September 10, 2026: All Newsclips

Lead Stories

RNC Midterm Convention: Trump promises Americans $5,000 each if Republicans win midterms, promises a Texas return for Paxton campaign

President Trump used his keynote speech at the first night of the Republican midterm convention to make an unusual promise: If his party keeps control of Congress after November, he will give every American adult a $5,000 “dividend.” The president offered few details on how he would pay for these dividends or how they would work. Trump’s speech, which lasted about an hour and 45 minutes, capped a day in which Republican speakers sung his praises and touted his policy achievements, even as his approval ratings have steadily declined since the start of his second term. Trump is also set to return Thursday to deliver closing remarks. Republicans are hoping the convention will energize voters ahead of the November election, and speakers painted Democrats as too extreme for Americans. In one of the most surprising moments of the convention so far, Democratic Sen. John Fetterman appeared in a video message to praise a bipartisan effort to support the steel industry.

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President Trump concluded nearly two hours of remarks by promising to return for the second night of the GOP convention but to keep his subsequent speech short. He also pledged to return to Texas to campaign for Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general who is running for U.S. Senate. "We have to elect Ken Paxton," Trump said. "We have to." Trump received resounding cheers as he spoke of Paxton. Delegates from Texas, sitting just below the VIP luxury box, jumped to their feet. They applauded, waving their white cowboy hats in the air. Trump also repeated remarks he recently made about people not liking the way Paxton dresses or speaks. The president said his analysts told him not to rehash the insults and that it wasn't included on the teleprompter, but he opted to repeat them anyway. He added that after he said the comments, “[Paxton] went through the roof.” "He may not dress right, he may not talk exactly perfectly, and he may not be the best looking guy I've ever seen, but you know what he is?" Trump said. "He's the greatest attorney general in America, and he deserves to be your next senator." Trump said the United States has "so many victories because of Ken," such as the border wall.

Iran hackers claim responsibility for North Texas internet outage that affected thousands, AT&T refutes claim

Iranian hackers claimed responsibility for the AT&T outage that left thousands of Texans without internet, TV, and phone services Monday, Sept. 7. The group APT IRAN wrote on its Telegram channel Tuesday that it attacked "telecommunications and other critical infrastructure in Texas" and also took credit for disrupting an unknown water utility in Texas. The claim was first reported by Threat Beat, a publication associated with the McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security at Auburn University. AT&T initially said the outage was due to fiber equipment and cable issues. In an updated statement, the company said there is no evidence to support the claim. “We have no evidence to support that claim. Our assessment indicates that attempted cable theft led to the outage. Internet service across Dallas and surrounding areas is operating normally, and we continue to monitor our network and review relevant information," the statement reads.

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The AT&T outage was reported Monday morning, with Downdetector showing a significant jump in customer issue reports at about 2:18 a.m., followed by a large increase in reports starting at about 10:30 a.m., WFAA previously reported. Reports of outages peaked shortly before 3 p.m. at 5,990, but quickly dropped, and the outage was mostly resolved by 6 p.m. Monday. "We were just dead in the water," said Terry Snuggs, who lives in Denton County and relies on the internet as a clinical systems engineer for hospitals and their diagnostic imaging equipment. "It's frustrating, especially when not only just the home fiber goes down, but when the cellular data, the backup method goes down with it, you know, everything was out. And that becomes untenable in this day and age." APT IRAN is closely linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-affiliated CyberAv3ngers, according to Threat Beat. It previously claimed that late July attacks on dozens of water systems were "only to warn" of the group's ability to hack critical U.S. infrastructure. The group claimed it attacked water systems in Minnesota, Michigan, Georgia, New Jersey, South Dakota and Arkansas. On Aug. 30, the hackers claimed they would target more critical infrastructure.

Texas Comptroller requests $2 billion to expand school voucher program

Texas Comptroller Don Huffines is asking state legislators to double the private school voucher program to $2 billion. More than 100,000 students are still on the wait list for vouchers, also known as Texas Education Freedom Accounts or TEFA, driving the need for expansion. In its inaugural year, the program received more than 270,000 applications, of which 248,000 were deemed eligible, well exceeding the program’s capacity. "This is the longest school choice waitlist in the country," Travis Pillow, a spokesperson for the program, said in a legislative hearing Wednesday morning. "The comptroller’s office hears constantly from Texas families who are eager to apply when the opportunity becomes available."

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Pillow said the program needs another $980 million to satisfy those on the waitlist and another $82 million for the newly eligible siblings of students already enrolled in the program. That's in additionto the $1 billion the legislature allocated last year. As many as 4,000 eligible students are expected to upgrade from home school vouchers valued at around $2,000 to private school vouchers worth roughly $10,000. As such, the program's leaders are also asking for additional funding to cover those students. They're also preparing for changes in how much funding special education students are entitled to, as well as any rise in statewide per-student funding from the state. Vouchers honor 85% of the funding allocated per student in the public education system. The comptroller’s office said it plans to announce the new application window for vouchers in the coming weeks. "The results so far speak for themselves," Pillow said. "TEFA is the largest and most successful year-one school choice program in U.S. history and already the second largest education savings account."

Trust in US government information has declined, new poll finds

Americans are more skeptical of government information than they were a few years ago, with majorities now saying they have little or no trust in federal government information about elections and politics, foreign affairs or the environment, a new poll finds. The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and USAFacts shows that while mistrust of government information has grown since 2024, it’s also higher than it was at the end of President Donald Trump’s first term, underscoring how his recent attempts to dismantle parts of the federal bureaucracy may have affected public confidence in the executive branch, particularly among Democrats.

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Those suspicions extend to the results of the coming midterm elections. Only 34% of U.S. adults trust government certifications of election results “a great deal” or “quite a bit,” which is down slightly from 40% in 2024. Certification is a typically routine process in which local and state officials confirm the vote count, but it’s become politicized since Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. Trust in government information has also become more partisan since Trump’s first term, the survey found. “It’s pretty hard to trust anything that’s being communicated,” said Shannon Ingram, 46, a Democrat who lives in Maryland, pointing to shifting health recommendations as an example of “questionable” government information she’s seen since Trump regained office. “There is a significant amount of bias, and it comes from the people who are authoring the content.” About 6 in 10 U.S. adults have low trust in information from the federal government about the environment, foreign affairs, elections and politics, abortion or immigration — saying they trust it “only a little” or “not at all.” Mistrust in what the federal government says has risen at least slightly on nearly every topic that was asked about in an AP-NORC/ USAFacts survey from 2019. That includes education — which has risen from 37% in 2019 to 53% now — with a 9-percentage point spike in the last year.

State Stories

Eric Beach: Why some Trump voters are leaning toward Talarico

(Eric Beach is CEO of Lineage HoldCo and co-founder of the Great America PAC.) When I sat down with candidate Donald Trump in 2015, I walked out of the room and told my wife, “This is the guy.” He did not care about the Republican Party as an institution. He cared about America and the forgotten man, and he had the size and force to make everyone else care too. I believed it enough to put in my own money — money I did not have to lose — and founded Great America PAC with Ed Rollins, Ronald Reagan’s 1984 campaign manager. We took that step when supporting Trump was still a career-ending decision in Republican politics. That is why I understand what is happening in Texas now. Republicans who have never considered voting for a Democrat are looking at James Talarico for Senate. They know which party he belongs to. They see him talking about concentrated power, wages, housing, health care and the cost of raising a family, while Republicans give them another loyalty test, another accusation of communism and another week arguing about foreign countries.

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But a family cannot pay its mortgage with a podcast clip. Talarico is running against Ken Paxton, who beat John Cornyn campaigning as a sledgehammer against Washington. But Paxton, like JD Vance, has an authenticity problem. Both ran as insurgents. Once power was within reach, both became harder to distinguish from the people they promised to challenge. The movement we played a part in has been overtaken by beneficiaries who arrived after the risk was gone. The original Trump coalition was unruly: Ron Paul voters, Tea Party organizers, working families and antiwar conservatives. Trump gave them a place because he saw people the Grand Old Party had stopped seeing. He united and mobilized those groups. The GOP’s technology, donor and influencer class inherited that audience and became an admissions committee. Their entitlement will be the death of the Republican Party.

Annie Farmer: 3M pages of Epstein files come to Dallas, with survivors who demand answers

(Annie Farmer, a Jeffrey Epstein abuse survivor and victim advocate, submitted the following op-ed in advance of the Republican National Convention happening in Dallas this week.) It was one year ago this week that I went to Washington, D.C., along with a group of Epstein survivors to demand that the federal government provide answers that were long overdue. We pushed Congress to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA) to force the Department of Justice to finally give us the information we were seeking. Against all odds, the EFTA passed and was signed into law — yet almost a year later, survivors are still being dismissed and ignored by our government. To this day, we still have questions about improper redactions, incomplete records, and the Department of Justice’s ongoing refusal to follow the law as written. We — survivors and the American people — deserved to be listened to and we deserve answers. Something needs to change. It has been 30 years since my sister, Maria Farmer, bravely made the phone call from her tiny New York apartment to the FBI to report Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and their powerful associates.

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It has been 20 years since FBI agents came to my door in Austin, after finally following up with my sister on her report, and asked me to recount the abuse I endured at the hands of Epstein and Maxwell when I was 16 years old at Zorro Ranch. They reassured me that Epstein would finally be properly investigated and prosecuted. Instead, he was given an unprecedented sweetheart deal that allowed him to continue abusing women during his sentence. That is why many of my survivor sisters are traveling again this week, this time to Dallas for the opening of The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room and Bookmobile tours. Texas was my home for nearly 20 years, where I got married and started my family. I earned my doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin, worked with veterans at the Houston VA, and started my psychology practice. Along the way, I worked with so many Texans of all ages who have faced their own issues of sexual abuse, assault, or coercion. I know how central these issues are to the safety of Texas communities and the challenges that many victims continue to face when they report these crimes. I also know how tired Texans are of the powerful protecting the powerful and ignoring the cost to those who are more vulnerable.

This North Texas firebrand got more air time than Ken Paxton at the convention. Who’s Brandon Gill?

Among the sea of high-profile speakers at the GOP midterm convention is a rising star in the Republican party from North Texas who played a prominent role Wednesday: Brandon Gill. The 32-year-old conservative firebrand who represents Flower Mound was given about twice as much time to speak than Ken Paxton, who is in one of the most hotly contested U.S. Senate races in the country. Gill’s speech, like many of his public statements, painted a picture of Democrats as extremists or out of touch. "I think we can all remember the good old days when political debates were about marginal tax rates and government spending," Gill said. "Now we're debating whether toddlers can become transgender, whether men can get pregnant and whether your daughter should have to share a locker room with grown men."

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He accused Democrats of allowing millions of undocumented immigrants into the country, though deportations remained high throughout the Obama and Biden administrations. He also falsely claimed Democrats want the Christian faith “dismantled.” He blamed Joe Biden for the economy and praised the policies of the Trump administration. "This November, Americans have a very clear choice,” he said. “It's the mainstream versus the extreme. Our country will not go back to Democrats' woke insanity." That rhetoric puts him squarely in line with President Trump — and Gill represents the future of the Make America Great Again movement, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston. "Brandon Gill has been, at a very young age, one of the many members who's been able to build his identity around this America First wing, rather than the older Texas Republican establishment," Rottinghaus said. "So he's effectively kind of at the vanguard of these next generation of Republican leaders."

Netflix orders new series based on Larry McMurtry’s ‘Lonesome Dove’

Netflix announced Tuesday, Sept. 8, a new series based on Larry McMurtry’s seminal Western novel “Lonesome Dove.” Teton Ridge Entertainment is also behind the project, after securing rights to the book back in February 2025. Zoe Kazan and Jeb Stuart will co-showrun the new series. This is the next project from the duo after working on a new adaption of John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” for the streamer, which releases on Oct. 1. “After our singular experience on ‘East of Eden,’ we are thrilled to be teaming with Netflix again, along with Teton Ridge Entertainment, to bring Larry McMurtry’s western classic to life,” Kazan and Stuart said in a joint statement. “We come to this material with love and respect, and can’t wait to hit the trail with Gus and Call and the rest of these beloved characters. Yee-haw.”

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McMurtry published “Lonesome Dove” in 1985. The novel follows Woodrow F. Call and Augustus “Gus” McCrae, two former Texas Rangers that embark on one final cattle drive from the fictional Texas town of Lonesome Dove to Montana. The pair renew their sense of adventure on the trip as they face heroes, villains and everything in between. Just a few years after publication, “Lonesome Dove” was adapted into a four-episode miniseries on CBS. Robert Duvall starred as McCrae and Tommy Lee Jones took on the role of Call in the series that was a major event for the network, as some 26 million homes tuned in during its four-day run in February 1989. No casting details have been revealed for the new adaption, or if the series will shoot in Texas like the miniseries. Netflix has also not set a release date for the project. “’Lonesome Dove’ is one of the great American stories, and there was no question we wanted to follow Zoe and Jeb wherever they went next,” Jinny Howe, Netflix head of scripted series, said in a press release. “After ‘East of Eden,’ we know exactly what they’re capable of — the depth of character, the sweep of place, the emotional precision. This material deserves that level of care. In their hands, it’s going to be something extraordinary. We’re excited to partner with Teton Ridge to bring this legendary story to life.”

The police-shaped elephant in the budget room

As we approach the end of this scorching summer, the Dallas City Council is nearing the end of a heated budget season. In April, Dallas City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert effectively said the city is almost broke, facing a $30 million budget shortfall and a projected deficit of $51 million for the upcoming fiscal year. The key reasons: police and fire overtime, declining sales tax revenue, and ballooning employee health insurance costs (chief among them: GLP-1 drugs). The Council is still in the process of hammering out the final details, but the broad strokes are clear. To balance the budget without increasing property taxes, the city furloughed thousands of employees and is now poised to make layoffs and cuts across a number of departments, including the Dallas Public Library, the Office of Environmental Quality and Sustainability, Municipal Courts and Detention Services, and Emergency Management and Crisis Response.

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Other proposed changes fall heavily on city employees, including eliminating the preferred provider organization (PPO) plan that the majority of city staff use. Despite these cuts, the city’s general fund budget will increase, “with nearly all of the growth directed to the Dallas Police Department and Dallas Fire-Rescue budgets.” The Dallas Morning News editorial board has called for cuts big and small, praising some aspects of the proposed budget while also castigating City Council for other decisions, such as preserving the $700,000 budget for six community pools. The elephant in the room is the Dallas Police Department (DPD) budget, which consumes more than 40 percent of the city’s general fund and will see its funding increase by $65 million to a total of $823 million. But due to a number of structural factors, the creeping police budget has largely remained out of the conversation. “We can’t decrease our police budget,” Councilmember Paula Blackmon told D Magazine. “Then we have the pension, which we also have no ability to raise revenue to cover. And our revenue gains are about as much as our increase for DPD. We live in a police state, a police city.” A quick civics refresher to help you understand what Blackmon means. Here are the four governmental realities that make the cops’ budget untouchable.

Council rallies behind San Antonio’s police chief pick. Mayor Jones stays silent.

Acting Police Chief Jesus “Jesse” Salame Jr. was flanked by eight City Council members as City Manager Erik Walsh introduced him as his pick for San Antonio police chief. That included council members Marc Whyte and Misty Spears, who are staunch supporters of increasing the size of the police force, and Teri Castillo and Jalen McKee-Rodriguez, who have been critical of department initiatives and want the city to spend more on public health and infrastructure to address the root causes of crime. Despite their differences, they all stood behind Salame, who is a 27-year veteran of the San Antonio Police Department, to show their support for his appointment. Notably absent from the Sept. 2 news conference at City Hall was Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones. Her office has not provided a reason for her absence.

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Jones and the 10-member council will vote Thursday to confirm Walsh’s appointment of Salame. The mayor’s absence stands out given her silence on whether she supports Salame for police chief. That’s unusual because Jones has established herself as a mayor whose positions are clear heading into a vote, said political consultant Mohammad Rasool, whose communications firm has worked with McKee-Rodriguez and ran former Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda’s 2025 mayoral campaign. “She’s been very public on her positions so there’s no surprise on the dais,” Rasool said. Walsh gave the mayor and council four hours’ notice about the news conference’s time and location, said city spokesperson Brian Chasnoff. Council members Phyllis Viagran and Edward Mungia said scheduling conflicts prevented them from attending. Salame was a close advisor to longtime Chief William “Bill” McManus, who retired in July after leading the SAPD for two decades. Jones privately told Walsh in October 2025 that she had lost confidence in McManus after information about her overnight and weekend police security detail was leaked to KSAT-TV. Jones met with Salame on Sept. 4, according to a post on her official social media accounts, which included a photograph of the two of them sitting at a meeting table inside City Hall.

Local leaders share progress on Kerrville's flood recovery plans

On Tuesday, Sept. 1, at the Kerrville Host Lion's Club Meeting, Todd Bock of the Kerrville Economic Development Corporation and Kelly Hagemeier of Kerr Together gave an update on damage from the July 16 flooding, the economic impact on businesses and new programs to assist in recovery. Despite experiencing two natural disasters in little over two years, both Bock and Hagemeier said that Kerrville was "years ahead" of counties in similar situations. Both attributed that to the creation of Kerr Together, the county's long-term recovery program. "I started my job with the Kerrville EDC on July 1, 2025," Bock said. "Three days later was July 4. Since then, what I've been doing is a balance of flood recovery and our original purpose, which is retaining and expanding businesses in Kerr County."

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Hagemeier said that, even though the long-term recovery is working efficiently, the changes in both damage and funding between the 2025 and 2026 have presented unique challenges. "There was more damage this year, especially to businesses," Hagemeier said. "Business recovery efforts are going to be huge." Throughout Kerr County, 123 businesses were damaged by rising floodwaters and 106 of those affected were within Kerrville city limits. The damage was more substantial than in 2025, when fewer than 100 businesses were physically affected and only 22 within Kerrville city limits. Relief for these businesses has been delayed due to a lack of funding for the 2026 flood. "As an example," Hagemeier said. "In 2025, we received millions of dollars through state flood relief donations. This year, donations from the state flood relief fund are at about $150,000." Hagemeier also said that lack of funding has contributed to the housing crisis many Kerr County residents are experiencing. "Almost 50% of the calls I'm taking now are about mold mitigation," she said. "We've tried to get as many people with confirmed cases of mold into safe, temporary housing as we can. But there are some who are still living in their homes or even in their cars."

Bexar County spent big modernizing elections. It’s still stuck with a system that ‘destroyed’ voter confidence.

Since replacing a longtime elections chief last year, Bexar County has spent big upgrading the county’s election technology. It’s purchased more voting machines, replaced aging tabulation equipment, added new devices to assist people with disabilities and overhauled its website to deliver results and help voters find the shortest lines. Now as a high-profile Nov. 3 midterm election approaches, Elections Administrator Michele Carew says voters will start to notice some of the improvements, while others won’t be up and running in time for this election. Perhaps most notably, Bexar County’s plan to switch to a new voter registration system — intended to cut ties from a problematic state-run system — won’t happen until January. “We’re wanting to build voter confidence, but TEAM has destroyed the voter confidence that’s in place,” Carew said of the state’s voter registration system. The TEAM system caused a massive registration backlog last year that left voters without a new voter registration card before the March primary.

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Carew said in an Aug. 24 interview that it still struggles to present accurate information to voters tracking their ballot — sowing distrust in a system that’s producing fair elections. “Even though we show that we received an application, we mailed them a ballot, the ballot came back, and the ballot was counted, it’s not reflected in TEAM,” Carew said. The switch to a new system was delayed due to a sluggish county purchasing procedures and delays transferring data. Still, Bexar County voters who’ve experienced long lines at the polls and delays in learning the results could see some improvement this year. Bexar County will be operating 20% more poll pads to check voters in for this November’s election, Carew said, thanks in part to a $4 million grant from the Help America Vote Act. That should move lines faster, though the county won’t see a major uptick in the number of polling locations, because the department still lacks the staff and equipment to open them. Voters should also be able to check wait times online before heading to vote — among many other upgrades aimed at updating Bexar County’s antiquated election procedures before a high-profile U.S. Senate race, governor’s race and other contests on the Nov. 3 ballot.

Texas Dems say Tarrant voting site reduction is part of national effort to suppress

Tarrant County’s reduction of voting centers is an illustration of Republicans’ goal to suppress the votes of Texans, Democrats said at a Wednesday morning press conference. The press conference, Texas Democratic Party Chairman Kendall Scudder said, is the Democrats’ way of showing “the other side of the story” the Republicans would lay out over the course of the two-day midterm convention in Dallas. Five Democrats spoke about the negative impacts of Gov. Greg Abbott and President Donald Trump’s policies, Republicans’ efforts to rig elections and the Democratic candidates’ excellence. On Sept. 2, the Tarrant County Commissioners Court opted to reduce the number of Election Day polling locations by 29%.

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Democrat Commissioners Alisa Simmons and Roderick Miles Jr. said removing polling locations is voter suppression and will diminish turnout in Black and Hispanic areas. In 2025, the same arguments were made about the reduction of voting sites for the November election, but there ended up being record turnout. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said the cut was part of a country-wide effort to suppress votes. “Republicans know that they can’t win on the merits of their unpopular policies, so they’re working to rig the 2026 election,” Pritzker said. Houston City Controller Chris Hollins, a Democrat, said the decision was necessary for Republicans because Tarrant County is becoming more diverse and is on the verge of electing a Democrat, Simmons, to the top county seat. Simmons said Tarrant County residents are worried about affordability, health care and if their vote really matters. She said the Republicans on Commissioners Court said “your vote doesn’t count” by voting to have 92 fewer Election Day polling locations.

San Antonio councilwoman wants to outlaw gas-station slot machines

District 5 Councilwoman Teri Castillo is taking aim at gas-station slot machines and the legal gray area in which they operate. On Friday, Castillo filed a formal request co-signed by four other members of San Antonio City Council asking its Governance Committee to consider a ban on the controversial gambling machines as soon as possible. “San Antonio should not allow a legal gray area to undermine the intent of our gambling laws. We need to establish a clear rule and enforce it consistently in order to protect our communities,” Castillo said in a statement.

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Specifically, Castillo’s request aims to ban the operation of the controversial gambling gear, commonly known as eight-liner machines, within city limits. She also wants to strengthen enforcement and inspection mechanisms to ensure compliance and prioritize community education and reporting on illegal gambling activities. “For too long, eight-liner machines have been used to skirt gambling laws,” Castillo added. “This policy request presents an opportunity to close a loophole that has allowed eight-liner operations to proliferate despite state and local rules and regulations.” The loophole Castillo is referring to opened in 2022, when the 2nd Court of Appeals in Fort Worth found that eight-liner machines function as unconstitutional illegal lotteries. The Texas Supreme Court subsequently declined to review the lower court’s ruling in 2024, which effectively solidified the illegality of these machines, Castillo argues. Following the Fort Worth decision, nearly a dozen other Texas cities have banned eight-liners and game rooms. Castillo said her request for council debate will protect law-abiding businesses and provide residents with better information, reinforcing the city’s commitment to safe and healthy communities.

Data center debate ‘transcends partisan sides’, says Tarrant Commissioner Krause

The debate over data centers “is an issue that transcends partisan sides” and one where the Texas Legislature could set standard criteria for projects while leaving much else to the cities, Tarrant County Commissioner Matt Krause said after hosting a town hall Tuesday night. “We’ve got to have some guardrails,” Krause said in an interview with the Fort Worth Report after hearing from constituents at Precinct 3’s Gary Fickes Northeast Courthouse in Hurst. The town hall’s 23 speakers included some from The Lakes at Marshall Ridge Homeowners Association in Keller, a neighborhood adjacent to a planned data center in Westlake.

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A number of the evening’s speakers said they accepted the need for data centers, given the growth in artificial intelligence. However, they added that such developments must include regulations on water usage, power consumption, noise and neighborhood setbacks. They also questioned whether municipalities need to offer financial incentives to attract data centers, and whether developers, operators and public officials can be trusted. Some compared the growth of data centers to a speculative gold rush that could abate, or to the spread of regional malls that are now outdated and being demolished. “I am not against development, but it has to be done intelligently,” said Cate Brennan, a Democrat who is running for the open Texas House 98 seat against Republican Armin Mizani. The district is home to 16 cities, including Grapevine, Keller, Southlake, Colleyville, Euless and Westlake. Krause, a Republican, ran a Q&A session with the crowd after hearing the speakers and acknowledged the need for protections multiple times. “Something new needs to happen,” he told the audience.

James Talarico calls deepfake videos of him ‘lies’ that voters are ‘fed up’ with

Democratic state Rep. James Talarico today characterized campaign ads using AI-generated videos of him as “lies” and asserted that voters are “fed up” with them, one day after his opponent in Texas’ Senate race posted a deepfake video of him. “They are lying about a candidate in this race, and so I think Texans are fed up with these kind of lies in our politics,” Talarico said in an interview with NBC News in Dallas. “They want elected leaders who are going to shoot straight with them about their record and about what they’re going to do for the people of Texas, and so these AI deepfake ads don’t add anything to our civic discourse.” In a video state Attorney General Ken Paxton’s campaign released yesterday, which The Texas Tribune reported will air on Newsmax this week, Talarico is depicted writing with a crayon in a “King James Talarico” bible with audio clips of separate remarks he has made in the past about gender and feminism but spliced together without context.

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It’s not the first time Republicans have posted deepfake videos of Talarico. In March, shortly after he won the Democratic nomination for the Senate, the National Republican Senatorial Committee posted a video of an AI-generated Talarico reading excerpts of previous posts of his on X. At the time, a spokesperson for Talarico told CNN that Republicans were “scared” of him. “While they spend their time making deepfake AI videos to mislead Texans, we are uniting the people of Texas to win in November,” the spokesperson said. In today’s interview, which came after he hosted an event counterprogramming the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas, Talarico also addressed recently resurfaced remarks he made in 2020 calling capitalism an “oppressive system.” “I’ve missed the mark on statements that I’ve made in the past. I’ll be the first to admit that,” he said. “What I was talking about when you listened to my entire comments was not capitalism, but crony capitalism, which is what we have today.” He pointed specifically to the Republican candidates and donors gathering this week in Texas to promote their policy agenda ahead of the midterms, saying, “The only people who succeed in this economy are those who can pay for politicians, like the megadonors who are in that convention center across the street, and that’s what we have to dismantle.” Talarico also spoke about Democrats’ yearslong efforts to win a statewide contest in Texas, addressing hopes from members of his party that he could be the one to “turn Texas blue” in November. “I’m actually not interested in turning Texas blue. I know my party wants to turn Texas blue. The Republican Party wants to keep Texas red. I think the best color for Texas is purple,” he said. “When you have competitive elections, it forces every politician at every level to stay on their toes and compete to serve the people of the state and to operate within the 40-yard lines. Right now, one-party rule leads to extremism and corruption, no matter what state.”

Texas Republicans rely on AI slop to attack Democratic rivals as midterms draw closer

Facing increasingly tight polling and an apparent inability to make dirt stick on their Democratic rivals, two of Texas’ highest-profile Republican elected officials have resorted to using artificial intelligence to generate phony footage for their attack ads. Lt. Gov. Patrick used controversial AI deepfake technology in a spot that debuted over Labor Day weekend mocking Texas Democrats running this election cycle. Meanwhile, Attorney General Ken Paxton’s campaign debuted an AI-generated ad showing James Talarico reading fake passages from the Bible — an apparent attempt to slam the state rep’s background as a seminarian. The spot was released to coincide with the Republican Midterm Convention in Dallas.

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“Ken Paxton and his billionaire backers are using AI deepfake videos to literally put words in James’ mouth because they can’t rely on facts to win this race,” Talarico campaign spokesman JT Ennis told the Current. Patrick’s political ad, posted on his social media accounts, featured the likenesses of his Democratic challenger Vikki Goodwin as well as those of Talarico and gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa, also Democrats. The phony clip shows Goodwin playing spoilsport at a University of Texas Longhorns football game as she proposes new taxes, including a soda tax, a brisket tax, a happiness tax and a “nostalgia surcharge.” “They should be chanting taxes instead!” the digitally generated Goodwin is shown saying as the crowd chants “Texas.” Next, the clip shows a phony Gina Hinojosa appearing at Texas Tech to demand a permit for Red Raider fans’ finger guns. Finally, the spot includes fake footage of Talarico at a Texas A&M game eating tofu and asking why the 12th Man has to be so gendered.

National Stories

Ilhan Omar cleared of wrongdoing after overstating assets by millions

A nonpartisan entity charged with reviewing misconduct allegations has cleared Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) of wrongdoing in connection with documents she submitted to Congress that dramatically overstated her wealth. The Office of Congressional Conduct, which reviews allegations concerning House members and staff, made the determination after opening an investigation into Omar earlier this year. The findings, marked confidential, were viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The OCC’s board, in a 5-1 vote, recommended the House Ethics Committee dismiss allegations against Omar that she reported false or incomplete information in potential violation of federal law and House rules.

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“The Board recommends that the committee dismiss the above allegation concerning Rep. Omar because there is not substantial reason to believe that Rep. Omar reported false or incomplete information in her financial disclosures,” a report on the case says. A disclosure filed last year showed Omar and her husband had assets of between $6 million and $30 million, a massive rise in wealth from her previous annual filing. That jump triggered questions among Republicans eager to scrutinize a critic of President Trump. But an amended filing addressing major accounting errors in her initial document dramatically dialed back the couple’s assets to just $18,004 to $95,000. The forms don’t require exact values, only broad ranges. Omar’s husband, former political consultant Tim Mynett, is involved with several businesses, including a venture-capital management firm in Washington, D.C., and a winery in Santa Rosa, Calif., her disclosure forms show. Those businesses had previously been listed as worth between $6 million and $30 million. In the amended filing, they were shown as having no value, once liabilities are factored in. The venture-capital firm was listed as generating between $100,000 and $1 million in income, while the winery showed income between $2,501 and $5,000.

Most data center bans are in metro areas, despite more facilities heading for rural areas

Building data centers is broadly unpopular across the political spectrum, but so far, banning new development is a mostly metropolitan area phenomenon. While more data centers are located in metropolitan areas than nonmetropolitan ones, two-thirds of all new facilities are planned for rural communities. The rural data center boom comes amidst rising backlash to the facilities. Earlier this year, my colleague Sarah Melotte and I mapped rural opposition to data centers. In June, we found that there were 129 groups organized on Facebook who were fighting against data center development in rural areas, compared to 345 groups in metropolitan areas. At the time, the rural groups were representative of around 27% of all of the opposition groups present on Facebook, spanning 43 states. We used data from the Data Center Opposition Report, a coalition of organizations and academics tracking resistance to the facilities. Since June, the coalition has continued monitoring new groups as they emerge. As of August, the researchers have identified 580 local opposition groups active on Facebook, encompassing more than 640,000 members across the country.

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It’s still early to identify trends in whether and how local opposition translates into local policy, especially in rural places where development is just starting to ramp up. One reason why there are more bans in metropolitan areas than in rural areas may just be a result of data center development history. Metropolitan areas have long hosted data centers that provide cloud services. But the AI-driven campuses being built now require much more land, energy, and water resources than their 2000s and 2010s-era counterparts. Now, as data center development expands into the countryside, rural communities often face unique barriers to organizing, compounded by news deserts and projects’ lack of transparency. At a national level, hostility toward data centers is quickly calcifying into an election issue ahead of November’s midterms. The sentiment has prompted politicians of all stripes to call for stricter regulation on the facilities, and, in some cases, flat-out moratoriums. Data center-related policies being proposed at local levels of government range from 90-day pauses to permanent bans on the facilities. Of nearly 700 bans we looked at, 25% are in rural areas, as of August 2026. The Daily Yonder uses a county-level definition of rural derived from the Office of Management and Budget.

Hunter Biden’s meme coin imploded immediately

On Wednesday morning, Hunter Biden posted to his Substack in a wistful mood, recalling a “warm summer afternoon” when he was 17 spent learning from his father’s operatives around their Delaware pool about “how power is actually won.” Maybe the 56-year-old was feeling nostalgic at the end of summer. Or maybe he was trying to distract from his audience from his other big play today: his meme-coin launch that was going horrifically. Just after 8 a.m. on Wednesday, the former president’s son released his coin, called $LAPTOP, referring to the computer he left at a repair shop in 2020 that created a whole lot of trouble for his family back in 2020. The price, at launch, was $199.51 per coin. If it held, that valuation would have made it the tenth-highest-priced cryptocurrency in circulation. But within the hour, it tanked to around $4. By the afternoon, it had halved again to about $2. There are basically only two reasons to buy a meme coin: You like the celebrity issuing it or you think you can make money as its price inevitably, precipitously declines.

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(These coins have no value other than the hype behind them, and hype fades fast in cryptocurrency.) And in the initial hype, at least one person who really loves Hunter Biden or thought they could swindle someone else appears to have lost big: On X, crypto-world figures are accusing Biden of engaging in a rug pull — the industry term for launching a meme coin, then immediately selling off your own liquidity when the price is at its highest, leaving others in the lurch. There is no evidence yet that wallets controlled by Biden or someone close to him actually did such a thing. But he has damaged his reputation in the process. After avoiding the media during his father’s term, Biden has been on a world tour this summer, speaking with everyone from Andrew Callaghan to Tucker Carlson; people seemed to be responding to his populist views and his uncensored tales of fighting his addictions. His meme coin even appeared to be a comment on Donald Trump’s crypto cash grabs, offering free coins to people who lost money on $TRUMP. But the stunt to call attention to Trump’s meme-coin crash has met a similar fate. The Biden and Trump meme coins are both trading just above $2.

Rhode Island Dem incumbent becomes first sitting governor to lose primary since 2018

Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee lost his Democratic primary Wednesday to businesswoman Helena Foulkes, becoming the first sitting governor in the country since 2018 to be denied his party's nomination. Foulkes, a former CVS executive and current Costco board member, defeated McKee in a rematch of their closely fought 2022 Democratic primary, when McKee edged her by just a few percentage points. McKee's defeat Wednesday adds another incumbent to a growing list of officeholders ousted during the 2026 primary season. McKee first became governor in 2021 after Gov. Gina Raimondo left office to serve as Commerce Secretary in the Biden administration. The former Cumberland mayor and two-term lieutenant governor went on to win his first full term in 2022 after narrowly emerging from a crowded Democratic primary that included Foulkes.

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The last sitting governor to lose his party's nomination was Kansas Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer. Colyer lost the 2018 GOP primary to then-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, backed by Donald Trump at the time, by fewer than 400 votes. Foulkes has spent decades in the private sector, including as a senior executive at Rhode Island-based CVS Health, and later served as CEO of Hudson's Bay Company. She sits on Costco's board of directors. Her 2026 campaign marked Foulkes' second bid for elected office after finishing second to McKee in the 2022 Democratic gubernatorial primary. The rematch centered in part on the candidates' competing arguments over their records and leadership. Foulkes criticized McKee's management of state government, including his administration's handling of the Washington Bridge, which was abruptly closed over structural concerns in December 2023 and remains under reconstruction. McKee defended his administration's record and repeatedly targeted Foulkes' tenure at CVS, suggesting she is an out-of-touch corporate executive and going after her leadership role at the company amid its controversial handling of prescription opioids.

The US is losing its ability to store water when it needs it most

Turn on a hose in Denver this summer and the water likely flows from the Strontia Springs Reservoir. The small manmade lake in the mountains just west of downtown stores the state’s precious snowmelt and distributes it through the dry months when rain grows scarce and farmers are irrigating frantically. But over its 44 years, Strontia has lost much of its storage capacity. Almost one-fifth of the reservoir is now filled with sediment – sand, silt and mud – the hidden vulnerability of America’s water system. Most of the country’s 90,000 or so storage reservoirs are facing a similar problem to some degree. Engineered decades ago to enable development in some of the country’s harshest conditions, these dams are in a self-propelling sediment loop. Climate change is exacerbating drought and wildfires, decimating vegetation that holds dirt in place. More extreme rainfall, meanwhile, is unleashing torrents of water and debris, as happened in the flash flood that killed two people and washed away bridges and trails in the Grand Canyon last month.

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The same fossil-fuel emissions intensifying this cycle are crimping water supplies. This winter, the American West got less snow than ever recorded, sapping the Colorado River and driving water levels at the country’s two largest reservoirs to record lows. Last month the federal government ordered California, Arizona and Nevada to sharply curtail the amount of water they draw from rivers and reservoirs over the next two years. Precisely when utilities need to stockpile water to endure longer dry spells, sediment is robbing them of precious space to store it. America’s shrinking water storage threatens to clog billions of dollars in economic activity from hydroelectric power and agriculture. Farmers, in particular, are spending millions each year to pump extra water from wells, which, in turn, inflates prices at the grocery store. At Strontia, for example, a rash of wildfires between 1996 and 2008, scorched the canyon upstream of the dam. Without healthy trees and brush, the steep banks slough sand into the lake in every rainstorm, said Erin Gleason, a dam safety engineer with Denver Water, the city’s utility. Strontia wasn’t big to begin with, she notes, and it’s shrinking at the worst possible time. Denver — like much of the American West — has spent the summer under emergency drought protocols. Yet nearly four days’ worth of Strontia supply is now occupied by a mound of muck large enough to fill 700 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Trump’s peace envoy is raking it in

Last year was a very successful one for Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s peace envoy. Not because he managed to broker a lasting truce between Russia and Ukraine, but successful in the way it was also a banner year for Donald Trump: He made a shitload of money. And a lot more than he did the year before Trump returned to Washington, which surely does not point to any sort of brazen conflicts of interest. After learning in April that Witkoff’s net worth increased by some $300 million — to $2.3 billion — from when he started working for the Trump administration, we now have further details on the large sum of money Witkoff, a longtime friend of Trump, made last year. On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that the businessman turned envoy raked in $107 million in 2025 “from the holding company that owned his share of a crypto venture he and his boss helped co-found, according to a recent financial disclosure report.” To be clear, that crypto venture is World Liberty Financial, and that boss is Donald Trump; in addition to the two men, the company was co-founded by Witkoff’s sons, along with Barron, Eric, Don Jr., and others.

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While Witkoff did not specify how much WLF earned him last year — there are other assets in the holding company, like real estate — we do know that the president made more than half a billion dollars from tokens sold by the venture in 2025. In 2024, before Trump returned to office and Witkoff joined the administration, Witkoff’s holding company made $34 million. In May 2025, one of World Liberty Financial’s co-founders claimed that Witkoff was “in the process of fully divesting” from the company, yet three months later, it was still being listed under financial disclosure assets. This past May — as in, a full year later — then–White House counsel David Warrington told Bloomberg that Witkoff was divested from WLF and played no role whatsoever in government business that could impact his financial interests. Strangely, not everyone sees it that way. For one thing, while Witkoff may no longer hold a stake in WLF, his sons are still invested in the company, and one of them, Zack Witkoff, is currently its CEO. For another, there’s the fact that shortly before Trump was inaugurated for the second time, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, an Abu Dhabi royal, was part of a $500 million investment into WLF, a deal that, per The Wall Street Journal, involved “at least $31 million … slated to flow to entities affiliated with the family of Steve Witkoff … who weeks earlier had been named U.S. envoy to the Middle East.”

Mail-in voters weigh flying to vote in person and other backup plans amid uncertainty

For almost a decade, Kelsi Kiper has relied on the U.S. Postal Service to cast her ballots as a voter registered in Texas but stationed out of state with her husband, an active-duty service member. This year, though, to make sure her voice is heard, she's making a backup plan. Kiper hopes she'll be able to exercise her voting rights by mail for this year's midterm general election. But she recently started considering spending around $2,000 to book flights and rental cars so she can vote in person. "It's not something that I think a lot of us in the military are prepared to spend because many military families operate on a single income," Kiper said. "For me, I think that it's important to prioritize the rights that our active-duty members are serving to preserve."

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The ongoing legal fight over a Postal Service plan for President Trump's attempt to exert control over federal elections is forcing millions of other eligible voters to navigate the uncertainty with voting by mail for the midterms. For now, USPS is expected to handle election mail as usual. North Carolina and parts of Wisconsin have already started sending out absentee ballots for the general election. That's because U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani has blocked USPS from refusing to deliver ballots to voters in states where election officials do not turn over voter lists to the mailing agency and do not have certain specific barcodes on their ballot envelopes. But the Trump administration has asked the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court to allow those new federal mail ballot requirements for the midterms. Rulings from those courts may come as soon as this week. They could unleash a major upheaval to voting by mail, which was how about 1 in 3 voters cast ballots in the last two federal elections.

Copyright September 10, 2026, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved