8 January 2 - 8, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents his tips for winter weather preparation, in- cluding the advice, “If it gets too damn cold, join me in Cancun!” How many times do we have to say this? People died, Ted. Still, it does make our Grinch hearts grow three sizes to see Cruz get the occa- sional taste of his own medicine. He chimed in on September’s right-wing backed con- spiracy theory that Haitian migrants were eating residents’ pets in Springfield, Ohio, with a meme of 2012-like formatting: two wide-eyed, embracing kittens urging voters to choose Trump at the polls so their lives would be spared. One commenter responded to the meme with a reminder that Cruz doesn’t have a perfect record when it comes to animal wel- fare. After all, while he was defrosting in Cancun, his pet dog — aptly named Snow- ball — was stuck in the Lone Star State freez- ing with the rest of us. The Observer could conduct our own inquiry to find out how many times Cruz recalled his Cancun trip on social media over the past year, but we worry the an- swer would be too much even for our cyni- cal asses. Where Have All the Dems Gone? I n the 2023 Congress on X report, Quo- rum predicted Democrats would retreat from the platform — a trend that seemed to be aided by the rising popularity of the so- cial media app Bluesky. Bluesky’s concept is reminiscent of X’s: the Bluesky app allows users to post short messages, images and videos to a newsfeed, which can then be responded to, reposted and liked by other users. In the weeks fol- lowing the election, millions of users flocked to the Bluesky app as X endured an exodus of users. Data shows that even the Democrats who have historically been most inclined to take to Twitter for political dialogue are scaling back their posting habits. Last year’s postingest Democrat was Dwight Evans of Pennsylvania; in 2024, he decreased his posting by 66%, Quorum found. President Joe Biden has remained relatively silent on- line since Vice President Kamala Harris’ No- vember election loss. Democrats’ retreat from X could be con- tributing to an increasingly conservative culture on the app. Quorum found topics like “Bidenomics” — a term first coined by the Biden Administration to promote the Presidents’ economic policies before it was commandeered by Republicans — and “Biden border crisis” trended among Re- publican lawmakers’ posts. Those conservative posts likely received a boost from new algorithm that X put into place in mid-summer and which some stud- ies suggest has turned the app into a conser- vative echo chamber. Still, some Democrats warn that turning away from the app may actually benefit X owner and Trump crony Elon Musk. “If we leave X, it will help Elon with his goal of making the platform void of any pro- gressive ideology or the way we think about the world,” Maxwell Frost, a 27-year-old member of Congress from Florida, told Po- litico last month. ▼ ENVIRONMENT FREE TO DIE TEXAS AG COMMISSIONER SID MILLER SAYS SAVING MONARCH BUTTERFLIES IS BAD FOR TEXAS. BY EMMA RUBY U .S. officials moved to protect the monarch butterfly species recently by labeling the iconic orange-and- black insect a “threatened” species, and al- ready one Texas official is making an undue stink over it. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service opened a 90-day public input period dur- ing which individuals can weigh in on the proposal, which includes designating 4,395 California acres a critical habitat for mon- archs under the Endangered Species Act. In a statement released shortly after the service’s announcement, Sid Miller, the head agriculture official in the Lone Star State, warned that protecting the butter- flies is part of the “radical agenda” of “out- of-touch and out-of-control Washington bureaucrats.” “The Biden Administration’s recent pro- posal to list the Monarch Butterfly as a threatened species is just the latest example of federal government overreach which cripples agriculture and rural develop- ment,” Miller said in a statement. “Don’t be misled. This proposal isn’t about protecting butterflies.” Except that it is. Scientists are raising the flag on a dan- gerously declining monarch migratory pop- ulation. The western and eastern monarch populations have declined 95% and 80%, re- spectively, since the 1980s, federal scientists say. Monarchs are known for their flight across North America, but several factors — including climate change, illegal logging in the butterfly’s overwintering habitat in Mexico, insecticides and pesticides used on U.S. crops, and spreading development across U.S. grasslands — have resulted in fewer surviving the journey each year. Van Johnson, an Oak Cliff resident who has maintained a robust butterfly garden in his backyard for several years, used to re- cord hundreds of butterflies a day passing through during the peak fall migration. He’d noticed the population decreasing in recent years; then, this fall, the butterflies never came. “I kept waiting and waiting and waiting for them to come, because in previous years there would be early arrivals, and they’d slowly build and then, boom, one day they’d all be there,” Johnson told the Observer. “That didn’t happen this year. It was like the early arrivals for a week, and that peak never came through. And [other gardeners] all over Dallas are saying that. They just never arrived this year.” Johnson worries the monarch migration trickle is the “new normal” for Texas, which acts as a funnel for the insects on their jour- ney from Canada to Mexico and back. But Miller is concerned that the pro- posed protections for the butterflies — mon- archs, by the way, are the state insect of Texas — would impede the Lone Star State’s economy by slapping “widespread restric- tions” on Monarch habitats, impacting “Texas farmers, ranchers, small businesses, and consumers.” The commissioner also warned that the new protections would make it “impossible” to build or develop in rural areas of Texas, taking an axe to our state’s “dairies, wind and solar farms, foot- ball stadiums, roads, airports, railways, feed- lots, rural hospitals, parking lots, logging, and mining.” (Officials have stated that the critical habitat — which is proposed to be in Califor- nia, not Texas — will not impose require- ments on state or private land unless the action involves federal funding, permits or approvals.) In its proposal, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service states that public goodwill towards the monarch butterfly could be leveraged into encouraging a grassroots conservation effort. “Because of the monarch butterfly’s general habitat use and wide distribution, all sectors of society, including the general public, have an opportunity to participate in a broad range of conservation efforts throughout the species’ range,” the pro- posal reads. Encouraging the planting of butterfly- friendly gardens such as Johnson’s is noted in the proposal as a necessary step towards “improving future conditions” for the butterflies. And while Johnson will be submitting a public comment of support for the proposal — officials expect to make a ruling on the monarch’s species status in March — he is also looking to local ceme- teries as underutilized green spaces that could be used to increase the number of nectar plants in the Texas funnel. He is currently planning a butterfly gar- den for the Western Heights Cemetery in West Dallas, where Clyde Barrow is buried. “It’s one of the great migrations of the world,” Johnson said. “It’s one of the mir- acles of nature, and it would just be a terri- ble shame if it disappeared for short-sightedness.” Unfair Park from p7 williamhc/iStock The familiar monarch may be disappearing.
