Lead Stories

Don Huffines owns Epstein's Zorro Ranch in Santa Fe County

The family of Texas businessman and politician Donald Huffines owns the late Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in southern Santa Fe County, which was purchased in 2023 by a limited liability company created just a month before the purchase. Huffines, a former GOP state senator from Dallas, is now running a high-profile campaign for comptroller — a statewide office in Texas overseeing state financial matters. Records obtained by The New Mexican also show the ranch has been renamed San Rafael Ranch and its address, formerly 49 Zorro Ranch Road, is now 49 Rancho San Rafael Road. The change was made in 2024. The ownership was previously unreported. Epstein died in 2019 in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York. The property was listed for sale in July 2021 for $27.5 million; a published report later said the sale price had dropped to $18 million.

In 2023, San Rafael Ranch LLC bought Epstein’s sprawling property for an undisclosed price. The buyers behind San Rafael Ranch LLC have been private. New Mexico is one of a handful of states allowing anonymous ownership of property through limited liability companies. “Four years after Mr. Epstein’s death, the Huffines family purchased property in New Mexico listed at public auction whose proceeds benefited his victims,” a spokesperson for the family, Allen Blakemore, wrote in an email Friday. “Prior to the auction listing, they had never visited the property,” Blakemore wrote. Huffines’ spokesperson didn’t answer questions about the purpose of the property purchase, and Huffines didn’t respond to calls and emails left Thursday evening and Friday morning. The property was valued for tax purposes for tax year 2023 at $21.1 million, but representatives of the LLC protested, and court records show in December 2024, the Santa Fe County assessor determined the value of the property for tax purposes to be just $13.4 million for tax year 2023. (The LLC argued in part it was the “notoriety” of the property along with the sales price that justified a lower valuation and thus lower taxes.) Public records obtained by The New Mexican tie Huffines, who owns a large real estate company in Texas to that LLC.

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Inside the debacle that led to the closure of El Paso’s airspace

Last spring, in the early months of Steve Feinberg’s tenure as deputy defense secretary, Pentagon staff members briefed him on plans to employ new high-energy laser weapons to take out drones being used by Mexican cartels to smuggle drugs across the southern U.S. border. But their use was conditioned on getting a green light from aviation safety officials. The law, the staff members at the Pentagon explained to him, required extensive coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration and the Transportation Department, which could slow the testing of the system. Transportation officials could even block the system’s use if they determined that it posed risks to aviation safety. Two people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss sensitive matters, said they recalled that Mr. Feinberg felt the Pentagon had the authority to proceed anyway. Sean

Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, denied their account, saying it was “a total fabrication.” The meeting took place at an especially sensitive time for those regulating air safety as well as for the Pentagon. Just months earlier, an Army helicopter collided with a passenger jet near Ronald Reagan National Airport above Washington, killing 67 people and putting the military’s safety protocols under intense scrutiny. Now the question of whether the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security followed proper procedures and the law in deploying the laser weapon has become a flashpoint within the Trump administration. Working alongside military personnel, agents from Customs and Border Protection, which is part of the Homeland Security Department, used the weapon this week not far from El Paso International Airport, prompting fury inside the F.A.A. and a brief shutdown of the airport and airspace in that region. Late Tuesday night, the F.A.A. administrator, Bryan Bedford, caught off guard that the system was being used without authorization and concerned for public safety, believed he had little choice but to close the airspace for 10 days, according to more than a half-dozen people. It was an extraordinary decision that surprised the flying public and local officials.

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‘South Texas will never be red again’: Home builders warn GOP over Trump’s immigration raids

Home builders are warning President Donald Trump that his aggressive immigration enforcement efforts are hurting their industry. They’re cautioning that Republican candidates could soon be hurt, too. Construction executives have held multiple meetings over the last month with the White House and Congress to discuss how immigration busts on job sites and in communities are scaring away employees, making it more expensive to build homes in a market desperate for new supply. Beyond the affordability issue, the executives made an electability argument, raising concerns to GOP leaders that support among Hispanic voters is eroding, particularly in regions that swung to Trump in 2024. Hill Republicans have held separate meetings with White House officials to share their own electoral concerns.

This story is based on eight interviews with home builders, lawmakers and others familiar with the meetings. “I told [lawmakers] straight up: South Texas will never be red again,” said Mario Guerrero, the CEO of the South Texas Builders Association, a Trump voter who traveled to Washington last week. He urged the administration and lawmakers to ease up on enforcement at construction sites, warning that employees are afraid to go to work. The construction industry is one of the latest and clearest examples of how the president’s mass deportation agenda continues to clash with his economic goals of bringing down prices and political aims of keeping control of Congress. Even the president’s allies fear disruptions to labor-heavy industries will undermine the gains with Latino voters Republicans have made in recent years, in large part because of Trump’s economic agenda. These concerns were the central focus of a White House meeting this week between chief of staff Susie Wiles, Speaker Mike Johnson, and a group of Republican lawmakers, according to three people with knowledge of the meeting, granted anonymity to discuss it. The group talked about growing concerns that Hispanic voters are abandoning the Republican Party in droves, as well as the policies driving these losses — immigration and affordability concerns.

Read this article at Politico - Subscribers Only

Trump vs Bad Bunny: A Super Bowl feud with possible midterm consequences

President Donald Trump's attack on Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime show - including a gripe that it was mostly in Spanish - has alarmed some Republican Hispanic strategists, politicians and business leaders who warn it risks further eroding his support among Latino voters ahead of November's congressional elections.Hispanics were central to the coalition that powered Trump's re-election in 2024, even after inflammatory rhetoric on the campaign trail, including a comedian calling the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” at one of Trump's rallies. But their support has softened amid continued high prices, discontent over tariffs and his administration's aggressive immigration enforcement tactics. Some of Trump’s staunchest Latino allies called Republican attacks on the global music star — and on a performance widely seen as a rare prime-time celebration of Latino culture — a political misstep as the party fights to hold its razor-thin majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.Several key House races are unfolding in Hispanic-heavy districts, including in California, Arizona and Colorado."It's going to do us more damage than good," said Vianca Rodriguez, a former Trump administration official who served as deputy Hispanic communications director for the Republican National Committee during the 2024 campaign. "That shouldn't have been a battle to have been picked culturally."

Rodriguez, who is Puerto Rican, said she remains an avid Trump supporter. Trump slammed Bad Bunny’s February 8 halftime show as “an affront to the Greatness of America” and a "slap in the face” to the country. “Nobody understands a word this guy is saying,” Trump wrote on his social media account, calling the dancing “disgusting” and unsuitable for children.Even long-time Trump critics like Mike Madrid were baffled by the president's outburst."To see them doubling down on alienating the single most critical constituency they need for survival is beyond belief," said Madrid, a Republican strategist who is an expert on Latino voting trends. Hispanics are the largest ethnic minority in the U.S., accounting for about a fifth of the population. Trump received 48% of the Hispanic vote in 2024 - more than any Republican presidential candidate in history - up from the 36% share he garnered in 2020, according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.But a November survey of more than 5,000 Latino voters by Pew showed Trump is down 12 percentage points among those who backed him in 2024. At the beginning of his second term in January 2025, 93% of Latinos who voted for him approved of the job he was doing. Ten months later, that had fallen to 81%. Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, did not respond to questions about Trump's weakening Latino support.

Read this article at Reuters - Subscribers Only

Five years since the Texas blackout, anxiety remains and the big test has yet to come

This January, an arctic blast barreled toward Texas with the certainty of an avalanche, and Texans went, once again, into emergency mode. Grocery store shelves were cleared of some essentials even before the temperatures dropped. People shared tips about how to prepare for a blackout: everything from dripping your faucets to pre-grinding your coffee beans. A great number of people, no doubt, secured fuel for generators they had purchased since Feb. 15, 2021. The reason for all this, of course, is what began on that day five years ago: The worst blackout in Texas — and by some measures, U.S. — history. It lasted for four days. Millions lost power. Hundreds died. Some power companies, energy traders and natural gas suppliers got rich off the high cost of energy. Ratepayers got stuck with billions of dollars of debt that they are still paying off. The shared experience of the disaster continues to shape what it means to be a Texan.

As the anniversary of that catastrophe arrives, people inevitably wonder what has changed with our state power grid, and some point to the performance in this most recent storm as a sign of improvement. But even as they look for progress, grid anxiety remains a fact of life in Texas. It also seems to be growing outside our state borders, as more Americans learn that their own regional energy systems may not be well prepared for the next big storm. Despite days of freezing cold in some parts of the state last month, the Texas grid kept chugging along. If anything, the grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, may have overestimated the impact of the freeze, forecasting a higher energy draw than actually took place during some moments of the long freeze. The relatively smooth ride in Texas was thanks, in part, to changes put in place after 2021’s winter storm Uri overwhelmed the Texas grid. “The big fear on our end was these dropping temperatures and ice forcing generators offline,” said Tim Ennis, an analyst with Grid Status, a platform that tracks the energy system. But, Ennis said, mandates to prepare power plants for cold weather seem to have paid off, keeping more energy flowing when it was needed most. "A lot of the lessons that we've learned in Uri, that in some ways were paid in blood, have [...] been followed," he said. Ennis also credits the proliferation of big grid-scale batteries for improving electric reliability. That’s despite some state lawmakers' attempts to curb battery growth.

Read this article at KUT - Subscribers Only

State Stories

Black voters could decide Crockett-Talarico primary

Just a month into his Democratic campaign for U.S. Senate, a public poll put state Rep. James Talarico ahead among white and Latino voters in a head-to-head matchup against his then-rival, former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred. A campaign consultant posted a screenshot of the news on Oct. 9 — but cropped out the results among Black voters, who favored Allred by a more than 2-to-1 margin. State Rep. Venton Jones, D-Dallas, was searing. “It’s disappointing to see a campaign share selective polling that leaves out Black voters entirely. Black voters CANNOT be an afterthought — they’re the foundation of our party,” Jones, who is Black, said on social media. “Leaving them out of your polling story isn’t just misleading — it’s disrespectful.”

It was an early indication of the tense racial politics that would eventually grip the race, growing only more fraught after U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, launched her bid in December. Her campaign, which is headlined by her political brand as a partisan crusader, set off a firestorm of online commentary from around the country declaring her candidacy a liability for Democrats in a state that elected President Donald Trump by 14 percentage points. For many of her supporters, the scrutiny of Crockett seemed rooted in racism and misogyny, and conspicuously absent in relation to Talarico and other firebrand candidates, like Democrat Graham Platner in Maine, who are white. That tension has continued to frame the contest in the weeks leading up to early voting, with Talarico struggling to break 13% support among Black voters, according to recent polling. Then, a social media influencer alleged last week that the Austin Democrat referred to Allred as a “mediocre Black man,” prompting Allred to issue a scathing response and to endorse Crockett. Talarico called the allegation a “mischaracterization” and said he criticized Allred’s campaigning but would “never attack him on the basis of race.” He has repeatedly affirmed that he is running a positive campaign and urged his supporters to remain respectful of Crockett.

Read this article at Texas Tribune - Subscribers Only

Poll shows Brandon Herrera overtaking Tony Gonzales in key House primary

New polling shows incumbent Republican Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales on defense with challenger Brandon Herrera taking the lead in a key House primary, according to a new Political Intelligence (PI) poll obtained by the Daily Caller. The PI poll, conducted between Dec. 17 and Dec. 22, 2025, asked “likely Republican primary election voters” who they would support if the race in Texas’ 23rd Congressional District were held immediately. Of the 422 likely Republican primary voters surveyed, 29% said they would vote for Gonzales, with 11% indicating they are “leaning” toward the incumbent. Gonzales’ most competitive challenger, Herrera — an entrepreneur and Second Amendment activist — polled at 33%, with 22% saying they would “definitely” vote for him and another 11% leaning in his favor.

The poll also asked voters how they would respond if only the top two candidates appeared on the primary ballot. In that scenario, 34% said they would vote for Gonzales — including 23% who said they would “definitely” support him — while 43% backed Herrera, with 32% saying they would “definitely” vote for the challenger. Another 23% of respondents said they were “undecided.” “Texas is tired of woke Tony Gonzales. The only thing worse than his voting record is his character. I’m giving Texas 23 what they deserve, a pro-gun, pro-life, pro-Trump congressman,” Herrera told the Caller in a statement. President Donald Trump officially endorsed Gonzales in the race on Dec. 18, declaring in a Truth Social post that Gonzales has his “COMPLETE and Total Endorsement for Re-Election.”

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MAGA lawmaker accused of lying on sworn statement as GOP Senate primary gets ugly

The campaign of Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is accusing one of his primary rivals, Wesley Hunt, of committing voter fraud in 2016 by lying to election officials so he could take a provisional ballot he was ineligible for. Hunt, along with Attorney General Ken Paxton, is locked in a close contest with Cornyn for the nomination. Most polls show Paxton at least slightly ahead of Cornyn, and Hunt placing third, with both candidates keen to reduce Hunt's numbers in the hope his voters will go to them. The allegation was laid out on X Friday by Matt Mackowiak, a longtime Austin-based Republican strategist now running communications for Cornyn's campaign.

"In a bombshell development today in the U.S. Senate primary in Texas, little known 2nd term Congressman Wesley Hunt attempted to show he voted in the 2016 general election, but his provisional ballot was not counted because he was not a registered voter," wrote Mackowiak. "Far more significant is the revelation that he claimed to the Election Judge and in a sworn affidavit that he was discharged in Oct. 2016 (one month before), but his official congressional biography, his campaign biography, and his military discharge document all show he was discharged four years earlier in 2012." According to the allegation, Hunt falsely told an elections judge that he had only just been discharged, as an explanation for why his voter registration wasn't in the system, so that he could take a provisional ballot. “Wesley Hunt has now unwittingly proved he committed voter fraud by lying in a sworn statement to an Election Judge both verbally and on a sworn document,” Mackowiak continued. “His military discharge form, and his official biography prove he was discharged in 2012, not in 2016 as he claimed in an attempt to illegally vote. Corrupt Ken Paxton should investigate Wesley Hunt for voter fraud and Wesley should admit he lied in a sworn document.”

Read this article at Raw Story - Subscribers Only

Illness is rampant among children trapped in ICE’s massive jail in Texas

The number of people held at the notorious Dilley immigration jail has nearly tripled since October. Amid growing calls from lawmakers and human rights groups to shut down the sprawling Dilley Immigration Processing Center in southern Texas, an analysis shows the number of people incarcerated at the notorious immigration jail for children and families has nearly tripled in recent months. Texas lawmakers and attorneys for immigrant families say a growing number of children at the facility are suffering in dangerous and inhumane conditions. People incarcerated at Dilley were quarantined after at least two became sick with measles last week.

In another recent case, an 18-month-old girl was hospitalized with a life-threatening lung infection after spending two months in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the migrant jail. The girl was reportedly returned to Dilley after spending 10 days at the hospital and denied prescribed medication, according to a federal lawsuit. She was only freed after lawyers filed an emergency petition demanding her release. As the nation’s main large immigration jail designed to hold families — though the Trump administration is racing to build more — families are transferred from across the country to a remote part of Texas as they wait weeks or months to see an immigration judge. Recent federal data show that the average daily population exploded from an average of 500 people a day in October to around 1,330 a day in late January, according to Detention Reports, a new tool that maps data on 237 immigration jails nationwide.

Read this article at Truthout - Subscribers Only

Greg Abbott launches rural TV ad targeting Crockett and out-of-state Democrats

Gov. Greg Abbott’s campaign is running TV ads in rural markets across the state attacking “radical Democrats” Zohran Mamdani, Kamala Harris and Jasmine Crockett — the first significant ad buy in the Texas Republican’s push for a record fourth term in office. The ad went live Thursday, and his campaign has reserved $1.3 million worth of airtime through the March 3 primary, according to AdImpact, which tracks campaign advertising. Abbott’s campaign says it is aimed at driving turnout in rural parts of the state, while other campaigns blanket the airwaves in major markets. While 10 Republicans are running in the GOP primary against Abbott, the ad is focused on Democrats. The 30-second spot frames Abbott as a bulwark against “radical Democrats,” though he is not facing any of the politicians in the ad.

It starts with a clip of Mamdani, the newly elected New York City mayor, saying he campaigned as a Democratic socialist and will govern as one. It’s followed by Crockett, a Dallas congresswoman running for U.S. Senate, saying the party needs to learn from Mamdani. In a post on the social media site X about the rural focus, Abbott’s longtime political adviser Dave Carney wrote: “Must be some magic sauce…” The early TV ad buy underscores how much Abbott has to spend this election cycle. The governor had more than $105.7 million in the bank as of the beginning of the year — $40 million more than what he had at the same point in 2022. It also comes as Abbott has political capital riding on other statewide races further down the ballot. The governor has endorsed candidates in both the comptroller and agriculture commissioner races. State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, an Austin Democrat seen as the frontrunner in the race to challenge Abbott, cast the ad buy as a sign the governor is worried. Hinojosa’s campaign released internal polling Thursday showing her trailing Abbott by 3 percentage points, 43-46, which she argued is a sign the three-term governor is more vulnerable than it might appear. The University of Houston poll released a survey this week that showed a 7 percentage point margin between the two, with 6% undecided. “It looks like a governor who's not very confident with his base,” Hinojosa said about the ad buy.

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Carlos Spector, champion of immigrant rights, facing final days as family seeks help to bring him home to El Paso

Carlos Spector, El Paso’s most prominent immigration attorney and a champion for the right to asylum, is gravely ill with cancer at a Houston hospital, his family said. Spector’s family has started a GoFundMe campaign to bring him home so he can spend his last days in El Paso, said his daughter, Alejandra Spector. Carlos Spector has been treated for three weeks at the MD Anderson Cancer Treatment Center in Houston, where doctors determined that he likely would not survive surgery for the sarcoma in his throat, Alejandra said. “And they said, ‘You need to go home and just spend what time you have left,’” she said.

The family is looking at using an air ambulance service to bring him to El Paso, which could cost $25,000. The GoFund me campaign, which is seeking to raise $50,000, is meant to cover that and other costs the family has incurred while in Houston for the treatment. Spector, 71, is an El Paso native and Air Force veteran. His paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants who fled Russian pogroms; his mother was from Mexico. He has been an attorney for 40 years, specializing in immigration law. It was Spector’s advocacy that created the opportunity for Mexicans fleeing drug violence to qualify for amnesty in the United States, said Linda Rivas, a senior trial attorney for the El Paso County Attorney’s Office and former executive director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center. “I think some would argue that he really started Mexican asylum. Mexican asylum was unheard of, and he really was able to prove that this issue with narco violence and the threats to people’s lives was something that the (Mexican) government could not control, was not willing to control,” Rivas said. “He was able to show that there were groups of people who were more vulnerable than others and did fit the definitions of asylum and should be eligible for asylum and not be ignored just because they were Mexican.”

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GOP candidate Bo French pulls out of Houston-area meetup at Islamic center

Republican Texas Railroad Commission candidate Bo French announced he would not be attending a Harris County bipartisan political event Friday night because it was being held at an Islamic center. French, former chairman of the Tarrant County Republican Party, took to X to make the announcement, made just hours before the event was set to begin. "On the advice of my security team, I have to cancel my appearance at the Harris County GOP event tonight," he wrote. "This event is being held in an islamic center." The event was held at Masjid AlSalam in Spring. Chad Khan, the mosque's civic engagement committee chair, said French never RSVPed. "It was a very nice event," Khan said. "A lot of Democrat candidates came, a lot of Republican candidates come and they talk about their platform. It's nothing to do with Muslim, Christian or Judaism. We talk about mainstream politics, that's it."

In a statement to the Chronicle on Friday, French said, "It is sad to see how much more dangerous the Islamization of Texas has made our state. This is why we need a real leader who will defend Texas oil & gas and shut down the mullahs wherever they are." His reference to "Islamization" reflects the GOP's embracing of anti-Islamic rhetoric, which some Texas Republican Muslims say has deterred them from the party. Religious scholars refute some conservatives' messaging on Islamic Sharia law, stating that it isn't a legal code that competes with the nation's laws and is being misconstrued. French is running against Hawk Dunlap, a veteran oil field worker and well control specialist, and incumbent Chairman Jim Right in the Republican primary for Railroad Commissioner. French stepped down as Tarrant County GOP chairman in November to announce his candidacy. He said running for railroad commissioner was the "best way that I can defend Texas, stop the Islamic invasion, and defeat the left." He drew criticism in June from both Republicans and Democrats after posting a poll to X asking whether Jews or Muslims were "a bigger threat to America." In response, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called for French's removal as Tarrant County GOP chairman. "Bo French’s words do not reflect my values nor the values of the Republican Party," Patrick wrote on X. "Antisemitism and religious bigotry have no place in Texas."

Read this article at Houston Chronicle - Subscribers Only

Muslim lawmaker says his community feels targeted by Texas Republicans

If you haven’t noticed lately during the campaigns, Texas Republicans just aren’t talking about the border much anymore, as the policies of the Trump Administration have led to a 55-year low in crossings. They’ve instead turned their attention to Islam, Sharia Law, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), with some Republican campaigns sending near daily texts on the matter. State Rep. Salman Bhojani, D-District 92, is one of two Muslims in the Texas Legislature. He says he gets a call from a Muslim family just about every day. “The Muslim community is devastated. It’s living under sort of a blanket of fear, a blanket of suspicion that, oh, if you’re Muslim, then you must be doing something illegal or these organizations that are fighting for your civil rights are also terrorist organizations,” Rep. Bhojani told us on Inside Texas Politics. “I get calls from Muslim community members that they’re being targeted just for wearing a hijab.”

Rep. Bhojani thinks it’s all political red meat, a way for Republicans to rally the base. Political consultants agree. But the Democrat says the situation can become dangerous when leaders from the President, down to the Governor, down to local lawmakers specifically target Muslims. “As a Muslim Texan, I feel really strongly that it’s not contrary to say I’m a proud Muslim and I’m a proud Texan,” he added. The lawmaker says Sharia is a framework for Muslims to govern their lives, which every religion has. There are no tribunals, he says, or compounds. Republicans have even targeted some proposed Muslim-centered developments, such as EPIC City in North Texas. “All they’re trying to do is come together, give a particular acreage to the mosque, and then have the community live close by to the mosque when they have older parents that can walk to the mosque. They just want to be able to pray in peace and that’s the right that we all enjoy in the state of Texas, in our country,” Bhojani relayed. The Democrat also expects legal action after reports surfaced that Muslim private schools are being excluded from the state’s new voucher program, which is now open for parents.

Read this article at KHOU - Subscribers Only

HUD investigates EPIC over alleged religious discrimination in upcoming project

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is investigating the East Plano Islamic Center over its upcoming project The Meadow, formally known as EPIC City. The department in a press release Friday accuses EPIC Real Properties, Inc., and Community Capital Partners, LP — the corporate entities for EPIC— of violating the Fair Housing Act over religious and national origin discrimination. "It is deeply concerning the East Plano Islamic Center may have violated the Fair Housing Act and participated in religious discrimination,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said in a statement. “As HUD Secretary, I will not stand for illegal religious or national origin discrimination in housing and will ensure that this matter receives a thorough investigation so that this community is open to all Texans.”

The probe stems from a complaint from the Texas Workforce Commission describing a "large-scale pattern of religious discriminatory conduct" by The Meadow's developers, according to the department. The allegations accuse developers of promoting The Meadow as a Muslim-only community and that it would represent “the epicenter of Islam in America.” Other claims include: Discriminatory financial terms that required lot owners to subsidize a mosque and Islamic educational centers. A bias sales mechanism consisting of a two-tier lottery system for lot sales, which granted lot access to Tier One buyers. The Meadow is planned to be a 402-acre development between unincorporated Collin and Hunt counties, roughly 40 miles northeast of Dallas near the city of Josephine. It would include more than 1,000 homes, a new mosque, a K-12 faith-based school, senior housing, an outreach center, commercial developments, sports facilities, and a community college. Planners from Community Capital Partners, LLC in the past have repeatedly said The Meadow is an open community where everyone is welcome. “CCP does not discriminate,” Emily Black said, a spokesperson for the corporate entity.“They do not seek exclusivity. They support equal housing opportunity and religious freedom, both of which are protected under federal and Texas law.”

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‘Teen Mom’ star Farrah Abraham site solicits donations above Austin's $500 limit

Reality TV star and newly minted Austin City Council candidate Farrah Abraham is already soliciting campaign donations, but her fundraising website lets supporters give more than the city’s legal limit. The site, which features a photo of Abraham posed in front of an American flag, includes preset donation buttons as high as $1,000 – double Austin’s $500 cap for individual contributions. The $500 button also includes a $20.51 processing fee, which would push the donation over the allowed limit.

Read this article at Austin American-Statesman - Subscribers Only

Texas man convicted in Jan. 6 attack on Congress wants a new job — in Congress

More than two years after being convicted as part of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a Texas Republican is looking to return to Washington, D.C., but this time as a member of Congress. Lubbock's Ryan Zink is one of seven Republicans in a crowded GOP primary for the 19th Congressional District. Current U.S. Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Lubbock, is not seeking reelection, setting the stage for one of the wildest primary races in Texas.

Last year, President Donald Trump issued pardons or commutations for an estimated 1,500 people charged with the attack on the Capitol. Zink had been charged with a felony and two misdemeanors and was sentenced to 90 days in jail. Zink didn’t respond to a request for an interview on Friday, but told Manny Diaz at KTAB in Abilene early last year that he was wrongly prosecuted. “I never entered the building,” he said. “I never assaulted anyone. I never damaged any property.” Federal agents ultimately used video of him during the attack to prove he was on “restricted grounds” — even if not technically inside the building. In that video, Zink says, “We knocked down the gates! We’re storming the Capitol! You can’t stop us!” Zink has sincesaid the "storming the Capitol" line was just a figure of speech. Zink is certainly a long shot in the race for the district, which stretches from Lubbock to Abilene. All six of the other Republicans in the race have outraised him, according to Federal Election Commission records. Zink isn’t the only one convicted that day who has since tried to run for office. In Longview, Republican Ryan Nichols, also pardoned by Trump, initially filed to run for Congress in the 1st Congressional District against U.S. Rep. Nathaniel Moran, R-Whitehouse, but later dropped out. And in West Virginia, Republican Derrick Evans is running for the U.S. House. Jake Lang, also pardoned, announced he is running for the U.S. Senate in Florida. He told the Miami New Times he expects others arrested that day to run of office too. “The Jan Sixers have risen out and emerged out of these prisons and these gulags, these lions’ dens, and we’re going to slay the giant now, just as David has,” he said.

Read this article at San Antonio Express-News - Subscribers Only

How radioactive oil and gas waste could lie beneath a North Texas elementary school

On a cold winter morning in Johnson County, at the southwestern edge of the booming Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, 52-year-old Lee Oldham stands beside the Pleasant View Elementary School and wonders what the drilling waste he helped lay underneath might mean for the children inside. Surrounding the school is the partially complete 2,500-home Silo Mills development that will supply it with children and that is also built atop drilling waste, according to satellite maps and interviews. The first families moved in two years ago. “They weren’t telling anyone this was a radioactive material. They told us it was safe,” said Oldham, who worked as a dozer operator here from 2009 to 2011, laying waste that he said was generally 6 inches to a foot deep, but in spots as much as 2 to 3 feet. In 2015, Oldham returned to the same area doing reclamation work that involved putting 1 to 2 feet of local dirt back over the waste. Hundreds of homes have already been built in this subdivision, and many are occupied, with cars parked in driveways and trampolines in yards.

Pleasant View Elementary School is part of the Godley Independent School District and already has about 500 students. The elementary school’s website shows photos of smiling children, a list of upcoming and recent events including chess club meetings, an area spelling bee, field trips, and a celebration marking the 100th day of school. School officials say the developer conducted a “Phase 1 Environmental Site” assessment prior to completing the school in 2022. “The assessment indicated that no evidence of recognized environmental conditions was identified in connection with the subject property and that no further action was required,” Superintendent Rich Dear said in a statement provided to Truthdig and the Texas Observer by email. “The Pleasant View Elementary School site was developed following voter approval of Godley ISD’s 2021 bond election and the donation of the property by the developer.” Students began attending the campus in January 2023. Dear identified Terra Manna, LLC, as the site developer and said that the company could provide the assessment. Terra Manna did not reply to questions sent through an online contact form, and phone calls to the company’s main line requesting the Phase I Environmental Site Assessment went unreturned.

Read this article at Texas Observer - Subscribers Only

Hundreds join Walk for Peace homecoming for Buddhist monks in Fort Worth

Hundreds of supporters lined the streets of east Fort Worth on Saturday morning to welcome the Buddhist monks home after their 2,300-mile Walk for Peace. By 7 a.m., a large group had already gathered at Eastover Park, where the monks were due to arrive. Someone scattered red and white rose petals on the road and several people were carrying bouquets of flowers.

Yvonne Hanson left her home in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin, at 6 a.m. Thursday and drove more than 17 hours so she could be on time to walk with the monks on the last leg of their journey from the park to their temple, the Húóng Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center. The monks set off from the Fort Worth temple on Oct. 26. Clad in brown robes and carrying simple packs on their shoulders, they prepared to walk to Washington, D.C., on a mission to promote national healing and unity. The journey spanned nine states in 112 days. Despite a serious accident near Houston that injured two monks, the group persevered and arrived in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. They returned to Fort Worth around 8:40 a.m. Saturday in a charter bus. Cheers erupted from the onlookers as the bus headed down Ramey Avenue toward Eastover Park. One woman held up a hand-lettered sign reading, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.” A throng of people gathered around as the monks disembarked. Most joined the men and their dog, Aloka, for the approximately one-mile walk to the temple.

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National Stories

Trump’s relentless self-promotion fosters an American cult of personality

The racist online video that President Trump recently shared and then deleted generated a bipartisan furor because of its portrayal of Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. What was little remarked on was how it presented Mr. Trump himself — as the “King of the Jungle.” After a year back in the White House, Mr. Trump’s efforts to promote himself as the singularly dominant figure in the world have become so commonplace that they no longer seem surprising. He regularly depicts himself in a heroic, almost godly fashion, as a king, as a Superman, as a Jedi knight, as a military hero, even as a pope in a white cassock. While Mr. Trump has spent a lifetime promoting his personal brand, slapping his name on hotels, casinos, airplanes, even steaks, neckties and bottled water, what he is doing in his second term as president comes closer to building a cult of personality the likes of which has never been seen in American history. Other presidents sought to cultivate their reputations, but none went as far as Mr. Trump has to create a mythologized, superhuman and omnipresent persona leading to idolatry.

His picture has been splashed all over the White House, on multistory banners on the side of federal buildings, on annual passes to national parks and maybe even soon on a one-dollar coin. His name has been etched on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, on the U.S. Institute of Peace, on federal investment accounts, special visas and a discount drug program and, if he has his way, on Washington Dulles International Airport and Penn Station in New York. His White House is pressuring the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery to display portraits of Mr. Trump by his supporters. A group of cryptocurrency investors has shelled out $300,000 to forge a 15-foot-tall gold-covered bronze statue of Mr. Trump called “Don Colossus” to be installed at his golf complex in Doral, Fla. His administration is considering designating a new class of battleships in Mr. Trump’s name. His allies are pressuring foreign leaders to endorse his bid for the Nobel Peace Prize and threatening consequences for resisting. Some supporters in Congress have even proposed adding his face to Mount Rushmore, an effort that, for the moment, has gained little traction. This spree of self-aggrandizement goes beyond mere vanity, although Mr. Trump suffers from no particular shortage in that department. “I really have a big ego,” he noted at the National Prayer Breakfast this month, an assessment that drew no disagreement. What Mr. Trump is actually doing, though, is making himself the inescapable force in American life.

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In first public comments since Trump’s racist video, Obama laments lost decorum

Former President Barack Obama this weekend indirectly addressed a racist video posted earlier this month by President Trump, which depicted Mr. Obama and his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama, as apes. In a podcast interview published on Saturday, Mr. Obama was asked about the “devolution of the discourse” in American politics, with the host mentioning the video shared by Mr. Trump as one of several examples of inflammatory comments or statements by officials from the current administration. “There’s this sort of clown show that’s happening in social media and on television, and what is true is that there doesn’t seem to be any shame about this among people who used to feel like you had to have some sort of decorum and a sense of propriety and respect for the office,” Mr. Obama told Brian Tyler Cohen, a YouTuber and podcast host. “That’s been lost,” he added.

Appearing on Mr. Cohen’s “No Lie” podcast, Mr. Obama did not directly address the video, which was deleted from Mr. Trump’s Truth Social account after it prompted rare, bipartisan outrage. But Mr. Obama stressed that he believed that most Americans found such content abhorrent. “I think it’s important to recognize that the majority of the American people find this behavior deeply troubling,” Mr. Obama said. “It is true that it gets attention. It’s true that it’s a distraction. But as I’m traveling around the country, as you’re traveling around the country, you meet people, they still believe in decency, courtesy, kindness.” Mr. Trump has refused to apologize for posting the video, saying he “didn’t make a mistake.” He said that he had not seen the entire clip and that someone else had posted it on his account. In the nearly hourlong appearance with Mr. Cohen, Mr. Obama spoke at length about the Democratic Party, public protest and Mr. Trump’s blunt immigration enforcement, including the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to Minneapolis. “The rogue behavior of agents of the federal government is deeply concerning and dangerous,” Mr. Obama said. He added: “It is important for us to recognize the unprecedented nature of what ICE was doing in Minneapolis.” The Trump administration said on Thursday that it was ending its deployment of federal agents to Minnesota after it led to tense protests, thousands of arrests and at least three shootings in the Democratic-led state. Mr. Obama applauded the grass roots organizing that was occurring in places like Minneapolis and community efforts to protect immigrants there. “That kind of heroic, sustained behavior in subzero weather by ordinary people is what should give us hope,” he said.

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These young voters are starting to regret their vote for Trump

Week after week, images of Israel’s military pummeling Gaza filled news broadcasts and social media—and President Trump was losing patience. “People are getting sick of turning on the TV and seeing you bombing everything,” Trump said in a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The young people don’t like it.” Trump’s private remarks last year, recounted by a person with knowledge of the conversation, came as his standing with young people has plummeted during his first year in office. After Trump nearly won the group in 2024, roughly two-thirds of young voters ages 18-29 now disapprove of the president’s priorities, including his approach to foreign policy and immigration, according to a recent Wall Street Journal poll.

Young voters are part of Trump’s coalition that is showing signs of fraying ahead of the coming midterm elections, where history is already against the party that controls the White House, and the GOP has the barest of control in Congress. As the president looks to rebuild his standing with the group, he has sought to address economic concerns, including offering plans to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes and cap credit-card interest rates. He has directed the federal government to reclassify cannabis as a less dangerous drug. Emboldened in his second term, Trump has also pursued an aggressive foreign-policy stance, pushed for amped-up deportations and swarmed cities like Minneapolis with immigration agents. Those decisions, and others, have pushed some young Trump supporters away. Trump and team are focused on “making life more affordable for working Americans, and winning the midterms,” said Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser to Trump’s 2024 campaign.

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Europeans push back at US over claim they face 'civilizational erasure'

A top European Union official on Sunday rejected the notion that Europe faces “civilizational erasure,” pushing back at criticism of the continent by the Trump administration. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas addressed the Munich Security Conference a day after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a somewhat reassuring message to European allies. He struck a less aggressive tone than Vice President JD Vance did in lecturing them at the same gathering last year but maintained a firm tone on Washington’s intent to reshape the trans-Atlantic alliance and push its policy priorities. Kallas alluded to criticism in the U.S. national security strategy released in December, which asserted that economic stagnation in Europe “is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure.”

It suggested that Europe is being enfeebled by its immigration policies, declining birth rates, “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition” and a “loss of national identities and self-confidence.” “Contrary to what some may say, woke, decadent Europe is not facing civilizational erasure,” Kallas told the conference. “In fact, people still want to join our club and not just fellow Europeans,” she added, saying she was told when visiting Canada last year that many people there have an interest in joining the EU. Related Stories Rubio's speech to European allies takes a softer tone but sticks to Trump's firm stance Europe hopes to repair trans-Atlantic trust as Rubio attends key security conference Europe warily awaits Rubio at Munich Security Conference as Trump roils transatlantic ties

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Architect submits most-detailed renderings so far for White House ballroom

The most-detailed renderings yet of President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project were briefly made available Friday, showing the massive scale of the planned 89,000-square-foot space. The renderings from Shalom Baranes Associates — which were posted by the National Capital Planning Commission on its website and then swiftly taken down — show the new East Wing could span approximately one street block, significantly longer than the West Wing. It also appears to be more than half the length of the Treasury Building, which it would be next to. CNN has reached out to the NCPC, the planning agency for federal land that must approve the project; the architecture firm; and the White House regarding why the proposal was removed from the website and for additional comment.

The project is facing a legal challenge from the nation’s top historical preservation group, with a federal judge expressing deep skepticism last month over Trump’s authority to construct the ballroom without express authorization from Congress. Yet, construction is moving ahead, with Trump claiming earlier this week that the project is ahead of schedule and within budget. The White House has said the ballroom would be privately funded. “When completed, it will be the finest Ballroom ever built anywhere in the World, one that has been sought by Presidents for over 150 years — and now they are getting THE BEST!” Trump posted on Truth Social, adding that future presidential inaugurations — which are traditionally held in the US Capitol — could be held in the ballroom. The National Capital Planning Commission is set to meet next on March 5 to discuss the proposal. Trump has appointed loyalists to the NCPC, as well as to the Commission of Fine Arts, the other organization that must review the ballroom plans.

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Soaring coffee prices rewrite some Americans' daily routines

For years, it was a daily McDonald’s trip for a cup of coffee with 10 sugars and five creams. Later, it was Starbucks caramel macchiatos with almond milk and two pumps of syrup. Coffee has been a morning ritual for Chandra Donelson since she was old enough to drink it. But, dismayed by rising prices, the 35-year-old from Washington, D.C., did the unthinkable: She gave it up. “I did that daily for years. I loved it. That was just my routine,” she says. “And now it’s not.” Years of steadily climbing coffee prices have some in this country of coffee lovers upending their habits by nixing café visits, switching to cheaper brews or foregoing it altogether. Coffee prices in the U.S. were up 18.3% in January from a year ago, according to the latest Consumer Price Index released on Friday. Over five years, the government reported, coffee prices rose 47%.

That extraordinary rise has brought some to take extraordinary measures. “Before, I thought, ‘There’s no way I could make it through my day without coffee,’” says Liz Sweeney, 50, of Boise, Idaho, a former “coffee addict” who has cut her consumption. “Now my car’s not on automatic pilot.” Sweeney used to have three cups of coffee at home each day and stop at a café whenever she left the house. As prices climbed last year, though, she nixed coffee shop visits and cut her intake to a cup a day at home. To make up for the caffeine, she pops open a can of Diet Coke at home or rolls through McDonald’s for one. Dan DeBaun, 34, of Minnetonka, Minnesota, has likewise trimmed back on coffee shop visits, conscious of the increasing expense as he and his wife save up for a house.

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Several ICE agents were arrested in recent months, showing risk of misconduct

Investigators said one immigration enforcement official got away with physically assaulting his girlfriend for years. Another admitted he repeatedly sexually abused a woman in his custody. A third is charged with taking bribes to remove detention orders on people targeted for deportation. At least two dozen U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees and contractors have been charged with crimes since 2020, and their documented wrongdoing includes patterns of physical and sexual abuse, corruption and other abuses of authority, a review by The Associated Press found. While most of the cases happened before Congress voted last year to give ICE $75 billion to hire more agents and detain more people, experts say these kinds of crimes could accelerate given the sheer volume of new employees and their empowerment to use aggressive tactics to arrest and deport people.

The Trump administration has emboldened agents by arguing they have “absolute immunity” for their actions on duty and by weakening oversight. One judge recently suggested that ICE was developing a troubling culture of lawlessness, while experts have questioned whether job applicants are getting enough vetting and training. “Once a person is hired, brought on, goes through the training and they are not the right person, it is difficult to get rid of them and there will be a price to be paid later down the road by everyone,” said Gil Kerlikowske, who served as commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection from 2014 to 2017. Almost every law enforcement agency contends with bad employees and crimes related to domestic violence and substance abuse are long-standing problems in the field. But ICE’s rapid growth and mission to deport millions are unprecedented, and the AP review found that the immense power that officers exercise over vulnerable populations can lead to abuses.

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Lead Stories

Party balloons? FAA’s surprise El Paso airspace closure fuels questions

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) surprise closure and later opening of airspace over El Paso, Texas is fueling questions from the public and sharp rebukes from lawmakers. Trump administration officials initially contended the move came in response to the incursion of Mexican drug cartel drones. However, the closure of airspace — initially set to last 10 days, but lifted after 8 hours — reportedly came after Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials in the area used a laser counter-drone weapon, provided by the Pentagon, to take out objects that were later identified as party balloons. A White House official told The Hill on Thursday that FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford pulled the trigger on closing the airspace without notifying the White House, DHS and the Pentagon.

“The Department of War and the Department of Transportation having been working together for months regarding drone incursion operations. Last night’s action to disable the cartel drones was not a spontaneous action,” the official said in a statement. “At no point in the process of disabling these cartel drones were civilian aircraft in danger as a result of the methods used by DOW to disable the drones.” That explanation has not put to bed questions about why the FAA acted alone, why the decision was reversed so quickly, what CBP’s role was in the preceding events, or why officials initially defended the move as a necessary response to “address a cartel drone incursion.” “The FAA is in charge of the notification and the process of closing the airspace, but it’s historically done in consultation and coordination with other agencies, right? Because other agencies have equities in airspace,” said Charles Marino, ex-advisor to former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano. Marino, who is now chief executive officer of global security and intelligence advisory firm Sentinel, told The Hill on Thursday that he finds it “weird that the FAA would be the first stop regarding an imminent threat.”

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DHS shutdown imminent after Senate Democrats block Homeland Security bill

Senate Democrats voted Thursday to block a motion to advance a House-passed bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, putting Washington on the brink of a partial government shutdown that will affect more than 260,000 federal employees. The motion, which required 60 votes, failed to advance by a vote of 52-47. Centrist Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who has a long-standing policy of voting against government shutdowns, was the only Democrat to vote for advancing the measure. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) voted no for procedural reasons to be able to bring the bill back to the floor quickly at a later date. Shortly after, Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) attempted to get unanimous consent to move a two-week stopgap bill, but Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) objected. Democrats blocked the legislation after rejecting an offer from the White House they said didn’t go far enough to reform immigration enforcement operations after the fatal shootings of two protesters in Minneapolis last month.

As a result, funding for key agencies such as the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Coast Guard will lapse Saturday without further action from Congress. The agencies that are the main targets of Democratic fury, however, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), will be able to continue operations without much disruption. Both agencies received tens of billions of dollars through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Trump signed into law last year. “Democrats have been very clear. We will not support an extension of the status quo, a status quo that permits masked secret police to barge into people’s homes without warrants, no guardrails, zero oversight from independent authorities,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said before the vote. Schumer acknowledged that White House border czar Tom Homan announced Thursday that it was ending its surge deployment of ICE officers in Minnesota but declared the action falls short of what’s needed to prevent troubling incidents connected to law enforcement operations.

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Trump boasts of over $1.5B in political funds. How he chooses to spend it could rock the midterms

President Donald Trump has bragged about building a political war chest exceeding $1.5 billion — a staggering sum that he can wield at his whim to shape November’s midterms and the 2028 race to succeed him. Trump’s stockpile — which dwarfs any amounts raised by his predecessors in their second terms — is not easy to precisely calculate given that much of it is being collected by groups that aren’t required to file regular financial disclosures. Current and former staffers, as well as others in Trump’s orbit, wouldn’t say exactly where his political bank account stands six months after the president announced on social media that he’d raised, just since Election Day 2024, “in various forms and political entities, in excess of 1.5 Billion Dollars.”

But what is not in question is that it represents a mountain of cash that could reshape Republican politics for years to come — if he chooses. He’s been reluctant to spend money on other people’s races in the past, and he’s even found ways to funnel some cash to his own businesses. The $1.5 billion Trump claimed is roughly equal to what he and outside groups spent on his successful 2024 reelection bid, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan group that tracks political spending. Related Stories Bondi clashes with Democrats as she struggles to turn the page on Epstein files furor Republican calls are growing for a deeper investigation into the fatal Minneapolis shooting Smith defends his Trump investigations at a House hearing. 'No one should be above the law,' he says By comparison, Democratic President Joe Biden’s various super PACs, political groups and nonprofits, as well as the Democratic National Committee, raised roughly $97 million during his first year in office, according to public disclosures. That’s only about 7% of Trump’s total, and Biden was gearing up for a reelection run Trump isn’t allowed to make. “I think a lot of people are asking, ‘What is it all for?’” said Saurav Ghosh, federal campaign finance reform director at the Washington nonprofit Campaign Legal Center.

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Julie Johnson says she only made $90, disputes attack over ICE-linked stock trades

Rep. Julie Johnson pushed back Thursday against a new attack from Democratic rival Colin Allred over her stock trades in Palantir, a tech contractor whose software assists immigration officials on deportations. The Farmers Branch congresswoman faces Allred, a former House member from Dallas, in an increasingly caustic primary March 3 for Congressional District 33. The Allred ad accuses Johnson of “profiting from ICE’s surveillance company, making thousands from the company ICE uses to track and detain our neighbors.” “In Congress, she was supposed to be overseeing Trump and ICE,” the ad’s narrator says. “Instead, Johnson was making money from it.” Johnson called that misleading.

“It was less than $8,000 and I made $90 on the whole thing,” she told reporters this week. “I owned it for a very short period of time and I consistently voted against their interests. So, Colin’s assertions to the contrary are false, misleading and deceptive to the voters.” Financial disclosures show Johnson bought Palantir stock on Jan. 15 and Feb. 12 of last year, each time in amounts between $1,000 and $15,000. She sold on April 1 and June 30, again in that same range. Those reports list ranges, not exact figures, leaving no independent way to confirm or refute Johnson’s $90 figure. Johnson’s campaign said an independent money manager handled her assets, she started divesting her portfolio in March 2025 and all Palantir stock was sold by June 2025. She had divested “all actively traded stocks” in 2025, the campaign said. She also cited her support for a revised congressional stock trading ban in November, two months after it was introduced. Allred signed onto a January 2023 version of a stock trading ban in mid-2024. Allred has stuck with his criticisms of Johnson’s stock trading, saying she is one of the most active stock traders in Congress. In contrast, he said, he never traded stocks while in office.

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State Stories

No tax hike despite budget headache, Whitmire says in State of the City address

At his second State of the City event on Thursday, Houston Mayor John Whitmire addressed daunting fiscal challenges and unveiled his aspirational visions. The address came about a year before the next municipal campaign season, when Whitmire will seek a second four-year term. "I’m prepared to give six years — the remaining best years of my life — for Houston," said Whitmire, who is 76 years old. If reelected, he would be 82 years old at the end of his second term. Sign up for the Hello, Houston! daily newsletter to get local reports like this delivered directly to your inbox. He said the main message of the address was "Houston is a strong city and is getting stronger every day." The city of Houston faced its highest-ever budget deficit last year, as expenses outpaced revenues by nearly $150 million.

As the end of the current fiscal year in June approaches, the city again faces a daunting deficit ­­— expected to exceed $120 million, with additional overages possible as the police, fire and solid waste departments are projected to overshoot their overtime budgets by about $54 million. Throughout his first two years in office, Whitmire refused to increase the property tax rate. He said the trend will continue until the city eliminates "waste, duplication, conflicts of interest and corruption." "We’re not going to raise taxes in this next budget cycle," Whitmire said. "We’re going to look for efficiencies, collaboration, eliminate corruption, conflicts. It can be done, and it will be done." He highlighted the voluntary retirement incentive program put forward by his administration last year, in which about 1,000 workers retired in exchange for lump sum buyouts equaling 25% of their annual salaries. It is projected to save $35 million per year from the city's $3 billion general fund.

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‘You’re being cute:’ Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo walks out during spat over office project

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo walked out in the middle of the Harris County Commissioners Court meeting on Thursday during a spat about a project that she said could restrict space inside her department’s office. Commissioner Lesley Briones said that her efforts to secure a second exit door from her precinct office inside the Harris County Administration building were delayed for months before commissioners overwhelmingly approved the request on Thursday. Though the item was set to be taken up in a closed-door session during the court meeting, Hidalgo requested that the discussions be taken in the public forum. Earlier in the day, she held up a map of her county office and said she’s been harassed by Briones’ precinct office, which has made attempts to tear down one of her office walls for the project, Hidalgo said.

However, Briones said that creating a second egress from her precinct office would ensure her staffers’ safety. “All we want is a second door in case there is an active threat, whether that is a shooter, whether that is a fire,” Briones said. “My office does not have a second exit in a separate area by which my team can leave.” Hidalgo spoke about commissioners last year failing to back her request for additional security detail during her trade mission to Paris. In an interview with Houston Public Media last year, she said she wasn't permitted to bring security detail on her trip, which was funded with money from her own political campaign. The request for an additional door from Briones’ office first arose in a meeting of the county’s space planning committee, which works with county departments and precinct offices to make security and space recommendations for local government buildings. On Thursday, Hidalgo said the county judge’s office inside the administration building is limited in space and has not been remodeled like other precinct offices. Some of the county judge’s staff need to work out of a conference room because the floor they work on is being treated for asbestos.

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Dallas County primary election early voting locations still in flux

With days left before early voting begins, where Dallas County residents can vote continues to change. Several places selected to be early-voting locations approved last month declined, were unavailable to host or were swapped for a different site. Local Democratic and Republican parties each set primary election day locations, but the county is required, under contract with the parties, to establish the early voting sites. So again, on Feb. 12, the list of early voting centers changed. Elections Administrator Paul Adams said during the special-called commissioners court meeting that separate Republican and Democratic elections has stressed planning.

"We kind of anticipated some of the things that might happen here today for early-vote, so we can kind of adjust for that," he said. "But as we get farther down the road with the polling places, the issue is going to be making absolutely certain — especially those places that only Democrats or only Republicans are voting, that the equipment that is dropped off, is the proper equipment for that place. "...If we have a place that's supposed to be a Democrat polling place, but they only get Republican equipment, that obviously is gonna be a problem for election day," he said. Staff are giving extra effort to serve the parties and voters, he said. "They're doing the best job that they can dealing with the circumstances that we are under," he said. "There are individuals in logistics that have worked through the weekend. They have been working 12-hour days in order to make this happen."

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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott scores endorsement from 800 Texas music venues

Gov. Greg Abbott was just called back for a political encore. A collective of 800 live music venues across the state – from classic theaters to honky-tonk dance halls – endorsed the Republican’s reelection bid on Thursday. In a statement released by Abbott’s campaign, the Music Venue Alliance – Texas praised recent pro-music initiatives and Abbott’s moves to lift COVID-19 restrictions that had threatened about 500 venues statewide. The group said those efforts also helped protect the tens of thousands of musicians who perform on their stages. “Governor Abbott has always been a champion for us,” said Edwin Cabaniss, alliance cofounder and chairman. The state has an estimated 1,000 live music venues, according to the alliance website.

Cabaniss also praised the Texas Music Incubator Rebate Program, which will give $200 million in tax rebates over the next decade for eligible Texas venues and festival promoters. Abbott is all but assured of the GOP nomination in the March 3 primary, while Democrats are still sorting out their field, with state Rep. Gina Hinojosa of Austin widely viewed as the leading Democratic contender for governor. Live music is a $31 billion annual industry in Texas. The alliance includes Antone’s Nightclub in Austin, Trees Dallas, Ridglea Theater in Fort Worth, the Texas House of Rock in Corpus Christi and The Arcadia Live in Kerrville.

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Harris County's 100-year floodplain may swell 43% under new FEMA maps

Harris County’s 100-year floodplain could grow by more than 40% under draft maps newly released by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. After a nearly four-year delay, FEMA posted last week an early version of the county’s updated floodplain boundaries on its website. The agency is now gathering feedback from local officials before beginning a broader public review process. If adopted, the new maps would mark the first comprehensive update to Harris County’s floodplain boundaries since 2007. A Chronicle analysis found the county’s flood zones could see substantial expansions. If finalized as currently proposed, the 100-year floodplain would grow by about 130 square miles, a 43% increase compared with today’s boundaries. The 500-year floodplain would increase by about 62 square miles, or 30%. Meanwhile, floodways, which represent the most dangerous areas, would shrink by about 5%.

For one, new data show that rainfall rates are over 30% higher than previous models assumed, according to Emily Woodell, a spokesperson for the Harris County Flood Control District, FEMA’s local partner in the update. The new maps also use more sophisticated technologies, she said. The latest analysis, for instance, takes into account almost all the channels in the county, while the previous model only included major waterways. At the same time, decades of development have replaced vast stretches of natural soil that once absorbed water. A recent Chronicle investigation found that builders have developed more than 65,000 new structures inside Greater Houston’s floodplains since 2017’s Hurricane Harvey. “We're developing and not thinking about downstream impacts,” said Sam Brody, an environmental science professor at Texas A&M University, whose research found that sprawling growth has consistently worsened flood damage. “I think that’s the biggest driver of the expanding floodplains.”

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UT Austin consolidates ethnic and gender studies, causing uncertainty for hundreds of students

The University of Texas at Austin is restructuring seven ethnic and gender studies departments into two new departments, causing concern among students and faculty. The decision was first announced by the dean of the College of Liberal Arts in a 30-minute meeting with department chairs on Thursday. The changes are likely to be finalized by September 2027, faculty from the departments said in a written statement. A university spokesperson said there's no official timeline for the consolidation. In a message to the UT community sent afterward, President Jim Davis said the departments of African and African Diaspora Studies; American Studies; Mexican American and Latina/o Studies; and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies will be consolidated into a new Department of Social and Cultural Analysis.

The departments of French and Italian; Germanic Studies; and Slavic and Eurasian Studies will also be consolidated into the Department of European and Eurasian Studies. Davis said curriculums will be reviewed to determine what majors, minors and courses will be offered. He said students currently enrolled in the affected departments can continue pursuing their degrees as the changes are implemented. Faculty members said they were not given specifics at the meeting on Thursday on what the review of curriculums would entail. It is also unclear how the consolidation of these departments will affect institutes, research centers or staffing. Davis said these changes come after an evaluation of the college revealed fragmentation across departments. He also said the restructuring of the college would allow students to have access to a "balanced and challenging educational experience." Karma Chávez, a professor in the Mexican American and Latina/o Studies department, says the consolidation will take staff's attention away from students for the next couple of years while they figure out the new governance structures of the college. She said it could also have implications on what faculty teach.

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Austin ended its license plate reader program. Then the police department found a loophole.

Austin police are still using license plate reader technology months after the Austin City Council ended the city's program over privacy concerns. A KUT investigation found the Austin Police Department accessed data from Flock Safety license plate readers maintained by neighboring law enforcement agencies within the last month. The access skirts the city's push to end the firm’s presence in Austin — and highlights a gap in Austin’s policies on surveillance technology. The cameras scan license plates at intersections and allow police to search a database for certain criminal activity, like stolen cars or arrest warrants tied to certain vehicles. Austin ended its contract with Flock last June after pushback from residents who said the surveillance can be shared with immigration enforcement and that the system can be used as a dragnet that leads to wrongful arrests.

While APD no longer has the license plate reading cameras on city roads, it does have access to cameras maintained by at least two neighboring agencies: Round Rock and Sunset Valley police. Both agencies listed APD under the departments they had shared data with in the last 30 days. APD confirmed to KUT that it has access to Flock data from other departments, but said it only requests it in emergencies. "There may be situations where APD requests assistance from peer law enforcement agencies, such as during a joint investigation or when additional information is needed for investigative purposes," APD said. "These partnerships ensure the safety and well-being of our Austin community." APD did not say whether it had accessed data from any other departments' license plate readers, including the Texas Department of Public Safety, which recently installed Flock cameras near its headquarters off North Lamar Boulevard.

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Austin United PAC appeals convention center decision to Texas Supreme Court

An effort to stop the Austin Convention Center project from moving forward is not over. The group hoping to stop the construction appealed to the Texas Supreme Court days after a Travis County district judge sided with the city. The Austin United Political Action Committee — the group behind the petition that would let voters decide whether the expansion should move forward — filed the emergency appeal on Tuesday, Bill Bunch, an attorney representing the PAC, said. But the Texas Supreme Court faces a tight deadline. The last day to call for an election in May is Friday. “The court does have some leeway for ordering an election after the deadline,” Bunch said. “They have complete discretion to not consider this at all, or not consider it on an expedited basis, in which case the appellate process would be addressing whether we are entitled to an election in November."

Last October, the Austin United PAC filed a petition with more than 20,000 signatures — the amount needed to trigger an election — to force a ballot measure on if the convention center expansion was something voters wanted. But after reviewing the documents, Austin City Clerk Erika Brady said her office determined there were not enough valid signatures, and the petition was denied. The Austin United PAC believes Brady improperly disqualified hundreds of signatures from people who live in the extraterritorial and limited purpose jurisdictions to keep the petition below the 20,000 signature threshold. It sued the city over it in December. The lawsuit played out over two days in court last month, where Bunch and attorney Bobby Levinski argued that the people who live in these areas just outside the city are allowed to have a say in how hotel occupancy taxes are spent. Bunch said the group still believes the city disenfranchised those voters, which is a violation of state law and the city charter. “The question is whether our suburban voters in the extraterritorial jurisdiction and limited purpose jurisdiction have a right to vote on this matter,” Bunch said. State law says voters who live in these areas can only cast a ballot in certain city elections. The city believed the convention center petition wasn't one of them. A similar effort went before Austin voters in 2019 but failed. A city spokesperson said staff are reviewing the appeal and will respond as needed. Austin began its $1.6 billion project to expand the Austin Convention Center last year. The facility is already demolished and construction has begun. The center is set to reopen in Spring 2029.

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Bonck, deZevallos and Pratt lead crowded GOP field vying to succeed Hunt in TX-38

Texas' 38th Congressional District, stretching across west and northwest Harris County, is a solidly Republican seat drawn with U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt in mind. Twelve GOP candidates are vying to succeed Hunt now that he's running for the U.S. Senate. Jon Bonck, a mortgage loan officer and Baptist deacon, leads the 10-person Republican field in fundraising for the March 3 primary election. According to the latest filings with the Federal Election Commission, Bonck has raised just over $1 million and has more than $846,000 in cash on hand. Bonck has also landed some of the most significant endorsements of the contest, including those of Sen. Ted Cruz and retiring Houston-area U.S. Rep. Morgan Luttrell.

West Houston Airport president Shelly deZevallos is second in fundraising on the GOP side. She's raised more than $666,000 and has more than $578,000 in cash on hand. Running third in fundraising among the Republican candidates is Michael Pratt, a Tomball ISD board member and former U.S. Marine Corps officer. Other candidates competing for the Republican nomination in Texas' 38th include journalist Carmen Maria Montiel, who has run unsuccessfully as a GOP candidate in Texas' 18th and 29th Congressional Districts; paralegal Avery Ayers; health care executive and retired U.S. Army officer Barrett McNabb; law enforcement leader and attorney Craig Goralski; business executive and political activist Larry Rubin; and firearms dealer Jeff Yuna. The Democratic field includes Marvalette Hunter, former chief of staff to Sylvester Turner, the late congressman and former Houston mayor; school counselor Theresa Courts; and real estate broker Melissa McDonough.

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Sheila Jackson Lee's daughter named as new Harris County administrator

Commissioners unanimously voted Thursday to appoint Erica Lee Carter to the position of county administrator — the fourth person to oversee the department since it was created in 2021. Lee Carter's appointment marked the end of a roughly nine-month nationwide search that cost the county more than $100,000. Lee Carter is the daughter of the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, and was elected to briefly succeed her in a November 2024 special election. Her appointment takes effect March 9, and she will succeed Jesse Dickerman, who served as interim county administrator following the April resignation of Diana Ramirez. "'I've seen your commitment to strengthening infrastructure core services and engaging residents in every corner of this county," Lee Carter said to commissioners at Thursday's meeting. "I look forward to elevating governance, collaboration and communication across Harris County departments."

Lee Carter, 46, is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her master's in public policy from Duke University. She previously worked as policy director for Commissioner Rodney Ellis. Commissioners created the Office of County Administration to oversee 16 county departments, including flood control and public health, and handle various day-to-day operations. The intent was for the office to serve as a centralized administrative department empowered to put commissioners' plans into action, but skeptics say the office has failed to deliver on that vision. Although the Office of County Administration was created at least in part to help shield department heads from political exposure, Republican Commissioner Tom Ramsey previously said that, in practice, the office simply created a single "bureaucratic scapegoat." "The county administrator position is nothing but a bureaucratic scapegoat. Since its inception four years ago, we’ve gone through two highly paid administrators, with the last one making $418,000 a year,” Ramsey said.

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A teen shattered Hector Garcia's face. He's one of many Texas juvenile officers who've suffered

A Dallas County juvenile detention officer is still recovering 10 months after he says he was attacked by a detainee while on duty. Hector Garcia, who had been on the job less than one year, said he intervened when a 15-year-old male resident tried to assault another juvenile last April. The teen began hitting Garcia, shattering bones in his face, according to medical records. "He broke my nose, he broke my jaw bone,” Garcia told KERA in an interview. “I might have passed out a little bit, but I was mostly aware and I'm not sure how much time passed, but it might have been like two minutes.” When he got up, he said he tried to help the other boy out of the shower before help came. Covered in blood — holding his eye — Garcia says he waited about a half-hour before a supervisor spoke with him. A nurse put him in a wheelchair and took him from the fifth floor to the third. "I lost a lot of blood," he said. "I couldn't walk. I was a little too woozy.”

Garcia is among the thousands of staff members at juvenile facilities who have been attacked in recent years. Serious incidents must be reported to the Texas Juvenile Justice Department. That agency's data indicates more than 1,400 juvenile assaults on staff were reported statewide from 2022-2023, more than 1,900 in 2024 and nearly 900 from January to August 2025. After the attack, Garcia, 37, was taken by ambulance to Parkland Hospital. "Honestly, I kind of felt like someone should have been there, not just me by himself in the ambulance," he said. "I feel like someone should have gone with me. They just put me in an ambulance and I just went with the paramedics." He was treated as an "assault victim" with facial lacerations, abrasions, contusion, and fractures, according to hospital documents. Parkland discharged him at 6 a.m. the next day, April 29. "I requested from the hospital, like an Uber, to get me back over there so I can get my car, and I had one eye closed," he said. "My eye was all swollen. They told me they were going to give me a bus pass at first and I asked them can I get an Uber because I can't see."

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San Antonio Express-News Editorial: Hawk Dunlap, with 30-plus years in oil and gas, our GOP pick for Railroad Commission

We recommend Hawk Dunlap, a longtime oil and gas worker, in the Republican Party primary for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, which is tasked with regulating and overseeing this industry despite its misleading name Dunlap began working in oil fields more than three decades ago, and during his time in the business, he has held senior roles and developed operational expertise that would serve him well as one of three railroad commissioners.

And unlike the incumbent, Jim Wright, who has shown himself to be overly cozy with the companies the commission is supposed to be holding accountable, Dunlap takes that responsibility as paramount. To that end, he told us that his first priority would be to get produced water “under control,” referring to the water that comes out of the ground in the process of extracting oil and gas. Tens of millions of barrels of it are injected into the ground daily, which has been linked to contamination. “It's gotten out of hand,” he said. “That’s really threatening our groundwater.” Similarly, Dunlap believes the state must do a lot more to plug abandoned, or orphan, wells. And he’s proposed charging production companies 10 cents per barrel of produced water that they inject into the ground with the proceeds going toward plugging such wells. It’s past time for the commission to include someone who understands the industry while also being committed to making it as responsible as it should be. Dunlap could be that person.

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Sakai fired staffer after probe into texts to newspaper publisher

Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai fired one of his top staffers in December over flirtatious texts the staffer sent to the publisher of an East Side newspaper — messages the publisher said made her feel "creeped out," according to county documents and interviews conducted by the San Antonio Express-News. Jim Lefko, Sakai’s communications director, had been talking with staff of the San Antonio Observer, a weekly news tabloid, in an effort to generate support for a plan to revitalize the grounds of the county-owned Freeman Coliseum on the East Side. In November, Observer CEO Waseem Ali sent Lefko an email expressing concern about texts Lefko had sent to Stephanie Zarriello, Ali's wife and the weekly's publisher.

Lefko called her a "pretty lady," asked her to send him a photo of herself "all dolled up" and suggested they meet for drinks because he was a "bachelor for the weekend," according to a county investigator's report and text messages, copies of which Zarriello gave to the Express-News. The messages were part of an Oct. 23 text exchange. After Sakai heard about the texts, he requested assistance from the county ombudsman, an independent official who investigates complaints about county employees. The ombudsman interviewed Lefko, 67, but he refused to turn over his text messages. Lefko and Zarriello communicated over the course of three months and met twice — once at Lefko's office and again at a downtown bar. Their exchanges included debates over the county’s East Side plan, Lefko’s suggestion that he could arrange a ceremonial proclamation honoring the Observer and his invitation for Zarriello to sit next to him at a Commissioners Court meeting.

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National Stories

Conservative heavyweights pan Trump’s ‘socialist’ drug pricing plan

A group of more than four dozen conservative and free-market activists penned a letter to members of Congress Thursday opposing the Trump administration’s new drug pricing model. The letter, sent to members of Congress, argued that the White House’s “most favored nation” drug pricing model released late last week would “import socialist price controls and values into our country.” It also suggests the program will reduce global competitiveness in medical innovation and “reduce cures available to patients while causing an unacceptable degree of drug shortages.” “While supporters of this proposal correctly identify the unique problems facing the American health care system — namely, wealthy countries paying artificially lower prices for prescription drugs than the U.S. and the fact that this depresses innovation and inflates our costs — MFN would not solve these problems,” the letter continued. “In fact, it would exacerbate them.”

Among the signatories to the letter were: President of the nonprofit Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist; Pete Sepp, president of the National Taxpayers Union; conservative pundit and former Trump adviser Stephen Moore; president of the nonprofit Taxpayers Protection Alliance, David Williams; and Ryan Ellis, president of the conservative nonprofit Center for a Free Economy. The groups who wrote Thursday’s letter argued that Trump’s drug pricing plan is essentially a manufacturer incentive program “based on the flawed assumption that American manufacturers are not already fighting as hard as they can against foreign price controls.” The White House announced in December that it had confirmed commitments to most favored nations pricing by more than a dozen pharmaceutical companies, requiring those firms to charge U.S. consumers prices on par with those of other peer countries. On Feb. 5, the White House also unveiled its TrumpRx drug portal, which allows pharmaceutical companies under the MFN initiative to market directly to consumers by linking out to private drug websites. “You’re going to save tremendous amounts of money,” Trump said during the announcement. “We have many of them, and in a very short period of time, we’ll have just about all of them.”

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Goldman Sachs General Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler resigns over Epstein ties

Goldman Sachs’s top lawyer, Kathryn Ruemmler, resigned on Thursday in the wake of the Justice Department’s release of emails and other material that revealed her extensive relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier. Ms. Ruemmler and representatives for Goldman said for years that she had a strictly professional relationship with Mr. Epstein, a convicted sex offender. But emails, text messages and photographs released late last month upended that narrative, leading to Ms. Ruemmler’s sudden resignation, which surprised many inside the firm. Before joining Goldman in 2020, Ms. Ruemmler was a counselor, confidante and friend to Mr. Epstein, the documents showed. She advised him on how to respond to tough questions about his sex crimes, discussed her dating life, advised him on how to avoid unflattering media scrutiny and addressed him as “sweetie” and “Uncle Jeffrey.”

Mr. Epstein, in turn, provided career advice on her move to Goldman, introduced her to well-known businesspeople and showered her with gifts of spa treatments, high-end travel and Hermes luxury items. In total, Ms. Ruemmler was mentioned in more than 10,000 of the documents released by the Justice Department. Ms. Ruemmler, in addition to being Goldman’s general counsel since 2021, was a partner and vice chair of its reputational risk committee. She earlier served as White House counsel under President Obama and was a white-collar defense lawyer at Latham & Watkins. “My responsibility is to put Goldman Sachs’s interests first,” Ms. Ruemmler, 54, said in a statement confirming the resignation. In a separate statement, Goldman’s chief executive, David M. Solomon, said he respected her decision and described her as “a mentor and friend to many of our people.”

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A pilot fired over Kristi Noem’s missing blanket and the constant chaos inside DHS

Kristi Noem knew she needed a reset. It was two days after federal agents had shot and killed Alex Pretti, and Noem was facing fire from all sides. Even some inside the administration were pushing President Trump to remove her from her position for her handling of the chaotic immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis and comments she’d made saying Pretti committed an act of domestic terrorism. So Noem’s top adviser, Corey Lewandowski, messaged Trump’s pollster with a request: They needed to cut an ad to help her, according to two people familiar with the episode. The pollster, Tony Fabrizio, who worked on Trump’s 2024 re-election campaign, ignored the entreaty, the people said. Throughout her tenure as secretary of Homeland Security, a sprawling agency charged with carrying out Trump’s central campaign promise of a mass deportation, Noem has attempted to burnish her personal stardom at every turn.

Within DHS, Noem and Lewandowski have cut employees or put them on administrative leave. The pair have fired or demoted roughly 80% of the career ICE field leadership that was in place when they started. In the blanket incident, Noem had to switch planes after a maintenance issue was discovered, but her blanket wasn’t moved to the second plane, according to the people familiar with the incident. The Coast Guard pilot was initially fired and told to take a commercial flight home when they reached their destination. They eventually reinstated the pilot because no one else was available to fly them home. The DHS spokeswoman didn’t address the episode but said the secretary has “made personnel decisions to deliver excellence.” In an incident last year that rankled some senior staff at the agency, Lewandowski made it known to top ICE officials that he wanted to be issued a law-enforcement badge and a federally issued gun, according to people familiar with his push. Officials are typically only issued a badge and a gun after undergoing law-enforcement training. The administration was preparing to bring on Tom Feeley, a former top ICE official in New York, as its new director when Lewandowski asked Feeley if he would be willing to issue him and several other political officials badges and guns. Feeley declined, and he was subsequently passed over for the top job at ICE.

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A 54-year-old personal injury lawyer from Minnesota just became the oldest US Winter Olympian

The stakes were low — and the time ripe — for a 54-year old personal injury lawyer and six-time winner of “Minnesota Attorney of the Year” to make Olympic history. It was the end of the U.S. men’s curling match against Switzerland on Thursday and they were down 8-2. The team called a substitution. Rich Ruohonen, from Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, stepped onto the ice. He hurled the corner guard and watched his stone, biting his lip until it arrived safely at the left flank of the house. “Yeah, baby! Good shot, Rich!” skip Danny Casper — who was born in 2001, making him 30 years younger than Ruohonen — shouted across the ice. U.S. fans gave a standing ovation. The lawyer looked wistful. He’d had just become the oldest person to compete for the U.S. at the Winter Olympics.

“I would have rather done it when we were up 8-2 instead of down 8-2,” he said, “but I really appreciate the guys giving me a chance.” Since inviting Ruohonen onto their Gen-Z team as an alternate for Casper, who has Guillain-Barre syndrome, he has become something of an honorary uncle: driving them around, waking them up for morning trainings and buying them snacks. Related Stories A red headband earns quirky US curling star a nod from 'Pommel Horse Guy' at Winter Olympics US reaches first Olympic curling mixed doubles final, will face Swedish siblings for gold By The Numbers: A look at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics All while holding that much-discussed full-time job. “We got Rich. Uh, he’s a lawyer. I don’t know if you guys knew that,” said Casper at a recent press conference, after that fact had already been mentioned four times. Curlers from the US women’s and men’s teams cracked up. “If you need a lawyer, I think you can call Rich,” Casper said a few minutes later, again to uproarious laughter. All jokes aside, it’s a serious commitment.

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Trans-Atlantic tensions in focus as annual Munich security gathering opens

An annual gathering of top international security figures that last year set the tone for a growing rift between the United States and Europe opens Friday, bringing together many top European officials with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others. The Munich Security Conference opens with a speech by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, one of 15 heads of state or government from European Union countries whom organizers expect to attend. The many other expected guests at the conference that runs until Sunday include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. In keeping with the conference’s tradition, there will also be a large delegation of members of the U.S. Congress.

“Trans-Atlantic relations have been the backbone of this conference since it was founded in 1963 ... and trans-Atlantic relations are currently in a significant crisis of confidence and credibility,” conference chairman Wolfgang Ischinger told reporters earlier this week. “So it is particularly welcome that the American side has such great interest in Munich.” At last year’s conference, held a few weeks into U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term, Vice President JD Vance stunned European leaders by lecturing them about the state of democracy on the continent. A series of Trump statements and moves targeting allies followed in the months after that — including, last month, his later-abandoned threat to impose new tariffs on several European countries in a bid to secure U.S. control of Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark. With Rubio heading the U.S. delegation this year, European leaders can hope for a less contentious approach more focused on traditional global security concerns, though a philosophically similar one. Rubio will face a heavy lift if he wants to calm the waters, however.

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FBI gives new details on suspect in Nancy Guthrie case, doubles reward to $100K

The FBI revealed new details about the man they now describe as the suspect in the abduction of Nancy Guthrie, based on evidence investigators gathered from the 84-year-old’s doorbell camera. The suspect was described as a man around 5 feet 9 inches tall with an average build, the FBI said in a social media post Thursday evening. Footage from the doorbell camera of Guthrie’s Tucson home showed the man was wearing a black “Ozark Trail Hiker Pack” backpack, according to the FBI. The FBI on Thursday also raised the reward for information leading to Guthrie’s location or to the arrest of a person involved in her disappearance to $100,000. “We hope this updated description will help concentrate the public tips we are receiving,” the FBI’s post said, which added that the agency has collected more than 13,000 tips about the case since Feb. 1, when Guthrie’s family reported her missing.

The same day the Pima County Sheriff’s Department requested neighbors within a two-mile radius of Guthrie’s home send in video footage, including of vehicles, people or anything they deemed “out of the ordinary” from between Jan. 1 and Feb. 2. Several items of evidence, including gloves, have been recovered and would be submitted for analysis, it said. Guthrie’s disappearance unfolded in front of a worldwide audience that was familiar with Savannah Guthrie as the host of the “Today” show and, over the past two weeks, saw her as a distraught daughter in search of her mother. The case has drawn intense interest from internet sleuths, a show of support from President Donald Trump and a flurry of special news segments, namely from NBC, Savannah Guthrie’s home network. Still, it remained slow-moving and mysterious. On Thursday, Savannah Guthrie shared what appeared to be a home movie of her family and a photograph in a post on social media. “Our lovely mom. we will never give up on her. thank you for your prayers and hope,” she wrote.

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White House seeks to tighten control over HHS with personnel shakeup

The White House is looking to exercise tighter control over key areas of the US Health and Human Services Department, planning a shakeup of top personnel as the administration looks ahead to the midterm elections, an administration official told CNN. The moves are aimed at restructuring HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s senior-most ranks, installing four new senior counselors who will be charged with more closely managing the department’s daily operations and communications across the federal government. Chris Klomp, the administration’s current Medicare head and senior adviser at HHS, will become chief counselor and the department’s de facto chief of staff, the administration official said.

John Brooks, the deputy administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, will be a senior counselor in charge of CMS-related issues. Two senior US Food and Drug Administration officials, Grace Graham and Kyle Diamantas, will take on senior counselor roles at HHS managing FDA-related issues. Matt Buckham, the current HHS chief of staff, will move to a senior counselor role, the administration official said, adding that the changes came out of conversations between White House officials and Kennedy. HHS confirmed the changes later Thursday, saying the hires would help accelerate the department’s agenda in their new roles, while still retaining their previous positions. “I am proud to elevate battle-tested, principled leaders onto my immediate team — individuals with the courage and experience to help us move faster and further as we work to Make America Health Again,” Kennedy said in a statement.

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CBS News producer quits in fiery note lambasting Bari Weiss’ break from ‘journalistic merit’

Producer Alicia Hastey departed CBS News on Wednesday after four years with the network, blasting Bari Weiss’ break from “journalistic merit” in a fiery exit note. “It is with sadness that I write to tell you that I am taking a buy out and today was my last day in the Broadcast Center,” Hastey wrote in a statement. “I joined the network four years ago with gratitude and optimism and I want to leave you with these thoughts only as a reminder of things I know you already know.” She continued: “I am proud of the work that’s been done in my time here: segments that aimed to foreground underrepresented perspectives, interviews that challenged conventional wisdom and effort to make our journalism more responsive to a skeptical public.”

However, Hastey bemoaned that “a sweeping new vision” has prioritized “a break from traditional broadcast norms to embrace what has been described as ‘heterodox’ journalism.” “The truth is that commitment to those people and the stories they have to tell is increasingly becoming impossible,” she added. “Stories may instead be evaluated not just on their journalistic merit but on whether they conform to a shifting set of idealogical expectations — a dynamic that pressures producers and reporters to self-censor or avoid challenging narratives that might trigger backlash or unfavorable headlines.” While Hastey noted that this sentiment didn’t detract “from the talent of the journalists who remain at CBS News,” she called this shift in the industry “so heartbreaking,” adding, “The very excellence we seek to sustain is hindered by fear and uncertainty.” Representatives for CBS News did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.

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Lead Stories

El Paso airport grounding was in response to testing of U.S. military technology, sources say

The grounding of aircraft at El Paso International Airport in Texas early Wednesday was in response to the testing of U.S. military technology that can be used to take down drones, according to four sources familiar with the matter. The testing was taking place in the proximity of the airport, raising concerns within the Federal Aviation Administration, which responded by issuing a "Temporary Flight Restriction Notice," the sources said. Three of the sources said the testing, which was taking place near Fort Bliss, was of high-energy lasers that are designed to protect against drones from drug cartels that could cross over the U.S. border.

The Federal Aviation Administration halted all flights out of El Paso International Airport in Texas for 10 days for what it said were “special security reasons” before abruptly lifting the order. It did not explain the about-face. A Trump administration official earlier told NBC News that Mexican cartel drones had breached American airspace and the Defense Department had disabled them. There is no confirmation from the Pentagon that any drones were shot down, despite the statement from the administration official. The military did recently shoot down a small party balloon, two of the sources said. Two of the sources said there was a miscommunication, or possibly a dispute, between the FAA and the Defense Department about whether the testing could affect commercial aviation that preceded the grounding of aircraft at El Paso airport.

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‘Money being burned’: Donors fret over Cornyn primary as Trump sits back

The hundreds of donors gathered in Palm Beach, Florida, for the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm retreat on Saturday heard President Donald Trump’s political team outline how they plan to win the midterms. While no one at the Breakers resort publicly complained about Trump’s refusal to endorse Sen. John Cornyn, privately donors are furious, discussing over cocktail hour a looming and seemingly avoidable debacle, according to three people who attended the events. One of those donors, who like others interviewed was granted anonymity to discuss the gathering candidly, said an off-cycle election “was always going to be complicated, but this three-way primary is a self-inflicted wound.” Nervous donors watching a formerly safe Republican seat and high-profile special elections lost to insurgent Democrats fretted that Texas could also suddenly become unnecessarily competitive – and even more expensive for them – if Cornyn’s primary challengers, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton or Rep. Wesley Hunt, force a runoff.

Those establishment GOP donors gathered at the Breakers were largely aligned behind Cornyn and want to pull Trump into that, thinking he can clear the field, despite the president keeping the incumbent twisting in the wind. Trump has explained his position as an issue of personal relationships, saying his “problem” is “I’m friendly with all of them.” “I like all of them, all three,” he said earlier this month. But donors, many of whom increasingly feel like they’re throwing good money after bad, are anxious for Trump to pick a side. “Seeing the deterioration in overall GOP numbers in recent weeks has Republicans loath to watch donor money being burned in a Texas primary,” said another one of the people. The White House did not offer any comment about mounting pressure on Trump to endorse Cornyn. Last week at a White House briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump is “watching all of these races across the country quite carefully.” She added at the time that she wouldn’t get ahead of the president on potential endorsements.

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Gallup will no longer measure presidential approval after 88 years

Gallup will no longer track presidential approval ratings after more than eight decades doing so, the public opinion polling agency confirmed to The Hill on Wednesday. The company said starting this year it would stop publishing approval and favorability ratings of individual political figures, saying in a statement it “reflects an evolution in how Gallup focuses its public research and thought leadership.” “Our commitment is to long-term, methodologically sound research on issues and conditions that shape people’s lives,” a spokesperson for the agency said. “That work will continue through the Gallup Poll Social Series, the Gallup Quarterly Business Review, the World Poll, and our portfolio of U.S. and global research.”

The Gallup Presidential Approval Rating has for decades been the among the top barometers cited by media outlets measuring public opinion of the president’s performance. President Trump has seen his rating by the agency slip in recent months, peaking at 47 percent last February and dipping to less than 37 percent in its last poll taken in December. “This change is part of a broader, ongoing effort to align all of Gallup’s public work with its mission,” a spokesperson for Gallup said. “We look forward to continuing to offer independent research that adheres to the highest standards of social science.” When asked by The Hill if Gallup had received any feedback from the White House or anyone in the current administration before making the decision, the spokesperson said, “this is a strategic shift solely based on Gallup’s research goals and priorities.”

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In rebuke, House votes to roll back Trump’s tariffs on Canada

Six Republicans joined Wednesday night with Democrats in the House in voting to end President Donald Trump’s stepped-up tariffs on Canada, rebuking the president in the first of what could be several congressional challenges to his trade policies. The measure is largely symbolic and is not likely to succeed in overturning tariffs on the major U.S. trading partner, because Trump could veto the resolution if it clears the Senate as well. It would require a two-thirds majority vote in both chambers to override his veto. But the action showcases the long-standing frustration some congressional Republicans have with Trump’s controversial trade policies, and it’s the latest evidence of the difficulties House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) is having managing his razor-thin majority. Rep. Don Bacon (Nebraska), one of the Republicans who voted in support of the measure, said Congress has a responsibility to speak out on tariffs.

“We cannot & should not outsource our responsibilities,” he wrote in a post on X. “As an old fashioned Conservative I know tariffs are a tax on American consumers. I know some disagree. But this debate and vote should occur in the House.” The resolution from Rep. Gregory W. Meeks (D-New York) would end the “national emergency” underpinning Trump’s tariffs on Canada, which were first announced in February 2025. Wednesday was the first time that the House has considered a challenge to Trump’s tariffs. The Republican-controlled chamber had used procedural moves to preemptively muzzle opposition to the administration’s trade policy since March. “We should have a vote. The Constitution says, Article One, tariffs belong to the United States Congress. It’s standing up for what our jobs are,” Meeks said after the vote, adding that “these tariffs are hurting the American people.” The latest prohibition on voting on legislation to challenge Trump’s tariffs expired at the end of January, and Johnson attempted to renew it through July as part of a procedural vote Tuesday night. The House rejected that attempt,opening the controversial policy up for reversals for the first time in nearly a year.

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State Stories

Hood County’s proposed moratorium on data centers squashed by Texas senator

A proposal in Hood County for a moratorium on data centers and other large-scale industrial developments was stymied at the last minute Tuesday when a Houston lawmaker warned the county commission that it had no authority to even consider such a thing. The county was considering a six-month pause on any new projects to allow time to study regulations over air and water quality and pollution. Developers have multiple projects in the pipeline in Hood County, including a 2,600-acre data center complex called Comanche Circle that has triggered a tsunami of opposition from ranchers, landowners and conservationists near Glen Rose. The standing-room only Commissioners Court was hours into a public hearing on the issue Tuesday when a letter from Texas Sen. Paul Bettencourt arrived.

Addressed to Attorney General Ken Paxton, with a subject line “Proposed Illegal County Moratorium on Development,” the letter said counties are merely political subdivisions of the state without any powers other than those specified by the constitution or state statutes. And a moratorium isn’t among those powers. The commissioners ended up voting 3-2 against the six-month moratorium . County attorney Matt Mills read Bettencourt’s letter following an impassioned public hearing where most speakers told commissioners that their quality of life, and livelihoods, were at stake. Bettencourt’s letter cited a law adopted last year that attempts to limit the ability of Texas cities to implement moratoria. He said the Senate Committee on Local Government “will be closely monitoring these situations” like with Hood County’s proposal. “I encourage your office,” Bettencourt told Paxton, “to investigate counties that implement such a moratorium and explore any necessary legal actions.”

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Chair of Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission removes member after heated hearing on antisemitism

The chairman of President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission said Wednesday that he ousted a member of the commission after she sparred with fellow members during a contentious public hearing on antisemitism. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who chairs the commission, said on X that it was his call to remove Carrie Prejean Boller, a former Miss California USA, after tense exchanges during the hearing Monday over what constitutes antisemitism in the US. Boller, during the hearing, defended conservative commentator Candace Owens, who has boosted conspiracy theories and embraced antisemitic rhetoric to her millions of online followers.

“Carrie Prejean Boller has been removed from President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission,” Patrick said. “No member of the Commission has the right to hijack a hearing for their own personal and political agenda on any issue. This is clearly, without question, what happened Monday in our hearing on antisemitism in America. This was my decision.” Boller challenged Patrick’s authority to oust her, insisting on X, “As the name states, this is President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, not yours. You did not appoint me to the Commission, and you lack authority to remove me from it. This is a gross overstepping of your role and leads me to believe you are acting in alignment with a Zionist political framework that hijacked the hearing, rather than in defense of religious liberty.” CNN has reached out to the White House and the commission to confirm that Boller has been removed from the commission.

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Musk jumps back into political fray with big midterm donations

Billionaire Elon Musk is back in the political fray, giving Republicans a boost in the run-up to the 2026 midterm elections. The Tesla CEO had injected hundreds of millions into the 2024 election but announced plans last spring to step back from political spending, a potential blow for the GOP ahead of the high-stakes midterms. Less than a year later, Musk had already given $20 million to two top Republican groups by the end of 2025, according to federal filings, and dropped $10 million into the Kentucky Senate race last month — signaling the tech mogul could again play a pivotal role in the fight for Congress this fall.

“Musk as a donor is important [because] money in politics is important, but Musk himself is a politically polarizing figure,” said Cayce Myers, a Virginia Tech public relations professor who has focused on political campaigns. “As his money is needed, the fact that he is involved does create a complicated political situation for Republicans.” Musk, who is the world’s richest person, spent at least $250 million boosting President Trump’s 2024 campaign, making him by far the top donor of the cycle. Following Trump’s election win, the tech billionaire cemented himself in the president’s inner circle and secured a wide-ranging role in the new administration as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). However, the cost-cutting initiative proved highly controversial, as DOGE sought to slash large swaths of government funding and make steep cuts to the federal workforce.

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Trump administration is sending pregnant migrant girls to South Texas shelter flagged as medically inadequate

The Trump administration is sending all pregnant unaccompanied minors apprehended by immigration enforcement to a singlegroup shelter in South Texas. The decision was made over urgent objections from the administration’s own health and child welfare officials, who say both the facility and the region lack the specialized care the girls need. That’s according to seven sources who work at the Office of Refugee Resettlement within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which handles the custody and care of children who cross the border without a parent or legal guardian, or are separated from family by immigration authorities. All of the sources declined to be named for fear of retaliation.

Since late July, more than a dozen pregnant minors have been placed at the Texas facility, which is located in the small border city of San Benito. Some were as young as 13, and at least half of those taken in so far became pregnant as a result of rape, sources said. Their pregnancies are considered high risk by definition, particularly for the youngest girls. “This group of kids is clearly recognized as our most vulnerable,” one of the sources said. Rank-and-file staff, the source said, are “losing sleep over it, wondering if kids are going to be placed in programs where they’re not going to have access to the care they need.” The move marks a sharp departure from longstanding federal practice, which placed pregnant, unaccompanied migrant children in ORR shelters or foster homes around the country that are equipped to handle high-risk pregnancies. ORR sources, along with more than a dozen former government officials, health care professionals, migrant advocates and civil rights attorneys, said they worry the Trump administration is putting children in danger at the San Benito shelter to advance an ideological goal: denying them access to abortion by placing them in a state where it’s virtually banned.

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'Dawson's Creek' star and Austinite James Van Der Beek has died at 48

James Van Der Beek — best known for his role as Dawson Leery in the hit late 1990s and early aughts show Dawson's Creek — has died. He was 48. Van Der Beek announced his diagnosis of Stage 3 colon cancer in November 2024. His family wrote on Instagram on Wednesday, "Our beloved James David Van Der Beek passed peacefully this morning. He met his final days with courage, faith, and grace. There is much to share regarding his wishes, love for humanity and the sacredness of time. Those days will come. For now we ask for peaceful privacy as we grieve our loving husband, father, son, brother, and friend." Van Der Beek started acting when he was 13 in Cheshire, Conn., after a football injury kept him off the field.

He played the lead in a school production of Grease, got involved with local theater, and fell in love with performing. A few years later, he and his mother went to New York City to sign the then-16 year old actor with an agent. But Van Der Beek didn't break out as a star until he was 21, when he landed the lead role of 15-year-old Dawson Leery, an aspiring filmmaker, in Dawson's Creek. Van Der Beek's life changed forever with this role. The teen coming-of-age show was a huge hit, with millions of weekly viewers over 6 seasons. It helped both establish the fledgling WB network and the boom of teen-centered dramas, says Lori Bindig Yousman, a media professor at Sacred Heart University and the author of Dawson's Creek: A Critical Understanding. "Dawson's really came on the scene and felt different, looked different," Bindig Yousman says.

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She sued over her gender transition. Will the Texas Supreme Court decide it's too late?

The Texas Supreme Court will decide whether it’s too late for a woman to sue a therapist who recommended a double mastectomy as part of her gender transition. Soren Aldaco, a Fort Worth resident at the time, alleges various counselors and doctors recklessly pressured her into medical gender transition as a teen and were biased toward encouraging hormones and surgery as a remedy for gender dysphoria — psychological stress over one’s gender identity that is often the precursor to transitioning. The case is a test of how the statute of limitations should be applied when an act of alleged medical negligence and the resulting harm occur at different times. But it could also determine if and when mental health professionals are to blame for recommending transgender treatment that their patients later regret.

“What was done to Ms. Aldaco and many people like her is a medical scandal,” Aldaco's attorney John Ramer told justices. “Kids and young adults suffering from severe psychological distress went looking for help and what they found is medical providers saying that what's going to liberate them from their distress is pumping them full of cross-sex hormones and cutting off their body parts.” Aldaco started identifying as a boy in eighth and ninth grade. According to her lawsuit, Aldaco had a troubled family life, struggled with her body image and started exploring her gender after interacting with transgender friends online. Aldaco was hospitalized for a manic episode in 2018, during which she alleges a Fort Worth doctor pressured her to identify as transgender. It was this and interactions with other people supportive of medical gender transition that led Aldaco to start taking testosterone, she said. Aldaco began telehealth counseling with Barbara Wood of Three Oaks Counseling in 2020. She said the therapy primarily focused on relationship issues with her partner at the time, not assessing or resolving her “gender curiosity.”

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Five takeaways from North Texas lawmakers' panel on education

Two North Texas state lawmakers said during a town hall meeting Wednesday that state leaders have a duty to make sure public school districts have the financial support they need to educate the state’s students. Rep. Cassandra Garcia Hernandez, D-Farmers Branch, and Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas, spoke at Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD’s Nancy Watten Technology and Events Center during a town hall meeting on public education. The event was organized by the education advocacy group Raise Your Hand Texas, as a part of a series of candidate forums in cities across the state. Both Anchia and Garcia Hernandez are running unopposed in next month’s Democratic primary. During the last legislative session, lawmakers sent $8.5 billion in new money to Texas schools, mainly for teacher pay raises. But Anchia said lawmakers didn’t raise the state’s per-pupil allotment enough to put districts on sound financial footing.

Insufficient funding from the state, combined with declining revenue from enrollment losses, are leaving districts in a bind, he said. He noted that many districts are closing and consolidating schools in an effort to shore up their budgets. Texas lawmakers passed a $1 billion education savings account plan last year. Gov. Greg Abbott and other proponents have said the plan, which offers families public money to pay for private school tuition or other expenses such as homeschool costs, will create more competition, forcing school districts to improve their offerings. But Garcia Hernandez said that increased competition also forces districts to recruit students in a way they’ve never had to before, without a budget to do it. At a time when districts are losing enrollment due to declining birth rates and increased competition from charter schools, she said she worries about the impact the new education savings account program will have on public school budgets.

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Ex-UT professor sought Epstein funding for conference on sexual consent

A former University of Texas professor in 2015requested thousands of dollars from child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to pay for an academic conference on the meaning of sexualconsent, new documents reveal. Professor Thomas K. Hubbard, who worked at the university from 1988 to 2021, wrote to Epstein on Aug. 18, 2015 seeking funding from Epstein’s foundation for a 2016 conference titled “Theorizing Consent: Educational and Legal Perspectives on Campus Rape,” according to records released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act last month. The conference, hosted at UT, aimed to gather scholars from different fields to question policies around consent and a university’s role in policingsexual assault. The conference was aimed at interrogating “the concept of sexual consent,” something Hubbard believed was too strictly defined.

Hubbard confirmed in a statement that he was aware at the timeof Epstein’s 2008 conviction for the sexual solicitation of a minor. The former professor said that he thought the convictionmight make Epstein more likely to contribute to the UT conference. “Like over 1,000,000 Americans, he did have a conviction for a sex-related offense, but from what I could see in 2015, it was for something that would not even have been illegal in most European countries and resulted in a very short sentence,” Hubbard said. “Given his own brush with the law, I believed his Foundation might have been interested in furthering critical discussion of the contours of consent and rape. They weren’t.” In his letter to Epstein — written on university stationary — Hubbard asked for help raising between $10,000 and $20,000 to supplement his $12,000 budget, which was in part funded by UT through a fund Hubbard controlled. Hubbard wrote that Title IX regulations; the Clery Act, which mandates universities be transparent about violent crimes; and “attention to 'campus rape culture' in the media” put an “unprecedented” responsibility on university administrators to police student sexual conduct.

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Texas AG Paxton files lawsuit against Snapchat over child safety concerns

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against Snap, Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, alleging that the the social media platform fails to adequately warn parents and consumers about inappropriate content and the app's addictive design. The lawsuit claims that while Snapchat is marketed as being safe for children with a "12+" age rating on app stores, users of the platform are still exposed to mature and dangerous material. The suit alleges that the content includes profanity, sexual content, nudity and drug use. The filing also alleges that features such as “Snapstreaks” or other incentives for daily use of the app encourage addictive behavior, which the AG says can harm young minds.

The case seeks to hold Snap, Inc. accountable for what it describes as misrepresenting the platform's safety to parents and consumers. “I will not allow Snapchat to harm our kids by running a business designed to get Texas children addicted to a platform filled with obscene and destructive content,” Paxton said in a Wednesday news release. “Parents have a fundamental right to know the dangers of the apps their kids are using and not be lied to by Big Tech companies. This lawsuit will hold Snapchat accountable for illegally undermining parental rights, deceiving consumers, and for putting children in danger.” A spokesperson for Snap, Inc. sent the following statement in response to the lawsuit: "We strongly disagree with the Texas Attorney General’s complaint, which fundamentally distorts how our platform works. There is no single safety measure or policy that can eliminate every potential risk online - just as there isn’t offline. That’s why we’ve implemented strong safeguards, introduced safety tutorials and resources, partnered with experts, and continue investing in features and tools that support the safety, privacy, and well-being of all Snapchatters." The lawsuit follows similar ones filed by Paxton over the last year against the parent companies of TikTok and Roblox over child safety on those platforms.

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Austin American-Statesman Editorial: Berlanga is the most qualified GOP pick for Texas comptroller

Voters on both sides of the aisle largely agree on one pressing issue: Their property taxes keep risingas public school funding languishes. One Republican candidate for Texas comptroller offers a solution worth serious consideration. In our view, the most qualified candidate in the March 3 Republican primary is Michael Berlanga, a self-described “rare tri-licensed” certified public accountant, real estate broker and property tax consultant from San Antonio. Though less known statewide than his rivals on the GOP primary ballot, Berlanga brings credentials uniquely suited to the office. He and two other challengers aim to unseat acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock, a businessman and former state senator appointed to the post last July.

The comptroller is the state's chief financial officer, responsible for collecting revenue, providing payments and making financial projections for state agencies. That includes a little-discussed report that Berlanga argues has a big impact on Texans' high property tax bills for schools. Every other year, the comptroller conductsproperty value studies, assessments of the total property value in each Texas school district. The higher a district's total property value, the more local taxpayers are paying — and the less school funding comes from the state. But valuing property is not an exact science. Appraisals produce a range of possible values, andBerlanga argues the comptroller’s office has long assessed taxable property at the high end of those ranges, resulting in what he described as the state “offloading that responsibility” onto school districts.

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Higher Medicaid reimbursement rates could stabilize ambulance services, Texas providers say

Texas is considering new Medicaid reimbursement rates for ambulance services that providers say could help stabilize access to EMS across the state. During a public rate hearing Tuesday, providers applauded the higher Medicaid rates proposed by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission that would raise reimbursement for certain ambulance services by up to 50%. “The proposed rates reflect the first meaningful adjustment to Medicaid reimbursement in nearly 17 years,” said Michael Furrh, president of the Texas EMS Alliance’s Board of Directors. “Adjusting Medicaid rates as proposed will improve the sustainability of EMS and ensure that most vulnerable Texans can continue to access high-quality, 911 medical response and ambulance transport.”

The proposed increase comes as HHSC considers significant cuts to other Medicaid services, including dozens of medical supply services. Texas already has a gap in emergency medical and ambulance services. Almost 95% of Texas counties have areas known as “ambulance deserts,” meaning people or places are 25 minutes or more away from an ambulance station. In addition, EMS agencies are still recovering from significant staffing shortages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Eric Maloney, a rural fire chief in Kerr County, said the Kerrville Fire Department provides emergency medical care across a 1,000-square-mile area. Over the past decade, the department has seen significant increases in operating costs, including staffing, fuel and medical equipment. “These rising costs did not get matched by reimbursement rates, placing strain on our ability to maintain reliable and timely emergency medical services,” Maloney said.

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Major San Antonio builder Darren Casey seeks bankruptcy for 31 businesses

Prominent San Antonio builder Darren Casey is in a world of hurt. With his various operations facing a cash flow crunch and pressure from lenders, Casey has sought bankruptcy protection for 31 of his businesses. All but three of the businesses filed last week in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Fort Worth on its “Mega Docket,” which handles huge cases with assets or liabilities of $50 million or more. The other three were also filed in Fort Worth but not on the Mega Docket. All told, the 31 businesses have more than $50 million in assets and $25 million in debt, court filings indicate. Casey has developed millions of square feet of multifamily, industrial, commercial and office buildings, primarily in the San Antonio area, though he also has projects in the San Marcos and Austin areas.

He's also a major donor to his alma mater, Texas State University. The school’s athletic administration complex was named after him after he made what was then the single largest gift to the athletics department in 2008. His flagship business, Casey Development Ltd., formed in 1989, did not file for bankruptcy protection. Its headquarters are at 200 E. Basse Road, the former home of radio behemoth iHeartMedia Inc. Neither Casey nor Davor Rukavina, a Dallas bankruptcy lawyer representing the businesses, responded to requests for comment Wednesday. Casey has filed an emergency motion asking the court to consolidate all of the bankruptcies into one case. A hearing on that and other requests is set for Friday before Judge E. Lee Morris. One of the court filings shows that various businesses collectively borrowed at least $217 million. Casey, who didn’t personally file for bankruptcy, is a guarantor on substantially all of the loans, the document adds. The loans also are secured by real estate in Bexar, Comal, Travis and other counties in Texas.

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Houston Chronicle Editorial: Hawk Dunlap in the Republican primary for Railroad Commissioner

It speaks volumes that Jim Wright, the chairman of the Railroad Commission, makes news when he recuses himself from voting on a permit for a company he has a financial stake in. Such is the state of affairs for one of Texas’ most important agencies, which, for years, has been reduced to a rubber stamp for the oil and gas industry. The agency, originally created in the late 19th century to regulate rates and operations of railroads, hasn’t had anything to do with railroads since 2005. Yet the Railroad Commission’s name has stuck by design. It’s easier to get away with ignoring its responsibility as the state’s oil and gas watchdog if the public doesn’t understand what they’re voting for. Yes, Texans should want our state’s oil and gas industry to be a successful engine for jobs and economic growth. We should also want to ensure operators don’t profit by dumping their waste and pollution into Texas’ water, air and public land.

That’s hard to guarantee when commissioners are allowed to have a personal stake in that profit. Each of the three railroad commissioners routinely rakes in tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the companies they are supposed to regulate. The state’s lax ethics laws also permit commissioners to trade oil and gas stocks. Hence the surprise when Wright, the Republican incumbent in this race, declined to vote to renew a permit for an oilfield waste company he owns a small financial interest in during a November public meeting. It was reportedly the first recusal by a commissioner since 2020. Wright, who is running for his second term and did not meet with the editorial board, has deep financial ties to the industry. According to Commission Shift, a nonprofit watchdog organization, Wright owns stock in more than a dozen companies that handle oil and gas waste. Despite being named chairman of the Railroad Commission in June last year, he continues to serve as president of an oilfield waste company. His financial stake in these companies may have influenced some of his actions as a commissioner. For instance, one of his first official acts as commissioner in 2021 was to reissue waivers to rules that protect groundwater from industry waste pits. Months later, Wright voted to renew a permit for an oilfield waste company, Blackhorn Environmental, whose employees donated $3,000 to his campaign. To make matters worse, Commission Shift reported that two of Wright’s companies dumped their oilfield waste at Blackhorn’s facility 139 times over a roughly two-year period.

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Ireland pushing to free citizen held by ICE in Texas

Ireland will do “everything we can” to free an Irish citizen who has been confined for nearly five months in a U.S. detention camp in Texas, Prime Minister Micheál Martin vowed Tuesday. The high-profile case of Seamus Culleton — who was seized by agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in September as he left a Home Depot hardware store in Boston — is complicating Ireland’s hopes of keeping relations with Washington upbeat ahead of Martin’s planned St. Patrick’s Day visit next month. Ireland prizes its exceptional political access to the White House and Capitol Hill tied to the annual March 17 Irish national holiday, when the Irish leader typically presents his U.S. counterpart with warm words and a bowl of shamrock.

The festivities have become diplomatic minefields in Trump’s era, however, given the contribution of U.S. multinationals to Ireland’s economic strength and record-breaking tax revenues — benefits that Trump has threatened to roll back. Culleton has been Ireland’s top news story since the Irish Times on Monday reported on his case and on the allegedly appalling conditions he faces in Camp East Montana, the ICE facility inside Fort Bliss army base near El Paso. The same day, Culleton appeared live on air on Ireland’s RTÉ radio to describe conditions of overcrowding, filth, disease, hunger and violence — and a personal fear, now set aside, that speaking out might make matters even worse for him. “I definitely am afraid of rotting away here. It feels like I’m just stuck and there’s no way out,” Culleton told RTÉ in an hourlong broadcast that included live interviews with his American wife in Boston and his sister back in Waterford, Ireland. Culleton admitted having overstayed his U.S. visa two decades ago, but said he’s been pursuing legal residency via his ongoing application for a green card, buttressed by his valid work permit, his employment as a plasterer and his April 2025 marriage. He’s one of at least 10,000 undocumented Irish citizens who have lived, often for decades, in the United States.

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Dallas votes to give up DART majority in bid to keep suburbs in system

Dallas decided Wednesday to sacrifice some of its power to keep the region’s transit service alive. The high-stakes move is aimed at stopping a half-dozen suburbs from bolting from the Dallas Area Rapid Transit. The City Council, in a 13-2 vote, approved a proposed governance framework that would shrink the city’s voting power on the DART board to at least 45%, marking the first time in the agency’s more than 40-year history that Dallas would no longer hold majority control. The plan also would guarantee each of DART’s 13 member cities at least one board seat, replacing a structure that now gives only Dallas, Irving, Garland and Plano dedicated single-city representation, and would likely expand the current 15-member board.

“I’m in support of the resolution, not because it’s going to solve the whole thing today, but because it’s necessary,” said Mayor Eric Johnson. “Not sufficient, but necessary.” The changes aren’t final yet. The proposal still needs the Texas Legislature next year to amend state law before any changes take effect. But the goal is to try to persuade six cities – Addison, Farmers Branch, Highland Park, Irving, Plano and University Park – to scrap May elections that could let voters decide whether to withdraw from DART. The six cities have until late February to finalize their special ballots and until March 18 to rescind their election plans altogether. Most council members framed the move as a rescue effort for the transit agency and for bus and rail service in Dallas. But the vote exposed sharp divisions. Council members Cara Mendelsohn and Chad West voted against the deal, saying it lacked tangible concessions from other cities or structural reforms within DART. Mendelsohn said Dallas, as DART’s largest financial contributor and ridership base, should not surrender majority control without concrete improvements in service, safety or accountability. West questioned whether other cities are truly committed to building the strongest possible system for Dallas.

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National Stories

Democrats are field-testing new ways to talk about the Epstein scandal

Democrats have been publicly conflicted about how much to talk about Jeffrey Epstein on the campaign trail this year, with some worried a continued focus on the convicted sex offender and his political connections distracts from a winning platform centered on affordability. Now a growing faction in the party is asking: Why not discuss both? Some Democrats are now attempting to link the rolling Epstein scandal with the kitchen-table issues voters have traditionally prioritized. This wing of the party is pushing to establish the Epstein saga as emblematic of the Trump administration’s failure to address other issues the country faces.

“We were told that MAGA was for working-class Americans. You remember that? But this is a government of, by and for the ultra-rich. It is the wealthiest Cabinet ever. This is the Epstein class ruling our country,” Sen. Jon Ossoff, one of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats up for reelection this year, said at a Georgia campaign rally on Saturday. “They are the elites they pretend to hate.” Ossoff is known to walk on a purple-state tightrope. But his embrace of these us-versus-them talking points illustrates that the antiestablishment take on the Epstein scandal isn’t limited to his party’s progressive vanguard.Ossoff did not comment for this piece, but some strategists say his rhetoric offers a potent midterm message — if Democrats more broadly are willing to take it up. Faiz Shakir, a progressive strategist and former Bernie Sanders presidential campaign manager, said Democrats focusing on the legal process of file releases and the administration’s transparency failures “doesn’t do justice to what the main mission is.” “Ossoff is on the right track, which is to say, I need to connect this thing, this saga, to something deeper about who fights for you and who doesn’t fight for you, who understands your life, who doesn’t understand your life,” Shakir said. “It’s going to be critical that people are able to take this out of partisan terms and move it into a place of persuasion.”

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US Energy Secretary Chris Wright visits Venezuela to assess oil industry overhaul

United States Energy Secretary Chris Wright arrived Wednesday in Venezuela for a firsthand assessment of the country’s oil industry, a visit that further asserts the U.S. government’s self-appointed role in turning around Venezuela’s dilapidated energy sector. Wright met Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez at the Miraflores presidential palace in the capital, Caracas. He is expected to meet with government officials, oil executives and others during a three-day visit to the South American country. Wright’s visit comes as the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump continues to lift sanctions to allow foreign companies to operate in Venezuela and help rebuild the nation’s most important industry.

It follows last month’s enactment of a Venezuelan law that opened the nation’s oil sector to private investment, reversing a tenet of the self-proclaimed socialist movement that has ruled the country for more than two decades. “I bring today a message from President Trump,” Wright told reporters as he stood next to Rodríguez with flags from both countries behind them. “He is passionately committed to absolutely transforming the relationship between the United States and Venezuela, part of a broader agenda to make the Americas great again, to bring our countries closer together, to bring commerce, peace, prosperity, jobs, opportunity to the people of Venezuela.” Rodríguez was sworn into her new role after the brazen Jan. 3 seizure of then-President Nicolás Maduro in a U.S. military attack in Caracas. She proposed the overhaul of the country’s energy law after Trump said his administration would take control of Venezuela’s oil exports and revitalize the ailing industry by luring foreign investment. Rodríguez on Wednesday acknowledged that Venezuela’s relationship with the U.S. has had “highs and lows” but said both countries are now working on a mutually benefiting “energy agenda.”

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Man pardoned by Trump for attacking US Capitol found guilty of child abuse

A man who took part in the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol and later pardoned by Donald Trump was found guilty on Tuesday of multiple child sexual abuse charges in Florida, officials said. Andrew Paul Johnson was arrested in Tennessee this August and extradited to Florida. He pleaded not guilty. Johnson was found guilty of five counts this week, on charges such as molesting a child under 12 and another under 16, and lewd and lascivious exhibition, NPR first reported. A jury found him not guilty of one count of transmission of material harmful to a minor by electronic device or equipment. The Guardian has contacted an attorney listed for Johnson.

“He is exposed to the possibility of life in prison,” said Walter Forgie, chief assistant state attorney for Florida’s fifth judicial circuit, of a possible sentence. “Sentencing will be at a later date.” The Hernando county sheriff’s office received a report in July that “two juveniles had fallen victim to lewd and lascivious acts over a many-month span”, according to a probable cause affidavit. This document claims that a mother of one of these children claimed she had discovered Johnson, her former boyfriend, who had lived with them, had sent “inappropriate” Discord missives to her son. She asked her child about these messages and whether Johnson had “done or said anything inappropriate”, the probable cause affidavit says. Her son allegedly said that “between April 1 2024 and October 2024” Johnson had “molested him three times”, starting when he was aged 11. The police document also claimed Johnson said “he was pardoned for storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and he was being awarded $10,000,000 as a result of being a ‘jan 6er’” and would put the boy “in his will to take any money he had left over”.

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Bondi hearing devolves into shouting match over botched Epstein files release

Attorney General Pam Bondi’s defiant appearance Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee showed her contempt for any critique of her handling of the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein. She repeatedly refused to apologize to victims whose names were exposed, while simultaneously defending redactions that continue to hide the names of powerful men that may be implicated in Epstein’s crimes. At one point, Bondi caused an audible ruckus at the hearing when she deflected by changing the subject to the nation’s economic state. “The Dow is over 50,000 right now!” she said. “The S&P at almost 7,000! And the NASDAQ smashing records! Americans’ 401(k)s and retirement savings are booming. That’s what we should be talking about. We should be talking about making Americans safe … what does the Dow have to do with anything? That’s what they just asked? Are you kidding?”

But Democrats and at least one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie, pressed her on what they characterized as the Justice Department’s careless release of millions of records relating to the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender. Massie cosponsored a bill last year with Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna to compel the DOJ to release FBI documents about the network of men who partook in Epstein’s sexual abuse, while ensuring that victims’ names would remain redacted. Instead, the DOJ appears to have done the opposite, in some instances hiding the men’s names while publishing the women’s names — including one email clearly labeled “Epstein Victim List.” Rep. Hank Johnson, a Democrat, reminded Bondi that she’d already learned about the grave importance of protecting victims’ identities during her previous career as a state prosecutor who worked on sex crimes cases. “How many lives have been derailed because your department was either sloppy and incompetent or willfully tried to intimidate and punish these ladies?” he said as his allotted time neared its end. “Your time is up,” Bondi replied.

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Immigrant surge helped boost GOP states’ population, and they may gain US House seats as a result

The millions of immigrants who have crossed the border with Mexico since 2020 could change the balance of political power in Congress — but in a way likely to boost Republican states that emphasize border security, at the expense of more welcoming Democratic states. That’s because many of the new immigrants joined state-to-state movers gravitating to the fast-growing conservative strongholds of Florida and Texas, boosting those states’ populations. California and New York also had large influxes from the border but ended up losing population anyway. The vastly different population changes threaten to scramble the Electoral College map. California and other Democratic states lost immigration-related population gains when residents moved away during the COVID-19 pandemic or while seeking jobs and housing. Where did those state-to-state movers go? Florida and Texas, in large measure.

Republicans have long accused Democrats of encouraging immigration for their electoral benefit. But the shift is likely to help Republican-leaning states in the next decade: The Constitution allocates congressional representation by population — including noncitizens. Every 10 years, the country counts its people and then shuffles the number of U.S. House seats given to each state. In presidential elections, each state has the same number of electoral votes as it does congressional representatives. Several experts contacted by Stateline agreed that after the next decennial census in 2030, California is likely to lose four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Texas is likely to gain four. Adam Kincaid, president and executive director of the GOP-founded American Redistricting Project, said the changes could dramatically alter the Electoral College map, with the Midwest no longer a “blue wall” against Republican presidential victories if the region loses three seats, by his calculation. On the plus side for Democrats, he said, immigration helped stem population losses in many blue states. Three forecasts for 2030 — one provided to Stateline by Jonathan Cervas, an assistant teaching professor at Carnegie Mellon University; one from Kincaid’s American Redistricting Project; and one from William Frey, a demographer at The Brookings Institution — all show Democratic states in the Northeast and West losing House seats while fast-growing, mostly Republican states in the South and West gain seats. In addition to the representation changes in California and Texas, Florida would gain either three or four seats in the U.S. House, depending on the forecast, while Illinois and New York each would lose either one or two seats.

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Homeland Security hires Labor Dept. aide whose posts raised alarms

The Department of Homeland Security has hired a social media manager from the Department of Labor for a key communications job, despite posts he made on Labor Department media accounts that raised internal alarms over possible white-nationalist messaging. Peyton Rollins, 21, was hired this month to help run Homeland Security’s social media accounts, which have become public bullhorns for President Trump’s mass-deportation efforts and come under scrutiny of their own for appealing to right-wing extremists. Tricia McLaughlin, the Homeland Security spokeswoman, said her public affairs office had “no personnel changes to announce at this time,” but Mr. Rollins has put his new position on his personal website. He is now digital communications director, according to screenshots of a Homeland Security staff directory reviewed by The New York Times. At the Labor Department, he was digital content manager.

Courtney Parella, a spokeswoman for the Labor Department, said only, “The department does not comment on internal or personnel matters.” Mr. Rollins has spent most of the past year giving the Labor Department’s social media pages a makeover in Mr. Trump’s image. Current and former employees said career staff members had been pushed aside after Mr. Rollins’ arrival and rarely, if ever, crafted social media posts once he took control. Instead, Mr. Rollins personally posted social media content, which he has included on his personal website. Agency posts of late have used evocative imagery, some reminiscent of the 1920s and 1930s, with phrases like “Restore American Greatness” and “the globalist status quo is OVER.” An image of Mr. Trump, with bombers flying overhead, was accompanied by the message, “One of one.” Mr. Rollins has also claimed credit for a massive banner with Mr. Trump’s visage that has hung from the Labor Department’s headquarters.

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Trump lashes out at GOP Governor, ramping up criticism of fellow Republicans

President Trump lashed out at a Republican governor organizing a coming White House meeting with state leaders, the latest example of the president attacking a member of his own party. Trump’s target on Wednesday was Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican and chairman of the National Governors Association. In a social-media post, Trump disputed recent reports that he had limited invitations to next week’s White House meeting of the NGA to only Republican governors. “The RINO Governor of the Great State of Oklahoma…incorrectly stated my position on the very exclusive Governors Annual Dinner and Meeting at the White House,” Trump wrote, using the acronym for “Republican in Name Only.”

Trump’s beef with Stitt was the latest example of the president feuding with fellow Republicans. In recent months, Rep. Thomas Massie (R., Ky.), who has pushed the Justice Department to release documents in the Jeffrey Epstein case, drew the president’s ire and a Trump-backed primary challenge. The president also criticized Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.), who left Congress last month after a public falling out with him. Last month, Trump slammed five GOP senators who sided with Democrats in advancing a motion aimed at blocking him from taking further military action in Venezuela without congressional approval, saying the lawmakers “should never be elected to office again.” He also called the senators directly to register his frustration. The senators included Rand Paul of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, who faces re-election in a Democrat-leaning state. In a note to governors before Trump’s social-media post, Stitt wrote that the president was inviting all of the governors of the nation’s states and territories to a Feb. 20 breakfast at the White House, adding, “He was very clear in his communications with me that this is a National Governors Association’s event, and he looks forward to hosting you and hearing from governors across the country.”

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Lead Stories

Without explanation, FAA closes El Paso and New Mexico airspace for 10 days, cites national defense

The Federal Aviation Administration issued unexplained notices late Tuesday closing airspace over El Paso and a large patch of southern New Mexico west of Santa Teresa for 10 days. El Paso International Airport is closed to all flights, the city said. The orders close off all air travel in the affected area, which could cause massive disruption in the nation’s 23rd largest city. “THE FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION (FAA) CLASSIFIES THE AIRSPACE DEFINED IN THIS NOTAM AS ‘NTL DEFENSE AIRSPACE’. PILOTS WHO DO NOT ADHERE TO THE FOLLOWING PROC MAY BE INTERCEPTED, DETAINED AND INTERVIEWED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT/SECURITY PERSONNEL,” the notices said.

“THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT MAY USE DEADLY FORCE AGAINST THE AIRBORNE ACFT, IF IT IS DETERMINED THAT THE ACFT POSES AN IMMINENT SECURITY THREAT,” the notice continued. The notices, known as Notice to Air Missions, or NOTAM, took effect at 11:30 p.m. Mountain Time Tuesday, and expire at 11:30 p.m. Feb. 20. The El Paso city government issued an advisory early Wednesday that flights at El Paso International Airport are canceled. “The FAA, on short notice, issued a temporary flight restriction halting all flights to and from El Paso and our neighboring community, Santa Teresa, NM. The restriction prohibits all aircraft operations (including commercial, cargo and general aviation) and is effective from February 10 at 11:30 PM (MST) to February 20 at 11:30PM (MST),” the city said in a news release. “Airport staff has reached out to the FAA, and we are pending additional guidance. In the meanwhile, commercial airlines operating out of El Paso are being informed of the restriction, which appears to be security related. Travelers are encouraged to contact their airlines to get the latest information on their flight status.” Closing off airspace over a major U.S. city is a rare action, and officials with the Federal Aviation Administration didn’t immediately respond to questions from El Paso Matters on the reasons for the action.

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Sid Miller accused of spending taxpayer dollars to boost his campaign

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller’s Republican opponent has accused the politician of misusing taxpayer dollars to prop up his reelection campaign. In a complaint filed Tuesday, Nate Sheets – who is challenging Miller in the Republican primary – asked the state attorney general’s office to look into a series of social media advertisements that the Department of Agriculture paid to launch on Feb. 3, two weeks before the start of early voting. The ads, which have run on Facebook and Instagram, all begin with the slogan “TDA is in…” and prominently feature Miller’s name or likeness. “Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller grew up on a Texas farm,” the caption of one Facebook post reads. “Today, he works hard every day, not just supporting our farmers, but also our fishermen and the entire seafood industry through our Texas Gulf Seafood program.” Below the text is an image of Miller framed by a dock at sunset, and the slogan “TDA is in the Gulf.”

Sheets’ campaign called the timing of the ads “especially suspect” in a news release about the complaint. “Sid Miller couldn’t raise the money to run a real campaign, so Texas taxpayers are now footing the bill,” Sheets said in a news release Tuesday. “Every Texan has effectively been made a donor to his re-election. That’s an abuse of public trust.” Each of the more than 60 ads has cost the agency between $100 and $600 as of Tuesday, totaling at least $6,000, per Meta’s ad portal. Each is targeted to reach one million social media users, and they have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times so far. Miller, who is seeking a fourth term, called the complaint “groundless” and “desperate.” “The Texas Department of Agriculture is laser-focused on boosting our state's ag powerhouse and protecting consumers,” Miller wrote in an email statement to Hearst Newspapers. “As its leader, it's my duty to highlight our team's non-stop, round-the-clock heroics 365 days a year. I'll keep promoting our agency's programs, whether my opponent likes it or not."

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Abbott breaks with Trump over president's call to nationalize elections

President Donald Trump's call to nationalize elections in some areas of the U.S. is exposing a rare public split with one of his closest political allies. At a recent campaign event in Houston in which he touted the endorsement of several labor unions, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was asked directly about Trump's suggestions to nationalize elections. "Listen, my understanding of the United States Constitution, uh, and that is elections for state positions are to be conducted by states, and I don’t think we should deviate from that," Abbott said. Trump's comments have reignited a debate over who controls U.S. elections, placing constitutional limits, partisan tensions and practical realities into sharp focus.

While the Republican president frames federal intervention as a response to election integrity concerns, legal experts and even some allies warn the Constitution gives states primary authority over elections, making any attempt to nationalize the process both legally fraught and logistically complex. Trump has discussed the idea at least twice this month, first in an appearance on former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino's podcast on Feb. 2. "The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over. ... We should take over the voting in at least ... 15 places.’ The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting," Trump said. Then two days later, in anexclusive interview with NBC News, Trump denied his use of the word "nationalize" but added to his initial remarks. "I didn't say national. I said there are some areas in our country that are extremely corrupt," Trump said. "They have very corrupt elections. Take a look at Detroit. Take a look at Philadelphia. Take a look at Atlanta. There are some areas that are unbelievably corrupt. I could give you plenty more, too. I say that we cannot have corrupt elections if we have to, if they don’t straighten out."

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House blows open gates on tariff war

The House is now going to have open season on President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Trump suffered a serious political blow Tuesday night when the House voted down a rule blocking members from offering resolutions to end the numerous tariffs the president has levied since returning to office. GOP Reps. Don Bacon (Neb.), Thomas Massie (Ky.) and Kevin Kiley (Calif.) voted with all Democrats against the rule, despite heavy lobbying from Speaker Mike Johnson’s leadership team and the White House’s legislative affairs operation. The White House was driving this process, mostly because Trump doesn’t want intraparty division. The GOP leadership knew it couldn’t win this vote, despite the pressure from administration officials.

With that vote, members will have effectively unfettered ability to force up or down votes on the president’s global trade agenda. This will start today. Rep. Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.) plans to offer a resolution terminating any tariffs imposed on Canada via a Trump executive order in February 2025. These resolutions are privileged, meaning House GOP leaders must schedule a vote now that Johnson’s effort to block them has failed. Democrats need to wait 15 days from the introduction of such resolutions and forcing a floor vote. If the House approves any resolution, it gets a floor vote in the Senate due to its privileged status. There are a few implications to consider here. Trump’s loss was a loss for Johnson, too. The White House wanted Johnson to include the tariff provision in the rule. If you align yourself that closely with Trump and he loses a vote, so do you. Also, it’s never good for a speaker to lose votes. This will reignite debate over Trump’s lame-duck status. Trump acknowledged Tuesday that there won’t be a second reconciliation package, quashing the hopes of House GOP leaders in particular.

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State Stories

Southwest Airlines shakes up board

Two members of the Southwest Airlines Co. board will step down at the end of February in the latest sign of a pullback by activist investor Elliott Investment Management. David Cush and Gregg Saretsky both informed the Dallas-based carrier on Feb. 10 of their impending resignations, according to a federal filing. In connection with their departures, expected to take effect Feb. 23, Southwest (NYSE: LUV) announced the board intends to reduce its size from 13 members to 11.

Neither resignation "is due to any disagreement with the Company on any matter relating to the Company’s operations, policies or practices," according to the filing. Both Cush and Saretsky joined the board in 2024 after Southwest and Florida-based activist investment Elliott reached a deal to avert a proxy fight. The agreement expanded the board to 13 seats and included the appointment of six new members, including five Elliott nominees. Cush and Saretsky were both part of Elliott's slate.

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San Antonio Express-News Editorial: In bruising Texas House 121 GOP primary, Marc LaHood gets the nod

The vast amount of money flooding into the GOP primary for Texas House District 121 has tainted this race with a major ick factor. The competition between state Rep. Marc LaHood and challenger David McArthur is not a battle of competing conservative philosophies and ideas, but a proxy for influential lobbyists in Austin, namely Texans for Lawsuit Reform and the Texas Trial Lawyers Association. Our recommendation goes to LaHood, a trial attorney seeking his second term to represent this North Side district that includes Alamo Heights.

We have fierce disagreements with LaHood, particularly on abortion rights, school vouchers and the House impeachment of disgraced Attorney General Ken Paxton. But he has never declined a meeting request, always takes our questions (respect for that), works well with others and demonstrates flashes of independence. Some of that independence is why LaHood faces a challenge from McArthur, a former oil and gas executive who worked for the George W. Bush administration and has received massive support from Texans for Lawsuit Reform, commonly known as TLR. McArthur’s top issue is tort reform. While he regurgitated TLR’s talking points about tort reform being good for business, he was painfully vague on other issues in Austin. If our interview were a comprehensive exam, it was as if McArthur only prepared for one question. The issue here is LaHood’s vote against a slew of TLR priorities at the end of last session. These included limiting economic damages to plaintiffs, reducing liability for trucking companies after accidents and limiting litigation against developers. LaHood, a defense attorney who also practices personal injury law, said he opposed the TLR bills because they would limit a plaintiff’s ability to hold bad actors accountable for damages. He has, unsurprisingly, received significant support from the Texas Trial Lawyers Association. The advertising in this race has been brutal, and LaHood’s ads have been painfully sloppy. While he is wrong on so-called education savings accounts (vouchers), LaHood had far better command of other state issues than McArthur. Both expressed an openness to increasing public school finance and improving oversight of voucher spending. The winner will face Democrat Zack Dunn, a Bexar County prosecutor.

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Texas Republicans target Sharia Law as threat to Texas in campaign messaging for 2026 primaries

Congressman Chip Roy, R-Texas, brought down his gavel Tuesday afternoon to start a congressional hearing on Capitol Hill. In his opening statement to the committee, of which he is the chairman, the Texas congressman said there is a growing movement to overthrow the county’s legal system and its Constitution. A movement he said is most prevalent in Texas. “If Texas falls, so does the nation,” Roy said. Roy was talking about Sharia Law, a set of values and commandments of Islam. Roy said Sharia Law fails to provide due process, treats non-Muslims as second-class citizens, and “prescribes barbaric punishments.”

Roy’s comments on Tuesday add to the growing trend among Texas Republican candidates who have attacked Sharia Law this campaign season. High-profile candidates running for U.S. Senate, Governor, Texas Attorney General, and state Senate and House races, have placed Sharia Law in their sights, vowing to fight against it and the alleged rise of radical Islam. Political scientists attribute one big reason for the increase in the anti-Sharia messaging to the March primary election, while Muslim advocate groups say the attacks are fanning the flames of hate against Muslim Americans. The Islamic Networks Group (ING) is an organization that says its mission is to advance respectful engagement of other cultures. It defines Sharia as “the values, code of conduct, and religious commandments or sacred laws” that provides guidance to Muslims in various aspects of their personal life. ING credits distrust of Sharia in America to Islamic states that have huddud, or criminal, laws. They are specific punishments for certain crimes. “Unfortunately, the misapplication of these laws by the Taliban or other contemporary groups or governments generally contradict both the letter and spirit of Sharia and have given it a bad name,” ING wrote on its website. The Council of American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, sent a letter to Roy’s subcommittee members ahead of Tuesday saying the hearing misrepresented Sharia.

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Austin American-Statesman Editorial: In Senate bid, Talarico models the leadership this moment demands

These are not normal times. Masked immigration enforcement agents are confronting people in the streets. Artificial intelligence is poised to disrupt the economy and the workforce in ways we barely understand, and social media platforms have become so effective at sustaining our attention through outrage that we struggle to talk across our differences. Confidence in political institutions is cratering. That makes the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate more than simply a contest between two compelling candidates. The race for the seat held by Republican Sen. John Cornyn, locked in his own bruising primary battle, is a test of what kind of leadership Texans need in a moment defined by instability, uncertainty and a widening trust gap between the public and those who govern. In our view, the best Democratic contender to meet this moment is state Rep. James Talarico.

He and his primary opponent, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, both offer serious choices to voters, but Talarico’s approach reflects a conviction that political leaders should focus on building trust in a deeply divided moment. The Austin-area lawmaker and former public school teacher practices a form of leadership grounded in persuasion and moral clarity. He speaks forcefully about feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger and protecting the vulnerable — not as slogans, but as ethical obligations that should guide public policy. “Politics is just another word for how we treat our neighbors, and we should treat each other a lot better than this,” Talarico told our Editorial Board. “So I do think we can take on this broken system and chart a new kind of politics that's not rooted in division, not rooted in fear and hate, but something that's rooted in hope and service and in love.” A Presbyterian seminarian, Talarico is animated by his faith but also firm in his commitment to the separation of church and state. He recognizes that an erosion of that wall undermines the fairness of government and the integrity of religion alike.

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Houston Chronicle Editorial: Don’t just vote for him because he’s young. Christian Menefee wins fights more than Al Green.

Normally, newly elected members of Congress get sworn in as part of a cohort, a freshman class who learn the ropes together. When former Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee got to Washington, D.C., that didn’t happen. “I came in in a special election so none of that existed,” he told the editorial board. “My orientation was 15 minutes and then I’m told, ‘You know you’re giving a speech on the floor tonight?’”

But Menefee, 37, not only has to find his feet in Washington, D.C. but also find a victory in the newly redrawn Congressional District 18. He’s campaigning every spare moment he has. “Good news is because of my work as county attorney, I’m finding that when I’m moving around the new 18th, people know who I am,” said Menefee. His primary challenger, Rep. Al Green, 78, knows people will be familiar with him, too. The longtime incumbent of the 9th was drawn out of his district and has been campaigning to show his new constituents that he still has the fight and vigor to continue being the outspoken advocate who was the first to present articles of impeachment against Donald Trump during his first term — a move that alienated some fellow Democrats at the time but that shows his willingness to be bold. In the past, we endorsed Green several times, citing his reliable Democratic representation that brought back millions to his district for important infrastructure projects.

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Hood County rejects moratorium on new data centers, large developments despite pushback

Hood County Commissioners voted Tuesday against a plan to pause all new large industrial developments as residents raised concerns about more data centers headed to the county. Commissioners rejected the six-month moratorium on new industrial permits, including data centers and factories, 3-2. County Judge Ron Massingill and commissioners Kevin Andrews and Jack Wilson voted no. However, commissioners Nannette Samuelson and Dave Eagle argue current rules are too outdated to protect Lake Granbury's watershed from potential pollution and noise.

Supporters say the moratorium would have allowed the county to update development laws, ensuring modern growth doesn't come at the environment's expense. At the forefront of those discussions is the proposed Comanche Circle data center which spans 2,100-acres. During a Jan. 13 meeting, commissioners voted to conditionally approve the concept plan submitted by Sailfish Investments late last year. The county believed the plan lacked information regarding utilities and energy usage, telling Sailfish to submit an updated plan addressing the concerns. Sailfish has until Feb. 27 to submit its revised concept plan. During the Jan. 29 special meeting, Ryan Hughes, managing partner at Sailfish Investors, argued Sailfish had done everything by the books and accused the county of "rewriting the steps."

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What happens when a far-right Twitter troll runs for office? Meet Bo French.

For a brief moment last summer, it looked like Bo French had finally gone too far. At the time, French was a ringleader of the far-right political apparatus that had taken control of Tarrant County, one of the last urban strongholds in America not run by Democrats. As chairman of the Republican Party there, French pledged to “make Tarrant County inhospitable for Democrats” and cultivated a certain persona: an edgy provocateur who wasn’t afraid to call his enemies “gay” and “retarded” on social media. Plenty of people found his rhetoric sickening, but his allies in the GOP remained conspicuously silent. Then, last June, French asked his X followers to vote on the “bigger threat to America”: Jews or Muslims. It had apparently been fine when the chairman was insulting women, immigrants, Muslims, and Black people, or variants thereof. But for Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and other Republicans, this was the one bigotry (antisemitism) they couldn’t appear to abide. It was time for Bo to go. Patrick called for French’s resignation, writing on X, “antisemitism and religious bigotry have no place in Texas.” Eight minutes before Patrick’s post, French posted on X to apologize, writing that “some people clearly misunderstood the intent” of the poll, which he deleted. “Antisemitism has no place in the Republican Party, and if you disagree with me, get out,” he wrote.

But he didn’t resign. In November, French left on his own terms, announcing that he would seek the nomination for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, the state’s oil and gas regulator. He’s on the GOP’s statewide ticket, alongside Patrick and Governor Greg Abbott. How much is the Texas GOP willing to stomach from him now? The answer so far is, quite a lot. In late January, French was scheduled to appear alongside Patrick, Attorney General Ken Paxton, and GOP Chairman Abraham George at a political rally held at a fancy hunting ranch in Llano. He didn’t show up—it’s unclear why, and he didn’t respond to an interview request. But the emcee, political activist and commentator Luke Macias, favorably contrasted French with the incumbent, Jim Wright, who, according to some inscrutable DEI matrix, had overseen the Railroad Commission’s transformation into the “ninth-most DEI-enforcing state agency in the state of Texas.” French and Patrick still share the same demanding patron, far-right billionaire Tim Dunn. The Midland oilman gave both politicians a nice payday last year from one of his PACs, the Texas Freedom Fund for the Advancement of Justice. French received an in-kind donation of advertising worth $150,000. French does tweet about the railroad commissioner race. He regularly attacks Wright, who has performed his duties like almost every other railroad commissioner in the last couple decades—that is, by faithfully catering to the needs of fossil fuel companies.

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Austin Film Commission celebrates 40 years of helping local moviemaking

Austin is such a great town for filmmakers that sometimes it’s hard to remember all the reasons it’s become one of the most important centers of the movie business. Luckily, the Austin Film Commission has teamed up with one of the most iconic and constant parts of that film scene for a new video that lays out all those facts and figures. As part of the celebration of the office’s 40th anniversary, AFC has recorded a new promotional video starring Texas Film Awards 2026 honoree Sonny Carl Davis (The Whole Shootin’ Match, Buck Alamo). Austin Film Commission Senior Director of Film Marketing Brian Gannon said, “Austin’s production history is filled with so many iconic feature films and television series. We have such great resources available to filmmakers in Austin and wanted to find a unique way to present that, why not do it the way our industry knows best: visually.”

Directed by Cody Ground, filmed at Austin Studios (one of the many studio facilities in the area) and produced by Arts+Labor (one of a huge number of local production companies), the short video emulates the legendary commercial Davis filmed with Richard Linklater for the Fire Ted Cruz PAC. However, this time it’s a much more cheerful topic, highlighting not just the history of the state’s film industry but also its future, especially in the light of both the state and the city of Austin strengthening their incentive programs. Gannon said, “We are so proud to collaborate with Arts+Labor and Sonny Carl Davis to tell this [100% made in] Austin story. This promo celebrates the 40 years of work done by the Austin Film Commission and all the amazing cast, crew, and local businesses that helped put Austin on the map. Austin continues to flourish and is the perfect place for your next production – from diverse locations to seasoned crew and cost saving incentives to the amazing hospitality.” Catch the promo video below, complete with Davis’ inimitable rascally charm. Watch out for appearances by other familiar figures including John Merriman (I’ve Got Issues, Sister Aimee) and former state senator turned actor Hector Uribe (Tejano).

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Rep. McCaul questions ICE director about Minneapolis operations after fatal shootings

U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) pressed Immigration and Customs Enforcement leadership this week about escalating tensions in Minneapolis following the fatal shootings of protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti. During a congressional hearing, McCaul questioned acting ICE Director Todd Lyons about the agency’s operations in the city and whether recent leadership changes have helped calm unrest. McCaul pointed to what he described as years of border security failures and criticized sanctuary city policies in Minneapolis, saying local officials had previously declined to honor ICE detainers on individuals identified as dangerous felons. Lyons confirmed that ICE detainers had not been honored at the local level.

The Texas congressman also cited a rise in assaults and threats against ICE officers, calling it a “perfect storm” that contributed to heightened tensions on the ground. He argued that ICE agents are trained for targeted enforcement operations, not crowd control, and said previous tactics may have escalated the situation. After the shootings, President Donald Trump removed Agent Greg Bevino from overseeing the operation and assigned border czar Tom Homan to take charge. McCaul praised the move, describing Homan as a “consummate professional.” Lyons told lawmakers that since Homan assumed control, ICE has shifted to “targeted, intelligence-driven enforcement operations,” working more closely with local authorities. He said protests have “subsided” and described a “de-escalation” in the city. In one recent incident, local law enforcement arrested 54 protesters without ICE officers directly engaging. McCaul asked whether Homan’s approach in Minneapolis could serve as a national model. Although the hearing time expired before a full response, Lyons indicated support for the strategy.

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Arlington votes to reshape city’s anti-discrimination code, removing LGBTQ+ protections

The Arlington City Council Tuesday, Feb. 10 approved a proposed anti-discrimination ordinance that, many believe, in effect leaves the city’s minority residents without any protection against discrimination. The vote follows the council’s vote in December not to reinstate the city’s original nondiscrimination protections passed in 2021, after suspending that ordinance in September, 2025, due to concerns over federal funds. Republicans in Austin and in Washington, D.C., threatened to withhold federal funding for any city that did not rescind so-called “DEI” policies. DeeJay Johannessen, the CEO of HELP Center for LGBTQ Health who was instrumental in getting the city council to pass the original ordinance in 2021 and has been working to get protections reinstated since September, said in a press release supporters are “deeply disappointed” by the vote.

“Though described as progress, the ordinance fails to provide meaningful local protections and in fact dismantles all of Arlington’s existing anti-discrimination laws,” according to a press release from HELP following the vote. The press release explains that the measure approved tonight by the council “replaces Arlington’s duty to protect with a ‘meet and refer’ model, eliminating the city’s responsibility to investigate or resolve discrimination complaints.” The ordinance leaves “residents, workers, visitors and businesses … without local recourse” and instead directs those who feel they have been discriminated against to “outside agencies that are often overburdened and inaccessible. Every protected class in Arlington loses meaningful local protection under this framework.” The new ordinance, according to the press release, “limits city involvement to providing a website or phone number to victims of discrimination.” Johannessen pointed to a statement by Council member Rebecca Boxall, saying that it “underscores the central problem. She said, ‘We aren’t taking anything away. The previous ordinance did not have any enforcement, and neither does this one.’ “Yet she opposed reinstating the prior ordinance because she argued it lacked enforcement,” Johannessen said, “and then voted for one she acknowledges also has none. That contradiction is difficult to reconcile.” Two council members — Nikkie Hunter, who represents District 3, and Bowie Hogg, who represents District 7 — voted against the ordinance containing the new code.

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CAIR urges comptroller to allow Muslim schools to access TEFA program

The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Texas chapter is urging the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts to stop excluding Muslim schools from the state’s new education savings account program. The program, known as Texas Education Freedom Accounts, gives families public money to pay for educational expenses such as private school tuition and homeschooling costs. The comptroller’s office began taking applications last month from schools looking to participate in the school voucher-like program.

Not all private schools have been able to access the $1 billion program. The Houston Chronicle reported last week that more than a dozen Islamic schools across the state had been shut out of the program over ties to CAIR, an advocacy group that Gov. Greg Abbott has designated as a foreign terrorist group. In a statement, Imran Ghani, executive director of CAIR-Houston, said the move effectively blocks Muslim families from accessing the program to send their children to schools that align with their values, as adherents of other faiths are able to do. “Government inaction that disproportionately excludes an entire religious community is no different than an explicit ban, and courts have made that clear for decades,” Ghani said. “Texas officials must correct this immediately, or they will be complicit in violating the fundamental principles of religious freedom and equal protection.”

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Austin-Bergstrom International Airport marks 2025 as third busiest year

A total of about 21.67 million passengers departed and arrived at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in 2025, marking the year as the third busiest for the airport. Passenger traffic marked 2024 as the airport’s second busiest year, following 2023 and 2022’s record-breaking totals. The busiest airline for the airport was Southwest Airlines, with 8.9 million passengers, similar to 2024. Southwest Airlines officials recently announced plans to expand at ABIA, backed by a $5.5 million economic incentive deal between the airline and the city of Austin.

The airport is currently undergoing a multiyear expansion program designed to upgrade facilities and increase capacity to address the record-breaking passenger traffic in recent years. The expansion program includes several projects, such as a new baggage handling system, facilities and passenger gates, various airfield upgrades, and the construction of new taxiways and a second terminal. In 2025, officials broke ground on a new parking garage with 7,000 spaces opening in two phases, as well as broke ground on the Atrium Infill project.

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Public Utility Commission of Texas to study water usage at data centers as they expand across state

The Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) plans to conduct a survey to study the water use of data centers and virtual currency mining facilities as they expand across the state. State Rep. Armando Walle, a north Harris County Democrat, authored a rider in the state's 2026-2027 budget to direct the commission to conduct the study. "It's important that we know and have transparency about how much water is being used and how much energy is being used by these large scale emerging technology centers," he said. With an influx of these facilities coming to the state, Walle said he wants to find solutions for Texans and determine how much natural resources are being used.

"There’s a lot of opportunity here. There's a favorable business climate, regulatory climate. But we also know that we have to be good stewards of our natural resources," Walle said. "Water and energy is a huge factor for us and we need to be able to preserve our water source, whether it's for urban communities or whether it’s for agricultural communities." Luisa Venegoni, chief of staff to the executive director at PUCT, presented plans for the study to commissioners during their meeting Friday. She said the goal of the study is to provide data for its statewide planning work. Questions about direct water use, technology used and indirect water use will be included. The survey will launch in the spring, and facilities will have six weeks to respond. The commission will share that data with the Texas Water Development Board and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. During the commission's meeting last week, Commissioner Kathleen Jackson urged data centers to cooperate and elaborate on their answers. "We are only as good as the data we receive," she said. Commissioner Courtney K. Hjaltman said data centers support modern technology, but it's also important to understand their impact. "Texans, regulators and the legislature really needs to have an understanding of data centers, really needs to understand the water they’re using, so that we can plan and create the Texas we want," she said.

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Tracy Benson: The proven science that keeps carbon capture and storage safe and sustaining industrial jobs

Tracy Benson is interim dean of the College of Engineering at Lamar University.) When I explain carbon capture and storage to my students, I start with a map of Southeast Texas. I point to the refineries and the power facilities, and then to the thick layers of rock below that have securely contained natural resources for millions of years. That map tells the story of why the Golden Triangle is uniquely suited to be an internationally-recognized hub for the safe capture and storage of carbon emissions. In the Golden Triangle, carbon capture and storage (CCS) from industrial facilities follows the same practical application of geology, engineering, and industrial systems that this region has understood for generations. As these projects are planned and begin to come online, we are seeing well-established science applied to meet demands of a changing global economy. That context matters, because the conversation around CCS often skips past the fundamentals.

Southeast Texas has long been a place where complex industrial challenges are managed safely and at scale. From deep subsurface operations to high-pressure systems, the region’s skilled workforce has built a trusted reputation for precision and discipline. CCS draws on them same technical expertise that has supported the region’s economy for decades, while positioning local industry for what comes next. Why are manufacturers and power generators so interested in capturing and storing carbon emissions? Around the world, customers are setting clearer expectations for how goods are produced. Manufacturers, utilities, and industrial operators are increasingly asked to lower emissions and make products in more efficient ways. Companies are pursuing carbon capture not because it is fashionable, but because it is becoming a condition of competitiveness. Without the infrastructure, it could put our industries and our port at a severe disadvantage. In the classroom, we focus on proven engineering concepts that keep this process safe for our community. There are reasonable questions, and they deserve clear answers. The geology beneath Southeast Texas is among the most studied in the country. Thick rock formations have trapped fluids securely for millions of years.

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Ed Young says Trump is not a racist

President Donald Trump is not a racist, according to Southern Baptist megachurch pastor Ed Young of Dallas. On Saturday, Feb. 7, the pastor of multicampus Fellowship Church based in Grapevine, Texas, posted a set of four slides on Facebook addressing the controversy over Trump posting on Truth Social a video that includes images of former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, as monkeys — an age-old racist trope. That video, which sparked outrage nationwide, appeared on Trump’s Truth Social profile in the middle of the night last Thursday. Trump has been known to post outrageous content to social media in the night so it was generally accepted that he had posted it himself.

Initially White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said there was no problem here: “This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the king of the jungle and Democrats as characters fromThe Lion King. Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.” In reality, there are no monkeys in The Lion King and the images of the Obamas bear no resemblance to any scene from the blockbuster film. Even some Republican elected officials publicly denounced the video, but Ed Young doubled down in support of the president. His series and white text on black background slides said: “Our voices are loud at times and very quiet at other times. Shared opinions and judgments on social media have been loud concerning the post shared yesterday from President Trump. “I’ve learned that a staffer posted a video which had been forwarded to him/her and they didn’t take time to review it before sharing. That is irresponsible and unprofessional. Now, the words are loud accusing the President of racism and much more.

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Cy-Fair ISD’s banned textbook chapters restored

The newly elected progressive trustees at Cypress-Fairbanks ISD did what they said they would do when they were on the campaign trail last fall and, in a split vote Monday night, agreed to restore textbook chapters that were banned in 2024. With less than two months on the job, new trustees Lesley Guilmart, Cleveland Lane and Kendra Camarena joined board president Julie Hinaman in voting to add back 13 chapters to health science, biology and environmental science books that a previous conservative-majority board said delved too deeply into controversial topics like vaccines, climate change and cultural diversity. Supporters of the new trustees said when the book chapters were censored that they were concerned their kids weren’t going to learn about important topics like infectious diseases, and that lack of knowledge could harm them as they enter college.

Trustees Todd LeCompte, Justin Ray and Christine Kalmbach voted against restoring the chapters, which was not surprising since all three voted to ban the chapters in May 2024. Kalmbach questioned whether the new board members reviewed the content thoroughly or were just supporting it because it was suggested that they do so by community members. “The curriculum writers in Cy-Fair who provided the replaced content, it met the Texas Essential Knowledge Skills. The students did not miss out on anything,” Kalmbach said, suggesting that the matter be tabled. “I’m very sad that our district is considering doing this rather than following through on our job as board members to review the content.” Five speakers addressed the board in support of reinstating the chapters. CFISD parent Ginger Mitcham Patel, a nurse practitioner, was among them. “These [banned] textbooks were approved by the state and the [School Health Advisory Committee],” she said. “I served on the SHAC committee, read these textbooks cover to cover and made the informed recommendation to use them in their entirety.”

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Buddhist monks on a peace walk return to Fort Worth

In late October, 19 Buddhist monks from the Huong Ð?o Vipassana Bhavana Center in Fort Worth set out on a “Walk for Peace” to Washington, D.C. Today, some 2,300 miles and 110 days later, they are due to arrive at the Capitol. They will return to Fort Worth on Valentine’s Day, having met with local dignitaries and others and sharing their message of peace along the way. Their return will include a homecoming walk from downtown Fort Worth, starting around 8 a.m., and will proceed six miles to the Center. The monks are hoping for company and have invited the public to join them. They’ll have a map of the route coming soon.

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National Stories

Trump administration fails to indict Democrats involved in 'illegal orders' video

The Trump administration tried and failed Tuesday to indict Democratic lawmakers over a video urging members of the military and intelligence communities not to comply with unlawful orders, three sources familiar with the matter told NBC News. Six Democrats participated in the video, and some had said they would not cooperate with the Justice Department’s probe into their involvement. The indictment, pursued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, led by Trump appointee Jeanine Pirro, is the latest example of the Justice Department’s targeting the president's perceived political opponents. The government attorneys assigned to the case are political appointees, not career Justice Department prosecutors, according to a source familiar with the investigation.

A Justice Department spokesman and a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday night. The FBI had sought interviews with the six members of Congress who appeared in the video, which was posted to social media in November: Reps. Jason Crow of Colorado, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire and Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, and Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan. The lawmakers, all of whom served in the military or in intelligence roles, said in the video that the Trump administration was pitting members of the military and the intelligence communities “against American citizens.” They then pointed out that public servants can refuse illegal orders. “Now, more than ever, the American people need you,” the lawmakers say in the video. “Don’t give up the ship."

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Members of Congress are fleeing the job at a historically high rate

Some feel they’ve hit an appropriate retirement age. Others want to tend to their health or their families. Yet more are leaving because they don’t like the workplace. Add it all together, and members of Congress are heading for the exit at a historically high rate ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, with two more House Republicans adding themselves to a growing roster just last week. Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., announced Wednesday that he was retiring from Congress, while Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., announced Friday that he wouldn’t run for re-election, either. Loudermilk said he wants “to spend more dedicated time with my family,” while Amodei said it was “the right time for Nevada and myself to pass the torch.”

The latest retirements mean 60 members of Congress have decided not to run for re-election this year — 51 House members and nine senators. It’s the most retirements from both chambers combined this century, according to historical data from the Brookings Institution’s Vital Statistics on Congress. That includes lawmakers who are retiring from political life altogether and those leaving their seats to run for other offices, but it doesn’t include members who have resigned or died during the current Congress. The number of House departures is inching closer to a recent high in 2018, when 52 lawmakers didn’t run for re-election. And, as in 2018, which was a bruising election year for the GOP, more House Republicans are heading for the exits than Democrats. Lawmakers can choose to retire for a variety of reasons, including the personal — health issues or long commutes to Washington infringing on time with family — and the political, from chasing opportunities to run for higher offices to weighing the unappealing prospect of being relegated to the minority. And on top of it all, Congress can simply be a frustrating place to work.

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March for Life rally, national shrine, CUA among infection sites for confirmed measles cases in DC

The March for Life rally, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and several buildings at The Catholic University of America were among infection sites for confirmed measles cases in the District of Columbia, the capital city's health department said Feb. 7.

DC Health said sites where people may have been exposed to the measles virus include: — Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Wednesday, Jan. 21, from 3:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.; National March for Life Rally and Concert, Friday, Jan. 23, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; The Catholic University of America, Garvey Hall, Saturday, Jan. 24, from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. and Sunday, Jan. 25, from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m.; CUA, Edward J. Pryzbyla University Center, Saturday, Jan. 24 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday, Jan. 25 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.; CUA, St. Vincent de Paul Chapel, Sunday, Jan. 25, from 9 p.m. to 12 a.m. Other sites include the city's Metro system, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Union Station Amtrak Concourse and the Children's National Medical Center emergency department. The Pontifical Academy for Life in 2017 issued updated moral considerations on vaccinations, telling Catholic parents they should vaccinate their children for the good of their children and the community, and they can do so with a "clear conscience."

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Even a decade of unintentional shootings could not slow America’s top pistol maker

In 2010, a group of weapons technicians gathered at the training academy of SIG Sauer Inc. for a routine test referred to as the “shake and bake.” The technicians, a mix of military and law enforcement professionals, had reached the final round of a course certifying them to repair SIG firearms. To graduate, they needed to strip a couple of dozen pistols, all from the gunmaker’s P226 DAK line, down to their screws and springs. They would scramble the parts in a bin, then set about reassembling each gun from scratch. The test began as usual; the technicians rebuilt the guns without issue. But when they pulled the triggers, the weapons, which had functioned properly beforehand, no longer worked. Two former instructors who were present told me the technicians had reassembled their guns correctly. (

(These instructors asked to remain anonymous for fear of professional retribution.) That suggested the problem lay with the weapons. Identical guns should have interchangeable parts. When they don’t, it can indicate poor manufacturing. That same year, SIG’s chief executive officer and president, Ron Cohen, sat for an interview with the magazine Management Today. Cohen had staged a dramatic turnaround at the New Hampshire-based company. When he’d taken charge five years earlier, it had recently become independent of its iconic German parent, SIG Sauer GmbH. It was sputtering, eking out tiny margins on guns still built with parts from Germany. But under Cohen’s stewardship, sales had tripled, and the company had added product lines and hundreds of employees. In the interview, Cohen extolled the company’s transformation. He compared SIG to Mercedes-Benz, then mused about what it might cost to continue expanding: “How do you grow Mercedes to be four times bigger while not losing your edge of being the quality leader? How do you grow without losing those parts of you?” Over the next 15 years, SIG surged to the front of a fiercely competitive U.S. pistol market and edged out industry heavyweights for government contracts. But while business grew, so did claims of shoddy manufacturing.

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Activist investor pushes Warner to walk away from Netflix deal

Activist investor Ancora Holdings has built a roughly $200 million stake in Warner Bros. Discovery and is planning to oppose Warner’s deal to sell its movie and television studios and HBO Max streaming service to Netflix, according to people familiar with the matter. Ancora, which could announce its position as soon as Wednesday, believes that Warner failed to adequately engage with David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance PSKY 1.50%increase; green up pointing triangle after it made a rival all-cash offer for the entire business, including its cable-network group, at $30 a share, the people said. The arrival of an activist, even with a small stake in the company, will add yet another dose of uncertainty and drama to an already drawn-out fight for the Hollywood studio.

Netflix has signed a $72 billion deal, but Paramount, which is bidding nearly $78 billion for the whole company, has gone straight to shareholders and threatened to wage a board fight at the same time. Ancora, a roughly $11 billion fund that has a history of lobbying in the middle of deals, emailed Warner Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav on Tuesday to say that it is considering launching its own proxy fight if Warner’s board doesn’t negotiate the best deal for shareholders with Paramount, the people added. Warner has a market value of roughly $69 billion as of Tuesday, making Ancora’s stake in the company less than 1%. But Ancora plans to continue buying Warner shares, the people familiar with the matter added, and, even with a small stake, it adds a voice that could help rally other investors around opposing the Netflix transaction. Many shareholders remain on the fence over which deal is better and are anticipating the offers could be revised further. A shareholder vote is expected next month.

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Man detained for questioning in Nancy Guthrie case is released

A man who was detained during a traffic stop by investigators looking into the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie has been released after questioning. In an interview early Wednesday, the man said he had not heard about Nancy Guthrie but hopes that she is found safe. “I hope they get the suspect, because I’m not it,” he said, speaking on the doorstep of his wife and mother-in-law’s home in Rio Rico, Ariz. The F.B.I. and the Pima County, Ariz., Sheriff’s Department on Tuesday had carried out a “court-authorized search” related to the investigation in Rio Rico, Ariz., about an hour’s drive south of Tucson, Ariz., the county sheriff, Chris Nanos, said in a statement. As of 1:20 a.m. local time on Wednesday, the department had not yet confirmed that it had released the person it had detained for questioning. But a spokeswoman, Angelica Carrillo, said investigators had “completed their search of a property in Rio Rico.”

Investigators questioned the man after he was detained during a traffic stop south of Tucson, more than 10 days into the search for the 84-year-old mother of the “Today” host Savannah Guthrie. Outside a home in Rio Rico, a woman said the man was her son-in-law and that investigators had broken down her door and were searching the house. She said her son-in-law had been delivering food when he was stopped by the police. She insisted that the masked figure in a newly released surveillance video was not him. The footage, released earlier, shows a masked person on Nancy Guthrie’s porch around the time that she is believed to have vanished from her neighborhood near Tucson early on Feb. 1. The person is wearing a ski mask, gloves and a backpack, and appears to be armed with a pistol. Cable news pundits and true crime enthusiasts have spent more than a week analyzing the scant details of Ms. Guthrie’s case as they have trickled out. The authorities said early on that they were investigating the disappearance as a kidnapping, and Savannah Guthrie and her siblings have released a series of videos pleading with whoever is involved to reach out to them. They said they were prepared to listen to ransom demands. It was not yet clear whether the authorities believe the person being questioned is the same person in the video, according to a second law enforcement official familiar with the case. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share details.

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A 14-year-old girl described being zip-tied during Idaho raid, sparking fresh questions about ICE tactics

When Canyon County Sheriff Kieran Donahue described the October raid on a popular community horse racing venue here, he hailed the detention of 105 undocumented immigrants and flatly rejected allegations that agents used zip ties to restrain some of the dozens of children present. Then he was presented with photographic evidence. Images obtained by CBS News appear to show the zip ties and bruised wrists of Anabel Romero's 14-year-old daughter SueHey, a U.S. citizen who was tending to her 6- and 8-year-old siblings when the agents descended on the crowd in military-style gear and herded them into a confined area. "God bless her. I'm sorry she went through that," said Donahue, a self-proclaimed cowboy who participated in the raid on horseback.

"But law enforcement is not evil because we contained everybody and detained them until we sorted it out. That's not evil." Mistreatment of children during a militarized police action that involved armored vehicles and flashbang grenades has sparked fresh questions about tactics being employed nationwide in the name of the Trump administration's wave of immigration sweeps. On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal civil rights lawsuit highlighting the mistreatment of families attending the weekend recreation event at La Catedral Arena, many of whom were American citizens of Hispanic descent. The incident in this small agricultural community about an hour outside of Boise has largely been overshadowed in the national headlines by the immigration surge in Minnesota, where the tactics used by federal immigration agents on children have attracted widespread scrutiny. In one instance, a family alleged that agents deployed tear gas that landed under a car with six children inside. One viral image showed 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who was wearing a hat with bunny ears and carrying a Spiderman backpack as he was being detained.

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D.C. grand jury declines to indict six Democratic lawmakers

A federal grand jury in D.C. refused the Justice Department’s attempts to indict six Democratic lawmakers over their comments to military service members — the latest rebuke of the Trump administration’s push to prosecute the president’s foes, according to two people familiar with the matter. Federal prosecutors last year launched an investigation into the lawmakers — all of whom served in the military or with intelligence agencies — after they released a short video advising current military members to reject “illegal orders.” The lawmakers include Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain and astronaut from Arizona, and Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst from Michigan, both of whom sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

They have criticized the administration’s attempts to deploy the National Guard to cities run by Democratic officials and conduct strikes on alleged drug traffickers’ boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. It is exceedingly rare for grand juries to reject indictments, in part because prosecutors only need to convince a majority of grand jurors that there is a probable cause that a crime was committed — a relatively low threshold. But the Justice Department’s campaign to target President Donald Trump’s perceived adversaries has repeatedly been rebuffed by grand juries and judges, including in its efforts to prosecute former FBI director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D). The other lawmakers in the video whom the grand jury rejected to indict include Democratic Reps. Jason Crow (Colorado), a former Army Ranger; Chrissy Houlahan (Pennsylvania), a former Air Force officer; Chris Deluzio (Pennsylvania), a former Navy officer; and Maggie Goodlander (New Hampshire), a Navy veteran. The lawmakers have denounced the investigations.

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Lead Stories

Allred wants James Talarico to apologize for alleged racially charged remark about him

Former Democratic Congressman and current Congressional candidate Colin Allred of Dallas is calling on fellow Democrat and U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico to apologize following their clash that went viral last week over an alleged racially-charged remark he made to a supporter and influencer in a private conversation. In some of his first remarks since he posted a video on "X" criticizing Talarico, Allred spoke to CBS News Texas Monday afternoon at the MLK Community Center in Dallas. "I think there needs to be an apology either way; an apology and some attempt to recognize that there are certain things, whether the full intent was intended or not, that it came across in a way that was offensive to that young woman and to many others," Allred said. In a video posted on TikTok by the woman identified as Morgan, she said, "James Talarico told me that he signed up to run against a mediocre Black man, not a formidable and intelligent black woman."

Morgan was referring to Dallas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who entered the race in December, hours after Allred left the race to run for the 33rd District seat in Congress. Morgan said she is now supporting Crockett. CBS News Texas has reached out to her several times, but she has not responded. Last week, Talarico responded to the controversy with a statement, "This is a mischaracterization of a private conversation. In my praise of Congresswoman Crockett, I described Congressman Allred's method of campaigning as mediocre - but his life and service are not. I would never attack him on the basis of race." Allred said Monday that he and Talarico spoke by phone after the dust-up. "I offered him a chance to apologize, and he declined to do that," said Allred. "It is surprising. I think it's the easiest thing to do in this situation. Say, listen, whatever, you can even say. 'I feel like that's not how the conversation went, but either way, I apologize for the offense that was given,' which I think would have been the right thing to do."

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Trump’s threats to Cuba’s oil suppliers put Mexico in a bind

When President Trump declared a “national emergency” last month, accusing Cuba of harboring Russian spies and “welcoming” enemies like Iran and Hamas, it came with a warning: Countries that sell or provide oil to the Caribbean nation could be subject to high tariffs. The threat seemed to be directed at Mexico, one of the few countries still delivering oil to Cuba. Earlier this month, he even said that he had specifically asked President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico to cut off its supply. Mexico and Cuba’s long alliance — rooted in economic and cultural cooperation and a shared wariness of U.S. intervention — survived and even deepened after the Cuban Revolution, when Mexico preserved ties with Havana even as much of the region aligned with Washington. Ms. Sheinbaum now faces a fraught balancing act: upholding her country’s historical alliance with Havana, while managing its vital yet increasingly tense relationship with the United States.

The Sheinbaum administration has been careful not to provoke Mr. Trump, who has strained Mexico’s economy with tariffs and threats of military action to stop fentanyl from crossing the border. He has also threatened to withdraw from the free trade deal with Canada and Mexico, the U.S.’s largest trading partner. Ms. Sheinbaum has largely held to her country’s commitment to Cuba, a Communist country, where people are struggling with surging food costs, constant blackouts, a lack of critical medicine and dwindling fuel. But Mexico has not sent any oil to Cuba since early last month. “No one can ignore the situation that the Cuban people are currently experiencing because of the sanctions that the United States is imposing in a very unfair manner,” she said during a news conference on Monday. She added that Mexico had deployed two Navy ships carrying more than 814 tons of humanitarian aid — mostly staple foods and hygiene supplies — to Cuba. Cuba, whose main oil provider was Venezuela, has faced chronic fuel shortages for years, but the situation has become far more severe since last month, when President Trump took control of Venezuela’s oil supply. He halted deliveries to Cuba, which now only has a fraction of the oil it needs.

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Less than 14% of those arrested by ICE in Trump's 1st year back in office had violent criminal records, document shows

Less than 14% of nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in President Trump's first year back in the White House had charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security document obtained by CBS News. The official statistics contained in the DHS document, which had not been previously reported publicly, provide the most detailed look yet into who ICE has arrested during the Trump administration's far-reaching deportation operations across the U.S. The internal DHS figures undermine frequent assertions by the Trump administration that its crackdown on illegal immigration is primarily targeting dangerous and violent criminals living in the U.S. illegally, people Mr. Trump and his lieutenants have regularly called the "worst of the worst."

The statistics show ICE has dramatically increased arrests since Mr. Trump's return to office. Nearly 60% of ICE arrestees over the past year had criminal charges or convictions, the document indicates. But among that population, the majority of the criminal charges or convictions are not for violent crimes. For example, while Mr. Trump and his aides often talk about immigration officials targeting murderers, rapists and gangsters, the internal data indicate that less than 2% of those arrested by ICE over the past year had homicide or sexual assault charges or convictions. Another 2% of those taken into ICE custody were accused of being gang members. Nearly 40% of all of those arrested by ICE in Mr. Trump's first year back in office did not have any criminal record at all, and were only accused of civil immigration offenses, such as living in the U.S. illegally or overstaying their permission to be in the country, the DHS document shows. Those alleged violations of U.S. immigration law are typically adjudicated by Justice Department immigration judges in civil — not criminal — proceedings.

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Trump to repeal landmark climate finding in huge regulatory rollback

The Trump administration is planning this week to repeal the Obama-era scientific finding that serves as the legal basis for federal greenhouse-gas regulation, according to U.S. officials, in the most far-reaching rollback of U.S. climate policy to date. The reversal targets the 2009 “endangerment finding,” which concluded that six greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare. The finding provided the legal underpinning for the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate rules, which limited emissions from power plants and tightened fuel-economy standards for vehicles under the Clean Air Act. “This amounts to the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in an interview. The final rule, set to be made public later this week, removes the regulatory requirements to measure, report, certify and comply with federal greenhouse-gas emission standards for motor vehicles, and repeals associated compliance programs, credit provisions and reporting obligations for industries, according to administration officials.

It wouldn’t apply to rules governing emissions from power plants and other stationary sources such as oil-and-gas facilities, the officials said. But repealing the finding could open up the door to rolling back regulations that affect those facilities. The move is likely to be seen as a victory for the fossil-fuel industry, which for years has pushed back against federal climate regulations. Since taking office, President Trump has sought to repeal rules that his allies in the oil-and-gas industry have cited as overly burdensome. Trump has framed fossil fuels as vital to economic and national security, and he has argued that expanded reliance on them will help lower energy prices. The decision to repeal the endangerment finding might also create fresh uncertainty for companies with global operations, which could find themselves caught between lower environmental standards at home and a higher baseline for emissions rules abroad. A void at the federal level might prompt states to implement their own regulations, and create new legal exposure for companies. Environmental groups have said they would challenge a rollback in the courts, and it could be years before litigation is resolved. The administration could decline to enforce rules and fines while a legal process unfolds. Several unsuccessful attempts to revise or repeal the “endangerment finding” have been made in recent years—including in the courts.

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State Stories

Why Elon Musk says recruiting top engineers in Texas is still difficult

California still has it over Texas in at least one key way, Elon Musk says: Hiring. After moving headquarters of SpaceX and Tesla Inc. to Texas in recent because of political disagreements, he said it’s still easier to recruit employees to work in California. With one exception. “Austin, it helps,” Musk said — while noting that Tesla still has most of its engineering staff in California. “Getting engineers to move … I call it the significant other problem.” That’s what makes engineering recruiting toughest at Starbase, the remote South Texas outpost where SpaceX is developing its Starship mega-rocket.

“For Starbase that was particularly difficult, since the odds of finding a non-SpaceX job are pretty low,” Musk said, referring to the idea that Austin can be an easier pitch for tech hires because they know they can move to other local companies, too. “It’s quite difficult. It’s like a technology monastery thing, remote and mostly dudes.” Musk companies also have operations in Robstown McGregor, Bastrop and elsewhere across the state. He disclosed the issues on the Cheeky Pint podcast during a chat in which he also accused tech giant Apple Inc. of trying to poach Tesla’s talent when that company was working on its own self-driving electric car, a project it later scrapped. “They were carpet bombing Tesla with recruiting calls,” Musk said. He claimed their opening offer would be roughly double the compensation at Tesla, indicating what he referred to as a “Tesla pixie dust” factor, in which other companies assume if they hire someone from Tesla, the employee would put them on track to success. “When we had the pixie dust problem, we would get relentlessly recruited from,” Musk said. “Also, Tesla being engineering, especially being primarily in Silicon Valley, it’s easier for people to just … They don’t have to change their life very much. Their commute’s going to be the same.”

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Texas Governor Greg Abbott: State will fix Fort Worth school ‘indoctrination’

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott cited failing schools and indoctrination as reasons for a state takeover of the Fort Worth school district in a post on X. The governor’s post came in response to a Star-Telegram article looking at a growing list of student walkouts at schools in and around Fort Worth to protest federal immigration enforcement after the shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. “The State will course correct FWISD,” the governor said in his Sunday post.

The Texas Education Agency released guidance on Feb. 3 about consequences for students, teachers and districts that engage in walkouts. These include investigations, sanctions, and the possibility of a state takeover, according to the guidance. Representatives for the governor did not immediately respond to an email from the Star-Telegram with questions about the post. Representatives from the Fort Worth school district did not immediately respond to an email from the Star-Telegram seeking comment about the governor’s post. The TEA announced in October it would be taking over the Fort Worth school district and replacing the school board, citing five consecutive years of failing grades at a middle school campus closed in 2023. The district board appealed the decision, but that appeal was denied by a panel of administrative judges on Feb. 5. The TEA is evaluating 286 applications for a nine-member board of managers to oversee the district. It’s not known when the appointees will be announced, however, state Education Commissioner Mike Morath said he hopes to have the panel in place by spring.

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San Antonio councilwomen move to censure Mayor Jones after reported blowup at colleague

Five members of City Councilwomen filed a memo Monday calling for the censure of Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones, a move typically reserved for serious misconduct such as DWIs or other criminal charges. The memo alleges Jones engaged in “repeated instances of unprofessional conduct,” including a reported argument last week with District 1 Councilwoman Sukh Kaur over a vote about whether to close downtown LGBTQ+ nightspot the Bonham Exchange due to a fire code violation. Jones allegedly yelled and cursed at Kaur when the two stepped away from last Thursday’s council meeting, the Express-News reports, citing three people familiar with the situation. After the confrontation, Kaur was absent from the dais for 90 minutes, during which time she holed up in a meeting room to regain her composure, the daily report, again relying on City Hall sources.

One source reportedly told the Express-News Thursday’s incident was the “last straw” for come council members tired of Jones’ confrontational actions against people who disagree with her. The memo was submitted by District 3 Councilwoman Phyllis Viagran, District 5’s Teri Castillo, District 7’s Marina Alderete Gavito, District 8’s Ivalis Meza Gonzalez and District 9’s Misty Spears — all the women on the dais excluding Kaur and Jones. “We all experience difficult days, but when a leader repeatedly fails to meet these standards, it is our duty to hold them accountable in order to preserve the integrity and trust of San Antonio’s government and the people we serve,” the memo states. Even so, the signatories added that none of them questions Jones’ “desire to represent the City well.” City Council members typically use censure votes to signal disapproval of a colleague’s action without imposing an actual penalty, such as moving for their removal or denial of committee assignments.

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Plano leaders postpone transit decision after offer from DART

Plano city leaders surprised residents and public transit advocates on Monday by announcing that they may have a deal with Dallas Area Rapid Transit ahead of a May withdrawal election. During an evening city council meeting, city manager Mark Israelson asked the council to postpone a decision on an alternative transit option that would replace DART with a rideshare service provided by Via if voters choose to withdraw from the agency. That service would work similarly to other rideshare options such as Uber, Lyft or DART’s GoLink service. Via already operates services in other North Texas cities including Arlington and Denton.

"The city has been in active discussions with our transit provider DART for the last 6 or 7 months and really over the last several weeks talks have become more focused around a potential offer that we have heard from the chair of the DART board," Israelson said, though he did not provide specific details. The council voted unanimously to table a vote on a contract with Via and instead make time to review DART's proposal. Plano previously proposed keeping train and express bus service but ending regular bus routes as a way to possibly prevent the May election; DART leaders will meet again Tuesday to consider potential agreements with some member cities. Pro-DART residents who showed up to the meeting Monday to protest the Via option said they felt a sense of relief by the council's decision to delay a vote until later this month. Embher Chaffin, director of the advocacy group Keep DART in Plano, said the announcement was unexpected. "I think that it shows an effort of collaboration from both parties," Chaffin said. "For the city to acknowledge the DART is trying, gives me a lot of hope."

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Austin American-Statesman Editorial: Lincoln-Goldfinch blends urgency and realism for Texas House 50

The dilemma for Democrats in the solidly Republican Legislature is whether to take impassioned stands on losing votes or focus on incremental work, scraping out modest wins in the margins of the possible. Immigration attorney and community advocate Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch struck us as someone who can make a real impact in both lanes: a pragmatist who understands when it’s time to meet in the middle and when it’s time to go down swinging. That earned her our recommendation in the crowded March 3 Democratic primary for the Texas House District 50 seat held by state Rep. James Talarico, who’s running for U.S. Senate. “At the end of the day, I want to actually get things done,” Lincoln-Goldfinch told our Editorial Board. “Will I be a firebrand and create viral moments and be really loud when the Lege is doing racist stuff? Yes, I’m capable of that. But I don’t intend to be that type of legislator. I intend to actually make friends where I can and get stuff done.”

She said that starts with building arguments around data — not competing emotional narratives — to show where a policy would serve common interests. And years of legal work have shown her the importance of focusing on the solutions needed now, not debating the origins of the problem. That strategic outlook is a defining feature in a race where the candidates largely share the same policy goals: expanding Medicaid, boosting school funding, promoting more affordable housing, supporting immigrants and unwinding abortion restrictions. This open seat in Northeast Austin drew a highly qualified crop of candidates who did not make our endorsement decision easy. Samantha Lopez-Resendez, who served as chief of staff to state Rep. Donna Howard, impressed us with her legislative acumen and personal perspective. “I am running as a woman of reproductive age, a former bilingual educator and a proud daughter of immigrants, all three of which are issues currently under attack right now,” Lopez-Resendez told our board. Jeremy Hendricks, a longtime labor leader and community advocate, is a seasoned negotiator and coalition-builder who would also make an effective lawmaker — in his case, focused on issues affecting Texas workers. Rounding out the field are John Hash, who has worked as a youth outreach coordinator; information technology specialist William Rannefeld; and Nathan Boynton, who comes from a small business sales background. Whoever wins the Democratic primary will face Republican Howard Olsen in November.

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Austin American-Statesman Editorial: Garibay ready to lead on education in Texas House 49

Education changed everything for Montserrat Garibay. And she has used that knowledge to organize and uplift others — from defending Austin’s prekindergarten programs years ago from budget cuts, to advocating for workers in the Texas Capitol, to championing bilingual students as a U.S. Department of Education official in the Biden administration. “To me, coming to the U.S. as an undocumented child and not speaking a word of English, education totally transformed my life,” said Garibay, a former bilingual educator and labor leader who became a U.S. citizen in 2012. “My mother used to work three jobs, and she told us the only thing that will change your life is education, and it has. It’s the bedrock of our democracy and it’s worth fighting for.” Garibay earned our recommendation in the packed Democratic primary for Texas House District 49 because she is ready for that fight.

In a state where some lawmakers are more inclined to attack and politicize public education than properly fund it, Garibay brings the expertise and track record in the trenches to champion quality schools. Central Texas especially needs such an advocate now. Two of the strongest defenders of public education in the Texas House are leaving their Austin-based seats: District 49 Rep. Gina Hinojosa is running for governor, and District 50 Rep. James Talarico is running for U.S. Senate. Garibay recognizes education shouldn’t be a partisan issue: Texans of all stripes want quality schools. The hard work of championing good policies comes from building rapport with key players and making a data-driven case for “why this needs to happen and how it’s going to benefit our entire state,” she said. “If we don't have a strong education — if we don't invest in our young students now — we will be paying for it later, in building jails and detention centers,” Garibay added.

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Evan Mintz: While America watched the Super Bowl, Texas politicians had an online meltdown

While the rest of the country was watching the Super Bowl — or, like my brother, the Puppy Bowl — Texas politicians were getting mad on the internet. No, they weren’t mad about Bad Bunny, the Grammy Award-winning Puerto Rican singer whose performance during the halftime show attracted so much partisan ire for reasons I still don’t understand. (Who can disagree with “Together, we are America” as a message?) They were mad at Gene Wu. Apparently the End Wokeness content farm account on X, formerly Twitter, shared a 2024 video of the Houston state representative on a podcast hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas. According to End Wokeness, Wu said, “Non-whites share the same oppressor and we are the majority now. We can take over this country.” No. That’s not what Wu said.

If you actually click the video and listen, you won’t hear Wu say the word “non-whites,” nor will you hear him say the word white at all. Instead, he offers a rather generic description of the Democratic Party’s difficult multiracial politics. “I always tell people the day the Latino, African American, Asian and other communities realize that they share the same oppressor is the day we start winning,” Wu said. “Because we are the majority in this country now. We have the ability to take over this country and do what is needed for everyone. And to make things fair. But the problem is our communities are divided — they’re completely divided.” While I can understand some quibbling about the phrasing of “take over this country,” there’s little in Wu’s statement that should be controversial. Heck, the Chronicle’s Joy Sewing even wrote a column about Wu’s speech more than a year ago as his comment went viral not on End Wokeness, but on platforms popular with Black audiences.

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Dallas Morning News Editorial: We recommend acting comptroller Hancock in the Republican primary

The GOP primary for Texas comptroller has attracted three well-known political figures with stuffed campaign accounts, along with one interesting outsider running on a pocket-change budget. The comptroller serves as the state’s chief financial officer. Kelly Hancock is a former state senator from northern Tarrant County. He stepped down from that seat in June, became chief clerk for the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, then rose to interim comptroller when Glenn Hegar resigned to become chancellor of the Texas A&M University System. Hancock’s temperament, his breadth of experience in both houses of the Legislature and his integrity give him the edge in this race. He chaired the Senate Business and Commerce Committee and served on the Legislative Budget Board. He’s also been a small business owner and a school board member; he understands revenue and budgets from a variety of perspectives. He has a strong track record of fiscal conservatism. We recommend Hancock in the primary.

The other three candidates include Don Huffines, a real estate developer from North Texas. He served in the state Senate from 2015-19 and ran unsuccessfully in the 2022 GOP primary for governor. His key policy idea is “to DOGE Texas.” He has signed onto a pledge that encourages the state to secede from the United States. Another candidate is Christi Craddick, who currently serves on the Texas Railroad Commission. The daughter of longtime state representative and former Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick, she was first elected to the commission in 2012. Her campaign materials emphasize her desire to “audit everything,” meaning state agencies and local governments as well. Michael Berlanga, a CPA and real estate broker, is a longshot candidate whose campaign focuses on the comptroller’s role in the property appraisal process, an esoteric but important duty of the office. He also wants appraisal districts to more clearly explain the protest process and property owners’ rights. The comptroller’s job is invisible but crucial. The state needs an honest account of its balance sheet and a careful certification of its budget, just two of the office’s many roles. Also, lawmakers often hand the office additional duties. During the 89th Legislature, they passed a $1 billion education savings account program, and gave the comptroller responsibility for overseeing it. Legislators also established a cryptocurrency reserve fund that the office must manage. We aren’t confident Huffines would put the real numbers ahead of his politics. We are also queasy about Craddick, given her indifference to persistent conflicts of interest as a railroad commissioner. Gov. Greg Abbott has endorsed Hancock. We believe Hancock has the standing, knowledge and personal integrity to ensure that Texas is handling its accounts properly.

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He vowed to revive RadioShack and Pier 1. Investors say they were swindled.

Taino “Tai” Lopez was living proof the American dream was still attainable for young men willing to bet on themselves. The entrepreneur hosted parties at a mansion in Beverly Hills and boasted about the black Lamborghini in his garage. The college dropout had made a name for himself on social media by offering get-rich-quick advice and self-help courses. He urged his followers to invest in a new company he had started that was scooping up distressed retailers on the cheap—RadioShack, Pier 1 Imports, Dressbarn, Modell’s Sporting Goods and Linens ‘N Things—with a promise to turn them into e-commerce winners. Sean Murphy saw Lopez’s posts on his Facebook and Instagram feeds and was drawn in by the brand names and a promise of 20% returns. He invested $175,000 in the company, called Retail Ecommerce Ventures, and related Lopez ventures. All told, Lopez raised more than $230 million from hundreds of mostly small investors.

Murphy, an Illinois grandfather, got a $10,000 Pier 1 gift card and monthly checks of about $1,000 for about two years. What he didn’t know was that his payouts allegedly were funded mostly by other investors. “These guys lied,” he said. “They conspired. They led people on.” The payments stopped abruptly in late 2022, and the struggling retailers were taken over by some of the company’s creditors. Last September, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil lawsuit against Lopez and his partners, accusing them of running a Ponzi scheme, misleading investors and misappropriating $16.1 million. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been contacting investors as part of a criminal investigation into what happened, according to people familiar with the matter. No charges have been filed. Lopez and his lawyer, Marty Ready, didn’t respond to requests for comment, and the FBI and SEC declined to comment. Court filings indicate that lawyers for Lopez and the other defendants are in settlement talks with the SEC.

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Amanda Edwards suspends congressional campaign following defeat in special election

Former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards announced Monday morning that she had suspended her campaign for Texas’ 18th Congressional District. Edwards fell far short of victory in the recent special election runoff against former Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, who garnered more than two-thirds of the vote. Edwards had previously planned to run for the same seat in the upcoming Democratic primary.

"Although my name will appear on the March 2026 Primary ballot, I have decided to suspend my campaign for Congress," Edwards wrote in a social media post. "My commitment to serving and advocating for the community remains unchanged. I cannot thank you enough for working with me to elevate people over politics and to deliver results for our community." Menefee, who was sworn into office following his special election victory, praised Edwards in a statement on Monday. "It's an honor to have run alongside Amanda Edwards in this campaign," he said. "She's always been a voice for the community, committed to service, and the consummate professional." Though the special election runoff and the proper Democratic primary in the race are only weeks apart, the course of the elections could be drastically different. Menefee will now faceoff against Congressman Al Green, who is running in the 18th district after last year’s mid-decade redistricting. Representatives for Green's campaign did not immediately return a request for comment. The Democratic primary for the 18th Congressional District is on March 3.

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Eagle Mountain-Saginaw students say admin changed ICE walkout rules, discipline

Chance Howell grew up on a two-house property near his dad’s oil company in Saginaw. One house for him and his family, the other for his father’s best employee, Jose. The two families grew so close that Jose regularly came over for dinner, and Howell also spent dozens of evenings after school at Jose’s house learning how to speak Spanish. The two houses were separated by just a few yards, but the occupants couldn’t have been any more different. Yet, the two families were still best friends. “I’m a white boy,” said Howell, a senior at Saginaw High School in Eagle Mountain-Saginaw school district. “It’s always impressing people when I say I can speak Spanish. That’s because I grew up with immigrants. Immigrants are part of life here in Texas.”

Howell’s childhood experiences with Jose, coupled by recent events in Minnesota where two died at the hands of federal immigration agents, inspired him to speak up about what he believes is the mistreatment of immigrants by ICE. Howell is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of students across the Dallas-Fort Worth region in recent weeks who have organized or participated in anti-ICE protests at their schools. Some students have walked out in the middle of their school day, down busy highways and through neighborhoods holding signs and chanting anti-ICE slogans. Some school leaders, most notably those at Saginaw Boswell High School, are in a firestorm with students regarding punishment and disciplinary action for participating in walkouts that interrupt the school day. Students believe administration helped them walk out just to be disciplined by the district days later. Now, they could lose their senior prom or ability to walk the graduation stage as punishment. Protests Howell has led at Saginaw High School have been after school hours.

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Former Fort Worth City Council member Gyna Bivens dies at 71

Gyna Bivens, a former Fort Worth City Council member and mayor pro tem, has died at 71. While her cause of death has not been announced, Bivens said in October that she had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was undergoing an in-patient evaluation at Clements University Hospital in Dallas. Mayor Pro Tem Carlos Flores, who served with Bivens the longest out of the council members, reflected on her passing in both personal and professional terms. “I lost a friend today,” Flores said in a phone call with the Star-Telegram. Flores talked about Bivens’ strength of character and her sense of humor, which he said she kept until her last days.

On council, she was diplomatic when she needed to be, but was also very forthright, Flores said. Sometimes she could be like an icebreaker moving through the arctic, because that’s what was needed, he said. District 4 council member Charles Lauersdorf, who sat next to Bivens at every council meeting and work session, wrote that he misses her in a social media post on Monday. “I miss her common sense approach, her nonpartisan viewpoints, and the fact that she actually knew what was going on,” Lauersdorf wrote. “The world was a better place with Gyna and I’m going to miss my friend. Rest in power Mayor Pro Tem, we got the watch.” Bivens was a woman of great faith, said District 5 council member Deborah Peoples, who succeeded Bivens on the council. “She was a child of Fort Worth, Texas,” Peoples said. “She knew the people and the neighborhoods like the back of her hand, and had a passion for public service.” Peoples credited Bivens with always being willing to help her understand the district and impart her institutional knowledge. “That’s something we don’t see enough of these days,” Peoples said. Bivens paved a path for all those called to public service, District 6 council member Mia Hall said in a post on Facebook. “She was comfortable being uncomfortable, standing resolute in her beliefs regardless of popular opinion, and that is something I will always cherish,” Hall said in the post. District 9 council member Elizabeth Beck wrote, “Gyna Bivens was all of 5’1” but you wouldn’t have known it because her personality was giant. Her determination to bring change to the things that mattered most to her was unparalleled. All you had to do was listen to her talk with pride about the demolition of the Dairy Queen or ensuing Fort Worth has one of the toughest tree ordinances. You knew if Gyna cared about it, something was going to happen.”

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Lecturer 'no longer teaching' at Texas State University after social media message to plastic surgeon

A lecturer is "no longer teaching" at Texas State University (TxSt) in San Marcos after a plastic surgeon said he sent her a social media message involving explicit language. On Wednesday, breast reconstructive surgeon Dr. Dhivya Srinivasa, MD FACS, posted a screenshot to Instagram of a Facebook message she said she received from Bret Bryon. The message said in part, "I hope Kristi Noem deports you," and called Srinivasa several derogatory terms. After Srinivasa made the post, TxSt initially responded in the comments on Wednesday, saying the university was looking into the incident. Then, on Thursday, the university added an additional comment that read, "As of February 4, 2026, Bret Bryon is no longer teaching classes at Texas State University."

Bryon's name has since been removed from the list of faculty members on the university's website. Srinivasa later posted a video to Instagram, stating in part, "Gotta give a major shoutout to Texas State University. Within 48 hours of hearing about this, to take definitive action and share it with us, that means that they care and they deserve a round of applause." She also shared her feelings following the exchange. "The reason I'm still kind of bummed is it makes me face the reality that simply identifying these people, shaming them, firing them is likely to be completely insufficient to fix the problem," Srinivasa said in the video. "To fix the problem, you have to raise boys differently, you have to teach them differently." According to The Texas Tribune, Bryon worked in the university's Department of Organization, Workforce and Leadership Studies in the College of Applied Arts.

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Sarah Stogner: What the GOP got wrong about voters in the Texas Senate election

(Sarah Stogner is the Republican district attorney of Texas’ 143rd Judicial District, which includes the town of Pecos and a swath of West Texas.) The victory of Democratic candidate Taylor Rehmet in deeply “red” Tarrant County is being described as the “political equivalent” of “a 9.5 Richter scale earthquake.” But take a look at what’s been going on here in Texas and across the country, and you realize the results should not come as a shock. To people who think “Republican” these days automatically translates to “staunch Trump supporter,” Rehmet’s big win in a state Senate race would seem inexplicable. Donald Trump won the district by 17 points in the 2024 presidential election. In advance of Saturday’s special election in the Fort Worth-area suburb, Trump gave Republican Leigh Wambsganss his “Complete and Total Endorsement” (capitalization his, of course). Yet Rehmet beat Wambsganss by about 14 points.

But having voted for Trump does not automatically mean supporting the direction in which he has taken the Republican Party. Also, his re-election had a big boost from the implosion of President Joe Biden’s campaign. And voters were rejecting incumbents all over the world. Across the United States, people were dissatisfied with Democrats on the economy, security and more. Here in Texas, voters can’t blame Democrats for our problems. We’ve been under one-party GOP rule for decades. The way so many Texans see it: You break it, you fix it. And a lot feels broken right now — including our economy and education system. Voters have told me they’re also fed up with hateful rhetoric from GOP figures who demonize Democrats. And they’re deeply concerned about growing antisemitism, racism and other forms of bigotry in both parties. They want candidates who will unite people. That played out here. “This isn't red versus blue; this is right versus wrong,” Rehmet said in his victory speech. “We can talk about partisanship all we want. I was focused on unity, bringing people together. We're all Texans. We all want to look out for each other.”

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Despite legal setbacks and border closures, Annunciation House continues ministry

Ruben Garcia had long expected that an overzealous federal government would one day accuse him of aiding and abetting illegal immigration. "And that doesn't mean that they would necessarily have been successful," Garcia said during a recent interview at Casa Papa Francisco, a house of hospitality in El Paso that houses migrant women and children. Dressed in blue jeans and a white button-down shirt, Garcia, 77, sighed as he discussed the Texas attorney general's efforts to shut down his migrant ministry. "I never would have imagined that the state of Texas would be the one that came after us," Garcia said. "That's something that never, ever crossed my mind." On Feb. 7, 2024, representatives from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office arrived at the front door of Annunciation House, a shelter for migrants in El Paso that Garcia helped found nearly 50 years ago.

Armed with an official Request to Examine, the attorney general's representatives demanded to enter the shelter and examine its business records. Annunciation House, which is part of a network of shelters that includes Casa Papa Francisco, balked at the request, which led to Paxton, a Republican, suing to shut down the shelter. In court documents and public statements since, Paxton has accused Annunciation House of "harboring illegal aliens" and serving as a "stash house" engaged in human smuggling. Garcia, the executive director of Annunciation House, pushed back against the allegations. Despite the Trump administration's ongoing immigration crackdown and Texas state officials' moves to close nonprofits that serve migrants, Garcia said the shelter and its volunteer staff are determined to stay true to their mission. "I'm very open about the work we do," he said. "We provide hospitality to migrants and refugees. Some of them have been documented, some of them have not been documented. Annunciation House is not the only one that does this. Churches and [nongovernmental organizations] across the country have been providing hospitality to migrants. And the courts have said that to provide that to human beings is not illegal."

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National Stories

Health costs are fueling voter stress and powering Democratic campaigns

President Donald Trump’s second term has presented an array of opportunities for political opponents, from immigration crackdowns and lingering inflation to attacks on independent institutions and friction with overseas allies. Many Democrats, however, are staying focused on health care, an issue that was once a political liability but has become foundational for the party in recent elections. They insist their strategy will help the party regain control of Congress in the November elections and fare better than chasing headlines about the latest outrages out of the White House. Republicans last year cut about $1 trillion over a decade from Medicaid and declined to extend COVID-era subsidies that had lowered the cost of health plans under the Affordable Care Act.

Democrats are filming campaign spots outside struggling hospitals, spotlighting Americans facing spiking insurance premiums and sharing their own personal health care stories. U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, one of the party’s most endangered incumbents this year, said at a rally Saturday attended by more than 1,000 people in an Atlanta suburb that health care is part of Trump’s abandonment of working people. “While prices are going up and jobs are getting harder to find, they decided to let health insurance premiums double for more than 20 million Americans, including more than a million Georgians,” said Ossoff, the only Democratic senator seeking reelection this year in a state that Trump won in 2024. He said 200,000 people in Georgia had lost their coverage. Brad Woodhouse, a Democratic strategist and executive director of advocacy group Protect Our Care, said health care is “a banger of an issue for Democrats.” “I think it will be part of every single campaign, up and down the ballot,” he said. Republicans defend their votes as reining in ballooning health spending and cracking down on what they call waste, fraud and abuse. Trump recently launched a website to help patients buy discounted prescription drugs.

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Dems reject W.H. counteroffer with 3 days until DHS shutdown

A brand new edition of The Tally — our campaign special publication — will be out this morning. The Top will feature a lengthy and newsy interview with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), conducted by our own John Bresnahan and Andrew Desiderio. Check your inboxes at 10 a.m. Crunch time. Democratic leaders rejected a White House counteroffer on DHS reforms in a late-night statement on Monday, complaining that the GOP proposal “included neither details nor legislative text.” Earlier Monday, Senate GOP leaders were trying to lay the groundwork to pass another short-term DHS funding patch. They were working closely with the White House to convince enough Senate Democrats that negotiations are on the right track as Friday’s shutdown deadline looms.

But the joint statement from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries made clear that persuading even a small handful of Democratic senators to support a stopgap measure will be a heavy lift. “The initial GOP response is both incomplete and insufficient in terms of addressing the concerns Americans have about ICE’s lawless conduct. Democrats await additional detail and text,” Schumer and Jeffries said. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has been striking an unmistakably optimistic tone about the negotiations, knowing that’s the key to securing enough Democratic support for a short-term funding patch. The exchange of offers was a sign that there’s some level of horse-trading going on as the deadline nears. “Obviously there’s a lot of work ahead but I think the sides are engaged in good-faith efforts at trying to find common ground,” Thune said. “[Democratic support] depends on how well the negotiations are going and whether it looks like there’s a pathway to success. And based on what I’m familiar with about the discussions so far, I think there is.”

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For $1 million, donors to U.S.A. birthday group offered access to Trump

President Trump’s allies are offering access to him and other perks to donors who give at least $1 million to a new group supporting flashy initiatives he is planning around the nation’s 250th birthday, according to documents and interviews. The group, Freedom 250, is threatening to overshadow years of plans meant to reach the broadest cross section of Americans for semiquincentennial celebrations. They are now taking on a Trumpian flare, replete with marble and machismo. But Freedom 250 has also emerged as another vehicle, akin to the White House ballroom project, through which people and companies with interests before the Trump administration can make tax-deductible donations to gain access to, and seek favor with, a president who has maintained a keen interest in fund-raising, and a willingness to use the levers of government power to reward financial supporters.

When Mr. Trump announced the creation of Freedom 250 in a social media post in December, he promised that it would give the nation “the most spectacular birthday party you’ve ever seen.” Several of Freedom 250’s planned events and monuments lack obvious connections to the Boston Tea Party, the signing of the Declaration of Independence or other seminal moments in the nation’s founding. Rather, they are tailored to Mr. Trump’s political agenda and his penchant for spectacle, personal branding and legacy. They include the construction of an arch overlooking Washington, an IndyCar race through the nation’s capital, a national prayer event and an Ultimate Fighting Championship match on the White House lawn to coincide with the president’s 80th birthday. Meredith O’Rourke, the president’s top fund-raiser, is amassing private donations for Freedom 250. Her team is circulating a solicitation, obtained by The New York Times, offering “bespoke packages” for donors.

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How cigars, whiskey and an old-school Oklahoman got the government funded

The crucial votes to fund the government last week were brokered in Speaker Mike Johnson‘s ceremonial office just off the House floor. But the groundwork to get the $1.6 trillion spending package through the chamber was laid in a literal smoke-filled room just steps away. That would be the domain of Rep. Tom Cole, the 76-year-old cigar-and-whiskey-loving chair of the House Appropriations Committee. Inside that haunt, the Oklahoman took an unabashedly old-school approach over the course of months to getting the congressional funding process unstuck after a record-long, 43-day shutdown last year. “That’s not actually an office — it’s a smoke room,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a regular in what some members cheekily call the “Cigar SCIF,” a play on the “sensitive compartmented information facilities” where government officials review state secrets. Inside, Cole “doesn’t dazzle you with numbers, he works on people-to-people skills,” Issa said, “and it’s the reason we’ve gotten something done.”

That’s something of a miracle considering who Cole is and what his colleagues have demanded. When Cole took the Appropriations gavel in the spring of 2024, conservative demands for spending reductions were mounting. Hard-liners citing unfulfilled promises of funding cuts had ousted Kevin McCarthy, a close Cole ally, from the speakership just six months earlier. Months later, Donald Trump was elected to a second term as president and immediately began freezing billions of dollars top appropriators had already fastidiously allocated. “We often joke: Boy, did we get here at a bad time,” Cole said in an interview, describing the situation he and Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) confronted. While the politics of government spending grew stormy as 2025 wore on, Cole and his allies were biding their time and working — puff by puff and sip by sip — to build support for the government funding bills he was quietly negotiating with his counterparts across the aisle and across the Capitol. Matters came to a head in the weeks after the longest shutdown in U.S. history concluded in November.

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Federal court blocks California’s law enforcement mask ban

A federal judge in California on Monday temporarily blocked the state from enforcing its ban on most law enforcement officers from wearing masks during operations. US District Judge Christina Snyder in Los Angeles granted the Trump administration’s request for a preliminary injunction, finding that the ban “unlawfully discriminates” against federal agents because it does not equally apply to state law enforcement officers. Snyder, however, kept in place another law requiring federal officers operating in the state to display either their name or badge number. The ruling is a partial win for the Trump administration, which challenged the policies in federal court last year, insisting both be thrown out to protect federal agents.

The administration had argued that the laws, signed in September in response to immigration raids last summer in Los Angeles, were an unconstitutional attempt to regulate federal law enforcement officers. Attorney General Pamela Bondi touted the ruling on Monday as a “key court victory” in a post on X. “We will continue fighting and winning in court for President Trump’s law-and-order agenda — and we will ALWAYS have the backs of our great federal law enforcement officers,” she said. In a statement Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta stressed that the judge’s ruling “denied the Trump Administration’s attempt to block California from requiring law enforcement officers, including federal agents, to visually identify themselves by agency and either by name or badge number.” “Safe communities thrive on transparency and trust and California is committed to doing our part to uphold public safety and civil liberties,” he added.

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ICE, CBP officials face questions from Congress about Minneapolis surge

Top Department of Homeland Security officials are set to testify Tuesday before a House committee, as the agency faces growing scrutiny over its immigration enforcement tactics. Todd M. Lyons, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Rodney Scott, commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection; and Joseph Edlow, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director, are scheduled to appear. It will be the first time the heads of ICE and CBP appear before the House Committee on Homeland Security since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term. Tuesday will also mark the first congressional oversight hearing since two U.S. citizens, Alex Pretti and Renée Good, were shot and killed by federal immigration personnel in Minneapolis last month.

Their deaths have prompted public backlash and bipartisan calls for an independent investigation. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem has also faced bipartisan criticism for suggesting after Pretti’s death that he had committed an “act of domestic terrorism” and sought to kill law enforcement, despite video from witnesses contradicting that account. Members of Congress are seeking to avert another partial government shutdown this week, amid negotiations over DHS funding. Democrats are pushing for new restrictions on federal immigration authorities, including tighter rules around the use of warrants, independent investigations of alleged misconduct, a ban on masks for federal immigration agents and a requirement that agents wear body cameras. Some Republicans have already rejected those demands. Noem announced last week that “effective immediately” DHS would deploy body cameras “to every officer in the field in Minneapolis” and would expand the body camera program broadly, “as funding is available.”

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Congressman says redacted part of Epstein file suggests Trump never banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago

A previously unseen part of the Epstein files may refute one of President Donald Trump's most common claims about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, according to a Democratic congressman. Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin spoke with reporters on Monday, Feb. 9, after reviewing unredacted versions of some documents in the Epstein files. The Department of Justice has released countless documents to the public in large batches, though many of the documents were shared with heavy redactions that omitted significant context. Raskin was among a select group of House members who were granted permission to view some original documents in person. Raskin, 63, said he has only had the opportunity to review about "30 or 40" of the documents so far, in preparation for U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Feb. 11.

However, one of the documents he did see had an interesting exchange that could call some of the president's previous statements into question. The document in question was an email forward from Epstein to his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, from 2009, which was just after the late billionaire's 2008 conviction on charges of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute. The email exchange apparently recounted a conversation between lawyers for Epstein and Trump. "Epstein's lawyers synopsized and quoted Trump as saying that Jeffrey Epstein was not a member of his club at Mar-a-Lago, but he was a guest at Mar-a-Lago, and he had never been asked to leave," Raskin said. "That was redacted for some indeterminate, inscrutable reason." "I know it seems to be at odds with some things that President Trump has been saying recently about how he had kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club or asked him to leave, and this was at least one report that appears to contradict it," Raskin continued. PEOPLE reached out to Raskin for more context on the document he referenced, and sought comment from the White House and DOJ about Raskin's claims.

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House overwhelmingly passes sweeping bipartisan housing package

The House on Monday overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan, comprehensive housing package aimed at ameliorating the affordability crisis in the U.S. and increasing homeownership. The legislation, dubbed the Housing for the 21st Century Act, passed the lower chamber by a vote of 390-9. It is sponsored by House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) and ranking member Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), and it passed the committee overwhelmingly in December. The bill includes more than 20 provisions that would direct the Government Accountability Office to study gaps in federal housing programs and modernize the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s HOME Investment Partnerships Program, among other actions.

“When there aren’t enough homes, prices go up. The Housing for the 21st Century Act includes real, bipartisan solutions to boost development by clearing out red tape and letting communities and local banks do their job. That’s how we expand supply, lower costs and give families more options,” Hill, along with Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.), wrote in an op-ed for The Hill last week. The bill now moves to the Senate, where lawmakers will likely make changes to the legislation. Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) had sponsored their own bipartisan housing bill, dubbed the ROAD to Housing Act, last year. They had pushed for provisions of the bill to be included in the National Defense Authorization Act in December, but it was not included. Hill wrote in a statement at the time that he looked forward to working with the Senate “to send a bill to the president’s desk that reflects the views of both chambers.” More than 50 groups have endorsed Hill’s bill, including the Affordable Housing Tax Credit Coalition, American Hotel and Lodging Association, Americans for Prosperity and others, according to a press release. The nine lawmakers who voted against the bill were Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.), Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), Chip Roy (R-Texas), Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) and Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas).

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Lead Stories

Trump accepts ownership of the current economy: 'I'm very proud of it'

President Donald Trump says it’s his economy now. In an interview with “NBC Nightly News” anchor Tom Llamas that aired during the Super Bowl on Sunday, the 47th president said the country is already experiencing the Trump economy. “At what point are we in the Trump economy?” Llamas asked. “I’d say we’re there now,” he replied. “I’m very proud of it.”

His remarks come at a time when most Americans tell pollsters they are not satisfied with the state of the economy and as Trump executes a barnstorming strategy to bring his economic message to political battlegrounds before the November midterms. An NPR/Marist/PBS News survey released last week showed that 36% of adults say they approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, while 59% disapprove. In off-year elections last November, Democrats in Virginia, New Jersey and New York hammered away at “affordability” on their way to victory. In the interview, which was taped Wednesday in the Oval Office, Trump said the economy is doing so well that Democrats are abandoning that message — and also blamed his predecessor, President Joe Biden, for stubbornly high prices on some staples. “In the last four days, it’s only four days, the Democrats have not uttered the word ‘affordability,’” he said. “They’re the ones that caused the problem. I took over a mess in every way.”

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Pro-Paxton PAC, mystery group buy up $3M in ads attacking Wesley Hunt

With just amonth to go before the Republican U.S. Senateprimary, a Super PAC supporting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and a newly formed outside spending group is pouringa combined $3 million into newadvertising attacks against U.S. Rep.Wesley Hunt of Houston. The Conservatives for Texas PAC, which just formed last month and has yet to disclose its donors, launched one ad thatcalls out Hunt for not voting for President Donald Trump — a claim Hunt's campaign denies — and voting with U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on an unspecified piece of legislation. Routine bills oftenpass the House with unanimous support. "Washington Wesley is no conservative, he's a backstabbing RINO Texas Conservatives can't trust," the ad states, using an acronym for the insult"Republican in name only."

The March 3 primary has become a tight three-way race, with U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, Paxton and Hunt all vying for the toptwo spots in what most observers believe will end in a runoff. In a statement Thursday, Hunt criticized Cornyn and Paxton for attacking him, saying, "The result will be the same, and it won't work." "They're scared. That's why they're attacking. And that's why we're going to win," he said. The pro-Paxton Lone Star Liberty PAC hasn't started running ads attacking Hunt yet, but on Thursday the group reported buyingmore than $680,000 in advertising opposing Hunt through a Florida consulting firm. "Wesley Hunt has a lot to answer for for his time in Washington, D.C., and we'll be prosecuting that message aggressively from now until election day," said Gregg Keller, a spokesman for the group. The ad by the Conservatives for Texas PAC started running in the Houston area Tuesday, according to the research firm AdImpact. The group reported $2.7 million in advertising buys on Wednesday, setting up for a longer campaign.

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Trump's ICE crackdown will limit Texas job growth in 2026, Dallas Fed says

Texas should see modest employment growth in 2026, according to an annual forecast from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, although President Donald Trump’s ongoing immigration crackdown stifled job growth last year and is likely to remain a constraint. The Dallas Fed’s annual Texas Employment Forecast indicates the state will add about 154,600 jobs over the course of the year, an increase of 1.1%. That comes after employment growth was essentially flat in 2025, when the state added just 10,700 jobs. All told, Texas has about 14.4 million people employed. “The immigration crackdown is really having an effect limiting labor supply,” Pia Orrenius, a labor economist and vice president of the Dallas Fed, said Friday at an economic outlook event where the forecast was released.

The Dallas Fed previously raised this concern in a report in October, which found that the Trump administration’s ramped-up immigration enforcement was making it harder for many Texas businesses to hire or retain foreign-born workers. “It’s almost more the chilling effect, than people actually leaving or being deported,” Orrenius said, adding: “This is actually impacting both unauthorized immigrants and legal immigrants.” Several other factors help explain Texas’s tepid job growth last year, Orrenius said, and remain relevant as 2026 begins. The growth of artificial intelligence helped the state notch healthy productivity gains, for example, but those productivity gains likely suppressed hiring to some extent: “Firms can do more with fewer workers.” Low oil prices may also serve as a drag on growth this year, as they did in 2025. The Greater Houston Partnership said in its own employment forecast, released in December, that it expects the region’s oil and gas sector to shed about 3,200 jobs in 2026 even as it forecasts the region will add about 31,000 jobs overall. Census Bureau data released earlier this month found that state population grew by about 391,000 people in 2025, a decrease of about one-third compared to the prior year. Orrenius said that, based on her own calculations, the state saw a steep drop in the number of domestic and international migrants who moved to Texas last year. She forecasts just 89,000 people will move to the state this year. That would be the slowest population growth Texas has seen in more than a decade and it would be a worrisome development for Texas, Orrenius suggested. The state has long experienced outsized economic growth alongside, and as a result of, outsized population growth.

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K Street: Dems stronger in 2026

Most K Street leaders (90%) said Democrats are in a stronger position than the GOP ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, according to our most recent Canvass survey. Notably, 84% of Republican respondents ranked the Democratic Party in the more favorable position heading into the campaign season.

In their midterm messaging so far, Democrats have focused heavily on health care — including the expiration of premium enhanced ACA subsidies — and affordability. Democratic leaders have also worked to offset key House GOP redistricting gains, although which party comes out with the edge heading into the November midterms remains to be seen. Issues top of mind. More than eight out of 10 respondents said President Donald Trump’s immigration and deportation policies will be a top issue in the midterms. More than two-thirds said Trump’s tariff and trade negotiations will have an impact, while 51% also said mid-decade redistricting outcomes would weigh on the election. Other major events K Street predicts will have an impact in November: the Jeffrey Epstein files (35%); military actions in Venezuela and other foreign nations (24%); and the reconciliation law (23%).

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State Stories

Why San Antonio public schools are closing — and it’s not just enrollment

When she learned her family’s beloved neighborhood school was marked for closure, Shannon Oster-Gabrielson passionately fought to keep it open, then mourned when it closed. Her kids, now 7 and 9, attended Lamar Elementary – a school older than San Antonio Independent School District. It was just a block from their house. They considered it home; the family knew everyone at Lamar. Opened in 1878 and later a fixture in Mahncke Park for a century, Lamar in its final years became a choice school built around an innovative, real-world learning model. But enrollment dwindled to 315 students in 2023. Searching for a way to “rightsize” district resources and address a steady decline in students across SAISD, trustees voted late that year to close Lamar and 14 other schools. The district argued it was a necessary step to make sure students across all campuses had the best resources possible – and students at under-enrolled schools weren’t making do with less.

The decision devastated families who had to find a new place to send their children. “When I talk about it and the impact, I still get very emotional. It feels like you lost a family member. It’s one of the most trusted institutions that you have. When it closes, you lose that,” Oster-Gabrielson said. Experts say students who attend a school that shutters during their K-12 education suffer from lower test scores, spotty attendance and a diminished sense of belonging that sometimes leads to behavior issues on campus. Later on, they’re less likely to finish college and pursue well-paying careers. But school choice advocates argue that a competitive education landscape is the answer to improving student outcomes. Families have more options than ever to educate their students outside the traditional public school system. Charter schools, which began in Texas in the 1990s as a public school alternative to test out innovative learning models, have proliferated since then. The model now ranges from individual charter campuses focused on particular student demographics up to expansive networks with campuses across Texas and other states.

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Flesh-eating parasite sparks disaster declaration in Texas

Texas will not get screwed by the flesh-eating parasite known as the screwworm — with Gov. Greg Abbott declaring a preemptive disaster declaration before the devastating organism even gets to the Lone Star State. The New World Screwworm, a fly which can burrow into and feed on living tissue, has been steadily making its way north from Central and Southern America, officials said. “State law authorizes me to act to prevent a threat of infestation that could cause severe damage to Texas property, and I will not wait for such harm to reach our livestock and wildlife,” Abbott said.

The blowflies primarily affect animals, experts said. And while human cases are rare, they can be terrifying. Doctors ended up surgically removing 100 to 150 screwworms from a cancer patient in Florida last year, after the man apparently contracted the bug during a week-long visit to the Dominican Republic. There were so many larvae, the bugs clogged the hospital’s suction machine, the hospital said. There have been more than a dozen cases of the screwworm in Tamaulipas, Mexico, a town just south of the Texas border, Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller confirmed in January. Miller urged ranchers to remain vigilant. “Now is the time for Texas producers to stay sharp and be prepared… Early detection is our strongest weapon,” he said. Abbott is also ordering state agencies to gear up before the parasite arrives, directing the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the Texas Animal Health Commission to form a joint New World Screwworm Response Team.

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Wildfires ignite across central Texas amid hot, dry conditions

Hot and dry conditions have sparked multiple wildfires across central Texas, with flames erupting from Austin to the Hill Country. The Texas A&M Forest Service attributes the increased wildfire activity to recent short-term drying and warm weather. Reilly Ruggiero, public information officer for the Texas A&M Forest Service, said, "People still do need to be aware during those times." One significant fire ignited near the Gillespie-Blanco County line, expanding to around 70 to 80 acres. Blanco County Emergency Management reported that the fire was 80% contained as of 6 p.m., with no injuries or structural damage. "Whenever we see those higher percentages such as 80-100 percent containment, it doesn't mean that the fire is out," Ruggiero said. "We still can see some smoke or pockets of the interior burning."

In Johnson City, another fire burned 1.5 acres after starting as a structure fire. A third fire occurred in Mustang Ridge. Ruggiero says the warm and dry conditions are to blame. "We had some short-term drying, along side with warm and dry conditions that did support an overall increase of wildfire activity across the state," she said. Both of these fires have been contained. The Texas A&M Forest Service urges residents to remain vigilant and adhere to local burn bans and fire restrictions. "Please follow local burn ban and fire restrictions. And even if we aren't in a burn ban, please be safe," Ruggiero advised. Blanco County Emergency Services confirmed that Gillespie fire resources have left the area, and airdrop operations have concluded, though monitoring continues.

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DHS buys El Paso warehouses for $123 million ICE mega detention center as deportation capacity expands nationwide

The federal government has purchased industrial park warehouses in Far East El Paso County for nearly $123 million to be used as a massive ICE detention center, according to newly filed deeds. The purchase comes as hundreds of residents speak out against the project and city and county leaders question what authority, if any, they have to intervene. A general warranty deed filed with the county this week shows the property transfer from El Paso Logistics II LLC in Delaware to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was executed Jan. 17. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans a 8,500-capacity mega detention facility on the property off Gateway Boulevard East near Clint. The property falls within the boundaries of the city of Socorro.

The property in an industrial zone – Eastwind Logistics Center – comprises three reinforced concrete warehouses of about 296,000 square feet each, with an adjacent plot of land available for expansion, a commercial real estate brochure indicates. The park was previously available for lease, but disappeared off real estate and developer websites the past month. A second deed filed with the county this week sets up long-term drainage and stormwater obligations for the property, with an effective date reversing back to Jan. 1. That includes shared stormwater detention ponds for multiple parcels – including future development. The effective date indicates the infrastructure work likely began before the land sale was complete. The facility falls within the Lower Valley Water District service area, raising questions about the availability of water to the facility housing thousands of people. Officials with the water district didn’t return calls for comment. State Rep. Vincent Perez, D-El Paso, on Friday warned about potential fires at the planned mega center, citing the lack of water pressure and infrastructure as dangerous. He urged El Paso County Emergency Services District No. 2 that serves the area to deny a permit for the center. He noted the 2023 fire at a migrant detention center in Ciudad Juárez that killed 40 detainees and injured 27 others as an example of the potential dangers.

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Dallas Morning News Editorial: We recommend Katherine Culbert in the Texas Railroad Commissioner Republican primary

For too long, the Texas Railroad Commission has been criticized for essentially being in the hands of the oil and gas industry it is supposed to regulate. There are well-documented examples that reveal that the state agency basically operates a rubber-stamp system. This is why it was refreshing that three of the candidates in the Republican primary for Railroad Commissioner were concerned about conflicts of interest at the agency and the need to rebuild trust. From this group, we recommend Katherine Culbert, a process safety engineer, as having the best credentials for this agency and for her commitment to transparency. Culbert, 50, told us she likes to look at things with a preventive eye to make sure workers and communities are protected. Orphan wells are an example of how the agency is not doing enough, she said. “When a plugged well leaks, the Commission needs to take responsibility for the well, no matter the history,” she wrote in the Voter Guide. “It does not benefit Texans to have the Railroad Commission turning away from helping landowners because of an old well that is not on the books.”

Hawk Dunlap and James Matlock, who also interviewed with us, could be part of a much-improved Railroad Commission. Also running are incumbent Jim Wright and Bo French, the former Tarrant County GOP chairman. French is the least qualified and is running to “stop the Islamic invasion.” Dunlap, 55, has vast experience in oil fields all over the world and was concerned that landowners in Texas are forced to hire lawyers to do the job that the Railroad Commission is supposed to do. Matlock, 53, brought very specific examples showing the agency is failing everyday Texans and shared a proposal to change its name to be more descriptive of what it does and to expand its scope to oversee more of Texas’ energy sources. But we have concerns over a Jan. 31 post on X, where he justified the use of deadly force against protesters. Culbert, Dunlap and Matlock told us they are not receiving campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry. According to the Texas Ethics Commission, Dunlap has raised about $65,000 and Culbert roughly $7,000. Matlock told us he is self-financing his campaign. They all pale in comparison to incumbent Jim Wright’s contributions. He reported over $440,000, including contributions linked to the oil industry. Wright did recently recuse himself from a vote related to an oilfield waste company that he had financial ties to. The recusal was so rare it made news. In 2021, Wright reported active interests in 18 companies, according to Commission Shift, a watchdog group. “Recusal needs to be mandatory,” Culbert told us. We agree; the perception of conflict of interest is not a good look for any regulating agency. This is an agency that no longer has credibility and is in serious need of reform. The way it operates is so well-known that it has even become a punchline in Taylor Sheridan’s Paramount+ series Landman.

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Austin American-Statesman Editorial: Sethi's statehouse know-how would benefit Texas House 47

Cash-strapped school districts are shuttering schools. Homeowners’ insurance rates keep jumping by double digits: 21% one year, 19% the next. And West Travis residents are particularly vulnerable to wildfire risks, making amenities like additional fire hydrants essential. Texas House District 47 needs a state rep who knows how to tackle problems within the corridors of the Capitol. In our view, that candidate in the Democratic primary is Pooja Sethi, an attorney who spent the past four and a half years working on this district’s issues as chief of staff for Rep. Vikki Goodwin, who’s now running for lieutenant governor. Sethi impressed us with her targeted, realistic ideas for addressing the state’s “Robin Hood” school finance system.

She suggested capping recapture payments to no more than 30% of a school district’s revenue (Austin ISD currently sends 52% of its local dollars to the state), and reducing recapture payments for districts that lose students to private schools under the state’s new voucher program. “It is unbelievable to me that we're getting penalized twice: We have to pay all this money in recapture as well as lose money in the voucher scam,” she told our Editorial Board. She also sees opportunities to incentivize wildfire mitigation efforts in a way that improves safety while bringing down homeowners’ insurance bills. Sethi faces Joseph Kopser, an energetic tech entrepreneur focused on jobs and healthcare, in the March 3 primary. The winner will face Dr. Jennifer Mushtaler, a Republican, in the November election.

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Three Democrats take on long odds in bid to unseat Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick

Toppling a powerful GOP lieutenant governor after a decade of leadership in a deep-red state is no small task. Three Texas Democrats say it’s time to take a swing at Dan Patrick anyway. First they have to duke it out in the March 3 primary to get a shot – however small – to take him on. State Rep. Vikki Goodwin of Austin, considered the frontrunner, has emphasized her legislative experience, voting record and support of public education. But challengers Marcos Vélez, a Houston labor leader, and political newcomer Courtney Head say three decades of Democratic statewide losses demand a break from the past and a new generation of leadership. Still, the odds remain steep. Upsets happen but incumbents enjoy advantages in name recognition, money and media attention, said Sara Johnson, a political science lecturer at SMU. Even with a message that might resonate with voters, Johnson said, “outsiders face many challenges winning elections.”

Goodwin said her experience helps narrow that gap. ‘‘I’ve built relationships. I like solving problems with public policy. I’ve been able to work on issues that impact all different parts of the state,” she said. The Democrats remain undaunted. All three are centering their campaigns on economic pressures, from health care access to affordability and wages. Vélez, a former refinery worker turned steelworkers union leader, is betting that frustration over wages, affordability and economic insecurity can cut across party lines. He said he sees signs of momentum, citing his Texas AFL-CIO endorsement and last week’s Democratic upset in a Republican-leaning state Senate seat in Tarrant County. Vélez, who had $46,000 in his campaign account as of late January, is pushing priorities such as raising the minimum wage and calling out what he describes as decades of failed policy decisions. “We get really frustrated with the lack of progress in the Texas Legislature,” Vélez, 40, said in an interview with The Dallas Morning News. “Let’s swing for the fences.” He said voters are tired of inaction. Head, a San Antonio resident and head of legal operations and management for an Ohio-based software company, said she hopes to rally first-time voters, students and young adults, pitching innovation, bipartisanship and education affordability. A 35-year-old wife and mother, Head interned for U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro in San Antonio while still in college – a job that taught her how energy and relatability can drive voter engagement.

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Houston Chronicle Editorial: Staci Childs is Democrats' best pick to replace Alma Allen

Most Houstonians have never heard of the State Board of Education, let alone watched one of its meetings, but that’s where the work of writing curriculum standards that affect every public school kid in the state happens. As a member of that board, Staci Childs makes the most of her voice. “I see ancient Israel, I see ancient Greece, ancient Rome, why wasn’t ancient Africa parsed out as a separate topic?” the board member asked earlier this year. “Please, we want to see Black folks represented in different ways outside of being enslaved in the United States.” By the end of the exchange, she got a promise that the curriculum developers will “take a look at that.”

It’s a small glimpse into the ideological battleground that is Texas public education — from vouchers to Bible verses in schools. But the interaction, posted to Childs’ social media, shows what kind of leader she has been and will be. If elected to the Legislature this year, constituents can count on her to be attentive, thoughtful and direct — putting both her background as a teacher and a lawyer to work for constituents. That’s why we’re recommending Childs, 38, for the Democratic primary in House District 131. The seat has been held since 2004 by Alma Allen, a stalwart defender of public education, but she is stepping down. The district includes a narrow band of southwest and south Houston with parts of Alief, Hiram Clarke and Minnetex. Allen’s own son Lawrence Allen Jr., 64 — also a longtime educator and former member of the State Board of Education — is also in the race. He has won his mother's endorsement as well as a handful of others from Democrats in the House. We found him well versed in some issues but were surprised by his lack of insight on the coming property tax relief debate as the Legislature readies a showdown between Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s and Gov. Greg Abbott’s competing proposals.

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Constitutional law expert: Gov. Abbott has law on his side regarding school walkouts

The Texas governor says the Supreme Court supports his stance that the right to free speech is not absolute for students. Gov. Greg Abbott emphasized that students cannot simply walk out of school to attend protests without facing consequences. “The Supreme Court has been very clear about free speech of students,” Abbott said. “And that free speech of students does not include leaving the school.” Both the governor and the Texas Education Agency say students who walk out during school hours to protest will face repercussions, most likely being marked with an unexcused absence. Teachers who encourage walkouts could face even harsher consequences, including the potential loss of their teaching license. School districts are also prohibited from facilitating protests in any way, with the risk of losing funding if they do.

But is all of this legally sound? Would these measures hold up in court? Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law, said there are three layers to consider. “Students have some free speech rights at school but they can’t cause a disruption. I think the entire point of a walkout is to cause a disruption,” Blackman said. He added that teachers “have no obligation, in fact, are not allowed to encourage students to leave school. They can encourage them to protest after school or on a weekend, but not during the school day.” And regarding school districts, which are largely governed by Texas Education Agency, Blackman said they will likely be cautious about imposing punishments or accepting state monitors. It is conceivable that these rules and repercussions could be tested in court in the future. Outcomes could depend on how key terms, such as “facilitating a walkout,” are interpreted.

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Na’Cole Thompson wins race for Leander mayor, making her first city's first Black mayor

Na'Cole Thompson reacted to her victory in the race for mayor of Leander. "I’m really excited to continue serving the city of Leander, and I firmly believe that this win belongs to all of us," Thompson told Community Impact. "We had so many people from different walks of life, different backgrounds, different parts of the city that all came together and showed up to vote, just to show they care about the future of Leander."

Unofficial results show Na’Cole Thompson garnered 57.01% of ballots cast in the race for mayor of Leander with 3372 votes. Challenger Mike Sanders received 25.88% with 1531 votes, and Kathryn Pantalion-Parker received 16.92% with 1001 votes.

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Uvalde CISD superintendent announces resignation from district, will join Pflugerville ISD

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District will be looking for a new leader by the end of the current academic year. In a letter to parents Friday morning, Superintendent Ashley Chohlis announced her resignation. KSAT Investigates obtained a copy of Chohlis’ letter. Her departure will go into effect on April 7, 2026, according to the letter. In her Uvalde CISD announcement, Chohlis said she will be pursuing “new opportunities” outside of the district.

“During my tenure, I have been continually inspired by the dedication and passion of our educators, the curiosity and brilliance of our students, and the unwavering support of the families and school community members who help make Uvalde CISD an exceptional place,” Chohlis said in the letter, in part. “I am profoundly grateful for the opportunities I’ve had to work alongside such remarkable individuals.” According to a Friday news release obtained by KSAT Investigates, Chohlis will become the chief of staff at Pflugerville ISD, an Austin-area school district. “Ashley Chohlis brings exceptional leadership experience, deep operational knowledge, and a strong commitment to people and purpose,” Pflugerville ISD Superintendent Dr. Quintin Shepherd said in the news release. “Her collaborative leadership style and focus on student-centered outcomes will be a tremendous asset as we continue advancing Pflugerville ISD’s strategic priorities.” “Strong leadership empowers educators, supports families, and transforms the student experience,” Chohlis said in the Pflugerville ISD news release. “I am honored to join Pflugerville ISD and look forward to supporting the district’s strategic goals while working alongside staff, families, and community partners to advance student success.”

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National Stories

Seahawks ride their 'Dark Side' defense to a Super Bowl title, pounding the Patriots 29-13

The “Dark Side” defense carried Sam Darnold and the Seattle Seahawks to a Lombardi Trophy. Devon Witherspoon, Derick Hall, Byron Murphy and the rest of Mike Macdonald’s ferocious unit pummeled Drake Maye, and the Seahawks beat the New England Patriots 29-13 on Sunday to win the franchise’s second Super Bowl. “We never waver, man. We believe in each other. We love each other, and now we’re world champions,” Macdonald said. Darnold threw a touchdown pass to AJ Barner, Kenneth Walker III ran for 135 yards and Jason Myers set a Super Bowl record by making all five of his field-goal tries. “To do this with this team, I wouldn’t want it any other way,” Darnold said. “So proud of our guys, our defense. I mean, I can’t say enough great things about our defense, our special teams.”

Walker became the first running back to win the Super Bowl MVP award since Hall of Famer Terrell Davis did it with Denver 28 years ago. Uchenna Nwosu punctuated a punishing defensive performance by snagging Maye’s pass in the air after Witherspoon hit his arm and running it back 45 yards for a pick-6. Related Stories Pro Picks: Patriots will top the Broncos and Rams will edge the Seahawks to reach the Super Bowl Patriots-Seahawks Super Bowl is not so much of a rematch as it is a matchup of contrasts Sam Darnold has overcome doubters, Drake Maye has lived up to hype. Only one will win Super Bowl 60 “We went through a lot, but we believed,” Witherspoon said. “All of you all doubters out there who said all that other stuff, you all don’t know what’s going on in this building. We’re one of one over here.” Seattle won its first Super Bowl a dozen years ago behind its “Legion of Boom” defense, then was denied a repeat when New England’s Malcolm Butler intercepted Russell Wilson at the goal line. The Seahawks hadn’t been back to the Super Bowl since.

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Turning Point USA’s All-American Halftime Show draws 6.1M concurrent viewers on YouTube

Streamed opposite Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance, Turning Point USA’s “All-American Halftime Show” featuring Kid Rock drew as many as 6.1 million concurrent viewers on its YouTube channel Sunday night. The show, which started after the conclusion of the first half of the Super Bowl, began with a message in support of late conservative pundit Charlie Kirk. “This one is for you, Charlie,” a spokesman said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made a video appearance on the YouTube livestream before the concert commenced, and the stream included a pro-adoption advertisement funded by “Adoption is an option.” But the show, which also saw performances from country singers Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice and Gabby Barrett, was mostly devoid of political messaging. “From the War Department, we salute Turning Point USA and everyone who believes freedom is still worth the fight,” Hegseth said in the video. “Thank you for your courage as an organization, your clarity and leadership, and for this halftime show the war department is proud to support.” While Turning Point USA drew over 6 million concurrent views on YouTube, the television audience for the Bad Bunny halftime show was expected to be much larger. Last year, Kendrick Lamar’s halftime concert drew 133.5 million views, the most for any Super Bowl halftime show. Messages in opposition to the stream appeared at times in the YouTube comments, including some writing “ICE Out.” Other users expressed their support.

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Bad Bunny brought Puerto Rico's history and culture to a revolutionary Super Bowl show

The sun hung low when Bad Bunny emerged in Puerto Rico’s sugar cane fields during his halftime show, surrounded by jíbaros in pavas (rural farmers in traditional straw hats), viejitos playing dominos (an affectionate term for older men) and a piragua stand (shaved ice) — undeniable symbols of Puerto Rico. From a small Caribbean island with a complicated colonial history, to the world: The artist born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio brought Puerto Rican culture to the Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, for his 2026 Super Bowl halftime show in what was always going to be a landmark moment for Latinos. He started with his huge reggaeton-and-then-some hits, “Tití Me Preguntó” moving into “Yo Perreo Sola,” as he remerged on top of the casita (“little house”) from his Puerto Rican residency — Cardi B, Jessica Alba, Pedro Pascal, Karol G, Young Miko, Ronald Acuña Jr., Alix Earle and Dave Grutman were guests at his pari de marquesina (“house party.”)

Then he crashed through the roof — Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina” played for a moment, clearly an acknowledgement and celebration of the Puerto Rican artists who laid the path for his career to go global. “Mi nombre es Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio,” he introduced himself to the crowd in Spanish. “Y si hoy estoy aquí en el Super Bowl 60, es porque nunca, nunca dejé de creer en mí y tú también deberías de creer en ti, vales más de lo que piensas.” In English: “My name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, and if I’m here today at Super Bowl 60 it’s because I never, ever stopped believing in myself and you should also believe in yourself, you’re worth more than you think.” The strings of his song “Monaco” played — then, a surprise Lady Gaga emerged at a real wedding scene, singing her portion of the Bruno Mars-duet “Die with a Smile,” joined by the salsa band Los Sobrinos. Her dress featured a maga, Puerto Rico’s national flower. As they performed, the couple was married and Benito served as their witness and signed their certificate.

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Republicans want nothing to do with conservative efforts to ban gay marriage

In late January, a number of prominent conservative advocates launched a campaign with the explicit goal of organizing to overturn the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage in 2015. Elected Republicans want nothing to do with it. “If government is going to be in the marriage business, it cannot discriminate based upon any of the protected classes, including sexual orientation,” Rep. Nick LaLota of New York told NOTUS. “I don’t think it’s a viable effort, legally, politically or otherwise, to try to overturn that decision.” The “Greater Than” campaign is an attempt to garner support — both popular and political — to overturn the Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which declared that state bans on gay marriage were unconstitutional.

In a video announcing its launch, Katy Faust, founder and president of the conservative group Them Before Us, said that “when you redefine marriage, you redefine parenthood. When you make mothers and fathers optional in parenthood law, children are harmed.” “Children are greater than equal,” conservative activists, taking turns, said in the video. The Republican Party has been toning down its opposition to gay marriage in recent years. For decades, the party’s official platform declared that marriage was a union exclusively between a man and a woman. In 2016, a year after Obergefell was decided, the party added a clause explicitly condemning the ruling. But in 2024, under the direction of Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate at the time, the language around “natural marriage” was removed, and the platform was changed to say that “Republicans will promote a Culture that values the Sanctity of Marriage.” Polling also shows that most Americans overwhelmingly support keeping gay marriage legal. A May 2025 Gallup survey found that 68% of Americans believe that same-sex marriages should be considered valid under law. While current support is high, the most recent number is a decline from the 71% record high reached in 2023.

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The sordid story of Trump, the Trump–Witkoff family business, and the UAE

In autumn 2024, when it had become clear that he’d likely win back the White House in about six weeks, Donald Trump and his friend Steve Witkoff founded a crypto business called World Liberty Financial (WLF). WLF was (and remains) an ideal vehicle for leveraging political power in search of financial gain. Crypto is shrouded in mystery and intrigue. The public generally doesn’t understand it. The Federal Reserve says just 2 percent of Americans used crypto to pay for something in 2024. The “value” that investors promote and customers purchase is vague. Hence, a crypto business — whether in tokens, currency, or other iterations — is an ideal way to disguise political payoffs as financial transactions. And, because they have sons who do not hold government positions and could ostensibly run the crypto business, President Trump and his Middle East envoy, Witkoff, would be poised to claim that WLF is a private enterprise, walled off from Trump’s political influence — even though that influence was the magnet for foreign investment and consumer purchases.

Reportedly, and predictably, a Chinese-born Canadian billionaire felon named Changpeng Zhao, who ran a corrupt international cryptocurrency exchange called Binance and was desperately seeking a presidential pardon, contributed invaluable technical expertise for building WLF’s infrastructure. So did Zhao’s close associate, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al Nahyan, the top intelligence operative and the second-highest-ranking royal family member of the United Arab Emirates, a tiny, rich Gulf monarchy. The UAE had big ambitions to become an AI powerhouse but had been blocked by Washington from access to cutting-edge American chip technology because of its extensive ties to the Chinese Communist Party. The UAE also wanted a pardon for Zhao, who lives in Dubai and could move Binance to Abu Dhabi if regulatory complications from his felony convictions were removed. Four days before Trump was inaugurated in January 2025, the UAE began pouring what is now publicly known to be at least $2.5 billion into the Trump crypto enterprise. Before Trump’s first year in office was over, Zhao had his pardon. And the UAE had its chips, in addition to being feted at the White House, inflated into a nation of real consequence in Middle East geopolitics, included in the Trump administration’s Stargate project to build global artificial intelligence and super-computing capacity, and given an ownership slice of TikTok when the president — after a year of flouting a congressional statute mandating divestiture of China’s stake — cut a deal to preserve the platform’s operation in the U.S. Before we get into the gory details, it’s worth observing that, at National Review, we extensively covered the Biden family business of corruptly profiteering off Joe Biden’s political power and influence. So did congressional Republicans. Indeed, three investigative committees, led by Representative James Comer (R., Ky.), who is still the Oversight chairman, spent hundreds of hours gathering evidence, interviewing witnesses, and threatening to hold President Biden’s son, Hunter, in contempt.

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HUD headquarters move draws legal, funding scrutiny

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has started its long-awaited, multistage relocation of Washington-based staff to Alexandria, Virginia, even as questions swirl over the move’s legality, cost and congressional oversight. The union representing HUD employees argues the department is violating federal law that requires the agency to maintain its headquarters in the District of Columbia, absent explicit approval from Congress. Lawmakers, meanwhile, have been waiting since June — when HUD announced plans to relocate to the previous National Science Foundation building in Virginia — for basic information about the budget and decision-making behind moving approximately 3,000 federal employees.

“We need more transparency and more insight into their plans when it’s possible to ask questions and make changes, not just be presented after the fact with what they’ve decided to do,” Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Development committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in an interview. “These guys may think they’re being very clever by hiding information from us, but in the long run, they’re just hiding it from the American people,” HUD has defended its accelerated relocation plans as important to save taxpayer dollars and protect the well-being of employees, but critics say the administration’s efforts to push the move forward with limited congressional input reflects a broader White House pattern of sidelining the legislative branch. “It shows the same kind of contempt for Congress and congressional oversight as pretty much every other part of the Trump administration demonstrates,” Warren said. In response to questions for this story, a HUD spokesperson said the department “is complying with all applicable laws and regulations related to the move to Alexandria, including providing required information to Congressional appropriations staff.”

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Demanding support for Trump, Justice Dept. struggles to recruit prosecutors

Chad Mizelle, a former chief of staff to Attorney General Pam Bondi, hung an online help wanted sign for federal prosecutors last weekend that perhaps explained why so many valuable Justice Department staff members have left, and why so few candidates want in. Assistant U.S. attorneys are not typically recruited, as Mr. Mizelle sought to do, by a former federal employee who asks potential candidates to send a private message to his X account. Nor have they been asked in the past to prove political or ideological fealty. “If you are a lawyer, are interested in being an AUSA, and support President Trump and anti-crime agenda, DM me,” wrote Mr. Mizelle, a fierce Trump supporter who remains close with Justice Department leaders and senior officials in the West Wing. Mr. Mizelle was acting as a private citizen expressing his own views. But the post reflected the prevailing sentiment inside the department — that Mr. Trump has the right to hire only those willing to execute his agenda. It also highlighted the dynamic that appears to be contributing to the very staffing shortages Mr. Mizelle tried to address.

The intermingling of law enforcement and political goals has made the department, long a magnet for platinum legal talent, an unappealing landing spot, according to current and former officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. The number of applications is down significantly from previous years, officials said, even as Trump loyalists have publicized vacancies through official and unconventional channels. Some of those applying are generally not as qualified as those who sought the position in the recent past, they added. A Justice Department spokesman did not respond to specific questions, but said all of the department’s actions reflected Ms. Bondi’s February 2025 memo requiring all employees to “zealously advance, protect and defend” the interests of Mr. Trump in his role as the nation’s chief executive. The White House has exercised extraordinary control over the Justice Department, with prosecutors pressured to investigate and prosecute the president’s enemies, all in the name of reversing purported politicization under Democrats.

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Lead Stories

Democrats confront the party’s questionnaire-industrial complex

A group of moderate Democrats is kicking off the midterm season by targeting one of the mightiest, if least-known, forces in their party: the interest group questionnaire-industrial complex. Rohan Patel and Seth London, who oversee Majority Democrats — a group of young Democrats that have won competitive races — want their candidates to know they shouldn’t feel obliged to complete the often-expansive advocacy group forms. They’re also telling these organizations’ donors to think twice about contributing and urging the groups to heal thyselves by overhauling or mothballing the documents, which are typically used to determine endorsements. “These questionnaires, and more broadly the interest groups, are hurting our chances of winning,” Patel told me. “They all have their own niche questionnaires, some of which are so broad as to be almost absurd, 20 to 30 pages of questions that don’t always have anything to do with their actual issue focus.”

While long a staple of campaigns up and down the ballot, and a bane for many a candidate and staffer, the liberal litmus tests are little-known by the broader voting public. That began to change, though, in 2024 when Kamala Harris was hammered by Republicans for saying she supported taxpayer-funded trans surgery for prisoners. Harris made that pledge in the 2020 campaign, and it stemmed from an ACLU candidate questionnaire she filled out, in which she vowed to use executive authority to ensure transgender people, including those in prisons or immigration detention, would be granted “comprehensive treatment associated with gender transition.” It was, Patel said of the ACLU form, “one of about 20 questions that were absolutely deranged.” Harris has been blistered for her answer, but what about the groups asking the questions in the first place, he asked. Trans surgery for prisoners was no aberration. As Patel and London will post on a site they’re calling “The Questionable,” other groups have asked candidates to commit to federally mandated 32-hour workweeks, halting the expansion of all fossil fuel projects and signing broadly-worded pledges on criminal justice that Republicans happily portray as defunding the police.

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Following Talarico appearance, FCC launching probe into ABC's 'The View' amid crackdown on equal time for candidates

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is launching an investigation into ABC's "The View" amid the agency's crackdown on equal time for political candidates, Fox News Digital has learned. Last month, the FCC announced it will require the broadcast networks to adhere to the "statutory equal opportunities requirement," citing the Communications Act of 1934, "including their airing of late-night and daytime talk shows." A source at the FCC told Fox News Digital that Monday's "View" appearance by Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico triggered the probe. Talarico was among the first political candidates to appear on "The View" since the FCC announced its crackdown.

There has been a longstanding "bona fide" exception for news programming that wouldn't require equal time for an opposing candidate, but the FCC now says it "has not been presented with any evidence that the interview portion of any late-night or daytime television talk show program on the air presently would qualify for the 'bona fide' news exemption." ABC's parent company, Disney, never made an equal-time filing to the FCC regarding Talarico's recent appearance, which would implicitly indicate to the FCC that Disney believes "The View" is bona fide news and would be exempt from the policy, the source said. The equal opportunity requirement applies to all legally filed candidates on a ballot regardless of political party, meaning all eligible Democratic primary candidates would require equal time. Notably, Talarico received roughly nine minutes of airtime in one segment while his top primary rival, Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, had roughly 17 minutes of airtime across three segments during her appearance on "The View" last month. Crockett's appearance came before the FCC announced its policy enforcement.

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Texas’ troubled election software and new congressional maps delay voter registration cards

Texas' unusual mid-decade redistricting and problems with the state's new voter registration system have delayed the mailing of voter registration certificates, the documents that give voters information about their polling place and their assigned districts, state and local officials say. Under state law, the certificates should have been issued by Dec. 6, though there's no penalty for a late mailing. With early voting for the March 3 primaries set to begin Feb. 17, the delay has confused some voters who were expecting to have received the certificates by now, and multiple election officials said they have been fielding calls and questions about the missing certificates for weeks. The certificates are small postcards that counties send to registered voters every two years, listing the voter's local voting precinct, their congressional, state Senate and House districts, county precincts, and city and school districts.

Voters don't need the cards to vote, but election officials say the cards can serve as an additional form of ID and help voters identify their new congressional or legislative district if it has changed. They also help election officials conduct voter list maintenance: When a card is returned as undeliverable, it signals that the voter may have moved. Most of the state's 254 counties rely on the Secretary of State's free election and voter registration management system, called TEAM, to produce the certificates. Local election officials have for months complained that they are struggling with the system, which was overhauled in July, and several election officials said that is contributing to the delay. State election officials said they also didn't anticipate the system needing to handle the unexpected midcycle redistricting lawmakers undertook last year, and the redrawn boundaries are creating additional complications. Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State's Office, said the state is still working with "several counties" to upload redistricting data, including Harris and Tarrant counties, which could not begin the process until they completed special runoff elections Jan. 31. The system has lagged in producing reports containing large amounts of data and images that county officials need to print the certificates. Those reports are reviewed by both state and local election administrators to ensure voters' information, including street addresses, cities, precincts, and districts, is accurate.

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Washington Post publisher Will Lewis abruptly steps down, days after massive layoffs gut the newspaper

The Washington Post’s publisher and CEO Will Lewis has abruptly stepped down, just days after the newspaper laid off one-third of its staff, including at least 300 journalists in the newsroom. Post journalists, who believed Lewis had failed to turn around the publication’s fortunes, openly celebrated the news. “After two years of transformation at The Washington Post, now is the right time for me to step aside,” Lewis wrote Saturday in a brief note to staff. “I want to thank Jeff Bezos for his support and leadership throughout my tenure as CEO and Publisher. The institution could not have a better owner.”

“During my tenure, difficult decisions have been taken in order to ensure the sustainable future of The Post so it can for many years ahead publish high-quality nonpartisan news to millions of customers each day,” Lewis’ note concluded. The Post said that CFO Jeff D’Onofrio, the former CEO of Tumblr who joined the Post in June, will take over as acting publisher and CEO, “effective immediately.” D’Onofrio wrote in a Saturday memo to staff that he is “honored to take the helm as acting Publisher and CEO to lead us into a sustainable, successful future with the strength of our journalism as our north star.” “The Post has an essential journalistic mission and an extraordinary opportunity,” Bezos, the paper’s owner, said in a statement — his first since the layoffs. “Each and every day our readers give us a roadmap to success. The data tells us what is valuable and where to focus.”

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Republicans rarely criticize Trump in his second term. A racist post briefly changed that

President Donald Trump received rare blowback from Republican lawmakers over a video posted to social media that included a racist image of former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, depicted as primates. Since Trump’s return to the White House, Republican lawmakers have treaded carefully when disagreeing with the president, often communicating their concerns in private for fear of suffering his wrath. But the swift calls to remove the post, which also echoed false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, represented a rare moment of bipartisan backlash to Trump’s actions from lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Multiple GOP members of the Senate and House joined their Democratic colleagues in voicing disgust and criticism at the post and urged the president to remove it. Trump declined to apologize, saying he did not see the racist portion of the video when he passed it on to staff.

South Carolina’s Tim Scott, the only Black Republican senator and chair of the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, criticized the image and urged the president to remove it. “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it,” Scott wrote on social media. Other Republican senators echoed the sentiment. “Even if this was a Lion King meme, a reasonable person sees the racist context to this,” Sen. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, wrote on social media. “The White House should do what anyone does when they make a mistake: remove this and apologize.” Sen. Susan Collins of Maine called the image “appalling.” Roger Wicker, the senior senator from Mississippi, denounced it as “totally unacceptable.” “The president should take it down and apologize,” Wicker wrote. Sen. John Curtis of Utah called Trump’s post “blatantly racist and inexcusable. It should never have been posted or left published for so long.” In the House, Rep. Mike Lawler of New York called Trump’s post “wrong and incredibly offensive—whether intentional or a mistake—and should be deleted immediately with an apology offered.” Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, a frequent Trump critic, quipped on social media about the White House’s shifting explanations for the video’s origin and deletion.

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State Stories

Austin officials correct campaign donation cap after providing incorrect information

Individual donors to Austin City Council candidates may contribute up to $500 per election, not $450 as previously stated by city officials, a city spokesperson confirmed. The clarification follows recent reporting that raised questions about whether Council Member Paige Ellis had accepted campaign contributions exceeding the city’s individual contribution limit. At the time, both Ellis and the city told the American-Statesman the limit was $450. City spokesperson Jenny LaCoste-Caputo also provided a statement on Jan. 29 that suggested Ellis’ contributions could be a violation of city rules, saying that if a finance report listed an amount "above $450 with only one name, that would be an issue for the city’s Ethics Review Commission to review."

The next day, the American-Statesman noticed the city’s elections webpage had been updated with a higher individual donation cap of $500. Asked about the change, LaCoste-Caputo confirmed that officials had provided incorrect information and that $500 is the current limit. Another city spokesperson, Jessica King, said city communications officials mistakenly provided outdated information because the staff who were familiar with the current limit were at a court hearing in a lawsuit related to an effort to thwart the ongoing convention center expansion. However, those staff confirmed the $450 limit to the Statesman, which was present at the hearing.. King added that the webpage updates to reflect the actual limit were not related to the Statesman’s reporting. Ellis said via text message Friday that she was unaware of the new contribution limit. “I had not heard it changed,” she wrote.

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Texas National Guard silences troops posted at ICE facility near S.A.

In advance of a planned visit by members of Congress, Texas National Guard troops stationed in an ICE facility in South Texas have been ordered not to answer questions from elected officials or the media about their activities. The San Antonio Express-News viewed an image of the written order from the Texas Military Department, which oversees the National Guard. The order bars guard personnel from speaking publicly about their mission in support of ICE and says “all media inquiries, Congressional inquiries and internal inquiries regarding this operation” must be referred to the guard’s public affairs office. It also instructs guard members to avoid “speculation or discussion of the mission with unauthorized individuals.” U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Democrat from San Antonio, is scheduled to visit the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall on Friday, along with Rep. Maxine Dexter, an Oregon Democrat. The facility is in Frio County, 55 miles southwest of San Antonio.

Asked about the order silencing the guard troops, Castro said he suspected it came down after the Express-News, quoting the congressman, reported on Wednesday that Texas guard members in civilian clothes were “embedded” in ICE facilities to support the Trump administration's campaign to detain and deport immigrants. Responding to inquiries from the paper, the guard and Gov. Greg Abbott’s office confirmed Castro’s assertion in general terms but provided few details, saying only that troops were performing administrative and logistical functions. Castro said Thursday that he wants to talk to guard soldiers at the Pearsall facility about what they are doing there. In a letter to Todd M. Lyons, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Castro asked for "the opportunity to speak directly with the Texas National Guard personnel currently stationed or performing duties within the facility.

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‘A disaster waiting to happen’: How the fracking boom put an oil field in the Guadalupe River floodplain

More than 500 enormous oil tanks dot the floodplains of the Guadalupe River and its tributaries where they cross one of Texas’ leading oilfields, an Inside Climate News investigation has found, posing risk of an environmental disaster. Longtime residents of these historic ranchlands still remember the last time these plains filled up with water in a biblical inundation in 1998. That was before the fracking boom hit this region and the oil-rich geological formation that lies beneath it, known as the Eagle Ford Shale. Today, a repeat of the historic flood could wreak havoc, locals worry. “There’s a whole lot of tanks full of oil that are going to float away,” said Sara Dubose, a fifth-generation landowner in Gonzales County with 10 tanks in the floodplain on her family’s ranchlands, each holding up to 21,000 gallons of oil or toxic wastewater. “Spill all over our land and ruin it for 100 years.”

Almost 20 feet of water could submerge some of the tanks on the Dubose family’s land in an event similar to 1998, according to an Inside Climate News analysis of data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Inside Climate News scoured satellite imagery on Google Maps to identify batteries of oil tanks and other oilfield infrastructure near waterways of the Guadalupe River Basin where it crosses the Eagle Ford Shale. We then took the latitude and longitude coordinates of each tank battery and used FEMA’s flood mapping data to extract the agency’s estimates for the depths of its benchmark flood scenarios at these locations. In some areas, the 1998 flood exceeded the worst-case scenario considered by disaster planners. FEMA calls this the “500-year flood,” a hypothetical event the agency estimates has a 0.2 percent chance of happening in any year. Today, a 500-year flood across this entire area would cover at least 22 tank batteries containing 144 individual oil and wastewater tanks with 10 or more feet of water, ICN’s analysis found. Of those, 12 tanks would sit beneath at least 20 feet of water. FEMA’s estimates for a 500-year flood understate present risk in many locations, research shows, as warming air and oceans continue to fuel an intensification of extreme rainfall. Dubose experienced the 1998 flood, when the Guadalupe River sprang from its banks and filled the shallow valleys here at the edge of the coastal plains.

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Dirk Nowitzki seems ready to move on, embrace future after Mavs’ trade of Anthony Davis

The Dallas Mavericks took another huge step forward in moving on from the Luka Doncic trade this week by shipping out Anthony Davis and looking toward the future. The greatest player in the history of their franchise seems to agree with their line of thinking. Dirk Nowitzki, while on the job Saturday for Prime TV in his studio analyst role, discussed the Mavericks’ trade of Davis from the perspective of a fan hoping to move forward and embrace the future of the franchise around rookie Cooper Flagg.

“I’ll tell you one thing, I think Mavs fans are happy with this,” Nowitzki said on Saturday. “I think they didn’t want to be reminded of what happened a year ago in the Luka trade. So to me, looking at this deal at first glance there’s not a lot that came back, picks or player-wise. This is all really about financial flexibility for the future.” The Mavericks have, of course, dismissed the primary architect of last season’s Doncic deal, as they fired Nico Harrison in early November. Ultimately, though, it sounds like Nowitzki agrees that the time was right to pull the plug on the Davis experiment as well and instead “go young.” “I’m a little disappointed, I think when AD actually played with Cooper, they played off each other really, really well,” Nowitzki admitted. “But we’ll never know. What this ultimately is now is build around Cooper, go young. See what the next year brings with the draft this summer. Ultimately now, they’re all in on Cooper Flagg and his future.” Dirk might’ve even thrown a bit of a not-so-subtle dig at Harrison, as after some teasing from his co-hosts Steve Nash and Blake Griffin about the Mavericks landing Flagg on a 1.8% chance, Nowitzki replied: “That was the vision.”

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San Antonio Mayor Jones could face censure vote for allegedly yelling at council member

City Council members are mulling over whether to reprimand Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones after she allegedly yelled and cursed at Councilwoman Sukh Kaur when the two stepped away from Thursday’s City Council meeting, according to three City Hall insiders familiar with the situation. The incident was the last straw for some members who have grown tired of Jones’ confrontational behavior with council members who have sided against her on high-profile votes, a source said. Jones got into an argument with Kaur in a private area in the Municipal Plaza Building that’s reserved for city staff, according to multiple City Hall sources who requested anonymity because they feared retribution for publicly discussing the matter. The area is adjacent to City Council Chambers, where the council meeting was underway.

Council was slated to vote on whether to allow the Bonham Exchange to remain open after the historic gay nightclub blew past an Oct. 1, 2023, deadline to install legally required fire sprinklers. Kaur was pushing for a resolution that would have given the Bonham Exchange until Feb. 1, 2027, to install sprinklers without having to cut its occupancy in half, as the San Antonio Fire Department had urged for months. Joan Duckworth, the club’s general manager and co-owner, said that limiting capacity to fewer than 300 people would make it impossible to keep the venue in business. Jones disagreed with the resolution that Kaur forced onto the meeting agenda with the support of Council members Teri Castillo and Jalen McKee-Rodriguez. The mayor brokered a last-minute deal to get Duckworth to comply with the city’s demands, rendering the three council members’ resolution moot. Jones publicly committed Thursday to helping the club raise the $550,000 it needs to cover the costs of installing automatic fire sprinklers throughout the three-story venue. The city and the Bonham Exchange finalized a compliance agreement on Friday. The deal allows the club to continue operating, but with an occupancy limit of fewer than 300 people, among other safety precautions. Before taking up the Bonham Exchange issue during Thursday’s meeting, the mayor and City Council’s 10 members went into a closed-door executive session to discuss it. There, Kaur talked about her encounter with Jones, and Castillo asked City Attorney Andy Segovia about the possibility of calling a censure vote against the mayor, a source said.

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Austin ISD updates protest protocols for staff, campus police as walkouts continue

The Austin Independent School District is updating its protocols for how campus police officers will monitor student walkouts. The district is just one of several across Central Texas that have seen an increase in walkouts over the past two weeks, as students protest immigration enforcement actions taken by the Trump administration. AISD’s response to the protests has received scrutiny from Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, both of whom have launched investigations into how the district responded. In a letter to parents Friday evening, Superintendent Matias Segura said AISD will implement new protest protocols beginning Monday. If walkouts remain on campus and are within 300 feet of a school building, the students will be monitored by administrators and AISD police officers.

If the protest moves more than 300 feet away from the building, administrators and staff will stay on campus, while police will follow the students to monitor safety. Once students leave campus, local law enforcement will monitor them, rather than AISD police, Segura said. Segura also reiterated several policies to ensure AISD employees remain “in alignment” with guidelines released earlier this week by the Texas Education Agency, including a reminder that school staff are not allowed to participate in, help plan, provide guidance or endorse walkouts, unless directed to do so for safety and monitoring purposes only. Teachers are also directed to remain in the classroom with any students who do not participate in the walkout. “State law requires educators to support student learning in ways that are objective and free from political bias,” a TEA spokesperon told KXAN earlier this week. “Schools also have an obligation to ensure students are safe and attend school, with consequences for students for unexcused absences.” “TEA takes allegations that schools have violated these requirements seriously and is investigating these complaints thoroughly. If violations of law are found, the agency will take appropriate action to ensure that state law is upheld,” the spokesperson said.

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Redrawn TX-35 sets stage for high-stakes Democratic primary

For more than a decade, Texas’ 35th Congressional District was easy to describe. It ran like a political spine between Austin and San Antonio, linking two liberal urban centers through a corridor of heavily Latino and working-class neighborhoods. It reliably sent a Democrat to Washington. In 2026, the district barely resembles that version of itself. After Republican lawmakers unveiled new congressional maps in 2025, TX-35 was carved away from Austin almost entirely and reshaped into a district anchored in Southeast Bexar County and extending through Guadalupe, Wilson, and Karnes counties, along with smaller portions of surrounding rural areas. Analysts now rate the seat as Republican-leaning, a dramatic shift for a district that had long been considered safely blue. The map’s political impact has been matched by legal chaos.

In November, a three-judge federal panel in El Paso blocked Texas from using the 2025 congressional map for the 2026 cycle, finding that the new lines amounted to unlawful racial gerrymandering and ordering the state to use its 2021 map instead. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton quickly appealed, and in early December, the U.S. Supreme Court granted Texas a stay, effectively allowing the new map to be used while the case continues, leaving campaigns and election officials to plan around a district map that remains under active litigation. Nowhere is that shift more evident than in TX-35. Under previous maps, TX-35 consistently elected Democrats by comfortable margins, powered largely by voters in East and South Austin and central San Antonio. That coalition sent progressive Democrat Greg Casar to Congress in 2022. Casar no longer lives in the newly drawn district and is now running in Texas’ 37th Congressional District, a newly configured Austin-based seat that remains solidly Democratic, which Rep. Lloyd Doggett currently holds. Casar’s departure leaves TX-35 open for the first time in years and strips the district of its most visible progressive anchor. Under the new lines, TX-35 is rated R+4 by the Cook Political Report, meaning Republicans hold a four-point structural advantage based on past election results and partisan composition. That shift has transformed what was once a safe Democratic seat into a battleground and given Republicans their best chance in years to flip it.

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Junior grand champion steer fetches record-breaking $550K at Fort Worth Stock Show

On Saturday, Feb. 7, a Hood County teen’s life was forever changed after his beloved steer White Castle was sold for $550,000 to the Azle-based company Trico Electric at the Fort Worth Stock Show Junior Stock Show Sale of Champions. Caiman Cody, a 13-year-old from Tolar, Texas, was awarded the grand championship title on Friday after spending the past year caring for the white European crossbreed steer. Wearing his bright purple Tolar Rattlers shirt, Cody walked White Castle into the auction ring to raucous applause before the bidding began. The bidding started at $25,000 and blew past last year’s purchase of $375,000 in less than three minutes before settling at that record-breaking $550,000.

After the auction, the visibly shocked Cody family spoke to reporters alongside the buyers from Trico Electric in a closed-off media room as the auctioneer bellowed outside. “I’m just so thankful for these two nice men who donated so much money,” Caiman said. Caiman’s mom Kasey said that the prize money will transform their family’s farming operation. “My husband is a fourth-generation cattlemen...not only will we be able to grow our operation, we’ll be able to help more families,” Kasey said. “This is what we do, we live and breathe it every single day. To see that pay off in this scope is incredible.” What’s next for young Caiman, who now has such a large sum of money before he can drive a car? “Well, I want to go to college one day, and I’d also like to be on the Texas Junior Ambassador board so I can help educate more kids about agriculture and help teach people,” Caiman said. “I love teaching people about stuff they don’t know.” Caiman isn’t quite sure where he wants to go to school — he’s only in eighth grade, after all — but he knows that he wants to stay in agriculture.

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Fort Worth ISD’s final appeal of TEA state takeover denied by judges

The Texas Education Agency is cleared to move forward with a state takeover of the Fort Worth Independent School District, according to a ruling by three state administrative law judges. Fort Worth ISD lost its appeal in the case in which it challenged TEA’s takeover decision. In an order issued Thursday, the administrative law court granted TEA’s request to dismiss the case. The administrative judges’ order is final and can’t be appealed, according to state law, meaning the TEA will move forward with appointing a board of managers to replace the elected school board. The court reviewed pleadings and evidence submitted from both the district and state education officials on the issue and determined there were no factual disputes that would justify overriding the TEA’s plans. A formal decision and order with the judges’ analysis will be issued within 30 days.

Fort Worth ISD Superintendent Karen Molinar said in a statement Friday that the district will continue staying focused on students while the final order is forthcoming. “This action does not change our focus. Our team remains fully engaged in the day-to-day work of serving nearly 70,000 students, and we will continue working collaboratively with the Texas Education Agency while keeping student success at the center of every decision,” Molinar said. “Fort Worth ISD remains committed to serving students by strengthening classroom instruction, supporting educators, and ensuring safe, stable learning environments across the district.” A TEA spokesperson said on Friday that the search process for a board of managers and superintendent remains ongoing. Fort Worth ISD Board of Trustees President Roxanne Martinez said in a statement that the court’s action “is deeply disappointing” and “disregards the meaningful progress taking place in Fort Worth ISD.” She echoed Molinar’s sentiments, saying the board is dedicated to the success and support of all students.

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Texas AG opens probe into Houston anti-fascist group accused of 'doxing' neo-Nazis

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Friday he's taking "legal action" against a Houston-area anti-fascist group that's posted personal information of alleged neo-Nazis and members of other far-right movements online. Paxton accused the Screwston Anti-Fascist Committee, an "Antifa-affiliated" nonprofit, of potentially violating state law by aiding in the commission of terrorism and "doxing," or publishing a person's private information online with malicious intent. The attorney general issued a legal demand for records and documents to identify any potential violations of law. “Radical leftists have engaged in coordinated efforts to militantly attack our nation and undermine the rule of law," Paxton said in the release. "Screwston and related groups have illegally doxed Texans and encouraged violent terrorism against fellow citizens. These deranged traitors will face the full force of law. No stone will be left unturned, and no tool will be left unused.”

KERA News reached out to the AG's office and the Screwston Anti-Fascist Committee for comment and will update this story with any response. According to the "About" section of the group's blog, the committee was formed in 2016 and is dedicated to "building resistance to fascism and the far-right in Houston, Texas." The committee dedicates a section of its blog to highlighting "local fascists," generally people associated with far-right and neo-Nazi groups in Texas. The blog links to separate sites that list the personal information of those individuals, including their full name, date of birth, address and vehicle information. Among the groups referenced on their site is Patriot Front, which the George Washington University Program on Extremism describes as a white nationalist and fascist organization founded in the wake of the 2017 Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally. Photos on the site show people in Nazi-associated tattoos and iconography. The Screwston committee also sells merchandise with messages like "Antifa Zone, refugees welcome" and "Make Racists Afraid."

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Defamation lawsuit against former Gateway Church elders will continue, judge says

A Dallas judge denied requests from two former Gateway Church elders asking to be dismissed from a defamation lawsuit filed by the woman who was sexually abused by founding pastor Robert Morris. During a court hearing Friday, Judge Emily Tobolowsky immediately denied the motion after arguments by the attorney for elders Kevin Grove and Steve Dulin and an attorney for Cindy Clemishire. Clemishire declined to comment after Friday’s hearing. In June 2024, Clemishire accused Morris of sexually abusing her when she was 12 years old and he was 22 during the 1980s. She said the abuse lasted for more than four years.

Morris pleaded guilty to five counts of lewd or indecent acts to a child in October and was sentenced to 10 years at Osage County Jail in Oklahoma, where the abuse took place. He’s serving six months of that time, will pay out $270,000 to Clemishire and register as a lifetime sex offender. Gateway parted ways with Dulin a month after the accusations from Clemishire. Grove was one of four elders removed following a four-month internal probe into the Southlake megachurch that revealed they knew about the abuse. Last June, Clemishire and her father sued Gateway, its elders, Morris, his wife, and his charity group over statements elders made about the abuse, allegedly covering it up for years and financially benefiting from it. Elders released a statement on June 14, 2024, acknowledging Morris’ sexual abuse. It also said he had been involved in “inappropriate sexual behavior” with a “young lady,” and that her family forgave him.

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Professors, students push back as Texas A&M regents increase curriculum oversight

One of the nation's largest university systems has been in a state of academic and political turmoil over the past several months. Since September, the president of Texas A&M University has resigned, a professor has been fired and subsequently sued the university, the faculty senate has been dissolved and several courses have been canceled due to the system's new race and gender policy — under which faculty can be put on leave or fired if they stray from approved course syllabi. During this year's first quarterly Texas A&M System Board of Regents meeting Thursday, the board approved the establishment of general education review committees at each of its 12 university campuses. These new review committees will act as an additional level of administrative supervision over course curriculum and were implemented to comply with Senate Bill 37.

Several faculty members and students spoke out against this oversight Thursday, including philosophy professor Martin Peterson, who said the committees were yet another form of censorship. "We have recently seen several attempts to politicize the university by closing academic programs for ideological reasons and prohibiting important topics from being taught," Peterson said. "Even Plato has been censored at Texas A&M in recent weeks." Peterson's mention of Plato was in reference to his own course syllabus, which, according to the New York Times, was flagged by university administration, who asked Peterson to remove some teachings of Plato — a central figure in Western philosophy. Texas A&M civil engineering student Robert Day also spoke to the board and said the actions by the regents are causing some to consider taking off their Aggie rings and canceling any future donations to the university. "I fear the actions this board has taken to cancel the gender studies major, dismissively fire faculty and your capitulation to political pressure bear grim consequences for students who share the same mission I have to lifelong learning and critical thinking," Day said. "Academic freedom is the great equalizer and it is the protector of our ability to learn without fear." Day's comments on the potential risk to alumni donations came just one day after Jon Hagler, an A&M class of 1959 graduate and prominent donor to the Texas A&M Association of Former Students, published an editorial in the Dallas Morning News saying the regents had failed to protect the university's independence.

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Comal County Judge Sherman Krause dies at home

Comal County Judge Sherman Krause, a long-serving leader who presided over the county for more than 15 years, passed away early Saturday morning at his home. The Comal County Public Information Office announced his death in a statement, describing the county family as "devastated" by the loss. "Judge Krause was more than a leader," the statement read. "He was a colleague, a mentor, and a friend to many." Krause first took office on Jan. 1, 2011. Throughout his tenure, he was regarded as a "steady presence" through various periods of both challenge and progress within the community. He had announced his retirement back in December. County officials have asked the public to keep the Krause family in their prayers during this time. Details regarding memorial services or a successor have not yet been released, though officials noted that additional information will be shared as it becomes available. Krause was a New Braunfels native. He graduated from Texas State University.

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National Stories

Senators far apart on DHS deal as talks stall with deadline looming

Pessimism is increasing across the Capitol that lawmakers will reach a deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as they point fingers over the lack of talks and float canceling the upcoming recess. Senators return to Washington on Monday facing a sprint to strike a deal and avoid a shutdown that would affect agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the Coast Guard. Democrats, facing intense pressure from their base to rein in Trump’s deportation crackdown, have insisted GOP lawmakers acquiesce on including far-reaching immigration reforms in the funding bill. Republicans have little appetite to even put most of those demands on the table. And, with a Feb. 13 deadline looming, negotiations hadn’t even gotten off the ground by the end of last week.

When asked of his level of optimism that a deal could come together by then, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) responded: “About a minus squillion.” Kennedy placed the blame squarely on Democrats. “It’s not enough time. … This is not about reforming DHS. This is about the Karen wing of the Democratic party that wants to defund ICE, just like they wanted to defund the police,” Kennedy said. “I think even if we agreed to every one of [Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s] suggestions, I don’t think most Democrats would vote for the bill because the Karen wing of the party would punish them.” Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) laid out the party’s 10-item wishlist in a letter to Republican leaders on Wednesday night — much of which was repurposed from their previous asks after Renee Good and Alex Pretti were shot and killed by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis.

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Seahawks, Patriots—or asleep by halftime? Ultimate last-minute Super Bowl guide for a last-minute fan

Few events in American life are more overexposed, over-promoted and over-discussed than the Super Bowl—and I say that as a sportswriter who’s a gleeful part of the plague. The NFL’s extravagant finale is preceded by a two-week rodeo of media gasbaggery in which the country is bombarded with hype and nonsense and everyone but the neighborhood squirrels is polled for a prediction on the outcome. Will it be the Seattle Seahawks? Will it be the New England Patriots? Or will it be a righteous nap on the couch that begins on in the second quarter and ends Monday morning? Then there’s the whole gambling component, increasingly legal and brutally ubiquitous.

The Super Bowl is a wagering peril in which, if you’re dedicated, you can lose money betting the winner, the game MVP, the time it takes to power through the national anthem, the color of the Gatorade poured on the coach’s head, and the paragraph at which I get to my inevitable line about the Super Bowl being the final sliver of the national monoculture. If you bet the sixth paragraph, you won. Watching this game is indeed the last thing we do collectively as a country, other than scream over each other on the internet. If I really want to sound pretentious, I’d call the Super Bowl the final fireplace of the digital era, with a live audience that dwarfs every other show in the U.S., even Bluey. This is why an advertisement costs many millions, and perhaps why most Super Bowl advertisements are terrible. Finally, mercifully, game day arrives. I am thrilled to report: we are here. The Patriots will face the Seahawks in Santa Clara, Calif. Sunday at 6:30 p.m. ET. There used to be a robust search-engine business in writing content that answered the question “What time is the Super Bowl?” but we all work for the AI robots now, and they just say 6:30 p.m. ET in a haunting metallic voice.

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Breezy Johnson wins U.S.'s first gold medal

Breezy Johnson became the second American woman ever to win the Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing Sunday, hours after the first person to accomplish the feat, Lindsey Vonn, crashed violently on the famed Tofane course. Johnson finished in 1:36.1 to earn the first Olympic medal of her career. A native of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Johnson was skiing in her second Olympics. The win was not an upset — Johnson entered the competition as the reigning world champion in downhill. It was the United States' first medal of the Milan Cortina Olympics. Johnson extended both arms above her head as she stepped atop the podium before accepting her gold medal. She held back tears while mouthing the words to the U.S. national anthem.

"I had a good feeling about today, I sort of still can't believe it yet, I don't know when it will sink in yet," Johnson said. "I knew I had to push and go harder than I did in training. I had to be super clean and I felt like I did that." Emma Aicher of Germany earned the silver medal, just four-hundredths of a second behind Johnson. Italy's Sofia Goggia earned bronze to win the host country's fourth medal of these Olympics. The victory required Johnson, 30, to confront and overcome her own history of difficulty on this course. In 2022, she crashed on a training run in Cortina and tore cartilage in her right knee, forcing her to miss that year's Olympics in Beijing. "I'm going to have to come back to this same place with a body that's been put back together and try to accomplish my goals," she told NBC last May. "It's a beautiful place, (but) it has teeth and has also hurt a lot of people." Johnson survived the 1.6-mile course with more than 2,000 feet of elevation drop on Sunday by making up time on the five women who taken the course ahead of her during the back half of the race. Seven skiers later, however, Vonn did not — crashing violently after only 13 seconds. She was airlifted off the course, which reopened after an approximately 30-minute delay. It came 16 years after Vonn won the Olympic gold medal in Vancouver, Canada.

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Bad Bunny rewriting the ‘rules’ of American popstardom

Recording artist Bad Bunny will command one of America’s biggest stages this Sunday when he is poised to make history as the first Super Bowl halftime headliner to sing primarily in Spanish. In less than a decade, he has become one of the world’s most popular artists while embracing traits that have historically been seen as barriers to the widest success: he sings almost entirely in Spanish, champions his Puerto Rican identity, and doesn’t shy away from speaking his mind on politics. Bad Bunny, 31, whose full name is Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, was born and raised in Puerto Rico. His first album, “X 100PRE” (pronounced “por siempre” meaning “forever”), came out in 2018. His songs blend Latin trap and reggaeton with pop, rock and classic Puerto Rican styles including salsa, bomba and plena. Since his debut, he has skyrocketed to global stardom, dominating charts and obliterating streaming records.

“He is someone who has broken countless records and just keeps breaking them,” said Vanessa Diaz, professor of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at Loyola Marymount University and co-creator of the Bad Bunny syllabus. “It’s just kind of unimaginable how many accolades he has acquired in a relatively short time,” Diaz said. Bad Bunny’s embrace of video and visuals has also helped his popularity, including with non-Spanish speakers, said Diaz. He has 19 videos on YouTube with more than one billion views – the most of any artist on the platform - and his channel has 51.7 million subscribers. Diaz points to the video for “La Mudanza” (The Move), a salsa track from the album as an example. The lyrics reference Puerto Rico’s pro-independence and decades-long resistance movements. In the video, Bad Bunny runs with a Puerto Rican flag while being chased by men in military fatigues, followed by shots of salsa musicians and dancers, and historical footage of Puerto Rico’s independence struggle. Then there’s the music itself. “You don’t have to understand every single historical reference in a song like ‘La Mudanza’ to want to dance to ‘La Mudanza’,” said Diaz. “Everyone’s getting something different, with or without the lyrics.” The data show Bad Bunny’s formula is working. He ranks consistently on Billboard’s list of top artists, and his albums remain popular years after release.

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Gabbard under scrutiny over whistleblower report, election probes

Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard is coming under scrutiny from lawmakers in both parties for delays in transmitting a whistleblower complaint and her involvement in two different seizures of voting records. On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Gabbard’s office had failed to relay a whistleblower report made last May accusing her of wrongdoing to Congress. Two days later, Gabbard’s office confirmed its involvement in the seizure of voting machines in Puerto Rico, news that came after the DNI was spotted during the execution of a search warrant in Fulton County, Ga.

Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been highly critical of Gabbard on both fronts, hammering her for failing to swiftly turn over the whistleblower report while calling her involvement in voting a threat to the coming elections. “It appears there may be a coordinated effort to try to interfere in the ’26 midterm,” Warner said, noting that President Trump said he requested Gabbard be on site for the Fulton County search. “I think we’ve got a president that can’t get over the fact that he lost in 2020 and now in kind of a Nixonian effort is going to try to do everything he can to make sure he doesn’t get another beating in 2026.” The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) elections probes were done in conjunction with other agencies, with FBI officials seizing 2020 ballots in Fulton County and voting machines in Puerto Rico after the ODNI said it received allegations of “discrepancies and systemic anomalies.” Gabbard has taken heat not only for her involvement but for evolving explanations surrounding her presence. It’s extremely unusual for high-level officials to be on site for the execution of a search conducted by rank-and-file officers and even more unusual for Gabbard, since her intelligence job is focused on foreign countries and is not connected to domestic law enforcement.

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Lindsey Vonn crashes out of Olympic downhill

Lindsey Vonn’s audacious bid for an Olympic comeback ended in a cloud of snow on Sunday morning after a dramatic crash in the women’s downhill. Vonn, the 41-year-old alpine skiing star competing on one rebuilt knee and another with a torn ligament, appeared to tag the fourth gate hard with her right shoulder as she carved through a corner. The contact spun her around and left her splayed out on the course, screaming in pain. Her day was over less than 14 seconds into the run. She received treatment on site leading to a 15-minute delay in the race as a helicopter swooped in overhead. For the second straight week, Vonn was airlifted off a mountain. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the three-time Olympic medalist and perhaps the best downhill racer in history would attempt to return at these Games.

The crash in her first race brought a shocking end to Vonn’s return to competition on an ACL that she had completely ruptured in a pre-Olympic event just 10 days earlier. While some athletes require surgery and a year of rehabilitation after tearing the ligament, which helps stabilize the knee, Vonn said she had no pain and little swelling. That allowed her to strap on a knee brace and return to the mountain within days. Vonn made a comeback to the sport in late 2024 after nearly six years of retirement, her body battered by years of crashes and surgeries. She had undergone a reconstruction on her right knee that included titanium parts, and felt so good that she returned to the slopes. This season, she stunned the sport’s fans by winning two World Cup races and leading the overall standings in the downhill. She made her fifth U.S. Olympic team at age 41, becoming the oldest in alpine team history, and she was set to try to repeat her gold in the downhill at 2010 Vancouver.

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The troubled state of the Senate has members eyeing governorships

The U.S. Senate has long been considered the pinnacle of American politics. Governors, in particular, saw the deliberative and dignified body as a natural last stop when their time in the executive mansion was up, a place to confront the big issues before the nation in momentous debates. Those days are over. Frustrated by Senate dysfunction and the inability to accomplish much of substance, senators this year are reversing the steady migration from state capital to Capitol Hill as a record four sitting senators are running for governor. It is one of the best indicators yet of how the Senate, plodding and polarized, has lost its allure. “I like my job in the Senate,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, in declaring at the end of January that she wanted to head home to head up her state’s government. “But I love our state more than any job.”

Senator Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado, was candid about his decision to run for governor there rather than stick it out in the Senate. “I think what is driving people the other way — what is driving me the other way — is the feeling that the real battle now is going to be in the states, that it is not going to be in D.C.,” Mr. Bennet said in an interview, noting the “dysfunctional nature” of the Senate. “It just isn’t working for the American people.” Besides Mr. Bennet and Ms. Klobuchar, Republican Senators Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama are also running for governor in their states. Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, explored the possibility of running for governor there like her father, Frank Murkowski, had done as a senator in 2002, but she has made no firm move in that direction, with time running short to do so.

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The big split driving the tricky politics of AI data centers

The tech industry is facing fierce local backlash to data center projects around the country. But a new poll suggests national opinion is still up for grabs. Cities from Madison, Wisconsin, to Chandler, Arizona, are rejecting new data centers — the hulking, server-packed complexes that make up the backbone of the booming artificial intelligence industry — citing everything from rising electricity costs to depleted water tables and air pollution. Nationally, however, the tech giants behind the rapid rollout of data centers have a window to shape public opinion despite opposition they’re seeing on the local level, according to new results from The POLITICO Poll. The survey, conducted by London-based independent polling company Public First, found that most voters are blasé — even mildly positive — about the possibility of having a data center in their area, associating them with new jobs and other economic benefits. But the industry’s standing is also precarious, and the poll suggests a partisan split is emerging: People increasingly see the tech companies as aligned with Republicans, the survey shows.

And Democratic Govs. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey won races in November in part by campaigning to force data center operators to help upgrade the electric grid and keep utility rates down. As the AI-driven projects spread, the map the industry will have to defend politically and financially will keep expanding, far beyond traditional clusters of data center growth in places like Virginia and Texas. “I think it’s going to be a big issue in the midterm elections,” said Brad Carson, a former Oklahoma Democratic representative and head of Public First, a super PAC pushing for AI regulations that has no relation to POLITICO’s polling partner. He said that while most people can tune out data centers as an abstraction, “we know there are discrete pockets of people — often quite conservative in their politics — who care a lot about it.” Carson said people who are against data centers “are likely to vote on that issue, right, because, ‘I don’t want a data center in my neighborhood, I’m opposed to it.’ The guys who are for [data centers] are like me — they’re a million miles away from the nearest data center.” While distance from a data center is a factor, the poll found that voters aren’t reflexively opposed to the idea of having one nearby the way they might be quick to complain about new transmission towers or freeway expansions: Thirty-seven percent of respondents say they would support a new data center in their area, compared with 28 percent opposed. That leaves a large portion of people — 36 percent — that could swing either way.

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Copyright February 15, 2026, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved