July 31, 2026: All Newsclips

Lead Stories

Fox News Poll: Talarico leads Paxton by 3 points, Abbott and Hinojosa are neck and neck

President Donald Trump won the Lone Star state by nearly 14 percentage points in 2024, but a new Fox News Poll of Texas registered voters suggests this year's Senate race is far less settled. Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton has yet to fully unify the GOP despite the president’s endorsement in the GOP primary against incumbent Sen. John Cornyn. In addition, more voters are concerned Paxton lacks the character to serve than worry Democratic challenger James Talarico is too extreme, and more Democrats than Republicans are extremely motivated to vote (by 7 points) and extremely interested in the midterms (by 6). Those dynamics give Talarico a 3-point edge over Paxton (51% vs. 48%) in the Senate contest (within the survey’s margin of sampling error).

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Talarico's advantage in the race grows to 6 points among both extremely motivated and extremely interested voters (53% vs. 47% in each group). Most independents (68%) and virtually all Democrats support Talarico (98%), while fewer Republicans are unified behind Paxton (89%). In part, that’s because one quarter of non-MAGA Republicans back Talarico (24%). Paxton is the choice among White evangelical Christians, White men without a college degree, rural voters, regular worship attenders, men and voters ages 65 and older. Some of Talarico’s best groups are Black voters, moderates, voters under age 30, Hispanic voters, women and voters with a college degree. "Although Paxton dominated Cornyn in the GOP primary, that bruising contest left scars," said Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who conducts Fox News polls with Democrat Chris Anderson. "He has considerable work to do with non-MAGA Republicans and independents, and that undoubtedly requires aggressively tying Talarico to the Democratic Party’s far left." By a 12-point margin, more voters are concerned Paxton lacks the character to serve as a senator than believe Talarico is too extreme (59% vs. 47%). Twice as many Republicans are concerned about Paxton's character as Democrats are that Talarico is too extreme (36% vs. 17%). In the race for governor, incumbent Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is favored by 1 point over Democrat Gina Hinojosa.

Defying Trump, Cornyn uses his lame-duck power

Not long after Senator John Cornyn lost his re-election bid to a right-wing challenger backed by President Trump, the Texas Republican predicted that the remainder of his Senate tenure might be a “pretty bumpy ride” for the president. He warned that he and other lame-duck senators had “some cards to play” and would not hesitate to use them. This week, depending on the metaphor you prefer, Mr. Cornyn either made himself a giant senatorial pothole or laid his hand on the table. By wielding his vote on the Judiciary Committee as leverage, a newly liberated Mr. Cornyn threw Mr. Trump’s choice for attorney general, Todd Blanche, into limbo as the Senate left town for the weekend on Thursday night.

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Both he and Senator Thom Tillis — the North Carolina Republican who chose not to seek re-election after Mr. Trump threatened to unseat him — said that they would not advance Mr. Blanche’s nomination unless the Justice Department agreed to narrow an immunity settlement that Mr. Trump reached with the I.R.S. to protect himself and his family. The red line that Mr. Cornyn has drawn is fairly thin. He and Mr. Tillis are not seeking to kill the deal that Mr. Blanche negotiated with Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers, which gave the president, his family and his businesses broad immunity, potentially saving them at least $100 million in penalties and drawing accusations from Democrats of self-dealing. They are merely demanding modifications — in writing. Still, his willingness to dig in his heels against a demand by Mr. Trump at a moment when the president’s popularity is sagging and senators are increasingly frustrated with him is notable. Though Mr. Tillis has been more openly critical of Mr. Trump for months, Mr. Cornyn, a onetime contender for Senate majority leader, had long been a reliable Republican vote who rarely said a critical word about the president.

With future of U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade in limbo, Texas businesses navigate choppy waters

It's hard to overstate just how much Texas has riding on a successful renegotiation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. Mexico and Canada are Texas' No. 1 and No. 2 trading partners, respectively, just as they are for the U.S. as a whole. And that doesn't take into account direct investment in Texas by Mexican and Canadian companies. All that trade and investment means that thousands of Texas jobs depend on the smooth flow of goods and services between the U.S. and its southern and northern neighbors. So, too, does the competitiveness of North America in the world economy as a whole. Since July 1, when the Trump administration announced it would not renew the USMCA and instead put the agreement under annual review, the U.S. has held bilateral trade talks with Mexico but not with Canada.

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In the meantime, ratcheting up the pressure, President Donald Trump has announced a new 10% tariff on a fraction of Mexican imports and 50% tariffs on a range of Canadian imports, including cars and trucks. "The problem is not for Washington or Mexico City or Ottawa," said Tony Payan, director of the Claudio X. Gonzalez Center for the U.S. and Mexico at Rice University's Baker Institute. "The problem is for businesses, because a lot of these companies — manufacturers, energy companies — they’ve got long-term plans. They have to plan ahead 5, 10 years. And now they have to learn to live with the uncertainty of investments that may not be covered by the agreement whenever that is ratified, if it all." In 2024, two-way trade between Texas and Mexico came to $281.2 billion, while trade between Texas and Canada came to $69.2 billion. Taken together, that's equivalent to 12% of the state's economy. Texas' main exports to Mexico and Canada are oil and natural gas products – but its manufacturing, particularly of vehicles, depends heavily on parts imported from both countries. Texas' and Mexico's economies have been historically integrated, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't suffer if the USMCA dies. That's even more the case with Texas' ties with Canada. Air Tractor, Inc. is a prime example of a company that has thrived thanks to USMCA. Based in the small North Texas city of Olney, the company makes aircraft for farming and aerial firefighting. It sells to customers throughout the U.S. and in more than 50 countries across the world.

Appeals court rejects the Trump administration’s expansion of mandatory detention for immigrants

The Trump administration cannot deny immigrants detained inside the United States a chance for release on bond, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. The 2-1 decision by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, with a judge appointed by President Donald Trump in the majority, deepened a split between federal appeals courts over the administration’s mandatory detention policy. Four other appeals courts have also rejected it, while the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans and Eighth Circuit in St. Louis have sided with the Trump administration. The expanding circuit split increases the likelihood that the U.S. Supreme Court will eventually take up the issue. The administration last month asked the high court to consider it.

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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a statement it “strongly disagrees with the Ninth Circuit panel and is confident in its legal position regarding mandatory detention.” “President Donald Trump and Secretary Mullin are now enforcing the law as it was actually written to keep America safe,” the statement said. Under previous administrations, most noncitizens without a criminal record who were arrested inside the U.S. were allowed to seek a bond hearing while their immigration cases were pending. Mandatory detention was generally reserved for people arrested at the border. Last July, immigration officials issued guidance expanding mandatory detention to immigrants in the U.S. interior. The move — part of the administration’s mass deportation campaign — prompted a deluge of federal lawsuits by immigrants seeking release from custody. Some federal judges who ordered bond hearings blasted the administration for repeatedly violating their orders.

State Stories

Paxton’s MAGA Inc. bailout & Thune’s crypto stall

While every Republican is still waiting to see how Donald Trump will deploy MAGA Inc.’s nearly $400 million cash hoard in the midterms, three sources told me that the super PAC plans to put at least some of that dough to work in support of Ken Paxton in Texas. MAGA Inc. will be “meaningfully involved” in the Texas Senate race, one of the sources told me. That commitment—the first real insight into how the MAGA Inc. money will be spent—would bring considerable relief to the party’s Senate campaign committees: Trump’s decision to endorse Paxton over Sen. John Cornyn in the primary could cost the party hundreds of millions of dollars to ensure that the scandal-plagued Texas attorney general can defeat well-financed Democrat James Talarico. A cash infusion from MAGA Inc. seems like the least Trump could do.

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune has threatened to bring the Clarity Act, the crypto market regulatory bill, to the floor and force Democrats to vote on it. But after months of negotiations—especially over an ethics provision intended to curb the president and his family’s crypto dealings—Thune still lacks 50 Republican votes, disincentivizing him from putting it on the floor. Sens. Josh Hawley and John Cornyn, who are hearing complaints from local banks, remain undecided. Meanwhile, Sen. Thom Tillis is working with Democrats to shore up the White House ethics provisions. Sen. Mitch McConnell is out of the office. And I’m told there are several other Republicans who aren’t on board yet, either. Thune and other Republicans want a vote before the August recess to pressure Democrats. Hundreds of millions of dollars from pro-crypto super PACs are waiting to be deployed, but most groups have held back their spending while talks continue. Thune is calculating that money will start flowing into races to defeat Democrats if they vote against the bill. The problem, of course, is that he can’t even hold a procedural vote until his own members are prepared to support it.

Big new power lines could prevent blackouts in Texas, but landowner opposition is fierce

Opponents of new ultra-high-voltage transmission lines voiced their concerns into the wee hours of the morning at a 15-hour-long state capitol hearing on Wednesday and Thursday. Speakers shared their fear over the project’s local impacts, their anger over the proliferation of data centers and their distrust of renewable energy. State regulators and grid managers say that new electric transmission is necessary to maintain Texas grid reliability. But the long night of protest laid bare the challenges ahead for major additions to the energy system. Here are some key takeaways.

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The 765 kilovolt transmission lines would be constructed in phases to move more electricity, more efficiently, around fast-growing Texas. The first phase of that larger transmission network, the routing of which is already underway, is called the Permian Basin Reliability Plan. That would create three 765 kilovolt ultra-high-voltage transmission lines running from the central part of the state to West Texas to answer energy shortages due largely to high demand from the oil and gas industry. The lines are bigger and taller than any currently in Texas, reaching a height of 160 feet and occupying a right of way 200 feet wide. At the hearing, state electric utility regulators said they approved the plan for ultra-high-voltage lines because building a few big lines leaves a smaller footprint than building several lower voltage lines to carry the same amount of electricity. “765 is fewer lines,” Thomas Gleason, Executive Director of the Public Utility Commission of Texas told lawmakers. “While each line requires more right of way, in totality, it's actually less right of way.”

Texas officials tell counties to reinstate some voters flagged by a federal program as potential noncitizens

Election officials across the state should immediately reinstate some voters who were incorrectly flagged as potential noncitizens through a federal program, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office told county officials Wednesday. Christina Adkins, the state elections director, told county officials the state had reviewed Texas Department of Public Safety records confirming the citizenship of some of the 2,724 registered voters who were flagged as potential noncitizens, according to an audio recording of her comments obtained by Votebeat and The Texas Tribune, as well as election officials who heard them. The voters were flagged after the state checked its voter roll through a federal program called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, used to verify the citizenship of people registered to vote.

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Adkins said the state is still working through the data and that she couldn’t yet say how many of the 2,724 people had provided proof of citizenship to DPS and should thus be reinstated if they were already removed from the voter roll. She characterized SAVE as having “some inaccurate information” but added that “most of the data that we got out of SAVE was consistent with what DPS had.” According to election officials, the secretary of state’s office said it plans in the coming days to send voter registrars additional information from DPS showing some of the flagged registered voters had in fact provided proof of citizenship to DPS while registering to vote or obtaining a driver’s license or state ID. There isn’t yet an exact number of how many U.S. citizens’ registrations were actually canceled or how many were canceled in total by counties after being flagged by SAVE, said Kristin Miles, the Bastrop County elections administrator and president of the Texas Association of County Election Officials. “Counties are following appropriate list maintenance procedures under Texas law, and will ensure eligible voters whose registrations were cancelled are reinstated, and that only U.S. citizens remain on the voter rolls,” Miles said in an emailed statement.

'We'll keep pushing forward': Consumers and businesses brace for expanded Texas THC ban taking effect July 31

New restrictions on several synthetic THC products will take effect across Texas starting Friday, forcing retailers to pull many popular items from their shelves while customers scramble to make final purchases. The change comes after a Texas Supreme Court decision in May that ended a 2021 injunction preventing the Texas Department of State Health Services from enforcing its classification of various hemp-derived THC compounds as Schedule I controlled substances. "Now they rescheduled everything to a Schedule 1 so even if you possess it now it's going to be a crime,” said Jackie Walji, owner of Mellow Monkey in San Antonio. For smoke shops like Mellow Monkey, the impact will be immediate. Customers have been stopping by before Friday to purchase various products before they're banned.

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"Most of what we have is going to be gone," said owner Jackie Walji. Walji said the list of prohibited products has expanded over time. "Originally, they said just take off the smokable THCA flower and concentrate. And then how they're saying THCP, Delta-8," Walji said. Delta-10 products are also among those affected by the new enforcement. Not every THC product is disappearing. Hemp-derived Delta-9 products containing no more than 0.3% THC remain legal under state and federal law, prompting retailers to stock up on those items ahead of the deadline. Walji says Mellow Monkey's broader inventory of smoking accessories will help soften the financial blow. "Since we're more of a smoke shop too we have pipes, papers, other things that people can get, so if this was my whole business, a good 95% of this is gone," Walji said.

Crypto kiosks linked to $56.8M in losses for Texans, lawmakers examine scams

Texas reported more cryptocurrency kiosk-related losses than any other state in 2025, with Texans losing roughly $56.8 million, according to FBI data. On Thursday, Texas lawmakers met to discuss the effects of financial influences and illicit networks by foreign adversaries, with a focus on cryptocurrency kiosks. Cryptocurrency kiosks are ATM-like electronic devices that allow individuals to exchange cash and cryptocurrency, a digital form of currency. The kiosks have increasingly been used in scams in which criminals persuade victims to withdraw money from their bank accounts and deposit cash into a cryptocurrency kiosk. Across the U.S., the FBI received 10,956 cryptocurrency kiosk complaints in 2024, with reported losses of $246.7 million. In 2025, complaints increased to 13,460 and reported losses rose to nearly $389 million. In the span of one year, there was a 23% increase in complaints and a 58% increase in losses.

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Texas accounted for 1,179 of those complaints in 2025, with reported losses totaling $56.8 million. The state’s losses were the highest reported by any state. The Texas Tribune estimates there are 4,000 kiosks across the state in gas stations and convenience stores. On Thursday, the Texas House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security, Public Safety & Veterans’ Affairs met and heard invited testimony to discuss financial influences from foreign countries and their effect on Texans. Lawmakers quickly pointed to cryptocurrency-related activity. “In my career, I’ve never seen a more efficient, cleaner way to steal money,” said State Representative AJ Louderback, R- Victoria. Kelley Currie, a founding partner of a geopolitical advisory firm, Kilo Alpha Strategies, and a fellow of the Think Tank Atlantic Council, emphasized the magnitude of financial crimes across the globe. “Scamming is now treated by INTERPOL as an industry, a criminal industry in its own right, comparable to drug trafficking and human trafficking in terms of the size of organized crime revenue it generates,” Currie testified.

San Antonio Mayor Jones warns of deeper cuts ahead as she defends her budget proposals

With San Antonio staring down a $158 million budget deficit, Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones devoted much of a town hall Wednesday night to preparing residents for difficult financial decisions ahead — including defending her proposal to ask voters to end the city’s Ready to Work workforce development program early instead of raising property taxes. Speaking to dozens of District 1 residents at Edison High School, Jones argued the city should exhaust every available option before asking taxpayers to pay more, describing a financial outlook she said has worsened in recent weeks. “We’ve got a $158 million budget gap,” Jones said. “For context, if you closed every library, if you closed all of Animal Care Services, if you took all of the money in the general fund out regarding public health, you’d still have to go find another $20 million.”

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Jones said after meeting with City Manager Erik Walsh earlier Wednesday, the proposed budget scheduled for release Aug. 13 is expected to include even deeper cuts than council members had previously anticipated, though she declined to identify which programs could face additional reductions before the proposal is unveiled. She added that the city’s next bond program — which funds major capital projects like streets, sidewalks, drainage improvements and parks — is now expected to be significantly smaller than originally projected because property values have not grown as anticipated. “This is how we get after those projects, drainage, in infrastructure projects, parks, etc. In the 2022 bond, we had a $1.2 billion dollar capacity,” she said. “This year, we were expecting ideally something similar, but based on where property values are, we were initially at $600 million. We will now be south of $600 million.” Jones said the combination of a shrinking bond program and widening budget deficit has forced city leaders to reconsider ideas that may have previously been politically untouchable.

Bucking Texas decline in vaccination, El Paso public schools record high immunization rates

Last school year, El Paso County kindergarteners had the highest vaccination rates among those in the 10 most populated Texas counties, according to an annual report by the state health department. As the United States faces the worst measles outbreak in more than a quarter century, vaccine exemption rates ticked up for Texas kindergarteners and their immunization coverage fell below 95% in all six school-required vaccines. Measles, a once-eliminated disease, has made a resurgence in recent years because of falling immunization rates. More than 95% of a community needs to be fully vaccinated against measles to achieve herd immunity.

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El Paso bucked the state trend with both kindergarten and seventh-grade vaccination rates above 97% for all childhood vaccines. In comparison, Dallas reported kindergarten vaccination rates barely above 90% for measles and polio, and just above 89% for pertussis, also known as whooping cough. Immunization coverage improved for Dallas seventh graders, though measles vaccination remained below the herd immunity threshold. “I believe culture plays an important role in our community’s positive attitude toward vaccination, and that is reflected in the higher vaccination rates we see across the Borderland,” said Dr. Hector Ocaranza, El Paso city-county health authority. Ocaranza said the trust El Pasoans have in healthcare providers combined with strong partnerships with public health organizations helped maintain confidence in childhood immunizations.

South Texas Builders Association calls for protection from targeted ICE raids

A few minutes after 10 a.m. on Tuesday, the crowd inside the Brookhaven Event Center was told to take their seats as the third community meeting of the South Texas Builders Association was set to commence. The crowd slowly filled into the seats on the left and right side of the stage, but a few dozen seats designated for local elected officials remained largely unoccupied. Following a performance by Mariachi Xochipilli and some local folklorico dancers, South Texas Builders Association CEO Mario Guerrero took to the stage and welcomed those in attendance to the meeting titled “Rally the Valley.”

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He invited any local elected officials in attendance to sit in the middle section, joining U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, state Rep. Christina Morales, D-Houston, and Texas District 41 Democratic and Republican candidates Julio Salinas and Gary Groves. “Where are our elected officials?” Guerrero asked. “We need to start making better choices as a community. We need to start really opening our eyes and seeing who really cares for us.” He applauded Groves for being in attendance, explaining that he did not expect any Republicans to attend the meeting. At one point both Groves and Salinas, who sat next to each other, shook hands and were met with applause from those in the crowd. “We are not Democratic and we are not Republicans here,” Guerrero continued. “We are builders. Once again, this is not a gathering of politics.” He explained that the purpose of the meeting was to focus on the needs and safety of the men and women who work in construction.

Denton City Council Member and former legislative staffer Jordan Villarreal resigning to focus on 'personal health'

Two months after he was elected, Denton City Council Member Jordan Villarreal announced Thursday that he will resign as the District 1 representative in an email to the mayor and city officials. In the July 30 email, Villarreal said he is planning to step down Sept. 1 and was providing notice so that the city could hold a special election that coincides with the general election in November. “At this time, I must step away from my duties to focus on my personal health,” Villarreal said in the email. “After careful consideration, I believe it is in the best interest of both my well-being and the continued effective representation of my constituents that I transition out of this role in an orderly manner.”

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Kayla Herrod, the city’s interim director of marketing and communications, confirmed that the city had received Villarreal’s official resignation. Herrod said that the next step is for the council to hold a special-called meeting to fill Villarreal’s vacancy. Whenever a vacancy on the council occurs, the vacant seat is filled by a special election, held on the first authorized uniform election date following the vacancy, according to the city’s code of ordinances. “Those dates have not yet been confirmed,” Herrod said in an email on Thursday afternoon. Mayor Chris Watts has asked staff to schedule the special-called meeting for Aug. 5 to vote on acceptance of Villarreal’s resignation and to call the election in November to fill his seat. “I enjoyed serving with council member Villarreal albeit for a short time,” Watts said in a statement Thursday. “I support Jordan for doing what he feels is best for his well being. I know from personal experience how difficult that can be. I wish him good health moving forward.”

Tarrant commissioners could slash polling location quantity for Nov. election

Tarrant County commissioners will decide on Tuesday whether to cut back on voting locations for the Nov. 3 general election. The Election Day locations could be cut nearly in half from 316 sites in the last midterm election to 176 this year. Early voting sites might go down from 50 in 2022 to 42 in 2026. In last November’s constitutional amendment election, the county downsized the number of polling locations, citing cost reductions and low turnout in odd year elections. The commissioners will consider the polling location quantity at their 10 a.m. meeting Tuesday in the county administration building, at 100 E. Weatherford St.

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Brody Mulligan, who works on Tarrant County-area Democratic campaigns, raised concerns Thursday about the reduced number of voting sites. He said two of his clients — Kevin Burge, who is running in the 24th Congressional District, and Nathan Smith, a candidate for Tarrant County district clerk — would join Tarrant County Young Democrats in suing the county’s election department and commissioners if locations aren’t added. They are concerned about a lack of sites for Tarrant County College’s Northeast campus, UT-Arlington and areas with a high concentration of people, particularly in the southeast and southwest parts of the county, Mulligan said. He expects the midterm election to be of high interest and hopes to avoid litigation by reaching a “reasonable agreement” to restore sites, particularly on Election Day. “Our main concerns here is to alleviate confusion, to alleviate disenfranchisement,” Mulligan said. Tarrant County Elections Administrator Clint Ludwig did not immediately return a request for comment Thursday evening.

Hegseth’s ‘gold standard’ college exam tests middle-school math

The college entrance exam that Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth hailed as the nation's new "gold standard," promising to open doors at some of America's most elite institutions, is instead seeing its heaviest use as a remedial high-school graduation test. A USA TODAY investigation found that in Florida, the first state to broadly embrace the exam, the Classic Learning Test has become less a college admissions test than a graduation alternative for struggling students. School officials credit it with boosting graduation rates, while critics say it allows students to earn diplomas without demonstrating the skills – especially the math skills – Florida otherwise requires. Since 2023, high school students who couldn't pass the state's reading and Algebra graduation exams — or earn qualifying SAT or ACT scores — have instead used the newer CLT to receive a diploma. An analysis comparing the CLT, ACT and SAT math sections found the Classic Learning Test has a higher concentration of questions the researchers described as pre-algebra, or middle-school-level math.

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If a student struggled with algebra or concepts beyond it, “I can conceive that they would have more success on the CLT because there's a higher proportion of items that come in everything before algebra," said Anna DeJarnette, a University of Cincinnati professor. She was one of five mathematics education experts who conducted the review. Yet two years after Florida started its experiment with the CLT, the nation's elite military academies and several state university systems have added it to their accepted college entrance exams. USA TODAY scoured school board minutes and found officials in at least nine Florida districts attributed a rise in graduation rates to the introduction of the CLT in 2023. At a May 2025 school board meeting, Christopher Bernier, superintendent of Duval County Public Schools in Jacksonville, told the board the CLT helped boost the district’s graduation rate by seven percentage points after its introduction in 2023. “We’re hopeful that CLT will remain,” he told the board, “because it has been a game changer for some of our kids, who can't seem to manufacture the ACT or SAT score.”

Texas approves AI data center co-location next to wind farm, with curtailment caveats

The Public Utility Commission of Texas last week approved a net metering arrangement for a 260-MW AI data center co-located with a wind farm of approximately the same capacity in a case that could serve as a template for other co-located loads in the Lone Star State. The data center is the second one planned for the site, and the developer had argued it should not be subject to the same curtailment requirements as the first because the total load of both – about 525 MW – exceeds the generation resource’s capacity of 265.5 MW. The commission rejected that argument. According to the July 23 order, the data center must be capable of curtailing its full load within 30 minutes during grid emergencies, with physical breaker disconnection if necessary. It is also barred from participating in paid demand response programs tied to the arrangement.

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The proceeding represents one of the first major tests of Texas’ SB 6, which became law last year and established new rules for large loads in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas’ territory, including giving the grid operator the authority to disconnect data centers during grid emergencies. Rather than creating a project-specific exception, commissioners largely adopted ERCOT’s proposed reliability conditions. The order allows the co-location arrangement to move forward while establishing operating requirements for future behind-the-meter projects. Chris Talley, co-founder of GridTracker, wrote in a LinkedIn post following the decision that the order is not a “death blow” to co-location in ERCOT. “It just means that this architecture now essentially requires full backup capacity,” he said. In a follow-up message to Utility Dive, Talley clarified that by “full backup,” he meant resources capable of carrying the load off-grid for a meaningful period of time, rather than simply riding through a short interruption. He cautioned that this was an “untested assumption” and pointed to a pending co-location application from Amazon and Vistra to build a data center campus next to the Comanche Peak nuclear plant, southwest of Fort Worth, as a case to watch.

County Stories

Leaders of new Fort Bend LULAC chapter say fatal ICE shooting in Houston accelerated its launch

Organizers with Fort Bend County's new chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, said the fatal ICE shooting of a Mexican immigrant in neighboring Harris County accelerated plans to establish the chapter, which is launching with a focus on advocacy and educational scholarships for Hispanic students. "We’re having to take action, be active, because this event has forced us to be active," LULAC Communications Director Chris Fernandez said. "And yes, it’s bittersweet. I feel that it’s something that’s big enough that it affects everyone." Fernandez said the new chapter of the nationwide Latino civil rights organization, Greater Fort Bend Area LULAC Council 22571, is organizing a public vigil for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in August.

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The 52-year-old father of three was shot and killed by an officer with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on July 7 in Houston. He had been living in the United States for decades without legal immigration status, according to his family. The ICE agents involved were not wearing body cameras, and the passengers in Salgado Araujo’s van at the time he was shot have disputed the federal agency’s claims that he tried to run over the officers. JoAnne Gonzales, the president of the new LULAC chapter, made statements on behalf of the chapter and its demands from ICE early in Wednesday’s meeting. "These demands center on use-of-force incidents," Gonzales said, "all the lethal shootings that have occurred and demands for evidence transparency, full transparency and a halt to further funding [ICE] until systemic reforms and constitutional compliances are met." While founding members, including elected officials and candidates from both political parties, attended the inaugural meeting at a Sugar Land Mexican restaurant on Wednesday, much of the discussion centered on expanding college opportunities and scholarships for the county's growing Hispanic student population.

City Stories

Former 'Teen Mom' star Farrah Abraham files for Austin City Council

Former reality television star Farrah Abraham has filed to run for Austin City Council. Known for her time on MTV's "16 and Pregnant" and "Teen Mom," Abraham filed Monday to run for the District 5 seat in the November election. Current council member Ryan Alter is running for reelection, and union electrician Elizabeth Brink has also filed paperwork to run for the seat. "Raising our voices for South Austin local businesses, safety, and community advocacy," Abraham posted to Facebook on Tuesday, adding, "Ready to represent South Austin residents, champion local shops, and advocate for every neighborhood."

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Abraham got her start in 2009 on MTV's "16 and Pregnant," where she documented her journey and birth of her daughter. That same year, she continued her reality television career as an original cast member on "Teen Mom," a spin-off of "16 and Pregnant." She eventually left "Teen Mom" in 2018 during the show's seventh season after an apparent conflict with the show's executive producer. In 2019, she started Enigma Productions in Los Angeles, California. Her daughter is now a teenager.

National Stories

Trump says he may pull Blanche AG nomination until Sens. Cornyn, Tillis leave office

President Trump says he is willing to pull Todd Blanche's nomination for attorney general. The news comes as two key Republicans are withholding their support over concerns about the Justice Department's deal with President Trump to end his IRS lawsuit. Trump said Thursday he was willing to end the nomination, but he was by no means conciliatory in his tone, saying he would keep Blanche on as acting attorney general and renominate him later. In addition, Trump took aim at the two Republican senators withholding their support — John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, both of whose support Blanche would need to advance in his nomination in committee. "I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd's name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office," Trump wrote in a social media post.

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Both Cornyn and Tillis are leaving Congress in January. Tillis announced his retirement last year, after publicly clashing with Trump over his massive tax-and-spending bill. Cornyn lost his primary this year to a Trump-backed challenger. In his post, Trump bragged that both senators' "political careers have been ended by my action." Blanche, Trump's former personal lawyer, has been a contentious pick to lead the Justice Department amid questions about his handling of the Epstein files, the targeting of Trump's political foes and the broader politicization of justice. Tillis and Cornyn this week voiced their opposition to Blanche over an agreement the Justice Department struck to end President Trump's IRS lawsuit over his leaked tax returns. The settlement included the creation of a nearly $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund, which Cornyn and Tillis have vocally opposed for weeks. That fund would compensate people who alleged they were unfairly targeted by the government, meaning money could have gone to defendants charged with wrongdoing in the Jan. 6 riots.

U.S. says Hamas has agreed to broad plan to disarm

Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups agreed to a plan that, if followed, would see the groups disarm and lose power in the Gaza Strip as long as Israel withdraws from the enclave, U.S. officials said. The officials, speaking to reporters Thursday evening, said the agreement is the start of an indefinite, multiphase process to end Hamas’s rule in Gaza and rebuild the enclave. The officials acknowledged many challenges ahead, such as verifying the Palestinian groups’ compliance and ensuring that a skeptical Israeli government doesn’t scuttle any progress. The announcement is the culmination of months of diplomacy between the U.S., Israel, Hamas and Middle East mediators, as well as the Board of Peace created by President Trump to oversee Gaza’s transition. But it is only the first step in a pathway laden with political and military traps.

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“What the agreement says matters. What happens next matters even more. Implementation and verification have to be real,” Nickolay Mladenov, the board’s chairman, said in a social-media statement praising the agreement. Trump was far more optimistic in his own social-media post minutes before the briefing. “Today, the Board of Peace reached a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza. This is a monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY,” the president wrote. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’s negotiating team, said the group agreed to place its weapons in a storage facility overseen by the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, a Palestinian-run technocratic group charged with the enclave’s political and security transition. “We didn’t say disarmament, we didn’t say handing over the weapons, and we didn’t agree on any Israeli involvement,” Hamad said, adding that the plan is contingent on Israel ending military operations in Gaza and allowing humanitarian aid in.

Airports, nursing homes and schools brace for disruption without Haitian workers

The Department of Homeland Security alerted employers this week that it had officially ended humanitarian protections for 350,000 Haitian immigrants, triggering mass layoffs that threaten to disrupt summer travel and destabilize an array of essential institutions and industries up and down the East Coast and across the Midwest. Nursing homes terminated hundreds of workers, including nursing assistants, dietary aides and housekeepers, industry and union leaders said. At airports including those in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Boston, contractors terminated scores of Haitian workers, including janitors, cabin cleaners and wheelchair attendants, according to union leaders at Service Employees International Union 32BJ. At Florida schools, landscapers, bus drivers and other staff were fired. And in New York City, dozens of security guards were terminated only to be rehired because of confusion around their eligibility to continue working, union officials said.

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The tumult comes about a month after the U.S. Supreme Court granted the Trump administration permission to cancel the humanitarian program, known as temporary protected status (TPS), potentially stripping permission to live and work in the United States from as many as 1.3 million immigrants from Haiti, Syria and a dozen other countries. The high court said the program for Haitians, one of the largest groups affected, could end on Monday. But attorneys for Haitian TPS holders said the protections should remain in effect until a lower court that had blocked the Trump administration from ending the program formally recognizes the Supreme Court decision. In response to a question about the status of TPS for Haitians, a DHS spokesperson said in a statement that “activist lower court judges are openly defying the Supreme Court on this, but the end result will be the same. Haitians with TPS cannot and will not be able to stay.” Earlier this week, DHS informed employers that it considered the “Haiti TPS designation … terminated, effective” immediately, and businesses have been laying workers off ever since.

Anthropic said its AI models hacked into other companies’ systems during testing

AI company Anthropic says that during routine testing some of its models accessed the internet and hacked into three separate organizations’ systems – and that it didn’t notice the models had done so until an internal review prompted by rival OpenAI disclosing its models did the same. Anthropic said in an announcement on Thursday that it started a review of its own systems after OpenAI disclosed last week that during a cybersecurity test some of its models escaped their testing environment, accessed the open internet and hacked into AI platform Hugging Face’s systems. Anthropic said it found three instances where its AI models accessed the open internet when they were not supposed to and “gained unauthorized access to the production infrastructure of three different organizations.”

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The company said it discovered the incidents while reviewing more than 140,000 evaluations following OpenAI’s disclosure. Like during OpenAI’s tests, normal safety guardrails were removed during Anthropic’s evaluations to assess their models’ full capabilities. Anthropic explained that in the three instances its models were given a fake “capture the flag” challenge, told that the “flag” was hidden on a different machine on the network and that its objective was to break in and retrieve it. Unlike OpenAI’s situation, Anthropic said none of its models deliberately attempted to escape their testing environments. Instead what happened was that the models were not supposed to have access to the open internet but that they were able to due to a misunderstanding between Anthropic and its evaluation partner, the company said in its statement. To break into the three unnamed organizations, the models used basic techniques like “exploiting weak passwords” and finding system points that do not require log ins or tokens, Anthropic said. The most advanced version of its models did at some point recognize it was on the open internet, and stopped itself from continuing, the company said.

U.S. weighs $100,000 fee for foreign students wanting to work after graduation

The Trump administration is considering attaching a $100,000 price tag on international students’ ability to work in the U.S. after they graduate from an American university, according to people familiar with the matter, a move that would make it much less attractive for foreigners to study in the U.S. If enacted, the fee would significantly advance President Trump’s efforts to restrict nearly all forms of legal immigration. It would particularly harm universities, which rely on recruiting international students as a reliable source of revenue, as well as top Silicon Valley and Wall Street firms, which disproportionately hire international college graduates to fill technical roles. The fee would be attached to a program called optional practical training, or OPT, which allows international university graduates to work for one to three years on their student visas.

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There were roughly 419,000 foreigners working on OPT in 2024, the latest year that data are available. The move, in essence, accomplishes the goal originally set out by the administration’s $100,000 levy on H-1B visas for foreign professionals, which caused a panic in Silicon Valley last year. The government was blocked from collecting the H-1B fee by an appeals court in Boston last week. Though officials originally intended that fee to apply to all H-1B visas, widespread opposition from tech giants led the administration to narrow it to foreign recruits seeking to come to America. Broadly speaking, foreigners moving to the U.S. directly on H-1B visas tend to be recruited by IT and accounting firms, while the top companies in tech and finance generally prefer to recruit from top American universities and convert their employees from student visas to H-1Bs several years into employing them. In that way, the new fee on OPT would more directly target these firms. A DHS spokeswoman said in a statement: “No policies should be considered final until formally announced. At DHS we are always having conversations about how to use all tools in our arsenal to protect the integrity of our legal immigration system.”

Critics say historic sites are endangered by Trump-aligned panel’s plan

For decades, from the highway boom of the 1960s to the recent surge in construction of data centers, federal law has sought to protect America’s historic sites from destruction or disturbance as the push for industrial development complicated efforts to preserve the country’s past. At issue over the years have been burial sites dating back millenniums; earthen structures that have survived a thousand years in the desert; government buildings that evoke the early days of American democracy; and plantation houses that carry the painful history of slavery. Now, a Trump-aligned panel is proposing to overhaul the regulations in ways that would speed up the review of industrial projects by limiting the input of preservationists and the public.

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The proposed rules received initial approval from the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, a federal agency, this month. If adopted, they would, according to proponents, boost the economy by, say, helping to ease the way for commercial projects such as oil and gas drilling. The changes would also, as preservationists note, aid President Trump’s efforts to redesign Washington, including his plans for the National Garden of American Heroes, by limiting public review. A draft of the rule changes that circulated in recent weeks prompted an outcry from preservationists, architects, archaeologists and organizations representing Native American tribes. Though officials have said the draft is still subject to feedback and revisions, lawyers for preservation groups are already preparing for legal action in the event of a major overhaul. “It’s both a scalpel and a bludgeon,” said Greg Werkheiser, a lawyer who specializes in preservation cases. “It cuts out whole swaths of what we are used to in terms of historical preservation over the past 60 years.”

The MAGA media machine is fracturing

Benny Johnson, a right-wing podcaster, was racking up tens of millions of views on YouTube during Donald J. Trump’s 2024 re-election campaign, posting about divisive cultural issues and criticizing Democrats. Things have changed. Views for Mr. Johnson’s YouTube channel are down by millions from the heights of 2024. The surge of attention he received on X has slowed to a trickle. His loyalty to Mr. Trump has become unappealing to some Republicans who are frustrated with the rising cost of living and the president’s decision to start a war with Iran. Other high-profile right-wing influencers are contending with similar shifts of fortune. Dan Bongino, a podcaster and a former deputy director of the F.B.I., has seen his livestream views shrink by about half from their peak in 2024.

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Megyn Kelly, a former Fox News host, has found moments of explosive growth, yet that attention has been hard to sustain. The shifts add to a growing body of evidence that suggests the audience for pro-Trump content has fallen from its heights and, for some creators, has reached new lows. Views are dropping for many of Mr. Trump’s greatest allies, while some figures on the right who have taken to criticizing Mr. Trump are showing uneven gains. The shifts threaten to complicate messaging this year for Republican candidates, who have for years relied on a united front of content creators to rile up Republicans and guide them to the polls each election cycle. “The vote is in November, but the heart of the midterms is happening now,” said Ryan Broderick, the founder of Garbage Day, a newsletter about online culture and influence. “A lot of the propaganda that they’re pushing out just isn’t really connecting the way it would have even three or four years ago,” he added.

Ohio Haitians lose jobs, face terror — and impossible choices

With Ohio’s Haitian refugees losing their protected status Monday, Springfield’s large population has begun being terminated from their jobs, a pastor who works with the community said on Tuesday. Without legal status, their work permits become invalid. They also face being forced to return to a nation that the International Rescue Committee says is “in the grip of an overwhelming humanitarian crisis.” Right now, gangs control Haiti. Kidnapping, murder, and rape are rampant. And the pastor, Carl Ruby, said one Springfield 12-year-old faces having to return to a place where he saw animals feeding on murdered corpses when he was just five.

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“They’re just terrified for their physical safety,” Ruby said during a virtual press conference. “Many of them have already been traumatized… Some of them have been in prison. Some of them have been tortured. Some have been beaten. Some had been raped. Nearly all of them have seen friends or family members killed.” And some of those families — those who have had children since coming to the United States — face an excruciating choice: whether to take their children with them into the violent chaos that is Haiti or leave them behind in a relatively peaceful, prosperous place where their children’s citizenship gives them the right to stay. More than 330,000 Haitians have received temporary-protected status since an earthquake devastated the impoverished Caribbean country in 2010. Once in the United States, their status has been renewed as conditions in Haiti continued to deteriorate. Early last year, Ohio’s then-Attorney General Dave Yost and 27 other Republican state AGs wrote a letter to the Trump administration stressing the word “temporary” in temporary protected status.

Copyright July 31, 2026, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved