Lead Stories

Dems raise 2.5 times as much as GOP in Senate battlegrounds

Senate Republicans had been warning for weeks that they were at risk of being overtaken by a Democratic fundraising wave. It ended up being a tsunami. All told, Democratic candidates across the 10 top Senate battlegrounds raised a collective $203 million last quarter, nearly 2.5 times the GOP’s $83 million. In fact, Senate Democratic fundraising in the last three months was so meteoric the question wasn’t whether Democrats outraised their Republican opponents — it's whether they doubled, tripled or quadrupled them. Three battleground Democrats each raised more than $30 million between July 1 and Sept. 30 — an absolutely staggering sum. And all but three outraised their opponents by at least a 2:1 margin, if not more. Here’s a breakdown of the top races:

Montana: Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, the most endangered incumbent seeking reelection, raised more than any of his peers with a $32.2 million quarter. That’s over three times Republican Tim Sheehy’s $9.7 million. Ohio: Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown raised nearly five times as much as Republican Bernie Moreno. The incumbent had a $30.7 million quarter compared to Moreno’s $6.5 million. Ohio has seen more TV spending than any other Senate race this cycle. Arizona: Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego raised $21.8 million, nearly 2.5 times as much as Republican Kari Lake’s nearly $9 million. Gallego has been trouncing Lake on TV and leading in public and private polling. Maryland: Democrat Angela Alsobrooks raised $13.4 million last quarter for the open Senate seat. That’s four times as much as former Gov. Larry Hogan, who raked in $3.3 million. Hogan has a well-funded super PAC helping on TV, but he’s still trailed in recent polling. Pennsylvania: Republican Dave McCormick, a former CEO of one of the world’s largest hedge funds, raised $7.6 million last quarter. That’s less than half of Sen. Bob Casey’s nearly $16 million haul. Casey is going to need it — Republican super PACs have been dumping millions in to defeat him.

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Religious school choice advocates envision next steps after significant wins

The school choice movement has notched some dramatic wins over the past few years. In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states can’t exclude religious schools from tuition assistance programs, while programs that channel public funds into accounts that parents can spend on alternative education are on the rise. “We are in a school choice moment, the school choice movement,” Nicole Stelle Garnett, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame who directs the university’s Education Law Project, said Thursday (Oct. 10). “After more than three decades of incremental growth, the tide has turned in the battle for parental choice and education.” Garnett was speaking to advocates for religious schools at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, who had gathered to discuss the movement’s next steps at an event called “Church and State: Reimagining Faith Communities’ Role in K–12 Education.”

Robert Pondiscio, an AEI senior fellow, told attendees that school choice measures had flourished in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing the “crisis of trust in public education, in institutions in general” caused partially by many parents’ feeling they could no longer depend on public schools. Pondiscio said the “grievances and flash points” over COVID-19, race and gender all also pushed anxious parents away from the public school system. “Remote learning ripped the lid off” the “black box” that had been U.S. education so that parents could see what their children were being taught, he said. “There is no such thing as a values neutral education,” said Pondiscio, repeating a common sentiment among the event’s speakers. Pondiscio said such culture war issues had long operated in education.“We invented the culture war in schools. It didn’t come for us. We created it,” he said. Pondiscio celebrated the rapid spread of universal education savings account programs, which permit parents to opt out of the public school system and receive thousands of tax dollars for their children’s educational expenses, since they first went into effect in Arizona two years ago. “The biggest thing that ESAs do is open the door for public dollars to be used for religious education, so, as you know, it’s functionally a voucher,” Pondiscio said.

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Ted Cruz, Colin Allred come out swinging over abortion, immigration in Texas debate

Republican incumbent Ted Cruz and Democratic challenger Colin Allred came out swinging in their Tuesday night debate, each portraying their opponent as too extreme to serve in the U.S. Senate. Allred began by introducing himself as a fourth-generation Texan with a bipartisan record in Congress before attacking Cruz as divisive and “the most extreme senator” in Washington. “I’m the exact opposite of Sen. Cruz,” said Allred, who also criticized Cruz for vacationing in Cancun during deadly 2021 blackouts in Texas. “The truth is, we don’t have to be embarrassed by our senator. We can get a new one.” Cruz urged voters to listen for the difference between Allred’s words and actions and promised to expose his opponent’s “radical” record, saying Allred would seek to obscure it. “We’re doing an awful lot right in the state of Texas,” Cruz said. “Colin Allred wants to change that. I want to keep Texas, Texas.”

In a fast-paced back and forth on abortion, immigration, inflation and other hot-button issues, the candidates sought to portray themselves as aligned with Texas values and their opponent as dangerous and out of touch. Tuesday’s one-hour debate, held at WFAA’s downtown Dallas studio without an audience, came as recent polls show Allred, a congressman from Dallas, making significant gains on Cruz. Even so, most political handicappers give Cruz the edge three weeks ahead of the Nov. 5 election, and a University of Houston survey released Tuesday showed Cruz leading Allred 50-46. The debate, aired live on WFAA-TV (Channel 8) and other TEGNA stations across the state, was moderated by Jason Whitely, WFAA’s senior political reporter, and Gromer Jeffers Jr., The Dallas Morning News’ political writer. The first question probed the candidates’ thoughts on abortion, specifically whether Cruz supports exceptions for rape and incest. Cruz avoided addressing his position on those specific exceptions, instead saying the U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe vs. Wade returned regulations to the control of the states. He objected to Allred blaming him for Texas’ near-total abortion ban, saying those policy decisions were up to state lawmakers. “You wouldn’t expect Texas’ laws to be the same as California,” Cruz said. “You wouldn’t expect Alabama to be the same as New York.”

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All eyes on Gov. Greg Abbott as fellow Republicans urge him to pardon Robert Roberson

A GOP megadonor and close ally of Gov. Greg Abbott is working with an unusual bipartisan coalition to call for clemency in the case of Robert Roberson, who is scheduled to be executed on Thursday in the death of his 2-year-old daughter. “I felt like God was pushing me and telling me that I needed to get involved in this case,” said Doug Deason, who advised the Trump administration on criminal justice issues and has been a crucial voice among Texas Republicans who oppose the death penalty and support other reform measures. “I’ve taken it very very seriously, I’ve done everything that I possibly can.” Texas lawmakers will also be holding a hearing at the Capitol on Wednesday to highlight Roberson’s case and other issues related to convictions based on“junk science.” That term is often used to refer to the diagnosis of “shaken baby syndrome” that was the basis for Roberson’s capital murder conviction in Anderson County back in 2002.

“This was a pretty clear case where Robert Roberson did not have due process,” said Lacey Hull, a Republican state representative from Houston, during an appearance on CNN this morning. “Texans deserve to know that our justice system is fair … and we cannot say that right now.” Abbott did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A slew of new scientific evidence and medical experts say that Roberson is not responsible for his daughter’s death. Similar claims of “shaken baby syndrome” made by prosecutors in child death cases have been discredited across the country. But Texas judges have so far denied all of Roberson’s legal appeals, and since he is set to die in just two days, a pardon or a commutation of his sentence by Abbott is his best chance. In an interview, Deason told the Chronicle he has been talking directly with Abbott’s general counsel, James Sullivan, and two other Abbott staff members in recent weeks. The bestselling author John Grisham, who has written about the Roberson case, is also a part of those conversations along with Roberson’s legal team, Deason said.

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State Stories

In wake of Ken Paxton’s acquittal, Senate mulls changing rules for impeachment

Work has begun on legislation to change state impeachment proceedings, a Texas Senate committee was told Tuesday. After the Senate voted last year to acquit Attorney General Ken Paxton of impeachment charges, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick criticized the process as rushed, secretive and unfair to the accused. Patrick followed by directing the Senate State Affairs Committee to study and propose changes to the impeachment process when the Legislature meets next year. During a State Affairs meeting at the Capitol on Tuesday, state Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, said he has been drafting laws to address what he saw as flaws in the process.

Birdwell’s input is notable. The six-term senator chaired the committee that drafted the rules governing Paxton’s trial in the Senate. Birdwell was not at the Capitol Tuesday due to a COVID-19 illness, according to Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, who read aloud a letter from Birdwell. Last year, Patrick, who presided over Paxton’s trial, criticized the impeachment as “rammed through” the House without due process. The House voted 121-23 to impeach Paxton two days after its General Investigating Committee unveiled 20 articles of impeachment accusing the attorney general of corruption and misusing his office. Patrick has called for the Texas Constitution to be amended to require evidentiary hearings and a slower House impeachment process. “This is not a partisan issue,” Patrick said at the end of Paxton’s trial. “We owe it to future legislatures to make these changes so no future official impeached by the House, whether Republican, Democrat or independent, is subject to the way this impeachment process occurred in the House this year.”

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Troy Nehls: Add new federal judges

Federal district courts across the country are currently plagued by overwhelming caseloads and multiyear backlogs. These overloads are causing Americans, including Texans, to be denied access to our justice system, impeding the constitutional guarantee of a speedy trial in criminal cases and making it difficult to resolve civil disputes. This situation is totally unacceptable and is incumbent upon Congress to rectify. Our nation’s federal court system consists of three levels: district courts, circuit courts and the Supreme Court of the United States. Across the 50 states and U.S. territories, we have 94 district courts with 677 authorized judgeships. Texas has four federal district courts. From 2000 to 2020, America’s population grew by approximately 50 million residents. Despite the drastic increase in population, Congress last authorized new district court judgeships in 2002, more than two decades ago, through the 21st Century Department of Justice Appropriations Authorization Act, in which 11 new federal district judgeships were added.

As of June 30, 2024, our nation’s court system has 724,209 pending cases, which don’t include misdemeanor criminal cases, according to data compiled by the United States Courts. The Southern District of Texas alone, headquartered in Houston, has a backlog of 14,737 cases as of June 30, 2024. The Eastern District of Texas is experiencing a backlog of 6,470 cases. Currently, the average time between the filing of a civil suit to a resolution of the case in the Southern District of Texas is 7.6 months. Criminal cases in the Southern District of Texas have an average time of 5.1 months between the filing of the indictment and a resolution of the case. In the Eastern District of Texas, the average time from the filing of a civil suit to a resolution of the case is 7.6 months, and the average time for a criminal case is a stark 23.9 months. Given these increasingly persistent backlogs in our federal court system, the Judicial Conference, which was created by Congress in 1922 and is the national policymaking body for the federal courts headed by Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, made recommendations to Congress in March 2023 to create 66 new district court judgeships to meet the increased workload demands and alleviate the backlog our justice system faces. Ultimately, every American should be afforded the administration of justice in a reasonable timeframe, which is exactly why I co-led the U.S. House of Representatives version of the Judicial Understaffing Delays Getting Emergencies Solved (JUDGES) Act of 2024 alongside Reps. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., and Hank Johnson, D-Ga.

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World Series, Austin’s music festival and a State Fair: Abbott dotes on Texas tourism

Gov. Greg Abbott spoke about the boost the State Fair of Texas and SpaceX have been for Texas during fireside chat at American Airlines headquarters. There’s no doubt that Lone Star State is a prime tourism state. Just look at the last few weeks of major events held from Dallas Cowboys games to the Austin City Limits Music Festival and even the Texas State Fair coming to a close this weekend. Gov. Greg Abbott spoke in a fireside chat held in Fort Worth at the American Airlines headquarters Tuesday. Moderated by Geoff Freeman, CEO and president of the U.S. Travel Association, the two discussed Texas’ booming economy fueled by Texas’ “everything’s bigger” attitude. Last year, he said, over 470,000 people moved to Texas from another state.

“Businesses don’t relocate without someone visiting first,” Abbott told attendees. “People don’t buy a second home without visiting first. Travel is really that incubator of other spending that happens. You’ve seen a lot of that spending right here in Texas.” Abbott explained the state is growing at a rate where its difficult to find a place to stay because of how busy hotels are hosting various events happening at the same time. But the events bring in major dollars to the economy. According to Abbott, Formula 1 in Austin injects about $1 billion into the Austin economy alone because of travel and tourism. He said half a billion was added into Austin County because of the two-week music festival, Austin City Limits. He also pointed to the growth in North Texas, like the relocation of the PGA headquarters to Frisco and opened a new headquarters in 2022. That eventually led to the massive Omni PGA Frisco Resort. Abbott reiterated that Texas is built for just about all of the major entertainment experiences imaginable, just maybe not the Winter Olympics. The state is naturally accustomed to high demand and big venue events, he said. “Texas has always been a huge entertainment center,” Abbott said. “There were different people — before Taylor Swift, there was Willie Nelson.”

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Houston Chronicle Editorial: HISD's $4.4 billion bond requires trust. Mike Miles hasn't earned it yet.

No one, no matter how angry they are about the state’s takeover of the Houston Independent School District, should look away from the aging, decaying buildings in which we expect some of our youngest Houstonians to learn. The “temporary” portable buildings at Cornelius Elementary School, long bursting at the seams and now storm-damaged as well, were never supposed to last 30 years, subjecting generations of the same families to the same cramped conditions. The kids at Benavidez Elementary School deserve a restroom with floors that aren’t wet and peeling, urinals that aren’t broken and bagged, faucets that aren’t missing handles. The principal at Cage Elementary shouldn’t have to embark each morning on an expedition through the campus to pinpoint which component of a patchwork system of rented and portable air-conditioning units is malfunctioning today. The students of HISD shouldn’t have to worry whether traces of lead are seeping into the water, past the district’s jerry-rigged mitigation efforts. Or whether a troubled individual with a semi-automatic can slip past a lack of fencing and secure entry vestibules at hundreds of campuses.

We, the taxpayers who fund the state’s largest school district, should be willing to invest our hard-earned money to fix these things, and to build others — including more Pre-K classrooms and career and technology centers — for our young scholars who will someday become Houston’s workers and artists and parents and community organizers and political leaders. We should pay it forward the way past generations did for us. In normal times, that’s how public education is supposed to work. But these aren’t normal times. Voters are being asked to approve a $4.4 billion bond for HISD on the November ballot at a time when our school district is under state control, led by a state-appointed board of managers that replaced our democratically elected trustees and by a state-appointed superintendent who is wholly unaccountable to the community he serves. From the beginning, this editorial board made it clear that, if the takeover had to happen, we wanted Superintendent Mike Miles to succeed. Kids’ futures at chronically failing campuses depended on it. We also implored Miles to build trust among teachers, parents and the general community. At almost every turn, he failed to build that trust.

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TEA report finds ‘no evidence of wrongdoing’ by Mike Miles, Third Future Schools

The Texas Education Agency's investigation into alleged misuse of state funds concluded Third Future Schools — a Colorado-based charter school network founded by Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles — did not violate any Texas laws. The investigation also found “no evidence” of any wrongdoing by Third Future Schools Texas or Miles, who was not one of the subjects of the TEA’s investigation. TEA officials said a special investigation began after Spectrum News Texas reported in May that Third Future Schools Texas had inappropriately diverted state funds from public school students in Texas through partnerships between three Texas school districts — Austin, Ector County, and Midland ISDs.

The outlet reported Third Future Schools charged fees to its Texas schools, which fed into a general fund that, in part, subsidized one of its schools in Colorado before it closed. According to a 2022 audit, Third Future Schools Texas also reported it had run a deficit due to debts to “other TFS network schools and to TFS corporate.” Spectrum News’ initial story prompted outrage among HISD community members and state lawmakers, who called for an investigation into Miles’ spending practices and an audit of the charter school network, including its financial dealings and potential noncompliance with state laws. In a 29-page report, the TEA said it was closing its investigation after concluding that the charter network and the three districts had not broken any laws. It also found the allegations in Spectrum News’s report — as well as a separate story by the Texas Observer — were either not applicable to the network's partnerships, could not be substantiated or were proven to be false. “TEA concludes that there is no merit to the allegations contained in the media reports that state funds were being inappropriately diverted from public school students in Texas,” David Rodriguez, the executive director of the TEA’s division of investigations, said in a letter Tuesday to the board president and superintendent of Third Future Schools Texas.

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Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones seems to threaten radio hosts' jobs after getting agitated over questions

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones seemingly threatened the jobs of radio hosts during a contentious interview on Tuesday morning. Appearing on 105.3 The Fan, Jones grew frustrated and irritated by the questions he was facing about Mike McCarthy and the lack of moves the Cowboys made in the offseason. Following Sunday’s embarrassing 47-9 loss to the Detroit Lions at home, many fans were calling for McCarthy to be fired as the Cowboys fell to 3-3 on the season. Jones has only made one coaching move during the season, when he fired Wade Phillips in 2010 and installed Jason Garrett as head coach. The Cowboys owner said that won’t be happening this time around. “I won’t be making any others during the season,” Jones told 105.3 The Fan.

“We were 1-7 at that time — 1-7. I think as I recall, we had gotten beat the week before by about the same score – we were on the road, not at home – but about the exact score that we got beat Sunday. We got beat and so I made the change, and we had one win. Little bit of difference there, man.” Jones stated that making a head coaching change midseason usually doesn’t go over well. “They aren’t good, and they usually are ineffective and they just aren’t good,” Jones explained. “They’ve got to be — at that particular time (in 2010), I did think it was the thing to do. I think it did produce a positive effect, but we’ll never know, will we? “All Wade did was move over to Denver, he didn’t become the head coach, he became the defensive coordinator. And it was one of the few times in my 35 years in the NFL that I heard throughout the league that the one coach was responsible for them having the team (they did), and that was Wade Phillips running the defense for Denver when they won the Super Bowl.” It’s been a struggle for the Cowboys in the first six weeks of the season. After being one of the best teams on both sides of the ball in 2023, Dallas now ranks 25th in defense in total yards and 30th on offense in points per game (21). Quarterback Dak Prescott has thrown eight touchdowns and six interceptions on the season. The team has also been dealing with significant injuries to Micah Parsons, Demarcus Lawrence, and Daron Bland. When asked about why he didn’t make more offseason moves to improve the team, Jones grew agitated and seemingly threatened the radio hosts’ jobs. “This is not your job. Your job isn’t to let me go over all the reasons that I did something and I’m sorry that I did it. That’s not your job. I’ll get somebody else to ask these questions. I’m not kidding,” Jones said on 105.3 The Fan. “You’re not going to figure it out what the team is doing right or wrong. If you are, or any five or 10 like you, you need to come to this (NFL) meeting I’m going to today with 32 teams here, you’re geniuses.”

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Texas county adopts policy to ensure unclaimed bodies are treated with dignity

A Texas county that for years gave unclaimed bodies to a local medical school without families’ consent will now cremate or bury those people instead — but only after officials document that they have done all they can to contact relatives. The revamped rules, approved unanimously Tuesday by the Tarrant County Commissioners Court, are the latest change prompted by an NBC News investigation that revealed how the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth cut up and leased out the remains of hundreds of unclaimed people to other schools, medical technology companies and the Army. The vast majority of the unclaimed bodies — people whose families could not afford funeral arrangements or could not be found — came from Tarrant and Dallas counties, which each saved half a million dollars a year in burial and cremation costs. “The county is now in a position to do things ethically, as opposed to before, when we counted on the University of North Texas Health Science Center to handle our business,” Commissioner Alisa Simmons said after Tuesday’s vote.

Tarrant County had delegated the work of contacting dead people’s families and cremating their remains to the Health Science Center. The new policy brings that responsibility back to the county — at an estimated cost of $675,000 a year. Officials in Tarrant and Dallas counties had justified sending unclaimed bodies to the Health Science Center by saying their use for training and research would help improve medical care for the living. NBC News found repeated failures to contact relatives who were reachable before the bodies were declared unclaimed. The Commissioners Court did not publicly discuss the details of the new policy — or its costs — before it voted unanimously to adopt it. Commissioners Court records indicate that the county has $57,760 in a burials account and will have to find additional money to cover the cost of the new policy. A spokesperson for Judge Tim O’Hare, Tarrant County’s top elected official, said in a statement that Tuesday’s vote was important “to honor the dignity and memory of deceased individuals the County is responsible for handling after they pass away.”

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Kiewit beats out 2 firms for Texas desalination plant job

Corpus Christi picked Kiewit Infrastructure South Co. to design and build the city’s first seawater desalination plant in order to create a drought-proof water supply for its growing population, according to an Oct. 4 news release from the city. The Inner Harbor Seawater Desalination Treatment Plant project aims to relieve water scarcity for Corpus Christi Water customers across seven counties in the area, according to the project website, and will produce up to 30 million gallons of water per day. Currently, Corpus Christi’s four surface water sources depend solely on rainfall.

Last year, Texas lawmakers agreed on a $1 billion plan for new water projects and to repair aging infrastructure, though the cost to fully address the state’s water needs is much higher. Texas is dealing with leaky pipes and old treatment plants stressed by a dwindling water supply, more demand and extreme weather such as persisting droughts, according to the Texas Tribune. Texas is not alone in upgrading its water systems: A slew of major AEC firms have reported strong demand for water infrastructure projects in recent earnings calls. Desalination is growing in popularity amid worsening water scarcity, but it remains a less common treatment method. Processing saltwater for drinking water is relatively costly and requires significant energy, and the process disturbs the environment both when the plant takes in water and when it discharges brine, according to E&E News.

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Charles Luke: Are vouchers too costly for Texas?

During the last session of the Texas Legislature, Governor Greg Abbott promised to veto any school choice bill that did not include an expansive universal voucher in the form of an Education Savings Account (ESA). While such bills emerged in both the regular session and subsequent special sessions, they were defeated by a coalition of rural Republicans and Democrats. When House Public Education Chairman, Rep. Brad Buckley proffered an omnibus funding bill in the fourth special session with a Governor-approved universal ESA type voucher in it, the voucher was stripped from the bill with the passage of an amendment offered by Rep. John Raney from Bryan, Texas. A major concern about the voucher was its long-term budgetary cost. While the cost of vouchers in Buckley’s bill, (HB1) was estimated at around $500 million, some in Austin cringed at the potential budgetary ramifications if more families began using the voucher.

Former State Representative Paul Colbert says, “regardless of any temporary limitations that might be initially applied to a Texas voucher program, the governor has made it clear that his goal is to provide ESAs to every child in the state.” Colbert , who spent 12 years in office, served as the Texas House Public Education budget chair and Appropriations member and as the research director of the Texas Senate Education Committee, indicates that the cost to the state could be astronomical if more people use the voucher. “Last year,” says Colbert, “the website of the Texas Private School Association said their member schools enrolled 250,000 students. The website for the Texas Home School Coalition claimed that 750,000 students were being home-schooled. Adding those two together means that about 1 million students were in private primary and secondary education in Texas. If each of these students were to receive the $10,500 ESA voucher proposed last year, that would cost $10.5 billion of our state tax dollars per year, or $21 billion in the biennial (2-year) budget. That is without a single child leaving a public school for private education, and it would bankrupt the state. Plus, if just 1 percent of current Texas students did leave, public schools would lose over $1 billion per biennium in state funding. Multiple states that adopted “limited” voucher programs have seen them balloon far beyond their estimated costs as those limits have been lifted. Given the goals of our state leadership, that would surely happen here.”

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Mifepristone case update: intervenor-plaintiffs file motion for leave to file

The States of Missouri, Kansas and Idaho—the intervenor-plaintiffs in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine—filed a motion for leave to file with an attached amended complaint in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas Amarillo Division on Friday. As we previously reported, the parties involved submitted a Joint Status Report on Sept. 30, where the intervenor-plaintiffs stated that they intended to file an amended complaint that “will confirm that the States do not challenge the original 2000 approval of mifepristone, merely the FDA’s actions from 2016 to 2023.” The amended complaint does not challenge the drug’s original approval, nor does it call for the FDA to vacate its original approval or declare that mifepristone and misoprostol fall outside the scope of the FDA’s regulation, as the original complaint did.

The amended complaint asks the Court to reinstate the drug’s 2016 risk evaluation and mitigation strategy (REMS), rescind the 2019 generic approval and reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement. It also asks the Court to hold unlawful “the provision of drugs to adolescent populations because the FDA lacked authority under § 355c(a)(2)(B)(i) to extrapolate pediatric effectiveness,” another change from the original complaint. The FDA’s 2016 Major Changes to REMS allowed pregnant people to take mifepristone at up to 70 days of gestation from 49 days, allowed non-doctors—such as nurse practitioners—to become certified prescribers of mifepristone and eliminated the requirement for follow-up visits to a doctor after taking the drug. In 2021, the FDA removed the in-person dispensing requirement, a decision they made in response to the coronavirus pandemic, but they finalized it in 2023, along with requiring pharmacies that dispense mifepristone to be certified. The current mifepristone REMS can be found on the FDA’s website.

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Mexico still sees steady flow of migrants to US border

Despite perceptions in the United States, the flow of migrants coming to the border continues at a steady pace, Mexican border experts say. The difference is that thousands are now coming from southern Mexico to border cities like Juarez for appointments at U.S. ports of entry, while others are seeking entry in ways that are hard to document — such as hiring smugglers. That’s what some scholars and government officials said Monday at an immigration conference in Juarez. “A lot of people are saying migration has halted. I dare say this is not the case,” said Enrique Valenzuela, head of the Chihuahua Population Council. “Here on this border, we find ourselves at somewhat of an impasse, where it would appear the flow of people stopped. But we see there is more interest in coming in through CBP One. We know because people come to us seeking help with the application.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently reported 58,000 migrant apprehensions between ports of entry last August and 44,700 others processed through CBP One at ports of entry. Valenzuela said migrant shelters that are church run, as well as those operated by Mexican government entities, remain 40 percent full or more. The one thing that has vanished is large groups of people approaching the U.S. border wall and trying to surrender to the Border Patrol and claim asylum. Valenzuela said various factors account for that, including word-of-mouth among the migrants that approach no longer guarantees they will be released into the U.S. while their case goes through immigration court. “It became clear that surrendering did not guarantee their stay,” he said. Valenzuela said it’s possible the election of a new U.S. president will affect the migratory flow, as it has in the past. But he said no one knows exactly what will happen in weeks to come. Rodolfo Rubio Salas, an investigator with Colegio de Chihuahua (Chihuahua College), said at least there is no mystery on how Mexico will handle migration in the future. He said President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo brings continuity to the policies of her predecessor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

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County Stories

New center offering mental health, support services to Tarrant students set to open in 2025

An F-18 fighter jet took off over the future site of Communities In Schools of Greater Tarrant County’s Center for Student Support. “We planned that,” Lindsey Garner, president and CEO of CISGTC, joked to a crowd of more than 50 education leaders, local officials and partners who have backed the project since its capital fundraising campaign began in 2023. Matt Dufrene, CISGTC campaign chair and vice president at Texas Health Resources, could hardly believe the day had come — on Oct. 9, CISGTC celebrated a milestone when shovels ceremonially hit the ground in Westworth Village, marking the start of construction on the CIS Center for Student Support. The $5.5 million project will serve as the organization’s new headquarters and a hub for resources aimed at supporting thousands of at-risk students and their families throughout Tarrant County, Garner said.

So far, CISGTC has secured $3.2 million in donations from supporters including the Amon G. Carter Foundation, The Morris Foundation and the Ryan Foundation. Scheduled to open in the fall of 2025, the center will feature a mental health counseling wing, a fresh food pantry in partnership with Texas Health Resources and a training and enrichment facility. The expanded space will allow CIS to extend its services, including trauma-informed training for staff and community members, along with enhanced case management services, Garner said. Communities In Schools, or CIS, is a dropout prevention program funded in part by the Texas Legislature and administered by the Texas Education Agency. There are 27 different CIS programs in Texas, including CIS of Greater Tarrant County and CIS of the Dallas Region. The program received $33.5 million in funding from the Legislature in 2022; other funding comes from schools and private and public donations. While thanking the organization’s supporters, she spoke to the crowd about the evolving needs of Tarrant County students and the urgency of creating a centralized support hub to better serve the region’s most vulnerable. “We asked local school districts what they see as the most pressing challenges in the coming years,” Garner said. “All this feedback manifested in the planning for the future.” Following those conversations, it was clear mental health would be a priority, Garner said. One of the key features of the new center is its dedicated mental health counseling space, which will allow CIS to expand its services to include after-school and weekend sessions for students and their families. This flexibility is crucial for parents who may work during traditional school hours or for siblings who require joint sessions.

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Dallas County approves opening second early voting site in Rowlett after judge’s order

Rowlett voters will now have two sites to cast ballots early for the Nov. 5 election, but it’s unclear if both locations will be open by the time early voting starts Monday because the city is threatening to revoke one of the building’s operating certifications. The Dallas County Commissioners Court voted 4-1 to add Rowlett Community Centre as an additional polling location to Freedom Place Church, a little less than a mile away. The approval comes after Rowlett’s mayor sued the Commissioners Court and the county’s top elections official, arguing the church didn’t have enough space to accommodate early voters properly. Dallas County District Court Associate Judge Rachel Craig last week approved a temporary injunction denying the church as the city’s sole early voting location. Around half a dozen sites will be open in Rowlett on Election Day. Commissioner John Wiley Price, who represents Rowlett, was the lone dissenting vote. He believed Freedom Place Church would have enough parking for voters and feared the county’s approval to override its elections department’s site designation set a “dangerous precedent.”

“What happens when the next city decides that they want a second voting center?” Price said. The commissioner’s comments counter Rowlett Mayor Blake Margolis and a resident couple who sued. They said it’d be illegal to host early voters only at the church. They cited its 10 parking spaces shared with four tenants as insufficient for the city’s around 65,000 residents and said it would hamper access for voters with disabilities and those who are elderly. Meanwhile, whether Freedom Place Church keeps its doors open is up in the air. The city recently sent a letter to the evangelical church saying a review of its certificate of occupancy found it was issued last year by mistake, and the church has to provide a revised plan to show it has adequate parking. Otherwise, its operation certification would be revoked. Church officials accused the city of religious discrimination and threatened legal action. Cori Reaume, Rowlett’s director of community development, didn’t immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment on the status of the church’s certificate of occupancy. Hiram Sasser, an attorney representing the church, said talks are ongoing.

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City Stories

Fair Park operator accused of misspending donor funds says it is owed $2.1 million

Fair Park’s operator said Tuesday that it’s owed money. Greg O’Dell, Oak View Group’s president of venue management, sent a letter to council members stating that the company is owed $2.1 million in deferred fees over the last three years, further complicating a fight over the park’s financing. “Per the contract, operating expenses and/or deficits are to be paid by revenue from Park operations, fundraising or City subsidy,” O’Dell said in Tuesday’s letter sent to council members. That adds further uncertainty on how the park will be run. OVG officials have said there is a $3 million shortfall in the current fiscal year’s accounting books.

“OVG has repeatedly expressed concern about the growing deficit in operating funds and has offered solutions, including transitioning of certain services at the Park to the City or otherwise reducing certain services offered at Fair Park,” O’Dell’s letter said. The letter is the latest development after Fair Park First, the nonprofit organization contracted by the city to oversee the park, accused OVG of misspending $5.7 million of donor funds earlier this month. Fair Park First subcontracts with OVG to run the day-to-day operations. O’Dell’s letter restated that Fair Park First officials knew and authorized the use of donor funds. Discussion on Fair Park’s finances and oversight is expected to continue in meetings with the Dallas City Council and Park Board on Wednesday and Thursday of this week.

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National Stories

Special report: Horse units patrol border from dusk till dawn

Weighing in at over 1,000 pounds and equipped with night vision, the horses on the Border Patrol’s horse patrol units play an integral part in securing the nation’s border, agency officials tell Border Report. In the Rio Grande Valley Sector, there are 31 horses — all geldings, and most mustangs — and 30 Border Patrol agents who ride them. Officials say their stealth and swift skills are a force multiplier that help to stop migrants from illegally crossing from Mexico into South Texas, especially at night. Border Report recently visited the RGV Sector’s horse patrol training academy in Edinburg, and went on a night ride along with Border Patrol agents on horseback where several migrants who were trying to cross the border were apprehended with the help of horses. We saw firsthand why agents vie for this popular detail, who is selected and how they get these horses to work the border.

“They’re very good partners. In the night they do excellent. They’re able to see. They’re able to identify objects or people coming across before pretty much before agents do,” Border Patrol Supervisory Agent Danny Rios, who has led the horse patrol unit for the RGV for the past few years, told Border Report. “They’re very useful out in the field. They can get into areas that other entities aren’t able to get into. They’re very stealthy out in the field,” Rios said. But before they’re able to go into the field for overnight duty, these horses — and the Border Patrol agents who ride them — must go through extensive training and pass a national Border Patrol training program, that takes about six weeks. The training facilities for the Rio Grande Valley Sector are housed behind the RGV Sector’s headquarter building where there are hitching posts, stables and a large field where new horses are broke in. It’s also where agents must hone horseback skills before they are admitted into this popular detail. There are 24 mustangs currently in the RGV Sector’s horse patrol unit, and seven quarter horses. And Rios says they want to increase the program to 36 horses and agent riders.

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Despite her call to 'do something' for Harris, Michelle Obama has yet to hit the campaign trail

Barack Obama has begun stumping for Vice President Kamala Harris. Bill Clinton is holding a series of campaign events for her in battleground states. Yet the Democratic superstar many members of the party would like to see helping Harris has been absent from the campaign trail so far. With just 20 days until the election, Michelle Obama has worked behind the scenes to boost turnout in key swing states, but she has yet to schedule an official appearance for Harris since the Democratic National Convention. Two people familiar with the matter said she has expressed fresh concerns about security following two assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump. Both Harris and Trump are receiving an unprecedented level of security after the former president faced two apparent attempts on his life this summer. Measures like more Secret Service agents and bulletproof glass are now commonplace on the campaign trail.

“After the two assassination attempts against former President Trump, the staffs of all the former presidents and first ladies recognized the new reality and so does the Secret Service,” a person familiar with the matter said, calling them “a wake-up call to everyone” to redouble their efforts on security “in light of the new reality.” Her low profile stands out after her rousing speech in August at the Democratic National Convention, when she implored members of her party not to get complacent about the November election and repeatedly urged voters to instead “do something!” Michelle Obama is expected to add Harris campaign events to her schedule as Election Day nears, five people familiar with the planning said, though nothing has been finalized at this point. She is expected to play a role in the “closing arguments” for the Democratic campaign, three of those people said. By the time polls close on Nov. 5, another one of the sources said, “she will have made her voice heard.”

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Elder care costs are outpacing inflation. Americans want a lifeline.

The costs of caring for ill and aging loved ones don’t show up on store shelves, but they’re front and center for voters like Sharon Zimmer. Zimmer, 65, of Onalaska, Wisconsin, has been caring for her husband, Chuck Zimmer, since he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and dementia in 2018. “Everything that we worked hard for is going back into his care,” said Sharon — one of the more than 38 million unpaid family caregivers to whom Vice President Kamala Harris appealed last week with a proposal to have Medicare cover the costs of at-home care. The ranks of U.S. family caregivers have swelled by around 4 million since 2015, according to AARP, causing many to drop out of the workforce. For Sharon, that decision came in 2021, when she gave up most of her part-time retail work after it became too much to juggle with caring for Chuck, now 67. The move slashed their annual household income by nearly $24,000.

The couple now have health insurance through Medicare, but they didn’t qualify for the program when Chuck was first diagnosed, causing a big early hit to their finances. Even now, the Zimmers are still dipping into their retirement funds to subsidize his care. Their out-of-pocket costs are set to exceed $17,000 this year, not including security and transportation. That is far more than the average $7,200 unpaid caregivers shoulder annually, up from $7,000 in 2016, according to AARP. And while inflation overall slowed to an annual rate of 2.4% in September, the costs of at-home care for ill and elderly people were 8.7% higher than they were the same time last year, federal data show. Sharon called Harris’ proposal “huge.” While she’d been leaning toward supporting Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, over women’s rights issues, she called the new plan “a deciding factor for us.” Everything that we worked hard for is going back into his care. Caregiving costs have continued to squeeze millions of households even as price increases for other goods and services cool or outright reverse. Many are long-term, essential expenses that eat away at other financial buffers, said Kelsey Flock, a dementia care specialist at the Aging and Disability Resource Center of La Crosse County, Wisconsin. “If your loved one is diagnosed younger, they’re losing their retirement, they’re losing their income, maybe losing the primary caregiver’s health insurance,” Flock said, “so you’re coming up with all of those extras.”

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What to know about early voting in Georgia and North Carolina

Two critical battleground states – Georgia and North Carolina – are kicking off early in-person voting this week, and the Peach State is already seeing a record number of voters. Between a flurry of legislative changes and the fallout from Hurricane Helene, the experience could look different for many voters heading to the polls in the coming weeks. In Georgia, voters can head to the ballot box beginning on Tuesday and in North Carolina, early in-person voting begins on Thursday. Georgia is shattering its record for early voting turnout in the critical swing state on Tuesday, according to state election officials, with over 188,000 votes cast by 2 p.m. ET. “We are looking at blowing by 200,000 votes cast in person today. Hats off to our counties and the voters who are turning out. HUGE!” Gabriel Sterling with Georgia’s Secretary of State office posted on social media.

New state laws after 2020 that tightened rules for absentee ballots and cracked down on the availability of drop boxes may make the option less appealing than early in-person voting, election experts said. While many drop boxes were available 24/7 in 2020, this year there will be fewer of them, and they will be in election offices or early vote locations with hours that tend to mimic normal business hours. “The drop boxes have really been made so inconvenient to use that fewer voters are able to utilize them,” said Kristin Nabers, the Georgia state director for All Voting is Local. “I don’t want to discourage people from using drop boxes by any means, but I can see why people would think it’s easier to show up in person.” Meanwhile, the opportunities to vote early in-person have expanded: Georgia law mandates two Saturdays of early voting and allows for two Sundays of early voting if a county desires. A 2021 law that makes it a crime to offer food or drinks to voters waiting to cast a ballot – which was highly publicized by news outlets and immortalized by comedian Larry David in episodes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” – mostly survived legal challenges. So, offering a bottle of water or a snack to voters within 150 feet of a building where ballots are being cast is still banned. The law also sought to ban offers of food or beverages within 25 feet of a voter standing in line, even if it was well beyond 150 feet of the building where ballots were being cast. A judge paused that provision, allowing voting rights groups to offer so-called line relief to voters that may find themselves waiting in particularly long lines.

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Harris PAC’s $1 million contribution from Ripple’s Chris Larsen shows crypto industry warming to VP

For months, crypto companies and their executives have been pouring tens of millions of dollars into Donald Trump’s effort to win the White House. Chris Larsen isn’t one of them. The co-founder and chairman of Ripple recently contributed $1 million worth of XRP tokens, the currency created by Ripple in 2012, to Future Forward, a super PAC that’s supporting Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign. Larsen, who’s backed candidates across the aisle for the last few years, told CNBC in an interview on Monday that his comfort level with Harris comes from conversations he’s had with people inside the campaign and what he’s seen from the vice president since she replaced President Biden at the top of the ticket in July. It helps that Harris is from the Bay Area.

“She knows people who have grown up in the innovation economy her whole life,” Larsen said. “So I think she gets it at a fundamental level, in a way that I think the Biden folks were just not paying attention to, or maybe just didn’t make the connection between empowering workers and making sure you have American champions dominating their industries.” Larsen’s affection for the Democratic nominee isn’t brand new. In February, he gave the maximum personal contribution of $6,600 to Harris (which would cover the primary and general election), about five months before she became the Democratic presidential nominee, FEC filings show. At the same time, he contributed $100,000 to the Harris Action Fund PAC. In total, Larsen has given around $1.9 million to support Harris’ campaign directly and through PACs, according to FEC data compiled by crypto market and blockchain analyst James Delmore and independently verified by CNBC. Larsen, 64, has a net worth of $3.1 billion, according to Forbes, primarily from his ownership of XRP and involvement in Ripple, which provides blockchain technology for financial services companies.

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Local election officials in Georgia must certify results, state judge rules

County election boards in Georgia are not allowed to refuse to certify election results, a state judge ruled Tuesday. Concerns about fraud or abuse are to be settled in court, the judge said, not by county officials acting unilaterally. “If election superintendents were, as Plaintiff urges, free to play investigator, prosecutor, jury, and judge and so — because of a unilateral determination of error or fraud — refuse to certify election results, Georgia voters would be silenced. Our Constitution and our Election Code do not allow for that to happen,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said in his order. In the wake of the 2020 election, President Donald Trump and his allies pressured county officials to block the certification of his loss. Since then, Republican members of the boards have used the once-routine process of approving election results and sending them on to the state as a political battleground.

McBurney said the law is clear when it says county officials "shall" certify the results. In the footnotes, he said the word was quite clear. "To users of common parlance, 'shall' connotes instruction or command: You shall not pass!" he wrote, quoting Gandalf's famous battle cry from "The Lord of the Rings." "And, generally, even lawyers, legislators, and judges, construe 'shall' as 'a word of command,'" he continued. Julie Adams, a Republican member of the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections, had gone to court claiming she was required to refuse to certify the election results if she believed the results were incorrect or unreliable. Adams, who is a member and the regional coordinator of former Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell’s activist group Election Integrity Network, abstained from voting to certify primary results in Georgia this May. She is one of a growing number of Georgia officials who have refused to certify election results since 2020, worrying election experts that county officials might try to block the routine certification of election results in the name of baseless conspiracy theories.

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Lead Stories

Ted Cruz says he's getting no help from national Republicans in tight race against Colin Allred

As polls show his race tightening, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is lashing out at national Republicans for not doing more to help him in his battle against Democrat Colin Allred. Cruz told Fox News he’s being massively outspent by Allred on the airwaves and couldn’t even afford to get his own ads on TV until three weeks ago. And he complained U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell hasn’t spent a penny on the race even though his PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, is sitting on millions of dollars meant to fight for a GOP majority. “Mitch McConnell runs the largest Republican super PAC in the country and has $400 million. But that super PAC is used to reward the Republican senators who obey him and to punish those who dare to stand up him,” Cruz said during an interview on Life, Liberty & Levin on FOX News on Friday.

Cruz’s comments come just days after Allred’s campaign announced it had raised $30.3 million since July — about $9 million more than Cruz raised during the same period. But Cruz said Allred is getting help from national Democrats. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee last month announced it is preparing to spend millions to support Allred as they see his chances improving to oust Cruz. The committee didn’t spell out exactly how much it would spend. But Cruz told Fox that the combination of national money and Allred’s fundraising haul has his back against the wall going into the final three weeks of his bid to hold onto his seat in the U.S. Senate. “We are in the middle of a full-on battle,” Cruz said. “We are being massively outspent.” There is a heightened tension in part because in-person early voting in Texas starts next week and public polls have shown Cruz and Allred in a tight battle. On Sunday, Politico reported on an internal polling memo by the Senate Leadership Fund that highlighted the trouble Cruz is in. The fund's internal polling, done by the Tarrance Group in Virginia, showed Cruz leading Allred by 3 percentage points in September. But as of Oct. 8 that was down to just 1 point. In the memo, the group pointed out Cruz has much higher unfavorable ratings among voters than Allred. While 48% of respondents said they had an unfavorable view of Cruz, Allred’s unfavorables were at 36%.

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What to know about tonight’s debate between Ted Cruz and Colin Allred

Three weeks before the Nov. 5 election, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, will face off Tuesday night in their only planned debate. Here’s what to know: The one-hour debate will begin at 7 p.m. Central time. WFAA will broadcast the event live, and it will also be streamed across TEGNA apps, including WFAA+. Other TEGNA stations throughout the state will carry the debate live, including KHOU in Houston, KVUE in Austin, KENS in San Antonio, KCEN in Waco, KAGS in College Station, KYTX in Tyler, KIII in Corpus Christi, KBMT-KJAC in Beaumont, KXVA in Abilene, KIDY in San Angelo and KWES in Midland and Odessa.

A free debate feed also will be provided to radio and TV stations in Texas with certain market restrictions. Where is the debate? WFAA will host the debate inside its studio in downtown Dallas. Jason Whitely, WFAA’s senior political reporter, and Gromer Jeffers Jr., The Dallas Morning News’ political writer, are co-moderators. There will be no audience present. What are the debate rules? Each candidate will have 60 seconds to introduce themselves and 90 seconds to answer questions. Their opponent has 90 seconds to respond, and the first candidate gets 60 seconds for a rebuttal. An additional 60 seconds for follow-up could be granted at the discretion of the moderators. Candidates will get one minute each for closing remarks. Who speaks first, who speaks last? Allred won two coin tosses last week and opted to go first in the opening and closing statements, giving Cruz the last word to end the debate.

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Armed man arrested after reportedly threatening FEMA workers

A North Carolina man was arrested on Saturday and accused of threatening federal emergency responders who have been administering aid since Hurricane Helene ravaged parts of the state last month. The man, William Jacob Parsons, 44, of Bostic, N.C., was charged under a law that makes it illegal to carry a weapon in a way that threatens the public. He was arrested at a supermarket where a Federal Emergency Management Agency bus was parked, according to Capt. Jamie Keever, a spokesman for the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office. Mr. Parsons had a handgun and a rifle in his possession. No FEMA personnel were at the site, he said.

The Rutherford County Communications Center received a call on Saturday afternoon that a man armed with an assault rifle had made a comment about harming FEMA workers in the area, according to a statement released by the sheriff’s office. The man was overheard voicing threats at a gas station in neighboring Polk County, and either a station clerk or a customer alerted U.S. Army soldiers nearby, Captain Keever said. The Army informed the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office, whose deputies visited the gas station and obtained a description of the man’s vehicle. That information led them to Mr. Parsons at the supermarket. The arrest occurred after FEMA, which is administering aid to severely flooded counties in the region, directed its employees to stop going door to door to help survivors amid various threats of violence. FEMA workers were still working from designated locations, however. A person with Mr. Parsons’ name and age has faced misdemeanor criminal charges in the past, court records show, including a charge in 2004 of communicating threats, which North Carolina prosecutors later dropped. Social media pages that appear to be run by Mr. Parsons feature messages supporting Mr. Trump and opposing coronavirus vaccines. One of the posts from 2020 shows the logo of the Three Percenters right-wing militia group and the message “When tyranny becomes law, rebellion is order.”

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Can the stock market keep going up? Market watchers think so.

Stocks have climbed since the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates a month ago, with investors betting that it marked the beginning of a series of cuts that will offer a tailwind to the market. And the economy continues to hum, with reports this month showing robust hiring and milder inflation, bolstering the rally. As big companies begin to announce their latest quarterly financial results, providing key numbers that analysts use to model where the market is headed, there is a renewed sense of optimism across Wall Street. That bullishness is largely based on confidence that the Fed will tame inflation without tipping the economy into recession, a “soft landing” seldom achieved by policymakers. “There has been a marked shift relative to 18 months ago,” said Ben Snider, an equity analyst at Goldman Sachs. “When I talk to investors there is much less concern about an economic downturn.”

Falling interest rates are generally good news for stocks because lower borrowing costs can boost corporate profits and raise market valuations. Lower rates also make the potential gains on stocks more attractive relative to the returns offered by bonds. The S&P 500 index has risen 4 percent since the Fed cut rates last month as investors have funneled more than $20 billion into funds that buy U.S. stocks. The benchmark index has set a series of fresh record highs, including after a rise on Monday. Last week, analysts at Fundstrat and Goldman Sachs both raised their year-end forecasts for stocks, with Goldman expecting a further gain of just a little over 2 percent, with the index having already surpassed its previous prediction. That would come on top of what has already been a buoyant year, with the S&P 500 up more than 20 percent through Monday. Even just a few weeks ago, concerns about the economy led analysts to lower their expectations for quarterly corporate earnings growth by more than usual, according to data from FactSet. But the initial batch of earnings reports late last week from bellwether corporations like JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo were stronger than anticipated, a sign that the economy remained solid.

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State Stories

UIL approves proposals aimed at addressing ‘complex’ eligibility challenges for high school athletes

The University Interscholastic League Legislative Council passed several staff proposals that are aimed at student-athlete eligibility during the general session of its annual fall meetings Monday morning in Round Rock. Those changes represent what UIL deputy director Jamey Harrison says are “just the first step” in helping the organization more effectively deal with some of the eligibility issues it's facing when it comes to the ever-changing landscape of high school athletics. “We know that we have some keystone eligibility rules that we need to keep at our core,” Harrison said. “All of that is related to having community and educational basis to our activities and to having as level of a playing field as we can possibly provide to schools. There are some instances where that doesn’t feel like it’s happening anymore, and we need to find new ways to address it. We’ve talked about a number of those over the past several years. To be honest with you, I think we were guilty of trying to find simple solutions to remarkably complex challenges, and what we’ve learned is it’s going to take a more complex set of solutions.”

Perhaps the most significant change came with an amendment that specifically grants the UIL State Executive Committee authority to investigate schools with an inordinate number of Previous Athletic Participating Forms (PAPF). The PAPF is a two-page document required to be filled out by students changing schools who intend to participate in athletics. The form asks 18 yes-or-no questions, focusing on things from the student’s residence and family situation to potential recruiting violations. Also passed was a proposal to update the requirements for filing the PAPFs, which the UIL says are not always completed in a timely manner. The change mandates that any new student at the high school level must complete the questionnaire prior to participation in athletics. Another proposal passed by the council provides a penalty the SEC can impose on a District Executive Committee when it is determined the DEC is acting in a manner inconsistent with UIL rules. DECs are responsible for ruling on protests and reports of violations concerning eligibility and other matters that occur within each district around the state. The SEC now has an avenue to appoint an independent individual to oversee the conduct of the meetings, making sure the rules are enforced consistently. Another change approved Monday prohibits athletes found to have changed schools for athletic purposes from participating in contests against varsity teams from other schools, barring an exemption from the UIL athletic director. Athletes ruled ineligible for changing schools for athletic purposes are allowed to play in sub-varsity games, but now that participation is stipulated even further.

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Mark Henry: Half of Texas’ new teachers aren’t certified. That's hurting our students.

(Mark Henry, Ph.D, dedicated over 40 years of his life to education, with 33 years served as superintendent across five Texas school districts, including Cy-Fair ISD.) Every fall brings a sense of renewal and fresh optimism. It’s the start of a new season and a new school year. But there’s something making educators pause: an ever-increasing rise in uncertified teachers. Houston ISD has over 2,000 uncertified teachers across its campuses. And it’s not just a Houston problem. The University of Texas at Austin recently released a study showing half of the state’s newly hired teachers lack certification. That means Texas students are being taught by more and more teachers who may have never stepped foot in a classroom. They lack the foundational training and formal education typically acquired through accredited four-year universities or alternative teacher certification programs. And that’s not to vilify the people coming forward — or the schools that hire them. There is a very real teacher shortage, and I know what it’s like to face those numbers. Education leaders must get creative to fill labor gaps.

That said, we can’t shrug our shoulders and let our classrooms get filled with more and more unlicensed candidates. That shortchanges students. Research shows that having uncertified teachers without prior classroom experience can result in up to four months of learning loss. Hiring candidates without a certification and allowing them to remain uncertified also shortchanges the new hires. It is overwhelming for any individual to walk into a profession with little to no experience. Imagine walking into a room full of middle schoolers if you have no experience managing a large group and no training on how to guide students through the curriculum — much less how to build trust among young people. This can also create tenuous relationships with other teachers and the school, as uncertified teachers fill a short-term gap but create a long-term problem. Unfortunately, fewer than half of new uncertified teachers stay in the profession after three years, compared to a little over three-quarters of new teachers who have completed traditional certification. When we fill classrooms with uncertified or temporary educators, we deprive students of this crucial connection. What’s equally important: Every educator deserves the full wrap-around support system of a certification process — whether that is through a four-year university or a high-quality alternative certification program. After more than 40 years in education, 33 of them as a superintendent, I have seen the teacher shortage and the uncertified teacher crisis grow in lockstep. We had school years that started with as many as 200 positions unfilled. We had long-term substitute teachers, and we eventually started “Teacher Signing Days” to encourage students to pursue the profession. We also did our best to offer competitive salaries and opportunities for professional development. But I will say, schools can feel hamstrung by the lack of funding.

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San Antonio Express-News Editorial: In House District 121, Swift would fight for public education and women’s health

House District 121 has long been a reliable Republican seat, thanks especially to the steady tenure of former Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, who represented this district from 2005 to 2019. Only after Straus decided to not seek reelection in 2018, did Democrats challenge in this district, which covers the North Side and includes Alamo Heights, Olmos Park, and, importantly this election, Alamo Heights ISD and North East ISD. Straus' successor, state Rep. Steve Allison, continued the Republican representation on District 121. Nevertheless, the district became a desired but unattainable white whale for Democrats who nominated strong and dynamic challengers in Celina Montoya (twice) and Becca DeFelice. Straus and Allison share many characteristics and policy views, and one of those is unequivocal support for public education and opposition to vouchers. That opposition to vouchers almost certainly cost Allison his seat. In this year’s primary election, attorney Marc LaHood, a vocal supporter of vouchers, defeated Allison. He now faces Democrat Laurel Jordan Swift, who grew up in the district, has a bachelor’s degree in biology and works in medical sales.

We recommend Swift, a former Republican, because she opposes school vouchers, and she is outspoken about women’s health and restoring reproductive rights. LaHood is unequivocal on both issues. Not only is he a staunch supporter of school vouchers, but he is an equally staunch supporter of the state’s abortion ban. Voters in this district should think long and hard about the potential impacts vouchers for private schools might have on funding for the Alamo Heights and North East school districts, widely viewed as two of the leading districts in Bexar County. In their joint meeting with the Editorial Board, LaHood and Swift engaged in a substantive, thoughtful and civil discussion of these and other issues. To their credit, they treated one another with a high level of respect and decorum that is often lacking during these contentious times. Both agreed that education is the most important issue, but only Swift recognizes how vouchers could further undermine an already underfunded Texas public education system. She’s unequivocal about increasing funding for public education, noting the state has billions of dollars available to do this.

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Keller ISD’s new theater policy prompts parent petition against alleged censorship

A petition on Change.org seeks signers to join an effort against Keller ISD’s new theater policy, approved in August, that some call censorship. Parent Courtney Mullaney launched the petition to end the policy, which requires a superintendent-led review of every play and musical before it can be performed. As a result, Mullaney said, previously approved productions, including “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime,” “Ruthless,” and “Yellow Boat” are now off limits. "As parents of children actively participating in the Fine Arts programs of Keller ISD, we are alarmed by the sudden increase in censorship of the theatre departments across the district," the petition reads.

Other high schools have performed these plays, including “Yellow Boat,” as recently as this month. The play involves a child with hemophilia who contracts AIDS after a medically necessary blood transfusion. Cary High School in North Carolina presented the show last weekend. In Texas, Royal ISD, west of Houston, produced it in 2020. Last fall, Legacy High School in Mansfield ISD put on “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime,” based on the book about an autistic boy who looks into the death of a neighbor’s dog. A senior in Keller ISD, Nathan Beets, wrote on the change.org petition that "theater can have a profound effect on its audience. We can’t do that if we are censored from portraying real-life stories on stage; stories that people may find uncomfortable to talk about, but are best conveyed through art." Earlier this year, Keller ISD was accused of censorship when it cancelled “The Laramie Project,” a play about the murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student in Wyoming. After public pushback, the district reversed its controversial decision and the play was produced.

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$1 million lawsuit filed by injured workers in Pemex Deer Park hydrogen sulfide release

Three people injured in a deadly Pemex chemical leak last week filed a $1 million lawsuit against the facility owner and operator on Monday, arguing it exposed workers to life-threatening hazards. Two people died and about 35 others were injured after hydrogen sulfide was released at the Deer Park industrial plant Thursday afternoon. At least 13 of the 35 people injured in the incident were sent to nearby hospitals. One of the workers sustained orthopedic injuries during the evacuation of the facility Thursday evening, Geoffrey Adkinson, a spokesperson for the law firm said. Each of the three workers at the forefront of the lawsuit, Sergio Antonio Olvera, Jonathan Martinez and Yoselynn Soto, suffered from hydrogen sulfide exposure symptoms including vomiting, dizziness, nausea, headaches and respiratory symptoms, Adkinson said.

A lawsuit filed Monday by a Houston-based law firm against Deer Park Refining and P.M.I Services argued the crude oil refinery “began to uncontrollably release highly flammable and toxic gases into the atmosphere in and around the refinery.” “If owners and operators of oil refineries follow the proper policies and procedures designed to protect people, then the release of highly toxic gases does not happen,” Mo Aziz, an attorney who filed the lawsuit said in a statement. The lawsuit is seeking $1 million in damages. It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the chemical release, and an investigation into the leak is currently underway. "They were working on a flange of some kind so we don't know if it was some type of manual error, again that's going to be part of our investigation so frankly I don't want to delve too much into that because this all still preliminary," Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said during a press conference. Friday, county officials asserted that Mexico-based Pemex failed to communicate with leaders after the incident.

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Montgomery County to conduct manual recount of random voting precinct ballots Nov. 5

Montgomery County will conduct a manual recount of votes in randomly selected precincts following the Nov. 5 election after several residents raised concerns about election integrity and the state’s voting system. Randomly selected election precincts on Nov. 5 will be selected to manually recount ballots for all of the elections, including a crucial presidential race. Volunteers and some part-time staff members will be tasked with conducting the recount which could take up to a week to complete. County commissioners on Tuesday approved the procedure on Oct. 8 after some discussion with Suzie Harvey, the Montgomery County Elections Administrator, who said she has “no problem” with the move. “I do agree with the concept,” she said. “I don’t have any problem with it.”

Several Montgomery County residents in a three-hour workshop meeting on Sept. 27 asked County Judge Mark Keough to consider additional safeguards to strengthen the voting process. Neda Henery, a resident, said the security surrounding the Texas voting system and electronic poll books is “nothing more than a smoke and mirrors method of deception.” Montgomery County Judge Mark Keough on Oct. 1 sent a letter to the Secretary of State Jane Nelson’s office requesting guidance for having a partial manual recount. Nelson in response said the move that would go “above and beyond the provisions that were already established in law” was permissible. The Secretary of State requires a random manual count of a single race in randomly selected counties. It’s conducted to “ensure the accuracy of the tabulation of electronic voting system results,” according to the secretary’s office.

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Department of Insurance rejects proposed Texas Windstorm Insurance Association rate increase

The Texas Department of Insurance has rejected a rate increase proposed by the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association that would have raised premiums on about a quarter-million residential and commercial properties along the coast. The proposed 10% rate hike would have been "unjust and unfair," wrote TDI Commissioner Cassie Brown in her order rejecting the filing, which was posted to TDI's website Monday. TWIA confirmed the news but did not immediately make a statement. The not-for-profit insurance association, an insurer of last resort, provides residential and commercial policies covering wind and hail damage to home and business owners in Texas’ 14 coastal counties, as well as the portion of Harris County east of Texas 146. As of March, there were about 250,000 TWIA policies in force in coastal Texas, a 37% increase from 2020.

TWIA's board voted to seek the rate increase in August, after the association's 2024 Rate Adequacy Analysis found that current rates fell significantly short of being able to cover expenses and losses. That analysis was released July 1, a week before Hurricane Beryl made landfall in Matagorda County, causing extensive damage in Texas and further complicating TWIA's finances. As of last week, TDI's order notes, TWIA had received 31,163 claims arising from Hurricane Beryl and paid more than $250 million to settle them. Ultimately, Beryl claims could wipe out TWIA's Catastrophe Reserve Trust Fund, which had a balance of $451.4 million at the end of June. Proponents of the rate increase had argued that such a move was necessary given the association's financial picture and the prospect of further extreme weather events, which have led many insurers to raise rates — or even pull back — in coastal Texas.

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What to know about Judge Janis Jack, removed from Texas foster care case

U.S. District Judge Janis Jack is a semi-retired judge in Corpus Christi who has overseen a 13-year lawsuit by Texas foster kids against the state’s child-welfare system. On Friday, a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ordered Jack removed from the case and reversed her most recent – and most punitive – order against state child welfare officials. Here’s what to know about Jack and the long-standing battle with the Texas foster-care system. Jack, 78, studied nursing in the late 1960s before moving to the legal field, earning a law degree from South Texas College of Law in 1981. She was in private legal practice in Corpus Christi until President Bill Clinton nominated her in 1993 to the federal bench. The U.S. Senate confirmed her in 1994, and Jack has been semi-retired since taking senior status in 2011.The Dallas Morning News editorial board named Jack “Texan of the Year” in 2016 for her work on the foster-care lawsuit known as M.D. vs. Abbott, filed in 2011 by a New York-based children’s advocacy group that focuses on reforming state child-welfare laws. It is the only case the judge now oversees.

“Texas’ foster-care system is broken,” wrote Jack in a landmark 2015 ruling. “Most importantly, it is broken for children, who almost uniformly leave State custody more damaged than when they entered.” Jack mandated far-reaching reforms, saying the state was violating the rights of Texas foster children “to be free from an unreasonable risk of harm caused by the State.” Jack followed with about 60 orders to alleviate problems she found in the system, including overmedicating the children, failing to investigate reported abuse by caretakers, and housing children in dangerous hotels and under-supervised group homes. Jack has been vocal about her frustration with the ongoing problems after repeated orders to fix them. She once asked Texas human services officials if they’d ever seen the inside of a jail cell when they didn’t provide documents she had ordered brought to a hearing. Another time she suggested that agency leaders stay in cheap motels and eat fast food like some foster kids were doing. An example cited by the 5th Circuit Court’s order removing Jack from the case was the judge’s response – “nobody cares” – when a state lawyer said health problems kept Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner Cecile Erwin Young from testifying in court. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services and Texas Health and Human Services, defendants in the lawsuit, have repeatedly objected to Jack’s treatment – inside her courtroom and in her avalanche of orders – as unfair and unconstitutional. That’s partly because, in spite of the state spending $100 million to improve the system, Jack has continued to find that officials have defied her orders. In the first contempt ruling in 2019, Jack appointed monitors who were told to report back on the state’s compliance with court-ordered reforms. The most recent contempt finding in April fined Young $100,000 per day until her agency could prove they were adequately in line with Jack’s orders. The state argued that nothing they do will be enough for Jack to end the lawsuit. The 5th Circuit Court ruling last week overturned the latest contempt finding, saying her comments and rulings gave the appearance of bias against the state.

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Texas reading program allows children to hear the voice of their incarcerated mother

Many children have a fond memory of their mom reading them a book before bed, flipping through the pages and pausing to explore pictures. Children with incarcerated parents, however, may miss out on this comforting experience. “If you think about the library story time, or someone reading to you in school, or even just a mom sitting down with her children in the evening to read a book, it’s a comfortable and joyful experience,” Jill Gonzalez, executive director of Women’s Storybook Project, said. The Women’s Storybook Project connects incarcerated moms with their children through storytelling. The Austin-based program sends volunteers to prisons across Texas, where they record incarcerated mothers reading a book aloud and then send the recording, along with a copy of the book, to the child. Last year, the program served over 400 mothers and sent out 6,200 books to almost 900 children.

“I’m a firm believer that you can teach anything through a children’s book,” Gonzalez said. “There’s so many messages of friendship and hope and humor.” Judith Dullnig, who was inspired by a similar prison program in Illinois, started the Texas program in 2003. She began with a team of five volunteers who used cassette tapes to record mothers reading stories. Gonzalez took over for Dullnig in 2018. Today, the program is digital with links sent directly to the children’s guardians. “Reading a story makes a difference, because when we send the URL, mom can record it once, and the child can listen to it 100 times, and that’s reassuring,” Gonzalez said. “It helps kids feel better when they’re lonely. They know somebody loves them. And it’s so important because these kids didn’t do anything wrong.” The program is currently offered in one county jail and 11 prisons across Texas. Moms have to apply and meet certain criteria to be selected. Once selected, a mom will record themselves reading the first book – usually a nostalgic pick like Goodnight Moon. The recording is sent to the child, who then sends back a request for the next book. Books like Elephant & Piggie, Diary of a Wimpy Kid and the Harry Potter series are highly requested. Mothers are given 10 minutes to record and read as much as they can. They end the recording by encouraging their child to finish the book at home and write to tell them what happened next. If a mother completes all six sessions with Storybook Project, their child will have 12 books at the end of the program.

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ExxonMobil, Texas ink deal for nation’s largest offshore CO2 storage site

ExxonMobil signed a deal with the state of Texas last week for the nation’s largest offshore carbon dioxide capture and storage site, the company announced Thursday. The deal gives the energy giant access to more than 270,000 acres of submerged land to sequester carbon dioxide, Texas’ General Land Office said in a release the same day. The proceeds from the lease agreement will go to the Texas Permanent School Fund, with the GLO estimating that it will “provide millions” to the Texas school system. The exact financials of the deal were not disclosed. The deal comes as transition-scenario projections by BloombergNEF found that any natural gas or coal emissions will need to be offset by carbon capture by 2050 for the U.S. to reach a net-zero emissions scenario.

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In South Texas, the myth of noncitizen voting takes center stage

Cecilia Castellano awoke to the sound of her doorbell in the early hours of Aug. 20. The South Texas sky outside her Atascosa County home was still dark, but as she emerged from her bedroom -- hair curlers in place, a robe draped over her shoulders -- a light cut across her foyer. Two voices on the other side of her front door announced themselves: "Police Department." "I came to the front and I actually looked out through the window ... and they were shining a flashlight in my window," Castellano recalled in an interview with ABC News' Mireya Villarreal. "They said, 'Ma'am, we have a search warrant.' I said, 'A search warrant for what?' And they're like, 'Well, can we come in?'" The officers presented Castellano with the warrant, then confiscated her phone and asked her to write down its PIN, she said. They were searching for evidence of so-called "vote harvesting," an opaque provision of a 2021 voter integrity bill championed by the state's Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and enforced by its controversial attorney general, Ken Paxton.

Both men have characterized the law, known widely as S.B. 1, as a safeguard against noncitizen voting -- an exceedingly rare occurrence already banned under state and federal law. But Castellano, a Democratic candidate for a seat in the Texas State House, calls it voter intimidation. Republicans, following the lead of former President Donald Trump, have claimed without evidence that undocumented immigrants could tilt the scales in favor of Democrats this November, increasingly promoting the debunked narrative as a centerpiece of their pitch to voters in the months leading up to Election Day. "Our elections are bad," Trump said at ABC News' presidential debate in September. "And a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they're trying to get them to vote. They can't even speak English, they don't know even know what country they're in practically, and these people are trying to get them to vote, and that's why they're allowing them to come into our country." House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, recently tried without success to pass legislation that would have required voters to prove their U.S. citizenship through documentation -- instead of attesting to it under penalty of perjury as the current laws require -- arguing in May that, "We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections." But critics and election experts say that simply isn't true, and they accuse Trump and his allies of generating unfounded and disingenuous claims of noncitizen voting as part of an effort to make it more difficult for eligible voters to register and vote. The libertarian Cato Institute called allegations of widespread noncitizen voting "alarmist theorizing," and the Republican elections chief in Pennsylvania recently acknowledged that he "found that it occurred very, very, very infrequently."

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The precarious state of marijuana

Since 2019, the skunky, citrusy and oh-so-polarizing smell of marijuana has moved from the realm of late night park benches and that one apartment that smells impossibly strongly of sandalwood, to brick and mortar stores in broad daylight. Hemp and Marijuana are the same plant. Whether a plant is legally defined as hemp, cannabis or “marihuana” depends on the Delta 9 THC content with hemp containing less than 0.3%, cannabis containing an undetermined amount of THC and “marihuana” contains more than 0.3% of Delta 9 THC. Enacted in June 2019, Texas’ House Bill 1325 authorized hemp production on the state level for both fiber and consumable products. The state law followed the national 2018 farm bill in legalizing industrial hemp and allowing for up to 0.3% of delta-9 THC on a dry weight basis, a decision that opened up the gates for an unregulated THC market.

“At the time, I think the implication is, they were only talking about delta-9 THC, which is the narcotic component of marijuana,” Calvin Trostle, Texas A&M AgriLife State Hemp & Sunflower Specialist, said. “So things that you read like delta-8 THC or delta-10, or THC-O, I think, to the writers of the Farm Bill, these were things that they just really weren’t aware of yet. And so that’s created a little bit of a gray area.” Within that gray area, an $8 billion hemp industry has germinated, but not without legal challenges. The Texas Supreme Court is set to hear a case between the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) and Hometown Hero, a cannabis company based out of Austin, that could decide the legality of delta-8 THC in Texas. As of June 2023, the hemp derived THC industry accounted for the employment of 50,100 people in Texas and more than $1.6 billion in wages annually according to a Whitney Economics analysis of the Texas hemp derived cannabinoid industry.

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County Stories

Harris County-Houston Sports Authority names Chris Canetti as interim CEO

The Harris-County Houston Sports Authority has named Chris Canetti to be its interim CEO, the organization announced Monday. The announcement comes days after the agency’s board of directors unanimously fired longtime CEO Janis Burke, who had come under fire by the city’s sports executives and Mayor John Whitmire for concerns over transparency and facility maintenance. Canetti currently serves as president of the city’s FIFA World Cup 26 host committee, and will hold the position as he takes over the sports authority in the interim. Canetti was also president of the city’s World Cup bid committee and was president of the Houston Dynamo for eight years.

“Chris has a proven track record of success here in Houston,” board chair J. Kent Friedman wrote in a statement. “We know that with his experience he will help guide the organization and ensure that all obligations and responsibilities are met during this period of transition.” Canetti did not immediately return a request for comment, and a spokesperson for the agency did not have Canetti's new salary as interim CEO immediately available. The sports authority, which Whitmire helped create during his time in the Texas Senate, finances the city’s professional sports stadiums. It also ensures city and county credit ratings don’t suffer in the event of financial trouble. Its board members are appointed by city and county leaders. The agency owns Toyota Center, Minute Maid Park and Shell Energy Stadium and leases the buildings to the respective sports franchises. While NRG Stadium receives funding from the sports authority, it is owned by the Harris County Sports & Convention Corporation. On Friday morning, Whitmire, executives from Houston’s professional sports leagues and members of the sports authority’s board gathered at City Hall to say the agency needed to go in a new direction.

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City Stories

Fort Worth Chamber, Economic Development Partnership to formally split in 2025

Eighteen months after creating a nonprofit to bolster economic development and hiring a high-profile state official to lead the effort, the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce and the Fort Worth Economic Development Partnership are splitting. Beginning the first of next year, the Fort Worth Chamber and the economic development partnership created under its umbrella will operate as separate, but complementary, organizations, according to an Oct. 10 joint letter sent by both organizations to investors and supporters. In the letter, the two organizations say the economic development partnership will focus on its core mission of business recruitment and attraction, while the chamber will pursue advocacy and workforce development.

“We’ve delivered some nice wins that we’re very proud of for the community,” said Robert Allen, president and CEO of the economic development partnership. “So the time is right for this next step in the relationship and for the Fort Worth Economic Development Partnership to truly stand on its own two feet so that it can continue servicing business attraction and recruitment for Fort Worth.” Over the last year and a half, the economic development organization has built a strong track record, said Steve Montgomery, president and CEO of the Fort Worth Chamber. He pointed to the announcement of a new Dick’s Sporting Goods distribution center, the opening of Big Ass Fans’ new manufacturing facility and the upcoming UTA West campus as key accomplishments by the economic development team. “They are focused on business attraction while we are retention, expansion and advocacy,” Montgomery said. “We’ll continue to focus on our core mission, and they will focus on theirs. We’ve worked closely together, and we’ll continue to do that. I see this as a very positive sign.” Mike Berry, president of Hillwood, and chairman of the board for the economic development partnership, said the changes are a natural evolution of the way the organization was originally structured.

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Looking to boost mental health resources, SAISD plans to add 'peace rooms' to more campuses

In a push to offer more mental health resources to students, San Antonio Independent School District has earmarked over $2 million to add "peace rooms" to more of its middle and high school campuses, according to a report by KENS 5 TV. The peace rooms, with their calming decor, are dedicated spaces where students can find a quiet moment to process heightened emotions and meditate. The district already has peace rooms at other campuses, including the Young Men’s Leadership Academy and Lanier High School. With the dedicated funding that will help pay for furniture and sensory items, the district plans to add 25 peace rooms to different middle and high schools, with the first 10 set to open in January, according to KEN 5 TV. SAISD also has an application pending with Bexar County for an additional $200,000, which would be used for training on restorative care and trauma-informed care, the news station reported.

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National Stories

How Wall St. is subtly shaping the Harris economic agenda

When two of Vice President Kamala Harris’s closest advisers arrived in New York last month, they were seeking advice. The Democratic nominee was preparing to give her most far-reaching economic speech, and Tony West, Ms. Harris’s brother-in-law, and Brian Nelson, a longtime confidant, wanted to know how the city’s powerful financiers thought she should approach it. Over two days, the pair held meetings across Wall Street, including at the offices of Lazard, an investment bank, and the elite law firm Paul, Weiss. Among the ideas the attendees pitched was to provide more lucrative tax breaks for companies that allowed their workers to become part owners, according to two people at the meetings. The campaign had already been discussing such an idea with an executive at KKR, the private equity firm. A few days later, Ms. Harris endorsed the idea during her speech in Pittsburgh. “We will reform our tax laws to make it easier for businesses to let workers share in their company’s success,” she said.

The line, while just a piece of a much broader speech, was emblematic of Ms. Harris’s approach to economic policy since she took the helm of the Democratic Party in July. As part of a bid to cut into former President Donald J. Trump’s polling lead on the economy, her campaign has carefully courted business leaders, organizing a steady stream of meetings and calls in which corporate executives and donors offer their thoughts on tax policy, financial regulation and other issues. The private feedback has, in sometimes subtle ways, shaped Ms. Harris’s economic agenda over the course of her accelerated campaign. At several points, she has sprinkled language into broader speeches that business executives say reflects their views. And, in at least one instance, Ms. Harris made a specific policy commitment — to pare back a tax increase on capital gains — after extended talks with her corporate allies. They describe a Democratic campaign that is far more open to corporate input than the one President Biden had led for much of the election cycle. Ms. Harris’s team does not take all of the advice it is given. Some pleas for a more robust endorsement of big business have been ignored, for example, while some of the meetings have devolved into executives’ raising specific tax problems their companies face. The friendlier corporate ties have nevertheless raised questions about whether Ms. Harris’s overtures are campaign-season coalition building — or a sign that she will take a more centrist tack if she wins the White House. On some issues, like a proposed tax on the ultrawealthy, her campaign has been studiously ambiguous, fueling uncertainty about what kind of an economic leader she would be.

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Why Harris and the Democrats may not be able to count on Hindu Americans in November

Utsav Sanduja, born in Canada 34 years ago, has long admired the global power the United States wields, and couldn’t wait to become an American citizen. Not long after immigrating 14 years ago, he filed a lawsuit over what he judged an unreasonable delay in his visa application. This November, his citizenship secured, Sanduja will be voting in his first U.S. presidential election. “Once you’re a citizen, my God, you just want to do everything in your power to be able to exercise your constitutional liberty,” he told RNS. “It’s not just an American election, it’s an election across the planet, really, and it’s just too critical to not get involved.” Sanduja is more involved than most new voters. Earlier this month he launched the Hindus for America First PAC, intended to provide a “safe space” for Hindus, like him, who no longer feel the Democratic Party has Hindu interests at heart and plan to vote for Donald Trump.

“I am very concerned about religious pluralism, and I feel that there ought to be more disparate voices in our politics,” said Sanduja. “And what I noticed was that the Hindu voice, unfortunately, has been kind of hijacked by woke elements.” From the appeal of lower taxes for the ultrawealthy, to job security against illegal immigration, to securing the nuclear family unit, Hindu Americans, Sanduja maintains, have more in common with the existing religious right than not. “This is our time to shine,” he said. Sanduja’s views are shared by a growing minority of American Hindus, who are mostly first-generation Indian immigrants who have historically voted Democratic. Data from both the Carnegie Endowment and APIA Vote show Indian Americans’ support for Democrats has been decreasing since 2020. Analysts suspect that November’s election results will show the pattern continuing. “We’ve been so strongly Democratic that I think sometimes we’ve been taken for granted,” said Rishi Bhutada, a Houston native and treasurer of the nonpartisan Hindu American PAC. “The polling data is showing that a shift is starting to happen. It’s one of those things where, if you’re not paying attention to it as a political observer, it will surprise you.”

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Crude oil prices fall more than 4% as looming surplus overshadows Iran-Israel tensions

Crude oil futures fell more than 4% on Tuesday, as a looming global oil surplus next year overshadowed the risk of a supply disruption from the conflict between Israel and Iran. Oil prices spiked earlier this month after Iran hit Israel with a ballistic missile attack, raising fears that Israel would respond by targeting the Islamic Republic’s oil facilities. The International Energy Agency said Tuesday that its members are prepared to take action if there is a supply disruption in the Middle East. “For now, supply keeps flowing, and in the absence of a major disruption, the market is faced with a sizeable surplus in the new year,” the IEA said in its monthly report.

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Kamala Harris sets an interview with a not-so-friendly outlet: Fox News.

Vice President Kamala Harris has agreed to an interview with Fox News, the network said on Monday. The interview, with Fox News’s chief political anchor, Bret Baier, will take place near Philadelphia on Wednesday, shortly before it airs at 6 p.m. Eastern on Mr. Baier’s program, “Special Report.” Ms. Harris is expected to sit for 25 to 30 minutes of questions, the network said. This is Ms. Harris’s first formal interview with Fox News, whose day-to-day programming is heavy on conservative punditry that often explicitly supports her Republican opponent, former President Donald J. Trump. It could also represent an opportunity for the Democratic nominee three weeks ahead of Election Day. Ms. Harris will have a chance to deliver her message to a viewership that may be skeptical of her candidacy. Her willingness to appear on Fox News may aid the perception that she is open to facing tough questions. And she can reach a swath of independent voters, more of whom watch Fox News than CNN or MSNBC, according to research by Nielsen.

Senior Democratic officials have long shown hostility toward Fox News, going so far as to formally bar the network from hosting a primary debate in 2020. Hillary Clinton, in 2016, was the last Democratic presidential nominee to sit for a Fox News interview. President Biden has not appeared on the network since taking office, though he has jousted at news conferences with its senior White House correspondent, Peter Doocy. But a thaw has occurred. Ms. Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, was interviewed on “Fox News Sunday” the past two weekends. (Mr. Walz’s aides reached out to Fox to schedule his second appearance.) In recent months, the network has also welcomed a string of Harris supporters, including Gov. Gavin Newson of California, Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is now such a regular that he cheekily told Democratic convention-goers, “You might recognize me from Fox News.” Mr. Baier’s interview with Ms. Harris is scheduled to air on the same day that Fox is set to broadcast an unusual town hall in which Mr. Trump plans to field questions on subjects like abortion, child care and day care from an all-female audience. Ms. Harris has appeared across a range of traditional and niche media outlets in recent weeks. On Tuesday, she is set to record a live interview in Detroit with Charlamagne Tha God, host of the syndicated morning radio show “The Breakfast Club,” which is particularly popular with Black millennials. Last week, she sat for interviews with “The View,” “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and “The Howard Stern Show.”

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Trump sways and bops to music for 39 minutes in bizarre town hall episode

The town hall, moderated by South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R), began with questions from preselected attendees for the former president. Donald Trump offered meandering answers on how he would address housing affordability and help small businesses. But it took a sudden turn after two attendees required medical attention. And so Trump, after jokingly asking the crowd whether “anybody else would like to faint,” took a different approach. “Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music. Let’s make it into a music. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?” he said. For 39 minutes, Trump swayed, bopped — sometimes stopping to speak — as he turned the event into almost a living-room listening session of his favorite songs from his self-curated rally playlist.

He played nine tracks. He danced. He shook hands with people onstage. He pointed to the crowd. Noem stood beside him, nodding with her hands clasped. Trump stayed in place onstage, slowly moving back and forth. He was done answering questions for the night. “Total lovefest at the PA townhall! Everyone was so excited they were fainting so @realDonaldTrump turned to music,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung wrote on X. “Nobody wanted to leave and wanted to hear more songs from the famous DJT Spotify playlist!” Trump has long obsessed over his playlist, and aides have often described him privately DJing on his campaign plane or at his Mar-a-Lago Club patio in Florida. He has also angered music artists — such as Celine Dion — who have requested that he stop playing their music at his campaign rallies.

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Why Black men have not flocked to Harris in larger numbers

his city’s main drag has not seen true bustle for decades, with dozens of vacant storefronts scattered among active businesses. But that has not stopped Bryan Killian-Bey from daydreaming about the red brick corner property on North Saginaw Street. “I have my goals,” he said, peering inside a building that he has already explored transforming into a Black-owned restaurant and lounge. “We don’t have enough places for us.” It has been a good year for Killian-Bey, 60, who in August took on a lead violence-prevention role for the city that nearly doubled his pay. But he sours when discussing the presidential election. Talking to The Washington Post nearly a year ago, he said Black men were being overlooked by both parties. And the ascent of Vice President Kamala Harris, who is Black and Indian American, has not changed his mind. In December, when President Joe Biden was the presumed Democratic nominee and The Post interviewed Killian-Bey and other Black men in the Detroit area, polls showed waning enthusiasm among Black voters for Biden and the Democrats.

After Harris was nominated, a late August Washington Post-Ipsos poll found a significant jump in the number of Black Americans saying they were certain to vote. But that shift was concentrated among younger Black women. Turnout interest hardly increased among Black men, with 66 percent saying they were certain to vote, compared with 63 percent in April, while turnout interest among Black women rose to 71 percent from 61 percent over the same period. Reports of apathy among this key group recently inspired basketball icon Magic Johnson and former president Barack Obama to deliver impassioned pleas for Black men to more robustly back Harris at events sponsored by the vice president’s campaign. The Harris campaign on Monday signaled a need to reach out to this demographic, releasing an “opportunity agenda for Black men” that includes such items as loans for small businesses and a focus on health challenges facing Black men. Still, some of the initiatives are not new or do not target Black men specifically, and it was not clear whether they would affect these voters’ willingness to embrace Harris.

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Lead Stories

Internal polling memo has warning signs for Senate Republicans

The top GOP super PAC charged with flipping the Senate has found that most of its candidates are trailing their Democratic opponents, according to an internal polling memo obtained by POLITICO. The new round of October polling from the Senate Leadership Fund shows all but one Republican candidate running behind Donald Trump in battleground states, a pattern that could sharply limit their ability to build a sizable majority unless they can force a change in the final weeks of the election. Republicans are still favored to take control of the chamber, and their data brought some hopeful news with tightening races in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. But other pickup opportunities, namely Maryland and Michigan, are moving in the wrong direction. And Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, one of the two incumbents running in a state Trump won in 2020, looks surprisingly strong in Ohio.

The 2024 map is full of offensive targets for Republicans, including open seats in Michigan, Maryland and Arizona. They have a near-certain pickup in West Virginia and polling has consistently shown the GOP is ahead in Montana. But it’s unclear how many of the other seats Republicans are poised to flip. They’ve struggled from a serious fundraising gap at the candidate level. And Democrats have built large polling leads in some battlegrounds. And now two GOP-held states, Texas and Nebraska, may be emerging as late-breaking problem spots. The memo warns of two defensive problems: In Texas, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz is only up 1 point in the latest poll, and Law describes Nebraska as “a serious trouble-spot” where they are polling to “assess whether intervention is necessary” to help GOP Sen. Deb Fischer. (The incumbent released a poll last week showing her up 6 points.) SLF or allied groups have been repeatedly polling across the top states, including twice in September alone in some of them, as they weigh financial investments in the final stretch. The nine-page memo, dated Oct. 8, noted that the group “will roll out further investments in these top-priority Senate races, based on our latest polling” by early next week.

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Why have Houston ISD's special education complaints increased despite better compliance?

Elizabeth Hornbeck watched her daughter struggle for years before she finally filed a special education complaint against Houston ISD. As a first-grader, her daughter Alex, who is diagnosed with ADHD, dysgraphia and dyslexia, often came home from school crying. In second grade, Alex had three teachers, including a two-month substitute and new teacher with little special education experience. In third grade, her daughter was placed in a self-contained classroom of children with special-needs students for part of the day, which Hornbeck worried was understaffed and too restrictive for her daughter's abilities. The final straw came when the school didn't accept her daughter's autism diagnosis. She filed a complaint Aug. 15 alleging that her daughter was not spending enough time in a general education classroom with her peers. Federal law requires that children be in the "least-restrictive environment" possible.

"I wanted somebody else watching what (HISD is) doing," Hornbeck said. "I didn't expect anything different from all of the new people who are inexperienced and all of the high turnover. Every year there are even less expectations." Hornbeck joins a growing number of Houston ISD special education parents and advocates who have complained to the TEA since 2019. The total number of TEA special education complaints — including those that were withdrawn or ruled as nonadverse, or unsubstantiated — grew from 15 during the 2019-2020 school year to 39 in the 2023-2024 year despite the implementation of two state conservators and a districtwide push for better special education compliance. School districts are federally required to provide a free appropriate public education, called FAPE, to students with disabilities. A student's guardians and district staff form a committee, called an Admission, Review and Dismissal committee, to create an individualized education program, or IEP. The IEP is then reviewed periodically and includes both accommodations and services that will be provided and learning goals to measure the student's progress. Parents can request an ARD meeting anytime to discuss concerns they may have with their child's plan or progress. If parents are still dissatisfied, the TEA recommends that community members contact their school or district local level first before filing a formal complaint. Each complaint then triggers a TEA investigation and report, which could result in required action from the district. Complaints are often seen as a last resort to both parents and the TEA, special education advocate Shana Halvorsen said. "Most parents are afraid of it. They hear the word 'complaint,' and I think they fear retaliation by the school or they think it's a lawsuit," Halvorsen said.

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Republicans flipped key seats in South Texas. Can they expand their reach in November?

On televisions in South Texas this fall, U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz tells voters about her humble beginnings and her grandfather’s work as an immigrant farm laborer. “Hard work made my American Dream a reality,” she says in a 30-second campaign ad titled “Sueño Americano.” In a dueling spot, challenger Michelle Vallejo appears with law enforcement officers to decry chaos at the southern border, ending: “It’s time to get serious.” The two candidates, facing off for a second time in the hotly-contested 15th congressional district, are emblematic of how traditional partisan roles are quickly shifting in South Texas. Just years ago it would have been unusual for a Republican incumbent to lean into her family’s immigration story, or for a Democrat to build their campaign around tough talk on the border.

But political calculations have changed since Republicans made inroads in 2020 in the historically blue region. GOP incumbents are seeking to defend the seats they picked up and continue the attacks on elected Democrats who they say have taken the region for granted. “There's been such a flipping of the script, like a total swap of the playbooks,” said Alvaro Corral, a professor of political science at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley. “We're seeing a bit of a strategic triangulation or movement to the center, and voters in South Texas are hearing something different than in the past.” The rematch for the district, which stretches from Seguin to McAllen, is one of the most competitive races in Texas this year and has national significance as Republicans try to hold onto their slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. The predominantly Hispanic Rio Grande Valley is still expected to back Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race, but by a narrower margin. There are now a number of Republicans holding local office, including the mayor of McAllen, the biggest city in De La Cruz’s district.

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CBS News Trump-Harris poll shows one election, two worlds: How information, beliefs shape tight campaign

The 2024 presidential contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is more than just two ideologies competing over what should happen. It's two groups of voters that look out at the country and don't even agree on what's happening right now. Views about hurricane relief are just one example of many. To most of former President Donald Trump's voters, that relief isn't going to the people impacted. To Vice President Kamala Harris' voters, it is. Trump's voters view the U.S. economy as bad, while most Harris voters view the economy as good. Trump's voters say U.S.-Mexico border crossings are increasing now. Harris' voters are more apt to say crossings are down than up. As voting gets underway, far more Trump voters anticipate widespread fraud. Harris' voters do not.

And Trump's voters — especially the men among them — see themselves in a nation where gender equality efforts have gone too far. For most Harris voters gender equality efforts in the U.S. haven't gone far enough. There is at least one thing in common though: each side says they use but don't trust social media. They say that it makes it easier for them to find people they agree with (perhaps reinforcing already-held beliefs) but also harder to tell what's true. Against that backdrop, an already close, effectively even contest draws even tighter. Trump is one point closer to Harris nationally than last month, the decisive battleground states also remain effectively even, a mere one point apart now. In the view of most Trump voters, hurricane relief is mainly going to people not impacted by hurricanes, and among them, there's wide belief in the claim that FEMA funds are going to people in the U.S. illegally. Most Harris voters think those claims are false, that funds are going to people impacted and relief efforts are moving about the right speed.

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State Stories

The headmaster of this Houston private school earns more than $1 million a year

The faculty and staff of the Kinkaid School, one of Houston's most expensive private schools, regularly rub shoulders with some of the city's wealthiest people. And Kinkaid head of school Jonathan Eades may count as one himself. In 2022, according to the school's most recent tax filings, he earned a compensation package worth just more than $1 million. Eades, formerly the head of St. Mary's Hall in San Antonio, was hired by Kinkaid in 2020 after a nationwide search. Eades is likely the most highly compensated private school head in the Houston area. But his pay is not out of line with that of many peers, who often make many times more than principals, their public school counterparts. The average principal in Houston makes about $114,000, and the superintendent of the entire Houston public school district, Mike Miles, receives a salary of $380,000.

Across the country, the median salary for a head of school in the 2023-24 school year was $300,000, and the median starting salary for teachers was $48,000, according to the National Association of Independent Schools. Those figures don't include paid tuition for children of educators, which can be a significant component of compensation packages. The compensation reflects the scope of Eades' role and the size of the institution, said Peggy England, director of strategic communication for Kinkaid. The school, in Piney Point, has about 1,500 students from pre-K to 12th grade, nearly 500 faculty and staff and about 7,500 living alumni, England said, many of whom live in the Houston area. "Just like with any industry, compensation is such an important factor in attracting and retaining qualified and seasoned executives who can lead an institution of this size," England said. Being the head of a private school today means fundraising, philanthropy and alumni relations as well as the core work of leading a school: "That's a big portfolio for an individual," England said.

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Houston Chronicle Editorial: Harris County commissioners need a voice of dissent. Our pick for Precinct 3 Commissioner.

When Harris County Democrats redrew precinct lines in 2021 in a way that effectively ousted one of the two Republicans on Commissioners Court, the remaining Republican, Tom Ramsey, could’ve sulked. He could’ve spent the rest of his time in office raising hell during meetings and voting against every initiative his Democratic colleagues put on the table. Instead, Ramsey has found his niche. He still pushes back on proposals that don’t align with his values — blasting the county’s controversial proposal for a guaranteed income program, for example. But he’s also found common ground with the Democratic commissioners on issues such as roads and flood control, so much so that they occasionally deputize him to lobby Republicans in the state Legislature if it serves the county’s interest. "I don't think of myself as a Republican, I think of myself as someone who represents 1.2 million people in Precinct 3," Ramsey told us recently. "And when they look at me, I think some days in a very pragmatic way, not a political way, they think, 'You know, the city of Houston and Harris County may be purple, but it's a progressive-leaning county in the middle of a red state. Well, maybe we could ask Ambassador Ramsey to go advocate' — I think that's important."

Ramsey’s ability to collaborate with his colleagues is not just a feather in his cap, it’s crucial to providing constituent services. Not only is his redrawn precinct now crammed with Republican voters, giving him an enormous political advantage in election years, a staggering 79% of it is unincorporated land. That means the county often must provide basic services that are typically handled by cities, such as law enforcement and road maintenance. Ramsey said his Democratic counterparts generally understand that he shoulders an extra burden taking care of those constituents. Yet his relationships with his colleagues haven't always been perfect. The redistricting battle of 2021 drew his ire when the Democrats' gerrymandered map created a super-GOP precinct for Ramsey at the expense of then-Commissioner Jack Cagle, a Republican whose precinct was suddenly packed with far more Democratic voters. Ramsey blasted the new maps as "corrupt." He and Cagle filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to get the maps overturned. Those hard feelings carried over to budget negotiations in 2022, when Cagle and Ramsey boycotted Commissioners Court meetings to force the Democratic majority to adopt a budget that froze the amount of property tax revenue the county could collect at roughly the same levels as the previous year. The maneuver cost the county more than $200 million in revenue, forcing cuts to a budget that would’ve included raises for sheriff deputies and budget boosts for the district attorney and county constables.

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When DEI is gone: A look at the fallout at one Texas university

Universities across the country have transformed at the command of anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) legislation. At the University of Texas-Austin, the legislation led to resource cancellations, office closures, and staff firings -- pushing some students to create alternatives to their school’s defunct diversity programs. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed SB 17 into law in 2023, barring public institutions of higher education from having diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, as well as programs, activities, and training conducted by those offices. The law also restricts training or hiring policies based on race, gender identity or sexual orientation. His office told ABC News in a recent statement that the legislation was intended to ensure people “advance based on talent and merit at public colleges and universities in Texas.”

Abbott’s office criticized universities for using DEI offices to “advance political agendas and exclude conservative viewpoints on college campuses. These efforts adversely affect our students, limit exposure to diverse thought, and destroy our education system,” read the statement from Abbott’s press secretary Andrew Mahaleris. ABC News spoke to UT Austin students and a terminated faculty member about the compounding impact the loss of diversity programs has had on campus. The long list of potential college life logistics – like how to pay for school, open an independent bank account or get a job – is even longer for undocumented students and those with temporary status. These students are not eligible for federal student aid, federal work-study, are limited in their access to grants and scholarships and, in some cases, cannot accept paying jobs while in school. With limited guidance and limited options, Arely, a student at UT Austin who asked to be referenced by only her first name out of privacy concerns, said her status created many unknowns and uncertainties for her future when applying to colleges. Arely told ABC News she worked hard to be at the top of her high school class so she could get into a good school.

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Texas teen's abduction at Dallas Mavericks NBA game shows nothing is off limits: expert

The heart-wrenching ordeal of Natalee Cramer, a Texas 15-year-old abducted from a Dallas Mavericks game and rescued from sex traffickers in Oklahoma 10 days later, is a reminder that "trafficking can happen to anyone anywhere," an expert told Fox News Digital. "A trafficking victim can look like anyone, and a trafficker can look like anyone – people too often think 'It doesn't happen to me, it doesn't happen in my country, it doesn't happen to my community – it doesn't happen to people here,'" said Stefany Ovalles, an attorney with the Center for Safety and Change who has legally represented dozens of sex trafficking victims. "To rely on that as a blanket statement is being too naive about what human trafficking looks like." Every two minutes worldwide, a child is sold into sexual slavery. Of the 4.8 million total victims of sex trafficking, 300,000 are American children, according to the Safe House Project nonprofit. It is estimated that sex trafficking generates more than $150 billion in profits for traffickers and their facilitators, according to the U.S. Department of State.

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Cedric Golden: Texas football has a defense that's thinking about a natty

Texas football blew the doors off Oklahoma two years ago, but Saturday’s 34-3 shellacking at the Cotton Bowl felt different. The Horns haven’t arrived just yet but the expectations are so much larger than at any time during the Steve Sarkisian era. Buoyed by the program’s stingiest defense in nearly 50 years, the top-ranked Longhorns feasted on a tasty Sooner morsel in Dallas, but they are after bigger game in 2024. A win over the Oklahoma Sooners is cause for celebration, yet the Horns, to a man, wore the look of a team that has history on its mind. They want it all.

In many ways, this beatdown was even more impressive than the 49-0 win two seasons ago because the Horns spoke like a team that expected to hand Oklahoma hat and wear the Golden Hat back to the 512. Speaking of morsels, Sarkisian strode into the interview room with a State Fair staple held up to his mouth. “I got my Corny Dog, y'all!” the head coach bellowed to reporters. So how was it? “It’s amazing,” Sarkisian answered. But no way was it tastier than the victory he authored. That said, the postgame celebration, while joyous, didn’t have the visible outpouring we witnessed after the 2022 beatdown Texas administered — one season after they blew a 28-7 lead and lost 55-48 as OU freshman quarterback Caleb Williams introduced himself to the nation. “Two years ago when we won the Golden Hat, you might have thought we won the Super Bowl,” Sarkisian said. “This year, was like, ‘OK, we got the Golden Hat back. Alright, let's put it in the trophy case. Let's keep going.’ So I think that's the mentality of our team.”

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Hidden Killers: Inside San Antonio's struggle with fentanyl and meth addiction

She walked out of a rundown apartment and approached a nondescript gray minivan stopped in the street on San Antonio's near West Side. Her name was Stephanie, and she was wearing a gray T-shirt, rolled-up blue jeans and no shoes. In her hands was a metal cash box stuffed with used hypodermic needles. She grabbed two fistfuls of needles, used to shoot up heroin and fentanyl, and dumped them into a bright red biohazard container brought by the people in the Ford minivan, outreach workers from Corazón Ministries. In all, she turned in 80 used needles. She got 90 clean ones in return, plus a pack of Narcan, a medication to reverse opioid overdoses. Depending on your perspective, the exchange was a small victory in the fight against IV-related diseases — or it was a grim illustration of the surge of addiction that has swept South Texas, accompanied by a drastic increase in overdose deaths, many caused by fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin.

Fatal overdoses across San Antonio and the rest of Bexar County have gone through the roof, an analysis of state health department data shows. In 2013, there were 197. Last year, there were 501, a 154% increase. In 2023, the county's rate of overdose deaths was 24 per 100,000 people — double the rate of just five years earlier. The San Antonio Fire Department responded to 4,276 overdoses in 2023, both fatal and non-fatal. That’s 12 calls a day on average, from every part of the city. “Overdoses are happening at a much higher rate because of the introduction of fentanyl,” said Andrea Guerrero-Guajarado, who oversees Bexar County’s response to addiction as director of the department of preventative health and environmental services. “There’s a crisis.” The wave of addiction has created a new normal, especially in downtown San Antonio, a center for the homeless population, many of whom deal with addiction. Trish DeBerry, president and CEO of Centro San Antonio, a nonprofit that cleans streets and sidewalks, assists tourists and aims to revitalize downtown, has noticed the change. Walking along Houston Street in the heart of the tourist district three to four times a day, she regularly encounters "folks that are under the influence." Some are passed out on benches. Others have sores on their face, an indicator of meth use.

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Fort Worth poised to be major hub for national rail travel. Will the pieces fall into place?

Nearly 400 miles north of Fort Worth, Rod Kreie, the mayor of Newton, Kansas, happily envisions a day when he and his friends can hop aboard a southbound Amtrak to go watch his revered Kansas City Chiefs “beat up” on the Dallas Cowboys in Arlington’s AT&T Stadium. For now, the nearest north-south train from Fort Worth, Amtrak’s Heartland Flyer, ends its journey in Oklahoma City — nearly 200 miles south of Kreie’s town of about 18,000 people. But an unprecedented Biden administration plan designed to pump new life into the nation’s passenger rail system would extend the Flyer all the way to Newton while dramatically escalating Fort Worth’s stature as a major hub for national rail travel. The initiative constitutes the biggest passenger rail revitalization program since the creation of Amtrak, America’s publicly funded rail system, more than a half-century ago.

Funded under the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the program would direct $66 billion toward creating, restoring and extending conventional lines while authorizing some of the nation’s first high-speed routes, including at least two in Texas. “The opportunity that could exist there would be huge for our economy,” Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker told the Fort Worth Report, describing how the expanded national rail network would vastly strengthen the North Texas region’s economic and cultural links with other cities. “With the amount of growth we’re seeing in North Texas, we have to embrace the opportunity of passenger rail.” A series of planning grants announced in December unleashed fierce efforts to fulfill passenger rail needs in nearly every state while railroad administration officials undertake related efforts to establish new long distance routes from 750 to 2,500 miles. Although the process is still in the early stages, Fort Worth and the surrounding metropolitan area appear destined to figure heavily in the next-generation rail system based on the initial round of studies. “It’s the first time we’ve been able to look this far forward,” said Peter LeCody, president of Texas Rail Advocates, a Dallas-based nonprofit organization formed nearly 25 years ago to advocate for expanded passenger rail in the nation’s second largest state. He calls it a crucial “first step in a long process” that would require “the cooperation of local, regional and state entities.”

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Attack ad blitz: Colin Allred and Ted Cruz don’t have much nice to say about each other

Texans have little escape from the growing waves of attack ads in the state’s hottest race Nov. 5, the U.S. Senate contest pitting Republican incumbent Ted Cruz against U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas. As both the national parties and outside groups have trained their focus on the race, money is pouring in to fuel ad blitzes, including a barrage of negative spots. Allred has substantially narrowed the gap with Cruz in recent weeks, according to polls and election handicappers. The two are scheduled to face off in a much-anticipated Tuesday night debate during which viewers can expect to hear many of the themes reflected in the ads. Here are the main issues in the attacks.

Allred has hit Cruz early and often on abortion, describing the senator as responsible for the state’s near-total abortion ban. He points to Cruz’s support for state lawmakers who back tight abortion restrictions and his promotion of conservative nominees to the federal bench, from the Supreme Court down to the district level. One ad, supercharged with money from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, features women saying they were denied emergency medical care because of the state’s abortion ban. The senator has been quieter on the issue during the campaign. When pressed, Cruz has emphasized the role of the states and said Democrats are out of touch by not supporting any limits on abortion. Cruz has been an outspoken critic of Democrats on border security and illegal immigration. During his speech at the Republican National Convention, Cruz focused on Americans killed by people who entered the country illegally and said Democrats’ policies are endangering people. In the campaign, Cruz has attempted to tie Allred to the policies of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. He says the Dallas lawmaker has stood by party leaders such as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in opposing GOP proposals to address the issue. “Colin Allred consistently votes for open borders, including voting against deporting illegal aliens who assault police officers,” the narrator of one Cruz ad says.

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David O. Brown: Proposed charter amendments are the wrong approach

For 33 years, I had the honor and privilege of serving my hometown as a Dallas police officer, including more than six years as police chief. I will always be most proud of my record as a crime fighter. As a top deputy and as Dallas’ top cop, I presided over 12 consecutive years of overall crime reduction using an approach that emphasized trust-building, accountability and smart, strategic decision-making. In this year’s election, Dallas voters are presented with three city charter propositions — S, T and U — that take the opposite approach. Frankly, I have never seen a package of public policy proposals that are more self-defeating or more dangerous for Dallas. Propositions S, T and U are being sold on the promise of more police officers to protect our neighborhoods. On its own, that sounds like a laudable goal. When I was the police chief, we reached a peak of more than 3,600 officers. But Proposition U would create an unfunded mandate to immediately hire hundreds more officers than our record high, an unworkable proposal that risks turning our city into a police state.

In Dallas, like in major-city police departments across the nation, hiring became more challenging in the last few years of my tenure. Anti-police sentiment had grown nationally as complacency about lower crime rates grew. Young people were less interested in law enforcement careers. We faced increased competition in our growing region with neighboring cities that continued to poach our officers. A police and fire pension crisis exacerbated the problems and resulted in hundreds of officers leaving. We responded by raising police pay significantly, improving our training, creating a team to deal with mental health issues with a trained clinician, shoring up the pension and increasing our standards. I also had to fire some officers who didn’t meet these high standards, which didn’t make me very popular with some in the department and even in the media. But it was the right thing to do to foster trust. We also invested in law enforcement technology such as license plate readers and surveillance cameras to supplement our boots on the ground. We created specialized squads to address and disrupt criminal activities. And we emphasized the importance of neighborhood policing to foster trust in our communities.

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Thomas Saenz: Paxton’s tactics in Texas undermine our electoral democracy

(Thomas A. Saenz is the president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.) In a democracy, evolution of the policy views of the electorate is a constant occurrence, and more dramatic shifts are not unusual. For those currently in power who may be out of line with such changes, there are only two proper responses: Convince the voters that their new or emerging policy views are wrong and should be abandoned, or change your views to better align with the new electoral majority. Some Texas leaders have pursued at least some of the former, with limited inroads among voters in the emerging electoral majority. Others, such as Attorney General Ken Paxton, have rejected either of these responses in favor of an illegitimate approach to an emerging electoral majority with policy views that may differ from those of current state leadership. These leaders’ effort is to deter or prevent participation by as many voters who align with the emerging electoral majority as possible.

Among Paxton’s actions were the recent, suspiciously-timed early morning raids of elderly Texans’ private homes as part of a supposed two-year investigation of registered voters who have attempted to help their peers, who may need assistance due to age or disability, to cast a completely legal ballot through the mail. More recently, Paxton has threatened to use his official authority to stop counties from sending voter registration materials to unregistered eligible voters. He has also publicly issued an election advisory that overemphasizes and exaggerates with respect to noncitizen voting, despite lack of evidence to suggest that such voting is a problem of even minimal size anywhere in Texas. Finally, he is seeking in court to preserve his right to intimidate voter assistants by threatening to enforce a new Texas law that prohibits elections-related speech in the presence of an inanimate object — a vote-by-mail ballot. The timing, tactics and targets of these measures plainly evince an attempt to deter or prevent participation by new and less experienced voters from the growing Latino community in Texas, a group whose views overall do not necessarily align with those of Paxton and others in statewide leadership positions. But voter suppression, whether through deterrence by threat and intimidation, or through direct obstruction, is a wholly anti-democratic response to a new or emerging electoral majority. We should all expect better of our elected leaders. Voter suppression parallels the efforts of authoritarian dictators in other nations when they see their popular support declining dangerously in the lead-up to an “election.” In Texas and throughout the United States, we must reject such efforts as a significant threat to the survival of democracy. In the context of redistricting, there is a consensus that voters should choose lawmakers, rather than lawmakers choosing their voters. Voter suppression efforts by those in power, including the state attorney general, are an even more direct manifestation of lawmakers choosing their voters.

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National Stories

'Totally illegal': Trump escalates rhetoric on outlawing political dissent and criticism

Donald Trump is ramping up his rhetoric depicting his political rivals and critics as criminals, while dropping a long trail of suggestions that he favors outlawing political speech that he deems misleading or challenges his claims to power. In a speech Friday in Aurora, Colorado, the Republican presidential nominee blasted the immigration system and lobbed a rhetorical grenade at his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris. “She’s a criminal. She’s a criminal,” said Trump, who was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in his New York hush money trial. “She really is, if you think about it.” It’s a pattern of messaging that has long been part of Trump’s stump speeches but has escalated significantly in his 2024 candidacy. In the final stretch to the Nov. 5 election, the former president has developed a tendency to claim that speech he disapproves of is illegal, even if it is protected by the First Amendment.

A questionable cut of a “60 Minutes” Harris interview? “Totally illegal,” Trump wrote on X, saying it makes Harris look better and that CBS should have its broadcast license revoked. The Harris campaign editing headlines in paid Google ads? “Totally Illegal,” he wrote, vowing that Google “will pay a big price” for it. Democrats are trying to “illegally hide” part of his statement calling on rioters to be peaceful on Jan. 6, he claimed this month. In August, Trump told a crowd in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, that criticisms of judges who have ruled in alignment with him should be banned. “I believe it’s illegal what they do,” Trump said. “I believe they are playing the ref. They’re constantly criticizing our great — some of our greatest justices and a lot of great judges. … Playing the ref with our judges and our justices should be punishable by very serious fines and beyond that.”

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Young men’s economic prospects are shifting, along with their politics

For David Tasker, an 18-year-old construction worker in Pennsylvania, his top financial priorities are having enough money for gas, dining out and spending on his girlfriend while living at home with his parents. But he worries about the rising prices he’s seen during his teen years as he’s emerged into an economy experiencing decades-high inflation. For his first election, he said he will be voting for former President Donald Trump with those higher costs and concerns about the wider economy in mind. “Trump can run America like a business and Kamala would run it as a classroom,” Tasker said. “Trump would care about how Americans can get the most money, how we can care for the most people, and keep America first.”

Young men like Tasker, seen as a solidly Democratic group less than two decades ago, have been shifting further to the right politically as their economic outlook has been on a downward trajectory, especially among those without a college degree, said pollsters and social scientists. While the economy has been a top issue for many voters, it’s been a particularly salient one for young men and one tied into their wider cultural ideals about their place in society and wanting to be a provider for their families. “The economic and employment picture for younger men without college degrees is significantly worse than previous generations,” said Dan Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute, whose research has focused on young adults. “These sort of traditional norms around masculinity and what it means to be a man and a husband are wrapped up in economic success, and that makes it really, really challenging when their economic outlook is not as bright.” The economic anxieties among young men are both current and generational. Those without a college degree are making less money, when adjusted for inflation, than the generations before them and are less likely to be working full time, according to data from the Pew Research Institute.

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In outreach to Black men, Harris to vow to legalize weed, protect crypto

Vice President Kamala Harris is pledging Monday to legalize recreational marijuana, protect cryptocurrency assets and give 1 million loans to Black entrepreneurs, as part of her efforts to court Black voters who may be pivotal in the presidential race. Polls show that some Black men may be gravitating toward former President Trump, Harris’ Republican rival, or not vote at all. Harris and other prominent Democrats are trying to counter that. Among the initiatives being announced by Harris Monday:

Legalizing recreational marijuana and providing opportunities for Black Americans to succeed in the industry. 1 million fully forgivable loans of up to $20,000 for Black entrepreneurs and others to start businesses. a plan come up with rules for cryptocurrency and other digital assets; more than 20% of Black Americans own or have owned cryptocurrency assets, according to the campaign. invest more in Black male teachers, promote registered apprenticeships and credentialing opportunities in Black communities and investing in leadership training and mentorship programs like My Brother’s Keeper. a National Health Equity Initiative focused on Black Men that addresses sickle cell disease, diabetes, mental health, prostate cancer, and other health challenges that disproportionately affect them. Former Rep. Cedric Richmond, a co-chair of the Harris' campaign, said her new announcement is part of her "Opportunity Economy" pledge — “an economy where people don't just get by, but get ahead. Where Black men are equipped with the tools to thrive: to buy a home, provide for our families, start a business and build wealth,” he said in a statement.

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Trump pushes plan to hire more Border Patrol agents

Former President Trump said Sunday that if elected he would call on Congress to boost the pay of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents to meet a goal of hiring 10,000 agents. “So in order to meet the goal of hiring 10,000 new agents — we need … agents. We have to — we need them badly, and keeping our incredible veteran agents on the force, don’t leave us,” Trump told supporters at a rally in Prescott Valley, Ariz. “But after I win, I will be asking Congress immediately to approve a 10 percent raise. Haven’t had one in a long time for all agents, and a $10,000 each retention and signing bonus,” Trump said later.

Congress and the agency have each take measures to address pay or recruitment over the last year. Congress approved “higher rates of regularly scheduled overtime pay” for certain Border Patrol agents in its last annual defense spending bill. CBP also announced earlier this year it would be offering as much as $30,000 for new hires. Immigration and border security are top issues in the Grand Canyon State, and Trump’s remarks are meant to appeal to both Republicans and swing voters. Trump also used the rally to reiterate some of his prior policy stances, including not taxing tips and overtime pay. Trump’s rally comes less than a month before the election. Arizona is among a handful of battleground states that will determine who returns to the White House. Trump won the state in 2016, but narrowly lost it to President Biden in 2020.

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Israeli strike on hospital tent camp kills 4 and ignites a fire that burns dozens

An Israeli airstrike on a hospital courtyard in the Gaza Strip early Monday killed at least four people and triggered a fire that swept through a tent camp for people displaced by the war, leaving more than two dozen with severe burns, according to Palestinian medics. The Israeli military said it targeted militants hiding out among civilians, without providing evidence. In recent months it has repeatedly struck crowded shelters and tent camps, alleging that Hamas fighters were using them as staging grounds for attacks. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah was already struggling to treat a large number of wounded from an earlier strike on a school-turned-shelter that killed at least 20 people when the early morning airstrike hit and fire engulfed many of the tents.

Several secondary explosions could be heard after the initial strike, but it was not immediately clear if they were caused by weapons or fuel tanks. Associated Press footage showed children among the wounded. A man sobbed as he carried a toddler with a bandaged head in his arms. Another small child with a bandaged leg was given a blood transfusion on the floor of the packed hospital. Hospital records showed that four people were killed and 40 wounded. Twenty-five people were transferred to the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza after suffering severe burns, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Israel is still carrying out near-daily strikes across the Gaza Strip more than a year into the war, and has been waging a major ground assault in the north, where it says militants have regrouped. The war began when Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, while Palestinian militants abducted around 250 hostages. Around 100 are still being held inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.

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Nobel economics prize is awarded for research into how poor institutions affect countries' success

The Nobel memorial prize in economics was awarded Monday to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson for research that explains why societies with poor rule of law and exploitative institutions do not generate sustainable growth. The three economists “have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity,” the Nobel committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said at the announcement in Stockholm. Acemoglu and Johnson work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Robinson conducts his research at the University of Chicago. “Reducing the vast differences in income between countries is one of our time’s greatest challenges. The laureates have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for achieving this,” Jakob Svensson, Chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences, said.

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Lead Stories

Texas' 100-plus year investigatory tool ruled unconstitutional

A federal magistrate judge has struck down a 100-plus year old Texas statute authorizing the state’s attorney general to investigate certain businesses and organizations for violating state laws. Judge Mark Lane of the Western District of Texas said his decision “wasn’t that hard” because Texas’ Request to Examine statute doesn’t expressly allow a served party to pursue pre-compliance judicial review before producing requested records. Lane announced the decision at the end of a hearing Friday, siding with Spirit AeroSystems, Inc., a Kansas-based manufacturer for Boeing 737 jets that the state is investigating for alleged misrepresentations about its parts.

The order weakens the investigatory ability of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and raises questions about a case pending before the Texas Supreme Court in which Paxton’s office is investigating an organization serving the migrant community. That case, which involves the El Paso nonprofit Annunciation House, is set for oral arguments in January. As of Friday the state statute that Texas used to serve the agency is unconstitutional. Lane said the Request to Examine statute was written for another time, and that recently it has been “frankensteined” by Paxton’s office to include exceptions that don’t appear in the law. The law requires immediate production of requested records, leaving a served party no chance to seek pre-compliance judicial review. The US Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that a served party is entitled to a court’s review in Los Angeles v. Patel. Texas tried to work around the high court’s decision by offering Spirit 20 days to turn over records, Lane said. But the statute makes no mention of such a grace period, and there’s no telling if Paxton or a future attorney general will enforce the law as written and demand immediate access, he said.

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School choice goes before voters in 3 states, faces pushback in others

Supporters of school choice in Kentucky are hoping voters will do what the state courts wouldn’t — allow a new path for state-supported payments to private schools. Kentucky is one of three states, along with Colorado and Nebraska, with school choice questions on the ballot this fall. Voters will be asked to decide whether public money should go to support private education. Opponents say the measures would undermine public schools by shifting money from them, while backers maintain that state aid would give parents more control over their kids’ education. The measures come as school choice gains momentum across the country. Thirty-three states plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico already have at least one kind of school choice program, according to EdChoice, a nonprofit that advocates for the programs. They range from education savings accounts sponsored by the state to voucher programs to various types of tax credits that help provide scholarships or cover educational expenses for private schools.

But the measures have sparked some controversy. In Arizona, which in 2023 became the first state to make all students, regardless of family income, eligible for a school voucher, parents have tried to use the voucher money for dune buggies and expensive Lego sets. Teachers unions and other public school professionals generally oppose the school choice plans, while many conservative politicians, religious institutions and private educational groups are in favor, along with some people of color in districts with underperforming public schools. The choice programs have had difficulty gaining traction in rural areas, where there are fewer private schools than in cities and suburbs. To overcome that resistance in Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has worked hard to elect like-minded allies to the state’s legislature. He led a multimillion-dollar political offensive that resulted in six Republican House members who opposed his school choice initiative being defeated in primaries this year. Stateline reported earlier this year that Abbott is within a couple of votes of being able to enact a school choice program when the legislature reconvenes in January.

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Court removes judge from Texas foster care lawsuit, reverses millions in fines for state

A federal appeals court reversed millions in fines for the state’s embattled child-welfare system on Friday and removed the judge from the case — calling into question the future of a 13-year lawsuit on behalf of children in the permanent custody of the state. The lawyer for the 9,000 children in the class-action lawsuit said Saturday he plans to appeal the ruling. The three-member panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in its late Friday ruling that U.S. District Judge Janis Jack, who has overseen the lawsuit for more than a decade, “must be removed” because of her “highly antagonistic demeanor” toward the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services and Texas Health and Human Services, which oversee the state’s foster care system.

The lawsuit alleges that the state system is unconstitutional — an assertion that has been upheld several times in courts over the years — because children it is supposed to protect after removing them from their homes have been abused and damaged. The state has been subjected to repeated orders by Jack to fix and change the system, some of which the judge has acknowledged they have done. She has also found them in contempt of her orders three times. “Frankly, this is a sad day for Texas children,” said Paul Yetter, the children’s pro bono attorney. “For over a decade, Judge Jack pushed the state to fix its broken system. She deserves a medal for what she’s done. We will keep fighting to ensure these children are safe.” In May, the 5th Circuit Court halted the third contempt order issued by Jack that fined Texas HHS Executive Commissioner Cecile Erwin Young $100,000 per day until her agency complied with orders to fix problems with investigating abuse of children in the state’s care. Friday’s ruling permanently threw out the order and the fines as unconstitutional, saying Jack didn’t take into account the impact it would have on the agency. Jack, the semi-retired judge who has become the state’s unofficial foster care czar through some 60 orders aimed at the system over the past decade, “has become too personally involved in the proceedings” to provide even the “appearance of justice” in the high-stakes case, the ruling said.

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We watched 20 Trump rallies. His racist, anti-immigrant messaging is getting darker.

Donald Trump vowed to “rescue” the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, from the rapists, “blood thirsty criminals,” and “most violent people on earth” he insists are ruining the “fabric” of the country and its culture: immigrants. Trump’s message in Aurora, a city that has become a central part of his campaign speeches in the final stretch to Election Day, marks another example of how the former president has escalated his xenophobic and racist rhetoric against migrants and minority groups he says are genetically predisposed to commit crimes. The supposed threat migrants pose is the core part of the former president’s closing argument, as he promises his base that he’s the one who can save the country from a group of people he calls “animals,” “stone cold killers,” the “worst people,” and the “enemy from within.” He is no longer just talking about keeping immigrants out of the country, building a wall and banning Muslims from entering the United States. Trump now warns that migrants have already invaded, destroying the country from inside its borders, which he uses as a means to justify a second-term policy agenda that includes building massive detention camps and conducting mass deportations.

In his lengthy speech Friday, Trump delivered a broadside against the thousands of Venezuelan migrants in Aurora. And he declared that he would use the Alien Enemies Act, which allows a president to authorize rounding up or removing people who are from enemy countries in times of war, to pursue migrant gangs and criminal networks. “Kamala [Harris] has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world … from prisons and jails and insane asylums and mental institutions, and she has had them resettled beautifully into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens,” he said. His rhetoric has veered more than ever into conspiracy theories and rumors, like when he amplified false claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating pets. And Trump has demonized minority groups and used increasingly dark, graphic imagery to talk about migrants in every one of his speeches since the Sept. 10 presidential debate, according to a POLITICO review of more than 20 campaign events. It’s a stark escalation over the last month of what some experts in political rhetoric, fascism, and immigration say is a strong echo of authoritarians and Nazi ideology.

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This Texas Democrat was campaigning quietly. Then Ken Paxton launched an investigation

Cecilia Castellano’s campaign breakfast had a modest turnout of about a dozen family, friends and volunteers, but it was the journalists from media outlets in Paris and New York who stood out. Castellano is the Democratic candidate for a Texas House seat that is in play with the retirement of 14-term Rep. Tracy King, D-Uvalde, and Republicans are ready to pounce. The out-of-state news crews didn’t drive to the Mexican restaurant in a town of barely 4,000 people 40 miles south of San Antonio because they were interested in Castellano’s prospects for holding a Democratic seat in the Republican-run Texas House. Nor did they care that a victory by her Republican opponent, Don McLaughlin Jr., would add another supporter of “school choice,” Gov. Greg Abbott’s priority plan to devote some public money to private schools. Castellano became part of a bigger story in August when Attorney General Ken Paxton sent officers to raid her home and seize her cell phone with a search warrant obtained as part of an investigation into alleged vote harvesting in 2022.

Raids also targeted other South Texas Latinos with ties to the civil rights group League of United Latin American Citizens, including Manuel Medina, a Democratic aide in the Legislature and Castellano campaign consultant. Latino leaders accused Paxton of trying to intimidate voters in a “disgraceful and outrageous” attempt to counter the growing political power of Hispanic voters, and several Democrats in Congress called on the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the attorney general’s actions. Paxton’s office said the search warrants were part of an investigation into “allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting that occurred during the 2022 elections,” adding that more information would not be provided because it relates to an ongoing investigation. The raids have had a mixed impact on the race, Castellano said, with some voters unaware of the incident, some criticizing Paxton and others saying she should drop out or be in jail. She said she’s “gotten some ugly stuff” from Republicans and has heard from people who are afraid to work with her. “That’s how much fear has already been poured into House District 80 due to everything that has happened,” she said. Preparing for an afternoon of knocking on doors, Castellano encouraged her campaign team to make lists of voters who want to meet her personally and to give out her cell phone number if voters ask.

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State Stories

Bobby and Taylor Duncan: Fort Worth ISD failing? Parents see success in public schools

(Bobby and Taylor Duncan live in Fort Worth, where their three school-age children attend Fort Worth ISD schools. More than 200 other FWISD parents are co-signers of this piece.) In recent weeks, the Fort Worth ISD has faced renewed scrutiny. Public comments by Mayor Mattie Parker and the abrupt resignation of Superintendent Angélica Ramsey after just two years in the role have left many families concerned. The message from our civic leaders emphasizes data points and test scores. This leads some to believe that our public schools are failing. However, many parents of FWISD students believe this narrative is harmful and overlooks the successes happening at numerous campuses across the district. While there are certainly areas worth improving, it seems as though the loudest critics come from outside the arena. Those of us actually in our neighborhood schools see many children thriving.

As parents of FWISD students, we have chosen to invest our time, energy and resources in our neighborhood schools — not just for our children, but for all students. Over the years, we’ve witnessed the transformative power of community engagement. When neighbors, even those without direct ties to the schools, come together to support our children and staff, the results are astounding. For example, some PTAs have grown from barely meeting quorum requirements to become some of the largest in the district. When a school needed funds for a new auditorium sound system, the community raised the money quickly, pulling support from current families, alumni, local churches, and even neighbors without children. In the Near Southside, five schools came together for a “Back to Public School Bash” two years in a row, raising funds and distributing them to schools in need. It is no coincidence that these schools are now some of the top performing campuses in the district. This was not always the case, but with a little intention, we’ve seen real gains.

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What to expect from Colin Allred-Ted Cruz Texas Senate debate

On Oct. 15, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Democrat U.S. Rep. Colin Allred will debate for the first — and possibly last — time this election cycle. For months Texans have seen the candidates on social media and in commercials, but for many potential voters, the face-off will be the only time they hear from Cruz and Allred beyond the posts and soundbites. Debate topics are likely to include immigration, border security, abortion policy, energy, health care, climate change and the economy. Here’s what to know before Cruz and Allred take the debate stage at 7 p.m at WFAA Channel 8 studios in Dallas. Cruz has represented Texas in the Senate since 2013 and has generally maintained his lead in recent polls, but the surveys show a tight race. At least one put Allred, a U.S. Representative from Dallas, ahead by one point. Were he to win on Nov. 5, he’d achieve what every other statewide Democrat has failed to do since 1994.

Cruz is projected to win by about 3 to 4 points, according to recent polling averages from 538, but the race’s competitiveness, as rated by The Cook Political Report, recently shifted from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican.” The change indicates a closer race than first predicted by the independent, nonprofit newsletter that analyzes elections and political trends. Before diving into what to watch for, one note: The significance of a debate between Cruz and Allred happening at all. “The fact that they are debating means that both of them see this as an opportunity or are worried about where the election is,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political science professor. And what should the candidates do with that opportunity? Cruz wants to use the debate as a “nail in the coffin of the Allred campaign,” said Rottinghaus. It’s a chance for Cruz to diffuse “some of the controversies and problems that have come up in his political past,” such as his trip to Cancun during the deadly February 2021 winter storm. “I think that is what is front and center for most voters, so he addressing it really diffuses it and lets him pivot to the issues he wants to talk about,” Rottinghaus said.

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South Texas border city celebrating start of Mexican produce season

The South Texas border city of Pharr is preparing to celebrate the start of its annual produce season and is home to the top port for produce imports from Mexico. The Pharr International Bridge is the No. 1 location for produce imports from south of the border and this year the bridge will mark 30 years facilitating trade between the two countries. City officials are calling this event a “milestone” in U.S./Mexican relations and will be joined alongside produce growers, importers, distributors, consumers, and Mexican dignitaries from the border state of Tamaulipas. All will celebrate continued leadership in trade, agriculture and commerce. The Pharr International Bridge facilitates the import of over 65% of the nation’s fresh produce, which includes over $6 billion in produce trade. And $47 billion in overall annual trade.

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Hotline targeting opioid overdoses coming from Dallas County, poison control

A new hotline aimed at preventing opioid overdoses is launching in Dallas County for both individuals and health care providers, county officials announced Friday. Drug overdoses and overdose deaths in the county have steadily risen over the past few years. The Overdose Prevention Hotline, which launches Monday, aims to expand access to essential information and share information about available resources. “We are committed to providing our community with the resources and support they need to address the opioid crisis,” said Dr. Philip Huang, director of the Dallas County health department. “This hotline will serve as a lifeline for many Dallas County residents, connecting individuals with life-saving resources and reducing the devastating impact of opioid overdoses.”

The hotline will help those seeking information about opioid treatment, harm reduction services and “linkage to care,” county health officials said in a news release. It will operate daily from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. and may be called at 214-590-4000. Services will be available in both English and Spanish. The line is launching in partnership with staff at the North Texas Poison Center. The regional center, at Parkland Health, provides expert medical advice for poisoning emergencies. “Our poison information specialists will be able to assist clinicians in starting medication treatment and assist patients in being referred to places where they will have the best opportunity for continued care,” said Dr. Anelle Menendez, a specialist and educator with the poison control center, in a written statement. Officials said the line will offer guidance on buprenorphine treatment, a medication-assisted therapy that can help manage opioid addiction. It will also offer guidance on referrals to other treatment resources for substance use.

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Here's why California Democrat Nancy Pelosi spends so much time in Republican Texas

A perusal of former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's travel records over the past half-dozen years or so might give the impression that the Democrat from San Francisco is just one more Californian contemplating a move to Texas. Her stops included Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, Laredo and El Paso. Just in the past three months, she's been in Texas three times, including for an event in Austin on Tuesday that was part of her ongoing promotion of her new book, "The Art of Power: My Story as America's First Woman as Speaker of the House." A case could be made that no other national Democratic political leader, except perhaps someone running for — or actually holding — the office of president, has been to Texas more often in the years since it has been a Republican stronghold.

Texas is hardly Pelosi Country. A poll by the Texas Politics Project, an arm of the University of Texas, during her second stint at the helm of the House in 2020 showed that her approval rating was a paltry 34%. Her disapproval number was 52%. Even President Joe Biden has had better numbers in the state. But when Pelosi comes to Texas, it's not to see if she can put a dent in that 52% number. She's here for the 34%. And to not so subtly remind them that she has a thing or two in common with a Texas political figure of another era whose shadow and memory have yet to fade from the landscape. Pelosi's Texas stop on Tuesday evening was at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library on the UT campus, where she was interviewed by historian Mark Updegrove, the president and CEO of the LBJ Foundation.

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SpaceX’s Starship cleared for new test flight

SpaceX plans to launch its powerful Starship rocket on another test flight Sunday, securing approval for the flight following weeks of back-and-forth with regulators. On Saturday, the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees commercial space launches, said SpaceX was cleared to conduct the fifth test mission of the Starship vehicle. Earlier in the week, before officials at the FAA signed off, SpaceX had said it was planning for the flight. The launch could occur as soon as Sunday at 8 a.m. ET. Permission for the flight came after a tense stretch that had SpaceX and Elon Musk, its chief executive, raising objections to what they saw as the slow pace of approvals for Starship, the nearly 400-foot-tall rocket the company wants to launch more frequently.

The company had been bracing for approval in late November. In addition to SpaceX, some members of Congress raised concerns about the pace of greenlighting the flights. The FAA licenses private space launches, overseeing safety factors and collaborating with other agencies to track and mitigate the environmental impact of launches and ground infrastructure. An FAA official said in September that the timing of SpaceX’s next launch was being driven by environmental reviews, which included an analysis of sonic booms expected during the mission. SpaceX needs to show that Starship, which consists of a booster that propels a separate craft, can fly as it hopes. The vehicle stands taller at liftoff than the Saturn V rockets used in NASA’s moon landings decades ago, and relies on dozens of powerful engines. The company made advancements with the vehicle over four previous test missions that began in April of last year, but technical hurdles remain. The company has sought faster regulatory approvals so it can work through problems and gather data. It has criticized what it described as “superfluous” environmental analysis to get clearance for rocket tests. Executives have said many flights are needed before Starship would carry humans.

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Ted Cruz and Colin Allred wage another big US Senate fight in Texas

Attack ads on every TV break. Campaign money pouring in. And on a sunny Saturday, a crowd stretching out the door for a campaign rally at Tulip’s, a popular Fort Worth nightclub — this time for Democratic U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, a former NFL linebacker trying to unseat Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. Texas is having one of those Octobers again. With Democrats defending twice as many Senate seats as Republicans, Allred’s bid could be their best chance to flip a seat next month and preserve their thin Senate majority. Cruz is imploring Republican supporters to take the challenge seriously, six years after his narrow victory over Beto O’Rourke revealed fault lines for Republicans after decades of dominance in Texas.

But Allred, who would become Texas’ first Black senator, is doing things his own way. Out for more than the moral victories Texas Democrats have settled for since 1994 — the last time they won a statewide election — Allred has run to the center and away from O’Rourke’s barnstorming and break-the-rules blueprint. The different look has frustrated some Democrats, but amid signs of a competitive race with less than a month to go, Allred is sticking to the script. “Beto didn’t win, but he was successful,” said Ryan Armstrong, 21, who was registering voters outside Tulip’s on a clipboard still adorned with a “Beto for Texas” sticker. “I have a lot of hope that (Allred) will win, but I honestly don’t know if he’s done enough.” Allred, a three-term congressman from Dallas, is by nature a far different candidate than O’Rourke, an electrifying orator who was quick to hop up on a table to fire up a crowd and road-tripped across all 254 counties. Allred describes himself as someone who “keeps a cool head” and presents himself as a bipartisan problem-solver. To win with that low-key approach, he’ll need enthusiasm generated by Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket even as he sets himself apart from her in a state former President Donald Trump is expected to win handily. “Colin has to outperform Harris, so that’s a little more delicate for him than it was for us,” said David Wysong, a top O’Rourke adviser during his 2018 run against Cruz. Allred boosts his moderate credentials by touting endorsements from prominent Republicans, including former U.S. Reps. Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney.

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New DPS medical marijuana report looks at ways to increase accessibility in Texas

The Texas Department of Public Safety now has a fresh report on the state's Compassionate Use Program, or CUP. CUP is the law passed in 2015 that allows certain doctors to prescribe low-THC products to people with specific medical conditions. The report by Weeds Inc. says Texas geography is a hurdle for patients and dispensing organizations for statewide access. While the Legislature has expanded the qualifying conditions for a prescription, there hasn't been an increase in the number of doctors who can write those prescriptions, and dispensary locations are still limited outside of Central Texas.

Weeds Inc. is recommending three things to meet more patient needs. Those three things include a recommendation to recruit more doctors, allow existing dispensaries to open additional locations outside of Central Texas and to allow more dispensaries to open outside Central Texas. Texas DPS says with the next legislative session about to convene in January, the department isn't making any recommendations to change the program. But it is passing along the report to lawmakers to consider future changes.

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'This jury was by no means ready to see what we saw' | Juror details decision to convict Austin police officer

It was the first ever conviction of a law enforcement officer in Travis County for a deadly shooting while on duty. One week ago today a Travis County jury found Austin Police officer Christopher Taylor guilty on a deadly conduct charge in the death of Mauris DeSilva, a Sri Lankan researcher and scientist with a history of mental health issues. A juror who voted to convict Taylor sat down with KVUE Defenders to explain why. The juror asked us not to show his face or name out of fear for his safety. He said his decision had nothing to do with his political views or those of other jurors and he started by dispelling any notion that the 12-member jury was anti-police. “The majority of police are not bad,” the juror said. “And I’m not saying that Officer Taylor was bad, but I think it was poor judgment."

“My political views are not what you think this verdict would have been,” he told the KVUE Defenders. “I’m not protesting the police. I have always supported the police. I have never supported ‘defund the police.’ I vote Republican. I and several other members of the jury as well. This jury was by no means ready to see what we saw.” What they saw, and what this juror says they could not overcome, were hours of body camera footage that showed the events leading up to the death of Mauris DeSilva and the moment that Officer Taylor opened fire. “I think the threat level increased by their own doing,” said the juror. On that day in 2019, Austin police officers were called to the Spring Condominiums after DeSilva, was seen walking around the property with the knife. The juror says, in analyzing the facts of that day, they placed an emphasis on dispatch records that did not indicate DeSilva was an immediate threat to the public.

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The most consequential races in Texas that you might not be following

Lauren Miller’s story has become a familiar tale in Texas: A woman, facing complications that put her life at risk during pregnancy, was forced to seek reproductive care out of state because of extreme abortion laws. In Miller’s case, she was pregnant with twins. When it became clear that one would not survive, the nonviable fetus also became a threat to the other, healthy baby. Miller later became one of 22 women to sue the state in Zurawski v. Texas, a 2023 lawsuit that sought to clarify medical exceptions to the state’s abortion ban, under which doctors performing abortions could be penalized with as many as 99 years in prison, more than $100,000 in fines, and the loss of their state medical license. In May, the Texas Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision that abortions were not permitted in situations where the fetus had a lethal condition and would not survive, unless the mother also had a life-threatening condition. But the court refused to clarify just how dire the stakes have to become in order to permit doctors to perform an abortions. “How dead do we have to be?” asked Miller, who said she was headed toward kidney failure before she finally elected to seek the care she needed in Colorado—what ultimately amounted to a single injection.

Now several of the plaintiffs in Zurawski v. Texas are working to unseat three Texas Supreme Court justices who are up for reelection this November: Jimmy Blacklock, Jane Bland, and John Devine, all of whom were involved in the ruling. While ten other states are voting on abortion policy via ballot measure, no such option exists in Texas. The women believe the Supreme Court races could prove critical for the future of Texans’ access to reproductive health care, as the Legislature mulls further restrictions. “This is a life-or-death race for us,” said Miller, an eighth generation Texan who lives in the Dallas area. “The only way to try and protect our lives and to try and get some reasonable judicial decisions and put pressure on the legislature is to change the judges.” Find Out, a political action committee spearheaded by Gina Ortiz Jones, the former undersecretary to the U.S. Air Force and two-time congressional candidate, has launched an ad campaign that shares the stories of these women. While Republicans have won every race for Texas Supreme Court since now-Congressman Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat, joined the bench in 1989, Jones is optimistic the races could be competitive if made into a referendum on abortion. A poll conducted by Global Strategy Group found that 90 percent of Texans support abortion in cases where the life of the mother is at risk, including 84 percent of Texans who said they’re voting for Trump. Texas is one of eight states that hold partisan elections for their supreme courts. If a vacancy emerges when a justice retires, the governor of Texas—in this case, Greg Abbott, who also once served as a member of the court—appoints a replacement. The nine members serve six-year terms, acting as the final say on civil cases occurring in the state.

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Fearless Texas defense shuts down Oklahoma with top-to-bottom effort in Red River victory

The crimson and cream Baker Mayfield jersey had a seismic gash down the middle. The culprits: Texas linebacker Anthony Hill Jr., who laid the Oklahoma jersey down at the Cotton Bowl’s 50-yard line, and defensive lineman Barryn Sorrell, who dug a Longhorns flag through the No. 6 on the back. As if they didn’t do enough of that during the game. Hill, a Denton Ryan alum, posted a photo of the rival’s tattered jersey to Twitter with this caption “Texas fears nobody.” The boogeyman, or men, are often the ones who strike those feelings anyway.

The No. 1 Longhorns (6-0, 2-0 SEC) held Oklahoma to nothing more than a single field goal, ineffective drives and its lowest scoring output of the season in their 34-3 win in Saturday’s installment of the Red River Rivalry game at the Cotton Bowl. The No. 18 Sooners (4-2, 1-2) ended six of their 13 drives with a punt, two on fumbles, two on field goal attempts and one on a turnover on downs. They didn’t orchestrate a single 70-yard plus drive, ended three in a minute of game time or less and were held to 3.4 yards per play. “They got up,” Oklahoma coach Brent Venables said, “and they put a lot of pressure on us.” Relentless pressure. The kind that can bewilder a true freshman passer with limited offensive weapons to throw to. Oklahoma quarterback Michael Hawkins Jr. completed 19 of his 30 attempts — few of which were downfield or, even, over the middle of the field — for 148 yards. Texas held Hawkins, a dual-threat Frisco Emerson alum, to just 27 rushing yards on 20 attempts and a long of 11 yards; the Sooners as a unit ran for just 89 yards on 39 attempts. Hawkins was sacked five times: twice by Hill, once by Sorrell, once by safety Michael Taaffe and once by defensive end Ethan Burke.

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SpaceX wants to go to Mars. To get there, environmentalists say it’s trashing Texas

Standing before a crowd of onlookers and journalists in South Texas in February of 2022, Elon Musk made the case for going to Mars. His company SpaceX would build a rocket called Starship. It would be the largest ever built and it would launch frequently — as often as three times a day. The goal would be to stockpile enough fuel and oxygen in space to power a single Starship out toward the Red Planet. Ultimately, Starships would deliver around a million tons of cargo on the Martian surface — enough to build a self-sustaining colony. Musk pitched the colony as a Plan B for humans, anything should happen to Earth. It would protect other species from a catastrophe as well.

“We are life's stewards, life's guardians,” Musk told the crowd. “The creatures that we love, they can't build spaceships, but we can, and we can bring them with us.” Musk might see Starship as an ark for all God's creatures, but environmentalists tell a different story. As Starship prototypes have begun flying from SpaceX's launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas, they say the company has shown little regard for the wildlife Musk has said he wants to protect. Now, a review of state and federal records by NPR, including some obtained through a freedom of information request, shows how SpaceX has sometimes ignored environmental regulations as it rushed to fulfill its founder's vision. With each of its launches, records show, the company discharged tens of thousands of gallons of what regulators classify as industrial wastewater into the surrounding environment. In response to the discharges of water from the pad, both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) have determined that SpaceX has violated the Clean Water Act. Both agencies levied fines totaling more than $150,000 against the company in September .

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City Stories

Fired dancers, protesters picket Dallas Black Dance Theatre’s season opener

At Moody Performance Hall on Friday night, two different worlds played out at Dallas Black Dance Theatre’s first performance of the season, DanceAfrica. A giant inflatable rat named Scabby loomed over protesters as they chanted “Join our picket! Tear up your ticket!” outside. Meanwhile, onstage newly hired dancers joyfully leapt in the piece “Kati Yaki na Groove.” The glass wall of the Moody’s entrance seemed to indicate a clear divide on the company firing its main company of dancers in August. The company cites a social video as the reason for the firings. But the American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents the fired dancers, says the firings happened because of union efforts. The dancers unanimously voted to unionize in May to demand better working conditions.

The company held auditions to replace the fired dancers in August. In the performance pamphlet, Dallas Black Dance Theatre announced its new roster of dancers: 10 dancers for its main company and 11 for its second company DBDT: Encore! DBDT’s Executive Director Zenetta Drew declined an interview but provided a written statement. “We are thrilled to have the opportunity to introduce new members of our company, which each dancer bringing fresh energy and creativity to our mission,” reads the statement. Dozens of protesters came out on Friday from labor organizations, including the Dallas AFL-CIO, Actors’ Equity Association, Young Active Labor Leaders and American Federation of Musicians. Those picketing also passed out flyers explaining what happened to the fired dancers. Griff Braun is the national organizing director of AGMA. While protesting, he said the dance company’s actions are unlawful. “Dallas Black Dance Theatre decided to hold an audition and hire a company of scab replacement dancers and announce a full season of performances. We’re going to be out picketing every performance that Dallas Black Dance Theatre does until they bring back the real dancers of the company,” he said.

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National Stories

Survey: Americans think cities can't arrest their way out of the homelessness crisis

Homelessness has hit record highs, as rent costs have risen 19% since 2019 while wages have not kept up. Survey respondents viewed housing costs as a major cause of homelessness, nearly on par with alcoholism and substance use disorders, and nearly half said they’ve noticed an increase in homelessness in their community in the last year. For elected officials, the findings suggest that “their constituents understand that [homelessness] is a systemic problem … and that housing as a system is not working for the American people” Oliva said. That means government officials must consider a different response, she added. Nearly 40% of respondents, for example, said that a lack of social safety nets like rental or food assistance, among others, contributed to the risk of homelessness.

Oliva pointed to Minnesota as an example where state leaders have made notable investments to meet housing needs. Last year policymakers allocated $1 billion in the state budget to support affordable housing, including $46 million to support the rental assistance program Bring It Home. The voucher program is projected to serve about 5,000 low-income households in the state, the Minnesota Reformer reported. The program will also be supported by a sales tax lawmakers approved last year that is projected to generate $300 million in funds over the next two years. The state also allocated $25 million to help unhoused people or those who have experienced homelessness pursue employment or educational opportunities and secure stable housing. Another $10.7 million will provide rental assistance for individuals or households with a family member with a mental health disorder, and lawmakers dedicated $5.5 million to prevent youth homelessness.

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Inside the TikTok documents: Stripping teens and boosting ‘attractive’ people

Kids as young as 15 were stripping on TikTok’s live feature fueled by adults who were paying for it. That’s what TikTok learned when it launched an internal investigation after a report on Forbes. Officials at TikTok discovered that there was “a high” number of underage streamers receiving a “gift” or “coin” in exchange for stripping — real money converted into a digital currency often in the form of a plush toy or a flower. This is one of several disturbing accounts that came to light in a trove of secret documents reviewed last week by NPR and Kentucky Public Radio. Even more troubling was that TikTok executives were acutely aware of the potential harm the app can cause teens, but appeared unconcerned. The information came after a more than two-year investigation into TikTok by 14 attorneys general that led to state officials suing the company on Tuesday.

Here are a few more of the most serious, and previously unreported, allegations against TikTok, the wildly popular app that is used by around 170 million people in the U.S. TikTok quantified the precise amount of viewing it takes for someone to form a habit: 260 videos. Kentucky authorities note that while it might seem a lot, TikTok videos can be just a few seconds long.“Thus, in under 35 minutes, an average user is likely to become addicted to the platform,” the state investigators concluded. When TikTok’s main video feed saw “a high volume of … not attractive subjects” filling everyone’s screens, the app rejiggered its algorithm to amplify users the company viewed as beautiful, according to an internal report viewed by Kentucky investigators. In fact, TikTok’s documents showed it went so far as to tweak its algorithm to reduce the visibility of people it deemed not very attractive and “took active steps to promote a narrow beauty norm even though it could negatively impact their Young Users,” the Kentucky authorities wrote in the previously redacted documents.

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Tester’s fight for political survival is Democrats’ last stand on the Great Plains

When Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat and political fixture in Montana, was re-elected to a sixth term in 2008, all of the statewide offices down the ballot — governor, attorney general, secretary of state, state auditor and school superintendent — were won by fellow Democrats. A sole Republican took the state’s single seat in the House of Representatives. Things are much different today. “If Tester loses, all those will be Republicans,” Mr. Baucus said, referring to Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat who is battling to hold on to his seat there in one of the country’s most pivotal contests, “That’s a dramatic shift.” It is not just Montana. Other states on the Great Plains — once bastions of progressive prairie populism — have experienced stark partisan upheaval in their congressional delegations over the past two decades, shifting almost completely out of reach for Democrats. Just 20 years ago, two Democratic senators represented both North Dakota and South Dakota — including the party’s Senate leader. Each state also boasted a Democratic House member. Nebraska had a Democratic senator and only a few years earlier had two. Today, those states are represented in Congress entirely by Republicans.

“It is a constituency I don’t even recognize in some cases,” said Byron Dorgan, a former Democratic senator from North Dakota who retired in 2010 after three terms in the Senate and 11 statewide election wins. “The people elected me for 30 years to the House and Senate, and I don’t think that constituency would have ever considered someone like Donald Trump to be elevated to the White House.” While Democrats have been able to offset the loss of those once competitive seats by tightening their grip on Senate seats in Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona — where they are fighting to hold a seat this year — the prospect of being locked out on the Great Plains presents a significant long-term obstacle for Democrats in securing and preserving congressional majorities. They see the race involving Mr. Tester, a third-generation farmer with deep roots in Montana, as a test of whether Democrats can still bridge the yawning urban-rural divide. Democrats who once held the now-Republican seats attribute the shift to a variety of factors, including the exodus of younger residents to more populous areas. They also point to a deeply ingrained sense among the older voters who remain that the federal government and the liberal powers they see as running it are not on their side and not acting in their interests.

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Harris releases medical report, drawing contrast with Trump

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, released a letter from her doctor on Saturday that pronounced her in good health and fit for high office, in an effort to draw a contrast with her counterpart, Donald Trump. In a memo distributed by the White House, the vice president's physician, Joshua Simmons, said Harris's most recent physical exam in April was "unremarkable," that she maintains an active lifestyle and "very healthy diet" despite a busy schedule, suffers from seasonal allergies and sporadic hives, does not use tobacco and drinks alcohol only in moderation. "She possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander in Chief," the doctor wrote.

Harris, 59, is running against Republican Trump, 78, for the White House. She made her medical information public on Saturday in an effort to draw attention to his refusal to do so, according to a Harris aide. The Harris campaign is eager to highlight the former president's age since he became the oldest candidate in the race after President Joe Biden, 81, stepped aside as the Democratic standard bearer following a poor debate performance against Trump. Locked in a very tight race. Harris' campaign hopes that contrasting her comparative youth and mental acuity with Trump's more advanced age and tendency to meander, along with the differences in transparency between the two, will help convince undecided voters that she is more fit for office than he. A White House doctor said in 2018 when Trump was in office that he was in overall excellent health then but needed to shed weight and start a daily exercise routine. Simmons said Harris's allergies had been well-managed with over-the-counter and prescription medications. Her urticaria or hives were "sporadic and transient and do not seem to be triggered by any particular exposure nor are they associated with other symptoms" and respond well to antihistamine treatment.

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America’s new millionaire class: Plumbers and HVAC entrepreneurs

Aaron Rice has two logos tattooed on his left leg: one from the plumbing business he co-founded more than a decade ago, and another from the private-equity-backed company that recently bought it. Few businesses are as vital to their customers as local plumbing, heating or air-conditioning companies—especially in places like Tucson, Ariz., where Rice works and residents sweltered in 100-degree heat most days this summer. For years, Rice, 43 years old, was skeptical when out-of-state investors offered to buy his company. He assumed most of them knew little about skilled-trade work or his customers. They were just looking to make a buck. But in 2022, when approached by a local HVAC company backed by private equity, he changed his mind, figuring that they knew the business. “The trades are hard work. A lot of today’s society, picking up a shovel is foreign to them,” he says.

Private equity, however, is no foreign player in the skilled trades these days. PE firms across the country have been scooping up home services like HVAC—that is, heating, ventilation and air conditioning—as well as plumbing and electrical companies. They hope to profit by running larger, more profitable operations. Their growth marks a major shift, taking home-services firms away from family operators by offering mom-and-pop shops seven-figure and eight-figure paydays. It is a contrast from previous generations, when more owners handed companies down to their children or employees. The wave of investment is minting a new class of millionaires across the country, one that small-business owners say is helping add more shine to working with a tool belt. “You don’t need to go to Silicon Valley to have a successful career and entrepreneurial opportunities,” says Brian Rassel, a partner at the Detroit-based Huron Capital, which focuses on investments in service companies.

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Iran has a hit list of former Trump aides. The U.S. is scrambling to protect them.

U.S. officials are coming to a troubling realization about Iran’s repeated threats to kill Donald Trump and some of his former top generals and national security strategists: Tehran isn’t bluffing — and it isn’t giving up anytime soon. Iran has been openly threatening Trump and those who oversaw his national security strategy since January 2020, when Trump ordered a drone strike killing Qassem Soleimani, then Iran’s most powerful military general. Tehran has put out videos depicting the future deaths of Trump and others who helped orchestrate the Soleimani attack, pushed for their arrest and extradition and issued menacing statements promising revenge. U.S. intelligence community officials briefed the Trump campaign last month about assassination threats against the former president from Iran, with the Trump campaign saying they were warned the threat has “heightened in the past few months.” The briefing followed a pair of assassination efforts on Trump this summer. No evidence has been presented to link those to Tehran.

But Iran’s efforts to kill Trump and former senior officials it has blamed for the Soleimani strike are even more extensive and aggressive than previously reported, according to a dozen officials familiar with the Iranian assassination threat. “This is extraordinarily serious,” said Matt Olsen, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for national security. “Iran has made it very clear that they are determined to seek retaliation against former officials in connection with the Soleimani strike.” And, while the government has gone to unprecedented lengths to protect many of these officials, some who experience similar threats receive no government protection. POLITICO spoke with 24 people with direct knowledge of the Soleimani strike or the ensuing assassination threat, including current and former U.S. lawmakers, Secret Service agents, congressional aides and senior U.S. officials. Some were granted anonymity due to ongoing threats against them or the sensitivity of their work.

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Lead Stories

Tilman Fertitta, Tony Buzbee bankroll Galveston County sheriff candidate who could soon lose his badge

High-profile figures like Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Houston attorney Tony Buzbee are rallying behind a Galveston sheriff’s candidate who could lose his law enforcement officer’s license within two months of election and be forced out of office. Armed with an outsized war chest and a promise to “fight back against the liberal agenda,” Jimmy Fullen, a former Galveston County constable, defeated his opponent Ray Nolen, 57% to 43%, in the March primary, positioning him as the likely next sheriff in the Republican stronghold. That prospect, however, was thrown into jeopardy when the executive director of the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, the regulatory agency overseeing all officers in the state, recommended revoking Fullen’s license in June.

The TCOLE letter claims that on two occasions Fullen was untruthful in official documents about past incidents that cast him in a negative light, including being arrested twice, terminated from a job, disciplined at work and accused of discrimination. The Houston Chronicle independently confirmed these discrepancies based on records from Fullen’s former employers and other agencies. Fullen has since appealed the petition to revoke his license, and state regulators have scheduled an eight-hour hearing in January to make a final determination. Under Texas law, losing his license would disqualify Fullen from serving as sheriff, even if he has already won the election and been sworn into office. The looming uncertainty, however, has not deterred some of Texas' most influential figures, along with a broad coalition of local Republican elected officials, from doubling down on their support for the Galveston candidate. Fullen said his legal team has advised him not to discuss the specifics of the allegations against him, as the case is still ongoing. He argued his broad appeal stems from his decades of service in law enforcement and active involvement in civic organizations, which has persuaded his supporters to overlook the two misdemeanor assault charges he faced in the 1980s.

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Ship channel locals are worried about sludge from port expansion. Now, they want an external review

After Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans in 2005, shocking locals as floodwaters breached trusted levees built and updated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal government turned to impartial experts to find out what went wrong. The resulting report from the American Society of Civil Engineers found that structural flaws in the levees caused most of the city’s deaths from the hurricane. The Army Corps used those lessons when it renewed the infrastructure in Louisiana. Now, a Houston coalition is taking a similar approach to raise concerns about the Army Corps’ plans to use mountainous, berm-bound sludge dump sites in residential neighborhoods to store an influx of dredge spoils from the Houston Ship Channel's expansion project.

“We are assembling a panel of three engineers from the American Society of Civil Engineers to conduct an independent review of the engineering plans,” the Healthy Port Communities Coalition wrote in a letter sent last week to Col. Rhett Blackmon, commander of the Corps’ Galveston district. They urged the corps to join forces with them and suggest one of the panel members. The coalition is worried about hazardous substances such as arsenic, PCBs and dioxins found in samples of dredged material from the channel floor, and about the possibility that an increase in extreme weather since the plan was made will cause floods that could rupture the sites’ walls. After months of requesting new testing of the sites themselves, the coalition is chasing a Katrina-style external review – before any new disaster occurs. Asked about the request, the Army Corps district office said it had to review and respond directly to the letter's authors before making public statements. “It would be inappropriate to acknowledge receipt of letters, discuss the contents, or provide responses to external inquiries prior to replying to the original correspondents,” said Neil F. Murphy, a spokesman for the district office.

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Wall Street pros avoid election bets with race too close to call

In less than a month, Americans will vote in one of the most consequential elections in US history. But on Wall Street things are eerily quiet, as the so-called smart money is reluctant to wager on what’s about to happen. “Never bet on the flip of a coin,” said George Ball, head of the Houston-based investment firm Sanders Morris Harris. “The election is too close to permit thoughtful investment positioning.” Hedge funds aren’t reducing their stock positions the way they historically do ahead of elections, and instead have elevated exposure to equities as the S&P 500 Index continues to set records, according to Goldman Sachs prime brokerage data going back to 2008. Meanwhile, options traders are more focused on the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate cuts and the health of the US economy, putting the Nov. 5 vote lower on the list of immediate priorities, market veterans say.

“Concerns about the elections are around fifth in line behind the war in the Middle East, the explosive moves in China, the push-and-pull of US economic data and shifting Fed easing expectations, upcoming earnings season, etcetera,” said Chris Murphy, co-head of derivatives strategy at Susquehanna International Group. The most recent election polling averages from Real Clear Politics show Democrat Kamala Harris with 49.2% support nationally, and Republican Donald Trump at 47.2%. But with the Electoral College, national averages are far less important than state-by-state polls, which essentially show a neck-and-neck race. And the chance of either party sweeping the presidency and both houses of Congress is considered low. “First, it’s a very close presidential race, especially in the swing states,” said Eric Sterner, chief investment officer at Apollon Wealth Management. “Second, both candidates have very ambitious economic goals, and I highly doubt either will be able to fully implement these campaign promises unless their party takes the White House, the Senate, and the House.” Hedge funds are taking a wait-and-see approach to the election, waiting until there’s more clarity before making significant politically connected investment bets, said Jonathan Caplis, chief executive officer of hedge fund research firm PivotalPath. The approach has worked so far this year, as US long-short hedge funds have posted an 11% gain through September, which is in the top quartile of rolling nine-month returns since 2010, according to PivotalPath. “Most funds are more likely to lean into ongoing market growth than radically cut back because of a still currently uncertain US election result,” Caplis said. “It’s much easier to discern the investment impact of a Fed interest-rate cut than a hazy statement from the Trump or Harris campaigns.”

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Battle for swing states is tied, Trump has edge on top issues, WSJ poll shows

WASHINGTON—Voters in the nation’s seven battleground states see Donald Trump as better equipped than Kamala Harris to handle the issues they care about most—the economy and border security—yet are divided about evenly over which candidate should lead the nation, a new Wall Street Journal poll finds. The survey of the most contested states finds Harris with slim leads in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia on ballots that include independent and third-party candidates where they will be offered as options. Trump has a narrow edge in Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. But no lead is greater than 2 percentage points, except for Trump’s 5-point advantage in Nevada, which like the others is within the poll’s margin of error. Across the full set of 4,200 swing-state voters, Trump gets 46% support and Harris draws 45%. The survey finds that the race in every state—and therefore the presidential election—is too close to call. If Harris wins the states where she leads in the poll, she would win a narrow majority in the Electoral College.

The survey also shows that a campaign marked by bitter rhetoric, a switch of candidates atop the Democratic ticket and two assassination attempts on Trump have pushed Americans into their partisan corners, with neither candidate taking a meaningful share of voters from the other’s party. Trump, the former president, is holding 93% of Republicans across the seven states, while Harris, the vice president, retains 93% of Democrats. Independent voters are evenly divided, 40% for Harris and 39% for Trump—another factor that makes the contest an up-for-grabs race in each state. “This thing is a dead heat and is going to come down to the wire. These last three weeks matter,” said David Lee, a Republican pollster who worked on the survey with Democrat Michael Bocian. “It really could not be closer,” Bocian said. “It’s an even-steven, tight, tight race.” The results suggest that Harris has a potential path to victory through the competitive Sunbelt states, a route that seemed foreclosed when President Biden led the Democratic ticket. By 6 percentage points, more voters in Arizona are backing Harris now than supported Biden in a Journal survey in March. Her share of the vote has grown by 5 points in Georgia over Biden’s showing, and by 4 points in North Carolina. By contrast, Trump’s share has changed little in the seven states, compared with March. By 10 percentage points, more say Trump than Harris would be better at handling the economy—the issue that voters cite as most important to their choice of candidate. By 16 points, voters favor Trump for handling immigration and border security, the No. 2 issue of concern.

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State Stories

Ted Cruz goes all in on transgender attack ads as Texas Senate race enters final stretch

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz continues to bet big that focusing attack ads on transgender issues will help him defeat Democrat Colin Allred in November and give him a third term in Washington. Cruz already has two TV ads focused on transgender athletes playing sports on the airwaves. Plus there is a super PAC airing another, and the Republican Party of Texas is sending out mailers on the same issue. Now Cruz has a third TV ad of his own hitting in the home stretch of the campaign that takes Allred to task for signing onto a letter that objected with other Democrats to Republican-added provisions in a big military spending bill that would ban drag shows, block the display of gay pride flags and restrict transgender health care on military bases. The ads, which will air during football games in Dallas and Houston this weekend, come less than two weeks ahead of the start of in-person early voting and with absentee voting already underway in Texas.

Allred, who represents Dallas in the U.S. House, signed onto a Sept. 27 letter with more than 170 members of Congress objecting to the added provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act. The NDAA, which reauthorizes funding for the military, is typically one of the less partisan bills in Washington each year. “These sections of the NDAA were constructed to score political points rather than support and invest in our most important operational advantage: our service members,” the letter states. “The U.S. government should not prohibit our service members from accessing medically necessary care, especially care that is safe, effective, and supported by every major medical association in the U.S., representing more than 1.3 million doctors.” In the new ad, paid for by Cruz’s campaign, a narrator blasts what it calls Allred's“extreme liberal vision for America” for wanting to allow “boys in girls’ sports.” “Now Allred is demanding drag shows on American military bases, taxpayer-funded sex-change surgeries for men and women in uniform and even taxpayer funds to sterilize minors,” the ad says as a copy of the letter flashes on the screen.

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Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick helps kick off next phase of new police academy in southern Dallas

After decades of renting space to train Dallas police cadets, city and state officials joined to kick off the design phase of a regional police academy Thursday. Mayor Eric Johnson said the new facility represents the city’s dedication to public safety and would revolutionize “efforts to ensure that Dallas is the safest major city in America.” The kickoff event was held at the Kathlyn Joy Gilliam Collegiate Academy. The new police academy, projected to cost $150 million, is expected to be constructed by 2027 and will serve other local regional departments besides the Dallas Police Department. It will replace the current training facility, often knocked for wear and tear amid mold and odor from years of sweat and lack of storage. The academy is in a rented space in the Red Bird area and was always meant for temporary use.

“It’s a really important message to send to the community that we are serious at the state, serious at the city level, of keeping them safe,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said. The new facility will bring some permanence into the picture and upgrades in training infrastructure, such as expanded gym facilities, communal spaces and classrooms and new training technology. The center will be built on five acres of the University of North Texas Dallas campus in southern Dallas, with a park next to it. In August, the City Council awarded HKS Inc., an architectural firm, the bid to oversee the academy’s design. The firm is also in charge of “facility programming” and “construction administration services.” The academy will be built in collaboration with UNT Dallas. The city received $20 million from the Texas Legislature and $10 million through Communities Foundations of Texas, which also supports The Dallas Morning News’ community-funded journalism.

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Which way will Tarrant County, a pivotal election battleground, swing in 2024?

With the U.S. Senate race pitting Colin Allred against Ted Cruz leading the fight, Tarrant County is one of the most important political battlegrounds in Texas. Once a reliable source of Republican votes, Dallas’ western neighbor is a barometer of political change in Texas, particularly as new arrivals are making the area more diverse and politically unpredictable. The county’s prominence was on display last Saturday, with Republicans and Democrats holding dueling events to launch the final month of campaigning before the Nov. 5 election. Cruz rallied GOP supporters at a Keller barbecue restaurant, while Allred joined Democrats for a rally at a Fort Worth honky tonk.

That same day, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson – in Arlington to launch his national American Revival Tour – proclaimed Texas as the linchpin of the 2024 election. That was a lot of political muscle flexing in the county of 2.1 million people. The vote in Tarrant County could play a significant role in determining whether Cruz remains in the Senate or Allred can become the first Democrat to win a statewide race in 30 years. Election returns also will be watched to see if the county remains its current shade of light red or shifts to a shade closer to blue. Cruz and Allred stressed the importance of winning Tarrant County and other North Texas areas. “This is a battle between sane and crazy,” Cruz said at Outpost 36 BBQ in Keller. “This race is about keeping Texas, Texas.” Allred said Texans face a critical choice. “We’ve got one month, one month to stand up for the state that we know we are,” he said at Tulips FTW. Democrats and Republicans echo the call. “Tarrant County is in a precarious position,” said Tarrant County Republican Party Chairman Bo French at the Cruz rally. “I’m gonna tell you, we have a lot of work to do.”

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Chemical leak at Houston-area plant kills 2 workers and injures several others, prompting city-wide shelter-in-place

A chemical leak at a PEMEX oil refinery in Deer Park, Texas, on Thursday killed two workers and injured several others, prompting temporary shelter-in-place orders for residents across the city, officials said. The leak happened around 4:20 p.m., sending hydrogen sulfide – a colorless and potentially toxic gas – seeping into the air at the plant, according to Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez. Two bodies have been found at the scene and at least 35 others were “triaged,” the sheriff said at a Thursday night news conference. It is unclear how many were treated on-site or brought to a medical facility. PEMEX, a Mexico-based oil company, said in a statement in Spanish that operations were halted once the leak was detected and local authorities were notified. Shelter-in-place orders were issued for the city of Deer Park, as well as some residents of neighboring Pasadena, as emergency officials told residents to stay indoors, close all windows and doors, and turn off their air-conditioners. The orders have since been lifted after air monitoring determined no hazardous chemicals had permeated the surrounding community, city officials said.

“We’ve not gotten any air monitoring reports to show that anything has gotten into the community that would be a concern to any constituents in Deer Park,” Deer Park Mayor Jerry Mouton said, noting air monitoring will be ongoing. Hydrogen sulfide, commonly used in oil and gas refining, has a pungent “rotten egg” smell that may linger in the air, Mouton said. The local utility, CenterPoint, has received several calls reporting possible gas leaks as the scent wafts into neighborhoods, the mayor said. He reiterated that no hazard has been detected outside of the plant. “Other than the smell, we have not had any verifiable air monitoring to support that anything got outside the facility,” Mouton said. Investigators have yet to enter the facility because hazmat and fire marshal personnel are still working to lower chemical levels inside the plant, Gonzalez said. The process will likely last through the night, he added.

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Did Abbott's voucher push put HD121 in jeopardy for Republicans?

Texas Democrats had largely abandoned their long-held dream of flipping House District 121 — until Gov. Greg Abbott’s school voucher campaign thrust it back into the spotlight this year. Now an unlikely coalition of public education supporters, including House Democratic leaders, the state teachers’ union and even Rep. Steve Allison (R-Alamo Heights) — the ousted Republican incumbent — are working together to help little-known Democrat Laurel Jordan Swift in her uphill race against conservative Marc LaHood, a voucher supporter who emerged victorious from the Republican primary. The group’s urgency was on full display Wednesday night, as state Reps. Gina Hinojosa (D-Austin), James Talarico (D-Austin), and House District 121’s soon-to-be-former state Rep. Allison all huddled in San Antonio for a public education forum Swift hosted with state Rep. Diego Bernal (D-San Antonio).

In a highly unusual move, Allison, who drew Abbott’s ire when he joined Democrats in shutting down a school voucher program last November, unabashedly joined the Democrats’ call for a cross-party effort to stop the use of taxpayers funds for private school tuition at all costs. He called out Abbott, suggesting that the governor may have overplayed his hand when he aimed at fellow Republicans in the name of his school voucher plan earlier this year. “We can’t lose sight of the big picture… we’ve got to protect public education,” Allison said to the room of mainly San Antonio-area educators. “The governor thinks he has the votes [on vouchers]… and this election is one of those key three to five [seats] to flip that’s going to make all the difference in the world.” In an interview after the event, Allison, a former Alamo Heights ISD board president who has represented the district since 2018, said he believes Swift now has a real chance at a seat that’s long eluded Democrats. “I’m supporting her, and urging others to do the same,” said Allison, who still counts himself as a Republican. Flipping the seat is tall order for Swift, a first-time candidate running in a district that hasn’t sent a Democrat to Austin in the 21st century.

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Kristian Carranza left college to care for her sick mother. Health care is now central in her campaign

For Kristian Carranza, the issue of health care access is personal. Carranza was a few credits away from graduating Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi in 2013, when her mother Mary Jane became gravely ill. She’d recently lost her job, and without health insurance, she struggled to keep up with the medical bills. So Carranza left college, moved home to San Antonio and got a job waiting tables to help out. The story is central in her bid to oust state Rep. John Lujan, a San Antonio Republican, in perhaps the most competitive election to the Texas Legislature this cycle and the best pickup opportunity for Democrats.

“That experience changed me, and drove me to help other families as well,” Carranza said in her first television ad. Carranza’s campaign is focused on expanding health care access, including pressing for the state to remove its ban on abortions and to expand Medicaid to insure more low-income adults, which would primarily be funded by federal dollars but require some state investment. In campaign advertisements and at a debate earlier this week, she has attacked Lujan over recent comments that if he had a daughter who was raped and became pregnant, he’d urge her not to get an abortion. Lujan, who backs the state abortion ban, clarified those are his personal views and he would support an exception in the law for rape and incest. Lujan’s campaign said he has supported programs to strengthen Medicaid plans for children and pregnant mothers, but he believes widespread Medicaid expansion would be financially irresponsible. As a former firefighter and sheriff’s deputy who has twice represented the district in the Legislature, Lujan has a name-recognition advantage. Carranza has attempted to counter that by blanketing the district with campaign advertisements sharing her personal story.

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County Judge Peter Sakai touts 'South Texas Diamond'

Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai touted what he called the "South Texas Diamond" — a sprawling region that includes San Antonio, Laredo, Brownsville and Corpus Christi — but offered few concrete plans to strengthen ties between the cities. "We must prepare before growth gets unmanageable," Sakai said during his "State of the Region" luncheon at a North Side hotel on Thursday. Sakai, Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina and Medina County Judge Keith Lutz discussed the economic and population growth they expect to see in South Texas in the coming decades — and what they need to do to accommodate it. "When you're not sustaining what's going on in your region, when you're not collaborating together as one, that's when you start getting sick," Tijerina said. "That's when you start dying in the region. So it's really important that we keep that collaboration."

San Antonio's population is expected to increase by one million by 2040, which would bring it to 2.5 million. Lutz said Medina County's population will nearly double in the next 30 years. High on the county judges' list of concerns was transportation. They zeroed in on highway expansions, with Tijerina advocating the widening of Interstate 35 in Webb County, anchored by the border city of Laredo, one of the busiest inland ports in the country. Tijerina said up to16,000 trucks travel I-35 in the Lardeo area each day. That number is expected to increase by 5 percent annually. Many of those trucks are crossing from Mexico. Delays at the city's border crossing can result in miles of idling trucks on the highway, which affects families and workers as much as truckers. "Somebody lives there," Tijerina said. "It challenging to get kids to their house and get them safely there." Lutz said heavy traffic is also clogging Highway 90 in Medina County, to the east of Bexar County.

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La Marque councilman questioned over possible $43K in back taxes, hurls profane insults at reporter

Faced with questions about court records showing he owes tax collectors more $43,000, a La Marque city councilman hurled expletives at a Galveston County newspaper reporter before hanging up the phone. "I don't owe anybody any money," councilman Joseph Lowry said to the Galveston County Daily News. "But good job. You're a piece of s---. You're a f------ maggot. And you'll get what's coming to you." Reached by phone Thursday, Lowry repeated his denial and said the tax issue would be cleared up soon. "We're still trying to figure it out," Lowry said.

The report by Daily News reporter B. Scott McLendon is based on civil court records filed in Galveston County's 10th District Court. A three-page petition filed in April by Galveston County, Galveston County Drainage District No.2, the College of the Mainland and the Texas City Independent School District. The lawsuit claims that Lowry's company, Six Brothers Concrete Pumping, owes the four entities $43,868.48 in taxes, penalties, interest and attorney's fees. Court records also show that Lowry was personally served the lawsuit in April. Mark Ciavaglia, the lawyer representing the county in the case, said the money was owed on taxes on business property, such as machinery, equipment and inventory, from 2022 and 2023. The company hadn't responded to the lawsuit as of Thursday, and had no listed lawyer. The tax issue was scheduled to go to trial on Friday, according to court records. The Daily News reported that the trial had been delayed after Lowry belatedly argued his business -- which shares an address with his home -- should have been removed from Galveston County tax rolls. Ciavaglia confirmed the trial had been delayed as Lowry pursued his claim that a mistake had been made.

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Three former Harris County Tax Office employees indicted for bribery, tax assessor says

Three former employees of the Harris County Tax Office were indicted on bribery charges, according to a statement released by Harris County Tax Assessor Ann Harris Bennett. While the employees were not named in the release, the charges stemmed from alleged fraud within the office's Automobile and Compliance Department. One employee was terminated, while the other two had resigned a year before. In a post on X, Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman announced that deputies had arrested a former clerk on bribery charges. Court documents filed with the Harris County District Clerk's Office Tuesday accused Diana Flores-Cibrian of accepting cash payments between May 1, 2022, and June 8, 2023, from Arnold's Title Services LLC in exchange for processing transactions containing false information and processing titles in violation of Harris County Tax Office policy. Also listed in charging documents are two other individuals, identified only as "C. Gonzalez," and "M. Martinez."

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Here's how many ballots North Texas counties have mailed and received so far

Last week, a once-respected national journalist brought a whole lot of unwanted attention to Tarrant County’s elections department when former 60 Minutes reporter Lara Logan tweeted misinformation regarding mail-in ballots for the Nov. 5 general election. On Oct. 2, Logan quote-tweeted a post from the Dallas County GOP alleging that the county will be using questionable voting system components in the upcoming election. In her post she aimed her keyboard to the west of Dallas County, writing “Texas is in real danger from fraud in this election - Tarrant County is trying to send out 7 million mail in ballots & there is no sign enough people are taking this seriously. Ken Paxton & his office realize the threat. But too many are complacent & ignoring this.” In pretty quick fashion, Logan’s claim was debunked. It didn't take much to do so for a number of reasons, but the Tarrant County Elections Administrator Clint Ludwig told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that Logan’s baseless allegation was, in fact, false. At that point, his office had received just under 23,000 requests for mail-in ballots, had sent out only 4,705 and had received 81 of those back.

Later, Logan would note on her X account that she had been mistaken and had meant to claim that Harris County, not Tarrant, had been guilty of mailing millions of ballots — again, without offering any evidence to support her claim. She even seemed to get her geography wrong when attempting to correct herself, writing “Correction: This should have read Harris County, Houston. NOT Tarrant County, Dallas.” Once upon a time, Logan was a prominent voice in the CBS News empire, where she became a star as a 60 Minutes contributor and as CBS News’ chief foreign affairs correspondent. But since she left CBS in 2018, Logan has been a leading voice for conservative-backed conspiracy theories of all kinds. Scroll for a bit on her X timeline and you’ll see that she, like U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, thinks people can control the weather, but she’s also a vocal supporter of the right-wing efforts of the Dallas HERO amendments that we wrote about for this week’s Observer cover story. Voting by mail has become one of the hottest of hot buttons since the 2020 presidential election. Former president Donald Trump has long cited fraudulent mail-in ballots as being partly to blame for his loss in the 2020 election, although no proof of widespread fraud of any kind has been found from that election, and every lawsuit that has been filed on the matter has been defeated or dismissed.

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Texas woman gets death threats for baking Tim Walz cookie

If there’s one truism in life, it’s that people on the internet will take any opportunity to act like assholes. Case in point: A bakery in Flower Mound has received death threats for daring to make a cookie with vice presidential candidate Tim Walz’s face on it. Haley Popp, who owns Hive Bakery, told The Dallas Morning News that she posted the blue sugar cookies on the store’s Instagram and they sold out quickly. (What a sweet story! Anyway that’s all—wait, just kidding.) Of course, online assholes jumped in. The worst came via a private Facebook group called Flower Mound Cares. One commenter reportedly hoped that Popp’s bakery and “all of the gay people in it” would burn. (She contacted police but was told that unless someone messaged her directly with a threat to harm her, there’s nothing they can do.)

Popp said she’s been harassed before — essentially anytime she posts any baked goods with a political message. Apparently bakers can only be “political” if they’re refusing to make cakes for gay couples! Luckily even when she receives threats, her sales go up — not down, she told the newspaper. And Popp, to her credit, isn’t backing down. “This business is just an extension of who I am, and I don’t think I should have to be quiet,” she told the Morning News. “I’ve built this platform. Why shouldn’t I use it?” On Wednesday, the bakery posted a fresh batch of cupcakes featuring both Walz and Vice President Kamala Harris on it. And they’re gluten free! Grandpa is NOT gonna like that! (Unless he’s a celiac.)

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Battle over access to mifepristone to continue in Amarillo court

In June, the Supreme Court unanimously preserved access to the medication mifepristone, used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the United States in 2023, by ruling that the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine challenging the expansion of access to the medication by the Food and Drug Administration in 2016 and 2021 lacked a legal right to sue. The lawsuit sought to restrict access to mifepristone to include states where abortion is legal. The parties involved submitted a Joint Status Report to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Amarillo Division, on Sept. 30. In the status report, as Defendants, the FDA said they believe that no further proceedings are necessary or warranted in the case, citing the Supreme Court’s conclusion that the original Plaintiffs lack standing to challenge the FDA’s actions.

“Additionally, the State Intervenors cannot continue with their Complaint because intervention requires an existing suit within the Court’s jurisdiction, which is not present here,” the status report said. “And the State Intervenors’ claims cannot proceed as an independent suit because the States cannot satisfy venue requirements (and the States also independently lack legal standing.)” Intervenor-Defendant, Danco Laboratories, LLC, agreed with the FDA, the status report said. The Supreme Court unanimously stated in rejecting the plaintiff’s theories as insufficient to create an Article III case or controversy that “the federal courts are the wrong forum for addressing the plaintiffs’ concerns about the FDA’s actions.” Citing the Supreme Court’s decision, they said the plaintiffs could present their concerns and objections to the President and FDA in the regulatory process or to Congress and the President in the legislative process. As a result, Danco Laboratories said the litigation should be over, according to the status report. As the Plaintiff, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine disagrees, as does the State of Missouri, the Intervenor-Plaintiffs. In the status report, they said the Supreme Court decided only whether the private plaintiffs amassed enough evidence to prove standing for the preliminary injunction, not whether their complaint should be dismissed.

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Fair Park report on $5.7 million in misspent funds tweaked after OVG warns legal action

An accountant’s report released Wednesday showing $5.7 million of donor-restricted funds were misspent in Fair Park was tweaked Thursday to remove any mention of who’s at fault for moving money from bank accounts, according to documents obtained Thursday by The Dallas Morning News. OVG’s general counsel Brian Rothenberg told The News in an emailed statement that the company received an “updated” version of the accountant’s report, the original version of which was widely distributed Wednesday by Fair Park First. The original report pointed blame at OVG, the operator, for moving money in and out of bank accounts that held restricted donor funds and were supposed to be exclusively held by the nonprofit manager, Fair Park First, which has been raising money for specific capital improvement projects. The updated version, obtained by The News from OVG and Fair Park First on Thursday, does not mention who is at fault.

The original report said that “[OVG] ultimately failed to comply with the requirements” of the management agreement between the city and Fair Park First. The updated version says that “compliance” with the requirements “failed,” dropping the reference to OVG. “This change seems to be a clear admission by the auditors that OVG was not at fault for any non-compliance with any provisions of the management agreement, and rather any failures are attributable to Fair Park First’s own actions and omissions,” Rothenberg wrote. According to documents obtained by The News, Rothenberg put Malnory, McNeal & Company PC on notice in a letter sent Wednesday demanding the firm retract its previous statement assigning blame to OVG and issue an updated report — or else OVG reserved the right to “commence legal action.” “This statement is odd in that it appears to be a legal conclusion that has no place in a report on accounting procedures that expressly states it is not an audit,” Rothenberg wrote in the letter. “More importantly, the statement is patently false and inaccurate, and evidences a gross misunderstanding of the Management Agreement and then the related Sub-Management Agreement.” The management agreement is between the city of Dallas and nonprofit Fair Park First. The submanagement agreement details the relationship between Fair Park First and OVG as its for-profit operator. Fair Park First is the manager responsible for fundraising and supervising subcontractors. OVG, a subcontractor, is responsible for the day-to-day upkeep and operations of the park.

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Communities in Schools plans new Tarrant County headquarters

A Fort Worth nonprofit is beginning work on a new building its leaders say will offer critical resources to students struggling with mental health challenges, food insecurity and other issues. Communities in Schools of Greater Tarrant County partners with 12 school districts in the Fort Worth area to provide mental health counseling for students. The organization is building a new headquarters on Hawks Creek Avenue in Westworth Village, just east of Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth. The nonprofit expects to open the new headquarters in the fall of 2025. Once it’s complete, the new building will include a mental health counseling center, a fresh food pantry, a clothing and school supply pantry and training space for social workers. Communities in Schools works with school districts to place social workers on campuses across the Fort Worth area to provide mental health support and case management to students who might not have access to those services otherwise.

Lindsey Garner, the nonprofit’s CEO, said the counseling center at the new headquarters will allow the organization to build on the services it already offers. On-campus mental health services have been an effective way of reaching thousands of students, Garner said, and the organization will continue to offer those services. But there are cases in which a student needs to meet with a counselor off campus, in a group session with a parent or sibling. The new center will give the nonprofit’s counselors the ability to see students in the setting that works best for them, she said. In the meantime, the organization’s counselors are holding off-campus visits with students and their families at a temporary office in Fort Worth’s Como neighborhood. Counselors can offer up to 75 sessions per week at the temporary location. Since the pandemic, public health officials have raised alarms about a growing number of students suffering from mental health issues, including an increasing number who say they’re having suicidal thoughts. In 2021, 42% of students across the country reported feeling persistently sad or hopeless, and one in 10 attempted suicide, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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City Stories

Houston Grand Opera announces longtime music and artistic director Patrick Summers to step down

Patrick Summers, longtime artistic and music director of Houston Grand Opera, is bidding adieu to the performing arts organization after more than 25 years. He will step down from his post during the spring of 2026; at the close of the 2025-2026 season, he will transition to the role of music director emeritus and holder of the Robert and Jane Cizik Music Director Emeritus Chair. In his future position, Summers will serve as an advisor, scholar and guest conductor of the company. An international search for his successor is underway. "Since David Gockley first spoke to me almost three decades ago about coming to HGO, when I was a shy and ambitious young conductor in my thirties, to this current moment in Khori Dastoor's early tenure, during which I will bring my long service as music director to a close, I can only say that it has been the privilege of a lifetime to be a part of this extraordinary company," Summers said via statement.

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National Stories

Social Security recipients will get a 2.5% cost-of-living boost in 2025, smaller than in recent past

Millions of Social Security recipients will get a 2.5% cost-of-living increase to their monthly checks beginning in January, the Social Security Administration announced Thursday. The cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, for retirees translates to an average increase of more than $50 for retirees every month, agency officials said. About 72.5 million people, including retirees, disabled people and children, get Social Security benefit. But even before the announcement, retirees voiced concern that the increase would not be enough to counter rising costs.

Sherri Myers, an 82-year-old retiree from Pensacola City, Florida, is now hoping to get an hourly job at Walmart to help make ends meet. "I would like to eat good but I can't. When I'm at the grocery store, I just walk past the vegetables because they are too expensive. I have to be very selective about what I eat - even McDonald's is expensive," she said. Recipients received a 3.2% increase in their benefits in 2024, after a historically large 8.7% benefit increase in 2023, brought on by record 40-year-high inflation. The smaller increase for 2025 reflects moderating inflation. Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley told The Associated Press that the upcoming increase will provide a measure of relief for recipients as inflation has cooled and the agency serves a record number of retirees while funding is at a historic low. His message to those who feel that the adjustment is not enough: "They're not wrong."

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Kamala Harris off base on tax rate comparison of billionaires, teachers

During her “60 Minutes” interview, Vice President Kamala Harris resurrected an old talking point to justify raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans. CBS News’ Bill Whitaker pressed Harris on how she would pay for promises such as an expanded child tax credit and aid to small-business startups. Harris pointed to her plan to raise taxes on wealthier taxpayers. “Well, one of the things is I’m gonna make sure that the richest among us, who can afford it, pay their fair share in taxes,” Harris said in the Oct. 7 interview. “It is not right that teachers and nurses and firefighters are paying a higher tax rate than billionaires and the biggest corporations.” Harris made an almost identically worded remark the following day on CBS’ “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

What do billionaires pay in taxes? Taxpayers may think of tax rates solely as the percentage of income they pay on their annual tax filings. But when Biden and Harris use this talking point, they are factoring in a Biden proposal to tax wealth held by the richest fraction of Americans, rather than just income. In 2023, the White House published a fact sheet that said the average tax rate for billionaires is 8%. The White House’s 8% figure came from a report by its own Council of Economic Advisers that examined what would happen if the United States were to tax unrealized gains on stocks. Currently, if people see their stock shares rise in value over time, they don’t pay taxes on those gains until they sell the shares. If the shares are never sold, they aren’t taxed. Under current law, stockholders may pass their shares to the next generation with little or no taxation.

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Nobel Peace Prize: Japanese atomic bomb survivors Nihon Hidankyo win

Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese group of atomic bomb survivors, has won the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize. The organisation, made up of survivors of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was recognised by the Norwegian Nobel Committee for its efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Nobel Committee Chair Joergen Watne Frydnes said the group had "contributed greatly to the establishment of the nuclear taboo". Mr Frydnes warned the "nuclear taboo" was now "under pressure" - and praised the group's use of witness testimony to ensure nuclear weapons must never be used again. Founded in 1956, the organisation sends survivors around the world to share their testimonies of the "atrocious damage" and suffering caused by the use of nuclear weapons, according to its website.

Their work began almost a decade after the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The group has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize "many times" in the past, including in 2005 when it received a special mention by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, its website says. On 6 August 1945, a US bomber dropped the uranium bomb above the city of Hiroshima, killing around 140,000 people. Three days later a second nuclear weapon was dropped on Nagasaki. Two weeks later Japan surrendered, ending World War Two. Speaking to reporters in Japan, a tearful Toshiyuki Mimaki, the co-head of the group, said: "Never did I dream this could happen," the AFP news agency quotes him as saying. Mr Mimaki criticised the idea that nuclear weapons bring peace. "It has been said that because of nuclear weapons, the world maintains peace. But nuclear weapons can be used by terrorists," Mr Mimaki said, according to reports by AFP.

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The ex-Soros executive who is Trump’s new obsession

“One of the most brilliant men on Wall Street.” “Respected by everybody.” “A nice-looking guy, too.” This is how former President Donald Trump recently described Scott Bessent, a little-known hedge-fund manager, onetime Al Gore supporter and George Soros’s former top investor. Bessent, in some ways an unlikely ally for Trump, has become his latest obsession. Trump sang Bessent’s praises at an August rally in North Carolina, then surprised him by having him come onstage. On Thursday, Trump called Bessent “one of the top analysts on Wall Street” during a speech before the Detroit Economic Club. Bessent, founder of the investment firm Key Square Capital Management, caught the former president’s attention last year when he publicly backed Trump as many peers in the finance world were still coalescing around Nikki Haley.

Bessent, 62 years old, decided to go all-in when he saw that the legal cases against Trump were helping, not hurting, his approval rating. He told people the phenomenon reminded him of a stock that rises despite bad news, a bullish sign for some investors. Now Bessent is Trump’s go-to economic adviser. He passes campaign officials note cards with economic data and messages that Trump references on the stump. Bessent’s name has been floated for positions such as Treasury secretary should Trump recapture the White House. The billionaire investor has known the Trump family for decades, though he didn’t become close with the former president himself until recently. He is friends with Blaine Trump, the ex-wife of Donald Trump’s late brother, Robert. Bessent visited Trump early this year at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, where they discussed ways Trump could convert his ideas into policy. Bessent is friends with Sen. JD Vance (R., Ohio) and was among the few on Wall Street advocating for Trump to choose Vance as his running mate. He also is friendly with John Paulson, another investor seen as a potential Treasury secretary under Trump. This account is based on conversations with more than a dozen people familiar with Bessent and his deepening relationship with Trump.

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Florida plans Hurricane Milton recovery; 2.5 million remain without power

Florida entered its second day of recovery and rescue operations after Hurricane Milton swept through the state and unleashed wind, rain and tornadoes that left at least 14 people dead and pummeled communities still cleaning up after Hurricane Helene struck two weeks ago. More than 2.5 million remain without power as of Friday morning. Since landfall, nearly a thousand people have been rescued by urban search and rescue teams and the Florida National Guard, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said in an update Thursday.

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Obama admonishes Black men for hesitancy in supporting Harris

Former president Barack Obama on Thursday made a direct, impassioned plea to Black men to support Vice President Kamala Harris — a key demographic she is struggling to mobilize — admonishing them for thinking about sitting out the presidential contest as well as suggesting sexism might be at play. During an unannounced stop at a Harris campaign field office in Pittsburgh, just hours before he was set to appear at his first campaign rally for the Democratic nominee, Obama said he wanted to “speak some truths” and address Black men specifically, making his most direct remarks about their hesitancy in supporting Harris to date. “My understanding, based on reports I’m getting from campaigns and communities, is that we have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running,” Obama said, adding that it “seems to be more pronounced with the brothers.”

Obama questioned how voters, and Black voters specifically, could be on the fence about whether to support Harris or former president Donald Trump, the Republican nominee. “On the one hand, you have somebody who grew up like you, knows you, went to college with you, understands the struggles and pain and joy that comes from those experiences,” Obama said, ticking off a list of Harris’s policy proposals. In Trump, he added, “you have someone who has consistently shown disregard, not just for the communities, but for you as a person ... And you are thinking about sitting out?” The former president then spoke about what he thought might be contributing to Black men’s soft support of Harris: the discomfort of some with the idea of electing the first female president. “And you’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses, I’ve got a problem with that,” he said. “Because part of it makes me think — and I’m speaking to men directly — part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.” Obama’s comments created a remarkable moment: The nation’s first Black man to serve as president urging others like him to rally behind potentially the first woman of color to ascend to the White House. Harris is Black and Indian American.

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Groceries are more affordable now than in 2019. So why are prices still such a hot-button issue?

Absolute prices themselves — the dollar amount you pay for eggs, milk and other items at the store — are still higher than they were before. That’s caused a long-lasting case of sticker shock for consumers. Food price increases did pick up slightly in September, according to the latest consumer price index report from the Labor Department. The annual inflation rate for food at home was 1.3%, lower than the inflation rate for prices across the economy, which was 2.4%. Groceries are a lot more affordable than other expenses like rent and insurance costs, economists say, and they sometimes don’t paint a particularly meaningful picture of the economy, or of Americans’ financial burdens. In spite of that, food prices have remained top of mind for consumers, as well as in this year’s presidential election, as both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have pledged to make spending on this staple more affordable for voters. “This is a narrow sliver of what people spend their money on. But it’s something that is very memorable,” said Jeremy Horpedahl, an economist and director of the Arkansas Center for Economic Research. “It keeps hitting them in the head as they see these high prices, but we are headed in the right direction.”

The annual inflation rate for groceries, which the government calls “food at home,” has slowed significantly since peaking at about 13.5% in August 2022. But the impact of those price increases will reverberate for years, economists said. That’s partly because most of us had gotten used to pretty consistent prices at the grocery store. Starting in the late 1990s, the “real,” or inflation-adjusted, cost of food actually fell consistently. Prices were steady as wages increased — meaning that, for years, weekly grocery hauls effectively got cheaper. There’s also a classic disconnect in how economists analyze inflation in data sets versus how the majority of people experience it in their own lives. Policy makers look at the rate of change in prices, and are looking for slower increases, not lower price levels.

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Sheinbaum targets violence in states besieged by cartels

The Mexican government will target criminal activity and social disparity in a handful of states accounting for most murders and other “high impact crimes.” President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo said on Tuesday that those states include Chihuahua, Baja California, Guanajuato, Jalisco, and six others where organized criminal groups have a strong presence. Government data shows almost 2,300 people have been murdered in the central state of Guanajuato since Jan. 1, 2024, while more than 1,700 have been killed in Baja California and nearly 1,500 in Chihuahua – which includes Juarez just across the border from El Paso. “We are not going back to (former President Felipe) Calderon’s narco war. There will not be extrajudicial executions and such. Our tools will be prevention, attention to the root causes, intelligence and presence” of law enforcement, Sheinbaum said.

Calderon, in the early 2000s, mobilized police and the military against the cartels, which resulted in a historic spike in homicides and more criminal activity, not less. Newly appointed Public Safety Secretary Omar Harfuch said the administration will beef up intelligence gathering and expand the use of technology to identify criminal organization leaders, apprehend them, ensure their trial, and seize their assets. Sheinbaum said the feds will coordinate with states because “public safety is a shared responsibility.” As for how she will address the root causes of crime, Sheinbaum said she would send brigades of social services workers to high-crime neighborhoods in those states to attend to the needs of families. “If the (teenagers) are not going to school, we will give them scholarships. If they have no jobs, we get them jobs. (The point) is to help needy families and prevent young people from joining criminal groups,” the president said.

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Lead Stories

Hurricane Milton makes landfall in Florida as Category 3 storm

Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida on Wednesday, bringing dangerous winds, life-threatening storm surge and heavy rain to a region that was pummeled by Hurricane Helene less than two weeks ago. The storm hit near Siesta Key, Fla., in Sarasota County around 8:30 p.m. ET as a Category 3 hurricane, the National Hurricane Center said. Maximum sustained winds were estimated at 120 mph. Late Wednesday night, Milton was downgraded to a Category 2 hurricane, weakening further to a Category 1 early Thursday. Before making landfall, Milton hammered Florida with several inches of rain, powerful winds, storm surge and tornadoes. The National Weather Service on Wednesday issued Florida a record number of tornado warnings, which indicate a twister has been spotted or detected by radar. The storm is likely to exacerbate the devastation wrought by Helene, which tore a path of death and destruction across several states in late September.

Millions were urged to evacuate ahead of the storm. Some faced traffic jams and found gas stations out of fuel. By Wednesday night, officials were urging residents to shelter in place. “The storm is here,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “It’s time for everybody to hunker down.” Tampa Bay was spared a direct hit, allaying some fears of catastrophic damage to coastal communities there. The area, which is densely populated and has seen booming development on low-lying ground, is still expected to see significant effects from the storm. In the bayside city of St. Petersburg, footage showed the storm had shredded the roof of Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays, while city authorities said a construction crane collapsed downtown. No injuries were reported in either incident. More than 3 million customers in Florida were without power in the early hours of Thursday, according to PowerOutage.us—over a quarter of the connections it tracks in the state. Losing power was the main concern of Charles Giglia of Sarasota. The 82-year-old retired mechanic, who recently moved to the area from Queens, N.Y., said he wasn’t able to buy a generator in time; they were all sold out. He tried to book a flight to New York City a few days ago, but there was nothing available. His home, slightly inland from the beach, wasn’t damaged by Helene and he thinks the concrete house will likely weather Milton without too much damage.

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Inflation data to show if price cooldown has continued as election nears

Economists expect inflation to have slowed gradually in September. Inflation data set to be released on Thursday will show whether price increases have continued a monthslong slowdown or hit a snag as they near normal levels. The report will mark the final update of the nation's preeminent inflation gauge ahead of the presidential election next month. Price increases have proven a major point of contention between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. Inflation has slowed dramatically from a peak of about 9% in 2022, hovering right near the Federal Reserve's target rate of 2%. Economists expect prices to have climbed 2.3% over the year ending in September. That figure would mark a gradual slowdown from a 2.5% inflation rate recorded over the prior month.

The data is set to arrive about three weeks after the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate a half of a percentage point. The move dialed back the central bank's yearslong inflation fight, signaling a shift toward greater focus on ensuring a strong labor market. "This recalibration of our policy stance will help maintain the strength of the economy and the labor market," Fed Chair Jerome Powell said at a press conference in Washington, D.C., last month. Weaker-than-expected jobs data in both July and August had stoked worry among some economists about the nation's economic outlook. But a jobs report last week defied any such concern by presenting a rosy picture of the labor market for September in which employers hired at a strong pace, a large share of people stayed on the job and wages rose at a fast rate. Employers hired 254,000 workers in September, far exceeding economist expectations of 150,000 jobs added, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed.

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CenterPoint 'reassessing' use of The Pond, its Houston-area lobbying retreat, CEO says

CenterPoint Energy is “reassessing the use” of its private Chambers County retreat, colloquially known as “The Pond,” as a space to wine and dine Texas lawmakers, the company’s chief executive said Saturday. The country lodge off of Trinity Bay has been key to CenterPoint’s lobbying efforts for decades. More than 70 current or former state and local elected officials said they have visited, reported spending campaign funds on trips there or were shown on the grounds in public images posted on social media, a Houston Chronicle investigation found in August. “I've never hosted an elected official or a member of any of our regulators. I've never been out at The Pond with anybody other than members of our team,” Jason Wells, CenterPoint's CEO, said in an interview following a Public Utility Commission of Texas meeting in Houston over the weekend.

“In light of the criticism, we are reassessing the use of that facility for things like hosting elected officials,” Wells said. CenterPoint Chief Communications Officer Keith Stephens called the Pond “a rustic fishing lodge” that’s “pretty pedestrian” where guests can go fishing and alligator hunting. Those who’ve visited The Pond say it boasts extraordinary fishing, a kitchen serving three meals a day, an open bar, pool and poker tables and on-site staff to help reel in the fish, clean them and filet them for guests to take home, according to the Chronicle’s investigation. Several lawmakers, including some who've backed laws or initiatives supported by CenterPoint in recent years, told the Chronicle visiting the Pond hasn’t influenced their votes or their policymaking. CenterPoint also hosts employee and community-oriented events at the Pond, Wells said. Some industry observers, however, said invitations to the Pond can build closeness between lawmakers and the company that may later come in handy.

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Trump's small-dollar donor fundraising is beset by confusion and fatigue

Donald Trump’s contributions from small-dollar donors have plummeted since his last White House campaign, presenting the former president with a financial challenge as he tries to keep pace with the Democrats’ fundraising machine. Fewer than a third of the Republican’s campaign contributions have come from donors who gave less than $200 — down from nearly half of all donations in his 2020 race, according to an analysis by The Associated Press and OpenSecrets, an organization that tracks political spending. The total collected from small donors has also declined, according to the analysis. Trump raised $98 million from such contributors through June, a 40% drop compared to the $165 million they contributed during a corresponding period in his previous presidential race.

The dip has forced Trump to rely more on wealthy donors and groups backed by them, a shift that cuts into the populist message that first propelled him to the White House. The decline in donations could not come at a worse time for Trump. Democrats have raised massive sums from small-dollar donors this cycle. President Joe Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris have raised a staggering $285 million from such donors since April 2023, representing more than 40% of their fundraising, according to data from OpenSecrets. GOP operatives said the trend could portend trouble for the broader party. Trump’s fundraising dip raises questions about the party’s ability to continue tapping its aging base for funds. Such voters often live on fixed incomes and don’t have the extra cash to contribute to candidates, and polls have consistently found that the Republican base is growing older. Republicans also engaged in a hyperaggressive — often combative — style of digital fundraising that is alienating voters, the operatives said. Campaigns and committees often share or rent lists of donors to each other, leading to voters being flooded with similar solicitations that can be confusing. “Republican vendors have so mistreated our donors that many grassroots donors don’t want to give to us anymore,” said John Hall, a Republican fundraising consultant and partner at Apex Strategies. “If you make a donation to almost any Republican candidate today, within three weeks you are going to start getting 30-50 text messages from other candidates you have never heard of before.”

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State Stories

Colin Allred’s no-frills approach helped win football games. He’s hoping it will oust Ted Cruz

Colin Allred was never known for his bravado on the football field or hype in the locker room. At Baylor University, where he played linebacker and was a team captain, Allred acted like a protective older brother, shutting down parties that went too late and urging teammates to stay focused when they were down. “I played with guys who are supremely talented — way more talented than Colin ever was — who would freak out when things go bad,” said CJ Wilson, who played with Allred in college before going on to the Dallas Cowboys and Carolina Panthers. “He would be looking at the scoreboard, he’d look at the ground, and he’d tell fellas around him: ‘Let’s just get one play.’” Twenty years later, the former NFL player and civil rights attorney is taking the same steady approach in a hotly contested U.S. Senate race against Republican Ted Cruz. Allred’s buttoned-up — some would say downright boring — campaign has left some Democrats frustrated, especially after Beto O’Rourke fired up crowds across the state in 2018 and came closer than any Democrat has to unseating a Republican from statewide office in decades.

Allred, now in his third term in Congress, hasn’t hit the ground in the same ceaseless way. And he won’t be dropping F-bombs in impassioned rally speeches like O’Rourke. He’s even a departure from MJ Hegar, a similarly moderate Democrat who nonetheless sought to brand herself a “badass” biker in her unsuccessful 2020 bid against U.S. Sen. John Cornyn. Instead, Allred says he’s campaigning like he governs: he’s trying to lower the temperature and reach across partisan divides. He credits the approach for helping him flip his longtime Republican congressional seat six years ago and is confident it will work again. “When everything’s going crazy, it’s always the guys who keep their heads who are able to perform and do their jobs,” he said. Unlike 2018, when O’Rourke rode a blue wave of bubbling suburban resentment against Trump to a 2.6 percent loss against Cruz, this year’s Senate contest has been a race to the middle, with even Cruz working to rebrand himself as more of a bipartisan dealmaker than the firebrand he’s long been known as. Allred has kept his distance from Kamala Harris, even as her entry in the race has energized the Democratic base. He talks about beefing up border security — long a GOP priority — almost as much as restoring abortion access, the driving issue for Democrats this cycle.

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Spring ISD teachers placed on administrative leave while district investigates sleeping patch claim

Spring ISD administrators say they have placed two teachers and two aides from an elementary classroom on administrative leave while they investigate parents' claims that children were given stickers containing sleeping supplements. Melissa Gomez, whose 4-year-old child is in a preschool class at Northgate Elementary, said she wants more information from the district and wants staff to be held accountable. Gomez said on Sep. 24, another parent at the school noticed her child with a sticker that she didn’t recognize and asked her child about it. Lisa Luviano told KHOU when her child brought a sticker home, she researched it online and found it being sold on Amazon as a sleeping patch with melatonin.

Gomez said she and other parents got together to discuss the situation and discovered multiple children said they had received the stickers before. She said she showed it to her son and he recognized it, then pointed to his stomach, hand and forehead. “I asked my son, and he was able to identify what it was and where he got it and what part of his body it was placed,” said Gomez. Gomez said the school district didn't look into the sticker claim or alert other parents until weeks after the first parent reported it. "We were not aware of this situation until the primary parent that reported it told us something,” she said. She said she thinks parents should have had an opportunity to hear about potential allergic reactions or get their children checked out, and she received little information when she went to the school to talk to administrators.

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Supreme Court decision on Texas emergency abortions will harm Black women, group warns

After the U.S. Supreme Court this week upheld an order that Texas hospitals aren't required to provide emergency abortion care, a Dallas reproductive justice organization is warning the decision will be especially harmful to Black women. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed a lower court’s order to stay in place blocking enforcement of the Biden administration's guidance that the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) mandates emergency rooms provide abortions if a pregnant patient's life or health is at risk, even if they violate state bans. In a statement, the Afiya Center said the decision is another challenge for marginalized women, particularly Black women, who are disproportionately affected by lack of health care access.

“No doubt, Black women will suffer unnecessary injuries, risk criminal prosecution, and worst of all preventable deaths due to this ruling” the Afiya Center said in the statement. The Biden administration said that under EMTALA, emergency rooms are required to provide abortions in emergencies, despite state bans. Texas law bans abortions except in cases when the life of the pregnant patient is at risk — but the law doesn’t specify when the exception might apply. “The Texas medical board has refused to specify which conditions qualify for exceptions,” the Afiya Center said, “leaving health care providers to guess whether providing abortion care could put them at risk of criminal prosecution.” D’Andra Willis, deputy director of the Afiya Center, highlighted the existing challenges Black women face in the medical system, where they don’t feel safe and often feel dismissed. She noted the maternal mortality rate for Black women is significantly higher compared to white women, and this ruling may heighten those disparities.

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Fort Worth to ban game rooms after 9-year legal battle, Texas Supreme Court decision

After a nearly decade-long legal battle, Fort Worth officials are poised to ban game rooms across the city by the end of 2024. Since 2015, the city has been involved in litigation over its attempts to regulate and prohibit game rooms. In June, the Texas Supreme Court denied a game room operator’s request to rehear the case, enabling city officials to make good on their plan to prohibit the controversial rooms. Game rooms, or stores that feature six or more game machines, are found in gas stations and convenience stores across the city. The game machines, which city officials sought to classify as illegal gambling devices, are commonly referred to as eight-liners. Critics, including in Fort Worth’s Northside, say game rooms attract crime to neighborhoods. Chris Mosley, senior assistant attorney for the city, told City Council members during an Oct. 8 work session meeting that game rooms are “going to go.”

The game room debacle ignited in Fort Worth in 2014, when City Council members adopted two ordinances to restrict game rooms to areas zoned for industrial use and at least 1,000 feet from a school, place of worship or residential area. After the ordinances took effect in January 2015, game rooms owners filed lawsuits against the city, alleging that eight-liners are legal in Texas under what’s known as the “fuzzy animal” exception. Although gambling is usually deemed illegal across the state, the “fuzzy animal” exception allows operators to award noncash prizes that are worth less than $5, according to Texas state law. In March 2022, the Fort Worth Court of Appeals ruled that eight-liner machines were not exempt from regulation under the “fuzzy animal” exception because they are considered “lotteries,” or games of chance. The game room owners involved in the lawsuit sought the Texas Supreme Court’s input on that ruling, and in December 2023, the court denied further review of the case. Game room operators requested a rehearing on the denial, but the court ultimately disposed of the request in June, according to court documents.

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Kirk Watson continues to outfundraise opponents in the Austin mayoral race

Austin Mayor Kirk Watson has once again outraised his opponents in the race to be the city’s next mayor, adding another $216,000 to his campaign coffers. In total, Watson has raised nearly $1 million since January, which is almost nine times the second highest-earning candidate, according to campaign finance reports filed Monday. This includes cash and non-cash contributions, such as food provided for a campaign event. The current mayor, who is seeking reelection against four challengers, heads into the last month of campaigning with $266,891 on hand. Doug Greco, former director of Central Texas Interfaith, has $45,218 still to spend, while former City Council member Kathie Tovo has $31,713.

Carmen Llanes Pulido, who runs the nonprofit Go Austin/Vamos Austin, has spent nearly all of the $104,679 she has raised thus far. She has just $4,661 on hand. Jeffery Bowen, a construction company owner who entered the race later than the others, has spent less than $2,000 and has nearly $10,000 left. Candidates in Texas running for office are required to file campaign finance reports in the months leading up to an election. The reports detail how much money a candidate has raised, who has contributed and what that money is being spent on, including advertising, labor and office supplies. Campaign finance reports are just one measure of voters’ support of a candidate. More money means more resources – the ability to buy items such as campaign signs, flyers and T-shirts. “Without money you're not competitive and it's very hard to run an effective campaign,” said Kirby Goidel, a professor of political science at Texas A&M who spoke with KUT in July about campaign finance.

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Lawmakers press Deloitte on 'fraud' in application to $5B Texas fund for gas-fired power plants

Texas lawmakers grilled executives from Deloitte, the consulting firm contracted to manage a $5 billion taxpayer-funded program mainly intended to kickstart construction of natural gas power plants, after the organization advanced a potentially fraudulent loan application. Allegations first arose last month that a little-known company, Aegle Power, sought loans for its proposed natural gas power plant by listing another big-name company as a sponsor without permission. Additional scrutiny revealed Aegle Power CEO Kathleen Smith had previously been convicted in an “embezzlement scheme” related to the development of a different power plant. In addition to seeking to slash the consulting firm's up to $107 million contract, lawmakers heard accusations Tuesday that Aegle Power falsified yet another aspect of its application to the state.

The Aegle Power application, which has since been denied, proposed adding nearly 1.3 gigawatts of gas-fired generation to the Texas grid. It was the second-largest offering among the 17 developers selected as finalists for low-interest loans from the Texas Energy Fund, the $5 billion program approved by voters last November. The Public Utility Commission of Texas, the state agency overseeing the fund, has emphasized no loans have yet been given to any organization. The remaining 16 projects are still in the monthslong “due diligence” stage, when Deloitte is supposed to verify the information submitted by the applicants. The commission can only execute loans with developers that pass that review. Still, the saga has embarrassed state leaders working vigorously to encourage more natural gas power plants to connect to the at-times shaky Texas power grid, which they say are needed given the potential for Texans’ electricity needs to roughly double by 2030. “The people of Texas have entrusted people like you to make sure that the money is spent appropriately, efficiently and fairly. It doesn't appear that that's happening,” state Sen. Joan Huffman said to Deloitte executives at the Tuesday hearing.

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UH President Renu Khator sets stage for big year in 2027, including $1 billion capital campaign

University of Houston President Renu Khator announced Wednesday a $1 billion capital campaign for the institution's centennial celebration in 2027. The goal capped her annual "State of the University" address, where Khator shared the past year's successes as well as her vision for the future. Here are some takeaways from the speech.

UH has already raised $580 million in a quiet phase of its new $1 billion capital campaign, which officially launched Wednesday under the name, "Can't Stop Houston." The university began the quiet phase shortly after ending its last $1 billion campaign in 2020. That effort ended up with $1.24 billion raised over eight years. The new campaign seeks to raise $100 million more for student scholarships and another $100 million for academic and research programs across disciplines. The remaining fundraising goal would go toward funding 100 graduate and professional program scholarships, giving 100 innovation awards to staff, attaining a 100% increase in support for student athletes, and landing 100 gifts for physical campus transformation. The UH Centennial will launch in October 2026 and work will begin soon on a $40 million landscaping project to finish around the time of UH's 100-year celebrations, Khator said.

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Houston property tax hike will not happen after state steps in with $50M for disaster relief

A $50 million lifeline from the state for disaster debris cleanup has thwarted a potential tax hike in Houston after Mayor John Whitmire and several council members brought forward two competing tax proposals. Whitmire proposed the city’s tax rate should remain the same at just under 52 cents per $100 of a home’s assessed value. But Council Members Sallie Alcorn, Joaquin Martinez, Letitia Plummer and Mario Castillo offered a proposal under Proposition A that would have raised the rate by just under 6% to 55 cents per $100 of assessed value to help with disaster recovery. The council members’ proposal would’ve led to a bill increase of a little more than $104 a year for homeowners of an average priced house with a homestead exemption, according to the city’s finance department.

Chris Newport, Whitmire's chief of staff, said Wednesday that the $50 million is the first infusion of money from the state's solid waste fund. The administration plans to submit all invoices for debris clean up from May's derecho and Hurricane Beryl to state leaders for full reimbursement, and the state has committed to covering those costs, Newport said. The news of the windfall led the four council members to withdraw their proposal to raise property taxes. Alcorn said that she thought the proposal was the right thing to do as the leader of the city’s Budget and Fiscal affairs committee. The proposal was "certainly not a politically popular one, but I wouldn’t have put it forward if I didn’t think it was the right thing to do for the health of our city finances,” Alcorn told the council Wednesday. Houston has not raised its property taxes in recent history due to state and locally imposed revenue caps. Disaster declarations from May’s derecho and Hurricane Beryl created exceptions in those state laws that allows the city to raise its property tax rate for disaster recovery.

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David Leininger: Funding dispute is going nowhere

(David Leininger is founder and CEO of Leininger Analytics. He previously served as CFO and interim CEO at Dallas Area Rapid Transit.) The disagreement among Dallas Area Rapid Transit member cities has shifted from a healthy debate to a very disagreeable and dangerous dispute. If cooler heads don’t soon prevail, the current path could very well lead to a diminished agency incapable of supporting basic public transportation services to transit-dependent residents. It is odd and surprising that Plano would lead the charge to lower the sales tax that funds DART at the very moment of the pending introduction in 2025 of the Silver Line commuter rail system, which will provide two new stations in Plano and direct service to the University of Texas at Dallas and DFW International Airport. Even more surprising is that Plano would suggest this without even inquiring what impact it would have on the agency’s 20-year financial plan, approved by the DART board, which has very capably guided decisions regarding capital investment and service plans.

To be clear, the 1% sales tax currently being collected will remain for the foreseeable future. And, no, the Texas Legislature cannot provide Plano or other cities with relief from this obligation. The Master Debt Resolution adopted by DART at the inception of bond issuance makes that quite clear. The Texas Constitution is very specific about the sacrosanct nature of contracts. Should the Legislature attempt to modify an existing bond covenant, it would trigger concerns among virtually all local government debt issuers in Texas — especially so among the institutional investors who purchased DART bonds and rely upon their assured repayment. As harsh as this may sound, what Plano is asking is for DART to break its contract, ignore the concerns of its creditors and start a cascading crisis of public finance. While it is true DART could work around the covenant by refunding all outstanding debt and then rewriting the Master Debt Resolution, the cost of refinancing, along with increasing interest costs, would be in the hundreds of millions. It would most likely trigger an immediate downgrade in bond ratings, which would increase interest rates even more. It might also lead to a bondholder lawsuit brought by major institutional holders of DART debt. It is not going to happen.

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Sharon Grigsby: How did UT Dallas wind up with star-studded cricket tournament promised to east Oak Cliff?

“Wait, wasn’t this star-studded cricket tournament supposed to take place on a new field in east Oak Cliff, not at the University of Texas at Dallas?” That was my first thought Sunday when I saw the full-page advertisement in The Dallas Morning News promoting world-class cricket and Coachella-style entertainment Oct. 4-14. My memory was not playing tricks on me. The event was originally scheduled for southern Dallas, where the National Cricket League planned to build a million-dollar field in the Cadillac Heights area. How those plans unraveled since local politicians announced the original site — and made big promises of an economic windfall — is yet another drop in the bucket of Dallas City Hall dysfunction. City leaders revealed in November they had landed the just-formed National Cricket League’s inaugural Sixty Strikes event. Their news conference focused on the much-needed economic shot the tournament would provide for this underserved area between I-35E and I-45.

Dallas Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Carolyn King Arnold said providing a tournament home to the league would spark prosperity for residents adjacent to the future Roland G. Parrish Park. “I want to make sure everyone understands the fact that this is a long-overdue investment in this community,” Arnold proclaimed. Arun Agarwal, the league’s chairman and part-owner — and president of the Dallas park and recreation board — told the audience that equity played a big part in the site selection. “You can imagine, when the game gets played and there are thousands of people coming to watch it, what it will do to the economic development of this area.” Fast-forward to August and — with no mention of the commitment to Cadillac Heights — the cricket league announced UTD in Richardson would host the event. Apparently, most of us missed that news or had forgotten the role southern Dallas had been promised. I have doubts the cricket field would have provided an infusion of cash for Cadillac Heights. Ditto for whether area residents care about the sport — or even had a say in the plan. My concern is with a city bureaucracy that makes it near impossible to do business with Dallas. And with politicians who make big promises then hope no one remembers. When I began digging for answers Monday, what I found lived up to the low expectations many of us have about the state of affairs at Dallas City Hall. In this case, the cricket league leadership became so weary of dealing with the park and permitting departments, it took its business elsewhere. But not before a number of trees were cut down in the proposed footprint of the cricket field.

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Child care advocates call on Texas lawmakers to make investments

The spotlight on the call for Texas child care reform intensified on Oct. 9 after more than 120 organizations across the state released a statement to the Legislature, urging lawmakers to make change through four policy recommendations. Advocacy group Texans Care for Children sent the statement alongside various chambers of commerce, faith-based organizations, child care providers and other children’s advocacy groups, some of which are based in Fort Worth. The organizations underscored the challenges of the child care crisis that are impacting children’s success in school, creating roadblocks for programs with financial struggles, and hindering parents’ ability to go to work and pay for the cost of high-quality care. The legislative session begins in January, and committees in both the House and Senate have been assigned to study interim charges related to child care ahead of lawmakers convening in Austin. “The Legislature has an opportunity to give more parents a chance to go to work and more kids a chance to get the early learning experiences they need,” said David Feigen, director of early learning policy at Texans Care for Children.

The four policy recommendations include: Investing in the state’s subsidy system by addressing the waitlist of about 80,000 children and tailoring reimbursement rates to providers who accept subsidies; Increasing the supply of programs by offering competitive grants to expand affordable care in high-need areas. This includes focuses on child care deserts, serving children with disabilities and infant and toddler care; Ensuring programs recruit and retain qualified staff by way of helping low-income educators access child care themselves; Expanding pre-K partnerships in public schools by providing options for families in community-based child care programs that can provide education and care for a full working day. Among the Fort Worth-based organizations who signed onto the statement include the Early Learning Alliance, Child Care Associates, Green Space Learning and the Goddard School Fort Worth. Kym Shaw Day, executive director of the Early Learning Alliance, said the organization is proud to stand by the several other entities that signed on to the statement, as the alliance believes that “accessible, high-quality child care to be essential for the development and well-being of our youngest Texans.”

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How one Texas sports franchise became the focal point for the entire sports world

Just as ESPN started with not much in September of 1979, something called “Victory +” has even less to offer in October of 2024. ESPN was once the ambitious startup network in the new world of “cable television,” that had little programming to show viewers who had the money to pay for extra channels beyond ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS. In 1979, a lot of people thought the concept of an all-sports TV network was the equivalent of throwing a bag of money into a garbage can. Who is going to watch sports all day? In 1980, Ted Turner started a 24-hour news network, CNN. What are they going to do on a slow news day? In 1981, MTV launched. What is a music video?

While linear TV evaluates hospice care plans, everyone involved in sports watches for the “next ESPN.” Because it’s not Fox Sports. It’s closer to Amazon. It’s the player on the side that no one sees coming. The YouTuber. The TikTok infuencer. The Instagram model who hits it on their own, without the cost. “(Linear TV) is heading for extinction. I think by early 2030, the overwhelming majority of us will be watching TV through streaming,” Dallas Stars president Brad Alberts said in a phone interview. “It is hanging on, and sports, specifically the NFL, is holding it together.” Rather than wait, the Stars became the first major team to cut the cord and jump into streaming exclusively. With a roster that is good enough to reach the Stanley Cup, the Stars both on and off the ice will be one of the most fascinating teams to watch in 2024 and 2025. In any sport. The Stars are either on the ground floor of an industry revolution, and their new TV plan will score; or sports teams, and leagues, will be forced to re-evaluate themselves in a streaming society. The Stars are one of two teams to go with the new app “Victory +” to televise their regular season games that are not carried by national networks.

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Texas Transportation Commission approves historic funding for ship channels

The Texas Transportation Commission said on Oct. 3 it approved historic levels of funding for ship channel improvement projects in that state. The commission approved the $400 million for Ship Channel Improvement Revolving Fund (SCIRF) loans for two projects near Beaumont and Brownsville. The funding comes from a bill passed by the legislature and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott last year. Texas ship channels and seaports are vital economic engines for the state, Texas Transportation Commissioner Steven D. Alvis noted. “Ship channel improvement projects are extremely costly, often making it incredibly difficult to make improvements,” Alvis said. “The foresight of the Governor and the Texas Legislature to make Ship Channel Improvement Revolving Fund loans available is critical to ensure Texas ship channels are prepared to accommodate larger vessel sizes, resulting in a more robust and resilient supply chain.”

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Swinerton breaks ground on Texas mass timber office

Concord, California-based Swinerton broke ground on a new mixed-use mass timber office building located in Austin, Texas, on Oct. 2, a structure that the firm will eventually inhabit, according to an Oct. 8 news release. The mixed-use, mass timber building known as Workbench, located in the East Austin neighborhood, will serve as a showcase for potential Swinerton clients interested in mass timber, according to the release. Swinerton estimates the timber used on the project will store 500 metric tons of carbon dioxide, which is the equivalent of removing 301 cars from the roadway for a year.

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Ken Paxton’s evasive relationship with the press

502 days ago, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton held a press conference — one of just two he has called in the last year and a half. It was a blockbuster political news event, both because it was meant to preempt his historic impeachment, and because in recent years he has made himself available to journalists almost as rarely as the Texas House has impeached statewide officials. He took no questions. During that long drought of public access to the state’s top attorney, KXAN has submitted dozens of press inquiries to Paxton’s office. They have not responded to one since September 2023. It marks an era of evasion in which Paxton has ignored inquiries and avoided accountability from the press. “Democracy runs on information,” the Texas Press Association’s Donnis Baggett told Nexstar. “The flow of that information — two ways — is essential. But increasingly in this country… (officials) may control the message and their exposure to questioning about that message. That’s not a healthy relationship. That’s a one-way street.”

The OAG’s website shows Paxton’s communications staff has published over 200 press releases since October 2023. Each one includes a media contact email that has proven to be a one-way line of communication. Email data Nexstar obtained through the Texas Public Information Act suggests Paxton’s press team has an extraordinarily low response rate to journalists’ inquiries. From March to September, the Attorney General’s Office received 2,722 emails to their “communications@oag.texas.gov” email account — the main press contact and the only means of contacting their press office that they provide publicly. In the same timeframe, that account sent eight emails — a sent/received ratio of 0.003%. Individual press staffers also show a low response rate. Communications Director Paige Willey received 3,470 emails in the same period. She sent 907 emails, suggesting a press response rate of less than 26%. Lead press secretary Jonathan Richie sent just 197 emails for the 2,112 he received, suggesting a response rate of less than 9%.

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National Stories

The evangelicals calling for ‘spiritual warfare’ to elect Trump

Lance Wallnau, a self-styled prophet in a fast-growing evangelical movement, came down off the stage to lay his hands on people who had requested prayers. Then he explained why re-electing Donald Trump is essential to save America. “Don’t think for a moment that it isn’t possible for this country to veer off course and go over a cliff in November,” Wallnau told about 2,000 people gathered under a tent in late July. “It’s quite possible, and the only thing that can arrest that is an activated, catalyzed body of Christian patriots.” Wallnau, 68 years old, is one of the most important figures in the New Apostolic Reformation, an influential movement in evangelical Christianity that blends direct experience of the Holy Spirit with a call to engage in politics as a form of “spiritual warfare.” He opposes abortion and same-sex marriage, but his main goal is to elevate Christians to greater influence to transform society.

Wallnau’s “Courage Tour” events, equal parts tent revival and political mobilization, are part of his strategy to help put Trump back in the White House. On a recent weekend, JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, appeared at a Wallnau event in the swing state of Pennsylvania. “If Christians aren’t out there voting, Christians aren’t going to have a voice in this country,” Vance told the crowd. Evangelical voters have leaned Republican for many years. George W. Bush, who described himself as a faithful Christian, won nearly 70% support from white evangelical Christians in 2000 and nearly 80% four years later. Other Republican candidates have blended evangelical beliefs with blue-collar populism, including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a onetime pastor, in 2008 and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a noted social conservative, in 2012. Yet Donald Trump—with his three marriages, tabloid lifestyle and reality-show background—managed to win the hearts of Republican voters in 2016 over the likes of Huckabee, Santorum and Ted Cruz, the son of an evangelical preacher. Wallnau was an early advocate, offering prophecies that promoted Trump in 2015, when many evangelical voters were skeptical. Matthew Taylor, a scholar who tracks the New Apostolic Reformation, says that no evangelical leader did more than Wallnau to provide a theological rationale for religious conservatives to accept Trump. “Wallnau was already popular,” said Taylor, of the Maryland-based Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies. “But he became a mega evangelical celebrity through his endorsement of Trump and using his ideas to backstop Trump.” Now, Taylor sees Wallnau as presenting a threat beyond his advocacy for a political candidate. “I would call Lance Wallnau a Christian supremacist,” Taylor says. “He wants Christians to be in charge of society and to tear down the wall of separation between church and state.”

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The Tropicana crumbles as Las Vegas goes all in on sports and entertainment

With a flash and a boom, the Tropicana went bust. The iconic casino was torn down in the wee hours Wednesday morning to make way for a baseball stadium, part of an ongoing pivot that Las Vegas officials hope will fuel the city’s economic future as affordability concerns simmer on and off the Strip. The 22-story resort hotel, which opened in 1957 and featured in the 1971 James Bond film “Diamonds Are Forever” and “The Godfather” the following year, closed its doors April 2. But it didn’t go down in darkness: In true Vegas fashion, the city turned the building’s 2:30 a.m. implosion into a party, replete with a drone and a fireworks display. “It’s kind of a celebration of life for all that property has meant to Las Vegas,” said Steve Hill, president and CEO of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

The neighborhood where the Tropicana once stood is quickly becoming the city’s sports district, housing both Allegiant Stadium, home of the Las Vegas Raiders football team, and T-Mobile Arena, which hosts UFC, WNBA and NHL events. After the rubble is cleared away, officials hope to start building a proposed 33,000-seat ballpark for the Oakland Athletics ahead of the team’s scheduled relocation for the 2028 season. The stadium is projected to cost an estimated $1.5 billion, with taxpayers kicking in at least $350 million. Locals and visitors in town ahead of the Tropicana’s demolition were mostly upbeat about the next chapter for the city. Marco Robinson, who has been tending bar in Las Vegas for four decades, acknowledged the casino’s demise was “hard for a lot of people who worked there.” But he said: “It’s a new era. This is what Vegas is.” “I’m excited about the changes coming to Vegas,” said Jordan McCall, 30, who has lived in the city since 2010 and works at a warehouse. “You just have to embrace it,” he said, carrying a camcorder to document the property’s final hours. Las Vegas has long sought “to make way for the new, and this is a normal part of our evolution,” said Amanda Belarmino, an associate professor of hospitality management at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, “but I think what it’s being imploded for is what’s more significant.” The new stadium set to take the Tropicana’s place would add to a growing roster of venues and events offering high-dollar experiences beyond casinos’ card tables and concert halls.

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Lawmakers spending even more in 2024 under receipt-free expense program

House lawmakers expensed at least $2.5 million under a program that allows them to be reimbursed for their spending without submitting receipts through the first five months of 2024, over $120,000 more than they expensed during the same period last year, according to data released by the House as of Oct. 9 and analyzed by The Washington Post. Created at the end of 2022, the program allows House members to use taxpayer funds to reimburse themselves for some lodging, meals and incidental costs while they are in D.C. on official business. It was intended to help members offset the costs of maintaining two households without requiring them to give themselves a politically toxic raise. But critics of the expense program have argued that its lack of receipt requirements and reliance on the honor system open it up for abuse, and expenses have risen for 2024 despite public scrutiny of last year’s spending.

The data released by the House is sourced from expense information submitted by individual congressional offices, which can potentially contain errors or be corrected later. The data that The Post reviewed for this article is probably the last major data release before next month’s elections. The program’s top spenders in the first five months of 2024 include Reps. Jim Baird (R-Ind.), who spent a little over $22,000, and Veronica Escobar (D-Tex.), Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.) and Jack Bergman (R-Mich.), who all spent more than $16,000. The program has only a few strict rules, including that members cannot seek reimbursement for more than their actual expenses. They also cannot be repaid for principal or interest on their mortgages and can get reimbursement only for days they’re actually working in D.C. or flying to the city. Misuse of taxpayer funds under the members’ allowance could violate not just House rules but also federal law. Mace, one of the program’s top spenders in 2023, came under scrutiny after former staffers alleged to The Post earlier this year that she misused the program by seeking reimbursements that were higher than her actual expenses. Mace, who owns 28 percent of a Capitol Hill townhouse with her ex-fiancé Patrick Bryant, is still a top spender. But the $12,180 she expensed for lodging in the first five months of 2024 is roughly $1,500 less than her spending on lodging during the same period in 2023.

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Is the Trump campaign’s male-dominated culture losing women votes?

Soon after Donald Trump’s campaign team took over the Republican National Committee earlier this year, a senior Trump aide was asked how to combat news stories that the campaign had an insufficient get-out-the-vote operation. “We are going to beat the reporters into retardation!” shouted James Blair, one of the two men now leading the operation, on a call with other advisers, according to two people with direct knowledge of the conversation. Blair did not respond to a request for comment. Such pugnacity has come to define much of the tone and image of Trump’s 2024 campaign, reflecting the personalities of many of the men leading it as well as the candidate. Trump has long valued being viewed as an alpha male who never apologizes or shows weakness.

In many ways, that campaign culture mirrors some of its strategies. Trump and his advisers are calculating that, at a time when polls show voters dissatisfied with the direction of the country, and with turmoil abroad revealing the limitations of America’s global influence, they can win the White House by projecting a particular kind of strength — with a distinctly aggressive vibe not seen in presidential campaigns before. That posture also fits with the campaign’s focus on appealing to young men, who advisers view as a key untapped voting bloc that could help tip the electoral college in Trump’s favor in a closely divided electorate. Polls show he has an edge with this group, and Trump has gone out of his way to appear with celebrities — from Ultimate Fighting Champion chief executive Dana White to controversial YouTuber Logan Paul — popular with many young men. Trump’s lead spokesman, Steven Cheung, is a former UFC staffer who routinely taunts Democrats in crass ways, once publicly comparing the Biden campaign to an injured male organ. One of his favorite insults is a pejorative slang for a weak man derived from the term for a husband who has been cheated on. Cheung also accused an employee at Arlington National Cemetery of having a mental health episode after she complained of being shoved aside by two male Trump aides who wanted to film Trump at gravesites. The aggressiveness of many of his statements has surprised some others on the campaign. Co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita — a combat veteran sometimes jokingly called “Sarge” — has sent profane invectives to people who crossed him, according to people familiar with his communications. Earlier this year he posted an online message to “all my haters”: a photo of fictional mob boss Tony Soprano giving the middle finger that received millions of views. One colleague described him as a person who wakes up at level 10 — and then escalates throughout the day.

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Why Democratic Senate control seems to be slipping away

The math for Senate control is pretty simple. For Democrats, it isn’t adding up. The Democrats have a 51-49 majority in the Senate, but Republicans are expected to flip West Virginia — where Joe Manchin is retiring. Any additional Republican victory in November in seven red or purple states currently held by Democrats would ensure G.O.P. control of the chamber, provided the Republicans hold their own states. This morning’s New York Times/Siena College poll finds Republicans poised to flip that additional seat: Montana Tim Sheehy, a Republican, leads the longtime Democratic incumbent, Jon Tester, by seven percentage points, 52 percent to 44 percent (figures rounded).

Before today, Democrats led nearly every Times/Siena poll of the contested Senate races for months, including in Ohio — where Sherrod Brown led by four points in a state Donald J. Trump won by eight four years ago. A positive Montana result for Democrats would have kept that string going, giving them a path to Senate control. They didn’t get it. Even so, the Montana result isn’t a surprise. Mr. Tester hasn’t led in a public poll since mid-August, and most of the data hasn’t shown an especially close race. His path to victory — and therefore the Democratic path to Senate control — looked daunting even before he fell behind in the polls, as Mr. Trump won the state by 16 points in 2020. The poll finds Mr. Trump ahead of Kamala Harris by a similar 17 points today. Without Montana, the Democratic path to the Senate would require flipping a red state. The Times/Siena polls suggest it won’t be easy. On paper, the two easiest options ought to be Texas and Florida, but the polls find the two Republican incumbents ahead — Ted Cruz by four points in Texas, and Rick Scott by nine in Florida.

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Wisconsin Supreme Court grapples with governor's 400-year veto, calling it 'crazy'

Justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court said Wednesday that Gov. Tony Evers’ creative use of his expansive veto power in an attempt to lock in a school funding increase for 400 years appeared to be “extreme” and “crazy” but questioned whether and how it should be reined in. “It does feel like the sky is the limit, the stratosphere is the limit,” Justice Jill Karofsky said during oral arguments, referring to the governor’s veto powers. “Perhaps today we are at the fork in the road ... I think we’re trying to think should we, today in 2024, start to look at this differently.” The case, supported by the Republican-controlled Legislature, is the latest flashpoint in a decades-long fight over just how broad Wisconsin’s governor’s partial veto powers should be. The issue has crossed party lines, with Republicans and Democrats pushing for more limitations on the governor’s veto over the years.

In this case, Evers made the veto in question in 2023. His partial veto increased how much revenue K-12 public schools can raise per student by $325 a year until 2425. Evers took language that originally applied the $325 increase for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years and instead vetoed the “20” and the hyphen to make the end date 2425, more than four centuries from now. “The veto here approaches the absurd and exceeds any reasonable understanding of legislative or voter intent in adopting the partial veto or subsequent limits,” attorneys for legal scholar Richard Briffault, of Columbia Law School, said in a filing with the court ahead of arguments. That argument was cited throughout the oral arguments by justices and Scott Rosenow, attorney for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce Litigation Center, which handles lawsuits for the state’s largest business lobbying group and brought the case. The court should strike down Evers’ partial veto and declare that the state constitution forbids the governor from striking digits to create a new year or to remove language to create a longer duration than the one approved by the Legislature, Rosenow argued.

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Nobel Prize in literature is awarded to South Korean author Han Kang for her "intense poetic prose"

The Nobel Prize in literature was awarded Thursday to South Korean author Han Kang for what the Nobel committee called “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” Han becomes the first South Korean writer to win the Nobel literature prize. Nobel committee chairman Anders Olsson praised Han’s “physical empathy for the vulnerable, often female lives” of her characters. He said her work “confronts historical traumas and in each of her works exposes the fragility of human life. She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead, and in a poetic and experimental style, has become an innovator in contemporary prose.”

Han, 53, won the International Booker Prize in 2016 for “The Vegetarian,” an unsettling novel in which a woman’s decision to stop eating meat has devastating consequences. At the time of winning that award, Han said writing novels “is a way of questioning for me.” “I just try to complete my questions through the process of my writing and I try to stay in the questions, sometimes painful, sometimes - well - sometimes demanding,” she said. With “The Vegetarian,” she said, ”I wanted to question about being human and I wanted to describe a woman who desperately didn’t want to belong to the human race any longer and desperately wanted to reject being human, (humans) who commit such violence.” Her novel “Human Acts” was an International Booker Prize finalist in 2018. The literature prize has long faced criticism that it is too focused on European and North American writers of style-heavy, story-light prose. It has also been male-dominated, with just 17 women among its 119 laureates until this year’s award. The last woman to win was Annie Ernaux of France, in 2022.

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US Republicans condemn hurricane misinformation spread by their own party

As U.S. officials struggle to push back against misinformation about natural disasters, opens new tab hitting the country, at least three congressional Republicans condemned conspiracy theories repeated by fellow members of their party. Representative Chuck Edwards, who represents a North Carolina district hit hard by flooding caused by Hurricane Helene in late September, called out the "outrageous rumors" spread by "untrustworthy sources trying to spark chaos." The flooding decimated much of North Carolina's inland west, an unexpected outcome in a state which is used to dealing with hurricanes along its Atlantic coast. Florida is now bracing for a direct hit from the powerful Hurricane Milton, headed for its western coast.

One of the sources of misinformation is fellow Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who has used both her official congressional social media account and her personal account to spread such misinformation. "Ask your government if the weather is manipulated or controlled. Did you ever give permission to them to do it? Are you paying for it? Of course you are," Greene wrote in one such post on her official account on Monday. Edwards directly called out this falsehood in his statement, without naming Greene. "Nobody can control the weather," he said. "Please make sure you are fact checking what you read online with a reputable source." Greene's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Representative Carlos Gimenez, a Florida Republican representing the very southern tip of the state, also condemned the conspiracy theories. "News flash," he said in a Wednesday post on social media, responding directly to Greene's post. "Humans cannot create or control hurricanes. Anyone who thinks they can, needs to have their head examined."

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Lead Stories

ERCOT, renewable energy developers break stalemate on issues to ward off 'catastrophic grid failure'

The operator of the Texas power grid said it’s reached “a reasonable compromise” with renewable energy developers after more than a year of stalemate on technical issues with some solar, wind and battery storage resources it warned could conceivably lead to “catastrophic grid failure.” Clean energy companies fought the initial requirements the Electric Reliability Council of Texas wanted to impose, cautioning they could be forced to shut down large swaths of the fast-growing wind, solar and battery resources on the Texas grid if made to install expensive hardware upgrades. The parties agreed in August that owners of clean energy resources on the ERCOT grid must instead implement all available software and settings changes to meet the new requirements. This proposal is expected to fix the “vast majority” of problems found in three of the worst failures of the past few years, which prompted the rules change in the first place, according to clean energy developers and an industry consultant who studied those events.

The new rule will “improve reliability over time” as resources comply with its terms, ERCOT spokesperson Trudi Webster wrote in an email. The Public Utility Commission of Texas, which regulates ERCOT, issued an order approving the new rule last month. “While this will be an enormous lift for (clean energy resource) owners, it is far better than the alternative,” Eric Goff, an industry consultant who emerged as the lead negotiator for renewable developers, wrote in a social media post. Clean energy resources – particularly solar and batteries – have grown rapidly on the Texas power grid in recent years as the technology becomes less expensive and federal incentives boost domestic manufacturing and development. They’ve been credited with adding a healthy cushion of supply to the grid, especially on the hottest summer days, lowering electricity costs and helping decarbonize electricity generation, the third-largest contributor of climate-warming emissions in Texas

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How Texas business investments could help deter migrants from crossing the border

When Inter-American Development Bank COO Jordan Schwartz traveled to Houston last week to try and sell Texas companies on investing in Latin America and the Caribbean, he had more on his mind than just the bottom line. With the United States facing a flood of migrants coming across its southern border, Schwartz is tasked with trying to bolster economies in Latin America and the Caribbean through expanded incentives and guidance from the IDB, a government-sponsored financial institution in Washington. The bank is pitching companies in certain key U.S. markets, like Houston and Miami, as well as some in Europe, to expand their investments in the region in key areas like clean energy, infrastructure, healthcare and manufacturing. The theory is that more jobs and opportunity could incline migrants to stay in their home countries, and where better to focus than Texas, the state that does the most trade with Latin America, Schwartz said.

With a national election fast approaching in which border security is top of mind for many voters, the Biden administration and the IDB are attempting a long-term strategy of making economies to the south more integrated with the United States. Their goal is both to shift U.S. supply chains away from China, with which the nation has had an increasingly tense relationship over the past decade, and to improve conditions in a region that has struggled under economic crises and the crime that comes with drug trafficking and human smuggling. "It's not about simple top-level geopolitical questions. It's what would be best for the relationship between the U.S. and the region to provide growth and stability," Schwartz said. "Increasingly it's not only the supply chain issue, but looking at the root causes of migration and citizen security and organized crime elements, and trying to find the best and most proactive role." Two years ago, the Biden administration launched the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity, a State Department-sponsored initiative to address inequality within the region and the "underlying economic drivers of irregular migration in our hemisphere," a senior administration official told CBS News.

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Trump secretly sent Putin COVID-19 tests during pandemic shortage, a new book reports

Vice President Harris is criticizing Donald Trump following new reporting by the journalist Bob Woodward that the former president secretly shared COVID-19 test machines with Russia’s Vladimir Putin at a moment in 2020 when tests were out of reach for most Americans. The revelation, first reported by CNN and The Washington Post on Tuesday, is detailed in a forthcoming book called War by the famed Watergate journalist, about Trump’s record on the international stage, as well as President Biden’s. According to the book, Trump sent the secret shipment of testing equipment to the Russian leader at the height of the pandemic in 2020, even as the U.S. and other nations were facing crippling shortages of testing kits. “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me. They don't care about me,” Putin told Trump, according to the book. Trump responded, "I don't care. Fine," according to Woodward.

NPR has not independently verified the account, which was based on interviews with unnamed sources. Asked about the report during an interview Tuesday with Howard Stern, Harris said Woodward’s reporting was an example of why Trump cannot be trusted as commander-in-chief, because she said he is easily manipulated by authoritarians he hopes to befriend. “He admires strong men, and he gets played by them because he thinks that they're his friends, and they are manipulating him full time and manipulating him by flattery and with favor," Harris said. “Remember, people were dying by the hundreds, everybody was scrambling to get these kits ... and this guy, who was President of the United States, is sending them to Russia to a murderous dictator for his personal use.” The Trump campaign has dismissed the book as “made up stories” written by a “deranged man,” according to a statement by its communications director, Steven Cheung.

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Healthcare premiums are soaring even as inflation eases, in charts

Inflation is easing across much of the economy. For healthcare? Not yet. The cost of employer health insurance rose 7% for a second straight year, maintaining a growth rate not seen in more than a decade, according to an annual survey by the healthcare nonprofit KFF. The back-to-back years of rapid increases have added more than $3,000 to the average family premium, which reached roughly $25,500 this year. Businesses absorbed this year’s higher premium costs—one of several signals in recent years that employers are sensitive to the limits of what workers can afford, said Matthew Rae, associate director of the KFF healthcare marketplace program and an author of the survey. Employers spent about $1,880 more this year, bringing their average cost for family premiums to $19,276. Workers’ share of the average family premium dropped by roughly $280 from last year, to $6,296.

Businesses can’t keep that up, said Shawn Gremminger, chief executive of the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions, an employer group. And workers ultimately bear those higher costs in other ways, he said, including smaller raises or job cuts. “That’s adding real stress to the economy,” he said. Stress on the sector is expected to continue, at least for another year. Employers and benefit consultants said health-insurance costs are projected to rise rapidly again in 2025. Healthcare costs don’t change as swiftly as in other sectors of the economy, where inflation has cooled. Prices for health services are typically locked in under multiyear contracts. In addition, hospitals have recently won new contracts with bigger price increases, which they said they need to offset raises for their own workers. Increases in deductibles—the amounts employees must pay out of pocket before health insurance kicks in—was steep for years but eased more recently because the expense might already have been more than workers could afford, Rae said. This year, however, the average deductible for large companies inched higher by 4% for workers with single coverage. Workers in smaller companies were hit harder, with deductibles rising 6%.

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State Stories

Elon Musk jumps into Texas election with $1M donation to pro-business PAC

Elon Musk appears to be jumping back into Texas politics, making the first state-level political donation under his own name in nearly a decade. The Tesla and SpaceX chief gave $1 million to Texas for Lawsuit Reform PAC, the political arm of a powerful pro-business group known for lobbying against what it sees as frivolous lawsuits. The September donation, from the Elon Musk Revocable Trust, was reported in the PAC’s quarterly fundraising report filed this week. Musk’s donation accounted for about a third of the $2.9 million the PAC reported raising, and was the largest gift the group reported. The second largest was from Miriam Adelson, a conservative megadonor who gave $500,000.

The Austin billionaire has moved much of his business empire to Texas and has become increasingly active in Republican politics this election cycle, launching a super PAC supporting Donald Trump and appearing at the former president’s rally in Pennsylvania over the weekend. Musk also gave $289,100 to the National Republican Congressional Committee, which works to elect House Republicans, in August. The state donation comes after Musk secretly funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars into an effort to unseat progressive Travis County District Attorney José Garza in the Democratic primary race earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported. The paper reported the Musk-backed group that targeted Garza, Saving Austin, is connected to another group now supporting U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s reelection bid, Saving Texas. Texans for Lawsuit Reform is a business-aligned lobbying group co-founded by Dick Weekley, a Houston real estate developer and GOP donor who reportedly helped Musk launch his pro-Trump super PAC.

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Texas A&M is mulling an underground tunnel system to ease campus congestion. Enter, Elon Musk.

Texas A&M University administrators will decide in the coming month whether to pursue an idea that could ask Elon Musk’s Boring Company to build a subsurface transportation system at the College Station campus – part of a broader effort to ease above-ground congestion woes. Construction of the “Aggie Loop” tunnel is far from a reality, even if President Mark A. Welsh III approves a recommendation to explore the up to $350 million option, brought to him in a report assessing the university’s current capacity. A&M officials have conducted a feasibility study with positive results, but they have yet to talk with Musk about the project, Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice President Peter Lange said. School leaders believe the transit system would be unlike anything seen at American universities. But Lange said a “moonshot” is appropriate for a campus that has grown rapidly over the past decade, hitting 71,000 students without a means to transport them all in 20 minute passing periods between classes.

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GOP demonstrators gather outside Fort Bend commissioners court calling for KP George’s resignation

A group of Republican demonstrators gathered outside the Fort Bend County Commissioners Court on Tuesday calling for the resignation of County Judge KP George. George is facing allegations that the judge used fake social media profiles to send himself racist messages to sway his 2022 re-election campaign. The group organized by the Fort Bend County Republican party also held signs calling for Taral Patel, George's former chief of staff, to withdraw as a candidate for Precinct 3 commissioner. A search warrant issued Sept. 19 alleges that Patel coordinated with George in creating the fake social media profiles to attack themselves with racially charged messages in an attempt to garner support from voters.

George was arrested Sept. 26 and charged with a class A misdemeanor for allegedly posing as Facebook user “Antonio Scalywag” to “injure” Republican challenger Trever Nehls, according to court records filed by the Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Office. George has said he has no intention of stepping down from his position. George, who arrived at the court meeting in the morning, did not answer questions or address protesters. "Judge George knows if he is guilty or not," said Precinct 3 Commissioner Andy Meyers. "If he knows he is, he should apologize and resign." Donna Tucker was among the protesters outside the courthouse. “KP has been absolutely abysmal,” Tucker said. “We are not a racist county. We value each other.” Protester Katie Neely said she is a Republican.

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'Make a hole!' Newly released video shows police chaos during Robb Elementary massacre

Newly released video from the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting shows pandemonium erupting in a hallway packed with lawmen in the moments after Border Patrol agents killed the shooter. The video depicts officers in a fog of confusion as medics rush into a classroom to try to save victims. Some officers bark orders, one cries "Police!" and others yell "Go! Go! Go!" "Make a hole! Make a hole!" officers shout frantically as medics carry one of the victims out of the building on a stretcher. Moments earlier, as the Border Patrol team prepared to breach the classroom, body camera footage shows officers and medics laying stretchers out in the hallway and preparing tourniquets and other life-saving equipment.

One officer's body camera captured him struggling, with trembling hands, to pull on a pair of purple sanitary latex gloves in preparation for tending to the wounded. A fellow officer offers to help him, and he replies, "No, I'm good, I'm good. My hands are so sweaty, I can't get these gloves on." The videos were part of a storehouse of previously unreleased information made public by the city of Uvalde under a legal settlement with the San Antonio Express-News, the Houston Chronicle and other news organizations. The city first made public a large batch of police body camera footage, 911 calls, officials' emails, text messages and other information on Aug. 10. A few days later, however, city officials said they had inadvertantly failed to disclose all the video covered by by the settlement. They promised to release the remaining information, and they handed over additional videos on Tuesday.

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Fort Worth ISD names interim superintendent

An interim superintendent has been chosen to oversee the Fort Worth Independent School District — and it’s not her first time to do the job. Karen Molinar, the school district’s deputy superintendent, will take charge of the district as it searches for a permanent leader, according to a unanimous vote at Tuesday night’s meeting. “Her journey through our district is a testament to her deep commitment to student success and community engagement,” school board president Roxanne Martinez said. Molinar’s appointment comes two weeks after the previous superintendent, Angélica Ramsey, resigned from the post over concerns about the district’s academic performance. Now, Fort Worth ISD will begin its search for a new leader.

Molinar has been here once before: She served as the interim during the search that brought Ramsey to the district. In an email shortly after the meeting, Molinar laid out the basics of a five-point plan she will recommend to the board at the next regular meeting on Oct. 22. “I am pleased and humbled to accept the position of Interim Superintendent for the Fort Worth ISD as we embark on a necessary but meaningful transformation to address the critical shortcomings within the District,” Molinar said. Highlights of the plan include a commitment to improving student achievement and closing performance gaps, a renewed focus on business and community partnerships, budget changes to support student needs, organizational changes aimed at increasing efficiency, and an evaluation of how to consolidate facilities “based on enrollment and academic impact,” Molinar wrote. “Every student in Fort Worth deserves a path to success,” Molinar said. “We are committed to closing achievement gaps and ensuring that every child has the tools and support they need to thrive academically.”

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Texas mayor suggests we nuke Hurricane Milton: ‘It may save more than it can hurt’

As Hurricane Milton bears down on Florida, one Texas mayor has a novel idea about how to deal with it: Nuke the damned thing. In a since-deleted Facebook post, Bobby Lindamood, the mayor of Colleyville (a Fort Worth suburb) wrote: “For the amount of destruction this next hurricane is brining, it’s time to throw a simi nu/ke bo//mb (minus the radiation) at this dude and see if we can stop the rotation. It may save more than it can hurt.” He added, “Just casting thoughts and ideas. This is gonna be bad.” When reached Tuesday, Lindamood said his idea for a NukeNado wasn’t “a literal suggestion.” Lindamood isn’t alone in fearing for the safety of Floridians — especially in Texas, where we’ve seen our own fair share of historic, devastating hurricanes. And Hurricane Milton was receiving international attention after the mayor of Tampa described the situation to CNN late Monday. Speaking about the 10-12 foot tidal surge heading toward central Gulf Coast Florida, she said, “There’s never been one like this.”

“I can say without any dramatization whatsoever, if you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you’re going to die,” Tampa’s mayor told CNN. Meanwhile, in his defense, Lindamood said in a text message to The Barbed Wire that he wasn’t being serious. “After seeing the mass destruction caused by the Helene hurricane, my heart goes out to all the people that may be impacted by one of the largest hurricanes in history,” Lindamood said, in the text. “My post was simply an expression of deep concern for Florida and surrounding states who will be impacted. My comments were meant to convey a desire to use all available resources to protect American citizens not a literal suggestion.” Needless to say, this is a very bad idea. (Though if Lindamood knows how to remove the radiation from a nuclear weapon, we’re all ears.) And it would not be Lindamood’s first terrible idea. To say the least, he’s a colorful character on the far right — and he’s grabbed quite a few headlines for the mayor of a suburb with a population of 25,000 people. He’s shared QAnon memes, along with debunked claims about the attempted insurrection of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Before that, Lindamood’s demolition company made the news for accidentally tearing down the wrong house in Dallas.

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San Antonio Express-News Editorial: Texas House Rep. Philip Cortez should continue representing District 117

We recommend incumbent state Rep. Philip Cortez to continue representing Texas House District 117, which includes portions of the Southwest and far West sides. Cortez, born and raised on the South Side, retired from U.S. Air Force in 2019 after serving for 20 years. Before being elected to the Texas Legislature, he was on the San Antonio City Council from 2007 to 2011. Cortez was first elected to the Texas House in 2012, unseating Republican incumbent John Garza. He then lost his seat to Republican Rick Galindo in 2014 but came back in 2016 to defeat Galindo and has retained his seat since then. The challenger, Republican Ben Mostyn, is a San Antonio-area Realtor and U.S. Army veteran. Mostyn was arrested this summer in San Antonio on suspicion of driving while intoxicated and unlawful carry of a weapon. Court records show his next appearance in Bexar County Court is Nov. 1.

Cortez’s priorities include protecting seniors, supporting veterans and creating better-paying jobs. He is committed to public education and opposes school vouchers. Mostyn agrees that public education should be funded, but he also supports implementing a school voucher system, a dubious proposal being pushed by Gov. Greg Abbott, who has targeted Republican Texas House members who thwarted attempts to pass such a measure during multiple special sessions in 2023. During the most recent legislative session, Cortez sponsored the bipartisan Sergio Lopez Food Allergy Awareness Act, which was enacted and received national attention. The law requires restaurants, among other things, to display a standardized poster with information about food “allergies and responses to allergic reactions.” The effort was in response to the death of a 24-year-old from complications of a peanut allergy. Cortez’s openness to bipartisanship and his firm stances on critical issues make him the best choice for District 117.

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Hearst, OpenAI announce partnership for U.S. newspaper and magazine content

Hearst Corp., one of the nation’s largest information and media companies, said Tuesday it’s the latest major publisher to sign a content partnership with artificial intelligence giant OpenAI. Under terms of the deal, New York-based Hearst will license its vast archives, containing more than 150 years of material, to the San Francisco-based maker of the ChatGPT generative AI tool. OpenAI will be able to integrate Hearst content into its chatbot and other products. Hearst publishes more than 40 U.S. newspapers and 20 domestic magazine brands. Included in the deal will be content from the San Antonio Express-News, Houston Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Runner’s World, Women’s Health and other titles.

“As generative AI matures, it’s critical that journalism created by professional journalists be at the heart of all AI products,” said Hearst Newspapers President Jeff Johnson. “This agreement allows the trustworthy and curated content created by Hearst Newspapers’ award-winning journalists to be part of OpenAI’s products like ChatGPT — creating more timely and relevant results.” “Bringing Hearst’s trusted content into our products elevates our ability to provide engaging, reliable information to our users,” said Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s Chief Operating Officer. Neither Hearst nor OpenAI disclosed the terms of the deal. Hearst said in a statement that content appearing in ChatGPT “will feature appropriate citations and direct links, providing transparency and easy access to the original Hearst sources.” Hearst Magazines President Debi Chirichella said the deal “will help us evolve the future of magazine content,” adding that “this collaboration ensures that our high-quality writing and expertise, cultural and historical context and attribution and credibility are promoted as OpenAI’s products evolve.”

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Bexar Commissioners Court narrowly approves public financing deal for downtown ballpark

Bexar County narrowly approved a public financing deal for a new downtown ballpark Tuesday, the second step in the San Antonio Missions’ owners’ plan to build a new stadium by Opening Day 2028. Commissioners Court voted 3-1-1 to approve a memorandum of understanding and the financing terms of a deal with Designated Bidders LLC, the group that purchased the Double-A team in 2022. The City Council voted 9-2 last month to OK the same deal, a vote that was delayed by a week after a public backlash over the future demolition of the Soap Factory Apartments, a rare affordable complex downtown that sits in shadow of the proposed 4,500-seat stadium. Designated Bidders still has to acquire a 2.3-acre property from the San Antonio Independent School District that it needs for the stadium site — the final parcel it needs to solidify the stadium footprint near the San Pedro Creek Culture Park.

County Judge Peter Sakai and the four commissioners heard from nearly two dozen community members Tuesday, the majority of whom supported the deal. That included representatives from Visit San Antonio, the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce and the San Antonio Hotel & Lodging Association, as well as baseball fans. Sofia Lopez, the housing campaign director for the Texas Organizing Project, said those speakers didn't reflect community sentiment. “There’s a much broader community out there that has very strong feelings about this development, even if they can’t be here right now,” Lopez said. Precinct 3 Commissioner Grant Moody said he couldn’t vote for the memorandum of understanding or the financing terms because he wasn’t fully satisfied with the deal. He did not elaborate on the provisions that concerned him, but said he believed there were “some factors that could have further protected the county financially.” Major League Baseball gave Designated Bidders until Oct. 15 to present it with a signed MOU from the city and county.

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School choice advocate admits that’s him in the gay porn

More than a week after he was outed as a former gay porn star, school voucher evangelist Corey DeAngelis is taking on his critics and saying he refuses to be cancelled. DeAngelis appears to have been fired by the American Federation for Children, a conservative advocacy group for private and charter schools founded by Betsy DeVos, after he was identified as the actor “Seth Rose” in the videos that still are available for viewing on the gay porn site GayHoopla. DeAngelis is listed as a “contributor” to Project 2025 and serves as an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. He also is known as a fierce advocate for school vouchers, believes the U.S. Department of Education should be abolished, opposes LGBTQ rights and opposes “left-wing indoctrination” in “government schools.” His new book, The Parent Revolution, claims to teach parents how to “rescue” their children from “the radicals ruining our schools.”

In an interview with Christian Broadcasting Network, DeAngelis admitted he is, in fact, the person seen in the sexually explicit videos. “There are images and videos circulating of me from my college days about a decade ago that I’m not proud of,” he said. “They’re embarrassing.” After more than a week of silence, he emerged to tell about getting involved in porn as a young adult and to declare a warning about the dangers others face today. “If I was able to be lured in to make bad decisions as a young adult in college, just imagine how much worse it could be for younger people,” he said. And he claims his own experience is what drives his fight against public education and government-controlled schools. “So I fought against this kind of material being included in the classroom,” he said. “I’ve been consistent. I’ve changed my life. People change over time.” There is no evidence of gay porn being included in any public school classroom in America.

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Houston Chronicle Editorial: He's a thorn in Harris County's side, but a 'happy warrior' worth reelecting

We’ve called state Sen. Paul Bettencourt a “happy warrior.” He’s not always so jolly. The public got a glimpse of this recently during the hearings following CenterPoint’s bungled Hurricane Beryl response. But he’s also had his moments behind the scenes. “This is a full contact sport,” the Republican lawmaker, who will turn 66 shortly before the election, told the editorial board. Even with members of his own party. In the fight over property tax relief, Bettencourt, who served 10 years as Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector and has his own business that helps people protest their property taxes, found himself on the wrong side of Gov. Greg Abbott. “When he vetoed three of my bills," Bettencourt told us, "I literally picked up the phone and called him and said, ‘You know, we’re going to have a very difficult conversation because if you veto any more of my bills, I will do whatever I have to to protect these bills.’”

It was a full-throated battle: “We had 51 bills vetoed in the Senate because we were for a homestead exemption.” We agreed with Bettencourt's version of property tax relief, calling it a fairer way to distribute that relief than a House version that went after appraisal value increases instead. We also found common ground with Bettencourt on his criticism of public facility corporations, a mechanism meant to deliver affordable housing in exchange for taking the properties off tax rolls. And even though we were skeptical, we ultimately judged his legislative push to remove Harris County’s troubled election administrator position a win for the county since it restored elections to the eminently competent county clerk, Democrat Teneshia Hudspeth. Some Harris County officials probably have other nicknames for the happy warrior, who has repeatedly challenged the Democrat-led county. Outside of his legislative efforts, for example, he's used his bully pulpit to blast the county's plan to send out thousands of voter registration applications, claiming it would "likely register non-citizens to vote." And he questioned the legality of the county's proposed guaranteed income program that would have used federal, pandemic-era funds to send monthly payments to a handful of eligible households. When he asked the attorney general to weigh in, Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee said Bettencourt was "more focused on political games and weaponizing government institutions than making life better for the people of Harris County." Even as he works on statewide concerns, he seems to always have a finger in the Harris County pie.

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City Stories

Austin Opera buys landmark home for $4.5M to house theater, studios, offices

Taking advantage of a soft market for Austin office space, Austin Opera has purchased a landmark building in Southeast Austin. Its interior will be transformed into offices, storage areas, rehearsal studios and social gathering spaces as well as a 195-seat performance venue that will be available to other arts groups 40 weeks out of the year. The opera paid $4.5 million for 16,000 square feet of high-ceilinged space laid out diagonally on a corner lot at Trade Center and Comsouth drives. Since the previous owner, J.D. Abrams L.P., an engineering firm, constructed an expansion of the Ann Richards Congress Avenue Bridge in the 1980s, the opera building, built in 2016, is dominated by a dramatic series of bridge-like arches. The theme continues inside with a series of high barrel vaults.

The opera plans to raise an additional $3 million to finish retrofitting the building, including the 3,600-square-foot theater and four rehearsal studios, under the direction of architect Travis Young, founder of Studio Momentum Architects, and project contractors Liza Wimberley and Tina Barrett, who also serves as opera trustee. A squad of acoustic, lighting and theater design experts will consult on the in-house performance venue. Opera employees moved into the building in September. The new theater and rehearsal studios are expected to be complete in October 2025. Once the building is finished it will be called the Butler Performance Center at Austin Opera. The theater itself will have a separate name.

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3 Laredo city councilmembers object to pay raise council voted for itself

A trio of city councilmembers from the South Texas border city of Laredo are upset over a recent vote by the council to increase council pay by 40%. Laredo City Councilmember Melissa Cigarroa, her niece Councilmember Alyssa Cigarroa and Councilmember Dr. Tyler King are asking Mayor Dr. Victor Treviño to veto the Sept. 16 vote that was approved by 5-3, with the three members above voting against it.

The vote gave the mayor a $25,200 pay bump, making his annual salary $100,200. Each councilmember will get an additional $19,200, bringing their pay to $69,800, including reimbursements. The Sept. 16 vote included a change to the city’s ordinance, but Melissa Cigarroa told Border Report on Monday that during that meeting and the previous Sept. 3 council meeting — when the issue was first discussed — the term “pay raise” was never mentioned. “This was not presented as a salary increase. This was presented as a change in the language of the ordinance to make it more clear and transparent, which is laughable, in my opinion,” Melissa Cigarroa told Border Report. “Our city attorney never told us that our pay would be raised in his presentation. So had myself, Councilmember King and Councilmember Alyssa Cigarroa not spoken up and discussed how this is a de facto salary increase, no one would have been any the wiser.”

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National Stories

Anti-trans ads didn’t work in 2022. Republicans think this time will be different.

An actor playing Democratic Rep. Colin Allred smashes into a female football player, dramatizing how he wouldn’t “stop men from competing in women’s sports.” A narrator warns what would happen if the Allred-backed Equality Act passed: “Boys in girls’ bathrooms! Boys in girls’ locker rooms!” And at campaign stops, with his “KEEP TEXAS, TEXAS” bus parked outside, Sen. Ted Cruz tells supporters of the gender madness coming if Allred beats him and Democrats stay in power. “Do our daughters have any rights?” Cruz asked the crowd at a Tex-Mex restaurant here on Monday, where some supporters waved WOMEN FOR CRUZ signs. “Does a teenage girl have any right not to have a fully naked grown man right next to her in the changing room?”

Republicans are running more ads than ever about transgender rights — an issue that hasn’t previously worked for GOP candidates in swing states. In Michigan and Ohio, attempts to link abortion rights amendments to “sex changes for minors” fell flat. In deep red Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear won two tight campaigns despite ads that linked him to “the transgender industry,” and his veto of LGBTQ-related legislation passed by Republicans. But Republicans see an issue that can break through, especially with Trump voters who’ve been supporting Democratic candidates for Senate. Last month, the Trump campaign ran the first-ever presidential campaign ad on the topic, highlighting Harris’s support of gender surgeries for prisoners and migrants in a 2019 ACLU questionnaire: “Kamala’s for they/them, President Trump is for you.” Last week, the Trump campaign put out another ad on the topic; at the same time, the Senate Leadership Fund backed by Mitch McConnell started running swing seat ads that went after Democrats for the implications of the Equality Act, which would prohibit discrimination based on gender identity rather than some other definition of sex, and their opposition to the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which would prevent student athletes from playing on a team that doesn’t match their sex at birth. Voters in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Montana soon heard that Sen. Tammy Baldwin wanted “women’s shelters to accept biological men,” Sen. Sherrod Brown would “allow children to receive sex change surgery,” and Sen. Jon Tester would “let men use women’s bathrooms.” According to a New York Times analysis, at least $65 million has been spent on these ads. There are no real-world examples in the ads; the claim of Brown supporting gender surgery for minors, which is illegal in Ohio, was based on an interview where he opposed Republican bans on various treatments for transgender youth.

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Fact check: Six days of Trump lies about the Hurricane Helene response

Former President Donald Trump has delivered a barrage of lies and distortions about the federal response to Hurricane Helene. While various misinformation about the response has spread widely without Trump’s involvement, the Republican presidential nominee has been one of the country’s leading deceivers on the subject. Over a span of six days, in public comments and social media posts, Trump has used his powerful megaphone to endorse or invent false or unsubstantiated claims. The chief targets of his hurricane-related dishonesty have been Vice President Kamala Harris, his opponent in the November presidential election, and President Joe Biden.

Monday: Trump falsely claims Biden hasn’t answered calls from Georgia’s governor; Trump cites baseless ‘reports’ about anti-Republican bias in the North Carolina response. Thursday: Trump falsely claims the Biden-Harris response had received ‘universally’ negative reviews; Trump falsely claims Harris spent ‘all her FEMA money’ on housing illegal migrants. Friday: Trump falsely claims $1 billion was ‘stolen’ from FEMA for migrants and has gone ‘missing’. Saturday: Trump falsely claims the federal government is only giving $750 to people who lost their homes; Trump falsely claims there are ‘no helicopters, no rescue’ in North Carolina.

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Scientists who used AI to ‘crack the code’ of almost all proteins win Nobel Prize in chemistry

The 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry has been awarded to a trio of scientists who used artificial intelligence to “crack the code” of almost all known proteins, the “chemical tools of life.” The Nobel Committee lauded David Baker for completing “the almost impossible feat of building entirely new kinds of proteins,” and Demis Hassabis and John Jumper for developing an AI model to predict proteins’ complex structures – a problem that had been unsolved for 50 years. “The potential of their discoveries is enormous,” the committee said as the award was announced in Sweden on Wednesday. The prize, seen as the pinnacle of scientific achievement, carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million).

Proteins, a string of amino acid molecules, are the building blocks of life. They help form hair, skin and tissue cells; they read, copy and repair DNA; and they help carry oxygen in the blood. While proteins are built from only around 20 amino acids, these can be combined in almost endless ways, folding themselves into highly complex patterns in three dimensional space. The committee said Wednesday’s prize had two “halves.” The first went to Hassabis, a British computer scientist who co-founded the Google’s AI research laboratory DeepMind, and Jumper, an American researcher who also works at DeepMind. Hassabis and Jumper were honored for using AI to predict the three-dimensional structure of a protein from a sequence of amino acids, allowing them to predict the structure of almost all 200 million known proteins. Their AI program – the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database – has been used by at least 2 million researchers around the world. It acts as a “Google search” for protein structures, providing instant access to predicted models of proteins, accelerating progress in fundamental biology and other related fields. The pair have already won the 2023 Lasker and the Breakthrough prizes.

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Inside the battle for America’s most consequential battleground state

When Vice President Kamala Harris rolled out her economic agenda, she went to Pittsburgh. When she unveiled her running mate, she went to Philadelphia. And when she had to pick a place for Barack Obama’s first fall rally this Thursday, it was back to Pittsburgh. Former President Donald J. Trump has earmarked the greatest share of his advertising budget for Pennsylvania and has held more rallies in the state than in any other battleground since Ms. Harris joined the race — including two on Wednesday and three in the last week. Welcome to the United States of Pennsylvania. There may be seven main battlegrounds in the race for the White House in 2024, all of which could prove crucial. But Pennsylvania stands apart as the state that top strategists for both Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump have circled as the likeliest to tip the election.

Both candidates are pouring more money, time and energy into the state than anywhere else, with Ms. Harris, Mr. Trump and their allies set to spend $350 million just on television ads in Pennsylvania — $142 million more than the next closest state and more than Michigan and Wisconsin combined. Part of Pennsylvania’s pivotal role is its sheer size: The state’s 19 electoral votes are the biggest prize of any battleground. Part of it is polling: The state has been virtually tied for months. And part of it is math: It is daunting for either Mr. Trump or, especially, Ms. Harris to reach the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win without it. “If we win Pennsylvania,” Mr. Trump said at a recent rally in the state, “we win the whole thing.” What makes Pennsylvania so compelling — and confounding — for both parties is the state’s unusual mix of demographic and geographic forces. It is home to urban centers such as Philadelphia with a large population of Black voters whom Democrats must mobilize. It has fast-growing, highly educated and mostly white suburbs where Republicans have been bleeding support in the Trump years. There are struggling industrial towns where Mr. Trump needs to maximize his vote, and smaller cities booming with Latino immigrants where Ms. Harris aims to make gains. And there is a significant, albeit shrinking, rural population. White voters without college degrees, who make up Mr. Trump’s base, still account for roughly half the vote. “This is almost a microcosm of America,” said Austin Davis, Pennsylvania’s Democratic lieutenant governor. Editors’ Picks How to See the ‘Once-in-a-Lifetime’ Comet Flaring in Our Night Skies 3 Warming Dishes for Crisp Fall Days Grappling With the Talmud in the Midst of Crisis The campaigning in Pennsylvania is fierce and everywhere — the intensity of a mayoral street fight playing out statewide, with consequences for the whole country. Ms. Harris is running online ads targeting voters in heavily Hispanic pockets of eastern Pennsylvania and radio ads featuring Republicans voting for her on 130 rural radio stations. Her team said they knocked on 100,000 doors in the state last Saturday, the first time the campaign had reached that threshold in a day.

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California’s rent control ballot measure could reverberate across the US

Among the many ballot questions American voters will consider next month, housing experts are paying close attention to California and a question known as Proposition 33 — a proposed repeal of the state’s restrictions on local rent control. If passed, the measure would give authority back to local governments to enact or change laws on rent control. For advocates, passing Proposition 33 would be a critical opportunity to address California’s housing crisis head-on. For the real estate industry, defeating Proposition 33 would mean maintaining the status quo in a market that has made billions for corporate landlords. While rent control — caps on rent increases — provides relief to tenants, some economists suggest there are significant trade-offs: Rent control policies can lead to higher rents for uncontrolled units, reduce landlords’ incentive to maintain units, and dampen the creation of new rental housing — exacerbating affordable housing shortages.

Since January 2021, states and localities across the country have implemented more than 300 new tenant protections, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a nonprofit that pushes for housing affordability. And some housing advocates think that if Californians approve the ballot question, other states could follow suit, expanding rent control in the coming years as a way to prevent large rate hikes that can force out low- and middle-income tenants. The ballot initiative could have “a reverberating effect across the country” if it is passed, said Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a liberal-leaning advocacy group. “Renter protections have shown to have a path [to being passed] when put in the hands of voters since the pandemic.” Rent control has a long history in California. Before 1995, local governments were allowed to impose rent controls, as long as landlords were still receiving reasonable financial returns. But that year, lawmakers, with the support of the housing industry, passed the Costa-Hawkins Rental Act. It imposed new mandates: no rent control on condominiums or single-family homes, and no rent control on properties built after 1995.

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Kamala Harris on ‘60 Minutes’ said unemployment is at historic lows for everyone. Half True.

During an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Vice President Kamala Harris faced several pointed questions, including one about how the Biden-Harris administration has handled the economy. “There are lots of signs that the American economy is doing very well, better than most countries, I think,” CBS’ Bill Whitaker said in the interview, which aired Oct. 7. “But the American people don’t seem to be feeling it. Groceries are 25% higher and people are blaming you and Joe Biden for that. Are they wrong?” Harris said, “We now have historic low unemployment in America among all groups of people. We now have an economy that is thriving by all macroeconomic measures. And, to your point, prices are still too high. And I know that, and we need to deal with it, which is why part of my plan — you mentioned groceries. Part of my plan is what we must do to bring down the price of groceries.” We wondered whether Harris was correct that “we now have historic low unemployment in America among all groups of people.”

The short answer is that under the Biden-Harris administration, unemployment for all groups has been low by historical standards; in several cases, unemployment hit record lows. However, Harris said “now,” which could lead listeners to think unemployment is at a record low today. That’s not so for any of those groups, since unemployment has trended upward for nearly two years. We looked at data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the federal government’s official source for unemployment rates, for five categories: overall unemployment, white unemployment, Black unemployment, Latino unemployment and Asian unemployment. We’ll address them in that order. The record low overall unemployment rate is 2.5%, set in 1953. The lowest rate during the last seven decades came under Biden’s tenure: 3.4% for two months in 2023. But in the most recent month, September 2024, the rate was 4.1%, or seven-tenths of a point higher than the 70-year low. The record low white unemployment rate is 3%, set three times: during several months in 1968-69, one month in 2020 under President Donald Trump and two months in 2022 under Biden. In the most recent month, September 2024, the rate was 3.6%, or six-tenths of a point above the record. The record low Black unemployment rate is 4.8%, set in April 2023 under Biden and Harris. In the most recent month, September 2024, the rate was 5.7%, or nine-tenths of a point above the record. The record low Latino unemployment rate is 3.9%, a level reached once under Trump in 2019 and once under Biden and Harris in 2022. In the most recent month, September 2024, the rate was 5.1%, or 1.2 percentage points higher than the record.

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The hurricane X-factor in the 2024 election

Any number of October surprises could affect the 2024 election, but right now, none loom larger than the fall hurricanes. Hurricane Helene is already the deadliest mainland hurricane since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, ripping through the swing states Georgia and North Carolina after tearing up parts of Florida. And now Hurricane Milton — currently a Category 5 storm — is bearing down on Florida in a way that officials believe could be even more catastrophic than Helene. Milton is due to make landfall Wednesday. The immediate concern is the devastation these storms have and will wreak. But the political fight over them isn’t waiting, in large part because of Donald Trump. And the impact on the fast-approaching election is obviously a huge emerging subplot, with major implications for the future of the country.

What’s clear is that we are largely in uncharted territory so close to a presidential election and with this many key states bearing the brunt of these storms. But what does history suggest that could mean? The first thing to note is just how crucial these states could be — and how much even slight shifts could change the overall race. Georgia and North Carolina, in particular, are polling extremely close. Trump leads by two points in Georgia and by less than one in North Carolina, according to The Washington Post’s polling averages. They combine for more than one-third of the electoral votes in the seven key swing states. Red-leaning Florida is more of an afterthought in the 2024 campaign; it’s generally been thought that Democrats would win there only if they’re already well on the way to winning the presidency. But the former swing state went for Trump by only three points in 2020, and some on the Democratic side have pushed for more investment in a key U.S. Senate race there and possibly even the presidential race. If Vice President Kamala Harris somehow won Florida’s 30 electoral votes, she would very likely be elected president.

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Hurricane Milton barrels toward Florida, could be one of most destructive storms on record

Milton forecast to grow in size: Milton has strengthened back into a Category 5 hurricane. Even though it is forecast to weaken before it makes landfall, it will double in size — meaning its disastrous impacts will be felt over a much larger area. Over the past 24 hours, the tropical-storm force winds expanded from 80 miles to 140 miles from its center.

Where will Milton hit? The storm is forecast to make landfall Wednesday night as a major hurricane somewhere on Florida’s Central Gulf Coast, where it could be one of the most destructive storms on record. Its dangerous eye and eyewall could come ashore in the Tampa area and unleash record storm surge while tropical-storm force winds are expected to cover the entire width of the Florida peninsula. The opportunity for people on Florida’s west coast to get out before the effects of Hurricane Milton are seen is rapidly closing, according to the sheriff of Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa. “This is the 11th hour. If you’re in an evacuation zone, the time to get out is now,” Sheriff Chad Chronister told CNN’s Kasie Hunt on Wednesday morning. “We already saw some flooding out here early this morning,” said Chronister. “That’s only going to get worse. As this storm wobbles, we don’t know what kind of storm surge (we will see).” The sheriff said more than 1,000 rescues were conducted in his county after Hurricane Helene, and they’re preparing for more. “We only have to look back two weeks ago. We’re still healing from this storm and recovering,” he said. Dangers left from Helene: Despite frenzied efforts to clean up after Hurricane Helene, mounds of rubble – including sheet metal, cinderblocks and large appliances – remain in neighborhoods. Officials worry Milton’s winds will turn that debris into dangerous projectiles that could hit people or homes.

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Copyright October 17, 2024, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved