Lead Stories

As Trump faces down the midterms, a grim mood takes over the White House

President Trump’s private dining room, located just off the Oval Office, is where he goes to watch television, make phone calls and sift through stacks of printed-out news articles and documents that eat up most of the space. A spot has been cleared for Natalie Harp, a devoted aide who now works out of that room when she is not seated behind the president at his desk. Elsewhere, Bill Pulte, a top federal housing official and purveyor of A.I.-generated images and memes that make their way to the president’s social media feed, spends some of his time making posters. He recently made one of Senator Jon Husted of Ohio, a Republican whose backside Mr. Trump has admired, for the president to display while riding aboard Air Force One. Amid the loyalists, news clippings, poster boards and pieces of art made by his fans is an increasingly unpredictable president staring down the possibility that the Republican Party could lose both chambers of Congress in next week’s elections.

Many G.O.P. candidates in tight races have tried to distance themselves from Mr. Trump’s policies, his behavior and the widespread allegations of self-dealing in his administration. Behind the scenes, some political advisers and outside Republican groups have warned the president’s aides that Mr. Trump could do more harm than good by holding rallies in battleground states with uncomfortably close races, according to people with knowledge of the conversations. Mr. Trump receives a steady stream of updates from loyalists like Natalie Harp and Bill Pulte. Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times But the president, under pressure and angry with naysayers, has dismissed polls that reflect his unpopularity, and has raged against unflattering stories that plunge him into a dark mood. Determined to win by turning the midterm season into a referendum on himself, he is set to headline rallies around the country all week, including in Ohio on Wednesday. Mr. Trump remains convinced that his dominant place in the Republican Party is enough to mitigate a tough political climate. But a grim mood has set in around the White House, which has been rocked by turnover, tension among internal factions and anxiety over what happens should Republicans lose legislative control in Washington, according to 16 current and former administration officials and allies of Mr. Trump’s, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

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The money behind data center red tape

More than two months into Gov. Greg Abbott’s audit on data center approvals around Texas, millions of dollars and gigawatts of power demand are still tied up in red tape. In early August, Abbott directed the Electric Reliability Council of Texas Inc. and the Public Utility Council of Texas to conduct the audit against large loads advancing through ERCOT’s new interconnection process, later expanding the audit to the Texas Water Development Board and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The audit aims to reduce the impacts on local communities, such as strains on water and transmission infrastructure and increases in electricity prices for residents. But it’s still unclear how the PUCT will ensure the cost of future transmission upgrades aren’t passed on to the consumer.

"The commission is developing new rules related to how large-load projects would pay for the transmission infrastructure needed to serve their facilities. These adopted and proposed rules will protect customers from paying for large-load interconnection and improve grid planning. ... The PUCT expects final consideration of the proposed rules by the end of 2026," a spokesperson for the PUCT told the Houston Business Journal. Ken Medlock, senior director of the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University, told the HBJ that the audit may be partly for show, given that a lot of what was required in the audit was already a part of the siting and permitting process for the data centers. “I think a lot of this is just part of the political cycle … it wasn't really adding a lot. It was just making it more visible to the general public, which has a very specific political objective,” Medlock said. “I am sure six or seven months from now there will be another issue that grabs the general public's eye, and we will not be anywhere close to having all the data centers built that are going to get built. And who knows? This may actually start to dissipate right after the elections in early November.” The audit specifically targets the Batch Zero process, ERCOT’s new interconnection approval process that studies and approves new demand loads in groups rather than individually.

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Texas county Republicans sue to block election certification unless every ballot is hand counted

A Texas county Republican Party is asking a federal court to stop certification of the state’s upcoming election results unless officials first hand count every paper ballot in the state. The extraordinary request rests on speculative claims about artificial intelligence, foreign-made voting machine components and the possibility of undetected hacking. The Potter County Republican Party and its chairman, Daniel Rogers, filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against Potter County Elections Administrator Christy Benge seeking to prevent certification of the Nov. 3 election until officials conduct a hand count of every paper ballot cast in every Texas precinct. The case was filed in the Amarillo Division of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, where it is assigned to U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee who has presided over a series of high-profile conservative legal challenges.

Kacsmaryk was confirmed to the federal bench in 2019. His Amarillo courtroom has drawn scrutiny over judge shopping because the division has historically allowed litigants filing there to reliably land before Kacsmaryk. The lawsuit does not allege that voting machines in Potter County — or anywhere else in Texas — have actually changed votes. In fact, the plaintiffs explicitly concede that they are not claiming any previous Potter County election was altered or inaccurately reported. Instead, the 27-page complaint argues that the possibility of hacking, software errors and manipulation by increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence makes Texas’ existing election safeguards constitutionally inadequate. The plaintiffs want the court to require a 100% statewide hand count before results for federal races can be certified. The lawsuit attempts to turn a case against one county official into a statewide challenge by asking the court to certify a class of Texas county election administrators, with Benge serving as their representative.

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The Hispanic voters who turned on Trump and put Texas in play

Abad Morales, who owns a construction company here in South Texas, was swayed by President Trump’s 2024 campaign question: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” Two years later, he is asking himself the same question—and now, he says, life has only gotten worse. Morales is having a harder time finding workers for his construction jobs and says the cost of everything continues to rise. His company won’t be able to host an annual toy drive this year because he has opted instead to use the money to help friends and local families who have been deported. His frustration with Trump has pushed him deeper into politics. Once largely disengaged, Morales is now running for the city commission in Weslaco and has become a Democratic precinct chair. By his count, he has helped register more than 350 voters this year.

“I’m done. I don’t think it’s right what he’s doing at all,” Morales, 36 years old, said of Trump. “We need a change. It’s time to put our foot down and make a change.” As Texans head to the polls to decide some of the nation’s most closely watched races, Latino voters—who helped propel Trump’s return to the White House in 2024—once again could play a decisive role, this time in determining whether Democrats win majorities in the House and Senate. ?A recent Wall Street Journal poll found a majority of Latino voters picking a Democrat for Congress over a Republican, 53% to 35%. On Trump’s job approval among Latinos, only 26% approve while 68% disapprove—significantly lower than his approval of 37% with voters overall, the poll found. In 2024, Trump flipped all four counties in the Rio Grande Valley, a predominantly Latino region that had long been a Democratic stronghold in Texas but had shifted rightward in recent elections. At the time, he appealed to Hispanic voters, especially men, with promises to lower the cost of living and tighten border security and immigration enforcement. Now, signs of growing disenchantment with Trump over his handling of the economy and his administration’s immigration crackdown suggest the gains are unraveling.

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State Stories

New report finds childcare remains biggest barrier to economic opportunity for Texas women

A new report on Texas women’s economic well-being finds little progress in being made and access to affordable childcare is one of the biggest obstacles. The Texas Women’s Foundation has been tracking women’s economic indicators for more than a decade. Its latest report finds that women working full-time now earn, on average, 81 cents for every dollar earned by men, down from 83 cents in the previous report. The gap is wider for Black and Latina women. “I would say there’s not been a lot of forward progress,” said Karen Hughes White, president and CEO of the Texas Women’s Foundation. The new research, conducted in partnership with the policy group Every Texan, examines 12 indicators of women’s economic opportunity across 252 of the state’s 254 counties, including employment, education, health care and childcare. (Loving and Kennedy Counties were excluded because of insufficient data.)

The stakes are growing: According to the report, women currently make up 46% of the Texas workforce, but White said they could become the majority by 2040. And, the research shows childcare stands out as the biggest challenge. Half of Texans live in what’s considered a childcare desert. That’s an area with at least three children for every available licensed childcare spot. For families who can find care, affordability is another hurdle. The average cost of center-based infant care in Texas is nearly $12,000 a year. White said that’s roughly the cost of a year of tuition at a public university. “It forces, especially women, to make these untenable decisions about going to work to support their family or being able to afford childcare,” she said. She said women often end up reducing their hours or leaving the workforce altogether. The report comes as Texas lawmakers and state leaders consider ways to address the childcare crisis ahead of the legislative session in January. White said expanding paid parental leave and increasing enrollment in public pre-K could help. But she cautioned that expanding public pre-K can also put financial pressure on private childcare centers, which depend on revenue from older children to help offset the higher cost of infant care. She said policymakers also need to look at what they’ve already tried to see what’s working and what isn’t. “Oftentimes, we’ll have policy changes. We’ll have funding increases. We’ll have stronger participation by philanthropy,” White said. “But we don’t do a good job, in my opinion, of coming back around the table together … to assess what we solved for and where we may have created some unintended consequences.”

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Texas faces growing flood threat as Tropical Storm Vance sends moisture north

Moisture from Tropical Storm Vance will stream north into Texas, bringing days of tropical downpours and an increased flood threat to parts of the Lone Star State. Rain will move into southwestern Texas Thursday before expanding northward into the northern part of the state later in the day. Repeated rounds of showers and thunderstorms will produce widespread rainfall totals of 1 to 2 inches, with isolated amounts reaching up to 3 inches.

A Level 2 out of 4 flash flood threat is in place from Del Rio to Lubbock on Thursday, with Flood Watches already issued for parts of West Texas. This latest threat comes after Texas and much of the Southwest endured multiple rounds of devastating flooding this year as Pacific moisture repeatedly surged inland, fueled in part by the brewing Super El Niño and an active Pacific basin. Rain will continue spreading north across much of West and Central Texas on Friday before reaching parts of Oklahoma. A Level 1 out of 4 flash flood threat stretches from northern Oklahoma, and southward across Central and West Texas, including Oklahoma City, San Antonio and Fort Worth. For Texans soaked earlier in the week, the spooky weather leading up to Halloween shouldn’t ruin all trick-or-treating plans. By Friday night into Saturday morning, moisture will begin to wane as it shifts north, limiting rainfall to a few light showers across parts of the Midwest.

Read this article at Fox Weather - Subscribers Only

Texas says 9 islands in Rio Grande belong to state, not Mexico

The State of Texas on Tuesday declared that nine river islands in the middle of the Rio Grande belong to the state, not to Mexico. For years, river islands have provided what officials says are safe havens for cartels that smuggle drugs and migrants into the U.S. from Mexico, giving them a place to hide and wait out border patrols in those areas. A couple years ago, however, the Texas General Land Office declared some islands a part of the state and cleared them of vegetation. Some islands have had military troops land on them recently, and some are also used as border security staging zones.

“For years, the ownership of these islands has been uncertain, limiting the ability to ensure they are properly monitored and protected,” Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham said. “Now that the GLO has confirmed these nine islands belong to the State of Texas, we are notifying our law enforcement partners so that they can gain access to these state-owned properties to patrol, inspect and clear them of any illegal activity they may encounter, consistent with the law. Texas land will never become a safe haven for cartels, human traffickers, smugglers, or other criminal organizations.” The nine islands are in South Texas and span from Laredo to McAllen, the GLO says. Buckingham last month told Border Report that the Texas Department of Public Safety requested that they map the ownership of these islands in the Rion Grande. In 2023, Buckingham declared Fronton Island off Starr County as part of the state. Last year, her office declared Roma and Bear islands, also in Starr County, also as part of the Lone Star State. Fronton Island was cleared and used by Operation Lone Star, Texas’ border security operation during the Biden administration. Roma Island was cleared in March, and Chinook helicopters and hundreds of military have recently landed on the island as part of Operation Unified Resolve.

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Dallas VC firm Disruptive raises record $10 billion fund, largest in Texas history

Venture capital firm Disruptive has raised $10 billion for its first flagship fund, setting a record for the largest venture capital investment fund ever raised in Texas. The Dallas-based firm, which operates legally as Disruptive Technology Advisers LLC, announced the raise of its so-called "megafund" on Oct. 27. The announcement comes just a couple of weeks after Dallas Business Journal and other media reported Disruptive had already secured roughly $7.5 billion in commitments toward the $10 billion target. Disruptive plans to deploy the capital in about 10 late-stage companies, with investments of up to $1 billion apiece. The firm is known for backing high-profile artificial intelligence startups including Groq?? and Reflection AI.

At $10 billion, Disruptive's fund is the largest ever raised by a Dallas firm, and the largest venture capital fund in state history, according to PitchBook? data. Private equity firm Lone Star Funds?, previously headquartered in Dallas but now based in London, previously closed an $8.1 billion buyout fund in 2019. The raise also puts Disruptive among a small group of venture firms managing megafunds — defined by PitchBook as a venture vehicle with at least $500 million in committed capital. Firms such as Josh Kushner's Thrive Capital? and Silicon Valley-based Andreessen Horowitz are among the few that have raised funds exceeding $10 billion in recent years. "The best private technology companies are growing larger, staying private longer and requiring more capital than ever before," Disruptive founder and CEO Alex Davis said in a statement. "We have always focused on a small number of exceptional companies, building the conviction and relationships to be there for founders at their most important moments. The Disruptive Flagship Fund gives us the scale to match the opportunity."

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Tarrant woman accused of stealing campaign sign listed as ballot board member

The wife of a White Settlement council member who is accused of stealing a campaign sign is on the approved list of appointees to the early voting ballot board, but it is unclear if she is still a member. Jennifer James’ name appears on Page 6 on the list of Republican Party members of the board. Jennifer James and her husband Aaron did not return phone calls from the Star-Telegram seeking comment. Tim Davis, chairman of the Tarrant County GOP, did not respond to email messages. Allison Campollo, chair of the Tarrant County Democratic Party, said she saw James on video footage from the ballot board room. Campolo said James was on the approved list for the Republican Party, but it is unclear if she is still on the board. The election board is meeting at 4 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 29. The agenda lists public comment and appointing ballot board members for the Nov. 3 election.

The Tarrant County Election Board, which includes the Republican and Democratic party chairs, the county judge and elections administrator, is responsible for appointing the early voting ballot board members, who must be from the Republican, Democratic and Libertarian parties. The members’ primary responsibility is to count ballots that were not scanned, which includes mail-in ballots, provisional ballots or if a scanner was down at a voting site, Campolo said. The board live-streams the ballot counting proceedings. James was cited for theft after White Settlement Mayor Faron Young, who is unopposed in his re-election bid, said that on Oct. 1, he checked on his campaign signs after a rainstorm. Young told the Star-Telegram previously that the sign in question was on private property belonging to a dealership, Cars-For-U on White Settlement Road. Young asked to review security-camera footage and saw someone driving up in a blue SUV. He said he recognized Jennifer James taking his sign. “I have no idea why she would do that,” Young said. Jennifer James’ husband, Aaron, is running for his second council term with two opponents for the Place 1 seat. When asked why he filed the police report, Young said he did so because the signs cost money. “We raised funds. I had people who made donations for those signs,” he said. “We shouldn’t be touching people’s private property.”

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Lawsuit filed against Grand Prairie ISD after play cancellation

South Grand Prairie High School senior Ana Mota, 17, is suing the Grand Prairie Independent School District after district officials cancelled the high school’s planned production of Little Shop of Horrors rather than allow Mota to perform the role of the male lead, Seymour, according to breaking news reports from the Dallas Morning News. The lawsuit claims GPISD violated Title IX, the federal law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex by institutions receiving federal funds. Mota’s mother, Nancy Jimenez, has also filed a Title IX complaint with the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education.

GPISD district officials have declined to comment on the lawsuit. News that the play was being cancelled was made public the week of Oct. 12, when Mota told the Morning News that she had been cast as Seymour and rehearsals had already started when district officials stepped. Mota told reporters she was informed she couldn’t play Seymour in the production because of Texas Senate Bill 12, which was passed in 2023 and which bans certain drag performances. At a GPISD Board of Trustees meeting that same week — on Thursday, Oct. 15 — board president Emily Liles defended the school district’s decision but insisted that GPISD Superintendent Gabe Trujillo instead canceled the production based on the OTHER Senate Bill 12, passed in 2025, which bans diversity, equity and inclusion measures in public schools along with school-sanctioned clubs based on sexual orientation or gender identity and anything school curricula on acknowledging transgender identities. Jimenez asked GPISD officials to explain in writing exactly how her daughter playing a male role in a play would violate state law. She never received an answer, the Morning News Reports. Mota’s lawsuit claims the school district is misrepresenting SB 12 and applying it too broadly, noting that cross-gender acting is a centuries-old staple of theater. The lawsuit also points out that Mota is not transgender and “was not engaged in any personal gender transition. She was portraying a scripted fictional character in an official school theatrical production.”

Read this article at Dallas Voice - Subscribers Only

Mavs CEO to retire

Rick Welts, 73, the out CEO of the Dallas Mavericks will retire on Dec. 31, the team announced on Wednesday, Oct. 28. Mavs president Ethan Casson will succeed him. Welts has been CEO since 2024 when he agreed to serve in the position for two years. His impact on the team may be best remembered for the plan to move the team from the American Airlines Center to North Dallas. The Mavs are currently planning to build a new arena at the former Valley View Mall on Preston Road at LBJ Freeway. The team hopes it will be ready for the 2031 season, when the team’s lease expires at the American Airlines Center.

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Texas nonprofit hospitals must offer charity care, but many patients never realize they can apply

Nikki Myles knew the hospital bill about to hit her mailbox would be expensive and probably take years to pay off. But she wasn't prepared for what she saw. Myles, 38, got the bill in March, a couple weeks after an emergency hospitalization that included a three-night stay and surgery to remove her gallbladder. She had hoped doctors at Houston Methodist Hospital in Baytown, Texas — a city on the north shore of Galveston Bay — could treat the unceasing pain in her abdomen with a prescription. But the culprit was gallstones, and her gallbladder had to come out. Myles declined the operation at first because she didn't have health insurance. She relented after her doctor warned her that the horrible pain would return. A few weeks after the surgery, the hospital bills started to arrive. Myles braced for a big number — she thought $20,000, maybe $30,000. The total exceeded $117,000. A first payment of $989 was due in a month.

Myles said a nurse had mentioned the possibility of financial assistance while she was still in the hospital. But that was the last she remembers hearing about it before she learned of her six-figure debt. "I panicked," said Myles, who was working as a case manager at a Houston-area nonprofit that helps children in foster care. "I had no resources to pay." The burden was too much. She dropped her master's degree courses, which she had hoped would help her land a higher-paying job. Like all nonprofit hospitals, Houston Methodist is required under federal and state laws to offer eligible patients financial assistance, or charity care, as a condition of its tax-exempt status. Hospitals also must communicate to patients that the program exists and make it accessible. But in interviews with Public Health Watch, some patients, researchers and advocacy groups said nonprofit hospitals are falling short in letting patients know about charity care and making it easy to apply. As a result, low-income patients can fall into heavy medical debt that upends their lives.

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Judge orders senders of trans advocacy comms in Texas to reveal identity

Who sent the mysterious text messages and mailers purporting to come from Texas transgender advocacy groups? Their identity was not revealed during a court hearing in downtown Austin on Tuesday, but Chris Hilton, who used to work for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, identified himself as the lawyer for the senders. Hilton argued he should not have to divulge the names of his clients. Travis County District Judge Jan Soifer disagreed, and ruled that the clients must agree to answer questions about the matter later this week. Texans across the political spectrum received the communications in recent weeks. They promoted resources for transgender, nonbinary and questioning youth and mentioned several different LGBTQ+ organizations across the state, including the Transgender Education Network of Texas (TENT).

But they stood out from the sea of text messages and pamphlets that voters receive during election season because TENT says it didn’t send them. Last week, the organization filed what’s called a “Rule 202” petition in court, asking Soifer to allow it to force the senders to answer its questions in a deposition. In court, Hilton said his clients will stop sending out the pamphlets but argued that their actions are protected by the First Amendment. He said TENT’s rush to expose his clients’ identity before the election is a political ploy, and “doxxing” or publicly revealing personal information about his client would cause them harm. “They seek to inflict some of the same harms that they claim to be suffering, they seek to engage in electioneering,” Hilton said. Mimi Marziani, one of TENT’s attorneys, countered that the communications led to harassment and threats against TENT staff and that they could amount to illegally impersonating the nonprofit. “Somebody has been impersonating our client and sending out millions of unauthorized text messages and mailers to voters across Texas, intentionally creating confusion for voters and strife,” Marziani told reporters after the hearing. She added TENT is “very pleased” with Soifer’s ruling, which Hilton has appealed.

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Nuclear power projects flock to Texas, with billions in tax subsidies

On the Texas Gulf Coast, Maryland-based X-Energy is awaiting federal approval to begin building a more than $4 billion, next-generation nuclear reactor at a Dow plastic plant. If successful, it will be among the first of what the nuclear industry hopes will be a new class of advanced reactors that are less expensive to build and safer to run. The venture is one of more than half a dozen similar projects underway in Texas, driven by tens of billions of dollars in federal grants and lucrative tax credits created by a Congress eager to revive the nation’s dormant nuclear energy industry amid a flood of power-hungry data center projects.

Texas is quickly emerging as an epicenter for the nascent technology. Already, a wave of startup nuclear companies is locating in the state, setting up offices in and around Austin while partnering with universities, including Texas Tech and Texas A&M, which is offering up a more than 2,000-acre site near its flagship campus for companies to build advanced reactors. In Abilene, the startup Natura Resources, founded by local oil billionaire Doug Robison, is building a test reactor on the campus of Abilene Christian University, with plans to one day turn out what are known as small modular reactors, much as GM and Ford produce cars. “I can see Stargate, one of the world’s largest data centers, out my window,” said CEO Jordan Robison. "The need is out there. We need to find clean, firm generation sources. The technology is proven, and we have the ability to bring the cost down.” But the technology is far from proven, and traditional investors, including Wall Street banks and pension funds, have been reluctant to invest. Some are wary of nuclear projects after the last U.S. effort to revive the industry resulted in the construction of two reactors in Georgia whose costs ballooned to more than $36 billion, double what they were budgeted for. Andrew Kleinman, an analyst at the research firm Wood Mackenzie, said while the surge in U.S. power demand has revived interest in nuclear, as yet no one has proven they can build reactors at a cost competitive with more traditional power sources, like natural gas plants or wind and solar farms.

Read this article at Houston Chronicle - Subscribers Only

HPD says officers called ICE 88 times from July through September

Houston police officers contacted federal immigration agents 88 times from July through the end of September, according to data issued by the department on Thursday. The calls happened when officers found people with immigration warrants. On average, officers detained people for approximately 45 minutes while waiting for agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to respond. According to the figures from the Houston Police Department (HPD), 58 people were released after the calls, 13 were taken to jail for new charges, and 17 were taken into ICE custody.

In 33 cases, officers were responding to a call for emergency services when they encountered someone with an immigration warrant. The data report doesn’t make clear whether the person placing the call for help was the subject of the warrant. "Out of 300,000 contacts [between HPD and citizens] that have 17 end with ICE involvement speaks for itself," Houston Mayor John Whitmire told reporters on Wednesday. "Very small, very small number. And for anyone to say different about our involvement is just wrong." Related: Houston police responded to a man in a mental health crisis. ICE arrested him Authorities did not provide full details on each interaction, but records obtained by Houston Public Media for incidents from April through June showed contacts between HPD and ICE during responses to a mental health crisis, a suicide attempt and domestic disturbances. Asked by a Houston Public Media reporter about community trust, particularly when contacts involve victims of crimes, HPD Chief Noe Diaz said, "I won't diminish that because that's real. People feel that. But for us, statistically speaking, the calls for service haven't changed in the last quarter."

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Republicans for Talarico? New video features former North Texas GOP officials

U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico is reaching out to Republicans with a new video focused on some of the Democrat’s GOP supporters. The video from Talarico’s campaign features former state Rep. Bennett Ratliff and former state Rep. Todd Smith, who used to represent parts of North Texas in the Texas Legislature. It also includes former U.S. Rep. Alan Steelman from Dallas, former Ennis Mayor Russell Thomas and former Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley. The former elected officials explain why they’re “passing on Paxton” in the short video shared on X Wednesday afternoon. Talarico, a state representative from Round Rock, is facing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Nov. 3 election for U.S. Senate.

“I truly believe that he is the most corrupt politician Texas has seen,” Whitley says in the video, later adding that he’s ashamed Paxton is on the ballot. Whitley has crossed party lines in the past to support candidates, including former Vice President Kamala Harris for president and former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, both of whom are Democrats, in 2024. Whitley said he wouldn’t support Paxton relatively early in the general election, after Sen. John Cornyn lost his bid for reelection in a GOP primary runoff. At the time, Whitely told the Star-Telegram he no longer “publicizes himself” as a Republican, but leans conservative and is more of Republican than a “liberal Democrat.” Thomas raises concerns about Paxton’s past legal troubles and his 2023 impeachment in the video. The attorney general was acquitted after a trial in the Texas Senate. Ratliff calls Talarico the best person in the race before the video flips to Smith, who represented House District 92 in Tarrant County for eight terms, before leaving the House in January 2013.

Read this article at Fort Worth Star-Telegram - Subscribers Only

National Stories

Dolores Huerta, United Farmworkers co-founder and civil rights icon, dies at 96

Dolores Huerta, the legendary labor organizer whose advocacy improved conditions for migrant farm workers in the nation’s fruit and vegetable fields and persuaded presidents to do more for women’s equality and immigrant rights, died Wednesday. She was 96. Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers union with César Chavez, was celebrated for her enduring rallying cry “Sí, se puede!” — which translates to “Yes, it can be done!” She died of cancer at her home in Bakersfield, California, surrounded by family, said Erik Olvera, a family spokesperson. Well into her 90s, Huerta was marching in protests and encouraging activists to keep speaking out about race, poverty and LGBTQ+ and women’s rights. “It seems like history continues to repeat itself,” she told The Associated Press in August. “You see what’s happening right now in our country, and we know that people have to stand up.”

Huerta’s resolve cemented her place in history as one of the nation’s most influential labor leaders, civil rights icons and feminist activists. Her three-word Spanish-language slogan was grounded in the belief that people who take action can affect change. Her accolades over the decades included the Presidential Medal of Freedom. When President Barack Obama presented her with the nation’s highest civilian honor in 2012, he praised Huerta as a tenacious leader. He said she was gracious when he stole her slogan for his 2008 campaign. “I’m pleased that she let me off easy ... ’cause Dolores does not play,” Obama joked. Just days after President Donald Trump’s first inauguration, Huerta voiced concern about the rise of so-called “alt-right” groups. “We cannot survive as a nation, as a democracy, if we continue with the racism, with the sexism and homophobia, with the militarization that we have in our society,” she told the AP in 2017. This year, Huerta revealed a shocking chapter in her life story — that she was sexually abused in the 1960s by Chavez, the farmworker movement’s co-founder, leading to the birth of two children who were raised by others. She had kept the secret for 60 years, long after he died. Chavez’s reputation immediately soured, his name removed from the holiday that had been a point of Hispanic pride.

Read this article at Associated Press - Subscribers Only

Inside Democrats’ secret effort to stack Alaska’s midterm ballot with another Dan Sullivan

In the summer of 2025, a staffer for Mary Peltola, the Alaska Democrat who was eyeing a run for Senate, received unusual instructions from top campaign aides: Find as many people named Dan Sullivan in Alaska as you can. The staffer complied, combing through voter records to produce a list of Dan Sullivans from across the state. This was no random request. Dan S. Sullivan is the name of the state’s Republican senator. And if the Peltola campaign or its allies could track down and persuade another Dan Sullivan to run for Senate, the confusion could cost the senator crucial votes on the state’s unusual, four-person ballot. The plan worked. This spring, a retired teacher from a tiny fishing village along the Alaska Panhandle, reachable only by air and sea, announced his candidacy for Senate. His name was Dan J. Sullivan.

The Peltola campaign has repeatedly denied any involvement in his candidacy. But The Times has found, based on interviews and text messages, along with documents prepared for a potential lawsuit against the campaign, that not only did Ms. Peltola’s team work with people trying to recruit Mr. Sullivan to run for Senate, but the effort was much broader. The group worked to coax other would-be spoilers into the race, to dilute the incumbent’s support and help catapult the Democrat to victory. The endeavor, which was internally called the ballot composition project, involved secret trips to far-flung Alaskan communities and the appearance of a mysterious Midwestern operative, who traversed the state using a fake name and made his pitch to would-be candidates over beers at brew pubs. It also involved the Peltola campaign’s lawyers, as well as senior aides at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which directs the party’s campaign strategy in Senate races across the country. From Washington to Anchorage, those advisers participated in regular conversations about the effort and even considered forming a new political party to draw conservatives onto the ballot. Ballot-stacking tactics are common in politics and generally considered legal — and have been employed by both parties in Alaska.

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Trump turns stolen election claims from rhetoric to action

Democrats, election officials and voting rights groups have long wondered whether President Donald Trump, upon his return to the Oval Office, would again attempt to overturn an election when his party is trailing. It’s no longer hypothetical. Late last week, the president directed the Department of Justice to preemptively contest a potential Republican loss in the Alaska U.S. Senate race. The department is demanding a court hold up certification of a possible Democratic win until it’s determined whether voters were confused by having two candidates with the same name on the ballot. Trump followed that by calling for the prosecution of Democratic candidate Mary Peltola, a former congresswoman, based on a New York Times report that her campaign helped recruit someone named Dan Sullivan to siphon away votes from the Republican incumbent, also named Dan Sullivan.

Academics believe the lawsuit is the first time since the Civil Rights era that the federal government has sued to halt certification of an election, a duty the Constitution places in the hands of states. Trump for years has claimed elections are rigged when he or his party loses, and this time is no exception. He has used his midterm rallies to say Democrats cheat, criticize election officials by name and call the ranked choice voting system in Alaska, which might hold the key to Senate control, a scam. But the certification lawsuit elevates Trump’s crusade beyond mere rhetoric, indicating that he is preparing to use the power of the presidency to try to reverse a possible loss as his party is struggling to hold its control of Congress. Earlier this week, the president also announced a $1 million bounty for anyone who provides proof of prior or current voter fraud in the country. It wasn’t clear whether or how he planned to follow through. “For at least the last year and a half, they’ve been laying that groundwork,” said Theresa Lee, a senior attorney with the ACLU. “We’ve been preparing for just as long, if not longer.”

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Hegseth fires a top general

Earlier this week, the Pentagon’s chief planner, Army Lieutenant General Brett Sylvia, was ousted from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No explanation was given. This comes at an inopportune moment, given that President Trump may be planning to relaunch the war on Iran. Sylvia, the former commander of the 101st Airborne Division, becomes the latest in a long line of senior officers who have been shown the door since Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth arrived at the Pentagon almost two years ago. No replacement for Sylvia was named, and it is unclear who will take over his responsibilities. In the past, the deputy or vice director of the relevant directorate of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would fill the role on a temporary basis until the president nominated a candidate for Senate confirmation. Sylvia is the second person to be pushed out of the job of director of the Directorate for Strategy, Plans, and Policy at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, known inside the military as the J5, in the past year. His predecessor, Army Lieutenant General Joseph McGee, was forced to retire. “Now is not the time when you’d want to lose the J5,” a former Joint Chiefs of Staff official said. “This person would serve as a critical link between the operational force, the department policy, and the White House.”

Sylvia’s departure presages more upheaval in the Pentagon’s upper echelons as Trump looks to break the stalemate with Iran and weighs renewed combat after Tuesday’s elections. Trump had considered striking Iran before the midterms, my colleagues and I previously reported, and U.S. Central Command, which is running the war effort, has prepared a variety of strike options. Those plans range from a short burst of strikes targeting Iran’s nuclear sites to a longer campaign aimed at pushing Iran’s economy closer to the brink—and Iran’s government to the negotiating table. But the president has not yet decided how to proceed, and any strikes are unlikely to happen before next week. The war, which began in February, has been relatively quiet in recent months as U.S. and Iranian forces face off in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for global energy supplies. Iran effectively seized control of the strait shortly after the war began, while the U.S. has countered with a blockade of Iranian shipping. The webpage naming Sylvia as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has already been taken down. Sylvia did not respond to a request for comment. If the war has gotten bogged down, Hegseth’s campaign of firings at the Pentagon has not. Sylvia is at least the fifth general pushed out or fired this year, each holding key positions within the military. Hegseth forced out General Randy George, chief of staff of the Army, at the height of the U.S. strike campaign in Iran, despite the Army’s role in restocking key munitions, which are now in short supply.

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As support for Trump dips, conservatives fight to boost evangelical turnout in midterms

Ralph Reed, head of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, has worked for decades to get conservative evangelical Christians to the polls. Widely known as a key architect of what is sometimes called the Religious Right, the Georgia-based activist and his organization have expended enormous resources to hone what has become the Republican Party’s core voting bloc — and a crucial player in President Donald Trump’s rise to power. But earlier this month, as Reed drove to a Trump rally in Dalton, Georgia, where his group planned to recruit volunteers to help with voter turnout in the upcoming midterm elections, he acknowledged that getting conservative Christians to vote this year — when the president’s approval rating has hit historic lows — has been challenging. “We’re hearing what you would expect to hear, which is concerns about cost of living, concerns about gas prices,” Reed told Religion News Service in a phone interview, referring to evangelical voters.

“But also real fear about the extremism and radicalism on the other side.” It’s a dynamic that has left a question mark hanging over conservative Christian voters this election cycle, sparking anxiety among some in the GOP as polls indicate the group’s enthusiasm for the president — like that of many Americans — is dipping ahead of Election Day. With some voters already casting ballots in battleground states across the country, organizers such as Reed are rushing to ensure evangelicals still turn out with their usual gusto — or at least vote enough to limit conservative losses. Recent polling paints a muddy picture of how evangelicals will respond to the upcoming midterms. On the one hand, a recent Pew Research survey found that 73% of white evangelicals who are registered to vote say they are likely to support their local Republican House candidate on Election Day. But while approval of Trump among evangelicals hovered near 80% in many polls last year, recent surveys from Pew, Public Religion Research Institute and The Washington Post show support for the president dipping to anywhere from 66% to 58% with the group. Michael Wear, an evangelical who once helped organize former President Barack Obama’s efforts to court conservative religious voters, stressed that while white evangelicals may be souring on Trump in the near term, that doesn’t necessarily signal a sea change for Democrats.

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James O’Keefe charged over hidden-camera operation at Minnesota polls

Prosecutors in Minnesota charged two conservative activists, James O’Keefe and Cam Higby, on Wednesday with felony identity theft and unlawful voting. The complaints allege that O’Keefe, 42, and Higby, 26, wore disguises and used hidden cameras while giving poll workers the names and addresses of four registered voters at Minneapolis polling places during the August primary. The voters had not authorized them to use their identities, prosecutors said. The complaints do not allege that either man cast ballots. Each faces one count of identity theft and one count of unlawful voting, which covers misidentifying oneself while applying for a ballot. Each count carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, or both.

The pair later posted videos on social media of the visits, during which they were dressed in what they called Muslim clothing: Higby’s face covered by a black veil and O’Keefe wearing a long white robe and skullcap. In the videos, they criticized Minnesota for allowing registered voters to cast ballots without showing IDs and allowing registered voters to vouch for others so they can also register to vote at the polls. In a statement, Higby said he was trying to “expose vulnerabilities” in how Minnesota runs elections. “I never voted, I never signed an affidavit and I never violated a law,” he said. “For showing how Minnesota abuses votes, they seek to take mine away from me permanently.” In a nine-minute video posted Wednesday night, O’Keefe said the charges would allow him to “expose injustice at the highest levels.” “This is an attempt to criminalize investigative journalism,” he said. “The charges are an attempt to distract from what we exposed as insecure elections in Minnesota. Now, this case has become a landmark First Amendment case where everyone’s right to speak truth to power has just been put on the line.”

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Fox News ratings sink a staggering 27% in October, but audience still larger than CNN or MS NOW

In the lead-up to the 2026 midterm elections, Fox News lost more than a quarter of its overall viewing audience in the month of October, according to new data. That said, the network remains the most-watched news outlet on cable, well ahead of rivals CNN and MS NOW. For October 2026, Fox News is on track to post its lowest-rated month in total-day viewers since December 2023, according to preliminary figures from Nielsen, first reported by Status. FNC averaged 1.1 million total viewers for the month, down 27%, and 98,000 viewers in the key 25-54 demographic coveted by advertisers, a drop of 32%. The ratings decline comes amid a continuation of the drop-off in TV viewers overall — but Fox News has been losing viewers at a double-digit clip as CNN and MS NOW have been slightly up in recent months.

As Variety has reported, Fox News on many nights draws a bigger live audience than one or more broadcast TV networks. But its viewership is steadily eroding: In the third quarter of 2026, Fox News saw total-day viewership decline 16%, and viewership in the 25-54 demo fall 24%. Both CNN and MS NOW saw small gains in overall audience for Q3. In primetime, Fox News averaged about 2 million total viewers (down 28% year over year) in October, with viewers in the 25-54 demo falling 36% to 183,000, according to the Nielsen data. “Fox & Friends” had its second consecutive month below 1 million total viewers and under 100,000 in the key demo, with October representing its lowest overall viewers since July 2015 (and its lowest in the 25-54 demographic since June 2001). Meanwhile, progressive rival MS NOW saw its daytime audience rise 16% to 588,000 total viewers in October, and CNN viewership was up 3% to 402,000 viewers over the same timeframe, according to the preliminary Nielsen figures.

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Lead Stories

Trump visits Lubbock and Corpus Christi as Republicans fight to hold Texas’ U.S. Senate seat

Election Day is just a week away, and political campaigns are racing toward the finish line. For Republicans in Texas, that means bringing out their party’s biggest figure: President Donald Trump. Trump will make stops in Corpus Christi and Lubbock on Tuesday, while Vice President JD Vance plans to visit Weatherford on Thursday. The visits are aimed at rallying support for Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in his U.S. Senate race against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico. “They’re pulling out all the stops to come here and fight to try to keep that Senate seat,” Nancy Sims, a political science lecturer at the University of Houston, told The Texas Newsroom.

The outcome of Texas’ Senate race could determine which party holds control of the chamber in Washington for the final two years of Trump’s term — a major factor in whether the president will be able to advance his agenda. Recent polling underscores how competitive the Texas race has become. An October Emerson College/Nexstar Media poll put Talarico at 48% and Paxton at 46%, too close to establish a clear leader. A separate Rasmussen Reports survey found the candidates tied. In Corpus Christi, the GOP isn’t just looking to excite voters for Texas’ U.S. Senate race. The region’s congressional contests are also pivotal for the party. That includes Texas 15th, 28th and 34th Congressional Districts, where polling shows close races. Trump narrowly won majority-Latino Nueces County in 2016 and 2020. But that support exploded during the 2024 election, when Trump won Nueces County by double digits for the first time. According to Del Mar College political science professor Dr. Paul Gottemoller, the president’s visit highlights the importance of Latino voters for Republicans’ overall success.

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Texas’ largest oil and gas trade group leaves Bo French off endorsement list in rare move

An endorsement list distributed Monday by the Texas Oil and Gas Association was silent on the most consequential race for the state’s oil and gas industry. The major trade group previously endorsed Bo French, the Republican candidate in the race for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, the three-person board that oversees oilfield regulation in Texas. The endorsement came days before French’s infamous post on X where he described a group of non-white Longhorn fans as a “problem.” But a new list of TXOGA’s preferred candidates did not mention the pivotal race. President Donald Trump also did not include French in his social media posts plugging a long list of Republican candidates in Texas.

The snubs come as French faces widespread scrutiny over his comments deriding various ethnic and religious groups in Texas, raising the prospect that his Democratic opponent Jon Rosenthal, a sitting state representative, could win the statewide race. A Democrat hasn’t held a seat on the Railroad Commission since 1994. TXOGA and French could not be immediately reached for comment. TXOGA represents some of Houston’s largest oil companies, including Exxon Mobil and Chevron. Reached Tuesday, Rosenthal said French’s absence from TXOGA’s endorsement list “speaks for itself.” “French does not seem to reflect the values that our industry forwards,” Rosenthal told the Chronicle. “I was surprised when they endorsed him in the first place.” Karr Ingham, president of the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, which represents smaller oil and gas firms, said his group does not endorse candidates. That said, he said Rosenthal has been more proactive about engaging with the group than is historically true for Democratic candidates. “There’s a reasonable chance he may win that race,” Ingham said.

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The worst-case midterm scenario for Democrats

With the 2026 midterms looking more and more like a big blue-wave election thanks to Donald Trump’s weak job-approval ratings and the lack of any sign he understands why voters aren’t happy with him, we’ve reached a moment when Democratic loyalists are crossing their fingers, touching wood, and forcing themselves to remember recent electoral disappointments. It’s understandable. Democrats were deeply shocked by Trump’s 2016 and 2024 victories — and, for that matter, by Trump’s surprisingly strong performance in 2020. Of the last four midterm elections, only 2018 produced Democratic gains, and even then, Republicans gained two Senate seats. General superstition aside, there are four reasons why Democrats’ hopes of a big midterm could be exaggerated or even mistaken. To a remarkable extent, the close contests of 2026 are occurring in territory recently claimed by the GOP. Of the ten U.S. Senate races rated as competitive (either toss-ups or leaning Republican or Democratic) by the Cook Political Report, seven involve seats that Republicans have held at least since 2014 and six are in states Donald Trump carried three times.

Add in the GOP’s current three-seat majority in the chamber (effectively a four-seat majority because of Vice President J.D. Vance’s tie-breaking vote), and you can see why the GOP has a home-field advantage in Senate races this year. Of the 50 U.S. House seats Cook rates as competitive, 39 are currently held by Republicans and 36 of them are in states Trump won in 2024. The GOP’s late gerrymandering campaign of 2025–26 increased the number of GOP House districts either in play or essentially already won. And of 12 Cook-rated competitive gubernatorial races, 11 are in states Trump won in 2024. The deep-red coloration of the 2026 map obviously means Republicans have an awful lot to lose in a blue-wave election. But it also means a lot more voters who are accustomed to voting Republican and may be more receptive to GOP messaging and conservative media outlets. Any overestimation of national, regional, or local Democratic trends will leave a lot of endangered Republican candidates in a position to survive. To be clear, the Trumpian mythology of “fake polls” always benefiting Democrats is unfounded, and as Nate Silver has shown, polling errors have in recent years been (a) mostly nonexistent in midterms and (b) unpredictable in their direction.

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‘Absolutely ridiculous’: Dallas still hasn’t received Republican midterm convention reimbursement

Dallas city staff have released the final bill for hosting the Republican midterm convention at the American Airlines Center for two days in September: $800,000. The Republican National Committee has yet to reimburse the city, and it's unclear if they will. Council members raised concerns over the city taking on the full cost during a finance committee meeting Monday afternoon. "That's absolutely ridiculous," council member Maxie Johnson said. "I'm just really uncomfortable, and I feel that this is wrong that this has not been rectified at this moment." Kevin Oden, the city's emergency management director, told Johnson the city plans to receive a contractual reimbursement from U.S. Capitol Police before invoicing organizers for the rest of the cost.

The capitol police reimburses Dallas whenever local security is needed for members of Congress. The Secret Service protects presidents. City officials said that historically the Secret Service has not reimbursed Dallas for helping with that. When asked by Johnson who specifically would be invoiced, Oden said it would be "either the RNC or the host committee, whichever pays the bill back." The Dallas 2026 Host Committee, which raised at least $45 million to support the convention, said it would reduce government costs. But its unclear how much it intends to pay or if there's a formal agreement between city leaders and the committee. Oden said the city provides provides security for dozens events and protests annually and often doesn't get reimbursed. Council member Kathy Stewart pushed Oden to regularly update the committee on any potential reimbursement status. "It is our job as stewards of our taxpayer dollars to watch over something like this and to make sure that we do get that reimbursement," Stewart said.

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State Stories

Arlene Alvarez’s mother asks for Abbott ad to be taken down, steps back from Arlene’s Law

Wendy Alvarez says her daughter Arlene’s memory should bring people together. After backlash over a political advertisement supporting Gov. Greg Abbott, she says she is stepping away from a legislative effort bearing her daughter’s name. Alvarez announced the decision in a Facebook post, saying she has asked for the commercial to be removed and did not know about it beforehand. The ad features family advocate April Aguirre with a picture of Arlene, who was 9 when she was killed. Alvarez said she had not agreed to her daughter becoming part of a political campaign. Although she met Abbott and sought his help advancing Arlene’s Law, she said her advocacy was focused on preventing other families from experiencing a similar loss. She rejected suggestions that her meeting with the governor meant she had turned against her community or that her efforts were about immigration.

Alvarez said hateful messages and accusations had left her emotionally exhausted. “But today, with a very heavy heart, I have decided to step aside from pursuing Arlene’s Law at this time,” she wrote. Her post also defended Aguirre’s intentions and acknowledged years of friendship and support. Alvarez said Aguirre had helped her family and other families seeking justice. Alvarez asked people to remember her daughter as a child with dreams and a family who loved her. “Arlene was not a political party. She was not a campaign slogan. She was not a vote,” she wrote. “She was my baby.”

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Ken Paxton’s ‘October surprises’ are pure disinformation

As polls for the Senate race between Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico remain tight, right-wing influencers, media outlets, and Paxton campaign surrogates have taken their shot at ginning up an “October surprise” by spreading at least two extraordinary stories aimed to discredit Talarico. The first was that Talarico, who was taking time off the campaign trail early this month to recover from the flu, had actually checked into a psychiatric hospital in Ohio due to a mental breakdown. The second, which unfolded as early voting kicked off, involved unsolicited text messages and mailers sent to Texan voters regarding resources for transgender youth—a topic that Paxton has said is his best line of political attack and that his campaign’s largest financial backer, Elon Musk, has hammered Talarico on in recent weeks. But both stories turned out to be disinformation, spread maliciously or recklessly in many cases by amateur-ish “influencers” whose shoddy work was easily exposed. (Hillary Clinton’s emails, these would-be scandals are not.)

The first attempted surprise started life around October 8. That morning, Sara Gonzales, a host on Glenn Beck’s BlazeTV network and the vice president of the anti-LGBTQ+ group Texas Family Project, informed her more than 518,000 followers: “I have received unverified information on James Talarico’s whereabouts. If true, it will END his campaign.” Two hours later, Paxton himself—who remains the state’s attorney general until January—alleged in a post on X that Talarico was having “a full-blown mental Tala-freak-out” and requested “proof of life.” Within minutes of Paxton’s post, an anonymous X account that uses a photo of a young red headed woman, “TickleTexts,” spun up the allegation into a full-blown theory that Talarico was in a mental facility and by the next day had identified the Lindner Center, a psychiatric hospital in Ohio, as the place where Talarico was hospitalized. A right-wing influencer named Rhein Amacher separately shared a recording of a call purporting to prove the Lindner Center had admitted Talarico. Michelle Smith, a senior adviser to Paxton, added on social media that a doctor told a friend of hers that Talarico “has definitely been admitted to a mental institution.” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Musk made numerous posts about Talarico’s absence, implying that his campaign was not being truthful. But the story then swiftly fell apart. On the evening of October 11, the Linder Center denied that Talarico was ever a patient, and the following day the New York Times reported on home security footage Talarico provided that proved he had been at his residence while recovering from the flu and not in Ohio. Even right wingers including Texas journalist Tony Ortiz expressed dismay about the slipshod influencing effort. Conservative commentator Carmine Sabia wrote: “I support Ken Paxton, but the truth matters more than winning on a lie.”

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Nick Powell: How a toxic river convinced Texas conservatives to vote for a Democrat

(Nick Powell is a columnist and editorial writer for the Houston Chronicle.) It’s unusual to see more than a trickle of water on the parched bed of the Pecos River. But outside Imperial, a mysterious rust-colored stream has emerged in the midst of a drought. It stretches at least half a mile through the high desert of the West Texas oil patch and is a sign of governmental failures so egregious that longtime conservatives are lining up behind a Democrat, Jon Rosenthal. The Permian Basin is the second biggest oil field in the world and is the center of an election battle that’s garnering national headlines — but for reasons that have nothing to do with oil and gas. Bo French, the Republican nominee for the Railroad Commission, the agency that regulates Texas oil and gas drillers, is a shameless bigot. His xenophobia is so revolting and over-the-top, that CNN and the Wall Street Journal are covering the obscure race and Republican leaders are endorsing Rosenthal — most recently Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker. Donald Trump even left French’s name off his endorsement list.

Meanwhile, the people on the ground in the Permian rarely get a word in. For years, oil and gas drillers have tapped billions of gallons from freshwater sources like the Pecos — water that could otherwise be used for agriculture and drinking water. They use it for hydraulic fracturing to extract oil. That in turn produces huge volumes of dirty water, which is then pumped into shallow fields with leaky wells that can contaminate groundwater aquifers. It all adds up to a potential environmental calamity. One landowner told us the whole region is worthy of being designated a Superfund site. On a cloudless day in early October, photojournalist Sharon Steinmann and I flew from Houston to Midland, and rented a car to drive out to that riverbed. We followed Schuyler Wight, a local rancher, down the sloped banks of the Pecos to get a closer look. The salt-crusted reeds and mesquite branches crunched and crackled beneath my sneakers. At first glance, the water just looked muddy. But standing on the riverbed, I saw the unmistakable sheen of oil on the surface. Crystallized salt wreathed around the edges of the ochre pool, a glittering halo that looked like something you’d see on the surface of Mars. I turned my head, searching for a water source. “You can’t really tell where it’s coming from,” Wight said.

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Republican DA in West Texas investigating ‘trans resources’ pamphlets mailed to ‘students in the household’

Sarah Stogner, the Republican district attorney for Loving, Reeves and Ward counties, located west of Odessa, has opened a criminal investigation into pamphlets that were mailed recently to voters across the state purporting to have come from or be connected to the Transgender Education Network of Texas, or TENT, and marked as a resource guide for LGBTQ+ youth, according to reports by The Texas Tribune. Stogner said that while her office is investigating as a potential forgery, she added that the scope of the investigation could expand depending on what information is uncovered. Forgery, as the Texas Tribune notes, is a state jail felony under Texas law.

The pamphlets were labeled as having come from “The Texas Transgender Student Union,” which was actually created just recently in Wyoming as a limited liability company, and the return address on the mailer was a Houston-area post office box. The pamphlets were an obvious effort to continue the right-wing’s scare campaigning targeting the transgender community ahead of the 2026 midterms. President Donald Trump has claimed that parents are sending their sons to school in the mornings and then picking them up as daughters in the afternoon because teachers and other school officials are “forcibly transitioning” the children at school. And Democrat James Talarico’s support for transgender people and the rest of the LGBTQ+ community has been a constant source of attacks from the campaign of Republican Ken Paxton in the race to replace John Cornyn in the U.S. Senate. Paxton’s campaign has even tried to attack Talarico — or as they call him, “TalaFreako” — by claiming he is, himself, transgender. While the pamplets, which were addressed to the students in the households and offered suggestions on how transgender teens could escape unsupportive families, repeatedly referenced TENT, which has categorically denied having to do with the pamplets. A TENT spokesperson said in an email that the “messages were deliberately distributed in a manner calculated to cause maximum harm to TENT and to create confusion and strife among the Texas electorate.”

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CenterPoint expands 10-year capital plan by $4B to handle load growth

CenterPoint Energy expects to see 14 GW of new demand online through 2030, and has added $4 billion to the utility’s 10-year capital investment plan, company officials said Tuesday in a third-quarter earnings call with analysts. Total planned capital expenditures through 2035 stand at $70.7 billion, up from $66.7 billion the company announced in July. The company has also accelerated about $1.5 billion of capex into the first half of the plan, helping drive a $4.5 billion increase to planned investment through 2030. CenterPoint has improved system reliability 40% since 2024 and intends to file its next System Resiliency Plan by the end of 2027.

The utility increased its 10-year capital plan by $4 billion to $70.7 billion and accelerated $1.5 billion of investment into 2026-2030 timeframe. Of CenterPoint’s planned capex, $51.5 billion is on the electric side and $19 billion will go towards the company’s natural gas operations. The remainder will occur at the corporate level. “This incredible demand is creating a powerful multiplier effect, as large industrial expansions drive broader commercial growth across our service territory,” CenterPoint Chairman, President and CEO Jason Wells said on the earnings call. “Notably, industrial and commercial leasing activity in the Houston area is up more than 30% from last year.” CenterPoint has received nearly 1 GW of distribution-level load requests in the last year, he added. The 14 GW of expected demand growth are expected to generate $5 billion in customer savings across Texas over the next 10 years, company officials said. “To replenish that capacity and sustain the region’s competitive advantage for the next wave of demand, earlier this year we began an internal transmission study focused on increasing load serving capacity in three key areas,” Wells said, pointing to import transmission capacity, system stability and intra-regional transmission capacity.

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UT Southwestern reported 18 retained object errors in 18 months

Among Texas hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers, one facility stood out with an unusually high number of surgical “never event” errors. That facility also happens to be the No. 1 hospital in Dallas-Fort Worth, according to U.S. News & World Report’s rankings, and No. 2 in the state of Texas. Over the most recent 18 months of reporting — from July 2024 through December 2025 — UT Southwestern Medical Center reported 19 “never events.” That included 18 reports of objects left in a patient after surgery. That’s an average of one unintentionally retained object per month.

UT Southwestern spokesperson Russell Rian did not respond to repeated requests for an interview with a representative of the medical center. He did send an emailed comment about the medical center’s retained object reports. “UT Southwestern considers patient safety of paramount concern,” Rian wrote. The comment then explained UT Southwestern’s reporting process — which it believes is more expansive than other institutions’ — and whittled down the reported number to account for mistaken reports. Retained objects — when a surgical team accidentally leaves behind a sponge or an instrument or another surgical item — are in a category of errors sometimes referred to as “never events.” Surgical never events, including retained object as well as wrong site, wrong surgery and wrong patient errors, were the focus of a months-long investigation from The Dallas Morning News, which looked into why these errors happen and how patients fare after the fact. That investigation included analysis of state data on “preventable adverse events,” which includes these four surgical never events. Of the Texas facilities that filed reports, UT Southwestern had the highest number of surgical never events in the state. One of those errors was a wrong surgery error. The rest were retained objects.

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One of the largest UMC churches in the country just voted to leave the denomination

In a special vote on Sunday and Monday (Oct. 25-26), members of one of the largest United Methodist churches in the country elected to leave the denomination, setting up what is likely to be a prolonged court challenge. Following two days of in-person voting by 4,775 of the 15,000 members of Dallas’ Highland Park United Methodist Church, some 90% elected to withdraw from the United Methodist Church. The church did not provide the exact vote count. The move comes in response to a heated dispute between the church and the denomination’s regional governing body. In August, that regional governing body, called the Horizon Texas Conference, sued Highland Park over changes that the church made to its governing documents that attempted to chart a more independent course.

Those changes removed “United Methodist” from the church’s legal name and gave the church council authority to make broad decisions typically made by the denomination. Membership at the 110-year-old church, in the tony University Park neighborhood adjacent to the Perkins School of Theology on the campus of Southern Methodist University, includes many prominent Dallas business and civic leaders, including former President George W. Bush. The church’s three senior ministers, Matt Tuggle, Paul Rasmussen and Mark Craig, all recommended breaking away. “Based on these results, the congregation has voted to follow the recommendation of the Church Council and separate from the United Methodist Church,” a statement posted to the church website reads. “Beginning this Sunday, we will worship as Highland Park Methodist Church, with the commitment to protect the mission, ministry and future of our Church while still honoring our history and past.”

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New DART CEO’s former colleague alleges he covered up money issues at prior transportation agency

Nathaniel Ford, CEO and president of the Jacksonville Transportation Authority in Florida, is a finalist candidate to run Dallas Area Rapid Transit despite prior allegations that he mismanaged spending at his current job. Dallas Area Rapid Transit’s new CEO Nathaniel “Nat” Ford faces new allegations of covering up financial mismanagement at his previous job in Florida. Jacksonville Transportation Authority Board Member Daniel Vallencourt alleged this week that Ford withheld that the agency had a $39 million deficit, owed vendors tens of millions of dollars and was pulling from its reserve fund to stay afloat.

“Nat Ford and his executive leadership team painted a picture for the Board that did not reflect reality,” Vallencourt wrote in a statement Monday. “The house was on fire, and leadership was doing everything it could to convince everyone otherwise.” Just two months after DART hired Ford, JTA said it would eliminate up to 194 positions and make service cuts last month to close a $39 million budget gap. Florida’s attorney general then opened a criminal investigation into JTA’s spending earlier this month and requested Ford’s text messages and emails between his consultant and wife between 2023 and 2025. KERA asked DART for comment on Vallencourt’s allegations. His response only addressed the investigation. “I am confident that at the conclusion of this process, it will be clear that the dedicated public servants at JTA, including myself, were responsible, ethical stewards of public funds,” Ford told KERA in an email. “I intend to participate in the investigations as I am able while I shift my complete focus to the opportunities for transportation in North Texas.”

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Texas judges block student loan debt relief agreements

When Travis Estes finally admitted he had to declare bankruptcy, creditors were already suing him over his debts. He and his wife owed nearly $1 million to dozens of lenders. He had been largely unable to work since a stroke robbed him of his career as a construction superintendent in 2016, when he was 34 years old. The stroke left his body unable to regulate heat and his balance was off. He couldn’t stand for sustained periods. Estes went from navigating billion-dollar construction projects to navigating physical therapy. He still has near constant eye and face pain, a condition called trigeminal neuralgia. The syndrome’s symptoms are so intense it’s nicknamed the “suicide disease.”

His bankruptcy took three months in late 2023 to complete. The couple’s possessions were liquidated, leaving them with their house. But Estes still had $64,000 in debt from his federal student loans. He was like the nearly 10 million other Americans with such debt they cannot afford to pay. Part of the reason is that for decades, federal courts have made it nearly impossible to wipe away that debt in bankruptcy, requiring proof of extreme duress both physically and financially to qualify. But after his bankruptcy was complete, Estes’ lawyer told him there might be a new way to get a clean slate. In November 2022, the Biden administration gave federal agencies guidance intended to streamline the bankruptcy process. It aimed to increase the number seeking such relief while decreasing the cost of such cases for borrowers. Estes filed the paperwork regarding his hardship and federal education and justice officials agreed that his student loans should be eliminated. Unfortunately for Estes, he filed his case in the Western District of Texas, where judges have rejected the agreements and made their own determinations outside the new executive branch guidance. “I felt like the door shutting on my face,” Estes said.

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Denton moves closer toward implementing 6-month pause on new data centers

The Denton City Council held a public hearing Tuesday night about data centers, a required step as the city moves closer to implementing a six-month pause on new data center projects amid growing pushback. The city council is set to vote on the moratorium Dec. 1. At Tuesday's public hearing, more than two dozen public speakers voiced their support for the pause. No one spoke against implementing the temporary ban. The public opposition goes beyond Denton and a poll just released from the University of Houston shows how far. The survey found four out of five likely voters in Texas would support policies that limit data center development in the state. Two-thirds of those polled believe the projects will increase their water and electricity costs — a sentiment echoed among public commenters Tuesday in Denton.

However, two existing data centers in Denton have generated "substantial" revenue, the city said in documents accompanying Tuesday's public hearing. Even though the two projects are not yet fully online, they've already contributed $3 million in sales tax revenue alone, the documents said. Two council members indicated they would support the moratorium when it comes up for a vote. The others did not speak on it during Tuesday's meeting. Denton already took action earlier this month to add zoning restrictions to new data center projects, requiring a special permit for any proposed data center. Those changes took effect Oct. 27, the city said. If the city votes to authorize the temporary pause in December, it could only last through May at the longest, the city said. State law requires the moratorium last no longer than 180 days — and after a city implements one, it cannot do it again for two years.

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Tarrant County is the starting point of Texas’ blue wave, Gina Hinojosa says

Tarrant County is ground zero for a blue wave in Texas, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa said at a Tuesday night get-out-the-vote rally in Lake Worth. In January, when Taylor Rehmet won the Texas Senate district that voted for President Donald Trump by 17 points in 2024, people thought it was a fluke, Hinojosa said. “They thought it was a one-off,” Hinojosa told the Star-Telegram. “Then we started seeing Democrats winning all throughout the state, all throughout the year. And now what we’re seeing is polling numbers that show we are winning. It’s not because people are Team Democrat. It is because people are for change.”

Hinojosa’s rally at the National Hall SPJST Lodge 92 included two Republican voters who selected her on their midterm ballots this week. Ashleigh Johnson, a mother of four in the Grapevine-Colleyville school district, said her values haven’t changed, the Republican Party has. “I voted for Greg Abbott more than once,” Johnson said. “And in fact, until last Friday, in fact, I never voted blue, but I did just that.” Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who Hinojosa is running to unseat, and the Republican ticket have abandoned their base by passing school vouchers and stripping the public school system of resources, Johnson said. Tim Buchanan, a legendary Aledo football head coach and Republican, also addressed Hinojosa’s roughly 250-person crowd Tuesday night. It was the first rally other than a pep rally he’d ever spoken at, he said. Earlier this month, Hinojosa announced Buchanan’s endorsement of her on social media. Since then, Buchanan said he has received boxes and boxes of real estate brochures and magazines for blue states. “They’re trying to tell me I need to move to a blue state,” Buchanan said. “Well, I got news for you. Gina Hinojosa is fixing to turn this [darn] state blue.”

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Fort Worth’s Range Resources acquired in $13 billion deal

Fort Worth-based Range Resources Corp. is being acquired in a $13 billion all-stock deal by EQT Corp., ?an energy company with operations focused on the Appalachian Basin. The merger creates what EQT said in a news release is “America’s largest and only vertically integrated natural gas producer” with a combined enterprise value of $50 billion. Together, EQT and Range are estimated to produce more than 9 billion cubic feet of natural gas equivalent, or NGE, a day. NGE measures the energy from natural gas as compared to the energy in one barrel of crude oil, which is equal to approximately 6,000 cubic feet of natural gas.

Though headquartered in Fort Worth and energy-rich Texas, Range Resources has become known as an early entrant in drilling and production in the Marcellus Shale. That’s the geologic formation underneath Pennsylvania and other areas of Appalachia believed to hold trillions of cubic feet of natural gas. “This merger is a major milestone in the Range Resources story,” said Dennis Degner, chairman and CEO of Range, in a conference call following the announcement. “Following the discovery of the Marcellus Shale more than 20 years ago, Range’s technical team has transformed that world-changing discovery into a high-quality drilling inventory measured in decades.” Range has about 500 employees split between its Fort Worth headquarters and the Appalachian Basin area. The company recently said it was moving its headquarters into a 94,500-square-foot space in the 777 Main building, relocating from its current Two City Place headquarters on the northwest side of downtown. Range officials did not say what impact the merger would have on its presence and employment in Fort Worth.

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Former Texas health official resigns from top CDC leadership role just months after joining

Former Texas health official Dr. Jennifer Shuford will step down from her roles as deputy director and chief medical officer of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention several months after joining the agency. The Washington Post first reported the news of Shuford’s departure Tuesday. A CDC spokesperson said Shuford’s last day at the agency will be Nov. 12. “I am deeply grateful for Dr. Shuford’s outstanding leadership and commitment to CDC and public health, especially as she has navigated an exceptionally demanding, high-profile, and constantly evolving environment over the past several months,” said CDC Director Dr. Erica Schwartz in a statement from the agency.

Both Shuford and Schwartz were tapped by President Trump to join the CDC’s leadership in April. “These Highly Respected Doctors of Medicine have the knowledge, experience, and TOP degrees to restore the GOLD STANDARD OF SCIENCE at the CDC,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform TruthSocial at the time. Like Schwartz, Shuford has supported vaccines, including when she oversaw the 2025 measles outbreak in West Texas and helped lead Texas’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic before that. She was trained as an infectious disease physician at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and earned a Masters in Public Health from Harvard University. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, has in the past come into conflict with CDC leaders due to disagreements over vaccine policy — including former CDC director Susan Monarez, who said those disagreements led to her firing. In the CDC’s statement, Shuford said she is stepping down to spend more time with family. “I am so thankful to President Trump and Secretary Kennedy for giving me the opportunity to help lead CDC,” she said. “It has been an amazing experience and I will be forever grateful for it.” KUT News has reached out to Shuford for additional comment. Dr. Satish Pillai will serve as the CDC’s acting chief medical officer until a long-term replacement for Shuford is identified.

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Last-minute spending surges to shore up Republicans in should-be-safe San Antonio-area seats

In the final weeks before the Nov. 3 election, more than $1 million has been spent helping first-term Republican state Rep. Marc LaHood (R-San Antonio) in his reliably red Northside district. No Democrat has carried Texas House District 121 since 1981, but LaHood and his allies are now launching last-minute attacks against his little-known challenger, Zack Dunn. Campaign finance reports covering money raised and spent between Sept. 25 and Oct. 24 indicate LaHood pulled in a staggering $1.1 million during that span. That includes roughly $200,000 from a PAC aligned with the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, which wants to legalize casino gambling in Texas, plus big money from trial lawyers, who LaHood helped during the last legislative session.

Dunn, a 33-year-old prosecutor, brought in close to $400,000 in the same span, including $225,000 from a Democratic PAC aligned with former state Sen. Wendy Davis, called Blueprint Texas PAC. Dunn is just the latest in a long list of Democrats who’ve sought to put the seat in play in recent years — hoping to win over moderate Republicans who’ve grown tired of the GOP’s rightward march. The old Joe Straus district includes wealthy suburbs of San Antonio, which have long favored more moderate, business-centric Republicans. Dunn’s campaign manager Colt Osburn, who has been working in the district for many years, said this election cycle could be a breaking point for those voters, who Democrats have to win over to be successful in this district. “If all of the quote-unquote Democrats — people with Democratic primary history — all vote for us, we still lose by about 5%,” Osburn said. “But we’re getting people at the door that are literally telling us, ‘I voted Republican for the last however many years, and I can’t take it anymore.'” Last-minute campaign cash is also flowing into a nearby U.S. House race that Republicans didn’t expect to have to defend this cycle: Texas’ 23rd Congressional District. This week the National Republican Congressional Committee — a group charged with protecting the GOP’s House majority — purchased ads to shore up their candidate, 30-year-old gun content creator Brandon Herrera.

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County Stories

Smith County appoints new budget officer

The Smith County Commissioners Court appointed Jason Adams as the county’s new budget officer when it met Tuesday at the Smith County Courthouse Annex. “I’m grateful to Judge Neal Franklin and the Commissioners Court for their confidence, and I can’t wait to get to work,” Adams said in a statement. “My goal is to build a budget process rooted in accountability, transparency and strong fiscal stewardship, one that the court, our elected officials, department heads and taxpayers can all trust.”

As a former budget analyst for Tarrant County, Adams helped develop the North Texas county’s $1.5 billion budget and assisted with keeping multiple budgets below the no-new-revenue tax rate. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master of public administration from the University of North Texas. Adams is currently working on completing his certified government finance officer designation. “I’m looking forward to working alongside Auditor Timothy Hollis, our elected officials and department heads,” Adams said. “I came to Smith County to put down roots, and I’m excited to be part of this community for the long haul.”

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National Stories

Inside the Trump administration’s controversial lists of alleged noncitizen voters

In the closing days of the midterms, the Trump administration has sent multiple states lists of what it alleges are noncitizens on the voter rolls, intensifying its controversial efforts to stop those people from voting in the election. In California, the administration claimed there were 20,000 people who could be noncitizens on the rolls, while in Washington state, the administration alleged this week that 400 possible noncitizen voters had voted 1,500 times in past elections. The Justice Department sent letters to both states demanding they set aside the ballots of those the department claimed could be noncitizens — and sued California when the state said that the request ran afoul of its laws. The demands this month of California and Washington marked a significant escalation of the administration’s efforts to hunt voter fraud by creating lists of potential noncitizen voters, one of numerous ways the federal government has tried to prove President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of mass voter fraud.

The allegations have sparked questions about how the administration created its lists of voters who could be noncitizens — and criticism that its claims of tens of thousands of noncitizens voters have whittled down under scrutiny. State election officials and election experts have questioned the validity of the data the Trump administration is relying on to make its sweeping allegations — in addition to the decision to bring these demands to the states as early voting in the midterm election is already underway. At a district court hearing Tuesday in the California case, attorneys for the secretary of state, Los Angeles County and outside groups argued that the federal government’s data was outdated, flawed and was a “recipe for disenfranchisement” of US citizens. “This is a deeply troubling process, that is trying to use social security numbers that they’ve glued to the voter file, to go fishing for anyone who has an alien number,” said Anna Baldwin, an attorney arguing on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens and NAACP.

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Netanyahu holds on as election results show no clear winner

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party moved into the lead position in Israel’s election Wednesday morning, denying his opponents a victory but still sitting short of a majority that would return his coalition to power. The partial results could still fluctuate in the hours and days ahead as more votes are counted. But his showing gives the prime minister a solid position for the high-stakes showdown in the coming weeks over whether he will stay in office. The results showed Netanyahu’s coalition losing its current parliamentary majority, reflecting anger over his performance among voters across the spectrum. But with more than two-thirds of the votes counted, his coalition was ahead of its rivals. The Yashar party of Netanyahu’s main challenger, former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, had won the second greatest number of votes so far. His coalition was also short of a majority and slipped behind Netanyahu’s bloc of allies as the votes rolled in.

If the results hold with neither side commanding an outright majority, Netanyahu’s fate could come down to whether Israel’s president gives the prime minister or Eisenkot the first chance to form at least a 61-seat Knesset majority. In either case, a scenario many experts foresee is a hung parliament that ultimately heads to another round of elections, with Netanyahu hanging on as a caretaker premier. Early results had Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party with around 28 seats and Eisenkot’s centrist Yashar with around 21. The prime minister’s bloc was in the lead with around 56 seats, compared with around 48 for his challengers. The numbers moved around as votes were counted and could continue to do so. Speaking to supporters early Wednesday, Netanyahu called the results “merely a prelude.” “Iran is weaker than ever, while Israel is stronger than ever, yet, it is not over,” Netanyahu said in a brief speech. “As long as this regime exists, it will seek to destroy us. Together, with our wonderful friend President Trump, we must eliminate this threat once and for all.”

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How AI has got the Fed in a bind

Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh says artificial intelligence will ultimately provide a “huge benefit” to the economy. But a cooling off of investment in the skyrocketing technology might actually help him right now. The rapid construction of AI data centers across the nation is stoking inflation by juicing financial markets and creating shortages in electricity and construction. Yet it’s also a massive engine for the economy, fueling spending by consumers enriched through rising stock prices and by businesses, which are pouring money into tech-related investments. That creates a dilemma for Fed policymakers: Raise interest rates too sharply to fight inflation and risk damaging a key driver of the economy. Move too slowly and risk entrenched inflation. But if the AI industry’s growth were to moderate on its own, that would make it easier for the Fed to tame inflation.

“The demand behind the AI build-out is so intense that it’s putting pressure on the supply of goods and services that are needed to do the AI build-out,” said Claudia Sahm, a former Fed staffer who is now chief economist at New Century Advisors. “So if that demand for the build-out just took a little bit of wind out of the sails, well, then maybe the production could catch up and we wouldn’t have these bottlenecks.” The stakes for the central bank are high, as Warsh and his colleagues are aiming to cool inflation without wrecking the job market or causing financial turmoil. But given the frenzy around the new technology, the bulk of AI investment isn’t likely to be affected by Fed rate hikes unless borrowing costs go significantly higher, which the central bank for now has not signaled it intends to do. That means inflation could stay stubbornly high even if the Fed raises rates, which investors expect the central bank will do in December, rather than now, just days out from congressional elections. Fed officials will announce their next interest rate move Wednesday. In other words, it would be one fewer headache for the Fed if markets themselves tempered the boom without any intervention from the central bank.

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This tycoon's WhatsApp messages influence oil transport prices

The messages from the world’s biggest supertanker owner often begin with pleasantries: “Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.” Within minutes, the WhatsApps are the talk of the oil-tanker industry, a multibillion-dollar corner of the energy market that’s been plunged into chaos by the Iran war this year, and where word of mouth is the main way information spreads. The details vary, but the messages to shipbrokers from Sinokor Group, the South Korean company controlled by tycoon Ga-Hyun Chung, mostly boil down to the same thing — one of its vessels has just been hired at a new sky-high rate to ferry oil out of the Persian Gulf. Some messages detail a new contract, listing the ship, counterparty and eyewatering price. Others just refer loosely to negotiations underway. The format fluctuates from terse strings of numbers and names to full sentences and florid signoffs: “Very respectfully. Thank you very much and best regards,” concludes one message sent to brokers in August, and seen by Bloomberg. Usually, in the days that follow, the global benchmark price set by London’s Baltic Exchange takes another leap higher.

What would simply be fodder for gossip in most industries, brokers say that Sinokor’s WhatsApp messages have for months played an outsized role in setting the cost of transporting oil around the world. Rates for very-large crude carriers — the biggest kind of oil tanker — have soared more than 1,600% this year amid disruptions caused by the war, creating an unprecedented boom for the industry, but throwing a spotlight on the arcane system used to price the world’s shipping contracts, and the centuries-old institution that manages it. The world of oil tanker rates is coming under fresh scrutiny this week, as hearings begin in a London lawsuit brought against the Baltic Exchange by trader Mercuria Energy Group, which argues that the benchmark rate is no longer fit for purpose because of the disruptions caused by the Iran war. Mercuria has complained to the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority about the benchmark, according to its legal filings, and at least one other market participant has also contacted the regulator, according to a person with knowledge of the complaint, who asked not to be identified because it is not public. The Mercuria case doesn’t refer to Sinokor or its role in the market. Mercuria argues that a near-cessation of normal commercial shipments through the Strait of Hormuz since the war began meant that there was no basis on which to calculate the oil tanker market’s most important reference price, known as TD3C, which measures the cost of shipping oil from inside the Persian Gulf to China.

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The Democrat dilemma: Border contradictions and the midterm elections

In Arizona a high-stakes battle for control of the House of Representatives is underway between Republican incumbent Juan Ciscomani, who won the seat in 2024, and Democrat JoAnna Mendoza. The battleground is House District 6 in the southeastern borderlands, which include a significant portion of Cochise County. In polls tabulated by The New York Times, updated on October 26, Mendoza holds a slim lead. This race matters because, to win a majority in the House, Democrats must net three districts, and to win the Senate, they need to gain four seats. In the House, 435 seats are up for election, including several in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands that merit attention. Many analysts anticipate a “blue wave” for the Democrats. In Arizona’s District 6, the candidates are at each other’s throats. Day and night, their campaign commercials appear on Arizona televisions. Ciscomani calls Mendoza, who identifies as bisexual, an extremist.

Mendoza claims that Ciscomani’s platform is responsible for soaring prices and an unpopular war in Iran championed by the Trump administration. She criticizes Ciscomani for talking about his immigrant heritage without condemning the Trump administration’s enforcement operations. In this sense, the two candidates would seem to differ sharply on border and immigration enforcement issues. In reality, however, their policies are nearly identical. In Ciscomani’s campaign ads, he makes sure the public knows he’s “secured manpower at the border.” He says this while walking along a border road, the wall towering next to him as if he had built it with his own two hands. Mendoza’s campaign ads, meanwhile, ensure that voters don’t forget her military background. Talking to the Copper Courier, she said, “As a 20-year Marine who has been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, national security is always going to be a top priority for me, protecting the homeland is a top priority for me.” She said “a strong border equals a strong country,” a slight variation on a Trump slogan: “If you don’t have borders, then you don’t have a country.” It might be surprising that the Democratic candidate whose opponent has accused her of wanting to “defund the police” would so strongly favor border control. In many ways, however, Mendoza follows a decades-long Democratic tradition of support for border and immigration enforcement, dating back to President Bill Clinton’s 1995 State of the Union address, when he boasted that his administration was moving “aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards.”

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Shouting match erupts at UN as Cuban foreign minister moves toward US ambassador's podium

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz told Cuba's foreign minister to "back up" Tuesday after the Cuban diplomat approached the podium and interrupted his remarks on the floor of the U.N. General Assembly. "Well, we know. We know where it went. And today we are here to share it to the world," Waltz said as he accused Cuba's government of enriching its leaders while its people suffered. As the Cuban delegation sought to interrupt his remarks, Waltz fired back. "I know you don't like to hear this," Waltz said. "This is America, my friend. This is the United Nations. This isn't your communist dictatorship. You cannot silence me."

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla continued toward the podium as the president of the General Assembly attempted to restore order, reminding delegates that they would have an opportunity to respond. "This individual needs to back away from this podium," Waltz said as the confrontation escalated. "He's not going to intimidate me in the United States of America. "I'm the representative of the United States of America. Back up! Back up, Ambassador. Back away! This isn't Havana." The confrontation erupted during the General Assembly's annual debate over the decades-old U.S. embargo on Cuba, with Waltz urging member states to reject a resolution calling for an end to the restrictions. Waltz accused Havana's communist government of enriching itself while blaming Washington for hardships he said were caused by corruption and repression inside Cuba. After Cuba was eventually granted the floor, the delegation's foreign minister accused Waltz of "lying" and asked the General Assembly president to call him to order. "Mr. Waltz is lying yet again," he said, arguing that the U.S. ambassador's remarks were "beneath the dignity of this forum and member states" and were insulting to Cuba's government and people.

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‘I felt blind panic.’ They opened their new $2,000 iPhone Duo—and it broke.

It took about five minutes for Jesse Dalton’s iPhone Duo dream to shift into nightmare mode. Last Friday, the Dallas-area resident unboxed Apple’s just-released $2,000 folding phone. He transferred cell service and apps from his old iPhone, then showed the novel device to his wife. He had only opened and closed the Duo four or five times when the hinge got stuck at a 45-degree angle. Dalton tried to pry it open and heard a loud pop. “I felt blind panic,” he says. Immediately, bright lines appeared on screen, one along the crease and another multicolor strip shooting across one side of the screen. The whole interior display also appeared “wavy,” he says.

Shane Basinski’s new iPhone Duo broke after about six hours. “I was babying it, like fine china,” says the Melbourne, Australia, resident. “I put on a case right away.” While opening the phone to show it to a friend, he heard a “loud audible crack” and felt a small bump on the display where lines suddenly appeared. Both Dalton and Basinski were able to get replacements at their local Apple Stores. Basinski says opening and closing his replacement Duo feels much smoother. An spokesman said, “We are aware of an issue impacting the inner display on a small number of iPhone Duo units. If users experience issues with their iPhone Duo display, they should contact AppleCare for a replacement.” He didn’t specify how many units are affected, and says Apple isn’t recalling the product. While the larger concern for would-be iPhone Duo buyers has been getting their hands on one, some who succeeded have encountered this fatal flaw. And this isn’t Apple’s only hardware headache during its high season: Earlier this month, the company offered to replace some iPhone 18 Pro Max models which were unable to connect to AT&T’s network for calls, text and data. There are reports of similarly damaged Duos on social media, all with bright lines across the same parts of the screen. Are these units just lemons—or are they part of a systemic issue? “The consistency points to a possible sensitivity in the hinge tolerances or in how the display is supported during the fold,” says Francisco Jeronimo, vice president of worldwide devices at research firm IDC.

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Inside Vivek Ramaswamy's Ohio flameout

The mood at the Vivek Ramaswamy rally was upbeat—confident, even—but the cracks started to show before it began. The town hall in the small Cleveland suburb of Parma was entitled “Pierogis, Pabst, and Patriots,” and there were plenty of all three on hand at the Union House Bar and Restaurant. But we weren’t really supposed to be here. We were supposed to have convened at the Cleveland Harley-Davidson outpost for a “Christians, Bikers & Patriots” campaign event, before a sudden cancellation necessitated a shift to this woodsy sports joint. There was no word on what had gone wrong with the bikers. Still, the energy was real in this crimson-tinged bar, bustling with elderly Ohioans in OSU jerseys and MAGA merch alongside watery tubs of PBR. (Among the T-shirts: a red-ink outline of Charlie Kirk raising his fist, and a Trump-Vance shirt where the year was crossed out and replaced, in Sharpie, with 2028.)

Once the actual event kicked off, however, even the speakers couldn’t help but strike notes of concern. “If you choose not to decide in this election, you are supporting a cast of characters that wants to take our state in a fundamentally dangerous direction,” said Secretary of State Frank LaRose, invoking Rush’s “Freewill” as he opened for the guest of honor and promoted his own campaign for state auditor. “The Democrats are feelin’ chippy,” he warned. “But there will be no blue wave. There will be a bright-red Ramaswamy tsunami!” Ramaswamy finally took the stump to raucous applause and harped on his finely honed campaign planks—improving public schools, reducing property taxes and everyday costs, welcoming legal immigrants—while firing some culture-war drive-bys at the evils of “wokeism” and “transgenderism.” Former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel subsequently took the mic and felt the need to emphasize Ramaswamy’s devotion to God. “I’ve been with Vivek at churches all over the state. There’s this band of Christian warriors who are following and supporting Vivek because he supports them,” Mandel stressed. The sentiment proved to be a bellwether for the audience Q&A. An answer Ramaswamy gave condemning sanctuary cities wasn’t enough for a hoarse-voiced attendee who repeatedly interrupted: “Damned immigrants are hurtin’ everybody! We gotta get all of ’em out of here!”

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Lead Stories

Trump returns to Texas, turning to former football stars to motivate GOP base

Everything is bigger in Texas and with a week to go until Election Day that holds true here for the amount of campaign money being spent and the political capital at stake for President Trump. The president is making his third visit in the past month to the Lone Star state Tuesday with his endorsement power on the line after he helped oust incumbent Republican Senator John Cornyn in favor of embattled state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the state’s primary. More than $1 billion in ad spending has already poured into Texas overall by both parties, and the critical Texas Senate race between Paxton and Democrat James Talarico, where well over half of that money has gone, is on track to become the most expensive Senate contest in U.S. history.

According to the latest polling average from MS NOW/FiftyPlusOne Talarico has a slight edge 49.2 to 46.5 over Paxton. Trump’s trip back to Texas to stump for Paxton and other Republicans is another stop on his red state tour in the campaign’s closing days to turn out his base with control of the House and Senate at stake. Tuesday he’ll make a play to energize those supporters, particularly young men, with two former college football stars beloved in the state, Johnny Manziel and Colt McCoy, along with two-time Super Bowl champion Danny Amendola joining him in Texas, according to a White House official. Axios was first to report the former football players joining Trump on the trail. Trump is making two stops, rallying first in the southern coast city of Corpus Christi followed by a visit to Lubbock in deeply conservative West Texas. Corpus Christi is located in the 34th Congressional District of Texas, which is one of a handful of congressional districts across the country that voted for Trump in the 2024 presidential election but elected a Democrat in the House.

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Trump’s border chief defends wall plans in Texas’ Big Bend despite a court setback

The Trump administration's top border official defended plans to build a wall and other infrastructure in Texas’ Big Bend region despite mounting opposition against the project and a court-ordered pause on construction, saying his goal of fortifying the country’s borders was "non-negotiable." In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott argued that the $46 billion wall project was justified despite a bipartisan coalition of landowners, local businesses and environmentalists who view it as a waste of taxpayer money that could be destructive to a region with historically low migrant crossings. "Our number one goal right out the gate is we have to know who and what is coming into the United States," Scott said on Thursday. If the Big Bend region were left without a wall or other border infrastructure while other areas along the border get those fortifications, he said, "I am 100% convinced it will be completely overrun and destroyed."

The fight over Big Bend has become a major test for how far the Republican administration is willing to go for the border wall, President Donald Trump’s signature infrastructure project. Scott, a former Border Patrol agent, was tapped by Trump to complete it. His agency is responsible for executing a plan funded last summer by Republicans in Congress to line the roughly 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) border with Mexico with a mixture of 30-foot-tall (9-meter-tall) steel walls, vehicle barriers, new roads and surveillance technology to prevent illegal immigration and smuggling. The Trump administration says it is building about 12 miles (19 kilometers) a week. Scott, who gets daily progress updates, said it will be complete by the end of Trump’s second term. The primary border wall — some areas also get a secondary layer — will be done by the end of December 2027. "We're actually ahead of schedule," Scott said.

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How Big Tech and Abbott made Texas the ‘epicenter’ of data centers

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has been cracking down on data centers for months, but less than a year ago his appointees and staffers were actively trying to bring projects to the state. On Dec. 16, 2025, two days before Texas announced sweeping changes to expedite grid access to data centers, Abbott’s top staff held a closed-door meeting with representatives of the state’s largest tech and transmission companies, according to records obtained by POLITICO. The documents show representatives from Google, OpenAI, Meta, Amazon Web Services and Nvidia were “confirmed” to meet with Abbott’s team, joined by Texas’ head electricity regulator and grid manager to discuss building out the state’s power grid. Also in the room, according to the records: officials with the state’s four main electric transmission companies — Oncor Electric, CenterPoint Energy, AEP Texas and Texas-New Mexico Power.

A person at the meeting, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about what happened, said the message from Abbott’s office was clear: We want data centers to come to Texas, and we want to work with the industry to remove roadblocks to make that happen. “The point of that meeting really was to say, ‘We’re committed to fixing this and finding a better path forward,’” the person said. That path was laid out by grid officials to the state’s utility regulators at an open meeting Dec. 18, 2025 — a framework that was largely similar to one proposed by Google and a Texas-based hyperscaler. In the months that followed, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and the state Public Utility Commission worked to write new rules and develop the new process to bring large power users — almost all of which are data centers — onto the state’s main power grid. The moves came as the Trump administration encouraged Texas leaders to support data center development and the growth of artificial intelligence.

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Fact check: Did North Texas senator avoid property taxes on Fort Worth home?

The Republican Party of Texas is accusing state Sen. Taylor Rehmet, a Fort Worth Democrat, of illegally taking a full property tax exemption on a property he rents out. Rehmet received national attention in a January special election runoff when he defeated his Republican opponent, Leigh Wambasganss, in a district that President Donald Trump won by 17 points in 2024. That election gave him a partial senate term representing much of North and West Tarrant County. Now, Rehmet and Wambsganss are in a Nov. 3 rematch for a full term. Up and down the ballot, Republicans are worried about Democratic gains in what is looking to be Texas’ most competitive election cycle in decades. Early voting runs through Oct. 30. Many Democrats have centered their campaigns on affordability and the working person — a move out of Rehmet’s playbook from January.

With the cost of living as a top ballot issue, it’s no surprise property taxes have become a source of campaign fodder, including in the Senate District 9, where the Texas GOP claims Rehmet doesn’t pay his fair share. Rehmet — U.S. Air Force veteran, aircraft mechanic and union leader — disputes that attack line, but he and his campaign have avoided answering many of the Star-Telegram’s questions when working to check the claims. So did Rehmet skirt paying property taxes? Here’s what we know. A website and mailer from the Texas GOP claim Rehmet is illegally applying the state’s general homestead exemption and an exemption granted to disabled veterans to a rental property he owns. The party claims he lives at a friend’s house. In Texas, homeowners are granted a $140,000 homestead exemption on their primary residence when paying school property taxes. That means $140,000 is deducted from a home’s appraised value for the purpose of calculating the tax. Disabled veterans can also qualify for separate property tax exemptions, including a homestead exemption on the total appraised value of their primary residence. A video ad displays images of the home in question, which is in Fort Worth’s Greenway neighborhood, property tax records and a Zillow listing that shows the property as available to rent. A full address for the Fort Worth house is displayed at points. The address is publicly available online.

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State Stories

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries calls ‘not to give a dime’ to ICE at Houston stop

U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Houston-area U.S. Reps. Sylvia Garcia and Christian Menefee met with members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) on Monday to discuss how President Donald Trump's immigration policies are affecting Houston's workforce. Jeffries called for cutting off all funding to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Jeffries praised U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia for her work in pressing for comprehensive immigration reform, in the vehicle of the American Dream and Promise Act of 2026. The bill, of which Garcia is the lead sponsor, would provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, as well as immigrants with Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure statuses.

"That is just the beginning of what needs to happen in terms of getting this national nightmare that the people here in Houston and all across America have been experiencing and get to a much better place here in the United States of America, which will certainly include dramatic change as it relates to immigration enforcement and our continued commitment not to give a dime to Donald Trump’s violent mass deportation machine," Jeffries said. Jeffries said that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security should not count on getting any funding from Democrats in Congress without structural changes to the agency, including greater accountability. "If you’ve got rogue ICE agents who think they’ll never be held accountable," he said, "then we’re going to continue to see the type of violence that has been unleashed and brutality on law-abiding immigrant communities and on American citizens as we horrifically saw with Alex Pretti and Renée Nicole Good." Jeffries, as the leader of the Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, is in a strong position to become the next Speaker of the House if his party wins a majority of seats in the chamber in the midterm elections. His visit to Texas came one day before Trump’s Tuesday visit to the state — in the president’s case, to hold rallies in Lubbock and Corpus Christi. Garcia, who introduced Jeffries, stressed that aggressive immigration enforcement measures under Trump were hurting not only immigrants but the Houston economy. "Make no mistake, this is an affordability issue," Garcia said. "When workers are afraid to show up for work, families lose paychecks. When customers are afraid to leave their homes, restaurants, and small businesses lose money. And when construction workers are afraid to go to a job site, homes will not get built."

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When James Talarico was Jimmy, he played in the sandbox of student politics at UT Austin

Friday nights at the University of Texas at Austin meant The West Wing for Jimmy Talarico and his friends. They watched the show on DVD, escaping into the fictional White House of President Jed Bartlet, imagining themselves in the corridors of power. "We were a bunch of dumb college kids doing politics," said Andy Jones, who was part of that circle of friends. "We were all caught up in the moment of being in college and the Iraq war and the financial crisis and all this stuff." But even among these political obsessives, Talarico stood out. He was unusually polished, smooth and deliberate, almost as if he had been preparing for a U.S. Senate campaign since elementary school.

Nearly two decades later, he's within striking distance of becoming the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from Texas since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988. Public opinion polls suggest a neck-and-neck race between Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton in the Nov. 3 election. "I could tell from the very minute he stepped on campus that he had big aspirations," Talarico's college friend Zack Hall remembered from 2007. "The way he dressed like he looked like Bill Clinton." Hall, who took Talarico under his wing at University Democrats, sometimes thought his younger friend could loosen up a bit. "You look too much like a politician right now. You're acting too much like a politician," Hall remembers telling him. Talarico's four years at UT Austin, from 2007 to 2011, became a political apprenticeship. He helped register thousands of voters, organized protests, lobbied lawmakers and ran a bitterly fought campaign for student government. Along the way, he made political decisions that left some of his closest allies feeling betrayed.

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Inside Jim Burke’s big bet on Vistra’s future

On a 104-degree August day in Texas, Vistra Corp. president and CEO Jim Burke was preparing to board a plane to visit the company’s Davis-Besse nuclear facility in Ohio. The trip reflected a strategy years in the making. In 2018, when the zeitgeist favored renewables, Vistra execs doubled down on grid reliability. Building on its longstanding investments in nuclear and natural gas, Vistra expanded its fleet of gas plants that could deliver power on demand. Now, as AI fuels demand for electricity, those assets are increasingly valuable. The company’s market cap has climbed from roughly $10 billion in 2017 to $48 billion today. Burke is helping meet the demand for AI infrastructure in two major electricity markets while keeping power affordable and reliable for existing customers. As a marathon and triathlon competitor, the Louisiana-born, 58-year-old is accustomed to pushing through discomfort. “I love this company because it takes on the hard stuff,” Burke says.

Burke became CEO of TXU Energy in 2005, early in Texas’ transition to a competitive electricity market. He has experienced its upheavals firsthand, leading the retail business through its parent company’s leveraged buyout and subsequent bankruptcy before moving into leadership at Vistra. Lessons were learned and prices paid, he acknowledges. “I’ve been here through almost all of that,” says Burke, who served as COO and then CFO and president before becoming Vistra’s chief executive in 2022. “Five or six years ago, no one was really talking about dispatchable fleets,” Burke says, recalling the focus on renewables. In 2018, Vistra acquired Dynegy for $1.74 billion, doubling the company’s power generation capacity. Markets weren’t valuing gas plants—out-of-favor dispatchable assets that can adjust output to match power needs. Vistra pursued the deal on the thesis that those assets would become more and more important. The deal brought Vistra’s generation capacity to roughly 40 gigawatts (GW). Six years later, Vistra expanded its nuclear fleet through a roughly $6 billion acquisition of Energy Harbor. Amazon’s deal with Talen Energy to buy energy from the Susquehanna nuclear plant, an an adjacent data center, in Pennsylvania in 2025 took the industry by storm. “We announced our acquisition of Energy Harbor two years before that industry wake-up call,” notes Burke, who serves as vice chair of the Nuclear Energy Institute and sits on the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations board. Public acceptance of nuclear power has grown in recent years, he adds. “Safety and reliability is in the best place it’s ever been.”

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Tom Giovanetti: This one’s on you, Republicans

(Tom Giovanetti is president of the Institute for Policy Innovation, a conservative, Dallas-based think tank.) I was raised in a conservative, religious family. In the days before President Ronald Reagan, families like mine often resisted identification with a political party, choosing instead to “support the man, not the party.” They were conservatives, both fiscally and socially, they just weren’t necessarily Republicans. All that changed with the Reagan coalition. Many Christians came to see the Republican Party as their natural home because of its embrace of pro-life and pro-family policies. It also offered the promise of Supreme Court nominees who would reverse the liberal Warren and Burger courts, of which Roe v. Wade was exhibit A. I experienced this personally. As a teenager sitting at the breakfast table, I listened to Reagan’s radio broadcasts and heard a wise, confident man explaining the world and its problems to me in ways that made sense. Reagan advocated conservative solutions, and when he later put many of those policies in place, they worked. I have spent my life since as a “movement conservative,” writing, speaking and running a conservative organization.

Conservatives have banked a lot of successes since then — not only social but also fiscal and international. Conservative policies strengthened the economy, defeated the Soviet Union, freed millions from communism and restored American confidence and leadership. They also nurtured a generation of legal scholars and judges who reformed judicial interpretation and ultimately the Supreme Court. In the course of enjoying all these successes, many found their identity within the party and forgot why their forebears joined the Republican coalition in the first place. Too many who called themselves conservatives found it easy to discard long-held beliefs in order to secure victory for Republican candidates, even when those candidates offended or even scorned their values. Many former allies have lost their ability to see it, but today I see a Republican Party that violates and ridicules the conservative principles that drew people like me into it in the first place. My party chose as its leader an incompetent, narcissistic, chronic liar who seeks nothing but his own enrichment and the indulgence of his own ego. Transgressions spin out of this White House with such frequency that we have become inured to them.

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Inside UT's response to Bo French's racist post about Longhorn fans

The weekend of Sept. 12, the University of Texas celebrated. Celebrating the win that night, UT sent out an “apply now!” link on X, inviting students to be a part of “moments like this.” A UT social media analyst tracked which politicians and celebrities had posted about the win (U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, Matthew McConaughey and U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico) and who had posted a picture with President Jim Davis — referred to behind the scenes as PJD — (Ohio State’s president, a local CEO and former U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison). The day after, the UT account went comparatively quiet. On Sunday, Sept. 13, just before 8 a.m., Bo French — a Tarrant County Republican running for a seat on the oil and gas industry-regulating Texas Railroad Commission — posted a screengrab he’d taken from the game.

The photo showed a student section erupting in cheers as the Longhorns charged into the fourth quarter to score the 21 points they needed to clinch the victory. French described the crowd, with celebrating South Asian fans in the front row, as a problem “far worse than anyone imagined.” French — a downballot conservative candidate — posts online angrily and often. He has argued that 100 million people, about a third of the country, should be deported, and has increasingly perpetuated Islamophobic and antisemitic views. But his post about UT’s student section hit a nerve, attracting millions of views and forcing those in the Republican party to answer the question: Was this politics as usual, or did French’s post cross a line? In the days that followed, Republicans including U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Speaker of the House Dustin Burrows and Texas Tech University System Chairman Cody Campbell condemned French’s language as racist or wrong. Longtime conservative strategist Karl Rove said he would not vote for French in November. But the University of Texas remained quiet on the matter for 36 hours. UT leadership’s silence would create deep rifts with its students of color, some of whom already felt upset with the university’s decision to cut ethnic studies majors and some core classes.

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Texas appeals court to review case of woman convicted after swearing at Tarrant Commissioners Court

The highest appeals court in Texas has agreed to review the case of a woman convicted of disrupting a Tarrant County Commissioners Court meeting last year. Carolyn Rodriguez was arrested after cursing during the public comment portion of the meeting in January 2025. Part of her appeal request argues her freedom of speech was violated, the meeting was not hindered in any way and that profanity is not disorderly conduct so long as there were no threats of violence. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted review last Thursday, according to court filings. Mark Streiff, an attorney for Rodriguez, told KERA News Monday elected officials should listen to their constituents, regardless of whether they agree with them.

“We live in a democracy, and we have elected officials that we elect to certain offices,” Streiff said. “They don’t get to be little kings and tyrants.” During the January 2025 meeting, commissioners were set to vote on stricter meeting rules that prohibited swearing. In turn, Rodriguez protested these new rules by rattling off several swear words during her allotted time to speak. County Judge Tim O’Hare kicked her out of the meeting, and she shouted, “[Expletive] you!” and “It’s not against the law!” as she got arrested. The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office did not comment on the case but said in an email Rodriguez’s brief is due Nov. 23 and the DA’s office will file its response 30 days after that. KERA News reached out to O’Hare and will update this story with any response. Rodriguez is known in the community as a free-speech activist and films police interactions on her YouTube channel, Carolina in Fort Worth.

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With Muny in play, the city golf course is in the spotlight once again

Lions Municipal Golf Course has been a part of Volma Overton Jr.’s life for more than 70 years. He was 5 when he ran around and watched wildlife while his dad played 18 holes with friends. He was 8 or so when he first entered the “caddie shack” for food. And he’s worked for decades to help save the historic golf course from development. Now, for the first since it opened, the City of Austin has a chance to own the 141 acres. The course, nicknamed Muny, holds a place in national civil rights history as the first desegregated course in the South. It hosts 75,000 rounds of golf each year. “I think everything is finally moving in the right direction,” said Overton, now 78. “We’ve got enough people who believe that this is the best thing to happen for the city and for the golf course.”

When Mayor Kirk Watson announced on Oct. 14 the city has a path to owning the course, Muny fans celebrated. The University of Texas owns the land and has leased it to the city for nearly 90 years,currently on a month-to-month basis. Now UT has tentatively agreed to give the course to the city in exchange for a large donation from anonymous donors and amendments to the 1989 Brackenridge Development Agreement, which governs how the 190 acres of university-owned land contiguous to Muny can be developed. The amendments could rewrite decades-old rules dictating building heights, environmental regulations and development standards of that property. Researchers, environmental advocates and residents have already voiced concerns about how future development would affect the city. Holly Reed, who is on the board of The Muny Conservancy, and West Austin Neighborhood Group, says people need more information about the development agreement before they can properly weigh in.

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Texans report receiving fear-mongering text about ‘furries voting’ in election

Over the weekend, Texas voters reported receiving a text sounding the alarm that furries are turning out to skew the state’s midterm election. The text, which four people independently told the Current they had received, was distributed Saturday, accompanied by a photo of a man allegedly walking away from a Collin County polling place while wearing a fox tail accessory. The text claimed that furries — a term for people who sometimes adopt personas of anthropomorphized animal characters — and “other weirdos” are turning out in “record numbers” to vote early and are a “big reason why Democrats hold an 86,000 vote lead on Republicans statewide.” “Don’t let weirdo furry Socialists pick our leaders!” the text read, encouraging recipients to vote for “every Republican on your ballot today to keep common sense conservatives in control of Texas.”

The text states that it was sent out by Texans for Common Sense, a political action committee 100% funded by Texans United for a Conservative Majority PAC, a far-right group backed by West Texas oil billionaire Tim Dunn. Dunn, co-founder of Midland-based CrownQuest Operating, is one of the main financial backers of the increasingly far-right Texas GOP. Texas Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico frequently mentions the deep-pocketed oilman on the campaign trail as he decries billionaires’ meddling in Texas politics. There’s no proof that the unknown man in the texted photo was walking away from a polling place during early voting or that he’s a furry. People wear fox tails for a variety of reasons, including as an alternative fashion statement. In addition to potentially signaling membership in the furry community, the accessories are popular among cosplay and anime enthusiasts, e-girls, Renaissance faire-goers and members of other niche subcultures. But even if the man is a furry, who cares? There’s no indication that furries share any political ideology, nor is there any estimate of how many Texans are part of the subculture. The state’s largest annual furry convention, Texas Furry Fiesta, draws an attendance of 8,000. Even that gathering, a major celebration of furry culture that also draws people from other states and countries, represents a tiny fraction of Texas’ 31.7 million residents. Or could the furry voting bloc be the literal dark horse this election cycle?

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Data center boom leads to surge in demand for electricians — and interest in joining trade

Applications to the North Texas Electrical Training Center have climbed to about 700 a month, up from 60 to 70 a month just a few years ago, as a surge in data center construction drives demand for electricians, the center’s training director said. “Demand has grown crazy as of late,” said Jason Allen. “It’s gone exponential.” Allen said the program now receives about 10 times more applicants than it has spots to fill, and he's looking to expand to keep up. Allen said data centers are the main reason for the demand. “We have a bunch of them going and they require a lot of electricians and that is the big driver there,” he said, adding that the trend has been building over the last three years. “There’s just not enough of us out there,” Allen said. “And so when there’s not enough manpower you need to get people [and] the way you do that is incentives.”

Allen said pay is a major draw. Wages start at $20.33 an hour plus benefits, he said, but some companies are also offering overtime incentives, including paying time-and-a-half and double-time. “There is a substantial amount of money to be made out there in the field for sure,” Allen said. He also credited social media for the jump in applications. “I think a big part of it is people on social media showing their checks,” Allen said. “People talking about how much money you can make in the trades has been a big part of the push.” Allen said the four year apprenticeship training involves 8,000 hours on the job — and a day in a classroom setting once every two weeks. “Our goal is to just train the best general electricians out there with our apprentices doing it safely every day,” Allen said. One of those apprentices, Jacob Hamilton, is learning the fundamentals of electrical circuits in class at the training center. He said he's already on his second data center job.

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Dallas Morning News Editorial: Dan Patrick threatens books in schools while AI deepfakes target kids

There is something dystopian about boxing up books from classrooms and school libraries and sending them to storage. This sounds like the plot of a science fiction novel, but it’s also what is happening in Dallas ISD. The district is removing book titles at the request of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick whose list of “dirty, filthy and vulgar books” is based on about 2,000 titles compiled by a conservative activist group. This newspaper reported that in September, Dallas ISD directed schools to remove book titles flagged by Patrick. While the district evaluates the fate of the books, they are being stored at a district service center.

It’s hard to blame Dallas ISD for sending its books away, especially since Patrick has threatened to punish school districts that don’t remove books with profane content by knocking them down a letter grade in the state’s accountability scores. But the focus on books is a side show, distracting from the district’s real work: educating students. It’s one thing for a high-performing district like Celina ISD to form a library council to discuss what students are reading — though it feels unnecessary when many of those participating in the process haven’t read the books, community input is low, and students aren’t checking out the books in question. But for a large, urban school district like Dallas that is educating some of the most vulnerable students in the state, directing staff to spend time culling books takes valuable time and attention away from teaching. The urgency to rid schools of profane books feels tilted given the other harmful content students are encountering at school, some of it enabled by those supporting Texas Republicans’ campaigns.

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Lawsuits and police reports: Texas Dems are taking legal action against GOP opponents

Two Democratic candidates have taken legal action against their Republican opponents, as Election Day fast approaches. Gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa filed a lawsuit against Gov. Greg Abbott in Travis County on Oct. 19 to obtain unredacted emails between Elon Musk and Abbott. Vikki Goodwin, the Democratic candidate running for Lt. Governor, filed a police report against Republican incumbent Dan Patrick at the end of September for misrepresenting her views in AI deepfake ads. Hinojosa's lawsuit stems from a Texas Public Information Act request Hinojosa filed on Sept. 29, asking to inspect all documents exchanged between Musk, his companies, and the governor’s office. Texas Newsroom had previously requested the documents and received redacted versions.

Goodwin filed a police report on Sept. 21, saying Patrick’s campaign advertisements violated state law. The since-deleted, AI-generated ads depicted the Democratic candidate describing policies she said did not reflect her campaign. The ad misrepresented Goodwin’s views on taxes, she said. Patrick’s campaign said the ads were “an obvious parody produced to entertain” and did not break state law because they were released before the mandated 30-day limit. “I did not personally do or say the things depicted in the video; although the ‘person’ in the video appears to be me, it was not actually me,” Goodwin said in the affidavit. “Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick posted the video with the intent to deceive Texans, injure a candidate, or influence the result of an election.” The two Democrats have had other things in common this election cycle, as they have repeatedly tried to capitalize on their opponents’ unwillingness to debate. Abbott and Patrick have declined many debate invitations from their opponents, which reflects a broader nationwide trend this cycle in which GOP candidates across the country will not debate their challengers.

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Houston's Memorial Hermann ends Medicare Advantage plan

Memorial Hermann Health System’s decision to close its Medicare Advantage plan at year's end comes as many healthcare providers and insurers struggle with financial and regulatory challenges, experts said. Houston’s largest health system announced last month that it will stop offering its private insurance alternative to Medicare beginning in 2027. The Memorial Hermann plan has more than 14,000 members as of this month, according to data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Memorial Hermann pointed to a variety of reasons for its decision, including intensifying competition in the market and uncertainty around changing federal regulations.

“By narrowing our focus on our System’s core strengths, including care delivery, access and clinical excellence, we can advance our mission while positioning the System for sustainable growth,” Memorial Hermann said in a statement on its website. Memorial Hermann previously announced plans to wind down its commercial insurance plans — types of plans administered by private companies and typically obtained through an employer — by the end of the year. Experts said Memorial Hermann’s decision to close its plan comes as many health insurers scale back coverage because of various financial and regulatory challenges. Hospitals and insurers have struggled with rising healthcare costs and a higher-than-expected demand for services. The federal government has also implemented several policy changes that have tightened payments to Medicare Advantage plans. “It can just create an environment where it’s very difficult to continue to operate a very complex line of business like a health plan when you’re navigating all these other things going on,” said Molly Smith, group vice president for public policy at the American Hospital Association.

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Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker endorses across party lines in key races

Republican Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker has made endorsements in several key Nov. 3 midterm races that straddle party lines — but she has not made a decision in the race for U.S. Senate. State Rep. Jon Rosenthal of Houston, the Democratic candidate vying for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, announced Sunday that Parker has endorsed him. The Texas Railroad Commission — which oversees the state’s oil and gas industry, not railroads — has become a political lightning rod after former Tarrant County GOP chair Bo French won the Republican nomination for the seat. French received backlash in September for a series of social media posts targeting a diverse group of students cheering for the Longhorns at a Texas football game. “The Texas Railroad Commission is not a place for culture wars and bigotry,” Parker said in a statement endorsing Rosenthal, according to a post on his Facebook. “It is the foundation of the Texas economy, and we cannot afford to hand it to the wrong leader. Vote for Jon Rosenthal.”

Parker told the Dallas Morning News and KXAS Channel 5 in a joint interview that she remains undecided in the Senate race between Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton and Democratic state Rep. James Talarico of Round Rock. “I will ultimately vote in that election,” Parker told the outlets. “I just haven’t voted yet and I don’t know yet.” Parker endorsed U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary and told the outlets that she considered him a better model for a senator. Parker has also endorsed Republican Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare to keep his position. Parker was one of a handful of Republicans who endorsed former Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price when she ran for Tarrant County judge, and she has spoken about division within the Republican Party. “We just eat our own,” she told the Texas Tribune in 2022. Parker was one of 10 mayors in Tarrant County who signed a letter in 2025 asking Tarrant County commissioners to “strongly consider” delaying a vote on redrawing voting precincts. In her endorsement of O’Hare, posted on his Facebook page on Oct. 16, Parker said that O’Hare was “the right choice for Tarrant County.” “Now is not the time for activist leadership,” Parker said, according to the post. “It’s a time to focus on governing our county into the future.” Parker has also endorsed state Democratic state Sen. Nathan Johnson of Dallas over state Republican state Sen. Mayes Middleton of Galveston in the race for Texas attorney general, telling the Dallas Morning News and NBC5 that she had worked with Johnson in the past.

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Fort Bend judge candidate uses AI to create Black 'supporters' in ad

Fort Bend County Judge Daniel Wong is facing heat for posting a campaign video generated by artificial intelligence that depicts Black people voicing support for his campaign because he paid for their basic needs. Wong, a Republican who was appointed to the role this year and is seeking a full term Nov. 3, posted a video on Facebook Friday morning that shows six Black, AI-generated "supporters" thanking Wong for his help in finding them jobs, getting them food and paying their light bills. The video has since been deleted from Wong's social media pages. "(He helped me) at my worst time," says one AI-generated character, who wears a misspelled "Daniel Wong" hat and stands in front of an illegible roadside marquee covered in gibberish letters.

Fort Bend County Pct. 4 Commissioner Dexter McCoy, Wong's Democratic opponent, said the video was "reprehensible and disgusting" for reducing the perception of Black voters to people simply looking for a "handout." Making matters worse, McCoy said, was that the AI-generated characters depict the likenesses of real people — in this case, paid Wong campaign workers who were asked to send in selfies when they checked in for work at polling places, according to McCoy. "Stealing the faces of ordinary people to fake support from Black voters is racist, vile and flat-out wrong," McCoy said. "Wong knows his agenda is extreme and it doesn't sell well in Fort Bend County, so he's using AI to manufacture support that he can't earn, and I don't think that's the judgement of someone ready to lead the most diverse county in Texas." The Wong campaign did not respond to questions about whether the video was based on photos of his campaign staff. Wong posted a statement Saturday night claiming, without evidence, that the video was created by a Democrat and shared with his campaign. The campaign did not respond to a request for further comment.

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City Stories

Ariat replaces Dickies as naming sponsor of top-grossing arena

Dickies Arena woke up with a new name Monday morning: Ariat? Arena. Ariat International Inc. has signed a 10-year naming rights deal with Trail Drive Management Corp., the nonprofit operator of the venue, effective immediately. The naming rights partnership also designates Ariat as the arena's official partner for Western and work wear, according to an Oct. 26 announcement by Ariat International. Financial terms were not disclosed. The naming rights builds on a partnership established when The Ariat Club opened inside the arena in 2023 and as Ariat continues to grow its regional headquarters in Fort Worth. Ariat opened its 1-million-square-foot distribution hub and regional HQ in the city in spring 2022 and in 2025 announced plans to invest $72.6 million to expand.

"Fort Worth has played a huge part in Ariat’s growth, and the city and the State of Texas have been incredible partners every step of the way," Liz O'Neill, CEO of Ariat, said in a statement. "Putting our name on this iconic arena is the next chapter, and we’re honored to welcome the community for rodeos, concerts, and sporting events." Ariat International was founded in 1993 and is based in San Leandro, California. It is known for boots and apparel, including specialized equestrian gear, and has been the sponsor of the Texas Rattlers team in the Professional Bull Riders league since the inaugural season in 2022. At the time, Ariat was the first company to sponsor a PBR team. Ariat Arena has hosted more than 935 events and 6 million-plus fans since it opened in 2019. It was the highest-grossing venue in North America in the first six months of the year in the 10,001-15,000 capacity category, according to a Billboard? report. Trail Drive Management announced it was seeking a new naming rights partner earlier this year, after the relationship with Dickies'? new owner, New York-based Blue Star Alliance LLC, ended in a contract dispute. The Dickies headquarters moved out of Fort Worth for Costa Mesa, California, in 2025. The nonprofit had its eye on Ariat since it began searching for a new naming rights partner earlier this year, despite at least a dozen companies, both local and national, showing interest.

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National Stories

Anthropic’s IPO sets up defining moment for Wall Street and AI boom

Anthropic PBC’s initial public offering is laying bare the extremes of the multi-trillion-dollar AI boom business model: extraordinary growth paired with uncertainty about demand and the spending required to continue developing the technology. The startup, which publicly filed IPO paperwork on Monday, is poised to be the first major US firm focused solely on building AI software to make its market debut. The filing offers proof of the billions of dollars in sales per year that Anthropic's products generate, but also puts forth hard questions about its extreme losses, government intervention and the potential for catastrophic harms that are specific to cutting-edge AI developers. Just five years into its existence, Anthropic is expected to raise more money in its IPO than any firm in history and overtake Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in market value.

Its valuation has surged from $183 billion a little over a year ago to $965 billion in its most recent round, with early expectations that the company could be worth upwards of nearly $2 trillion once it goes public — creating a massive windfall, even for employees and investors who got into the company somewhat late. Its public market performance might cement or capsize Wall Street’s confidence in the AI boom at a moment when investors are increasingly anxious about the borrowing binge underpinning it. More than any other companies, Anthropic and archrival OpenAI have set the pace for global AI development. Anthropic has also put itself at the center of a complex web of interconnected investments from leading chipmakers and cloud providers that are helping to prop up the entire sector and the US economy. “This will really be investors’ first significant opportunity to invest directly in the company that is driving the AI economy,” said Gil Luria, head of technology research at DA Davidson. “It’s of monumental importance.” At the same time, Anthropic’s IPO may shape the prospects for an entire generation of AI startups. It’s anticipated to funnel more capital into the ecosystem through what promises to be an almost unparalleled wealth creation event and is expected to open the floodgates for others to go public in the coming months after a period of paralysis for the IPO market.

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Silicon Valley AI political groups turn on each other in the 2026 election

Silicon Valley’s bid to dominate artificial intelligence politics has devolved into a fight with itself. With one week until the midterm election, political groups favoring faster AI development and lighter, more uniform rules have spent roughly $8 million in general-election congressional races, besting groups pushing for stronger safeguards and more room for states to regulate that have spent about $6.9 million, according to a CNBC analysis of Federal Election Commission filings through Oct. 20. In Florida’s 25th Congressional District, that split has produced a direct face-off. During the primary, Think Big, an affiliate of Leading the Future, the main super PAC network pushing faster AI development and lighter regulation, spent $310,000 supporting Democrat Jared Moskowitz, whose district changed after Florida redrew its congressional map ahead of the 2026 election.

On the other side, Defending Our Values, a super PAC favoring stricter safety guardrails and state-level authority, dropped almost $857,000 to boost Republican Scott Singer and an additional $740,000 to keep one of his primary opponents from being elected. Now, Moskowitz and Singer face off in the general election. It’s a microcosm of the breakdown in Silicon Valley’s bid to build a unified AI political machine. Both sides favor AI innovation and agree on the need for guardrails, but they remain locked in a costly tug-of-war over which candidates to back — and which will best align with their preferred deployment speed, regulatory reach and balance of state power. Electing more allies could give either camp an edge in shaping AI policy in the next Congress, even as the feud risks weakening Silicon Valley’s clout. “Everyone supports some form of regulation. It’s just a debate about how much,” said Bruce Freed, president and co-founder of the nonpartisan Center for Political Accountability and a former chief investigator for the Senate banking committee. “Money is flowing in all directions to be in the driver’s seat of what happens.”

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Microsoft to shed 60,000 from workforce

Microsoft Corp. will offer buyouts to about 60,000 workers, representing roughly a quarter of its total staff, as part of the company’s efforts to trim costs and retool its workforce for the artificial intelligence era. Some personnel in the US, Canada, India and the UK at a vice president level and below will be eligible, said a Microsoft spokesperson. Divisions such as Xbox, Windows, Copilot and finance are fully participating in the offer, according to people familiar with the terms. Certain pools of employees, including some focused on data centers, sales, marketing, cybersecurity and quantum computing, aren’t eligible, the people said. Microsoft declined to comment on these specifics. “This offer gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the company a new choice to make that transition now with support,” Chief People Officer Amy Coleman said in a note to staff Monday. Workers will receive benefits similar to a standard severance package, the spokesperson said.

The world’s largest software maker has shed tens of thousands of workers in waves of layoffs in recent years. In July, it offered buyouts to retirement-age employees, and more than 30% of the roughly 8,750 eligible people took the offer. Microsoft expects far fewer personnel to accept the latest buyout proposal compared with the voluntary retirement program, the spokesperson said. Microsoft’s headcount as of the end of June was 223,000. The figure has been largely flat since 2022, about the time Microsoft began spending heavily on AI and data centers — squeezing budgets and hiring elsewhere in the company. The company is scheduled to report financial results on Wednesday, and investors will be laser-focused on signs that the heavy spending on AI is paying off. Microsoft shares rose about 1% at midday in New York. Other companies have sought to shrink headcount as they redirect spending to AI infrastructure. Google offered voluntary buyouts in a number of units last year, CNBC reported. Meta Platforms Inc.’s headcount is down by more than 20,000 from a late 2022 peak. Both are among the biggest spenders on data center infrastructure.

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Trump proposes local tax to curb infrastructure expansion

President Donald Trump wants data center companies to make an offer residents may find harder to refuse: a financial benefit from hosting the infrastructure powering the AI boom. In an Oct. 21 Truth Social post, Trump urged data center operators to pay dividends to the communities hosting their facilities, arguing that financial agreements could help turn unpopular projects into more acceptable developments. The proposal comes as communities increasingly question the electricity demands, water consumption and local costs associated with AI infrastructure. While Trump’s statement does not establish a nationwide payment requirement, it raises a larger question for the industry: Can sharing the economic benefits of data centers make it easier to build them?

The rapid expansion of AI infrastructure has intensified concerns about the resources needed to operate large data centers, particularly electricity and water. While AI companies have tried to tout the benefits of these facilities, including permanent and temporary employment opportunities for residents, often running into the thousands, these efforts appear to have done little to quell opposition. Already, some states have begun imposing restrictions and moratoriums on data center construction in response to residents’ demands. These decisions are beginning to slow the pace of data center buildouts. While the effects are still early, continued opposition could eventually slow the advancement of AI and other technologies that rely heavily on data centers. Against this backdrop, US President Donald Trump has urged data center companies to make their projects more appealing to residents by offering them financial incentives. In a Truth Social post cited by Reuters, Trump framed his recommendation as something he had observed, suggesting that if more data center operators adopted this approach, opposition to their projects could begin to wane. “I have watched the process closely, and data centers that were highly unpopular in a certain area, have become extremely popular when a financial deal is struck,” he said. Trump did not specify how the proposed dividends would work, who would qualify to receive them or whether payments would come directly from company profits. Those details would determine how much residents benefit and what the arrangements cost data center operators.

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GOP congressman suggests he’s open to deporting Melania Trump if she lied on her immigration paperwork

NewsNation anchor Nichole Berlie interviewed Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) on Monday about his threat to expel Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from the House and push to deport her should authorities find she lied on her citizenship application. “We certainly want to make sure people follow the law when it comes to citizenship, when it comes to anything. Do you think this type of scrutiny should be placed on others who are high profile with connections to the administration, like First Lady Melania Trump, Elon Musk, who was the head of DOGE? Both are high-profile citizens who are also immigrants to our country,” Berlie asked.

“I believe that we should go back to 1990 and we should re-evaluate everyone who has become a naturalized citizen, because what I am understanding is the kind of fraud that we’re hearing about from Ilhan Omar is endemic in Minnesota, with many, many people having gotten citizenship without giving appropriate paperwork. So yeah, I think Ilhan needs to be the first. She certainly should not be the last,” replied Fine. “All right, so you would include that too, or you would want that to include the First Lady, to include Elon Musk, to include other high-profile immigrants as well?” Berlie pushed. “Anyone who was not honest in their immigration paperwork. I don’t know anything about the circumstances of the First Lady or Elon Musk. I don’t know that there’s ever been an allegation, but there are allegations about Ilhan Omar’s citizenship issues going back 10 years that people have refused to look at, in fact coming from the Somali community. I believe anyone who lied on their paperwork to become a citizen should be denaturalized and should be deported,” Fine replied. “Right, we know the First Lady came on the Einstein visa,” Berlie added before moving on.

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James Comey charged for a third time by the Trump administration

Federal prosecutors have charged former FBI Director James Comey with transmission of national defense information and conspiracy to transmit national defense information. It’s the third federal case against Comey, who has been a longtime target of President Donald Trump since he initiated the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The case has played out under seal since Oct. 5. Comey’s defense attorneys filed a motion 10 days ago to dismiss the charges. He has not been indicted in the case. Comey responded to the new charges in a video Monday. “Well, they’re back again. It would almost be funny if it weren’t such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice, one that we cannot become numb to,” Comey said in a video on Substack after the charges were made public.

“Nothing’s changed with me. I’m still innocent. I’m still not afraid of these people, and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary,” he said. The new charges stem from an Oct. 5, 2016, article in The New York Times with the headline “Yahoo Said to Have Aided U.S. Email Surveillance by Adapting Spam Filter” by reporter Charlie Savage. “The United States’ investigation has uncovered evidence that former FBI Director, James B. Comey, sought to correct misinformation which had appeared in the press by way of Reuters the day before,” Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Dustin Farahnak wrote in a filing unsealed Monday. “The investigation has uncovered evidence that Mr. Comey directed staff to speak to Mr. Savage about specific accuracy concerns related to the Reuters article, and thereby illegally transferred classified information.” Comey’s attorneys argued that both counts “are based exclusively on the October 5, 2016, alleged disclosure exactly ten years before the government’s filed criminal information” — and that the charges should be tossed out because of statute-of-limitations issues.

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In Israeli election, Netanyahu's longtime leadership is on the line

Israelis are voting in a pivotal election Tuesday as their country wrestles with unresolved wars, continues to reel from Hamas’ 2023 attack and is deeply divided over the character of the state and the right person to lead it. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who voted just after midday, faces an array of parties seeking to oust Israel’s longest-serving premier from power. Opinion polls have suggested a tight race with his main rival, former military chief Gadi Eisenkot. Over 7 million people are eligible to vote, and tens of thousands have reportedly arrived from overseas. Inside Israel, the race is largely about security and who should serve to defend the country. Outside Israel, it’s mainly about the country’s reputation — and the security of Jewish people worldwide — after growing criticism over the war in Gaza and Jewish settler violence in the occupied West Bank.

Almost 17% of Israelis voted in the first three hours, the highest turnout by that point since 1981, according to initial figures by the Central Elections Committee. In Israel’s fragmented parliamentary politics, no single party has ever won an outright parliamentary majority. There is a chance that neither Netanyahu’s religious and ultranationalist coalition nor the group of parties hoping to remove him has enough support for a majority. That could set off weeks of negotiations before a leader is declared. Israel’s Arab-led parties could emerge as kingmakers — if other parties agree to join forces with them. “Our vote will change the government,” Mansour Abbas, head of the Islamist Ra’am party, said while voting, adding that he hoped turnout would surpass 70% in Arab communities. Arabs in Israel make up about 20% of the population. Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, known for taunting Palestinian detainees and saying some Palestinians in Gaza are “not even people,” warned that “it will be Mansour Abbas’ government” if Netanyahu and his allies don’t win.

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Pentagon presses Congress to keep measure changing name to ‘Department of War’

The Pentagon is pressing Congress to keep measures in the annual defense policy bill that would formally authorize the name change from Department of Defense to “Department of War.” “President Donald Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth had the conviction to say so plainly. Many in Washington would have left the name alone. The president chose clarity over convenience when he signed the executive order authorizing the Department of War name,” Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, wrote in an op-ed for Fox News Digital published Monday. “This is a restoration, not an invention,” wrote Parnell, who is also Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s senior adviser.

The Pentagon’s insistence comes as both the House and Senate Armed Services committees adopted measures in their drafts of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would codify the department’s name change to one preferred by the Trump administration. The amendment — put forward by Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), a staunch Trump ally — to formally rename the department was adopted during the June marathon NDAA session with a 29-27 vote. The push began after Trump signed an executive order last fall to authorize the name change with Hegseth taking on the title of “secretary of War,” and many Republicans on Capitol Hill have referred to the department by the new name. The War Department was established in 1789 under former President George Washington, and the name remained until 1949 when it became the Defense Department. “The president has acted. Now Congress must finish the job. The House and the Senate Armed Services Committee have both backed restoring the Department of War name in this year’s defense bill,” Parnell wrote in the op-ed. “Lawmakers should keep it in the final version and send it to the president’s desk. The name of the institution that sends Americans to fight belongs in law, not just in an executive order.”

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Lead Stories

Dozens of Texas agencies say they can't afford to make state-mandated budget cuts

In July, Texas' top elected officials directed most state agencies, appellate courts and public universities to cut spending by 3% in their base budget requests for the next two years. Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows said those reductions will help Texas hold a "strong fiscal position" by expanding property tax relief and maintaining public education funding when the legislature returns to Austin next year. Yet dozens of agency leaders have warned that the cuts, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, are not sustainable. They would cause Texas residents to lose "essential" services and lead to losses in state revenue, leaders said at the capitol and in budget documents. Texas A&M University System Chancellor Glenn Hegar, a former lawmaker and state comptroller, acknowledged the complexities of state finances before asking budget writers to oppose the 3% cut to his system, which includes 12 universities, eight agencies and other institutions.

"I've spent much of my career working on budgets from the other side of this table," Hegar said during a Sept. 25 hearing on the system's legislative appropriations request. "I understand that every request competes with other important needs and every dollar must deliver a return for the people of Texas." To avoid impacting student services, the university system plans to shrink several research programs if the funding cuts are enacted, according to university documents. "We are asking that the 3% reductions be restored for all institutions, so they can continue to protect education and the services students depend on without shifting additional costs to families," Hegar said. Other government institutions protesting the cuts include the comptroller's office, the attorney general, Texas' Cancer Prevention and Research Institute, state criminal justice agencies and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. This is not the first time state agencies have been asked to cut their spending. In the wake of a recession, state leaders mandated 5% cuts to budget requests in 2010 and required 4% cuts due to low severance tax revenues in 2016, according to Rahul Sreenivasan, a fiscal policy analyst at the nonpartisan think tank Texas 2036.

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In Texas Senate race, Talarico leans into growing rivalry with Elon Musk

A rivalry between the world’s richest person and one of the most prominent Democratic candidates is intensifying during the final stage of this year’s midterm elections. On the campaign trail in Texas, James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate, is increasingly criticizing Elon Musk over his role in the race. Mr. Musk made a huge contribution this fall to a group aligned with Ken Paxton, Mr. Talarico’s Republican opponent, recent campaign finance disclosures showed. The race in Texas, a pivotal contest that could determine control of the Senate, is now in part a test of whether Democrats can turn Mr. Musk into a political boogeyman and whether his infusion of cash can lift a Republican candidate who has lagged behind his opponent in fund-raising.

“Elon Musk wants our land. He wants our water. He wants our tax dollars,” Mr. Talarico said at a rally in San Antonio on Saturday, as the crowd booed in disapproval of Mr. Musk. “He wants his very own personal United States senator.” Representatives for Mr. Musk and Mr. Paxton did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Talarico has stepped up his attacks on Mr. Musk after campaign finance filings revealed earlier this month that Mr. Musk, a Texas resident who has major business interests in the state, donated $158 million to a Republican super PAC that then flipped the same amount to a group allied with Mr. Paxton. At the University of Texas on Friday, Mr. Talarico said Mr. Musk was trying to “stop the movement that we are building in our state.” The day before that, Mr. Talarico’s campaign released a digital advertisement accusing Mr. Paxton of being beholden to Mr. Musk. “Let’s remind Elon: Texas is not for sale,” says the narrator of the ad. Mr. Talarico is betting that Mr. Musk’s connection to the contest will hurt Mr. Paxton. It’s not the first time Democrats have made such a wager.

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Russian diesel could be on its way to the U.S., but will it actually impact prices?

As diesel prices reached record levels last month across the country, an unconventional solution might be on its way to the U.S. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump announced he made a deal with Russia to bring over 300,000 tonnes of Russian diesel to the U.S. — with millions more to come. Now, media reports say tankers are on their way from Russia to the U.S. But Texas is unlikely to receive that diesel — that is, if the U.S. ever receives it. Energy Secretary Chris Wright recently told reporters, including the Houston Business Journal, at an event in Houston that Texas produces a lot of diesel through its refineries, but other parts of the U.S. will need to benefit. “In the Northeast, they often get diesel and (liquefied natural gas) from overseas to bring into that region because (of) a limitation on energy infrastructure. So if you saw Russian diesel arrive in the United States, maybe it comes to New England,” Wright said.

But Ed Hirs, energy economist at the University of Houston, is skeptical that the diesel will even make it to the U.S. He said the country’s diesel prices are a result of global supply issues, but that local supply is relatively stable and that the U.S. is still exporting roughly 1.5 million barrels of diesel per day. “Why would we buy an inferior product?” Hirs said. “I don't think the diesel is going to make it here. It'll be traded off someplace.” Previously, Russian diesel and crude had been sold on the global market at discounted prices because it was sanctioned. With the U.S. bringing in shipments, even if they are sold off, Hirs said the diesel being sold at full price would simply benefit Russia. “In effect, what the president has done is he's given Vladimir Putin a huge bonus by allowing this diesel to be sold at the global market price at $185, $190 per barrel,” Hirs said. After Trump previously explored a ban on diesel exports and now is bringing in Russian diesel — both actions that have faced backlash — Hirs said the government doesn’t have the power to find easy solutions to global pricing issues. “You may be able to flout the laws of the land, but you can't flout the laws of supply and demand,” Hirs said.

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US political candidates tailor messages for AI models used by voters

US political candidates have been engineering their campaign messages to appeal to the AI chatbots that more voters have been using to answer questions about issues, and documents seen by Reuters have revealed some of ?their strategies. One Powerpoint presentation proposed a strategy for Mike Minogue, Republican challenger to Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey. It aimed to convince ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and other chatbots to present him as ?the preferred choice on key issues, and went well beyond traditional search-engine optimization that candidates have used for years. As AI increasingly becomes a source of news, political campaigns must make greater efforts to control its output and become its recommendation when voters ask questions such as who is best on issues like taxes, housing and public safety. Some experts worry about fact-checking and misinformation in AI campaigns.

Fees can range from hundreds of dollars a month for small AI monitoring jobs to tens of thousands per month if consulting ?and buying media are included. The presentation proposed that Minogue's campaign should create hundreds of AI-friendly policy pages and citations across the websites frequently cited by AI chatbots. It proposed ways to track ?how major chatbots respond to political questions, and systematically alter content until the answers reflect the candidate's platform. At the center of the pitch was the idea that ?in addition to persuading voters directly, campaigns can increasingly shape the information environment by feeding the internet, and AI assistants, data that influences how candidates are described, compared and recommended. "Campaigns using AI-influence training are now a reality that ?we face and it will be ubiquitous by the 2028 cycle," which will include a presidential election, said Joe Bonilla, managing partner of Relentless Awareness. The New York-based creative strategy firm has worked with companies and political ?candidates at the federal, state, and local levels. "The public increasingly cannot and will not be able to discern what is created by systems like Claude and ChatGPT versus human-originated content," Bonilla said.

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State Stories

Republican Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker endorses Democrat Jon Rosenthal for Texas Railroad Commissioner

A month after multiple Republicans condemned Texas Railroad Commissioner candidate Bo French over a racist social media post, Republican Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker has endorsed his opponent, Jon Rosenthal. "Jon Rosenthal is the right choice for Texas Railroad Commissioner," Parker said in a statement shared by Rosenthal on X. "The Texas Railroad Commission is not a place for culture wars and bigotry - it’s the foundation of the Texas economy, and we cannot afford to hand it to the wrong leader." Parker additionally said Rosenthal has proven leadership, experience and a focus on regulation and policy in partnering with industry leaders and Texans. Rosenthal, a mechanical engineer who has worked in the oil and gas industry for more than 25 years, made his case for the office on Inside Texas Politics in June.

“Sometimes my opponents have tried to say that I’m a Democrat that wants to destroy the oil and gas industry. My answer to that is it’s literally how I make my house payments. I’m not looking to cut the legs out from my own household,” Rosenthal said at the time. “I’m the expert in this race. My opponent has no experience.” French drew widespread criticism on the night the University of Texas football team beat Ohio State in September, when he shared a photo on X showing a group of predominantly South Asian fans celebrating at the game. He referred to the fans as “foreigners” and described their presence as a “problem,” drawing condemnation from Democrats and prominent Texas Republicans. Rosenthal responded to the controversy by writing: “A man who can't tell a Longhorn from a foreigner has no business regulating anything in Texas.”

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Severe storms may bring flooding to Texas this week

After a rainy Sunday, wet weather will likely continue to drench a large chunk of West Texas to start the work week, with forecasters even warning residents that there's a chance of flooding. A large system whose tail has been hanging out across West Texas and the Texas Panhandle on Sunday will finally head north on Monday, according to the National Weather Service Office in Midland/Odessa on Sunday. But that tail will likely swing across West Texas, forecasters added, bringing possible showers on Monday afternoon. "This looks the best chance for rain this event," the forecasters wrote Sunday. High temperatures in the Midland and Odessa area will hover around 70 degrees Monday.

The tail of that system should also impact the Panhandle, said the National Weather Service Office in Amarillo on Sunday. There's currently a 50 percent chance of showers Monday, with wind gusts that could be as high as 25 mph. But that isn't all that Panhandle forecasters are watching. "Heavy rainfall rates could cause some localized flooding for these areas," the forecasters wrote Sunday. The NWS has issued a "marginal risk of excessive rainfall" for much of the Panhandle through Monday. As of Sunday afternoon, there was a 5 to 14 percent chance of flash flooding within 25 miles of all areas of the Panhandle for Monday. Highs should be in the upper 60s. Drier conditions are set to return starting Tuesday, with temperatures beginning to climb into the mid 70s. Another round of showers could arrive late in the week as a system is expected to move in from Baja California.

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Texas youth prison director resigns following controversial multiday lockdown

The director of the embattled agency that oversees Texas’ youth prisons has resigned, according to a message she sent to staff members on Friday morning. “I want you to hear directly from me that I have submitted my resignation,” wrote Shandra Carter, who has led the Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD) since 2022, in a message obtained by The Texas Newsroom. She added, “I will always be proud of TJJD, and I will always be rooting for your success.” Carter’s sudden departure comes just weeks after TJJD imposed an unprecedented multiday lockdown at all five of its youth prisons, confining hundreds of children to their cells day and night and prompting harsh criticism from advocacy groups.

An investigation by KERA and The Texas Newsroom published in September revealed scores of episodes of self-harm by the children during the first few days of the lockdown. The investigation also exposed numerous instances in which agency staff struggled to handle the situation and expressed an urgent need for more resources, detailed in thousands of pages of shift logs. Carter has said she ordered the lockdown to give staff across the agency time to evaluate their safety procedures following an “exceptionally brutal assault” against a juvenile correctional officer. TJJD declined to comment for this story.

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From the bleachers to the ballot box, a community weighs a changing Texas

In the bleachers at any high school football game across Texas, you'll be hard-pressed to find something fans love more. Eric Schultz called high school football in Texas a "function of the community." He came to the Deer Park High School homecoming game in the suburbs of Houston with his wife and kids even without a player on the field. "No matter if you're in a big city or rural, rural Texas where I grew up everybody goes to the game," Schultz said. "You know it's the same principle as going to church." The football field remains common ground for Texans in a state where the political tide appears to be shifting. Once reliably red for Republicans, this year Texas is flashing shades of blue. From the economy to immigration, voters across the Lone Star State are wrestling with the top political issues while they consider the candidates.

On the ballot this midterm election are two historically close races. Democrats Gina Hinojosa and James Talarico are forcing their Republican counterparts, Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, into ultra-competitive contests for governor and Senate, respectively. Recent polling from the Texas Politics Project shows Talarico a few points ahead of Paxton and the race between Hinojosa and Abbott effectively tied. Emily Taylor, who came to the game to watch her niece Sydney cheer, said this cycle feels different to her. "The other day, I took some back roads leaving a restaurant that I had never taken before, and I saw two houses that had Talarico and Gina Hinojosa signs outside, and it made me so hopeful because I do not remember seeing that during Kamala Harris’s run," Taylor said. Taylor is a Democrat living in Deer Park, a traditionally conservative suburb of Houston. She said her faith is important to her and that she believes Talarico spotlighting his Christian values on the campaign trail will help him win the support of more moderate Republicans. "So many people in Texas feel like they have to vote red because their parents did [and] their grandparents did," Taylor said. "It’s instilled in them their Christian beliefs that they have to vote red, and that’s not the case." A Democrat has not won statewide in Texas in more than three decades. Democrat Beto O'Rourke energized the party in 2018 when he came within striking distance of beating Republican Senator Ted Cruz, but ultimately fell three points short. This cycle, however, Talarico has polled ahead of Paxton, a milestone O'Rourke never achieved, infusing the Democrats with renewed hope.

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Texas school policing report prompts Crockett to seek federal review

U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett has called on a federal watchdog agency to examine school policing practices nationwide, citing a joint investigation from the San Antonio Express-News and the New York Times. Crockett, a Democrat who serves as the ranking member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, on Monday urged the U.S. Government Accountability Office to make recommendations to prevent unnecessary use of force against students. In May, the Express-News and Times reported that school discipline has transformed in Texas following a multi-billion-dollar investment in school policing. School police have tackled students, blinded them with pepper spray or shocked them with Tasers, at times over seemingly minor misconduct.

In a letter to the GAO, Crockett noted that reporters had identified at least 2,600 use-of-force incidents in Texas schools from January 2022 to December 2025, but that the full extent was unknown because some districts did not disclose data. This month, the newsrooms reported that the influx of school police officers and a crackdown on misbehavior had routed an increasing number of elementary and middle school students into the justice system. Children ages 10 to 13 were referred for prosecution after incidents in schools more than 47,000 times over the last decade, the investigation found. “As Texans, we should be raising the bar for other states, not setting up our children to end up behind them,” Crockett wrote in a statement to the newsrooms. “A mistake in the hallway at school should not lead to the start of a criminal record that could follow them for the rest of their lives.” Crockett represents the predominantly Black and Hispanic 30th Congressional district, covering much of the city of Dallas. A former public defender and the daughter of a teacher, she is an outspoken civil rights advocate, known for sparring with Republican lawmakers.

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Nadira Goffe: I’m begging Matthew McConaughey to go back to what he does best

(Nadira Goffe is a staff writer of culture at Slate.) On Sunday, actor and Texas native Matthew McConaughey, posted a six-minute video to social media imploring people to consider voting independent in the upcoming midterm elections. With the stunningly maverick caption “Independent counts,” McConaughey says that he is endorsing two things, “fairness and reality,” because, to him, a “fair fight” is “not just two fighters throwing the same punches at each other for 50 years.” At some point, he states, “Here’s a fact: The No. 1 political identity in America today is not Republican. It is not Democrat. It is independent.” For the rest of the video, McConaughey goes on to use an unsurprising number of football metaphors—he refers to the percentage of House seats decided in party primaries as “not a competition” but “more like a scrimmage”; he compares the existing parties playing in their own “end zones” to independents who “keep the game between the 40s” (as in yard lines) “where most of America actually lives”—to uplift the independent candidacy. In his plea, he also praises former Sen. Joe Manchin’s organization, the Independent Leadership Council, which really tells you all you need to know.

Finally, he ends his message with some uninspired wordplay about America’s foundation: “America’s brand was never R or D, it’s independence. Enjoy yours.” This statement earned McConaughey tsk-tsks from notable Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones. Many of his fans also responded to the video with disapproval over McConaughey’s display of cowardly both sides–ing, effectively throwing his vote away to the advantage of the Republican Party. (Yes, he insists voting independent isn’t a waste, but in reality where the rest of us live, we all know that—to quote one of my colleagues’ reactions, referencing the sitcom 30 Rock: “That’s Republican; we count those.”) McConaughey is entitled to his own opinion, but frankly, I don’t want to hear it. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I really don’t care to hear from him again unless it’s him announcing that he’s gone back to where he belongs: starring in romantic comedies. (Or another Magic Mike. I’d take that, too.)

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Frisco Muslims vote in Texas midterms marked by anti-Islam rhetoric

As the Nov. 3 midterm elections approach, political observers are watching the U.S. Senate race in Texas because it could be key to Democrats taking control of the upper chamber. As Democratic State Rep. James Talarico and Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton battle for the seat, even small swings in turnout could lead to Texas electing its first statewide Democrat in the last 32 years, experts say. On Saturday, during the early voting period, members of the Islamic Center of Frisco hosted their first “BBQ and Ballots” event, where they grilled burgers and halal hot dogs in a park near a Collin County polling center. It was like any weekend barbecue, the only difference was members of the congregation sporting “I voted” stickers on their sleeves as they sprinkled cajun seasoning and drizzled mustard on their burgers.

The mosque is a nonprofit and does not officially endorse candidates, but most attendees, regardless of whether they were Democrats, Republicans or Independents, agreed that Muslims in Texas need to get more involved in politics. For months, Republicans in Texas have been campaigning on promises to ban Shariah, the Islamic religious code, although the U.S. Constitution already precludes it from taking hold. Gov. Greg Abbott designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights organization, a terrorist group. This summer, the State Board of Education approved a social studies curriculum that predominantly portrays Islam as a religion connected to conquest and conflict. Locally, city council meetings in Frisco and McKinney have grown heated when zoning approvals for new mosques were on the agenda. One of the candidates in Frisco’s June mayoral runoff made national news for calling Islam a “terrorist group.”

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Ken Paxton’s anti-abortion influence already extended beyond Texas. He could take it further in the Senate

Early in his tenure as Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton issued a statement commemorating what he believed was a national tragedy. “It’s impossible to fill the void of more than 50 million missing human beings,” he said in 2016. He was marking the 43rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that protected abortion rights — and had long stood in the way of efforts to ban terminations in early pregnancy, when most abortions occur. Paxton spent the years that followed testing Roe’s limits and ultimately prevailed where others had failed: In 2021, he defended a near-total abortion ban that Texas legislators had designed to evade conventional legal challenges. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed it to take effect while Roe remained in force. After the justices overturned Roe the following year, Paxton kept pushing, pursuing new ways to extend the reach of Texas’ restrictions. He prevailed against the Biden administration, picked fights with states that protect abortion access and pioneered strategies that his peers later adopted or expanded.

While Paxton’s tenure as attorney general has drawn criticism from across the political spectrum for his personal scandals and alleged misuse of the office, detractors and allies alike agree that his signal achievement as the state’s top legal official has been advancing restrictions on abortion. A close look at his record shows a clear pattern in his successes: He relentlessly tests the limits of the law and employs novel legal strategies to advance his goals. Paxton’s national role as an anti-abortion warrior would change if he wins his U.S. Senate race. As Texas attorney general, he has been able to act largely on his own authority. If he prevails in November, he would become one of 100 senators in a chamber where most legislation needs 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. But allies who have witnessed his victories see an opening. “He’ll have the ability to use some of the laws that he’s defended in Texas as influence to draft legislation in the U.S. Senate,” said Mary Elizabeth Castle, director of government relations at Texas Values, a Christian advocacy group that supports a national abortion ban.

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Texas dad deported by ICE to Ghana was then forced to go to Mali, a country that's unsafe for him, he says

From thousands of miles away, a Texas dad, hiding in a country he doesn't know, reminded his son to vacuum the carpet each week. Moussa Diawara is from Mali, but spent nearly half his life living in the United States, where he married, had two U.S. citizen children, worked and paid taxes. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported him to Ghana over the summer. Diawara has no connection to Ghana, but a judge had issued an order that he couldn't be deported to Mali, because it was likely he'd be persecuted there. Diawara said that within days of his arrival in Ghana, local officials forced him onto a flight to Mali. "I still say to myself, 'This isn't real,'" Diawara said.

Third-country deportations are a reality for many as President Trump's administration seeks to carry out the largest deportation in U.S. history. When the U.S. government decides an immigrant can't stay in the U.S., and can't be sent to their home country, it can send them to a third country. A 60 Minutes investigation found that some of the third countries accepting deportees from the U.S. are routinely sending them back to the very countries they fled — locations where U.S. immigration judges ruled they would likely be persecuted or tortured. Diawara, 57, came to the U.S. on a tourist visa when he was 32. He overstayed that visa, and later applied for refugee protection, arguing he would be persecuted if he were to return to Mali. Diawara had converted to Christianity, and Mali's a Muslim-majority nation with an Islamist insurgency. He has no criminal record. In 2012, a U.S. immigration judge ruled that Diawara could not be deported to Mali, but the U.S. could find a safe alternative if it ever wanted to remove him from the country. As a result of the ruling, Diawara was able to get a U.S. work permit. He worked as an Uber driver and was finishing a night shift on July 11 of this year when he found ICE agents waiting for him at the suburban Houston home where he lived with his wife and children, who are U.S. citizens. Diawara spent three weeks in ICE detention in Texas, unable to speak to his lawyer or a judge. He was loaded onto a plane and deported to Ghana, a country he never visited or had any ties to, on July 31. In Ghana, Diawara said he and others were detained in a hotel by armed guards and were not allowed to make phone calls.

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This Texas startup is turning oil well waste into EV batteries

Across the Permian Basin, the vast, mineral-rich swath of land in West Texas that supplies much of the nation’s crude oil, derricks pump out massive amounts of oil, roughly 6 million barrels a day. But that amount pales in comparison with the amount of dirty, brackish water that’s also extracted during oil drilling. Drilling in the Permian Basin also unearths roughly 26 million barrels of water a day, about the same daily water use as all of New York City. This water is often black-gray from oil residue, and has a funky odor from underground bacteria. Traditionally considered a by-product of energy production, this water, concentrated seawater from prehistoric oceans, is mineral rich. The Houston-based startup Element3 found that this so-called wastewater is a rich source of lithium, and endeavored to filter it to create a domestic source of this high-demand mineral.

(Lithium is the third element on the periodic table, hence the company name.) It’s a creative concept that, in a poetic twist, turns a waste product of petroleum drilling into the raw materials for EV batteries and a clean energy future. “It’s a wonderful circular economy, waste-to-value story,” said the company CEO and founder, Hood Whitson. Founded in 2021, Element3 is commercializing U.S. Department of Energy research from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory on ways to filter this oil by-product, and is working across Texas to figure out ways to scale up production. The firm has raised a little over $20 million and has 15 employees, per PitchBook. For years, DOE researchers have been looking into what Whitson called “unconventional brine mining,” finding ways to extract lithium from California’s inland Salton Sea, for example, or pull rare earth metals out of industrial waste sites. Aged for hundreds of millions of years, the Permian Basin water is five times as salty as today’s oceans, boasting lithium as well as magnesium and strontium. Whitson discovered the properties of this water, and realized that energy companies had built up a massive infrastructure to move it; in effect, paying for the infrastructure for extraction and returning filtered water to the larger system. It seemed like an ideal way to meet the rising demand for lithium, and build a domestic source for the metal, which is mostly processed in China. The U.S. imported more than $16 billon worth of lithium-ion batteries from China in 2024. “This is one of our nation’s largest untapped natural resources,” said Whitson. “It’s really a grand opportunity.”

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Plans to make driving easier between Texas and Colorado just got a million dollar boost from the federal government

$1 million in federal funds are heading to Raton to help plan a potential interstate highway connecting Texas to northern New Mexico. The so-called Raton planning project will evaluate possible ways to connect Interstate 27 in Texas with Interstate 25 just south of the Colorado border. The proposal involves upgrading the existing path of U.S. Highway 87. Local and state officials in New Mexico say this upgrade would provide farmers, ranchers and energy producers with a more reliable way to get their goods to market. Also, they say it’ll help businesses grow in Northern New Mexico by bringing more travelers and commerce through communities like Raton and Clayton.

“This is about more customers walking into Raton’s restaurants and stores, more opportunities for small businesses to grow, and more good-paying jobs so our children can build their futures here,” New Mexico Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernández wrote in a statement about the funding. “Our farmers, ranchers, and energy producers need reliable roads to get their products to market. This million-dollar investment brings us closer to those opportunities, and I will keep fighting for additional funding to complete this project.” The new interstate connection is part of the Ports-to-Plains Corridor, which is designed to support trade with Mexico and Canada by connecting North America’s agricultural and energy core. The funds came through a process in the Fiscal Year 2026 appropriations law and “will support studies, environmental review, and preliminary design to help Raton prepare for the future highway connection and development around it.” It’s likely years before this road is built.

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How water is defining the map for Central Texas residential development

Whiskey may be for drinking, but water is becoming worth more than just a fight. Water access is a growing challenge across the nation. But as utilities get more challenging for Central Texas residential developers to secure, water access is determining the local pathway for residential growth. When it comes to plotting out a potential neighborhood, utilities can be a defining factor for project viability. Specifically, water and wastewater each have a complicated flow chart of approvals and regulatory bodies that dictate access.

Developers want to help determine the path forward, said Grant Rollo, vice president at Randolph Texas Development. He sees one of the best ways for residential players to get involved is through coordination. Strategic partnerships with municipalities, water-focused agreements with other entities and frank communication are all needed. "I think there's a lot of ego to get through all across the board to really find a solution," he said. "That's going to be the battle." The city of Austin and its water utility are at the forefront of water strategy, said Daniel Oney, research director for Texas A&M's Texas Real Estate Research Center. But the vast majority of the metro's single-family development is going up outside of city limits, a sprawl that only accelerated in recent years. “Before COVID, the biggest thing was your wastewater company … water was never really a concern back then,” Rollo said. “Fast forward to today, and we have the great Texas miracle that happened. We had record numbers of people moving to Central Texas" and more utility needs than many suburban cities were prepared for.

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National Stories

Brazil’s Lula completes shock comeback to win reelection, as Trump ally Bolsonaro rejects result

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was reelected to a historic fourth term Sunday, but his defeated rival and Trump ally Senator Flávio Bolsonaro said he would not accept the results and would mount a legal challenge. The 80-year-old leftist leader won more than 51% of votes, securing a runoff victory that bucks a broader rightward political shift across Latin America and comes after a campaign dominated by concerns over the cost of living, crime and corruption. Bolsonaro, who trailed Lula by about 4.4 million votes, said his team would challenge the result after the Supreme Court’s last-minute ruling to extend voting by two hours. “It is impossible to recognize the election result given how these events unfolded,” Bolsonaro told supporters in the capital Brasilia after Lula’s victory was declared. “We will take legal action. We will ask for this election to be annulled.”

The vote marks the first time since the return of direct presidential elections in 1989 that a candidate has won the presidency after finishing second in the first round. “I can assure you that we are going to change the way we govern this country. We are going to give the people a greater role in our decisions,” Lula said after his reelection. Lula thanked the Brazilian people for their “generosity,” especially the country’s youth who “took to the streets to defend democracy.” In Rio de Janeiro, Lula’s supporters were seen hugging, beeping their car horns and raising the “L” sign. And in Belo Horizonte, capital of the key swing state Minas Gerais, supporters could be seen chanting and singing following Lula’s victory. Lula’s win is a major setback for the Bolsonaro political movement, with Flávio failing to accomplish what his father, imprisoned former President Jair Bolsonaro, also couldn’t to do in 2022: defeat Lula at the ballot box. But the results came after a turbulent election day, with voting being extended by two hours following last-minute pleas from both candidates to electoral authorities. Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin granted a request from Lula’s campaign, which asked for an extension citing “incidents” affecting buses that provide transportation to polling venues in several states.

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U.S. energy execs say they quit startup over undisclosed Russian funding

A group of American executives has quit an energy startup that aspired to liquefy and export natural gas out of Alaska, alleging they recently learned it was secretly being funded by Russian gas giant Novatek. Polar LNG, the startup, was launched in March with what seemed like a long-shot goal. The U.S. company wanted to get a license to import a half-finished piece of equipment from the Russian company, with the goal of exporting a geyser of gas from beneath Alaska’s North Slope. The massive structure—as tall as the Statue of Liberty and suitable for frigid conditions—had fallen under sanctions during the Biden administration in response to Russia’s war on Ukraine. But Polar hoped its project would find favor with the Trump administration’s goal of “energy dominance” for America. The sanctions also meant the equipment was available at a knockdown price, people involved in the project said. Securing it would mean Polar wouldn’t have to build its own from scratch.

Then the plans hit a snag: It turned out the project was being run and at least partly funded by Russian energy company Novatek, former Polar executives said. Joel Riddle, Polar’s CEO until September and a former ExxonMobil employee, says he resigned after the discovery, which he said emerged in budget discussions over the summer. “I felt uncomfortable that the Russian company Novatek was financing and ultimately controlling the strategic direction of the company,” Riddle said. Other executives left with Riddle. Their departures and the alleged Russian funding were earlier reported by the Financial Times and the New York Times. Novatek didn’t respond to a request for comment. The White House, the Treasury Department and the State Department didn’t return calls for comment. Novatek isn’t sanctioned by the U.S., and Europe has continued to buy its LNG since the invasion of Ukraine. Unlike many other Russian companies, Novatek has continued to have a presence in the U.S. and in European capitals during the war, paying lobbyists and elite law firms to try to influence sanctions and energy policy. Polar’s project required convincing the Treasury Department to give it a license to buy the infrastructure from a sanctioned entity, Novatek’s Arctic LNG 2 business. It hasn’t received the go-ahead.

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Jamieson Greer on being tasked with rebuilding Trump’s unpopular tariff wall

Ask a Washington insider to nominate the most consequential figure in the Trump administration and you’ll get a mix of responses, including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Vice President JD Vance, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent or even ever-present aide Natalie Harp. But as he wandered through the White House gardens in April, mingling with giddy children and their parents gathered for the annual Easter Egg Roll, President Donald Trump offered his own pick. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have the most powerful man in government with us today, Mr. Jamieson Greer. Have you heard of him?” the president asked the crowd. “Come on over here, Jamieson. How are we doing on trade?” Trump’s US trade representative, who at age 46 with a beard looks more like a suburban dad than a power broker, stepped forward. “We’re doing well, sir,” he answered confidently, citing a historic high in US exports. Greer was clearly surprised by the compliment from his boss, though in one of two in-depth interviews with Bloomberg Businessweek this month he played it down. “He says that to all the girls,” joked Greer, noting that Trump often flatters members of his cabinet.

Still, for anyone tracking Trump’s efforts to engineer a new economic order, the message was clear. One year on from his chaotic “Liberation Day” tariff rollout, the president was publicly acknowledging the capable and increasingly influential general directing his trade wars. Over the course of his 20 months on the job, Greer has racked up victories but also defeats. The average effective US tariff rate now stands at 11.2%, the highest since the 1930s. That’s created leverage with trade partners that the administration has exploited to negotiate 20 or so deals, rolling back some duties in exchange for commercial concessions and investment pledges. (Some remain no more than outlines at this point.) Yet Trump’s initial plans to construct a protectionist wall around the world’s biggest market were set back earlier this year, when the US Supreme Court ruled that a raft of duties the administration introduced at the beginning of his term were illegal. Now, with elections approaching, Greer, who was confirmed on a largely partisan vote of 56 to 43, is confronting what could quickly become an uncomfortable political environment. If the Democrats win even one congressional chamber, the party may act on bills they’ve drafted to reclaim tariff authority. At the very least, Greer and Trump’s trade policies will be subject to scrutiny at oversight hearings.

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U.S. measles cases more than double what they were last year as outbreak spreads

The U.S. is grappling with its worst resurgence of measles in decades, with cases particularly high in the state of Pennsylvania. New data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows there have been more than 4,580 measles cases reported in 2026 across the U.S. as of Oct. 22, which is more than double the number for the whole of 2025. The vaccination status of 96% of those who contracted measles in 2026 was "Unvaccinated or Unknown," according to data from the CDC. A measles outbreak across Pennsylvania has grown as officials urge residents to get fully vaccinated against the disease. At least 1,338 cases of measles have been confirmed in 44 counties across the state so far this year, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health on Friday. There were 21 new measles cases as of Oct. 21. More than 250 people have been hospitalized and 5 people have died, the department also said.

In Lancaster and Mifflin counties, two of the counties with the highest number of cases, local Amish communities, which have low vaccination rates, are being impacted the most. Of the five who have died, three lived in Lancaster County On Thursday, Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Dr. Debra Bogen held a roundtable with Mifflin County healthcare providers to assess their needs in combatting the disease. "Our state metrics and data tell part of the story of the measles outbreak in Pennsylvania, but listening to the people on the ground caring for people in affected communities like Mifflin County is essential to refining our public health response," Bogen said in a statement. One of the best ways to protect oneself from getting the measles is vaccination, according to health officials. Two doses of measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine known as MMR, is nearly 97% effective against measles, according to the CDC. One dose is about 93% effective.

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Poll shows government graft is one of the defining issues of the midterms

President Trump walked out of the White House on Thursday afternoon and delivered a warning to his political allies. “I want my people to be honest, and if they’re not going to be honest, they have to be prosecuted,” he said. “If people are not honest, they’re stealing from me as president.” Trump’s rebuke came in response to a question about his longtime adviser, Corey Lewandowski, who The Wall Street Journal earlier reported was facing a Justice Department inquiry into allegations that he profited off his top position at the Department of Homeland Security. It was the latest in a series of damaging stories that have contributed to growing voter concerns about alleged government corruption less than two weeks before the midterm elections. Trump and White House aides have privately expressed frustration about the negative headlines that have been plastered across newspaper front pages and on cable news in recent weeks, according to people familiar with the matter.

The stories have prompted hand-wringing from Republican campaign operatives, who worry that the alleged self-dealing could make an already challenging midterm election even more difficult for GOP candidates. Among the headlines: Trump’s ambassador to Greece resigned after being accused of soliciting $100,000 from a donor; the family of a billionaire Venezuelan banker who was angling for a pardon offered the president’s former personal lawyer a deal worth $50 million; a Russian businessman funded a lavish wedding afterparty for one of Trump’s sons; and two of the president’s top political advisers flew abroad to consult for a Russia-aligned government. Democrats have put Trump at the center of their allegations of corruption, pointing to the extraordinary growth of his wealth since he took office, including earning $1.4 billion last year from crypto ventures. They have promised to launch investigations into his efforts to get large companies to cut checks for projects such as his White House ballroom, his decision to accept a gifted luxury jet from Qatar, and his pardon of Changpeng Zhao, the founder of the crypto exchange Binance. Government corruption has climbed the list of voter concerns in recent weeks.

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Trump escalates rhetoric against El-Sayed in Michigan

President Donald Trump intensified his anti-Muslim rhetoric against Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed on Sunday, portraying him as a threat to national security and questioning his loyalty to the United States in remarks that drew a sharp rebuke from a former top Arab American ally. Trump called El-Sayed, a former Detroit health official, a “jihadist” who was “on the side of the terrorists” and would “have to go through a metal detector before he’s allowed to go into the Senate.” He also repeatedly invoked the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, drawing a comparison between stopping El-Sayed from entering the Senate chamber and the passengers who fought back against the hijackers aboard United Flight 93.

El-Sayed, who would become the nation’s first Muslim senator if elected, has called attacks on his loyalty to the country “shameful” and repeatedly denied any ties to extremist groups. The Republican president’s remarks were condemned by Bishara Bahbah, a founder of Arab Americans for Trump, the group that helped lead the president’s outreach to Arab American voters in 2024. “The president’s statements are out of line,” he said in a phone interview. “They are crossing a red line. They are racist.” With Republicans on the defensive over inflation, soaring fuel prices and the Iran war, the president has been trying to generate turnout by claiming that El-Sayed and other Democrats are existential threats to America, instead of electoral rivals. Michigan’s Senate race between El-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers is among a handful of contests that could determine control of the chamber. Trump made his remarks in Port Huron, a Canadian border city about an hour north of Detroit and near communities where he made significant gains among Arab American voters in 2024. He became the first Republican presidential candidate since 2000 to win Dearborn, a city with one of the nation’s largest concentrations of Arab Americans.

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Blanche defends DOJ lawsuit blocking Alaska Senate results if Republican loses

U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche Sunday defended his department's lawsuit seeking to stop Alaska from automatically certifying the results of its Senate election if the Republican incumbent there loses. Earlier this week he had said the Justice Department could get involved in the vote certification process in a "doomsday" scenario. Pressed on CNN about whether the suit was setting the stage for President Trump to challenge the outcome of next week's midterm elections, Blanche denied it. The seat is seen as one vital for Republicans if they are to maintain control of the Senate for the second half of President Trump's term in office. The Justice Department claims that potential confusion over candidates with similar names is the reason for the suit, though some Democrats have argued that it is actually an attempt to interfere in the democratic process.

A candidate on the Nov. 3 ballot is a retired schoolteacher from Petersburg, named Daniel J. Sullivan, with a remarkably similar name to the current Republican senator, Dan Sullivan. Republicans have accused Daniel J. Sullivan of running as a spoiler to try and divert votes away from the incumbent. But the other Sullivan has said the decision to run was his own and denied his candidacy was intended to confuse voters or siphon votes in Republican Sullivan's tight race against Democrat Mary Peltola, a former congresswoman. The Justice Department has argued in its suit that the name overlap risks confusing voters. "We're not laying any groundwork for the president to do that," Blanche told anchor Dana Bash on CNN's State of the Union, after she asked whether the administration was positioning Trump to overturn a result he did not like. "President Trump is not trying to take over a state election in any way, shape, or form," Blanche added.

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Lead Stories

As Republicans brace for election losses, Musk prepares for war

Elon Musk has adopted a war posture in response to looming threats of congressional investigations: If Democrats win control of Congress in next month’s midterm elections, Musk has signaled he is bracing for a fight. “Live by the sword, die by the sword,” he said Wednesday in a post on X, responding to a Politico report that cited Democratic lawmakers seeking to investigate him. “Those who pick fights with me should understand that I will find out who is really pulling the strings and come for them, not just their puppets,” said Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. Musk’s battle-ready stance comes as a host of Democrats have said they are eager to wield the power of their office to investigate the world’s richest person should they win either chamber in the midterms.

As Republicans’ election prospects have soured, lawmakers are building momentum for probes looking into the tech mogul, his companies or the work of the U.S. DOGE Service, which Musk oversaw and which was instrumental in dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said in an interview Thursday that he would investigate Musk and DOGE if Democrats win. Blumenthal led inquiries relating to the cost-cutting group but was in the minority and did not have subpoena power, which could be used to compel the attendance of witnesses, as well as the production of documents and records. “The American people have a right to know the cost, the consequences and the chaos resulting from DOGE and … what he may be concealing,” Blumenthal said. “There is a web of potential corruption here that needs to be explored.” He dismissed Musk’s threats of retaliation, expressing surprise at his strong reaction.

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Why Texas’ early voting totals don’t match what counties are reporting

Counties across Texas have reported record-breaking turnout during the first week of early voting, including tens of thousands of mail-in ballots. But as of Friday, the totals on the state’s election website didn’t match many of those being touted by local officials. In Bexar County, for instance, only eight people voted by mail, according to the state’s site. In reality, according to Michele Carew, the county’s election administrator, nearly 18,000 people have cast ballots by mail. “We do not leave this office until we report numbers to the state,” she said. The state’s turnout data continues to lag significantly for many large urban counties, especially for mail-in ballots, an error that local election officials say is linked to the same flawed system that caused a massive backlog of voter registrations in recent weeks.

In person vote totals have also lagged. Election officials in Fort Bend County – one of the state’s most competitive districts – reported more than 75,000 ballots cast in person as of Friday morning while the state’s website shows just over 41,000. Local election officials said they are still confident in the state’s election night reporting system, which functioned without any issues or delay in the March primary, but are frustrated the turnout numbers aren’t being accurately reported. “It's not that we haven't entered the data, it's just not reflecting here,” said Kristin Miles, the election administrator in Bastrop County and the president of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, referring to the Secretary of State’s portal. Local elections officials have said the problem lies with the state’s online voter system, Texas Election Administration Management (TEAM), which was was overhauled in July 2025. In February, they wrote to Jane Nelson, then the Secretary of State, noting that “counties face daily challenges with TEAM’s core functionality.”

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State reps now investigating Aqua Texas after hundreds complain about soaring water bills

Hundreds of customers have contacted KPRC 2 about soaring Aqua Texas water bills. Now, state lawmakers are looking into how the increases were allowed and whether state rules need to change. State Rep. Gary Gates says he is working with Rep. Cody Harris to examine the rules governing water rate increases and whether Aqua Texas adequately invested in its infrastructure before raising rates. “I want to know the guidelines that allows a utility company that has monopoly to overnight to be able to raise their rates 100%, 200%, 300%,” Gates told KPRC 2. The lawmakers’ efforts follow KPRC 2’s reporting on customers who say their water bills have doubled or tripled, including residents in the Lakes of Mission Grove subdivision in Richmond, where the issue first came to light.

Why are Aqua Texas water bills increasing? Aqua Texas received approval for interim rates from the Public Utility Commission of Texas in March 2026. The new rate structure includes tiered water charges based on consumption and changes to wastewater billing. The company told the PUC that its infrastructure investments include replacing water mains, drilling new wells, building water and wastewater treatment plants, and upgrading storage tanks. Gates wants to know whether the utility adequately planned for those costs before seeking higher rates. “I think we’re going to probably find out that just like CenterPoint, I believe Aqua did not do, especially when they’re sitting there saying that we have all these capital needs,” Gates said. Those are Gates’ concerns, not findings that Aqua Texas failed to maintain its system.

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U.S. evacuates Mideast outposts after suspected Iranian plot to target Americans

U.S. intelligence suggests Iranian preparations to attack Americans throughout the Middle East have reached “advanced stages,” prompting a sudden exodus of personnel from embassies and military bases throughout the region, officials said. Jay Clayton, the director of national intelligence, summarized that finding in a brief memo Friday to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “Iran has substantially increased efforts to target U.S. personnel. The lethal plotting efforts by the Iranians against U.S. citizens have reached advanced stages in both the Middle East and certain other countries,” he wrote. The U.S. in recent days ordered the departure of diplomats and staff from the embassy in Saudi Arabia and other countries, initially citing threats from the Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen. The U.S. also has evacuated personnel from military bases across the region in preparation for renewed fighting, according to U.S. officials familiar with the planning.

A U.S. official said Friday that suspected Iranian terror plots targeting U.S. personnel informed the decision to order embassy staff from their posts. This month, the U.S. evacuated bomber aircraft from a base in the U.K. because of intelligence about an Iranian plot to attack aircraft and personnel, the Journal has reported. The State Department on Friday updated its travel advisories for 13 Middle Eastern countries over concerns about Iran and the Houthis. Tehran has long promised retaliation if the U.S. resumes attacks. “Last time you wanted to ‘finish the job’, Iran emerged even stronger. Want to try your luck again? Be our guest. But be careful; we have unfinished jobs too,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on social media in recent days. U.S. officials confirmed the memo and the intelligence, which was reported earlier by Axios. Before the war began in February, Trump administration officials warned about the potential for Iran to strike American targets first, adding that it necessitated the U.S. to begin pre-emptive attacks on Iran alongside Israel.

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Cornyn voters become key prize in Texas Senate race

They lost their candidate. Now they could help decide who wins. Republicans who backed John Cornyn in his bitter Senate primary fight against Ken Paxton are among the most coveted voters in Texas. But many are struggling with where to land in November: Stick with Paxton, cross party lines for Democrat James Talarico or sit out the race altogether. About 910,000 Texans voted for Cornyn in the March Republican primary. A little more than 500,000 backed him in the May runoff, which he lost to Paxton by nearly 28 percentage points. They make up only a sliver of the Texas electorate, but in a Senate race this close, the Cornyn bloc has become one of the biggest prizes in the Nov. 3 election.

Paxton, the attorney general, has leaned on President Donald Trump’s endorsement to rally the GOP base, while Talarico, an Austin state representative, has emphasized unity and affordability to attract disaffected Republicans. Cornyn’s supporters are squarely in the sights of both campaigns. Interviews by The Dallas Morning News reveal deep divisions among them over Paxton’s character, loyalty to the Republican Party and Democrats’ efforts to win them over. Adora Gnuschke, a 39-year-old Cedar Park real estate agent, voted for Cornyn in the Republican primary, putting aside her concerns that he wasn’t always aligned with the president. She also questioned the longtime senator’s record on issues such as illegal immigration and Second Amendment rights. Still, she recognized the value of his seniority and had reservations about Paxton’s personal conduct stemming in part from his 2023 impeachment. “Integrity is important in politics,” Gnuschke said. Gnuschke plans to vote for Paxton despite her earlier hesitancy because it’s “way more important” for Texas to maintain its Republican identity. She also supports his positions on issues, such as transgender athletes competing in girls’ sports.

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State Stories

Longhorns used AI against Florida — a 'new wave' of tech for Texas Athletics

Chris Del Conte was buzzing as he geared up for a board meeting Thursday. Texas’ athletic director was giddy, less than 18 hours before the department he leads was set to announce a major new initiative — one he says will change college athletics. “This is the new wave,” Del Conte said in an exclusive interview. In the fourth quarter of last week’s game against Florida at Royal-Memorial Stadium, the Longhorns put the new initiative to use. Down 20-17 and facing a fourth-and-2, Texas needed a spark. So, coach Steve Sarkisian and his staff turned to their new artificial intelligence data analytics platform, Bevo Lab. While the Longhorns ultimately failed to convert after quarterback Arch Manning lost three yards on the play, Del Conte said the moment was a pivotal embrace of the new tech. “It’s happening,” Del Conte said. “They’re bought in.” College football coaches using AI isn’t new. But Texas isn’t turning to traditional chatbots.

Bevo Lab, which is being officially announced Friday, functions as the athletic departments’ personal AI sports intelligence platform. Coaches, trainers, nutritionists, student-athletes and analysts will use it to improve performance on the field, court and even pool. Sponsored by Dell Technologies Inc., Google and SHI International, it is also a living, breathing classroom for undergraduate students to shape the future of AI in sports. “I have no doubt this will fundamentally change how college athletics programs look at data and utilize data,” Deputy Athletics Director Drew Martin said. “Oh no doubt,” Del Conte said. “I’m fired up. I’m excited. This is earth-shattering.” In sports, there's always been an abundance of data. Game strategy, injury recovery, training schedules, rosters and scouting all rely on that data for success.

Read this article at Austin American-Statesman - Subscribers Only

Paranoia spreads as election officials prepare for federal intervention in midterm elections

“I think this is an environment where, if you’re not paranoid, you’re kind of crazy.” David Axelrod, the architect of Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential runs, offered this assessment during a Sept. 29 sit-down at the Economic Club of Chicago. Speaking beside his Republican counterpart, Karl Rove, Axelrod said he worries that Donald Trump will use the U.S. Department of Justice to try to steal this November’s elections. He speculated that Trump could declare a national emergency and send the military to patrol the polls and seize voting machines. Rove called his colleague’s concerns ridiculous, but Axelrod isn’t the only one worried. Recent pieces in The New York Times, NPR, Reuters, and Votebeat detail how election officials across the country are preparing for trouble this November.

Votebeat reported that Nevada election officials have put together a “Mad Libs of legal filings” in case they need to file any lawsuits against the administration’s actions come November. Reuters reported that California officials have developed their own response if Trump sends federal agents to polling locations. The Times reported that Utah officials have planned for federal interference. Other reports cited similar responses from Michigan and South Carolina officials. Former Justice Department attorney Gary Restaino described a “nightmare scenario” to NPR. “What if there was a search warrant executed a few days after the elections in which the seizure of materials and machines prevented the tabulation and counting and certification process from occurring?” Restaino asked. Trump is well-known for normalizing such ideas. The Times recently reported that the country’s top executive has cast doubt on its elections on 445 of the 632 days of his second term, as of Oct. 14. In January, he told Times reporters that he regretted not sending National Guard troops to seize voting machines in Georgia after the 2020 election. (About three weeks later, the FBI confiscated boxes of ballots from the state.) In February, he told a radio host that Republicans “oughta nationalize the voting” in at least 15 Democratic areas.

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Pflugerville candidate faces ‘Mister Rogers’ branding dispute

A Pflugerville City Council candidate who calls himself “Mister David Rogers” on his campaign website has received a cease-and-desist request from Fred Rogers Company over campaign branding that resembles elements associated with the “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood" TV show. The dispute centers on several elements of Rogers’ campaign that evoke Fred Rogers’ longtime persona on the children’s television show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” On his campaign website and signs, Rogers calls himself “Mister David Rogers,” but “Mister” and “Rogers” appear in larger lettering than “David,” making “Mister Rogers” the most prominent part of the name. His campaign also uses the slogan “It’s a beautiful day in Pflugerville,” echoing the “beautiful day” language associated with the opening of Fred Rogers’ show, and shows Rogers wearing a cardigan sweater, similar to the clothing Fred Rogers routinely wore on the show.

David Rogers, who is running for Place 2 on the City Council, said he has not done anything wrong. "I have not violated any trademark in using my own name," Rogers said. "I have great respect for Fred Rogers and have tried to live by his example because I respect his guidance." He said he had referred the cease-and-desist request to a lawyer. In an email, Fred Rogers Company said: "We are aware of Mr. Rogers' actions and have sent a cease and desist, as we would to any candidate regardless of political affiliation." The company owns the copyrights to "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood." Fred Rogers hosted the children's television show from 1968 to 2001. Rogers is giving up his City Council seat in Place 6 to run for the Place 2 seat against incumbent Ceasar Ruiz.

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‘Too little, too late’: 41-month sentence in $1M fraud of University of Austin founder Lonsdale

John Robison, convicted in July of defrauding University of Austin founder Joe Lonsdale through a real estate scheme, has been sentenced to 41 months in federal prison and ordered to pay back the $1 million he took from the Austin-based conservative billionaire. U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman called Robison’s crime brazen and the evidence overwhelming. The four federal counts on which he was convicted by a jury, including wire fraud and money laundering, stem from a deal he pitched to Lonsdale in 2022 to purchase 1,800 acres along the Colorado River outside Bastrop to develop a campus for the University of Austin. Lonsdale, a tech entrepreneur who co-founded Palantir, was then designing the conservative university he later launched.

In early 2022, Lonsdale gave $1 million to Robison’s Four Gates Property L.P. to be held in escrow. Robison agreed that the money would not be used until he had successfully raised at least another $1 million. The next day, though, $250,000 was transferred to Robison’s personal account. Federal prosecutors said Robison used the money to pay back other debts and fund his lifestyle. The sentence was handed down after two teary-eyed statements from Robison and his life partner, Jason Papp, 52. “Joe lost a million dollars and his wealth doesn’t make that loss less, and I am deeply sorry,” Robison said, saying he recognized that Lonsdale’s immense wealth, estimated at about $3 billion, did not ameliorate the crime. He spoke of finding religion again, joining his late mother’s church in Lakeway. He spoke of his shame and regret, saying that he would be serving two sentences: one handed down by U.S. District Judge Pitman, the other levied by shame and the knowledge that he must regain the trust of his community. Papp told the court that he had seen his partner change over the past year, that shame and regret had taken a toll. “He told me he was glad his mother wasn’t alive to see all this,” Papp said.

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AI ad mocks Talarico as Bible-defacing radical. Democrats bet it will backfire.

Texas Senate candidate James Talarico strolls through a dimly lit warehouse with rows of television sets arrayed on the floor in a recent campaign ad. The TV sets are airing Republican attack ads that portray the Democratic candidate as a Bible-defacing radical who advocates for sex change surgery for minors. “No, I’m not a member of the Chinese Communist Party,” Talarico says as he faces the camera and walks around the room TED Talk style. “No, I don’t support sex change surgeries for kids.” Talarico blasts the AI-generated ads as an effort by GOP Senate nominee Ken Paxton and his allies to lie to voters about Talarico’s record. “I don’t have to use AI, because the truth about Ken Paxton is bad enough,” Talarico says in the ad.

The Talarico spot highlights a clear trend in the ad wars of the 2026 midterm campaign cycle. Republicans are going all in on AI-generated ads. Democrats, meanwhile, are shunning them and trying to turn the tables on the GOP, suggesting the ad campaigns are emblematic of a party that doesn’t care about the truth and can’t be trusted. Another Talarico ad, for example, accuses Paxton of “selling off Texas” for the construction of data centers. It includes the disclaimer: “Made by humans, not AI.” The 2026 midterms offered the first real showcase of AI campaign ads. Campaigns spent over $137 million on ads generated or enhanced by AI this midterm cycle, up from $50,000 in the 2024 elections, according to an estimate from the Wesleyan Media Project, which analyzes political advertising. Republican candidates and groups have aired the overwhelming majority of those ads, accounting for 88 percent of spending, or around $120 million. Multiple Democratic strategists and campaign advisers told The Washington Post they believed voters’ concerns about cost of living, corporate power and political authenticity outweighed the edge Republicans might gain from using synthetic video.

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City of Canton mayor resigns after apologizing for 'gossip comment' in wake of back-to-back tragedies

The City of Canton announced the resignation of Mayor Lou Ann Berry on Friday, Oct. 23, one day after she apologized following backlash for a comment made during the press conference. The city had called the press conference after the tragic losses of a Van Zandt County Sheriff's deputy in a shooting and a deadly fire that claimed the lives of a mother and four children that happened hours apart. "The City of Canton has been informed today that Mayor Lou Ann Berry intends to formally resign from the office of Mayor," the town said in a statement shared to social media on Friday. "This process involves several legal steps and will be completed in conformance with Texas law. It is anticipated that a written letter of resignation will be formally received next week. Neither the City nor Mayor Berry have any additional statement at this time, but a public update will be issued when the letter is received by the City."

The statement was shared less than 24 hours after the City of Canton shared a statement from Berry that read: "I apologize for my 'gossip' comment that was broadcast after an interview this morning pertaining to the officer shootings and loss of lives in a fire. My comment had nothing to do with the unfortunate events of last evening," Berry said in the statement. "My biggest regret on this pop off comment is that it has become a distraction from the seriousness of the loss of these lives and the major injury to our city policeman. I am praying for all the families involved." The City of Canton held a press conference on Thursday, Oct. 22, in the wake of two tragic events in Van Zandt County that happened just hours apart. Van Zandt County Sheriff's Deputy Adam Al-Sherifi was assisting the Canton Police Department in serving a warrant around 10 p.m. on Tuesday when he was killed in the line of duty. The sheriff's office said the suspect, identified as Mi Van Nguyen, "fired more than 800 rounds" in the shootout. A few hours later at 12:30 a.m., officials said the housefire broke out that claimed the lives of Jasmine Henson and four of her children. Her seven-year-old Grayson and long-term partner Cody survived the fire, according to statement by the family. WFAA sister station KYTX was present at the press conference and livestreamed the event. "It's a tragedy for our city. It's a tragedy for our county. It's a tragedy for Henderson County for their deputies who came and helped to answer the call, and it's a tragedy for the man who was to be had the warrant served," Berry said during the press conference before her self-described "pop off comment."

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Texas sues OpenAI, Sam Altman over product safety

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Friday launched a lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, alleging they misled consumers about the safety of the company’s artificial intelligence chatbot and failed to protect users from harm. The lawsuit is the latest example of a growing legal offensive from states against the ChatGPT maker, as the federal government has largely maintained a hands-off approach to AI regulation. “With the rapid advancement of AI technology, OpenAI has the responsibility to protect users and warn them of the many dangers of its platform,” said Paxton in a statement. “I will fight to protect Texans from the harms of AI and ensure that powerful technology companies are not above the law.” The lawsuit, which was filed in a Texas state court, alleges that OpenAI’s business practices violated the state’s consumer protection and children’s online safety laws. It echoes the set of lawsuits filed by bipartisan attorneys general in eight states last week alleging OpenAI violated their respective state laws.

The complaint alleges OpenAI misled consumers by marketing ChatGPT as safe and failing to disclose risks, citing instances in which the chatbot allegedly encouraged self-harm and fostered unhealthy relationships with its users, including children. Paxton in the lawsuit also points to a series of incidents in which rogue AI agents from OpenAI hacked or attempted to break into the websites and systems of other private companies. The complaint argues that OpenAI has rushed its products to market for its own financial gain, disregarding internal safety warnings. The complaint asks the court to prohibit OpenAI from offering ChatGPT to minors in Texas and to block the company from releasing new AI models to Texas users without approval from an independent third-party evaluator. The state is also seeking civil penalties of $10,000 per violation of its consumer protection law. OpenAI spokesperson Jason Deutrom said in a statement that the company works with experts to continually improve ChatGPT, mitigate risks and build additional safeguards. “Governments have an important role to play in setting robust safety standards for AI, and we’re committed to working with Texas and other states on advancing pragmatic AI policies that apply to the entire AI industry - not just one company,” they said.

Read this article at Politico - Subscribers Only

Building evacuated after suspicious package delivered to Crockett’s district office

Dallas Police and a hazardous materials team from Dallas Fire and Rescue responded to the building at 1825 Market Center Ave. in the Design District after staff in Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett’s district office, located on the fourth floor of the building, reported receiving a suspicious package. The building, the first floor of which formerly housed a Chase Bank, is also where Dallas Voice offices are located (we are on the second floor) and where the district office of the late Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson was located (on the fifth floor).

Dallas Voice Publisher Leo Cusimano and Associate Publisher Leo Cusimano were in the office at the time. Mantooth said building officials asked everyone on the third floor and above to evacuate, and suggsted that those on the first and second floors should evacuate if they felt it necessary. Mantooth said that haz mat officers had secured the package and removed it from the building taking it away with them for further investigation. We have no other information at this time, but we will post updates as information becomes available.

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Amphitheater developer used El Paso property to secure $20 million loan for another Texas project

The company planning to build a 12,500-seat amphitheater in Northeast El Paso used land it acquired from the city as collateral for a $20 million loan to help finance construction of another amphitheater near Dallas, according to federal securities filings. Venu Holding Corp., the Colorado-based entertainment company developing the Sunset Amphitheater at the former Cohen Stadium site, borrowed the money in July from Ryan LLC, a Texas-based tax consulting firm and business partner of the company. The 90-day loan carried an 18% annual interest rate.. To secure it, Venu pledged properties and other assets connected to several projects, including its 20-acre El Paso site. The arrangement highlights how Venu’s construction spending far outpaces the revenue its existing operation generates – meaning the company has to seek funding from investors, lenders and real estate transactions while its new amphitheaters remain under development.

The city of El Paso provided Venu incentives worth nearly $31 million and conveyed city-owned land for the project. “VENU is developing several amphitheaters at once. Like any developer building at that pace, we use our full balance sheet to keep every project on schedule,” the company said in an emailed response to questions. “Pledging assets to support a short-term construction facility is a common tool and does not change our commitment to any market.” Since putting the El Paso property up as collateral in July, Venu has strengthened its short-term finances with a $60 million sale-leaseback transaction involving the company’s McKinney, Texas, property with STORE Capital, a real estate investment company. Under the sale-leaseback arrangement, Venu sold the land beneath the McKinney venue and parking garage before agreeing to rent it back. The sale-leaseback deals that Venu has also used elsewhere allow the company to raise cash from real estate without issuing new shares, although it also creates ongoing rental expenses.

Read this article at El Paso Matters - Subscribers Only

The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders have unionized

The DCC is the most famous squad in the world, and the newly formed Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Association (DCCA) could very much pave the way for other cheerleading squads to fight for compensation and benefits that better match the rigours of the job. This is a meaningful moment for the sport, and one that’s thankfully being documented for a wide-reaching platform like Netflix. Good for her, indeed.

Read this article at D Magazine - Subscribers Only

A Texas cop signed on to help ICE deport his neighbors. It tore the town apart.

The new patrol officer parked his black Dodge Charger outside a house off Main Street and approached on foot. A Mexican ballad was playing. Someone had called in a noise complaint, claiming it sounded as if people were fighting. But as the officer, Jaron Alexander, got closer, he found nothing of the sort. A middle-aged woman greeted him as her daughter, Joanna Martinez, petite and visibly pregnant, looked on. “What kind of party are you all having?” she remembers him asking. Behind her were three generations of an extended family. They were celebrating a 3-month-old’s baptism over pozole verde, horchata and beers. Alexander ran some IDs and found no issues. The music wasn’t even that loud, he thought. He told them to have a good night, and then he left. That encounter, in early October last year, was the first of many that Alexander and Martinez would have in tiny Ingram, Texas, a 1.5-square-mile town of 1,900 people beside the Guadalupe River. But it was the only one before Ingram signed an agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that would roil the town and tear Martinez’s family apart.

“Her and I, at the beginning, I felt like we were running into each other all the time,” Alexander told us, in one of eight conversations over four months that offer a rare window into the thoughts of one of the local police officers on the front lines of the Trump administration’s deportation campaign. In a town as small as Ingram, drivable in five minutes end to end, more run-ins were probably inevitable. Later that October, Alexander pulled over a work truck for rolling through a stop sign, and soon there Martinez was, demanding that he let her friends go rather than let immigration take them. He didn’t. He pulled over another driver in November who turned out to be her cousin, the father of the baby they celebrated at the baptism party. Alexander handed him over to immigration agents as well. Alexander, who is in his mid-30s, with dirty blond hair already turning gray, says he didn’t come back to Ingram to help deport his neighbors. In his telling, he just ended up making it part of his job. The town was where he started his law-enforcement career years earlier, before he took a better-paying position with the county, as a sheriff’s deputy. But things recently started to fall apart, first in his marriage, next at the sheriff’s office: A 185-page internal investigation found that he had an affair before his divorce was final and used a county vehicle to carry it out, then lied about it all. He says the investigator called him an “embarrassment to the profession.” The sheriff’s office fired him. (Alexander said at the time, and again to us, that he did not have the affair.)

Read this article at Texas Observer and ProPublica - Subscribers Only

From the bleachers to the ballot box, a community weighs a changing Texas

In the bleachers at any high school football game across Texas, you'll be hard-pressed to find something fans love more. Eric Schultz called high school football in Texas a "function of the community." He came to the Deer Park High School homecoming game in the suburbs of Houston with his wife and kids even without a player on the field. "No matter if you're in a big city or rural, rural Texas where I grew up everybody goes to the game," Schultz said. "You know it's the same principle as going to church." The football field remains common ground for Texans in a state where the political tide appears to be shifting. Once reliably red for Republicans, this year Texas is flashing shades of blue. From the economy to immigration, voters across the Lone Star State are wrestling with the top political issues while they consider the candidates.

On the ballot this midterm election are two historically close races. Democrats Gina Hinojosa and James Talarico are forcing their Republican counterparts, Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, into ultra-competitive contests for governor and Senate, respectively. Recent polling from theTexas Politics Projectshows Talarico a few points ahead of Paxton and the race between Hinojosa and Abbott effectively tied. Emily Taylor, who came to the game to watch her niece Sydney cheer, said this cycle feels different to her. "The other day, I took some back roads leaving a restaurant that I had never taken before, and I saw two houses that had Talarico and Gina Hinojosa signs outside, and it made me so hopeful because I do not remember seeing that during Kamala Harris’s run," Taylor said. Taylor is a Democrat living in Deer Park, a traditionally conservative suburb of Houston. She said her faith is important to her and that she believes Talarico spotlighting his Christian values on the campaign trail will help him win the support of more moderate Republicans.

Read this article at Houston Public Media - Subscribers Only

How an education nonprofit is helping Margil Elementary students thrive beyond the classroom

At Margil Elementary, Communities In Schools of San Antonio (CIS-SA) has spent the past eight years helping make that support a reality for students and their families, addressing needs that go beyond academics. The nonprofit works to support the “whole child,” connecting students with resources, mentorship and emotional support so they can focus on learning and reaching their full potential. For Margil Elementary Principal Andrea Castañeda, the need for that support is something she sees firsthand. Before CIS-SA stepped in, school staff often used their own resources to help students facing challenges at home.

“You have to have a heart to be a teacher here at Margil,” Castañeda said. “Our teachers would buy clothes, buy food. We would always have little food drives. We would always have clothing drives, coat drives, but it wasn’t enough.” With 375 students enrolled at Margil Elementary, meeting students’ needs can mean addressing much more than what happens during the school day. That can include helping families access food and clothing, as well as recognizing when a child needs emotional support. Castañeda recalled one student who arrived at school carrying luggage and duffle bags. Staff checked in to see whether the student needed help — an example of how educators and support staff work to recognize when a child may be facing difficult circumstances. CIS-SA CEO Jessica Weaver says schools are focused on education, while the nonprofit helps connect students and families with additional support. “Schools do what they do best. And that’s academics. And then what we do is we bring in the other part of the support system that our kids and our families need,” Weaver said.

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Houston Hindus say Republicans are fueling anti-Indian 'demonization'

Vasant Bhatt, a 21-year-old political science major at the University of Houston, got 2.6 million views and a torrent of racist backlash Monday when he posted why he voted for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico. Until recently, Bhatt was a conservative. He interned with U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz's 2024 campaign and with the Texas Youth Summit in The Woodlands. He’s a second-generation Indian American and a lifelong Hindu; he cleanses himself and performs a puja, which includes prayer, every morning. In response to his viral post, Republican commentators called him disloyal to America and encouraged him to self-deport. “That reaction was disturbing, but I'm not shocked,” Bhatt said. He said that ever since debate over H-1B visas divided Republicans in late 2024, anti-Indian and anti-Hindu rhetoric within the party has grown louder.

“My biggest concern is the extent to which politics has become organized around just resentment,” said Bhatt, who now identifies as “politically homeless,” and expects to be voting for Democrats in the future. The share of Hindu Americans who describe themselves as Republican doubled from 2013 to 2025, reaching 14%, according to PRRI's religion census. But as denigration of Hindus and Indians becomes more common in online conservative spaces, some Hindu Republicans are reassessing their loyalties. A month ago, GOP Texas Railroad Commission candidate Bo French went viral when he shared a picture of what appeared to be Indian American students cheering at a Texas Longhorns football game. “The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined,” French wrote, adding: “I weep for the families in Texas who can’t get into UT because they prioritize foreigners over Texans.” The comments prompted some backlash from within the GOP. Republicans including outgoing U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and Karl Rove, deputy chief of staff to former President George W. Bush, said they wouldn't vote for French. President Donald Trump left French off of a Texas endorsement list he posted to social media this week, but state Republican Party officials have yet to publicly admonish French or any other candidates about anti-Hindu or anti-Indian remarks. D'rinda Randall, chair of the Republican Party of Texas, said she didn't want to comment on French's post.

Read this article at Houston Chronicle - Subscribers Only

A man on a Texas ballot is dead. Why his opponent could still lose.

A recent text message sent to Brazoria County residents regarding votes cast for the late Brazoria County Precinct 2 Justice of the Peace, Richard Davis, has caused confusion as early voting continues. Davis, who is facing Shenequa Harrison, died Sept. 14, but since he died after the 74th day before election day, Nov. 3, his name still appears on the ballot. If Davis receives a majority of the vote, the Brazoria County Commissioners Court will appoint a qualified replacement to serve a two-year term until voters select a permanent successor in the next general election.

Has this happened before? Yes. For example, in September 2020, former Conroe Mayor Toby Powell died after a battle with cancer. Powell's name remained on the ballot and faced former Councilman Jody Czajkoski at the polls Nov. 3. According to Montgomery County Election Central, Czajkoski garnered 55.61% of the vote to Powell’s 44.39%. If Powell had won, the city would have held a special election to fill the position.

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National Stories

GOP pushes for oversight of Musk’s dominance of space

Republican lawmakers alarmed over Ukraine’s loss of access to a Starshield, a critical battlefield tool, are pushing for more congressional oversight on what some view as Elon Musk’s “space monopoly,” fearing that Musk will have too much power over future national security operations. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on Thursday said he’s concerned that U.S. national security has become overly reliant on Musk and his company, SpaceX, which owns Starlink and its military-oriented sister company Starshield. Cramer visited the Senate SCIF (Secure Compartmented Information Facility) to get a classified update on Ukraine’s loss of access to Starshield. He expressed “my concern” that “we’re putting too many eggs in one company’s basket when it comes to our space assets.”

He said he would appeal to Republican leadership that “we pour a lot of resources … into making sure there’s a lots of competition both for satellite production and satellite launch.” Cramer said SpaceX has too much of a stranglehold on the commercial space industry and expressed concern that it could have major future implications for U.S. national security. Cramer said he has significant concern that Musk “has as much power as he does as one individual and one company over America’s ability to protect the domain of space, which is a war-fighting domain.” A Senate Republican aide, who requested anonymity to comment on the sensitive topic, confirmed it’s “a concern” that Musk’s SpaceX has become too dominant. Musk’s dominance over space operations was crystalized in March of 2025 when NASA needed a SpaceX dragon capsule to rescue astronauts Suni Willias and Butch Wilmore, who had been stranded for 286 days on the International Space Station because of a critical propulsion failure suffered by Boeing’s Starliner, which was originally scheduled to pick up the crew.

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ICE said a man jumped on the hood of their vehicle. Video — and police — say otherwise

When footage of a man being hit by federal immigration officers’ SUV in Northern California became public, the Department of Homeland Security responded by saying the man had jumped on the vehicle’s hood. Local police raised doubts about federal officials’ account as they announced a criminal investigation into Tuesday morning’s incident involving the pedestrian, 37-year-old Antonio Moreida, citing video footage that contradicted DHS’ statement. Footage from a nearby surveillance camera, a bystander’s cellphone recording and Moreida’s GoPro, which had already been made public at the time of the agency’s statement, told a different story of what happened on a residential street in Woodland, an agricultural city just outside of Sacramento.

The incident is the latest in which DHS’ account has been contradicted by officials and video evidence amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. In a statement Wednesday morning, DHS said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers didn’t hit a pedestrian. “An agitator jumped onto the hood of an ICE vehicle and the officer driving applied the brakes,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement in response to CNN’s request for information. “The agitator slid off the hood. ICE immediately contacted EMS and the Woodland Police Department. Flopping for the camera is dangerous, especially when it interferes with a federal law enforcement operation,” apparently accusing the man of faking his injuries. After the incident on Tuesday, Woodland Police Chief Ryan Kinnan said in a statement he found footage of the incident troubling. Investigators were working to gather evidence and statements and to review available audio and video related to the incident, including video taken from multiple perspectives, police said in a Facebook post. Woodland Police didn’t take part in the ICE operation the agents were involved in that morning, police said. The following day, Woodland Police called DHS’ account “inconsistent.”

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Obama seeks to shore up Abdul El-Sayed with Black voters at Michigan rally

Former President Barack Obama rallied for Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed in Detroit on Saturday as the bitterly fought contest could come down to the city’s substantial Black vote. “We’re clear about the choice in this election,” Obama said. “Abdul is fighting for change, real change, change that will bring an end to this war. Change that will get money out of politics and put money in your pocket. Change that will finish the job we started with the Affordable Care Act and guarantee quality, affordable healthcare to every single American.” “You hear people say this is somehow radical,” Obama continued. “What is radical about that?”

The former president, who rallied earlier Saturday in Cleveland, was joined by El-Sayed, gubernatorial nominee Jocelyn Benson and downballot Democrats less than two weeks before Election Day. Like his speech earlier in the day, Obama lambasted President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans for “broken promises” made during their 2024 campaigns and criticized Trump’s handling of the Iran war and tariffs, both of which he said have had an outsize effect on Michigan. “Does anybody really think this guy is spending that much time thinking deeply on these issues? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he is very focused on home renovation. He should be on HGTV,” Obama said of Trump’s extensive changes to the White House. “You remember — roll back the tape: ‘We’re gonna drain the swamp,’” Obama added. “The only thing they drained is the reflecting pool on the National Mall because some no-bid contract got it all messed up.” The Black vote has become a focus in the race as both El-Sayed and his Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., have sought to improve their standing with the critical electorate. Detroit, a city where 75% of the population is Black, is crucial to statewide victories for Michigan Democrats. In the Democratic primary, El-Sayed underperformed there compared to his opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich.

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Police and protesters clash in Paris as an estimated 410,000 demonstrate across France

Clashes erupted in Paris as a mass march drew to a close Saturday, with more than 400,000 people rallying across France over school funding and soaring living costs in a fresh challenge to President Emmanuel Macron. Police made nearly 1,000 arrests, the government said. The Paris march began peacefully, a week after widespread rioting and looting during protests across the country. But near the demonstration’s endpoint in eastern Paris, masked protesters hurled objects and fireworks at police, who answered with clouds of tear gas, deafening sound grenades and jets of water cannons. Officers with megaphones urged protesters to disperse. Some demonstrators panicked as tear-gas canisters landed in their midst, scattering with screams. Veteran protesters shouted after them: “Don’t run!”

The Interior Ministry put nationwide turnout at 410,000 — fewer than the 550,000 it said protested last weekend — while the CGT union that helped organize some of Saturday’s protests estimated nearly 800,000. The ministry’s estimate included 110,000 in Paris, where authorities confined the march to the city’s southeastern edge, away from the center. The CGT put the number of protesters in Paris at 250,000. More than a month of unrest that started with protests in high schools for more funding and teachers is testing Macron’s authority in the final months of his presidency before voters choose his successor in May. The stakes are high: The far-right National Rally party has accused his government of failing to protect the public and urged people to channel their anger into votes for its candidate Marine Le Pen. On the far left, presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon has backed demonstrators and criticized policing that has left some teenage protesters with life-changing injuries. As dusk fell Saturday, violence erupted at the end of some of the 289 protests counted by the Interior Ministry nationwide. Street fires burned in the cities of Marseille and Lyon. Police used tear gas in Lyon, Clermont-Ferrand, Strasbourg and Bordeaux and water cannons in Nice and Nantes, French media reported. In Nice, far-right extremists fought with demonstrators downtown and 11 people were arrested, regional authorities said.

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With jet fuel prices near a record, holiday airfares soar higher

Herb and Latasha Williams flew from Dallas to Baltimore/Washington International Airport this week for a quick vacation to celebrate his birthday. But their plane tickets cost hundreds of dollars more than they expected. And Latasha Williams is now wondering if they can afford to travel for the holidays. “I kind of wanted to go somewhere warm. Florida, I’m thinking,” she said. Then she looked at airfares. “Maybe next year. Maybe,” she said with a laugh. “Fingers crossed.” Those planning to fly this holiday season, should be prepared to pay more than they did last year. Experts expect airfares for this holiday travel season will be the highest in years as airlines scramble to cover the rising cost of jet fuel, which is one of their biggest expenses.

The average price of jet fuel in the U.S. topped $4.75 per gallon this week, according to the tracking firm Argus. That’s close to an all-time high, and almost twice what it was a year ago. “Airfares right now are at what we see as a 10-year high because of the high cost of jet fuel,” said Hayley Berg, the lead economist at Hopper, a travel tech company. “Airlines have to pass on these super high jet fuel prices in the form of higher fares to consumers.” Airfares for Thanksgiving are up about 30% compared to last year, according to Berg. Tickets for the Christmas holiday are up more than 20%. But so far, Berg said, travelers seem willing to pay, at least for their big holiday trips. “We’re at the time of year where travel is really sticky. Even with higher prices, travelers are unlikely to make major changes to their traditional holiday home for the holiday trips,” Berg said in an interview with NPR. U.S. airlines say demand is holding steady even as fares have gone up. In an earnings call this month, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said consumers have put up a “limited amount of resistance” and still view airfare as “reasonably affordable” even after fare increases.

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12 people, including 6 minors, injured in shooting near Florida university stadium

At least 12 people, including six minors, were injured in a shooting near Florida A&M University’s stadium in Tallahassee late Saturday, police said. Eleven of the injured sustained gunshot wounds, the city’s police chief, Lawrence Revell, told a news conference. The twelfth person — a grandmother of one of the victims — injured herself while fleeing the scene, he added. At least three of the victims were seriously injured, including one in critical condition, Revell said. The others are in stable condition.

Six of the victims are juveniles and the youngest is 11. One victim is believed to be a Florida A&M University student, Revell said. He said no arrests have been made. The incident took place shortly before 8 p.m. at the intersection of two streets near Bragg Memorial Stadium, Revell said. The Florida A&M’s football team had played a homecoming game against the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff at the stadium earlier that evening. Preliminary findings indicate that “an altercation occurred” before the shooting, Revell said. Police believe it was an “isolated incident between two or three individuals.’ About two dozen officers had been in the area before the shooting, he said. In a statement on social media, Florida A&M University said the campus “remains safe” but advised people to avoid the area to allow police investigate.

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Government contractor arrested for allegedly leaking national defense information

Federal authorities arrested a government contractor and charged him with leaking classified national defense information, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Friday. FBI investigators have accused 42-year-old Ian Brinksman, an employee of a third-party company which provided services to a government agency, of leaking national defense information to his girlfriend, who writes an online publication on Substack. “A fundraising article reportedly published by Individual 1 in September 2026 claimed Individual 1 had “published reporting based on classified [relevant U.S. government agency] assessments.” Individual 1 posted on her social media profile, “I also accept leaks,” the DOJ said in its release. Brinkman was arrested following a search of his Washington, D.C., home.

Quotes included in the affidavit match the description of posts to the Capital & Empire Substack, a Congress and defense publication written by Aida Chavez. Chavez did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment. Chavez’s past work has appeared in The Hill, according to her bio on the social platform X. In the DOJ’s statement announcing Brinkman’s arrest, FBI Director Kash Patel said any employee caught leaking classified information will “be met with the full weight of justice.” “Protecting America’s secrets is a top counterintelligence priority of this FBI – and anyone caught abusing their position of trust within the government by jeopardizing national security and putting our brave warriors at risk will be met with the full weight of justice,” Patel said. Identifying and prosecuting leakers has been a priority for the second Trump administration, threatening prosecution of both the government employees and media organizations that publish leaks. In July, the DOJ moved to subpoena four journalists from The New York Times for their reporting on a luxury jet gifted to the president by Qatar, which was used as Air Force One but has periodically been pulled for security concerns.

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Lead Stories

3 Democratic Texas sheriffs deny endorsing Abbott

Three Democratic sheriffs whom Gov. Greg Abbott said had endorsed him say they have not. Zapata County Sheriff Ramon Montes; Val Verde County Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez; and Webb County Sheriff Marin Cuellar all told Border Report on Wednesday they have not endorsed Abbott. Abbott earlier this week named them in a list of endorsements that included nine other Democratic sheriffs. Cuellar is the brother of U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas. When Border Report spoke with Sheriff Cuellar on Wednesday, he said, “How can I endorse the governor when he’s supporting my brother’s opponent?” Republican Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina, whom Abbott endorsed, is running against Congressman Cuellar in Texas’ 28th Congressional District.

Sheriff Cuellar said no one from the governor’s office called to ask him for an endorsement and he was shocked to see his name on the governor’s list. “I’m not supporting him. How can I support him? And it’s confusing people,” Sheriff Cuellar said. On Wednesday afternoon, a list with names of all those Abbott says endorsed him — including the 12 sheriffs — was amended on his campaign website. Sheriff Cuellar’s name was removed but Martinez and Montes’ names still appeared. Martinez told Border Report: “I want to make it unequivocally clear that I have not issued a political endorsement of Gov. Greg Abbott, and I did not authorize anyone to use my name as an endorsement.” Zapata County Sheriff’s Deputy Chief Juan Molina told Border Report that Sheriff Montes “is not endorsing anyone at this time.”

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Transgender group seeks court order to uncover who sent mailers as registered agent drops fake group

A transgender advocacy organization is seeking a court order to uncover who is behind mailers and text messages on the topic that ignited anger and confusion as early voting opened this week in Texas. The mailers, which were sent to some Texas voters and purport to help transgender children with information, have sparked an election mystery, calls for a state investigation and squabbling among conservative influencers and politicians on both sides. Mimi Marziani, an attorney for the Transgender Education Network of Texas, or TENT, called the messages and mailers “dirty, unethical tricks” and said she wants to uncover the identity of the sender by Election Day on Nov. 3. TENT, a state advocacy organization, said it did not print or distribute the mailers and knows nothing about them.

“Someone is spending millions and millions of dollars to induce division and strife among Texas voters,” Marziani said. “And they’re doing so while hiding behind a shell company.” According to the return address, the mailers were sent by the Texas Transgender Student Union from an address in Meadows Place, near Houston. That organization, which is not affiliated with TENT, was formed last month in Wyoming, a state that allows registered agents to create businesses without disclosing the owners. On Thursday, Northwest Registered Agent in Wyoming told The Dallas Morning News in a statement that it is in the process of resigning as the group’s agent. “We have no way of knowing someone’s intent when they’re forming a new company, and Northwest Registered Agent has no knowledge of, or involvement in, our clients’ business operations,” the company said. “We follow all state and federal laws, and we cooperate fully with law enforcement investigations.” The request for the court order, filed Thursday in Austin, asked a judge to compel testimony from the Texas Transgender Student Union and Infobip, a digital messaging company tied to one of the phone numbers that sent the message. It is not clear when the judge will issue a decision. Infobip did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Thursday. Northwest Registered Agent, which is not named in the request for a court order, declined to comment on the petition.

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TWIA moves to dismiss class-action lawsuit over Hurricane Beryl claims

The defendants in a possible class-action lawsuit against the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association and others have moved to dismiss the suit filed by three Galveston County homeowners. The TWIA, Hansen Scott Holdings, Ryze Claims Solutions, James Jarasczeski and David DeVilbiss claim the McCarran-Ferguson Act prohibits the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations — or RICO — Act lawsuit filed by Ernestine Bell, Alicia Stuart and David Mohun. The suit was filed in August in the Galveston Division of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. It alleges willful underpayment of claims after Hurricane Beryl, accusing staff of TWIA, the state’s insurer of last resort for Texas’ coastal regions, of conspiring with personnel of Colley-based adjusting firm Leading Edge Claims Service LLC to secretly alter the windstorm damage claim estimates for their homes made by a field adjuster. Those changes resulted in a combined $96,000 less than what the adjuster had appraised for damage to the three homes, the suit claims.

Defendant Hansen Scott Holdings is the successor of Leading Edge, according to the plaintiffs. The McCarran-Ferguson Act established that the authority to regulate the insurance industry belongs primarily to the states. In its motion to dismiss, TWIA also claims that since it did not deny the homeowners’ claims, the only available remedy to challenge the amount of the loss was through appraisal and that the plaintiffs’ attorney, Shaun Hodge, failed to correctly request one. In an email to the Houston Business Journal, Hodge said the plaintiffs’ team anticipated the defendants would raise those issues in a motion to dismiss. “We believe we have properly pled the essential elements for RICO and have ample strong evidence to support our claims,” he said, adding that the facts show that the McCarran-Ferguson Act does not preempt the plaintiffs’ claims.

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Trump excludes Bo French, Nate Sheets from Texas midterm endorsements

President Donald Trump has endorsed just about every statewide and congressional Republican on the Texas midterm ballot by name except for 10. In a post on Truth Social on Monday, Trump told Texas voters to get out to the polls and vote Republican in every race all the way down the ballot. Then on Wednesday evening, he gave 36 statewide and congressional Republicans his “Complete and Total Endorsement — They will never let you down!” The 10 excluded Republican candidates were Bo French, Nate Sheets and eight U.S. House hopefuls. Trump did not explain why only those 36 candidates were endorsed or why the 10 statewide and congressional candidates were left off of his list in the Truth Social post.

French, who is running against Democrat Jon Rosenthal for Texas Railroad Commissioner, has been criticized multiple times by members of the GOP for discriminatory social media posts. The most recent was one about the demographics of students at the University of Texas. He is the former Tarrant County GOP chairman. Sheets, the Republican nominee for Texas Agriculture Commissioner running against Democrat Clayton Tucker, has been called out by the current agriculture commissioner, Republican Sid Miller, for his various admitted addictions and an inappropriate relationship that ended his career in ministry. Neither Sheets’ campaign nor French responded to a request for comment. The eight U.S. House candidates not named in the president’s endorsement list are all running against a Democrat incumbent or are in a race with no incumbent. They were: Alexander Hale in District 7, Adam Bauman in District 16, Ronald Dwayne Whitfield in District 18, Edgardo Rafael Baez in District 20, Martha Fierro in District 29, Everett Jackson in District 30, Patrick David Gillespie in District 33 and Lauren B. Pena in District 37.

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State Stories

San Antonio attorney Thomas J. Henry endorses James Talarico for U.S. Senate

San Antonio-based personal-injury attorney Thomas J. Henry on Wednesday said he will vote for James Talarico in Texas’ U.S. Senate race — even though he supported Republican Ken Paxton in the GOP primary. In a minute-long video message posted to his social media channels, Henry said his early support for Paxton stemmed from his belief that the candidate’s primary opponent, incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, had been in office too long. However, Henry added that he asked for a one-on-one meeting with Talarico as he became more aware of Paxton’s laundry list of scandals.

“That meeting was extremely valuable because it taught me the values Talarico has: the values for respect, fairness, safety, good economics for Texas, and our country, and a balanced approach to all the issues,” Henry said. Henry’s endorsement comes amid record early-voting turnout in Bexar County ahead of the 2026 midterms. Both Talarico and Paxton will visit San Antonio before Election Day. Talarico will hold rallies on Oct. 24 and Nov. 1, while Paxton will conclude his “Come and Take It Tour” at the Alamo on Nov. 2. Early voting continues through Oct. 30. Polls will reopen on Election Day, Nov. 3.

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Bud Kennedy: Tarrant County Republicans may pay for cutting Election Day polling places

If Republicans lose a Texas or Tarrant County election Nov. 3, they have a ready-made list of scapegoats from Washington to Southlake. But as Democrats came pouring in to vote at a rate comparable to 2018 — when Beto O’Rourke brought Democrats their best vote totals in a generation — Republicans began to wonder aloud whether any Tarrant County offices might really flip to Democrats. The worry is real. After the first few days of early voting, those voters who are regulars in the Democratic Party primary made up the largest portion of voters, more than a third. The next largest group showed no party history, and Republicans lagged with about one-fourth of the vote. Nobody I know thinks Democrats will keep that margin up. Republicans will vote. They’ll just wait for the lines to subside.

But that Democratic edge doesn’t even allow for the 6% of Republicans who tell pollsters they won’t vote for U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton, or more who won’t but may not admit it to pollsters. So Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico probably has an inside track in Tarrant County. At least three Republican Texas House seats are at risk. State Rep. John McQueeney‘s district in southwest Fort Worth and Tarrant County has been purpling in recent years, so he has TV ads up now against Democrat Beth Llewellyn McLaughlin. Open seats are at risk of flipping to Democrats in Arlington (Cheryl Bean vs. Democrat Katie O’Brien-Duzan) and in the Mansfield-Burleson area (Ellen Sorrells Fleischmann vs. Democrat Ebony Turner). Democrats would love to flip the county judge’s seat. Personal-injury lawyer Tim O’Hare of Southlake has been antagonistic and sometimes openly hostile while presiding at Commissioners Court. But even if Commissioner Alisa Simmons wins the gavel, the Arlington Democrat will be on the wrong end of 3-2 votes. That is, unless either Arlington Republican Tony Tinderholt or northwest Tarrant County Commissioner Manny Ramirez is upset by Fort Worth Democrats Dr. Jared Williams or Nydia Cardenas.

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Counties race to regulate groundwater amid data center boom

A couple of years ago, when Williamson County Commissioner Terry Cook tried to form a local groundwater conservation district, the overwhelming reaction was: “Don’t tell me what to do with my land, my water.” “We got nowhere,” she said. Then came the data center boom. Now, as rural and suburban areas like Cook’s see an explosion of interest from developers of the massive computing centers, many are scrambling to form the voter-approved districts, which manage aquifers and issue permits for groundwater withdrawals. Groundwater supplies the state with half of its water, and nearly all drinking water in rural Texas comes from below ground. But in areas without groundwater conservation districts, or GCDs, landowners are free to pump without limits or disclosure.

That lack of oversight may be a draw for some data center developers. Nearly a quarter of the 630 data centers planned, under construction or operating in Texas are in areas without groundwater conservation districts, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis. The analysis found that nearly a hundred data centers operating or under construction are in areas not covered by GCDs. An additional 61 data centers are planned in these areas, as of October 15. Communities across the state are now rushing to create these districts in order to have some control over groundwater. “There’s been a huge increase in interest,” said state Rep. Cody Harris, a Palestine Republican and the chairman of the committee that oversees groundwater regulation. There are 98 groundwater conservation districts in Texas, covering 70% of the state. Adam Foster, the executive director of the Texas Alliance of Groundwater Districts, counted at least 10 active efforts to form new districts across the state, including a proposed district spanning 17 counties in northeast Texas. Foster said the growth of data centers across Texas has been the “main driver” of efforts to form new GCDs, as communities worry the large computing centers will drain their aquifers.

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Republican Tim O'Hare confident Tarrant County can stay red if GOP base votes

Despite a strong showing from Democrats on the first few days of early voting, Republican County Judge Tim O’Hare is confident his party will win out on Nov. 3. In the first three days of 2026 midterm early voting, Tarrant County voters exceeded the numbers from the last midterm in 2022. At a Metroplex Republican Women club meeting Thursday, O’Hare said the Republican Party expected Democrats to outpace the GOP voters in the first few days. The Democrats turned out more than estimated, he said. “What I think you’re going to see is you’re going to see us catching up over the next several days, and I think you’re going to see us pass, if we all do our part,” O’Hare said at a Republican club meeting. “And here’s the great news: I have never, and I haven’t been here as long as some of y’all, but I have never seen Republicans so engaged, so energetic, working together so well.”

O’Hare is running in one of the most prominent races in Tarrant County this election against Democrat challenger and commissioner Alisa Simmons. The two have dueled on commissioners court a multitude of times since they were elected to their seats in 2022. “There has never been a sharper contrast between candidates for county judge ever in the history of this county, bar none,” O’Hare said Thursday. He added that “the stakes have never been higher,” but many Republicans in the county aren’t aware of that. O’Hare raised alarm bells at a True Texas Project meeting in September, telling attendees his seat could flip blue. The county party has been employing several outreach methods to contact low-propensity voters and remind them to go to the polls. O’Hare said there are more Republicans in the county than there are Democrats, so the issue is one of turnout. “If we don’t do our part, and we see Democrats take Tarrant County, you never get it back,” O’Hare said. “Dallas County never got it back. Harris County never got it back. Are we going to let that happen in Tarrant County? No way.”

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TCEQ closes online permitting system, after watchdogs accuse agency of violating data center pause

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has shut down its online permit application system after watchdog groups accused the agency of approving permits related to data center projects, in violation of a recent directive from the governor. Watchdog groups Public Citizen and FracTracker said earlier this week that the TCEQ had continued to process permits for data centers, despite an order from Gov. Greg Abbott to halt approvals for these facilities until an audit is completed. In particular, the groups identified a handful of construction stormwater permits related to data centers that they said the TCEQ had approved. Public Citizen and FracTracker said after they publicized their findings, the environmental agency suspended at least 17 stormwater and wastewater permits for data center projects.

"TCEQ retroactively suspending construction stormwater approvals in the wake of FracTracker and Public Citizen’s scrutiny means that any clearing, grading and excavation at these sites must stop immediately," Sam Law, researcher and manager of communications at FracTracker, said in a news release. "The confusion surrounding these approvals further proves the need for a moratorium: TCEQ is proving itself incapable of meeting complex regulatory challenges posed by data centers without further study." TCEQ spokesperson Victoria Cann said the watchdog groups identified stormwater permits known as notices of intent, which are approved through "automated authorizations," prior to construction. Cann added that all notices of intent related to data centers have been suspended, along with the agency's online permit application system. "To ensure all applications are thoroughly reviewed by agency staff to determine if they are related to data centers, applications must be physically provided to TCEQ," she said in a statement.

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Harris County Judge candidates face off in debate over ICE, Flock cameras, and the future of the Astrodome

The two candidates for Harris County judge faced off Thursday evening in a debate, tackling issues from immigration and public safety to administrative issues and the future of the Astrodome. The debate, presented by Houston Public Media and in partnership with the Houston Chronicle, N+ Univision 45, and the University of Houston's Hobby School for Public Affairs, brought Republican Orlando Sanchez and Democrat Letitia Plummer head-to-head just before election day on Nov. 3. "As a dentist by trade, I understand the challenges in healthcare," Plummer said in her opening remarks. "As a single mom, I know the challenges that many of us are experiencing, taking care of our families and our children. And being able to spend six natural disasters and our first pandemic with many of you, I know what we need to do to make sure that Harris County moves in a direction where every single person has the opportunity to thrive."

"Back when the county was chock full of money, we had money in the Rainy Day Fund, the county had not raised the property tax rate in 25 years," Sanchez said in his opening statement. "Unfortunately, we’ve seen the tax rate rise precipitously here in Harris County over the last eight years — 60%, and just in the last 36 months by 41%. To me, it’s intellectual dishonesty when you talk about affordability, and you hammer those who can least afford it." Both of the candidates came to something of an early agreement when they stated that county law enforcement officials should not be required to act as immigration officers in partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Sanchez, who immigrated as a child from Cuba with his family, said he was "very sensitive" to the issue of immigration enforcement in Harris County. He recounted a story in which his mother was pulled over by a constable and asked her citizenship status, which Sanchez called "unacceptable." Harris County currently holds a contract with Flock, a controversial surveillance company that uses automated license plate readers. Incumbent Judge Lina Hidalgo has called for the county to reassess its contract. Commissioner Lesley Briones decommissioned the Flock cameras in her precinct. As the contract currently stands, Plummer stated she did not support it. "Right now, with the contract the way that it is, I will rescind it immediately," she said. "As your county judge, we're going to have to make sure that when we bring any AI technology in, although we understand it's necessary to assist with public safety issues, we cannot do it against the privacy of our residents."

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Fort Bend tax assessor federally indicted for allegedly using county funds to pay for her mother’s caretaker

Fort Bend County Tax Assessor-Collector Carmen Turner was arrested on Thursday after she was indicted on federal charges of misusing public funds. Prosecutors said she employed two tax clerks who were tasked with caring for her 81-year-old mother. Turner, a Democrat who was first elected to the office in 2020, faces federal charges of conspiracy, wire fraud and theft concerning programs receiving federal funds. Representatives for Turner did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Federal prosecutors accused Turner of employing two individuals as tax clerks, tasking them "to care for [her] then 81-year-old mother ... who is wheelchair bound and living in an apartment in Houston, Texas," according to the federal indictment.

One of those caregivers, Shemerrylyn Fields, was also indicted for her alleged role in the scheme. As of Thursday afternoon, Fields did not have an attorney listed in her case records and could not be reached for comment. The other caregiver, who was not identified in the indictment, is cooperating with federal authorities, according to U.S. Attorney Aaron Reitz. Turner is also accused of employing Victor Ewing, the father of her adult son, as a "department coordinator," tasked with, among other things, managing special projects and providing educational information and training. At the same time Ewing was paid as a full-time employee of the county, prosecutors said he was working in Chicago's O'Hare International Airport as a materials specialist. Ewing, who also did not have an attorney listed in his case record, could not be reached for comment. Prosecutors allege that the three defendants falsified timesheets as part of the scheme. The unnamed individual working with prosecutors said they were instructed to tell anyone who asked that they worked "on the 2nd floor at the Missouri City tax office location," according to the indictment. Though Reitz did not give an official figure, he said his office believes the scheme involved "tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars."

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El Paso County GOP Chair plans to sue Sacha Baron Cohen: ‘A liar and a pervert’

The chair of the El Paso County Republican Party has said he intends to sue Sacha Baron Cohen over footage of the local politician used in new satirical comedy Ali G: Who Iz I? In the film, Michael Aboud is shown taking part in a training programme with another Cohen character, ex-Mossad terrorist expert Col Erran Morad, who instructs Aboud and fellow Maga sympathisers in self-defence techniques including the wearing, over clothes, of protective plastic buttocks. He also schools them in how to fire bullets from the middle of these buttocks by the repeated up and down manipulation of a rubber penis. Aboud and a fellow student, former preacher and aspirant actor Joshua Loudermilk, are then recruited by Morad to help in a mission to prevent the birth in the US of the baby of a (fictional) South American drugs kingpin.

This involves Aboud and Loudermilk abducting his heavily-pregnant girlfriend and driving her in a phoney ambulance to a remote unstaffed medical facility, where she gives birth (to a lifelike prosthetic). They then abandon her, Morad having placed her live baby in a zipped bag, and drive with it towards Mexico. Loudermilk is later seen attempting to discharge fire from his fake buttocks, while Aboud takes the decision to drop the baby – at that point being dangled from a drone at a substantial height – to the ground to prevent it touching US soil. The actions could not be anything other than extremely serious for a real infant. Until the Guardian contacted Aboud on Tuesday, the businessman was unaware of his participation in anything other than what he believed to be a nonfiction film. In a statement, Aboud called Baron Cohen “and his entire film crew … a bunch of liars [who] deceive people to benefit themselves. They claimed that this would be a documentary about the illegals crossing the border. Then they said they were adding in this self-defence guy from Israel.” He added: “It is my opinion that Sasha Cohen [sic] is a pervert. Plus he talked about how Muslims are all gay because they follow the sex practices of Mohamid [sic]. No one should spend one penny watching anything he produces or appears in. I plan to sue him.”

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Texas Christian University chancellor resigns, university confirms

Texas Christian University (TCU) Chancellor Daniel Pullin is resigning, according to a statement from the college. Pullin notified the university’s chair, Kit Moncrief, of the resignation. In a statement, the now-former chancellor wrote, “I would like to thank the entire Horned Frog family for the support and encouragement during my time at TCU.” Pullin's run as TCU Chancellor has been brief, he was named to the position in June 2025, marking just under a year and a half with the job. Previously, Pullin was also the university's president from February 2023 to June 2025.

In his statement, Pullin added that he thinks TCU is building the model for the future of higher education. “I love our students and couldn’t be more proud of what their futures entail as they graduate and become outstanding TCU alumni,” Pullin said. “Thank you to everyone at TCU. I will always be invested in what TCU stands for.” Victor Boschini, Pullin's immediate predecessor as chancellor and TCU's chancellor emeritus, has been appointed to fill the role effective immediately. “Victor’s proven leadership will ensure our Lead On: Values in Action strategic plan continues to be successfully implemented on behalf of our students, faculty, and our supportive community, while he and our team steward our daily campus life,” Moncrief said.

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Drivers say Carla Wyatt had no insurance during car crash

A pair of Houston residents involved in a four-vehicle wreck that officials say Harris County Treasurer Carla Wyatt caused last month alleged Thursday that she was driving without insurance at the time of the crash. Amanda Byford and Diamantina Uribe, two of the three drivers involved in the Sep. 18 crash, urged voters to oust Wyatt as they revealed new details about the incident at a press conference with Marc Cowart, the Republican running against Wyatt in the Nov. 3 election. The women said they have not received damages for the crash and have not heard from Wyatt or law enforcement since the incident.

Though officers found no indication that Wyatt was driving under the influence, per a crash report, Uribe and Byford each said they believe she may have been intoxicated and showed no apparent concern that she had been in a car crash. “She looked dazed and confused to me,” said Byford. “She was trying to put the airbag back into the steering wheel column, and I thought, ‘well that’s strange.’” Wyatt also sought to leave the scene immediately despite significant damages to her car. “I got off and checked on her, and she was like, ‘You need to move. I’m running late to a meeting,’” said Uribe. Wyatt initially alleged to police that the three other vehicles had been stopped on Interstate 45, but dashcam footage and a diagram of the crash included in the crash report showed Wyatt aggressively changing lanes and rear ending all three vehicles before coming to a stop. No one was badly injured in the crash, according to the report. The incident was Wyatt’s fourth run-in with the law since her election in 2022. The embattled Democrat was twice arrested for drunken driving, and last December was charged with burglary of a vehicle, though a grand jury later declined to indict her on that charge.

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How Texas data centers could reverse years of air pollution progress

Data centers will likely make Texas’s air less breathable by reversing two decades of progress on curbing air pollution, according to a report released this week by the Houston Advanced Research Center. The Woodlands-based sustainability nonprofit predicted a range of data center-related pollution outcomes, depending largely on how many are eventually built and what power sources they use. Most of the outcomes are bad for Texans, said Carlos Gamarra, a vice president for HARC and one of the report’s authors. The new data centers would roll back years of reductions in air contaminants linked to increased rates of asthma, heart attacks and cancer. Driving these outcomes is a rush to build data centers as fast as possible to keep up with rising demands for computing capacity for artificial intelligence. The breakneck pace is pushing companies to use dirtier energy sources, primarily natural gas plants, to power their projects, Gamarra said.

“What’s happening with the data centers is they are building with profitability in mind, not so much with sustainability in mind,” Gamarra said. Levels of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and fine particulate matter in the air have dropped dramatically since the start of the century, according to HARC data — upwards of 60% in some cases. The group attributes the improvements to a combination of emissions controls on power plants, stricter vehicle emissions standards and the replacement of dirtier coal-fired plants with natural gas and renewables. But the AI boom could change the tide, HARC said. Data center development in Texas is in flux after Gov. Greg Abbott directed environmental regulators to indefinitely pause data center permitting last month. But in the long term, development is expected to continue. In 2025, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state's grid, estimated Texas would add 24 gigawatts of new data centers by 2031, requiring roughly as much energy as the entire Houston region this year

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Central Texas healthcare is booming. Can the workforce keep up?

Healthcare employment grew by 35,411 jobs in five years across Bastrop, Caldwell, Hays, Travis and Williamson counties from 2021 to 2026. Meanwhile, nearly $10 billion was invested into the sector by venture capitalists and private equity firms. And the region has dozens of major healthcare projects in the pipeline. Healthcare and its related tech innovations are poised to become one of the region's next major business pillars. But hurdles and bottlenecks pose major challenges to the region reaching its potential. That includes expanding training programs for nurses, as well as limiting turnover. Meanwhile, population growth in some areas is outpacing the establishment of new clinics and resources. Those are a few key takeaways from a new Austin Healthcare Council report that examines a broad spectrum of healthcare and demographic data from recent years.

"Population growth is shifting healthcare demand beyond Travis County, physician and specialty capacity remains concentrated in the urban core, and shortages of faculty, preceptors and clinical placements constrain how quickly the workforce can expand," the report said. "The next stage of development will depend less on whether healthcare continues to grow than on whether capacity, access and talent can keep pace with Central Texas’ population and economic growth." The Austin Healthcare Council is a nonprofit founded in 2016 by local healthcare leaders to help make Austin a global healthcare innovation center by connecting competitors and collaborators across hospitals, digital health, pharmaceuticals, medical devices and academia. Healthcare worker recruitment, training and retention is perhaps the most significant challenge cited in the new report. For example, the report says that Austin Community College, which says it is the area's largest educator for the healthcare workers, has about 9,000 students in pre-health pathways. But its capacity for health sciences slots is only about 1,100. And turnover rates for some roles remain a significant issue. For example, in 2025, turnover rates for nursing assistants came in at 90%. For medical assistants, the turnover rate was 58% and registered nurses were at 41%. The report also shows doctor-to-resident ratios vary from one county to the next. It said Travis County had 5,166 physicians in September 2026, or 371.7 per 100,000 residents, compared with 268.9 across the five-county Central Texas region and 250.5 statewide.

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National Stories

Owning a home comes with a hidden price tag, and it's getting more expensive

The hidden costs of homeownership are rising and have increased by nearly one-third in the last five years as expenses like insurance, maintenance and property taxes take a bite out of homeowners' budgets. A new report by Zillow and Thumbtack found those costs amount to about $16,566 per year, which amounts to roughly $1,380 a month in addition to a mortgage payment. Within the $16,566 total cost, the typical U.S. homeowner faces about $11,171 in annual maintenance, $2,266 for homeowners insurance and $3,129 on property taxes. "Many households focus so much on winning the home and underestimate what it costs to live in it," said Zillow Senior Economist Kara Ng.

"Long after they receive the keys, insurance, taxes and upkeep are recurring expenses to plan for. Since these homeownership costs vary so much by market, home shoppers should run the numbers and understand what they can truly afford before they make an offer." Hidden costs have risen in recent years, with the biggest jump occurring in homeowners insurance premiums, which are up 54% over the last five years. Maintenance costs had the second-fastest growth rate and are up 32% over the past five years, while property taxes grew 19% in that period. Overall homeownership costs increased 3% in the last year but are up 32% over the past five years. The Zillow and Thumbtack analysis found that maintenance costs showed the clearest slowdown, as annual increases in maintenance costs eased in each of the last five years, slowing from 9% in 2022 to 1% in 2026. Insurance is following a similar pattern, with premiums rising just 0.3% between February and June 2026. "The slowdown in maintenance cost growth is welcome news for homeowners managing a lot of competing expenses," said Kendra Sinclair, Thumbtack's home trends expert. "Planning for regular upkeep throughout the year can help prevent bigger repair bills and protect your savings when something unexpected happens."

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Politicians are turning against AI, but your pension is riding on it

The artificial-intelligence boom is driving a wedge through America’s multitrillion-dollar public-pensions system. AI-crazed markets have turbocharged hundreds of state and local public-employee pension funds, whose combined assets have grown from $5.8 trillion in 2023 to $7.3 trillion in June, according to Federal Reserve data. Across 13 of the largest funds that manage their investments in-house, a basket of domestic AI-linked stocks fueled $138 billion in paper gains between the end of 2022 and June, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of securities filings. But while those pensions were racking up AI-fueled returns, officials from many of those same states have begun to throw up barriers to data centers and are criticizing the industry in the final stretch of the midterm campaign. The pushback has left fund managers and boards scrambling to gauge the risks of one of the most polarizing industries in the U.S.

In Pennsylvania, a gubernatorial candidate who sits on the board of a teachers’ pension fund is hammering the incumbent on data-center development. California union representatives are pushing fund managers to account for threats posed to workers and communities. New York state instituted a moratorium on many new data centers, even as pension funds’ AI holdings have surged. “It’s so contradictory,” said Joseph Hernandez, GOP candidate for New York state comptroller. “We’re on both sides of the bet.” In March, New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, trustee of the state’s Common Retirement Fund, urged 18 tech companies including Amazon.com to engage residents and allay concerns around power prices, land use and water consumption. DiNapoli, a Democrat, wrote in a letter that the approach would “protect shareholder value and ensure sustainable growth.” But the backlash has only grown, culminating with the state’s July moratorium on many new projects to study regulation. In a recent hearing with representatives for Meta, Alphabet and other tech firms, New York City Council Member Shekar Krishnan grilled the companies on retirement-fund risks.

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Inside Vivek Ramaswamy’s historic Ohio flameout

The mood at the Vivek Ramaswamy rally was upbeat—confident, even—but the cracks started to show before it began. The town hall in the small Cleveland suburb of Parma was entitled “Pierogis, Pabst, and Patriots,” and there were plenty of all three on hand at the Union House Bar and Restaurant. But we weren’t really supposed to be here. We were supposed to have convened at the Cleveland Harley-Davidson outpost for a “Christians, Bikers & Patriots” campaign event, before a sudden cancellation necessitated a shift to this woodsy sports joint. There was no word on what had gone wrong with the bikers. Still, the energy was real in this crimson-tinged bar, bustling with elderly Ohioans in OSU jerseys and MAGA merch alongside watery tubs of PBR. (Among the T-shirts: a red-ink outline of Charlie Kirk raising his fist, and a Trump-Vance shirt where the year was crossed out and replaced, in Sharpie, with 2028.) Alfred, a 60-year-old Filipino immigrant who was raised in Shaker Heights and works in the Parma public school system, told me he didn’t think, whatever the national narrative, that too many of his fellow conservatives were disaffected with Donald Trump or the current Republican Party.

He loved the way Immigration and Customs Enforcement was operating, and anyway, as devout Catholics, he and his wife would never vote for a pro-choice Democrat like Amy Acton—Ramaswamy’s opponent in the bitter race for the Ohio governor’s mansion. Others I spoke to were similarly unbothered. Mark, a retired Air Force technician sitting at the bar, was planning on attending church that very evening and claimed to be far more concerned about property taxes than Ramaswamy’s Hinduism, one of the many issues that may work against the candidate in this very Christian state. To him, Ramaswamy’s religious objectors were just “morons who say stupid shit.” Once the actual event kicked off, however, even the speakers couldn’t help but strike notes of concern. “If you choose not to decide in this election, you are supporting a cast of characters that wants to take our state in a fundamentally dangerous direction,” said Secretary of State Frank LaRosa, invoking Rush’s “Freewill” as he opened for the guest of honor and promoted his own campaign for state auditor. “The Democrats are feelin’ chippy,” he warned. “But there will be no blue wave. There will be a bright-red Ramaswamy tsunami!” Ramaswamy finally took the stump to raucous applause and harped on his finely honed campaign planks—improving public schools, reducing property taxes and everyday costs, welcoming legal immigrants—while firing some culture-war drive-bys at the evils of “wokeism” and “transgenderism.” Former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel subsequently took the mic and felt the need to emphasize Ramaswamy’s devotion to God. “I’ve been with Vivek at churches all over the state. There’s this band of Christian warriors who are following and supporting Vivek because he supports them,” Mandel stressed. The sentiment proved to be a bellwether for the audience Q&A. An answer Ramaswamy gave condemning sanctuary cities wasn’t enough for a hoarse-voiced attendee who repeatedly interrupted: “Damned immigrants are hurtin’ everybody! We gotta get all of ’em out of here!”

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The oppo mastermind who could take down Roger Marshall

Early in September, a New York Times investigation rocked the Kansas Senate race. The incumbent Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, the paper revealed, had sued some 700 patients over his previous, decadeslong career as an obstetrician-gynecologist in rural Kansas; in 81 of the cases, patients had gotten arrested over missed court dates. In an agricultural state already hard-hit by Donald Trump’s tariffs, and in a cycle with affordability as voters’ top issue, the revelation of struggling patients facing legal peril over medical debt — in one case of as little as $101 — changed the map, putting Republicans officially on the defensive in a state that had looked safe only months before. The story was a coup for the paper and veteran health care reporter Sarah Kliff who, as the paper noted, “reviewed thousands of court records and interviewed eight people whom Roger Marshall sued over medical debt.” But many also suspected a particular hand behind the initial tip: Tyson Brody, a 39-year-old opposition researcher and an alum of both the Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders campaigns, who moved home to Kansas to work for Marshall’s Democratic challenger, Rev. Adam Hamilton.

Brody is “the kind of guy who, forget a skeleton in your closet — he will find every single dust bunny in your closet,” said Caitlin Legacki, a senior fellow at Third Way and a Democratic strategist who has worked with Brody in the past. The Times declined to comment, as did both Brody and the Hamilton campaign. Kliff has said on Kansas City public radio that she will not reveal who gave her the tip, as is standard journalistic practice. But journalists and operatives familiar with Brody’s work think it’s no coincidence that the Hamilton campaign’s oppo game is exploding as it happens to employ one of the Democratic party’s top practitioners of the craft — in his own home state. Marshall has said he treated every patient regardless of ability to pay. But in the weeks since the story ran, polls have tightened, prognosticators have moved the race toward Democrats (the Cook Political report now rates it a toss-up) and millions of dollars have rushed into what suddenly looks like a battleground on the prairie — in a state so associated with conservativism that Democrats use the book title What’s the Matter With Kansas? as shorthand for benighted farmers voting against what liberals see as their own interests. Giddy Democrats and despondent Republicans alike are contemplating the possibility that Kansas could send a Democrat to the Senate for the first time since 1932. And central to that phenomenon — along with a damaged incumbent and a unique challenger — is the old-fashioned, dark art of oppo research.

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Experts say Venezuela's claim to 300 billion reserve oil barrels is a stretch

A single figure sets Venezuela apart from the rest of the world: 303 billion barrels of so-called proven oil reserves. But experts say the country’s estimate is inherently problematic and far from proven — rooted in exaggerated, aging data from a corrupt government. The number has long been touted by politicians and investors as an important measure of untapped energy potential, most recently by President Donald Trump’s administration in detailing a sweeping deal for the U.S. to take control of some Venezuelan reserves. But a more realistic estimate of the country’s proven reserves — a gold standard metric, representing the amount of oil that can reasonably be extracted under current conditions — is about one-third of what it has reported, half a dozen experts told The Associated Press. They put the likely figure at 60 to 120 billion barrels, a vast amount but not enough for Venezuela to remain the world’s largest holder of reserves.

The distinction is an important one as Venezuela and the U.S. attempt to attract new investment into the country’s dilapidated oil industry, and it suggests that the deal Trump announced in August claiming the U.S. would ultimately control more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves is much less profitable than he asserted. “That’s a funny, funny proposal,” Evanan Romero, a former Venezuela energy official now based in Houston, said of the deal, adding that he believes the Trump administration didn’t fully research the South American country’s claims before wading in. “If the U.S. government called them and asked them to testify to how they did the procedure — well, the whole world will know that that’s a funny number, an absolute lie.” Venezuela’s government didn’t respond to a request for comment from AP. Trump has said that under the deal, the U.S. will control 65 billion barrels of proven reserves — a figure exceeding the entirety of U.S. crude reserves. He’s repeatedly cited the 65 billion barrels number and called the oil deal the biggest in history, a way to refill U.S. strategic reserves and lower gas prices that surged during the Iran war.

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MAHA activists jaded by top ally’s departure from White House

The abrupt resignation of one of the leading Make America Healthy Again advocates from the Trump administration on Thursday is a threat to discourage swing midterm election voters who want reforms to federal food policy. Calley Means, one of the founding figures in the MAHA movement, resigned from his position in the Trump administration on Thursday after reportedly clashing with members of the White House inner circle over delays in advancing food policy reforms central to his agenda. Means’s departure comes as Republicans are struggling nationwide in polls ahead of the elections on Nov. 3. His resignation is likely to spark disillusionment with President Donald Trump and the GOP among MAHA voters who voted for him in 2024.

Kelly Ryerson, a food reform and anti-pesticide activist, told the Washington Examiner that Means’s resignation “is a strong signal that the administration is falling short on their commitments to our MAHA cohort,” but it might not be enough to tip the scales in favor of Democrats. “President Trump is surrounded by smart, shrewd industry players that hold enough power to silence the demands of our diseased population,” Ryerson said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that MAHA voters will run and vote Democrat. It’s more a renewed, deep distrust in the entire political system that continues to leave our kids sick and medicated.” Means was one of the central figures in the summer of 2024 who connected Robert F. Kennedy with Trump, who at the time were rival presidential candidates. After Kennedy was appointed health and human services secretary, Means has been a key adviser to Kennedy, including helping with the revision of the dietary guidelines and negotiations with food companies to remove artificial dyes from certain products.

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Flashy AI campaign ads use religion to stir emotions and attack candidates

In a recent campaign ad for Ken Paxton, the Trump-endorsed Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Texas, his Democratic opponent James Talarico appears to sit at a desk while he scribbles on a Bible page. “I always think of myself as a Christian who hates Christianity,” says the ad’s Talarico before adding that God was a “radical feminist” who “never asked people to worship him,” a reference to Talarico’s liberal Christian views, which have drawn criticism from political opponents. The scene seems realistic and pulls quotes from Talarico’s speeches and his sermons at his Presbyterian church. Yet, it is not an actual clip of Talarico. It was created with artificial intelligence.

The 30-second clip, which has 2.6 million views on X since its release in September, is part of a flurry of AI-generated political ads airing on cable, streaming and digital platforms across the country ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. As AI content spreads online, political strategists have used the technology to create glossy campaign videos. According to a Wesleyan Media Project report released in September, 164 ads generated or enhanced by AI have been released this election cycle, costing $80 million. In some key races, AI has been used to depict candidates’ religious views and convey religious messaging through campaign ads ranging from highly realistic to provocative and eccentric. Layering catchy music, colorful images and provocative captions, the AI campaign ads can elicit strong emotional reactions, said Heidi Campbell, author of “Digital Creatives and the Rethinking of Religious Authority” and a communication professor at Texas A&M University. “Political ads have always tried to get you to respond out of your gut to either like or not like a person,” she said, adding strategists now “use the features of AI to kind of get people to bypass thinking and focus on emotion.”

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Iran threatens wider strikes on economic and civilian targets if U.S. attacks

Iran’s message is stark: If the U.S. and Israel restart their air campaign, Tehran will respond with strikes not only on American bases and warships but on airports, pipelines and other civilian targets in the neighboring countries of the Persian Gulf. The warnings, issued publicly and in private diplomatic communications, are clearly aimed at deterring any attack with tough talk. But they also signal a real threat. Iran retains significant missile and drone stocks and the ability to use them. Analysts estimate Iran has hundreds to thousands of ballistic missiles, and U.S. and regional officials believe it has resumed production of ballistic missiles in limited numbers using stockpiled components and working in underground facilities. In the opening phase of the war, Iran inflicted significant damage on U.S. air bases, embassies and the headquarters of the U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain. It also hit energy and industrial facilities in the United Arab Emirates, a major gas plant in Qatar and airports in Dubai, Kuwait and Bahrain.

Tehran says it would seek to cause more pain in any new round, at a time when stockpiles of the air-defense interceptors the U.S. and Arab militaries need to absorb any attack have been running down. Israel’s interceptor supplies have also been under pressure. Raising the ante in any new fight would expose Iran’s infrastructure to attack when its economy is teetering. Its missile arsenal and launchers were battered by U.S. and Israeli attacks early in the war—the Pentagon said in September the U.S. had destroyed up to 90% of Iran’s drone, ballistic missile and naval industrial base—limiting its ability to sustain a long exchange. Still, analysts believe it would run the risk. “The consensus in Tehran now believes that deterrence requires imposing immediate, sustained and substantial costs on its adversaries,” said Sina Toossi, an Iran expert at the Center for International Policy, a Washington think tank. Yemen’s Houthi militants, working with training and technology from Iran, have hit Saudi Arabian refineries and shut down air traffic to the capital with a series of long range missile and drone attacks that Tehran could replicate. Drones fired from Iraq knocked the kingdom’s East-West pipeline out for days, threatening oil supplies.

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Lead Stories

Musk’s move to flood Texas Senate race with cash plays into Talarico’s hand

Elon Musk’s move to spend millions of dollars to support Republican Ken Paxton in his US Senate race is opening up a potent line of attack about money in politics from Democratic challenger James Talarico. Musk’s America PAC has now spent $31.6 million on the Texas race, according to the latest federal filing, on top of the $149 million a different Musk-funded PAC has funneled into the contest. The spending has cemented the world’s wealthiest person as the biggest political donor for the second straight election cycle. As of Wednesday, Musk’s total known spending on the midterms is $369 million. “Elon Musk is trying to buy this Senate seat in Texas,” Talarico said during a recent rally. “In all likelihood, if you’ve seen an attack ad on your TV, that was Elon. If you’ve gotten lies in your mailbox, that was Elon. If you’ve received a text message saying scary things about me, that was Elon too.”

Billionaire-bashing has been fundamental to Talarico’s campaign since its inception. In his launch video in September 2025, Talarico said the wealthy try to divide people over social issues so they can cut taxes for their donors. As Musk has stepped up his political spending — and personal insults directed at Talarico through his social-media accounts — it’s given the Democrat a face for those attacks. Talarico, who maintains a slight edge in recent polls, has framed the political divide as working people versus the wealthy, with an anti-corruption message about getting big money out of politics. Musk has a lot riding on the tight race, which Texas Democrats believe might be their best opportunity to win a statewide election for the first time in three decades and could be key to Democrats’ chances of flipping Senate control. Musk has lived in Texas since 2020, and Tesla and SpaceX — which are studying a mega-merger — are expanding operations in the state. SpaceX is a key contractor for NASA and the US military, and got about one-fifth of its revenue from the federal government last year. Both SpaceX and Tesla are also vulnerable to government regulations on everything from environmental restrictions around rocket launches to fuel-efficiency standards for autos. Besides his financial contributions, Musk is also using his platform on X to bash Talarico, often over unfounded accusations about transgender policy. Musk has said that “Talarico hates Texas” and amplified baseless theories about the Democrat’s health to his 241 million followers. On Facebook and Instagram, America PAC is running digital ads about “Talafreako.” Another ad shows a person putting on makeup with the caption: “He made his plan to vote. Did you?”

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Texas loses 19,000 jobs, prompting Dallas Fed forecast cut

Texas lost nearly 19,000 jobs in September, according to figures published this week by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, representing the state’s largest monthly net jobs decrease since June 2025. The rough month also helped push the Reserve Bank’s 2026 Texas employment growth forecast downward to less than 1% — a significant drop from recent months and far below the state’s historical average. September’s weak job numbers come as the country faces numerous economic headwinds, including high energy costs, interest rates that continue to weigh on homebuilding and an immigration crackdown restricting hiring in some key industries. “Texas employment declined in September, slowing year-to-date job growth to 0.8%, well below the state’s long-running average of 2%,” Luis Torres, a Dallas Fed senior business economist, said in a statement. “The moderation in job growth is consistent with current labor supply constraints that partly result from sharply lower immigration.”

The September jobs numbers were a major factor behind the bank’s new projection of a 0.9% jobs increase for the year, down from 1.2% a month ago and 2% in July. The forecast is based on an average of four models that include national GDP, oil futures prices and other economic data. In 2025, Texas’ job growth rate was 0.8%, a significant slowdown compared with recent years that economists blamed in part on the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, which squeezed the state’s labor market, as well as tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty. Early this year, the bank’s model projected Texas employment would grow by 1.1% for the year. “It’s not back to trend growth,” Pia Orrenius, a senior economist with the bank, said at the time. “I don’t think that trend growth is really achievable given the labor supply constraints that we’re experiencing right now.” For much of the year, though, even as soaring fuel prices and lower immigration contributed to a largely stagnant national labor market, in Texas — a state that’s long outperformed the national economy — jobs gains seemed to defy early expectations.

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New $4.2 billion Texas gas pipe to supply fuel for data center

Kinder Morgan Inc. formally committed to building a $4.2 billion pipeline that will haul fuel across West Texas and the Panhandle to help power a data center complex. The project dubbed Permian Link will have a capacity to ship 2.8 billion cubic feet of gas daily across a 434-mile (700-kilometer) expanse, according to a statement Wednesday. Kinder counts an unnamed “A-list hyperscaler” as a major customer for the network, which is expected be in-service in late 2030, the statement said.

The pipeline will capture a “compelling opportunity” by moving cheap Permian Basin gas north to emerging data center clusters in the Panhandle, Kinder Chief Executive Officer Kim Dang said during a conference call with analysts. Permian Link is the latest giant Texas pipeline to reach a final investment decision in recent months amid booming demand for power to run data centers and supply export terminals. While Kinder is looking to accommodate multiple customers with Permian Link, the unnamed hyperscaler is the anchor tenant and “obviously is driving the need for speed,” said Sital Mody, president of natural gas pipelines. Separately, the company greenlit the 470-mile Southeast Connector pipeline that will haul as much as 2.6 billion cubic feet of gas daily.

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Higher deductibles, bigger premiums: Rising healthcare costs hit employees

Corporate America is getting hit by healthcare sticker shock—and companies are passing a greater share of the cost on to workers. The trend is accelerating. New data shows that this year, the average cost of a family health plan crossed $28,000, rising by 5%, according to an annual survey from the nonprofit KFF, which provides the broadest picture of U.S. employer health coverage. The share coming out of employees’ paychecks shot up even faster—to $7,471, an increase of 9% from 2025. Kevin Cole, chief executive of Mid Oregon Credit Union, was stunned when he got the company’s new healthcare cost projection: Mid Oregon was expected to spend 38% more on coverage in 2027. “It was horrific, much worse than I expected,” said Cole.

Cole had to make changes to the health coverage offered to the credit union’s roughly 170 employees. Among those changes: raising workers’ premium payments in tandem with the overall cost increase, raising deductibles and offering a new high-deductible plan. Still, the changes are only expected to bring Mid Oregon’s cost increase down by about 2 percentage points. Next year is likely to be worse, according to health benefits consultants and actuaries. The cost increases for 2027 follow two or three years of steep rises, and the drivers aren’t going away. Hospitals have been able to raise some prices and use artificial-intelligence tools to boost billing. High-cost drugs for an array of conditions, including cancer and weight loss, are driving up spending. Some employers are reacting by dropping coverage for popular GLP-1 weight loss drugs, though some are now helping to fund pretax accounts that workers can use to buy them on their own. Denver-based Cerebral Brewing, which makes its own beer and owns tap rooms, is budgeting for a 20% cost increase on its health plans, which renewed on July 1. The company is also facing cost increases for aluminum and fuel, and it hasn’t raised its overall beer prices.

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State Stories

The Texas Attorney General's race is worth watching

A crucial midterm contest is happening right now in Texas, one that could determine the future of the state and its influence on federal policy and national politics. No, not the U.S. Senate race—though everyone is watching that one, and with good reason. The Republican, Ken Paxton—who has served as Texas’s attorney general since 2015—is an unusually weak candidate, beset by personal and financial scandals and a reputation for using his office for right-wing culture-war fixations, and weighed down by a deeply unpopular president. On the other side is James Talarico, an unusually strong Democratic candidate, fluent in the language of faith and without the cloud of scandal that haunts his opponent. “This is the most competitive election that we have seen in Texas” in decades, James Henson, the executive director of the University of Texas at Austin’s nonpartisan Texas Politics Project, told me. But the race I’m talking about is downstream of that: Who will succeed Ken Paxton? The two major-party candidates vying to be attorney general are Nathan Johnson, a Democratic state senator from Dallas, and Mayes Middleton (“MAGA Mayes,” as his own ads call him), a Republican state senator and GOP mega-donor whose district covers parts of Harris, Brazoria, and Galveston counties.

An October poll from the Texas Politics Project shows a dead heat, with Johnson at 48 percent and Middleton at 47 percent. The Texas attorney general is a very powerful position, one that has frequently been a springboard to higher office—John Cornyn held the job before becoming a U.S. senator, as did Greg Abbott before becoming the state’s governor. The AG is meant to defend the laws of the state, and has certain specific responsibilities, such as enforcing child support and investigating Medicaid fraud. Over the past few decades, however, the role has become something more: a way for ambitious politicians to wage culture wars, cultivate a national profile by taking on right-wing causes, and shape law and policy not just in Texas but nationwide. The attorney general “helps set legal policy across the country,” Justin Nelson, a Democrat who came within a few points of unseating Paxton in 2018, told me. The race between Talarico and Paxton may be capturing everyone’s attention right now, but “when you’re a senator, you’re one of 100,” Nelson pointed out. There’s only one attorney general of Texas. An entire accounting of Paxton’s use of the AG’s office to further extreme conservative causes would take too long. But you get the idea. The Texas AG’s office is the “largest legal power in the conservative movement, nationally, period, end of story,” Adam Piper, who runs the Republican Attorneys General Association, told The Texas Tribune earlier this year. Ali S. Zaidi, the former director of the Texas House Democratic Caucus, told me that “simply removing a Republican” from the Texas attorney general’s office “could have enormous ripple effects across the country for, frankly, generations to come.”

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Trump administration asks Supreme Court to let Big Bend border wall construction continue

The Trump administration on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to allow construction on border walls and other barriers across the Big Bend region of West Texas to continue amid an ongoing legal fight. The administration’s emergency request to the nation’s highest court comes just weeks after U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone issued an injunction blocking border barrier construction — and the use of federal regulatory waivers expediting the project — for the entire Big Bend region. The area, known for its rugged canyon lands and desert vistas, makes up nearly a quarter of the U.S.-Mexico border but has historically seen among the lowest numbers of border crossings in the Southwest. The Center for Biological Diversity, a church preservation group and a local river guide are suing the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection over its border barrier plans for the region.

In the emergency application filed Wednesday, the government called the injunction “baseless” and argued that its border security and operation interests “vastly outweigh any aesthetic, recreational, or cultural injuries” suffered by the plaintiffs. The administration is asking for both a stay of the lower court injunction, which would allow construction to continue, and for the court to “summarily” take up the case and reverse the original injunction order. For now, the judge’s block on construction remains in effect, after Judge Cardone on Tuesday rejected the government’s separate request in the lower court for construction to continue. The Trump administration claims the construction pause is costing over $460,000 a day due to the “scale” of the project. “Workers there had already constructed about three quarters of a mile of border barrier, and temporary field offices, supply yards, a water delivery system, and a temporary concrete batch plant had been installed,” the emergency application read.

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Texas state senator raises concerns about ‘loophole’ in new school voucher program

State Sen. José Menéndez is questioning what he calls a "loophole" in Texas’ voucher program that allows families to receive taxpayer dollars even when their children attend private schools that don’t participate in the program. A Texas lawmaker is questioning a provision in the state’s new school voucher program that allows families to receive taxpayer money even when their children attend private schools that aren’t participating in the program. At a recent Senate Education Committee hearing, Democratic state Sen. José Menéndez of San Antonio questioned how families can qualify for up to $2,000 through a category called “homeschool/other.”

Menéndez raised concerns after reviewing a Facebook exchange in which Travis Pillow, who oversees the Texas Education Freedom Accounts program for the Comptroller’s office, explained that the homeschool/other category isn’t limited to traditional homeschool families. “Basically you’re telling folks, check homeschool or other, you’ll get the money and you can still use whatever school you want,” Menéndez said during the hearing. Pillow explained that families can qualify for the $2,000 award even if their children attend private schools that don’t participate in the voucher program. Instead of tuition, the funds can go toward approved educational expenses, including tutoring, therapy, educational materials and extracurricular activities like karate or piano lessons. “Every dollar that is spent through this program needs to be for an approved and qualified educational expense,” Pillow told lawmakers. Menéndez said the distinction raises questions about accountability, particularly when students move from the private school category into the homeschool/other category. “My concern is that by dropping to the home school it is a big, big loophole the size of a Mack truck to use it for almost anything,” Menéndez said. “And so I think it’s something we need to be thoughtful and careful with.” The hearing was held as lawmakers evaluate the first year of the voucher program and prepare to potentially double its $1 billion budget during the upcoming legislative session.

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Tony Gonzales’ campaign paid wife’s companies thousands after leaving office

Since resigning this spring amid scandal, former U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales has sent tens of thousands of campaign dollars to companies recently created by his wife that don’t appear to have any physical or online presence, according to records reviewed by the Express-News. Between April and September, Gonzales’s campaign and an associated PAC reported paying $54,350 to two companies, Adulting Consulting and Casagrande LLC, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. Both businesses were registered with the state after Gonzales stepped down and include the same San Antonio address as Gonzales’s campaign committee, which appears to be a UPS store about a seven-minute drive from Gonzales' house. Gonzales’s wife, Angel, is listed as the manager for each.

Neither company appears to have a website. In their incorporation documents, they each include the same generic business description. Federal law allows former candidates to pay companies that are operated by family members. But the services provided must be necessary, legitimate and billed at standard commercial rates, said Michael Beckel, director of money in politics reform at the nonpartisan group, Issue One. It’s illegal to use campaign funds for personal use. In FEC records, Gonzales’ campaign said the money went toward “data management,” “compliance” and “compliance consulting.” Tony Gonzales is the only candidate whose campaign has reported paying the organizations. In a statement to the Express-News, Gonzales’ campaign said the spending was in compliance with federal law. The statement did not answer questions about the specific services provided by Adulting Consulting and Casagrande LLC. “As the campaign transitions from active status there remain ongoing administrative expenses to include but not limited to compliance requirements, storage, data management, and others,” the statement said. It was unsigned.

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Talarico presses anticorruption agenda, targeting both Paxton and Elon Musk

Democratic state Rep. James Talarico made one of his final swings through the Houston area Wednesday ahead of November's U.S. Senate election, taking direct aim at trillionaire Elon Musk for bankrolling his Republican rival, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Speaking before a crowd at the UH Hilton on the main campus of the University of Houston, Talarico framed the Senate race as a fight against corruption. "Ken Paxton was impeached by his own party, by his fellow Republicans for using his public office — his position of public trust — to enrich himself and his donors at the expense of the people of Texas," Talarico said. "Ken Paxton represents everything that’s wrong with this broken, corrupt system. He doesn’t serve us. He serves himself."

Paxton’s campaign has been dogged by multiple scandals, including his past indictment for felony securities fraud, as well as his 2023 impeachment on charges of abuse of office, which ultimately ended in his acquittal by the Texas Senate. Talarico pledged to pass a raft of anti-corruption measures if elected. Specifically, he advocated for legislation to ban corporate political action committees and super PACs; to bar members of Congress from trading in stocks; to outlaw partisan gerrymandering by state governments; and to enact congressional term limits. As a first-term lawmaker, Talarico would likely have limited power to push for any of these measures. Talarico also took aim at Musk, pointing to the nearly $190 million in donations Paxton received from Musk through the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC tied to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D. "In all likelihood, if you’ve seen an attack ad on your screen, that was Elon. If you’ve gotten lies in your mailbox, that was Elon. If you’ve received a text message saying scary things about me, that was Elon too," Talarico said. "Elon Musk wants our land. He wants our water. He wants our taxpayer dollars. He wants his very own personal United States Senator. He is trying to buy Texas. But on Nov. 3, we are going to send a clear message to the world’s first trillionaire: Texas is not for sale."

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Die-hard Dems face dilemma in Harris County Treasurer race

Can a county official with a boatload of baggage and relatively low name ID get re-elected in November? It’s certainly possible. Since Carla Wyatt was elected Harris County treasurer in 2023, she’s had two drunk-driving arrests, a burglary charge that was later dismissed and a pending case alleging she caused a four-car pileup on Interstate 45. Some might think that Wyatt would sit out the November election and pursue another employment opportunity, but that’s not the case. She’s on the ballot seeking another two-year term and she also brazenly asked in August for a salary increase from $139,547 to $305,000.

Harris County’s Salary Grievance Committee instead recommended a 30 percent raise, which would have hiked Wyatt’s salary to $181,411. Commissioners Court denied the recommendation last month. The court had already voted in February 4-0 to prioritize abolishing the treasurer’s office as part of its legislative agenda in 2027. County Judge Lina Hidalgo was not present for the vote. The action came after Wyatt’s office approved two fraudulent checks totaling nearly $53,000. The funds were recovered, but the incident prompted commissioners to move key fraud-prevention duties out of the treasurer’s office and into the Office of Management and Budget. Texas Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, has said that if Wyatt is re-elected, “it will effectively be a signal for removal.” Tarrant, Bexar, Collin and El Paso counties have all eliminated the treasurer’s office in recent years. The Harris County Treasurer’s Office is similar to a comptroller or controller, responsible for managing bank accounts and public money. It handles the receipt, disbursement and deposit of county funds and keeps records of how money is spent.

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San Antonio City Council curb's mayor’s power over bond picks

In a direct jab at Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones, the City Council is curtailing her power over who will oversee San Antonio’s next bond program. Council members voted 7-3 on Wednesday to give themselves the authority to pick and approve the three chairpersons who will guide the city’s 2027 bond process, breaking with precedent. Before Jones, mayors were free to unilaterally name the so-called tri-chairs, who usually are business and civic leaders. Jones had announced her chairs on Monday: Jim Perschbach, president and CEO of Port San Antonio; Jelynne LeBlanc Jamison, president and CEO of the Center for Health Care Services and chairwoman of the San Antonio Water System’s board of directors; and Mario Obledo Jr., chief of government and public affairs at the San Antonio Food Bank. Wednesday’s vote nullifies those appointments.

Council members Teri Castillo, Marina Alderete Gavito and Marc Whyte forced the special meeting by filing a three-signature memo last week requesting that Councilwomen Sukh Kaur and Phyllis Viagran review the mayor’s selections and that city staff draft an ordinance requiring the council to green-light the nominees. But the ordinance sets up Kaur and Viagran to go further than weighing in on Jones’ selections. It gives the two councilwomen the authority to recommend tri-chair candidates, who will then go to City Council for approval. The five council members behind the measure have repeatedly clashed with Jones over a variety of policies and protocols. She has accused her colleagues of ignoring her budget proposals and recommendations for the city’s contributions to Project Marvel, the sports and entertainment district downtown. They, in turn, say she’s been unwilling to hear their feedback and hasn’t sought their support for her initiatives. Jones’ recent proposal to allocate most of the 2027 bond proceeds to Council Districts 1 through 5, the city’s poorest, fell flat.

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As Texas Gov. Abbott targets Muslim groups, his PAC receives millions from Muslim oil exec

One of the largest donors to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s political action committee is a Pakistani American Muslim oil executive and philanthropist, who has given nearly $4 million to the PAC since 2025 alone. Over the same period, Abbott has launched investigations of Islamic organizations and escalated anti-Muslim rhetoric. Since 2015, S. Javaid Anwar donated more than $15 million to Abbott’s Texans for Greg Abbott PAC, making him one of Abbott’s top donors, according to Texas Ethics Commission filings. The founder of Midland Energy and Petroplex Energy, two independent oil drilling companies, Anwar has given $3.9 million and made $122,000 in-kind donations, such as providing private plane travel for Abbott, since 2025, filings show. Anwar, who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s, has been a major donor to Republicans, including contributing more than $1 million to Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, according to U.S. Federal Election Commission filings. The White House referred RNS to the Republican National Committee for comment, which did not immediately respond.

Anwar, a Houston resident, also has supported local Muslim groups, serving, for example, as one of the “grand sponsors” of Houston’s largest interfaith Ramadan Iftar since at least 2013, according to the organization’s website. “He’s giving millions to Abbott, to the GOP, to Trump specifically, and they in turn have harmed us in very, very real ways,” said Saleema Gul, a Houston-based activist who is Muslim. RNS made several attempts to reach Anwar. On Friday (Oct. 16), his executive assistant sent an email to RNS, saying, “Mr. Anwar is ill and not taking any meeting request or phone calls at this time.” Abbott has called for state and federal criminal and civil investigations into The Meadow, a proposed Muslim-centered real estate development in a north Texas suburb. In November 2025, he also designated the largest Muslim civil rights group, the Council on American Islamic Relations, a foreign terrorist group in Texas. The three-term governor has repeatedly said he is targeting Sharia law, though interfaith advocates have said his rhetoric has put a target on Muslims in the state. Abbott’s spokesperson referred RNS to Abbott’s campaign, which did not respond to a request for comment. Social media users on the right have also raised objections to Anwar’s donations for different reasons, saying that Abbott’s acceptance of the donations show he doesn’t take the “Islamification” of Texas seriously.

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Texas wedding venue settles lawsuit over $16K refund after groom dies

A Hays County wedding venue has dropped its counterclaim against a woman who filed a lawsuit this summer accusing the business of refusing to refund her after her fiancée died suddenly, months before the wedding was scheduled to take place. The counterclaim from Posey Meadows against the surviving fiancée was not part of an amended answer filed in the case Tuesday.

An attorney for the woman confirmed Wednesday evening the case was settled and she will be given a refund for the full amount. In a statement, Posey Meadows addressed the latest step in a suit that has brought a flood of negative attention to the venue. “Our thoughts continue to be with Diego’s family and loved ones, and we extend our deepest condolences. Posey Meadows is not pursuing any claim against (redacted) and is not seeking any further payment from her. When we were told of Diego’s passing, we wanted to help. We have always asked for confirmation of the circumstances when making an exception to our cancellation policy. When families have provided it in other difficult situations, we have made exceptions and refunded them in full. Our goal is to treat every family and every client fairly, compassionately, and consistently. In early May, we asked the family for a copy of the death certificate, and they told us they would provide it. While waiting, we wanted to do our part and searched for an obituary, a funeral or memorial notice, and any other public confirmation of Diego’s passing, but were unable to locate anything. We continued checking over the following months. We did not receive a copy of the death certificate until mid-August, after they had filed the lawsuit and after we had responded to it—as we were required to do. Our efforts were never meant to diminish the family’s loss. We regret that the litigation process has complicated what we hoped would be a speedy and compassionate resolution. We are hopeful an agreement will be reached very soon, and we sincerely hope it allows everyone involved to move forward with peace and healing.” An attorney for Posey Meadows, who confirmed she had earlier this week replaced the attorney who filed the counterclaim, told KSAT Wednesday morning the venue had offered to settle the case and is waiting to hear back from the plaintiff’s attorney.

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Saks sought $126 million from Dallas to keep Neiman Marcus downtown

Saks Global asked for $126 million in taxpayer dollars last year to redo — and keep open — the flagship Neiman Marcus store in downtown Dallas, newly released public records show. Saks, which acquired the department store two years ago, said it was going to pursue historic tax credits and city funding to renovate the building, bring the iconic Zodiac restaurant to the ground floor and reconstruct the top seven floors into office space and a “Luxury Accelerator” — a sort of incubator for fashion designers and fabricators. The company, now called Exemplar Luxury Group, asked for money collected in downtown’s tax increment financing zone. It presented the plan to the city over a year before Neiman Marcus permanently closed downtown. The proposal consolidated the retail store on the first two floors of the century-old building, where shoppers could’ve perused the work by the designers upstairs.

Downtown Dallas Inc., the nonprofit that oversees downtown, is working to use historic tax credits to save aging buildings in the city center. Neiman Marcus is one of many fixtures leaving downtown. Saks officials did not immediately respond Wednesday about why the deal didn’t materialize, but in the presentation the company said the project was not “financially viable without the requested incentive.” The city’s economic development officials told The Dallas Morning News the city “indefinitely paused” work on the application after the company filed for bankruptcy in January and didn’t do any “substantive work” reviewing the proposal in the months before the pause. The News received emails, slide decks and incentive documents this week after requesting the records from the city several times. The city attorney’s office requested the Texas attorney general allow city officials to withhold the records, but the AG’s office allowed a partial release. The records show the financial considerations in the fight to keep the store downtown. The city’s Landmark Commission kicked off the process to designate the property as historic and protect the building from demolition in August.

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Race for Tarrant County judge a barometer of region’s political dynamic, analysts say

After four years sharing the commissioners court dais, Tim O’Hare and Alisa Simmons face off Nov. 3 in the race for Tarrant County judge. O’Hare, the Republican incumbent seeking his second term, has focused his campaign on keeping property taxes low and bolstering public safety. Simmons, a Democratic county commissioner, wants to strengthen county services and has centered her campaign on empowering residents while holding government officials accountable. Both candidates took office in January 2023. Their tenure on commissioners court has been marked by repeated public clashes, as the two held opposing stances on issues including accountability for in-custody deaths at the county jail, local law enforcement’s role in immigration enforcement, last summer’s county redistricting and decorum at public meetings. The race for county judge is also a test of the county’s political dynamic, as O’Hare seeks to maintain and further assert Republican dominance in Tarrant County after the high-profile county redistricting he initiated last summer.

Political analysts told the Fort Worth Report and KERA News that county judge races are not typically the biggest drivers of voter turnout in midterm elections, but national attention on the high-profile governor and U.S. Senate races can generate a trickle-down effect on the down-ballot races. Although Democrats are primed for a good election year in Texas, Tarrant County candidates shouldn’t count on voters sticking to one political party up and down the ballot, said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University. “This is a distinctively hard year for Republicans across the country and will be in Tarrant County as well,” Jillson said in a phone interview. “How far down the ballot that goes remains to be seen.” National unrest over Republican leadership, combined with Tarrant’s growing and diversifying population, could benefit Simmons’ bid for the countywide seat, Jillson said. Voters who split from their usual party — such as Republicans considering voting Democrat for Senate — typically revert to their political affiliation further down the ballot, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. He predicted an O’Hare win. “Honestly, it’s hard to bet against Republicans, especially down-ballot,” Rottinghaus said.

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Georgia GOP candidate Jackson loans $20 million to Texas oil refinery Trump touted

Georgia GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson loaned $20 million at 12% interest to a new oil refinery planned for the Texas coast that President Donald Trump has hailed as a major victory in his quest for “energy dominance.” The healthcare billionaire’s loan and ownership stake in America First Refining’s plan to build the first new, major US refinery in half a century were disclosed in a federal tax court hearing earlier this year. Jackson’s ties to the project have become a flashpoint in the contest to decide who will lead the nation’s eighth-largest economy. His Democratic opponent in the Nov. 3 election, Keisha Lance Bottoms, has unveiled ads slamming his role in the fossil-fuel installation as well as his ties to Trump. An Atlanta Journal Constitution poll ranks the race effectively a dead heat.

Trump has been a robust supporter of America First’s proposed fuel-making complex in the Texas city of Brownsville roughly 25 miles (40 kilometers) from Elon Musk’s Starbase launch complex. The refinery will process solely Texas crude when operations begin toward the end of the decade. The White House has been seeking to boost domestic fuel output as wars in Iran and Ukraine spike prices globally ahead of the midterm elections. Retail diesel has soared almost 70% since the US-Iran war kicked off in late February, touching an all-time high of more than $6.50 a gallon late last month. The president is so bullish on America First’s development that the project is listed on the White House website as the single largest investment in US manufacturing and industry, pegging its value at $300 billion. Donald Trump Jr. has praised Jackson for stepping up to help finance the refinery. Jackson’s role in financing the refinery emerged during testimony in his United States Tax Court suit against the Internal Revenue Service over deductions tied to low-budget movie productions. In response to a question about whether any loans made by his investment firm, Jackson Investment Group, have been particularly successful, he alluded to the proposed Brownsville refinery.

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Camp Mystic given firm deadline to restructure how company is run or could lose control

A bankruptcy judge could appoint a trustee if Camp Mystic fails to meet requirements for independent oversight of its Chapter 11 case. After three days of hearings, a Houston-based Bankruptcy Judge gave Camp Mystic a deadline in their Chapter 11 bankruptcy case. The Kerr County Camp and other debtors in the case have until September 28 to submit a number of documents, including who they want to appoint as an Independent Fiduciary and how they plan to oversee their Chapter 11 bankruptcy case.

If they don't file them on time or Judge Christopher Lopez does not deem them up to standard by November 3, he will appoint a Trustee to oversee the case. Camp Mystic is where 28 people, including 27 campers and counselors, died in the July 2025 floods. Several of the families whose daughters died have asked for the Trustee to be put in place. The ruling comes about two weeks after Judge Lopez ruled the stay is lifted on lawsuits against the Eastland family, who own and operate the camp. Those can resume as of November 9. Camp Mystic filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June after pulling their license application to open their doors for the 2026 summer camp season.

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National Stories

Hegseth wanted Eisenhower’s globe for his office. His staff broke it.

It was early this year when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wanted to move the world. A replica of it, anyway. Two floor globes said to be used by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower during World War II are housed in the Pentagon, where subsequent generations of Army leaders became custodians of the artifacts, according to people familiar with the globe’s lineage and an accompanying plaque dating them to the 1930s. The historical significance was attractive to Hegseth, these people said, and his staff requested that the secretary’s office become the new home to one of the 30-inch globes. Ordinarily, moving historical items within the building is a deliberate process overseen by trained curators. Instead, Hegseth’s staff dispatched its own team to relocate an Eisenhower globe. They lost control of the artifact and dropped it, sending the globe crashing onto its base and impaling the fragile shell near Antarctica, according to those familiar with the incident. The resulting gash appears to be several inches wide.

Pentagon officials denied The Washington Post’s request for a photo of the globe or to examine the artifact in person, but The Post separately obtained images of the damage. The Army, in an email to The Post, acknowledged that the globe was damaged and said it occurred during an “attempted move” Feb. 3. Aside from the hole, “the spherical portion of the globe was detached from the metal mounting that allows it to rotate,” spokesman Christopher Surridge said in response to questions. Ultimately, the damaged relic was not relocated, he said. Asked where the movers came from, Surridge referred The Post to Hegseth’s office. Spokespeople for the defense secretary did not respond to a request for comment. The Army office in possession of the globe had expected to consult with experts at the U.S. Army Center of Military History on how to ensure its safe transport and properly document its new relocation to Hegseth’s office, according to two people familiar with the matter. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a previously undisclosed incident that is viewed as an embarrassment within the Defense Department.

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It’s a blue state. It was ground zero for ICE’s brutality. It’s somehow also Democrats’ 2026 weak spot.

With less than two weeks to go before the midterms, the tale is the same as it has been all fall: It’s hard to find anything going Republicans’ way. Look around. While the GOP’s super PACs continue flooding Senate races in red states like Texas, Ohio, Kansas, and Iowa with ads, Senate Democrats’ super PAC is investing in Mississippi. In the House, Republican election groups are retreating from lost causes to defend core seats. But as Democrats put away House districts and Senate races in states like Georgia and North Carolina, one race is swimming curiously against the tide. On the same day that the election handicappers at the Cook Political Report shifted their rating of the Mississippi and South Carolina Senate races in Democrats’ favor, and fellow forecasters at Sabato’s Crystal Ball moved dozens of House races Democrats’ way, Cook made another change.

It moved the Minnesota Senate race, a contest between Democratic Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and Republican former sports reporter Michele Tafoya, from “Likely Democrat” to “Lean Democrat.” Crystal Ball had made a similar decision the previous week. In other words, forecasters believe Flanagan is still the favorite, but not by much. What’s going on here? Why, in a great environment for Democrats, and in a consistently blue state like Minnesota, is this race looking like a squeaker? It’s not the same as New Hampshire, Democrats’ other misbehaving light-blue state that should be a shoo-in this year but somehow isn’t. In the Granite State, Republicans are running a former senator from the state’s Republican royal family, and Republican outside groups invested substantially, and early, in that race. Senate Republicans’ main super PAC, meanwhile, hasn’t put any money behind Tafoya’s bid; each candidate’s campaign has spent a civilized couple-million dollars each. And it’s not that Minnesota is a runaway train trending redder demographically. It’s dominated by the Twin Cities, and has a high percentage of adults with college degrees, the dividing line on which so much of Trump-era political realignment hinges. Instead, Democrats’ inability to pull away in this race is a matter of candidate quality, and seismic news stories from Minnesota that garnered immense national attention. What sets the race apart, aside from positions here or there, though, is that Tafoya, more than the average 2026 Republican in Trump’s America, has a lot of offensive material to work with. Flanagan is lieutenant to Gov. Tim Walz, who presided over a state welfare fraud scandal of such magnitude that it ended his bid for a third term. Tafoya has made this her central line of attack, arguing that Flanagan should be held accountable for the failures of the administration.

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Trump merchandise stores are closing: 'He has peaked'

When the Trump merchandise store here announced it was closing earlier this year, Wes Alker, a Trump superfan and retired auto mechanic, came by for some nostalgia and the going-out-of-business deals. They included everything from "Trump Won" caps for $9.99 to Trump pool floats for $19.99. Trump stores first emerged during the 2016 campaign. But with the president now in his second and final term, store owners say there isn't as much to fire up the consumer fan base and sales have softened. At least four stores have closed this year. The MAGA Mall, a big online retailer and wholesaler, reports sales of MAGA gear are down 30% compared to a presidential election year when Trump is on the ballot.

"He's no longer a viable business model for entrepreneurs because he has peaked," said Alker, who wore a gray T-shirt with a photo of former President Joe Biden and former Vice-President Kamala Harris which read, "Dumb and Dumber." Trump's lame duck status isn't the only drag on demand. When the Bensalem store closed – it still maintains an online presence – Trump's average approval rating had already fallen from 50 % when he took office to 44 %. Nine months later, when Bill Hays shut down his Trump super store outside of Knoxville, Tennessee, the president's approval rating had fallen five more points. Hays said unpopular policies – such as DOGE's massive government staff cuts – have had an impact. He noticed that instead of immediately putting on their new Trump gear, more buyers asked for bags. "People were not wearing their colors, so to speak, like they did before the (2024) election," said Hays, 80. When Hays opened his store in April 2024, business boomed. One day, he said, there was a line of 80 people out the door and sales hit $200,000 a month. By the time it closed in September, sales had fallen to just $20,000 a month. "After the inauguration, I think a lot of people felt that their job was done," said Hays. "They didn't have to promote MAGA or Trump."

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Vance ‘disgusted’ by Republicans decrying Ramaswamy ad with Acton’s mother

Vice President Vance criticized the response by some Republicans to a campaign ad for Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy (R), saying he is “disgusted” by those in his party who pushed back on the video. “I have to admit that I’m a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America,” Vance said at a fraud task force press conference Wednesday. The ad features the mother of Ramaswamy’s Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, who accuses Acton of being a “liar” and saying “my daughter needs help.”

Acton’s brother released a statement and a competing video hours later saying that he and Acton have been estranged from their mother for years because she stayed married to the man who sexually abused Acton at a young age. Acton was removed from her mother’s care at the age of 12, something unmentioned in the Ramaswamy ad. Acton is in a competitive race for Ohio governor, but her lead has expanded in recent polls. Decision Desk HQ, a partner of The Hill, gives Acton a 60 percent chance of defeating Ramaswamy. Vance, a former Ohio senator, again defended Ramaswamy while rallying with him in the Buckeye State Wednesday. “Vivek Ramaswamy had the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar,” Vance said. “Whatever you think about any of the TV advertisements, focus on the substance and focus on the facts.” The personal nature and controversy surrounding the ad led Democrats and some Republicans to condemn it and call on Ramaswamy, who admitted Tuesday that the ad was from his campaign, to change course. Axios reported Tuesday that Ramaswamy’s campaign will now spend $4 million on airing the ad statewide. Vance said at the press conference that he is not concerned about the ad and is only focused on Republicans winning Ohio. “Whether the ad was appropriate or not is not really my concern,” Vance said. “What is my concern is who is going to govern the next generation of American government, who is going to win the Senate race in the state of Ohio, who is going to win the governor’s race in the state of Ohio?” “Politics is a tough business,” Vance added. “My message to my fellow elected Republicans is if you actually believe in the things you say you believe in, stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race in 13 days.”

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Trump pushback, Biden 'disaster' and gender surprise: 5 key moments from Kansas Senate debate

Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., and Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton sparred over President Donald Trump, immigration, Iran, transgender athletes, artificial intelligence and personal controversies during a contentious Kansas Senate debate Wednesday night. The hour-long showdown came less than two weeks before Election Day as Marshall seeks a second term and Hamilton, a longtime pastor, tries to become the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from Kansas since 1932. The race has drawn increased national attention as Republicans and Democrats battle for control of the Senate, with Trump traveling to Kansas earlier this week to campaign for Marshall â?? a topic touched on during the debate.

The debate wasted little time getting contentious, opening with questions about controversies that have fueled attacks against both candidates. Marshall was confronted with a New York Times review that found his former medical practice sued more than 700 patients over unpaid bills. "Every year we gave away $3 to $4 million of charity, but we also had a business," Marshall responded. "We had 300 employees, we had a mortgage payment, we had electric." Hamilton, meanwhile, was questioned about his handling of allegations involving a volunteer at his church's summer camp who was accused of sexual abuse. Hamilton acknowledged that he should have ensured the individual did not return to the camp following an initial investigation. Trump became part of the debate after moderators played footage from the president's campaign appearance for Marshall in Kansas earlier in the week. "And at this election, I'm asking you to pretend, please, that I'm on the ballot. Just pretend," Trump told the crowd. Marshall was then asked whether Trump's support meant Kansans should expect him to back every part of the president's agenda. "No," Marshall responded, saying there had been "multiple times" when he objected to Trump.

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‘There are no people’: Springfield, Ohio, faces loss of Haitian residents

The denizens of this once booming industrial Midwestern city were pining for something to rally people around when they coined the motto: “Speak a good word for Springfield or say nothing.” It was the height of the Depression in 1932 and the slogan sought to inspire unity among those living in a place where the Shawnee once roamed, European immigrants arrived and freed Black families found a home. Now some residents in Springfield, Ohio, say the city’s creed is being put to the test. Since thousands of Haitian residents lost their protection from deportation this summer, dozens have been arrested, scores have lost their jobs and others have either left the country or decided to hunker down at home, out of view. “Help wanted” ads for cooks, dishwashers and babysitters are going unanswered. Haitian residents are limiting their electrical usage as they worry about how they will pay the bills.

“I’m not sure there is precedent in U.S. history for this small a community to lose that much of its workforce and population cloistered at home,” said Tim Voltz, a Springfield resident who helps Haitian immigrants. “The situation is unsustainable.” Ohio’s Miami Valley region had been growing in recent years, after decades of decline that began in the 1950s when factories shuttered and the area’s population shrunk. New immigrants, including people from Venezuela and Nicaragua, as well as Haiti, helped boost Springfield’s economy, adding thousands of new jobs. The county health department estimated the Haitian population grew to about 20 to 25 percent of the city over the last decade. Then Donald Trump targeted the city’s Haitians during his 2024 presidential campaign, falsely claiming that most had arrived illegally, were “destroying” the city and were eating people’s pets. The economy began to falter in Clark County, where Springfield is located, losing more manufacturing jobs in 2025 than it had gained the two previous years. Springfield now leads the state in year-over-year job losses. Federal job reports show the city’s labor force lost 1,100 manufacturing, leisure and hospitality jobs, contracting 2.2 percent in 2025. The downward trend has continued this year, preliminary data shows. Many factors, including rising transportation and child care costs, help explain why Ohioans are exiting the workforce.

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Trump's redistricting gave Republicans a head start, now it goes to the voters

Voters across much of the South are casting ballots ahead of next month's midterm elections in congressional districts that were redrawn following calls from President Trump. He said it would help the GOP hold the House, where they currently outnumber Democrats 218 to 214. In state legislatures over the last year, Republicans tilted about eight more seats their way than Democrats did in response. But it's the voters who will decide whether it works. Here's the catch: Republicans redrew districts partly on how people voted in the presidential election in 2024. Now the political mood has changed and many who voted for President Trump two years ago could be voting for Democrats, or not voting, in the midterms. The Republicans could lose many of the districts they targeted.

Usually, states redistrict early in each decade after the census. But Trump called on legislatures to do it now. It set off a chain reaction of political crises across the country that threw legislatures into the national spotlight. Texas Republicans issued arrest warrants for Democratic legislators who'd left the state. The Louisiana governor suspended a primary after thousands of votes were already cast so the lines could be redrawn. In Missouri, the state supreme court found the Republican secretary of state in contempt for sticking with a GOP map that was not legally in effect. In California and Virginia, Democrats won approval in statewide votes for redistricting in response to the Republicans in other states – only to have the courts toss out Virginia's plan. And when the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act this spring, it fueled rushed legislative sessions to draw maps that often ended up weakening the voting power of minority communities. In a few places, Republicans rejected Trump's call to redistrict, including dramatic votes in the Indiana and South Carolina legislatures. But overall, Trump prompted a cycle of mid-decade redistricting unlike any since the 1960s, when courts set the current rules.

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Copyright October 29, 2026, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved