Texas
Board faults Camp Mystic leader for inaction during deadly flood
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas board has suspended the nursing license of Camp Mystic’s co-director in a scathing order that accused her of not helping children evacuate during last year’s catastrophic floods that killed 25 girls and two teenage counselors.
It’s one of the state’s first actions against a member of the family that owns and operates the all-girls Christian camp since the July 4 flood. Last month, Camp Mystic canceled plans to reopen this summer in the face of outrage from victims’ parents.
Mary Liz Eastland, a registered nurse, served as the camp’s medical officer. She has previously acknowledged in court that she never tried to reach children and staff in the low-lying area of the camp as the predawn flooding along the Guadalupe River worsened. Her father-in-law, Camp Mystic owner Richard Eastland, also died in the flood.
Allowing Mary Liz Eastland to keep practicing nursing would constitute a “continuing and imminent threat to public welfare,” according to an order signed Tuesday by Kristin Benton, executive director of the Texas Board of Nursing.
Eastland “abandoned the campers and staff when the camp site began to flood ... by evacuating herself and her children to higher ground without providing any assistance or direction to all of the other campers and staff,” the order reads.
Eastland rejects the findings and will fight the suspension, said Camp Mystic attorney Joshua Fiveson. He said the board suspended her license with less than a day’s notice of a hearing and without taking testimony or conducting a full investigation.
“This is a sad day for Mrs. Eastland as well as every licensed nurse in Texas,” Fiveson said. “This was an exercise in premature punishment.”
According to the order, the board will issue a final decision on her license within two months.
Since the flood, the Eastland family has come under intensifying criticism from families of the victims and Texas lawmakers. Several families have filed lawsuits against the Eastlands, who for months forged ahead with plans to reopen before ultimately backing down.
In April, legislative hearings laid bare the camp’s lack of detailed planning for a flood emergency, reliance on poorly trained staff and missed chances to evacuate children from the cabins near the river.
Mary Liz Eastland recounted during the hearings her steps that night when she and her children left their house to join her mother-in-law. She described water pouring into the house and breaking a window to escape. The family was able to get to higher ground.
She and other staff gathered survivors for a head count, checking names against cabin rosters. She said she could not pass through the rising floodwaters to get to the campers closest to the Guadalupe River.
Eastland was also pressed as to why, as the camp’s chief medical officer, she did not try to call or alert other medical staff to get to the campers before disaster struck. When asked if the other staff could have helped with the camp evacuation, she said, “Maybe so.”
Colorado
State Democrats censure governor for conspiracy theorist sentence commutation
FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) — Colorado Democrats voted overwhelmingly to censure one of their own, Gov. Jared Polis, for commuting the prison sentence of Tina Peters, the election conspiracy theorist who amplified President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that mass fraud caused his 2020 election loss.
About 90% of the state party’s roughly 700 Central Committee members voted Wednesday for censure. It means that Polis, who is term-limited and serving his final year in office, will be barred from being an honored guest, featured speaker, or officially recognized party representative at party-sponsored events.
Peters, 70, is a former county clerk who was sentenced to nine years behind bars after being convicted in 2024 for a scheme to make a copy of her county’s election computer system.
She is set for release June 1 after Polis commuted her sentence Friday.
Trump has championed Peters’ cause. Reducing her sentence set a “dangerous and disappointing” precedent when democracy and voting rights are under attack nationwide, the Colorado Democratic Party said in a statement.
“It sends a message to future bad actors that election tampering has consequences, unless you’re friends with the president,” the statement said.
About 700 state party members, including current and former elected officials, petitioned for the party to condemn Polis. The subsequent censure vote was taken in a regularly scheduled party Central Committee virtual meeting.
In April, a Colorado appeals court upheld Peters’ conviction but ordered her to be resentenced, saying the judge wrongly punished her for speaking out about election fraud.
In commuting her sentence, Polis told Peters in a letter she deserved prison time but had been given an “extremely unusual and lengthy” sentence for a first-time, nonviolent offender.
He defended the commutation after the censure vote.
“The governor made this decision based on the facts of the case and what he believed was the right thing to do. Sometimes the right thing isn’t the popular thing with everybody. Democracy is strongest when disagreement is met with debate and dialogue, not censorship,” Polis spokesperson Eric Maruyama said in an emailed statement Thursday.
Peters thanked Polis and apologized for her crime in a statement after her sentence commutation.
Peters sneaked an outside computer expert, an associate of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, to make a copy of her county’s Dominion Voting Systems election computer server during a system upgrade in 2021. She then joined Lindell onstage at a “cybersymposium” that promised to reveal proof of election rigging, and photos of the upgrade, including passwords, were posted online.
Board faults Camp Mystic leader for inaction during deadly flood
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas board has suspended the nursing license of Camp Mystic’s co-director in a scathing order that accused her of not helping children evacuate during last year’s catastrophic floods that killed 25 girls and two teenage counselors.
It’s one of the state’s first actions against a member of the family that owns and operates the all-girls Christian camp since the July 4 flood. Last month, Camp Mystic canceled plans to reopen this summer in the face of outrage from victims’ parents.
Mary Liz Eastland, a registered nurse, served as the camp’s medical officer. She has previously acknowledged in court that she never tried to reach children and staff in the low-lying area of the camp as the predawn flooding along the Guadalupe River worsened. Her father-in-law, Camp Mystic owner Richard Eastland, also died in the flood.
Allowing Mary Liz Eastland to keep practicing nursing would constitute a “continuing and imminent threat to public welfare,” according to an order signed Tuesday by Kristin Benton, executive director of the Texas Board of Nursing.
Eastland “abandoned the campers and staff when the camp site began to flood ... by evacuating herself and her children to higher ground without providing any assistance or direction to all of the other campers and staff,” the order reads.
Eastland rejects the findings and will fight the suspension, said Camp Mystic attorney Joshua Fiveson. He said the board suspended her license with less than a day’s notice of a hearing and without taking testimony or conducting a full investigation.
“This is a sad day for Mrs. Eastland as well as every licensed nurse in Texas,” Fiveson said. “This was an exercise in premature punishment.”
According to the order, the board will issue a final decision on her license within two months.
Since the flood, the Eastland family has come under intensifying criticism from families of the victims and Texas lawmakers. Several families have filed lawsuits against the Eastlands, who for months forged ahead with plans to reopen before ultimately backing down.
In April, legislative hearings laid bare the camp’s lack of detailed planning for a flood emergency, reliance on poorly trained staff and missed chances to evacuate children from the cabins near the river.
Mary Liz Eastland recounted during the hearings her steps that night when she and her children left their house to join her mother-in-law. She described water pouring into the house and breaking a window to escape. The family was able to get to higher ground.
She and other staff gathered survivors for a head count, checking names against cabin rosters. She said she could not pass through the rising floodwaters to get to the campers closest to the Guadalupe River.
Eastland was also pressed as to why, as the camp’s chief medical officer, she did not try to call or alert other medical staff to get to the campers before disaster struck. When asked if the other staff could have helped with the camp evacuation, she said, “Maybe so.”
Colorado
State Democrats censure governor for conspiracy theorist sentence commutation
FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) — Colorado Democrats voted overwhelmingly to censure one of their own, Gov. Jared Polis, for commuting the prison sentence of Tina Peters, the election conspiracy theorist who amplified President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that mass fraud caused his 2020 election loss.
About 90% of the state party’s roughly 700 Central Committee members voted Wednesday for censure. It means that Polis, who is term-limited and serving his final year in office, will be barred from being an honored guest, featured speaker, or officially recognized party representative at party-sponsored events.
Peters, 70, is a former county clerk who was sentenced to nine years behind bars after being convicted in 2024 for a scheme to make a copy of her county’s election computer system.
She is set for release June 1 after Polis commuted her sentence Friday.
Trump has championed Peters’ cause. Reducing her sentence set a “dangerous and disappointing” precedent when democracy and voting rights are under attack nationwide, the Colorado Democratic Party said in a statement.
“It sends a message to future bad actors that election tampering has consequences, unless you’re friends with the president,” the statement said.
About 700 state party members, including current and former elected officials, petitioned for the party to condemn Polis. The subsequent censure vote was taken in a regularly scheduled party Central Committee virtual meeting.
In April, a Colorado appeals court upheld Peters’ conviction but ordered her to be resentenced, saying the judge wrongly punished her for speaking out about election fraud.
In commuting her sentence, Polis told Peters in a letter she deserved prison time but had been given an “extremely unusual and lengthy” sentence for a first-time, nonviolent offender.
He defended the commutation after the censure vote.
“The governor made this decision based on the facts of the case and what he believed was the right thing to do. Sometimes the right thing isn’t the popular thing with everybody. Democracy is strongest when disagreement is met with debate and dialogue, not censorship,” Polis spokesperson Eric Maruyama said in an emailed statement Thursday.
Peters thanked Polis and apologized for her crime in a statement after her sentence commutation.
Peters sneaked an outside computer expert, an associate of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, to make a copy of her county’s Dominion Voting Systems election computer server during a system upgrade in 2021. She then joined Lindell onstage at a “cybersymposium” that promised to reveal proof of election rigging, and photos of the upgrade, including passwords, were posted online.
