October 19, 2026: All Newsclips

Lead Stories

Trump targets down-ballot Texas Democrats on eve of early voting

President Donald Trump urged support for Texas Republicans on the eve of early voting — and trained his fire on some relatively unknown down-ballot Democrats, a sign of how competitive the midterms have become as voters head to the polls. Trump on Sunday night held a phone rally with Attorney General Ken Paxton, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, state Sen. Mayes Middleton and two congressional candidates, Jace Yarbrough and Eric Flores. “A lot of people say this must be tough making a call like this. It's not because I love these people, I love what they represent, and I love the people of Texas,” Trump said. The president targeted Vikki Goodwin, an Austin state representative running to unseat Patrick, and Nathan Johnson, a state senator running for attorney general against Middleton.

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Some recent polls show both locked in close races, despite the two Democrats starting with hardly any name recognition and raising far less than their GOP opponents. No Democrat has won statewide since 1994. Trump accused Goodwin of wanting to “give you a nice high state income tax” and said Johnson “opposes the 10 Commandments in Texas schools.” “Can you believe it?” Trump said. Later in the call, Paxton urged listeners to meet with two or three people a day and urge them to vote. Patrick upped the request when he joined the line. “Every one of you on this call has a cell phone. You may have 50, 100, 1,000 contacts. I want you to send out, you know, cut and paste to everyone on your contact list and say, ‘Are you voting for Republicans in November or early voting?’” Patrick said. “And if they say yes, say ‘Thank you, God bless you.’ And if they say no, call them. They're your friends.”

Suburban women souring on Paxton could doom him in tight race

here’s something missing in this conservative Houston suburb on the eve of early voting next Monday: Visible support for Republicans, particularly the embattled Senate candidate. In the sprawling Bridgeland subdivision, yard signs appear to favor Democratic state Rep. James Talarico over his rival, GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton. The signage gap matches recent polling, which shows Talarico, a four-term state representative, either tied or several points ahead of Paxton, who has never lost an election in 25 years. Nowhere is that more clear than on Bridgeland’s Inspiration Drive, where voters on both sides of the political aisle say that Paxton, dogged by corruption scandals and accusations of infidelity, has lost support from a crucial segment of the electorate: suburban women. Interviews with these female voters, who tend to outvote men and therefore carry extra sway in growing communities, reveal a combination of apathy toward Paxton’s candidacy and an active shift by some conservatives toward his Democratic opponent.

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Republican Tess Eugenio, who works in human resources, said there is a split on her street between the vocal supporters for Talarico and those whom she suspects will vote for Paxton, even if they’re not advertising it. “People don’t want to talk about whether they’re going to vote for him, but they will,” Eugenio, 57, said of Paxton. “The question is, will it be enough?” Across the street, Maria Kostecka, a retired preschool teacher, said female friends and neighbors have approached her expressing enthusiasm for Talarico, especially after she posted his campaign yard sign. “I start to feel like it’s this secret underground club who don’t want Paxton in office,” said Kostecka, 66. She said she’s worried though that people “will stay home because they do not like the choices they have.” In a race that veteran political observers say will be decided by small margins, incremental shifts that eluded Democrats in recent cycles could be building in the suburbs. In 2022, Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke made gains in the suburbs, but in the end, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) still won 60 percent of suburban precincts to O’Rourke’s 38 percent, according to the Texas Politics Project.

Could Republicans prove the pollsters wrong in the midterms?

Republicans facing a predicted wipeout in next month’s midterm elections are clinging to the hope that opinion polls are underrepresenting support for Donald Trump’s party. On the campaign trail this week, House Speaker Mike Johnson joined other party operatives in questioning whether polling and betting markets, which point to a Republican rout in the House and a possible defeat in the Senate, might not be reaching many conservative voters. “I’m looking right at the camera, and telling you: The polls are wrong,” Johnson told an audience in North Carolina on Thursday. “The polling organisations are admitting over the last few weeks that they have been under-sampling Republicans [and] they are over-sampling Democrats?.?.?.?because Republicans don’t trust pollsters any more,” Johnson said. Polls consistently underestimated support for Trump in the last three presidential elections, leading to his victory in 2016 and 2024. Polling in the midterm elections has been less prone to big misses, however, underestimating Democrats slightly in 2022 and 2018. The sitting president’s party has only managed a net gain of House seats twice in midterms since the second world war.

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Yet Democrats’ hopes of winning control of the upper chamber hinge on wins in at least a few states where polling puts them ahead by 3 percentage points or less. If polls are off merely by the margin of error, Republicans could retain all Senate seats in Maine, Alaska, Ohio, Iowa and Texas. “Republicans aren’t as eager to pick up the phone and talk to pollsters about who they voted for?.?.?.?they see it as a much more private matter,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist who has worked on national campaigns. “If half of what has been true in the past is true again, then chances are Republicans are going to win in Texas. They are going to win in Iowa. They’re going to win in Maine,” said O’Connell. Republican insiders such as O’Connell are encouraged by the fact that some Senate candidates are polling better than expected in Democrat-held states including New Hampshire and Minnesota. They also hope unpopular candidates such as Texas’s Ken Paxton will be lifted by the fact that more popular Republicans, including the state’s governor Greg Abbott, are also on the same ballot. One strategist for a large Trump-aligned group told the FT that they were enthused by early voting trends in Georgia, which showed that under-35s — who tend to lean Democrat — were “not turning out at the same levels as they were in 2022 and 2024”.

Trump’s overtures to Putin put Republican candidates in hot seat

President Trump’s surprise diesel deal with Russia and decision to waive sanctions on Moscow have become a headache for Republican candidates with just two weeks to go before the midterms. In interviews and town halls, Republicans are being pressed on why now is the time to go soft on Vladimir Putin. Some of them are breaking with Trump rather than defend his string of Russia-friendly decisions. Diesel prices remain elevated, adding to the challenge in an election heavily focused on affordability. The result is a new political hurdle for Republicans who are uncomfortable with the idea of easing sanctions on Putin’s Russia and have yet to see the hoped-for economic gains. Republicans, who worked to pass a sanctions package targeting buyers of Russian oil and gas just over a month ago, are now questioning Trump’s decision to hold off on implementing it. The move has thrust Trump’s handling of the war in Ukraine, which he once vowed to end swiftly after returning to the White House, back into the political spotlight.

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Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate candidate locked in a tight race against Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, has said he opposes buying Russian diesel fuel. On Sunday he also made clear that he objects to the president’s decision to pause the sanctions package. “It’s just not where I would be,” Rogers said on Sunday on CNN. “I would have voted for the sanctions bill. If the president has a better idea to get diesel prices down, I’d be for it. I’m just a little skeptical that this will work in the way that the administration wants it to work.” “I don’t think we can give Putin an inch,” Rogers added. Trump defended his recent decisions in a social-media post Sunday, saying he was in the process of “negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine” and didn’t want to do anything that will “drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table.” The Wall Street Journal on Sunday reported that Putin has proposed that he, Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping meet next month to talk about Ukraine in an attempt to negotiate an end to the four-year conflict that would favor Moscow. Other Republicans echoed Rogers’s qualms. On Saturday, Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, who is facing a competitive re-election contest, said he would tell Trump not to buy Russian diesel fuel. Instead, Sullivan called for continued efforts to expand energy production in Alaska and strengthen the U.S. military, which he referred to as “hard power things Putin understands the most.”

State Stories

El Paso City Councilmember Art Fierro faces four challengers in East El Paso District 6 race

Incumbent city Rep. Art Fierro faces four challengers in the race for the District 6 City Council seat, as the city’s agreement with a Meta data center, a coming property tax increase and rising utility bills have put affordability at the center of the Nov. 3 election. The Eastside district encompasses much of the 79936 ZIP code, including neighborhoods around Marty Robbins Park. Fierro, 64, is seeking a second term on council after serving on the El Paso Community College board and in the Texas House. He won the council seat in 2022 after losing the Democratic primary for his legislative seat to Claudia Ordaz earlier that year. He points to park improvements, street resurfacing and investments in public safety – mostly compensation for firefighters and, soon, police officers – as reasons to keep him in office.

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Jesus “Jesse” Moreno, 25, is a former City Council staffer who worked for District 3 Reps. Cassandra Hernandez and Deanna Maldonado-Rocha before recently departing Rocha’s office. A Bowie High School graduate studying economics at the University of Texas at El Paso, Moreno worked multiple jobs while attending school before entering city government through a workforce program. He says his experience handling constituent issues, reviewing budgets and working with city departments would allow him to take office with an accumulated knowledge of city government. Pedro Fernandez Jr., 26, graduated from Americas High School and UTEP, where he studied political science. The son of two Army veterans, Fernandez worked on congressional and statewide political campaigns before moving to Washington, D.C., where he worked for the Western Caucus Foundation, an organization focused on Western land, environmental and energy policy. He returned to El Paso and now works for a staffing agency. Fernandez describes himself as fiscally conservative and politically pragmatic. Claudia Contreras Siller, a care provider for her mother and an animal welfare advocate, and photographer Hector Alba are also on the ballot. Neither responded to multiple interview requests from El Paso Matters. Alba did submit responses to a questionnaire from El Paso Matters.

Harris County to form working group on Flock oversight

Kevin Newsom is a Harris County taxpayer, and although he describes himself as a “local ne’er-do-well,” he doesn’t appear to present a threat to public safety. But he and most of his neighbors are frustrated and angry that they’re being watched by Flock Safety cameras. “We need to cancel the Flock contracts,” Newsom said during a Thursday meeting of commissioners court. “They are unconstitutional. They are illegal. The Fourth Amendment is the ultimate rule we’re supposed to follow when it comes to surveillance. If we’re talking about rules and regulations concerning Flock, if we’re not following the biggest rule, what hope do we have to follow the smaller rules that you’re proposing today?” Newsom joined dozens of residents who weighed in on the automated license plate readers, sometimes referred to as ALPRs, which have been in place since 2022. Just recently, however, reports surfaced of non-law enforcement employees accessing the system, law enforcement officers abusing the system for personal use, and suspicion that those with access are sharing data with federal immigration authorities.

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Commissioners voted 3-2 to direct the Office of County Administration to convene a working group chaired by Sheriff Ed Gonzalez to gather information on automated license plate reader data, access and oversight, and to propose amendments to the county’s contracts with Flock Safety and Vigilant Systems, a subsidiary of Motorola, by February 2027. Commissioners Adrian Garcia and Tom Ramsey voted against it. Both said they support oversight but noted that Gonzalez already has a working group and is prepared to present a policy regarding the sheriff’s office use of license plate readers within a week or so. County Judge Lina Hidalgo, who called the public hearing, expressed disappointment that the license plate reader vendors weren’t present to answer questions. She suggested suspending use of all the devices in Harris County while the working group convenes, but there was some confusion over whether contracts would need to be amended to do so. Also, some of the devices were purchased by neighborhood associations and municipal utility districts, so, although authorized Harris County law enforcement officers can access the data, the devices don’t belong to Harris County. The cameras use artificial intelligence to capture and analyze information about vehicles, including their make, model, color, and distinguishing features such as bumper stickers or dents.

Haltom City mayor, first Vietnamese American to lead a Tarrant city, dies

Haltom City Mayor An Truong, who oversaw a commercial and residential building boom in the city, died Friday, Oct. 16, the city announced. He was 78. He died from complications related to cancer, the city said. Truong was elected mayor in 2019, the first Vietnamese American mayor in Tarrant County. His swearing-in ceremony was conducted in English, Spanish and Vietnamese. Born Vietnam, Truong immigrated to the United States when he was 26. He began his career with the Fort Worth Police Department and spent 37 years as an investigator with the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office. He also served on the Haltom City Council from 2013 until he was elected mayor. “Mayor Truong was a dedicated public servant who always put his community first,” City Manager Rex Phelps said in a statement. “On behalf of the City Council and City staff, we extend our deepest condolences to his family and friends.”

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Truong helped lead Haltom City through a significant period of economic growth and development, including attracting H Mart’s seventh Texas store as part of a major mixed-use development at Northeast Loop 820 and Beach Street that is 100% leased. The city also saw major residential growth, including a 412-home subdivision and plans for 1,000 apartments, along with new hotel and recreation developments. City officials projected that development projects would bring thousands of new jobs and residents while generating additional sales tax revenue and allowing the city to lower its property tax rate. The city built a new city hall, law enforcement center, fire substation and senior center in recent years. A renovated North Park opened in 2025. The $4 million overhaul of the 56-acre park included a 4-acre stocked fishing pond with a pier, trails, a new playground, pavilion, amphitheater and improvements to the disc golf course. Truong was born in 1948 and grew up in Vietnam when France occupied the country. He joined the Vietnamese Air Force in 1968 and learned English, so he could come to the United States to become a pilot. He returned to Vietnam, where he fought against the Communists. After the war ended in 1975, Truong and his family came to the United States as refugees and started out in Pennsylvania, where Truong worked in a grocery store. But they did not like the cold weather and moved to Haltom City in 1980. Mayor Pro Tem Kyle Hantz and Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Troy Dunn will assume the mayoral duties until further notice, the city said.

Educator misconduct reports triple since new Texas reporting requirements took effect

Since the state tightened reporting restrictions and created liability for school districts regarding sexual misconduct, reports of educator misconduct have tripled. The Texas Education Agency defines misconduct as physical abuse or unlawful acts with minors. This includes threats of violence, sexual acts, inappropriate communications and physical mistreatment. There have been 19,766 reports of misconduct this year, up from 6,456 last year. Of those nearly 20,000 reports, there have been 13,916 investigations and only 1,114 sanctions issued to perpetrators. The TEA did not respond to the request for comment and clarification on why reports have surged this year.

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The Educator Misconduct Reporting Dashboard is a transparency tool that provides public information about educator investigations. Required by last legislative session’s Senate Bill 571, the dashboard includes data on reports submitted to the TEA, educator investigations, State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC) santions and a “Do Not Hire” registry. “These resources reflect our commitment to transparency and fostering trust in our schools,” TEA Inspector General for Educator Misconduct Levi Fuller said. “The dashboard gives communities access to critical information, while the resource center brings together the tools and guidance school systems need to respond quickly and appropriately when concerns arise.” SB 571 broadened the definition of abuse to include inappropriate communications and failing to maintain appropriate boundaries with students. The law also changed reporting requirements, lowering the window to report abuse to law enforcement from 48 hours to 24 hours. “SB 571 ensures that misconduct is caught early and acted on swiftly, no more ‘passing the trash’ or looking the other way that lets predators reappear in other educational roles or in other schools,” Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston) said when the bill passed.

Texas store warns small businesses to watch for fake AI-generated receipts

A locally owned western wear store in Alice is warning other small businesses to be on the lookout after a receipt that appeared to be generated using artificial intelligence was allegedly used to obtain a refund of over $600. Employees at Horseshoes Western Store said the incident involved a receipt for a Consuela purse. Store manager Inez Almaraz said the owners learned about the receipt from a representative connected to the purse brand. She said the distributor refunded the money before the receipt was identified as fake. "We've never had anything or any of this happen, you know, especially with something that we carry, for them to produce or generate a fake AI receipt is something that's just... it's not tolerated," Almaraz said.

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Almaraz said employees compared the questionable receipt with a legitimate one and noticed differences in the address, and the paper itself. Angel Ramos, a retail seller at the store, said the document initially appeared convincing. "It looked real. It was shocking but then like, no, if you really look into it closely...it was not the same. There was a lot of little hiccups in it. The papers were different," Ramos said. Ramos said businesses should pay close attention to their records and inventory. "Just be more cautious. Look at your receipts. Pay attention to your systems. Just keep track of your inventory because we didn't carry that purse," Ramos said. Katie Galan with the Better Business Bureau said scammers are increasingly using artificial intelligence to make fraudulent messages and documents more believable. "So, scammers are definitely utilizing AI right now. It's making things much more difficult. It used to be where you could look at an e-mail or a text message and it was very easy to differentiate because you would see all of the grammatical errors and the punctuation and all of that," Galan said. "So, now we don't, have that as much. It's, it's a lot easier for scammers to plug these, these items into AI and then make it, more believable for the rest of us."

Some Dallas public safety boosters ask voters to ‘bust the bond'

Dallas’ public safety boosters are at odds over a $443 million bond election to fund police and fire projects. One campaign is backed by council member Cara Mendelsohn and Save Dallas City Hall advocates, who are urging voters to reject the bond in order to save the I.M. Pei-designed building. Another effort, which is endorsed by the city’s police and fire associations and a majority of the City Council, says City Hall and the bond are separate issues. The bond package will fund a new police academy; a tactical police training complex; a consolidated evidence room and crime lab; a new downtown fire station; and move 911 operations out of City Hall.

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Repaying the bond debt would cost more than $629 million over two decades amid debate about the city’s finances and whether enough was done to secure public confidence in bond proposals. Mendelsohn’s “Bust the Bond” campaign says the program is actually a veiled attempt to move city operations out of City Hall. The group has posted “Bust the Bond” signs throughout the city and has pledged to give any excess money donated to the cause to the Save City Hall organization. “This is a ‘move out of City Hall’ bond dressed up like public safety,” Mendelsohn said in a post advocating for voters to reject the package. She is listed as treasurer of the campaign. Mendelsohn said she would support a bond just for the police academy next year in May. But Dallas’ largest police and firefighter associations say the funding could modernize several buildings that have gone years without repairs and maintenance. “When someone calls 911, every second counts. Modern facilities, as in the proposed New Station 4, reliable emergency communications, and properly equipped firefighters and paramedics are essential to saving lives,” Dallas Fire Fighters Association President Chris Peterson said in an endorsement of the bond.

Durant House’s restoration by Russell Buchanan challenges preservation norms in Dallas

A historic house in Dallas was falling apart. Water damage and years of deterioration had left the modest Victorian-era home on the brink of collapse. Rather than demolishing it, co-owners Shannon Wynne and Casey McManemin partnered with architect Russell Buchanan to reimagine preservation. The result is an approach the team calls “adaptive restoration,” combining preservation, restoration, and adaptive reuse through a “building within a building” concept that Buchanan had previously seen used in Europe. The original reconstructed house peers through large glass paneling on a facade of gray-slatted siding and tailored-aluminum trim—a deliberate juxtaposition. “We wanted to show that preservation means finding a creative way to carry history forward,” Wynne and McManemin said in a statement.

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The Durant House was built in 1903 by reputed mason and builder Owen Hughes. Also known for constructing the Praetorian Building—Dallas’s first skyscraper and, at the time, the tallest building west of the Mississippi River—Hughes consistently executed remarkable brick detailing. By 2022, one section of the house’s sidewall had begun leaning six to eight inches away from the structure. Its load-bearing brick walls sat directly on the earth without a conventional foundation. The house was dismantled from the top down, carefully removing shingles, rafters, and framing while preserving the historic materials that could be saved. The original Abilene bricks were removed one by one, cleaned, and stored off-site until the structure was ready to be reconstructed. “Once we understood what was there, there was simply no acceptable substitute for putting it back,” Buchanan said. “The goal wasn’t to create a replica. It was to preserve the actual building and the evidence of the people who built it.”

Orlando Sanchez walks a line on GOP extremes, won’t reject hardliners

Republican Harris County judge nominee Orlando Sanchez has run a moderate campaign relative to some of his statewide GOP colleagues, and has tried to distance himself from the most extreme figures in his party – but he has not rejected them outright. In a year when the political headwinds appear to be blowing to the left, Sanchez has touted positive relationships with some local Democrats and hammered traditional conservative talking points on public safety and tax relief. But the former county treasurer and Houston city council member also has said he is “playing for the red team” at a time when the GOP has shifted right, a balancing act experts said may be hard to pull off in “light blue” Harris County. Sanchez said he was “deeply troubled” by GOP Railroad Commission nominee Bo French’s latest racist tweet last month. But he did not join several fellow Republicans in saying he wouldn’t vote for French.

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And after far-right firebrand Steven Hotze sent out a text blast last week warning Sanchez’s Democratic opponent Letitia Plummer, who is Muslim, would make Harris County “Sharia County,” Sanchez’s campaign called such attacks “wrong” – but did not reject Hotze’s endorsement. Sanchez’s approach underscores the difficulty he faces this fall, political scientists said, particularly given voters’ apparent discontent with Republican leadership. Taking a firmer stance against the far-right risks alienating hardcore conservatives Sanchez needs to win, they said, but his reluctance to full-throatedly denounce them could leave independents and Democrats – who make up a majority of the electorate – unimpressed. “He’s just in a bad place,” said Renée Cross, a political scientist at the University of Houston. “He’s got to try to balance on that line, and I think it’s especially hard in today’s Republican Party because they are so polarized.” Sanchez appears to understand that he will need a politically diverse coalition of voters to have a chance at winning in November, and that passing a Republican purity test may be antithetical to that goal in this political environment.

Thanks to familiar miscues, the Dallas Cowboys are off to their worst start in years

The Dallas Cowboys don’t run the ball well. Their much-hoped-for defensive turnaround hasn’t materialized. Unable to count on either, the Cowboys have hinged their playoff hopes for a third straight season on the right arm of quarterback Dak Prescott. The result? Their worst record through six games since 2020. “The effort is right, the fight is right,” Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer said. “Mistakes are killing us.” They continued in a 23-13 loss to Green Bay on “Sunday Night Football” that left the Cowboys 2-4. As they chase their first playoff berth since 2023, a lone silver lining has been the dreadful state of the NFC East, where the Cowboys aren’t out of contention thanks to the up-and-down struggles of division-leading New York (3-2-1), a rash of injuries in Philadelphia (2-4) and the regression of Washington (1-3-1).

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All four teams in the division have a negative scoring differential, the only division this season to do that. What makes Dallas difficult to count out was seen on the scoring drive that pulled it within 23-13 with 44 seconds to play in Sunday’s fourth quarter, after Prescott led a 13-play, 78-yard drive capped by his scramble away from two tacklers before throwing a touchdown pass on the run. Prescott’s ability, coupled with receivers CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens — their 862 combined receiving yards entering Sunday were second-most by a duo in the league — left Dallas seventh in the league in points scored entering Week 6. Yet what makes Dallas difficult to count on was also on display just four minutes earlier in the fourth quarter. Needing 11 yards on fourth down to continue their drive and cut into a 23-7 Packers lead, Prescott narrowly avoided a sack before lofting a pass that sailed out the back of the end zone, not close to any particular Cowboys receiver. The reliance on Prescott largely paid off to begin this season, as he threw eight touchdowns against just one interception through his first four games. In the last two, though, Prescott has two touchdowns and four interceptions. The latter total doesn’t include an interception Sunday that was negated by a Green Bay penalty for roughing the passer.

It took 3 months to get inside this massive Texas data center — here’s what we saw

As massive data centers rise across the country to power America's artificial intelligence boom, one of the industry's biggest builders is making the case that the benefits extend far beyond the technology inside. During an exclusive tour of Compass Datacenters' sprawling campus in Red Oak, Texas, Fox News Digital got a rare look inside the infrastructure behind the nation's growing appetite for computing. Getting inside took roughly three months' of approvals. Once on site, Fox News Digital passed through six layers of security and suited up in personal protective equipment before entering the facility, where photos and recording devices were prohibited. Beyond the checkpoints, the interior was remarkably clean and surprisingly quiet, with little of the industrial noise one might expect from an operation running around the clock.

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Inside, rows of towering server racks stretched across the spotless floor, surrounded by the electrical and cooling systems needed to keep the equipment operating. At Red Oak, Compass uses a closed-loop cooling system that recirculates coolant rather than continuously drawing water to cool the equipment. Compass CEO Chris Crosby, a North Texas native, said the Red Oak campus has not used water for cooling since it began operating. "We haven't used water since inception," Crosby said, noting the importance of conserving the region's resources. "Water is precious in North Texas." Beyond cooling, security is another major consideration for facilities housing vast amounts of computing infrastructure. Crosby the extensive security is not about keeping the facilities secret, but rather protecting the sensitive information and critical infrastructure housed inside. "Hacking is real, attacks on infrastructure are real," Crosby said. "If people knew that a bank or a government was operating at a particular facility, they could infiltrate that facility. So that's why the levels of security are so high at our campuses." The campus, roughly 20 miles south of Dallas, will eventually include 10 data center buildings spanning roughly 2.6 million square feet. A Schneider Electric manufacturing facility and a workforce training center operated in partnership with Texas State Technical College are also located on the campus.

The most annoying neighbor in this San Antonio subdivision is a leaking oil well

In Texas, suburbs have sprung up where oil pump jacks once bobbed. At the Preserve at Medina, a subdivision of brick-and-siding starter homes in southwest San Antonio, students filed off a school bus on a hot afternoon. One child turned down Vesper Branch, a street with a plugged oil well ringed by a heavy black metal fence: “CAUTION flammable gas,” a sign on the fence warned. A faint smell of rotten eggs hung in the air, from low levels of hydrogen sulfide leaking from the well. Only the fence separated the child from the leaking well. Oil hasn’t flowed from the Thompson Callaway Spears #1 well since it was plugged in 2006. But in recent years, the well has vexed Texas regulators and nearby residents. The state has replugged it five times, yet gas continues to leak. Since a housing subdivision rose around the well in the early 2020s, residents have filed repeated complaints.

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Soil and air monitoring near the well has detected leaking methane and hydrogen sulfide. In June, contractors told the Railroad Commission, the state’s oil and gas industry overseer, that plumes of methane gas were moving through the soil toward homes in the subdivision, which could trigger an explosion. “We had no idea when we moved here,” said Krystal Solis, who lives across the street with her husband and three children. “No one told us anything.” Plugged wells are usually safe, but several in Texas have failed catastrophically in recent years, including at a Baptist church in the Permian Basin town of Grandfalls. From Canada to Southern California, legacy oil and gas wells have been linked to leaks, fires and explosions in residential areas. Prospective homebuyers rarely know about old oil and gas wells before they buy property. Texas has no statewide laws regulating construction around plugged oil and gas wells. Real estate developers are not required to disclose legacy wells to potential buyers. This means that many people unknowingly end up living near plugged or orphan wells that could present future liabilities.

National Stories

How CBS News’ Middle East war spread to the Upper Midwest

Control of the US Senate for the next two years could come down to how much the news media chooses to focus in the final weeks of the midterms on a tweet sent years ago by the younger half-sister of Michigan’s Democratic Senate candidate. In 2012, Abdul El-Sayed’s half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, described “an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early ’70s.” Republicans and members of the media have since pressed El-Sayed, an American of Egyptian descent, to answer whether he has ties to the Islamist movement, which was founded in Egypt and whose offshoots include US-designated terrorist groups. The subject is of particular interest at CBS News, where Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss has repeatedly encouraged the network’s journalists to dedicate serious resources to finding a potential link. In recent weeks, Weiss has personally advocated for CBS News journalists to pursue numerous story angles related to El-Sayed’s supposed sympathy towards the Muslim Brotherhood, and was directly involved in a controversial story about his previous posts comparing the COVID-19 death toll to 9/11.

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She has discussed the topic on editorial calls, and tasked CBS News’ investigative unit with combing through El-Sayed’s background for a potential link to the organization. The network’s investigative team is set to publish a story in the coming days on the subject, though two people familiar with the reporting said that as of Sunday afternoon, it was unclear whether the story will include new revelations. A year into a new regime at CBS News, some of the daily controversies over Weiss’ management style and relations with the White House that defined the first few months have eased. But the politics of the Middle East and the conflict in Israel and Gaza — and its echoes in American domestic politics — remain red-hot inside the company, as a network leader with strong views on the region’s dynamics has attempted to shape its coverage of stories touching its spiraling conflicts. Rank-and-file staff have clashed with editors installed by Weiss over Gaza, leaking embarrassing internal network discussions about coverage — such as last week, when the media-focused news startup Status and Guardian media reporter Jeremy Barr reported on a clash between CBS News’ London bureau and foreign editor Shayndi Raice. Weiss has taken a particularly hands-on approach to the Michigan Senate race, where campaign rhetoric has revolved around El-Sayed’s Muslim faith, and whether he can win over Jewish voters in the state. The Hollywood Reporter reported last month that Weiss faced criticism internally for “overseeing an article that critics say falsely insinuated Michigan’s Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed had ties to the September 11 attacks.” Some CBS News staff have privately grumbled that Weiss is particularly focused on pursuing theories about high-profile progressive candidates that bubble up on X or in right-leaning news outlets. Weiss also tasked staff with pursuing the theory that Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico was in a mental health facility after he disappeared from the campaign trail for over a week in October. He was at home with the flu, journalists from The New York Times confirmed, citing images from Talarico’s home security cameras. (CBS News never gave public credence to the theories and matched the Times’ reporting.)

America’s new housing market is all about luxury—and it runs on cash

America’s home-buying market is a house divided. On one side, near-record home prices and the recent surge in mortgage rates above 7% have relegated buyers to the sidelines. In many cities, sales are stagnant and sellers are cutting prices for lower-end and entry-level homes to lure back buyers. On the other is a robust luxury market, where wealthier home shoppers swerve around high rates with jumbo down payments or all-cash purchases. The top third of the market is still buying, and spending enough to push up home prices nationally by more than 4% over the past two years. This dichotomy is playing out across the country. In 33 of the top 50 metro areas, luxury home prices are rising faster or falling slower than starter home prices, according to data from First American Data and Analytics, a real-estate data and economics firm.

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In the greater San Francisco area, home prices have surged as the AI boom has brought tech employees new wealth. But just about all of that price growth has come from the luxury market, where prices are up 4.6% year-over-year, compared with a 1.7% decline for the starter tier and a 0.6% decline for the middle tier, according to First American. Around Tampa, Fla., where a surge in new construction after the pandemic raised inventory, home prices in the bottom third of the market—below $305,000—were down 4.1% in August. The luxury-market homes—priced above $471,833—have been able to hold steady at 0.4% growth. The trend in the housing market reflects a growing divergence in the fortunes of the country’s economic classes. Wealth has surged for Americans with steady, high-paying jobs or businesses and stock investments. At the same time, middle- and working-class Americans are locked out of that level of prosperity and struggle to keep up with rising costs on nearly every front. The same trends are shaping the new-home market. Home builders are shifting their focus toward luxury homes, which generate far wider margins than entry-level homes. Many builders have struggled to unload built-up inventories of entry-level homes, compelling them to offer significant incentives in the form of mortgage rate buydowns.

Macron urges calm as France counts the cost of worst unrest in years

President Emmanuel Macron appealed for calm on Sunday, a day after France suffered one of its worst days of unrest in years, with thousands arrested and shops looted or damaged after protests over high prices and declining public services. Fresh ?clashes broke out in Paris and Marseille, where riot police intervened to prevent attempts to ransack businesses. Nationwide demonstrations had erupted into riots on Saturday, with a town ?hall torched, shops pillaged and buildings covered in graffiti as violent groups clashed with police in cities across the country. "Looking at these images, we have all asked ourselves: What was going through their minds? How can French people do ?this to France?" Macron said in a televised address to the nation. "Nothing justifies it, nothing explains it, nothing excuses it. Tonight, we all feel anger and shame."

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Saturday's unrest laid bare the deep anger at Macron, who leaves office in 2027 after a decade in power that has increasingly become defined by social discontent, a weak economy and ballooning debt. Macron said those protesting peacefully had legitimate grievances and their actions should not be confused with those seeking to wreak havoc. He stopped short of declaring a state of emergency, as demanded by some right-wing politicians, but said the government would act to ?allow prefects to ban protests if necessary to protect public buildings ?and local businesses. The government has blamed the violence on what it said were ultra-left groups, as well as criminals it said had instigated the looting. One protester died on Saturday after suffering a cardiac arrest during demonstrations in Paris. Police made 2,400 arrests across France, ?while nearly 1,000 officers were injured, French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said. Police again clashed with protesters and fired tear gas at Place de la Republique on Sunday afternoon, and protesters had set fire to piles of bicycles. A Reuters witness said there appeared to be several hundred protesters in the area. A massive clean-up operation took place in cities from Lille in the north to Marseille in the south and ?from ?Strasbourg in the east to Bordeaux in the southwest, where a masked mob invaded the residence of the ?local prefect.

‘You Can See Everything’ sets Rotten Tomatoes, Letterboxd review records

We are running out of ways to describe just how critically beloved You Can See Everything is, the mind-bending Elizabeth Holmes pseudo-documentary from Nathan Fielder. Now, we have to add audiences on top of that as well. Just a day after putting up an astonishing score on Metacritic, the dust has settled with two more records across two other sites, one for 2026, one for much longer than that. On Rotten Tomatoes, the website issued a statement that said You Can See Everything was the only 100% certified fresh movie of the year, having more than 80 reviews in. Now, it’s dropped to a 99% because of a single negative review, but the 99% with 101 reviews still seems to be the record for the year regardless. Then, on top of that, you can add the just-in 99% Rotten Tomatoes audience score for the film, matching the critics at near perfection.

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There is nothing that matches that. Audiences loved Spider-Man: Brand New Day enough to make it $2.5 billion, but it is still lower with a 97% audience score. Project Hail Mary has a 95%. There are barely any other releases even in this category at all. Continuing with the fan review format, we can head over to Letterboxd, the movie rating site that has become a hobby, sometimes practically a job, for the biggest cinema fans. This record may be the most impressive of any of these, and really for any movie in…many years. You Can See Everything, with a 4.7/5 score, is the fourth-highest reviewed offering on the entire site. It could be considered the highest-scored movie ever, as #1 is a live Radiohead concert and two others, Band of Brothers and Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, are TV shows. This is the list sorted by average rating, and not a final calcuation. Many movies are going to have tens of thousands of more reviews in, but right now, among earlier viewers, it has universal, almost unprecedented praise and scores. Those are reviews, however, and the question turns to how all of this will translate into box office results. Positively, is the obvious answer, but we are still asking people to believe that a three-hour documentary about a Theranos scam artist is worth spending more than a full afternoon with. Previously, estimates were for around a $7-8 million opening weekend, though if reviews are this good, and word-of-mouth travels fast as a result, that may prove to be an underestimate. The budget of the documentary, as you might expect, is very low, around $5-7 million.

Early childhood educators fear tougher working conditions amid Trump proposals

Early childhood educators are sounding the alarm at changes proposed by the Trump administration to loosen regulations on the industry such as staff-to-child ratios. Advocates are on the edge of their seats after the public comment period closed on a proposal from the administration that would take a unified Head Start, a program that serves 700,000 children from low-income households, and create a state-by-state approach for many regulations. But in an industry already plagued by staffing shortages and low pay — educators fear these changes will make the job even more difficult. A survey of almost 4,000 early childhood educators from the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) found a majority worry that increasing staff-to-child ratios will make their jobs harder and pose as a safety issue for everyone involved.

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Eighty percent say bigger group sizes would make it harder to meet students’ individual needs, and 78 percent said there is greater risk of more people leaving the industry due to burnout. More than half of early childhood educators said they would be likely to leave if the ratios increased. “I think that if they were to try to raise the child to teacher ratio, that it would just completely collapse the industry,” said Tricia Hulsether, a worker at Windy Willow Preschool in Minnesota. “It’s already very difficult to have, especially in an infant room, four to one ratio. If they were to try and raise that, no one would want to work in that room.” “Even at a four to one ratio, we have our administrative staff and our other teachers stepping in just to assist at certain times of the day, and if that was more, no one would want to be in there,” she added. “I think the parents wouldn’t want their child in there either. It wouldn’t just be that the teachers are too stressed. The children are going to be distressed.” The Trump administration’s proposal shifts the responsibility of regulation onto the states, creating vastly different class sizes, education requirements and background checks depending on the area.

Zacharia speaks out after White House press secretary exit: ‘It was an honor’

Katie Zacharia issued her first public statement Friday night after a White House official announced she’d be “transitioning out” of the press secretary post after just five days in the role. In a post on the social media platform X, Zacharia praised President Trump’s leadership, saying, “It was an honor to work for him.” “President Trump is a kind, wonderful, gracious, thoughtful, enthusiastic, and hardworking man,” she wrote in her post, which included a picture of herself and Trump in the Oval Office. She continued, “I wish more Americans appreciated him. No one will ever make America great the way he has and continues to.”

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Zacharia’s departure follows the president’s remarks to reporters on Friday that he had advised her to “reconsider” the position. The former political commentator has now logged the shortest press secretary tenure in the position’s history. Her exit also followed a wave of scrutiny over a shaky debut press conference, which lasted 14 minutes and included only three questions from conservative-leaning outlets, as well as skepticism over her legal background. Zacharia, who replaced former White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, had presented herself as a lawyer during her TV appearances. When asked by a reporter on Tuesday about which state she passed the bar exam in, Zacharia responded, “When I moved to China.” However, the Wall Street Journal reported later that evening that she had failed the exam, prompting watchdog group Campaign for Accountability to file a complaint with the State Bar of California on Wednesday over her claims that she is a lawyer. In an interview with conservative outlet Real America’s Voice, Zacharia said she “misheard” the question but added that her bar exam results were “inconsequential” because she moved to China with her husband for work after graduation.

Copyright October 19, 2026, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved