Lead Stories

State Rep. Gina Hinojosa enters race for Texas governor

State Representative Gina Hinojosa announced she is running to become the first Democratic governor in Texas in 30 years. The Rio Grande Valley native will officially launch her campaign in Brownsville on Wednesday night. Supporters gathered for Hinojosa’s campaign launch on Wednesday and were seen holding signs that read “No Te Dejes.” That phrase translates as a directive to “know yourself and fight for it,” Hinojosa said during her speech. “When you know your people have your back, you can do anything. When you know your people are with you, you can do anything. It is a courage, and it is a faith, to do the hard things. And because you give me courage — because I have faith in you, because I have faith in my family, my community, in God and in Texans — I am running to be the next governor of the State of Texas.”

As Hinojosa went on in her speech, supporters were heard chanting “Si se puede,” which means yes we can. Hinojosa started her career as a labor lawyer. She said she never wanted to be a politician, but decided to get involved after her son’s school was threatened to be closed and was elected to the Austin Independent School District school board. She was then elected to the State House in 2016 and has served the Austin area in the Capitol ever since. When asked about her intentions in running for governor, Hinojosa said that Texans need a governor that “prioritizes the needs of Texans, as opposed to the billionaire class, which is what we’re seeing Governor Greg Abbott do.” Hinojosa has been one of the harshest critics of Gov. Greg Abbott, who is running for his fourth consecutive term. Following her announcement, Abbott’s campaign manager, Kim Snyder, released a statement: “Time and again, Gina Hinojosa chooses woke, extreme ideologies over the safety and security of Texas families. Texans deserve a Governor who will continue to secure the border, fight for safer communities, and uphold family values—not someone who supports failed, radical policies that hurt hardworking Texans.”

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Texas trial lawyer: ‘No jury in America will hold Camp Mystic responsible’

Nationally prominent Texas plaintiff’s trial lawyer Mikal Watts, who has successfully sued some of the biggest companies in the world for wrongful death and personal injuries, is taking on his first defense client: Camp Mystic and its owners. Watts said Monday that he is officially representing pro bono the Eastland family and the Christian girls summer camp that they have operated for decades in any potential litigation resulting from the July flooding tragedy that caused more than 115 deaths, including 27 children at Camp Mystic in Kerr County. “I’ve spent three months conducting a thorough investigation, and I believe that facts matter,” Watts told The Texas Lawbook in an exclusive interview. “This was a flood of biblical proportions. This was preventable only one way — by deploying Texas tax money into modern river flood surge warning devices instead of the 70-year-old technology being used in Texas.

“The sirens never went off. The warnings never came,” said Watts, who also owns property along the Guadalupe River about 12 miles from Camp Mystic. “We, as a state, failed those families. Those girls never had a chance. There is no jury in America that will hold Camp Mystic responsible,” he said. Watts said that no lawsuits have been filed so far naming Camp Mystic or the Eastlands as defendants.A lawsuit has been filed by the family of Jayda Floyd against the HTR TX Hill Country, an RV and camping resort along the Guadalupe River. Floyd was with her fiancé, Odessa police Officer Bailey Martin, celebrating the Fourth of July in their RV. Both Floyd and Martin died in the flood that swept them away along with their RV. “I would be lying if I said that I did not see financial opportunity by possibly representing the victims’ families in this tragedy,” Watts told The Lawbook. “But all the finger pointing in the world is never going to change what happened or who is responsible.” Watts, a prominent donor to Democratic candidates and causes, praised the Republican-led Texas legislature for the passage of multiple laws that he agrees were first steps in requiring improved warning systems in flood-prone areas. “The families have a right to demand to know what happened,” Watts said. “So we are inviting any families to tour the grounds at Camp Mystic, and we will show them the evidence, show them the facts.”

Read this article at Texas Lawbook - Subscribers Only

Trump considers overhaul of refugee system that would favor white people

The Trump administration is considering a radical overhaul of the U.S. refugee system that would slash the program to its bare bones while giving preference to English speakers, white South Africans and Europeans who oppose migration, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. The proposals, some of which already have gone into effect, would transform a decades-old program aimed at helping the world’s most desperate people into one that conforms to Mr. Trump’s vision of immigration — which is to help mostly white people who say they are being persecuted while keeping the vast majority of other people out. The plans were presented to the White House in April and July by officials in the State and Homeland Security Departments after President Trump directed federal agencies to study whether refugee resettlement was in the interest of the United States.

Mr. Trump had suspended refugee admissions on his first day in office and solicited the proposals about how and whether the administration should continue the program. Trump administration officials have not ruled out any of the ideas, according to people familiar with the planning, although there is no set timetable for approving or rejecting the ideas. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the confidential plans. The proposed changes would put new emphasis on whether applicants would be able to assimilate into the United States, directing them to take classes on “American history and values” and “respect for cultural norms.” The proposals also advise Mr. Trump to prioritize Europeans who have been “targeted for peaceful expression of views online such as opposition to mass migration or support for ‘populist’ political parties.” That appeared to be a reference to the European far-right political party Alternative for Germany, whose leaders have trivialized the Holocaust, revived Nazi slogans and denigrated foreigners. Vice President JD Vance has criticized Germany for trying to suppress the views of the group, which is known as the AfD.

Read this article at New York Times - Subscribers Only

Supreme Court seems poised to further undercut the Voting Rights Act

The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed headed for another ruling that undercuts the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act. Once considered the jewel in the crown of the civil rights movement, the Voting Rights Act has been largely dismembered since 2013 by the increasingly conservative Supreme Court. The major exception was a decision just two years ago that upheld the section of the law aimed at ensuring that minority voters are not shut out of the process of drawing new congressional district lines. But on Wednesday, Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote that decision, downplayed the importance of the ruling, suggesting he didn't see it as controlling the outcome in Wednesday's case.

At issue in the more than two hours of arguments before the court was the redistricting map drawn by the Louisiana legislature after the decennial census. Following years of litigation, the state, with a 30% Black population, first fought and then finally agreed to draw a second majority-Black district. Two of the state's six House members are African American. Normally, that would have been the end of the case, but a self-described group of "non-African-American voters" intervened after the new maps were drawn up to object to the legislature's redistricting. Supporting them in the Supreme Court Wednesday, Deputy Solicitor General Hashim Mooppan contended that the Black voters should not have gotten a second majority-minority district. "If they were all white, we all agree they wouldn't get a second district," he said.

Read this article at NPR - Subscribers Only

State Stories

Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson denies speculation he’ll resign to seek another political office

Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson rejected mounting speculation about his political future late Tuesday, declaring on social media he is not resigning and will continue serving as mayor. “I am NOT running for anything, and I will continue serving our great city as its mayor!” Johnson posted on X. The statement comes amid weeks of growing speculation at Dallas City Hall that Johnson, who is in his second and final four-year term as mayor, might step down to seek another political office. Johnson did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. At least one candidate for mayor says he is ready to run if Johnson resigns. Former Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Michael Hinojosa is one of several people being discussed as a possible successor to Johnson, whose term expires in 2027.

Others who are being talked about as potential candidates are developer Peter Brodsky, Dallas workforce czar Lynn McBee and Dallas City Council members Chad West, Gay Donnell Willis and Adam Bazaldua. “It was really quiet for a long time, but in the last 10 days, I’ve heard it from 10 different sources that he’s going to announce something at some point — that he’s not going to finish his term,” Hinojosa said in an interview. The domain name ericjohnsonfortexas.com was registered Oct. 6, according to the website godaddy.com, though it’s unclear who reserved it. The city also canceled a scheduled City Council briefing this week, fueling more speculation. Johnson has not responded to requests for comment, but he posted Tuesday night on social media, saying he is not running for another office. “Trying to find out whether I am resigning, but the “story” is behind a paywall," Johnson posted. “Hate it when that happens. Anyway, here is the free version: I am NOT running for anything, and I will continue serving our great city as its mayor!” For more than a year, Dallas political insiders have questioned whether the mayor will finish his term or seek higher office. Recent events have intensified speculation, with some of it suggesting he may resign soon to run for state or federal office.

Read this article at Dallas Morning News - Subscribers Only

Houston mayor calls rainbow crosswalk removal ‘a manufactured issue’ in first public comments about it

Houston Mayor John Whitmire called the removal of rainbow crosswalks in Montrose "a manufactured issue" at the behest of the federal government and an "ambitious" Gov. Greg Abbott. In his first public comments on the controversy, Whitmire also indicated that a legal challenge would be "a battle we would lose." "This was a manmade issue," Whitmire said during Wednesday’s Houston City Council meeting. "Nothing was broken. Governor Abbott joined because he's a very ambitious governor, looking at the presidential race. The stripes have been in place for the last eight years of his administration. I've had contact with him. It's never been an issue. It was a manufactured issue, but it's a real one." Whitmire spoke for more than 10 minutes on the crosswalks' pending removal by the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County (METRO), based on a directive by Abbott.

Whitmire had previously been criticized by some for not commenting publicly, including by hecklers during a Tuesday news conference held by city council member Abbie Kamin. Kamin praised Whitmire for speaking on the matter Wednesday. "I understand the position that the city is being put in, but if we do not do something now, what will they threaten us with next?" Kamin said. "And so I would hope that we are able to explore opportunities like other cities are doing to submit for safety exceptions for the crosswalk, because that is an option." Kamin also opened the door to possible legal action or a rapid development of the Montrose area as a historical heritage district, which could protect the area for its "character-defining elements" such as the rainbow crosswalks at the intersection of Westheimer Road and Taft Street, which were installed in 2017 to celebrate the city’s LGBTQ+ community. Whitmire said such challenges could lead to political backlash. "That's a battle we would lose," he said. "We can do what we want to. Abbott has a veto, a line-item veto. So everything we were successful in getting this year and plan to get in the future would be in jeopardy. And beyond jeopardy, they would be cut."

Read this article at Houston Public Media - Subscribers Only

Austin police don’t know when ICE is coming. The chief says that could be dangerous.

Police in some Texas cities get a heads-up before ICE raids and arrests. Austin is not one of them. In an interview with The Texas Newsroom, Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said they are not warned ahead of time when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to conduct sweeps in city limits. Davis said this lack of communication causes confusion and threatens to create dangerous misunderstandings between local and federal law enforcement agencies. People who witness ICE arrests have even reported them as assaults or kidnappings, she added, prompting local police to investigate what happened. Davis said APD often only finds out about raids at all because of the public attention they draw.

The Travis County Sheriff’s Office said it also doesn’t hear about impending immigration raids. “We are not notified, but that's not unusual,” Kristen Dark, senior public information officer for the Travis County Sheriff’s Office, said in an interview. “State and federal agencies have no obligation to notify us when they're conducting operations in our jurisdiction.” There have been several raids in the Austin area this year, including one in East Austin near a construction site that resulted in multiple arrests. Federal and state officers were involved in that raid. Aggressive public sweeps like this have become a hallmark of the second Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies. In some places, local law enforcement has provided support to federal agents to carry out raids. In others, ICE has accused city police of refusing to help. Notification has been inconsistent nationwide. In June, Los Angeles police said they were not informed ahead of raids in that city. That same month, city and county law enforcement in Omaha, Nebraska, said they were notified, with deputies backing up operations with traffic enforcement.

Read this article at KUT - Subscribers Only

TEA says these San Antonio public schools need 'turnaround plans'

Five local school districts need to implement “turnaround plans” and improve student outcomes at failing campuses to avoid further probing from the state. This comes after the Texas Education Agency released preliminary campus and district ratings for the 2024-25 school year, measuring how effective public schools are at teaching students. The latest ratings found that San Antonio Independent School District, Edgewood ISD, Northside ISD, Judson ISD and Harlandale ISD all have campuses that have earned a failing rating — a “D” or “F” — for two or three consecutive years. All five districts got letters from the Texas Education Agency in September, alerting them to the need to implement turnaround plans for these schools.

They have until Nov. 14 to submit those plans for TEA approval, and several of the districts have started making recommendations. Turnaround plans are more intensive than general campus improvement plans, and are meant to get campuses to at least a “C” rating within two years. If a single campus earns an “unacceptable performance” rating for five consecutive school years, the state education commissioner is legally required to take over a school district by replacing elected school boards with an appointed board of managers or closing the failing campus. While going from an “F” to a “D” rating does not break the failing streak, it does extend the five-year limit, but this extension is only available twice. The TEA could also appoint conservators for these school districts this school year to oversee the implementation of turnaround plans but isn’t required to. School accountability has recently come under fire for leaning heavily on state standardized test results, especially after the TEA updated the system for the 2022-23 school year — something the agency is legally required to do every five years under state code .

Read this article at San Antonio Report - Subscribers Only

Inside a new Bible-infused Texas English curriculum

A new state-sponsored English curriculum infused with lessons about the Bible and Christianity could reach tens of thousands of Texas schoolchildren this year. More than 300 of the state’s roughly 1,200 districts signed up to use the English language arts lessons, according to data obtained by The New York Times through a public records request. Many are rural, and relatively small. The curriculum was created as several states, including Oklahoma and Louisiana, fought to bring prayer or religious texts like the Ten Commandments into public school classrooms, blurring the line between church and state. Texas leaders adapted the curriculum from a popular reading program made by the education company Amplify. A large majority of its lessons are typical for grade-school children, but the Texas version features new content on Christianity, the Old and New Testaments and the life of Jesus, according to a Times analysis of thousands of pages of teaching guides and activity books.

It is not unusual for public schools to introduce students to religious texts and figures. A typical elementary school lesson on ancient Roman civilization, for example, might describe how Christianity influenced the Roman Empire. The old Amplify curriculum spends about four paragraphs on Jesus’s parables, his crucifixion and the Christian belief in his resurrection. In the original grade unit, Jesus is mentioned 19 times. The Texas lessons include several new pages about the life of Jesus. They detail the Biblical story of his birth in a Bethlehem manger, New Testament accounts of an angel describing him as the Messiah and stories about the miracles he performed. Religious scholars say the Texas curriculum presents a partial picture of Christianity’s role in the nation’s development, especially during moments of conflict. David R. Brockman, a Christian theologian and religious studies scholar at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy who reviewed all of the Texas materials, said he believed the lesson “amounts to Bible study in a public school curriculum.” Mr. Brockman said he worried that the state’s adaptation would send an implicit message to children “that Christianity is the only important religion.”

Read this article at New York Times - Subscribers Only

Radical political puppeteers come to Texas

If the road to the revolution is a long one, the journey might as well be fun. That’s what Bread and Puppet Theater has been doing since 1963, when Peter and Elka Schumann founded it in New York City, staging radical political performances around their anti-capitalist, anti-empire and revolutionary spirit with puppets in a circus-style setting across the country. Now based in rural Vermont, a band of 16 puppeteers are on the company’s annual fall tour visiting 33 cities, including four in Texas this week. The tour, titled Domestic Resurrection Revolution In Progress, is making stops in Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and Fort Worth this week. The Fort Worth performance on Friday still has tickets available. After Texas, the troupe continues to Oklahoma City, Fayetteville, Arkansas, and wraps up their tour in Missouri, with shows in Kansas City and a final performance on October 26 in St. Louis.

Their venue choices are as diverse as their performances. In Houston, they’re performing in the Rothko Chapel plaza, a peaceful gathering and worship space around a chapel named for the late painter Mark Rothko. In San Antonio, they’re in Confluence Park, an environmental education center and public gathering space. In Austin, they’re in the parking lot of the Museum of Human Achievement, a diverse community arts center. And in Fort Worth, they’re performing in the outdoor wooded, quiet Hip Pocket Theatre campus. There’s one guarantee, and one that’s enshrined in their name. After each show performers hand out freshly baked sourdough bread with a side of aioli. The two-hour circuses are divided into twenty small acts, balancing serious political stories with lighter fare, said Paul Bedard, a booker and performer who also runs a New York live theatre company. Skits range from supporting workers’ unions to reasons to visit one’s grandmother to a somber reflection on the lives lost in Palestine.

Read this article at Texas Signal - Subscribers Only

Why Texas educators hope UT Austin refuses Trump ‘compact’

On Wednesday, Brown University became the second institution to reject a Trump administration deal to secure federal funding in return for changing policies over admissions, curriculum and surveillance over foreign students. The University of Texas at Austin, which is one of the nine universities asked to sign the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” has yet to make a decision. But UT Austin’s board chair has said the university was “honored” to be among top institutions asked to sign the pact. The terms of the compact have alarmed many in higher education, with instructors and professors across the country calling on state and federal officials to stop what they say is an attack on academic freedom and free speech on campuses.

Earlier, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also declined to sign the deal. The president of Brown said Wednesday the compact would compromise its ability to fulfill its mission, the New York Times reported. “I am concerned that the compact by its nature and by various provisions would restrict academic freedom and undermine the autonomy of Brown’s governance,” Christina H. Paxson told the administration in a letter. The other six schools that were sent the agreement are Vanderbilt, Dartmouth College, the University of Virginia, the University of Arizona, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California. Sally Kornbluth, the president of MIT, told its faculty, staff and students that the compact included principals that didn’t align with MIT’s. Kornbluth said America’s leadership in science and innovation depends on free thinking and open competition. “In that free marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT gladly compete with the very best, without preference,” Kornbluth said in the statement provided to the Star-Telegram. “Therefore, with respect we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education.”

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The perception and truth behind violence in Dallas

Prominent Dallas headlines over the last month portray a city in chaos. A sniper shot three people—killing two—outside a federal immigration office in the Stemmons Corridor. Three people were found dead in West Dallas after a car crash ended in gunfire. An argument in Old East Dallas preceded the beheading of a motel manager. Two people were fatally shot on DART trains. A 17-year-old girl was shot multiple times outside a Victory Park restaurant; the next day, a woman was killed at a shopping center near the city’s southern border after, according to police, she didn’t thank the suspect for holding a door open. While the spate of violence weaves a gruesome thread about the state of the city’s public safety, Dallas police statistics communicate a different tale. The city of Dallas is on pace to record one of its lowest homicide tallies in a decade.

Police have reported 111 murders in 2025 as of Monday, a 26.5 percent drop compared to the 151 recorded at this point last year. That reduction coincides with a 14.1 percent drop in overall violent crime across 6,334 murders, aggravated assaults, robberies and sex offenses. That’s 1,041 fewer offenses than at this point in 2024. “The work that the officers are doing day to day is making a difference,” says Dallas Police Department Chief Daniel Comeaux. “We kept the pace on the violent crime plan.” The department’s official count does not include murders for which other agencies are the lead investigators, which means three homicides reported on public transit by DART this year and the double murder outside the immigration office are excluded (the latter is being investigated by federal authorities, and DART notes that violent and property crimes have declined 18 percent on its buses, trains, and facilities). Still, the significant drop has reaffirmed strategies that attracted national acclaim since being implemented in 2021, which was the first of four consecutive years Dallas reported reductions in violent crime. The department’s violent crime plan uses data and research-backed strategies to direct police resources to small geographies that account for the highest rates of violence in Dallas. It follows up enforcement with social services and neighborhood infrastructure improvements.

Read this article at Lab Report Dallas - Subscribers Only

Who will fund the arts in North Texas? Gen Z and Millennials say not me

Luis Tiliano spent weeks looking forward to a Twenty One Pilots concert. He paid about $250 for a ticket and $170 on his outfit of a T-shirt, thrifted floral pants and special edition Air Jordan 13 sneakers. But he isn’t interested in dropping at the Winspear Opera House, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra or the Dallas Museum of Art. “I personally don’t like the idea of investing or putting my money towards those,” Tiliano said. “When I think of those [art institutions], I’ll be honest, I think of the status quo white man setting the tone for it kind of like in the corporate world like the jacket, the button up, the tie.” The 22-year-old is part of the elusive generation that local nonprofit museums, theaters and performance venues have been trying to attract for years – a generation that for myriad reasons is less likely to support the arts through patronage, memberships or donations

Organizations have good reason to be concerned. Research from SMU DataArts shows that in 2024 art organizations nationwide received about 59% of their revenue from contributions. But younger generations are giving less to the arts than their predecessors. It’s a pattern that Jon Bergdoll, associate director of data partnerships at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, has noticed. Not only has overall giving in the U.S. declined since the Great Recession of 2008, each successive generation is giving at a lower rate. From 2003 to 2019, giving rates dropped 42% among early adults ages 22 to 37, according to the center’s Next Generation of Philanthropy report published earlier this year. “With younger households,” he said, “giving rates are much lower in general as are giving amounts typically.”

Read this article at Dallas Morning News - Subscribers Only

Vote on removing LGBTQ protections delayed again in Arlington

A proposal to remove all mentions of gender identity and sexual orientation from Arlington’s anti-discrimination ordinance was delayed for a second time. Mayor Jim Ross told staff at the Oct. 14 council meeting that he wanted them to have more time to evaluate the potential effects of adjusting the ordinance. “It’s important that we remain compliant with federal directives to protect receipt of federal funds and not subject the city to liability,” Ross said at the meeting. “However, we must balance the need to make modifications with the need to ensure that every single member of our community feels welcome, protected, respected and is treated with dignity.”

Since the beginning of September, Arlington council members have made sweeping changes to programs and city jobs they feared put $65 million at risk because of federal directives against diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Other cities, including Fort Worth, have made similar changes. Ahead of Tuesday’s meeting, a line of people led into the council chambers, and about 40 people from across the Arlington area spoke out against the proposed changes. DeeJay Johannessen, CEO of HELP Center for LGBTQ Health and Wellness, said city officials misinterpreted sources cited in a staff report and did not need to make the changes. The report notes that the removal of mentions of gender identity and sexual orientation were made to comply with recommendations from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, new state laws and federal court rulings. “I want to be very clear tonight that there is no legal reason, none, to make these changes,” Johanessen told the council. State Rep. Salman Bohjani, D-Euless, sent a statement urging council members to reject the changes. The statement was read to the council by Zak Borja, the district director for Bohjani, who represents parts of Arlington.

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El Paso family claims Border Patrol killed their dog during search, CBP reviewing incident

U.S. Customs and Border Protection says they are reviewing a "use of force incident" in El Paso, after a family says a Border Patrol agent unjustifiably shot and killed their dog. According to CBP, the incident happened on Tuesday at around 7:15 a.m. Without offering specifics, CBP said that during a migrant smuggling investigation in El Paso, a U.S. Border Patrol Agent "was involved in a use of force incident" involving a dog. CBP stressed that it is taking the matter seriously and said it will provide more information when it becomes available, providing no mention of any migrants being found. However, KFOX14/CBS4 spoke with a distraught family from the Upper Valley who claimed to have been the victims of this incident and said the agents went into the home and shot and killed their dog.

The father, who wished to remain anonymous, said Border Patrol agents in jeans and t-shirts showed up at his son's home looking for migrants after receiving a tip. The son answered the door and, while he permitted the agents to search his home, claiming he had nothing to hide, he asked if they could wait first while he put the family dog, Chop, a Rottweiler, away in the bathroom before they walked in, as the dog could be aggressive. Border Patrol agents then asked the son if he could show them some identification. According to the family, it is at this point that the son went to his pickup truck to retrieve his ID and a Border Patrol agent entered the home and, as a result, ended up shooting the dog. The family stressed that the agents knew-- the son had told them-- that Chop was put in the bathroom for their safety and that the agents opened the door, let Chop out and shot him. The family appeared upset and disgusted by the agent's actions, saying that they were following orders and trying to be upstanding citizens, only for an agent to kill "a family member." Furthermore, the family said none of the Border Patrol agents helped the family, who desperately tried to render aid to the dog, which bled to death on the kitchen floor.

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Fort Worth residents demand apology after mayor casket claim

Fort Worth residents packed a city council public comment meeting Tuesday, demanding that Mayor Mattie Parker apologize for comments directed at nonprofit leader and community activist Patrice Jones. It comes two weeks after the Sept. 30 council meeting, when Parker told Jones, “I have your casket.” The mayor later explained she was referring to a December 2022 incident where a casket painted with the names of people killed by police was left on the mayor’s lawn. “I wanted her to know that I knew she was involved in leaving a casket in our front yard. There is evidence in the police report from December of 2022 and eyewitness accounts to this fact,” Parker said in an Oct. 2 statement to the Star-Telegram.

The Star-Telegram filed a records request on Oct. 1 seeking a copy of the full police report and along with photos and evidence. Fort Worth police responded on Oct. 13 saying they are compiling a thumb drive with photos from the incident. A publically available version of the report does not indicate that Jones was involved. Several residents accused Parker of trying Jones in the court of public opinion without providing evidence to her involvement in the casket incident. “You said you felt triggered as a mother and a home defender, but what was Atatiana Jefferson,” asked Arlington Heights resident Ken Shimamoto speaking at the Oct. 14 council meeting. Shimamoto and others called on the Mayor to apologize to Jones, and to increase the number of public comment meetings after the council voted during the Sept. 30 meeting to reduce the number from 15 to 10. Several residents also criticized Parker for appearing to solicit the support of faith leaders amid the backlash over her comments to Jones.

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

What Ross Perot Jr. knows about tariffs despite rhetoric

The future looks bright for the Texas economy, and lawmakers are listening to small businesses when it comes to things like tariffs, Ross Perot Jr. assured chambers of commerce leaders gathered Wednesday in Irving. Perot, the businessman and real estate developer behind AllianceTexas in Fort Worth, is serving as chair of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He was keynote speaker at a meeting of chamber leaders from across Texas, weighing in on a variety of economic topics including tariffs, trade and federal policy. Tariffs dominated much of the conversation when Perot spoke to reporters before giving his address to chamber attendees. Small business is the primary focus of chambers of commerce, and Perot said he and leaders in Washington are actively engaged in advocating for small business owners in the halls of Congress.

“In the short term, we’re in there fighting for forms of tariff relief,” said Perot. In April, President Trump imposed steeper import tariffs on a wide range of goods, sending shockwaves through the economy. Many small businesses, in particular, were impacted when the cost of imported raw materials suddenly rose. Days later, Trump announced a 90-day pause on those tariffs, something that Perot insinuated was the result of U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbying. He said that pause helped small businesses react to the sudden changes. According to U.S. Chamber of Commerce figures, new tariffs will cost small businesses approximately $200 billion a year. Beth Bowman, president of the Irving-Las Colinas Chamber of Commerce, said local chambers are business owners’ conduit to lawmakers and the people who can help them. Perot added to that, saying he speaks directly with lawmakers, and what he’s seen gives him reason for hope, despite the increased polarization among elected officials.

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

TSU homecoming changes spark outrage among alumni

Texas Southern University has announced that it will end all Homecoming activities this year at 7 p.m. The decision, brought on because of “safety concerns,” has sparked frustration and backlash from alumni who say the abrupt curfew threatens to dim the spirit of one of Houston’s most celebrated HBCU traditions. TSU President James Crawford announced the new restriction this week, citing safety concerns after two recent shootings at Jackson State and Alcorn in Mississippi, both connected to homecoming celebrations. One person was killed and several others injured. Crawford said national trends show that earlier closures can help prevent incidents that could jeopardize community well-being.

“Every fall, institutions of higher education across the country invite their own to come home,” Crawford said in a statement. “HBCU homecomings are well-known for celebration, pageantry and enduring hope for continued growth, progress and accomplishment. But we must remain vigilant to maintain this history and this joyous occasion.” Crawford said the decision came “after careful personal discernment and consultation with the TSU Department of Public Safety,” adding that “evaluation of national trends and local data indicates that early closure is an effective deterrent to incidents that could compromise celebration and safety.” The president said all campus homecoming activities on Saturday, October 18, 2025, including tailgating, will end at 7 p.m. “It is my charge to host annual homecomings that bring generations of Tigers together for years to come,” Crawford said. “No unwarranted incident can be allowed to jeopardize the ability of the University to do so.” While the university maintains that the decision prioritizes safety, many alumni argue that the early cutoff demonstrates a lack of consideration for the community that supports and funds the event.

Read this article at Houston Defender - Subscribers Only

Bexar County Deputy Johnny Garcia wages congressional bid

As Democrats nationally try to flip the script on crime, they could soon lean on longtime Bexar County Sheriff’s Deputy throwing his name in the hat for an uphill congressional race. “I see the current administration using law enforcement, my profession, as a political weapon to divide communities rather than uniting them,” said Johnny Garcia, a veteran deputy with the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office and its current public information officer. Garcia announced plans to run for the newly redrawn Texas 35th Congressional District Thursday evening at Taqueria Mexico on the South Side. The district was dramatically reshaped under a redistricting plan that’s being challenged in court, and could play a key role in Republican efforts to gain additional congressional seats in Texas during the 2026 election cycle.

While numerous Republicans have lined up for the job, so far Democrats, who have a deep bench of elected officials in San Antonio haven’t shown much interest. Garcia said he was motivated by tariff policies threatening jobs, families struggling with health care and his distaste for the Trump administration’s approach to law enforcement. “Every day in my job, I tell the public, ‘If you see something, say something. Well, I see something, and I’m saying something tonight,” Garcia told supporters Thursday. The current district — which connects urban areas between Austin and San Antonio — is represented by U.S. Rep. Greg Casar (D-Austin), an outspoken progressive who is running in a more Austin-centric seat after being drawn out of the district. The new map would shift the district southward to include more exurban portions of Bexar County, creating an opportunity for Republicans in a district that was once solidly blue. As the current PIO for the sheriff’s office, Garcia’s path mirrors that of his boss, Sheriff Javier Salazar, who spent 23 years as a San Antonio Police Officer, ending his career as the communications director prior to running for public office in 2016.

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Bexar Elections says voter registration backlog has been resolved

Bexar County’s Elections Administrator Michele Carew says a large backlog of new voter registration applications has officially been taken care of in time for the Nov. 4 election. The voter registration deadline for this November’s election was Monday, Oct. 6. Carew said Wednesday that all applications received before then have been processed, thanks to numerous temporary employees brought on to help staff 14-hour work days. Bexar County was thrust into a chaotic transition process when its longtime voter registration vendor, Votec, went under this summer — at the same time the state’s system was undergoing a massive update.

That left Carew’s office to process about 72,000 backlogged applications between Oct. 1, when the county went live on the state’s registration system, and the start of early voting, on Oct. 20, she said. “I want to extend my deepest gratitude to the Commissioners Court, Texas Secretary of State, and my entire team, including temporary staff. Their efforts made this possible,” Carew said in a statement Wednesday. New voters may not have received their voter registration cards in the mail, she said, but can still vote using their driver’s license or other forms of legal identification.

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National Stories

Capitol Police called to investigate swastika in GOP congressional office

U.S. Capitol Police were called about an American flag altered to include a swastika and displayed inside the office of Rep. Dave Taylor (R-Ohio), his spokesperson said. POLITICO obtained an image taken during a virtual meeting that shows the flag pinned to what appears to be a cubicle wall behind Angelo Elia, one of Taylor’s staffers. Alongside the flag — with altered red and white lines in the shape of a swastika — are pinned images, including a pocket Constitution and a congressional calendar. It is unclear what role, if any, Elia had in the incident. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment. EXCLUSIVE Capitol Police called to investigate swastika in GOP congressional office An American flag altered to include an image of a swastika was found in Rep. Dave Taylor’s office. An American flag altered to include a swastika was displayed inside the Capitol Hill office of Rep. Dave Taylor (R-Ohio). An American flag altered to include a swastika was displayed inside the Capitol Hill office of Rep. Dave Taylor (R-Ohio). | Obtained by POLITICO By Samuel Benson 10/15/2025 02:55 PM EDT U.S. Capitol Police were called about an American flag altered to include a swastika and displayed inside the office of Rep. Dave Taylor (R-Ohio), his spokesperson said. POLITICO obtained an image taken during a virtual meeting that shows the flag pinned to what appears to be a cubicle wall behind Angelo Elia, one of Taylor’s staffers. Alongside the flag — with altered red and white lines in the shape of a swastika — are pinned images, including a pocket Constitution and a congressional calendar. It is unclear what role, if any, Elia had in the incident. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “I am aware of an image that appears to depict a vile and deeply inappropriate symbol near an employee in my office,” Taylor said in a statement. “The content of that image does not reflect the values or standards of this office, my staff, or myself, and I condemn it in the strongest terms.”

Taylor said he “immediately” directed a thorough investigation alongside the Capitol Police, adding, “No further comment will be provided until it has been completed.” The flag was found inside Taylor’s office in the Cannon Building in Washington, D.C., Tuesday afternoon, according to an office spokesperson. Taylor believes it is the result of “foul play or vandalism,” the spokesperson said. The revelation comes a day after POLITICO reported on an explosive Telegram group chat in which Young Republican group leaders traded racial epithets, joked about the Holocaust and praised Adolf Hitler. Elia has worked as a legislative correspondent in Taylor’s office since January, according to his LinkedIn. When reached for comment, a U.S. Capitol Police spokesperson sent an automatic reply saying the office is closed due to the shutdown and “will re-open when the federal government is funded.”

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Inside Thune’s ‘Trump management’ amid shutdown

It’s Day 16 of the government shutdown. There’s no resolution in sight to this crisis. When Sen. John Thune was elected as Republican leader last November, there was plenty of skepticism among both rank-and-file GOP senators and MAGA world over the South Dakotan’s ability to deal with President Donald Trump. The pair had a sometimes-tumultuous relationship coming out of Trump’s first term, especially the fallout from the contested 2020 election and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Trump even called for Thune to be primaried. Thune worked hard to mend those ties, including a key trip to Mar-a-Lago in March 2024. Now, as Senate majority leader, Thune has delivered for Trump on multiple fronts — from quick Cabinet confirmations to passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to changing Senate rules to confirm Trump’s nominees more quickly amid Democrats’ slow-walking.

Overall, Thune has managed to keep Senate Republicans mostly together, even on issues where most of them disagree with Trump, most notably on tariffs. “Because [Thune] has been winning votes, his opinion matters to the White House,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), a close Thune confidant. “And that’s one of the reasons why so many members have stuck with John on a lot of really difficult votes, because they know that it matters in terms of our ability to negotiate with the White House.” Now, in the midst of the most serious crisis of Thune and Trump’s tenure — a seemingly never-ending government shutdown — their relationship is being put to the ultimate test. A tough job. Thune has stayed on-message since the shutdown began. The same can’t be said for Trump, who recently signaled he’d negotiate a health care deal with Democrats — without saying the government should re-open first. This fed into GOP fears that Trump would go around them on the health care fight.

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Judge pauses shutdown layoffs at more than 30 federal agencies

With the federal government shutdown now 2 weeks old and counting, a federal judge in San Francisco temporarily halted the latest wave of layoffs by the Trump administration. In a hearing on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said she believed the plaintiffs in the case are likely to prove that what the administration has done — using the lapse in government spending to implement layoffs — is "both illegal and in excess of authority and is arbitrary and capricious." The lawsuit was brought by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which together represent more than 800,000 federal workers. In a brief filed with the court Tuesday, the unions accuse the Trump administration of "using federal employees as pawns to impose political pressure on the Administration's perceived opponents in Congress."

"The harm is now," the plaintiffs' attorney Danielle Leonard told the court on Wednesday, describing the emotional trauma that federal employees are enduring. Illston granted the unions' request for a temporary restraining order to pause the implementation of layoffs already underway and to block any additional layoff notices from being sent out at more than 30 agencies where the unions represent employees. The Trump administration's attorney, Elizabeth Hedges, said she was not prepared to discuss the underlying merits of the government's actions. Instead, she argued that the court lacks jurisdiction to hear the case and that the plaintiffs had not shown that they would suffer "irreparable harm" without a temporary restraining order. Illston appeared frustrated and perplexed by the government's unwillingness to engage on the merits during the hearing. "This hatchet is falling on the heads of employees all across the nation and you're not even prepared to address whether that's legal?" the judge asked the government's attorney. In a brief filed with the court earlier, government attorneys argued any pause would be inappropriate.

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Federal government to withhold $40M from California for not enforcing trucker English requirements

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Wednesday he will withhold $40 million from California because it is the only state that is failing to enforce English language requirements for truckers. An investigation launched after a deadly Florida crash involving a foreign truck driver who made an illegal U-turn on Aug. 12 found what Duffy called significant failures in the way California is enforcing rules that took effect in June after one of President Donald Trump’s executive orders. California had issued the driver a commercial license, but these English rules predate the crash. Truckers are supposed to be disqualified if they can’t demonstrate English proficiency, and Duffy said the driver involved in the crash should not have been given a commercial license because of his immigration status.

The crash has become increasingly political, with the governors of California and Florida criticizing each other and Duffy highlighting the administration’s immigration concerns in interviews. “California is the only state in the nation that refuses to ensure big rig drivers can read our road signs and communicate with law enforcement. This is a fundamental safety issue that impacts you and your family on America’s road,” Duffy said. California defended its practices in a formal response to the Transportation Department last month, but federal officials weren’t satisfied. The office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom quickly pushed back after the announcement Wednesday. Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson for the governor, said statistics show that California commercial truck drivers have a lower crash rate than the national average.

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Journalists turn in access badges, exit Pentagon rather than agree to new reporting rules

Dozens of reporters turned in access badges and exited the Pentagon on Wednesday rather than agree to government-imposed restrictions on their work, pushing journalists who cover the American military further from the seat of its power. The nation’s leadership called the new rules “common sense” to help regulate a “very disruptive” press. News outlets were nearly unanimous in rejecting new rules imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that would leave journalists vulnerable to expulsion if they sought to report on information — classified or otherwise — that had not been approved by Hegseth for release. Many of the reporters waited to leave together at a 4 p.m. deadline set by the Defense Department to get out of the building. As the hour approached, boxes of documents lined a Pentagon corridor and reporters carried chairs, a copying machine, books and old photos to the parking lot from suddenly abandoned workspaces. Shortly after 4, about 40 to 50 journalists left together after handing in badges.

“It’s sad, but I’m also really proud of the press corps that we stuck together,” said Nancy Youssef, a reporter for The Atlantic who has had a desk at the Pentagon since 2007. She took a map of the Middle East out to her car. It is unclear what practical impact the new rules will have, though news organizations vowed they’d continue robust coverage of the military no matter the vantage point. Images of reporters effectively demonstrating against barriers to their work are unlikely to move supporters of President Donald Trump, many of whom resent journalists and cheer his efforts to make their jobs harder. Trump has been involved in court fights against The New York Times, CBS News, ABC News, the Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press in the past year. Speaking to reporters at the White House on Tuesday, Trump backed his defense secretary’s new rules. “I think he finds the press to be very disruptive in terms of world peace,” Trump said. “The press is very dishonest.”

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NBC News’ 150 layoffs gut Black, Latino, Asian American and LGBTQ+ diversity teams

NBC News eliminated its teams dedicated to covering issues affecting Black, Asian American, Latino and LGBTQ+ groups as part of its layoffs of about 150 staffers on Wednesday, according to two sources familiar with the matter, a significant culling as the Peacock network separates from its sister news network, MSNBC. The cuts mean that the verticals NBC BLK, NBC Asian America, NBC Latino and NBC OUT will no longer have dedicated teams bolstering their coverage. The verticals will continue to publish stories related to the specific groups and NBC News may ultimately retain up to five staffers who will contribute coverage on the verticals to the newsroom, according to one source, as the dedicated teams focused exclusively on these verticals are sunset.

The total reductions, which affected NBC News’ entire news operation, make up about 7% of NBC News’ newsroom of about 2,000 staffers and 2% of the wider NBCU News Group, which includes Telemundo and the network’s owned-and-operated local news stations. The cuts did not target specific teams and were driven by the network’s budget and the desire to streamline its editorial efforts, according to one source. The cuts were announced to staff at a brief, 10 a.m. meeting on Wednesday by NBC News’ executive vice president of editorial, Catherine Kim, who said the layoffs marked a “difficult day for a lot of us,” according to a source in the meeting. The job losses came as the network no longer needed to support two different news operations, as MSNBC has moved under the spun-off company Versant. It also reflects the challenging nature of operating a large-scale newsroom amid a media environment facing declining ratings and a fragmented audience, with layoffs occurring across news outlets, including the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, CNN and PBS.

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Trump team plans IRS overhaul to enable pursuit of left-leaning groups

The Trump administration is preparing sweeping changes at the Internal Revenue Service that would allow the agency to pursue criminal inquiries of left-leaning groups more easily, according to people familiar with the matter. A senior IRS official involved in the effort has drawn up a list of potential targets that includes major Democratic donors, some of the people said. The undertaking aims to install allies of President Trump at the IRS criminal-investigative division, or IRS-CI, to exert firmer control over the unit and weaken the involvement of IRS lawyers in criminal investigations, officials said. The proposed changes could open the door to politically motivated probes and are being driven by Gary Shapley, an adviser to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Shapley has told people that he is going to replace Guy Ficco, the chief of the investigative unit, who has been at the agency for decades, and that Shapley has been putting together a list of donors and groups he believes IRS investigators should look at. Among those on the list are the billionaire Democratic donor George Soros and his affiliated groups, according to a senior IRS official and another person briefed on the list. It couldn’t be determined upon what grounds Shapley would seek to begin such an investigation. The effort within the IRS coincides with a larger administration effort to probe left-leaning groups for helping to finance organizations that the president says are creating anarchy in Democratic-led cities. Trump has directed Bessent, who is also acting IRS commissioner, to identify financial networks that the president says are fomenting political violence. Democrats say the effort is politically motivated and not based on real evidence. “Scott will do that. That’s easy for Scott,” Trump said during a recent cabinet meeting about Bessent’s helping with the investigation.

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Lead Stories

Austin state Rep. Gina Hinojosa launches Democratic bid against Greg Abbott

State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, a progressive Democrat and former Austin school board member, joined the race for governor on Wednesday, accusing Gov. Greg Abbott of being beholden to big money donors and vowing to fight corruption. “No te dejes — fight back,” she said in a video announcing her campaign. “Our fight right now is against the billionaires and the corporations, who are driving up prices, closing our neighborhood schools and cheating Texans out of basic health care. That’s who Greg Abbott works for.” Hinojosa is the most established contender in a primary field that has struggled to draw big names to take on Abbott as he seeks a record fourth term in office.

She has served in the House since 2017 and was a vocal opponent of Abbott’s $1 billion private school voucher plan that passed earlier this year, which she likened to "welfare for the well off.” Hinojosa sparred directly with Abbott over the voucher plan earlier this year, and is working to make the issue a key rallying cry on the campaign trail. In her launch video, she hit the Texas Republican for taking millions in campaign donations from Jeff Yass, a Pennsylvania billionaire and voucher proponent. She was set to hold a launch rally on Wednesday in Brownsville, where she grew up. The choice is an early indication of the importance of South Texas, which has increasingly become a battleground after Republicans gained ground there in recent elections. Hinojosa joins a Democratic primary that includes Andrew White, a Houston businessman and son of the late Gov. Mark White; Bobby Cole, a rancher and retired firefighter; and Bay City Councilman Benjamin Flores.

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USDA defends $750M New World Screwworm strategy; calls Texas proposal 'clickbait'

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is pushing back against what it calls “ineffective solutions” proposed by Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller in the fight against New World Screwworm (NWS). In an exclusive statement to RFD-TV News, USDA officials defended their $750 million plan to build a sterile fly production facility at the southern border— calling it the most aggressive response in U.S. history — and also accused Miller of disregarding proven methods for quick publicity. “USDA, in conjunction with the entire federal government, has launched the most aggressive plan to combat the New World Screwworm in the history of our country, including committing up to $750 million to build a sterile fly production facility at the Southern Border at Moore Air Base,” the USDA spokesperson said.

Commissioner Miller advocates for using fly bait traps to combat the cattle parasite — a plan he said he will implement in his state, “with or without buy-in from the USDA,” and claims could knock out NWS in 90 days. “Commissioner Miller is blatantly disregarding tried and true NWS offensive strategies in favor of clickbait publicity stunts,” the USDA spokesperson told RFD-TV News. “USDA looks forward to working with any and all partners who seek to find REAL solutions to defeat the NWS.” The USDA says that they tried Miller’s method, and it “has proven ineffective,” saying its own traps caught thousands of flies in a month, while Miller’s only trapped one. “We won’t defeat it overnight,” said the USDA spokesperson. “It will take all of us at the federal and state level working together to combat it.” The USDA maintains that its five-step plan to address NWS, which includes the sterile fly facility and up to $100 million in investments for biosecurity innovation, is a proven method with tangible results, unlike Miller’s proposal. “USDA will remain focused on our five-pronged plan to boost sterile fly production and dispersal and work with Mexico to increase real-time surveillance in Latin America — real actions that are delivering results,” the USDA spokesperson said."Never before has the U.S. been this involved on the ground in Mexico. This is a national security issue, and it has the full attention of the Trump administration.”

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Is Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson considering resigning from office? Speculation is swirling

Speculation is mounting at Dallas City Hall that Mayor Eric Johnson may soon resign to seek another political office. At least one candidate for mayor says he is ready to run if and when Johnson resigns. Former Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Michael Hinojosa is one of several people being discussed as a possible successor to Johnson, whose term expires in 2027. Others who are being talked about as potential candidates are developer Peter Brodsky, Dallas workforce czar Lynn McBee and Dallas City Council members Chad West, Gay Donnell Willis and Adam Bazaldua. “It was really quiet for a long time, but in the last 10 days, I’ve heard it from 10 different sources that he’s going to announce something at some point — that he’s not going to finish his term,” Hinojosa said in an interview.

The domain name ericjohnsonfortexas.com was registered Oct. 6, according to the website godaddy.com, though it’s unclear who reserved it. The city also canceled a scheduled City Council briefing this week, fueling more speculation. Johnson has not responded to requests for comment, but he posted Tuesday night on social media, saying he is not running for another office. “Trying to find out whether I am resigning, but the “story” is behind a paywall,“ Johnson posted. ”Hate it when that happens. Anyway, here is the free version: I am NOT running for anything, and I will continue serving our great city as its mayor!" For more than a year, Dallas political insiders have questioned whether the mayor will finish his term or seek higher office. Recent events have intensified speculation, with some of it suggesting he may resign soon to run for state or federal office.

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Originalist ‘bombshell’ complicates case on Trump’s power to fire officials

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in December about whether President Trump can fire government officials for any reason, or no reason, despite laws meant to shield them from politics. There is little question that the court will side with the president. Its conservative majority has repeatedly signaled that it plans to adopt the “unitary executive theory,” which says the original understanding of the Constitution demands letting the president remove executive branch officials as he sees fit. But a new article, from a leading originalist law professor, has complicated and perhaps upended the conventional wisdom. The legal academy treated the development like breaking news. “Bombshell!” William Baude, a law professor at the University of Chicago who himself is a prominent originalist, wrote on social media. “Caleb Nelson, one of the most respected originalist scholars in the country, comes out against the unitary executive interpretation” of the Constitution.

Professor Nelson, who teaches at the University of Virginia and is a former law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote that the text of the Constitution and the historical evidence surrounding it grants Congress broad authority to shape the executive branch, including by putting limits on the president’s power to fire people. Professor Nelson’s article was published Sept. 29 by the Democracy Project, an initiative at the New York University School of Law that plans to release 100 essays in 100 days by an ideologically mixed group. The article is particularly notable, said Richard H. Pildes, who is a law professor at N.Y.U. and one of the project’s founders. “If a highly respected originalist scholar like Professor Nelson, on whom the court relies frequently, denies that originalism supports the unitary executive theory,” Professor Pildes said, “that inevitably raises serious questions about an originalist justification for the court’s looming approach.” Professor Nelson’s scholarship has been exceptionally influential. It has been cited in more than a dozen Supreme Court opinions, including ones by every member of the six-justice conservative majority.

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State Stories

Applications for $1B Texas school voucher program to launch in February, contract documents show

Texas families interested in school vouchers will be able to apply beginning in February, according to newly obtained documents outlining the rollout of the landmark $1 billion program. The window for families to sign their children up is set to run from Feb. 4 to March 20. Decisions about awarded vouchers will be finalized by May 1, with the money accessible in digital wallets beginning July 1. The timeline, detailed in contracting documents obtained by Hearst Newspapers via a public records request, is the most specific plan seen so far for the new Texas Education Freedom Accounts program, which will provide state dollars to pay a wide variety of educational expenses, including private school tuition and homeschool costs. Families had previously been told to expect applications to open in “early 2026.”

The program is meant to prioritize low-income families and projected to serve around 100,000 students. Families will be eligible to receive up to $10,500 for children in private school, up to $30,000 for children with special needs, or $2,000 for homeschoolers for the 2026-27 school year. The proposed timeline conflicts with the typical application deadlines for many private schools, with some accepting applications only until the end of 2025 or early 2026. That means many families may need to decide to apply to private school before knowing whether the school will be approved for use with a voucher, or whether they will receive a voucher at all. For example, at Awty International School, a highly rated private school in Houston with tuition at $36,610 for this year, prospective students must apply before Jan. 15 and will receive admissions notifications by March 5, according to the website. Students must reply to the offer of admission and enroll by March 25, almost two months before families are scheduled to receive final notification of a voucher award on May 1. Awty has not yet made a public statement about whether the school will apply to be part of the program. Many area schools, like The Westview School, a private school for students with Autism, are awaiting the release of the final rules for the program by the comptroller before making a decision, which are expected by the end of the month. The documents also show that Odyssey, the New York-based technology firm selected to run the program last week, received a contract worth $26 million that runs over the next two years, with an option for the state to renew it for two more years. Before the year’s end, eligible private schools and vendors can apply to be recipients of the allotted funding, according to the contract. Odyssey expects to open those applications on Dec. 2.

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Number of Texas Guardsmen sent home from Chicago for being out of shape has gone up

The tally of Texas National Guard soldiers recalled from Illinois for failing to meet fitness standards has been revised — upward. Seven soldiers were sent home after a news photo of seemingly overweight Texas troops at an Army training center outside Chicago went viral, the Guard said in a statement on Tuesday. Previously, a Texas Guard member told the San Antonio Express-News the number was four. Tuesday's Guard statement said the soldiers had arrived for duty in Illinois and were “recalled” to their “home station” after the news photo began spreading on social media.

“During the pre-mission validation process, the Texas National Guard identified and replaced seven service members who did not meet mission requirements,” a Guard spokesperson said. “These service members were returned to home station. The Texas National Guard echoes Secretary (Pete) Hegseth's message to the force: ‘Our standards will be high, uncompromising, and clear.’” The soldiers were among 200 Texas National Guard members sent to Illinois last week by order of President Donald Trump, and over the objections of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. Trump said he was mobilizing the Guard because local authorities had failed to control protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel and facilities. The Guard member who spoke to the Express-News on condition of anonymity said troops are scrutinized once a year and again before deployment to ensure they meet fitness standards. But the hurried nature of the deployment to Illinois allowed a small number of soldiers to slip through even though they fell short of standards, the Guard member said.

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How West Texas created American conservatism

For the first Europeans to encounter it, the Llano Estacado was a portal to madness. It was a “worthless and terrifying hellscape,” as Jeff Roche describes it in The Conservative Frontier: Texas and the Origins of the New Right (University of Texas Press), a mostly affectionate account of West Texas’s distinct political traditions. These newcomers found an endless grassland with little surface water and weird weather—“sublime,” the explorer Albert Pike wrote in 1831. Roche reminds us that the word, during the Romantic Era, implied a certain degree of horror. At the end of the 1880s, when white settlers first started coming to West Texas in large numbers with modern technology and agricultural science, the woo-woo stuff started to seem a little silly. The weather was good enough to grow a few things most of the time, and there was even an ocean of water underground, the Ogallala Aquifer. Reading Roche’s book, though, you’ll wonder if those early explorers were right about the madness. West Texas has attracted and produced many of the strangest people you can find in the state’s especially colorful history.

There’s C.?W. Post, the cereal tycoon who sought to bring rain to his capitalist utopia, Post City, by launching dynamite into the sky; Ida M. Darden, a rabid polemicist who opposed giving women the vote because she feared racial integration would surely follow; and J. Evetts Haley, a homespun historian turned conspiracy theorist who warned of a plot by the Catholic Church to take over the U.S. Postal Service. That Ogallala water is deep and ancient. Maybe there’s something in it? Roche—who works with a broad definition of West Texas that includes Abilene, Midland, and the Panhandle but tends to emphasize the more cinematic northern environs around Lubbock and Amarillo—seeks to explain how the region became, by some measures, the most conservative in the country. The first part of The Conservative Frontier is a social history, picking up in 1876 just after most of the natives had been fought off, cleared off, or killed. The new people who settled this remaindered stretch of land prized self-determination and a rough kind of agrarian social equality honed through the rise and fall of the cattle kingdoms and early agricultural booms. In many ways, the region was remarkably progressive. But that frontier egalitarianism was premised on the exclusion of anyone who wasn’t white and Protestant. In West Texas even the cowboys were mostly white, an oddity in a state filled with Black and Hispanic men on horseback. Black people passing through West Texas on trains were too scared even to poke their heads out of the window. Severe economic and demographic homogeneity contributed to a sense of isolation from the rest of the state and country. So were sown the seeds of what Roche calls cowboy conservatism.

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76 Texas rural hospitals on life support as state seeks $50B federal lifeline

According to a watchdog group, 76 rural hospitals in Texas are at risk of closing. Reasons for closing range from shrinking populations, declining reimbursement levels and increasing operating costs. Many rural Texas hospitals and urgent care clinics are operating on life support. At the state capitol Monday, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission heard hours of testimony from rural hospital executives, medical providers and others that are affected by dwindling healthcare resources in their communities. "They face a widening gap between the care their patients need and the clinicians they can recruit," said Nurse Practitioner, Lauren Ingram. "We bear the burden of Medicaid and economically disadvantaged patients in our communities writing millions of dollars off each year to assure them access to care," said CEO of Electra Hospital District, Rebecca McCain.

According to the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals (TORCH), Texas leads the nation in rural hospital closures. 25 hospitals have closed in the last two decades. Doctor Timothy Bray is the director of the Institute for Urban Policy Research at UT Dallas. "We've been struggling with rural healthcare access to care for many years now," said Dr. Bray. Texas declined to expand federal contributions to Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act under the Biden administration. At the time. Governor Greg Abbott said there were too many strings attached. The grant money from President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act would presumably close part of the gap. A lot of today's testimony described how these hospital closures can put lives in jeopardy. "I've watched rural families drive two, four or even five or six hours to try and access rehab after stroke, PTSD and other life-changing conditions because there wasn't an affordable place closer to home," said Dr. Jane Wigginton at the Texas Biomedical Device Center at UT Dallas.

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Federal judge halts enforcement of new state law amid free speech lawsuit brought by students

A federal judge is preventing the University of Texas System from enforcing a new state law that restricts when students can engage in “expressive activities” on campus. Several student groups at UT Austin and UT Dallas filed a lawsuit against the schools' respective presidents, the UT Board of Regents and UT System Chancellor Dr. John Zerwas, over the law in September. The law bars students from engaging in “expressive activities” between the hours of 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. and from using devices that amplify sound during the last two weeks of a given semester — reversing a state law passed in 2019 that expanded free speech protections on public university campuses.

Judge David Alan Ezra of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas said the lawsuit is likely to succeed on First Amendment grounds. "The First Amendment does not have a bedtime of 10:00 p.m. The burden is on the government to prove that its actions are narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling governmental interest," the court said in the injunction order. "It has not done so." Several UT Austin students told KUT News they felt the effects of the new law immediately. Ally Flores, president of the student-led University Democrats, said the group could no longer invite guest speakers to campus without receiving permission from the Dean of Students Office two weeks in advance. University Democrats’ voter registration drive was also limited to low-traffic areas because of the new law, Flores said.

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Houston elected officials float legal action as Gov. Abbott fights rainbow crosswalk repainting

A legion of Houston’s elected officials gathered at the Taft and Westheimer rainbow crosswalk Tuesday as a show of force against Gov. Greg Abbott’s call to remove it or risk the loss of state transportation funding, and some even floated the potential for legal action. The crosswalks in Montrose were painted over weeks ago due to repaving work at the intersection, and were quickly restored to their original vibrancy after outcry from the community and elected officials. But Abbott soon swooped in Wednesday to threaten to remove Texas Department of Transportation funding from cities that painted “political ideologies” on their streets unless they were removed. Abbott’s office called rainbow crosswalks a distraction, but Council Member Abbie Kamin said Tuesday the governor had “apparently entered the portion of the program where the state of Texas is now worried about paint.”

Metro, the city’s transportation arm, has since said it would paint over the rainbow crosswalk. The crosswalk was originally rainbow splashed following the death of Alex Hill in 2016, who was struck and killed by an oncoming car in the intersection. The move to paint the sidewalk rainbow was not only to honor Hill, but make the crosswalk safer and more visible using private dollars, Kamin, who represents the neighborhood where the crosswalk is located, said Tuesday. Montrose, the neighborhood where the crosswalk is located, has long been a heartbeat for the area’s LGBTQ+ community. As the news conference got underway Tuesday, the crosswalk remained as is. But on adjacent sidewalks there were new chalk drawings. One read “gay rights are human rights” and “Mayor Whitmire quit.” Another drawing depicted a pink, blue and white transgender rights flag and read “IDK BRO I JUST EXIST.” More drawings and even pride flags could pop up around Houston if the crosswalk ends up being painted over – officials on Tuesday called for residents to rally their support through putting up their flags or putting up yard signs. “If we lose the battle, and we have to take this off the street, you put it on your house,” Commissioner Rodney Ellis said Tuesday. “You go and put it on the yard sign. You roll down the street and stick it out your car window, whatever angle they come up with, we have to find another one.”

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Fort Worth mayor allegedly sought church support at council

Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker asked Tarrant County faith leaders to come to city council meetings and saturate them in prayer, according to Republican state Rep. Nate Schatzline. The request allegedly came during a meeting with faith leaders organized by Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare to discuss threats of violence against government officials, Schatzline, a pastor at Mercy Culture Church, said in a video posted to the church’s Instagram account. “I did not realize how spiritual this battle for our city was,” Schatzline quoted Parker saying during his sermon.

She allegedly went on to claim government officials have received a record number of death threats, and mentioned a December 2022 incident when a casket bearing the names of people killed by police was left on her lawn before making the request for support, according to Schatzline. “As a guest, Mayor Parker attended a meeting of faith leaders from across the community, and at that time she asked for prayers for the city and its leadership,” Parker’s spokesperson Kinsey Clemmer said in an email to the Star-Telegram. Parker has been asking different groups for months to attend council meetings and see how city business actually works, Clemmer said, adding the Mayor plans to reiterate this call during her Oct. 16 State of the City address. Fort Worth city council member Alan Blaylock, who also attended the faith leader meeting, said in a text message to the Star-Telegram that O’Hare and Parker asked the faith leaders to be aware of how city and county policy could affect their congregations.

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Love Field, DFW Airport won't show video blaming Democrats for government shutdown

Dallas Love Field and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport are among a growing list of airports nationwide that won’t show a video of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blaming Democrats for flight delays due to the ongoing government shutdown. The shutdown, which is entering its third week, has impacted air travel, causing flight delays and cancellations at airports across the country. The video, labeled as a "public service announcement," was released last week and first obtained by Fox News.

"It is TSA's top priority to make sure that you have the most pleasant and efficient airport experience as possible while we keep you safe," Noem says in the video. "However, Democrats in Congress refuse to fund the federal government, and because of this, many of our operations are impacted, and most of our TSA employees are working without pay." In a statement to KERA, Zachary Greiner, a spokesperson for DFW, said it is not displaying the video "consistent with the airport's longstanding policy." Greiner referred to the airport's advertising policy, adopted in 2005, which prohibits "political, social and religious advertising" in any of its public facilities. "The Airport is not a public forum, and it is the intent of the Airport Board not to designate the Airport's advertising facilities as a public forum for the dissemination, debate or discussion of political, social or religious issues," the policy reads.

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AG Ken Paxton claims evidence shows EPIC City violated federal, state laws

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says his office found evidence the East Plano Islamic Center’s developers for the project EPIC City violated state and federal laws, according to a press release Tuesday. Paxton is also requesting the Texas State Securities Board (TSSB) — an agency responsible for protecting investors and enforcing the Texas Securities Act — review his office’s findings to file a lawsuit against EPIC City’s developers. “The bad actors behind this illegal scheme must be held accountable for ignoring state and federal regulations,” Paxton said in the press release. “In accordance with state law, the TSSB should review our findings and refer this matter to me for further legal action.”

In a letter to TSSB, Paxton claims he received more than 750 documents and written responses from Community Capital Partners LP, EPIC City’s developers, after opening an investigation into the proposed development in March. Paxton’s office allegedly found evidence that CCP “violated federal and state securities laws and regulations, including both procedural violations and fraudulent conduct,” according to his letter. The letter doesn’t specify details of the alleged evidence or what laws were violated. KERA News reached out to Paxton’s office and CCP and will update this story with any response. EPIC City would be a 402-acre development in unincorporated Collin and Hunt counties, roughly 40 miles northeast of Dallas near the city of Josephine, and would include a new mosque, more than 1,000 single and multi-family homes, a K-12 faith-based school, senior housing, an outreach center, commercial developments, sports facilities, and a community college.

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Vehicles stolen in Texas and NM seized from group linked to killing of officers

Police in Chihuahua, Mexico, have seized 17 vehicles from the criminal group blamed for the killing of three police officers last week. Seven of those recent-model pickup trucks and SUVs seized by police were stolen in El Paso, the Dallas area and in New Mexico, Chihuahua state police Special Operations Director Ricardo Realivasquez said on Monday. They include a 2024 Chevrolet Silverado registered in New Mexico, a black 2023 Jeep Gladiator stolen in Dallas, a 2023 Dodge Ram 1500 pickup taken from Arlington, a 2022 Cadillac SUV reported stolen in Socorro, Texas, a Ford F-250, a Lincoln Navigator and a gray Ram believed stolen in El Paso.

Mexican authorities will be contacting the Texas and New Mexico-based police departments where stolen vehicle reports were filed for them to arrange their return to the rightful owners, said Gabriela Cota, a spokeswoman for the Chihuahua Attorney General’s Office. Some of the stolen autos had their vehicle identification number (VIN) removed or altered; some had the logo of a criminal organization painted on a side or had steel plates welded on. Police officials declined to name the group but local news media have identified it as La Linea. Chihuahua Public Safety Director Gilberto Loya said two of the nine suspects arrested late last week in connection with the October 7 deaths of state Officers German Peralta Hernandez, Guillermo Aguirre Palma and Ana Esmeralda Arteaga Arroyo were directly involved in the shooting ambush near the town of Moris. Rafael N., a.k.a. “El Fray,” allegedly is a second-tier leader in La Linea; Adrian N. is the reputed lead sicario, or hitman, of the group.

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Austin, Travis County homeless services grow, fewer first-time clients reported in 2024

The Austin and Travis County homelessness response system is growing more efficient and seeing fewer people needing services than in the past few years, according to new reporting from the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition, or ECHO. ECHO, which coordinates the regional response to homelessness between local governments and other organizations, released its 2025 State of the System report in early October. The analysis covers data from 2019-24, and points to a growing system that is more effectively matching clients to the services and housing they need. "We're not where we want to be yet, although we are celebrating progress today. But the clear evidence is that what we’re doing and the investments we're making are having a positive impact," Mayor Kirk Watson said at the report's presentation Oct. 8.

Austin and Travis County's homeless population both outside and in shelter reached nearly 5,000 as of this summer, based on ECHO estimates of the number of people who engaged with the response system in the first half of 2025. That figure is different than the estimated 3,238 people accounted for in the most recent regional Point in Time Count, a federally-required in-person tally on a single night that ECHO notes is likely an undercount. More people than ever are seeking homeless services around the Austin area, with 28,348 clients served by programs in the response system in 2024. That's up almost 90% from 2019, when the system served just over 15,000 people. However, the nearly 3,300-person increase in those served between 2023 and 2024 was far smaller than from 2022-23, which ECHO leaders attributed to better community outreach and shelter availability.Fewer people also sought services as first-time clients last year. ECHO reported that 5% decrease as the first dip in a "strong upward trend" of newly homeless people tracked since 2020. Joseph Erik Montaño, ECHO director of research and evaluation, said that slight decline suggests service providers around the area are doing a better job of re-engaging clients and connecting them with supportive programs while they await housing.

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Gina Ortiz Jones hopes to unite council after months of skirmishes

San Antonio’s new mayor once climbed to the highest tier of military leadership through an Army program that trains “adaptive leaders” to solve “complex operational problems.” So far, it’s proving little match for city government. Gina Ortiz Jones’s unusual political path involved leaving after John Jay High School to pursue a career in national security, and then returning home to best a field of 27 candidates with that experience as President Donald Trump was returning to office. Now in the midst of a federal government shutdown — with a White House planning major cuts to the social safety net at the same time the city is negotiating a major downtown development deal — Jones is on a mission to get city leaders thinking bigger about the challenges they’ll soon face.

“Balancing the near-term [needs] with a really strong appreciation for the fiscal s—show that we’re about to experience, trying to be strategic and compassionate, while also doing our due diligence, that is where I am,” Jones said in a recent interview at her office. Yet Jones’ first months have hardly been focused on the big threats she’s most worried about. She took over leading a council of members with longer local government resumes who prefer a more coalition-building approach. They spent much of her predecessor’s final term stripping power from an already weak mayor’s office, leaving Jones to navigate the role with little traditional political leverage beyond assigning some boards and committees. Four months in, disagreements over the mayor’s authority have resulted in weeks-long fights over peafowl protections and whether to continue policy proposals submitted by members no longer on the council.

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'Woke has no place at The Alamo:' Buckingham slams Indigenous People's Day social post

Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham has slammed a social media post made by The Alamo. On Tuesday, Buckingham responded to various callouts on social media after The Alamo's social media pages made a post recognising Indigenous Peoples' Day, which is held on the same day as Columbus Day. In the now-deleted post, The Alamo said on Monday that they honor Indigenous Peoples and their communities, highlighting that the Alamo Visitor Center will feature an indigenous peoples gallery, celebrating the people who shaped the region. "The @TXGLO (Texas General Land Office) is investigating how the Alamo Trust reviews and approves content for social media posts to Official Alamo accounts," said Buckingham. "We will be holding those responsible accountable and will be implementing a new process to ensure my office has oversight."

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Dr. Phil went MAGA. It didn't turn it well, even in Texas

Phil “Dr. Phil” McGraw has earned himself a star position in this game-show-host presidency. Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, the ex-psychologist has stationed himself within the White House’s content-creation apparatus, as both a firsthand witness to Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and as a sneering critic of the Americans protesting Israel’s mass bombardment of the Gaza Strip. Unlike fellow Oprah-endorsed TV personality Mehmet Oz, McGraw doesn’t have a Cabinet position, but he’s been an active, ever-present volunteer for the chief executive: attending RFK Jr.’s swearing-in, brokering the partnership between ICE and New York City’s mayor, leading the White House’s new Religious Liberty Commission, appearing with the president after the devastating Texas flooding. It feels less like public service than a promotional gambit for McGraw, who’s been spotlighting such events and government friends on Dr. Phil Primetime, which is broadcast on his self-helmed right-wing network, Merit TV.

At least, it was broadcast there until June, when McGraw’s post–Dr. Phil venture, Merit Street Media, went on a “summer hiatus” and laid off dozens of staffers just before it was scheduled to air McGraw’s on-the-ground dispatches of the Chicago ICE raids. The short-lived media enterprise was supposed to help transition McGraw from the traditional TV age to the new-media economy. Instead, the little-viewed Merit Street Media is now locked in bankruptcy proceedings and in an expensive legal battle with its distributor, Trinity Broadcasting Network, as McGraw attempts to launch yet another media startup, Envoy. 2025 could have been Dr. Phil’s best and most lucrative year, the one where he finally transcended the talk-show doldrums through a dynamic self-controlled network catapulting off the MAGA cultural shift. How did it all crash so hard, so soon? When McGraw signed off from his highly rated talk show in 2023—following a spate of controversies around Dr. Phil’s allegedly exploitative treatment of its guests and employees—it was in the midst of an absolute rout for daytime TV. Throughout the previous year, once indispensable working-day hosts like Ellen DeGeneres, Maury Povich, Wendy Williams, and Dr. Oz all bid goodbye to their time slots, either to retire or to seek other career paths. McGraw, meanwhile, was shifting his ubiquitous mustache from the daytime circuit to the prime-time rat race, telling Deadline in 2023 that he was “compelled to engage with a broader audience because I have grave concerns for the American family, and I am determined to help restore a clarity of purpose as well as our core values.”

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National Stories

ICE is cracking down on Chicago. Some Chicagoans are fighting back.

Federal agents deployed tear gas on Chicago residents and more than a dozen police officers on Tuesday, the latest clash in the nation’s third-largest city as the Trump administration has carried out its immigration crackdown. The clash began on Tuesday morning when federal agents were seen chasing a car through a working-class, heavily Latino neighborhood on the city’s far South Side, witnesses said. An S.U.V. driven by the federal agents collided with the car they were pursuing, the Chicago Police Department said, sending that car into another vehicle that was parked nearby. After the crash, dozens of additional immigration agents in masks arrived and residents emerged from their houses, gathering on streets and sidewalks, throwing objects at agents and shouting, “ICE go home!” As the agents left, they released tear gas, apparently without warning, sending people coughing and running for cover. Among those affected by the gas were 13 Chicago Police Department officers, the police department said, and at least one officer was seen rinsing his eyes out with water from a neighbor’s garden hose.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security said that the federal agents were conducting an immigration enforcement operation when two people tried to flee and hit the agents’ vehicle. “This incident is not isolated and reflects a growing and dangerous trend of illegal aliens violently resisting arrest and agitators and criminals ramming cars into our law enforcement officers,” the D.H.S. said in a statement. The statement said that federal agents used “crowd control measures” after a group of people gathered and turned hostile. It was one of many turbulent episodes to erupt in Chicago in recent days. Federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol have roamed the city and suburbs making arrests, often pulling up to people walking along sidewalks, stopping them and questioning them. The agents repeatedly have been observed releasing smoke bombs, tear gas and pepper balls to disperse residents who gather or capture videos on cellphones, including when the agents were making arrests in densely populated neighborhoods. Chicago police officers, who have been called to the scenes of some clashes, have been exposed to tear gas from federal agents twice in the last two weeks. As the intensity of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has risen, residents of Chicago are increasingly pushing back with fury. In the last several weeks, Chicagoans have formed volunteer groups to monitor their neighborhoods for federal immigration agents, posting alerts on Facebook and in Signal group chats when agents are seen.

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‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat

Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway. They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery. William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n--ga” and “n--guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.” Giunta was referring to an upcoming vote on whether he should become chair of the Young Republican National Federation, the GOP’s 15,000-member political organization for Republicans between 18 and 40 years old. “Im going to create some of the greatest physiological torture methods known to man. We only want true believers,” he continued. Two members of the chat responded.

“Can we fix the showers? Gas chambers don’t fit the Hitler aesthetic,” Joe Maligno, who previously identified himself as the general counsel for the New York State Young Republicans, wrote back. “I’m ready to watch people burn now,” Annie Kaykaty, New York’s national committee member, said. The exchange is part of a trove of Telegram chats — obtained by POLITICO and spanning more than seven months of messages among Young Republican leaders in New York, Kansas, Arizona and Vermont. The chat offers an unfiltered look at how a new generation of GOP activists talk when they think no one is listening. Since POLITICO began making inquiries, one member of the group chat is no longer employed at their job and another’s job offer was rescinded. Prominent New York Republicans, including Rep. Elise Stefanik and state Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt, have denounced the chat. And festering resentments among Young Republicans have now turned into public recriminations, including allegations of character assassination and extortion.

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LA County officials approve emergency declaration over immigration raids

Los Angeles County officials voted Tuesday to declare a state of emergency that gives them power to provide assistance for residents they say have suffered financially from ongoing federal immigration raids. The move allows the L.A. County Board of Supervisors to provide rent relief for tenants who have fallen behind as a result of the crackdown on immigrants. The immigration raids that ramped up over the summer have spread fear in immigrant communities, prompting many to limit their outings. Federal agents have rounded up immigrants without legal status to be in the U.S. from Home Depots, car washes, bus stops and farms. Some U.S. citizens have also been detained. The local state of emergency can also funnel state money for legal aid and other services.

Funds for rent will be available to people who apply via an online portal that would be launched within two months, Supervisor Lindsey Horvath's office said. The motion could also be a first step toward an eviction moratorium, but that would require a separate action by the supervisors. Landlords worried it could be another financial hit after an extended ban on evictions and rental increases during the COVID-19 pandemic. The declaration was passed by a 4-1 vote, with Supervisor Kathryn Barger opposing. Horvath and Supervisor Janice Hahn said the raids have spread fear and destabilized households and businesses. In late August, there were more than 5,000 arrests in Los Angeles as part of the crackdown. About a third of the county's 10 million residents are foreign-born. Several cities in the region canceled their Fourth of July celebrations and summer movie nights as families stayed home due to safety concerns.

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Can states, and a little bit of faith, convert church land into affordable housing?

Growing up in a religious family, Florida Republican state Sen. Alexis Calatayud has seen how many church communities are no longer anchored to a single building in the way they used to be. Her small prayer groups take place over chats these days, not necessarily in person or sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in pews. With churches in her Miami-Dade County district grappling with shrinking membership and aging buildings, Calatayud thinks those institutions can do good with their unused land, by acting as anchors of new housing rather than as bystanders in neighborhood redevelopment. “When you look at someone sitting on a small church, on a 10-acre property with a dwindling congregation, the question becomes, ‘How can this entity continue to be the beating heart of the community?’” Calatayud said in an interview.

“I think it’s to create a village, where we can create more housing and even centralize other needs in the community on that land.” This year, Florida enacted a measure, sponsored by Calatayud, allowing multifamily residential development on land that is both owned by a religious institution and occupied by a house of worship, so long as at least 10% of the new units are affordable. Some housing advocates believe the zoning override has the potential to unlock roughly 30,000 parcels statewide. Florida’s new law is part of a growing movement known as YIGBY — Yes in God’s Backyard. Touted by many faith leaders, lawmakers and developers, the movement imagines a connection between a religious mission to serve and the very real hurdles of building affordable housing. If the U.S. is to meet the nation’s demand for new apartments, developers are going to need land, experts say, and parcels owned by faith-based organizations are starting to become a part of the solution for some states. At the same time, some skeptics question whether the movement could strip local communities of having a say in neighborhood development.

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Hegseth’s legal fixer at the center of Pentagon’s new media restrictions

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bid to impose sweeping restrictions on journalists’ ability to report at the Pentagon was orchestrated with advice from his longtime personal lawyer, whose role on Hegseth’s staff has troubled some defense officials. Tim Parlatore’s dual status as a mid-ranking military officer and legal fixer for Hegseth has attracted scrutiny internally among other officials, some of whom are leery of the influence he wields, people familiar with the matter said. He was integral in shaping the new media restrictions set to take effect this week, according to people familiar with the matter and a draft of the policy obtained by The Washington Post. The 21-page policy requires credentialed reporters who sign the document to acknowledge they understand Hegseth’s view that by requesting any information — including unclassified material — that has not been preapproved for release by the Pentagon, they are “soliciting or encouraging government employees to break the law.”

Such action, the policy claims, “falls outside the scope” of “newsgathering activities” protected by federal law. Journalists who do not sign must leave the building by Wednesday evening. The Washington Post is among a number of news organizations, spanning the ideological spectrum, that have declined to sign the new rules. Many have cited the proposed changes’ infringement on the media’s First Amendment protections. Pentagon officials anticipate one or more media outlets may challenge Hegseth’s policy in court, said people familiar with the matter, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal conversations. Parlatore, 46, joined Hegseth’s staff in March, upon commissioning into the Navy Reserve. He arrived shortly before Hegseth fired three senior political appointees in April, shrinking a small group of senior advisers he trusted even more, people familiar with the matter said. The part-time arrangement allows Parlatore to remain involved in his private practice — work that included representing Hegseth when the former Fox News personality was accused of sexual assault — while working behind the scenes in uniform, in an ostensibly nonpartisan military role, to shape policy and carry out the defense secretary’s directives. People familiar with Parlatore’s actions describe him as calculating and brash, at times angering others on Hegseth’s team. He uses a desk in the defense secretary’s front-office suite, and has outlasted several other senior aides who have been either fired or marginalized during a months-long period of infighting and instability among the secretary’s brain trust. Parlatore’s sway with leadership far exceeds his rank, Navy commander, a dynamic that has made some officials uncomfortable, people familiar with the situation said.

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OpenAI’s ChatGPT will soon allow ‘erotica’ for adults in major policy shift

Adult ChatGPT users can soon access a less censored version of the artificial intelligence chatbot, which will include erotic materials, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has announced in an apparent policy shift. “In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our ‘treat adult users like adults’ principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults,” Altman said in a social media post on Tuesday. Though it remains unclear what material will qualify as permitted erotica, the move could represent a major shift in OpenAI’s policy, which formerly prohibited such content in most contexts. According to Altman, existing versions of ChatGPT were made “pretty restrictive” to protect users from mental health risks, but that approach made the chatbot “less useful [and enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems.

“Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases,” he said. Those “new tools” appear to refer to safety features and parental controls rolled out last month to address concerns over how the chatbot was impacting young users’ mental health. However, as safeguards for minors expand, it appears that Altman is ready for ChatGPT to take a looser approach for adults. OpenAI hinted at a shift in February when language on its “Model Spec” page was updated to clarify that, in order to “maximize freedom” for users, only sexual content involving minors was prohibited. Still, erotica was considered to be “sensitive content” to be generated only in certain permitted contexts. Besides the rollout in December, Altman also said a new version of ChatGPT will launch in the coming weeks, allowing the chatbot to adopt more distinct personalities — building on updates in the latest GPT-4o version. “If you want your ChatGPT to respond in a very human-like way, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a friend, ChatGPT should do it,” he said. “But only if you want it.?

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U.S. kills 6 alleged drug smugglers in new strike off Venezuela, Trump says

The U.S. military killed six alleged drug smugglers Tuesday off the coast of Venezuela, President Donald Trump said, the latest development in an ongoing military campaign that has raised questions about his legal authority to use lethal force against vessels suspected of transporting illicit narcotics. Writing on social media, Trump said that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had ordered the strike “under my Standing Authorities as Commander-in-Chief.” Trump claimed the six men killed were “narcoterrorists” affiliated with what he said was a designated terrorist organization, though he did not name it. The strike hit a vessel in international waters “just off” Venezuela’s coast, Trump said. In a video taken from the air accompanying his social media post, a boat can be seen idling before being hit and bursting into flames.

This is the fifth reported strike by U.S. forces since September against vessels the administration has alleged were carrying drugs. The operations have killed 27 people, the Trump administration has said. It has not disclosed evidence verifying that the vessels were carrying drugs, that the people aboard them were confirmed criminals or which country they came from. Trump has argued that he has the legal authority to conduct these strikes because he has determined that the United States is in “armed conflict” with Latin American drug cartels. Some in Congress, which has the sole authority to declare war and has not formally authorized the use of force in this instance, have pushed back against the president’s claims. Lawmakers from both parties have been frustrated with what they say is a lack of information from the administration about its objectives. However, last week, Senate Republicans narrowly defeated an effort led by Democrats that would have blocked the U.S. military from continuing the strikes. In a recent notice to Congress that was reviewed by The Washington Post, the White House indicated that Trump directed the attacks pursuant to the law of armed conflict after he “determined that the United States is in a non-international armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations” and must conduct the strikes in self-defense.

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ICE's use of full-body restraints during deportations raises concerns over inhumane treatment

The Nigerian man described being roused with other detainees in September in the middle of the night. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers clasped shackles on their hands and feet, he said, and told them they were being sent to Ghana, even though none of them was from there. When they asked to speak to their attorney, he said, the officers refused and straitjacketed the already-shackled men in full-body restraint suits called the WRAP, then loaded them onto a plane for the 16-hour-flight to West Africa. Referred to as “the burrito” or “the bag,” the WRAP has become a harrowing part of deportations for some immigrants. “It was just like a kidnapping,” the Nigerian man, who’s part of a federal lawsuit, told The Associated Press in an interview from the detainment camp in which he and other deportees were being held in Ghana. Like others placed in the restraints interviewed by the AP, he spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The AP identified multiple examples of ICE using the black-and-yellow full-body restraint device, the WRAP, in deportations. Its use was described to the AP by five people who said they were restrained in the device, sometimes for hours, on ICE deportation flights dating to 2020. And witnesses and family members in four countries told the AP about its use on at least seven other people this year. The AP found ICE has used the device despite internal concerns voiced in a 2023 report by the civil rights division of its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in part due to reports of deaths involving use of the WRAP by local law enforcement. And the AP has identified a dozen fatal cases in the last decade where local police or jailers around the U.S. used the WRAP and autopsies determined “restraint” played a role in the death. The WRAP is the subject of a growing number of federal lawsuits likening incorrect usage of the device to punishment and even torture, whether used in a jail or by immigration authorities during international flights. Among advocates’ concerns is that ICE is not tracking the WRAP’s use as required by federal law when officers use force.

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Lead Stories

Hegseth sends home overweight Texas National Guard troops after viral photo

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has celebrated the apparent reassignment of overweight Texas National Guard troopers in Chicago whose photo went viral last week. "Standards are back at the Department of War," crowed the former Fox News host on his personal X account on Monday, linking to a news story about the soldiers. Hegseth has repeatedly grouched about fitness standards in the Armed Forces, saying in April that troops "need to be fit, not fat" and telling hundreds of top military leaders summoned to Virginia last month that he found it "tiring" to see "fat troops". But when the Texas National Guard arrived outside Chicago last week as part of President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, Associated Press photographer Erin Hooley snapped a picture of several troopers who were visibly carrying extra weight — which soon spread widely on social media.

On Sunday the Texas Military Department confirmed that it had replaced "a small group" of the 200 National Guard members serving in Illinois, though it refused to specify which troops, how many, or why they were removed. "In less than 24 hours, Texas National Guardsmen mobilized for the Federal Protection Mission," a spokesperson told the military news website Task & Purpose, which first reported on the troops' reassignment. "The speed of the response necessitated a concurrent validation process, during which we identified a small group of service members who were not in compliance and have been replaced." The federal National Guard Bureau said Thursday that all soldiers must meet "service-specific height, weight, and physical fitness standards at all times", and that non-compliant members would be pulled from missions and returned to their home stations.

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For Israel, Hamas and Trump’s peace plan, now comes the hard part

Getting Israel’s hostages released from Gaza and stopping the war may have taken two years and the direct efforts of the American president and the leaders of several Arab and Muslim nations. But that was almost certainly the easy part. Getting Hamas to give up its weapons, and demilitarizing the Gaza Strip — key preconditions for Israel to pull out of Gaza fully, as both President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Monday — could prove a lot harder. Then there are the other issues in Mr. Trump’s 20-point plan, which outlined a comprehensive solution for Gaza. In full, it also called for the establishment of an international force to help maintain security in the territory, an ambitious effort to rebuild Gaza’s economy and infrastructure, and the creation of a temporary Palestinian governing committee, whose work would be overseen by an international board.

During the talks leading up to the cease-fire in Gaza, provisions for who would run the enclave on “the day after” the war was over were among the most complicated and vexing — so much so that they were eventually severed from the cease-fire talks and put off until a second phase of negotiations. That phase had at least an air of auspiciousness on Monday evening in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where Mr. Trump and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt gathered dozens of leaders to try to build on the momentum created by the truce and the exchange of 20 living Israeli hostages and the bodies of others for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. “Phase 2 has started,” Mr. Trump said. He predicted “tremendous progress.” “It’s peace in the Middle East,” he said. “Everyone said it’s not possible to do. And it’s going to happen.” Yet, Monday’s kickoff in Sharm el-Sheikh aside, it is unclear even when Phase 2 talks will formally begin and where they will be held. And both Israeli and Palestinian analysts said it was easier to imagine things going sideways than to imagine Mr. Trump’s plan being fully realized.

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News outlets broadly reject Pentagon rules before deadline for signing

Media across the ideological spectrum said they will not sign the Defense Department’s restrictive new press policy by Tuesday’s afternoon deadline. The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Associated Press and CNN said they wouldn’t sign, as did Newsmax and the Washington Times. Matt Murray, The Post’s executive editor, said the policy runs counter to the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of the press. “The proposed restrictions undercut First Amendment protections by placing unnecessary constraints on gathering and publishing information,” he said in a statement Monday. “We will continue to vigorously and fairly report on the policies and positions of the Pentagon and officials across the government.” The policy says reporters cannot obtain or solicit any information the Defense Department does not explicitly authorize. Any media representative who does not sign by 5 p.m. Tuesday has 24 hours to turn in their media credentials and clear out of the Pentagon facilities.

After pushback from reporters, news organizations and press freedom advocacy groups, the Pentagon expanded the prohibitions in the document, earning condemnation last week from the Pentagon Press Association, which represents the Pentagon press corps. The policy “constrains how journalists can report on the U.S. military, which is funded by nearly $1 trillion in taxpayer dollars annually,” said the New York Times’s Washington bureau chief, Richard Stevenson. “The public has a right to know how the government and military are operating.” The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, Reuters and the Guardian, along with the trade publications Task & Purpose and Breaking Defense, said they were not signing either. Fox News, Hegseth’s former employer, has not yet said whether it would sign the pledge. The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, who was added to a Signal group chat including Hegseth earlier this year, said the constraints on journalists violate their First Amendment rights. As a result, the magazine’s staffers won’t sign. The media policy is the latest attempt by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to clamp down on journalists covering the Pentagon. The Defense Department’s media staff rarely conducts briefings, kicked out many mainstream news organizations from their dedicated desks, and restricted movement within the Pentagon facilities.

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Ken Paxton warns Houston Methodist in letter over vaccine policies for organ transplants

Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday warned Houston Methodist that it shouldn't deny organ transplants to patients who haven’t received the COVID-19 vaccine, but the hospital said it is already complying with a new Texas law that prohibits such policies. The law, known as House Bill 4076, went into effect on Sept. 1. It prohibits health care providers from denying an organ transplant and related services to a patient based solely on their vaccination status. Paxton issued a letter on Monday that said his office had become aware of allegations that Houston Methodist was denying organ transplants to patients who hadn’t received the COVID-19 vaccine.

He gave the hospital an Oct. 27 deadline to provide a written explanation of steps the hospital is taking to ensure its policies are in line with the law, and said he would open a formal investigation if the hospital fails to respond. “Texans looking to receive medical care should never be turned away due to arbitrary COVID-19 vaccine mandates imposed by woke medical providers,” Paxton said in a statement. Houston Methodist said in a statement that the hospital is following the new law. Since the law took effect, the hospital has not denied any organ transplants to patients because they are unvaccinated, a Houston Methodist spokesperson said. “Houston Methodist does not have a policy requiring transplant patients be vaccinated against COVID-19, or any other disease, and does not deny care based on vaccination status,” the hospital said in the statement. Houston Methodist has previously been at the center of controversies involving the COVID-19 vaccine. The hospital in 2021 became the first in the nation to require a COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of employment, though it allowed employees to request a medical or religious exemption. More than 150 employees were fired or resigned after the requirement took effect, and 117 employees subsequently filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against the hospital. A federal judge tossed the suit, and an appeals court upheld the dismissal.

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State Stories

Dallas Mavs owner Miriam Adelson praised by Trump before Israeli parliament

President Donald Trump heaped praise and kind words on his friend and campaign megadonor, billionaire Dallas Mavericks majority owner Dr. Miriam Adelson, as she joined him for a speech before the Israeli parliament in her native country on Monday. “She loves this country,” Trump said of the physician and casino owner, who was born in Israel and who, with her late husband, Sheldon, was one of Trump’s top donors during his three presidential campaigns. “I’m going to get her in trouble with this, but I actually asked her once, I said, ‘So Miriam, I know you love Israel. What do you love more? The United States or Israel?’ She refused to answer. That might mean Israel.” The crowd chuckled, but the underlying message was the Adelsons’ yearslong support for and influence on U.S. foreign policy in Israel during Trump’s presidential years — a partnership he said strongly shaped his decisions to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the U.S. Embassy, as well as his moves on the Golan Heights.

In his speech, Trump described a nearly open-door policy at the White House with the Adelsons, describing Sheldon Adelson as “aggressive” in his support of their agenda — particularly when it came to Israel, of which Miriam Adelson has been a fierce backer. “Wonderful woman,” Trump said Monday to lawmakers’ applause. “I think they had more trips to the White House than anybody else I could think of. Look at her sitting there so innocently. She’s got $60 billion in the bank.” According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, her total net worth was valued at $39.4 billion as of Oct. 12, ranking her as the 51st-richest person in the world. Adelson launched her first solo effort as a highly sought-after political donor in 2024, three years after her GOP megadonor husband, the former CEO and chairman of casino company Las Vegas Sands, died at age 87. Her son-in-law, Patrick Dumont, is president of Sands. The Adelsons donated more than $200 million to Republican campaigns and political action committees in 2020, including $90 million to Preserve America, a Trump fundraising machine that went dormant after Trump’s defeat. It was soundly revived last year, when Miriam Adelson donated $100 million to Preserve America, which funded tens of millions in ads in swing states.

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Ken Paxton sues leader of group trying to seize control of Texas’ least populated county

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday filed a lawsuit against the leader of a group of people that recently moved into a wealthy far West Texas county with the expressed intent to wrest political control from the current office holders. Paxton also filed a request for a temporary restraining order against Malcolm Tanner for what the attorney general asserted were environment violations on the isolated plot of land in Loving County where members of his organization, the Melanated People of Power, have erected a small encampment of RVs and tents. The State of Texas “requests that defendant be enjoined from allowing any person to move on to, reside, or otherwise establish habitation or domicile on the property,” the filing said.

In numerous social media posts, Tanner has declared his intention to take over Loving County’s government by moving in enough of his supporters, who he has attracted there by promising free homes and a $5,000 monthly stipend. Thanks to a gusher of oil and gas revenue, the county, which sits in the Permian Basin, is one of the state’s wealthiest. The Houston Chronicle reported on Tanner and his political plans three weeks ago. Days later, several state and federal elected officials requested law enforcement and elections officials mount investigations. Paxton’s office was the first to make an official filing. “Indiana resident Malcolm Tanner has no right to try and take over Loving County with illegal schemes that endanger real Texans,” the attorney general said in a statement accompanying the lawsuit’s filing in state district court in Loving County. “His deceptive and unlawful scheme to lure people with free housing for the purpose of conducting a political takeover is a disgustingly fraudulent plot to line his own pockets. I will not stand by while frauds try to carve up Texas for themselves and make everyone sicker and less safe along the way.” In the lawsuit, state prosecutors alleged that Tanner violated Texas health and safety codes when he and his followers established their encampment without septic or sewer access on two 5-acre parcels about a half-hour drive on rough caliche roads outside of Mentone, the county’s only city.

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Obama slams Greg Abbott's Texas Guard deployment, noting past Republican criticism

Former President Barack Obama criticized the deployment of Texas National Guard troops to his hometown of Chicago, noting that the Republicans who now support it, including Gov. Greg Abbott, had attacked him a decade ago for overseeing routine military exercises in Texas. “If I had sent in the National Guard into Texas and just said, ‘You know what, a lot of problems in Dallas, you know, a lot of crime there, and I don’t care what Governor Abbott says, I’m going to kind of take over law enforcement because I think things are out of control’ – it is mind boggling to me how Fox News would have responded,” Obama said in an appearance on the “WTF With Marc Maron” podcast that posted on Monday.

Obama then went on to talk about outrage sparked by regular military exercises in Texas when he was president, an apparent reference to Jade Helm 15, an operation that fueled right-wing conspiracies. Abbott, then in his first year in office, directed the Texas State Guard to monitor the military exercise, saying he wanted Texans to know their "safety, constitutional rights, private property rights and civil liberties will not be infringed.” “Ted Cruz and a number of other folks were out there lending credence to the fact that I was preparing for, you know, the whole black helicopter, one world government — I was about to take over Texas,” Obama said. Cruz's office did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Abbott said in a statement: "If the liberal governments in Obama’s hometown were protecting people and property and upholding law and order, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Public safety should be the first priority for any elected official, and President Trump is stepping up where Democrats are failing." Abbott was a regular adversary of Obama’s when the Democrat was in the White House and Abbott was the state attorney general. He sued the Obama administration dozens of times, joking "I go into the office, I sue the federal government and I go home.”

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About that new Greg Abbott rule

Fox 4’s Steve Noviello wonders on Instagram if a few other road embellishments will run afoul of Greg Abbott’s new rule about displays in streets like rainbow crosswalks. He points out that, “a media release from Gov. Abbott says any ‘non-standard surface markings, signage, and signals that do not directly support traffic control or safety’ are unlawful and dangerous. As you can see below, he’s not talking about Oak Lawn. “Does anyone know if there is a demolition date for these crosswalks in Victory Park and University Park?” he asks.

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ICE detains another Dallas Muslim activist, a DACA recipient

Advocates are calling for the release of Filipino-American filmmaker Ya’akub Ira Vijandre, a Muslim who was detained by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement outside his Dallas home last week, arguing he was detained illegally because he is protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Vijandre’s arrest on Oct. 7 marks the second time a well-known Muslim community member in Dallas was detained by immigration officials in less than a month. In late September, community leader Marwan Marouf was detained by ICE. Advocates say Marouf’s arrest was part of a Trump administration effort to criminalize pro-Palestinian activism and suppress free speech, while the administration said he overstayed his visa and was denied a green card due to past support for a troubled, now-defunct foundation. Vijandre, an artist known for his solidarity activism for Palestinians, is legally protected from deportation under DACA, according to his lawyers from the Muslim Legal Fund of America, who released a joint statement with the Council on American-Islamic Relations – Texas DFW, condemning his arrest.

“To detain him is to trample on justice itself,” the Oct. 8 statement read. “ICE’s actions are not only unlawful, but also a disturbing abuse of power and a direct violation of his rights.” Vijandre, who is being held at Bluebonnet Detention Facility, about 200 miles west of Dallas in Texas, was born in the Philippines and settled in the U.S. as a child. His friends said he is a beloved storyteller and photographer recognized for uplifting marginalized people. He converted to Islam in 2022 and teaches Filipino martial arts. “He was really connected to his Filipino roots, but he also loved other cultures,” said Mohammad Ayesh, an organizer in Dallas and friend of Vijandre. “His whole focus it seemed was just around humans telling human stories.” Over the past two weeks, Vijandre was working on a documentary series about people shaped by Marouf’s mentorship and advocacy work in Dallas. Ayesh told Religion News Service the goal of the project was to counter the Department of Homeland Security narrative about Marouf.

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Totally Tejano Hall of Fame & Museum set to open in San Antonio this December

The legacy of Tejano music will soon have a permanent home in the Alamo City. The Totally Tejano Hall of Fame & Museum, a 5,000-square-foot space dedicated to showcasing, honoring, and preserving the legends and pioneers of Mexican American music, will officially open its doors on December 6, 2025, at 1414 Fredericksburg Road in San Antonio, Texas. The museum — the first of its kind in the city — is devoted to the preservation and celebration of the music known by many names: La Onda Chicana, La Onda Tejana, Tex-Mex, and Tejano music. The facility aims to educate, inspire, and keep alive the vibrant cultural sounds that originated in Texas and went on to influence generations across the nation.

Visitors will experience exhibits honoring Tejano legends and Grammy Award winners, including Little Joe Hernández and Flaco Jiménez, alongside various other historic collections that have been showcased in museums throughout Texas. In addition to its museum space, the facility will feature a 2,000-square-foot hall designed for industry meetings, conferences, symposiums, and album or video release parties, as well as a gift and record shop offering Tejano music memorabilia and souvenirs. A learning center room will allow visitors to enjoy nostalgic music and photo archives, while school district partnerships will bring students for educational tours highlighting the roots of Tejano music dating back to the early 1900s.

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Dallas ICE facility shooter feared radiation exposure and practiced shooting, records show

The parents of the 29-year-old gunman who opened fire on a Dallas immigration facility in September told police their son was “completely normal” before he moved to Washington state and returned home several years ago believing he had radiation sickness, according to newly released records. Joshua Jahn had begun wearing cotton gloves to avoid contact with plastic and practiced target shooting with a newly purchased rifle in Oklahoma a month before the deadly rooftop attack on a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement building, according to a report written by a Fairview Police Department officer. Jahn killed two detainees and wounded another before taking his own life in the September 24 shooting.

The records, obtained by The Associated Press through an open records request, reveal no clues about what may have motivated the attack. Federal authorities said previously that Jahn wrote “ANTI-ICE” on a bullet and left handwritten notes indicating he wanted to ambush and terrorize ICE agents. The new records show that on the day of the shooting, Jahn’s parents told the FBI he would “occasionally discuss current events” with his mother but rarely engaged in conversations. His parents said he was a “loner” who was “obsessed” with artificial intelligence technology. The parents, Andrew and Sharon Jahn, did not immediately respond Monday to text and phone messages from the AP. The documents portray Jahn as an unemployed, friendless young man who had withdrawn into playing computer games in his bedroom at his parents’ home in a Dallas suburb. Jahn was not diagnosed with or treated for any mental or physical disorders, his parents said.

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Prabhas Moghe, UT Dallas’ new president, wants to bridge academia and industry

In a bright neurobiology lab at The University of Texas at Dallas, Prabhas Moghe peered over a graduate student’s shoulder as she examined recordings of electrical impulses from human nerve cells. Among the microscopes, test tubes and scientists solving society’s most complex health challenges, such as cancer or, in this case, migraine pain, Moghe feels at home. An accomplished bioengineer who has developed medical technologies, he was at Harvard Medical School as a postdoctoral researcher and spent the last 30 years at Rutgers University. His white lab coat has a new title embroidered in neat script above the pocket — “President.” His office is across the street from the bioengineering hub, nestled in the second floor of UT Dallas’ Administration Building. Moghe, 58, became UT Dallas’ sixth president in August after serving as Rutgers’ executive vice president for academic affairs. He takes the helm at a challenging time for higher education. Under increased scrutiny from state and federal leaders, universities face rising political and financial pressures. Americans’ perceptions of the importance of higher education continues to decline, according to a recent Gallup poll.

Moghe isn’t daunted by those challenges. He understands much of the job will be proving UTD’s value to the region. “If we can make sure that students that come to us succeed, there will be trust in us. If our research work is solving the problems of humanity — that doesn’t come in different political affiliations, it’s across all stripes — we will have support,” Moghe said. “So my view is nose to the grind, focus on the work and stick to the academic mission.” For Moghe, the school’s future is informed by its origins as a research and industry partner to Texas Instruments. He’s turning to what he knows best, and what the fast-growing university has quickly distinguished itself for: groundbreaking research that changes people’s lives. Moghe points to the graduate student’s research on migraines, which will hopefully lead to a drug that can quell the daily pain millions of Americans suffer from. That kind of work, he says, “represents the nucleus of an academic institution today.” The approach could cement the young university as a player on the national stage. “UTD is at a crux. It is ready to spring forward,” University of Texas System Regent Christina Melton Crain said. “We were really tasked with finding that person who could catapult the university into the next realm. And he walked in the room and it was like, ‘Wow, I think this guy is the guy.’”

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Amendment to ban securities taxes draws TXSE, Nasdaq support; opponents cite inequality

Texans will vote in November on a constitutional amendment banning certain taxes on stock exchanges. Proposition 6 was signed by Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this year as part of the Texas Capital Markets bill package, which aims to make the Lone Star State more friendly to stock trading and pave the way for the recently approved Texas Stock Exchange. The amendment, one of 17 on the ballot this fall, would prohibit the Texas Legislature from “the enactment of a law imposing an occupation tax on certain entities that enter into transactions conveying securities or imposing a tax on certain securities transactions.”

The amendment would prohibit taxes aimed at businesses such as stock exchanges themselves, broker-dealers and other market participants. Texas has other occupation taxes in place, like one on certain oil and gas service providers. The second piece of the amendment would ban transaction taxes on the purchase or sale of securities. Currently, a national transactions tax is paid for by either the stock exchange or broker-dealer, but no states collect their own securities transactions tax. The proposition, which passed the Legislature with wide bipartisan support (111-31-1 in the House and 28-3 in the Senate), was sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound, and comes as Texas stakes a claim to capital markets. In the last year, Texas has seen a boom on “Y’all Street,” with the creation of TXSE, the New York Stock Exchange branch NYSE Texas, and a new North Texas-based Nasdaq regional headquarters. TXSE has been a heavy supporter of Proposition 6, and, in some ways, has a similar proposal in New York to thank for its existence. Speaking at a panel last week, TXSE global managing director Marc Cunningham explained that in 2020, New York and New Jersey floated securities taxes as a way to raise revenue during the pandemic.

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AllianceTexas sees massive increase in international trade, state report says

AllianceTexas, the 27,000-acre business hub in north Fort Worth , handled about $834 million in international trade in 2024, according to a report release Monday by the state comproller’s office. That’s a roughly 405% increase from 2023, and an over 550% increase from 2016, according to the report. Alliance has always been ahead of the curve, acting State Comptroller Kelly Hancock said during a small gathering to announce the numbers. While figures from Alliance developer Hillwood estimated the campus has generated around 66,000 jobs for North Texas, the state’s data indicate the that number is closer to 136,780. Hancock noted those jobs include businesses outside the AllianceTexas development that support businesses located in the corridor. Without Alliance, those jobs wouldn’t be there, he said.

The nearly 36 year-old port has anchored massive growth in north Fort Worth, attracting hundreds of businesses, thousands of homes, and generating billions of dollars in economic impact for North Texas. The development includes massive warehouses from Amazon and Walmart, companies on the cutting edge of autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence development, and soon a new 450,000-square-foot film and television production campus from Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan. Hancock reflected on how the area has changed from ranch land to massive warehouses and homes powering the state’s economy. “We’re just getting started,” he said. The development’s location at the intersection of the freeways, railroads, and its airport is unique across the country, said Hillwood chairman Ross Perot Jr. “This is where you want to be,” he said. The development’s location makes it the primary point of entry for the southwestern United States due to rail networks connecting the Port of Houston to the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the report said.

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Judge denies bid to toss arson case against former Turkey Leg Hut owner Lynn Price

A federal arson case against former Turkey Leg Hut owner Lynn Price will not be thrown out over accusations he was betrayed by his former defense lawyer, a federal judge ruled Friday. Price, who has been in federal custody since his arrest in April, argued last month that the case against him is fatally flawed because one of his co-defendants was represented by Letitia Quinones-Hollins, who previously represented Price in criminal matters.

Price is accused of ordering the 2020 arson fire at Bar 5015, a restaurant that belonged to a former business partner with whom he was feuding. He’s pleaded not guilty and is currently scheduled to go on trial next month alongside the three men he allegedly hired. However, federal prosecutors have already indicated that one of the men, John Lee Price, is set to testify against Lynn Price. The men are not family but have a longstanding working relationship. Prosecutors allege that John Lee Price worked as a “ranch hand” for Lynn Price, a job that included stealing cars and dealing marijuana at the business owner’s direction. John Lee Price is represented by Quinones-Hollins, who had previously represented Lynn Price in other criminal cases, including a 2016 tax fraud case.

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In Dallas, 6,700 women rally for culture war battles after Kirk’s death

“Welcome to the fight,” said commentator Allie Beth Stuckey as she greeted the 6,700 conservative Christian women assembled in the Dallas, Texas, arena on Saturday morning (Oct. 11): “The fight for truth, the fight for our Christian faith, the fight for our children, the fight for the nation.” Among Stuckey’s hundreds of thousands of social media followers, that fight is often waged in podcast recordings, comment sections, PTA meetings and local elections. But this weekend, the battle converged in the Dallas suburbs during Stuckey’s second annual “Share the Arrows” women’s conference, where throngs of Bible-wielding Christian women gathered at the Credit Union Texas Event Center to be inspired in person by their favorite online influencers, including Jinger Duggar Vuolo from the hit show “19 Kids and Counting” and homeschooling “momfluencer” Abbie Halberstadt. Held just one month since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the event also served as a rallying cry for women whose faith has been reignited by the death of the far-right political activist.

“There’s a new ache in all of our hearts since Charlie passed, and we’re just so excited to keep this fire burning. This is a great way to rekindle that in all of us,” Rachel Jonson, a 28-year-old mother from Corinth, Texas, told RNS as she sat near the back of the arena, rocking the infant wrapped to her chest. To these women, Kirk was an evangelist turned martyr who died for defending conservative beliefs about Scripture, family, abortion, gender and sexuality that they, too, hold sacred. In the weeks after Kirk’s passing, the conference saw a swell of more than 2,000 women purchase tickets. And the conference aimed to equip these women to boldly enter the fray of the culture wars. Though Stuckey argues the battle is primarily about defending biblical truths, she says political engagement is a byproduct. “This is a fight to which every single Christian is called, and it’s not fought on a physical battlefield or even only in the public square,” said Stuckey from the conference stage. “This is a spiritual battle that is waged in our homes and in our neighborhoods, at school, at your job.”

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Group says it’s got enough signatures to force an election over the $1.6B Convention Center project

A group opposed to the redevelopment of the $1.6 billion Austin Convention Center says it has enough signatures to file a petition with the city clerk and potentially force an election in May. “Way over 20k of you signed for the right to vote on the boondoggle of a Convention Center and to ask for $ to spend on things we care about, and actually attract visitors,” the Austin United PAC wrote on social media. That PAC is working to force a ballot measure that would stop the project — either until it is approved by voters or for seven years. The petition also calls for the city to prioritize funding for music, arts, cultural and outdoor tourism rather than spending on conventions, the Austin Business Journal previously reported.

On the same day, KXAN watched as the final standing elements of the current Convention Center were demolished. The city said it received the petition and conduct a standard signature verification process, which takes about 30 days. “As of today, the Convention Center completed demolition, is in active excavation and construction, and the project is on schedule and on budget,” the city added. The project to redevelop and expand the Austin Convention Center began following South By Southwest this year, and the building is expected to reopen in 2029. The project, which the city calls Unconventional ATX, is funded through Hotel Occupancy Tax and Convention Center revenues, according to the city of Austin. The city described the new Convention Center as a “cutting-edge facility” that will “seamlessly integrate innovative architecture, sustainability, and public art to create a world-class event space in the heart of Austin.”

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National Stories

Who are the Louisiana voters behind a major Supreme Court challenge?

One made national news when she protested the Covid-19 vaccine at her local City Council. Another is a member of the Trumpettes, a group of women united in their ardent support for the president. A third is a retired grocery salesman who said he didn’t remember signing up to be involved in a lawsuit. The three are among the 12 Louisiana voters at the center of a case set to be heard by the Supreme Court on Wednesday that could gut what remains of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the landmark civil-rights-era legislation. In January 2024, the group filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Louisiana’s congressional district map, arguing state lawmakers had discriminated against them as white voters by impermissibly taking race into account when they drafted the map after the 2020 census. Since then, they’ve been referred to in court filings merely as the “non-African-American” voters.

Plaintiffs in such weighty Supreme Court cases often become the public faces of major issues in American life, their names forever tied to the historic legal challenges: Fred Korematsu became a civil rights icon for resisting an executive order that forced Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II. Mildred and Richard Loving successfully challenged Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage in a landmark case. Not so in the Louisiana case. The landmark case, on whether the Constitution permits race to be used as a factor in carving congressional districts, has had no public face. None of the plaintiffs testified at a three-day trial in federal court, according to transcripts. The legal briefs list their names but say nothing about their lives or the reasons each chose to participate in the case, aside from assertions that each “suffered unlawful, intentional discrimination based on race.” “I genuinely don’t know who these people are,” said Stuart C. Naifeh, manager of the Redistricting Project at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which has been involved in the litigation and will be defending the map at the Supreme Court.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene, tearing into her own party, says GOP men in Congress are ‘weak’

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) spent part of last week fielding angry texts from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana). She posted on social media that the Senate should abolish the 60-vote filibuster threshold so senators can end the government shutdown with just Republican votes. “He told me they can’t do it and it’s math,” Greene said. As with many things Johnson says these days, Greene disagreed. “I sent him the article about them doing it yesterday,” she said, referring to the Senate changing its own rules in order to confirm a large group of nominees on a single vote. “I said, ‘They just did it.’” (Johnson told reporters on Friday that he called her and they had a “good discussion” as “colleagues and friends.”)

Greene, an anti-establishment outsider who became a close ally to the president, is used to conflict with leaders of her own party. She unsuccessfully tried to force a vote to remove Johnson from his leadership post in 2024, and she was openly critical of former speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) before she and McCarthy forged an alliance. Now, she’s on what some Republicans see as a media blitz from hell. She’s torching the speaker’s shutdown strategy in cable news interviews, siding with Democrats to call for extensions to health care subsidies, and supporting an effort both Johnson and President Donald Trump oppose to force a vote on releasing files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “My district knows I ran for Congress trashing Republicans,” Greene said in an interview focused on her recent clashes. “They voted for me because they agreed with that. My district’s not surprised.” Greene’s sharpest attacks also reflect some disillusionment with how she and other conservative women in Congress have been treated in recent months. She said she sees a pattern of unfair treatment in which competent and tough women such as herself and Rep. Elise Stefanik (New York) have been punished or ignored while “weak” Republican men are rewarded.

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'Fluoride disconnects one from God': Inside the weekly call with RFK Jr.'s MAHA hype squad

The night before Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified before a Senate committee to defend his Make America Healthy Again agenda in September, the actor Cheryl Hines made an appearance on a weekly call put on by a nonprofit organization that supports Kennedy’s agenda. There was only one problem: Her microphone was off. “Sorry that I’m late,” Hines, who is married to Kennedy, said once her microphone was switched on. “I’m in Paris.” She offered few details about her husband’s mindset beyond that he “is doing a lot of work.” “I know that Bobby is preparing right now for his day of Senate hearings tomorrow, that he’s, of course, taking very seriously,” Hines said.

Every Wednesday, publisher and MAHA activist Tony Lyons’ nonprofit organization, MAHA Action, gathers a roster of Kennedy allies for a “MAHA Action Media Hub” call. The group describes itself as “a vital resource for our core MAHA Warriors and grassroots activists.” And every Wednesday, the calls offer a fleeting glimpse into Kennedy’s world, a dizzying kaleidoscope where alternative health practitioners appear alongside the governor of West Virginia. On any given week, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services could speak for a few minutes before a shirtless Russell Brand calls in from what appears to be a bathtub, or a former member of The Pussycat Dolls argues that the COVID-19 vaccine destroyed her ability to dance. These calls are a real-time look into the growing pains of a fringe movement that was launched into the mainstream with the election of President Donald Trump. Sometimes awkward, often downright funny, each week the calls juxtapose a haphazard group of celebrities with real power — and show just how professionalized the MAHA movement has become.

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'It's nuts': Sky-high Las Vegas prices stun visitors as travel pro gives tips to fight back

The city of Las Vegas has experienced a widely reported dip in tourism — with travelers pointing to extremely high prices in many parts of the city. Fox News Digital spoke with visitors to Sin City to hear about their experiences and get their thoughts. A woman named Sarah from Staten Island, New York, said she'd been to Vegas quite a few times over the years. "[Vegas] has changed immensely price-wise," she said. "It's a little crazy, but dinners are like $1,000, it's nuts. They need to go back a little bit, and I think they'll get more tourism if they do that." A man named Craig, also from Staten Island, agreed that the Strip has changed.

"If you're looking for a bottle of wine, you've got to pay at least $2,000 a night for a good bottle of wine," he said. Amanda from Valencia, Spain, shared a personal tip for saving money while in Vegas. She said that since the "hotels [are] more expensive," it is better to purchase food on the street. "You can find one coffee for maybe $5-$6 on the street, and in a hotel [it’s about] $20," she said. Irene from Los Angeles, California, told Fox News Digital she had to pay a $135 resort fee. "The price is going up and up, and the resort fee is very high," she said. A man from Houston, Texas, told Fox News Digital, "I’d probably say one of the cons of being here is the price of things. You know, it's Vegas, so I mean, everything’s pretty expensive." Travelmation supervisor and adviser Mallory Dumond told Fox News Digital that for clients of her firm, which is based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Vegas pricing is becoming more of a concern. Dumond suggested staying off the Strip or staying nearby during a Vegas trip.

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Airports say they won’t air Kristi Noem shutdown video at TSA checkpoints

Airports in more than a half-dozen U.S. markets have declined to display a video in which Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem blames congressional Democrats for the government shutdown and any related travel delays, citing the political nature of its content, according to local authorities. Officials that oversee airports serving Buffalo, Charlotte, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Seattle and Portland, Oregon, said the video could violate internal policies that bar political messaging or contravene state or federal laws that prohibit the use of public resources for political activity. “We believe the Hatch Act clearly prohibits use of public assets for political purposes and messaging,” said Molly Prescott, a spokesperson for the Port of Portland, which operates Portland International Airport. Enacted in 1939, the Hatch Act bars federal employees from engaging in politics while on the job and is meant to ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion.

Oregon law also precludes public employees from promoting or opposing political parties during working hours, Prescott said, noting: “This is the first time to our knowledge that the Port has declined to play a video.” Westchester County, a community just north of New York City, also declined to show the video; County Executive Ken Jenkins called it “inconsistent with the values we expect from our nation’s top public officials” and “unnecessarily alarmist” in a statement on Friday. Though airports routinely display video greetings from the homeland security chief at TSA checkpoints, the messages typically center on safety or procedures to be aware of, said Henry Harteveldt, an airline industry analyst with Atmosphere Research Group. For example, the agency used the screens to broadcast the need to have a Real ID — the standard for state-issued driver’s licenses and identification cards that took effect in May — to board a domestic flight. “It is TSA’s top priority to make sure that you have the most pleasant and efficient airport experience as possible,” Noem says in the video, captured by news organizations and on social media. “However, Democrats in Congress refuse to fund the federal government, and because of this, many of our operations are impacted.”

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Biden is receiving radiation and hormone therapy to treat his prostate cancer

Former President Joe Biden is receiving radiation and hormone therapy as part of a new phase of treating the aggressive form of prostate cancer he was diagnosed with after leaving office, a spokesperson said Saturday. “As part of a treatment plan for prostate cancer, President Biden is currently undergoing radiation therapy and hormone treatment,” said Biden aide Kelly Scully. The 82-year-old Democrat left office in January after he had dropped his bid for reelection six months earlier following a disastrous debate against Republican Donald Trump amid concerns about Biden’s age, health and mental fitness. Trump defeated Democrat Kamala Harris, who was Biden’s vice president. In May, Biden’s postpresidential office announced that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and that it had spread to his bone. The discovery came after he reported urinary symptoms.

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The West's power grid could be stitched together — if red and blue states buy in

For years, Western leaders have debated the creation of a regional energy market: a coordinated grid to pool solar power in Arizona, wind in Wyoming, hydro in Washington and battery storage in California. The shared resources would meet the demands of 11 different states, bolstering utilities’ local power plants with surplus energy from across the region. With the passage of a landmark new law in California, that market is finally on its way to becoming a reality. Proponents say it has the potential to lower energy costs, make the grid more resilient and speed up the deployment of clean energy. But the market’s success, experts agree, depends heavily on which states and utilities decide to opt in. As energy issues have become increasingly politicized, it’s uncertain whether Western leaders can buy into a common vision for meeting the region’s power needs.

“As we move toward weather-dependent renewables to run our grid, we’ve got to have a grid that is bigger than a weather pattern,” said California Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, a Democrat who sponsored the legislation aimed at establishing the new market. “A Western energy market is critical.” The California measure earned bipartisan support, and leaders in conservative and liberal states alike have long touted the benefits of a region-wide market. But some skeptics worry about merging the power systems of states with varying climate goals. And some fear the new market could give federal regulators appointed by President Donald Trump an opening to interfere and mandate more fossil fuel-powered plants that can be turned on regardless of the weather. Across the 11 Western states that straddle or sit west of the Rocky Mountains, 37 separate private and public utilities operate portions of the grid.

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Lead Stories

Hamas frees hostages and Israel releases prisoners as Trump visits the region

Hamas released all 20 of the last living hostages on Monday, the Israeli military said. It is part of a breakthrough ceasefire after two years of war between Israel and Hamas in the devastated Gaza Strip. Buses carrying dozens of freed Palestinian prisoners drove to the West Bank city of Ramallah and the Gaza Strip, the Hamas-run Prisoners Office said. Israel is freeing more than 1,900 prisoners as part of the ceasefire deal. U.S. President Donald Trump is in the region to discuss the U.S.-proposed deal and postwar plans with other leaders. A surge of humanitarian aid was expected into famine-stricken Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people have been left homeless. While major questions remain about the future of Hamas and Gaza, the exchange of hostages and prisoners marked a key step toward ending the deadliest war ever between Israel and the militant group.

The president began his remarks by praising “20 courageous hostages” who he said are “returning to the glorious embrace of their families. And it is glorious.” Trump also saluted Israel’s prime minister for his role in the ceasefire agreement -- but couldn’t help but offer a backhanded compliment, too. The president took the podium after an address to the Israeli parliament by Netanyahu, which concluded with Trump getting up from his seat and shaking hands with the prime minister, before embracing him. That embrace prompted chants of “Trump! Trump! Trump!” Trump later started his own remarks by saying, “It’s a great honor” and calling the Knesset a “nice place.” “He’s not the easiest guy to deal with, but that’s what makes him great,” Trump said. “Thank you very much, Bibi. great job.”

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Trump, feeling emboldened, pushes agenda into higher gear

President Trump began mass layoffs of federal workers. He threatened a dramatic increase in tariffs on China. And he flexed his control over the Justice Department once again, as his newly appointed U.S. attorney in eastern Virginia obtained an unusual indictment against the New York attorney general that Trump had demanded over the objections of career prosecutors. That was just in the past 48 hours. On Sunday, Trump heads to the Middle East to sign a deal he helped clinch to end the fighting in Gaza. All of these actions reflect a buoyed commander in chief who feels emboldened to go further after feeling as though he has faced surprisingly little resistance to his ambitious agenda in the first nine months. He has even remarked to aides that he is shocked how easy it has all proven to be.

While the war in Ukraine continues to bedevil Trump, causing him the most frustrations, he doesn’t face the discontent, sniping and disagreements that characterized his first term, said David Urban, a longtime ally. “This time, he’s having way more fun,” Urban said. The bespoke gifts from business executives in Trump’s White House tell the story of just how different his second term has been from the first: a circular glass plaque from Apple set in a gold base, a gilded TV remote, a General Motors mock-up of the presidential limousine, a large model of a jet fighter, and a gold chain. “Everyone’s on my side now,” Trump told advisers this summer. “They were fighting me last time.” It is a sentiment Trump has expressed regularly since taking office in January, according to advisers. A lot of Trump’s agenda so far has been a combination of following his own impulses and surrounding himself with people who won’t try to stop him. In the first administration, defense officials dissuaded Trump from sending the military into cities, and Justice Department officials largely kept their distance from the White House and pursued investigations—even into Trump. Business leaders were regularly critical of the administration. A number of senior staffers left and painted a scorching portrait of the White House.

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This Texas town is an energy powerhouse. It’s running out of water.

South Texas lured Tesla, along with Exxon Mobil and other energy behemoths, with the promise of land, cheap energy and, perhaps most critically, abundant water. The companies spent billions of dollars over the past two decades building plants that use huge amounts of water to transform fossil fuels into gasoline, jet fuel and other refined products. More set up shop in recent years to refine lithium for electric-vehicle batteries and crank out plastic pellets. All were drawn to the region by its juicy tax deals, deep-water Gulf Coast port and latticework of pipelines that ferry cheap natural gas and crude oil. Now, Corpus Christi, the region’s main water provider, says it is tapped out. A crippling drought is depleting its reservoirs, and the city expects it won’t be able to meet the area’s water demand in as soon as 18 months. In addition to industrial users, the water utility serves more than 500,000 people in seven counties.

Cue the panic. Energy companies are warning they might have to shut down part of their production, sparking fears of layoffs and stalling growth. The city is scrambling to stave off the looming shortage amid political infighting. Residents, meanwhile, are trying to save their yards and gearing up for increased water rates. “The water situation in South Texas is about as dire as I’ve ever seen it,” said Mike Howard, chief executive of Howard Energy Partners, a private energy company that owns several facilities in Corpus Christi. “It has all the energy in the world, and it doesn’t have water.” The crisis could resonate beyond Corpus Christi, a city that is the eighth largest in Texas, by population, and sits just 150 miles from the Mexico border. Its refineries supply products to regional airports and markets in Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, Texas and in Mexico. It is also home to a Navy base that hosts the world’s largest rotary-wing aircraft repair center, which services combat aircraft including Black Hawks. Since the 1950s, Corpus Christi has expanded its water supplies after each severe drought. Nowadays, two reservoirs to the west, and a 101-mile pipeline to the east serve its needs.

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Houston police calls to ICE have surged 1,000% since Trump took office; 'really difficult situation'

Houston police officers have called federal immigration agents on civilians over 100 times since President Donald Trump took office in January — a jump of more than 1,000% from any of the previous five years, according to public records obtained by the Houston Chronicle. The vast majority of those 107 calls to Immigration and Customs Enforcement came as the result of a traffic stop. In only three offense reports — for responses to domestic violence, aggravated robbery and narcotics complaints — did officers indicate that the subject had been suspected of a serious crime. Incident reports indicate that ICE came to arrest the subject in at least one out of four cases. Those numbers could be higher, however, as many incident reports lack details about why the subject was stopped or whether ICE responded.

By comparison, Houston police called ICE nine times in 2024 — the most of any year prior to Trump's second term in office, records show. Police officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about their cooperation with ICE. Local immigration advocates say the department’s willingness to involve ICE in non-criminal proceedings could deter immigrants, who make up more than a quarter of the city’s residents, from reporting crimes to law enforcement. Already this summer, Houston police officers called ICE on a Salvadoran woman who reported her abusive ex-husband to police. “The majority of these cases are non-criminal in nature,” said Zenobia Lai, executive director of the Houston Immigration Legal Services Collaborative. “And that is very concerning for many reasons, one being that victims of crime or domestic violence will be very hesitant in contacting the police for help when they actually need it.” Houston Mayor John Whitmire has long maintained that the department will hold violent criminals accountable and assist crime victims regardless of their immigration status, and that the Houston Police Department would not get involved in immigration enforcement as Trump embarked on a nationwide crackdown. However, he has also said that local officers are required to contact an arresting agency when they come across a person with a warrant.

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State Stories

After dumping it for Texas, Elon Musk quietly expanding in the Bay Area again

Elon Musk’s brain-implant startup Neuralink Corp. has leased a vacant building in South San Francisco, a fresh sign of the billionaire’s renewed interest in the Bay Area tech scene. The lease adds to a refreshed and growing area presence for Musk, who moved several of his companies to Texas after criticizing California’s business climate during the pandemic. Tesla Inc. and X Corp. relocated their headquarters to the Austin area as Musk shuttered Twitter Inc.’s San Francisco offices after renaming the social media platform X. He moved SpaceX headquarters to Starbase, his new company town in South Texas.

Now, both Neuralink and Musk’s California-based artificial intelligence startup xAI are expanding in the Bay Area., with xAI reportedly scouting for even larger office space. Neuralink’s new lease is for a 144,000-square-foot property that had been vacant since biotech firm InterVenn Biosciences pulled out of its lease in 2023, according to a report by the Business Times. Last year, Neuralink expanded its operations in Central Texas with construction of a 112,000-square-foot facility in suburban Austin. Founded in 2016, the Fremont, Calif., company has developed a brain-computer interface designed to help people with paralysis control devices with their thoughts. The company, valued at more than $3 billion, began human trials last year and says 12 patients worldwide now have its implant. “The latency between a user’s intention and the system’s output is roughly 10 times faster than typical brain-to-muscle response,” president and co-founder DJ Seo told PC Mag in July.

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Some Texas National Guard troops replaced in Illinois after failing to meet standards

The Texas Military Department has removed an unspecified number of National Guard troops deployed to Chicago for not being “in compliance” with its validation process. A spokesperson for the Texas Military Department confirmed to Task & Purpose that “a small group” of the 200 National Guard members sent to Illinois this past week have been replaced after they were found to not meet certain standards. The move came amid criticism on social media over pictures that showed some of the Guard members appearing to be overweight, and as an appeals court temporarily blocked the deployment of the Texan troops into Illinois. “In less than 24 hours, Texas National Guardsmen mobilized for the Federal Protection Mission,” a spokesperson told Task & Purpose by email this weekend. “The speed of the response necessitated a concurrent validation process, during which we identified a small group of service members who were not in compliance and have been replaced.”

A set of viral photos by ABC News earlier this week showed troops arriving in Chicago, with several appearing heavyset. The Texans were met with derision online for their appearance, with several people noting Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments about fitness standards during his September speech to top military leaders. The Texas Military Department’s response was to questions from Task & Purpose about whether Guardsmen were being evaluated for height and weight standards as a result of the pictures. The Texas Military Department did not say exactly how the 200 deployed National Guard members were out of compliance and being replaced. The National Guard Bureau issued a statement on Oct. 9 saying that “National Guard Soldiers and Airman are required to meet service-specific height, weight and physical fitness standards at all times.” The statement did not include any context about what prompted it, not did it mention the photos criticized on social media.

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Renewable energy, power storage key to meeting Texas’ electricity demand, experts say

Energy experts speaking at a virtual Reliable Grid Project media briefing Wednesday said renewable power sources are needed to keep up with Texas’ growing demand for electricity. Panelists also emphasized the importance of power storage using batteries. "Renewables are absolutely bringing affordability to the grid in Texas, but they're also bringing reliability in a state that really needs it," said Matt Boms, the executive director for the Texas Advanced Energy Business Alliance. Boms expressed optimism about the grid's reliability this winter, noting how power sources like wind and solar, along with energy storage, can help fulfill the state's demand.

"We are heading into the winter with more flexible, reliable power than ever before,” he said. “Clean energy is driving ERCOT's reliability.” As more data centers come to Texas, the state will also have to contend with an increased demand for energy. Stoic Energy Consulting founder Doug Lewin said increased electricity use can drive down costs, if managed correctly. "That can be, with the right mix of policies around it, actually good for consumers, because you're actually spreading the cost of the system out among more use," he said. Lewin said the state should create a demand response program for data centers to help avoid peaks in electricity use during extreme weather. "To have a reliable grid, we need data centers to actually create funds to deal with this problem," he said. Patricia Zavala, the executive director of nonprofit PowerHouse Texas, also emphasized the importance of renewable energy sources.

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After 40 days on picket line, union workers at Hilton Americas-Houston end strike

Striking hotel workers have reached a deal with Hilton Americas-Houston that will raise the minimum wage of housekeepers, stewards and laundry attendants to $20 per hour. The workers' union, UNITE HERE Local 23, negotiated a contract with Hilton that will raise employees' hourly wages to $22 by the end of the contract. A union spokesperson told Houston Public Media the contract will last for three years. "This victory is an attestation of our members' strength, their will, and determination," Franchesca Caraballo, Texas chapter president of UNITE HERE Local 23, said in a news release.?"They held the line for over a month in the heat and rain, as they fought to secure better standards after being left behind for so long." Union leaders said the contract includes "strong job security protections," better workloads for housekeepers and increased job safety.

“Furthermore, we believe that the agreement reached meets the goal of balancing industry standards, the competitive marketplace, and the need to maintain and fairly compensate a strong and dedicated workforce. Labor negotiations can be complicated and we commend both sides for working in good faith to make this resolution possible.” Houston Mayor John Whitmire also shared a statement on social media in which he thanked all the parties involved for reaching a “positive outcome.”

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Investigation finds no criminal wrongdoing in hunger, thirst death in Tarrant County Jail

An outside investigation cleared the Tarrant County Jail of criminal wrongdoing in the death of Kimberly Phillips — but advocates say her death was completely preventable with proper care. Phillips, 56, died of malnutrition and dehydration on Feb. 18, after three weeks in jail. Phillips told jail staff she couldn't eat the food she was given, and jailers noted she wasn’t eating, according to medical records her daughter shared with KERA News. By the time she was sent to the hospital on Feb. 15, her kidneys were failing. The Denton County Sheriff’s Office conducted an outside investigation into Phillips’ death — which is required by the state — and KERA obtained the investigation report through an open records request. The investigation determined jail staff did not break any criminal laws or violate any relevant policies in caring for Phillips.

The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office wasn’t surprised by the findings, spokesperson Laurie Passman wrote in an emailed statement. “From the outset, we had full confidence that an investigation would affirm the professionalism and integrity of our Detention staff,” she said. “They remain committed to treating every individual in our custody with respect and care.” Since 2020, four people have died of dehydration in jail custody, including Phillips. All had a history of mental illness, and all had water fountains in their cells, according to the sheriff's office. Phillips only died because jail medical staff failed her, said Krish Gundu, co-founder of the nonprofit advocacy organization Texas Jail Project. “The excuse of like, ‘We followed policy, and so, shrug, it's not our fault,’ is a terrible excuse,” Gundu said. “Or maybe it tells us we need better policies for scenarios like this, because this is not the first time this has happened." John Peter Smith Hospital, which is in charge of medical care in the Tarrant County Jail, did not respond to an email with questions about the protocol for when someone is not eating or drinking. Phillips has a documented history of psychosis, and doctors noted a paranoia about food. Her medical records also list severe allergies.

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KU staffer says pocketknife thrown during Texas Tech's home game

Kansas coach Lance Leipold said a pocketknife was thrown from the stands at Jones AT&T Stadium and hit a KU staffer during No. 9 Texas Tech’s win over the Jayhawks on Saturday night. Leipold said the knife was thrown in the third quarter of Tech’s 42-17 win. Texas Tech fans were flagged twice for throwing tortillas on the field during kickoffs during the game as part of the Big 12’s new rule against throwing objects. He did not say that the staffer was injured in the incident. “It’s supposed to be for safety and things like that, and it’s a culture that’s been accepted to a point and hasn’t changed. Eventually somebody’s going to be seriously hurt, unfortunately,” Leipold said.

The Lawrence Journal-World cited a KU spokesperson who said that Texas Tech’s second penalty for thrown objects “was a direct result of the thrown pocketknife, which he referred to as a Swiss Army-style knife.” Tech’s second penalty of the game came in the fourth quarter. Texas Tech's tortilla tradition has been at odds with the Big 12’s new push. Schools are given a warning before flags are thrown if objects come from the stands. In his postgame news conference, Leipold said the situations were handled "very poorly." The tortilla tradition has been around for decades at Texas Tech after a group of students were looking for a unique way to celebrate. Coach Joey McGuire spent the days ahead of the KU game explaining that his team could get penalized if tortillas continued to get thrown on multiple occasions against the Jayhawks.

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More than 21,000 Harris County voter registration applications are still pending ahead of November election

Caitlin Cicchetpi moved to Harris County from Washington state in early June. Despite registering to vote within the same month, she said her voter registration was not confirmed until earlier this week. She said she had to reach out to the county, the Texas Secretary of State’s office, and her local state representatives over a period of several months to confirm her registration. "The frustrating part was that nobody seemed to be taking it seriously," Cicchetpi said. "It's really frustrating. Where is the integrity behind the work that's being done in elections in this state?" As of Oct. 9, there were 21,172 Harris County voter registration applications that were submitted by the Oct. 6 deadline and were still pending verification, according to the Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector and Voter Registrar's office.

In a statement to Houston Public Media, the Harris County Tax Office said there are two main contributing factors to the backlog: the state's rollout of the Texas Election Administration Management (TEAM) system and the abrupt closure of Votec, the long-time vendor of voter registration and election software used by Harris County and other counties throughout the state. "We understand and appreciate the challenges the Secretary of State is facing as it rolls out the new TEAM system ahead of the November elections,” the tax office said. “Our office has sought and is awaiting guidance from the Secretary of State regarding what information can be provided to applicants whose registration status is pending verification." The statement goes on to say that the tax office has been working with the Secretary of State's office since it learned on Aug. 1 that Votec would no longer be providing its software services.

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Could Arlington or Fort Worth lure the Dallas Stars west?

Arlington wants to be a leader in the race for the Dallas Stars’ new home, and Fort Worth wants to build its sports credentials as the nation’s 11th largest city. However, it’s unclear how likely it is for either to be a new home for hockey after both were identified by the Dallas Stars’ CEO recently as possible locations if the team seeks a new arena. The inclusion of the “American Dream City” Arlington on Stars CEO Brad Alberts’ list for a potential move after its lease comes up in 2031 should come as no surprise, says Michael Jacobson, CEO of the Arlington Chamber of Commerce. During the past 20 years, the city in the center of North Texas has shown the ability and willingness to fund new stadiums for the professional sports teams it hosts, he noted.

While securing space like this may seem like a stretch in the constantly growing entertainment district, Jacobson said one advantage Arlington has is that it does not have a cookie-cutter approach to new developments or welcoming businesses. “We’ll do everything we can to meet the needs of the person who’s looking at us,” Jacobson said. Front Office Sports reported a week ago that the Stars’ 21-person ownership advisory group recently met and identified Plano as one of the most likely relocation destinations, if the team moves. In an interview with The Dallas Morning News published the same day, Alberts said the team has engaged in discussions with officials from Arlington, Fort Worth, Frisco, The Colony and Plano on the site search. Sana Syed, interim chief communications officer for the city of Fort Worth, told the Report in an email last week, “We have not had discussions with the Stars about a site for a new arena.” Asked if that meant no one from the Stars had contacted anyone representing the city of Fort Worth, Syed responded, “We are only aware of their interest in expanding their recreational facility model into additional cities, but there have been no further discussions.” Drew Hayes, who recently joined Visit Fort Worth as vice president of sports and executive director of the Fort Worth Sports Commission, said he was aware of what Stars officials have said in the media but, otherwise, had no comment. “I just feel that Fort Worth has momentum across so many different sectors as a community, from film to music to what’s going on with the convention center and with sports right now,” he said. “I think that’s really important to highlight.”

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Austin private colleges reckon with cuts to Hispanic Serving Institution funding

More than 100 Texas institutions lost funding opportunities after the Trump administration ended grants dedicated to minority-serving institutions last month. The institutions previously qualified for exclusive, student-focused funding awards due to their enrollment of at least 25% Hispanic students, which made them a Hispanic Serving Institution. Article continues below this ad Texas has more than 1 million students enrolled in an institution with an HSI designation, according to the Hispanic Association of College and Universities. The state’s institutions expected nearly $60 million in HSI grants this year at 98 colleges, the Houston Public Media reported. These grants aimed to bolster student support, expand research access, improve academic programs and boost student career readiness.

The federal cuts come after the U.S. Department of Justice declined to defend the constitutionality of grants where only Hispanic-serving or minority-serving institutions were eligible applicants — cutting $350 million in funding nationally. And for Austin’s small universities, the funding slashes sparked fear about the future availability of key student supports. “It was important to me to go to school with people that have the same upbringing as me,” St. Edward’s University junior Sofia Sanchez said. “My dad wasn’t able to afford college, and my mom wasn’t able to afford college either. It’s just very vital that places for marginalized groups exist.” Knowing her university was an HSI gave Sanchez confidence that she wouldn’t be an outlier because of her race or first gen status. Without the designation, students worry about the future of their support on campus, she said. “It definitely raises a lot of questions about the future if we erase these spaces,” Sanchez said. In announcing the cuts, U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said minority-serving institution grants, including those dedicated for HSIs, are “discriminatory” and the money that supported them will be redirected moving forward.

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Once home to the American-Statesman, iconic downtown Austin lakefront site gets new tenant

Sitting on Lady Bird Lake just south of downtown is an iconic piece of waterfront real estate, one of Austin’s most coveted properties. East of the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge, which is known for hosting North America’s largest urban bat colony on summer nights, sits the former home of the Austin-American Statesman. After selling the paper in 2018, Atlanta-based Cox Enterprises retained ownership of the building and 18.9-acre waterfront property at 305 S. Congress Ave. with plans to turn the site into a residential, retail, hotel and office entertainment district.

With redevelopment plans stalled by lawsuits and a cooling market, the site instead has found new life with unconventional tenants. From hosting events to serving as an immersive art exhibit or a luxury car showroom, the building has taken on a variety of roles in recent years. Now, it enters a new chapter, possibly its last, before eventually giving way to condominiums and high-rises. Blending the legacies of two iconic Central Texas institutions, the building is transitioning from printing newspapers to manufacturing batteries for Base Power, an energy startup founded by Zach Dell, son of Dell Technologies Inc. founder and CEO Michael Dell. The Statesman’s old distribution center, where the newspaper’s printing press still remains, is becoming the company’s first factory. “We were able to secure the Statesman building for our first production line, which we’re really psyched about,” Dell said. “I’m a local, born-and-bred Austinite. And so the Statesman and that building has a special place in my heart so it’s really cool to carry on the legacy of the Statesman in that building for now.”

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New documentary shows how 8 civil rights icons shaped history of Fort Worth — and U.S.

The Fort Worth Tarrant County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People premiered a new documentary Saturday, highlighting the lives of eight legendary Fort Worth and Tarrant County residents. The documentary, “Unlocked Voices: Bridging the Future,” tells the story of eight Black Tarrant County residents who shaped history. One of those names will be familiar to many Fort Worth residents: Opal Lee, known as the “Grandmother of Juneteenth.” Juneteenth recognizes the end of slavery in the United States on June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, which President Abraham Lincoln had signed more than two years earlier.

In 2016, Lee began her campaign for Juneteenth to be recognized as a national holiday with a walk to Washington, D.C. Lee was in attendance in 2021 when President Joe Biden signed a bill making Juneteenth a national holiday. But the documentary also features Fort Worth residents who aren’t as famous as Lee, including Lorraine C. Miller, Estella Williams, Mattie Peterson Compton, Louis Sturns and Norma Roby. For director and producer Robert Eric Wise, the goal of the documentary was to introduce more young people to the work and accomplishments of pivotal Black Fort Worth residents. “These are people who have accomplished amazing things that most people don’t know anything about … and their accomplishments have shaped our lives, yeah, and we didn’t even know it,” Wise said. Blake Moorman, the first vice president of the Fort Worth Tarrant County NAACP and co-producer of the documentary, said the idea to preserve these stories started about four years ago.

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National Stories

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s deepening split with GOP leaves Republicans exasperated

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) insists she hasn’t changed, but the conservative firebrand’s deepening splits with her party on everything from Jeffrey Epstein to health care subsidies are puzzling and exasperating her fellow Republicans. Greene forged her political identity in Congress as a fierce Trump loyalist, defending the president and Jan. 6, 2021, protestors, and attacking Democrats at every turn. But with Trump back in the White House, Greene has put herself on the opposite side of many of the president’s positions, and on somewhat of an island among Republicans.

In a phone interview for this story, Greene said she’s not the one who has changed, pointing to her criticism of congressional Republicans and their lack of action on health care in her first 2020 campaign. “I am 100 percent the same person today as I was when I ran for Congress,” Greene said. Greene said it is “ridiculous” to suggest her positions have put her on an island in the GOP. “I’m actually representing what a lot of Americans fully support.” “My job title is not cheerleader for Republicans in Congress. I’m not talking about the President. I’m talking about Republicans in Congress. And Republicans in Congress are the ones that need to come up with a plan to fix the health insurance,” she later added. Yet several of Greene’s House GOP colleagues and GOP sources told The Hill that they are more thrown off than ever by Greene’s positions, and wish she would take a different strategy to achieve her goals. “Whether it’s Gaza, whether it’s Epstein, or whether it’s now the ACA [Affordable Care Act] credits, she’s been 180 degrees opposite of Trump,” one House Republican vented. “In fact, she’s been more Biden than she has been Trump.” Greene over the summer dubbed Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide.” She was one of just four Republicans to sign on to a discharge petition to release files related to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in defiance of White House wishes. Last week, she went against GOP leaders’ shutdown messaging by expressing alarm at the expiring ObamaCare tax credits that could double insurance premiums for millions, saying Republicans have no plan to address the issue.

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Ukraine hit Russian energy sites with US help

The US has for months been helping Ukraine mount long-range strikes on Russian energy facilities, in what officials say is a co-ordinated effort to weaken Vladimir Putin’s economy and force him to the negotiating table. American intelligence shared with Kyiv has enabled strikes on important Russian energy assets including oil refineries far beyond the frontline, according to multiple Ukrainian and US officials familiar with the campaign. The previously unreported support has intensified since midsummer and has been crucial in helping Ukraine carry out attacks that Joe Biden’s White House discouraged. Kyiv’s strikes have driven up energy prices in Russia and prompted Moscow to cut diesel exports and import fuel.

The intelligence sharing is the latest sign that Trump has deepened his support for Ukraine as his frustration with Russia has grown. The shift came after a phone call between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in July, when the FT reported the US president asked whether Ukraine could strike Moscow if Washington provided long-range weapons. Trump signalled his backing for a strategy to “make them [Russians] feel the pain” and compel the Kremlin to negotiate, said the two people briefed on the call. The White House later said Trump was “merely asking a question, not encouraging further killing”. The US intelligence helps Kyiv shape route planning, altitude, timing and mission decisions, enabling Ukraine’s long-range, one-way attack drones to evade Russian air defences, said the officials familiar with the matter. Three people familiar with the operation said Washington was closely involved in all stages of planning. A US official said Ukraine selected the targets for long-range strikes and Washington then provided intelligence on the sites’ vulnerabilities.

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Historic wave of retirements is putting huge strains on the government

A historic wave of retirements and other departures has swept through the federal workforce in recent months, putting enormous strain on agencies as they cope with a new government shutdown and administration layoffs. This mass exodus — unprecedented in its scale — includes 154,000 federal employees who accepted buyout offers and were largely removed from the payroll as of the end of last month. Some of those are among nearly 105,000 employees who took regular retirement during the fiscal year that ended in September, an 18 percent surge from the previous year. Tens of thousands of the cases are still awaiting processing, creating a crisis for already understaffed human resources offices across the government and the Office of Personnel Management. With a significantly reduced workforce of its own, OPM has a growing backlog and worsening wait times, raising alarms about the government’s ability to smoothly handle this unprecedented personnel shift, according to documents and interviews with HR representatives and departed federal workers.

Complicating the efforts, the government shutdown that began on Oct. 1 has furloughed some workers who handle paperwork and payroll, meaning the departing employees who would be receiving their documentation and final annuity payments around this time are experiencing further delays, according to documents and workers. OPM Director Scott Kupor said in an interview with The Washington Post that he remains optimistic about his agency’s ability to get through the backlog. He said OPM is in touch with other agencies about how to streamline the process and HR workers at other agencies will be detailed to his office to help with the workload. “I’m excited about the work we’re doing, but the reality is, as you know, is there is a big volume that’s coming in a short period of time, and so we’re going to have to do everything we can to make sure that we continue to invest in those efforts that are going to significantly improve the efficiency of the process,” Kupor said.

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Nobel economics prize goes to 3 researchers for explaining innovation-driven economic growth

Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt won the Nobel memorial prize in economics Monday for “having explained innovation-driven economic growth" including the key principle of creative destruction. The winners represent contrasting but complementary approaches to economics. Mokyr is an economic historian who delved into long-term trends using historical sources, while Howitt and Aghion relied on mathematics to explain how creative destruction works. Dutch-born Mokyr, 79, is from Northwestern University; Aghion, 69, from the Collège de France and the London School of Economics; and Canadian-born Howitt, 79, from Brown University.

Aghion said he was shocked by the honor. “I can’t find the words to express what I feel," he said by phone to the press conference in Stockholm. He said he would invest his prize money in his research laboratory. Asked about current trade wars and protectionism in the world, Aghion said that: “I am not welcoming the protectionist way in the US. That is not good for ... world growth and innovation.” The winners were credited with better explaining and quantifying “creative destruction,” a key concept in economics that refers to the process in which beneficial new innovations replace — and thus destroy — older technologies and businesses. The concept is usually associated with economist Joseph Schumpeter, who outlined it in his 1942 book “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy.” The Nobel committee said Mokyr “demonstrated that if innovations are to succeed one another in a self-generating process, we not only need to know that something works, but we also need to have scientific explanations for why.”

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Pam Bondi responds to 'Saturday Night Live' parody of herself and Kristi Noem

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi gave a playful response to actress Amy Poehler’s parody of her on NBC’s "Saturday Night Live." Poehler, who hosted Saturday’s episode, appeared in the cold open as Bondi during her testimony at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing last week. "My name is Pam Bondi. I spell it with an ‘i,’ because I ain’t gonna answer any of your questions," Poehler said. "My time is valuable. The DOJ has many ongoing operations, and we’re moving like Kash Patel’s eyeballs—very quickly in multiple directions at once."

During the skit, Poehler was later joined by her fellow former "SNL" cast member Tina Fey, who played Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem carrying an AR-15 rifle. "That’s right. It’s me, Kristi Noem," Fey said. "I spell my name with an ‘i’ because that’s how I thought it was spelled. And I’m the rarest type of person in Washington, D.C.: a brunette that Donald Trump listens to." Though the show took many jabs at Bondi’s demeanor during the hearing, Bondi appeared to enjoy the parody on Sunday morning and invited Noem to respond on X. "@Sec_Noem, should we recreate this picture in Chicago? Loving Amy Poehler!" Bondi wrote. In a comment to Fox News Digital, DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin simply responded, "SNL is absolutely right—the Democrats' shutdown does need to end!" The long-running sketch comedy series has often mocked President Donald Trump and his administration, usually with some backlash from Trump himself. However, the show’s 51st season premiere went largely unremarked on by the president despite another parody of him by cast member James Austin Johnson.

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Amid shutdown, Trump administration guts department overseeing special education

Sweeping layoffs announced Friday by the Trump administration landed another body blow to the U.S. Department of Education, this time gutting the office responsible for overseeing special education, according to multiple sources within the department. The reduction-in-force, or RIF, affects the dozens of staff responsible for roughly $15 billion dollars in special education funding, and for making sure states provide special education services to the nation's 7.5 million children with disabilities. "This is decimating the office responsible for safeguarding the rights of infants, toddlers, children and youth with disabilities," said one department employee, who, like the others NPR spoke with, requested anonymity for fear of retribution.

According to sources, all staff in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS), with the exception of a handful of top officials and support staff, were cut in Friday's RIF. The office is the central nervous system for programs that support students with disabilities, not only offering guidance to families but providing monitoring and oversight of states to make sure they're complying with the landmark Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The layoffs at the Education Department, 466 in total, were part of broader cuts – some 4,200 jobs – announced by government lawyers in a court filing on Friday as the shutdown continues. At the Education Department, it's not clear precisely how many workers in the special education office were cut. Department officials did not respond to NPR's requests for clarity or comment. "Based on multiple reports from staff and their managers, we believe that all remaining staff in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS), including the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) and the Rehabilitative Services Administration (RSA), have been illegally fired," said Rachel Gittleman, president of AFGE Local 252, a union that represents many Education Department employees. "The harm these cuts will cause for the 7.5 million students with disabilities across the country is only beginning," Gittelman added. Employees who received a notice Friday were told they would remain employed until Dec. 9.

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Lead Stories

Texas GOP abandons effort to kick 10 Republican lawmakers off primary ballot

The Texas Republican Party’s governing body on Saturday backed down from its threat to bar nearly a half dozen lawmakers from next year’s GOP primary ballot, ending an intraparty stalemate that would have led the organization into a costly legal battle. The State Republican Executive Committee opted to censure three incumbents who are seeking reelection and two retiring members. The censure resolutions formally discourage each member from running again as Republicans and authorize the Texas GOP to spend general funds to oppose them in the 2026 GOP primary. But the governing board didn’t follow through on its proposed nuclear option of stripping the censured lawmakers from the upcoming primary ballot. And five other censure resolutions failed to gather enough support, including one against current House Speaker Dustin Burrows.

Burrows oversaw one of the most conservative legislative sessions in years this spring, helping push through bills establishing a private school voucher program, requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools and barring transgender individuals from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity in government buildings after years of failed efforts. “Last session, under the last speaker, we had six (of our priority) bills passed and they impeached our attorney general,” Texas GOP Chair Abraham George said Saturday. “This session, we had 43 bills passed and an additional five Congressional seats. So there's a drastic difference." Each censure required a three-fifths vote from the 64-member body, which is elected by attendees of biennial Texas GOP conventions. Many of the resolutions criticized members for voting with Democrats to elect Burrows as speaker, signaling the party is still fuming over the episode, even as Burrows went on to oversee the most conservative session in years. The SREC had lobbied against Burrows’ speakership. Burrows “worked very hard for the Democrats this session,” Paul Anthony Hale, a committee member, said. “He stole our agenda from us.”

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Federal judges, warning of ‘judicial crisis,’ fault Supreme Court’s emergency orders

More than three dozen federal judges have told The New York Times that the Supreme Court’s flurry of brief, opaque emergency orders in cases related to the Trump administration have left them confused about how to proceed in those matters and are hurting the judiciary’s image with the public. At issue are the quick-turn orders the Supreme Court has issued dictating whether Trump administration policies should be left in place while they are litigated through the lower courts. That emergency docket, a growing part of the Supreme Court’s work in recent years, has taken on greater importance amid the flood of litigation challenging President Trump’s efforts to expand executive power. While the orders are technically temporary, they have had broad practical effects, allowing the administration to deport tens of thousands of people, discharge transgender military service members, fire thousands of government workers and slash federal spending. The striking and highly unusual critique of the nation’s highest court from lower court judges reveals the degree to which litigation over Mr. Trump’s agenda has created strains in the federal judicial system.

Sixty-five judges responded to a Times questionnaire sent to hundreds of federal judges across the country. Of those, 47 said the Supreme Court had been mishandling its emergency docket since Mr. Trump returned to office. The judges responded to the questionnaire and spoke in interviews on the condition of anonymity so they could share their views candidly, as lower court judges are governed by a complex set of rules that include limitations on their public statements. Of the judges who responded, 28 were nominated by Republican presidents, including 10 by Mr. Trump; 37 were nominated by Democrats. While those nominated by Democrats were more critical of the Supreme Court, judges nominated by presidents of both parties expressed concerns. In interviews, federal judges called the Supreme Court’s emergency orders “mystical,” “overly blunt,” “incredibly demoralizing and troubling” and “a slap in the face to the district courts.” One judge compared their district’s current relationship with the Supreme Court to “a war zone.” Another said the courts were in the midst of a “judicial crisis.” The responses to The Times serve as the most comprehensive picture to date about the extraordinary tensions within the judiciary, hints of which have begun to spill out publicly.

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Michael Dell’s son raised $1 billion to upend the Texas energy market

One late September afternoon, a couple of men in a bucket truck arrived at the blocky white former Austin American-Statesman building, just off the South Congress bridge over Lady Bird Lake, and got to work installing a new sign. Piled at the base of the wall were the giant Gothic letters of the old newspaper logo, faded but still iconic. Up went a new name in its place—“Base,” in a sleek black font, presented with that familiar tech-world assurance that today’s inscrutable label will soon be obvious to all. Inside, near where the printing presses once roared, long rows of boxed-up lithium-ion batteries stood like troops in formation, waiting to be deployed. By early 2026 the space will hum with manufacturing lines turning out a new kind of home battery system aimed at solving one of Texas’s most vexing challenges—keeping the lights on. The company’s full name is Base Power. In less than two years, it has become one of the buzziest young companies in Austin—drawing particular attention because of who’s running it. Its 29-year-old CEO, Zach Dell, is the son of billionaire Michael Dell, founder of Dell Technologies.

This week the company announced it has raised a $1 billion round of venture capital—led by the New York firm Addition, alongside Silicon Valley powerhouses such as Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Google’s CapitalG. That makes Base one of the best-funded start-ups in Texas history, and it comes on top of the $200 million it raised in April. Base installs compact battery systems in homes—a few thousand of them so far across Texas—and manages them as a fleet, charging them when power is cheap and plentiful, then drawing on them when the grid is stressed. Dell likes to describe the network as a kind of distributed power plant. Homeowners don’t own the batteries—Base does—and the company can coordinate them as if they were one giant utility-scale resource. That’s a key difference between Base Power and previous home-battery systems such as Tesla’s Powerwall. Tesla sells a product, typically $10,000 to $15,000, that a homeowner owns and manages. (Its Tesla Electric program lets those owners sell excess power back to the grid, but they still have to buy and control their own hardware.) Base sells a service. It installs its batteries at a fraction of the upfront cost (about $700), keeps them on its own balance sheet, and makes money by trading on the energy market.

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Prosecutors push toward charging other Trump foes after Letitia James

President Donald Trump’s unprecedented efforts to pressure the Justice Department into prosecuting his perceived enemies have, so far, netted swift results — and more may be on the way. In a matter of only two weeks, his handpicked U.S. attorney in Alexandria, Lindsey Halligan, obtained indictments against two frequent targets: former FBI Director James B. Comey and, on Thursday, New York Attorney General Letitia James. Federal prosecutors across the country are pursuing several other investigations, many of which Trump has personally called for. Those include investigations into a sitting U.S. senator, former top leaders of the FBI and CIA and the Georgia prosecutor who charged Trump in a massive 2020 election conspiracy case. The next set of charges could be coming quickly. Under pressure from senior Justice Department officials, federal prosecutors in Maryland are preparing to ask a grand jury to indict John Bolton, Trump’s first-term national security adviser, in a classified documents case. Charges could come as soon as the coming week, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation.

Many of Trump’s targets, including Comey, charged with lying to Congress, and James, indicted on allegations of mortgage fraud, have derided the cases against them as baseless and driven by political retribution. Here’s what to know about where investigations of Trump’s other perceived foes stand: Federal authorities in Maryland have been investigating Bolton, a veteran diplomat turned fierce Trump critic, since earlier this year on allegations he illegally retained classified material after his 2019 resignation. Multiple people familiar with the evidence against him have described the case as generally stronger than those against James and Comey. Court records unsealed last month indicate that FBI agents recovered documents marked classified while searching Bolton’s downtown Washington office. In seeking a warrant to search the facility, investigators revealed they believed they would find classified records there in part because of information they learned through a foreign adversary hacking into Bolton’s AOL email account years ago. Kelly O. Hayes, acting U.S. attorney in Maryland, a veteran federal prosecutor whom the Trump administration elevated to the office’s top job this year, is overseeing the case.

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Preparations begin to ramp up aid in Gaza as ceasefire brings hope for end to 2-year war

Preparations were underway Sunday to ramp up aid entering the war-battered Gaza Strip under a new ceasefire deal that many are hoping will signal an end to the devastating 2-year-long war. The Israeli defense body in charge of humanitarian aid in Gaza, COGAT, said the amount of aid entering the Palestinian territory is expected to increase on Sunday to around 600 trucks per day, as stipulated in the agreement. Egypt said it is sending 400 aid trucks into Gaza Sunday. The trucks will have to be inspected by Israeli forces before being allowed in. Associated Press footage showed dozens of trucks crossing the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing. The Egyptian Red Crescent said they carried medical supplies, tents, blankets, food and fuel. The trucks will head to the inspection area in the Kerem Shalom crossing for screening by Israeli troops.

Expanding Israeli offensives and restrictions on humanitarian aid have triggered a hunger crisis, including famine in parts of the territory. The United Nations has said it has about 170,000 metric tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian aid ready to enter once Israel gives the green light. Abeer Etifa, a spokeswoman for the World Food Program, said workers were clearing and repairing roads inside Gaza on Sunday to facilitate delivery. The fate of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an Israeli- and U.S.-backed contractor that replaced the U.N. aid operation in May as the primary food supplier in Gaza, remains unclear. Food distribution sites operated by the group in the southernmost city of Rafah and central Gaza were dismantled following the ceasefire deal, several Palestinians said Sunday. GHF had been touted by Israel and the United States as an alternative system to prevent Hamas from taking over aid. However, its operations were mired in chaos and hundreds of Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire while heading to its four sites. The Israeli military has said its troops fired warning shots to control crowds.

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State Stories

Texas wins 121st Red River Rivalry

Unranked Texas shocked No. 6 Oklahoma 23-6 Saturday in the Red River Rivalry, showing a dominant defensive effort and key special team contributions to secure a pivotal bounce-back victory at the Cotton Bowl. Texas’ defense controlled the game from the opening kickoff, repeatedly thwarting a struggling Sooners offense. Quarterback John Mateer, who made a miraculous return only weeks after hand surgery, threw three interceptions against the stout Texas unit. Oklahoma’s offense sputtered, managing only 48 rushing yards on 30 carries and failing to generate any consistent rhythm around Mateer.

The Longhorns offense, which struggled through the first half against Oklahoma’s No. 1 defense, found its footing after the break. The offensive line settled into a rhythm, enabling Texas to string together a 13-play and a 14-play scoring drive. Quarterback Arch Manning threw a 12-yard touchdown pass to DeAndre Moore, giving Texas its first lead of the game. Manning then led a late-fourth-quarter drive that ended with a 39-yard field goal by Mason Shipley. However, a pivotal special teams play sealed the upset. Late in the fourth quarter, punt returner Ryan Niblett took it 75 yards to the house, giving the Longhorns a commanding 20-6 lead. Texas' defense slammed the door on Oklahoma's comeback attempts in the final minutes. The Sooners moved the ball inside the Texas 30-yard line but quickly went backward as Mateer was sacked on consecutive plays, forcing a turnover on downs. The preseason No. 1, entered the week unranked after losing two power conference games, collected a crucial win as they faced a difficult stretch of their schedule. The loss greatly complicated Oklahoma's path, as their slate now included five straight games against Associated Press Top 15 opponents and the hardest remaining schedule in the country.

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Texas youth camps say cost of implementing new safety requirements will force them to close

Texas camp owners on Friday urged the state health agency to give them more time and flexibility on costly new safety requirements, saying they could be forced to close by next summer. “We support the goal of making camps safer,” said Riley Watkins, owner of Camp Oak Haven, west of Houston. “Let's work together to find a way for these new bills to work with us instead of against us.” It was the first time youth camp owners got a peek at what two landmark bills passed this year, following the July 4 flooding deaths of 27 Camp Mystic campers and counselors, would mean for them come next summer.

Imelda Garcia, chief deputy commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, and her staff opened the floor for public input on Friday after releasing a dramatic proposal that would raise the initial licensing fee for a large overnight camp from $750 to $11,000. Renewing a license would be slightly less. License fees would no longer be tied to how many days a camp operates and instead be based on the number of campers served. Day camps would also see a license hike, from the current $250 a year to as high as $3,200 for those caring for the most campers. The state insists the fee structure will allow the health agency to recapture the more than $2 million the Texas Legislature budgeted this year to cover the costs of regulating the new safety requirements. Owners of larger camps cautioned that the new hefty fees, especially for smaller camps, will likely put them out of business. “I’d ask you to continue to look at what is a large camp versus a small camp, as anything over 500 being a large camp is probably just a misunderstanding of how large some camps are,” said Ryan Neuhaus, executive director of Camp Lone Star in La Grange. “I’d love for larger camps like mine to be able to shoulder a little bit more of the cost than the smaller camps.”

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La Niña is officially back. Here’s how it affects Texas weather.

La Niña has officially returned, and it could have a noticeable effect on the prevailing weather pattern across the United States this fall and winter, especially here in Texas. For La Niña to be considered active, sea-surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean near the equator have to be at least 0.5 degree Celsius below average. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center determined earlier this week that water temperatures met the threshold, prompting the agency to issue a La Niña advisory. What La Niña can mean for Texas: La Niña causes a blocking high pressure system to develop over the northern Pacific Ocean, between Hawaii and Alaska. This, in turn, forces the polar jet stream farther north, reducing its influence on the southern United States.

With the polar jet farther away, Texas often experiences less frequent cold fronts during a La Niña winter, leading to warmer and drier than average weather. For San Antonio specifically, La Niña winters are, on average, 1.3 degrees warmer and 28% drier than non-La Niña winters. It should be noted that strong cold fronts and occasional freezing temps will still happen this winter — they’re just not typically as frequent as they would be without the presence of La Niña. The weather across South Texas this weekend is not the result of La Niña — but it will resemble the kind of rain-free conditions and above-average temperatures that we would experience in South-Central Texas during a La Niña event.

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Study: San Antonio, South Texas metros have nation’s highest rates of delinquent mortgages

San Antonio has the highest rate of delinquent mortgages of any large U.S. metro area, according to data released this week by software firm Construction Coverage. Parsing data from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, U.S. Census Bureau and Zillow, researchers found that 4.3% of homeowners in the San Antonio-New Braunfels metro area are more than 30 days behind on their mortgage. That number drops to 1% when it comes to those who are severely delinquent, or more than 90 days behind on their loan. San Antonio wasn’t the only South Texas metro where people are struggling to pay off their homes.

McAllen ranked as the midsize metro with the highest rate of mortgage delinquencies. In that area, 6.7% of homeowners are more than 30 days late. Meanwhile, Laredo ranked as the top small metro, with an astonishing 10.3% behind on their home loan. For reference, the national average for 30-day-plus delinquent mortgages was about 11.5% during the height of the 2008 financial crisis, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The data about delinquent mortgages aligns with the late payment trends observed in other loan types. According to the report, delinquency rates for all major loan types — including auto, student and credit card debt — have now surpassed pre-pandemic levels. Mortgage loans dominate, however, accounting for more than 70% of all U.S. household debt and totaling more than $12.9 trillion. Word of South Texas’ mortgage delinquencies comes amid a slowing national economy, increased import costs due to President Donald Trump’s tariffs, policy uncertainty and a cooling labor market, according to consulting firm Deloitte.

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San Antonio likely to seek exemption from governor's order on rainbow crosswalks

San Antonio isn’t rushing to remove its rainbow crosswalk after Gov. Greg Abbott threatened Wednesday to withhold transportation funding from cities that don’t erase “political ideologies” from their streets. In a statement, Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones said she and members of City Council received a briefing on the Republican governor’s order. She also added that city staff reached out to Texas Department of Transportation to “ensure we understand the full scope of what may be impacted. “As Mayor, I remain committed to balancing our community’s transportation needs with ensuring everyone in our community feels safe, welcomed, and supported,” Jones added.

The statement identifies no course of action for the city on Abbott’s order. Nor does it state a timeline for removing or altering the Pride crosswalk at the intersection of N. Main Ave. and Evergreen , the center of San Antonio’s LGBTQ+ nightlife. Furthermore, Councilwoman Sukh Kaur, whose District 1 includes the crosswalk, told the Express-News she expects the city will seek an exemption because the colorful intersection hasn’t resulted in any traffic accidents. “It has actually increased security in that community,” Kaur told the daily. Abbott’s directive comes after Trump Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy this summer urged governors to join a what he described as a national safety initiative aimed at scrubbing political messages from roadways. Abbott’s warning also emulates a threat by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a fellow MAGA loyalist, to yank transportation funding from cities that don’t remove rainbow crosswalks and other street art. Some Florida communities are fighting that order.

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Texas grid operators and regulators iron out new rules for data centers

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law in June that empowers the state’s grid operator to remotely disconnect data centers and other large energy users if the grid is under extreme stress. The so-called “kill switch” is just one aspect of the wide-ranging state legislation meant to govern the growing number of energy-intensive supercomputer warehouses being planned and built out across the state. The legislation comes as Texas, like other states across the country, tries to balance remaining an attractive place to do business for the booming data center industry while addressing the challenges that come with the huge amounts of electricity the facilities demand, especially when grid capacity has been maxed out by extreme summer heat or freezing winter storms. Much of the legislation around energy and the grid in recent years has aimed to prevent a rerun of Winter Storm Uri in 2021. During the dayslong freeze, millions of households went without power and at least 246 people died, while some industrial sites’ lights stayed on.

The new law, Senate Bill 6, which currently applies to electricity customers using at least 75 megawatts—equivalent to a medium-sized power plant—aims to shift transmission costs to the large load users, so upgrades and new connection costs aren’t paid through residential and small commercial customer rates. The legislation also looks to establish grid reliability protection measures and add credibility to electricity demand forecasting. As with other aspects of Senate Bill 6, the Public Utility of Commission of Texas (PUC), the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and other stakeholders are still working out how the new responsibilities and rules around data centers will be implemented. Public comment periods for stakeholders on S.B. 6 rulemaking close this month. Both the energy and data center industries are expected to participate in and follow the rulemaking closely, as the two sectors have grown accustomed to the free trade of energy with few state-imposed restrictions. As the bill made its way through the legislative process, both industries warned that the new oversight measures, requirements to shoulder costs relating to grid reliability and disclose private power deals, could discourage business in Texas.

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Brian Gaar: Texas is asking voters to protect the rich and punish the poor. Will they do it?

Why legislate the messy way when you can just etch your politics into the bedrock of the state forever? This is why Texans love a good constitutional amendment, and on Nov. 4, we get to vote on 17 of them. Buckle up, it’ll be a veritable buffet of tax breaks and tough-on-crime chest thumping. Let’s start with the shiny tax cuts. Do you own stocks? A family trust? Maybe a spare ranch house in Aspen? Congratulations: Proposition 2 (capital gains ban) and Proposition 8 (inheritance tax ban) are here to make sure Texas never, ever taxes that wealth (because we wouldn’t want child healthcare or public schools ever getting their grubby mitts on it). Yes, even though the state doesn’t tax it now, lawmakers want to double-pinky-swear that they’ll never try it in the future.

Jon Taylor, chair of the political science department at the University of Texas at San Antonio, told The Barbed Wire that Prop 2 is “a reward to wealthy GOP donors,” and Prop 8 is “another gift to GOP donors and the wealthy by banning the possibility of a wealth tax.” In other words, solutions in search of a problem — unless your “problem” is that Texas might someday consider taxing your third vacation home. The message is clear: Die rich, stay rich, and pass it all down untaxed. It’s trickle-down economics, except the only thing that trickles is champagne at the family estate after the will is read. Meanwhile, Proposition 3 on bail reform offers the flip side of that generosity. If you’re accused of certain felonies, judges would be required to keep you locked up with no bail at all. Yes, you’re still legally innocent, but good luck fighting your case from an overcrowded cell. Taylor notes that this amendment “essentially enshrines — and expands — pre-trial detention without conviction” and even echoes Texas’ Jim Crow era. It also “ties the hands of judges by reducing judicial discretion.” Currently, only defendants accused of capital murder can be denied bail. This would extend that to other crimes, including aggravated assault and indecency with a child. The state would have to demonstrate that bail is not enough to prevent the defendant from being a flight or public safety risk, according to the Texas Tribune.

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A community burdened by chemical waste is demanding cancer data. Texas health officials won’t give it to them.

Eight months ago, Texas health officials delivered alarming news to residents of a string of industrialized communities east of Houston: A new study had found that they may be at elevated risk of developing several types of cancer, especially leukemia. But few conclusions about the severity of the threat in specific locations can be drawn because state epidemiologists have refused to release the cancer data at the census-tract level — a move advocates and experts are calling into question.This granular data can pinpoint areas with high cancer burdens and help connect those discrepancies to risk factors like environmental exposures. It can also be used to identify cancer clusters. Two independent epidemiologists told Public Health Watch the state’s decision not to release this data was illogical and indefensible. A Houston-area congresswoman and three Harris County commissioners sent letters to the state’s health commissioner, asking her to remedy the error. A local activist accused health officials of suppressing information that could reflect poorly on the state’s $68 billion oil-refining and petrochemical industries, centered in Houston.

Ketki Patel is the Texas Department of State Health Services, or DSHS, epidemiologist who led the study. In an interview, Patel defended the agency’s decision to publish cancer data for a 250-square-mile area — about a quarter of the size of Rhode Island — without providing details at the census-tract level. She said the agency can’t release such data because, for some cancer types, it didn’t find enough cases to guarantee statistical reliability. “How am I going to drill down just to individual census tracts [if there aren’t enough instances of cancer]? It’s just mathematically not possible,” Patel said. “And we’re not going to be able to release those data because of patient privacy laws that we have to abide by.” But the state released census-tract level data in a similar cancer study of the area in 2015, a decision Patel attributed to protocols in effect at the time. Two epidemiologists with whom Public Health Watch consulted said there was no reason to withhold such data this time. “It doesn’t make any sense at all,” said Kyle Steenland, a professor in the departments of environmental health and epidemiology at Emory University. “This [new] study found a three-fold excess of leukemia [across all] 65 census tracts. It’s shocking — more than 300 cases of leukemia when the state was expecting 100. This is either a systematic error, or the entire state of Texas should be mobilized to find out why this is true.”

Read this article at Public Health Watch and Univision - Subscribers Only

Dallas County GOP’s push to hand-count 2026 ballots could upend voting for Democrats

Republicans in Dallas County, one of Texas’ largest voting jurisdictions, say they want to count ballots in their coming March primary by hand, if they can afford to, a change that could delay the reporting of election results and have far-reaching consequences for all of the county’s 1.5 million voters. The decision could force Dallas Democrats, as well as Republicans, to return to casting ballots at their assigned local precincts, rather than countywide vote centers, which would require finding scores of additional polling locations and hundreds more workers. It could also vastly increase the cost of holding both primaries, an increase that the parties would have to be prepared to cover on their own. Cost is one reason why Dallas County Republicans decided in 2023 against hand-counting ballots. At the time, Jennifer Stoddard Hajdu, then the county GOP chair, estimated the party would need more than $1 million to hand-count the more than 70,000 ballots cast in the 2024 primary.

Two years later, Hajdu is still skeptical. “I just think there are so many parts to this that it's going to be very difficult to get it done,” she said. But Allen West, a former Florida congressman and Army veteran who is the new chairman of the Dallas County Republican Party, said that the size of the challenge shouldn’t deter the party. He said that party members distrust electronic voting equipment, and that the county’s problems with some of its electronic pollbooks last year contributed to the renewed push to hand-count ballots. The Dallas County Republican Party’s executive committee voted in September to hand-count primary ballots, and set a goal to raise $500,000 to get it done, West said. “Let’s not forget this is the way it used to be done,” West said, referring to hand-counts and precinct-based voting. In the Army, he said, “we don’t take that excuse of anything being too hard.”

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Black Tie Dinner adds Crockett, Johnson to dinner line-up

Officials with the Black Tie Dinner announced Friday that Congresswomen Jasmine Crockett and Julie Johnson have just been added as featured speakers for the event. “Their addition brings two barrier-breaking Texas voices to a night that celebrates leadership, visibility and unity across the LGBTQ+ community,” according to a press release about the announcement. Crockett, who represents District 30, is a “North Texas leader known for her authenticity and commitment to equality” and who “brings a powerful voice to an evening centered on resilience and representation,” the press release notes.

Johnson, representing Texas’s 32nd Congressional District, made history in 2024 as the first openly LGBTQ+ person elected to Congress not just from Texas but from the South as a whole. She is also the first woman to represent District 32. A longtime advocate for patient protection and insurance reform, Johnson continues to champion equality in Washington. Both Johnson’s and Crockett’s districts were heavily impacted this year when the Texas Legislature, at the behest of Donald Trump, redrew district lines to add six Republican seats to the Texas congressional delegation. Johnson’s district was heavily-gerrymandered to stretch from northeast Tarrant County eastward beyond Gilmer, nearing the Texas-Louisiana border, in an effort to return it to Republican control. Crockett’s district remains primarily democratic, but the lines were redrawn so that her residence no longer falls within the district’s boundaries.

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New Braunfels Pride Fest changes venues after complaints by state representative

A New Braunfels Pride Festival is relocating after a controversy involving a Texas State Representative. The annual Riverside Pride Festival has changed venues after Republican State Representative Carrie Isaac complained to the Comal County Fair and Rodeo Executive Board. Isaac threatened “significant legal liability," had the event taken place at the Comal County Fairgrounds. Isaac based her action on SB 12, a law recently passed which aims to prevent children from seeing sexually explicit performances. That law has been put on hold by a Federal Judge as a violation of the first amendment.

Isaac represents House District 73 which includes most of the city of New Braunfels. The Republican lawmaker recently filed a proposal seeking to ban counties from locating polling locations on college campuses. That bill failed to reach a vote in the legislature. In a press release, the Comal County Fair Executive Board said that organizers of the festival had decided to change venues following discussions.

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National Stories

Cybersecurity agency that clashed with Trump one of first hit with firings during gov’t shutdown

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is among the offices being permanently downsized as a result of the ongoing partial government shutdown, The Post has learned. The RIFs (reductions in force), which started Friday, will fire many of CISA’s 2,540 employees as well as thousands more within the federal bureaucracy — after President Trump repeatedly threatened to target offices cherished by Democrats if the party’s senators refused to reopen the government. In an indication of the possible scale of the RIF, CISA had planned to keep just 889 employees on duty during a shutdown while furloughing 65% of its workforce.

CISA, a component of the Department of Homeland Security, was led by Chris Krebs during Trump’s first term and dismissed Trump’s allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election, thumbing their nose at the president’s objection to mail-in ballots and calling it “the most secure in American history.” One administration source told The Post that CISA had pumped out “disinformation.” Other agencies and departments being impacted by the RIFs include the EPA, the Commerce Department, the Education Department, the Interior Department, the Treasury Department, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. White House budget director Russ Vought announced that permanent job reductions had begun on the 10th day of the shutdown after Senate Democrats again blocked a reopening of the government, with just three upper-chamber Democrats siding with Republicans.

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Pentagon will pay military troops, Trump says, shifting $8B

President Donald Trump on Saturday announced that he will direct Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to “use all available funds to get our Troops PAID on October 15th” as the government shutdown nears its third week. After the Senate failed to approve spending legislation this week, military members were preparing to go without their paychecks on Wednesday for the first time in U.S. history. “We have identified funds to do this, and Secretary Hegseth will use them to PAY OUR TROOPS,” the president wrote in the social media post Saturday. “I will not allow the Democrats to hold our Military, and the entire Security of our Nation, HOSTAGE, with their dangerous Government Shutdown.” To scrounge up enough money to pay the troops, the Pentagon is tapping into its research and development accounts to use funding Congress made available for two years, according to an OMB official.

Specifically, about $8 billion is being shifted from accounts that fund military research, development, testing and evaluation efforts, according to two people familiar with the plan who were granted anonymity to discuss its details. POLITICO previously reported that the White House was weighing options to move money around in case a congressional deal was not struck by next week’s paycheck deadline. One of those options was applying pressure on Republican leaders to put a standalone troop pay bill on the floor. But both House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune came out against that option, despite support from several congressional Republicans. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Trump’s post. Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.) — who sponsored a bipartisan bill to get troops paid — praised Trump’s move on X, saying “This is exactly what my Pay Our Troops Act was aiming to accomplish!” adding “Now it’s time to get the government open!”

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Oscar winner Diane Keaton died at 79

Diane Keaton, an Oscar-winning actress with a decadeslong career, died in California Saturday, according to reports. She was 79. PEOPLE was the first to report her death, saying there were no additional details available and a family spokesperson told them the family is asking for privacy. No cause of death details have been released. The unexpected news was met with shock around the world, including from Bette Midler, her co-star in “The First Wives Club.” "I cannot tell you how unbearably sad this makes me. She was hilarious, a complete original, and completely without guile, or any of the competitiveness one would have expected from such a star," said Midler in an Instagram post. "What you saw was who she was…oh, la, lala!" Keaton, born Diane Hall, acted in high school plays, pursued drama in college and dropped out to move to New York and jumpstart her career, according to IMDb.

Woody Allen spotted her talent on stage and cast her in his Broadway play "Play It Again, Sam," launching the two's professional career together. Her professional Hollywood career really took off in the 70s when she landed the role as Kay Adams in Francis Ford Coppola’s "The Godfather" and its sequel "The Godfather Part II." She continued working with Allen on projects like "Sleeper" in 1973 and "Love and Death" in 1975. Throughout her career, she played a wide collection of characters. From a mob bosses wife to a loving mother of a spontaneous daughter, Keaton's range continued to grow and got her multiple Oscar nominations and one win. She was nominated for her roles in "Marvin's Room" (1977) where she played a woman with leukemia who needs a bone marrow transplant and has a complex family life; "Reds" (1981) where she played a feminist icon and activist; and "Something's Gotta Give" (2003). She won her first Oscar for best actress in a leading role as a struggling nightclub singer in "Annie Hall" (1977) alongside Woody Allen. The movie won a total of four Oscars, according to IMDb.

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Black unemployment is surging again. This time is different.

Joblessness for Black workers is rising again, two years after reaching a record low. It’s a troubling indicator: Joblessness often spikes higher for historically marginalized groups during economic downturns, and takes longer to fall. This time, the Trump administration’s assault on diversity programs and cuts to the federal work force could make it even more difficult for Black workers to recover when conditions improve. The African American unemployment rate has surged over the past four months, from 6 to 7.5 percent, while the rate for white people ticked down slightly to 3.7 percent. On top of a slowing economy, the White House’s actions have disproportionately harmed Black workers, economists said. “I think the speed at which things have changed, in such a dramatic fashion, is out of the ordinary,” said Valerie Wilson, who directs the program on race, ethnicity and the economy at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “There’s been such a rapid shift in policy, rather than something cyclical or structural about the economy.”

At least since the 1970s, when the federal government started tracking unemployment by race, the rate for Black people has run about twice the rate for white people. Because of inferior educational opportunities, the legacy of mass incarceration and discrimination over generations, Black people confront greater challenges in the job market. A strong economy during President Trump’s first term created more jobs for Black workers, but many of them were lost when the Covid-19 pandemic hit in-person employment particularly hard. Generous public subsidies, though, cushioned the blow, and hiring rebounded quickly. “I was hoping that the commitment to investing in America, so that a broader set of Americans were actually receiving benefits in terms of low unemployment and higher wages, would continue,” said Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank focused on issues affecting Black Americans. He said he was particularly disappointed in large businesses that said they would support Black workers in response to protests for racial justice in 2020, only to pull back. Job losses are concentrated among Black women working in professional services such as human resources, according to Ms. Wilson’s analysis of federal data. A hiring freeze and mass layoffs in the federal work force, which have continued during the government shutdown and now exceed 200,000, have also fallen disproportionately on Black workers.

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California oil workers face an uncertain future in the state's energy transition

Thirty years ago, Willie Cruz was shocked when he learned the Southern California oil refinery where he worked was shutting down. Cruz, now a 61-year-old living in Arizona, had spent five years working in the environmental department when Powerine Oil Company said it would close the plant in Santa Fe Springs, southeast of Los Angeles. Cruz feared getting laid off again if he stayed in the industry. He decided to look into respiratory therapy, in part because he’s asthmatic. A federal job training program paid for his schooling. “I thought it was pretty cool, you know — go from polluting to helping, right?” Cruz said.

Now he’s advising his son, Wilfredo Cruz, as the Phillips 66 refinery in Los Angeles where the 37-year-old has worked for 12 years plans to close by the end of the month. Thousands — perhaps tens of thousands — of workers could lose jobs in the coming years as California tries to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels. Energy company Valero said earlier this year it would close a refinery in the Bay Area. California’s leading Democrats are grappling with how to confront lost jobs and high gas prices that the oil industry says are the result of the state’s climate policies. State energy regulators are negotiating to keep the Valero plant open and recently backed off a proposal to penalize oil companies for high profits, while Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation to speed oil well permitting in the Central Valley. That action came after years of Newsom declaring he was “taking on big oil.” That inconsistent messaging has left the industry’s workers unsure of what the future holds.

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Trump administration begins laying off more than 4,000 federal workers amid government shutdown, court filing shows

The Trump administration on Friday began laying off more than 4,000 federal workers, according to a court filing, as the government remains shut down due to the inability of Congress to reach a funding deal. Reduction-in-force notices are being sent to federal workers across seven departments, with the Treasury Department and Department of Health and Human Services being the hardest hit and accounting for more than half of the total layoffs, according to a new Justice Department filing. The court filing is in response to a lawsuit over the shutdown layoffs from the American Federation of Government Employees and the AFL-CIO. Other affected agencies include the departments of Homeland Security, Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development and the Environmental Protection Agency.

“The RIFs have begun,” White House budget director Russ Vought said on X earlier Friday, referring to “reductions in force” for workers. While he didn’t provide details, a spokesperson for the White House Office of Management and Budget confirmed to NBC News that the layoffs had begun and said they will be “substantial.” On Friday night, a senior administration official told NBC News "those RIFs are a snapshot in time and represent only where things were at the time of the court filing," suggesting the situation remains fluid. OMB senior adviser Stephen Billy wrote in Friday’s filing that the affected agencies, in addition to others, “may actively be considering whether to conduct additional RIFs, including RIFs related to the ongoing lapse in appropriations.” Billy also indicated that agencies are continuing to weigh layoffs, but “those assessments remain under deliberation and are not final.” He did not provide an estimate for any additional layoffs or the timing.

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Lead Stories

How Ken Paxton, a rising MAGA star, got rich as a Texas politician

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton went from being a middle-class lawyer to a multimillionaire during his two decades on a public official’s salary, according to thousands of pages of previously unreported documents that shed new light on the personal finances of one of the Republican Party’s most-watched midterm candidates. Paxton, who entered state government in 2003 with a modest income and few assets, by 2018 told a lender he had amassed a net worth of about $5.5 million, not including millions in assets he and his wife had previously moved into a blind trust. The following year, Paxton reaped an additional $2.2 million gain—never previously disclosed—from his investment in a local company with a lucrative Texas state contract, according to the documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, which include Paxton’s tax returns and bank statements. Paxton’s accumulation of wealth has become a key campaign issue as he vies to unseat U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in a hotly contested Republican primary set for March 3, 2026.

A spokesman for Paxton called this article a “bogus hit piece” given to The Wall Street Journal by Paxton’s political enemies. The documents reviewed by the Journal were produced via subpoena by banks and other parties for the impeachment trial. Most were never entered into evidence and haven’t been previously disclosed. The documents include seven years of Paxton’s tax returns; personal financial statements prepared by Paxton and his wife for a series of property loans; personal bank records; the bank records of his blind trust; and text messages between Paxton, his wife and the trustee of the blind trust. Paxton in 2015 put his assets into a blind trust, a tool used by politicians to avoid conflicts of interest by separating them from management of their money. Although he said in public filings that he would no longer know what assets were in his trust, the text messages show a closer involvement, including in one instance his trustee texting Paxton updates on stock trades.

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Tariffs are way up. Interest on debt tops $1 trillion. And DOGE didn’t do much.

Control of the White House changed in fiscal year 2025, but the U.S. budget picture didn’t. It remains grim. Despite a historic rise in tariff revenue, the deficit was the same in the year ended Sept. 30, 2025, as the previous year. That is largely because the main drivers of spending kept rising: social programs, including Social Security and Medicare, and interest on the public debt, which topped $1 trillion by one measure for the first time. Here are five things we learned about the U.S. government’s finances based on the year-end figures released Wednesday by the Congressional Budget Office: The U.S. collected $195 billion in customs duties, more than double the prior year. That doesn’t capture the full jump because tariff rates only ramped up in April, halfway through the year. President Trump seeks to shift the government’s reliance on income taxes toward taxes on imported goods. Still, tariffs contribute a relatively small 3.7% of overall federal revenue, compared with 51% for the individual income tax.

By one CBO metric, net interest on the public debt topped $1 trillion for the first time—more than the country spent on Medicare or defense. For every $5 the government collected in taxes, about $1 went to pay interest. Net interest of $1.029 trillion was up roughly $80 billion, or 8%, from a year earlier. This measure isn’t directly comparable to how net interest is reported in some other CBO or White House accounts, but the differences are relatively small and the trend is consistent. There is little the government can do in the short term about the rising interest bill. It is the inevitable result of the growing national debt and higher interest rates. As the Trump administration started, Elon Musk claimed his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, could achieve $2 trillion in savings—equal to more than a quarter of total spending in fiscal 2024. Not even close. DOGE did claw back some grants and fire some probationary employees. And some savings will show up later as federal workers who accepted deferred resignation drop off government payrolls in fiscal 2026.

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Judge temporarily blocks National Guard deployment in Chicago, saying it violates Constitution

A federal judge granted a request to temporarily block a National Guard deployment in Chicago, saying the move violates the U.S. Constitution. U.S. District Judge April Perry ruled the Trump administration's deployment of troops in Chicago violated the 10th and 14th amendments, as well as the nearly 150-year-old Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the military’s role in enforcing domestic laws. It was not immediately clear when the temporary restraining order will take effect and how long it will last. Perry said she plans to issue another ruling Friday on the case. Perry called the federal government's recount of recent events in Chicago and surrounding suburbs “simply unreliable," saying in the last 48 hours four separate decisions by different neutral parties cast doubt on the Department of Homeland Security's credibility.

"I don’t find any evidence of impeding actually happened," Perry said, noting she has "found no credible evidence that there is a danger of rebellion in the state of Illinois." Perry referenced Alexander Hamilton in condemning the president’s actions. “(The founders) would never believe that it would ever come to pass that one state militia could be sent to another state for the purposes of political retribution,” she said. “I have found no credible evidence that there is a danger of rebellion in the state of Illinois,” she said. The judge also questioned whether the National Guard had adequate training in de-escalation tactics. Trump has said he would be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows a president to dispatch active duty military in states that are unable to put down an insurrection or are defying federal law. It remains unclear if that will happen. Earlier in the Thursday hearing, Perry had quizzed a Trump administration attorney on the role National Guard troops would play if deployed in Chicago to assist ICE agents with immigration enforcement, at one point questioning "where is the rebellion?"

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Oklahoma’s Republican governor criticizes National Guard deployment in Chicago, plans to talk to Abbott this weekend

Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, a Republican and the chairman of the National Governors Association, on Thursday criticized the deployment of Texas National Guard troops to Illinois as a violation of his beliefs in federalism and “states’ rights.” His comments, in an interview with The New York Times, marked the first time a Republican governor has questioned the interstate deployment of National Guard troops over a governor’s objections. Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois and other Democratic elected officials have been strongly critical of the move and have implored Republican governors to join the opposition. Mr. Stitt on Thursday said, “We believe in the federalist system — that’s states’ rights,” adding, “Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration.”

Mr. Stitt stressed that he supported President Trump’s efforts to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and ensure “law and order” in cities like Chicago and Portland, Ore. But he worried about the precedent that was being set by the guard deployment and how it could be used by a president from another party. Instead, Mr. Stitt said, Mr. Trump should have moved to federalize the troops in Illinois first. Mr. Stitt pointed to his opposition during the pandemic to federal mandates around vaccinations and directions on masking under then-President Joseph R. Biden Jr., an opposition shared by Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a fellow Republican. “I was surprised that Governor Abbott sent troops from Texas to Illinois,” Mr. Stitt said. “Abbott and I sued the Biden administration when the shoe was on the other foot and the Biden administration was trying to force us to vaccinate all of our soldiers and force masks across the country.” He added: “As a federalist believer, one governor against another governor, I don’t think that’s the right way to approach this.” Mr. Stitt said that he had not discussed the issue with Mr. Abbott but that the two governors would be together this weekend in Dallas, for a heated football rivalry game between the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas.

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State Stories

TCU never canceled Turning Point USA event, student organizer clarifies

Allegations that Texas Christian University canceled an event held by its chapter of Turning Point USA are false, the student organization’s president said. “For clarity, TCU never canceled the event,” Annie Cellar, the president of TCU’s Turning Point chapter, wrote in an email to the Star-Telegram. The chapter independently decided to host the event off campus after organizers were unable to secure an appropriate space at TCU on short notice, Cellar said. Cellar’s statement came days after detransition activist Chloe Cole’s characterization of the story blew up online and attracted the attention of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Paxton promised to investigate the university’s handling of the event in a social media post last week.

The event drew about 400 people to Birchman Baptist Church on Tuesday night, according to the Fort Worth Report. Minutes before taking the stage to speak at the event, Cole appeared to continue to push the narrative that the university canceled the event. “TCU can’t cancel the truth,” the activist wrote in a post on X. “We regularly welcome Christian and faith-based events, for example, the recent memorial for students and the community honoring the life of Charlie Kirk, hosted by TCU’s TPUSA chapter on Sept. 18,” a TCU spokesperson told Fox News on Friday. “For the date of Oct. 7, no venue was available for an event open to the public for up to a thousand people, ,” the spokesperson said.

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Ken Paxton urges closed GOP primaries, will not defend state in lawsuit

Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday essentially sided with the Republican Party of Texas’ effort to restrict participation in primary elections, urging the secretary of state’s office to stop fighting the party’s lawsuit on the issue. In a joint motion with the party, Paxton’s office argued that state law unconstitutionally prohibits the party from limiting the primary election to registered Republicans. “The Secretary of State must follow the Constitution by swiftly implementing this consent decree,” said Paxton, who is challenging U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in the March primary. “Instead of fighting this lawsuit with expensive out-of-state lawyers, the Secretary of State’s office should respect the will of Texas voters and defend their freedoms by creating a process that will allow the RPT to immediately close its primaries.”

As attorney general, Paxton is generally responsible for defending Texas officials in court, including Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson, who oversees the state’s elections and is the named defendant in the party’s lawsuit. But because Paxton has declined to defend the election law, Nelson’s office retained outside lawyers – the Underwood Law Firm and Clement & Murphy – to represent the office in court, court filings show. The state’s current system allows Democrats and non-Republicans to vote in the GOP primary. The GOP grassroots have long sought to hold “closed primaries,” where only voters who are registered with the party are eligible to vote, but legislative efforts to change the law have failed. Proponents of closing the primary say non-Republicans’ participation leads to more moderate nominees and “Republicans In Name Only” elected in conservative districts. If successful, the state Republican party’s federal lawsuit would place Texas among 14 states that already restrict primaries to registered party members. “What we really want is Republicans to elect Republican nominees,” Republican Party of Texas Chair Abraham George said in a September interview. George has said he hopes the party’s suit will force the 2026 midterm elections to have open primaries, which are scheduled for March 3, but that litigation may take longer. A spokesperson for Nelson previously said their counsel is reviewing the lawsuit. “As always, the Secretary of State’s Office is committed to fair, orderly and legal elections,” said spokesperson Alicia Pierce in a statement. “Preparations for the March 3 primary election are already well underway in accordance with state laws.”

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Mike Conaway: Congress gave the CFTC a clear mandate. The courts must respect it

For generations, American farmers — like those spread across a broad swath of Texas I had the honor of representing in Congress — have turned to markets to manage risk. From fluctuating crop prices to unpredictable weather patterns, uncertainty is a fact of life in farming communities across the country. That’s why futures markets have always mattered. They give farmers the tools to make informed decisions, manage their own risk on their own terms, and keep their operations, and our food supply, resilient through unpredictable conditions. It’s a powerful example of how free markets help people solve real problems and plan for the future. After the 2008/09 financial crisis, I joined bipartisan efforts in Congress to strengthen our financial system — not by growing the bureaucracy, but by clarifying accountability.

We gave the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) a clearer mandate to ensure transparent, well-regulated markets supported growth and innovation. The goal was simple: create the conditions for markets to function efficiently and responsibly. Today, that progress is being tested by the casino industry and state bureaucracies. They are waging a legal battle that risks unraveling what we built. At the center is Kalshi, a CFTC-regulated prediction market that brings modern tools to individuals and businesses navigating uncertainty. Whether it’s inflation, interest rates, elections, or sports, Kalshi allows Americans to hedge against future events using federally overseen contracts rooted in the same principles that have guided farmers and commodity traders for generations. It’s a modern extension of a time-tested idea: letting markets help people prepare for the unknown. In a $600 billion sports industry — where events on the field swing billions in advertising, sponsorships, and merchandise — Kalshi’s contracts equip entrepreneurs to offset potential losses. These are calculated tools that help businesses protect their bottom lines, safeguard revenue streams, forecast outcomes, price probabilities, and manage real-world risk — just as weather futures protect farmers or interest rate contracts protect homeowners.

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Oscar S. Wyatt Jr., oil magnate and philanthropist, dies at 101 after 'colorful and well-rounded' life

Oscar S. Wyatt Jr., the tenacious oil magnate and philanthropist who parlayed an $800 loan into a multibillion-dollar business empire, died Wednesday. He was 101. Wyatt died "peacefully of old age and natural causes," said the Wyatt Ranches Foundation in a statement, authorized by Wyatt's family, announcing his death. Born in Beaumont and raised in Navasota, Wyatt was a student at Texas A&M University when the United States entered World War II. He volunteered for the U.S. Army Air Corps and served as a bomber pilot in the Pacific Theater, having first learned to fly as a teenager when he worked as a crop duster. After the war, Wyatt returned to A&M, graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering before launching a career in business that would see him become an internationally recognized oil tycoon.

"In 1950, using his black 1949 Ford 2-door coupe as collateral, Mr. Wyatt borrowed $800 from a bank in Corpus Christi, Texas," the Wyatt Ranches Foundation said in its statement. "With the loan, he started the Hardly Able Oil Company, which later became the Coastal States Gas Producing Co., and ultimately grew to become the Coastal Corporation." In 2002, when Coastal Corp. merged with the El Paso Corp., the company had consolidated assets of around $15 billion and more than 12,000 employees. After the merger, Wyatt launched another oil and gas venture, which became Coastal Energy and would sell in a $2.2 billion deal in 2014. Along the way, Wyatt was pursuing his other interests and building a family. He bought his first ranch in the 1960s, and Wyatt Ranches has now grown to include five cattle ranching divisions in south and west Texas. In 1963, he married the beautiful and stylish Lynn Sakowitz, whose grandfather started the Sakowitz department store chain in Galveston in 1902. Together, the Wyatts were fixtures on Houston's social scene, hosting glittering gatherings in their River Oaks home and spending time with luminaries ranging from pioneering heart surgeon Michael DeBakey to artists such as Elton John and Liza Minnelli and royals including Princess Grace and Princess Margaret. "There can be no discussion that Mr. Wyatt lived a colorful and well-rounded life," the Wyatt Ranches Foundation said. For example, the statement said, Wyatt helped former Texas Governor John Connally negotiate the release of American hostages held in Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

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Rep. Carrie Isaac attempts to block LGBTQ+ Pride celebration in her home town

State Rep. Carrie Isaac, the New Braunfels Republican who filed a widely ridiculed 2023 bill attempting to ban election polling places from college campuses, has once again waded into the culture war. The organizers of New Braunfels’ Riverside Pride Festival have switched venues for the upcoming event after Isaac contacted officials overseeing the Comal County Fairground and urged them not to host it, KSAT News reports. Instead, the gathering will take place this weekend at Faith UCC Church. Isaac told KSAT that past photographs from Riverside Pride and an online statement from a person once slated to perform at the event convinced her it would include sexually explicit performances.

In a letter to the Comal County Fair and Rodeo Executive Board, Isaac invoked Senate Bill 12, a state law that sought to criminalizes performers who put on sexually explicit shows in front of children as well as businesses that host the shows. She warned that both the board and the venue could face “significant legal liability” if it hosted the celebration. However, a federal judge blocked enforcement of SB 12 in September 2023, mere weeks after it went into effect, saying the law “impermissibly infringes on the First Amendment and chills free speech.” Undaunted by that legal technicality, Isaac claimed in her letter that despite the court’s decision, “the definitions and structure of the statute create significant ambiguity.” “A persistent argument from opponents of SB 12 is that drag or similar performances should be protected under free speech,” Isaac added. “Do you believe that sexual performances in front of children are a form of free speech? This is an issue of both legal responsibility and moral stewardship.” Mike Stegen, a Riverside Pride board member, told KSAT the drag show was never going to be sexually explicit. Indeed, the nonprofit wants to present a family-friendly program to push back against misconceptions about drag, he added.

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San Antonio Spurs rep refuses to say whether team will leave town if arena vote fails next month

During a lively Wednesday night town hall, San Antonio Spurs General Counsel Bobby Perez refused to say whether the team would leave town if voters reject a publicly financed arena deal in November. “We’re totally focused on Nov. 4,” Perez said in response to an audience inquiry about whether the NBA franchise would consider relocating. “We hope that when you look at the numbers, when you look at the facts, you’ll vote for ‘Yes’ for Propositions A and B. That’s what we’re focused on.” Perez’s dodge didn’t satisfy the packed and vocal audience at the West Side’s Mexican American Unity Council building. “Answer the question!” members yelled at Perez. “Liar!” another attendee called.

Indeed, the gathering organized by District 5 Councilwoman Teri Castillo crackled with a contentious energy different from similar events held by other council members to answer constituent questions about the upcoming election. Unlike some of those town halls, for example, the questions for Perez and San Antonio Rodeo CEO Cody Davenport weren’t pre-approved by organizers. What’s more, Castillo also invited vocal Project Marvel opponent Heywood Sanders, a UT-San Antonio professor emeritus of public administration and Current columnist. City Manager Erik Walsh and City Chief Financial Officer Ben Gorzell also were in attendance. “What we know about teams is that if they see an opportunity for a larger return, they will move,” Sanders said of the relocation question. “But, the NBA at this point is not necessarily interested in the Spurs moving. They’re not necessarily interested in any team moving. They may well consider expansion.” Sanders brought up the case of the Philadelphia 76ers franchise, whom NBA Commissioner Adam Silver reportedly pressured to remain in its current arena.

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Robert Roberson’s execution has been suspended once again

Robert Roberson’s execution has been suspended once again. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted an unexpected stay of execution to Roberson on Thursday morning, sending his case back to his trial court. That court will determine whether it made a mistake in convicting Roberson of killing his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki, in 2003 on the basis of the controversial medical theory known as Shaken Baby Syndrome. Roberson had been scheduled to die on Oct. 16. This decision comes the same week a Deadline podcast introduced new evidence in the case. Roberson’s supporters celebrated the stay of execution on social media.

Republican Representative Jeff Leach, who has worked hard to save Roberson’s life for the last several years, declared, “Truth and justice wins the day.” Democratic Representative Joe Moody said, “I believe in his innocence and applaud the court for taking a breath rather than taking a life.” Austin Rep. John Bucy said, “After more than 20 years, Texas has the chance to do the right thing and deliver true justice.” In a statement to reporters, Roberson’s attorney, Gretchen Sween, said the TCCA’s order was necessary after it granted a review in the case against Andrew Roark, who was exonerated after being convicted of injuring an infant on the basis of shaken baby syndrome in 1997. She said the district court will have to consider changes in science that have occurred over the last 20 years. “Deciding this issue will, of necessity, require considering the mountain of medical records, scientific studies, expert opinions, and other evidence that proves his very ill little girl died from natural and accidental causes, not shaking or other abuse,” Sween said. “Robert adored Nikki, whose death was a tragedy, a horror compounded by Robert’s wrongful conviction that devastated his whole family. We are confident that an objective review of the science and medical evidence will show there was no crime.”

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'Trauma': Takeover commission hears testimonies on Houston ISD teacher experiences

Parents, teachers and students gave emotionally charged testimonies at a Wednesday event focused on teacher experiences under Houston ISD's state-appointed leadership. This listening session was the second hosted by a state takeover-focused commission chaired by state Sen. Molly Cook, state Rep. Lauren Ashley Simmons and Colin Bossen, senior minister at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston. The commission is examining and documenting the effects of the state's June 2023 appointment of Superintendent Mike Miles, which has led to increases in test and school accountability scores and opposition from many parents, teachers and community members.

The commission includes scholars Guadalupe San Miguel, Jasmin Lee, Dan Dawer, Rachel Williams and Steven Nelson; education attorney Geneva Jones; school takeover expert Domingo Morel; Community of Resources founder Kay Wasden; and student and parent representatives Emily Yanez and Melissa Yarborough, respectively. Sixteen attendees at the First Unitarian Universalist Church on Fannin spoke in groups of four with the commission. Each person had time to share their experiences, followed by time to answer questions. At least 40 people were sitting in the church's pews. Attendees could also confidentially share their experiences one-on-one, and the commission is also accepting submissions via a Google form.

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Houston ISD Board of Managers terminates union leader

Houston ISD's Board of Managers terminated a teachers' union president Thursday — an action the labor leader has characterized as retaliation. This is the second time Houston Education Association President Michelle Williams, a 26-year teaching veteran, faced disciplinary action under state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles. HISD hired Williams back in 2024 after an independent hearing examiner ruled in her favor and found that the district violated the Texas Open Meetings Act. Williams was reassigned to "home duty" with pay after an alleged "failure to follow campus protocols" and "repeated refusal to implement the HISD Curriculum and Instructional Model," according to August documents. Home duty required Williams to stay at home during work hours and call to report in and out of work.

The district alleged the third-grade Benbrook Elementary School teacher left campus without informing administration and did not sign out as protocol required. District officials also said Williams did not follow the HISD instructional model, while Williams alleged this model, enforced by district officials, required her to violate special education laws and the state's educators' code of ethics. Williams said she has filed complaints pertaining to HISD with agencies including the state's education agency. Teachers discussed in closed session are typically not named in board agendas. However, after Williams was proposed for contract nonrenewal in 2024, an independent hearing examiner found that "the Board action would be void because HISD did not provide sufficient notice to the public of the proposed action." The hearing examiner found there was not enough specificity in the board's agenda language to notify the public that the contract of Williams, a person of public interest as a union leader, was proposed for nonrenewal.

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Texas pension to spend up to $15 billion on private market bets

Texas Municipal Retirement System plans to commit as much as $15 billion over the next five years to a program that will allow it to invest directly in private markets transactions alongside its external fund managers. The $44 billion pension will commit between $10 million and $200 million each in co-investment opportunities, including in secondaries and growth capital investments, according to a statement from the system. The move will allow Texas Municipal to deepen its manager relationships and save “hundreds of millions in fees” annually, Yup Kim, its chief investment officer, said in an email to Bloomberg News.

With co-investing, private equity backers put money into specific deals rather than pooled funds. They have become popular because co-investments typically don’t charge fees and allow clients to bet more strategically. More institutional investors have introduced or expanded their co-investment programs in recent years to enhance their net returns. Texas Municipal’s program will commit capital to global managers across venture capital, buyouts, real assets and structured equity, the pension said in a statement. It will consider managers in its private markets portfolio and will be “open to others too,” Kim said. The pension will make these investments alongside its managers, focusing on five broad investment themes including digital transformation, health care innovation and energy modernization, it said in the statement. Texas Municipal’s co-investments surged to 9% of total private markets net asset value as of June 30 from 5% at the start of 2024, according to pension documents. The pension expects co-investments to account for nearly 30% of the private markets net asset value in the next five years, Kim said in an email to Bloomberg News. California Public Employees’ Retirement System relaunched its co-investment strategy in Dec. 2022 and expects to save $400 million in management fees and carried interest, or the share of a fund manager’s profits, over the life of each $1 billion co-investment, a pension document shows. That translates into approximately $25 billion of reduced costs for 10 years of commitments at an annual deployment of $15.5 billion each year. California State Teachers’ Retirement System announced a co-investment partnership on Tuesday, with Carlyle AlpInvest, for climate-related investments.

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Faith leaders called to resurrect Houston’s affordable housing

In Houston, the fight for affordable housing has reached a critical point. As of September 2025, the state of affordable housing for Black people in the greater Houston area is marked by profound racial disparities and worsening conditions, especially for renters. According to Rice University’s Kinder Institute, Harris County requires more than 20,000 new affordable housing units annually just to meet current demand. If you like this article, please consider donating to support the Defender ? With housing costs continuing to rise, advocates across the city say finding solutions will take the full participation of every sector—including faith institutions.

While local and community-led initiatives are working hard to fill the gap, broader national trends and policies threaten to widen it. Black households remain the most rent-burdened group in Texas. A March 2025 report found that 32% of Black renter households pay more than half their income on housing, leaving little for food, healthcare or savings. The homeownership gap tells a similar story: While there’s been a slight uptick in Black homeownership in Harris County since 2021, the racial gap remains wide. Buying a home is becoming even harder. In July 2024, the Houston Association of Realtors reported that only 26% of Black households could afford a median-priced home, a decrease from the previous year. Meanwhile, historically Black neighborhoods such as Independence Heights and Third Ward face steep price increases fueled by gentrification, pushing longtime residents out. And for renters, the picture is bleak. The Kinder Institute’s 2025 State of Housing in Harris County and Houston report showed that in just one year, about 15,000 new renters became cost-burdened. Federal cuts to housing programs like Section 8 could deepen that vulnerability, especially for Black families who rely on assistance to stay housed.

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Why many Texas Republican leaders are concerned about gender transitions

Many of Texas’ Republican leaders say they’re concerned about people changing their bodies as part of a gender transition. Texas lawmakers are increasingly calling for policies that would prevent transgender adults, not just children, from living as a different gender than their birth sex. In the 2025 legislative session, several proposed policies would have outlawed cross-sex hormones or made it a felony to identify as transgender on a government document. Those two bills didn’t pass, but they reflect a growing appetite among state leaders for regulating gender identity. As state officials express more concern over gender transition, The Dallas Morning News contacted five D-FW lawmakers who proposed bills this year related to transition to learn about their perspectives.

Rep. Brent Money, R-Greenville, and Rep. Mitch Little, R-Lewisville, agreed to be interviewed, and Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Allen, shared a statement. Rep. Keresa Richardson, R-McKinney, did not respond to phone and email requests for comment, and a spokesperson for Rep. Andy Hopper, R-Denton, said he was not available for an interview. Money and Little said they believe gender dysphoria to be a real condition but said feelings of dysphoria don’t change the reality that there are two genders, fixed at birth. A person is diagnosed with gender dysphoria, according to the American Psychiatric Association, when they experience consistent mental and emotional distress due to “incongruence” between their birth sex or body and their gender identity. Money and Little said people shouldn’t treat dysphoria by transitioning to another gender. Transition is physically destructive and encourages confusion for people who are hurting, according to the lawmakers. They also said their Christian faith informed their belief that there are two genders, and said obedience and adherence to that truth were important for a healthy society.

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Thanks to former Sen. Powell, architect Huckabee, new Uvalde elementary school opens

A new elementary school is scheduled to open Friday in Uvalde more than three years after 19 elementary students and two teachers were killed in the deadliest school shooting in Texas history. Fort Worth philanthropic leaders jump-started a more than $60 million fundraising effort to build the campus that replaces Robb Elementary. Uvalde school leaders plan to hold a ribbon cutting Friday for Legacy Elementary. The new campus is expected to welcome students later in October. Beverly Powell, a former state senator, assembled a coalition of Fort Worth groups to build the school. Powell plans to attend the opening of Legacy Elementary. “I’m delighted that we’re here. It’s been a long, long journey, but it’s one of those that really warms your heart,” said Powell, who also previously served on the Burleson school board.

The fundraising effort was filled with love and kindness from across Texas and the nation, Powell said. On May 24, 2022, a teenage gunman entered Robb and began opening fire, killing the children and educators. Community leaders decided to close that campus after the mass shooting and build a new school using donations. Tim Miller, executive director of the Uvalde CISD Moving Forward Foundation, said the three-year endeavor was a collaborative process that happened only because so many people stepped up. “We appreciate the generosity of the hundreds of individuals, businesses, foundations and other organizations that contributed the monetary and in-kind donations that have made Legacy Elementary School a reality,” Miller said. And it all started with Fort Worth. “Fort Worth, Dallas and the North Texas community made a huge commitment to this project,” Powell said. “I will be forever grateful that they kicked it off in a way that allowed us to go from Fort Worth to Dallas on to Houston, Austin, San Antonio and pulled the whole state together.” Fort Worth-based architect Chris Huckabee was instrumental in delivering the new school to Uvalde, Powell and Miller said. Huckabee’s architecture firm designed Legacy Elementary — for free — using principles of trauma-informed architecture that’s meant to help the community in healing.

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Austin faces a 30-day deadline to remove its Pride crosswalk, 'Black Artists Matter' roadway art

Austin's roadway art, including the rainbow crosswalk at Fourth and Colorado streets and the "Black Artists Matter" painted on 11th Street could soon be gone. Gov. Greg Abbott ordered cities and counties Wednesday to remove displays like these or risk losing state and federal money for road projects. He said this order will comply with a federal policy banning symbolic language and roadway art. A TxDOT letter to cities and counties gives them 30 days to remove any "decorative crosswalks, murals, or markings conveying artwork or other messages." "This prohibition includes the use of symbols, flags, or other markings conveying any message or communications," the letter from TxDOT's Executive Director Marc Williams read. The city said it "will comply" with the new guidelines in a statement Wednesday.

Austin's Transportation and Public Works Department did not immediately respond on Thursday to whether it would repaint the Pride-themed crosswalk or the 11th Street art within 30 days. It's unclear if the order will apply to other roadway art, including the "TEXAS" on Guadalupe Street just off of UT Austin's campus. In 2020, Austin artists painted "Black Austin Matters" on Congress Avenue downtown and "Black Artists Matter" on 11th Street. While the Congress Avenue art has faded, the 11th Street art is still visible. Less than a year later, the city painted the intersection of Fourth and Colorado with the colors of the Pride flag in 2021. The city OK'd a plan to paint the intersection to honor longtime LGBTQ+-friendly businesses.

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Dallas groups and councilman respond to Abbott order on rainbow crosswalks

The uproar in the community over Greg Abbott’s demand that any non-standard crosswalks anywhere in Texas — read that as the rainbow crosswalks on Cedar Springs Road in the heart of the Dallas Gayborhood — or risk losing millions in federal funds continues to grow. And several local organizations have issued statements addressing the situation. GLAAD, Texas Latino Pride, Pride in Dallas, Dallas Social Queer Organization, ReVoyce and Dallas Pride issued the following joint statement:

“Dallas’ Rainbow Crosswalks, located at the heart of our Cedar Springs neighborhood, are a symbol of unity and hope and serve as a powerful display of the LGBTQ community’s resiliency and influence in North Texas. This privately funded project, thanks to efforts from the North Texas LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce, operates for the community and by the community. Past the crosswalks’ intersections are small businesses, owned and operated by the LGBTQ community and our allies. On the streets of Oak Lawn and Cedar Springs, we invest in our local economy; we organize and practice our First Amendment rights, and we love openly. Texas faces many challenges, especially when it comes to infrastructure. Instead of prioritizing what color the roads are, we call on state officials in Texas to focus on what really matters: ensuring our roads are safe to drive on, that our small businesses have the means to continue to operate and that the rights of LGBTQ Texans are protected.” Dallas City Council Member Adam Bazaldua, who represents Dallas’ District 7 which lies south and east of downtown, on Thursday night, Oct. 9, issued the following statement in response to orders from Gov. Greg Abbott that could force the removal of the rainbow crosswalks on Cedar Springs Road: “Governor Abbott’s recent order demanding that cities remove their rainbow crosswalks, under threat of withheld funding, is nothing short of political bullying. His justification that such crosswalks ‘incorporate political ideology’ ignores a simple truth: A rainbow is not a political statement. It’s a universal symbol of inclusion, hope and pride in diversity. With no words, no slogans and no agenda attached, how can anyone credibly claim a few colors on a crosswalk constitute ideology? I will not fold to bully tactics, and I hope our city stands firm against the egregious overreach

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Tarrant officials aim to prevent overdose deaths with review, a first in Texas

Tarrant County officials are set to begin conducting reviews of overdose deaths at a meeting this Friday, said Dr. Brian Byrd, the county’s public health director. More than 2,000 Tarrant County residents have died from drug overdoses in the past five years, with many of those deaths involving fentanyl and a mixture of other drugs, according to county records. By reviewing overdose deaths on a case-by-case basis, the group hopes to identify common factors between cases and figure out what to do about them, Byrd said. “We would look into all the stuff,” Byrd said. “Where were they? Who showed up? Did the EMS who showed up have Narcan or not? What part of the city was it?”

Officials with Byrd’s office, as well as the sheriff’s and medical examiner’s office, sit on the council, Byrd said. So do representatives from the Recovery Resource Council, a Dallas-Fort Worth nonprofit that provides behavioral, mental and addiction recovery healthcare. Dr. Casey Green, an addiction psychiatrist, approached the nonprofit three years ago with the idea for the review, said Becky Devine, the Recovery Resource Council’s director of special projects. Green had heard about similar initiatives while attending a conference and thought a review board would be good to implement locally, Devine said. But Green didn’t have the capacity to take on the project alone, so he approached the nonprofit for help. Weeks later, Devine attended a conference on overdose response strategies hosted by the Centers for Disease Control Foundation, she said. At that conference, review boards like the one Green suggested were discussed as the “latest and greatest” strategy.

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National Stories

Former GOP election official buys Dominion Voting Systems, says he’ll push for paper ballots

Dominion Voting Systems, the election vendor that was falsely accused of rigging the 2020 election, is being sold and rebranded as Liberty Vote effective immediately. Scott Leiendecker, the founder of a Missouri-based election technology company who previously served as the Republican director for the St. Louis City Board of Elections, purchased the company this week for an undisclosed sum, according to a press release. “As of today, Dominion is gone. Liberty Vote assumes full ownership and operational control,” the press release reads.

Leiendecker says he wants to use the renamed company to restore public confidence in the US electoral process. Liberty Now also vows to be bipartisan as it works to reshape Dominion’s image. Dominion’s election products were used by millions of US voters across 27 states last year. Dominion’s founder and CEO, John Poulos, confirmed in a one-sentence statement provided to CNN on Thursday that, “Liberty Vote has acquired Dominion Voting Systems.” The company’s new owner laid out four goals, many of which align with the Trump administration, that they argue will restore trust in US elections, the main being a heavy emphasis on using paper ballots. “Liberty Vote is committed to delivering election technology that prioritizes paper-based transparency, security, and simplicity so that voters can be assured that every ballot is filled-in accurately and fairly counted,” Leiendecker says.

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Chicago puts up a fight against Trump, deployment of National Guard troops

Eric Harvey is furious about the deployment of the National Guard to Illinois, the city of Chicago, and his neighborhood. "That's a publicity stunt, man!" Harvey, who lives in the south side, said. This summer Chicago's homicide rate was the lowest since the 1960s. So, Harvey can't believe hundreds of troops have arrived in Illinois to make the city any safer. President Trump has called Chicago a "war zone" and has claimed the city's crime rate is unsustainable. Under Trump's orders, National Guard troops from Illinois and Texas are tasked with protecting federal government employees such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and federal property.

Harvey said Trump is doing this to appear like he's keeping the city safe from undocumented immigrants. This hits close to home. Harvey lives in a neighborhood that recently had a big ICE raid in a residential building. "You snatching kids and people that get up and go to work every day — that's who you grab, you not grabbing no criminals," Harvey said. Last month, the Trump administration ramped up its immigration enforcement operations in Chicago. According to the Department of Homeland Security, the mission dubbed "Operation Midway Blitz" has led to more than 1,000 arrests of migrants without legal status. Chicago residents have taken to the streets to push back. They have recorded — and published — the ICE arrests, and have created ICE watch groups. On Wednesday night, hundreds of people marched in downtown Chicago to protest the deployment of the troops and the presence of ICE. Jessica Urbina, 26, came to march by herself because she felt it was important to join her community to repudiate Trump's actions.

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Grand jury indicts N.Y. Attorney General Letitia James, a Trump opponent, on bank fraud charges

New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat who has clashed with President Donald Trump, was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury in Virginia. James was charged with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution after Trump publicly called for his Justice Department appointees to bring charges against her. The indictment alleges James falsely claimed that a home in Norfolk, Virginia, was her second residence, allowing her to obtain favorable loan terms, and that she rented the property to a family of three. James could face up to 30 years in prison and up to a $1 million fine on each count if she’s convicted. She vehemently denied the charges.

“These charges are baseless, and the president’s own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost," James said in a statement that she also read aloud in a video on X. "The president’s actions are a grave violation of our Constitutional order and have drawn sharp criticism from members of both parties." As NBC News reported in August, Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed a "special attorney" to probe mortgage fraud allegations against James, who brought a successful civil fraud case against Trump before he retook the presidency. Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte had referred the case to the Justice Department, alleging that James had made false statements on mortgage loan applications. But the case hit a standstill last month because federal agents and prosecutors didn't believe they had the evidence to secure a conviction, two senior federal law enforcement officials told NBC News last month. Erik S. Siebert, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, resigned under pressure last month after Trump said he wanted him "out."

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Circumcision ‘highly likely’ linked to autism, RFK Jr. says in wild new Tylenol claim

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stunningly claimed Thursday there may be a link between circumcision and autism – due to distribution of Tylenol to infants following the procedure. “There’s two studies which show children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism, it’s highly likely, because they were given Tylenol,” Kennedy told President Trump during a cabinet meeting. Kennedy didn’t specify the research to which he was referring, but a 2015 study out of Denmark that tracked nearly 343,000 Gen Z boys suggested that circumcised males were more likely to develop autism before the age of 10 compared to their non-circumcised peers.

Researchers hypothesized that pain and stressful surgery early in life can increase the risk of neurodevelopmental, behavioral or psychological problems later on. However, some critics called the research “flawed” and said the study authors should have examined other painful conditions such as urinary tract infections, which are common in young children. Another possible explanation for the purported link is that boys who undergo circumcision are more likely to interact with healthcare workers, leading to a higher detection rate of autism. A second, smaller 2024 study out of Ireland found that circumcised boys with autism “exhibited significant improvements” in irritability, sensory issues and repetitive behavior compared to their non-circumcised peers. The researchers also reported that urinary symptoms such as pain, urgency and the need to go at night, were “significantly reduced.” Rabbi Nechemia Markovits, a fifth-generation certified mohel and circumcision specialist based in Brooklyn who’s performed the ritual for nearly 40 years, said he has never needed to recommend Tylenol after performing the procedure on a newborn. “The procedure is quick and well-tolerated,” he told The Post.

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Who is María Corina Machado, winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize?

María Corina Machado, who was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, is an opposition leader in Venezuela, where she built one of the country’s most important political movements. She has been in hiding since the candidate she backed lost the 2024 election to President Nicolás Maduro — a vote that was widely seen as rigged. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the prize, said in a statement that it chose Ms. Machado “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.” The committee said that it chose Ms. Machado primarily for her efforts to advance democracy “in the face of ever-expanding authoritarianism in Venezuela.” Ms. Machado, 58, is the eldest daughter of a prominent steelmaking family, and attended an elite Catholic girls’ school in Caracas and a boarding school in Wellesley, Mass.

She studied engineering and finance and later worked for the family company, Sivensa. In 1992, she created the Atenea Foundation, which provides aid to children living in poverty in Caracas. A decade later, she became a political activist and was a founder of Súmate, a voter rights group that led a failed effort to recall Hugo Chávez, the founder of the country’s modern socialist movement and Mr. Maduro’s predecessor. Ms. Machado joined the National Assembly in 2010, after winning a record number of votes. She leads the Vente Venezuela opposition party, and in 2023 she announced a bid to become president in the 2024 election. Ms. Machado was blocked from running over what the government said were financial irregularities when she was a national legislator. She backed another candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia. Mr. González ran against Mr. Maduro, who has held power since Mr. Chávez died in 2013. Mr. Maduro claimed victory in the election. The opposition, however, claimed it had won, and collected evidence that it said showed Mr. González won by a wide margin. Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, told reporters after the announcement that the judges weighed the security implications of giving the prize to Machado. “This is the discussion we have every year for all candidates, particularly when the person who receives the prize is, in fact, in hiding because of serious threats to her life,” he said, adding that the committee believed the award would support her cause. Mr. Frydnes said he hoped that she would be able to attend the Nobel Prize ceremony in December but that it would depend on the security situation.

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Emergency Medicaid for undocumented immigrants accounts for less than 1% of state spending

Emergency spending amounted to about $9.63 per resident. Emergency Medicaid for undocumented immigrants made up only 0.4% of total Medicaid spending in 2022, a new study finds. Researchers from Emory University; University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora; and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health looked at financial management report data for fiscal year 2022 from the Medicaid Budget and Expenditure System. Of the 38 states that had data and Washington, D.C., the team found that emergency Medicaid spending for undocumented immigrants amounted to about $9.63 for every resident in those states, according to the research letter published Thursday morning in JAMA.

Supporters of the 2025 Budget Reconciliation law say the cuts to Medicaid will only affect care for groups whom they believe should not be receiving it to begin with, such as undocumented immigrants. However, undocumented immigrants are unable to receive comprehensive Medicaid, Medicare and Marketplaces options under the Affordable Care Act under federal law, the researchers note. Emergency Medicaid is a limited form of Medicaid that pays for emergency medical care for people who meet all the usual Medicaid requirements except U.S. citizenship or legal immigration status. Emergency Medicaid primarily covers immediate, short-term medical treatment such as labor and delivery, but some states also include care such as dialysis and cancer treatments. Even in states with the largest undocumented populations, costs remained under 1% of Medicaid budgets, though these states spent roughly 15 times more per person than those with smaller undocumented populations. The authors noted that cutting emergency Medicaid, as proposed in the 2025 Budget Reconciliation law, would save little and would harm states with large populations of undocumented immigrants.

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Cuomo’s last-minute push takes him into MAGA territory

Nearly a year ago, Lisa Fields Lewis rallied in Pennsylvania for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. But on a recent Friday evening, Lewis, a mother of two and staunch Israel advocate, was in front of Bloomingdale’s stumping for Andrew Cuomo with more than a dozen other volunteers on the Upper East Side. The neighborhood came out strongly for him in the June mayoral primary election he lost to democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani. Standing on a corner of Lexington Avenue, Lewis passed out Cuomo palm cards to passersby. An elderly Hispanic man in a MAGA cap asked to take some cards with him to The Bronx. Lewis bade him goodbye: “Vote for Cuomo — and make America great again!”

Instead of backing Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, Lewis threw her support behind Cuomo — a Democrat now running as an independent on the “Fight and Deliver” ballot line — because she thinks he still has the best chance to win the election. “At the end of the day, he will be a good mayor,” Lewis said of Cuomo. “A vote for Sliwa is a vote for Mamdani.” On her Instagram account, she has made no secret of her disdain for Mamdani, recently posting a video urging her fellow Republicans to prevent, as she put it, “a communist mayor.” Wearing a MAGA hat and a Trump shirt, she implored her followers, “I need you to hold your nose. I need you to vote for Cuomo.” With the Nov. 4 election looming, Cuomo’s path to winning the mayoral race is to consolidate the anti-Mamdani vote. But with Mamdani’s double-digit lead in polls — and in a city where a majority of voters are registered Democrats — it’s a tall order, even with Mayor Eric Adams out of the race. Cuomo’s best shot at getting more votes is to turn out conservative independents and Republicans — without alienating liberals and Democrats.

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Lead Stories

Gov. Greg Abbott's campaign fundraises off Texas National Guard deployment

Gov. Greg Abbott was quick to agree to send Texas soldiers to Chicago at President Donald Trump's request, and now the Texas Republican is using the issue to raise campaign funds as he seeks a record fourth term. In a message Monday — the first of at least three his campaign has sent this week — Abbott framed it as a move to defend the nation, even as local leaders have likened the deployment to an “invasion.” “The liberals are FURIOUS, but this fight goes far beyond Illinois and Oregon — it’s about whether we let the radical Left weaken law and order across America,” Abbott said.

The message went out less than 24 hours after the Republican said he had authorized the president to call up 400 members of the Texas National Guard — and apparently before they had even left the state. More than an hour later, the governor posted a picture of soldiers boarding planes to Illinois, writing they were “deploying now.” On Tuesday afternoon, his campaign sent another fundraising message, touting his decision to authorize Texas troops to “support President Trump's mission.” It urged supporters to “rush a donation of any amount to show YOU support law and order” and offered a “FREE ‘Make America Texas’ drink cooler” in exchange. The messaging around the deployment is the latest example of Abbott — long viewed as a possible presidential contender — framing his actions as protecting not just Texas, but the entire nation. The governor regularly argued he was defending the country against an “invasion” with his border security crackdown while President Joe Biden was in office. On Wednesday, his campaign sent a fundraising message connecting the two.

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Texas’ blue-state deployments shred relations between governors

The deployment of Texas National Guard troops to Illinois at the behest of President Trump has divided the nation’s governors, severing the bonds between state leaders who have long portrayed themselves as above the partisan fray. The Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, along with Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, both Democrats, have threatened to leave the once-chummy National Governors Association, a group formed more than 100 years ago and dedicated to finding areas of bipartisan agreement even in fractious political times. Instead, Democratic governors are accusing Republicans, especially Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, of a betrayal, even an “invasion” of their states. “Greg Abbott is a tool of Donald Trump, he’s his lackey,” said Mr. Pritzker in an interview with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC this week. Mr. Abbott returned fire, calling Mr. Pritzker “clueless.”

Such animus would once have been considered unusual or out of bounds for governors, who generally have seen themselves as pragmatic politicians, required to balance budgets and find solutions for their states, regardless of party. The governors have hosted “disagree better” road shows in between twice-annual meetings and White House galas marked by bonhomie. But the deployment of about 200 troops from Texas to the Chicago area, and the threatened movement of Texas troops to Portland, Ore., have ruptured such comity. “The president wants to call up National Guard troops in a way that we don’t believe is lawful,” Gov. Tina Kotek of Oregon, a Democrat, said in an interview. “That should concern every governor, Republican or Democrat.” Democratic governors pleaded with Mr. Abbott to rebuff the president’s troop request. The Texan in turn castigated his Democratic colleagues as weak on crime and illegal immigration. For Mr. Pritzker and Mr. Abbott, the rift over Texas troops is only the latest in an ongoing and bitter public feud that has not been a model of respectful debate.

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Israel and Hamas agree to first phase of Gaza peace plan

Israel and Hamas agreed Wednesday to pause fighting in Gaza so that the remaining hostages there can be freed in the coming days in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, accepting elements of a plan put forward by the U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration that would represent the biggest breakthrough in months in the devastating 2-year-old war. Hamas said it had agreed to a deal that will lead to the end of the war in Gaza, the withdrawal of Israeli troops, the entry of aid into Gaza and the exchange of prisoners for hostages. While many questions remain, the sides appear to be closer than they have been in several months to ending a war that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, destroyed most of Gaza and ignited other armed conflicts across the Middle East.

The head of paramedics in northern Gaza says the agreement between Israel and Hamas is a “moment of joy” because it means an end to the relentless bloodshed and killings that have claimed tens of thousands of lives. Fares Afana said his team’s priority is to remove bodies from under the rubble and on the roads which were inaccessible during intense bombings. “After two years of this genocide, injustice and oppression, we are physically and psychologically tired,” he added. “Only now after the ceasefire announcement, we can cry for our colleagues who were killed.” Over 130 Palestinian paramedics were killed, many during rescue operations, in the two years of war, according to the Palestinian civil defense. Afana said the task ahead will take months if not years. “The situation is disastrous. It will need months, maybe years, before we can restore even a sliver of normalcy in Gaza city and the territory.”

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Why Schumer thinks Dems have momentum

It’s Day 9 of the government shutdown. There’s no resolution in sight to this crisis. When you take stock of where things stand, it’s not difficult to see why House and Senate Democrats feel good about their strategy — for now. It’s important to note that Democrats instigated this shutdown. They rejected a “clean” funding proposal and demanded significant and expensive health care policy changes in exchange for their votes. But as we enter the second week of the standoff, Democrats are nowhere close to buckling. In fact, top Democrats feel like they’re gaining political momentum. We interviewed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday in his Capitol office, where the New York Democrat was as bullish as he’s ever been about his shutdown strategy. “Every day gets better for us,” Schumer asserted.

“It’s because we’ve thought about this long in advance and we knew that health care would be the focal point on Sept. 30 and we prepared for it … Their whole theory was — threaten us, bamboozle us, and we would submit in a day or two.” Schumer is right that he’s been able to block the clean CR for much longer than most Republicans — and many House Democrats — thought. After three Senate Democrats peeled off during the first day of floor votes, Schumer has stopped any further defections. Some of this is because Trump isn’t fully dialed into the funding crisis. The president veered way off-message earlier this week when he said he wants an Obamacare deal without specifying that the government has to reopen first. What Schumer is banking on is that Trump gets engaged at some point and wants to cut a deal on Obamacare subsidies to reopen the government. There’s been no real sign of this yet, even as Schumer insists Republicans are “feeling the heat.” Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and many Trump aides remain confident they have the upper hand. Trump is essentially letting Johnson and Thune run the show. Why Democrats feel good. Trump and top administration officials have threatened to enact mass layoffs, restructure federal agencies and cut benefits during a shutdown. They’ve done none of that up until now. We’ll see what happens at Trump’s Cabinet meeting today.

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State Stories

8 people allegedly affiliated with Houston woman in illegal abortion case indicted, Paxton says

Eight people affiliated with Houston-area health clinics accused of providing illegal abortions and operating without licenses were indicted, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said on Wednesday. The announcement of more arrests in the case championed by Paxton comes a month after Maria Rojas, a Houston-area midwife who operated the clinics, was indicted on 15 felony charges stemming from allegations that she performed illegal abortions at the Waller County clinics. Rojas became the first person to be arrested under the state's near-total abortion ban. Several counts outlined in the June indictment against Rojas accuse her of assisting nine different clinic employees to practice medicine without a license. The indictment also accuses Rojas of performing abortions on two different women in which at least one unborn child died during the medical procedures, according to court documents.

Yaimara Hernandez Alvarez, Alina Valeron Leon, Dalia Coromoto Yanez, Yhonder Lebrun Acosta, Liunet Grandales Estrada, Gerardo Otero Aguero, Sabiel Bosch Gongora and Jose Manuel Cendan Ley were indicted for their alleged roles in the illegal abortion case, Paxton said. Charging documents against the eight people facing new allegations in the case were not immediately available on Wednesday. Court filings showed medical malpractice charges were filed against some of those accused on Sept. 26 and Oct. 2. Ley was first arrested in March and is facing allegations that he performed an abortion on a patient who did not have a life-threatening physical condition that placed her at risk of death or posed a risk of impairment, according to court documents. Ley allegedly was not a licensed physician at the time he performed the abortion. On Monday, Alvarez’s bond conditions were uploaded to a folder of public court documents shared by the Waller County District Attorney's Office earlier this year. The conditions order Alvarez to stay away from the clinics in Cypress, Spring, Hempstead, Richmond and Bay City.

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Rep. Marc Veasey of Fort Worth running for reelection. But where? And for what?

U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey says he is running for reelection after he was drawn out of his congressional district. The Democrat from Fort Worth has represented Congressional District 33 since 2013. Whether he will run for that North Texas district or Congressional District 30, currently held by Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Dallas Democrat who was also drawn out of her home district, is up in the air, according to a source familiar with the situation. “Let me shut this down right now: I absolutely intend on running for reelection,” Veasey said in a Wednesday statement.

“Any suggestion otherwise is a flat-out lie. I’ve spent my career fighting for North Texas, and I’m not about to back down now. I will continue fighting every single day for the issues that matter to our families, workers, and communities. I will be on the ballot, I’m in the fight, and I fully intend to win. End of story.” The announcement comes after lawmakers approved a new congressional map drawn mid-decade to boost Republican performance in the 2026 midterm election. Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bill with the new map on Aug. 29. The boundaries are facing legal challenges, with a key hearing in El Paso this week. The map moves Congressional District 33, which includes parts of Tarrant and Dallas counties, fully into Dallas County. Veasey would no longer live within the district under the new boundaries, though residing in the district is not a requirement to run for Congress.

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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declares war on the state's rainbow crosswalks

As federal and state governments ramp up their war on LGBTQ+ identities, rainbow crosswalks are next on the chopping block. And Texas is doubling down. On Wednesday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Texas Department of Transportation to withhold funding from cities and counties that do not remove "political ideologies," a thinly veiled threat that mirrors both the Trump administration and the state of Florida's crusade against rainbow crosswalks. "Texans expect their taxpayer dollars to be used wisely, not advance political agendas on Texas roadways," Abbott said in a statement. "Any city that refuses to comply with the federal road standards will face consequences including the withholding or denial of state and federal road funding and suspension of agreements with TxDOT.”

Abbott's move comes a week after crews restored the rainbow crosswalks in Montrose, Houston's historic gayborhood. Abbott did not cite any particular reason for his move, but just this week, far-right provocateur Libs of TikTok ripped a video of the crosswalk's reinstallation from the Houston Chronicle's Instagram account, posted about it on X, and begged Abbott to intervene. State Rep. Brian Harrison (R-Midlothian), on a winning streak after getting a Texas A&M University professor fired for teaching about transgender people, similarly posted about the Montrose crosswalk. While it's unclear if Abbott is taking orders from Libs of TikTok and Harrison, the timing was curious. How far-reaching Abbott's new directive may be isn't clear. While the statement makes clear that the governor wants "political agendas" removed from city streets, it also notes that federal transportation guidelines ban "non-standard surface markings, signage, and signals that do not directly support traffic control or safety," including the use of "symbols, flags, or other markings conveying social, political, or ideological messages." That could be so broad as to require the removal of the massive "TEXAS" painted through the University of Texas' campus in Austin, as the Houston Chronicle's Isaac Yu noted.

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Metro to remove pride crosswalk after Abbott threatens to withhold funding from Texas cities

Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday threatened to withhold road funding from cities and counties if they do not remove “political ideologies” from their streets, joining the Trump administration in declaring rainbow crosswalks a dangerous distraction. Abbott directed the Texas Department of Transportation to crack down on cities and counties with symbols, flags or other markings on any roads that convey social, political or ideological messages. That includes Houston, San Antonio and Austin, which all have rainbow crosswalks. “Texans expect their taxpayer dollars to be used wisely, not advance political agendas on Texas roadways," Abbott said in a statement. "To keep Texans moving safely and free from distraction, we must maintain a safe and consistent transportation network across Texas.”

In an email Wednesday evening, Metro said that it would re-stripe the pavement at the intersection of Westheimer and Taft to ensure the crosswalks are in compliance with federal design and safety standards. It said the decision came after Abbott's statement and recent correspondence from the Texas Department of Transportation. The city of Houston had just repainted the rainbow crosswalks earlier this month after they were removed temporarily for construction. "We recognize the significance this crosswalk has to the community, which is why our project team restored the infrastructure to its pre-construction condition," the email read. "However, given the recent directive, we will comply with the order to preserve support that is essential to our mission of providing safe, clean, reliable, and accessible transit to all communities that depend on our services." The directive comes after U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy this summer wrote to governors urging them to join a national roadway safety initiative aimed at removing artwork and political messaging from streets.

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Eaton completes $100 Million expansion at Texas facility to support grid modernization

Eaton Corporation on Wednesday said that it has completed a $100 million expansion of its manufacturing facility in Nacogdoches, Texas, doubling U.S. production capacity for voltage regulators and three-phase transformers. It aims to meet rising demand for solutions that accelerate grid modernization. The first shipment of regulators from the new production lines was delivered to Oncor, Texas’ largest energy delivery company. The facility expansion, which added 200,000 square feet, strengthens Eaton’s position as a leading supplier of grid modernization products and is part of the company’s broader $1 billion investment in North American manufacturing.

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Texas companies threatened with boycotts amid National Guard deployment

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has authorized the deployment of hundreds of Texas National Guard troops to Illinois and Oregon to "safeguard" U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, despite pushback from those state leaders. Now, consumers in his home state and beyond want to wield their purchasing power to show their disapproval of Abbott's troop deployment. A list of Texas companies to boycott in response to the deployment is catching steam. In what's being dubbed "the Governor Abbott Boycott," consumers are holding back from purchases with the most recognizable Texas-based companies, such as Tesla, Exxon Mobil and Southwest and American Airlines. A 1903 law says the president can call upon the National Guard in instances of invasion, a rebellion (or the threat of one), or if the federal government cannot enforce laws "with the regular forces."

But some democratic leaders argue the deployment of the soldiers, who the Texas Military Department oversees with Abbott as its commander-in-chief, is unlawful. Guard members are often deployed in response to natural disasters, but have previously been used for non-traditional deployments such as Operation Lone Star in 2021, the Texas Tribune reports. Consumers are now hoping to hurt the pockets of Texas companies to grab Abbott's attention. "Good luck with your next quarterly reports," a statement attached to the list reads. It also warns that any other state that deploys its National Guard can "expect the same fate." This boycott is the latest effort to persuade state leaders to take a different policy approach by invoking a potential economic impact. For example, after a 2021 law passed that banned abortions after six weeks, before many know that they're pregnant, some companies reacted with swift opposition, saying restrictions on reproductive health are "bad for business."

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DART’s big problem and the little group that wants to solve it

If there is a silver lining to Dallas Area Rapid Transit’s no good, very bad year—historic budget cuts, a revolt by several of its member cities, a lingering legislative threat that could have decimated its financing, and, worst of all, two murders on trains over a single week this fall—it is found in a seventh-floor conference room at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, where about 40 people are spending their Saturday afternoon politely discussing the agency’s future. This is the monthly meeting of the Dallas Area Transit Alliance, or DATA, a Discord chat that quickened into an advocacy group of riders who desire to be an organized response to the challenging headwinds facing the region’s public transportation agency. The group got to work in the summer of 2024, once city councils in Plano and Irving began passing resolutions in support of reducing their transit contributions by 25 percent, which led to state legislative action. “We’re worried about DART and recognize they’re in a tenuous spot,” says Connor Hulla, the group’s president. “Our place has primarily been in awareness and making sure the opposition to this is known about and felt by our elected representatives. To that end, I know we’ve succeeded.”

DATA’s work has attracted the attention of DART’s top executives, who have never needed a friend more. While not exactly enormous, some of DATA’s meetings have attracted 80 people and its mailing list has grown to about 1,500. The DATA founders realized that riders tend to get crowded out of such high-stakes political discussions. Which makes this Saturday gathering something of a salve—a grassroots rider-led group, perhaps the first of its kind in North Texas, trying its hardest to recenter the discussion on how to make the agency better. September marked a cruel capstone to a difficult year for DART. Lagging sales tax revenue as well as higher contracting and operational costs—inflation, but also the cost of running trains along the forthcoming Silver Line from Plano to DFW International Airport when it opens this month—resulted in the largest cuts in the agency’s 42-year history. Hundreds packed meetings to oppose the reductions. When DART announced it would need to cut $60 million from its operations budget, its chief executive and board president called DATA’s leaders to sell them on the plan. (The agency was able to knock that number down to about $36.8 million, mostly through delaying construction projects and freezing open jobs.) Starting in January, seven low-performing routes will be eliminated. Frequency during peak times on weekday mornings has slowed from 15 to 20 minutes on rail and some buses, and DART also increased the cost of single-ride tickets and curb-to-curb paratransit fees. According to a federally mandated Title VI analysis, the frequency changes on five routes will disproportionately affect low-income riders. DART will prioritize those if the agency is able to fund them in the future. After officials walked DATA through the proposals, the group passed a resolution to “accept” the cuts and called off its opposition—they felt the agency had no other choice.

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Texas systems review course descriptions, syllabi, as critics scrutinize them

s conservative Texas politicians identify and target faculty who teach about gender identity, officials at six Texas public university systems have ordered reviews of curriculum, syllabi and course descriptions. The impetus is clear: Texas A&M University fired a professor, demoted two administrators and pushed out its president after conservative politicians lambasted the institution for a lesson on gender identity in a children’s literature class. Their criticism hinged on the fact that the topic was not reflected in the brief course catalog description for the class. Before he resigned, Texas A&M president Mark Welsh ordered an audit of all courses at the flagship campus, which the system Board of Regents quickly extended to all Texas A&M institutions. “The Board has called for immediate and decisive steps to ensure that what happened this week will not be repeated,” the regents wrote in a statement posted on X.

“To that end, the Regents have asked the Chancellor to audit every course and ensure full compliance with applicable laws.” Other systems soon followed. On Sept. 29, University of North Texas system chancellor Michael Williams instructed the president of each institution to “conduct an expedited review of their academic courses and programs—including a complete syllabus review to ensure compliance with all current applicable state and federal laws, executive orders, and court orders,” he wrote in a letter. The review is due Jan. 1. The University of Texas system is reviewing all courses on gender identity to “ensure compliance and alignment with applicable law and state and federal guidance, and to make sure any courses that are taught on a U.T. campus are aligned with the direction and priorities of the Board of Regents,” according to a statement from the system. The review will be discussed at the Board of Regents meeting in November. System leaders at several public institutions have cited Texas House Bill 229, President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order and a Jan. 30 letter from Gov. Greg Abbott that said, “All Texas agencies must ensure that agency rules, internal policies, employment practices, and other actions comply with the law and the biological reality that there are only two sexes—male and female.” Yet no current federal or state laws prohibit public university professors from teaching about transgender identity.

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Texas Tech athletics introduces modernized Double T logo

Texas Tech Athletics has introduced a new, modernized Double T logo that will be worn on all athletics uniforms beginning with the 2026-27 academic year and will represent the athletics brand for years to come. The new Double T logo features a clean, flat design that combines many traditional aspects of Texas Tech’s primary mark with a modern twist, incorporating proportional design elements and updated color schemes.

“The Double T represents one of the most recognizable logos in all of collegiate athletics and a point of pride for all Red Raiders,” Director of Athletics Kirby Hocutt said. “As we celebrate Homecoming this weekend and welcome back thousands of alumni to campus, this is the perfect opportunity to unveil our new branding that will resonate with our history and define Texas Tech Athletics for future generations of Red Raiders. This multi-year project will propel our athletics brand further into this new era of college athletics, where Texas Tech will continue to lead at a national level.” The new design will be implemented in all Texas Tech athletic facilities and throughout the athletic department’s branding over the next few months, leading to a full launch in spring 2026.

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Longtime Dallas Morning News editorial and business writer Jim Mitchell has died at 71

Jim Mitchell, longtime member of The Dallas Morning News editorial board, died quietly in home hospice care in Carrollton on Tuesday morning from prostate cancer. He was 71. He retired earlier this year as senior editorial writer due to his health issues — having spent 41 years at The News, starting as a business news reporter in 1984 before moving to the editorial board in 1998. “Jim was a man of deep conscience and empathy and someone devoted to practicing journalism the right way,” said Editorial Page editor Rudy Bush. “His intellect, curiosity and just all around decency helped shape this newspaper’s perspective for decades. He is greatly missed.” The News was his extended family, and he was devoted to it. “Jim’s four decades at the paper showed just how dedicated an employee he was,” said Keven Ann Willey, who headed the editorial board for nearly 16 years until February 2018. “Day in and day out, Jim was always the first one in the office.”

She noticed after her second year at the paper that Mitchell hadn’t put in for any vacation. “I said, ‘You have to take a vacation or I’m going to assign you one.’ He was such a Steady Eddie.” Mitchell graduated from Loyola University and earned a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University. His first job out of college was at the Times-Union in Rochester, N.Y. Jim Memmott, currently a columnist for Gannett, met Mitchell when Memmott signed on at the Times-Union in 1980. “His desk was beside mine, and he was a welcoming colleague,” Memmott recalled. “He’d been told that it was a good idea to read your stories aloud before sending them off to the editors. That helped in catching glitches. “So Jim would read what he’d written, always in a quiet, soft voice. And, inevitably, I would think he was talking to me. ‘What, Jim?’ I would ask. I’d say it again until he, or I realized what was going on.” Memmott overheard Mitchell’s one-sided interview with the widow for an obit he was writing. Mitchell repeated her answers for her husband’s hobbies: Kodak Pioneer Club and bowling. “Finally, Jim recounted to me afterward, the widow told him, ‘I guess he was kind of dull.’ I don’t know if Jim used that quote. He was a good guy.” Mitchell’s second job out of college was with The Dallas Morning News.

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Blood sport: North Texas is hub for cockfighting industry at home and abroad

The 58 hens and roosters were packed into wooden crates at a quarantine farm in Celina, loaded into a van and shuttled to DFW International Airport, where their journey was just beginning. A few apple slices and some straw lined their cramped boxes, far from the breeding farms in Oklahoma, Kentucky and Alabama where they were hatched. With a stop in Korea, their plane landed 38 hours later in the Philippines, the cockfighting capital of the world. The birds traveled through what animal welfare experts say is a hotbed of illicit cockfighting activity flourishing in plain sight in the Dallas region. With spotty law enforcement crackdowns, weak criminal penalties and ties to international battle pits, the corridor between Tulsa and Dallas has become the “primary hub of illegal cockfighting” in the U.S., according to a report released Wednesday by the nonprofit Animal Wellness Action.

Although cockfighting is illegal in all 50 states, raising gamefowl for pleasure is not. That loophole can serve as a cover story for American breeders and shippers feeding the industry in places like the Philippines and Mexico, where it is legal. It’s a federal crime in the U.S. to transport animals for the purpose of fighting, and welfare experts say there is no legitimate reason to ship aggressive strains of roosters across oceans for anything other than blood sport. But the Philippines import permit for the March 28 flight from DFW Airport organized by North Texas Livestock Shipping Services declared the birds were for breeding, not fighting. That’s what made the shipment legal, said Korean Air spokesperson Diane Yang. Animal Wellness Action founder Wayne Pacelle has heard this before. He alleges it is a well-worn cover used by breeders and shippers to obfuscate their illegal activities. “It’s like saying, ‘We don’t know what the people are going to do with this cocaine,’” Pacelle said.

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Medal of Honor Museum CEO Chris Cassidy to step down after four-year mission

When the National Medal of Honor Museum opened in Arlington earlier this year, it marked the culmination of an intense four-year journey for President and CEO Chris Cassidy and the team he built. Now, with his mission accomplished, Cassidy says it's time to take a well-deserved break and make room for the museum's next leader. In August 2021, the former NASA astronaut and Navy SEAL became the first president and CEO of a museum that didn't exist yet. All he had to start with was a piece of dirt in Arlington — and a mission to raise money. Cassidy reflected on what he wishes he had known when he first accepted the role in August 2021. Laughing, when I asked him, "Do we need an hour? No! I knew fundraising was a part of it, but I had never fundraised before." Cassidy says it took him about six months to realize that "fundraising truly is a relationship-building business."

By the groundbreaking in March 2022, Cassidy's relationship-building was paying off. Former President George W. Bush accompanied 15 Medal of Honor recipients and hundreds of special guests. The money began to flow in—but so did the pressure to make the museum extraordinary. "We actually got going pretty far down the path of the design of the museum, the layout, the nature of the exhibits. And it was kind of like, we all woke up one day and said, 'This is not right, it's not on the mark,'" Cassidy said. "We basically erased the whole thing halfway through." After redesigning to the incredible layout visitors see today — and raising $300 million — Cassidy and his team completed three years of nonstop construction to meet the March 25, 2025, deadline: National Medal of Honor Day. "Grand opening was just a magical day, the whole thing. Heck of a day," Cassidy said. "There were so many people who got us to that day, and sharing it with all those people was just something special." To date, the museum has welcomed thousands of visitors, each soaking in the curated personal stories behind those who have received the nation's highest honor for valor in combat. As for what Cassidy says he will miss most? It happened only days before this interview. "I looked around, and I remember just sitting off to the side and watching and thinking, this is the perfect day," Cassidy said. "We've got young people, elderly people, we've got active duty military, and corporate people all enjoying what we've got to offer here. I'll miss that."

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David Simpson: Imagine what our regional water district can be

Few, if any, people attended the special meeting of the Northeast Texas Municipal Water District board of directors Sept. 5. Perhaps that’s the way some directors like it. The agenda, posted at 7:51 p.m. on Labor Day, had one action item: the termination agreement with US Steel. NETMWD’s website promises “alerts” for subscribers, but none was issued. Why was the matter handled hastily and not in a regular meeting? Which agreement with US Steel was terminated — the treated drinking water amendment or all of it? When I asked these questions at the regular meeting, President Jimmy Cox directed me to send my questions to its executive officers. I did so as an Avinger alderman, but have received no answers.

For years, the district did not enforce the minimum payment for its treated water contract with US Steel. It only did so lately after a public information request was made and district officials knew its practice could be publicized. Was the termination related to this? Cox promised transparency after the district tried for years behind closed doors to sell 100,000 acre-feet of water from Lake O’ of the Pines to the Dallas suburbs, riling many East Texans. His boasts of reform are like clouds without rain. In March, the directors acted on an item not on the agenda with no discussion. In April, the board curtailed public comments and ratified its actions taken in the March meeting as a result of a lawsuit initiated by Daingerfield Aldermen Mike Carter and myself to enforce the Texas Open Meetings Act. In July, at the end of deliberating an agenda item, Cox stated that board members would discuss the matter amongst themselves and perhaps take it up at the next meeting. The expectation appeared a common practice and was stated so baldly and contrary to the open meetings act, that director Patrick Smith interjected that directors should not talk about the matter outside a public meeting.

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Onetime Catholic Charities Fort Worth leader returns as next president, CEO

Heather Reynolds is returning to lead Catholic Charities Fort Worth more than a month after the nonprofit suddenly parted ways with its former CEO. Officials from the nonprofit announced Reynolds, who oversaw the charity from 2005 to 2018, as its next president and CEO on Tuesday. For the past seven years, she’s been at the University of Notre Dame, where she has served as the Michael L. Smith managing director at the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities. The appointment drew support from members of the nonprofit’s board and Fort Worth Catholic Bishop Michael Olson, according to an Oct. 7 press release.

In August, Catholic Charities Fort Worth officials announced that former CEO Michael Iglio was no longer with the nonprofit. No details of the separation were released, and Beth Kwasny was appointed interim leader. Iglio’s departure came after the nonprofit reversed a decision to end its federally funded role in leading Texas’ refugee resettlement. Catholic Charities Fort Worth “took a different approach with the hiring of this CEO role by seeking out talent ourselves,” said Allison Rix, the interim board chair who oversaw the CEO selection committee. “When the selection committee heard Heather was returning to Fort Worth, we actively pursued her given her unmatched strategic vision, fundraising and leadership skills both at this agency and at Notre Dame,” Rix said. “It’s one of the most exciting hires we’ve made as we have agreed to a long-term tenure to ensure not only stability for today, but also the runway and planning required to eventually hire and train a successor under her leadership someday.” Reynolds was with Catholic Charities Fort Worth for 17 years. She joined the organization as a 22-year-old intern in the clinical counseling department. She became its CEO at 25. The Catholic nonprofit has a long history of serving the most vulnerable, Reynolds said. “There is so much work to be done in service to those struggling in poverty,” she said. “I can’t wait to help take what we started and scale it with the people and community that already have my heart.” Reynolds will formally step into the role in February. Kwasny is to remain interim CEO until then.

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Ag Commissioner Sid Miller wants to stop screwworms with pesticide bait, but the USDA is hesitant

Mexican agriculture officials confirmed a second case of New World screwworm in Nuevo León earlier this week, as the parasitic pest continues to advance north through Mexico. New World screwworms are actually flies whose larvae burrow into the open wounds of mammals, causing infection and even death. They used to be a big problem for Texas ranchers, until they were pushed out of the state in the 1960s. The screwworms are on their way back though, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to control them.

I’m a little frustrated that I can’t get them to use the fly bait. The bait is… You don’t put it in a trap. You actually just put it out. It comes in a pellet. So you scatter the pellets out and the flies are drawn to it by an attractor. And then when they eat the pellet, of course it kills them. They’ve used it before. I mean, it’s a USDA program that was used in 1976. We had 29,000 cases of screwworms in the fall of ’76. We put out the fly bait and we went from in the fall of ’76, 29,000 cases. In the spring of ’77, we had 39 cases. So it’s almost 100% effective," Miller said. " They’re very reluctant, actually, to use the fly bait. They say it’s environmentally unsound. I keep asking why, and they say, ‘well, it would probably kill the good flies, too.’ My answer is good flies? I mean, what’s a good fly? That’s kind of like a good fire ant. I don’t care. I mean we’re going to kill some house flies, or you’re afraid we’re gonna kill some stable flies? So I don’t know what a good fly is, but anyway, that’s the reason. I don’t think it’s a sound reason. I think it is a little ridiculous myself, but anyway, I’m going to keep working it."

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UT professor named MacArthur Fellow for research in structural biology

Structural biologist at the University of Texas at Austin Jason McLellan has been named as a 2025 MacArthur Fellow for his research and contribution to the development of vaccines for many infectious diseases. McLellan is one of 22 fellows to receive this prestigious award, commonly referred to as the “genius grant.” Recipients of the five-year fellowship receive an $800,000 “no-strings attached” stipend, which may be used as they see fit. Fellows are nominated for their originality, talent and proven dedication to their work and selected by a rotating committee of leaders across various disciplines. “I’m extremely honored to be chosen to join this prestigious group of scholars, scientists, teachers and artists,” McLellan said in a news release. “I also want to give my heartfelt thanks to all the mentors, collaborators and students and fellows who have contributed to my success. None of this happens in a vacuum — science is a team effort.”

A UT professor of molecular biosciences and Robert A. Welch Chair in chemistry, McLellan’s work to understand how proteins are structured and how they function has contributed to the development of vaccines and potential treatments for viral infections that impact billions of people. In his early career, he made major strides toward the development of an effective treatment for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)‚ a common respiratory virus, especially dangerous for young children and elderly people. McLellan and his team were able to describe, for the first time, the atomic-level structure of the RSV fusion protein, which enables viruses to invade a host’s cells. They were able to engineer the protein in a way that aids the immune system’s ability to fight it. McLellan’s discoveries led to the first successful RSV vaccine, which is now produced by GSK, Pfizer and Moderna. “Jason McLellan’s research has had a profound impact on the world, including his efforts to combat common viruses such as RSV,” said UT President Jim Davis. “We are excited for him to receive this recognition and proud to count him as a member of the UT faculty.”

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National Stories

Former FBI director Comey pleads not guilty to federal charges of lying to Congress

Former FBI Director James Comey has pleaded not guilty to charges of false statements and obstructing a congressional proceeding. Comey entered his plea via his lawyer Pat Fitzgerald during his arraignment in federal court on Wednesday in Alexandria, Va. The judge on the case set a trial date of Jan. 5, 2026, and Comey is set to be released with no conditions. "It's the honor of my life to represent Jim Comey in this matter," Fitzgerald said at the courthouse, where Comey's family also attended the arraignment. The former FBI director, who has long been one of President Trump's most vocal critics, was indicted last month on two counts stemming from his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2020. The Justice Department secured the indictment just days after Trump demanded a faster pace from prosecutors in their investigation against Comey.

The top federal prosecutor in Northern Virginia, Erik Siebert, had cast doubt on the strength of the evidence against Comey. The Trump administration then replaced Siebert with Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide who previously served as a personal attorney for Trump. Halligan, who secured the grand jury indictment against Comey, is bringing in prosecutors from North Carolina to assist on the case. Comey's lawyers said they plan to file two batches of motions to dismiss the case, centering on accusations of a vindictive or selective prosecution, and that Halligan was unlawfully appointed. They may also include allegations of "outrageous conduct" and problems with the grand jury process that indicted Comey last month. Trump has long railed against Comey, blaming the former FBI leader for the appointment of a special prosecutor who probed contacts between Russia and Trump's 2016 campaign through most of the president's first term in office.

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The bad blood between Trump and Pritzker goes back decades

President Trump’s declaration this week that Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker should be jailed is just the latest clash between two billionaires who are part of a decadeslong feud. The Republican president and Democratic governor have fought over the size of their fortunes as well as topics ranging from crime to immigration to democracy. Pritzker in recent days has questioned Trump’s mental acuity, suggesting America’s leader has dementia. The bad blood has been on the rise since late August, when Trump said he would act on his yearslong threat of deploying military troops in Chicago to combat crime. Trump’s desire came to fruition this week as his administration federalized roughly 300 Illinois National Guard members and moved 200 Texas National Guard soldiers to the Chicago area.

Both see political gain in the fight. Trump has repeatedly turned to law-and-order themes to attack Democrats, while Pritzker is boosting his national profile by aggressively confronting the president. Pritzker, a potential 2028 presidential candidate who has won praise among Democrats for being one of Trump’s most vocal critics, calls the deployment unconstitutional. The state of Illinois and the city of Chicago filed a lawsuit Monday challenging the actions, and a judge set a Thursday hearing on their temporary restraining order request. Trump posted on social media Wednesday that Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson should be imprisoned for failing to do more to protect federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. He didn’t specify their alleged crimes. The bad history between Trump and the Pritzker family, a major Democratic Party force nationally, goes back to at least the 1990s and a Manhattan real-estate fight that included the governor’s now-deceased uncle, Jay Pritzker. “You’re a bad guy, Jay. I’m going to kick your ass,” Trump later recalled saying.

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Bluesky civil war shows free speech is harder than it looks

Last week, a joke familiar from X circulated on rival platform Bluesky: “(bluesky user bursts into Waffle House) OH SO YOU HATE PANCAKES??” It was obviously a jab at the moral intensity that now seems to define the site, and indeed much of the rest of the social media landscape. On most platforms such a joke might go viral for a day then fade. On Bluesky, it metastasised into something resembling a crisis. Bluesky CEO Jay Graber reposted the joke with a comment: “Too real. We’re going to try to fix this. Social media doesn’t have to be this way.” When a user shot back by calling for gender-critical journalist and researcher Jesse Singal to be banned from the platform, Graber responded playfully: “WAFFLES.” The word immediately became a meme, invoked as shorthand for everything that feels absurd about Bluesky’s internal politics, and revealed a divide over free speech and censorship that is roiling the platform.

“Harassing the mods into banning someone has never worked,” Graber argued. “And harassing people in general has never changed their mind.” On a different platform, this might have been received positively, yet almost since its inception as an independent company in 2021 (having previously been affiliated with Twitter) Bluesky has provided a more hostile environment for defences of free speech. The site’s early adopters imagined it as a sanctuary for Left-leaning netizens, especially trans users who fled X after Elon Musk’s takeover in 2022. Graber has always insisted her aim is a decentralised protocol, not a single moral community. However, reconciling that vision with the reason so many of Bluesky’s users are there in the first place is hard. One side frames moderation as solidarity; the other rejects moral authority. You can’t appeal to progressives, specifically, and have both. The underlying question is worth asking, despite the sensitivity of Bluesky’s user base. What kind of speech should a social network tolerate, and who should decide? That tension stretches back to the dawn of the virtual community. In the Eighties and Nineties, communities were experiments in free speech — but they frayed under disputes over tone, governance, and the limits of inclusion. The dream of a global public sphere often foundered on human nature. People want freedom, but also protection. “Safety” means different things to different people.

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Thinkers, dreamers, doers: Here's who made the 2025 MacArthur Fellow list

A cartographer, a composer, an archaeologist, a neurobiologist and an astrophysicist are among this year's MacArthur Fellows, one of the most prestigious cash awards given to "extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential," according to the MacArthur Foundation. Each Fellow will receive a no-strings attached award of $800,000. So how do you get one of these so-called "genius grants"'? You need to be nominated and vetted. It's a selection process that takes "many months and sometimes years," said Marlies Carruth, director of the MacArthur Fellows Program. MacArthur Fellows might work in vastly different fields but they share certain attributes like creativity, risk-taking, optimism and perseverance. They are "thinkers and doers and dreamers," said Carruth. Ángel F. Adames Corraliza of the University of Wisconsin-Madison is an atmospheric scientist whose research "sheds light on tropical atmospheric dynamics that influence global weather patterns and phenomena such as tropical cyclones and monsoons." Matt Black of Exeter, Calif., is a photographer focused on marginalized communities, from migrant farmworkers to boarded-up towns across the United States. Garrett Bradley of New Orleans is an artist and filmmaker whose work explores "questions of justice, public memory, and cultural visibility." Heather Christian of Beacon, N.Y., is a composer, lyricist, playwright, vocalist and member of The Arbonauts whose works explore "the possibility for the sacred and spiritual in our modern world."

Nabarun Dasgupta of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is an epidemiologist who brings "compassion, collaboration, and creative vision" to his work reducing the harms and deaths from drug use. Kristina Douglass of Columbia University, is an archaeologist involves local residents in her research, which "informs efforts to protect biodiversity hot spots while preserving the lifeways of those who live in them." Kareem El-Badry of the California Institute of Technology, is an astrophysicist whose research into all things about stars "has led to many discoveries —from overlooked dormant black holes in our galaxy to new classes of stars and coupled systems." Jeremy Frey of Eddington, Maine, is an artist using all-natural materials he harvests himself, Frey is "forging a singular aesthetic that blurs the boundaries between craft, design, and contemporary art." Hahrie Han of Johns Hopkins University is a political scientist whose research "advances scholars' understanding of what makes certain forms of civic participation more durable and impactful than others." Tonika Lewis Johnson of Chicago is a photographer and social justice artist who uses "art, storytelling and community organizing to help the larger public learn about and confront the history of segregation." Ieva Jusionyte of Brown University is a cultural anthropologist who immerses herself in the communities most affected by border security issues. Toby Kiers is an evolutionary biologist who studies the relationships between plants, fungi and other microbes, "one of the most important and widespread mutualisms on Earth."

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Trump fires Black officials from an overwhelmingly white administration

Robert E. Primus, the first Black board chairman of the federal regulator responsible for approving railroad mergers, at first thought there was something wrong with his work phone. When he couldn’t unlock it he switched to his personal phone, only to learn that President Trump had fired him by email, effective immediately. “I didn’t see it coming at all,” Mr. Primus, a Democrat, said in a recent interview. In January, the Trump administration had put a Republican in his place as the chairman of the Surface Transportation Board, which Mr. Primus saw as the president’s prerogative. But he had been appointed to the independent board by Mr. Trump in his first term and expected to remain on it, as had been the longstanding practice. Instead, he heard a White House spokesman say the day after his firing in August that he did not “align” with the president’s agenda.

Mr. Primus, a longtime congressional staff member and former lobbyist on transportation and national security matters, was reminded, he said, of Mr. Trump’s widely condemned comment during the 2024 campaign that immigrants were taking “Black jobs.” “Maybe he felt that this job was not intended for Blacks," said Mr. Primus, 55. He acknowledged he was speculating, he said, but “it’s legitimate speculation. Because if you look across the board, there is a pattern.” Mr. Primus is part of a series of firings of Black officials from high-profile positions in an overwhelmingly white administration that has banished all diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the federal government. And while there are no statistics on firings by race, an examination of the people Mr. Trump is appointing to fill those and other jobs shows a stark trend. Of the president’s 98 Senate-confirmed appointees to the administration’s most senior leadership roles in its first 200 days, ending on Aug. 7, only two, or 2 percent — Scott Turner, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and Earl G. Matthews, the Defense Department’s general counsel — are Black.

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Laszlo Krasznahorkai is awarded Nobel Prize in Literature

Laszlo Krasznahorkai was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.” The Nobel Prize is literature’s major honor, and typically the capstone to a writer’s career. Past recipients have included the authors Saul Bellow and Toni Morrison, the playwright Harold Pinter and, in 2016, Bob Dylan. Alongside prestige, the new laureate receives almost $1.2 million. The Swedish Academy, which organizes the prize, has tried in recent years to expand the diversity of authors awarded the prize, having faced criticism that the vast majority of laureates were men from Europe or North America. Last year’s recipient was Han Kang, the South Korean author best known for “The Vegetarian,” a surreal novel about a woman who stops eating and tries to live off sunlight.

Other recent laureates have included Abdulrazak Gurnah, a Tanzanian author whose novels dissect the immigrant experience and legacies of colonialism, and Annie Ernaux, a French writer whose books details moments from her life, whether everyday or traumatic. Before Thursday’s announcement, a British bookmaker had listed the favorites for this year’s prize as Can Xue, an avant-garde Chinese writer, and Krasznahorkai. Swedish journalists who follow the prize closely had predicted other winners. Björn Wiman, the culture editor for Dagens Nyheter newspaper, said in an email this week that he believed Christian Kracht, a Swiss novelist, had a strong chance. In September, “more or less the entire Swedish Academy” attended a seminar by Kracht at the Gothenburg Book Fair, Wiman said. Academy members had attended a similar talk by Herta Müller, a Romanian-born German novelist, before giving her the 2009 Nobel, Wiman added.

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The Bill Belichick nightmare just keeps getting worse

When the University of North Carolina hired Bill Belichick to coach their downtrodden football team, it looked like a sensational coup. Tickets sold out. Donations poured in. Excitement coursed through Chapel Hill at the prospect of the greatest coach of all time transforming a program that had become a national afterthought into one styled after his NFL success, from schemes and scouting to nutrition and development. But 10 months on, the enthusiasm has all but vanished. North Carolina’s blowout loss to a mediocre Clemson team on Saturday dropped their record to 2-3 and marked their third defeat by 25 points or more. Hopes that Belichick would turn the Tar Heels into a contender have quickly evaporated. Along the way, there have been a series of flare-ups involving his 24-year old girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, and signs of a frayed relationship with the New England Patriots, the franchise he led to six Super Bowl victories.

Even more troubling, the first month of this NFL season has raised questions about Belichick’s final years in the pros. His former players, such as current San Francisco 49ers quarterback Mac Jones, are thriving without him—and so is his former team. The Patriots are now 3-2 after Sunday night’s upset win over the Buffalo Bills, showing signs that they’re finally improving the talent-barren roster that Belichick assembled. All told, it paints a bleak picture of both the 73-year-old’s chances to fix a college program—and to revitalize his own career in the process. “We just got to do a better job of coaching, a better job playing, and just eliminate the mistakes that are fixable,” Belichick said after last weekend’s latest defeat. “We’ll get ready to go and keep improving and keep fixing the things that we need to fix.” After Belichick’s exit from the Patriots following the 2023 season, it was something of a surprise when he didn’t immediately get another NFL head coaching opportunity. Despite the Patriots’ struggles in the years after Tom Brady’s departure, Belichick’s genius remains the stuff of legend—and no coach has more Super Bowl rings to prove it. One year later, though, Belichick had a surprise of his own: After decades in the NFL, he was going to the college game. He threw on a baby blue tie and brought the Belichick apparatus with him to North Carolina. He hired a staff that included his sons as assistant coaches and tabbed longtime NFL executive Michael Lombardi to be the Tar Heels’ general manager.

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Copyright October 16, 2025, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved