Lead Stories

Senate passes One Big Beautiful Bill with host of Texas Republican priorities

The U.S. Senate passed a sweeping GOP tax policy bill Tuesday that represents the centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda. Republicans say the bill, which includes a number of specific provisions pushed by Texas’ Republican U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, will drive economic growth, promote domestic energy production and fund Trump’s immigration enforcement policies. Democrats described the measure as a giveaway to the wealthy and highlighted projections it would increase by millions the number of people without health insurance, due in large part to Medicaid changes. The Senate vote sends the bill back to the House where it faces resistance from some conservative deficit hawks, including U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Austin.

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Texas Republicans have focused on using the bill as a vehicle to reimburse the state for border security and immigration enforcement expenses it incurred during former President Joe Biden’s administration. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has traveled to Washington multiple times this year to lobby for $11.1 billion to cover the cost of Operation Lone Star. As part of that initiative, Texas sent state troopers and National Guard soldiers to the border. It also placed physical barriers such as razor wire along the Rio Grande. Texas Democrats have criticized the operation as a failure. Republicans say the state should be reimbursed for doing the federal government’s job over the four years of Biden’s term. Cruz fought to preserve and expand the nationwide school choice program approved by the House that would provide a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for contributions to nonprofit organizations granting scholarships for K-12 public and private school students. Cruz pushed successfully to strip out language requiring eligible schools to maintain admissions standards that do not take into account whether students have an individualized education plan or if they require equitable services for a learning disability.

House Republicans threaten to sink Trump’s megabill

House Republicans are already lining up to oppose President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” with conservatives and centrists blasting the legislation just hours after Vice President JD Vance cast his tiebreaking vote on the Senate version. At the moment, the number of House Republicans vowing to oppose the Senate version is enough to block the bill’s passage, unless there is again a last-minute scramble to negotiate with holdouts along with a successful pressure campaign by the president. Only three House Republicans need to oppose the bill to sink it. Rep. Ralph Norman (R., S.C.), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, told reporters about an hour after the Senate bill’s passage Tuesday that he wouldn’t vote to move the president’s tax bill out of the House Rules Committee. The panel is debating whether to advance the bill to a vote in the full House. If it does ultimately make it to the floor, Norman would oppose the bill there as well.

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“Our bill has been completely changed—from the IRA credits to the deficit,” said Norman, referring to the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act. “This bill’s a nonstarter. We want to do this, but this bill doesn’t do what the president wants it to do.” Norman later said he believes there are enough “no” votes in the House to sink the bill. If House Speaker Mike Johnson fails to get enough members to back it, they will go to a process in which the House and Senate work to reconcile differences. That would likely blow through Trump’s fast-approaching deadline of July 4 to pass the bill. A crescendo of complaints began building across the disparate wings of the House Republican conference days before the Senate passed the bill, following an exhaustive 27-hour marathon of amendment votes. The legislation would broadly fund Trump’s biggest priorities including the extension of his 2017 tax cuts; no tax on tips and overtime; and a large funding boost to the president’s immigration and border policies.

How tech’s bold bid to curb AI laws fell apart

Republican leaders had appeared poised to deliver on one of the U.S. tech industry’s wildest policy dreams as the Senate convened Monday morning to begin a marathon voting session on the sprawling tax and immigration bill. Less than 24 hours later, the measure was dead. And Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee was holding the knife. The night before, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) had hammered out a hard-won compromise with Blackburn to preserve the essence of a moratorium on state laws regulating artificial intelligence. The deal came after 11th-hour lobbying by tech groups giddy at the prospect of rolling back regulations they viewed as obstacles to unfettered innovation. It wasn’t to be. The Senate voted 99-1 in the predawn hours Tuesday to strip the AI-law moratorium from the bill — a resounding defeat for the tech industry and a dramatic reversal of fortune for the provision’s supporters.

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Blackburn — who has pushed bills to protect kids online and to protect Nashville’s country music industry from AI imitations — proposed the amendment to strip the provision at the end of a day-long pressure campaign Monday by its opponents. A defeated Cruz ultimately joined her, as did every senator except for Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), who had recently announced he won’t run for reelection. The vote on the AI moratorium came as part of a 27-hour “vote-a-rama” on a slew of proposed changes to the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which carries much of President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda. The Senate approved the amended bill later Tuesday morning, sending it back to the House with the AI provisions no longer mentioned. Blackburn’s turnaround, insiders told The Washington Post on Tuesday, followed pleas from allies who feared the moratorium would jeopardize child safety regulations despite language in the compromise intended to exempt them. Republican leaders and tech trade groups had pitched a 10-year freeze on state AI regulations as necessary to pave the way for American tech firms to innovate and outcompete their Chinese counterparts. The idea echoed a 2024 proposal by the R Street Institute, a free-market think tank, which proposed a “learning period” moratorium on AI laws to prevent a “looming patchwork of inconsistent state and local laws.”

Powell confirms that the Fed would have cut by now were it not for tariffs

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Tuesday that the U.S. central bank would have eased monetary policy by now if not for President Donald Trump’s tariff plan. When asked during a panel if the Fed would have lowered rates again this year had Trump not announced his controversial plan to impose higher levies on imported goods earlier this year, Powell said, “I think that’s right.” “In effect, we went on hold when we saw the size of the tariffs and essentially all inflation forecasts for the United States went up materially as a consequence of the tariffs,” Powell said at European Central Bank forum in Sintra, Portugal. Powell’s admission comes as the Fed has entered a holding pattern on interest rates despite mounting pressure from the White House.

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The Fed last month held the key borrowing rate steady once again, keeping fed funds at the same range between 4.25% and 4.5% where it’s been since December. The central bank’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee indicated via its so-called dot plot of members’ projections that there could be two cuts by the end of 2025. However, Powell also said at a press conference last month that the Fed was “well positioned” to remain in a wait-and-see mode. On Tuesday, Powell was asked if July would be too soon for markets to expect a rate cut. He answered that that he “really can’t say” and that “it’s going to depend on the data.” Fed funds futures traders are pricing in a more than 76% likelihood that the central bank once again holds rates steady at the July policy gathering, according to the CME FedWatch tool. “We are going meeting by meeting,” Powell said during Tuesday’s panel. “I wouldn’t take any meeting off the table or put it directly on the table. It’s going to depend on how the data evolve.”

State Stories

3 families say lack of air conditioning in Texas prisons caused their loved ones' deaths

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) is facing more legal action over sweltering conditions in state prisons. The families of three inmates who died in 2023 are suing the department in federal court, claiming their loved ones died due to a lack of air conditioning in prisons. The families of Jon Southards, Elizabeth Hagerty and John Skinner say their loved ones had multiple disabilities, making them more vulnerable to heat-related illnesses. But the families say the TDCJ failed to provide them with cooled housing. The three were housed in different facilities: one in Gatesville and two near Huntsville.

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WFAA, KVUE's news partners in North Texas, spoke with Southards' mother just after his death in 2023. She said her son was in prison for burglary, and he told her about the hot conditions just before he died. "I thought my baby would be rehabilitated. I thought he would serve his time, which, deservingly, he needed to," Tona Southards-Maranjo said. "Jon was not just my son. John was my best friend, my baby." KVUE reached out to the TDCJ for a comment about the new lawsuit. We received the following response: "Core to this department’s mission is protecting the public, our employees, and the inmates in our custody. It is a responsibility that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice takes seriously. The agency takes numerous precautions to lessen the effects of hot temperatures for those in our facilities. Over the last several years, the agency has worked to increase the number of cool beds available. TDCJ is dedicated to continuing to add air-conditioned beds in our facilities. During the 88th Texas Legislative session, TDCJ received a historic infusion of funding for major repair and improvement projects at facilities. Specifically, the agency received $85 million to install additional air conditioning. Additionally, TDCJ’s Legislative Appropriations Request for the FY2026-27 biennium includes an exceptional item request for $118 million for the installation of air conditioning. This would provide an additional 18,000 air-conditioned beds to the system. Earlier this year, a federal judge ruled that extreme heat in TDCJ facilities is unconstitutional, but he stopped short of requiring the TDCJ to add air condition to all its units due to the cost. The supplemental appropriations bill lawmakers passed this past session will include $118 million to help the TDCJ add 11,000 air-conditioned beds to prisons. But a bill that would have required Texas to add A/C to all prisons passed in the House this session, then failed in the Senate.

Chip Roy is in the hot seat again on Trump's tax cut bill

Earlier this year, U.S. Rep. Chip Roy reluctantly voted for a Republican budget plan, saying while it didn't go far enough in cutting government spending, he had gotten assurances from President Donald Trump the cuts he wanted would be there in the end. Three months later, those cuts have not materialized. The U.S. Senate on Tuesday passed Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill," which includes expensive tax breaks and increased spending on the border and military in a package the Congressional Budget Office estimates would add $3.3 trillion to the federal debt over the next decade. Now, Roy and his allies in the House Freedom Caucus must decide between pleasing Trump or resisting the type of government spending increase they have long railed against.

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Roy expressed his frustration in a social media post Monday night. "We’ve got to deliver for the President—but it has to be the right bill," the Austin Republican said, according to a post by his press team on X. "One that actually stops the spending, ends the inflation, and stops subsidizing our own destruction.” Since being elected to Congress in 2018, Roy has repeatedly threatened to block Republican budget packages he believes overspend, only to relent and cut deals with leadership to allow their passage. With Trump back in the White House and Republicans narrowly controlling both the House and Senate, Roy is in his best position yet to wield influence and bring down the deficit. In an interview late last year, he acknowledged the challenges in getting Congress to cut spending that members' states had come to rely on, while describing the national debt crisis in histrionic terms. “I know I can’t get everything I want, but I know I won’t get anything if just get in the boat heading to the iceberg," he said.

Trump officials want to give TxDOT more power over highway expansions

The Trump administration wants to give Texas more authority – and require less transparency – as the state expands existing highways and builds new ones. In November, the Texas Department of Transportation asked the Federal Highway Administration to extend a special designation that lets it oversee its own compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act. NEPA requires the state to document community and environmental impacts of road projects. Now, TxDOT has submitted a new application, with changes that would give itself drastically more oversight and authority over its own federal environmental review. The draft rule would allow TxDOT to skip annual self-assessments and monthly reports that document the agency’s compliance with the federal law.

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The application was revised after federal leadership “presented an opportunity to address unnecessary administrative requirements in a renegotiated MOU that preserves all of the legal requirements of the NEPA assignment program,” said Adam Hammons, a TxDOT spokesperson, in an email. He said that TxDOT was still subject to monitoring and audits by the Federal Highway Administration. If approved, TxDOT won’t have to inform community members of their right to sue the state agency or file a civil rights complaint with the FHWA, as dozens of people did in 2021 in response to the I-45 expansion in Houston. The new agreement also removes a requirement that TxDOT reevaluate old projects, meaning projects originally approved years ago could begin construction without public notice or input. “The Biden Administration added burdensome NEPA requirements like environmental justice initiatives that delayed progress on vital road and bridge projects,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy when he announced the proposed changes. “If enacted, Texas’ new agreement will allow the state to tackle critical infrastructure bigger, better and faster.”

100+ felony bonds reduced by Travis County Justice of the Peace

The release of an Austin man charged with capital murder after a Travis County Justice of the Peace granted him a significant bond reduction prompted a KXAN investigation. It uncovered that same judge has reduced or modified bonds for at least 100 additional defendants facing felony charges since she took office in January. Aden Munoz, 18, was arrested on Feb. 13 and faced a Capital Murder charge. An Austin Municipal Court Judge required him to post a $750,000 bond. Less than four weeks later, court records show another judge reduced his original bond to $5,000, and he was released from custody. Three days after Munoz was released from jail, the Travis County District Attorney‘s Office filed a motion to reinstate the original $750,000 bond, alleging a violation of Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Section 17.091, which requires the attorney representing the state receive reasonable notice of any proposed bail reduction and be given the opportunity to have a hearing on the proposed reduction for all first degree felony offenses as well as any offense listed in Article 42A.054 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure.

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“No representative of the State was notified of any of these proceedings,” the motion stated. The order modifying and reducing the original bond to $5,000 was issued by Tanisa Jeffers, the newly-elected Travis County Justice of the Peace for Precinct 5, which serves downtown and parts of central and northwest Austin. She formerly served as an associate judge at the Austin Municipal Court before beginning her current term in January 2025. In Travis County, Austin municipal court judges provide criminal magistrate services and are tasked with determining bail amounts and bond conditions as appropriate during preliminary proceedings in felony and misdemeanor cases, according to the Interlocal Agreement between Travis County and the City of Austin. A Texas Justice of the Peace has jurisdiction to perform magistrate duties in Texas, however, the criminal workload for JPs in Travis County typically involves class C criminal misdemeanors and various civil law duties, according to the Travis County website. KXAN asked Judge Jeffers why the State was never notified of the bail reduction and what factors she considered before agreeing to a reduced bond of $5,000 for a defendant facing a capital murder charge.

Cook Children’s Medicaid coverage remains in legal limbo

After a March brain surgery at Cook Children’s, 15-year-old Preston Benjamin-Sewell had to relearn how to walk, eat and talk. He was in the Fort Worth-based hospital for a little over a month and a half, a place he’s well acquainted with. The first several days were challenging, said Meghan Czarobski, his mother. Preston was bedridden and couldn’t do anything independently. “But once he gets up and going, nothing holds him back,” Czarobski said. “He just starts going. So, he went from, like, not being able to walk to, as soon as he got his footing, he was taking off.” The surgery was to help with seizures.

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Preston has autism, an intellectual and developmental disability and a rare form of epilepsy called Lennox-Gastaut syndrome. He’s triple insured through Cook Children’s Health Plan, Blue Cross Blue Shield and TRICARE to help cover health care costs, Czarobski said. They’re at Cook Children’s frequently, but the family and others in North Texas are concerned about possible disruptions to their health care coverage, after state lawmakers didn’t take action to address the way the state awards Medicaid contracts. Texas’ Health and Human Services Commission announced in March 2024 that it was not awarding its multibillion dollar Medicaid contract to Cook Children’s Health Plan. Texas pays insurance providers, like the Cook Children’s Health Plan, who administer health insurance to children and pregnant patients on the Medicaid STAR and CHIP programs. Instead of going to Cook’s Health Plan and a handful of other similar plans in Texas, the Health and Human Services Commission awarded the contract to Aetna, United Healthcare, Molina, Blue Cross and Blue Shield for Tarrant County and five neighboring counties. Also excluded were health plans associated with Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston and Driscoll Children’s Hospital in Corpus Christi. The contract award for STAR Kids, which provides Medicaid benefits to children and adults 20 and younger with disabilities, including Preston, is on hold by court order.

Texas mom charged with killing son on FBI’s Most Wanted list

More than two years after a 6-year-old Everman boy went missing, his mother has been added to the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List. Authorities have been searching for Cindy Rodriguez-Singh ever since she fled from North Texas to India with her husband and six other children on March 22, 2023, two days after she lied to investigators by saying the missing child was with his biological father in Mexico. Her son Noel Rodriguez-Alvarez is presumed dead, and Rodriguez-Singh has been charged with capital murder. The FBI’s Dallas office, Everman Police Department and Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office held a news conference Tuesday morning to announce that Rodriguez-Singh, 40, is the newest addition to the most wanted fugitives list.

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Craig Spencer, former chief of police and current city manager and emergency management coordinator for the City of Everman, said somebody knows what happened to Noel, “and now they have 250,000 reasons to come forward.” “This designation puts the world on notice that Cindy Rodriguez-Singh is now one of the most wanted fugitives in America,” Spencer said. “You don’t end up on the FBI top 10 list by accident. This is as serious as it gets.” A concerned relative from out of town alerted Child Protective Services in March 2023 that Noel hadn’t been seen since the previous fall. On March 20, police went to the family’s home on Wisteria Drive to check on the child, but Rodriguez-Singh lied to them about his whereabouts. Investigators reached Noel’s biological father in Mexico on March 23, and he denied that the 6-year-old was with him. Federal authorities confirmed there was no record of Noel crossing the border into Mexico. Police tried to contact Rodriguez-Singh the following day, but were unsuccessful.

Smaller nuclear reactors spark renewed interest in a once-shunned energy source

Bolstered by $3.2 million from a former Midland oilman, this West Texas city of 130,000 people is helping the Lone Star State lead a national nuclear energy resurgence. Doug Robison’s 2021 donation to Abilene Christian University helped the institution win federal approval to house an advanced small modular nuclear reactor, which might be finished as soon as next year. Small modular reactors are designed to be built in factories and then moved to a site, and require less upfront capital investment than traditional large reactors. The company Robison founded, Natura Resources, is investing another $30.5 million in the project. Only two small modular reactors are in operation, one in China and another in Russia. Natura Resources is one of two companies with federal permits to build one in the U.S.

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“Nuclear is happening,” said Robison, who retired from the oil business and moved to Abilene to launch the company. “It has to happen.” Robison’s words are being echoed across the country with new state laws that aim to accelerate the spread of projects that embrace advanced nuclear technology — decades after the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl calamities soured many Americans on nuclear power. In the past two years, half the states have taken action to promote nuclear power, from creating nuclear task forces to integrating nuclear into long-term energy plans, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, which advocates for the industry. “I’ve been tracking legislation for 18 years, and when I first started tracking, there were maybe five or 10 bills that said the word ‘nuclear,’” said Christine Csizmadia, who directs state government affairs at the institute. “This legislative session, we’re tracking over 300 bills all across the country.” The push is bipartisan. In New York, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul last month directed the New York Power Authority to build a zero-emission advanced nuclear power plant somewhere upstate — her state’s first new nuclear plant in a generation. In Colorado, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis in April signed legislation redefining nuclear energy, which doesn’t emit a significant amount of planet-warming greenhouse gases, as a “clean energy resource.” The law will allow future plants to receive state grants reserved for other carbon-free energy sources.

Judge dismisses lawsuit against doctor in case of woman who gave birth alone in Tarrant County Jail

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit against a doctor accused of neglecting a woman who gave birth alone in her Tarrant County Jail cell. Chasity Congious has intellectual disabilities and multiple serious mental health diagnoses, according to court records. She gave birth unattended in the Tarrant County Jail in 2020, and her daughter, Zenorah, died in the hospital 10 days later. Congious' family received $1.2 million in a lawsuit against Tarrant County, the largest settlement in county history. After that settlement, U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor allowed Congious’ mother to sue Dr. Aaron Ivy Shaw, the medical director at the Tarrant County Jail at the time Congious was incarcerated.

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On Tuesday, O’Connor dismissed the lawsuit. Congious’ legal team failed to prove Shaw was “deliberately indifferent” to her medical needs, he ruled. “There is no doubt that this case is an abject tragedy,” O'Connor wrote. Deliberate indifference is difficult to prove, and requires a lot of evidence, O’Connor wrote. Shaw would have needed to do something like deny Congious care or ignore her complaints, he wrote. The lawsuit hinged on an email to Shaw that noted Congious was experiencing abdominal pain the day she gave birth. Previous medical evaluations determined Congious would not be able to recognize if she was having contractions and recommended induced labor for her, according to court documents. The court had previously dismissed the lawsuit against Shaw, but O’Connor brought it back after Congious’ attorney produced that email. That email was a warning Congious was likely in labor and Shaw did nothing about it, her legal team argued.

Tarrant County approves $250K contract with law firm to fight racial gerrymandering lawsuit

Tarrant County commissioners approved a quarter million-dollar contract with a conservative law firm Tuesday to defend itself against a lawsuit over redistricting. The vote was 3-2, Republicans versus Democrats. Republican commissioners led an unusual mid-decade redistricting process this spring, redrawing the commissioners court precinct maps to add another Republican-majority precinct. They openly said they wanted to give themselves a larger majority on the commissioners court. Opponents to redistricting say Republicans created that extra conservative precinct by packing Democratic-leaning voters of color into a single district, diluting their voting power. The lawsuit, filed in June, accuses the county of unlawful racial gerrymandering.

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The $250,000 legal agreement is with the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), the same law firm Republican County Judge Tim O’Hare handpicked to lead the redistricting process. “This is essentially hiring the arsonist to put out the fire,” Democratic Commissioner Alisa Simmons said. She and her fellow Democratic commissioner, Roderick Miles Jr., voted against the contract. Miles criticized PILF for refusing to speak to the public or answer their questions at a series of public hearings about redistricting. “Residents asked questions and received no answers. Commissioners sought clarity and were met with silence,” he said. Simmons wondered whether hiring PILF could be a conflict of interest, if any of the foundation’s attorneys are called as witnesses in the lawsuit. Republican County Commissioner Manny Ramirez called that a valid concern and asked county attorney Mark Kratovil his opinion. The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office — which represents the county in legal matters — doesn't have a problem with the contract at this time, Kratovil said. Whether there’s a conflict of interest or not will come up as the lawsuit progresses, he said.

New Texas laws target roadside pet sales and puppy mills

Two new Texas laws taking effect later this year will tighten the leash on puppy mills and roadside pet sales by expanding local authority over outdoor animal vendors. With little government oversight, animals sold in parking lots and along roadsides often face poor conditions and neglect, typically at the hands of unlicensed breeders within large-scale breeding operations, colloquially referred to as puppy mills. But starting Sept. 1, House Bills 2012 and 2731 will allow counties near large metropolitan areas to ban animal sales in outdoor public spaces. These rules will also apply to counties along the U.S.-Mexico border with at least 200,000 residents.

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According to Katie Fine, senior advocacy strategist at Best Friends Animal Society, the laws represent “significant progress in breaking the supply chain for puppy mills in Texas.” The organization works to end euthanasia in animal shelters across the nation. "These laws protect communities, empower consumers, and hold deceptive sellers accountable,” Fine said. "It is smart and responsible legislation that prioritizes public safety and transparency." Since 2007, only counties with at least 1.3 million residents could regulate outdoor animal sales in Texas. The new laws expand that power to counties with over 600,000 residents that border another county with more than 4 million people. Counties newly granted this authority include Fort Bend, Montgomery, El Paso, Cameron, Webb and Hidalgo. These counties now join Harris County and the cities of Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Fort Worth — which have all banned roadside sales of dogs and cats.

CBP plans to process migrants arrested in new Rio Grande Valley military zone, agency says

Migrants who are apprehended from within a newly established military zone on the border in two South Texas counties will be processed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, the agency told Border Report on Monday. Last week, the Air Force announced that 250 miles of borderlands in Hidalgo and Cameron counties, which were previously managed by the International Boundary and Water Commission, are now part of an extended military base. The lands are now part of Joint Base San Antonio, a facility near 250 miles north of the border with Mexico. Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez told Border Report that the military will have the authority to withhold those for trespassing on military property, but that they would turn them over to other federal authorities.

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Border Patrol spokeswoman Christina Smallwood said in a statement: “All 9 stations in the RGV Sector are equipped with processing facilities. RGV Sector also has a Centralized Processing Center.” Cortez emphasized that the land transfer was from one federal agency to another, specifically to create the new National Defense Area along the Southwest border. It was completed on Wednesday by the General Services Administration. Cortez says he was not informed prior to the land transfer. But much of the land in Hidalgo and Cameron counties are privately owned. In 2018 almost 300,000 parcels of land in Hidalgo County were privately owned, and 175,000 parcels of land in Cameron County were privately owned, according to a 2019 report by Texas Land Trends, of Texas A&M. That included over 5,600 parcels within a mile of the Rio Grande in Hidalgo County, and over 24,000 parcels within a mile of the river in Cameron County.

The Dallas Morning News picks 28-year veteran journalist as its next newsroom leader

The Dallas Morning News has appointed Colleen McCain Nelson as its next executive editor, following a four-month search. Her tenure will begin on Aug. 11. A veteran with nearly 30 years of experience, Nelson currently serves as executive editor of The Sacramento Bee, and is McClatchy Media’s California regional editor, leading five Golden State newsrooms. She is replacing Katrice Hardy, who departed The News in February to lead The Marshall Project. Nelson is returning to lead a newsroom where she spent 12 of her formative reporting years covering local, state and national politics — winning a Pulitzer Prize in the process. She takes the reins at a time when the newspaper is reimagining its newsroom to be more competitive in the digital era, and to better serve a rapidly evolving North Texas region that’s becoming an epicenter of Texas’ growth.

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“We conducted a nationwide search to find the best executive editor in the United States, and I am confident we found that leader in Colleen,” Grant Moise, publisher of The Dallas Morning News, said in a statement. “Colleen is an outstanding journalist, and has been at the forefront of journalism’s digital transformation. We can’t wait to welcome her back to The Dallas Morning News.” In 2010, Nelson and her News colleagues Tod Robberson and William McKenzie were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, recognition for a series of editorials that condemned the stark economic and social disparities separating Dallas’ thriving northern half and struggling southern half. Nelson’s arrival coincides with DallasNews Corporation’s drive to improve its financial health, with The News’ parent company having recently completed a $43.5 million deal to sell its printing and distribution operation in Plano. In an interview, Nelson said she is embracing “the chance to learn from such great journalists here. I have always admired the company’s commitment to the community… and I never stopped rooting for and reading The Dallas Morning News.

National Stories

Mortgage refinance demand surges, as interest rates drop further

ortgage rates fell last week to the lowest level since April, leading current homeowners to seek savings. Applications to refinance a home loan rose 7% last week compared with the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index. Demand was 40% higher than the same week one year ago. The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances, $806,500 or less, decreased to 6.79% from 6.88%, with points decreasing to 0.62 from 0.63, including the origination fee, for loans with a 20% down payment. That rate is 24 basis points lower than the same week one year ago.

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“This decline prompted an increase in refinance applications, driven by a 10 percent increase in conventional applications and a 22 percent increase in VA refinance applications,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s vice president and deputy chief economist. “As borrowers with larger loans tend to be more sensitive to rate changes, the average loan size for a refinance application increased to $313,700 after averaging less than $300,000 for the past six weeks.” Homebuyers, however, were less driven by the drop in rates. Applications for a mortgage to purchase a home increased just 0.1% for the week and were 16% higher than the same week one year ago. “Purchase activity was essentially flat over the week, as overall uncertainty continues to hold homebuyers out of the market,” added Kan. Mortgage rates fell further to start this week, according to a separate survey from Mortgage News Daily. They were then flat Tuesday, following the release of job openings data which showed another increase.

How holdout Alaska senator shaped Trump’s megabill

At 3 a.m. Tuesday, with President Trump’s sprawling domestic-policy bill in trouble on the Senate floor, no one had more leverage than Sen. Lisa Murkowski. With two GOP senators firmly opposed and Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) likely to vote “no,” the senior senator from Alaska was the pivotal vote for Trump’s legislative agenda. Murkowski, a patient and often inscrutable moderate Republican, was dead set on amending the bill to benefit her constituents and softening the blow from spending cuts in the package. By 5 a.m., Medicaid officials were on the phone with staffers representing Alaska’s other and more conservative Republican senator, Dan Sullivan, to iron out rural-hospital provisions that would help Murkowski get to “yes.” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) could have chosen to shrink the bill’s debt-ceiling increase to sway Rand Paul (R., Ky.), or adjust the Medicaid provisions to woo Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) and Collins. Instead, he gave more to Alaska—and it worked.

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At the end of a marathon voting session that lasted more than 26 hours, Murkowski offered a soft-spoken yes for the bill just before noon, bringing the total number of senators supporting it to 50 and allowing Vice President JD Vance to break the tie. Then she stepped outside the Senate chamber and said she hopes the House changes the bill she had just supported. “We do not have a perfect bill by any stretch of the imagination,” she told a clutch of reporters before heading off for a nap. Murkowski said that senators rushed too much because Trump created the July 4 deadline. In a subsequent statement, she said that while she protected Alaska’s interests, the bill was “not good enough for the rest of our nation.” House Republican leaders said they don’t plan to change the legislation and want it passed out of the chamber as soon as Wednesday—though the raucous nature of their members make the proceedings unpredictable. No members of the Democratic caucus supported the bill, and the wins for Alaska prompted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) to call the final legislation a “polar payoff.” Sullivan, who is up for re-election next year, brushed off the criticism. “I can see why he’s jealous of my hard work,” Sullivan said. “If he’s calling it the polar payoff, I’d call it the New York nothingburger.”

Musk proposes a new political party, Trump suggests DOGE 'might have to go back and eat Elon'

Elon Musk’s feud with President Donald Trump — and seemingly any congressional Republicans who support the president’s massive tax cuts and spending package — has reignited, with the tech billionaire threatening to launch a new political party, and Trump suggesting Musk could be punished for his opposition. The dispute has laid bare not only the differences between the Republican president and one of his most vociferous one-time advocates, but also has reignited the possibility that the world’s richest man will — along with his billions — reenter the political spending arena.

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Musk — who spent at least $250 million supporting Trump in the 2024 presidential campaign as the main contributor to America PAC — said in May that he would likely spend “a lot less” on politics in the future. But his recent statements seem to indicate Musk might be rethinking that stance. On Monday, the tech billionaire and former Department Of Government Efficiency chief lashed out multiple times at Republicans for backing Trump’s tax cuts bill, calling the GOP “the PORKY PIG PARTY!!” for including a provision that would raise the nation’s debt limit by $5 trillion and calling the bill “political suicide” for Republicans. After a post pledging to work toward supporting primary challengers for members of Congress who backed the bill, Musk responded “I will” to a post in which former Michigan Rep. Justin Amash asked for Musk’s support of Rep. Thomas Massie. Trump and his aides are already targeting the Kentucky Republican for voting against the measure, launching a new super PAC devoted to defeating him. Musk and Trump’s potent political alliance seemed to meet a dramatic end a month ago in an exchange of blistering epithets, with Trump threatening to go after Musk’s business interests, and Musk calling for Trump’s impeachment. Much of it has boiled down to Musk’s criticism of the tax cuts and spending bill, which he has called a “disgusting abomination.” Both the House and Senate versions propose a dramatic rollback of the Biden-era green energy tax breaks for electric vehicles and related technologies.

Trump tours 'Alligator Alcatraz,' a day before its first arrivals are expected

President Trump visited Florida on Tuesday to tour what's been dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz," a controversial migrant detention center in the Everglades that officials say is poised to start filling its bed in a matter of hours. The president was joined by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state emergency management officials as he toured the makeshift facility, which the state put together within days of receiving federal approval last week. "I thought this was so professional, so well done," Trump said after touring the center, which features rows of fenced-in bunk beds and a razor-wire perimeter. "It's really government working together."

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The facility is situated within the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, an isolated, 39-square mile airstrip located within the wetlands of the Big Cypress National Preserve, next to Everglades National Park. The site's nickname — coined by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier — references its proximity to the predators of the marshy Everglades, from pythons to alligators to mosquitoes. "What'll happen is you'll bring people in there, they ain't going anywhere once they're there unless you want them to go somewhere, because, good luck getting to civilization," DeSantis said at an unrelated news conference on Monday. "So the security is amazing — natural and otherwise." Speaking to reporters before departing for Florida, Trump described the facility as "an East Coast" version of the infamous island prison off the San Francisco coast. When asked if the idea was for detainees to get eaten by alligators if they try to escape, Trump replied, "I guess that's the concept." "Snakes are fast but alligators — we're going to teach them how to run away from an alligator. Don't run in a straight line, run like this," he said, waving his hands in a zigzag. "You know what, your chances go up about one percent." The airstrip's roughly 11,000-foot runway has largely been used for training purposes, but officials say it will soon accommodate deportation flights. DeSantis has repeatedly said the state will deputize National Guard judge advocates to serve as immigration judges in order to expedite the removal of migrants — both from the facility and the country.

Paramount to pay Trump $16 million to settle ‘60 Minutes’ lawsuit

Paramount said late Tuesday that it has agreed to pay President Trump $16 million to settle his lawsuit over the editing of an interview on the CBS News program “60 Minutes,” an extraordinary concession to a sitting president by a major media organization. Paramount said its payment includes Mr. Trump’s legal fees and costs and that the money, minus the legal fees, will be paid to Mr. Trump’s future presidential library. As part of the settlement, Paramount said that it had agreed to release written transcripts of future “60 Minutes” interviews with presidential candidates. The company said that the settlement did not include an apology. The deal is the clearest sign yet that Mr. Trump’s ability to intimidate major American institutions extends to the media industry.

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Many lawyers had dismissed Mr. Trump’s lawsuit as baseless and believed that CBS would have ultimately prevailed in court, in part because the network did not report anything factually inaccurate, and the First Amendment gives publishers wide leeway to determine how to present information. But Shari Redstone, the chair and controlling shareholder of Paramount, told her board that she favored exploring a settlement with Mr. Trump. Some executives at the company viewed the president’s lawsuit as a potential hurdle to completing a multibillion-dollar sale of the company to the Hollywood studio Skydance, which requires the Trump administration’s approval. After weeks of negotiations with a mediator, lawyers for Paramount and Mr. Trump worked through the weekend to reach a deal ahead of a court deadline that would have required both sides to begin producing internal documents for discovery, according to two people familiar with the negotiations. Another deadline loomed: Paramount was planning to make changes to its board of directors this week that could have complicated the settlement negotiations. A spokesman for Mr. Trump’s legal team said in a statement that the settlement was “another win for the American people” delivered by the president, who was holding “the fake news media accountable.”

Three shootings at Utah Hare Krishna temple raise concerns about hate, safety

In the heart of Mormon Utah, a Hare Krishna temple has stood as a beloved cultural landmark for more than three decades. Tens of thousands of locals flock to the ISKCON Sri Sri Radha Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork each spring for its annual Holi color festival, and children from diverse backgrounds enjoy field trips to the 15-acre property — which includes an AM radio station and an animal park with llamas, cows, peacocks and parrots — throughout the year. “We’re trying to do good and enrich the community pretty much 24 hours a day,” said Caru Das Adhikari, the temple’s founder and head priest, who once distributed copies of the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu scripture, in the 1970s on the campus of Brigham Young University, the flagship university of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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But over the past month, three attacks on the temple’s building have left Utah’s Hare Krishna devotees concerned about the presence of hatred amid their otherwise peaceful coexistence. On June 18, Adhikari’s wife and temple co-founder, Vaibhavi Warden, heard a loud noise and observed smoke coming from the temple’s radio station roof. The next day, several bullet holes were discovered on various parts of the temple’s main structure, including on its hand-carved arches and through a second-story window that opens into the main worship hall. More gunfire followed later that night, and again on June 20, based on security footage reviewed by temple staff. No one was injured in the attacks. About 20 shell casings were recovered by Utah County police, who said in a statement that the shots were likely fired from over 100 yards away. Surveillance video from the three days captured a pickup truck approaching the temple grounds, stopping near its fence and someone opening fire from the vehicle before speeding away.

Lead Stories

Dallas Democrat Colin Allred launches Senate campaign for seat held by John Cornyn

Former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred has launched a campaign for the Senate seat held by Republican John Cornyn, pledging to be a voice for Texans wracked by higher costs of living and what he views as a “rigged” political system. “Everything’s backwards. Folks are working harder than ever and they still can’t get ahead, but the folks who are cutting corners and cutting deals are doing just fine,” Allred told The Dallas Morning News in an exclusive interview, on Monday. “I know Washington is broken and I’m going to be laser-focused in this campaign on getting back to some of the basics, on lowering costs, on fighting for health care, for fighting against corrupt politicians like John Cornyn and Ken Paxton.” In a campaign kickoff video launched Tuesday, Allred stressed his commitment to working Texans.

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“Texans are working harder than ever, not getting as much time with their kids, missing those special moments, all to be able to afford less,” Allred said in the video. “And the people that we elected to help — politicians like John Cornyn and Ken Paxton — are too corrupt to care about us and too weak to fight for us.” Allred, 42, is staging his second statewide campaign launch in two years. Last year he lost a Senate challenge against incumbent Ted Cruz by nearly 9 percentage points. It was a disappointment for Democrats hoping Allred would propel them to their first statewide contest since 1994. The March Senate primaries are expected to be competitive. Paxton, Texas’ attorney general, is challenging Cornyn in a GOP primary that could also draw other contenders. Several hopefuls are considering running in the Democratic primary. The Dallas Democrat said he’s learned from the loss to Cruz. His time away from Washington, spent primarily at home raising his two young sons, gave him a different view of the political scene. he said.

Texas schools still struggle with deficits despite HB 2 funding boost

Many local school districts expect to collect millions from House Bill 2, an $8.5 billion funding package passed through the Texas Legislature and signed into law by the governor this month. The bill was the first comprehensive funding package state lawmakers have passed since 2019, though districts have received funding increases in areas such as tutoring, instructional materials and school safety. For many districts in Central Texas, HB 2 will provide some relief after two years of budget slashing, campus closures and staff layoffs. Despite the infusion of state funding, many local school leaders are still turning their attention to austerity measures next year to reduce lingering budget deficits.

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HB 2’s largest investment is $4 billion for teacher and staff pay raises and an expansion of Texas’ merit-based teacher pay program, the Teacher Incentive Allotment. Gov. Greg Abbott declared teacher pay raises an emergency item at the beginning of this year's session. During a signing ceremony for HB 2 at Salado Middle School on June 4, Abbott touted the educator raises. "We want to attract and keep the very best teachers," Abbott said. The law allocates $1.3 billion for a new fixed cost allotment to help districts with operational costs, utilities or transportation; $850 million for special education; and almost $650 million for early literacy and numeracy. HB 2 also allocates $430 million in safety funding. The Austin district expects to collect about $35.9 million from HB 2, with almost $20 million going to staff raises. Interim Chief Financial Officer Katrina Montgomery told the school board at a Thursday meeting that she expects the district to net about $9 million in flexible money after accounting for directed spending and added costs – such as additional payments to teacher retirement.

‘The right person to step in’: Brazos County Commissioner talks new county judge appointment

Former Texas State Representative Kyle Kacal was appointed interim Brazos County Judge on Sunday as Judge Duane Peters recovers from a health issue. In a statement, now Judge Kacal said he feels “humbled and appreciative” to be stepping into the role. I am humbled and appreciative of Judge Peters’ request for me to serve as County Judge in his absence. He is a longtime, highly respected friend and I do not take this appointment lightly. Once my bond is approved by Commissioners Court and I am sworn-in to office, I will begin official duties as County Judge. Until then, I’m meeting with elected officials and department heads to gather as much information as possible. I am a public servant honored to answer a call to serve the residents of Brazos County once again and will do so as long as I am needed.

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Brazos County Commissioner Bentley Nettles told KBTX this isn’t his first time working alongside Judge Kacal. According to Commissioner Nettles, the two worked together while he was the Executive Director of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission and Judge Kacal was still an elected representative. “He’s certainly a public servant and the right person to step in to be able to handle all the moving parts of a county,” he vouched. According to county officials, commissioners were not made aware until shortly after the appointment was made, nor did they have a say in the process. Commissioner Nettles said the county’s chief of staff informed him on Sunday that Judge Peters would have to make an appointment, but expected it to happen during the week. He explained why the decision was made unilaterally, saying under the law, Judge Peters has 30 days from the time of his last official act to make an appointment like this himself. “If he did not meet that 30-day requirement, then that burden would shift to the Commissioner’s Court to make an appointment,” detailed Commissioner Nettles. Judge Peters’ last official act was in early June.

Senate's long day turns to night as GOP works to shore up support on Trump’s big bill

The Senate’s long day of voting churned into a long Monday night, with Republican leaders grasping for ways to shore up support for President Donald Trump’s big bill of tax breaks and spending cuts while fending off proposed amendments from Democrats who oppose the package and are trying to defeat it. The outcome was not yet in sight. Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota acknowledged the Republicans are “figuring out how to get to the end game.” And House Speaker Mike Johnson signaled the potential problems the Senate package could face when it is eventually sent back to his chamber for a final round of voting, which was expected later this week, ahead of Trump’s Fourth of July deadline. “I have prevailed upon my Senate colleagues to please, please, please keep it as close to the House product as possible,” said Johnson, the Louisiana Republican, as he left the Capitol around dinnertime. House Republicans had already passed their version last month.

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It’s a pivotal moment for the Republicans, who have control of Congress and are racing to wrap up work with just days to go before Trump’s holiday deadline Friday. The 940-page “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” as it’s formally titled, has consumed Congress as its shared priority with the president. The GOP leaders have no room to spare, with narrow majorities in both chambers. Thune can lose no more than three Republican senators, and already two — Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who warns people will lose access to Medicaid health care, and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who opposes raising the debt limit — have indicated opposition. Tillis abruptly announced over the weekend he would not seek reelection after Trump threatened to campaign against him. Attention quickly turned to key senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, who have also raised concerns about health care cuts, but also a loose coalition of four conservative GOP senators pushing for even steeper reductions. And on social media, billionaire Elon Musk was again lashing out at Republicans as “the PORKY PIG PARTY!!” for including a provision that would raise the nation’s debt limit by $5 trillion, which is needed to allow continued borrowing to pay the bills.

State Stories

Rep. Cook jumps into race to succeed Sen. Birdwell

Shorlty after Texas Sen. Brian Birdwell announced Monday that he will not seek re-election in 2026, state Rep. David Cook said he would run for the seat. Birdwell, a Granbury Republican representing Senate District 22 since 2010, thanked Jesus, his wife Mel, his constituents and his staff members for their support throughout his four terms. “It has been the high honor of my life, on par with commanding United States soldiers, to serve my fellow Texans for over 15 years,” Birdwell stated in a X post. Cook, 53, is a Mansfield Republican serving his third term for House District 96. He ran for House speaker before this past legislative session. In his announcement, he thanked Birdwell for his service, calling him “the personification of a servant leader.”

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“While we’ve accomplished a great deal, there’s more work to be done!” Cook stated in the news release. “I look forward to hitting the campaign trail to earn the support of the people of Texas Senate District 22.” Other officials also showed their appreciation for Birdwell, including Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare. Some of Cook’s priorities include securing the border, lowering property taxes and supporting public schools, among others, according to his website. Birdwell, 63, will finish the remainder of his term, which will end in January 2027. The next Texas Senate election is in November 2026. Senate District 22 represents the counties of Bosque, Comanche, Eastland, Erath, Falls, Hamilton, Hill, Hood, McLennan and Somervell, as well as parts of Ellis and Tarrant counties.

Abbott vetoes bill to boost oversight of migrant child detention centers

For years, Texas mom Sheena Rodriguez has worn a band with the number 3120 everywhere she goes. She had it on when she testified in Congress about unaccompanied migrant children, and every time she urged Texas state lawmakers to pass a bill that would increase oversight of facilities that house them. Human smugglers had put the band on a 13-year-old girl from Belize before she crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Rodriguez, who met the girl there in fall 2022, told her she wouldn’t need it now that she was in the care of the U.S. It wasn’t until a few months ago that she registered that the bill she had fought for — House Bill 3120 by Republican state Rep. Stan Kitzman of Pattison — happened to have the same number. “You can’t make this up,” Rodriguez, a Republican, said in a phone interview.

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Lawmakers passed the bill to address what the elected officials described as longstanding problems with abuse, neglect and sanitation at facilities that house unaccompanied minors – the majority of whom are migrant children. It would have required detention facilities to share information on safety practices, illness prevention, criminal incidents and education plans with local authorities. Facilities that receive state funding would also need to put new hires through criminal background checks. Gov. Greg Abbott, however, vetoed HB 3120 hours before a June 22 deadline, killing the bipartisan proposal that could have put the Trump administration’s immigration practices — and those of future presidents — under a microscope. The bill passed with just two “no” votes in the GOP-controlled House and gained unanimous approval in the Republican-led Senate this legislative session, three years after Kitzman first filed a version of the proposal. State Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, sponsored it in the upper chamber. Unaccompanied children in U.S. detention centers have made thousands of reports of sexual abuse to federal authorities, including about 2,000 complaints in 2023 alone, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Oversight agencies have also identified problems with overcrowding, dangerous flu outbreaks and lack of access to sufficient food and water. In legislative hearings, Kitzman and Huffman referenced these reports and expressed concern about a lack of communication with local authorities, including in two facilities in the rural southeast Texas communities they represent. Both facilities opened in the past four years, most recently in Wallis in 2022. In a veto statement, Abbott praised the bill’s goals, saying it could help local authorities respond to emergencies in detention centers.

South Texas county judge calls military border zone ‘drastic’

Standing atop an earthen levee just north of the Rio Grande and near the famous Santa Ana National Wildlife Refugee, environmentalist Scott Nicol wondered Friday where signs indicating that this area is now a military zone would go. And if people would notice them, or face arrest. “Where are they going to put it? Look around,” said Nicol surrounded by mesquite trees and hardy drought-resistant thick brush. Nicol took a stroll atop the levee with Border Report, which now is part of a new military zone that the Air Force says spans 250 miles in Hidalgo and Cameron counties of deep South Texas. “It is very concerning because the whole part of this announcement is to restrict access – to make sure that people can’t get anywhere near the river, can’t get across the river. What does that also mean for residents? Does it mean the entire Rio Grande Valley is cut off from the river, which is the lifeblood of our region?” Nicol said.

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The federal lands — previously under management by the International Boundary and Water Commission — were transferred Wednesday by the General Services Administration, an IBWC official confirmed to Border Report. The lands now are part of Joint Base San Antonio, a facility nearly 250 miles away. Establishing these new National Defense Areas along the Southwest border are “designed to support the Department of Defense’s ongoing mission to secure the southern border in coordination with inter-agency and partner stakeholders,” the Air Force said in a statement. But Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez on Friday told Border Report it’s a “drastic” move, annd one of which he had no knowledge. “We have an issue that we haven’t been able to resolve with immigration and I think that this is kind of a drastic way of addressing it,” Cortez said. Cortez, who is the top elected official in a county of 1 million people, said on Friday that federal officials told Hidalgo County Sheriff Eddie Guerra that it’s meant as an extra layer of border security. “It’s all federal land and basically our understanding is it allows the military to be able to go in there and do surveillance of the property and anyone illegally trespassing they can withhold them. They cannot arrest them but they can withhold them and turn them over to other authorities,” Cortez said. That means that anyone caught on these lands can be arrested and charged with trespassing – a criminal misdemeanor punishable by up to 18 months in prison.

Northside ISD responds to ESAs by opening its enrollment

With the passage of education savings accounts and enrollment decreases in San Antonio’s biggest school districts, it’s no surprise that “school choice” has become more competitive for public and private schools alike. Northside Independent School District, the largest district in San Antonio, recently started “Excellence Without Boundaries,” an open enrollment program allowing any student in the San Antonio area to apply to attend any one of its schools. While the district has long housed magnet schools and in-district charters that enroll students regardless of their address, Superintendent John Craft said it was the “right time” to go ahead with a more competitive strategy.

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There are over 130 charter schools in San Antonio vying for the same pool of students, and the recently passed ESAs, which pay for private school tuition, therapy, transportation and other education-related costs, won’t help. ESAs, sometimes called school vouchers, cannot be used by families who enroll in public schools. Because of this, public school advocates and officials say school vouchers could result in the “disenrollment” from public schools. Schools rely on enrollment and average daily attendance of students to determine how much money they get from the state. There are a few caveats to NISD’s open enrollment program however, Craft said. Applying for the program doesn’t grant a student automatic acceptance to their preferred campus. Before accepting someone transferring from outside of the district, officials will consider a student’s attendance record, disciplinary history and the campus’ capacity. Formally launched June 18, the open enrollment application portal had 6,000 users and 76 applications within its first week, and Craft expects most of the students transferring into the district will be children of parents who commute to work within NISD’s boundaries.

African American Museum, Dallas names new CEO.

Founding CEO Dr. Harry Robinson Jr. retired from the African American Museum, Dallas, in January, and the museum has been conducting a national search for the next CEO and president since. Today, it announced that Lisa Brown Ross would step into the role beginning July 21. Robinson led the museum for its entire first 50 years. In a statement this morning, he gave his full-throated support to the new hire.

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“As someone who has spent a lifetime building this institution, I see in Lisa the same dedication to education, a steadfast resolve to preserving our heritage, and a passion for building community. She is not only capable – she is called to this work,” he said. “It brings me great joy to pass the torch to someone as accomplished, creative, and committed as Lisa.” Ross says Robinson “built something extraordinary,” adding that she sees her new job as “more than a professional calling—it’s a personal mission.” Ross most recently served as director of marketing and development at Anthem Strong Families, leading rebranding efforts and helping secure $15 million in federal funding. Her resume also includes stints at USAID, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Seattle Police Department. She has also been active in the North Texas arts community, helping the Bishop Arts Theatre complete its strategic plan, serving on the board of Jubilee Theatre in Fort Worth for six years, and more. Last summer, James Russell spoke with Robinson about the museum and his work, including his mission to acquire a piece by Dave the Potter. It’s a valuable insight into the work Ross is now undertaking.

Tarrant County commissioners to consider $250K contract with law firm in gerrymandering lawsuit

Tarrant County commissioners will consider a quarter million-dollar contract with the conservative law firm that led the county's controversial redistricting process — this time to defend the county in a lawsuit. A group of Tarrant County residents sued over the new commissioners court map on June 4, arguing the redrawn precinct boundaries are racially discriminatory. The map gives white non-Hispanics the majority in three out of four commissioners court precincts, even though they make up less than half the county’s population, the lawsuit states. The Public Interest Legal Foundation got a $30,000 contract to lead the redistricting process in April. Now, a vote for a $250,000 contract to defend the county in the lawsuit is on the commissioners court agenda for Tuesday’s meeting. The Republican commissioners, who led the push to redistrict, have denied the new map took race into consideration. All three have been open about their intentions to grow their existing majority on the commissioners court.

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The redrawn map makes Precinct 2 — represented by Democratic County Commissioner Alisa Simmons — more conservative, past election data shared by the county shows. Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare, a Republican, defended the county’s redistricting process in an interview on Lone Star Politics posted June 22. When asked whether the new maps targeted Black voters, who generally vote for Democrats, O’Hare responded that the media is responsible for a lot of this country’s polarization. “You’ll always talk about race, and race, race, race, and you do things that divide people,” he said. O’Hare did not consider race in choosing a new map, he said. “It's real simple, no matter how many ways you want to ask it, or how many ways you want to word it, I wanted another Republican on the court,” he said. “We have three Republicans on the court. We wanted another one, and that’s why we chose to do it.” The Public Interest Legal Foundation also defended Galveston County in a lawsuit over accusations of racial gerrymandering. The county commissioners court there redrew its maps and got rid of the lone majority-minority precinct, The Texas Tribune reported. A federal district court ordered the county to rethink that map, but the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out that ruling and sent the case back to district court. Different racial and ethnic groups – in this case, Black and Latino Galveston County residents – cannot form coalitions to sue over racial gerrymandering together, the appeals court ruled, going against decades of precedent, according to Houston Public Media.

All 13 people killed in early June flash flood in San Antonio identified

The Bexar County Medical Examiner has identified the 13th victim deadly flooding and storms earlier this month. 77-year-old Esther Chung died near Loop 410 and Perrin?Beitel on the Northeast Side. She was the oldest victim recovered — the youngest was 28.

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The storms unleashed more than 6 to 7 inches of rain in just a few hours on San Antonio, causing sudden flash floods across the city. Near Loop 410 and Perrin?Beitel on the Northeast Side, a wall of water swept more than a dozen vehicles into Beitel Creek — killing 11 of the 13 victims. The other two victims were found in separate flood-affected areas: near Leon Creek/Highway 90 and several miles upstream. The San Antonio Fire Department, along with SAPD and volunteers, including Texas A&M Task Force 1, launched extensive rescue operations. They conducted more than 70 water rescues and saved numerous individuals stranded in trees or stuck in waterlogged vehicles. In mid June, the City of San Antonio and Bexar County issued a joint disaster declaration following the floods. It called for the State of Texas to evaluate if the disaster qualifies to request federal assistance for the recovery process. City and county officials said they specifically seek state support to assist with cleanup, infrastructure stabilization, and any other recovery efforts.

Supreme Court upholds record $14M penalty against Exxon for Baytown air pollution

Air pollution from Exxon Mobil's petrochemical complex in Baytown took the national stage Monday as the U.S. Supreme Court denied the company's bid to overturn a record $14.25 million civil penalty levied against it in a Houston courtroom. The plaintiffs, nonprofit groups Environment Texas and Sierra Club, first filed the long-running lawsuit in 2010 on behalf of residents living near one of the largest petroleum and petrochemical complex in the nation. They sought penalties for the company's repeated violations of the Clean Air Act, a federal law that limits air pollution from industrial emitters. "Our members in Baytown knew Exxon might fight this case all the way to the Supreme Court, but we matched Exxon’s persistence," said Neil Carman, the Clean Air director of the Sierra Club in Texas.

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The penalty Exxon must now pay to the federal government, issued by U.S. District Judge David Hittner in 2021, is the largest to date in a Clean Air Act lawsuit initiated by citizens. Exxon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Houston Chronicle. In its appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Exxon argued that people who have been exposed to pollution from Clean Air Act violations should have standing to sue only if their injuries were "likely" caused by a company's conduct, rather than if they "could have been" caused by the pollution. Environmental contamination has cumulative impacts on human health, so while the health effects of air pollution are well established, it is often impossible to attribute an ailment exclusively to one pollution event or source. Exxon's anticipated payout is already reduced from Hittner's original ruling in 2017, which demanded the company pay $19.95 million for pollution released from its Baytown complex between 2005 and 2013. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the judge's first penalty, but upheld his revised amount of $14.25 million.

George Foreman IV to run for Congress in Houston district

George Foreman IV, the son of the legendary Houston boxer, is running for Congress. Foreman said he will run as an independent in the crowded race to replace the late U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, who died in March. A special election to determine who will finish Turner’s term for the 18th Congressional District will be held on Nov. 4. “I want to make life better for working families, for small business owners, for students trying to find their path, and for people who feel unseen,” Foreman said on his campaign website.

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Foreman, who grew up in Humble, is an educator who has degrees in journalism and public administration from Texas Southern University. On his website, he emphasized wanting to help prepare young people for the workforce and supporting law enforcement. Foreman is one of 12 children of George Foreman Sr., a former heavyweight boxing champion, businessman and minister who died in March at the age of 76. There are 29 candidates who have announced they are running for the seat. Nineteen are Democrats, four are Republicans, and the rest are independent or minor party candidates. The district, previously represented by the late Sheila Jackson Lee, heavily favors Democrats. It includes downtown Houston, the Fifth Ward and stretches north into Humble. Other notable candidates in the race include Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, former Houston city councilwoman Amanda Edwards and State Rep. Jolanda Jones.

Bradford William Davis: GOP leaders slammed Tarrant chair over post, but some embraced this hater

It was the summer of 2020, and Black Lives Matter protests against police violence erupted across the country. As an energetic, multiracial coalition formed in opposition to the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, a rising star of Tarrant County Republican politics feared the rallies, but had a solution to keep the community safe. “Sadly, they need to die,” the rising star wrote about the demonstrators in a Facebook post advising Southlake residents to, if necessary, exercise their Second Amendment rights. Whatever that means. “But,” the GOP leader lamented of the protesters, many of them Black teens who had for years, identified racism at the school, “they would still vote.” I wouldn’t blame anyone for guessing this local leader was Bo French, the Tarrant County Republican Party chair who recently polled his followers over whether Jews or Muslims were the bigger threat to America. It provoked a host of local Republicans to call for his resignation, most notably Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who tweeted June 27 that “French’s words do not reflect my values nor the values of the Republican Party.

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However, the apparent calls to murder protesters wasn’t from French. This time. No, that was Leigh Wambsganss, who suggested on her Facebook account that Southlake residents defend themselves by any means necessary against the student demonstrators. Yet while French was hastily disfellowshipped by Patrick and other Texas Republicans, including Sen. John Cornyn, Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker and U.S. Rep Craig Goldman of Fort Worth — the lieutenant governor celebrated Wambsganss’ announcement that she would campaign for the open Texas Senate District 9 seat. French’s X (formerly Twitter) feed is like a sponge rotting at the bottom of a dirty sink, absorbing and releasing the waste you forgot the human mind was capable of assembling. Jovial governor Tim Walz? “Gay child molester.” Immigrants? Deport 100 million of them, and their children. French’s hate-spewing is common knowledge. So why the sudden Republican intifada? French’s problem isn’t racism. No, he’s something worse: sloppy. When he tweets, you can feel the foam dripping from his lips. Wambsganss, however, cloaks her bigotry in a veneer of ambiguity so thin, you’d need your eyes stapled shut to miss it.

Dallas judge dismisses AG Ken Paxton’s lawsuit against State Fair of Texas’ gun ban

A Dallas County judge dismissed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit against gun restrictions adopted by the State Fair of Texas following a 2023 shooting that injured three fairgoers. The ruling came a day after Cameron Turner, the 23-year-old gunman, pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and 10 years for unlawfully carrying a weapon in a prohibited place. Judge Emily Tobolowsky, who previously denied Paxton’s request for a temporary stay on the fair’s ability to enact its gun policy, sided with the city and the State Fair again, and ended the lawsuit before it went into trial, according to a June 24 ruling. Her ruling did not explain her reason for dismissing the case. Paxton and the city of Dallas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Karissa Condoianis, a spokesperson for the State Fair of Texas, said Monday the fair was pleased with the outcome, and possibly the conclusion, of the litigation. “The State Fair takes no political position on the complex issues related to the lawful carrying of firearms in Texas, and in fact, has long been, and continues to be, a strong supporter of the rights of responsible gun owners in Texas,” she said, adding that last year’s gun policy was comparable to similar events like concerts, athletic competitions and other fairs and festivals. More than 200 uniformed police officers patrol the fairgrounds. “We take the safety of State Fair patrons very seriously and will continue to do so,” Condoianis said. Paxton’s lawsuit argued the city and the State Fair of Texas, its tenant at Fair Park during the 24-day event, violated state law and infringed upon a resident’s Second Amendment rights by prohibiting licensed owners from carrying their guns. Only current law enforcement officials and qualified retired officers can carry firearms at the fair in accordance with state law, officials said last year while announcing their plans to ramp up security screening.

National Stories

Trump vowed to deport the 'worst of the worst' -- but new data shows a shift to also arresting non-criminals

President Donald Trump campaigned for president on the promise of mass deportations that targeted criminals -- and while ICE agents have arrested over 38,000 migrants with criminal convictions, new data shows a recent shift toward also arresting those who have not been accused of crimes. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has arrested an increasing number of migrants with no criminal convictions, according to an ABC News analysis of Immigration and Customs Enforcement data. The numbers, which were obtained through a public records lawsuit and released by the Deportation Data Project at the University of California Berkeley, give the first real glimpse of how Trump's immigration enforcement policy is playing out in the streets.

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Over the first five months of the Trump administration, ICE has arrested over 95,000 individuals, according to data analyzed by ABC's owned television stations' data team. At the start of the administration, ICE tended to target migrants with pending or criminal convictions. From Inauguration Day to May 4, 2025, 44% of those arrested had a criminal conviction, while 34% of those arrested had pending charges and 23% had no criminal history, according to the data. But beginning May 25, the data appears to show there was a shift in enforcement -- with individuals with criminal convictions making up only 30% of those arrested. Those arrested with pending criminal charges accounted for 26% of the individuals arrested and 44% had no criminal history. "It looks like there's been a shift from about Memorial Day this year up until now, to an increasing number of people who have been detained who have no criminal charges," said Austin Kocher, a professor at Syracuse University who reviewed the data.

Preppers distance themselves from Minnesota murderer, say their movement is about defense, not violence

Troy McKinley was launching the first day of his Minnesota Prepper Expo on June 20 when someone handed him a phone with breaking news. Like most in the movement, McKinley bristled at the implication that Boelter’s actions had anything to do with being a prepper. The term denotes anyone who stockpiles food and supplies in preparation for an emergency, whether it’s a snowstorm or civil war. “It’s a simple word that’s been turned evil,” McKinley said. “You get people of all kinds: People worried about economic collapse, World War III. Look at Minneapolis — what happened down there," he said, referring to the riots that broke out after George Floyd’s killing by police. Authorities on preppers say most people associate the term with religious zealots. But preppers cross the political spectrum and date to the country’s founding.

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“Americans have seen themselves as a people who are prepared to take on the dangers of the frontier on their own,” said Arizona State University associate professor Robert Kirsch, who co-authored a book on preppers. “That sort of individualistic character gets translated into emergency preparedness in unique ways.” Prepping is often viewed as a practice by “aberrant, marginal, fringe, weird people,” said Kirsch. But he found it’s a mainstream behavior that has “some worrying dimensions if taken too far.” As for Boelter being a prepper, he said: “Plenty of people do this kind of stuff and they don’t start murdering politicians.” FBI agent Terry Getsch said in an affidavit that Boelter and his wife Jenny were preppers who had a “bailout plan” to go to her mother’s home in Spring Brook, Wis. He wrote the affidavit while Boelter was on the run after shootings that killed Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and injured state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. Prosecutors say that after shooting the Hortmans and Hoffmans, Boelter sent his family a text saying “Dad went to war,” and warning them to leave their house because people with guns might show up.

In 24-hour span, two in GOP who split with Trump say they won’t seek reelection

Two of the best-known Republican lawmakers who have split with President Donald Trump in his second term said in a span of 24 hours this week that they would not seek reelection — illustrating how little room there is in the party for dissenting voices and complicating the GOP’s path to keeping its majorities in the midterm elections. Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) — who has taken issue with Trump’s tariff policy, his posture toward Russia and Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service, among other things — announced his retirement Monday, calling himself a “traditional conservative” caught in a “tug of war” in his party over issues such as foreign policy and trade. A day earlier, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) declared that he would not seek a third term, after drawing Trump’s wrath for opposing the president’s priority legislative package. The developments emboldened Democrats in their efforts to try to defeat the sweeping tax and immigration bill as well as capture both lawmakers’ seats next year — and worried some Republicans on both fronts.

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Bacon represents one of only three GOP-held House districts nationwide that Trump lost last year, while Tillis was considered the most vulnerable Senate Republican up for reelection next year. “When the energy’s on the other side, you really don’t want to have to defend an open seat,” said Tom Davis, a former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. The ranks of Republican elected officials who have differed with Trump in recent years has thinned considerably, as fealty to him has become the biggest litmus test in the party and the president has frequently vowed retribution against his critics. Some have stepped down voluntarily, while others have been ousted in Republican primaries. That dynamic is in play once again ahead of the 2026 elections, with other Republicans facing difficult decisions. In Texas, Republican Sen. John Cornyn is already facing a tough primary challenger in a vocal Trump ally, state Attorney General Ken Paxton. Cornyn has said he is fully committed to running again. But Paxton sought to stoke doubts about that. “You next?” Paxton asked Cornyn on X after Tillis announced his retirement.

Bush, Obama — and singer Bono — fault Trump's gutting of USAID on agency's last day

Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush delivered rare open criticism of the Trump administration — and singer Bono recited a poem — in an emotional video farewell Monday with staffers of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Obama called the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID “a colossal mistake.” Monday was the last day as an independent agency for the six-decade-old humanitarian and development organization, created by President John F. Kennedy as a peaceful way of promoting U.S. national security by boosting goodwill and prosperity abroad. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered USAID absorbed into the State Department on Tuesday.

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The former presidents and Bono spoke with thousands in the USAID community in a videoconference, which was billed as a closed-press event to allow political leaders and others privacy for sometimes angry and often teary remarks. Parts of the video were shared with The Associated Press. They expressed their appreciation for the thousands of USAID staffers who have lost their jobs and life’s work. Their agency was one of the first and most fiercely targeted for government-cutting by President Donald Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk, with staffers abruptly locked out of systems and offices and terminated by mass emailing. Trump claimed the agency was run by “radical left lunatics” and rife with “tremendous fraud.” Musk called it “a criminal organization.” Obama, speaking in a recorded statement, offered assurances to the aid and development workers, some listening from overseas. “Your work has mattered and will matter for generations to come,” he told them. Obama has largely kept a low public profile during Trump’s second term and refrained from criticizing the monumental changes that Trump has made to U.S. programs and priorities at home and abroad.

California dismantles landmark environmental law to tackle housing crisis

California lawmakers on Monday night rolled back one of the most stringent environmental laws in the country, after Gov. Gavin Newsom muscled through the effort in a dramatic move to combat the state’s affordability crisis. The Democratic governor—widely viewed as a 2028 presidential contender—made passage of two bills addressing an acute housing shortage a condition of his signing the 2025-2026 budget. A cornerstone of the legislation reigns in the California Environmental Quality Act, which for more than a half-century has been used by opponents to block almost any kind of development project. The abuses of the law have spread so widely that opponents used it to block some bicycle-lane expansions when Newsom served as San Francisco’s mayor, he said during a signing ceremony at the Sacramento capital. Democratic leaders of the Assembly and Senate, who had steered the bills to bipartisan passage earlier Monday, flanked him.

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“We have seen this abuse over and over and over again,” the governor said. “We have fallen prey to a strategy of delay. As a result of that, we have too much demand chasing too little supply. This is not complicated, it is Econ 101.” Some environmentalists and other defenders of the longstanding law were furious, and warned that developers will now go unchecked. “Who needs Trump when we have a wolf in sheep clothing negotiating back room deals while he and his oligarch donors score big,” one critic wrote on X. The lack of affordable housing has climbed to the top of voter concerns in other coastal blue strongholds. New York City’s brutal rental market became a flashpoint in the city’s recent Democratic primary for mayor, and helped propel Zohran Mamdani to victory. But California sits at the epicenter of America’s home shortage. The state has faced a homelessness crisis. And nine of the 10 least affordable cities in the country are located there, according to a May 20 report by WalletHub, a personal finance company. And the heart of the problem, say housing experts, are the regulatory barriers to construction. The state needs 3.5 million units, but only about 100,000 are built annually. “We have turned off the spigot on housing for the last 20 to 30 years,” said Michael Lens, a professor of urban planning and policy at the University of California, Los Angeles.

'Alligator Alcatraz' immigrant detention facility set to open, with Trump in attendance

President Donald Trump will be in the Florida Everglades on Tuesday for the opening of a controversial immigrant detention center spearheaded by state Republican leaders, which has faced vocal pushback from Democrats, Native American leaders and activist groups over humanitarian and environmental concerns. The facility, informally dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz" by state Republicans, was the brainchild of state Attorney General James Uthmeier. It has received significant national attention, including during a "Fox and Friends" interview with Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday. DeSantis described the push as Florida's continued effort to align the state with Trump’s anti-immigrant crackdown. But Trump's decision to attend in person, along with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, has shifted some of the focus to the administration, which had to approve Florida’s plan to run the facility.

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“When the president comes tomorrow, he’s going to be able to see the facility, which is expected to be ready for operation on Tuesday” DeSantis said at a news conference Monday. He said that he spoke to Trump over the weekend and that Trump is “very excited.” Noem said last week on X: “Under President Trump’s leadership, we are working at turbo speed on cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people’s mandate for mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens. We will expand facilities and bed spaces in just days, thanks to our partnership with Florida.” NBC News first reported Sunday night that Trump would attend, a big boost for the effort. Noem had to approve creating the project and is likely to reimburse the state with significant federal funding, but until Monday’s public announcement, it was unclear how the White House formally viewed the project. There has been significant pushback from Democrats and immigration advocates who see the project as inhumane. They have objected to putting people whom the administration has identified as being undocumented in the middle of a swamp surrounded by snakes and alligators in the middle of the Florida heat — and in an area of the state that is prone to hurricanes. But those reasons are why Uthmeier, DeSantis and other Republicans have said the facility is needed.

Air travel hits new milestone with 6 record days in 2025 -- and July Fourth surge expected ahead

Air travel is surging to new highs, and the Transportation Security Administration has added two more record-breaking days to the history books amid a summer of staggering passenger volumes. Just last week, as millions of Americans took to the skies, June 27 and June 29 now rank as the seventh and eighth busiest days respectively in TSA history, pushing 2025 to claim six of the agency's top 10 busiest days on record. The surge shows no signs of slowing down. TSA expects to screen 18.5 million travelers during the upcoming Fourth of July holiday period, which officially starts Tuesday. Sunday, July 6, is projected to be the busiest day as an estimated 2.9 million passengers pass through security checkpoints.

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This record-breaking trend began earlier this month when TSA screened nearly 3.1 million travelers on Sunday, June 22, marking the single busiest day in the agency's history. "Airlines are offering great deals, and with Fourth of July falling on a Friday this year, it extends the weekend for many folks," explains Keith Jeffries, former federal security director at Los Angeles International Airport. "People are out of school, and they're going to enjoy themselves this summer." The robust travel numbers reflect broader economic strength, according to Jeffries. "When you see TSA hitting some of the busiest days in its history, it's a testament to how well the economy is doing. People are traveling again, and that's exciting to see." Major airlines are preparing for the surge. American Airlines announced its largest-ever July Fourth operation, planning to accommodate nearly 7.6 million customers across 71,000 flights from June 27 through July 7. United Airlines expects to transport more than 6 million passengers during the same period -- 500,000 more than last year.

Kristi Noem secretly took personal cut of political donations

In 2023, while Kristi Noem was governor of South Dakota, she supplemented her income by secretly accepting a cut of the money she raised for a nonprofit that promotes her political career, tax records show. In what experts described as a highly unusual arrangement, the nonprofit routed funds to a personal company of Noem’s that had recently been established in Delaware. The payment totaled $80,000 that year, a significant boost to her roughly $130,000 government salary. Since the nonprofit is a so-called dark money group — one that’s not required to disclose the names of its donors — the original source of the money remains unknown. Noem then failed to disclose the $80,000 payment to the public. After President Donald Trump selected Noem to be his secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, she had to release a detailed accounting of her assets and sources of income from 2023 on. She did not include the income from the dark money group on her disclosure form, which experts called a likely violation of federal ethics requirements.

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Experts told ProPublica it was troubling that Noem was personally taking money that came from political donors. In a filing, the group, a nonprofit called American Resolve Policy Fund, described the $80,000 as a payment for fundraising. The organization said Noem had brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars. There is nothing remarkable about a politician raising money for nonprofits and other groups that promote their campaigns or agendas. What’s unusual, experts said, is for a politician to keep some of the money for themselves. “If donors to these nonprofits are not just holding the keys to an elected official’s political future but also literally providing them with their income, that’s new and disturbing,” said Daniel Weiner, a former Federal Election Commission attorney who now leads the Brennan Center’s work on campaign finance. ProPublica discovered details of the payment in the annual tax form of American Resolve Policy Fund, which is part of a network of political groups that promote Noem and her agenda. The nonprofit describes its mission as “fighting to preserve America for the next generation.” There’s little evidence in the public domain that the group has done much. In its first year, its main expenditures were paying Noem and covering the cost of some unspecified travel. It also maintains social media accounts devoted to promoting Noem. It has 100 followers on X.

Lead Stories

Senate GOP looks to pass marathon final test on Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’

Senate Republicans are facing a marathon session on Monday in order to pass President Trump’s ambitious tax and spending package and meet the White House’s end-of-week deadline to OK its top domestic agenda item. Senators will convene on Monday morning for a lengthy “vote-a-rama,” during which lawmakers can offer an unlimited number of amendments that are related to the mammoth proposal. The hours-long voting session was expected to start overnight, but GOP leaders opted to push it until 9 a.m. after a grueling weekend, which included Democrats forcing the Senate clerks to read all 940 pages of the bill. That process took nearly 16 hours to complete, and was followed by debate on the bill itself that lasted into Monday morning before the chamber finally recessed.

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“The debate and eventually voting on the ‘big, beautiful bill.’ has begun. Hallelujah. It’s taken a while for us to get there,” Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on the floor on Sunday afternoon. “I’ve worked a long time with my colleagues to get to where we are today.” As Graham referenced, Republicans have been working on the bill — which extends much of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and includes the elimination of taxes for some tipped and overtime income — dating back to even before their 2024 electoral victory. And they still have to clear some hurdles in order to finish the job. Republicans can lose a maximum of three votes, with two of those already spoken for. Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) are both expected to vote “no” over their opposition to proposed Medicaid cuts and the inclusion of a $5 trillion debt ceiling hike, respectively. Both voted against advancing the bill past a procedural hurdle Saturday night. This has left GOP leaders little room for error, forcing them to quell potential opposition from a key group of conservatives who are seeking to further reduce Medicaid spending.

Gov. Greg Abbott ignored dysfunction at the Texas Funeral Service Commission, lawyer says

A lawyer for the state agency tasked with overseeing funeral homes and regulations has backed up his now-fired boss, alleging that the head of the funeral board has far exceeded her authority. Further, Christopher Burnett — a 20-year state worker — notes the governor’s office was aware of the strife between staff at the Texas Funeral Service Commission and board chair Kristin Tips. Burnett’s comments follow the June 18 firing of former executive director Scott Bingaman, who had complained of a “rot” that permeated the commission board, making the agency unable to properly function. “Yet instead of stopping Tips’ behavior themselves, the governor’s office sat mute and allowed Tips and the other commissioners to terminate Mr. Bingaman,” Burnett wrote in a June 26 letter.

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Neither Tips nor Gov. Greg Abbott, who appoints the seven-member board, responded to requests for comment on Friday. The letter is the latest salvo in the divide between the funeral commission board and its staff, as the agency addresses its dual focus of regulating funeral homes and enforcing the proper disposal of corpses. The funeral commission board on June 18 unanimously and immediately fired Bingaman as executive director, ending his nine-month tenure. The vote, which led to a walkout by funeral commission staff, followed Bingaman airing concerns about the board’s own actions and months of disarray related to the proper handling of human remains and the regulations governing the industry. “I have never seen a mess like this in my life. It is just astounding,” Burnett said Friday morning. Commission board members are scheduled to meet July 3 and potentially choose an interim replacement for Bingaman. The board also oversees donations of bodies for medical studies and research, a task previously handled by the now-defunct State Anatomical Board of Texas. Burnett confirmed many of the concerns Bingaman raised in his own letter to the commissioners, sent in the runup to his firing. Burnett, echoing Bingman, said Tips “directed agency staff to research limiting damages for pain and suffering and mental anguish in lawsuits against funeral homes," despite the commission having no authority over the court system. Tips, along with her husband Robert “Dick” Tips, own and operate the Mission Park Funeral Chapels, Cemeteries and Crematories in San Antonio. Further, Burnett wrote, “Tips wasted two years of the agency’s time,” as the commission ineffectively regulated donations of bodies for medical research and training.

Texas keeps adding jobs, setting records; Austin jobless rate edges up

Despite concerns about government cutbacks and tariffs slowing down the economy, Texas has kept on growing. For the sixth month in a row, it has posted a record number of number of jobs, the Texas Workforce Commission said. The state also set a record in terms of its labor force, which has grown in 59 of the last 61 months. “Texas continues to be a top state for growth and economic success with thousands of jobs added by employers in May,” Workforce Commission Chairman Bryan Daniel said in a statement. Leading the way for statewide growth was the sector tied to trade and transportation, followed closely by hospitality. Texas added 28,100 jobs over the month of May, reaching 14.3 million positions, according to the latest data from Texas Workforce Commission and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Since May 2024, its added 213,300 jobs, for a growth rate of 1.5%, as compared with 1.1% for the nation.

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The state’s labor force, the count of people working or actively looking or work, grew by 24,900 people to reach a record of nearly 15.84 million people. The statewide seasonally adjusted unemployment rate held steady at 4.1% in May, a notch better than the U.S. rate of 4.2%, which also was unchanged. The unadjusted unemployment rate for both the San Antonio-New Braunfels region and the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos region edged up in May compared with April although both added jobs. All of the state’s metro areas saw their unadjusted rates creep higher. Statewide, the trade, transportation, and utilities sector had the largest over-the-month increase in May, adding 8,400 jobs. Leisure and hospitality was close behind with 8,200 new jobs. Coming in third was the private education and health services sector, which added 4,300 positions. Job growth in the leisure and hospitality sector led both the San Antonio-New Braunfels and Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos regions in May. The greater San Antonio area added 2,400 jobs in the sector while the greater Austin area had even more new jobs, 3,700. The Austin region also added more total jobs during the month — 6,700 new positions in the capital city compared with 5,700 in the San Antonio-New Braunfels metro area.

From tariff pain to record highs, a wild quarter on Wall Street

A historic and tumultuous quarter is wrapping up with U.S. stocks at records and many investors betting the ride isn’t over yet. The April swoon that carried the S&P 500 to the brink of a bear market has been erased and then some. The broad index has now added more than 8% since President Trump announced sweeping tariffs that sparked havoc in markets. Now, investors have more reasons to feel upbeat. Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite Index hit fresh all-time highs on Friday. Robust corporate earnings and solid economic data suggest that the growth remains resilient. Inflation is trending near the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. Banks that slashed their year-end targets for the S&P 500, such as JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, are raising them again.

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“Markets can take some comfort in that we’ve, in a sense, weathered some of the storm,” said Yung-Yu Ma, chief investment strategist at PNC Asset Management. “The worst is probably behind us.” That optimism has fueled fresh gains for some recent stalwarts. The AI trade has rebounded from a rocky start to the year, when the emergence of Chinese upstart DeepSeek’s artificial-intelligence model erased billions of dollars of value from Nvidia and other tech giants. Nvidia shares have climbed 17%, Meta Platforms has gained 25% and Microsoft has added 18%. Shares of data-analytics firm Palantir Technologies and chip maker Broadcom, are up 73% and 16%, respectively. The price of bitcoin has climbed back above $100,000, with Trump reaffirming his promise to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet” and Congress seeking to advance legislation that could integrate crypto into the mainstream financial system. Coinbase led the recovery from the April lows, rising around 130%. At the same time, some warn that it is just a matter of time before tariffs hurt economic growth, rekindle inflation and weigh on corporate earnings.

State Stories

Northwest ISD trustee is running for Texas House District 93

Northwest school board trustee Steve Sprowls announced this week he will challenge Rep. Nate Schatzline in House District 93 next year. Schatzline said earlier this week he would run for an open Senate seat in District 9, but on Friday changed his mind after conservative activist Leigh Wambsganss announced she was entering the Senate race. Schatzline now intends to run for reelection. Sprowls said Friday he intends to stay in the House District 93 race. “My initial intention was to run against Nate,” he told the Star-Telegram. “This is the race I wanted.”

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Sprowls, a 54-year-old Republican who previously served as the school board’s president, said he had been thinking about serving in the legislature for several months after growing frustrated with what he described as a lack of support for public education from Schatzline. The election is in 2026. Sprowls, who has served on the Northwest ISD board for nine years, said he invited Schatzline to several events in the school district such as an all-community pep rally and reading to elementary students. He said that Schatzline attended the school events but did not advocate for students while in Austin. “He pretended to care, but once he got to Austin it was a different story. I just got tired of our kids being ignored and put on the back burner for personal ambition,” Sprowls said. Schatzline declined to comment on Sprowls running for District 93. “I’m focusing on my own race right now,” he told the Star-Telegram. Sprowls said he decided to seek the District 93 seat when Schatzline announced this week that he is running for the open Senate District 9 seat, previously held by Kelly Hancock of North Richland Hills, who resigned to become Texas comptroller on July 1.

Tropical Storm Barry has formed in the Gulf of Mexico. Could it affect Texas?

A tropical storm has developed in the Bay of Campeche, in the far southern part of the Gulf of Mexico, the National Hurricane Center announced Sunday morning. The storm has been given the name Tropical Storm Barry, and it is the second storm of the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season. The first named storm of the year was Tropical Storm Andrea, which developed in the central Atlantic Ocean on June 24, only to dissipate just 12 hours later. The National Hurricane Center first noted the tropical system on Saturday afternoon, denoting the system as a tropical depression with sustained winds of 30 mph. In the past 18 hours, the storm strengthened its wind speeds to 40 mph, which makes it officially a tropical storm and is thus, given a name. Barry is the first tropical system to develop within the Gulf of Mexico this year. The center of the tropical depression is located 90 miles east-southeast of Tuxpan, Mexico. Heavy rain and potential flooding is possible across eastern Mexico. The state of Texas is not expected to see a direct effect from Barry. However, leftover moisture from the storm may help to produce scattered showers and thunderstorms across parts of South Texas during the middle of the week. Some of this tropical moisture could reach the Houston area in the form of scattered showers and storms by the middle to later part of the week, but big impacts are not expected.

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Former San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg gearing up to run for office

Since former San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg left City Hall earlier this month, there’s been a lot of speculation about his next move in politics. Nirenberg told TPR he’s gearing up for the midterm elections. He made the comment at a rally hosted by former El Paso Congressman Beto O'Rourke Friday at Pearl's Stable Hall. “This is more than about Democrats and Republicans — this is about right and wrong," Nirenberg told a crowd of more than 1,000 people who turned out to see O'Rourke along with fellow Democrats, Rep. Joaquin Castro and State Rep. James Talarico. They are all being talked about as statewide office candidates in 2026. Nirenberg, who served as mayor of San Antonio from 2017 to 2025, said he could also be on the midterm ballot. “I will tell you that the challenges that are facing this country and our nation and our state and our communities are complex and they're urgent — and I'm not going to sit on the sidelines," Nirenberg said. He said he’s not ready to make an announcement yet on what office he might pursue, but his time in politics isn’t over.

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Harlandale ISD superintendent named best in the region

Harlandale Independent School District Superintendent Gerardo Soto was named the region’s superintendent of the year by the Texas Association of School Boards. Region 20 includes all school districts in Bexar County, stretches out toward Kerr and Atascosa counties and reaches parts of the Southwest Texas border. Each year, the TASB picks one superintendent from each region to recognize “achievement and excellence in public school administration.” “I’m honored to serve a community that believes so deeply in the power of education,” Soto said in a statement after his family, campus leadership and school board members surprised him with the announcement on Tuesday morning. “This recognition is a reflection of the work we’ve accomplished together for the betterment of our students,” he said in a statement.

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No disrespect to the past, but the Spurs look to bright future with young core

No disrespect to the past, but the Spurs look to bright future with young core. A rookie born in 2006 held up a jersey with the number he always wanted. He grinned from ear to ear. He wasn’t insulting anybody. Neither was the team that gave it to him. Nothing about this scene was disrespectful, and it’s doubtful that someone on a beach or in a practice gym 1,300 miles away felt the sting of any purported affront. It’s simple, really. You can’t slap a man in the face after he’s turned his back on you and walked away. Dylan Harper wears No. 2 for the San Antonio Spurs now, and that’s because seven years ago Kawhi Leonard chose to let him. The most valuable player of the Spurs’ last NBA Finals victory had no illusions back then about what he was doing, and he understood as well as anyone that the clean break he wanted was irrevocable. Leonard had his reasons for wanting to move on in 2017. That was his right. He chose his future over his past. And now that the Spurs have done the same? Some might say it’s about dang time.

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Year by year, era by era, it’s hard to notice sometimes when the stuff we still consider current events starts slipping into children’s history books. Who put the cutting-edge music that blew our minds on the classic rock station? Why is one of my favorite “new” films on Turner Classic Movies? It happens. Near the end of his playing days, Tim Duncan would get mildly perturbed when opposing rookies would approach him during games and tell him they grew up watching him play. He didn’t want to be reminded of how old he was. He also didn’t realize how much worse it could get. On Saturday, when the Spurs held a press conference to introduce their two newest first-round picks, it was a good thing Duncan wasn’t there. “Timmy D,” 19-year-old Carter Bryant said, “was my uncle’s favorite player.” The lesson here is that the Spurs’ championship dynasty isn’t the stuff of fuzzy childhood memories for NBA players anymore. It’s now basically ancestral, no different than a great-grandfather’s stories about World War II, or the moon landing, or accessing the internet with a dial-up modem.

South Texas county judge calls military border zone ‘drastic’

Standing atop an earthen levee just north of the Rio Grande and near the famous Santa Ana National Wildlife Refugee, environmentalist Scott Nicol wondered Friday where signs indicating that this area is now a military zone would go. And if people would notice them, or face arrest. “Where are they going to put it? Look around,” said Nicol surrounded by mesquite trees and hardy drought-resistant thick brush. Nicol took a stroll atop the levee with Border Report, which now is part of a new military zone that the Air Force says spans 250 miles in Hidalgo and Cameron counties of deep South Texas. “It is very concerning because the whole part of this announcement is to restrict access – to make sure that people can’t get anywhere near the river, can’t get across the river. What does that also mean for residents? Does it mean the entire Rio Grande Valley is cut off from the river, which is the lifeblood of our region?” Nicol said.

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The federal lands — previously under management by the International Boundary and Water Commission — were transferred Wednesday by the General Services Administration, an IBWC official confirmed to Border Report. The lands now are part of Joint Base San Antonio, a facility nearly 250 miles away. Establishing these new National Defense Areas along the Southwest border are “designed to support the Department of Defense’s ongoing mission to secure the southern border in coordination with inter-agency and partner stakeholders,” the Air Force said in a statement. But Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez on Friday told Border Report it’s a “drastic” move, annd one of which he had no knowledge. “We have an issue that we haven’t been able to resolve with immigration and I think that this is kind of a drastic way of addressing it,” Cortez said. Cortez, who is the top elected official in a county of 1 million people, said on Friday that federal officials told Hidalgo County Sheriff Eddie Guerra that it’s meant as an extra layer of border security. “It’s all federal land and basically our understanding is it allows the military to be able to go in there and do surveillance of the property and anyone illegally trespassing they can withhold them. They cannot arrest them but they can withhold them and turn them over to other authorities,” Cortez said. That means that anyone caught on these lands can be arrested and charged with trespassing – a criminal misdemeanor punishable by up to 18 months in prison.

Houston scored big wins in the Texas Legislature this session.

Houston leaders are calling the recent legislative session the “most successful” one in its history, reaping a catalog of benefits that included everything from new supplies to new laws and more funding. The city took a team of six people, led by Mayor John Whitmire’s intergovernmental relations chief Josh Sanders, to Austin to lobby for policy that would directly impact Houston. Here’s a breakdown of some of the new state laws that will help Houstonians: The 2024 hurricane season was nothing short of detrimental for Houstonians, and included a derecho that took the city by surprise and a Category 1 hurricane that led to the largest outage in CenterPoint’s history in Houston with 2.7 million impacted customers.

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That power loss inhibited Houston from being able to provide vital services residents needed during the hurricane. Around 10 fire stations went offline, and many of the city’s multi-service centers couldn’t open as cooling shelters for those who needed a place to go to beat the blistering heat. Whitmire’s team just unrolled a plan where the city will install 100 generators at critical city facilities before the end of his first term to help keep city buildings online when the power goes out. But that move will get an extra boost with House Bill 1584, led by state Rep. Lacy Hull, R-Houston, which will require energy companies to prioritize critical facilities like public safety buildings and water treatment plants when they’re working to turn the lights back on. Houston also saw gaps in its ability to provide mental health services during the winter freeze in January. Officials tried to help a man to shelter, but he denied assistance and ended up dying at a Metro bus stop in what city leaders said was a mental health case. Under Senate Bill 1164, led by state Sen. Judith Zaffirnini, D-Laredo, city officials will better be able to help those who don’t know they need it. Those experiencing mental health emergencies will be able to be transported to help with proper notification. Some Houston neighborhoods have had some serious problems with bandit signs, which is any sign placed in a public right of way. Some of the sign placers, too, have bad intentions and put up signs that look like they might help residents but ultimately end up scamming them. And after six years of effort to get lawmakers to pass a law change to help the issue, Houston was finally successful. House Bill 3611, carried by state Rep. Pat Curry, R-Waco, ups the penalties the city can give out to people who repeatedly put bandit signs in public right of ways.

Resolutions seeking to admonish ‘MAGA mayor’ John Whitmire grow to 100 signatures from Democrats

Resolutions attempting to admonish Houston Mayor John Whitmire and prevent him from seeking Democratic party endorsement have so far gleaned more than 100 signatures from a growing coalition of fringe Harris County Democratic Party precinct chairs. The collective is also hoping to make sure Whitmire and other elected officials are bound to the same rules that precinct chairs are for fundraising. Democratic precinct chairs in Harris County are not allowed to endorse or fundraise for members of a different political party. The resolutions came to life after Whitmire made plans to appear at a Houston-based fundraiser for U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Republican representing parts of northern Harris County and Montgomery County.

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Experts, at the time, did not think the move was unlike something the mayor of a big city would do. They reasoned that mayors have to make friends on both sides of the aisle in order to get the city resources. Whitmire, too, justified his attendance and said he worked closely with those who helped the city. But some Democratic precinct chairs begged to differ. “John Whitmire’s agenda is indistinguishable from that of a MAGA mayor,” the collective wrote in its resolution, referring to the Trump campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.” “With Trump in office and pursuing an illegal and authoritarian agenda impacting millions of Houstonians, we deserve to have a fighter who wants to represent us, not a willing enabler of an emerging dictatorship,” the resolution continued. “If Whitmire wants to be a Republican, that’s OK, but he shouldn’t be able to do that and count on the support of thousands of grassroots volunteers who shed blood, sweat and tears to knock on doors and elect people who represent our values.” When the resolutions were first announced, it only had about 30 signatures. Cameron Campbell, the leader of the charge, said Friday he was proud of the grassroots group of Democrats who had come together to learn a new fighting style. “I'm just really proud of our ability to learn a different way to use our voices, and how aligned and unified everybody (is),” Campbell said.

Dallas Stars closing in on hiring Glen Gulutzan as new head coach

A familiar face could soon be taking over as the Dallas Stars' next head coach. The Stars are closing in on hiring Glen Gulutzan as the franchise’s next head coach, a person familiar with the team’s search confirmed with The Dallas Morning News. Gulutzan, who was most recently an assistant for the Edmonton Oilers, served as the Stars’ head coach for the 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons before being fired by Jim Nill as one of his first acts as general manager. But for the second time in his career, Nill could be hiring a former Stars coach to take over the team. He hired Stanley Cup-winning Ken Hitchcock for his second stint in Dallas in the 2017-18 season.

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The likely hire comes three weeks after the Stars fired Pete DeBoer after three years leading the team. Nill said earlier this month that he planned to conduct a patient and open-minded search for DeBoer’s replacement, as the Stars were the only NHL team actively searching for a new head coach. Gulutzan was one of three known candidates interviewed for the opening, alongside Texas Stars head coach Neil Graham and Dallas Stars defensive assistant Alain Nasreddine. Gulutzan has not served as a head coach since the 2017-18 season. After his two years in Dallas, which followed two seasons as the Texas Stars’ head coach, he went on to coach the Calgary Flames. He has a 146-125-23 record in his 294 games as a head coach and made the playoffs just once when Calgary lost in the first round to Anaheim in 2016-17. The Hudson Bay, Saskatchewan, native also served as an assistant for the Vancouver Canucks and the Oilers, most recently. He had worked in Edmonton since 2018, running the Oilers’ lethal power play led by Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. Gulutzan’s Oilers eliminated the Stars in the Western Conference finals in each of the last two seasons. The Oilers went 6 for 16 on the power play in their five playoff games against the Stars this year. Gulutzan’s contract with the Oilers is set to expire Monday. The 53-year-old would become the Stars’ sixth head coach in the last decade and under Nill. He replaces DeBoer, who led the Stars to three consecutive Western Conference finals, but lost his job after many felt he lost the locker room.

Brian Nyquist: Texas patients deserve better than price-control politics

(Brian Nyquist is the president and chief executive of the National Infusion Center Association.) Every day, Texas patients walk into infusion centers to receive treatments that help them manage cancer, autoimmune conditions, rare diseases, and more. These therapies — often delivered in community-based settings — are critical to keeping Texans healthy, productive and out of the hospital. But there’s a threat lurking in Washington that would upend the progress each of our centers is making in helping keep Texans healthier. It’s called the “Most Favored Nation” policy, an artificial drug price control, that we adamantly oppose. Here’s why. The MFN policy would peg Medicare drug reimbursements to prices paid by foreign governments with entirely different health care systems — systems that ration care, limit innovation, and often delay or deny access to lifesaving treatments. That may be how Europe handles its health care system. But it’s not how we do things in Texas.

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In fact, data from the PRI Center for Medical Economics and Innovation show that in countries with government-imposed drug price controls, patients have access to only 29% of new medicines. Here in the U.S., it’s 85%. Why? Because we’ve created an environment that rewards innovation and supports timely access to cutting-edge care. MFN would upend that balance — hurting not just patients, but the doctors and infusion centers that serve them. Texas has one of the largest networks of community-based infusion centers in the country. Many of these centers operate on tight margins, particularly in rural and underserved communities. If Medicare suddenly slashes reimbursement rates to match artificially low international prices, it could force Texas providers to stop offering key therapies — or close altogether. That means less access to care, more delayed treatments, and more patients pushed into higher-cost hospital settings. Worse, MFN wouldn’t actually solve the root causes of high out-of-pocket costs for Texas patients. The real culprits are middlemen like pharmacy benefit managers, who use opaque pricing practices and rebates that often do nothing to lower costs for the people filling prescriptions. We also see continued abuse of the 340B drug discount program by large health systems that divert savings away from patients. These are the places Congress should continue to focus reform — not on punishing local providers trying to do right by their patients. Supporters of MFN like to argue it’s fiscally responsible. But there is nothing fiscally smart about destroying a cost-effective, community-based care delivery system and shifting care to more expensive hospital outpatient departments. That’s not savings — it’s cost-shifting. MFN is also a threat to Texas’ growing life sciences economy. Our state is a hub for clinical trials, medical research and biopharmaceutical investment. Policies that import foreign price controls would send a chilling message to innovators, entrepreneurs and researchers working on the next generation of treatments and cures. Why invest in tomorrow’s breakthrough if Washington can arbitrarily cap its value based on what Europeans pay?

Tony Quesada: Losing spent nuclear fuel storage case may be win in long term for Texas

The Texas government's recent loss in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling may prove to be a long-term victory for the state — at least in the eyes of those who see nuclear energy as a viable and desirable part of the state’s future electricity generation. In a 6-3 decision, the court rejected litigation by the Lone Star State and a private business challenging the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s authority to issue a license to a company to operate a storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in West Texas. The decision, which concludes years of legal wrangling, comes in the wake of the Texas Legislature allocating $350 million during its recent session to foster development of advanced nuclear energy projects. The Texas Advanced Nuclear Development Fund, created by newly enacted House Bill 14, supports the ambitions of Gov. Greg Abbott, who said last year that he wants Texas to be “the global leader in advanced nuclear power.”

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But while Abbott and Texas lawmakers are putting taxpayer money behind nuclear power generation, the state has sought to block a necessary aspect of the full nuclear power life cycle — a place to store radioactive waste after it’s fissionable material is depleted. In 2021, the state and Fasken Land and Minerals Ltd., a West Texas business, sued the NRC after the agency issued a license to Waste Control Specialists to operate a temporary storage facility for up to 11 million pounds of spent uranium fuel at a Permian Basin facility it owns that currently accepts low-level nuclear waste. After Texas prevailed before a federal judicial panel in 2023, the NRC appealed. In October, the Supreme Court granted review primarily on two questions: Can a nonparty challenge a federal agency’s final order under the judicial review provisions of a law called the Hobbs Act? Do federal laws — namely, the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 — allow the NRC to license private entities to temporarily store spent nuclear fuel away from where it was generated? While Texas said “yes” to the first and “no” to the second, the high court said “no” to the first and “it doesn’t matter” — for now, at least — to the second. In doing so, the commercial nuclear energy industry averted a major setback — again, at least for now — in its decadeslong quest for a solution to its long-term waste storage needs.

National Stories

The Trump administration is building a national citizenship data system

The Trump administration has, for the first time ever, built a searchable national citizenship data system. The tool, which is being rolled out in phases, is designed to be used by state and local election officials to give them an easier way to ensure only citizens are voting. But it was developed rapidly without a public process, and some of those officials are already worrying about what else it could be used for. NPR is the first news organization to report the details of the new system. For decades, voting officials have noted that there was no national citizenship list to compare their state lists to, so to verify citizenship for their voters, they either needed to ask people to provide a birth certificate or a passport — something that could disenfranchise millions — or use a complex patchwork of disparate data sources. Now, the Department of Homeland Security is offering another way.

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DHS, in partnership with the White House's Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) team, has recently rolled out a series of upgrades to a network of federal databases to allow state and county election officials to quickly check the citizenship status of their entire voter lists — both U.S.-born and naturalized citizens — using data from the Social Security Administration as well as immigration databases. Such integration has never existed before, and experts call it a sea change that inches the U.S. closer to having a roster of citizens — something the country has never embraced. A centralized national database of Americans' personal information has long been considered a third rail — especially to privacy advocates as well as political conservatives, who have traditionally opposed mass data consolidation by the federal government. Legal experts told NPR they were alarmed that a development of this magnitude was already underway without a transparent and public process. "That is a debate that needs to play out in a public setting," said John Davisson, the director of litigation at the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center. "It's one that deserves public scrutiny and sunlight, that deserves the participation of elected representatives, that deserves opportunities for the public to weigh in through public comment and testimony."

Sen. Thom Tillis says he won’t seek re-election after opposing Trump megabill

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, N.C., will not run for re-election when his term is up, he announced Sunday, hours after he voted against advancing President Donald Trump’s tax bill and drew the president’s ire. “As many of my colleagues have noticed over the last year, and at times even joked about, I haven’t exactly been excited about running for another term,” Tillis said in a statement. “That is true since the choice is between spending another six years navigating the political theatre and partisan gridlock in Washington or spending that time with the love of my life Susan, our two children, three beautiful grandchildren, and the rest of our extended family back home,” he said.

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“It’s not a hard choice, and I will not be seeking re-election,” he continued. Tillis’ announcement is likely to spur a competitive — and costly — election in the key battleground, where Trump had already said he would explore supporting a primary challenger to the two-term senator. Tillis has been an outspoken critic of Trump’s megabill, and he voted against advancing the package in a key late Saturday vote, making him one of two Republicans to do so. After Tillis’ “no” vote,Trump took to Truth Social to criticize the North Carolina Republican. “Numerous people have come forward wanting to run in the Primary against “Senator Thom” Tillis,” Trump wrote. “I will be meeting with them over the coming weeks, looking for someone who will properly represent the Great People of North Carolina and, so importantly, the United States of America,” he continued. Tillis’ seat, which he has held since 2014, has also been a target for Democrats in next year’s midterms eager for a pick-up opportunity.

Zohran Mamdani wants to build government supermarkets. America already has them

Zohran Mamdani, the favorite to become New York City’s next mayor after winning the Democratic primary, has a contentious plan to create a network of city-owned grocery stores. But it’s less radical than critics portray, some food policy and grocery industry experts say. Mamdani has proposed five municipally owned stores, one in each New York City borough, to offer groceries at lower prices to customers with limited access to supermarkets. In some New York City neighborhoods, more than 30% of people are food insecure. The proposal has been blasted as a “‘Soviet’ style disaster-in-waiting,” “farcical” and “economically delusional.” John Catsimatidis, the owner of New York City-based supermarket chain Gristedes, threatened to close stores if Mamdani is elected. (Catsimatidis is a two-time Republican candidate for mayor.)

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But Mamdani is drawing on government-owned and subsidized models that already exist in the United States, such as the Defense Department’s commissaries for military personnel, public retail markets that lease space to farmers and chefs, and city-owned stores in rural areas such as St. Paul, Kansas. Atlanta is opening two municipal grocery stores later this year after struggling to draw a private grocery chain. Madison, Wisconsin, and rural Venice, Illinois, also plan to open municipally owned stores. “This is more common than people are aware of,” said Nevin Cohen, director of the City University of New York’s Urban Food Policy Institute. “There’s a wide spectrum of food retail establishments that could be created by or with the support of city government.” Mamdani has not released all the details of his plan yet, and it’s not clear what role New York City would play in the opening or operation of grocery stores. Would it build stores? Lease them out to a private company or a non-profit? Would the employees be on the city’s payroll? But a government-owned supermarket “concept is sound” and can take a “variety of formats,” Cohen said. “Rather than giving incentives to private supermarkets without the assurance of low prices, a city-focused program that puts affordability front and center is a better approach.” Yet municipal-owned stores have recently closed in several towns, such as in Baldwin, Florida. Chicago also shifted its effort from building city-owned stores to a city-run public food market, despite a study showing stores were “necessary, feasible and implementable.” These cities’ struggles underscore the challenges of government stepping into the grocery business amid fierce resistance from the private sector.

2 firefighters dead after apparent ambush on first responders in Idaho

Residents of Coeur d’Alene lined the highway on Sunday to honor two firefighters killed in an ambush while responding to a fire. The procession transporting the firefighters from Kootenai Health to Spokane, Washington, drew a large turnout from the community. “It was very moving to see all the people that came out. They just kept coming out. Even after the procession was done, people kept coming out,” Bill Buley, assistant managing editor for of the Coeur d’Alene Press, told CNN’s MJ Lee. Many stood in silence, waving flags or holding one another in comfort as a stream of vehicles passed by, Buley said. “I think a lot of people were hit hard to think that this could happen — to their firefighters, the front-line guys, who are there to protect them,” Buley said. “Coeur d’Alene is a pretty small community. People know who these front-line guys are and hold them with a great amount of respect. So when this happened, I think a lot of people were really shaken and just really wanted to come out and show their support for the firefighters and for their families.”

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National pride is declining in America. And it's splitting by party lines, new Gallup polling shows

Only 36% of Democrats say they’re “extremely” or “very” proud to be American, according to a new Gallup poll, reflecting a dramatic decline in national pride that’s also clear among young people. The findings are a stark illustration of how many — but not all — Americans have felt less of a sense of pride in their country over the past decade. The split between Democrats and Republicans, at 56 percentage points, is at its widest since 2001. That includes all four years of Republican President Donald Trump’s first term. Only about 4 in 10 U.S. adults who are part of Generation Z, which is defined as those born from 1997 to 2012, expressed a high level of pride in being American in Gallup surveys conducted in the past five years, on average. That’s compared with about 6 in 10 Millennials — those born between 1980 and 1996 — and at least 7 in 10 U.S. adults in older generations.

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“Each generation is less patriotic than the prior generation, and Gen Z is definitely much lower than anybody else,” said Jeffrey Jones, a senior editor at Gallup. “But even among the older generations, we see that they’re less patriotic than the ones before them, and they’ve become less patriotic over time. That’s primarily driven by Democrats within those generations.” America’s decline in national pride has been a slow erosion, with a steady downtick in Gallup’s data since January 2001, when the question was first asked. Even during the tumultuous early years of the Iraq War, the vast majority of U.S. adults, whether Republican or Democrat, said they were “extremely” or “very” proud to be American. At that point, about 9 in 10 were “extremely” or “very” proud to be American. That remained high in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but the consensus around American pride slipped in the years that followed, dropping to about 8 in 10 in 2006 and continuing a gradual decline. Now, 58% of U.S. adults say that, in a downward shift that’s been driven almost entirely by Democrats and independents. The vast majority of Republicans continue to say they’re proud to be American. Independents’ pride in their national identity hit a new low in the most recent survey, at 53%, largely following that pattern of gradual decline. Democrats’ diminished pride in being American is more clearly linked to Trump’s time in office. When Trump first entered the White House, in 2017, about two-thirds of Democrats said they were proud to be American. That had fallen to 42% by 2020, just before Trump lost reelection to Democrat Joe Biden.

Lead Stories

Senate votes to move forward on Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill,’ though measure’s fate remains in question

Senate Republicans took a major step toward delivering President Donald Trump his “big, beautiful bill” late Saturday, though the fate of the giant tax cuts and spending measure is still in question as other hurdles remain. After an hourslong push by Senate GOP leaders Saturday, the bill cleared a key procedural vote, 51-49. Republican leaders must now satisfy numerous holdouts still demanding changes to the bill. Trump’s multitrillion-dollar bill would lower federal taxes and infuse more money into the Pentagon and border security agencies, while downsizing government safety-net programs including Medicaid. The timeline is extremely tight: Trump has demanded to sign the bill on the Fourth of July, but the measure must still go back to the House if it passes the Senate. Saturday’s vote allows the Senate to begin debating Trump’s bill, teeing up a final passage vote in that chamber as soon as Monday.

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In a late-night post on social media, Trump declared a “GREAT VICTORY” after the bill cleared the Senate, offering praise to four key senators who shifted their votes to get the procedural bill over the finish line. “Tonight we saw a GREAT VICTORY in the Senate with the ‘GREAT, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL,’ but, it wouldn’t have happened without the Fantastic Work of Senator Rick Scott, Senator Mike Lee, Senator Ron Johnson, and Senator Cynthia Lummis. They, along with all of the other Republican Patriots who voted for the Bill, are people who truly love our Country!” the president said on his Truth Social platform. Republican Sens. Thom Tillis and Rand Paul voted against the measure. Vice President JD Vance traveled to the Capitol on Saturday evening to help Senate Majority Leader John Thune convince remaining holdouts, including the handful of GOP hardliners who demanded more changes to the bill. As president of the Senate, Vance was also on hand in case he needed to break a tie.

Wall Street hangs on to hopes for a boom in deals

Dealmaking is off to its best start of the year since 2022 by some measures, showing demand for corporate tie-ups has held up despite market turmoil, global conflicts and President Trump’s ever-shifting tariffs. U.S. deal value this year through June 25 is up about 10% from last year and at its highest level in three years, according to the London Stock Exchange Group. The second quarter got off to a slow start after Trump’s sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs in early April sent stocks swinging and spooked dealmakers. But activity has since picked up again. “Deals beget deals,” said Michael Kollender, co-head of investment banking at Stifel. “As soon as we start to see more momentum, others will jump on the wagon.”

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Blockbuster deals have continued in the second quarter in industries relatively insulated from Trump’s tariffs. Charter agreed to buy fellow broadband and cable provider Cox Communications in a nearly $22 billion deal. Salesforce, meanwhile, revived a roughly $8 billion deal for data-management software firm Informatica, continuing a race by big tech to invest in artificial-intelligence capabilities. Also among this quarter’s splashy deals: Shoe-maker Skechers agreed to go private in a buyout valued at more than $9 billion. Still, the number of transactions so far this year is down 16% despite the increase in deal value. The drop is largely explained by deals under $1 billion—those account for most of transactions. Advisers say some deal hunters are waiting for more certainty on the direction of the economy before pursuing bigger game. That could help deliver on Wall Street’s expectations for a boom in mergers and acquisitions under Trump, though perhaps later than hoped.

Lt. Gov. Patrick calls for Bo French to resign Tarrant GOP post

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and a growing chorus of Republican state and local leaders are now calling on Tarrant County GOP chair Bo French to resign over a post he made on X that polled his followers on whether Jews or Muslims were the “bigger threat to America.” “Bo French’s words do not reflect my values nor the values of the Republican Party. Antisemitism and religious bigotry have no place in Texas,” Patrick posted on X on Friday evening. “I am calling for the immediate resignation and replacement of @BoFrenchTX as @tarrantgop Chairman.” French responded on X that he has no intentions of resigning his party leadership of the largest Republican urban county in America. He deleted the poll around 7:30 p.m. and expressed regret, saying he was “misunderstood.” That appears to have done little to fend off the calls for his ouster.

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Patrick’s statement is an extraordinary public rebuke of French, who has made many inflammatory comments on social media — most of them without political consequence — since the county’s Republican Party elected him chair in fall 2023. Patrick is one of the most powerful Republicans in Texas state politics, and his call on French to resign will likely give the green light to other Republican critics of French who have remained silent in the past. It didn’t take long for that to start happening Friday night. Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker joined in around 8 p.m. with a social media post saying her party needs new leadership. “Too many examples of @BoFrenchTX’s bigotry and hate. This is one of the most egregious examples. Go fishing on X for some of the other prime examples,” she wrote. “New leadership with @tarrantgop is a given. Clear the deck,” Parker said.

ICE crackdown rattles Houston’s construction industry as contractors warn of labor shortage

Kevin Zaldaña Ramirez started Feb. 25 like any other day, framing houses at a construction site outside of Houston. But when the 20-year-old returned from a lunch break, everything changed. A local law enforcement officer pulled him over, claiming his license plate was dirty from recent rain, he said. Zaldaña Ramirez, who entered the U.S. at the age of 14, has a work permit and is considered a low priority for deportation. So he was surprised when the officer claimed his documents weren’t valid and told him there was an order for his removal from the country. Within minutes, he and a group of fellow construction workers were surrounded by ICE agents carrying large guns, he said. He was in shock. “I just wasn’t expecting this,” Zaldaña Ramirez said in an interview, through an interpreter. Then, his thoughts raced to his mother, who is visually impaired and depends on him for care. “I started thinking about what would happen to my mother because she was going to be alone,” he said.

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Zaldaña Ramirez’s case drew media attention after his attorney, Susana Hart, argued his arrest was a mistake. Despite having a valid work permit and a special immigrant juvenile (SIJ) designation meant to protect vulnerable young migrants, ICE officials said he had entered the country illegally, and that his work permit doesn’t protect him from arrest or deportation proceedings because it doesn’t provide lawful status. Zaldaña Ramirez was held in a detention center for three weeks until he was released on bond in mid-March. “I felt desperate,” he said. “I shouldn’t have been there... I’m not a criminal.” His story is one of many stoking anxiety across Houston’s construction industry, where more than a third of workers are immigrants. As the Trump administration escalates enforcement, even targeting those with legal work permits, the immigration crackdown threatens to destabilize a key pillar of the industry: access to affordable foreign-born labor. With hundreds of thousands of construction jobs already unfilled nationwide, the question looms: If more immigrant workers disappear, who will be left to build? Although estimates vary, the U.S. construction industry is short anywhere from 200,000 to 400,000 workers in any given month, according to the National Association of Homebuilders.

Rick Perry’s company wants to build a giant nuclear campus near Amarillo, possibly named after Trump

Former Gov. Rick Perry is building a nuclear homage to President Donald Trump near Amarillo, he announced recently. Fermi America, a company Perry co-founded, has announced wildly ambitious plans to build what it says will be the United States’ largest nuclear power complex on 5,800 acres of land owned by Texas Tech University. The nuclear reactors, along with natural gas power plants and solar arrays, would supply electricity to what Fermi America says will be the world’s largest data center campus. Leading U.S. tech companies would be able to rent space at this campus to pursue their own artificial intelligence ambitions. The so-called Advanced Energy and Artificial Intelligence Campus project, first reported by the Washington Post, may be named after Trump. The four large-scale nuclear reactors that Fermi America aims to build on-site could also bear the president’s moniker.

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In a social media post announcing Fermi America, Perry said the company was answering Trump's call for “world energy and AI dominance,” echoing language the president has used since the first day of his second term to define his energy agenda. Trump last month issued several executive orders to boost the nation's nuclear energy potential, though critics say his other policies have undermined the industry at the same time. China has built 22 nuclear reactors to power AI, while the United States has built none, said Perry, who was Trump's Energy Secretary during his first term, in a company statement. “We're behind, and it's all hands on deck,” he said in the statement. The path forward for Fermi America is difficult: The last time a company built large-scale nuclear reactors in the U.S., the Georgia-based project ended up seven years late and $17 billion over budget. The U.S. is behind because the country’s nuclear energy industry has atrophied for decades, while countries such as China and Russia have pushed ahead. Now, though, the U.S. nuclear industry says it could see a revival as it banks on the potential of a new technology known as small modular reactors, which are theoretically easier and cheaper to build. Texas lawmakers, led by Gov. Greg Abbott, recently bet big on SMRs, putting $350 million of taxpayer funds into boosting such projects. Fermi, though, is starting out by applying to build large-scale Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactors, the same ones that took so long and cost so much in Georgia. And it wants to build the first one by 2032, a timeline experts think is pushing what’s possible even for SMRs.

State Stories

Rick Perry: I’m dedicating my life to fighting for a psychedelic drug

I’ve spent most of my adult life in public service — as governor of Texas, U.S. secretary of energy and a proud veteran. And few things have moved me like what I’ve witnessed with a psychedelic drug made from a shrub in Africa. This month, Texas became the first state in the nation to allocate public funding for FDA-approved clinical trials of ibogaine, committing $50 million, the largest psychedelic research investment ever made by a government. It’s a bold, bipartisan move rooted in science and urgency. Ibogaine is a naturally occurring plant medicine derived from a shrub native to Gabon and surrounding countries in West Africa. It is quite literally a plant root, yet it’s changing the way we think about healing trauma, substance use disorder and brain injury. Clinical data shows that ibogaine has the potential to interrupt substance dependence, reduce trauma symptoms and promote neurological repair. I first heard about the drug from Morgan Luttrell, a Navy SEAL and combat veteran who was elected to Congress in 2022. He learned about other SEALs traveling to Mexico to undergo an alternative treatment for trauma and addiction — something called ibogaine.

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When he told me about it, I cautioned him. Like many people, I thought I knew what psychedelics were — that they were dangerous, something to stay far away from. I grew up during the Nixon era, when the message was clear: Drugs are bad, psychedelics will ruin your life, and the only responsible path is total avoidance. But I’ve come to realize how wrong that narrative was. That fear-based messaging kept us from exploring treatments that could have saved countless lives. Morgan eventually went to Mexico for ibogaine treatment. When he came home less than a week later, he was clear, calm and centered in a way I hadn’t seen before. He had found a path forward from the psychological wounds he had been dealing with for years. Then I watched his twin brother, Marcus Luttrell — also a Navy SEAL, and a hero whose story many Americans know from the book and movie “Lone Survivor” — go through the same experience. Marcus had lived with my wife, Anita, and me at the governor’s mansion after coming home from war. He was in constant pain from his injuries and dependent on opioids just to get through the day. He also drank heavily and used nicotine to cope with stress. Worse, he was carrying the burdens that come with war: grief, trauma and survivor’s guilt. For years, we tried to find him help. And for years, nothing worked. But after undergoing ibogaine treatment at a clinic in Mexico, Marcus came back changed. He no longer needed opioids. He hasn’t touched alcohol in years. He even quit chewing Copenhagen, a longtime habit.

Owner of famed Texas Chili Parlor dies

Scott Zublin, owner and savior of the iconic Texas Chili Parlor — the hole-in-the-wall restaurant near the state Capitol that for decades has attracted politicians, lobbyists, tourists, journalists and celebrities — died June 7. He was 67. Yellow roses and a flower arrangement were displayed at the front door of the 49-year-old restaurant June 16 in commemoration of Zublin. The restaurant’s old-school sign read, “What time is it! Love you Scott Zublin!”

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Zublin, an Austinite known as "Zoob," purchased the Texas Chili Parlor in 2002 after the state comptroller seized it because of unpaid taxes and debt. Zublin paid off the debt and returned the restaurant to its original vibe that made him fall in love with it back in the late 1970s. Prior to taking on Texas' state dish — chili — Zublin traveled the world for his work in the oil industry, once earning the accolade Oil Rigger of the Year. Zublin's death was unexpected. He was slated to be on-site as manager June 8. When he didn't show up, his friends went looking for him and found him deceased, said Will Holmes, who has worked as Texas Chili Parlor's bartender for about five years. “(Texas Chili Parlor is) still here because of him. No doubt about it," Holmes said. Zublin was able to keep business flowing at Texas Chili Parlor despite Austin’s changing dining habits and the city’s transformation from a laid-back college town to a tech-centric metropolis. A historic designation next door has likely had a hand in keeping the building from being redeveloped, Holmes said. The restaurant, a staple in Austin, has been featured in a variety of local and national media, including Southern Living and Food Network's "The Grill Dads," when the show's hosts headed to Austin for a plate of homemade beef chili.

Regulators, suspecting fraud, close tiny Texas lender in year’s second U.S. bank failure

Late Friday, a federal U.S. bank regulator said it shuttered the Santa Anna National Bank, a very small lender that served as the only bank for Santa Anna, Texas, in the country’s second bank failure of 2025. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which was appointed as receiver to help recover customers’ assets, said in a separate statement on Friday that “suspected fraud contributed to the failure of the bank.” It’s the first bank failure in Texas since 2019. A small, nearby lender, Coleman County State Bank, will absorb the failed bank’s insured deposits and some of its assets. The Santa Anna National Bank had one location and $64 million of assets in mid-June.

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Representatives for Santa Anna National Bank couldn’t be reached for comment. A phone number for the bank listed on the OCC’s website prompted an automated message that said the bank had been closed and directed callers to the FDIC. The 92-year-old bank “was in an unsafe or unsound condition to transact business” and held fewer assets than its obligations to creditors, the OCC said. Lenders’ assets must exceed its liabilities in order to function. Bank collapses are rare. In 2024, two banks—Republic First Bank of Philadelphia and the First National Bank of Lindsay, in Oklahoma—failed. In 2023 there were five bank failures, including the dramatic closures of First Republic, Silicon Valley Bank, and Signature Bank during the regional banking crisis that spring. Chicago-based Pulaski Savings Bank’s failure in January was the first U.S. bank failure of 2025. The FDIC’s Office of Inspector General found that Pulaski Savings Bank failed because it had become “critically undercapitalized” and had some $21 million of deposit liabilities unaccounted for in its core system. The Texas Bankers Association, a trade group for the state’s large and community lenders, didn’t respond to a comment request about Santa Anna late Friday. The bank was run by Chief Executive Scott Morelock and President Robert Cheaney, two longtime leaders, according to archived images of Santa Anna National Bank’s website.

Austin ISD school board adopts new budget with a nearly $20 million deficit

The Austin ISD Board of Trustees on Thursday OK'd a 2025-26 budget that has a projected deficit of $19.7 million. The new fiscal year begins July 1. Austin ISD interim Chief Financial Officer Katrina Montgomery told trustees that while they were asked to approve a deficit budget, the district will continue working on ways to reduce it. “We didn’t get where we wanted to this year having a balanced budget," she said, "but that is still something that we are going to work hard at, is making sure we have a balanced budget year over year over year."

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The plan trustees approved includes roughly $1.6 billion for the district’s general fund, which is used to pay for things like salaries, school maintenance, transportation and utility bills. More than $715 million of that will also be used for Austin ISD’s recapture payment. The Texas Legislature created the recapture system in the early 1990s to redistribute money from districts with high property values to those with lower ones. According to the state’s current school finance formulas, Austin ISD collects more in local property tax revenue than it needs to operate. That’s why it has to send a big chunk of its general fund revenue to the state. The budget's approval was coupled with a vote to change the school board’s policy on the district’s fund balance, which is the cash it has on hand to cover expenses such as payroll. Austin ISD has been required to maintain a 20% fund balance, giving it the ability to cover several months' worth of operating expenses without having to borrow money.

Texas Supreme Court partly sides with utility companies in lawsuits over 2021 winter storm

Texas residents and businesses who sued utility companies for cutting power during the 2021 winter storm didn’t adequately prove the companies were intentionally negligent in causing widespread blackouts, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday. The justices ruled plaintiffs didn’t put forth enough evidence to show Oncor, CenterPoint Energy and other utilities were purposely negligent — or caused a nuisance when they were ordered to cut power to homes across the state and allegedly failed to adequately mitigate the harm. “The plaintiffs have nowhere alleged facts supporting an inference that the Utilities were not doing the best they could in those time-sensitive circumstances,” Justice Debra Lehrmann wrote for the court.

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Justices ruled, however, that the plaintiffs should get the chance to replead their gross negligence claims at the trial court level now that the high court has clarified what does and doesn't classify as "conscious indifference" in cases like this. The decision provides a relatively narrow pathway for the plaintiffs to try and prove the utility companies’ liability. KERA News has reached out to Oncor, CenterPoint Energy, AEP Texas and their attorneys for comment and will update with any response. When the statewide freeze put record-high demand on the state’s electrical grid, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas — which maintains the grid — ordered the utilities to “load shed,” or cut power to homes. According to the state’s count, 246 people died, mostly from hypothermia. Thousands of residents and small businesses then sued, alleging the power cuts worsened the situation and the companies could have reasonably prepared for the freeze. The plaintiffs said the power companies’ actions caused an intentional nuisance — in other words, unreasonable discomfort or annoyance that interferes with the use of land — but the court found that’s not a good enough argument.

John Moritz: THC dustup shows how Abbott-Patrick dynamic has shifted to governor's favor

The surprising takeaway from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's news conference Monday over a Legislature-approved THC ban was not that he took several roundhouse swings at a fellow Republican who stood in the way of a pet piece of legislation. For the firebrand conservative, such actions have become routine — and perhaps even enjoyable — during his decade in power. But what stood out when Patrick stood before reporters in a room off the Senate chambers one day after Gov. Greg Abbott vetoed Senate Bill 3, a ban on products containing THC, was that the lieutenant governor pulled his punches. “The governor of the state of Texas wants to legalize recreational marijuana," an obviously worked-up Patrick said. “That’s the headline, folks.” The remark punctuated a fusillade of head and body shots from Patrick to Abbott, and was perhaps his most outspoken criticism of the governor since they were independently elected together in 2014 and reelected twice more. But nearly every jab and uppercut was later followed with something of an olive branch.

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"I respect the governor," Patrick volunteered during the Q&A session. "I'm not mad at the governor. ... I'm not angry with him, but I'm not happy that he vetoed or how he did it. "(But) we had a great session. The governor and I worked on everything. We probably passed more Senate priority bills than we've ever passed." During his two-and-a-half terms as the presiding officer of the Senate, and even during his eight years as a rank-and-file member, Patrick has raised sparring with fellow Republicans to something of an art form. Two years ago, the lieutenant governor opened a blood feud with his House counterpart, then-Speaker Dade Phelan, and remained relentlessly on offense. When such Senate-backed legislation as school vouchers bogged down in the lower chamber, Patrick branded Phelan a tool of the Democrats and mocked him with nicknames. Phelan's decision to move ahead with the House's impeachment of Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in 2023 so angered Patrick that he served notice that not only would he campaign against the speaker in the upcoming GOP primary, but he would also go against the House Republicans in the leadership circle.

UNT System board names Calhoun as lone finalist for HSC presidency, von Eschenbach for UTD

Dr. Kirk Calhoun is the lone finalist for president of the University of North Texas Health Science Center. System regents appointed Calhoun during a special called meeting June 27. He is currently serving as interim president of the Health Science Center. Per Texas law, the board must wait 21 days before officially hiring Calhoun as president. Calhoun took over as interim president of the Health Science Center in February. The regents also tapped UNT Dallas interim President Warren von Eschenbach as sole finalist for the permanent presidency of his campus. Addressing both finalists’ appointments, Dr. Michael R. Williams, chancellor of UNT System, said the two “are values-based leaders who have served a pivotal role.”

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“There is no doubt that they will continue to serve with distinction by fostering academic excellence in innovation, furthering the mission of our institutions, and serving the students and communities entrusted to our care,” Williams said in a news release. The previous president, Sylvia Trent-Adams, resigned in January more than four months after an NBC News investigation into the school’s Willed Body Program revealed failures to contact family members of the deceased, letting their bodies go unclaimed and used for research. Before coming to the UNT Health Science Center, Calhoun served as president of the University of Texas at Tyler, where he led the opening of a medical school. Calhoun is a graduate of the University of Kansas School of Medicine.

State board declares Northeast Texas, DFW officially in conflict over Marvin Nichols Reservoir

Dallas-Fort Worth and Northeast Texas are officially in conflict over the proposed Marvin Nichols Reservoir, the Texas Water Development Board declared at its June 26 meeting. Northeast Texans called on state water leaders earlier this year to discard the proposed $7 billion reservoir from planning for future supplies. By declaring the dispute an interregional conflict, the state officials are leaving it to Northeast Texans and Dallas-Fort Worth water planners to find a solution. Board members did not specify how a solution could be reached but referred the two groups to come to an agreement through mediation. Board members also gave executive administrator of the water board Bryan McMath the authority to oversee the interregional conflict process.

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In a June 27 interview with the Fort Worth Report, Dan Buhman, who chairs the Region C water planning group, said board members have twice previously declared a conflict regarding the reservoir, once in 2011 and in 2015. That involved keeping the proposed reservoir in Region C’s plan and removing language mentioning conflict from the water plan for Region D, which represents 19 counties in Northeast Texas. Region C represents the Dallas-Fort Worth region. “I don’t know what the solution will be, but we want to mediate in good faith and create something that creates a win-win,” said Buhman. Both groups are responsible for choosing four representatives from regions C and D to take part in a meeting, with both sides proposing solutions until a consensus is reached, said Buhman. The decision to declare conflict came after Region D water planning group chair Jim Thompson, representing Northeast Texas, sent a letter in April to the board, requesting they determine whether a conflict exists stemming from the Marvin Nichols Reservoir in Dallas-Fort Worth’s water plan and, if so, to identify a resolution. The letter says the proposed reservoir would hurt Northeast Texas’ economy, agriculture and natural resources.

Reality Winner rebuilds in Kingsville

On April 5 at 4 p.m., Reality Winner was hustling: She’d just learned she was needed to find additional last-minute female competitors for a Crossfit competition in Corpus Christi—a hassle for the 33-year-old who was already busy with other duties that day, including cleaning out dog kennels as one of the many requirements for her veterinary technology program at Texas A&M-Kingsville. Winner told the organizers that her two-person team would compete against anyone, even men, in contests designed to test people’s limitations, including lifting gigantic barbells and running and swimming races. In the end, her team tied for second place. Crossfit has become a way for Winner to blow off steam after returning to Kingsville, where she launched an eclectic but quiet new life after first earning international publicity—and then becoming a convicted felon—for leaking classified information about attacks on U.S. elections.

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In 2018, Winner, a decorated U.S. Air Force veteran and a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, accepted a plea deal and was sentenced to five years and three months, America’s longest prison sentence ever for the crime of leaking a secret document to journalists. In 2017, Winner was working for the NSA when she spotted a classified document that revealed that there had been a coordinated attempt by Russians to hack a voting software company in the 2016 elections. The document showed that hackers used the information they obtained to conduct spear-phishing attacks against more than 100 election officials nationwide. Winner anonymously mailed that information to The Intercept, but the leak was quickly traced to her. During her trial, prosecutors attempted to prove that Winner was a dangerous rogue at risk of being recruited by foreign adversaries if ever released on bail. They questioned everything from her gun collection to her diary entries. When Winner was released early in June 2021, she chose to return to Kingsville—the town that she’d once hoped to leave forever. Winner grew up there with interests in both shooting guns and practicing yoga. Early in life, she became fascinated with Arabic and international relations, which made her an attractive Air Force recruit and earned her medals for her military service after she used those skills to help identify enemy targets. Later, they landed her a job at the NSA.

Flood victims demand Harris County prioritize overdue protection projects. They may get their wish.

Frustrated flood victims packed Harris County’s commissioners court session last week to demand results while county leaders debated which flood infrastructure plans to put on hold as they grapple with a $1.15 billion shortfall. “We’re tired of flooding. The bond we voted for in 2018 requires equity,” said Doris Brown, a Trinity Gardens resident who helped found the Northeast Action Collective. “The system that came before was not working to resolve the historic neglect communities of color had endured for decades.” For nearly two hours on Thursday, Brown’s frustrations were echoed by dozens of other county residents. They said that seven years after voters passed a record $2.5 billion flood bond and two years after the Harris County Flood Control District secured its target $2.7 billion in matching funds, they had expected to see more progress in the most flood-prone areas. Of the 181 line items in the original bond, 137 are still in progress, and many have yet to start construction.

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After the bond was passed in 2018, the court introduced two different frameworks spearheaded by Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis that he thought would prioritize projects based on factors like equity and flood vulnerability. The first framework was set in 2019, with an update in 2022. But data and records reviewed by the Houston Chronicle and confirmed by the flood control district show that its staff never changed the original flood bond budget to follow the equity rankings. This left an estimated funding gap of nearly $240 million to complete projects that commissioners thought would be the county’s top priorities under the 2022 framework. An additional shortfall of over $910 million could kneecap projects that scored lower on the equity framework, and projects that have not been ranked. By Thursday afternoon, three of four county commissioners voted to instruct the flood control district to go back to the drawing board and find a way to pull bond funding from lower-ranking projects, ensuring that at least the top-priority work could be completed. If the district acts on the commission’s new order, this will mark the first time it moves bond money between unfinished line items since they were first budgeted in 2018.

Garrett W. Fulce: KP George needs to say the magic words: 'I resign'

(Garrett W. Fulce of Sugar Land hosts "Seeing Red," a Texas politics podcast, and owns Fulce Consulting LLC, a Texas-based public relations and public affairs firm.) At a press conference this month, embattled Fort Bend County Judge KP George unveiled his latest magic trick: Presto! Change-o! He transformed himself into a Republican. For George, this is only the latest in a long line of impersonations and magic words. In the past, his act involved fake posts and invented racism. Now he’s throwing around what he seems to believe are magic words: "lawfare," "Soros," "MAGA." Say the right thing, George seems to believe, and Republicans will forget everything else. Say the right thing, and accountability disappears. But those words aren’t magic; they’re just props in his latest con. Let’s review. George’s former chief of staff, Taral Patel, created a fake persona, "Antonio Scalywag," and in that guise, posted race-baiting social-media attacks against himself, George and others. George and Patel then used the posts in their campaigns to garner support by insinuating that Fort Bend Republicans were racists. Patel eventually pled guilty to two misdemeanor charges of impersonation, and confessed that he’d coordinated with George. Text messages showed Patel asking for George’s approval before posting. George stood at the center of the deception.

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That scheme was built on magic words too — statements designed to provoke outrage, drive division and cast George as the victim of a GOP mob. Every post was a spell cast in bad faith. In Fort Bend, where races are tight and stakes are high, even one lie can change the outcome. Now George also faces a felony indictment for campaign-related money laundering. Against that stark backdrop, George tried his most audacious illusion yet. He stepped onto the stage dressed as a Republican, reciting the script. Freedom. Family. Faith. Trump. All of it rehearsed. And all of it, we can safely assume, as fake as Antonio Scalywag. What began as digital fraud has become political theater. The costume has changed, but the scam remains. Many former Democrats have crossed over to the Republican Party with integrity — among them, Eric Johnson, Ryan Guillen, J.M. Lozano and Rick Perry. In those cases, the party switch aligned with the politicians’ legislative records and long-standing beliefs. None arrived with charges pending and a record of fraud.

Joaquin Castro and Beto O'Rourke draw 1,000 at San Antonio rally

U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro and former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke used a rally in San Antonio on Friday night to blister Republicans in Congress as they prepare to vote on a spending and tax cut plan in Washington that they warn will cut Medicaid and food stamps for hundreds of thousands of Texans. While Republicans have downplayed the impact of the potential cuts and said they are focusing on rooting out fraud and abuse, Democrats have warned it will still lead to funding cuts for rural hospitals and clinics that rely on Medicaid and ultimately push tens of thousands more in Texas off health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. “We have to stand up for Medicaid and beat back this reconciliation bill because people’s lives are at stake,” Castro told more than 1,000 people packed into a music venue near downtown.

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Will who knows Trump best become the key to Texas attorney general race?

If next year's GOP primary comes down to who has the best ties to the Trump administration, Aaron Reitz likes his chances in the race for attorney general. While he doesn’t have the campaigning history of state Sens. Mayes Middleton or Joan Huffman, who have also entered the race, Reitz told me he is convinced he can one-up them when it comes to working with the White House and current U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. “What Texans want out of their next AG is someone who can really deeply integrate, at least for the first two years of his term as AG, with the Trump administration,” said Reitz, who just left his fledgling post as assistant attorney general with the U.S. Justice Department under Bondi. “When I’m the next AG you’re going to see very tight coordination with the Trump administration.” Reitz, 38, said his opponents are surely going to say they are allies of Trump as well, but he thinks he has a better case to make.

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“Frankly, that’s what no one else can credibly bring to the table,” Reitz said. The other two candidates certainly aren’t ceding that territory to Reitz. Middleton, 47, has pictures on his campaign website of him with Trump and declares he is “a steadfast ally of President Trump and a proven champion of the America First movement.” Huffman is leaning into her legal experience, which includes having been a prosecutor and, later, district court judge before becoming a state senator. “You want an experienced attorney, not someone who’s never seen the inside of a courtroom or is simply a young politician climbing the political ladder,” Huffman, 68, said in announcing her campaign last week. But Reitz said he's not afraid to put his record up against Huffman's or Middleton's. He said when campaign finance reports come out next month, they’ll show he raised more than $1.7 million in just a couple of weeks on the campaign trail. “My opponents, on the other hand, are career politicians with experience doing what career politicians do best: all talk, no action, and self-congratulatory photo ops,” he said.

National Stories

Trump says he will move aggressively to undo nationwide blocks on his agenda

An emboldened Trump administration plans to aggressively challenge blocks on the president’s top priorities, from immigration to education, following a major Supreme Court ruling that limits the power of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions. Government attorneys will press judges to pare back the dozens of sweeping rulings thwarting the president’s agenda “as soon as possible,” said a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations. Priorities for the administration include injunctions related to the Education Department and the U.S. DOGE Service, as well as an order halting the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the official said, detailing efforts to implement plans President Donald Trump announced Friday.

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“Thanks to this decision, we can now promptly file to proceed with numerous policies that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis,” Trump said at a news conference, during which he thanked by name members of the conservative high court majority he helped build. Trump on Friday cast the narrowing of judicial power as a consequential, needed correction in his battle with a court system that has restrained his authority. Scholars and plaintiffs in the lawsuits over Trump’s orders agreed that the high court ruling could profoundly reshape legal battles over executive power that have defined Trump’s second term — even as other legal experts said the effects would be more muted. Some predicted it would embolden Trump to push his expansive view of presidential power. “The Supreme Court has fundamentally reset the relationship between the federal courts and the executive branch,” Notre Dame Law School professor Samuel Bray, who has studied nationwide injunctions, said in a statement. “Since the Obama administration, almost every major presidential initiative has been frozen by federal district courts issuing ‘universal injunctions.’” Nationwide injunctions put a freeze on an action until a court can make a decision on its legality. They have became a go-to tool for critics of presidential actions in recent times, sometimes delaying for years the implementation of an executive order the court ultimately approves.

UN nuclear watchdog chief says Iran could again begin enriching uranium in ‘matter of months’

The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog says US strikes on Iran fell short of causing total damage to its nuclear program and that Tehran could restart enriching uranium “in a matter of months,” contradicting President Donald Trump’s claims the US set Tehran’s ambitions back by decades. Rafael Grossi’s comments appear to support an early assessment from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, first reported on by CNN, which suggests the United States’ strikes on key Iranian nuclear sites last week did not destroy the core components of its nuclear program, and likely only set it back by months. While the final military and intelligence assessment has yet to come, Trump has repeatedly claimed to have “completely and totally obliterated” Tehran’s nuclear program.

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The 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran began earlier this month when Israel launched an unprecedented attack it said aimed at preventing Tehran developing a nuclear bomb. Iran has insisted its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. The US then struck three key Iranian nuclear sites before a ceasefire began. The extent of the damage to Tehran’s nuclear program has been hotly debated ever since. US military officials have in recent days provided some new information about the planning of the strikes, but offered no new evidence of their effectiveness against Iran’s nuclear program. Following classified briefings this week, Republican lawmakers acknowledged the US strikes may not have eliminated all of Iran’s nuclear materials – but argued that this was never part of the military’s mission. Asked about the different assessments, Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told CBS’s “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan”: “This hourglass approach in weapons of mass destruction is not a good idea.”

After criticism from MAGA world, Amy Coney Barrett delivers for Trump

As President Donald Trump reveled in a major Supreme Court victory that curbed the ability of judges to block his policies nationwide, he had special praise for one of the justices: Amy Coney Barrett. “I want to thank Justice Barrett, who wrote the opinion brilliantly,” he said at a White House press conference soon after Friday’s ruling. Barrett’s majority opinion in the 6-3 ruling along ideological lines, which at least temporarily revived Trump’s plan to end automatic birthright citizenship, is a major boost to an administration that has been assailed by courts around the country for its broad and aggressive use of executive power. It also marks an extraordinary turnaround for Barrett’s reputation among Trump’s most vocal supporters.

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Just a few months ago, she faced vitriolic criticism from MAGA influencers and others as she sporadically voted against Trump, including a March decision in which she rejected a Trump administration attempt to avoid paying U.S. Agency for International Development contractors. CNN also reported that Trump himself had privately complained about Barrett. That is despite the fact that she is a Trump appointee with a long record of casting decisive votes in a host of key cases in which the court’s 6-3 conservative majority has imposed itself, most notably with the 2022 ruling that overturned the abortion rights landmark Roe v. Wade. One of those outspoken critics, Trump-allied lawyer Mike Davis, suggested that the pressure on Barrett had the desired effect. “Sometimes feeling the heat helps people see the light,” he said in a text message. Quickly U-turning, MAGA influencers on Friday praised Barrett and turned their anger on liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson instead.

Trump threatens to back primary challenge against GOP Sen. Thom Tillis over 'big, beautiful bill' vote

President Donald Trump on Saturday attacked Sen. Thom Tillis for opposing the party’s sweeping domestic policy bill, threatening to meet with potential primary challengers to the North Carolina Republican. Tillis, who faces re-election next year in a battleground state, was one of two Republicans, along with Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, to vote against advancing the “big, beautiful bill” in the Senate on Saturday evening. “Numerous people have come forward wanting to run in the Primary against ‘Senator Thom’ Tillis,” Trump wrote Saturday night. “I will be meeting with them over the coming weeks, looking for someone who will properly represent the Great People of North Carolina and, so importantly, the United States of America.”

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Trump’s social media criticism came hours after Tillis said in a statement that he “cannot support this bill in its current form,” pointing to expected cuts to Medicaid he said would “result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina, including our hospitals and rural communities.” Trump accused the two-term senator of grandstanding “in order to get some publicity for himself, for a possible, but very difficult re-election.” “Looks like Senator Thom Tillis, as usual, wants to tell the Nation that he’s giving them a 68% Tax Increase, as opposed to the Biggest Tax Cut in American History!” Trump wrote, adding, “Thom Tillis is making a BIG MISTAKE for America, and the Wonderful People of North Carolina!” Tillis is one of Democrats’ top targets for defeat in the 2026 midterm elections. He won his previous two Senate races by less than 2 percentage points. Prior to Trump’s post, Tillis told reporters Saturday evening that he gave the president a heads up about his opposition during a call he characterized as “very professional” and “very respectful.”

What Democratic swings in special elections mean for 2026

It’s not too early to talk about 2026, when the first national elections will be held since Donald Trump was voted into the White House for a second time. It’s the first opportunity for Americans to register their approval or disapproval of Trump’s agenda by deciding whether to maintain a Republican congressional majority. As such, politicos are scouring the landscape for any signs hinting at which way voters may be leaning in the 2026 midterms. If history is any guide, Democrats should gain seats in the House and Senate, since that has been the pattern of the party out of power in off-year contests, with a few notable exceptions. Beyond what the historical record suggests, there is an additional warning sign for Trump allies who want to continue single-party GOP rule in Washington: Democrats have made big gains in special elections since Trump took office in January 2025. A Washington Post analysis of these races suggests Democrats might be on track for a very good 2026.

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Among all special elections this year, Democrats have outperformed Kamala Harris’s vote share in 2024 by 13 percentage points, based on Harris-Trump baselines calculated by the Downballot, an election data newsletter. That’s the largest shift toward any party in years. In fact, all but four of the 31 special elections have seen movement toward Democrats. Most of the special elections we looked at were state legislative elections, and while Democrats have flipped only two of the seats (Pennsylvania’s 36th state Senate district and Iowa’s 35th state Senate district), the size of the shift compared with last year’s presidential election is noteworthy. Democrats are overperforming in districts across the map, from Pennsylvania to Florida and California. Some of the largest swings toward Democrats were in states that Trump won in 2024, while the four races that shifted toward Republicans were in more Democratic-leaning states. But Democrats aren’t only performing well in state legislative special elections. They also delivered huge swings in the April special elections for Florida’s 1st and 6th Congressional Districts, exceeding Harris’s vote share by 15 and 23 percentage points, respectively. There are a few caveats to keep in mind, though. Any Democratic swing in 2025 could look exaggerated, following the party’s popular vote loss and overall poor showing last November. It’s a lot easier to overperform when the baseline is lower. And, of course, special elections aren’t necessarily predictive of voter behavior over a year from now. Many things can change — from swings in the economy to Trump’s approval rating; and Democrats are themselves very unpopular with voters.

The first rule in Trump’s Washington: Don’t write anything down

At the Department of Veterans Affairs, some employees had to sign nondisclosure agreements before reviewing plans for firings and organizational shake-ups. At the Administration for Children and Families, career staff were told not to respond in writing to panicky grant recipients whose funding had been shut off to avoid a “paper trail,” one employee said. And at the Environmental Protection Agency, several months after Elon Musk began requiring federal workers to submit weekly emails detailing five things they’d accomplished, some managers began calling staff to say they no longer had to comply — but refused to put it in writing, according to an employee who received one of the calls. “What’s particularly weird for me is that, as a regulatory agency, we tend to operate with the idea that ‘if it’s not in writing, it didn’t happen,’” said the employee, who has since left the government. “But we are very much moving away from things being in writing.”

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Across President Donald Trump’s administration, a creeping culture of secrecy is overtaking personnel and budget decisions, casual social interactions, and everything in between, according to interviews with more than 40 employees across two dozen agencies, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals. No one wants to put anything in writing anymore, federal workers said: Meetings are conducted in-person behind closed doors, even on anodyne topics. Workers prefer to talk outdoors, as long as the weather cooperates. And communication among colleagues — whether work-related or personal — has increasingly shifted to the encrypted messaging app Signal, with messages set to auto-delete. It’s not just career staffers who are clamming up, fearful they will be tagged as rebellious or resistant to Trump’s policies and dismissed amid the administration’s push to trim the workforce, fulfilling the president’s promise to eradicate waste, fraud and abuse. Trump’s own political appointees are also resistant to writing things down, worried that their agency’s deliberations will appear in news coverage and inspire a hunt for leakers, federal workers said. Every administration comes in urging at least some confidentiality, usually to protect presidential priorities or encourage the candid airing of views in decision-making, federal workers noted. Government employees’ devices have long been monitored, and the law prevents workers from publicly espousing political opinions or taking part in political activity while on duty. But this shift is different, workers said — more far-reaching, affecting every aspect of external and internal communications. The overall effect has been to impede honest discussion, slow work, stir confusion and depress morale. “I’ve never seen this much secrecy and lack of transparency from any leadership, including in the military,” said a nearly 10-year veteran of the General Services Administration. “We don’t know anything until it happens.”

Lead Stories

Supreme Court is set to issue rulings on birthright citizenship and five other cases, including two from Texas on term's final day,

The Supreme Court term that started in October got off to a slow start, with a relatively quiet docket that seemed to leave room for litigation arising from the presidential election. Those challenges never came, and the court’s work accelerated. The justices heard arguments on transgender rights; in three major cases on religion in public life; in two cases on efforts to curb gun violence; and in two others on limiting speech on the internet. Decisions in some cases have been released already; all are expected by early July. After the election of President Trump, the court was also inundated with emergency applications arising from his scores of executive orders.

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The court will decide the legality of a nationwide pause imposed by lower courts on the enforcement of an executive order signed by President Trump on his first day back in office. The order would end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants and some temporary foreign residents. Are there major precedents or recent related decisions? The government argues that the temporary pauses on the president’s birthright citizenship order, called nationwide injunctions, are unconstitutional. A debate has simmered for years on whether such injunctions are allowed, but the Supreme Court has yet to rule on the issue. The Supreme Court will determine the constitutionality of a task force created as part of the Affordable Care Act that determines what types of preventive care insurance companies must offer for free. Are there major precedents or recent related decisions? The case is the latest in a series of lawsuits targeting the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s central legislative achievement. The law has survived three previous major challenges at the Supreme Court, including cases in 2012, 2015 and 2021. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. cast the decisive vote to save the law in 2012, a crucial milestone where the justices upheld the law’s core mandate that most employers provide health insurance for their workers. What did the lower courts say? A federal trial judge agreed with the challengers, ruling that members of the task force had been unconstitutionally appointed. The court will decide whether a Texas law that seeks to limit minors’ access to sexual materials on the internet by requiring age verification measures can survive First Amendment scrutiny. Are there major precedents or recent related decisions? In 2004, in Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, the justices blocked a federal law quite similar to the one from Texas, applying the most demanding form of judicial review, strict scrutiny, to find that the law impermissibly interfered with adults’ First Amendment rights. What did the lower courts say? Judge David A. Ezra, of the Federal District Court in Austin, blocked the law, saying it would have a chilling effect on speech protected by the First Amendment.

Texas lawmakers failed to deliver on big CenterPoint reforms after Beryl: 'Band-Aids on bullet wounds'

After Hurricane Beryl devastated the Houston region last year, Texas’ most prominent leaders issued extraordinary rebukes of the area’s primary utility, CenterPoint Energy. Gov. Greg Abbott said the company “lost the faith and trust of Texans.” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the state’s most powerful lawmaker who presides over the Senate, accused the company of “potential fraud” and “poor money management.” And state Sen. Phil King, vice chair of a legislative committee that oversees utilities, claimed that “CenterPoint deceived me, the Legislature and the public.” The criticism came as the Houston Chronicle revealed that CenterPoint had invested almost a billion dollars in power generators that were mostly unusable, even as nearly 1 million of its customers remained in the dark four days after Beryl hit. King and Patrick vowed to ensure that consumers would not have to pay any of the nearly $500 million regulators have already allowed CenterPoint to collect from ratepayers for the massive generators.

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But nearly a year later, a Houston Chronicle investigation shows those promises have yet to be fulfilled, even though their original champions have already declared victory. CenterPoint is not giving consumers a full refund for the generator costs they have already paid. Some ratepayer groups, including the city of Houston, are skeptical that consumers are even getting a partial refund. City attorney Arturo Michel says he hasn’t seen documentation to support CenterPoint’s claims that the company will give consumers hundreds of millions of dollars in rate relief. The city has requested a public hearing on CenterPoint’s generator rate reduction filing with state regulators. “It is unclear how the proposal in this case does anything to make customers completely whole,” Michel said in a statement. Patrick and King’s offices did not respond to multiple detailed requests for comment. Lawmakers also did not make any systemic changes to the underlying policies that govern how Texas regulates electric delivery companies, often called utilities. These companies still earn profits based mostly on how much they spend on new equipment, rather than how well they perform. And laws passed in 2023 that make it easier for such utilities to raise rates — and much harder for cities and other ratepayer groups to protest — remain in place. “They did the bare minimum of outlawing the worst practices, while not really addressing how consumers are affected overall,” said Bill Kelly, who used to lead the city’s lobbying efforts.

On a quiet Southern border, empty farms and frightened workers

Alexandra, a 55-year-old undocumented immigrant, was on her way to work at a watermelon farm in the border city of Edinburg, Texas, recently when her oldest son stopped her before she stepped out of her aging trailer. “Please don’t go. You are going to get deported,” he told Alexandra, who asked that her last name not be used because she did not want to attract attention from federal immigration agents. Her son then showed her graphic videos of federal agents chasing and handcuffing migrants seemingly all over the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. “That could be you,” he said. President Trump’s conflicting orders to exempt, then target, then again exempt farm workers from his aggressive immigration sweeps of work sites have caused havoc in agricultural industries across the country, where about 42 percent of farm workers are undocumented, according to the Agriculture Department. But perhaps nowhere is fear among farm workers more palpable than on the farms and ranches along the southwestern U.S.-Mexico border, where for centuries workers have considered the frontier as being more porous than prohibitive.

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Administration officials have vowed to make good on a once-popular campaign promise from Mr. Trump to deport millions of undocumented workers, in what he has said will be the largest mass deportation in U.S. history. As workplace raids have eroded that popularity and sparked angry protests across the country, the border region has been eerily quiet. The Trump administration has effective shut down crossings by those on the Mexican side seeking asylum or just illegal work in plain sight in the fields. On the American side, where undocumented immigrants still make up much of the work force, many of those workers are afraid to show up. “Right now, I have zero workers,” said Nick Billman, who owns Red River Farms, a farm-to-table operation in Donna, Texas. He wonders whether to plant if he has no one to maintain the fields and harvest them. “We need to figure out what we’re doing, you know?” It is difficult to estimate how many workers have stopped going to work. But Elizabeth Rodriguez, an activist with the National Farm Worker Ministry, says she is seeing fewer and fewer workers at the farms she frequents as the watermelon season is about to end. “The majority of workers here are longtime residents who for some reason or another don’t have legal status,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “And now, they are terrified to go to work. The fields are nearly empty.”

Big Beautiful Bill would trigger higher electric bills, job losses, advocates say

As lawmakers in Washington debate the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, several studies have found that its repeal of tax credits for renewable energy and large batteries will cost jobs and increase consumer costs for electricity. The U.S. Senate could begin voting on the sweeping budget reconciliation bill as soon as Friday. The legislation is stuffed with Republican priorities, including cuts to Medicaid and extending 2017 tax cuts. It also includes a rollback of renewable energy tax incentives that were part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which many credit the climate change-centric bill for jumpstarting a solar and battery storage boom in Texas. That rise might not end, but the sudden removal of renewable tax credits makes them more expensive. The Senate’s version of the bill calls for phasing out those credits over the next year, though some experts say it would more likely be a sudden drop because of provisions regarding how solar, wind and batteries source their components from foreign nations.

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“The issue is that they will cost more, and so you’re going to see power prices go up for consumers like you and me, and you’ll also see them go up for commercial businesses and for industry,” said Dan O’Brien, a senior analyst at the Washington-based, non-partisan think tank Energy Innovation Policy & Technology. Energy Innovation Policy & Technology – or EI – recently studied the effects of ending the Inflation Reduction Act tax credits for renewable energy. It found the average Texas household would pay $320 more for electricity in 2030 and $780 more in 2035. Similar increases in consumer spending on electricity were projected by the Clean Energy Buyers Association, which found households would see electric bills rise by $275 in 2029. Both studies also predicted job losses and a hit to the state’s overall economic health. “You kind of get a double whammy of higher prices here and also fewer jobs,” O’Brien said. “So people who are struggling with energy prices are losing their jobs at the same time, it could be a rough hit.” The Senate’s version of the budget reconciliation act preserves tax credits for other energy sources, including nuclear power and geothermal power. However, those sources of clean energy remain years away from producing the amount of energy needed to meet projections of steep power demand increases fueled by the growing number of data centers in Texas and the nation.

State Stories

Parents, teachers ask Dallas ISD to bar ICE from any school property

Dallas ISD officials should ban immigration enforcement officials from all school property — including parking lots — so undocumented families feel safe sending their kids to school, community members told trustees Thursday night. Photos of ICE agents near two Bachman Lake neighborhood schools, José May Elementary School and Francisco Medrano Junior High School, circulated on social media last week, prompting concerns that the federal agency is targeting Dallas schools for enforcement. “When ICE parks outside of our schools, it doesn’t just send a message. It sends a threat,” said Cinthya Longoria, a kindergarten teacher at José May Elementary, at Thursday’s meeting. “It tells our immigrant families, ‘You’re not safe here.’ It tells our students, ‘Even your school cannot protect you.’ And it tells teachers like me, people who love the district and have chosen to serve it, that even we can be next.”

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Dexter Henson, a spokesperson for the Dallas Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, confirmed officers were in the area but denied they were on a campus. Nationwide, families and educators have been on high alert since January after President Donald Trump’s administration removed long-standing federal protections that barred immigration enforcement agents from operating in or near public schools. Administration officials said the new guidance was aimed at ensuring “criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest.” Parents and advocates described to Dallas school trustees during Thursday’s meeting the widespread fear community members have about the presence of immigration officials at and around campuses. Some said they worry ICE agents will detain parents and separate them from their kids at pick up or drop off. Teachers warned that reports of immigration officials near schools could have a chilling effect, prompting some immigrant parents to keep children home from school or skip the free meals offered at the campuses in the summer. Nina Lakhiani, a DISD spokesperson, said no “confirmed reports” of ICE agents on a campus have been made to the Dallas ISD Police Department to date. Lakhiani said district officials were aware of “unconfirmed reports alleging a police agency near two of our schools.” But when district police “attempted to make contact,” the vehicles “were no longer on Dallas ISD property,” she said.

Oncor seeks rate review that may hike monthly utility bills by nearly 5%

Oncor, the largest energy delivery company in Texas, announced Thursday that it is seeking a rate review that could potentially increase residents’ monthly bills by about 4.7%. In a statement, the company cited several reasons for the rate hike, which would require regulatory approval. Those factors include “explosive” growth as people and businesses flock to the Lone Star State, record levels of construction and the impact of extreme weather. “We are requesting this rate review as we’re executing on our approximately $36 billion five-year capital plan as we seek to minimize the impacts of increased storms on our customers,” said Debbie Dennis, Oncor’s senior vice president and chief customer officer, in a statement.

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“These efforts require Oncor to attract, train and maintain the safety of a large and active workforce and obtain materials and equipment on a record scale,” she added. Headquartered in Dallas while serving more than 400 communities in 98 counties, Oncor maintains more than 144,000 miles of transmission and distribution lines throughout Dallas-Fort Worth and Midland-Odessa. The company said it is filing a request with the Public Utility Commission of Texas for a base rate review. Oncor also said it would file the request with the 210 cities in its service area that have original jurisdiction over its rates.

Bud Kennedy: A year in jail for a THC snack? Texans are unhappy with Republicans

Texans are sick of our elected officials. But probably not sick enough to get rid of any of them. We don’t like any of our state leaders, according to a University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll of 1,200 voters. Most of all, we don’t like U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. This stunning survey came June 6-16, after the Texas Legislature mercifully went home but before Gov. Greg Abbott vetoed Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s wacked-out idea of throwing people in prison for a year for a single THC drink, gummy or chocolate. More than half the voters polled — 53% — hated the ban. Only 31% favored it. Texans soundly disapprove of six top leaders: Cruz: 49% disapprove, 28% approve.

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U.S. Sen. John Cornyn: 46% disapprove, 24% approve. Gov. Greg Abbott: 45% disapprove, 41% approve (notably, the highest approval). Attorney General Ken Paxton: 43% disapprove, 29% approve. Patrick: 42% disapprove, 30% approve. House Speaker Dustin Burrows: 31% disapprove, 16% approve. Texans polled strongly opposed making it a jail crime to possess a THC drink, gummy or chocolate. Notably, the Texas voters polled also disapproved of President Donald Trump, 51%-44%, although that was before a U.S. attack on Iran that led to a rapid ceasefire in the Israel-Iran war. Does any of this mean Democrats are about to win their first statewide office in 32 years, or their first statewide U.S. Senate election in 38? No. The 40%-50% who “disapprove” of current officials came both from Democrats — 42% of voters polled — and the 35% of voters who said current elected officials are “not conservative enough.” In other words, Abbott is positioned squarely in the middle of Texas voters, and other Republicans are only a half-click to the right. In the same poll where voters said Republicans aren’t conservative enough, 41% of voters said Texas Democratic officials are “not liberal enough.” So we’re all cheering for less collaboration and more partisan gridlock.

Major bills Greg Abbott vetoed, from Texas' THC ban to summer food programs

Gov. Greg Abbott vetoed more than two dozen bills this week, ranging from a teacher retention advisory committee to a slew of criminal justice-related changes. He sent state lawmakers back to the drawing board on six of the rejected proposals and completely scrapped the rest. Most of the vetoed bills were bipartisan and the authors’ party affiliations were almost evenly split, though slightly more were authored by Republicans. Abbott is calling state lawmakers back to Austin on July 21 for a special session to take up several of the vetoed measures. The big priority will be creating regulations for hemp products to replace the all-out ban that Abbott vetoed earlier this week.

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Senate Bill 3 by Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, sought to ban consumable hemp products with THC that have proliferated in Texas since the state legalized hemp farming in 2019. The legislation, championed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, would have created significant criminal penalties for possessing, manufacturing and distributing a variety of consumable products that have become ubiquitous in grocery stores, gas stations and vape shops across Texas. Abbott vetoed the measure, saying it was "well-intentioned" but would not have survived legal challenges. He’s calling lawmakers back to Austin in July and said he wants them to impose some regulation on the industry that has grown dramatically in recent years with little state oversight. HB 3120 by Rep. Stan Kitzman, R-Pattison, would have strengthened regulations on residential child detention facilities, such as by requiring criminal background checks for employees, contractors and volunteers and implementing oversight by the state. Abbott called the bill “well-intentioned” but disagreed with how it would be implemented: through memorandums of understanding with local governments. He said those “should be things of the past.” He pointed to a Trump Administration motion last month seeking to put an end to a 1997 settlement agreement, known as the Flores Agreement, that sets standards for safety and sanitation for child detention facilities.

Ed Hirs: Why utility deregulation is the worst way to generate more electricity

(Edward Hirs is UH energy fellow at the University of Houston where he teaches energy economics.) The Trump administration, including the Department of Justice, is looking to ensure more electricity production through increased “competition in the utility marketplace.” The president is right to be concerned that if we lack adequate electricity, we will not be able to build data centers and dominate artificial intelligence. The administration is evaluating whether utility competition using electricity market deregulation will increase electricity supply. But this notion is deeply misguided. The regions of the country that embraced deregulation are just the ones failing to keep up with growing demand. Contrary to the spin of the deregulation cheerleaders, it is the traditionally regulated states, like Virginia and Georgia, where the utilities are showing that they can generate enough electricity to attract those data centers. Furthermore, supporters of the deregulated electricity “free markets” are not being honest when they say forcing electric utilities to compete with other energy providers benefits ratepayers.

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These deregulated electric states, currently about 20 of them, disadvantage consumers because their electric grids are overseen by organizations with the authority of government but run by people not elected, who cannot be sued and therefore lack real accountability. For example, the Texas political leadership and some conservatives like the Washington-based think tank R Street contend that the Texas grid is an example of the free market in action. But the conservative Texas courts have ruled consistently that the Electric Reliability Council of Texas — the agency which runs the state’s power grid — is the monopoly electricity provider in the wholesale market, and, in language that conjures the defunct Soviet Union, that it is “an arm of the state.” The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has failed just like the Soviet Union did. Following a deadly grid failure during the 2011 freeze, the state did nothing. The grid failure that followed in February 2021 left 246 dead and $4.2 billion in overcharges that the governor’s appointees to Public Utility Commission of Texas enforced by suing to overturn an appellate court’s decision to refund the $4.2 billion to customers. The Wall Street Journal also found that Texans had been overcharged $28 billion. If we are looking at ensuring the Lone Star State has enough energy, it must also be noted that the overcharges on Texans’ electric bills have not gone toward building new power plants. They have gone to share buybacks, corporate bonuses, hedge funds and campaign contributions. The statewide performance fits exactly with the predatory behavior of a monopolist — less supply, higher prices.

Crockett questions Melania Trump’s reported ‘Einstein visa’: ‘The math ain’t mathin”

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) questioned first lady Melania Trump’s reported “Einstein visa” at a House hearing Wednesday. “Let me remind y’all that Melania, the first lady, a model — and when I say model, I’m not talking about Tyra Banks, Cindy Crawford or Naomi Campbell level — applied for and was given an EB-1 visa, and what that stands for is an Einstein visa. Now y’all that don’t know, let me tell you how you receive an Einstein visa,” Crockett said. “You’re supposed to have some sort of significant achievement, like being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize or a Pulitzer, being an Olympic medalist, or having other sustained extraordinary abilities and success in sciences, arts, education, business or athletics. Last time I checked, the first lady had none of those accolades under her belt,” the Texas Democrat added. “It doesn’t take an Einstein to see that the math ain’t mathin’ here.”

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The Washington Post has reported that Trump in 2001 was given a green card via the elite EB-1 program. The program has been used by people such as academic researchers and multinational business executives, as well as people who have demonstrated “sustained national and international acclaim,” according to the Post. Crockett’s comments came amid already heightened tensions over immigration in the U.S. as President Trump and his administration pursue an immigration crackdown. The Trump administration has recently looked to social media more as a national security tool to vet immigrants, raising concerns the action could result in a chilling effect on political speech in the U.S. The State Department announced earlier this month it was relaunching interviews and processing foreign student visas, with applicants having to make their social media accounts public for vetting or face possible denial. The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment.

Mexico investigating contamination from SpaceX explosion debris

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said Wednesday she was exploring legal repercussions for Elon Musk’s SpaceX company after a rocket explosion scattered waste across the country. “There is indeed contamination,” the leader said during a Wednesday press conference, pledging to file “necessary lawsuits” in international court. Sheinbaum said Mexico is launching a general review of the damage and its impact. Gov. Américo Villarreal of Tamaulipas, where shards landed, urged the country to also investigate whether SpaceX was complying with regulations regarding Musk’s project’s proximity to population centers after a May 27 failed launch left ruins in the state, according to The Associated Press. SpaceX did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment.

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“Just a scratch,” Musk posted to X after the unsuccessful June takeoff without directly acknowledging the incident. His officials also allege there were no hazards from debris. “Our Starbase team is actively working to safe the test site and the immediate surrounding area in conjunction with local officials,” SpaceX wrote on X. “There are no hazards to residents in surrounding communities, and we ask that individuals do not attempt to approach the area while safing operations continue,” it added.

Gov. Abbott signs bill defining consent, closing Texas rape loophole

A bill that will codify a definition of consent into Texas law was signed by Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday, signaling a step forward for sexual assault survivors and advocates across the state. The bill was named the “Summer Willis Act” for a Texas woman who says she was raped at a University of Texas fraternity party a decade ago. While Willis did not pursue legal action at the time, she later discovered that her assault would have been difficult to prosecute under state law because she was not given alcohol directly by the person who raped her. “[My rape] doesn't count, one, because I voluntarily took a drink and two, because that person, when I entered the party, did not have the intent to rape me, even though someone else did,” Willis recently told PBS. “I think something cracked inside of me, realizing that, even if I wanted to, even if I went to the police the next day, they would have just turned me around.”

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There is no federal definition of consent, and before House Bill 3073, Texas defined sexual assault “without the consent” of the other person as instances in which physical force was used to facilitate the assault, cases in which the victim was unconscious and cases in which the victim was mentally disabled or incapacitated in a way that they could not have given consent. What consent actually meant, though, was legally vague. That made instances where a victim was unable to give consent due to drunkenness or other inebriation tricky to prosecute, Amy Jones, CEO of the Dallas Area Rape Crisis Center, told the Observer. “We have seen this time and time again, where so many survivors come to us and their story is, ‘I was at a party, I had too much to drink.’ And … then they experienced some sort of sexual assault. And they would fall through the cracks,” Jones said. With the passage of the Summer Willis Act, the legal relationship between consent and sexual assault has been broadened to include cases in which a person is too drunk to knowingly say yes to sex. The act brings the legal understanding of consent into step with the cultural understanding of it, and the bill will go into effect Sept. 1. Jones said that timing could be crucial ahead of students returning to college campuses. According to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), 13% of students across graduate and undergraduate programs experience rape of sexual assault while on campus. Over 50% of those assaults take place over the fall months, and students experience an enhanced risk of victimization during their first year at school, the network reports. “Perpetrators of sexual violence look for vulnerabilities to exploit, which is why the number one date rape drug is alcohol,” Jones said. “For this loophole to be clarified, I think, is really important. And I think it sends a message to survivors that we understand what sexual assault actually is.”

Universities may police themselves as Texas A&M forms new accreditor with systems from red states

The Texas A&M University System will join five other public higher education systems – all from red states – to create a new accreditor for colleges. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced the consortium on Thursday, springboarding off several federal and Republican-led state efforts to expand accreditation options for colleges. Some critics of the system have claimed that accrediting agencies have a monopoly on the regions or academic specialties they oversee, and that they advance "woke" ideologies through diversity, equity and inclusion requirements. Supporters contest that not all accreditors mandate DEI, and that the current processes have been largely successful in holding institutions accountable.

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The Texas A&M System will establish the new Commission for Public Higher Education along with the State University System of Florida, University System of Georgia, University of North Carolina System, University of South Carolina System and University of Tennessee System. “In recent legislative sessions, our top state officials have sought a more reasonable and transparent pathway toward accreditation," incoming Chancellor Glenn Hegar said in a news release. "And now, the leadership of the Texas A&M University System is pleased to announce that the System has joined an alliance of some of the nation’s top university systems to provide a new, less cumbersome and more objective option for accreditation.” Accreditation is a process where peer administrators and professors regularly review other colleges, using a list of requirements to ensure they are meeting high standards of education in curriculum, staffing and other areas. Institutional accreditation is required for schools to distribute federal student aid. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges is the accreditor for institutions in the Texas A&M University System as well as the other systems in the new consortium. SACSCOC does not have benchmarks pertaining to diversity, equity and inclusion, though it does "support and encourage" efforts to promote diversity in higher education, according to its website.

How Bill Moyers went from Marshall, Texas, to being LBJ’s “young man in charge of everything”

CBS/Getty On a sunny November afternoon in 1963, a slender, bespectacled young man hurried up the stairs of Air Force One at Love Field, in Dallas, and handed a scribbled note to a harried Secret Service agent who had failed to recognize him. “I’m here if you need me,” the note read. Minutes later, the door to the front section of the plane opened, and the young man joined Vice President Lyndon Johnson minutes before he was sworn in as the nation’s thirty-sixth president. Johnson already knew then what Washington and the world would soon come to know. Young Bill Moyers, the pride of Marshall, Texas, was the indispensable man. Moyers, who died on June 26 at 91, was like a son to the man who had two daughters but no sons of his own. A journalist, an ordained Baptist minister, and a remarkably adept practitioner of the political arts, he was an integral part of LBJ’s ambitious effort to apply the power and resources of the federal government to the nation’s knottiest challenges.

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suited, buttoned-down stereotype of the fifties organization man. The clean-cut young man knew how to get things done, things like the Peace Corps, which he helped design for President John F. Kennedy and for which he served as the first deputy director, under Sargent Shriver. Working for LBJ in the White House, Moyers was involved in drafting the 1964, ’65 and ’66 civil rights bills (making him “persona no grata in my hometown,” he told a reporter in 1984). As a domestic policy aide, he marshaled the multiple task forces that constructed LBJ’s landmark Great Society programs, the preeminent accomplishments of Johnson’s star-crossed presidency. He was involved in early discussions that led to the passage of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, the legislation that established NPR and PBS. He made the cover of Time magazine in October 1965 with a story headlined “L.B.J.’s Young Man in Charge of Everything.” LBJ’s young man in charge also helped create one of the most memorable—some would say one of the most notorious—campaign ads in political history, the so-called “daisy” ad implying in the midst of the 1964 presidential race that a President Barry Goldwater was likely to blow up the world.

National Stories

Stock futures rise on trade deal hopes, S&P 500 poised for record high

Stock futures rose Friday, with the S&P 500 just a whisker away from its all-time high, as hope for a U.S.-China trade deal grew and traders awaited fresh U.S. inflation data. S&P 500 futures climbed 0.2% along with those tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Nasdaq-100 futures advanced 0.3%. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Bloomberg news that a framework between China and the U.S. on trade had been finalized. Lutnick added that the Trump administration expects to reach deals with 10 major trading partners imminently. China’s Ministry of Commerce also said Friday that the two countries had confirmed a trade framework that would allow the export of rare earths to the U.S. and ease tech restrictions. The S&P 500 is on the verge of completing a stunning comeback from the closing lows set in April. Markets were in turmoil during the spring as investors feared President Donald Trump’s tariffs would hurt corporate earnings and tip the economy into a recession.

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However, the benchmark recovered and is up 23.3% since reaching a nadir on April 8. The index also sits just 0.1% below its all-time intraday high of 6,147.76. “The markets were in a sense of stasis,” said Rick Rieder, BlackRock’s chief investment officer for global fixed income, on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.” “There is so much money that wants to come into the market that didn’t for a while. And I just think if you don’t have any negative news, the natural gravitational pull is across all these assets.” To be sure, investors have new inflation figures to contend with before the S&P 500 can complete its stunning rebound. The May reading of personal consumption expenditures price index is due at 8:30 a.m. ET. Economists polled by Dow Jones expect the index to tick 0.1% higher on the month and 2.3% from a year ago. So-called core PCE is slated to rise 0.1% from April and 2.6% from 12 months earlier.

House GOP holdouts threaten revolt over Trump and Senate’s tax bill

As Senate Republicans eye the finish line on President Donald Trump’s massive tax and immigration proposal, there may be one more obstacle standing in the way of what they hope will be era-defining legislation: their GOP colleagues in the House. The Senate has transformed key provisions from the House-passed version of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a measure that would extend trillions of dollars in tax cuts, spend hundreds of billions on immigration enforcement and defense, and cut spending on social benefit and anti-poverty programs. Now to many House Republicans, the legislation looks unrecognizable — and no longer adheres to hard-fought compromises lawmakers in the lower chamber secured just a month ago. That task got harder Wednesday night and early Thursday. The GOP may not include many of its initial proposals to jettison immigrants from Medicaid, the Senate parliamentarian ruled, blowing a nearly $250 billion hole into the bill’s budget math.

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The Senate hoped to include deeper funding cuts to Medicaid than the House bill would make, including a provision that some lawmakers fear would threaten rural hospitals in their states. But the parliamentarian said that and other measures violate rules surrounding budget reconciliation, the process Republicans are using to bypass a Democratic Senate filibuster. Other Senate proposals are more costly than what the House approved. The upper chamber would preserve, for now, some Biden-era clean energy credits the House sought to eliminate immediately. And House and Senate Republicans are still negotiating a compromise over raising the limit on how much taxpayers can deduct in state and local taxes — a crucial issue for a handful of House Republicans in high-tax states who have threatened to vote against the bill if they don’t get their way. House budget hard-liners nearly tanked the legislation in May over concerns it added too much to the national debt; the Senate’s bill is likely to be dramatically more expensive. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) is rushing his chamber into a vote on the measure by the end of the week, trying to beat a self-imposed Independence Day deadline to have the bill on Trump’s desk. “The day I sign this bill into law, almost every major promise made in the 2024 campaign already will have become a promise kept,” Trump told a crowd at the White House on Thursday at an event to build support for the legislation.

Supreme Court rules for South Carolina in its bid to defund Planned Parenthood

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled for South Carolina in its effort to defund Planned Parenthood, concluding that individual Medicaid patients cannot sue to enforce their right to pick a medical provider. The court held in a 6-3 ruling along ideological lines, with the conservative justices in the majority, that the federal law in question does not allow people who are enrolled in the Medicaid program to file such claims against the state. The ruling written by Justice Neil Gorsuch is a boost to the state's effort to prevent Planned Parenthood from receiving funding through Medicaid, a federal program for low-income people that is administered by the states, because it prevents individual patients from enforcing their right to choose their preferred health care provider. The ruling could also give a boost to other Republican-led states that choose to follow suit.

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“Congress knows how to give a grantee clear and unambiguous notice that, if it accepts federal funds, it may face private suits asserting an individual right to choose a medical provider,” Gorsuch wrote. But, he added, “that is not the law we have.” Federal funding for abortion is already banned, but conservatives have long targeted funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides reproductive health services, including abortions where allowed, even when that money is for other health care-related services. They argue that even non-abortion-related funding that flows to Planned Parenthood would help it carry out its broader agenda that favors abortion rights. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, issued an executive order in 2018 that prohibited Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, the local affiliate of the national group, from providing family planning services under Medicaid. “Seven years ago, we took a stand to protect the sanctity of life and defend South Carolina’s authority and values — and today, we are finally victorious," McMaster said in a statement. A total of 18 states backed South Carolina in the case.

Republican senators propose slashing size of intel office led by Tulsi Gabbard

A top Republican senator is proposing a sweeping overhaul of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, slashing the workforce of an organization that has expanded since it was created in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. Under a bill by Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the Republican chair of the Intelligence Committee, the ODNI’s staff of about 1,600 would be capped at 650, according to a senior Senate aide familiar with the proposed legislation. ODNI’s workforce was about 2,000 in January, but National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard has already overseen a reduction of about 20% as part of the Trump administration’s drive to shrink the federal workforce. The reduction in the staff Gabbard oversees could weaken her role in the intelligence bureaucracy at a time when she appears to have fallen out of favor with the White House. The Senate staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Cotton and other Republican senators have been working on the proposed reform for months and that their effort preceded Gabbard’s appointment.

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Kennedy’s advisers back flu vaccination, but not shots with a rarely used preservative

The Trump administration’s new vaccine advisers on Thursday endorsed this fall’s flu vaccinations for just about every American — but only if they use certain shots free of an ingredient antivaccine groups have falsely tied to autism. What is normally a routine step in preparing for the upcoming flu season drew intense scrutiny after U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. abruptly fired the influential 17-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and handpicked replacements that include several vaccine skeptics. The seven-member panel bucked another norm Thursday as it discussed the safety of a preservative used in less than 5% of U.S. flu vaccinations: It deliberated based only on a presentation from an antivaccine group’s former leader — without allowing the usual public airing of scientific data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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The preservative, thimerosal, has long been used in certain vaccines that come in multi-dose vials, to prevent contamination as each dose is withdrawn. But it has been controversial because it contains a small amount of a particular form of mercury. Study after study has found no evidence that thimerosal causes autism or other harm. Yet since 2001, all vaccines routinely used for U.S. children age 6 years or younger have come in thimerosal-free formulas — including single-dose flu shots that account for the vast majority of influenza vaccinations. The advisory panel first voted, with one abstention, to back the usual U.S. recommendation that nearly everyone age 6 months and older get an annual flu vaccination. Then the advisers decided people should only be given thimerosal-free single-dose formulations, voting 5-1 with one abstention. That would include single-dose shots that already are the most common type of flu vaccination, as well as the nasal spray FluMist. It would rule out the subset of flu vaccine dispensed in multi-dose vials. “There is still no demonstrable evidence of harm,” one panelist, Dr. Joseph Hibbeln, a psychiatrist formerly with the National Institutes of Health, said in acknowledging the committee wasn’t following its usual practice of acting on evidence.

Pete Hegseth attacks old Fox News colleague's reporting on Iran strikes intelligence evaluation

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth criticized his former Fox News colleague Jennifer Griffin as “about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most intentionally what the president says” in a Pentagon news conference Thursday. Griffin, Fox’s chief national security correspondent, said that “I take issue with that” and defended her reporting on the U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Hegseth, a Fox News anchor before President Donald Trump appointed him defense secretary, repeatedly criticized the media and questioned its patriotism for its reporting on an initial assessment of the weekend’s bombing that questioned how much damage was done to Iran’s nuclear program. The attack on Griffin was notable because, less than a year ago, she and Hegseth shared the same employer — a news network that has seen its reputation in Trump’s eyes rise and fall haphazardly over the past decade.

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Griffin had asked Hegseth about whether there was any certainty that highly enriched uranium was stored at the mountain bunker bombed by the U.S., given satellite photos that showed more than a dozen trucks were seen there two days in advance. “Of course, we’re watching every single aspect,” Hegseth said. “But, Jennifer, you’ve been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most intentionally what the president says.” Fox management had no immediate comment on what Hegseth said. Fox analyst Brit Hume called it an attack she did not deserve. “Her professionalism, her knowledge and her experience are unmatched,” Hume said. Hume did seem to criticize, however, other news organizations for reporting on the initial assessment by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. “It is typical of the media in our age that any negative report that you can put your hands on in the aftermath of the United States military action is going to be highlighted, played up and so,” he said, saying it was disappointing. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that the administration is investigating who is responsible for leaking a copy of the intelligence agency’s report. The news reporting clearly angered Trump, since the report’s initial conclusions contradicted the president’s statements that the bombing resulted in “total obliteration” of Iran’s nuclear program.

Pew study finds Trump gained with Catholics, nonwhite Protestants in 2024

White evangelicals’ love affair with Donald Trump has been well documented over the years, and their unflagging support for the president was no different in the 2024 election. But a new study examining the 2024 vote among nearly 7,100 verified voters shows the president won over the affections of many other Protestants beyond evangelicals — and Catholics too. The Pew Research poll released Thursday (June 26) shows that Trump bested his performance among all U.S. Protestants, winning 62% of their votes, up 3 percentage points from the 2020 election, when Trump lost to Joe Biden. And Trump won 55% of the Catholic vote, up 6 percentage points from 2020. Most surprisingly, Trump did exceptionally well among minority race Protestants (a category that includes Hispanic and Asian Protestants, but not Blacks), winning 70% of their vote, up from 55% in 2020. He did better with Blacks too, winning 15% of the Black Protestant vote, up 6 percentage points over 2020. Still, overwhelmingly, Black Protestants voted Democratic.

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“What the overall study shows is that Donald Trump was able to expand his coalition,” said John Green, emeritus director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. “He maintained his religious supporters among white Christians but then reached out particularly to the Hispanic and minority communities to really pick up some people.” Unaffiliated voters, including atheists, agnostics and those who say they have no particular religious affiliation, overwhelmingly voted for the Democratic candidate, with 70% voting for Kamala Harris and only 28% for Trump. The study was made up of validated voters, meaning those who said they voted and were recorded as having voted in at least one of the three commercial voter files that Pew checked. (Exit polls, which are available almost immediately after the election, are considered less reliable because not all registered voters who said they voted actually voted.) The Pew study also shows that in 2024 Trump won a larger share of voters who attend religious services monthly — 64%, up from 59% in 2020. People who attend religious services have proved to be reliable voters even as their proportion of the population continues to fall. Indeed, the study found that voters who attend religious services monthly favored Trump by nearly 2-to-1 in 2024 (64%-34%). “The people remaining in religious institutions turn out to vote at much higher numbers,” said Green. “One reason is that voting behavior is communal. If the people I hang out with vote, I’m more likely to vote. It’s a connectedness phenomenon.”

Lead Stories

Former Ken Paxton aides allege witness tampering during impeachment trial

Several former and current top aides of Attorney General Ken Paxton are trading explosive accusations in legal and administrative filings, the latest of which alleges that Paxton's right-hand deputy obstructed justice and tampered with witnesses during his 2023 impeachment. The public feud could become a distraction for Paxton just as he’s overcome a series of legal troubles, including the impeachment charges, which he was acquitted of by the Texas Senate, and as he launches his bid to unseat U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in next year’s Republican primary. The new allegations — detailed in a suit filed Wednesday in federal court in Austin by former Solicitor General Judd Stone and Chris Hilton, the former chief of the general litigation division — include claims that current First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster threatened to fire employees if they gave testimony during the impeachment proceedings that was unfavorable to Paxton. The claim has not previously been reported, and Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It’s not clear if the claims were ever raised to law enforcement; Webster has not been charged with any criminal wrongdoing.

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The first lawsuit was filed last month by Jordan Eskew, a former executive assistant for Stone and Hilton, against the two men and their private law firm. Eskew accused Stone of sexual harassment on multiple occasions in 2023 when she had taken leave from Paxton’s office to work for Stone and Hilton as private attorneys representing Paxton in the impeachment trial. She also claimed Hilton failed to protect her and that the two created a hostile work environment. A spokesperson for Stone and Hilton’s law firm has called Eskew’s suit “a complete fabrication” and said that it was pushed by Paxton’s top deputy, First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster, who has a “personal vendetta” against Stone and Hilton. Webster and Eskew are still working at the attorney general’s office. This week, Stone and Hilton shot back with a suit of their own against Webster and other attorney general staffers, not including Eskew, and a bar complaint against Webster. They claim Webster tried to damage their careers by lying about them and encouraging Eskew to file her sexual harassment suit. Stone and Hilton also claimed in the filing to the State Bar of Texas that Webster tried to tamper with potential witnesses for Paxton’s impeachment proceedings by pressuring them to give favorable testimony or “to flee the state to evade being subpoenaed to disclose information harmful to Webster.” It does not specify which people were targeted.

Democrats Allred, Castro, O’Rourke, Talarico meet to discuss 2026 options

Four of Texas’ leading Democrats met last month to sort out which of them is the best choice to run for the Senate seat held by Republican John Cornyn and to potentially develop a slate that would contend for other statewide offices. There was a major obstacle. They all were steadfastly interested in running for Senate — and nothing else, advisers to three of the potential candidates told The Dallas Morning News this week. The May 31 virtual meeting featured former U.S. Reps. Colin Allred and Beto O’Rourke, along with U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro and state Rep. James Talarico.

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The potential candidates declined to discuss details of their private meeting, even as operatives from the four camps touted their political bona fides to The Dallas Morning News. With much of the party’s top talent interested in the marquee race, it could be difficult for Democrats to develop a robust slate of candidates, though they are hopeful the situation will work itself out. Some Democrats hope the four top Democrats would be slotted in campaigns for Senate, governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general. Democrats are anticipating the 2026 political climate will be unforgiving for Republicans. Historically the party that controls the White House takes losses during midterm elections and Democrats hope voters will sour on President Donald Trump. There’s also the prospect that Attorney General Ken Paxton, who in 2023 was impeached before being acquitted by the Texas Senate and has a history of legal troubles, will defeat Cornyn for the GOP Senate nomination. Polls show Democrats would fare better against Paxton than Cornyn, a proven general election juggernaut. “I’m sure everybody wants a path that’s going to get them to a win and lead the Democrats out of the wilderness. That’s what history will remember,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political scientist. “Assuming Paxton wins, he’s the most vulnerable statewide official and he’s the clear target.”

Why most Texas vouchers could go to homeschoolers, not private schools

As Texas lawmakers brawled over a school voucher plan this spring, scrutiny centered on whether to fund private school students’ tuition with taxpayer dollars. But an overlooked group of students may be some of the program’s biggest beneficiaries: homeschoolers, who can receive up to $2,000 a year. More than a half million Texas children are in homeschool, nearly double the private school population. The Legislature’s fiscal analysis of the voucher law estimates that around 270,000 would apply in the program’s first year, meaning they could account for a majority of the available $1 billion. “People have walked into this with the idea that this is a program for accredited private school students, and a few homeschoolers might also participate,” said Jeremy Newman, vice president of policy and litigation at the Texas Homeschool Coalition. “There’s a decent probability it will be the opposite.”

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The prediction, shared by other experts, came down to a few factors. Low-income families are first in line for the stipend. Homeschool families may be more likely to qualify since one parent is likely serving as the primary teacher, Newman said. And homeschoolers would bypass the biggest hurdle of needing to be accepted into a private school to access the funds, which become available in the 2026-2027 school year. They are also not subject to the standardized test requirements that recipients in private schools face. But how many actually apply remains to be seen. Homeschool families surveyed by Hearst Newspapers said they are split on whether they will seek the funds. A few have a distrust of the government harkening back to when some parents were jailed for homeschooling in Texas in the early 1980s. Others believe taking money from the state would mean giving up freedom over their children’s education. The estimated population of homeschool students in Texas is between 500,000 to 650,000 students, rivaling the entire population of Wyoming. Research into the homeschool population is difficult in part because Texas has among the nation’s most lenient regulations for homeschoolers, said Robert Kunzman, an Indiana University professor who leads the International Center for Home Education Research. Parents are not required to provide the government with test scores or other proof of their children’s learning.

Immigrants drive population growth in a graying America, census shows

Immigration is driving U.S. population growth and helping offset a broader demographic shift as the baby boom generation ages, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. U.S. children outnumber older adults, but older adults’ share of the population is growing, the census data released Thursday shows. From 2023 to 2024, the number of Americans 65 and older climbed by 3.1 percent while the population under 18 declined by 0.2 percent. There are more older adults than children in nearly half of U.S. counties, and the pattern is particularly strong in sparsely populated areas, the bureau said. The gap between the two groups “is narrowing,” in part because of a decline in births this decade, said Lauren Bowers, chief of the Census Bureau’s population estimates branch, in a statement Thursday.

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At the same time, a historic rise in immigration, particularly among Hispanics and Asians, has counteracted some of that population decline. The Hispanic population in the U.S. rose by about 9.7 percent from April 2020 to July 2024, including both immigration and births, while the Asian population grew by about 13 percent. (This analysis applies the Census Bureau’s classification of the non-Hispanic racial groups as excluding people who also identify as Hispanic.) “This past year, the population gain was bigger than it’s ever been before,” said Bill Frey, a senior demographer at the Brookings Institution, a think tank. “Overall, it’s because of immigration.” A sharp drop in the number of White children is a major factor in the declining number of American children overall, and that decline has been partially offset by the rising number of non-White youth, Frey said, based on his analysis of the census data. White Americans accounted for 57.5 percent of the total population last year but for 47.5 percent of the population under age 18. By comparison, Hispanic people accounted for 20 percent of the total population and 26.9 percent of children.

State Stories

House shelves Houston Congressman Al Green’s effort to impeach Trump over Iran strikes

The U.S. House voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to set aside an effort to impeach President Donald Trump on a sole charge of abuse of power after he launched military strikes on Iran without first seeking authorization from Congress. The sudden action forced by a lone Democrat, U.S. Rep. Al Green of Houston, brought little debate and split his party. Most Democrats joined the Republican majority to table the measure, for now. But dozens of Democrats backed Green’s effort. The tally was 344-79. "I take no delight in what I’m doing," Green said ahead of the vote. "I do this because no one person should have the power to take over 300 million people to war without consulting with the Congress of the United States of America," he said. "I do this because I understand that the Constitution is going to be meaningful or it's going to be meaningless."

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The effort, while not the first rumbling of action to impeach Trump since he started his second term at the White House in January, shows the unease many Democrats have with his administration, particularly after the sudden attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, a risky incursion into Middle East affairs. Trump earlier Tuesday lashed out in vulgar terms against another Democrat, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, for having suggested his military action against Iran was an impeachable offense. House Democratic leadership was careful not to directly criticize Green, but also made clear that their focus was on other issues. Impeachment matters are typically considered a vote of conscience, without pressure from leadership to vote a certain way. Rep. Pete Aguilar of California, chair of the House Democratic caucus, said lawmakers will "represent their constituents and their communities." "At this time, at this moment, we are focusing on what this big, ugly bill is going to do,” he said about the big Trump tax breaks package making its way through Congress. "I think anything outside of that is a distraction because this is the most important thing that we can focus on." Trump was twice impeached by House Democrats during his first term, in 2019 over withholding funds to Ukraine as it faced military aggression from Russia, and in 2021 on the charge of inciting an insurrection after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by his supporters trying to stop Democrat Joe Biden's presidential election victory. In both of those impeachment cases, the Senate acquitted Trump of charges, allowing his return to the presidency this year.

BlackRock launches Texas-focused fund to tap into state’s ‘dynamic’ economy

The world’s largest investment firm has launched a new fund focused on the Texas economy. BlackRock, which has around $11 trillion under management, on Tuesday debuted the iShares Texas Equity ETF, which trades on the Nasdaq market under the symbol TEXN. It is an index fund composed only of publicly traded companies headquartered in Texas. In a statement, BlackRock said the fund aims to provide investors “targeted exposure to a dynamic state economy.” More than 300 companies have moved their headquarters to Texas over the past 10 years, BlackRock noted, and last year, the state ranked first in the nation for population growth. Texas GDP reached a record $2.7 trillion in 2024, making the state the world’s eighth-largest economy if considered on a standalone basis.

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“TEXN presents a new opportunity for Texans, and investors across the country, to invest in nearly 200 companies powering the state’s economy and to capitalize on Texas’ twin engines of business and population growth,” Joe DeVico, head of the Americas client business at BlackRock, said in a statement. The fund has about $5 million in assets under management and 190 holdings. The largest holdings within the fund are Tesla Inc., Exxon Mobil Corp., Oracle Corp., Chevron Corp. and AT&T. Also included are San Antonio-based Valero Energy Corp., Cullen/Frost Bankers Inc., Victory Capital Holdings Inc. and Xpel Inc., along with New Braunfels-based Rush Enterprises Inc. and Seguin-based Alamo Group Inc. The fund closed at $24.96 Wednesday. The Texas-focused exchange traded fund, an investment vehicle that holds a number of underlying assets, joins BlackRock’s existing “geography-based products.” Through iShares, the firm offers more than 60 mutual funds and ETFs that target a single country or region, comprising more than $100 billion in assets under management. The launch of the ETF comes after several years of friction between the state and BlackRock, and is consistent with an apparent desire for détente on the latter’s part. In 2022, BlackRock was among ten financial services firms placed on a sort of statewide naughty list after they were deemed to be “boycotting” the oil and gas industry. Under a 2021 state law, firms boycotting fossil fuel-based companies could be subject to divestment by pension funds including the Employees Retirement System of Texas and Teacher Retirement System of Texas. BlackRock representatives denied that the firm was boycotting fossil fuels. The firm’s co-founder and CEO, Larry Fink, had emerged as a leading Wall Street voice in favor of various priorities of the environmental, social and governance movement, including reducing carbon emissions.

Ryan Holeywell: 300,000 Texans stand to lose Medicaid if 'Big, Beautiful Bill' passes

(Ryan Holeywell is senior editor at Kinder Institute for Urban Research.) One of the most consequential conversations I’ve ever had was with Dr. Hagop Kantarjian, chair of the leukemia department at MD Anderson Cancer Center. At the time, I was working in communications for the Texas Medical Center. Kantarjian was doing everything he could to sound the alarm about the rising cost of health care. About 40% of his leukemia patients, Kantarjian told me, got less-than-optimal care because they couldn’t afford the treatment they needed. “They just disappear, and don’t take the drug and they die,” Kantarjian told me. “That’s the reality of my clinic — every day.” Not long after speaking with Kantarjian, I moved to Washington, D.C. to work for a nonprofit focused on making health care more affordable and accessible for cancer patients. I remain haunted by what Kantarjian told me, and in a broader sense, by the disparity that’s core to my hometown of Houston. Patients — at least those who can afford it — come from all over the world for treatment at the Texas Medical Center. But the same health care offered to the global elite is out of reach for many Texans. More than 1 in 5 working-age Texans lack health insurance, and nearly two-thirds of Texans say they skip health care because of the cost.

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The reality is that in Texas and many other parts of the country, those without health coverage have only two options when they face a serious condition like cancer: hope for charity, or hope for a miracle. Amazingly, we’re dangerously close to a future where health care somehow becomes even more difficult for patients to access, following passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” in the U.S. House on a party-line vote. The U.S. Senate is now considering the legislation. If you think you or someone in your life could one day face a serious disease like cancer, this affects you. Huge cuts to Medicaid and complicated new paperwork requirements would make it harder for those most in need of affordable health coverage to get it and keep it. Meanwhile, technical changes will make buying insurance through Healthcare.gov more confusing, complicated and costly. Some — including those who run rural hospitals — have warned the cuts are so deep that they threaten the ability of some providers to remain open. In total, the House-passed measure — along with the expiration of tax credits that make Healthcare.gov insurance premiums more affordable — would increase the number of uninsured people in the U.S. by an estimated 16 million people in 2034, including 1.9 million Texans, according to a KFF analysis. Houston’s elected officials, business leaders and civic boosters all take pride in our community’s leadership in the fight against cancer. But by supporting this legislation, many lawmakers representing Texas are making it even harder for Texans to survive this devastating disease. Some of the bill’s supporters say the health care cuts are necessary to reduce the deficit, but the legislation actually increases the deficit by more than $2 trillion. Others say there are too many able-bodied adults relying on Medicaid. But the vast majority of adults with Medicaid work. Some argue it’s an effort to reduce fraud. But as anyone with health insurance knows, insurers pay the health care provider — not the patient. Medicaid patients aren’t getting rich by receiving free chemo.

Dallas to review programs linked with DEI to align with Trump’s executive orders

Dallas will begin reviewing municipal programs to determine if they align with President Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs in hopes of retaining $305 million in federal grants. With no discussion, the City Council quickly authorized City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert to take temporary steps to ensure compliance with federal directives and brief the City Council no later than Aug. 20 on her recommendations for which policies and programs need to be paused, though Tolbert has maintained the city can achieve its goals of serving underrepresented communities without violating federal directives. The approval comes a day after the Fort Worth City Council delayed its vote on a similar measure to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The city is at risk of losing $277 million in federal funding per year, according to the Fort Worth Report.

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Trump’s executive orders don’t require cities to discontinue equity programs, but they include provisions that broadly prohibit recipients of federal contracts or grants from operating or supporting any programs that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, according to city officials. Dallas, like most municipalities in the U.S., relies on federal dollars to advance its efforts to revitalize neighborhoods and their infrastructure, provide housing assistance and spur economic investment. The city has projects worth $980 million in the pipeline and include grants from federal agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Justice. The Dallas City Council was recently briefed in closed session on five executive orders that could have local effects. For example, provisions in order No. 14168 target transgender residents by declaring just two sexes, while order No. 14173 revokes former President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 executive order that established “affirmative action” to reverse discriminatory policies that excluded applicants based on their race and gender in the federal workplace. It is unclear what the orders mean for the city’s equity and inclusion office and its employees.

'Unjust': Judson ISD board cuts pre-K program, staff positions, athletics to offset deficit

The Judson Independent School District board is cutting early childhood education, athletics, staff positions and employee workdays in an effort to offset a historic budget deficit. The board has undergone a dramatic shift since the May 3 election, with the addition of three new trustees who ran campaigns on the need to address the district’s fiscal crisis more aggressively. At the behest of a new majority and its pariah-turned-presiding president, the seven-member board has spent the last month working tirelessly to reduce expenses. At a special meeting that spanned two days this week, the board agreed to several new budget cuts. Among them is Judson’s Pre-K3 program, which offers half-day preschool to eligible three-year-olds. Eliminating it will shave roughly $2 million off a $40 million deficit next year.

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“There’s a lot of rightsizing to still do because we’ve got to get these resources down into our classrooms in the hands of our teachers, impacting students every day,” said board president Monica Ryan. “This is not going to be an easy process.” Judson ISD serves about 24,000 students across more than 30 campuses on the Northeast Side. Nearly 60% of its students are Hispanic, 22% are Black and 70% are economically disadvantaged, according to state data. The cost-saving measures come six months after the board voted to close Coronado Village Elementary School, adding to dozens of Bexar County public schools shuttered since 2023 due to declining enrollment and stagnant state funding. In recent weeks, trustees have voted to increase class sizes, reduce pay for uncertified teachers and conduct an efficiency audit — a necessary step if the board decides to ask voters to approve a property tax rate increase.

Houston said closed homeless camps carried offers of housing. So what happens when housing is tight?

When Kenny Lindley and his neighbors received word in 2023 that their collection of roughly five dozen tents near Minute Maid would be cleared, they were given a decision to make by the authorities decommissioning the camp. They had to move. But if they wanted permanent housing, they were told they could move into the city’s navigation center, where they could all live under one roof, along with any pets, until their paperwork was in order and a spot became available. Lindley, now 63, was nervous because he’d never been to the navigation center. Would conditions be civilized? But he was pleasantly surprised. And it was much easier to focus on his housing application for a new apartment. He still lives there today with his longtime partner. Lindley’s experience is emblematic of Houston’s response to encampments since 2018, a housing-focused approach that was lauded for its blend of pragmatism and compassion. The approach was distilled into a manual and enabled people to move from encampments into housing quickly by utilizing federal funds unlocked by disasters such as Hurricane Harvey and the pandemic.

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As these federal funds run out in 2025, the city’s homeless camp decommissioning strategy is changing as city officials and program partners face new challenges and priorities. The result? People like Lindley are often offered different options today to move out of homelessness — and some are choosing to simply set up camp elsewhere. It is no longer the standard for authorities who clean up camps to directly offer permanent housing or a spot in the navigation center, officials say. The decommissioning playbook has expanded to include shelter beds, such as those at the Houston Recovery Center. The change highlights the need for more funding, officials say, who note that paying for housing subsidies and supportive services has become a bottleneck in the response to homelessness. The Coalition for Housing in Houston and Harris County also said that more options can help people who may be newly homeless, who do not qualify for permanent housing. “In the past, officers might have taken them straight to navigation,” said Larry Satterwhite, director of the city’s Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security and former chief of the Houston Police Department. “We are now using the sobering center, the Houston Recovery Center, as our first stop, because they have beds. And some of them will go to navigation or to the Harris Center,” which has various temporary housing programs for those with mental illness.

Texas commissions team to fight flesh-eating screwworms, protect livestock

With the flesh-eating screwworm inching toward Texas, the state will commission a team to fight the parasitic fly and protect livestock. Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday he is directing the Texas Animal Health Commission and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to form the Texas New World Screwworm Response Team. The team will coordinate communications and the state’s preparedness and response efforts, according to a statement from the governor’s office. In a letter to the agencies, Abbott said a screwworm infestation could “result in severe economic losses and ecological disruption” to the state. The New World screwworm, a fly that burrows into open wounds of animals, has spread through Central America, reaching as far north as Oaxaca and Veracruz, Mexico, roughly 700 miles from the Texas-Mexico border. The insect has the potential to devastate the state’s $15 billion cattle industry, but also wildlife. It can also deposit its larvae on pets and humans.

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Screwworms were considered eradicated in the U.S. in the 1960s, but they have continued to pop up. In 2016, a screwworm infestation killed endangered deer in Florida. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced plans to open a fly factory in South Texas, where it will breed millions of insects. The $8.5 million facility at Moore Air Base in Edinburg will breed sterile male flies and release them into the wild to mate with fertile females, producing nonviable eggs until the population dies. The facility, slated to open later this year, would be only the second facility for breeding such flies in the Western Hemisphere, joining one in Panama. In May, the agriculture department suspended all imports of live cattle, horses and bison through U.S. ports of entry along the southern border to prevent the insect’s spread.

Another Dallas postal worker dies while working, union leaders say

Union leaders confirmed a Dallas postal worker died Saturday while working on a hot day, summoning memories of the heat-related death two years ago of Eugene Gates Jr., a Dallas letter carrier. It remained unclear whether Saturday’s death was connected to temperatures that were in the mid-90s. Brian Renfroe, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, testified this week before Congress about the need to protect postal workers. He started his testimony by highlighting Saturday’s death of carrier Jacob Taylor while working in Dallas.

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“While the circumstances of his death are still under review, it’s of course a heartbreaking loss that serves, once again, as another jarring reminder of the on-the-job hazards that letter carriers face every day,” Renfroe told lawmakers. Kimetra Lewis, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers’ Lone Star Branch 132, confirmed Taylor’s death in an interview with The Dallas Morning News. Lewis said that unlike in the death of Gates, Taylor had air conditioning installed in his vehicle, although it’s not clear whether it was working. Lewis said it’s too early to know if heat played a role in Taylor’s death.

U.S. Department of Justice ends civil rights investigation of EPIC City development

The U.S. Department of Justice has dropped a civil rights investigation into EPIC City, a planned Muslim-centric development in Dallas-Fort Worth. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon wrote in a June 13 letter to development group Community Capital Partners that the probe was ending. The DOJ did not bring any lawsuits or charges forward. The DOJ provided no further information regarding the investigation. A copy of the letter was provided to The Dallas Morning News by Community Capital Partners. “CCP has affirmed that all will be welcome in any future development, and that you plan to revise and develop marketing materials to reinforce that message consistent with your obligations under the Fair Housing Act,” the letter reads. “Based on this information, the Department is closing its investigation at this time.”

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Community Capital Partners hopes to build more than 1,000 homes, a K-12 faith-based school, a mosque, elderly and assisted living, apartments, clinics, retail shops, a community college and sports fields on 402 acres in Collin and Hunt counties. The site is about 40 miles northeast of downtown Dallas. The for-profit development group was formed by members of the East Plano Islamic Center, one of North Texas’ largest mosques. “We are pleased with the feedback we received from the Department of Justice,” said Dan Cogdell, an attorney representing Community Capital Partners. “Assistant AG Dhillon and her team were professional, responsive and easy to work with. Community Capital Partners is committed to building an inclusive community that follows the guidelines of the Fair Housing Act, and we are glad the DOJ found that to be true in their investigation.” The DOJ launched its probe last month, following a request from U.S. Sen. John Cornyn. The Texas Republican expressed concern that those involved in the planned development could discriminate against Jewish and Christian Texans.

Ted Cruz moves to stop Texas, other states from regulating AI

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is moving to stop Texas and other states from regulating artificial intelligence technology, saying the industry should be able to develop quickly without having to navigate a patchwork of rules. On Wednesday, Cruz, who chairs the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, released a revised provision of the federal budget reconciliation bill that would restrict access to a newly created $500 million AI deployment fund to states that don't regulate artificial intelligence for the next ten years. The move could hamstring efforts to put guardrails on the burgeoning industry, including in Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott recently signed a new law that would ban the use of artificial intelligence technology to manipulate human behavior and produce child pornography. The legislation passed the Texas Legislature overwhelmingly.

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State Sen. Angela Paxton, R-Allen, likened the provision to a "10-year freeze on state AI laws," in a social media post Tuesday. "If the bill passes in its current form, Texas wouldn’t be able to enforce the common-sense protections to protect our kids from things like deepfake AI child pornography, and other bipartisan AI regulations that were just signed into law," she wrote. "This is a federal overreach that strips states of our duty to protect children." Cruz's office declined to comment for this story. The Republican has pushed the provision as a means to allow AI companies to develop more quickly so they can stay ahead of China in what is considered a critical technology for the future. "A single state should not have the power to set AI rules for the entire country," said a one-pager released by his committee. "Instead, the U.S. should take steps to prevent an unworkable patchwork of disparate and conflicting state AI laws and to encourage states to adopt commonsense tech-neutral policies." But he is also facing opposition from some Republicans in the U.S. Senate who are worried the provision infringes on states' autonomy, including Marsha Blackburn, of Tennessee, and Ron Johnson, of Wisconsin.

North Texas lawyers prepare for reopened immigration cases

In its efforts to reach its quota of 3,000 immigration arrests a day, the Trump administration has found a new target: thousands of low-priority cases closed as far back as a decade ago. In the sunny upstairs conference room of his Fort Worth office on Hulen Street, immigration lawyer Jaime Barron shared a concern he and his peers from across the country discussed at last week’s annual conference of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “Under Trump 2.0, what they’re doing is they’re looking at all these thousands upon thousands upon thousands of cases and doing a rescheduling order,” he said. The order “awakens” immigration cases that were in a status of administrative closure, a temporary pause on a removal order due to the person’s case being considered a low priority.

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Barron’s firm has to date seen fewer than a dozen such cases reopened, but he expects many more as the year progresses. An ICE spokesperson did not respond to multiple emails asking how many cases in administrative closure have been reopened both in North Texas and nationwide, but Barron and other lawyers consulted by the Star-Telegram said the influx of new cases will put further strain on an immigration court system already strained by a backlog counted in the millions. In order to deal with the mounting backlog of cases, the Obama administration began exercising “prosecutorial discretion” to determine how to prioritize cases in the immigration system. A 2011 memo from then ICE Director John Morton cited the agency’s limited resources and instructed personnel to focus on enforcement priorities like “the promotion of national security, border security, public safety, and the integrity of the immigration system.” Prosecutorial discretion is a legal concept that gives prosecutors and enforcement agencies the authority to determine the degree to which they want to enforce the law against an individual, the memo states. Morton directed ICE officers, agents and attorneys to consider on a case-by-case basis factors such as the manner in which a person arrived in the United States, how long they had been in the country, education, military service, criminal history, community ties, home country conditions and others when deciding whether to use prosecutorial discretion to administratively close a case.

Three Harris County Jail inmates die within 48-hour span, marking 10 in-custody deaths in 2025

Three Harris County Jail inmates died during a recent 48-hour span, marking a total of 10 in-custody deaths reported in Harris County so far this year. Alexander Winstel, 43, suffered a medical emergency inside of the downtown Houston jail before he was transported to St. Joseph Hospital, according to the sheriff’s office. He was previously diagnosed with a life-threatening health condition. Winstel was pronounced dead at the hospital at 7 a.m. Sunday, four days after he was arrested on a charge of unauthorized use of a vehicle. On Sunday night, Phillip Brummett, 68, was pronounced dead at Ben Taub Hospital. The sheriff’s office, which operates the jail, said he had been hospitalized since suffering a medical emergency in the jail on June 19. Brummett was booked into the jail one day before the emergency on charges of continuous sexual abuse of a child, indecency with a child and aggravated sexual assault of a child younger than 14, according to Harris County court records.

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Ronald Pate, 35, died on Monday after suffering a medical emergency in the jail. He was in the Harris County Jail for 13 days after his arrest on a possession of a controlled substance charge. The three deaths were first reported to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. The Harris County Sheriff’s Office had reported Winstel’s death on its website as of early Tuesday afternoon. Information about the other two deaths were reported later in the day following an inquiry from Houston Public Media. The Houston Police Department is investigating the three inmate deaths. The sheriff's office's internal affairs division is also investigating to determine if all applicable policies were followed. The string of deaths comes weeks after the sheriff's office reported that a 26-year-old inmate was pronounced dead after allegedly smoking a substance and losing consciousness. A 52-year-old inmate with a pre-existing health condition died days earlier, prompting the Texas Rangers to investigate.

Starbase lockdown: SpaceX city blocks public roads, raising legal questions

The new city of Starbase is moving fast to cut off public access to most of the SpaceX company town in South Texas. Citing safety and security issues, city officials approved four gates to limit public access to the community’s residential areas. At least three are already in place, raising questions about the legality of blocking public roads and the private space company's long-term plans. While the barriers don’t impact the public’s access to nearby Boca Chica Beach, some property owners and residents are decrying the move as another step in Elon Musk’s creeping takeover of the area.

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The gates’ installation comes after the Legislature's approval early this month of an act giving Starbase's leaders, each of whom are affiliated with SpaceX, authority to shut down Texas 4 and Boca Chica Beach during weekdays for Starship launches and testing. Cameron County leaders previously held that authority, and opposed the move. Lawmakers acted despite local officials’ objections and those of activists concerned about losing access to the public beach. Starbase commissioners approved the gates Monday. They also approved a controversial zoning ordinance, annexed about 174 acres of SpaceX-owned land, discussed plans for a sewage system and considered the city’s budget. The gates’ installation comes after the Legislature's approval early this month of an act giving Starbase's leaders, each of whom are affiliated with SpaceX, authority to shut down Texas 4 and Boca Chica Beach during weekdays for Starship launches and testing. Cameron County leaders previously held that authority, and opposed the move. Lawmakers acted despite local officials’ objections and those of activists concerned about losing access to the public beach. Starbase commissioners approved the gates Monday. They also approved a controversial zoning ordinance, annexed about 174 acres of SpaceX-owned land, discussed plans for a sewage system and considered the city’s budget.

National Stories

GOP senators push back hard on Medicaid cuts, endangering Trump bill

Republican senators are pushing back hard on hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid cuts included in the Senate version of President Trump’s budget reconciliation package, endangering Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s (R-S.D.) plan for a vote as soon as Friday. Two Republicans are a hard “no” on the bill — Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Ron Johnson (Wis.) — and a handful of other Republicans won’t say whether they’ll vote to begin debate on the package because they are concerned that deep cuts in Medicaid spending could cause millions of Americans to lose their coverage and push scores of rural hospitals around the country into bankruptcy. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) declined to say Wednesday whether they would vote to proceed to the bill if their concerns about Medicaid cuts remain unsolved. The Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday circulated a proposal to establish a $15 billion health care provider relief fund, but Collins said it wouldn’t be adequate to keep many rural hospitals from going out of business.

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A Republican senator familiar with the Finance Committee’s proposal said roughly half of the fund would be available to rural hospitals around the country, and the other half would be targeted to specific hospitals chosen by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Collins said the proposal falls far short of what’s needed. “I believe we need [a] $100 billion provider-relief fund. I don’t think that solves the entire problem. The Senate cuts in Medicaid are far deeper than the House cuts, and I think that’s problematic as well,” Collins said. “Obviously any money is helpful but not if it is not adequate. But I do not know for certain that that is where the Finance Committee has landed,” she said of the Finance panel’s concession. Collins, who faces reelection next year in a state former Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024, declined to say how she would vote on the motion to proceed but emphasized she has major concerns with the bill. Hawley said the bill does not have the votes to pass as it now stands, but he said Thune could help fix that by providing more help to rural hospitals. “Probably not this instant, but presumably we’ll get some text, some actual text and finalized plans on various things, including rural hospitals,” he said. “I don’t think Sen. Thune would put it on the floor with just a, ‘Hey, let’s vote on it. We’ll see text later.’ That’s so against what Republicans have always preached.”

Inside the NATO charm offensive that shocked as much as it delivered

It must have been the last thing NATO’s chief needed. Late Tuesday, on the eve of a crucial summit that would lock in a generational investment in NATO’s defense, Donald Trump’s Truth Social account pinged with a single photo: a gushing message signed “Mark Rutte,” written in a carbon-copy Trump style and overflowing with sycophantic praise for the US president. “You are flying into another big success in the Hague this evening,” Rutte’s message read. “Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win,” he continued. “You will achieve something NO American president in decades could get done.” While the diplomatic world has bent toward many norms of the Trump White House, this was extreme.

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Doubling down on the comments the following day, saying Trump deserved credit for his actions on Iran and NATO, Rutte waded through many observers’ incredulity at his kowtowing tone. But as the summit crescendoed, there was a growing sense he may have pulled off a diplomatic masterstroke. Rutte, the former Dutch prime minister, is no stranger to dealings with Trump, having deployed his easy charm in several visits to Washington, DC, during Trump’s first term. Exuding an easygoing, relaxed image – his signature boyish grin never far from his face – Rutte’s charm offensive echoes that of other NATO leaders. French President Emmanuel Macron has charted up a boisterous bromance with Trump; Finnish President Alex Stubb bonded with him over rounds of golf, and Italian far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has won a reputation as something of Trump whisperer: She’s a “fantastic woman,” in Trump’s words. Rutte’s message – signed with his surname – perhaps spoke of a less pally relationship. So did one of Trump’s reactions Wednesday: “I think he likes me. If he doesn’t, I’ll let you know. I’ll come back and I’ll hit him hard,” Trump announced in his Wednesday news conference.

After a stunning NYC primary, national Democrats try to embrace Zohran Mamdani’s energy, if not always his ideas

New Yorkers aren’t the only ones trying to wrap their heads around Zohran Mamdani. Democratic Party operatives and elected officials around the country are both flabbergasted and inspired by the 33-year-old democratic socialist’s stunning success in Tuesday’s mayoral primary. In text chains and private conversations, they are scouring election precinct data from parts of Queens and the Bronx some had never heard of before and trying to understand how Mamdani might affect races all over the country. Mamdani, a three-term state assemblyman, is poised to win pending a ranked-choice tally after his top rival, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, conceded the race Tuesday.

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Many Democrats on Wednesday publicly embraced the enthusiasm Mamdani generated with younger voters by focusing on the affordability crisis gripping New York and many other places across the country. They also tried to avoid associating too closely with Mamdani proposals like freezing rent or opening government-run grocery stores that they think could get easily caricatured. “Running a city myself, I’m not sure all those ideas are actionable and practical in the way they sound on a TikTok video, but that aside, he met people, he listened to people,” said Paige Cognetti, mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday morning, weeks after she romped in her own primary against her own city Democratic Party chair. Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, New York City natives who lead their parties’ caucuses in each chamber of Congress, quickly issued statements saying they had spoken to Mamdani and praising the campaign he ran. They stopped short of endorsing him.

Trump administration targets Florida foster kids, migrant youth for deportations

Federal agents on the lookout for undocumented immigrants to deport paid a visit recently to the offices of a state-funded children’s shelter in the Florida Keys. Trying to find the undocumented parents of a child living in the shelter, the agents staked out the parking lot of the office building, assuming they would eventually come there to visit their youngster. At a program dedicated to the welfare of families, federal agents were seeking to tear one apart. The stakeout, detailed during a meeting this month between Florida’s privately-operated foster care providers and the state, is just one example of how the Trump administration’s mass-deportation campaign is encircling vulnerable children who were previously off-limits — and squeezing the social welfare agencies tasked with caring for them.

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Since Donald Trump began his second term, his administration has directed immigration agents to target unaccompanied minors, moved to cut contracts that fund their legal representation and sent Homeland Security agents to homes where unaccompanied children are released to conduct welfare checks. In at least one case, it has leaned on Florida’s state government to violate its own rules and laws by sharing information about the immigrant children in its care. And earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security announced a new policy that will clear the way for the agency to deport children who are in the United States as documented victims of abuse, neglect or abandonment under a classification known as Special Immigrant Juveniles. The new guidance leaves unprotected those children who lack the ability to apply for lawful permanent residency because visas aren’t available — at the very moment when there is a years-long backlog for green cards. “While children are waiting for a visa, they have no formal immigration status and no automatic protection from deportation,” said Robert Latham, a University of Miami law professor. “Despite the lack of formal protection, these children have never been targeted for removal by any prior administration.”

Trump knocks down barriers around personal data, raising alarm

The Trump administration is shattering norms around the handling of Americans’ personal — and sometimes private — information, dismantling barriers around data in the name of government efficiency and rooting out fraud. Privacy experts say the moves bring the country closer to a surveillance state, increase the government’s vulnerability to cyberattacks and risk pushing people away from public services. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has sought, and nearly always received, access to Social Security numbers, addresses, medical histories, tax histories, welfare benefits, bank accounts, immigration statuses and federal employee databases. These moves have shattered walls that have long kept data within the agencies that collect it.

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John Ackerly, a former technology policy adviser under former President George W. Bush and founder of data security firm Virtru, said government agencies need to strike a balance in handling data. “Foundationally, more information being shared more widely can provide greater insight,” he said. “Bureaucracy shuts down access to information,” he added. “But that does not mean that there should be unfettered access.” Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) see the risk of abuse as outweighing any potential gains. “We should be limiting federal agencies to access data about us only to the extent they need to perform their duties for the American people,” said Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel on surveillance, privacy and technology at the ACLU. “There’s no reason why these data silos need to be broken down,” he added. Despite outrage from Democrats and some pushback from the courts, the Trump administration has charged ahead.

NATO chief clarifies Trump comments: ‘I didn’t call him daddy’

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte sought to clarify an eyebrow-raising comment he made during a bilateral news conference with President Trump on Wednesday: He doesn’t consider the U.S. leader “daddy” and was making a reference in jest. “The daddy thing, I didn’t call him ‘daddy,'” Rutte told reporters later in the day. “What I said is that sometimes, in Europe, I hear sometimes countries saying, ‘Hey, Mark, will the U.S. stay with us?’ And I said that sounds a little bit like a small child asking his daddy, ‘Hey, are you still staying with the family?’ So in that sense, I used ‘daddy’ — not that I was calling President Trump daddy.” Rutte drew attention — and jokes from Trump — after he invoked the word “daddy” while describing the president’s response to Israel and Iran’s military conflict. “Sometimes daddy needs to use strong language,” Rutte said with a laugh, referring to Trump using the f-word to rebuke the Middle Eastern countries on Tuesday. Trump laughed off the remark during a later news conference. “He did it very affectionately though, ‘Daddy, you’re my daddy,'” Trump said, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio chuckled behind him.

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Faith groups say House Republicans' probe into immigration work violates their religious freedom

A House investigation launched by two Republican congressmen into dozens of religious organizations and denominations, from the U.S. Catholic bishops to the Unitarian Universalist Association, is being called a violation the groups’ religious liberty. On June 11, U.S. Rep Mark E. Green of Tennessee, who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, and Rep. Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma, who is also part of the committee, announced plans for a probe of more than 200 nongovernmental organizations they accused of being “involved in providing services or support to inadmissible aliens during the Biden-Harris administration’s historic border crisis.” The lawmakers unveiled a letter they planned to send to all of the organizations. Among other allegations, the letter argues the Biden administration’s reliance on nonprofit groups signaled “those who arrived illegally or without proper documentation that they could expect such assistance, all expensed to American taxpayers, once they arrived in the United States.”

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The letter included a link to a lengthy questionnaire asking the groups if they had received any “grant, contract, or other form of disbursement from the federal government” or provided “legal services, translation services, transportation, housing, sheltering, or any other form of assistance” to undocumented immigrants or unaccompanied immigrant children. They were also asked whether they had sued the federal government or filed any amicus briefs in legal proceedings since the beginning of the Biden administration “to the present.” Green and Breechen, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations and Accountability, did not respond to RNS’ questions regarding the probe, nor did they offer a complete list of organizations under investigation or those that received the letter. A press release released by the Homeland Security Committee named four organizations that were under scrutiny: the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Catholic Charities USA, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Global Refuge. But according to a list provided to RNS by the Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush — the head of Interfaith Alliance, which is working with faith groups and other organizations targeted by the probe on a potential response — more than 30 religious groups have received letters from the lawmakers.

Trump US CDC nominee backs vaccines as life-saving

U.S. President Donald Trump's nominee for director of the CDC was pulled into political contention over U.S. vaccine policy on Wednesday, describing the medications as "life-saving" and telling a Senate panel that she has not seen evidence linking vaccines and autism. If confirmed, Susan Monarez, a career public health official who served as acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until her nomination, will report to U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long questioned the safety of vaccines contrary to scientific evidence, including suggesting a link between them and autism.

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"I have not seen a causal link between vaccines and autism," Monarez told the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions during her confirmation hearing in response to a question from Senator Bernie Sanders. She said she would prioritize vaccine availability if confirmed. The hearing took place at the same time as a crucial meeting of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that reviews vaccine data for the agency and recommends who should get them. Kennedy previously fired the entire 17-member panel of outside vaccine experts and replaced them with his own picks. One left the committee hours before the meeting. Several of the ACIP members Kennedy appointed have published papers, posted on social media, or written online biographies with anti-vaccine views, including against the mRNA vaccine technology used in some of the newest immunizations such as the COVID-19 vaccine.

Lead Stories

Trump's call for more oil amid Iran conflict falls flat in Texas

President Donald Trump's call for more oil production Monday, following the U.S. bombing of nuclear facilities in Iran, isn't getting much traction among Texas oil companies. Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil & Gas Association, said in interview Tuesday while companies were grateful for Trump's efforts to boost the industry, ultimately crude prices would determine whether they increased drilling. "I believe companies are willing to respond should there be supply chain disruptions to the extent they give long term (price) signals," he said. "So major shifts can be justified." The Texas oil industry has struggled since last summer amid a decline in crude prices, with the number of drilling rigs operating in West Texas's Permian Basin down 12% from a year ago, according to data from Houston-based oil field company Baker Hughes.

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Exacerbating the problem, some oil executives say, are tariffs created by the Trump administration, which have raised the price of steel and other materials. In his post Monday, Trump called on the Department of Energy to "drill, baby, drill," following up with a warning to those who did not comply. "EVERYONE, KEEP OIL PRICES DOWN. I’M WATCHING! YOU’RE PLAYING RIGHT INTO THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY. DON’T DO IT!" he wrote. But even after the U.S. bombing of Iran and more than a week of attacks by Israel, prices have not risen to the point many oil companies would start expanding drilling operations, analysts says. While prices Monday were over $72 a barrel, they closed Tuesday at less than $65 a barrel. And forecasts show oil prices declining over the next six months to less than $60 a barrel in 2026, below the level at which many oil operations are profitable. Even if oil executives wanted to drill to appease Trump, they would be restrained by their investors, who want to see high returns, not "unprofitable tribute," said Clayton Seigle, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "Its not like other countries where politicians can call up the state-owned oil company and say increase supply," he said.

Texans were most likely to cross state lines for abortions in 2024, study finds

More than 150,000 people traveled out of state to get an abortion last year — and nearly one-fifth came from Texas alone, a new report found. The data released Tuesday shows the home states of people who traveled across state lines for an abortion in 2024, who together made up about 15 percent of all abortion patients. Most came from the South, the region that most heavily restricts abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an organization that supports abortion rights and wrote the report. About 20 percent of the patients who sought out-of-state care lived in Texas, which bans abortions after 6 weeks. The state is one of 17 where all or most abortions are illegal. Texans visited 14 other states and Washington, D.C., for abortions last year, Guttmacher found. The numbers — published on the third anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, and with it the constitutional right to an abortion — reflect how that decision altered patients’ access to the procedure.

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While the report found that patients came from Texas more frequently than any other state, it also showed that people from every state with a near-total ban sought abortions elsewhere. The data does not establish why exactly patients went to the states they did. Those judgments are based on different considerations, including whether another state mandates a waiting period before an abortion, requiring them to arrange a multiday trip, said Isaac Maddow-Zimet, a Guttmacher data scientist who led the study. “People are weighing a lot of these factors — the cost, the interruption to their life that travel would cause — in trying to make a decision about how to get the abortion,” he said. In April, Guttmacher found that fewer people traveled across state lines for an abortion in 2024 than 2023. That change is in part because of telemedicine allowing for remote prescription of abortion pills, Maddow-Zimet said, especially for those who can’t afford to travel hundreds of miles. “Telehealth provision has really filled that gap,” he said.

If Trump wants more deportations, he’ll need to target the construction industry

As President Donald Trump sends mixed messages about immigration enforcement, ordering new raids on farms and hotels just days after saying he wouldn’t target those industries, he has hardly mentioned the industry that employs the most immigrant laborers: construction. Nevertheless, the Trump administration is going after construction workers without legal status to meet its mass deportation goals — even as the country has a housing shortage and needs new homes built. A shortage of workers has delayed or prevented construction, causing billions of dollars in economic damage, according to a June report from the Home Builders Institute. Almost a quarter of all immigrants without a college degree work in construction, a total of 2.2 million workers as of last month, before work site raids began in earnest. That’s more than the next three industries combined: restaurants (1.1 million), janitorial and other cleaning services (526,000) and landscaping (454,000), according to a Stateline analysis of federal Current Population Survey data provided by ipums.org at the University of Minnesota.

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Within the construction industry, immigrant workers are now a majority of painters and roofers (both 53%) and comprise more than two-thirds of plasterers and stucco masons. U.S. citizens in construction are more likely to work as managers and as skilled workers, such as carpenters. Many immigrant workers are likely living here illegally, although there are some working legally as refugees or parolees, and others are asylum-seekers waiting for court dates. There’s also a small number of legal visas for temporary farmworkers, construction workers and others. The pool of immigrant workers Stateline analyzed were employed noncitizens ages 18-65 without a college degree, screening out temporary workers with high-skill visas. About half of the immigrant laborers in construction are working in Southern states, including conservative-leaning Florida, North Carolina and Texas, where there is more building going on, according to the Stateline analysis. Another 584,000, or one-quarter, are in Western states, including Arizona, California and Nevada.

Texas’ risk of power blackouts reduced as 100-degree days near, officials say

Buttressed by capacity increases in solar and large-scale batteries, ERCOT officials predict the lowest chance of power supply emergencies in years. ERCOT’s meteorologist predicts a hot summer this year — possibly among the top 10 hottest on record — with record-breaking demands. North Texas is expected to see its first 100-degree day of the year this weekend. But the state of the power grid is strong and ready for the demand, said Pablo Vegas, CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. “Because of the contributions of the new resources that we’re seeing on the grid, our continued conservative operations and reliable management of the grid, all of that is contributing to those benefits,” Vegas said during a meeting of ERCOT’s board Tuesday.

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Last year, the power grid operator predicted that during hours where power use remains high after the sun goes down, the grid would have a 16% chance of entering a power demand emergency. This year, ERCOT predicts a 0.5% chance of having an emergency during the same hours. “That does put us in a better position to get over those evening ramps as we go into late summer,” said Kristi Hobbs, ERCOT’s vice president of system planning and weatherization. The amount of battery storage and solar power generation on the state’s stand-alone power grid boomed over the past two years. Battery storage increased its capacity fourfold while the amount of solar generation doubled and now rivals wind power. The state saw record shattering levels of renewable generation on the ERCOT grid. In June, that record was broken three times, including on Saturday when solar and wind combined to produce 47 gigawatts of power — enough to meet far more than half of the state’s demand.

State Stories

Texas higher ed commissioner directs schools to identify students without legal immigration status

Houston-area higher education institutions are navigating murky compliance issues after a federal judge blocked the Texas Dream Act and the state directed schools to identify and increase the tuition of students who are “not lawfully present.” Texas Commissioner of Higher Education Wynn Rosser told college and university presidents that they “must” reclassify the students as non-residents, according to a June 18 letter first reported by the Texas Tribune. Students who live in Texas but lack legal U.S. residency were eligible for in-state tuition under the Texas Dream Act, a 24-year-old law which was suddenly placed under an injunction following a legal challenge by the Trump administration this month.

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Higher education officials have typically relied on estimates to determine the number of college students without legal residency, because institutions do not require students to disclose their immigration status in the admissions process. One estimate places the figure around 57,000 students in Texas, and it's unclear whether schools have a uniform mechanism to pinpoint those individuals. Rosser did not issue more specific guidance related to the process, and a Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board spokesperson said the agency will not be providing it to institutions. Efrén Olivares, legal director of the National Immigration Law Center, said that he anticipates challenges following Rosser's directive, as the term "lawful presence" doesn't have a standard definition. Some people might have pending applications for citizenship or temporary residence, for example.

Dallas activist group sues to block display of Ten Commandments in Texas classrooms

A Dallas activist group has sued to block the Ten Commandments from being displayed in Texas classrooms under a new law that is supposed to take effect on Sept. 1. Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 10 on Saturday. Under the pending law, public schools must conspicuously display a 16-by-20-inch poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments in every classroom with text that can be read by anyone inside the room who has average vision. On Tuesday, the Next Generation Action Network Legal Advocacy Fund filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of Texas targeting the pending law’s implementation. It argues that SB 10 violates the First Amendment and interferes with the rights of parents to lead their children’s religious education.

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“Our schools are not theocratic temples,” said a social media post by Dominique Alexander, a plaintiff in the lawsuit who is also the president and CEO of NGAN. “Our pulpits must stay free of state mandates. Our children deserve education, not indoctrination.” Other plaintiffs named in the suit include several Christian and Muslim parents as well as their minor children enrolled in the Dallas, DeSoto and Lancaster Independent School Districts. The lawsuit lists these school districts and Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath as defendants. In a statement to The Dallas Morning News, DeSoto ISD said it is “closely monitoring the legal proceedings and guidance” around SB 10. “As a public school district, DeSoto ISD operates in alignment with all applicable district and state policies, and state and federal laws,” the statement said. “The district remains committed to fostering an inclusive, respectful, and supportive learning environment for all students and families, regardless of religious background or personal beliefs.”

Retired Houston astronaut jumps into race to take on U.S. Sen. John Cornyn

Retired Houston astronaut and political outsider Terry Virts announced on Monday that he will run for the United States Senate in 2026, targeting the seat that Republican John Cornyn has held for over 20 years. “I’ll be running as a Democrat challenger for the seat currently held by just another D.C. insider who has lost touch with Texas,” Virts said in a video. Virts, 57, is getting a jump start on more established candidates like former U.S. Reps. Beto O’Rourke and Colin Allred, as well as state Rep. James Talarico of Austin, who have all said they are considering entering the race, though none have filed for the office yet. Virts, an Air Force fighter pilot before joining NASA in 2000, has never run for office before but is convinced his background outside of politics can allow him to do what no Democrat has done since the 1990s.

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“I intend to be the first Democrat in more than 30 years to win a statewide election in Texas by being a commonsense, down-to-earth candidate who focuses on issues that we care about like the economy, health care and education,” Virts said. In a video announcing his candidacy, Virts emphasized his tenure as an astronaut. Virts became a pilot for the space shuttle program in 2000 and more recently served as the commander of the International Space Station before his retirement in 2016. Through his missions to the space station, Virts has spent more than 200 days in space. "I've risked my life for this country, and I'll fight anyone trying to destroy it," Virts said. More specifically, Virts has slammed President Donald Trump for trade wars that have hurt some farmers and potential cuts to Medicaid. For Democrats, the race for the U.S. Senate has spurred growing interest because of polling that shows Cornyn trailing his GOP primary opponent Ken Paxton, the current Texas attorney general.

A Texas college, UNT student seek to join lawsuit over end of Texas Dream Act

A community college and various advocacy groups want Texas’ in-state tuition for undocumented students reinstated, according to a motion filed late Tuesday from them as they seek to join a federal lawsuit over the Dream Act. The Austin Community College District joined University of North Texas student Oscar Silva and La Unión del Pueblo Entero, an advocacy group for the low-income community in the Rio Grande Valley, in asking a federal judge to intervene in the case. The legal action comes just days after Texas officials instructed public colleges and universities to identify undocumented students to charge them out-of-state tuition beginning in the fall semester.

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“If Attorney General (Ken) Paxton will not defend Texans, we will,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, one of the nonprofit legal organizations filing Tuesday’s motion. “We are committed to ensuring that this cynical move is opposed, to defending the Texas Dream Act, and to supporting the courage of our clients.” Receive our in-depth coverage of education issues and stories that affect North Texans. The U.S. Department of Justice recently sued Texas over its 2001 Dream Act, which grants undocumented students in-state tuition rates if they can show they have lived in the state for three years before high school graduation. Shortly after the federal action, Gov. Greg Abbott and Paxton agreed with the agency, saying the law is unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor concurred and blocked state officials from applying the law. Representatives from the attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the motion Tuesday evening.

Rep. Al Green of Houston introduces articles of impeachment against trump after Iran strike

Rep. Al Green of Houston moved to file a new article of impeachment against President Donald Trump, accusing the president of violating the War Powers Clause of the U.S. Constitution after ordering a military attack on three Iranian nuclear and military sites without congressional authorization. Green's announcement comes as U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, called for Trump's impeachment shortly after his order to send bombs to Iran, prompting the president to take to Truth Social to throw insults at the congresswoman and urging her to "MAKE MY DAY."

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Shortly after Green forced a vote on a five-page impeachment resolution — accusing Trump of "Disregarding the Separation of Powers" and "Devolving American Democracy into Authoritarianism by Unconstitutionally Usurping Congress's Power to Declare War — House Democrats overwhelmingly joined with their Republican colleagues against holding a vote to impeach Trump, according to Axios. "In starting his illegal and unconstitutional war with Iran without the constitutionally mandated consent of Congress or appropriate notice to Congress, President Trump acted in direct violation of the War Powers Clause of the Constitution,” the article of impeachment states. “President Trump has devolved and continues to devolve American democracy into authoritarianism by disregarding the separation of powers and now usurping congressional war powers."

Gov. Abbott activates emergency response resources in case of floods in Southeast Texas

Gov. Greg Abbott announced Tuesday that he is activating state emergency response resources due to potential flooding in the Southeast Texas area. The governor's office said there's an increased threat of rainfall that could lead to flooding this week, in a news release. However, Chronicle newsroom meteorologist Justin Ballard said there isn't much of a threat in Southeast Texas. "The risk for severe weather and widespread flooding this week is low, but daily storms could result in brief localized street flooding," Ballard said. "Any storm that does develop could bring gusty winds of up to 40 mph in addition to downpours. Daily storms are expected to dissipate each evening, likely by 8 or 9 p.m." Abbott said among the groups being activated are the Texas Department of Public Safety, Texas Department of Transportation and Texas Department of State Health Services.

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Houston police seeing quicker response times for some crimes, but homicide reactions slowed

Response times for a host of lower-priority calls have improved in 2025, for the first time in several years, but the change has come as homicides have increased and police have lagged with higher priority calls, according to May data from the Houston Police Department. Police are responding to Priority 2 calls, where a property crime is in progress or a life threatening event has just occurred, slightly slower this year than in 2024 — 11.8 minutes on average, compared to the previous 11.7, records show. Priority 1 calls, which include all “life threatening events” that are in progress, were down about a tenth of a second through May, though remained above 2024’s numbers through April.

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But Priority 3 through 5 calls have seen a substantial drop, each being answered at least 8% faster in 2025 compared to 2024, records show. Marc Levin, the Houston-based chief policy counsel for the Council on Criminal Justice, said he was intrigued by Houston’s response time data and crime numbers in 2025, but wasn’t yet sure quite what to make of them. Unlike most cities, Houston has seen an uptick in homicides, 129 compared to 125 in 2024, records show. Even as crime numbers are on the decline, some calls may have become clustered around the edges of patrol districts, Levin said, meaning it takes officers longer to reach their destination. The data isn't yet clear exactly where the rise in homicides is concentrated, if anywhere. “Crime can proliferate in certain areas even as it’s declining in general,” he said. Doug Griffith, president of the Houston Police Officers Union, attributed some issue with response times to worsening traffic across the city, saying it makes it harder to respond to certain calls. He added he wasn’t sure what to make of the city’s crime trends in general, however. Despite delays with the highest-priority calls, Houston has seen a significant reduction in the number of calls to police compared to 2025. Priority 1 calls declined almost 20%, from around 14,000 in 2024 to 11,274 this year, records show. All other calls saw at least some decline in volume, with Priority 3 seeing the smallest decrease of around 3.1%.

Texas track meet stabbing suspect indicted on murder charge

A Collin County grand jury has indicted the teenager accused in a fatal stabbing at a Frisco ISD track meet, the county district attorney announced Tuesday. Karmelo Anthony, 18, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder after he stabbed and killed 17-year-old Austin Metcalf during an argument at the meet at Kuykendall Stadium on April 2, the Star-Telegram previously reported. “We know this case has struck a deep nerve — here in Collin County and beyond. That’s understandable. When something like this happens at a school event, it shakes people to the core,” District Attorney Greg Willis said in a news release. “But the justice system works best when it moves with steadiness and with principle. That’s what we’re committed to. And that’s exactly what this case deserves.”

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Anthony told police shortly after his arrest that he had acted in self-defense, the Star-Telegram previously reported. The two teens had been involved in an argument about Anthony being under the wrong school’s tent during the meet, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. Witnesses told police that Metcalf grabbed or pushed Anthony before Anthony stabbed him. Austin Metcalf was stabbed in the heart and died in the arms of his twin brother, his father, Jeff Metcalf, previously told the Star-Telegram. “I am glad this process is moving forward and I look ahead to the trial now,” Jeff Metcalf told CBS News on Tuesday.

Purujit Chatterjee: A pediatrician’s voice for LGBTQ youth in Texas

(Purujit Chatterjee is a pediatrician in Dallas. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of his institution.) Before I became a doctor, I was the quiet boy on the exam table. I grew up as a closeted gay kid navigating a South Asian household in Texas, where being gay felt unspeakable. The tension between who I was and who I pretended to be rippled throughout my adolescence. And before I had the words to understand it, that distress showed up in my body. It surfaced as episodic vomiting, which ultimately landed me in the office of a pediatrician. In a setting that cultivated silence, that pediatrician offered me a space to speak. Suspecting that anxiety underpinned my symptoms, he encouraged me to confront the crisis I hadn’t yet named. As a result, he became the first adult I came out to. My buried truth was uncovered, and it was warmly welcomed. That moment began my path toward healing, not just from my symptoms but from their deeper roots. Today, I’m a pediatrician in Texas, and I care for kids like the one I used to be.

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But that duty grows harder as LGBTQ Texans grow up within an increasingly hostile climate, and pediatricians are constrained from providing the care they need. Recent state policies have restricted gender-affirming care, targeted discussions of sexuality in schools, erased legal recognition of trans and intersex identities, and disempowered LGBTQ youth and their providers. These measures have directly caused an exodus of families faced with lost access to their children’s care. But more indirectly, they reinforce dangerous anti-LGBTQ stigma, driving higher rates of depression, suicide, homelessness and more. And amid this crisis, the federal government moved last week to terminate the Trevor Project’s suicide prevention line, stripping away a critical safety net for LGBTQ youth, who already face limited resources and punishing social pressures in this state. I’ve seen this firsthand in the early months of my career. I cared for a gay teenager hospitalized after a suicide attempt, which he confided was triggered by his mother’s rejection of his sexuality. He had attempted suicide before. And given an unsafe home dynamic, the psychiatry team recommended inpatient care. But his mother refused. She renounced her son’s sexuality, accused the medical team of corrupting him, and insisted her church could better “heal” him. His look of resignation was piercing. With his head bowed, wrestling with the truth he couldn’t voice, he finally muttered, “Mom’s right.”

BlackRock leans into Texas economic miracle with new index ETF

BlackRock on Tuesday unveiled a new exchange-traded fund composed entirely of companies based in Texas ? a nod to the state’s emergence as an economic power in its own right, and a draw for domestic and international investment. Known as the iShares Texas Equity ETF, the fund will be listed as “TEXN” on the Nasdaq ? which recently announced plans of its own to create a second hub in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. BlackRock itself manages nearly $400 billion worth of public companies in Texas. According to the firm, the index ETF will be one of over 60 geographically specific products within its suite, holding over $100 billion in assets under management.

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However, the new fund is expected to provide small and large investors “targeted exposure to a dynamic state economy,” the world’s largest asset manager said in a release. With the Lone Star State rapidly becoming the “headquarters of headquarters,” multiple companies have announced plans to relocate to Texas, or have already done so. The state’s gross domestic product is over $2.7 trillion, making it the world’s eighth-largest economy if it were a standalone country. “I think the economic story is clear,” Jay Jacobs, U.S. Head of Equity ETFs at BlackRock, told The Dallas Morning News. He cited the state’s booming population of over 31 million, companies migrating from other parts of the country and sustained growth. “Generally speaking, the U.S. remains a very attractive economy with a lot of growth prospects, but getting more granular within the U.S to really isolate some of the most attractive areas like Texas, is something that one, our clients want,” Jacobs said. Overall, more than 50 Fortune 500 companies call Texas home. Of the nearly 200 companies in the ETF, D-FW companies are well-represented, including corporate names like AT&T, Texas Instruments, Comerica, Match Group, American Airlines, CBRE and Southwest, among many others.

UTA places staff hiring freeze as new federal directives hit budget

Prompted by federal directives restricting funding, a staff hiring freeze at the University of Texas at Arlington will take effect July 3. UTA President Jennifer Cowley announced the measure, along with a pause in salary adjustments for staff, in a June 16 message to the campus community. No end date for the freeze has been determined. “We are seeing a marked decline in research grants, a pause on visa interviews for international students, a travel ban on students from some countries, and federal budget proposals that could impact financial aid, student support services, and research and development,” Cowley said. “These circumstances make it important that we plan for decreased resources while maintaining academic excellence and supporting student success.”

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The Report reached out to the university on the hiring freeze. The university did not share additional details beyond Cowley’s June 16 message. The staff hiring freeze does not impact faculty or student positions. Offers accepted before July 3 but starting after that date will be honored. There will be no new job postings for affected staff roles, and current job postings may be deactivated. Andy Milson, chair of the UTA Faculty Senate, said some faculty members fear they might be next. “I think there is a sense of this could just be the beginning,” said Milson, a professor in historical geography. “I think anyone who’s paying attention would see that this could get worse before it gets better.”

1 person dead, 2 officers injured in Texas Tech campus shooting

A shooting on the Texas Tech University campus ended with one person dead and two officers injured early Tuesday morning. According to a release from Texas Tech Police Department, at about 12:45 a.m. officers were "checking on a suspicious vehicle," in a campus parking lot near the Jones AT&T Stadium. The suspect pulled out a gun and shot at the officers. The suspect was shot and declared dead at the scene. Two officers were shot and injured. They were transported to University Medical Center. The injuries were not life-threatening. The incident is being investigated by the Lubbock Metropolitan Special Crimes unit. Though there are limited details, Texas Tech Police Department said it would continue to provide updates as information becomes available.

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Mark Wingfield: Where are the SBC leaders who will call Houston's Allen Jordan to account?

(Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global. He is the author of five books, including Honestly: Telling the Truth About the Bible and Ourselves.) For a decade now, the Southern Baptist Convention has abided a voracious liar in its midst and done nothing publicly to silence him. That liar is Allen Jordan, who lives in Houston and is the most persistent denier of a sexual abuse crisis in the denomination. We have hashed and rehashed all his nonsense before. If you need to catch up, see here and here. For reasons unknown to any of us, Jordan has been on a one-man campaign to disprove what already has been proved time and time again. He insists that those who speak of being abused by Southern Baptist clergy are lying and seeking attention — all while he lies and seeks public attention. His emails to journalists and denominational officials are relentless and unhinged. He simply will not stop.

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And now, based on BNG’s reporting last week of his claims about Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, and my commentary in last week’s Friday Roundup, Jordan is accusing me of being a liar too. His latest email to all of us says: “You need to realize Mark that just because BNG is the media outlet for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, that does not give you the journalistic right to use your BNG platform as a tool to try to destroy the SBC, its churches and its leaders as you have done since becoming its editor over five years ago.” Note: We are not the media outlet for CBF and receive zero funding from them. Then he restates his oldest lie: That the Houston Chronicle’s “Abuse of Faith” series “presented no evidence of a clergy sex abuse crisis in the SBC” and that the Guidepost Solutions report “presented no evidence that any Executive Committee member or staff had ever mishandled any allegation of abuse during the 20-year period Guidepost investigated and that the abuse stories of the professional activists cited in the Guidepost report are not credible.” And here’s the real tell of a world-class narcissist: “Salacious and misleading talking points and social media postings does not count as evidence. Comprehensive, detailed research and fact-checking as I have done does.” Once again, only he has the truth and the rest of us are just dumb schmucks. In fairness, here’s what I wrote back to him: “You are a liar and a deceiver and need to be rebuked by leaders of the SBC for your malicious and unending attacks on sexual abuse survivors. What you are doing is evil and mean and abusive. I am waiting patiently for SBC Executive Committee leaders to say what the convention already said in a previous resolution, that Christa Brown and Tiffany Thigpen are telling the truth. I cannot comprehend why you are so singularly obsessed with this. As I have told you before, you are sick. This really needs to stop.”

National Stories

Mamdani stuns Cuomo in New York mayoral primary

Zohran Mamdani, a little-known state lawmaker whose progressive platform and campaign trail charisma electrified younger voters, stunned former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City on Tuesday night, building a lead so commanding that Mr. Cuomo conceded. Mr. Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist from Queens, tapped into a current of anxiety around New York City’s growing affordability crisis. His joyful campaign brought new voters into the fold who rejected the scandal-scarred Mr. Cuomo’s ominous characterizations of the city and embraced an economic platform that included everything from free bus service and child care to publicly owned grocery stores. The outcome was not official, and even assuming Mr. Mamdani gains the nomination, he faces an unusually competitive general election in November.

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Still, Mr. Mamdani declared victory at a rally early Wednesday in Queens, pledging to be a “mayor for every New Yorker” and framing his win as part of a movement powered by volunteers. “Tonight we made history,” he said. “In the words of Nelson Mandela, it always seems impossible until it is done. My friends, we have done it.” The decisiveness of New Yorkers’ swing toward Mr. Mamdani reverberated across the party and the country, at a time when Democrats nationally are searching for an answer to President Trump and are disillusioned with their own leaders. Mr. Cuomo acknowledged his apparent defeat in a concession speech. “He won,” Mr. Cuomo told his supporters roughly 80 minutes after polls had closed and said he had congratulated Mr. Mamdani. “Tonight was not our night,” he said, appearing deflated. “Tonight was Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s night.” With 93 percent of the results in, Mr. Mamdani was the first choice of 43.5 percent of voters. Mr. Cuomo was in second place as the first choice of 36.4 percent of voters.

U.S. initial damage report: Iran nuclear program set back by months, not obliterated

An initial U.S. intelligence report assesses that airstrikes ordered by President Donald Trump against Iran’s nuclear facilities set Tehran’s program back by months but did not eliminate it, contradicting claims by Trump and his top aides about the mission’s success, according to three people familiar with the report. The classified report by the Defense Intelligence Agency is based on the Pentagon’s early bomb damage assessment of the strikes on nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan using earth-penetrating munitions carried by B-2 bombers and submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles. It assesses that the strikes did not destroy the core components of Iran’s nuclear program and probably set it back by several months, not years, one of the people said.

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U.S. intelligence reports also indicate that Iran moved multiple batches of its highly enriched uranium out of the nuclear sites before the strikes occurred and that the uranium stockpiles were unaffected, said the person, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters. A second person familiar with the initial DIA report — labeled “low confidence” in nature — said it concludes that some of Iran’s centrifuges, used to enrich uranium that could be used in a nuclear weapon, remain intact. Trump has proclaimed repeatedly that the U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities was an unmitigated success. “The sites that we hit in Iran were totally destroyed, and everyone knows it,” he wrote in a social media post Monday. News of the classified intelligence report came on a day that a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, negotiated by Trump and the leaders of Qatar, was fragile but holding. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian both acknowledged the ceasefire and claimed victory in the 12-day war. Before the ceasefire, Iran had fired missiles at the huge U.S. air base in Qatar in what it said was retaliation for American strikes on its nuclear sites. No casualties were reported. The Defense Intelligence Agency assessment was first reported by CNN earlier Tuesday.

How Trump pivoted from bombing Iran to announcing a ceasefire

In just 48 hours, President Donald Trump pivoted from an unprecedented bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities to announcing a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, resulting in a flurry of diplomatic activity that left allies and adversaries scrambling to keep up. Trump’s Monday evening announcement of the ceasefire, which appears to be holding despite breaches by both sides, reflects his mercurial decision-making process, which current and former officials say is unorthodox even by his standards. The president has largely sidestepped the traditional foreign policy establishment and the intelligence community in dealing with the Iran crisis. And in proclaiming victory and announcing major foreign policy moves, he has posted missives on social media rather than going through diplomatic channels. Early U.S. intelligence reports have also suggested that the U.S. military strikes did not destroy Iran’s nuclear program and may have only set it back by a few months, with stockpiles of highly enriched uranium relocated to other secure locations.

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“This is Trump trying to declare success and then sell that version of reality to the American people and then hope that any countervailing facts get drowned out by other news,” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), a member of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, told The Washington Post. But some former officials say Trump could have found the slim path between preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon and preventing U.S. military entanglement in another Middle East war. “Trump’s pivot back to negotiations puts the pressure on Iran to accept no enrichment,” said Anthony Ruggiero, a former White House national security official during Trump’s first term. “The U.S. military strikes provide Trump and his negotiators leverage to insist on significant limits on Iran’s nuclear program.” A senior White House official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations, suggested that Trump had immediately begun to focus on the prospects of a ceasefire from the White House Situation Room on Saturday night, shortly after he saw U.S. bombs hit nuclear sites in Iran. “NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!” Trump wrote on social media that evening. The precise planning of the Iran strikes were confined to a small group of top officials.

With stakes high, White House pushes negotiations with Harvard

The Trump administration is ramping up negotiations with Harvard University in an effort to reach an end to its months-long battle with the elite school, two senior White House officials have said, as Harvard has been racking up legal wins in court. The administration expects a deal to land by the end of the month, one official said, and hopes the agreement would make a big enough splash to “basically be a blueprint for the rest of higher education.” The White House officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations. Harvard declined to comment. The university has been a key target in the Trump administration’s mounting attacks on higher education, which have focused on diversity efforts and allegations of antisemitism on campuses across the country.

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Harvard has drawn praise in academia for its efforts to push back on the White House’s sweeping demands to limit student protests, submit to extensive government oversight, and revamp its admissions and hiring practices. The university has also amassed dozens of statements of support from organizations, universities and states in a lawsuit filed after the administration froze federal research funding. A person close to the university, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity, said Tuesday that Harvard will not compromise its values or its First Amendment rights. Harvard allies, free-speech advocates and others have feared that the Trump administration would use its attacks on Harvard to exert control over universities nationwide and dismantle academic freedom. Whatever the outcome, the case will create a significant precedent, said higher education attorney Sarah Hartley. “This is the playbook to be used with other universities by the government going forward,” said Hartley, a partner at the Washington-based law firm BCLP. “It, in many ways, is being used as a test of democracy and what the government can force on private institutions.”

Trump's pick for appeals judge seen as 'ill-suited' to lifetime appointment

The White House describes Emil Bove as an ideal nominee for a position on the federal courts. And that's exactly what critics fear. Bove spent years as a federal prosecutor, registering convictions and generating complaints about his work before he left to defend Donald Trump through four criminal indictments. More recently, he's had a hand in some of the administration's most aggressive moves at the Justice Department. As its top official responsible for daily operations, he was involved in sacking prosecutors and FBI agents who investigated Trump and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. In a recent move, he walked away from the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

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Now, Bove is President Trump's nominee to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, a region that covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and the Virgin Islands. His nomination hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week offers Senate Democrats an opportunity to question him about upheaval inside the Justice Department this year, as well as complaints about his temperament and decision-making during his tenure as a federal prosecutor. But his nomination also could represent a pivot point in Trump's approach to the judiciary. Gregg Nunziata once served as chief nominations counsel for senior Republican lawmakers. He considers Bove's background as a staunch defender of Trump "very ill-suited for a lifetime federal judgeship." If confirmed, Bove, 44, will enjoy a job with substantial autonomy and lifetime tenure.

Court orders Trump administration to return another wrongly deported man

A federal appeals court in New York on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of a Salvadoran man deported last month to his native country just minutes after the same court ruled he shouldn’t be removed from the US. An order issued by judges from the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit stated the government must facilitate the return of Jordin Melgar-Salmeron, 31, “as soon as possible.” Melgar-Salmeron, who was deported in May, is at least the fourth individual to have been wrongly removed from the US, despite court rulings or protected status, amid the administration’s vast deportation efforts. Tuesday’s order noted that a stay of removal for Melgar-Salmeron was issued on May 7 at 9:52 a.m. but that a flight carrying him to El Salvador departed approximately 30 minutes later.

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“The Government represents that Petitioner was removed that day due to ‘a confluence of administrative errors,’” the order read, pointing to the government’s acknowledgment in earlier court documents that a “perfect storm of errors occurred to allow for Petitioner’s untimely, and inadvertent, removal, despite the Government’s assurance and the eventual stay order.” The judges also stated the government must file within a week a supplemental declaration addressing Melgar-Salmeron’s current physical location and custodial status and include what steps the government will take, “and when, to facilitate his return to the United States.” Melgar-Salmeron’s case comes weeks after another wrongly deported man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was returned to the US after being removed to El Salvador despite a 2019 court order barring his removal. Abrego Garcia, who faces a federal indictment for smuggling undocumented migrants across state lines in 2022, has been described as a vessel for the Justice Department’s hardball approach to immigration enforcement.

Tucker Carlson takes on Fox News

For years, Tucker Carlson made a name for himself on cable television and built a loyal following through attacks on Democrats, rival network news hosts, and other leading enemies of the right. Now the conservative political podcaster and social media personality is turning his fire on the company that helped build him up — and then terminated him three years ago after he served as a staple of its prime-time lineup: Fox News. Carlson, who opposed U.S. intervention in the Israeli-Iran war, has ripped Fox over its coverage of the conflict. “The Murdochs really hate Trump,” Carlson said during a recent episode of his online commentary and interview show. “I got fired in April of 2023. In May of 2023, they asked me to run for president against Trump and said they would back me.”

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His battle with his former employer underscores the MAGA fight for the president’s ear. Anti-war MAGA figures like Carlson are worried that Fox News, which has been reliably supportive of calls to attack Iran, has had too much influence on President Trump, who last Saturday ordered strikes on three Iranian nuclear plans. Trump is known to watch media coverage of his decisionmaking as president closely and in real time, placing particular stake in how things “play” on Fox, those around him say. The New York Times reported several top advisers to the president are irritated Carlson is no longer at Fox, fearing Trump was not hearing enough of a more isolationist argument when deciding whether to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. Carlson has made this argument explicit, saying Fox is engaging in pro-war “propaganda” as part of an effort to “scare old people” and benefit the “warmongers” running the network.

Copyright July 02, 2025, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved