Lead Stories

Tony Gonzales admits affair with aide Regina Ann Santos-Aviles

After dodging questions about it for months, U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales on Wednesday acknowledged having an affair with Regina Ann Santos-Aviles, a member of his congressional staff who later took her own life. "I made a mistake, and I had a lapse in judgment and there was a lack of faith,” Gonzales said on “The Joe Pags Show,” a nationally syndicated San Antonio-based podcast hosted by conservative commentator Joe Pagliarulo. “I take full responsibility for those actions.” The admission comes as Gonzales seeks a fourth term representing Texas’ 23rd Congressional District. He finished second to challenger Brandon Herrera in Tuesday’s Republican primary, forcing a runoff in May.

Gonzales, 45, a married father of six, told Pagliarulo he had reconciled with his wife after the 2024 affair. “I've asked God to forgive me, which He has, and my faith is as strong as ever,” he said. “When you make mistakes like this, it's never easy. It humbles you, but it's important to kind of work through it all.” The congressman said he had “absolutely nothing to do" with Santos-Aviles' suicide in September 2025. Santos-Aviles, 35, who was married herself and had a young son, set herself on fire in her backyard in Uvalde. She died the next day. Police said they found no evidence of foul play and closed their investigation in November. The bipartisan House Ethics Committee voted Wednesday to establish an investigative subcommittee to examine whether Gonzales engaged in “sexual misconduct” toward a congressional staffer or “discriminated unfairly by dispensing special favors or privileges."

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Talarico looks like the usual Texas Democratic nominee. He won with a very different type of campaign.

He was a pastor in training quoting Scripture on the campaign trail who has called President Trump a “child of God.” She was a bomb-throwing, anti-Trump, self-styled “warrior” who once called Governor Greg Abbott “Governor Hot Wheels.” Can I make it any more obvious? This was a race largely of style, not substance, and the Democratic voters in Texas have put their faith in state Representative James Talarico over Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett to represent the party in the 2026 U.S. Senate election. In November, Talarico will face either incumbent Senator John Cornyn or Attorney General Ken Paxton, who have advanced to a GOP runoff election that will be held May 26. The campaign between Talarico and Crockett was hotly contested and at times flat-out ugly—perhaps in large part because of the stakes. As soon as Democrats got wind that Paxton, a candidate for whom “flawed” would be a kind descriptor, was running on the Republican side, they practically began salivating. This could be it, they reasoned: the first chance in three decades to actually turn a statewide Texas seat blue. More than that, it could provide a path for control of the upper chamber: Democrats need to gain four seats in the Senate to win the majority, and Texas is one of the few Republican holds potentially vulnerable to flipping. Now, how to stick the landing?

Talarico’s political ascent has been greatly helped by a knack for showmanship. While in the statehouse, he displayed a cunning eye for viral moments—his team expertly chopped his grillings of Republican opponents on the House floor and in committee hearings into clips all but guaranteed to do numbers on TikTok or Instagram. They did, and he cemented a reputation, aided by his biblical literacy, as a rising star adept at challenging the Christian nationalist faction of the GOP. “I feel like I’m kind of prepared for this kind of landscape, because I know how to get people’s attention, and, most importantly, I know what to do when I have it, usually,” Talarico told me last year, ever the former theater kid. “And I feel like that is the X factor in politics.” Last summer, he got everyone’s attention with an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience. His multihour discussion with the Trump-voting comedian whom other Democrats have shied away from was a good indication of what he planned to do with the nation’s attention, and of what kind of campaign he planned to run once he announced his Senate bid. He has peddled a message of unity, consciously crossing party lines to court voters in red counties and appeal to independents and moderates. His public faith—present even in his campaign slogan, “It’s time to start flipping tables,” a reference to Scripture—has been an advantage on this front.

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Republicans say the NRSC isn’t taking the midterms seriously

For Sen. Tim Scott’s birthday last year, the executive director of Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, Jennifer DeCasper, required all of her staff to take time off work and board a rented bus. They were going to surprise Scott, the organization’s chairman, at the airport. DeCasper had the group make a banner and signs celebrating their boss, and the whole event was filmed. DeCasper had staff edit the video and then posted it on her personal X account. The video, which was widely circulated and ridiculed among GOP senators and consultants, is indicative of what Republicans believe this year’s National Republican Senatorial Committee has become: unserious. NOTUS talked with over a dozen Senate GOP aides, strategists and other sources with knowledge of the NRSC.

They described an organization that has devolved into dysfunction. Both senators and the White House are growing more incensed with the campaign arm by the day, the sources say. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. While Republicans have a litany of complaints about how the NRSC is being run this cycle, the majority of their grievances land at the feet of two people: Scott and DeCasper. President Donald Trump’s team has been upset with NRSC leadership since before the current Congress began, two sources told NOTUS. They believed they were not properly read into hiring decisions at the committee, and they continue to be upset that some at the NRSC routinely appear to veer off message, the sources said. Senate Republicans and campaign consultants say they don’t think Scott is taking his job seriously, either, sources said.

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Trump mulls Noem firing

President Donald Trump has quietly asked Hill Republicans if he should fire Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the latest sign of her tenuous standing inside the West Wing, according to multiple Republicans who have spoken with the president. Even Speaker Mike Johnson speculated about the potential for a change at the top of DHS during a recent House Republican elected leadership retreat in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Trump dialed up some GOP senators after Noem testified in front of the Senate and House Judiciary panels on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively. Those appearances were marked by extraordinarily bitter exchanges between Noem and Democratic lawmakers, especially over Trump’s harsh immigration crackdown.

But some of the most notable exchanges, especially in the Senate hearing, were with Republicans. Trump was said to be especially upset about Noem’s response when Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) pressed her Tuesday about a government-funded ad campaign that Kennedy said only served to boost her own personal name recognition nationally. The $220 million contract for the ad campaign was awarded to a firm run by the husband of former DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin. The ads were filmed in October at Mount Rushmore. Under questioning from Kennedy, Noem said repeatedly that Trump personally approved the controversial ad blitz featuring her in the lead role. This has so angered Trump that Noem’s future at DHS may be at risk, we’re told. Kennedy: “The president approved ahead of time you spending $220 million running TV ads across the country in which you are featured prominently?” Noem: “Yes sir, we went through the legal processes …” Kennedy: “Did the president know you were gonna do this?” Noem: “Yes.” Kennedy: “He did?” Noem: “Uh huh, yes.” More from Kennedy: “They were effective in your name recognition. To me it puts the president in a terribly awkward spot.”

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State Stories

Creuzot concedes to Givens in Dallas County district attorney primary

Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot conceded Wednesday in the Democratic primary to former felony court judge Amber Givens, a shocking upset for the two-term chief prosecutor. In a statement, Creuzot thanked supporters, voters and his family, and congratulated Givens on her victory. “While the outcome was not what we had hoped for, I am proud of the work my team accomplished and the important conversations we advanced about justice, accountability, and public safety in Dallas County,” he said. Givens, who resigned from the 282nd District Court in December to challenge Creuzot, had been widely viewed as the underdog in the race.

Creuzot raised far more campaign money, collecting about $420,000 in contributions compared with roughly $20,000 for Givens. And he had the backing of Democrats locally and across the state. Givens also faced scrutiny last year after the State Commission on Judicial Conduct issued two sanctions, which she is appealing. A trial on the charges was held last week before a Special Court of Review at the state Supreme Court, but it could be several weeks before the three-judge panel issues a decision. As of early Wednesday afternoon, Givens had not yet released a statement on her win and didn’t immediately respond to a message from The Dallas Morning News seeking comment. Creuzot, a retired judge, campaigned on his record and highlighted changes he said reshaped the office. In his statement, he said the primary provided an opportunity to engage residents and highlight issues affecting the criminal justice system. “This is not the end of our work,” he said. “I remain committed to serving the people of Dallas County and ensuring justice, fairness, and accountability remain at the forefront of our community. I am grateful for the support and engagement of so many residents who made their voices heard at the polls.” Creuzot also congratulated Givens as she prepares to take over the office. No Republican filed in the primary. “Our democracy works best when we all participate,” he said. “I congratulate my opponent and wish her well as she takes on this important role in Dallas County.”

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Audit: Austin 'may not be able to' justify hundreds of millions in recent consultant spending

A recent audit found recurring issues with a sample of Austin's recent third-party general service contracts. (Ben Thompson/Community Impact) A new city audit revealed issues with Austin's frequent use of third-party contractors, including unclear justifications and reporting on work that recently cost nearly $300 million in less than three years. “The city may not be able to show why consultant services were needed or how they were used," Audit Manager Keith Salas said.

Contracting with consultants is common in Austin, with Salas noting that "virtually all" city departments are spending on third-party support. The practice grew increasingly expensive in the less than three-year period covered by the March audit, which looked at data from fiscal year 2022-23 through late FY 2024-25. Annual citywide consulting costs rose by more than $20 million, or about 25%, in that span. Annual consulting expenses surpassed $100 million for the first time with two months still remaining in FY 2024-25. Austin Energy and the economic development department each made up more than 20% of Austin's overall third-party spending on general services in the audited period. Those two departments alone spent nearly $125 million of the $279.3 million total used for consultants over that time.

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Marty Lancton fails to make runoff despite dwarfing opponents in fundraising

Patrick “Marty” Lancton, despite boasting major endorsements and a war chest that dwarfed his opponents', was dealt a surprise defeat Tuesday after he failed to secure a place in the Republican runoff for Harris County judge. While early polling pointed to a likely runoff between Lancton and Orlando Sanchez, Republican businessman Warren Howell managed to edge the political newcomer out. Lancton, a firefighter-turned-union-leader, held a narrow lead over Howell in early voting tallies, but an election day surge propelled Howell to second place by just a few hundred votes, according to unofficial election results. “Party primaries are unpredictable,” said Nancy Sims, a political science lecturer at the University of Houston. “It’s a family feud. Grassroots voters might support this aunt over that uncle or vice versa. Money certainly matters, but it can also be easily overcome at the grassroots level.”

Although the results of the primaries have yet to be certified, Lancton congratulated his two opponents and thanked supporters in a Wednesday morning statement. “We built this campaign from nothing," Lancton said. "It was an idea rooted in service to our community. Thank you to the countless volunteers and to the tens of thousands of voters in Harris County that believed in our mission." Howell in a Wednesday statement, said he was honored to have made the runoff, and had done so "against the odds." "To the supporters of the candidates who did not advance, I want to say this: you care deeply about the future of Harris County, and your voices are important," Howell said. "I invite you to join us. Together, our campaign is building a coalition of voters who believe county government should be accountable, efficient, and focused on its core responsibilities." Lancton raised more than $637,000, which placed him atop the GOP field in fundraising. He was also endorsed by Gov. Greg Abbott, who joined him at a February campaign event, and Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale, a major Houston-area Republican financier. Howell's and Sanchez’s war chests combined barely eclipsed a fourth of what Lancton raised in the lead up to the primaries. The duo relied heavily on their own pocket books to fund their races, each providing their campaigns with more than $200,000 in loans. Lancton took in more than ten times what Howell received in political contributions, according to campaign finance reports.

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Texas judge declines to close Camp Mystic but bars construction on campus hit by flooding

A Texas judge declined Wednesday to fully close Camp Mystic — the tragic epicenter of the July 4 floods that inundated the Texas Hill Country last year — but prevented the part of the camp where the deadly flooding occurred from being altered. State District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble heard evidence in a packed Travis County courtroom in a temporary restraining order and injunction request filed by Will and CiCi Steward, the parents of 8-year-old Cecilia "Cile" Steward, a camper who died in the flooding. Gamble granted a temporary injunction barring the all-girls summer camp along the Guadalupe River from altering or remodeling any structure where campers were housed during the tragedy.

She also ordered that the old Guadalupe grounds, where the fatal flooding occurred, be sealed off, including the commissary, the rec hall and the main office. However, areas outside of those grounds can proceed with construction. Twenty-five girls, two counselors and Camp Mystic's owner were killed in the historic flooding in Kerr County that swamped the camp. Cile’s body has not been recovered. Over 130 people in the region died in the catastrophe. The Stewards, who filed a lawsuit against the owners of the camp and the request for a restraining order last month, had asked that Camp Mystic not reopen this summer to campers and that construction and remodeling be halted to preserve evidence at the site. In their filing, the Stewards argued that remodeling and construction are already underway, even as the search for their daughter’s body continues.

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Jasmine Crockett returns to D.C. facing new questions after defeat

A day after falling short in Texas’ Democratic Senate primary, Rep. Jasmine Crockett was back in Washington, returning to the Capitol and facing new questions about what comes next. Pressed by reporters Wednesday about her plans, she offered little beyond a short answer before climbing into a waiting vehicle. “I am going to continue to serve,” she said before stepping into the car and closing the door. Crockett has enjoyed a meteoric rise in recent years, moving quickly from a state legislative seat to Congress. There, she built a national profile as a bare-knuckled political brawler who unapologetically confronts Republicans. She has repeatedly demonstrated her skill at producing viral online clips, including the “Crockett Clapbacks,” as she calls them on branded campaign merchandise.

After President Donald Trump called her out, she fired back repeatedly and later used a sizzle reel of those insults as the background track for her Senate campaign’s launch video. But a fundraising surge for her Senate race never materialized, and she lost the primary Tuesday to state Rep. James Talarico of Austin. Talarico ran a campaign focused on arguing he could attract independent voters and soft Republicans, a strategy he said could revive Democrats’ fortunes statewide. Crockett struck an upbeat tone Wednesday about the outcome. “It was an exciting election,” she said. “It’s clear that Democrats are poised to win in November, and so we’ve just got to keep the energy up.” She was critical of Republican-driven changes to voting locations that caused chaos on Tuesday. “We also have to make sure that the terrible tactics of the Republicans don’t cost us votes and disenfranchise voters as we saw in Dallas County,” she said. “This is something that needs to be fixed.”

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‘Fed up with the status quo’: How a 26-year-old unseated eight-term Texas lawmaker

In one of the biggest upsets out of Tuesday’s primaries, a 26-year-old from Grand Prairie unseated eight-term Texas Rep. Chris Turner. But the way Junior Ezeonu sees it, perhaps his win in House District 101 shouldn’t come as that big of a surprise. “I just feel that in this moment that we’re living in, we need change across the board within the Democratic Party,” Ezeonu said in a Wednesday morning interview. “I think we need a new generation of leaders. Young, bold progressive leaders that are ready to fight back against the insanity that we’re seeing from the right.”

Democratic voters in the southeastern Tarrant County district, which includes parts of Arlington, Grand Prairie and Mansfield, chose Ezeonu over Turner, 53% to 47%. There are no Republican candidates in the November election. Ezeonu is a political consultant and serves as mayor pro tem in Grand Prairie, where he’s served on the City Council since 2021. He who moved to America from Nigeria and has lived in the district since he was 2 years old. He said he went to school in Arlington and has worked retail in the district and as a substitute teacher in the Mansfield school district. “I think that helped me appeal to the voters, being that I’m a young progressive guy, but I’m also homegrown,” Ezeonu said.

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Marathon meeting over Dallas City Hall resolution

Amid calls for increased transparency from more than 100 members of the public earlier Wednesday, the Dallas City Council debate on a resolution extended into early morning hours Thursday, with few people remaining in attendance. The council was split 9-6 on a number of amendments to the resolution, with council members Mendelsohn, Paul Ridley, Laura Cadena, Paula Blackmon, Adam Bazaldua and Bill Roth voting as a block to slow down momentum to explore other potential sites for city hall.

The city council was considering a resolution directing city manager Kimberly Tolbert to explore move 311, 911 and emergency operations to another location, and to explore options to both relocate other city staff to a new government location and the redevelopment of the current city hall site. Tolbert said during a debate that started around 5 p.m. and lasted more than seven hours that no final decision on the future of Dallas City Hall would be made, no matter how the council voted on the resolution. "We have not identified locations," Tolbert said. "We don’t have a financing plan for anything that’s currently on the table, whether it’s the renovation of city hall or whether it’s to go to a different location.”

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Thousands of Dallas County ballots are being held as a legal fight unfolds

The confusion experienced at polling places across Dallas County during the primary election has now triggered a legal and political battle over thousands of ballots that remain unresolved. According to the Dallas County Elections Department, more than 2,300 provisional ballots were cast and will remain on hold as the dispute plays out. "The Texas Supreme Court told us to keep them set aside," Nicholas Solorzano with the Dallas County Elections Department said. "For right now, they're safe, they're secure. They are labeled, and we know where they are."

"I got this in the mail, and I scanned the QR code, so I know I was at the proper place," she said. Election officials say they spent about one million dollars attempting to inform voters about a new rule governing the primary that was established by Texas Republicans. "We sent a mailer to the residential households. We sent a text message to over 700,000 Dallas County residents. We've been running ads for the last three to four weeks," Solorzano said. Even with those efforts, more than 2,000 provisional ballots, including some cast by Republican voters now sit unresolved while legal challenges move forward.

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Fort Worth ISD Superintendent Karen Molinar ousted amid TEA takeover

Superintendent Karen Molinar will be ousted from her position as leader of the Fort Worth Independent School District during the impending state takeover. Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath announced the decision on Wednesday but fell short of naming a new person who will take her place. A Texas Education Agency spokesperson confirmed to the Star-Telegram that the selection will be announced at the same time as the new board of managers, who will replace the current elected school board amid the state takeover of Fort Worth ISD. Morath said the announcement will be made “in the coming weeks” after he conducted a nationwide superintendent search for candidates that included Molinar.

“Dr. Karen Molinar is a student-centered leader of integrity, and I want to thank her for her nearly three decades of service to Fort Worth ISD, its students, educators and families. This decision is not a reflection of Dr. Molinar’s leadership but made with consideration for the scope of changes and improvements needed to better serve all students in the district. These needs require specialized leadership that can rapidly improve the trajectory of the district,” Morath said in a statement. “Throughout her tenure, Dr. Molinar has remained steadfastly focused on improving student outcomes. Her leadership has helped lay a solid foundation that the new superintendent and Board of Managers — to be announced in the coming weeks — can build upon and ensure that all schools in Fort Worth ISD reflect the highest expectations and supports for all students,” he added. In a statement, Molinar said she entered the role of superintendent understanding the range of challenges and opportunities to improve district deficiencies and academic progress for students.

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A green new victory lap in Texas in unlikely race

The Invest In Tomorrow Coalition PAC, a pro-green energy spending group, told us yesterday it found a proof-of-concept for its plan to use relatively small amounts of money for campaigns aimed at making life difficult for a list of Freedom Caucus members the group sees as particularly anti-clean energy. The first target was Rep. Chip Roy, the second-place vote-getter in the Republican primary for Texas attorney general who is now in a runoff.

Invest In Tomorrow placed paid ads on MAGA-friendly platforms like Rumble and Truth Social, highlighting Roy’s votes to certify the 2020 election and the times Trump has been mad at him. The group says they are among the first Democrat-supporting PACs to put paid spots on these platforms. One especially memorable ad featured a “teen girl” voiceover calling out Roy for voting no on some efforts to release the Epstein files. The campaign was run by Tusk Strategies and cost around $650,000. The biggest single funder was Chris Larsen, co-founder of Ripple. Ad impressions suggest a runaway success at turning Trump supporters off Roy, a strategist involved told us. Roy had his problems with MAGA and the right wing coming into the primary already, but it appears his team noticed the PAC’s ads, too — he posted about the group’s spending in the final days before Tuesday’s primary.

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McLennan County Democrats hopes “rejuvenated” by primary;

McLennan County’s primary elections on Tuesday favored Republican incumbents and well-funded candidates, while the biggest surge in Democratic turnout since 2008 left local party leaders bullish on their November chances. While the winners plot their course to the general election, two local Democratic races are headed to runoffs May 26, with no majority winner Tuesday. The U.S. House District 17 contest is set for a rematch between Casey Shepard and Milah Flores. McLennan County Precinct 5 Justice of the Peace race will feature incumbent LucyAnn Sanchez-Miramontez and Leslie Edwards.

Republicans will have two runoffs of their own on May 26. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn is locked in a drama-rich brawl with former Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, which will determine who challenges Democratic Texas Rep. James Talarico in November. Meanwhile, Paxton’s empty Attorney General seat has wrought a primary run-off race for his replacement featuring Mayes Middleton and Chip Roy. But other than the sheer increase in local Democratic turnout, the state and local races concerning Waco area residents produced few surprises.

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Amid questions about format, should UIL championships be shaken up?

Interest in women’s basketball is at an all-time high in the United States, and not just because young WNBA stars such as Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and the Dallas Wings’ Paige Bueckers have become celebrity icons on and off the court. The WNBA has skyrocketed in popularity, setting a record for paid attendance in 2025 by exceeding 3 million fans. The women’s NCAA Tournament is also in vogue, as it had its third-highest attendance ever in 2025 while the national championship game between UConn and South Carolina produced the third-largest television audience since 1996, peaking at 9.9 million viewers on ABC.

Dallas-area coaches say high school girls basketball is growing in Texas as well, but attendance figures for the University Interscholastic League’s state championship games at the Alamodome in San Antonio have been declining since the pandemic. With this year’s state finals being held Thursday through Saturday, coaches who have teams playing at the Alamodome have voiced their desire to either move the event elsewhere, possibly to Dallas-Fort Worth, or have rotating sites. The UIL hasn’t ruled out the possibility of playing the boys and girls state finals at separate locations someday, including D-FW. “Ever since they moved the state tournament to the Alamodome, the crowds have been very small compared to what they used to be in Austin. People don’t go as much,” Argyle coach Chance Westmoreland said. “The Alamodome is a football stadium. It’s not a basketball arena. What they really should do is move the boys tournament to Dickies Arena and then the girls tournament they should play like in Waco at the Baylor area. I think that would be a more central location.” The boys and girls state finals are held over three days each in back-to-back weeks in March. The UIL has discussed playing the two events at separate sites to provide more options beyond the Alamodome.

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Tarrant County Democratic leaders forecast energetic election season in Tarrant County heading out of primaries

Tarrant County’s primary elections saw unusually high turnout, with Democrats out-mobilizing Republicans for the second time in recent years and outpacing their party’s statewide turnout. High turnout in the March 3 primaries can be a strong indicator of voter interest and momentum as attention shifts to the general election in November, political experts and local officials say. Just under 26% of Tarrant’s 1.3 million registered voters participated in the March 3 primaries, according to unofficial returns from the county elections office. About 56% of those voters cast ballots in the Democratic primary. “People are going to turn out in November,” said Keith Gaddie, a political science professor at Texas Christian University. “Angry voters are motivated voters. And right now, Democrats are really angry. That’s why you got the turnout you’ve got.”

Historically a GOP stronghold, Tarrant County has shown occasional signs of trending purple, with voters supporting a handful of Democrats at the top of the ballot during recent elections. Political analysts have long hailed the county as a “bellwether” for national elections but more recently agreed either party could win under the right circumstances. So, has a “blue wave” washed over Tarrant? While it’s too early to tell, the “stars really aligned” for Democratic wins this year, said Matthew Wilson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University. “If Democrats don’t produce a blue wave in this cycle and don’t make major gains in Texas in this cycle, then I think they’re not going to for the foreseeable future,” Wilson said. The primary turnout is a hopeful sign for Democrats, he said, but likely not an indicator of a “slam dunk electoral rampage” for Nov. 3’s general election, which consistently has higher turnout than March elections. Statewide, about 52% of the nearly 4.3 million Texas primary voters cast ballots in the Democratic primary’s U.S. Senate race while 48% did in the GOP primary, according to unofficial results. Allison Campolo, chair of the Tarrant County Democratic Party, attributed her party’s turnout to well-coordinated block walking and door knocking to mobilize people to the polls. She believes Democrats also were energized by the “tactics and antics” of local Republicans such as County Judge Tim O’Hare, who did not return a request for comment.

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Spring Branch ISD removes Ramadan display at Bunker Hill Elementary School

A Ramadan display at Bunker Hill Elementary School was removed Monday after Spring Branch ISD said it violated a policy on maintaining political and religious neutrality across the district. “Because the display was religious in nature, campus leaders were directed to remove it,” Spring Branch ISD said in a statement to the Houston Chronicle. A spokesperson for the school district said a parent complained about the display. The Parent Teacher Association’s cultural awareness committee set up the Ramadan display, said the committee’s chair, Casey Kaf Alghazal. The school has had decorations for the Islamic holy month in the past, she said, but not as large as the display put up this year.

Its removal comes as some Muslims feel discriminated against after Islamic schools have been barred from participating in Texas’ private school voucher program. Speaking for herself and not on behalf of the committee, Kaf Alghazal said the request to remove the Ramadan display felt politically motivated. The committee has worked on other holiday decorations including for Hanukkah, Christmas, and, alongside the Ramadan decor, Easter. She said she had also offered to buy materials for a nativity around Christmas, but that no one had taken her up on it. “My kid felt seen. That’s all it was supposed to be — for every kid to feel seen,” said Kaf Alghazal, who is Muslim. “Bunker Hill wanted that. Spring Branch doesn’t want that.” The Harris County chapter of Moms for Liberty — a national conservative group that says it’s dedicated to parental rights and “the survival of America” — posted photos of Bunker Hill’s Ramadan display late last week on social media. The three-slide Instagram post showed the school’s lobby decorated with signage that said “Ramadan Mubarak,” as well as the use of a crescent moon; the crescent moon and star are generally recognized as Islamic symbols.

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NATO air defenses shoot down Iranian missile headed toward Turkey

Iran’s military denied on Thursday that it fired a ballistic missile toward Turkey, after the Turkish defense ministry said NATO defenses in the Mediterranean had intercepted the missile. Turkey’s defense ministry said on Wednesday that the missile was detected to have been launched from Iran, directed toward Turkish airspace, and flew over Iraq and Syria. A statement published by Iran’s state news broadcaster said “the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran respect the sovereignty of the neighboring and friendly country, Turkey, and deny any missile launch toward that country’s territory.”

A senior U.S. military official and a Western official said it was aimed at the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, a NATO member that hosts American troops and those from other allied countries. Incirlik hosts a sizable U.S. Air Force contingent, but Turkey has said that it would not allow its airspace to be used for attacks on Iran. Both officials said the Iranian missile was shot down by an interceptor missile fired from a U.S. warship in the eastern Mediterranean. The senior U.S. official added that it had been shot down shortly before midnight Eastern Standard Time Tuesday by an SM-3 interceptor launched from the U.S.S. Oscar Austin. Remnants of the interceptor fell in Turkey’s south-central province of Hatay, near the border with Syria, injuring no one, the Turkish ministry statement said. Iran has launched missiles and drones at neighboring countries that host U.S. military facilities and personnel in retaliation for the American and Israeli air campaign against Tehran.

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What's really at stake in November

Good morning and congratulations. You made it through the primary elections. Your phone should stop vibrating through your pocket any day now—except for, maybe, the voters who will return to the polls in the May runoff to determine candidates like attorney general. The Dallas results came late: The county GOP’s decision to hem voters into their precincts on Election Day led to widespread confusion that prompted a district judge to keep the Democratic polls open until 9 p.m. That decision got shot down by the Texas Supreme Court, which ordered ballots from voters who got in line after 7 p.m. to be held as conditional until a future ruling—it’s still unclear how polling places separated those voters. The horserace of politics isn’t necessarily our bag, but policy certainly is. Particularly how that policy manifests in communities of all sizes, whether countywide, a neighborhood, or a single block or apartment complex.

The fight over whether to extend tax credits that made Affordable Care Act plans cheaper led to the federal government’s longest shutdown in history last fall. Congress failed to renew those enhanced subsidies, and healthcare affordability debates have only intensified since. In 2026, monthly premiums doubled or tripled for some people. A January poll by KFF, a nonpartisan health research group, found that 66 percent of respondents ranked healthcare affordability as the nation’s top economic concern—above utilities, food, and housing. The Trump administration has proposed new rules for Affordable Care Act plans, but policy experts doubt these changes will meaningfully reduce the cost of care for the most vulnerable. The uncertainty over funding, coupled with the deepest cuts to Medicaid in 60 years, left some of North Texas’ safety net entities, including Parkland Health, adjusting on the fly. When The Lab Report spoke with Parkland’s top financial officials in the fall, the health system was bracing for a $130 million loss from cuts to a single program (Medicaid DSH) this fiscal year. Early last month, Congress eliminated the scheduled cuts to that program until 2028. While the policy whiplash continues, many families are still contending with higher health insurance costs and economic anxieties that are expected to play a large role in the voting booth this election season.

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Texas leaders link state’s growth to child care, skills and adaptable workers

Four influential voices delivered a clear message about what Texas needs to support its economic future. Texas can keep growing only if it continues investing in people, from child care workers and high school students to midcareer adults and second-chance job seekers. The remarks came Wednesday during the 30th anniversary celebration for Workforce Solutions for North Central Texas. The luncheon brought together business, education and government leaders who have spent decades building a regional workforce system that now spans 14 counties. Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas economist Pia Orrenius delivered a keynote address on Texas’ long-term growth, followed later by a conversation with Texas Workforce Commission Chair Joe Esparza and Governor’s Office economic development official Terry Zrubek. Phedra Redifer, executive director of Workforce Solutions for North Central Texas, grounded those big picture themes in the realities of the region.

Orrenius, a vice president and senior economist at the Dallas Fed, set the scene with a long view of Texas growth. She showed that for decades the state has consistently added jobs and expanded its economy faster than the rest of the country, even as it cycled through recessions, oil busts and a pandemic. Texas’ outperformance did not happen by accident. Over time, the state shifted from an economy anchored in “cotton, cattle and oil” to what Orrenius described as a modern industrial powerhouse. The state layered in high-tech industries, a growing transportation and logistics sector, advanced services such as finance and insurance, and a reinvented energy mix that includes leading positions in wind and solar alongside oil and gas. Orrenius said the state’s real advantage has been its ability to adapt. Texas diversified its industries, capitalized on its central geography and ports, and attracted workers from other states and countries. Even within energy, she noted, technology has radically changed production, allowing Texas to become the top oil producer in the world while employing far fewer people in traditional drilling. But Orrenius also warned that some of the tailwinds behind that story are fading. Population growth, especially from migration, is slowing sharply after record highs. Texas also consistently lags behind in the national share of younger workers with college degrees. Meanwhile, many people are voicing uncertainty about the rapid spread of artificial intelligence.

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National Stories

Justice Dept., under pressure from Trump, fails to build autopen case against Biden

The Justice Department, after calls by President Trump to investigate former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., scrutinized whether Mr. Biden and his aides broke the law in using the autopen to sign presidential documents, but was ultimately unable to move forward with making a case, according to three people briefed on the matter. The department’s failure to build a criminal case against Mr. Biden and his aides is the latest example of its increasing inability to follow through on Mr. Trump’s demands and bring indictments against those he wants to be criminally targeted. Some of those cases were rejected by grand juries, some were rejected by judges and some, like the autopen case, were abandoned by prosecutors.

But the fact that prosecutors even pursued the matter to begin with reflects the degree to which Mr. Trump has sought to use the levers of government to undermine Mr. Biden’s presidency by seizing on an unsubstantiated theory: that the pardons Mr. Biden issued in his final months in office were invalid because he did not have the mental capacity to consent to them. The autopen investigation was led by the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, which is run by a longtime Trump ally, Jeanine Pirro. The inquiry was quietly shelved in recent months, around the time that prosecutors under Ms. Pirro sought and failed to secure an indictment in a different case: one against six Democratic lawmakers who posted a video in the fall that enraged Mr. Trump by reminding active-duty members of the military and intelligence community that they were obligated to refuse to follow illegal orders. In that case, a grand jury refused to issue an indictment, a once incredibly rare action in the federal court system, but one that has become more common as the Trump administration pushes the limits of the criminal justice system.

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'Blankies,' ICE tactics and luxury jets: Top moments from Noem's House testimony

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem forcefully defended her department’s immigration enforcement policies Wednesday before Democratic lawmakers — part of a heated and contentious House Oversight Committee hearing that, at times, grew deeply personal. The hearing is the second in back-to-back DHS oversight hearings centered on the agency's actions on immigration enforcement and Noem's leadership of the department, and comes as members of Congress remain deadlocked on how to proceed with fully funding the sprawling federal agency. Here are the top moments from the action-packed hearing.

Some Democrats on the panel zeroed in on the responsibilities Corey Lewandowski has assumed as a special adviser for the Department of Homeland Security. Rep. Sydney Kalmager-Dove, D-Calif., cited a Wall Street Journal report from last month, that said President Donald Trump allegedly rejected Lewandowski's request to be Noem's chief of staff "due to reports of a romantic relationship" between the two. Both Noem and Lewandowski have denied reports of an affair. Kalmager-Dove asked Noem, point-blank, about the nature of their relationship. "This person has no experience running anything close to the Department of Homeland Security, or even advising someone in your position," Kalmager-Dove said, noting his role as a special government employee has extended a "well beyond the allowed 130-day" period.

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Shipping has collapsed through vital strait of Hormuz

Traffic through the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping strait has reached a near standstill amid the war between the US, Israel, and Iran. Just two bulk carriers and a small container ship were observed traversing the waterway on Tuesday. All were leaving the Persian Gulf, not entering. The Strait has descended into a digital fog. Signal jamming and a widespread disabling of position-reporting transponders has hindered satellite tracking and made it more difficult to monitor traffic through the waterway. But understanding what, if anything, is moving is critical in assessing the impact of the conflict on oil, gas and other commodity markets.

The Persian Gulf nations are vital to global supplies of crude oil, fuels, natural gas and fertilizer feedstocks. And almost all of the region’s output has to pass through Hormuz, making it a choke point for a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies, and half of the global seaborne trade of sulfur. The effective closure of the waterway is already leading countries like Iraq to shut in production, helping to send oil prices up by 14% since the weekend and natural gas to the highest since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It’s also left sulfur traders scrambling for alternative supplies for the fertilizer and nickel processing industries. Ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg show traffic has plummeted by well over 95%, with major crude carriers and LNG tankers avoiding the route. The few ships still moving are leaving the Gulf with location transponders turned off, a common practice in conflict zones.

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Epstein files: House committee subpoenas Attorney General Pam Bondi

The House Oversight Committee on Wednesday voted to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi for a deposition on the Department of Justice's handling of its investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and its compliance with a law requiring all documents related to the notorious sex offender to be made public. The 24-19 vote by the committee came after growing criticism of the DOJ for failing to release all of the Epstein files, and reports that it has removed from public view tens of thousands of documents that previously were made public. The motion to subpoena Bondi was introduced by Rep. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican, who blasted the DOJ earlier Wednesday over its suppression of many Epstein files.

"AG Bondi claims the DOJ has released all of the Epstein files. The record is clear: they have not," Mace said in a post on X. "The Epstein case is one of the greatest cover-ups in American history," Mace wrote. Mace also posted a YouTube video showing her entering the motion at the Oversight Committee. In addition to Mace, four other Republicans joined most of the panel's Democrats in voting to subpoena Bondi, who is a Republican: Lauren Boebert of Colorado; Pennsylvania's Scott Perry; Tim Burchett of Tennessee; and Michael Cloud of Texas. CNBC has requested comment from the DOJ. The DOJ, under the Epstein Transparency Act passed nearly unanimously by Congress last year, was required to publicly release all of its files on Epstein and his convicted accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. After making more than 3 million documents public in late January, the DOJ said it would not release the rest of the Epstein files, which total more than 2.5 million documents. Since then, media outlets have reported that the DOJ had removed the files from public view. Some of the files withheld had included memos and notes about FBI interviews, including those of a woman who has alleged that President Donald Trump sexually abused her when she was a minor. Trump has never been charged with wrongdoing in connection with Epstein and has said he was unaware of his former friend's criminal conduct. CBS News reported on Tuesday that "as of late February, the Justice Department has taken down more than 47,000 files comprising about 65,500 pages."

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U.S. submarine launches its first torpedo in combat since World War II

For the first time since World War II, a torpedo launched from a U.S. Navy submarine struck a vessel in combat, sending the Iranian frigate Iris Dena to the bottom of the Indian Ocean near Sri Lanka. The submarine, which the Pentagon has yet to identify, carried out the attack on Wednesday. Later that morning, the Defense Department released a video of a single torpedo detonating under the Iris Dena’s stern, sending a large plume of water skyward. The frigate’s hull can be seen tearing apart along its port quarter above the waterline. At a Pentagon briefing, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the sinking “quiet death,” while Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke about it more dispassionately, saying the torpedo achieved “immediate effect.” Sri Lankan officials said they had rescued 32 Iranian sailors from the Iris Dena, which is believed to have had a crew of 180.

The Navy referred questions about the submarine attack to U.S. Central Command. According to the U.S. Navy’s History and Heritage Command, the last American sub to fire a torpedo at an enemy vessel was the U.S.S. Torsk, which sank a 750-ton Japanese vessel on Aug. 14, 1945. That ship, a patrol escort called the CD-13, was off the Japanese port of Maizuru when it spotted the Torsk via sonar. According to a Navy history of the engagement, the American submarine fired one torpedo in response, dived to 400 feet and launched a second torpedo. Both weapons struck the CD-13, killing 28 of its crew members. Since then, U.S. submarines have carried out some of the nation’s most dangerous and sensitive intelligence-gathering missions in enemy waters. Navy subs have carried torpedoes in hostile waters throughout the Cold War to the present. And even though American subs had not been using torpedoes to sink ships from 1945 until the current war with Iran, they have regularly contributed to combat operations ashore. The Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine U.S.S. Louisville became the first to launch a land-attack missile in combat when it launched a Tomahawk missile at an Iraqi position during Operation Desert Storm, according to U.S. Submarine Force Pacific.

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States move to limit access to H.I.V. treatment

Tens of thousands of Americans are losing access to treatment for H.I.V. as nearly 20 states impose restrictions on assistance programs and several others weigh such changes. The states, led by both Democrats and Republicans, are tightening requirements for people benefiting from Ryan White AIDS Drug Assistance Programs, or ADAPs, according to an analysis released on Monday by the health research group KFF. The programs help pay for H.I.V. medications or provide them free to some people, and pay insurance premiums for others. H.I.V. medications suppress the virus to undetectable levels, eliminating the chance of spreading it to others. Interrupting treatment may lead to an increase in new infections and in AIDS cases. Moreover, some people may try to extend their supplies by alternating days or sharing their pills with others. If the virus replicates in people with only partial protection, it can become resistant to the medications. People living with the virus may then pass the resistant virus on to others.

The biggest change took effect in Florida on Sunday, when officials cut off benefits for at least 16,000 residents living with H.I.V. The state also will no longer cover Biktarvy, the most widely prescribed H.I.V. medication. On Friday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services opened a special enrollment period allowing Floridians who lose financial support for insurance premiums to choose a new plan. The period ends April 30. ADAPs support roughly 25 percent of the 1.2 million people living with H.I.V. in the United States. The programs had a 30 percent surge in enrollment from 2022 to 2024, in part because states were removing people from Medicaid after keeping them on during the pandemic. ADAPs are funded by Congress through the Ryan White federal H.I.V. program. The programs are contending with rising costs as H.I.V. drugs become more expensive even as health care subsidies have expired, sending premiums soaring. At the same time, funding for the programs has remained flat for more than a decade.

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Taxpayer dollars flood pregnancy centers. Oversight hasn't followed.

The patient came in with a belly full of blood, Dr. Leilah Zahedi-Spung recalled. Her pregnancy was ectopic, no longer viable, and could have killed her if left untreated. But when she went to a mobile pregnancy help center offering free care in an RV in St. Louis, she was told the pregnancy could be saved. By the time she saw Zahedi-Spung days later, her fallopian tube had ruptured. In North Lauderdale, Florida, Ieshia Scott was pregnant and in the throes of postpartum depression. She thought she’d arrived at an abortion clinic. She told the staff she might hurt herself if she had another baby. They told her God would give her strength. A woman and her partner in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, went to a pregnancy help center by mistake. When they made it to a Planned Parenthood clinic across the street, the pregnant patient handed Dr. Kristin Lyerly a copy of the sonogram. But the scan was not of her uterus. It was her bladder.

All three patients had gone to crisis pregnancy centers, organizations that advertise free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds but dissuade women from pursuing abortions and contraceptive options. Since the U.S. Supreme Court ended national abortion access in June 2022, the centers have seen an infusion of taxpayer dollars in many Republican-led states. But medical experts have urged lawmakers to reconsider the state support, as the centers can endanger public health by “causing delays in accessing legitimate health care,” according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. States Newsroom conducted a 50-state investigation examining state and federal budgets, as well as the tax records of these organizations, finding that while the magnitude of public funding for them is growing, oversight is not. Twenty-one states funneled nearly a half-billion dollars, or $491 million, of taxpayer money to crisis pregnancy center organizations between fiscal years 2022 and 2025. That figure does not include millions some states diverted from federal programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and it does not include multimillion-dollar tax credit programs launched after federal protections for abortion rights were overturned. Nearly $1.3 billion in local, state or federal government grants were awarded to 1,259 crisis pregnancy centers in total between 2019 and 2024, according to States Newsroom’s analysis of tax records. The actual figure may be higher, as digital records are not comprehensive or entirely up to date.

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Lead Stories

Talarico beats Crockett; Cornyn, Paxton move to runoff in heated Texas Senate race

Texas’ bitter, big-money Senate primary left Republicans fractured Tuesday night as Democrats fought for an edge, all in a showdown that could help decide control of Congress. Sen. John Cornyn was leading the GOP field with Attorney General Ken Paxton close behind, but neither secured a majority, setting up a May rematch and weeks of renewed attacks. U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt finished a distant third. On the Democratic side, state Rep. James Talarico of Austin beat U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Dallas, after pushing rival strategies for a party shut out of statewide office for more than three decades. He secured 53.2% of the votes, according to the Associated Press.

Already the most expensive Senate primary in U.S. history, it has topped $125 million in ad spending, and the national parties are watching closely for clues about turnout, messaging and momentum ahead of the midterms. In the three-way Republican brawl, Cornyn stressed experience and electability, Paxton ran on his MAGA loyalties and Hunt cast himself as a younger, conservative alternative. With more than three-fourths of the expected statewide vote counted, Cornyn remained slightly ahead of Paxton. Signaling an aggressive runoff fight ahead, Cornyn said late Tuesday that the race comes down to character. “I refuse to allow a flawed, self-centered and shameless candidate like Ken Paxton risk everything we’ve worked so hard to build,” he told reporters in Austin. He warned Paxton would be “an albatross around the neck” of Republican candidates in November.

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Crenshaw loses in major upset to Toth, Gonzales and Herrera set for runoff

In a surprise upset, state Rep. Steve Toth defeated U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Houston Republican, in Tuesday’s GOP primary election, ousting one of the state’s most recognizable GOP congressmen. Toth, the owner of a local pool cleaning company who is considered one of the most conservative members of the Texas Legislature, carried a wide margin of the vote. The already Republican-leaning district, which includes Montgomery and Harris counties, was redrawn last year to be more conservative. "Big thanks to the voters of Congressional District 2. I will work hard for all of you,” Toth wrote on X late Tuesday night. The Associated Press called the race shortly after midnight.

A spokesman for Crenshaw said he would not comment on the election result tonight. The contest was widely seen as Crenshaw’s toughest since being elected to Congress in 2018, after he failed to secure the endorsement of President Donald Trump. In a race rocked by scandal, U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-San Antonio) is now headed to another primary runoff with YouTuber Brandon Herrera. Herrera held Gonzales under 50% in their 2024 primary as well, when the incumbent was facing major pushback for crossing the aisle on votes supporting same-sex marriage and gun safety. This year Gonzales has much bigger problems, after text messages indicated he’d been having an affair with a staff member who later died by suicide. Since then some of his Republican colleagues in Congress have been calling for him to resign. With 193 of 371 precincts reporting just after 1 a.m., Gonzales was at 43.03% of the vote to Herrera’s 42.24% in a four-way GOP primary.

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Don Huffines wins Texas GOP comptroller race, will face Sarah Eckhardt

Former state Sen. Don Huffines won the GOP primary for comptroller on Tuesday, making the conservative firebrand the Republican nominee to lead an agency with vast influence over the state’s finances, as well as the new private school voucher program. Huffines defeated acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock, who was endorsed and supported by Gov. Greg Abbott, and Railroad Commissioner Christi Craddick. State Sen. Sarah Eckhardt of Austin won the Democratic primary. She has campaigned on watchdogging the state budget and opposes the private school voucher program.

Huffines ran on a promise to “DOGE” the state government and is a favorite of the Republican grassroots. The Dallas businessman's campaign was boosted by endorsements from President Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, as well as broader name recognition from Huffines’ 2022 run against Abbott, in which he called the governor “weak” and “a coward." Though Huffines has largely dropped his antagonism on the campaign trail, emphasizing that he is “excited” to work alongside Abbott, his win is nonetheless a blow to the governor, who spent millions boosting Hancock. Capturing the comptroller’s office would give Huffines a powerful bully pulpit to go after state agencies as well as control over Texas’ finances. The comptroller also oversees the voucher program, which Abbott spent considerable funds and political capital to push through the Legislature last year. Hancock has run the $1 billion program’s rollout since becoming acting Comptroller in June. Huffines is also a voucher proponent, but he has so far declined to say if he would run the program differently. Craddick enjoyed strong backing from the oil and gas industry, which she currently regulates. She spent relatively little compared to her rivals and will retain her seat on the Railroad Commission, where her term expires in 2030.

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'Mass confusion': How election day went awry for Dallas County voters

It’s Tuesday — election day in Dallas County — and an hour has passed since polls opened for a pivotal set of primaries. At Fretz Park Library on the north side of the city, roughly 90 voters have come and gone. Yet, if the poll workers had to guess, only 15 ballots had been cast. “Most people don’t know their precinct numbers,” one worker said, “and they don’t know that their party’s not even here.” For the first time in nearly a decade, voters were required to cast ballots at their assigned neighborhood precinct instead of a universal voting center, a change imposed by the county’s Republican party in December.

Allen West, chair of the county GOP, said he pushed for separate primaries to reduce the opportunity for voter fraud, an exceedingly rare occurrence in the U.S. Despite efforts from Democratic leaders to maintain the status quo, state law only allows countywide voting on election day if both parties agree. Check-in tables, workers and voting machines were divided by party, and red and blue arrows directed voters to opposite sides of the room, leaving them no choice but to pronounce affiliation. Election navigators were assigned to direct voters to the correct precinct if they showed up at the wrong location. Hundreds did. By sundown, concerns of voter disenfranchisement from lawmakers and election experts had come to fruition. Frustrated residents struggled to navigate shifting poll sites, downed websites and long, winding election lines – others gave up entirely. After an emergency extension and an intervention from the state’s Supreme Court, Dallas County – a stronghold for Democrats – became ground zero for a voting rights dispute with implications well beyond its borders. “If the goal of the Republican Party was to make voting more difficult, they have succeeded this day,” said County Commissioner Andrew Sommerman, who is running for a second term.

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State Stories

Democratic Rep. Chris Turner trailing in House District 101 seat in Arlington

Incumbent Chris Turner is trailing challenger Junior Ezeonu in the early results for the Democratic nomination for House District 101. Ezeonu, a member of the Grand Prairie City Council, is leading with 53% of the vote. Turner has 47% of the vote. The early results are a surprise for Turner, who has represented House District 101 since 2013. House District 101 covers parts of Arlington, Grand Prairie and Mansfield, and is home to 199,000 people, according to state data. Ezeonu, 26, is a political consultant who has been on the Grand Prairie City Council since 2021. He told the Star-Telegram that his top three priorities if elected would be to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, fund public schools, and make homeownership affordable.

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Bexar incumbents fend off challengers. Voucher architect Jorge Borrego to defend Lujan seat. Runoff for HD 125

In an unusual primary election, Bexar County state lawmakers who have little to fear in most reelection races faced primary challengers backed by influential outside groups. As of Tuesday night, however, all five incumbents in contested primaries cruised easily to reelection, including state Rep. Marc LaHood (R-San Antonio), who faced one of the most expensive legislative primaries in Texas history. LaHood, a criminal defense attorney, was part of a group of lawyers in the House Republican Caucus — including House Speaker Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock) — that bucked powerful business interests on their priority legal reform legislation near the end of his first term. He faced a GOP primary challenge from David McArthur, a business consultant backed by the powerful Texans for Lawsuit Reform PAC (TLR), which wanted to punish LaHood and root out trial lawyers within the Republican Party.

But LaHood fended him off easily Tuesday, with 73.6% of the vote to McArthur’s 26.4%. In another Northside race, Texas House District 122, the lawsuit reform group backed challenger Willie Ng over state Rep. Mark Dorazio (R-San Antonio), a member of the GOP’s conservative wing who had voted against their priority bills. Dorazio held him off with 74.63% of the vote to Ng’s 23.57%. Texans for Lawsuit Reform did have one big victory in this area, in the open House District 118 race, where it spent big to help former Texas Public Policy Foundation staffer Jorge Borrego defeat trial attorney Desi Martinez in the GOP primary to replace state Rep. John Lujan (R-San Antonio). Borrego took 52.51% to trial attorney Desi Martinez’ 26.98% in the GOP primary for Texas House District 118. A third Republican candidate, coffee company owner, Joseph Shellhart, took 20.51%. Borrego, 30, is a former legislative staffer who most recently worked on education policy for the Austin-based think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF). Democrats are headed to a runoff in the race to replace retiring state Rep. Ray Lopez (D-San Antonio) in Texas House District 125. SAISD teachers’ union leader Adrian Reyna got 39.06% of the vote, while former Bexar County Constable Michelle Barrientes Vela took 34.43%. Lopez’s former chief of staff Donovan Rodriguez took 15.33% and Carlos Antonio Raymond took 11.18%.

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Nate Sheets beats three-term Ag Commissioner Sid Miller in stunning upset

In a stunning upset, beekeeper and businessman Nate Sheets unseated three-term Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller in Tuesday’s Republican primary. As of Wednesday morning, Sheets had 53% of the vote, compared to Miller’s 47%. Sheets, a 56-year-old Navy veteran, had the backing of Gov. Greg Abbott in a rare internal GOP dustup with an entrenched incumbent who was endorsed by President Donald Trump.

“Texans are ready for new leadership,” Sheets wrote in a victorious post on X, “and we are ready to get to work.” During the campaign, Sheets accused Miller of using the state department’s resources to post flattering information about himself on social media. Texas law bars the use of state resources for political campaigns and prohibits government officials from using public funds for political advertising.

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Rep. Roy and Sen. Middleton headed to runoff in Texas AG race

Rep. Chip Roy will advance to a runoff in the race to replace Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. He will face state Sen. Mayes Middleton, who led Roy by a double-digit margin with three-fifths of the vote counted. The competitive primary turned into a fealty test to President Donald Trump. Reitz and Middleton slammed Roy for breaking with Trump in the past and calling for Attorney General Ken Paxton to resign after he faced charges of bribery and abuse, while brandishing their own MAGA bona fides. Trump made no endorsement in the race.

Roy — the House Freedom Caucus policy chair who has represented Texas’ 21st congressional district since 2019 — earned a reputation in Congress as a true conservative ideologue. He has led in polling and fundraising and has been endorsed by well-known conservatives like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and fellow Freedom Caucus representatives. But Mayes’ apparent first-place finish indicates that he begins the runoff as the favorite. It remains to be seen what the president, who once called for Roy to face a primary challenge, might do in the runoff.

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Goodwin headed to runoff with Johnson just shy of majority

Two Democrats vying for the chance to unseat Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in November were heading for a runoff late Tuesday as returns showed state Rep. Vikki Goodwin with just under half the vote. The four-term state representative entered the three-way race as a frontrunner but was stymied after garnering only 49% of the vote with nearly three-quarters of statewide votes counted. That all but guarantees a rematch with Houston labor leader Marcos Vélez, who held second place with 31% of Democratic primary votes. Political newcomer Courtney Head, a San Antonio-based software executive, gathered 20% of the vote.In the Democratic primary for Texas attorney general, State Sen. Nathan Johnson is hovering just below the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff, sitting at 49% as more votes come in. If he doesn’t cross that mark, he is likely to face former Galveston mayor Joe Jaworski in a runoff.

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Texas Rep. Gina Hinojosa wins Democratic nomination, will face Gov. Greg Abbott in November

The race to decide who will be the Lone Star State’s next governor is set. Gov. Greg Abbott easily won his Republican primary on Tuesday. In November, the incumbent will face off against Democrat Gina Hinojosa, an Austin-area Texas House member. A win for Abbott would put him on track to becoming the longest serving governor of Texas. For Hinojosa, a win would break the 30-plus year streak of Republicans holding the office. However, defeating Abbott won’t be easy. He has everything an incumbent gubernatorial candidate could dream of: More than $100 million in campaign cash on hand, strong name recognition, and the backing of the current president. “She’s up against probably one of the most formidable Republicans in the nation, the most well-financed Republicans in the nation — probably the most comfortable incumbent Republican in the nation,” said Alvaro Corral, a political scientist at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. “I think the odds are very much stacked against her.”

But it’s a battle Hinojosa believes is necessary. “Our fight right now is against the billionaires and the corporations who are driving up prices,” Hinojosa said during her October campaign kickoff event in her hometown of Brownsville. She thinks right now is the time to strike. Abbott’s approval ratings have seen sporadic dips lately, but that alone may not be enough to unseat him. Tuesday night, the governor mostly ignored his Democratic opponent, instead taking to social media to congratulate a slew of successful Republicans he’d backed in their primaries. Rather than campaigning for himself, Abbott has spent most of his recent time and money attacking the Democratic candidates in the Senate race. “He’s in such a position — sort of above the fray — that he can sort of go on the attack against the Democratic Party in general to try and help Republicans down ballot,” Corral said.

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Menefee leads Green, Garcia survives primary from former Rep. Johnson

Fresh off the heels of his special election victory in the 18th Congressional District, U.S. Rep. Christian Menefee took an early lead in his bid to stay in the seat beyond this year. Menefee led longtime U.S. Rep. Al Green in the Democratic primary, according to early voting results released Tuesday by the Harris County Clerk’s Office. Election Day results in the redrawn Houston district, which historically favors Black Democrats, were still being tallied. Menefee, 37, received 48.75% of the early vote compared to 43.13% for the 78-year-old Green, who has represented the 9th Congressional District since 2005. He switched to the 18th after Texas Republicans undertook a rare mid-decade redistricting last summer in order to help the GOP win up to five additional seats in the November midterm election.

U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, the only Latina to ever represent Houston in Congress, defeated fellow Democrat Jarvis Johnson in Tuesday's primary election. During her election night watch party at Esther's Cajun Café & Soul Food, Garcia expressed excitement about her lead, but spent time during her speech criticizing U.S. involvement in Iran and talking about affordability issues. “I'm just like you all. I go to the grocery store, too. And we feel it,” Garcia said. “So people are feeling it in the pocketbook, and the last thing they wanted us to do is get involved in a war that's just gonna cost us more and more and more.” Garcia promised not to vote for “one more penny for this war.” She added that she also wouldn’t vote for “one more penny for ICE.”

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Cook and Lowe declare victory, Bean likely avoids runoff and Mizani leading in open seat

State Rep. David Cook has declared victory in the Republican primary for the Texas State Senate in District 22. Cook, the former Mansfield mayor, has 68% of the vote, with Jon Gimble at 24% and Rena Schroeder at 8%, according to unofficial returns. Keller Mayor Armin Mizani has a strong lead over former Tarrant County GOP Treasurer Fred Tate in the Republican primary for state House in District 98, according to unofficial results. Mizani has 54.3% of the vote, Tate holds 42.49% of the vote, and Zee Wilcox, a small business owner who spent much of the last few months in a legal battle to add her name back on the ballot, is trailing behind with 3.3, with 50 of 199 vote centers reporting.

Cheryl Bean, a business owner, is leading in the Republican primary for the Texas House in District 94, according to unofficial results. Bean has 54.5% of the vote, with Jackie Schlegel, director of Texans for Medical Freedom, at 24.7% and Susan Valliant at 9.5%. In the Democratic primary, Katie O’Brein Duzan, vice president of marketing at Veeva Systems and TCU alumna, is running uncontested. She will face the winner of the Republican primary during the general election in November. Republican incumbent Texas Rep. David Lowe has declared victory in the race for the GOP nomination for state House District 91. Lowe has 64% of the vote to challenger Kyle Morris’s 36% with 20 of 199 vote centers reporting. Lowe faces Democrat Yisak Worku in the Nov. 3 election.

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Mark Teixeira clinches District 21 Republican primary

Mark Teixeira appears to have won the Republican primary for the 21st Congressional District with 61.3% of the vote as of 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, according to the Texas Secretary of State's website. Teixeira, a former Major League Baseball player, is one of 12 Republican candidates running for the seat currently occupied by Republican Chip Roy. District 21 includes parts of Hays and Bexar counties, and all of Real, Kerr, Kendall, Gillespie, Comal, Blanco and Bandera counties.

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Runoff likely as Julio Salinas leads in the Texas House District 41 Democratic primary race

Early voting results show Julio Salinas is leading in the Democratic race for the Texas House District 41 race. Incumbent Bobby Guerra currently holds the seat but chose not to run for re-election. There are three Democratic candidates on the ballot. Salinas has 4,716, or 37.4 percent of early votes, while Haddad has 4,693, or 37.2 percent of early votes. Also on the ballot is Eric Holguín who has 3,117, or more than 25 percent of early votes.

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Terri Leo Wilson wins GOP primary for House District 23

State Rep. Terri Leo Wilson seemed certain of a Republican primary win for Texas House District 23 late Tuesday when she held a big lead over former Mont Belvieu City Manager Nathan Watkins in a race marked by relentless attack advertising. Wilson late Tuesday held about 64 percent of votes, compared with about 36 percent for Watkins, according to incomplete, unofficial election returns. The results remain unofficial until county officials complete the required canvass and formally certify the totals later this month. House District 23 spans most of Chambers County and portions of Galveston County and has leaned strongly Republican in recent cycles, making the GOP primary the decisive contest in most election years.

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Allred, Johnson expect runoff in newly redrawn Dallas congressional primary

Former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred and incumbent U.S. Rep. Julie Johnson expect to face each other again in a runoff after neither secured enough votes Tuesday to win outright in the Democratic primary for a newly redrawn, Dallas-based congressional seat. The race was triggered by a state-drawn shakeup of Texas’ congressional lines that forced the two North Texas Democrats into the same district, making the race for the 33rd District one of the most closely watched intraparty contests. The outcome in Dallas and other House districts across the state carries stakes beyond Texas, testing boundaries Republicans drew last year to protect their slim majority in Washington. The results of the matchup were delayed after Election Day disruptions at Dallas County polling places forced a two-hour extension of voting times. The change, ordered by a judge at the county Democratic party’s request, was later stayed by the Texas Supreme Court.

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Bo French, Jim Wright headed to runoff for RRC

Former Tarrant County GOP Chairman Bo French, who has come under scrutiny for offensive comments targeting religious groups and for inflammatory social media posts, has advanced in the Republican primary for the Texas Railroad Commission, heading to a May runoff against incumbent Jim Wright. In his social media post announcing his campaign, he wrote he was running for the commission to ”defend Texas, stop the Islamic invasion and defeat the left.” “Just like I expect my elected officials to stand up for the values of Texans, that’s what I plan to do in office,” French told The Dallas Morning News late Tuesday evening. “My position is a reflection of the voters in Texas who are concerned about this.”

Wright, who has served as chair of the state agency that regulates the oil and gas industry since 2025, faced four Republicans in the GOP primary: oil worker Hawk Dunlap, engineer Katherine Culbert, consultant James Matlock and French. Wright and French were neck-and-neck as results came in Tuesday with nearly a third of the vote each and almost 80% of expected votes counted. But neither received a majority of the vote. Primary runoffs take place May 26. Wright’s campaign did not immediately respond to a phone call requesting comment Tuesday night. Wright, a a fifth-generation South Texas rancher, said he’d seek to uphold high environmental and safety standards if reelected, while ensuring regulations don’t interfere with innovation and job creation. French has faced backlash from other Republicans for using slurs for people with disabilities and gay people. Last summer, Republican leaders denounced French and called for him to resign from his post leading the Tarrant County Republican Party after he posted a social media poll on whether Muslims or Jews posed the “biggest threat to America.” Just a month later, French singled out a Muslim state House member, asking federal officials to denaturalize and deport state Rep. Salman Bhojani, who was born in Pakistan and is a U.S. citizen.

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Hopper, Evans, Patterson leading Texas House of Representative primaries

Andy Hopper, Julie Evans and Jared Patterson remain leading in their respective Texas House of Representatives primary races. Hopper, the District 64 incumbent, is leading in the Republican primary with 14,042 votes, or 71.48%, while challenger Lisa McEntire has received 5,604 votes. In the District 64 Democratic primary, Evans has received 5,629, or 53.1%, while Christie Wood has garnered 4,972 votes. Patterson has received 8,569 votes, or 55.7%, in the District 106 Republican primary, holding a lead over Larry Brock and Rick Abraham, who have garnered 5,535 and 2,066 votes, respectively. The winner will face Joe Mayes, who is running unopposed in the District 106 Democratic primary, for the state seat in November.

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Republican incumbents prevail in Collin and Dallas counties

The fiercest legislative primary fights Tuesday in North Texas were inside the GOP. In Dallas County, two moderate GOP incumbent representatives faced challengers after being censured by their own county party. In Collin County, several Republican state House members were fending off rivals running to their right. Republican Morgan Meyer, first elected in 2014, gained a decisive edge over attorney Sanjay Narayan in a district that includes the Park Cities, Oak Lawn and Preston Hollow. Narayan criticized Meyer for backing renewable energy expansion and for being censured by the Dallas GOP last year.

Republican Angie Chen Button, who has represented the district covering parts of Dallas, Richardson and Garland since 2009, comfortably beat her three primary opponents by securing 72.4% of the votes as of 4:16 a.m. Two Republicans were seeking to represent the district that covers most of McKinney and parts of Frisco and Celina. But incumbent Keresa Richardson came out on the top with 67% of the votes as of 4 a.m. Richardson, who was elected in 2024, was up against former state Rep. Frederick Frazier. Both supported eliminating property taxes. Republican Rep. Jeff Leach, first elected in 2012, beat Matt Thorsen with 64.3% votes as of 4:16 a.m. in a district that includes parts of Plano, Allen, McKinney and Melissa. Leach has highlighted his conservative record, including legislation barring Shariah in Texas courts. He also served as a House impeachment manager during Attorney General Ken Paxton’s 2023 trial, a role he has defended amid backlash from activists. Three Republicans are competing for the nomination to run against incumbent Democrat Mihaela Plesa, who was unopposed in her party’s primary. George Flint, a former district judge and Collin County Republican Party Chair, who had a significant edge in votes over his opponents, emphasized eliminating property taxes and securing the border in his campaign. Jack Ryan Gallagher, an attorney, said he would attract companies to North Texas, improve public schools and partner with local law enforcement if elected. Michael Hewitt, an attorney, said he would gradually lower property taxes and work to keep Texas a business-friendly state.

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Bud Kennedy: It’s John Cornyn or Ken Paxton vs. James Talarico. Trump holds the key

Everybody won in the U.S. Senate primary in Texas. Texas Republicans rallied behind struggling U.S. Sen. John Cornyn to send him to a runoff against bullish challenger Ken Paxton. They also won the right to brag over Dallas County’s disorganized Democratic election officials. Texas Democrats nominated a powerhouse fundraiser and Senate challenger in state Rep. James Talarico. They also got to complain, “The Republicans robbed us of our votes!” Mostly, both parties picked up another ton of campaign fodder for November — as if they didn’t have enough already in a Senate race that has already cost more than $100 million. That was the ultimate outcome on an Election Night when Democratic voters swamped the party’s polling places and Republicans efficiently reduced three statewide elections to a final two candidates for a May 26 runoff.

Now, all eyes are on the White House. President Donald Trump will pick whether Cornyn or Paxton wins the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. His endorsement is worth an estimated 10 percentage points in the polls. With Cornyn’s resilient showing, Trump might be expected to make a fiscally prudent decision and endorse the candidate who won’t need a $200 million campaign to overcome a Texas-sized wagonload of personal baggage. But when does Trump ever do what’s expected? Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick proved he’s closest to Trump’s ear when Trump issued late endorsements for comptroller candidate Don Huffines and Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller. Huffines surged to win the Republican nomination outright and a November matchup against Austin Democratic state Sen. Sarah Eckhardt. Miller was losing to Collin County challenger Nate Sheets but won Election Day voting, indicating Trump’s endorsement simply came too late.

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Both parties face runoffs in new 35th Congressional District

In one of the most competitive races on the U.S. House map this year, both Democrats and Republicans are headed to a May 26 runoff. The new 35th Congressional District is ground zero in the Trump administration’s effort to squeeze more Republican lawmakers out of Texas in 2026, turning a solidly blue Austin-to-San Antonio district into a potential GOP pickup on San Antonio’s Southeast side. The GOP-led legislature drew the district for state Rep. John Lujan (R-San Antonio), 63, who flipped a blue Texas House district that’s entirely within TX35’s boundaries. But at the last minute, his dominance in an 11-way Republican primary was upended by President Donald Trump endorsing a different candidate, Carlos De La Cruz, a retired U.S. Air Force veteran whose sister is U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz (R-Edinburg).

“We’ve had multiple conversations with the White House and D.C. leadership, [and] we laid out our case … [that] I was the one to be able to get us past a general election against whoever the Democrat is,” De La Cruz said in an interview Tuesday. “I don’t like to say anything disparaging about my my potential opponents, but the bottom line is, they put us side by side, and they made the decision that they made.” De La Cruz took 26.8% in the GOP primary, to Lujan’s 32.98%. Gathered with family at his campaign headquarters on Tuesday, Lujan said he still believes he’s the better candidate. “I have a tough race. It’s a new district,” he told the Report. “I’m the first and only Republican to ever win this [state House] seat in the history of Texas. And then I won the reelection, which was even tougher. And then now this new district, so I’m used to being in tough races.” Democrats originally wrote off this district, which under new boundaries would have supported Trump by more than 10 percentage points in 2024. One of their largest PACs published a report saying it’s out of reach for this election cycle, and efforts to recruit a high-profile candidate fell short.

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County Stories

For Harris County Judge, Parker likely headed to runoff against Plummer for Democrats; Sanchez, Lancton headed to runoff

By late Tuesday, former Houston Mayor Annise Parker held a substantial lead in her bid for the Harris County Judge’s seat in the Democratic primary election, according to initial results. But she was not quite in a position to avoid a runoff. Parker received 48.6% of the vote during the early voting period, compared to former Houston City Council member Letitia Plummer’s 37.5%, according to incomplete returns. Matt Salazar, the only other Democratic candidate on the ballot, had received 14%. If either candidates fail to gain 50% of the vote, the top two vote-getters will advance to a May 26 runoff election.

In the six-candidate Republican primary, former Harris County treasurer Orlando Sanchez led the race with 25.9% of the early vote, and Houston firefighters union leader Marty Lancton was running second at 22.4%.The two primary winners will compete in the November general election for the right to be the chief executive of the third-largest county in the United States.

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Nirenberg declares victory in Bexar County judge race

Ron Nirenberg is a big step closer to holding one of the San Antonio area’s most powerful elected positions — once again. The former mayor declared victory Tuesday evening in the Democratic primary against incumbent County Judge Peter Sakai. Sixty-two percent of Bexar County's 120,000 early voters chose Nirenberg, according to unofficial results. Sakai trailed by nearly 30,000 votes. "Tonight, you elected me as your Democratic nominee for Bexar County judge," Nirenberg said as supporters cheered at Backyard on Broadway, a patio bar and restaurant. Nirenberg said that if he's elected county judge, he plans to appeal to people who "don't trust that government is worth their time."

"If we want to restore that faith, we have to start right here at home, at the local level. Because hope comes from government that keeps its promises and it's the steady, quiet — proof that even in it's worst times, Bexar County will be at its best," Nirenberg said. "And today we have taken a massive step toward making that promise a reality." About 150 people sipped beer and ate pizza as Nirenberg spoke. His wife, Erika Prosper Nirenberg, stood to his right, and his teenage son, Noah, was on FaceTime watching his dad speak at the podium. Sakai spoke for just over one minute as his supporters gathered at La Fonda in Alamo Heights. He stopped short of conceding, saying, "It ain’t over till it’s over." "I just again want to say thank you to all of you who have been a part of this journey," said Sakai, 71. "We will continue on. No matter what the outcome, I will respect the voters and the decisions they made today." Nirenberg is set to face conservative activist Patrick Von Dohlen in the November general election. Von Dohlen, a three-time City Council candidate known for his staunch position against abortion, is the lone Republican running for the position. Bexar County voters have not elected a Republican county judge since 1998.

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National Stories

Tensions flare as lawmakers question Iran war’s costs, risks and strategy

Tensions flared as questions mounted at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday over the Trump administration’s shifting rationale for war with Iran as lawmakers demand answers over the strategy, exit plan and costs to Americans in lives and dollars for what is quickly becoming a widening Middle East conflict. Trump officials made their case at the Capitol during a second day of closed-door briefings, this time with all members of the House and Senate ahead of a looming war powers resolution vote intended to restrict Trump’s ability to continue the joint U.S.-Israel campaign against Iran. “The president determined we were not going to get hit first. It’s that simple,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a testy exchange with reporters at the Capitol.

Rubio pushed back on his own suggestion a day earlier that Trump decided to strike Iran because Israel was ready to act first. Instead, he said Trump made the decision to attack this past weekend because it presented a unique opportunity with maximum chance for success. “There is no way in the world that this terroristic regime was going to get nuclear weapons, not under Donald Trump’s watch,” he said. The sudden pivot to a U.S. wartime footing has disrupted the political and policy agenda on Capitol Hill and raised uneasy questions about the risks ahead for a prolonged conflict and regime change after the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. At least six U.S. military service personnel have died so far. The situation has intensified the push in Congress for the war powers resolution — among the most consequential votes a lawmaker can take, with the war well underway — as administration officials are telling lawmakers they will likely need supplemental funds to pay for the conflict. It comes at the start of a highly competitive midterm election season that will test Trump’s slim GOP control of Congress. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer left the closed hearing, saying he was concerned about “mission creep” in a long war.

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Key moments from Kristi Noem’s Congressional testimony

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, where she fielded questions about deportation quotas, her spending on TV ads and the Trump administration’s immigration operations in Minneapolis. Here are some takeaways: North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis said Homeland Security had been “a disaster” under Noem’s leadership, characterized by imprecise immigration enforcement in the pursuit of arbitrary deportation targets. “We just want numbers. We want 1,000 a day, 6,000 a day, 9,000 a day because numbers matter, right?,” the senator said. “No, they don’t matter. Quality matters, not quantity, quality.” Tillis held up a letter from the DHS Office of Inspector General outlining 10 instances in which investigators said they were misled or blocked from pursuing investigations under Noem’s leadership. “That is stonewalling, that’s a failure of leadership and that is why I’ve called for your resignation,” he said.

Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy accused Noem of putting President Trump in a “terribly awkward spot” when Homeland Security spent $220 million on a TV-ad campaign that featured her prominently warning immigrants in the U.S. illegally—in English—to “leave now.” When Noem said the ads had effectively pressured unauthorized immigrants to leave the country, Kennedy shot back that the ads were “effective in building your name recognition.” The Wall Street Journal has previously reported the ads rankled many inside the administration because they thought the campaign was more focused on Noem than the administration’s message and signaled her own presidential aspirations. Noem told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Trump asked her several times to run the ads, which are still airing, and denied she improperly funneled most of the ad spend to a company run by the husband of her former spokeswoman. “It’s hard for me to believe, knowing the president as I do, that you said, ‘Mr. President here’s some ads I cut and I’m going to spend $220 million running them,’ that he would have agreed to that,” Kennedy said.

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U.S. takes military action in Ecuador against ‘terrorist organizations’

The United States and Ecuador have launched joint military operations against “designated terrorist organizations” in the South American country, the Pentagon said on Tuesday night, in what appeared to be a major expansion of the U.S. military’s unilateral strikes against boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific that the Trump administration has accused of carrying drugs. U.S. Special Forces soldiers are advising and supporting Ecuadorean commandos on raids across the country against suspected drug shipment facilities and other drug-related sites, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. The Americans are not believed to be participating in the actual raids, but are helping the Ecuadorean troops plan their operations, and are providing intelligence and logistics support, the official said.

In a 30-second video released by the military’s Southern Command, a helicopter is seen taking off in early morning or dusk, flying over an area, then picking up soldiers. The U.S. official said the video depicted the first in what was expected to be a series of raids across the country, some with U.S. advisers assisting nearby, some with Ecuadorean forces only. In this instance, involving mostly Ecuadorean forces, the official said, it was unclear what the mission’s objective was or whether it was successful. “The operations are a powerful example of the commitment of partners in Latin America and the Caribbean to combat the scourge of narco-terrorism,” the United States Southern Command said in a statement, which did not provide other details about the operations. The White House did not immediately comment on the military activity. In a visit to Ecuador last September, Secretary of State Marco Rubio strongly implied that the United States and Ecuador might conduct joint strikes. Across Latin America, cartels have battled each other and authorities to produce cocaine and smuggle it to the United States. Ecuador, the world’s largest exporter of the drug, does not produce it, but serves as a trafficking route for criminal groups operating in Colombia and Peru.

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S&P puts Paramount on negative credit watch

Paramount Skydance has been put on a watch by S&P Global for a possible credit rating downgrade after the studio prevailed against Netflix with a $31 per share bid to merge with Warner Bros. Discovery. The ratings firm has revised its outlook for Paramount to negative, while affirming its BB+ credit rating, on grounds Paramount will see its debt load likely grow beyond a red line for a possible downgrade. “While the company has yet to provide complete details around how it will finance the transaction, which we estimate will cost $111 billion (including the assumption of WBD’s debt and a one-time $2.8 billion termination payment to Netflix), we believe the purchase will increase its leverage well above our 4.25x downgrade threshold for the current rating,” S&P said in a statement on Tuesday.

The ratings firm’s caution assumes Paramount will have to take on substantial debt to acquire WBD and, while investing for growth, will also have to bring down its interest expense and borrowings. “We note that S&P Global adjusted leverage, which includes our adjustments for operating leases and restructuring charges and is net of cash, as of Dec 31, 2025 was 4.8x. PSKY has offered WBD’s shareholders a daily ticking fee starting after Sept. 30, 2026, until the transaction closes, which could add $650 million each quarter in additional costs to the transaction,” S&P added in its commentary. The ratings firm has a wait-and-see attitude toward Paramount to show operational and financial performance improvements over time. “If (Paramount) successfully completes the merger and integration, we would likely view the pro forma company more positively because it would have an enviable collection of marquee IP and the largest library of film and television content in the world. This would provide the company with the content and library to compete in the global streaming space and potentially help offset the declines in its linear TV business,” S&P argued.

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Congress is poised to pass its first major housing bill in more than a decade

A bipartisan pair of senators unveiled a new housing package this week that combines House- and Senate-passed legislation, putting Congress’ first major housing bill in more than a decade on a path to final passage in both chambers. The bill, spearheaded by Sens. Tim Scott and Elizabeth Warren, the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, passed a key procedural hurdle Monday night and would include provisions from the Housing for the 21st Century Act. Both chambers have now passed separate housing packages, a rare spot of bipartisan agreement in a deeply polarized Congress. A final Senate vote on the combined package could be scheduled as soon as next week, a Senate aide told NOTUS. From there, the bill would need to clear the House before heading to the president’s desk.

Scott and Warren released the bill, called the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, on Monday, right before the Senate successfully advanced the measure in an 86-4 vote. “This week, the Senate is set to vote on housing affordability legislation, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, and my colleagues and I stand ready to deliver it to President Trump’s desk, fulfilling the promise he made to Americans at the State of the Union,” Scott, the chair of the banking committee, said in a statement. Before that happens, the legislation would need to clear several hurdles, including procedural votes in the Senate to adopt the new package. It would also need to gather the support of lawmakers in the House. NOTUS previously reported that lawmakers in the House are eager to work with the Senate to get housing legislation passed. And the top lawmaker on the House Financial Services Committee signaled last week that the two chambers plan to work closely to get it done.

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Following Iran strikes, Trump floods news outlets with one-on-one calls

Since the United States and Israel launched a joint strike against Iran on Saturday, President Donald Trump has taken a blitz of calls, often dubbed “exclusives,” with a list of eager reporters. Among the many interviewers: Natalie Allison of The Washington Post, Zolan Kanno-Youngs of the New York Times, Kristin Welker and Peter Nicholas of NBC News, Jake Tapper of CNN, Bret Baier and Jacqui Heinrich of Fox News, Jonathan Karl and Rachel Scott of ABC News, Barak Ravid of Axios, Michael Scherer of the Atlantic, Nikki Schwab of the Daily Mail, Jon Levine of the Washington Free Beacon, Mychael Schnell and Laura Barrón-López of MS NOW, Steven Nelson of the New York Post, Connor Stringer of the Telegraph, Dasha Burns of Politico, and Libby Blanca Alon of Israel’s Channel 14 News.

Although Trump has been known to occasionallycall reporters or sometimes pick up his cellphone when they call, the poststrike media offensive differs from the traditional executive office playbook.Presidents often make the case for military action to the public in a White House speech, a news conference or by sending administration officials to lay out the administration’s message on Sunday talk shows. In 2013, President Barack Obama sent Secretary of State John F. Kerry to all five major Sunday shows to make the case for Congress authorizing military intervention in Syria. The White House described the calls as offering intimate access to the president. “President Trump is the most transparent and accessible President in American history,” White House principal deputy press secretary Anna Kelly wrote in an statement to The Post. “The American people have never had a more direct and authentic relationship with a President of the United States than they have with President Trump.” But Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at the University of Maryland, said the array of direct interviews offers Trump an opportunity to relay his talking points without being subjected to a cross-examination.

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Democrat flips Republican Arkansas House seat in special election

Democrat Alex Holladay is projected to win the special election to represent Arkansas’s House District 70, edging out Republican Bo Renshaw, according to Decision Desk HQ. The race was seen as a pickup opportunity for the Democrats after Holladay, in 2024, narrowly lost his bid to unseat Republican incumbent Carlton Wing, who eked out a 50.97 percent victory. But Wing resigned in September to become the executive director of Arkansas PBS, giving Holladay another opportunity to vie for the seat. Democrats’ successes in 2025 races had given the party hope for a better chance in this special election.

Holladay’s victory does not change control of the state’s lower legislative chamber, where Republicans have held a 80-19 majority. But the Democratic pickup could matter for appropriations bills, which require a 75-percent supermajority vote from both chambers. The margins especially matter this year, as Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) faces GOP backlash to her controversial push to build a 3,000-bed prison in Franklin County, despite local reporting suggesting resistance. The governor lost her bid to schedule the special election for June 9, which would have been after the fiscal session in April. The seat is in north Pulaski County and includes part of Sherwood and North Little Rock. Holladay is projected to represent the district during the fiscal session and finish out the term.

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Classified report finds Kristi Noem created security vulnerabilities at airports

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for months failed to appropriately respond to the findings of an internal watchdog that one of her biggest changes to airport security—allowing passengers to pass through screening checkpoints with their shoes on—is creating “significant” security risks, according to a letter from the inspector general reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and officials familiar with the matter. In July, she announced the change with great fanfare, granting the shoes-on policy to passengers even if they weren’t enrolled in the Transportation Security Administration’s precheck program. The announcement to eliminate what millions of travelers view as a nuisance was one of Noem’s most politically popular moves to date. But a classified November report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, the agency’s top watchdog, found that some of the TSA full-body scanners that most airline passengers pass through can’t scan shoes, according to people familiar with the report’s contents.

The report determined Noem’s policy move had inadvertently created a new security vulnerability in the system. Some White House officials have been made aware of the report. When the secretary’s office was briefed on the report, officials there gave it a higher level of classification and blocked it from being publicly released, people familiar with the matter said. A spokeswoman for the department disputed the inspector general’s claims and said Noem had appropriately responded to the findings. Many homeland-security officials said Noem’s handling of the inspector general report fits a pattern in which she has ignored or played down national-security concerns. In another instance, her office published photos of a secret government facility, publicizing a site meant to house the president in emergencies, officials said. Officials across the department have complained that Noem places priority on her public image and political standing in a way that jeopardizes her sprawling department’s core mission. In recent weeks, DHS has come under scrutiny, following two shootings of U.S. citizens by immigration agents. The Journal detailed earlier this month how Noem has attempted to burnish her personal stardom, staging a headline-grabbing immigration crackdown while retaliating against rivals and dissenters.

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Mary Ellen Klas: Can state election officials trust the White House?

(Mary Ellen Klas is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former capital bureau chief for the Miami Herald, she has covered politics and government for more than three decades.) After federal officials said last week that they didn’t plan to station immigration agents at voting locations during the midterm elections, secretaries of state from across the country had two reactions: relief and skepticism. In public comments and interviews, they said they were happy to see that the Trump administration appeared to be tamping down speculation that it would send ICE agents to polling places in the name of “verifying” voters. But they were not sure whether to believe it. “What we heard in the meeting is in stark contrast with what we're seeing in real life,” Steve Simon, Minnesota’s Democratic secretary of state, told me after the highly publicized virtual confab, which brought together state and federal officials. The meeting was called by the FBI and attended by officials from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and other federal agencies.

Secretaries of state from all 50 states and members of their staff were invited. But what should have been a routine conference call to hammer out how state and federal partners will work together throughout the election cycle instead left elections officials with new doubts. Simon’s skepticism was echoed by Democratic secretaries of state in Maine, Colorado and Arizona. Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams acknowledged the news on social media, but as with other Republican election officials, was notably silent about whether the comments were reassuring. On the eve of the first statewide primary elections of the midterm cycle on Tuesday, the fact that many state officials don’t trust their federal partners is a remarkable development. The US Constitution requires states to run elections. States establish rules and guidance and rely on the federal government for some funding and support. But states leave it to county officials to operate the mechanics of every election and count the votes. The brilliance of this decentralized system is that it makes it nearly impossible for a bad actor to hack the elections.

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Lead Stories

Autopsy reveals new details in self-immolation suicide of Tony Gonzales aide

Regina Ann Santos-Aviles, the congressional aide who had an affair with her boss, U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, was legally intoxicated when she set herself on fire in her backyard in Uvalde, according to an autopsy report obtained by the San Antonio Express-News. Santos-Aviles, 35, had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.094 grams per deciliter, according to the five-page report from the Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office. After lighting herself ablaze on the evening of Sept. 13, 2025, Santos-Aviles was flown to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, where she died the next morning. It is illegal to drive in Texas and all other states with a blood alcohol level of 0.08 grams per deciliter or higher.

There is no evidence Santos-Aviles drove while intoxicated that night, but the toxicology results suggest her judgment may have been compromised. At a blood alcohol level of 0.08 — less than what was in in her system — “judgment, self-control, reasoning and memory are impaired,” and it is “harder to detect danger,” according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In the hours before she soaked herself with gasoline and ignited the fluid with a handheld lighter, Santos-Aviles went to an Applebee's restaurant in Uvalde with longtime friends and members of their family, according to reports by police investigators. A member of the family told police Santos-Aviles had one alcoholic drink at the restaurant, and afterward she and another person stopped at a liquor store and purchased tequila, police reports state. Santos-Aviles drank some of the tequila at the friends' home. Because she had been drinking, one of the family members drove her to her own house at 8:15 p.m., police records state. She left her car behind.

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Texas primaries could test whether Latino support for GOP is holding after 2024 gains

Ongoing primary elections in Texas could be a first look at whether Latino swing voters, who are increasingly influential in state elections, are sticking with the Republican Party. These voters were key in President Trump's reelection in 2024 and helped Republicans win in parts of the state where they have historically struggled, mostly along the southern border. Those gains also played a key role in how Republicans reshaped the state's congressional lines at Trump's urging last year. Three out of the five seats that the Republicans drew to favor their party rely on continued support from Latino voters. Yet there have been some recent signs that Latinos in the state, as well as nationwide, are beginning to back away from the Republican Party. And primaries could provide another picture on where that support currently stands.

Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, said Latinos are mainly a young population that is expanding Texas' pool of new voters. And they are also a voting bloc that is not consistently aligned with either major political party. "The Latino electorate has emerged as the biggest swing vote in Texas because they are willing to side with either party," he said, "depending on the kinds of issues that are presented by the candidates." The economy and immigration were top issues that drove many Texas Latinos to support Trump in 2024. But lingering high prices and cost-of-living issues could become a liability for Republicans in power. "There's a sense that the Republicans have squandered a situation where they were likely to get the Latino vote on their side for several election cycles," Rottinghaus said. Daniel Garza works as president of the LIBRE Initiative to mobilize Latino voters to support conservative candidates. He believes the economy will continue to be the deciding factor in whom these voters support.

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Iranian drones hit the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia, while hundreds are reported dead in Iran

Iran struck the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia’s capital with a drone early Tuesday as it kept hitting targets around the region, while the United States and Israel pounded Iran with airstrikes in what U.S. President Donald Trump suggested was just the start of a relentless campaign that could last more than a month. The attack from two drones on the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh caused a “limited fire” and minor damage, according to Saudi Arabia’s Defense Ministry, and the embassy urged Americans to avoid the compound. It followed an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, which announced Tuesday it had been closed until further notice. The U.S. State Department also ordered the evacuation of non-emergency personnel and family in Kuwait, as well as Bahrain, Iraq, Qatar, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates as a precaution. The expanding conflict has so far killed hundreds of people, the vast majority in Iran.

Across Iran’s capital, explosions rang out throughout the night into Tuesday, with aircraft heard overhead. It was not immediately clear what had been hit. The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment site had sustained “some recent damage,” though there was “no radiological consequence expected.” Natanz earlier came under attack by the U.S. in the 12-day Iran-Israel war in June. In Lebanon, Israel launched more strikes on Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia group. Explosions could be heard and smoke seen in a southern suburb of Beirut. Israel also said its soldiers were “operating in southern Lebanon.” Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the Lebanese army was evacuating some of its positions along the border. The expansion of Iranian retaliation across the Gulf and the intensity of the Israeli and American attacks, the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the lack of any apparent exit plan portend a possibly prolonged conflict with far-reaching consequences. Iran has hit many countries deemed safe havens in the Mideast in retaliation for the U.S. and Israeli strikes. Recent targets include two Amazon data centers in the UAE and a drone impact near another in Bahrain that caused damage, the company said Tuesday. Iran has also hit energy facilities in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and attacked several ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all oil traded passes, sending global oil and natural gas prices soaring. “The Strait of Hormuz is closed,” declared Iranian Brig. Gen. Ebrahim Jabbari, an adviser to the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, threatening to set fire to any ships attempting to transit. “Don’t come to this region.”

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Epstein’s New Mexico ranch gets scrutiny at last. It may be too late.

One of Jeffrey Epstein’s most secretive and least scrutinized former properties is not an island. But it might as well be. His palatial 30,000-square-foot New Mexico mansion sits on a ridge overlooking thousands of acres of southwestern land he named Zorro Ranch. A sea of tufted grass, prickly cholla cactus and cracked arroyos, the sparsely populated high desert south of Santa Fe is a land where the nearest neighbors are miles away and most everyone minds their own business. Some of the financier’s victims have said they were trafficked there, famous figures visited, and Mr. Epstein mused about turning Zorro into a headquarters for outlandish genetic engineering experiments. And yet, New Mexico leaders say there has never been a thorough investigation of the criminal activity that may have occurred at the ranch during the 26 years the convicted sex offender owned it.

A state-led inquiry into Mr. Epstein’s actions was taken over by federal prosecutors in 2019, and then apparently fizzled, according to New Mexico officials and recently unsealed records. Last month, lawmakers in New Mexico, spurred by the Justice Department’s latest release of Epstein documents, voted unanimously to change that, impaneling a bipartisan four-member “truth commission” in the State Legislature, equipped with subpoena power, to probe the sordid history of Zorro Ranch. The state’s attorney general also announced he would reopen an investigation his office had closed shortly before Mr. Epstein’s death in 2019. “We need to find out how he was able to operate without any accountability,” said Andrea Romero, a New Mexico state representative from Santa Fe who is leading the truth commission. “We have to understand what allowed this to happen.” That won’t be easy. Since Mr. Epstein’s death, the property has changed hands, potentially complicating the state’s investigation. The new owner, a Dallas real estate magnate and former state senator named Don Huffines, is running for comptroller of Texas, an inopportune moment for investigators, though he has said he would cooperate with law enforcement.

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State Stories

A third victim has died from the Buford's shooting, Austin Police say

Austin Police have identified three people killed in Sunday's shooting at a bar on West Sixth Street as investigators said they were still working to determine why the shooter opened fire. The shooting at Buford's bar early Sunday left four dead, including the suspected shooter, and as many as 13 others wounded. At a news conference on Monday, Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis named two victims: 19-year-old Ryder Harrington and 21-year-old Savitha Shan. Late Monday, APD released the name of a third victim who has died: 30-year-old Jorge Pederson. Davis had stated earlier at the press conference that a person hospitalized from the shooting was expected to be taken off life support later that day.

Before APD updated on Pederson's condition, Austin-Travis County EMS had said 14 people were hospitalized and three of those victims were in critical condition. Police identified 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne as the man who allegedly fired into the bar from a vehicle before exiting the car and shooting into crowds near the popular bar. Officers responded within a minute of receiving the first 911 call, police said, and fatally shot Diagne early Sunday morning. In a news conference Monday, Austin Mayor Kirk Watson praised the speed of the city's first responders, but he also praised the people of Austin for supporting one another amid a traumatic event. "I want to also say how proud I am and how the people that are this city have reacted with such great compassion," Watson said. "We're all mourning together and grieving as a group, but we're seeing tremendous compassion and love coming out of the people of Austin." APD is investigating the incident along with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. Chief Davis said Monday that Diagne was wearing a shirt related to Iran. On Sunday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott warned against potential attacks stemming from U.S. actions in Iran.

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71 Texas lawmakers call on Congress to pause immigration after the Sixth Street massacre

A group of 71 Texas lawmakers asked Congressional leaders to pause immigration in the wake of the deadly massacre on Sixth Street in Austin over the weekend. The FBI suspects Ndiaga Diagne, a 53-year-old naturalized citizen originally from Sengal, opened fire into Buford’s Bar on Sixth Street killing two people and wounding 14 others. Police shot and killed Diagne on the street during his rampage as he wore a sweatshirt with the words “Property of Allah” printed on the front. “Terrorists do not care about party affiliation,” wrote state Rep. Cole Hefner, R-Mount Pleasant, and chairman of the Texas House Committee on Homeland Security, Public Safety & Veterans’ Affairs. “While Americans on both sides of the aisle disagree—sometimes fiercely—on policy, we share far more in common with one another than we will ever share with radical Islamic extremism.”

The 71 Texas lawmakers, all Republican, listed four demands in their letter to Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic Minority Leader, Senate Republican Majority Leader John Thune, and Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer. First, they asked Congress to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Democrats refused to approve funding for DHS after masked federal agents participated in a violent roundup of people in Minneapolis that left two Americans dead. “Budgetary obstruction and political gamesmanship that starves DHS of the resources it needs is not a negotiating tactic, it is a national security failure,” the Texas Republicans wrote. Second, the Texans asked Congress to immediately freeze all H-1B visas and called for a “comprehensive audit of existing visa holders and their current status is completed.” Third, the Texans demanded Congress pause all immigration until proper vetting protocols are established.

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$100 a barrel? How the war in Iran could affect oil and gas prices in Houston

Oil prices could surge to $100 a barrel if war with Iran continues, delivering a boost for Houston’s oil industry and pain at the pump for American consumers. The conflict is choking off oil and gas tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical artery for 15% of the world’s oil supply and 20% of natural gas cargoes. Oil prices surged 13% since Thursday, leveling out around $71 in Monday afternoon trading. Just how much the price of oil could jump and how much impact Houston will feel depends on how long the conflict hampers global oil trade.

“If the reduction in tanker traffic continues for a week or so, it will be historic,” Jim Burkhard, S&P Global’s vice president and global head of crude oil research, said in a statement. “Beyond that it would be epochal for the oil market with prices rising to ration scarce supply and impacts in financial markets.” Gasoline prices will likely begin to rise Monday or Tuesday, according to Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy. Fuel pump prices will continue to rise over the next week to reflect the jump in oil prices that occurred over the weekend, said Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates in Houston. “The biggest impact is going to be on diesel prices, which have increased by about 25 cents per gallon,” Lipow said, noting much of the world’s diesel supplies come from the Middle East. The conflict in Iran and the associated surge in oil prices add to the seasonal price swing already underway. The geopolitical incident coincides with seasonal shifts that push up fuel prices each year as refineries undergo spring maintenance while they transition to more costly fuel blends for the summer season, limiting output and pushing up prices at a time when the weather warms and consumers start driving more.

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Texas’ $10M bitcoin investment slips into the red amid crypto price dive

Boosted by a pro-cryptocurrency Trump administration, digital coins spent most of last year soaring to new heights. Bitcoin, the world’s most popular digital currency, skyrocketed from below $70,000 before the 2024 election to above $126,000 in October, an all-time high. But this year, amid broader geopolitical turbulence, economic uncertainty and growing pessimism around alternative investments, crypto has been in a nosedive, falling to a recent low below $64,000 — wiping out its entire run up from Trump’s second term. Other popular cryptos, including Ethereum, have also been plunging, and some analysts have been warning much steeper drops could be coming. “The crypto bubble is imploding,” Mike McGlone, a senior strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote recently on LinkedIn.

Early Monday, Bitcoin posted something of a rebound, pushing back near $70,000, although the digital coin was still off more than 20% year-to-date. The recent tumble means Texas taxpayers are also in the red. Last year, as part of a broader, yearslong push to transform the state into a “crypto capital,” Gov. Greg Abbott signed a high-profile bill establishing a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” — essentially a new state investment fund, controlled by the Texas comptroller’s office and funded with public dollars that would buy and potentially sell crypto. In late November, the office made the fund’s first first purchase, buying around $5 million of a Bitcoin ETF, or exchange-traded fund. On Dec. 15, the state made another $5 million purchase of the same ETF, the comptroller’s office recently told The Dallas Morning News. Texas made its first purchase when Bitcoin was trading at around $91,000, and the second when it was trading around $87,000. The purchase prices mean that as of early Monday the state’s $10 million cumulative investment was valued around $7.8 million.

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Recent report shows data centers may negatively impact Texas’ water supply

Texas is home to 464 data centers, with over 70 additional sites under development, and the increasing water demand for these facilities is expected to continue to rise, according to a newly released report. In a state plagued by drought and a rapidly growing population, many people are concerned that these data centers are not disclosing how much water they plan to use. Using energy forecasts used at data centers, the Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC) estimated that Texas uses 8 billion gallons of water annually. Vice president for water and community resilience and the report’s author, Margaret Cook, emphasized the need for transparency between data centers and communities.

"It’s important because we don’t have a whole lot of information about this," Cook said. "It’s a big phenomenon. It’s influencing a lot of communities, and community members don’t feel like they have enough information about these large water users coming into their community." Without knowing the facilities’ true impact, Cook said it's more difficult to create a state-wide water strategy. Increases in water usage are often tied to data center upgrades. Cities that build new pipelines or wells for these facilities could see an influx of taxpayer dollars. According to Cook, data centers may share information during negotiations, but often under a non-disclosure agreement. "They could be providing normal water rates, but they’re not accounting for the additional water supply and additional infrastructure that they’re going to need in the future, that this data center is adding to their community’s burden," Cook said.

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Houston rodeo begins its 94th season. Here’s how it’s addressing public safety

Monday kicked off the annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, one of the most highly anticipated and highly attended local events of the year. This year’s rodeo comes on the heels of a deadly shooting in Austin that has prompted security concerns statewide. A shooting in Austin left two dead and injured 14 others, after a man allegedly fired a gun from his car into a downtown bar. The shooter, identified as 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne, allegedly exited his car and shot into crowds before being killed by police. The rodeo does not have a clear bag policy and permits small purses or backpacks to be brought into NRG Park. Prohibited items include fireworks, laser pointers, or other weapons in general.

The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo does not allow firearms, whether open carry or concealed, according to the rodeo's website. Security at the rodeo includes the use of a body wand, checking bags at entrances, and random bag checks within NRG Park. “The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is committed to providing a safe, family-friendly environment for our community," a spokesperson for the rodeo said in a statement. "The safety of our guests, volunteers, staff and participants is our highest priority. We work year-round with law enforcement partners to implement and continuously evaluate comprehensive security measures, supported by state-of-the-art technology. We are focused on delivering a secure and welcoming experience at this year’s Rodeo.” In a statement on Saturday following the shooting, Governor Greg Abbott said he directed the Texas Military Department to send service members across the state, as well as increasing patrols at "vital energy facilities, ports, and along our border." Firearm bans at major events have drawn scrutiny in the past. The State Fair of Texas issued a ban on firearms after a 2023 shooting, prompting a lawsuit from the Texas Attorney General's office which was ultimately dismissed by a Dallas County judge.

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The Texas Senate primary ad wars have been expensive and the ads predictable.

$121 million is a lot of money to spend on five people. But that’s how much has been spent in the Democratic and Republican primaries for the U.S. Senate seat occupied by veteran Sen. John Cornyn. He is in a contentious primary against Attorney General Ken Paxton and Congressman Wesley Hunt. And has been running advertisements touting his re-election since last year. Cornyn and outside groups have spent nearly $65 million supporting the incumbent, with Hunt trailing at $11 million and presumed frontrunner Paxton’s total at $3.6 million. And we’re not even in the expected runoff. On the Democratic side, the leading candidates are Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett of Dallas and State Representative James Talarico of Austin. Talarico and his allies have spent around $18 million in his run while Crockett’s so far spent about $4.5 million.

Introductions are everything, and Cornyn mastered it in 2008 when he rolled out his tongue in cheek advertisement “Big John” at the 2008 Republican Party of Texas convention. It was a knock off of a Jimmy Dean commercial, where a man with a low tenor voice extolls the virtues of Cornyn. Dressed as if he’s a ranch hand, the senator – then running for his second term – is described in the narrator’s deep, crooning voice as a fighter for Texas who delivers for his state. “He rose to the top in just one term, kept Texas in power, made lesser states squirm—big John … big, bad John,” he says. Career defining as it may be, it was instantly mocked by the political press mocked. Nonetheless Big John easily defeated his Democratic opponent former State Representative Rick Noriega of Houston that fall in Texas. Paxton kicked off his campaign implying support from President Trump, although the president has actually withheld an endorsement in the race, most recently calling all three candidates “good guys.” But the insinuation in the ad pulls from past comments made by Trump supporting Paxton. At one point, Trump calls Paxton “a really talented guy.” In another, Trump says, “I wish I had him in the White House!” The advertisement has one message, and that is “Trump/Paxton.” Paxton speaks only once, at the end, with the disclaimer “I’m Ken Paxton and I approve this message.”

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US moving pregnant immigrant girls to Texas to avoid providing abortions, critics say

All unaccompanied immigrant children who are pregnant, many by rape, are being moved to a single facility in Texas in order to avoid providing abortion services in a significant human rights violation, critics say. As detainees are frequently moved across state lines quickly, often to red states like Texas, pregnant people are facing challenges accessing reproductive health care in detention centers. Unaccompanied minors who lack immigration documentation are at high risk for trafficking and other forms of harm, so they fall under the care of the office of refugee resettlement (ORR), which previously had facilities across the country capable of caring for children under the age of 18 who are pregnant. Since July, more than a dozen pregnant children have been moved to a single facility in the small town of San Benito, along the south Texas border. The children kept in Texas are as young as 13, and about half are pregnant because of rape, according to a joint investigation by the Texas Newsroom and the California Newsroom.

In Texas, abortion is banned in nearly all circumstances, including rape and incest. “It’s a choice to ensure zero abortions,” said Jonathan White, a former top official working with children’s programs in the ORR under the Obama and Trump administrations. When a pregnant child is moved to Texas, “as long as she is in Texas, she can’t access an abortion – without a federal official needing to deny her an abortion”, he said. The move amplifies existing concerns about reproductive healthcare in immigration detention centers, including allegations over the lack of appropriate healthcare for pregnant people, separation of nursing parents and infants, and forced sterilization in immigration facilities. The “total disregard” for the rights of pregnant and nursing detainees is a “dramatic violation” of international law and public health practices ensuring consensual medical treatment, said Diana Romero, professor and director of the Center on Immigrant, Refugee and Global Health at the CUNY graduate school of public health. Forcing any individual to carry a pregnancy to term is an “egregious” violation of rights, and relocation from other locations around the country to states with more restrictive abortion laws “adds a whole other layer of concern”, Romero said.

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Brian Babin backs Houston’s bid to host major global space event

Houston is in the running to host the 80th International Astronautical Congress. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics has submitted a bid to host the event in October 2029 — just months after the 60th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. U.S. Rep. Brian Babin, a Texas Republican and chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, has written a letter backing the AIAA.

“Hosting the (International Astronautical Congress) in the United States would provide a valuable opportunity to reinforce global collaboration at a time when international cooperation in space is essential to scientific discovery, economic growth and the peaceful use of outer space,” Babin wrote in a letter on Monday to the International Astronautical Federation, which organizes the event. “It would also underscore the United States’ commitment to open dialogue, international partnership, and the advancement of a safe, sustainable and innovative space ecosystem.” The International Astronautical Congress is the world’s largest global space congress. It attracts governments, space agencies, industry leaders, researchers and students from around the world, according to a news release from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). AIAA has previously hosted six of these global space events, including the 2002 event in Houston. It estimates the 2029 congress could generate $35 million in economic impact for Texas and attract more than 13,000 delegates from over 80 countries.

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North Texas officials discuss how to plan for region's water future

Dozens of North Texas officials are voicing their worries, ideas and dreams about the area’s water resources, as a regional influx of businesses and residents ramp up pressure to address looming scarcity concerns. On Friday, experts and decision-makers participated in a water workshop at the University of Texas at Arlington as part of Vision North Texas 2.0, a revamped public-private-academic partnership. The event brought together representatives from water utilities, regional groups, municipalities, consulting firms and more to discuss the region’s long-term water supply, infrastructure, growth pressures and resilience challenges. North Texas’ population is expected to surge to more than 12 million by 2050. That raises the stakes for the group, which is working to address regional growth while enhancing economic vitality, quality of life and long-term sustainability across 16 counties.

This was the first in a series of workshops that will have different themes, but leaders said beginning with a look at the state of water in the region made the most sense. “Our region is growing at a pace that few parts of the country can match,” Ming-Han Li, dean of the College of Architecture, Planning and Public Affairs, or CAPPA, at UT Arlington, told the crowd. “That growth comes with extraordinary opportunities and responsibilities.” No one is bringing water with them, Li said, before posing questions to the group on how leaders can anticipate future drought rather than react to it. “How can we build a future when water is not a constraint but a catalyst for the thriving, equitable and resilient region we aspire to create?” Li said. CAPPA is a Vision North Texas 2.0 partner along with the North Central Texas Council of Governments, Urban Land Institute Dallas-Fort Worth and the North Texas Commission.

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Iranian drones hit the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia, while hundreds are reported dead in Iran

Iran struck the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia’s capital with a drone early Tuesday as it kept hitting targets around the region, while the United States and Israel pounded Iran with airstrikes in what U.S. President Donald Trump suggested was just the start of a relentless campaign that could last more than a month. The attack from two drones on the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh caused a “limited fire” and minor damage, according to Saudi Arabia’s Defense Ministry, and the embassy urged Americans to avoid the compound. It followed an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, which announced Tuesday it had been closed until further notice. The U.S. State Department also ordered the evacuation of non-emergency personnel and family in Kuwait, as well as Bahrain, Iraq, Qatar, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates as a precaution.

The expanding conflict has so far killed hundreds of people, the vast majority in Iran. Across Iran’s capital, explosions rang out throughout the night into Tuesday, with aircraft heard overhead. It was not immediately clear what had been hit. The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment site had sustained “some recent damage,” though there was “no radiological consequence expected.” Natanz earlier came under attack by the U.S. in the 12-day Iran-Israel war in June. Related Stories As Mideast conflict widens, US says attacks on Iran will last weeks and intensify US and Israel pound Iran as Trump signals willingness to talk to new leaders after Khamenei's death What to know about the new US-Israeli attacks on Iran.

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Ryan Patrick: Texas should follow Florida’s lead in acting on litigation reform

(Ryan Patrick is the CEO of Texans for Lawsuit Reform and previously served as US attorney for the Southern District of Texas, a Texas district court judge, and a law firm partner in private practice.) From the ‘90s to early 2000s, Texas was the undisputed leader in civil justice reform. The question now is whether it intends to lead again by modernizing how medical damages are presented to juries or accept the consequences of falling behind as litigation costs spiral. Reestablishing fairness and transparency in medical damages is the clearest place to start. Insurance markets across the US are sending increasingly clear signals about how states price litigation risk. Florida, once described as a “judicial hellhole,” finally responded in 2023 by modernizing its civil justice systems and curbing inflated medical damages. Texas, meanwhile, hesitated. Florida’s experience shows how quickly capital markets respond when the rules become fair and predictable. When litigation risk falls, competition returns. Texas is now testing the opposite hypothesis: What happens when reform stalls?

The answer is hitting Texans in their wallets and difficult budget conversations around the dinner table. Insurance rates in Texas are climbing at one of the fastest paces in the country. Texans now pay the fourth-highest combined home and auto insurance costs nationwide, with homeowners rates rising 19% in 2024 and auto insurance premiums jumping 25% in a single year. But insurance rates aren’t the only things rising in Texas. In 2024, Texas led the nation in “nuclear verdicts,” or jury awards exceeding $10 million. This creates a parasitic cycle where excessive verdicts feed off insurance pools, which reappear as higher premiums for families and businesses. As insurers absorb outsized jury awards, they respond by raising liability premiums for employers, who in turn pass those added costs along to consumers through higher prices and reduced services.

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County Stories

Pretrial set to start for 2 former Tarrant County jailers indicted in Anthony Johnson, Jr.'s death

The pretrial for two former Tarrant County Jail officers indicted for murder in the death of Anthony Johnson, Jr. is set for Tuesday morning. Joel Garcia, 49, and Rafael Moreno, 39, were among several jailers that responded to an altercation with Johnson, a Marine veteran whose family says was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Partially released video footage from April 21, 2024, shows jailers pepper spraying Johnson in the face while restraining him face down on the ground. Moreno knelt on Johnson’s back for about 90 seconds, and Johnson can be heard saying he can’t breathe. Garcia, who was Moreno’s supervisor, recorded the incident on his phone. Johnson died after the altercation. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled his death a homicide by asphyxiation.

Rafael Moreno and Joel Garcia were fired in May 2024, reinstated after the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office said they were incorrectly dismissed, then fired again. Both were indicted for murder in June 2024 and arrested a few days after, court records show. Daryl Washington, attorney for the Johnson family, told KERA News Monday he expects the trial will start sometime this year. “The family is anxious,” Washington said. “Their son was wrongfully taken away from them. And they want answers.” KERA News reached out to Garcia and Moreno’s attorneys and will update this story with any response. For nearly two years, the Johnson family has demanded accountability from Tarrant County and its staff. They filed a federal lawsuit against the county and 15 jailers, including Garcia and Moreno, for their son’s wrongful death.

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City Stories

Houston’s 1940 Air Terminal Museum announces abrupt closure in midnight post

The 1940 Air Terminal Museum, a longstanding tribute to Houston's aviation history, has closed because it was no longer economically sustainable, according to its president. The museum is adjacent to Houston's Hobby Airport. Karen Nicolaou, president and director of The Houston Aeronautical Heritage Society, the nonprofit that operates the museum, said she hopes the closure is temporary as a workable financial solution is sought. "The museum has ceased operations at this time," according a Facebook post. "Thank you to everyone who has contributed."

More than 50 people commented on the closure online since the announcement, which was posted at midnight on Monday, with many wondering what happened, if the closure was temporary and what will happen to the building and exhibits. The Houston Aeronautical Heritage Society nonprofit leases space in the old terminal building for the museum. She said the building is owned by Houston Airport System which reports to the city of Houston and the mayor's office and it is governed by federal aviation regulations. On March 6, 2019, the Houston Municipal Terminal Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places and is a recognized piece of history by the city of Houston. As a nonprofit that leases the building, she said they face restrictions on where they can get their funding and how they use the space. The final blow, Nicolaou said, was Facebook's refusal to let the group pay to promote their raffle fundraiser on the platform because the company considered it gambling. The board of the nonprofit hosted a raffle for a 1928 Ford Model A in December 2025 and had held a raffle the previous year as well. The group also tried raising money through GoFundMe pages and other methods before the closure. She said the raffle makes up over 50% of their budget and they've been doing the raffle for 10 years. The museum's website lists major benefactors for the museum which include United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, National Trust for Historic Preservation, Texas Preservation Trust, The Strake Foundation, The Houston Endowment and others.

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Henry S. Miller III, RIP

The family of Henry S. Miller III announced this morning that Miller, who is credited with developing West Village and for his work in Highland Park Village and Preston Royal Village, died Saturday. He was 79.

“Long before mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly urban districts became standard in American cities, he imagined a Dallas where shopping, dining, living, and public life could coexist seamlessly—and brought that vision to life with West Village,” an obituary accompanying the announcement said. West Village opened in Uptown in 2001. Miller’s father and the family purchased Highland Park Village in 1976, working to bring in new tenants and revitalize the center over time. That also meant maintaining a movie theater and a grocery store there at a loss, the family says, because he felt the shopping center belonged to the neighborhood. The family sold Highland Park Village in 2009. Miller is survived by his children, Kathryn Miller Rabey and her children Nicholas, Maximilian, and Olivia; Henry S. Miller IV and his wife Lydia, and their children Henry, Jack, Owen, and Mimi; Michael Alexander Miller and his wife Lindsey, and their children Layton Garrett, Miles, and Samuel; and Alexander Lewis Miller. Henry is also survived by his sisters, Patsy Miller Donosky and Jacqueline Miller Stewart and a large extended family. He was preceded in death by his brother, Vance C. Miller.

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National Stories

Lawmakers: Israeli plan to attack Iran dictated Trump’s decision on strikes

Senior lawmakers in both parties said Monday that the Trump administration’s decision to launch bombing and missile strikes across Iran this weekend was largely dictated by Israel’s plan to attack Iran with or without U.S. support. Senior administration officials told Republican and Democratic lawmakers at a classified briefing on Capitol Hill that the Israeli plan to strike Iran pushed the United States to take preemptive action to protect U.S. troops stationed at bases throughout the Middle East, whom the Pentagon believed would have been targeted by retaliatory strikes. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who serves as vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee attended the briefing, said the decision to initiate a massive military assault on another country because of pressure from a U.S. ally put the nation in “uncharted” territory.

“This is still a war of choice that has been acknowledged by others that was dictated by Israel’s goals and timeline,” Warner told reporters at the briefing. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine provided the briefing to lawmakers Monday afternoon. Warner said he supports Israel, but he questioned the decision to put American lives at risk when an imminent threat may be directed at an ally instead of the United States itself. “Israel is a great ally of America. I stand firmly with Israel. But I believe at the end of the day when we are talking about putting American soldiers in harm’s way and we have American casualties and expectations of more, there needs to be the proof of an imminent threat to American interests. I still don’t think that standard has been met,” he said. Warner argued if the military operation against Iran “was being driven by imminent security threats from Iran against America, I think we would have had better planning.”

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Solar power’s newest friends: MAGA influencers

Environmentalists and solar power proponents have found a pair of surprise allies: Katie Miller and Kellyanne Conway. Miller, the wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, and Conway, the polling guru who led President Donald Trump’s first campaign, raised eyebrows this month when they publicly touted the clean energy source that has come under fire from the Trump administration. According to a confidential strategy memo obtained by POLITICO, their advocacy is aligned with a campaign by members of the nation’s largest renewable energy lobby group to MAGA-fy solar power — technology that Trump once derided as “a blight on our country.”

The memo distributed earlier this month shows the American Clean Power Association launched the “American Energy First” campaign to engage Conway and conservative influencers like Miller “to amplify the benefits of solar energy” and “note the harm that could result from reckless trade policy.” The memo lays out a strategy to leverage recent Conway-driven polling data — commissioned by American Energy First and conducted in December — showing solar power was popular with Trump’s base. “As part of the campaign, ACP is working with a series of conservative influencers to secure opinion media placements authored by conservative columnists, former Republican lawmakers, and other credible Republican voices in conservative outlets,” the memo says. The campaign will expand in the coming weeks, it states, “with the release of polling data from a Trump aligned firm, paid media partnerships with podcasts like the Katie Miller Pod (Steven Miller’s wife), as well as advertorials and sponsorships with right-of-center publications like the Washington Reporter, The Dispatch and The Federalist.”

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Tariffs confound small businesses again

President Trump’s whipsawing trade policy last year destabilized many American businesses. His new push to replace the system with a different batch of duties has bewildered companies all over again. Since the Supreme Court invalidated many of Mr. Trump’s tariffs last month, his administration has vowed to use other legal authorities to rebuild the program. Almost immediately, Mr. Trump wielded an unproven legal provision to enact a 10 percent across-the-board tariff on U.S. trading partners and threatened to raise the rate. The haphazard rollout has introduced a tangle of unknowns for companies. A new tariff system could upend months of business decisions, and many companies are bracing for prolonged uncertainty. They are also considering whether and how to seek refunds on tariffs they paid — and, if they receive them, whether they would return any money to customers.

Peter Furth, whose company, FFF Associates in Stamford, Conn., imports fig paste from Turkey and Spain, said Mr. Trump’s tariffs had driven up costs and destroyed his cash flow. Mr. Furth has been passing on the additional costs to his customers, which include Mondelez, the maker of Fig Newtons; Nature’s Bakery; and J&J Snack Foods. He said he believed he had a contractual, and moral, obligation to return any tariff refund to customers. “I owe it back to them,” he said. “It’s very simple.” Smaller businesses like his have been particularly unmoored by the latest shifts in trade policy because, as during last year’s tariff chaos, they lack the legal and financial resources to weather unpredictability smoothly. “The level of uncertainty is crazy,” said Matt Weyandt, a co-founder of Xocolatl Chocolate, a craft chocolate maker in Atlanta. Mr. Weyandt, whose company sources cacao beans from countries including Peru, Nicaragua and Tanzania, is trying to establish whether exemptions on foreign agricultural products previously enacted by the Trump administration still stood, to no avail, he said. He was intrigued by the prospect of seeking a tariff refund, he said, but had no idea how to go about it.

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America’s billionaires continue to flock to Wyoming

At his childhood home in Nebraska that lacked the comforts of television and air conditioning, Joe Ricketts learned that honest work and neighborly values were keys to success. After graduating college, he persuaded friends and family to lend him $12,500 in seed money for what became Ameritrade, the investing firm that would go on to disrupt the Wall Street trading establishment and put Mr. Ricketts on a path to riches. By 2015, his wealth had grown to $1 billion, and even that stunning figure now feels like a quaint memory, as the powerful elixir of rising stocks and falling taxes that has minted new billionaires across the country has catapulted Mr. Ricketts’s personal net worth to $8 billion. Along the way, Mr. Ricketts found new community in and around Jackson, Wyo., a playground for the rich. For some things, he has been celebrated: He has donated to research on conservation of red squirrels and American beavers. He contributed $1 million to building a hospital. He has taken pride in building a herd of white bison.

But lately some of his neighbors have come up against the raw power of Mr. Ricketts’s financial muscle. Many of them fought against a plan he advanced a few years ago to turn his ranch into a resort for wealthy tourists, proposing to bypass regulations that limit construction during the brutal winter months to protect local wildlife. Then, when community opponents dug in, Mr. Ricketts simply acquired a different piece of land — a $9 million parcel that officials had hoped to turn into public land that could benefit everyone. “There is not much we can do to rein that in,” said Luther Propst, a county commissioner in Teton County, home to Jackson and the mountain outposts that surround it. The Jackson Hole region has long been a refuge for the rich, but an explosion of new affluence has allowed a growing cadre of extraordinarily wealthy people to dominate both the local economy and Wyoming state politics. Teton County is not merely the richest county in the country, per capita, by far; it is a window into America’s near future, as the country enters a new gilded age, one in which millionaires are turning into billionaires overnight. It is not merely the majesty of the Teton Range and the winding Snake River that have made Jackson Hole a destination for the ultrawealthy. Unlike states like Washington and California, which are moving to tax millionaires and billionaires, Wyoming has helped the rich hold on to their wealth. In 2022, the county assessor went to the state Legislature to support a bill closing the loopholes that allowed wealthy landowners to claim agricultural tax exemptions even when their large spreads were hardly working farms. But lawmakers declined to make the change.

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Trump, who campaigned against 'endless' wars, enters Iran with no end date

To win the White House in 2016, Donald Trump first had to get by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the son and brother of two past presidents inextricably linked with U.S. wars in the Middle East. Attacking the Bush family dynasty — and its legacy — became a feature of Trump’s campaign. And that meant doubling down on criticism of the Iraq War that President George W. Bush had led the United States into under the premise of finding weapons of mass destruction that never materialized. “The war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake,” Trump responded, when asked at a Republican presidential debate in February 2016 if he still believed, as he said he did in 2008, that Bush should have been impeached for it.

“We can make mistakes,” Trump added. “But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq.” The moment was one of many in Trump’s long history of denouncing forever wars and promising, as president himself, to keep the U.S. out of the sorts of foreign entanglements that could lead to them. But one year into his second term, Trump has ordered military action in multiple countries, including the January strike on Venezuela to capture Nicolás Maduro. And now with the war in Iran, Trump has plunged America into its most significant conflict since the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — without any congressional approval. “President Trump’s courageous decision to launch Operation Epic Fury is grounded in a truth that presidents for nearly 50 years have been talking about, but no president had the courage to confront: Iran poses a direct and imminent threat to the United States of America and our troops in the Middle East,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an emailed statement. “The rogue Iranian Regime under the evil hand of the Ayatollah has killed and maimed thousands of American citizens and soldiers over the years — and that ends with President Trump.” Trump’s successful 2024 campaign to return to power was predicated in large part on how he hadn’t started any wars in his first term. “My entire adult lifetime has been shaped by presidents who threw America into unwise wars and failed to win them,” Trump’s future vice president, JD Vance, wrote for The Wall Street Journal in a January 2023 guest column endorsing Trump’s 2024 bid.

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Republicans back Trump’s war on Iran

Republicans on Capitol Hill are about to give President Donald Trump a major boost — a green light to conduct a war against Iran without worrying about Congress, at least for now. The House and Senate are on track this week to vote down a pair of bipartisan war power resolutions aimed at limiting Trump’s ability to conduct the Iran campaign. Rank-and-file Republicans are prepared to back Trump, giving them co-ownership of a conflict that’s already unpopular with Americans. The Senate is likely to vote Wednesday, with the House set to vote on Thursday. The House and Senate will receive separate briefings on Iran this afternoon from top administration officials.

In the Senate, previous GOP skeptics of Trump’s unilateral war-making authority say they’re comfortable with the president’s efforts on Iran. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) waffled on a Venezuela war powers resolution in January before ultimately voting against it. But Hawley said he’d oppose this Iran war powers measure, which is led by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). The Missouri Republican cautioned that he might change his mind if Trump deployed ground forces during the Iran conflict. “I’ve always said that committing ground troops would be something, I think, that would require immediate congressional authorization. But that doesn’t seem to be in the immediate horizon,” Hawley said Monday night. Two Republicans who supported the war powers push on Venezuela — Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) — were noncommittal on Iran. Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), who eventually opposed the Venezuela resolution despite deep reservations, said he’d withhold judgement until after today’s Senate briefing.

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Lead Stories

FBI investigates Texas bar shooting that killed 2 and wounded 14 as possible terrorist act

A gunman wearing clothes with an Iranian flag design and the words “Property of Allah” killed two people and wounded 14 early Sunday at a Texas bar, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. The FBI is investigating the shooting, which erupted a day after the U.S. and Israel launched an attack on Iran, as a potential act of terrorism. Police in Austin shot and killed the gunman, who used both a pistol and a rifle to carry out the attack, police said. The shooting happened outside Buford’s Backyard Beer Garden just before 2 a.m. along Sixth Street, a nightlife destination filled with bars and music clubs and only a few miles (kilometers) from the University of Texas at Austin.

Nathan Comeaux, a 22-year-old senior, had spent the evening there with friends and said the bar was “full of college students, probably mostly UT kids, shoulder to shoulder, hundreds just enjoying their nights.” The suspect drove past the bar several times before stopping and shooting from the window of his SUV at people on a patio and in front of the bar, according to Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis. He then parked, got out with a rifle and began shooting at people walking along the street before officers rushed to the intersection and shot him, Davis said. Three of the injured were in critical condition Sunday morning, she said. The gunman was identified as 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement. Comeaux had left the bar to grab pizza at a food truck across the street about 10 minutes before the first gunshots were fired. No one around the pizza truck understood what was happening, he said, with some thinking the noise was fireworks or a loud motorcycle.

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War spirals in Middle East as explosions heard across region

Iran’s top official said Tehran “will not negotiate” with the US. Explosions have been heard in Gulf cities including Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha, while Israel and Hezbollah are trading blows as the conflict widens. Here’s a look at the war in maps and charts. Fighter jets down: Three US fighter jets were accidentally shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses in an apparent “friendly fire incident,” according to the US military. All crews have been recovered and are in a stable condition. Videos geolocated by CNN showed a fighter jet crashing in Kuwait and a pilot parachuting to the ground.

Americans killed: President Donald Trump acknowledged there could be more US casualties after three US service members were killed in Kuwait. Global shockwaves: The war has disrupted air travel, hit US-friendly Gulf states usually regarded as safe, and hindered the flow of oil. Countries looking to evacuate their citizens also face major challenges. At least 555 people have been killed in Iran since the joint US-Israeli strikes began, according to the Red Crescent Society.At least 168 students were killed in a strikeat a girls’ elementary school, according to Iranian state media, with another three students being killed in separate attacks in the capital and northern Iran, state media said. A Chinese national was also killed in Iran, China’s foreign ministry said. At least 10 people have been killed and more than 200 injured in Israel since it began military operations against Iran, according to Magen David Adom. Nine of the fatalities were reported from the city of Beit Shemesh, where a missile hit a bomb shelter. Three US service members were killed in a suspected drone strike early Sunday in Kuwait, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. Prior to this, Kuwait’s health ministry said separately that one person had been killed in Iranian strikes.

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Iran gives Democrats a new opening on energy prices

Democrats on Saturday seized on President Donald Trump’s decision to attack Iran as a new front in their energy affordability campaign. Crude prices had already begun climbing on Friday in anticipation of military action in Iran, a major oil producer that also sits at the Strait of Hormuz, a key chokepoint for fossil fuel shipments. After House Democrats gathered last week for a retreat to hammer out their midterm messaging strategy, Trump’s strike on Iran may give them a fresh line of attack. “Americans are demanding help with the cost-of-living crisis, but President Trump would rather start another war, potentially driving up energy prices, than listen to them,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.

When Trump launched an operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, some Democrats said he was putting the nation at risk to take over that nation’s oil. The Iran situation is different. Democratic critics say the president launched what he called “major combat operations” without enough consideration of energy prices. Roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas flows through the Strait of Hormuz. During Tuesday’s State of the Union address, Trump exaggerated the drop in gasoline prices, saying they were “in some places $1.99 a gallon.” The U.S. average sat at $2.98 on Saturday, according to AAA. A protracted war could send prices higher, especially if Iran blocks oil tankers from accessing the Persian Gulf. Ships are already avoiding the area. “Destabilizing Iran is not cost-free. Iran has the capacity to disrupt oil shipments in the Persian Gulf, activate proxies across the region, and trigger refugee flows that would immediately affect Qatar, the UAE, Turkey, and others,” said Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.).

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China emerges as big winner from Supreme Court's tariff ruling

Global trade has been upended again after the Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs, with U.S. trading partners and businesses around the world grasping to understand the system that replaces them. A new flat global tariff of 10% paid by U.S. importers took effect Tuesday, lower than the 15% that Trump said he would implement days before. Under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, the 10% tariff can remain in place for 150 days without congressional approval. China is the “biggest winner” from the Supreme Court ruling, with an effective U.S. tariff rate now much closer to that of other countries, said Alicia García-Herrero, chief economist for Asia-Pacific at French investment bank Natixis.

Among other benefits, China’s lower tariff rate reduces the incentive for companies to shift production to other countries in Asia, at least temporarily. But the whiplash has created overwhelming uncertainty for key U.S. allies and some of Washington’s biggest trading partners, many of whom had already announced or were nearing trade deals with the U.S., some having offered major concessions with the aim of securing favorable rates under Trump’s now-defunct tariff regime. In Asia, Trump administration officials had rushed to conclude deals in the weeks before the court ruling, with Indonesia agreeing to a 19% tariff rate only a day earlier. The tariff ruling also comes just weeks before Trump’s upcoming trip to China, where he hopes to maintain a delicate trade truce with the world’s second-biggest economy. Those who stand to lose the most include Japan and Taiwan, both of which had previously pledged hundreds of billions in U.S. investment in exchange for a tariff rate of 15%. Singapore and Australia also stand to lose since they already had a relatively favorable tariff rate of 10%.

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State Stories

Abbott activates Texas military in case of retaliation after U.S. attacks Iran

Gov. Greg Abbott deployed troops and heightened cyber security measures Saturday to protect Texas from potential retaliation following the United States' strikes on Iran. The Texas Military Department will increase patrols at the southern border, ports and energy facilities and boost cyber security capabilities as part of "Operation Fury Shield," according to the agency. There has been no publicly reported threat against Texas, but the action comes amid a global fallout from the U.S. and Israel's attacks on Iran on Saturday, which killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "Texas stands with President Trump," Abbott wrote on social media. "His message to Iran is clear aggression toward America and our allies will no longer be tolerated."

“We will deliver such devastating blows that you yourselves will be driven to beg," Iran's parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said in an address Sunday, according to the Associated Press. President Donald Trump responded from his social media platform Truth Social early Sunday, saying Iran suggested they would "hit very hard today, harder than they have ever hit before." "THEY BETTER NOT DO THAT, HOWEVER, BECAUSE IF THEY DO, WE WILL HIT THEM WITH A FORCE THAT HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE!" Trump's post states. Operation Fury Shield will involve the Texas National Guard and Department of Public Safety, Abbott said. He said they would guard against "lone wolf" or cyber attacks.

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Houston LULAC council cancels 2026 Cinco de Mayo parade over ICE concerns

A Houston council of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) announced Friday that it canceled this year’s Cinco de Mayo parade due to "growing concerns surrounding [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] activity." In a news release posted on social media by a representative of LULAC District VIII, it said the parade committee and district leadership voted to cancel the 2026 parade out of an "abundance of caution." The annual parade was originally scheduled to take place on the morning of Saturday, May 4, in downtown Houston.

"The safety of our children and their parents remains our highest priority," the local LULAC council said in its statement. "LULAC District VIII is not willing to put any child, family member, volunteer, or participant at risk for a parade — no matter how meaningful or celebrated the tradition may be. While Cinco de Mayo is an important cultural celebration that honors heritage, pride, and community unity, no event outweighs the responsibility we have to protect our families." The LULAC council said the cancellation applies to this year's event only and that the organization looks forward to "bringing the parade back next year under conditions that allow our community to gather freely, safely and without fear." "We understand the disappointment this may cause to participants, sponsors, schools, and community partners who have supported this event year after year," LULAC District VIII said. "We share that disappointment. However, leadership requires making difficult decisions when circumstances demand it."

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Tom Luce and David Leebron: Texas at 190: The next decade will define what comes next

(Tom Luce is founder and chairman emeritus of Texas 2036. David Leebron is president and CEO of Texas 2036.) For nearly two centuries, Texans have built, risked, welcomed and dreamed. We have grown because people believed this was the place where ambition meets opportunity and hard work pays off. Today, Texas marks its 190th birthday and begins the final decade before its bicentennial. This year also marks 10 years since Texas 2036, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives and opportunities of all Texans, was founded. That symmetry makes this a moment both for urgency and reflection. It challenges us to think beyond the next election or news cycle. The data and trendlines tell us Texas will continue to grow. The real question is whether opportunity grows with it.

Over the past decade, our state’s growth has outpaced nearly every large state in the nation. Our population now exceeds 31 million. Our economy exceeds $2.7 trillion. Nearly one in 10 Americans lives here. In North Texas, corporate relocations, workforce expansion and infrastructure investment reflect both the promise and the pressure of rapid expansion. Ten years ago, as Texas approached its 180th birthday, families were arriving, jobs were multiplying and investment was accelerating. So were the pressures. Water supplies tightened. Infrastructure strained to keep pace. Many students graduated without clear pathways to high-demand careers. Health care costs rose for working families. The challenge was not growth itself. It was whether we would prepare early enough to ensure more Texans could move forward with confidence, or whether inadequacies in infrastructure, education, health and housing would stifle their ambition and dreams.

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Texas LNG applied for a $160M tax break with Point Isabel ISD, group says

The Point Isabel school board will hold a public hearing Monday about Texas LNG Brownsville LLC’s application for a state program that would limit how much the district can raise taxes on the company’s property for up to 10 years. The meeting will take place at 5:30 p.m. at the Port Isabel Early College High School Lecture Hall and is open to the public, according to a special meeting notice posted Feb. 24. “Texas LNG is considering investing approximately $4 billion to construct and operate a Liquefied Natural Gas facility at the Port of Brownsville,” according to the school board meeting agenda. The Point Isabel ISD superintendent and school board vice president declined to comment on the hearing. The board president did not immediately respond for comment.

The natural gas company applied for the state comptroller’s Taxable Value Limitation on Eligible Property, a program that would limit a property’s assessed value under the Texas Jobs, Energy, Technology and Innovation Act. The project is seeking a $160 million tax abatement from the school district, according to the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, which opposes the application and will be attending the public hearing Monday. Laguna Madre communities don’t want Texas LNG because the fossil fuel facility would release toxic pollution and harm the local economy and beach tourism, Bekah Hinojosa, the organization’s co-founder, said in a news release. “We should not be taking money meant to educate Texas school children and redirecting it to finance corporate projects,” Valley Interfaith leader Rosalie Tristan said in a statement shared in the release. According to Hinojosa, other organizations like Border Workers United as well as residents of Laguna Madre will also be in attendance. During the meeting, the liquefied natural gas company will show a presentation. The public comment period will take place after. Then, the school board will have a closed session to discuss the proposal. Finally, they will reconvene openly to discuss and potentially vote on the application.

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A Texas student turns abandoned school into mosque in 45 days

On the first night of Ramadan,worshippers stood shoulder to shoulder on rows of blue prayer rugs beneath the glow of string lights in a former elementary school gym in Lubbock, Texas. Just weeks earlier, the building had been abandoned and in disrepair. Mohamad Altabaa, a third-year medical student at Texas Tech University, and his physician friend bought the former Arnett Elementary School in January with an ambitious goal: open a mosque and community hub in 45 days, just in time for Ramadan. “It was in horrible condition,” he said, noting the building had been unused since a church sold it in 2024. “But I just had a feeling like we need to purchase it and turn it into a community center, to do good in the community.” After purchasing the building, Altabaa took to Instagram to share the renovation process through a nine-part witty video series featuring volunteers and crews hauling debris, opening an underground water main and tackling a steady stream of odd jobs.

“I just bought an elementary school, and that’s kind of crazy,” Altabaa said at the start of each video, all of which have since gone viral, with more than 1 million views and 100,000 likes on one video alone. What followed was a burst of grassroots support that grew beyond the West Texas city. Young professionals from across the state and country came over several weekends to clean, paint walls, cut grass and prepare the center. Hundreds more donated to the renovation costs. And on Feb. 14, less than two months after Altabaa and his friend purchased the building, the Unity Center opened. Unlike many mosque projects in the United States that rely on large donors and community elders, the Unity Center was mostly powered by students and young professionals. “It’s pretty much just young people under 30 years old,” said Aditee Zinzuwadia, a Texas Tech University student who helped coordinate flights, hotels, rides and meals for 30 out-of-town volunteers during opening weekend.

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Council votes to begin ongoing, third-party audits of Austin's operations and services

Austin officials authorized continuous third-party audits of citywide operations and services, a process partly prompted by the outcome of last year's Proposition Q tax rate election. Mayor Kirk Watson, who's promoted a civic performance review since election night in November, said City Council's unanimous vote for the concept Feb. 26 will make Austin better. “It’s a major step in an effectiveness, efficiency and innovation agenda for our city," Watson said. "We don’t know of any other city that’s doing it this way where it’s a systemic, citywide, ongoing, independent efficiency assessment or audit. And never before has Austin done this."

The city auditor's office is now tasked with starting up the ongoing "comprehensive efficiency assessment" program. City Auditor Jason Hadavi will oversee the initiative, to be handled independently by an external consultant. The audit will analyze Austin's overall city government organization, public programs and services, third-party contracting practices, and financial comparisons to peer cities. Public progress reports will be made at least semiannually, and all project recommendations, results and other information will be posted online. As improvements are suggested throughout the review, city management and department leaders will have to detail how those changes will be made—or why they disagree. City employees will also be able to share feedback on possible improvements along the way. Given the broad scope of a citywide assessment, Hadavi previously said a multiyear process would likely yield the best results. The work is set to repeat indefinitely into the future, although the council-approved ordinance calls for at least three-year gaps between each full audit cycle.

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Supreme Court will hear arguments over law banning drug users from owning guns stemming from Texas case

In early August 2022, federal agents arrived at the suburban Texas home of Ali Hemani, a former high school football player whose family had come under scrutiny because of its ties to Iran. During a search of the family’s house, Mr. Hemani told agents that he kept a handgun locked in a safe. He also told them that he used marijuana “about every other day,” pointing them to about 60 grams of marijuana in the house. Agents also found cocaine in his parents’ closet. Months later, the F.B.I. arrested Mr. Hemani, accusing him of violating a federal law that bars drug users and addicts from owning or possessing guns. On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments over whether Mr. Hemani’s arrest violated the Second Amendment. The case, the second major gun rights dispute before the justices this term, has also sparked interest because the law is the same statute used to convict President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son Hunter in 2024.

The case may give the court an opportunity to clarify how to apply a test the justices set out in a 2022 landmark Second Amendment ruling. It requires courts to analyze whether gun laws align with the country’s “history and tradition” of firearms regulation to determine if they are constitutional. Lower courts have struggled with how to apply the test. The question before the justices involves the constitutionality of a section of the Gun Control Act of 1968, legislation enacted as a response to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. The law aimed to create a broad framework to keep guns away from people whom Congress deemed irresponsible and dangerous. The section of the statute used in Mr. Hemani’s case, which was amended in the 1980s, bans gun possession by anyone who “is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.” The case has scrambled typical political alliances. The Trump administration is defending the law. It has been supported in briefs by Everytown for Gun Safety, a group backed by former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a Democrat, along with leaders of several Democratic-led states, including California, Hawaii and Massachusetts.

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City of Plano denies Dallas City Councilmembers' claim that it's presented a formal offer for Dallas Stars to move there

In an interview for Sunday's Inside Texas Politics, Dallas City Council Member Chad West said he'd been told that Plano made a formal offer to the Dallas Stars for the hockey franchise to move to Collin County. The offer, according to West, included a non-binding "Letter of Intent" that was presented to the Stars. "My understanding, and I'm not at the negotiating table for the city," West said, "is that there is a letter of intent that's been presented by Plano to the Stars. The Stars have that. They haven't signed anything."

On Thursday, Plano city officials would not directly address it and said "if any letter or document exists, it would have to be retrieved through an open records request. However, all requests related to economic development activities are routinely withheld under the Public Information Act and will require a ruling from the Attorney General." But on Friday, Plano issued a statement denying that it issued such a letter to the Stars. "For the past year, the City has been in earnest discussions with the Dallas Stars regarding a potential arena district at The Shops at Willow Bend," Plano said Friday. "We want to clarify to the Plano community that no such offer has been made." The Dallas Stars declined to comment on this story.

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Nirenberg fundraising surges in final stretch of county judge race

In their final fundraising reports before the March 3 primary election, former San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg more than doubled incumbent Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai‘s haul. The two well-known Democrats are competing for their party’s nomination, with the winner an odds-on favorite to carry the blue county in November.

Between Jan. 23 and Feb. 22 — roughly the month leading up to early voting —Nirenberg raised $168,000, spent $211,000 and reported $305,000 on hand. Sakai raised $76,000, spent nearly $200,000 and reported another $340,000 on hand. That’s including a big fundraiser he held at Mi Familia on Feb. 17. There are no contribution limits on county-level campaigns, and the same handful of donors continue to prop up both Nirenberg and Sakai’s fundraising reports. In total, Nirenberg has raised about $577,000 for the race, to Sakai’s $506,000. That includes money raised on three reports covering July 1 through Feb. 22.

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Harris County commissioners will prioritize abolishing the county treasurer’s office next year

Harris County commissioners voted unanimously late Thursday to strip the county treasurer’s office of key functions and pursue dissolving it altogether. The move was made amidst legal troubles for County Treasurer Carla Wyatt. The treasurer’s office will be stripped of its ability to operate Positive Pay — an automated alert system that detects fraud payments. Commissioner Adrian Garcia said the action to remove functions of the office was due to concerns that were found. The operation will be taken up by the county’s Office of Management and Budget, which will also absorb full-time staff members of the treasurer’s office in the process. Recommendations of the reassignments will be brought back to commissioners court on March 19.

“I want to make sure that we keep things moving forward in this county,” Garcia said. The action was recommended by Harris County Auditor Michael Post and discussed in a closed-door executive session during the Thursday meeting. The four county commissioners unanimously approved the motion as Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo was absent. Garcia also made a motion to prioritize the office’s abolishment by the Texas legislature when it next convenes in 2027. Because the position of county treasurer is elected, a move to abolish the office entirely would require majority approval from Texas and county voters in an election cycle. The action follows more counties that have sought to eliminate county treasurer offices. Texas voters in 2023 voted to dissolve the Galveston County Treasurer’s Office shortly after former treasurer Hank Dugie was elected on a campaign to abolish his own office. In Harris County, the treasurer is responsible for handing the county’s finances and transactions at the direction of the commissioners court.

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Feds challenge effort to return Austin-raised college student who was wrongfully deported

The federal government is challenging a court order to repatriate Any López Belloza, a college student who was deported after trying to board a flight to Austin last November. The Trump administration admitted last month that it wrongfully deported the 19-year-old Honduran-born college student, but this week it argued the Massachusetts federal court doesn't have jurisdiction over the case — and that it would deport her again if she were to return to the U.S. The government's filing complicates the return of López Belloza, who's enrolled at Babson College near Boston. In a call Friday, López Belloza's attorney Todd Pomerleau said federal agents had been in touch with her via WhatsApp, offering a flight back to the U.S. without guaranteeing she wouldn't be immediately deported back to Honduras.

"All they have to do is let her in and leave her alone," Pomerleau said. "She has a green card application pending, and yet they want to continue to torment her. They want to fly her back here to engage in a charade to then separate her from her loved ones again." Pomerleau called the tactic a ploy to bring his client back to the country and deport her without giving her a day in court. KUT News reached out to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for comment on Pomerleau's allegation but has not heard back. López Belloza said she was angry about the lack of movement on her case and that "no one should have to feel this powerless." "All I'm asking is for honesty and fairness," she said. "I'm asking to be treated like a human with rights and whose life matters, and to be allowed to keep building the life I have worked so hard for in the United States."

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National Stories

How talks between Anthropic and the Defense Dept. fell apart

Minutes before a 5:01 p.m. deadline on Friday, Emil Michael, the Department of Defense’s chief technology officer, was fuming. For weeks, Mr. Michael, a former top executive at Uber, had been negotiating a $200 million artificial intelligence contract with the A.I. company Anthropic for the Pentagon. The talks had hit obstacles as the agency demanded unfettered use of Anthropic’s A.I. systems, while the company countered that it would not allow its technology to be used for purposes such as the surveillance of Americans. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had set the Friday deadline for a deal and the two sides were close. The only thing that remained was agreeing on a few words about the issue of lawful surveillance of Americans, multiple people with knowledge of the talks said.

Mr. Michael, who was on a call with Anthropic executives, demanded that the company’s chief executive, Dario Amodei, get on the phone to hash out the language, the people said. But Mr. Michael was told that Dr. Amodei was in a meeting with his executive team and needed more time. Mr. Michael was unhappy with that answer, the people said. He also had an ace up his sleeve: On the side, he had been hammering out an alternative to Anthropic with its rival, OpenAI. A framework between the Pentagon and OpenAI had already been reached. So when the Friday deadline passed, the Department of Defense did not give Anthropic more time. At 5:14 p.m., Mr. Hegseth announced that he had designated Anthropic as a security risk and that it would be cut off from working with the U.S. government. “America’s warfighters will never be held hostage by the ideological whims of Big Tech,” he posted on social media.

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Congress returns to address Trump’s Iran attacks

Lawmakers are wrestling with how to respond to President Trump’s massive attack on Iran that eliminated many of the regime’s top figures, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The administration briefed congressional leaders before carrying out the strikes, and the White House is planning to brief legislators in both chambers this week. But that hasn’t tamped down backlash from critics. Many Democrats and some Republicans are expressing outrage at the president’s decision to go forward with military action without congressional authorization. House Democrats were already planning to force a vote on a war powers resolution this week to restrict Trump’s authority before the strikes began.

The Senate is also set to debate and vote on a war powers resolution sponsored by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). The resolutions are all but certain to fail, with nearly all Republicans and some Democrats opposed. Trump would also use his veto if any such resolution came to his desk. But The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports the debate will give Democrats a platform to argue Trump’s order to attack Iran was illegal and demand he provide an exit strategy. “The president seems to have no plan for the aftermath, and it looks like Iran is now poised to choose a new leader from the current regime,” Kaine told reporters. The Iranian government quickly named its interim leadership Sunday after confirming Khamenei’s death. Khamenei served as Iran’s leader for more than 35 years after the death of the regime’s founder, Ruhollah Khomeini.

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Hunkered at Mar-a-Lago, Trump makes his club a makeshift Situation Room

As gala-goers in gowns and tuxedos were dancing the night away inside Mar-a-Lago’s ballroom Friday evening, a very different scene was unfolding on the other side of the rambling estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Out the gilded doors, past layers of security and behind a set of black curtains, the country’s top national security officials were convening in anticipation of a long night. The CIA director, the secretary of state and the secretary of defense had all slipped in earlier, unseen by the crowd sipping cocktails by the pool. So had the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose map of the Middle East showing the locations of American assets — along with Iranian targets — was set up on an easel.

By the time President Donald Trump touched down, the space was running as a makeshift Situation Room from which he would oversee the start of a sustained attack on Iran. First, though, the ballroom summoned. “Have a good time, everybody,” Trump called out to the black-tie crowd gathered for a charity gala after briefly jerking his arms around to his anthem, “God Bless the USA.” “I gotta go to work.” Behind the black curtains, photos released by the White House showed Trump, tieless and wearing a white hat emblazoned with “USA,” watching the unfolding action, which would include the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Through most of Sunday, those images and two taped videos — the first announcing the extraordinary operation, in which Trump’s face was half obscured by the hat, and the second addressing Khamenei’s demise and the deaths of three American service members — were all the public saw of the president. He did not deliver a live formal address or convene a televised news conference.

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The war against PDFs is heating up

When Adobe introduced the portable document format (PDF) in 1993, a consultant from Gartner called it “the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard in my life”. Users would have to twiddle their thumbs waiting for the megabyte-sized files to download over their dial-up internet, then wait again for their PCs to render them. The software-maker’s board wanted to kill the project. But as sharing digital files became essential, the PDF triumphed—particularly after the Internal Revenue Service, America’s tax authority, started using it for its forms. Today more than 2.5trn PDFs float in the ether. But will the format survive the ai revolution?

PDFs still have drawbacks. They are a pain to view on a smartphone. Copying data from them is fiddly. Software tools that read screens for blind people struggle with PDFs. The file type, which Adobe relinquished control over in 2008, is also a vehicle for malware: a fifth of email-based cyber-attacks utilise PDF attachments, according to Check Point, a cyber-security firm. Lately another source of criticism has emerged. The large language models underpinning generative AI are often bamboozled by PDFs, reading a page set in columns from left to right rather than top to bottom, say, or getting confused by headers and footers. Trouble parsing PDFs is one of the reasons AI chatbots occasionally “hallucinate”, generating nonsense. Enter the disrupters. Startups such as Factify are on a mission to build a new file type that is better suited to the technology. Matan Gavish, its boss, talks of his “megalomaniac” vision of displacing the PDF. Yet Duff Johnson, head of the PDF Association, protector of the format, argues that the fault lies not in the file type but in ourselves. He contends that there is no reason developers cannot build bots that are able to use PDFs. The AI assistant embedded in Acrobat, Adobe’s PDF reader, is designed to do precisely that, notes Leonard Rosenthol, the software firm’s PDF guru. Google, a leader in AI, has rolled out a tool for developers using its Gemini models that makes it easier to ingest PDFs. The format’s reign is not over yet.

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Cuba faces ‘zero hour’ as Trump, Rubio put squeeze on regime

Cuba’s communist government is facing a breaking point in its battle for survival under pressure from President Trump, whose energy quarantine against the country is aimed at collapsing the regime. The consequences are hitting the population of 10 million people hard, with the U.S. fuel blockade exacerbating a decades-long economic crisis, disrupting access to water and worsening food and medicine shortages. “There’s a number of epidemics rippling through the population right now, repression is increasing as the regime feels cornered, and they are not signaling any willingness to negotiate with the United States,” said Sebastián Arcos, interim director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.

“These people are really, really bad guys, and they have shown this capacity to survive difficult crises,” he added. “I don’t think they can survive this one.” Trump on Friday suggested the U.S. could achieve a “friendly takeover” of Cuba, perhaps mirroring America’s approach to Venezuela, where the military took out its leaders but kept the regime largely in place while demanding greater economic cooperation. Analysts aren’t convinced that such a path exists for the hard-line Cuban regime, which has been fighting against U.S. threats for six decades. “What’s going to happen in Cuba is much more difficult to divine than Venezuela,” Arcos said. “Cuba is a unified ideological leadership, where any deviation from the dogma is severely punished, and no one, therefore, is willing to risk that unless the United States escalates.” Jorge Piñon, director of the Latin America and Caribbean Energy Program with the University of Texas in Austin, said time is running out for the Cuban regime to make a deal or risk an even graver humanitarian crisis on the island.

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X is drowning in disinformation following US and Israeli attack on Iran

Minutes after Donald Trump announced that the US and Israeli governments had launched a “major combat operation” against Iran in the early hours of Saturday morning, disinformation about the attack and Tehran’s response flooded X. WIRED has reviewed hundreds of posts on X, some of which have racked up millions of views, that promote misleading claims about the locations and scale of the attack. Elon Musk’s social media platform is a verifiable mess: In some cases, alleged video footage of the attack shared in posts on X are actually months or years old. In several posts, video footage of apparent attacks have been attributed to incorrect locations. A number of images shared on X appear to be altered or generated with AI. Other posts attempt to pass off video game footage as scenes from the conflict. X did not respond to a request for comment. Under Musk’s stewardship, X has become a haven for disinformation, especially during major breaking-news events.

At the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, and more recently during anti-immigration enforcement protests in LA, the platform has drowned in inaccurate and faulty posts. Almost all of the most viral posts reviewed by WIRED on Saturday came from accounts with blue check marks, meaning they pay X for its premium service and could be eligible to earn money based on how much engagement their posts generate, even if the content is false. While some posts with disinformation have a community note appended beneath them to correct the record, they remain up on the site, and it’s unclear how many people viewed them before the notes appeared. One video posted by a blue-check-mark account claimed to show ballistic missiles over Dubai; the clip actually showed Iranian ballistic missiles fired at Tel Aviv in October 2024. The post has been viewed over 4.4 million times. One of the most viral clips shared on X in the hours after the attack claims to show an Israeli fighter jet being shot down by Iranian air defense systems. The video has been shared by dozens of accounts, including one post that has been viewed more than 3.5 million times. The provenance of the video is unclear, but there have been no credible reports of any Israeli jets being shot down over Iran on Saturday.

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Khamenei killing shatters Iran's order, triggers high-stakes succession race

The assassination of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has plunged the Islamic Republic into its most perilous crisis since the 1979 revolution - confronting it with war on its own territory, an unresolved succession, and mounting internal strain. Despite the shock of Khamenei's killing, five regional officials and analysts cautioned against assuming rapid collapse. Iran's political order, they said, was ?deliberately constructed to avoid reliance on a single leader, dispersing authority across clerical institutions, the security apparatus and power networks. "The Iranian system is bigger than one man - removing Khamenei could harden the regime rather than weaken it," said Danny ?Citrinowicz of the Atlantic Council.

"Iran was built to survive the loss of a leader," added Ali Hashem, a research affiliate at Royal Holloway, University of London. "The danger is not a vacuum. It's whether war and pressure push the system past the point where that resilience holds." At the centre of that resilience is the ?elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), long regarded as Iran's true centre of gravity. The balance of power now hinges on whether the Guards emerge weakened by battlefield losses and internal frictions - or more entrenched, closing ranks around a harder, more security-driven approach to governance. "The real question is whether Khamenei's death takes the air out of the IRGC - the force that actually runs Iran - or whether they close ranks and harden," said Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. "If rank-and-file officials decide there is no future here, I'm not sure even the Guards can keep the regime together."

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Lead Stories

Israeli strikes rock Tehran as Iran's counterattacks widen after the killing of its supreme leader

Israel and Iran traded strikes Sunday as part of a widening war after the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a surprise U.S. and Israeli bombardment a day earlier. Blasts in Tehran — whose target was not immediately clear — sent a huge plume of smoke into the sky in an area where there are government buildings. Iranian authorities say more than 200 people have been killed since the start of the U.S. and Israeli strikes that killed Khamenei and other senior leaders. Earlier, Iran fired missiles at an ever-widening list of targets in Israel and Gulf Arab states in retaliation. Loud explosions caused by missile impacts or interceptions could be heard in Tel Aviv. Israel’s rescue services said eight people were killed and 28 wounded in a strike in the central town of Beit Shemesh, bringing the overall death toll in the country to 10.

Meanwhile, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said in a prerecorded message aired on state television that a new leadership council “has begun its work.” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told the Al Jazeera network that a new supreme leader will be chosen in “one or two days.” The killing of Khamenei, and U.S. President Donald Trump’s calls for the overthrow of the decades-old Islamic Republic, marked the start of a stunning new U.S. intervention in the Middle East and potentially a prolonged war. It is also a startling show of military might for an American president who swept into office on an “America First” platform and vowed to keep out of “forever wars.” It was the second time in eight months that the Trump administration has joined Israel in using military force against Iran. In a 12-day war in June, Israeli and American strikes greatly weakened Iran’s air defenses, military leadership and nuclear program. But the killing of Khamenei and several top security officials creates a leadership vacuum, increasing the risk of regional instability.

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3 dead, several injured in downtown Austin mass shooting

Three people have died, and at least 14 were injured in a shooting on West Sixth Street overnight Saturday into Sunday, according to Austin-Travis County EMS. Austin Police officers responded to the popular street to calls about a man shooting at Buford’s Bar. APD Chief Lisa Davis said three officers shot back toward the suspect, who died. The suspect has not yet been identified, but was described as a man. ATCEMS said medics took 14 people to the hospital following the shooting. Of those 14, three were in critical condition as of the last report.

“I’m very thankful for the speed with which our public safety officials responded to this,” said Austin Mayor Kirk Watson. “I don’t think there’s any question that it saved lives.” Chief Davis said officers and ATCEMS medics were able to respond quickly to the area because of customary staging over on East Sixth Street. ATCEMS Chief Robert Luckirtz said his medics were on scene within 57 seconds of getting the call at 1:59 a.m. Federal partners also responded to the scene.

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Even MAGA Republicans hate plans to put a border wall in Big Bend

The idea of a border wall in Big Bend was once unthinkable. The far West Texas region is one of the most remote, unpopulated places in the continental U.S.—a hot, arid landscape that defies human existence. Few migrants bother to cross the border here, for the same reason few people have ever called this part of the Chihuahuan Desert home. Summers are deadly hot, water is scarce, and any trek by foot will be long, arduous, and dangerous. Much of the Rio Grande is sheltered by steep, unscalable canyons—some as deep as 1,500 feet—that are far more effective in deterring illegal crossings that any man-made fence could ever be. The Big Bend sector of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which encompasses nearly a quarter of the U.S.-Mexico border, typically has the fewest crossings of any of the agency’s nine sectors. In fiscal year 2025, there were just 3,096 apprehensions of migrants across 517 miles. The border here has never been open, not really. Moreover, Big Bend holds a special place in the hearts of Texans, and of millions of visitors from other states and nations. Its remoteness, its wildness, its eternal stubbornness remain fragile tethers to an older, wilder world in an era of never-ending sprawl. At the heart of the region is Big Bend National Park, one of the crown jewels of the national parks system; it has soared in popularity despite being far away from any major city

To destroy all this with a steel wall? It seemed insane. It would be like building a power plant in front of Half Dome, in Yosemite, or constructing an Amazon distribution center at the rim of the Grand Canyon. A pointless desecration. And yet the Trump administration appears to be moving forward with plans for around 175 miles of what it calls a smart wall. Since The Big Bend Sentinel first reported rumblings of the plan earlier this month, residents in the region have grown increasingly alarmed as the administration has stealthily proceeded with plans for barriers. Last week, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem waived 28 laws—including the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Clean Water Act, the Migratory Bird Conservation Act, the Clean Air Act, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and the Historic Sites, Buildings, and Antiquities Act—to speed the way for a physical barrier slated for a 175-mile stretch that includes a portion of Colorado Canyon in Big Bend Ranch State Park. And a recently updated map on the CBP site shows a “smart wall” along roughly half the river frontage in Big Bend National Park—basically anywhere the river doesn’t cut through a steep canyon. The wall then continues through the Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande, piledriving through the Lower Pecos region, with its concentration of prehistoric rock art, and bulldozing through Seminole Canyon State Park all the way to Lake Amistad and beyond. Meanwhile, residents are on edge over contractors swooping into the area, according to the Sentinel. The suddenness has stunned people. “It’s been a big shock, and people are reeling,” said Bob Krumenaker, a former superintendent of Big Bend National Park and a member of Keep Big Bend Wild, a small advocacy group. “There’s nothing more destructive to the wildness of Big Bend National Park than a border wall.”

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School choice programs grow in popularity — and cost

States are scrambling to meet rising demand for newly expanded school choice initiatives, pouring more money into the programs as waiting lists — and budget concerns — grow. A further boost is expected next year, when the federal government rolls out a new policy allowing taxpayers to claim a tax credit for up to $1,700 in donations to nonprofits that award private school scholarships to K-12 students. Supporters tout such programs as a lifeline for parents desperate to get their kids out of failing public schools, while opponents have long warned that they drain resources from public education as students move from public schools to private ones. For years, voucher and scholarship programs providing taxpayer dollars for private school tuition were limited to low-income or special needs students.

In 2022, however, Arizona became the first state to allow all students to use public money for private school tuition. By next school year, at least 17 states are expected to have universal programs — making roughly half of U.S. students eligible to receive money, according to FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown University. As both universal and limited programs spread across the country, many families are eager to participate. In Alabama, more than 36,000 students last spring applied for 14,000 spots in the state’s new program, prompting Republican Gov. Kay Ivey to propose increasing its funding from $180 million to $250 million for the 2027-28 school year, when income limits will be eliminated. In Oklahoma, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt has proposed removing the budget cap on a scholarship program that turned away 5,600 students a couple of years ago because it ran out of money. And in Tennessee, Republican Gov. Bill Lee has proposed doubling the funding for a scholarship program that has a waitlist of about 34,000 students. “Last year, we gave families school choice with the Education Freedom Scholarship program, because parents know best,” Lee said in his State of the State address last month. “Growing the program would open the doors of opportunity for thousands more children statewide.”

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How Wesley Hunt of Texas is working in plain sight with outside groups

“Running out of money,” read the post on the social media platform X, “less than $400 remains in my pocket.” It landed on Nov. 13, from an obscure account called @pie0myWesley with just three followers. Anyone else stumbling upon it might have assumed it was a random musing from someone who had seen better days. The account instead appears to be connected to the Republican Senate campaign of Representative Wesley Hunt of Texas. And one of its followers is @TxGopFighter, with seeming connections to an outside group helping Mr. Hunt’s candidacy. The two anonymous accounts have spent months sharing strategic information, private polling, messaging advice and media-buying data in what may be an effort to skirt federal law. That law prohibits candidates from coordinating in private with independent groups such as super PACs. The Hunt campaign and those allies, however, are doing so with a pair of social media accounts in plain sight for those who know where to look.

Candidates and super PACs have increasingly become bold in pushing the boundaries on coordination limits. The laws result from a tangle of court rulings, regulations and the idea that groups with no limits on what they may raise could be a corrupting force on politics. The agency responsible for being a watchdog, the Federal Election Commission, has generally done little to crack down on these efforts. The commission, which does not comment on potential cases, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The messages from the X accounts that appear to be linked to Mr. Hunt’s campaign and outside allies show the flimsiness of federal limits on coordination — and offer a rare window into the inner workings of a campaign. The New York Times learned about the accounts from a strategist working for a rival, who was granted anonymity in order to share details of public communications that the strategist had been tracking for months. The Hunt campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Reached by phone, a Republican political strategist linked to the @TxGopFighter account said in a brief interview that he is an adviser to Standing for Texas, an outside group that has spent millions on pro-Hunt ads. “Everything has been in public,” said the strategist, Stephen Puetz. The @TxGopFighter account has posted documents that are stored in Mr. Puetz’s Dropbox account.

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State Stories

Elon Musk’s secret web of companies in Texas

In 2020, Elon Musk announced he was moving to Texas from California and embarking on a personal austerity campaign to strip his life of belongings. “I am selling almost all physical possessions,” he posted on social media. “Will own no house.” But in the years since, Mr. Musk, 54, has quietly built an empire of more than 90 companies and other legal entities in Texas, which have amassed a vast collection of assets, according to an examination by The New York Times. The secretive network offers a glimpse into just how central one of the world’s richest men, who has a net worth of more than $650 billion, has made Texas to his operations and ambitions. More than 50 of his at least 90 companies there are subsidiaries or other entities affiliated with his business empire, such as the rocket company SpaceX and the electric vehicle maker Tesla, as well as his nonprofit Musk Foundation.

But The Times identified at least 37 companies that appeared to be largely for Mr. Musk’s personal use. Among them was one that owns two multimillion-dollar condominiums totaling more than 7,000 square feet in the Austin Proper Hotel, with sweeping views of downtown. Other companies managed planes that Mr. Musk uses for private travel and a portfolio of more than 1,000 acres of land, which when combined is bigger than Central Park in New York. The lines between Mr. Musk’s business and personal interests are often blurry, and some of the companies most likely served both purposes. The Times’s examination also offers a window into how Mr. Musk used private companies to support Donald J. Trump during the 2024 election. Tapping these companies to cover the expenses of a super PAC is highly unusual, campaign finance experts said, and ended up obscuring how money was being spent because they are not subject to the disclosure requirements of super PACs. The vehicle that Mr. Musk frequently turned to is one that many of the ultrarich use: limited liability companies, which are designed to shield owners from legal and financial risks, as well as public scrutiny. Whatever Mr. Musk’s intent, the effect of using these companies has been to disguise how he is spending his money.

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Calculating the taxpayers' tab for Ken Paxton's extensive travels

By the time Ken Paxton finally leaves behind the eighth floor of the Price Daniel Sr. State Office Building, where the attorney general’s executive team works, he’ll have spent 12 years as what occupants of his office like to consider Texas’ top law enforcement official. Those dozen years—tied with his predecessor, Greg Abbott, for the longest AG stint in state history—were fought and clawed for, through incessant turmoil and scandal, by the former probate attorney from McKinney. And Paxton’s tenure has also been filled with lots, and lots, of travel—across Texas, namely to his homebase in Collin County; all around the United States; and, increasingly, to exotic destinations abroad. It’s not readily apparent who has covered the costs of the attorney general’s travels. Some of these trips appear to have been connected to his official work as AG, while others have been for political or personal purposes.

But accompanying Paxton on most of these trips has been a state police security detail, a perk that comes along with serving as governor, lieutenant governor, or AG. And the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) is, by law, required to report the quarterly expenses incurred by the state police providing security for these top officials, broken down by destination and the correlating expense of travel, food, fuel, and lodging—providing one window onto taxpayer costs. Since first entering office in January 2015 and up through August 2025, the most recent reporting available, Paxton’s security detail has cost a total of about $2.8 million, those DPS records obtained by the Texas Observer show. The annual cost of his security detail clocked in at an average of $245,000 a year—but the costs have steadily ticked up in recent years. At the peak, in 2024, it cost DPS nearly $500,000 to accompany Paxton on his travels. The details about the trips are relatively limited; for instance, DPS doesn’t provide specific dates of travel beyond the month, nor the number of officers who are present on each trip. But the reporting does provide perhaps the most readily available way to track where Texas’ most powerful politicians have been. That’s a valuable tool for public transparency, especially for someone like Paxton, who is notorious for shielding details about his activities and correspondence from the public.

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Notable A&M alumni warn 'excessive' politics is reshaping campus leadership

Jon Hagler’s name is etched into the walls of Texas A&M's campus in College Station as the namesake of an academic institute, the headquarters of A&M's philanthropic foundation and an auditorium in the Bush School of Government and Public Service. But his faith in the university system’s board of regents has waned as he watches its members bend to partisan Republican politics, according to an op-ed he wrote in the Dallas Morning News. Other Aggie alumni and supporters are beginning to follow his lead and speak out. “The crisis is pretty serious and pretty deep,” Hagler said in an interview with the Houston Chronicle. “While I respect their authority, I think that they need to think of themselves as stewards of a sacred public trust, and I think in some instances, their fealty to political parties is excessive and damaging.”

Hagler penned the op-ed after the regents made national headlines for banning the teaching of “race and gender ideology” in the classroom. He also cited board Chairman Robert Albritton’s acknowledgement that Gov. Greg Abbott — who appoints the regents — played a role in some of their more controversial decisions, as reported by the Texas Tribune. Albritton, who with his wife has donated more than $1.6 million to Abbott since 2000, told the Chronicle he has “nothing but good things to say” about Hagler. But he denied any loss of institutional independence, as Hagler alleges, and instead framed A&M’s response to lawmakers’ demands as not only in the best financial interest of the system, but reflective of the wishes of Aggies and Texas voters. “For A&M not to be cognizant of what is going on politically in this state would be total mismanagement by the board,” Albritton said. “What A&M is doing is they are parsing what the law asks us to parse and to adhere by the law. Now, if people don’t like this — whether it’s Jon Hagler or whoever — if they don’t like that we are adhering to the state law, then take that up with Austin.” Hagler is among those who fear that the regents have not only micromanaged but overcorrected after a gender identity lesson in a children's literature class cascaded across social media and snowballed into the resignation of the university president in September.

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Can one county’s approach be a model for preserving the Hill Country?

On a clear day, Bill Kennon says, you can see the Tower of the Americas from this spot. This quiet hilltop outside of Boerne is 30 miles from downtown San Antonio – but the city’s growth has crept closer, and Kendall County’s population has climbed as developments sprout along the county's rolling hills. It isn’t hard for Kennon to imagine more subdivisions rising around his land, but he’s one of more than a dozen landowners who have signed agreements with the county guaranteeing that his property won’t be one of them. In 2022, Kendall County voters overwhelmingly approved a $20 million bond package to pay for open spaces and conservation – agreeing to tax themselves so the county could buy land or easements to protect it for recreation, wildlife and water quality. County commissioners have approved spending about $17 million of that, protecting about 4,400 acres from development.

Kendall County isn't alone in using taxpayer dollars for conservation. Voters across the Hill Country have approved more than $1.6 billion of public funding for conserving open space in the region, said Katherine Romans, executive director of the nonprofit Hill Country Alliance, an environmental advocacy group. But the Kendall County program — in a county where residents favor small government and fiercely protect their property rights — is an example of how public money and private landowners can be paired up to preserve the area’s character and protect its natural resources as more people move into the Hill Country and development booms. “Where there is public money to support land conservation, you see greater success stories,” Romans said. Preserving wildlife habitat, protecting water quality, mitigating flooding and maintaining the region's rural landscape is good for everyone, she said. “Consistently, across the board, where you have public investment in conservation, you have greater rates of conservation and all of the spillover benefits that provides," Romans said.

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43% of Bexar County residents are in a new congressional district

Thanks to Texas’ unusual mid-cycle redistricting effort, roughly 43% of Bexar County residents are in a new congressional district this year. But that’s not all that’s changed. Even many voters who remain in the same district still don’t have the option to reelect their current congress member. Redistricting took Bexar County from five members of Congress to four, losing U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Laredo), whose district no longer stretches up to Bexar County. Meanwhile, incumbent U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Dripping Springs) is running for Attorney General instead of reelection in the 21st Congressional District, and the 35th Congressional District changed so dramatically that incumbent U.S. Rep. Greg Casar (D-Austin) is now running for a different seat. If scandal-plagued U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-San Antonio) doesn’t make it through his primary, voters in a third San Antonio-area district will be sending a newcomer to Congress.

Across the country, Republican-led legislatures have been cracking up blue urban centers to create more GOP-friendly congressional seats. The result is a national congressional map with fewer flippable seats than there were before the 2020 Census — even as Democrats head into an election they think offers their best political environment since 2018, following President Donald Trump’s election the first time. That’s left both parties fighting over districts they once wouldn’t have considered competitive. At the same time, Texas’ new district lines weren’t solidified until halfway through the filing period, and many races now feature crowded fields of candidates with either little political experience to help their community, or little connection to the district they’re running in. “None of these candidates are very well-known by the primary electorate,” said Phil Gardner, a senior adviser at Blue Dog Action PAC, which is running TV ads for Democrat Johnny Garcia in TX35. “That can lead to all sorts of almost random outcomes.”

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Texas Republicans hail strikes on Iran, Democrats warn of risk

Texas Republicans swiftly lined up behind President Donald Trump on Saturday after he ordered military strikes against Iran, calling the action long overdue and necessary to curb Tehran’s ambitions. Democrats countered that the president bypassed Congress and risked dragging the country into a wider conflict. The split underscored deep partisan divisions in Texas over Trump’s foreign policy. “For too long, Iran and its tentacles of terror have destabilized the Middle East and waged war on the West and our values,” Sen. John Cornyn said. “With today’s strikes by U.S. forces led by our Commander-in-Chief, President Trump, there is finally an opening for these dark days to come to an end.”

Cornyn, who faces Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt of Houston in Tuesday’s Republican primary, tied the operation to what he described as years of Iranian aggression. He expressed hope “that the Iranian people, after years of oppression and being ignored by previous Democrat administrations, will finally be free.” Paxton reposted video of Trump’s speech, writing: “Thank you President Trump for your courageous leadership. For years, Iran has terrorized the world and threatened our nation’s existence, and it’s critical that the evil regime is never able to obtain a nuclear weapon. Praying for our brave men and women in uniform.” Hunt cited his combat experience as an Army Apache pilot, adding: “In moments like this, bold action requires bold leadership, we have that in President Trump.” Democrats in the Senate race were sharply critical. “The self-proclaimed ‘President of peace’ is once again starting illegal wars without congressional authorization. This is not what the American people asked for,” U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Dallas posted on X. “Time and time again, Trump has proven that he is not interested in – or capable of – putting ‘America First.’ Our soldiers will have to put their lives on the line to defend his reckless decisions. Congress must pass a War Powers Resolution to rein in this dangerous overreach before more damage is done.” Crockett faces state Rep. James Talarico of Austin in the primary. Talarico posted a briefer statement on X that read in full: “No more forever wars.”

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San Antonio City Council members vote to censure Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones

All eyes were on City Hall as San Antonio council members Friday as they voted to censure Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones at a special meeting.  The vote was 8-1 for censuring, with Mayor Jones recusing herself and one city councilmember absent. The vote follows weeks of tension and a closed-door discussion Monday on a complaint filed Feb. 5.  It started when five city council members submitted a memo calling for a possible censure vote against the mayor. The claims go back as far as last summer, but the most recent, according to the memo, points to a Feb. 5 incident involving District 1 Councilmember Sukh Kaur. Specifically, whether downtown’s Bonham Exchange could stay open despite missing a deadline to install required fire sprinklers.

District 6 council member Ric Galvan voted for censure and issued a statement: “Creating and maintaining a safe, respectful work environment is essential. As Councilmembers, we are held to high standards in service to the residents who placed their trust in us. We remain committed to moving forward with professionalism and focus on the work our community expects.” District 9 council member Misty Spears voted against the censure and issued a statement that said in part: "When the allegations were first raised, I supported moving forward with an investigation because the concerns were serious and deserved review. The findings made clear that the conduct in question was unprofessional, and I have compassion for my colleague's experience. However, based on the findings presented, I did not believe the conduct rose to the level of a censure or removal from committee. It was inappropriate, but it was not unlawful, did not jeopardize public safety, and did not constitute workplace violence." The vote of censure is more of a formal and symbolic reprimand, and it does not remove Jones from office. Here is more about what a censure vote means. Ahead of the meeting, the mayor issued a statement saying she is willing to step aside from the Governance Committee for a period of three months.

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Thousands gather to mourn loss of civil rights icon Hargie Faye Savoy

Hundreds gathered Thursday at the Robert A. “Bob” Bowers Civic Center to say goodbye to Hargie Faye Savoy, a woman who spent nearly a century turning faith, quiet determination and an unshakeable belief in the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. into a legacy that touched every corner of Southeast Texas. She was 96. Savoy, born Dec. 30, 1929, in Port Arthur, died Feb. 19, 2026, surrounded by her family. The service drew elected officials from Austin and Washington, fellow civil rights workers, pastors, longtime friends and generations of community members whose lives she shaped, a turnout that reflected the breadth of a woman her family called, simply, their Queen. “With deep sorrow, we announce the passing of our Queen and beloved mother. May her love, vision and dedication forever guide our work and our community,” the Savoy family wrote in a statement following her death.

The Texas House of Representatives sent a delegate to present a formal resolution in her honor. Rep. Aicha Davis, speaking on behalf of the chamber, told mourners that Savoy’s presence at the state Capitol was unmistakable. “Any time Christian’s grandmother was at that Capitol, you felt the love — and you knew she was there,” Davis said, referring to Savoy’s grandson, State Rep. Christian Manuel. “She was such a blessing to myself, to my colleagues, and even to my mother.” A representative for U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett also delivered condolences, reading from the Congressional Record. “I rise today to honor the extraordinary life, the enduring legacy, and faithful service of Hargie Faye Jacobs Savoy,” the tribute stated, calling her a “devoted public servant and steadfast pillar of the Port Arthur community.” The speaker added a personal note: “As the world mourns the loss of Jesse Jackson, they better not forget Hargie Faye because there would be no Jasmine Crockett if there was not Hargie Faye Jacobs before it.” A resolution from Martin Luther King III was also read into the service record, praising Savoy’s “timeless leadership” of the MLK Jr. Support Group of Southeast Texas as “an inspiration” to his mother, Coretta Scott King, and declaring that her “voice, strength of spirit, still glows like a beacon of hope” in her community.

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Poll worker shortage is forcing Montgomery County to combine voting precincts

A shortage of election judges and poll workers is causing Montgomery County Election Central officials to combine more than a dozen polling locations for Tuesday’s primary election. Election Administrator Suzie Harvey said one reason was that some precinct chairs, who also serve as election judges, are on the ballot, making them ineligible to serve as judges. However, overall, Harvey said she didn’t know why residents weren't able or willing to work the polls. While election judges aren’t actual judges, a person serving in that role does handle any disputes and answer questions for voters during the voting process. Election judges must be registered voters in Montgomery County, according to the county election website. Montgomery County has 468,865 registered voters and 121 polling precincts.

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Houston primaries could help set a Texas record for Republican women in Congress

Texas has never had more than three Republican women in Congress at the same time. But that could change starting on Tuesday. A group called the Winning For Women Action Fund has been helping to raise money and cut ads in support of Republican women in key GOP primaries, hoping to send at least three more to Congress. Texas currently has seven women in the U.S. House, but all but two are Democrats. Overall, 128 of theU.S. House's 432 members total are women. The vast majority,96 of them,are Democrats. “It’s not just about checking a gender box,” said Danielle Barrow, president of the group. “It is about finding exceptional, standout women that we can elevate.”

Barrow said the GOP needs more women in Congress because they bring perspective to key issues important to voters. “The American people, at the end of the day want to see themselves reflected back in the leaders that we have in Congress, and that means not just electing men and making sure women have a seat at the table,” she said. The fund is focused on boosting three candidates in the Houston area: Jessica Steinmann. With endorsements from President Donald Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott, the former Trump administration official, who lives in Montgomery County, is locked in a crowded GOP primary for the 8th Congressional District to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Morgan Luttrell. Alex Mealer. The Army veteran, who narrowly lost a bid for county judge in 2022, is in a 9-person primary, which includes state Rep. Briscoe Cain, for the newly redrawn 9th Congressional District. The district,currently held by Democrat Al Green, wasredrawn to be GOP-leaning and includes the Houston shipping channel up through Liberty County. Mealer also won an endorsement from Trump, who praised her military and business background. Shelly deZevallos. An airport executive and GOP activist who is running against nine other candidates in the 38th Congressional District based in Houston’s Energy Corridor.

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Breaking down President Trump's visit to Corpus Christi

Corpus Christi was in the national spotlight Friday as President Donald Trump visited the Port of Corpus Christi, the nation’s largest energy export gateway, delivering remarks focused on oil, gas and the region’s role in U.S. energy production. Port officials said this marks the first time a sitting President has visited the port. “We’re experiencing an energy boom,” Trump said. At the beginning of his speech, Trump complimented the new Harbor Bridge. “What a nice bridge! Oh, I like that color,” he said. President Trump addressed supporters as well as local, state and federal officials gathered at the port, with the ship channel serving as his backdrop. Energy production took center stage during his speech. “Drill baby drill,” Trump said.

“Natural gas production is at an all-time record high by far. And today right here in Corpus Christi is down to less than actually two dollars and 30 cents,” he added. He spoke on a variety of topics including immigration enforcement, inflation, cost-of-living concerns and the upcoming primary election. Among the state officials in attendance were Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. “Trump supports our law enforcement officers. So do we in Texas,” Abbott said. “Let me get a selfie first. Can we get a quick selfie out here?” Patrick joked from the stage. Port Commission Chairman Gabe Guerra said the visit highlights the port’s significance in global energy markets. “We're the number one crude exporter of American-produced oil in America. We're the second in liquified natural gas and you just heard about what Cheniere Energy is doing to expand,” Guerra said. He added that the region’s growth translates into opportunities for local workers. “All of these workers that have come out here. And it means that these young people coming out of high school, coming out of college, engineers, technical, operators, can have great paying jobs that can help raise the tide in our own communities,” Guerra said. Trump ended his remarks by thanking the community for its turnout. “Thank you Corpus Christi, thank you very much. Thank you Texas,” he said.

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Republican candidate ineligible for Nov. 3 ballot after voting in Democratic primary

Michelle Garza cannot appear on the Nov. 3 general election ballot for Precinct 2 county commissioner after she voted in the Democratic primary while running unopposed as a Republican. Under Texas Election Code Section 162.015, a candidate who votes in another party’s primary becomes ineligible to serve as her own party’s nominee in the general election. Garza voted Feb. 17 in the Democratic primary under the name Michelle Rodriguez-Garza. She told newspaper staff that, before becoming a candidate herself, she signed a petition to help her sister, Claudia Rodriguez, who was applying to be a Democratic candidate for Precinct 6 Justice of the Peace. Candidates for local office may either pay a filing fee or gather signatures in lieu of a fee to get on the ballot.

The petition form, provided on the Secretary of State’s Office, reads, “I understand that by signing this petition I become ineligible to vote in a primary election or participate in a convention of another party, including a party not holding a primary election, during this voting year in which this primary election is held.” Garza subsequently decided to run as a Republican candidate. She said she has been urging others to vote, was determined to vote herself, but understood from signing her sister’s petition that she needed to vote in the Democratic primary. She thought she was correctly following the rules. She said she regrets she failed to fully educate herself on procedures. Per the Texas Secretary of State’s office, a candidate who signs a petition for someone running in another party’s primary does not immediately affiliate with that party, but the signature makes the candidate ineligible to vote in any other party’s primary.

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National Stories

Judges in a Trump stronghold condemn ICE tactics

Federal judges in one of the Trumpiest states in the country have suddenly become a firewall against President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda. District court judges in West Virginia describe rampant lawlessness by masked ICE agents, defiance of court orders and a wanton infliction of fear and intimidation by the federal government after the Trump administration deployed a targeted immigration enforcement operation in the state last month. “Operation Country Roads,” a partnership with federal and local law enforcement that netted an estimated 650 arrests in January, primarily focused on targeting immigrants driving along the state’s roadways. It has resulted in a flood of lawsuits by people — most without criminal records and with longstanding ties to the U.S. — seeking release from ICE custody.

Though federal judges in other states have raised alarms, four judges in deep-red West Virginia who have been inundated by Country Roads cases are using their rulings to grab Americans by the shoulders and warn against a descent into authoritarianism — often in terms they acknowledge are un-judicial. “Antiseptic judicial rhetoric cannot do justice to what is happening,” U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin, a Clinton appointee, wrote in a Feb. 19 opinion. “Across the interior of the United States, agents of the federal government — masked, anonymous, armed with military weapons, operating from unmarked vehicles, acting without warrants of any kind — are seizing persons for civil immigration violations and imprisoning them without any semblance of due process.” “The systematic character of this practice and its deliberate elimination of every structural feature that distinguishes constitutional authority from raw force place it beyond the reach of ordinary legal description. It is an assault on the constitutional order,” he continued.

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Musk points to highest 'ever' usage of X amid US-Israel strikes on Iran

President Donald Trump addresses the American people following strikes by the U.S. and Israel on Iran. The fallout of the joint U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran led to the highest-ever activity on X, the platform's owner Elon Musk confirmed on Sunday. Musk made the statement in reply to Nikita Bier, the head of product at X. Bier stated on Saturday that the day had been "the biggest day on X in history." "Highest usage of X ever," Musk replied. The exchange came after the U.S. and Israel conducted airstrikes and drone attacks on multiple targets across Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ayatolla Ali Khamenei as well as several other top Iranian officials, including the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Footage of airstrikes both against Iran and Iran's retaliatory strikes against neighboring countries spread across social media like wildfire throughout Saturday and into Sunday. The strikes also quickly led to widespread arguments over whether the attacks benefited the U.S. and whether President Donald Trump had the authority to carry them out without approval from Congress. Ben Rhodes, a top Obama-era official who helped negotiate the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, faced mass criticism after he tried to rebuke Trump for the attacks. Rhodes argued on X that Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "seem to be totally unconcerned about the human beings — on all sides — who will suffer." "Trump's second term has been the worst case scenario," Rhodes added. Rhodes was quickly ridiculed by many conservatives on social media who pointed to the Obama-era Iran deal as a catalyst for allowing the situation to escalate to this point, and placing blame on the Obama administration for not taking the threat from Iran seriously.

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A Las Vegas steak house tries its luck in New York

When it comes to Las Vegas restaurants, the cultural exchange tends to flow inward, not out. At every level of dining, from cheap chain to ultra-luxe destination, the city has imported big-name brands from elsewhere—a Spago here, a Momofuku Noodle Bar there. There’s an outpost of New Orleans’s Turkey and the Wolf, and a branch of the downtown Manhattan pizzeria Scarr’s; hell, there was even a Rao’s, for a while, and it was actually pretty easy to get a table there. The city absorbs these establishments and then does what it does to everything: amplifies, simplifies, suspends in amber. Now the Las Vegas restaurant Golden Steer, an icon of the Sin City steak-house scene, has opened in New York City. Seeing the migration run in the other direction—Vegas to the world—feels almost off-kilter, a little unnerving, though not uncompelling. If any Vegas-endemic restaurant were going to attempt the crossing, Golden Steer is the one to do it: it has the branding, and the mythology, and certainly the point of view. Opened, in 1958, as a cowboy-themed joint, the restaurant was off-Strip, freestanding, deliberately removed from the casino world it served.

The city’s hotels, still rigidly racially segregated, wouldn’t allow Black performers to dine in the very venues where they headlined, but the Golden Steer, a stand-alone restaurant, did not abide by such restrictions, so it became the favored post-show spot of the Rat Pack: Sammy Davis, Jr., would hold court at booth No. 20, Dean Martin at No. 21, Frank Sinatra at No. 22. Their presence drew other celebrities: Elvis liked to order an off-menu hamburger; Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio shared a favorite table while they were married; after their divorce, Marilyn staked out a separate spot, right in front of Joe. Booth No. 11 is dedicated to Oscar Goodman, the notorious mob attorney and eventual mayor of Las Vegas, whose Golden Steer dinners with Tony (the Ant) Spilotro were dramatized in Scorsese’s “Casino.” (Goodman, ever the showman, played himself.) In the half century since its heyday, the restaurant has layered a second motif over its nominal cowboy getup: it’s a memorial to Old Las Vegas, before a veneer of family-friendliness settled over the town like a beauty filter. What it sells, today, is not steak but nostalgia—a specific, gaudy, morally complicated American moment that the rest of Vegas has largely paved over.

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9 killed as protesters try to storm US Consulate in Pakistan over killing of Iran's supreme leader

Violent clashes between protesters and security forces in the Pakistani port city of Karachi left at least nine people killed and more than 50 others wounded on Sunday, after hundreds of demonstrators attempted to storm the U.S. Consulate, authorities said. The violence came hours after the United States and Israel attacked Iran and killed the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Police and officials at a hospital in Karachi said that at least 25 people were also wounded in the clashes and some of them were in critical condition. Summaiya Syed Tariq, a police surgeon at the city’s main government hospital, confirmed that initially six bodies and multiple injured people were brought to the facility. However, she said the death toll rose to nine after three critically wounded people died.

The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan wrote on X that it was monitoring reports of ongoing demonstrations at the U.S. Consulates General in Karachi and Lahore, as well as calls for additional protests at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad and the Consulate General in Peshawar. It advised U.S. citizens in Pakistan to monitor local news, stay aware of their surroundings, avoid large crowds and keep their travel registration with the U.S. government up to date. Karachi is the capital of southern Sindh province, and Pakistan’s largest city. Senior police official Irfan Baloch said that protesters briefly attacked the perimeter of the U.S. Consulate, but were later dispersed. He dismissed as baseless reports that any part of the consulate building was set on fire. However, he said that protesters torched a nearby police post and smashed windows of the consulate before security forces arrived and regained control. Witnesses said that dozens of Shiite protesters remained gathered about a kilometer (half-mile) from the consulate, urging others to join them. They said one of the protesters had tried to burn a window of the consulate, before security forces arrived there and dispersed the demonstrators.

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Measles outbreaks are costing the U.S. millions of dollars. The true losses can't be counted.

In early 2025, as measles began to tear through West Texas, Katherine Wells knew she needed money. Though the outbreak was concentrated in Gaines County, a community an hour away, Wells, who heads Lubbock’s public health department, needed more staff to respond to numerous exposures at local pediatricians’ offices, urgent care centers, restaurants and day cares. “We were really relying on staff that aren’t hourly, because I can work them for 80 hours if I have to, which is horrible,” Wells said. In emergency planning meetings with the Texas Department of State Health Services, she pleaded for roughly $100,000 to hire temporary workers to help her exhausted staff. “I was like, can I just have money so that if I need a few hours of work from a retired school nurse who we’ve worked with before, I can just pay them?” Wells said.

The answer, she said, was consistently “no.” The state did send a few travel nurses from other areas to help, but no extra funding. To stop a measles outbreak from escalating out of control, public health workers have to snap into action, contacting every person exposed to the virus as fast as possible, determining their vaccination status or health risk, and then try to woo them into either getting vaccinated or staying home for three weeks in quarantine. Wells pulled at least half of her staff to work the outbreak response on top of their other daily duties. Wells couldn’t estimate what it cost the Lubbock Health Department to contain the virus before the outbreak, which began in a mostly unvaccinated Mennonite community in late January of last year, ended months later. Since 2019, more than two-thirds of counties and jurisdictions have reported notable drops in vaccination rates, an NBC News/Stanford University investigation found. Among states that track MMR rates, more than half their counties — 67% — fall below the level needed to stop a measles outbreak. An alarming new report calculates the price tag for the U.S. if those rates continue to fall. If measles vaccination rates continue to drop just 1% annually for the next five years, the cost to the U.S. could reach $1.5 billion a year, according to a new report from the Yale School of Public Health.

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America’s ‘most luxurious ski town’ is tearing itself apart

On a snowy March evening last year, a local official stepped to the microphone to declare that this winter ski paradise was in crisis. He singled out one man. “Chuck is failing us all,” said Paul Wisor, grim-faced and wearing a blue puffer jacket, as he stood before the council and a packed room of residents. They gave him a standing ovation. “Chuck” was Chuck Horning, the longtime owner of the Telluride Ski & Golf resort. While many ski towns have spent years mourning the rise of corporate conglomerates swallowing mom-and-pop owners, a growing faction in Telluride was pushing in the opposite direction. They wanted to oust Horning, one of the last independent operators of a major Western ski resort. Detractors argued Horning had allowed the resort to lag behind rivals like Vail and Jackson Hole. “Time to chuck Chuck,” councilman Dan Enright posted on social media. “Telluride, it’s about damn time for change.”

Change came—just not the kind anyone anticipated. Over the following year, Telluride descended into what some called the “ski-gate scandal”: an alleged attempted coup to force Horning to sell to investors. The upheaval has involved resignations, a work stoppage and a protest. In recent days, local leaders hired an outside team of former federal prosecutors to investigate whether any town elected official or employee committed wrongdoing in connection with the ordeal. Horning, an 82-year-old real estate mogul who skied in jeans, buys his shirts at Costco and cuts his own hair, has his own name for what Telluride has become. “Little Chicago,” he said, sitting in his Newport Beach, Calif., office, working through a Taco Bell bean burrito. On a wall, a clock was set permanently to Telluride time. “This place is as corrupt as anything.” The feud is unfolding in one of America’s most spectacular corners, a box canyon beneath a concentration of 13,000- and 14,000-foot peaks. Telluride attracts the ultra-wealthy—Oprah Winfrey and Kelly Ripa own homes in the area; Forbes dubbed it the Hamptons of the West, while Realtor.com ranked it the most luxurious ski town in the U.S. in 2024. Yet it retains a hippie vibe, with no stop lights and bumper stickers bearing slogans like “Crazy is still better than corporate.”

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Nancy Mace on her trauma, why she does what she does and Donald Trump as a “father figure.”

Behind a closed, locked door, Nancy Mace sat in her private space. In her separate little lair on the edge of her offices on Daniel Island in Charleston, South Carolina, she wore black leggings and a black blazer and a black blouse. Thick curtains covered the windows to keep out outside sound and light. On the carpet were dog beds for her toy Havanese and crumbled bits of biscuits Liberty wasn’t touching. In one corner was a life-size cardboard cutout of Donald Trump adorned with a shirt and a hat that said “MACE.” In another was a dry erase board with the words “Inflation + Cost of Living” and “Illegal Immigration” and “Crime, Drugs + Public Safety” and “ANYTHING TRUMP” written in blue and “must be substantive!” written in red. On an opposite wall was a bigger board with a different assortment of words — “C+++” and “B++++” and “WHORE,” and “Emojis” and “Heart” and “F+++ YOU,” and “thumbs up” and “go girl” and “good.” I looked at it and looked back at her. “We were workshopping replies to certain messages on social media,” she said. “I have, like, an auto-responder.” “How’s it going?” I asked her. “That’s a very loaded question.” “How are you feeling?” I said. “Cautious,” she said. “It’s a very, I would say, cautious time for me, because I have a lot going on, and I have a lot of folks that are trying to stop me.”

By this point in late January, I had been talking to Mace, and to others around Mace and about Mace, for hours and hours, for months and months. I wanted to know what so many wanted to know and still do. What is happening with this woman? What is happening, or has happened, to her? Why does she say the things she says? Why does she act the way she acts? Is she … OK? Mace is a 48-year-old twice-divorced mother of two. She often walks with a gun. She sometimes shops in a wig. She always sleeps (the little she sleeps) under a 20-pound heavy blanket she thinks isn’t heavy enough. She says she does what she does because of “an engine” that she “can’t control” and that “just fucking goes” and is “going to go and go and go.” She says she gets the tattoos that she gets because of “the pain that I need to feel.” And in the wake of her shocking speech last year in which she on the floor of the United States House of Representatives accused her ex-fiancé and three of his business partners and friends of grievous sexual crimes against her and other women — in the spiraling subsequent litigation in which alleged abusers are suing Mace and other alleged victims and vice versa and a judge instituted a gag order for all parties involved and Mace has taken to representing herself — she at times has all but asked to get sent to jail. She is, according to scores of ex-staffers and ex-friends, operatives and colleagues from both parties and a spectrum of people who know her and have known her for a long time, “unstable” and “unhinged” and “unwell.” “Something snapped in her mentally,” Charleston-based Republican consultant Chris Drummond told me. “I hope that she gets the help that she needs,” Charleston-based Democratic consultant Renee Harvey told me.

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Hegseth cancels troop attendance at top-ranked schools

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the cancellation of members of the military attending some of the country’s top-ranked colleges and universities on Friday, beginning academic year 2026-27, arguing the schools are teaching the “enemy’s wicked ideologies” to service members. Hegseth, who attended Harvard University for postgraduate studies, said the move would affect institutions like Princeton University, Columbia University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University, Yale University and “others.” “We demand that senior service colleges work to sharpen our war fighters on genuine national security issues, not social justice activism. We demand curriculums grounded in the founding principles of this republic, principles that champion the enduring ideals of peace through strength and putting American interests first,” Hegseth said in a video posted on social platform X.

“We demand universities that invest back into our nation’s prosperity rather than our greatest adversaries,” the Pentagon chief said in the four-minute clip. “It’s common sense.” Earlier this month, Hegseth announced the Pentagon would cut all academic ties with Harvard starting in the 2026-27 school year, contending the country’s oldest university is “one of the red-hot centers of hate-America activism.” The move marks another chapter in Hegseth’s culture war against academia since taking the helm at the Pentagon. On Friday, Hegseth said he would direct a formal “top to bottom” review of the U.S. war colleges to ensure they are “once again bastions of strategic thought, wholly dedicated to the singular mission of developing the most lethal and effective leaders and war fighters the world has ever known.” War colleges provide professional military education to high-ranking officers, Pentagon civilians and international partners, with a focus ranging from joint operations to national security and strategy. “We’re going to hold ourselves accountable as well,” Hegseth said in the video. “As a final message to our warriors, the Ivy League faculty lounges may loathe you, the so-called elite of academia may mock your patriotism and disdain your sacrifice, but never forget that we the War Department have your back.”

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Lead Stories

Trump to speak Friday at Port of Corpus Christi, with energy exports and water infrastructure in focus

President Donald Trump is set to visit the Coastal Bend on Friday, marking his first stop in the region during his second term in office. Trump is scheduled to deliver remarks Friday afternoon at the Port of Corpus Christi, the nation’s leading exporter of liquefied natural gas and one of the country’s top petroleum hubs. The visit follows his State of the Union address earlier this week, where energy policy was a central focus. The president is expected to highlight fossil fuel production and exports along the Texas Gulf Coast.

According to Kara Rivas, Flint Hills Public Affairs Manager, only two major refineries adjacent to the port — CITGO, Valero, — are among only 11 facilities in the United States capable of processing heavy Venezuelan crude oil, giving the Coastal Bend an outsized role in the nation’s energy supply chain. During his address to Congress, Trump said shipments of that crude would soon be arriving in the United States. White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson said the president understands the economic importance of energy production in Texas. “That’s why he’s so excited to come visit tomorrow and talk with folks about it,” Jackson said. “I won’t get ahead of the President on any specific announcements, but what I will say is that he understands how important this is, and a lot of his agenda is also about bringing more companies and more investment to Texas. Under the Trump administration, companies have invested billions in the state of Texas, and that will create thousands of good-paying jobs.” Local officials are also hoping to raise regional concerns during the visit. State Sen. Adam Hinojosa said he wants to brief the president on ongoing water infrastructure challenges in South Texas. “We want to make sure he is fully aware of the infrastructure issues we have, specifically with water, and the urgency of our need,” Hinojosa said. “Having the opportunity to visit with him in more depth about those challenges would be very helpful. He’s coming to Corpus Christi for a reason, and we are eager to better understand that, but we also believe this is an important opportunity to discuss the critical issues facing our community.”

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Crenshaw has Texas primary problems

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) is at serious risk of losing his primary. House GOP leaders are growing increasingly concerned about Crenshaw’s fate next Tuesday as he faces a strong challenge from state Rep. Steve Toth. A pro-Crenshaw super PAC has spent more than $1 million bashing Toth on TV. That’s a clear sign that the incumbent’s allies see the challenger as a serious threat, even though Toth has spent very little money himself. The race extends to a May runoff if no candidate clears 50% next week. “I’ve heard [Crenshaw has] got a tough race,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told us this week. “I mean, I supported him, hopefully he pulls it out on Tuesday.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) upended the contest by endorsing Toth this week, and Cruz immediately cut an ad for a pro-Toth super PAC. The House Freedom Caucus’ political arm got behind Toth as well.

“He was completely underwater before the race even started,” Toth told us of Crenshaw’s favorability rating. “There’s no way Ted Cruz would jump in. There’s no way the Freedom Caucus would jump in. There’s no way that these different players would get involved in this thing, if the numbers weren’t incredibly good.” We’re not sure aboutthat. The Freedom Caucus has endorsed failed candidates in the past. But Cruz’s nod is significant. “Steve Toth is the best candidate for that seat,” Cruz told us on Thursday. “He’s a strong conservative, and I think his principles and values reflect the values of the voters of the district.” Cruz had already been planning to endorse against Crenshaw. But the divide between the Texas Republicans grew worse recently when Crenshaw voted against the ROTOR Act, Cruz’s aviation safety bill. Cruz announced his support for Toth just hours after the failed ROTOR vote in the House.

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Paramount emerges victorious over Netflix in Warner Bros. Discovery bidding war

Paramount emerged as the victor in the months-long battle for Warner Bros. Discovery after Netflix backed out of the bidding war Thursday, leaving Paramount poised to acquire Warner’s vast media empire, including CNN. Netflix said it has “declined to raise its offer for Warner Bros.” after the Warner Bros. Discovery board determined that Paramount has submitted a “superior” offer for the media giant. “The deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid,” the streamer said, suddenly ending the corporate tug-of-war. With that announcement, Paramount suddenly moved much closer to taking over CNN, HBO, and the rest of the assets owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, or WBD for short.

The regulatory review process will still take several months at a minimum. But barring any further surprises, Paramount CEO David Ellison will assemble a sprawling entertainment and news empire with dozens of TV channels, multiple movie studios and two leading newsrooms. WBD CEO David Zaslav wished Netflix well and extended a friendly hand toward Paramount in a statement Thursday evening. “Once our Board votes to adopt the Paramount merger agreement, it will create tremendous value for our shareholders,” Zaslav said, alluding to the fact that WBD’s stock price more than doubled during the months-long bidding war. Paramount most recently offered $31 per share. “We are excited about the potential of a combined Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery,” Zaslav added, “and can’t wait to get started working together telling the stories that move the world.”

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Trump, seeking executive power over elections, is urged to declare emergency

Pro-Trump activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting. President Donald Trump has repeatedly previewed a plan to mandate voter ID and ban mail ballots in November’s midterm elections, and the activists expect their draft will figure into Trump’s promised executive order on the issue. The White House declined to elaborate on Trump’s plans. “Under the Constitution, it’s the legislatures and states that really control how a state conducts its elections, and the president doesn’t have any power to do that,” said Peter Ticktin, a Florida lawyer who is advocating for the draft executive order.

Ticktin attended the New York Military Academy with Trump and was part of his legal team that filed an unsuccessful 2022 lawsuit accusing Democrats of conspiring to damage him with allegations that his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia. “But here we have a situation where the president is aware that there are foreign interests that are interfering in our election processes,” Ticktin went on. “That causes a national emergency where the president has to be able to deal with it.” The emergency would empower the president to ban mail ballots and voting machines as the vectors of foreign interference, Ticktin argued. The idea of claiming emergency executive powers based on allegations of foreign interference attaches new significance to the administration’s actions to reinvestigate the 2020 election. Trump has never accepted defeat, while never finding evidence of widespread fraud. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is leading a review of election security that officials said focuses on foreign influence. A 2021 intelligence review concluded that China considered efforts to influence the election but did not go through with them. Ticktin said he’s had “certain coordination” with White House officials but declined to specify, citing safety concerns. But his input has successfully led to a presidential action before. Ticktin represents Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk imprisoned on state charges arising from breaking into voting equipment, whom Trump said he pardoned in December. (The presidential pardon did not free Peters from her nine-year prison term because the president has no power over state crimes.)

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State Stories

Harris County seeks to abolish elected treasurer after attempted fraud

Harris County commissioners unanimously voted Thursday to strip County Treasurer Carla Wyatt's office of a key responsibility and pursue abolishing the office entirely during the next legislative session. It’s the first step in a long process that could require approval from a majority of voters both statewide and within Harris County. Commissioners voted 4-0 to add abolishing the office to the county’s legislative agenda, the items the county will ask lawmakers to support during the next legislative session in January 2027. The move came after treasurer's office staff approved for payment two fraudulent checks totaling nearly $53,000, according to a county document obtained by the Houston Chronicle.

Fraudsters intercepted and altered two checks, one for $24,328 and another for $27,530, intended for county vendors. A county financial system that alerts officials of potential problems flagged the payments, but the treasurer’s office approved them anyway, the document shows. Commissioners unanimously approved transferring that alert system and the employees tasked with overseeing it from the treasurer's office to the Office of Management and Budget. While the funds have since been recovered, it’s the latest in a series of mistakes that have shaken commissioners’ faith in Wyatt, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the fraud incident late Thursday. Commissioners first discussed potentially reducing Wyatt’s duties after she was charged with misdemeanor burglary of a vehicle in December. Judge Lina Hidalgo said at a January Commissioners Court meeting that it was too soon to consider sidelining Wyatt, who has not been convicted and is expected to go before a judge in March. Hidalgo was not at Thursday's meeting.

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Defense of a third party theory emerges in Prairieland ICE center shooting trial

When Thomas Gross arrived in a vehicle under drizzle outside a federal ICE detention center in Johnson County late on July 4, the Alvarado Police Department lieutenant says he saw a person dressed in black tactical gear running and a detention security officer following. Gross got out and drew his pistol, a 9mm Glock. Nearly immediately, Gross, who had been dispatched to the Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado for a problem the nature of which was not clear, was shot by a person firing a rifle from a position opposite the person who was running. The shooter, federal prosecutors allege, was Benjamin Song, a 32-year-old former Marine Corps reservist. Song may have been justified by defense of a third party because he believed that he was protecting the running person, defense attorneys have suggested in cross-examination of government witnesses at the joint trial of Song and eight other defendants that is underway in U.S. District Court in Fort Worth.

The defendants’ attorneys refer to their clients as noise demonstrators and argue that they hoped to, in a protest, bring hope to immigrants detained by ICE. The FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office describe the defendants as domestic terrorists aligned with antifa. The defense theory was made clear on Wednesday in defense questions, particularly from attorneys Cody Cofer and Phillip Hayes. That Gross drew his pistol was “extremely reasonable” under the set of facts, FBI Special Agent Clark Wiethorn, the case agent, testified. Gross was shot in his upper shoulder, and the projectile left the back of his neck and took a path through tissue and muscle, but avoided vital organs, Gross testified. The evidence that Song was the shooter comes from a green mask the assailant wore from which samples that tested positive for Song’s DNA were taken and from interviews with cooperating sources, the government has said.

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Senator John Cornyn: From day care fraud to suitcases full of cash: Somali fraud is worse than you think

While the outrage surrounding the Somali day care center scam has largely subsided, there may be an even deeper scandal going on in Minnesota than initially meets the eye, with tentacles reaching across the globe. Over the past two years, the Department of Homeland Security has reported that approximately $700 million in cash has been flown out of the Minneapolis airport in suitcases to far-flung destinations. This enormous sum has been largely tied to Somali nationals. No one knows where this money has come from or where it is going, but here’s the most alarming part: This activity is not currently illegal. To address the national security risks posed by this clandestine movement of funds, I will introduce legislation that will tighten TSA regulations for noncitizens transporting cash through American airports and allow us to literally follow the money.

My legislation, the Stop Somali Currency Airport Smuggling through Hawalas Fraud Act, will strengthen the customs form for noncitizens taking cash out of the country to ensure we know who is moving it and why. The bill will require disclosure of whether the cash was received from a government contract or benefit program, and additional information about both the individual transporting the cash and the recipient. By requiring the form to be filed 72 hours in advance, my legislation will give U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents time to fully vet the form before allowing noncitizens to leave our country carrying large sums of money. This legislation offers a necessary update so that illegal immigrants can no longer legally fly out of the United States to their home countries with suitcases full of cash. Current U.S. law only requires those traveling out of the country to declare cash in excess of $10,000. Furthermore, the current customs form does not require individuals to disclose the source of the cash, meaning we have no way to know whether the money was obtained through licit means. Increasing reports of government fraud in Minnesota suggest that this money may be coming from illegitimate sources. It is also quite possible that these millions are bolstering the arsenal of al Shabaab, an active terrorist affiliate of al Qaeda that has previously been linked to Somali nationals living in Minneapolis. The current laws on the books should be brought up to date to rectify this loophole.

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Dell jumps after projecting AI server sales of $50 billion

Dell Technologies Inc. shares jumped in early trading after the company gave an outlook for sales of its artificial intelligence servers that exceeded estimates, a sign of robust demand for machines helping fuel the AI data center build-out. The company will generate about $50 billion in AI server revenue in the current fiscal year, which ends in January 2027, Dell said Thursday in a statement. “The AI opportunity is transforming our company,” Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke said in the statement. Dell enters the year “with a record backlog of $43 billion — powerful proof that our engineering leadership and differentiated AI solutions are winning,” he said.

Dell’s servers designed to run AI workloads are attracting customers from companies that rent computing power like CoreWeave Inc. and Nscale Global Holdings Ltd., as well as corporate clients and major AI providers. The Texas-based company has been working to hold down costs and improve margins even as prices for memory chips rise rapidly. In the fiscal fourth quarter, Dell reported an operating margin of 14.8% for its server and networking unit, compared with an average estimate of 12.9%. In its computer unit, the margin was 4.7%. Analysts, on average, projected 6.18%. “Across the industry, the environment remains highly dynamic, with unprecedented AI demand creating sustained supply tightness and frequent pricing resets,” Clarke said in prepared remarks, referring to the memory chip issue. The shares gained about 10% in early trading before markets opened in New York. The stock has increased 13% in the past 12 months. Earnings, excluding some items, will be about $12.90 a share in the current fiscal year, Dell said in the statement. Sales will be about $140 billion. Analysts, on average, projected profit of $11.56 a share on revenue of $126.3 billion.

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Cece Cox retiring from Resource Center

Cece Cox will be retiring as CEO of Resource Center, effective 2027, Resource Center Board Chair Christopher LaGrone announced in a letter this morning. LaGrone noted that Cox’s retirement comes after “19 years of extraordinary leadership anchored in vision, courage, heart and steady guidance that has helped Resource Center grow and deepen its impact.”

LaGrone wrote: “Cece’s leadership has shaped Resource Center into what it is today: a place where LGBTQIA+ people and those living with HIV/AIDS can access affirming care, find community and build healthier, more connected lives. Under her tenure, Resource Center has grown in both scale and impact — expanding health and wellness services, strengthening education and advocacy, broadening the wraparound support and advancing critical LGBTQIA+ initiatives. “And beyond our walls, Cece has been a steadfast leader for LGBTQIA+ people across Dallas and throughout Texas — advancing dignity, equity, and safety through partnership, advocacy, and trusted presence. “’Resource Center was a touchstone for me as a young adult coming out, and it has been an honor to work with the remarkable board and staff to build upon the organization’s incredible history in serving the LGBTQIA+ community. As I reflect on all we have accomplished together, I am excited to welcome and support the next leader who will guide Resource Center into its bright future,’ said Cece.

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With 5 data centers on the horizon, Hays County water advocates see the fight as just beginning

Water advocates in Hays County have identified five potential data center developments in the region that they plan to protest. The organizers said they are hopeful after the San Marcos City Council blocked another proposed data center last Wednesday. With the 5-2 vote, the proposed site located at 904 Francis Harris Lane in San Marcos will not move forward at this time. Hundreds of speakers showed up at the council meeting with concerns ranging from accessing water for their generations-old ranches to being able to safely swim in rivers around San Marcos. These issues — opponents say — still exist for the other potential sites in the region. "These data centers affect not only residents of San Marcos, but anyone who loves to go to the river, anyone who lives in Central Texas," said Chia Guillory, a librarian in San Marcos.

Organizers have flagged several projects they're keeping an eye on throughout or just outside of Hays County. Of the five projects currently being watched, two are in Caldwell County, but organizers said the developments would directly impact Hays County residents' access to water, including drawing from the Edwards Aquifer. Another site they are watching is a proposed Cloudburst data center just up the road from the project that was blocked. Construction was projected to start last May but still hasn’t broken ground. Cloudburst did not respond to KUT's request for comment about the project. The fight over the data center that was just blocked isn't over yet either. The developers can resubmit their proposal in six months, but they have not said whether they plan to do so. With all of these proposed or initiated projects, Hays County residents are questioning the county’s plans to manage water use. Throughout Central Texas, at least 14 different counties are experiencing moderate to extreme drought including Hays, Travis, Williamson, Guadalupe and Caldwell. The strain on the watershed has been felt throughout the region, with aquifers within Hays County reaching historic lows.

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Former Dallas County judge and DA candidate testifies in misconduct trial, denies allegations

In her first public statements since being accused of allowing a staff member to stand in for her during a criminal court proceeding nearly five years ago, former Dallas County District Judge Amber Givens denied the allegations while testifying Wednesday before a three-judge panel. Givens’ testimony came on the second and final day of her judicial misconduct trial held at the state Supreme Court in Austin. Her statements to the panel contradicted previous testimony from two prosecutors and two probation officers who witnessed the hearing at the center of the case. The former felony court judge received a public reprimand and an admonishment from the State Commission on Judicial Conduct last year after it determined she had allowed her court coordinator to stand in for her during an August 2021 bond hearing.

The commission also ruled that Givens had treated attorneys poorly in her courtroom on three specific occasions, and had taken action in two criminal cases after she had been recused from them. Givens appealed the findings, which then voided them and led to this week’s trial. The trial was presided over by a Special Court of Review, whose members are three justices from various appellate courts in the state. Two prosecutors from the attorney general’s office presented the case against Givens. The panel didn’t issue a ruling, and it could be weeks before a decision is released. Among the options the justices have is to reinstate some or all of the sanctions, or to dismiss them. If they uphold the public reprimand — the harshest sanction available — Givens would not be able to serve as a visiting judge, which many former judges choose to do after they leave the bench. Givens resigned from her position presiding over the 282nd District Court in December to run for Dallas County district attorney. She’s taking on incumbent John Creuzot, who was among the witnesses called to testify at her trial. Both are Democrats and will face off in the March 3 primary. Since no Republican candidates filed for the position, the primary winner likely will get the job after the November general election.

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Irving cancels DART withdrawal election in 7-2 city council vote

Following in the footsteps of Plano and Farmers Branch, Irving moved Thursday night to rescind a May 2 special election that would have allowed voters to determine the future of DART in their city. The city council voted unanimously to approve the interlocal agreement between DART and the city for general mobility program funds. It then voted 7-2 in favor of cancelling the election, with council members Luis Canosa and John Bloch voting against it. This comes after months of back and forth between DART and its member cities, six of which were recently slated to hold withdrawal elections. Earlier this week, city council members in Plano and Farmers Branch voted to take their measures off the ballot after striking an agreement with DART.

Addison will keep their election, following a Tuesday city council vote. As a compromise between the transit agency and member cities thinking about withdrawal, millions of dollars in sales tax contributions will be returned to the cities across six years. The DART Board’s governance and funding models are expected to change, too, with the City of Dallas no longer holding a voting majority. Resident Michael McPhail told the council, “I have to admit, I thought this was a high-risk play and you won, good work.” He went on to thank the council for reaching a compromise with DART and getting the issue on the agenda. “Hopefully DART will behave better in the future,” McPhail added. Other speakers thanked the council, mayor and city staff for their role in brokering a deal with DART. Council member David Pfaff described it as Mayor Rick Stopfer’s “crowning achievement” as his three-term tenure at the city’s helm comes to an end, per city term limits. DART Board Chairman Randall Bryant told the council that the new agreements provide guarantees to member cities and “a pathway for the future.” After the vote, Bryant told KERA it was "a great day," following major strides in governance and funding solutions. “We still have to work on service and there's a lot of priorities within each city that we have to figure out how to bring together,” Bryant said. “There are a lot of things that hinge on the legislative session and so we need to get prepared for that starting now, too.” Withdrawal elections are still slated to be held in Addison, University Park and Highland Park.

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Tarrant County seeks 200 more election clerks to man March 3 primary polls

Tarrant County is short about 200 election clerks needed to man the polls during the March 3 primaries, elections administrator Clint Ludwig told the Fort Worth Report. It’s unusual but not unheard of to have such a shortage of poll workers. However, Tarrant County is typically “pretty close to fully staffed” a week ahead of Election Day, Ludwig said. “We can’t figure it out,” Ludwig said Wednesday about the shortage. “We’ve been working the phones feverishly, trying to find enough clerks and judges, and it’s just been a struggle this year for some reason. I don’t know.” In total, the county needs close to 2,000 clerks to fully staff 200 voting sites March 3. Without a full staff, some polling sites risk closure. Of the still-needed 200 clerks, Ludwig said the county wants 75 to 80 bilingual Spanish speakers and 10 to 15 bilingual Vietnamese speakers.

During the primaries, each polling site is led by two elections judges — one Republican and one Democrat — and at least two clerks. The clerks help voters check in and scan ballots. Tarrant County pays election clerks $15 per hour. On Election Day, clerks start their shifts at about 5:30 a.m. to set up voting equipment and get the polls ready, then typically work until 8 or 9 p.m., Ludwig said. Clerks may work a half-day, he noted. It’s an unglamorous job without many perks, he admitted, but it’s a chance to be “part of the process and see how it works.” “It’s an opportunity to serve your local community and help provide democracy where you live,” Ludwig added. The primary ballot includes partisan races at the county, state and federal levels. Voters cast ballots as either a Democrat or a Republican to nominate candidates to face off in the general election in November.

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Why Austin’s Live Music Fund grants left musicians confused and angry

Theo Love looked into the camera, took a breath and read aloud the survey comments about the city’s music grants to the Austin Music Commission. Venues are suffering and denied funds that were given to musicians who have not performed for years. It was the biggest help to buy the piece of equipment that we couldn’t afford. This thing was messed up in every way. Love edited that last one on the fly. No f-bombs in a public meeting. Love — a musician on the advisory panel for Austin Texas Musicians, a nonprofit that did the survey — cringed as he repeated some of the criticisms during the January 2025 meeting he attended via a video call.

But he wasn’t surprised. Every year, there are complaints, suspicions and whispers about who gets the grants and why. Maybe it was DEI. Maybe I made too much money. Maybe it was politics or cherrypicking or rigged applications. But the reasons behind who wins the Live Music Fund grants are more complicated. An Austin Current review of application scores, city policies, emails, presentations and Music Commission meetings shows the 2024 grants, the last ones awarded, were shaped by three colliding forces: priorities, scoring and confusion. First, priorities. City staffers prioritized diversity, but avoided race-based DEI questions, instead focusing on what they considered related issues: health care, bank accounts, residence in traditionally high poverty census tracts.

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Opponents say Bo French’s campaign distracts from Railroad Commission priorities

Four of the five Republican candidates vying to lead the Texas Railroad Commission have similar priorities for the state’s energy industry: addressing demand from data centers, cleaning up orphan wells, and increasing transparency and accountability in the agency. The fifth candidate — Bo French, the former Tarrant County GOP chairman — has run a very different campaign ahead of the March 3 primary. French’s campaign is based on three principles described on his website. He wants to end diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the Railroad Commission, end “massive overregulation” in the oil and gas industry, and stop an “Islamic invasion of Texas.”

French has stoked controversy on social media for years and survived relatively unscathed. Last summer, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and a chorus of other Republican leaders called for French’s resignation as Tarrant County GOP chairman over a survey he posted on X asking his 49,000 followers whether Jews or Muslims were the “bigger threat to America.” He deleted the poll, saying “some people clearly misunderstood the intent,” and said he regretted posting it. French has perhaps the biggest audience on social media among the Railroad Commission candidates, including incumbent Jim Wright. He regularly posts several times a day, crusading against what he describes as radical Islamic extremism and calling for the deportation of all immigrants living in the United States. He has used phrases like “third world savages” to describe immigrants. “Entire neighborhoods have been transformed into third world favelas,” French wrote in a Feb. 23 post, using the term for impoverished urban settlements in Brazil. “Third worlders, who brought Islam, have teamed up with Marxists, and now together they openly talk about rounding us all up when they take power and disposing of us.”

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North Texas districts pass on school prayer under Senate Bill 11

As February draws to a close, school districts across Texas are facing a deadline to decide whether to set aside a daily period for students to pray. Senate Bill 11 requires every school district in the state to hold a vote before March 1 on a resolution to adopt a policy allowing daily time for prayer or reading religious texts. Notably, the law doesn’t require districts to adopt such a policy, only that they vote on it. Most North Texas districts have opted not to set aside time for prayer and scripture reading. Officials in many of those districts have cited a range of logistical issues, including finding designated spaces and carving time out of the school day. Under the bill, students would only be allowed to participate in prayer or scripture study if their parents have signed a consent form. Districts that adopt a prayer policy must make sure prayer and scripture reading don’t take place in the physical presence or within earshot of a student whose parents haven’t signed a consent form.

Dallas ISD trustees voted unanimously Thursday not to adopt a policy creating a designated period for school prayer. In doing so, the district joined a lengthy list of North Texas school districts that have opted not to adopt such a policy. School boards in Fort Worth and Grapevine-Colleyville ISDs all approved resolutions stating that those districts won’t designate time for prayer, and several other districts, including Arlington, Plano, Irving and Grand Prairie ISDs, also passed similar measures over the past month. During Thursday’s Dallas ISD meeting, Trustee Lance Currie, the son of a Baptist minister, asked fellow board members not to adopt a designated prayer time “not in spite of my faith, but because of it.” Dallas ISD already has a policy in place allowing students to practice their faith in schools, so long as they don’t disrupt class or take learning opportunities away from other students. Currie said he supports that policy and hopes to see it remain in place. But he worried that having a single designated period for prayer would lead to difficult questions among students about who participates, who doesn’t and why.

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National Stories

Hillary Clinton told lawmakers during closed-door testimony that she 'never met Jeffrey Epstein'

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the House Oversight Committee during roughly six hours of testimony Thursday that she has no new information about Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, and she criticizedRepublicans' handling of their investigations into the late convicted sex offender. "I had no idea about their criminal activities. I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein. I never flew on his plane or visited his island home or offices," she said in her opening statement, which she posted on X and delivered at a closed-door hearing with lawmakers. After the interview, Clinton told reporters that she "answered every one of their questions as fully as I could" and that those questions "were repetitive." The answers, she said, were that "I never met Jeffrey Epstein" and "I knew Ghislaine Maxwell casually, as an acquaintance."

"I don't know how many times I had to say I didn't know Jeffrey Epstein," she said, adding that the session took an odd turn toward the end, when one of the members asked her about UFOs and the “pizzagate” conspiracy theory. Committee chair James Comer, R-Ky., said the interview was "productive." "I think we learned a lot," he said, adding that on some questions involving the Clinton Global Initiative, Clinton told lawmakers, "You have to ask my husband." Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., said Clinton "took every question from every single member" on both sides of the aisle. In her opening statement, Clinton accused the panel of engaging in partisan "fishing expeditions" by forcing her and her husband to sit for depositions and said it was interviewing the wrong people. "[Y]ou have compelled me to testify, fully aware that I have no knowledge that would assist your investigation, in order to distract attention from President Trump's actions and cover them up despite legitimate calls for answers," she wrote in the statement.

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Why Trump got involved in a state Senate race — and why he might lose

As North Carolina’s longtime state Senate leader weighed President Donald Trump’s push to redraw the congressional map last year, his team privately hoped to get something in return, according to two people familiar with their thinking. The GOP Senate leader, Phil Berger, was facing a formidable primary challenge from a popular sheriff. And Berger’s team thought redistricting wouldhelp secure Trump’s endorsement, said the two people, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. In an interview, Berger vehemently denied any quid pro quo and said he never spoke with Trump to seek his support. But several weeks after he helped pass the new map meant to net one more House seat for Republicans, the president made an unusual endorsement in a local race.

“Phil Berger has my Complete and Total Endorsement for Re-Election,” Trump wrote on social media, making no mention of redistricting in a long list of Berger’s accomplishments. He urged Berger’s opponent — a staunch ally who chaired Trump’s 2020 campaign in North Carolina — to drop out. The race shows how the power of Trump’s endorsement can advance his agenda. But it could also end up demonstrating Trump’s limits as Republicans are bracing for electoral losses. With days to go until the March 3 primary, one of the most powerful Republicans in North Carolina is locked in a tough fight for reelection, despite Trump’s help. Challenger Sam Page, the longtime Republican sheriff of Rockingham County, could end up unseating Berger, according to state GOP operatives — an outcome that would upend North Carolina politics. Berger, who has led his chamber since 2011, has more resources behind him, but his team has privately indicated they are worried the Senate leader could lose his race next week, people familiar with their outlook said.

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Anthropic CEO says it 'cannot in good conscience accede' to Pentagon's demands for AI use

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Thursday that the artificial intelligence company “cannot in good conscience accede” to the Pentagon’s demands to allow unrestricted use of its technology, deepening a public clash with the Trump administration that is threatening to pull its contract and take other drastic steps by Friday. The maker of the AI chatbot Claude said in a statement that it’s not walking away from negotiations but that new contract language received from the Defense Department “made virtually no progress on preventing Claude’s use for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons.” Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, said earlier on social media that the military “has no interest in using AI to conduct mass surveillance of Americans (which is illegal) nor do we want to use AI to develop autonomous weapons that operate without human involvement.”

Anthropic’s policies prevent its models from being used for those purposes. It’s the last of its peers — the Pentagon also has contracts with Google, OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI — to not supply its technology to a new U.S. military internal network. “It is the Department’s prerogative to select contractors most aligned with their vision,” Amodei wrote in a statement. “But given the substantial value that Anthropic’s technology provides to our armed forces, we hope they reconsider.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic an ultimatum on Tuesday after meeting with Amodei: Allow the Pentagon to use the company’s AI as it sees fit by Friday or risk losing its government contract. Military officials warned that they could go even further and designate the company as a supply chain risk or invoke a Cold War-era law called the Defense Production Act to give the military more sweeping authority to use its products. Amodei said Thursday that “those latter two threats are inherently contradictory: one labels us a security risk; the other labels Claude as essential to national security.” In a post before Amodei’s announcement, Parnell reiterated that the Pentagon wants to “ use Anthropic’s model for all lawful purposes” but didn’t offer details on what that entailed. He said opening up use of the technology would prevent the company from “jeopardizing critical military operations.”

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Religious parents awarded $1.5M after Supreme Court win in LGBTQ+ books case

A group of religious parents who sued the Montgomery County Board of Education in Maryland after it refused to let them opt their children out of classes discussing books on LGBTQ+ characters will receive a $1.5 million settlement. The agreement, approved on Feb. 19 by District Judge Deborah L. Boardman, also requires the school board to alert the parents when classes will be discussing books with LGBTQ+ themes and allow their children to skip those lessons. The parents filed the suit in May 2023 after the school system introduced a pre-K through fifth grade English/language arts curriculum in 2022 with some LGBTQ themes and removed the option for parents to opt students out of the lessons. The curriculum had already drawn tensions among the county’s religious parents, with some worrying about appropriateness and arguing the material promoted a particular ideology.

According to the plaintiffs — Tamer Mahmoud and Enas Barakat, who are Muslim; Jeff and Svitlana Roman, who are respectively Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox; and Melissa and Chris Park, who are Catholic — the school system decision to remove the opt-out option infringed on their religious rights. The case was heard last June by the Supreme Court, which ruled 6-3 in favor of the religious parents, with the three liberal justices dissenting. In his opinion, Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, said the board’s refusal to allow opt-outs infringed on the parents’ religious rights. The court instructed the lower court to order the board to restore the option to opt out.  The books, Alito wrote, were “designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected.” After the Supreme Court decision, the Montgomery County Public Schools introduced an opt-out request form parents can fill out if they believe the use of instructional material would interfere “with their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

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Trump’s foreign policy: Resurrecting empire

President Trump’s foreign policy has veered wildly across the globe, but has remained consistent in its aggressive nature and reliance on the use of force. He has seized the leader of Venezuela while claiming the country’s oil and attacking nearby civilian boats. He has pushed Cuba into a humanitarian crisis through a blockade, and asserted a right to control Canada and Greenland. And he has amassed the largest U.S. military force in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, threatening a new war against Iran after attacks last June. Mr. Trump calls his policy “America First” — a stated focus on U.S. interests as he defines them. But it is not isolationism or a retreat from the world, as some analysts have argued. Nor has it manifested yet in a push to create “spheres of influence,” where the administration would be content to dominate only the Western Hemisphere and leave other regions to rival powers.

From one perspective, it is a resurrection of the mission of empire — acquiring the territories and resources of sovereign peoples — that animated European and other well-armed powers up to the 20th century. It is also an embrace, and even a celebration, of Western imperial histories. In his inauguration speech last year, Mr. Trump praised President William McKinley, who transformed the United States into an overseas empire during the Spanish-American War by acquiring the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico. Mr. Trump’s form of American primacy was most clearly articulated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this month in a speech at the Munich Security Conference. “For five centuries, before the end of the second World War, the West had been expanding — its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe,” Mr. Rubio told an audience of mostly European officials.

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This Republican and Democrat are trying to expand critical women's health program

Two senators from opposing parties are pushing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to renew and expand a health care screening program aimed at uninsured and underinsured women. Sens. Angela Alsobrooks and Katie Britt introduced the new legislation on Thursday. It would expand access to a CDC program that provides heart health risk screenings and other medical support. The bill authorizes $250 million over the next five years to increase eligibility for the program and permit additional health care providers to participate. “Heart health, or heart disease, is the number one killer of women in both Alabama and in Maryland,” Alsobrooks told NOTUS.

“Having the opportunity to reauthorize a program that has been so helpful to so many women, to expand it, to increase the funding and to allow women to be screened for heart disease, is really important.” The existing program operates in a select number of states, and only patients who are already participating in a specific cancer detection program are currently eligible, she said. Alsobrooks added that she valued the opportunity to introduce the bill alongside Britt, emphasizing the need for bipartisan teamwork on issues that impact their constituents on both sides of the aisle. “In this environment, it’s important to get things done, and to be able to do so in a way that really enhances the lives of people across parties,” Alsobrooks said. “We’re looking to find more and more of these spaces where we can invest in our families, and I’ve enjoyed doing it. Katie Britt and I are mothers, so we initially came together around being mothers.”

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U.S. tells embassy staff in Israel to leave now if they want amid Trump threats to attack Iran

The United States on Friday told some embassy staff that they could leave Israel — and that those who want to must do so quickly — as fears of an American attack on Iran fueled alarm throughout the region. The message, conveyed in an email from Ambassador Mike Huckabee that was sent to the U.S. mission, instructed those wishing to leave to “do so TODAY.” NBC News has seen the email, which was first reported by The New York Times. The guidance was issued out of “an abundance of caution” after meetings and calls through the night including conversations with the State Department, Huckabee said in the email. “There is no need to panic,” the email read. “For those desiring to leave, it’s important to make plans to depart sooner rather than later.”

He also urged anyone intending to leave to go ahead and book flights, citing the likely surge in demand out of Israel after the embassy's move. In a public notice early Friday, the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem confirmed that non-emergency government personnel and family members would be allowed to leave Israel, citing “safety risks.” It did not elaborate on the risks leading to the “authorized departure.” The move falls short of the ordered departure instituted this week for some personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. It comes after the latest round of talks between Washington and Tehran on Iran's nuclear program ended Thursday with no sign of a breakthrough. President Donald Trump has overseen a huge military deployment in the Middle East, America's biggest in decades. Iran has threatened to attack American bases in the region if it is attacked, and an escalation could also draw in Israel, which fought a 12-day war with Iran in June.

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Lead Stories

Abbott's school voucher ally pulls in big money for HD118 race

A deluge of spending and attack ads are suddenly raining down on two San Antonio-area state legislative races that previously weren’t getting much attention. Campaign finance reports covering Jan. 23 through Feb. 21 were due Monday, detailing money raised and spent by campaigns and outside groups in the month leading up to early voting. They showed state and national PACs pouring money into a GOP primary on the South Side, where Republicans are choosing between a school voucher architect and a trial lawyer as their nominee to replace state Rep. John Lujan (R-San Antonio). Meanwhile in another district, longtime Democratic state Rep. Liz Campos (D-San Antonio is spending big to fend off a 25-year-old challenger whose family has deep political connections, and could benefit from the surge of new Democratic primary voters turning out to vote.

In the Republican primary, the most recent reports showed a surprise uptick in spending for Jorge Borrego, a 30-year-old former think tank scholar who helped craft Gov. Greg Abbott’s landmark Education Savings Account program in the last legislative session. Borrego worked on education policy at the Austin-based think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation, and is now one of three Republicans seeking their party’s nomination in House District 118. That race once seemed all but sewn up for attorney Desi Martinez, who Lujan recruited to run for his old seat, but who now faces a barrage of attack from Borrego’s deep-pocketed supporters. A national school choice group, AFC Victory Fund, is on TV with ads depicting Martinez on an Obama-era hope poster, and criticizing him for having run as a Democrat in the past. Martinez’s campaign said he does support school vouchers — a defining issue in last cycle’s GOP primaries — but one that’s hardly been discussed this cycle since they were approved in the last session. Similar attacks are flying from the statewide group Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR), which accounted for the vast majority of Borrego’s surprising $360,000 haul on the latest campaign finance reports. TLR is spending big to elect candidates who support tort reform, and opposing trial lawyer candidates from within the Republican Party. Now Borrego is getting help from Abbott, who will campaign alongside him at Texas Pride Barbecue on Thursday morning.

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Crockett up by double digits in Texas Senate Democratic primary poll

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) holds a double-digit lead over her opponent in a hypothetical Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Texas, according to a survey released this week. The two-week University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll, which concluded Feb. 16, shows the congresswoman leading Texas State Rep. James Talarico (D), 56 percent to 44 percent, among likely Democratic primary voters in Texas. The poll was conducted just before the start of early voting, which began on Feb. 17 and lasts through Feb. 27. The primary will be held on March 3. The survey also took place before Talarico got a boost of momentum last week from the national controversy surrounding his appearance on CBS’s “Late Show” with Stephen Colbert. The talk show host said CBS told him not to broadcast Talarico’s appearance, citing pressure from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), though the network denied the accusation.

Colbert pushed back, releasing the interview on YouTube, where it garnered millions of views and helped the campaign raise millions of dollars. Some political observers say the surprise development has the potential to be a last-minute game changer in the closely watched primary. Talarico’s standing in the survey may reflect, in part, his relatively low name recognition, though that may shift after the CBS controversy. While the congresswoman outpaces Talarico on favorability — with 71 percent of Democratic voters viewing Crockett favorably and 59 percent viewing Talarico favorably — more than a third of Democratic respondents say they don’t know of or have strong feelings about Talarico. In the survey, 21 percent of Democrats say they don’t know or have no opinion of the Texas State representative, while 15 percent say they hold neither favorable nor unfavorable views of him. By contrast, 12 percent of the same group say they don’t know or have no opinion of Crockett, and 9 percent say they’re neutral on their feelings about her.

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Hillary Clinton set for deposition with House Oversight Committee in Jeffrey Epstein probe

Members of the Republican-led House Oversight Committee are scheduled to question former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday as part of their investigation into the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The closed-door interview, which will be videotaped, is set to take place in Chappaqua, New York, where the Clintons have a house. The committee will meet with former President Bill Clinton the next day for a similar deposition. The in-person interviews come after months of bitter back-and-forth between the former first couple and the committee, which at one point threatened to hold the Clintons in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena it issued in August.

The committee initially scheduled their depositions for October. Committee chair James Comer, R-Ky., has accused them of having given the panel the runaround since then. The Clintons had volunteered to testify at a public hearing, but Comer said the committee's practice is to conduct closed-door interviews with witnesses before it holds hearings. The Clintons have repeatedly denied wrongdoing related to Epstein and have not been accused of any crimes in connection with him. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee who lost the presidential election to Donald Trump in 2016, has said they have little information to offer the panel about Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 as he was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. She has accused the committee of using her and her husband to try to distract from Trump's ties to Epstein. "Other witnesses were asked to testify. They gave written statements under oath. We offered that," she told the BBC in an interview last week. "Why do they want to pull us into this? To divert attention from President Trump. This is not complicated."

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From Jalisco to Texas: El Mencho’s death triggers violence across the borderlands

The detention and killing of Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, the head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, sparked a wave of violence in over 20 states with 252 violent events. But one of the first sparks, happened in Reynosa, Tamaulipas. Around 8:00 am on Sunday, several cars were set on fire, blocking highways. At first, there was no clear explanation because there was no visible local security operation that would justify this type of blockade. It wasn’t until around 10 a.m. that questions began to arise about the leader’s death. The presence of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) in Tamaulipas has been confirmed since 2023. At the time, the U.S. government declared that they had formed an alliance with the “Metros” faction of the Gulf Cartel to gain control of customs trafficking and fuel theft operations (or huachicoleo), and to maintain control over this part of Tamaulipas.

Cecilia Farfan, head of the North American Observatory at The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) explains that “border towns like Reynosa are important because the border is a region where added value is created.” When substances move north, that triggers an increase in their price once they cross the border with the U.S. The value of trafficked firearms and ammunition goes up when they enter Mexico. Although Tamaulipas is geographically far from Jalisco and Michoacán — the CJNG’s main centers of operation — organized crime dynamics closely connect these regions. “El Primito,” identified as originally being from Colima, went to Tamaulipas to take charge of the “Metros” faction. In Reynosa, he reportedly oversaw the structure for fuel trafficking through the bridges connecting Reynosa with the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. The U.S. government has considerable information about operators involved in this logistics network, including environmental logistics and fuel smuggling operations carried out through fiscal mechanisms. James and Maxwell Jensen — whose extradition has been requested by the Mexican government for alleged links to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel in Veracruz and Tamaulipas — are both linked to “El Primito.”

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State Stories

Texas is correcting thousands of errors in controversial Bluebonnet curriculum

Texas will correct more than 4,200 errors in the controversial, state-written Bluebonnet curriculum, which was rolled out in public schools this year, the state board of education ruled on Wednesday. The fixes, which range from missing commas and improperly licensed images to incorrect answer keys and factual errors, were submitted by the Texas Education Agency, which wrote and published the curriculum as part of Texas’ push for state-issued “high-quality” instructional materials. Board members approved the changes, but not before expressing frustration about the “unprecedented” number of errors. Several raised concerns that they hadn’t been caught in the initial approval process and that taxpayers would be on the hook for the costs of reprinting the updated material.

“I’m very concerned about our review process,” said Will Hickman, Republican of Houston. “It feels like we’ve done something wrong, that we have high-quality instructional materials that were approved by us, but then they are coming back with 4,200-plus corrections.” The Republican-led board voted 8-6 to approve the changes, with support from most of the board’s conservatives. Republican Evelyn Brooks of Frisco joined Democrats to oppose them, and Hickman did not take a vote. Bluebonnet has been highly controversial since its adoption two years ago. Portions of the materials integrate Biblical teachings and are viewed by some critics as part of a national effort to return Christianity and prayer into public schools. Texas is also one of the only states in the country to write and print its own textbooks in addition to setting guidelines for private publishers to follow. The Texas Education Agency gained that power through a new law approved by the state Legislature in 2023 that aimed to increase rigor in classrooms and give teachers more ready-made lesson plans. The state-issued materials are optional, but public school districts receive a financial incentive if they adopt them, which critics say represents an effort to increase top-down control of classroom instruction. Just under one-third of the roughly 1,200 districts statewide voted to adopt Bluebonnet this school year.

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Texas Republican warns Trump of Iran regime change: 'You break it, you own it'

U.S. Rep Michael McCaul is speaking out on the risks posed by a U.S. invasion of Iran, an idea reportedly under consideration by President Donald Trump. Ahead of the president's State of the Union speech Tuesday night, McCaul, an Austin Republican who is not seeking reelection this year, warned that were the United States to attempt to remove Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as the administration did to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro last month, it is unclear who would take his place. "The problem is you don't have a clear leader. (The opposition) don't have weapons, and they don't have communications," he said. "I think it's going to be more complicated than Maduro. That was an extraction. I think regime change in Iran will be... you know when you break it you own it. We've done that a couple times in the Middle East, and I'd be very careful."

Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that Trump has told advisers that if diplomacy or any initial targeted U.S. attack does not lead Iran to give up its nuclear program, he would consider a larger-scale attack towards driving that country’s leaders from power. During the State of the Union, Trump accused Iran of actively developing nuclear weapons, despite a U.S. strike on nuclear facilities there last year. "They're starting it all over. We wiped it out and they want to start it all over again and are at this moment again pursuing their sinister ambitions," he said. Iran's Foreign Ministry denied that claim Wednesday, writing on social media: "Professional liars are masters at creating the illusion of truth." The former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, McCaul has a history of questioning Trump administration policy. Last year, he warned Trump's global tariffs could potentially drive U.S. allies in Asia and South America to make deals with China. And earlier this month he criticized criticized former Border Patrol commander at-large Greg Bovino for escalating the standoff between Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and protestors in Minneapolis, resulting in at least two deaths. "Agent Bovino came into the situation, and I'd say in fairness he escalated the situation by the way that was handled," McCaul said at a hearing with two of Trump's top border and immigration officials.

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Hood County rejects second data center moratorium, seeks attorney general's opinion on authority

Commissioners in Hood County voted down a proposed moratorium on large-scale data center development Tuesday for the second time this month — instead choosing to seek an opinion from the Texas Attorney General on whether the county even has the authority to enact one. The proposed pause, which failed in a 3-2 vote, would have temporarily halted new large-scale development while county leaders studied potential impacts on water, infrastructure and public health. Commissioners Kevin Andrews and Jack Wilson along with County Judge Ron Massingill opposed the moratorium, with Commissioners Nannette Samuelson and Dave Eagle voting in favor. It follows a similar vote earlier in February.

Commissioners have faced mounting pressure from residents concerned about water usage, noise and long-term environmental effects tied to artificial intelligence-related data centers and power generation projects proposed in the area. During Monday's meeting, dozens of residents spoke during public comment, many urging commissioners to approve a moratorium under Chapter 231, Subchapter K of the Texas Local Government Code, a provision unique to Hood County that allows certain regulations on development. Enacted in 1999, Subchapter K specifically gave the county more regulatory authority in order to better preserve and protect nearby bodies of water including Lake Granbury and the Brazos River. But commissioners said their legal counsel, including County Attorney Matthew Mills, advised them that a moratorium may not be permitted under state law. “We hired the most qualified attorney for development regulations that we've hired to guide us through the development process and what we can do and can't do with Subchapter K," Andrews said. "The short answer: no. The commissioners court of Hood County is not authorized to institute a moratorium on development in the county, as the Texas Legislature has not granted such authority."

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Suzanne Bellsnyder: Rural Texas needs champions, not loyalty tests

(Suzanne Bellsnyder is editor of the Texas Rural Reporter.) A few years back, I left my life in Austin to move back home to the Texas Panhandle to raise my family, help my aging dad and build a business in the community where I grew up. As a girl who was raised in a rural community and an agricultural family, I always felt a void in my city life. Not everyone understands this feeling, and not everyone values the life we live in rural Texas, but a few of us do. Generally, we’re conservative, we are present in our faith, we work hard, and we are often unheard. There is a small but mighty group of us working to advocate for rural Texas in state government, and to bring a better understanding of issues that impact our communities. So when I heard recently that one of those champions for rural Texas, former Texas Rep. Glenn Rogers, had been stripped of an administrative appointment by Texas A&M University, I felt a strong calling to speak up about the situation.

In 2021 and 2023, the Legislature created the Rural Veterinary Incentive Program (RVIP) to encourage the recruitment of young veterinarians into rural communities. Rural places experience shortages of veterinarians – just like we do with nurses, doctors and teachers – mostly because the pay in rural communities is lower, making it harder for students to pay back their education expenses and creating a financial disincentive to return home or move to a community like the one I live in. RVIP helps us build our rural workforce. It’s a critical public health investment. And with threats facing Texas, such as the new world screwworm, it also becomes a matter of national security. As a former policy director in the Texas Senate, I also know that the long-term viability of programs like these depends on good people who understand the fabric of rural Texas communities. Folks like Rogers, with his experience and expertise, are critical in a program like the RVIP. Texas A&M recognized Rogers’ value last fall when it recruited him to begin reviewing applications for the program. And rightly so. Rogers was a joint author of the legislation that created RVIP. He has served as president of the board of the American Association of Bovine Practitioners. He’s a Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine Outstanding Alumnus. And he is a rural practitioner and animal health expert. If those qualifications are insufficient for an advisory role on rural veterinary policy, it is fair to ask what qualifications would be?

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Appeals court strikes down AG’s effort to halt Harris County’s immigrant legal services fund

The Fifteenth Court of Appeals on Tuesday struck down Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s effort to halt Harris County’s legal fund to defend undocumented immigrants in court. While the ruling appears to be a legal win for Harris County, justices concluded that it won’t prevent the state from continuing to argue that the county’s Immigrant Legal Services Fund is a violation of the state’s constitution. The state in December appealed a Harris County judge’s ruling that rejected Paxton’s attempt to shutter the program. In its appeal, the state argued the legal defense fund constitutes unconstitutional grants of public funds to private entities and serves no public purpose.

Harris County attorneys fought that notion and argued that the program — which was approved by the Harris County Commissioners Court in 2021 on a party-line vote — strengthens the economy and keeps families together. The justices’ ruling on Tuesday asserts the program has operated for nearly five years with no apparent objection or controversy. “The state has yet to produce proof that, despite several years in operation, the program has resulted in any actual harm to residents of Harris County or the state," according to the ruling. Harris County Attorney Jonathan Fombonne on Tuesday said the county has a clear authority to continue operating the program. “This is an important win for Harris County and the families who rely on this program,” Fombonne said. “The court recognized that the attorney general’s claims don’t match the facts. This program has operated responsibly for years and continues to serve a legitimate public purpose.”

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Texas man who saved lives at Camp Mystic honored at Trump's State of the Union

The Coast Guard swimmer who saved 165 lives during the deadly flooding at Camp Mystic last year received an award for "extraordinary heroism" during the State of the Union Tuesday night. President Donald Trump awarded the Legion of Merit award to Scott Ruskan, who was seated in the U.S. House of Representatives chamber with one of the girls he rescued from Camp Mystic, 11-year-old Milly Cate McClymond. Trump said it was the first time the two had reunited since the July 4 flooding that killed more than 130 people in the Texas Hill Country, including 28 at the Christian girls' camp that McClymond attended. Trump called the flooding "one of the worst things I've ever seen."

The rescue mission to Camp Mystic had been Ruskan's first after finishing his training with the U.S. Coast Guard roughly six months earlier, according to the military branch. He traveled there on a four-person flight crew but was reportedly the only first responder rescuing campers on the ground at the time. Ruskan received a roughly 30-second standing ovation before a military aide arrived to decorate him with the Legion of Merit medal.

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New details have emerged on the sale to ICE of a New Jersey warehouse with a Dallas connection.

Monday morning, we published a story about a Dallas connection to the sale of a warehouse in New Jersey to ICE. We updated that story twice since, as new details emerged, including who owned the warehouse exactly, and a couple of clues as to why the sale probably went through. Monday night, CoStar News, which covers real estate specifically, was able to confirm with ICE that the agency did purchase the building. It also confirmed that it was owned by DG Roxbury Property Owner, an entity that includes a Goldman Sachs asset management fund as a majority owner and Dalfen Industrial (which is headquartered in Dallas) as a minority owner.

Goldman Sachs says that the company had a “fiduciary obligation” to sell the property when an offer was made, especially since the building had been vacant for two years. In a comment to the Dallas Morning News, Dalfen provided another clue: They sold the property because “of the potential of eminent domain.” Even before this story was published, we had been trying to get a better sense of how these deals are done. We had some of the likely components when we explained why cities are often caught unaware that ICE is looking at a warehouse in their boundaries here. We ended up finding someone familiar with these deals who would speak on background. From the story: In most cases, the warehouse owners—whether it be a real estate development company or an investment firm—are approached by a third-party government contractor, a person with knowledge of such deals but who is not authorized to speak to the press told D Magazine. The risk, the source says, is if the seller rebuffs the government’s offer, the government could attempt to take the property through eminent domain. If successful, the price would be set by the courts and could be lower than what was originally offered. Should that happen, it introduces another issue: If the seller has investors or is part of an asset fund, for instance, its required to protect investors. Turning down the offer and risking seizure at a lower value—along with the attendant legal costs—doesn’t do that. Even if the seller is opposed or uncomfortable with the deal, that risk doesn’t leave them with any good choices, the source said.

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Redistricting pits Democratic colleagues and allies against each other in Texas

The new Texas congressional map that kicked off a nationwide redistricting fight last year was designed to boost Republicans in the midterm elections. First, in the primaries, the map is pitting the newest Democrat in Congress against one of his longest-serving colleagues in a primary. Rep. Christian Menefee took office this month after he won a late January special election to fill the Houston-based seat of Rep. Sylvester Turner, who died last year. But because of the new congressional maps, Menefee is running for a full term in a district composed of a mostly new group of voters. Meanwhile, Rep. Al Green is running in the same district after the Legislature redrew his longtime seat to lean more Republican. It's not the only awkward primary matchup forged in part by redistricting.

Democratic former Rep. Colin Allred, who endorsed current Democratic Rep. Julie Johnson to succeed him in a Dallas-based district in 2024, is now challenging Johnson after a redistricting shuffle that led two other Democrats from the metro area to leave their seats and Allred to leave the Senate race to seek election to the House once again. The race between Johnson and Allred has heated up over stock trading and immigration enforcement, while Menefee and Green's has been fueled by calls for generational change. The primaries Tuesday highlight some of the issues that will echo through Democratic primaries around the country all year. But the matchups have their roots in redistricting, which occasionally pits incumbents against each other — though usually only once every 10 years, after a census. Early voting in Texas has already begun as voters decide which members of Congress they want to keep. “I think that we should always acknowledge and start from the premise that this is what the Trump administration wanted,” Allred said. “They wanted to draw districts together to force Democrats to run against each other. They wanted to sow division and reduce representation, and that’s what their aim was.”

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Hutto city officials subject of lawsuit over Cottonwood development

Over two years after development talks began, the city of Hutto and a Houston-based development firm are now at odds in a legal dispute. Hutto Mayor Mike Snyder and the Hutto Economic Development Corp. were among the defendants in a lawsuit filed by attorneys for Midway Development Group LLC on Feb. 19. The filing calls for over $301 million worth of damages – $50 million of which would make up for Midway's estimated loss of profits and $250 million of which are being sought for the benefit of the city's residents. The petition comes nearly five months after the city's board voted to cease negotiations on the buildout of the 250-acre Cottonwood Tract – a move Midway executives called "disappointing." Midway is alleging breach of contract, tortious interference with a contract, bribery and civil conspiracy in its suit, which was filed in the Harris County District Court.

Snyder, who is a member of the EDC board, announced the termination of Midway's plans on social media in October. He reiterated comments in an interview with the ABJ, in which he primarily pointed to the development's "lack of progress" for pushing the vote. Reached by phone on Feb. 19, Snyder said he had not seen the lawsuit and declined to comment. In a Feb. 20 Facebook post, Snyder said in response to the lawsuit that the city got few concepts of what the development would look like. "What we did get was a lot of excuses," he said. "And, as anyone who knows me knows, excuses are worthless and results are priceless." Representatives for the Hutto EDC did not respond to a request for comment. Midway was selected to build out the site in December 2023. Company representatives had said they hoped to create a cohesive space for the community, similar to Hutto's Co-Op District, all while increasing commercial and retail offerings and spurring economic growth. Concept plans for the six-phase project included apartments and townhomes, big retailers, restaurants, parks and trails, a potential school site and sports facilities.

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George P. Bush: With smart planning, data centers can strengthen Texas communities

(George P. Bush is an American attorney, U.S. Navy Reserve veteran, and Republican politician who served as the 28th Texas Land Commissioner (2015–2023).) 1930s. By Amanda McCoy Texas sits right at the heart of a generational investment, the data center boom. The Lone Star State is on track to have more data center capacity than any other state. This ongoing expansion means an extensive new pool of job opportunities and long-term economic advantages across Texas. Although this ?sort of innovative landscape ?is worth embracing, Texas needs to home in on these benefits while working with local communities to address their concerns around this new era of infrastructure buildout. Data center development involves long-term water planning, land-use coordination and infrastructure upgrades that can shape a community for decades. Texans living in these communities deserve both the economic tailwinds from these investments and a comprehensive strategy to ensure construction headlines are accompanied by responsible resource management.

The good news is we don’t have to choose between the false narrative of growth and responsibility — we just need the right partners. Texas must put a framework in place to make sure data center development strengthens the fabric of local communities. When it comes to energy, large load customers, such as data centers, should help cover the cost of keeping the grid strong and reliable. That could include investing in their own on-site backup power, supporting new generation or crafting thoughtful ways to respond to high power demand. States such as Indiana and Missouri have enacted capacity commitment frameworks that balance growth and consumer protections by requiring large industrial electricity customers to pay for the costs associated with serving their operations and prevent cost shifting to other ratepayers. Some tech companies operating in Texas have gone further, establishing dedicated energy impact funds to support grid reliability and affordability for the communities around them — a model worth encouraging industrywide. Long-term water planning must also be part of this conversation, especially in drought-prone regions across Texas

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Texas child care centers get business support

The Texas Workforce Commission is launching a new Child Care Business Support initiative to uplift child care providers as a key part of the state’s workforce infrastructure. Licensed and registered child care programs across Texas will have access to free business coaching, training and tools meant to help them stabilize their operations, manage finances and retain staff, according to the commission’s announcement on Monday. To obtain the support, providers must register, complete a business health assessment, receive a personalized learning plan, and connect with one-on-one and group coaches, along with self-paced learning modules and training events in English and Spanish. Joe Esparza, the Texas Workforce Commission chair, said in a statement that the initiative demonstrates his agency’s commitment to helping child care providers manage their business needs.

“Texas child care businesses are a critical link in the workforce system, providing children with safe, nurturing environments while their families contribute to a strong Texas economy,” his statement said. The initiative offers two main types of support. Business coaching is aimed at improving day-to-day operations such as budgeting, marketing and supervising staff. The initiative also connects providers with experts in early childhood and adult learning for training in financial planning and risk management, among other topics. Alberto Treviño III, the Texas Workforce commissioner representing labor, called the initiative a direct investment into the workforce. He said in a statement that the initiative will strengthen the foundation for working families to thrive across Texas. That matters, because inadequate access to child care already costs Texas an estimated $11.4 billion each year in lost productivity and revenue for parents, businesses and taxpayers, according to the University of Texas at Austin. Advocates warn those losses will only increase as more parents scramble for limited care. State Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, told The Dallas Morning News last year that more than 5,000 child care centers have closed in Texas since the pandemic. The state lost nearly 75,000 child care seats in 2024 alone, according to the advocacy nonprofit Children at Risk.

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AG Ken Paxton sues more out-of-state providers for allegedly shipping abortion pills to Texas

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing more providers for allegedly shipping abortion medication into Texas. Paxton's office announced a new suit Tuesday against Aid Access, a nonprofit based in Austria, as well as two medical providers. The office asked a Galveston County judge for a temporary injunction that would prevent the defendants from providing medicine to Texas residents and practicing in the state without a license. The suit alleges Aid Access's founder, Dutch physician Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, and California physician Dr. Remy Coeytaux violated Texas' abortion law by prescribing "abortion-inducing drugs" to Texans and shipping the medications into the state. KERA reached out to Aid Access for comment and did not receive a response.

Gomperts founded the organization in 2018 to "create social justice and improve the health status and human rights of women who do not have the possibility of accessing local abortion services." The "abortion pill" refers to two medications — mifepristone and misoprostol — used to end an early pregnancy. Both are part of the most common type of "medication induced" abortion. In the U.S., 9 in 10 abortions occur within the first trimester, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The World Health Organization said in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, abortions can be safely self-managed outside of a health care facility "in whole or in part." However, the Food and Drug Administration has only approved mifepristone for people less than 10 weeks pregnant. Texas law requires abortions permitted by narrow exceptions to be performed by a physician licensed in the state. Paxton's complaint said by providing abortion medication to Texas residents through a telehealth structure, Aid Access also violates the state law, which says people may not "mail, transport, deliver, prescribe, or provide an abortion-inducing drug in any manner to or from any person or location" in Texas.

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National Stories

Takeaways from surgeon general nominee Casey Means’ Senate confirmation hearing

Dr. Casey Means, the president’s nominee for surgeon general, believes the US is a “nation with a broken heart” reckoning with unprecedented amounts of chronic illness and mental illness. But during a lengthy confirmation hearing on Wednesday, she said vaccine policy would not be her priority. At one point, she sparred with a senator over the benefits of flu vaccination, dodging repeated questions on whether she thinks it’s effective against hospitalization and death. Means was interrogated by senators from both sides of the dais about her positions on vaccines, abortion and contraception and pesticides. She also fielded questions about her qualifications, conflicts and even her personal use of psychedelic mushrooms.

In her opening remarks Wednesday, Means described the “unraveling” of mental and physical health” in the United States and “a society losing its mind” to dementia and depression. “As a physician, I have always been inspired that the root of the word healing means to return to wholeness,” she told senators. “Nothing is more urgent than restoring wholeness for Americans, physically, mentally and societally.” Means said she would push to address root causes of chronic illness through nutrition, steering away from “frankenfoods made in factories,” and said she wants to focus the health care system on understanding “why we are sick and not just reactive sick care.” Advocates and some former officials have criticized Means’ nomination because the surgeon general is typically a physician with clinical experience; Means dropped out of her medical residency program, and her Oregon medical license is inactive. Means acknowledged on Wednesday that her license is not active and she cannot write a prescription. She said she has no plans to reactivate her license. Here are highlights from the roughly two-and-a-half hour hearing. Means’ vaccine views were a common theme throughout the hearing, with both Democrats and Republicans questioning her stance on the childhood vaccine schedule and certain immunizations under new scrutiny by Kennedy appointees, such as the hepatitis B vaccine.

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Washington Post losses topped $100 million in 2025

The Washington Post lost more than $100 million last year, according to people familiar with the matter, financial troubles that contributed to the company’s decision to cut its staff by 30% earlier this month. The Post lost roughly $100 million in 2024 and $77 million in 2023. The paper, known in part for its coverage of the Watergate scandal and the Pentagon Papers, has struggled to find a sustainable business model in the face of waning web traffic and changes to the way consumers access news and information online. In their first major presentation since the layoffs, acting Chief Executive and Publisher Jeff D’Onofrio and Executive Editor Matt Murray held a staff meeting Wednesday in which they described years of overspending and declining productivity.

D’Onofrio told newsroom staff that expenses surpassed revenue between 2022 and 2025 because the company had hired hundreds of staffers in the years prior, according to people in attendance. He didn’t detail the depth of the losses at the meeting. The number of news stories published by the Post has fallen by 42% since 2020, while newsroom costs were 16% higher in 2025 compared with 2020, D’Onofrio said. Murray acknowledged the “painfulness of the moment” in light of the recent cuts. The former Wall Street Journal editor in chief, who took the top spot at the Post in June 2024, tried to reset expectations for newsroom staff. “We don’t want or need to do every story or jump on everything that happens,” Murray said. “We’re not a paper of record; there’s no such thing anymore in today’s world.” Still, he said, “We want to be distinctive, urgent, must-read with every chance we have.” D’Onofrio, who was named to his post earlier this month after the departure of publisher and CEO Will Lewis, said he is looking toward a larger strategic plan. “Bear with me, because that will take some time and obvious care, but I’m keen to get going on it,” he said. “And we are going to go after it, and we’re going to go after it hard, because we owe it to this place to do that.”

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U.S. brings tough demands to Iran nuclear talks

U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are entering a crucial round of talks over Iran’s nuclear program Thursday with tough demands, under pressure from hawks in the administration and Republicans in Congress not to agree to a deal that could be criticized as soft. In the talks, now under way in Geneva, the U.S. negotiators were expected to make clear Iran must dismantle its three main nuclear sites—at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan—and deliver all of its remaining enriched uranium to the U.S., officials said. They were also expected to insist that any nuclear deal must last forever and not sunset—the way restrictions rolled off over time under a nuclear pact negotiated under the Obama administration that Republicans have long said was too weak. Trump pulled out of that deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, in his first term, reimposing tough sanctions on Iran.

The U.S. demands come after Trump warned in his State of the Union speech Tuesday that Iran continues to pursue a nuclear weapon and ballistic missiles that could hit the U.S., charges Iran denies. The demands could be tough for Tehran to swallow as both sides look for a diplomatic alternative to a U.S. strike. Trump has threatened to take military action if a deal isn’t reached and has massed a force near the country that includes two aircraft carriers and a host of advanced warplanes, destroyers and missile defense. Iran has warned it would treat any attack, however limited, as a trigger for an all-out response. “This may be the last chance to clinch a deal,” said Saeid Golkar, associate professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and an expert on Iran’s military. “Failing that, the U.S. will next sort out by military means what it can’t resolve through diplomacy.” Iran insists on its right to enrich uranium but is floating proposals to placate the U.S. They include reducing enrichment to as low as 1.5% from up to 60% currently, pausing enrichment for a number of years, or processing it through an Arab-Iranian consortium based in Iran.

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Larry Summers to resign from Harvard over Epstein ties

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers on Wednesday said he will resign from teaching at Harvard University at the end of the academic year, amid the continuing fallout from his ties to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein."I have made the difficult decision to retire from my Harvard professorship at the end of this academic year," Summers said in a statement. Summers, also a former president of Harvard, has been under fire since the U.S. House Oversight Committee released documents detailing an ongoing personal correspondence between Summers and Epstein.

Summers discontinued teaching roles at Harvard and went on leave as a director of a business and government school at the university in November after the university said it would conduct a review of people named in the Epstein files. “In connection with the ongoing review by the University of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein that were recently released by the government, Harvard Kennedy School Dean Jeremy Weinstein has accepted Professor Lawrence H. Summers’ resignation from his leadership position as co-director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government," Harvard spokesperson Jason Newton said in a statement. Newton said Summers would remain on leave until he retires from his academic and faculty positions at Harvard at the end of the school year.Summers also resigned in November from the board of OpenAI, the developer of the ChatGPT artificial intelligence tool, after Harvard announced its review.Summers said then he was "deeply ashamed" of his actions and said he would step back from public commitments to "repair relationships with the people closest to me."

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FBI raids home and offices of major Los Angeles school district superintendent

Federal officers conducted a search Wednesday related to the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), federal officials told Fox News Digital. Investigators reportedly targeted Alberto Carvalho’s home in San Pedro and the school district’s downtown headquarters, LAUSD said. FBI agents also raided a Miami property linked to the school executive, according to Fox 11 Los Angeles. Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Central District of California, confirmed that search warrants were judicially approved but declined to provide additional details on the nature of the investigation, noting that the warrants remain under seal. Carvalho has led LAUSD, the nation’s second-largest school system, since early 2022. He was also recently unanimously reappointed to the position in September 2025.

LAUSD released a statement saying the district is fully cooperating with federal officials. "We have been informed of law enforcement activity at Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters and at the home of the Superintendent," it said. "The District is cooperating with the investigation." The home of Alberto Carvalho, the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, is located in San Pedro, Calif. (KTTV) Early Wednesday morning, staff members at the LAUSD headquarters were reportedly evacuated as federal agents arrived to conduct the search, Fox 11 said. Footage captured multiple investigators, appearing to be FBI agents, going in and out of Carvalho’s home carrying various items, including a small suitcase and several cardboard boxes. Additionally, FBI Miami told the local outlet that a home in Southwest Ranches linked to Carvalho was also searched. The property has since been cleared, the station reported.

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Hegseth warns Anthropic to let the military use the company’s AI tech as it sees fit, AP sources say

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic’s CEO a Friday deadline to open the company’s artificial intelligence technology for unrestricted military use or risk losing its government contract, according to a person familiar with their meeting Tuesday. Anthropic makes the chatbot Claude and is the last of its peers to not supply its technology to a new U.S. military internal network. CEO Dario Amodei repeatedly has made clear his ethical concerns about unchecked government use of AI, including the dangers of fully autonomous armed drones and of AI-assisted mass surveillance that could track dissent.

Defense officials warned they could designate Anthropic a supply chain risk or use the Defense Production Act to essentially give the military more authority to use its products even if it doesn’t approve of how they are used, according to the person familiar with the meeting and a senior Pentagon official, who both were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The development, which was reported earlier by Axios, underscores the debate over AI’s role in national security and concerns about how the technology could be used in high-stakes situations involving lethal force, sensitive information or government surveillance. It also comes as Hegseth has vowed to root out what he calls a “woke culture” in the armed forces. “A powerful AI looking across billions of conversations from millions of people could gauge public sentiment, detect pockets of disloyalty forming, and stamp them out before they grow,” Amodei wrote in an essay last month. The person familiar called the tone of the meeting cordial but said Amodei didn’t budge on two areas he has established as lines Anthropic won’t cross — fully autonomous military targeting operations and domestic surveillance of U.S. citizens. The Pentagon objects to Anthropic’s ethical restrictions because military operations need tools that don’t come with built-in limitations, the senior Pentagon official said. The official argued that the Pentagon has only issued lawful orders and stressed that using Anthropic’s tools legally would be the military’s responsibility.

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Epstein files are missing records about woman who made claim against Trump

The vast trove of documents released by the Justice Department from its investigations into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein failed to include some key materials related to a woman who made an accusation against President Trump, according to a review by The New York Times. The materials are F.B.I. memos summarizing interviews the bureau did in connection to claims made in 2019 by a woman who came forward after Mr. Epstein’s arrest to say she had been sexually assaulted by both Mr. Trump and the financier decades earlier, when she was a minor. The existence of the memos was revealed in an index listing the investigative materials related to her account, which was publicly released. According to that index, the F.B.I. conducted four interviews in connection with her claims and wrote summaries about each one. But only one of the summaries, which describes her accusations against Mr. Epstein, was released by the Justice Department. The other three are missing.

The public files also do not include the underlying interview notes, which the index also indicates are part of the file. The Justice Department released similar interview notes in connection to F.B.I. interviews with other potential witnesses and victims. It is unclear why the materials are missing. The Justice Department said in a statement to The Times on Monday that “the only materials that have been withheld were either privileged or duplicates.” In a new statement on Tuesday, the department also noted that documents could have been withheld because of “an ongoing federal investigation.” Officials did not directly address why the memos related to the woman’s claim were not released. On Wednesday afternoon, the Justice Department said in a new statement that it was reviewing which documents were released in connection to the index. The department said it would publish any documents “found to have been improperly tagged in the review process” that are legally required to be made public. The woman’s description of being assaulted by Mr. Trump in the 1980s is among a number of uncorroborated accusations against well-known men, including the president, that are contained in the millions of documents released by the Justice Department.

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