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Newsclips - January 19, 2025 |
Lead Stories
Here's how Texas House Democrats became the kingmakers in the race for speaker
What happened 2 hours, 44 minutes and 30 seconds after the Texas Legislature came to order at midday Tuesday for the 2025 legislative session was exactly what the three most power political figures in state government said must not happen. Democrats, who have 26 fewer seats in the House than Republicans do, chose the chamber's new leader. And the Democrats chose someone with whom most of them disagree on issue after issue, up and down the line. It's no secret that Republicans have run state government without interruption for more than two decades. They've held the Governor's Mansion for 30 straight years and all other statewide offices for 26. The House was the last to come under GOP control, in 2003, and only five sitting Democrats in the 150-seat chamber are still in office from when their party was in charge.
So it raises the question: How could Democrats, who can never seem to get out of their own way on Election Day in all of the statewide races and most of the legislative campaigns, manage to have all of the marbles when it came to choosing a speaker? The answer is simple: Republicans gave them those marbles. It's fair to note that not all Republicans were so generous. Just enough of them. Actually, nine more than enough of them. The story has been told and retold since 2023, when the frustration of three-term Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who under the state Constitution is the Senate president, boiled over at Speaker Dade Phelan for slow-walking or killing Senate bills. Phelan is also a Republican. But unlike Patrick, whose job is handed to him by the voters of Texas, Phelan got his chamber chief position from the House members themselves. Republicans and Democrats get an equal vote. And Patrick made clear his intention to work to oust Phelan loyalists in the next GOP primary. Then Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton joined the fray. He was still chafing from the Phelan-led House's impeachment, which would have bounced him from office were it not for an acquittal that he won in Patrick's Republican-controlled Senate.
Read this article at Austin American-Statesman - Subscribers Only
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Trump officials haven’t decided on post-inauguration Chicago raids, Homan says
President-elect Donald Trump’s handpicked “border czar” Tom Homan said in an interview Saturday that the incoming administration is reconsidering whether to launch immigration raids in Chicago next week after preliminary details leaked out in news reports. Homan, the former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told The Washington Post that the new administration “hasn’t made a decision yet.” “We’re looking at this leak and will make a decision based on this leak,” Homan said. “It’s unfortunate because anyone leaking law enforcement operations puts officers at greater risk.” ICE has been planning a large operation in the Chicago area for next week that would start after Inauguration Day and would bring in additional officers to ramp up arrests, according to two current federal officials and a former official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal law enforcement planning.
Homan said he did not know why Chicago “became a focus of attention” and said the incoming administration’s enforcement goals are much broader than one city. “ICE will start arresting public safety threats and national security threats on day one,” he said. “We’ll be arresting people across the country, uninhibited by any prior administration guidelines. Why Chicago was mentioned specifically, I don’t know.” “This is nationwide thing,” he added. “We’re not sweeping neighborhoods. We have a targeted enforcement plan.” The seesawing reports of possible raids in Chicago can stir up fears that advance the administration’s broader enforcement goals, even if operations are postponed or shifted to other cities. Homan and other Trump aides say they want immigrants living in the United States illegally to once more fear arrest and choose to leave the country on their own, or “self-deport.”
Read this article at Washington Post - Subscribers Only
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Texans brace for Arctic blast as ERCOT issues another Weather Watch
With another Arctic blast coming to Texas, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has issued a Weather Watch due to freezing temperatures in the forecast. Extreme cold in the forecast for most of Texas means higher electrical demand and the possibility of lower reserves. The watch is in effect beginning Monday, Jan 20, through Thursday, Jan. 23. However, ERCOT said it expects grid conditions to be normal during the Weather Watch and no energy emergencies are expected.
ERCOT stated that it will closely monitor conditions and utilize all available tools to manage the grid effectively. According to ERCOT's 6-Day Forecast, energy demand is expected to peak on Monday and Tuesday mornings, when wintry precipitation could be possible for some parts of Texas. Texans can stay updated on grid conditions by signing up for notifications through the Texas Advisory and Notification System (TXANS). Real-time and extended grid condition updates are available here. Additionally, Texans can subscribe to ERCOT emergency alerts or download the ERCOT app for timely updates. In December, ERCOT warned that extreme cold events would be more likely than usual this winter, similar to those in 2021. However, ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas said in November that he doesn't expect calls for conservation or rolling blackouts. While this Arctic blast is expected to bring the coldest temperatures of the winter so far, Vegas said there have been a lot of changes to the grid since the deadly winter storm.
Read this article at KVUE - Subscribers Only
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US cities largely saw a drop in violent crime in 2024
As U.S. police departments release preliminary or finalized 2024 crime numbers, many are reporting historic declines in homicides and drops in other violent crimes compared to 2023. In many parts of the country, though, those decreases don’t match the public perception. Experts say most cities are seeing a drop in crime levels that spiked during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. But they say misleading campaign rhetoric in the runup to the November elections and changes in how people interpret news about crime have led to a perception gap. “The presence of even one murder has a great cost,” said Kim Smith, the director of national programs at the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab.
Violence interruption and intervention programs have helped decrease gun violence and homicide numbers in Chicago and elsewhere, Smith said. But even with fewer crimes, people experiencing it in their neighborhood lowers their perception of being safe. “The presence of those crimes is the thing that people get the most distress from, and that has the biggest impact on people being able to enjoy their neighborhood and on quality of life,” she said. Jeff Asher, cofounder of AH Datalytics, tracks crimes across the country using law enforcement data for the group’s Real-Time Crime Index. He said the data, which lags by about 45 days rather than being reported quarterly or annually like a lot of crime statistics, allows communities and experts to evaluate and respond to trends as they are happening. Early in 2024, Asher noticed cities were largely seeing historic declines in homicide numbers, but much more muted declines in other violent crimes.
Read this article at Politico - Subscribers Only
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Is Mexico prepared for mass deportations?
Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs will operate in 2025 with 700 million fewer pesos (about $33.8 million) than in 2024, a budget cut that will affect consular services for millions of Mexicans in the United States when they will need them most. Ever since President-elect Donald Trump won a second term in the White House, Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has reiterated there is “a plan” to face the challenge of the massive deportations he promised during his 2024 campaign. Talk of this plan from Sheinbaum has been accompanied by reassurances that Trump’s hardline immigration agenda is not feasible because migrants are too valuable to the U.S. economy. Meanwhile, in the northern Mexico city of Monterrey, Father Luis Eduardo Zavala talks about doubling the bed capacity of the shelters at Casa Monarca, an organization that offers protection to migrants. “We’ve been preparing for years for this context,” Zavala explains, while reviewing plans for expansion to welcome incoming deportees. The Sheinbaum government’s denialism paired with border communities’ practicality reveal the deep fault lines in how Mexico is preparing to respond to what Trump has said will be the largest deportation operation in American history.
Trump’s threats on migration are no longer hypothetical. The wheels of his immigration agenda have already been set into motion, and he has the support of Congress and state governments. The Republican majority in the U.S. House passed the Laken Riley Act in early January. It expands detention powers for even minor offenses and would hand state attorneys general new powers. In Texas, Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham has offered land in Starr County for deportation facilities, and Governor Greg Abbott assured the National Guard and the Department of Public Safety that there was “help on the way” to support their immigration enforcement efforts. Like in 2016, immigration enforcement is at the core of what Trump offered his voters. And he will be pressured to deliver rapidly and aggressively. Upon taking office, Trump is expected to issue a large number of executive orders regarding immigration. The orders could end temporary protections for migrants from certain countries. He could also target DACA recipients, migrants who arrived in the United States as children. Trump has even suggested he could use the military to assist in his planned deportations. “I don’t think you’re facing the prospect of a deportation plan of 11.2 million people,” noted former Mexican ambassador to the United States Arturo Sarukhán, “but I think there will be very significant deportation measures.” The Mexican government’s greatest fear, he added, is that Trump will end up forcing Mexico to accept deportees from other countries.
Read this article at Texas Observer - Subscribers Only
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State Stories
Scott Turner's rise from 'difficult' childhood to Trump housing nominee
Last year Scott Turner appeared on a podcast from Prestonwood Baptist, the Dallas-area megachurch he attends, to talk about his rise from a "difficult situation" in childhood to the National Football League and the state Legislature. His parents had divorced and he spent his teenage years working as a dishwasher at a barbecue joint, "isolated in the back, no one seeing you." Members of his family struggled with drug addiction, he has said. Now Turner, who faced senators on Thursday as President-elect Donald Trump's picked to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development, could become the face of an agency that Trump has previously tried to use to cut federal funding for public housing. Housing prices are rising fast and homelessness is at record levels, and Democrats and Republicans alike have described a national housing crisis that is pushing families onto the streets.
Instead of increasing federal spending on affordable housing, as Democrats have done under the Biden administration, Turner pushed Thursday for holding the line or reducing federal spending on housing while promoting free-market policies like reducing regulations on home builders and giving tax breaks to those who invest in affordable housing. "HUD's budget is at record levels and we're still not meeting the need," Turner testified before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. "This moment is not just about fixing what’s broken, it’s about continuing and expanding the policies from the first Trump administration — policies that worked." During Trump's first term, Turner was tasked with creating "opportunity zones" that have come under fire from housing advocates as giving tax breaks for a small number of projects that likely would have been built anyway. More than 80% of the zones created did not see any investment at all, according to a 2022 report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. After graduating from high school in a Dallas suburb, Turner enjoyed a near meteoric rise, winning a football and track scholarship to the University of Illinois and then playing for the Washington Redskins, despite being drafted in the final round.
Read this article at Houston Chronicle - Subscribers Only
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Glenn Rogers: Texas Republicans are claiming a voucher mandate. They made it up
The 2024 Texas Republican primary was brutal and unprecedented in the volume of unwarranted character assassination, misdirection and, of course, money spent from both “dark” and “illuminated” sources. Despite Gov. Greg Abbott’s persistent opposition to rural Republican House members and a fourth special legislative session, a bipartisan majority defeated school vouchers (called education savings accounts) by stripping off an amendment in Rep. Brad Buckley’s ominous omnibus education bill that tied critical school funding to vouchers. The governor then proceeded to launch his scorched-earth attack on rural Republicans. Of the 21 that voted for their districts instead of Abbott’s pet project, five did not seek re-election, four were unopposed, nine lost their seats and three were victorious. Only one third remain in the House.
Reducing republican opposition to vouchers was a resounding success for the governor and he has been crowing ever since that the 2024 slaughter proves Texans across the state desire vouchers (“school choice” in governor speak). But does it? During the primary campaign, polling data clearly demonstrated vouchers were not a priority for Texas voters, including those in my district. The border, followed by property taxes and inflation were top of mind, with vouchers barely making the top 10. With four special sessions, Christmas and a week with a major freezing-weather event, block-walking time before the early March primary was limited to about six good weeks. I hit the pavement hard and, true to the polling data and my consultant’s advice, the border and property taxes were on everyone’s mind. In fact, after knocking on thousands of doors throughout the district, I had only a handful of questions about vouchers and usually from current or retired educators who were anti-voucher.
Read this article at Dallas Morning News - Subscribers Only
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Brandon Creighton: The Legislature has a mandate for education reform
With the 89th Legislature now underway, it’s time to be honest with Texans about what must be done for the 6 million students in Texas schools. Last session’s political distractions and fearmongering over education reforms may have benefited paid lobbyists and union officials, but they left the real needs of Texas families unmet. According to the Texas Education Agency, only 40% of Texas third graders achieved grade-level proficiency in math, and 46% in reading during the 2022–23 school year. Additionally, 22% of high school graduates required remedial courses upon entering college. These alarming statistics underscore the urgent need for legislative action to address the deficiencies in Texas’ education system. Our 6 million Texas students deserve better, and the mandate for change has never been more clear.
In November, from national election outcomes down to local school board races, Texas families rejected the status quo. We are witnessing a bold movement of Texans demanding that their children’s education is not held hostage by outdated systems, bloated administration and political agendas. Parents are standing up to reclaim their rightful role as the chief decision-makers in their children’s education, fighting for a system that works for them — not against them. Throughout 2023, the Texas Senate stood strong in its commitment to students, families and educators, championing legislation that prioritized real solutions over empty rhetoric. Senate Bills 8 and 9, known as the Texas Parental Bill of Rights and the Texas Teacher Bill of Rights, were crafted to empower parents, support teachers and give students the tools they need to succeed. Despite overwhelming support in the Senate, each of these critical initiatives was ultimately blocked. We also introduced legislation to inject billions of dollars into public education, deliver long-overdue raises for teachers and raise the basic allotment for the first time since 2019. Yet once again, a vocal minority chose political arguments over meeting the real, urgent needs of our schools. Texas families and educators were left waiting for action.
Read this article at Dallas Morning News - Subscribers Only
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How Texas GOP activists are planning to take ‘spiritual jurisdiction' over Legislature
Throngs of Republican grassroots activists poured into the Texas Capitol on buses from around the state Tuesday, ready to send a message to state lawmakers: The building is not the government’s, but God’s. “Today, Lord, we take charge and authority over the 89th legislative session,” Pastor Brandon Burden said as he stood on the Capitol’s south steps. “Because Lord, we, the ecclesia, which are the people of God that are called by the name of Jesus and covered in the blood of the Lamb, have been given spiritual jurisdiction over the affairs of men." Burden was praying over several state lawmakers who had assembled in a circle, their heads bowed, including state Rep. Tom Oliverson of Cypress, chair of the House Republican Caucus. In addition to being the “lead pastor/prophet” at Frisco’s KingdomLife Church, Burden is the founder of Daniel Nation, a group whose mission is to “transform nations by restoring the true worship of God in civil government” and “remov(e) Jezebel’s influence in society.”
His prayer was among many that took place at the Capitol that day, ending in an ecstatic worship service co-led by Fort Worth Republican Rep. Nate Schatzline in a hearing room. Their public displays of religious dedication were indications of the state Republican Party’s embrace of a new class of evangelical conservatives whose goalposts continue to move further right, pulling once-fringe ideas into the mainstream. On Tuesday, the chair of the Republican Party of Texas gave one of the clearest signs yet of his organization’s commitment to infusing Christian values in public life. “There’s no separation between church and state,” Texas GOP Chair Abraham George said, to roaring applause from the crowd. “We don’t want the government in our churches, but we should be in the government.” His comments reflected a belief increasingly popular among evangelicals that the Founding Fathers intended to make the U.S. a Christian nation, an interpretation that historians have dismissed as contrary to the First Amendment. (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” the amendment’s Establishment Clause reads.)
Read this article at Austin American-Statesman - Subscribers Only
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Steve Sarkisian, Texas football agree to terms on contract extension
Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian and the university have agreed to terms on a contract extension, a source confirmed with the Austin American-Statesman. The news was first reported by the Action Network. A high-ranking official told the Statesman on Saturday that Sarkisian’s current contract was extended to seven years through the 2031 season. Sarkisian also received an increase from his current salary but the source did not give a specific number when asked.
The source added two or three NFL teams reached out requesting to interview Sarkisian for their coaching vacancies but did not name those organizations. When the new deal is signed, this will be the second consecutive offseason in which Sarkisian inks a new contract. Last year, Sarkisian was connected to the open Alabama job after Nick Saban's retirement before Texas extended him. That contract, signed in January 2024, made him the third-highest-paid coach among public universities. He earned $10.6 million in base pay in 2024.
Read this article at Austin American-Statesman - Subscribers Only
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'This one hurts.' Texans at their worst when they needed it most in fourth quarter of loss to Chiefs
Shortly after the Houston Texans' 23-14 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs on Saturday afternoon, coach DeMeco Ryans was asked at his press conference whether he was encouraged by his team’s performance having given themselves a chance against the defending Super Bowl champs. For the second consecutive season, the Texans won a playoff game before losing in the divisional round on the road. Last year, the Texans were blown out in the second half by the Ravens. In this game, against the Chiefs, it was within their grasp, until it wasn’t. The Texans trailed by one point entering the fourth quarter, before the Chiefs ultimately outscored them 10-2 over the final 15 minutes. Was Ryans, the first Texans coach to take a team to back-to-back divisional rounds in his first two years, encouraged?
No. He had the opposite feeling. “I’m walking out of here discouraged,” Ryans said. “This one hurts because I know we’re a better football team than we showed today, no matter who we are playing against. “To go back, and still have to talk about the mistakes that we made in this moment, it’s discouraging to be here because we should be over that.” What’s puzzling is the Texans outgained the Chiefs 336-212, they dominated the time of possession battle by seven minutes, didn't have a single turnover, held quarterback Patrick Mahomes to the lowest passing yards of his playoff career (177 yards), and sacked him three times. Yet, Houston lost because it didn’t take advantage of its opportunities, didn’t score enough touchdowns and failed to finish late. When kicker Ka’imi Fairbairn missed a game-tying extra point attempt late in the third quarter, it seemed to take the wind out of the Texans, while providing energy to the Chiefs and their fans at Arrowhead Stadium. Instead of the game being tied 13-13, it was 13-12 with 4:42 left in the third quarter. The Texans left seven points off the board because of missed and blocked field goals and extra points. “You marry that on top of everything else that we had to deal with, it was a really tough uphill battle,” Ryans said of the mistakes they made.
Read this article at Houston Chronicle - Subscribers Only
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North Texas white supremacists ordered to pay $2.75 million to Black man they attacked
A Massachusetts judge has ordered a North Texas-based white supremacy group and its leader to pay a Black man $2.75 million after the man was injured by the group’s members during a Boston “flash march” in 2022. Charles Murrell III, a musician and activist, will receive compensation for physical and psychological injuries, pain and suffering, lost wages and future earnings, and punitive damages from the organization Patriot Front, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled Monday. The Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center identify Patriot Front as a white supremacist group, and Alex Horn, regional director of ADL Texoma, told the Observer the decision could play a role in destabilizing Patriot Front. “We applaud U.S. District Judge Talwani’s decision because the ruling makes it clear that hate-based violence will not be tolerated,” Horn said in a statement. “While it remains to be seen if this case will have a major impact on this group’s future, civil cases have historically been a critical component in dismantling the operations of hate groups in the United States.”
Read this article at Dallas Observer - Subscribers Only
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Tarrant County DA has complaints over Keller ISD split talks
The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office has received complaints about the Keller ISD controversy over how the school board has handled its internal discussions of a possible split in the district. At least one parent of children in the district told the Star-Telegram earlier this week that he had filed a police report accusing board president Charles Randklev, vice president John Birt, and Place 1 Trustee Micah Young of violating the Texas Open Meetings Act by discussing a split during a December closed meeting. Under state law, public bodies are required to follow certain steps to post notifications about what it plans to discuss in either public or private meetings. State law also dictates what types of topics school boards and other government agencies are allowed to talk about during those executive sessions.
The parent who filed a complaint, Andrew Sternke, cited Facebook posts by trustees Chelsea Kelly and Joni Shaw Smith saying the topic of splitting the school district was discussed in detail during a Dec. 19 executive session, which caught both school board members off guard. “The non public and clandestine way this district division was present on December 19, 2024 is not proper and usurps the opportunity for affected parents, students and voters from having a say,” Sternke said in an email to the Star-Telegram after filing a police report. Sternke said Friday he was told the Keller Police Department had turned over its reports to the county District Attorney’s Office. A spokesperson for the DA confirmed it had received more than one complaint “regarding the Keller ISD school board controversy.” It’s unclear, though, what if anything prosecutors are investigating. The DA’s Office responded to questions by saying it does not comment on “pending matters.” The revelation of discussions about a possible split has rocked the Keller school district community. More than 100 people signed up to speak at a heated school board meeting Thursday night, while countless others showed up but couldn’t get in. Several thousand people watched the session livestream.
Read this article at Fort Worth Star-Telegram - Subscribers Only
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The great Sherman land rush
Rex Glendenning knows this land. He’s in his late 60s, and he has lived in North Texas almost all his life. His great-grandfather emigrated from Scotland in 1887 to Celina, at the far northern tip of Collin County, and raised 13 children on a cotton farm here. Glendenning’s grandfather grew cotton, too. Some of his earliest memories are waking up before sunrise and shuffling out to the cotton fields to see his granddad. Even when times got hard, Glendenning’s father tried to hold together as much land as he could. “He was always under the belief that one day this area would boom,” Glendenning says. For years, he wasn’t sure he’d live to see that boom. But on the wall of Glendenning’s conference room in Frisco hangs a giant, colorful, high-definition aerial map of the northern edge of North Texas. At the bottom of the map is State Highway 121, also called Sam Rayburn Tollway. The map goes all the way north to the Red River, the state’s border with Oklahoma. Here, on the wall, it’s easy to identify the dense, sprawling northern suburbs of Plano, Frisco, and McKinney—each of which has a population over 200,000—along with the smaller, booming exurbs of Celina, Anna, and Prosper. This is one of the fastest-growing areas in the entire country. When Glendenning looks at the map, though, his eyes go straight to the craggy, rural land north of that sprawl.
Right now the area is predominantly ranch and farmland, divided by barbed wire and two-lane country roads. But Glendenning knows better than anyone that all this is about to change. He points a knobby index finger to Preston Road and then to U.S. 75, both of which run north from Dallas, through Grayson County. A century and a half ago, he tells me, this was part of the Shawnee Trail, an old Native American route adopted by drovers who moved hundreds of thousands of cattle from as far south as Austin through what is now Dallas and Frisco, on the way to the railhead in Kansas. There, a longhorn that cost $5 in Texas could sell for nine or 10 times as much. “It’s pretty remarkable,” Glendenning says, “that now the same trail is synonymous with white-collar demographics and money and growth, and that’s where everybody wants to be.” In his brown suede boots, Glendenning has the tall, round-shouldered build of a linebacker. He had 26 tackles in the 1974 state championship game, helping Celina High School win its first state title, before getting a football scholarship to UNT. After 44 years in the land-speculation business, his nickname is The King of Dirt, though plenty of people shorten it to simply The King. His royal garments usually consist of a tartan blazer, a white-collared shirt, dress jeans, and boots. The younger land brokers he employs often wear the same thing. Glendenning also has one of the state’s largest longhorn breeding programs, with roughly 1,000 horn-mantled creatures he affectionately calls “lawn art.” In the late ’80s, one of his longhorns, G-man, held the world record for longest horns. G-man’s head is now mounted on a wall of Glendenning’s pool house. Glendenning speaks with a soft Texas drawl that sometimes sounds more like a mumble. “A land deal is almost like a jigsaw puzzle,” he tells me. “And the guy that puts the puzzle together gets paid.”
Read this article at D Magazine - Subscribers Only
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Tilman Fertitta will co-host inauguration reception for Donald Trump
Just weeks after President-elect Donald Trump chose Houston billionaire Tilman Fertitta to be his ambassador to Italy, the CEO of Landry’s Inc is planning to co-host a black tie reception shortly after the new president is sworn into office on Monday. Fertitta is just one of four of the wealthiest people in America listed on the invitation for the event. Casino owner Miriam Adelson, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and Chicago Cubs owner Todd Ricketts are also listed as hosts.
Trump’s inauguration ceremony starts at 11 a.m. on Monday. The reception with Fertitta is scheduled for 5:30 p.m., before three inaugural balls that will be happening in Washington, D.C. later that evening. Conroe country music star Parker McCollum will also be in Washington for the inauguration. He is scheduled to perform at the Commander-in-Chief Ball, which is focused on military service members. Musicians Jason Aldean, the Village People and Rascal Flatts are among other acts performing at the various balls. Last month Trump said he was nominating Fertitta, a Galveston native, to be his ambassador to Italy. “Tilman is an accomplished businessman, who has founded and built one of our Country’s premier entertainment and real estate companies, employing approximately 50,000 Americans,” Trump said in the announcement.
Read this article at Houston Chronicle - Subscribers Only
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Houston ISD to roll out weapons detectors on high school campuses where guns have been found
Houston ISD will begin installing weapons detection systems next week on campuses where weapons have been discovered within the past year, officials said. The weapons detectors, Superintendent Mike Miles said, will be less intrusive and quicker for students to get through than typical metal detectors like the ones found in airports. “We are starting with high schools, of course, and we will see if we have enough money next year for middle schools but for high schools, we started with the schools where we have already found weapons this year,” Miles said this week. After the detectors are installed at Lamar High School, the district will begin installing the systems at Northside and Bellaire high schools — campuses where students have been found with weapons in the past. The schools began holding community meetings this week to answer questions families may have on the new systems.
Read this article at Houston Public Media - Subscribers Only
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Texas lawmakers push for decriminalization of fentanyl test strips
Fentanyl overdose looms large on the docket heading into the Texas Legislature’s 89th regular session. One Texas lawmaker is advocating for the decriminalization of fentanyl test strips as part of the solution. “I filed House Bill 1496, where the goal is to make sure that people can legally purchase testing kits to determine if there is fentanyl,” State Rep. Erin Zwiener, D – Driftwood, said. “If they have pills or other material where they have a question about it, they should be able to determine what’s in it.” Current Texas law considers it a crime to have drug paraphernalia, with fentanyl test strips falling into the same category as bongs, pipes and rolling papers. The charge for possession constitutes a Class C misdemeanor punishable by a fine up to $500. Yet, Texas Health and Human Services reports that a large number of fentanyl-related overdoses are a result of falsely legitimate prescription drugs, affecting thousands of unsuspecting Texans. Zwiener said this law prevents Texans from taking the proper measures toward their safety.
“I think the big myth around fentanyl is this idea that most people are getting fentanyl through other illicit drugs. But that’s not always true,” Zwiener said. She added, “A lot of folks who end up in this situation thought they were taking pharmaceuticals that they got from a friend because they couldn’t get in to see a therapist and address their mental health issues through actual mental health care.” Zwiener’s district in Hays County has been a hotspot for fentanyl losses. KXAN reported 67 fentanyl overdoses between 2022 and 2023, resulting in 14 deaths. Zwiener said she remains in contact with the families affected in search of a solution. “These families who’ve lost their children, they are asking for tools to prevent this from happening to other families,” Zwiener said. “So they are asking for tools like fentanyl test kits so that they can make sure that their kids aren’t getting their hands on fentanyl in something that looks like it’s innocuous.”
Read this article at KXAN - Subscribers Only
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How Texas plans to support broadband access in rural, unserved areas
The Texas Broadband Development Office (BDO) said it was developing a grant program to help expand broadband access in rural, unserved areas. The program would use $30 million from the state’s Broadband Infrastructure Fund to support the development of a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite. The Texas Comptroller’s office said “LEO satellite technology offers a promising solution for connecting remote and sparsely populated areas where traditional broadband infrastructure is often prohibitively expensive to deploy or could take years to build out.” “This innovative technology provides high-speed internet access to hard-to-reach homes and businesses across the United States and the globe, enabling economic growth, improving education outcomes and enhancing telemedicine services in disconnected communities,” the office continued.
Read this article at KXAN - Subscribers Only
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National Stories
TikTok goes dark in the U.S.
“Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now,” the message read. Hours before a federal law banning TikTok from the United States took effect on Sunday, the Chinese-owned social media app went dark, and U.S. users could no longer access videos on the platform. Instead, the app greeted them with a message that said “a law banning TikTok has been enacted.” “We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution,” the message said. “Please stay tuned!” In addition, TikTok’s sister app, Lemon8, stopped working and showed U.S. users a message saying that it “isn’t available right now.” Both TikTok and Lemon8 are owned by ByteDance, a Chinese internet giant. Apple said it removed TikTok and other ByteDance apps, including Lemon8, from its app store, and users said that Google’s U.S. app store also removed TikTok.
TikTok became unavailable after the Supreme Court decision on Friday upholding the law, which calls for ByteDance to sell the app by Sunday or otherwise face a ban. The law was passed overwhelmingly by Congress last year and signed by President Biden. TikTok, which has faced national security concerns for its Chinese ties, had believed it could win its legal challenge to the law, but failed. The blackout capped a chaotic stretch for TikTok, which had made last-minute pleas to both the Biden administration and President-elect Donald J. Trump for a way out of the law. Until Saturday night, no one — including the U.S. government — was entirely sure what would happen to it when the law took effect. The United States has never blocked an app used by tens of millions of Americans essentially overnight. The law has a provision to penalize app store operators like Apple and Google and internet hosting companies like Oracle for distributing or maintaining the TikTok app. Under the law, those companies face penalties as high as $5,000 per user who can access the app. TikTok, Apple and Oracle didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Google declined to comment. For TikTok and ByteDance, the developments are a major blow. TikTok has roughly 170 million U.S. users, who are some of the app’s most lucrative customers. In legal filings, TikTok has said that even a temporary disappearance could kneecap it, with users and creators leaving for other platforms and never returning even if a ban was lifted.
Read this article at New York Times - Subscribers Only
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Gaza cease-fire begins after last-minute delay
A cease-fire in Israel’s war with Hamas went into force in the Gaza Strip on Sunday after a last-minute delay, halting 15 months of conflict and paving the way for the militant group to release Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. The fragile truce pauses a war that is among the deadliest in modern Middle East history, killing 46,000 Palestinians and reducing much of the strip to ruins following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people and seized about 250 hostages. If it holds, the cease-fire could also ease tensions in the region after more than a year of a conflict that drew in the U.S., Iran and Tehran’s allied militias across the Middle East, including the first direct exchanges of fire between Israel and Iran and an Israeli offensive against Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement last year.
The halt in fighting was delayed by about three hours after Hamas failed to hand over the names of hostages it planned to release by the time the agreement was meant to come into effect Sunday morning, highlighting the challenges ahead to implementing an agreement between two bitterly opposed sides. Hours later, the militant group made a public announcement of the names of the first three Israeli women to be released, a move that put the deal back on track but which sidestepped the official negotiating channels with Israel and undercut Israel’s ability to inform the families of those set to be freed. The Israeli prime minister’s office said the cease-fire had begun at 11:15 a.m. local time and confirmed it had received the names of hostages set to be released later on Sunday. The three women are Romi Leshem Gonen, a 24-year-old waitress who was taken from the Nova music festival in southern Israel; Doron Steinbrecher, 31, a veterinary nurse who was kidnapped from her home in kibbutz Kfar Aza; and Emily Tehila Damari, 28, a British-Israeli citizen who was also taken from her home in Kfar Aza. Hamas said earlier Sunday the delay in submitting the list of hostages was due to “technical and field-related reasons” and that it was committed to the terms of the agreement.
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Biden is spending his final full day in office in South Carolina. It helped him become president
Joe Biden is spending his final full day in office Sunday in South Carolina, a state that holds special meaning after his commanding win in the 2020 Democratic primary there set him up to achieve his life’s goal of being elected president of the United States. On the eve of Monday’s inauguration of Republican President-elect Donald Trump, Biden planned to deliver a final farewell from the state that brought him to the dance, as he likes to say. Biden, accompanied by his wife, first lady Jill Biden, was scheduled to visit Royal Missionary Baptist Church in North Charleston to worship and speak on the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the White House said. Monday is the federal holiday honoring the slain civil rights leader.
Afterward, the Bidens will tour the International African American Museum. It was built on a waterfront site where tens of thousands of enslaved Africans were brought to the U.S. from the late 1760s through 1808, according to the museum’s website. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., a key Biden ally, said the trip was Biden’s way of saying “thank you” to the state. “Joe Biden is showing once again who he is by coming back to the state that really launched him to the presidency,” Clyburn told The Associated Press in an interview. The president delivered a televised farewell address to the nation on Wednesday. Back in 2020, Biden saw his campaign flounder after he lost the opening contests in New Hampshire, Iowa and Nevada. But at the fourth stop, South Carolina — where Black voters make up a majority of the Democratic electorate — he was lifted to victory after Clyburn’s endorsement. “I know Joe. We know Joe. But most importantly, Joe knows us,” the congressman said at the time.
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LA fire victims fear rebuilding ordeal. Some will not do it
Karen Myles, 66, walked out of her Altadena, California home in the middle of the night in her pajamas, confronted by a forest of red and orange flaming trees and live wires from tumbled electric poles sparking in the street. Her son, who had woken her from a deep sleep, navigated their path to safety. The fire destroyed her neighborhood this month, and she is not going back. “I’m not going to rebuild. Oh no. Hell no. That fire took everything out of me. I’m going to fly away somewhere, somewhere nice. Maybe Colorado,” the retiree said outside a disaster recovery center. She lived in the house for more than 40 years and will miss friends, she said, but “the fire left me no choice.”
Across Los Angeles on the coast, Pacific Palisades residents Sonia and James Cummings lost a house they bought in 1987 and renovated a decade ago. “It was with the intention of staying there until we were no longer above ground,” said James Cummings, 77. Now they see a wasteland. “I worked two years nonstop building our ideal home,” Sonia added. “We were at the point where everything was perfect. I don’t want to do that again.” Victims of one of the most destructive fires in California history are struggling to decide whether to rebuild, facing a bewildering array of challenges, including soaring construction costs, years of effort, and the question of whether the tight-knit communities, especially middle-class Altadena, will rise again. One issue for many is the toxic ash and other pollutants that blanket destroyed neighborhoods, stretching block after block. The fires have killed about two dozen people and destroyed more than 10,000 structures. "Think of ash like fine, dangerous dust that can be inhaled deep into the lungs and can cause major problems everywhere it lands. It's not just dirt," an advisory from the L.A. County Public Health Department warned.
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Outgoing Interior Secretary Deb Haaland hands off closer ties with Indian Country
At a farewell speech in Washington D.C. this week, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland reflected on President Biden's formal apology last October for the U.S. government's historic assimilation policies and its Indian boarding school system. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, children were separated from families, with no full accounting of those who went missing or died. "I believe we are in an era of healing," she told the crowd. "That healing has been among the most important things I have done as secretary." Haaland went on to reflect on traveling with Biden to one of the most notorious boarding schools in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, now a national monument. "As I stood next to the president, I felt the power of our ancestors who persevered through unthinkable odds so that we could all be there that day," she said.
Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna of New Mexico, says her grandparents and her mother were sent away, a trauma she brought up in an interview with NPR just before the November election. Haaland says her twelve-stop "road to healing" tour across Indian Country – which included listening sessions and reports meant to better account for the missing – was a turning point. "It's an important piece of our history that every single American should know about. It's a painful part of our history," she told NPR. It may be too early to tell what historians will make of Haaland's legacy leading the Department of the Interior, an agency that experts say came into being in part to manage and control native people. But it's for sure historic. She's presided over the allocation of unprecedented billions of dollars in federal money for tribes going to everything from water and schools to improvements in public safety addressing an alarming human trafficking crisis on reservations. It's not clear how the new Trump administration will work with tribes and tribal lands. But agency observers say Haaland made gains working to give tribes a seat at the table on land decisions and to right a legacy of historic wrongs in Indian Country, such as broken treaties.
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Trump hires fed-firing mastermind
President-elect Donald Trump is bringing back a senior White House official who led his first-term push to make it easier to fire civil servants. James Sherk, who served as a special assistant on domestic policy during Trump’s first term, will return to serve in the White House Domestic Policy Council, Trump announced Saturday. Sherk has worked at the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute during the Biden administration.
Sherk was central to the Trump administration’s efforts to make it easier to fire some federal employees using a classification called Schedule F. That effort generated an outcry from civil servants, and the Biden administration moved quickly to reverse course. But the effort “could — and should — be reissued by another president,” Sherk wrote in a 2022 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled, “The President Needs the Power to Fire Bureaucrats.” The incoming Trump administration has made it clear that it plans to pursue drastic reforms to the federal workforce, and Sherk is poised to be central to those efforts. Trump has vowed to “shatter the deep state” and make it easier to fire “rogue bureaucrats.” During the Biden administration, Sherk has filed Freedom of Information Act requests with multiple agencies seeking career staffers’ emails that mention Trump or President Joe Biden around the time of the 2020 election and the 2021 inauguration, he told POLITICO’s E&E News in 2022.
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Trump’s inauguration to be moved indoors
President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration will be moved indoors, he announced Friday, due to dangerously cold temperatures projected in the nation’s capital. “I have ordered the Inauguration Address, in addition to prayers and other speeches, to be delivered in the United States Capitol Rotunda, as was used by Ronald Reagan in 1985, also because of very cold weather,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “We will open Capital One Arena on Monday for LIVE viewing of this Historic event, and to host the Presidential Parade. I will join the crowd at Capital One, after my Swearing In,” Trump added. CNN reported earlier Friday that plans were underway for Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance to be sworn in in the Rotunda and that Trump’s team was in talks to potentially hold some of the festivities at the arena, where Trump will host a rally on Sunday.
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Newsclips - January 17, 2025 |
Lead Stories
Texans' top concerns: Southern border, economy and health services, poll finds
Lawmakers who this week returned to Austin to kick off the 2025 legislative session should focus on helping further secure the Southern border and on growing the economy, and they should allocate more money to programs protecting Texans' physical and mental health, according to a new poll of registered voters. The poll by the Texas Politics Project, an arm of the University of Texas, released Wednesday also found that Texans give generally positive marks to most of the best-known statewide officeholders. The Politics Project conducted the survey after the dust had settled from the November elections and before the holiday season gobbled up the public's attention in the weeks before the start of the legislative session. Jim Henson, director of the Politics Project, said border security has become something of a perennial top concern for Texans in the polls he has overseen.
That and the state of the Texas economy were among the dominant issues in the 2024 election cycle, in which all 150 seats in the Texas House and about half of those in the 31-member state Senate were on the ballot. However, two of the other issues pressed in many of the contested races — abortion for the Democrats and school vouchers on the Republican side — ranked comparatively low on the interest scale, the poll found. Henson said both issues motivate campaign donors and partisan activists, but not necessarily ordinary Texans. "These are not top-of-mind issues for most voters," Henson told the American-Statesman. "It's not to say they are not important to voters, but those concerns tend to get swamped by economic concerns." While the poll of 1,200 self-identified registered voters found wide gaps between Democrats and Republicans on border security — four times as many Republicans said it was the top issue than Democrats did — the difference became much narrower when it came to the importance of education/vouchers and abortion.
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American ‘oligarchy’ decried by Biden gained $1.5 trillion in his term
The very richest Americans are among the biggest winners from President Joe Biden’s time in office, despite his farewell address warning of an “oligarchy” and a “tech industrial complex” that threaten US democracy. The 100 wealthiest Americans got more than $1.5 trillion richer over the last four years, with tech tycoons including Elon Musk, Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg leading the way, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The top 0.1% gained more than $6 trillion, Federal Reserve estimates through September show. Biden warned of “a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra wealthy people,” in his speech from the White House on Wednesday. “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”
During his term, the super-rich grabbed a bigger share of a growing pie. Stock and housing markets boomed during a post-pandemic rebound that outpaced US peers. It left all the income and wealth groups measured by the Fed at least a little better-off – and American households overall some $36 trillion richer, as of September, than when Biden took office. Measured in straight dollars, that increase was slightly bigger than the one recorded under Biden’s predecessor and soon-to-be successor, Donald Trump. But inflation complicates the picture. The spike in prices over the last few years means that wealth rose faster during Trump’s term in real, purchasing-power terms, as did the median household income.Under both presidents, the top US billionaires did far better than almost everyone else. The richest 100 Americans saw their collective net worth surge 63% under Biden, according an analysis that covers the four years between his 2020 win and Trump’s re-election last November, and excludes another 8% jump since then. The 100 largest fortunes combined now exceed $4 trillion — more than the collective net worth of the poorest half of Americans, spread over 66.5 million households. The share of US wealth owned by the top 0.1%, at nearly 14%, is now at its highest point in Fed estimates dating back to the 1980s.
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Biden won't enforce TikTok ban, official says, leaving fate of app to Trump
President Joe Biden won’t enforce a ban on the social media app TikTok that is set to take effect a day before he leaves office on Monday, a U.S. official said Thursday, leaving its fate in the hands of President-elect Donald Trump. Congress last year, in a law signed by Biden, required that TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance divest the company by Jan. 19, a day before the presidential inauguration. The official said the outgoing administration was leaving the implementation of the law — and the potential enforcement of the ban — to Trump. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal Biden administration thinking.
Trump, who once called to ban the app, has since pledged to keep it available in the U.S., though his transition team has not said how they intend to accomplish that. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is expected to attend Trump’s inauguration and be granted a prime seating location on the dais as the president-elect’s national security adviser signals that the incoming administration may take steps to “keep TikTok from going dark.” Incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz on Thursday told Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” that the federal law that could ban TikTok by Sunday also “allows for an extension as long as a viable deal is on the table.” The push to save TikTok, much like the move to ban it in the U.S., has crossed partisan lines. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said he spoke with Biden on Thursday to advocate for extending the deadline to ban TikTok.
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California fires show states’ ‘last resort’ insurance plans could be overwhelmed
In the months before thousands of Los Angeles homes went up in flames, property insurance companies dropped coverage in many neighborhoods of the city, citing the growing wildfire risks caused by climate change. As a result, a fast-growing number of California residents have switched to a state-backed “last resort” insurance plan. That plan has taken on policies covering billions of dollars in some of the neighborhoods hardest hit by the fires, which have engulfed more than 12,000 structures and prompted staggering loss projections. Some experts think the plan’s reserves won’t be enough to cover the damage. “They’re not going to have enough money to pay these claims,” said Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, a nonprofit that advocates for insurance customers. If that happens, it will trigger an assessment on every home insurance policyholder in the state to cover the outstanding claims. It’s a mechanism available under some state-backed insurance plans — one that’s known in Florida as the “hurricane tax.” Now, for the first time, Californians may be hit with the “wildfire tax.”
Some experts fear it’s just the beginning of a vicious cycle in states across the country. As climate change increases the frequency and severity of disasters, experts predict, insurance companies will stop offering coverage to vast swaths of the country. State-backed “last resort” plans will take on an ever-growing number of the highest risk properties. And homeowners everywhere will get stuck with the bill when disaster strikes. “We’re all going to be paying for the insurance industry’s unwillingness to serve in those communities,” said Doug Heller, director of insurance with the Consumer Federation of America, a research and advocacy nonprofit. “The private companies are getting all the best risk [policies] and the public holds the bag for the worst risk.” Insurance companies have lobbied state regulators for more flexibility in setting rates and faster approvals of rate hikes. They say the market needs to keep up with the ever-growing risks caused by climate change for their business to be viable. The American Property Casualty Insurance Association did not grant an interview request by publication time. State-backed insurance plans, known as FAIR Plans or Citizens Plans, were set up starting in the 1960s to provide coverage for homeowners who couldn’t find policies on the private market. The plans are managed by state governments, but backed financially by a pool of the private insurers doing business in that state. Today, 35 states and the District of Columbia offer FAIR Plan policies to high-risk property owners. In many cases, those plans — often designed to cover a handful of outlier properties — are insuring hundreds of thousands of homes valued at billions of dollars. California, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts and North Carolina all have more than 100,000 policies insured by their state plans. Nationwide, these state-backed plans cover nearly 3 million properties — California’s alone provides nearly half a million policies — with an exposure exceeding $1 trillion. Those numbers are only likely to grow.
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State Stories
The Feds found sexual abuse of kids in Texas’ Juvenile Justice Department. Will the Legislature act?
As disturbing as it was to read, an August report by the civil protection unit under President Joe Biden offered Texas’ criminal-justice reform community a sliver of hope. It confirmed some advocates’ pressing concerns. The Texas Juvenile Justice Department “uses excessive force on children” and “fails to prevent staff from sexually abusing children,” the 73-page assessment from the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division said. “Body-worn camera video reportedly showed one of the staff slamming a child’s head into a brick pillar, knocking him unconscious,” said one section. “Our review of hundreds of investigation reports from the Office of Inspector General shows a pervasive atmosphere of sexual abuse, grooming, and lack of staff accountability and training” at the department, where around 800 children from the ages of 10 to 18 are housed in Texas, added another. In August, the weight of the federal government loomed large. A lawsuit against the state was possible, should Texas refuse to address the “very severe and significant violations,” Kristen Clarke, the Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said at the time.
Then, the election happened. As President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration nears, advocates are waiting to see if his administration will pressure TJJD to correct the failings found in the report. And have turned their sights to another avenue of potential reform: the freshly convened 89th Texas Legislature. The federal report was the culmination of a three-year deep dive into TJJD’s five facilities and was launched after two advocacy groups lodged complaints about the conditions within the lockups. The department’s governing board has since largely dismissed the findings. “I’m going to tell you — just from my personal experience — I don’t think it’s completely accurate,” former TJJD board chairman Scott Matthew said three weeks after the report was released, according to an archived video of the meeting. “I’ll leave it at that.” The threats of violence, another department official insisted, come from the children. “To provide some contrast, most of the investigations we do in (the office of the inspector general) are actually juvenile offenders assaulting our staff to varying degrees of injury and severity,” TJJD OIG Chief Daniel Guajardo told the board. “I don’t have any examples or evidence to present to the board that youth are experiencing any beatings while they’re confined at TJJD at this time.”
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Border business leaders show unity amid threats of tariffs, trade pact review
Business leaders from both sides of the border met Wednesday in El Paso. It was a show of unity as a new U.S. president threatens tariffs and a vital trade pact faces review in little more than a year. “This is very opportune because of the moment we are living in,” Juarez Mayor Cruz Perez Cuellar said. “We want to send a clear message that we want to continue working as a team, that the interests of both countries are totally compatible.” Added El Paso Mayor Renard Johnson: “We are going as a group to dispel any myths, any rumors about this region […] We are going to show not only the United States but the world how important El Paso and Juarez are.”
Donald Trump takes office on Monday following a presidential campaign in which he vowed to rein in illegal immigration. He wants Mexico to stop letting through millions of migrants who arrive at the U.S. border every year or else slap a 25 percent tariff on Mexican exports. The problem is many of those exports come from U.S. companies with assembly operations in Mexico. And thousands of trucking, warehousing, logistics and customs broker jobs in the United States depend on those exports. “The rest of the country needs to know this (El Paso-Juarez) corridor is the second largest in Texas,” said El Paso County Commissioner Sergio Coronado. “It is very important we keep this trade collaboration and make it possible for both sides to have the goods go back and forth. […] Half the products that come through here go east of Texas. So, it’s not just Texas and border communities that benefit; it’s the entire country.”
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Texas missionaries bring food, hope to migrants in Mexican border towns
The well-worn white van owned by West Side Baptist Church has made dozens of trips to South Texas and across the border to Mexico over the past few years. On Wednesday, it was filled with red upholstered chairs, donated clothes and toys to be given to migrant shelters and for a children’s ministry that missionaries from that church are starting in the Mexican border town of Reynosa. Pastor Jim Howard, who has been coming to the border for 35 years, brought three parishioners on the 12-hour drive from his church in Atlanta, Texas, to do missionary work south of the border this week. For years he has brushed off criticisms about why he helps the asylum-seekers, but admits that lately the outcries are getting louder and louder. “Some of them think they’re taking their jobs up here,” Howard said as he stopped at the McAllen-Hidalgo International Bridge to talk with Border Report before crossing into Reynosa.
“They just can’t understand anyone who would want to come from up there down here to help people down here, especially if they’re migrants and from other countries. So I do get pushback. And of course, you know, I tell them this, I’m am a man of the Lord, and I’m going to do what He tells me to,” he said. “And I’m going to keep coming.” He says he is worried for the asylum-seekers as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office on Jan. 20 with a promise of mass deportations from the United States. He says those waiting south of the border are uncertain whether they’ll get an opportunity to claim asylum in the U.S., and whether the CBP One app, which allows them to make asylum appointments, will even be operational. “They’re afraid,” Howard said. “Donald Trump has guaranteed that some of them are going back across the border. So they’re very concerned. They don’t know what’s going to happen, so they’re concerned about it. We try to stabilize them and say, ‘Look, you just have to trust the Lord. He’s going to end you up somewhere. So just, just be calm and trust Him.'”
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Jasmine Crockett, John Cornyn launch bid to name Dallas VA after Eddie Bernice Johnson
U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, are teaming up in a bipartisan effort to name the Dallas VA Medical Center after former U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, who died at the end of 2023. After receiving her nursing certificate, Johnson was hired sight unseen at Dallas’ VA hospital. She later recounted the overt racism she experienced at the hospital, where officials were shocked to discover she was Black. The discrimination almost drove her to quit, but she stuck with it and worked her way up to chief psychiatric nurse, the first African American to hold that position at the hospital. Johnson was the first registered nurse elected to Congress and the first Black woman to chair the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.
Crockett, with Johnson’s endorsement, was elected in 2022 to the Dallas-based seat Johnson represented for 30 years. “Throughout her 30 years of service to the people of North Texas, Congresswoman Johnson was guided by her service-driven heart and compassion for Texans in need — the same qualities that fueled her work as Chief Psychiatric Nurse at the Dallas Veterans Administration Hospital for nearly two decades,” Crockett said in a news release. “Congresswoman Johnson never forgot the servicemen and women she treated there.” In the release, Cornyn described Johnson as a trailblazer and longtime advocate for veterans. “This legislation to rename the VA Medical Center in Dallas in Congresswoman Johnson’s honor — nearly 70 years after she was hired as a nurse at this very hospital — would ensure her legacy of service is forever preserved,” Cornyn said. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, also supports the renaming, along with U.S. Reps. Al Green, D-Houston; Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio; Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo; Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston; Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso; and Lance Gooden, R-Terrell.
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Mavs midseason report card: Injuries, illness, inconsistency plague first half of season
The Dallas Mavericks have limped their way to the halfway point of the regular season. If there’s any word to describe the first 41 games for the defending Western Conference champions, it’s wounded. None of the team’s key players have been exempt from injury, including Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving, Klay Thompson, P.J. Washington Jr., Dereck Lively II and Daniel Gafford. A season defined by injury, illness and inconsistent lineups has the Mavericks seventh in the Western Conference with a 22-19 record following Wednesday’s controversial loss to the New Orleans Pelicans. The play-in window is disappointing positioning for the Mavericks, who entered the season with championship expectations following an NBA Finals loss to the Boston Celtics. The midway point of the season offers an opportunity to reflect on performances and distribute assessments of the roster and coaching staff. Mavericks guard Spencer Dinwiddie was asked about the state of the team following Wednesday’s loss.
“You can’t really give us a grade,” Dinwiddie said. “I know fans are probably up and down every game right now. But at the end of the day, we have lofty goals when healthy. ... It’s an incomplete grade until you get healthy and figure out which nine [players], what role are they going to have and string 20 games together. Then you know what you have.” Spencer Dinwiddie: B-. Dinwiddie signed with the Mavericks with the understanding that there could be nights when he doesn’t play, but there would also be games when the team needs his veteran leadership at the point guard spot. The latter has been the case this season as the Mavericks have relied on him probably more than they anticipated due to injuries. Dinwiddie ranks fourth on the team in total minutes behind Washington, Irving and Thompson. He’s averaging 9.9 points per game as the lead guard off the bench, but he’s also started 10 games in place of Irving or Doncic. His field goal efficiency at 38% is his lowest since the 2020-21 season and there are times where he’s guilty of falling in love with the step back 3 in end-of-shot-clock situations, which he refers to as “grenades,” but Dinwiddie has proven that he can set the table for others and finish at the rim. Luka Doncic: A-. There were lofty expectations for Doncic to pick up where he left off after coming off the best season of his career. A left calf injury took him out of training camp and preseason, delaying the chemistry-building process with his new teammates. He had a slow start by his own standards, especially from beyond the arc, but he resumed his MVP-caliber play following a 10-day sabbatical to rest a wrist injury. However, another injury to the same calf on Christmas day took Doncic out of the lineup indefinitely, ruining his chances for MVP and snapping his streak of five consecutive appearances on the All-NBA First Team. It’s been an uphill battle for the Mavericks without him over the last three weeks. When Doncic is healthy, the Mavericks are a force to be reckoned with and can compete with the league’s best.
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Driver in Texas migrant smuggling run where 53 people died pleads guilty
A Texas truck driver charged in the deaths of 53 migrants who rode in a sweltering tractor-trailer with no air conditioning pleaded guilty Thursday over the 2022 tragedy that became the nation’s deadliest smuggling attempt across the U.S.-Mexico border. Homero Zamorano Jr. pleaded guilty in federal court in San Antonio to one count of conspiracy to transport aliens resulting in death, causing serious bodily injury, and placing lives in jeopardy; one count of transportation of aliens resulting in death; and one count of transportation of aliens resulting in serious bodily injury and placing lives in jeopardy. The 48-year-old could face a maximum sentence of life in prison, the Justice Department announced. Zamorano is scheduled to be sentenced on April 24.
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Why doesn’t Texas have high-speed rail? Will we ever?
If Texas is anything, it’s big. Drive around the state, like most of us do, and it takes forever to get anywhere — it’s even become a point of pride. We laugh at East Coasters who complain about three and four-hour drives, which are a lunch trip for us. But, despite our bravado, the fact is that it’s 2025, and we’re still mostly driving around in cars, just like our parents and grandparents did. While we may look hungrily at countries like Japan and China, with their futuristic bullet trains, the question remains: Why doesn’t Texas have something like that? Or something even in the same galaxy? In November, Texas state Rep. John Bucy, a Democrat from Austin, proposed legislation to develop a high-speed rail line connecting Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio along the Interstate 35 corridor. Bucy introduced two bills: one requiring the Texas Department of Transportation to establish partnerships for planning the rail and another enabling state highway funds for transit projects.
But with all due respect to Bucy, his bill is probably going nowhere. (Such is the life of Democratic bills in Texas, and such has been the case for all other high-speed rail legislation in our state history.) The answer to why Texas doesn’t have high-speed rail is complicated — a confluence of political, economic, and cultural factors. Entrenched lobbying interests, high costs, and a deeply ingrained car culture have stymied efforts to develop rail infrastructure. But as Texas continues to grow, the demand for sustainable and efficient transportation solutions will only grow. Of course, high-speed rail would also affect competitors in the transportation industry, so interested parties have made their positions pretty clear — both through public arguments and through lobbying. In the 1990s, Southwest Airlines actively opposed the development of a high-speed rail line between Dallas and Houston, which would have been expanded to Austin and San Antonio, Chron.com reported. The airline feared losing passengers to the proposed rail system, which targeted the same short-haul market that Southwest relied on. The rail system, Texas TGV, planned to use trains capable of travelling 200 miles per hour but failed due to financing challenges and opposition from influential figures, many of whom were moved by Southwest’s lobbying. Southwest argued publicly that its concern was about preventing taxpayer-funded bailouts for the project. However, industry analyses suggested the airline’s motivation was protecting its market share. Predictions indicated the rail system could divert 60% of local air passengers, potentially forcing Southwest to increase fares or cut routes. “In the past in Texas, when high speed rail has come up as a possibility, airlines have pushed back against this, fearing competition,” Chandra Bhat, a University of Texas professor of engineering, told The Barbed Wire. “And, with their clout, they have successfully thwarted high speed rail possibilities by using their lobbying influence in the state legislature.”
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Steven Tu and Domenic Canonico: Texas law protects religious services. That includes sacred trees.
(Steven Tu is a law student in Notre Dame Law School’s Lindsay and Matt Moroun Religious Liberty Clinic. Domenic Canonico is an attorney in the clinic. The Lindsay and Matt Moroun Religious Liberty Clinic filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court of Texas on behalf of the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers and Carol Logan, in support of the appellants, Gary Perez and Matilde Torres.) Five years ago this winter, the COVID-19 pandemic upended the world, and governments responded by restricting large swaths of public life. Since then, Americans have grappled with that experience, working to decide how we should respond to similar situations in the future. For their part, Texans have already given a partial answer: in 2021, they amended the Texas Constitution to stop the government from “prohibit[ing] or limit[ing] religious services.” The Supreme Court of Texas is currently considering a case that tests whether that promise will ring true for people of all faiths, or only for some. For millennia, local Indigenous peoples have regarded a bend in the San Antonio River (known as Yanaguana) as sacred ground. The river bend mirrors the constellation Eridanus, symbolizing a bridge between the physical and spiritual worlds. The surrounding trees are home to cormorants, creatures central to the Coahuiltecan creation story, which tells of a cormorant spirit whose flight brought life to the San Antonio region. The site’s spiritual ecology makes it irreplaceable for believers. Today, the sacred site lies within San Antonio’s Brackenridge Park.
And it’s threatened by a construction project the City of San Antonio is pursuing. To renovate a retaining wall next to the river, the City wants to remove nearly 70 of the area’s 83 sacred trees and is preventing cormorants from nesting there. Once completed, these actions will make it impossible for Native Americans to worship there. Yet City officials never considered less destructive alternatives, refusing to reconsider their design because it “would take time and money.” Unfortunately, the City’s dismissive attitude is another episode in our nation’s long history of disregard for Native American sacred sites. Despite our nation’s commitment to religious freedom, Indigenous spiritual practices often haven’t received equal respect. For instance, in Arizona, the Apache sacred site Oak Flat is at risk of being obliterated by a government-enabled mining operation that would transform the land into a massive crater. Similarly, the Karankawa, once a prominent tribe in Texas, have been driven to near extinction, leaving their sacred sites vulnerable to government-backed development. This case is more of the same. But two members of the Lipan-Apache Native American Church are working to protect their rights. They’ve sued the City to stop it from needlessly destroying the sacred site. The case, Perez v. City of San Antonio, is now before the Supreme Court of Texas, and the survival of their spiritual practices may depend on how the court interprets the constitutional amendment ratified in the wake of the pandemic.
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Controversial gender policy approved by Cy-Fair ISD trustees without discussion
Despite heavy opposition at Thursday’s board meeting, Cypress-Fairbanks ISD trustees voted 5-1 to approve the first reading of a policy that would force staff to “out” transgender or nonbinary students if they request to use a different name or pronoun at school. The policy passed with only comments from the lone dissenting trustee, Julie Hinaman, who brought up myriad concerns about the policy and asked for changes. The other five trustees did not share thoughts on the policy at Thursday’s meeting, despite over 30 public speakers asking for clarity and urging trustees to vote against it. Board President Scott Henry was absent. “To listen to all of those impassioned students, current and former teachers, educators, parents in this district, their concerns about the parents' rights and responsibility policy, and then listen to trustee Hinaman’s impassioned analysis of the shortcomings of that policy, and then immediately turn around and pass it without further discussion ... It's cold,” said parent Christian Kimbell.
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HISD school board enacts stricter limits on Miles’ changes to magnet programs
Houston ISD’s Board of Managers voted Thursday to finalize stricter limits on when Superintendent Mike Miles can make major changes to the district’s magnet programs. The updated constraint states Miles can not make significant changes to specialized school programs without conducting a research-based analysis of the results of stakeholder engagement and related studies. He also must share the projected impact of any potential changes to student outcome goals, student enrollment and the budget with the school board and community. The revised policy expands the language in one of the initial constraints that board members had placed on Miles in November 2023. The other two constraints say he cannot allow the number of multi-year D- or F-rated campuses to increase or oversee negative impacts to the implementation of Individual Education Plans for students.
The board added a new definition of “significant changes,” clarifying that the constraint would apply to any program change that affects more than 30% of students in a magnet program or school. It would also include changes that apply to more than 10% of students in any grade level, or any other group that the board and superintendent agree is significant. “The real reason that we came to these conclusions was we did some actual testing amongst ourselves,” HISD board president Audrey Momanaee said. “‘Well, would this change actually trigger a reporting obligation on the administration? Do we want that? Is that appropriate? And we thought collectively that these numbers work.” It also defines “specialized programming” as a combined set of courses or experiences that include enrichment and advancement opportunities for students and are different from other programs at traditional neighborhood schools, such as language and cultural programs or college and career advancement programs. In a separate vote, the board approved a separate policy change that would allow Miles to make “minor” modifications to magnet programs in New Education System schools without having to conduct a research-based analysis.
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Bombshells from Turkey Leg Hut owner Nakia Holmes' interview with Essence
Nakia Holmes broke her silence in an interview with Essence magazine after her restaurant Turkey Leg Hut closed, following a split with her husband Lyndell Price, a failed health inspection and a bankruptcy filing. Holmes detailed the start of her relationship and the business, all the way to the end and what the future could hold for her. Here are five things we learned from the interview. Holmes said her divorce should be finalized this month. In the interview, she said she had been “checked out of the relationship” years before actually filing for divorce. She first announced her split from Price in an Instagram post in November 2023. As a self-described introvert, she said this was difficult for her to do. She said she fired him from the business shortly after.
Holmes, who married Price in 2015, alleged that Price was “guilty of cruelty” toward her in their marriage, according to court records reviewed by the Chronicle. Holmes made an array of allegations in an affidavit seeking a temporary restraining order in June 2023. She alleged that Price had recently "committed family violence," and taken her car keys and cash from the Turkey Leg Hut, according to court records. When asked why she didn't leave him sooner, she said she was wired to stick through tough times. Her parents had been married for more than 47 years and her grandparents 60 years. She told the magazine Price was the funny guy making people laugh at the hair salon. He asked the hair salon owner to pass her his number. Holmes didn't think anything of it but then they kept seeing each other around Almeda. He approached her at a bar, and his "charm was impossible to ignore," she said. In 2015, Holmes and Price created a hit selling turkey legs outside the Houston rodeo. In December of 2016, Price went to federal prison for his role in an IRS fraud scheme, just months before they were supposed to open a brick-and-mortar restaurant.
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Keller ISD residents tell board they oppose district split
Residents in the Keller school district who spoke at a special school board meeting Jan. 16 overwhelmingly opposed a proposal to split the district in two. Concerns from some of the 121 who signed up to speak included questions over how the district’s buildings, resources, funding and student body would be divided. Many also expressed anger at a lack of transparency on the part of the board in the process. Many described the split as a move to cut out students who “live on the wrong side of the tracks,” referring to the rail line along Denton Highway that serves as the border between Keller and Fort Worth, saying the board intended to racially segregate schools in the district. They also said they were “blindsided” by how the idea was made public.
Two school board trustees said on social media on Jan. 9 that they did not know about the plan until it was discussed during a closed session by three of the colleagues at a Dec. 19 meeting. Fort Worth city council member Charles Lauersdorf told the Star-Telegram last week that he spoke to a school board member who said members didn’t want to disclose the plan publicly because they didn’t want to create a public outcry before discussing it. The lack of transparency was the source of anger for many who came to speak. “Stop the secrecy,” said Tamara Masters, a Fort Worth resident, retired Keller ISD teacher and regional director of the United Educators Association. “I come before you today with a simple letter to request please stop all this drama. Start valuing the very people who make the district work for teachers, your staff, and the students they serve. It’s deeply alarming that you’re moving forward with a plan to abolish a significant portion of the district.”
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County Stories
Collin County deputy election administrator tapped to lead office
Collin County’s election commission on Thursday appointed the next administrator. Kaleb Breaux has been Collin County’s deputy elections administrator since January 2023, according to his LinkedIn profile. He also worked at the county’s election office as a voter registration coordinator from February 2020 to December 2022. Breaux will fill the position left by Bruce Sherbet, who retired late last year after nine years leading the county’s election office and more than 40 years of experience in election administration. “I’m super thankful and happy to be part of what’s going on in Collin County,” Breaux said after the elections commission announced his appointment.
Collin County’s election commission interviewed four candidates Thursday, including Troy Havard, who has been an assistant election administrator for Tarrant County. The election commission also interviewed Chris O’Reilly, who has experience in the restaurant industry, and Stephani Reazor, a nurse who has experience as a poll watcher and canvassed in previous elections. Collin County’s election commission is responsible for appointing the administrator and consists of the county judge, the county’s tax assessor-collector, the county clerk and the chairs of the county’s Republican and Democratic parties. Following the interviews, which were conducted behind closed doors in executive session, Shelby Williams, chair of the Collin County Republican Party, made the motion to appoint Breaux.
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City Stories
HISD ends policy that charged late parents $1 a minute at north Houston elementary school
Houston ISD said it had taken "corrective action" to end a policy that charged fees to families for late student pick up at Herrera Elementary School. In forms given to the Chronicle, the north Houston elementary school appeared to charge parents up to $62 for picking up students more than 30 minutes late. The school, which dismisses at 3 p.m., said it charged families $1 per minute after 3:30 p.m., citing its handbook. Failure to pay could affect students' ability to participate in field trips and "school-wide special events," according to the form.
Hector Mireles, who serves as president of Texas Support Personnel Employees Local 1, said he learned about the measure while eating at a restaurant, where the owner said his employee had to leave early because of Herrera's policy. At first Mireles did not believe it, but another customer corroborated the claim. Mireles said he tried to call the district, but they did not return a call. "And you got to understand, this is a Title I school that serves underprivileged students," Mireles said, referring to the school receiving resources to serve a high concentration of low-income families. "So this creates a financial hardship for the struggling families to choose if they want to pay cash fine for their school, or keep the lights on at home, or put food on their table."
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National Stories
Trump picks a jet-setting pal of Elon Musk to go get Greenland
Ken Howery is a quiet, unassuming tech investor who prioritizes discretion. And yet, he has ended up in the middle of two of the noisiest story lines of the incoming Trump administration. One is the expanding ambition of Elon Musk, Mr. Howery’s close friend and fellow party-scene fixture since the two helped run PayPal 25 years ago. The other is the expansionist ambition of Mr. Musk’s boss, President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has set his sights on buying Greenland, the world’s largest island. As Mr. Trump’s pick for ambassador to Denmark, Mr. Howery is expected to be central to what Mr. Trump hopes will be a real-estate deal of epic proportions. The only hitch is that Denmark, which counts Greenland as its autonomous territory, says the island is not for sale. Whether he likes it or not, Mr. Howery, a globe-trotter known for his taste for adventure and elaborate party planning, is likely to find himself in the middle of a geopolitical tempest.
Mr. Trump has been explicit about his expectations for his new ambassador filling a once-sleepy post. When he announced Mr. Howery for the role, which requires Senate confirmation, he reiterated his designs on Greenland for the first time since winning the presidency. “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social late last year. “Ken will do a wonderful job in representing the interests of the United States.” Thanking Mr. Trump on X, Mr. Howery mentioned not just the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen but also the U.S. Consulate in Nuuk, Greenland, saying he was eager to “deepen the bonds between our countries.” On cue, Mr. Musk chimed in: “Congrats! Help America gain Greenland.” Mr. Howery’s mission is an example of what awaits the crop of Silicon Valley donors who swarmed to Mr. Trump during the campaign and now intend to follow him into public office. While many are seasoned deal-makers, their private sector experience may only go so far in serving the unpredictable Mr. Trump. Mr. Howery did not respond to requests for comment. In private conversations, friends say he holds traditional conservative views and is hardly a Trump die-hard. He is drawn to diplomatic roles not out of ideology but for the overseas experience, they said. He is expected to be in Washington this week, hosting a rooftop cocktail reception opening the inauguration weekend on Friday, according to a copy of the invitation.
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Biden sets record for most pardons and commutations with new round of clemency for nonviolent drug offenders
US President Joe Biden speaks to the press before participating in a briefing regarding the ongoing wildfire season response and Federal efforts to reduce wildfire risk, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, on September 17, 2024. President Joe Biden said Friday he is commuting the sentences of more than 2,000 people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses, cementing his legacy as the president who has issued the most individual pardons and commutations in U.S. history. Biden said in a statement that commuting the nearly 2,500 sentences would help “equalize” sentencing disparities. “Today’s clemency action provides relief for individuals who received lengthy sentences based on discredited distinctions between crack and powder cocaine, as well as outdated sentencing enhancements for drug crimes,” he said.
“This action is an important step toward righting historic wrongs, correcting sentencing disparities, and providing deserving individuals the opportunity to return to their families and communities after spending far too much time behind bars,” he added. “With this action, I have now issued more individual pardons and commutations than any president in U.S. history,” Biden said. Almost two dozen congressional Democrats last month urged Biden to commute the sentences of people affected by the sentencing disparities, arguing that harsher penalties for crack “caused disproportionate harm to communities of color.” Two laws dramatically shifted sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine offenses over the past 15 years. The Fair Sentencing Act, which was signed into law in 2010, lowered the statutory penalties for crack cocaine and tossed out the mandatory minimum sentence for possessing it. The First Step Act, which became law in 2018, made it possible to apply the reduced penalties to sentences for crack offenses that predated the 2010 law.
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Fact-check: Did California Gov. Gavin Newsom cut $100 million in fire prevention?
As wildfires caused at least two dozen deaths and billions of dollars in damages, some social media users accused California Gov. Gavin Newsom of slashing money to prevent fires. Many posts including by Fox News stated Newsom cut about $100 million in fire prevention from the state’s budget months before the Los Angeles fires. Some of the posts drew information from a Jan. 10 Newsweek article that said Newsom signed a budget in June that cut funding for wildfire and forest resilience by $101 million. California Assembly Republicans made similar statements about fire prevention cuts citing information from the state budget. President-elect Donald Trump posted an article by Breitbart that repeated the $100 million claim, citing Newsweek.
Newsom said it was a "ridiculous lie" that he cut $100 million, a retort he included on his new website, California Fire Facts. But the website didn’t dissect the $100 million; it focused on the big picture of the budget during his tenure, asserting that the budget had grown for California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, Cal Fire. Newsom is right that the budget increased. But it’s not a lie that money (actually more than $100 million) was cut. In 2021 and 2022, California had a budget surplus. The state dedicated an additional $16.3 billion to address issues ranging from droughts and sustainable agriculture to wildfires and extreme heat, said Gokce Sencan, a research associate at the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan think tank. As part of that increase, the state allocated $2.8 billion toward wildfires and improving forest health. However, after 2023 and 2024 budget deficits, the state shaved that amount by $191 million ($47 million in 2023, $144 million in 2024). The budget deficit was tens of billions of dollars. Cal Fire, which oversees about 31 million acres, responds to hazards and disasters, including fires. The department in 2024-25 has about a $4.2 billion budget. (Most of the money comes from state funds, but it also includes reimbursements from local departments and the federal government.)
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Kash Patel has vowed retribution. As FBI director, he could do it.
If Kash Patel has his way, he has written, the FBI’s top ranks will be fired. The bureau’s headquarters in downtown Washington will be emptied out and shuttered, and its authority will be “dramatically limited and refocused,” he wrote in his 2023 book. President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of Patel to lead the FBI has set off spasms of alarm among many national security veterans, law enforcement officials and others who have worked with him. The former prosecutor and national security aide appears to have secured the support of at least some key Republican senators, but critics say Patel lacks the record and temperament needed to run the country’s premier law enforcement agency. They point to his lack of experience as well as his history of remarks attacking Trump opponents and threatening to punish perceived foes. “The idea that he is going to become the FBI director is appalling,” said Charles Kupperman, who was deputy national security adviser in the previous Trump White House while Patel worked as an aide to the National Security Council. “His legal career is modest at best. His ideas are ludicrous.”
Patel’s record is light on managing a large workforce and heavy on bombastic rhetoric and fervent loyalty to Trump, according to a review of his published writing and interviews with more than 20 people who have worked with him over the years. He also has at times overstated his achievements. His detractors, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss information they were not authorized to disclose, said they fear Patel would weaponize an agency with sweeping powers and misuse sensitive intelligence. Some Republicans have hailed the pick, however, saying that if confirmed Patel would bring needed changes to an agency they think has become too politicized. Trump, for one, called him “the most qualified” person ever tapped to lead the FBI. Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma) said: “If you’re going to clean up the FBI … Kash is the perfect person.” Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick for attorney general, has also backed Patel for the FBI job. During the first day of Bondi’s confirmation hearing Wednesday on Capitol Hill, Democratic senators repeatedly grilled her about the FBI nominee. “I have known Kash, and I believe that Kash is the right person at this time for this job,” Bondi said. She also highlighted the chain of command. “Mr. Patel would fall under me and the Department of Justice,” Bondi said, adding that she would make sure “all laws are followed, and so will he.” Robert O’Brien, Trump’s last national security adviser, said in an interview that Patel had laudable accomplishments — including working to win the release of Americans held hostage overseas — “but never made a big deal about it.”
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Zeldin, HUD pick Eric Scott Turner testify as part of a busy day of confirmation hearings
Former Rep. Lee Zeldin, who is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, told senators Thursday that climate change is real but that other nations are not doing enough to cut their carbon emissions. Mr. Zeldin, a Republican from New York, acknowledged concerns about heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide and methane, and rising sea levels. He said emissions have decreased in the U.S. in recent decades and other superpowers should make an effort, an allusion to nations such as China and India. “I believe that climate change is real,” Mr. Zeldin told Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, during a confirmation hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
But he defended his future boss, Mr. Trump, saying the president-elect’s comments about climate change being a hoax were related to policy solutions that were unfair to the U.S. “I think that he’s concerned about the economic costs of some policies,” Mr. Zeldin said. More broadly, Mr. Zeldin said it would be possible to protect the environment without stifling economic opportunity. “We can and we must protect our precious environment without suffocating the economy,” he said. Senators focused on the climate and parochial matters in their states during the hearing, without the type of bitter exchanges about personal character that other nominees faced. The congenial tone signaled Mr. Zeldin has a solid path toward confirmation in the GOP-controlled Senate. Eric Scott Turner appeared before the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee for his nomination as leader of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Mr. Turner, a 52-year-old who also served in the first Trump administration, is a former player in the NFL and a professional mentor, pastor and former Texas House member. HUD is charged with addressing the nation’s housing needs and fair housing laws, and oversees housing for the poorest Americans. Sen. Bernie Moreno, Ohio Republican, asked how the number of unauthorized immigrants has affected housing affordability. Mr. Turner called it “a great burden” on HUD as an agency, especially as a homelessness issue.
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David Lynch, who directed off-kilter classics, dies at 78
Director David Lynch has died. His sinister, surreal vision of America made him a leading counterculture auteur in the 1980s and 1990s, with movies such as Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and Mulholland Drive, as well as the groundbreaking television series he co-created with Mark Frost, Twin Peaks. Lynch's family shared the news of his death on Thursday in a Facebook post. He announced in 2024 he would no longer leave his home after a diagnosis of emphysema from a lifetime of smoking, and concerns about catching COVID-19. Born in Missoula, Mont., in 1946, Lynch spent much of his childhood in Boise, Idaho. For the rest of his life, Lynch looked as if he had stepped out of the 1950s, with a messy pompadour of silver hair and simple outfits of slacks and white dress shirts, buttoned all the way to the top.
In his 2018 memoir, Room to Dream, Lynch said he grew up in "a super happy household" with tremendous freedom. But he recalled a haunting memory about riding bikes at night with his brother on a small, quiet street, when a naked woman emerged out of nowhere with a bloodied mouth. She walked toward the boys in a daze and sat down on the curb. That image could come straight from one of Lynch's movies. Over the course of his life, he created dozens of works ranging from full-length films to television series to short animation to commercials for luxury perfumes. His first feature, from 1977, was a black-and-white surreal horror movie. Eraserhead centers on a stressed-out man who finds himself thrust into fatherhood, with a sickly newborn who barely resembles a human child. Lynch started making it while in his mid-20s, as a student at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. The film initially got mixed reviews but became a stealth hit in late-night movie houses.
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