Is Operation Slowdown effective?
Two vehicles went airborne over Houston freeways on back-to-back days last week, and both incidents occurred during TxDOT’s own campaign to stop it. Operation Slowdown, the state’s annual speed-enforcement push, runs July 18 through Aug. 2 this year, adding extra patrols after speeding contributed to 1,247 deaths and more than 150,000 crashes across Texas in 2025 alone.
On July 22, a driver lost control on the elevated HOV lane along northbound Interstate 69 at Beltway 8 West, struck the barrier, and fell onto the main lanes below. Three women were hospitalized and are expected to survive, thanks in part to bystanders who used sledgehammers and their bare hands to pull them from the wreckage. Less than 24 hours later, two 18-wheelers collided on eastbound Interstate 10 at the Grand Parkway interchange. One truck’s trailer was left dangling off the overpass while the cab crashed onto the feeder road below, spilling fuel and sending two people to the hospital.
Both crashes shut down major freeways for hours during rush periods. That should tell us something. A themed campaign and a few more patrol cars are not going to fix a culture where cutting across three lanes at 85 mph feels normal. Houston needs engineering fixes and real consequences. Because after the campaign is over, then what?
Ryan Coogler chooses the next Black Panther
Marvel finally answered its biggest lingering question at Comic-Con. Who takes up the mantle after Chadwick Boseman? Director Ryan Coogler introduced David Jonsson, known for HBO’s “Industry,” “Alien: Romulus” and “The Long Walk,” as the actor who will play an adult T’Challa II in “Black Panther 3,” set for Dec. 15, 2028. Jonsson called it “an honor and a privilege” to join the franchise. The casting news should have been a celebration. Instead, a slice of social media turned it into a referendum on Jonsson’s nationality, questioning why a British actor was chosen to carry on a story built around Boseman, an American who died in 2020 after a private battle with colon cancer.
Wakanda is fiction. It is Coogler’s vision of an African nation that was never colonized, built with actors from across the diaspora, because that is the point. Letitia Wright is British. Winston Duke is Trinidadian. Lupita Nyong’o is Kenyan-Mexican. Coogler has always cast globally because Blackness is not limited to a single nationality. Second-guessing his decision after two films that reshaped what a superhero movie could be is giving second-hand embarrassment. Ryan Coogler knows what he is doing, and he hasn’t disappointed us so far.
Trump joked about a fourth term. It was not that funny
At the recent rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, President Donald Trump pulled a red “Trump 2028” hat from behind the podium and announced, as a bit, his “intention to run for a fourth term.” The room, by most accounts, went quiet. The Constitution’s 22nd Amendment limits any president to two elected terms, and Trump has previously suggested that his count should include his disputed 2020 loss.
Historians and legal scholars continue cataloging what they call the unprecedented erosion of democratic norms under this administration, from two impeachments to a felony conviction to open questioning of the peaceful transfer of power. Supporters call it Trump being Trump. Critics see a president who keeps testing how far a bit can go before it stops being one.
The oath to preserve and protect the Constitution is not a punchline. Using the power of the federal government against critics is not a punchline. A hat is not just a hat when the man wearing it has spent a decade blurring the line between performance and intent. There are many unprecedented things happening in his presidency. A fourth term isn’t what I ever want to see.
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