Lead Stories

Bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers critical over new border wall Big Bend region construction

Construction is underway in the Big Bend region of Texas amid public concern, following months of rumors. Residents in the area first reported contractors with heavy machinery moving into the area in early August. Video and pictures taken by Terlingua resident Natalie Newman and shared widely on social media show bulldozers clearing brush in Big Bend National Park near Santa Elena Canyon, one of the park's most recognizable and visited spots. The crews are working for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which says this video shows them doing survey and design work. CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott said in a statement that they are working to preserve the landscape and protect the access that visitors and local businesses depend on.

"Big Bend belongs to the American people, and our job is to keep it safe. So, let's be clear about what is - and is not - happening there. CBP is building one new access road, improving existing roads, installing detection technology, and placing vehicle barriers in limited, strategic locations. We are NOT building a 30-foot wall or stadium lighting through Big Bend National Park, Big Bend Ranch State Park, or the Black Gap Wildlife Management Area," Scott said. Even so, concerned residents gathered at Big Bend National Park last week to protest the Trump administration's actions. Also, last week, Sen. John Cornyn sent a letter to the Secretary of Homeland Security, asking him to meet with Texas stakeholders before any additional construction takes place within Big Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park. CBS News Texas spoke with residents in the area who are upset about what's happening. "The roadways they want to put in require almost as much destruction as would be necessary to put in a vertical wall, especially some of the areas that they've proposed putting the roads," said Natalie Newman, a Terlingua resident whose video of construction crews was shared widely on social media. "I'm glad Cornyn is doing what a true Texan should do, especially one who's elected to his office. Stand up for the rights of the landowners in the state, and stand up for the parks that are America's playground, our playground," said Charlie Angell, who runs a business as a river guide. Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat from El Paso, also spoke out against the construction work in an interview for Eye On Politics.

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James Talarico’s campaign is refunding over $1 million in excess contributions

James Talarico keeps raising too much money. The Texas Democrat has already raised more than $70 million in his bid to defeat state Attorney General Ken Paxton for U.S. Senate — more than any other non-incumbent candidate has raised this cycle nationwide and millions more than his Republican rival has amassed. But scores of Talarico donors are exceeding federal donation limits, with regulators at the Federal Election Commission identifying 143 such donors who exceeded the legal limit, according to a 24-page letter they sent to the Talarico campaign this month. It’s not the first time Talarico, who is attempting to become the first Texas Democrat elected to statewide office since 1994, has received such a missive: Every quarter since its inception, Talarico for Texas has received warnings about accepting donations beyond the legal limit.

The campaign, in turn, has to date reported 534 refunds totaling $844,347. Another quarter-million dollars or so worth of refunds or reattributions are expected after the FEC’s latest letter. Among the flagged Talarico donors is Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, who made two donations in March for $2,000 and $2,500 designated for the general election — $1,000 over the legal limit. (Polis’ office did not respond to a request for comment.) One of the largest reported contributions came from Robert E. Price, the son of Sol Price, who founded the companies that would become Costco. He donated a lump sum of $14,000 to Talarico’s campaign, well above the federal limit. Unlike Price, many of the donors who exceeded the FEC limit on contributions didn’t make a single large contribution. Rather, their small-dollar donations added up to more than the $3,500 individuals are allowed to give per election. Sharon Freeto, a retiree from San Antonio, had 20 of her Talarico campaign contributions flagged this month by the FEC for giving over the contribution limit — 10 of which were made on April 24, according to federal records. “I have no memory of how that happened. That’s a lot of money,” Freeto said of the April transactions. She added that she agreed to make monthly donations to the campaign. Freeto said she had already received a refund for some of her contributions.

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Democrats face a potential Tea Party moment

A movement of young, progressive outsiders has stormed Democratic politics this year, sparking a wave of contentious primary contests across the country and fueling a fraught debate over whether these new, left-wing candidates are remaking the party in their image. But as primary season winds to a close, the results reveal not only the strength but also the potential limitations of this insurgent movement. In Minnesota last week, Peggy Flanagan, the lieutenant governor, won a Senate primary by a double-digit margin, pressing a fiercely progressive message to defeat a more moderate opponent. Just a week earlier, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a left-leaning Democrat, won a Senate primary in Michigan despite being vastly outspent. And Francesca Hong, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, came close to winning a primary for governor in Wisconsin, falling short by less than one percentage point.

The results marked a new level of political strength for candidates affiliated with a resurgent, activist left, showing that their movement can be competitive in statewide primaries, well beyond deep-blue House districts. Yet while a vocal group of strategists, activists and college-educated voters have raced to embrace these pugnacious, boldly liberal — and in some cases untested — candidates, some of the voters who have historically been most crucial to the party’s fortunes remain skeptical. In Michigan and Wisconsin, both pivotal battleground states, the progressive candidates appeared to have struggled to sway voters who have long been the backbone of the party — including Black, more moderate and older Americans who vote reliably. As left-wing candidates have notched victories in primary after primary, many progressives hope they will be able to move the Democratic Party further to the left — mirroring, in some ways, how the rise of the Tea Party movement nearly two decades ago pushed the Republican Party much further to the right. But the results raise questions about whether these candidates can piece together a broad enough coalition of Democrats, independents and moderates to win general elections in swing states that could determine whether Democrats are able to regain power in Congress and, eventually, the White House.

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‘Uncharted territory’: Second-largest reservoir in US plunges to a record low

Lake Powell, the second-largest reservoir in the United States, provides water and electricity to millions in the West. It has now has shrunk to its lowest level on record, in the latest sign of the alarming crisis unfolding on the drought-stricken Colorado River. The reservoir’s levels dropped to 3519.91 feet on Saturday, breaking the record low of 3,519.92 feet set in April 2023, according to data from the US Bureau of Reclamation published Sunday. It is now just under 30 feet away from the point at which its dam will no longer be able to generate hydropower. The record comes nine days after downstream Lake Mead, the US’s biggest reservoir, dropped to its lowest level since it was first filled nine decades ago. “We are in uncharted territory,” said Jack Schmidt, director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University.

Lakes Mead and Powell, which are essentially one gigantic reservoir separated by the Grand Canyon, hold just under 60% of the total water currently stored in the Colorado River basin. The unprecedented decline of these vast bodies of water, which have been shrinking for more than 20 years, drives home the perilous state of the river that feeds them. Known as the lifeblood of the Southwest, the Colorado River starts in the Rocky Mountains, fed by melting snowpack, and ends in the Gulf of California in Mexico. It provides water to roughly 40 million people and irrigates more than 5 million acres of farmland across seven states: California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. Climate change-fueled drought and increases in temperature, combined with years of heavy water use, have caused the crucial waterway to shrink by roughly 20% since 2000. And Mead and Powell have been heavily affected. Spanning parts of Arizona and Utah, Lake Powell formed behind the Glen Canyon Dam, which was constructed in the 1950s. The vast reservoir started filling in 1963 and took 17 years to reach its full pool level of 3,700 feet above sea level.

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State Stories

CyrusOne wants to earn Texans’ trust amid data center boom

Amid the uncertainty surrounding data centers, one Dallas-based company aims to earn the trust of Texas residents. CyrusOne has 15 data centers in Texas, located on campuses in Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio. It’s also planning to add facilities in Castroville, Clifton and Fairfield. It’s part of a boom that’s set to make Texas the world’s largest data center market — surpassing Virginia — amid the growth of artificial intelligence and cloud-based technologies, according to a recent report from real estate firm JLL. There are at least 335 operational facilities in the state and more than 248 planned projects. But amid this new wave of development, the industry remains shrouded in mystery, with several companies keeping mum about specific details of their centers. Nearby residents, city officials and even state leaders have expressed concerns about the industry’s lack of information.

Katy Hancock, the company’s vice president of community affairs, said that while CyrusOne can’t invite guests into its facilities, it wants to be transparent about its operations in Texas and beyond. “We are doing everything we can to show up earlier, come into the community, introduce ourselves, share details of our projects and meet with community leaders and neighbors before we make final plans,” Hancock said. “We want to take the time to explain who we are and how we do things in those conversations and hope to assuage some concerns.” Not only does CyrusOne want to provide information to educate concerned parties about its new development, but it’s now required to do so. On Aug. 3, Gov. Greg Abbott halted the approval of data centers until the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas can audit proposed projects seeking to connect to the state’s electric grid. “As a company proudly headquartered in Texas, CyrusOne shares Governor Abbott’s commitment to responsible data center development,” a spokesperson said. “We support the goals he has outlined, and we are confident that we already reflect the best-in-class development and operating principles his directives are designed to encourage. We believe transparency, accountability and thoughtful planning are essential, and remain committed to working collaboratively with state leaders, regulators, utilities and local communities to help create economic opportunities and lasting local benefits.”

Read this article at San Antonio Express-News - Subscribers Only

Texas barbecue is getting a halal makeover

At 9 a.m. on a scorching Saturday in June, nearly 100 people were already lined up outside Goldee’s BBQ, a small, wooden-shack restaurant. First in line was 30-year-old Thanh Huynh, who had been sitting in a lawn chair on the joint’s rustic porch since 6:30 a.m. “I have, like, a whole list, and I’m going to spend lots of money here. It’ll be worth it,” he said, laughing while rattling off a long order of meats and sides from his phone’s Notes app as a sweet, smoky scent from nearby pits hung in the air. Opened in 2020 by a group of his friends, the restaurant was named the No. 1 barbecue spot in the state by Texas Monthly a year later, and then won a Bib Gourmand award from the prestigious Michelin Guide, given for “great food at a great value.”

The restaurant serves classic Texas barbecue like craft pork belly, sausage and ribs. But it also offers halal brisket, turkey and lamb — meat raised and butchered in accordance with Islamic guidelines. At a time when Republican leaders are increasingly targeting the state’s growing Muslim communities, halal barbecue joints like Goldee’s are thriving in Texas. Across the state, Muslim pitmasters are gaining recognition for putting their own spin on one of Texas’ most iconic culinary traditions. At least a dozen barbecue spots now serve halal meats, including Yearby’s Barbecue & Waterice, run by Black Muslim couple CJ and Sabrina Henley, soon-to-be in Plano, and Levant Mediterranean BBQ, a restaurant with locations in Houston and Frisco and whose all-beef menu includes a brisket shawarma sandwich. “Now there are so many options, and for us to have highly rated barbecue, it’s a blessing,” said Haris Ghaffar, who drove an hour from Celina and stood in 90-degree weather for nearly two hours with a friend for the halal options at Goldee’s. Growing up in the 1990s, Ghaffar said a McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish sandwich was one of the few halal meals he could eat while dining out. Back then, halal food was seen as serving a small community. Today, it’s a multibillion-dollar industry that’s part of the American culinary mainstream, said James Beard Award-winning food writer Farhan Mustafa, who wrote about the rise of American halal barbecue for Bon Appétit magazine in 2025.

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UT Austin overhauling core classes but hasn’t detailed how new center relates to the courses

Future UT Austin students would have fewer classes to choose from to meet graduation requirements under a proposal university leaders presented Thursday. The plan to remake the flagship campus’ core curriculum replaces the sprawling menu of classes students can now take to meet core requirements with a more structured core curriculum organized around the humanities, social sciences and science, technology, engineering and math. But how the overhaul connects to UT Austin’s new Center for the Humanities remains unclear. A report from a 22-member faculty task force appointed by UT Austin President Jim Davis proposes 12 requirements across the core areas, compared with the current 10.

Davis described the existing core to the University of Texas System regents as a “haphazard grab bag of classes,” pointing to a course on the history of college football as an example of a specialized class that may be a worthwhile elective but, in his view, should not fulfill half of a student’s U.S. history requirement. UT students would have to take courses focused on Western civilization, great questions of human life, the principles of American politics, world politics and cultures, great ideas in science, and computer science and artificial intelligence, according to the proposal. Recommendations include creating a “Texas 40: Great Thinkers” list for courses on great questions of human life and three separate 40-author lists for British, American and world literature courses. Great questions courses would have to draw at least two-thirds of their content from the thinkers list. Faculty members would have a chance to shape their own courses with their creativity and expertise, one of the task force members, Richard Reddick, told The Texas Tribune. “Academic freedom is a big piece of this,” Reddick said. “I can’t imagine telling our faculty colleagues, ‘Here’s your syllabus, teach this.’ It’s not going to work.”

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Multistate controversy highlights ‘gray areas’ around surrogacy, bioethics expert says

A multistate surrogacy controversy poses significant ethical questions about the practice, according to a leading medical ethics and surrogacy expert. The case centers on an Alaska woman acting as a surrogate who traveled to Texas to give birth to a baby with a severe heart defect after she said his biological parents had declined treatment and asked that she get an abortion. McKenna West gave birth in Dallas last week. The child was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome – a rare congenital heart defect where the left side of the heart doesn’t develop fully about 20 weeks into the pregnancy. After learning about the diagnosis, the couple allegedly demanded West “undergo an abortion,” according to a statement from Texas Attorney Ken Paxton. Paxton’s office said she refused and came to Texas for “protection.”

Arthur Caplan, a professor emeritus of bioethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, said there are so many ethical issues at the center of this case, he could spend a semester long course on just it. “You’ve got three states,” he said, “a fight between the couple that paid this woman to carry their baby and issues around the legitimacy of abortion and whether anybody could force someone to have an abortion who doesn’t want to.” Caplan recently retired after 45-year-long bioethics career, which included writing the first paper on ethical issues around infertility treatment. His latest publication on the ethics of surrogacy was published in the most recent issue of Fertility and Sterility – an international, peer-reviewed journal for OB-GYNs and other medical providers who treat issues related to human reproductive disorders. “[The] public should be paying attention to the many, many gray areas or just absolutely dark areas that this case is triggering,” he said. West said the couple wanted to end the pregnancy at 20 weeks after consulting with doctors about the diagnosis, according to AP reporting. West’s lawyers alleged the couple spent weeks pressuring West to seek an abortion after learning of the diagnosis, but court filings show they had sought medical opinions and care, the Dallas Morning News reported.

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James Talarico revives Ken Paxton’s $1,000 pen ad in Senate race

Both sides in the Texas race for U.S. Senate are running environmentally correct campaigns when it comes to recycling. But we're not talking about diverting spent cardboard pizza boxes and empty soda bottles from the state's landfills. Instead, it's about reusing old video clips and resurfacing past charges of misdeeds. By now, we've all seen years-old footage of Democratic state Rep. James Talarico questioning whether God has a biological sex or noting that some in the science community have suggested that there might be as many as six genders within the human race. Talarico has more recently acknowledged such remarks as "cringey" attempts to make larger points.

Anyone who has listened to more than a snippet of a Talarico stump speech has been reminded that Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton had been under indictment for years on securities fraud charges filed more than a decade ago and had been impeached by the Texas House in 2023 on 16 articles of impeachment, including bribery and misuse of office. Less mentioned is that the indictment did not result in a conviction after Paxton entered into a pretrial intervention agreement that included 100 hours of community service, 15 hours of legal ethics training and $271,000 in total restitution. The impeachment did not result in Paxton’s removal from office, either. Although two Republicans joined the Senate's 12 Democrats in voting to convict Paxton on 12 articles, the GOP-controlled chamber acquitted him on all charges. But who among us recycles everything? While the above examples are usually delivered in tones both serious and stern, the race's most memorable example of recycling comes with a generous dose of whimsy. This one dates back to the 2018 election cycle, when Paxton was seeking his second term as Texas' top lawyer. A few years earlier, when he was a state senator, Paxton was passing through the metal detectors at the Collin County courthouse, where he sometimes practiced law. In one of the trays sat a pricey ink pen that Paxton tucked into his pocket. The matter was more or less forgotten until Fort Worth Democratic operative Matt Angle obtained the security video through an open records request as part of routine political research. From there, it landed in the hands of Justin Nelson, the Democratic candidate who challenged Paxton's reelection in 2018. Nelson's camp used the clip to make a lighthearted ad that strongly implied that Paxton had sticky fingers.

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The real estate kernel of Texas Republicans’ mounting legislative attack on Muslims

The Texas Legislature is convening in January, and a slice of the state’s Republican majority has settled on a new target: Muslim Texans. The far-right True Texas Project hosted a conference earlier this month in which lawmakers proposed legislative responses to what they’re calling a “Muslim invasion,”which seems to an echo of the white supremacist “great replacement theory.” The Dallas Morning News reported on the conference and detailed the proposals, including regulations specifically intended for Muslim organizations, banning hijabs and halal foods and denying professional licenses to Muslims. It’ll be the first legislative session for the new “Sharia Free Texas” caucus, launched by state Rep. Brent Money of Greenville in March. There’s a national version, the “Sharia Free America” caucus, started by U.S. Reps. Keith Self and Chip Roy, both Republicans from Texas.

This particular wave of anti-Muslim sentiment in Texas coalesced around the kernel of a proposed Muslim-centric master-planned community, originally pitched as EPIC City, now known as the Meadow. The 400-acre project proposed by developer Community Capital Partners sparked the ire of Texas’ top Republicans, namely Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton, when plans became public in the spring of 2025. Since then, Abbott and Paxton have unleashed state investigations, lawsuits and new legislation targeting the project’s ownership structure, prompting the Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations to call the actions of state officials “Islamophic witch hunts and politically driven regulatory harassment.” Multiple lawsuits are ongoing, even after the U.S. Department of Justice dropped its inquiry into the development in June 2025 and a Travis County judge recently sided with the developer in its legal battle with the Texas Workforce Commission. Community Capital Partners continues to move forward with the development, which is set to include a mosque, school, single-family homes, apartments and senior living facilities. The community will be located in Collin and Hunt counties near Josephine.

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Trump backed sway from a wall at Big Bend. But the bulldozers are here.

Texans were caught off-guard several months ago when the Trump administration appeared poised to construct a 30-foot wall through Big Bend National Park, a rugged expanse of moon-like desert that is a point of pride for many in the state. But after bipartisan opposition grew, the wall was removed from the federal government’s border construction map. Many exhaled, believing that the West Texas park, with its towering mountains and cliffs, would be spared. Then the bulldozers arrived this month. The sight of these earth-moving machines along the Rio Grande near the Santa Elena Canyon, one of the park’s major attractions, pointed to the most significant evidence of border barrier construction in the park. Contractors ripped through mesquite trees and brush and leveled the ground for more than a mile of what appeared to be a future roadway.

Big Bend is beloved by Texans and many across the country, even those who are not among its more than 500,000 annual visitors. It is a place to feel the immense and inhospitable wilderness of West Texas, where the stars at night actually are big and bright. The construction sparked a fresh wave of anger and outrage from all sorts of people — environmentalists, former park officials, local sheriffs — who again insisted that such infrastructure was unnecessary in a border region so remote and dangerous that people have rarely tried to cross there, even at the peak of unauthorized migration. Both John Cornyn, the state’s outgoing Republican senator, and James Talarico, the Democrat running to replace him, expressed concern this month about the start of construction inside the park. “My constituents believe that the 1,000-foot riverbank cliffs and remote Big Bend terrain offers its own source of deterrence,” Mr. Cornyn said in a letter last week to the Homeland Security secretary, Markwayne Mullin. Other Republican state leaders, including Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, who defeated Mr. Cornyn in the Senate primary, have not weighed in directly on the construction.

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Texas regulators prepare fraud case against TEXITcoin as founder denies wrongdoing

The Texas State Securities Board will begin presenting its enforcement case Monday against TEXITcoin, a Texas-themed cryptocurrency that blends digital money, multilevel marketing and the rhetoric of the Texas independence movement. The four-day evidentiary hearing is scheduled to begin Aug. 17 at the State Office of Administrative Hearings in Austin. Administrative Law Judge Katerina DeAngelo will consider whether to affirm, modify or set aside an emergency cease-and-desist order issued in February. The proceeding is an administrative case, not a criminal trial. TEXITcoin promotes itself as a digital currency created in Texas for people seeking an alternative to banks and government-issued money. Its slogan is “Built in Texas. Mined in Texas. Owned by Texans.”

But TEXITcoin, its mining partner MineTXC, its marketing arm Blockchain Mint and founder Robert J. “Bobby” Gray, face allegations that they violated the Texas Securities Act. The Feb. 11 emergency order alleges MineTXC’s “Mining Packages” were unregistered securities offered through a multilevel marketing operation. Buyers paid for a share of computing power and received allocations of coins generated by the mining network. Participants could also receive commissions and bonuses for recruiting additional buyers. Regulators describe the packages as passive investments that Gray promoted as “seats on the TEXITcoin rocket ship.” The Securities Board alleges the respondents were not registered to sell securities and failed to disclose information that prospective purchasers needed to evaluate the risks, including details about company finances, mining operations, custody of funds and Gray’s earlier business history. “They wanted us to stop offering these alleged securities in Texas,” Gray said.

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Greg Abbott says IAH, DFW could lose grants over Muslim accommodations

Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday threatened to revoke state grants to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston over religious accommodations for Muslim travelers. The governor referred both airports to the Trump administration for investigation and said his office was reviewing their grants after it was reported that DFW Airport was exploring plans to install Islamic foot wash stations inside its international terminal restrooms. IAH has had an ablution station connected to its Interfaith Chapel since 2024. The facilities are used by Muslims who wash their bodies before prayer five times a day. Abbott called the accommodations “religious discrimination."

“Unlike nondenominational interfaith chapels, these ablution facilities appear designed to single out one subset of the population for special treatment based on religion,” Abbott wrote in a letter to DFW Airport CEO Christopher McLaughlin. “I am unaware of either airport installing standalone facilities to meet the particular needs of the many other religious groups represented across Texas.” A spokesperson for DFW Airport said Friday night that the project was being scrapped. "Like all proposed projects, the airport ultimately considers the operational benefits, customer service impacts, operational risks and costs before approving them," Heath Montgomery, vice president of communications and marketing, said in a statement. "While that evaluation was planned, the airport accelerated its review due to elevated public interest this week and has determined not to proceed with the project as it would not deliver the originally anticipated operational benefits." IAH did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The governor and other Republicans have spent months targeting what they call Sharia law, accusing predominant nonprofit group Council on American Islamic-Relations of having ties to foreign terrorists and entertaining right-wing conspiracies of an Islamic takeover in Texas. CAIR has denied the allegations. Muslims maintain that Sharia just refers to a moral and spiritual framework that guides them on matters like prayer and fasting. When IAH opened its ablution room and prayer room in 2024 it said in a statement “the calming and welcoming prayer room provides another option for passengers of all faiths and beliefs.”

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Galveston County voters ask Texas Supreme Court to block new map

Two Galveston residents and a constable are asking the Texas Supreme Court to stop the county from using a newly redistricted map in the November general election, They argued in an emergency petition that that because a different map was used in the primary election, the county's actions violate equal protection and the election code — and set a bad precedent for the rest of the state. Lawyers for Precinct 3 Constable Derreck Rose and county residents Wilma Green and Diane Merchant filed the emergency petition for writ of mandamus, which is a type of legal remedy that asks a higher court to order a public official to correct an abuse of discretion. The Justice Department has called this type of petition an "extraordinary remedy, which should only be used in exceptional circumstances of peculiar emergency or public importance."

"If this is not stopped, the precedent set will be horribly damaging to democracy," the petition states. "It will make Texas’s primary elections an empty exercise. The voters’ choices just cast aside on the whim of the government—the 4 very governmental officials on the ballot in the ongoing election. If polling against their general election opponent is looking bad, they can just change the map—up to the very eve of the election—to evade the voters’ judgment." Galveston County commissioners unanimously passed a motion in June to redraw boundaries for commissioner, justice of the peace and constable precincts. Galveston County Judge Mark Henry told the Chronicle in June the redrawing was done to align precincts for the "most efficient and beneficial setup," helping keep the county Republican. But because a different map — one that sparked a federal lawsuit over claims of racial discrimination — was used in the primary elections earlier this year, the emergency petition argues the change violates various parts of state election code. The petitioners argue that while the constitution allows commissioners to redistrict from time to time, they have to redistrict in accordance with state law.

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Tom Luce remembered at Dallas funeral for lifetime of service

Across Texas, Tom Luce was known as an influential lawyer and public servant. To his family, he was simply “Pawpaw.” Family members, friends and civic leaders gathered Saturday for his funeral at Saint Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Dallas. Luce died of cardiac arrest July 25 in Telluride, Colorado, where he had traveled for his grandson’s wedding. He was 86. The Rev. Dr. Christopher D. Girata, rector of the church, welcomed mourners before reflections from Luce’s daughter, Ellen Luce Tucker; his grandson, Thomas Luce IV; and former Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, a San Antonio Republican who led the chamber from 2009 to 2019.

Among those attending were Ross Perot Jr., chairman of Hillwood and The Perot Companies, and members of his family. Luce was a longtime adviser and personal attorney to Perot’s father, Ross Perot Sr., and worked closely with both generations on business and civic endeavors. Pam Luce, his wife of more than 66 years, attended with their family. Looking across the church, Tucker recalled one of her father’s rules: Show up for funerals and weddings, and arrive early. “My dad’s faith was the foundation of everything,” Tucker said. His faith shaped his family life and the causes he pursued, she said. Tucker remembered a father who helped her recognize gifts she could not see in herself, then showed her how to use them in service to others. “My dad never sat me down and had a gospel conversation with me,” she said. “Rather, he gave me a vision of the gospel day in and day out.” Straus described Luce as a trusted counselor who could turn ambitious ideas into lasting institutions.

Read this article at Dallas Morning News - Subscribers Only

McKinney voters move to recall mayor, council after mosque vote

A group of McKinney residents has launched an effort to recall the mayor and three city council members, a week after the city council unanimously approved a contentious proposal for a new mosque. Organizers cited a “loss of public confidence” in the ability of the elected officials to represent the city’s residents in filings submitted this week to the city. The recall effort seeks to remove from office Mayor Bill Cox and council members Justin Beller, Geré Feltus and Ernest Lynch. In a statement, the mayor said residents have “every right to make their voices heard and to participate in the processes available to them.”

“Upholding the law and the constitutional principles that guide our government is a fundamental responsibility,” he said. “Our focus remains on serving the people of McKinney and continuing the important work before us.” The three council members did not immediately respond to phone calls, text messages or emails from The Dallas Morning News. Council members Rick Franklin, Patrick Cloutier and Michael Jones are not named in the recall petition but are up for re-election next year. John Aselton, who is helping to organize the recall, said the effort is not only about the mosque but reflects broader concerns about city spending, transparency and infrastructure. He pointed to the city’s plans to expand the airport and build a new amphitheater over the objections of some residents. “There’s a long string of personal grievances from the citizens,” said Aselton, who has lived in McKinney for about a decade. “This is not about one single issue. It’s an ongoing pattern of the city council not listening to its citizens.” Recall organizers must return the completed petition within 45 days of filing the affidavit, which would be 5 p.m. Sept. 26, according to the city’s charter. To trigger a recall election, they must obtain about 5,800 signatures from registered McKinney voters — equal to at least 30% of the votes cast at the last regular municipal election.

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National Stories

Republicans are attacking Democrats as vegans on the campaign trail

Republicans think they’ve found a winning message in some battleground races: calling their opponents vegans. In Colorado’s 8th District, where beef production is a major industry, Democratic nominee Manny Rutinel is being attacked for “a decade of pushing veganism” and “hurling disgusting insults at the agricultural community,” as Alexandria Cullen, spokesperson for GOP Rep. Gabe Evans, put it. As an undergrad, Rutinel posed shirtless draped in a PETA banner, and at Yale Law, he said animal agriculture is a “horrific, exploitive industry,” the Colorado Sun reported. In since-deleted 2017 Reddit posts, he suggested veganism as a solution to high food prices and voiced support for a movement that opposes the slaughter of animals for food.

Rutinel says he was vegan earlier in his life, but no longer is. “The views that Manny posted nearly a decade ago are not his views today,” said Clay Volino, his campaign manager, who noted Rutinel is “laser-focused on lowering costs for families.” Republicans are making similar attacks elsewhere, trying to wage a new meat-fueled culture war. The push to point out Democrats’ veganism is often about the local economy — but it’s also cultural red meat, and comes at a time as some Republicans and MAHA activists are pushing for more Americans to embrace a more meat-centric diet. “There’s a masculinity aspect: Being a vegan is viewed as soft,” said Anang Mittal, a Republican strategist who eats meat. “If you’re trying to portray your opponent as left-wing, it’s an easier hit than arguing the policies against the person.” In Iowa’s 2nd District, home to plenty of cattle and hog farms, Republicans are exuberantly resharing an old social media post from Democratic nominee Lindsay James in which she expressed support for “Meatless May,” a solidarity movement for meat processing workers and farmed animals.

Read this article at Politico - Subscribers Only

Data centers are defining the Wisconsin governor’s race

Wisconsin hates data centers. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the state’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, wants voters to think his Democratic opponent doesn’t. Tiffany entered the general governor’s race this week by claiming in a series of social media posts that Democratic candidate David Crowley wants to subsidize artificial intelligence facilities — even as the House Republican avoids supporting an all-out ban, instead calling for modest reforms and ending state subsidies for tech corporations. Crowley says he doesn’t back a full moratorium on building AI facilities, instead supporting guardrails on the centers that already exist in the state. But Tiffany’s opening argument reflects a political reality: While data center protests are popping up and disrupting campaigns across the country, there are few places where the issue is currently as salient as it is in Wisconsin.

How the race plays out could be a sign of Republicans’ ability to tap into growing national concerns about the spread of AI facilities and their use of natural resources — a position that up until recently has been dominated by Democrats, largely due to the White House’s emphasis on developing AI in the U.S. “I don’t believe him,” Kelly Gallaher, Racine Democratic Party chair, laughing while speaking about Tiffany’s promises to address the data center issue. “It was a politically expedient thing to say. … There’s nothing in his past that shows that he’s not amenable to influence from businesses or from the White House. So I just flat-out don’t believe him.” It’s not surprising data centers have entered the general race so early, Gallaher said. Developers have swarmed the state, including Microsoft’s recent investment of more than $7 billion in “the world’s most powerful AI data center” in Mount Pleasant, located in Gallaher’s Racine County. Residents of the county she calls “Data Center Central” have voiced concerns about AI facilities for years — particularly after an infamous 2017 effort to build a Foxconn manufacturing plant there eventually failed, despite President Donald Trump’s heavy support at the time. “We have seen this become a topic of conversation that really pre-exists this particular election,” Gallaher said. “It’s been building, and the candidates have been responsive to the talk on the ground, the temperature of the people who have really big concerns about them.”

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Rural economic pain tests the GOP’s grip on a Trump stronghold

The arrival of late-summer state fairs, like the one here that features a prizewinning boar weighing 1,246 pounds, signals to the political world that the midterm campaign’s final chapter is just ahead. As Iowa’s 11-day extravaganza started late last week, the state’s Republicans found themselves in an unfamiliar position: trailing Democrats in a top race and facing serious challenges in several others. Some GOP candidates didn’t mention President Trump—viewed more unfavorably than favorably in a recent Fox News poll of Iowa voters—during their highest-profile fair appearances. Democrats, meanwhile, are pouring millions into the state’s races, as rural economic pain from Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran erodes GOP support amid stagnant grain prices and higher fuel and fertilizer costs.

Iowa, which backed Trump by 13 percentage points in 2024, is now an unexpected battleground despite years of GOP dominance. All six members of its congressional delegation are Republicans, and the Democratic National Committee was so disillusioned with Iowa, it ended a roughly five-decade tradition of Iowa hosting the party’s first presidential nominating contest. (Republicans are expected to keep it first for 2028.) Just three years ago, Trump dominated the fair as a presidential candidate. His Boeing 757 circled overhead several times even before he arrived on a day when four other presidential candidates were there competing for attention ahead of the state’s leadoff nominating caucuses. This year, Iowa’s Republican nominee for governor didn’t mention the president in his appearance on the Des Moines Register’s political soapbox, where candidates speak to fairgoers and a throng of media.“I talk about Iowa,” Zach Lahn, who is endorsed by Trump, said later when asked about the omission in his Friday speech. Joe Mitchell, the GOP nominee for a northeast Iowa congressional race, also didn’t mention Trump during his soapbox appearance. His district is rated as “lean Republican” by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. Lahn has trailed his Democratic opponent, state Auditor Rob Sand , in every public poll this summer.

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AI has plunged the book publishing industry into utter chaos

Shortly after scoring a multimillion-dollar book deal for a debut author, the novelist’s agents pulled the plug. They could no longer support the project, they said, because they couldn’t verify that the book had been wholly written by their client. “This raises so many questions about authorship and what AI means for this industry,” the agency, Europa Content, told the publishers in a July letter after allegations of AI use swirled around “Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body,” a crime novel by Jerry Falade. “But those are questions for another day.” Yet with a new AI scandal engulfing publishing seemingly every month, it’s become more difficult to punt questions about its impact into some distant future. The spectacular implosions of big book deals over suspected AI use—and fears about who might be next—are forcing a reckoning over the nature of authorship, the relationship between writers and publishers and the industry’s long-term survival. But nobody can seem to agree who exactly is responsible for solving this problem, or even how much a problem it actually is.

Last year, 70 authors including Margaret Atwood and Jonathan Franzen signed an open letter to publishers voicing concerns about generative AI and asking them to make “a pledge that they will never release books that were created by machines.” Yet the Big Five—Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group and Macmillan—have largely been reluctant to make sweeping pronouncements about a technology that is both potentially lucrative and increasingly ubiquitous. (Many of them are also involved in lawsuits against tech companies for training their models on copyrighted books.) Instead, they find themselves running to put out fires when scandals over AI use become too reputationally damaging to ignore. Falade, a Southern Methodist University graduate student, has denied the accusations about his novel, calling them racially motivated. “This has just been so terrible for me,” he said in an interview on Thursday. “I haven’t been able to sleep well, I haven’t been able to eat.” In March, Hachette Book Group canceled the U.S. release of Mia Ballard’s book “Shy Girl,” a horror novel about a woman held captive by a man she met online and forced to live as his pet, amid allegations that the author had used AI in the writing process. Ballard, who originally self-published the novel before Hachette acquired the rights, has denied these claims, saying AI was used by an acquaintance who had edited the book. “Hachette remains committed to protecting original creative expression and storytelling,” the publisher said in a statement at the time. Last month, the Atlantic wrote that “Daggermouth,” a self-published dystopian romance whose rights were snapped up by Simon & Schuster, and which has consistently topped bestseller lists, contained hallmarks of AI use. The piece cited a research paper from Stony Brook University professor Tuhin Chakrabarty that ran the book through the AI detection tool Pangram. The paper has not yet been peer-reviewed, and the author has denied the allegations, publicly saying she does not believe that generative AI belongs in the writing process.

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Donald Trump has committed too many high crimes to count. But should Democrats really impeach again?

If, as seems likely, Democrats win control of the House of Representatives in November, there will be tremendous pressure from the Democratic base to start a third round of impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump. If Democrats also win the Senate, the pressure will be still greater. Trump himself has predicted that if Democrats win the midterms, “I’ll get impeached.” Would another impeachment of Donald Trump make sense? Would it be constitutionally supportable, and would it be in the best interests of the country? I attempt to answer those questions in a new book—Great and Dangerous Offences: The Case For (and Against) Impeaching Trump a Third Time—due out in early 2027. In this end-of-summer series, “Try, Try Again?,” I will lay out the case for impeachment that is most likely to earn buy-in from American voters and also consider the best arguments against another Trump impeachment. Anyone considering a third Trump impeachment has to answer two questions: First, has Trump engaged in impeachable conduct in his second term? Second, even if so, what is the purpose of a third impeachment effort, and is that purpose achievable?

The clear answer to the first question is yes. Indeed, the perverse difficulty confronting any Trump impeachment project is that he has committed so many impeachable offenses that categorizing and explaining them all in ways the public can easily digest is a daunting challenge. Unlike the British, from whom the America’s founders adapted impeachment, the Framers wrote a definition of impeachable conduct into the Constitution—“treason, bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” That definition has often fomented debate in prior presidential impeachments, primarily because the meaning of high Crimes and Misdemeanors is not immediately evident from the words themselves. Whatever else this enigmatic phrase may cover, it is plain from British constitutional history, the statements of those involved in drafting and ratifying the U.S. Constitution, and subsequent American practice that it reaches corruption in office for the personal gain of oneself or one’s family, serious criminality, and direct violations of significant provisions of the Constitution. More importantly, it covers an effort by the president to subvert the constitutional order by evading its structure of interbranch checks and balances, undercutting democracy, degrading the rule of law, and setting himself up as an elected autocrat.

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Haley Stevens urges El-Sayed to ditch Hasan Piker affiliation after Michigan primary

Democratic anxiety rises in the Michigan Senate race as a new Fox News poll shows Republican Mike Rogers leading Abdul El-Sayed. Michigan Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens joins Jacqui Heinrich to defend the party's platform, address demographic underperformance and outline strategies to mobilize key voters ahead of the crucial upcoming election. Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., urged Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, who defeated her in Michigan's fierce Democratic primary election, to sever ties with controversial, far-left streamer Hasan Piker on "The Sunday Briefing," saying the party's nominee should now turn his attention toward Michigan voters as he pivots to the general election. Stevens maintained her primary-season criticism of Piker even while backing El-Sayed, describing herself as still committed to the party.

"It certainly makes sense to get rid of this Hasan Piker affiliation," she said, also asserting that the Democratic plans for healthcare, democracy and Black-owned businesses are better than those of Republican Mike Rogers, who will oppose El-Sayed in the Senate race. Asked whether El-Sayed had said or done anything other than winning the Democratic nomination to earn the support and assuage the concerns of groups that voted for Stevens, such as Jewish voters, Black voters or Reagan-era Democrats, Stevens pointed to her own good performance with those demographics, identifying herself as a Zionist Democrat and asserting that her party had room for all those communities. "I came really close [to winning the primary] and I'm still a Democrat. I'm still out here talking about my views and values. I want the people who share my views and values to feel safe and to feel heard in the Democratic Party." The face-off to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, who backed Stevens, is a must-win contest for Democrats and one of roughly a dozen general election Senate races expected to determine whether Republicans retain their narrow majority.

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Trump orders military to reduce joint exercises with South Korea

President Donald Trump said Sunday that he has directed the Defense Department to scale down joint military exercises with South Korea, citing the U.S. ally’s refusal to join the war in Iran and his “very good” relationship with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Trump said the large, annual military drills sent a “signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea, a nuclear-armed state with which the U.S. has no formal diplomatic ties but which Trump says has been “unthreatening and respectful” as long as he has been president. “Based on the fact that it is too late to cancel, I have instructed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises!” Trump wrote on social media. His announcement came just hours before the drills were set to start.

“While somewhat unrelated (?), I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, ‘No thanks!’” Trump wrote. It was not immediately clear what a scaled-down version of the training would look like. The South Korean defense ministry said Monday that the drills, known as Ulchi Freedom Shield and scheduled to last until Aug. 27, were “proceeding as planned.” In a statement on Monday, the office of South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said the U.S. and South Korea had “maintained close coordination” on joint exercises and training and would continue to do so. Like Trump, Lee has expressed support for the resumption of talks with North Korea, which remains technically at war with South Korea after the Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice rather than a peace treaty. The government “hopes that the friendly relationship between the leaders of the United States and North Korea will lead to meaningful U.S.-North Korea dialogue, thereby opening discussions aimed at advancing peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula,” Lee’s office said. “To this end, the government will make the necessary diplomatic efforts as a ‘pace-setter,’ in close coordination with the United States.”

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Lead Stories

Trump ratings may complicate Texas GOP plan to flip 5 seats in House

Texas Republicans’ controversial move last summer to redraw the state’s congressional maps with the aim of flipping five Democratic seats this fall may be complicated by President Donald Trump’s low approval ratings, experts say. High prices on gas and groceries, along with a nationwide immigration crackdown that has sometimes turned violent, have led pollsters to predict a “blue wave” in November’s midterms. The GOP counted on Texas Latinos, in particular, to maintain the support they showed for Trump in 2024, political scientists said, but may have inadvertently weakened some of their advantages as the president’s approval rating plummets among the demographic. Several South Texas districts, including two that were redrawn to favor Republicans by double digits, now appear to be legitimate toss-ups, experts said.

The shift could even influence contests in deep-red areas like the newly redrawn Congressional District 9 east of Houston, though the state’s political experts still give Republican Alex Mealer an edge over Democrat Leticia Gutierrez. More than 60% of Latino Texans now have an unfavorable view of the president, according to polling by the Texas Politics Project, one of the highest rates in nearly a decade. Even a few Democratic pickups could determine control of the U.S. House for the last two years of Trump’s term, said Sean Theriault, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. “South Texas districts are going to be more competitive… and I think that as the election gets closer and closer we’ll see them start drifting toward the toss-up category,” he said. “Those districts I think are going to determine who’s the majority (in the House).” While Democrats are growing optimistic about the South Texas races, other redrawn districts now held by Democrats still appear to favor Republicans. Congressional District 32 now lies in staunchly conservative suburbs of Dallas and East Texas, while District 35, in the San Antonio area, also appears to favor the GOP.

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Texas GOP lawmaker predicts fallout for his party over Big Bend border work

A bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers sent a letter this week to Gov. Greg Abbott asking for his help in stopping the Trump administration from moving forward with border construction projects in Big Bend National Park. Forty Democrats and three Republicans serving in the Texas House of Representatives added their signatures to the letter that went to the governor Thursday. In the opening of the letter, they said they wanted to express their “deep concern and opposition to construction of border barriers in the Big Bend region, particularly in Big Bend National Park.” “We support securing our border and recognize our duty to protect Texans,” the letter from the 43 lawmakers read. “However, it is essential that border security policy be pursued in a manner that is effective, fiscally responsible, and respectful of the communities and landscapes we are sworn to protect.”

The timing of the letter coincides with protests that happened earlier this week in Big Bend National Park, where people spotted heavy equipment working to clear what looked like paths in the vegetation there. The commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection reiterated the agency does not plan to build a 30-foot-high border wall through the national park, but he said preparations are underway for a broader border infrastructure project that includes new patrol roads, detection technology and vehicle barriers. On its official X page, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accused news outlets of “fearmongering” in their reporting about the scope of the project. “What people are seeing is survey and design work — NOT construction of a wall or stadium lighting through Big Bend National Park, Big Bend Ranch State Park, or the Black Wildlife Management Area,” the DHS post on Thursday read. “We are working to preserve the landscape and protect the access visitors and local residents depend on.” However, one of the three Republican lawmakers who signed onto the letter, State Rep. Wes Virdell of Brady, told KXAN on Friday his party could face backlash in the upcoming midterm election for Texas leaders not speaking out more publicly against the project, which he said has faced major bipartisan pushback across the state.

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How Taylor Sheridan built a $1B TV empire, without needing Hollywood, A-listers or Emmys

Working for “Yellowstone” creator Taylor Sheridan is not for the faint of heart. The man who shepherded huge hits on to our screens is a “frustrated actor” with a “big ego,” according to those who have worked for him. Former A-lister Ed Harris recently griped he was “misled” by a role on Sheridan’s “Dutton Ranch” saying he told his team to “get me the f—k out of here,” off his set, while “Lioness” star Zoe Saldaña said Sheridan gives his stars two choices, “You have one of two choices. You either accept the challenge and make sure that you don’t f— up… or you quit.” But it can’t be denied he’s breathed new life into the careers of stars like Helen Mirren, Harrison Ford, Demi Moore and Michelle Pfeiffer, raking them in multi-million dollar pay days in the process.

But, while many people swear by Sheridan and say he is fiercely loyal, things don’t always work out. He no longer talks to “Yellowstone” star Kevin Costner after their very public fallout toward the end of the show’s fifth and final season, Page Six is told. And now Sheridan, 56, is now quitting Paramount, the network where his shows found a fanatical audience, for NBCUniversal, in a deal that valued at a billion dollars. Those who know him paint a picture of a wannabe cowboy who keeps a horse trailer at base camp on his show “Landman” and is often seen riding around set. “Here’s the deal about Taylor,” actress Jill Wanger told Decider earlier this month, “He’s not necessarily always nice. He’s fair and if he tells you he’s going to do something, he does it. And that’s rare in the industry.” Wagner co-created the Paramount+ series “Special Ops: Lioness” with her husband David Lemanowicz, and pitched the concept to Sheridan, her former acting coach. She also stars as CIA operative Bobby and serves as an executive producer on the show, while Sheridan plays Sergeant Major Cody Spears.

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‘ICE tax’: Valley hardest hit in Texas from mass deportation campaign

The Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign led to a 5% quarterly drop in construction jobs in the Rio Grande Valley during the third quarter of last year — the highest construction jobs decline on record for the region — while the cost of housing and services across the state is rising because of the shrinking workforce. That’s according to a newly released report, “End the Ice Tax,” from America’s Voice, a nonprofit national organization that advocates for the enactment of changes to government policy that “secure freedom and opportunity for immigrants in America.” The report found that nearly one-fifth of ICE arrests in Texas took place in the Valley, where ICE has arrested more than 9,100 people during the surge. In Laredo, monthly arrests of workers and residents jumped from around half a dozen on average to more than 800 due to the mass deportation campaign, the report said.

“Business is down significantly,” South Texas Builders Association Board President Ronnie Cavazos is quoted as saying. “If we continue on this trajectory, we will see a lot of businesses fail.” Among U.S. states, California, Florida, Nevada, New Jersey and New York rely most heavily on immigrants workers and are experiencing proportionate economic impacts, including higher costs for things like groceries, daycare and home construction, according to the report, which noted that regions of Texas are experiencing the same types of effects. America’s Voice stated that the government’s “mass deportation agenda is contributing to an increase in price and depressing economic activity.” “That decision isn’t theoretical,” the organization said. “It shows up at every kitchen table in the country, including the tables of families who’ve never thought twice about immigration. We call it the ICE tax. It’s the additional cost you pay when your government picks mass deportation over your wallet — higher prices at checkout, jobs that stall out because workers are gone, and Main Street businesses sitting quiet after a raid comes through.”

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Republicans worry their chances of keeping Congress are slipping away. Inside the Trump campaign plan to change that

President Donald Trump has finally given the green light to pour millions of dollars from his personal PAC toward boosting vulnerable Republicans in November, two people familiar with the plans told CNN, as some top campaign advisers privately acknowledge that Republicans’ chances of keeping control of both the House and Senate are dwindling. Trump’s political team is still debating what the final dollar figure will be, though one person familiar with the discussions floated $30 million in the first tranche. Another official cautioned that the final amounts have not yet been decided. The long-awaited cash infusion is happening in the coming weeks, two people said, describing it as the first salvo in a stretch-run effort as November looms just three months away. And it comes amid growing GOP concerns that severe headwinds over the Iran war and high gas prices could suppress voter turnout.

“There is a path where we keep the House and the Senate,” one source told CNN. “I’m not in a place today where I’m prepared to say we’re cautiously optimistic about that.” Trump is also belatedly preparing to ratchet up his own campaigning schedule, with plans to travel at least once a week to hold a spate of rallies in battleground districts, one adviser said. His team first promised this move months ago, and Republicans have long argued it’s a crucial step to energizing MAGA voters critical to the party’s midterm chances. “He loves to travel, but he hates to travel,” said one of his advisers, noting that domestic issues and the Iran war upended early plans to get him on the road more frequently. Trump has recently told his closest aides that he wants to be out more stumping for GOP candidates. But advisers acknowledge his enthusiasm could evaporate just as quickly. “We’ll see how long that lasts,” the adviser said. “Once he’s traveling, he’s like: ‘Why am I doing this? I want to be doing other things.’” Still, there’s widespread angst within the party that Trump has waited too long to get more directly involved.

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State Stories

How Republicans embraced Brandon Herrera, a Texas Republican candidate and gun influencer

Standing in a San Antonio barbecue joint, the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, laid out a stark contrast between two congressional candidates in a sprawling West Texas border district. Voters could choose the “common sense” of the G.O.P. nominee, Brandon Herrera, he said, or the “crazy” positions of his Democratic opponent. Until recently, however, establishment Republicans were trying to paint Mr. Herrera as the crazy one. A self-described gun-rights absolutist and YouTuber known for his inflammatory humor, Mr. Herrera, 30, was initially opposed this year by both Mr. Johnson and President Trump as he challenged the district’s Republican incumbent, Tony Gonzales, for a second straight time. Mr. Gonzales and his allies spent millions painting Mr. Herrera as extreme, highlighting old videos in which he made wildly offensive jokes like saying that a Nazi-era submachine gun was “the original ghetto blaster” and “Hitler’s street sweeper.”

But after a sexual misconduct scandal forced Mr. Gonzales out of the race and then out of Congress this year, top Republicans quickly closed ranks around Mr. Herrera. In an era where candidates’ online pasts are etched into the public record, Mr. Herrera’s rise is testing voters’ tolerance for comments, even those made in jest, that are beyond the pale of public acceptability. It also underscores the anti-establishment energy coursing through both parties. As they wrestle for control of Congress, national leaders have jumped into shotgun marriages with outsider candidates — and those candidates, in turn, are welcoming help from an establishment they once attacked. “After a brutal primary on all sides,” Mr. Herrera told reporters in San Antonio late last month, “the focus has to be bringing the party together.” The district leans Republican — Mr. Trump carried it by 15 percentage points in 2024 — but Democrats believe Mr. Herrera’s polarizing nature could give their nominee, Katy Padilla Stout, a chance.

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Jim Foster, who helped Democrats sweep Dallas County, dies at 82

Former Dallas County Judge Jim Foster has died, according to his sister, Charlotte Foster Ross. He was 82. Foster suffered a heart attack on Friday, his sister said, after going into the hospital for gallstones. He died yesterday at Methodist Hospital in Plano, Ross added. “He was a loving, kind brother that was always there for everybody. He was the most soft-spoken human being I’ve ever known,” she continued. Foster was in the security business and ran unsuccessful campaigns for sheriff and constable before launching what looked like a longshot bid for the county’s top office. In 2007, he defeated Republican County Judge Margaret Keliher, as Democrats swept into power in Dallas County.

“Jim Foster ran for and won Dallas County Judge at a time when other Democrats believed the seat was unwinnable. In his first year, he convened a summit for other newly elected county judges in the metroplex building upon the strong regional relationship that continues to exist today,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins told WFAA on Saturday. But during his one term, Foster tangled publicly with Commissioner John Wiley Price, a fellow Democrat, over the Inland Port in southern Dallas County. “You can't stand for what's right and expect to be the darling of the Democratic Party,” Foster told The Dallas Morning News in 2014. In 2010, Democratic voters replaced Foster with Jenkins. After leaving office, Foster moved to Florida to work in real estate but later returned to Dallas. “He was the most honest man I have ever known,” former Dallas County Commissioner Maurine Dickey posted on Facebook on Saturday. “He loved Dallas County and his family was very involved in the history of northeast Dallas County.” Foster regularly contributed images and insight to the Facebook group called Pioneers of Dallas County.

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As John Whitmire turns 77, the ‘spry’ and ‘vigorous’ Houston mayor wants to stay in office into his 80s

Houston Mayor John Whitmire turned 77 years old on Thursday, more than a year before he plans to seek a second four-year term in office. When a Houston Public Media reporter wished Whitmire a happy birthday and asked how he felt about serving another four years on Wednesday, Whitmire said his administration is "actively working." "I'm the first one here in the morning, last one to leave," Whitmire said. "So I love where you’re going, but we have started something special in the city of Houston. We’re not going to finish it ‘til the end of my second term. So I look forward to working with you — such a delight."

Former President Joe Biden entered office at 78 years old in 2020, making him the oldest president in history at the time. Concerns about his age factored heavily into his decision to drop his reelection bid in 2024, when he was 82. On Wednesday, city controller Chris Hollins — a consistent rival of Whitmire — wished the mayor a happy birthday. "Brother, you're almost old enough to run for president now," Hollins said. Biden's performance as president and on the campaign trail contributed to a surge in negative sentiment about aging officeholders, said Brandon Rottinghaus, political science professor at the University of Houston — but it also highlighted the importance of voter perception. A Pew Research Center survey found 79% of Americans supported maximum age limits for federal elected officials in 2023. But a poll by Gallup in 2024 found 59% of Americans were "very concerned" about Biden's age, compared to just 18% for President Donald Trump, who was three years younger.

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Texas child advocates push back against proposed overhaul of federal Head Start

Child advocates from Texas and across the country are voicing strong opposition against proposed changes to Head Start. The nonprofit Children At Risk held a press conference Thursday with child advocates and early childhood stakeholders to discuss the proposed overhaul and its state-by-state impacts. Head Start programs provide free learning and development services to children from low-income families, from birth to age five. Last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families announced proposed sweeping changes to the program’s regulations. This includes removing significant federal regulations and shifting standards towards state and local requirements, decreasing allowable administrative costs from 15% to 5%, and emphasizing English-language instruction in most programs.

It would slim regulation of the 60-year-old anti-poverty program and aim to save money. Advocates worry the changes could undermine the early education program's mission. The federal government said the changes would reduce significant bureaucratic burden on programs and open up new slots for kids. “The rules that we have for Head Start right now are really good — they’ve worked for 60 years,” said Bob Sanborn, CEO of Children at Risk. “We support efforts to reduce unnecessary federal [spending,] but this cannot come at the cost of child care quality, accountability, and safety.” Teresa Granilla, CEO of the San Antonio-based nonprofit AVANCE, said the move to prioritize English-language instruction could hurt the growth of the nearly one-third of children in Head Start who are bilingual learners. “The research in Head Start’s own resources are clear: Supporting a child’s home language helps build the foundation for learning English and for later learning, ” said Granilla. “An English-only approach is not simply a change in curriculum.” Children at Risk reports Texas is home to nearly 465,000 low-income children with working parents. Altogether, Head Start and Early Head Start programs have provided affordable, high-quality childcare for nearly 70,000 of those children as of last year. Advocates in Alabama and Florida also said significantly changing the federal standards for governing Head Start services could lead to state-by-state inequities to high-quality services. “Head Start is a staple in rural communities where there’s no childcare,” said Dawn Owens, the director of the Montgomery Education Foundation. “There are counties where there is no childcare, there is only Head Start, so families rely on that to work.”

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DFW Airport drops plans for wash stations for Muslim travelers

DFW International Airport has stopped plans for a proposed project to build wash stations for Muslim travelers in Terminal D after the project sparked public debate this week and Gov. Greg Abbott targeted its funding. Abbott said on social media Friday he had ordered a review of state grants at DFW Airport and referred DFW to the U.S. Department of Transportation for investigation. “Texas will not allow illegal religious discrimination at taxpayer-funded facilities,” Abbott said.

Similar wash stations like the ones DFW was expected to install are offered at facilities in Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport and Chicago O'Hare International. Abbott targeted the Houston airport also. The airport had been considering a proposal to install Islamic foot wash stations inside some Terminal D restrooms, The Dallas Morning News previously reported. The project consisted of adding ablution stations to existing concourse-level restrooms in Terminal D, one men's ablution station in the existing men's restroom and one women's ablution station in the existing women's restroom, according to a filing with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. Wash stations like the ones the project proposed are commonly used to perform Wudu, a ritual purification practice in Islam. DFW Airport already offers wash stations in its Terminal D interfaith chapel. “Like all proposed projects, the airport ultimately considers the operational benefits, customer service impacts, operational risks and costs before approving them,” Heath Montgomery, a spokesperson for the airport, told The News in an email Friday evening. “While that evaluation was planned, the airport accelerated its review due to elevated public interest this week and has determined not to proceed with the project as it would not deliver the originally anticipated operational benefits.” When asked whether existing ablution stations in the interfaith chapel would be affected, Montgomery said via text that “I’m not aware of any additional proposed changes at this time.”

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Superintendent: immigration policies impact Dallas school enrollment

Dallas ISD’s enrollment has slipped, and immigration policies may have had a hand in it, Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde said as the district began the new school year Tuesday. "Certainly, some policies regarding immigration have had an impact," Elizalde said at a news conference at Victor H. Hexter Elementary School. "We think this year we're probably going to level off." Elizalde said this school year’s enrollment figures are not yet available. “We are prepared to receive as many students as come through our doors,” Elizalde said. The district’s enrollment has been on a downward trajectory for the last decade, save a small increase in the 2024-25 school year. Last school year, Dallas ISD had over 134,000 students, down 3% from the previous year. Since 2015, Dallas ISD has consistently lost over 1,000 students per year, with a large dip in 2020 due to the pandemic.

In January 2025, President Donald Trump repealed a Biden-era policy that protected certain spaces — including schools and churches — from immigration enforcement. Dallas ISD, the second-largest district in the state by enrollment, isn’t the only district seeing fewer students. Enrollment in Fort Worth ISD has also dropped significantly in the last decade, and it saw a 4% decrease from 2024 to 2025. Other North Texas school districts, like Richardson ISD and Irving ISD, follow similar trends. Other factors that could influence enrollment are the Texas’ new school choice program, wherein the state subsidizes private school tuition or homeschooling. Over 2,500 students living in Dallas ISD boundaries and 1,500 students in Fort Worth ISD boundaries will participate in the program, though not all of them are necessarily switching from public to private school. Demographic trends, like declining birth rates and fewer children in Texas, could also contribute to lower enrollment in public schools. At the state level, public school enrollment saw a decline of 76,000 students in 2025 — a 1.4% drop — making it the largest enrollment dip in Texas outside of the pandemic, according to the nonpartisan think tank Texas 2036. Elizalde said Tuesday she doesn’t expect a large change in enrollment this year for her district, but hopes new Dallas ISD initiatives, like its universal pre-K program, will draw in more families. Dallas ISD, along with dozens of other area districts, had their first day of school this week. While Fort Worth entered the new school year under state takeover, others, like Dallas and Irving ISD opened new campuses.

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United ISD restores Communities in Schools program at 5 campuses

United ISD is bringing back its Communities in Schools (CIS) program this year, but at fewer campuses than before. Trustees approved a plan to restore CIS at five campuses, down from the original 15. The move reduces the district’s cost from $400,000 to $115,000. At the Aug. 12 board meeting, several students spoke to trustees about how CIS affected their lives. Victor Vasquez, with County Court at Law 2, also addressed the board, saying the court has seen positive results from students involved in the program. The decision comes as UISD continues looking for ways to reduce expenses while maintaining supports for at-risk students.

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James Talarico pushes new plan to woo Texas veterans, pledges to ‘fight for them the way they fight for us’

Democratic U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico is unveiling a veterans and military-specific policy platform Friday aimed at “stopping the new forever war in Iran,” strengthening support for military families and increasing the resources available to veterans for health care, housing and employment. “Texas has more veterans than any other state, and they deserve a senator who will fight for them the way they fight for us,” Talarico said. “That’s why I’m proud to announce my plan to support our brave men and women in uniform and bolster the systems they rely on when they return home.” The plan takes aim at the Trump Administration’s mass layoffs in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), committing to a reversal of terminations of federal veteran employees along with reclassifying VA medical care as “mandatory spending,” which would protect the funding from yearly Congressional budget fights.

Talarico, a 37-year-old state lawmaker from Austin who taught school in San Antonio before his career in politics also proposed automatically enrolling all eligible veterans in VA health care and opposing efforts to privatize the VA system. Talarico’s policy announcement, which he will unveil officially at a Friday event in Killeen, follows six months of U.S. conflict with Iran that has killed 18 service members, including Texas teenager U.S. Army Pvt. Isabella Gonzales. Talarico pledged support for ending “forever wars,” including in Iran, and reinforcing cooperation with NATO and the European Union. Talarico faces Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the landmark Senate race, and with polls showing the Democrat surging despite Republican dominance statewide, both candidates have been seeking to coax voters to turn out in force in November. Paxton swung through San Antonio on Saturday, appearing with local conservative officials to urge voters to rally their friends and neighbors against sitting out this election. Paxton has not unveiled a veteran-specific platform yet in the Senate race.

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How the $6.2 billion Nexstar-Tegna merger could remake Houston TV news

Come September, when viewers of CW39 flip to the channel for the 9 p.m. news, they'll be greeted with the unfamiliar faces of Len Cannon and Mia Gradney, the evening broadcasters on KHOU, Houston's CBS affiliate. The seemingly minor programming switch — CW39 currently leases its nightly broadcast from ABC13 — is among the first shifts in the Houston media market following the proposed merger of broadcasting giants Nexstar and Tegna, which would create one of the largest local television companies in U.S. history. In April, the Federal Communications Commission approved the $6.2 billion merger of the rival television conglomerates, paving the way for Nexstar to own 256 stations across 80% of the country's media markets, including 42 stations in Texas, covering approximately 98.1% of the state's population.

In Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin and 11 other markets, Nexstar is poised to control at least two stations. President Donald Trump has trumpeted the deal, saying it “will help knock out the Fake News because there will be more competition.” But the merger is currently held up in federal court, after a bipartisan coalition of 13 states sued to block the union on antitrust grounds. Texas did not join the suit, and the state’s Attorney General's office did not respond to a request for comment. Tegna didn't respond to requests for comment. Nexstar, which is headquartered in Irving, declined to comment on specifics of the merger, citing the ongoing litigation. Its executives have argued that the merger is essential for the survival of local television journalism, which they say is increasingly eclipsed by YouTube, streaming and other social media platforms. Andy Alford, Nexstar's president of broadcasting, described the programming shift at CW39, which it has owned since 2019, as an "arm's-length relationship between two distinct organizations." Tegna owns KHOU. At the same time, he heralded the pending merger as an opportunity to produce better journalism in Houston by combining the "talent, resources and capabilities" of KHOU and CW39. "We continue to believe that a future integration of our newsrooms is a better outcome that will create even greater opportunities to serve our community while strengthening and preserving local journalism," Alford said in a statement.

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Restaurant operator with Texas ties mired in bankruptcy

A longtime Texas restaurant operator with prominent ties to Houston and the Dallas-Fort Worth area is poised to enter a new chapter, thanks to a federal judge and a multimillion-dollar bankruptcy case. Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Brenda T. Rhoades confirmed Aug. 6 a reorganization plan for KBI 2015 TX LP, a company managed by restaurateur Kim Forsythe with multiple food-and-entertainment-focused businesses in Texas When the reorganization plan goes through, an unaffiliated investor would contribute at least $250,000 for 100 percent of the company's equity.

The decision marks another major shrinking of Forsythe's once sprawling restaurant empire, which includes the Sambuca chain of steak, seafood and dancing concepts. The news also coincides with the abrupt closure of Forsythe's other company, 909 Events, Inc., formerly known as Sambuca Catering, Inc., according to public records. 909 was the operator of the Crystal Ballroom at the Rice, a wedding venue inside the Rice Hotel. Chron multimedia reporter Macy Meinhardt reported earlier this week that the company had informed customers its lease had been terminated and that it would be seeking bankruptcy protection, leaving their scheduled deposits and wedding dates up in the air. While KBI, as a company, may emerge still alive after all this, additional companies owned by Forsythe are presently being swallowed up by liquidation, as a bank is accusing them of defaulting on millions of dollars in debt. According to court documents, KBI was identified as the operating company behind The Rayleigh Underground and Kitchen 101, both part of Toyota Music Factory, a sprawling entertainment district in the North Texas city of Irving. The Rayleigh Underground is a 38,000-square-foot, two-story entertainment venue that evokes sights, sounds and tastes of Las Vegas, according to its website. Kitchen 101 is an adjoining fast-casual restaurant with wine and coffee.

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Indigenous group sues to stop Big Bend Border Wall on religious grounds

The People of La Junta for Preservation, a nonprofit founded in 2024 that works to preserve Indigenous sites, and two Indigenous worshippers of Lipan Apache lineage are suing the federal government to stop the highly contentious border barrier construction and surveying activities in Big Bend, the Texas Observer has learned. The plaintiffs argue that ongoing U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) construction and surveying activities in Big Bend National Park and across far West Texas have cut them off both from specific sacred sites and ecosystems fundamental to their spiritual practices in violation of Religious Freedom Restoration Act and American Indian Religious Freedom Act protections. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in San Antonio, not only seeks an immediate halt to construction activity in Big Bend National Park but across CBP’s Big Bend Sector.

The lawsuit argues that “the threatened areas include places used by [plaintiff Christina Hernandez] or members of her community for religious observance, ceremony, prayer, gathering, or other traditional religious practices” and “the challenged construction also threatens to substantially burden the exercise of religion by physically altering, restricting access to, or destroying the places at which those practices occur.” Democratic Texas state Senator Roland Gutierrez, who is also a San Antonio-based lawyer, is representing the plaintiffs in the case. His state Senate district includes a portion of Big Bend National Park and Brewster County. The prominent Houston lawyer Dick DeGuerin is also on the case. The lawsuit names the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), CBP, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott, and Big Bend Sector Border Patrol Chief Patrol Agent Lloyd M. Easterling among the defendants. Hernandez is director of People of La Junta and is also a member of the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas, which is not currently a federally recognized tribe but has been recognized by the state, and a lead plaintiff in the suit. “We use the river for coming-of-age ceremonies that we are reintroducing into the community, and then we also harvest sacred plant material—willows, cattail pollen—and that all we get specifically from the banks of the river, versus sourcing elsewhere, because we feel like that’s the the closest to our creator,” Hernandez told the Observer. “That water is used in a multitude of ways within ceremony, whether it’s opening up a ceremony at large, or being put in the water to be close to our Creator.”

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National Stories

U.S., Canada race for deal to avert Trump’s threat of 50 percent tariffs

The United States and Canada are inching closer to a deal to avert the imposition of punitive 50 percent tariffs on such Canadian products as hockey sticks, wine and cement, according to industry executives and trade specialists following the talks. Details remain fluid, and recent talks were contentious ahead of an early-Wednesday deadline. But the emerging accord could pair Canadian tariff concessions along with commitments on energy, defense and critical minerals in return for the U.S. agreeing to shelve President Donald Trump’s new Section 338 tariffs and relax levies on steel and aluminum, according to those following the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations. If a deal is reached, it is expected to provide momentum for the ongoing renegotiation of the North American trade deal reached in the president’s first term. An accord would also spare the administration one more legal battle over the president’s tariff powers.

“I’m optimistic that there’ll be a resolution in full or in part that will stave off the Section 338 tariffs. That’s the trajectory we’re on,” said Dan Ujczo, a veteran trade attorney in Columbus, Ohio. “Both sides want a deal.” Trump’s Section 338 tariffs would apply to just 5 percent of the $382 billion worth of Canadian goods that the U.S. imported last year. But if they take effect as scheduled at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, they could scupper hopes for preserving a unified North American trade bloc, industry executives said. The imposition of new tariffs, especially at a trade-chilling 50 percent, would exacerbate anti-U.S. sentiment in Canada, which is already raw after Trump’s repeated gibes about turning Canada into the 51st U.S. state. Prime Minister Mark Carney has said “all options are on the table” in terms of retaliation for any new U.S. actions. “You’ve now put the Canadian government, with these 338s, in a position where if we don’t do a comprehensive deal, we may just end up having to politically retaliate and we will be years away from having trade peace,” said Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association in Toronto.

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Years of Trump support came undone in 15 minutes in an airport.

Brent Jindra, a tech salesman, voted for President Trump three times, drawn by his aggressive immigration agenda. He never imagined the crackdown would ensnare his own wife. Last month, moments after the couple got off their flight in Burbank, Calif., a young man in a brown hooded sweatshirt stopped Galina Bobreneva. “Congratulations, you’ve been chosen for secondary screening,” he told her, according to the couple’s recollection. The man was a federal agent, and after questioning Ms. Bobreneva for about 15 minutes, he led her away in handcuffs to an unmarked vehicle. “I’m only doing my job,” he said. “Everything will be OK.” So began a 16-day ordeal: a night on the floor of a basement holding cell in downtown Los Angeles; two weeks in a Mojave Desert detention center and a frantic legal effort to win her release.

Freed on a $35,000 bond with an electronic monitor clamped to her ankle, she is now fighting to stay in the United States against federal charges of overstaying her visa. Ms. Bobreneva, who is from Russia, has a pending green card application, and her lawyer asserts that she was never out of lawful status. Her case represents a new front in President Trump’s mass deportation drive: arrests at airports of people whose visas have expired but who have active immigration cases and no criminal history. Although green-card applicants with expired visas can be detained under federal law, previous administrations did not consider them to be in the country unlawfully. But as the Trump administration seeks to nearly double its daily arrests to 2,000 people, it is detaining and attempting to deport thousands of people who believed they were following the rules. “The allure of the MAGA campaign was around illegal entries of criminals,” said Mr. Jindra, 48. “There was never a mandate for this president to turn the barrel of the gun and start going after people who legally entered.” n response to questions about Ms. Bobreneva’s case, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that she was “an illegal alien” targeted for arrest because “she overstayed her welcome in violation of our nation’s laws.”

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The ‘country hicks’ who refused $26 million from an AI data center

The offer arrived out of nowhere just over one year ago. An unknown company was scooping up Kentucky farmland, and few plots were more valuable than those owned by Delsia Bare and her mother, Ida Huddleston. The money would be life-changing. From Bare’s farm, the company wanted 463 acres at $48,000 apiece. From Huddleston’s nearby piece of property, it sought 71 at $60,000 per acre. Together mother and daughter would collect $26.48 million. All they had to do was sign. At first the women agreed. Then they discovered what their farmland—the farmland that their family had cultivated for nearly 200 years—would be used for: a 2.2-gigawatt hyperscale data center. That information turned their answer into an easy one. No. “Kick rocks and don’t come back,” Bare told the representative, after successfully revoking the agreements.

Since that $26 million refusal, Bare and Huddleston, two self-described “country hicks,” have become polarizing heroes of the rural campaign against the AI technology rewiring geopolitics, the economy—and now hometowns like theirs. If computing power is, as OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman has said, “the currency of the future,” then communities like Maysville (population: 8,700) are being asked to serve as the reserves. The industry’s arrival has brought overnight changes—in some cases, boosted tax bases and multimillion-dollar payouts for landowners, but also fears about costs, water usage, noise and, in Maysville, allowing in an unknown piece of the future. “I never thought I’d be in a battle with a data center,” said Bare. “I thought I was about as far out in the boondocks as you could get.” She and her mother are unlikely Silicon Valley adversaries. Bare, 54 years old, is God-fearing and transgressive, often in the same breath, with domestic trouble in her past. Diabetes has left her nearly blind. She calls cows to breakfast with a holler, extemporizes on the Bible in full paragraphs and keeps a collection of high-vibration crystals. Her mother is an 83-year-old churchgoing widow who walks with a cane. “One of us is blind and the other’s cripple,” said Huddleston.

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Stock-picking funds are performing as poorly as ever

Investment pros say AI disruption has created a stock picker’s market. They are still struggling to pick the right ones. Just 27% of actively managed U.S. large-cap equity funds beat their benchmark passive-fund alternatives in the 12 months ended June 30, according to Morningstar data that compares returns after fees. That is actually an improvement over stock-picking funds’ long-term track record. In the decade through June, just 13% of active large-cap funds beat their benchmarks. The fees on actively managed mutual funds have been a cash cow for investment firms for decades, but years of outflows from investors moving to more tax-efficient, and often passive, exchange-traded funds are weighing heavily on the industry.

“If you look at active equity mutual funds, they’ve had outflows every year consistently since 2015,” said Matthew Bartolini, head of SPDR Americas research at State Street Global Advisors. “That’s a losing trend only compared to the New York Jets.” In recent Wall Street marketing and outlook materials, stock picking is still all the rage. Active managers argue that higher interest rates have ended the cheap-money tide that lifted all boats, just as AI is set to mint huge winners and losers, making security selection crucial. “Conditions have shifted to favor active investing,” T. Rowe Price declared. AI means “active stock selection will be increasingly important,” says Janus Henderson. “Finally, active managers can participate and join the passive moneymakers,” Jefferies CEO Rich Handler said in a recent letter to clients. Those predictions have been correct, to an extent. Stock-market dispersion—or the divergence in performance between individual stocks in the same index—has soared to the highest level in decades this year.

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California congressman left GOP to try to survive redistricting competition

One thing Anne Smull, a retired feedstore owner, was looking forward to on Election Day was voting for the man who currently represents her in Congress, conservative Rep. Kevin Kiley. Now she can’t. That’s because California Democrats sliced Kiley’s district six ways as payback for Republican redistricting in Texas and elsewhere. The chunk of the district that Smull, who identifies as a conservative, lives in is now grafted onto an overwhelmingly Democratic seat based in the state’s wine country. During a recent lunch at a cafe in Lincoln, a onetime agricultural town that has morphed into a bedroom community on the edge of Sacramento’s exurban sprawl, Smull was heartbroken to hear she can no longer vote for Kiley.

“He believes in the same things I do,” Smull said. “It feels sneaky and underhanded.” Democratic voters in several other states know how Smull feels. President Donald Trump last year told GOP-controlled states to redraw their maps before this year’s midterm elections to increase the number of winnable seats for Republicans in order to help the party hold onto the U.S. House. The effort was turbocharged by a U.S. Supreme Court decision this spring that neutralized a key provision of the Voting Rights Act and cleared the way for Republicans to redraw more seats across the South that had elected Black Democrats. Democratic-leaning and heavily minority communities from Texas to Tennessee have been split into multiple congressional districts that dilute the Democratic vote by stretching deep into conservative areas. In the future, it is likely that more Republican voters in other states will go through what Smull and other conservatives in Northern California are facing. Democrats in Maryland, New York, Illinois and other strongholds have pledged to retaliate in time for the 2028 elections and split Republican-leaning districts the way their California counterparts did Kiley’s. Democrats have been hindered nationally by stricter rules against partisan line-drawing in their states, but California showed a way around that. California Democrats won voter approval last year to redraw the state’s congressional map, originally made by an independent commission, and formed five new Democratic-leaning seats.

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Top US Middle East commander visits deployed aircraft carrier

Adm. Brad Cooper, the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, visited the USS Lincoln in the Arabian Sea during a 10-day tour in the region that concluded on Saturday, U.S. Central Command said. Adm. Cooper visited the USS Lincoln in the Arabian Sea as reports have emerged of mental health and supply issues aboard the long-deployed aircraft carrier. The Lincoln arrived in the Middle East in January and has been supporting the U.S. war against Iran, including the blockade on Iranian ports. Its deployment has included a record-setting uninterrupted time at sea of more than 240 days. Extended deployments of carriers – which can have more than 5,000 sailors and Marines on board – have raised concerns about the impact not only on the ships but on service members.

“History will record this deployment as one of the most operationally intense and consequential of the modern era,” Cooper said of the Lincoln strike group in a statement released Saturday. Cooper also went to Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to meet with civilian and military leaders, according to the Central Command statement. The U.S. Navy’s blockade was in response to Iran’s asserting control over the Strait of Hormuz after the war started on Feb. 28 with U.S. and Israeli strikes. About one-fifth of the world’s traded oil and natural gas passed through the waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf before then. Talks between the U.S. and Iran have stalled while Iran is in discussions with Oman about how to manage the strait that runs between them and had been considered an international waterway.

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ICE agents are building a DNA database. What about the Constitution?

The Trump administration has spent tens of millions of dollars building out the ability of immigration enforcement agents to collect DNA samples from detainees, a program that has so far collected genetic records from millions of people and deposited them in a federal criminal database. But experts say the effort, which represents legal territory so far uncharted by the courts, raises serious constitutional questions — and some worry it could serve as a preview to a “genetic panopticon” broadening government surveillance powers. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have for years collected DNA samples from people detained as part of their operations. But under the second Trump administration, the number of genetic records taken by federal agents has skyrocketed. According to a July report published by the Georgetown University Law School’s Center on Privacy and Technology, ICE agents captured the DNA of as many as 900,000 people last year.

Those genetic records, the report said, are entered into a sweeping criminal justice database known as the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS. The repository, run by the FBI, contains genetic profiles contributed by federal, state and local law enforcement. As of December, more than 3 million entries in CODIS were indexed as “detainee” profiles. And it’s not just adults who are subject to DNA collection by immigration authorities. Federal agents took genetic samples from roughly 133,000 children as young as four years old — as well as from hundreds of elderly people, including a 96-year-old. Media reports have also pointed to examples of immigration agents collecting DNA samples from bystanders during immigration operations, including advocates and legal observers. The Homeland Security Department, meanwhile, is further expanding its ability to collect DNA samples from immigration detainees. Government contracting documents published Monday show ICE has spent an additional $10.1 million on “rapid DNA tests,” equipment and services it says will be used during immigration enforcement operations to “verify biological relatives.”

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Lead Stories

State takeover of Austin ISD likely with new Fs announced

The five consecutive failing ratings give Education Commissioner Mike Morath the power to either shut down Webb and Burnet middle schools or replace Austin ISD’s elected Board of Trustees and superintendent with state appointees. TEA has used the law to take over seven school systems for academic issues since 2015. In only three cases, TEA has closed campuses rather than replace elected district leadership. The sobering results come despite Austin ISD’s overall rating improving from a C to a B and the district reducing the number of D- and F-rated campuses from 41 to 31. Austin ISD learned of the results Wednesday, ahead of the state’s public release of grades Friday.

Dobie Middle School earned a D this year, which “pauses” any state penalties at the campus for another year. Superintendent Matias Segura had hoped scores at Burnet and Webb would improve further, but he said the decreasing number of D- and F-rated campuses across the district shows progress. “There’s without a doubt been and will continue to be a sense of urgency for all schools, and certainly these two schools as we move into the ’26-’27 school year, regardless of what the agency does or doesn’t do,” Segura said. The first day of school for Austin ISD students is Aug. 18. Getting five F ratings at two campuses is a big deal, Board President Lynn Boswell said. But Austin ISD is making necessary changes to improve student outcomes, she said. “We’re figuring out how to make that change,” Boswell said. “We need to figure out how to make that change happen for students who are right now at … Burnet and Webb, and at every one of our schools where we’re not there in the way we want to be yet.”

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More than 20,700 Texas students gave up their school vouchers

More than 20,700 Texas students have returned their school vouchers. Over two-thirds were previously enrolled in public schools. Proponents promised that vouchers would help families leave cash-strapped public schools. The data, which was obtained through a Dallas Morning News records request, paints a clearer picture as to whether the Texas Education Freedom Accounts is meeting that goal. Education experts say the numbers confirm their early warnings. Getting approved for a voucher is a starting point. As of July 29, more than 122,000 students have been awarded and invited to participate, according to the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, which runs the program.

Actually using it proves challenging, critics say. Private schools can deny admission, charge tuition far beyond the voucher amount and be located far away. “Just because you got an award does not mean you have a seat in a private school,” said Dee Carney, director of the Texas Center for Voucher Transparency. “They have to pick you.” Nathan Cunneen, Texas state director of American Federation for Children, said in a statement that TEFA is "fulfilling its mission,” despite families returning their vouchers. He pointed out that 80% of participating children come from low-income households and 25% have a documented disability. The program offers families $10,474 to offset private education expenses. Students with special needs can receive up to $30,000, while homeschooled students can get $2,000. Among those who “opted out,” about a quarter formally declined the award, according to a TEFA spokesperson. The rest did not select a school by the July 15 deadline, or the selected school did not confirm their enrollment by July 31. Regardless, the voucher gets reassigned to someone on the waitlist.

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White House says more than 40 nations help China dodge tariffs

Chinese companies are increasingly routing shipments to the United States via other nations to avoid President Donald Trump’s tariffs, the White House said Thursday. Such efforts began during Trump’s first term and have accelerated over the past year as he imposed higher taxes on Chinese imports. The United States is missing “tens of billions of dollars” in tariff revenue from the practice, as merchandise worth roughly $75 billion skirts Trump’s tariff wall, the White House said in a report. Different tariff rates for goods from different nations are a key part of the president’s trade policy. But the varying rates also “create opportunities for arbitrage and evasion,” the report said. To avoid high tariffs, exporters in China send a product to another nation, such as Vietnam or Mexico, where it is repackaged or minimally processed and sent on to the U.S.

“Communist China has engaged in an extremely sophisticated set of actions that are designed essentially to transship and thereby evade the tariffs,” said Peter Navarro, the White House trade adviser who led the study. The report comes little more than a month before Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to meet Trump in Washington. The administration has tried to discourage the practice in trade deals reached over the past year with nations including Vietnam and Indonesia. But distinguishing between permissible transshipment — when goods move from one vessel to another like passengers boarding a connecting flight — and fraudulent practices is difficult. The administration is working on an artificial intelligence system that would scrutinize shipments to identify suspect cargos, the report said.

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CBP commissioner defends agency’s border project in Big Bend National Park

The head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection is defending the agency’s plan to build border vehicle barriers and new patrol roads across Big Bend National Park, despite growing public outcry from those who say any new border infrastructure will irreparably harm the pristine West Texas park. “We are securing this park to protect its legacy,” CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott said in a statement Thursday. “Keeping it safe, secure, and pristine so American families can enjoy the beauty of our country, free from fear of cartel activity, for generations to come.” The park draws more than 500,000 visitors per year, many of whom flock to campgrounds, hiking trails and a scenic hot spring pool that all lie right along the Rio Grande in areas with no physical border security infrastructure.

CBP has maintained it’s not planning to build a 30-foot steel border wall in the national park or nearby Big Bend Ranch State Park – though the agency is pursuing a 175-mile-long, 30-foot-tall steel wall in the broader Big Bend region from Hudspeth to Presidio counties. More than $3 billion in federal contracts have been awarded for that project. CBP said in early August “early construction activities” have begun on the project and that wall panels would begin being installed “in the coming weeks.” In his statement, Scott indicated the agency would not back down from its infrastructure plan for the national park, which calls for more than 200 miles of “patrol road” construction and improvements in and around the park, along with 17 miles of smaller steel vehicle barriers and surveillance technology. “These improvements will help our agents detect illegal crossings, respond faster, and assist visitors in danger,” Scott said. “As we strengthen the border across the Southwest, we will not leave Big Bend as an opening for cartels to exploit by shifting their routes and tactics.”

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State Stories

Greg Abbott app offers rewards for Texas campaign activities

If you’re supporting Gov. Greg Abbott’s campaign and turning out conservative voters to the polls this November, you can now hope for more than just your candidate getting elected — you may be the big winner of a Dyson Airwrap or a whole brisket. Abbott’s team launched the Abbott Impact app, which gives supporters tools to help turn out conservative voters. Users can earn points by completing campaign activities, including messaging neighbors, knocking on doors and phone banking, then redeem those points for rewards.

Among the lower-point prizes is a Yeti Rambler emblazoned with the GOP catchphrase “Unity Drives Victory.” At the higher end, supporters can redeem points for a Traeger pellet grill and smoker. The Republican-repackaged Airwrap goes for 40,000 points, compared with its market value of roughly $650 (per the official Dyson website). The brisket, sausage and sauce can be taken home for 25,000 points; the market price varies depending on your choice of butcher. “Since the Abbott Impact App launch, the Governor’s campaign has rewarded volunteers who put in the work, earn points, and encourage their friends and neighbors to vote,” said Abbott’s press secretary Eduardo Leal. “Gov. Abbott is competing for every single vote, and this app gives Republican volunteers and activists another tool to reach voters, organize their communities, and turn out at the polls.” The app is available on the App Store and Google Play. The governor plugged the app on X earlier this week, calling on his followers to “get rewarded for supporting Texas.”

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Future of surrogacy in Texas could be at stake amid complex legal battle over ‘Baby Gabriel’

The birth of a baby boy at the center of a rare, multistate surrogacy dispute has put Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the middle of a legal fight over parental rights, medical decisions and the state’s authority to intervene. The level of media attention on the case, along with a recent Republican grassroots push to change surrogacy laws in Texas, has some worried this case could influence lawmakers in next year’s legislative session. The case involves McKenna West, a surrogate from Alaska, and intended parents Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed. Their child, referred to publicly as “Gabriel,” was diagnosed in the 20th week of pregnancy with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, or HLHS, a serious congenital heart defect where the left side of the heart does not form correctly. It requires urgent surgery.

West alleges that the intended parents wanted to terminate the pregnancy, which was allowed in the contract, but she did not want to. In an interview on the Megyn Kelly Show, West said she felt “trapped” by the contract and wanted to protect the unborn child. She flew to Texas to try and gain parental rights of the child and get him the necessary medical care he needed to live. Paxton intervened in the Dallas County case Monday, asking a judge to ensure the child received medically indicated, life-saving treatment after birth and could not be removed from Texas while questions over his care remained unresolved. The child was born Wednesday, according to West. According to Paxton’s legal brief, West and the intended parents entered into a gestational surrogacy agreement. After the baby’s diagnosis, West said the intended parents wanted the pregnancy terminated. Paxton’s brief describes its account of the circumstances as “assumed facts” for purposes of its legal arguments. The state alleged the intended parents planned to refuse consent for surgery after birth or potentially transport the child to California.

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Judge who appointed Daniel Wong as Fort Bend County judge denies request to vacate that decision

Four months after a visiting Republican judge from Galveston County appointed Daniel Wong as Fort Bend County’s chief executive — while Wong seeks that role on a more permanent basis in the upcoming November election — the judge this week denied a request to have the April appointment vacated. The decision solidified the likelihood that Wong, a Republican who is facing Democratic Fort Bend County Commissioner Dexter McCoy in the county judge race, will continue to serve in that position through the election. The request to vacate Wong’s appointment was made last month by Fort Bend resident Sarah Roberts, who last September filed a civil lawsuit against then-county judge KP George, alleging he was incompetent to hold office and violated her First Amendment rights during a commissioners court meeting.

As part of that case, district court Judge Jeth Jones suspended George and appointed Wong to serve as county judge on an interim basis — after George was convicted of felony money laundering in a criminal case. After Roberts dismissed her lawsuit against George on June 17, she asked Jones to invalidate his appointment of Wong as of that date. Jones on Monday denied that request, which had been challenged by Wong. Wong, a former Sugar Land city council member, also is contesting a lawsuit filed by Fort Bend County Attorney Bridgette Smith-Lawson. The twice-elected Democratic attorney is challenging Wong's authority to continue serving as the appointed county judge after the Roberts case was dismissed, also arguing that decisions made by a commissioners court with Wong presiding over it could be challenged. "The legal challenges are confusing to those of us who've watched politics for lifetimes," University of Houston political science lecturer Nancy Sims said. "It doesn't appear that the court's actions presented a real solution on whether County Judge Wong is officially still county judge or not."

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Texas Gov. Abbott proposes limiting laptops and tablets in school classrooms

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is proposing to limit the use of laptops, tablets, and other electronic devices in classrooms, emphasizing a return to traditional learning methods like books, paper, and handwriting. Abbott held a roundtable with parents and educators in Corpus Christi on Thursday, building on what he described as the success of last year's cell phone ban in schools. Texas Gov. Abbott proposes limiting laptops and tablets in school classrooms "Educators report that class participation and grades are up, and bullying and cyberbullying have gone down," Abbott said. Abbott says technology should serve a specific purpose in the classroom rather than act as a time-filler.

"Technology should only be used for specific lessons and specific assessments, not as a substitute for teachers or other proven methods of learning," Abbott said. Texas is currently ranked 34th in the nation for education. Abbott says the path to improvement starts with one key element. "The most important element of delivering a good quality education is a great teacher in a classroom," Abbott said. Parents at Thursday's roundtable said they notice a difference when their children engage with teachers rather than screens. "They're not telling me about the games they played on their computers. They're telling me about the times that their teachers sat down and worked with them on the one-on-one time they get with their educator," a parent said. The Texas Classroom Commission will work with educators, parents, and students to determine how much screen time is appropriate for each grade level, with the goal of improving Texas's national education ranking.

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ICE detained Adventist pastor at Houston airport, church says he has legal work authorization

A Seventh-day Adventist pastor was detained by immigration agents last week at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. Pastor Luis Morales Pérez leads four Adventist congregations in the Houston area and holds “valid employment authorization,” the Texas Conference of Seventh-day Adventists said in a statement. The Department of Homeland Security told RNS that Morales was detained August 6 at the airport. “His commitment to our mission and the families he serves is unwavering,” the Texas Adventists wrote, asking for people “to join us in prayer for Pastor Morales and his family that the situation may be resolved quickly.”

Morales, a 50-year-old father of two, according to Telemundo Houston, is at least the third Texas pastor detained by immigration agents at an airport in the last month. The arrests come as the Trump administration has begun detaining people with expired visas at airports, including those who have work permits and pending applications — a group that was not previously targeted for detention. In July, Assemblies of God Pastors Nepthali Zozaya Saucedo and Cinthia Sarai Cardona Otero, assistant pastors at Comunidad Cristiana Emanuel in Edinburg, Texas, were detained in the airport and released two days later. The two said that they were threatened with separation from their children and deportation to separate third countries if they did not sign voluntary departure papers. In a statement to RNS, a DHS spokesperson said that Morales “legally entered the United States on January 10, 2020, with permission to remain until July 9, 2020. In violation of our nation’s laws, Morales Perez overstayed his welcome. He will receive full due process and remain in ICE custody pending the outcome of his removal proceedings.”

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Some Austin ISD families lose in-school help for finding food, counseling, tutoring

For lunch, Michelle Covington sits with a group of middle schoolers eating cafeteria food and talking through challenges at home or school. Later that day, she may help a student process the loss of a loved one. Some Austin families will start the new school year without the resource that Covington provides. As a program manager of 27 years for Communities in Schools (CIS), she has helped families find food and provided mental health counseling, academic support and more from inside their children’s schools. CIS is a national nonprofit that partners with schools to provide in-school support for families, helping keep students in school. It will serve 44 Austin Independent School District campuses during the 2026-27 school year, AISD said, down from 55 last school year.

The reduction is part of Austin ISD’s effort to close a roughly $180 million budget deficit. The district’s budget, approved in June, included about $200 million in reductions, including staffing cuts, campus consolidations and reductions to district-supported programs. District officials said declining enrollment, lower-than-expected property tax revenue and inadequate state funding have contributed to the financial challenges. The district’s contract with CIS was reduced from $2.2 million last school year to $1.2 million for the upcoming year, said Mary Ann Maxwell, Austin ISD’s assistant superintendent of academics. That initial amount was estimated to fund CIS at about 30 campuses. Fundraising efforts and campus-level budgets brought enough funding to maintain CIS services at some additional campuses, bringing the total to 44 as of the time of publication, AISD said. Maxwell said the district is currently considering whether it can fund CIS at one or two more campuses. As of the time of publication, CIS provided KXAN with a list of 13 Austin ISD campuses that will not have the program this school year. The school district did not respond to requests to clarify how those figures align with the totals AISD is reporting.

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UNT slashes projected $45 million deficit by half after cost-cutting

The University of North Texas has trimmed its projected $45 million budget deficit to approximately $19 million, President Harrison Keller said at a Board of Regents meeting Thursday. Since February, the university has instituted cost-saving measures to address the projected shortfall, which is driven by a steep decline in international enrollment and reduced state funding. By May, the university had reduced the projected deficit to $35 million. The fiscal year runs until the end of August. The university has phased out over 70 programs with low enrollment, including linguistics, ethnic and gender studies and arts degrees and certificates. It also offered buyouts to 40 faculty members, which officials said could save the school an estimated $4.7 million.

Keller also announced plans to move some courses to a hybrid learning model, combining online lectures and small in-person sections, and to realign smaller academic departments with larger divisions or schools. The university also slowed hiring and controlled expenditures in personnel, maintenance and operations. The sweeping changes have altered academic life at the Denton campus, drawing pushback from some professors. But on Thursday, Keller described the measures as a success, saying the university was “leaner” and backed by “powerful momentum” as it entered the school year. “Even as we pulled back in some areas, we also made strategic investments in other areas that are important for our future,” Keller said. He named support for student retention, transfer partnerships, graduate students and incentives for top-performing researchers. Keller, who took the helm in August 2024, has long underscored the need to develop new revenue streams by improving student retention and boosting enrollment. In the past year, for example, UNT announced new partnerships with community colleges to bring in more transfer students.

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In this flood-ravaged South Texas town, residents are rebuilding while waiting for federal aid

For decades, wide skies, fresh air and scattered livestock sightings have greeted visitors to Crystal City, a South Texas town of around 6,000 where no one is a stranger. Today, furniture, tires and other destroyed possessions are piled next to gutted houses. The sound of construction equipment drowns out the area’s usual soundtrack of birds, crickets and cicadas. Empty lots have become makeshift landfills. In mid July, historic flooding hit the town. The Nueces River, which lies just to the east of Crystal City, rose more than 30 feet in some areas, spilling over its banks and sending walls of water rushing through its many creeks and tributaries.

Water covered roads and filled residential streets along the waterways. More than a hundred homes were damaged, shocking a community where few residents have ever experienced flooding. The disaster hit just after Texas marked the one year anniversary of 2025’s catastrophic flooding. More than 130 people died, mostly along the Guadalupe River in the Texas Hill Country. But this year’s storm spread across a wider geographic area, filling even more of the state’s iconic rivers. Crystal City was one of dozens of tiny South Texas towns to be inundated with floodwaters. While camaraderie is rich in this rural community, resources are limited. Crystal City is the seat of Zavala County, which has one of the highest poverty rates in the state. Now, many residents who were already struggling financially, are picking up the pieces as they wait for aid. Also limited in Crystal City: rainfall. Drought isn’t uncommon. These factors all made last month’s flooding even more devastating and surprising.

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Corpus Christi puts industrial water charge on November ballot

Reservoirs have rebounded, but the fight over water isn't over in Corpus Christi. The City Council has ordered a public referendum on a citizen-led petition that would sharply increase the price of water for industrial facilities during drought. The proposal is expected to face a litany of legal challenges before November's election. It would add millions of dollars in fees to the region's largest water users, including ExxonMobil, Occidental Chemical and Valero, the next time reservoir levels are below 30 percent full, like they were for 29 months until early August. Community and environmental groups gathered nearly 13,000 signatures of registered voters to get their proposal on the ballot. "This was a lot of signatures," said Corpus Christi Mayor Pro-tem Kaylynn Paxson at the City Council meeting Tuesday evening.

"This is something that doesn't happen every day. I am very proud and amazed to say that this actually took place." The 6-2 vote to call a special election on the referendum followed years of growing tensions between the public in Corpus Christi and the industrial giants that consume enormous amounts of water. As the region's main reservoirs fell from 30 percent full in March of 2024 to less than eight percent full in May of this year, residents clamored for authorities to curtail water consumption at refineries and chemical plants. Activists began to circulate the petition for the referendum, called the Fair Water Amendment, this year as Corpus Christi came perilously close to running out of water. Dozens of volunteers for a local organization called For the Greater Good along with paid canvassers from Texas Campaign for the Environment spent months gathering signatures. "Something that seemed impossible gave me hope in our democracy," said Miriam Guerra-Rachidy, a member of For the Greater Good, in comments to the City Council on Tuesday. "It gave me hope in believing that the people can make a difference."

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San Antonio pitches 3.9% property tax increase as budget woes worsen

San Antonio’s financial state has only worsened since city leaders first floated the idea of raising taxes earlier this year. Rather than bumping up the tax rate as high as they can, however, city staff is now pitching bigger budget cuts and financial restructuring that will offer more wiggle room if the economy doesn’t turn around in the next few years. Their budget proposal on Thursday called for a 3.9% increase to the city property tax rate — amounting to about $36 more per year for the average San Antonio home with a taxable value of $231,356.

None of the changes are final until debated and approved by City Council in the coming weeks, but the proposed $4.4 billion fiscal year 2027 budget eliminates more than 100 civilian positions, consolidates city departments and defunds several senior nutrition centers, among other cuts. It doesn’t add a single new police patrol officer, but it raises fees the city collects on everything from Alamodome parking to trash carts and missing library books. “What we’re feeling is probably the same thing that other tax entities in Bexar County are feeling,” City Manager Erik Walsh told reporters in a media briefing Wednesday. “So we felt like we needed to be conservative.” As of this week, city leaders say San Antonio’s net taxable value is down about 2.7% — worse than projections issued earlier this year — due to slowed economic growth and new tax exemptions for business property and homeowners.

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National Stories

Trump’s Justice Dept. targets smaller fraud cases

As the White House expands its “war on fraud,” the Justice Department announced criminal charges in recent days against a new symbol of that battle — a food truck in Santa Ana, Calif. Soriano Produce, a weathered white food truck advertising ice cream treats as well as fruits and vegetables, drew the attention of undercover agents at Immigration and Customs Enforcement for what investigators said was a startlingly high number of food stamp transactions for such a small business. The case against the food truck owner, Esmeralda Soriano, is an example of the Trump administration’s push to show that “no fraud is small enough or big enough to look away from,” as Vice President JD Vance said in a speech in April.

The new emphasis on small-dollar fraud comes as the administration has issued pardons and commutations to white-collar convicts, pulled back from pursuing criminal cases against multinational corporations and dropped high-profile charges against wealthy executives. Administration officials say they are pressing to prosecute fraud involving government-funded programs because Democrats have failed to do so at the federal, state and local levels. Current and former federal prosecutors, however, criticize the change as effectively lowering the standards of a Justice Department that for decades prided itself on tackling big, financially complex investigations in executive suites, and leaving the small cases in corner stores and food trucks to local agencies. A food truck “is not the kind of case you would typically see federal law enforcement resources being poured into,” said Jacqueline Kelly, a former federal prosecutor. “And that’s resources being pulled from other areas. We’re not seeing an increase in fraud prosecutions involving public companies, investment frauds and the more traditional Wall Street prosecutions typically pursued by the Justice Department.”

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Meta can keep its data center details private, PSC decides

Social media giant Meta gets to keep records for its projected $50 billion data center secret after state utility regulators overturned a judge’s order to make them public. The Louisiana Public Service Commission voted 3-1 Wednesday to overrule its administrative judge’s order that required Meta to disclose how it calculated publicized job projections and electricity needs for its Hyperion artificial intelligence data center campus in Richland Parish. The vote fell along party lines, with Republicans Jean-Paul Coussan, Mike Francis and Eric Skrmetta reversing the judge’s order and Democrat Davante Lewis in support of it. A second Democrat, Foster Campbell, was absent.

Meta has contracted with Entergy Louisiana to provide electricity for the data center, starting with three natural gas-powered turbines the utility will build for the facility. Meta has since announced it intends to expand Hyperion, which will require another seven power-generating units. But the finer details of the deal have been shrouded under the secrecy of non-disclosure agreements that state and local officials, including Gov. Jeff Landry, have signed. The Alliance for Affordable Energy, the Union of Concern Scientists, the Sierra Club and other organizations want firm figures from Meta before the Public Service Commission gives a green light to Entergy to build all that power infrastructure. The groups asked PSC Administrative Law Judge Melanie Verzwyvelt to subpoena the Meta records, arguing Entergy has never adequately explained how Meta came up with the power-need calculations the utility included in its applications to the commission to build new turbines for Hyperion. After Verzwyvelt approved the subpoena July 10, Meta appealed the ruling to the commission in a last-ditch bid to keep the details under wraps. The company maintains that revealing the information would expose trade secrets. Wednesday’s PSC hearing drew a stream of data center opponents who addressed commissioners before the vote, though Skrmetta, the chairman, limited each to 3 minutes and at times engaged in contentious debate with speakers who called for transparency as audience members applauded.

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Bluesky’s active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app

Decentralized social network Bluesky was one of the bigger beneficiaries of the exodus from Elon Musk’s X in November 2024, following the U.S. elections. But now, nearly two years later, the social network and would-be X competitor is struggling to hold on to its momentum. According to data from digital intelligence provider Similarweb, Bluesky’s mobile app had 10.4 million monthly active users worldwide in June 2026, down 27.2% year-over-year. In addition, mobile daily active users continued to decline, falling 25.6% year-over-year in July to around 3 million.

These declines indicate that even though Bluesky’s app continues to add registered accounts, fewer people are using its mobile app on a regular basis. It also suggests that some of those who joined Bluesky due to their dissatisfaction with X post-elections haven’t stuck around long-term. But the bigger takeaway here is not just that Bluesky’s post-election bump has shrunk. Bluesky’s app has lost more than half its monthly active users from its late-2024 high, which means that its app usage continued to shrink even after the initial post-election surge subsided. (Its quarterly average was around 22.1 million monthly active users in the fourth quarter of 2024, Similarweb’s data indicates, and it declined to 10.7 million in the second quarter of 2026. That’s a decline of around 52%.) While Bluesky’s numbers are down, those who stuck around are committed. Its smaller community remains relatively active, with a stickiness rate (the ratio of daily to monthly active users) of roughly 29% in June, about the same as Threads. For Bluesky’s new CEO, Toni Schneider, these numbers may not be as concerning. The company is not entirely focused on making Bluesky (the app) succeed, but on making it possible for the underlying protocol (AT Proto) to power a growing number of social apps, services, and communities. That’s something that is now taking place, as projects like BlackSky and Eurosky are growing, while some AT Proto apps like the video-focused Skylight have found early traction, too.

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The U.S. surveilled left-leaning groups during immigration crackdown in Minnesota

Homeland Security officials secretly spied on and investigated progressive groups and protesters during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota earlier this year, new court filings show. The motion for discovery, filed in the U.S.’s ongoing federal case against local activists, details two undercover surveillance operations that targeted protesters and dissidents during and following the Homeland Security Department’s January descent into the Twin Cities. Through “Operation Puppet Master” and “Project Whipple Shield,” undercover agents attended community meetings across the capital region, covertly recorded conversations and obtained financial records — all without any basis for suspecting criminal activity. Attorneys who represent the 15 people charged with conspiring to impede or injure federal agents say the usage of such surveillance tactics on those practicing political dissent violated the First Amendment.

DHS officials conducted these operations under a directive President Donald Trump signed last September that tasked that agency and the Justice Department with investigating individuals and groups under an expanded definition of domestic terrorism. Operation Puppet Master was opened four days after federal immigration agents fatally shot Alex Pretti while he filmed officers detaining a woman. Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh used Trump’s September memo to encourage officials and prosecutors to pursue a sweeping set of cases that could generate headlines, The New York Times reported in March. “Go big and go loud,” Singh said at the time. One exhibit features a PowerPoint diagram of 18 organizations — including Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America, Minnesota ICE Watch and labor union chapters like the AFL-CIO — that Homeland Security Investigations alleges were conspiring to interfere with the work of federal immigration agents in the state. DHS reports lay out plans to investigate “funding sources, organizational structures and predicate actions” for those organizations and others, over two dozen filings show, even before agents had identified any specific criminal basis to do so.

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Trump orders Navy to restore older tech on aircraft carriers, costing billions

President Trump has directed the Navy to tear out a complex system for launching jet fighters from its aircraft carriers and instead go back to using steam catapults, a move Navy officials have fought for years and will likely cost billions of dollars. U.S. officials say Trump signed a national security memorandum Thursday directing the change, which would involve removing the electromagnetic catapult system used by the ships in the Gerald R. Ford class of carriers. By doing so, Trump is making good on a promise he made almost 10 years ago to go back to the steam system after hearing a sailor praise it while visiting a ship during his first term. But since Trump said in an interview with Time in 2017 that he told the Navy to go back to “goddamn steam,” top Navy and industry leaders have resisted the move because of the enormous expense to tear out such a complex system that was integral to the design of the Ford class.

The move directs the Navy to redesign the fourth ship in the class—to be named the Doris Miller—and all remaining ships. The first three ships—the Ford, John F. Kennedy and Enterprise—will retain the electromagnetic system. “They’re not nearly as good, too complex,” Trump said last month at a conference in Pennsylvania, referring to the electromagnetic system. The memo includes several other directives aimed at improving submarine maintenance and repair and driving foreign investment into the U.S. shipbuilding sector as the Navy tries to increase the size of its fleet. The order marks Trump’s latest foray into the design and development of military programs. He inserted himself into negotiations for the Air Force One and the F-35 jet fighter programs, directed design changes to the Constellation-class frigate and championed the creation of Trump-class battleships. “This decision will result in carriers that are enabled by battle-tested steam and hydraulic systems that are more resilient and robust than the present, more exquisite, follow-on systems,” the White House said in a statement. “It will also reactivate portions of the maritime industrial base that are easier to scale.”

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Kennedy Center Board votes again to shut main building down — and add Trump's name back

On Thursday, the board of the Kennedy Center voted a second time to shut down most of the Washington, D.C., arts complex for what is being described as a two-year major renovation plan, according to a person briefed on the vote. In March, the center's board approved a full shutdown of the complex for major renovations, but a federal judge later ruled to temporarily block the planned closure, saying that no board members had "sufficient information" to make such a decision. In a test of both the same judge's previous ruling and a related appeals court ruling, the board also voted on Thursday to put President Trump's name back on the center's entry, calling the complex, "Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump."

In this most recent vote, the board elected to close the center's main building, while keeping The REACH, a 2019 addition, open for limited programming and as a memorial to the late President John F. Kennedy. According to the plan approved by the board, the $250 million project includes structural repairs, new marble floors, nearly $12 million in "acoustical improvements" and a plan to temporarily move the famed, eight-foot, bronze bust of Kennedy that sits in the center's main foyer. Under this plan, the main campus would reopen in the summer of 2028. The details of the proposal and the potential name change were first reported by The New York Times. The individual who was briefed on the vote spoke to NPR on the condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The board's decisions will be subject to the federal judge's approval. Thursday's board meeting was held by Zoom, and was not public. In the days leading up to Thursday's vote, Democratic legislators who serve as ex-officio Kennedy Center trustees told the Washington Post that they had still not been given access to any assessments of what such a closure would mean for the long-term wellbeing of the institution. The arts complex is chaired by President Trump, and the majority of its current board are Trump allies appointed by the president.

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Republicans love working with Elizabeth Warren

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is well known for her progressive stances on “Medicare for All” and taxing the rich. But over the past year, the senior Democratic senator from Massachusetts has collaborated with a number of conservative Republicans. Warren partnered with Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina to overwhelmingly pass a bill aimed at increasing the country’s housing supply, authored an op-ed alongside Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno on the future of social security and introduced a measure with Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley to limit stock buybacks by defense contractors. “We have a great work relationship,” Hawley said about Warren. “We’ve done a lot of issues that are really pocketbook issues that are about trying to make sure that working people can afford health care, see their doctor.”

Warren told NOTUS that she is always looking for common ground with lawmakers across the ideological spectrum and has found areas of overlap with some Republicans on cost-of-living and anti-corruption issues. “It’s about lowering costs for working families. I look for places of intersection,” she said. “We may disagree on 99 things, but if I can find one that we agree on and make some progress, I am ready to go.” Hawley, who over the years has worked with Warren on legislation to break up health care conglomerates, rein in pharmacy benefit managers and tackle electricity costs for data centers, told NOTUS that he has long looked to Warren as a partner in the Democratic Party. Moreno, another Republican who has praised President Donald Trump for creating a “new, populist Republican Party,” told NOTUS that his recent work with Warren was born out of a conversation in a budget hearing. Warren approached Moreno and asked to partner on a New York Times opinion piece on a plan for Social Security. Moreno said that work expanded quickly — the two met to try to identify a path forward and assembled a team that is working on a legislative solution before funds are set to run out in 2032.

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Lead Stories

Texas High Court appoints judges in school funding challenge

A special three-judge panel will preside over a school district’s constitutional challenge to Texas’s public education funding system that redistributes property tax revenue, according to a high court order issued Wednesday. The Texas Supreme Court granted a petition from Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) under a state statute ordering the court to convene such a panel upon request when cases involve public school system financing. Midland Independent School District’s suit alleges aspects of the school funding system violate local government bodies’ constitutional authority to levy property taxes. A Travis County Democrat assigned the case will be joined by two Republicans chosen by Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock. Blacklock's choices are Justice Emily Miskel of the Dallas Court of Appeals and District Court Judge Alfonso Charles of Longview. Aurora Martinez Jones of Travis County also on the panel.

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Outside groups are raising money to help down-ballot Texas Democrats

James Talarico may be trouncing Ken Paxton in fundraising for the U.S. Senate race, but the Austin Democrat is an outlier in his own party when it comes to raking in campaign contributions. That's why several independent organizations are stepping in to raise millions ahead of Election Day, to help down-ballot Democrats do the legwork necessary to be competitive even as their GOP adversaries are awash in cash. Former state Sen. Wendy Davis, the Democrats' nominee for governor in 2014, helped launch a political action committee in May, Blueprint Texas, to provide Democrats running for the Legislature and targeted county offices with financial help and expertise. The goal is to replicate or improved on the 12 state House seats it picked up during President Donald Trump's first midterm election, in 2018. As of July 1, the group had pulled in just over $600,000.

Davis said the group does not make direct cash transfers to candidates, but instead tries to fill in logistical gaps such as paying for direct mail pieces, helping with media relations and get-out-the-vote efforts. "If we have a candidate who is trying to get a mailpiece out the door, but they're short of money, we will help make sure that they can," said Davis, who lost the 2014 race to Republican Greg Abbott. "What we want is for us to be running on all engines in each of these districts and counties that we're focusing on. Our hope is to make sure that we fill any holes that those (candidates) have." Davis added that the political landscape for Democrats this year is the best it's been since 2018, when Democratic Senate nominee Beto O'Rourke fell just 2.6 percentage points short of unseating U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. After his Senate bid, O'Rourke formed a grassroots organization called Powered by People that helps register young people and residents new to Texas to vote. So far this cycle, the group has spent more than $2.4 million to solicit and communicate with new voters. "We'll stay in touch with that voter during early voting until we can confirm from their county registrar that they have voted," said O'Rourke, who represented El Paso in Congress for three terms before his Senate run. According to its filing with the Federal Election Commission, Powered by People has received more than $200,000 in contributions through a political organization called Middle Seat that was founded by veterans of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaigns. It also has taken in several hundred contributions that were $10 or less.

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Officials say data centers can boost local economies. In Abilene, they have spurred a housing crisis

Lexi Smith and her family have always had a plan. They wanted to buy land that was big enough to build multiple houses. That way she and her husband could raise their boys next door to their grandparents. “?Our family budgeted and...said yes to less so that we could pay our house off...and then, you know, this kind of stuff happens, and you just don’t have any control,” Smith said. Smith’s family settled down just outside of Abilene, where, before a few years ago, their only neighbors were other ranches. In 2024, construction on one of the biggest data centers in the world started across the street. The Stargate Project is one of dozens of data center campuses in Texas that some local, state and federal officials have promised will revitalize local economies. Some officials across Texas, including in the Austin area, say they will create jobs, ease the burden on taxpayers and transform downtowns. But in Abilene — a city with the most expensive data center project in the U.S. — residents and business owners say that hasn’t happened.

The Smiths do a little bit of everything. Her husband is an accountant but also co-owns an electrical company and sells turf for sports fields. She teaches K-12. Together they own and operate a fireworks stand just down the road. “?I can mark things by fireworks season. Two or three fireworks seasons ago, [things were] completely normal,” Smith said. Since then, she said the construction project has caused traffic, damaged roads, worsened air and water quality and, for her family, created a worse quality of life. “?We got taken, we got robbed,” Smith said. “Because when you see what kind of money they’re throwing into it, you’re like, ‘Holy cow.'” OpenAI, one of the companies behind the project, has said they will invest $500 billion in AI infrastructure over the next four years. That doesn’t mean much to Smith. “[Our] house has no more residential value. If we were ever able to sell, it would be purely commercial,” she said. That’s hard to grapple with after waiting so long and saving so much money to build their home out here. She said she resents the city for ever allowing the data centers to build. “?There’s no amount of money worth it. None,” Smith said. “I can’t tell you enough, there’s no dollar sign worth it.”

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A small Texas law firm backs out of HHS contract after backlash

A small Houston-based law firm announced this week that it had withdrawn itself from consideration for a federal contract, worth up to $150 million, to facilitate legal representation for unaccompanied minors. Last week, President Donald Trump’s administration quietly unveiled its intent to award the firm a contract to provide legal services — quickly prompting backlash from advocates, as Burke Law Group seemed to have little experience in immigration law before the contract was published. This week, both the law firm and the Office of Refugee Resettlement backed away from the no-bid contract. “We were approached by the Trump administration to fill a gap in legal services and we were considering how we might help,” Burke Law Group wrote in a Tuesday statement addressing “false reporting” about its involvement, adding that the firm was “only considering applying for a small portion” of the $150 million contract.

The ORR is the Health and Human Service Department’s branch tasked with facilitating legal services for unaccompanied minors. The agency posted a notice on the Federal Register on Aug. 4 announcing its intent to award Burke Law Group the multimillion-dollar contract after the government’s previous contract expired that week. A spokesperson for ORR confirmed to NOTUS that Burke Law Group had declined to apply for a grant. “On August 4, 2026, a Federal Register Notice was published to share ORR’s intent to enter into a cooperative agreement with Burke Law Group, PLLC, a private law firm with a strong geographic presence in Texas,” the ORR spokesperson wrote in the statement. “Burke Law Group has declined to apply and has not been awarded any grant with ORR. ORR has published notices in the Federal Register in an abundance of transparency regarding a potential grant recipient.” Earlier versions of staff biographies indicated no one at the organization specialized in immigration law when the contract was first announced. Two profiles on the site were later updated to include “immigration and asylum” as specialties after initial reports about the contract were published.

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State Stories

Fermi finally secures Project Matador tenant in a $6.5B deal

Amid other announced data center projects, concerns and controversies, progress is quietly continuing on a massive site in the Texas Panhandle near Amarillo. On Aug. 10, Fermi America announced a binding lease agreement with its first tenant, TensorWave, at the Project Matador site in Carson County. The lease is expected to generate approximately $6.5 billion in total contracted revenue over a 15-year term, excluding any renewal terms, according to a company release. "Power is the critical constraint in AI infrastructure, and the vision and scope of what Fermi is building at Project Matador resonates with our own," said Darrick Horton, CEO and co-founder of TensorWave. "Our customers need hundreds of thousands of next-generation AMD Instinct GPUs in aggregate, on timelines they can count on. Fermi has assembled the power, land, and permits to deliver at that pace, and we are proud to be the first customer at a campus built for the decades ahead."

Fermi said the first phase is to deliver a complete turnkey data center solution with 222 megawatts (MW) beginning in the second half of 2027. "The lease between Fermi's subsidiary Fermi Campus 1 LLC and TensorWave TEX1, LLC, a subsidiary of AI cloud provider TensorWave Inc., covers a facility supported by 222 megawatts (MW) of total facility power following commencement of the final delivery phase," the release states. "Once fully delivered, the facility is being designed to support tens of thousands of next-generation AMD Instinct GPUs for large-scale AI training and inference. The lease carries expansion rights for two additional data centers that when exercised, would bring the partnership to a total of more than 650 MW." TensorWave delivers high-bandwidth, memory-optimized infrastructure that scales with training and inference workloads, backed by funding from investors including Magnetar, AMD Ventures, Maverick Silicon, Nexus Venture Partners, and Western Frontier. Fermi said approximately 6 GW of the planned 17 GW are already permitted for the 7,570-acre campus being built in the Panhandle. "As a result, Fermi is positioned to deliver AI data center capacity in a market where many projects are still raising the capital required to build or being blocked by permitting issues," the release states.

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Permian Basin community seeks fix for radium in its drinking water

Many residents of Imperial, Texas drive long distances to buy bottled water instead of opening up the tap. Pecos County Fresh Water, a county-operated utility, provides drinking water for 800 people in Imperial and the surrounding area. The utility routinely violates safe drinking water standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency for “combined radium” and “gross alpha,” two metrics of radioactivity in water. The culprit is naturally occurring radioactive material in the aquifer. Imperial is one of many rural communities in Texas where deposits of radioactive materials dissolve into the groundwater. But small communities often struggle to pay for costly treatment technology or alternative water sources that could fix the problem. During 2025, 29 public water systems that serve more than 22,000 people in Texas violated maximum levels of radionuclides. That’s down slightly from 2018, when a report by the non-profit Environmental Working Group found that 38 Texas utilities exceeded legal limits for radionuclides.

“It needs to be fixed,” said Pecos County Commissioner Nathan Reeves, who represents Imperial. “It’s a problem that should have been dealt with a long time ago.” Reeves said the county has been rejected for several grants to address the problem, but recently obtained some funding. Pecos County is evaluating alternatives including blending with another water source or drilling a new well. In the meantime, residents rely on purchasing drinking water 30 miles away in Fort Stockton. “[Radiation] is especially an issue for these smaller systems that only have a limited number of wells they can rely on,” said Tasha Stoiber, an environmental chemist and senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group. “It’s a huge inequity and disparity of who is being exposed more.” In August 2025, Pecos County Fresh Water once again notified its customers that the utility had exceeded the EPA’s maximum level for radionuclides in drinking water. “This is not an emergency,” the notice pinned in the Imperial post office and mailed to water customers declared, explaining that some radioactive minerals in water emit alpha radiation. “Some people who drink water containing alpha emitters in excess of the [Maximum Contaminant Limit] over many years may have an increased risk of getting cancer.”

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Baby at center of surrogacy controversy born in North Texas

McKenna West, a surrogate from Alaska, has given birth to the baby who’s been at the center of a multistate controversy over parental rights and abortion. Get coverage about the businesses, industries and developments shaping North Texas. West gave birth Wednesday morning in the Dallas area, attorney Lincoln Wilson told The Dallas Morning News. West’s legal team has referred to the baby as “Baby Gabriel.” An attorney for the intended parents, Lee Budner, confirmed in a written statement to The News that the baby was born Wednesday morning and is currently undergoing medical care.

“Our clients’ only focus at this time is ensuring that their baby receives the medical care that he vitally needs and that they, as his parents, are able to spend every precious moment they can with him,” Budner wrote. The baby has been part of a controversy that’s made national headlines. West was carrying the baby under a surrogacy contract that she signed with a California couple. The surrogacy contract, according to Wilson and a recorded interview that West participated in for The Megyn Kelly Show, allowed the intended parents to choose to terminate the pregnancy in the case of fetal anomalies. When West was about 20 weeks pregnant, the fetus she was carrying was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, which is a severe congenital heart condition. The intended parents then decided they wanted to terminate the pregnancy. West, however, refused to undergo an abortion. She later traveled to Texas, seeking a hospital with expertise in caring for infants with this congenital condition. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has waded into the legal case in Dallas County court. Paxton’s office announced that it obtained an emergency court order requiring two Dallas hospitals — UT Southwestern Medical Center and Children’s Medical Center of Dallas — to provide life-saving care to the baby.

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Randy Galloway quits Dallas Express over distorted views on legacy media

Veteran sports columnist Randy Galloway quit the Dallas Express Sports Network (DXSN) after only a handful of podcast appearances, saying the outlet distorted his views on legacy media and made him feel “used.” In February, the Dallas Express established a partnership with the Dallas Sports Network, a digital sports media platform founded by Chris Yates, an award-winning former FOX 4 News sportscaster. The launch announcement for DXSN touted a number of prominent writers, producers, and sports personalities, including Galloway, whose decades-long career in sports media at the Dallas Morning News, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and ESPN Radio’s Dallas affiliate earned him an induction into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 2020. “You heard that right,” Dallas Express CEO Chris Putnam wrote on X on February 22. “Randy Bleeping Galloway.”

Galloway appeared to be a major get for the right-wing Dallas Express, which fashions itself as an ascendant alternative to the “dying” legacy media. But within a matter of months, Galloway’s name was absent from the list of contributors. I called him to find out why. “I liked the guys I was working with,” Galloway said. “But one screwup pissed me off.” His departure stemmed from his objections to a headline on one of his podcast segments: “Randy Galloway: Old Media is DEAD—Social Media is Taking Over.” Yates promoted the clip in a post on X, stating: “That’s why he’s teamed up with us at Dallas Express Sports Network. He’s a great addition to our team.” But Galloway said the headline distorted his point. “My point was that the golden days are dead,” Galloway said. “But newspapers aren’t.” Galloway also recalled making positive statements about contemporary local newspapers that were absent from the published segment. When he raised the issue with Yates, Galloway said, he was told an unidentified editor was responsible. DXSN never published Galloway’s full remarks. He quit soon afterward. Galloway was not denying the newspaper industry’s well-documented decline. Massive changes in the economics of newspaper publishing, the rise of digital media, and corporate consolidation have dramatically reshaped journalism, contributing to the closure of thousands of local papers since 2005. Sustained political attacks and polarization have meanwhile helped drive public trust in the media to historic lows.

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Water produced at South Padre Island RGV Desal plant to be privately owned

RGV Desal has pitched itself as a potential solution to the Rio Grande Valley’s longstanding water woes. This new resource, however, will be privately owned. Cities and water districts throughout the region could eventually depend on the water produced at the $1 billion seawater desalination plant — water that will belong to a for-profit company. The desalination plant to be located on South Padre Island is a joint venture between US Desal and Israeli company IDE Technologies. Both will own the water produced, but the infrastructure for distribution will be a public affair. Additionally, water will be sold at a set price at the plant’s “fenceline” but the consumer’s distance from the plant will impact total cost.

The company’s preferred customers will be cities and water districts, as well as industrial companies, according to US Desal Board Director Doug Allison. RGV Desal’s leadership board is composed of both US Desal and IDE Technologies board members. IDE Technologies will oversee construction with additional US Desal oversight, and are signed onto a 20- to 30-year contract, according to Allison. RGV Desal will own the completed plant as well as the water it produces, and will control pricing, contracts, and potential expansion. RGV Desal is a for-profit enterprise. It is privately financed with a limited number of investors, none of which are from the Valley, according to Allison. Some investors are within the state. While at this time Allison could not disclose the identity or quantity of investors, he did say they range from smaller investors to private equity groups. Allison said “lots of people” stand to profit if the plant proves successful, and cited the local communities as an example. He specified that they will benefit by “not running out of water.”

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G. Brint Ryan completes buyout of Mr Gatti's

G. Brint Ryan's family office has completed its acquisition of the remaining ownership interest in Texas-born pizza and entertainment chain Mr Gatti's Pizza. Dallas-based OneRyan Global LLC announced the closing of the deal Aug. 6. CEO Jim Phillips, who has led Fort Worth-based Mr. Gatti's since 2015, will also retire at an unspecified date, according to the announcement. Phillips will remain CEO during the transition to OneRyan's ownership, and the company said it will announce his successor at a later date. The latest transaction follows OneRyan's acquisition of a controlling stake in Mr. Gatti's in January. As of April, Mr Gatti's reported having 234 open and upcoming locations, including those inside Walmart stores.

Though born in Austin in 1969, Mr Gatti's relocated its headquarters to Fort Worth in 2015. The chain moved after being acquired by Sovrano LLC, an affiliate of Fort Worth-based FundCorp Inc. Mr Gatti's evokes nostalgic memories for many Gen Xers and millennials who grew up in Texas, especially a catchy jingle that was ubiquitous on radio and television ads. During the last decade, Phillips guided the chain through turbulent times as it went through financial challenges. The chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2019 and re-emerged the following year while embarking on a plan to expand through franchise sales. The company now has more than 200 locations open or in development across Texas and the southeastern United States. During Phillips' tenure, Mr Gatti's expanded its restaurant footprint by 50% and nearly doubled revenue over the past five years, according to the announcement.

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Appeals court revives key parts of Texas voter suppression law found to harm voters with disabilities

A federal appeals court Wednesday overturned a ruling that had blocked key parts of Texas’ sweeping voter suppression law, allowing those provisions to remain in effect despite a lower court’s finding that they violated federal protections for voters with disabilities. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the lower court’s decision in full, delivering another win for anti-voting Texas Republicans in the yearslong legal fight over Senate Bill 1 (SB 1). The ruling affects several restrictions on mail-in voting and voter assistance. Among them are rules requiring some voters to provide an identification number that matches state records, requirements for people who help voters cast ballots and limits on paid voter assistance and canvassing.

The opinion opened with an unusual and extraordinary attack on mail-in voting, portraying the practice itself as a threat to democracy. “It has long been established that mail-in ballots are prone to fraud,” Judge Andrew Oldham wrote. “That is why voting by mail jeopardizes election integrity and democracy itself.” The sweeping claim goes well beyond what the evidence shows. Fraud involving mail-in ballots is exceedingly rare, and research has not found evidence that mail-in voting produces widespread voter fraud as anti-voting activists have suggested over the years. Election officials also use safeguards including ballot tracking and other security measures to detect improper ballots. Oldham cited a 2014 federal district court opinion stating that mail-in ballots are “not secure,” a decision the Fifth Circuit later affirmed in relevant part. But his broader assertion that mail-in voting itself jeopardizes democracy was the court’s characterization, not a finding that widespread mail-ballot fraud had occurred. A federal district court blocked nine provisions of SB 1 in March 2025 after finding that they violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, two federal laws that protect people with disabilities from discrimination.

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HUD wants to overhaul a homelessness response program. North Texas communities are worried.

Tanisha Thomas isn’t usually one to ask for help. But when she dialed 2-1-1, Texas’ free hotline that connects people to local resources, three and a half years ago, she was at rock bottom. Thomas and her 1-year-old son were experiencing homelessness after she'd lost her job, and they'd worn out their welcome with friends and family. With no car, her phone shut off, and her three oldest children staying with their dad back home in Iowa, she arrived at the door of Center for Transforming Live’s historic old lodge in Fort Worth with a weight on her shoulders and nowhere else to go. That's when the shelter's intake coordinator, Miss Sydney, gave Thomas exactly what she needed.

"I just remember when I got to the room, I was looking out the window and I started crying and she came and gave me a hug and... I guess you just, you don't think about hugs and stuff like that at a time like that," she said. "But I really needed, I really just needed to feel, you know human, like somebody loved me or somebody cared." The nonprofit later helped Thomas and her son move into an apartment — where she received counseling, childcare, financial coaching and 18 months of rental assistance to get back on her feet. But now, Thomas' program, and others like it across the country, are on the chopping block as the Trump administration threatens to overhaul the federal homeless aid program that fuel them. Last Friday, a federal judge in Rhode Island struck down a second attempt by the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s to significantly restructure the Continuum of Care program. The ruling blocked changes that critics said would have put more than 5,000 Texans at risk for re-entering homelessness next year.

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Texas hemp-derived THC ban hits businesses as Senate candidates clash over policy

Nearly two weeks after Texas enacted a statewide ban on most hemp-derived THC products, local businesses say they are feeling the financial impact while political candidates continue to debate the policy’s effects ahead of the state’s U.S. Senate race. Cristina Da Costa, owner of Vida Botanicals in El Paso, said the new law forced her to remove and dispose of thousands of dollars’ worth of inventory. “I ended up having to dispose of thousands of dollars’ worth of products,” Da Costa said. “It’s impacted my business that, obviously, a certain section of the population here in El Paso no longer comes to buy my products.”

The ban, which took effect this month, prohibits the sale of numerous hemp-derived THC products that had previously been available in Texas stores. Supporters of the law argue it is necessary to protect consumers from potentially dangerous products, while opponents say it limits access to products many Texans use for wellness purposes and could hurt small businesses. Da Costa said many of her customers have expressed frustration with the state’s decision. “People are frustrated that Texas has taken this stance,” she said. “Millennials, Gen Zers are not drinking. They are doing other things that they feel are healthier for their bodies, which includes the edibles.” The issue has also become a point of debate in Texas politics. James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, criticized the ban and said voters across the political spectrum have opposed the move. “People are outraged across the state, and it’s not any one political party,” Talarico said. “It’s people across the spectrum.”

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City leaders hope a Democratic wave election will protect Pre-K 4 SA from future cuts

Democratic strategists believe their party’s enthusiasm is at a high headed into the November midterm election, and some San Antonio city leaders want to harness it to protect a signature anti-poverty initiative from potential spending cuts in the future. Pre-K 4 SA, the landmark tuition-free early childhood education program started under-then Mayor Julián Castro, is about to see its first class of enrollees graduate from high school next year. While most policymakers consider the program an unmitigated success for a city trying to improve its low educational attainment rates, the one-eighth-cent sales tax underwriting requires periodic reauthorization from voters, including another election when the current funding expires in 2029.

This week, San Antonio’s City Council will vote on a proposal to bump that decision up by several years to the Nov. 3 midterm — when they could have the wind at their backs with Democrats already revved up about the partisan races on the same ballot. “All signs are pointing toward major Democratic turnout in November with the U.S. Senate race … so this would be the time to do it,” said San Antonio political consultant Mohammad Rassool, referring to the high-profile race between Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico. Voters will also be weighing in on a governor’s race, a Bexar County Judge race, and a number of targeted congressional and state legislative contests. “The political environment is ripe,” said San Antonio political consultant Bert Santibañez, who has worked on citywide ballot initiatives in the past. “Childhood education issues are very Democratic-centric.” This week a proposal to reauthorize the program was added to Thursday’s council agenda with the support of four members. It would extend the funding for an unprecedented 20 years before it needs another public vote — something Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2) said would allow for more “thoughtful long-term planning” on a program that already proved its popularity when voters re-upped it in 2020.

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Man arrested after profanity at last week’s Tarrant commissioners meeting

Last week, he used profanity in a public government meeting. On Wednesday morning, he was in jail. Fort Worth police arrested Efrin “EJ” Carrion around 3 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 12, on a warrant from Tarrant County, his friend Alexander Montalvo said. Carrion is a fixture at most city and county public meetings and hosts the 817 Podcast. Montalvo and Carrion were out late celebrating after Fort Worth City Council began the process to restrict data centers, a decision the pair among many others have been pushing for.

Around 2:15 a.m. Wednesday, Carrion was on the phone with Montalvo while driving home when he said there were police pulling him over. The next time Montalvo heard from his friend, Carrion was in police custody under a warrant from Tarrant County. On Aug. 4, Carrion was kicked out of the Tarrant County Commissioners Court meeting after he twice used a profane word during his minute of public comment. He said the Republicans’ extremism and the Republican court members themselves were baloney, in choice terms. The Tarrant County decorum policy prohibits personal attacks and impertinent, profane, obscene or slanderous remarks. Promptly after, County Judge Tim O’Hare told sheriff’s deputies to remove Carrion from the meeting, but he was already leaving. On his way out, Carrion called O’Hare a “small man” and “crybaby.” Carrion was the first of five people kicked out of the court that day, including the arrest of former Texas Rep. Lon Burnam for picking up the microphone in support of another man who was kicked out for doing the same.

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National Stories

They’re making record profits, but oil companies still won’t ‘drill, baby, drill’

Over the last two weeks, oil companies have announced eye-popping profits from the spring quarter. Exxon Mobil pulled in $14.5 billion. Chevron landed $12 billion, its highest quarterly profit on record. Shell posted $9.8 billion — more than twice its earnings from the same time last year. These profits are largely a product of supply constraints brought on by the war in the Middle East. With the Strait of Hormuz effectively blockaded, oil suppliers have rerouted shipments over land and through pipelines. The resulting supply shortages, constrained refining capacity, and higher transportation costs have driven up oil and gasoline prices, delivering windfall profits for producers. But companies aren’t using those profits to drill lots of new wells or explore untapped oil fields. Instead, they’re pocketing the cash and paying their shareholders, experts say.

What was once an industry defined by the “drill, baby, drill” ethos is now defined by another term: “capital discipline.” It’s a phenomenon in which rampant drilling and production growth has given way to tightened belts and bigger payouts to investors. Oil executives expected a weak financial year in 2026 due to a supply glut, but the closure of the Strait of Hormuz constrained oil production and allowed companies to charge top dollar for use of their refineries outside the Middle East. “While we didn’t anticipate the current situation, we were prepared for it,” Exxon CEO Darren Woods said in a July call with analysts, according to the Wall Street Journal. “Despite the temporary loss of approximately 10 percent of our upstream production, we delivered exceptional financial results.” Chevron executives offered a similar assessment. In July, Chief Financial Officer Eimear Bonner told Bloomberg that the company didn’t adjust their production as prices rose. “We did not change any of our plan,” she said.

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ICE wants to give agents gloves that deliver electric shocks

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers could soon be provided gloves that administer painful electric shocks, the latest in a series of costly purchases to bolster President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort. The Department of Homeland Security posted a notice about the purchase on Monday in the Acquisition Planning Forecast System, which provides alerts on contracts that the agency intends to issue in the coming days. The contract for the gloves, which the agency says would be used as a “distraction and de-escalation device,” would be issued to Enforcement Removal Operations and Homeland Security Investigations officers. The contract could be awarded as early as Friday and is estimated to cost anywhere from $10 million to $20 million. It lists a completion date of March 31, 2027.

Although the notice of a potential contract does not name a company, the gloves in question — CTG-5 G.L.O.V.E., or Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter — are made by Compliant Technologies, a Kentucky-based company that has sold its gloves to various law enforcement agencies, according to its website. The plan to purchase the gloves was first reported by The Associated Press. Jeff Niklaus, the founder and CEO of Compliant Technologies, said in an email to NOTUS that the organization was “unable to comment” on any potential contract. A spokesperson for DHS told NOTUS that ICE is “constantly assessing the needs of our officers in the field to ensure they have the tools and equipment necessary to safely arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens from our country.” “Every decision is made with careful consideration and appropriately reviewed to ensure that any technology ICE utilizes is consistent with all applicable law enforcement policies and standards,” the spokesperson said, pointing to the agency’s use of force policy.

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The backlash to social media bans has already begun

Banning social media for minors has, well, gone viral. In less than a year, the world has witnessed a rapid-fire succession of political proposals to restrict youth access to social media: from the left-wing prime minister of Spain to the right-wing prime minister of Greece, the Australian Labor Party leader and a Texan Republican senator, and on to the national agendas of Brazil, Rwanda and, most recently, Vietnam. Creating new government limits to keep young people off digital platforms is increasingly seen as good politics, a popular piece of legislation that touts the protection of kids while tapping into bubbling anger at Big Tech platforms. Three decades into the digital era, policymakers around the world are converging on the idea that much of the time we spend online is not good for us — and that children are the most vulnerable.

Yet eight months since Australia’s groundbreaking under-16 social media ban triggered a surge of similar legislation around the world, doubts are already spreading about both the efficacy and unintended side effects of a blanket ban. The rash of new laws and the subsequent backlash is prompting people to ask if social media bans are going too far, too fast — and whether there may be a smarter way to protect kids online than forcing them off. Lorena Giuberti Coutinho, an online safety commissioner for Brazil’s independent data protection authority, told POLITICO that social media bans increasingly appear “quite hard to impose,” and questioned whether global momentum for that approach would persist. “The incentives for teenagers to continue on social media are quite strong because this is where they communicate,” said Coutinho. Brazilian lawmakers passed a law last year that allows teenagers to keep using social media but legally requires platforms to anticipate and reduce potential harm to children. For under-16s, the law also bans targeted advertising and “loot boxes” commonly offered as online gaming rewards, while requiring the availability of parental-control tools.

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AI data center developer 5C secures half a billion dollars in new financing

AI data center developer 5C Group has secured $605 million in debt financing to expand its projects across North America. The financing, led by Brookfield Asset Management, follows the raise of $835m in equity and debt capital that 5C raised in 2025. 5C says it builds “AI factories,” defined as large-scale, high-performance data center campuses for “dense and complex AI workloads.” The developer said the funding would allow it to accelerate the development of its portfolio of priority sites, fund the acquisition and construction of a campus in Memphis, Tennessee, and support the development of its campuses in Phoenix, Arizona, and Ohio.

“This financing reflects strong confidence in 5C's strategy and our ability to execute at scale," said Jonathan Ahdoot, CEO of 5C. "It strengthens our ability to build next-generation AI infrastructure while investing for the long term in communities." Hamish Kidd, managing partner, Investments – Infrastructure at Brookfield Asset Management, added: "We are pleased to expand our partnership with 5C and support the continued growth of its AI infrastructure platform. 5C combines strong execution capabilities with a long-term approach to developing critical digital infrastructure, and we believe its North American campuses are well positioned to support growing demand for advanced AI capacity." Launched in 2023, 5C describes itself as one of North America’s largest AI digital infrastructure providers. The company says it has more than 1.5GW of capacity in the pipeline. 5C was acquired by Hypertec Cloud last year.

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Farrah Hassen: The fight against Flock cameras is just the beginning

(OtherWords columnist Farrah Hassen, J.D., is a writer, policy analyst, and educator. ) Government surveillance isn’t new, but new wide-ranging technologies that can detect our faces and track our movements are making it more ubiquitous. While the tools have changed, the purpose remains the same: to chill independent thought, free speech, and dissent, bringing our country closer to 1984. Millions of Americans are being watched as the U.S. ramps up mass surveillance with help from AI, data brokers, and partnerships with private tech companies. Immigrants, people seeking reproductive health care, and activists are among the most intensely monitored, but tech like Flock cameras has brought the issue into communities across the country. According to the ACLU, police departments have increasingly deployed automated license plate readers (ALPRs) powered by AI to track drivers “without a warrant, probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.” And they’re doing this with little to no oversight or regulation.

Flock Safety is one of the largest ALPR vendors in the U.S. Their solar-powered, teardrop-shaped cameras capture images of all passing vehicles, storing the car’s make, model, and other identifying features. Any law enforcement agency with a Flock contract can access the company’s nationwide database without a warrant. Flock cameras also track people. Their “FreeForm search” feature has allowed police departments to search the database using phrases like “male with tattoos” and “person on skateboard,” according to data reviewed by 404 Media. DeFlock, an open-source project that maps license plate readers, has identified over 128,000 ALPRs in the U.S. Even my small town of around 20,000 people in Southern California has at least 35 ALPRs, most of them Flock cameras. No independent research has shown that ALPRs can reduce crime. But there’s mounting evidence of the technology’s alarmingly high error rate. An analysis by the Roseville, California police department found that 71 percent of Flock’s alerts to the Roseville police incorrectly flagged vehicles as stolen or used in a felony.

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Mamdani’s honeymoon with New York is over

Zohran Mamdani was riding high as the mayor of New York City earlier this summer, after fulfilling a campaign pledge to put a new tax on the wealthy, flexing his political might with successful endorsements of three progressive congressional candidates and handing the victorious New York Knicks the keys to the city. Now, after a streak of good fortune, Mamdani is facing growing discontent from New Yorkers upset with his anti-Israel rhetoric and slights against the business community. Efforts to fulfill some of his marquee campaign pledges have stumbled, including the messy launch of the pied-à-terre tax. His relationship with the City Council is fraying. The latest setback for the mayor came this week when a judge swiftly paused a new tax on luxury second homes after a group of residents, including one of Mamdani’s own supporters, filed a lawsuit accusing the city of botching the rollout.

The city quickly appealed the decision, automatically putting the lower-court order on hold, but not before the judge criticized the administration’s handling of the matter. The city posted an online list of more than 900,000 properties, which included homes that might be subject to the tax but many more that likely won’t. It also sent out notices to 17,000 property owners saying they might be subject to the tax, including some who said they were longtime New Yorkers. At a hearing Monday, Justice Wayne Ozzi questioned why the city needed to post such a broad list. “I’m sure it caused concern amongst people,” the judge said. “Some may be embarrassed, some may be quizzical.” He also said the city had made “missteps,” noting that it could have done more due diligence before sending out the mail notices. President Trump—who earlier in the year had appeared to have struck up an avuncular political friendship with the new mayor—chimed in on Tuesday, saying his administration was looking into legal action the federal government could take to stop the tax. He called it a “dangerous political experiment.”

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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt to leave administration

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will leave the administration at the end of August, one of the most high-profile exits of Trump’s second term, with the midterms less than three months away. Leavitt, 28, was the youngest press secretary in history and the first to give birth while serving in the role. She has been a loyal adviser to President Donald Trump who played a highly visible role in his efforts to remake the presidency and erode trust in traditional media reporting, in part through aggressive moves to control which news outlets have access to the White House. In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, Trump said that Leavitt will leave her role to spend more time with her children. Leavitt gave birth to a girl in May and is also the mother of a 2-year-old boy. Trump said that she would continue to serve as an outside adviser.

“Karoline will now be one of my top outside advisors, and an influential voice within the Republican Party, as we work to defy History, and conclusively win the Midterm Elections,” Trump wrote. Leavitt said in a lengthy social media post that the job has been the “honor and adventure of a lifetime,” but that she had decided to leave the administration after she returned from maternity leave this summer. “The truth is since returning to the White House after the birth of my daughter, I have felt in my heart that I cannot be the best mom my two young children deserve while devoting the constant time, energy, and attention required of the White House Press Secretary — and that is why I have ultimately made the bittersweet decision to depart the White House and embark on a new chapter in my life,” she wrote. The White House has not announced who will succeed Leavitt. One of her deputies, Abigail Jackson, also left this month, adding to staffing complications. During Leavitt’s maternity leave, a rotating cast of Cabinet secretaries filled in for occasional press briefings.

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Lead Stories

Rural Texas conservatives love free markets but not when it comes to data centers

Nikki Meador grew up here in East Texas. She’s a lifelong conservative and a three-time Trump voter unaccustomed to activism. That’s mostly because there’s never been much to protest in rural Leon County. That changed when the nurse practitioner heard data centers were coming. “We are the people who built this community, and we intend to pass it down to our children. We deserve protection, not to be sacrificed for outside investment. Industrialization is irreversible,” said Meador, 43. Meador, wearing a camo green T-shirt bearing the state’s unofficial motto, “Come and take it,” was among several dozen attending the county commissioners’ regular meeting on a recent Monday. “We’re asking you to consider the long-term cost to taxpayers, the environmental and safety risks, the permanent loss of what makes this place home,” she said.

Texas conservatives love free markets, the energy industry, development and small government. But in scores of deep-red Texas communities such as Leon County, longtime Republican voters are setting aside those principles to battle an onslaught of data center projects that pro-business GOP leaders initially welcomed. Opposition to data centers has been notably bipartisan in communities across the country. But the fierce pushback from conservatives in Texas has required no help from liberal groups, and it has been felt everywhere from the state GOP’s new party platform to the campaigns of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott, Republicans who now support varying degrees of increased data center regulation. At the GOP convention in June, the platform included a new plank that would require data centers to disclose and finance infrastructure needs without shifting costs to residents; prioritize the use of reclaimed water; and protect aquifers and the state’s electrical grid. Patrick, a staunch Trump ally, has made AI regulation a priority for the next legislative session in January.

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A.I.-driven chip crunch leads to new rush of lobbying in Washington

The artificial intelligence boom has created a shortage of a critical commodity called memory chips, and a new front for corporate lobbying in Washington. Memory chips store data in items as varied as smartphones and cars, and they are being snapped up by A.I. companies for use in giant data centers. The price of these tiny components has quadrupled over the past year, creating a problem for the White House, which has struggled to convince Americans that it has inflation under control. Now, a wide range of industries, including medical device makers, car manufacturers and consumer electronics companies like Apple, are asking for the government’s help to get the chips they need. The companies and their lobbyists have suggested a mix of solutions, some conventional and others highly interventionist, like federal policy that would push memory chip makers to allocate more chips to their industries, according to interviews with 18 people, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about those discussions.

Some have suggested that selling chips to a broader set of customers should be a condition for receiving money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, a program to fund semiconductor research and manufacturing in the United States, three of those people said. Others have asked the Trump administration to use a Korean War-era law called the Defense Production Act to require allocation to industries outside of A.I., five people said. “We’re in what I would characterize as a 100-year flood on the memory pricing, with exponential increases in memory prices,” Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said last month in an earnings call. In a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in June, a group of trade associations warned of “risks to large parts of the economy” from an “urgent imbalance” in the memory chip market. Memory chips are starting to add to inflation in the United States, said Diane Swonk, the chief economist for KPMG US, an accounting firm. Shoppers are already cutting back on buying video game consoles, and more expensive electronics will probably follow, she said. “The A.I. boom is so strong that it is bidding up costs elsewhere,” Ms. Swonk said.

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DHS wanted to build the largest ICE detention complex in the US in El Paso. Here's how the plan just got killed.

The Trump administration is scrapping plans to convert a nearly 1 million-square-foot Socorro, Texas, warehouse complex into a mega immigration detention center and training center for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, said Tuesday (Aug. 11). The complex was originally envisioned as the largest immigration detention facility in the country. Escobar said in a statement that the Department of Homeland Security has transferred the Socorro warehouses to the General Services Administration, the agency in charge of federal properties. “This means the warehouses will be put up for sale and they will no longer be used by the federal government for detention purposes,” Escobar said.

DHS wanted to build the largest ICE detention complex in the US. Here's how the plan just got killed. The reversal on the planned Socorro detention facility came after months of scrutiny over costs and intense local opposition to its impact on local water supply and first responders. Numerous political and advocacy groups in El Paso opposed the Socorro detention center plan. In Socorro, a community of about 30,000 people southeast of El Paso, much of the opposition came from parishioners in the community’s three Catholic parishes, who had moral objections to mass detention as well as practical concerns about the impact to their relatively small water system. “Human beings should not be treated like sardines. We are not sardines,” El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz said in Spanish to 50 people gathered on July 29 at San Felipe de Jesus parish in Socorro for a presentation on the proposed ICE detention center and other issues flagged by the Lower Valley Water District. The announcement on the Socorro warehouses follows reports that ICE plans to keep the controversial Camp East Montana detention facility open for at least another year, rejecting calls that it close over reported human rights abuses. The facility on Fort Bliss land can house up to 5,000 detainees, the largest immigration detention facility in the country.

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Left-wing surge stalls in Wisconsin as Francesca Hong narrowly loses

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley narrowly won the Democratic nomination for governor in this battleground state, upsetting Democratic socialist Francesca Hong and delivering a significant blow to the party’s insurgent far-left flank. Hong, who led in polls ahead of Tuesday’s primary, had the backing of many progressives and the socialist left. But she lacked support from some of the movement’s top national names. Boosted by a late endorsement from Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, Crowley was declared the winner by the Associated Press. With 98% of the expected vote tallied, he led Hong, 39.8% to 39.4%, the AP reported.

The unexpectedly close race is the latest evidence that an intraparty fight among Democrats is far from over. Last week, Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated Rep. Haley Stevens in a divisive and costly Democratic Senate primary in Michigan that saw progressives claim one of their biggest victories to date. But the tight margins in Wisconsin and Michigan indicate that while the far left appeared to be surging, many voters still believe a more centrist approach is Democrats’ best hope to win competitive general elections. “There are a lot of people who are scared,” Crowley told the Wall Street Journal the day before the primary. “She is a self-proclaimed socialist. There are a lot of people worried about not just this party, but this country moving in that direction.” According to Wisconsin election rules, a candidate can request a recount if trailing by less than 1% of the total votes cast for the office. Crowley will face Tom Tiffany, a Republican congressman from northern Wisconsin, in the general election in November. The open-seat governor’s race in Wisconsin, the state that delivered the narrowest 2024 presidential election result, comes after Evers decided not to seek a third term.

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State Stories

John Cornyn urges DHS consultation on Big Bend border projects

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn is urging Department of Homeland Security officials to engage with local leaders, residents and business owners about border barrier projects in the Big Bend region. Cornyn sent a letter Friday to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, obtained by the American-Statesman, highlighting concerns about federal plans and construction of physical barriers in Big Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park. The longtime Republican senator pointed to concerns from local sheriffs, county judges and landowners that the projects could harm the landscape and local economy and impede access to the Rio Grande.

Cornyn cited federal laws, including a requirement that federal agencies consult local governments, tribes and property owners to minimize impacts on nearby communities. He wrote that such communication has occurred in the past, but “it appears the level of coordination and communication related to proposed construction…has not been as fulsome as in prior years.” He cited an April 16 letter from 14 Texas-Mexico border county judges asking the agency to engage with their communities about the projects. To Cornyn's knowledge, he wrote, the letter never received a response. “The request from local officials and community leaders for coordination and communication appear very reasonable to me,” Cornyn wrote. “I would ask that you or your designees meet with Texas stakeholders directly to discuss their concerns before proceeding with any additional construction of physical barriers in [the region].”

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They’re named in the Epstein files — and they donated to Ken Paxton’s campaign

At least one member of a Texas family whose business once considered buying Jeffrey Epstein’s notorious plane — the “Lolita Express” — donated thousands of dollars to support Ken Paxton’s Senate campaign earlier this year, according to federal campaign finance records. The Jaffe family, known for its real estate holdings and aviation business based in Texas, appears in two batches of Epstein documents released by the Department of Justice: once for trying to buy Epstein’s infamous plane, and once for reportedly associating — according to an anonymous tipster — with scantily clad young women. At least one member of the family also donated upwards of $6,000 to groups supporting Paxton after the Epstein files were released publicly, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission.

The Paxton campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment, including a question about whether it would return the money. A member of the Jaffe family denied any wrongdoing to MS NOW during a phone call Monday. And Doug Jaffe III told MS NOW in an email early Tuesday morning that he had “absolutely nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein or the Epstein files.” “I never met Jeffrey Epstein, had no relationship or association with him, and have no knowledge of the anonymous tip you referenced,” he wrote. But in the Epstein files, Doug Jaffe III is mentioned in a 2020 anonymous tip call to the FBI National Threat Operations Center alleging possible sex and drug trafficking. According to the caller, in the early 2000s, Jaffe invited the caller to spend spring break with him and others at a villa in Mexico owned in part by his aunt. While there, the anonymous caller said they saw a “scandalously” dressed young girl, and estimated her age as roughly 11 or 12. “Doug told ANON the girl was his niece, which she later found out what [sic] a lie,” the FBI log of the call reads.

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Brian Hawthrone: The truth about Flock

(Brian Hawthrone is the Chambers County Sheriff.) Social media is abuzz about Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR), and in turn, it has some of our citizens abuzz. One company in particular, Flock, is getting most of the coverage and most of that coverage is negative. Much of that negative publicity stems from police officers who have been alleged to have misused the data from that system. One recent social media headline from Lincoln Square reads, “More Than 20 Cops Have Been Arrested for Using Flock to Stalk Women.” Any of those allegations that are true are bad. It’s bad for public confidence. It’s bad for that law enforcement agency. It’s bad for the law enforcement profession. But, as with much in our society today, that headline has no context for the average reader. That headline, and similar anti-ALPR posts, seem to run daily giving the perception that such improper, and potentially illegal, behavior is rampant across the country. It is much like the emotion that sparks after a police shooting. The same story runs continuously, giving the impression that a police deadly force encounter happens every minute. It does not.

Across the country every year, there are roughly 50 million police-initiated contacts with the public. Universally accepted statistics show those contacts will result in about 1,000 police shootings each year. That’s 0.002 percent of all police-initiated contacts. Of those 1,000 deadly force encounters, conservatively speaking, 997 of them will be unquestionable and not controversial. The remaining 3 will be questioned, protested, and potentially lead to criminal charges against the officers. Those 3 incidents represent 0.000006 percent of all police-initiated contacts with the public each year. That is 6 millionths of one percent! When we talk about that one bad shooting, that kind of context should give the public a better understanding of those incidents than what they get from mainstream and social media. Law enforcement ALPR cameras only identify that a vehicle was in a specific location at a specific time in a public space where anyone could see it. The camera has no way of knowing where you came from or where you are going. And it doesn’t even know who you are. It only records an image of the license plate and vehicle. Using that image to identify who that vehicle belongs to requires access to the state DMV database. Those two systems are separate, and each requires separate authorization to access its data – an appropriate privacy protection. In government, and especially in law enforcement, we have access to many databases that we use daily to investigate and solve crimes. Through law enforcement databases, we can access the driver’s license, vehicle registration, and criminal history from every state and the federal system.

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Lina Hidalgo blasts Democratic commissioners in scathing Substack post

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said her Democratic colleagues on Commissioners Court have abandoned the principles that swept them into office as part of the 2018 Blue Wave, and called on voters to scrutinize the court's recent decisions in a scathing post made to Substack. The fusillade is the latest in an ongoing dispute between Hidalgo and her fellow Democrats that emerged after the party achieved a 4-1 supermajority on the court in 2023, and has produced bitter arguments between the county judge and two of her colleagues. The animosity shows no signs of abating as Hidalgo, who did not seek reelection this year, enters her final months in office. Hidalgo said a combination of questionable relationships between her Democratic colleagues, their campaign donors and the contracts they approve, coupled with recent raises for county law enforcement and subsequent cuts to programs in other departments, are part of the court's backslide into practices she said were common under the its pre-2019 Republican majority.

"Here we are again but this time, sadly, under the Democratic label," Hidalgo wrote on Substack. "Members of Commissioners Court have campaign coffers so large there are no primaries to speak of. Blatant pay to play with No-Bid contracts awarded to donors. Catastrophic budgetary decisions with little public awareness." Pay to play, or exchanging government contracts for campaign contributions, is illegal. Commissioners have repeatedly said they are not corrupt. The bulk of Hidalgo's criticisms were directed toward Commissioners Adrian Garcia and Lesley Briones, both moderate Democrats who are up for reelection this year and with whom Hidalgo has clashed over funding for law enforcement and other initiatives. None of Hidalgo's fellow Democrats responded to a request for comment. The Harris County Democratic Party also did not respond. The post was the first made to Hidalgo's newly created Substack, which she launched in late July. She first publicly shared the page in a Facebook post Monday. Hidalgo said waning public interest in county government — fueled in part by decisions made by her colleagues that she said disenfranchised residents — prompted her to seek out a platform she could use to directly engage with the public.

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Conservative group attacks Talarico on trans rights with AI-slop LBJ

Last week, the infamous 1964 Lyndon B. Johnson ad, "Daisy" got a Texas-ified remake courtesy of a conservative advocacy group that has been at the forefront of anti-trans policy-making. The group put the ad, which was generated with AI, out on behalf of Texas Attorney General and Republican U.S. Senate nominee Ken Paxton. Though it only ever aired once during the 1964 presidential campaign, "Daisy," is one of the most important ads in the history of American political campaigns. In it, a little girl picks petals off of a daisy while counting to 10. A voiceover interjects, counting down from 10 as the camera zooms into the girl's eye. Then, a flash of nothing before a nuclear explosion fills the screen. It's gutsy, shocking, like something out of an early horror film. But it got the message across: Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee, will risk civilization itself if elected president. In the AI-sloppified remake,instead of the spectre of nuclear war, the ad is playing on a different fear: that Democratic nominee James Talarico will literally perform transgender surgery on your daughter.

"She dreams of growing up, falling in love, becoming a mother," a poor man's facsimile of LBJ says. The scene cuts to an old-school operating room, where the girl is lying in a hospital bed with some sort of breathing device strapped to her face. Then, a masked doctor pops up, pulls down his mask, and reveals himself to be Talarico (if his nametag didn't clue you in). "Keep counting," fake Talarico says eerily. "The trans industry preys on confused children. Irreversible puberty blockers," the fake LBJ voice continues as the camera zooms in on the girl's eye. "Cross-sex hormones. Sex-change surgeries. This November, stop them before it's too late." "VOTE FOR KEN PAXTON ON NOV. 3," the ad concludes. It's unclear where, exactly, this ad will run. APP said it was a $10 million ad buy, but did not respond to Chron's request for comment on whether it will run on TV. But the Virginia-based American Principles Project has been instrumental in pushing anti-trans laws and rhetoric around the country. APP President Terry Schilling has urged Republicans to adopt anti-trans talking points to attack Democrats. Schilling said on X that a "$4.5 billion transgender industry" preys on children and blasted Talarico for voting against a 2023 bill banning gender affirming care for minors in Texas. "If you want to protect kids and your tax dollars, vote for Ken Paxton!" Schilling wrote. But Schilling and his contemporaries who pushed Republicans to emphasize transgender attack ads have admitted in interviews that their goal is to eliminate transition care entirely. The initial focus began with children because his group was "going where the consensus is," Schilling told the New York Times. Riley Gaines, the former swimmer who has advocated against trans women in women's sports and gender affirming care for trans youth, has similarly said that focusing on sports "will be the card that makes all of it crumble."

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Fort Worth makes major moves towards data center moratorium, regulations

After a summer of fits and starts, with multi-billion dollar developments circling the city, Fort Worth took major steps on Tuesday to regulate and limit the growth of data centers — with a potential moratorium now taking shape. Past 11:30 p.m. at the Fort Worth City Council’s Aug. 11 meeting, after several hours of public comment, council members approved several measures related to the local regulation of data centers, and began a lengthy process of implementing a local moratorium on new data center developments. It’s a move that local advocacy groups have been calling for for months, even as the city instead focused on a large package of new regulations for data centers.

Along with initiating the moratorium process, the city will now establish a Data Center Infrastructure Commission that would, according to the resolution passed on Tuesday, “conduct a comprehensive, fact based evaluation of data center development.” The commission will be made up of 11 members, led by Dr. Mike Slattery, director of the Institute for Environmental Studies at Texas Christian University. The commission will include industry experts and academics, plus several community members. The ultimate goal of the commission will be to produce a report to the city council in November. The council also approved a resolution that, following a directive from Gov. Greg Abbott for Texas to pause the approval of new data centers until two state regulators can audit all existing applications, any data centers developers looking to build in Fort Worth would have to receive necessary state approvals before the city would approve any development permits. Council members approved the measure after dozens of residents gave more than two hours of public comment, including state representatives who are running for statewide office.

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‘Smear, smear, smear’: Tarrant County judge candidates feud over polling locations

Two Tarrant County Commissioners Court members are throwing names across party lines over the recent proposition to cut 140 polling sites for the 2026 midterm election. Last week, the five-person court unanimously agreed that the slash was far too large and sent Elections Administrator Clint Ludwig back to the drawing board. Democrat Alisa Simmons, the Precinct 2 commissioner, has sent out at least five campaign emails in roughly a week blaming Republican County Judge Tim O’Hare and the two other Republicans for the proposed cuts. All of the emails included a prompt to donate to Simmons’s campaign or sign a petition in her favor. Simmons is running against O’Hare for his seat as Tarrant County Judge in the Nov. 3 election.

“Either Tim O’Hare KNEW a proposal to eliminate ALMOST HALF of our voting locations was moving forward and failed to put a stop to it,” two of the emails said. “OR, if you take him at his word, he did not know what was happening inside the very government he is supposed to lead. Neither explanation is acceptable.” Simmons was also slated to speak at a rally prior to the Tuesday commissioners court meeting where speakers called the proposal “voter suppression.” She did not end up speaking and didn’t give a reason why. In the meeting, when the full court discussed the proposal for the first time, O’Hare was the first to say the number of Election Day voting sites was way too low. Simmons agreed but believed O’Hare or one of the other Republicans prompted the slash. Every member on the court said they didn’t know about the proposed cuts until it came out in the agenda the week before their public meeting. Ludwig said he did not run the proposal by any member of the court. In order to come up with the 176 sites, he said he apolitically looked at the map of election precincts and determined how many voting locations would be adequate with an increased turnout. In response to Simmons’s claims, O’Hare said she is being completely dishonest.

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Dallas County commissioners pass budget, give voters chance to vote on homelessness tax

Dallas County commissioners decided on Tuesday to add a homelessness tax proposal to the November election ballot — and approved the first tax rate increase since 2010. Commissioners, though split 3 to 2, also approved a tax rate of $0.2246 for every $100 in value for fiscal year 2027. Adding the homelessness tax proposal to the mid-term ballot also was split 3 to 2. It lets voters decide whether to approve that tax. It would fund homelessness outreach services and resource support, including housing and mental heath treatment. The county would be locked in to a minimum 5-year contract with the non-profit Housing Forward. That organization would help allocate money among housing and healthcare network programs.

Commissioners John Wiley Price and Elba Garcia voted not to include the proposal on the ballot. "The voters deserve a well-designed plan with measurable objectives and that is what is not there," Garcia said Tuesday. " Several speakers voiced their support for the proposal on Tuesday. The proposal originally included public safety components, like more crisis intervention training for law enforcement and a program that helps people in jail who self-report homelessness to secure shelter and support services. Those and other programs were removed from the proposal language, lowering the adopted budget to about $1.59 billion. The county shouldn't ask taxpayers for more than it needs, Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins said. "We don't need to tax the voters at a higher rate than 2.4," he said. "That's what the amendment is. We've worked that budget again and again. We've found those savings, so let's only charge what is necessary." To comply with state law, the tax rate was raised on Tuesday to its historical high before voters get the choice to approve more.

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After refusing abortion, surrogate travels to TX for legal protection

An out-of-state surrogate has traveled to Texas seeking medical care for the unborn child she’s carrying, according to the Texas Attorney General’s office, after refusing the intended parents' request for an abortion. Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office announced Tuesday that it is intervening in a Dallas County court case, on behalf of the pregnant woman and the fetus she’s carrying. The announcement comes days after the surrogate, McKenna West, spoke in an interview with The Megyn Kelly Show. West, who lives in Alaska, said in the interview that she signed a surrogacy contract with a couple who wanted a child. The Texas attorney general’s legal filing identified the couple as living in California.

The surrogacy contract, West said in the interview, allowed the intended parents to choose to terminate the pregnancy, although West didn’t believe they’d take that option. At about 20 weeks' pregnancy, West said, the fetus she’s carrying was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect. After the diagnosis, according to West’s interview, the intended parents wanted the pregnancy to be terminated. West, however, refused. The pregnant woman has now traveled to Texas, according to Paxton’s office, seeking legal protections and medical care for the unborn child. The congenital heart condition typically requires multiple surgeries soon after birth. An attorney for the intended parents did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. When The Dallas Morning News sent a request for comment to an attorney representing West, a spokesperson for Alliance Defending Freedom responded and said the surrogate is not currently available for an interview. Although West has not yet given birth, the Texas attorney general has preemptively requested that UT Southwestern Medical Center and Children’s Medical Center of Dallas provide life-saving care to the child upon birth.

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Southwest bolsters Board with two CEOs

Southwest Airlines has appointed Jason Liberty, Chairman and Chief Executive of Royal Caribbean Group, and Varun Krishna, Chief Executive of Rocket Companies, to its Board of Directors with immediate effect. The airline said the appointments will strengthen the board’s expertise in technology, digital innovation, commercial strategy and financial leadership as Southwest continues to execute its strategic priorities. Liberty has led Royal Caribbean Group as Chief Executive since 2022 and became Chairman in 2025, having previously served as Chief Financial Officer for nine years. During more than two decades at the company, he has held senior roles across finance, strategy, technology and operations. Krishna leads Rocket Companies, the financial technology group whose businesses include Rocket Mortgage and Redfin. Before joining Rocket, he held senior positions at Intuit, PayPal, Groupon and Microsoft. Southwest said the two executives bring experience leading large, customer-focused companies through periods of growth and transformation.

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Tan Parker: It’s back to school for local students

There is a rhythm to August in North Texas. The heat settles in, the summer that felt endless suddenly seems to have slipped away, and families turn their attention to a new school year. Backpacks come down from the closet, supply lists are checked, and a generation of Texas students prepares to walk through the schoolhouse doors. I have always loved this season. Beth and I raised our daughters in our community, where they attended Lewisville ISD schools. We vividly remember the mix of anticipation and disbelief that comes with watching your children begin another school year – and how quickly they grow up! While the paths our children ultimately forge will differ, I believe one of our most consequential responsibilities is preparing the next generation of Texans for a bright and prosperous future.

Whether a student’s journey leads to a university, a skilled trade, military service, or directly into the broader workforce, each pathway can open the door to a life of opportunity and purpose. For students entering higher education this fall, Governor Greg Abbott recently reaffirmed his directive freezing undergraduate tuition and fees at Texas public colleges and universities through the 2026–27 academic year. For high school students interested in gaining career-ready skills before graduation, Texas invested an additional $153 million to expand Career and Technical Education opportunities as part of the $8.5 billion in new public education funding approved last legislative session. The legislation also directed additional resources toward teacher and staff pay, early literacy, school safety, and special education. This school year, Texas will also have a more student-centered approach to special education funding, based on each child’s individual needs rather than primarily on the classroom setting in which instruction is provided. The new framework will consider the services, technology, equipment, and professional support required to help each student succeed. That same conviction guided House Bill 2310, legislation I was honored to carry in the Senate. For too long, families of young children with disabilities or developmental delays have had to navigate early childhood services divided among three state agencies. Each agency performs vital work, but separate systems can create barriers, complicate transitions, and allow important information or resources to slip through the cracks.

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USDA secretary says Edinburg sterile fly production facility ahead of schedule

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott visited Moore Air Base Monday to discuss plans to prevent further spread of the New World screwworm. Following a brief demonstration of the Department of Homeland Security’s surveillance drones and a roundtable discussion, Rollins took to a podium on the tarmac to address the media. She said that progress on the sterile fly production facility, located at Moore Air Base, is ahead of schedule.

When ground was broken for the new facility in April, the project was estimated to be completed in November of next year. “We are now planning to open seven months ahead of schedule,” Rollins announced. “This facility will be fully operational by April 1st of this coming spring.” Upon completion, Rollins said that the facility will produce up to 100 million sterile flies per week. She said that they hope to increase that amount to 300 million by late 2028. “A big shout out to the team here at Moore Air Base that helped us open the dispersal facility, which may not have seemed like a big idea when we did that last spring,” Rollins said. “Once the screwworm hit our side of the border, and once we began to identify and then immediately move in flies to drop over where those confirmations were, it is this fly facility and this team, this dispersal facility right here where we’re standing, it is the reason that I believe we have been so successful in the containment.”

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Texas county defends plan to swap voting maps between primary and November election

A Texas county told the state Supreme Court it can change its voting maps between its primary and November general election — doubling down on what pro-voting plaintiffs warn could be replicated across the state to undermine the will of the voters. Whether Galveston County can switch out its district maps is not just a local dispute. A win for the county could embolden other Texas jurisdictions to tweak election maps after seeing primary results in order to boost partisan advantages in the general election. However, Galveston argues it is well within its powers under the Texas Constitution to redraw district boundaries when and how it sees fit, admitting in its brief that the latest adjustment is an attempt to boost Republicans’ odds of winning their races.

“Practically, there are many reasons why a county’s commissioners may adopt changed precinct boundaries between a primary and general election,” the county argued in a new response filed Monday. “They may want to increase partisan performance (as here), address new laws, or comply with population requirements.” Pro-voting plaintiffs filed an emergency petition last week asking the Texas Supreme Court to block the 11th-hour map switch, arguing the Texas Election Code requires that a political party’s nominees for a county general election be selected by a primary election. Galveston County’s local maps have been at the center of a years-long redistricting legal battle. Pro-voting plaintiffs are still fighting to block a GOP gerrymander that was struck down in 2023 by U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey Brown, who was appointed by President Donald Trump. The decision was later reversed by the ultra-conservative Fifth Circuit, and some of the claims are still being litigated in the district court. On Friday, Brown, who was weighing a request to end what is left of that prior federal case, called the timing of Galveston County’s map swap “highly suspicious.” Ironically, Brown also noted that GOP officials didn’t do a particularly good job at redrawing the map for partisan gain.

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Beef recall in Texas: USDA recalls nearly 30,000 pounds

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is warning Texas consumers about nearly 30,000 pounds of raw beef recalled after the products entered the country without required federal reinspection. Corte Argentino USA LLC of Aventura, Florida, is recalling about 29,628 pounds of raw beef imported from Argentina, according to the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service. The recall was announced Aug. 8 after officials determined the products entered the United States without undergoing required import reinspection. FSIS reinspection can include reviewing documentation, verifying labels and packaging, evaluating a product's condition and, when necessary, testing samples for contaminants. No illnesses or injuries linked to the recalled beef have been confirmed, according to the USDA. Anyone concerned about an illness or injury should contact a health care provider.

The raw beef products were produced from May 15 through May 20, 2026, and have use- or freeze-by dates from Sept. 15 through Sept. 20, 2026. Article continues below this ad The recalled products are marked with the Argentine establishment number "EST. N° OF. 2025" and shipping mark "26644-AA." They were distributed to businesses and stores in Texas and Florida. The recall includes various-weight cardboard boxes containing Frigorifico Gorina SAIC boneless beef products: Top Sirloin Butt ("Cuadril Sin Tapa"), Eye Round ("Peceto"), Topside Cap Off ("Nalga AD S/Tapa"), Flat ("Carnaza Cuadrada"), and Knuckle ("Bola de Lomo").

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National Stories

Hunter Biden is now everywhere. What does he want?

Hunter Biden is going places that few Democrats will go. He’s also going places few Republicans will go. On Monday, Tucker Carlson aired a lengthy conversation with the former president’s 56-year-old son. They talked about social media, war, and President Trump. “I think he’s one of the most transformational individuals in our political history, all for ill,” Hunter Biden said of Trump on the program. This came shortly after Hunter Biden sat down with Nick Fuentes for a two-hour conversation about a range of things, including Fuentes’s past comments on Jews and Hunter’s past use of cocaine. And they talked about Trump. On Friday, Hunter Biden told the BBC that his father’s cancer was very serious, having spread to his bones and “further.” Jill Biden’s book came out earlier this year, and Joe Biden’s book is scheduled to publish in November.

But Hunter Biden is suddenly the one with the megaphone. He’s everywhere: tweeting, appearing on podcasts, talking about America and, often, Trump. He is in front of audiences that in the past might have viewed Hunter Biden as an archetypal villain. Maybe they still do. For much of Biden’s presidency, Hunter Biden’s life, drug use, gun ownership, personal behavior, and personal photographs were put on full display. Hunter kept a mostly lower profile then. He started an account on X in May. Carlson, in the interview released Monday, pressed Hunter on why he was speaking out in this way (the two said they’ve known each other more than 30 years). Hunter said his life had become so exposed by critics and others that he felt he had nowhere else to go. “In that total exposure, there was nowhere to hide,” he said. “The only way out was through—owning the things that were true and speaking truth to the things that were false.” That’s Hunter’s version of his motivation. Many people are dubious, questioning his motives. Welcome to politics. If Hunter Biden is going to be a main voice in American politics in 2026 and beyond, that might be a development Trump is more than happy to welcome.

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In South Carolina, Sen. Darline Graham advances to a GOP special primary runoff for U.S. Senate

Sen. Darline Graham, who is serving out the remainder of her brother's term, didn't secure enough votes to win Tuesday's primary outright, but she did receive enough of the total to advance to a runoff. Also advancing to the Aug. 25. runoff is Rep. Ralph Norman. That's according to race calls by The Associated Press. President Trump backed Graham, who was appointed by South Carolina's Gov. Henry McMaster last month to complete her late brother's term. Yet some GOP voters say while they respect the president's endorsement, they chose other candidates in a crowded field.

After her appointment, Sen. Darline Graham had a busy few weeks as South Carolina's junior senator voting on key items in Washington, including the confirmation vote of Attorney General Todd Blanche and a bill long championed by her brother to sanction buyers of Russian oil and gas. "This campaign schedule has been absolutely brutal," Graham told reporters Saturday in Florence, S.C., following a campaign event. "But you know what, I'm still standing, I'm still going and that shows you how strong I am." At a tele-rally on Monday, Trump said that Graham is the best candidate to support the goals of his administration. "[She] will help us achieve our mission to Make America Great Again," Trump said. "She looks so nice, but she's actually tough and strong, and she's the perfect person to carry on Lindsey's legacy." Graham said that she would focus on cost of living concerns.

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Progressive Peggy Flanagan sweeps Minnesota Senate primary in race defined by anti-ICE anger

Peggy Flanagan, Minnesota’s lieutenant governor, won the Democratic primary for US Senate in a race centered on immigration enforcement after the Trump administration crackdown turned deadly and destructive earlier this year. Flanagan ousted congresswoman Angie Craig in yet another example of progressive campaigns toppling moderates amid an anti-establishment wave among Democrats. “It’s time to fight for what people actually need,” Flanagan recently told the Guardian. “And so often I think Democrats are like: ‘What do we think we can win?’ Instead of: ‘What are the fights that we should be picking?’” Flanagan will now face Michele Tafoya, a Republican former National Football League sideline reporter, in November. If she wins, Flanagan will become the first Native American woman in the Senate.

Meanwhile, the state’s gubernatorial race proved a rebuke of Donald Trump’s endorsement power as Mike Lindell, an election denier and pillow salesman, lost to Lisa Demuth, the Minnesota house speaker. Demuth will face Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic US senator, in November, where Klobuchar is favored to win. Lindell’s significant campaign liabilities had led his own party to speak out against his campaign. He is contending with ongoing defamation cases because of his election denialism, as well as a potential campaign finance violation for handing out free pillows at a parade. He recently stepped down as CEO of MyPillow, which faces legal claims for unpaid bills. Minnesota leans Democratic. It has not elected a Republican statewide since 2006, when Tim Pawlenty won a second term as governor and a Republican presidential candidate has not won the state since 1972.

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Democratic Rep. John Larson loses his primary to opponent calling for generational change

Democratic Rep. John Larson of Connecticut has lost his primary race to former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, NBC News projects, becoming the latest example of Democratic voters’ push to sweep out incumbent House members and replace them with younger leadership. Larson, 78, has been a fixture in Connecticut politics, having served for more than a decade in the state Legislature and almost three decades in Congress. A former member of party leadership, he touted his work on Social Security in Congress and had been backed by the state’s congressional delegation, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and key unions.

But Bronin, 47, mounted a serious campaign against him, calling for generational change and arguing that President Donald Trump’s second term called for new energy and new direction from Democratic lawmakers. Bronin raised more money than Larson and won over party activists at the state convention, winning the state party’s endorsement. Larson is the 10th House member to lose a primary this year: seven Democrats and three Republicans. “In this moment, when Donald Trump is president, the job of a member of Congress isn’t just in the subcommittee rooms, it’s what you are doing outside the walls of the Capitol to build a movement,” Bronin said in a late May interview. “Over these next two years, it’s so important to have Democratic members of Congress using that platform not just to give red-faced speeches to an empty chamber for the C-SPAN cameras, but to ... carry our message, to win people back who lost faith in our party.” Asked Monday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press Now” about the movement for generational change in the Democratic Party, Larson said that “I think the change that we need is to continue to go after Donald Trump” and touted his “record of doing that.” “I have the endorsement of more elected officials, every sitting member in the congressional delegation, because they understand what I’ve been able to deliver,” he said. “They understand that they’re able to work with me, and they understand what I’ve been able to accomplish on their behalf. Luke Bronin has no record. I’m running on a record of accomplishment and achievement.” Bronin replied that Larson has been in office “for about 50 years, and for the last 10 years or so, I just think he’s gotten stuck in a routine. And I understand, you know, it’s hard to find anybody who does the same thing for 30 years and doesn’t get a little bit stuck in the routine, but this is not a moment that we can keep doing the same thing.”

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Democrats are building their opposition to the Protect College Sports Act

Late Friday night, in the last hours before the Senate left for August recess, there was still a chance, however slim, that the Protect College Sports Act would go to a vote. Hours earlier, President Donald Trump had posted about the bill on Truth Social, telling senators to stay in Washington until they passed it. Sure, a handful of Republicans had filed last-minute amendments, some of which called for significant changes to the 171-page legislation. But Republicans pushing the bill started riding the president’s endorsement as hard as they could, hoping it would get the PCSA to the floor. And it was about that time, when there was a “new groundswell of interest in the bill,” as one Senate aide put it, that Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) and Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) went to work. Each called a number of their fellow Democrats to explain why they don’t like the bill. They called labor groups, civil rights groups, all kinds of groups that could strengthen the public and private pushback. Their staffers called one another. A lot.

Around 11:30 p.m., Senate leaders needed unanimous consent to proceed to a vote on the bill. Murphy and Booker objected. Then around 2 a.m., they objected a second time, as did a handful of other lawmakers from both parties, according to multiple aides. “Booker and Murphy put stakes in the ground and said we’re not moving,” said a lobbyist working on the bill. “And that was basically that.” According to the bill’s lead sponsors, Majority Leader John Thune agreed to make the bill a priority when the Senate returned in mid-September. But Murphy and Booker hadn’t just compressed the timeline for the bill to pass through the Senate and House before the midterms in November. They also gave themselves five more weeks to build up the Democratic opposition to it. “This month is now our opportunity to explain what’s in the bill,” Murphy told NOTUS. “And explain to people, and explain to our colleagues on the left, that this is a fundamental civil rights issue. That this is an unprecedented restraint on compensation for student-athletes, but particularly young Black student-athletes.”

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No ID, No money, No way out: DHS deports a man to a country he doesn't know

Rogelio Bolufé stared out the porthole of the white Boeing 767 as the landing gear hummed to life. He eyed endless green fields, a sparkling expanse of water, and a sprawling city along a river. The 44-year-old Cuban, who’d lost months of his life inside the vast network of U.S. immigration jails, was staring at his new purgatory: southern Ecuador. His mind wasn’t on the reality of being stranded in this strange place; that despair would swallow him later. Instead, his thoughts were fixed on the piles of documents that had been taken by prison guards and vanished. And now, he thought, I disappear too.

His deportee companions, mostly returning Ecuadorians and men from neighboring Peru, talked themselves into a frenzy over how they’d show journalists on the ground the deep and dark impressions on their wrists — evidence that they’d been tightly bound for more than 24 hours in hot and mostly stationary buses and planes with little water and infuriating discomfort. But when the plane landed at Aeropuerto Internacional José Joaquín de Olmedo minutes before noon on June 1, the tarmac was empty. Bolufé heard one man ask: “Don’t people worry about us?” He was still wearing his dark green prison clothes when he stepped into the scorching midday sun, down the stairs and onto the runway. An American man in uniform handed him a sheet of paper. “Pasaporte de emergencia,” it read. “Ecuatoriano nacido en Ecuador.” Bolufé shot the man a confused look. The document was a blatant lie. Bolufé was not an “Ecuadorian born in Ecuador.” The Department of Homeland Security knew that. It was in his case file and detention records and plastered all over the internet thanks to his minor celebrity status in political circles back in Miami’s Little Havana.

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Ex-ICE agent’s group awarded $158 million to represent migrant children

The Trump administration has awarded a $158 million contract to represent unaccompanied migrant children to a nonprofit group founded by a former immigration agent who inspired the film “Sound of Freedom,” a federal contracting database shows. A notice of the award to the Minneapolis-based group Our Rescue, which combats child trafficking, was posted online late Friday. The contract is with the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees the care of minors who cross the border without authorization and without a parent or guardian. The award could increase up to $244 million, the contract notice showed. President Donald Trump’s administration in recent weeks has pivoted away from working with advocacy groups that previously represented the minors. Last week, a small Texas law firm with ties to the Trump administration was awarded a $150 million no-bid contract to represent unaccompanied minors in their immigration court proceedings.

That firm, Burke Law Group, is helmed by Marcella Burke, a former Trump appointee. Immigration advocates criticized the contract and the Trump administration’s decision to cut ties with groups that had two decades of experience in legally represented minors. Our Rescue was founded in 2013 by Tim Ballard, a former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who quit his job and embarked on efforts to rescue children from sex trafficking rings in countries including Colombia, Haiti, Mexico, and Thailand. His work was loosely fictionalized in “Sound of Freedom,” a 2023 film starring actor Jim Caviezel that drew acclaim from conservatives. Others, however, criticized the movie for catering to unfounded conspiracy theories, including those peddled by the far-right group QAnon. During Trump’s first term, Ballard was appointed in 2019 as a co-chair of a council tasked with making antitrafficking recommendations to the White House. Ballard abruptly left Our Rescue in July 2023, days before “Sound of Freedom” was screened at Trump’s private club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

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Lead Stories

Oil in U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve falls below 300 million barrels, lowest since 1983

Crude oil stockpiles in the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve have fallen below 300 million barrels, the lowest level in more than four decades, as global inventories stay under pressure due to the Iran war. The SPR fell by 6.1 million barrels to 298.7 million barrels last week, according to data released by the Department of Energy on Monday. The reserve, created in 1975, is at its lowest level since January 1983. President Donald Trump ordered the release of 172 million barrels in March after Iran choked off oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz, triggering the largest disruption of crude oil supplies in history.

The drawdown in the SPR, whose authorized storage capacity is 714 million barrels, has raised questions about whether U.S. government stockpiles are on the verge of depletion. The minimum amount of oil needed to safely operate the SPR is about 70 million barrels, an Energy Department spokesperson told CNBC in July. There is enough oil left in the SPR to do another release if needed, said David Goldwyn, who served as a State Department special envoy for international energy affairs under President Barack Obama. “I’m not worried about the stability of the reserve or our ability to do another drawdown, if we needed to,” Goldwyn told CNBC. The SPR stood at around 415 million barrels before the U.S and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. U.S. government stocks will fall to around 243 million barrels when the release Trump ordered is completed. The SPR’s operational capability is at risk due to aging infrastructure, according to a May report from the Government Accountability Office. More than a quarter of its inventory was “not available for drawdown due to a combination of construction outages and cavern outages” as of December 2025, GAO investigators found.

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One source of Paxton’s wealth: A cell tower at a hospital he knew well

Over the course of Ken Paxton’s decade-long rise to prominence, through scandal and turmoil, questions about his finances have followed him. Opponents scrutinized his real estate holdings and suggested that he has used his public office to enrich himself personally — allegations that have never been proven. With Mr. Paxton locked in a close, contentious race for U.S. Senate in Texas, his Democratic opponent has questioned how Mr. Paxton, the state attorney general, has amassed a multimillion dollar real estate portfolio on a public servant’s salary. Now, Mr. Paxton’s federal financial disclosure forms and additional records obtained by The New York Times shed light on one unusual source of his income: a cellular tower company from which Mr. Paxton made between $100,000 and $1 million about every 18 months. The company controls at least one tower in a city north of Dallas that was erected around 20 years ago on the property of a hospital where Mr. Paxton was a board member.

Mr. Paxton co-founded the company, Premier Vertical Properties, in 2005; he reported serving on the board of the hospital, Centennial Medical Center, from 2003 to 2013. Records show that Premier signed a deal to lease space on the tower to T-Mobile in 2006; the hospital’s parent company at the time, Tenet Hospitals, was mentioned in the lease agreements. The terms of any agreement that may have been struck between Mr. Paxton’s company and the hospital are not clear. Tenet did not respond to questions, and the hospital’s current administration said it could not provide information about a deal made before its tenure. Industry experts said a hospital’s board would need to review and approve a decision to lease land to a cell tower company such as Premier. It is not clear whether Mr. Paxton, as a board member, voted on any contract between the hospital and his company, or whether he had participated in any such discussions. In a statement provided to The Times, Nick Maddux, Mr. Paxton’s campaign spokesman, did not address questions about Premier’s dealings with the hospital during Mr. Paxton’s time on the board. “This week, every major publication in Texas covered the overflow crowds at Attorney General Paxton’s Protect the Texas Promise tour, and the Times spent that same week combing through twenty-year-old lease paperwork on a cell tower that Ken Paxton has disclosed publicly for many years,” Mr. Maddux said in the statement. “That is not journalism; it’s a search for a story that does not exist.”

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Gov. Greg Abbott touts tech company cooperation, following Trump criticism of data center policy

Gov. Greg Abbott is touting major technology companies' responses to his temporary moratorium on data centers, following recent criticism from President Donald Trump. "I established clear guardrails to ensure data centers protect our electric grid, conserve our water, respect our neighborhoods, and pay their own way," Abbott said in a statement. “They must not pass costs on to Texas families or interfere with their quality of life." The governor issued a directive last week, announcing that no new data centers could connect to the Texas power grid until state regulators conducted a thorough review of their energy and water usage, as well as their impact on nearby communities.

It's a reversal of the governor's previous stance. Abbott once courted data centers, calling Texas "the epicenter of AI development" in November. In an interview with Punchbowl News late last week, Trump criticized changes to Texas’ data center policy. "I saw Texas the other day sort of is against data centers," Trump said. "I think that's a mistake." Meanwhile, major technology companies have signaled their willingness to comply with Abbott's recent directives, which called for data centers to bring their own energy infrastructure to Texas and reduce their water usage. Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, issued a statement on Monday, saying the company pays for its own infrastructure to connect data centers to the power grid. The company also announced the launch of a new fund to invest in water and energy infrastructure, educators and first responders. Google also touted a "$40 billion investment" in Texas infrastructure and jobs.

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Lubbock County commissioners pass resolution regarding large-scale industrial development in Texas

The public gathered, Monday, to hear Lubbock County commissioners discuss and potentially approve a resolution regarding large-scale industrial development in the state of Texas. This discussion mostly centered around data centers potentially being built in unincorporated parts of the county, but the wording opens it up for any major business to disclose how much water and electricity it would use for its projects. The resolution passed four to one, with only judge Curtis Parrish voting against it due to its language. “If the concern is about data centers, let’s make sure this resolution is tailored to data centers,” Parrish said. “I don’t have anyone coming and talking to me concerning about any other manufacturing businesses, any other expanding businesses.”

Commissioner Cary Shaw does not see it the same way, feeling each business should be up front about what it plans to use regardless of its industry. “Why would you not want all the information before a business comes in?” Shaw said, “what they’re going to use, what kind of resources they’re going to need from the county.” Nothing in this non-binding resolution creates or expands county authority. It does not require the county to take any action or authorize the county to prohibit, suspend, delay, or impose a moratorium on a privately financed project, except as expressly permitted by Texas law. This became a point of contention inside the commissioner courtroom. “All this is doing is telling Texas law that we need some help,” commissioner Jordan Rackler said during the meeting. “You just got done rattling off that this would make the data centers come talk to us,” commissioner Jason Corley said in response. “If you want it to pass, let’s pass it, but this is 10 minutes of my life I’m never getting back. Let’s get going. Resolutions do nothing, they are not binding. You want to pass it, let’s pass it.” After the resolution passed, Parrish said a lot more work needs to be done before anything moves forward regarding this topic. “We need to make sure that the state gives us enough teeth, enough authority that we can put a hiatus on these data centers coming and taking our electricity, taking our water and not giving anything back to the community,” Parrish said. “That’s what I want to make sure we’re protecting the citizens of Lubbock county for. This resolution does not do that.” Commissioner Shaw says the symbolic approval does send a message to Austin as the statewide debate over the future of its economy takes up more of its bandwidth.

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State Stories

Secretary of State opposes closing Texas primaries via GOP-led lawsuit

The Texas agency that oversees elections still opposes a lawsuit seeking to restrict Republican primaries to voters registered with the party but believes the issue will likely be resolved in the 2027 legislative session, Secretary of State Robert Howden said Monday in a court filing. The Texas GOP last year filed a lawsuit against the secretary of state's office, saying only registered Republicans should be allowed to vote in GOP primaries. Howden’s answer comes after Matthew Kacsmaryk, the federal judge overseeing the suit, on Friday ordered Howden to say whether the state’s official position has changed under his leadership.

Howden, who was appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott last month after Jane Nelson stepped down, said the Legislature is the “proper forum for adopting any closed primary system” and coming up with a detailed plan on how it would work. Texans are not required to register with a specific political party under state law, allowing them to vote in either party’s primary. GOP activists say the state’s open primary system is allowing Democrats to vote for more moderate Republican candidates, boosting people they believe are insufficiently conservative. The secretary of state's office has asked Kacsmaryk to dismiss the lawsuit, while the state's Republican Party is asking him rule that the open primary system violate's the party's First Amendment rights and allow the party to exclude non-Republicans from primaries. Legislation seeking to close the state’s primary system failed in last year’s legislative session, prompting the party to file the lawsuit. A spokesperson for the state’s Republican Party did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Monday’s filing. The party also did not respond to a voicemail.

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How many voting sites does Tarrant County need? Commissioners to decide in September

After disagreeing with a proposed reduction in polling sites, Tarrant County commissioners are divided on how many locations to approve for the November midterm election. County staff are revising the proposed list of sites based on feedback from commissioners. One commissioner proposed keeping the number consistent with the total used during the 2022 midterms, while another suggested an increase to accommodate population growth over the last four years. Others haven’t suggested a specific number but were clear that the proposed list did not include enough sites. Commissioners were scheduled to vote on the list of sites Aug. 4 but ultimately delayed that decision until Sept. 1 after listening to dozens of speakers criticize the proposed reduction as an attempt to make it harder for voters to cast a ballot. The nearly seven-hour meeting saw attendees removed, banned and arrested.

After disagreeing with a proposed reduction in polling sites, Tarrant County commissioners are divided on how many locations to approve for the November midterm election. County staff are revising the proposed list of sites based on feedback from commissioners. One commissioner proposed keeping the number consistent with the total used during the 2022 midterms, while another suggested an increase to accommodate population growth over the last four years. Others haven’t suggested a specific number but were clear that the proposed list did not include enough sites. Commissioners were scheduled to vote on the list of sites Aug. 4 but ultimately delayed that decision until Sept. 1 after listening to dozens of speakers criticize the proposed reduction as an attempt to make it harder for voters to cast a ballot. The nearly seven-hour meeting saw attendees removed, banned and arrested.

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Texas could owe $709M for food stamps. Food banks say the fallout would be ‘catastrophic.’

Food banks across Texas are raising the alarm over a federal policy change that could force the state to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for food assistance benefits or risk leaving millions of Texans without access to food. Beginning in 2027, states with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payment error rates above 6% will be required to share in the cost of benefits under the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” signed into law in 2025. Texas recorded a 9% error rate in fiscal year 2025, meaning the state could face up to $709 million a year in additional costs, and potentially more than $1 billion if that rate climbs above 10%. San Antonio Food Bank CEO Eric Cooper said the stakes couldn’t be higher.

“When you think about the San Antonio Food Bank, for every one meal we put out, SNAP provides nine,” Cooper said. “Should we see an increase in the number of families, we just won’t have the food supply to meet that need.” The San Antonio Food Bank currently serves around 140,000 people every week — a number that has continued to climb year over year. That growth comes on the heels of a recent study showing food insecurity in the San Antonio region has risen to nearly 22%, meaning roughly one in five people don’t have enough to eat. Celia Cole, CEO of Feeding Texas, the state association of food banks, said the error rate triggering these new costs is widely misunderstood. “The most important thing to know about the payment error rate is that it is not fraud,” Cole said. “It is a measure of accuracy.” Cole explained that the error rate reflects paperwork and processing mistakes, not intentional wrongdoing, and that roughly two-thirds of errors come from state agency mistakes, not recipients. She added that Texas consistently maintained an error rate below 6% before the COVID-19 pandemic strained state workforce capacity. If Texas cannot or will not fund its share of SNAP costs, Cole warned the consequences would be severe. “If they walk away from the program, what that’s going to mean is 3 million Texans without access to reliable food,” Cole said. “Our food bank network won’t be able to make up for that gap.” Food bank leaders across the state are now calling on Congress to delay the cost-sharing requirement by two years, giving Texas time to bring its error rate back below the 6% threshold. The Senate version of the Farm Bill, currently working through Congress, includes a provision for a one-year delay, but advocates say two years is what’s needed. Cooper echoed that urgency. “The fear that SNAP might be impacted — it’s catastrophic,” Cooper said. “I just don’t have the inventory at the San Antonio Food Bank to meet that need.” The Texas Legislature is set to begin its next session in January 2027 — the same session that would need to appropriate funds if the cost-sharing requirement moves forward without a congressional delay.

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She says she was fired from a nursing home after taking medical leave. It’s a common claim in Texas

Kendria Dubois felt she had sacrificed health and family to keep her job as a resident care coordinator at a Mansfield nursing home. One night in March 2025, Dubois, 46, says she began to vomit and pass blood during an overnight shift, prompting a call to her superiors and her staff. Nobody answered, she says, so she toughed it out until the end of her shift at 6 a.m. before rushing to the emergency room where she learned she had intestine inflammation. Dubois — who also has multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune nervous system disease with no cure — was fired a little more than two months later. In a federal lawsuit filed last month, she claims the nursing home discriminated against her for her disabilities. “I kept putting all these people first, and put myself at the bottom,” Dubois told KERA News. “But when it mattered, I was the first to go.”

The complaint is becoming increasingly common in Texas. The state had the highest number and percentage of disability complaints in the country filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2025. And that year saw more disability complaints filed than any other year in decades, according to EEOC data that goes back to 1992. Management for the nursing home, Cedar Bluff, did not respond to KERA’s request for an interview or comment. The company has also not filed a response to the lawsuit as of Monday. Disability discrimination complaints with the EEOC have only increased as older generations experience natural health decline, said Michael Maslanka, an associate professor at the University of North Texas at Dallas who teaches employment law. "Two words, one concept: baby boomers," Maslanka said. "You're going to have a spike, and it's going to continue for a while I think.” Texas could also have more complaints because some large states like California have their own agencies to handle discrimination claims. "There may be less action in the California EEOC, or even in California's federal court, because the state protection is better," said Brian East, an attorney at Disability Rights Texas. Employees with disabilities are largely protected from discrimination by the American with Disabilities Act and the Texas labor code, which aims to mirror the ADA.

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The Dog's Head deal was made with little public input. Now neighbors want their voices heard

Lee Edwards has lived on Hergotz Lane for nearly two decades. His property backs up to the Colorado River, giving him direct access to the water. It’s the reason he moved to the area. “This is a river neighborhood, a river community,” Edwards said. “We’re very identified with the nature here, the animals, the river, the whole thing.” It’s surprisingly rural, considering how close it is to U.S. 183 and the airport. There are trees and wildflowers. Bobcats and deer roam the land. Edwards is the president of the South East Colorado River Neighborhood Association. He said it's unlike any neighborhood he’s lived in before. “You’ve got our property and your house, and we have neighbors, that is nice,” he said. “All that is true but there is this whole other thing going on – it's a special and unique neighborhood.”

Garrett Tung, who has lived just a few doors down from Edwards for five years, agreed. “It's a quiet lifestyle,” Tung said. “It's kind of like you're in the middle of nowhere, but you're in Austin. The neighbors are amazing. The wildlife is amazing. It's just a crazy cool place to live.” If you look at a map of this area, the Colorado River bends around the neighborhood in a shape that resembles a silhouette of a dog’s head. So, people have taken to calling this area the Dog’s Head. Last month, the Austin City Council signed off on a 2,600-acre development for the site that will include housing, retail and office space and some green space. Amazon’s robotics division will be the property’s biggest tenant. But the project was approved with little public input. That’s where neighbors said the city failed them. Both Edwards and Tung fear that their little slice of paradise will be lost without a proper plan to develop the Dog’s Head.

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E-bike, e-scooter riders will have to dismount on central portion of UT campus

Riders of electric bikes, scooters and boards on the University of Texas at Austin’s campus will have to dismount and walk in a large portion of central campus, including the Speedway Mall, starting Aug. 24. The university is designating the area between San Jacinto Boulevard and Guadalupe Street and 21st Street to 24th Street as a “pedestrian friendly zone,” the university announced Monday. The changes start the first day of the fall semester. The announcement comes after signs went up on campus last week and after the university quietly posted new mobility regulations online, including a “dismount zone map.” The web page was then taken down. The original post did not make clear if the dismount areas included non-motorized vehicles. Cycling advocates expressed concerns about the plan's impact before the university clarified that the ban would not impact manual bicycles and scooters.

The new "pedestrian friendly zone" will also have a 5 mph speed limit for personal electric vehicles. Other sections of campus have speed limits of 15 mph. Eduardo Diaz, a student at UT, was one of the people concerned about a blanket ban for all scooters, bikes and boards on Speedway. "I still think that this confusion would have been avoided significantly if we had gotten some input before this went into place,” Diaz said. "I'm glad that this was clarified or that it was changed." He said he understands the decision more after the clarification, but that, for him, ideally the ban would only be in effect in between classes. "Speedway is basically the only protected car-free route that you can take from Central Austin, that's not really far out of the way,” Diaz said. "So if you're people who are coming up from Hyde Park, from all those areas, [you] probably would take Speedway.

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Peter Licata: We’ve acted fast to fix schools. And we’re not done

(Peter Licata is the superintendent of the Fort Worth Independent School District.) When I took the job as superintendent of the Fort Worth school district on March 24, I knew meaningful change would not happen overnight. But I knew it needed to start right away. The reason I was hired was one simple, indisputable fact: too many of our schools were failing to educate many of our kids. While there has been incremental progress in some areas, far too many of our students are still not achieving at the levels they deserve. That reality demanded change — not because our educators lack commitment but because our students deserve better outcomes. Accepting the status quo is simply not an option. Over the past four months, our leadership team has worked with urgency to stabilize operations, restore confidence, and build systems that put students — not adults — at the center of every decision we make.

One of our first priorities was ensuring that every student arrives safely at school each day. We eliminated all bus driver vacancies and hired additional qualified drivers to strengthen daily operations and reduce disruptions. Equally encouraging is the progress in staffing our classrooms. For years, Fort Worth ISD routinely began the school year with more than 200 teacher vacancies, many of which remained open throughout the year. This year, we opened school with only nine classroom teacher vacancies districtwide, a testament to our Human Capital team, campus leaders and the outstanding educators who chose Fort Worth ISD because they believe in our mission. We also restructured our central administration, eliminating positions that did not directly support student achievement and redirecting resources back into classrooms where they can have the greatest impact. This work has also required difficult decisions, including consolidating campuses. Instruction has remained our highest priority. This year, we introduced Cowtown 12, a districtwide instructional framework designed to protect instructional time while providing every teacher with clear, consistent expectations for high-quality teaching. Great teachers deserve clarity, and Cowtown 12 establishes districtwide expectations while honoring each teacher’s craft. Top schools are built one classroom at a time by exceptional teachers. Our responsibility is to provide them with outstanding curriculum, meaningful support, clear expectations, and the trust to do what they do best: teach children.

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Axiom Space CEO Jonathan Cirtain on NASA’s moon race and the fight to build the next space station

Jonathan Cirtain is drawn to big challenges. He was first pulled toward the sun, developing instruments that studied its complexities and earning a presidential award in 2011. He then led a team that used nuclear medicine to image and treat diseases. Now, Cirtain is leading Houston-based Axiom Space through two particularly big tasks: Deliver a spacesuit that can help NASA’s astronauts walk on the moon before China’s taikonauts and develop a successor to the International Space Station that will win NASA’s business. “I’ve always been drawn to complex problems and their solutions,” Cirtain said in a statement. “I’ve wanted to work on very difficult problems that, if solved, could significantly expand what we know and push humanity forward.”

Cirtain is an astrophysicist turned technology executive. With a doctorate in physics, he joined Axiom Space as its president in June 2025 and became its chief executive that October. He’s had a busy first year. The company announced it is opening overseas offices and moving its legal domicile to Texas from Delaware. It has begun building test versions of its spacesuits, partnering with sunglass company Oakley on the visor and luxury retailer Prada on some of the materials. It’s also preparing to receive the first two major structures of its space station in 2027. But there have been doubts, too. NASA’s Office of Inspector General suggested Axiom’s spacesuit might not be ready for the agency’s Artemis IV mission that seeks to land on the moon in 2028. And NASA has questioned the financial viability of commercial space stations. Cirtain said he can't imagine not finishing the space station. “We have been preparing for game day for 10 years,” Cirtain said during an interview with the Houston Chronicle. “We've been building this company for this purpose.” Axiom Space was founded in 2016 to build Axiom Station, an outpost that could replace the International Space Station when it retires in 2030. The company would own and operate the station; NASA would be one of many customers. Axiom Space plans to launch the first component of its space station into orbit in 2028. The company has raised more than $1 billion, and NASA awarded it a $140 million contract for early development.

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Has abortion become the forgotten issue in the 2026 midterm elections?

Ashley Brandt knows what it feels like to get smacked in the face by politics. She knows what it’s like to be affected by a draconian law that doesn’t see nuance or reason. She knows what it’s like to be an advocate, focusing on tiny wins whilst becoming a punching bag for the other side. She knows what it’s like to be lied about and smeared, and what it’s like to change a mind. For Brandt, abortion is not simply a law or a ruling or a campaign promise. It is the medical procedure that she received in Colorado in 2022 after being told that one of the 12-week-old twin girls she carried had developed an abnormality in her skull that would be lethal. Continuing to carry the child may have put the life of her healthy twin, and herself, at risk. In Texas, which operated under a near-total abortion ban even while Roe v. Wade was in effect, there was no way to terminate the life of the sick fetus.

Brandt was forced to travel out of state to receive care, a decision that thousands of Texas women have made since the 2021 passage of Senate Bill 8, which banned abortions in all instances after a heartbeat has been detected in an embryo. Brandt made it through the procedure, returned home, and was overwhelmed by fear. Would the daughter she still carried remain healthy? Would she or her doctors be prosecuted for the decision to cross state lines? It was amid that anxiety that the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the decades-old precedent that guaranteed women across the nation access to abortion care, and the world cracked open. “Coming home and trying to process and grieve my situation, (and then) seeing that happen just a week later, was devastating,” Brandt, who lives in North Texas, told the Observer. “All I could think was how many more women, how many families, were going to suffer under this decision.” When the Dobbs decision overturned Roe, protests converged on the steps of the Supreme Court. Record-breaking amounts of donations poured into centers offering resources and aid to women in need of abortion care. In 2022 and 2024, Democratic candidates put money towards ads highlighting their pro-reproductive rights voting records, and they went on the attack against Republicans who had worked to limit abortion access. Polling overwhelmingly showed that a majority of Americans supported access to abortions in at least some cases.

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Jones and Galvan call for new vote on Spurs arena funding and back data center moratorium

San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones and District 6 Councilmember Ric Galvan are supporting a citywide vote on the proposed use of $489 million in city funding for a new downtown Spurs arena, while also opposing Gov. Greg Abbott’s call to introduce private competition into San Antonio’s electricity market. Appearing separately Monday on Texas Public Radio’s "The Source," Jones and Galvan stressed that the proposed vote would address the city’s contribution to the arena. And last November’s countywide vote on the issue was not sufficient. Bexar County voters narrowly approved $311 million in county funding for the project. “I think it’s really important that city voters have an opportunity to weigh in on the city’s $489 million contribution,” Jones said.

She cited the city’s projected $158 million budget shortfall, possible property-tax increases and changes to the broader Project Marvel proposal as reasons voters should have the chance to vote on the city funding for the new NBA arena. Jones said the county and city contributions would expose San Antonio residents to a combined $800 million in public arena funding, before any additional downtown infrastructure bond. The city council would have to approve an election ordinance by Aug. 17 to place the question on the ballot. Six members of city council have signaled they would not vote to place the issue on the November 3 ballot — which is enough to block the measure. However, when asked whether he supported a citywide vote, Galvan responded, “I’m supportive.” But he wouldn’t acknowledge that his position is likely in the minority on council and, therefore, not likely to pass. Jones urged residents who want a citywide vote to contact their council representatives before the Aug. 17 deadline. “If you want to vote on the city’s $489 million contribution to the arena, please reach out to your council member,” she said.

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American-Statesman Editorial Board: Texas leaders talk tough. Why won't they fight for Big Bend?

For years — when a Democrat was in the White House — Texas Republican leaders projected unflinching “Don’t Mess with Texas” swagger. Gov. Greg Abbott famously bragged, as state attorney general during the Obama years, “I go to work, I sue the federal government and then I go home.” Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a press release when his office filed its 100th lawsuit against the Biden administration. And in January 2024, when Abbott asserted Texas’ right to deploy the National Guard and state troopers at the border, the governor declared that “states should not be left to the mercy of a lawless president who does nothing to stop external threats.”

Where is that energy now, as federal contractors have begun bulldozing a remote stretch of Big Bend National Park for a border construction project that threatens to permanently alter one of Texas’ greatest natural treasures? Instead, with Republican President Donald Trump pursuing his signature border wall project, Texas’ formidable political machinery has gone eerily quiet. That silence is infuriating and indefensible. There is one notable exception: Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham sent a cease-and-desist letter last month after finding a Customs and Border Protection contractor had improperly cleared more than a mile of state-managed grazing land in Presidio County. Buckingham’s letter says the lands “must be remediated and returned to their original condition.” More of that, please. The resolve to defend one of Texas’ most cherished landscapes should not be hard to find. Protecting the wild swaths of untamed Texas, the rights of private property owners and the integrity of taxpayer dollars should not be partisan causes. Yet all three are at stake in the massive border construction project now bearing down on the Big Bend region.

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National Stories

Hopes for Hormuz deal fade as Trump demands Iranian reparations

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday responded to Iran's conditions for a peace deal with his own demands ?that Iran pay compensation for people killed in wars, attacks and protests, in a rhetorical escalation likely to complicate efforts to reopen the Strait of ?Hormuz. Trump's proposal, which had not been raised before, was a response to Tehran's demands for compensation and an end to sanctions. The Iranian demands were largely in line with the terms of a preliminary peace deal signed in June, which has since broken down.

Since the war began in February, Trump has repeatedly oscillated between threats of escalation and claims that a peace deal is imminent. "We're going to ask for money for the damage ?they've done over a 50-year period," Trump said at the White House, saying payments would cover deaths among both civilian demonstrators and U.S. forces in the region. "So if ?there's damages to be paid, I think Iran should pay those damages," Trump said. Oil prices settled 5% higher on Monday after the demands ?dimmed prospects for a deal to reopen the strait. Referring to Tehran's crackdown on demonstrations in late 2025 and 2026, Trump said Iran had ?killed some 52,000 protesters as of six weeks ago. While some Iranian opposition and exile groups have claimed tens of thousands killed, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) in February reported ?around 7,000 deaths including 6,500 protesters. Trump encouraged protesters to overthrow the Iranian government when the war began with U.S. and Israeli airstrikes in February. Rights groups say the Iranian government has continued to crack down on opponents since then. Trump also said Iran should compensate families of the 17 U.S. sailors killed in an October 2000 attack in Yemen on the naval vessel USS Cole, which has been blamed on al Qaeda, not ?Iran.

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Trump signs order calling for spacing out childhood vaccines, against medical groups’ guidance

President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order calling for revamped childhood vaccine recommendations that promote his long-held but discredited theory that childhood shots should be spaced out into separate medical visits. The order advocates separating the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three different single-disease shots and administering all childhood immunizations at separate appointments whenever possible. It also directs the nation’s health department to improve research on vaccines, which are already extensively studied, and present a plan to offer separate measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines for children, since that is not currently an option in the United States. The renewed focus on vaccines marks a departure from the Trump administration’s recent efforts to emphasize less controversial health policies related to healthy eating, drug price negotiations and medical fraud crackdowns ahead of November’s midterm elections.

Public health experts have raised concerns that spacing out shots as Trump suggests can lead to an increased risk that children become infected with a vaccine-preventable disease before returning for another visit. Childhood vaccines — and how and when to give them in combination — go through rigorous studies, and safety tracking continues for years as the shots are used. Trump called the announcement a “major victory for parents rights, religious and constitutional rights, and for the gold standard science.” Speaking about the order at the Oval Office on Monday, Trump repeatedly suggested the number or timing of vaccines could play a role in rising rates of autism spectrum disorder, even as scientific consensus and decades of studies have firmly concluded there is no link. The order also includes several changes to the childhood vaccine schedule that his health department has already attempted, but that have been blocked by a federal judge. A White House official who insisted on anonymity to brief reporters said Trump was within his right to provide his own recommendation through the executive order and said the lawsuit blocking the health department’s schedule was a separate issue. Dr. Andrew Racine, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said the announcement spreads uncertainty, fear and confusion where “there doesn’t need to be any of that.” He disputed Trump’s recommendations and said previous ones should stand.

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NOAA says the Lower 48 US states set a record for hottest month in July

The contiguous United States sizzled to its hottest month ever last month, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. July averaged 76.89 degrees Fahrenheit (24.94 degrees Celsius) across the Lower 48 states, eclipsing the Dust Bowl’s July 1936 by an eighth of a degree. Records go back to 1895. “It’s not good when you’re breaking records from the Dust Bowl, which we are in this case,” said meteorologist Jeff Masters of Yale Climate Connections. “And that was a crazy sort of situation where you put tens of millions of people in motion. You had this great migration because of the drought and the heat that hit the center of the U.S. — just a cataclysmic event in U. S. history. If we’re exceeding records from The Dust Bowl, that says that we’re in deep trouble.”

Although it was unusually cool in Alaska, hotter-than-normal conditions blanketed the Lower 48, with the most excessive heat in the Mountain West, Southwest, Northern Plains and Southeast. The heat was so widespread that every one of the Lower 48 states was at least 1 degree Fahrenheit (nearly 0.6 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 20th century average, said Russ Vose, chief of monitoring at NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Information. What’s happening now is due to the burning of coal, oil and gas, scientists said. “Extremely high temperatures across the continental U.S. this summer, along with intense drought and fire conditions, are absolutely consistent with the climate change signal,’ said Katharine Jacobs, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona. The biggest driver of the record heat was nighttime lows that smashed the old mark for hottest minimums by 0.7 degrees, NOAA said. Hotter nights are a classic sign of human-caused climate change, according to scientists and several studies in peer-reviewed literature. NOAA’s calculation is based on averaging 24 hours of temperature, not just highs or lows. “If you’re talking heat waves, that nighttime low is incredibly important for determining total heat stress,” Masters said. “So if it doesn’t cool off at night, your body doesn’t have time to readjust to all the heat.” As nighttime temperatures increase, more people die and lose sleep, studies show.

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Will the left keep winning in the Midwest? Will Sen. Graham keep her seat? What to watch in Tuesday’s primaries.

The Democratic Party’s ascendant left flank, looking to build on its success in Michigan last week, faces fresh tests in two primaries in the Midwest on Tuesday. A democratic socialist appears to be clearly ahead in the governor’s race in Wisconsin, and a progressive is facing off against a moderate in an expensive Senate race in Minnesota. Wisconsin, like Michigan, is a closely watched national battleground. On the Republican side, President Trump’s choice to succeed Senator Lindsey Graham in South Carolina — Mr. Graham’s younger sister, Darline Graham — is running in a special primary election against four more experienced rivals. Despite Mr. Trump’s endorsement, a runoff is likely in the crowded race.

Mr. Graham’s death last month rocked South Carolina politics, leading to Tuesday’s special primary election to succeed him. His sister, Ms. Graham, accepted Gov. Henry McMaster’s appointment to complete her brother’s term, but then she surprised South Carolina Republicans by deciding to run for a full six years in the Senate — with Mr. Trump’s support. Special elections, especially those run on a compressed calendar, can be unpredictable. Four other Republicans also decided to run, increasing the likelihood that a runoff will be necessary on Aug. 25. The front-runner for the Democratic nomination for governor of Wisconsin is State Representative Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist. While her victory on Tuesday is assured by most accounts, where she does well — or less well — could reveal clues as to whether the socialist brand can work in a general election in a purple state. More moderate Democrats worry that candidates with “socialist” by their names would struggle to win in America’s heartland, risking the party’s chance at a governorship in November. Far-left candidates including Abdul El-Sayed, who won the Democratic Senate nomination in Michigan last week, have tended to do best among white and college-educated voters. More moderate Democrats fear that trend might suggest that other slices of the electorate that the party has counted on, including Black voters, could stay home in November. How well Ms. Hong does in Milwaukee, for instance, will be closely watched as election results come in.

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White House officials tamped down efforts to oust Max Miller in final days

Members of President Donald Trump’s political team asked Ohio Republicans last week not to wage a public pressure campaign against embattled GOP Rep. Max Miller, after they became increasingly convinced he wouldn’t end his reelection bid. Their engagement, according to three people granted anonymity to share direct knowledge of private conversations, came as Miller insists he has no plans to withdraw despite serious allegations of domestic abuse, which he denies. Before that, some White House officials and Republicans had urged Miller to drop out of his race for reelection. Miller’s determination to remain in the race would render efforts to oust him moot, administration officials reasoned in calls with party leaders and other Republicans in the state over the past week. It would complicate messaging, the officials argued, when those same leaders would likely later have to defend Miller’s candidacy against a Democratic challenger.

“They basically told us to back off,” said one Ohio Republican involved in the conversations, “and let the voters decide.” Miller faced a 4 p.m. Monday deadline to drop out, and state party leaders would have had to schedule a meeting to discuss his replacement two days prior to that. At one point, Republicans in the state discussed scheduling the required meeting to replace Miller, in the hopes it would pressure him to drop out of the race, according to two of the people. But Ohio Republicans scuttled that effort as White House officials warned them that Miller would not drop out and Republicans would likely have to defend the seat without a new GOP replacement contender. Spokespeople for Miller and for the White House did not respond to requests for comment. Some Republicans argue they have no choice but to close ranks around a candidate accused by his former father-in-law, Ohio GOP Sen. Bernie Moreno, of being unfit to serve and needing psychological help; Ohio’s other Republican senator, Jon Husted, has also said Miller should resign and not run for reelection. Miller has remained defiant amid the calls to resign.

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Taylor Swift songs removed from White House, Trump campaign posts

Some Taylor Swift songs have been removed from social media videos posted by President Donald Trump's campaign and the White House, which has used two of the American superstar's songs over the past ?week. The White House and a representative for Swift did not immediately respond to requests for ?comment. The Reuters Inside Track newsletter is your essential guide to global sports news. Sign up here. Swift has not spoken recently about Trump, although she endorsed his Democratic rival, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, in 2024. During the 2020 campaign, Swift posted on social media that Trump was "WELL AWARE we do not want him as our president."

Trump has repeatedly criticized ?Swift. After she endorsed Harris, the Republican said on social media, "I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!" Last year he ?wrote: "Has anyone noticed that, since I said 'I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,' she’s no longer "HOT?" Dozens of ?artists, including Sabrina Carpenter and Ariana Grande, have called on the Trump administration not to use their songs. The Trump campaign ?used two Swift songs over the last week on its TikTok page. One, playing on her lyrics, featured the caption: "Red (Donald ?Trump's Version). Red (Taylor Swift Wrote A Whole Album About Republicans). Donald Trump. Everything Has Changed (At Our Southern Border). Donald Trump. We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (The Biden Harris Administration). Donald Trump. The Last Time (An Autopen Runs The Country)." It referenced famous songs ?by the pop star. In June, Trump's campaign posted a video on the short-video platform with Swift's new "Toy Story ?5" song "I Knew It, I Knew You." The short video was captioned "Nobody loves our country & the American People more than @President Donald ?J Trump." ?It showed him interacting with children at the White House, dancing at a UFC match and appearing at a rally. It was the third time the Trump administration or his campaign had used one of the Grammy Award-winning pop star's songs in recent months.

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Judge temporarily blocks Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new pied-à-terre tax hit a wall on Monday after a Staten Island judge ordered an emergency pause on the implementation of the new surcharge. The ruling came in response to a Friday lawsuit from a group of three aggrieved homeowners suing to delay the rollout of the tax because of how it has been executed so far. Wayne Ozzi, a state judge in Staten Island, entered a temporary restraining order mandating that the Department of Finance remove the tax roll of 960,000 properties that it published last month as part of the pied-à-terre tax rollout. The court also banned the city from taking any additional enforcement action on the tax warning notices that have already been mailed to 17,000 homeowners. The next hearing is scheduled for the afternoon of Aug. 31. The lawsuit isn’t challenging the legal basis for the pied-à-terre tax as a whole. Rather, it argues that the rollout has been botched so far. The plaintiffs—Rachel O’Brien, Carmine Morano and Simon Hedley—are New York City residents who say they were falsely targeted with the pied-à-terre tax notices and are now scrambling to prove that they live there.

“We disagree with today’s ruling, but we are confident in both the pied-à-terre surcharge and the City’s ability to implement it fairly and effectively,” said Mamdani spokesman Matt Rauschenbach. “This surcharge asks those who own second homes valued at $5 million or more to contribute their fair share to the city they benefit from.” The spokesman added that the city’s Law Department intends to appeal the ruling immediately in order to halt the temporary restraining order and allow the tax rollout to proceed. State law requires the Department of Finance to make an initial determination of who is subject to the pied-à-terre tax based on available information like tax returns, property assessments and other official records. The lawsuit claims that city officials illegally placed the burden on homeowners to prove their residency status, rather than verifying that for themselves. “We are very gratified by the judge’s decision, which has vindicated the rights of hundreds of thousands of New York City homeowners who were subjected to a process they never should have been a part of in the first place,” said Randy Mastro, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. The pied-à-terre tax applies to homes worth $5 million or more and co-ops and condos worth $1 million or more in which the owner isn’t a primary resident. Mamdani has touted the tax as proof that he is delivering on his campaign promise to tax the rich to fund his agenda. The tax went into effect on July 1 and since then, the rollout has been messy. Some New Yorkers say they received notices warning they may be subject to the tax despite having lived in their residences for years or decades. Property owners had until Sept. 18 to challenge their tax notices or apply for an exemption. The judge on Monday said that no deadlines related to those tax letters should be enforced.

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Lead Stories

As solar and batteries dominate in Texas, Republican lawmakers consider natural gas minimums

As new electricity generation skews toward solar and battery storage in Texas, Republican state senators are questioning whether it’s time to impose minimum standards for building gas plants and move away from free trade in the state’s electricity marketplace. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the state’s grid operator, reported last week that 70 percent of generation in the 460-gigawatt interconnection queue is from solar and battery storage. Natural gas facilities make up less than 17 percent of that line. And while it’s an uptick from three years ago, when there were less than 10 gigawatts of gas power plants seeking to connect, legislators and grid leaders say going forward the current level of planned gas facilities won’t be enough.

State Sen. Phil King, a Republican from Weatherford, asked the leaders of ERCOT and the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) at a public hearing last week whether there should be a rule that puts a quota on what share of new generation connecting to the grid comes from fossil fuels. “Should we say that from a point of interconnection that 50 percent—or some percentage of new generation—has to be dispatchable generation as opposed to just letting the market forces guide that,” King asked, referring to gas plants as “dispatachable” because they can be ramped up or down on demand, unlike intermittent wind and solar power sources. “That would be a pretty significant policy change to have a requirement like that,” ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas replied at a Senate Committee on Business and Commerce public hearing. But both Vegas and PUC Chairman Thomas Gleeson said there needs to be a way to provide long-term incentives for gas to get built in Texas.

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Data center backlash leads to a new land rush in the Texas oil patch

Energy companies in the country’s largest oil field have a plan to turn shrub-covered dirt into gold. It has nothing to do with oil—and everything to do with the data-center boom. Firms including Texas Pacific Land, LandBridge, and EagleRock sit on land empires nestled in the Permian Basin, which spans West Texas and New Mexico. Their customers are oil-and-gas producers that pay for the right to build roads, drill wells and dump toxic water that is produced alongside the oil they bring to the surface. Now, these landowners want a piece of the AI action. The companies’ ambition is to lease land to data centers and sell them everything from water to construction materials. They are betting that developers facing community pushback from Maine to Arizona will be drawn to the Permian’s abundant land, cheap energy and business friendly climate.

“A lot of places you see all over the country they’re worried about water, they’re worried about power, they’re worried about transmission, and the Permian has all of those things in spades,” said EagleRock Chief Executive Greg Pipkin Jr. The companies’ business model has been like catnip to investors because unlike drilling for oil, which requires huge upfront investments, leasing land is capital light. Texas Pacific’s stock is trading around 37 times its projected earnings over the next four quarters; LandBridge, about 39 times, which analysts say reflect investors’ growth expectations driven in part by data centers. Their respective stocks are up 14% and 56% so far this year. EagleRock, another firm that sits on a vast land domain, raised $320 million from an initial public offering earlier this year. “There’s so much money,” said Bryan Loocke, an energy partner at law firm Vinson & Elkins. “Everybody’s chasing that white whale.” Chevron recently signed a 20-year agreement to sell electricity to a Microsoft data center and is working to build a gas-fired power plant in the Permian to feed electricity to the facility. Texas Pacific sold land to Chevron for the project. Artificial-intelligence startup Poolside and cloud-infrastructure company CoreWeave have said they would build a massive data-center complex on a sprawling ranch in West Texas.

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Flock cameras can track every car in America. Police love them. Citizens don’t.

Driving down a road lined with strip malls outside Dallas, Philip, a 27-year-old cellphone tower repairman, was describing the exquisite piquancy of his homegrown hot peppers when he stopped midsentence. “Flock!” he said, pointing to a traffic light pole at an intersection. Attached to it was a small black box with a camera that takes photos as cars drive by. It was a license plate reader made by Flock Safety, based in Atlanta, that alerts law enforcement when it spots wanted cars and allows officers to see where cars of interest have been. Philip pulled into a strip mall, parked outside a dentist’s office and opened an app on his phone. The app, DeFlock, invites people to “view and contribute to an open map of public mass surveillance devices.” He zoomed in on the intersection on the digital map and plotted the location of the camera. Philip asked that his full name be withheld, because Flock’s chief executive, Garrett Langley, once called DeFlock “terroristic.”

To Philip, DeFlock is about pushing against the proliferation of cameras that capture the ordinary moments of ordinary people. “And what is my way of pushing back? Education. Data,” Philip said. “Am I just being paranoid? No, they’re actually everywhere.” Flock’s 120,000 cameras can be found alongside roads in every state but Alaska, allowing law enforcement officers to see within seconds where a car might be, and where it has been. The company has contracts with 7,000 law enforcement agencies, which is 40 percent of all departments in the United States. Other companies sell license plate tracking services, but Flock, a private company valued at $8.4 billion, has become a lightning rod because of its rapid expansion, the ubiquity of its cameras, and a number of controversies involving its product. A Texas officer used Flock’s cameras to track a woman across state lines who was suspected of self-administering an abortion. Officers across the country have abused their access to Flock’s cameras, including to track romantic partners, resulting in discipline and termination. Los Angeles and Dayton, Ohio, among other cities, recently suspended their contracts with Flock to prevent immigration authorities from accessing data from the cameras.

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'Weaker than we thought': Jobs surprise deals setback for GOP in elections

U.S. employers are shedding jobs and wage growth is decelerating, suggesting that President Donald Trump’s labor market looks much weaker than assumed. The Labor Department on Friday reported that employment unexpectedly contracted by 23,000 positions last month — compared with the 83,000 gain that economists had forecast. It also revised down the May and June reports by more than 100,000 jobs from payroll estimates that the White House had celebrated as a sign of the economy’s resilience. U.S. employers are shedding jobs and wage growth is decelerating, suggesting that President Donald Trump’s labor market looks much weaker than assumed. The Labor Department on Friday reported that employment unexpectedly contracted by 23,000 positions last month — compared with the 83,000 gain that economists had forecast. It also revised down the May and June reports by more than 100,000 jobs from payroll estimates that the White House had celebrated as a sign of the economy’s resilience. The report is a tough beat for Republicans heading into the 2026 midterms, with voters already sour on the economy. “Recent economic history is weaker than we thought,” University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers wrote on X shortly after the report’s release. “July’s new number is downright concerning.”

Even though the jobless rate fell to 4.1 percent — a level that would normally suggest workers could secure larger paychecks — average hourly earnings are growing at a slower pace than at any point since early 2021, when the labor market was still recovering from the pandemic. The jobs report is likely to take some of the heat off the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates at its next meeting to combat persistent inflation. That may keep borrowing costs from rising, but the combination of higher interest rates, inflation and uneven wage growth has fueled pessimism that has prevailed for the last half-decade. And the public’s negative mood about the economy is likely to persist, said David Blanchflower, an economics professor at Dartmouth College who specializes in labor market perceptions. “Maybe you know people are expecting more from their jobs, and they’re comparing themselves to different people,” he added. Or “maybe the jobs have just become shit.” Whatever the cause, measures of consumer sentiment and confidence have been weak. Cost-of-living issues have consistently kept Trump’s approval rating near record lows — a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that the GOP’s long-held advantage on economic policy has eroded — and Friday’s jobs report threatens to undermine the administration’s attempts to reverse the narrative.

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State Stories

Dallas awaits convention costs and how much government might reimburse

Dallas officials expect to seek federal reimbursement for city resources used during President Donald Trump’s Republican midterm convention, but they do not yet know the event’s cost or how much the federal government would cover. City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert, asked about the potential cost to taxpayers of the Sept. 9–10 gathering at the American Airlines Center, said she was awaiting more details about what the convention might require of the city. “I’m hoping to hear more because I keep asking, when are we gonna know what they’re doing?” she said Friday after speaking to The Dallas Morning News editorial board.

Tolbert said that if the convention creates additional costs, the city would typically establish a separate pay code for officers to record the extra hours they work. That would allow Dallas to calculate its expenses and submit them for possible reimbursement, as it did for the FIFA World Cup events. She said federal reimbursement is common when an event requires the city to commit additional resources, but she did not know how much would be covered. “Generally, that’s what happens if they’re going to require us to pull a certain number of our resources to support it,” Tolbert said. “Then there’s typically a federal government reimbursement. I just don’t know what the level is going to be.” Public Safety Chief Dominique Artis said after The News meeting that detailed planning is only beginning. “We’re just starting now to really get into how this thing is gonna roll out with the White House,” Artis said. “They’re taking the lead, and so as we go through the planning phase, we’ll start understanding costs.” Tolbert said Dallas has the public safety network needed to support the Republican convention. “The good thing is that we have the infrastructure,” she said. “We’ve got the public safety ecosystem that’s important. They’re kind of just controlling everything right now.” Mayor Eric Johnson spoke Tuesday at a media reception where he promoted Dallas as the convention’s host city but made no mention of what the event could cost or whether city expenses would be fully reimbursed.

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A year into the job, Mayor Jones risks holding the bag on largest tax increase in decades

Roughly a year into her first term, Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones is calling for some drastic measures to address a ballooning budget deficit: Reconsidering funding for a new $1.3 billion Spurs arena, sunsetting a workforce development program that’s popular with some of her closest political allies, and axing funding for popular events like Fiesta and the San Antonio Book Festival. Under San Antonio’s weak-mayor form of government, however, Jones has little power to do any of these things alone. And after months of irritating colleagues with her go-it-alone approach, she could soon be the one left holding the bag on the biggest tax increases in decades. “My administration inherited a mess,” Jones vented to reporters after Thursday’s council meeting. “This $158 million budget deficit did not happen overnight. This was years and years of poor decision-making.”

Six weeks out from its budget vote, the City Council returned from July recess with tensions as high as ever. Members have been grumbling privately all week about the slew of memos the mayor released about her spending plans without consulting them. On Thursday, a low-stakes vote over a community advisory board ended with one member accusing the mayor of lying about the status of the arena deal and the mayor requesting mediation from the city attorney. Then on Friday, a trio of council members raised the stakes with a press conference in which they characterized Jones’ budget efforts as “disingenuous” and an unwelcome distraction in the middle of the council’s busiest season. Despite not having the support to put a Spurs funding vote on the ballot, they pointed out, Jones has proceeded with a listening tour to rally residents in favor of the idea, the first of which kicked off last night.

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Communities In Schools of Houston offers guidance to help families start the school year strong

Communities In Schools (CIS) of Houston, a leading nonprofit supporting students and families across multiple Houston-area school districts, encourages parents and guardians to help students begin the 2026–2027 school year with healthy routines that support academic success. Serving students from Pre-K through Alumni, CIS provides comprehensive services that help young people overcome barriers and thrive in school and life. CIS places at least one full-time CIS Student Support Manager (SSM) on each partner campus to deliver direct services and provide students and families with tailored referrals to community partners. SSMs provide students and families in need with services including academic support, supportive guidance and mental health counseling, health and social services, and college and career readiness resources.

“With the new school year beginning, our campus-based professionals, which could include licensed mental health staff, are ready to help students and families navigate challenges, build resilience, and take advantage of opportunities for success,” says Shubhra Endley, Director of Mental Health & Wellness for Communities In Schools of Houston. “The first few weeks of school are critical.” “Students who miss even a few days early on are more likely to become chronically absent and fall behind academically,” Endley continues. “We want families to have the tools and support they need to start the year strong.”

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Don Nelson, influential Dallas Mavericks coach & basketball pioneer, has died

The assignment was to knock on the door, and interview Dallas Mavericks head coach Don Nelson 90 minutes before tipoff inside Reunion Arena. Having never covered an NBA game, or practice, I did not allow the boss to know the level of terror I felt because, in January 2000, this was an opportunity you take, no matter how scary. Inside a small room, Nelson was sitting in a chair, smoking a cigar, Red Auerbach style. Don Nelson was a huge man, and unaware of how intimidating this was to a young, naive reporter. He didn’t care. We were the only two in the room, and this five-minute interview happened a week or so after a young tech guy named Mark Cuban bought the Dallas Mavericks; Nelson had no idea of what was coming with Cuban, a point he offered with his dry wit that caught me off guard.

“I have two years left on my contract as general manager,” he said, “whatever that means.” It didn’t matter who you were, Nelson wore who he was, his thoughts and feelings, like a pair of comfortable jeans. He believed in himself, and what he thought. We should all be so lucky. Like anyone who was ahead of his time, his thoughts and vision are revered now. Longtime NBA reporter Marc Stein reported on Sunday that Nelson has died. His family issued the following statement to Stein: “On Sunday morning our beloved husband, dad, grandfather and great-grandfather Don Nelson peacefully went to be with the Lord, surrounded by his loving family. Throughout his last week, friends and family encircled him with love, sharing the blessing of his friendship and revisiting treasured memories.”

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FDA authorizes wound spray to help protect Texas livestock and wildlife from New World screwworm

Texas ranchers and wildlife managers now have a new tool to help protect animals from New World screwworm, as the parasitic fly continues to spread in the state. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued an Emergency Use Authorization for CLiK Extra, a wound spray that can help prevent New World screwworm infestations in livestock and several species of wildlife. The authorization comes as the U.S. responds to an outbreak that has resulted in 45 confirmed New World screwworm infestations, according to the latest federal data. New World screwworm is a parasitic fly whose larvae feed on the living tissue of animals. Female flies lay their eggs in wounds or other vulnerable areas. Once the larvae hatch, they can cause severe tissue damage and, in some cases, death.

The FDA said CLiK Extra may be effective in preventing New World screwworm infestations, known as myiasis, when used as authorized. The agency said the known and potential benefits of the product outweigh its known and potential risks. “Today's emergency use authorization provides a new tool for preventing the spread of New World screwworm infestations,” Acting FDA Commissioner Kyle Diamantas said. CLiK Extra does not kill screwworm larvae directly. Instead, it works as an insect growth regulator, disrupting the development of the larvae and preventing them from completing their life cycle. The product can be applied to or around a wound when the wound appears or is created. The authorization covers wounds associated with injuries, birth and surgical or husbandry procedures, including dehorning, ear tagging, castration, tail docking and shearing. That could give Texas livestock producers another option for protecting animals after procedures that leave them with wounds that could potentially attract screwworm flies. But the spray is intended for prevention, not treatment of an existing infestation. If a wound is already infested with screwworm larvae, or if an infestation develops after the product has been applied, the FDA recommends contacting a veterinarian to discuss treatment options.

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In blue San Antonio, Paxton taps locals to warn Republicans about progressive rule

Attorney General Ken Paxton tapped some unexpected names to introduce him at his packed campaign rally at the Angry Elephant on Saturday. Bexar County Commissioner Grant Moody and San Antonio Councilwoman Misty Spears took the stage asking the roughly 200 Republicans in attendance to rally their friends and neighbors around Paxton’s U.S. Senate bid this November. The move comes just months after the two were stumping for Paxton’s primary opponent, the more moderate U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who they said was the best candidate to hold off Democrat James Talarico in a tough race this November. San Antonio has long been a last bastion of GOP moderates.

But Paxton went on to trounce Cornyn in the primary runoff, and his party is now scrambling to unite voters around a candidate with baggage from a high-profile affair, personal legal troubles and years of disagreements with other Texas GOP leaders. Despite those weaknesses, nearly all of San Antonio’s elected Republicans were in attendance Saturday, urging voters rally their friends and neighbors against sitting out this election. “What we stand for is on the line here, and what we have before us is Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is ready to deliver that Texas promise up to the U.S. government,” said Spears, a longtime GOP activist before she was elected to City Council last year. “So what are you going to do about it? Are you going to sit out? Are you going to say ‘Ah, it’s fine’? Yell at the TV, at Fox News, and be upset? No, you’re going to get out there. You’re going to vote.” Councilman Marc Whyte (D10), state Rep. Mark Dorazio (R-San Antonio), state Sen. Donna Campbell (R-New Braunfels) and TX23 congressional candidate Brandon Herrera were also in attendance.

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Longtime Fort Bend County Judge Bob Hebert dies at age 84

Longtime Republican Fort Bend County Judge Robert E. “Bob” Hebert has died at the age of 84 following a brief illness. Hebert assumed office in 2003 and led the county through what county officials called "an extraordinary period of growth and change" up through Hurricane Harvey in 2017. After serving as county judge for 15 years, Hebert lost his re-election in 2018 to then-Democrat KP George. The former judge is being remembered for his years of leadership, public service and generosity in the community, as an outpouring of tributes from local nonprofit organizations and county officials has been released.

"I always appreciated Judge Hebert's wisdom, his integrity and the thoughtful leadership he provided through the years," Republican Fort Bend County Commissioner Vincent Morales said in an Aug. 6 social media post. "He carried himself with dignity, treated others with respect and understood that public service is ultimately about leaving a community stronger than you found it." For one of Fort Bend County's longtime Democratic commissioners, Hebert represents a different era of county politics — one they remember as more measured and less defined by partisan conflict. He’s described as someone who knew how to work within the role of county judge and balance competing interests without allowing political differences to overshadow the county’s work. Democratic Commissioner Grady Prestage served alongside Hebert on commissioners court during the former judge's entire time in office and believed Hebert genuinely wanted to do what was best for Fort Bend County.

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Mavericks call Valley View arena deal called 'purely exploratory'

New legal documents raise further questions about the prospects of the Dallas Mavericks' proposed new arena and entertainment district on the site of the former Valley View mall. Documents obtained by Dallas Business Journal indicate the NBA team remains non-committal. In recent court filings, attorneys for the Mavericks described an agreement to buy land at Valley View as "purely exploratory." The legal filings emerged as part of an ongoing dispute between the team's current majority owners, the family of Miriam Adelson and Patrick Dumont, and minority owner Mark Cuban. Cuban argues he's being frozen out of "business opportunities" related to the team’s planned Valley View arena development and filed a pre-lawsuit petition last month.

In an Aug. 6 response, James Bookhout, who is serving as legal counsel for a Mavericks entity called Arena Development Intermediate LLC, or ADI, called the Valley View deal "purely exploratory" and said "there is no business opportunity to present" to Cuban given "uncertainty" over who will operate the new arena. He states Cuban's team has been made aware of this. Cuban, who maintains 27% minority ownership in the team, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest filings. However, the legal dust-up appears to be heading toward arbitration. Judge Bill Whitehill of the Texas Business Court in an Aug. 6 filing sided with ADI's request to seek arbitration, rather than a full-blown lawsuit, in the case. Whitehill also set an Aug. 14 hearing on a petition Cuban originally filed in the 134th District Court in Dallas County. ADI successfully requested the hearing be moved from Dallas County to the Texas Business Court.

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Austin's pursuit of an NHL team is about to ramp up

Austin's impending pursuit of a National Hockey League team remains at "ground zero," stakeholders said, but there are at least signs that it's about to soon ramp up. About two months after NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman made the surprise revelation that the league signed an exclusive term sheet with the Friedkin Family and Houston-based Pursuit Sports to consider Houston and Austin for a new franchise, those involved maintained the latter is not just a throw-in to sweeten a deal with the franchise owner's hometown. That's because in recent weeks, representatives from Pursuit Sports have started initial conversations with local officials. Additionally, sources said Pursuit Sports has inked a local office lease, although it remains unclear where. Its CEO, David Beeston, is said to be soon spending extended time in Austin.

"I'm really pleased that the Friedkin group and Pursuit Sports are giving us a shot in this," Visit Austin CEO Tom Noonan said, adding the group had an initial call with Beeston. Noonan's team offered to serve as a connector as they roll out the welcome mat to court the city's first big four sports franchise. Representatives for Pursuit Sports and the NHL declined to comment. But Bettman, back during a June press conference, indicated the league has been working with the company for the better part of two years about Houston as an expansion opportunity. It was the realization a team would need a new arena that brought Austin also into the mix. Over the next six months, both the Houston and Austin areas will be evaluated for what Bettman has billed as a $3.5 billion project cost between an expansion fee and a new arena. A new Texas franchise would serve as the NHL's 33rd team. Public incentives are almost assuredly expected to be part of the discussion. The league's governing board will have the final say.

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Travis County taking its time on critical Dog's Head vote

Travis County officials plan to take their time considering whether the county should participate in a taxing plan that would support Endeavor Real Estate Group's development of the massive Dog’s Head area. The Dog’s Head is a 2,645-acre site along the Colorado River near Austin’s airport. The site is called the Dog’s Head because the shape of the Colorado River makes it look like a dog’s head from an aerial view. Most of the Dog’s Head site has been used for mining and industrial purposes. Endeavor has pitched the Dog’s Head as a massive development opportunity for Austin that could eventually hold millions of square feet of commercial real estate and over 12,000 residential units. But for Endeavor’s vision of the Dog’s Head to become a reality, the site needs an estimated $5.6 billion worth of infrastructure work.

That's why Endeavor is seeking for both the city of Austin and Travis County to participate in a Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone, or TIRZ. A TIRZ is a funding mechanism that local governments can use to pay for infrastructure and create a dedicated fund for improvement projects in a certain area. It works by creating a baseline of taxable value for an area of land, and increases in the land’s taxable value are put into a TIRZ fund for that area. The Austin City Council in July approved the city’s participation in the Dog’s Head TIRZ. The Travis County Commissioners Court is in no rush to vote on the Dog’s Head TIRZ. Travis County Judge Andy Brown told the Austin Business Journal that no decision has been made on when Commissioners could vote on participating in the Dog’s Head TIRZ. “I'd like to see the proposal come before the Commissioners Court when it's ready for thoughtful consideration and we have the information needed to determine whether it reflects Travis County's values,” Brown said in an emailed statement. “My focus is on getting it right, not on meeting a specific timeline."

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TACA annual meeting highlights Texas growth

The Texas Aggregates & Concrete Association (TACA) drew more than 600 attendees to its 72nd Annual Meeting at the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort & Spa. TACA logo This year’s event, themed “Building the Community,” set records for attendance (600-plus), exhibitors (26), funds raised (more than $200,000) and more. Featured at the meeting were economic and legislative updates, leadership development, industry recognition programs, charitable initiatives and networking opportunities to support the continued growth of Texas’s construction materials industry.

“Every road, school, hospital, home and business begins with the materials our members produce,” says Andrew Pinkerton, president and CEO of TACA. “As Texas continues to grow, our industry remains committed to providing the essential building materials that support strong communities, create jobs and improve quality of life for Texans. The TACA Annual Meeting is a reminder that what we build goes far beyond infrastructure. Our member companies help build the communities where families live, work and thrive – not just today, but for generations to come.” The meeting opened with a community service project led by TACA’s Emerging Leaders Academy participants. More than 100 volunteers assembled 2,000 backpacks for students in need, benefiting charitable organizations serving communities in Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. The general session featured updates on association initiatives, legislative and regulatory developments and presentations from nationally recognized speakers addressing the economic, technological and leadership challenges shaping the future of the industry. Featured economist Anirban Basu, chairman and CEO of Sage Policy Group, discussed economic trends affecting the construction materials sector, including inflation, tariffs and workforce challenges. Despite ongoing uncertainties, Basu forecasts continued growth for Texas, citing the state’s strong economic fundamentals and population expansion. “Let’s empower the doers,” Basu says. “That’s one of the reasons the Texas economy remains such a powerful engine of growth. Texas is a doer state.”

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Fort Worth ISD says it will start school year with zero teacher vacancies

Fort Worth ISD says it will begin the 2026-27 school year with no teacher vacancies, marking a significant turnaround for a district that faced major staffing concerns earlier this year. The district announced the milestone Sunday, one day before students are scheduled to return to class Monday, Aug. 10. "A milestone worth celebrating! Fort Worth ISD is opening the 2026-27 school year with 0 teacher vacancies," the district said in a social media post. The announcement comes after a months-long push to fill positions following more than 1,000 staff departures ahead of the new school year. As recently as July 23, Fort Worth ISD reported it still had 20 classroom teacher vacancies remaining with fewer than three weeks before the first day of school.

The district said Sunday that historically it has begun the school year with more than 200 teacher vacancies. "This year, every student will have a teacher on day one," the district said. Fort Worth ISD credited school principals, its talent management team and other district employees with filling the remaining positions. The district has spent months recruiting educators, including holding hiring fairs throughout the summer. In April, Fort Worth ISD also announced an automatic 5% raise for classroom teachers as part of its efforts to recruit and retain educators. Although Fort Worth ISD says it has filled its teacher vacancies, the district continues to advertise other employment opportunities, including positions in special education and other areas. The district called reaching zero teacher vacancies the result of "teamwork, urgency, and commitment" from employees across Fort Worth ISD.

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National Stories

The ‘jury duty’ scam that cost this family $25,000

The sheriff’s deputy chatted breezily over the phone about his three young daughters as Kimberly Fudge drove through gritty streets and lush Florida byways on a grim errand: gathering thousands of dollars in bail to avoid arrest for missing jury duty. When Fudge, 38, a manager in the finance department of a government contractor, reached the drop-off point, she balked. It was a convenience store with abandoned gas pumps and a cryptocurrency machine inside. She was told to scan a QR code and feed the machine $4,000 in cash. She walked back to her car and began to voice doubts that had been building: “Are you sure this is where I’m supposed to post the bail?” The officer’s friendly demeanor vanished. His voice rose. He reminded her that he was tracking her location—and that deputies were two blocks away, ready to bring her in.

She went back inside and made the deposit. It was the first of many that day. A team of at least five scammers, playing different roles with dead-perfect Florida accents, would keep her on the phone for nearly 10 hours and talk her into handing over $25,000. “They had me scared,” Fudge said. They could read her texts and see her internet searches. “They knew my Social Security number. They knew how much I had in my bank account. They had every single thing about me.” Americans are awash in scams: phony UPS texts, AI-generated voices of loved ones in trouble, spoofed emails tricking city governments. People reported losing $3.5 billion to impostor scams in 2025, nearly triple 2020’s level, the Federal Trade Commission said in a June report. Some swindles originate overseas, run by sophisticated criminal syndicates. “Some of them have HR departments and performance reviews,” said Ben Bernstein, a cybersecurity expert at Huntress. But increasingly, they come from closer to home. In January, the Justice Department announced the conviction of two Georgia inmates who ran scams on stolen cellphones from behind bars. The jury-duty shakedown has surged in the Tampa area. The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office alone has received 44 reports of the scam so far this year, up from 25 for all of last year, said Sgt. Andrew Miller, head of the economic-crimes unit.

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Surprises and scandals scramble the battle for Congress

The final stretch of primary season has scrambled the battle for Congress, as scandals, insurgent victories and voters’ rejection of party leaders’ preferred candidates reshape a small but critical set of races. Democrats’ path to a Senate majority narrowed with the triumph of progressive insurgent Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, whom polls show faring worse against former Rep. Mike Rogers (R) than his primary rival. Republicans suffered their own setbacks as a Trump-endorsed congressional candidate in Michigan lost to a rival who had suspended his campaign, while misconduct allegations drove a vulnerable North Carolina incumbent from the race. Republicans are eager to face several Democrats they believe are too far left for their districts, while Democrats see new openings where GOP candidates have suffered from controversies. With control of Congress potentially turning on a handful of seats, both parties are betting individual candidates will matter as much as the political terrain — though operatives’ judgments about electability often prove wrong.

“It’s really hard to tell you what the board’s going to be like,” said Democratic strategist Andrew Acosta, noting that antiestablishment fervor among grassroots organizers has made prognosticating harder for consultants and pollsters, and scandals are adding more volatility. For Trump, the stakes include the fate of his policy agenda for the rest of his term, as well as burdensome oversight and possibly a third impeachment. But he has taken a hands-off approach to the midterms, frustrating some Republicans who want him to help mobilize his supporters and dip into his super PAC’s $400 million war chest. “I said to somebody, ‘Wait a minute, you don’t understand — I won, I’m not campaigning,’” Trump said in an interview with Punchbowl News released Friday. “If I don’t run, will those people go out and vote? … Because a lot of them are very angry at Republicans.” To win the Senate, Democrats need to defend their seats in Michigan and Georgia, pick up North Carolina and Maine, plus win in two more states that Trump won by more than 10 points in 2024 — a tall order even in a year expected to favor them. The latest polls show how individual candidates can defy a state’s typical partisan makeup. Democrats are currently leading in red states like Ohio, Iowa and Texas by more than in left-leaning Michigan or Maine. Without Michigan, Democrats would have to win in a third state that Trump won by at least 10 points in 2024. Polls showed Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Michigan), who was endorsed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), faring at least slightly better against Rogers than El-Sayed. But he edged her out in Tuesday’s primary by about one percentage point.

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Powerball jackpot climbs to $905 million ahead of tonight’s drawing, the largest of the year

The Powerball jackpot is at an estimated $905 million ahead of tonight’s drawing after there were no big winners in Saturday night’s drawing. Tonight’s drawing will be the 43rd in a row in search of a winner, and its prize ranks as the eighth-largest jackpot in Powerball history, according to the Multi State Lottery Association, which administers the game. If a player matches all five white balls and the red Powerball tonight, they can choose between an annuitized prize estimated at $905 million, paid out over 30 years, or a lump sum payment estimated at $391.9 million. Saturday night’s winning numbers were 5, 9, 35, 54, and 63, and the red Powerball was 7. There was a Power Play multiplier of 3.

Although there were no jackpot winners on Saturday, tickets sold in Arizona, Florida, Michigan and New York matched all five white balls to win $1 million each, lottery officials said. Another ticket, sold in Texas, matched all five white balls and included the Power Play option, winning $2 million. Nobody has won the grand prize in more than three months, since two players in Florida and Texas split a $20 million prize on May 2. The odds of winning a Powerball jackpot are approximately 1 in 292.2 million. They are considerably more favorable for smaller cash prizes, with a 1 in 24.9 chance. Powerball drawings are held every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday at 10:59 p.m. ET.

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Trump Crypto took $100 million from a businessman with red flags

During the World Cup soccer final in New Jersey last month, Zach Witkoff, co-founder of President Trump’s cryptocurrency company, took in the action from a luxury suite. Joining him was a man who had made the president, and all the company’s co-founders, much richer. Two years earlier, the man, Guren “Bobby” Zhou, was a failed hardwood flooring retailer in Britain who had come under investigation there for money laundering and presided over the collapse of a small crypto start-up. Then seemingly out of nowhere, he became one of the biggest buyers of tokens from Mr. Trump’s company, World Liberty Financial, dropping a total of $100 million through a new firm called Aqua 1. He kept quiet about it for months, other than speaking briefly as “Mr. Bobby” from Aqua 1 during a little-noticed audio stream on X.

“We’re very proud to be a major player in the World Liberty, which is Trump’s family’s crypto venture,” he said. Under World Liberty policy, as much as $75 million of that money was distributed to a company controlled by the president and his three sons. The money also benefited the family of Steve Witkoff, the Trump administration’s special peace envoy and the father of Zach Witkoff. In any prior era, a windfall for the president of that size from a foreigner with no public signs of access to that level of wealth would have certainly gone against norms and might have spawned a congressional investigation. Instead, the curious case of Mr. Zhou illustrates the ease with which buyers with unknown backgrounds and motivations can use the anonymity of cryptocurrency to shower Mr. Trump with money. The president’s recent financial disclosure form shows that he collected $1.4 billion from his crypto businesses last year, the majority of it from anonymous sources. It is not clear how closely World Liberty scrutinized Mr. Zhou’s past, but the money laundering investigation in England was publicly available information, as were portions of Mr. Zhou’s troubled business history.

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Democrats’ new plan to win in November: Just be normal

Democrats are increasingly convinced that “double haters” — voters disappointed with both President Donald Trump and the Democratic Party — will make or break their chance at winning a House majority in November. All it’ll take to win this voting group over, Democrats think, is one very normal trick. In battleground districts across the country, Democratic candidates are attempting to prove that they are just like the average, everyday Americans they hope to represent. Their bet is that the promise of normalcy is enough to win over skeptical voters. It’s an effort that sits at the center of the party’s planned communication effort in the coming months, especially in the right-leaning seats its candidates need to win for a majority next year.

“What this really means is, are you putting your head down and working?” said Democratic Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet of Michigan. “Are you talking about things that really matter and using language that normal people use, not something from inside the beltway?” McDonald Rivet, who won her Trump-supporting district with relative ease in 2024, is considered the template for the kind of candidate Democrats hope they recruited this year, a list that includes Rebecca Bennett in New Jersey, Zach Dembo in Kentucky and Chaz Molder in Tennessee. In interviews, they described a formula for coming across as normal that included focusing on economic pressures instead of Trump’s actions and avoiding statements and positions more aligned with liberal activists than the larger body politic. “The most important communication aspect of this is, ‘Hey, I’m a normal human being who’s going to focus on the economy,’” said one Democratic strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly about party strategy. “‘I’m not a crazy Democrat.’”

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Trump names Will Scharf as White House counsel

Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary, will become White House ?counsel and assistant to ?the president effective September 1, ?U.S. President Donald Trump ?said on Sunday. Scharf will become the ?White House's top lawyer after overseeing the administrative work of the ?Oval Office in his current ?role. The Reuters Daily Briefing newsletter provides all the news you need to start your day. Sign up here. He also led the National Capital ?Planning ?Commission, which approved the president's construction of the White House ballroom. Trump said David Warrington, the ?current ?White House ?counsel, is going to the private sector. ?Warrington formerly served as ?a ?personal counsel and a lawyer for Trump's 2024 campaign.

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Hawaii Democratic incumbent fends off left-wing challenger in congressional primary

U.S. Representative Ed Case easily fended off a Democratic primary challenge from ?a progressive rival for one of Hawaii's congressional ?seats, election results showed late Saturday. Case's victory over Jarrett Keohokalole, 43, marks ?the latest front of the battle roiling U.S. Democratic politics in which seasoned lawmakers have been pitted against more progressive newcomers. Case, 73, won 57% of the votes in his ?district, compared with Keohokalole's ?34%, official results showed. Neither could be reached immediately for comment on Sunday. Three others had ?also sought the Democratic nomination for the Honolulu-based district that is seen as safely Democratic.

Case, widely seen as a moderate, ?has held ?the seat since 2019, ?and also served in the ?House between 2002 and 2007. He holds a senior position on a key spending committee and has argued Hawaii will attract fewer federal dollars if he is not reelected. Keohokalole highlighted Case's campaign donations from businesses to argue he ?has lost touch with voters. Case's ?win stands out from a recent ?surge for left-wing candidates ?in states including Colorado, Kentucky and New ?York. In Hawaii's other congressional district, ?U.S. Representative Jill ?Tokuda easily won her Democratic primary with 84% of the vote. Hawaii Governor Josh Green, who has led the ?state since ?2022, also defeated several challengers for the Democratic nomination.

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Trump says there was ‘some contractor error’ during Reflecting Pool renovation

President Trump on Sunday said there was “some contractor error” with the renovations to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool while still accusing a former Olympian canoeist of vandalizing the Washington, D.C., landmark despite charges against the athlete being dropped. “There was substantial damage to the Reflecting Pool, also but, unfortunately, there is no video or proof, other than the damage, itself,” he wrote on Truth Social. “We are working on the Pool, and it will reopen shortly. As with many jobs, there was also some contractor error done by rushing the job for a July 4th opening, but it was a very small area of this massive Pool, and was relatively inconsequential.”

Trump claimed that a National Park Service “career employee, a highly credible witness,” saw Olympian David Hearn “in broad daylight vandalize the Reflecting Pool by ‘violently’ ripping and tugging at the Pool’s somewhat delicate coating.” He added that this employee’s testimony was provided to U.S. Attorney of the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro. The president concluded his post by saying that security cameras “have been, and are being, installed.” The remarks went up on Truth Social the day after Trump posted photos of alleged vandalism amid a push for Pirro to revisit the decision to drop the charges against multiple people also accused of vandalizing the pool. This other post on Truth Social included two photos of what appeared to be graffiti and some peeling of the coating of the pool. Both photos were labeled with the word “Vandalism.” Trump is pushing for the Justice Department to backtrack on its move to drop criminal charges against people accused of damaging the site. On Friday, the president pressed for Pirro to revisit “her hastily made decision.”

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Copyright August 17, 2026, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved