Lead Stories

Texas hospitals expect to lose $27 million a day in Medicaid funding starting Tuesday

When the state’s new fiscal year begins on Tuesday, Texas hospitals expect to lose $27 million a day in additional Medicaid funding. The shortfall is the result of a decision by the Trump administration to withhold approval from Texas for about $9.8 billion in the next year from three programs, the bulk of which affects the Comprehensive Hospital Increase Reimbursement Program (CHIRP). This program gives hospitals additional funding to cover the difference between Medicaid rate payments and the actual costs that hospitals incur to provide services to Medicaid patients. Essentially, hospitals, which often are paid less than what they caspend on Medicaid patients due to outdated payment rates set by the state, are losing out on their additional reimbursement for 2027. Local governmental entities collect taxes from hospitals — about $4 billion a year, according to the Texas Hospital Association — and under CHIRP, the federal government matches those funds so that Texas hospitals can then use them to cover the actual costs of providing Medicaid services.

Hospitals say those CHIRP dollars are critical and if they lose that funding, they will likely have to cut services to patients. Four million low-income Texans are enrolled in Medicaid, most of them children. “It is impossible for a hospital to take a huge loss on a Medicaid side of their portfolio and not have that impact services across the board, regardless of what type of insurance a patient has,” said Sara González, a THA vice president of advocacy, public policy and political strategy. In Houston alone, the impact could mean at least $258 million less for the public healthcare system there known as Harris Health and as much as $1.4 billion less for the region overall next year. “The impacts would be catastrophic for Texas’ safety-net healthcare system,” said Dr. Esmaeil Porsa, president and CEO of Harris Health. “We are carefully monitoring every dollar and would be forced to make difficult decisions about maintaining critical services if this impasse continues.” The federal government is withholding these critical dollars because they are calling into question how local jurisdictions in Texas calculate the amount of taxes collected from hospitals. Robert Fries, the chief financial officer for Children’s Health in Dallas said in a statement that this type of funding is crucial for children’s hospitals like Children’s Medical Center. “Delays and uncertainty threaten access to critical pediatric specialty care, behavioral health services and the workforce needed to deliver that care,” Fries said. “If these delays continue, it will become increasingly difficult to maintain the health care safety net that Texas children and families depend on every day.”

Read this article at Texas Tribune - Subscribers Only

Texas prepares for severe weather as heavy rain, outages threaten region

State officials are warning Texans to prepare for dangerous weather from Tropical Storm Edouard that could bring heavy rain, damaging winds, flooding and widespread power outages. Gov. Greg Abbott and emergency officials say crews are on standby and ready to respond, but residents must also take steps now to protect themselves and their families. “This is a good time for everybody to go through both the mental and physical exercise of getting prepared for a storm like this.” Emergency management teams are forecasting heavy rain and high winds that could threaten lives and cause widespread power outages. However, officials tracking the storm say the state’s power grid is expected to hold. Texans from Brownsville to Beaumont are being urged to remain weather-aware, follow instructions from local officials and be prepared.

Residents should follow any local evacuation orders, monitor forecasts and review their family emergency plans in case of flooding or a power outage. Officials also encourage people to be prepared to assist relatives and neighbors who may need extra help. “This is our first big storm of the season, and I’ll tell you, Texas is prepared,” said Orlando Alaniz with the Texas Division of Emergency Management. CenterPoint says it is closely monitoring conditions across Houston and 12 surrounding counties. Nearly 3,000 workers are on standby and ready to respond, along with 100 gas line workers. CenterPoint says all of its substations have been inspected and are ready. “We’re ready, we’re focused and we’re mobilized. We’re going to be responding as quickly and as safely as possible to any type of outages that come,” said Nathan Brownell with CenterPoint. Officials anticipate this will be a relatively short weather event but say it is still important to remain prepared. One final reminder: Officials say to assume any downed power line is energized and stay at least 35 feet away. CenterPoint is expected to provide another weather update at 5 p.m. tomorrow.

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Trump says communities that oppose data centers will end up ‘backwards and poor’

President Donald Trump came out strongly in favor of data center construction across the country on Monday, writing on Truth Social that those speaking out against the expensive and resource-intensive projects must want to “end up being backwards and poor.” His post comes at a time when data center popularity is plummeting. According to a survey this year by the Pew Research Center, “more Americans say data centers have a negative effect on the environment, home energy costs and people’s quality of life nearby than say they have a positive effect.” And a Reuters-Ipsos poll in June found that 77% of Americans worry that artificial intelligence will raise their electricity bills. Trump, however, disagreed with that assessment.

“If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign,” he wrote Monday. “The good news is that there are plenty of other places that want them. If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame.” Many lawmakers who support data centers have pitched their development as an existential struggle to defeat China, which is also working to create sophisticated AI technologies. Trump highlighted this framing in his message, saying that “China could not be happier” with the anti-data center stances that candidates for both parties have adopted, including some Republicans who previously championed the developments. For example, just last year Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared his state the “epicenter of AI development” — but this month, he abandoned the claim and halted approvals of about 1,800 new data centers, citing concerns that they use too much power and water. Nationally, progressive Democrats are pushing a moratorium on the construction of new AI data centers. A bill introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) had faced bipartisan pushback when it was introduced in March, with elected officials from both parties arguing the United States must continue to develop the technology to stay ahead of rival nations.

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GOP soul-searching for life after Trump is ramping up

Republicans say their party will need to do a lot of soul searching to find its direction before President Trump leaves office in 2029, something that is coming into sharper focus with the approaching midterm election and the realization that Trump will soon become a lame duck. GOP strategists and political experts say the discussion about what comes next will begin to ramp up considerably after the November election. It’s a discussion likely to be impacted by how effective the GOP is this fall in defending its House and Senate majorities. “There will be a serious debate about the policy, about what the direction of the party is,” said Vin Weber, a GOP strategist and former member of House GOP leadership.

That debate will center on whether the Trump revolution on a host of issues, such as trade, will live on with the GOP. Weber said Republicans have embraced tariffs in recent years because they “respect Donald Trump as the negotiator,” not because they’ve embraced the concept of tariffs generally. “The traditional position of the Republican Party is anti-tariff. Tariffs are anti-trade, tariffs are taxes. The Republican Party that I grew up in was never the party of tariffs. The Democrats were the party of tariffs,” Weber said. He said Republicans embraced Trump as a bold fighter who won’t back down, but he said not everyone in the party is thrilled about some of Trump’s policy positions, including tariffs and federal meddling in the private sector. “In my view, much of the appeal of Trump to the Republican Party was that he was able to rouse the faithful against the movement to the radical left that we experienced under Barack Obama,” he added.

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State Stories

Texas’ Medicaid application backlog grows to more than 210,000, state data shows

Texas’ backlog of Medicaid applications grew from about 1,600 in January to more than 210,000 in August. During the same period, the backlog for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, grew from about 3,700 to more than 150,000, according to data from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, or HHSC, released by Texans Care for Children – a statewide research and advocacy organization. The group worries the backlog could continue to grow. “We’re very concerned that Texans are stuck waiting longer for healthcare and food,” said Diana Forester, director of health policy at Texans Care for Children. “We want to make sure pregnant women can start prenatal care quickly. We want to make sure that kids can see the doctor when they’re sick or need a checkup. We want to make sure people can eat.”

Forester’s group points to recent changes to SNAP as one of the key drivers of the increasing backlog. Last year, federal policymakers approved significant changes to SNAP as part of the massive federal tax and spending bill. Texas will already see millions of dollars in additional administrative costs later this year when states will have to take on more of the administrative costs of running SNAP – going from an even share with the federal government to covering 75%. In addition, Texas could be responsible for covering more than $700 million in benefits costs if it doesn’t improve the accuracy of its program. In order to avoid paying for part of the program, Texas would need an accuracy rate of 94%, but in fiscal year 2025, the state’s rate was 91%. In an email to KERA, HHSC said it continues to focus on helping eligible Texans receive food and healthcare benefits as quickly as possible. The agency issued a similar statement to KERA in May after Forester’s organization released data showing more than 40,000 pregnant people in Texas were waiting at least a month for their application to be processed.

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Matt Lanza: I’m a meteorologist who left Houston. Here's what the city needs.

(Matt Lanza, managing editor for Space City Weather and a former CenterPoint Energy meteorologist, will be leaving Houston for Connecticut after 15 years.) When the news came out this spring that I was leaving Houston, I thought it was interesting that some media reports framed it as a meteorologist fleeing climate change. That led people to ask, “If a meteorologist is leaving Houston because of climate change, what should I be doing?” It also produced humorous social media fodder. Everyone believes what they believe. But here’s the reality: Though I didn’t leave Houston because of climate change, it’s a reality that we need to build more resiliency in this city to manage the impacts. If anything, I’m bullish on Houston’s future more than most other Texas cities. Why? Houston works. It’s functional, and it has an attitude and culture to match. When I’m asked what I’ll miss most about Houston, I answer, “The people and the food.”

The people speak for themselves. Houstonians are some of the nicest, most charitable, coolest people in the country. Sadly, it often takes disasters for the world to see that. But living here, you get it. As for the food? I don’t care what magazine or website rankings say, Houston has the best food culture in America. I’ve gotten to know folks in the food and beverage industry in Houston, and I cannot profess my admiration for them enough. And when I think about the consequences of extreme weather, I think about the people who work in that industry, where margins matter so much. One storm can end it for them. When I write for Space City Weather, I think of a restaurant owner as my audience. They care deeply about weather impacts, and they just want to know what everything means to their business, employees and livelihood. When thinking about climate change and extreme weather, I don’t think of the politics or even the causes. What I think about is the impact. And outside of maybe Florida, Louisiana and California, I don’t think any place in the U.S. has seen more impact than Houston in the last 10 to 15 years. When we think about solutions, we need to think about mitigation and resilience. And yes, that stuff costs money. But you know what else costs money? People fleeing to other cities because they’ve flooded repeatedly. Amazing restaurateurs could well decide that though they love Houston, in order to function with fewer flood risks or power outages due to storms, they need to take their business to Austin or San Antonio or elsewhere. Maybe even a top-tier energy company could decide that to keep their operations functioning with fewer risks of disruption, they should set up shop in Austin or Dallas.

Read this article at Houston Chronicle - Subscribers Only

Perry Fowler: Advancing Inner Harbor desal is responsible step for water

(Perry L. Fowler is the executive director of the Texas Water Infrastructure Network.) (Editor's note: The Corpus Christi City Council is scheduled on Sept. 1 to vote on whether to award a design-build contract to Corpus Christi Desalination Partners LLC for 60% design services for the proposed Inner Harbor seawater desalination project, as well as design and construction of a demonstration plant and developing and verifying the guaranteed maximum price, at a cost of up to $78.6 million. The council had tabled the vote in June.) Recent rainfall has given Corpus Christi welcome relief. Reservoir levels have improved, restrictions have eased, and the immediate pressure on the region's water supply is lower than it was just months ago. That relief should be used to make long-term decisions from a position of stability, not crisis.

The underlying challenge hasn't changed. South Texas will see another severe drought. Population and economic growth will keep straining limited supplies. Corpus Christi still needs a diversified water portfolio, one built on groundwater, conservation, reuse, regional projects, and desalination that can deliver reliably through both wet and dry years. The question isn't whether any one option should replace the others. It's whether the city should keep advancing one of the most developed major water-supply projects it actually controls: one with an effectively unlimited raw-water source, existing permits, substantial engineering already complete, and significant state financing available. It should. The first phase of the Inner Harbor desalination project is designed to deliver roughly 30 million gallons a day of potable water from the Gulf of Mexico, a source that doesn't depend on rainfall or watershed inflows. Corpus Christi has spent years advancing it through engineering, environmental review, and state and federal permitting. The permits are in hand. The project has received substantial support from the State Water Implementation Fund for Texas. It is significantly further along than most other large-scale alternatives now being discussed, and that head start matters.

Read this article at Corpus Christi Caller-Times - Subscribers Only

South Texas ranchers fear imported beef could drive more producers out of business

The price of ground beef has climbed sharply in recent years, but South Texas ranchers say they are not necessarily benefiting from the higher prices consumers are paying at the grocery store. Federal Reserve data shows the price of ground beef has increased by more than $3 per pound, or about 80%, since 2019. At the same time, ranchers are dealing with the lingering effects of severe drought and the New World screwworm outbreak. "We're struggling. If it ain't the cost of the fertilizer, the cost of the feed, the cost of the cattle meds is way up the roof," said Walter Mencias, division livestock foreman for Wyatt Ranches. Mencias said some ranchers have already been forced to sell their herds because of rising costs.

Now, ranchers are watching another potential challenge. President Donald Trump announced plans to bring more imported beef into the United States for 90 days in an effort to address high beef prices. The plan allows up to 661 million pounds of beef to enter the country tariff-free during that period. Mencias worries the additional imports could put even more pressure on cattle producers. "If this keeps up the way it's going, a lot of ranchers are gonna be forced to sell," Mencias said. "As it is, we're in a shortage of cattle." Mencias said if more ranchers are forced to sell their herds, it could make the nation's cattle shortage even worse. Consumer advocate John Breyault, vice president of public policy for the National Consumers League, agrees that the imports may not provide meaningful relief for shoppers. "Dropping tariffs on 661 million pounds of beef isn't going to fix those high prices," Breyault said. "It only represents a small percentage of the total amount of beef that we consume in the United States in a given year." Breyault also argues that a small group of large meatpacking companies, which he says make up over 80% American market, could benefit more than ranchers or consumers. "Who this really is going to help is the big meatpacking companies who control the industry," Breyault said.

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Here’s what you need to know about Texas’ voter suspense list

Multiple headlines recently have fueled confusion among Texas voters who have been placed on the state’s suspense list. Voters on the suspense list can still vote. Despite its name, being placed on the suspense list does not mean a voter’s registration was suspended, canceled, or that the voter was removed from the voter roll. The list is made up of registered voters whose local election officials have reason to believe they may no longer live at the address they used to register to vote. Texas voters move every day, and they often don’t update their address on their voter registration record. Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, said the number of voters on the suspense list now — 1.2 million out of more than 18 million registered voters — is consistent with what the state has seen in previous election cycles.

Voters on the suspense list can confirm their address by contacting their local voter registrar ahead of the Oct. 5 voter registration deadline and filling out a new voter registration form with their updated address. Voters can also update their address at the polls. What is the suspense list? It’s an address verification list. By law, if a county voter registrar “has reason to believe that a voter’s current residence is different from that indicated on the registration records,” the voter registrar “shall deliver to the voter a written confirmation notice requesting confirmation of the voter’s current residence,” according to the secretary of state’s office guidance. How are voters placed on it? Every two years, each county voter registrar mails a new voter registration certificate to all active voters, a move required by law to keep the voter roll up to date. If the U.S. Postal Service returns the certificate as nondeliverable, the voter registrar must then confirm that the voter still lives at that address. That’s when a voter is added to the suspense list. A voter registrar mails a notice of address confirmation to voters when: The voter’s registration certificate has been returned as nondeliverable. A jury summons or any mailing sent to the voter was returned as nondeliverable. The voter registrar has received information indicating the voter no longer resides at the address on file. For example, parents can notify their voter registrar if their children have moved, or a voter themselves can call the voter registrar to say they no longer live at that address.

Read this article at Votebeat - Subscribers Only

Secretive Texas housing group builds apartment empire 1,500 miles away

Earlier this year, residents of an upscale multi-family apartment complex in a suburb of Columbia, South Carolina, received an unusual letter. It advised them that their homes at the Otarre Pointe Apartments had been sold, recalled City of Cayce Mayor Pro-Tem Phil Carter. The new owners would be converting most of the 299-unit complex into affordable housing. The upshot: Residents who did not meet the new lower income requirements would have to leave when their lease was up. The demand struck Carter as odd. “It’s just wrong to put people out of their homes,” he said. Equally strange, he said, was the identity of the new owner: A mysterious nonprofit attached to El Paso HOME, a Texas public housing authority located more than 1,500 miles away. Carter said his attempts to reach officials there were met with silence.

Cayce isn’t the only distant place where the new entity, Sixteenth Floor Residential, has been scooping up property, either. Public records show that over the course of barely a year, the El Paso organization has acquired hundreds of millions of dollars-worth of multi-family real estate — about 2,000 apartments — in South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia. El Paso HOME’s foray into distant jurisdictions is unique, said Stuart Nicol, an S&P Global analyst who follows affordable housing. “This is the first public housing authority we’ve come across doing this,” he said. Why is a nonprofit operated by a far West Texas public agency, charged with providing affordable lodging for a mid-sized city, accumulating a large real estate portfolio on the other side of the country? Sixteenth Floor would prefer not to say. Executive Director Gerald Cichon declined several interview requests. In response to open records requests from the Houston Chronicle, Sixteenth Floor insisted that it is a separate nonprofit company that isn’t required to disclose financial details of its growing business.

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New Texas laws expand repair rights, regulate solar sellers and recognize gold as money

Texas laws taking effect Sept. 1 will change how consumers repair electronic devices, strengthen oversight of residential solar sales and allow certain forms of gold and silver to be used as legal tender. House Bill 2963 creates a limited “right to repair” for digital electronic equipment. It requires manufacturers to provide owners and independent repair businesses with the parts, tools and documentation available to authorized repair shops on “fair and reasonable terms.” “This law is a major step forward,” said Nathan Proctor, senior director of U.S. PIRG’s Right to Repair campaign. “It allows Texans to get access to parts, tools, and other things you need to fix modern electronics.”

The law covers consumer electronics with a wholesale price of at least $50 — but only equipment originally offered for sale in Texas on or after Sept. 1. Consequently, devices already on the market before that date are not covered. The measure also contains numerous exemptions, including many motor vehicles, farm equipment, medical devices, video-game consoles, large home appliances, heavy equipment and certain cybersecurity-related products. Small countertop appliances are not included in the home-appliance exemption. The Texas attorney general can enforce the law, but it does not create a private right for consumers to sue over violations. “We strongly advocate for the right to repair everything,” Proctor said. “In Texas, there was clear agreement on personal electronics.” He said Texas lawmakers could expand the right to repair, as in other states, if enough voters make it clear this is what they want. Another change arriving Sept. 1 is the registration requirement under Senate Bill 1036, the Residential Solar Retailer Regulatory Act. Residential solar systems salespeople must now register with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation and work for a registered solar retailer. Retailers that employ or contract with salespeople must also register.

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Sand Branch has waited 41 years for clean water. Then the fires came.

It’s been 41 years since the unincorporated community of Sand Branch has had clean water, despite being 400 feet from the City of Dallas’s Southside Wastewater Treatment Plant. In the intervening years, residents have made do with bottled water and the tenacity born from being told “no” a lot. Last night, 10 acres of Sand Branch caught fire, and when advocates and the fire trucks from neighboring towns and cities arrived, residents were using those bottles of water to try to put the flames out. There are no fire hydrants in Sand Branch. As of Sunday afternoon, fire fighters were still working to put out hot spots that continue to crop up. Sand Branch is a freedman’s town that sits in unincorporated land in Dallas County near Seagoville, roughly 20 miles south of downtown. Established in the 1800s, it was a thriving community for years. Until the mid 1980s, residents received water through wells dug throughout the community, and sewage went to septic tanks. In the mid-80s, people began to get sick. Testing revealed the wells were contaminated with E.coli. The residents of Sand Branch have relied on bottled water ever since.

There have been many efforts to get clean drinking water running through the taps of Sand Branch homes for years. More recently, Derek Avery and the Water for Sand Branch Coalition has been working with the community to not only bring water to the area, but also improve the homes and properties there. Only last night and today, they are working to help residents survive yet another blow. A list of needs has been compiled, including a need for volunteers to help bring in water. Danielle Chambless worked social media channels to put fire blankets in every home, and continues to source fire extinguishers for each home. “How are we letting this happen right in our own backyard?” she asked Sunday. “These people are my friends. They deserve the basics. They deserve to be safe in their own homes. And we should be furious that they have been left without the basic infrastructure most of us never have to think twice about.” Long term, the Coalition hopes to convince the county and other officials to finally bring running water to Sand Branch. In the shorter term, Avery would like to install two large water tanks in the community that can be filled up frequently. Just like last year, the Coalition will be among the nonprofits hoping to attract donors during North Texas Giving Day. Giving Day opened last week, and will culminate on September 17. In 2022, we wrote about the weekly efforts to help the community that we encountered while on a bus tour of the county’s most notorious environmental hazards. In 1985, just as the environmental disaster was unfolding, Richard West wrote about Sand Branch. (Or Sandbranch, as it is sometimes called.) Incredibly, nothing has changed in regard to rectifying the situation.

Read this article at D Magazine - Subscribers Only

Steve Sarkisian gives embarrassing explanation for Texas' College Football Playoff loss: 'We were tired'

Expectations for the Texas Longhorns football program have reached a fever pitch, with star quarterback Arch Manning heading into his second year as the starting quarterback. The Longhorns are expected to once again have one of the best defenses in college football, brought in a top six recruiting class, and some services believe Texas has the most talented roster in the sport. At least by recruiting rankings. They also finished out their 2025 season with wins over Texas A&M and Michigan, taking some momentum into a pivotal 2026. Unfortunately, despite all these factors aligning in their favor, the Longhorns also have arguably the toughest schedule in the country. They host Ohio State, play at Tennessee, have the traditional Red River Shootout against Oklahoma, host Ole Miss, play at LSU, and at Texas A&M. With that schedule, the Longhorns could be a significantly improved team from 2025 and still finish 9-3 without playing poorly.

But that might not be the biggest hurdle in head coach Steve Sarkisian's quest to bring a national title home to Austin. It's being mentally tired. Seriously. Sarkisian revealed on a recent podcast that their loss to Ohio State in the 2024-2025 College Football Playoff was due to the Longhorns being "tired." "I felt like the year we played Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl, we were tired, and not necessarily physically tired," Sarkisian said. "We were mentally fatigued as well. That’s a long season. We had so many big games. So I think managing it this time around, how we manage their energy level, is as important as how we manage their legs and the physicality." Every team is tired at the end of a college football season. Every team deals with injuries and mental fatigue. And it's the job of a coach to prepare the players for each and every challenge. Specifically, if you can't overcome fatigue and being "tired" in the literal College Football Playoff semifinal, how can you ever? Not to mention, Ohio State was likely "tired" too. The Buckeyes finished their season with a top-5 Indiana team, rivalry game against Michigan, playing Tennessee in the first round, then the number one seed in the tournament, Oregon, in LA, then had to travel to Texas to play the Longhorns in what should have been an effective home game for Sarkisian just 200 miles from campus.

Read this article at Fox News - Subscribers Only

What is sharia? Muslims and Texas Republicans have very different answers

In political campaigns and the party’s platform, Texas Republicans condemn “sharia law” as a dangerous system of extremist Islamic rules and restrictions that threaten democracy, religious freedom and personal liberty — an affront to American values that must be stamped out. But when Shaimaa Zayan considers what “sharia” means to her, the Austin resident doesn’t see a hot-button political issue or a legal code that undermines the U.S. Constitution. She sees a set of daily practices that gradually lead Muslims like her closer to paradise. Linguistically, she said, sharia means “a path to water.” Religiously, she added, the Arabic term describes “the path to success” or “how we should practice our faith.”

“It’s for Muslims, so thinking that this is something that Muslims are bringing for everyone is just so far from the understanding of sharia,” she said. As Texas Republicans escalate attacks on Islam based on opposition to what they call sharia law, Muslims are pushing back, saying the term has been distorted by ignorance, fear and political opportunism. It’s time, they say, to set the record straight on the meaning of sharia as a religious concept. State Rep. Salman Bhojani, the first Muslim elected to the Texas Legislature, said sharia is an “ethical and moral framework that governs your personal conduct.” It involves “giving, charity, praying consistently to God, being honest with your neighbors, with your friends, with everybody.” “It is a personal moral code, and not something that I can impose on anybody else,” said Bhojani, D-Euless. Republicans see a far different meaning, denouncing sharia law as an oppressive legal code that is incompatible with state and federal laws.

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Elon Musk’s xAI sued over Grok child sexual abuse material

A woman repeatedly raped as a child by a man who put photos and videos of the crimes online says in a lawsuit that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence firm xAI allowed imagery of her abuse onto its X social media platform and that the company’s Grok chatbot generated additional child pornography from the images. The woman, identified as “Jane Doe,” is seeking class-action status for the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in San Jose, alleging Grok produced child porn from imagery of her and thousands of other victims of child sexual abuse. The lawsuit claims xAI, aiming to add users to X and Grok, designed the chatbot “to respond to prompts to create and distribute sexual content using an identifiable person’s real image or video.”

Doe, who is described only as living outside California, is seeking unspecified damages and a court order barring xAI from generating, possessing or sharing child pornography showing her or other alleged victims. Her lawsuit came as Palo Alto-based xAI — merged in February as a subsidiary into Musk’s Texas rocket company SpaceX — fights another lawsuit in the same court by three women and one man claiming Grok created sexualized “deep fake” images of them. Judge Casey Pitts in July shot down a bid by xAI to have the identities of the four plaintiffs — who are seeking class action status for their case — publicly revealed. The legal cases arose after Grok — embedded in X and also a stand-alone app — sparked worldwide outrage after xAI added an image-editing feature to the chatbot in December. The UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate reported that Grok generated 3 million sexualized images in the 11 days after image editing went live. Users digitally stripped real women in images — plus more than 20,000 apparent children — manipulating many into sexual poses, the group found. Musk responded to the furor by reposting an AI-generated image of a toaster in a bikini that he said he “couldn’t stop laughing” about. Doe’s lawsuit, overseen by Judge Nathanael Cousins, claims “xAI and its founder Elon Musk chose to capitalize and profit from predators’ appetite for non-consensual sexual images and videos of real people, including children.”

Read this article at Austin American-Statesman - Subscribers Only

Republicans look to hold Texas turf as midterm convention looms

Congress will get top billing when President Donald Trump brings the GOP’s political roadshow to Dallas. But farther down the ballot, his party has plenty at stake in the convention’s backyard. Republicans are defending two state House seats in Dallas County, where their influence has steadily fallen. They also are working to preserve control of major offices in Tarrant County, targeting a Democratic lawmaker in Collin County and seeking to recapture a state Senate district lost in a special election this year.

For the candidates, the MAGA doubleheader Sept. 9-10 at the American Airlines Center could be a boost or a burden. Republicans hope to energize supporters who might skip a midterm election. Democrats aim to turn Trump’s unpopularity into votes in close races. Republican National Committee officials described the event last week as a “primetime showcase for President Trump’s success, candidates and causes that have propelled the 2026 midterms to unprecedented focus.” State Reps. Angie Chen Button of Garland and Morgan Meyer of University Park are the only Republican legislators who live in Dallas County, where Democrats have dominated countywide elections since 2006. Meyer, an attorney first elected in 2014 in District 108, is being challenged by Democrat Allison Mitchell, a small-business owner and children’s book author. A national Democratic group focused on state legislatures has made both districts priorities as it targets 12 Republican-held Texas House seats. Republicans hold an 88-62 majority in the chamber.

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National Stories

Army Secretary resigns after months of friction with Hegseth

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll has submitted his resignation to President Trump following months of tension with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the direction of the service and the ouster of numerous senior Army officers. He is expected to leave the Pentagon in coming days. With Driscoll’s departure, the Army will lack top Senate-confirmed civilian or military leaders. Gen. Christopher LaNeve has served as acting chief of the service since Hegseth fired his predecessor, Gen. Randy George. Mike Obadal, the Army undersecretary, would be the highest ranking civilian after Driscoll departs. Driscoll didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Driscoll had been expected to step down this year from his role as the civilian leader of the Army after clashing with Hegseth, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. “Secretary Driscoll has been highly effective in advancing President Trump’s agenda to Make America Strong Again at the Department of the Army by providing outstanding leadership during historic military operations, restoring an emphasis on readiness and lethality, assisting with negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, and more,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement. “The United States Army is more powerful than ever thanks to his work alongside the Commander-in-Chief and Secretary of War,” she added. Last week, Driscoll attended the retirement ceremony at Fort Bragg for Gen. Chris Donahue, who served as the top Army officer in Europe until Hegseth downgraded his position, effectively bringing an end to his military career. Donahue’s abrupt departure was presented as part of Hegseth’s broader push to shrink the number of generals and admirals by 10% overall, plus a 20% cut to the number of four-star positions, the Journal reported.

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Want an animal shelter? A lazy river? Cash? Data centers want to know.

In a few years, the city of Saline, Michigan, will have renovated its recreation center’s locker rooms, tiled the pool deck, expanded the children’s play area, installed a waterfall and constructed a lazy river. Down the road, part of OpenAI’s Project Stargate, a 2.2 million-square-foot, $43 billion data center, will hum away, churning out the next generation of artificial intelligence. As public sentiment on data centers has soured, AI companies are leveling up their efforts to sweeten the deal for communities that host them. In Saline, that included a $10 million donation from OpenAI, Oracle and other companies for a new and improved recreation center. In Richland Parish, Louisiana, teachers got $50,000 bonuses from Meta. Compass Datacenters forked over $15 million for a new animal shelter in Ellis County, Texas.

In Florida, developers for the failed Project Tango offered to hide their building from view with a small forest of pines, palms and native shrubs. NorthPoint Development has proposed giving $10,000 to every household in Hazle Township, Pennsylvania, if it’s allowed to build a massive data center for Amazon — a dangling carrot some residents have characterized as a bribe. Politicians from both parties are pushing the deal sweeteners too. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s energy office told counties to make “wish lists” for data center developers, and Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is pitching free electricity for towns willing to play host. This summer’s data center backlash has underlined a glaring lack of guidance from federal and state leaders on what tech companies owe the communities they’re building in; in Washington, a growing slate of proposals range from requiring developers to procure and pay for their own power, and taxing data centers to prepare for potential AI-related job losses.

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MAHA has arrived in Iowa — and Big Ag is reeling

There’s something in the water in Iowa. And Republican Zach Lahn has centered his gubernatorial campaign around it. Lahn is taking aim at fertilizers, pesticides and other farm chemicals seeping into drinking water supplies — and the agrochemical giants that make them. He believes Big Ag and Big Chemical are to blame for the state’s high cancer rates, a top issue for voters here. Once unimaginable for a politician of either party in Iowa, Lahn’s campaign is putting the state’s Republicans in the same bind that has bedeviled the Trump administration during its second term: stuck between the demands of Make America Healthy Again activists and the interests of agricultural and chemical companies that hold deep sway with the party.

“Many people in the primary said, ‘You can’t win an election in the Republican primary talking about the big agricultural conglomerates that are extorting our farmers, talking about clean water, and how we need to lower our cancer rates,’” Lahn said in a stump speech earlier this month at the Iowa State Fair, where the farm industry’s influence loomed large, in the form of corporate sponsorships, expansive exhibits and free swag. “We did talk about it, and we won,” Lahn said. It’s not the campaign the Republican establishment wanted in a state with some of this fall’s fiercest battleground elections, including an open Senate seat and three competitive House races. Lahn pulled off an upset in the June primary, besting President Donald Trump’s pick, conservative Rep. Randy Feenstra. Lahn won Trump’s endorsement a month after the primary election. Now, rank-and-file Republicans are left with little choice but to support a candidate running on ideas most don’t agree with, in a year where Democrats believe they have their best shot in two decades to reclaim the governor’s mansion.

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More mail ballots are arriving late this year, and they’re getting tossed

The rate at which mail votes have been rejected for arriving late has ticked up in primaries this year and general elections last year in roughly a dozen states, prompting election officials to worry that the U.S. Postal Service is ill-equipped to deliver ballots in the fall midterms. The states studied by The New York Times include some of the most critical battleground House and Senate seats where control of Congress will be determined, as well as key races for governor and secretary of state. The Times obtained data from California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin and Washington. In Wisconsin, which hosts an open race for governor, a competitive House election plus contests for both chambers of the state legislature, lateness accounted for about 5,000 rejected mail ballots in the spring primary this year, or 78 percent of all tossed ballots.

During the last spring election, in 2023, the figure was roughly 2,300, or 47 percent of all tossed votes. The increase is particularly striking when comparing primaries in 2024 and this year. In Michigan’s primary earlier this month, more than 10,000 mail ballots were rejected for arriving after the state’s deadline of 8 p.m. on Election Day. That is nearly double the number of ballots rejected in 2024. In Washington, the number of late-arriving mail ballots increased from about 16,000 to more than 20,000 in the same period. The rise in rejected ballots comes at a time of immense upheaval at the Postal Service, where a budget crisis has prompted widespread complaints about delivery delays. The increase also comes as President Trump and his allies are trying to transform the 251-year-old agency into a central player in their quest to restrict mail voting and otherwise overhaul the nation’s elections. Roughly two dozen states sued the government over the president’s executive order governing mail voting, which would require states to hand over voter information and would empower the Postal Service to block mail ballots from being sent or delivered in states that do not comply.

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Haitian immigrant in Ohio takes his own life after losing temporary protected status, family says

A Haitian immigrant who had grown increasingly distraught after losing his protection from deportation and being outfitted with an ankle monitor was run over and killed Monday in what his family believes was a suicide. Pierre Damas Bel, 20, parked on the shoulder of Interstate 70 in Springfield, Ohio, some time before 8:45 a.m., got out of his vehicle and walked into westbound traffic, the Ohio State Highway Patrol told local media outlets. He was hit by a tractor-trailer and pronounced dead at the scene. Like an estimated 350,000 Haitian immigrants, Bel had recently lost temporary protected status, which is given to people fleeing nations experiencing disaster. He had a pending asylum claim, but had been summoned to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office after the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to proceed with canceling the status for Haitian recipients.

Federal immigrant agents placed an electronic monitoring device on his ankle, which is one way the agency tracks immigrants it is seeking to remove from the country. “He felt like he was treated like an animal,” his father, Pierres Ronal Bel, 40, recounted in a handwritten statement. Ohio authorities said they are investigating the crash. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Trump administration has been calling Haitian immigrants into ICE offices in order to be equipped with ankle monitors and sent two deportation flights to Haiti since temporary protected status was canceled for people from the troubled Caribbean nation. Advocates for the immigrants say the U.S. government is sending people back to a country where criminal gangs are responsible for massacres, kidnapping and extortion. Haitian leaders in Springfield and beyond said Bel’s death is symptomatic of the extreme stress many immigrants are under as they fear being detained and sent back.

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Roberts says Trump's ballroom 'likely unlawful' in SCOTUS dissent backed by liberal justices

The U.S. Supreme Court's conservative majority, except for Chief Justice John Roberts, ruled Monday that the architectural historian who tried to block President Donald Trump from building a ballroom where the East Wing of the White House used to be didn't have standing to sue after all. Although the issuance of stay may not come as a surprise to those closely watching the Supreme Court's actions to this point and the proceedings in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, it nonetheless stood out that Roberts penned a dissent that, in a rare occurrence, was joined only by the court's liberal wing.

Roberts, the circuit justice for Washington, D.C., had issued an administrative stay of a lower court injunction 10 days ago as the high court considered the DOJ's request for a stay. Thereafter, the Trump administration argued that a stay was warranted because Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Leon and the D.C. Circuit wrongly found the National Trust for Historic Preservation and architectural historian Alison Hoagland had standing to sue on "aesthetic injury" grounds. A D.C. Circuit panel, in a 2-1 decision, earlier rejected the "bold assertion that the Executive can act with utter lawlessness, destroying treasured national landmarks and harming the interests of individuals, and that no court can stop it flouts our constitutional order." But the lone dissenting appellate judge in that case, a Trump appointee, forecast the road ahead. U.S. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao criticized the D.C. Circuit for appointing itself as supervisors of the president's construction project by signing off on Leon's "blatant abuse of discretion." Rao wrote that the majority "elevated the aesthetic displeasure of a single passerby" over Trump's determination that the "ballroom is necessary for the overall security of the White House as well as to provide a secure space for hosting large presidential events."

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Kalshi hands George Santos its first lifetime ban

Former Rep. George Santos received a permanent ban and a fine of more than $71,000 from the prediction market Kalshi after he placed wagers on his attendance at President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address this year. The disgraced congressman publicly posted about plans to attend the annual address in February — even asking what kind of suit he should wear in a now-deleted post. From Feb. 2 to Feb. 25, Santos began placing large bets on his own presence at the address, and by the time he posted that he was watching it from an airport TV, the New York Republican had already allegedly switched his bet. “As a person capable of influencing the outcome of this underlying event, Santos was prohibited from trading in this market,” Kalshi wrote in a disciplinary notice released Monday.

Kalshi’s Compliance Department found that Santos had profited $17,839.57 from manipulating the “price of the Yes or No contracts that he intended to purchase.” The notice also cited Santos’ lack of cooperation with Kalshi’s investigation. A representative from Kalshi told NOTUS in an email that Santos “evaded discussions with our compliance dept[ment].” Santos is the first person to receive a lifetime ban from Kalshi, The Wall Street Journal reported. The ban went into effect Friday. The former congressman spoke out against his ban in a series of posts on X, calling Kalshi “an unserious company” that “violates its own notices and deadlines.” “On August 7th they gave us a 30 day notice and today they leaked/ announced once again their frivolous nonsense,” Santos wrote Monday. “Leaking and attention seeking seem to be the M/O of this organization. Pathetic!” Kalshi told NOTUS that Santos can appeal the ban and the monetary penalty against him to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, an independent federal agency that’s charged with regulating the prediction market.

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Lead Stories

Cruz dismisses Cornyn’s warnings that Paxton is ‘lazy’ and a ‘poor campaigner’

Sen. Ted Cruz on Sunday dismissed fellow Texas Sen. John Cornyn’s increasingly dire warnings about Republican Ken Paxton’s campaign, saying the criticism came from “hurt feelings” over their bitter primary. Cruz predicted Paxton will defeat Democrat James Talarico in November, even as polls show a close race and Cornyn refuses to use his formidable fundraising network to help his former rival. “I understand their hurt feelings,” Cruz said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “That is human nature.”

The race could help determine control of the Senate, where Republicans are defending their majority. Cruz predicted his party would keep control, saying a Democratic-led Congress would bring investigations, subpoenas and “nonstop impeachment circus” targeting President Donald Trump. Cornyn, who lost the GOP primary runoff to Paxton by nearly 28 percentage points, said last week that Paxton has not built a strong general election campaign. Cornyn called the Senate race “close” and potentially “disastrous” for Republicans in November. “Paxton’s a poor campaigner,” Cornyn told The Texas Tribune. “He’s lazy and doesn’t raise money. And he basically is not offering a very compelling case for his election.” Asked by moderator Kristen Welker whether he agreed with that assessment, Cruz said the remarks reflected lingering “hurt feelings.” “Primaries can often be bitter. …That’s part of the process,” Cruz said. He did not directly address Cornyn’s complaints about Paxton’s campaigning and fundraising. He instead described Paxton as “a strong conservative” who would support low taxes, fewer regulations, border security, law enforcement and constitutional rights. “This is not about how any one particular person feels about any one particular candidate,” Cruz said. “This is about the people of Texas.”

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‘This is an all-out war’: Inside the casino industry’s fight to stop prediction markets

It’s been a rough summer on the Strip. In addition to sizzling 115-degree days, Las Vegas’ famous resorts and casinos are plodding through a tourism slump. This year, a new and possibly existential threat has emerged: the meteoric rise of prediction markets. Prediction platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket – where users wager on sports, politics, culture, and the weather – have transformed from a niche space for superfans to a seemingly ubiquitous multibillion-dollar industry. With the Trump administration’s blessing, these startups are structured as financial markets for trading, not casinos or sportsbooks for gambling. Under this system, prediction companies bypass state gaming boards and instead get licensed by an obscure federal commodity regulator to offer “event contracts.”

This setup also means they aren’t taxed like gambling, which generated nearly $18 billion in revenue for states last year. Analysts blame Vegas’ slowdown on rising consumer costs, not prediction sites. But the casinos aren’t taking chances. They mobilized for “all-out war,” and have now become a driving force in the nationwide fight to rein in prediction markets, according to nearly 20 sources who spoke with CNN. “A couple nerds came up with this idea to avoid paying taxes,” says Derek Stevens, who owns three Vegas casinos and Circa Sports, with sportsbooks in seven states. “Just because they’re shrewd doesn’t mean they should be exempt from the law. These are thieves. They’re pirates. They’re marauders.” The anti-prediction campaign picked up momentum this summer. A casino-backed lawsuit secured the most consequential courtroom victory yet for prediction opponents. On Friday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that states can regulate prediction platforms as gambling, siding with Nevada officials and an association of Vegas casinos.

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How Trump’s policy agenda runs through one federal court, in Texas

President Trump’s Justice Department had a problem. Judge after judge was rejecting its demands that hospitals across the country turn over internal records of transgender care provided to children. By the end of April, federal judges in Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Seattle had either quashed or substantially pared back the administration’s demands that hospitals send patient records to the federal government. But the administration did not give up. Instead, in April, it went to the Northern District of Texas’ Fort Worth courthouse, where nearly all cases go directly to the district’s chief judge, Reed O’Connor, or a second judge, Mark T. Pittman, who was appointed by Mr. Trump. There were no hospitals in Texas that offered the transgender care at issue — state lawmakers banned gender-affirming care for minors in Texas in 2023. But the Justice Department asked the Texas court to enforce a subpoena to the Rhode Island Hospital, arguing that its nationwide investigation of such medical care was “being carried out in the Northern District of Texas.”

That was enough for Judge O’Connor, an appointee of President George W. Bush who has built a reputation as a conservative stalwart and became the district’s chief judge last August. He granted the motion, clearing the way for the hospital to turn over a variety of personal data, including the names and Social Security numbers of minors who had received treatment. “The subpoena’s demands are reasonable,” he wrote. Most of the country’s 94 district courts assign cases randomly across all of their judges. Northern Texas, where Judge O’Connor sits, does things its own way. It assigns cases to judges based on the courthouse within the district where the lawsuit is initially filed. Some courthouses are staffed by just one or two judges, meaning litigants can easily engage in “judge shopping” — filing their case in a particular courthouse and knowing to a certainty or near-certainty which judge will decide it. In four of Northern Texas’ seven courthouses, one judge appointed by Mr. Trump hears all of the cases. In a fifth courthouse, all the cases go to Judge O’Connor. In a sixth — Fort Worth — 90 percent of the caseload is split between Judge O’Connor and Judge Pittman. Of the district’s nine active-status judges, eight were appointed by Republican presidents — six of them by Mr. Trump. There are other districts in the country where more of the judges are Trump appointees, but very few assign cases the way Northern Texas does. And most fall outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, widely considered to be the country’s most conservative appellate court, which hears appeals from Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

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How Trump's beef plan, tariffs risk alienating farmers, GOP voters

Matt Ubel, a farmer based in rural Wheaton, Kansas, says that high diesel and fertilizer prices driven by the war in Iran were already hurting his bottom line. Now, he says he expects his profit margins will take another hit after President Donald Trump approved a temporary lift on tariffs for foreign inputs of 300,000 metric tons of beef to take effect in September. "This wasn't about making cheaper groceries for the American people," Ubel told ABC News. "They need to invest in their farmers -- not import beef from other countries. They need to make farming sustainable here in the United States."

Ubel, the vice president of the Kansas Farmers Union who is also running for Pottawatomie County commissioner, cares for some 120 cattle. His frustrations reflect the ways Trump's trade policies could complicate GOP messaging on affordability just months out from the November midterms as Republicans fight to maintain control of Congress. Ubel said he voted for former President Barack Obama in 2012, but went for Trump in the last three presidential elections. Some districts in agriculturally dominant states with the largest volume of cattle sales are the most competitive this election cycle, U.S. Department of Agriculture data from 2022 shows. Those include Kansas and Nebraska, but also Iowa -- home to a highly contested gubernatorial race and a slate of congressional races -- and Wisconsin's 3rd Congressional District, which could help determine control of Congress. The White House defended Trump's move, saying it's about both short-term and long-term needs. "The U.S. beef market is currently grappling with insufficient supply to meet consumer demand, and the President’s action is helping meet short-term beef needs while the Administration works with American ranchers to expand domestic production and grow the American cattle herd, which is currently at a multi-decade low," said Kush Desai, a spokesman for the White House.

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State Stories

Sandbranch fire supression continued after initial containment

Late Sunday afternoon, in sweltering 99 degree heat, firefighters were still working to suppress smoky hotspots and lingering flames from a brush fire that was initially contained the night before in Sandbranch, an unincorporated Dallas County community with no fire hydrants or water infrastructure. A massive fire burned for roughly three hours in a section behind the residential streets filled with two vacant trailers and other debris before it was contained around 11:30 p.m. Saturday, said Dallas County Fire Marshal assistant chief Michael Barber. Crews from about 15 volunteer, municipal and county fire departments responded to or hauled water into the area Saturday, including from hydrants two miles away near the Southside Wastewater Treatment Plant.

There were no injuries or fatalities in the blaze that covered 10 acres of land, said Jason Evans, spokesperson for Dallas Fire Rescue, which responded for the county as mutual aid but led in equipment and personnel. Sandbranch, a rural, impoverished pocket of roughly 80 residents in campers and aged homes, has never had running water, sewer or fire hydrants despite nonprofits and volunteers working on solutions for years. Residents were allowed back to their homes after being evacuated the night before, but the day-long ordeal underscored residents’ ongoing push for water. While Dallas Fire Rescue worked to quell lingering flames Sunday afternoon, resident Christina Parks stood in a neighbor’s backyard on Burns Drive and poured water from gallon jugs on a small, smoky flame threatening to creep up the tree line separating the fire scene and the residential block. “I didn’t sleep last night because of these hotspots,” Parks said. “My mind is distraught.”

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Talarico, Simmons speak against proposal to cut almost a 3rd of Tarrant County voting sites

Tarrant County could slash 92 voting sites for November's midterm Election Day, raising concerns from democratic county commissioners and state Rep. James Talarico. Tarrant County Commissioner Alisa Simmons and Talarico, the democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, held a press conference outside the University of Texas at Arlington's Mavericks Activity Center on Sunday, a former voting location. It comes as a proposed map for November's election includes 224 locations, cutting almost a third of the 316 sites used during the 2022 midterm elections. Three early voting sites would also be slashed. Talarico told reporters cutting these sites could cause longer commutes, longer lines and lower voter turnout on election day. "We're here fighting for the rights of everybody," Talarico said. "The problem is when we let voting rights become a partisan issue. That's when we walk down a very dangerous path in this country."

Simmons said county leaders should be figuring out how to make voting easier for a county as big as Tarrant County — the 3rd most populous county in Texas. "Dropping 92 Election Day polling places is crazy," Simmons said. "We should not compare this proposal to the worst proposal. We should compare it to access that Tarrant County voters actually had in 2022." The new proposed cuts come after commissioners unanimously agreed to table their vote on Election Day sites during this month's meeting. Nearly half of all voting sites were proposed to be cut, sparking outrage from several residents and disapproval from all commissioners during August's meeting. Elections Administrator Clint Ludwig, who proposed both maps, said during August's meeting the proposed map was made without any input from commissioners after residents accused Republican commissioners of coordinating the cuts and attempting to suppress voters, which they all denied.

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Penske Media acquires full ownership of SXSW

The South by Southwest festival is now fully corporate-owned. Penske Media Corp. announced on Aug. 28 that it acquired a 100% ownership stake in SXSW. Previously, the Los Angeles- and New York City-based media company owned a 50% stake in SXSW, which it acquired in 2021. That was after the festival faced significant financial pressure due to the 2020 iteration being cancelled because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Penske bought its initial stake from SXSW LLC, which was led by the festival's founders. Penske's full acquisition of SXSW marks the end of local ownership for the beloved and iconic festival that was founded in 1987 by Roland Swenson, Nick Barbaro, Louis Jay Meyers and Louis Black. It was born as a music festival and a way to provide a boost to Austin’s clubs and music scene during spring break, which used to be a slow period for the city.

“Premium live experiences are central to Penske Media’s future, and we are thrilled to increase our stake in SXSW, and provide the company with further backing and together write the most expansive chapter in its history,” Jay Penske, chairman and CEO of Penske Media, said in a statement. The announcement didn’t share how much Penske Media paid for the full ownership of SXSW. Penske Media didn’t immediately respond to questions on the announcement. The company also operates several other high-profile media brands, such as The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard and Variety. Penske Media said SXSW’s headquarters will remain in Austin and the festival will “continue to be led from Austin, with a focus on preserving the deep community relationships that have long defined the event.” SXSW has been looking for a CEO for several months.

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Texas hemp businesses say new delta-8 rules leave them facing raids, uncertainty

Saying a decision could exceed her authority, a judge has delayed ruling on a request by four Texas companies for a restraining order to keep the state from enforcing new rules on the sale of hemp-derived products. State District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble said during an emergency hearing in Austin that she could not immediately decide whether the temporary restrictions would be appropriate given the technical nature of a consumable hemp market that already has been the subject of Texas Supreme Court rulings, state agency statements and law enforcement actions. “I don’t think a district court judge is allowed to do that,” she said Friday. “That sounds like I’m rulemaking. That’s my problem.”

The four companies that filed the suit — San Antonio, Dallas and Rio Grande Valley firms that produce, distribute and sell hemp products — said they are not trying to relitigate the law or earlier court decisions. Rather, they argue the state overstepped with rules that expanded the list of barred substances beyond what the Legislature intended. Their suit comes after the state in late March began enforcing new rules that changed how delta-9 THC is measured in hemp products. The state separately classifies concentrated manufactured delta-8 THC as a Schedule I controlled substance. The new schedule was challenged in court but eventually allowed by the Texas Supreme Court to go into effect July 31. The testing regimen and enforcement standard, the companies say, endanger their businesses. “People are being raided on a regular basis, including in Dallas and San Antonio, based on the term ‘trace amounts’ and no one knows what trace amounts mean,” attorney David Sergi said during Friday’s hearing. The confusion stems from the fact that while the state has barred delta-8 products, trace amounts of delta-8 occur naturally in other THC products that are still legal. The state says more than trace amounts of delta-8 THC can be considered illegal, and products and sellers can be referred to law enforcement.

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Corpus Christi withholds water to wetlands while lifting restrictions on lawns

Environmental regulators in Texas issued an emergency order on Tuesday evening suspending requirements for the drought-stricken city of Corpus Christi to release water from its reservoir system in support of coastal wetlands. On the same day, Corpus Christi lifted restrictions on watering lawns that had been in place since 2024, when its reservoirs remained below critical levels until a dramatic rebound in July. “The city has chosen lawns over the bay,” said Larry McKinney, a former senior director of aquatic resources for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department who lives in Corpus Christi. “Without freshwater inflows, the bay becomes basically a giant sewage treatment pond.” The emergency suspension of requirements for environmental flows is the latest episode in a fight over water that has consumed Corpus Christ, an industrial hub on the semi-arid South Texas coast, during years of intensifying drought.

Corpus Christi hasn’t released water into the Nueces River Delta and Nueces Bay since 2024 while its reservoirs remained below 30 percent full, the trigger point for environmental flows established in a 2001 administrative order by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Epic rainfall in July refilled the Nueces River reservoirs above 40 percent, but Corpus Christi delayed releasing water and requested a suspension of the rule. “Without emergency relief, Applicants could be required to release as much as [11.9 billion gallons] of inflows,” the city wrote. The TCEQ granted Corpus Christi’s request on Tuesday, suggesting that the region’s water crisis isn’t over yet. “Although the reservoir system is above recent lows, long-term data and weather forecasts suggest a return to critical levels is foreseeable,” wrote TCEQ Executive Director Kelly Keel in the Aug. 25 emergency order. “The region is not expected to experience relief from persistent drought conditions and drought conditions are expected to worsen.” If below-average rainfall continues, reservoirs could fall back below 30 percent in April next year, said Corpus Christi Water Chief Operating Officer Nick Winkelmann in a presentation to City Council on Tuesday. Regardless, the city opted to lift restrictions limiting automatic sprinkler system use to once weekly, which had been in place since March 2024. “Why do we have to let the residents suffer? They want to water their grass,” said City Council member Eric Cantu at a City Council meeting last week. “Let them water their grass.”

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Woman dies at Tarrant County Jail — the 6th jail death this year

A woman has died at the Tarrant County Jail this weekend — marking the 6th death at the county jail this year. Gemma Leigh Swingle, 36, died at the county jail Saturday at 2:19 a.m., according to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's website. Her cause and manner of death were pending as of Sunday. KERA News reached out to the Tarrant County Sheriff's Office and will update this story with any response. Swingle was booked into Tarrant County Jail Aug. 25 on a prostitution charge, court records show. The Haltom City Police Department is investigating her death, according to the medical examiner's website. There's been more than 80 jail deaths since 2017 when Sheriff Bill Waybourn took office. The county jail and sheriff's office have faced increased scrutiny over jail deaths this year, demanding more accountability and details surrounding other deaths this year.

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Third witness to fatal Houston ICE shooting released from federal custody

The third witness of the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo at the hands of federal agents was released from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention Sunday morning, according to his attorney. Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo, the deceased's brother, was in the passenger seat during the shooting and was detained the same day, July 7, alongside two other witnesses, Daniel Tirado Pantoja and Jose Trinidad Rojas Pliego. Tirado and Pliego have already been released under orders from two federal judges.

"It’s just been so wonderful – a lot of different emotions when I first heard it might be happening," his attorney, Ruby Powers, said. "So I first didn’t believe it, and then when I received an email from ICE that I knew it was real, so then it was about making sure he got out physically as soon as possible." Ronaldo Salgado, Lorenzo’s son, shared on social media the family reunited with Victor just before noon. “Today is a key step in justice for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo,” Ronaldo wrote. Powers told Houston Public Media the exact reason behind Victor's release was unclear. "I don’t know what was the final thing that made it happen, but I don’t have a judge’s order or any definitive answer on what it was," Powers said. "I don’t have a definitive answer as to what was the final straw."

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Ed Kilgore: Plenty of states have flipped. Texas could too.

(Ed Kilgore has been a political columnist for Intelligencer since 2015.) For a data-driven number cruncher of the highest order, Nate Silver is refreshingly honest in admitting his skepticism about the Senate candidacy of Texas Democrat James Talarico is a “gut” hunch that may even reflect a bit of superstition. In a piece this week, Silver went through all the reasons his election model rates Talarico as a slight favorite over Republican Ken Paxton and refuted some misconceptions about the Texas Senate race (e.g., that recent Democratic Senate losers like Beto O’Rourke did just as well in polls as Talarico). “Would I still be surprised if Talarico carries Texas a few months from now? Absolutely,” Silver concluded. “I just don’t know that you ought to give that gut feeling much weight.” This is a common feeling among political observers and, particularly, Democrats. In recent years, the prospect of turning Texas blue has seemed tantalizingly close yet always just out of reach.

Democrats can’t help but keep hoping as the state is so large (with 40 electoral votes) and so significant both economically and culturally. And there are many aspects of Texas demography, with the state’s rapidly growing and very diverse big cities and suburbs, that suggest a brighter future for the Democratic Party. Recent Republican success among Texas Latinos probably isn’t sustainable. And the Texas GOP’s steady slide into extremism on issues like abortion and public education will alienate many swing voters. But the fact remains that no Democrat has won a governor’s race in Texas since 1990 or a Senate race there since 1988. No Democratic presidential candidate has carried Texas since 1976, when a lot of white conservatives still identified as Democrats and were especially attracted to Southern Baptist Jimmy Carter of Georgia. Is this the year all that changes, and is James Talarico the candidate to push open a door long closed to members of his party? It’s good to remember that the political stereotypes we carry around in our heads about particular states can become out of date very quickly. Iowa and Ohio, for example, were among the preeminent dead-even swing states of the early 21st century. Then in 2016 Donald Trump carried Iowa by 9 percent and Ohio by 8, and we’ve come to see them as red states (albeit red states where Democrats could win some key races in 2026).

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San Antonio storm recovery: Two deaths investigated as outages and cleanup continue, some schools adjust Monday plans

San Antonio police said Sunday they are investigating two deaths related to Friday night’s severe storm. In one incident, two people were caught in rushing water in San Pedro Creek north of downtown. One made it out safely. The other, a 46-year-old woman, was found dead Saturday night after emergency crews searched the area. Acting Police Chief Jesse Salame said the medical examiner is reviewing the circumstances of her death, which is being investigated as a drowning. Police are also investigating a possible drowning involving a man in his 50s who was found at Woodlawn Park Sunday morning. Recovery efforts continued Sunday as crews cleared storm damage and CPS Energy worked to restore electricity.

As of 11:00 p.m. Sunday, 6,030 customers remained without power, down from tens of thousands on Saturday and 112,000 at the height of the storm. City and CPS Energy crews reported significant progress Sunday, including more than 100 downed wires repaired overnight, 290 fallen trees removed or picked up, and 82 traffic signals restored. City officials extended resilience hubs, which offer cooling, power, device charging, Wi-Fi, basic supplies, medication refrigeration and space for pets, until at least noon Monday. VIA continued offering free rides to the hubs. The city also announced extra garbage collection Monday in two storm-affected neighborhoods and extended its waiver of brush-disposal fees through Saturday, Sept. 5. Meals and cold water were being provided Sunday at the San Juan Brady Center, 2307 S. Calaveras St. Our Lady of the Lake University canceled Monday classes and closed its San Antonio campus because of storm-related outages, damage and cleanup. The university said it will announce by 3 p.m. Monday whether campus operations and classes will resume Tuesday. San Antonio College said it will be open Monday.

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Austin retains No. 5 ranking for tech talent as AI specialists reach 17% of workforce

When tech companies and venture firms talk about Austin, the city's pipeline of tech talent is almost always among the first attributes mentioned. And with good reason. Austin retained, for the third year in a row, its No. 5 ranking among cities in the U.S. and Canada, according to the 2026 CBRE Scoring Tech Talent report. The Bay Area, Seattle, Toronto and New York were ahead of us. Washington, D.C., took the No. 6 spot. The report showed the metro had about 103,000 tech workers in 2025, a roughly 10% increase since 2022. It also showed tech talent accounts for 8% of the city's total employment. That's an outsized share. The U.S. and Canada average is 5.5%. Of local tech workers, 17% specialize in AI, which puts us just behind the Bay Area (26%), Seattle (20%), Boston (17%) and New York (17%).

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County treasurers, tax assessors ask Texas lawmakers for guidance on the end of penny production

They can be found hidden between couch cushions, littered in car ashtrays, and if you’re lucky, one may even be facing heads up on the street. The penny — that bronze-colored coin emblazoned with the nation’s 16th President — will soon become a relic. Last year the U.S. Department of Treasury directed the U.S. Mint to suspend the production of new pennies indefinitely because of cost. It cost more than three times the worth of a penny to produce and distribute it, according to a 2024 report from the U.S. Mint. Soon pennies will drop in demand and fall out of circulation, no longer in cash registers across the country. Private companies have adapted to the change and are either rounding up or down to the nearest nickel when someone pays in cash at checkout.

But the suspension of penny production has produced a headache for local government officials who are dealing with cash transactions with Texans. Some county tax assessors and treasurers shared their concerns with Texas lawmakers during a sparsely-attended subcommittee hearing in mid-August. “It’s not necessarily a payment issue,” Ronnie Keister, the Lubbock County tax assessor, testified. “It’s a change issue.” Texans can still make cash payments to local government entities for things like car payments, fines and fees, and property taxes. But if you overpay, even by a penny, government entities in Texas must make change for you. For example, Keister, who said a taxpayer overpaying by even two cents can become a relatively expensive and drawn-out procedure. The Texas property tax code requires the county to send a letter to the taxpayer to notify them they are entitled to a refund. “Now for two pennies, we have to send a letter that’s going to cost us several dollars,” Keister said. “A surprisingly large number of residents still utilize cash transactions,” Travis County Treasurer Dolores Ortega Carter testified. According to Ortega Carter, 19% of all property tax payments made to her county last year were made in cash. The local government officials who testified to lawmakers said the Texas Constitution requires them to make exact change on cash transactions.

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As Texans’ electricity costs soar and temperatures rise, a public health crisis brews

When Alek Micklethwait received his electricity bill in May, he was stunned. It was $545, more than double what his family had been paying during cooler weather, since moving into a 1,600-square-foot home in Central Texas last September. It must be a mistake, he thought. But it wasn’t. Micklethwait, who lives with his fiancée and her grandmother, was left wondering how they would afford to pay it, along with their mortgage, car insurance, groceries, gas, and a growing pile of medical bills. But they would have to figure it out. Getting disconnected wasn’t an option. Micklethwait’s fiancée has a heart disease, inappropriate sinus tachycardia, a rare disorder that causes her heart rate to exceed 100 beats per minute while resting. When she gets too warm, her heart pumps faster, adding stress to an already racing organ. So they set the thermostat between 70 and 75 degrees.

Facing unaffordable electricity bills, yet needing consistent air conditioning, Micklethwait called their electricity provider, Chariot Energy, hoping the private company would work out a deal with them. “We were told they don’t offer any discounts,” he said, “not even for low-income, seniors, disabled or military customers — nothing.” Electricity costs are rising across the country, but in Texas, which leads the nation in disconnections for nonpayment, these costs have risen on average by 30% since 2020. It’s the sharpest rise in rates in the country and an upward trend that is expected to continue. Texas is unique in that it runs its own grid in a largely deregulated market that rewards scarcity, not reliability. Power companies make higher profits when supply is low and demand is high. And surging demand, largely driven by data centers and other industries, has left residential electric customers footing rising bills. On August 4, Gov. Greg Abbott blamed public utilities for rising electricity costs, calling out Austin and San Antonio’s. Abbott offered a solution: Invite private providers to compete with public utilities, of which there are 72 in Texas. Increased competition, he said, would lower costs. But an investigation by Public Health Watch found that Texans like Micklethwait and his family, who live in deregulated markets, paid more on average — sometimes significantly more.

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National Stories

The House is back in session. Many Republicans hope it won’t be for long.

House GOP leaders could also put a Senate-passed Russian sanctions bill on the floor before the end of the month, though it is unclear whether it can pass. Many House Democrats — including Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the party’s leader on the Foreign Affairs Committee — believe the bill would give too much authority to Trump. But with many other House priorities currently in Senate limbo, there could be little incentive for members to hang around to wait to see if the Senate will act once it returns Sept. 14 for a brief three-week session. House Republicans rushed before their summer recess to adopt a budget blueprint for a fresh party-line spending package, but it’s currently stuck across the Capitol amid competing demands from defense hawks, fiscal conservatives and some GOP senators who aren’t convinced another such bill is needed at all.

Senate Republicans don’t expect the budget measure to be brought to the floor before the election, according to five people granted anonymity to disclose private discussions. House Republicans appear to be acknowledging that reality. When asked if he was confident the Senate would take up a third reconciliation bill, Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) told reporters this month that “‘confident’ is probably the wrong word.” Instead, the Senate is expected to focus in September on confirming Trump’s nominees and holding a vote on cryptocurrency legislation, as well as trying to advance a bill to overhaul college athletics and the Senate version of the farm bill. Some House Republicans, including Majority Whip Tom Emmer, have been trying to build public pressure on the Senate to pass the crypto bill known as the Clarity Act for months. But a mid-September vote on that measure is likely to fail. And while negotiations continue over the Senate’s college sports bill, a bill on the same topic in the House has stalled out, giving lawmakers little reason to stay to see if a Senate deal comes together. As for the farm bill, the House passed its version earlier this year largely along party lines, while the Senate version failed to advance in committee earlier this month due to GOP absences and Democratic opposition. Senate Agriculture Chair John Boozman (R-Ark.)said he plans to try again in September.

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Trump calls for NBC’s Kristen Welker to face ‘rebuke or punishment’ from the FCC

Treating the Federal Communications Commission like his own personal enforcer, President Donald Trump said on social media Sunday that NBC’s Kristen Welker would be “reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment” over a TV segment he didn’t like. In a separate post, Trump complained in all caps about “fake polls” and said “something must be done about it,” adding, “FCC to the rescue!” The posts were Trump’s most explicit efforts yet to direct the FCC to carry out his wishes. FCC Chair Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee and close ally, did not respond to CNN’s request for comment on the matter. Trump posted a long missive Sunday about what he described as mischaracterizations of his endorsement record in primaries.

He wrote: “Kristen Welker, the Unpopular ‘Hostess’ of the once great Meet the Press, now considered Meet the Fake Press, just stated that Donald Trump has ‘mixed results’ on his Endorsements of Candidates, when the recent WINS of Darline Graham and Mike Mazzei, stand at 100% for the U.S. Senate, and 98% for the U.S. House, recently and over the longterm. How can anyone be allowed to say this, working for freely given Public Airwaves?” The FCC has limited power over issues like this, and its own website states the agency “cannot prevent the broadcast of any particular point of view,” so the notion of “punishment” for Welker, the moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” would historically be a nonstarter. But Carr has been quick to respond to Trump’s requests to go after media organizations. And he has taken aggressive action against some FCC licensees, particularly ABC, whose parent company, Disney, filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the commission earlier this month.

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JD Vance set to address Jewish conservatives, as some Jews in GOP share concerns about his recent Israel remarks

Vice President JD Vance is set to address a major gathering of Jewish conservatives on Monday, with some Jews in the GOP raising concerns that the vice president is breaking with them on Israel -- and others saying his attendance at the event is a positive sign. Vance is set to speak at the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) annual leadership summit in Las Vegas, Nevada, just hours after a campaign stop in Michigan. But while the RJC is staunchly supportive of Israel, the vice president has made sharp and skeptical comments toward Israel in recent months, contrasting with the party faithful's traditionally supportive line toward the Jewish state.

While delivering a press briefing in the White House in June, for instance, as the United States was working on a deal to pause the war started by the U.S. and Israel with Iran, Vance told reporters that he had seen Israeli Cabinet members criticize the deal and would tell them that "Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time ... If I was in the Cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world." In a later interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Vance also said that "there are some people" in the Israeli government "we know beyond a shadow of a doubt who are manipulating and trying to change American public opinion to keep the war going on indefinitel. ... what I would say to the Americans who sort of see this and are frustrated by it, my attitude would be: you should be frustrated at American leaders who are persuaded by this, affected by this." Vance also said other governments run similar influence campaigns. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later told ABC News he spoke with Vance about those comments "and I think we straightened that out because we're not. That's not our policy."

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Dolly Parton laid to rest in private Nashville burial

Dolly Parton was laid to rest in a private burial in Nashville on Friday, three days after the country music legend died at age 80. Parton's niece Lainey Mae Parton shared news of the burial Saturday in an emotional social media post remembering her aunt. "This is a really hard post for me to make. I wanted to wait until after my granny was laid to rest yesterday before I tried to put any of this into words," she wrote in an Instagram post alongside photos of Parton. "From the time I was little, my granny always had a way of making me feel like I was enough," she continued. "She believed in me before I even knew how to believe in myself."

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Google Maps changes Lake Ontario's name to 'Lake America' for US users

Google has updated its maps application to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America” for users in the United States, reflecting a recent order by President Donald Trump that changed the name of the lake, the global technology giant says. Ontario Premier Doug Ford answered President Donald Trump’s “Lake America” decree Saturday with a billboard-sized message on the Canadian shoreline — “Lake Ontario. Now and Always” — as Canadian leaders met the move with ridicule rather than outrage. The Google Maps update comes days after Trump’s order amid an escalating trade war with Canada that has led both countries to impose billions of dollars in added tariffs on each other’s goods. It echoes what Google did in 2025 when Trump issued an order to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

Google said in a blog post Saturday that the decision was based on its practice of using names assigned by the U.S. Geographic Names Information System, also known as GNIS. “People using Maps in the U.S. will see ‘Lake America,’ those in Canada will continue to see ‘Lake Ontario,’ and those outside of the U.S. and Canada will see both names,” Google said in a brief statement. “These updates follow our long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country, and are starting to roll out now.” Trump’s decision Thursday to rename the lake was met with mockery and indifference in both Canada and the United States. On Saturday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford responded to Trump’s order with a billboard-sized message on the Canadian shore: “Lake Ontario. Now and forever.” The White House, the office of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ford’s office did not immediately comment Sunday ?on Google’s decision.

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Summer a ‘near lock’ to become warmest and most humid across U.S.

This summer has broken so many temperature records that each new one can feel almost routine. But the biggest record of all may be about to fall. Five out the 10 warmest summers on record in the contiguous United States have occurred in the past decade, pushed along by the tailwind of climate change. And summer 2026 is on track to not only join that list but to surpass the country’s average temperature record set during the notoriously hot Dust Bowl summer of 1936 — during a deadly, multiyear period of drought, dust storms and extreme heat that unfolded in the 1930s.

This year, average temperatures from June 1 to Aug. 29 have been around 2.05 degrees Fahrenheit above average across the contiguous states, nudging 2026 just beyond what was experienced in 1936 — and the highest, considering records dating back to 1895. “Remember that summer 1936 was fairly cool globally, even by the standards of the day. There was one notable exception,” said Alaska-based climate scientist Brian Brettschneider, who described it as a “near lock” that summer 2026 in the contiguous U.S. would finish as the warmest on record. Brettschneider also mentioned the scorching summer of 1976 in Britain — a benchmark against which hot, dry summers are measured there, including the current one — as an example of extreme regional heat that’s meaningful to the locals but that didn’t translate to extreme heat across the globe. In the U.S., one of this summer’s most consequential trends unfolded while most people slept. Nighttime temperatures smashed records, reaching their highest levels — 2.37 degrees above average — across the U.S. as a whole, on track to beat the previous record set in 2021 by almost half a degree.

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Meet the ex-Republicans running as Democrats in the midterms

Democrats have struggled to win over Republican voters in recent elections. This year, some Democratic candidates argue they can change that — because they were once Republicans. These party switchers say that they have unique insight into the concerns of voters distrustful of party politics, as well as those who feel they have no real home in either party, and that this knowledge will give them an edge in the upcoming midterm elections. “It is a big tent, right?” said Nancy Lacore, who is looking to flip Rep. Nancy Mace’s (R) seat in South Carolina and who left the GOP for the Democrats a decade ago. “There is room … in there for everybody.” There are at least three Democratic House candidates running in this year’s general election that are former registered Republicans.

While the phenomenon isn’t new, in a midterm year where President Donald Trump’s popularity is slipping among some Republican and independent voters, it is indicative of what polling suggests is broader dissatisfaction with partisan politics. In past cycles, party switchers sometimes have struggled in general elections. But Democrats hope that Lacore and other ex-Republicans such as former TV anchor Janelle Stelson in Pennsylvania and Navy helicopter pilot Rebecca Bennett in New Jersey can help their party win in districts where the odds are against them — and perhaps, in the case of Florida gubernatorial candidate David Jolly, manage to find a way to take a statewide seat that has eluded them for decades. Part of the hope is that these party-switching candidates can reach Republicans who, like they did, have soured on Trump. Lacore, who left the GOP in 2016, said she constantly runs into voters at Democratic events who go up to her and say, “I [am] a former Republican, too.”

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Lead Stories

Regulators approve routes for Texas' first 765-kV power lines

Plans for Texas’ first-ever 765-kilovolt transmission lines cleared a final regulatory hurdle Friday, but a top state official is trying to pause the project. The Public Utility Commission of Texas voted to approve two applications and final routes for ultrahigh voltage transmission lines west of Dallas-Fort Worth. This allows the utility company, Dallas-based Oncor, to begin surveying, securing necessary rights-of-way, and constructing the line. The PUC ordered Oncor to work with landowners on routing to avoid bisecting properties “when reasonable accommodations can be made.”

PUC Chairman Thomas Gleeson filed memorandums late Thursday afternoon ahead of the meeting that said he suggested the commission approve the applications in the more than 200-mile Dinosaur Switch to Longshore Switch from Somervell County to Howard County and the estimated 160-mile Longshore Switch to Drill Hole Switch from Howard County to near the Culberson County-Reeves County line. The routes chosen were Route 559 and Route 476, respectively. “I know we heard from some that the feeling is the participation isn’t meaningful,” Gleeson said after the vote. “I want to tell everyone it is meaningful. Everyone who participates in this process and the people up here takes it seriously.” He said balancing all of the interests is difficult. In a written statement, Oncor officials said the company appreciates the commissioners’ thoughtful review of the 765-kV projects.

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Warsh makes the case for higher rates and raises the bar for standing pat

Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh put to rest some concerns raised about his inflation-fighting strategy but set up a potentially bigger test three weeks from now. If the Fed raises interest rates, he risks infuriating the White House weeks before the midterm elections. If he holds, he could revive the doubts that Friday’s speech here quieted. The central bankers gathered in the Tetons this weekend arrived unsure how much the Fed’s new chairman would tell them about how he reads the economy. Warsh had been criticized after last month’s meeting, including by several conference attendees, for not explaining how the Fed’s current stance would bring inflation down. He gave a fuller account on Friday. Two observations in particular from Warsh’s speech pointed toward raising rates next month, which investors now think more likely than not. One was that Warsh would be hard-pressed to call financial conditions restrictive.

The other was that the summer’s better inflation readings hadn’t convinced him the underlying trend was improving. Rates are supposed to bring inflation down by making borrowing costly. If borrowing isn’t costly and inflation isn’t falling, rates aren’t high enough. Before Friday, the Fed’s default was to hold unless the data made a case to move. Warsh’s speech reversed it, said Donald Kohn, a former Fed vice chairman. “He’s changed the presumption to they’ll raise rates unless the data suggests it’s not necessary,” said Kohn, whose reading was shared by others at the Kansas City Fed’s annual symposium. That means the decision will turn on developments before the Sept. 15-16 meeting, especially the August consumer-price index on Sept. 11. Warsh has said he doesn’t put much weight on any single reading, but cooler data could turn two prior encouraging months into a trend. A weak enough report would settle it, Kohn said. If the data say a move isn’t necessary, the Fed shouldn’t move, and investors shouldn’t object. A firm reading, on the other hand, could undercut the argument that inflation is on its way to the central bank’s 2% target. If the Fed held steady anyway, it would revive the doubts about Warsh’s willingness to act that Friday’s speech had quieted.

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Gov. Abbott blocks funding in Texas for Flock cameras as bipartisan fury brews

Republicans and Democrats once praised Flock Safety as a protection tool for American communities. Now politicians across the political spectrum are turning against the mass-surveillance technology. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) froze state spending this week on the shoebox-size cameras that have proliferated across the nation. The flow of taxpayer money halted just before the Texas Tribune published an investigation probing how one state agency poured at least $30 million into expanding the reach of the controversial automated license plate scanners. “There is a crackdown across Texas,” Abbott spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris said in a statement.

Reports of authorities misusing the Flock network, which spans 120,000 cameras in every state except Alaska, have sparked an intense backlash, with critics asserting the crime-stopping devices too easily enable stalking or spying in the wrong hands. Abbott’s office highlighted a case in the East Texas city of Lufkin, where a police officer was indicted on felony charges after searching his ex-girlfriend’s license plate number thousands of times. Like energy-guzzling data centers, the robotic trackers have grown increasingly unpopular, sparking heated debate on the responsible use of AI in the United States as the midterm elections near. Protesters have vandalized Flock cameras they blast as “Big Brother,” and internet pranksters have danced in front of them in lighter-hearted viral mockery. Abbott’s office, meanwhile, said the technology is concentrated in densely populated areas and mainly funded by the federal government. “Almost all Flock cameras in Texas are used by cities, and those cities are increasingly canceling their contracts with Flock,” the governor’s press secretary said in a statement. The Democrat running against Abbott for governor, Gina Hinojosa, released an ad this month criticizing her opponent for allowing 10,000 of the monitors to trace Texans’ movements.

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James Talarico visits Fort Worth with Mark Cuban to discuss healthcare

Mark Cuban knows a good pitch. And after hearing Democrat James Talarico’s case for the U.S. Senate, Cuban appears ready to invest. The billionaire Dallas businessman and former Shark Tank star said Saturday that Talarico is offering the kind of ambitious ideas on healthcare, the economy and small businesses that Washington needs. “I believe in him,” Cuban said during a panel discussion with Talarico at a packed Ridglea Theater in Fort Worth. “We need people like James in the Senate helping to find solutions.”

Cuban, the former majority owner of the Dallas Mavericks, is no stranger to politics. He said he agreed to join the podcast event after Talarico called for breaking up healthcare monopolies to lower prescription drug prices and other medical costs. “James nailed it,” Cuban said. “So here I am.” Cuban never mentioned Republican Ken Paxton, Talarico’s opponent, by name. But he repeatedly contrasted Talarico’s character and ethics with those of the attorney general. “I believe very strongly that character is destiny,” Cuban said. “When people are tested, when it hits the fan, that’s when real character emerges. When you see somebody like James, who truly is ethical, you can believe in him. You can trust him.” Cuban also praised Talarico’s economic proposals, saying, “When we send him to Washington, he’s going to be looking out for those entrepreneurs.” Talarico and Paxton are locked in a tight race that could help determine the balance of power in the Senate. Cuban stopped short of formally endorsing Talarico, but he twice referred to “when Talarico is elected to the Senate” and said he was the leader Washington needs.

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A Texas banking billionaire and his children are locked in a bitter succession drama

A family battle over a billionaire’s fortune, from boats and a jet to Dallas Cowboys tickets, is rankling the board of a small regional bank in Texas. Texas banking veteran Gerald J. Ford is ensnarled in a legal fight with some of his adult children over a large stake in Hilltop Holdings, the $2.2 billion financial-services holding company he forged. Four of Ford’s children—including son Jeremy, who took over as chair from Ford in 2025—are suing to wrest away control of their father’s more-than-26% stake in Hilltop, worth some $600 million. At the core of the disagreement is family drama: The children claim Ford (no relation to the former president) is suffering from cognitive decline, and is being manipulated by his longtime second wife, Kelli O. Ford, and others. Ford’s camp, which includes children from his second marriage, rejects that and says it is simple greed and an attempt by his older children to gain millions on top of what they have already been gifted.

The disagreements over estate planning have now morphed into something that may belong more on an HBO dramedy than in a boardroom. In late July, Ford withheld his votes for the entire board at the company’s annual shareholder meeting, which would mean three directors didn’t get a majority of votes. The four children disputed his ability to vote the shares held by a family investment vehicle. The board chair and CEO is personally suing his largest individual shareholder, who is also his father. If Ford, 82 years old, were to die, it is unclear who would get voting control of his stake, leaving open questions about a major block of shares for the bank. “It is a war of attrition waged by a sitting Chairman and CEO against his own benevolent father, on the apparent theory that time and exhaustion will extract what negotiation could not,” Electra Ford, Ford’s 22-year-old daughter from his second marriage, wrote in a letter to Hilltop’s board of directors viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

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State Stories

Proposed state windstorm insurance change could leave many Galveston residences uninsurable

A proposed change to Texas Windstorm Insurance Association coverage could devastate the housing market in coastal communities such as Galveston County, state representatives, board members and business leaders told The Daily News ahead of the association’s meeting Tuesday. Association board member John Todd proposed eliminating coverage for secondary homes to reduce the association’s potential exposure by about $19 billion. Nearly 60% of the association’s secondary-home policies are in Galveston or Nueces counties, according to the association. Beyond vacation homes and coastal getaways, the proposal could also affect tenant-occupied properties, including short- and long-term rentals.

With no secondary private market for windstorm insurance in Galveston, losing association coverage could leave property owners with no alternative source of coverage. “It’s got bad implications all across the coast,” Rep. Terri Leo Wilson told The Daily News on Thursday. “It could have devastating consequences for coastal communities.” The Legislative and External Affairs Committee will consider whether to recommend the proposal to the association’s full board. The board would have to approve it before it could be included in the association’s report to the Texas Legislature as a proposed change to state law, association spokesman Aaron Taylor told The Daily News. “It would be premature for TWIA to comment on the proposal because at this point, it is still being discussed as a potential Committee recommendation to the Board,” Taylor said. “The Board must approve any recommendations put forth by the Committee before they are included in TWIA’s report to the Legislature as a recommended law change.” Todd couldn’t be reached for comment. The Texas Windstorm Insurance Association covered about 280,000 residential policies in March, of which 20% were categorized as secondary homes, Anna Stafford, senior legislative and external affairs manager, told the board at its June 22 meeting. Galveston County has 18,178 homes with a policy in force, with an average building limit of $355,870, according to the association.

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Texas PUC delays Hill Country transmission line route decision

With opposition mounting, state regulators delayed a decision on the route of a massive transmission line that would run from San Antonio through the Hill Country to West Texas, but gave their approval to another from North Texas. Both lines are part of the $33 billion Permian Basin Reliability Plan designed to provide power to the energy-rich region of West Texas by building three massive 765-kilovolt transmission lines. But the way the Public Utility Commission, grid operator the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and utilities have carried out the plan has sparked public outrage from landowners concerned about what they say is a compressed timeline and lack of transparency. Hundreds of people have shown up to make their voices heard at House and Senate committee hearings, regulatory agency meetings and protests.

Shortly after Friday’s meeting, Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a brief calling for the projects to be paused until the legislative session that begins in January, when a “full and thorough review” can be done. His action came after calls from lawmakers — who approved the plan in 2023 — to delay the project to give the state time to find a way to provide more transparency in the process and more time for public input. On Aug. 21, 31 Texas House members filed a request calling for utility regulators to pause the project until reforms to the permitting process can be made in the next legislative session. The request was made less than an hour before the commission met to discuss the North Texas transmission line. At that meeting, commissioners heard from Texans opposing the planned line, which has two segments. They delayed taking action on applications from Oncor to build the 235-mile Dinosaur-Longshore segment from Somervell County to Howard County and the 160-mile Longshore-Drill Hole segment from Howard County to a switch near the Culberson County-Reeves County line.

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North Central Texas Council of Governments leaves job

The executive director of an Arlington-based government organization is out of his job months after he fired an influential North Texas transportation director — a move that spurred legal action and led to the director’s reinstatement. Todd Little, a former Ellis County judge appointed to lead the North Central Texas Council of Governments in May 2025, left his position Thursday after a meeting of the group’s executive board, which now includes five Tarrant County leaders. During the meeting, the board “voted to approve a mutually agreed separation of Todd Little’s employment as executive director, effective immediately, with no finding of misconduct or cause,” Caroline Vandergriff, the organization’s spokesperson, said in a statement released late Thursday night. The vote was 8-6.

Little, also a former Red Oak mayor, could not be immediately reached for comment. The April firing of Michael Morris, transportation director for the 45-member Regional Transportation Council for 35 years, led to a monthslong regional dispute between the transportation body and the board. Morris, reinstated to his role days later by a judge, directs North Texas transportation projects and distributes millions of dollars to cities for road, rail, bus, bicycle and air quality projects. A settlement in the lawsuit by Denton County officials was approved by the transportation council on Aug. 13. Little previously told the Fort Worth Report that the organization is preparing for long-term mobility plans and looking for an eventual successor to marshal transportation projects needed to accommodate 4 million people expected to move to North Texas by 2050. “We’re planning for the future,” Little told the Report. Little was singled out by former Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley at the Regional Transportation Council’s April 30 meeting.

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Manvel mayor reverses his support for city's participation with Flock

Manvel Mayor Dan Davis is calling for the city to end its contract with Flock Safety, citing concerns over privacy, data sharing and the costs of the company's controversial license plate readers. “In 2024, I voted for Flock based on the information we had at the time and my desire to give our officers effective tools to keep Manvel safe,” Davis told the Houston Chronicle. “Since then, I’ve learned much more about Flock’s expanding data ecosystem, including Nova, the contractual language surrounding data use, cybersecurity concerns, and the broader sharing and aggregation of information.” Nova is Flock's AI-powered public safety platform. Davis on Friday announced on social media that he could no longer support Manvel’s four-year, $137,000 contract with the company, though he added that he doesn't oppose license plate readers generally. The issue is expected to come before Manvel City Council at its Sept. 8 meeting.

In his post, the mayor said he asked questions about language in Manvel’s contract and how data collected by Flock is used. He said he was troubled when a Flock representative could not provide clear answers. “Good leadership requires being willing to reconsider a decision when new information comes to light,” Davis said. “Knowing what I know today, I would not cast the same vote. Public safety is essential, but so are privacy, local control and public trust.” His push comes after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday directed state agencies to pause their funding for all Flock cameras amid the growing scrutiny of the technology. For his part, Davis said residents have complained to him about the license plate readers. Based on responses he has received, Davis estimated that more than 60% support ending the city’s relationship with Flock. He said some community members who disagree with removing the cameras appear to be supportive of law enforcement technology generally. “When I’ve explained my specific concerns with Flock, I’ve found there is actually significant common ground,” Davis said. Davis has also cited the cost of the system as Manvel works through what he described as a tight budget. He said the taxpayer money spent on Flock should be redirected to other public safety or infrastructure needs.

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Jonathan Levin: Texas’ Y'all Street won't mess with Wall Street

(Jonathan Levin is a columnist focused on US markets and economics. Previously, he worked as a Bloomberg journalist in the US, Brazil and Mexico. He is a CFA charterholder.) Second-tier US cities are always pitching themselves as “the next Wall Street.” During the penny stock frenzy of the 1970s and ‘80s, Denver adopted the Wall Street West moniker — until its boiler rooms got caught up in a wave of fraud. Charlotte, Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa and West Palm Beach have all, at one time or another, laid claim to the Wall Street South nickname. And now Dallas is going all in on Y’all Street (the best coinage yet, by far). The slogans are frequently part of marketing campaigns pushed by residential and office developers and business development strategists, and they should be met with an appropriate amount of eyerolling. Often the language shows up in luxury real estate ads and on Time Square billboards. Hilariously, the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County even went so far as to federally register the Wall Street South® trademark. Lately the attention has focused on Miami and Dallas. The former saw the opening of the MIAX Sapphire options trading floor in 2025, operated by Miami International Holdings Inc., and Dallas got TXSE Group Inc.’s (much more significant) Texas Stock Exchange this year.

In practical terms, these businesses have produced modest numbers of local jobs: Miami International, despite the name, is technically headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey, and the Texas Stock Exchange is reportedly starting out with about 100 employees. For all the inroads, the buzzy narratives around these kinds of developments can quickly become hyperbolic. And they veer toward fantasy when boosters try to convince us that Miami or Dallas (or wherever the new finance hub du jour might be) can actually replace the real Wall Street. Having examined the numbers from my office here in Miami, I can confidently tell you that while the ever-booming investment business has been expanding into more diverse locales, New York will always be its home. Manhattan alone still has five times as many high-finance workers as Dallas, Miami and Palm Beach combined, and in the last five years it added twice as much headcount as the total increase in those cities. Finance and investing workers also earn considerably less in these locales than they do in New York, putting a damper on the thesis that cost-of-living arbitrage might greatly accelerate incipient trends. Astute observers may rightly point out that these regions all have different-sized populations and workforces.

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Report finds majority of the Valley’s unemployed are prime-working age

The majority of unemployed workers in the Rio Grande Valley are in “the region’s prime working-age population,” 25-44, according to an August labor analysis report prepared by Workforce Solutions Lower Rio Grande Valley. The report was intended to provide “a broader look at the region’s workforce ecosystem and labor market,” according to communications specialist Julio Salinas. The analysis was based on 8,388 unemployment claims filed between January and March. According to the report, the median age of claimants is 36, and 63% have a high school diploma “or less.” According to the report, educational attainment has been a reliable predictor of long-term economic mobility. The report calls “targeted up-skilling” — training designed to improve specific workforce needs — “an economic imperative.”

The report also points to the need for affordable child care options throughout the Rio Grande Valley, calling the support for parents “the difference between being able to work or not.” According to the claimant analysis, 5,500 parents were receiving childcare assistance, totaling 9,700 children supported each day. “Stable child care enables workforce participation, increasing household incomes and consumer spending,” the report reads. “Employers gain a more reliable, stable workforce when parents have dependable care arrangements.” According to the report, the top four occupational sectors with the most unemployment during the analysis period were construction, administrative and support services, healthcare and social assistance, and professional, scientific, and technical services. A wide margin is dominated by construction, with 2,652 claims, or 31.6%. With inherently project-based work, cycles of unemployment and unemployment are predominant. Workforce solutions pitches licensed trades, OSHA certifications, operator qualifications as a possible fix, allowing workers to move quickly between employers when a project ends. Unfortunately, according to the report, many workers lack access to these necessary credentials.

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Bexar GOP seeks to boot independent candidate from 3-way District Attorney race

Bexar County Republicans are trying to remove an independent candidate who was once a member of their party, and could potentially peel votes away from their nominee in a three-way district attorney race. Defense attorney Jason Wolff ran and served as a Republican for many years — elected as a judge under the party’s banner in 2010 and 2014. But the GOP hasn’t won a countywide election in more than a decade in Bexar County, and this year Wolff entered the race to replace retiring District Attorney Joe Gonzales without a party affiliation next to his name.

“People can’t have a civil conversation with one another if they think that they can identify what’s in your heart based on your party affiliation,” Wolff said in a July interview. “I think it’s dividing this country [and] this county, so that’s why I’m running as an independent.” Now more than a month after the Secretary of State accepted Wolff’s petition to appear on the ballot, a lawsuit that seeks to have him removed has been filed by the Republican Party of Bexar County, its chairwoman Kris Coons, and the GOP nominee for District Attorney, Ashley Foster. The parties are scheduled to appear in court on Sept. 1. Major party candidates are selected through the primary process, while independents collect and submit signatures to qualify. Foster said Thursday that it’s standard practice for campaigns to check the validity of an opponent’s petition signatures, and local GOP activist Marian Stanko sought to do that in a timely manner after Wolff qualified.

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Routines and relationships are critical to a successful school year explains Communities in Schools

Schools across North Texas are in full swing, and a non-profit focused on helping kids succeed explains why routines and relationships are critical for children. Communities in Schools of the Dallas Region started in 1985 and, over the last 41 years, has provided services to kids in grades Kindergarten through 12. The non-profit uses evidence-based interventions for its programs to supply trained staff on campuses every day at schools to provide intervention to high-need students and families to remove barriers. Dr. Summer Rose, Psy.D, CEO of Communities in Schools of the Dallas Region, explains why routines and relationships are critical for the start of the year.

"We're trying to get kids back in the habit of getting up early, you know, having all their things prepared, making it to their classes on time, and also building from relationships," said Rose. "They're learning their new teachers; they might have old friends from last year, but there also might be new friends from this year. We might be having transitions from elementary to middle or middle-to-high. And so we really are talking about the importance of being in class every day so that you can build those routines and relationships because those habits formed early really impact for the rest of the school year." Communities in Schools of the Dallas Region said it relies on the generosity of the community, which is why North Texas Giving Day is huge for them. "This is like our Super Bowl. We love North Texas Giving Day, especially as a nonprofit, because we do survive; we thrive off of the donations from the community. This support allows us to be able to place these trained staff, both site coordinators and we have licensed mental health workers that also travel between the campuses that we serve to provide much-needed intervention. And so, North Texas Giving Day allows us to reach more students and families through the generosity of the community," explained Rose.

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Ross Fire consumes 85,303 acres and is 31% contained

A wildfire that exploded in size in a matter of hours on Monday continues ripping through wide swaths of ranchland in rural North Texas west of DFW on Friday, threatening structures, closing roads and forcing evacuations. The Ross Fire, which began early Monday afternoon, burned more than 78 square miles in less than a day across lightly populated areas in Palo Pinto and Jack counties. Fueled by whipping winds and extremely hot, dry conditions, the fire jumped creeks and rivers, residents said. On Saturday morning, Texas A&M Fire Service Operations Section Chief Boe Adler said the fire had consumed 85,303 acres and was 31% contained.

Adler said Friday's operations included firefighters using bulldozers to create a fire break along the southwest side. Firefighters use bulldozers to strip away any vegetation that could fuel the fire, leaving only a swath of bare soil. Along the fire's western front, Adler said they expect to see more fire activity moving through the rocky, rugged and tough terrain. They'll use bulldozers there, too, to try to prevent the fire from moving closer to Possum Kingdom Lake. The National Weather Service in Fort Worth said Thursday that the Ross Fire is the second-largest wildfire in our area's history, behind the PK Complex Fire, which burned roughly 127,000 acres in 2011.

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Brazoria County judge apologizes for using 'short bus' remark in reference to tax abatement opponents

Brazoria County's top elected official is apologizing after Eyewitness News asked about comments he made at Tuesday's commissioners court meeting. Commissioners were discussing whether to approve a seven-year tax abatement for the agricultural supply company NeuAg to expand its Clute fertilizer plant. Judge Matt Sebesta referenced emails he received from those opposed to the abatement, which he said were riddled with inaccuracies. "I'm gonna say it's kind of like the kid on the short bus that likes to eat boogers talks everybody else into eating boogers, and so they all copy the booger-eating champion on the short bus," Sebesta said.

Hours after Eyewitness News asked Sebesta about the comments Friday, he released a statement apologizing for the remarks. "I used a very poor analogy while discussing how quickly false information can be politicized and spread on social media," the statement read. "I deeply regret my choice of words and sincerely apologize to anyone I offended or hurt." The words still sting for Nicole Stayton, whose son has autism. "These kids go through a lot of scrutiny and for them to be scrutinized by a local official is not okay on any level ever," Stayton said. Commissioner David Linder said he was "shocked" and "disappointed" by the judge's comments. "I found the comments concerning members of the public to be inappropriate and offensive, and I understand the frustration and anger they have caused within our community," Commissioner Jay Burridge said in a statement. "I neither agree or condone the comments made about the citizens of Brazoria County and I will address it at our next meeting," a statement from Commissioner Stacy Adams reads. But Stayton says the response should have been immediate. "The people that were standing in that courtroom with him, the commissioners, should have said something and stood up and proclaimed for what was right," she said.

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Brownsville commissioners approve disannexation of future SpaceX property

City commissioners voted unanimously late Saturday night to voluntarily disannex more than 444 acres of land at the request of SpaceX after a tense, six-hour special meeting. At stake was a $220 million agreement with the trillion-dollar aerospace company that city leaders say will secure Brownsville’s ability to supply water to its residents for generations. The evening highlighted the lopsided power dynamics between the city and SpaceX, with a representative from SpaceX straightforwardly telling commissioners that the company would only provide money to the water infrastructure projects if commissioners passed an ordinance formalizing the disannexation the same night. Following the meeting, Mayor John Cowen Jr. told the Herald that the decision weighed heavily on commissioners.

He said the mood during the two executive sessions of the night was intense, with many in the room sharing concern that the process played out during special meetings. Ultimately, he said commissioners could not pass up the opportunity to secure the city’s water supply and “sustainability as a city for generations to come.” “We put the residents first tonight,” he told the Herald. “We look at this as a very historic moment for the city. Water is a huge issue in South Texas and around the state, and this decision today will ensure that Brownsville be a place for future generations to live, and for our continued growth as a city.” Commissioners heard from dozens of speakers during the public comment portion, both for and against the agreement and disannexation. Supporters extolled SpaceX’s economic contributions to the region while opponents expressed concern over environmental damage caused by the company and what some called bully tactics to push the disannexation forward. “Why are we rushing this? Why are we here on a Saturday?” said one resident. “Why can’t we know what they’re going to do with the land? They say Starbase is a company town, but I fear we are becoming one, too.”

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National Stories

USPS rule could bar millions from voting by mail

Voting by mail would become much more difficult, if not impossible, for tens of millions of Americans if the U.S. Postal Service is allowed to implement a restrictive rule governing mail voting that President Trump has demanded. The effects would likely be greater for Democratic voters, who vote by mail in higher numbers than Republicans, and in states where mail voting is universal or nearly so. Mail voting may not happen at all in states that resist the Trump administration’s demands for voter data. The rule would particularly affect people in rural areas and older voters, who tend to cast ballots by mail in greater numbers. It could also deeply affect states where some of the most competitive races for House, Senate and governor will determine control of Congress and state governments.

Michigan, where 37 percent of votes were cast by mail in 2022, would be one epicenter, with hard-fought statewide contests and multiple battleground House races. California, which mails ballots to all voters, is expected to be central to Democratic efforts to win a majority in the House. The rule is being challenged in several lawsuits, and it is on hold temporarily following a federal judge’s ruling on Thursday. The administration is appealing. Even if the Postal Service is permitted to proceed, it is unclear that it would have time to implement the plan ahead of an election that is fewer than 70 days away. For instance, the rule requires states to upload a list of voters to a federal mail ballot portal that is not yet online. Nearly two dozen Democratic-led states and Washington, D.C., have sued to block the proposed rule and said they will not comply with it. If the agency were to move ahead, state and local officials would shoulder enormous costs in what would need to be a herculean effort to prepare election offices and educate voters in time for the midterm elections in November.

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Influencers have a lot to say about politics. Many are quietly paid for it.

Josh Greene is a rising left-wing social media star with his own podcast, nearly 800,000 followers and access to politicians like Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York. He has used that platform to support dozens of progressive candidates in the midterm elections, ranging from low-profile, down-ballot contests to some of the nation’s marquee Democratic primaries. In camera-facing videos, Mr. Greene informs his followers of his preferences, calling some candidates “the most viable” and, in other cases, declaring that “this is the candidate for you.” He does not always tell his viewers that he is being compensated for his support.

But records show that Mr. Greene, 26, has received money from at least seven politicians, or outside groups supporting them, in the current campaign cycle, including several congressional candidates in New York and a super PAC linked to Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Senate nominee in Michigan. Tom Steyer, the former candidate for governor in California, paid him $21,500. Mr. Greene, who lives in Southern California and is best known by his handle @joshtheprogressive, is among a growing number of influencers who, at a moment when campaigns are increasingly willing to pay for online attention, appear willing to put their mouth where the money is. In February, Mr. Greene said that Mr. Steyer “isn’t the progressive champion you might think” because of his investments in detention facilities. In May, around the same time that he received $21,500 from Mr. Steyer’s campaign, Mr. Greene shifted his support to Mr. Steyer. He called Mr. Steyer “the most progressive viable candidate in the race,” adding that it was “my opinion.” As more people spend time scrolling on their phones, campaigns view these shows of support from influencers as a vital way to reach voters. They are also significantly less expensive than traditional advertising. But unlike campaign mailers, billboards and television spots, these messages fall into a legal gray area.

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Minnesota high court rejects Lindell’s gubernatorial primary recount bid

The Minnesota Supreme Court on Saturday rejected MyPillow founder Mike Lindell’s (R) bid for a recount of the state’s gubernatorial primary election, effectively confirming an 11-point loss that he has defiantly challenged. Chief Justice Natalie E. Hudson wrote in a six-page ruling that Lindell’s “claim fails on the merits.” “Lindell argues that he is entitled to a full recount for both the Democratic and Republican primary races for governor ‘to ensure that there are no anomalies in the ballots, whether the votes cast are for the Democratic or Republican primaries,’ and that this recount must include ‘the recording of votes for every candidate,'” she wrote. “But Lindell’s focus on alleged anomalies confused the purpose of a manual recount with an election contest,” she added, before citing legal precedent.

Hudson also wrote that the Minnesota secretary of state’s office and the State Canvassing Board were “not committing any wrongful act, omission, or error by following –– as the Secretary of State proposes –– the procedures set forth” in state election law. Lindell called for a recount after his primary loss to state House Speaker Lisa Demuth (R), who won the Aug. 11 primary by 45,000 votes. He told NBC News on Saturday that he plans to appeal the ruling, adding that his team requested election data from all 87 counties through the Freedom of Information Act to conduct an independent investigation of that data. “I’m willing to pay even more money,” Lindell told the outlet, having previously said he’ll cover a full recount with an estimated $825,000. “I don’t care what it costs.” Lindell refused to pay the money last Monday, the state’s deadline for a recount and audit of the race, after the recount would have solely been about counting the ballots cast for him or Demuth. Hudson wrote that Lindell, having missed the Monday deadline, “instead sent documentation to the Secretary of State to reflect wire transfer readiness, and he filed this section 204B.44 petition.”

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Medicare's pilot GLP-1 discount program has a catch. Some sick patients don't qualify

In January, Jeff La Marca got a prescription for the popular weight loss drug Zepbound. But he couldn't afford the $750 monthly price tag. Then Medicare launched an 18-month pilot program that offers GLP-1 medications to some enrollees for only $50 a month. La Marca thought he might finally be able to afford the drug. "I thought, 'Thank God, there's a path,'" said La Marca, who lives in Basking Ridge, N.J., and has tried numerous diets and exercise regimes. But the 68-year-old's celebration was short-lived. His application to the pilot program was denied. La Marca has severe obstructive sleep apnea, one of several diagnoses that exclude patients from the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge program's $50 monthly price. The notification didn't say why he was rejected. He thinks that if he didn't have that diagnosis, he would qualify due to his weight.

About 1 in 5 American adults has taken a GLP-1 medication, and most of them, including those with health insurance, say the drugs are difficult to afford. Federal law has long barred Medicare from covering drugs prescribed solely for weight loss, which is why the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge program made a big splash when it launched in July. It's a short-term pilot program in which Medicare is offering coverage of three GLP-1s for weight loss and management, to see whether that would save Medicare money later. Eligible patients must be enrolled in Medicare Part D, a prescription drug coverage add-on to Medicare. Even though people must have Part D insurance to qualify, the preauthorization request doesn't go through the insurer; it's instead submitted to a separate system run by a contractor for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The pilot includes Wegovy, the KwikPen formulation of Zepbound and the oral medication Foundayo. Under the pilot, many Medicare beneficiaries with a body mass index of 35 or higher — the upper range of obesity — qualify for coverage of one of those drugs, if prescribed. Those otherwise eligible who have a BMI of 27 to 34 can qualify if they also have certain health conditions, such as prediabetes or cardiovascular disease.

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Trump administration begins deportations of Haitians — slowly

The Trump administration has slowly begun removing Haitians who are illegally residing in the United States following the expiration of the temporary protected status program. But some conservatives say that isn’t enough to fulfill President Donald Trump‘s campaign promises. In the wake of the courts allowing the Trump administration to strike down TPS, roughly 350,000 Haitian illegal immigrants are no longer permitted to work in the U.S. and have lost protection from deportation, making them prime targets for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Hundreds of Haitians residing in the Springfield, Ohio, region were contacted by ICE in late July and told to check in with immigration authorities at a local federal office, where many reported being outfitted with ankle monitors, according to lawyers who spoke with the Haitian Times.

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At the FBI, a history of hiring prostitutes or stealing from employer may no longer be a barrier to being hired

The FBI previously refused to hire job applicants if they admitted to hiring sex workers or stealing from an employer — or engaging in acts of bestiality. Today, those acts, which are mostly illegal across the country, are no longer automatic deal breakers for applicants to the nation's top law enforcement agency. In June, the FBI quietly lowered some of the standards it uses when it conducts background checks on would-be federal agents and other personnel. According to multiple sources briefed on the matter, the FBI did so to facilitate hiring in some cases, even if candidates acknowledged they engaged in sexually deviant activities or stole from an employer. The move comes as the FBI has lost scores of employees through firings, retirements and resignations since the start of the Trump administration.

Under specific circumstances, the FBI is willing to give candidates a pass on prostitution, as long as they have not hired sex workers three or more times, the sources told CBS News. And the hiring of the sex workers must not have taken place within the last 10 years, several of the sources added. On this part of the guidance, the FBI spokesperson pointed out that a person may have hired a sex worker in a location where prostitution is legal. A person who was in a position of "trust" who solicited sex would still be automatically disqualified from FBI employment, one of the sources with direct knowledge of the changes told CBS News. Examples of positions of trust, according to the FBI's new policy, are those who work in the fields of public safety, education, health, social work, finance or law. Being a member of the military was not among the listed categories, and it was not clear if they would be treated as such. Under the new eligibility rules, a person who stole from an employer is not automatically disqualified as long as the incident occurred more than three years ago, one of the sources with direct knowledge said.

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USDA cyclospora research projects shelved amid funding cuts and relocations

USDA is directing blame to Congress for zeroing out funds for two of the projects once housed at the agency’s Beltsville Agricultural Research Center just outside Washington. But the department’s broader relocation effort is also raising questions about the Trump administration’s work to overhaul vital research amid public health threats like cyclospora, salmonella and E. coli. “We know so little, and I think that that’s been very frustrating to consumers,” said Kalmia Kniel, who studied with the BARC parasite scientists before becoming a professor researching cyclospora at the University of Delaware. Without BARC, “no one can work very fast. We don’t have the models, we don’t have these surrogates like we would want to have them, and we want to be able to do the research.”

More than 17,000 people have been sickened by cyclospora this summer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The FDA is investigating multiple outbreaks of the parasite, including one that has sickened more than 11,000 people across 20 states. While scientific research couldn’t prevent the current outbreak, it could help investigators find the culprit faster next time — or prevent an outbreak in the first place. The Trump administration has said that BARC, a 6,500-acre complex where researchers study nutrition, animal health and food safety, is too expensive to keep open. USDA officials have also said that the goal of the reorganization is to move the department’s employees closer to the people they serve, and that research, like that in the labs that conduct cyclospora research, will be uninterrupted. A USDA spokesperson blamed Congress for the funding cuts, and said, “None of the research has been disrupted, and research will continue without disruption.” “Congress did not appropriate funding for the two BARC research projects referenced in the FY2026 Agriculture Appropriations Act,” the USDA spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service “is working with research leaders to ensure an orderly transition of programs.” Spokespeople for Republican and Democratic appropriators in the House and Senate who oversee the funding for the parasite research did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

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Lead Stories

NDAs are hiding data center deals, drawing ire from locals — and attention from lawmakers

By fields of cotton and soybeans where his bees forage and pollinate, Foster Hensel pries open the lid of one of his beehives, setting off a rising hum from inside. "You hear the difference in the sound?" he asks, pumping the bellows of a small smoker to try and settle the bees. "They're getting a little aggravated." What has Hensel concerned is a few miles down the road. In Boyce, a small town in Rapides Parish in central Louisiana, construction is starting on a 300-acre data center site. The beekeeper worries the new warehouse-like facilities will raise his utility bills or change the local environment. And he asks why there's not more information. "Let me quote a good writer, Shakespeare — there's something rotten in Denmark," Hensel said. "There's something wrong with that." The negotiations between the data center developer — Dallas-based Applied Digital Corp. — and local officials were shielded under nondisclosure agreements (NDAs).

In Rapides Parish, the secrecy left residents with unanswered questions and distrust of their local leaders. But the use of NDAs for negotiations on data centers is common across the country, according to experts and those in the industry. And the practice has faced opposition from the public and some lawmakers. Bills to ban NDAs for data centers have been introduced in several states, including Michigan, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Ohio. Last week, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro banned their use on data center projects by agencies he oversees. Eric Bonds is a professor and environmental sociologist at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia. He and his research partner found that NDAs were used in at least 25 of 31 data center projects they surveyed there last year. He said NDAs seem to be "standard practice." "After we published our research," Bonds said, "we heard back from reporters and activists kind of around the country from Arizona, Indiana, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania." Companies and local officials who sign nondisclosure agreements say they're needed to protect corporate secrets and to negotiate freely. But experts say they also give data center developers an edge as they move from county to county — in this case, parish to parish — seeking the best deals. "Information is power, and these folks, they're powerful, and they want to make a lot of money, so they're going to control information as closely as they can so they have an advantage," said David Cuillier, director of the Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida.

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ICE officer's release escalates fight between states over extradition

The release of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer from a Texas jail on Thursday despite Minnesota’s request for his return could set a dangerous precedent, increasing friction between states and helping criminal defendants avoid justice, legal experts said. Christian Castro was released from a detention center in Brownsville after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declined to immediately sign his extradition warrant. A federal judge also declined to block Castro’s release or order Abbott to sign the warrant. Minnesota officials say they believe Castro could flee to Mexico to avoid prosecution on charges he shot a man and lied about it during an immigration crackdown in Minneapolis in January. Extradition from Mexico would require action by the Trump administration, which opened an investigation into Castro’s actions but also has argued ICE agents have “absolute immunity” for their actions on duty.

The standoff between the two states is highly unusual. Under federal law, states have little discretion to reject extradition requests from fellow states. Thousands of fugitives are sent to other states each year as a matter of routine. But Abbott, a Republican, said last week he would not respond to Minnesota’s extradition request, citing the ongoing investigation into fraud in government social service programs in the state, which President Donald Trump used to justify his immigration crackdown there. The decision is alarming because it injects politics into the extradition process, said Marsh Halberg, a criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor in Minnesota. “Something that’s been a routine process may now turn into a political card,” he said in a phone interview. In recent months, California and New York have rejected extradition requests from Louisiana for doctors accused of mailing abortion pills. But legal scholars say those cases are different because the doctors weren’t in Louisiana and never fled the state and became fugitives. Under federal law, the New York and California governors had no duty to turn over the doctors, Georgetown University law professor Stephen Vladeck wrote on Substack. “Abbott is just refusing to perform his,” he said.

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Trump visits Houston for GOP fundraiser and NASA ceremony

President Donald Trump touched down in Houston Thursday afternoon ahead of a private fundraiser before a Friday ceremony at NASA’s Johnson Space Center on his third visit to Texas since returning to the White House. The two-day trip puts Trump at the center of two consequential Texas stories: Republicans’ effort to hold a U.S. Senate seat in an unexpectedly competitive election and NASA’s push to return astronauts to the moon through the Artemis program. After arriving at Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base, Trump was scheduled to headline a Republican National Committee reception to raise money ahead of the midterm elections. He is also scheduled to visit NASA Johnson Space Center on Friday.

Trump's visit to help raise money for Republicans in Texas come as his endorsed candidate, Ken Paxton, is neck and neck with James Talarico in the race for U.S. Senate. The RNC Chair previously told the Houston Chronicle that Texas is a "treasure trove" for finding Republican conservative donors. According to a copy of the invitation for Thursday's event obtained by a New York Times reporter, donors must pay $10,000 to attend the reception and more than $88,000 for a photo opportunity. At NASA, Trump will honor the Artemis II crew and award the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch. Only 30 astronauts have received the honor, according to NASA. Experts said Trump has shown a particular interest in space policy over his two terms in office. “He's certainly, particularly among modern presidents, one of the more energetic and impactful drivers of national space policy,” said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy for the Planetary Society, a space advocacy organization. He redirected NASA to the moon with the Artemis Program and created the U.S. Space Force during his first term. In his second term, Trump worked to streamline regulatory paperwork required by companies seeking to launch rockets. Many presidents have enjoyed the symbolic power of NASA and human spaceflight, Dreier said. Trump seems to understand that returning NASA astronauts to the moon is a “very potent symbol of American capability,” he said. “He understands the power of symbolism and of a story and narrative,” Dreier said of Trump. “One of his great strengths is understanding how to sell an idea.”

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Texas Senate hopeful Talarico teams with Mark Cuban on plan to break up healthcare 'monopolies'

Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico is out with a new plan, first shared with CNBC, to break up what he says are healthcare monopolies and bring down the cost of prescription drugs. And he’s teaming up with entrepreneur Mark Cuban to launch it. Talarico, a member of the Texas House of Representatives who is running against state Attorney General Ken Paxton in one of the most closely-watched Senate races of the 2026 election cycle, will appear with Cuban for a live event and podcast recording in Fort Worth on Saturday to discuss the plan.

“Mark and I agree it’s time to break up the Big Medicine monopolies that control our broken healthcare system,” Talarico said in a statement to CNBC. “Healthcare corporations are ripping us off — jacking up premiums and profiting off our pain. This plan will break up monopolies, lower medical debt, bring down the cost of prescription drugs, and ensure doctors decide what medication their patients need — not insurance companies.” Talarico is trying to become the first Democrat elected statewide in Texas since 1994, in a seat that would be key for the party if they want to win control of the Senate from Republicans. The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter rates the race a “toss-up,” and recent polling shows Talarico and Paxton neck-and-neck. Democrats across the country have hammered home a cost-of-living message heading into the November election, criticizing President Donald Trump and the GOP-controlled House and Senate for enacting policies they say have hurt the economy and raised prices.

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State Stories

Enbridge to buy Houston pipeline co.'s crude oil business in $600M Permian deal

Canada-based Enbridge Inc. (NYSE: ENB), which has its U.S. headquarters in Houston, is acquiring pipeline assets for $600 million. Houston-based Salt Creek Midstream LLC is selling its crude oil gathering business — including 100% of the Orla and Wink North systems and a 50% interest in the Delaware Crossing system — to Enbridge. The business has about 500 miles of crude oil gathering infrastructure in the Delaware Basin portion of the Permian Basin. It serves more than 20 producers and has about 320,000 net dedicated acres under long-term commercial agreements with an average remaining contract life of about 10 years. The assets have a combined 420,000 barrels per day of throughput capacity and 350,000 barrels of storage capacity with access to Enbridge’s majority-owned Gray Oak Pipeline.

"These assets will strengthen our value chain in the Permian Basin and Enbridge can now offer customers full wellhead to water integration via Gray Oak, Cactus II and the Enbridge Ingleside Energy Center,” Colin Gruending, Enbridge’s executive vice president of liquids pipelines, said in a news release. The deal is expected to close in 2026. RBC Capital Markets acted as financial adviser to Enbridge. Sidley Austin LLP and Sullivan & Cromwell LLP were legal advisers to Enbridge. Salt Creek Midstream was formed in 2018 by Houston-based Arm Energy Holdings LLC and funds managed by Los Angeles-based Ares Management LP (NYSE: ARES). Aside from the crude oil gathering business, Salt Creek also has natural gas and water infrastructure in the Permian Basin. Enbridge is working on several other pipeline projects that come out of the Permian Basin. A joint venture is developing the 450-mile Eiger Express Pipeline, which will run from the Permian to Katy with a capacity of 3.7 billion cubic feet per day. A separate joint venture reached a final investment decision with Houston-based Targa Resources Corp. (NYSE: TRGP) last year to develop a 160-mile, bidirectional natural gas pipeline between the Corpus Christi area and Katy.

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Prominent general contractor's Texas offices raided by federal authorities

Federal authorities raided a general contractor's Austin, San Antonio and Plano offices on Aug. 26. More than a half-dozen eyewitnesses told the Austin Business Journal they spotted around 15 federal and state officers enter Three Barton Skyway, which is located at 1221 South MoPac Expressway, in the morning. The officers were circling in on the office of Plano-based Cadence McShane Construction Co. LLC and left with several boxes and confiscated cell phones, sources said. Srinath Kasturi, Cadence's executive vice president over the Austin office, on Aug. 27 confirmed the activity at the Austin office, along with offices in San Antonio and the Plano headquarters.

Kasturi said the incident "involved a government agency obtaining records related to a previous project," and added that Cadence fully cooperated and provided the requested information. He identified that agency as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and said no arrests or detainments were made. Cadence McShane is a prominent general contractor in the area and has worked on some of the region's most notable projects, including the massive NFM-anchored shopping center in Cedar Park. It ranked No. 11 on ABJ's list of largest area general contractors, based on $315.3 million in construction billings in 2025. It reported 79 local employees at the time. Representatives from the Texas Department of Public Safety on Aug. 27 confirmed they were at the scene assisting HUD, and deferred questions to HUD. HUD officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Austin Police Department confirmed it was not involved.

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‘The whole enchilada’: House Speaker Mike Johnson says all eyes are on San Antonio’s new district

A new congressional district on San Antonio’s South Side is ground zero in Republicans’ efforts to save a narrow U.S. House majority this November. On Wednesday evening, that brought U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), U.S. Reps. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-Florida) and Rudy Yakam (R-Indiana) to a VFW near the Mission Marquee Plaza, where they mingled with veterans and local officials at a campaign event for first-time congressional hopeful Carlos De La Cruz. “I just want to tell you that leaders from across Congress and across the country are all watching what happens right here in this district,” Johnson told the crowd of roughly 200 people. “This district is the whole enchilada — did I say that right?”

Texas’ 35th Congressional District was drawn to give the GOP a leg up in an election that party leaders worry could be brutal. Johnson can only afford to lose a few seats and still hold onto the speaker’s gavel, so his party placed a gamble on a part of the country that swung toward President Donald Trump two years ago. Last year, Trump got Texas to redraw its congressional districts outside of the census cycle, creating the new San Antonio-area district and reshaping several others south of here that are currently held by Democrats. “2024 was a bellwether election,” Johnson told reporters Wednesday. “We had a true demographic shift. We had a record number of Hispanic and Latino voters — we had a record number of Black and African American voters — coming to the Republican Party.”

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Free speech lawsuits against Tarrant County judge awaiting decision from US appeals court

A U.S. appeals court will determine whether two lawsuits alleging First Amendment violations move forward against Tarrant County and Judge Tim O’Hare. The lawsuit Bishop Mark Kirkland filed against the county and O’Hare in January is paused until the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decides whether to reconsider a lawsuit Kirkland’s attorney, CJ Grisham, filed against the county judge last year. Both men allege that O’Hare violated their constitutional right to freedom of speech when he had them removed from public meetings of the Tarrant County Commissioners Court. A magistrate judge canceled the Aug. 28 hearing to settle Kirkland’s lawsuit, citing U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman’s decision to wait on the appeals court before further judgment.

“The related case before the Fifth Circuit is substantially similar in posture and involves the constitutionality of precisely the same county rules of decorum,” Pittman wrote in an Aug. 6 court filing. The cancellation issued Aug. 7 came three days after O’Hare earned state headlines for ordering all attendees to leave the commissioners courtroom when some of them clapped after he told them not to during a public meeting. A former Tarrant County state lawmaker was arrested and carried out of the courtroom by sheriff deputies after continuing to speak when O’Hare cut off his public comments. Grisham, an attorney and gun rights activist from Temple, alleges that O’Hare violated the First Amendment when the county judge had him removed from a commissioners court meeting for using profanity in January 2025. U.S. District Judge Terry R. Means dismissed the lawsuit in April, and Grisham is appealing that decision. Kirkland, a Fort Worth pastor, sued O’Hare days after the county judge had him removed from a commissioners court meeting in December — then refiled the suit in January after it was tossed out for logistical errors. O’Hare had cut Kirkland’s speaking time short when the pastor commented on the county judge ordering attendees not to clap during the meeting.

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Houston ethics proposal targets late, missing campaign finance reports

Political candidates seeking office at Houston City Hall could soon face stiffer penalties for some campaign finance violations under a new proposal being considered by city officials. Filing campaign fundraising reports late — or failing to file them at all — is a criminal offense under state and city laws and can be subject to hefty fines. But in practice, the city doesn’t enforce those rules, leading to routine violations from officeholders and their challengers alike. A new proposal filed by Council Member Julian Ramirez seeks to encourage more timely reports by requiring the city secretary to file a sworn complaint with the Texas Ethics Commission anytime a candidate misses a deadline.

“With no penalty assessed for not meeting the deadline, filers can ignore the requirement with impunity,” the proposal reads. “Because violators are not held accountable, the public’s confidence and trust in its government is undermined.” Ramirez is pushing the idea through Proposition A, which allows any three City Council to place an item on the city council agenda. The proposal, which is also supported by Council Members Amy Peck, Sallie Alcorn and Joaquin Martinez, must pass a legal review before being scheduled for a vote. Ramirez and other council members have engaged in more than a year of talks at City Hall over ethics reforms. Mayor John Whitmire campaigned on rooting out waste, corruption and conflicts of interest in city government, but various proposals, from reviving the city ethics commission to reforming the Office of the Inspector General, have not advanced. Ramirez’s proposal also would require City Secretary Troy Lemon to post the names of delinquent filers on a city website within 24 hours after each filing deadline. Under state law, contenders for Houston mayor, controller, and city council seats are required to post reports with donations and spending twice a year, with extra reports due before each election day.

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Austin City Council begins process of banning large-scale data centers

It’s the perfect moment for an easy vote. The Austin City Council just came through a tough budget-writing process. It’s only weeks removed from the controversial decision on the Dog’s Head development. Taking a vote to ban large-scale data centers must feel quite comfortable by comparison. And banning large-scale data centers is definitely the plan. As Mayor Kirk Watson said at Tuesday’s work session, “It’s pretty clear what we’re hoping to see.” Watson opened the conversation by referring to recent Council message board posts, including one of his own, stressing that data center approvals in Austin’s extraterritorial jurisdiction should be frozen until Council finalizes a policy on their development. A post from Council members Vanessa Fuentes, Ryan Alter, José Velásquez, Zo Qadri, and Mike Siegel took the sentiment further, stating they are “committed to ensuring that Austin does not allow a single large, ‘hyperscale’ data center within the City limits.”

State law forbids Austin from simply banning data centers overnight, however. Joi Harden of the Austin Planning Department told Council that a data center ban will need to be executed through the city’s zoning process. That process would allow opportunities for public comment and conclude with Council amending the city’s Land Development Code, which currently does not even define the term “data center.” Council pushes the proposal forward today, Aug. 27, with a vote directing City Manager T.C. Broadnax to begin crafting amendments to the LDC for Council consideration. Harden told the CMs the process could be complete by spring of next year. Harden also ran through a presentation with the now-familiar reasons that large-scale data centers are causing such an emetic backlash – they consume obscene amounts of energy and water, give off sound and light pollution, and are housed in ugly industrial buildings. She and Austin Energy’s Stuart Reilly said the city is currently providing electricity to a handful of small data centers of 20 megawatts or less. These are not to be confused with large wholesale data centers, those using between 20 and 100 MW, Harden said, or the hyperscale data centers, the thousand-acre facilities consuming more than 100 MW. With the presentation complete, the Council members offered comments. Alter noted that the increased electricity use would increase the state regulatory fees that are a portion of everyone’s utility bill.

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Houston ICE shooting could go before grand jury soon, Sean Teare says

Harris County prosecutors plan to bring witnesses to the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo before a grand jury “very soon,” District Attorney Sean Teare said in an interview Thursday. Teare’s announcement comes less than 24 hours after a second witness, Daniel Tirado Pantoja, was released from federal custody. The investigation into Salgado’s fatal shooting July 7 by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent has entered “a tipping point,” Teare said in an appearance on Hello Houston. “Physically, when you’re talking the evidence from before it occurred and what happened that day, I think we’ve gotten just about all we’re going to get,” Teare said. “There are still pieces of evidence we need from the federal government that we are waiting on. But we are much more moving into the evaluation phase and determining what, if any, charge we’re going to present to a grand jury.”

Officials with Teare’s office declined to provide a more precise timeline in the case. Two witnesses in the van the day Salgado was fatally shot in Magnolia Park have been released from federal custody, but Teare said a third was still fighting his detention in court as of Thursday. The third witness, Victor Salgado Araujo, is Lorenzo Salgado’s brother. Ruby Powers, the Houston-based immigration attorney who represents Victor Salgado, told the Houston Chronicle Thursday that there has been movement recently in her client’s case, but a timeline on when a federal judge might rule on Salgado’s petition for release is unclear. Local prosecutors have interviewed all three of the men at some point in federal custody, Teare said. Teare said investigators with his office have compiled witness accounts and surveillance video that provide a compelling picture of events leading up to and immediately following Salgado’s shooting, but no one has yet provided video of the incident itself. The lack of evidence of the shooting itself suggests ICE has changed its tactics, Teare said, and is moving toward more surreptitious enforcement. “The agency has adapted from Minnesota and now you’re doing these operations at 7 a.m. on a side street,” he said. The name of the ICE agent who killed Salgado has not been released.

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Dallas knew of ICE flights as operator sought privacy at Love Field

Dallas officials were explicitly told a private aviation company was taking over ICE deportation flights at Love Field Airport, email records show, even as the city publicly described that message only as an "irregular operations courtesy notice." The emails don’t show that Dallas controlled federal immigration decisions or had authority to stop the flights. But they give a more detailed picture of what city officials knew about the operations and how they responded behind the scenes. The records also show Signature Aviation asked Dallas aviation department officials to approve black mesh being installed along fencing beside a public observation area, saying it wanted greater privacy and sought to “prevent further media scrutiny.” A senior city aviation official separately asked in a later email that the operations be conducted “more discreetly” away from the observation area.

The information comes from more than 100 pages of emails among Dallas aviation officials and Signature employees obtained by The Dallas Morning News through a public records request. Dallas aviation officials confirmed to The News in July that flights connected to federal immigration operations had occurred at the city-owned Dallas Love Field. Officials with the city and Signature told The News they had no authority to stop lawful flights conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. City officials also said the information they normally received from private aviation companies was generally limited to operational details like flight times and aircraft type. But on June 29, Signature General Manager Brett Langsdorf emailed Dallas airport and police officials a more explicit notice. “Starting tomorrow, we will be taking over all ICE deportation flights that Atlantic once had,” Langsdorf wrote. He said the planes, buses and support vehicles for the operations would use Signature’s Terminal 3.

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Here's why MD Anderson Cancer Center President Peter Pisters is retiring and what's next

Dr. Peter Pisters’ career has been divided into 10-year chapters, and the outgoing president of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center is turning the page on another one. “I was an academic surgeon for a period of time, then I was a mid-level administrator. I've been a healthcare CEO in two countries, and now I'm going to go on to something else,” Pisters told the Houston Business Journal in an interview. Pisters announced his retirement as president this week after nine years in the role. He’s handing over the reins to Dr. Jeffrey Lee, the cancer center’s chief physician executive, who now serves as interim president. Pisters told the HBJ that his and Lee’s working relationship is so good that they could “finish each other’s sentences.”

Pisters said he’d been thinking about the decision to leave for some time, but his ultimate call was aided by the institution’s strong financial position and improvement in several care and research metrics. After Pisters’ last day on Sept. 30, he plans to take some time before jumping into his next venture. His wife, also a physician, is retiring, and he’s welcoming a grandchild. But leaving the day-to-day demands of one of Houston’s biggest academic medical centers will also give Pisters time to reflect on what he described as “the societal factors that are going to impact us decades into the future,” like artificial intelligence in healthcare. Pisters also said his time as MD Anderson’s president and previously as a healthcare CEO in Toronto shaped his thinking on healthcare accessibility in the U.S., especially given what he described as an “epidemic of chronic disease.” “We're going to really want to think about how we really deal with that and how can some of the new technologies influence our ability to even out gaps in healthcare across society at this point in time,” Pisters said. “I think lots of opportunities will open, and those will be created by a confluence of factors and positive changes in the way that we approach medical student education, the ways in which AI is used to benefit society and to improve healthcare in rural areas and in underserved areas.”

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Expect road closures, enhanced security in downtown Dallas during GOP convention

All roads surrounding the American Airlines Center will be closed during the upcoming Republican midterm convention in Dallas. That includes Houston Street, Victory Avenue and Nowitzki Way. That’s part of the city's traffic and safety plan for the convention, which runs Sept. 9 through 10 at the arena. “Our teams are planning for the expected while also preparing for the unexpected,” said city manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert, who added that security measures will begin Sept. 7 and conclude Sept. 11. The plan was developed in partnership with the U.S. Secret Service, FBI, Dallas Police, Dallas Fire-Rescue and DART Police.

Secret Service Special Agent in charge Christina Foley said the public should expect “visible and non-visible” security measures around the arena, including checkpoints, vehicle barriers and temporary fencing. Deputy Dallas Police Chief Devon Palk said there will be temporary and rolling road closures around the convention, along with motorcades and other security operations. “The most significant traffic impacts are gonna be expected around the American Airlines Center and Victory Park," he said at a news conference Thursday. "Other areas of the city may experience temporary closures as security needs arise. Some of these closures could happen with little to no notice." Dallas Area Rapid Transit’s Victory station will also be closed during the convention beginning Sept. 8 through 10. Dallas will pay nearly $2 million on police to provide security for a midterm Republican convention in September, officials said Monday. Security and traffic preparations for the convention are estimated to cost the city $1.8 million, the Office of Emergency Management and Crisis Response shared at a committee meeting on Monday.

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Wylie is getting 'DeFlocked' after city council votes against renewing traffic camera contract

Wylie City Council voted unanimously to end its contract with Flock, marking the Texas city to move away from the controversial traffic surveillance technology. After almost two hours of discussion Tuesday the council voted 7-0 to end its automatic contract renewal, with the possibility of revisiting a new contract in the future. Wylie's contract with Flock will expire on Oct. 31. Mayor Matthew Porter acknowledged what he saw as the technology's successes in solving cases, but added his concerns are not with the Wylie Police Department. Porter said his main concerns stem from how Flock stores and shares the data. “My concerns are not with Wiley,” Porter said. “My concerns are that we continue to see misuse by other departments, some of which are partners that we share data with within the state.”

The city had deployed six license plate reader cameras since August 2024 at an annual cost of roughly $27,000. At least one of those cameras was recently vandalized — a trend seen across the nation. Residents in some Flock coverage areas say they are concerned over the privacy and data management of information collected by Flock Safety's automated license plate readers, or ALPR. Most recently, the Hood County Commissioners Court shut down three Flock cameras after residents raised concerns. Wylie Assistant Police Chief Tommy Walters said the tools were helpful in solving crimes, but he also said the department put additional internal regulations to try and prevent misuse. “I was a critic of this kind of technology when it first started coming out, " Walters said. “So there was a group of people that sat around and discussed the safeguards that can be put in place from implementation. These weren't knee-jerk reactions.” Local residents remained focused on who ultimately holds access to their information. Throughout public comment, speakers like Austin Gregory, founder of DeFlock Wylie, voiced concerns about misused information.

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National Stories

Years late, billions over budget: California’s high-speed rail hasn’t laid a track

Some 18 years after California voted to launch a bullet train that would travel between San Francisco and Los Angeles in under three hours, the project now costs billions more than planned, is years behind schedule and has yet to lay its first track. The 2008 ballot measure passed narrowly, 52.7% to 47.3%, kick-starting America’s largest active infrastructure project. A legislative bill said it should be completed by 2020, and the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s initial business plan estimated a cost of $33 billion. After years of legal battles, cost overruns, leadership changes and political fights, the price tag is up to $126 billion, with a high estimate of $231 billion, and it isn’t expected to be fully operational until 2040. Since 2008, the authority has spent about $15 billion, purchasing thousands of land parcels and building giant overpasses, rail beds, walls and other concrete structures that now rise over California’s Central Valley. The work has generated thousands of jobs.

But the Authority’s inspector general estimated the project will “exhaust its current funding resources” as early as next year, according to its July report. “This is a disaster,” Democratic state Sen. Catherine Blakespear said at a Transportation Committee meeting in April to review the project’s 2026 business plan. “I am such an enthusiast for rail and I really want this to be successful and just hearing these things makes it seem like we’re proceeding on a wing and a prayer.” The authority is currently focused on completing an initial segment through the Central Valley, then connecting it to San Francisco and Los Angeles later. The topic is polarizing in the valley. “You can’t really talk about it too loudly until you know where people stand. I’m pro-train, but it’s a divisive issue,” said Constance Peters, a shift leader at The 18hundred restaurant in Bakersfield who grew up in the area. Before that, she worked for a concrete company that helped build some structures for the rail project. “Californians have money. We want to travel,” Peters said.

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New coalition fights Trump’s efforts to weaken protections for historic sites

A coalition of more than 600 historic preservation groups, architectural associations, tribal governments and other organizations is urging Congress to block President Donald Trump’s efforts to weaken or evade laws intended to protect historic sites. Members of the new coalition say that they are seeking to safeguard sites in every congressional district — and that they intend to pursue legal action if Congress does not act. “Our coalition did not exist six weeks ago. Today it brings together constituencies who have rarely spoken with one voice,” the groups wrote in letters that were set to be sent to all members of Congress on Thursday. The signatories want lawmakers to reject the administration’s revisions to a 60-year-old federal law that governs changes to landmarks such as the National Mall, sites that are significant to Indian tribes and other properties eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

The proposed changes would allow federal agencies to undertake their own projects or permit construction by private developers without public input, breaking with long-standing requirements for public participation. Some members of Congress are also considering similar changes to the review process, which is required under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. The administration can enact regulatory revisions to Section 106 without congressional approval, but the coalition is asking lawmakers to help oppose such changes. The coalition also wants Congress to block legislation that would separately allow similar revisions to take effect. The coalition says it is also responding to Trump’s attempts to unilaterally change historic sites, such as demolishing the White House’s East Wing to build a planned ballroom. Administration lawyers have argued in court that they do not need to seek congressional approval for Trump’s projects, such as the ballroom and his planned triumphal arch. “The burden of standing up for congressional authority is falling heavily to civil society organizations, law firms, and individual Americans when Congress itself should be taking the lead,” the coalition wrote in a letter shared with The Washington Post.

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What a fake poll reveals about worries around prediction markets and the midterms

Earlier this month, after news broke that a phony company had released fake election polls, it prompted immediate speculation that the stunt was an attempt to manipulate prediction markets — fears especially pronounced with midterms right around the corner. The 21-year old man behind the fake polls posted a statement saying the bogus polls were "a short-term social experiment" to see just how fast the fabricated figures would circulate in news stories and social media. He said he was not trying to profit off the attention the polls attracted. But the suspicion was understandable, considering the spate of high-profile market manipulators uncovered in recent months on the surging prediction market sites Kalshi and Polymarket, where billions of dollars of bets flow in every week on everything from baseball games to the future of the Trump administration's policies.

While the poll stunt may not have been an effort to rig prediction markets, concerns are growing ahead of the midterms two months away about other attempts to influence the betting sites with ginned-up polls, viral social media campaigns, or other misinformation. "These markets are very easily manipulated, and the platforms say they invest in surveillance and catch people after the fact, but when it comes to elections, the consequences are really grave," said Amanda Fischer, chief policy officer at Better Markets, a financial reform group that studies prediction markets. Fischer added that since this is about to be the first major election cycle with Kalshi and Polymarket having gone mainstream, "some folks will be looking for ways to game prediction markets, partisan interests, and worse, perhaps even foreign actors." This year, prediction market operators have caught traders trying to make a buck through various types of insider trading, from a special forces soldier betting on the operation to capture Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro to former Congressman George Santos betting against his own attendance at the State of the Union address to President Trump's teleprompter operator profiting off the president's prepared remarks.

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Trump’s quietly working to give part of Yosemite to a private developer

For more than a year, the National Park Service has been quietly working to fulfill an unprecedented directive from Trump officials: Parcel off a corner of Yosemite National Park to give to a private developer. National Park Service staff in California and Washington, D.C., are trying to arrange a land exchange between a Nevada-based company and the federal government, according to four people directly familiar with discussions, as well as agency documents reviewed by NOTUS. Since the spring of 2025, the Trump administration has been looking into ways it could cede a roughly quarter-mile strip of land inside Yosemite to a company that, through a web of limited-liability companies, is operated by real-estate developer and investment firm Kingsbarn Realty Capital. Officials are proposing the Park Service give up the land or “interest” in the land in the form of an easement, and in return receive land of equal value somewhere in California that has yet to be decided.

The private developers own an 83-acre plot of land just outside the western boundaries of Yosemite, about five miles from one of the park’s defining ancient sequoia groves. Jeff Pori, the CEO of Kingsbarn, wants to build a short road connecting the property to one of Yosemite’s central thoroughfares. The new road would give the land exceptionally rare private access to a park that is otherwise almost entirely buffered by national forests. The property’s current access road is more than 10 miles from an entrance to the park, and much further from Yosemite’s most iconic sights. Without a new road, visitors to the property — whether it be developed into a hotel, resort or private residence — would need to drive an hour and a half in a circuitous route to reach the popular Yosemite Valley. The planning process has created a tense environment inside the National Park Service for the people involved; Kingsbarn’s proposal is backed by the full weight of the Interior Department’s top political leadership, sources said. “They want us to be responsive to the property owner and their lobbyists or people, and they want us to work with these folks,” said one person familiar with the conversations.

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Fauci contempt push stalls as Trump administration questions legal path

A Republican push to prosecute Dr. Anthony Fauci for contempt of Congress has stalled as the Trump administration questions whether the legal approach supports an indictment by the Justice Department. Three weeks after a GOP-led Senate committee voted to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress, some administration officials are skeptical that the current approach is procedurally sound enough to indict him for failing to answer questions before lawmakers, according to people familiar with the matter. The Aug. 6 contempt vote was brought by Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.), a longtime Fauci critic. He sought to bypass the Senate’s customary full-floor vote by having Vice President JD Vance certify the resolution, allowing him to refer it directly to the Justice Department for possible prosecution.

Paul, who has said Fauci should go to prison, pushed a contempt vote against the 85-year-old former public-health official after he declined to answer questions before Paul’s committee over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. The contempt resolution, which passed on a party-line vote, would traditionally be considered by the full Senate. Given his resolution would almost certainly fail to meet a 60-vote threshold to pass, Paul’s measure called on Vance to certify it in his capacity as Senate president. But as of early Tuesday, people familiar with the matter said that Vance’s office had yet to receive a document to certify. Paul’s office sent the report to the vice president late Tuesday, according to people familiar with the process, following repeated inquiries from The Wall Street Journal about its status. The Justice Department, which received a letter from Paul the day of the vote laying out the committee’s case against Fauci, has yet to receive a formal referral, a person familiar with the matter said. And President Trump hasn’t determined whether he wants the Justice Department to act on the referral, according to people familiar with the discussions, who say the issue hasn’t been a high priority for the president.

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Federal judge again blocks Trump's mail ballot executive order

A federal judge on Thursday halted — at least for now — attempts to implement President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting mail voting. The move stalled the directive for a second time only about a week before the first mail ballots are due to be sent out for the rapidly approaching midterm elections. U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani blocked the government from implementing the order for two weeks. The case could soon be appealed back to the Supreme Court, days after the justices handed down a procedural decision that allowed the the administration to move ahead. The ruling Thursday came after Democrats and voting rights groups refiled their lawsuits to comply with the recent Supreme Court decision. The high court’s conservative majority did not rule on the legality of Trump’s executive order, instead saying Talwani had acted too soon.

Now the administration has issued a formal rule governing whether the U.S. Postal Service will deliver states’ mail ballots, effectively restarting the legal fight. The whipsawing legal battle has major ramifications for the midterms. Nearly one-third of Americans vote by mail and election officials contend there isn’t enough time to revise their systems to comply with the new Postal Service directives. The Postal Service says it won’t deliver mail ballots unless states provide a list of voters who should receive them and format the envelopes in a certain way. “Plaintiff states have neither time nor funds to design new mail ballots, seek approval of the new designs, order production of mail ballots, update their own election management systems, train election officials to use the USPS portal and upload citizen data to the portal, all before the midterms,” Talwani wrote Thursday. The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. A hearing in the case is set for Sept. 3. “This rule is a clear attempt by the federal government to interfere in elections it has no power to control. Today, a federal court halted it before this administration could wreak havoc on our elections,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, one of two dozen Democratic attorneys general who filed one of the suits, said in a statement after the order.

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Lead Stories

A judge says Texas authorities can release an ICE agent who shot a man

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot a man in Minneapolis could be released from a Texas jail this week despite still being wanted on criminal charges in Minnesota. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. ruled against Minnesota’s attempt to force Texas to turn over Christian Castro, 52, concluding that the state’s lawsuit was filed too soon. “Based on the current record, the court concludes that it lacks subject matter jurisdiction because the case is not ripe for adjudication,” Rodriguez, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Donald Trump in 2018, wrote. Minnesota sued when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott refused to approve what is legally supposed to be “a summary procedure” in which a governor acquiesces to another state’s request to send a defendant to another state to face charges.

However, the judge said that technically Abbott hasn’t said no — he just hasn’t made a decision yet. “Governor Abbott has not denied the request for a rendition warrant,” Rodriguez wrote. “Minnesota alleges that Governor Abbott has ‘refused to sign’ and has ‘with[eld]’ the rendition warrant. But the record reflects only that Governor Abbott has neither agreed nor refused to sign the rendition warrant as to Castro.” Texas law only allows the state to jail someone for up to 90 days when that person is a fugitive wanted in another state. In court, Minnesota had alternatively asked that Cameron County Sheriff Manuel Treviño not release Castro from jail until the Texas governor signed a rendition warrant. However, Rodriguez wrote that “no grounds support a temporary restraining order requiring Sheriff Trevino to ignore the dictates of Texas Code of Criminal Procedure.” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who filed the lawsuit, said in a statement that Abbott was “playing with constitutional fire.” “This case should concern officials and citizens of every state. If a governor can delay extraditions and cherry-pick cases according to their political tastes, then no state will be able to hold fugitive criminals accountable,” Ellison said.

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Meta to pay 47 states up to $17.1B in landmark child safety settlement

Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, on Wednesday agreed to pay 47 states, the District of Columbia, and a handful of U.S. territories, up to $17.1 billion in penalties over claims that its social media platforms are addictive and a danger to children. As part of the settlement, Meta also pledged to make changes to Instagram and Facebook that are designed to reduce young people’s use of the platforms. “Meta intentionally exploited kids for profit and then lied about it, claiming its products were safe when its own internal research confirmed the platforms were addictive and harmful,” said Washington, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb, a Democrat, in a statement announcing the settlement.

“The physical, mental and emotional harms that intentionally addictive social media inflict on youth — and particularly teenage girls — are widespread across the tech industry, and this successful, coordinated multistage litigation has resulted in Meta being the first platform to come to the table and agree to such comprehensive reforms,” he said. “It will not be the last.” The settlement ended a high-stakes, landmark case, filed in 2023, in which states said Meta purposely designed its social media platforms with addictive features, that Meta knew it was exposing children to serious mental harms, and that it intentionally misled the public about the safety of those platforms. Meta has not admitted wrongdoing. The federal trial began last week in Oakland, California, led by a bipartisan group of attorneys general from California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey. State officials are calling the settlement the biggest consumer protection win since the Big Tobacco settlements of the 1990s. Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman, a Republican, said in a statement Wednesday that the lawsuit was “never just about the money.”

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Acclaimed Holocaust book part of list Dan Patrick flagged for removal from Texas schools, despite being required reading

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said last week there were more than 2,000 “filthy, dirty, vulgar books” that don’t belong in school classrooms or libraries. Yet one of them is going to be taught in classrooms across Texas. “Night,” the seminal Holocaust autobiography by Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel, was approved by the Republican-controlled State Board of Education this summer as required reading for eighth graders starting in 2030. It’s also on the list of 2,198 “inappropriate books” created by Texas advocates that Patrick touted during a Wednesday news conference. He said he wanted to introduce a bill in the upcoming session that would penalize schools a letter grade on their accountability ratings if superintendents didn’t remove problematic books. “Many books are on our library shelves, in all of our schools — over 2,000 titles of filthy, dirty, vulgar books,” Patrick said, adding: “The purpose of this press conference today is to get parents in action to get these books removed.”

It’s unclear whether Patrick was aware that “Night” was on that list. He did not mention it at the news conference. After this story published, he wrote on X that the book would be rated R if it were made into a movie. “Night, which includes depictions of graphic violence and the machine-gunning of babies, should not be available to sixth graders in middle-school libraries. High school is more age-appropriate," Patrick wrote. Bonnie Wallace, the activist who appeared and spoke beside him last week, stood by her decision that it did not belong in classrooms. Wallace, a member of the Houston-area Christian activist group Recover America, said she included “Night” on the organization’s list because of its graphic violence, including what she described as babies being used as “target practice” by Nazi soldiers and being “thrown into the crematorium.” “There’s nothing wrong with the book,” Wallace told the Chronicle. “The inappropriate thing is, an 8th grade student is 13 years old. Do they need to read about soldiers massacring, throwing up babies, and killing them with machine guns?” She said she “thought long and hard” and prayed on whether to add it to the list. Despite the description of real events, she said young minds couldn’t process it.

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Trump toes line on data centers as more Republicans pump the breaks

Republicans’ growing skepticism about data centers is forcing President Trump to balance his steadfast support for the industry with pushback from his party ahead of the midterm elections. While Trump has doubled down on his support of data centers, the president signaled last week he may give GOP candidates room to oppose the facilities as they become a political lightning rod in the midterms. Trump told reporters last week he wants Republican candidates to “do what they want” on data centers, acknowledging “some people feel differently” on the issue after previously criticizing Democrats for pushing back on planned data center projects.

“If Republicans are against a data center, that’s okay with me,” Trump added. “I’m only saying that if I ran a community … if I was a mayor or if I was a governor in the state, I would want to have the data centers because they bring tremendous income.” Faced with mounting pressure around the risks of AI and data centers, several high-profile Republicans have abruptly shifted their stance with the midterms just months away. Those now advocating for stricter restrictions on data centers include not only state leaders such as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) but also Trump-backed Senate candidates like Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.). “I’d say [Trump’s] been fairly consistent in his messaging. What’s been more malleable is everybody else’s opinion,” one Republican strategist told The Hill.

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State Stories

What we learned at Tuesday’s tense, tearful Dallas hearing over Alaska-California surrogacy battle

A Dallas judge will decide which of the parties in a high-profile, multistate parentage case can make medical decisions for a newborn baby boy with a serious heart defect: his genetic parents, or the surrogate that gave birth to him. Dallas County District Judge Ashley Wysocki heard arguments from attorneys on each side Tuesday, as well as testimony from the child’s genetic mother, Nausheen Gilkar of Los Angeles, and surrogate McKenna West of Anchorage, Alaska. Wysocki then extended for 14 days a temporary restraining order preventing West from seeing or making medical decisions for the child while her ultimate ruling is pending. She’s expected to make her decision within the next two weeks while the TRO remains in place.

Gilkar, her husband Omar Ahmed and their attorneys say the baby’s legal name is Rumi Ali Ahmed, while West and her legal team call him Baby Gabriel. Tuesday marked the first time Gilkar spoke about the case publicly. Both women’s testimonies filled in the finer details of a complicated narrative playing out in three different states in a test of abortion, surrogacy, parentage and child custody laws. Among the revelations was that West withheld medical records from the couple. Gilkar also said West did not inform them of her move to Texas ahead of time. She called the surrogate “unstable” and said West was trying to take Rumi from them. “She has no right,” Gilkar said through tears. “She’s making us run from doctor to doctor, state to state with our baby. She’s trying to take him.” Meanwhile, after some back and forth between each side’s attorneys and hesitation from West, the surrogate at one point said she would indeed drop her parentage and custody claims — but later said she would continue fighting.

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Kendall Scudder: Why did Gov. Abbott set off a scramble over filling Texas House seat?

(Kendall Scudder is chairman of the Texas Democratic Party.) Gov. Greg Abbott suddenly has an affection for special elections. He called two recently that affect residents of Tarrant County, easily the most Republican mega metropolitan county in the state. Both will be held on the same day as the Nov. 3 general election, when federal, statewide and legislative, and local offices will be on the ballot. I don’t have a quibble with special elections, especially those held in conjunction with an already scheduled election to save taxpayer expense. My quandary centers on the mystery of how the governor determines whether filling a vacancy is urgent or easily postponed — and when he thinks it is necessary to tell the public he is doing it. When Houston-area U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner died in March 2025, the governor waited a month to call a special election to replace him, setting it for Nov. 5, eight months after the congressman’s death.

Residents of the 18th Congressional District, a solidly Democratic area, were left unrepresented all that time. Abbott also has delayed calling a special election for the 23rd Congressional District, a rural district that runs from San Antonio to El Paso and where the population is overwhelmingly Hispanic. Republican U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzalez resigned in March, and the governor still hasn’t called a special election — perhaps because the district that has been in Republican hands for more than a decade is suddenly in play. On Aug. 18, three months after state Sen. Brian Birdwell resigned to accept a Pentagon post, the governor announced a special election in District 22 to replace him. The deadline for candidates to file to run was a mere two days later. Our Democratic candidate, Amy Salas, met the deadline. Then, on Aug. 20, Abbott apparently called yet another Tarrant County area special election for House District 93. This one will fill the seat vacated in early July by Nate Schatzline, now the governor’s special advisor for election integrity. I say “apparently” because the only place you could find mention of this special election on Thursday was at our website, texasdemocrats.org. Now there is a gubernatorial proclamation on the county website, time-stamped at noon Aug. 20.

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State Sen. Tan Parker on Amtrack's Heartland Flyer, his priorities for the next legislative session

Amtrak's Heartland Flyer, the line that runs between Fort Worth and Oklahoma City, is here to stay. Texas has provided its portion of the funding, ending what was a time of uncertainty over whether this line would have had to shut down. According to Amtrak, the line opened in 1999 and carried almost 81,000 passengers in the year ending last September. Republican State Sen. Tan Parker from Flower Mound, chairman of the Senate Committee on Transportation, helped get this deal across the finish line.

What is the importance of keeping the Heartland Flyer going? Parker says this rail line is an important economic development tool for Fort Worth and for all the smaller communities in Texas. "I also believe in this environment where Texas is growing so rapidly, particularly in North Texas, that to address the issues of congestion and mobility, we need long-term rail or long-haul rail," he said. "Amtrak Heartland Flyer is a wonderful asset." Funding through next year and beyond Funding for the Heartland Flyer is secured through 2027, and Parker says the funding will need to be continuously approved every legislative cycle. "We're gonna be on that cycle every two years, which is the normal customary role that Texas government funds all our projects," he said. "I'll continue to advocate, because I think it's just so important." One issue Parker said he plans to focus on when the Texas legislature reconvenes in January is safety. "Safety is always number one for me," he said. "How do I get families back home in the evening? I want moms and dads to be able to get to the soccer field and get to ballet and be able enjoy one another. It's very important that we maintain safety." His other concern, he said, is growth. At a recent hearing of the Texas Senate Committee on Transportation, Parker says he highlighted three specific areas of growth in transportation — rail crossings, autonomous vehicles and making sure commercial driver's licenses are being provided legally,

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Ross Fire smoke blankets parts of North Texas, prompting air quality warnings

Smoke from the Ross Fire, burning across Palo Pinto and Jack counties roughly 60 miles west of Fort Worth, is drifting into the Dallas-Fort Worth area Wednesday, triggering air quality concerns for several North Texas communities and school districts. The National Weather Service in Fort Worth noted that smoke will gradually spread south and southeast through the evening, with visibilities dropping as low as 1 to 2 miles in areas of dense smoke. The agency is urging drivers to slow down and leave extra distance between vehicles as poor air quality and reduced visibility.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has issued an Ozone Action Day for the Dallas-Fort Worth area for Wednesday, warning that atmospheric conditions are favorable for elevated ozone pollution on top of the wildfire smoke. TCEQ's forecast shows the daily PM 2.5 Air Quality Index reaching the middle of the "Moderate" range across parts of Dallas-Fort Worth, with the potential for occasional spikes into the "Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups" category, particularly in areas closer to the smoke plume. Sensitive groups include children, older adults, people with asthma or other lung conditions, and anyone spending extended time outdoors. TCEQ recommends staying indoors with air conditioning running when possible, and notes that masks suitable for filtering fine particulates can help reduce exposure for those who must be outside.

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A Texas austerity crisis is playing out city by city, school by school

Texas is in a state of fiscal crisis. Or, at least many of its school districts and municipalities are. All across Texas, from the biggest urban ISDs and metros to the smallest towns and exurban counties, local governmental bodies are feeling the increasingly painful fiscal pinch—and resorting to rigid austerity measures. The state’s 10 largest school districts, from Houston and Dallas to Austin and El Paso—collectively charged with educating a near-majority of Texas public school students—have all projected or enacted budgets that have them in a fiscal deficit. This is driven (in addition to factors like declining enrollment and property values) by an inadequately significant bump to the basic allotment of school funding last legislative session, as that funding has fast been consumed by inflation-fueled cost increases. Many districts across the state have been forced to close numerous neighborhood schools to alleviate the current strain.

Austin Independent School District (ISD) had a roughly $181 million deficit projection that it’s trying to close with staff cuts, campus closures, and a litany of other downsizing measures. Dallas ISD has a $108 million budget deficit; Houston ISD $25 million; neighboring Cy-Fair ISD about $80 million. A spring survey by the Texas Association of School Business Officials found that over 70 percent of surveyed districts would need to make budget cuts and that 44 percent would end the year still in a deficit. Some of the largest cities and counties in Texas are also facing dire funding gaps. For instance, the City of Dallas is facing a $30 million budget shortfall and recently furloughed more than 4,000 municipal workers. Harris County, the state’s largest population center, is facing a “structural deficit” of $130 million, which could reach as high as $800 million by decade’s end. Cities and counties are between a rock and a hard place, as they’ve lost the healthy cushion of COVID-era emergency funds, which helped maintain and expand services, at the same time that they’ve become severely limited by the state government in how much revenue they can raise through property taxes. Sales tax revenues, once sky-high during the pandemic era, have also come back down to earth. While population growth continues to surge across Texas, local governments can’t keep up with the growing cost of payroll and supplies. In some cities like Dallas, their revenue bases are also under threat, as major corporate employers threaten to flee downtowns for the surrounding suburbs.

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TCU bans Star-Telegram over coverage of football locker room attack

TCU has rescinded the Star-Telegram’s credentials to cover Horned Frogs athletics over the newspaper’s coverage of an Aug. 13 locker room assault that led to the dismissal of senior safety Jacob Fields from the football team. In a phone conversation Sunday, a TCU athletics spokesman said the Star-Telegram’s credentials were being pulled because the coverage resulted in threats to the victim. The Star-Telegram did not identify the player, junior wide receiver Dozie Ezukanma, until three days after the initial report, when he identified himself in a now-deleted Instagram video. “Our primary focus is the health and wellbeing of our student athlete,” TCU athletic director Mike Buddie said in a statement Tuesday. “Unfortunately, an unnamed source without first-hand knowledge of the incident provided inaccurate information cited in initial reporting by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which we strongly disputed.

“The inclusion of the misinformation advanced a narrative that endangered a student-athlete and resulted in threats to him and his family. These actions led to the decision to withhold the media credential until additional conversation can be held between athletics and the sports reporting team. We remain dedicated to restoring our student to health as well as focusing on the game that’s ahead.” Teams issue credentials to allow media members access to the press box, locker room, news conferences and media workrooms. TCU officials have not defined what criteria would need to be met to restore the credentials. Fields was dismissed from the team Aug. 18 “due to a violation of team rules,” a TCU spokesman said in a statement. Later that evening, the Star-Telegram reported that the dismissal came after an altercation in the locker room five days earlier. In that article, a source close to Fields said the player "felt targeted by teammates with insults and threats” leading up to the altercation and that TCU coaches made “no attempts to de-escalate the brewing tension.” TCU coach Sonny Dykes declined to comment for that story, as did athletics spokesperson Kyle Neaves. TCU officials disputed the source’s account of what led to the attack in conversations with the Star-Telegram, but they have declined to provide the university’s version of events for publication.

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Dallas County health officials confirm measles case, warn other North Texans of possible exposure

Dallas County health officials are warning of possible measles exposure after a resident tested positive for the virus. Dallas County Health and Human Services said Tuesday the individual visited three North Texas locations while infectious on Aug. 14 and Aug. 15. The highly contagious virus can remain infectious in the air for up to two hours after an infected person leaves the area.

The number of measles cases is higher than it’s been in 35 years, with more than 2,750 cases reported across the country – already surpassing last year’s total of about 2,300, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. North Texas health officials said they’re concerned about declining vaccination rates, especially as students head back to school. They said falling rates could lead to even more outbreaks, like the historic 2025 measles outbreak in West Texas – which lasted for months and resulted in more than 750 cases across 37 counties. “Measles is one of the most contagious diseases we know, but it is also highly preventable,” said Huang. “Vaccination remains our best protection against measles and the best way to prevent further spread in our community.”

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‘Living like vampires’: ICE surge fractures daily life in Deep South Texas

Deep in the Rio Grande Valley, Brenda Dumas and her family are adjusting to a new normal. One family member, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal from the federal government, has a work permit. He has to leave from his home in Olmito, a tiny town off Highway 69 between Harlingen and Brownsville, early in the morning to head east to South Padre Island, where he works. He shows up almost two hours before his shift starts. But to go any later is to risk being pulled over by the unmarked SUVs that drive around the Laguna Madre area—the 15-square-mile coastal mini-region surrounding the eponymous salty lagoon—starting around 7 a.m., pulling over, seemingly at random, other people heading to work. Dumas’ husband, who is close to achieving permanent residency in the United States, starts landscaping for clients once it gets dark, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are less likely to be driving around looking for work trucks.

Another family member, who also has a work permit and similarly requested anonymity, was detained by ICE in the nearby town of Port Isabel. ICE released him last week with an ankle monitor, one of more than 50,000 people the agency is tracking through the devices. Dumas now uses an app on her phone to track where family members are, and communication among them is constant. Since early July, ICE has arrested people daily in traffic stops throughout the Laguna Madre area—which includes Port Isabel, South Padre Island, Laguna Vista, and Laguna Heights—based on Texas Observer analysis of posts, photos and videos on social media. Like much of the Rio Grande Valley, these communities have a high population of people who were born outside of the United States. Twenty-one percent of those who live there were born in other countries, and more than half of those residents are not U.S. citizens, according to Census data. ICE arrested more than 46,000 people nationwide in July, which is around 3,000 more people than the agency did in June, according to internal data CBS News obtained. On July 14, the agency announced that on just one day in June it had arrested 238 people in the Rio Grande Valley, an apparent record for the Harlingen field office, which oversees the Laguna Madre area. ICE quietly took its statistics dashboard offline in July, after not updating its detention data for months. On July 20, ICE published its most recent data, showing that the agency has deported over 80 percent of the people it’s arrested since September last year. These arrests appear to usually occur in the early mornings or late afternoons, as people are heading to and leaving work.

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Gov. Abbott unveils three-year degree program for Texas public universities

Gov. Greg Abbott visited Stephen F. Austin State University Wednesday to discuss a proposal that could offer some Texas students a faster path to a bachelor’s degree. The proposal would create accelerated 90-credit-hour bachelor’s degree programs at public universities across Texas in high-demand fields. A typical four-year bachelor’s degree requires about 120 credit hours. Under the proposal, students in select programs could graduate a year earlier, potentially saving up to $35,000 in college costs, Abbott said. “Every additional year means more in tuition and fees, but also more in housing and living expenses,” Abbott said.

Fields under consideration include cybersecurity, supply chain management and information technology. Abbott said other high-demand fields could also be included. Abbott said students would likely take fewer elective courses and have more coursework concentrated in their area of study. “There are certain basic classes that would still be required here,” Abbott said. “It would probably take the place of a lot of selective optional classes.” Wednesday, Abbott directed the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to develop a framework for the program in collaboration with universities and lawmakers. The board is expected to make recommendations ahead of the next legislative session. Abbott said the program could take effect as early as next school year, depending on when the legislation passes. The proposal could also apply to students who transfer from community colleges. Abbott said the Higher Education Coordinating Board and universities would work to determine how credits earned at another college or university could count toward the 90-credit-hour degree.

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Six Flags to bring HQ back to Texas from Charlotte

Two years after a corporate merger that resulted in the moving of its headquarters to North Carolina, Six Flags Entertainment Corp. announced it's coming back to Arlington. Six Flags said Aug. 25 that the amusement park operator will move its corporate headquarters from Charlotte to Arlington's Choctaw Stadium at 1000 Ballpark Way. The relocation will occur by March 2027. Choctaw Stadium has served as a corporate office since 2020, where a portion of corporate leadership still operates. The stadium is in the heart of the city's Entertainment District and a mile away from Six Flags Over Texas, which just opened a record-breaking giga dive coaster called Tormenta: Rampaging Run.

It's a homecoming of sorts for the company. Six Flags relocated its corporate headquarters from Grand Prairie to Arlington in 2020. The city of Arlington offered $6 million in incentives in 2019 for the company to move and occupy roughly 40,000 square foot space and maintain a minimum of 120 employees. But Six Flags moved its headquarters to Charlotte in 2024 following a merger with Sandusky, Ohio-based Cedar Fair LP. The company will still maintain an office in Sandusky. John Reilly, who became CEO of the Fortune 1000 company in December, described Arlington is an "outstanding location for our headquarters that supports our long-term vision for growth." "Its central location and business-friendly environment make it a strong base for our company," he said in a statement. "Bringing our corporate teams together in the office will improve collaboration, strengthen our culture, enhance support for our parks and resorts, and help us continue delivering exceptional experiences for guests across North America." Six Flags reported a net loss of $203 million in the company's second quarter, more than double the loss it reported for the same time the previous year, according to Charlotte Business Journal.

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Pflugerville cancels Flock contract, covers and turns off cameras

After the city of Pflugerville voted to turn off all of its Flock License Plate Reader cameras Tuesday night, Pflugerville ISD followed suit. The district notified parents Wednesday morning that its suspending the use of Flock Safety cameras on district property, effective immediately. Pflugerville ISD sent a notice to parents Wednesday morning saying the cameras will be removed today. The district said since hiring its Police Chief Tyler Smith, the department had been reviewing its Flock Camera systems and evaluating whether continued use was appropriate. In its message to parents, PFISD said:

“We want to be clear about how this system has been used. The Flock Safety system is strictly limited to capturing license plate and vehicle information to support the safety of our students, staff, and families on our campuses. We understand this technology has raised questions and concerns within our community, and we have listened. Thank you for your continued partnership in keeping our schools safe.” It comes after Pflugerville City Council members unanimously voted to terminate their master services agreement with Flock Safety at their Tuesday night meeting, resulting in the city turning off all 28 Flock License Plate Reader cameras leased by the city and covering them with plastic bags. “Public safety and public trust have to go hand in hand, and recent revelations about the Flock system have fueled concerns throughout the community; we can’t engage with organizations we can’t trust,” Pflugerville Mayor Doug Weiss said in an early-morning social media post following the meeting. “Council will continue to explore tools to support law enforcement, but any vendors the City uses would need to have the safeguards in place to earn and keep the community’s confidence.”

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South Texas school district cancels classes after COVID outbreak

Just two weeks into the new school year, a Rio Grande Valley school district is closing all campuses for two days because of what officials described as the "rapid spread of COVID-19." San Perlita Independent School District announced Monday that all school operations will be suspended Tuesday and Wednesday "as a precautionary measure." Classes will resume as scheduled on Thursday.

The school year began Aug. 10. District officials said they are monitoring the outbreak and will provide updates to parents and caregivers. "Thank you for your understanding, cooperation and continued support as we work together to keep our Trojan community safe," the district said. San Perlita ISD is located in the small rural community of San Perlita, about 55 miles north of Brownsville. The district served 174 students during the 2024-25 school year, according to the Texas Education Agency.

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County Stories

Harris County Sheriff’s Office deputy temporarily reassigned after alleged ICE coordination

A Harris County Sheriff’s Office deputy has been temporarily reassigned after allegedly detaining a 23-year-old woman during a traffic stop and waiting over an hour for federal immigration officers to respond. Joceline Penaloza Magana was allegedly detained by a sheriff’s office deputy last week when her vehicle partially blocked an intersection at Westheimer Rd. and State Highway 6. During a press conference Wednesday, a family member said the deputy called immigration officials and detained Magana for an hour waiting for their arrival.

Magana, who has been in the United States for over 20 years, was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and is being detained in the Montgomery ICE processing center north of Houston, Kim Bruno, an attorney representing her, said. “Joceline complied with officers and it didn’t get her anywhere,” Bruno said. “Joceline has spent her entire life here mostly and she graduated at the top of her class. It is unfortunate and despicable that our community does not feel safe anymore.” Tess Rowland, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office, said the office is reviewing the circumstances surrounding the traffic stop to determine whether the deputy complied with policies. She did not say what the office’s guidelines are for coordinating with ICE. “The deputy has been temporarily assigned to non-traffic enforcement duties pending the outcome of the internal review,” Rowland said in a statement to Houston Public Media.

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Harris County Clerk rejects 70% salary increase to $305,000

Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth, a Democrat, has rejected a nearly 70% raise, according to a Monday news release. Harris County Commissioners voted Aug. 6 to increase the salaries of all eight constables and most countywide elected officials to $305,000. But commissioners gave officials the option to decline the raises, which must be funded using their existing budgets. Hudspeth is the only official to publicly decline the pay hike. “At this time, I have chosen not to accept the newly approved salary,” Hudspeth said. “My immediate focus remains ensuring the resources available to the County Clerk’s Office are directed toward filling the positions requested during the budget process and maintaining the staffing needed to effectively serve Harris County residents and fulfill our statutory responsibilities.”

Hudspeth said during a July budget hearing that costs associated with elections have strained her office’s budget. Hudspeth currently makes $179,420 and oversees a staff of roughly 480 employees, according to county salary data. While the raises were initially expected to apply only to the constables, Commissioner Rodney Ellis motioned to extend them to all countywide elected officials except the treasurer, county judge and sheriff, saying it was “only fair” that they also receive pay hikes. But the pay hikes come at a precarious time for county departments, many of which are facing cuts as commissioners work to balance a projected $129 million deficit for the next fiscal year. First elected in a 2020 special election, Hudspeth is seeking reelection this year. She is the first Black woman to serve as Harris County clerk, an office tasked with overseeing election operations and processing certain civil records. Commissioners approved the pay increases Aug. 6, but they don’t take effect until the start of the new fiscal year Oct. 1.

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National Stories

3 Secret Service officials placed on leave amid misconduct investigation

Three Secret Service officials, including the agency’s director of communications, have been placed on leave as an investigation into potential misconduct unfolds, a source familiar with the decision told CNN. The nature of the alleged misconduct was not immediately clear. All three officials, including comms chief Anthony Guglielmi, have lost their security clearances and access to their work devices, the source told CNN, adding that such practice is common during internal investigations. They each work in the agency’s communications office, the source said. The Secret Service confirmed to CNN that three people have been put on leave but did not include the names of the individuals. The agency also did not specify the nature of the alleged misconduct.

“Three non-law enforcement personnel at the U.S. Secret Service have been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation into potential misconduct,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday. “Per policy, this incident is being investigated by the Office of Professional Responsibility. We are unable to comment further at this time.” The statement continued: “The U.S. Secret Service is committed to upholding the highest standards of professionalism and integrity in fulfilling our zero-fail mission of protecting the President and other high-level government officials. Our critical work demands that our workforce maintain an unwavering commitment to duty, honesty, and courage in all aspects of their jobs. We will continue to pursue the level of excellence that is worthy of the mission which has been entrusted to us by the American people.” CNN has reached out to Guglielmi for comment but has not heard back. The investigation comes as the agency has been under intense scrutiny over the past several years — as Trump has faced several assassination plots, as well as more recent reports over a secret maneuver to spirit President Donald Trump safely away from Turkey this summer.

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Maryland judge strikes down Democratic redistricting ballot measure

A Maryland judge on Wednesday blocked a congressional redistricting amendment from appearing on the ballot this November, after state lawmakers voted to add the referendum during a special legislative session this summer. Maryland joined a wave of Democratic states that launched redistricting efforts in reaction to President Donald Trump’s push for Republicans to flip additional House seats ahead of the midterms. The state’s new map, which would favor Democrats in all eight House districts, would not go into effect until at least 2028. The Oversight Project, a conservative advocacy group, filed a lawsuit opposing the redistricting effort after Democrats in the state legislature passed an amendment this month to get the measure on the ballot.

Democrats appealed the judge’s decision to the Maryland Supreme Court on Wednesday afternoon, a spokesperson for Gov. Wes Moore confirmed to NOTUS. During a July special legislative session, Maryland lawmakers passed a measure that would allow the state to pursue a new redistricting map, clarify the requirements for congressional district boundaries and give the state Supreme Court the sole authority to hear these cases first before the traditional lower-court appeals process. Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Robert J. Thompson concluded that the ballot measure is flawed because it would pose multiple redistricting questions to voters. “The question itself is defective because not only does it ostensibly intend to ‘clarify’ the application of compactness requirements, but it also seeks to confer original jurisdiction over congressional redistricting cases to the Supreme Court of Maryland,” Thompson wrote, adding that the state’s constitution requires a referendum to pose questions about a single issue. Maryland Democrats’ court loss is another example of a court striking down redistricting efforts from blue states this year. In neighboring Virginia, the state Supreme Court invalidated a similar ballot measure, largely on procedural grounds.

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Everyone is making a U-turn on data centers as public support craters

The public is turning on data centers. Politicians are trying to keep up. Candidates are fighting to own the messaging as voters increasingly sour on the mass hubs, hammering their foes for backing a controversial industry in interviews and on the debate stage. Republican and Democratic groups have been conducting internal polls to see how the issue will play out, as they grapple for balance of power in Washington. Of the more than 100 campaign ads this cycle that have mentioned data centers, not one of the candidate-run spots presented the infrastructure positively, according to a POLITICO review of AdImpact data. It’s a reckoning that’s happening in real time — and earlier than many expected: A few months ago, data center development was largely a local issue that barely registered among candidates running for higher office.

Now, it’s roiling some of the most competitive contests, from the Ohio Senate race to Michigan’s battleground 7th District. “The most amazing thing is how data centers have exploded as the hot issue du jour,” said Doug Preisse, an Ohio-based GOP strategist. “And this happens from time to time ... these things rise and fall. Right now baby, it’s data centers, and everyone’s taking note of it.” That dynamic is forcing top Republicans and Democrats who had been pro-data center development earlier this year — including potential 2028 presidential contenders — to redefine their positions, with some pushing for moratoriums and others turning away from tax incentives or other carveouts. And there’s no clean ideological lane. From MAGA Republicans to far-left Democrats, there are strange bedfellows joining forces against data centers, further complicating the narrative with voters. “It’s one of the only cross-partisan issues that we are seeing both in every poll and talking to voters on the ground,” said Ravi Mangla, press secretary of the progressive Working Families Party, which has backed a number of Democratic candidates who have opposed data centers on the campaign trail. “I think that it became readily apparent to both Republican and Democratic candidates that this was not going away, and it was not going to be a fringe issue. It was going to be something that was actually moving and animating voters.”

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Tim Curry, who found cult stardom in ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show,’ dies at 80

Tim Curry, a British actor with a raffish swagger and Cheshire cat smile who found his most enduring acclaim in black fishnets and corsets as the gender-blurring mad doctor in a Broadway show that became the cult film musical “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 80. His death was announced by his manager, Marcia Hurwitz, who did not cite a cause. Mr. Curry had a stroke in 2012 that left him with partial paralysis and relying on a wheelchair for mobility. Mr. Curry first made his way to the London stage in the late 1960s with the hippie-culture celebration “Hair” and seemed to cling to the show’s risk-taking spirit over a five-decade career.

His more than 30 film roles — in addition to the cross-dressing Dr. Frank ‘N’ Furter in 1975’s “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” — included the shifty butler in the board game-inspired “Clue” (1985) and a hapless concierge in the slapstick comedy “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” (1992). On Broadway, he received Tony Award nominations for portraying the musical prodigy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in “Amadeus” (1980), a swashbuckling past-his-prime matinee idol in “My Favorite Year” (1992) and King Arthur in the medieval farce “Spamalot” (2005), written by Monty Python alumnus Eric Idle. Mr. Curry was not an actor who dissolved into a part. Instead, his roles most often became filtered through his distinctive mien: an elastic and slightly craggy grin and expressive high-arched eyebrows — “a clown’s face,” he ventured — and variations of English accents from endearing to menacing. He was once described in a film blog as both a performer and a mood. “I play glorious misfits,” he said.

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Kalshi and the Weather Co. join forces on climate trades

Kalshi says it is looking to broaden its fast-growing weather-predictions markets with meteorological know-how from the Weather Co., which is now verifying outcomes on climate trades. The companies said they want to explore new weather markets for sporting events, for example, citing local ski conditions and marathon race days. Consumers use Kalshi to trade on predictions ranging from what the highest temperature will be in Los Angeles on a given day to whether 2026 will be the hottest year ever. The platform says it chose the Weather Co. because it is one of the most trusted meteorological brands. Kalshi says its weather vertical is expected to reach $1.1 billion in trading volume this year as users put money on climate trends. The company said its weather markets reached $564 million in volume in 2026 as of July, and surpassed the 2025 total in March. The total volume for weather and climate markets on Kalshi has grown 500% year over year, the company said.

Weather predictions can also provide useful insights for businesses hedging on weather events, Kalshi said, including logistics firms, farms and ice-cream shops. “Weather is a quintessential prediction-market category,” said Will Brackett, head of partnerships at Kalshi. “It affects people every day, from the decisions you make about your commute to work to businesses and policymakers.” In turn, the Weather Co., which operates weather.com and the Weather Channel app, is now using Kalshi’s probability data where relevant on its app and website, displaying the trades to give its users a snapshot of how markets are pricing weather risk. “Our priority is ensuring Kalshi’s settlements rest on objective, scientifically validated atmospheric data,” said James Belanger, vice president of meteorology at the Weather Co. Kalshi recently announced another partnership with Cantor Fitzgerald. The investment bank said it would arrange block trades on everything from weather forecasts to iPhone sales through the predictions market. Weather trading has drawn attention—both good and bad—as it attracts more users. Prediction markets might actually be the best source to gauge the forecast, Patrick Brown, head of climate analytics at Interactive Brokers, said in a report. Meanwhile, Kalshi competitor Polymarket is being scrutinized for offering bets on disasters such as wildfires. Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, has a data partnership with Polymarket.

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Public health advocates are so desperate for help against conspiracies they’ve turned to the place you’d least expect

Last month’s Senate grilling of Dr. Anthony Fauci, if viewed by an audience that had not been subjected to years of propaganda, would be staggeringly strange. There were hissing accusations of lies, corruption, and megalomania; comparisons to sadistic Nazi scientists; and statements, as if of undisputed fact, that Fauci killed millions of people. The nation’s most powerful Republicans, without any significant pushback, joined forces to shout down and criminally pursue the face of the COVID pandemic’s health authority based on wild, speculative, and facile conspiracy theories. It all prompted a kind of deeply existential question: If this is how we now treat a onetime pandemic hero, what will happen the next time we face a similar public health crisis?

Public health officials say with the rise of conspiracy thinking at the highest echelons of our national government, the next pandemic response could be so much worse. But they did have one potentially innovative and surprising, if disconcerting, solution to our national public health information crisis: A.I. has the potential to help stave off a conspiratorial catastrophe during the next pandemic. Given everything that’s happened with our public health leadership since Donald Trump returned to power, most public health professionals Slate spoke with took a dim view of our possible responses to a future crisis. After a summer of foodborne illness crises, it’s clear our public health officials are struggling to handle basic public health. Indeed, they seem to be taking us backward: Just last week, it was reported that school vaccination rates have hit a new record low. But several experts, prodded for any note of optimism they could find, offered hope from artificial intelligence. Admittedly, looking to A.I. for rescue is usually an eye-roll-worthy impulse. And coming from the field of disinformation in particular, A.I. is a Pandora’s box of yet-to-be-imagined evils. Generative A.I. certainly has the potential to worsen pandemic conspiracy theories by equipping them with highly convincing fabricated evidence. But in this case, the desperation of the situation might just call for public health advocates leaning into the dangerous new technology.

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Florida's Angie Nixon and the power of pink

In all the postmortems and analyses that have appeared since State Representative Angie Nixon’s decisive win over Alexander Vindman in the Democratic Senate primary in Florida last week — in all the meditations on what this means for progressives and Democratic Socialists and what it may say about the Sunshine State as well as the political state of the country — one factor has rarely come up. The pink. Not just any old pink: a particularly bright shade of pink sometimes referred to as fuchsia and sometimes hot pink but most akin, in fact, to the color Elsa Schiaparelli christened “shocking pink.” (An awfully apropos bit of nomenclature, given the reaction to Nixon’s win.) And while that pink may seem an almost irrelevant detail in a hard-fought political race, it played a very real role in Nixon’s campaign — and possibly her victory. As she gears up for the general election in November, it’s worth considering how.

Nixon has been wearing pink since she first ran for office in 2020, but the color became synonymous with her, at least in the national consciousness, in late April when she marched down the State Capitol floor in a fuchsia jumpsuit with a hot pink megaphone to protest Florida gerrymandering. Though dismissed by some as a stunt, the picture was so powerful that it became practically shorthand for Nixon’s politics — and willingness to take on the establishment. From then on, it was essentially a pinkathon. Nixon’s campaign bus? Shocking pink. Her lawn signs and bumper stickers? Shocking pink. Her sneakers? Pink Skechers. The jacket and shirt she wore in a “fit check” video after her opponent’s wife, Rachel Vindman, appeared to imply that Nixon’s clothes were not “professional” enough, a comment that invited so much backlash that Vindman eventually deleted it and apologized? Pink and pink. (Each, Nixon noted, from Goodwill and costing $6.99 and $4.99, respectively). Turns out whining about “professional” was missing the point. By wearing pink so consistently throughout the campaign, it became impossible to think about the color without thinking about Nixon.

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Lead Stories

Mike Miles expects HISD’s state takeover to end after this school year

Houston ISD’s state takeover could end after the 2026-27 school year, state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles said Tuesday. Miles, appointed as superintendent by the state in June 2023, said he believes the district has nearly met all the criteria needed to end the state takeover. Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath is expected to decide whether to begin the transition back to local control in June 2027. Miles' comments echo what Morath told reporters in August: that he expected the takeover to end “relatively soon.” “We always wanted to work quickly to get out of the intervention strategy,” Miles said on a Hello Houston radio appearance. “I think the official end may be the end of this school year, and then the commissioner will determine what sort of transition period there will be.”

To exit the state takeover, HISD must improve three areas: accountability ratings, board governance and special education compliance. Since the intervention began in June 2023, HISD’s number of D- and F-rated schools has dropped from 121 to 13. HISD students have since seen improved passing rates in almost every STAAR tested grade and subject. But many high schools have also seen ratings improve, in part, due to enrolling students in online college-prep courses — courses which the state has since discredited. Miles said HISD enrolled students in the courses to keep them from taking remedial courses in college, not to boost ratings. He said the district was not alone in the widespread use of college-prep courses statewide. "We're using what is allowed in our high schools to help kids so that they don't have to take remedial courses in college, and almost every high school in the state is using it," Miles said. Miles told the radio program that the district still had “some work to do” to improve special education compliance before ending the takeover. In the 2026-27 school year, the district also began to consolidate some special education services, which has drawn both state scrutiny and a federal investigation. While the district could begin its transition out of the state takeover after the 2026-27 school year, Miles has a contract for four more years until 2030. On the first day of school, Miles did not commit to staying through the transition to an elected board, saying "anything can happen." “The new school board — when that happens — they’ll want their own superintendent, I think,” Miles said Tuesday. HISD's state-appointed board of managers recently approved their annual evaluation and undisclosed bonus for Miles. He is eligible for up to $231,000 in addition to his base pay of $462,000.

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The death of government transparency in Texas

Last fall, Texas A&M University was in the midst of a firestorm. State Representative Brian Harrison of Midlothian, a brash right-wing social media power user, had posted a video to X that a student had recorded of a professor discussing gender identity during a lecture. Harrison included a letter to Governor Greg Abbott demanding that she and university President Mark Welsh be immediately fired. Within two weeks, the professor and Welsh had been pushed out, and Texas A&M, which had cycled through four presidents in five years, was once again in search of a leader. With a colleague at The Texas Tribune, I set out to understand how the flagship public university in a system that educates 175,000 students across twelve campuses had reached such a point. We started by filing public-information requests for records from the school’s regents, chancellor, and other top officials, seeking texts and emails, as well as memos, calendars, and voicemails—all of which are supposed to be accessible to the public. We soon confirmed that system leaders had been talking extensively. But many crucial messages that we knew existed were nowhere to be found.

In one instance, we obtained a thread of texts among a few of the regents that referenced other messages between Abbott and Jay Graham, the vice chair of the board, about Harrison’s post. But our probe for those records yielded nothing. University staff told us that they could “only produce records that exist as of the date of the request.” It seemed that everyone involved had deleted their copies of the conversation. Eventually, a top official with the Texas A&M system provided us with clarity; they said the regents, wary of public-information requests, were accustomed to using a work-around: “Read it and delete it.” Though destroying public records before the mandatory retention period expires can be a crime under state law, enforcement is rare, leaving officials free to routinely violate the foundation of the once robust Texas Public Information Act. A generation ago, our lawmakers, journalists, and engaged citizens considered transparency and openness to be bedrock principles of our state’s government. Laws enacted in the seventies secured the public’s right to know how state officials wield their authority. For decades these laws had served as a point of state pride: Texas boasted of offering some of the most transparency-friendly rules in the United States. The TPIA spells out its foundational philosophy in the preamble: “The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.” These transparency laws led to revelations of some of the worst cases of malfeasance in the state. They also prompted the creation of regulations that have benefited taxpayers. After the Austin American-Statesman used over one hundred records requests to uncover more than 450 unreported child sex abuse incidents across Texas day care facilities, legislators passed a slate of new laws regulating the industry. And after the Houston Chronicle filed three hundred public-information requests and found that the Texas Education Agency had pushed districts not to identify students with disabilities, denying children services they were legally entitled to receive, the U.S. Department of Education took federal action, and the Legislature tightened its policies. But over the past two decades, governmental bodies, with the help of the courts, have degraded Texas’s public-transparency apparatus piece by piece, nearly hollowing it out.

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Three takeaways from Bill Gates’s 5,784-word warning on AI: ‘There is no plan’

Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates issued a stark warning about AI’s risks to employment and the human condition, saying that companies were barreling ahead with the technology with no larger plan for the massive upheaval it would cause. “Even under the best circumstances, the transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history,” he wrote in a 12-page essay published to his personal website Wednesday. “Right now, we are not preparing for it. I don’t see evidence that leaders, experts and communities are confronting the challenges adequately.” The message is more sober than Gates’s 2023 essay on AI, when he wrote he was as excited about this revolution as the internet and PC rollouts. Though Wednesday’s missive highlighted AI’s immense potential for good—citing developments in energy, medical care and agriculture—he stressed how badly things could go if the transition is mismanaged. “There is no plan to ease the entry into the AI era,” he wrote, calling for more regulation of the technology.

Here are three of his main points: AI will hit both white- and blue-collar jobs quickly. Much of his essay focused on jobs, noting that entry- and midlevel jobs are most at risk of being eliminated. He argued that AI will soon also affect blue-collar work, and the breadth and speed make it different from other workplace transitions. While the move from agriculture to office work took generations, sectors like law, customer service, software and manufacturing will feel AI’s impact over the course of a decade. When AI can produce error-free work, “it will be able to function on its own without a human checking in on it, and companies will have every economic incentive to let it,” Gates wrote. A society with many more jobless people will need a stronger social safety net, he said. When factories closed, many locals saw more opioid deaths: “Imagine similar pressures on both white-collar and blue-collar workers nationwide.” Critical thinking is more important than ever—and at risk. Gates stressed the risk of cyberattacks on the grid, hospitals and banks. Fraud and surveillance will be widespread. AI will also enable governments to use deadly force without a human’s input, Gates wrote.

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‘Honeymoon’s over’: Warsh under pressure as Fed weighs raising rates

Three years before taking over as chairman of the Federal Reserve, Kevin M. Warsh recounted an exchange he once had with a hero of his, Paul A. Volcker, the celebrated central banker. Mr. Volcker, who navigated the Fed through one of the worst bouts of inflation in the 1970s and 1980s, told Mr. Warsh, then a governor, that the central bank’s job boiled down to two primary responsibilities. The first was getting interest rates “about right.” The second was to “make sure you look like you know what you’re doing.” Those duties are top of mind as Mr. Warsh prepares for his first address as chairman to the world’s leading economic policymakers in Jackson, Wyo. His speech, scheduled for Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern, is the biggest draw of the three-day conference hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

It will offer Mr. Warsh the most powerful perch yet to articulate his own framework for thinking about the economy, the policy choices in front of the Fed as it contends with elevated inflation and how he is assessing seismic changes — such as new sources of productivity gains from artificial intelligence — that could alter the country’s growth prospects in the years ahead. Those details have been intentionally sparse, reflecting Mr. Warsh’s inclination to guard his preferences. One of the only things that Mr. Warsh has made unequivocally clear is that he is committed to getting inflation down after five years of the central bank’s overshooting its 2 percent target. And even then, he has spoken only obliquely about the possibility of raising rates to get there. The lack of specifics on where Mr. Warsh stands on a number of fundamental issues has caused confusion both inside and outside the Fed, overshadowing his broader ambitions to enact sweeping change at the institution. Resolving this does not require Mr. Warsh to provide specific guidance about the Fed’s policy moves in September and beyond, as he is staunchly opposed to doing. But a slight change of tack is required to begin to reset the narrative after a rocky start. “You won’t accomplish anything if you are unwilling to tell people how you think the economy works,” said Anil Kashyap, an economist at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. “You have to have a mechanism that you think explains why if you’re going to do something differently, it’s going to turn out better. And that means you need to pick a lane on various issues.” “The honeymoon’s over,” Mr. Kashyap added.

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State Stories

Greg Abbott has ‘serious doubts’ ICE agent in Texas jail is a fugitive

Gov. Greg Abbott has “serious doubts” that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent accused of shooting a man in Minneapolis is a fugitive whom he is legally bound to return to Minnesota, as officials there have requested, according to court filings in the case. The officer, Christian Castro, was arrested in Texas and is being held in Cameron County. He could be released from jail as soon as Wednesday under Texas law, which sets a 90-day limit on the detention of fugitives awaiting extradition. Minnesota officials last week sued to force Abbott to sign his extradition papers before then. A judge is hearing arguments in the case Tuesday. The Republican governor said in court filings this week that Castro appears to have been ordered by the federal government to return to Harlingen, where he lives and is usually stationed, after the January shooting. Castro was sent to Minneapolis during President Donald Trump’s deportation surge there.

Abbott said he directed the secretary of state last month to investigate whether Castro qualifies as a fugitive under the law. The governor says he is waiting on the findings before deciding whether to authorize the extradition — which Minnesota officials sought months ago. “While the Governor has serious doubts that Mr. Castro qualifies as a fugitive, the Governor has not yet received a report from the Secretary and so has not made a decision concerning Minnesota’s request,” the court filings say. “Minnesota rushed to file this lawsuit, claiming (incredibly) that an ICE agent subject to ongoing federal investigations — and who never bothered to post bond — was somehow a flight risk.” At a press conference last week, Abbott said he wouldn’t respond to Minnesota's request "at all" until officials there admitted fault in a series of unrelated fraud cases involving government programs. Those cases do not involve Texas. Minnesota says the extradition matter is pressing. The state is seeking a temporary restraining order to keep Cameron County Sheriff Manuel Trevino from releasing Castro until Minnesota authorities have him in custody.

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Medicaid and SNAP enrollment delays in Texas

New data from the state's Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) show that Texas families are facing growing delays as they wait for the state to process their applications for Medicaid health insurance and SNAP food assistance. The data show an increase from 2,000 delayed Medicaid applications in January to 183,000 in July. "Texas families should not have to delay health care because the state can't process their Medicaid applications on time," said Diana Forester, Director of Health Policy at Texans Care for Children. "We urge state leaders to step up for kids who are home sick from school and pregnant women who need prenatal care."

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Gina Hinojosa calls Tarrant County ‘ground zero’ in fight for the American dream

Gina Hinojosa outlined her vision for Texans to reclaim the American Dream to over 300 people during her rally in Fort Worth on Tuesday. The Democratic nominee for governor spoke about her plans to reform the public education system, make healthcare and electricity more affordable and combat data centers. During the 2022 midterm elections, Gov. Greg Abbott won Tarrant County with just over 51% of votes. Hinojosa called Tarrant County “ground zero” for this election. “The whole world is watching Tarrant County,” Hinojosa said. The county’s voting patterns have long been seen as a indicator of what will happen in Texas and national elections.

Taylor Eowers is a public school teacher with a son who has special needs. Eowers said his family is probably about to get kicked off of Medicare. “A candidate who can bring both public education and children’s healthcare into the mix has 100% got my vote,” Eowers said. Fort Worth ISD is one of eight school districts across the state that has been taken over by the Texas Education Agency due to consistent failing accountability ratings. “We need to include parents, include the community as part of the solution when our schools are struggling,” Hinojosa said, adding that she is against the state taking over public schools. Hinojosa said school districts face challenges due to underfunding, focusing on testing and the “teacher exodus” that has happened under Abbott. In the first three months following the state takeover, nearly 800 teachers resigned from Fort Worth ISD. “We will save Texas schools because there can be no American dream without strong public schools,” Hinojosa said.

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Tensions flare at Fort Worth City Council meeting over $10B data center

New details have been announced about Fort Worth’s proposed $10 billion data center project — including its developer — after a tense meeting drew both ire and support for the project. At its meeting on Aug. 25, the Fort Worth City Council approved an amended site plan for a data center project in the city’s southeast edge, near Forest Hill and Everman. Fort Worth-based energy consortium Black Mountain has been attached to the data center, but on Tuesday, a representative from the Virginia-based data center developer EdgeConneX announced that the company is the developer and operator. “We’re not a crypto-mining operation, and we’re not a speculative developer looking to ride the data center wave,” Todd Workman, a representative from EdgeConneX, told council members.

Workman said that EdgeConneX has started outreach efforts to get local students involved with careers at the data center. A council vote on the plan was postponed after residents — and some City Council members — expressed confusion and hesitation over the plans for the development. Zoning cases for the land were initially approved by the City Council in 2025. The site plan that was approved on Tuesday includes four buildings, plus a substation that would only power the data center. Throughout the year, just about any meeting regarding data centers in Fort Worth has drawn hours-long public comments from residents and activist groups, and attention from state representatives and candidates for statewide office. That was still the case on Tuesday, as dozens of people came to speak against the data center. “I think we’re moving too fast,” said Sue Weston, the owner of the historic Weston Gardens. The data center’s footprint is adjacent to her property. Weston told the city she does not believe enough environmental assessments on the data center have been completed.

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Dallas caps property tax rate, bucking hikes in other Texas cities

While other Texas cities have decided to increase taxes to balance their books, Dallas officials aren’t going to do that. The City Council voted 8-6 to cap the rate at 69.78 cents per $100 of taxable value. They agreed with City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert’s budget recommendation, indicating officials could seek deeper cuts. Dallas has pursued tax rate cuts for 11 years straight, forgoing more than $200 million in revenue. Tolbert’s $5.6 billion proposal offers a slight 0.10 cent decrease to its current rate, inspiring robust debate about whether it was enough or even necessary. The final budget will be adopted Sept. 16.

Council members debated whether to increase or lower the cap for more than an hour. Some said a lower property tax rate helps residents and makes the city more competitive to lure businesses. But several have pushed back saying a cut in the city’s tax collections also means neighborhood services will need to be pruned. Mayor Eric Johnson said in a statement that the council’s vote Tuesday showed “sound fiscal discipline and a serious commitment to keeping Dallas competitive, pro-growth and affordable compared with other major Texas cities.” Mayor Pro Tem Jaime Resendez and council members Laura Cadena, Adam Bazaldua, Paula Blackmon, Cara Mendelsohn and Paul Ridley voted against the cap. Council member Bill Roth was absent when the vote was taken. Tuesday’s move makes Dallas an outlier among major Texas cities. Austin, San Antonio and Fort Worth have either approved or proposed raising their property tax rates. Houston is keeping its property tax rate flat.

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Anthropic may make another huge footprint outside Austin

Fresh off its huge data center lease in Milam County northeast of Austin, Silicon Valley-based Anthropic PBC is in talks to occupy a gargantuan data center development on the east side in Bastrop County. While no agreement has been finalized, the artificial intelligence company has been working with Washington, D.C.-based BlackChamber Partners LLC and Dallas-based Pacifico Energy LLC on what's been described as a 2,842-acre gas-fired electric generation facility to support a major data center development in the Cedar Creek area, several sources told ABJ. Public documents indicate that at full buildout the power plant would deliver 710 megawatts of "site-rated redundant power using simple cycle natural gas turbines" that will support 490 megawatts of informational technology load.

Translation: A roughly 500-megawatt data center is in the works. Details aren't made public, but for perspective, such data centers often measure in the millions of square feet. Anthropic is largely known for its language learning model called Claude. It recently signed what could amount to a $16.1 billion data center lease at Riot Platforms Inc.'s campus in Milam County near the former Alcoa Corp. plant. BlackChamber and Pacifico last week pulled a tax abatement request filed with Bastrop County. They withdrew another request for property tax abatements from the Bastrop Independent School District through the Jobs, Energy, Technology and Innovation Act, or JETI. The decision to pull those applications was led by Anthropic, which cited a desire not to pull money from the local community, sources said. The company is said to be working with local officials on a list of community priorities to partner on ahead of potentially leasing the property. The project is located at 382 Earl Callahan Road.

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Ross Fire explodes to 50,000 acres in Palo Pinto County; ‘We’re throwing everything at this’

A wildfire that broke out Monday along Highway 180 near R.D. Bell Road in Palo Pinto County, known as "Ross Fire," has grown to 50,000 acres with 12% containment as of 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service. Highway 180 and Highway 254 are closed near the scene as crews battled the flames. Officials said spot fires are popping up about a mile north of the fire. Palo Pinto ESD 1 said the fire grew to over 18,000 acres in just 12 hours, and by 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, had grown to over 50,000 acres. Additional air assets arrived on scene Tuesday morning to assist the over 100 firefighters already on the scene to battle the blaze.

At least five structures are known to have been destroyed by the Ross Fire. Officials said additional damage assessments are expected to be conducted Tuesday. Firefighters have been working throughout the night to protect structures from the raging fire, Danny Watkins, chief of the Palo Pinto County Emergency Services District, said in a video posted to Facebook. "The primary objective for the day is structural protection because of the fire conditions and the fuel load; we're going to engage where we can, but the homes are the first priority," Watkins said. "The fuel load and the weather conditions, it's kind of been the perfect storm where we just haven't been able to contain it. We're doing everything we can; we're throwing everything at this and still having minimal effect." The city of Graford is on high alert due to the fire, according to Palo Pinto officials. Graford ISD and Perrin-Whitt CISD have canceled school due to the fire, officials said.

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SB 12 — ‘the drag ban’ — again ruled unconstitutional

Texas’ drag ban — Senate Bill 12 passed in the 2023 Texas Legislature — has once again been ruled unconstitutional, according to numerous reports. A federal judge in Houston ruled Tuesday, Aug. 25 — for the second time — that Senate Bill 12, the so-called Texas drag ban which came out of the 2023 legislative session, is unconstitutional. Today’s ruling once against pauses enforcement of the law, which had gone into effect in March. U.S. District Judge David Hittner of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas found that the ban is an unlawful restriction on speech that violates the First Amendment. He also issued a permanent injunction against enforcement of the law.

Brian Klosterboer, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Texas which represented the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said in a statement that Hittner’s ruling on Tuesday “confirms that the Legislature’s attempt to ban drag performances was unconstitutional from start to finish. “Drag has a rich history as a refuge of joy and liberation for countless Texans, and it’s not going anywhere,” Klosterboer continued. “This law stifled free expression across our state and made people afraid to engage in or attend drag shows and other performances. But all Texans — no matter our gender or background — are guaranteed the right to free expression. “We celebrate this victory and remain committed to stopping state officials from targeting LGBTQIA+ Texans and making our state less free and fair,” he said. SB 12, passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott in 2023, was part of a wave of “drag ban” laws that swept across the country. The Texas law prohibited “sexually oriented performances” on public property or in the presence of minors under the age of 18. It allowed for businesses hosting such shows to be fined $10,000 and for performers in those shows to be charged with misdemeanor offenses.

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Ex-Democratic Texas rep turned Republican anti-trans activist appointed judge in Houston

After a whirlwind few years that saw her anger Democrats, switch parties, get appointed to a state prison board and join the American chapter of an international anti-transgender group, former Texas state representative Shawn Thierry has a new gig: Houston judge. On Tuesday, Gov. Greg Abbott announced that he had appointed Thierry as judge of the 515th Harris County Judicial District Court. Thierry's appointment is effective Sept. 1, with her term expiring Dec. 31, 2028. The 515th District Court was one of five new courts created last legislative session to address a backlog of civil court cases. "I look forward to serving on the bench with integrity, fairness, and respect for the rule of law," Thierry wrote in a statement on X.

Abbott's office noted in a press release that Thierry currently serves on the Texas Juvenile Justice Board, which Abbott appointed her to in 2025. She is a graduate of Howard University and holds a JD from Thurgood Marshall School of Law and, the press release notes among her many distinctions, "a former volunteer with the Houston Food Bank." But Abbott's office did not mention some of Thierry's more recent work. Thierry was originally elected as a Democrat in 2017 to represent Texas House District 146, which includes Houston's historically Black Sunnyside neighborhood, replacing outgoing Rep. Borris Miles, who now serves in the Texas Senate. Thierry mostly flew under the radar until the 2023 legislative session, when she broke ranks with her party to vote for several bills opposed by LGBTQ+ advocates and allies. Thierry was one of 12 Democrats to vote for a bill that would have taken books deemed sexually explicit out of Texas schools. She also voted to ban transgender athletes from competing on college teams that align with their gender identity.

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More than 500,000 people across Central Texas don’t have enough food to eat

Texas has the highest population battling food insecurity in the country, with over 6 million residents in the state struggling to access food consistently throughout the year. That’s about 1 in 5 households, according to Feeding America, a nationwide network of food banks. Central Texas’s food insecurity rate decreased after 2020, but has increased each year since 2021. In 2024, just over 17% of the population in the region—more than 500,000 people—didn’t have enough to eat and didn’t know where their next meal would come from. Experts say a lack of access to enough food can lead to negative impacts on physical and mental health and affect other parts of life, from work and school to relationships.

Every year, Feeding Texas releases a Map the Meal Gap study to show food insecurity levels in counties across the country, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The nonprofit uses data like unemployment numbers, cost of living, access to nearby grocery stores and more to measure food insecurity. The 2026 report released this summer highlighted food insecurity from two years prior. In Central Texas, the food insecurity rate in 2024 varied by county, with Williamson County at the low end showing 14.6% of its population dealt with food insecurity, while Caldwell County had the highest at 19.9%. Many households who do deal with food insecurity do not qualify for federal food assistance programs, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). In Texas, about 47% of the population that is food insecure does not meet eligibility requirements for SNAP, whether that’s because a household’s income is higher than the threshold for the program or for other reasons. In Central Texas, more than 40% of those facing food insecurity do not qualify for SNAP, but that figure does vary by county. Broken down by demographics, 34% of the region’s food insecure population is Black, 23% is Hispanic and 12% is white. Data on Asian Americans and Native Americans was not available.

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What Texas’ childcare cuts could mean for Dallas families on the waitlist

Texas wants Dallas County to provide childcare support to 1,604 fewer children per day, which could keep families on the waitlist longer. The Texas Workforce Commission set Dallas County’s target at 11,516 children served per day for the 2027 Board Contract Year. That is down from the 13,120 target the agency approved for the current contract year. The number is a target for the average number of children served each day. It is not a confirmed count of individual children who will lose care or an annual count of families receiving help.

ChildCareGroup, which manages the Child Care Financial Scholarship program for Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas, has not received formal guidance on final service levels for the coming program year, CEO Tori Mannes said. But Mannes said there are no plans to remove current scholarship recipients from the program. As children leave because a parent no longer needs care or no longer meets eligibility requirements, fewer children will be enrolled from the waiting list, she said. In an Aug. 11 discussion paper, TWC reported it updated the current-year targets effective with the July performance report to give local workforce boards a way to gradually reduce enrollment before the new contract year. In June, TWC approved ending a staff-retention strategy after agency staff said it could not show whether the program reduced turnover. The commission also ended a planned $25 million childcare-expansion initiative that had not yet been awarded. Staff said the money should instead support more children amid long waitlists. In July, the commission redirected another $29.76 million in quality funds not needed to meet state quality earmarks into direct care.

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Grapevine-Colleyville school board drops effort to keep legal fees hidden from public

The Grapevine-Colleyville school board voted last night to dismiss three lawsuits filed against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that aimed to block the release of records that district parents have long demanded be made public. All three lawsuits were related to invoices for legal fees the school district paid to attorney Tim Davis and the firms he worked for while he served as the school board’s counsel. In 2024 and 2025, Rachel Wall, a Grapevine-Colleyville parent, requested the unredacted invoices from the district under the Texas Public Information Act. The Star-Telegram did the same in 2025. The school board, represented by Davis, initially sought to withhold those records, arguing they were protected by attorney-client privilege. The Texas Attorney General’s Office, however, ruled that fee details were not privileged and ordered the district to release the invoices.

The board then sued Paxton to keep the invoices from becoming public. As reported in June, there had been little movement in those cases. Davis parted ways with Grapevine-Colleyville earlier this summer, leading to speculation that the school board would abandon its legal fight to withhold the unredacted invoices. In July, a spokesperson for the school district said the school board was in the process of reviewing the documents. All along, Wall has argued that taxpayers are entitled to see how district money is being spent in the name of transparency. She said Grapevine-Colleyville paid Davis and his firms upwards of $600,000 over the course of four years. On Monday, the school board passed three motions to dismiss the lawsuits. In each instance, the vote was 6-1, with Trustee Shannon Braun the lone dissenting vote. There was no public discussion prior to the votes. School board president Dalia Begin did not immediately respond to a text message requesting comment on the board’s change of heart regarding the invoices. Braun did not immediately respond to a voice message asking for insight into her reasons for opposing the motions. The Keller school board, which Davis also represented, filed a similar lawsuit against Paxton last year to block the release of unredacted legal invoices. A spokesperson for Keller did not immediately respond when asked if the board had considered abandoning its legal challenge.

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The NBA investigated a team employee's sexual misconduct claim. Did they talk to her?

According to Joshua Primo’s therapist, the San Antonio Spurs rookie flashed his penis nine times during their private sessions. Though she said she reported her claims to Spurs management, the team didn’t issue any consequences until cutting him months after they ended her employment as the team’s performance psychologist. That’s what Dr. Hillary Cauthen alleged in her November 3, 2022, lawsuit against Primo and the team, spurring the National Basketball Association to launch an investigation. The league’s inquiry, ironically, led commissioner Adam Silver to compliment her former employer. Silver told the press that the Spurs—who publicly disputed Cauthen’s “accuracy of facts, details and timeline” before reaching a settlement—“handled the situation in a very responsible way.” But, he also acknowledged that the league was pursuing “safeguards” to ensure situations like Cauthen wouldn’t happen again.

Nearly a year after Cauthen’s lawsuit, the NBA suspended Primo for four games for “exposing himself to women” after finishing a probe that “consulted with relevant experts.” eyeblack learned that according to Cauthen’s attorney, the NBA’s decision was news to her. Literally. Tony Buzbee, the lawyer who represented Cauthen in her case against the Spurs, told eyeblack that NBA never contacted her about joining its probe, nor did Silver or any official inform her about those promised safeguards. “The league never even asked to speak to her,” said Buzbee. “We made her available, [the NBA] never responded.” Buzbee’s claim, if true, marked the second time in the last three years that the NBA was publicly criticized for ending an investigation without interviewing the woman who made the complaint. Buzbee cited Cauthen’s press conference announcing the suit, where she articulated her desire to “protect those that suffer in silence” and “help organizations develop a culture of care,” as a clear example of her desire to participate. “Maybe, if they are performing an investigation, and I’ve stated publicly that my client is available to speak, they should make an effort to reach out?,” Buzbee said.

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Dr. Summer Rose: 5 tips to help parents recognize if their student is struggling during back to school season

(Dr. Summer Rose is a clinical psychologist and CEO of Communities In Schools of the Dallas Region.) Kids are back in school, and as that first day excitement fades and schedules become routine, parents and teachers may begin noticing early signs that a student is struggling. Maybe they're suddenly reluctant to go to school, their grades or attendance begin slipping, their behavior changes, or they start withdrawing from friends and activities. Those changes can be easy to chalk up to an adjustment period, but they can also be critical clues that something more serious is happening.

One bad grade or bad morning is not reason for concern, Dr. Rose says. Look out for patterns that are cause for concern. Be curious before you become punitive. Dr. Rose says while it's easy to take technology away when grades slip, dig deeper to see if there's larger issue at play. Don't forget about the adjustment period. During back to school season, kids are just getting back into a strict routine. If your student still isn't adjusting well after a few months, Dr. Rose says it's worth having a conversation with them about underlying stressors. It's normal for students to experience summer learning loss, and the first month of school is usually the time to "catch-up." Dr. Rose says teachers should monitor students' progress throughout that first month, and let parents know if their student may require extra support. Teachers are a great resource into how your child is doing in the classroom. Some students at home present themselves to be on top of their game, but that may not be the reality for them in the classroom. Check in with educators on your students' progress these first few months.

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National Stories

Dolly Parton, country music superstar whose songs spoke to millions, dies at 80

Dolly Parton, a rhinestone-studded, rags-to-riches daughter of Appalachia who for six decades ruled country music — and much of pop culture — with an outsize personality and down-home wit that enshrined her as one of America’s most cherished originals, died on Tuesday in Nashville. She was 80. Her death was announced by her family. A spokesman said that she died after a brief battle with cancer and that she had been admitted to the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville on Friday. Concerns about Ms. Parton’s health arose last year when she postponed a Las Vegas residency, and intensified to the point that she took to social media in October to announce, “I ain’t dead yet.” This May, she canceled the residency but said that she had responded well to treatment after her immune and digestive systems had, as she put it, “got all out of whack” in recent years.

From her hardscrabble beginnings to glittering stardom, Ms. Parton’s life was the stuff of make-believe. With her voluptuous figure, sparkly stage costumes and blond bouffant wigs, she was likened by the writer Chet Flippo to the Big Rock Candy Mountain, the Depression-era symbol of abundance. Her songs spoke to millions, confronting privation and loss even as they radiated possibility and hope. She was, quintessentially, a uniter of people. In 2019, The New York Times ran a story with the headline “Is There Anything We Can All Agree On? Yes: Dolly Parton.” Ms. Parton cannily exploited — and transcended — rural stereotypes and kitsch to fashion a folksy chic entirely her own. (“A country girl’s idea of glam,” she called it in the song “Backwoods Barbie.”) In the process, she became an international celebrity who headlined stadium tours, starred in Hollywood movies, built a business empire and appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone. Her at times girlish soprano notwithstanding, she was anything but the “dumb blonde” invoked in the title of her 1966 single. “I’ve created this and played it up — the makeup, the whole persona,” Ms. Parton said, alluding to her plastic surgeries as well as her colloquial “Dollyisms” in a 2002 interview with The Times.

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Trump’s pick for open House seat in Kentucky scrubs president from campaign website

President Trump’s pick to replace Republican Rep. Andy Barr (Ky.) in the House has completely scrubbed the president from his campaign website. Former state Sen. Ralph Alvarado’s (R) campaign website no longer features an image of the candidate next to Trump with them both giving a thumbs-up and shifted from branding himself as a national leader in the “America First” movement to an “independent” focused on healthcare. The scrub of his website was first reported by NBC. Alvarado and the White House did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment explaining the change.

An archived version of Alvarado’s website says he “was one of President Trump’s earliest supporters, and now he’s stepping up to fight alongside him in Washington to fire up the economy, secure our border, and stop the woke agenda.” It touted the former state senator as the only Latino to speak in support of Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Now statements on the website focus on healthcare and lowering costs. “Healthcare isn’t a talking point to me — it’s been my life’s work. In Congress, I’ll work with both parties to fight for affordable healthcare, lower costs, and practical solutions that help Kentucky families,” a quote from Alvarado on the campaign website’s landing page says. His statement comes as healthcare premiums increased after lawmakers decided not to renew Affordable Care Act subsidies and as the Trump administration pushes changes to the vaccine schedule for school-age children. Democrats say Alvarado’s shift in rhetoric shows that he’s “two-faced.” “He is a two-faced, corrupt politician who has shown he is willing to say anything to deceive Central Kentuckians just to try and get elected,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Eli Cousin told The Hill. “Alvarado scrubbing his website to try and paper over his real record is just the latest sign that he is feeling the heat and knows that this race is a true toss up,” Cousin added. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the seat vacated by Barr as “likely Republican.”

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FEMA crew broke law by skipping homes with Trump signs, federal watchdog says

A crew of Federal Emergency Management Agency staffers working on the response to Hurricane Milton in 2024 violated the law and agency policy by skipping nearly a dozen homes displaying signs supporting then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, a federal watchdog said Tuesday. The new report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General found that the decision by a crew with the agency’s Disaster Survivor Assistance program “eroded public trust in FEMA’s ability to treat everyone impartially, offer unbiased and consistent assistance, and ensure equal access to resources and tools.”

Back-to-back hurricanes hit Florida within two weeks of each other in late September and early October 2024, prompting emergency declarations and federal assistance. FEMA Disaster Survivor Assistance crews canvassed 744,288 homes and other sites in response, according the report, and did not contact “555,374 locations for reasons such as private property signs or safety concerns.” During FEMA’s hurricane response, which was unfolding during the last few weeks of the pivotal election, a FEMA crew lead instructed team members to avoid homes with Trump signs due to safety concerns. The same crew bypassed those 11 homes in Florida, according to survey notes obtained by the inspector general’s office. At the time, the crew leader did not feel safe given the heightened tension and “was looking for ways to define safety. People were not getting good guidance, so she made her own way,” said a former senior FEMA official with direct knowledge of the situation. After several FEMA workers filed a complaint, the agency started its own investigation and officials referred the complaint to the Office of Special Counsel and DHS’s inspector general office.

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Pennsylvania reports first 2 US measles deaths in 2026

Two unvaccinated Pennsylvania residents have died after being infected with measles, the first U.S. deaths this year related to the contagious virus. State health officials announced the deaths Tuesday. They did not reveal any details about the people who died, other than that they lived in Lancaster County, west of Philadelphia. “My deepest sympathies are with the loved ones who are facing this unimaginable loss,” said state Health Secretary Dr. Debra Bogen. “Because measles was largely eliminated in the Commonwealth for more than three decades, people are not familiar with this disease and don’t fully understand the potential severity of the illness.” The U.S. has now seen five measles-associated deaths in the last two years — more than the combined total of reported deaths over the previous three decades — and is enduring its worst year for measles since 1991.

With 2,777 cases as of Thursday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this year already has surpassed 2025’s measles count. In November, international health officials will meet to determine if the U.S. and Mexico have lost their measles-free status. The U.S. eliminated local measles spread in 2000 by maintaining high vaccination rates, which have fallen in recent years to below the 95% coverage needed to prevent outbreaks. The measles surge has coincided with moves by President Donald Trump’s administration to scale back childhood vaccinations, based on concerns — unfounded, according to scientific studies — about vaccine safety. Trump earlier this month signed an executive order calling for revamped childhood vaccine recommendations. He also advocated separating the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three different shots, and administering all childhood immunizations at separate appointments whenever possible. Doctors have raised concerns that Trump and U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are stoking confusion and hesitancy.

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In headache for Republicans, second Dan Sullivan advances in Alaska Senate race

A candidate with the same name as Alaska’s incumbent U.S. senator advanced Tuesday to the general election in what will be one of the most closely watched races in the country this fall. Dan J. Sullivan, who goes by Dan Sullivan, was among the top four finishers after the Aug. 18 primary and moved on to the November matchup, which is a ranked choice contest. The incumbent, Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, and Democratic former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola also have advanced. The challenger Sullivan, a retired teacher from the island community of Petersburg, sued for a spot on the ballot and succeeded after a judge invalidated a decision by a top state elections official who said he had filed his candidacy with an intent to confuse voters.

The allegation was driven by claims raised by the senator and his GOP allies. The state Supreme Court ultimately ordered Dan J. Sullivan eligible for the ballot. While the challenger sought to appear on the ballot as Republican Dan J. Sullivan, the Division of Elections listed him as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., with no party affiliation. The senator was listed as Dan S. Sullivan, Republican and incumbent. A call seeking comment from the challenger was not immediately returned Tuesday, and emails to campaign staff for the senator also were not immediately returned. President Donald Trump endorsed Sen. Sullivan for reelection and called the other Sullivan’s candidacy an attempt to trick voters. Dan J. Sullivan criticized the incumbent for embracing Trump’s endorsement and said the president was “more interested in raising tariffs on our allies than in lowering the cost of groceries, housing and energy.” It was too early to determine who would fill the fourth and final slot in the Senate general election race. The Senate race was one of three major contests on Alaska’s primary ballot, which also featured races for the state’s lone U.S. House seat and governor.

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MAGA influencer outed as a Pentagon employee in bizarre turn after botching ‘scoop’ from State Dept.

Jennica Pounds, who is more well-known as MAGA influencer DataRepublican on social media, was outed as a special government employee of the Department of Defense Monday. Pounds’s Pentagon employment came to light after a bizarre incident in which she claimed she was being “set up” by the deep state — but it was revealed she merely botched a “scoop” she was being handed by a State Department official. Up until June, Pounds was a member of the credentialed Pentagon press corps. She had not disclosed her new gig with the Pentagon.

The story began to blow open on Friday, Aug. 21, when the X account for the far-right outlet AF Post wrote, “Jennica Pounds, aka Data Republican, a Department of War employee, alleges that Undersecretary of State Sarah Rogers is attempting to ‘entrap’ Pounds by providing her with information to ‘leak’ under the guise of offering her a ‘scoop.'” Per AF Post, Pounds also believed the “Deep State” — or Rogers — was “trying to set her up to commit a crime, in this case claiming Rogers is trying to entice her to leak sensitive information.” “It’s not okay when the Deep State sets you up to commit a crime,” Pounds wrote in a now-deleted thread. “I have never been more angry in my life.” On Monday, AP Pentagon reporter Konstantin Toropin posted on X, “The Pentagon confirms – ‘Ms. Pounds serves at the Department of War as a Special Government Employee.'”

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Trump nabs crucial primary wins in South Carolina, Oklahoma

President Trump notched two critical wins in South Carolina and Oklahoma on Tuesday, with Sen. Darline Graham (S.C.) and former state Sen. Mike Mazzei (Okla.) clinching the GOP nominations in their respective primary runoff races. The Republican contests for South Carolina Senate and Oklahoma governor served as another key test of the president’s influence in the GOP as several of his gubernatorial and House picks have fallen short in their primaries this cycle. Graham defeated Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) by nearly 5 percentage points while Mazzei eked out Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond by about half a point, according to Decision Desk HQ. Graham, who was appointed to serve the remainder of her late brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.), term in the upper chamber, faced growing questions around her lack of political experience after a gaffe on the debate stage last week.

But Trump’s endorsement carried both her and Mazzei across the finish line, underscoring the president’s firm grip on the party in key contests ahead of the November midterms. Trump had ripped Mazzei’s opponent in the days ahead of Tuesday’s contest. Graham pulled it off in South Carolina — helping Trump avoid an embarrassing primary loss. Trump threw his political weight behind the incumbent and visited the state last week to rally alongside Graham. His super PAC MAGA Inc. also invested $827,000 in the contest, marking the group’s largest investment so far this election cycle. Graham’s win is particularly notable given the president’s initial gubernatorial pick — South Carolina Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette (R) — lost. He had also backed Attorney General Alan Wilson in the race, but the outcome prompted questions about whether South Carolina Republicans would buck the president’s endorsee again. Trump came out on top in a tight Oklahoma governor’s GOP runoff with Mazzei’s victory over Drummond. Drummond narrowly led Mazzei in the initial June primary runoff. The race took a nasty turn, with Mazzei releasing a drug test this week after public pressure from Drummond, who did the same. In the days ahead of the runoff, Trump also hammered the attorney general, calling him a “fake Republican.” Drummond, a rancher, opposed a Trump-backed aluminum plant in the state and in recent days has slammed the president’s decision to import beef and tariff Canadian goods.

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Lead Stories

Supreme Court allows Trump to pursue mail voting limits, for now

A divided Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to move forward with plans to restrict mail-in voting before the midterm elections. In an emergency opinion, the justices said President Trump could proceed with implementing an executive order he had signed, which directed the U.S. Postal Service to help decide which voters should receive mail-in ballots. Under the executive order, the Department of Homeland Security will also create lists of U.S. citizens that the administration believes could be used to monitor voter rolls for noncitizens. The decision means the administration can move ahead with planning for restricting the use of mail ballots even as a lower court continues to weigh the legality of Mr. Trump’s executive order. But with a little more than two months until Election Day — and considerably less time before early voting begins in many states — it remains unclear whether the White House’s rules will be in effect for a midterm election in which control of both chambers is at stake.

Additional legal action is a near certainty with the plan’s fate not yet final. A separate injunction by the same lower court complicates matters. That court action prevents the postal service from implementing some parts of the executive order. That case could also soon be headed to the justices. Monday’s order from the Supreme Court was unsigned, as is typical in such emergency rulings. The majority wrote that it agreed with the government’s argument that it should be able to move forward with its plans, finding that the Trump administration was “likely to suffer irreparable harm” unless the justices lifted a freeze that had been imposed by lower courts. The three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warning that the majority “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.” The majority said the states that challenged the president’s order could not demonstrate that they were sufficiently harmed by voting rules that had not yet taken effect. The justices cautioned that their order was preliminary and not a final decision about whether the administration’s order “will necessarily be lawful” once the plans are complete. “On that score, time will tell,” the majority said in the 10-page, unsigned order. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has been receptive to some, but not all, of the administration’s broad claims of executive power. In this case, the majority said that the provision of Mr. Trump’s order that required creating lists of U.S. citizens was “an internal directive from the president to a subordinate” and so far imposed no obligations on the states.

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Can counties stop data centers? Ken Paxton won’t say.

Attorney General Ken Paxton has called data centers a “complicated issue” that should be decided “by local communities.” But when two rural counties asked his office early this year if they could halt local data center construction, it was not quick to weigh in. Six months later, it still hasn’t. The attorney general’s office had 180 days to issue a legal opinion or delay the matter, according to state law. The office wrote to Hood County Attorney Matt Mills on Monday notifying him it would "need more time to review the law, complete our analysis, and finalize the opinion." “I predicted long ago that I wouldn't hear back until after the election in November,” Mills said.

Paxton, who is running for the U.S. Senate, on Monday rolled out a campaign proposal that endorses new rules on where data centers can be built and calls for prohibiting Chinese technology from being used in them. He is the latest candidate to wade into the data center fracas, joining other GOP candidates who have sought to quell a brewing backlash among rural voters. But Paxton's plan is silent on one of the biggest questions fueling the data center debate in Texas, the ability that counties have to do anything about the centers cropping up across the state. Paxton’s Democratic opponent, state Rep. James Talarico, has called for them to be given the power to keep data centers out. His four-part plan includes federal legislation to hold data center companies criminally liable if they empower AI chatbots that could be harmful to children and backs a federal proposal to cut regulations to speed up power so new data centers don’t raise electricity costs.

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Farmers struggle to get basic services from depleted Agriculture Dept.

Mary and Zachariah Ben, farmers in New Mexico, believed they were on the verge of buying the property of their dreams last fall: 47 acres, with enough cropland to grow heirloom corn and a processing facility to expand their organic baby food business. But the low-interest loan they secured from the Agriculture Department to make the purchase in Aztec, N.M., was on hold for months, first during the government shutdown that lasted until mid-November and then as federal workers left the agency in droves. Only half a dozen loan specialists who could help process their claims remained in the entire state, the couple learned, leaving them in limbo indefinitely and the seller impatient to know whether the agreement would ever go through. Zachariah Ben, who along with his children is a member of the Navajo Nation, ultimately turned to private lenders instead, and the family absorbed more than $200,000 in interest as a result. “At least we got the land because we could have also lost that, and we would have if we had to wait” on the Agriculture Department, Mary Ben said.

The experience of the Bens, whose aim of providing organic and shelf-stable options for young children appears to align with some of the Trump administration’s stated goals, is not unique. Across the country, farmers and rural residents describe struggling to obtain the basic services the Agriculture Department is meant to offer, including loans and grants, technical assistance and financing for housing and utilities. Sharp attrition under the Trump administration, largely through voluntary resignations and dismissals by the Department of Government Efficiency, have left many of the Agriculture Department’s local offices with skeletal staffing — and, in some counties, with no one at all. The ripple effects of the Agriculture Department’s depleted work force illustrate how the Trump administration’s mission of shrinking the federal bureaucracy has undercut a competing priority: delivering for farmers, a core political constituency. Strained government resources also risk posing additional challenges for a farm economy that administration officials have described as “dire,” increasing barriers to entry for new farmers who need more assistance, impeding assistance to producers already facing tough economic conditions, and hampering basic services and government aid in the most remote and poorest places. “All these practical things that make the wheels go around in a community were facilitated by U.S.D.A., and it was with staff who knew how to navigate and had the trust of the local community,” Senator Peter Welch of Vermont, the top Democrat on the Senate subcommittee on rural development, said in an interview. “It’s something that was working, was working well, and was very cost-efficient. And now it is being demolished.”

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A relentless heat dome is expanding from Texas to California, challenging records

The states of Texas and Oklahoma are no strangers to extreme heat during summer. So when temperature records are being challenged in these notoriously hot places, it catches a meteorologist’s attention. On Monday, Dallas tied its hottest overall day on record, with an average temperature of 97.5 degrees Fahrenheit. It reached a blistering 109 degrees during the day after a low of just 86 degrees. By the time August is said and done, high temperatures in Dallas may end up reaching or exceeding 100 degrees on 27 out of a possible 31 days — just one day shy of the record, set in 2011. And the heat dome that has produced these extremes is showing no signs of letting up — at least not until early September. “Check on your Texan friends,” Dallas-based meteorologist Pete Delkus wrote Monday on X, while sharing a chart that showed triple-digit temperatures predicted for another two weeks straight.

In Oklahoma City, where it soared to a daily-record-tying 108 degrees on Monday, temperatures have reached the century mark on 18 days this month. The August record of 20 days, set in 2011, is within reach. Meanwhile, near Chickasha, Oklahoma, about 35 miles southwest of Oklahoma City, it reached 115 degrees, making it the regional epicenter of Monday’s heat. Through the end of August, about 98 million people across the United States — mostly from the Southwest to the southern Plains and Texas — could face major or extreme risks for heat-related impacts, according to NOAA’s HeatRisk. At those potentially dangerous heat levels, people without access to effective cooling or hydration are particularly vulnerable. In the days ahead, the core of the heat will shift farther west, becoming centered over New Mexico, Arizona and Southern California, where numerous temperature records are expected. Continuing a pattern seen with most heat domes this summer, nights will bring little or no relief from the day’s extreme heat — and the number of overnight low temperature records are expected to outnumber daytime high temperature records. “It will probably not drop below 70 degrees almost anywhere in Southern California at any point for several consecutive days,” said Swain, when discussing the potential for “record-shattering” overnight warmth.

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State Stories

Dallas to pay nearly $2 million on security for Republican midterm convention

Dallas will pay an estimated $1.8 million for police officers to provide security at the midterm Republican convention in September, city leaders were told Monday. Large conventions, not to mention ones that feature the president, generally require a police presence that can drive up overtime pay costs for the city, which is facing an overall $30 million budget shortfall. Kevin Oden, director of the Office of Emergency Management and Crisis Response, told the city council’s finance committee the Department of Transportation and Public Works is expected to spend $14,000 for the event. There’s no cost estimate yet for Dallas Fire-Rescue.

“Our focus between now and Sept. 9 is to continue doing that planning work everyday, make sure the city is prepared, whittle down our costs to get exactly what we know this thing’s going to be and then seek reimbursement or grant opportunities,” Oden said. Cost estimates are changing by the day as planning continues, Oden said. The estimate comes as overtime pay for Dallas police is projected to hit $2.7 million over budget for fiscal year 2026. Dallas police work to secure events whether they get reimbursed or not. For example, the city does get regular and overtime pay reimbursement for security when leaders of Congress are in town. That's not historically been the case for people protected by the Secret Service, Assistant Chief Mark Villarreal said during a city council briefing earlier this month. "As far as Secret Service protectees, never in the history have we ever received any type of reimbursement from the Secret Service," Villarreal said. At Monday's meeting, City Council member Chad West raised concerns with the costs related to the upcoming event. “I very much think we need to welcome this convention to the city just like we do all conventions,” West said. “But I do have real concerns on nonpayment given what has happened across the country for similar events.” The convention will take place at American Airlines Center on Sept. 9 and Sept. 10 — just a few months before midterm elections. Republicans hope to rally voters as they fight to hold onto their slim majority in Congress. But they face challenges. President Donald Trump’s approval rating is at 33%, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll. That will likely affect Trump’s ability to get votes for Republican Congress members during the Nov. 3 elections. The President’s party also historically loses seats in Congress during the midterms.

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Buc-ee’s CEO signals expansion shift away from blue states that ‘don’t appreciate’ chain

Buc-ee’s CEO suggested recently that the Texas-based travel center chain may be done looking into blue districts, saying some communities do not appreciate what the company brings while conservative states offer business-friendly and family-oriented values. Arch "Beaver" Aplin III, the company’s president and co-founder, made the comments during the grand opening of Buc-ee’s newest location in Benton, Arkansas on August 17. The chain is known for its expansive gas stations, famously clean restrooms and in-house food offerings. "We have a lot of opportunities. We're growing. We're building in a lot of places. But when you find a conservative business-friendly state with a phenomenal workforce, it makes a difference," Aplin said.

Aplin criticized states that he said do not appreciate what Buc-ee’s brings to their communities, suggesting the company would rather focus its expansion efforts elsewhere. "I'm starting to realize life's too short to try to build in places that people don't appreciate what you're bringing, versus a place like this where people do appreciate what you are building," he said. Conservative states typically promote business-friendly and family-oriented policies that align with Buc-ee’s values, Aplin said. "That leadership, that concept, that idea of conservative, business-friendly, family-oriented concept works so much better if it trickles down from the very leadership from the top at the governor's office, at the congressman, at senator, at the mayor, the representatives," he said. Aplin pointed to Benton as an example of the approach, saying the city’s business-friendly environment helped pave the way for Buc-ee’s newest location. "What we found when we got here into Benton was a business-friendly town," he said.

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Texas Gov Greg Abbott releases end-of-summer playlist, raises eyebrows

Around this time each year, there's often a debate over the "song of the summer." In 2026, Gov. Greg Abbott has thrown his hat in the ring. Abbott released an end-of-summer playlist on Friday, playing into the debate with the caption "Texas is the song of every season." The playlist features 16 songs with Texas-themed titles. The first is Ella Langley's smash-hit "Choosin' Texas," which is many people's "song of the summer" and has spent 19 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Beyond that, the selection includes a mix of modern hits and classics like George Strait's "Amarillo by Morning" and Marty Robbins' "El Paso."

It also includes North Texas artists like Fort Worth singer Leon Bridges, whose collaboration with Khruangbin "Texas Sun" made the cut alongside Dallas rapper BigXThaPlug's "Texas." The inclusion of BigX raised eyebrows on social media with several commenting to express skepticism that the governor listens to his music. "I’m 100% sure that Abbott is not jamming to Bigxthaplug but that’s ok," one commenter wrote. Some commenters shared songs they thought should have been on the list, while others suspected artificial intelligence was used to make it. "Hey AI make me list of songs that have Texas in the title so I can seem like common folk for election season," one commenter wrote. The playlist recalls the musical selections regularly released by former President Barack Obama since his final years in office. Abbott's summer playlist arrives in the midst of his re-election campaign for governor. The Republican is facing off against Democrat state Rep. Gina Hinojosa this fall. The Hinojosa campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Council Member Paige Ellis falls short of signatures needed to secure place on ballot

Austin City Council Member Paige Ellis’ petition to run for a third term was rejected by the city clerk, according to the city of Austin. The council member did not secure enough signatures. Austin City Council members can serve two consecutive terms. To run for a third, council members need to get a certain portion of eligible voters in their district to sign off. Those signatures are then filed with the clerk for verification. If the clerk finds there are enough valid signatures, the candidate is put on the ballot. In a statement provided to KXAN by Ellis’ campaign, she expressed gratitude to her team and constituents, while also making note of milestones during her tenure, such as the 2020 Active Mobility bond for improving sidewalks and bike lanes, as well as an effort to place a dog park in Circle C.

“Over the past six months, my campaign ran an exhaustive signature collection drive, where I personally knocked on thousands of doors, visiting all kinds of voters through all kinds of Texas weather,” Ellis’ statement to KXAN stated. “I feel so fortunate that our community has repeatedly and warmly welcomed me into their homes, our parks, our restaurants, and so many other places.” Ellis believed she had the necessary signatures from 5% of qualified voters in her district that would have moved her petition forward and kept her run for a third term alive. “Our campaign verified our petition against two voter files before submission, and our internal count showed a healthy cushion above the 3,044 signatures required,” the statement said. “Tonight, we have been informed by the City Clerk’s office that the petition fell 62 signatures short.” The campaign noted that Ellis respected and accepted the city clerk’s result, and would be working to understand what happened that lead to the number of signatures falling short of the minimum number needed. “On behalf of me and my entire team, it has been an honor to serve the people of Southwest Austin, and I look forward to continuing to connect with this city in new capacities, whatever those may be,” Ellis said in the statement.

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Patients face long-term consequences after JPS Health Network outage

A network outage due to detected “suspicious activity” at the John Peter Smith Hospital system lasted almost two weeks, and some patients are facing lasting consequences. JPS Health Network continued to operate under a “controlled network downtime” that started on Aug. 3, the hospital communicated through social media. While the health system’s hospital, clinics and other locations remained open, online services and phone lines were affected. Under the controlled network downtime, doctors, nurses and other staff used established manual procedures to provide care while technology systems were unavailable.

Many people on social media expressed frustration over not being able to access charting portals, scheduling, prescriptions and other critical care. Some also said the outage was affecting payroll for care providers. Other concerns reported on social media involved not being able to get prescribed critical medication without an original paper copy of the prescription. While the hospital did not directly communicate that, many community members said they learned that only after arriving at the pharmacy to receive their medications. JPS also takes care of inmates’ medical needs at the Tarrant County Jail. When asked about delays inmates might have faced during the outage, the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office said that is something JPS has to answer. It is unclear how much financial impact the outage had and the long-lasting impacts. While JPS’ core network was reported to be restored on Friday, Aug. 14, some social media users reported not being able to access online charts. JPS has said that patients should be able to log into MyChart as of Aug. 16.

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Texas screwworm outbreak: U.S. reopens border to Mexican cattle

As the U.S. begins reopening its southern border to cattle from Mexico, the flesh-eating parasite that caused the closure more than a year ago has not been eradicated — and there still isn’t an adequate supply of the sterile flies needed to stop it. The opening Monday of a cattle port in Arizona, an attempt by the Trump administration to reduce record-high consumer beef prices, comes as both the United States and Mexico are still fighting the spread of New World screwworm. “We have enough to slow it, not to eradicate it,” said Adm. Michael Schmoyer, director of the New World Screwworm Directorate, a unit within the U.S. Department of of Agriculture created to coordinate the federal response to the flesh-eating larvae that can infest and kill cattle and other animals.

The directorate’s challenge is simple math. During the last major outbreak in the mid-1960s, about 500 million sterile flies were released each week to prevent the screwworm fly from maintaining a self-sustaining population. Since the current outbreak began in early June with the first confirmed case in Zavala County, only about 700 million sterile flies had been released by Aug. 12, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. As of Sunday, the U.S. had 46 cases — all but one in Texas — with two cases active in Terrell and Val Verde counties. The last confirmed new case was reported Aug. 16, also in Texas. In Mexico, screwworm is still spreading, with 82 active cases in the state of Chihuahua as of Aug. 18. Monday’s reopening of a crossing in Douglas, Ariz., comes as the USDA says the spread has slowed enough to allow imports to the U.S. market, where consumers have seen beef prices jump 12% from a year ago. The price increases come as supply has declined because of a U.S. cattle herd that has been shrinking for five years and now is the smallest in decades.

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Tarrant County meeting arrests raise First Amendment concerns

Individual rights experts and political scientists are raising questions about the Tarrant County Commissioners Court decorum policy that led to the arrest of two people. Former state Rep. Lon Burnam of Fort Worth was carried out of the Aug. 4 court meeting by sheriff’s deputies after he picked up the microphone during his allotted one minute. EJ Carrion of Fort Worth was kicked out of the meeting for cursing and then arrested a week later on a warrant issued by the county. Notably, both had been kicked out of a Tarrant County Commissioners Court meeting once already this year. Both were released on a personal recognizance bond within a day of being booked into the county jail system. They are also facing criminal charges that could mean up to 18 months in jail and $6,000 in fines.

The charges are hindering proceedings by disorderly conduct, a Class A misdemeanor, and disrupting a meeting or procession, a Class B misdemeanor. Brennen VanderVeen, an attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said he believes there are unconstitutional provisions within the county’s decorum policy. The Philadelphia-based foundation was founded as a non-partisan group and has challenged both Democrats and Republicans on First Amendment issues across the country. The Tarrant County decorum policy prohibits personal attacks, impertinent, profane, obscene, or slanderous remarks as well as threatening, disruptive or unruly behavior. Leah Nesbitt, a spokesperson for County Judge Tim O’Hare, said the policy exists to allow as many voices as possible to be heard at meetings in an orderly manner. She pointed to the fact that every large county in Texas has a decorum policy, and many of them are stricter than Tarrant County’s. “These rules do not silence passionate or critical voices. Maintaining order is necessary to serve all constituents efficiently and effectively,” Nesbitt said.

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Wayne Dolcefino returns to Houston radio on KSEV

Former investigative reporter and media consultant Wayne Dolcefino is returning to his radio roots with a new morning role on conservative talk station KSEV-AM (700). The longtime television reporter will join radio host Craig Collins weekdays from 7 to 9 a.m. to talk about politics, culture and Texas news, according to an Aug. 18 announcement from the station owned by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

The new program, "KSEV Mornings with Craig Collins and Wayne Dolcefino," will replace Chris Salcedo's morning show as Salcedo leaves the station after 14 years. For Dolcefino, the role marks a return to radio after a career that made him one of Houston's best-known investigative reporters and, more recently, a media and political consultant. "I'm doing this because I enjoy doing it," Dolcefino said. "There's a lot of things I want to get off my chest, and you never make money in radio. You just do it because you like talking to folks, so that's what I'm doing." Dolcefino started his journalism career in radio after leaving the University of Texas to take a full-time job at a radio station in Austin. He later moved to Houston to work at KTRH-AM (740). The award-winning journalist is best known for his nearly 27 years at ABC13, where he covered local corruption and public spending. During his broadcasting career, Dolcefino received 30 Emmy Awards. Dolcefino said he returned to radio in recent years by filling in on Salcedo's KSEV morning show. Dolcefino said he hopes to talk more about politics on the conservative show, as well as "the change that's happening in Texas, and how we fight it." "I'm doing it to because I think it's trying to use whatever voice I have, personality, to show people that they've got they've got an important choice to make about where we're going," Dolcefino said. "I call it a fun thing because I started in radio," Dolcefino said. "That was kind of my first love. Still love it actually."

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Evan Mintz: Talarico is trying to win moderate voters. Why isn’t Paxton?

(Evan Mintz is the editor of opinion and community engagement for the Houston Chronicle.) The impossible happened last week in Texas politics, or at least the improbable: The Cook Political Report rated the Senate race between Democratic state Rep. James Talarico and Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton as a toss-up. Texas Republicans have won every statewide race since 1994, so, much like Cabo Verde in the World Cup, even a tie can feel like a win to the long-suffering Democrats. Cook's assessment of the race relies on polls that show the candidates running tied, but it also points to Paxton’s “personal and ethical vulnerabilities.” Not many GOP candidates were impeached by their fellow Republicans due to rampant corruption.

At the same time, Cook's Jessica Taylor notes that Talarico can be “appealing to disaffected Republicans.” That’s not by accident. The “soft-spoken Seminary student,” as Taylor describes him, has made earnest efforts to distinguish himself from the national Democratic brand, reach across the aisle and expand his electoral coalition. For example, Talarico has been criticizing the Biden administration’s failure to secure the border since before the primary election. “If we don't keep people safe, the government has failed in its most basic function,” he told the Houston Chronicle editorial board at the time. Putting space between himself and the unpopular former president may have been a risky gambit during the partisan primary, but it’s paying off in the general election. Talarico even went out of his way to applaud President Trump for supporting a gas tax holiday to deal with high prices at the pump — a bad policy, but smart politics for a Democrat in a red state. To put it bluntly, Talarico has tried very hard to present himself as the more moderate choice in this race. It has been working. Polls regularly show that Talarico has an overwhelming advantage with independent voters. So what about Paxton? For decades, Texas Republicans just had to show up to win a statewide race in November. The electoral math was easy — Texas had more Republican voters than Democratic. But with a tight race, Paxton might benefit from trying to moderate on the issues and expand his coalition beyond the hard-right base that delivered his primary victory over Cornyn.

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Rep. Al Green wants to impeach Trump — again

Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas is trying to impeach President Donald Trump, even though the lame-duck lawmaker knows he doesn’t have the votes. Green, who lost his primary runoff in May, cited immigration agents’ fatal shootings of Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in his 27-page resolution to impeach the president for high crimes and misdemeanors. “He is abusing the powers of the presidency by operating United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as his vicious, quota-driven, unaccountable paramilitary police forces, transgressing with anonymity and secrecy, assaulting people, committing and covering up unjustified killings of civilians,” Green’s articles of impeachment state.

Green has attempted to impeach Trump multiple times in both of the president’s terms, including three times last year for what the congressman said was Trump undermining judicial independence, over the war with Iran and for accusing several Democratic lawmakers of behavior the president said was punishable by death. The White House scoffed at Green’s attempt. “The brave men and women of ICE and CBP put their lives on the line to arrest murderers, rapists, pedophiles, gang members, and terrorists,” said White House spokesperson Lauren Bis, “Al Green should be thanking President Trump and our law enforcement for delivering the largest decrease in violent crime in American history.” The House impeached Trump twice in his first term: in 2019 for withholding military aid for Ukraine and in 2021 after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The Senate voted to acquit him both times. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said at a CNBC summit in June that impeaching Trump wasn’t a focus for his party if Democrats take the majority after the midterms.

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Sarah Silva: I'm a New Mexico lawmaker. Project Jupiter developers should leave

(Sarah Silva, a Democrat, represents District 53 in the New Mexico House of Representatives, which includes Chaparral, the east side of Las Cruces and White Sands Missile Range.) I’m serious. As an early supporter of this project because of the jobs and infrastructure it promised, I’m fed up with the dishonesty, broken promises and threats. The final straw for me is Oracle’s recent suggestion that it may try to connect Project Jupiter to the El Paso Electric grid. A company official first suggested this publicly in June and spun it as a good thing for us. (It is not). Then, last month at a meeting of the Doña Ana County Board of Commissioners, Oracle Executive Vice President Mahesh Thiagarajan was asked what would happen if the state rejected Project Jupiter’s proposal to power its data centers with fuel cells. I’ve formally opposed that plan because it would emit more than 10 million tons of greenhouse gases every year. That is too much.

Thiagarajan said the grid was the only other option. When one county commissioner pushed back, Thiagarajan said there is no other way to power the data centers. If neither was acceptable, he suggested the developers might abandon the project. That came days after I met with Thiagarajan and asked him to come up with a new power plan that includes renewable energy. He agreed to consider it. Instead of getting back to me, he delivered his ultimatum to the county commission. Connecting to the grid would break a promise that Oracle and Stack Infrastructure, the primary developers of Project Jupiter, promote on the project’s website: “Powered by its own independent energy system, Project Jupiter will protect local ratepayers,” the pledge states. I believe connecting to the grid would also violate Project Jupiter’s legal agreements with the county. To protect you from paying higher utility rates, county commissioners included language requiring Project Jupiter to “power itself with an onsite microgrid” instead of connecting to El Paso Electric’s system so that it “will not impact existing customers’ power reliability or costs.” Connecting to our grid creates the unacceptable risk that you will end up paying for the electricity to run data centers for billionaires.

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Wife of Army sergeant at Fort Bliss is deported to Honduras

The wife of an active-duty U.S. soldier was deported Monday to her native Honduras, according to her family and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Cristy Maryori Villafranca-Trejo is at least the seventh spouse or parent of an active-duty U.S. military service member to be deported under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. The Associated Press has found more than 50 cases in which immediate family members of U.S. troops were placed in federal immigration detention after the Trump administration rolled back protections for military families. In some instances, DHS has released military spouses following media attention and advocacy by congressional leaders. Villafranca-Trejo’s husband, Army Sgt. Hedar Leonel Turcios Juarez, said he has been struggling to manage his military duties since she was detained July 11 outside a Walmart near Fort Bliss, Texas, where he is stationed.

Since then, he’s had to care for their 6-year-old daughter without his wife’s help. Instead of training in the mornings, he takes his daughter to first grade, and he said he has already had to postpone a planned assignment at another base. “I don’t know if I will be able to continue with this,” Turcios Juarez told AP of his Army career. “I have to make a plan to make sure I can still fulfill my military responsibilities — but also take care of my family.” DHS confirmed Villafranca-Trejo’s deportation, saying she had “received due process.” Villafranca-Trejo, who has no known criminal record and entered the U.S. in 2016 at age 18, was issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge in 2017 after failing to appear at a hearing, according to DHS. Villafranca-Trejo’s husband said she had not received a notice for the hearing she missed and did not realize she had been ordered deported until they went to apply for her green card after marrying in 2022. Originally from Honduras, Turcios Juarez became a U.S. citizen in 2024 after enlisting two years earlier.

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5-year-old boy and father will be deported after ICE arrest on way to Austin soccer game

Victor Martinez Nieto, the father of 5-year-old Liam Tadeo, has chosen to be deported to Mexico with his son, rather than risk the child being separated from his family by immigration officials, according to their lawyer. The father and son were pulled over and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in North Austin on Aug. 16, while on their way to a children's Sunday soccer game. The pair’s detention was captured on video. It sparked calls from Congressman Greg Casar, D-Austin, and others for Liam’s release and the closure of the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, where the two have been since their arrest. But Martinez Nieto’s lawyer, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, says her client has decided to return to Mexico with Liam, rather than risk losing custody of his son.

“Victor, facing the possibility that he will be separated from Liam, ... is deciding to depart voluntarily with his son because the alternative is that Liam could be placed into [Office of Refugee Resettlement] custody as an unaccompanied child,” she said. “Children can be held in this system for months or even years at a time. It's a really bad experience for children and the family is just not willing to risk Liam being held alone,” she said. In a public statement shared with KXAN News last week, the Department of Homeland Security said, “Parents have a choice if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates. This is consistent with past administrations’ immigration enforcement." Lincoln-Goldfinch says that Liam’s family in Austin, including his mother, was not given the option of having Liam released into their custody. She said Liam’s mother, who lives in Austin, is figuring out how to reunite with her son. “In a heartbeat, she lost both her husband and her child. And her number one main priority is her son and his well being,” Lincoln-Goldfinch said. KUT News has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment on these developments.

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Trump's border wall may bring down a 110-year-old church in West Texas,

Out in Far West Texas, a heavy bronze bell once tolled, calling congregants from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border to worship at a small adobe church. The bell and the Catholic church in Ruidosa are hallmarks of an era when Mexican and American border communities lived as one. But nearly three generations ago, parishioners moved away from the tiny town. One of the church’s twin towers toppled. The bell disappeared. Local volunteers have begun restoring the church, El Corazón Sagrado de la Iglesia de Jesús. They view it as one of the last vestiges of a shared history along a southwestern landscape that is as Indigenous, Spanish and Mexican as it is American. Fortifying its walls and twin towers means that perhaps the bell could ring again.

Now their work faces a new danger: President Trump’s border wall. The church is one of dozens of historical sites across the Southwest threatened by the construction. In Arizona, portions of a 1,000-year-old etching in the earth have been bulldozed. In Texas, work is endangering ancient cave murals and landmarks on the Underground Railroad. “If you value a people’s worth and contributions, then you preserve their history in textbooks and curriculums,” the historian Trinidad Gonzales said. “You would preserve these physical markers.” Trump administration officials say the wall will go up yards away from the church and help deter violent drug traffickers in one of the most remote parts of the Chihuahuan desert. Preservationists, though, warn that the relentless vibrations of the construction threaten the church’s fragile structural integrity. To historians and border residents, the administration’s construction plans, alongside a campaign to deport thousands of immigrants, amount to uprooting centuries of Mexican and Latino American history and presence. The 110-year journey of the church and its bell is a story of displacement and migration, of being lost and improbably found, and of artists, historians and community residents who have gone to great lengths to bake and haul adobe bricks, bail the bell out of a Marfa jail and reclaim a piece of lost past.

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National Stories

Trump-backed candidates have lost 10 primaries. South Carolina is the next test.

The next big test of President Donald Trump’s now-strained endorsement power takes place Tuesday in South Carolina, where Republicans are voting in a runoff to elect a Senate nominee after the sudden death of Lindsey Graham. Trump backed Sen. Darline Graham, the late senator’s sister, for a full six-year term after the state’s GOP governor appointed her to temporarily fill the role shortly after Graham’s death last month. She faces Rep. Ralph Norman, a longtime conservative firebrand in the state and a House Freedom Caucus member whose campaign has shown signs of momentum despite the president’s support for Graham.

Unlike in the state’s gubernatorial primary in June — when Trump initially endorsed Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, who ultimately failed to gain traction with a majority of GOP voters — this time, the president is motivated to get his candidate over the finish line. He wants to mitigate his recent shaky endorsement record after his candidates suffered losses in at least 10 primary races this year, including high-profile defeats in Iowa, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida and Wyoming. “I think she’s great. I asked her to do it. I got her into this whole thing,” Trump said Monday night during a tele-rally for Graham, letting out a small chuckle. “I have to make sure she gets in, because there will be nobody better.” In June, Trump issued a last-minute dual endorsement of both Evette and her runoff opponent, Attorney General Alan Wilson, who won the primary election. Trump did not visit South Carolina to try to boost Evette. This time, Trump did visit the state, traveling on Friday to campaign in a primary for a seat that is widely expected to remain safely red this fall. His aligned super PAC, MAGA Inc., also doled out more than $825,000 over the weekend for get-out-the vote calls and texts on Graham’s behalf — marking the first time this year his political operation has deployed its large reserves of cash. The travel and spending reflected the Trump team’s concern about notching a win in a primary runoff they expected would be close.

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A third of web pages published since ChatGPT launched were written by AI, study finds

Over one-third of web pages published after the release of ChatGPT show signs of being written by AI, according to a new study from Pew Research released on Thursday. The report corroborates other studies that detail how much of the web’s newer web pages are now either written by or “substantially edited” by AI, the firm says. It also arrives shortly after internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare reported that bot web traffic had overtaken human web traffic — a milestone that was reached sooner than the company had estimated. Pew’s data, however, is focused not on who or what is browsing the web, but on what is being browsed. And apparently, much of it is bots reading web pages written by other bots.

To compile the report, Pew said it used the Common Crawl web archive to collect nearly half a million English-language web pages from the past five or so years, starting a couple of years before ChatGPT’s November 2022 release. Pew then used Open Pangram’s technology to detect how many were likely written or heavily edited by AI. In a random sample of 10,000 web pages collected in July 2026, around 10% showed “significant signs of AI authorship,” Pew said. However, Pew pointed out that a random sample like this would inevitably include older web pages — ones published before AI writing tools even existed, and therefore couldn’t have been AI written. To get a better sense of how much of the web is now being written by AI, Pew filtered out the older web pages and focused only on those published after the release of ChatGPT. In this same snapshot with the older pages removed, signs of AI authorship were found in over one-third (35%) of the pages. Drilling down into domains themselves, Pew found that URLs with a .com domain showed signs of AI authorship at around 10x the rate of a .edu or .gov domain (both of which were around 1% AI authored). In addition, .org domains had only a 4.6% rate of AI authorship. Of course, this analysis is not perfect. Pangram, like other AI-detection tools, can misclassify pages as AI written when they weren’t. But at scale, the data is likely at least directionally correct. In addition, Pew found that other supposed tells of AI authorship had also increased over the years, like the use of em dashes, Oxford commas, and phrasing like “it’s not X, it’s Y,” among other things.

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Paramount-WB Deal could cost LA 4,500 film and TV jobs and $2.8 billion, study finds

The Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger could result in the loss of nearly 4,500 film and TV jobs in Los Angeles County over the next three years when the two companies combine their operations, according to a new analysis by CVL Economics and the Department of Economic Opportunity exclusively obtained by TheWrap. The report also estimates that a total of 10,360 “job years” could be at risk, including 2,661 indirect jobs at small businesses that support production — such as prop houses, printers, transportation companies and other vendors — and 3,204 induced jobs that exist because film and TV workers spend money in the local economy — including restaurants, retailers and service providers. A “job year” is defined as one job sustained for one year and measures the total volume of work that could disappear over time. For example, one job lasting three years equals three job years.

Overall, the economic impact of losing these jobs would be $1.26 billion in wages, $2.78 billion in economic value, $4.06 billion in total business output and $547 million in tax revenue, including $78.6 million in local taxes — most of which (63%) comes from property taxes. Los Angeles County’s creative economy supports more than 312,000 workers, including approximately 171,155 entertainment sector jobs. The direct jobs at risk account for nearly 9% of the 52,016 film and TV jobs California has already lost since 2022 — and almost all those losses (99.6%) occurred in Los Angeles County. CVL and DEO said the losses would occur due to slate consolidation that would result in fewer buyers and fewer greenlights and reduce the overall number of unscripted/talk shows and related opportunities for Los Angeles–based crews. They also warned that about 895 creators hold exclusive deals with the two companies and that if development shrinks, these creators and their crews will lose work. If the two companies merge, the decisions they make about where to film their shows could dramatically affect how much production stays in California, CVL and DEO said. The high cost of living in L.A. County and California, combined with stronger incentives out of state and abroad, also contribute to work shifting out of the state and country.

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Tornado Alley’s on the move and creating new risk concerns, modeler says

The peak of tornado season may be behind us, but the eastward expansion of what has been traditionally known as Tornado Alley into more populated areas may continue raising insurance risk for some time. Record tornado activity in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin this year drove elevated claims and increasing risk because of population exposure. Increased losses in new areas weren’t from raw tornado counts across the U.S., but from increased risk exposure, according to one industry catastrophe modeler. Illinois led all states in tornado activity in this year, with 220 confirmed tornadoes through the end of July. Indiana and Wisconsin also set record-high numbers.

Weather experts say the tornado alley shift — beyond areas like Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas — is due to a warming climate that helps transport warmer and more-humid air farther north and east than in the past. Illinois saw its third distinct spike in five years, and the year’s volume already exceeds 2024 and 2025 combined, with average severity up by a factor of four since 2022, according to Verisk. The 2026 Illinois surge has been concentrated, driven mainly by occurrences in June and July, and by strikes in Cook, Kankakee and Coles counties. Kankakee saw unusually high severity with a $104,000 average estimate, according to Verisk data. Wisconsin experienced an even sharper spike, up 672% year-over-year, but that spike is due largely to a single concentrated event in Winnebago County in July the data show. “The Tornado Alley’s kind of expanding or shifting a bit eastward, and so I think as we think about that from an insurance perspective and think about ‘What does that mean for insurers,’ I think one of the largest concerns is there’s a lot more population as you move eastward,” said Tory Farney, vice president of Verisk Weather Solutions. Their data show the numbers of tornadoes aren’t going up, but the losses have tended to be worse when they strike.

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White House crops Natalie Harp out of Grand Prix content

As we’ve learned in recent weeks, Natalie Harp rarely leaves the president’s side, and Sunday’s Freedom 250 Grand Prix was no exception. What was odd was that even though Harp was clearly among the president’s entourage, she was mostly invisible in the White House social media coverage of the race. The administration has been trying to do damage control as public scrutiny over the relationship between the president and Harp intensifies, and it seems that not even an appearance by the reclusive first lady or mountains of media intrigue can convince her to leave his side for any length of time.

In broadcasts of the event, Harp was clearly visible among Trump’s guests. In the president’s suite she was spotted standing behind and to the right of Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, who has reportedly found herself at odds with Harp over her increasingly controversial relationship with her husband. Shocking. Someone in the press office, it seems, is trying to lower the temperature. A clip of Trump waving the starting flag for the IndyCar race held on the National Mall on Sunday was oddly cropped. Half of the Fox Sports logo was missing, the first lady had an arm almost entirely cut out of the frame. Zoom out and the full picture shows Harp hovering just beyond the first lady’s shoulder. Cameras also captured the first lady standing up and leaving her suite shortly after Harp arrived and approached the president, lingering behind him as he spoke to another guest. Harp, a 35 year aide to the president, has over the last few years become one of the most powerful — if least known — figures within Trump’s inner circle. She shares control of his social media, is his confidant and informant, travels with him virtually everywhere, and acts as a gatekeeper for his time and attention. Her status as a background character in the attention-hungry MAGA universe ended this summer, as reports emerged of the deep — passionate to the point of concern — devotion that she holds for the president. ‘Last week, The Daily Beast and Michael Wolff published two letters written by Harp and reportedly left in the president’s personal quarters — alarming the Secret Service.

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Iran vows to retaliate after US widens sanctions

Iran pledged to fight back against expanded U.S. sanctions aimed at isolating its economy, expressing confidence that major trading partners would resist Washington's pressure campaign. Almost six ?months into a conflict the U.S. has struggled to resolve, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveiled the measures on Monday but stopped short of the most punishing sanctions. While he said countries that continued trading with Iran risked being forced out of the dollar-based financial system, he declined to give a timeline or identify which may be targeted, saying he would give them time to comply with the new directive.

"Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?" he said when asked why the ?measures had not gone further. The Treasury Department did announce new sanctions on 60 individuals, entities and vessels, but the list did not feature any of the Chinese financial institutions suspected of facilitating ?Iran's oil trade. "We want to make clear here today that no one is above the reach of U.S. sanctions," Bessent said in response to a question ?about Chinese banks. China has been the biggest buyer of Iranian oil for several years, although the U.S. blockade of Iran's ports has cut Iranian oil flows to China since Washington renewed it in mid-July. Experts say Washington is ?wary of Chinese retaliation for any sanctions on its banks ahead of expected talks next month between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, with any curbs on China's exports of critical minerals especially sensitive. China ?said on Tuesday that its cooperation with Iran is conducted within the framework of international law and should not be interfered with or disrupted. Oil prices fell for a second day as traders brushed off the impact of the sanctions, although market participants remained wary of Iran's continued ability to disrupt shipping.

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GLP-1 boom could reshape restaurant bars as diners cut back on alcohol

The rise of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs could be changing more than what Americans put on their plates, as restaurants increasingly look to wellness drinks and other alternatives to traditional alcoholic beverages. The National Restaurant Association's new 2026 Restaurant Beverage Trends report found growing interest in a wider range of drink choices, particularly among younger consumers, as restaurants experiment with everything from wellness and energy drinks to smoothies, lemonades and alcohol-free cocktails. Chad Moutray, chief economist at the Washington, D.C.-based National Restaurant Association, told Fox News Digital that the growing use of GLP-1 medications is one of several health trends restaurant operators are watching.

The report, which was conducted by the National Restaurant Association and is based on surveys of consumers and restaurant operators across the country, found that health is already influencing some Americans' decisions about alcohol. Among adults surveyed who said they don't drink alcohol, 25% cited health reasons. That figure climbed to 34% among Gen Z nondrinkers. Several trends are converging as younger consumers become more health-conscious and GLP-1 medications become more widely used, Moutray said. "I think you're seeing a lot younger folks who are, in general, wanting to be healthier. You have the Make America Healthy Again movement, which is also driving some of this trend," he said. "You have people drinking energy drinks and health drinks and all those things. And then you add to that the GLP-1 notion, where if you're taking one of those drugs and your appetite is more suppressed, you're not going to drink as much alcohol." Restaurants are already preparing to broaden their drink selections.

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Democrats hash out trans rights message in Massachusetts debate

Democrats have another chance to test their messaging about transgender rights that the party has struggled to make plain. Two Democrats vying for the party’s Massachusetts Senate seat will face off Thursday in their final debate before the state’s Sept. 1 primary. Laws banning transgender women from participating in female sports surfaced as a key difference between Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Seth Moulton in their debate earlier this month and led to a contentious exchange. The events represent one of few opportunities for national Democrats to publicly debate an issue Republicans have spent tens of millions of dollars attacking their support in the past several election cycles.

Markey is looking to question Moulton’s commitment to trans rights given his post-2024 election stance that Democrats’ support of trans athletes was out of touch with voters. Moulton at the time cited not wanting his daughters “getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete.” Gallup polling after that election found that 69 percent of U.S. adults — including about four in 10 Democrats — believe that transgender athletes should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth sex. Still, Moulton in the Aug. 3 debate apologized for those comments and tried to defend his LGBTQ+ record. Lanae Erickson, senior vice president at center-left think tank Third Way, said part of the reason Republicans’ attacks have landed so well is “because Democrats were afraid to talk about” it. “At this point, every person in America has a viewpoint on transgender participation in sports. It’s incumbent on Democrats to be able to speak about this issue authentically and not evade it,” Erickson said. “In a way that opposes blanket bans, but leaves room for people to have questions about the rules.”

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Copyright September 01, 2026, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved