September 30, 2026: All Newsclips

Lead Stories

Ken Paxton, G.O.P. nominee in Texas, privately said Trump’s convention hurt him

Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for Senate in Texas, told a group of conservative donors and lobbyists last week that President Trump’s midterm convention in Dallas had hurt Mr. Paxton politically, according to an audio recording obtained by The New York Times. The recording, which is muffled at times, captures Mr. Paxton being asked, “Do you feel like he’s a little bit of a drag?” It is not clear from the audio whom the questioner is referring to. Mr. Paxton responds: “So to be honest with you, the numbers — when we did that convention — it dropped our numbers. Everybody’s numbers dropped. Right now, yeah, not good.” The audio of Mr. Paxton was shared with The Times by an attendee who recorded him speaking at a private fund-raiser in Washington attended by roughly a dozen people.

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The person, who opposes Mr. Paxton’s campaign and provided the recording to The Times, was granted anonymity because Mr. Paxton’s remarks were private. Three other people with knowledge of the event confirmed Mr. Paxton’s attendance. Two of these people recalled that Mr. Paxton had been posed this question, and one recalled his response about the negative consequences of Mr. Trump’s convention. Asked about the remarks, Nick Maddux, a senior Paxton adviser, said that “this is more manipulated nonsense from The New York Times to create a story that doesn’t exist.” “Our latest poll from the last week has Ken Paxton leading by three points, and every serious pollster will tell you that our numbers have improved since early September,” Mr. Maddux said. “Ken Paxton is going to win this race, and he looks forward to closing strong alongside President Trump including when he comes to Texas this week.” The event was hosted last Thursday by two Republican lobbyists, Susan Hirschmann and Chris Brinson, in a conference room near Capitol Hill. They did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Paxton’s comments about the convention are notable because of how closely he has aligned himself in public with Mr. Trump, who pushed for the unusual midterm gathering and ensured that much of it would serve as a celebration of his presidency. A longtime Trump loyalist, Mr. Paxton won a costly and bitter primary this year over Senator John Cornyn thanks to the president’s support.

Venezuelan man shot and wounded by ICE agent in Texas is charged with assaulting an officer

Federal prosecutors in Texas announced charges Tuesday against Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, a Venezuelan delivery driver shot and seriously wounded by an ICE officer in Austin this month. The charges came a day before he was set to appear in court to challenge the legality of his immigration detention. Garcés Pérez, 28, was charged with one count of assaulting, resisting and impeding a federal officer, according to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. Garcés Pérez was wounded by an ICE officer in the upper part of his back on Sept. 20 while he was in his car making DoorDash deliveries. His attorneys say the bullet is still lodged near his spine, causing “grave danger.” A Democratic congressman who visited Garcés Perez last week said he was in a wheelchair, in pain and in need of surgery.

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“We are all laser-focused on making sure that Wilber doesn’t die in custody,” said Rochelle Garza, president of the legal nonprofit Texas Civil Rights Project, who is part of Garcés Perez’s legal team. Garcés Pérez had his initial appearance in federal court Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Justin R. Simmons said in a statement. The criminal complaint accuses Garcés Pérez of striking an ICE officer’s torso with his car’s side mirror while trying to drive away. This officer was not wearing a body camera at the time of the encounter, as the Department of Homeland Security has stated previously, but the complaint includes images appearing to capture this moment from the body camera of a second ICE officer who was also there. After this, “a high-speed chase through a commercial and residential area” ensued, the complaint states. Tuesday’s court appearance following the criminal complaint took Garcés Pérez’s legal team “as a surprise,” they said in a statement. “His attorneys only learned of this appearance due to a pre-scheduled meeting they had with him this morning, in which he did not appear,” their statement said. “This morning, when his attorneys were finally able to see him, he was in considerable pain, dizzy, and needed pain medication, which had not been provided. Rather than provide the life saving medical care he needs, DHS and the government are playing games with his life.”

Supreme Court allows Trump’s quick third-country deportations to continue

The Supreme Court on Tuesday let President Donald Trump’s administration continue swiftly deporting people to countries other than their own for now, while the justices consider whether the policy is legal. The apparent 6-3 order temporarily lifts lower court requirements for migrants to get a chance to object before being sent to countries to which they have no ties. The Supreme Court will hear arguments in December. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson would have kept the lower court order in place. The Trump administration said last week the lower court order forced the cancellation of a deportation flight carrying about 70 people bound for three countries. The conservative majority has sided with the administration before on the core Trump administration policy, allowing deportation flights to temporarily continue last year.

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The court said it will consider several questions: whether the policy is lawful, whether lower courts had the authority to consider the case and issue a sweeping block, as well as other questions the government deems appropriate. The order “has now allowed the administration to resume sending people to third countries where they may face persecution, torture, imprisonment, or other grave danger,” said Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance and one of the lawyers representing immigrants in the case. “But today’s order does not decide that the government’s policy is lawful,” she said in a statement. “The Court will hear that question on an expedited schedule.” Under a series of often-secret agreements, the Trump administration has deported some 25,000 people to more than two dozen countries, from Liberia to Guyana. The vast majority have been sent to Mexico.

Tarrant candidates make plea for cash after mystery poll shows Dems ahead

A mystery poll showing the historically-red Senate District 9 voting blue in key races this November has become campaign fundraising fodder in the Tarrant County judge race. The candidates are warning against — or promoting — what could be a competitive election cycle in the red county that occasionally tips blue, and using the poll of unknown origins as a basis for their arguments as they urge voters to open their pocketbooks. The poll was published by Quorum Report, a respected outlet for Texas politics, without saying who exactly conducted the poll — beyond “a reputable Republican pollster” — or what the methodology was. It shows 600 likely Senate District 9 voters preferring Democrats by a noteworthy margin in races for state Senate District 9, U.S. Senate, governor, lieutenant governor and Tarrant County judge.

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That district elected President Donald Trump in 2024 by a 17-point margin, then it flipped blue to choose Democrat Taylor Rehmet over Republican Leigh Wambsganss in a February special election for a partial term in the Texas Legislature. The Democratic’s 14-point win shocked the country because of the Senate district’s deep-red roots. Now, this poll shows Rehmet winning a full term in the Texas Senate. It also has Democratic nominees James Talarico, Gina Hinojosa, Vikki Goodwin and Alisa Simmons joining him in flipping seats that have been ruby red for over three decades. Texas last elected a Democrat statewide in 1994; Tarrant County hasn’t had a Democrat in the county judge seat since 1986. Simmons and Republican incumbent Tim O’Hare have both seen the polling for their Tarrant County judge race and spread the news to their supporters with a plea for more dollars. O’Hare, who recently sounded the alarm at a True Texas Project meeting, said in a campaign email that if Republicans are behind in his race, “every corner of Tarrant County is in play.” The email said if Simmons wins the race as the poll says, she will raise taxes and wipe away support for the sheriff and law enforcement. Simmons’ post on X said the polling shows Tarrant voters refuse to keep supporting Republicans, who she says are “taking away our rights, starting culture wars and tanking the economy without consequence.” Both candidates said in their messages that the only way to ensure their preferred outcome is for supporters to pour money into the campaign.

State Stories

President Trump prepares to tour Peterbilt plant in Denton on Thursday

President Donald Trump plans to tour Denton’s Peterbilt Motors plant Thursday to tout his pro-growth economic agenda, which the White House claims has sparked trillions in investment, lowered taxes and brought key manufacturing back to the U.S., according to a statement from the White House. “The President’s American First trade agenda is driving a manufacturing renaissance that will continue to pay dividends for the great state of Texas and Americans across the country,” Olivia Wales, a White House spokesperson, said in the statement. Trump is expected to address Peterbilt workers during his visit. Denton Mayor Chris Watts said he plans to attend Thursday’s event at the invitation of Peterbilt, the city’s largest private employer, and he praised the truck manufacturer’s investment in Denton.

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“Peterbilt has long been a shining example of what it means to be a strong corporate partner, providing high-quality jobs for our residents while also supporting nonprofit organizations that serve our neighbors who need a helping hand,” Watts said in a statement Tuesday, through a spokesperson. “Their continued growth also holds the potential for additional job opportunities that benefit our community. “With more than half of Denton households struggling each month to make ends meet, the work being done at Peterbilt represents more than employment. It represents opportunity, an opportunity for families to strengthen their financial security and improve their quality of life.” The president’s visit comes as Americans’ negative views about the economy have lingered. Gallup last week announced its Economic Confidence Index has stayed steady at -20. “This reflects relatively few Americans rating current economic conditions as excellent or good (28%) while the majority continue to say the economy is getting worse (63%),” Gallup reported.

Brisket is missing from Texas menus. A Democrat blames Republicans.

Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas) is blaming Republicans for the missing brisket. The congressman running in a competitive race for reelection released a new ad Tuesday accusing Republicans of spiking beef prices with President Donald Trump’s tariff policy. “Have you seen the price of beef lately?” Gonzalez, a moderate Democrat, says to the camera before serving guests at a barbecue minuscule portions of meat. “Puras migajas” — pure crumbs — a man in the ad says after receiving a single bite of beef. Beef prices have steadily increased since 2025 because of numerous factors, including a volatile market for cattle ranchers that has led to a historically low herd. The rise in prices has caused some restaurants to pull brisket from their menus. Gonzalez is up against Republican Eric Flores in his majority-Latino district. Trump won the district by more than four percentage points in 2024, but Republicans redrew its boundaries last year to favor Trump by more than 10 percentage points. Still, Democrats are optimistic about holding the seat, betting that Latino voters who went for Trump in 2024 will swing back toward Democrats this year because of high prices and the president’s immigration agenda.

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Conservative moms are fed up over Texas schools. For Gina Hinojosa, it’s an opening.

Vanessa Ovalle has a “frontline view” of Texas schools as a single mom and a speech pathologist at a local school in McAllen, a city in the Rio Grande Valley bordering Mexico. Ovalle described the state’s education system as “completely disappointing.” In nearby Welasco, Catalina Ozuna said her daughter is working in an understaffed kindergarten classroom for little pay while being weighed down by the cost of daycare for her own child. Meredith Keller, who for over a decade presided over a local school board south of Austin, calls a new voucher program that allows parents to use public dollars for private school “a slap in the face to everyone who went to public school.”

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These Texas voters all have two things in common: They have backed Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in the past and are now throwing their support behind Democrat Gina Hinojosa in the November election, driven by concerns about the state of public education. In this Republican bastion, angst over the state’s public education system has helped fuel Hinojosa’s campaign, giving voters here one of the most competitive governor’s races they’ve seen in decades. That a Democrat has a chance is a welcome surprise for voters like Maria Colmenero, 32, who stood at the back of an Hinojosa rally this month in Brownsville, a town along the Mexican border, holding one of the campaign’s school-bus-yellow “Save Our Schools” placards. Colmenero said the main issue driving her support for Hinojosa is the state of public schools in Texas. She said she’s homeschooling her three daughters because the local public school options just “weren’t up to par.”

Judges back Meta $552M power plant if EP Electric customers don't pay

El Paso Electric is close to getting state regulators’ approval for a $551.8 million, 366-megawatt power plant to be built for the Meta Platforms data center complex in far Northeast El Paso. The city of El Paso and others are opposing the McCloud power plant. Two Texas administrative law judges issued a report Wednesday, Sept. 23, recommending that the Public Utility Commission of Texas approve construction of the plant, but on the condition that EPE ratepayers be protected from paying the facility's construction and operating costs. EPE officials have proposed a so-called “bridge period” of up to five years, in which Meta will be responsible for all construction and operating costs for the power plant until it's tied to EPE’s grid.

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“EPE has left open the possibility that other customers may pay a portion of the costs in the future,” judges Cassandra Quinn and Arthur D’Andrea noted in their decision. For EPE to include the McCloud power plant costs in future electric rates, it would need to show that the power plant’s capacity is needed for its grid, is cost-effective, and increases EPE's grid reliability, the judges wrote. The judges issued their recommendation after hearing arguments from EPE and opponents during a July 8 videoconference, and receiving post-hearing briefs before closing the proceeding Aug. 6. The PUCT's five commissioners are expected to make a decision on EPE's application by December. Meta, which operates Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is leasing the $14 billion data center campus on 1,000 acres at Stan Roberts Sr. Avenue and U.S. Highway 54, near the New Mexico state line. It's under construction and is expected to open in 2028. The McCloud plant cost had initially been projected at $500 million by EPE. But in the hearing judges’ report, the cost was put at $551.8 million. EPE’s “lack of analysis regarding options (to the McCloud plant) is concerning,” the judges wrote.

San Antonio Express-News Editorial: Philip Cortez deserves another term in the Legislature

We recommend incumbent state Rep. Philip Cortez for a seventh term representing Texas House District 117. This district takes in parts of the South, Southwest and far West Sides of San Antonio. Cortez, born and raised on the South Side, has his district's pulse, and knows the issues and community's priorities. Cortez also has a long history of public service. In his early 20s, he served as chief of staff to Mayor Ed Garza. He was then elected to two terms on the San Antonio City Council, representing District 4. He’s also a former U.S. Air Force officer, retiring as a captain in 2019. Cortez was first elected to the Texas House in 2012, but he lost to Republican Rick Galindo in 2014.

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In a 2016 rematch, Cortez regained his seat and has held it since then through hard work, constituent services and building meaningful connections with other lawmakers. For example, at the beginning of the 89th session, House Speaker Dustin Burrows appointed Cortez as chairman of the Permanent Standing Subcommittee on Defense & Veterans' Affairs. Supporting veterans, seniors, public education (he opposes vouchers for private schools) and creating better-paying jobs are Cortez’s priorities. During the 2025 session, Cortez pushed through a $50 million appropriation as an incentive for the U.S. Air Force to build a military cyber campus at Port San Antonio, but in a sudden and inexplicable reversal, Gov. Greg Abbott vetoed it, claiming it to be duplicative of other state initiatives. It wasn't. Cortez, who has a doctorate in education administration, has said oversight of school vouchers and improving public education funding remain top priorities. He faces Republican Ben Mostyn, a San Antonio-area Realtor and U.S. Army veteran, in a rematch from two years ago. We met with Mostyn at that time and found no need to meet again.

Judge denies DA’s request to revoke bond for Vision Oil CEO Josh Cohen

A West Texas state judge denied prosecutors’ requests to revoke the bond of Josh Cohen on Tuesday, allowing the former head of Vision Oil and Gas to remain free while facing charges for an oilfield fraud scheme targeting Permian Basin companies. Cohen, who lives in New York but owns and operates wells across Texas, was arrested June 5 for failing to pay more than $1.2 million he allegedly owed to oilfield services companies in Ward, Reeves and Midland counties. He was charged with one count of felony theft of services and one count of engaging in organized crime.

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After being released on a $400,000 bond in July, prosecutors alleged Cohen violated conditions of his parole when he solicited work from Texas companies, according to court documents. Cohen also ignored a court-mandated order to wear an ankle monitor and failed to provide proof of doing so, prosecutors said. Judge Alan Nicholas in Monahans disagreed, saying he couldn’t take away Cohen’s right to work and that the state hadn’t proved Cohen wasn’t going to pay for services he solicited, even though seeking new contracts violated the initial conditions of his bail. Ward County District Attorney Sarah Stogner, who brought charges against Cohen, said she was looking forward to letting the case play out in court. Cohen’s attorney, Lane Haygood, did not respond to requests for comment. During his June arrest Cohen was accused of contracting for services such as oilfield remediation, trucking and equipment rentals “without the intent or ability to pay for them,” pushing some firms to “near financial collapse,” according to law enforcement documents. In a filing requesting the bond revocation in August, prosecutors said Cohen solicited work on more than 270 wells across Midland, Canadian and Amarillo. Cohen called and emailed contractors for the work under his own name, a fake name, and on behalf of an associate while using multiple phone numbers, the filings said.

16 trucking companies, including five in Texas, hit bankruptcy court in less than a month

A new round of trucking bankruptcies has swept across the U.S. in recent weeks, with carriers ranging from small owner-operators to fleets operating dozens of trucks seeking Chapter 7 or Chapter 11 protection. At least 16 trucking, delivery and transportation companies entered bankruptcy proceedings between late August and Sept. 21, according to federal court filings and carrier records reviewed by FreightWaves. The filings include Chapter 11 cases involving Globemaster Incorporated, Xoco Transport, Jett Transport & Materials, CLJ Transporting, Mill Creek Logistics-Illinois, RP Hay Hauling, Truckload LLC and Pacer Transport. Several smaller carriers filed Chapter 7 cases, which typically involve liquidation rather than reorganization. The filings come as trucking companies continue navigating a freight environment marked by rising diesel fuel prices and other elevated operating costs.

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Xoco Transport, a Hidalgo, Texas-based carrier, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sept. 16. Bankruptcy court filings indicate the carrier has more than 40 tractors, 65 drivers and 70 trailers. Jett Transport & Materials LLC filed for Chapter 11 protection Sept. 14 in the Western District of Texas. The Somerset, Texas-based company specializes in hauling construction materials and reported assets between $100,000 and $500,000 and liabilities between $500,000 and $1 million. The company operates about 14 trucks and 14 trailers, according to records included with the bankruptcy information. It was listed with 10 drivers and an active motor carrier registration. The recent bankruptcy activity also includes a cluster of smaller fleets entering Chapter 7 proceedings. A&B Transportation Inc. of Lake Elsinore, California, filed Sept. 11. The carrier is listed with six trucks and six drivers. Russ Exp Co., an Arlington Heights, Illinois-based interstate carrier with five trucks and five drivers, also recently entered Chapter 7 proceedings. Texas-based carriers entering bankruptcy include T Yorkman Trucking LLC of Midland, which specialized in oil field water transportation, vacuum truck operations and hazardous-material hauling; Blue Star Transports LLC of Garland, listed with two trucks and two drivers; and Jackdollars Transport LLC of McKinney, a one-truck carrier.

How Republicans hijacked Fort Bend County

Depending on how you count, Fort Bend County currently has zero, one, or two chief executives. In March, the elected county judge, a Democrat turned Republican named KP George, was convicted of felony money laundering after spending campaign funds on personal expenses. George’s downfall set off a political crisis that has thrown the suburban county southwest of Houston into chaos. While George appealed his conviction, a separate civil lawsuit sought his suspension from office. Under Texas law, the civil case had to be heard by a visiting judge, one temporarily appointed to hear a case in a court they do not normally preside over. The rule seems reasonable enough. An outside arbiter would presumably be insulated from local political considerations. But that theory proved, well, presumptive. The district judge assigned to the case, Republican Jeth Jones from Galveston County, decided to suspend George and replace him with Republican businessman Daniel Wong. Wong was an unusual choice. The Macau-born owner of a civil engineering firm was a former city council member in Sugar Land, Fort Bend’s largest city, but had no experience in county government.

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He had, however, recently won the GOP nomination for county judge and would be running for the position in the November election. His interim appointment meant that he could run as an incumbent—an incalculable advantage for any politician. (Jones declined an interview request for this story.) Fort Bend Democrats saw Wong’s appointment as part of a right-wing conspiracy to take control of the county, which narrowly voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. The elected county attorney, Democrat Bridgette Smith-Lawson, filed a lawsuit claiming that Wong’s appointment was illegal. The two Democrats on the Fort Bend County Commissioners Court, the five-member governing body, refused to acknowledge Wong’s legitimacy and have been boycotting meetings since June. “We have a person who is operating in an office that does not have clear legal title to do so,” Smith-Lawson told me. “The rightful judge is still KP George, whether people like it or not. He’s suspended without pay, but he has not been removed from office.” The three Republican commissioners, led by Wong, have attacked Smith-Lawson as a partisan operative and voted to strip employees and resources from her office. Wong insists that the entire controversy has been ginned up by his political opponents. “People [in Fort Bend County] recognize I’m the county judge,” he told me. “They use different terms—interim county judge, acting county judge, county judge—but they all recognize me as the legal county judge.”

Houston Mayor John Whitmire funded Montrose pride banners

Rainbows have returned to Montrose with the installation of pride banners along Westheimer Road, nearly a year after the city removed the neighborhood’s iconic crosswalks to comply with threats from Gov. Greg Abbott. City leaders celebrated the ten new banners strung up on light poles at a press event in the heart of the historic heart of Houston’s LGBTQ+ community on Tuesday, voicing defiance against Abbott, who last year directed cities to remove “social, political, or ideological messages" from roadways or lose state transportation funding.

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“I want to remind the Republicans in the Legislature and Gov. Greg Abbott: You think you can pave over our existence and our history, and you cannot,” said state Rep. Ann Johnson, an openly lesbian Democrat who represents Montrose. Mayor John Whitmire personally paid for the roughly $10,000 installation, which hung banners along Westheimer from Taft Street to Montrose Boulevard. The original crosswalk, at the intersection of Westheimer and Taft, was painted over by Metro in September, then repainted by the city, then finally paved over the next month after a standoff between protestors and police. Four people were arrested. “Someone is driving down Westheimer and wondering whether there is a place for them here… without anyone having to say a single word, these banners tell them and myself, you are here, you are seen, and you belong,” said Kerry-Ann Morrison, the president of Pride Houston who organized the installation alongside longtime community advocate Jack Valinski.

CAIR Texas responds to “anti-Muslim” rhetoric in public schools

While many public school teachers and parents from diverse faith backgrounds rallied against Ten Commandments posters and state-mandated Bible readings, recently approved curriculum changes that spread anti-Muslim themes also have detrimental impacts on the future of public education, officials with CAIR Texas said this week. The Texas branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations hosted a livestreamed discussion Monday night to talk about changes to the social studies Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills — the official state curriculum standards for public schools — approved for K-8 in June and for high schoolers on September 4 by the State Board of Education. The new standards are set to take effect in 2030.

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Sameeha Rizvi, the Richmond-based governmental affairs and legislative manager for CAIR Texas, said the new social studies standards will shape what millions of students learn about history, religion, culture and civic life for years to come. “These standards include significant changes affecting the teaching of Islam, as well as representation of Black, brown, immigrant, Palestinian and other marginalized communities in Texas classrooms,” she said. “As communities continue to review and assess the impact of these changes, it is important that parents, educators, faith leaders, advocates and community members understand what was adopted and what it could mean in practice.” So what exactly changed? For starters, the Board approved a high school lesson requiring students to learn that “radical Islam” prompted the 9/11 terrorist attacks, rather than highlighting extremist groups like al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden. Additionally, students will now learn about early Islam based on the Prophet Muhammad’s “brutal military campaigns against Jewish and Christian tribes, the normalization and regulation of slavery and the taking of female captives as harem slaves.”

Houston-area Trump voters caught in immigration crackdown

A Honduran woman’s potential departure from Texas is forcing her conservative Bellaire family to confront a hard truth: President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown isn’t confined to Latino neighborhoods or work site raids. Instead, it casts a wide net that ensnares even people who “do it the right way.” In a few weeks, Anyi Hernandez-Escobar, her husband Patrick Keating and their 16-month-old toddler Emma could find themselves nearly 2,000 miles from their Houston home and extended family. Hernandez-Escobar, who came to the U.S. in 2018, could be forced back to her native Honduras because of an agreement between Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the Department of Justice. The agreement dissolved a Biden-era policy that allowed immigration judges to close certain cases, like Hernandez-Escobar’s, if an immigrant was applying for legal status.

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This sudden turn of events has left her in-laws and her husband torn about their political choices. They voted for Trump, in part because they believed his pledge to focus on deporting criminals. They said they never expected the administration’s policy could impact them so directly. “Anyi, she's always tried to do it the right way. Right from the minute she crossed,” said Ingrid Keating, her mother-in-law. “Immigration has been such a mess for so many years, but of course it's easy not to pay too much attention when it's not your immediate family. Now, all of a sudden, it really brings it home.” Even Hernandez-Escobar, who is not eligible to vote, said she supported the president’s promise to target criminals. “There was a lot of crime in the country. I thought it was good to deport the bad people,” she said. “Now, it doesn’t matter if you’re a good person or a bad person.” Hernandez-Escobar crossed the border into Texas and sought asylum at Eagle Pass during Trump’s first term. She was eight months pregnant and fleeing what she described as a desperate situation in Honduras: She had been abandoned by her parents, had no money and said the biological father of her son was largely out of the picture.

City Stories

David Persse, ‘pioneer’ of Houston’s EMS system, dies at 67

David Persse — a former director of the Houston Fire Department's (HFD) Emergency Medical Services (EMS) — died on Monday, according to the department. In a statement, Fire Chief Thomas Muñoz hailed the longtime leader as "a pioneer whose impact on the Houston Fire Department cannot be overstated." The department credited Persse, 67, with developing a mobile stroke unit program, which brought early diagnosis and treatment from the hospital to the field, as well as a tele-health program virtually connecting patients with emergency physicians.

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Marty Lancton, president of the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association, said Presse’s innovations "saved countless thousands of lives over the years." "It shows what a pioneer Dr. Persse was, and his legacy is going to continue to live on in all of us," Lancton told Houston Public Media. According to HFD, Persse began his emergency medicine career as a field paramedic and instructor before attending Georgetown University's medical school. After working in leadership roles in Houston and Los Angeles, he returned to Houston for good in 1996 to lead the city's EMS system. His years of public service included time as Houston's Public Health Authority and the city's Chief Medical Officer. He led Houston and Harris County through multiple hurricanes and the COVID-19 pandemic.

National Stories

Media trust increase driven by Republicans: Gallup

Republicans drove an increase in Americans’ trust in the media, which jumped by 5 percent this year after hitting an all-time low in 2025, according to survey results published Tuesday. In the new Gallup survey, 33 percent of respondents said they trusted mass media — including newspapers, television and radio — a “great deal” or “fair amount” when it comes to their ability to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly.” These new figures mark a rebound from 2025, where 28 percent of those polled — a new low in Gallup’s more than 50-year trend — expressed confidence in media outlets’ reporting. Republican respondents fueled this increase, with 22 percent expressing trust in the media, an 8 percent increase from the year prior. Republicans’ trust in the media hasn’t passed 20 percent since 2018, and 22 percent is the highest the figure has ticked over the past 10 years.

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Democrats’ evaluation moved in the opposite direction, with their trust hitting a historic low of 50 percent. Meanwhile, 31 percent of independents trust the media, a slight increase from 28 percent in 2025. Out of the entire respondent pool, 33 percent of those surveyed stated they have “not very much” confidence in mass media, while an equal 33 percent have “none at all.” Lydia Saad, Gallup’s director of U.S. social research, acknowledged in an analysis of this year’s results the party-line fracture surrounding media trust — but also emphasized that these ratings are historically weak overall. “The partisan trends also reveal a somewhat different political environment toward the media in [President] Trump’s second term than in his first,” Saad wrote. On Sept. 18, Trump banned three media outlets — CNN, MS NOW and Politico — from the White House. In a social media post announcing the ban, the president referred to CNN as “fake news” and called out MS NOW for changing its name from MSNBC, alleging the outlet had to rename itself due to “lack of viewership and credibility.” He also railed against the $8 million government agencies pay for Politico Pro subscriptions, calling it “illegal and ridiculous.” A federal judge swiftly reversed the ban on Sept. 24, mandating that the White House restore the three outlets’ press credentials. But the feud is waging on after the ruling, as the Trump administration barred CNN from traveling with the press pool on Air Force One over the weekend. Gallup surveyed 1,000 U.S. adults between Sept. 1-17. The margin of error was 4 percentage points.

Jack Smith defends Trump charges as senator’s perjury claim falls apart

It was meant to be a dramatic confrontation, a public accusation of perjury against Jack Smith, the special counsel who investigated Donald J. Trump. Instead, Senator Eric Schmitt’s amateur sleuthing into basketball led him to the wrong game, league and state. During a four-hour Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Mr. Schmitt, a Republican from Missouri, struck a conspiratorial tone and asked Mr. Smith if he had attended an Atlanta Hawks home game in February 2024. Mr. Schmitt focused on the basketball game in the hopes that he could show Mr. Smith had perjured himself and was involved in a conspiracy with local Atlanta prosecutors to ensnare Mr. Trump. In a hearing where Republicans repeatedly accused Mr. Smith of lying, what Mr. Schmitt first presented as smoking-gun evidence against Mr. Smith turned out to be a misfire.

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During his testimony, Mr. Smith appeared deeply confused by Mr. Schmitt’s question. “I definitely did not go to a Hawks game,” he said. “I’m sure of that.” Mr. Schmitt seemed confident he had just caught Mr. Smith in a lie. It was part of a broader effort by Mr. Trump’s Republican allies to characterize Mr. Smith as politically partisan, a man with an ax to grind not just against a former president, but also the Republican establishment. Mr. Smith has already defended his work before Congress, and Republicans have claimed that his past testimony included perjury. On Tuesday, Mr. Schmitt argued that Mr. Smith had lied again, this time about a basketball game. If the prosecutor was in Atlanta, Mr. Schmitt suggested, he might have met with the local district attorney, Fani Willis, who also pursued a criminal case against Mr. Trump. Mr. Schmitt’s Republican colleague from Louisiana, John Kennedy, stood next to him helping hold up a poster board showing text messages among members of Mr. Smith’s special counsel team from Feb. 3, 2024, discussing seats at a basketball game. “I don’t think you know we have this stuff, so I’ll give you a second to process it so you don’t perjure yourself,” Mr. Schmitt said, even as the poster board was swiftly taken down, too quickly for most in the room to read it.

Officials cast doubt on Trump’s plan for drones, snipers at proposed arch

Trump administration officials said Tuesday that they were unaware of specific plans to convert President Donald Trump’s planned triumphal arch into a military complex, more than a week after Trump announced plans to put snipers, drones and ammunition at the site. Senior officials at the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) and the National Park Service told advocacy groups that they were proceeding with existing plans for the arch’s design and features, including that it will be open to tourists, according to three people with knowledge of the remarks. The officials also told the groups that the administration had received no additional information from the Defense Department about militarizing the project, the people said.

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Administration officials met with the advocates as part of a required process to evaluate the planned arch’s harm on nearby historic sites. Trump officials are hoping to build the 250-foot-tall arch in Memorial Circle, a traffic roundabout tucked inside Washington’s boundaries and near Arlington National Cemetery. Spokespeople for ACHP and the Interior Department, which oversees the Park Service, did not immediately respond to questions about the meeting. Trump on Sept. 20 said on Truth Social that the arch would be converted into a “military complex” that would “house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage.” Trump did not explain what security need might be served by adding weaponry to the proposed arch, which would be near existing military installations. Trump has repeatedly invoked military and national security needs to expedite his construction projects and other priorities, including his planned White House ballroom. Administration officials are hoping to begin construction on the arch as soon as November.

US forces exit Iraq, emboldening Iran's proxies and Islamic State

US forces ended their mission in Iraq on ?Wednesday after more than two decades of war there, raising fears of a security vacuum that would embolden Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias and allow Islamic State to regroup. The withdrawal of the final troops, mainly from an airbase in Erbil in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, was celebrated as a victory by Tehran and its allies, although many Iraqis were concerned that their own security forces were unprepared. The pullout was agreed in 2024 under President Joe Biden and carried out by Donald Trump's ?administration even as it wages war against Irannext door. It comes 23 years after US-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein, triggering years of upheaval and chaos. US troops initially left at the ?end of 2011 but came back less than three years later after Islamic State fighters seized a third of Iraq.

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More than 4,500 US troops died in America's ?biggest war of this century, around twice as many as in the parallel war in Afghanistan. The Iraq Body Count project says more than 200,000 Iraqi civilians were killed. The Pentagon said the ?United States and its coalition partners formally concluded "Operation Inherent Resolve" and that the Pentagon will continue to provide targeted training and intelligence support to Iraqi partners. The Iraqis are expected to lead the effort ?to secure the country, an ally of both Washington and Tehran, and keep the remnants of Islamic State suppressed. “The end of the international coalition’s mission does not mean the end of our battle against terrorism, but rather Iraq’s transition to a phase in which it assumes full responsibility for its security and stability," said Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Faleh al-Zaidi in a statement. Tehran has steadily entrenched itself through proxies in Iraq since the fall of Saddam. While the ?departure of US forces is broadly popular among Iraqis, some worry that security forces trained and funded by the United States still can't protect the country.

Why New York City has become an AI mecca

The City Council is set to hold a rare all-Council meeting on Oct. 5 to discuss the “potentially catastrophic risks” of artificial intelligence and debate a package of oversight legislation, including protections for AI whistleblowers and requirements for third-party validators of AI systems. Attorney General Letitia James has also asked New Yorkers to report AI companies who might be violating the law. But while New York politicians are focused on the perils of AI, the city has emerged as a center for AI companies, second only to the Bay Area, showing the industry’s growing importance to the city’s economy — and the risks if the AI boom turns into a bubble. Elise AI, founded five years ago, now employs 600 people, two-thirds of them in New York. This week, it announced it had raised $350 million, which values the company at $4 billion as its tools for property management and healthcare companies gain new clients.

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Alex Sambvani’s Slang AI, which two years ago was developing an application to handle phone calls to restaurants, is now selling itself as an AI tools manager for restaurants around the world. In the last two years, Sambvani has raised $48 million, bringing total investment to almost $70 million, while doubling Slang AI’s headcount to 70. Two juggernauts leading the development of AI — OpenAI and Anthropic — have both established major operations here. The same factors that drove the city’s tech boom over the past 10 years are what’s propelling AI’s growth now: New York has both an enormous reservoir of tech talent and is the city best poised to bring tech innovation to the rest of the economy. “There are a wide range of small- to medium-sized AI companies in every sector who are coming here or launching here because of what Willie Sutton said about where the money is, because you have companies in finance, law, medicine, insurance or whatever,” Greg Morrisett, the dean of Cornell Tech said, citing the famous 20th-century bank robber.

Democrats eye Nebraska as an opportunity to take a Senate seat away from Republicans

Marine Corps veteran Gunner Arellano is a Donald Trump man — he voted for the president three times — but, he said, he won’t be casting a ballot for Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., in November. Dan Osborn, an independent who has the backing of the state’s Democratic Party, is “more for the people” than Ricketts, Arellano, a 35-year-old tobacconist, said in an interview at the S.G. Roi cigar shop in downtown Omaha late last month. While Arellano is familiar with Ricketts, a former two-term governor who ranks high on the list of wealthiest senators, he said that the senator isn’t present enough. “All those politicians, they want to come around when it’s election time, right?” he said. “Come down on a Wednesday in the middle of your term, you know.”

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Arellano said he’ll vote for Osborn, and voters like him are the reason that Democrats in Nebraska and at the national level hope they might be able to swipe a Senate seat in this heavily Republican state. They’re even more optimistic about flipping the state’s Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District, where Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris won in 2024 and Republican Rep. Don Bacon is retiring. In that year, Osborn surprised many political observers by running a competitive campaign against Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., who ended up winning by a little more than 6 percentage points while Trump took the state by 20 points. The latter margin is one reason, along with Ricketts’ record of winning statewide races at the gubernatorial and Senate levels, that Republicans are confident they can keep the seat. Omaha was the last in an eight-stop, five-state tour that NBC News reporters took through battleground congressional districts — and states with competitive Senate races — along Interstate 80 in late August. Democrats need a net gain of four Senate seats to take control of the chamber next year, and Nebraska has emerged at the edge of the small list of states that could be in play in November.

Trump signs executive order rebranding AI as 'Super Intelligence' as tech titans ink separate SI accord

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order directing the federal government to replace the term "artificial intelligence" with "Super Intelligence" across the executive branch, cementing a rebranding effort he has championed in recent weeks. Signed after a White House summit with leading technology executives, the order directs federal agencies to use the terms "Super Intelligence" and "SI" in official correspondence, public communications, websites, reports, policy documents and other non-statutory materials. The order also directs agencies to "no longer acknowledge" the terms "artificial intelligence" and "AI," according to the White House. The order further instructs the assistant to the president for science and technology to develop a federal definition of SI and recommend any additional executive actions needed to implement the new terminology.

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Trump argued in the order that AI no longer reflects the technology's rapidly advancing capabilities, saying SI better captures its promise and potential. "The term 'Super Intelligence' more appropriately captures the promise, potential, and rapidly advancing capabilities of these technologies," Trump wrote. He also wrote that modern AI systems are increasingly amplifying human ingenuity and unlocking new forms of creativity, arguing they represent the beginning of a new era of SI. The order follows remarks Trump made at last week's United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), where he publicly called for replacing the term "artificial intelligence" with SI. "Whoever wins AI, you have to remember this, and now I say whoever wins SI, whoever wins superintelligence, wins. That's the group that wins," Trump said at the time.

OpenAI ignored employees’ warnings about safely testing A.I. models

Months before OpenAI’s artificial intelligence went rogue, two employees raised an alarm with top executives. They were ignored. In emails, the employees said they worried that OpenAI’s newest artificial intelligence models were not being appropriately monitored during testing to gauge the technology’s sophistication and to secure the models, according to messages viewed by The New York Times. In response, OpenAI executives told the employees that the tests needed to move forward as quickly as possible to release the A.I. models on time. No additional security protocols were instituted, said the workers, who were not authorized to speak publicly on sensitive matters. OpenAI’s models later broke out of their testing environments and attacked the A.I. start-up Hugging Face and other organizations, setting off a global debate about A.I. safety.

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The exchanges between OpenAI employees and executives — which have not been previously reported — were part of a pattern where the San Francisco company did not prioritize security, according to employees and independent security researchers. That approach not only was evident with the testing of A.I. models, they said, but also showed up in other areas of the company, which makes the ChatGPT chatbot. Independent security researchers said they found bugs in recent months that allowed them to view the internal communications of OpenAI employees. They also found other vulnerabilities that would enable them to see the company’s internal computer code and view the chat logs of ChatGPT users. When the researchers contacted OpenAI about their findings, they said, the company initially disregarded them. “OpenAI’s security seems to be about what you’d expect from a research lab that scaled at a blistering pace over four years and focused more on beating its competitors than securing its infrastructure,” said Joshua Saxe, the chief technology officer of the A.I. security firm Abundant Security.

Copyright September 30, 2026, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved