October 2, 2026: All Newsclips

Lead Stories

Abbott pulls endorsement of the GOP challenger to Rep. Mary Ann Perez after video shows DWI arrest, racial slur

David Flores, the Republican running to represent Pasadena in the Texas House of Representatives, has lost Gov. Greg Abbott's endorsement after video circulated Wednesday showing Flores use a racial slur during his arrest for drunk driving earlier this year. Flores was pulled over by Deer Park police for speeding early in the morning on Feb. 14 and found to have a blood alcohol content of 0.11%, according to a spokesman for the Deer Park Police Department. Court records show he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of driving while intoxicated in June and was sentenced to probation. Dashcam footage obtained and released Wednesday by the Lone Star Project, a Democratic strategy group, appears to show Flores trying to talk his way out of the arrest by flexing his political connections. He tells officers he has just received an endorsement from Abbott and name-drops state Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, whom he describes as a "good buddy."

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"The governor just freaking endorsed me," Flores can be heard saying, though the governor did not officially announce his endorsement until May. Flores then can be heard mumbling expletives under his breath, using a racial slur for Black people, the video shows. Neither of the arresting officers appeared to be Black. Flores, through a campaign spokesperson, did not immediately comment Thursday. He is running to unseat Rep. Mary Ann Perez, D-Pasadena, in House District 144. Abbott campaign spokesman Eduardo Leal said Thursday that the governor was withdrawing his endorsement in light of Flores's arrest and comments. "There is no place for this kind of behavior or language," Leal said. "Our brave law enforcement officers put their lives on the line every day to keep our communities safe, and Governor Abbott will always stand with the men and women of law enforcement." Cain said he hadn't seen the video and declined to comment. Flores previously was convicted of five misdemeanors between 2001 and 2004 for offenses including theft, assault and evading arrest, and was open about his earlier run-ins with the law during a 2018 campaign for Pasadena mayor. Court records show Flores had not been charged with a crime in Harris County since 2004 until his February arrest. Flores' arrest could be a blow to one of the GOP's best chances to flip a Democratic state house seat in November, as Abbott attempts to "turn Harris County deep red" by investing heavily in races up and down the ballot. Perez has held HD 144 for nearly 10 years, but the district voted for President Donald Trump in 2024. Perez said Flores' arrest raised questions about her opponent's judgement. "Public service should never be viewed as a shield from accountability, before or after someone is elected," Perez said. "Those who seek the public's trust must accept responsibility for their actions and hold themselves to the same standards they expect of everyone else."

Trump rallies support for Ken Paxton in Texas campaign stop

President Donald Trump urged Texas voters to support state Attorney General Ken Paxton in his Senate battle against Democrat James Talarico, as polls show the race is a toss-up for either political party, during a campaign swing through the state Thursday. “We need Ken so badly, and that’s why I’m here. I wanted to stop here,” Trump said while speaking at the Peterbilt Motors in Denton. “Texas represents so much. It would be such a horror to the system to put a guy, a freak like that in there, would be such a horror to … your state and such a horror to the country.” Republicans will have spent more than $300 million boosting Paxton as Democrats are hoping to flip the Senate seat. Texas PAC, which is affiliated with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), has spent $131 million to aid the attorney general, federal filings show.

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The Cook Political Report rates the race as a toss-up, and Democrats are counting on voter frustration over the economy and high gas prices to help them capture a seat that has long been held by the GOP. Lloyd Bentsen was the last Democrat elected to the Senate from Texas, in 1988. The president also suggested that Talarico is far too radical for the Lone Star State. “We’re all for Ken, how the hell could you be for the other guy anyway?” he asked. “Even if they had a good opponent, I’d be for Ken because he proved himself.” Trump, however, pushed back against complaints that his administration has not done enough for the nation or that the scandal-plagued Paxton could lose the race. “We need the votes, and I’m here for that, and I think we’re going to win,” said Trump. “Every place I’ve gone, we win.” But numerous polls show that voters blame Trump for the Iran war, leading to high gas and diesel prices. The concern has even led several Republican lawmakers to call for an immediate end to the war or to distance themselves from Trump, whose approval numbers have reached record lows. Paxton continues to tout Trump’s support and appeared with him in Denton.

Democrats regain ground on voter registration in key states after steep post-2024 drops

After having suffered massive voter registration losses in the wake of the last presidential election, Democrats have stemmed the bleeding in several key states heading into this year’s midterms, according to an NBC News Decision Desk analysis. NBC News’ Decision Desk analyzed voter file data from TargetSmart, a progressive data firm, for seven of the states that were the closest in the 2024 election and that registered voters by party: Arizona, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. From late 2024 through late 2025, Republicans significantly improved their voter registration margin over Democrats in all seven states, including by a net of roughly 100,000 in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. But from late 2025 through the middle of this year, Democrats managed to reverse, though not completely erase, those losses in five of them, adding more registrants on net than Republicans in Arizona, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. And in New Hampshire and North Carolina, Democrats have slowed the decline.

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While party registration is not 100% predictive of vote choice, the recent movement toward Democrats on this front provides another reason for optimism for the party this fall. Arizona, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Pennsylvania are all holding critical races for the Senate or governor (if not both), while New Jersey, which has become more competitive in recent years, is hosting a battleground House contest. The trend comes not only amid a backlash to President Donald Trump that has grown over the course of the year, but also as Democrats campaigned in consequential primaries that often centered on what direction the party would take after its 2024 defeat. Meanwhile, the pool of unaffiliated voters continued to expand in many of those states, reflecting a growing distrust of both major parties. There are three primary ways the party registration margin can change: new voters signing up; registrants switching parties; or registrants being removed from the rolls after having moved out of state, routine maintenance or dying. A total of 30 states and Washington, D.C., register voters by party, while the rest — including battlegrounds like Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin — do not.

Records show DPS knew of problems with Texas’ online voter registration portal as early as March

Six months before the Texas Department of Public Safety and Secretary of State’s Office were forced to send hundreds of thousands of backlogged voter registration records to local county officials, both agencies were warned that records were getting lost in DPS’s web portal. A state lawmaker flagged an issue with voter registration records in March, public records show. The agencies said that problem was resolved. But complaints about the portal continued. And in August the agencies realized they had a big issue — at least 500,000 backlogged voter registration records sent to county election officials last week. Now, county election administrators are scrambling with little time to sort through those records before the critical Nov. 3 midterm election.

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State officials said the most recent backlog of records was due to an October 2025 software update by a DPS vendor. Software engineering and election administration experts say the state agencies should have tested updates to their respective systems, including how they worked together, and developed ways to immediately alert state officials of errors. “To me, it just looks like they did not have the people with the depth of knowledge and maybe experience to make sure that they were testing everything that they needed to test,” said Trevor Timmons, the former chief information technology officer for the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office confirmed it had tested how a new version of its voter registration management system, known as TEAM, worked with DPS’s portal before launching its system overhaul in July 2025. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office and DPS did not respond to questions about whether they had again tested the systems before the October 2025 DPS update. DPS acknowledged in March that a “programming change” had prevented the processing of nearly 1,000 voter registration applications and updates Texans submitted through its web portal between December and February, public records show.

State Stories

‘So you’re saying there’s a chance?’ Texas lawmakers talk annexing parts of New Mexico

Texas lawmakers jested late Wednesday about a proposal to annex parts of New Mexico where officials in the state’s neighbor to the west have considered joining the Lone Star State. “As somebody who is from the Permian Basin, and who is neighbors with a lot of the disaffected New Mexicans, who I think, in at least some cases, would greet us as liberators,” said Rep. Brooks Landgraf, R-Odessa. “If not, we could arm the moderate New Mexicans,” Rep. Mitch Little, R-Lewisville, replied. “Like some old CIA psy-ops, right?” Landgraf said.

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“If the president can talk about Greenland, we can talk about New Mexico,” Rep. Richard Peña Raymond, D-Laredo, added. The debate over whether Texas should annex parts of New Mexico began in New Mexico, where two state representatives authored legislation that would allow three counties along the New Mexico-Texas border to swap states. The proposal was left dead in the water in New Mexico, and the lawmakers who brought the idea said they created it to highlight the political differences between Republican-led Texas and Democrat-dominated New Mexico. That didn’t stop House Speaker Dustin Burrows, a Lubbock representative, from running with the idea. Burrows said in February that “Texas would gladly welcome Lea County back to Texas, where it rightfully belongs,” naming one of the border counties floated for annexation. Burrows went on to say in March that studying the annexation of parts of New Mexico is a conversation “ultimately about culture, opportunity, and the right to choose a path that reflects the shared values of the Permian and Delaware basins.”

El Paso, Rio Grande Valley residents say ICE tactics have gone too far, poll finds

Residents of El Paso County and the Rio Grande Valley feel that increased immigration enforcement is making their life harder without improving their safety, according to polling results released Thursday by the ACLU of Texas. The results also indicate that residents in Texas’ most populous areas on the U.S.-Mexico border overwhelmingly disapprove of President Donald Trump’s job performance, which could point to a difficult environment for other Republican political candidates in the Nov. 3 election. “If there is one thing to take away from today and from our report, it is that enforcement has simply gone too far,” Nick Hudson, senior manager of policy and advocacy for ACLU of Texas, said during a news conference. Sixty-three percent of the more than 1,000 people surveyed felt that tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement have gone too far, with 21% believing the tactics have been about right.

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Concerns about immigration enforcement are impacting how people go about their day-to-day lives in El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley, the poll found. “A significant percentage of border residents reported rethinking even traveling to school at 19%, to church and community events at 24%, and even visiting the doctor at 18%,” said Osvaldo Grimaldo, a policy and advocacy strategist for border and immigrants’ rights at ACLU of Texas. “As a result of the massive enforcement efforts along the Texas border, local officials should take steps to allow everyone living in border communities the basic decency of access to medical care and religious community.” The number of ICE apprehensions have surged the El Paso region in recent months, according to the Deportation Data Project, with more than 1,800 people being taken into custody in El Paso County and adjacent areas in southern New Mexico in June and July alone. When asked for comment about the poll findings, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said: “Our agents are focused on protecting the American people – not entertaining performative outrage.”

Wilber Garces Perez has undergone surgery 11 days after ICE shooting in Austin, lawyer says

Wilber Garces Perez, the man who was shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in North Austin last month, underwent surgery on Thursday. His lawyer, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, said he is now recovering and has spoken to his family. According to a press release sent out on behalf of Lincoln-Goldfinch and Daniel Woodward of the Texas Civil Rights Project, ICE would not grant Garces Perez's wife access to the operating room. He was shot on Sept. 20, after fleeing from a traffic stop, court documents show. As of Thursday, he had a bullet lodged in his back for about 11 days.

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“This is a public safety issue,” the lawyers' statement said. “Federal agents cannot act as judge, jury, and executioner on our streets. We’re seeing agents run plates, make high-risk stops of people with no criminal record, and fail to wear or activate the cameras meant to hold them accountable.” The officer who shot Garces Perez, who is a Venezuelan national, was not wearing a body camera, according to Rick Bazan, a Department of Homeland Security special agent who testified in court on Wednesday. The other officer involved had turned off his body camera prior to arriving at the scene. Garces Perez is facing up to 20 years in prison for allegedly assaulting, resisting, interfering and impeding a federal officer. He is being held by the U.S. Marshals Service, according to his lawyer, following a judge's ruling that he is a flight risk and will remain in custody.

Can small-group tours of data centers change hearts and minds? CyrusOne tries a new approach to influence public opinion.

Texas has become the epicenter of the nation’s data center growth with the conspicuous buildings popping up next to neighborhoods and on farmland throughout the state. Though the sight of them has drawn considerable public backlash, few people can say they’ve physically walked through the doors of a data center and into the cloud. Only a handful of staff work there. The gates are locked to all but construction crews and those with security clearances. The doors to the massive, windowless warehouse-style structures with their own power grids are tightly guarded. Media requests for a look behind the curtain had gone unfulfilled — until now. In the Texas Research Park on the far Northwest Side of San Antonio, several large industrial buildings in various stages of completion have been built along what’s become a data center corridor.

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On Omicron Drive, a high-security palisade fence, its sharp black teeth curved outward, wraps around 22 acres of land acquired by data center developer CyrusOne. Through a swing gate with crossing arms on either side, the San Antonio Report and other members of the press entered the premises recently for a first-ever media tour of the facility. Invited to the site by the company and its political affairs representatives, the tour began in the lobby of a gray and white building that houses the data center and offices. Uniformed security officers sitting behind glass checked IDs and handed out red visitor badges only after electronic confidentiality forms were signed. During introductions, a spokeswoman told reporters and a podcaster that all conversations during the media tour should be considered “off the record” and only exterior photos of the center were permitted. Data centers are critical infrastructure — storing and processing a growing amount of digital data on behalf of clients, from government entities, financial services firms and health care systems to streaming services and social media.

Airbnb launches nationwide affordable housing investment in Austin

Airbnb announced a $6.4 million investment in northeast Austin to fund affordable housing in the city earlier this month. The investment, part of Airbnb’s Housing Accelerator program, will support the creation of 201 units of affordable housing at 800 E. St. John Ave., a lot that has sat vacant for nearly 20 years. Working with Austin, the project will also support a companion project with an additional 325 units of mixed-income housing. The city has owned the St. John site since 2013 but has struggled to make progress on any projects. In 2017, former City Council member Greg Casar, now a U.S. congressman representing Austin, passed a resolution directing the city to reimagine the plot of land. Although City Council approved the project in 2020, it stalled for five years because of a lack of funding, despite community support.

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Airbnb’s investment will cover the remaining funding needed to move the project forward. A spokesperson for Airbnb said dozens of housing investment proposals have been submitted to Airbnb across 13 states and Washington, D.C., since the Housing Accelerator program went public. Research by the Center for Public Enterprise estimates about 750,000 housing units are currently stalled in the United States. “The U.S. is short (of) more than 5 million homes — more than all the housing units in New York City and Los Angeles combined,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “We launched the Airbnb Housing Accelerator to help make building housing easier, faster, and cheaper by tackling several construction barriers simultaneously: financing, data, policy reform, and innovation.” Airbnb is also funding local organizations in Austin supporting pro-housing reforms. Zach Faddis, president of Austinites for Urban Rail Action, an urbanist advocacy nonprofit in Austin, said Airbnb gave the group a $75,000 grant, which Faddis said will help AURA expand past exclusively volunteer work and hire an additional part-time employee. AURA engages with Austin residents and city hall to change affordable housing and zoning laws. Faddis said the organization has helped remove city parking minimums, increase the number of homes allowed on family lots and push other reforms citywide. Faddis said he is hopeful the project will further expand affordable housing opportunities in Austin. “(The U.S. has) made it very hard to build enough housing and (has) outlawed many of the kinds of housing that would allow people to live more (and) work comfortably, more affordably and would result in less homelessness and need for affordable housing in America,” Faddis said.

Amber Guyger granted parole after serving seven years in prison in shooting death of Botham Jean

Seven years to the day Amber Guyger was convicted of murder in the shooting of Botham Jean, she has been granted parole, WFAA has confirmed. Guyger, a Dallas police officer at the time of the shooting, was found guilty of murdering Jean in 2018. She said she mistook Jean's apartment for her own, assumed he was an intruder and shot him. DPD fired Guyger days after the shooting on Sept. 24, 2018. Guyger was sentenced to 10 years in prison during her 2019 trial. In 2021 and early 2022, Guyger appealed multiple times to have her conviction overturned but was denied by the courts. The news of Guyger's granted parole comes days after what would have been Jean's 35th birthday. It also happened just shy of three years before she was set to be released: Sept. 29, 2029, which would have been his 38th birthday.

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During the trial, Guyger said she had just ended a 13-hour shift when she mistook Botham Jean's apartment as her own. She told investigators that she parked on the fourth floor instead of the third at the South Side Flats apartments, arrest records show. But prosecutors said the fourth floor of the garage is open-air, while the third floor, where Guyger normally parked, is not. Prosecutor Jason Hermus said Guyger, who was still in uniform, also missed several visual clues during her walk down two long hallways. She also failed to notice Jean’s red doormat, the only one with such a noticeable doormat on the third or fourth floor, and the smell of marijuana in his home — all indicators she had gone to the wrong door. During the trial, it was revealed that Jean's apartment was more cluttered than Guyger's, which was sparsely furnished. Guyger's apartment had a half-circle entry table with a vase of flowers in the living room of her apartment.

Dallas Morning News Editorial: We recommend Alisa Simmons in the race for Tarrant County judge

Tim O’Hare has had a problematic tenure as Tarrant County judge. The hostile handling of meetings — including ordering speakers removed — and undemocratic decisions, such as reducing the number of polling places ahead of a midterm election, are troubling. The way Tarrant County is managing its finances is also concerning. Running against O’Hare, a Republican, is Commissioner Alisa Simmons. We recommend the Democratic candidate with reservations. Simmons, 63, has had frequent clashes with O’Hare. It is true that the incumbent county judge sometimes cuts her off while she is speaking, but Simmons has not always reacted well, including an instance in which she made an obscene gesture. Simmons told us she gets along well with the other commissioners, and she’s tired of the constant fighting in the court, but we are not confident she would lead toward more civility. Simmons has been critical of the finances of the county government, and while she was supportive of tax cuts early in her tenure, she has voted against lower tax rates in the last two budget cycles. She told us she wants to right-size the budget and supports a no-new-revenue rate.

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Simmons was also critical of the county’s use of more than $7.7 million in reserves to cover unbudgeted costs, including overtime at the sheriff’s office in 2025, which suggests poor planning. Simmons told us she supports fully funded public safety infrastructure as well as investments in community programs. In her view, outsourcing of some services, such as rental assistance for low-income residents, was not fully thought through. The nonprofit in charge of this assistance was projected to run out of funding before its contract ended. O’Hare did not answer our Voter Guide questionnaire and didn't attend a candidate interview. On his website, he cites lowering taxes and “cutting wasteful spending” as his accomplishments. O’Hare has used his platform for hyperpartisanship, including his unfounded ideas about election integrity. In 2023, the elections administrator Heider Garcia resigned over disagreements with the county judge. O’Hare has also pushed for removing early voting sites and led a mid-decade redistricting effort. The court also cut funding for bus rides to the polls for low-income residents. In 2025, this Editorial Board said O’Hare does not treat voting as a sacred right to be protected and encouraged, but as a source of suspicion. Under O’Hare’s leadership, speakers at commissioners court have been removed or criminally charged for cursing, clapping or insulting commissioners or for going past their allotted time to speak during the public-comment period. Some of these removals were justified, but others raise concerns. One man was expelled for speaking eight seconds over his allotted time, and then he faced a yearlong ban from the building, KERA News reported. We believed Republicans should have elected someone like former Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price to this seat. She would have done the job well and treated those who serve or appear before the court with respect. O’Hare has failed at that. Simmons was not the best candidate for Democrats in their primary either; U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey dropped out of the race early on. But between Simmons and O’Hare, she is the better choice.

Ted Brown: Want less spending, more guns and no war? Forget Paxton. Vote Libertarian!

(Longtime Libertarian Ted Brown is running for U.S. Senate against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton and Democratic Rep. James Talarico.) With early voting quickly approaching, Texas Republicans find themselves in a bind. Consider state Rep. Jeff Leach, a Collin County Republican who led the 2023 impeachment effort against Attorney General Ken Paxton. Now Leach says that even he has to support Paxton for the U.S. Senate. “I’m a Republican,” he said at the Texas Tribune Festival last week. “It’s a binary choice.” That’s not true. Republicans dissatisfied with Paxton’s criminal behavior and lack of character aren’t stuck voting for Democratic state Rep. James Talarico. There’s an alternative. They can vote for a candidate who actually cares about fiscal responsibility and limited, constitutional government. They can vote for me. I’m Ted Brown, and I’m Texas’ Libertarian Party candidate for U.S. Senate. I am seeking support from all voters with my platform of personal freedom, economic freedom, digital privacy and a peaceful, anti-war foreign policy.

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A lot of Texas Republicans know that Paxton has been indicted, impeached and accused of various forms of official misconduct. They know taxpayers are on the hook for his $6.6 million whistleblower settlement. Corrupt politicians may be nothing new, but usually it takes a while for a senator to give in to the swamp. If Paxton wins, he would enter the Senate already corrupt. Who knows what other trouble he’s ready to get into on day one? A few Republicans seem willing to cast their ballots for Talarico as a protest vote. I imagine many more are tempted but understandably can’t bring themselves to vote for a lifelong Democrat who regularly defies conservative values around fiscal responsibility and protecting the right to bear arms. That’s why I’m here. Not only do I want to cut spending and taxes, but I’m also a strong pro-gun advocate for the Second Amendment. Meanwhile, Paxton is running on a platform of big government giveaways, like free money for home down payments. Republicans used to campaign as a small-government party that wanted balanced budgets. They haven’t delivered, and there’s no reason to think someone like Paxton will do anything to tackle our gargantuan federal deficits and the unsustainable $40 trillion national debt. For those Republicans who truly believe in less government, voting Libertarian is the logical choice.

AAA: Texas records most expensive September ever for gasoline

Texas drivers just weathered the most expensive September at the pump in state history, as elevated crude oil prices and instability near the Strait of Hormuz kept fuel costs soaring throughout the month. According to AAA Texas, the statewide average for regular unleaded gasoline reached $3.94 per gallon last month, shattering the previous September record of $3.63 set back in 2012. While prices have edged down two cents over the past week, Lone Star State motorists are still paying $1.20 more per gallon than they did at this time last year.

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“September was a record-setting month at the pump for Texas drivers, with the statewide average for regular unleaded reaching its highest September level on record,” said Daniel Armbruster, spokesperson for AAA Texas. “While crude oil prices have recently eased back into the $90-per-barrel range, gasoline prices remain unusually high for this time of year.” The pain at the pump varies significantly depending on the metro area. Drivers in El Paso are taking the hardest hit, paying a state-high average of $4.34 per gallon. Meanwhile, motorists in the McAllen metro area are seeing the lowest prices in Texas at $3.74 per gallon. Nationally, Americans are paying an average of $4.41 per gallon—down seven cents from last week, but up $1.25 compared to a year ago. While crude oil dropping back into the $90-per-barrel range could offer drivers some relief heading into autumn, AAA officials noted that the record spike remains seasonal.

RFK Jr. announces partnership with Dell Medical School to boost clinical trials in the US

UT Austin's Dell Medical School will have a key role in new projects aimed at improving and expanding clinical trials in the United States, federal officials announced Wednesday. U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was joined by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Mehmet Oz and other top health officials to unveil the new SURPASS initiative — an acronym for "Simulation-augmented, Real-time Platform Adaptive Seamless Trials." Kennedy said the goal was to modernize American clinical trial infrastructure to be able to compete with countries that are amping up medical innovation, including China and Australia. "The system we have today takes far too long, it costs too much and it asks too much of the patients," Kennedy said.

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SURPASS is funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an agency within HHS created under the Biden administration that invests in innovative research and “breakthrough technologies.” With this initiative, the agency hopes to speed up the development of new disease treatments. “Today’s clinical trial system often requires too many stops, too much duplicated infrastructure, and too much time before researchers can understand whether a trial is on the right track,” said Daria Fedyukina, program manager for SURPASS, in a news release. Dell Medical School will be the "key academic partner" for two major projects announced as part of the SURPASS initiative. The first, known as STACK, intends to equip more research sites to take on clinical trials and make them more accessible to patients where they live, including in rural areas. The second, the COMMONS project, will develop a “national research data resource” which institutions across the country can access and contribute to. In addition to sharing data useful for future clinical trials, it aims to help institutions identify patients who might be a good fit for a project. Dell Medical School will be the first institution to contribute to and test COMMONS. Dell Medical School will dedicate resources from across UT to the efforts, including contributions from experts in computing, engineering and data science. Claudia Lucchinetti, the dean of Dell Medical School, said the projects align with the university’s goals in opening the forthcoming Dell Medical Center — “bringing research closer to patients and making learning part of everyday care.” “These projects will help build a lasting foundation for that work by connecting patients with appropriate trials, bringing participation closer to home and using real-world and digital data to better understand what works and for whom,” Lucchinetti said in a news release.

What Texas families should know about new student restraint rules

New Texas Education Agency rules published last week explicitly prohibit educators and other campus staff from restraining or disciplining students in any way that intentionally causes pain. The rules also reaffirm that restraint is only allowed in emergency situations — not as discipline or to make students listen or behave. Restraint includes using physical force or devices, like handcuffs, to restrict a student’s ability to move their body. Across the state, thousands of students are restrained every year, and 90% of restraints involve students with disabilities, according to research from advocacy groups Texas Appleseed and Disability Rights Texas. In San Antonio, a group of Schertz-Cibolo Universal City Independent School District parents sued the district after three educators allegedly abused special education students in 2024 and 2025, including through unlawful restraint.

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Starting Monday, Texas public schools will be required to train school employees and volunteers on crisis prevention and intervention techniques. Staff who are at a “high risk” of crisis involvement must receive annual training on non-violent intervention, verbal deescalation and safe ways to intervene. Schools need to train all other campus-based staff every two years. TEA released the updated rules after the Texas Legislature passed new laws related to student restraint and special education funding. Senate Bill 133, also known as the “No Kids in Cuffs” law, was passed in 2023 and bans school security staff from handcuffing, physically restraining or tasing students ages 10 and younger. The new rules take effect on Monday. In the updated rules, TEA added definitions for terms including “crisis,” “seclusion” and “taser.” The agency also clarified the meanings of “emergency” and “restraint.” The agency will now define “crisis” as when a student experiences dysregulation that overwhelms their coping mechanisms. In a crisis, a student may involuntarily move their body, making it difficult to function or think logically. This can put the student or others at risk of serious physical harm.

Texas youth prison lockdown prompts calls for reform ahead of new facility builds

A Texas legal advocacy nonprofit is calling for the state’s juvenile justice agency to halt groundbreakings on two new youth prisons in the wake of restrictive lockdown conditions at the agency’s five correctional facilities across the state. In the Texas Civil Rights Project’s letter to the Texas Juvenile Justice Department’s executive director Shandra Carter, the group condemned the statewide lockdown that confined hundreds of kids to their closet-sized cells for several days, sometimes with only minutes of release each day. “The agency has continuously proven an inability to safely staff and operate its existing youth prisons and deliver the rehabilitative services and care it is tasked to provide,” the letter reads. “It would be negligent for TJJD to continue the process of opening more facilities while systemwide operational challenges and staffing issues persist.”

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TJJD currently oversees five youth prisons housing about 750 kids total who have committed serious or chronic offenses. The department is set to break ground on two new youth prisons in the coming days: a facility south of Houston Thursday afternoon and a facility in Waxahachie on Wednesday. The Waxahachie facility will focus on kids with the highest mental and behavioral needs, according to TJJD’s web site. The Houston-area facility will serve youth with “high-risk and violent behavioral profiles.” “Celebrating new construction while children in existing facilities are harming themselves during statewide lockdowns is indefensible,” Sarah Beebe, the supervising staff attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, said in a press release Wednesday. “TJJD should cancel the groundbreakings, ensure all youth in their custody are safe, and return as many to the community as possible.” A representative from Finish the 5, a campaign under Texas Civil Rights Project’s pursuing the closure of the state’s five youth prisons, also signed onto the letter.

National Stories

5 wildest bombshell moments from Trump’s rollercoaster TIME interview

President Donald Trump doubled down on his media attacks, talked up his “highest of IQs,” floating pardoning his own administration officials and much more in a lengthy and fiery interview with TIME. Trump sat down for an interview with senior political correspondent Eric Cortellessa and editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs this week, and Trump wasted little time, jumping into numerous topics, lashing out at his own nominees to the Supreme Court, dismissing his falling approval ratings as “fake news,” and even lashing out at the reporters directly at one point.

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The president has lashed out at the Supreme Court over decisions against him, but made it clear in the TIME interview that he regrets nominating Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Trump said: Yeah. What can I do? I put them in. They voted against me too often. I was very—I gave them the position of a lifetime, and they vote against me often. They vote for me too. The Democrats stick like glue—those three, they virtually never vary. You can come up with the worst thing in the world and they’ll vote as a group. And while I don’t like it, there’s something I admire about it: there’s loyalty. So they have loyalty to [former President] Barack Hussein Obama. They have loyalty to [former President Joe] Biden, even though Biden doesn’t even know who the hell they are. He wouldn’t know. He doesn’t even know what the Supreme Court is. And me, I gave them the chance of a lifetime, and it’s unfortunate what they did. He took issue with the court’s rulings on birthright citizenship and tariffs. Trump had plenty to say about the media during his interview. He defended banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House grounds recently, accusing the outlets of publishing “fake” and negative stories about him, while ignoring more positive or “fair” stories. A judge has since temporarily reversed the ban against the outlets covering the White House. While complaining about the media attention he gets, Trump targeted Kaitlan Collins, a frequent media target. He called the CNN White House correspondent and TV anchor an “average person” and the “most unhappy young person” he’s ever seen. He even asked, “What’s the purpose of Kaitlan Collins?”

White House officials told the DOJ to delay action on abortion ahead of the midterms

The White House has instructed the Justice Department to move slowly on any abortion-related actions ahead of the midterm elections, The Washington Sun has learned. In a series of discussions, senior White House officials, led by White House chief of staff Susan Wiles, directly delivered the message to Attorney General Todd Blanche, according to a senior administration official not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Wiles suggested that an aggressive approach on abortion would generate unwanted attention, something the officials worried could alienate voters ahead of the November elections. “No one wants us taking any real action before the midterms,” the senior administration official said, emphasizing the push came directly from top White House staff.

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The White House denied that meetings took place: “This is completely false. These conversations never occurred between White House officials and DOJ officials.” But administration officials have also informed anti-abortion leaders, who have aggressively pressed the administration to move quickly to restrict abortion access, that any action on abortion would take place after the midterm elections, multiple sources told The Sun. “Once the midterms are over and it’s truly lame-duck time, we’ve heard the gloves will be off,” one conservative in touch with the administration, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations, said. “We have heard we have friends, and there are definitely people who are staunch pro-lifers.” The DOJ has consistently asked federal judges to pause ongoing lawsuits that seek to restrict access to the abortion drug mifepristone until the Food and Drug Administration completes a review of the drug’s safety and effectiveness. A departure from that strategy would create unfavorable headlines just before voters head to the polls, the White House officials made clear to Blanche.

ICE guidance bans high-speed car chases and sets tighter rules for traffic stops, a memo shows

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have been ordered not to engage in high-speed car chases and to make vehicle stops only if they have completed specific training, under new internal guidance issued after several drivers were shot in encounters with ICE. A memo sent to officers in ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division and obtained by The Associated Press warned they are not authorized to chase vehicles that fail to pull over under any circumstances. Instead, officers should take down the vehicles’ information for further investigation, according to the memo signed by ICE’s executive associate director Marcos D. Charles and dated Wednesday. The new guidance comes after ICE-initiated vehicle stops have repeatedly escalated when drivers have refused to cooperate or tried to flee. ICE agents have fired their guns during more than a dozen such encounters since last year, killing at least four people and wounding several others.

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President Donald Trump’s administration has faced internal tension over how to handle traffic stops, which are seen as particularly high-risk encounters. After fatal shootings of drivers in Maine and Texas in July, ICE officers were directed to temporarily pause most vehicle stops. But the next day, Trump went on social media to direct the agency to continue traffic stops, calling them “one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools.” ICE has faced intense pressure from the White House to deport more people who are in the country illegally, and its arrests have reached record numbers. At the same time, the agency’s rapid hiring spree last year resulted in some poorly vetted and trained officers hitting the streets. In a statement, ICE downplayed the significance of the memo, which said the new guidance was intended to replace and amend prior directives issued earlier this year, last year and in 2018.

Europe weighs new diesel stocks release after US pressure, sources say

European Union countries discussed a French proposal on Friday to release diesel stocks in response to US pressure to help cool surging fuel prices, two sources familiar with details of the discussion told Reuters. The proposal, ?discussed on a call involving EU governments, calls for European countries to release 50 million barrels of diesel and International Energy Agency members to release 50 ?million barrels of crude oil, the sources said. The discussions underscore growing pressure on Europe as U.S. ?President Donald Trump considers a potential ban on US diesel exports to help lower domestic fuel prices ahead of November ?3 midterm elections.

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In weighing its response, the EU needs to balance the need to ease soaring fuel costs against preserving ?emergency reserves to safeguard against uncertain supply from Gulf producers due to disruptions caused by the Iran war. France's finance and energy ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reuters reported on Thursday that the Trump administration had told Germany and France to draw down emergency ?diesel inventories or face a potential US diesel export ban, according to three people close to the discussions. The US had ?demanded large European countries including France and Germany release 100 million barrels of diesel within a 20-day window, one of the sources ?told Reuters ?on Friday. Global diesel supply has been hit by the US war with Iran and a Russian ban on exports after Ukraine damaged many of its refineries. Chinese refiners have also suspended October fuel exports to bolster domestic stocks, sources said.

Maine Dem Sen candidate's 'working class' cred shredded by both parties when internet sees latest 'cringey' ad

Maine Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson, a fifth-generation logger who has touted his working-class bonafides on the campaign trail, is facing backlash from both sides of the aisle over a viral ad that critics are labeling as tone-deaf pandering. "If Republicans spend $46 million on these TV ads, who’s gunna be convinced by that?" Jackson is asked in the ad as he sips a boba tea. Jackson then looks around and smiles before saying "the 1%ers" as a photo of his opponent, Sen. Susan Collins, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk are shown on the screen. The ad’s caption reads "sips boba tea" alongside a boba and wide-eyed emoji.

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The ad’s post on X was widely mocked by Democrats and Republicans and has been viewed over 2 million times. "Maine is the oldest median age electorate in the nation," Democratic strategist Steve Schale posted on X. "I know I’m not a DC strategist but I really, really don’t get it." "Troy Jackson needs to win but videos like this are unhelpful and cringey," liberal influencer Harry Sisson posted on X. "Please change it up! No boba tea!" "The same people that ran Mallory McMorrow's campaign into the ground are telling you to do this goofy s---," left-wing podcaster Kyle Kulinski posted on X. "Just get out there and tell the truth and speak from the heart for economic justice and against war and stop with all this bulls---. C'mon man. You're smarter than this." "It's a little bit funny to be desperately trying to position as working class masculine male and have gen-z women run your socials like they would run their own personals," Republican communicator Matt Whitlock posted on X. "... ," National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) Southern regional press secretary Reilly Richardson posted on X. " Weird," GOP communicator Steve Guest posted on X. "Looks like the first time that Troy Jackson has ever had boba." "Boba tea! Just like regular people! " journalist Chris Cillizza posted on X. "Want to remind you that Democrats were openly proud of how masculine their Maine campaign was going to be and then they ran this ad," former Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh posted on X. Fox News Digital reached out to Jackson's campaign for comment.

‘I am haunted’: Tennessee grapples with questions after another botched execution

For months before the state of Tennessee planned to execute Christa Pike, she and her attorneys worried that the lethal injection could go wrong. In court filings and in multiday hearings, they challenged the state’s existing protocols, raising fears that she could endure undue suffering and that a blood disorder and her small veins might cause complications. They cited another botched execution in the state in May. They suggested an alternative form of execution, such as firing squad or hanging. Each time, the requests were rejected. But those fears appeared to play out inside the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution on Wednesday night, when Tennessee officials tried to inject Pike with deadly drugs that ultimately did not kill her.

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She “was very concerned that this execution would go exactly the way it ended up coming out,” one of Pike’s attorneys, Stephen Ferrell, told reporters Thursday. “Tennessee should not be torturing its citizens in the name of justice.” As he spoke, Pike lay in a hospital bed, still alive more than a day after she was to have been executed for the brutal murder of Colleen Slemmer in 1995, when they were teenagers. Randy Spivey, another one of Pike’s attorneys, said she remained in critical condition and was “receiving lifesaving medical care,” but added that the full ramifications for her health were still not clear. It was hardly the only question that loomed Thursday, as Tennessee officials confronted intense scrutiny over what went wrong and how the state had botched two executions this year. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) on Thursday halted executions in the state and ordered an investigation into the incident, saying he was “highly disappointed” by what happened.

Hochul names Letitia James as special prosecutor in Cornell case

Gov. Kathy Hochul has named Letitia James, the New York State attorney general, to serve as special prosecutor to investigate a woman’s allegation that she was raped in a fraternity house near Cornell University’s campus in October 2024. In a post on X on Thursday night, Ms. Hochul said that she would be assigning Ms. James, who had already begun a review of the way law enforcement handled the matter, to oversee the investigation in Tompkins County. “New information has raised serious questions about how this case was handled, and I’ve lost faith in the Tompkins County D.A.’s ability to fairly oversee it,” Ms. Hochul said. She added, “The young woman at the center of this case deserves to know that every fact will be examined and justice pursued.” The announcement marked a dramatic development in a case that has horrified many Americans and renewed a long-running national conversation about sexual assault on college campuses.

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The authorities in Ithaca, N.Y., have faced intense backlash over how they investigated the Oct. 19, 2024, encounter between a woman known as Jane Doe and a number of men at the Chi Phi fraternity house. Facing a public outcry, Matthew Van Houten, the Tompkins County district attorney, said on Monday that his office would reopen the investigation into Jane Doe’s allegations. In a lawsuit filed last month, the woman said that when she was a 20-year-old sophomore, she was plied with alcohol and drugs and then raped by several men at the fraternity house. She reported the incident to the Cornell University Police Department several weeks later, but no criminal charges were filed. At the heart of the criticism has been the revelation that the woman, in her statements to the police, said that she could say “with 100 percent confidence I was raped.” Mr. Van Houten has said that his office primarily reviewed a six-page report provided by Cornell police, which omitted the definitive language detailed in a transcription of her interview with investigators. Lawyers for at least three of the seven men named in Jane Doe’s lawsuit have issued statements denying criminal wrongdoing. In hours of interviews during a university investigation in the winter of 2024, the seven men denied wrongdoing. Four said they had consensual sexual interactions with Jane Doe; three denied participating in sexual encounters altogether.

OpenAI fires researchers for allegedly sharing information with AI safety group

OpenAI has fired three researchers for alleged misconduct, including sharing confidential company information with a third-party AI-safety organization, according to people familiar with the matter. The company recently told some employees that it had terminated three researchers who worked on its safety team, one of the people said. The affected employees are Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni, the people familiar with the matter said. The researchers didn’t immediately comment. “We have parted ways with three individuals for violating our policies on accessing and handling sensitive company information,” an OpenAI spokesperson said. “Our investigation confirmed that these individuals mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures, violating our policies and breaking the trust essential to our work.”

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AI giants are under growing pressure to submit their technology for independent safety testing. Last month, the CEO of OpenAI rival Anthropic said his company would allow outside evaluators like METR, an AI safety nonprofit, to verify its adherence to safety measures and assess model alignment. OpenAI has recently faced a spate of security incidents in which its AI agents escaped containment, hacking some company websites and aggressively probing a wide range of websites. After its model hacked the AI company Hugging Face, OpenAI allowed staff members from METR and a Redwood Research staff member contracting with that group to work in its offices for six days to investigate how its models behaved. METR later released a report based on the information to which the company provided access. One of the fired OpenAI employees, Korbak, was a member of OpenAI’s safety team, and has said he served as the company’s technical contact for Redwood Research and METR in their investigation of the Hugging Face incident. The other terminated employees, Wang and Balesni, worked on alignment, which is ensuring that the company’s models behave as humans intend them to.

Copyright October 02, 2026, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved