4 April 16 - 22, 2026 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents launch that process without a private indus- try partner. SB 2308 requires an approved drug company to have a physical corporate presence in Texas, disclose key financial in- formation and agree to the state collecting 20% of future revenue. Along with the $50 million match, the requirements may have been “a tough pill to swallow,” Harris said. “I would really like to see what companies were considered for this process and why, spe- cifically, they were denied,” Harris said. “Be- cause I think it’s helpful to understand that and to understand if the state’s bar is too high, or is there a lack of interest with these require- ments? How many companies are even capa- ble of meeting these requirements?” The Tuesday joint statement did not con- tain information on the companies involved; rather, Patrick simply wrote that “no drug company, including the most recent appli- cant, has yet submitted a proposal that meets the law’s requirements and standards to re- ceive state funds and begin clinical trial.” Harris said the state could look to donors or other private sources to help match the state’s $50 million contribution. And the state needs a matching partner to disburse its own funds under the adopted text of SB 2306, Harris said. “They’re supposed to have that private matching contribution of 50 million to move forward… As a statutory thing, something is going to have to change for the compliance to be there,” Harris said. She added that, if needed, lawmakers could amend the bill’s language in a special session. Burrows and Paxton’s joint state- ment did not specify a timeline for launch- ing the trials. But even then, she said the $100 million to- tal may not be enough to fully fund the trials. “There’s questions about how this is going to work. $50 million will not be enough to get the clinical trials to the FDA approval stage,” Harris said. “I don’t know that $100 million will be. So more money is going to be needed, and maybe there are already identified pri- vate donors, right? So maybe they don’t have a drug developer partner, but maybe they can help. Maybe they’re still intending to raise money from the private sector.” Legislators in other states have joined Texas in advancing bills to fund research. On March 30, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed a bill authorizing the state’s own ibo- gaine consortium and allowing for collabo- ration with other states’ research programs. Lawmakers in Oklahoma and West Virginia have also filed bills modeled after SB 2308. The would-be miracle drug is still years away from approval for use, however, and a rubber stamp from the FDA is far from guar- anteed, said Harris, who pointed to the agency’s decision to deny MDMA for thera- peutic use after decades of trials in 2024. And it remains to be seen whether Texas of- ficials will have the stomach for a years-long process with an uncertain outcome. “Without the private partner, I don’t know that they actually have the appetite to spend what needs to be spent on this,” Har- ris said. “Because, again, I think $100 million is a kind of low-ball for what it would take to get to the FDA approval process. They wanted to spend $50 million.” ▼ PROTESTS MAKE PROTESTS SAFE AGAIN MAGA HAT-WEARER CHARGED WITH DEADLY CONDUCT AFTER WAVING STUN GUN AT PROTEST. BY AUSTIN WOOD A man is facing multiple counts of deadly conduct after brandishing a stun gun at an anti-war protest on April 8, Dallas police representatives said. According to a police statement, 58-year- old Luis Maldonado was arrested in the 1900 block of Main Street, close to Main Street Garden Park, after officers responded to a disturbance around 8:20 p.m. Maldo- nado pointed a stun gun at protestors, police said, and was taken into custody after being approached by officers. Police reported no injuries. The news comes less than two weeks af- ter an older man was assaulted by an indi- vidual alleged to have ties to far-right groups at a No Kings Rally in downtown. Maldonado is facing three counts of deadly conduct and one count of resisting arrest, search or transport, according to Dal- las County Jail records. A video posted to Reddit after the inci- dent appears to show Maldonado wearing a red Make America Great Again hat and sparking the stun gun in the direction of protestors multiple times before being taken into custody. Jo Hargis, an organizer of the protest and member of the DFW Anti-War Committee, said groups organized the protest in re- sponse to President Donald Trump’s recent statement that a “whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran failed to open the Strait of Hormuz by a certain time that evening. “The event itself, happily, was able to pro- ceed pretty normally,” Hargis said. “We had a very responsive crowd that was there, who were really engaged with the speakers who were speaking. I spoke last, and then we had someone who was doing a call to prayer, be- cause a lot of the folks who are in attendance are Muslim, and they pray five times a day.” “So the prayer was coming up, a lot of people were starting to pray. And it was dur- ing the call to prayer, where this man was singing the call to prayer, that I heard this crackling noise and saw a flash of light.” The call to prayer, or adhan, can be heard in the video, along with the crackling noise of the stun gun. Hargis said they recognized the stun gun “immediately” and noticed Maldonado wearing a MAGA hat. They also said orga- nizers had a dedicated security team at the event, who attempted to separate Maldo- nado from the crowd. “My first reaction to it was shock and dis- gust that someone would attack a group of people asking for an end to violence, and my second thought was how to keep as many people safe as possible,” Hargis said. The demonstration concluded as normal with food distribution and tables connecting protesters with resources, they added. Ryan Ahmadian, an organizer with Shias for Justice, said he didn’t see the incident coming. “The fact that somebody came out and felt the need to threaten us with tasers and almost assault people and hurt them with tasers when there’s little kids and elderly in the crowd,” Ahmadian said. “That was a lit- tle bit surprising to us.” Despite the incident, he said he plans to continue organizing against conflict in Leb- anon and Gaza. “We were promoting peace, speaking out against war, speaking out against the injus- tices that are going on all over the world,” Ah- madian said. “And so we don’t feel like there’s any kind of abrasiveness with that kind of messaging. We don’t see why it would make anybody mad, but it obviously does.” ▼ CRIMINAL JUSTICE NOT THROWING THE BOOK AT THEM TEXAS PRISONS OUTLAW HARDCOVER, USED BOOKS FOR INMATES AMID NARCOTICS UPTICK. BY EMMA RUBY A few hundred books that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice claims were soaked in narcotics have triggered a crackdown on literature en- tering TDCJ facilities. April is the first month during which hardcover and used books cannot be do- nated or mailed to inmates in the Texas cor- rectional system, a policy announced at the end of February this year. According to a TDCJ bulletin, the policy change was in- spired by “a rise in contraband” being smug- gled into prisons through books. In an emailed statement, TDCJ spokes- person Amanda Hernandez said that in 2025, officers identified 385 books contain- ing narcotics in facility mailrooms. “From religious books to classics,” Hernandez said, there has been a “relentless” effort to beat security measures, and that limitations with “scanning technology” mean it is impossible to know how many contaminated books may have been unidentified. The agency provided the Houston-based news outlet Chron with photos of three books that it says were sprayed with or soaked in the hallucinogenic drug PCP. Her- nandez did not answer the Observer’s ques- tion about how many books entered TDCJ facilities in total in 2025. Still, 385 instances of confirmed contra- band represent a fraction of the number of books — and, for that matter, drugs — actu- ally entering Texas’ correctional facilities. “I don’t know how many more times TDCJ has to be told that the majority of the contraband, the drugs, especially, come from the staff,” Jennifer Toon, executive director of LIONESS Justice Impacted Women Alli- ance, told the Observer. “[Contraband can] come from family, it does come through people on the outside sending in mail or books that are laced with drugs. There cer- tainly has been an uptick. But overall, our lived experience is that it is from the staff.” Two former correctional officers were arrested earlier this month for participat- ing in a drone-driven contraband delivery scheme in East Texas, and TDCJ staff members participating in contraband smuggling is a long-recorded problem that may have been further exacerbated by the pandemic. One organization, Inside Books Project, claims to send 30,000 free books annually to individuals who are incarcerated in Texas. Based on that figure alone, contraband books would have accounted for just over 1% of the literature donated to or mailed into a TDCJ facility in 2025. The organization told Chron that around 80% of their donations will be affected by the new ban on hardcover or used books, ul- timately limiting access to reading or sup- plemental learning materials. Program Coordinator Scott Odierno added that books donated to the organization undergo two rounds of checks to ensure compliance with TDCJ standards, and that being forced to purchase new titles will significantly limit the number of books the organization can donate. In a statement, Texas Board of Criminal Justice Chairman Eric J.R. Nichols said that “as a life-long reader,” he is pained to restrict access to reading materials, but that “illegal and dangerous drugs” have led to overdose deaths, necessitating the crackdown on con- traband. Unfair Park from p3 >> p7 Adobe Stock MAGA hats and anti-Trump protests typically do not mesh well.
