June 14, 2026: All Newsclips

Lead Stories

US and Iran inch closer to deal, Trump says Sunday but timing is unclear

U.S. and Pakistani leaders forecast a Sunday signing of a long-elusive framework agreement to end months of fighting between the United ?States and Iran, but Tehran cast doubt over the timing and hardline protesters in Iran voiced opposition. Qatari negotiators flew to Tehran on Sunday morning as part of an effort to finalise the agreement, a source with knowledge of the situation told Reuters. U.S. President Donald Trump posted that the deal with Iran was scheduled to be signed on Sunday, his 80th birthday. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Islamabad was preparing for an electronic signing, to be followed by technical-level talks in the coming week.

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But Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei, speaking ?before Trump's post, was quoted by state media as saying on Saturday it would "not be tomorrow" but could happen "in the coming days." Iran's Fars news agency, citing an informed source, said on Sunday Tehran has ?not yet taken a final decision on the framework agreement, with reviews of its political, legal and technical aspects ongoing at expert and decision-making levels. A senior Iranian ?official told Reuters that, under the terms of the draft deal, the U.S. would agree to release $25 billion of frozen Iranian assets, while Tehran would agree not to produce or acquire nuclear weapons. Trump wrote on Truth Social earlier that after a framework deal is signed, the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery for global oil supplies that Iran has effectively blocked, would immediately be "open to all". Once the strait reopens, the U.S. ?would lift its naval blockade, sources on all sides of the talks said. Negotiations over Iran's nuclear programme — a rationale Trump has given for the war — would take place afterwards.

Gov. Greg Abbott spells out vision for fourth term at Republican state convention in Houston

Gov. Greg Abbott outlined a variety of legislative priorities during his keynote speech at the state Republican Party convention Friday afternoon in Houston, followed by the stunning appearance of an elephant that paraded around the room. Abbott, who is running for an unprecedented fourth term as governor of Texas, also stressed how he intended to help Republicans win elections, including in Harris County. Abbott had previously pledged to spend big to flip blue-leaning Harris County, but he had been largely silent on the issue since his preferred candidate for Harris County judge, Houston firefighters' union president Patrick "Marty" Lancton, failed to make the party's primary runoff. He reiterated his commitment to delegates and gave specifics while speaking on stage at the George R. Brown Convention Center.

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"My campaign will spend at least $25 million just in Harris County alone," Abbott said. "We are going block by block, door to door, and we are going to win up and down the entire ballot." Abbott also endorsed a key demand of the party, passing legislation to close the state's primary system. Currently, Texans can vote in either major party's primary. Many Republicans have expressed concerns, with little evidence, that this is encouraging crossover voting by Democrats to influence their party's choice of candidates. The Republican Party of Texas is currently suing the state, arguing that the open primary system violates Republicans' First Amendment right to freedom of association. Much of Abbott's speech revolved around listing past Republican legislative accomplishments, ranging from tightening the state's election laws out of concerns for voter fraud — the evidence for which is minimal — to banning gender reassignment surgery for children. But when Abbott began speaking about the party's efforts to cut property taxes, he focused on his proposals for the next legislative session: legislation to require two-thirds voter approval for municipalities to pass any property tax hikes, as well as legislation lowering the property tax appraisal cap from 10% to no more than 3% per year.

New World screwworm cases in Texas rise to 10, new quarantine zones established

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has identified 10 cases of New World screwworm in Texas since June 3. Cases have been found in Edwards, Tom Green, Zavala, Gillespie and La Salle counties. The pests have been found in cattle and goats. Officials initially reported an additional case involving a dog in Andrews County on June 8. However, after further epidemiological investigation, authorities determined the animal lives in Lea County, New Mexico, and the case was reclassified as New Mexico's first confirmed New World screwworm infection. The veterinarian who submitted samples from the dog is based in Texas, officials said. Early reports indicated the dog had recently traveled to Mexico.

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The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department said updates will be provided as additional cases are confirmed. The agency has established a public information page and said situation reports will be updated daily when new detections occur. According to TAHC, five areas of the state have been designated as "infested zones" and include Coke, Edwards, Gillespie, Kerr, Kimble, La Salle, Sutton, Tom Green, Uvalde, Val Verde, Webb and Zavala counties. A quarantine is in place for those areas and warm-blooded animals cannot leave an affected area without authorization. Officials advised livestock owners and veterinarians to remain vigilant and report suspected infestations to the appropriate authorities. The Texas Animal Health Commission is handling livestock-related cases, while the Texas Department of State Health Services oversees human infestation reports. The screwworm was mostly eradicated in Texas and the rest of the United States in the 60s. But now, it’s moving north up from Panama and has a known presence a little over 300 miles south of the Texas-Mexico border. To eradicate the population, federal officials are expediting the release of billions of laboratory-raised sterile flies, deploying ground release chambers to supplement the four million sterile flies already being dispersed aerially in the region each week. When wild flies mate with the sterile flies, no offspring are produced, eventually collapsing the population.

Advocates decry targeting of migrants as thousands of US citizens' spouses, parents caught up in crackdown

In March, Maria Flores drove her husband to the courthouse to pay fees related to a traffic ticket in Tennessee. She expected the court visit to be short, but after waiting for hours, she realized something was wrong. "I went to check in the lobby and I kept asking the sheriff if everything was OK," Flores said. "They kept telling me that they couldn't tell me anything." Flores said she then saw officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and immediately realized that her husband was being detained. Orlin Carrasco, who entered the U.S. in 2013 as a 17-year-old unaccompanied minor from Honduras, was pulled aside after paying his court fees with several others and arrested by federal immigration officers, his wife said.

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Carrasco, who doesn't have a removal order or criminal convictions, was sent to a detention center in Louisiana and has been detained since. His attorney told ABC News his detention is unlawful. "We have a young man from Honduras who was targeted, because we are seeing that across the country, despite no criminal history at all," Alexandra Lopez said. "[He's] a contributor to our society, supporting a family who are U.S. citizens." "I've done everything the right way," Carrasco said in a video call with Maria. "I've asked ICE for a reason and they don't answer me." In a statement to ABC News regarding Carrasco's detention, the Department of Homeland Security said "President Trump and Secretary Mullin are now enforcing the law as it was actually written to keep America safe." Carrasco is one of thousands of immigrants targeted by the Trump administration in its ongoing immigration crackdown.

How Abbott’s advisers used agency regulating funeral homes to legally harass a Muslim community

Sarah Sanders had spent the day in her small, windowless office drafting letters to funeral directors when her boss came in with a new request. It was a late Monday afternoon in March 2025, and Scott Bingaman, the executive director of the Texas Funeral Service Commission, wanted her to put aside her other work and look into a year-old case. It concerned the East Plano Islamic Center, a mosque and Muslim community in North Texas known as EPIC. The soft-spoken 33-year-old Texas Tech University law school graduate had joined the commission, which regulates the funeral industry, only a few months earlier, after bouncing around law firms in Beaumont and briefly serving in another state agency. Most of her time in her new role in Austin had been dedicated to clearing a four-hundred-case backlog of complaints stretching back years. She figured the EPIC case would be just like the rest. Sanders opened the agency’s file. A complainant alleged that the mosque was offering Islamic funeral services without a license.

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Other staffers had left several pages of analysis, in mismatched fonts and text sizes, summarizing evidence the commission had gathered. The file had been shelved for months, sidelined by other, more pressing ones. Sanders took a few minutes to review one piece of the complainant’s evidence, a video that had appeared on EPIC’s YouTube page announcing a “one-stop shop” for funeral services. Families would call the mosque, and a funeral home it had contracted would transport the bodies to and from it for rites and burial—all for “around three thousand dollars.” As a religious institution, EPIC was allowed under state law to perform funerals without regulatory oversight as long as it didn’t charge fees. But if it had done so, it would have needed a license, and its license had lapsed more than a year earlier. To Sanders, the video—which was posted before the lapse—did not provide definitive evidence that the mosque had been charging for services improperly. But that was the point of an investigation, she thought. She prepared to issue a cease and desist order: The facility would have to halt funeral services while investigators did their work. (EPIC would later argue that any money that changed hands was a voluntary donation and that it did not profit. The commission’s lawyers would counter that the definition of compensation was broader than profits.) Sanders then turned to Bingaman’s second instruction, one that was far more unusual: Work on the case with Governor Greg Abbott’s general- counsel division, a small group of lawyers in his inner circle. Sanders wasn’t sure why Abbott’s team was so interested in a routine regulatory matter; she had never discussed one with anyone from the governor’s office. But she trusted and admired Bingaman, who had wooed her to the agency with a pitch about building something together that would outlast them both. She forwarded the file to one of the governor’s lawyers.

State Stories

Texas GOP Chair Abraham George ousted by second-in-command D’rinda Randall

Republican Party of Texas Vice Chair D'rinda Randall became the party's new leader Friday after defeating her former running mate, incumbent Chair Abraham George, shaking up the top of the state's majority party ahead of the fall midterm elections.

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A ban on IVF and Sharia law: Here's the Texas GOP platform

Texas Republicans passed a platform Saturday that urges lawmakers to prioritize further tightening the state's election rules, including laws to bar mail-in balloting for seniors, require proof of U.S. citizenship to vote and close the primary. The delegates also called for legislation next session that would ban IVF, oppose "all efforts to validate transgender identity" and prohibit any form of tax-subsidized lobby. The planks in the state GOP's platform and list of legislative priorities were adopted on the final day of the State Republican Convention in Houston with little debate. Approval of the 58-page documents by the more than 4,000 delegates carries no force of law.

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Still, it is intended to guide the policy positions for Republican candidates and officeholders heading into the final months of the 2026 midterm election cycle. Typically, the GOP platform skews more conservative than most of the party's rank-and-file voters, and even Republicans running for statewide, legislative and congressional seats. But some of its planks are adopted if not immediately, then over the coming years. Gov. Greg Abbott and other top Republicans who spoke at the convention enthusiastically embraced at least some aspects of several of the proposals, including a call to cut back property taxes. "We need to disrupt property taxes as we know them," Abbott said when he addressed the convention on Thursday. "We must abolish school district property taxes on your homesteads." Election security was ranked as the convention's top priority. The platform would require a proof of U.S. citizenship before someone is allowed to register to vote. The plank also calls for English-only ballots and a mandate that every voter present a Texas government-issued photo ID for every election, with no exceptions. Mail-in ballots could only be used by people with disabilities, members of the military and voters who are absent from the state — meaning Texans aged 65 and older would no longer be eligible. It would also do away with open primaries and require anyone who votes in a primary to register as a member of the party conducting the primary.

Texas rural hospital organization to end contracts with UnitedHealthcare over ‘unsustainable’ rates

A physician-hospital organization representing 45 rural and community hospitals across Texas said it will end its contracts with UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company, starting at the end of the year. The Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospital’s Clinically Integrated Network, or TORCH CIN, said the termination represents “one of the most significant statements of rural provider frustration in recent Texas healthcare history.” The organization said UnitedHealthcare’s reimbursement rates are unsustainable and threaten the financial survival of rural health systems. Paul Aslin, executive director of TORCH CIN, said his organization has been negotiating with UnitedHealthcare “in good faith” for more than 550 days – but despite biweekly meetings, TORCH CIN has not received a formal response to a proposal shared in January.

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“We would like them to acknowledge that they do underpay us compared to people that have more leverage, especially, for example, the urban hospitals,” he said. “We would like for them to give us a proposal that is sustainable for our hospitals.” In an email to KERA, UnitedHealthcare said it needs to balance the need to ensure long-term sustainability of TORCH providers with the need for affordable care. A UnitedHealthcare spokesperson referred to TORCH CIN’s actions as a negotiating tactic and said they do not reflect the ongoing discussions the insurance company has had with TORCH CIN. “While we are disappointed in [TORCH CIN]’s recent actions, we remain committed to using the time left on our contract to reach an agreement that maintains long-term access to quality, affordable care for the families we serve throughout rural Texas communities,” the spokesperson wrote. The spokesperson pointed to recent prior authorization reforms as part of its effort to support rural hospitals and providers across the country. In addition, they noted that UnitedHealthcare supported the development of TORCH CIN through a multi-million dollar investment.

Local Texas election officials await appointment of new secretary of state as midterm preparations ramp up

Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson’s unexpected departure only a few months before the November midterm election, which includes one of the most hotly contested U.S. Senate races the state has seen in years, has some local election officials and voting rights advocates worrying the transition will complicate their ability to administer a smooth election. “It’s the unknown, the uncertainty that is scary,” said Tandi Smith, the Kaufman County elections administrator. “Are we going to continue to receive guidance? Are we going to be ensured that we’ll be prepared for any coming changes? We just don’t know.” Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, is required by law to appoint a new secretary as soon as possible. His office, in an emailed statement, said the new appointee would be announced “at a later date.”

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Nelson, who has been the state’s chief election official for more than three years, last week announced that she’d be stepping down from the role effective July 17. Nelson’s departure will happen just as election officials across the state are preparing in earnest for the November general election. In the summer months, they’ll be recruiting election workers, seeking polling locations, and processing voter registration applications, among other duties. Some voting rights advocates say a new appointee may want to direct local election officials to change election procedures, which could lead to chaos and confusion for voters. Although the secretary of state’s office has no law enforcement authority and can’t change the law, it can issue election law opinions on how to implement election and voting rules. “If the new secretary of state has a laundry list of demands that election administrators can’t meet, that’s going to throw our elections into disarray,” said Emily Eby French, policy director at Common Cause Texas. French noted that there were three secretaries of state between 2017 and Nelson’s appointment in 2023, some of whom remained in the role only for about a year before resigning.

Report shows Texas restaurants are still struggling

A recent report shows what restaurant owners have been telling us all year long: that the cost of goods and fuel prices are affecting their businesses. Sergio Calderon loves making his food fresh. He says he’s seen it all, working from kitchens in Mexico to diners in New York to owning Panchos and Gringos in San Antonio. “For me, I learned how to survive,” Calderon said. He cited the Great Recession of 2007 as an example. “Then the pandemic,” Calderon said. “This is the worst with the prices of gasoline and inflation.” Kelsey Strefeurt, a public affairs officer for the Texas Restaurant Association (TRA), said 2025 was a difficult year for restaurants. There was a sigh of relief at the beginning of 2026 that things would change.

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“And yet, the second finding is that we are still in a very difficult economic climate,” Strefeurt said. The concerns restaurant owners had all year long were reflected in a recently published report from the TRA. A recent report shows that 77% of restaurant owners said the cost of goods have increased, while 66% say suppliers are now adding fuel surcharges because of gas prices. “Food costs are up 35% since the pandemic, labor, utilities, insurance, rent, mortgage payments,” Strefeurt said. There are also the financial strains customers are feeling, which limits the foot traffic in restaurants. “Of course they try to keep me afloat, and they come as often as they can,” Calderon said. Strefeurt says Texas restaurants become more efficient during times like these. Calderon learned that over the years. “My overhead is low, and believe me, I’m no quitter,” Calderon said. “I’m going to stay.”

Texas takes over voter registration in Val Verde County amid struggles with registration

This coverage is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletters here. Three years ago, Texas Republicans approved a state law that was designed to allow unprecedented state oversight of elections in Harris County, a Democratic stronghold that is also the state's most populous county and includes most of Houston. State Republican lawmakers said at the time they were responding to problems and irregularities with Harris County's elections, while some election and policy experts decried the partisan overtones of the new law and said it amounted to an intrusion on local control of elections.

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But the law also said the state could take control of elections in smaller counties, if it found problems there when conducting state-required random audits. Now, the state is using the law for the first time — but not to take over in Harris County. Instead, the state has assumed administrative oversight of voter registration in Val Verde County, which sits along the Rio Grande west of San Antonio and has around 30,000 registered voters. The county voted Republican in the past two presidential elections. The county’s tax assessor-collector and voter registration officials, who are responsible for voter registration duties, have repeatedly failed to maintain accurate voter registration records despite on-site training and help from officials with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, according to the agency’s preliminary audit of the county, released last year. “A recurring pattern of problems with election administration and voter registration exists and the problems impede the free exercise of citizens’ voting rights,” the preliminary audit report from the state said.

1 killed, 10 hurt in mass shooting in Midland, Texas; suspect also dead: DPS

One victim was killed and 10 others were injured in a mass shooting in Midland, Texas, on Friday morning, and the suspected gunman is dead following a standoff with police, authorities said. When police responded to an active shooter report around 8 a.m. local time Friday, the suspect, Victor Mata Villarreal, allegedly fired at bystanders and officers, the Texas Department of Public Safety said. Villarreal, 45, then barricaded himself in an abandoned veterinary clinic, DPS said. After an hourslong standoff, the Odessa, Texas, resident was found dead in the building around 12:30 p.m. local time, authorities said.

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Nine victims were taken to Midland Memorial Hospital, where four were rushed into surgery and five were admitted in stable condition, hospital officials said. The five in stable condition have since been discharged, officials said. The person killed in the shooting has been identified as Edward Randall Scott, 62, of Midland, Texas, by the Texas Department of Public Safety. Officials did not name any of the other victims involved but did confirm that no law enforcement officers were hurt. Villarreal had been wanted for attempted capital murder of an officer after he allegedly fired multiple shots at police during a car chase on Wednesday, DPS said.

Oklahoma AG Gentner Drummond calls on the Big 12 to sanction Texas Tech for Brendan Sorsby saga

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond publicly called on the Big 12 to sanction Texas Tech after quarterback Brendan Sorsby won a court order restoring his eligibility, setting aside his ban by the NCAA for gambling on pro and college sports. “If Texas Tech will not do the right thing, the Big 12 should,” Drummond wrote Friday in a letter to the conference. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton warned the Big 12 on Thursday of potential legal action from Texas Tech as the conference considers its options. Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark said the notice came shortly before the start of the league’s executive board meeting to discuss Sorsby's situation.

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Drummond said claims that sanctions against Texas Tech would violate antitrust laws are meritless. “By adopting and enforcing its bylaws, the Big 12 Conference is simply upholding integrity and fair play among membership," he said. A Texas district court's temporary injunction that was issued Monday prevents the NCAA from enforcing its permanent ban of Sorsby, a decision that sent shock waves across college sports. The transfer quarterback had been ruled ineligible after he acknowledged years of gambling that included more than $90,000 in wagers and at least 40 bets on his own team while he was a freshman at Indiana. NCAA rules call for a permanent loss of eligibility for any player who wagered on his own team. Texas Tech said Sorsby has completed a month-long inpatient treatment program and will continue to receive treatment and support while being monitored.

San Antonio City Council to vote next week on SAWS rate increases totaling 29% through 2029

The San Antonio City Council received its final update on proposed rate increases for the San Antonio Water System on Thursday. The utility is seeking a series of rate increases that would total about 29% through 2029. SAWS is proposing annual rate increases of 6% to 8% through 2029, though increases planned for 2028 and 2029 could be adjusted. The utility estimates the average residential customer's monthly bill would increase by about $4.60 each year. During the discussion, San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones urged her council colleagues to approve the proposal, arguing it would help prevent future water infrastructure problems like those experienced in Corpus Christi.

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“We can and must avoid something similar happening here in San Antonio. We need to pass this rate increase, and I hope my colleagues will join me in ensuring the city of San Antonio has the water she needs,” Jones said. The proposal is lower than the plan originally presented earlier this year. In February, SAWS projected cumulative increases of about 34%, but later reduced that estimate after updating its financial projections. Several council members expressed concerns about the proposed increases. District 7 Councilwoman Marina Alderete Gavito said it would be difficult to justify higher rates while residents continue to deal with frequent water main breaks near Jefferson High School. “The significant loss of water does pour into residents' bills, and that's not okay,” Alderete Gavito said. SAWS CEO Robert Puente said the utility's ability to respond to major leaks has improved over the last three years. "I'm very happy to report that since the height of 2023, which was the worst year for both the number of line breaks and the amount of water we lost, we've seen a 19% reduction because we hired more crews to go out into the streets and fix those breaks," Puente said.

District Court Judge Stephanie Boyd issued warning by state oversight commission over YouTube channel, conduct

Criminal District Court Judge Stephanie Boyd was issued a public warning by the Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct, finding that her conduct in multiple cases and on her court’s YouTube channel violated judicial standards. The commission announced the warning following a review of allegations against Boyd, who presides over the 187th Criminal District Court in San Antonio. Boyd livestreamed proceedings on the court’s YouTube channel and, according to the commission, engaged with viewers outside of court business.

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The commission said Boyd hosted a book club on the court’s YouTube channel, allowing real-time comments and messages about court proceedings and participants. The commission also cited Boyd’s conduct during a July 2023 plea hearing involving defendant Willberth Villamil. Investigators found Boyd improperly inserted herself into plea negotiations after rejecting a plea agreement, and asking whether the defendant would accept a 20-year prison sentence offered by the court. During the hearing, Boyd also described the case as a “life-sentence worthy,” according to the commission’s findings. A second complaint centered on an October 2024 probation revocation hearing involving defendant Thomas Henson. The commission found Boyd directed a court reporter to go “off the record,” while the livestream continued, and made remarks suggesting the defendant could be victimized in prison. “Do you want to be passed around for ramen noodle?” she said, according to the commission.

Shots fired after hundreds of juveniles take over Discovery Green, Houston police say

Houston police responded to a reported "teen takeover" at Discovery Green on Saturday night, according to Houston Police Department dispatchers. Police said when officers got to the scene around 9:23 p.m., there were about 500 to 600 juveniles and various adults in the crowd. As officers were working to disperse the crowd, shots rang out from another large group across the street, according to the Houston Police Department. About 10 to 15 minutes later, HPD said officers heard another round of shots being fired. Thankfully, police said no one was hurt. "We had one goal in mind," said HPD Cpt. Jonathan French. "To keep one large crowd from dispersing and developing in another spot, namely our Fan Fest for FIA. We did not want that to happen, so we had multiple units that continued to show up. HPD said one juvenile male and one adult male were detained. They said the two were found with guns in the area where the shots were fired.

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Frisco elects new mayor in runoff race that mirrored divisions over Muslim residents

Unofficial election results show that Mark Hill has prevailed in the runoff election for Frisco mayor that garnered thousands of dollars in spending and donations. The two candidates' views about this Collin County city's Muslim population featured prominently in their campaigns. Hill got about 58% of the vote, defeating his opponent Villhauer, who received about 42%. The mayoral runoff in Frisco has faced division over Vilhauer’s comments about Frisco’s growing Muslim population. At a Frisco Chamber of Commerce forum last month, Vilhauer expressed his support the Indian community in Frisco, which has also faced backlash over unfounded claims of H-1B visa fraud. But he said he doesn’t support the Muslim community.

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“When it comes to people of Sharia that govern themselves, they are not welcome here,” he said. “I will never welcome them here. We're going to fight that.” Sharia Law is a religious code in the Islamic faith that isn’t enforceable in the U.S. Audience members at the candidate forum erupted in applause in response to Vilhauer’s statements. And others applauded when his opponent condemned the discourse about Frisco’s Muslim population. “If you're a family looking to move from anywhere in the state, Dallas, anywhere in the country, say New Jersey, Boston, San Francisco, or anywhere in the world, and you see some of the rhetoric going on these days, you're not coming to Frisco, Texas,” Hill said. The city council canceled public input for non-agenda items at meetings after hours of testimony at a recent meeting where many people testified against building a new mosque, Jain temple and Hindu temple. Several commenters who were against the mosque said they support Vilhauer for mayor. Jeff Cheney, the outgoing mayor, said in a Facebook post most of the commenters who are causing disturbances aren’t local to Frisco. “Most of the disrupters do not live in Frisco and many not even in the state,” Cheney said. “They have not been following our decorum rules and many cases their comments had nothing to do with city business or things we have no control over.”

Tarrant Dem commissioner denied town halls over illegal campaigning concern

Republicans on the Tarrant County Commissioners Court denied their Democratic colleague’s use of county facilities Tuesday under the assumption she would be using them for political activity, which is illegal under Texas Election Code. Democratic Commissioner Alisa Simmons, of Precinct 2, asked permission from the court of five members to use the Arlington Subcourthouse, where her office is, for monthly town hall meetings from July to October. She asked the court to waive the $1,314 cost to pay the necessary staff and security. Simmons is challenging Tim O’Hare for his seat as county judge in the Nov. 3 election.

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Simmons and fellow Democratic Commissioner Roderick Miles voted to approve the request, but the pair was outnumbered by the three Republicans, O’Hare and commissioners Matt Krause and Manny Ramirez. Friday morning, O’Hare posted on X that Simmons was trying to “misuse taxpayer-funded facilities to hold political, self-serving events.” O’Hare’s post said Simmons disguised the event’s true purpose by calling it a town hall. On Friday, Simmons told the Star-Telegram the town hall meetings would cover the budget, the Southeast Connector Project and mental health services in the county jail. “County facilities are funded and maintained with taxpayer dollars,” Simmons said Friday evening. “Residents should have reasonable opportunities to use those facilities to learn about county services, county projects and county government.” When Krause said the four town halls being in the midst of a contentious election season was coincidental, Simmons denied having planned any political activity for the town halls. “It seems very coincidental, maybe, that these town halls line up right when the election season is really ramping up,” Krause said. “We’ve got four in four months, which is right during the heat of that. It kind of seems like to me, maybe we’re using the fee waiver and access to the courtrooms, it could be for political activity.”

STAAR scores show student progress

After the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on education and standardized test scores, results from the spring 2026 State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, tests show improvement across several subjects. The Texas Education Agency, or TEA, released results from this year’s STAAR End-of-Course, or EOC, exams on Wednesday. The exams measure academic performance in Algebra I, Biology, English I, English II and U.S. History. According to a press release from Texas 2036, a nonprofit public policy organization that did a full analysis of the STAAR EOC results, results improved across all five subjects in 2026, with the largest gains occurring in Biology and Algebra I. However, while the results are a continued improvement, performance in Algebra I and U.S. History remains below pre-pandemic levels.

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“These results are great news for Texas families. It means that more students all over our state are succeeding in their academic coursework. This is meaningful because it means more students are prepared for life after high school,” Mary Lynn Pruneda, Director of Education and Workforce Policy for Texas 2036, said in the release. “Texas is on our way to having the best public high schools in the country, and these results show we are headed in the right direction.” Texas 2036 listed the following key findings from its analysis: Biology: 71% of students met grade-level expectations in 2026, up from 62% in 2025 and 63% in 2019. Algebra I: 54% of students met grade-level expectations in 2026, up from 47% in 2025 but below the 62% recorded in 2019. English I: 55% of students met grade-level expectations in 2026, up from 51% in 2025 and above the 49% recorded in 2019. English II: 60% of students met grade-level expectations in 2026, up from 56% in 2025 and above the 51% recorded in 2019. U.S. History: 70% of students met grade-level expectations in 2026, up from 68% in 2025 and below the 75% recorded in 2019.

TAD’s reappraisal freeze under discussion after Tarrant homes overtaxed, no change in sight

Tarrant Appraisal District board members are split on whether to consider changing the property appraisal process after acknowledging that the current plan delivered less equitable tax bills to homeowners. The board discussed the possibility of undoing the reappraisal plan they voted to continue using in 2025 that switched residential property appraisals to a two-year schedule instead of the typical annual plan while capping tax increases at 5% per cycle. The June 10 discussion came nearly a month after it became public that 190,000 to 200,000 homeowners potentially received overvalued property tax bills. No action was taken during the meeting to change the reappraisal plan.

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“Everybody’s talking about the reappraisal plan, and I felt that if we didn’t get this on the agenda to have an open discussion based on the information that we’ve received, that it would be a slap in the face to the public,” TAD board member Gloria Pena said. “I felt like the attention needed to be given.” Pena and fellow board member Wendy Burgess initiated the discussion after local tax consultant Chandler Crouch published TAD data showing more than 195,000 homeowners would have received lower property tax bills this year if their homes had been reappraised in 2025. But because of the reappraisal plan, homes remain frozen at their 2024 value and won’t be reappraised until 2027. Chief appraiser Joe Don Bobbitt confirmed Wednesday that the county’s residential tax roll has become “less uniform and more regressive” since TAD froze reappraisals. However, he argued that about 60,000 of the overvalued tax bills were capped by homestead exemptions, effectively meaning only a ballpark of 130,000 homes were overvalued.

County Stories

Accountant Robert Garcia elected to join Alamo Colleges District board

Robert Garcia has won the runoff election to join Alamo Colleges District’s board of trustees representing District 9. Garcia, a certified public accountant and Northwest Vista graduate, bested Carolyn DeLecour, a lifelong educator and former Palo Alto College professor, in the pair’s head-to-head Saturday runoff. Garcia finished with 57.52% in the low-turnout Saturday election, winning by 294 votes. About 1.29% of the total 151,691 voters who are eligible to participate in the runoff voted. Garcia, 45, said he was overjoyed and emotional as he watched the results at home with his family, where his campaign started.

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Garcia joins the board in the midst of its first financial deficit in at least a decade. The board met the same morning of the runoff elections to be presented with options to address a $28 million deficit, for which they’ll likely have to approve a tax increase to fill in the gaps left by with decreased property taxes across Bexar County, while addressing enrollment growth and course demand. “This is something that you know I do have experience in. This is what sets me apart,” Garcia said. “The financing is one thing, but I think how all these things come together and how we think about the future sales is raising rates right CPS has a budget deficit the city the county you know we need fiscal responsible people we need fiscal watchdogs out there.” During the campaign, Garcia faced attacks about a teen arrest and overcame them, revealing details about a challenging upbringing that won over some with his candor and perseverance. He also earned the support of influential political leaders including former San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg. The race to represent the Northeast portion of the college for a six-year term attracted a number of candidates to take on incumbent Leslie Sachanowicz, who had filled the seat since 2020. Garcia finished first in the May election, over DeLecour, Sachanowicz and former Alamo Colleges trustee Joe “Jesse” Sanchez, who was appointed to the board in 2017 and served until December 2020.

City Stories

New Braunfels voters toss Mayor Neal Linnartz for Michael French

Voters in New Braunfels elected Michael French as mayor in Saturday’s runoff elections. French defeated incumbent Mayor Neal Linnartz to win the mayor’s race. French is a U.S. Army veteran whose military career included assignments supporting White House communications, intelligence work at the Pentagon and deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Linnartz is an attorney who has served in numerous community leadership roles. The mayoral runoff followed a dispute over the city’s election rules. After the May election, city officials determined that state law required a candidate to receive a majority of the vote to win the three-year mayoral term, prompting a runoff and leading to the City Council’s removal of City Attorney Valeria Acevedo.

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National Stories

Knicks win first NBA title since 1973 with Game 5 win

Jalen Brunson and the Comeback Knicks did it again. And now they're the Champion Knicks. For the first time in 53 years, New York rules the NBA. Brunson scored 45 points, including 13 straight for New York in the fourth quarter, and the Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs 94-90 in Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Saturday night. The Knicks won the series 4-1, rallying from double-digit deficits in all four of those victories. The deficit was 16 on Saturday night. Brunson and the Knicks were never fazed. “I have no words,” Brunson, the NBA Finals MVP, said during the on-court celebration. “It's everything I ever dreamed of.”

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Knowing New York had waited 53 years to see the Knicks hoist the NBA championship trophy, owner James Dolan didn't even wait to be handed the 30-pound gold-plated prize. He grabbed it and lifted it skyward with a yell. “I want to say something to New York,” Dolan shouted. “Hey New York! I'm sorry it took so long! But here we are, and hopefully it won't take that long again!” The New York Knicks are champions of the NBA for the first time since 1973, beating the San Antonio Spurs in five games for this title. The clincher came Saturday night in a 94-90 victory, the Knicks' fourth comeback win of the series. Jalen Brunson was fully aware of how much money some people spent to see the New York Knicks finally become champions again. Some tickets during the NBA Finals sold for $5,000, some for $50,000, some for probably more. Of course, Brunson parted with more money than any of those fans. Brunson is now an NBA champion and NBA Finals MVP in large part because of what he did against the San Antonio Spurs in the finals — though, really, his biggest contribution to this title run likely came in 2024, when he left as much as $113 million on the bargaining table to allow the Knicks the financial flexibility they needed to finish building a championship roster. It was considered an unprecedented move.

Trump's name removed from Kennedy Center following court order: DOJ

The Justice Department filed a certification in federal court one hour before a judge's Saturday noon deadline that said President Donald Trump's name has been "removed" from "all physical signage on the Kennedy Center building and grounds." The Trump administration had made a last-minute request to ask the court to step in and block the removal of Trump’s name ahead of a deadline of midnight Friday. The declaration from Kennedy Center executive director Matt Floca stated that in addition to removing Trump's name from the signage, the president's name was removed from "employees' email signatures, employees' email communications, letterhead, brochures, promotional materials, press releases, signs, [and] contracts."

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Trump's name has already been removed from the Kennedy Center's website and YouTube page. The government requested "a short extension of time" for 12 hours until noon on June 13, saying the work "has been delayed because of thunderstorms in the District of Columbia that presented safety concerns for workers," according to the government’s latest filing. A federal judge in D.C. ordered the Trump administration to certify by noon on Saturday that it has complied with a court order to remove Trump's name from the granting a brief extension. The extension came after a federal appeals court on Friday night denied the DOJ’s request for an administrative stay of a court order that requires the removal of Trump's name from the Washington, D.C., performing arts center. In an earlier filing with the D.C. Circuit, the Trump administration argued that removing Trump's name would stall fundraising, prevent repairs from taking place and confuse the public. "No one else other than President Trump would be in the position of both rebuilding the Building, and raising the money for its operation," the filing stated, saying the performing arts center can be " the envy of the World," and arguing the building could suffer a "financial and structural collapse."

FBI searches offices of Ohio voter registration group, seizing computers

Federal law enforcement officials on Thursday raided the offices of an Ohio organizing group that ran one of the state’s biggest 2024 voter registration efforts, seizing computers and other materials from the group’s Cleveland office, according to people familiar with the law enforcement action. The Ohio Organizing Collaborative is a two-decade-old community activist group that describes itself as “organizing everyday Ohioans, building transformative power organizations for racial, social, and economic justice.” The group registered more than 100,000 Ohioans to vote in the 2024 elections and was active in organizing against Republicans’ 2025 redistricting efforts in the state. The warrants executed Thursday appeared to focus on the group’s 2024 voter registration efforts, according to the people familiar with the action. Prentiss Haney, a former executive director of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative who sits on the group’s board, said that around 25 FBI agents arrived at the office to seize the devices.

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The Justice Department declined to provide details about the raid. “Search warrants are authorized by a judge, and anything said by any organization or others in the media is unfounded speculation, as the target of any investigation is not privy to the search warrant affidavit until after indictment,” a Justice Department official said. Separately, Haney said, the group estimates that more than 100 FBI and Department of Homeland Security agents fanned across the state on Thursday and arrived at the homes of people affiliated with the collaborative. Haney said these agents demanded to talk to the residents. They did not have subpoenas or warrants, he added. “The only thing we can think is that this is a political act to try and intimidate people from voting,” said Haney, who was not at his home or office at the time of the raid and did not interact with law enforcement. “There is no basis for this, especially with the kind of force they brought.”

AI supercharges deepfake nudes—unleashing a new form of bullying among kids

AI has made it trivially easy for anyone with a phone to digitally undress people and post the content online. Called explicit deepfakes, these images, and sometimes videos, are unleashing a new form of bullying and harassment among young people. Artificial-intelligence “nudify” tools are evolving and multiplying. Laws cracking down on them have lagged behind cases and aren’t always enforced. Schools don’t know how to handle them. Parents are left trying to help their children regain a sense of safety as they try to scrub the images from the internet. Megan Mancini in Hingham, Mass., wished she had a playbook for dealing with the issue. Last year, a boy created a deepfake image of her middle-school daughter and shared it on Snapchat with other kids, who then took screenshots and shared them in the hallways during school.

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The local police said the best way to get the photo offline was to upload it to a website that specializes in removing deepfakes. But because the image depicted a naked minor, federal law prevented the police from giving her the image electronically. They gave her a black-and-white printout of the image instead. Mancini said the police told her that her daughter would likely need to testify if she pressed charges and said the boy would face limited consequences because he was a minor. Mancini filed a Title IX complaint against Hingham Public Schools. After a nearly five-month investigation, the district sent a letter saying that there was insufficient evidence to conclude the behavior occurred in the district’s schools. The boy, who had admitted to creating the image, faced no formal disciplinary consequences. The school district didn’t respond to requests for comment. Another mother at the school recently contacted Mancini in distress. A boy had approached her daughter with a threatening message: “You’re next.”

Inside the whirlwind 24 hours that led the White House to slap export controls on Anthropic

The Trump administration’s decision to impose sweeping export controls on Anthropic followed a frantic 24-hour effort by senior officials to convince the company to voluntarily pull a newly released artificial intelligence model that officials believed posed security risks, according to two administration officials and a senior White House official, who like others in this story were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the episode. The move, which followed multiple tense calls between Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and White House Cyber Director Sean Cairncross, underscores how the White House is wrestling in real-time with regulating fast-moving and potentially dangerous AI models. The details of the calls have not been previously reported. The administration’s imposition of export controls forced Anthropic to pull its new AI model, Fable, just days after it was released to the public.

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Anthropic had given assurances that it was safe but soon after its release, top administration officials developed fresh doubts that the AI’s guardrails were as secure as the company had suggested. On Thursday, two days after the model’s public release, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy raised concerns to the White House about the ability to bypass the model’s guardrails, according to the two administration officials and the senior White House official. (Amazon, which is an investor in Anthropic, was responding to an administration request for feedback, said a person familiar with Amazon’s discussions.) By Friday morning, the issue had reached the highest levels of the White House. Bessent, Cairncross, chief of staff Susie Wiles and other senior officials met to discuss the model and the administration’s response, according to the administration official and the senior White House official. Bessent joined remotely while traveling to Houston for a previously scheduled public event, one of them said.

He profits off raw milk that’s making people sick. The government isn’t stopping him.

A white Ford pickup truck broke through a thick curtain of fog one morning in February, winding its way down a muddy farm road in California’s Central Valley. From it emerged a 64-year-old dairyman, burly and tan, who left the engine running as he lumbered toward me with open arms. “You must be Mark,” I said, warning him I wasn’t one for hugging. “I’m a hugger,” he said, pulling me in anyway. “I feel like I’ve known you for a lifetime.” I had spent the past couple of weeks corresponding with Raw Farm founder Mark McAfee, who’d filled my inbox with messages and PowerPoints extolling the virtues of his most important, and controversial, product:

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It is delicious. It makes you feel good (the gut-brain serotonin and dopamine cycle). It’s great for asthma and literally saves lives. He was talking about raw milk, which, if you trust 150 years of bedrock science, offers little reason to consume. By definition, it has not been pasteurized, the simple process of heating milk to kill off harmful bacteria. Before the practice was widely adopted a century ago, thousands of babies died each year from illnesses linked to contaminated dairy. Today, most scientists and health experts agree that raw milk has no significant, proven nutritional benefits over its sanitized counterpart, cannot treat or cure disease and subjects its consumers to over 100 times the risk of foodborne illness, which can be especially dangerous for young children. And yet, McAfee’s farm, the largest raw-milk dairy in the country, is pulling in about $30 million a year, meeting a growing demand from customers who say they want food that hasn’t been robbed of health benefits by industrial processing. Once drawing a fringe crowd, raw milk has been thrust into the mainstream in recent years by a potent mix of politics, wellness culture and a wave of suspicion that health institutions have been compromised by Big Pharma and Big Food. Its proponents have turned it into a symbol of freedom and defiance. More than 10 million Americans now drink it; national weekly sales rose by 65% from 2023 to 2024 alone.

College sticker prices top $100,000 at 16 schools — but many students pay significantly less

The yearly cost of attendance at over a dozen colleges is now six figures, after factoring in tuition, fees, room and board, books, transportation and other expenses. For the 2026-27 academic year, 16 institutions — including Duke, Georgetown, New York University and University of Chicago — have a sticker price of more than $100,000, according to data exclusively provided to CNBC from The Princeton Review’s upcoming “The Best 392 Colleges” list. Others, such as Brown University, Northwestern and Pepperdine, cost more than $99,000. As more schools cross the $100,000 threshold, others will follow, according to Jeff Selingo, the author of “Dream School.” “We just keep going up and it just never stops,” he said.

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“We have been moving toward this six-figure price tag for a long time, and now we are here — and for a lot of people that feels significant,” Selingo said. Some students and their families have reached their breaking point, he added, and as a result, smaller liberal arts colleges have started losing ground to larger — and less expensive — public schools. “There is a group of institutions that used to be able to command increasing their price without a problem, and now they are finding students and families pushing back,” Selingo said. The high cost of college has turned some students off pricey private schools as more students question the return on investment, Selingo said. “The cost of college is sobering — no doubt about that,” said Robert Franek, editor in chief at The Princeton Review, “and with some schools’ sticker prices crossing the $100,000 mark, paying for college seems all the more daunting.”

How longtime friends Trump and Dana White got a fight cage on the White House lawn

It’s the picture of the pen that stops him. Dana White is walking through the White House Rose Garden one recent morning when he sees the Presidential Walk of Fame, the gallery that the current president installed to honor previous ones. White points out Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, lauding their turns at the helm, and acknowledges that Jimmy Carter, while flawed, “did a lot of good.” But there’s one portrait that White, the irrepressible chief executive of Ultimate Fighting Championship, can’t get enough of: that of an autopen signing former president Joe Biden’s name, hung by President Donald Trump in place of a headshot of Biden himself. “You see this, with the autopen?” White says, pointing and chortling. “How funny is that?”

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At 56, White is the reigning king of combat sports, having authored perhaps this century’s greatest sports business story by satiating the country’s appetite for intimate displays of violence. Over the course of two decades, he has turned the once unprofitable UFC — famously described by then-Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) as “human cockfighting” — into a global mixed-martial-arts machine valued at roughly $15 billion. Through it all, White has proved himself unbeatable, surviving criticism over underpaying fighters and circumnavigating covid-19 restrictions, and skirting scandals such as the video of him slapping his wife, Anne, at a nightclub in 2023, an act for which he has repeatedly apologized. He is not just his sport’s most recognizable and relentless figure but its living embodiment. “I look at the UFC as this battleship,” White says. “As long as I’m here, we all f---ing go down together, or none of us go down.” He is also arguably the most powerful man at the intersection of sports and American politics, a status he unlocked in 2016, when he became among the first public figures to endorse Trump’s candidacy. Since then, White, who says he identifies as “an ’80s Democrat,” has spoken at three Republican National Conventions and played a critical role in turning out young, male voters for Trump, including convincing podcaster and UFC broadcaster Joe Rogan to endorse him in 2024. If the “manosphere” has a spiritual leader, it may be White.

Trump trades NBA boos for UFC cheers as sports become dividing line

President Donald Trump began his week by attending the NBA Finals, booed lustily by the New York crowd. He’s set to end it Sunday night being cheered at a UFC cage match outside the White House on his birthday. No prior president has attended the NBA Finals nor hosted a UFC fight — let alone in the same seven-day span. But for Trump, the events are just the latest sports episodes in a presidency punctuated by football championships, golf tournaments and the Daytona 500. The fans’ reaction, meantime, underscores how sports have become a partisan playing field, with football, golf, auto racing and UFC skewing Republican — and Trump repeatedly wrapping himself in those fans’ embrace. By contrast, Trump did not attend the U.S. national team’s first game in the World Cup soccer tournament on Friday night. Polls have shown that fans of soccer, like basketball and tennis, skew toward Democrats.

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“He should stick to the UFC,” Joe Rogan, a popular podcaster who supported Trump’s election but has criticized him more recently, said on his show after the president’s rough reception at the NBA Finals. “They’re going to boo him everywhere else.” Trump has said he’s an avid fan of many sports — including the NBA and his hometown New York Knicks, who hosted Monday night’s game. He has extolled the UFC showcase as a one-of-a-kind event that will energize Americans and put on a spotlight on mixed-martial artists, whom Trump has called “the toughest people” in sports. The president has spent months showing off a booklet prepared by the UFC to guests in the Oval Office, including New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, according to four people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private meetings. “This would be the highest-rated event, maybe one of them ever in sports,” the president told his daughter-in-law Lara Trump on a recent podcast, as he gave her a tour of the UFC arena being built at the White House. The White House defended Trump’s decision to attend and host the sporting events amid other priorities, including efforts to reach a peace deal with Iran.

Copyright June 14, 2026, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved