Lead Stories

Senate considers revised plan to end government shutdown

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) told Senate Republicans Thursday that they should expect to vote on a new proposal Friday aiming to end the government shutdown, according to people familiar with the plan, in an attempt by GOP leaders to build momentum toward a deal. Democrats, however, indicated they weren’t sold on the emerging package, with some saying they would need their core demand of extending Affordable Care Act subsidies to be part of any legislation. The plan to vote on a revised proposal comes as the impact of the shutdown continues to grow. Government workers have gone without pay for weeks, and low-income families are seeing cuts in food aid and other assistance programs. On Thursday, airlines scrambled to review flight plans after federal officials said they would reduce commercial air traffic starting Friday in response to the government shutdown.

The proposal would combine a short-term spending measure with a package of three full-year funding bills, covering the legislative branch, agriculture, and military construction and veterans affairs. It was unclear whether the interim measure would aim to keep the government open through mid-December or January. How ACA subsidies, a central concern of Democrats, would figure into the revised approach also remained in flux, and some Democrats warned they wouldn’t be satisfied by a pledge of future action. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) said the subsidies needed to be included in any stopgap bill. “Settling for some kind of vague promise about a vote in the future on some indeterminate bill, without any definite inclusion in the law, I think is a mistake.” Thune acknowledged the uphill fight. Democrats “seem to be walking back or slow-walking this,” he told reporters. “This is what they asked for.”

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Nancy Pelosi won't seek reelection, ending her storied career in the US House

Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi will not seek reelection to the U.S. House, bringing to a close her storied career as not only the first woman in the speaker’s office but arguably the most powerful in American politics. Pelosi, who has represented San Francisco for nearly 40 years, announced her decision Thursday. “I will not be seeking reelection to Congress,” Pelosi said in a video address to voters. Pelosi, appearing upbeat and forward-looking as images of her decades of accomplishments filled the frames, said she would finish out her final year in office. And she left those who sent her to Congress with a call to action to carry on the legacy of agenda-setting both in the U.S. and around the world.

“My message to the city I love is this: San Francisco, know your power,” she said. “We have made history. We have made progress. We have always led the way.” Pelosi said, “And now we must continue to do so by remaining full participants in our democracy and fighting for the American ideals we hold dear.” The decision, while not fully unexpected, ricocheted across Washington, and California, as a seasoned generation of political leaders is stepping aside ahead of next year’s midterm elections. Some are leaving reluctantly, others with resolve, but many are facing challenges from newcomers eager to lead the Democratic Party and confront President Donald Trump. Pelosi, 85, remains a political powerhouse and played a pivotal role with California’s redistricting effort, Prop 50, and the party’s comeback in this week’s election.

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Austin's Musk could become history's first trillionaire as Tesla shareholders approve giant pay package

The world’s richest man was just handed a chance to become history’s first trillionaire. Elon Musk won a shareholder vote on Thursday that would give the Tesla CEO stock worth $1 trillion if he hits certain performance targets over the next decade. The vote followed weeks of debate over his management record at the electric car maker and whether anyone deserved such unprecedented pay, drawing heated commentary from small investors to giant pension funds and even the pope. In the end, more than 75% of voters approved the plan as shareholders gathered in Austin, Texas, for their annual meeting. “Fantastic group of shareholders,” Musk said after the final vote was tallied, adding “Hang on to your Tesla stock.”

The vote is a resounding victory for Musk showing investors still have faith in him as Tesla struggles with plunging sales, market share and profits in no small part due to Musk himself. Car buyers fled the company this year as he has ventured into politics both in the U.S. and Europe, and trafficked in conspiracy theories. The vote came just three days after a report from Europe showing Tesla car sales plunged again last month, including a 50% collapse in Germany. Still, many Tesla investors consider Musk as a sort of miracle man capable of stunning business feats, such as when he pulled Tesla from the brink of bankruptcy a half-dozen years ago to turn it into one of the world’s most valuable companies. The vote clears a path for Musk to become a trillionaire by granting him new shares, but it won’t be easy. The board of directors that designed the pay package require him to hit several ambitious financial and operational targets, including increasing the value of the company on the stock market nearly six times its current level.

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USDA to issue partial SNAP benefits, but Texans and others remain confused.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said Wednesday evening that SNAP would be issuing partial benefits in November, following federal court orders in two states. However, the funds may not come as soon as its 42 million recipients hope. In a Nov. 3 court filing, the Trump administration initially promised the USDA would comply with the court rulings and "will fulfill its obligation to expend the full amount of SNAP contingency funds today." This was echoed by Patrick Penn, the deputy undersecretary for the USDA's Food Nutrition and Consumer Services (FNS). "Per orders issued by the United States District Courts for the Districts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, FNS intended to deplete SNAP contingency funds completely and provide reduced SNAP benefits for November 2025," Penn wrote in the court filing.

The contingency fund holds around $4.65 billion for this months benefits, which the USDA reported was about half of the approximate $9.2 billion required to cover the full amount for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Therefore, SNAP households would receive roughly half of the usual benefit amounts. A Nov. 5 court filing then corrected the 50% figure, which was reportedly based on a miscalculation, saying the actual reduction would be closer to 35%. This means recipients would be issued around 65% of their typical benefits. Despite a Truth Social post by President Trump from Tuesday that implies food assistance benefits would not be issued until the federal government reopens, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt assured reporters the court rulings would not be violated. "The administration is fully complying with the court order," Leavitt said Tuesday. "The recipients of these SNAP benefits need to understand, it's going to take some time." The exact timeline for SNAP recipients getting partial benefits is unclear due to the situation's unprecedentedness: Since its establishment in 1961, SNAP has never halted benefits, not has it ever issued partial monthly benefits.

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State Stories

Austin council staff to get training after Statesman spending probe

Austin City Council staff will soon get a refresher on what they can and can’t charge to their taxpayer-funded credit cards. An email obtained by the American-Statesman shows council staffers were asked Wednesday to attend a “refresher course” next week covering city rules for credit card use and travel. The directive came days after the Statesman published its latest investigation into questionable credit card and travel expenses by Austin City Council members — some likely made in violation of city policy. The training, described as specifically for City Council staff, will walk through “what are and aren’t allowed purchases” on city-issued cards and offer “best practices for completing travel authorization and reimbursement forms,” according to the email from City Manager T.C. Broadnax’s chief of staff.

Previous Statesman reporting revealed that Broadnax himself had expensed his lunch almost every working day since he started the job last year, mostly at the upscale salad chain Sweetgreen. Council Member Ryan Alter likewise expensed thousands of dollars worth of “working lunches” in likely violation of city policy. Both men agreed to reimburse taxpayers for a combined $4,500 after the Statesman started asking questions. City spokesperson Erik Johnson did not provide answers to several specific questions from the Statesman about next week’s training, including whether it was called in response to the newspaper’s recent reporting. In prepared statements, Johnson said Wednesday’s invite was directed at “designated staff members,” “but City Council members and other staff in their offices are able to attend as well.” An earlier statement noted that “refresher trainings” are offered annually to council offices, as well as one-on-one sessions for new chiefs of staff, and that all city employees receive training before they are issued a procurement card, or ProCard. “This training will also include guidance on other financial topics related to travel and ProCards as a knowledge refresher,” Johnson said of the Nov. 14 training. A second refresher will be offered in March, according to Wednesday’s email. The Statesman’s latest investigation revealed that some council members, including Alter, had spent thousands of taxpayer dollars on donations to nonprofits and advocacy organizations, furniture, artwork, consultants, staff development, international travel and more.

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5th Circuit ruling allows SB 12 drag ban to take effect

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued a ruling Thursday reversing a lower court ruling that had declared Texas Senate Bill 12 — aka the drag show ban — unconstitutional, according to a press release from the ACLU of Texas. In a joint statement released after the ruling the ACLU of Texas and the plaintiffs in the case said: “Today’s decision is heartbreaking for drag performers, small businesses and every Texan who believes in free expression. Drag is not a crime. It is art, joy and resistance — a vital part of our culture and our communities.

“We are devastated by this setback, but we are not defeated. Together, we will keep advocating for a Texas where everyone — including drag artists and LGBTQIA+ people — can live freely, authentically and without fear. The First Amendment protects all artistic expression, including drag. We will not stop until this unconstitutional law is struck down for good.” ACLU of Texas and Baker Botts LLP filed the lawsuit in August 2023 on behalf of The Woodlands Pride, Abilene Pride Alliance, Extragrams LLC, 360 Queen Entertainment LLC and drag performer Brigitte Bandit of Austin. A federal district court issued a permanent injunction blocking the law two years in the case The Woodlands Pride, Inc., et al, v. Warren Kenneth Paxton, et al, ruling that the law targeting drag performers and shows violated the U.S Constitution under five different grounds. But today’s Fifth Circuit ruling sends the case back to district court for “further analysis” on one of those five issues, the ACLU of Texas press release explains. The Fifth Circuit did not, however, address anything related to the other four issues on which the trial court had based its ruling.

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Dick Cheney's death went hardly recognized by many Texas Republicans

When a former vice president passes away, it's pro-forma for policitians of that party to issue a statement of condolence recounting that politician's achievements. But after news of former vice president Dick Cheney's death Tuesday, Texas Republicans in Congress largely stayed silent, mirroring the response of President Donald Trump, whom Cheney famously derided as a "threat to our republic." Cheney had connections to Texas. He served under George W. Bush, the first Texan since Lyndon B. Johnson to win the White House, and was the CEO of Texas oil field services giant Halliburton before agreeing to join Bush's campaign in 2000.

Some Texas Republicans said they hadn't personally known the 84-year-old Cheney, who had not served in public office since 2009. But others had, including U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, who is facing a competitive primary challenge in March. In 2009, as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Cornyn praised Cheney as a thoughtful critic of then president Barack Obama. "I'd be proud to appear with the vice president anywhere, anytime," he said. But this week, his office declined to comment on the senator's public silence about Cheney's death. The Republican party has largely distanced itself from the policies of the George W. Bush presidency, opting instead for Trump's economic populism and isolationism.

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Have Ray Hunt et al. gotten their money’s worth with the Republican Mayors Association?

As Zohran Mamdani was poised to become the next mayor of New York City last night, the mayor of Dallas dropped his take on Twitter. Speaking as the chairman of the Republican Mayors Association, a group he created in 2023, Eric Johnson said: Zorhan Mamdani’s victory in America’s largest city should serve as a wake-up call as to what the modern Democrat Party stands for: candidates who proudly call for defunding the police and who are determined to implement economic policies rooted in Soviet-era socialist ideology. New York City’s capture by the Democratic Socialists of America is a troubling sign for cities across our country. America’s great cities will not thrive under mayors who prioritize these patently un-American ideologies over the pleas of our citizens for increased public safety and economic growth. Elections—like the one that just occurred in New York City—have consequences: unsafe streets, stalled economic growth, and neighborhood deterioration. The Republican Mayors Association remains committed to electing and supporting Republican mayors to help build the strong, safe, and prosperous cities Americans deserve.

The tweet got me curious about how the Republican Mayors Association is doing—and what it is doing. Thankfully, ProPublica offers a great tool to satisfy, as least partially, such curiosity. It’s called the 527 Explorer. That’s what the RMA is, a political organization called a 527. KERA back in March published a story about the RMA’s finances, but for some reason that story didn’t mention anything about donors. That’s what I found most interesting when I looked up the RMA. ProPublica’s data for the RMA runs only through 2024. That’s what I’m focused on. So far this year, through June 30, the RMA hasn’t been very busy. It has taken in only $26,200. A PAC for Texas Realtors accounts for $25,000 of that. A Houston woman named Stephanie Nellons-Paige accounts for the other $1,200; oddly she donated it in six $200 installments. Back to the available data from ProPublica. There you can see that the RMA raised a total of $593,878 through 2024, and it has spent $337,197. Small shakes. But the biggest donors stand out. The following six names are responsible for 80 percent of the money raised by the RMA: Steve A Hall — $100,000, Ryan LLC — $100,000, Carl Sewell Jr. — $100,000, Ray Hunt — $100,000, John Carona — $50,000 and Carl Sewell III — $25,000.

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TEA commissioner names FWISD conservator amid state takeover

Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath doubled down on his decision of a state takeover of the Fort Worth Independent School District on Thursday. He also named a conservator who will oversee turnaround plans for underperforming schools. Morath notified the Fort Worth ISD school board and Superintendent Karen Molinar of his plans to move forward with replacing the elected school board with an appointed board of managers, in addition to initiating a nationwide search for a superintendent. Molinar will be considered as a candidate for the position. Morath named Christopher Ruszkowski as the district’s conservator on Thursday, effective immediately. Morath said he would announce the board of managers and superintendent appointments later. Applications for the board of managers are due on Nov. 21.

Morath reaffirmed the takeover decision after an informal review meeting took place with district representatives in Austin a week ago. The district has the option to appeal this decision to the State Office of Administrative Hearings within 15 days. “As you are aware, in correspondence dated October 23, 2025, I provided notice of my intent to appoint a board of managers to the Fort Worth Independent School District to exercise the powers and duties of the district’s board of trustees and of the appointment of a conservator to the district. On October 30, 2025, I conducted an informal review of the appointments at the Texas Education Agency. After careful consideration of the information submitted by the district and presented during the review and in the best interest of the students of Fort Worth ISD, I am affirming my appointment of a board of managers and a conservator to the district,” Morath said in his Thursday correspondence to the district. The takeover resulted from the Leadership Academy at Forest Oak Sixth Grade campus receiving five failed accountability grades in a row from the state. Per state law, officials are required to either close the campus or replace the school board with a board of managers. The district had already closed the school at the end of the 2022-23 school year, consolidating it with Forest Oak Middle.

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Inside Houston’s stunning new Ismaili Center, a first of its kind in the U.S.

After nearly two decades of planning and construction, a vacant property near Buffalo Bayou has been transformed into a majestic, 150,000-square-foot Ismaili Center — a new cultural and religious landmark that is the first of its kind in the United States. While the Ismaili Center, Houston will serve as a prayer venue, its representatives hope locals also embrace it as a peer to the likes of the Menil Collection, Rothko Chapel, Asia Society Texas, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The center plans to host art exhibitions, lectures and music recitals.

"We're here to recognize the Ismaili community's greatness, and in doing so, we get to show the greatness of the city of Houston," Mayor John Whitmire told the audience in a speech that praised the city's diversity. "This is a historic event," Whitmire added. "Pause a moment and realize what we're experiencing, what we're witnessing." Ismailis belong to a branch of Shia Muslims who trace their faith to their belief in the hereditary Imam. An estimated 35,000 to 40,000 Ismailis live in Greater Houston. They believe the Imams they follow are spiritual guides descended from the Prophet Muhammad, said Georgetown University associate professor Shenila Khoja-Moolji. The current Imam, Aga Khan V, is the 50th descendant in that lineage. Aga Khan V is the son and successor of the Ismaili Center’s initial visionary: His Highness Prince Karim Al-Hussaini, or the Aga Khan IV. Though the land had been purchased years earlier, the center was officially confirmed in 2018. As the project neared completion, Aga Khan IV died in February. One of the center’s closest local collaborators, former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, passed away about a month later.

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ICE arrests Episcopal priest who reportedly works for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice

An Episcopal priest in Texas was arrested by immigration authorities for allegedly overstaying his visa. The Episcopal Diocese of Texas criticized his arrest, saying he was legally employed by the state of Texas. James Eliud Ngahu Mwangi, a Kenyan immigrant, was arrested Oct. 24, according to a spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). He's accused of overstaying his B1 Visa, which ICE said required him to leave the United States on May 16, 2024. In a statement, the Episcopal Diocese of Texas said Mwangi was legally employed by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. He was arrested in Huntsville, about 70 miles north of Houston, according to the Dallas Morning News.

The Episcopal Diocese of Texas expressed "deep concern" about the arrest and is calling for transparency and due process in Mwangi's case. "The Episcopal Diocese of Texas stands firmly for justice, dignity, and compassion for every person," Rt. Rev. C. Andrew Doyle, IX Bishop of Texas, said in a news release. "This priest has served both the Church and the State of Texas faithfully. We are praying for his safety, for his family's peace of mind, and for fair and humane treatment as this case moves forward." The Texas Department of Criminal Justice did not immediately return a request for comment. The diocese said Mwangi was transferred to an immigration detention center in Conroe, about 40 miles north of Houston, and that he's been able to speak with his family. The organization said he was detained while returning home from work. Episcopal churches across Texas are calling attention to Mwangi's arrest. St. Christopher's Episcopal Church in Austin shared a message on Facebook, asking for prayers for Mwangi. St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Cypress also asked for prayers.

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Cowboys DE Marshawn Kneeland dies in apparent suicide at 24

Dallas Cowboys defensive end Marshawn Kneeland, 24, died Thursday morning from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot, according to law authorities. The team put out a statement Thursday but did not mention a cause of death. "It is with extreme sadness that the Dallas Cowboys share that Marshawn Kneeland tragically passed away this morning. Marshawn was a beloved teammate and member of our organization. Our thoughts and prayers regarding Marshawn are with his girlfriend Catalina and his family." The Cowboys have made counseling resources available to all players, coaches and staff. The players are on their bye week and are not scheduled to practice again until Monday.

According to Frisco (Texas) Police, the department responded to assist the Texas Department of Public Safety with locating a vehicle that evaded troopers during a pursuit that entered the city at approximately 10:39 p.m. CT Wednesday. DPS troopers found Kneeland's vehicle crashed on southbound Dallas Parkway near Warren Parkway. According to the report, Kneeland fled the scene on foot and officers searched the area with help from K-9 and drone units. As authorities were looking for Kneeland, a dispatcher told officers that people who knew him had received a group text from Kneeland "saying goodbye. They're concerned for his welfare," according to recordings from Broadcastify, which archives public safety radio feeds. Approximately three hours later, Kneeland was found with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Kneeland's agent, Jonathan Perzley, described his death as "a pain I can hardly put into words."

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Dallas police chief says rejected $25M ICE partnership required 50 arrests per day

Dallas Police Chief Daniel Comeaux told the City Council on Thursday that the $25 million partnership offered by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) would have required the department to arrest at least 50 undocumented immigrants each day to receive payment. Comeaux stated that the quota was shared with him during a phone call conversation about the program, although a representative from ICE denied that the initiative comes with an arrest requirement. In October, Comeaux told the Community Police Oversight Board that he’d rejected a $25 million offer for the Dallas Police Department to join the 297(g) program, which grants local law enforcement authorities jurisdiction over federal immigration enforcement.

In response, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson called for a joint hearing between the Public Safety and Government Efficiency Committees, suggesting that policy decisions, especially those that come with a paycheck, should be made by “elected policymakers after receiving public input.” Addressing the committees on Thursday afternoon, Comeaux defended his decision by stating that a 287(g) partnership would “make no sense” for Dallas because the program would require as many as 250 DPD officers to be reassigned from their regular duties to take over ICE responsibilities “all day every day.” Comeaux said that such a change in personnel would have ramifications on 911 response times, community engagement and drops in violent crime. He told council members that a 287(g) partnership would result in hundreds of Dallas Police officers spending their days traveling to fast food restaurants and hardware stores “trying to find illegal immigrants to meet [ICE’s] quota” rather than carrying out local law enforcement duties. Comeaux also voiced fiscal concerns, stating that while the 287(g) program reimburses regular hours worked by officers who participate in the partnership, it would not cover the overtime hours required to staff positions left vacant by officers focusing on immigration enforcement.

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Glenn Rogers: Don't Austin my College Station

In the summer of 1976, I was a student at Texas A&M University, taking a political science class. I was trying to get into veterinary school and was very GPA conscious. My professor was a young liberal with unkempt long hair. I had the standard Corps of Cadets haircut. In appearance, politics and philosophy, we were worlds apart. One late Friday afternoon, I ran into him at Northgate — a popular row of socializing establishments across the street from campus. We had some interesting discussions over more than one beer at the Dixie Chicken. I thought I was going to fail his class because of our obvious disagreement on most political issues. Growing up in a small, rural conservative town and then attending Texas A&M, I had been quite sheltered from opposing views.

On the final exam I knew my answers to essay questions were highly inconsistent with his beliefs. Surprisingly, and to my relief, I made an A. In comments on the exam, he stated he did not agree with my conservative stance but was impressed with my arguments. He never changed my views, and I never changed his, but we were allowed to have the interaction. If that professor had not been allowed to teach due to differences of political ideology at the bastion of conservatism known as Texas A&M, neither one of us would have experienced this healthy exchange. And now there’s a segment of Texas Republicans that wants to prevent just that kind of growth. In September, Gen. Mark Welsh resigned from his role as president of Texas A&M. A student’s confrontation with a professor about gender identity content in a children’s literature class was secretly recorded. State Rep. Brian Harrison, a prolific grandstander and media hound, proceeded to make the recording public by launching a relentless and vicious social media attack on Welsh. Public outcry from Aggies and non-Aggies alike led to calls to fire the popular university president over his handling of the situation. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick inserted himself in the discussion supporting Welsh’s removal. Not to be outdone by the Aggies, University of Texas grad (and governor) Greg Abbott called for the firing of the professor. Abbott does not have the authority to fire faculty, but does appoint university regents who do. He later stated that Texas will go after professors for “ideological differences,” sending chills up the spines of academics.

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Joe Kirby: Don’t let closed primaries destroy the Texas Republican Party

(Joe Kirby is a national spokesperson for Open Primaries.) I’m a fourth-generation South Dakotan and lifelong conservative Republican. I support the principles of limited government, reduced taxation and individual liberty. I love South Dakota. My great-grandfather was present at the state’s constitutional convention in 1889. But I hate our state’s system of closed, partisan primaries. That system isn’t in our constitution but instead was created over time by misguided politicians who wanted to control our state’s politics. We’ve learned the hard way that when you limit competition, limit participation and silo voters, you disconnect voters from their representatives and stifle innovation. So when I read that the Texas GOP had filed a lawsuit to enact closed primaries in the Lone Star State, I wanted to scream, “Don’t do it!” Let me offer a warning from experience: Closed systems weaken state government.

Why sacrifice the growth, dynamism and freedom that is attracting people to Texas from all over the country by enacting a political system that will put a damper on all that makes Texas great? No conservative, no Republican, should ever want a system that limits competition and participation. In South Dakota, over 90% of the time the Republican primary is the only election that matters. Only registered Republicans can participate, yet all taxpayers — Republicans, Democrats and independents alike — pay for these elections. Half of South Dakotans are Republicans, but that group alone decides who governs everyone else. The result is predictable: complacency, stagnation and growing dysfunction. Now, our Republican Party has imploded. It is run by a recently converted Obama Democrat. It shows little to no support for Republican members of our congressional delegation, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune. Supporters have stopped contributing to the party. The party fights among itself because of lack of competition.

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Moody Foundation donates Hill Country ranch for Texas' second-largest state park

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission on Thursday accepted a gift of some 50,000 acres of western Hill County land from the Moody Foundation, property that will be transformed into the second largest tract in the state's park system. With little discussion and no dissent, the commission voted to begin the process of taking possession of the sprawling Silver Lake Ranch, a rugged stretch of terrain that straddles Kinney and Edwards counties along the Nueces River 125 miles west of San Antonio. No closing date has been announced for the formal transfer of ownership. Ross R. Moody, trustee of the Moody Foundation, said in a statement that he hopes that as a park it will be "enjoyed by generations of Texans to come.”

“Silver Lake Ranch has been a special place for generations of our family, and we’re proud to see it become a public space where Texans can connect with nature and help preserve our state’s remarkable landscapes,” he said. Parts of the property are leased to a private family to run livestock. The land is home to a lake and abundant populations of white-tailed deer, turkeys, javelinas and doves. The foundation owns nearly 90% of Silver Lake Ranch's 54,000 acres. A separate transaction will complete the transfer of the remaining parcels, but the Parks and Wildlife Department declined to disclose who owns those tracts and whether they will be purchased or donated. Once the state takes full ownership of the property, Silver Lake Ranch will be second in size only to the 300,000-acre Big Bend Ranch State Park, which was purchased in 1988. "We are grateful for our partnership with the Moody Foundation and appreciate their long-standing commitment to conserving some of the most beautiful places in Texas for use by future generations," the agency said in an unsigned statement. The acquisition is part of a $1 billion initiative called Centennial Parks Conservation Fund launched in 2023 to bolster the state's parkland inventory. Texas' state park system ranks 37th per capita in the nation in parkland acreage.

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McKinney ISD to shutter 3 schools as enrollment declines and young families get priced out

Three elementary schools in southern McKinney will close after the McKinney ISD school board moved to consolidate services because of declining enrollment caused by high property values and low housing turnover that has priced out young families. Students at Eddins, McNeil and Wolford elementary schools will have to attend one of the 10 remaining schools in the area in the next school year. Closing the three schools is expected to save the district $3 million annually. While residential growth in the northwest and northeast regions of McKinney ISD could lead to crowding in some schools, elementary school enrollment in the southern regions of the district has declined, the school district said.

Since 2023, the district has been studying enrollment patterns to identify schools that aren’t being used to capacity. McKinney ISD superintendent, Shawn Pratt, said the closures were necessary because the district has been operating at a budget deficit for the last five years and measures to increase revenue like opening enrollment to families in other districts and charging tuition for child care haven’t closed the gap. Over the current school year, McKinney ISD reduced costs, shrinking its budget deficit from $22 million to $1.7 million. “I love this school district ... It’s not something I ever wanted to do,” Pratt said of the school closures. A facilities committee had recommended the three schools for closure at a Tuesday night meeting, after considering 13 elementary schools located south of highway 380 and west of U.S. 75. It based its recommendations on criteria like the condition of school buildings, financial efficiency and proximity to other elementary schools.

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Muslim student group says a protestor burned a Quran during prayer at University of Houston

A man disrupted an Islamic student group's event at the University of Houston by allegedly throwing the Quran into a fire, according to the student group. In a post on Instagram, the University of Houston Muslim Students Association said they held a peaceful gathering at Lynn Eusan Park on Oct. 30. During a prayer, they say a man "entered our reserved space shouting anti-Islam hate through a megaphone and threw a copy of the Holy Qur'an into our event bonfire." A video shared on Instagram appears to depict a man with a megaphone approaching a small, controlled fire, holding a book in his hand. He places the book in the fire and flees as a security guard approaches him. A photo attached to the post depicts a Quran with the top portion of the cover singed and blackened.

"What happened was not an interruption," the post reads. "It was a direct attack on our community, our faith, and our sense of safety at the University of Houston." In a statement, a spokesperson for the University of Houston said it has notified its campus police department of the incident, which is investigating it. "The University of Houston takes all allegations of harassment against members of our community very seriously," a spokesperson said. The Muslim Students Association, though, called on the university to go further. They asked for the university to restrict the individual's access to campus, release a public statement, and "provide all students of faith a dedicated safe space to congregate." The Houston chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called for law enforcement to investigate the incident as a possible hate crime, while praising the university's response.

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National Stories

Flight-cancellation plans prompt scramble across travel industry

Airlines and travelers scrambled to review flight plans after U.S. transportation officials said they would throttle commercial air traffic starting Friday, a move that has heightened pressure on lawmakers and the president to end the government shutdown. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said traffic at 40 major airports would be reduced as much as 10% as a safety measure prompted by the shutdown. He has said that while the country’s air-travel system is safe, the reduction is aimed at keeping it that way. Air-traffic controllers and airport security agents aren’t being paid during the shutdown, which federal officials said has led to stretched staffing, flight delays and long security lines. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill floated proposals to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history as the widening political and economic fallout has spurred interest in reaching a deal.

An agreement to end the shutdown could involve votes on a package of three full-year spending bills for military construction and veterans, agriculture and the legislative branch, along with a stopgap measure that would reopen the entire government through at least December. The Federal Aviation Administration and Transportation Department emergency order, which takes effect Friday, outlines a gradual increase in flight cuts. A 4% reduction in traffic will take effect Friday. The reductions will reach 6% by Tuesday, Nov. 11, 8% by Nov. 13, and 10% by Nov. 14. The order also limits commercial space launches to nonpeak hours and prohibits some parachute operations. Some of the nation’s busiest airports are among those the FAA targeted for flight capacity cuts, including those in Atlanta, Chicago and New York. “To put that in perspective, a 4% reduction in key markets represents approximately 100 flights, a level we routinely manage during standard weather or irregular operational events,” according to a Southwest Airlines internal memo viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Some airline industry officials compared managing the planned reduction to dealing with a winter storm—if a storm were to hit dozens of major airports all at once.

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Judge orders Trump administration to deliver full SNAP benefits to states by Friday

A federal judge in Rhode Island has ordered the Trump administration to deliver SNAP payments in full to states by Friday. The order, which U.S. District Judge John McConnell issued Thursday afternoon, followed two weeks of chaos and confusion about the fate of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, during the government shutdown. McConnell ruled last week that the Trump administration had to distribute benefits as soon as possible, in response to a lawsuit filed by the progressive legal advocacy group Democracy Forward.

The group sued the Department of Agriculture late last month, after the agency said SNAP funding would not be distributed in November as long as the federal government remained closed. The lawsuit alleged that the USDA’s actions were arbitrary and capricious and therefore violated the Administrative Procedure Act. The Trump administration agreed to partially fund the program by using $4.65 billion in contingency funds to cover about 65% of the benefits that eligible households would ordinarily receive. But it declined to draw from additional funding set aside for child nutrition programs. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins also said it would take several weeks to deliver the partial payments. Given those expected delays, Democracy Forward filed an emergency request asking McConnell to order the Trump administration to expedite benefits or grant additional relief.

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Stefanik poised to announce bid for New York governor on Friday

Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, an ardent ally of President Donald Trump, will launch her long-expected bid for governor Friday, four people with direct knowledge of her plans told POLITICO. Stefanik’s announcement will include a video and will be followed by a statewide tour. She has worked to line up endorsements from Republican leaders and elected officials, according to three of the people with knowledge of the calls. The upstate Republican has served in the House for the last decade and in recent months has ratcheted up her criticism of Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, repeatedly calling her the “worst governor in America.” Stefanik is making her announcement after Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Republican reelected to a second term on Tuesday, signaled this week he was also considering a bid for governor. A Stefanik spokesperson declined to comment about her plans.

But Stefanik will be running in a deep blue state where Trump is highly unpopular. The president helped clear the field for Stefanik earlier this year when he endorsed Rep. Mike Lawler, a moderate GOP lawmaker considered a potentially strong statewide candidate, for reelection to his swing seat in the New York City suburbs. Stefanik expects to leverage Zohran Mamdani’s election this week in the New York City mayor’s race and plans to tie the governor to the democratic socialist, who holds anti-Israel views and is deeply polarizing in the bellwether suburbs. Stefanik’s withering questioning of Ivy League presidents over campus antisemitism earned her support from Jewish voters and she plans to release a book on the issue next year. Still, she will have to introduce herself to a broader Democratic-dominated electorate in New York that has not backed a Republican for the governor’s office since 2002.

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DraftKings CEO says prediction markets aren’t luring customers away from sports betting

DraftKings CEO Jason Robins told CNBC’s Jim Cramer that prediction markets aren’t driving customers out of sports betting, stressing that the two have different offerings. “Simply going and spending five minutes looking at the products, you’ll see what I mean — it’s night and day,” Robins said. “The amount of markets, even the pricing, isn’t something that I would view as competitive with what we do.” Robins pointed to U.K. and Western European markets, where there is both exchange based betting and traditional sports betting. In those areas, he said “exchange products are typically low to mid single digit percentages of share of the total industry,” suggesting that indicates there is little volume migration from the sports books.

But DraftKings is making its own foray into prediction markets. It acquired prediction platform RailBird last month and announced it would launch a mobile application that allows users to bet on outcomes in a variety of sectors, including finance and entertainment. Robins told Cramer that prediction markets present an opportunity for DraftKings, especially in places like California and Texas where traditional online sports betting is illegal. However, he added that his company is going to continue to focus on sports books in states where the practice is legal. “I think the reality is that at least for the near term, it looks like the momentum is here,” Robins said of prediction markets. “They’re here to stay. And so, I think with that in mind, we need to participate, and we should have the tools to win.” The company reported earnings Thursday after close and lowered its full-year sales outlook, sending shares down more than 5% in extended trading.

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With a Sununu running for Senate, Democrats warn against 'sleeping on New Hampshire'

Former Sen. John E. Sununu’s comeback attempt in New Hampshire has Democrats there warning about a tougher-than-expected Senate race that could complicate the party’s effort to flip control of the chamber next year. Sununu — a Republican who served one Senate term two decades ago and whose younger brother, Chris, was more recently the state’s popular four-term governor — jumped into the race last month. The GOP establishment quickly rallied around Sununu in a primary that also includes Scott Brown, who served as an ambassador in President Donald Trump’s first term and as a senator from neighboring Massachusetts in the early 2010s.

Democrats are likely to counter with Rep. Chris Pappas for a seat that is up for grabs next year after Democratic incumbent Jeanne Shaheen, who beat Sununu in 2008, decided against seeking re-election. Mindful that their party’s recruiting windfalls in Maine, North Carolina and Ohio have brought more attention to those 2026 Senate battlegrounds, Democrats fear New Hampshire could be lost in the national shuffle. “I think people are sleeping on New Hampshire nationally, and that’s really foolish,” said Aaron Jacobs, who managed Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan’s 2022 re-election effort there and ran the state campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris last year. “I certainly think a Sununu getting in the race puts this race at a different level,” Jacobs added. “John Sununu is not Chris Sununu. It’s been a long time since he was a senator. But the bumper stickers are still going to say Sununu

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Supreme Court rules White House can implement anti-trans passport policy

As the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Chiles v. Salazar last week—a case that could overturn bans on conversion therapy in more than 20 states and the District of Columbia—a group of conversion therapy survivors gathered in Washington, D.C., to support one another and ensure their experiences are not ignored. Some members of the Conversion Therapy Survivor Network (CTSN), a nonprofit organization that provides a safe, non-therapeutic space for survivors nationwide, began their day on the steps of the Supreme Court. The small but dedicated group of protesters held signs, waved Pride flags, and shared stories of survival. They were joined by representatives from the Born Perfect Campaign, the Human Rights Campaign, and The Trevor Project—the LGBTQ suicide prevention nonprofit that has worked to save queer lives since 1998.

The case centers on whether parents have the constitutional right to subject their children to conversion therapy under the First Amendment’s protection of religious freedom. Dozens of states have banned the practice, citing overwhelming evidence that it does not change sexuality or gender identity and often leads to long-term psychological harm. Survivors of conversion therapy are at significantly higher risk of depression, anxiety, and suicide, according to every major U.S. medical association—including the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Medical Association—all of which have disavowed the practice. Kaley Chiles, a Christian therapist from Colorado, brought the case after arguing that Colorado’s 2019 law banning conversion therapy for minors violates her First Amendment rights. Chiles, who provides what she describes as “religiously informed care,” contends that the law restricts her ability to counsel clients in accordance with “biblical understandings of sexuality and gender.” During oral arguments, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared sympathetic to her claim that the law constitutes “viewpoint discrimination.” Justice Samuel Alito went so far as to say the ban represented “blatant viewpoint discrimination,” signaling that the court may be willing to expand First Amendment protections to cover conversion therapy.

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Cuomo backers burned $65 per vote, including $13.3 million from Bloomberg

In the weeks before Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral dream went up in smoke on election night, a handful of independent spending groups backed by New York City’s oligarchy spent more than $55 million supporting the ex-governor or attacking his ultimately victorious rival, Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani. With Cuomo garnering just under 855,000 votes, that amounted to the would-be power brokers spending $65 per vote for a losing candidate. Meanwhile, independent committees that included backers such as the Working Families Party dropped a relatively paltry $16 million to either support Mamdani or go after Cuomo. Mamdani snagged a little more than 1 million votes, making their investment come in at $15.81 per vote. For a winner.

And in the final weeks of the general election, one of the groups backing Cuomo unleashed a high-voltage ad featuring a photo of Mamdani placed over a an image of the burning World Trade Center, an ad that even some Cuomo supporters considered overtly Islamophobic and that some observers say may have actually backfired. If anything, this bruising election raised questions about the effectiveness of such committees — which are not permitted to coordinate with candidates and are not bound by the usual restrictions campaigns must adhere to — in swaying voters. Authorized under the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, the committees are a workaround of sorts from the strict rules campaigns must follow. Mayoral campaigns that wish to accept public matching funds are barred from accepting contributions from unions or corporations. Campaigns also can’t keep any donation from an individual totaling more than $2,100, and if the individual does business with the city, that cap shrinks to $400.

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Lead Stories

Cost of Texas and Illinois Guard deployment could top $12M by next month

Hundreds of Texas soldiers remain stationed in Illinois at a significant cost to the federal government, even as a court order issued nearly a month ago has blocked them from deploying to the streets or guarding a Chicago-area immigration facility. The U.S. Military’s Northern Command, which is overseeing the mission, told Hearst Newspapers on Tuesday that approximately 200 Texas troops remain under federal control in Illinois. A spokesperson gave no indication that the Trump administration plans to bring them home while a lawsuit over the deployment plays out. In the meantime, the command says the troops are training on deescalation, crowd control and use-of-force rules.

“Any decisions regarding their return to Texas will depend on mission requirements and will be announced as appropriate,” the spokesperson wrote in response to questions from Hearst, noting that the president ordered an initial mobilization of 60 days. The mission’s cost has very likely exceeded $4 million so far, per an analysis of publicly-available salary, lodging and meal reimbursement rates. Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the Texas soldiers and 300 Illinois National Guard soldiers to defend federal personnel and buildings in early October, including a Chicago-area ICE processing facility. Illinois’ Democratic governor called the move an “unconstitutional takeover” and sued Trump in federal court. Three days after soldiers touched down in Chicago on Oct. 7, a U.S. district judge blocked their deployment but said they could remain under federal control. The order was held up on appeal, and is now before the U.S. Supreme Court. While the Northern Command declined to say where troops are stationed, they said “all necessary arrangements have been made to ensure their basic needs, including billeting (lodging), food service, and other support, are met.” The deployment of Texas and Illinois soldiers has likely cost between $4.3 million and $6.2 million in total for the first month, per Hearst’s analysis of public data on active-duty military pay and per diem meal reimbursements. By the 60-day mark, the mission’s cost would double to at least $8.5 million, or around $12.5 million if the soldiers are being housed in the relatively pricey Chicago area.

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FAA reducing air traffic by 10% across 40 ‘high-volume’ markets during government shutdown

The Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday that it was taking the extraordinary step of reducing air traffic by 10% across 40 “high-volume” markets beginning Friday morning to maintain travel safety as air traffic controllers exhibit signs of strain during the ongoing government shutdown. The cutback stands to impact thousands of flights nationwide because the FAA directs more than 44,000 flights daily, including commercial passenger flights, cargo planes and private aircraft. The agency didn’t immediately identify which airports or cities will be affected but said the restrictions would remain in place as long as necessary. “I’m not aware in my 35-year history in the aviation market where we’ve had a situation where we’re taking these kinds of measures,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said at a news conference.

Air traffic controllers have been working unpaid since the shutdown began Oct. 1, and most have been on duty six days a week while putting in mandatory overtime. With some calling out of work due to frustration, taking second jobs or not having money for child care or gas, staffing shortages during some shifts have led to flight delays at a number of U.S. airports. Bedford, citing increased staffing pressures and voluntary safety reports from pilots indicating growing fatigue among air traffic controllers, said he and U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy did not want to wait until the situation reached a crisis point. “We’re not going to wait for a safety problem to truly manifest itself when the early indicators are telling us we can take action today to prevent things from deteriorating,” Bedford said. “The system is extremely safe today and will be extremely safe tomorrow. If the pressures continue to build even after we take these measures, we’ll come back and take additional measures.” He and Duffy said they would meet with airline executives later Wednesday to determine how to implement the reduction in flights before a list of the affected airports would be released sometime Thursday.

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Thune says ending filibuster 'not happening' despite Trump's demands

Returning from the White House Wednesday after President Donald Trump made yet another call for Senate Republicans to overturn the filibuster, Majority Leader John Thune reiterated his view that there are not the necessary votes among Senate Republicans to change the Senate rules. Thune was asked Wednesday if he believed that Trump could sway some of his reluctant members to support the filibuster. "I don't doubt that he could have some sway with members," Thune said. "But I know where the math is on this issue in the Senate, and ... it's just not happening."

Thune has been an outspoken defender of the Senate's rule requiring 60 votes to pass most legislative matters. But he's not the only Republican who has publicly expressed skepticism about overturning the rule. Republican Sen. Mike Rounds was among the group of Republicans who met with Trump for breakfast at the White House after a bruising election night, which saw Democratic victories in several races. After the meeting, Rounds said that the president made "a really good point" about Republicans changing the rule. But he wasn't sold. "I think there's a lot of us that really think the Senate was designed in the first place to find a long term, stable solution to problems, so we'll listen to what the president has to say," Rounds said. GOP Sen. John Kennedy called the filibuster "important."

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Karl Rove: The meaning of the Democrats’ victory

Tuesday was a very good night for Democrats, but the headlines obscure things that should worry both parties for next year’s midterms. While Kamala Harris last year eked out only a 5.8-point margin in Virginia, on Tuesday Democrat Abigail Spanberger won the governorship by about 15 points. She flipped seven traditionally GOP counties, and the government shutdown helped her reverse President Trump’s big 2024 gains in Northern Virginia, home to many federal workers. Ms. Spanberger’s margin was so wide that she dragged Democratic attorney general nominee Jay Jones across the finish line, despite his having fantasized about the murder of a Republican state House speaker. The GOP lost at least 13 of its 48 seats in the 100-member House of Delegates.

Last November, Ms. Harris won New Jersey by 5.4 points. Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill took the governorship by 13. She carried 14 of 21 counties—including all five Mr. Trump flipped in 2024—and she reversed the president’s strong showing in majority-nonwhite counties like Passaic and Hudson. Republicans also lost as many as seven legislative seats, which would put Democrats at a 52-year high. Democrats even won in states Mr. Trump carried last year. In Georgia, two GOP Public Service Commission incumbents went down, giving Democrats their first nonfederal statewide victories in nearly 20 years. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s big gerrymandering referendum victory in California offsets Republican redistricting gains in Texas. While registered Democrats outnumber Republican ones in Pennsylvania by less than 2 points, all three Democratic state supreme court justices won retention by over 22 points. So what happened to the GOP Tuesday? Complacency was part of the problem. Republicans voters were happy with the Trump administration and stayed home. Most Democrats weren’t and turned out.

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State Stories

Commissioner Adrian Garcia endorses Annise Parker for Harris County judge

Commissioner Adrian Garcia endorsed former Mayor Annise Parker for Harris County judge Monday, marking the first major endorsement of a candidate by a sitting commissioner for the November 2026 election. The endorsement further strengthened Parker’s position as the Democratic frontrunner for Harris County judge. Although Judge Lina Hidalgo held an impressive lead among Democrats, she lagged behind Parker among voters county-wide and has since announced her decision to not seek reelection. “I know Mayor Annise Parker to be an extremely competent leader with a backbone of steel – exactly what we need to stand up for Harris County families against Donald Trump and Greg Abbott,” Garcia said in a Monday news release. “I am proud to endorse Annise Parker for Harris County judge.”

Garcia and Parker have both come to occupy the moderate wing of the county’s Democratic party. The pair is aligned on issues ranging from support for the LGBTQ community to prioritizing disaster resilience and strengthening the county’s support networks in the face of increasing attacks from conservatives at the state and federal level. Parker said she and Garcia had a proven history of effective collaboration. The pair worked together both during Parker’s tenure as city controller and after she was elected mayor. “Commissioner Garcia and I go way back,” Parker said. “I served as Houston’s city controller while he served on Houston City Council. I served as mayor while he served as county sheriff. Every step of the way, Adrian Garcia has been an outstanding public servant – and to have earned his endorsement today is an incredible honor.” Parker will face off against Houston City Council Member Letitia Plummer in the Democratic primaries in March before the November election. Houston fire union president and Republican frontrunner Mary Lancton has secured endorsements from several high-profile conservative figures, including Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale and Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham.

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Houston police union tries to recruit NYPD officers after Zohran Mamdani’s election

As Zohran Mamdani gave his victory speech Tuesday night after being elected as mayor of New York City, the Houston Police Officers’ Union took to social media to make a recruiting pitch. “NYPD, are you disgusted with the election of Zohran Mamdani?” the Houston police union asked in a series of graphics posted on its X account. Mamdani, 34, is the youngest person to be elected as New York mayor in more than a century. He’s also the first Muslim and first person of South Asian descent to be elected to the position. A Democratic socialist, Mamdani expressed criticism of the New York Police Department in 2020, calling it a “rogue agency” that should be defunded, according to The Associated Press, which reported that he subsequently apologized and has said he plans to retain the NYPD commissioner.

Still, the Houston Police Officers’ Union is asking NYPD officers to consider moving more than 1,000 miles away to southeast Texas. In a flyer posted on social media, the union touted the Houston Police Department’s competitive pay, with officers recently receiving an $832 million contract that will give them pay raises of 36.5% over a 5-year period, along with support from local elected officials. "If you’re disgruntled where you are, there’s nothing worse than having a disgruntled police officer on your force. We’re about 1,500 officers short," Ray Hunt, executive director of the Houston Police Officers’ Union, told Houston Public Media. "Come on down to Houston, where we have a very supportive city council, very supportive mayor, and a governor, lieutenant governor, and legislature that supports the cops, and the calls are starting to come in." Hunt said a number of former NYPD officers are already at HPD. “One of them was our former president, who’s now the vice president of the Fraternal Order of Police, who he and his wife are both police officers here,” Hunt said. “And he has been a good recruiter for us from New York because this has just been life-changing for him."

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How a band of progressive candidates overturned Cy-Fair ISD's conservative majority

An unlikely slate of candidates with progressive backing, although they refer to themselves as non-partisan, won their bids for the Cy-Fair ISD board by wide margins Tuesday, bucking a trend of conservative leaders winning in Cypress. The three candidates — Kendra Camarena, Lesley Guilmart and Cleveland Lane Jr. — unseated two conservative incumbent trustees, Scott Henry and Natalie Blasingame, who challenged Henry directly rather than running for her own seat. Their path to victory was bolstered by a stronger turnout, plus younger and more diverse voters, both in early voting and on Election Day, according to the group’s campaign manager, Jordan Bowen, who analyzed voter data.

“You saw young people come out to vote … that makes a difference in a low turnout election like this,” said Odus Evbagharu, the campaign consultant who worked with Bowen. “They want to be in a school district where (it) isn't in headlines for the wrong reasons.” In fact, the entire slate endorsed by the Harris County Republican Party lost — Blasingame, Radele Walker and George Edwards Jr. — despite strong GOP support and a stop in Cypress by Gov. Greg Abbott. Over the last two years, the board pushed conservative policies into schools, removing chapters from textbooks that delved too deeply into climate change and vaccines and approving a controversial gender policy that would require schools to "out" transgender students to their parents. Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, said the election results showed a “return to political equilibrium.” “Conservatives have and will continue to win school board elections, but this is a clear signal that voters prioritize stability and moderation,” Rottinghaus said. “This outcome shows that voters are more attentive to school board politics and political calibration among incumbents is important to maintaining support.”

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Budget reductions, city spending audit: What's next for Austin after Proposition Q defeat

Austin leaders are readying to adopt a downsized budget potentially with cuts to city services after voters rejected a 20% tax rate increase to fund various public programs. Proposition Q, the ballot measure to cement a property tax rate above the city's voter-approval limit, failed in the Nov. 4 election with more than 63% opposition. That result automatically lowers Austin's tax rate to $0.524017 per $100 property valuation—5 cents below the higher tax rate that was on the ballot, but still a nearly 10% increase over last year's $0.4776 rate. The owner of a median-valued home in Austin can now expect to pay just over $100 more in property taxes, as opposed to the $300 annual increase projected under Proposition Q. Utility bills and other city charges are also expected to rise by about $115 this year for the typical resident as defined by the city.

Austinites won't face another tax rate election, or TRE, in the near future after voting down Proposition Q. Council members previously approved a policy stating TREs can only be called every four years unless the city faces a "financial emergency." The tax hike proposed under Proposition Q resulted from City Council adding about $110 million in new spending—largely for homelessness and housing programs, public safety and public health, and parkland maintenance—to the original fiscal year 2025-26 budget proposed by City Manager T.C. Broadnax in July. Austin's final spending plan will now likely resemble that first draft, although changes are possible. Mayor Kirk Watson said officials should only make limited edits to Broadnax's original outline and avoid relitigating the extensive amendments made during their two-day budget approval in August. Still, officials gave themselves the discretion to adjust all aspects of the budget in case the TRE failed. A city spokesperson said Broadnax will bring a revised budget for consideration. A timeline wasn't finalized as of press time.

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With $100M donation from Jeff Yass, UATX vows to reject government money

The University of Austin vowed to never charge tuition or accept government money as its latest rebellion against higher education norms, thanks to a $100 million donation from Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass, the institution announced Wednesday. The donation — the single largest the university has received since its start in 2021 — kicks off a $300 million campaign to ensure the private university is never reliant on student tuition or federal funds to operate. It is a significant statement on affordability and independence at a time almost 43 million Americans have federal student loan debt, and elected officials like President Donald Trump and Texas Republicans seek to encroach on public universities' independence.

“We always wanted to be independent from any kind of political pushing in any direction in building our educational mission,” President Carlos Carvalho said in an interview with the American-Statesman Wednesday morning. “We’re ready to make that statement, to make that commitment based on such a amazing investment that we’re getting with this gift.” Yass, an early backer of the University of Austin who has his own marble bust in the university’s atrium alongside other university’s founders, donated more than $12 million to Gov. Greg Abbott in a bid to pass school vouchers in Texas. A new education savings account program passed in 2025 after multiple failed attempts in decades prior. He is also a prominent donor to President Donald Trump, with recent gifts made to fund the new White House ballroom. UATX received flak for its conservative donors last year, but its leaders, including Carvalho, insist that though it may attract Republican interest, the institution is designed to foster non-partisan, intellectual excellence and true pursuit of truth, not “indoctrination” or “activism.” Carvalho said the endowment will make UATX solely accountable to the success of students in a way that other universities can’t be. He said he is not worried about political aims or donor pressure because of the school’s commitment to free tuition and the success of its students.

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Dallas finance exec Brad Heppner charged with securities fraud

A federal grand jury has indicted Brad Heppner, the former chairman of Dallas-based Beneficient, on charges of securities fraud. Federal prosecutors charged Heppner with securities fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud, making false statements to auditors and falsification of records, according to the indictment unsealed Nov. 4 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Heppner founded Beneficient, which offers a platform that high-net-worth clients can use to access liquidity in alternative assets such as private equity. Beneficient went public in 2023 after separating from its former parent company, GWG Holdings, known for selling bonds to retail investors.

As chairman of both companies between 2019 and 2021, Heppner convinced the GWG board to invest in Beneficient partly to pay off debt purportedly owed to a shell company, which he controlled, according to the indictment. Heppner also allegedly made false statements to board directors and auditors, according to the indictment. Prosecutors allege that Heppner received more than $300 million from GWG, including more than $150 million funneled through the shell company. He allegedly used the money for personal expenses including renovating a Dallas mansion and an East Texas ranch, according to the indictment. Heppner was arrested early Nov. 4 in the Dallas area, federal prosecutors said. He was expected in court on Nov. 5. The case is being overseen by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff. An attorney for Hepper did not respond to a request for comment. But the executive has previously denied wrongdoing in court documents and claimed the transactions at the heart of the dispute were legal, the Wall Street Journal reported.

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Loren Steffy: For better or worse, Dick Cheney put Halliburton (and Houston) in the spotlight

(Loren Steffy is a former business columnist, author and publisher. His novel The Big Empty is now available in paperback from Stoney Creek Publishing.) In a roundabout way, I should be grateful to Dick Cheney. I never met or interviewed him, but if his short time running Halliburton in the 1990s hadn’t created a political firestorm, a former employer wouldn’t have asked me to write a magazine feature on the company. That piece caught the attention of the editor of this newspaper and played a role in him offering me a business column. The nine years that followed were some of the most fun I’ve had in my career. Cheney, who died Monday at 84, is remembered for his career in government and his expansive interpretation of vice-presidential powers. But in Houston, his legacy goes beyond politics. He never lived here, but he left an indelible mark on Houston business. Cheney had relinquished his role as CEO of Halliburton by the time the company arrived in Houston in 2002, but his influence remained.

Halliburton arrived in Houston as a notorious household name, like Exxon after the Valdez spill and BP post-Macondo. But that wasn’t how it started. Cheney joined in 1995 as a celebrity hire, having overseen the Pentagon during Operation Desert Storm. His entire career had been in public service; he’d never run a business. So he was an odd choice to run then Dallas-based Halliburton, a major oilfield service provider that got its start in Oklahoma in the early 1900s. Like most oilfield service companies, Halliburton’s business was largely unknown to the public. Its customers were oil producers. It essentially had no public-facing persona. In the 1980s, the domestic drilling industry, which accounted for about two-thirds of Halliburton’s business, shrank significantly. To offset the decline, the company wanted to expand its international operations, but it needed new leadership. The retiring CEO, Thomas Cruikshank, decided to shake up the culture, so he looked outside the company. “Dick brought something to the party as far as being somebody who could do business with the customers,” he told me in 2003. Cheney could open doors with international oil companies, many of which were government owned. “He brought a lot of respect. He could pick up the phone and talk to anybody.” And he did. By the time Cheney left in mid-2000, 66 percent of Halliburton’s revenue came from overseas, a stark reversal in just five years.

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The ‘queen mother’ of the reparations movement gets her due

The image that graces the cover of historian Ashley Farmer’s new biography of Pan-African activist Audley “Queen Mother” Moore is no less regal than the iconic photograph of Black Panthers founder Huey Newton in a rattan throne chair that many of us are more familiar with. Moore sits in an old striped armchair, wearing an African-print caftan and headdress, neck draped with beads, wrist adorned with bangles. Behind her, portraits of Malcolm X and Winnie Mandela hang on the wall. But, as Farmer notes in her introduction to Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore (out from Pantheon on November 4), “What we know of Audley Moore, one of the most important activists and theorists of the twentieth century, remains largely confined to a few photos such as this one—a seven-decade history of struggle distilled down to a few still shots. Until now.” In her book, Farmer, a historian of Black women’s radical politics and an associate professor of History and African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, chronicles Moore’s life and activism.

Moore, a civil rights leader and Black nationalist, adopted the name Queen Mother in the 1960s as a symbol of both her matriarchal presence in Black organizing spaces as well as the connection to Africa that was key to her politics. From her roots in southern Louisiana at the dawn of the 20th century to her years pounding the pavement in Harlem as an organizer for the Communist Party to her reignition of the modern reparations movement well into her later years, Moore’s story offers a potent lesson for today’s organizers on the power of persistence, longevity, and showing up. Born in 1897 in New Iberia, Louisiana, to a mother from a free Black community and a father born into slavery, Moore bore witness to the dying breaths of Reconstruction in the South. Though she enjoyed membership in the Creole elite upon moving with her father to New Orleans, she found herself cut off from that wealth and access upon his death while she was still in high school. Newly a member of the working class, taking up domestic labor to provide for herself and her two younger sisters, the arrival of Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, one of the foremost proponents of the Back-to-Africa movement, laid the cornerstone of Moore’s political philosophy for the rest of her life. “It was Garvey who brought consciousness to me,” she recalled in an oral-history interview quoted in the book. “You can experience a thing without being conscious of yourself. … [You can] see the brutality of the police all against us and so on, and yet a consciousness is not aroused.”

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Fourth Celina ISD employee arrested; second for showing up to school impaired

Police arrested a fourth Celina ISD employee in just over a one-month span on Tuesday, adding to a slew of controversy surrounding the North Texas school district. The Celina Police Department announced Tuesday that Micheale Clark, a 46-year-old special education teaching aide at Celina High School, was arrested for endangering a disabled individual. The department said officers responded to the school Tuesday afternoon after receiving a call about an employee who appeared to be impaired. After an investigation, officers arrested Clark and booked her into the Collin County Jail.

"This is our most important duty, to protect our kids,” said attorney Wesley Gould, who has been monitoring the district’s recent troubles. “Right now, as Texans, we’re failing.” Gould said the string of arrests and investigations points to a larger issue of accountability. He’s now working with lawmakers to ensure school districts can be held responsible when staff misconduct occurs. He points to House Bill 4623, authored by State Rep. Mitch Little (R–Lewisville), which allows parents and victims to take civil action against school districts that fail to protect students from sexual misconduct. “It fast-tracks an approach to be able to hold a district accountable,” Gould said.

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Dallas City Council to seek legal advice as deadline nears to rid ‘ideologies’ from roads

The city of Dallas faces a fast-approaching deadline to abide by an Oct. 8 directive from Gov. Greg Abbott in which he called for Texas counties and cities to remove “political ideologies” from public roadways. City Attorney Tammy Palomino is scheduled to brief Dallas City Council members on compliance with the order during a closed executive session on Wednesday, two days before the expected deadline. The Dallas Morning News has reached out to city spokesman Rick Ericson to ask when the public can expect an update regarding next steps. Abbott’s order named symbols, flags and markings that conveyed “social, political, or ideological messages” as examples that ran afoul of federal and state roadway safety guidelines.

Street art, particularly rainbow-painted crosswalks that signify solidarity with the LGBTQ community, has become a lightning rod in recent culture wars. Abbott appeared to take heed of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who in July instructed governors nationwide to participate in a Safe Arterials for Everyone through Reliable Operations and Distraction-Reducing Strategies (“Safe Roads”) initiative. “Roads are for safety, not political messages or artwork,” Duffy wrote then in a public letter. He also singled out rainbow crosswalks on social media. In the weeks following Abbott’s mandate, uncertainty has loomed over the future of rainbow crosswalks in the historically LGBTQ neighborhood of Oak Lawn in Dallas as well as crosswalks in South Dallas painted with the words “All Black Lives Matter.” Cities that refuse to comply with the governor’s directive may be at risk of losing federal and state transportation funding. In the 2024 fiscal year, Dallas received roughly $142 million in federal transportation grants and $2 million from the Texas Department of Transportation, per audit reports from March 2025. Rainbow crosswalks have already been removed in Houston’s LGBTQ neighborhood of Montrose and in Galveston. In Austin, the city has announced plans to seek an exemption from the directive.

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‘Catastrophic:’ Air travel industry warns of more delays at DFW, Love as shutdown drags on

Fallout from the ongoing government shutdown could be “catastrophic” if federal workers continue to be denied paychecks as the holidays approach, according to a local representative for Dallas-area Federal Aviation Administration employees. “I think it’s going to be catastrophic, and I say catastrophic, not meaning people are going to be injured or it’s not going to be safe to fly,” said Tim Lindsey, an airway transportation system specialist and local representative for the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union. ”It’s going to be safe. The people we represent, they are the best in the world at their job. But what’s going to end up happening is there’s going to be more delays." North Texas’s two biggest airports, DFW International and Dallas Love Field, have fared better than some other major U.S. airports during the shutdown, but have started to see the effect in recent days.

The FAA issued ground delays at DFW Airport on three separate days last week. On Monday, the FAA again issued a ground delay for both DFW and Love Field, slowing flights bound for North Texas at their departure airports. The warnings come as the FAA announced Wednesday that it would reduce airline traffic by 10% at 40 “high-volume” markets beginning Friday if no deal is reached to reopen the government. The 40 markets were not identified and more information is expected Thursday. DFW Airport is the central hub of Fort Worth-based American Airlines and Love Field is the headquarters of Southwest Airlines. North Texas airspace seemed to be under normal operations Wednesday afternoon, according to the FAA’s website. TSA operations at both DFW and Love Field also appeared to be normal. As of 3 p.m., DFW had 103 delays and just two cancellations and Love Field had 30 delays, in addition to one cancellation, according to flight tracking site FlightAware. DFW’s top executive, Chris McLaughlin, said last week that if the shutdown drags on, it would negatively impact airport operations. “You could just imagine that as time wears on, as you get into a second and third paycheck, you can just imagine that people are going to have to make individual life choices which will ultimately impact the operation,” said McLaughlin. “And as that happens, I think you’ll ultimately see a net negative impact on the federal government’s ability to maintain the level of operations we need to continue to be successful. In particular, going into the holiday season, nobody can work for free forever.”

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After arena vote, San Antonio officials look for cooperation on Spurs' community benefits agreement

Although Bexar County voters narrowly approved tentative plans for a new downtown Spurs arena, there’s still plenty of uncertainty surrounding the $75 million community benefits agreement offered by the team, city officials said Wednesday. San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones, a vocal critic of the $1.3 billion publicly financed arena deal, said she looks forward to working with the NBA franchise and Managing Partner Peter J. Holt on bringing equitable and accessible development along with revitalization to the center city. “We need to be bold in our vision and think about what it’s going to take to have a revitalized downtown that we all want and deserve,” Jones said at a Wednesday press conference. “That includes affordable housing. That includes commitment to labor … as well as making sure we have those good-paying jobs.”

Jones also said that she’ll work to transparently communicate a timeline, allow for “real public engagement” and due diligence on the project to “ensure this is reflective of the people’s resources.” “We’ve got a wonderful opportunity,” Jones continued. “I think us moving forward together is the best way in which we can keep our commitment for a win-win opportunity for our city and for the Spurs.” Jones made her comments during a press conference organized by District 7 Councilwoman Marina Alderete Gavito. Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai and District 1 Councilwoman Sukh Kaur were also in attendance, along with Holt and Spurs General Counsel Bobby Perez. Indeed, Kaur, one of the arena plan’s most vocal supporters, said she wants to create a joint city-county task force to analyze how to best use the community benefits cash offered by the Spurs.

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Farmers Branch, Highland Park to hold elections on leaving DART

Two North Texas cities are set to hold elections next year to possibly withdraw from Dallas Area Rapid Transit, as more cities consider doing the same. Highland Park’s town council and the Farmers Branch City Council each voted Tuesday to set elections where residents will vote on whether or not to leave DART. Their potential withdrawals could pose an existential threat to the 42-year-old transit agency, which in the past year has faced calls from several cities to cut its funding. Farmers Branch City Council members heard an hour of pushback from residents before voting 3-2 to call an election May 2.

Aniya Robertson, a Carrollton resident who uses DART to go to school at Brookhaven College in Farmers Branch, said there would be serious consequences for her if the agency left the city. “My mom's a single mom. She's not able to drop me off all the time,” Robertson said. “I can't afford a car, and honestly, if it was just dropped, I wouldn't finish college. And I think it would really brutally mess up my college experience.” Farmers Branch Mayor Terry Lynne said the city has been paying 1% of its sales tax to DART since the agency’s inception in 1983 and would like to see that rate lowered. A 2024 study commissioned by DART found the city paid $24 million into the system but received roughly $20 million in services. The city was one of several that passed symbolic resolutions last year in favor of cutting their contribution to DART. “There has to be financial equity,” Lynne said. “The 1983 model just doesn't work today.”

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National Stories

A skeptical Supreme Court puts Trump’s tariffs and economic agenda in question

President Trump has fashioned tariffs as the utility knife of his second-term agenda. They have helped him to raise revenue, shape trade negotiations and bend other nations to his political will. But, as Mr. Trump learned on Wednesday, the primary tool in his punishing and ever-expanding trade war may soon reach its limit. The fate of the president’s sweeping taxes on imports from nearly every country now rests in the hands of the Supreme Court’s nine justices, most of whom sounded skeptical about Mr. Trump’s novel and vast assertion of trade powers. It is impossible to predict how a divided bench may ultimately rule in the landmark case, one that could redefine the scope of presidential trade authority and limit Mr. Trump’s ability to issue tariffs on a whim. But the court’s interrogation — across nearly three hours of oral arguments — underscored the grand political stakes for the president and his economic vision.

Since winning the election one year ago, Mr. Trump has targeted friends and competitors including Canada, Mexico, the European Union and China with an escalating set of duties. Those taxes on imports have primarily fallen on American consumers and businesses. Mr. Trump has imposed these tariffs without the approval of Congress, invoking a decades-old emergency law to impose a 10 percent tax on nearly every trading partner, plus higher levies on dozens of countries. Both the tariffs, and the tactics for putting them into place, are equally important for Mr. Trump, who relishes the ability to adjust duties with the stroke of a pen. He has wielded that emergency authority in a bid to reduce the national debt, support domestic manufacturing and pressure other countries into favorable deals, while trying to achieve a host of other objectives, many unrelated to trade.

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Inside the billionaire network shaping MAGA’s post-Trump future

In 2019, a small group of right-wing donors rented a resort outside the 100-person town of Rockbridge, Ohio, for a summit to secure the future of the MAGA movement. They aimed to turn a singular candidate — President Donald Trump — into an enduring political coalition, with a pipeline of voters, donors and candidates that would cement a radical transformation of the GOP. Convened by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel and JD Vance, then an investor who had written a best-selling memoir, the meeting included hedge fund heiress Rebekah Mercer, then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson and economist Oren Cass, according to two people familiar with the meeting. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private gathering, details of which have not been previously reported. But the person in the room who would solidify the group’s ambitions was decidedly lower profile: an Arizona insurance entrepreneur and conservative media figure named Chris Buskirk.

Today, Buskirk helms the Rockbridge Network, a secretive organization birthed out of the weekend gathering that has established itself as one of the most influential forces in GOP politics. Political strategists credit the close-knit network of businessmen-cum-donors with helping fuel the president’s reelection last year and propelling one of its own — Vance — into the vice presidency. With significant funding from tech leaders, Rockbridge aims to equip MAGA to outlive Trump. The group has no website or public-facing entity, but it has assembled pollsters, data crunchers, online advertisers and even a documentary film arm. It is gearing up to deploy its arsenal in the 2026 midterms and in the 2028 presidential contest, when many Rockbridge members hope Vance will be the nominee. The group has assembled a database with deep profiles of potential voters through nonpolitical memberships, including outdoors groups and churches, according to a person directly familiar with the organization. Buskirk’s ties to Trump’s orbit go beyond Rockbridge. 1789 Capital, the venture capital firm he co-founded with investor Omeed Malik, focuses on what the partners call “patriotic capitalism” and now counts Donald Trump Jr. as a partner. The pair — along with administration officials and friends — recently launched Executive Branch, a $500,000-a-head membership club for Trump-supporting business leaders to hobnob in D.C.

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USDA revises SNAP reduction plan to provide more partial benefits in November

The US Department of Agriculture issued revised guidance to states on Wednesday evening that will result in food stamp enrollees receiving somewhat larger partial benefits in November. The update, disclosed in a new court filing, calls for reducing the maximum Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefit by 35%, instead of the original 50%. The agency is issuing only partial benefits this month to comply with a court order requiring it to tap into SNAP’s contingency fund amid the government shutdown.

“USDA performed further analysis and determined that the maximum allotments need only be reduced by 35%, instead of 50%, to deplete the SNAP contingency fund,” Patrick Penn, a top USDA official, told the court. The update comes shortly after a left-leaning think tank published an analysis arguing that the USDA’s original guidance called for cutting benefits more deeply than needed. The agency had said in a previous court filing it planned to use $4.65 billion in the fund to provide SNAP assistance this month. However, the USDA’s initial plan would have provided only about $3 billion in food stamp benefits, which would have resulted in an average cut of 61% for the month, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ analysis. The think tank asserted that only a 43% cut would be needed to keep spending in line with the available funds.

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After a dream campaign, Mamdani faces the nightmare of running New York City

The capacious Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden in Astoria, Queens, had been swelling for hours with chanting—and drinking—young socialists. At 9:36 p.m. it erupted. “Mamdani is my mayor! Mamdani is my mayor!” a young woman shouted again and again, as if confirming to herself that the improbable had become reality: A little-known, Uganda-born, Muslim state assemblyman and avowed socialist was elected New York City mayor. By daylight, the harsh reality confronting Zohran Mamdani after his fantastical rise was apparent. The 34-year-old, with scant managerial experience, will have to manage a famously ungovernable city in all of its vast complexity. He will be doing so shadowed by the lofty expectations of his progressive supporters, who have been promised free buses and child care and an affordable city where the working class—not the financial elite—come first.

And then there is President Trump, who has made no secret of his desire to brutalize Mamdani’s New York for its leftist leanings and use it as a foil ahead of next year’s midterm elections. “If Communist Candidate Zohran Mamdani wins the Election for Mayor of New York City, it is highly unlikely that I will be contributing Federal Funds, other than the very minimum as required, to my beloved first home,” he posted on Truth Social on election eve. That may be just the start. City elders fear a worst-case scenario in which stepped-up raids in New York City by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents instigate unruly protests which Trump, in turn, responds to by deploying the National Guard, as he has in Chicago and Los Angeles. Imagine Fifth Avenue, one noted, patrolled by military vehicles. “New York City is facing potential Armageddon,” said Doug Schoen, a former political adviser to the Clintons who has since become a regular on Fox News. “[Mamdani’s] base wants largely unattainable goals, Trump has threatened credibly to cut off assistance to the city and the problems now—both budgetary and in law enforcement—are becoming as serious and intractable as they were in the 1970s.”

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Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show

Meta internally projected late last year that it would earn about 10% of its overall annual revenue – or $16 billion – from running advertising for scams and banned goods, internal company documents show. A cache of previously unreported documents reviewed by Reuters also shows that the social-media giant for at least three years failed to identify and stop an avalanche of ads that exposed Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp’s billions of users to fraudulent e-commerce and investment schemes, illegal online casinos, and the sale of banned medical products. On average, one December 2024 document notes, the company shows its platforms’ users an estimated 15 billion “higher risk” scam advertisements – those that show clear signs of being fraudulent – every day. Meta earns about $7 billion in annualized revenue from this category of scam ads each year, another late 2024 document states.

Much of the fraud came from marketers acting suspiciously enough to be flagged by Meta’s internal warning systems. But the company only bans advertisers if its automated systems predict the marketers are at least 95% certain to be committing fraud, the documents show. If the company is less certain – but still believes the advertiser is a likely scammer – Meta charges higher ad rates as a penalty, according to the documents. The idea is to dissuade suspect advertisers from placing ads. The documents further note that users who click on scam ads are likely to see more of them because of Meta’s ad-personalization system, which tries to deliver ads based on a user’s interests. The details of Meta’s confidential self-appraisal are drawn from documents created between 2021 and this year across Meta’s finance, lobbying, engineering and safety divisions. Together, they reflect Meta’s efforts to quantify the scale of abuse on its platforms – and the company’s hesitancy to crack down in ways that could harm its business interests. Meta’s acceptance of revenue from sources it suspects are committing fraud highlights the lack of regulatory oversight of the advertising industry, said Sandeep Abraham, a fraud examiner and former Meta safety investigator who now runs a consultancy called Risky Business Solutions.

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Wild affidavit captures John Bolton scrambling after Iranian hackers cracked his AOL account

John Bolton, the one-time staple of U.S. national security who is now accused of mishandling classified information, first realized that Iranian hackers had broken into his AOL account on a Tuesday morning in the summer of 2021 — as he and his assistant noticed how emails in his message list went from bold to regular font before their very eyes. They were reading his incoming emails in real time. Making matters worse, whoever was on the other end seemed to have updated the two-factor authentication that would have stopped someone from accessing Bolton’s sensitive emails by sending him a coded text message before granting them access. The hacker added their email and phone number instead. His assistant emailed the FBI.

“I’m alerting you that evidently someone has gotten into Amb. Bolton’s AOL account,” the assistant wrote, explaining the situation. “If there is anything you can help us with, that would be appreciated.” The incident and many other details were revealed in new court filings related to the Department of Justice’s current case against Bolton, which threatens to put one of the country’s best-known conservative foreign policy hawks behind bars for the rest of his life. Bolton, who turns 77 later this month, faces a decade in prison for each crime listed in the 18-count indictment filed last month. Newly unredacted portions of the FBI’s affidavit supporting the search of Bolton’s home in August provide more detail on the tense moments after the former ambassador tried to contain the damage from hackers deemed affiliated with the Iranian regime, long the target of Bolton’s ire. The FBI quickly assessed the situation, with a special agent telling Bolton’s assistant on a phone call that agents had already conducted a cybercrime investigation and had determined that “one or more email accounts under your control may have been compromised by a nation-state cyber actor around late June 2021.” That meant hackers had only gained access a few days or weeks earlier.

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The shutdown is pushing Forest Service staff to the breaking point

The hiking trails most Forest Service rangers work on feel far removed from the politics that play out in Washington, D.C. But they’re now a high-stakes political arena in the second Trump administration, as it has sought to downsize and decentralize the agency. Waves of budget cuts, layoffs and buyouts in the last year have decimated the U.S. Forest Service, but the shutdown is testing its staff on a whole new level. The forests, along with national parks, remain open to the public, meaning recreational employees and visitor center staff are still cleaning bathrooms, answering phone calls, and handing out maps. Four weeks into a government shutdown, those that are left are still working – and many have yet to see a paycheck. Many of the people most familiar with the workings of the agency are warning that this shutdown may push its workers past their wherewithal.

“A lot of these places where people work for the Forest Service are not very affordable on a government salary,” Matthew Brossard, a California-based representative for the Forest Service union. “So they have to live an hour-plus drive from where they work. Now you’re talking gas, vehicle maintenance, rent, food, all these normal expenses that they can’t make because they’re being told they have to work without pay.” “Everything’s going out, but nothing’s coming in,” Brossard said. “The people that are out cleaning the restrooms and everything, they don’t make a lot of money. You’re telling them they have to come to work every single day and not get a paycheck.” Sources told NOTUS that as of this week, some employees who were previously exempted and working with pay have now been shifted to an excepted classification, meaning they are now also working without pay. Even before the shutdown, the Forest Service workforce was down by about 15% after thousands of employees took buyouts or were laid off earlier in the year.

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Lead Stories

Democrats dominate across country, notching trifectas in Virginia and New Jersey and CA Prop 50 easily winning

Democrats dominated the first major Election Day since President Donald Trump returned to the White House. And while a debate about the future of the Democratic Party may have only just begun, there are signs that the economy — specifically, Trump’s inability to deliver the economic turnaround he promised last fall — may be a real problem for Trump’s GOP heading into next year’s higher-stakes midterm elections. Democrats on Tuesday won governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey, the only states electing new chief executives this year. They also swept a trio of state Supreme Court contests in swing-state Pennsylvania and ballots measures from Colorado to Maine. Trump was largely absent from the campaign trail, but GOP candidates closely aligned themselves with the president, betting that his big win last year could provide a path to victory this time. They were wrong.

Democrats are hoping the off-year romp offers a new winning playbook, but some caution may be warranted. Tuesday’s elections were limited to a handful of states, most of which lean blue, and the party that holds the White House typically struggles in off-year elections. Meanwhile, Republicans in Washington may be more excited than Democrats that a self-described democratic socialist will become New York City’s next mayor. Here’s some top takeaways: Former Rep. Abigail Spanberger will become Virginia’s next governor — and its first female chief executive — while Rep. Mikie Sherrill won the New Jersey governor’s office by running campaigns focused largely on the economy, public safety and health care. Early results showed Democrats outperforming their margins from four years ago in fast-growing suburbs, rural areas and even places with high concentrations of military voters. Above all, the Democrats in both states focused on rising costs such as groceries, energy and health care, which Trump has struggled to control. In addition to tacking to the middle on economic issues, Spanberger and Sherrill downplayed their support for progressive priorities, including LGBTQ rights and resistance against Trump’s attack on American institutions. Spanberger rarely even mentioned Trump’s name on the campaign trail. Trump and his Republican allies have been especially focused on immigration, crime and conservative cultural issues. But voters who decided Tuesday’s top elections were more concerned about the economy, jobs and costs of living. That’s according to the AP Voter Poll, an expansive survey of more than 17,000 voters in New Jersey, Virginia, California and New York City suggesting that many voters felt they can’t get ahead financially in today’s economy.

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Taylor Rehmet, Leigh Wambganss headed to runoff in Senate District 9

Democrat Taylor Rehmet and Republican Leigh Wambsganss appear poised for a runoff in the race to fill the vacant District 9 state Senate seat. The election featured two Republicans, former Southlake Mayor John Huffman and Wambganss, Patriot Mobile’s chief communications officer, and Rehmet, a Democrat leader of local and state branches of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union. With 68 of the county’s 215 vote centers reporting Tuesday night, Rehmet leads with 45.8% of votes to Wambsganss’ 38% and Huffman’s 16.2%, according to unofficial results from Tarrant County Elections Administration. Greeting supporters at an Election Night event at Nickel City in Fort Worth, Rehmet said there’s still work to be done.

“But we know we’re going to win, because we have what it takes to move the needle, and we’re going to keep doing it,” he said. A warm glow cast over the bar, as campaign signs were displayed on a long table and supporters huddled, their preferred candidate in the leading spot against his election opponents. The three candidates hope to replace former Sen. Kelly Hancock after he left the Legislature to join the Texas Comptroller’s office. Hancock serves as the state’s acting comptroller. Whoever ultimately wins the special election will finish out the remainder of Hancock’s term. Each of the candidates has said they plan to run for the seat again in 2026, when they’ll have to win their March primaries to secure a place on the November ballot. If a single candidate does not secure more than half of the votes on Tuesday, the race goes into a runoff. Gov. Greg Abbott hasn’t set a runoff date. The district covers Northeast Tarrant County, including much of Fort Worth, and suburban cities Southlake, Keller and North Richland Hills, where Wambsganss held her election night event. Wambsganss supporters crowded around her for photo ops at Niki’s Italian Bistro and Piano Bar. Screens displayed the election results, periodically refreshed as onlookers awaited the most recent vote tally.

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CD-18 heads to a runoff, Cy-Fair ISD conservatives lose ground and 17 amendments pass easily

Tuesday was Election Day in Houston, and 17 changes to the state constitution were on the ballot. Among them were measures that could increase property tax breaks for homeowners, funnel billions of dollars into water infrastructure and allow judges to deny bail in certain cases. The race to fill Texas’ historic 18th Congressional District is headed to a runoff between Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee and former Houston Council Member Amanda Edwards, according to preliminary election results. Menefee had 32% of the votes, and Edwards had 26% late Tuesday. Jolanda Jones trailed behind with 18%. None of the 16 candidates could secure the more than 50% needed to avoid the runoff. The exact date for that runoff will be set by Gov. Greg Abbott.

Just after midnight, Alejandra Salinas got a slight edge over opponent Dwight Boykins in the Houston City Council race. Salinas leads with 21.9% of the vote to Boykins' 21%. Only 257 of the county's 600 polling locations have reported their results Residents in Conroe voted to amend parts of the city's outdated charter Tuesday, but rejected a change to a city manager-style government. They also nixed a measure that would prevent a voting majority from gathering outside a called meeting. "Our citizens read the amendments and voted their heart," Deputy City Administrator Nancy Mikeska said, adding the amendments will set the "framework" for important issues in the future. The Cy-Fair ISD slate of candidates who ran to unseat the board’s incumbent conservative trustees have already begun celebrating a lead at their watch party. Lesley Guilmart, Kendra Camarena and Cleveland Lane Jr. popped champagne after early vote totals showed the group ahead in all three races. “We’re your voice. We are here for you,” said Lane Jr. at PO’s Icehouse in Cypress. “This is the community’s campaign.” While conservative candidates have prevailed in previous elections in Cy-Fair, the new "pro-public education" slate raised and spent the most money on the contested campaigns.

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Lawmakers see hope for ending record-setting shutdown

Republican and Democratic senators signaled optimism about reaching a bipartisan deal to end the government shutdown, while striking cautionary notes about how quickly lawmakers could resolve the impasse. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) on Tuesday outlined a pathway forward, pointing to the possibility of combining a new short-term bill to reopen the government with some of the 12 annual appropriations bills that fund federal agencies. He said that the off-ramp was focused on giving Democrats a vote on an extension of expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies along with plans for the spending bills. “I’ve said this before, but the question is whether or not they’ll take ‘yes’ for the answer,” Thune said.

Most Senate Democrats emerged from a closed-door lunch with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) grim-faced, declining to utter a word. The few Democrats to speak included centrist Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D., N.H.) and Gary Peters (D., Mich.), who are in talks with Republicans over finding a way out of the shutdown. “We had a good discussion,” Shaheen said, exiting the meeting with a smile. “It’s still a work in progress,” Peters said. “We have a lot to discuss.” Asked about the meeting, Schumer responded: “We had a very good caucus, and we’re exploring all the options.” Trump doubled down Tuesday on his demand that Senate Republicans bypass Democrats by killing the longstanding filibuster rule, which requires 60 votes to advance most legislation. He invited all Republican senators to a breakfast at the White House on Wednesday, as the shutdown enters its record-breaking 36th day and lawmakers sort through Tuesday night’s election results that delivered wins for? Democrats in the governor races in New Jersey and Virginia, and the New York City mayoral race.

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State Stories

Austin voters reject Proposition Q

The majority of Austin voters have rejected Proposition Q, which would have raised the city's property tax rate indefinitely. Prop Q would have increased Austin residents' property taxes by five cents per every $100 in value to address funding for homelessness prevention, safety, parks, public health, finances and Austin's general fund. The increase could have cost the average homeowner about an extra $300 a year in city property taxes and would have added roughly $110 million for the present fiscal year, according to city leaders. The proposition was presented as a way to help address the city's $33 million budget deficit. Ahead of the Nov. 4 election, Austinites were split on whether to support the proposition.

"We are casting a defiant 'yes' because we refuse to let indifference win," Organizing Director Chas Moore said. Some Austin business owners also opposed the proposition, saying it would negatively impact their operations. Among them were Brandon Hodge, owner of Big Top Candy Shop on South Congress Avenue. "If everyone's price is increasing like that, they can't afford to come in and buy a treat like candy, you know, much less food, clothing and shelter," Hodge told KVUE in October. But other business owners and leaders supported the proposition, including Congressman Greg Casar (D-Austin). At a "No Kings" protest held in Austin last month, Casar said he supported Prop Q "to save our ambulances, to save our shelters from Trump's cuts." Another supporter was Brydan Summers, who serves as the president of The American Federation of State, County, Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 1624. He said the proposition would help Austin make up for government cuts and Texas' limits on property tax revenue.

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Voters back county funding for new $1.3B San Antonio Spurs arena

Voters officially signed off on plans for a new $1.3 billion NBA arena for the San Antonio Spurs — approving Proposition B with 52.1% of the vote Tuesday night. The vote means roughly a quarter of the arena’s funding will come from the Bexar County venue tax — or fees on hotels and rental cars — which will be increased and extended as part of the ballot proposition. The rest of the funding will come from the city of San Antonio, which is using tax reinvestments to provide $489 million without a required public vote, and the Spurs, which expect to put in about $500 million. City leaders have already signed off on their agreement with the Spurs leadership, including a nonrelocation agreement to keep the team calling San Antonio home for the next 30 years in exchange for help funding the new arena.

That agreement was contingent on Tuesday’s vote, meaning the team has what it needs to start planning the new sports and entertainment district. At a Spurs election night party at River North Icehouse, cheers and “Go Spurs, go,” chants broke out when election results began to load on attendees’ phones and computers. “The community has spoken,” Spurs chairman Peter J. Holt said. “We love this city, we love this county, and the county and the city love us back.” The Spurs have been in San Antonio since B.J. “Red” McCombs bought the team here in 1973 — part of his vision to bring a professional sports team to the HemisFair Arena downtown. Since then the team has moved twice, to the NFL-style Alamodome that then-Mayor Henry Cisneros championed in the early 1990s, and later the AT&T Center the county built for the Spurs on the East Side, known today as the Frost Bank Center.

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Dwight Boykins, Alejandra Salinas appear headed to runoff in Houston City Council election, per early results

As of Tuesday evening, based on early voting results, Dwight Boykins and Alejandra Salinas appeared headed to a runoff for the open at-large seat on the Houston City Council. Boykins, a former city council member for District D and unsuccessful candidate for Houston mayor, received 24.01% of the vote during the early voting period. He entered the race as the most well-known candidate and ran a narrowly focused campaign emphasizing flood mitigation in Kingwood, home repairs for senior citizens, incentives for grocery stores to open in “food deserts,” and steps to address the city's growing budget deficit.

He trailed Salinas in fundraising, bringing in nearly $140,000 as of his most recently available campaign finance report from Oct. 27. Local political analysts expected him to receive a boost from the overlap between District D and Congressional District 18, where a special election is also underway. He boasted the endorsements of former mayor Lee Brown and former city controller Ronald Green, among other current and former elected officials. Shortly after early voting results were released, Boykins told Houston Public Media he believed voters appreciated his experience. “We worked hard and we campaigned hard, he said. “I think my experience counted, being that I served for six years and achieved some major milestones as a district council member, and showed my broad vision for Houston.” Salinas, a newcomer to municipal politics, received 21.40% of the vote during the early voting period, according to results released Tuesday night by the Harris County Clerk's Office. She is running a campaign focused on improving delivery of government services — from public safety to solid waste collection — as well as more general ideals like equity and defending democracy.

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Jonathan Madison: The Texas GOP wants independent voters out of primaries. That's a lousy idea.

(Jonathan Madison is a resident fellow with the governance team for the R Street Institute.) The Republican Party of Texas recently filed a lawsuit to shut independent voters out of its primary elections, limiting participation in the often-decisive contests only to voters formally registered with a party. That would be a mistake. Texas’s open primaries — which have existed in some form for over 120 years — give all Texans a meaningful voice, strengthen the legitimacy and accountability of those who win office, and even benefit parties by broadening their appeal and introducing more voters to their candidates. Open primaries let any registered voter — Republican, Democrat, third-party or unaffiliated — decide which major party’s primary to vote in. The decision does come with limitations: Once a voter makes that choice, state law requires them to remain in that party’s primary for the rest of the election cycle. If you vote in, say, a Republican primary, you can vote only in the Republican run-off elections. But you can then vote for anyone you choose in the general election. An estimated 3 million Texas voters, or 15% of those registered, are unaffiliated or aligned with minor parties.

Gerrymandered districts mean that a vast majority of general election contests tilt heavily in favor of one party. In those districts, it's only election of consequence is in the dominant party’s primary. All voters deserve a chance to participate in these races without compromising their First Amendment right to freedom of association. What’s more, candidates should have to compete for independent voters’ support. Open primaries force candidates to appeal beyond the party’s most locked-in voters. If a politician must appeal not just to their base but persuade independents, too, their rhetoric, platform and outreach all change. As a result, politicians become more responsive to a larger number of voters. Also, consider the fairness issue. Primaries are paid for with public money. When Texas taxpayers fund an election, every eligible Texan should have access without being forced to publicly identify with a party. It’s unfair to use public funds for what amounts to a private event. If the parties want to return to the old convention-based system for selecting nominees, they are welcome to do so — but only if it's on their own dime.

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Voters in Judson and East Central ISDs reject tax rate increases to support education

Voters in two Bexar County school districts — Judson and East Central ISDs — rejected property tax rate increases aimed at providing additional funding for public education, according to complete but unofficial county election results. The two districts held voter-approved tax rate elections, or VATREs, to raise the property tax rate in both districts. Roughly 60% of Judson ISD voters cast ballots against the proposed 4.5-cent increase to the district’s property tax rate. Judson was the largest of five districts in or near San Antonio to hold a Nov. 4 tax vote. The district sought an increase to its property tax rate to support daily operations, including student programs, teacher and staff pay and support services.

A little more than 55% of voters in the East Central school district opposed the proposed tax increase, according to unofficial Bexar County election results. East Central ISD estimated that the property tax increase initiative would have generated about $7.6 million in additional revenue to invest in safety, sustain fine arts, Pre-K and athletic programs and boost compensation for teachers and staff not covered by the state’s new school finance legislation, House Bill 2. The proposal sought to raise the total tax rate by 5 cents to $0.9818 per $100 valuation of property. Bexar County’s largest school district, Northside ISD with nearly 100,000 students, has discussed the possibility of a tax rate election, as well as a bond proposal, in November 2026.

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Proposal to form city in rural Hood County fails

Voters rejected a proposition to form a city in rural Hood County, according to unofficial results Tuesday. With 100% of the precincts reporting, 76 voters were against the proposal and 50 supported it. Some residents wanted to form the city in Mitchell Bend as a last resort to regulate noise and pollution from a cryptomining plant and nearby power plants. The complaints over a constant whirring noise from cooling plants at MARA Holdings’ data center near Granbury began almost three years ago when neighbors, including Cheryl Shadden and Danny Lakey, described how the noise permeated through the walls of their homes and contributed to health issues that included sleep disturbances, dizziness and high blood pressure. “I’m not sure what we are going to do. We will regroup,” Shadden said. “We are not done fighting.”

Lakey said, “This isn’t good. We will have to see where to go from here.” The county commissioners lacked the authority to regulate the noise because it was in an unincorporated area, so residents took the matter in to their own hands. MARA, for its part, said previously that the company is “a good neighbor” and that it has created jobs and contributed to schools and to the community. However, days before Tuesday’s election MARA filed a federal lawsuit against several Hood County officials, including Elections Administrator Stephanie Cooper, County Attorney Matt Mills and County Judge Ron Massingill, alleging that the officials approved an illegal petition and allowed the incorporation question on the the ballot. The suit also alleged that there was not an official map showing the boundaries for the Mitchell Bend incorporation area. The company also alleged that its Constitutional rights and rights for due process were violated. Shortly after filing the lawsuit, MARA sought a temporary restraining order to try to stop the election from moving forward, but on Sunday evening, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor denied the motion. O’Connor stated in his ruling that MARA failed to prove that holding the election would cause irreparable harm and that the company still could challenge the election in court after it is held.

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School bonds fail in two Grayson County districts

Proposed school bonds in two Grayson County school districts were rejected by voters in Tuesday elections. The Van Alstyne Independent School District sought approval of a $550 million school bond package, which included new elementary and junior high schools, maintenance and transportation centers, and an administration building. Purchases of land for future use were also included in the budget. Unofficial results showed that 57 percent of voters in the Van Alstyne ISD said "no" to the proposal. Classroom renovations, five new school buses, and a new HVAC system for the district were all part Tom Bean ISD's $22 million bond. Unofficial results show that 60 percent of voters in the district rejected the funding plan.

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‘It’s disappointing,’ says Socorro ISD superintendent after voters narrowly reject tax rate proposition

Voters in the Socorro Independent School District narrowly rejected a tax measure that would have increased funding for the financially troubled district, leaving district leaders scrambling to move forward without the additional revenue. The district’s voter approval tax ratification election — or VATRE – asked voters to authorize an increase to the operations portion of their tax rates beyond the state’s limit, while reducing the debt payment tax by an equal amount. State law requires that voters approve such a step. With all votes counted, 52.8% of SISD voters cast ballots against the tax measure, with about 47.2% voting in favor of it – failing by about 6 percentage points, or 850 votes.

“It’s disappointing. We were obviously hoping for a better result, but we’re going to move forward. It’s going to be difficult. We are going to have to make some difficult decisions moving forward without the passage of Proposition A,” SISD Superintendent James Vasquez told El Paso Matters on Tuesday. Vasquez said the district will likely have to take out a loan to cover its expenses and is unsure if layoffs may be needed as student enrollment declines. “We’re anticipating about an 800 student loss next year. So we’re just hoping, through natural attrition, we’ll get there. But, we’ll see how that goes,” Vasquez said. The SISD school board voted to lay off 43 employees in May due to financial challenges and falling enrollment, though 23 of them were instead moved to vacant positions in the district. District leaders had projected up to 300 layoffs earlier in the year. Vaquez blamed the language on the ballot for the proposition’s failure and added the district needs to work on building the community’s trust. The measure appeared on the ballot as Proposition A.

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Kyle mayoral election heads to runoff

Voters in the City of Kyle will head back to the polls in December to decide who becomes the city’s next mayor. No one in the four candidate field received more than 50% of the vote in Tuesday’s special election, setting the stage for a runoff election between the top two candidates, Robert Rizo and Yvonne Flores-Cale. Rizo received just over 42% of the vote, while Flores-Cale finished with 32%. The runoff election will be held on December 13. The special election comes after incumbent Kyle Mayor Travis Mitchell announced he would resign from his office effective this month, one year before his term was scheduled to end. Mitchell, mayor since 2017, said he was proud of the city’s accomplishments during his tenure in a July Facebook post, noting strong investments made towards the Kyle Police Department, public parks and roads. “I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished and excited to watch as our new major investments begin to materialize in the years ahead,” he said. “I step down with confidence in our long-term position in the region.”

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Voters say no to Hays school district's proposed property tax hike

Voters said no Tuesday to a proposal by the Hays Consolidated Independent School District to raise its tax rate to pay for raises for teachers and staff. Proposition A called for an increase of 12 cents per $100 valuation, which would raise the district's property tax rate to $1.2746. As of 11 p.m., 60.9% of the 11,890 ballots cast were against the proposal, with 39.1% in favor, according the Hays County elections office. In Travis County, 83 votes had been cast in the race, with 56 against and 27 in favor, according to the Travis County elections office. Hays CISD spans much of northeastern Hays County, including the cities of Kyle and Buda, and edges slightly into Travis County.

District officials had said the tax increase would generate about $26 million in revenue, which it intended to use for cost-of-living raises for teachers and staff and to avoid the need for increased class sizes, according to its website. The district had said that the state's basic student allotment funding — the general funding that the state provides annually to each school district — has not kept pace with inflation since 2019. The district has dipped into its savings to offset inflation costs, and the savings are now "critically low," it says. On Tuesday, voters in Hays County also cast ballots for city council races in San Marcos — one of the fastest-growing cities in the U.S., home to Texas State University — as well as Kyle and Buda.

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Most North Texas bonds and VATREs pass

North Texas voters considered billions of dollars in school funding measures Tuesday. The largest bond was Richardson ISD’s $1.4 billion package, separated into three proposals. Unofficial results show all three propositions appeared to pass: Proposition A, worth $1.3 billion to fund new and renovated schools; Prop B, worth $54 million for technology; and Prop C, valued at nearly $7.4 million, to upgrade some stadiums and bring them into compliance with some federal laws. In Midlothian ISD, southeast of Fort Worth, unofficial early results show voters favoring all three propositions totaling $389 million.

Several districts sought approval for VATREs, Voter-Approval Tax Ratification Elections. While bonds can only legally fund capital projects, districts use VATREs to pay salaries, operating expenses and other costs, without incurring new debt. Carroll ISD: Voters appear to have approved a VATRE to generate roughly $4 million to help compensate for a budget deficit due to enrollment declines. Denton ISD: Early unofficial results show voters appear to have approved a VATRE worth $26 million to battle recent record inflation, restore previous budget reductions, and improve pay that to help retain teachers. Garland ISD: Its VATRE, which would generate $56 million in additional annual revenue for special education, salary hikes for improved teacher retention, student programs and added safety and security measures, appears to have passed, according to unofficial results. Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD: The VATRE worth $6.5 million to raise teacher and staff salaries and expand student programs appeared set to pass as of 10:45 p.m. Northwest ISD: A VATRE to generate about $12 million to help reduce class sizes and improve teacher compensation appeared set to pass, according to unofficial results. Rockwall ISD: The district’s $16.5 million VATRE, for underfunded mandates, competitive teacher compensation, and required safety measures, appears to have passed.

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Voter turnout exceeds expectations in Dallas, Collin counties, officials say

All 17 proposed amendments to the Texas Constitution on the ballot Tuesday were on track for approval, according to unofficial statewide returns, as voters across Dallas-Fort Worth also weighed in on a slate of local measures and a few contests for local and state offices. More voters in Dallas and Collin counties turned out on Election Day than expected, county elections officials told The Dallas Morning News. Voters cast ballots in city council races, bond measures and tax proposals in the cities of Duncanville, Farmers Branch, Glenn Heights, Mesquite and Sunnyvale. The Garland and Richardson school districts had tax and bond questions, respectively, on the ballot. And in northern Tarrant County, residents cast votes in a costly special election for state Senate — a three-way race driven in part by major contributions from some of the state’s most prolific GOP donors.

By 6:30 p.m., about 15.6% of Dallas County’s 1.4 million registered voters had cast ballots during early voting and on Election Day, according to Nicholas Solorzano, a county elections spokesperson. The turnout, he said, was higher than the 9% the department had projected. Seven polling locations still had lines by the 7 p.m. closing time, delaying when ballots could be tabulated, Solorzano said. As a result, the department decided not to release returns at 9 p.m., as it initially had planned. The online Dallas County election results page after 12 a.m. Wednesday updated to show 171 of 442 vote centers — roughly 38% — were reporting returns. Early voter turnout ahead of Election Day through in-person and mail early voting had been sparse. Roughly 7% of Dallas County’s 1.4 million registered voters cast a ballot, elections department data shows, during the two-week early voting period as of end of day Friday. About 8% of Collin County’s 755,390 registered voters had cast a ballot during the same period. Dallas County Elections Administrator Paul Adams said “local issues are always what drives turnout,” noting the limited number of local races this year may have contributed to the low early-voting turnout. Tuesday’s election was the first Adams has overseen in Dallas County since taking over Oct. 1 after previously running elections in Lorain County, Ohio.

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State employee says he was fired for promoting No Kings rally in Austin

A member of the Texas comptroller's office says he was fired for promoting on his personal social media platform last month's No King's rally at the Capitol. Caleb Newton, 26, said his role as a communications staffer at the state agency was not political and that his personal progressive leanings were no secret when he assumed his $70,000-a-year job in January 2023. The Texas State Employees Union called the dismissal a "blatant attack on protected political speech and a violation of First Amendment rights" and plans to hold a rally in Austin on Monday to call attention to the firing.

"I don't want to necessarily get into specifics, but I can assure you that it is pretty much about (the social media post)." Newton said in an interview on Tuesday. A spokesperson for comptroller's office did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Newton, whose job was to manage social media posts for the office, posted a minute-long video on his Instagram page on Oct. 16 that used the Capitol as its backdrop and called for people to take part in the rally that coming weekend. In it, Newton describes President Donald Trump as "that orange Skeletor in the White House" but did not cite specific policy disagreements. "The No Kings protest isn't perfect, but it is one tool that we should be using before it's too late," Newton said in the post. "If all of a sudden we can't march anymore, then we would be like, damn, I really wish we could do that. Well, your chance to do that is now." On his LinkedIn page, Newton described himself as a "Political Organizer" and "Social Media Saint." In addition to his work at the comptroller's office, he listed under "experience" his role as a consultant for the successful 2024 reelection campaign of Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza, a progressive Democrat. Garza has been the subject of intense criticism by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and police organizations who have said he is insufficiently aggressive when prosecuting criminal suspects. In 2022, Newton worked on the losing campaign for progressive Austin city council candidate Daniela Silva.

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National Stories

The GOP civil war over Nick Fuentes has just begun

Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist known for his deeply antisemitic, racist, and misogynist worldview, just might be tearing the Republican party apart. The schism was triggered last Tuesday when former Fox News host Tucker Carlson released an in-depth interview with Fuentes, the leader of the so-called America First movement who has denied the Holocaust, praised Hitler, and shared deeply misogynistic views. During the interview, Fuentes waxed antisemitic about the threat apparently posed by “organized Jewry” in America, while Carlson slammed figures like Senator Ted Cruz and former president George W. Bush as being “Christian Zionists” who have been ”seized by this brain virus.”

Carlson was criticized by, among others, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee for giving Fuentes a platform, and the argument kicked into overdrive after Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, a high-profile conservative think tank, condemned those attacking Carlson as a "venomous coalition.” “Tucker Carlson remains and always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation,” Roberts said in a video posted to X on Thursday. Roberts' comments, which were viewed by many as a tacit approval of Fuentes’ antisemitic worldview, triggered a massive split on the right, with everyone from prominent podcasters and influencers to senators and other lawmakers weighing in to attack or defend Roberts and Carlson. The debate continued to rage over the weekend as many claimed the situation was a reflection of a broader concern about a perceived rise in antisemitism within the MAGA movement. “In the last six months, I've seen more antisemitism on the right than I have in my entire life,” Cruz told the Republican Jewish Coalition conference in Las Vegas last Thursday, hours after Roberts’ video was released. “If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very, very cool and that their mission is to combat and defeat global Jewry, and you say nothing, then you’re a coward and you are complicit in that evil.”

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Donors to Trump’s ballroom are asked why they chose to remain incognito

Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut is asking a handful of business interests about their donations to President Trump’s ballroom project, and why they were not disclosed by the White House. “Many questions remain about the fund-raising for this project, including the amount of each contribution, the agreement reached with each contributor, what promises may have been or may yet be made in exchange for what presumably will be substantial contributions, and why the White House chose to allow donors to remain anonymous,” Mr. Blumenthal, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, wrote in letters to several donors who were revealed in a report by The New York Times over the weekend. The Trump administration has promised transparency about the funding of the ballroom that is replacing the East Wing of the White House.

But donors were given the option of remaining anonymous, and The Times found several whose identities were not disclosed by Mr. Trump’s team last month when a list of more than three dozen donors was released. Among them were the health care companies Vantive and Extremity Care, which are seeking to shape Medicare reimbursement rates for their products, and the Wall Street powerhouse BlackRock, whose bid to acquire a stake in Panama Canal ports has been supported by Mr. Trump amid opposition from China. An individual donor who was not disclosed by the White House is Jeff Yass, a major investor in TikTok’s parent company who could benefit from a Trump-backed deal to keep the social media app running in the United States. Nearly identical letters were prepared for each of the donors. Mr. Blumenthal asked each why they chose to remain anonymous and asserted that the fund-raising raises questions about “what promises may have been or may yet be made in exchange for what presumably will be substantial contributions.” In the letter to BlackRock’s chairman and chief executive, Larry Fink, Mr. Blumenthal wrote, “At what point did the White House offer you a choice for whether your name would appear on the list of donors released by the White House?” The corporations and a spokesman for Mr. Yass did not immediately respond to requests for comment about Mr. Blumenthal’s inquiry.

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DFL projected to keep control of Minnesota Senate after special elections

The DFL is projected to keep control of the Minnesota Senate after two seats were up for election Tuesday. Democrats are expected to keep a 33-32 advantage in the state Senate, after the resignation of DFL Sen. Nicole Mitchell and the death of Republican Sen. Bruce Anderson left two spots open. Republican Michael Holmstrom Jr. is the projected winner of Minnesota Senate District 29's special election, keeping the seat in the GOP's hands in the closely divided chamber. Holmstrom won over 62% of the vote, according to the Minnesota secretary of state's office, defeating DFL candidate Louis McNutt. Amanda Hemmingsen-Jaeger is projected to win the special election in Minnesota Senate District 47, filling the seat vacated by Nicole Mitchell's resignation and preserving the DFL's majority in the chamber.

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As world leaders enter climate talks, people in poverty have the most at stake

When summer heat comes to the Arara neighborhood in northern Rio, it lingers, baking the red brick and concrete that make up many of the buildings long after the sun has gone down. Luis Cassiano, who’s lived here more than 30 years, says he’s getting worried as heat waves become more frequent and fierce. In poor areas such as Arara, those who can afford air conditioning — Cassiano is one — can’t always count on it because of frequent power outages on an overloaded system. Cassiano gets some relief from the green roof he installed about a decade ago, which can keep his house up to 15 degrees Celsius (about 27 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler than his neighbor’s, but he still struggles to stay comfortable. “The sun in the summer nowadays is scary,” Cassiano said.

As world leaders come to Brazil for climate talks, people like Cassiano are the ones with the most at stake. Poor communities are often more vulnerable to hazards like extreme heat and supersized storms and less likely to have the resources to cope than wealthier places. Any help from the climate talks depends on countries not just laying out pledges and plans to lower emissions. They also need to find the political will to implement them, as well as come up with the billions of dollars needed to adapt everything from harvests to houses to better withstand human-caused climate change. All of it is sorely needed for the 1.1 billion people around the world who live in acute poverty, according to the United Nations. That’s why many have lauded the choice of Belem, a relatively poor city, to host these talks. “I am pleased that we will be going to a place like this, because this is where climate meets poverty, meets demand, meets financing needs, and meets the reality of the majority of the population of this world that are impacted by climate change,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme.

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Kansas legislators won't have a special session to join the US redistricting battle

The Kansas House’s top Republican on Tuesday dropped efforts to force a redraw of U.S. House districts that would have thrust the state into a widening national battle for partisan advantage in the 2026 elections. The announcement by House Speaker Dan Hawkins ended a weekslong push by GOP lawmakers to circumvent Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly and call themselves into a special session on redistricting, which would have convened Friday. A session would have targeted four-term U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, the only Democrat in the state’s four-person House delegation. Republicans still could draw a map designed to oust her after the GOP-supermajority Legislature convenes its next regular annual session in January. Indeed, state Senate President Ty Masterson promised immediately after Hawkins’ announcement that redistricting would be “a top priority” early next year.

Kansas Republicans were trying to answer President Donald Trump’s call for states to redraw their maps to give the GOP more winnable seats ahead of the 2026 midterms so the party stands a better chance of keeping its slim House majority. The Kansas constitution allowed Republicans to bypass Kelly’s refusal to call a special session by having two-thirds of the members of both chambers sign a petition. The GOP has the necessary supermajorities in both chambers, and enough GOP senators were on board, but a few House Republicans would not sign. Some GOP critics opposed a mid-decade redistricting, while others feared that changes could make the three other Republican-held districts more competitive for Democrats. “Planning a Special Session is always going to be an uphill battle with multiple agendas, scheduling conflicts and many unseen factors at play,” Hawkins said in a statement. Davids conceded that the fight over a new Kansas map isn’t over. “We’ve won the first round in this fight against gerrymandering,” she said in a statement. Kansas lawmakers haven’t done a mid-decade congressional redistricting since 1965, following federal court rulings requiring congressional and legislative districts to be as nearly equal in population as possible as a matter of fairness to all voters.

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Some Republicans honor Dick Cheney, while Trump remains silent

Prominent Republicans in Congress on Tuesday expressed admiration for the life and career of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who died on Monday, honoring the man whose later years were characterized by his staunch opposition to President Trump. Speaker Mike Johnson started off a news conference on Tuesday speaking about the former vice president and congressman. “The scripture is very clear — we give honor where honor is due,” Mr. Johnson said of Mr. Cheney. “The honor is certainly due to him, and our prayers go out to the family.” Standing next to Mr. Johnson, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican in the House, said that Mr. Cheney had “lived an incredible life” and that he and his colleagues mourned his passing.

Other Republicans joined Mr. Johnson in paying tribute to Mr. Cheney, breaking with the president, who has remained silent on the death of a towering conservative who called Mr. Trump “a coward” and the greatest “threat to our republic.” In the 2024 presidential race, he supported Mr. Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Former Representative Liz Cheney, his daughter, was one of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump for inciting violence and a deadly riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Ms. Cheney then lost her re-election bid in 2022 to her primary opponent, whom Mr. Trump backed. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said that the White House had not been involved in planning Mr. Cheney’s funeral but that Mr. Trump was aware of the former vice president’s passing. She also noted that the American flags at the White House had been lowered to half-staff “in accordance with statutory law.”

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Mississippi Democrats break Republican Senate supermajority, flipping 3 legislative seats

After 13 years, Mississippi Democrats have broken the Republican Party’s supermajority in the Mississippi Senate. Voters elected Democrats to two seats previously held by Republicans, reducing the number of Republican senators in the upper chamber from 36 to 34—one fewer than necessary to constitute a supermajority. “Mississippi just broke the supermajority—and the people have taken back their power,” the Mississippi Democratic Party wrote in social media posts Tuesday night. “From the Delta to the Pine Belt, voters stood up for fair leadership and community progress: Better schools. Fairer representation. Expanded healthcare. Good-paying jobs.” When a party has supermajority status in the Mississippi Senate, it can more easily override a governor’s veto, propose constitutional amendments and execute certain procedural actions.

In the Mississippi Pine Belt region, Democrat Johnny DuPree won Senate District 45, previously held by Republican Sen. Chris Johnson of Hattiesburg. In North Mississippi, Democrat Theresa Gillespie Isom won the Senate District 2 seat held by Republican Sen. David Parker of Olive Branch, who decided not to run for reelection. Republicans had held a supermajority in the Senate since sweeping the state government in 2011. In the House, Democrat Justin Crosby also flipped House District 22, defeating incumbent Republican House Rep. Jon Lancaster. That district includes parts of Chickasaw, Clay and Monroe counties. The victories followed Tuesday’s special legislative elections. Six Senate seats were up for a special election on Tuesday, along with one House seat, because a federal court ordered the State to create more Black-majority legislative districts earlier this year. Two other Senate districts were up for special elections to fill vacated seats, along with a House seat. Democrats will likely hold 18 Senate seats when the Legislature returns to session in January 2026.

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Democrats flip two seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission

Democrats Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson have delivered an upset in Georgia’s off-year special election Tuesday, defeating two Republican incumbents on the state’s Public Service Commission. The double victory marks the first time the Democratic Party has won a statewide constitutional office in Georgia since 2006 and reshapes the political landscape ahead of the pivotal 2026 midterm elections. As of 10:15 p.m., Alicia Johnson led with about 60.5% of the vote, according to unofficial results from the Georgia Secretary of State’s website, while Hubbard carried 60.7% of the vote. The PSC regulates Georgia’s major utilities, including Georgia Power, and its decisions directly impact residential energy bills.

Republican incumbent Tim Echols, who has served on the commission since 2011, congratulated Johnson Tuesday night. “Congratulations to Dr. Alicia Johnson for her well-fought victory tonight. I pray your experience on the PSC will be as meaningful as mine. Godspeed to you,” Echols posted online. Alicia Johnson in a statement pledged to support energy policy at the PSC that benefits the public, rather than catering to the interests of powerful energy companies. “This victory isn’t just mine, it’s ours. It’s for the single mother choosing between groceries and her power bill, the senior trying to keep the lights on, and the young voter who showed up believing that their voice matters,” Johnson said in a press release. Hubbard, a clean energy advocate, ousted Republican incumbent Commissioner Fitz Johnson in the District 3 race. In a statement, Hubbard framed the results as a clear mandate from voters frustrated by soaring power costs.

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Lead Stories

Former Vice President Dick Cheney dead at 84

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who extolled the power of the presidency, died Monday at the age of 84, his family said in a statement. The cause was complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, the statement said. "Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing," the statement said. "We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for our country. And we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man." There was little in Cheney's early life to foreshadow the immensely influential role he would one day play at the highest levels of American politics. Born the son of a government conservation worker in Lincoln, Neb., in 1941, he would flunk out of Yale University and work as a lineman for a power company in his new home state of Wyoming; toss in a pair of drunken-driving convictions, and it's an inauspicious young adulthood.

But turn it around Cheney did: marriage to his high school sweetheart, Lynn; two children; a college degree at the University of Wyoming; graduate school at the University of Wisconsin. While Cheney was turning his life around, the U.S. was caught in the throes of the Vietnam War. Cheney supported that war but never fought in it. He received five military deferments. Critics would seize upon this decades later, as Cheney helped lead the U.S. into another controversial war — the one in Iraq. The future vice president began his political career as a congressional intern in 1969. That same year he went to work for a future partner in the Bush administration — Donald Rumsfeld, who ran an economics office in the Nixon White House. Cheney left the White House before Nixon's resignation, but in 1974 he was back working for the new president, Gerald Ford. Cheney moved up quickly, becoming Ford's chief of staff at the age of 34. It was then that he began to develop a philosophy that would come to full flower in the White House of George W. Bush. His belief was that the power of the presidency must be not only protected, but also restored. In the 1970s, he watched as Congress enacted reforms in response to Watergate and to Vietnam. "We've seen the War Powers Act, an anti-impoundment control act, and time after time after time, administrations have traded away the authority of the president to do his job," he said in a 2002 interview on Fox News. "We're not going to do that in this administration. The president is bound and determined to defend those principles and to pass on this office, his and mine, to future generations in better shape than we found it."

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Trump’s foe in tariffs case? A legal group funded by conservatives with a lot of Texas ties.

President Donald Trump is used to battles at the Supreme Court against liberal advocacy groups, but Wednesday’s high-stakes argument over his tariff policy features a very different foe — a legal center funded without public disclosure by some of the country’s wealthiest conservatives. The cases on which the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments were brought by small businesses, which argue that Trump’s tariffs have harmed them by raising their costs. Standing behind them, however — and paying for some of the high-priced legal talent — is the Liberty Justice Center, a nonprofit group with a libertarian-leaning agenda that has previously challenged public-sector unions and sued to prevent the ban on TikTok from taking effect. Liberty Justice Center does not disclose the names of its donors, but a Washington Post analysis of tax filings found that since 2020, it has received money from Donors Trust, the Walton Family Foundation and the Bradley Foundation, all of which have been prominent conservative donors.

Donors Trust is a fund that receives money from wealthy donors whose identities are not disclosed and steers it toward conservative causes. The group has frequently backed organizations associated with Federalist Society co-Chairman Leonard Leo, who counseled Trump on judicial picks during his first presidential term, but whom Trump denounced in May, in part because of the tariff case. Liberty Justice Center is also listed as a national partner of the State Policy Network, a network of conservative nonprofit organizations with links to Charles and David Koch that also receives funding from Donors Trust. Some of the most prominent groups and scholars associated with the conservative movement have sided against Trump in the tariff lawsuit, highlighting how import taxes have emerged as one of the clearest fault lines between the president’s MAGA base and the free-market groups that defined Republican politics before Trump. Filings in the case reflect that split: Prominent conservative economists, lawyers and judges have submitted briefs backing the businesses challenging the tariffs. One was signed by 31 former judges appointed by Presidents Ronald M. Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. The Chamber of Commerce, which was aligned with the Republican Party for decades before Trump, also filed a brief supporting the companies, as did the conservative Washington Legal Foundation and experts from groups widely viewed as right of center, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Cato Institute.

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What to watch in a pivotal election night for both parties

Donald Trump is going to loom large tonight. How large? We consulted with close election watchers, including those from our Washington Bureau Initiative partners, on how they’ll be tracking election night. New York City: Perhaps you have heard there is a mayoral election going on. Look to southeast Queens and eastern parts of Brooklyn, Haidee Chu, a reporter at NOTUS partner The City, told us. Middle-class Black voters in those areas have been key to mayoral races. They favored Cuomo in June’s Democratic primary. Zohran Mamdani has focused on those voters since. “I’d be curious to see whether Mamdani was able to expand his base there with his army of volunteers, and if not, whether he’d be able to clinch the election without them,” Chu said.

New Jersey: “I had a Democratic county chairman over the weekend say, ‘Thank God for Donald Trump,’” the New Jersey Globe’s David Wildstein told us. “If Kamala Harris were the president, Ciattarelli would be 10 points up.” There’s two places to look to see how Trump is playing, Wildstein says. Long lines at polling places in major cities? It’s a sign Mikie Sherrill has used Trump to her advantage. Huge turnout in Lakewood, New Jersey? It’s a sign Republicans have activated a broadened base — in this case, a large Orthodox Jewish population. In Virginia, watch House of Delegates District 57 in Henrico County, one of the most purple Republican-held seats Democrats are targeting. “That should be the first to flip … If it fails to flip, it suggests a rough night for Democrats,” Michael Pope, the host of “The Virginia Press Room” podcast, told us. On the other hand, if you see Harrisonburg — the reddest district Democrats are targeting — go blue, Abigail Spanberger is having a really good night. In Pennsylvania, Maine and California, the most interesting things to watch are maybe what comes next. PA’s judicial-retention races will say a lot about money in politics, NOTUS partner Spotlight PA told us. Maine voters will decide whether the state should have one of the strictest voter ID laws in the country for 2026, NOTUS partner The Maine Monitor reports. And California’s Prop 50 redistricting push is expected to bring an announcement about Nancy Pelosi’s future.

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Data shows how immigration crackdown plays out in Texas

On the evening of July 1, Luis Medrano called Houston police for help after his wife had gotten violent and punched him twice in the face during a schizophrenic episode in which she was hearing tormenting voices, according to a police report. Medrano, 50, a Mexican immigrant who met his wife when they crossed the Rio Grande with a group of about a dozen other migrants more than three decades ago, had tried to take his 47-year-old wife to the hospital, but she refused to go. So he did what he’d done three times before: called the police so they would take her to a hospital. But this time, the officer arrested her on suspicion of assault and booked her into jail. And after a prosecutor dismissed the case, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as ICE, picked her up from jail and eventually deported her to Mexico.

In Texas, which has the second-largest population of undocumented immigrants in the country — with more than 1.6 million of the estimated 13.7 million nationally — the local criminal justice system has become the main funnel sending undocumented immigrants into ICE custody, according to a Texas Tribune analysis of federal government data. Medrano’s story is emblematic of how the Trump administration has intensified its immigration enforcement compared to Trump’s first term, which focused largely on the southern border amid a record number of asylum seekers. The administration’s focus has now shifted to Democrat-led states such as California, Illinois and New York, where witnesses have recorded masked ICE agents using force in some cases to arrest people at worksites, immigration courts, commercial parking lots and at their homes. From Trump’s inauguration to July 29, ICE made 138,068 arrests nationwide, 24% of them in Texas. The Tribune analyzed ICE’s enforcement data from September 2023 to late July 2025, comparing the last 18 months of the Biden administration with the first six months of the Trump administration’s second term. The data, obtained through a public records request to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security by the Deportation Data Project, a group of immigration lawyers and professors, shows that in Texas: ICE’s average daily arrests have more than doubled from 85 under Biden to 176 under Trump. Daily arrests have jumped about 30 percentage points in the ICE regions that include Houston and Dallas. About 52% of ICE arrests have been of people in local jails, down from 61% during the Biden administration. Arrests of people who had not been convicted of a crime have increased from 42% under Biden to 59% under Trump. The Harris County Jail leads the country in ICE detainers — a request from immigration agents to hold a person for deportation — while jails in Dallas, Bexar and Travis counties have also been in the top 10.

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State Stories

New emails show what happened before a Texas A&M professor’s firing

When Texas A&M University President Mark A. Welsh III fired a professor after a video of her children’s literature class went viral in early September, he framed his decision as “academic responsibility.” The discussion of gender and sexuality captured in the video, recorded on July 29, didn’t “align with any reasonable expectation of standard curriculum,” Welsh said. He added that he only learned “yesterday” — September 8 — of a decision by two administrators that approved plans for a fall course teaching content inconsistent with its published description, which led him to both fire the instructor and remove the administrators from their roles. However, emails obtained by The Chronicle via a public-records request show Welsh was more involved in managing the situation than his statements suggested. Welsh, who resigned September 19, did not respond to messages seeking comment on Friday. In late July, Welsh corresponded directly with several students who raised objections about the course content and atmosphere.

In August, he repeatedly communicated with administrators and the instructor, Melissa McCoul, regarding the status of her fall course, a young-adult literature offering that would also cover LGBTQ themes. And McCoul said that based on conversations with her department head, she had gotten the message that she had Welsh’s backing to teach her fall class. As she relayed it, Welsh’s primary concern was a repeat of what happened over the summer. McCoul’s summer class, “Literature for Children,” rose to Welsh’s attention the second week of the summer semester. Aiming to “define both childhood and children’s literature and the problems with those definitions,” it was taught jointly by McCoul, who had taught similar classes since 2017, and her department head, Emily Johansen. On July 10, a user on X posted an apparent class slide, titled “Why Talk About Queerness At All.” Addressing why “genders and sexualities” was being discussed in a children’s literature class, the slide said the goal was to challenge “heteronormativity.” The user, who claimed his daughter was in the class, called the content a “woke onslaught” from McCoul, tagging various other accounts, including Texas State Rep. Brian Harrison, a Republican and longtime critic of Texas A&M’s governance. Harrison reposted it.

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Dan Crenshaw, Ted Cruz denounce Tucker Carlson over interview with Nick Fuentes

U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz are speaking out against television host Tucker Carlson for hosting the white nationalist activist Nick Fuentes on his podcast last week, an appearance that has divided Republicans nationally. In an appearance Sunday on CBS's Face the Nation, Crenshaw rejected those defending Fuentes' right to free speech, saying, "moral clarity is a lot more important in this case." "I've had a longstanding feud with Tucker Carlson," he said of the former Fox News host. "I'm glad everyone else is also waking up now to how bad of a person he is." Fuentes has a history of making antisemitic statements, including praising Adolf Hitler and questioning the death toll of the Holocaust.

On Carlson's show, he denied he was an antisemite, saying his criticisms of Israeli foreign policy had prompted pro-Israel Republicans to attack him as "radioactive" and "ostracize (him) from the movement." Carlson then went on to rail against Cruz, former president George W. Bush and Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, as being "Christian zionists" who have been "seized by this brain virus.” Cruz, who chairs the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell condemned Carlson for having Fuentes on his show. “I think it is incumbent of all people of good morals to stand up to it. And to stand up to it whether it is the opposing party or your own party," Cruz said in a speech in Las Vegas. He and Carlson have butted heads in the past, including this summer in an interview that delved into America's support for Israel's military actions. Some conservatives have defended Carlson, including Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, who previously led the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Roberts said in a video statement Thursday that the host was being attacked by a "venemous coalition."

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Here are the key Tesla shareholders backing Elon Musk's $1 trillion pay package — and who's against

The battle over Elon Musk's $1 trillion pay package is heating up. Tesla's chair, Robyn Denholm, sent a letter to shareholders on Monday warning them that Musk may choose to leave the company if they do not pass the massive compensation plan at its annual meeting next week. The package, which could be worth as much as $1 trillion if Musk hits a series of ambitious revenue and product goals over the next decade, has faced pushback. Proxy firms ISS and Glass Lewis have both recommended that shareholders vote against it, leading Musk to brand them as "corporate terrorists" in a fiery conclusion to Tesla's earnings call last week. Some notable shareholders have publicly supported the package, but others have been more critical, with Norway's $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund saying on Tuesday it had voted against it.

With the vote to potentially make Musk the world's first trillionaire looming, here's where Tesla's most high-profile investors stand. The State Board of Administration of Florida, a fund that manages assets worth over $280 billion and counts former presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis as its chairman, said last week it would back the proposed pay package. The board, which holds over $1 billion in Tesla shares, described the 2025 CEO performance award as a "bold, performance-driven incentive structure." ARK Invest CEO and longtime Tesla bull Cathie Wood said in October she was confident Musk's pay package would pass, and that it could lead Tesla to "super-exponential growth," adding that she disagreed with Glass Lewis and ISS. Tesla is the biggest holding in ARK's portfolio, with the firm holding around $1 billion worth of shares. Baron Capital, the investment firm founded by billionaire Ron Baron, said on Tuesday it supported Tesla's proposed 2025 CEO Performance Award. The firm invests in Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, and says shares in Musk's companies make up around 26% of its $44 billion in assets. New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli wrote a letter to Tesla shareholders last week, urging them to vote against the compensation plan and criticizing the board for an "alarming lack of independence." The state's retirement fund holds over three and a half million Tesla shares, valued at about $1.7 billion, according to a recent SEC filing.

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Dallas debates scrapping City Hall for possibility of 'catalytic economic development'

Numerous Dallas residents gathered outside of City Hall to oppose a plan to tear it down. The 48-year-old building, built by famed architect I.M. Pei, is the center of ongoing discussions. City staff and some Council members appear ready to scrap it and move the seat of government to an office tower downtown, allowing developers to take over. But the people who attended Monday night's listening session aren't on board. "We are the taxpayers," said one longtime Dallas resident. "We paid the bill for this building. And to have someone come in and say, 'We’re just gonna sell it out from under you?' I’m sorry – that to me is criminal."

Council members Cara Mendelsohn and Paul Ridley hosted the meeting and heard one passionate plea after another. "I never thought I’d fight city hall about City Hall," said Veletta Forsythe-Lill, who served on council from 1997 to 2005. Earlier in the day, Council members heard a presentation from city staff outlining the building's many deficiencies in need of repair and suggesting Dallas taxpayers could save hundreds of millions of dollars by moving to a leased office tower. "Investing dollars that’s going to do no more than putting lipstick on a pig, I cannot support that," said Council member Maxie Johnson. City staff said vacating the site could result in a "catalytic new development" on the site that builds on the momentum of ongoing renovations of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, revitalizes downtown and adds to the city's tax rolls.

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Jerry Jones said that the Cowboys made a trade — and then team sources pumped the brakes on his reveal

It appears Dallas Cowboys general manager and owner Jerry Jones has jumped the gun a bit. On Monday, just one day ahead of the NFL trade deadline, Jones appeared on the Stephen A. Smith Show on SiriusXM and announced in no uncertain terms that the Cowboys had made a deal. "We certainly have made a trade, and we may make a couple more trades before that deadline," Jones said. "We’ve made one. We possibly could make two more." Jones did not disclose with whom the deal was made or which players were involved, but alluded to Dallas receiving a player that could be plugged into the system and immediately address the Cowboys' "shortcomings." That sentiment would seem to imply that the Cowboys are making a deal for a strong defensive player. Despite having the top-ranked offense this season, the Cowboys' defense has been ranked the worst in the NFL.

However, according to multiple team sources, the trade Jerry spoke on doesn't exist — at least not yet. "Not just yet," Cowboys public relations reps wrote to WFAA when reached out to about a deal. "Possible though." Another team source confirmed to WFAA that the Cowboys "haven't done anything yet." Of course, "yet" is the common theme in both of those responses. Jones, to his credit or to his detriment, only continued to double down on his comments when he appeared on ESPN alongside NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman ahead of the team's Monday Night Football game against the Arizona Cardinals to announce that AT&T Stadium would host a NHL Stadium Series match featuring the Dallas Stars in 2027. After sharing details on that forthcoming hockey event, Monday Night Countdown host Scott Van Pelt asked Jones to clarify what he'd told Smith earlier in the day. "Well, I hope you will appreciate that, since the deadline is tomorrow, details are tomorrow," Jones said with a laugh. "The idea is, are we busy thinking about it, or am I sitting up here thinking about oil and gas, or am I trying to build a team, trying to get our defense ready to go? I've taken a little kidding about some of my comments recently about our oil and gas business. But, seriously, this is a time when we have a chance to help the Cowboys, and any time that I can do that, we burn the midnight oil. And there's a good chance that we'll have some things to talk about tomorrow."

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Early voting hits 20-year high for odd-year November election in Bexar County

More than 143,000 Bexar County residents cast early ballots ahead of Tuesday’s election, when voters will decide whether to devote county tax dollars to building the Spurs a downtown home court. That amounts to an early in-person turnout of just over 11% of the county’s registered voters — the highest rate for an odd-year November election since 2005, according to a San Antonio Express-News analysis of turnout for the last two decades. On average, just 3.6% of Bexar County registered voters cast ballots early in odd-year November elections in the last 20 years, with total turnout — including Election Day — averaging 8%.

Interest in two separate, but related, ballot measures is fueling the increased turnout. Bexar County is proposing keeping its tax on rental cars at 5% and increasing its tax on hotels from 1.75% to 2% to generate revenue of $503 million. Proposition B would provide up to $311 million of this revenue to help pay for a $1.3 billion arena at the former Institute of Texan Cultures site at Hemisfair. The city would contribute $489 million and Spurs Sports & Entertainment would kick in $500 million and cover any cost overruns. Proposition A would provide the remaining $192 million to upgrade the Freeman Coliseum, Frost Bank Center and facilities operated by the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo so the rodeo can expand its programming year-round — a bid to prevent these county-owned facilities from becoming a wasteland if the team leaves the East Side for downtown.

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'So great a prejudice': Pete Arredondo says he can't get fair trial in Uvalde

Attorneys for former Uvalde school district police chief Pedro "Pete" Arredondo are asking a judge to move his criminal trial out of Uvalde County, saying he could not get a fair trial there. Arredondo, 53, is charged with 10 counts of abandoning or endangering children stemming from his response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde on May 24, 2022. A teenager wielding a high-powered rifle killed 19 fourth graders and two teachers. Arredondo was the incident commander in charge of the police response. He and law enforcement officials from numerous agencies drew widespread criticism for letting 77 minutes pass before confronting and killing the gunman.

"A change of venue is necessary because there exists in this county so great a prejudice against Mr. Arredondo that he cannot obtain a fair and impartial trial," said the motion filed by Arredondo's attorneys in state district court. "Widespread and ongoing negative media publicity has made Mr. Arredondo a scapegoat of the local and national media to an extent unmatched in Uvalde’s history." The motion says "inflammatory and prejudicial statements" about Arredondo by officials of the Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as state lawmakers, have prejudiced the pool of potential jurors in Uvalde County. "Because of the profound and widespread impact of the school shooting on the entire Uvalde community, the division it has caused within the community, the widespread negative publicity that is ongoing, and the fear instilled in residents of the community, Mr. Arredondo cannot receive a fair trial from a jury free of prejudice in Uvalde County," the motion stated. Senior State District Judge Sid Harle has yet to rule on the motion. In an affidavit, Arredondo said he believes the prejudice against him "has been exacerbated by the ongoing release of additional evidence and personnel records."

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NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman slams Mavericks’ ‘frivolous’ arena lawsuit against Stars

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman on Monday slammed what he called a “frivolous” lawsuit by the Mavericks against the Stars, as the legal filing was altered to remove an emergency order. Bettman — speaking to media at AT&T Stadium following the NHL’s announcement that the Stars would host a 2027 Stadium Series game at AT&T Stadium — initially stated the injunction was vacated. The Stars’ legal counsel and Mavericks later clarified that the Mavericks only withdrew their demand for an immediate temporary injunction hearing. The Mavericks filed suit against their American Airlines Center co-tenant on Oct. 28, seeking legal finality on an alleged breach of contract dispute. The Stars filed a counterclaim hours later, seeking to restore normal operations at the arena.

“I understand the injunction that was initially issued was vacated today,” Bettman said. “No surprise because I think the initial lawsuit was frivolous. I don’t know what’s motivating it. … This doesn’t make any sense on a whole host of levels, unless it’s just somebody who thinks [the Stars] can be pushed around, and that’s not the hockey mentality to be pushed around.” An injunction is a court order that compels a party to either do or refrain from doing a specific act temporarily or permanently. When the Mavericks filed their lawsuit last week, they demanded a temporary injunction that would have revoked the Stars’ joint control of American Airlines Center. On Monday, the Mavericks withdrew that demand. The Stars and Mavericks still intend to go to trial or reach a settlement to resolve their differences, according to the Stars’ statement. “The Mavericks’ decision is no surprise, given there is no emergency involving the condition of the AAC requiring immediate court intervention — much less the temporary revocation of the Stars’ joint control rights,” the Stars statement said. “The Dallas Stars and Mavericks have successfully co-managed the American Airlines Center for decades, and this collaborative relationship has continued despite the Mavericks’ takeover attempt in 2024. Hopefully the issue of the teams’ joint and mutual operations of the AAC will continue until this business dispute is finally resolved via settlement or at trial.”

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The full Fifth Circuit will hear Ten Commandments case

All 17 justices on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit will hear arguments against Texas and Louisiana laws that require schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms. In a response filed last week, the court says it will hear the two cases jointly in January and that the court clerk “will issue an expedited briefing schedule.” The Attorney General’s office argues that the display is “passive” and does not require students to do anything, so it isn’t violating anyone’s rights.

Three lawsuits in Texas seek to prevent it, arguing in part that the measure is unconstitutional, going against the First Amendment’s guarantee for freedom of religion by highlighting only Christianity. Some have also argued that the requirement, which could require school districts to spend money purchasing the posters, violates the Constitution’s Establishment Clause. The lawsuit that will be heard by the Fifth was filed by 16 families in July, some religious and some non-religious. It lists several school districts as defendants, including Plano ISD. Among the plaintiffs is Mara Richards Bim, whose child attends school in that district. Bim is the founder of the now-closed Cry Havoc Theatre, and is also affiliated with the Royal Lane Baptist Church. Another suit was filed that same month in Dallas against Dallas, DeSoto, and Lancaster school districts. The parents involved are all ministers or community advocates. Another 15 families filed suit in September, naming 14 school districts, including Arlington ISD, Azle ISD, Fort Worth ISD, Frisco ISD, Lovejoy ISD, Mansfield ISD, McKinney ISD, Northwest ISD, and Rockwall ISD.

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UT faculty group issues new definition of 'academic freedom'

The University of Texas affirmed its “non-negotiable” commitment to academic freedom and serving the public in a new faculty-drafted statement on academic integrity. The statement, released Monday, is designed to serve as a state model for balancing professors' rights to speech with higher education’s responsibility to provide a balanced education. However, some freedom of speech advocates and a professor group worry the statement lacks specifics on what speech will be protected. In 900 words, the faculty group defines academic integrity as “the responsible exercise of academic freedom” in a manner that aligns intellectual honesty in teaching, moral responsibility and the pursuit of knowledge. It encourages universities, faculty and students to cultivate a culture of humility and curiosity to best question perceived truths, welcome new ideas and encourage respectful debate — while adhering to the limits of academic freedom.

“At its core, academic integrity forges a solemn trust between the instructor and the students, and between the university and the state and nation. It is that trust that we reaffirm here,” the statement concludes. “And it is that trust that will continue to ensure that what starts here changes the world.” The statement on academic integrity, introduced as the “Texas Way,” defines academic freedom as “the liberty to research, teach, and educate students in our collective pursuit of truth and knowledge” while creating an environment where students are free from indoctrination, harassment, or fear from repercussions of speaking their minds. In a recent social media post, Gov. Greg Abbott reflected on the dismissal of one of UT’s top academic leaders, saying, “We must end indoctrination and return to education fundamentals at all levels of education.” Conservative critics of higher education have sometimes referred to curriculum related to race or LGBTQ studies as “indoctrination.”

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7 women now charged in $100M Fort Bend hospice fraud scheme

Four more people have been charged in connection with a Fort Bend County Medicare scam, meaning seven are now accused of stealing tens of millions of dollars from the government by charging the health care fund for hospice care for patients who weren't actually dying. Hattie Banks, Lydia Obere, Cheryl Brooks and Ena Cowart were indicted by a federal grand jury on Oct. 8. All four were charged with healthcare fraud and two felony conspiracy charges related to the fraud and a plan to receive kickbacks. Banks, Obere and Brooks were also accused of receiving kickbacks.

The indictment also added to the list of charges against three people already charged in connection with the scheme: Dera Ogudo, Victoria Martinez and Evelyn Shaw. In June, the Justice Department accused the women of participating in a yearslong scam that falsely billed Medicare for more than $100 million. Ogudo and Martinez owned hospices and group homes in Fort Bend County, including United Palliative & Hospice Care, Cedar Hospice, Residential Hospice, Real Comfort Care and Elizabeth Gardens. Martinez is referred to in court documents as a paper owner who worked for Ogudo. The women allegedly solicited referrals from people like Shaw, a discharge planner at a Houston-area psychiatric hospital, for patients to receive care at their businesses, according to the indictment.

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Houston oil company probes alleged leak of insider information involving golf star Phil Mickelson

Sable Offshore, an embattled Houston oil company that has spent much of the year going up against California’s governor, launched an investigation Monday into allegations its chief executive shared insider information. In a report published late last week by the investigative publication Hunterbrook, leaked audio and group messages appear to show Sable’s CEO Jim Flores discussing undisclosed financial filings and prospects with a select group of investors — sometimes days before any public disclosures were made. The trusted investor group included American golf pro Phil Mickelson, Hunterbrook reported. Mickelson settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2016 for an insider trading incident involving Dean Foods Company.

It’s the latest in a series of obstacles for Sable, which is fighting the state of California, environmentalists, and some of its own investors as it aims to ramp up production off the coast of Santa Barbara. The company said Monday during an investor call that it “formed a special committee to conduct an independent review” into the Hunterbrook allegations. “We have no further comment on this matter while this investigation is ongoing,” Harrison Breud, head of investor relations for Sable Offshore, said during the call. Shares of the company have sunk nearly 40% since the allegations were aired Friday. In one moment of the leaked call published by Hunterbrook, which took place in October, Flores allegedly told the small group of investors that the company would need to raise around $200 million in equity within weeks. This claim was seemingly confirmed Monday during a public investor call in which Sable disclosed it would need to raise $225 million in equity funding in order to extend the maturity date of its key loan from Exxon Mobil, the prior owner of the embattled cluster of offshore California oil fields known as the Santa Ynez Unit.

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New high-rise height limit now in effect for downtown Austin

Austin officials implemented interim building regulations for high-rise projects in the downtown area in response to a new state law meant to spur housing development across Texas.The update caps new construction in much of the city core at 350 feet, unless they provide streetscape improvements and affordable housing funds. The change is expected to be short-lived with wider revisions to downtown development policies next year. This year's Senate Bill 840, known as "residential in commercial," allowed mixed-use and multifamily projects in places previously reserved for commercial uses only. Under that law, sites with at least 65% of their square footage dedicated to housing qualify as mixed-use, while those with three or more units qualify as multifamily.

Austin planners and officials have been working to address SB 840's effects on local regulations, including city bonus programs that help create affordable housing as new development takes place. Austin traditionally based some of those programs around the floor-to-area ratio, or FAR, density calculation. But SB 840 now blocks FAR restrictions for new residential development, moving Austin to center policy around building height instead. The law's requirements now apply along many major city corridors where commercial zoning is in place. SB 840 has a particular impact in the Central Business District, or CBD, given a key building program there that'd been based on FAR. Much of Austin's skyline is made up of towers developed through the city's Downtown Density Bonus Program. The program requires projects to adhere to Great Streets standards at the ground level, bringing wider sidewalks with more pedestrian amenities to city streets. Development under the program must also contribute to affordable housing, a process that's generated tens of millions of dollars for those purposes over the years.

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City Stories

Communities in Schools supports student attendance, mental health in New Braunfels

In her role as a Communities in Schools of South Central Texas (CIS) site coordinator, Kelsey Plant has helped students on the verge of dropping out go on to achieve accomplishments they never before imagined for themselves. CIS has been working to empower students to succeed in school and life for more than 30 years, reaching over 43,000 students across 60 schools, according to the nonprofit’s website. The local nonprofit is part of a national network that aims to connect families with resources and allow students to reach their full potential. Plant, one of two CIS site coordinators at New Braunfels High School, said CIS works to prepare students to be successful adults in a safe environment.

She is there for students who may need someone to talk to and provides a quiet space for students to process their feelings. She helps students learn problem solving skills, resiliency and prepare for college, as well as checks in with students struggling with attendance. Through various supports, Plant said she has seen students improve “leaps and bounds” along their own individual journeys. “Even when you see them struggling academically, the more you talk to them, it’s always because there’s something else going on, and so the more that they’re able to come and talk about those things safely, the better their mood is, the more willing they are to try the other things,” Plant said, “and so then, you see the attendance improve, the academics improve, all those other things improve because they are feeling better about themselves or feeling more secure in whatever is going on.” CIS has site coordinators on all New Braunfels Independent School District campuses and a handful for the Comal Independent School District. The site coordinators get to know students and their families really well, said Holley Digby, director of mental health and wellness. “What makes us unique is that they’re on the campus, they know the families, they know the students,” Digby said. “They see them every day, they have those relationships with teachers and admin, and so they’re really well trusted.”

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National Stories

Trump administration says SNAP will be partially funded in November

President Donald Trump’s administration said Monday that it will partially fund SNAP for November, after two judges issued rulings requiring the government to keep the nation’s largest food aid program running. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, had planned to freeze payments starting Nov. 1 because it said it could no longer keep funding it during the federal government shutdown. The program serves about 1 in 8 Americans and is a major piece of the nation’s social safety net. It costs more than $8 billion per month nationally. The government says an emergency fund it will use has $4.65 billion — enough to cover about half the normal benefits. Exhausting the fund potentially sets the stage for a similar situation in December if the shutdown isn’t resolved by then. It’s not clear exactly how much beneficiaries will receive, nor how quickly they will see value show up on the debit cards they use to buy groceries. November payments have already been delayed for millions of people.

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Inside the talks to open the government

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday that the Senate is “getting close to an offramp” to end the shutdown, citing bipartisan talks among a group of rank-and-file senators. We have a full in-the-room update on that. News: The outlines of a potential deal to end the shutdown are starting to take shape, although the talks are very fragile at this point and there’s still a long way to go. Senators and aides involved in negotiations tell us some Senate Democrats are warming to Thune’s offer to open the government and then hold a vote by a date-certain on renewing the extending the expiring Obamacare subsidies. Senators involved in these talks include Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Katie Britt (R-Ala.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and Mike Rounds (R-S.D.).

The shutdown has become too painful, many of these Democrats believe, and Republicans clearly aren’t going to cave by negotiating an Obamacare deal before the stalemate ends. A date-certain vote on Obamacare subsidies creates another new deadline and allows time to craft a bill that could win enough GOP support. Now that open enrollment has begun, these Democrats say, they can blame Republicans for premium hikes — as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer did during a floor speech Monday — and use that to pressure GOP senators on the issue. The second element under discussion involves pairing the stopgap funding bill to open the government with a three-bill minibus and other guarantees to pass full-year appropriations bills on an agreed-upon timeline. “There’s certainly ways to do that,” Peters told us. “We all want to have a real appropriations process … We’ve passed a number of bills [in committee], broadly bipartisan. I’d like to actually see those get signed into law.” The attractive part of this offer for senators would be to avoid a full-year CR that many hardline House Republicans and the White House want. You may have noticed that most of the senators involved in these talks are also appropriators. That’s no coincidence.

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This famous method of valuing stocks is pointing toward some rough years ahead

“Uncharted territory” is a phrase investors hear a lot these days. There are, in fact, updated charts out there, and they point to some difficult times ahead. Consider what seems like one of the clearest comparisons of how much we pay for a piece of the world’s largest, most-rewarding stock index. As of last week, its multiple of sales was higher than at any point in history, including the peak of the tech-stock bubble. In part, though, that just reflects the U.S. economy’s transformation. Microsoft has an operating margin about five times as high as Exxon Mobil and 10 times that of retailer Walmart. Asset-light companies make up a lot more of the index than they did in the past and they earn a lot more profit on their sales.

But the “companies are just better” excuse starts to wear thin when the gold standard of valuation enters the discussion. Rather than the forward-looking price/earnings ratio based on analyst forecasts and favored by most fund managers, that is the cyclically adjusted version first proposed by Warren Buffett’s mentor Benjamin Graham. It is sending a clear signal: Expect paltry stock returns in coming years. The version popularized by Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller looks back at 10 years of earnings and adjusts them for inflation to cover an entire business cycle. It recently broke above 40 for the second time ever. The first was in 1999, and it didn’t stay there long. Cyclical peaks in the Shiller P/E have coincided with negative real (inflation-adjusted) returns for stocks over the ensuing 10 years, including in 1929, 1966 and 2000. The soundest argument for dismissing today’s nosebleed Shiller P/E is that 40 isn’t as high as it sounds. The long-run average has been around 17.

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Trump backs Cuomo, threatens to cut funds for New York City if Mamdani wins mayoral race

U.S. President Donald Trump endorsed former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for mayor of New York City on Monday and threatened to hold back federal funds to the city if Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani wins the mayoral election on Tuesday. Trump, a Republican who has offered frequent commentary on the New York mayoral election, injected himself further into the race by crossing party lines to support Cuomo over Mamdani and the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, who trails badly in public opinion polls in the heavily Democratic city.

Cuomo, a longtime stalwart in the Democratic Party, is running as an independent after losing to Mamdani in the Democratic primary. Tuesday's New York City election has been closely watched nationally as one that could help shape the image of the Democratic Party as it seeks its identity in opposition to Trump. Mamdani, 34, a self-described democratic socialist who is leading Cuomo in the polls, has energized younger and more progressive voters, but he has also alarmed more moderate Democrats who fear a shift too far to the left may backfire. Republicans have attacked Mamdani's candidacy throughout the campaign, with Trump casting him as a communist.

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Trump administration argues Caribbean strikes do not meet requirements to be regulated by War Powers Resolution

The Trump administration does not believe the strikes the military has conducted targeting alleged drug smugglers in the Western Hemisphere meet the threshold to be regulated by a decades-old law designed to enshrine Congress’s role in declaring war. Any U.S. president needs approval from Congress for sustained military action following the passage of the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which President Richard Nixon opposed toward the end of the Vietnam War.

The Trump administration notified Congress on Sept. 4 of its first strike targeting an alleged drug smuggling vessel, which occurred on Sept. 2; that started a 60-day time period as outlined by the War Powers Resolution. At the end of that period of time, the president has to stop all military action unless Congress has declared war, extended the deadline by 60 days, or is unable to meet in that time as a result of an armed attack. None of those things have happened to date, and the 60-day period ended Monday. The Trump administration does not believe the current level of these operations meet the criteria to fall under the War Powers Resolution. A senior administration official told the Washington Examiner, “Even at its broadest, the WPR has been understood to apply to placing U.S. servicemembers in harm’s way.” “The operation comprises precise strikes conducted largely by unmanned aerial vehicles launched from naval vessels in international waters at distances too far away for the crews of the targeted vessels to endanger American personnel,” the official continued. “The kinetic operations underway do not rise to the level of ‘hostilities.’”

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Nancy Mace went on profane tirade against officers and TSA agents, police report says

Charleston County Aviation Authority police officers filed an incident report in connection with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) on Thursday after she allegedly went off on law enforcement in a profanity-ridden tirade at Charleston International Airport in South Carolina. Police were to meet with Mace at 6:30 a.m. EDT to escort her from the curb to her flight, according to a police report. Officers were told she would arrive in a white BMW, but they were told at 6:35 a.m. that she would be arriving late. While they never saw the car, dispatchers told the officers before 7 a.m. that she was at the entrance for the Known Crewmember program, the report stated. The officers approached her, “and she immediately began loudly cursing and making derogatory comments to us and about the department,” according to the report.

“She repeatedly stated we were ‘F---ing incompetent,’ and ‘this is no way to treat a f---ing U.S. Representative,’” the report read. “She also said we would never treat [Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.)] like this.” She was allegedly “cursing and complaining,” as well as yelling into her phone, during the walk to the gate, police wrote. This continued while waiting at the gate for several minutes before she boarded her flight. “After the aircraft departed the gate, the American Airlines Gate Agent approached us and stated he was in disbelief regarding her behavior,” according to the report. “He implied that a U.S. Representative should not be acting the way she was.” The officer who wrote the report said they reviewed the video of the curb where she was expected to arrive and did not see a white BMW arrive at the expected time. A gray or silver BMW appeared at 6:51 a.m. at the atrium crosswalk, the officer wrote.

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Lead Stories

Poll: Frustration with Trump gives Democrats an opening a year before the midterms

Democrats have an early lead in next year’s battle for control of Congress amid an ongoing government shutdown, as more voters say President Donald Trump has not lived up to their expectations on several major issues that propelled him back to the White House in 2024, according to a new national NBC News poll. Around two-thirds of registered voters say the Trump administration has fallen short on the economy and the cost of living, and a majority say he’s fallen short on changing business as usual in Washington. At the same time, the Democratic Party continues to suffer from low ratings from voters as it seeks to offer an alternative. Meanwhile, protecting democracy and constitutional rights is a top issue to voters, alongside costs, as Trump continues an expansive agenda of executive actions on immigration and other key policy areas. And a majority of voters believe he’s done more to undermine the Constitution than defend it.

The president’s overall approval rating in the survey sits at 43%, a 4-point decrease since March, while 55% disapprove of his job performance. And one year before the 2026 midterm elections, Democrats lead Republicans in the fight for Congress by 8 points, 50%-42%, the largest lead for either party on the congressional ballot in the NBC News poll since the 2018 midterms. Democrats had a negligible 1-point edge, 48%-47%, in the March survey. “We will learn a lot in just a few days’ time in New Jersey and Virginia, among other elections, and what impact these results may have on the government shutdown,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, who conducted the poll along with the Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies. “What we know is that this is an electorate that remains deeply unhappy with the status quo,” Horwitt said. Democrats’ lead on the congressional ballot is among the larger advantages they have enjoyed in any public polling in 2025. This poll was conducted Oct. 24-28, with a majority of respondents (52%) blaming Trump and congressional Republicans for the monthslong government shutdown — but historically high numbers blaming congressional Democrats, too (42%).

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Anger over ICE raids is driving some Latino voters to the polls

For months, immigration crackdowns in Southern California have transformed life in Bell Gardens, the majority-Latino suburb where Alo Hurtado lives. Neighbors have been hauled off by masked federal agents. Families have curtailed trips to supermarkets and churches. Many people have stopped going out without their passports, including Mr. Hurtado’s mother, a naturalized citizen. So when it came time to vote in California’s special election, Mr. Hurtado, 42, decided not to vote by mail, as many in the state do. Instead, he went to a polling place in a landmark park with his Mexican-born parents this week to vote early and in person. Given all his community had gone through, he was worried about mail tampering — and he was angry. “Especially here in California,” he said, “we need to speak up.” Elections on Tuesday in California, New Jersey and other states are unfolding as the Trump administration’s immigration raids have spread fear in Latino communities across the country. That fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity has become an X factor in next week’s elections.

Democratic officials and Latino voting-rights activists worry that the ICE crackdown will dampen Latino turnout and that the presence of Justice Department election monitors at polling sites in California and New Jersey will intimidate voters. Voter data of the turnout so far in California, New Jersey and Virginia shows that Latino participation is roughly on pace with past elections. And for some Latino voters, the Trump administration’s escalation of force appears to be not a deterrent to casting a ballot but a motivation. In Virginia, where the Republican nominee for governor, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, is running against Abigail Spanberger, a Democratic former congresswoman, one Hispanic business owner said the most important issue in the election was the ICE raids. “It is something we are feeling morning and night, and it stirs a lot of sadness,” said the business owner, Carlos Castro, a naturalized U.S. citizen from El Salvador and an independent voter who runs Todos Supermarket in Woodbridge, Va. He cast his ballot during the early-vote period. Elvis Cordova, 49, a government relations consultant in Alexandria, Va., who plans to cast an early vote for Ms. Spanberger, said the federal crackdown had raised the election’s stakes.

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Is the Texas GOP out of step with independents? A new poll tells the story.

When likening politics to football, one adage that often crops up is that the most important part of the game is played between the 40-yard lines. In the literal football sense, that means whichever team dominates that 20-yard slice of midfield real estate will return to the locker room euphoric in victory, while the other will hit the showers in despair. In politics, it illustrates that the object is to corral that bloc of voters in the middle — the ones who don't simply default to one side or the other and likely hold both sides in roughly equal amounts of contempt. And that brings us to the poll released Wednesday by the Texas Politics Project, a nonpartisan affiliate of the University of Texas. One key takeaway from the poll of 1,200 registered voters, conducted Oct. 10-20, about one year before voting begins in the 2026 midterms, is that most Texans are not happy with social and economic conditions and are not optimistic that things will improve soon.

The answers from respondents who align with one party or the other were predictable. Republicans, whose party is in charge both nationally and in Texas, feel a little bit better about the economy and are less concerned with political corruption than respondents overall. Democrats, out of power in Washington and historically out of power in Texas, are deeply troubled by those issues, and most of the others raised in the poll. But what is driving the disaffection across the board are respondent who describe themselves as independents. Two-thirds of them said the national economy is worse than it was a year ago, and 57% said they personally are worse off than they were on the eve of the 2024 elections. When asked about specific elected officials in charge, the mood of independents was just as sour. About Gov. Greg Abbott, 58% of independents said they disapproved of his job performance — a 19-point drop since February. For Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the disapproval rating among independents was 52%, slightly better than Abbott’s, but Patrick’s number fell 27 points among independents in the past eight months. Midterm elections are generally considered referendums on the sitting president, and the poll showed that independents have a dim view of how President Donald Trump is doing his job. His highest approval score among independents came for his handling of border security, with 33% saying they approved, but 50% said they disapproved. Even more — 58% — said they don't like his immigration policies.

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How a growing form of 'invisible government' is driving up Texans’ tax bills

Gov. Greg Abbott recently told a room of GOP faithful that he is determined to stop cities and counties from raising property taxes, slamming Austin for proposing a rate hike to raise $110 million to spend on parks, public safety and social services. “Do you think they're spending your money in the rightful, conservative, judicious way right now?” Abbott said. “Of course not. What they need to do is start cutting what they're spending, as opposed to continuing to raise your taxes.” It’s a pitch the Republican governor has rolled out often as he gears up to run for a record fourth term in office. But while cities and counties have been a frequent target of Abbott and other Texas leaders, a large and growing chunk of many Texans' tax bills has mostly been ignored: the thousands of special purpose districts that operate across the state. The districts — which encompass an enormous variety of government functions, from wildlife management to health care to waste disposal — have largely avoided the same rate limits that lawmakers have put on other taxing entities, even as more Texans pay property taxes to a special purpose district than ever before.

The number of special purpose taxing districts has nearly doubled since 1998, reaching 2,300 last year and far outpacing the state’s population growth. Those districts are collecting a greater share of the state’s total property tax revenue — nearly 16% in 2023, up from 13% the year before, according to the latest available data from the Comptroller. In sum, they collected more than $12.7 billion in taxes in 2023, up from $3.1 billion two decades before. That’s a larger jump than those for cities and counties during that two-decade period. Roughly half of the state’s special purpose districts are municipal utility districts, known as MUDs, which are especially prevalent in fast-growing parts of the state, where developers use them to issue bonds to build outside city limits and impose taxes to pay off that debt. In some areas of the state, homeowners in MUDs are charged triple the tax rate as those who live in city limits. State Rep. Erin Zweiner, who represents Hays County, the fastest growing county in the state, said special districts make up the vast majority of her tax bill. She said her constituents are often shocked by what they owe to the districts, which can charge for everything from water to emergency services — things that historically have been provided by cities.

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State Stories

As his legacy evolves, Greg Abbott set to launch historic reelection campaign

Preparing to run for a historic fourth term, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has fortified his campaign staff, trained a legion of volunteers and amassed close to $100 million in his war chest, a figure that will grow substantially between now and the November 2026 general election. Abbott’s intense campaign mobilization isn’t reflective of his odds for reelection. He faces little opposition in the March Republican primary. And like his previous campaigns, he’s heavily favored against any of the Democrats looking to challenge him. What’s different this time? Winning another term will position him to become the longest-serving governor in Texas history, eclipsing the 14 years served by Republican Rick Perry.

It also gives him more time to define his legacy, one he’s said involves keeping Texas an economic powerhouse, while shepherding conservative policies that reshape public education, economic policy, higher education and Texas’ relationship with the federal government. If he secures a fourth term, Abbott would likely try to tackle his toughest challenges to date, including an overhaul — or perhaps abolishment — of Texas property taxes. Another victory would also put Abbott in the 2028 presidential sweepstakes that will likely include fellow Texan and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. “He’s in the strongest position he’s ever been in,” said Dave Carney, Abbott’s chief campaign strategist. “He has a solid foundation of accomplishments. People are pumped up and ready to go. You can just feel it.” Abbott’s campaign style in high-stakes races is to leave nothing to chance. He’s running like an underdog. His campaign is developing an aggressive get-out-the vote effort featuring a “full ground game with digital advertising, texting, voter registration drives” and traditional television ads. Abbott’s team recently held an El Paso get-out-the vote rally for Tuesday’s elections that attracted about 450 people, Carney said, suggesting it’s a harbinger of the more anticipated 2026 primary and general elections.

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Texas Stock Exchange closes second funding round with big, new backer

The parent company of the Texas Stock Exchange announced Oct. 31 the closing of its second funding round, including backing from yet another Wall Street powerhouse. Dallas-based TXSE Group Inc. said it has now raised more than $250 million in total capital as it readies for the launch of the Texas Stock Exchange, possibly in the first quarter of 2026. The company also disclosed that New York-based financial giant JPMorgan Chase & Co. provided an equity investment as part of the second round. JPMorgan's participation is significant because it adds one of the world's largest and most storied financial companies to the rush of supporters for the Texas Stock Exchange. JPMorgan has $4.6 trillion in assets and is the parent company of the largest retail bank in the U.S. "Our strong capital position validates our mission to bring increased competition to the U.S. capital markets," James Lee, founder and CEO of TXSE, said in a statement. "The Texas Stock Exchange's focus on alignment and transparency for issuers will alter the trajectory of our public markets and help establish Texas as a new global leader in capital markets."

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McAllen mayor: Ban on flights to Mexico ‘strikes at the heart’ of the Valley

McAllen officials say they’re working with congressional leaders to preserve its “vital” air route between its airport and Mexico City following the U.S. Department of Transportation’s announcement revoking approval for the route. The federal agency announced Tuesday it had revoked approval for 13 routes by Mexican carriers into the United States and canceled all combined passenger and cargo flights by Mexican airlines to the U.S. from Mexico City’s Felipe Angeles International Airport. One of the routes affected is Aeromexico’s current service between Felipe Angeles and McAllen International Airport.

“This route has been a strong performer for McAllen and the entire Rio Grande Valley,” City Manager Isaac J. Tawil said in the news release. “It’s more than a flight, it’s a vital economic artery that supports commerce, tourism, and family connections across our binational region. We recognize the importance of protecting the livelihoods of our constituents and the economic momentum we’ve built together.” “McAllen stands at the front line of regional connectivity, commerce, and community,” Mayor Javier Villalobos said. “A ban on flights to Mexico strikes at the heart of our binational economy, our families, and our cultural ties.” The city noted in its Thursday release that they’re in “active dialogue” with U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, and U.S. Reps. Monica De La Cruz, R-McAllen, Vicente Gonzalez, D-Brownsville, and Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, to ensure federal actions reflect the realities and needs of border communities. “We’re grateful for the leadership and responsiveness of our congressional delegation,” Tawil said. “Their partnership is essential to ensuring McAllen’s continued growth and prosperity. McAllen encourages the U.S. Department of Transportation and its counterpart in Mexico to work quickly to fully restore full network connectivity.” The city urged passengers with travel specific questions to contact their carrier directly.

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Cypress school board candidates and PACs draw nearly $370K in contributions

Seven candidates and four local PACs have raised almost a combined $370,000 in funding for the heated board election for the state’s third-largest school district. A new tranche of campaign finance documents shows fundraising for Cy-Fair ISD candidates this election cycle has reached new heights, and local PAC spending is nearing $135,000 on seven candidates in three races, according to a Chronicle analysis of over 30 campaign finance records. Lesley Guilmart was the top fundraiser in the first batch of campaign finance documents, raising almost $30,000 to overthrow the conservative candidates running for re-election.

Board President Scott Henry, who gave himself a $52,000 loan over the past month and a $10,000 loan in September, surpassed her fundraising this cycle. Most of Henry’s spending has gone to CAZ consulting, a firm led by Chris Zook. Records also show Zook gave $4,000 to a political action committee in February that appears to have given $15,000 to the group supporting the conservative slate of candidates, Natalie Blasingame, Radele Walker and George Edwards Jr. Walker has given her campaign and affiliated PACs around $6,500 including in-kind support, and Blasingame recently donated $1,600 to the PAC supporting their campaign. Guilmart is still second in the fundraising race, though, neck-and-neck with her slatemate, Kendra Camarena. Both raised just over $33,000.

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Trustee candidates in state-run Houston ISD could gain voting power before end of terms

The Houston ISD board of trustees has five seats on the Nov. 4 ballot in what could be considered an unusual election. The winners won't have any governing power for at least the first 18 months of their terms. Under a takeover by the Texas Education Agency, HISD's elected trustees have been sidelined by a "board of managers" appointed by the TEA at the start of the takeover in June 2023. The state intervened after Wheatley High School received a string of failing grades, triggering a state law requiring the TEA to close the campus or replace elected trustees with appointed leadership. This June, Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath said the takeover will continue until at least June 1, 2027.

So the trustee candidates elected Tuesday could regain oversight of the state's largest school district during the second half of their four-year terms. That would include control over the district's $2 billion annual budget, employee terminations, the property tax rate and more. Placido Gomez, who is not on the ballot this fall, was elected as a trustee in November 2023 and could gain voting power near the end of his term. He pushes back on the notion that the trustees are powerless. "It's technically true that we don’t have the power to vote on things that have consequence in HISD, but we do have the power to influence the public discussion and I think that’s also very important," Gomez said. "So even during the takeover, people deserve active representation and it’s our obligation as elected board members to be as active as our schedules allow us to be, because people deserve to have their voices heard." Two school board positions — District 1 and District 9 — have just one candidate running unopposed and will not appear on the ballot. The three other seats — Districts 5, 6 and 7 — have two candidates each vying for those seats (more on the candidates below).

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Business is slow on the River Walk. Can local leaders fix it?

Business is booming at commercial and retail hubs across San Antonio. The Rim, Alamo Ranch, Brooks and Pearl are bustling with customers. More investment downtown and on the East Side could be on the way, but business owners at one of the city’s oldest attractions say that they are suffering. River Walk business owners are concerned about declining foot traffic and falling sales. They want to bring back more local customers. They want to keep up. “I’ve been here for 15 years. It’s never been worse,” said David Strainge, a managing partner for Casa Catrina, a Mexican restaurant in La Villita. “Virtually nothing has been done to improve it, enhance it.” At a City Council meeting Oct. 1, community members raised some of those concerns. “We have had trends the past three years where sales for the summer go down,” Marco Barros, a trustee with the River Walk Business Group, told he council. “This summer, we have had a drop in sales of 11 to 12% [compared to last year].”

The City of San Antonio is working on a new strategic plan for the River Walk to guide any changes or investments — it could use the River Walk Capital Improvements Fund. The fund collects about $500,000 a year from River Walk business owners. River Walk business owners are taking a broad approach to change, advocating for everything from keeping the walkway cleaner to multi-million dollar investments. Key issues include changing local ordinances to allow digital signage, adding shade and cooling and making parking more accessible. There is broad agreement between businesses and officials that local residents should be a bigger part of the River Walk’s target audience. “Yes, it no doubt needs some TLC, but those folks and those business owners need to step up,” said Trish Deberry, president and CEO of Centro, the downtown nonprofit that works to maintain the area. “It’s not nearly, from the locals perspective, the first place they’re going to go.” She noted the culinary competition from places like the Pearl and Southtown. San Antonio is renowned for its local restaurant scene — UNESCO noted the city for its gastronomy in 2017. And on Tuesday, San Antonio expanded its rising culinary profile with Michelin one-star awards for Mixtli, Isidore and Nicosi.

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Nov. 4 election: Proposition 14 could make Texas a ‘leader’ in dementia research

Approximately 460,000 Texans have Alzheimer's disease, a progressive brain disorder that affects memory, thinking and behavior. Over 1.1 million Texans provide unpaid care to loved ones who have Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia, according to the Alzheimer’s Association, a national nonprofit. Advocates are encouraging Texas voters to approve State Proposition 14, a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow the state to spend $3 billion to launch the Dementia Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. The proposal received nearly unanimous support from state lawmakers earlier this year, although some Texas House Republicans expressed concerns about creating a new government agency.

Proposition 14 would allocate $3 billion in state dollars to fund the institute, known as DPRIT, for the next 10 years. The institute would work with researchers and doctors to study the prevention and treatment of various neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and dementia.Lawmakers and experts said all funding for the institute would come from existing state revenue, donations and potential federal grants, meaning no new state taxes or fees would be created by the proposition. If approved by voters, DPRIT would be “the largest state-funded dementia research program in the country, with the goal of accelerating progress towards prevention,” Melissa Sanchez, the Texas public policy director for the Alzheimer’s Association, told Community Impact. Up to $300 million per year would be available for dementia-related research grants to higher education institutions, medical facilities and related programs, according to the Texas House Research Organization.

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Austin ISD updates school closure plan to consider campus, boundary changes following community pushback

Austin ISD revised its plan to close 13 schools and rezone most campuses next school year. While the updated school consolidation plan, shared Oct. 31, still involves closing the planned campuses, it adjusts some attendance boundaries and updates the district's policies related to transferring between campuses, transportation and dual-language programming. This comes after the district received feedback from thousands of community members on an initial draft shared Oct. 3. Going forward, AISD will consider moving Garza Independence High School to the Martin Middle School building, reopening Bedichek Middle School as a dual-language campus with additional grade levels, and relocating the Winn Montessori program to another elementary instead of Govalle, among other changes.

AISD has proposed closing 11 elementary schools and two middle schools, rezoning 98% of campuses, and changing the dual-language and Montessori programming offered at certain schools in the 2026-27 school year. The sweeping changes come as AISD works to reduce thousands of vacant student seats amid an ongoing decline in enrollment and a mounting budget shortfall. AISD is expected to save $25.6 million through reducing administrative and support staff at merging campuses and lowering costs for utilities, transportation and food service. The district has received over 7,000 comments from parents and community members, and hosted several meetings since sharing its initial plans Oct. 3.Parents, students and teachers at various campuses have rallied together to protest the closure or rezoning of their school. Many parents have urged the district to delay voting on the closures and focus on academic outcomes.

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Why Andrew White thinks he's a better choice to take on Greg Abbott next year

For Democrat Andrew White, sending another progressive to take on Gov. Greg Abbott next year is a giant waste of time. ?“Democratic voters want someone who can win,” said White, who is running as a Democrat but pitching himself as an independent in his campaign materials. “It's time to do something different. We can't do the same thing and expect different results.” ?In a new interview on the Texas Take Podcast, White said running to the left is fine in gerrymandered congressional or legislative districts, but in a statewide contest, he said Democrats have to send someone to battle who can win voters in the middle. ?In White’s case, that means supporting oil drilling and gun rights, not being afraid to talk about his Christianity on the campaign trail and faulting some fellow Democrats for not being tough enough on the border. ?“A sovereign country must control its own border,” White declares on his campaign website.

White is quick to say he isn’t opposed to all progressives, but said it would be a bad gamble for a party that hasn’t gotten close to winning the governor's mansion in 35 years to nominate someone who goes too far left. He said as a businessman who has never been in elective office, he’ll have a better shot at defeating Abbott next November than anyone else in the race so far, which includes State Rep. Gina Hinojosa. ?“I've got Democratic values and I can't stand by and watch my state go through potentially another four years of what Greg Abbott has done,” White said. ?The Houston Democrat said he’ll take a page from his father’s playbook and build a campaign around saving public education from Texas Republicans who he said are not supporting public schools and throwing money at private schools through the new voucher program. His father, Mark White, was governor from 1982 to 1986. ?White has tried to follow in his father’s footsteps before. He ran for governor in 2018 but lost to Democrat Lupe Valdez in a primary runoff election by six percentage points. But he said one thing he can build off from that race is the fact that he won 73% of the vote in Harris County, the state’s biggest county, which he considers his home-court advantage in the race. White's main challenger, Hinojosa, is pitching herself as the Democrat best able to bring voters from all walks of life together. She said just like during Lyndon Baines Johnson’s campaigns, working people are ready to have someone stand up to the big businesses and politicians getting richer while they struggle to make ends meet. ?“I just think we're at a different place in our history in politics. Politics, as usual, just is not going to cut it anymore,” said Hinojosa, a Rio Grande Valley native who has been a state legislator representing Austin since 2016.

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New Braunfels ISD reviewing over 400 books for compliance with new state law

The list of books under review at New Braunfels Independent School District libraries has grown five times longer after it was initially released more than a week ago. The district now has 432 titles on its list of books under review for compliance with Senate Bill 13, which took effect at the beginning of the school year. The review is being led by the district’s Policy and Compliance Coordinator, according to its website. It is unclear who else is on the team reviewing library materials. Since the publication of the district’s under review list, 11 books have been labeled by the district as non-compliant with state law.

Ellen Hopkins’ book Crank and Ashley Pérez’s book Out of Darkness are among the 11 books removed from libraries. Senate Bill 13 states that books in public school libraries and classrooms can not have any indecent, profane, obscene, harmful, vulgar or sexually explicit content. Hopkins and Perez both said the full context of their works is important to understand why the objectionable content is included. “It’s inspired by my daughter’s story of addiction when she was a teenager,” Hopkins said. “She was like this perfect kid, you know, she was a straight A+ student.” “She just got hung up with the wrong people and her dreams were gone,” Hopkins continued. “So, I wrote [Crank] to try to keep other kids from going the same way that she did.” Meanwhile, Out of Darkness is based on a 1937 school explosion caused by a natural gas leak in New London, Texas. The novel includes themes from her own personal life, too.

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These Texas parents donated Ten Commandment posters. The district hasn’t put them up

Three days before the bill allowing Ten Commandment posters in Texas public schools became law, the principal of Cedar Ridge High School got an email. “Our family would like to donate a Ten Commandment poster for every classroom in Cedar Ridge High School. Could you please verify the number of classrooms in the school?” The email was from Christie Slape – a parent and member of conservative political organization Moms for Liberty in Williamson County. She – along with several other parents, including a former Round Rock Independent School District trustee – pooled their resources to purchase 170 posters displaying the Ten Commandments. Two weeks later, Slape showed up to the school with enough posters for every classroom. “There would be a visual reminder in each classroom of how our country was established,” Slape said.

Despite ongoing legal challenges to Senate Bill 10, the donation of Ten Commandment posters to Texas public school districts has been overwhelming and swift. Records obtained by KXAN show that across just 14 Central Texas school districts, donors have given at least 6,400 posters since SB 10 became effective. The law does not require school districts to spend any money on the posters, but it does mandate schools put the posters up once they’ve been donated. Records show districts across the state got similar donation inquiries, like Slape’s, from lawmakers, national evangelical groups — and even educators at their campuses. In the same district where Slape donated, Round Rock ISD, records show a teacher at a local high school donated 30 Ten Commandments posters. Bastrop Independent School District leaders said it had nearly 900 posters donated from “multiple unknown individuals.” In Liberty Hill, district leaders said a local pastor donated more than 100 posters now hanging in two of its school buildings. At least one school district, Frisco ISD, told KXAN it used $1,800 in district funds to purchase more than 4,000 Ten Commandment posters for its classrooms. The ACLU is suing the district over its decision to hang the posters up.

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Inside Texas' pregnancy care in prison: Where women such as Kristina Chambers stay and are treated

After being sentenced to more than 10 years in state prison, Kristina Chambers will join the small population of incarcerated expectant mothers. For pregnant women spending time in prison, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice maintains specialty programs and facilities to ensure that expectant mothers receive the proper care. A total of 7,995 incarcerated women were admitted in 2024, only 87 of whom were pregnant, according to last year's TDCJ report on pregnant inmates. Chambers, who is four months pregnant, was sentenced Monday to 11 years and 14 days in state prison for the 2023 death of a pedestrian she hit with her Porsche 911 Carrera while driving drunk. As of Friday, she was awaiting transfer to prison from jail.

All pregnant women who are sentenced to state prison are housed at the Carole S. Young Medical Facility in Dickinson, near Texas City, said Timothy Fitzpatrick, director of classification and records for TDCJ. The facility opened in 1996 and was specially designed by the department's medical providers and health services team, he said. The air-conditioned facility is not solely for pregnant inmates. Nurses are available 24/7, and medical providers are on-site five times a week at the facility, Fitzpatrick said. The facility is also equipped with an obstetrician clinic and provider, Fitzpatrick said. "The staff that are assigned to those facilities, this is stuff that they deal with every day," he said. "They go through specific training, dealing with all types of medical needs. They are not medically licensed professionals, but they work side by side with the medical team and the nursing staff and their providers."

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Episcopal priest has been detained by ICE in Texas, says diocese

The Episcopal Diocese of Texas announced on Saturday (Nov. 1) that one of its priests, a Kenyan national, has been detained by immigration officials despite working in the state legally. The Episcopal bishop of Texas said the priest, who was a “legally employed Kenyan clergy member who works for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,” was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials this week while returning home from his workplace. The statement added that the priest, who was not named, has been transferred to an immigration detention center in Conroe, north of Houston, and had been able to speak to his family. In its statement, the diocese, which covers most of the eastern part of the state, called for assistance from “representatives in power” and said pastoral and legal teams from the diocese are “accompanying the priest’s community and family as they continue to seek justice and understanding in this matter.”

Asked about the priest’s arrest, the bishop, the Rt. Rev. C. Andrew Doyle, said the detained priest is “OK” but that church officials are still seeking answers. “We do not know yet why he was targeted,” Doyle told Religion News Service in an email. “He is working legally and his immigration status is documented with a work permit.” Doyle said that the diocese is also in contact with some elected officials in the region, although he did not name which. Officials with the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment. At least one other religious leader, Muslim hospital chaplain Ayman Soliman, had been detained earlier by ICE as part of President Donald Trump’s ongoing mass deportation effort. Soliman was detained in July and held for weeks before being released in September. A South Korean college student whose mother is an Episcopal priest was also detained over the summer, prompting outcry from faith leaders before her eventual release.

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National Stories

Civil war erupts on the right after Heritage president’s Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes comments

A civil war over the direction of the conservative movement and who should be considered part of it erupted after Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts posted a video Thursday defending Tucker Carlson for interviewing white nationalist Nick Fuentes. The statement sparked backlash from Republican senators and a number of traditionally conservative organizations — and from staffers within the Heritage Foundation itself who say that Fuentes, who is known for antisemitic commentary, and his ideas are not worthy of debate. “Nick Fuentes is a disgusting, anti-American, antisemitic loser. He is not a conservative, not America First, and not an ally of President Trump or any conservative organization,” one Heritage staffer, granted anonymity to share candid thoughts, told The Hill. “In his own words, Nick Fuentes is an ally of Stalin, Hitler, and the Taliban. That is not someone with ideas worthy of debate. Conservatives should pray he gets the help he needs, not give him even an inch of space in our movement.”

But Roberts had also gotten strong backup from the heads of other conservative groups and commentators with influence in the Trump administration, like former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who argued it should not be controversial to debate U.S. aid to Israel and that attempts to “cancel” those with opposing views are not productive. Following the uproar, Roberts posted another statement Friday more explicitly condemning the antisemitism from Fuentes and his followers, but not backing down from his defense of Carlson conducting the interview. Roberts, who has made the leading conservative think tank more aligned with the MAGA base, posted a video statement Thursday asserting that the “venomous coalition attacking” Carlson over the interview is “sowing division” and that the “attempt to cancel him will fail.” Roberts went far beyond defending Carlson, who is a personal friend of the Heritage Foundation president and has spoken at Heritage in the past. He warned against attacking friends to the right rather than political adversaries on the left. He argued that “canceling” Fuentes “is not the answer,” despite him saying things Roberts abhors, and that his ideas should be challenged and debated.

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Wall Street Journal Editorial Board: The New Right’s new Antisemites

An old political poison is growing on the new right, led by podcasters and internet opportunists who are preoccupied with the Jews. It is spreading wider and faster than we thought, and it has even found an apologist in Kevin Roberts, president of the venerable Heritage Foundation. On Thursday Mr. Roberts released a startling video to oppose the alleged “cancellation” of Tucker Carlson and even of Hitler fanboy Nick Fuentes, whom Mr. Carlson had hosted for a chummy podcast interview. “I want to be clear about one thing: Christians can critique the state of Israel without being antisemitic,” Mr. Roberts began, sounding like what William F. Buckley Jr. used to call “a pyromaniac in a field of straw men.” This is what Hamas supporters on the left say: What do you mean? We were only criticizing Israel. Not exactly.

On Monday’s Carlson show, Mr. Fuentes assailed “organized Jewry” as the obstacle to American unity and “these Zionist Jews” as the impediment to the right’s success, while calling himself a fan of Joseph Stalin. Even while toning it down for the largest audience he’ll ever have, Mr. Fuentes still came off as an internet mashup of the worst of the 20th century. Mr. Carlson said Mr. Fuentes should make his remarks about Jewish subversion of America more “universal,” so they can’t be dismissed as easily. But mainly the two agreed. Mr. Carlson shared with the Hitler admirer that he, too, despises Israel and Christian Zionists such as Ambassador Mike Huckabee and Sen. Ted Cruz. “I dislike them more than anybody,” Mr. Carlson said. They found common ground. After the interview, Mr. Fuentes said in another broadcast that conservative Jewish commentators Josh Hammer, Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro, also frequent targets of Mr. Carlson’s ire, will never be Americans and should “get the f— out of America and go to Israel.” Enter Mr. Roberts of the Heritage Foundation to assure us that Mr. Carlson is a victim of a “venomous coalition” that is “sowing division” by criticizing him. Mr. Carlson will always be “a close friend of the Heritage Foundation.”

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The money spent on Newsom's Proposition 50 was unlike any other California election in one way

Voters in Sacramento got a mailer in recent weeks declaring that “California’s landmark election reform — under attack by Sacramento politicians.” Orinda residents have received flyers that shout “Fight back against Trump — Vote Yes.” The narrator on a video ad shared on X intones, “Two wrongs don’t make a right — Vote No.” These are among a barrage of advertisements, yard signs and billboards bombarding Californians with direction to support or oppose redrawing the state’s congressional districts four years ahead of schedule. But none of it was paid for by the major campaigns advocating for and against Proposition 50, the ballot measure put forth by Gov. Gavin Newsom to counter Republican redistricting efforts in Texas. Instead, nonprofits, political parties and a billionaire have financed an independent effort as election day approaches Tuesday. Groups not directly affiliated with any Prop. 50 campaign have reported spending nearly $26 million to influence voters as of October 30, more than any ballot measure in California history, according to a CalMatters analysis of secretary of state campaign finance data.

The spending does not include the $118 million reportedly spent by the three major campaign committees. Anybody can buy ads, pay canvassers, or otherwise promote their position on a California ballot measure as long as they register a state committee, disclose major funders in the ads themselves and don’t coordinate with the primary campaigns. Once they’ve spent at least $1,000, they must report their spending to the secretary of state as independent expenditures. Independent spending for the redistricting measure is significantly more than the previous record-setting Prop. 32 in 2012, which drew $10.8 million in similar spending and would have restricted campaign contributions from labor unions if it passed. The largest spenders outside of the major campaigns this time are billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer, who reported more than $12.8 million in expenditures and the California Republican Party, which poured more than $10.2 million into ads and messaging opposing the measure. As a result, Steyer and the state GOP have become the second- and third-largest independent ad buyers in state history. The only group to have spent more was run by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “California Dream Team,” which reported spending a combined $27.8 million on multiple ballot measures in 2004 and 2005.

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Muslim voters didn't cost Dems the 2024 election, a new poll says. But they may have found their voice

Since Muslim Americans vocally opposed President Joe Biden’s embrace of Israel after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, who they would choose at the ballot box has been one of the most studied political questions, inside and outside the community. Muslim Americans were credited with aiding President Donald Trump’s sweeping 2024 victory after many Muslims vowed to sit out the presidential vote or cast a third-party ballot over grievances with the Democratic Party’s position on the Israel-Hamas war. But the idea that Muslim voters cost Vice President Kamala Harris the election is unfounded, according to a poll of Muslim Americans released Oct. 21.

“Muslims were somehow really blamed for this election, and it just wasn’t the case,” said Saher Selod, director of research for the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a Muslim research and education organization based in Michigan, which sponsored the survey. “It was a close election, but Trump won all of the swing states, and that you cannot put on this population. It’s not Muslims alone that did that.” The survey makes clear, however, that the Democratic Party paid a price for ignoring voters opposed to Israel’s war in Gaza. Among Muslim Democrats, 45% of those who voted for Biden in 2020 shifted parties or skipped the presidential vote altogether. ISPU’s poll found that 16% of those who voted for Biden in 2020 shifted to a third-party candidate in 2024. That shift was even more stark in the swing state of Michigan, where some 31% to 40% of Arabs voted third party for the presidential ticket, up from just 1% in 2020, according to researchers at Michigan State University.

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Trump's admin says it froze blue state infrastructure projects. The states don't know if that’s true.

Russell Vought announced via a post on X that the Trump administration was “immediately” pausing infrastructure projects in several blue states across the country. That was two weeks ago. Several of those states say they still don’t know which projects Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, was referring to, and Democrats on Capitol Hill say they have been “stonewalled” in their efforts to find out what’s going on. “So far, we are unaware of any details,” a spokesperson for Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said on Thursday. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office said the same, as did a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.

Vought’s Oct. 17 post said that the administration was freezing over $11 billion of Army Corps of Engineers infrastructure projects “including projects in New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Baltimore,” blaming the shutdown for the pause. He said the Army Corps would release further information about which projects were impacted. On Capitol Hill, Democrats have been unable to get a list of those projects from the administration, as first reported by Roll Call. And state officials, local leaders and congressional staff interviewed by NOTUS have yet to find any evidence that the work has been paused. After many requests for information, Army Corps officials told Democratic Senate aides that there is no concrete list of projects and that many projects are being evaluated in a dynamic process, a staffer familiar with the exchange told NOTUS.

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Nigerian leaders caught off-balance as Trump threatens over ‘Christian killings’

The Nigerian government can’t say this Trump move has come as a surprise. The “Christian killings” in Nigeria narrative had picked up steam in recent weeks as it made its way from fringe right wing conservative Chrisitan media circles to lower profile Congressmen then on to Sen. Ted Cruz. It was clear that this would eventually get to Trump. The most notable failure of the Nigerian government is that successive administrations have in over a decade and a half been unable to end the scourge of Boko Haram and other Islamist or related terrorist groups that have indeed killed thousands of Christians. But as the Nigerian government has repeatedly noted, these terrorists have also killed thousands of Muslims. As Cheta Nwanze of SBM Intelligence in Abuja told us, while he wouldn’t go as far as saying there’s a “Chrisitan genocide” it is clear to him the “Nigerian government has dropped the ball significantly.”

Indeed another note for Tinubu’s administration is that, even while this White House in Trump’s second term is unpredictable in some ways, the art of diplomacy is still a powerful and effective tool in Washington DC. But Nigeria does not currently have an ambassador or high profile special envoy to have helped get ahead of this. But that said, Trump’s talk of going in “guns-a-blazing” into Africa’s most populous country is a once-outlandish image — which is now being taken seriously as Nigerian leaders watch US forces move in on Venezuela. “It is the last thing needed and the one thing that is sure to be counterproductive,” said Ebenezer Obadare, an analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations. “Instead of putting Boko Haram in the crosshairs, it will change the conversation to the ethics of intervention and the perceived highhandedness of a superpower riding roughshod on an African country.”

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ICE and Border Patrol’s use of tear gas injures, sickens and tests the law

Federal immigration officers are using chemical irritants to disperse protesters in ways that violate American policing norms and are testing the boundaries of use-of-force laws, video footage from Chicago shows, in some cases hitting demonstrators directly with the munitions. Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have deployed tear gas in cities around the country, but its use has been especially prevalent in Chicago, where the Trump administration launched “Operation Midway Blitz” in September as part of the president’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Since then, federal officers have thrown chemical agents out of vehicles on city streets, creating a hazard for motorists. They have thrown tear-gas canisters near stores and schools, exposing children, pregnant women and older people to the noxious gas. And on numerous occasions federal officers have fired pepper balls directly at protesters — in one case, striking a pastor in the head.

The use of tear gas has persisted in recent days despite a court order forbidding officers from using chemical agents against demonstrators and journalists unless they pose a safety threat. Last week, Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol official leading the Chicago operation, was videotaped throwing a tear-gas canister into a crowd. In another incident, immigration officers deployed tear gas as families were walking to a Halloween parade. “Generally, these kinds of crowd-control devices are reserved for truly dangerous situations,” said Kevin Fee, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which is part of a legal coalition representing journalists and protesters in a lawsuit. “I cannot think of a good parallel for what the administration is doing right now.” Department of Homeland Security officials argue chemical agents are a necessary tool to protect law enforcement and prevent clashes with protesters from escalating. A spokeswoman for the agency said Bovino had been struck in the head with a rock and that someone had also fired fireworks toward officers.

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Clashing GOP proposals throw HIV services into deep uncertainty

Some lawmakers and advocates are increasingly uncertain whether critical HIV and AIDS services will survive the federal government’s funding fight. The GOP’s House-passed budget bill seeks to cut over $1.5 billion in services for people living with and vulnerable to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the U.S. — far greater than the cuts proposed by President Trump and the Senate. It’s unclear whether the Senate or White House will support the bill once it’s considered after the government shutdown ends. But some warn passing the House’s proposed cuts would result in increased infections and deaths. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, called these efforts a “callous move” in a statement to The Hill.

“People across the country rely on the testing, PrEP access, early diagnosis, and lifesaving treatment these resources provide,” DeLauro said. Eliminating these programs, she added, is not an option, and Americans living with HIV concur. “Anyone old enough to remember the start of the AIDS epidemic here in the U.S. remembers what government neglect produced,” said Javier Muñoz, an actor living with HIV and affiliate of the #SaveHIVFunding campaign, a coalition of organizations advocating against HIV funding cuts. “Hundreds of thousands died. An entire generation is gone.” “Protecting and sustaining current funding levels is a matter of life and death,” he said. The House’s full-year funding bill proposes over $1 billion in cuts to domestic HIV/AIDS prevention and research services. Also at risk is $525 million for the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, a flagship federal program that helps provide treatment for people living with HIV.

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Lead Stories

Some Republican groups urge 'no' votes on Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick priorities

Two proposed constitutional amendments, one with the full weight of Gov. Greg Abbott behind it and the other a centerpiece of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's agenda, are facing pushback from several grassroots conservative organizations in the run up to the Nov. 4 election. The groups are urging voters to reject Abbott's proposed $1 billion-a-year water infrastructure fund and a $3 billion dementia research fund strongly backed by Patrick, saying both initiatives seek to advance worthy goals but are invitations for abuse because the taxpayer money would be promised up front rather allocated on an as-needed basis. "Spending through the regular state budget provides transparency, oversight, and accountability and allows the taxpayer to weigh in with their elected officials," the small-government and socially conservative Texas Eagle Forum said of the water measure. "This funding method tosses out accountability and grows bureaucracy." Other conservative organizations opposing both constitutional amendments include Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, Grassroots America, the Dallas County Republican Party and the Nueces County Republican Party.

The measures are among 17 proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot that passed with at least two-thirds majorities in both chambers of the Legislature. But those two carry the highest price tags. Abbott, who earlier this year called on the Legislature to make a "generational investment" to meet Texas' insatiable demand for water, said the criticism of the water initiative, Proposition 4, is misguided. The amendment would direct $1 billion of state sales tax revenue every year to projects that create new water supply, like desalination plants, and fix aging infrastructure. "There seems to be a misunderstanding about what Prop 4 does," Abbott said last week after voting early in the constitutional amendment election. "Proposition 4 does not raise a single penny more in taxes. Water is one of the most important issues for our future. We want to make sure that you and your children and grandchildren are going to have access to the water that our state needs." The recommendation from the Nueces County GOP to oppose Prop 4 comes as the county seat, Corpus Christi, is facing a severe water shortage that could trigger a mandated 25% reduction in usage by both residential, commercial and industrial customers.

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Voters divided on midterms despite broad Trump disapproval, poll finds

Americans broadly disapprove of how President Donald Trump is handling his job, and a majority say he has gone too far in exercising the powers of his office, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll. But a year out from the 2026 midterm elections, there is little evidence that negative impressions of Trump’s performance have accrued to the benefit of the Democratic Party, with voters split almost evenly in their support for Democrats and Republicans. Overall, 41 percent of Americans say they approve of the job Trump is doing, while 59 percent disapprove. That level of disapproval is the highest in a Post-ABC poll since January 2021, a week after the attack on the Capitol. Trump’s support among self-identified Republicans remains strong at 86 percent, while 95 percent of Democrats disapprove. Among independents, Trump’s approval rating is 30 percent, while his disapproval mark is 69 percent.

Across eight issues that include the economy, immigration, tariffs, managing the federal government, crime, and conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, most Americans say they disapprove of how he is handling each of them. The narrowest disapproval among these is on the situation with Israel and Gaza, but still a 52 percent majority say they disapprove. Trump has governed primarily through executive orders, setting out controversial policies affecting the federal government, the nation’s electoral system, the private sector and academia, among others. These orders have drawn multiple lawsuits challenging his authority. Many of the suits are still being adjudicated, with the Supreme Court destined to be the final arbiter in setting the boundaries for executive power. Meanwhile, the public is rendering its own judgment and mostly in opposition to the president. The poll finds that 64 percent say he is going too far in “trying to expand the power of the presidency,” and majorities say he is going too far in laying off government employees to cut the size of the federal workforce, in deploying the National Guard to patrol U.S. cities and trying to make changes in how U.S. colleges and universities operate. Opinions are more divided on issues that include deporting undocumented immigrants, closing pathways for immigrants to enter the country legally and pushing back against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in the government. The country is roughly split between saying Trump is handling them “about right” or “not going far enough” and saying Trump is going too far.

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A legal blizzard in Texas targets Democrats and promotes Ken Paxton

When Texas’ attorney general, Ken Paxton, announced he had sued the makers of Tylenol over a connection to autism that’s never been proven, he got exactly what he wanted — headlines from coast to coast. The move was the latest in a rash of lawsuits, investigations and threatening letters from Mr. Paxton aimed at establishing his firm alignment with President Trump — who has publicly connected autism with Tylenol use during pregnancy — and crushing political opponents, immigrant rights groups and progressive organizers. The actions, including a new crop of hostile letters targeting Texas towns that have recently moved to raise taxes, have an added advantage. They have kept Mr. Paxton front and center as he seeks to defeat Texas’ senior senator, John Cornyn, in next year’s Republican primary.

“I know it’s political,” said Phil Harris, the city administrator of the small, mostly Republican town of Whitesboro, Texas, which received one of the attorney general’s letters on tax increases. “I wish Ken Paxton wasn’t running for Senate. I think it impacts his decision making.” Mr. Paxton, a darling of hard-line Texas conservatives now in his third term, has always spearheaded conservative litigation, supporting Mr. Trump and challenging the Biden administration for four years. But in recent months, Mr. Paxton has broadened the range and escalated the pace of his legal actions. In March, he charged a midwife in the Houston area with providing illegal abortions, then expanded the indictments this month to include her staff. In June, he worked with the Trump administration to help strike down a law, signed under Gov. Rick Perry, a fellow Republican, that offered in-state college tuition to undocumented immigrants in Texas. He secured indictments in May against Hispanic Democrats in one rural county over allegations they broke Texas election laws by helping older voters cast their ballots.

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As Texas applies for federal ‘transformation’ funds, rural hospitals struggle to stay open

Lots of people have suggestions for how Texas should use its federal rural health funds. The Rural Health Transformation Program, created under the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” allocates $50 billion over the next five years for rural health care across the country. Half of those funds will be split evenly amongst the states. States will compete for the remaining half of the funds. Texas will soon submit its application, vying against other states for as large of a chunk as it can get of the $25 billion that’s up for grabs. As the state Health and Human Services Commission has worked on the application, the agency has solicited ideas and input from the public. Those ideas have been wide-ranging. One public submission, obtained by The Dallas Morning News through a public records request, outlined a plan for using drones in health care delivery.

A number of pharmacists spoke at a mid-October public hearing, underscoring the role that pharmacies play in rural communities with limited medical access. Representatives of major health systems logged onto the public hearing, too, bringing urban hubs into the rural health conversation. While the federal program emphasizes “transformation,” rural hospital advocates and executive stress that many rural hospitals are fighting simply to keep their doors open. “Right now, ‘sustainability’ and ‘survival’ would be the words I use before ‘transformation,’” said Terry Scoggin, the interim CEO and president of the rural hospital advocacy organization TORCH. “Get us through two years of this, then let’s start talking about transformation.” The state’s rural hospitals have a familiar face to look to in the application process. John Henderson, the CEO of TORCH, has taken a leave of absence from the organization and is working with the state on its application. Advocates and CEOs of Texan rural hospitals say they do want to transform rural health care — they first need enough funding to stabilize their finances, and right a ship that’s constantly threatening to sink.

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Trump is leaning into his crackdown on city crime. The GOP sees it as a winning issue

President Trump threatened to deploy more troops to U.S. cities this week — and not just the National Guard — as part of what he describes as his national crackdown on crime. Speaking to U.S. troops aboard an aircraft carrier in Japan, Trump said he planned to expand his crime and immigration offensive because "we have cities in trouble." "We're sending in our National Guard, and if we need more than the National Guard, we'll send more than the National Guard, because we're going to have safe cities," Trump said, aboard the USS George Washington at the Yokosuka Naval Base. "We're not going to have people killed in our cities. And whether people like that or not, that's what we're doing."

The White House has transformed what started as a focused effort, purportedly meant to address crime in Washington, D.C. into a nationwide campaign to portray Trump and the Republicans as unabashed crime fighters while painting Democrats as coddlers of crime. Violent crime in the city was at a 30-year low prior to the Guard's arrival. Trump has also deployed troops to Los Angeles, Chicago, Memphis, Tenn., and Portland, Ore, which has triggered protests and lawsuits. Democratic leaders have accused the White House of exaggerating the challenges in order to launch an illegal military occupation. But Trump is banking on the moves helping him and Republicans in next year's midterms. At a cabinet meeting in August, Trump called crime a stronger issue for Republicans to run on than transgender athletes in school sports and possibly even immigration. "Crime is probably the issue that he fares best on, certainly better than handling inflation or trade or even international relations, despite some of the successes that he's had recently," said Jon McHenry, a Republican pollster with North Star Opinion Research.

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State Stories

A West Texas children’s clinic where vaccine suspicion is encouraged

On a warm October day, Victoria Rodriguez tried to soothe her restless daughter as the girl fidgeted on an examining table of a West Texas children’s clinic. Pia Habersang, the registered nurse who runs the clinic, leaned closer. “How is her speech?” she asked. “She doesn’t talk,” Ms. Rodriguez said, paused and then added, “She is kind of saying ‘no’ more.” Ms. Rodriguez was insistent that her daughter, diagnosed with autism, needed care from the Pediatric Wellness Center of Amarillo, where parents are greeted with messages professing the side effects of vaccinations and possible connections to autism — connections that medical experts say have been debunked in several medical studies. Dr. Habersang is a registered nurse with a doctorate in child and youth studies from Nova Southeastern University, but is not herself a medical doctor; she runs the center with her husband, who is a physician.

She begins her initial medical sessions with new patients’ parents by discussing her concerns about vaccines, the addition of aluminum salts to shots and the rise in autism diagnoses that she insists is connected to vaccination rates. If a child has a genetic predisposition to autism, she tells parents, early exposure to a vaccine that contains small amounts of aluminum salts, as well as factors like a diet high in saturated fats and sugar, can accelerate toxicity in the body and worsen the condition. “If you look at lists like that, the autism increase, there has to be a reason,” Dr. Habersang said. Virtually all immunologists, pediatricians, virologists, microbiologists and other medical experts have rejected her ideas and have hailed vaccines as lifesavers, extending life expectancy, improving childhood health immeasurably and saving millions of people from life-threatening or debilitating diseases like measles, polio and cervical cancer. “It is totally understandable that parents are looking for a reason for why this happens, because it can be so heartbreaking,” Catherine Lord, a psychology professor and autism expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, said about autism diagnoses. “But vaccines aren’t the reason.”

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'The slowdown we've all feared has materialized': Texas Restaurant Association report warns of economic headwinds

Texas Restaurant Association CEO Emily Knight sought to "sound the alarm" about economic headwinds facing the hospitality industry in a recent industry newsletter. The Texas Restaurant Association advocates for the state's $138 billion food service industry. Knight wrote in a recent industry newsletter that data "suggests the slowdown we've all feared has materialized." "We’ve got a new Texas Restaurant Economics report for you today. Unfortunately, I have to sound the alarm a bit. Our data, combined with reports we’re reading from Black Box Intelligence and others, suggests that the slowdown we’ve all feared has materialized. I say this not to create panic but to prepare you," Knight wrote.

The Texas Restaurant Association's economic report shows 40% of restaurant operators reported food costs increased significantly in the third quarter of 2025 over the previous quarter, with 48% reporting food costs increased slightly during the same time frame. For labor costs, 56% of restaurant operators reported a slight increase in the third quarter of 2025, while about 10% reported a significant increase during the same time frame. The report also indicated that 38% of restaurant operators reported sales and revenues decreased slightly in the third quarter of 2025 compared to the previous quarter, 40% reported profit margins decreased slightly, and 37% reported traffic decreased slightly during the same time frame. As for menu prices, 50% of restaurant operators reported a slight increase in the third quarter of this year over the previous quarter, while 46% reported they stayed about the same. Nationally, the National Restaurant Association reports food and labor costs for the average restaurant have increased 35% over the last five years, and customer traffic remains down from pre-pandemic levels.

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Trump hates wind energy. Why does Texas have more than any other state?

Pat Wood III was walking out of the governor’s office in 1996 when his boss said something about wind power that stopped him cold. “Hey, Pat,” then-Gov. George W. Bush called out to him. “We like wind.” Wood, a lifelong conservative who was chairman of the state agency that regulates Texas’ electric grid, said recently that he fell back against the door in surprise, his mind drifting to thoughts of California, Birkenstocks and other “liberal BS.” “You heard me,” Bush replied. “Go get smart on it.” The praise for wind power from the top Republican in Texas may seem as unbelievable to many now as it was to Wood then. But, in 2010, Bush retold the same anecdote at the American Wind Energy Association’s conference in Dallas. “I think ultimately we’re headed for an era in which my grandchildren will be driving electric cars, powered primarily by renewable energy,” Bush said in his speech at the event, where thousands of wind energy professionals reportedly gave him not one, but two standing ovations.

Texas had hardly any wind power when Bush left in 2000 for the White House. Fifteen years later, by the end of his successor Rick Perry’s governorship, oil-rich Texas was also the top producer of wind energy in the U.S. — and no other state even came close. Today, Texas still reigns supreme: The Lone Star State has more than three times as much wind energy capacity as second-place Iowa. Last year, wind turbines supplied more than one-fifth of Texas’ electricity needs — surpassing coal and nuclear, and second only to natural gas. “We had a lot of disagreements with Perry and Bush on other facets of their environmental record,” said Tom “Smitty” Smith, a longtime Texas environmental advocate. “But they were heroes to many of us on renewable energy.” Texas’ early embrace of wind energy defies today’s political divides, exemplified by President Donald Trump, a particularly vocal critic of the technology. Trump has publicly denounced wind energy since the early 2010s, when he unsuccessfully fought an offshore wind farm built in view of his Scottish golf course. This year, Trump has again and again called wind energy unreliable, expensive and destructive to natural landscapes.

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Early voting turnout was 8% in Harris County with congressional seat, school board races on ballot

Friday was the last day to vote early for the Nov. 4 election. A little more than 8% of the registered voters in Harris County participated. A total of 212,104 Harris County voters cast ballots between Oct. 20-31, according to data from the Harris County Clerk’s Office. Among them, nearly 205,000 voted in person, and about 7,000 voted by mail. In 2024, there were just over 2.6 million registered voters in Harris County. Early voting turnout was lower than the last comparable election in Harris County, which was in November 2023. More than 239,000 voters cast ballots during early voting that year.

The 2023 ballot was similar to this year’s, with 14 state propositions and several municipal elections, including races for Houston mayor and city council. This year’s ballot has 17 proposed amendments to the Texas Constitution along with local municipal elections, although only one Houston City Council seat is on the ballot — a special election to fill the seat being vacated by at-large council member Letitia Plummer. The most high-profile race on the ballot is a special election to complete the term of late U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner in Texas’ 18th Congressional District, which includes large swaths of Houston. One of the top five locations, Prairie View A&M University Northwest, and several of the top 10 polling locations are within Texas' 18th Congressional District. Sixteen candidates are vying to fill the seat vacated by Turner, who died in March at the age of 70. There were 69 early voting locations across Harris County, and there will be 576 polling locations on Election Day. Voters registered in the county can cast ballots at any of the locations.

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UT’s independence tested as politics reshapes Texas higher ed – again

When university system regents and state lawmakers last sought to deepen their control over the University of Texas, there was a price. As World War II loomed, a conservative governor seeking greater influence appointed reform-minded regents to oversee the University of Texas System. First, the regents sought to fire four New Deal economics professors, but they soon expanded their reach, threatening to kill tenure, cut social work funding and censor a book that negatively portrayed wealthy Americans, said UT historian and alumnus, Jim Nicar. UT President Homer Rainey, at a breaking point, told faculty he feared regents were infringing on the university’s independence. The regents fired him, sparking a chain reaction of outrage, dissent and upheaval.

“Whenever politics has messed too much with an independent university, the results are always disastrous,” said Nicar, who has authored two books about the institution and is the former director of the UT Heritage Society at the Texas Exes. “It doesn’t turn out well for the university — or for the state for that matter.” This fall, mounting conservative influence across state institutions, championed by Gov. Greg Abbott, have harkened back to the Rainey era for Nicar and other experts who warn that too much political influence could jeopardize the university’s independence and excellence once again. On Sept. 9, Abbott publicly demanded Texas A&M University fire children’s literature professor Melissa McCoul after a video of a student confronting her for teaching about gender identity “against the president’s laws” went viral on X. Within days, the controversy spiraled, costing the Texas A&M professor, a dean, department head and the university’s president their jobs. In the next few weeks, multiple state university systems, including the UT System, announced audits of gender identity course content for compliance with state law and system priorities, though no law prohibits teaching about gender identity or LGBTQ studies.

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Bradford William Davis: Fort Worth rep’s pivot to faith panel allies him with Jan. 6 speaker

Rep. Nate Schatzline says he’s leaving elected office. Knowing the outgoing representative for Texas House District 93 — which covers North Fort Worth — well enough to have a strong opinion of him in any direction assumes you either pay close attention to legislative politics or his church’s sermons. Each of which is, in its own way, unwise for your health. While you should be informed about how Schatzline uses his podium in Austin and pulpit in Fort Worth to force us to live like we go to his church, I am sorry if I’ve stripped you of your blissful ignorance. But for Fort Worthians who either enjoy (or at least respect) the right to abortive healthcare, LGBTQ+ expression or easy access to buying books, Schatzline’s departure from the state House may feel like an early Christmas present.

Same for those who want freedom from easily preventable disease. Schatzline honored Mercy Culture Preparatory, a school operated by the church he pastors, for having the lowest measles vaccination rate of any school in Tarrant County, framing its flirtation with exposing children to an easily preventable disease as a triumph for “medical freedom.” Wouldn’t it be nice if Schatzline’s upcoming job vacancy ensured liberty and justice for us all? Instead, Schatzline’s next gig is a promotion of personal status and political power. Schatzline says he is joining the National Faith Advisory Board, a coalition of faith leaders — mostly Christian pastors — allied by their opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, politics they call “family values” and “religious freedom,” unwavering support for Israel and their close relationship to the Trump administration. Schatzline said in an announcement that his job will more or less involve equipping pastors to fight for the company line. As Schatzline transitions into his new role, the Fort Worth lawmaker with a near-nonexistent record of writing Austin bills that actually become Texas law will be a half-degree removed from the American president’s ear.

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Fire destroys AISD Board Trustees’ home

A fire in south Austin destroyed an Austin ISD Board of Trustees’ home on Thursday. Austin ISD Board Trustee Andrew Gonzales and his partner, LaRessa Quintana—who also serves on the board—were coming from an Austin ISD board meeting when they opened the door to their home, finding it in ruins. “A wall of smoke just poured out of the house. And immediately we knew that there was a fire,” Gonzales said. “My family has always lived in this house. We are the first owners. The only owners. My parents passed it to me. I grew up here my entire life with my three siblings and my mom and dad.” The Austin Fire Department told KXAN the fire was caused by an insulation issue. On Saturday, the house caught on fire again for the same reason, and Austin Fire had to put the fire out again as a result.

Gonzales had two cats that were in the house when the fire happened. The cats did not make it. “My heart is more broken than I could have ever imagined. I would trade the house and everything if I could have our pets back,” Gonzales said. Gonzales also said he lost a lot of his family’s memorabilia and artifacts he had of Austin ISD history in the fire. “I have nothing but the shoes and the clothes that were on me, and that’s it,” Gonzales said. “This is an abyss. There’s nothing but darkness ahead of us and we don’t know what we’re going to need.

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Likely facing primary from former Mayor Nirenberg, Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai launches bid for second term

Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai launched his campaign for a second term on Saturday, telling supporters he's focused on protecting the county's most vulnerable residents — not climbing the political ladder. The first-term county judge is facing a likely challenge from former San Antonio mayor Ron Nirenberg for the Democratic nomination. "Every job I've held, it was never about the next political opportunity," said Sakai, 71. "I am a servant leader to serve you. And I will be a servant leader putting the needs of our county first." Speaking to about 100 supporters who munched on breakfast tacos and conchas at Progreso Hall on the West Side, the county's top elected official said his priorities were serving working-class families, particularly children, and continuing to grow the county’s "booming" economy.

He touted the expansion of University Health — the taxpayer-funded hospital system that is opening two new hospitals — and economic development trips to Japan that he credits with bringing jobs to Bexar County. His campaign launch comes just three days before a high-stakes election in Bexar County, with voters deciding whether to devote county tax dollars to helping build a new Spurs arena downtown and revitalizing the Freeman Coliseum and surrounding grounds on the East Side. A recent poll from the University Texas at San Antonio’s Center for Public Opinion Research showed 36% of surveyed voters approved of Sakai's performance as county judge, while only 10% of the 660 respondents disapproved of his performance. Ten percent said they'd never heard of Sakai. Nirenberg left office with a 56% approval rating, according to an earlier poll from the Center for Public Opinion Research. Nirenberg declined to comment on Sakai's campaign launch Friday, saying he's still deciding whether to enter the race.

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Judson ISD accused of electioneering to promote property tax rate increase

The Texas Attorney General’s Office this week accused Judson Independent School District of breaking state law by engaging in electioneering to promote a property tax rate increase on the Nov. 4 ballot. In a letter sent Tuesday, Assistant Attorney General Lauren McGee notified Judson ISD officials that the agency had received a complaint about a “professionally produced video” the district reportedly showed to employees on campus during work hours. “Based on our preliminary investigation, the Office of the Attorney General has reason to believe the district is engaging in electioneering in favor of the (voter-approval tax rate election, or VATRE),” the letter, which was obtained by the Express-News, reads.

In a statement provided on Friday afternoon, Judson ISD Chief Communications Officer Nicole Taguinod said the district decided to remove the video and stop showing it to employees to “avoid protracted time-consuming litigation on the matter.” “Upon being informed of the district’s voluntary decision, the Attorney General’s Office informed the district on Tuesday evening that the matter would be closed,” she said. The video in question, which has since been deleted from the district’s website and YouTube, begins with an explanation of how school funding works before blaming the district’s budget deficits on “forces outside the district’s control,” McGee wrote. A July report from the district’s former financial consultant offers a different perspective, attributing much of Judson’s financial troubles to years of questionable spending — such as hiring additional staff despite declining enrollment and neglecting to plan for the end of pandemic relief funding.

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Your local ballot actually matters more than the presidential one

Early voting is underway for the Nov. 4 election, and you may be asking yourself, what’s the point? Don’t worry, you’re in good company. Texans love to gripe about property taxes, potholes, and school funding, but when it’s time to vote for the people who actually fix (or ignore) those things, most folks suddenly remember they’ve got laundry to do. Sure, we show up for the flashy stuff: presidents, senators, maybe governors if the attack ads are spicy enough. But the elections that decide your water rates, your kid’s school, and whether your street gets paved? Crickets. Jon Taylor, chair of the political science department at the University of Texas at San Antonio, tries to hammer that point home to his students. Unlike federal elections, those “at the state and local level — particularly the local level — often have far more direct impact on citizens’ lives,” he told The Barbed Wire.

Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, put it even more directly. “Decisions made at the local level affect people’s day-to-day lives,” he told The Barbed Wire. “Local officials set policy on education, policing and public safety, water supply and drainage, local taxes, and road maintenance.” “These policies are often more influential on life than federal decisions,” he added. And yet, almost no one shows up. Oklahoma City just approved a $2.7 billion bond package for civic improvements — the largest in its history. Sounds like a big deal, right? Less than nine percent of voters bothered to participate, Taylor said. Texas isn’t much better. Taylor said off-year elections for state constitutional amendments typically draw fewer than 10 percent of registered voters. Even hot mayoral races in big cities rarely crack 20 percent, he said. (Austin’s an exception — it moved its mayoral elections to even-numbered years, and turnout shot up to around 51% in 2024, he said.) But that apathy has a silver lining: It gives even more power to those who do vote.

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Is Dallas rushing the conversation about City Hall’s future? Serious talks start Monday

In two weeks, the Dallas City Council is expected to vote on whether to explore sites for a new City Hall. While many council members have declined to share where they stand on this issue, at least two have said they have reservations about the timeline if the vote occurs sooner rather than later. “What [City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert] told me is that the vote that they’re going to probably ask for in two weeks is for us to give them direction to go look at other options,” council member Chad West told The Dallas Morning News when reached by phone Friday afternoon, adding that city officials were anticipating that council members could provide direction based on numbers that are coming out. Council member Paul Ridley said Tolbert was rushing to make a decision before the end of the year without disclosing why.

“Nobody understands why it’s so urgent, but the city manager is pushing this,” Ridley said. Discussions of City Hall repairs have been on the back burner for years. Most recently, city officials told council members that repair costs could range between $150 million to more than $345 million. Water leaks, damages to the foundation, structural issues in the parking garage, and outdated electrical and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems, are among the list of issues plaguing the building. But the true cost of repairs will not be known until a full inspection of the building occurs in 2026. The question on every council member’s mind, however, is whether the nearly 50-year-old building was salvageable after years of deferred maintenance. In the first week of November, city officials are expected to present more data points and cost comparisons. Just days ago, city officials presented three scenarios for City Hall’s future. Keep the building as is or repair the building. A third scenario involves looking for alternative sites to lease or build a new City Hall.

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Why Tarleton State is college football’s best-kept secret in era defined by NIL, transfers

The first representation of life and society beyond expansive acres of ranches and farmland on U.S. Route 281 South is a large purple billboard stacked on top of an advertisement for a local Dairy Queen franchise. The road sign reads “Welcome to Texans Country" and, despite the fact that another dozen miles of hills separate it from Tarleton State’s campus, there’s an authenticity to the in-your-face message that clashes with the freeway’s agricultural backdrop. Tarleton State, tucked away some hundred miles from the metroplex and once dubbed the best-kept secret in Texas by its own administrators, now intends to shed its confidentiality. Its unbeaten football team — the most successful in the heart of a state that lives and breathes the sport — offers a nifty flag to plant.

“It’s the most visible program on our entire campus,” Tarleton State athletic director Steve Uryasz told The Dallas Morning News. “And that’s why it’s so important.” The Texans are the winningest team in all of Division I with a 9-0 record in only their sixth season at that level of play. They’re the second-ranked team in the FCS national poll behind only perennial powerhouse North Dakota State and can clinch a share of the UAC championship Saturday at Abilene Christian on the road. Their .753 win percentage since the 2018 season is the best among any Texas team at the Division I or II levels. They’ve done so with a head coach on his third turn at the university, a roster led by power conference exes, an administration that’s prepared for the next steps forward and an innate and improbable ability to navigate a college football landscape that’s no longer designed to benefit lower-level schools. “We’ve won a lot of games and done well,” head coach Todd Whitten said, “The greatest accomplishment is we have flourished in the era of the transfer portal.”

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Cedric Golden: How the Longhorns landed a first-quarter knockout of Vanderbilt

We all have a wise elder in our family who told us at one time or another, “It’s not how you start, but you how finish.” I’m hoping that old codger was watching Texas football's 34-31 win Saturday over No. 9 Vanderbilt because it was all about how the No 20 Longhorns started. The finish left a lot to be desired. The game turned out to be closer than it should have been — Vanderbilt's last-minute onside kick trickled out of bounds before the Commodores could corral it — but it was the most electric first quarter of Texas' brief SEC history and the most impactful of its 2025 season. Vanderbilt, in the midst of a program renaissance under highly regarded head coach Clark Lea, walked into a good old-fashioned Southern ambush at Royal-Memorial Stadium.

It was anything but "easy like Saturday morning" for these Commodores who rallied late but to no avail. Texas jumped on the No. 9 team in America and never looked back. Quarterback Arch Manning shrugged off the effects of the big hit he took at Mississippi State and piloted a 17-point early uprising that started with a 75-yard first-play touchdown connection with speedy Ryan Wingo, who left later in the quarter with what looked to be a thumb injury. The Longhorns came out of the blocks like Ben Johnson before he got popped in Seoul. The 17 points were the most the Horns have scored in an opening quarter in an SEC game, topping the 14 they posted en route to a 35-0 halftime lead at home against Florida in last year's league debut. Over these last two meetings, Texas holds a huge 31-7 first-quarter edge over the Commodores. And just like that, the Horns are on a roll, fresh off two overtime great escapes at Kentucky and Mississippi State. At 7-2 overall and 4-1 in SEC play, the Horns are all of sudden alive and well in regard to the SEC title race.

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National Stories

Trump’s MRI scan raises specter of secrecy in presidential health

President Trump’s off-the-cuff disclosure that he underwent an MRI scan is raising fresh questions about the secrecy surrounding Trump’s health and the need for presidents to be more transparent. Trump is the oldest person to be elected president, and his aides and allies have long projected him as the picture of strength and vitality. Outside physicians initially raised questions after Trump visited Walter Reed Military Medical Center earlier this month for what the White House described as a routine follow-up visit, though it was his second visit in six months. A note from his physician pronounced Trump in “excellent overall health.” Later, Trump disclosed that he underwent an MRI and a cognitive test during the secondary physical.

“I got an MRI, it was perfect,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One. The president did not detail the reason for the MRI, and press secretary Karoline Leavitt later didn’t offer any additional details. Jeffrey Kuhlman, who served as a White House physician to three presidents and wrote a book about his experience called “Transforming Presidential Healthcare,” said he wasn’t surprised a 79-year-old man needed a second checkup and that it’s typical for presidents to go to Walter Reed for advanced imaging. “Most any procedure scope, I had the capabilities there at the White House. The only thing I couldn’t, that I’d have to Walter Reed for, is advanced imaging,” Kuhlman said. But Kuhlman questioned the timeline of the treatment that was released by Trump’s physician Sean Barbabella. Aside from the MRI, other testing and preventive health screening could have been done in the White House doctor’s office in less than 15 minutes. “It’s about an eight-minute helicopter ride from the South Lawn to Walter Reed. So we know that he at least had four hours available to undergo medical care,” Kuhlman said. “There’s a disconnect there.”

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Amazon carries Wall Street to the finish of another winning week and month

Amazon led the U.S. stock market on Friday to the finish of another winning week and month. The S&P 500 rose 0.3% and pulled closer to its all-time high set on Tuesday. It closed out a third straight winning week and a sixth straight winning month, its longest monthly winning streak since 2021. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 40 points, or 0.1%, and the Nasdaq composite gained 0.6%. Amazon led the way and jumped 9.6%. The retail giant was by far the strongest force lifting the market after reporting profit for the latest quarter that blew past analysts’ expectations. CEO Andy Jassy said growth for its booming cloud-computing business has accelerated to a pace it hasn’t seen since 2022. Amazon’s massive size of roughly $2.4 trillion means its stock movements carry more weight on the S&P 500 than almost any other company’s. Without it, the S&P 500 would have been down for the day.

Another highly influential stock, Apple, had less of an effect on the market even though it’s bigger than Amazon. The iPhone maker, which is worth more than $4 trillion, swung between modest gains and losses through the day before finishing with a dip of 0.4%. It likewise delivered a better profit report for the latest quarter than analysts expected, though by not as big a margin as Amazon did. CEO Tim Cook said it benefited from strong revenue for both its iPhone lineup and its services offerings, which include its app store. Elsewhere on Wall Street, online message board Reddit jumped 7.5% to erase losses from earlier in the week after reporting stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Coinbase Global rose 4.6% after the crypto exchange’s profit likewise topped expectations. Outside of earnings reports, Netflix added 2.7% after the video streamer announced a move that could make its stock price more affordable but still leave all its investors holding the same amount. Netflix will undergo a 10-for-1 stock split, where it will give nine additional shares to investors for each they own.

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Food stamp cuts expose Trump’s strategy to use shutdown to advance agenda

As the federal shutdown stretched into its fifth week, imperiling the nation’s largest anti-hunger program, Vice President JD Vance insisted that there was little the White House could do to help. “The American people are already suffering,” he told reporters, “and the suffering is going to get a lot worse.” In fact, the administration had billions of dollars at its disposal — more, by its own admission, than it needed to sustain food stamps for the roughly 42 million low-income people who depend on them. And it was only after a federal judge intervened that President Trump signaled he could use the money for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP. Even now, much remains unclear about whether or when poor families may receive their scheduled benefits. Still, the saga has laid bare the shutdown strategy at the White House, where Mr. Trump has been willing to shield only some Americans from the harms of a fiscal standoff that he has made no effort to resolve.

In what may become the longest federal stoppage in history, the president has frequently bent the rules of budget, primarily to reap political benefits or exact retribution. He has found new and untested ways to spare certain Americans, like the military, from the pain of the government closure, while claiming he has no power to help others, including low-income individuals who rely on benefits like SNAP. The result is a shutdown unlike any other, one that has posed disparate and debilitating risks for those unlucky enough to depend on the many functions of government that Mr. Trump has long aspired to cut. “They are willing to hurt people at the bottom when they take care of their friends and priorities,” said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. But Mr. Trump said in a social media post on Friday that he would release the funds for SNAP only after the court clarified its ruling.

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How Trump’s warning of possible US military action could affect Nigeria’s economy

Nigeria, one of Africa’s largest economies, now finds itself at the centre of a geopolitical storm that could test its economic resilience, diplomatic acumen, and financial stability. Nigeria’s government swiftly rejected the accusations, reaffirming its commitment to constitutional protections for religious freedom. However, even the mere mention of American military action can jolt financial markets. Nigeria’s Eurobond curve, already volatile through 2025, could see spreads widen further as investors price in heightened risk. The Debt Management Office has reported active trading into late October, while analysts warn that risk aversion is driving yields higher, a sign of more challenging borrowing conditions for both the government and industry.

For a country that has only begun to breathe easier after years of tight monetary policy, the timing could not be worse. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had just started to ease, buoyed by a modest decline in inflation. Yet a geopolitical shock of this scale could send portfolio investors fleeing, push the naira under fresh pressure, and force policymakers to slam the brakes on recovery. The United States remains a vital economic partner for Nigeria. Bilateral trade in goods and services reached approximately $13 billion in 2024, according to official data from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Trump’s threat to cut “aid and assistance” could therefore ripple through multiple channels, from trade finance to energy exports, and from defence procurement to humanitarian programs. Such a move could cripple the momentum Nigeria has built in non-oil exports, particularly in textiles, agro-processing, and light manufacturing. The country’s export council recently reported a nearly 20% rise in shipments during the first half of 2025, driven by global demand for cocoa, urea, and cashew.

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What would strikes on Venezuela look like? US target list expected to include ports, airports used by drug smugglers

The Trump administration has drawn up a secret list of targets in Venezuela the U.S. could strike upon orders of the president, according to several officials familiar with the effort, which experts said was expected to include ports, airports and other sites run by Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro but also used by drug cartels to transit illegal narcotics. The classified target list, briefed to Senate Republicans earlier this week, along with a massive buildup of military assets in the region that includes some 10,000 troops, has fueled speculation that President Donald Trump could order strikes at any moment. As of Friday afternoon, it was not clear whether Trump would act. Military sources said they did not expect an imminent attack, and Trump himself told reporters he has not made a decision.

Trump, though, has previously threatened to hit Venezuela by land. And, one person familiar with how the operations would proceed if a military strike were ordered, said there were "several indications" a strike may happen "within the next 72 hours." The last time Trump ordered a large-scale military attack in June -- a surprise B-2 stealth bomber strike on Iranian nuclear sites -- White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the public two days prior that Trump would make a decision on military action "within two weeks." According to The New York Times, planning for the operation was already underway and her comments were part of a misdirection campaign. "No, it’s not true," Trump told reporters Friday when asked about reporting an attack was imminent. White House spokesperson Anna Kelly added: “Unnamed sources don’t know what they’re talking about. Any announcements regarding Venezuela policy would come directly from the president.”

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Jay Jones is back in the Democratic fold amid texting scandal

Jay Jones, the embattled Democratic nominee for attorney general in Virginia, made a surprise appearance at a major Democratic campaign rally Saturday aimed at revving up the party faithful ahead of the high-stakes statewide elections Tuesday. Jones — whose years-old violent text messages triggered a nationwide GOP backlash and a steady drumbeat of calls for Democrats to push him off the ticket — opened the event, where headliner former President Barack Obama energized voters in support of Abigail Spanberger, the party’s gubernatorial nominee. Speaking before Spanberger and Obama took the stage, Jones made no mention of the scandal that prompted Spanberger to distance herself from him. He instead focused his brief remarks on Jason Miyares, seeking to cast the incumbent GOP attorney general as a puppet for President Donald Trump.

“Trump has endorsed Jason. … He said ‘Jason will never let us down,’ and what that means is that he’ll never let Donald Trump down,” Jones said, with the crowd at the Chartway Arena erupting in boos in response to the mention of the current president. He cast his opponent as being a “willing enabler” of the president, who has wreaked havoc on Virginia residents, and claimed Trump “illegally fires workers [and] levies tariffs that destroy our regional economies, including the Port of Virginia.” The overwhelmingly Democratic crowd received Jones warmly, with cheers and applause. He reminded them he grew up in this region, which he said will help Virginia send a message to Trump on Election Day. Republicans, including Trump, have seized on the text messages from Jones, who in 2022 sent to a colleague messages fantasizing about shooting then-House Speaker of Virginia Todd Gilbert, a Republican. Jones has apologized but refused calls, including from his opponent Miyares, to end his bid for attorney general. Spanberger criticized those text messages, but like most other prominent Democrats in the state and nationally, did not call on him to drop out.

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Can’t stop doomscrolling? The ‘Brick’ helped me unplug.

I orchestrate distraction for a living. That’s not my job description, but as a social media manager, I understand dopamine loops, engagement bait, and why people come back for more. Because I know how social media works, I thought I was immune to “phone addiction” and the doomscrolling trap. I felt like my screen time was different, professional, intentional. That I had boundaries. The truth arrived the way most uncomfortable ones do: quietly, then all at once. After a jam-packed weekend snapping photos for social posts, trading memes with friends and scrolling through apps, I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been truly bored. Or better yet, deeply relaxed. If I wasn’t physically with someone, I was surrounded by a symphony of voices online — drowning in notifications, caught in the constant, thrumming hum of always consuming, always sharing.

I’m not alone when it comes to feeling chained to my phone. According to a recent Washington Post investigation, after only a month, more than three-quarters of TikTok users who had typically spent about 30 minutes a day on TikTok were now spending almost twice that much time on the app, on average. Some people spent more than four hours a day on it. After hearing about Brick through a friend, I knew I had to try it. (It costs $59, and are HSA/FSA eligible.) Brick is a device, shipped to your house, that locks you out of your phone and forces you to physically return to ‘unBrick’ to get back in. You download the related app, select which applications on your phone you want to block and for how long, and then physically place your phone on the Brick. It’s about the size of a deck of cards and has a magnetic backing so you can stick it on easy-to-see places, like your fridge. With a feature akin to Apple Pay, your phone locks and you cannot remove it without returning to the device and confirming you’re ready to unBrick, almost like a consent ritual. You won’t be able to use Spotify, food-ordering apps, Slack, email or even texts. Unlike other methods used to limit phone time, there is no passcode work-around. No swipeable reminder. No giving yourself “just 15 more minutes.”

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Trump escalates demands for 2020 election investigations and prosecutions

President Donald Trump is dialing up pressure on the Justice Department to freshly scrutinize ballots from the 2020 election, raising tensions with administration officials who think their time is better spent examining voter lists for future elections. In recent private meetings, public comments and social media posts, Trump has renewed demands that members of his administration find fraud in the five-year-old defeat that he never accepted. He recently hired at the White House a lawyer who worked on contesting the 2020 results. Administration officials and allies have asked to inspect voting equipment in Colorado and Missouri. Others are seeking mail ballots from Atlanta in 2020, when Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to lose Georgia since 1992. Across the administration, though, officials have been more focused on forward-looking steps such as examining state voter rolls for people who have moved or aren’t citizens.

Some officials are ready to move on from 2020 and want to avoid being called “election deniers,” a term for people who claimed without evidence that Trump beat Biden in the 2020 election. But Trump and some allies inside and outside the administration won’t let go of allegations of widespread election fraud in 2020 even though courts have repeatedly rejected their theories. They argue that future elections can’t be secured without a full accounting of 2020. “I hope the DOJ pursues this with as much ‘gusto’ as befitting the biggest SCANDAL in American history!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday. “If not, it will happen again, including the upcoming Midterms.” The renewed focus on 2020 coincides with Trump’s starting to see results from his demands to prosecute his critics, including former FBI director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Last week, the Justice Department also suspended two prosecutors who referenced the Jan. 6, 2021, riot by a Trump-supporting mob at the Capitol in a court filing related to sentencing a participant who Trump pardoned and is now facing unrelated weapons charges. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) said he views the charges against Trump’s political opponents and the administration’s attempts to acquire voter rolls and voting equipment as a continuation of Trump’s years-long effort to question the results of an election he lost.

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Lead Stories

Trump says Senate should scrap the filibuster to end the government shutdown

President Donald Trump is calling on the Senate to scrap the filibuster, so that the Republican majority can bypass Democrats and reopen the federal government. “THE CHOICE IS CLEAR — INITIATE THE ‘NUCLEAR OPTION,’ GET RID OF THE FILIBUSTER,” Trump posted Thursday night on his social media site, Truth Social. The filibuster is a long-standing tactic in the Senate to delay or block votes on legislation by keeping the debate running. It requires 60 votes in a full Senate to overcome a filibuster, giving Democrats a check on the 53-seat Republican majority that led to the start of the Oct. 1 shutdown when the new fiscal year began. Trump’s call to terminate the filibuster could alter the ways the Senate and congressional dealmaking operate, with the president saying in his post that he gave a “great deal” of thought to the choice on his flight back from Asia on Thursday.

Trump spent the past week with foreign leaders in Malaysia, Japan and South Korea, finishing his tour by meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The president declared the trip a success because of a trade truce with China and foreign investment planned for American industries, but he said one question kept coming up during his time there about why did “powerful Republicans allow” the Democrats to shut down parts of the government. His call to end the filibuster came at a moment when certain senators and House Speaker Mike Johnson believed it was time for the government shutdown to come to an end. It’s unclear if lawmakers will follow Trump’s lead, rather than finding ways to negotiate with Democrats. From coast to coast, fallout from the dysfunction of a shuttered federal government is hitting home: Alaskans are stockpiling moose, caribou and fish for winter, even before SNAP food aid is scheduled to shut off. Mainers are filling up their home-heating oil tanks, but waiting on the federal subsidies that are nowhere in sight.

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Crockett inches toward Senate run

Texas Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett is taking further steps toward launching a Senate campaign, including spending significant money on polling and meeting with a potential campaign manager. Crockett told POLITICO’s Dasha Burns in an episode of “The Conversation” that she’s “seriously weighing” a bid to replace GOP Sen. John Cornyn and is commissioning polling to see how she stacks up against a potentially crowded primary field. “I am seriously weighing it, to the extent that I’m about to spend a lot of money to get data,” she said. Crockett has raised her profile since first entering Congress in 2023 through memorable and divisive attacks on Republican opponents like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott and President Donald Trump — becoming a frequent target of Trump’s attacks in the process.

But Crockett said elevating her profile with Texas voters is only the first step in mounting a serious statewide campaign. “I don’t think that we have the luxury, especially with us having such an early primary, of actually doing what we normally do, which — we spend about $100 million to get someone’s name ID up,” she said. “But the way that I look at elections is that that’s just first base.” Crockett said she’s had “multiple conversations” with someone she’d potentially tap to lead her campaign, without naming them. She said they discussed her chances in a general election against the field of Republicans in the primary, noting that Cornyn would be a stronger challenge than Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt. “I’m going to be flat out with you and tell you that I don’t think that there’s a Democrat that can take out Cornyn,” she said. “For me, I would be making a very last-minute decision because it’s not just about winning the primary. You gotta win the general.”

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Food banks in the central U.S. say they can't fill the gap left by frozen SNAP benefits

The Feed My People Food Bank in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, has been preparing for a freeze of federal food benefits since the start of the government shutdown on Oct. 1. Padraig Gallagher, the food bank's executive director, told his team to source as much food as possible, just in case the shutdown dragged on long enough to affect the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which more than 10% of Americans use. "I went to our food resource and warehouse transportation managers and I said, 'Let's open the floodgates. Let's fill the warehouse to the rafters,'" Gallagher said.

Now he's glad he did. SNAP recipients will not receive money to buy food in November, thanks to the ongoing shutdown. Food bank directors across the Midwest and Great Plains like Gallagher expect a surge in demand for their services. But they caution that food banks alone will not be able to fill a gap left by SNAP. "We do feel confident that we can increase the amount of food beyond what we're currently getting," Gallagher said. "We do not have confidence that we can get enough food to offset what is being lost." This would be the first time that SNAP recipients face a lapse in benefits because of a government shutdown. Celia Cole, who leads the statewide food bank group Feeding Texas, said she's treating it "like any major disaster." "Food banks are no stranger to disaster," said Cole. "We have been responding to natural disasters, economic disasters, political crises like this one for decades. And so we know how to prepare." But the loss of SNAP is a major stressor to a food security system that's already stretched thin.

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In turnabout, Uvalde officials say no charges expected in death of Rep. Tony Gonzales aide

Uvalde officials now say the police investigation into the fiery death of an aide to U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales is expected to end soon with no charges. But officials still are not prepared to release police reports and other public records on the case. Regina Santos-Aviles, 35, was found severely burned in the backyard of her home in Uvalde on Sept. 13 and died the next morning at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. Authorities said she immolated herself. In an Oct. 24 letter to the Texas Attorney General’s Office, Austin Beck, a lawyer for the city of Uvalde, wrote that the investigation into the death “now appears likely to be closed in the near future without resulting in criminal prosecution against any person.” That marked a change from recent statements by city lawyers, who had indicated the investigation was active and might lead to charges.

Beck asked the attorney general for a ruling supporting the city's decision to withhold 911 calls, witness statements, body camera footage and other public records requested by the San Antonio Express-News and other news organizations. In earlier correspondence with the AG's office, Beck’s colleague Francisco J. Garza wrote that the investigation was “pending possible criminal prosecution.” Garza cited that as a reason for rejecting the news media's requests for records. The Texas Public Information Act, which generally requires disclosure of public records, allows agencies to withhold documents if their release would interfere with an investigation. Beck wrote that the city still wants to keep the records secret but for a different reason. He cited a provision of the information act that permits agencies to withhold records of closed cases if they did not result in a conviction or deferred adjudication, a form of probation. Beck also cited common-law privacy concerns raised by an attorney for Santos-Aviles’ family. Beck wrote that the lawyer argued disclosure would violate the family’s privacy rights. “The fact that the death in the case resulted from self-inflicted injuries, whether accidental or intentional, is already publicly known,” Beck wrote.

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State Stories

James Talarico Senate campaign says it mistakenly listed endorsement from Socorro ISD Superintendent James Vasquez

Socorro Independent School District Superintendent James Vasquez was incorrectly included on a list Tuesday of “more than 100 elected officials from every region of Texas” endorsing James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, campaign officials said. Minutes after El Paso Matters questioned the inclusion of the Socorro ISD superintendent – who was appointed to the job this year by the SISD school board and not elected – Talarico campaign spokesperson JT Ennis said including Vasquez in the news release was a mistake. “The moment this came to our attention, the name was removed from the list of more than 100 endorsers throughout the state of Texas. We’re thankful for the superintendent’s service to the community,” Ennis said. Socorro ISD spokesperson Daniel Escobar said Vasquez didn’t endorse Talarico.

“It has come to our attention that James Vasquez was listed as endorsing a political candidate. This is incorrect — James Vasquez has not endorsed any candidate. We are working to correct this misinformation,” Escobar said in a statement. Texas school superintendents rarely engage in partisan elections. And Socorro ISD is in the midst of an election asking voters – Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated – to approve a property tax proposal that could result in millions of extra dollars for the district. Talarico, a state representative from Austin, is seeking the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Republican John Cornyn in next year’s midterm elections. Talarico is making a campaign stop in El Paso at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at Fire Fighters Hall, 3112 Forney Lane. El Paso elected officials included on his list of endorsements Tuesday include state Reps. Vince Perez and Claudia Ordaz; County Commissioners Jackie Butler, Sergio Coronado and David Stout; and El Paso city Rep. Art Fierro. Former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred also is seeking the Democratic nomination in the Senate race. On the Republican side, Cornyn is being challenged by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt.

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‘You are the racists,’ Tarrant GOP chair when asked about his ‘chimp out’ post

Tarrant County GOP Chair Bo French is facing backlash after referring to Nov. 1 — the day federal food assistance benefits are set to lapse — as “National Chimp Out Day” in a social media post. The post has been called racist in responses on social media, as “chimp” has been used as a slur to refer to Black people. French, in a text and other social media posts, said it was not racist. French has a history of incendiary social media posts. He wrote in a Tuesday post on X: “November 1, 2025 is National Chimp Out Day. It’s going to be lit.” He responded to the post with a comment reading “(N)o SNAP!” The post comes after the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits wouldn’t go out starting on Nov. 1, as the federal government shutdown drags on.

Later that day, French posted that someone had said his post is racist. It’s not, he said. “It just means freaking out,” French said. Earlier in the week on Monday, he posted that: “November 1 the EBT payments shut off. 40 million people will not get free food anymore. Remember what happened when they rioted over a dishonest narrative following George Floyd? Imagine what 40 million will do. Plan accordingly.” French responded to a San Antonio Current article about the posts on Thursday, defending his social media remarks. “This leftist sees racism where there clearly isn’t,” he said. “Most rioters of recent have been white ANTIFA types.” French declined a Star-Telegram interview request, saying in a text that he didn’t want to help with the writing of a “dishonest hit piece” where “you project your own racism onto my posts where I clearly said nothing about race.” “I talk about EBT and SNAP and y’all immediately think I am talking about black people,” French said in the text. “I talk about social unrest and riots and y’all immediately think I am talking about black people. You are the racists.”

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Texas House Dems urge Gov. Greg Abbott to fund state’s SNAP benefits amid government shutdown

Texas House Democrats sent a letter to Governor Greg Abbott urging him to declare a state of emergency and fund SNAP benefits for 3.5 million Texans who will lose food assistance in November due to the government shutdown. The letter was signed by 57 members of the Texas House Democratic Caucus. “Families who rely on SNAP to feed their children and seniors who depend on it for groceries will have nowhere to turn,” a portion of the letter read. “...States do have the power to take temporary emergency measures, using state funds to prevent hunger and stabilize families while Congress resolves the federal impasse. Governors in Louisiana and Virginia have already taken decisive action to protect their residents during this period of uncertainty. Texas should do the same.” Earlier this week, Gov. Abbott called for Democrats in the state senate to end the government shutdown by approving Republican-backed legislation, calling it a “simple and immediate solution.”

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Dallas lawyer Tony Box launches Democratic bid for Texas attorney general

A new name has entered the running for Texas attorney general. Dallas lawyer Anthony “Tony” Box is running to succeed Republican Ken Paxton as the state’s chief legal counsel. Box, 57, joins a March Democratic primary that includes opponents state Sen. Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas, and former Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski. “The people of Texas deserve a chief law enforcement officer that’s going to have the courage to stand with them and to fight corruption and the pressure to not bend the knee to someone in Washington, D.C,” Box said in an interview with the Dallas Morning News. “I’m that guy.”

Box is a former FBI agent, military servicemember and federal prosecutor. At 16, he survived a bullet to the stomach while chasing down a purse-snatcher in Chicago. “As I recovered in the hospital, I thought about what I wanted to do with my life,” Box said. “I decided I wanted to live a life of service. I’ve done that. I want to do more.” As an assistant U.S. attorney, Box prosecuted tax evasion, fraud and violent crimes. He called Paxton “corrupt” and ineffective and said that ultimately pushed Box to run for office. Paxton faced impeachment in a 2023 trial over corruption allegations after his top aides reported him to the FBI. He was ultimately acquitted, and two senators who voted to absolve him — state Sens. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, and Joan Huffman, R-Houston — are now running to fill his post.

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Largest gay church pushes back on Texas Supreme Court

The pastor of the world’s largest progressive church with a primary outreach to the LGBTQ community issued a statement blasting a Texas Supreme Court assessment that allows state judges to refuse to conduct same-sex marriages based on religious freedom claims. “This ruling is nothing less than state-sanctioned discrimination and a betrayal of the fundamental promise of equality under the law,” said Neil Thomas, senior pastor at Cathedral of Hope in Dallas. “This decision gives prejudice a platform and power it does not deserve. “To deny couples the right to marry because of who they love is an affront to both our Constitution and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let us be clear: This is not about religious freedom; it is about institutionalizing bias.”

In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex marriage must be allowed in all 50 states. Previously, the states had a patchwork of different practices, with some allowing same-sex marriage and others not. Since then, judges and justices of the peace nationwide have been required to be all in on weddings — for heterosexual as well as homosexual couples — or not officiate weddings at all. In Texas, judicial officials are not required to officiate weddings but may choose to do so. After Obergefell, a Rowan County, Ky., clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, citing her religious beliefs, made national headlines. Kim Davis defied the Supreme Court ruling and was defeated in her bid for reelection and sued by two same-sex couples for refusing to issue marriage certificates. Both a trial court and an appeals court rejected Davis’ argument that she is entitled to qualified immunity from monetary damages in civil suits brought against her.

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Bee Moorhead: Texans must look past “feel-good” amendments and ask hard questions

(Bee Moorhead is executive director of Texas Impact, the state's oldest and largest interfaith advocacy group.) The Nov. 4 constitutional amendment election has the most amendments Texans have been asked to consider on a single ballot since 2003. The 17 amendments include funding for various projects; proposals related to public safety; and seemingly pointless statements intended to support future lawsuits on social issues. Ten of the amendments involve tax provisions, and seven of those are property tax exemptions. The U.S. Constitution has been amended a handful of times since 1787, but the Texas Constitution has been amended 528 times in about 125 years. It's like a pier-and-beam house that has been remodeled and added onto by every successive owner. We've built stories and added wings, but we never actually go in and level the piers.

This year’s proposed tax exemptions will add more weight to an already unstable structure. Exemptions appeal to politicians and voters because they feel good: Who doesn’t want lower property taxes? But each exemption exists in relation to all others, and like all exemptions, those proposed this year would further concentrate the property tax burden on Texans who don't happen to meet arbitrary qualifications. My husband is over 65, and that means we benefit from certain property tax exemptions. Of course, we like saving money on our tax bill. But what about the mail carrier, our house cleaner and the H-E-B employee who helped me carry 10 heavy bags of potting soil out to my car? None of them are over 65. When we exempt property taxes for some, the system as a whole becomes less stable and less fair. Non-exempt taxpayers will experience an increase in their taxes (or their rent), all just so my husband and I can benefit from, no offense, being old.

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Texas gas prices drop as November nears

Prices at gas pumps across the Lone Star State are trending lower as October ends, with drivers in Austin and San Antonio seeing some of the steepest declines. The statewide average for regular unleaded fuel sat at $2.59 per gallon Thursday, according to the AAA Texas Weekend Gas Watch. That figure amounts to three cents less than last week and 10 cents lower than a year ago. In the Austin–San Marcos area, prices fell 10 cents over the past week to an average of $2.56 per gallon, while San Antonio drivers saw an even larger drop of 14 cents, landing at $2.52. In Houston, prices remained relatively stable, down just two cents to $2.56 per gallon.

At the higher end, El Paso and San Angelo posted the state’s most expensive fuel, both averaging $2.81 per gallon. Amarillo continues to have the cheapest gas in Texas at $2.48 per gallon. Nationally, the average price for regular unleaded is $3.04, also three cents down from last week. AAA Texas spokesperson Daniel Armbruster said the easing prices are typical for this time of year. “Gas prices often remain steady or dip during the fall, and this year is no exception,” Armbruster said. “With crude oil prices holding relatively low and demand easing, drivers may continue to see some relief at the pump heading into the upcoming busy holiday travel period.” Fuel costs have been sliding throughout October as crude oil prices stay low amid ample supply and soft demand. With those trends expected to continue, AAA says motorists could see prices drift even lower into November — potentially keeping fuel costs manageable for Thanksgiving travelers.

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Will following the MAHA agenda put Ken Paxton in the Senate?

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has his sights on a U.S. Senate seat and he apparently thinks anti-vaccine MAHA moms and trial lawyers will get him there. Neither group is historically associated with the Republican Party, but President Trump has scrambled everything in politics, including recruiting former plaintiffs lawyer and Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy to run the Health and Human Services Department. Paxton has fallen right in line behind Trump, suing Covid vaccine manufacturer Pfizer, tech giants Google and Meta and most recently Tylenol maker Kenvue, the successor company to Johnson & Johnson’s consumer health care division. He’s also suing Johnson & Johnson. The lawsuits allow Paxton to tell Texans he is “protecting our kids” while also providing tens of millions of dollars in fees to law firms that traditionally have supported Democratic candidates.

It also aligns him with Trump as he tries to free himself from basically a tie in the polls and win the GOP nomination for Senate next year against incumbent John Cornyn. “The closer to Trump the better in these primaries,” said Brandon J. Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston and host of the “Party Politics” podcast and TV show. “Every contender is waiting for Trump’s endorsement, so being closer to the MAHA movement helps.” Paxton has served as Texas AG for a decade and has long used the office to sue companies and deliver large settlements to the state. After narrowly escaping impeachment in 2023, he has increasingly turned toward using high-priced outside attorneys to pursue litigation, sometimes in parallel with national mass-tort cases. He tapped Keller Postman, a Chicago law firm, to sue Johnson & Johnson and its Kenvue consumer-products spinoff over claims Tylenol can cause autism in newborns even though Keller Postman had a similar case thrown out of court after a federal judge in New York found its scientific evidence lacking.

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Four companies announce 400+ layoffs in Dallas-Fort Worth

Four companies are laying off more than 400 workers in Dallas-Fort Worth, putting further strain on Texas’ slowing job market as national layoffs also pick up speed. Security firm Job1USA is cutting about 117 employees at six locations in Texas, including 81 in Dallas-Fort Worth. Most are security guards or security guard managers. The company did not respond to a request for comment, but noted six addresses in its letter to state officials matching UPS distribution facilities. That included 31 layoffs at a UPS facility in Arlington, 25 in Fort Worth and 25 in Haslet. There are also layoffs in Houston, San Antonio and Round Rock, the company’s letter said.

UPS announced layoffs in August that included 61 employees at a facility in Dallas. The shipping giant said two days ago that it would cut 48,000 jobs in management and operations worldwide. Health care and consumer products company Tekni-Plex is laying off 64 workers at its plant at 4700 S. Westmoreland Road in Dallas, as the company “is ceasing most operations” at the location. Layoffs are expected on Dec. 26. “A few employees will be kept on as the facility transitions to a warehouse and distribution center, and some employees will be offered relocation,” Tekni-Plex’s Sue Vanhoy said in a letter to Texas officials. “However, Tekni-Plex has carefully analysed this situation and its available options, and it is with regret that I must report to you that as a result of this action, a number of positions located at 4700 S Westmoreland Rd, Dallas, TX 75237 will be eliminated.” Separately, Louisville, Ky.-based food maker Congo Brands is cutting 155 workers at its facility in Lewisville, after losing contracts to distribute Alani Nu and Celsius energy drinks. Layoffs are expected to happen at the end of 2025. Congo has its commercial headquarters office in Lewisville.

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Dr. Phil ordered to liquidate in bankruptcy case with ‘no hope for rehabilitation’

A month after a weekslong hearing on the motion to dismiss or to convert Merit Street Media’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Scott Everett converted the case to a Chapter 7 from the bench Tuesday afternoon. “There is no hope for rehabilitation,” Everett said. He called the case an anomaly and said it came to him in “liquidation mode.” Everett said he had found several reasons to convert the case, which included not trusting the testimony of Chief Reconstructing Officer Gary Broadbent, a missing text Dr. Phil McGraw deleted and the makeup of the unsecured creditors committee.

“At this point, and not withstanding able counsel for the parties, the Chapter 11 case is a broken three-legged stool. The first leg is Mr. McGraw, who deletes unfavorable text messages he doesn’t want me to see, who vows to pay favored creditors no matter what the court does, and who vows to wipe out unfavored creditors,” Everett said. “The second leg is Mr. Broadbent, who worked for Mr. McGraw’s newly created company after the petition date, without pushing back honest and direct answers to direct, simple questions. And the third leg is a creditors committee, half composed of the Ribmans who enjoy a favorable payment guarantee from either Mr. McGraw or the debtor, no matter what the court does, and who enjoy the right under the proposed plan to supervise litigation.” Celebrity television psychologist McGraw, 75, launched Merit Street Media television network in April 2024, a year after he ended his two-decade run of Dr. Phil on CBS. Merit Street filed for bankruptcy in July. Shortly after filing for bankruptcy, McGraw launched Dallas-based ENVOY Media Co., a new media venture that delivers live news, original entertainment and interactive content across traditional and digital platforms. Merit has accused Trinity Broadcasting Network and its affiliate TCT Ministries of failing to fulfill their obligations under the 2023 agreement that established Merit Street. Merit alleges Trinity violated the agreement by charging for production services, not covering distribution costs and delivering “shoddy” production work. According to its bankruptcy filing, Merit has between $100 million and $500 million in assets but has liabilities in the same range.

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March of Dimes launches research collaborative in Texas to address high preterm birth rate

Texas has a new research collaborative focused on addressing the state’s high rate of pre-term births. March of Dimes – a nonprofit advocacy and research organization focused on maternal and infant health – launched the collaboration, which includes UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and UT Medical Branch in Galveston. The Texas Collaborative marks the organization’s sixth Prematurity Research Center. “It's really a historical moment for Dallas-Fort Worth and for the state of Texas,” said Clint Abernathy, March of Dimes board chair and president of Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Alliance. “We have an 11% preterm birth rate in the state of Texas and this research center is meant to find innovative ways to help correct that.”

In 2023, there were over 43,000 preterm births in Texas, representing about 1 in 9 babies. Abernathy said the point of the collaboration is to address that high rate by teaming up with expertise that already exists within the state. “Whenever you have research that focuses in on those wonderful assets in the community in our future, it's very easy to tie into the mission,” he said. Dr. Katherine Spong, chair of UT Southwestern Medical Center’s OBGYN department, leads the project with another doctor in Galveston. “We at UT Southwestern certainly do a lot of research and create evidence for practice which is very, very important to us,” Sprong said. “Having the ability to leverage the March of Dimes network is going to be really important for us and a huge opportunity for our young faculty members as well as our experienced faculty members.” While there is some overlap in what each of the March of Dimes research centers bring to the table, Spong said each center has unique strength to contribute to the research network.

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Bradford William Davis: Don’t be so quick to judge intent behind a casket left at mayor’s house

On Thanksgiving weekend in 1995, a Fort Worth activist dropped a casket. Not as a threat of retaliation, but as a somber reminder of senseless violence and its consequences. Mortician and minister Gregory W. Spencer tinted his coffin in blue and sprinkled on red chrysanthemums, the colors representing the Bloods and Crips warring throughout Stop Six. Casket in tow, Spencer spread his anti-gang gospel to residences such as the since-demolished JA Cavile Place housing projects — what he called one of the city’s “prime gang locations” — pleading with anyone watching to stop the violence. “There’s blue, there’s red, there’s contention, there’s controversy,” Spencer said as he motioned toward the empty casket. “But in the end, when there is violence, this is the scene.”

Message received. Three decades later, the city of Fort Worth is once again confronted with a symbolic casket. Mayor Mattie Parker recently alleged that an empty coffin dumped in front of her home in 2022 could be intended as a threat to her family. Protesting outside the mayor’s home was provocative, and I see how it could have put her on edge more than a march at City Hall, particularly looking at it now in the shadow of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s shocking assassination. We don’t know who left the casket, which means we don’t have a statement from their own words about their intent. But I believe history can free us from being prisoners of the moment and provide a different perspective on the protesters’ possible intent. One month after Parker voted against forming a citizen-led police review board intended as a check on police power, the activists responsible for the December 2022 casket drop spray-painted an important and deeply tragic name in recent Fort Worth history on their coffin: Atatiana Jefferson, a Black woman killed in her home while babysitting her nephew. (A jury found Aaron Dean, the cop who killed Jefferson, guilty of manslaughter. Dean was sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison.) The activists also painted the well-known slogan #SayHerName, used to commemorate Black women slain by the police, and #FTP, an acronym that I gather stood for what Ice Cube and Dr. Dre named their infamous rap song about police. Further, protesters garnished the casket at Parker’s house in red paint resembling spilled blood and a target reticle.

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‘She told me she’d get in trouble’: Texas law limits students’ mental health support, name choice

El Dorado High School senior Jay Byrd felt overwhelmed as the cacophony of student chatter, crowded hallways and piercing bright fluorescent lights of her school overcame her senses. The 17-year-old Socorro Independent School District student, who says she has post-traumatic stress disorder, said she was used to going to her school’s counselor any time she experienced sensory issues or felt overstimulated in class. That was until last month, when Jay’s school counselor told her a new law that took effect Sept. 1 prevented her from providing mental health services without first getting a signed permission slip from her parents. “She immediately told me, ‘I’ll get in trouble if you talk to me about your emotions and what you’re feeling,’” Jay said. “I was on the verge of tears, and I was already really stressed. She told me it was because of the new bill.”

Senate Bill 12, which was approved by Texas lawmakers during the summer legislative session, requires schools to obtain written consent from parents before providing students with “mental, emotional, or physical health” services. It also requires schools to notify parents anytime there are changes to these services. This is on top of the forms some parents already sign to allow school nurses to give their child medication or specialized treatment. SB 12, known by its supporters as a “Parents Bill of Rights,” establishes a series of sweeping policy changes aimed at strengthening parents’ control over their child’s education, while some opponents, including students, say it limits their rights. Critics of the bill say portions of SB 12 mirror Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill and target LGBTQ students, teachers and their allies. Some of the policy changes under the bill include requiring schools to give parents easier access to their curriculum online, requiring parents to give written permission for students to join clubs — regardless of their purpose — barring schools from offering activities and programs related to gender identity or sexual orientation, and banning diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in schools.

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Hood County residents could form a city to regulate a Bitcoin mine – now it's suing to stop them

A rural community in Hood County is set to vote next week to become Texas’ newest city – but a lawsuit filed by the owner of a nearby Bitcoin mine could block them. For months, residents of Mitchell Bend outside of Granbury have been campaigning to incorporate, and by doing so, try to regulate the Bitcoin mine they say has been causing them serious health problems for years. The mine, owned by Marathon Digital Holdings, or MARA, was built in 2022. Since then, residents have complained about constant noise pollution from the fans needed to cool the massive computers in the facility.

“All of these people in this area have varying degrees of issues – dizziness, nausea, vertigo, motion sickness,” said Cheryl Shadden, who runs the Facebook group Bitcoin Noise Hood County and works as a registered nurse anesthetist. She and others say incorporation is their only remaining option to address the problem. But on Tuesday, MARA filed a lawsuit in the federal Northern District of Texas calling the ballot initiative "illegal." "This case is about an intentional and unconstitutional use of local government authority to favor a small group of citizens and violate the constitutional rights of others," reads the lawsuit. A spokesperson for MARA wrote in a statement to KERA that the company filed the suit because the incorporation effort "serves no lawful or legitimate purpose." "It seeks only to target specific businesses —including MARA — with punitive taxes and restrictive ordinances, which is contrary to the principles of fair and lawful governance," read the statement.

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National Stories

Super rich? In prison? Lobbyists want to help score you a Trump pardon.

A rapper. A scam PAC operator. A former utilities executive. They’re just a few of the people participating in the flourishing presidential pardon economy, where wealthy convicts of all stripes are paying lobbyists big money to potentially score them enduring freedom from President Donald Trump. NOTUS identified six previously unreported individuals who have recently hired lobbyists to help them seek pardons from Trump. Among them: Anne Pramaggiore, the former CEO of Illinois utility giant Commonwealth Edison, who paid Crossroads Strategies $80,000 last quarter for “advising on public policy and legislative matters relevant to the pardon process.” Pramaggiore was convicted on nine charges related to an alleged bribery scheme involving former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and sentenced on July 21 to two years in prison — days after she hired Crossroads Strategies to advise on the pardon process.

Pramaggiore, who is set to report to prison on Dec. 1, is appealing her conviction on the grounds that federal prosecutors failed to establish a quid pro quo took place. Crossroads Strategies directed questions about Pramaggiore’s case to adviser Mark Herr, who told NOTUS: “Anne Pramaggiore was wrongly convicted and is appealing her case to the Seventh Circuit. At the same time, she is exploring all options in her pursuit of justice, including the possibility of a pardon.” Clients are also flocking to Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl of JM Burkman & Associates — lobbyists who themselves pleaded guilty in 2022 to telecommunications fraud as part of an illegal robocall scheme — to lobby for pardons and on “DOJ issues.” Their client list includes rapper Boosie Badazz — real name: Torence Ivy Hatch Jr. — who in August pleaded guilty to federal gun charges and hired JM Burkman & Associates this month to lobby the White House for a presidential pardon. JM Burkman & Associates is also raking in big money from two more previously unreported clients. The firm received $960,000 during the second quarter to “[seek] a federal pardon” for Joseph Schwartz, a former nursing home executive sentenced this spring to three years in prison for a $38 million tax-fraud scheme. And JM Burkman & Associates client Tim McPhee, who in August pleaded guilty to charges related to a multimillion-dollar investment scheme, has paid the firm $160,000 since the end of 2024 to lobby on “DOJ issues.”

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Trump’s call to resume nuclear testing after decades revives a Cold War debate

President Trump’s unexpected declaration on Thursday that he was ordering the U.S. military to resume nuclear testing prompted visions of a return to the worst days of the Cold War, when the United States, Russia and China were regularly detonating new weapons, first in the atmosphere and outer space, then underground. It was an era of terrifying threats and counter-threats, of dark visions of Armageddon and theories of deterrence by mutually assured destruction. That age supposedly ended with the arrival of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty that nations agreed to in the mid-1990s. But not enough of the signatories ratified it for the treaty to formally come into force. Its objective was to starve the arms race by cutting off new tests and the cycle of retaliation they engendered.

Mr. Trump has now revived the debate inside the national security community over whether to break the tradition of observing that treaty, which some of his former aides have argued impedes the country’s ability to demonstrate “peace through strength.” On Air Force One, returning from Korea, the president told reporters he had made the call because of all the other countries conducting nuclear tests. “We’ve halted it years — many years — ago,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the fact that the last U.S. explosive test of a nuclear weapon was in 1992, during the George H.W. Bush administration. “But with others doing testing, I think it is appropriate that we do also.” Except, of course, they aren’t. The only nation that has been regularly testing in the past quarter century is North Korea, and its last explosive test was in September 2017. Moscow has not conducted a test in 35 years, in the last days of the Soviet Union. Mr. Trump, however, may have been confusing nuclear weapons tests with Russia’s recent declaration that it had tested two exotic delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons: a nuclear-powered cruise missile and an undersea torpedo, called Poseidon, that could cross the Pacific and strike the West Coast of the United States. Both are designed to evade American missile defenses, which look for the warheads of intercontinental ballistic missiles as they speed through space.

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Noem rejects Illinois Gov. Pritzker's request to pause immigration actions over Halloween weekend

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday flatly rejected a request by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker to suspend immigration enforcements in the Chicago area until after Halloween. Pritzker cited children’s safety and an incident from Saturday in which Customs and Border Protection agents deployed tear gas in a neighborhood where kids were preparing for a Halloween parade. In turning down the request, Noem also cited children’s safety. “We’re absolutely not willing to put on pause any work that we will do to keep communities safe,” Noem said at a news conference in Gary, Indiana, on Thursday. “The fact that Gov. Pritzker is asking for that is shameful and, I think, unfortunate that he doesn’t recognize how important the work is that we do to make sure we’re bringing criminals to justice and getting them off our streets, especially when we’re going to send all of our kiddos out on the streets and going to events and enjoying the holiday season.”

Noem made the comments amid a firestorm of controversy in the Chicago area, as a spasm of immigration enforcement operations devolved into chaotic confrontations with residents and activists in which immigration officers deployed chemical agents. In a widely reported event over the weekend, they used tear gas in the Old Irving Park neighborhood, just as kids and families were gathering for a Halloween parade. Pritzker appeared to reference the incident in his letter to Noem. “I am respectfully requesting you suspend enforcement operations from Friday, October 31 to Sunday, November 2 in and around homes, schools, hospitals, parks, houses of worship, and other community gatherings where Halloween celebrations are taking place. Illinois families deserve to spend Halloween weekend without fear,” Pritzker wrote in a letter sent to Noem. “No child should be forced to inhale tear gas or other chemical agents while trick or treating in their own neighborhood.”

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More home purchases are falling through in an uncertain economy

Trish DaCosta saved for more than five years to buy a home in Nashville, Tenn., and was thrilled when her offer on a roughly $400,000, three-bedroom house was accepted. Then, a month before closing earlier this year, she was laid off from her job in public relations. When she learned she lost her job, the first call she made was to her real-estate agent to pull the offer. “I’m grieving the loss of that house,” said DaCosta, 40. “It’s really frustrating after years of saving and planning.” A clause in her contract ensured that DaCosta got back her $4,000 good-faith deposit, but she lost the roughly $1,100 she had spent on inspections and appraisal fees. More home-purchase agreements are being scrapped around the country, reflecting an intensifying standoff between buyers and sellers in a largely stalled housing market. About 15% of agreements were canceled in September, up from roughly 13.6% a year earlier, according to the real-estate brokerage Redfin. The rate has generally been climbing all year.

The rising cancellations are being fueled by a range of factors, including uncertainty regarding the economy. More buyers are feeling anxious about their job security, triggering cold feet before closing in some cases, according to real-estate agents. And with home prices at historic highs, financing for buyers might be falling through or they might realize that ongoing costs such as homeowners insurance or property taxes are higher than they anticipated, said Rick Sharga, founder of CJ Patrick Co., a real-estate consulting firm. In many cases, buyers simply have more leverage than they have had in years, thanks to the growing inventory of homes that are staying on the market longer. Meanwhile, many sellers with low mortgage rates feel little pressure to sell, one reason home prices are still so high. Sellers who don’t get the price they want can simply take their home off the market. In September, about 52% more homes were delisted compared with a year earlier, according to Realtor.com, which is operated by News Corp, parent of The Wall Street Journal.

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Gen Z focus group shows excitement about Mamdani, lack of trust in establishment

A focus group of young New York City residents conducted during the early voting period in a hotly contested mayoral race found that Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani's message of affordability resonated with participants concerned about the cost of living in America's largest city. Researchers from the Harvard Institute of Politics asked the group aged 22 to 29 about the biggest stressors in their lives and their preferences in this year's mayoral race in order to better understand the political attitudes of New York City's young voters. The study comes as the role of the youth vote in this year's election for mayor has loomed large, with Mamdani in particular receiving praise for his social media strategy that allowed him to tap into the Gen Z vote in the Democratic primary. It could also point to how Gen Z voters might behave in the 2026 midterm elections, as Republicans across the country seek to maintain their control of the Senate and their razor-thin majority in the House.

Participants in the group hailed from The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens, and spanned education levels and careers. Those excited about Mamdani crossed the political spectrum, including two participants who had voted for President Donald Trump in last year's presidential election. One of those participants was Matthew A., a 27-year-old Republican from Texas who now lives in Manhattan. Focus group participants were identified only by their first name and last initial. "I'm enthusiastic. I think he has great plans," Matthew said. He drew comparisons between Trump and Mamdani, saying that with both "there's no flip-flopping." "The Bernie-Trump pipeline is very real," added Thomas L., a 25-year-old Republican who also voted for Trump and lives in Queens, referring to the group of independent Sen. Bernie Sanders supporters who were attracted to Trump's populist message after Sanders dropped out of the Democratic primary back in 2016. "[Mamdani] seems like another Bernie, and I want that.” Across the board, participants cited a lack of affordability as one of the greatest stressors on young people living in New York City and are hopeful that Mamdani's agenda might make living in the city that they love a little easier. "I think my life could really improve if he wins," said Elyssa F., a 22-year-old Democrat who lives in Queens. Other participants appreciated Mamdani's anti-establishment positioning and his stance on Israel.

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Prince Andrew stripped of his 'prince' title, per Buckingham Palace

Prince Andrew, son of the late Queen Elizabeth II, has been stripped of his “prince” title and will move out of his royal residence in the latest fallout from his relationship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Buckingham Palace announced Thursday that King Charles III, Andrew's older brother, has initiated the process of removing Andrew’s “style, titles and honours.” “Prince Andrew will now be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor,” the palace said in a statement. “His lease on Royal Lodge has, to date, provided him with legal protection to continue in residence. Formal notice has now been served to surrender the lease and he will move to alternative private accommodation.”

“These censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him,” the statement continued. “Their Majesties wish to make clear that their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been, and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse.” Andrew announced earlier this month that he would no longer use his Duke of York title, saying in a statement released by the palace that “the continued accusations about me distract from the work of His Majesty and the Royal Family.” The removal of Andrew’s titles marks the first time a member of Britain's royal family has been stripped of their title in over 100 years, according to the U.K. House of Commons. Under the change announced Thursday, Andrew will also move from his longtime home of Royal Lodge on the grounds of Windsor Castle to a property on Sandringham, the king's private estate in Norfolk, England, a royal source told ABC News. In addition to no longer being referred to as Prince Andrew -- the title given to him at birth by Queen Elizabeth, who died in 2022 at the age of 96 -- Andrew is also losing the titles of Earl of Inverness, Baron Killyleagh, the style “His Royal Highness” and the honors of the Order of the Garter and Knight Grand Cross of the Victorian Order, a royal source told ABC News.

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Justice Department investigating fraud allegations in Black Lives Matter movement, AP sources say

The Justice Department is investigating whether leaders in the Black Lives Matter movement defrauded donors who contributed tens of millions of dollars during racial justice protests in 2020, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. In recent weeks, federal law enforcement officials have issued subpoenas and served at least one search warrant as part of an investigation into the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc. and other Black-led organizations that helped spark a national reckoning on systemic racism, said the people, who were not authorized to discuss an ongoing criminal probe by name and spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press. It was not clear if the investigation would result in criminal charges, but its mere existence invites fresh scrutiny to a movement that in recent years has faced criticism about its public accounting of donations it has received.

The recent burst of investigative activity is also unfolding at a time when civil rights organizations have raised concerns about the potential for the Trump administration to target a variety of progressive and left-leaning groups that have been critical of him, including those affiliated with BLM, the transgender rights movement and anti-ICE protesters. Spokespeople for the Justice Department declined to comment on Thursday. One of the people said the investigation had been initiated during the Biden administration but is getting renewed attention during the Trump administration. A second person confirmed that allegations were examined in the Biden administration. The foundation said it took in over $90 million in donations following the 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man whose last breaths under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer sparked protests across the U.S. and around the world.

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Copyright November 07, 2025, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved