Lead Stories

Fed slashes interest rates by a half point, an aggressive start to its first easing campaign in four years

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday enacted its first interest rate cut since the early days of the Covid pandemic, slicing half a percentage point off benchmark rates in an effort to head off a slowdown in the labor market. With both the jobs picture and inflation softening, the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee chose to lower its key overnight borrowing rate by a half percentage point, or 50 basis points, affirming market expectations that had recently shifted from an outlook for a cut half that size. Outside of the emergency rate reductions during Covid, the last time the FOMC cut by half a point was in 2008 during the global financial crisis. The decision lowers the federal funds rate to a range between 4.75%-5%. While the rate sets short-term borrowing costs for banks, it spills over into multiple consumer products such as mortgages, auto loans and credit cards.

In addition to this reduction, the committee indicated through its “dot plot” the equivalent of 50 more basis points of cuts by the end of the year, close to market pricing. The matrix of individual officials’ expectations pointed to another full percentage point in cuts by the end of 2025 and a half point in 2026. In all, the dot plot shows the benchmark rate coming down about 2 percentage points beyond Wednesday’s move. “The Committee has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 percent, and judges that the risks to achieving its employment and inflation goals are roughly in balance,” the post-meeting statement said. The decision to ease came “in light of progress on inflation and the balance of risks.” Notably, the FOMC vote was 11-1, with Governor Michelle Bowman preferring a quarter-point move. Bowman’s dissent was the first by a Fed governor since 2005, though a number of regional presidents have cast “no” votes during the period.

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Texas House education chair expects vouchers will pass next session — with limitations

The chair of the Texas House education committee expects a voucher bill to pass in the next legislative session after failing last year – but it might look different this time. Speaking at a Dallas Regional Chamber State of Public Education event Tuesday, District 54 Rep. Brad Buckley said he wants well-funded public schools as well as a voucher program with limitations. He said vouchers should go to low-income kids in poorly rated schools. “And then every session the legislature will have the opportunity to evaluate the program that shows how kids are doing and we’ll be able to make those decisions as we go along,” he said. Public schools “will educate 95% of our kids, regardless,” said Buckley – whose wife is an assistant superintendent in Killeen ISD -- and vouchers would allow the other 5% to use public dollars to pay for private schools.

“There are too many kids that aren’t doing well enough, and we need to make sure that they can,” he said. “There has never been a more important time for us to have every tool we can at our disposal, so that kids can enjoy the promise of this country.” Buckley crafted a bill last session that included education savings accounts championed by Gov. Greg Abbott. The package would have funded public schools, teacher pay raises, ESAs, and larger per-student allotments. Buckley hoped it would appeal to Abbott and Democrats, but rural Republicans saw no benefit to vouchers in their communities where public schools are often the center of life and civic pride. Twenty-one Republicans joined 63 Democrats in voting to strip ESAs out and the bill, which then died. Abbott had vowed he would sign no education funding bill without ESAs. The governor endorsed the primary opponents of Republicans who had voted against ESAs, and several of the anti-voucher candidates he targeted lost.

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Texas requests federal data to check citizenship status of some registered voters

The Texas secretary of state on Wednesday asked the federal government to provide citizenship data to help state officials verify whether registered voters are eligible to cast ballots. Secretary of State Jane Nelson said her office is compiling a list of registered voters whose citizenship can’t be verified using state sources. Nelson asked U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ur Jaddou to provide data to share with county registrars by Oct. 2 “to prevent non-U.S. citizen voting.” It is against federal and state law for noncitizens to vote in elections. The state’s voter registration deadline is Oct 7. “Texas is leading the way in instituting measures to ensure the integrity of our elections, including by removing non-U.S. citizens from the State’s voter rolls and preventing non-U.S. citizen voting — all of which are undertaken in compliance with the requirements of federal and state law,” Nelson wrote in a letter to the federal agency.

“In furtherance of these obligations, federal law entitles state and local officials to receive citizenship status information from USCIS,” she said. “Specifically, federal law says state governments may not be prevented from requesting citizenship information from USCIS.” Nelson’s correspondence came hours after Attorney General Ken Paxton urged her office to use its “legal authority” to request the information from the federal government. Paxton, who panned the federal government as “the most significant challenge we face in securing Texas elections,” said the Biden-Harris administration’s “open-border policies” have led to an influx of illegal immigration as federal law makes it “nearly impossible” for states to verify voter registration applicants’ citizenship. “Although it is a crime for a noncitizen to register to vote, federal law restricts states from requiring proof of citizenship, and state agencies like those we lead have limited means to verify voter citizenship in many cases,” Paxton wrote in a letter to Nelson. “But those same laws place obligations on the federal government to help us identify potential noncitizen voters. And the Office of the Secretary of State possesses the legal authority to demand the federal government do its job in helping states maintain the integrity of their voter rolls.”

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Harris leads Trump in Pennsylvania, Michigan, with tighter race in Wisconsin: Poll

Vice President Harris is leading former President Trump in Pennsylvania and Michigan by at least 5 points but has a smaller lead in Wisconsin, according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University. The poll finds Harris winning 51 percent of likely voters in Pennsylvania, compared to 45 percent for Trump. Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver each earn 1 percent support. In Michigan, Harris wins 50 percent support in the Quinnipiac poll, compared to 45 percent for Trump and 2 percent for Stein. In Wisconsin, Harris wins 48 percent support compared to 47 percent for Trump and 1 percent for Stein. The findings differ from The Hill/Decision Desk HQ aggregate polling, which finds closer races in Pennsylvania and Michigan than Wisconsin. In those polling averages, Harris leads Trump by less than a percentage point in Pennsylvania and Michigan, but by 2.9 percentage points in Wisconsin as of Wednesday.

Neither candidate can likely win the White House while losing all three states. Trump won all three in 2016, while President Biden won them in 2020. The states are sometimes called the “blue wall” because of their importance to Democratic presidential candidates. The only Republican since former President George H.W. Bush to win any of the three is Trump. The poll also found that more voters are seeing Harris favorably compared to Trump. Quinnipiac said that factor and problems with GOP attacks could explain Harris’s lead. “The GOP’s most ‘go to’ attack strategies against Democrats on immigration and the economy may be losing momentum. Likely voters now see little daylight, in most cases, between Harris and Trump on who can best handle those key issues,” said Tim Malloy, a Quinnipiac University polling analyst. “Favorability, that catch-all for what voters think about candidates from policy to personality to promise, tips Harris’ way since we last polled Pennsylvanians. A post-debate shift, though small, suggests voters are warming up to her,” Malloy later added.

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State Stories

Texas doubles down on razor wire, fencing facing New Mexico

U.S. Border Patrol encounters with unauthorized migrants have fallen drastically since June. Still, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott remains concerned about the 58,000 or so that are getting through the Rio Grande or the border wall each month. “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have allowed more illegal immigrants to cross our southern border than every before,” Abbott tweeted on Saturday. “Texas is fighting back. We are tripling our razor wire border barriers to deny illegal entry into our state and our country.” Three days later, Texas Army National Guard troops were laying fencing and additional rows of concertina wire along the Rio Grande in the El Paso area. On Tuesday, a KTSM camera crew witnessed as soldiers laid the razor wire and installed fencing on the riverbank that faces not Mexico, but New Mexico west of El Paso.

Read this article at Border Report - Subscribers Only

Houston ISD student arrested amid threats to schools statewide, HISD chief of police said

HISD Police Chief Shamara Garner said in a video published Tuesday that a student was arrested for a social media threat amid a rise in reported threats against schools statewide. "As police chief, I understand any threat or mention of violence toward your child's school is deeply unsettling," Garner said. "Please know that the safety of your children is our highest priority, and we take all reports and social media threats of violence seriously." No details about the student arrested were provided in the message. The district announced Thursday it was boosting campus security amid "a statewide situation." HISD said then it had not confirmed any direct threats to its schools, and that its police department is working with state law enforcement agencies to investigate.

HISD is still investigating online threats "suggesting violence toward several Texas schools" with other law enforcement and federal partners, Garner said. "It is important for our students to know that any such threat that cause fear will be investigated with the intent to seek criminal prosecution," she said. Families across multiple schools have been getting school-issued messages regarding threats, social media posts show. The district will hold a webinar on student safety and health Thursday at 5 p.m., the first of what the district plans to be monthly webinars, according to a message from HISD's chief of police to families. Garner will present the district's approach to student safety and hold a Q&A session with Safety and Emergency Management Director Craig Straw at the end of a presentation. Parents were asked to submit questions online ahead of the webinar, the link for which will be provided Thursday morning. The district saw at least two security incidents Wednesday regarding a reported bomb threat at Bellaire High School and a fight between students that ended in a stabbing at Sterling High School, a district official said.

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Evacuation order lifted and residents impacted by Deer Park fire now free to return, city says

The evacuation order has been lifted in the area surrounding the pipeline fire near Deer Park and La Porte as of 6 p.m. Wednesday, according to Deer Park city officials. Residents are free to return to their homes. The fire is not fully extinguished, but officials said they expect repairs to be fully complete by 6 p.m. Thursday. Once the repairs are made, the fire should take roughly two to three hours to die down, according to a news release. Spencer Highway between Luella Avenue and East/Canada Boulevard will remain closed as crews work to extinguish the fire. Air quality monitoring will also continue until an all-clear is given.

The natural gas pipeline owned by Energy Transfer is located near the border between Deer Park, La Porte and Pasadena. The pipeline was used to transport Y grade natural gas liquids — a highly flammable hydrocarbon mixture used to process plants separating components, such as ethane, propane, butane, isobutane and pentane plus. Officials reported on Monday that four people were injured. Two of the injuries were caused by the fire and two were heat-related. A Pasadena firefighter was one of the people who experienced heat stress and was treated with fluids and rested, Fire Chief Lanny Armstrong said in an email. The firefighter remained at the scene. Energy Transfer said it was utilizing air monitoring equipment in the area alongside Harris County's Pollution Control Services Department. Crews were working to manage and fix a pipeline leak Wednesday by installing stopples, which are used to temporarily block the flow in a pipeline section, according to a news release. "Initial assessments conducted by local authorities and Energy Transfer revealed a pressure drop at the affected pipeline section," the release reads. "In response, the company immediately shut down the offsite flaring process and initiated procedures to isolate the leak."

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Dallas mayor Eric Johnson wears ‘TCU sucks’ shirt at city council meeting

If the SMU-TCU rivalry on the football field is reaching its end, the city of Dallas is fighting until the last bell. Mayor Eric Johnson wore a “TCU Sucks” shirt at the Dallas City Council meeting Wednesday morning and said it “makes clear our position on the Iron Skillet.” The Mustangs and Horned Frogs are set to reignite their rivalry on Saturday at Gerald J. Ford Stadium, the last scheduled appearance for the game in Dallas. Johnson said he got the shirt from council member Chad West and that it was designed by someone named Michael Chipper Haynes from Tayhoss Designs, who lives in West’s district in North Oak Cliff. ”Thank you Tayhoss Designs and Chipper Haynes for outfitting the mayor with this awesome shirt,” Johnson said during the council meeting. “And I hope Mayor (Mattie) Parker over at Fort Worth sees this and y’all can stop being so chicken and play the game after next year.” In 2023, TCU decided it will indefinitely pause the longstanding football series with SMU after next season, citing a desire to “play more home games” as the conference realignment landscape continued to shift.

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No A-F grades for Texas schools as judge temporarily blocks release

Texas schools won’t receive A-F accountability grades after a judge granted a new order temporarily blocking them on Wednesday. A coalition of school districts sued over the system alleging the grades are invalid because they’re based on flawed STAAR tests. A trial on the case is set for February. Travis County Judge Daniella DeSeta Lyttle temporarily granted dozens of districts’ requests to prohibit Education Commissioner Mike Morath from publishing campus grades for last school year. Texas Education Agency officials plan to appeal the decision, agency spokesman Jake Kobersky said.

The grades are based largely on how well students perform on the STAAR tests. This is the second year in a row some districts sued to block the grades’ release. The current lawsuit alleges grades released by the state would be invalid. The suit questions the use of computers to score students’ essays on the assessment. Large numbers of students scored zeroes on their written answers last year. “During the 2023–24 school year, the Commissioner radically changed the way the new STAAR test is being administered by replacing human graders with AI grading,” their lawsuit states. “This change was made without ensuring that this radical change would not impact the new STAAR test’s validity and reliability.” Morath has repeatedly defended the A-F system as valid and critical to students’ success. Supporters of the system argue families need to know how their local schools are performing and school leaders need to know where to direct resources. Some school district leaders in North Texas, including those in Dallas ISD, released their projections for how schools would perform on A-F, saying it was important to remain transparent with families.

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Louis A. Bedford, IV: Texas needs universal free school lunch

(Louis A. Bedford IV is a Dallas civil rights attorney.) According to Feeding America, 1 in 8 Texas children don’t get enough to eat. Of the roughly 5.8 million school-age children in Texas, this equates to 1.2 million students who are potentially going through the school day hungry. But, there’s a commonsense solution to make sure our kids are fed and can actually focus on their learning and development — universal free school lunch. Feeding children isn’t a liberal or conservative issue. The 1.2 million students experiencing hunger in our state represent all areas of Texas, from farmland to urban centers. And in a state where we pride ourselves on supporting family values and economic efficiency, universal free school lunch fulfills both mandates. Feeding our kids has long-term benefits for the health and wellness of our state. According to the Food Research & Action Center, free or reduced-price school lunches reduce poor health outcomes by at least 29%. The same research found that academic, behavioral, emotional and mental health issues are more prevalent among children and adolescents struggling with hunger.

A study from MIT has found that schools that provide free meals also saw a 17% decrease in disciplinary referrals for white male elementary students. Together with the reality that Texas ranks 33rd in juvenile incarceration rates, according to the Sentencing Project, giving our children access to adequate food can be an invaluable step forward. A reduction in behavioral issues in our Texas schools will not only create a more conducive learning environment for our students, but it will also lead to valuable cost-savings for our state. Fewer disciplinary needs mean more resources can be devoted to what the goal of school is — an education. Those who criticize that a universal free lunch program would provide free meals to affluent families who can afford to pay are missing a key piece of the education equity puzzle. We do not means-test any other aspects of a public education. A family does not need to make below a certain income to send their children to public school, or to wave goodbye to them on a public school bus; so why should a barrier apply to fulfilling the most basic need to eat? Just like free public education for our kids, universal free lunch benefits all of us. For families, even those who aren’t eligible for income-based assistance, the cost of school lunches can be a significant burden. By ensuring that all kids can receive a nutritious meal at school, we ease the financial strain on hardworking Texas families and give parents the freedom to pursue employment or education opportunities and to otherwise thrive.

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North Texans push to rename a road to the airport ‘Trump Way’

An effort in one North Texas city to rename a public street after former President Donald Trump has so far hit roadblocks, but supporters aren’t giving up. Some Republicans in Wise County have sought to change the name of Airport Drive in Decatur to “Trump Way.” The quarter-mile road leads to the Decatur Municipal Airport on the northern side of the city. The issue came up multiple times this summer at the Decatur City Council, including Sept. 9, but officials took no action. Several council members said it’s important that the council and the city remain nonpartisan. However, if supporters get enough signatures from registered voters, the proposal for “Trump Way” could come up for a vote on a future ballot.

Rick Lifto, the chairman of the Wise County Republican Party, told the Star-Telegram that there are many streets, highways and buildings throughout Texas named for former presidents — but not Trump. “I thought well, if we’re going to recognize him in some way, what would be the most appropriate? It seemed appropriate that we should name something after Trump,” Lifto said. The Metroplex has several highways bearing the names of former commanders-in-chief, most notably those who are from the Lone Star State. The 52-mile President George Bush Turnpike, honoring the 41st president, wraps around the northern suburbs of Dallas — and happens to intersect with the Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway. George H.W. Bush’s name is also on Houston’s airport. As for Bush 43, there’s Bush Drive that leads to his presidential center at SMU, as well as an elementary school in Collin County and the southbound I-44 bridge at the Red River (which was a tribute bestowed by the state of Oklahoma, which also has a 20-mile stretch of U.S. 287 called Trump Highway in the Panhandle). Hundreds of thousands of people each day take Ronald Reagan Memorial Highway, also known as Interstate 20, through Arlington. And up in McKinney, there’s a small neighborhood where every street is named after presidents, including Clinton and Carter drives. In Decatur, population roughly 8,000, the would-be Trump Way is nowhere near as traveled as those other presidential roadways, nor does it have many addresses. There’s a Texas Army National Guard recruiting office on the corner, though technically its address isn’t Airport Drive. Google Maps images show a few potholes along the short stretch of asphalt, which doesn’t even have center striping. Lifto, the Republican county chair, said he first approached Wise County government leaders about renaming a road after the 45th president (who also hopes to become the 47th). In his view, Lifto said that Trump supported several pieces of legislation that benefited Wise County, including bills calling for high-speed Internet in rural areas.

Read this article at Fort Worth Star-Telegram - Subscribers Only

TCU & SMU both in elite conferences for 1st time since 1995

After two plus decades, TCU and SMU are again on “the same plane” managing their long frenemy friendship. They’re the rich couples at the 19th hole of the country club who acts nice to their face, but behind the respective backs degrades and minimizes everything the other does. Both are convinced they are prettier than the other, even if the rest of America views them in the same general category: Small, private wealthy schools in DFW. People throughout Dallas-Fort Worth know the dozens of differences between SMU and TCU, even if their challenges are identical. Fans, administrators and coaches at the respective universities only need to look at 1995 to see the invisible cord that links this pair to the “power structure” of major college athletics. Both are on secure footing today, here in 2024, but the lessons of 1995 can never be ignored.

TCU plays at SMU on Saturday in Dallas in what is the second-to-last of the “Iron Skillet” rivalry that will be on “pause” after the 2025 season. This will be the first time both are in a “power league” since they were members of the Southwest Conference, in 1995. As far as they have come since that season, neither is ever that far away from the 3 a.m. phone call. The man charged with informing both TCU and SMU that neither “made the cut” when the Big 8 joined four members of the Southwest Conference to form the Big 12 has a soft vision of a future of college football that is an echo throughout the industry. It would effectively be a case of 1995 happening all over again. “I don’t know how you keep it (intact) except, ‘What is the next step?’” Steve Hatchell said in a recent interview. Hatchell was the last commissioner of the Southwest Conference and was responsible for forming the then new Big 12 in ‘96. “What if someone comes in and says, ‘We’re going to put the top 50 schools together in one entity?’ Is that the next step? I don’t know. It could be. There are enough entities out there that look at it from that perspective that you think maybe that is the case.

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Texas shakes with one of largest earthquakes in state history

Thousands of Texans were rattled by one of the strongest earthquakes in state history Monday night. Per the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the earthquake struck around 21 miles west-southwest of Ackerly, located about 60 miles north of Midland, just before 7:50 p.m. It had a magnitude of 5.1 with a depth of 5.2 miles and was possibly the main shock of a sequence of dozens of earthquakes. 0:13 / 0:30 A 5.1 earthquake is often felt but only causes minor damage. So far, there have been no reports of damage or injuries as a result of the tremor. However, the USGS received more than 1,400 reports of shaking, from residents as far as Austin and San Antonio. Residents in neighboring New Mexico and Oklahoma also reported feeling the rumblings. "Notable quake, preliminary info: M 5.1 34 km WSW of Ackerly, Texas," the USGS posted on X Monday night. In response, users from around the state noted the earthquake's intensity. "Friend felt in Schertz, TX. Knocked candles off of shelves," one person wrote. "Felt it in San Angelo, TX. Biggest one I've felt," another responded.

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Texas AG Ken Paxton is shielding details about his real estate buying spree from the state

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has purchased millions of dollars’ worth of properties in recent years. So why is he keeping them secret? Paxton and his blind trust have been on a real estate buying spree since 2021, more than doubling his holdings by purchasing land and homes from Hawaii to Florida. But of the 10 properties the attorney general or his blind trust currently own, just one was listed on his most recent official financial statement. That’s even fewer than last year, when The Texas Newsroom first reported that Paxton did not disclose all of his properties to state ethics regulators. Experts said Paxton appeared to be violating state ethics rules. Elected officials are required to report all properties they own to the Texas Ethics Commission. But at the time, the attorney general said he was not breaking the law and called it “some made-up issue.”

Paxton’s spokespeople did not answer questions about why he’s choosing to disclose even less about his properties this year. One former ethics regulator says the attorney general’s financial disclosures — or lack thereof — appear to be ripe for investigation. Once a year, public officials are required to file a report with the Texas Ethics Commission that details how they make and spend their money. This form, called the personal financial statement, is meant to give the public a window into a politician’s wealth and expose any potential self-dealing or conflicts of interest. If you look at Paxton’s most recent financial statement, filed July 1, it appears as though he owns just one property, in Collin County. The address is redacted. But according to appraisal district and mortgage records reviewed by The Texas Newsroom, Paxton or his blind trust actually own 10 properties in five states. These include three additional homes in Texas, a luxury cabin in Oklahoma, multiple properties in Florida and plots of land in Utah and Hawaii. Six of these properties were purchased within the last four years, records show. Paxton and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, together own two of the properties in their names, according to local appraisal district records.

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‘Total war’: Lawmakers look to shake up Texas politics next legislative session

One year ago from Monday, the Texas Senate acquitted Attorney General Ken Paxton of all charges accusing him of corruption, bribery, and abuse of office in Texas’ second-ever impeachment of a statewide official. The historic trial attracted national intrigue to an already-salacious Texas Capitol, but its dramatic conclusion was just one chapter in an ongoing political saga, rather than the end. The political rifts triggered an earthquake still yet to settle. “The trial was an initiating event for things that were latent that finally got a chance to come to the surface,” House District 65 Republican nominee Mitch Little told Nexstar. Little gained notoriety as one of Paxton’s defense attorneys during the trial, springing him to victory in the Republican primary in his North Texas House district. He beat a Republican who voted to impeach Paxton, and for that reason. Barring a significant electoral shift, he will be in the House as an outspoken reformer come January.

“You had animosity over how the House was led, that it wasn’t driving conservative principles. The House was essentially functioning, in large part, as an enemy of the grassroots. And then the impeachment of Ken Paxton really brought all of that to the surface,” he said. Conservatives like Little and many of the dozen-plus up-and-coming Republicans who ousted their incumbents take issue with some institutional mechanisms of the House. They want to stop appointing members of the minority party to chair committees, a longstanding practice meant to encourage bipartisanship. They want to oust the House Parliamentarian, meant to be a neutral arbiter of House rules but one some conservatives see as killing conservative bills for technical infractions. And they want to codify impeachment procedures to require more representation and transparency than was granted to Paxton last year.

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Texas has a history of earthquakes — but human activity is increasing their frequency

In the wake of a magnitude 5.1 earthquake rattling near Midland Monday evening, Texas geology experts are giving further insight into some of the causes behind these quakes. Monday’s magnitude 5.1 earthquake had its epicenter located in the area surrounding Ackerly, Texas, which is about 20 miles north of Midland. While out in West Texas, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) received reports from those in the Austin metro feeling the tremors. Dr. Shelly Wernette is an assistant professor of instruction at Texas State University and works in the geology program. She said Texas’ vast size and geography results in some portions of the state having more natural seismic activity than others. Out in West Texas near El Paso and the Rio Grande rift, that area is a “seismically active region,” Wernette said, adding historical data have revealed a number of historic earthquakes in that area dating back to the late 1800s and early 1900s.

In that region, magnitude 5.0 earthquakes and stronger ones aren’t unusual, she said. Here in the Austin area, she said there are some fault lines, but the region historically hasn’t had as much natural seismic activity akin to portions of West Texas. “It’s true that we are not a very active state, and the area where this earthquake was — the Ackerly, Midland area — really is not historically a natural earthquake hotbed,” Wernette said. “It’s very unusual that we’ve had this earthquake…most recently, the earthquakes have been intensifying and becoming more common, and that’s very much a human-driven thing, rather than what our natural patterns have been.” USGS data found more than 3,600 earthquakes have been reported in Texas since 1900. While the vast majority of those are smaller in magnitude, USGS has revealed dozens have been recorded at a magnitude 4 level or greater. Accounting for Monday’s magnitude 5.1 quake in Midland, it marks eight total earthquakes with magnitude 5 or greater since 1900. Wernette said that typically, earthquakes landing around a magnitude 5 intensity aren’t strong enough to cause structural damage. Once you reach closer to magnitude 5.5, she said that’s when some damage become more plausible.

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South Texas mayor, Mexican officials sign agreement for McAllen trade corridor

The mayor of McAllen has signed an agreement with the governor of the Mexican state of San Luis Potosí for Mexican commercial truck traffic to use the Anzalduas International Bridge through McAllen once it is expanded in 2025. The memorandum of understanding was signed Sunday by McAllen Mayor Javier Villalobos and San Luis Potosí Gov. Ricardo Gallardo Cardona in the central Mexican state. Villalobos tells Border Report the MOU commits to establishing a trade corridor through the Rio Grande Valley, and away from the crowded bridges in Laredo, Texas.

“They want to be partners. They want to make sure that their manufacturing companies, their maquiladoras, can come and cross as fast as possible. That’s something that’s very important, not just for us, but for everybody,” Villalobos told Border Report on Monday from the airport in Mexico as his team was preparing to return to the United States. The deal comes just two months after Gallardo visited McAllen and the Anzalduas International Bridge and expressed how he wanted to expedite truck traffic from his Mexican state through McAllen. San Luis Potosí is one of Mexico’s biggest producers of auto parts, and once the expansion of the Anzalduas International Bridge is complete, he hopes to be able to send many trucks full of auto parts to the United States through this bridge that connects Mission, Texas, to Reynosa, Mexico.

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'Slap in the face:' San Antonio Airport-Southwest standoff could hurt both sides

The city of San Antonio and Southwest Airlines are locked in a fight that, if not resolved soon, could damage both sides. Southwest is refusing to sign a long-term lease agreement with the airport unless it gets 10 gates the Dallas-based airline said it was promised in a new terminal that'll be built under the city's $2.5 billion airport expansion plan. The terminal, which will take up more square footage than the existing Terminals A and B combined, is scheduled to open in 2028. The airport said it never guaranteed Southwest gates in the new terminal — and that there is no chance it will be moved into the new facility. American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and several international carriers are slated to take up the planned terminal's 17 gates.

The City Council, after only a few minutes of discussion, approved an airline use and lease agreement last week that locks Southwest into Terminal A, the oldest, narrowest terminal at the airport. The current agreement expires Sept. 30, but airlines can sign the new long-term lease deal after it kicks in next month. Because Southwest has refused to sign a long-term lease — and will likely operate at the airport under series of month-to-month agreements — it will rack up higher fees to fly out of San Antonio and its gates could be shifted frequently. The fallout for San Antonio could be severe, too. Southwest flies nearly 40 percent of all passengers at San Antonio International, making it the airport's dominant airline. American accounts for 22% of all passengers at the facility, and Delta 15%. Last year, Southwest carried more than 3.7 million of the airport’s customers.

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County Stories

New contract keeps Flores as Alamo Colleges chancellor at least three more years

Alamo Colleges District Chancellor Mike Flores will continue leading the fast-growing community colleges system for at least for three more years under a new employment contract. The agreement keeps Flores the chancellor through Aug. 31, 2027, with an automatic one-year extension unless the district board decides in the next year not to extend it. The board approved it Aug. 20 and the final version was signed Sept. 10. Flores, 54, has said he wants to keep the system and its five colleges in Bexar County focused on breaking cycles of multigenerational poverty and providing access to well-paying, high-demand jobs. He previously was president of Palo Alto College on the South Side and has served as chancellor for more than five years.

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Travis DA won't pursue murder charge against Austin cop Christopher Taylor for 2019 shooting

Travis County prosecutors will not pursue a murder case against Austin police officer Christopher Taylor in the shooting death of a man in 2019, opting instead to seek a conviction on a lesser felony charge. The attorney for the family of Mauris DeSilva, a scientist and researcher who was shot and killed during what officials and family members said was a mental health episode, and attorneys for Taylor confirmed the development to the American-Statesman on Tuesday. The murder trial was set to start Monday. A spokesman for District Attorney Jose Garza said the prosecutor's office would not comment on the pending matter, adding that a pretrial hearing is set for Friday.

Prosecutors recently met with DeSilva’s family, including his father, Denzil Desilva, to inform them of the decision to instead try Taylor on a deadly conduct charge, a third degree felony, attorney Brad Vinson said. Vinson said prosecutors told them: “We think it is better for the case, better for juries in Travis County on these cases, and that is what we are going to be going forward with." “It makes me think that maybe their office thought a Travis County jury would be more likely to convict (police officers), and what they are finding is that Travis County juries are more technical,” Vinson said. “They are very educated and technical in the way they evaluate evidence.” The decision is the latest instance in which Garza has shifted strategy — or outright dismissed a charge — in a case dealing with police accountability, a major platform that helped the district attorney get elected in 2020 in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by a cop in Minneapolis.

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National Stories

Second wave of exploding devices raises fears of wider Israel-Lebanon conflict

Hand-held radios used by armed group Hezbollah detonated on Wednesday across Lebanon's south in the country's deadliest day since cross-border fighting erupted between the militants and Israel nearly a year ago, stoking tensions after similar explosions of the group's pagers the day before. Lebanon's health ministry said 20 people were killed and more than 450 injured on Wednesday in Beirut's suburbs and the Bekaa Valley, while the death toll from Tuesday's explosions rose to 12, including two children, with nearly 3,000 injured. Israeli officials have not commented on the blasts, but security sources said Israel's spy agency Mossad was responsible. One Hezbollah official said the episode was the biggest security breach in the group's history.

The operations, which appeared to throw Hezbollah into disarray, played out alongside Israel's 11-month-old war in Gaza and heightened fears of an escalation on its Lebanese border and the risk of a full-blown regional war. "We are opening a new phase in the war. It requires courage, determination and perseverance from us," Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said in remarks at an air force base. Jordan's Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi accused Israel of pushing the Middle East to the brink of a regional war by orchestrating a dangerous escalation on many fronts. The U.S., which denied any involvement in the blasts, said it was pursuing intensive diplomacy to avert an escalation of the conflict. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Israel told Washington on Tuesday it was going to do something in Lebanon. But Israel did not provide details and the operation itself was a surprise to Washington, the official said.

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Hezbollah pager attack puts spotlight on Israel's cyber warfare Unit 8200

The mass pager attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon has turned the spotlight on Israel's secretive Unit 8200, the Israel Defense Forces' intelligence unit, which a Western security source said was involved in planning the operation. Israeli officials have remained silent on the audacious intelligence operation that killed 12 people on Tuesday and wounded thousands of Hezbollah operatives. At least one person was killed on Wednesday when hand-held radios used by Hezbollah detonated. A senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters that Israel's Mossad spy agency was responsible for a sophisticated operation to plant a small quantity of explosives inside 5,000 pagers ordered by Hezbollah.

One Western security source told Reuters that Unit 8200, a military unit that is not part of the spy agency, was involved in the development stage of the operation against Hezbollah which was over a year in the making. The source said Unit 8200 was involved in the technical side of testing how they could insert explosive material within the manufacturing process. The Israeli military declined to comment. The prime minister's office that has oversight of Mossad did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Yossi Kuperwasser, a former military intelligence official and now research director at the Israel Defense and Security Forum, said there was no confirmation that the military intelligence unit was involved in the attack. But he said 8200's members were some of the best and brightest personnel in the Israeli military, serving in a unit at the centre of Israel's defence capabilities.

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Iranian hackers tried but failed to interest Biden's campaign in stolen Trump info, FBI says

Iranian hackers sought to interest President Joe Biden’s campaign in information stolen from rival Donald Trump’s campaign, sending unsolicited emails to people associated with the then-Democratic candidate in an effort to interfere in the 2024 election, the FBI and other federal agencies said Wednesday. There’s no indication that any of the recipients responded, officials said, and several media organizations who have said they also were approached with stolen material did not publish it. Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign called the emails from Iran “unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity” that were received by only a few people who regarded them as spam or phishing attempts. The emails were received before the hack of the Trump campaign was publicly acknowledged, and there’s no evidence the recipients of the emails knew their origin.

The announcement is the latest U.S. government effort to call out what officials say is Iran’s brazen, ongoing work to interfere in the election, including a hack-and-leak campaign that the FBI and other federal agencies linked last month to Tehran. U.S. officials in recent months have used criminal charges, sanctions and public advisories to detail actions taken by foreign adversaries to influence the election, including an indictment targeting a covert Russian effort to spread pro-Russia content to U.S. audiences. It’s a stark turnabout from the government’s response in 2016, when Obama administration officials were criticized for not being forthcoming about the Russian interference they were seeing on Trump’s behalf as he ran against Democrat Hillary Clinton. In this case, the hackers sent emails in late June and early July to people who were associated with Biden’s campaign before he dropped out. The emails “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” according to a statement released by the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

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Allegations that Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs tampered with witnesses contribute to bail denial

Last week, on the day he was sued for at least the ninth time in less than a year, Sean Combs was determined to get a message through to one of his protégées, prosecutors in his federal criminal case said. The music mogul, who was indicted by a federal grand jury this week on sex trafficking and racketeering charges, is alleged to have called or texted Kalenna Harper 58 times in four days. The outreach started, prosecutors said, on the day that another of his protégées, Dawn Richard, who was Harper’s bandmate in the since-disbanded group Diddy — Dirty Money, sued Combs, alleging that he groped and threatened her and at times failed to pay her while he oversaw her career. And the communication stopped, they said, after Harper took to social media to deny that she had witnessed some of the things Richard’s complaint alleges.

The allegation of communication between Combs and Harper is one of several examples of “witness tampering” and obstruction of justice prosecutors laid out for a judge Tuesday in New York as they argued that Combs was too dangerous, violent and dismissive of the federal case against him to be allowed to return home before his trial. “This incident is just one way of making clear that this defendant has the ongoing ability to keep witnesses, even witnesses who might have been around for very distant-in-time abuse, in his pocket and at his disposal,” one of the prosecutors, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson, told a judge Tuesday. Combs’ attorneys had asked that he be released on bail and said he could post a $50 million bond. But U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky denied their request Tuesday, saying, in part, that even with a bond, she could not “reasonably assure his return to court or the safety of the community, or a lack of witness tampering.” U.S. District Judge Andrew Carter Jr. upheld that decision Wednesday after an appeal from Combs’ attorney.

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‘Why Springfield?’ How a small Ohio city became home for thousands of Haitians

Margery Koveleski says “Why Springfield?” is something she’s been hearing a lot lately. “Everybody asks the question,” says Koveleski, a community activist and translator in the Ohio city who’s been helping its growing Haitian population. Springfield is now home to thousands of Haitians. Last week’s presidential debate thrust the small city into the national spotlight, prompting even more people to wonder how a Haitian community has taken root there — and why. Here’s a look at some key questions, and the answers we know so far. There’s no official tally. Mayor Rob Rue told CNN the city’s population has grown about 25% over the past three years, in part due to the arrival of Haitian immigrants. Between 12,000 and 15,000 immigrants are living in Clark County, which includes Springfield, according to estimates on the city’s website. Of that group, an estimated 10,000-12,000 are Haitian, according to a July presentation from the county’s health commissioner, who cited data from school and social services officials.

The 2020 Census estimated about 60,000 people were living in Springfield, and 2022 data from the American Community Survey indicated about 2% of the city’s population was born outside the US. No. Immigrants have chosen to live in Springfield due to its low cost of living and available work, according to a city website, which notes that “no government entity is responsible for the influx of Haitians into Clark County.” “Any system is going to struggle with the rapid population growth we have seen,” Clark County Health Commissioner Chris Cook told the Springfield City Council in July as he stressed the importance of getting more resources and funding to help. “This is not part of a federal resettlement program. … It’s not someplace it was planned, and it’s not someplace those resources initially go by policy,” he said. Officials and Springfield residents who’ve spoken with CNN say employment opportunities and word of mouth drew an influx of immigrants to the city. Koveleski, the interpreter and community activist in Springfield, said word that jobs were available spread quickly among Haitians’ family and friends. “Before you know it,” she told CNN’s Omar Jimenez, “it was almost like, ‘If there’s a good Friday sale and you got a great deal at Macy’s, you tell all your friends, and the stores are packed.’” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said businesses in the area are grateful to have the help of a growing labor force. “Ohio is on the move, and Springfield has really made a great resurgence with a lot of companies coming in. These Haitians came in to work for these companies,” he told ABC on Sunday. “What the companies tell us is that they are very good workers. They’re very happy to have them there, and frankly, that’s helped the economy.”

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The SBC will sell its Nashville headquarters to defray abuse-related legal costs

An investigation into how leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention have dealt with sexual abuse by clergy has cost more than $12 million over the past three years, causing the nation’s largest Protestant denomination to put its Nashville, Tennessee, headquarters up for sale, the SBC’s Executive Committee announced on Tuesday (Sept. 17). The expenditures, which include $3 million spent fending off a lawsuit filed by a former SBC president, have led the committee to spend down its reserves in what its auditors have called an unsustainable manner. The group, which met in Nashville this week, also approved a loan to cover budget shortfalls. Lawyers for the SBC will meet Thursday with attorneys for the former SBC president, Johnny Hunt, in a court-order mediation session, where the two sides will discuss settling their dispute. Hunt has claimed the SBC leadership ruined his reputation by reporting on his past sexual misconduct and for including him in a report on allegedly abusive leaders.

The Executive Committee’s fiscal woes come as the denomination is struggling to implement reforms ordered by the SBC’s governing body two years ago, designed to help churches better prevent and respond to abuse. On Tuesday, members of the Executive Committee also voted to set up a new department to deal with the issue of abuse reforms, which will take over the reform effort from volunteers. “Southern Baptists, we have had two task forces that have done difficult and important work, but it’s time now to stop talking about what we’re going to do and take an initial strategic step of action that puts into place an administrative response to this issue,” Jeff Iorg, president of the Nashville-based Executive Committee, told trustees. Iorg described the new department as a “beginning point of a workable solution” on the issue of abuse reform.

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States, hospital systems try less punitive drug testing of pregnant women and newborns

Some states and hospital systems have updated their policies on drug testing for pregnant women and newborns, aiming to better support patients’ treatment and recovery from substance use disorder and combat racial disparities in testing and reporting. Under federal law, medical professionals must notify child protective agencies when an infant has been affected by the mother’s substance use, including alcohol use. However, the federal rules — which were updated in 2016 in response to the opioid epidemic — emphasize that substance use disorder on its own doesn’t constitute child abuse, and require states to develop their own “plans of safe care” to promote the long-term health of the newborn and the mother. But federal law doesn’t define “affected,” and testing and reporting policies vary from state to state and even from hospital to hospital. As the opioid crisis continues, some of the nation’s most prominent hospital systems and a handful of states have enacted or are considering less punitive approaches, as long as the baby is in no imminent danger.

One impetus for the shift is research showing that Black pregnant women are more likely to be drug tested and long-standing disparities in how Black and Indigenous families are treated by child welfare agencies. Mental health conditions and substance use have also emerged as leading causes of maternal death, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The data about bias in child welfare reporting related to pregnant/birthing people’s substance use has been around for decades,” Sarah Roberts, a legal epidemiologist and professor at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in an email to Stateline. Roberts tracks testing policies across the country. What’s changed, Roberts said, is a growing awareness of the harms of over-testing and over-reporting to child welfare agencies. Only two states, Minnesota and North Dakota, have laws that require drug testing of pregnant patients in certain circumstances, such as when there are complications during birth that point to the possible use of drugs or alcohol, according to an analysis by If/When/How, a reproductive justice nonprofit. And only four states (Louisiana, Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin) mandate the drug testing of newborns in certain circumstances.

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Lead Stories

The Fed’s biggest interest rate call in years happens Wednesday. Here’s what to expect

For all the hype that goes into them, Federal Reserve meetings are usually pretty predictable affairs. Policymakers telegraph their intentions ahead of time, markets react, and everyone has at least a general idea of what’s going to happen. Not this time. This week’s gathering of the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee carries an uncommon air of mystery. While markets have made up their collective mind that the Fed is going to lower interest rates, there’s a vigorous debate over how far policymakers will go. Will it be the traditional quarter-percentage-point, or 25-basis-point, rate reduction, or will the Fed take an aggressive first step and go 50, or half a point? Fed watchers are unsure, setting up the potential for an FOMC meeting that could be even more impactful than usual. The meeting wraps up Wednesday afternoon, with the release of the Fed’s rate decision coming at 2 p.m. ET.

“I hope they cut 50 basis points, but I suspect they’ll cut 25. My hope is 50, because I think rates are just too high,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “They have achieved their mandate for full employment and inflation back at target, and that’s not consistent with a five and a half percent-ish funds rate target. So I think they need to normalize rates quickly and have a lot of room to do so.” Pricing in the derivatives market around what the Fed will do has been volatile. Paul McCulley says, he expects a total of 200 bps cuts in 2025 Until late last week, traders had locked in on a 25-basis-point cut. Then on Friday, sentiment suddenly shifted, putting a half point on the table. As of Wednesday afternoon, fed funds futures traders were pricing in about a 63% chance of the bigger move, a comparatively low level of conviction against previous meetings. One basis point equals 0.01%. Many on Wall Street continued to predict the Fed’s first step would be a more cautious one.

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Dem operative posing as Abbott chief of staff fished for oppo research in antisemitic, lewd text messages, House Republican charges

Several Republican members of Congress are accusing a liberal political action committee of impersonating a GOP staffer to extract potentially damaging information from elected officials and raise funds for Democrats – with one text exchange that targeted a female lawmaker including antisemitic and sexist language, Fox News Digital has learned. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., said she received a text this summer from a person posing as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s chief of staff. Before long, however, the individual launched into personal attacks, denigrating Luna as a "fake" Jew and making lewd comments about her. Luna says she's currently facing a different harassment campaign, too, as her re-election bid comes down to its final weeks. She revealed the bizarre details about the opposition research scheme when Fox News Digital inquired about the other allegations.

A person posing as Abbott’s new chief of staff in July attempted to set up a phony phone call between Luna and Abbott regarding Luna's re-election effort, according to screenshots of a text conversation supplied to Fox News Digital by Luna's office. "Rep. Luna – Hello, I’m the new [Chief of Staff] to Gov Abbott. May we set up a call for tomorrow? Robert Black," the first text to Luna on July 18 reads. Robert Black is the name of Abbott’s actual chief of staff, who officially joined the office on July 22, according to a press release from Abbott’s office at the start of July. Luna responded: "Yes! What time?" "He wants to talk about how to help you beat Fox," the supposed Abbott staffer said, while suggesting a time for the alleged call. Luna is facing Democratic opponent Whitney Fox in her re-election battle this year. "Whitney Fox?" Luna asked, before brushing off concerns over the race. "I’m always willing to take advice but full transparency I’m in a R + 8 so we’re not super concerned. Did he see a poll or something?" she asked.

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Ted Cruz leads fight to block Democrats' IVF bill that he blasted as an 'empty show vote'

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz on Tuesday led the effort to block a bill by Senate Democrats that they said would protect in-vitro fertilization in America. But on the Senate floor, Cruz blasted the Democratic bill as a cynical show vote, saying it was less about protecting IVF treatments than creating political fodder for TV commercials ahead of the November election. “Today, unfortunately, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are staging an empty show vote,” he said. Cruz is facing a challenge from Democrat Colin Allred, a Dallas-area congressman who is campaigning heavily on protecting abortion rights. The debate over IVF has grown after Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022 amid concerns that abortion bans could threaten the procedure.

The bill up for debate Tuesday would mandate insurance providers cover IVF treatments, among other things. Schumer acknowledged in a letter to Democrats days earlier that he was forcing a vote because former President Donald Trump said last month that he wants to make IVF treatments free or force insurance companies to cover the costs. His running mate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, voted against the Democratic bill to do that earlier this year. Vance was not in the Senate for Tuesday’s vote. “The American people deserve another chance to see if Senate Republicans will back up their words and vote for access to IVF or vote against it. It’s that simple,” Schumer said in the letter. Several Republicans spoke against the measure on Tuesday, including Texas' other U.S. Senator John Cornyn, but Cruz was among the most vocal. He said Democrats loaded the legislation up with poison pills that they knew Republicans could not support because they wanted Republicans to vote "no" so they could falsely accuse Republicans of wanting to end the popular treatment that millions of Americans use to have children. Cruz said the legislation was a backdoor to expand abortion rights, something most Republicans in the U.S. Senate oppose.

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How the Trump campaign ran with rumors about pet-eating migrants—after being told they weren’t true

City Manager Bryan Heck fielded an unusual question at City Hall on the morning of Sept. 9, from a staff member of Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance. The staffer called to ask if there was any truth to bizarre rumors about Haitian immigrants and pets in Springfield. “He asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’” recalled Heck. “I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.” By then, Vance had already posted about the rumors to his 1.9 million followers on X. Yet he kept the post up, and repeated an even more insistent version of the claim the next morning. That night, former President Donald Trump stood on a Philadelphia debate stage and shot the rumor into the stratosphere. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” he said to 67 million viewers. “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating, the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in this country.”

In an instant, the everyday struggles of a typical American city grappling with an influx of immigrants were transformed into a bombshell political message laser targeted at voters distressed by immigration. It was the culmination of a spectacular collision of forces that thrust Springfield into the heart of the U.S. presidential election. Over the summer, outside neo-Nazi groups—which specialize in exploiting local controversy to foment outrage about migrants—had seized on a local controversy and fanned the narrative of pet-eating Haitians. Then the Trump campaign blasted those rumors to the world—and kept pushing them even after they were exposed as lies. The Trump campaign continues to run hard at the controversy. Trump last Friday said he planned “large deportations” from Springfield—whose Haitian community is overwhelmingly in the country legally. Trump campaign surrogate Vivek Ramaswamy plans to host a town hall in Springfield this Thursday. Vance said on Tuesday that Trump would like to visit Springfield, too, at some point. Attempts to contain the damage in Springfield were quickly overwhelmed despite city leaders’ racing from meeting to meeting trying to stem the tide. The Ohio state police were called in to protect local children as they returned to school. A security tower with cameras was erected outside City Hall. Thirty-six bomb threats had been logged as of Tuesday evening.

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State Stories

Elon Musk moved Tesla and SpaceX to Texas. They could test the state’s new business courts

Elon Musk’s recent decision to reincorporate Tesla and SpaceX in Texas was exactly the scenario Gov. Greg Abbott envisioned when he made the case last year for a new court system designed exclusively for businesses. "People will be coming here so fast, so furious, I'm going to have to build a wall on the north, east and west of the state of Texas to keep people from storming into our state," Abbott said as he pushed the Legislature to pass a law establishing the business courts. Abbott signed that law in June, and, less than a year later, Musk announced he was ditching Delaware, home to the oldest business courts in the nation, for Texas, home to the newest. But experts are skeptical that many will follow — at least any time soon. That’s largely because of the close control Abbott has over the courts. The governor appoints the business court judges every two years, a far shorter term than similar circuits in other states, and a pace that experts say could put political pressure on judges who want to keep their seats.

“They have Greg Abbott sort of peering over their shoulder … keeping a fairly tight rein on how the judges decide cases,” said Ann Lipton, a professor of business law at Tulane University. “If I were a business choosing a place to incorporate, that would concern me.” While Musk has not said explicitly the courts — designed to handle complex, high-dollar commercial disputes — were a reason for the move, he has been vocal about his frustration with Delaware’s courts, which blocked a more than $50 billion pay package for the Tesla CEO in January. “If your company is still incorporated in Delaware, I recommend moving to another state as soon as possible,” Musk wrote on X, the social media site he owns, in February. Tesla, which has been headquartered in Austin for years, officially reincorporated in Texas in June, a move that makes the state its legal home, as well. It comes amid a growing relationship between Abbott and Musk, who has become increasingly active and vocal about his support for Republicans this election cycle. Abbott has been a cheerleader of Musk’s as he has pushed publicly for the billionaire to move his companies to the state. The governor has said the two talk “frequently” and they regularly trade chummy exchanges on X.

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Mayor John Whitmire's first State of the City address leans into the past over policy

In his first State of the City address on Tuesday, Mayor John Whitmire mostly stuck to the past, whether it be his accomplishments on his road to becoming Houston's mayor or the perceived failures of the past administration. The mayor spent the first 30 minutes of his nearly 45-minute chat in front of more than 1,600 audience members at Hilton Americas taking questions about his time prior to being Houston mayor. Moderator William F. McKeon, the president and CEO of Texas Medical Center, flashed photos from the mayor’s childhood, his hometown of Hillsboro and some during his time as dean of the Texas Senate on the screen, at one point asking Whitmire to identify the shape of inkblots to prove the mayor was speaking off the cuff, before finally asking a question on city and county collaboration. Whitmire took questions about some of the biggest top-of-mind issues surrounding the changes has made in his eight months in office so far after the address.

His administration has said repeatedly it inherited a bevy of issues when he took over this past January. Whitmire's team made a gamut of changes to fix some of those issues. The mayor made due on his promise to the fire union and settled the more than $1.5 billion deal, and he proposed and passed a new budget that included no tax hikes for city residents or extra fees. Yet as financial concerns rise, the mayor in his Tuesday talk did not address topics surrounding the impact of his changes – like how his administration will pay the $1.5 billion fire settlement or plans to potentially raise taxes to offset damages incurred from Hurricane Beryl, among others. One upcoming change he teased out in his talk and elaborated on to reporters after the event was a plan to open navigation centers around the city with Housing Director Mike Nichols and homeland security director Larry Satterwhite to help get the city’s unsheltered population off the streets. He also reiterated that he wasn’t going to raise taxes until his administration had done the best it could to eliminate waste, duplication and corruption.

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Surrogacy company owner used parents' money for lavish lifestyle and music career, court filing says

The owner of a Houston company charged with managing financial transactions between hopeful parents and surrogates they hire siphoned millions of dollars out of their accounts improperly for years to pay for real estate, other business ventures and an extravagant lifestyle vividly displayed on social media, according to new allegations contained in court filings. Dominique Side, the owner of Surrogacy Escrow Account Management, drained an estimated $16 million entrusted to her by prospective parents and used it to pay for her vegan clothing line, luxury foreign travel, houses in Houston and New Orleans, and membership in an exclusive celebrity club and “to bankroll her music career as ‘Dom,’ a racy rap and R&B singer and music producer,” according to the filings. Side, who court filings show does not yet have legal representation, could not be reached.

Her social media accounts, which had been full of pictures and descriptions of her latest trips and appearances, have been scrubbed since SEAM shuttered. Records show she was served with a subpoena at a Rosharon address in Brazoria County. The allegations in the new document, part of a lawsuit filed in state District Court in Harris County on behalf of more than 30 people who claim to have lost nearly $1 million combined, for the first time suggests that money SEAM clients entrusted to the company is probably gone and not merely inaccessible. The filing also provides details, based on the company’s financial records, about where the money may have been spent. The FBI said it has opened an investigation into the company’s mysterious dissolution and encouraged SEAM clients to contact it. At least two lawsuits have been filed in Houston. As the Houston Chronicle detailed three weeks ago, hundreds of intended parents across the country had their plans for starting families thrown into disarray when SEAM suddenly shut down its operations without explanation last month. Surrogacy typically isn’t covered by insurance and costs tens of thousands of dollars. Most agencies recommend parents hire a third-party escrow company to hold the money and make contractual payments to surrogates. Money kept in escrow may not be used for other purposes.

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Travis County claims Paxton violated voter registration law, takes case to federal court

Travis County officials are challenging Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's recent attempts to block local voter registration efforts, accusing the state's top lawyer of violating the National Voter Registration Act. In a sweeping round of legal action Tuesday morning, county officials sideswiped a lawsuit Paxton filed in a state District Court seeking to halt voter registration efforts in Travis County by filing a "notice of removal" in federal court, which automatically brings the case before a federal judge, according to Travis County Attorney Delia Garza. Travis County also filed a lawsuit in federal court asking a judge to issue an order finding that the county's work is lawful and allowing the county to proceed with its voter registration efforts as planned. In addition to Paxton, Travis County also accuses Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson of failing to enforce the National Voter Registration Act because she "has taken no steps to cause Attorney General Paxton to comply with the NVRA." They argue she is "obligated under the NVRA to facilitate local governments’ efforts to implement the" act's requirements.

Neither Paxton's nor Nelson's offices immediately responded to American-Statesman requests for comment Tuesday. Paxton in early September filed a lawsuit in state District Court challenging the county's hiring of Civic Government Solutions to identify names and addresses of eligible, unregistered voters. He accused the company of being "partisan" and argues that Travis County does not have the authority to collect the names and addresses of potentially unregistered voters, and he sought to stop the registration efforts. Travis County commissioners at their Aug. 27 meeting approved a contract with Civic Government Solutions at an estimated cost of $3,562.80 per 10,000 "names of Eligible Resident-Citizens," according to the court's agenda. Commissioners Court agenda documents show that Civic Government Solutions was the only respondent to the tax office's bidding request for "Unregistered Voter Outreach Services," which was issued July 19 and opened Aug. 12. "There are clearly a large number of citizens, including newer citizens in our community, who have not registered to vote for various reasons," the request for proposal states. "By implementing a targeted strategy, we have the potential to significantly increase voter registration in Travis County, thereby strengthening our democratic process."

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Del Valle High School administrators stopped armed student from entering campus Tuesday

Del Valle school administrators stopped a student with a handgun at the front doors of the high school Tuesday morning before classes started, district spokesman Christopher Weddle said. The student didn't enter the school and the gun wasn't fired, Weddle said. Administrators learned of the armed student after receiving a tip from another student, he said. "The student did what they should have done," Weddle said. "They heard about something and they did something." The district wouldn't share specific information about disciplinary action taken against the armed student, but Weddle said administrators planned to follow district procedures. "Anything like this causes concern with parents," Weddle said. "As we saw today, our administration reacts quickly when we get information."

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Glenn Hegar: Rule update would bring clarity to taxing online marketplaces in Texas

Technology has undergone a sea change in the past few decades, and Texas tax law has had to adapt to the innovations — including online marketplaces that process data to help people sell goods and services. When the Legislature imposed the sales tax on data processing services in 1987, the internet as we know it didn’t even exist. Current tax law applies to online marketplaces just as it does to the traditional businesses within our communities, and my job is to collect taxes fairly. To help online marketplaces understand their responsibilities under the law, my office is proposing to update Comptroller Rule 3.330 regarding taxable data processing services. The proposed update has been published in the Texas Register for public comment, and we may revise it based on feedback we receive. Starting with the basics, the proposed rule defines a taxable data processing service as the computerized entry, retrieval, search, compilation, manipulation, or storage of data or information. It also lists items that are taxed and excluded from taxation.

For example, the proposed rule excludes some data processing from taxation if it is ancillary to a nontaxable, related service and does not have a separate value. It identifies specific factors to consider when looking at whether a service is taxed as a data processing service, and it provides examples of services that are and are not taxable. I hope the detail in the proposed rule will resolve any confusion about the taxability of fees paid to online marketplaces by people using them to sell goods and services. Many online marketplaces have already come into compliance and are appropriately collecting tax on their data processing fees. But other online marketplaces have expressed surprise when they’re audited by my office and discover the fees they charge the sellers are taxable, since sales tax is separately collected on the price of the item sold. The reality is there are two purchasers, two sales contracts and two taxable transactions. The purchaser of goods or services through a marketplace pays sales tax on the goods or services purchased. And the marketplace seller, who is purchasing data processing services from the marketplace provider, pays sales tax on those services.

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American Airlines continues slashing routes in Austin; here are the latest affected

Another set of routes to and from Austin has been eliminated by American Airlines as the company continues to navigate industry turbulence in hopes of landing in a more profitable financial model. This latest cut in offerings saw four direct routes removed after the airline axed 21 Austin flights in 2023 and five other routes in July of this year. In a previous statement, the company said: “American will continue to offer customers access to our comprehensive global network of more than 350 destinations with one-stop connections. We’re proactively reaching out to impacted customers and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”

The Texas-based airline is continuing cuts after ending routes to Las Vegas, New Orleans, Orlando, Palm Springs, Calif., and Reno, Nevada, in July. The latest direct routes to be canceled are: Boston, Nashville, Tenn., Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and Orange County, Calif. The airline indicated that it would end the first three routes during the first week of November while service from Austin to Orange County will stop in January.

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Fort Worth bishop says ‘odor of schism’ looms between Catholic Church and Arlington nuns

After more than a year of legal and religious disputes between Fort Worth Catholic Bishop Michael Olson and the Discalced Carmelite Nuns in Arlington, the sisters are going “further down the path of disobedience to and disunity” with the Catholic Church and the Carmelite order, Olson announced Sept. 17. His statement comes days after the sisters publicized their affiliation with the Society of Saint Pius X, also known as SSPX. The group is a traditionalist fraternity of priests headquartered in Switzerland. The society’s U.S. chapter has chapels in Texas, including one in North Richland Hills. The Arlington nuns’ announcement follows 18 months of legal action and ecclesiastical discord that dates to April 2023, when Olson opened an investigation of The Rev. Mother Teresa Agnes Gerlach over allegations she violated her chastity vow with a priest. Civil lawsuits filed by the nuns have since been dropped by a judge or voluntarily dismissed by the sisters.

In April 2024, the Vatican named Mother Marie of the Incarnation, president of the Association of Christ the King, as the “lawful superior” to “exercise full governance” over the monastery and nuns. Olson was set to oversee an election of new internal leadership to replace Gerlach, according to an April 18 statement. However, the nuns have rejected Mother Marie as their leader and are seeking to keep Gerlach in charge. Along with the Sept. 14 announcement of affiliation with the Society of Saint Pius X, the nuns said Gerlach was reelected for a three-year term following an August election presided over by the society’s leadership. “We completed the final steps necessary for our Monastery to be associated with the Society of Saint Pius X, who will henceforth assure our ongoing sacramental life and governance,” the sisters said. Olson called the elections “illicit and invalid,” arguing in his Sept. 17 statement that leadership decisions made by the sisters were not conducted in accord with ecclesiastical law and the Constitutions of the Order of Discalced Carmelites. He also stated that Mother Marie “remains the legitimate superior” of the Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity in south Arlington, where the nuns reside.

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East Texas man seeks clemency as execution date in ‘shaken baby syndrome’ case approaches

Exactly one month before the impending execution of a Texas man at the center of a “shaken baby syndrome” case, attorneys, lawmakers and advocates convened Tuesday to proclaim his innocence. Robert Roberson III, 57, was convicted of capital murder in 2003 for reportedly shaking his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki, to death. He is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Oct. 17 in Huntsville. The clemency petition filed Tuesday asks Roberson’s death sentence to be commuted, or the execution delayed 180 days to allow the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Greg Abbott to give the filing “appropriate consideration.” Roberson requested an interview and hearing on the matter. “Robert Roberson is an innocent man,” his attorneys wrote in the petition. “This is not a case where the State got the wrong person. Instead, a crime was alleged — but none actually occurred.”

Roberson previously was scheduled to be executed in 2016, but the date was stayed after his lawyers argued that the conviction was based on “junk science” and “false, misleading and scientifically invalid testimony.” The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals last week dismissed a motion to halt the execution and a new application for relief — without reviewing the merits of his claims. When Nikki died on Feb. 1, 2002, a medical examiner ruled the cause to be blunt-force head injuries. According to court documents, Roberson said Nikki accidentally fell from a bed, but medical staff at a Palestine hospital called police because they considered the injuries — including bruises to her chin, cheek and jaw and bleeding outside her brain — suspicious and “likely intentional.” “Based on the then-prevailing Shaken Baby Syndrome hypothesis, as well as the since-falsified belief that her father’s description of a short fall and Nikki’s illness could not explain her condition, it was assumed that Mr. Roberson must have shaken his daughter to death,” according to the filing. “Significant scientific and medical evidence now shows that his daughter Nikki, who was chronically ill, died of a combination of natural and accidental causes, not the debunked shaken baby syndrome hypothesis that State used to convict [him].”

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Fort Worth approves 2025 budget while keeping same tax rate

The Fort Worth City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to approve its 2025 budget while keeping its tax rate the same. It’s part of an effort to ease the property tax burden on homeowners while still delivering essential city services. The council kept the city’s property tax rate at 67.25 cents per $100 valuation. The owner of a $300,000 home with a homestead exemption would pay $1,614 in city property taxes. The city estimates this will translate to a $65 increase for the average Fort Worth homeowner. The rate is lower than the one initially proposed by City Manager David Cooke, which would have generated the same amount of revenue in 2025 from properties that were on the rolls in 2024. However, the proposed “no-new-revenue” rate would have raised the city’s tax rate for the first time in 30 years. The budget approval comes as the city’s rapid growth appears to be slowing. Property values increased roughly 5% over the past year compared to 15% between 2022 and 2023.

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On-campus nuclear reactor approved for university in Texas

Federal nuclear power regulators have given the go-ahead for the first research nuclear reactor in more than 40 years, and it’s here in Texas. Abilene Christian University will be home to the advanced nuclear reactor, which the university’s NEXT Lab and Abilene-based nuclear company Natura Resources will build on campus. The permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is a milestone in the research and development of smaller-scale nuclear reactors in Texas and could become the state’s first new nuclear reactor since the Comanche Peak power plant’s second unit was licensed to operate in 1993. The NEXT Lab reactor could generate enough energy to power the equivalent of only about 250 homes. However, it will create a testing ground for a type of reactor that its developers believe can be scaled to larger utility-scale reactors. It will be housed in the university’s Dillard Science and Engineering Research Center, which was completed in August 2023.

“With the NRC’s issuance of the construction permit, we are one step closer to making that a reality. The performance-driven approach of Natura Resources to advanced reactor deployment has quickly moved them from a relative unknown to a leader in the upstart advanced reactor industry,” said Phil Schubert, university president. Federal inspectors will monitor the construction of the reactor, which will not produce electricity until ACU obtains additional federal approval to fuel the reactor with uranium. “This is the first research reactor project we’ve approved for construction in decades, and the staff successfully worked with ACU to resolve several technical issues with this novel design,” Andrea Veil, director of the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, said in a news release. Molten salt will be used to cool the reactor, which can reach extreme temperatures. Heat that radiates through the molten salt can then be used to create electricity. While this method of cooling has existed for more than 50 years, it is not widely used. Legacy reactors generally rely on water to cool fuel rods.

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Study: Collin County led nation in Asian population growth from 2022 to 2023

The Dallas-Fort Worth area led the country in the growth of the Asian American population from 2022 to 2023, and Collin County anchored that increase, a recent report showed. Those who work closely with Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in the region celebrate the increase but say there’s more work to be done to address the needs of the growing population, including language access and political participation. The report was the first of three parts that Austin-based nonprofit Asian Texans for Justice is planning to release ahead of the presidential election, said the group’s executive director, Lily Trieu. “You look at all of the think tanks and research organizations and universities across Texas, there really are very few that are doing meaningful work looking at the current Asian American community today,” Trieu said.

From 2022 to 2023, Texas led the nation in Asian population growth with 91,000, according to the report. The Dallas-Fort Worth area accounted for nearly 44,000 of that increase, with about 20,000, or almost 22%, being in Collin County. The report found the largest subgroup of Asian American residents in Dallas-Fort Worth were Asian Indian — about 35% of all Asian residents. Vietnamese residents came in second at just over 15%. Chanda Parbhoo said she’s not surprised at the findings; she first noticed it in 2018. Her organization, SAAVETX Education Fund, is a nonpartisan nonprofit that promotes voting in the South Asian community. After Fort Bend County, near Houston, she consistently saw Collin County’s South Asian American votership grow in the past five years. “Some of that growth is sort of maxing out a little bit in Collin County and is now filtering into Denton County,” she added. When Parbhoo moved to North Texas in the 1980s, many in her community settled in Garland and Richardson. She now considers cities in Collin County, such as Murphy and Allen, among her target voter engagement areas.

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Crime in San Antonio is down 3% amid increased police presence, police chief says

Crime throughout San Antonio dropped 3% in the first eight months of the year, a decline city officials said could be due to ongoing efforts to increase police presence in areas where violent crime is high. The San Antonio Police Department launched the three year violent crime reduction plan, which is in collaboration with criminologists from the University of Texas at San Antonio, in January 2023. Since then, the department has reported several decreases in both overall crime and crimes against persons, which includes homicides, assaults, human trafficking, kidnappings and sexual assaults. "I think it's probably a number of things," Police Chief William McManus told City Council's Public Safety Committee Tuesday. "It depends on the number of people we arrest. It depends on how long they're held in jail pretrial. It depends on how they're sentenced, if they're sentenced at all."

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Dallas banned short-term rentals a year ago, so why are they still here?

The Dallas City Council more than a year ago voted to ban short-term rentals in most of the city, but a judge stalled the new rules after some operators sued. While the attorneys await their court date, an array of city officials have stepped up enforcement using existing tools available to their departments Monday morning, code enforcement officials joined the City Attorney’s Office and City Controller Sheri Kowalski to provide an update on the situation during the City Council’s Quality of Life, Arts, and Culture Committee meeting. Almost a year ago, four short-term rental operators and an organization called the Dallas Short-Term Rental Alliance filed their lawsuit against the city. The four plaintiffs say they abided by prior city requirements to register and pay hotel occupancy taxes on their properties. The operators argue that the two new measures contradicted the Texas Constitution, since they were following previous ordinances when the city changed the game. The two new rules effectively eliminated short-term rentals in the city except in small areas with specific zoning. Those that were still able to operate in a far narrower swath of the city were subjected to new enforcement rules, including registering their property.

The court date for the city’s appeal continues to be postponed. On Monday, Andrew Spaniol, one of the city’s deputy chiefs of litigation, said both sides have submitted briefs and are still awaiting a date for oral arguments. Spaniol says “it is possible” the two sides could go before a judge in October. In the meantime, the city continues to allow new operators to register to pay its 9 percent hotel occupancy tax. “There’s nothing to prohibit us from registering,” said Lance Sehorn, an assistant city controller. That registration, he reiterated, is for paying taxes and is not the registration required under the currently blocked ordinance. “They’re just getting set up in our tax system so they can file and pay taxes.” The city has seen an uptick in STRs since the vote on the new rules, with many using platforms like Airbnb or VRBO. Others are listing their properties on more obscure sites or even advertising and arranging rentals through social media. City staff has identified 3,512 properties in the city limits as STRs. Of those, 2,024 were properly registered while 1,488 were suspected of being STRs but had not registered as of September. “There are more properties registered now and more that we are trying to get to register than there were a year ago,” Kowalski said.

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National Stories

Harris isn’t giving the specifics some undecided voters say they want

Voters want more from Kamala Harris. But while the Democratic nominee has been clear about what she is not — Donald Trump — she is either unwilling or unable to spell out a comprehensive blueprint for exactly what she would do as the 47th president. In an interview on Tuesday, the vice president mostly stuck to broad themes and headlines about her economic plan that were largely familiar from a previous big-picture policy speech and her convention address. But a candidate who has been criticized by opponents for running on “vibes” and surfing a wave of joy refused to be pinned down on specifics and details, instead citing her values and background to attest to her sincerity. For instance, when asked at Tuesday’s National Association of Black Journalists event how she’d alleviate the “squeeze” many Americans feel over child and elder care, she said her plan was for no family to pay more than 7% of their income on such costs. But she offered no roadmap for how she’d drive major social policy reform through what is likely to be a polarized Congress next year and didn’t say how she’d pay for it.

On another intractable issue, the Israel-Hamas war, Harris was strong on aspiration, vague on specifics and seemed to fall on both sides of the issue. “I absolutely believe that this war has to end. And it has to end as soon as possible,” she said. “And the way that will be achieved is by getting a hostage deal and a ceasefire deal done. And we are working around the clock to achieve that end.” She added: “Far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.” Few would quarrel with her diagnosis of the situation, but the US has been pursuing the mirage of a deal for months. There’s no sign Israel and Hamas want an agreement. And after months of failed diplomacy, the White House seems to be taking a breather. It may be unrealistic to expect Harris, a member of an incumbent administration, to break with Biden over the war. And she’s got no power to stop it herself. But her hedging and repetitive soundbites in recent weeks show little evidence of new ideas. While her debate performance last week projected strength, Harris is not usually a gifted political athlete in spontaneous, high-pressure media sitdowns like ex-President Bill Clinton, for instance. And it doesn’t come naturally to her to drill down deep into policy questions like Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. This makes her vulnerable to attacks by the Trump campaign and conservative media that her “word salads” mean she’s not up to being president – even if Trump often communicates in a scattershot stream of consciousness and is spreading dangerous falsehoods. This all raises two key questions. Does it matter that Harris is hardly a policy wonk? And is it really likely that this most unusual of elections will turn on something as conventional as a policy platform?

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Border arrests rose slightly in August; Encounters at ports of entry hold steady

U.S. Border Patrol arrests along the Southwest border rose slightly from July to August but remained among the Biden administration’s lowest. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data released Monday afternoon, border agents had 58,038 encounters between ports of entry in August, up from 56,399 in July. Border arrests between ports of entry along the Southwest border in Fiscal Year 2024. (CBP) Border arrests hit a record high of 249,741 in December, but have been trending down since. CBP’s Office of Field Operations, however, had some of the highest numbers of migrant encounters at ports of entry, and they have remained steady since June 2023. OFO reported a total of 49,465 encounters in August, up from 47,702 in July. The increase in individuals showing up to ports of entry coincides with news rules from the Biden administration that require migrants to request an asylum interview using the CBP One app, which launched in January 2023, and the show up at a designation port of entry.

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What you might miss in news coverage about Latino voters and faith

There are more Latino voters in the U.S. than ever. As reporters and pundits seek to understand this important voting bloc, they’re digging into the faith of Hispanic communities. But as this election cycle brings yet another flurry of trend pieces about Latino evangelicals, some narratives distort the big picture of Latino faith. Others are just myths. Here’s what you may not know about Latino voters and their faith: The share of U.S. Latino adults who are evangelical has been relatively steady in the last decade. Many trend pieces about Latino voters claim that there has been a significant spike in the Latino evangelical population. However, that narrative doesn’t bear out in the polling. In 2022, Pew Research Center found that 15% of U.S. Latino adults were evangelical, the same percentage that was evangelical in 2012. In the years in between, that statistic has dropped to 14% or been as high as 19%.

The Public Religion Research Institute found in 2013 that Hispanic Protestants, a category that also includes nonevangelicals such as mainline Christians, made up 3% of Americans. In 2023, those numbers grew to 4%. The small growth PRRI has tracked comes as the overall number of U.S. Latinos is growing, as is the share of the U.S. population that they represent. In 2022, Latinos made up nearly 1 in 5 Americans, up from 16% in 2010. This growth does not translate to a significantly expanding Latino evangelical population, yet this misunderstanding persists. A segment on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Sept. 5 broadcast that narrative, with journalist Paola Ramos saying, “You even have some scholars like Mark Mulder from Calvin University that predict that by 2030 over 50% of Latinos will identify as evangelical.” In an email, Mulder told RNS that Ramos had misquoted a prediction he and others made in a 2017 book that included all Latino Protestants, a larger category. Asked whether he stood by that prediction in 2024, Mulder pointed out that the book had been written in 2015, almost a decade ago. “Right now, no, that does not seem plausible,” he wrote.

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Sean 'Diddy' Combs jailed by judge after sex trafficking indictment

Sean “Diddy” Combs headed to jail Tuesday to await trial in a federal sex trafficking case that accuses him of presiding over a sordid empire of sexual crimes protected by blackmail and shocking acts of violence. The music mogul is charged with racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. The indictment against him lists allegations that go back to 2008. He’s accused of inducing female victims and male sex workers into drugged-up, sometimes dayslong sexual performances dubbed “Freak Offs.” The indictment also refers obliquely to an attack on his former girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, that was captured on video. “Not guilty,” Combs told a court, standing to speak after expressionlessly listening to the allegations with his uncuffed hands folded in his lap. After U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky declined to grant him bail, Combs took a long swig from a water bottle, then was led out of court, turning toward family members in the audience as he went.

“Mr. Combs is a fighter. He’s going to fight this to the end. He’s innocent,” his lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, said after court. He plans to appeal the bail decision. The Bad Boy Records founder is accused of sexually abusing and using physical force toward women and getting his personal assistants, security and household staff to help him hide it all. Prosecutors say he also tried to bribe and intimidate witnesses and victims to keep them quiet. “Simply put, he is a serial abuser and a serial obstructor,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson told a court. Agnifilo acknowledged Combs was “not a perfect person,” saying he’d used drugs and had been in “toxic relationships” but was getting treatment and therapy. “The evidence in this case is extremely problematic,” the attorney told the court. He maintained that the case stemmed from one long-term, consensual relationship that faltered amid infidelity. He didn’t name the woman, but the details matched those of Combs’ decade-long involvement with Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura. The “Freak Offs,” Agnifilo contended, were an expansion of that relationship, and not coercive.

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Judge Aileen Cannon failed to disclose a right-wing junket

Federal Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the controversial jurist who tossed out the classified documents criminal case against Donald Trump in July, failed to disclose her attendance at a May 2023 banquet funded by a conservative law school. Cannon went to an event in Arlington, Va. honoring the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, according to documents obtained from the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University. At a lecture and private dinner, she sat among members of Scalia’s family, fellow Federalist Society members and more than 30 conservative federal judges. Organizers billed the event as “an excellent opportunity to connect with judicial colleagues.” A 2006 rule, intended to shine a light on judges’ attendance at paid seminars that could pose conflicts or influence decisions, requires them to file disclosure forms for such trips within 30 days and make them public on the court’s website. It’s not the first time she has failed to fully comply with the rule.

In 2021 and 2022, Cannon took weeklong trips to the luxurious Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana, for legal colloquiums sponsored by George Mason, which named its law school for Scalia thanks to $30 million in gifts that conservative judicial kingmaker Leonard Leo helped organize. Current rates for standard rooms at Sage Lodge can exceed $1,000 per night, depending on the season. With both Montana trips, Cannon’s required seminar disclosures were not posted until NPR reporters asked about the omissions this year as part of a broader national investigation of gaps in judicial disclosures. Cannon did not respond to repeated requests for comment. In response to questions from ProPublica, the clerk in the Southern District of Florida wrote in an email that Cannon had filed the Sage Lodge trips with the federal judiciary’s administrative office but had “inadvertently” not taken the second step of posting them on the court’s website. She explained that “Judges often do not realize they must input the information twice.” The clerk said she had no information about the May 2023 banquet. “Judges administer the law, and we have a right to expect every judge to comply with the law,” said Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

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Boeing, striking union set to resume contract talks on Wednesday

Boeing and its largest union will restart contract talks on Wednesday in the presence of federal mediators, after failing to agree on key issues such as wages and pensions, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers said. The union, whose members went on strike last Friday, has been pushing for a 40% raise over four years in its first full contract negotiations with Boeing in 16 years, well above the planemaker's offer of 25%, which was resoundingly rejected. A prolonged strike could cost Boeing several billion dollars, further straining the planemaker's finances and threatening a downgrade of its credit rating, analysts said. "After a full day of mediation, we are frustrated, the company was not prepared and was unwilling to address the issues you've made clear are essential for ending this strike: Wages and Pension." the union representing more than 30,000 Boeing factory workers said on X following Tuesday's meeting.

"The company doesn't seem to be taking mediation seriously. With a 96% strike vote, we thought Boeing would finally understand that IAM 751 Machinists are demanding more. We are fighting for what is right and just - for what we have earned over the past 16 years," it added. The strike, which enters its sixth day on Wednesday, is Boeing's first since 2008 and is the latest event in a tumultuous year for the planemaker that began with a January incident when a door panel detached from a new 737 MAX jet mid-air. Boeing and the U.S. Federal Mediation & Conciliation Service did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment outside normal business hours. The strike has halted production of Boeing's best-selling 737 MAX jets, along with its 777 and 767 widebody aircraft, delaying deliveries to airlines. Boeing said on Monday it was freezing hiring and weighing temporary furloughs to cut costs as its balance sheet is already burdened with $60 billion of debt and a prolonged strike could damage it further. The company has also stopped placing most orders for parts for all Boeing jet programs except the 787 Dreamliner, in a move that will hurt its suppliers.

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Hezbollah exploding pager trail runs from Taiwan to Hungary

The detonation of thousands of pagers targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon has left a mysterious trail from Taiwan to Hungary, while raising the prospect of another full-scale war in the Middle East between the Iran-backed group and arch-foe Israel. Israel's Mossad spy agency, which has a long history of pulling off sophisticated attacks on foreign soil, planted explosives inside pagers imported by Hezbollah months before Tuesday's detonations that killed nine people, a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters. The operation was an unprecedented Hezbollah security breach that saw thousands of pagers explode across Lebanon, wounding nearly 3,000 people, including many of the group's fighters and Iran's envoy to Beirut.

The Lebanese security source said the pagers were from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, but the company said in a statement it did not manufacture the devices. It said they were made by a company called BAC - based in the Hungarian capital - which has a licence to use its brand. Iran-backed Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel, whose military declined to comment on the blasts. The two sides have been engaged in cross-border warfare since the Gaza conflict erupted last October. While the war in Gaza has been Israel's main focus since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas-led gunmen, fighting along Israel's northern border with Lebanon has fueled fears of a regional conflict that could drag in the United States and Iran. "Hezbollah wants to avoid an all-out war. It still wants to avoid one. But given the scale, the impact on families, on civilians, there will be pressure for a stronger response," said Mohanad Hage Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center. Hezbollah said in a statement on Wednesday that "the resistance will continue today, like any other day, its operations to support Gaza, its people and its resistance which is a separate path from the harsh punishment that the criminal enemy (Israel) should await in response to Tuesday's massacre".

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Lead Stories

A jet-setting CEO, the Paxtons, and an alleged massive fraud

For the past decade, James Frinzi was a hired-gun lobbyist leveraging his deep political connections on behalf of an eclectic rotating roster of clients: investment firms in New York, various medical entities in Texas, the constitutional monarchy of Qatar, and the authoritarian defense minister of Indonesia. But Frinzi’s employer had long been the Goodman family, a quintet of brothers with a vast web of telecom businesses based in Texas. In 2010, Frinzi became an executive and chief lobbyist for their flagship company, Goodman Networks Inc., a major contractor for AT&T, based then in Plano. In the years to come, however,Goodman Networks went into a downward spiral, culminating in 2021 with the company on the verge of insolvency with nearly $20 million in bonds coming due to outside bondholders in the next year, according to bankruptcy filings. By October 2021, James Goodman—the co-founder and majority owner of Goodman Networks—was the sole remaining board director and tapped Frinzi to act as CEO. Together Goodman and Frinzi, the former’s friend and “political fixer,” as a court document describes him, took control of the distressed company.

If all went well, Frinzi would use his contacts to lead the newly created Austin-based company, called Multiband Global, from penny stock obscurity to the cutting edge of the 5G revolution. As he launched the company, Frinzi turned to one of his closest, most powerful friends for support: Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton—and the AG’s wife, GOP state Senator Angela Paxton. In January 2022, Frinzi acquired a dormant public shell company in Nevada called American Metals Recovery and Recycling, Inc. (AMRR), according to court and corporate records, which then bought a telecom business using part of $44 million he’d transferred from Goodman Networks and reported to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as a loan. He was now the CEO, chairman, and majority shareholder of a publicly traded company, AMRR, which he later renamed MBG Holdings Inc. and which did business as Multiband Global. One of his first acts was to appoint Senator Paxton to the company’s inaugural board of directors. (In this story, MBG Holdings—formerly AMRR—will generally be referred to as Multiband Global.) Senator Paxton, a former math teacher then in her first term as a state senator from Collin County, had little prior business experience—but her political and legislative experience, representing a district that’s home to major telecom companies, was touted as a key asset for Multiband Global.

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Fed prepares to lower rates, with size of first cut in doubt

The Federal Reserve is set to cut borrowing costs at its two-day meeting that ends Wednesday. The goal: preserve a solid job market now that price pressures have cooled. The decision over whether to cut the Fed’s benchmark interest rate, currently at a two-decade high between 5.25% and 5.5%, by either a larger half percentage point or by a traditional quarter point will come down to how Chair Jerome Powell leads his colleagues through a finely balanced set of considerations. Economic data over the past several months show inflation has resumed a steady decline to the Fed’s 2% goal. But the labor market has cooled, with the unemployment rate edging up to 4.2% in August from 3.7% at the end of last year. Monthly payroll growth has slowed to 116,000, on average, for the three months through August, down from 212,000 in December 2023.

“The key issue for them at this meeting is their sense of the balance of risks,” said William English, a former senior Fed adviser. “If you are more worried now about growth and employment than inflation, then you might well want to take out a little bit of insurance” with a larger cut of a half point, or 50 basis points. The argument for a smaller cut of a quarter point, or 25 basis points, rests on different considerations, including that the economy is fundamentally fine or that cutting too fast could stoke risk-taking that sustains higher inflation. “If they’re not convinced that inflation is really as good as the recent data has suggested, they may still be worried that the battle against inflation will be more protracted and uncomfortable,” said English, a professor at Yale School of Management. English said a few weeks ago he thought a smaller cut would be appropriate. But the recent downtrend in labor-market data has him more nervous, particularly because even after two or three cuts, interest rates will still be at a relatively high level. Fed officials have tended to raise or lower rates in increments of a quarter point to study the effects of those moves. But they move faster when they think their rate stance isn’t well aligned with the balance of risks. Officials hiked in 50- and 75-basis-point increments to fight high inflation in 2022.

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Greg Abbott designates Venezuelan gang as a top threat to Texas

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has directed state police to focus on a violent Venezuelan crime syndicate that has gained attention amid a divisive presidential election. Tren de Aragua started as a South American prison gang but has grown into an international organization that dominates human trafficking and has proliferated in Texas in recent months, Abbott said Monday. Abbott proclaimed Tren de Aragua, considered among the most dangerous and organized gangs operating in Texas, as a Tier 1 threat and directed law enforcement to disrupt its operations in the state. “They’re the worst of the worst,” Abbott said during a news conference in Houston with Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw and Texas border czar Mike Banks.

Other gangs previously given Tier 1 status have included the Texas Syndicate and the Mexican Mafia, two notorious prison gangs, as well as the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, the Crips, the Bloods and the Latin Kings. The designation makes gangs a law enforcement priority and directs DPS to run targeted enforcement operations and coordinate efforts with local authorities. Members of Tier 1 gangs can face enhanced penalties for crimes, including stiffer sentences. Abbott said he considered the gang to be a foreign terrorist organization and said a database and strike force will keep track of its members. Abbott has made combating illegal immigration a focus while in office, speaking on the subject at the Republican National Convention and pushing billions of dollars in taxpayer money toward Operation Lone Star border-security efforts. The proclamation came days after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, speaking Friday at a Las Vegas rally, said that, if he were elected, he would launch a federal task force to “crush” the Venezuelan prison gang. He also vowed to “liberate Aurora,” pointing to conservative media reports saying the gang had taken over an apartment complex in Aurora, Colo. City officials have called the reports exaggerated.

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SUV struck Energy Transfer pipeline valve before massive fire, Deer Park officials say

The gigantic plume of fire that shot up from a pipeline might have been sparked after an SUV crashed through a parking lot fence and hit an above-ground pipeline valve, Deer Park officials said Monday evening. The development added new insight and more questions into the series of events that caused a fire that led to the evacuation of neighborhoods in Deer Park and La Porte as natural gas from the pipe burned for hours. The crash happened around 10 a.m. Monday. Officials said a white SUV broke through a fence on the west side of the Walmart Supercenter lot on Spencer Highway in La Porte.

The SUV continued driving through the field until it hit the pipeline, officials said. The field contained a vertical part of the pipeline that stuck up out of the ground and was surrounded by a fence. Officials said they were still investigating other details about the SUV, including what happened to its driver. In a news release Monday night, Deer Park city officials said police and the FBI did not believe the crash was an act of terrorism and called it an "isolated incident." They did not provide any more information. The remnants of the SUV could be seen in photos of the plume, mere feet from where the fire was burning. The flow of natural gas into the pipeline has been shut off, according to the city. It could still take hours for the gas remaining in the pipe to burn off, officials said.

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State Stories

Houston-area pastor 'sick and tired of thoughts and prayers' after deadly mass school shooting

Pastor Timothy Sloan took to the podium Sunday morning to not only encourage his congregants to “do something,” but also lawmakers around the country. During his message at The Luke Church in Humble, Sloan addressed the recent mass school shooting that claimed the lives of teachers and students in Winder, Georgia. “We ought to say that it’s so important for those in the public square who keep talking about how much they care or fight for the people in this country (to) then do something that lets us know that (they) really do fight for us,” he said. According to the Barrow County Sheriff's Office, a 14-year-old armed with an AR-15 style rifle opened fire inside Apalachee High School killing four and injuring at least nine others on Sept. 4.

Sloan called on politicians to find real solutions to the ongoing problem of deadly mass shootings at educational institutions. “We’re sick and tired of thoughts and prayers,” Sloan said. “Every time a mass school shooting comes up, here it comes — copy and paste — thoughts and prayers from these politicians. Every day, folks who have children, we send our kids off to school and I don’t want to offend (anybody) but saying 'goodbye' is sometimes like sending them off to the military because you’re wondering will my child come home today.” After the shooting, Georgia lawmakers debated potential policy changes, ABC reports. Democrats called for stricter gun laws while some Republicans proposed expanding mental health resources and security measures at schools, according to the Associated Press. There have been more than 400 school shootings since Columbine in 1999, per data from the Washington Post. The Apalachee High School shooting marked the deadliest shooting in Georgia’s history, the New York Times reports.

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University of Texas restricts automatic admissions threshold to 5% for fall 2026 applicants

The University of Texas plans to automatically admit students in the top 5% in their graduating class who apply to attend the school as undergraduates in fall 2026 — the lowest rate in the school’s history. UT President Jay Hartzell announced during a Faculty Council meeting Monday that the university would be changing its automatic admissions rate percentage, according to the Austin American-Statesman. The school has automatically admitted students in the top 6% of their graduating class as undergraduates since fall 2019, when it raised the bar from 7%. Under state law, Texas public universities are required to admit students who graduate in the top 10% of their class at any Texas high school. However, as the number of graduates and applications continued to grow, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 175 in 2009 allowing UT to accept a lower percentage of students compared to other universities due to capacity concerns starting in 2011.

UT is legally required to admit 90 percent of its first-year students from in-state residents, including 75% of whom are automatically admitted. The remaining in-state students, along with transfer and out-of-state students, are admitted through a holistic review process, which includes class rank, test scores, essays and special accomplishments. The change comes after the university reported a record number of applications, enrolled freshmen and overall enrollment during the 2023-24 school year. According to the school, 66,109 students applied to attend UT, 9,385 first-time, first-year undergraduate students enrolled, and total enrollment reached 53,082 students. UT said it is "committed to continuing to provide world-class classroom and research experiences for our students, even while we are facing record demand." The demand has been driven "both by the success and growth of Texas, and by greater interest in UT among the state’s best high-school students," according to the school. "We see no signs that our demand will substantially fall, and revising our auto-admit percentage to 5% will allow us to continue to meet the state’s requirement that 75% of the Texas residents in each freshman class are admitted based on high-school class rank," the university said in a statement.

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Liz Cheney is not a fan of Ted Cruz, the junior senator from Texas

Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, a conservative Republican, said Monday she’s backing Democrat Colin Allred for U.S. Senate because GOP incumbent Ted Cruz can’t be trusted to do what’s right. “I think it’s really important for us as a country, if we’re going to move forward, to elect people of good faith, to elect people that we can trust, to elect people you might say, we don’t agree on every issue, but I know that Colin is going to do what he thinks is right,” Cheney, in Dallas to help Allred raise campaign money, told The Dallas Morning News. Cheney said her biggest problem with Cruz relates to his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, when he objected to certifying the results of the presidential election even after rioters disrupted congressional proceedings. In contrast, she said, Allred was prepared to physically defend members of the House from rioters.

“I know that he’s going to listen. I know that we can have really fruitful discussions about the issues and work together for common solutions,” Cheney said. “And I know that Ted Cruz is going to say and do whatever serves Ted Cruz’s political interest, and that includes what we watched him do after the 2020 election, which was basically put together this effort that would have resulted in throwing out the votes of millions of Americans.” Allred, who joined the interview with Cheney, said he welcomed Cheney’s support, adding that it would help him reach Republicans and independents. “I hope that principled conservatives here in Texas will understand that I want to serve them, that we are part of the same coalition,” said Allred, a member of the U.S. House from Dallas. “That coalition is one that, as Liz said, is about more than partisanship or any individual policy. It’s about a fidelity to an idea, the most powerful idea the world has ever had, which is the United States could be a country governed by itself and by its people.” Cruz campaign spokesperson Macarena Martinez said “Liz Cheney is on a crusade against top Republicans” and “no one takes her endorsement of any candidate seriously.” Martinez said Republican primary voters emphatically rejected Cheney in 2022. “She was overwhelmingly rejected by voters in Wyoming two years ago, just like Colin Allred will be in 50 days by Texas voters,” she said in a text message. “She’s a loser, and soon he will be too, but hey, it takes one to know one.” Cheney was in Dallas to headline an Allred fundraiser. She first announced she was backing Allred over Cruz earlier this month at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin. That endorsement came after Cheney said she’ll vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in her White House race against former President Donald Trump.

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More than 90% of Texas voters say there is a ‘retirement crisis’

Texas voters think there is a “retirement crisis” and their post-work accounts are underfunded, according to new study from asset management giant BlackRock, even though the issue hasn’t drawn the same attention in national and state elections as other hot-button issues. The study is part of what company founder and CEO Larry Fink called “rethinking retirement” in his 2024 annual chairman’s letter to investors. In his letter, Fink wrote that the retirement crisis requires a substantial response from the U.S. government. “America needs an organized, high-level effort to ensure that future generations can live out their final years with dignity,” he wrote.

The new study, which surveyed 500 registered voters in Texas, seems to point toward Texan voters being in broad agreement with Fink. One of the most eye-catching figures: 91% of Texas voters think there is a retirement savings crisis in America. The survey results come two months ahead of a pivotal national election where the economy and inflation are expected to be key issues among voters, but social security and retirement savings policies have been overshadowed by abortion, immigration, foreign policy and tax priorities. Texans are slightly more concerned about a retirement crisis than the country as a whole, of which 90% said there is such an issue. Once you take that into account, the rest of the figures in the study are no surprise. More than 70% of registered Texas voters are concerned about having enough in savings or investments to fund their needs in retirement. A similar percentage are concerned about maintaining their standard of living or being able to afford long-term costs like nursing homes once they retire. Nationally, voters estimate it will take about $2.2 million to retire, but 62% of registered voters in Texas surveyed report they have less than $150,000 in retirement savings. All told, less than a quarter (24%) of registered Texas voters expressed a high level of confidence that they have enough to live throughout their retirement years. That’s a lower percentage than the 32% who reported they have no retirement savings at all.

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North Texas Democrat joins race for powerful Texas House speaker post

Efforts to unseat embattled Speaker Dade Phelan picked up steam Monday when the first Democrat entered the race to lead the Texas House. State Rep. Ana-Maria Ramos of Richardson, facing an uphill battle in the Republican-led House, said she would work to end the partisan bickering that has characterized state politics in recent years. Ramos also said she would seek to block what she called “an extremist agenda” pushed by Republicans who control the Texas Legislature, specifically efforts by the GOP to curtail abortion rights, divert tax dollars to private schools and block gun restrictions. “When we fight, we win, but we only win when we fight together,” Ramos, who is running for her fourth two-year term, said in a call for support Monday on the X platform.

Phelan survived a highly funded effort from his party’s right flank to unseat him during the spring primaries and said he will seek a third term as House speaker when the new legislative session starts in January. To date, five House Republicans have announced bids to replace Phelan, including Rep. John Smithee of Amarillo, who revealed his campaign over the weekend. Smithee has served in the House since the mid-1980s and gained early support for speaker after he was among only 23 House Republicans to vote against impeaching Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton last year. Smithee delivered an impassioned speech on the House floor against what he called a flawed impeachment process. Other Republicans running for House speaker are Reps. James Frank of Wichita Falls, Shelby Slawson of Stephenville, David Cook of Mansfield and Tom Oliverson of Cypress. The election of Texas House speaker will take place Jan. 14, 2025, the first day of the Legislature’s 89th session. All 150 House members will decide, by a majority vote, who will lead the House.

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How an algorithm could be artificially raising rents for thousands of Houston renters

More than 25 Houston-area landlords managing thousands of apartments here are among those named in an ongoing lawsuit that accuses them of colluding to set rent prices with Richardson-based software company RealPage. While it's impossible to determine how much the alleged scheme cost tenants of those buildings, Texas housing advocates say the RealPage software at the heart of the case could have made the high cost of housing in the area even more expensive. Average apartment rents in Houston are about 22% higher than they were in 2020, according to MRI Software, which provides software to real estate professionals and is unrelated to RealPage. Rents have flattened recently, but they're still beyond the reach of many Houston households, said Ben Martin, research director with Texas Housers, a nonprofit that advocates for affordable housing.

“RealPage isn’t responsible for all of those rent increases — there’s a lot of factors that play into that, involving housing demand and supply,” Martin said. “But it appears that landlords using RealPage and other algorithmic software basically have a point of confluence of additional information that helps them squeeze out (more) rent than they would be able to do otherwise.” The 2023 class action suit filed in Tennessee covers anyone that paid rent to a landlord using RealPage’s software from October 2018 to the present — likely millions of tenants. Among the landlords operating in Houston named in the suit are some of the biggest names in the industry: Allied Orion Group, Camden Property Trust, Cortland Management, Greystar Management, Crow Holdings/Trammell Crow Residential and Willow Bridge, formerly Lincoln Property. RealPage denies helping to set rents, saying that market conditions have pushed prices higher.

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Local Elections Administrators respond to Governor’s voter purge

On Aug. 26, Governor Greg Abbott issued a press release announcing that since signing Senate Bill 1 into law in 2021, Texas has removed over one million people from the state’s voter rolls. For many Texan voters, the release created confusion and caused concern over their voter status. “It did cause a lot of panic for a lot of people,” Randall County Elections Administrator Shannon Lackey said. “We have had many, many people call to verify their status. What everyone needs to know was all of those things on that list happen on a daily basis.” In a Potter County Elections Administration press release, Potter County Elections Administrator Christy Benge explained, “The largest category of voter registration cancellations come from voters who are deceased, voters who give a signed statement affirming they no longer reside within Potter County, and voters who have a felony conviction,” with few other minor categories with very small numbers.

Lackey said that county elections officials constantly maintain their voter rolls, canceling the status of those who have died, moved away, or are noncitizens. But, she explained, election staff attempts to notify voters of their status so it can be maintained. For example, Lackey said that if someone gets a jury summons and responds that they no longer live there, the district clerk must notify the elections staff of the response. At that point, they go on the suspense list. “The suspense was another category that was listed on that report that came out,” Lackey said. “All that means is we think maybe you’ve moved or you no longer have that same mailing address. That does not cancel [your registration status.] We send out an address confirmation notice to that voter at whatever address we have available to us.” Lackey said if the voter does not respond, they stay on the suspense list for two federal election cycles or four years, and if they don’t vote or update, they fall off the voter rolls. “But that’s not done until the end of November of even years, okay?” Lackey said. “So, we don’t have mass cancellation before a general election.”

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New museum offers economic benefit to Central Texas

A new museum is expected to bring a significant economic boon to Killeen and the surrounding area. The National Mounted Warrior Museum is set to open on Thursday, Sept. 19, and bring numerous people to the Fort Cavazos area. The museum is located right outside the Fort Cavazos main gate at 105 Trooper Loop. A recent study conducted by Texas A&M University-Central Texas estimated that the museum would bring 377,000 visitors to the museum in the next year. Of those attending, the study estimated that approximately 70% of attendees would travel to the museum from outside the Killeen area, officials said.

One aspect attracting people to the museum is its uniqueness. “Outside of the National Army Museum, we are unique,” said Crouch. The focus on the mounted warrior is something this museum offers that nowhere else in the country does. It is located just outside of the Fort Cavazos main gate. That is intentional; Crouch indicated that if it was inside Fort Cavazos it might lose attendees due to people having to go through security. That, combined with everybody receiving free admission, make this an attractive option for history enthusiasts. Crouch mentioned how people in Killeen regularly travel to Austin for special events and to experience things they cannot find in Killeen. With this new museum, he said, “We think it’s going to be reciprocal.” People are expected to come to Killeen from Austin and other locations to see the museum.

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UNTHSC in Fort Worth ends program that used unclaimed dead

A Fort Worth school has suspended a program that used unclaimed bodies for medical research and sold some of those bodies to companies around the country. The University of North Texas Health Science Center announced the suspension in response to an investigation from NBC News, which detailed how the school had used more than 2,000 unclaimed bodies from Dallas and Tarrant counties since 2019. More than 830 bodies were used by the center for dissection and study, according to NBC News. Other bodies were sold, sometimes limb by limb, to medical research companies and even the U.S. Army, according to the report. In a statement to NBC News, the Health Science Center said on Friday that it was immediately suspending the program and had terminated program leadership. The statement also said that the medical school would hire a consulting firm to review the program. A spokesperson for HSC declined to say how many people were fired in response to a question from the Star-Telegram.

Separately, Tarrant County is scheduled to vote on terminating a contract with HSC at a Tuesday meeting. Since 2018, the county has given HSC “indigent and unclaimed minor children or adult decedents,” according to the contract. The county’s original agreement with HSC said that a dead body “that is not claimed for burial or requires disposition at County expense” could be donated to HSC for “clinical training, research, and medical education programs.” After the body was used by HSC, it would be cremated with ashes returned to the decedent’s family, according to the contract. For bodies that could not be used for medical training, HSC charged the county a $300 fee per person for cremation. On Tuesday, county commissioners will vote on whether to end the contract with HSC. NBC News identified at least 12 people who had died and whose bodies were used by HSC without their families’ knowledge or consent. In addition, 10 companies interviewed by NBC News said they were unaware that the bodies they had purchased from HSC were not willingly donated. Eli Shupe, a bioethicist at the University of Texas at Arlington, has been advocating against the use of unclaimed bodies in medical research since 2021, when she first learned that the practice was both legal in most states and in use by HSC and other schools. Shupe twice spoke out against the county’s contract with HSC at commissioners court meetings, and also researched the increasing use of unclaimed bodies in Texas medical education.

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North Texas welcomes new cryptocurrency investment. Residents say the cost is high

Cheryl Shadden doesn’t see herself as an activist. But when a controversy over cryptocurrency landed on her front doorstep, Shadden said, she became a “redneck warrior.” The 61-year-old works at a hospital in Granbury, the town 40 miles southwest of Fort Worth where Shadden has lived for a majority of her life. There, she found contentment in raising her animals — eight dogs, six cats, six horses and one parrot. Her closest neighbor is just shy of a mile away, and Shadden hasn’t often found the need to interact with them. However, that changed when a new neighbor came into town. In 2022, a large Bitcoin mining operation was established at Constellation Energy’s Wolf Hollow power plant, a quarter-mile from where Shadden lives. The mine runs day and night. Nearly 23,000 fan-cooled computers are trying to crack the right algorithm and solve complex math problems to get just one Bitcoin, the globe’s most well-known cryptocurrency.

Shadden and other Hood County residents didn’t know the mining operation was moving in. That is, until the noise started. Residents blame the ongoing noise pollution for health issues that have popped up since the plant opened. Shadden said her ears started ringing and buzzing in March whenever she was home, but would stop when she went to work. After the ringing became worse, she went to an audiologist, where she was diagnosed with permanent conductive hearing loss. It’s not just Shadden. She said her neighbors are experiencing hearing loss, dizziness and vertigo, along with a mother and teenage son who received cochlear implants. They link the complications to the Bitcoin mine’s arrival. “We’re really hoping for change,” Shadden said. “People here are so sick, I mean they’re so sick. It’s not random, it’s everybody in this area.” Geraldine Lathers has lived in Granbury for 30 years and is almost a mile away from the mine. She said she has been suffering from vertigo and hearing problems in her left ear. At first, she didn’t know what the cause could be. But, as she kept hearing the constant humming of the mines, she started to link the issues with the noise. “I’m all for progress and all of that, but not at the expense of people,” Lathers said. “I don’t think it’s right. Right’s right and wrong is wrong.” Marathon Digital Holdings acquired and started operating the Granbury Bitcoin mine in January. Amid the controversy and backlash, Marathon released a sound survey in July conducted by an independent third party.

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Growing threats impact student mental health: Resources for West Texas families

Recent threats circulating across the nation have amplified the negative effects on students, increasing their fear and anxiety. These concerns are not just affecting students’ sense of safety but also their mental health, leading to school avoidance and heightened stress. In recent years, schools have seen a rise in students’ fear and anxiety, partly due to constant exposure to potential threats. While safety drills are implemented to protect students, repeated exposure to these situations, especially through social media, intensifies their anxiety. It serves as a continual reminder of the risks and safety concerns they face in today’s world. Judge Brooke Hendricks of the Ector County Court at Law emphasized the importance of taking every threat seriously.

This reality often places students in a state of survival mode, where the stress can cause parts of their brains to shut down. Crystal Ruiz, Program Manager of Mental Health at Communities in Schools of the Permian Basin, explains that trauma occurs when our ability to cope is overwhelmed. In such heightened states, students may misinterpret ordinary objects as threats. It’s crucial to understand that this is a normal reaction during a crisis. Parents play a vital role in helping their children navigate these challenging times. They should watch for behavioral or mood changes and regularly check in with their kids. As Judge Hendricks pointed out: “The hardest thing to read is a teenager’s brain, right? We don’t know what’s going on in there. But, ask those hard questions of, ‘What’s going on? Why did you have a bad day?’ Or ‘I’m glad to see you today. Do you need help with anything?’ Each one of us can make a difference in a child’s life." It’s also essential for parents to hold themselves accountable, especially if there are firearms in the home. Ruiz recommends ensuring guns are securely locked away where children cannot access them. Judge Hendricks advises parents to trust their instincts: “Your mom gut, your dad gut, it’s usually right. If you think something’s off, check their backpack, just take a look.”

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Voter registration discrepancy has 1 Houston man panicking ahead of Oct. 7 deadline

Some Houstonians who say they checked a state website to make sure they were registered to vote report they couldn't find their names. In some cases, a Harris County maintained website showed they were registered to vote. Robert, a 72-year-old homeless man living in northwest Houston, said he's always prided himself on voting. "I have not missed but two elections since I was 18 years old," he told ABC13. But Robert said that when he checked VoteTexas.gov a website maintained by the Texas Secretary of State, there was no one registered to vote with his name and date of birth. "Since 2015, I have been registered in this neighborhood and voting at the same voting station," he said. Robert was initially worried he was one of more than one million Texans purged from voter rolls since a 2021 law went into effect.

The governor's office said only ineligible voters are being removed, including more than 6,500 suspected non-citizens. "I don't look Hispanic. I am an American citizen. I was born in the state of Michigan. My grandfather happens to be a full-blooded American Indian," Robert said. "It really (expletive) me off with my friend here, man, especially with his grandfather being an Indian, man," Robert's friend, Bruce, said. "He's got more rights than most of us do, man." But if you look closely at the VoteTexas.gov site, you'll see the following disclaimer: "'Am I Registered?' provides a web-based search of data extracted from Texas's statewide voter registration database. It is NOT the official record of your registration, which is retained by the voter registration office in the county of your residence." ABC13 searched for Robert on the Harris County Voter Registrar's site, HCTAX.net, and found he was registered to vote. "But why on Texas I'm not?" he asked. Eyewitness News reached out to the Secretary of State's Office, but it being a Saturday, it's outside their normal hours of operation. Even now, Robert has seen some evidence he's registered to vote. He still plans to reach out to the voter registrar's office on Monday to confirm.

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Texas soon to top nation in fast-growing energy resource

There's a lot you can fit in the 268,820 square miles of Texas, including endless highways, cattle ranches and enormous metropolitan areas. In recent years, though, some of that space has been filled with batteries designed to boost the state's energy resources. According to a new report, that battery storage is likely to soon top the nation. The United States Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently revealed that Texas and California lead the U.S. in power sector battery energy storage systems (BESS), per a Reuters report. While Texas' 4,832 megawatts (MW) of battery systems is currently in second place behind the Golden State's 9,920 MW, energy experts anticipate that the Lone Star State will soon overtake California.

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Uber and Waymo to bring robotaxis to Atlanta and Austin

Waymo and Uber will bring robotaxis to Atlanta and Austin, Texas, early next year, the companies announced Friday. Uber will manage and dispatch the self-driving vehicles in ride-hail service in the two states while Waymo will oversee testing and operation of its autonomous vehicle software, according to a press release. Waymo will also provide roadside assistance and some rider support functions. The partnership builds on a strategy the two companies announced last year to expand access to driverless ride-hail vehicles on the Uber platform beginning in Phoenix.

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Austin's airport set to move ahead with $865 million terminal expansion

A centerpiece of the largest-ever expansion of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport is on a glide path to obtain final approval for design and construction. City Council will vote on the project this month as ABIA strains to handle far more passengers than it was designed to accommodate. If approved, the 370,500-square-foot extension of the Barbara Jordan Terminal – an area about the size of three Costco stores – will push the terminal north through the Red Garage and establish a new front door to Austin’s airport. The new structure, dubbed the “Arrivals and Departures Hall” (A/D Hall), will serve as the primary pickup and drop-off point for passengers. The building will house airline check-in counters, domestic baggage claim, and concessions like stores and cafes. Construction on the $865 million project is expected to be mostly complete by December 2029, according to city solicitation documents.

One of the trickiest parts of the expansion involves rerouting Presidential Boulevard, the bustling multilane street in front of the Barbara Jordan Terminal. The new route will run by the A/D Hall and be widened to handle up to 43 million passengers per year, preparing for future growth beyond the planned capacity of 30 million. As part of the reconfiguration of Presidential Boulevard, city staff are hoping to bring rideshare pickup back to the curb. Uber and Lyft users have for years complained about having to trek all the way to the rental car garage to catch their rides. “People feel like it’s inconvenient to Austin, and when we’ve done an analysis of many other airports, we’re actually still quite close compared to airports our side,” airport planning officer Lyn Estabrook said. “But we understand the community is asking to resolve that situation, and so that’s why we’re looking to have a dedicated commercial area for all of that commercial traffic.”

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National Stories

Sean 'Diddy' Combs arrested by federal agents in New York

Sean “Diddy” Combs was arrested Monday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York City said. Combs was arrested at the Park Hyatt hotel on West 57th Street, a representative said. He was caught off-guard by the apprehension, according to a person familiar with the situation, who added he had been living at the hotel for several weeks. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams confirmed in a statement that on Monday evening, federal agents arrested Combs based on a sealed indictment filed by the Southern District of New York. “We expect to move to unseal the indictment in the morning and will have more to say at that time,” Williams said.

Combs’ attorney Marc Agnifilo expressed disappointment in a statement. He said Combs, 54, had been cooperative with the investigation and “voluntarily relocated to New York last week in anticipation of these charges.” “Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs is a music icon, self-made entrepreneur, loving family man, and proven philanthropist who has spent the last 30 years building an empire, adoring his children, and working to uplift the Black community,” the statement said. “He is an imperfect person but he is not a criminal.” “These are the acts of an innocent man with nothing to hide, and he looks forward to clearing his name in court,” it added. It was not immediately clear on what charges Combs, the rapper-turned-music mogul, was arrested. Combs has faced a wave of lawsuits — one as recent as last week — accusing him of sexual assault and misconduct since November, when former girlfriend Casandra Ventura sued him in federal court, accusing him of years of physical and sexual abuse.

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Trial begins in alleged Florida election conspiracy that tilted a Miami Senate race

A criminal case that opened a window to a plot to help Republicans win important 2020 Florida Senate races by propping up fake progressive Senate candidates with shadowy money is finally headed to trial, with a South Florida political operative fighting the charges. State prosecutors are expected to claim in court this week that former Miami state Sen. Frank Artiles, a Republican, masterminded a scheme to tilt the results of a tight race in Miami by recruiting and paying a straw candidate to siphon votes away from the Democratic incumbent. They’ll say Artiles puppeteered a machine-parts salesman who never campaigned but still shaped the outcome of the race — garnering more than 6,000 votes as an independent thanks to anonymous financial support and his last name, which he shared with the incumbent. After a recount, Democrat Jose Javier Rodriguez lost his seat to Republican Ileana Garcia by 32 votes.

Artiles, who bragged at an Election Night party about tipping the race as results came in, has pleaded not guilty to felony campaign finance violations and to submitting and swearing to false voter information. The man accused of accepting a bribe from Artiles in exchange for putting his name on the ballot has been fined $20,000 and formally reprimanded by Gov. Ron DeSantis for violating campaign finance laws, in a separate ethics case. Jury selection begins Monday. During expected opening statements, state prosecutors will lay out a timeline explaining how they say Artiles convinced Alexis Pedro Rodriguez to run for the legislative seat by promising him $50,000, most of which was secretly funneled to him in cash, gifts and purchases. They’ll say the former Marine and state senator coached the candidate on how to file his paperwork and change his party affiliation, and even used a credit card to cover tuition costs for the candidate’s daughter and bought him machine parts at a Caterpillar store.

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Pressure grows on Mayor Adams as key officials leave amid investigations

Three years ago, Eric Adams, then a rising Democratic star, would have been the main attraction at an event like this: a politically star-studded Democratic fund-raiser at the famed Junior’s Restaurant in Brooklyn, the borough where Mr. Adams made his mark in politics. But with his administration appearing to be in free fall, his stature — and even his appearance at the fund-raiser on Monday — is in question. In the last week, two prominent New York City officials have resigned as federal investigations swirl around Mayor Adams and his inner circle, raising doubts about his political future and his ability to focus on his agenda. The police commissioner, Edward A. Caban, resigned on Thursday at the request of City Hall; Lisa Zornberg, the mayor’s chief legal adviser, resigned abruptly on Saturday, largely in frustration over the mayor’s refusal to follow her advice on personnel matters, according to a person familiar with her decision.

New Yorkers could learn in the coming days whether more officials might quit his administration in an effort to distance themselves from scandal or be asked to leave; whether additional elected officials will call on Mr. Adams to resign; and whether the investigations advance or new allegations emerge. On Sunday, Mr. Adams made his first in-person public appearance since testing positive for Covid last week, visiting the African American Day Parade in Manhattan. In the evening, he visited an officer who was shot at a subway station in Brooklyn with his new interim police commissioner, Thomas Donlon. They held a news conference at Brookdale University Hospital Medical Center in Brooklyn. On Monday morning, Mr. Adams was scheduled to attend the fund-raiser held by the Brooklyn Democratic Party at Junior’s. Other New York Democratic leaders listed on the invitation included Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader; Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader; and Gov. Kathy Hochul. The event, which had a top ticket price of $1,000, was promoted as a “Bringing Home the Election Victory” breakfast in support of Kamala Harris, congressional candidates and state lawmakers running in November. If Mr. Adams appears, it remains to be seen whether his Democratic colleagues seek to keep him at arm’s length. Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher and Senator Julia Salazar on Friday became the first two state lawmakers to call for Mr. Adams to resign.

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Stopping hurricanes is bold, risky and failed idea. Some want to try again.

For two decades, a bold and promising experiment sought to answer a wild question: Could scientists artificially weaken hurricanes before they bring devastation to U.S. shores? The short answer was no — at least, not that scientists could detect. Despite early hints of success, they concluded in the 1980s that the endeavor aptly named Project Stormfury wasn’t worth continuing. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forbade its scientists from conducting any similar research from that point forward. But now, as the threat of rapidly intensifying and catastrophic hurricanes grows, some want to give the idea of disrupting a storm — still far-fetched, but perhaps more necessary than ever — another shot. They are pitching new technologies and approaches that, while intriguing to some experts, also underscore how daunting, costly and dangerous it could be to try to control nature.

A Norwegian company wants to employ devices it says could cool Atlantic surface waters ahead of storms. The Japanese government is funding research to modify typhoons as part of a program tackling some of the biggest threats to humanity. And there are meanwhile broader efforts to engineer a cooler climate and weaker storms, including a White House-sponsored effort to study how blocking out some planet-heating sunlight could slow or reverse human-caused climate change. The concept of altering the weather — technically called weather modification — has increasingly entered the public imagination, especially as warming temperatures have fueled stronger hurricanes and heavier downpours. The idea of using nuclear weapons to fight hurricanes drew some attention after a 2019 report that then-President Donald Trump suggested it, something he denied. Dangerous research to weaken tornadoes is central to the plot of the movie “Twisters” released this summer. “We really love to control our surroundings,” said Jill Trepanier, an assistant professor at Louisiana State University. But stopping a storm has never become reality.

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Trump pivots from second apparent assassination attempt to more incendiary claims

Ex-President Donald Trump responded to a second apparent assassination attempt that he blames on incendiary political rhetoric by inflaming the situation even more. When a bullet grazed his ear in a horrific shooting that killed a rally goer in July, Trump initially acted like a changed man, telling The Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito he had a chance to bring the country and the world together — although that aspiration did not last any longer than the opening paragraphs of his convention speech. After the Secret Service thwarted a gunman who had apparently lain in wait for the ex-president at one of his Florida golf courses Sunday, Trump’s reaction was different. He accused President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris of inviting assassins to target him when they warn that he is a threat to democracy.

He told Fox News Digital on Monday without evidence that the alleged would-be shooter “believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it.” Trump went on: “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country — both from the inside and out.” “It is called the enemy from within,” he said using a familiar trope of totalitarian leaders. Trump warned that “dangerous fools” like the suspect in Sunday’s incident listen to what Democratic leaders say and react to what he has claimed, falsely, is an orchestrated attempt by the White House to use the justice system to persecute him. Trump’s running mate advanced an even blunter argument. “The big difference between conservatives and liberals is that … no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months,” Ohio Sen. JD Vance said. “I’d say that’s pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down the rhetoric and needs to cut this crap out.”

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New details of Trump family crypto project released, including who can buy in

More than two hours into Republican former President Donald Trump’s World Liberty Financial launch event on X Monday night, the team behind the Trump family’s new crypto project finally unveiled a key detail: Who can buy the forthcoming tokens it plans to release, and how shares of the project will be allotted. For over a month, the former president and his family have been pumping up the endeavor with vague descriptions, promising that it will do many things at once. Lofty goals set by those involved in the project on Monday night’s X space suggest that World Liberty Financial will be a sort of crypto banking platform, where the general public will be encouraged to borrow, lend and invest in crypto.

There will also be an accompanying token called WLFI, founders said Monday. The equity structure for these tokens will be that 20% of the project’s tokens are allotted to the founding team, which includes the Trumps, 17% of tokens are set aside for user rewards, and the remaining 63% of the coins will be made available for the public to purchase, said founder Zak Folkman. There will be no pre-sales or early buy ins, Folkman added. An earlier leaked draft of an internal project outline had the founders’ share at 70%, sparking concerns that the project would be little more than a get-rich-quick scheme. The token will be a Reg D token offering, which follows the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Regulation D — a provision that makes it possible for a company to raise capital without first registering their securities with the commission so long as certain conditions are met.

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Lead Stories

Trump was the subject of an apparent assassination attempt at his Florida golf club, the FBI says

Donald Trump was the target of what the FBI said “appears to be an attempted assassination” at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday, just nine weeks after the Republican presidential nominee survived another attempt on his life. The former president said he was safe and well, and authorities held a man in custody. U.S. Secret Service agents stationed a few holes up from where Trump was playing noticed the muzzle of an AK-style rifle sticking through the shrubbery that lines the course, roughly 400 yards away. An agent fired and the gunman dropped the rifle and fled in an SUV, leaving the firearm behind along with two backpacks, a scope used for aiming and a GoPro camera, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said. The man was later stopped by law enforcement in a neighboring county. AP AUDIO: AP Correspondent Julie Walker reports Trump was the subject of an apparent assassination attempt at his Florida golf club, the FBI says.

It was the latest jarring moment in a campaign year marked by unprecedented upheaval. On July 13, Trump was shot during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and a bullet grazed his ear. Eight days later, Democratic President Joe Biden withdrew from the race, giving way for Vice President Kamala Harris to become the party’s nominee. And it spawned new questions about Secret Service protective operations after the agency’s admitted failures in preventing the assassination attempt this summer. The man who was detained had a calm, flat demeanor and showed little emotion when he was stopped, according Martin County Sheriff William Snyder. “He never asked, ‘What is this about?’ Obviously, law enforcement with long rifles, blue lights, a lot going on. He never questioned it,” Snyder said.

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As families searched, a Texas medical school cut up their loved ones

Long before his bleak final years, when he struggled with mental illness and lived mostly on the streets, Victor Carl Honey joined the Army, serving honorably for nearly a decade. And so, when his heart gave out and he died alone 30 years later, he was entitled to a burial with military honors. Instead, without his consent or his family’s knowledge, the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office gave his body to a state medical school, where it was frozen, cut into pieces and leased out across the country. A Swedish medical device maker paid $341 for access to Honey’s severed right leg to train clinicians to harvest veins using its surgical tool. A medical education company spent $900 to send his torso to Pittsburgh so trainees could practice implanting a spine stimulator. And the U.S. Army paid $210 to use a pair of bones from his skull to educate military medical personnel at a hospital near San Antonio.

In the name of scientific advancement, clinical education and fiscal expediency, the bodies of the destitute in the Dallas-Fort Worth region have been routinely collected from hospital beds, nursing homes and homeless encampments and used for training or research without their consent — and often without the approval of any survivors, an NBC News investigation found. Honey, who died in September 2022, is one of about 2,350 people whose unclaimed bodies have been given to the Fort Worth-based University of North Texas Health Science Center since 2019 under agreements with Dallas and Tarrant counties. Among these, more than 830 bodies were selected by the center for dissection and study. After the medical school and other groups were finished, the bodies were cremated and, in most cases, interred at area cemeteries or scattered at sea. Some had families who were looking for them. For months as NBC News reported this article, Health Science Center officials defended their practices, arguing that using unclaimed bodies was essential for training future doctors. But on Friday, after reporters shared detailed findings of this investigation, the center announced it was immediately suspending its body donation program and firing the officials who led it. The center said it was also hiring a consulting firm to investigate the program’s operations.

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Why Washington and Big Oil are investing billions in ammonia

Most people think of ammonia as a household cleaner. To big oil companies, climate investors and the U.S. government, it is a hot commodity that is attracting billions of dollars for its use in fertilizer and low-carbon energy. The latest bet is a $1.56 billion Energy Department loan commitment for an ammonia project in Indiana. The agreement comes on top of a recent $2.35 billion deal for a Gulf Coast project by an Australia-based energy company, a big investment from Abu Dhabi’s national oil company in an Exxon Mobil in Texas and a large effort in Mississippi from ammonia giant CF Industries. Ammonia, which is a mixture of hydrogen and nitrogen, has long been a critical ingredient in fertilizer, but it is also a big emitter of greenhouse gases because it is typically made using fossil fuels. Projects like the one in Indiana are considered low-carbon because they trap the CO2 emissions from the process and bury them underground.

Ammonia doesn’t produce carbon emissions when burned as fuel, driving a new wave of activity from companies angling to ship it all over the world. Increasing domestic supply is a priority after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 roiled the market and pushed up prices. Russia is one of the world’s biggest producers. “It’s important for us to have a diverse supply chain and make sure we’re not dependent on other countries for this really important chemical,” Jigar Shah, head of the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, said in an interview. The program is rushing to get deals done before the election. The office has agreed to a deal with Wabash Valley Resources, a producer backed by oil companies and hydrogen-vehicle startup Nikola. The company aims to repurpose a facility that was part of a decades-old coal plant in Indiana for low-carbon ammonia production. Founded in 2016, Wabash uses a byproduct of oil refining to make ammonia and says it has an advantage over competitors because its facility is close to the farms where fertilizer will be used to grow corn. It expects to produce 500,000 metric tons of ammonia a year.

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It’s a big week for central banks around the world, with a slew of rate moves on the table

A flurry of major central banks will hold monetary policy meetings this week, with investors bracing for interest rate moves in either direction. The Federal Reserve’s highly anticipated two-day meeting, which gets underway on Tuesday, is poised to take center stage. The U.S. central bank is widely expected to join others around the world in starting its own rate-cutting cycle. The only remaining question appears to be by how much the Fed will reduce rates. Traders currently see a quarter-point cut as the most likely outcome, although as many as 41% anticipate a half-point move, according to the CME’s FedWatch Tool. Elsewhere, Brazil’s central bank is scheduled to hold its next policy meeting across Tuesday and Wednesday. The Bank of England, Norway’s Norges Bank and South Africa’s Reserve Bank will all follow on Thursday. A busy week of central bank meetings will be rounded off when the Bank of Japan delivers its latest rate decision at the conclusion of its two-day meeting on Friday.

“We’re entering a cutting phase,” John Bilton, global head of multi-asset strategy at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday. Speaking ahead of the European Central Bank’s most recent quarter-point rate cut, Bilton said the Fed was also set to cut interest rates by 25 basis points this week, with the Bank of England “likely getting in on the party” after the U.K. economy stagnated for a second consecutive month in July. “We have all the ingredients for the beginning of a fairly extended cutting cycle but one that is probably not associated with a recession — and that’s an unusual set-up,” Bilton told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.” “It means that we get a lot of volatility to my mind in terms of price discovery around those who believe that actually the Fed [is] late, the ECB [is] late, this is a recession and those, like me, that believe that we don’t have the imbalances in the economy, and this will actually spur further upside.” Policymakers at the Fed have laid the groundwork for interest rate cuts in recent weeks. Currently, the Fed’s target rate is sitting at 5.25% to 5.5%.

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State Stories

AG Ken Paxton pulls legal opinion backing nonprofits banning firearms from city-owned land

Attorney General Ken Paxton this week withdrew a legal opinion issued by his office in 2016 saying nonprofits have the right to ban firearms from property leased from the government. The move comes after he sued Dallas, its interim city manager and the State Fair of Texas on Aug. 29 to block the nonprofit’s new ban on firearms at the city-owned fairgrounds. The fair starts in two weeks. After a gunman wounded three people in a shooting at the State Fair last year, organizers announced on Aug. 8 that it would increase security and only allow elected, appointed or employed peace officers to carry firearms into Fair Park. Paxton and other Republican state lawmakers called the new restriction illegal and an infringement on the rights of gun owners.

Paxton’s 2016 opinion withdrawal comes amid an Aug. 14 letter from state Sen. Mayes Middleton (R-Galveston) and Rep. Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock) to the attorney general seeking an opinion on the State Fair of Texas’ new policy. They cited Paxton weighing in eight years earlier on a question from Erath County Attorney Lisa Pence on whether a nonprofit can restrict people with firearms from coming onto property owned by a city. The attorney general at the time noted that while state law bans a governmental entity from banning a license holder from carrying a handgun on city-owned property, it didn’t address whether the same rule applied to private entities on leased government property. “The private, nonprofit entity appears to have an arms-length agreement to lease city property and is not otherwise affiliated with the city,” Paxton’s 2016 opinion read. “In such circumstances, (the law) does not apply to a city that leases property to a nonprofit entity that provides notice that a license holder carrying a handgun is prohibited from entry. “As long as the state agency or political subdivision leasing the property to the nonprofit entity has no control over the decision to post such notice, the state agency or political subdivision lessor would not be the entity responsible for the posting and would therefore not be subject to a civil penalty,” the opinion continued. Legal opinions from the attorney general’s office are non-binding.

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John Cornyn is raising millions for fellow Republicans as he seeks to become next Senate GOP leader

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn isn’t on the ballot this year, but that doesn’t mean he’s not campaigning hard this fall. The Texas Republican was in Ohio last week helping U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno campaign, and earlier in the month he made a stop in Philadelphia to help Republican Dave McCormick, who is trying to win a Senate seat in Pennsylvania. “And I’ll be looking for more opportunities to travel and help candidates where it is helpful,” Cornyn said this week on a call with reporters. That travel is in addition to about $25 million Cornyn said he’s raised to specifically help Republicans nationwide as the GOP inches closer to retaking control of the U.S. Senate.

Cornyn is also one of three Republicans in the running to be the GOP leader in the Senate next year. U.S. Sens. John Thune, R-S.D., and Rick Scott, R-Fla., are the other two. If Republicans pick up enough seats in November, that could put Cornyn in a position to be the first Senate majority leader from Texas since Lyndon B. Johnson. Earlier this year, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced he would not seek another term in the position. A Senate majority leader has vast influence over the national agenda by deciding which bills can even make it to the floor of the Senate for a vote. Cornyn, a 72-year-old Houston native, said the nature of the race for Republican leader is not a typical campaign. Most of the work is done in one-on-one conversations with Republican members of the Senate who will vote by secret ballot at some point after the November election on whom they want as the leader.

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Deadline nears for possible state takeover of South San ISD board

The future of the South San Antonio Independent School District is still uncertain, just over a week away from the one-year anniversary of a settlement between the district and the Texas Education Agency to avoid the ouster of elected trustees and the appointment of a board of managers. But Abe Saavedra, a conservator appointed by the TEA to oversee the board and guide them through corrective actions, told the San Antonio Report Thursday that the board has made substantial progress over the last year. “Things have certainly calmed down,” he said. “We haven’t had the chaos recently that we’ve had in previous meetings, and they seem to be working with each other better.” The board also met most of the criteria set by the state-appointed official — including the passage of a balanced budget late last month using a one-time taxing authority reserved for natural disasters and extra funds from higher-than-expected enrollment to cover a stubborn deficit that has dogged the district for years.

The TEA appointed Saavedra following multiple investigations into the board, which found severe dysfunction and poor governance affecting the operations of the district. The district has been under some form of governance on and off for the last decade. As a former superintendent of the district, Saavedra had already been monitoring the district and reporting on them for years at the agency’s behest. Once marred by protesters and yelling, the district’s meetings have mellowed in recent months to include less bickering between board members and the administration and more focus on student outcomes — positive developments reflected in monthly reports to the agency. Saavedra also didn’t decide to issue any directives to the board or administration, one of the key powers given by the agency to enforce corrective actions, which could signal a path toward restoration for the district. Not all issues have been resolved, however. Attendance has been a consistent problem, with one trustee missing most of the meetings held over the last year. The habitual absence of Trustee Shirley Ibarra, for example, resulted in trustees and the district taking steps to remove her — with the help of local and state authorities.

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What Nirenberg wants to see in San Antonio's next mayor

With less than a year left as mayor, Ron Nirenberg is hoping his successor will be patient with the progress he believes San Antonio is making on addressing generational poverty, housing shortages and sustainability. Speaking on a housing panel hosted by the San Antonio Report and H.E. Butt Foundation on Wednesday night, Nirenberg said that what keeps him up at night these days is the idea of a next mayor coming in and changing direction on initiatives that have been years in the works, but won’t be completed by the time he leaves office. For example, he pointed to VIA Metropolitan Transit’s advanced Rapid Transit routes, the first of which is expected to break ground this year, and a series of affordable housing initiatives that were made possible by the 2022 bond.

“There’s going to be a temptation in this community to say, ‘You know what? I’ve got a new plan and a new vision, and this is where we need to go as a city,'” Nirenberg said. “The community has already directed us where we need to go,” he said, referring to the voter-approved mass transit, workforce development and housing projects. “What I want to see as these [2025 mayoral] campaigns continue to unfold is, tell me how you’re going to take where we’re going and accelerate that momentum.” Nirenberg, who was a District 8 councilman before he was elected mayor in 2017, is term-limited from seeking reelection. “I didn’t come into office saying I wanted to solve generational poverty, but it became plainly evident to me that that was the issue,” Nirenberg said on Wednesday. “Regardless of any of the other things that we were talking about, the headwaters of the challenges that we’re dealing with, one way or another, went back to poverty.” So far the race to replace him has already drawn a dozen contenders, including roughly a third of City Council. The field also includes several outside candidates, including former Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos and tech entrepreneur Beto Altamirano, who blame incumbent council members for the lack of progress on improving economic prosperity, and have vowed to take the city in a different direction.

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Inside the battle to keep religion out of Texas schools

Every few months, as dependable as the scorching Texas heat or as dastardly as the Christmas Grinch, the Freedom from Religion Foundation sends out some small news blip, an outmatched David’s shot across the bow in the Goliathan battle against religion in Texas classrooms. Last month, it took the form of a successful effort to stop the athletic director of College Station Independent School District from tagging his emails with a New Testament verse from the book of Romans. Before that? A missive urging the state’s school districts to stop sponsoring religious baccalaureate graduation ceremonies. The time before that? Ending last year’s school prayer marathon in Burnet Consolidated Independent School District. Each tiny win, on its own, may seem inconsequential. But within the current roiling culture war — where every traditional American symbol has been seized to signal some self-righteous superiority — the Freedom from Religion Foundation has taken on the thankless task of pushing back on the multitude of efforts to put religion (and, specifically, evangelical Christianity) in Texas classrooms.

This trend started with a rather innocuous bill, passed two sessions ago, which required Texas school districts to post “In God We Trust” signs donated by local businesses. In places where far-right conservatives were making inroads in local school board races, that ended up being a whole lot of signs. Of course, it’s Texas, and not all religions are seen as equal: a school district in North Texas rejected “In God We Trust” signs printed in Arabic when a resident tried to donate a rainbow version in August 2022. “Why is more God not good?” asked Sravan Krishna at the school board meeting in Southlake. Add to that Kennedy v Bremerton, a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2022, which rolled out the welcome mat for teachers to share their own religious views — and it’s no surprise the Republican Party of Texas added the Bible to its platform, front and center, during its convention in San Antonio in May. “We support affirmation of God, including prayer, the Bible and the Ten Commandments being returned to our schools, our courthouses, and other government buildings,” said the document. There’s a constitutional guarantee of freedom from religion granted to all Americans. But in practice, religion and education have never been entirely separated in Texas schools. In fact, guidance from the Texas Association of School Boards says school districts can post religious displays, teach religion from a historical perspective, and allow citizens to express their religious beliefs. What they can’t do is “inculcate,” proselytize, or convert students. The idea that Texas school districts can teach a Bible elective isn’t new, either, even if the inclusion of the Bible as curriculum in early Texas grades is. (The contract for the content, oddly, was signed by Gov. Greg Abbott as part of a pandemic-era disaster declaration, according to nonprofit news organization The 74.) The State Board of Education added an optional Bible elective for high schools in 2009. At the time, the biggest question wasn’t whether the elective could be offered: everyone agreed a course on the Bible could be appropriate if treated as a cultural and historical document. It was whether it would be a mandatory offering in every high school. The board settled on a course offering upon request. Enrollment, tracked annually by the Texas Education Agency — has been nominal since the elective was added. The same is true of enrollment for a similar course in Georgia, which started the trend.

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Railroads love ‘monster’ trains. Texans don’t.

Freight trains are getting longer—some of them 3 miles or more—and that is making life unpleasant in places like Pleasantville, Texas. The Houston neighborhood sits in the shadow of sprawling rail yards run by Union Pacific, where employees assemble trains that can pull hundreds of railcars that regularly cut off local roads for residents. Railroaders call them monster trains. Union Pacific and its rivals are making trains longer because they generate higher profits, allowing the companies to haul goods with fewer locomotives and fewer crew. Long trains are typically slower, so drivers must wait longer for them to pass. When these trains stop moving, things get worse. School buses, ambulances and firetrucks are delayed. Pedestrians and cyclists clamber under or between train cars to get across—and the results can be deadly. In July, a 27-year-old woman died in north-central Texas after she climbed between railcars and the train began moving. The Lone Star state has the highest number of commuter-reported blocked crossings in the nation, with more than 8,000 reported in the past 12 months, compared with Illinois, the next-highest state with 1,600. The population in Texas has been growing along with container volume from Gulf Coast ports, and blocked crossings there have become a more frequent occurrence.

There are no federal limits on train length. Federal regulators are looking into the effects of long trains and considering possible restrictions. More than a dozen states, including Texas, have introduced bills to limit train length to 1.6 miles, but states can’t enforce them because they are barred from interfering with interstate commerce. At Union Pacific, which gets the most complaints for blocked crossings, according to federal records, trains can reach around 20,000 feet, or 3.8 miles. Last quarter, its average train length was 9,544 feet, or 1.8 miles, up from 1.3 miles in 2018. Jim Vena, chief executive of Union Pacific, said the railroad seeks to balance safety, customer demand, efficiency and the trains’ impact on communities. “Any time a train operates through a community—whether it’s 3,000-feet-long or whether it’s 10,000-feet-long—you know you’re going to impact roadways, the communities,” he said. Vena said that for his customers to beat competitors, he must maximize efficiency. “That’s the way I look at it,” he said. “It’s business.”

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Jasmine Crockett’s ‘clapback’ gathering issues call to action for Nov. 5 election

U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s pastor was watching earlier this year when the Dallas Democrat had a viral committee hearing exchange with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. Greene had jabbed Crockett by suggesting her “fake eyelashes” were interfering with her ability to read on the dais. Crockett’s response poking at Green’s appearance — “bleach-blond, bad-built butch body” — startled Rev. Dr. Frederick Haynes III, senior pastor at Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas. “I was drinking water and it all came out,” Haynes said during a panel discussion set up by Crockett at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual legislative conference in Washington.

“I called her immediately. I said, ‘You gotta warn me when you’re going to do stuff like that,’” Haynes told a capacity crowd of several hundred people at the session, titled “Clapback: Fighting in the current politically violent climate.” The panel also featured Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is prosecuting an election interference case against former President Donald Trump and others related to the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Friday’s panel explored the political significance of Crockett’s showdown with Greene and included pleas for Trump opponents to organize ahead of the Nov. 5 election. Polling shows a close presidential contest as Republicans, motivated to retake the White House, have hammered Vice President Kamala Harris over inflation and the Biden administration’s immigration policies.

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Texans don't care much for Taylor Swift's presidential endorsement, social media map finds

Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris garnered a lot of public attention — possibly enough to influence even those who don't count themselves among her self-described megafans, known as Swifties. That is, as long as they don't live in Texas, it seems. Although hashtags such as #SwiftiesForKamala, #TaylorForKamla, #Swifties4Kamala and #SwiftiesForHarris spread across social media platforms after the presidential debate, Texans were quiet on the excitement. A map tracking geotagged data from Tuesday’s debate looked at the prevalence of Kamala Harris and Taylor Swift themed hashtags and tweets on X across the country. Put together by BetOnline, a privately held online gambling company, the map found that Swift’s endorsement of Harris had the least influence on Texas among all 50 states. The endorsement had the most potential influence in Northeastern states, with Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine topping the list.

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Texas isn’t a battleground state, but that won’t make November’s election boring

Is Texas a battleground state? Hardly. The vast majority of races on November’s Texas ballots are highly predictable, offer little to no competition and won’t change the state’s political dynamic. Republicans have controlled statewide politics for nearly 30 years. And though the margin of GOP statewide wins has decreased considerably since the high-water mark of 2014, odds are the party will maintain its control. “The likelihood is that a presidential year would be the biggest boon for Democrats, but that has been muted by the kind of accelerated interest among Republicans,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. Rottinghaus said demographic shifts have helped Democrats become more competitive in statewide races, but the long-predicted move to swing state status hasn’t been realized. “That’s the biggest quandary that the Democrats face,” Rottinghaus said. “Demographics are moving in their direction, which is on paper positive, but the actual outcomes in voting haven’t gone their way.”

A battleground is a distinct classification – a place where the Republican and the Democratic candidates have a chance to capture the state’s electoral votes. In this year’s election, there are only seven – Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona. Some states are not presidential battlegrounds but have competitive down-ballot or midterm races. They also have recent histories of electing leaders from both parties. Even if you squint hard, Texas has trouble meeting either qualification. Still, there are compelling storylines to follow. Former President Donald Trump is favored to beat Kamala Harris in Texas, though most analysts expect a margin of victory in single digits. In 2020 Trump bested Joe Biden in Texas by 5.5 points. Robust turnout for the presidential race could produce coattails that impact down-ballot races for both parties.

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Waco Catholic priest is indicted on sexual assault charges

A Catholic priest was indicted in Texas on felony sexual assault charges after several victims accused him of sexual and financial abuse, according to court documents and investigators. The priest, Father Anthony Odiong, was indicted on Thursday by a grand jury in McLennan County, Texas, on two counts of second-degree sexual assault and one count of first-degree sexual assault. He was arrested in July in Ave Maria, Fla., when investigators found him in possession of child pornography while looking into sexual assault claims reported to the police, according to a Facebook post from the Waco Police Department. He was not indicted on possession of child pornography, but could be in the future, Detective Bradley DeLange said.

The police had been investigating Father Odiong for months because they had received “credible information” alleging he committed a sexual assault in 2012, according to the police. During the investigation, Detective DeLange said, the police found several women with similar stories of abuse as the original victim who had come forward. Detective DeLange discovered at least eight women who claim that the priest groped, sexually assaulted or financially abused them, including one woman who sought Father Odiong’s counsel over her marriage troubles. Under Texas law, it is considered sexual assault if members of the clergy engages in sexual activity with individuals who depend on them emotionally as a “spiritual advisers.” Father Odiong served as a priest at St. Peter Catholic Student Center in Waco, Texas, and at St. Mary’s Church of the Assumption in West, Texas, from 2007 to 2012, according to the police, and he also served in Luling, La., from around 2015 to 2023.

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Cannabis conference at A&M draws experts, politicians to plan future of industry in Texas

The second Texas Cannabis Policy Conference was held on Friday and Saturday at the Memorial Student Conference and featured talks from a state senator, medical professionals and industry experts. Sponsored by the Texas A&M Soil & Crop Sciences Department, the conference aimed to influence state policy on cannabis possession and use. Both federal and state laws classify marijuana as a controlled substance. In Texas, delivery and possession of it is a criminal offense in most cases. Terrence Baugh, the community relations manager for goodblend, one of three licensed medical marijuana dispensaries in Texas, attended in hopes of raising awareness of the Compassionate Use Program, which allows Texans to use marijuana for medical purposes.

“[The conference] happens every two years, in line with legislative sessions … so that we can all align as a cannabis community here in Texas to see what policies are going to be changed, what are we looking for [and] what are we going to be asking for. And we make sure that there’s alignment between the factions because there’s the hemp side of things and the medical marijuana side of things,” Baugh said. The conference featured State Sen. José Menéndez as a keynote speaker on cannabis regulation. Menéndez co-authored legislation to create Texas’ medical marijuana program in 2015 and serves on the State Affairs committee, which regulates the state cannabis industry. “Our job is to provide the highest quality products for Texans all across the state to provide relief when they need it,” Baugh said. “There are over 150 different conditions that qualify you to take part in the medical marijuana programs, so we are trying to make sure that all Texans have access to it.”

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UT Austin ranks among worst colleges in nation for free speech, a recent survey finds

A survey of college free speech ranked the University of Texas at Austin among the lowest in the nation, largely because of its response to student protests related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. UT Austin placed 244th with a "poor" speech climate in a survey of 257 colleges by the nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and research company College Pulse. The ranking means a score of 23.39 out of 100. Close to 59,000 students responded nationally to the survey between January and June of this year. The bottom 10 ranking "followed the university preemptively calling the police to campus, presumably to prevent students from establishing an encampment," the report says.

In April, police and state troopers responded to protests in riot gear, arresting dozens of people. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was identified as “difficult to have an open and honest conversation about” by 54% of students in the nationwide survey. In "Administrative Support," UT Austin ranks 228, and the report gave it a "yellow light" rating, indicating that the school has at least one policy that restricts protected expression. The survey found two instances where the university experienced "efforts to censor invited speakers, artwork, film screenings, or performances." UT Austin also saw at least three "scholar sanctions," which contributed to its ranking.

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U.S. Rep. Chip Roy blasts immigrants, transgender people on 9/11, criticizes Democratic leadership

On the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, U.S. Rep. Chip Roy criticized the current administration's track record on immigration and lamented the state of public education. The Republican, who represents the 21st district that includes a sliver of San Antonio's North Side, used his 30-minute address on the House floor to say the country needs to commemorate more than just the victims of the terrorist attack 23 years ago. Victims of crimes by immigrants and victims of fentanyl also need to be acknowledged, Roy said. "I am glad that we have people today on Sept. 11 commemorating those losses. I am glad that we show patriotism. I am glad we put the flag on the Pentagon," he said. "But until we recognize that every single day, because of our policies in this chamber, and in the other chamber, and the other end of Pennsylvania Ave., Americans are suffering with high inflation, with houses they can't afford, and with their own people getting murdered and slaughtered in the street and in their own homes."

Roy leaned into Republican campaign points, including crimes perpetrated by immigrants and non-citizen voting, which is already illegal and has no evidence of being done in significant numbers. Roy called for "mass deportation," saying the current border policy is allowing people to be slaughtered. He promoted a report by his office that highlights crimes perpetrated by immigrants, asking, "Where's the commemoration for those Americans?" He also showed support for school vouchers while making a jab at transgender people. "What the hell are we trying to defend? What is left of the United States to defend?" he said. "A school where I can't send my child to pray to God without spending $20,000 a year on top of the taxes I pay? A school that my friend sends her sixth grader to with a trans music teacher asking her kid to do some dance in class? Yeah, that's a true story." Roy concluded by asking where Congress' support of Texas was, saying that when Texas joined the Union, it was promised something that it is now being denied.

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Key defendant in 'Trump Train' trial testifies: 'I stand hardcore for my flag'

In fiery testimony, a San Antonio man accused of conspiring to block a Joe Biden-Kamala Harris campaign bus in 2020 said he was motivated by patriotism and the belief that Democrats are trying to "destroy our country" to organize what he maintained was a straightforward protest. Speaking before the jury in a federal court in Austin on Thursday, Navy veteran Eliazar Cisneros denied claims that he and other "Trump Train" participants intended to prevent the bus passengers from campaigning when they surrounded it Oct. 30, 2020, on Interstate 35 in Central Texas, forcing the vehicle to move as slowly as 15 mph on a highway with a speed limit of 70 mph. "I don't get y'all trying to paint me out to be this horrible person when I'm not," Cisneros said, tearing up as he addressed the plaintiffs. "I'm unbelievably patriotic. I love my country unbelievably. I stand hardcore for my flag, and I love it. And when you have people that just try to destroy our country, that hurts. It hurts me."

Cisneros, who sideswiped the car of a college-aged Biden campaign staffer who was following the bus, also maintained that he did not cause that minor collision. Cisneros is a defendant in a lawsuit that former state Sen. Wendy Davis, former Biden staffer David Gins and bus driver Timothy Holloway filed against six "Trump Train" drivers under the Ku Klux Klan Act, an 1871 federal law that forbids two or more people from conspiring to use violence, intimidation or harassment to prevent a citizen from engaging in political support or advocacy.All three plaintiffs testified this week that they feared for their lives during the more than 90 minutes they were blockaded by the convoy headed north from San Antonio to Austin on I-35, and all said they suffered lingering symptoms of anxiety for months after the incident. The plaintiffs, who also canceled the tour's Austin campaign stop as a result of the incident, are seeking punitive and compensatory damages as well as attorneys' fees in the case, over which Judge Robert Pitman of the federal Western District of Texas is presiding. The plaintiffs have focused on Cisneros as a primary organizer of the "Trump Train" rally through text messages and email evidence presented at trial, which show he directed several participants to wait for the bus at an exit in San Antonio. One email note that Cisneros wrote to himself says he and Jerry Pen~a planned the gathering when they saw that the bus would stop in San Antonio. Robert Meyer, an attorney for the plaintiffs, showed Cisneros wrote that he was “smart enough to get the entire Biden-Harris campaign canceled in Texas" in a Facebook Messenger exchange after the highway confrontation. The exhibit, which Cisneros confirmed, showed he was responding to a message that read, "You're not very smart, are you?"

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National Stories

Trump seeks to rally support after possible second assassination attempt

Donald Trump on Sunday sought to rally his supporters with news of a possible second attempt on his life, blasting out a campaign fundraising appeal that said “there are people in this world who will do whatever it takes to stop us” as his advisers urged campaign staff to be “vigilant” about security. Trump was golfing at his West Palm Beach, Fla., club on Sunday when a Secret Service agent spotted a man with a rifle with a scope in the tree line, officials said. Secret Service opened fire, and the suspect was eventually apprehended. The FBI is investigating the incident as a possible assassination attempt. The suspect — identified as Ryan Wesley Routh, according to multiple law enforcement officials — has written critically about Trump, but authorities have shared little publicly about him or his possible motive. Trump was uninjured, according to his campaign. But the episode renewed questions about Trump’s safety.

The Secret Service is probing breakdowns in security that allowed a gunman to fire down from a nearby rooftop at a July 13 Trump rally in Butler, Pa., killing an audience member and leaving Trump bloodied. Investigators have not pinpointed what drove the now-deceased shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, who had pictures of both President Joe Biden and Trump on his phone and did not show signs of a political motive. “[We] must ask ourselves how an assassin was allowed to get this close to President Trump again?” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) said in a statement. “There continues to be a lack of answers for the horrific assassination attempt in Pennsylvania and we expect there to be a clear explanation of what happened in Florida.”Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.) called on the Secret Service to tell Congress “what resources are needed to expand the protective perimeter” around Trump and urged his colleagues to “allocate it in a bipartisan vote the same day.” “Two assassination attempts in 60 days on a former President & the Republican nominee is unacceptable,” Khanna wrote on social media.

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Golf courses — in particular Trump’s — have long proved a difficult assignment for Secret Service

Golf courses, and in particular former President Donald Trump’s own properties, have long been a source of concern among Secret Service officials tasked with securing the grounds while the commander in chief plays, according to people familiar with the matter. While security around Trump was bolstered in the aftermath of the first attempt on his life over the summer, the new beefed-up protective detail wasn’t able to prevent another would-be assassin from coming within 500 yards of the former president, armed with an AK-47 with a telescopic sight on Sunday. In some ways, a similar issue led to both situations: difficulty securing a perimeter around the former president.

A golf course presents a particular challenge. The fairways and greens of a golf course are often the largest outdoor area a president can visit, and their design — often abutting public roads and containing elements such as trees and hills that can conceal would-be assassins — make them particularly difficult for the agency to secure. Officials said at a news conference Sunday that a suspected would-be shooter hid in a patch of bushes on the perimeter of Trump’s golf course before a Secret Service agent spotted the barrel of his weapon. Like other presidents before him, Trump’s presence at a golf course does not prompt the club to shut down to the general public, nor for the roads to be closed nearby. Instead, groups of agents in golf clothes typically ride in golf carts ahead and behind the former president as he plays and secure the areas in the several minutes before he arrives. Trump, like presidents before him, likes to drive his own golf cart — one of the only opportunities a sitting or former president has to drive any kind of vehicle. People familiar with the matter said the president’s golf cart is not equipped with any special protective measures, though it does have a presidential seal affixed to it.

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Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine says baseless claims about Haitian immigrants are 'garbage'

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Sunday decried former President Donald Trump's baseless claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were eating dogs and other pets as "garbage" but stopped short of directly condemning Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, for spreading the false claims. “There’s a lot of garbage on the internet. You know, this is a piece of garbage that was simply not true. There’s no evidence of this at all,” DeWine said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week” when he was asked whether it’s responsible for Trump to push the false claims. Asked what he would say to Trump after he pointed out that there is no truth to his claims, DeWine condemned groups that have marched in Springfield as part of a hate campaign against Haitian immigrants and went on to praise Haitians as hard-working people who have brought “positive influences” to the town.

“Hate groups coming into Springfield, we don’t need these hate groups,” he said. “I saw a piece of literature yesterday that the mayor told me about from purportedly the KKK [Ku Klux Klan]. Springfield is a good city. They are good people. They’re welcoming people. We have challenges every day. We’re working on those challenges. “Haitians are — culturally, my wife, Fran, and I have seen this when we’ve been down in Haiti — education is prized,” he added. “So when you look at all of these things, people who want to work, people who value their kids, who value education, you know, these are positive influences on our community in Springfield, and any comment about that otherwise, I think, is hurtful and is not helpful to the city of Springfield and the people of Springfield.” Recent bomb threats in Springfield prompted closings of schools and municipal buildings last week amid widespread scrutiny the town faces over false rumors of Haitian migrants stealing and eating household pets.

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Democrats have been losing working-class voters. Here's one playbook to win them back.

A new report commissioned by a labor-backed group is examining a problem many Democrats might rather ignore: the exodus of working-class voters from the party they used to call home. Republicans under former President Donald Trump have been making inroads in the working class, including among Black and Hispanic voters, while Democrats have been gaining suburban moderates and highly educated professionals that used to vote Republican. “Increasingly, Republicans are the party of working class people,” Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, said during a recent podcast interview, while noting that CEOs and other wealthy professionals have shifted toward Democrats. Some voices on the left have downplayed the significance or even denied the loss of working class voters, but the data is increasingly clear and signs of realignment are everywhere.

“I’ve watched as MAGA flags have encroached into my community, which used to be a solid deep-blue working-class suburb of New York made of ethnic whites and people of color,” said Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families Party, a labor-backed group that aims to organize a multiracial working-class coalition. “Republicans are making inroads into the working class, and it’s not just white working class people.” A nonprofit offshoot of Working Families embarked on an extensive research project last year to try to take an honest accounting of Democrats’ problems with working-class voters and find effective messages for the Democratic presidential campaign and others. The group shared its findings exclusively with NBC News. “We take the right wing and Republican Party seriously when they say they want to be the party of the working class,” Mitchell said. “And as much as Democrats are interested in organizing working-class people, and we don’t deny their sincerity, we wanted to start with a grounded place that provides the most accurate picture.” The effort started with an attempt to better understand the working class of the 21st century by creating a more nuanced definition of the demographic and breaking it down into seven values-based typologies. Those categories were based on a battery of 40 questions put to more than 5,000 participants in surveys conducted with HIT Strategies, a Democratic research firm.

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TikTok says it's not spreading Chinese propaganda. The U.S. says there's a real risk. What's the truth?

Is TikTok trying to secretly influence Americans at the behest of the Chinese government? That question is at the heart of the legal battle over a law passed by Congress that could result in a ban on the popular social media company in the United States — a clash that will play out in court Monday as each side presents oral arguments in a Washington, D.C., courtroom. In court documents filed in advance of the hearing — heavily redacted, because they contain classified information — the Justice Department and a senior U.S. intelligence official say flatly that they have no direct evidence China has used TikTok for propaganda purposes in the U.S. They also say there is significant risk that could happen. But a pair of academic studies — cited in the court documents and congressional testimony — make the case that the platform is biased in favor of Chinese government views, including suppressing information on China’s treatment of its Uyghur minority and its actions in Tibet.

And an analysis of the ownership structure of TikTok parent company ByteDance, obtained by NBC News, argues that the company is deeply entangled with some of China’s major government propaganda organs. The studies, by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) at Rutgers University, “present compelling and strong circumstantial evidence of TikTok’s covert content manipulation,” the authors wrote. The most recent one, published last month, found that TikTok suppresses anti-China content compared to YouTube and other social media platforms. TikTok says the studies are deeply flawed. The Justice Department disagrees and cited some of the research in its brief for Monday’s oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, TikTok’s first foray into a federal courtroom to challenge the law. The case could ultimately end up at the Supreme Court. The ownership analysis, prepared by Strider Technologies — a private analytical firm with long experience sifting through publicly available information in China — examines the influence on TikTok of a Chinese government company through what’s known as a golden share, a 1% interest in ByteDance’s main Chinese subsidiary that it says gives the company three directors’ seats and other special privileges. In recent years, according to media reports, Chinese government entities have increasingly taken golden shares in technology companies. TikTok says there is nothing unusual about the structure.

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House lawmakers sign ‘unity’ pledge to accept presidential election results, attend inauguration

Nearly three dozen House members on Friday signed onto a bipartisan pledge to respect the results of the 2024 presidential election and attend the inauguration for whichever candidate wins. The “Unity Commitment,” led by Reps. Josh Gottheimer, New Jersey Democrat, and Don Bacon, Nebraska Republican, said the 32 signed members commit to accepting the presidential election results once the Nov. 5 election is over “and all legal means to challenge election results in the courts have been exhausted.” The pledge signers — mostly members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus — promise to acknowledge the elected winner and certify the results during a January joint meeting of Congress. The last such effort on Jan. 6, 2021, resulted in violent riots at the Capitol as some supporters of former President Donald Trump refused to accept that he lost the 2020 election to President Biden.

The lawmakers committed to “serving as a voice for calm and reconciliation and speaking out against those who endorse or engage in violence that harms people, property, or public spaces.” Mr. Trump is the Republican presidential nominee again this year, running against Vice President Kamala Harris after Mr. Biden dropped out of the race in July. Democrats warn that Mr. Trump will refuse to accept the election results if he loses again. Mr. Trump previously said he would accept the outcome “if it’s a fair and legal and good election,” as he continues to refuse to acknowledge his 2020 loss and spread false narratives about widespread election fraud. “After this election, America will have the rule of the mob unless the commonsense majority stands up,” the House members’ unity pledge reads. “It’s never been more critical for our leaders to embrace the enduring idea that America is and must always be one nation.” Notably, the vast majority of the members who signed the pledge, 26 of the 32, are Democrats. The Republicans who signed, in addition to Mr. Bacon, were Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon, and Mike Lawler, Nick LaLota and Anthony D’Esposito of New York.

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Why House Republicans still can’t manage to fund the government

House Republicans have been in power for nearly two years — and they’re still unable to solve fiscal problems within their ranks. The belligerent nature of the conference, coupled with a historically narrow majority, has made it almost impossible for any GOP leader to appease each corner of their constituency when nearly every Republican vote is necessary to pass bills along party lines. Now House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is once again in the middle of the tensions that almost a year ago saw his predecessor ousted in part for refusing to fund the government the way a small group of far-right members demanded. But Johnson still worked through the weekend to rally support for his already-once-delayed proposal to avert an Oct. 1 government shutdown on terms friendly to the GOP, which he hopes to put to a vote this week.

“I believe we can fund the government responsibly, and I believe we can do right by the American people and ensure the security of our elections. I defy anybody to give me any logical argument why we shouldn’t do that. That’s why I’m so resolute about this,” Johnson told reporters last week. Johnson’s measure would extend government funding into March — longer than Democrats and even some Republicans prefer — and tacks on provisions requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote that election officials say are unnecessary and Democrats say they can’t accept. Many House Republicans consider the effort futile, since a solid block of GOP opponents remain unpersuaded to vote for any temporary funding extension and the Democratic-led Senate and White House have already rejected the plan. If all lawmakers are present and voting, Republicans can only lose four votes from their conference to pass a bill.

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State Democratic group unveils targeted races

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) in a memo obtained by The Hill on Monday detailed its top races 50 days out from Election Day. In the memo, the DLCC warned that Republicans could take control of four state legislatures if the GOP is able to flip eight state legislative seats across the country. “Our Spotlight candidates are running in razor-tight districts to make or break majorities; districts that will decide the fate of abortion access in their state; and districts featuring MAGA extremists intent on upending democracy,” DLCC President Heather Williams wrote in the memo. “In other districts, our Spotlight candidates are young leaders stepping up to run for office for the first time. Our candidates are closely connected with their communities, and they’re real changemakers.”

The DLCC is targeting races in a number of races in presidential battleground states, zeroing in on issues like reproductive health care and defending democracy. The group also noted that 20 percent of its spotlight candidates are under 40 years old. The committee highlighted targets in Michigan and Georgia’s state Senates, where it’s targeting 13 and five districts, respectively. In Arizona, the DLCC said it was targeting seven races in the state House and five candidates in the state Senate. In Pennsylvania, 15 state House and four state Senate candidates are being targeted, while in North Carolina nine state House and 5 state Senate candidates are being targeted. And in Wisconsin, the group said it was highlighting nine state assembly races and five state Senate races. Meanwhile, in the red-leaning state of Kansas, the group said it’s targeting six candidates in the state House and four in the state Senate. In Minnesota, it’s highlighting 13 candidates in the House and one candidate and the state Senate. The memo comes after the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) announced details surrounding its early investments in races. The GOP group has invested a total $34 million into state-level races this cycle. According to the RSLC, their notable investments are in states including Arizona, New Hampshire, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

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Emmy Awards: Winners list

The 2024 Primetime Emmy Awards were handed out Sunday night, with Hacks taking home a surprise best comedy series win. In addition, the show’s star Jean Smart won best actress in a comedy series. Hacks was a surprise winner over The Bear, which won best comedy series last year. However, the latter did collect four other big wins, including acting nods for three of the show’s castmembers: Jeremy Allen White (best lead actor in a comedy series), Liza Colón-Zayas (best supporting actress, becoming the first Latina to ever win in the category) and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (best supporting actor). In addition, Christopher Storer won best directing for a comedy series for the show. With its total 2024 Emmy wins, The Bear set a new record for most wins in a single season for a comedy with 11, besting its own tally from last year when it won 10. Shogun collected four wins, including best drama series. In addition, Anna Sawai won best actress in a drama series, while Hiroyuki Sanada was named best actor, with the two becoming the first Japanese actors ever to win Emmys. Frederick E.O. Toye won best directing for the show. Read more about Shogun’s historic Emmys wins.

Baby Reindeer also picked up four wins, including best limited or anthology series. Richard Gadd was named best actor in a limited or anthology series or movie and also collected the writing Emmy in the genre. His co-star Jessica Gunning won best supporting actress in a limited or anthology series or movie. Elsewhere in the acting categories, Elizabeth Debicki won best supporting actress in a drama series for The Crown, while Billy Crudup took home best supporting actor in a drama series for The Morning Show. Lamorne Morris won best supporting actor in a limited or anthology series or movie for Fargo, while Jodie Foster won best actress in the genre for True Detective: Night Country. Last Week Tonight With John Oliver was named best scripted variety series, beating Saturday Night Live, while The Traitors dethroned perennial winner RuPaul’s Drag Race as best reality competition program. The Daily Show won the Emmy for best talk series. In the writing categories, Alex Edelman: Just for Us won for best variety special, while Will Smith won for his work on the drama series Slow Horses. Steven Zaillian won best directing for a limited series or anthology series or movie for Ripley. Also during the ceremony, the Governors Award was presented to Greg Berlanti by Matt Bomer and Joshua Jackson.

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Lead Stories

Arizona school voucher program causes budget meltdown

In 2022, Arizona pioneered the largest school voucher program in the history of education. Under a new law, any parent in the state, no matter how affluent, could get a taxpayer-funded voucher worth up to tens of thousands of dollars to spend on private school tuition, extracurricular programs or homeschooling supplies. In just the past two years, nearly a dozen states have enacted sweeping voucher programs similar to Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account system, with many using it as a model. Yet in a lesson for these other states, Arizona’s voucher experiment has since precipitated a budget meltdown. The state this year faced a $1.4 billion budget shortfall, much of which was a result of the new voucher spending, according to the Grand Canyon Institute, a local nonpartisan fiscal and economic policy think tank. Last fiscal year alone, the price tag of universal vouchers in Arizona skyrocketed from an original official estimate of just under $65 million to roughly $332 million, the Grand Canyon analysis found; another $429 million in costs is expected this year.

As a result of all this unexpected spending, alongside some recent revenue losses, Arizona is now having to make deep cuts to a wide swath of critical state programs and projects, the pain of which will be felt by average Arizonans who may or may not have school-aged children. Among the funding slashed: $333 million for water infrastructure projects, in a state where water scarcity will shape the future, and tens of millions of dollars for highway expansions and repairs in congested areas of one of the nation’s fastest-growing metropolises — Phoenix and its suburbs. Also nixed were improvements to the air conditioning in state prisons, where temperatures can soar above 100 degrees. Arizona’s community colleges, too, are seeing their budgets cut by $54 million. Still, Arizona-style universal school voucher programs — available to all, including the wealthiest parents — continue to sweep the nation, from Florida to Utah. In Florida, one lawmaker pointed out last year that Arizona’s program seemed to be having a negative budgetary impact. “This is what Arizona did not anticipate,” said Florida Democratic Rep. Robin Bartleman, during a floor debate. “What is our backup plan to fill that budget hole?”

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Control of House heads toward another cliffhanger election

Just eight minutes apart, the two political arms competing for the House majority blasted out memos claiming momentum, citing the exact same analysis. “Inside Elections shifts six races toward Democrats as momentum grows,” the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee wrote a little past 4 p.m. Thursday. “Inside Elections: House Republicans still the favorite,” the National Republican Congressional Committee boasted in its memo soon after. That’s a sign of just how close the race for the House is: Each side found something tangible to praise in the latest report from the independent political analysis organization. The battle for the House is now fully resembling trench warfare, a political hand-to-hand combat.

The two most storied political analysis shops, Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales and the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, published reports that backed up Democratic claims of new momentum from Vice President Kamala Harris’s emergence in the presidential contest. Yet both give Republicans a decent chance of retaining the majority in the House. Inside Elections noted that Republicans are “still slight favorites to hold the House” but estimated that the range of outcomes is a mere “Democratic gain of five seats to a Republican gain of five seats.” The Cook Report delivered basically the same message. “We ultimately believe the most likely outcome is a single-digit gain for either party,” wrote Erin Covey, the organization’s House analyst. That’s either enough to give Democrats the barest of margins, leaving them fearful of illnesses to determine their majority status on any given day, or enough to leave a narrow Republican majority staring down a group of 15 to 20 staunch conservatives who upended much of the GOP agenda over the past two years.

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Wall Street turns skittish on eve of rate cuts

The cliché that investors hate uncertainty has been ringing true since early August, when signs of a weakening job market sparked a debate over whether the Fed has waited too long to cut rates. Stock and bond markets have become volatile after what had been a remarkably calm year. Investors are now trying to discern whether recent economic data is simply showing a hot economy returning to normal or the early glimmer of a recession. Analysts say stock and bond markets appear to disagree on the answer. That disconnect is setting up one of the most anticipated Fed meetings in recent memory. Investors will be closely watching Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference for commentary on the economy, along with the so-called dot plot, where Fed officials forecast rates over the longer term.

“Markets have been on edge for the last month or two,” said Rick Rieder, chief investment officer for fixed income at BlackRock. “You’ve seen bonds move rapidly from a sanguine view to recession.” Traders in interest-rate derivatives are now pricing in a benchmark rate of about 2.75% by the end of next year, down from about 5.25% now. That would equate to 10 standard-size, quarter-point rate cuts—something the Fed is likely to do only in response to a recession. Stocks, meanwhile, offer a much more bullish view. The S&P 500 has posted several ugly one-day selloffs in the past six weeks but has bounced back each time. The index is up 18% for the year and just 0.7% from its record high. Analysts say the stock market reflects optimism that the Fed will be able to stave off a recession. Stock indexes have also been buoyed by huge gains in technology companies that some argue are less exposed to the fate of the wider economy. So, which view is correct? Many investors are noting parallels to the end of last year, when the bond market rapidly priced in six rate cuts for 2024.

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Elon Musk spent over $650K to fund PAC's attempts to unseat DA Jose´ Garza, WSJ reports

Elon Musk covertly funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars into a Travis County election in an attempt to block a prosecutor's reelection, according to an exclusive report by the Wall Street Journal. Here's a breakdown of what the business and finance outlet uncovered. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO primarily funded Saving Austin, now called Saving Texas. The group tried (and ultimately failed) to unseat Travis County District Attorney Jose´ Garza in the March Democratic primary. Saving Austin circulated fliers and texts, along with spending over $650,000 on television ads, to attack Garza, according to sources familiar with Musk's involvement and Federal Communications Commission and corporate documents. The political action committee accused Garza of having "radical ideology" and "letting violent criminals out of jail in Austin." Fliers featured a bloody teddy bear with text that reads, "Jose´ Garza is filling Austin's streets with pedophiles and killers. The next victim could be your loved one." The back of the flier depicts a man's hand covering a child's mouth, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Despite being significantly outraised by opponent Jeremy Sylestine, Garza won the Democratic primary. In predominantly blue Travis County, Garza will likely also defeat Republican challenger Daniel Betts in the Nov. 5 general election. In June, Bell County Attorney Jim Nichols, a Republican, dismissed a lawsuit seeking to remove Garza from office. The lawsuit claimed the DA had a policy of not prosecuting certain cases, but Nichols wrote he found no such policies in place. Two months earlier, another case sought to remove Garza under a "rogue prosecutor" statute. Travis County resident Mary Elizabeth Dupuis claimed Garza's alleged refusal to prosecute certain criminal offenses qualified as "official misconduct" as outlined by Texas House Bill 17. Musk, whose net worth is over $250 billion, has become a highly visible supporter of former President Donald Trump — so much so that he was recently promised a leadership position for the "Government Efficiency Task Force" if Trump is reelected as president in November. Musk has previously been said to plan to make large donations to a super PAC supporting Trump, which he denies. In July, he made national headlines when rumors began circulating that he had pledged to donate $45 million to Trump every month. "What’s been reported in the media is simply not true," Musk told commentator Jordan Peterson during an interview on X. "I am not donating $45 million a month to Trump."

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State Stories

Korean ambassador touts Williamson County as 'top destination' for foreign investment

Williamson County was touted as the "top destination" for foreign investment from South Korea during a recent visit from the country's lead diplomat. Hyundong Cho, South Korea's ambassador to the U.S. and Philip Goldberg, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, stopped by Taylor High School on Wednesday to discuss the area's semiconductor industry and economic development. "Texas has become the major trading partner [of] Korea, and also, Texas has become the top destination of Korea's investment in the United States," Cho told reporters during the visit. Over the past 10 years, companies from South Korea have invested more than $48 billion in 47 projects throughout state, according to the Texas governor's office. One of those projects is Samsung's new, $17-billion semiconductor manufacturing plant that is currently being constructed in Taylor.

Semiconductors — also known as microchips — are a key part of nearly all modern electronic devices. Samsung said its facility in Taylor will "boost the production of semiconductor solutions that will power next-generation technologies" including 5G, artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. "The relationship between the Republic of Korea and the United States is something that we treasure. It was forged in blood during the Korean War, and now has expanded into whole new areas, and one of them, and one of the most important, is in the business relationships," said Goldberg. "And that's epitomized here in Williamson County and the City of Taylor, Texas." Last year, Williamson County signed its first-ever international economic mutual cooperation agreement with South Korea's trade agency in an effort to bring more manufacturing suppliers to the area. Local officials agreed to provide South Korean companies information to help them do business in the county. This includes details to help understand and navigate the business environment, policies, and legal and tax regulations. "The cultural differences — it’s very difficult for them to understand the process of coming to the U.S. [and] coming to Texas," Dave Porter, director of Williamson County's Economic Development Partnership, said at the time of the agreement's signing. "So we made it a lot easier for them by introducing ourselves." Since then, the county has become home to more than a dozen new South Korean companies, including several small and medium sized businesses needed to supply Samsung’s new plant in Taylor.

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After contentious hearing, judge promises movement on Walmart shooting case by end of month

Christopher Morales watched for 40 minutes as prosecutors and defense lawyers sparred in court over how many months or years might pass before a trial can be held for the man accused of killing his aunt and 22 other people at an El Paso Walmart more than five years ago. He then watched for 10 more minutes as District Attorney Bill Hicks and defense attorney Joe Spencer talked about the hearing at news conferences outside the courtroom. He couldn’t take it any more. “This is about the people who were slaughtered that day, and they (lawyers) are making a mess of it. And the only people who are hurting and who need to be surrounded (are) the victims,” Morales said after stepping in front of TV cameras to be heard. “This is not about him. He brutally slaughtered people that day,” Morales said of accused killer Patrick Crusius, 26. Morales’ aunt, Teresa Sanchez, was killed in the Aug. 3, 2019, shooting at the Cielo Vista Walmart, and his mother and grandmother survived gunshot wounds.

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Quinn Ewers injury update: Texas football QB enters locker room, Arch Manning steps in

Texas football star quarterback Quinn Ewers exited the Longhorns' game against UTSA on Saturday after straining his abdomen in the first half. Ewers limped off the field and entered the medical tent after the play, later heading off to the locker room. Ewers then reappeared without his uniform in street clothes, likely ending his day. Ewers, a third-year starting quarterback, was replaced by five-star redshirt freshman Arch Manning, who immediately threw a 19-yard touchdown pass to DeAndre Moore Jr. Ewers would certainly be a big loss for Texas if he is unable to return or miss future games, as the Heisman Trophy hopeful passed for 506 yards with six touchdowns and an interception heading into the UTSA matchup. Before exiting, Ewers was an efficient 14 of 16 passing for 185 yards with two touchdowns and an interception.

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Judge to decide on temporary restraining order in voter registration dispute

New developments in a voter's rights showdown between the Bexar County Attorney General's Office and the State AG. On Monday, August 16, both sides are expected to present oral arguments addressing Ken Paxton’s request for a temporary restraining order. This comes after Paxton sued Bexar County last week over its plan to hire a private company to mail out voter registration forms to eligible citizens on the taxpayer's dime. A judge will determine if a ruling will be issued immediately following the arguments or at a later date.

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Spring Branch ISD trial pits election experts against each other, trustees deny voter suppression claims

The federal trial between Spring Branch ISD and a parent alleging the district violated the voting rights act sheds light on what the plaintiffs characterized as vast inequities fueled by a lack of elected representation from the district's northside. Cross-examinations between the plaintiff Virginia Elizondo’s lawyer, Barry Abrams, and three Spring Branch ISD trustees grew tense Thursday and Friday as Trustees Chris Earnest, John Perez and Courtney Anderson advocated for the at-large system the district uses that allows voters to cast ballots for all seven seats on the school board. That system, the plaintiff's side argued, dilutes the Hispanic vote from the north side of the district, a population that encompasses more than half of Spring Branch ISD’s students and forms a majority of the voting-age population in at least one single-member district.

Perez, a Hispanic trustee elected in 2022, fervently denied that claim. “There is no one lived experience of Hispanics in the district,” he said. “A single Hispanic isn’t going to be able to walk in and understand the tapestry of Hispanic lived experiences… You’re looking at ideologies and political factions across the Hispanic community that no single person is going to say ‘I have the unified banner.’” He also took offense to the term “token Hispanic,” which the judge and the plaintiff used to describe his position and asked the plaintiff to apologize “on behalf of the district.” Earnest, who along with Perez and Anderson represents himself as a conservative and ran on a platform of conservative values, said that he believed the at-large system “forces you to consider what’s best for the entire district as opposed to what’s best for my kids.” When the board voted earlier this year to make $35 million in budget cuts, for example, Earnest decided to eliminate Stratford High School’s block schedule, a decision that upset many of his friends with children at the school, but he believed was best for the district overall.

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Texas publics are seeing more students in developmental courses. Where is the trend coming from?

Texas’ largest public universities have seen an increase in the numbers of students enrolling in developmental English and math courses designed to prepare students for college-level classes in the past five years, causing some educators to question whether the trend is a symptom of the pandemic’s effects on college readiness. Several university officials say the increases provide only a piece of the picture, as students signed up for so-called “developmental" or foundational courses are a portion of those who receive interventions after being deemed underprepared for college. But course enrollment data provides a glimpse into what higher education leaders suspect to be a larger problem. "We're really concerned with math readiness, as everybody else is," said David Troutman, deputy commissioner for academic affairs and innovation at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Students can be accepted into Texas public universities even if failing scores on the Texas Success Initiative exam label them as not ready for college. While they might have met the school’s admissions requirements, such as GPA or class ranking thresholds, poor grades on the TSI test generally push students into developmental courses so they can remediate core math or English skills for better results in future classes. Some exemptions exist for students to show college readiness by other measures, including meeting minimum ACT or SAT scores. The state’s most recently published Texas Success Initiative data showed about 15% of university students were underprepared for college, also facing lower graduation rates than their college-ready classmates, according to a 2021 report from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Texas Woman's University, Texas A&M University, Texas State University, Texas Tech University, Texas Woman's University, University of Houston and University of Texas at Austin logged rises in enrollment for most developmental courses, according to data obtained by the Houston Chronicle. Data for the University of North Texas was not immediately available.

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Rapid development transforms North Texas city of Springtown

Springtown bills itself as the place “where country meets living.” Cynthia Courtney and her parents have long embodied the motto. The family lives in a spacious and lush two-building lot at the end of a cul-de-sac two turns off Texas 199. They bought the property in the early 1980s, when much of the surrounding land was pasture ably serviced by the city’s still patchy, cramped country roads. Larry Jackson, Courtney’s father, grew up near Haltom City. He couldn’t wait to leave. “You could raise your window and spit on the house next door. I couldn’t stand it,” he said of his childhood home. The 78-year-old sat in a homemade gazebo in the middle of his yard decorated with old license plates and playful signage, including a green placard mandating: “No Farting.” Light rain pattered the metal paneling on the roof. “You moved out here to get away from the crowds,” he said.

In recent years, thousands have followed Jackson’s path, settling in Springtown and surrounding communities to enjoy cheaper homes, fewer people, and what remains of its unspoiled natural landscape — all while keeping Fort Worth within reach. Sensitive to the swell, Arlington-based construction giant D.R. Horton built a subdivision of roughly 100 starter homes right behind Jackson’s fence line, further cementing the firm’s status as the nation’s most prolific homebuilder. Early anxieties about noise and new traffic gave way to genuine grievance over the past year. Construction, Jackson and some neighbors say, upended the natural drainage pattern of the land. Big downpours, typically manageable, have since caused substantial flooding on their properties. Runoff from D.R. Horton homes has eroded their soil, and rain now pools in their yards. Springtown leaders maintain the city has done its due diligence, vetting the developer’s plans, pointing out flaws as they arose, and advocating for existing residents as much as local ordinances and state laws allow. Courtney said D.R. Horton has yet to effectively resolve the problem, despite making some fixes and offering to pay for the damages. (D.R. Horton did not respond to multiple requests for comment.) She blames city officials for doing too little to pressure them. “‘We’re big, you’re little; we can push you around and you don’t have any say so,’” Courtney said of D.R. Horton’s attitude. “The city is there to protect their citizens, to stand up for their citizens,” she continued, “not to let their citizens be run over by businesses that aren’t even local.”

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Tarrant DA moves to block request for jail death autopsy report

The Tarrant medical examiner ruled she died of natural causes, but county authorities have appealed to the Texas attorney general to block the release of Chasity Bonner’s autopsy report through open records requests. Bonner died in the Tarrant County jail on May 27. The medical examiner released the results of the autopsy earlier this month, concluding the 35-year-old mother of two died a natural death due to heart disease. Bonner’s aunt, Pamela Taylor, and four media outlets, including the Star-Telegram, have requested her full autopsy report through open records requests. The Tarrant County criminal district attorney notified the requesters on Thursday that, acting on behalf of the medical examiner, it had asked the Texas attorney general to rule that it withhold the report, citing the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office’s criminal investigation into Bonner’s death.

On Sept. 6, Taylor received an email from the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office requesting that she withdraw her request, as Bonner’s death was still the subject of a criminal investigation. After asking the DA about the request on Sept. 9, the office sent the Star-Telegram a similar request. Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Robbie Hoy told the Star-Telegram in an email last week that the department’s Criminal Investigations Division investigates all in-custody deaths and that the case would be closed as “soon as the Medical Examiner’s Office sends us the official report.” However, the ball appears to be in the Sheriff’s Office’s court. John Briggs, the chief forensic death investigator and interim spokesperson for the medical examiner’s office, told the Star-Telegram in an email on Thursday that the Sheriff’s Office only has to request the autopsy report in order for the documents to be sent. He did not immediately respond to an inquiry into why the office requested the report be withheld.

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Bud Kennedy: Another Texan and Bush Republican backs Harris over Trump. Will it matter?

The most surprising presidential endorsement of the week was not from Taylor Swift, America’s favorite “childless cat lady,” or her beloved Ragdoll cat, Benjamin. The shock of the week — or maybe not — came from Texan Alberto Gonzales, a Houston Republican and one of the highest-ranking Hispanic officials in American history. Gonzales rose from a family of nine packed into a two-bedroom house to become Texas’ secretary of state, a Texas Supreme Court justice and U.S. attorney general, all under George W. Bush. When Donald Trump first ran for president in 2016, Gonzales wrote a commentary in The Washington Post defending Trump’s harsh comments about judges. But at some point after the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot — maybe before — Gonzales had seen enough. He now has endorsed Kamala Harris for president.

Gonzales joined former Vice President Dick Cheney in the trickle of Republicans with Texas and Bush administration roots turning away from Trump. “This talk about the United States being in decline, becoming a Third World country — that we’re a disgrace — was an embarrassment,” Gonzales told CNN anchor John Berman, who was almost incredulous at the news. In a year when Republicans hope to flip U.S. and state House seats in South Texas, Gonzales wrote in a Politico commentary that the Democratic nominee is the “best suited, able and committed to unite us in a manner consistent with the rule of law.” Texas Republicans now boo and hiss former Bush administration officials and nearly every Republican who came before Trump. So, even if it’s not a surprise that Gonzales sides with Harris, it’s a surprise that he is so emphatic. “I can’t sit quietly as Donald Trump — perhaps the most serious threat to the rule of law in a generation — eyes a return to the White House,” Gonzales wrote in Politico. Gonzales wrote that Trump’s rhetoric and conduct show “little evidence that he has the integrity and character to responsibly wield the power of the presidency within the limits of the law.”

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FWISD trustees to review superintendent’s performance amid questions of leadership

Superintendent Angélica Ramsey’s record with Fort Worth ISD is going under the microscope. The school board called a special meeting for Sept. 17 to discuss Ramsey’s contract, a sign that trustees are considering whether she is the right top administrator amid questions about her leadership. The special meeting comes three weeks after Mayor Mattie Parker said a leadership vacuum existed in the school district after a decade of languishing and stagnant academic achievement. Tensions between the school board and Ramsey, who receives an annual salary of $335,000, reached a boiling point after Parker spoke to trustees during their regular meeting in late August. In February, Ramsey said the school board breached her contract over differences about her evaluation. In July, the school board gave Ramsey a $15,000 retirement bonus, the lowest contractually obligated amount, and did not extend her contract past its end date of July 26, 2026. One of the school board’s primary responsibilities is to hire and evaluate — or fire — their school district’s superintendent, the sole district employee who reports directly to trustees.

The catalyst for Parker’s comments was, as she described it, the unacceptable state of Fort Worth ISD’s academic results. State standardized test data from spring 2024 shows the district trailing 11 percentage points behind Dallas ISD, 14 points behind Houston ISD and 18 behind Brownsville ISD. Across all subjects, 1 in 4 students in Fort Worth ISD met grade level. About 1 in 3 students met grade level in reading, while 1 in 4 met grade level in math. Ramsey’s July evaluation was not based on state standardized test results. The superintendent touted academic improvements when administrators released district-calculated and self-reported A-F accountability ratings for 2023 and 2024, two years when the state was legally barred from issuing official grades for Texas schools. Trustees questioned the unofficial ratings during a Sept. 10 school board workshop meeting. Teachers throughout the district have also expressed frustration over Ramsey’s leadership. A group of educators told the Report they deal with mounds of paperwork to meet district leaders’ calls for data-driven instruction; technology issues that plague students and staff; and campuses that are limited in managing discipline issues.

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‘I’m a Democrat’: Mayor Ron Nirenberg campaigns for Kamala Harris, embraces party label

When Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz landed in Dallas on Monday for a private fundraiser, Mayor Ron Nirenberg was on the tarmac to greet him — the only Texas elected official invited to welcome the Minnesota governor to the state. Nirenberg posted a selfie of himself, Walz, Texas Democratic Party leaders and others to Instagram, with the caption: “Honored to greet our next Vice President in Dallas today. 57 days until election day — let’s make them count!” Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has tapped Nirenberg as a surrogate to stump on behalf of the presidential ticket — a role that takes him to campaign rallies and voters’ homes in swing states and comes with appearances on local and national TV to get the campaign’s message out.

“I think in the weeks to come, it’s just going to ramp up in terms of frequency and intensity,” Nirenberg said. “Essentially, any free time I have, we’re trying to fill it with surrogate activities.” For much of his political career — first as a North Side City Council member and then as mayor, both of which are nonpartisan offices — Nirenberg, 47, has cast himself as an independent. But as his fourth and final term comes to a close next May, the term-limited mayor is fully embracing partisan politics. “I’m a Democrat,” Nirenberg said. “It is very clear that the Democratic Party is the only party of solutions to the challenges that we’re facing in America right now.” Nirenberg has been a regular visitor to the White House during the Biden administration, whether to attend an official state dinner or, as he did in early June, to stand alongside President Joe Biden as the administration unveiled a new policy (in that case, an executive order to restrict the number of asylum-seekers allowed to cross the border). His role in the Harris campaign has reignited speculation that Nirenberg could be tapped, and is positioning himself, for a key role in her administration, if she wins election Nov. 5.

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Juarez traffickers using drones to drop drugs in El Paso

Federal officials in El Paso confirmed a Mexican police chief’s report that members of organized criminal groups are using drones to drop off drugs across the border into El Paso. “In the area of the (Big Red X) monument, they have been using drones to cross packages of drugs and drop them off on the other side,” Chihuahua Public Safety Director Gilberto Loya told reporters on Thursday. The site also known as Plaza de la Mexicanidad is about 100 yards south of the Rio Grande and the U.S. border wall. The monument itself is on the grounds of the Juarez Fair and has long been used as a geographical landmark for migrants seeking to turn themselves in to the U.S. Border Patrol.

Border Report reached out to some U.S. law enforcement agencies and a federal official confirmed drug-drone encounters in South-Central El Paso. The official could not immediately quantify the number of drones or type or amount of drugs encountered. Juarez cartels in the past couple of years have specialized in the sale and trafficking of methamphetamine, particularly crystal meth or “ice.” Mexican cartels have stepped up their use of drones not only to deliver drugs, but also to conduct surveillance on police and the Mexican army, and in southern Mexico to attack rivals with homemade bombs. Loya on Thursday said his officers have downed several cartel drones in the mountain areas of Chihuahua, which borders Texas and New Mexico. The encounters mostly took place in the southern portion of the state that abuts Mexico’s “Golden Triangle” of drug production. It’s near the juncture of the states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua.

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Texas Jews say state’s new Bible-influenced curriculum is ‘wildly problematic’

The portrayal of Jewish people became a main point of contention Tuesday during a state school board hearing about Texas’s new reading curriculum that predominantly features the Bible and Christianity over other faiths. During several hours of public testimony before the State Board of Education, multiple speakers noted negative or inaccurate representations of Judaism and a lack of attention to contemporary Jewish life or Americans. Sharyn Vane, one of the speakers who addressed the board, called the new program, branded as Bluebonnet Learning, “wildly problematic in its depictions of Jews and Judaism.” She referred to a second grade lesson on Queen Esther in which Haman, an official of the Persian king, cast lots to decide when to kill the Jews. The lesson includes students playing a game of dice. “This is shocking, offensive and just plain wrong. Do we ask elementary schoolers to pretend to be Hitler?”

Another speaker pointed to how fourth graders are asked to highlight positive aspects of the Crusades. “We were being murdered en masse,” Emily Bourgeois, public affairs director for Shalom Austin, said about the persecution of Jews during the Middle Ages. “There’s not really a whole lot of benefit to that.” The public’s comments, while more critical than favorable, demonstrated the intense pressure on board members to either tone down the emphasis on the Bible, add more references to other world religions or accept the proposed curriculum as is. The Texas Education Agency, which developed it, now has until Oct. 14 to complete any revisions before the board votes in November on a final list of approved materials. Groups opposed to the biblical content have urged the board to reject lessons that they say come close to proselytizing. But conservative organizations, especially religious ones, have encouraged their networks in recent weeks to bombard members with emails calling for approval of the state-developed materials with no changes. ??”The Bible is the single most impactful piece of literature. It is the single biggest influence on the formation of Western civilization,” Aaron Harris, a political consultant who has been countering opposition to the materials, said during the hearing. “Any denial of that fact is just silly.” Some board members seem to have already made up their minds. In her summer newsletter, Audrey Young, a Republican whose district includes Houston, said not including the Bible in the curriculum will “continue to severely limit [students’] opportunity for academic success.”

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City Stories

San Antonio launches nation's first Mexican American Civil Rights Museum

The Mexican American Civil Rights Institute (MACRI) celebrated a significant milestone with the creation of the nation's first Mexican American Civil Rights Museum. The City of San Antonio along with our elected officials shared the next phase of developing a national permanent museum. The Mexican American Civil Rights Institute, based in San Antonio, launched in 2019, is an emerging national museum and archive dedicated to preserving Mexican American civil rights history. They operate out of its visitor center, located on Buena Vista Street on the city's West Side. Marci is working to decide which of the 5 sites recommended in the study will become the museum's forever home.

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National Stories

Kamala Harris' surprisingly strong polling in state Dems lost for 60 years

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris only trails Republican nominee former President Donald Trump by single digits in Alaska, a state that a Democratic presidential hopeful hasn't won in six decades. The last time a Democratic presidential candidate won Alaska was President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964—exactly 60 years ago. The GOP has won the state in every presidential election since then, carrying the state by comfortable double-digit margins in recent cycles. Trump's margin did shrink in Alaska between 2016 and 2020. In his first election against Hillary Clinton, he carried the state by nearly 15 points, but that went down to a lead of 10 points when he was up against President Joe Biden. Notably, Alaskans bucked Trump's favored Senate and House candidates in the 2022 midterm election.

Democratic Representative Mary Peltola and anti-Trump GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski won their races despite Trump endorsing their opponents and campaigning against them. They were buoyed by Alaska's new ranked-choice voting system, in which voters get to list and rank multiple options for each office on the ballot. Newsweek reached out to the Trump and Harris campaigns for comment via email on Saturday morning. New polling conducted by Alaska Survey Research from September 11 to 12, after the ABC News debate between Harris and Trump, showed the Democrat down by 5 points with likely voters in the northwestern state. Harris had the support of 42 percent of respondents, whereas Trump had the backing of 47 percent. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was running as an independent but endorsed Trump in late August, received 5 percent support. An additional 6 percent said they were still undecided. Sixty-seven percent of respondents said they had watched the debate between Harris and Trump, with 52 percent saying Harris had won.

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Interest rates are too high. The Fed should cut by a half point.

The Federal Reserve’s interest-rate decision this week looks more difficult than it should be. The real question isn’t how much to cut, but where rates ought to be. The answer is much lower. That argues for a half-point cut. The case for a bigger cut starts by examining why the Fed’s short-term rate target is now 5.25% to 5.5%, the highest since 2001. The Fed pushed it there last summer because underlying inflation was well above 3% and, with the labor market overheated, the Fed was afraid it would get stuck there. It was willing to cause a recession to prevent that. Fast forward to today, and some key underlying measures of inflation are below 3%, some within range of the Fed’s 2% target. The labor market is cool, if not actually cold. A recession now serves no useful purpose. True, there isn’t much evidence a recession is in the offing. But waiting for that evidence is tempting fate.

A year ago inflation as measured by the consumer-price index was 3.2%. In August, it was 2.5%. In that time, core inflation, which excludes food and energy, has fallen from 4.2% to an estimated 2.7%, using the Fed’s preferred gauge, the price index of personal-consumption expenditures, or PCE. The gap between 2.7% and the Fed’s 2% target largely reflects the lagged effects of higher housing, auto and other prices from a few years ago. Some alternative indexes attempt to exclude such idiosyncratic factors. Harvard University economist Jason Furman averages several over different time horizons to yield a single, PCE-equivalent underlying inflation rate. It was 2.2% in August, the lowest since early 2021. Inflation is likely to keep falling. Oil has plunged from $83 a barrel in early July to below $70 on Friday. This will directly lower headline inflation and, indirectly, core inflation because oil is an input into almost every business. A study by Robert Minton, now at the Fed, and Brian Wheaton at the University of California, Los Angeles, found oil can explain 16% of fluctuations in core inflation, and it takes two years for 80% of the effect to show up.

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They died with the AC off. Why the government pays for heating but not cooling.

Millions of Americans are endangered by extreme heat due to federal policies that steer billions of dollars away from the nation’s hottest regions. At least a dozen government agencies oversee programs that ignore or minimize the threat of extreme heat as rising temperatures shatter historical records across the U.S., an investigation by POLITICO’s E&E News found. Disregard for the health dangers of heat is embedded in federal laws and regulations written decades ago, when home heating costs were soaring, air conditioning was rare and the risks of climate change were not widely understood. The programs treat extreme heat as a discomfort rather than today’s deadliest weather events by denying millions of people federal aid to cool their homes and barring homeowners from using tax credits and government-backed mortgages to pay for window air conditioners.

The policies belie the Biden administration’s unprecedented flood of grants, regulations and tax incentives aimed at reducing climate pollution and strengthening the nation against the effects of climate change. The administration has promoted heat safety extensively, proposed workplace heat protection mandates and spent hundreds of billions of dollars on green energy, emissions reductions and energy efficiency. “We do not currently have the climate that most of our buildings, our laws, policies, formulas and grants were designed around,” said Grace Wickerson, health equity policy manager for the Federation of American Scientists. The White House did not respond to requests for comment. Low-income people from Florida to Arizona are forced to turn off air conditioning, live in poorly insulated homes or simply forgo cooling equipment due to longstanding federal policies. The nation’s disaster apparatus, which has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to protect people and rebuild from storms and other weather-related perils, does not consider extreme heat a catastrophe. “Natural hazards, including hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, droughts, wildfires, winter storms, and floods, present a significant and varied risk across the country,” says the government’s National Preparedness Goal, omitting the only weather danger that killed more than 2,300 people last year. The disregard has persisted as temperatures across the U.S. climb to levels never recorded by humans, resulting in 201,000 extreme heat events in the U.S. between 2019 and 2023 — a fourfold increase from 30 years earlier.

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Kamala Harris helped shut down Backpage.com. Sex workers are still feeling the fallout.

t was 2016, and California prosecutors were mulling an audacious bid to shut down the internet’s most popular clearinghouse for sex-related services. Their boss, Kamala Harris, pressed her deputies to aggressively prosecute the founders of the website, Backpage.com. Her office brought the first-ever criminal charges targeting the site, and the case came to exemplify Harris’ tough-on-crime reputation as state attorney general. Now, as she runs for president, she is touting her prosecutorial record, including what she frequently describes as her efforts to combat human trafficking. She even highlighted the shutdown of Backpage at the Democratic National Convention. “Every politician of every party is on the bandwagon to say what they’ve done to fight human trafficking, right?” said Maggy Krell, who was one of Harris’ deputies in the California attorney general’s office and worked on the Backpage case. “What’s unique about Harris is she started it all. She literally started it all.”

The charges Harris brought against Backpage never went to trial. But they sparked a nationwide crackdown against the site, including a follow-on federal case that has been making its way through the courts for nearly a decade. Last month, after a meandering legal saga in that follow-on case, the website’s 76-year-old co-founder was sentenced to five years in prison on a federal money-laundering charge. He reported on Wednesday to begin serving his sentence, while his lawyers appeal. But some advocates on the left see Harris’ approach to Backpage — and to sex work more broadly — as overly punitive. Before the site was shuttered, they say, it primarily served as a place where sex workers safely connected with — and vetted — adult clients for consensual services. They say that Backpage cooperated with authorities to identify sex trafficking and that, by driving the market for consensual sex-related services to more obscure corners of the internet (or back into the streets), the shutdown of the site hampered efforts to investigate underage or coerced prostitution. “Unfortunately, Kamala Harris is just one of many, many politicians to conflate adult, consensual prostitution with horrific, violent, gender-based violence,” said Kaytlin Bailey, the host of “The Oldest Profession Podcast” and founder of the group Old Pros, which advocates for the decriminalization of sex work. Harris’ campaign did not respond to repeated requests for comment about her role in the Backpage shutdown — or her current views about criminalizing prostitution, an issue on which she’s been inconsistent. Early in her career as a prosecutor, she mocked the idea of decriminalization and said sex workers should be arrested. But in 2019, when she was pivoting to the left during her first bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, she backtracked from that position.

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Hillary Clinton is back, with a fourth memoir. Is there anything new to say?

“Something Lost, Something Gained” is Hillary Clinton’s 13th book (including the ones she has co-written) and fourth memoir. So it seems an odd place to admit, as she does, that “sharing my most personal reflections does not come naturally.” Clinton claims to prefer writing about politics, but says: “I hope that combining the two — the broccoli and the ice cream, if you will — makes for a rewarding meal.” Well, no. It’s as unappetizing as that image makes it sound. This is an eat-your-broccoli sort of book. So much broccoli, so little dessert. At age 76, and after more than three decades in the national political arena, Clinton remains a commanding, influential and remarkable figure. Her books, alas, are not. So much of “Something Lost, Something Gained” — its title a riff on a Joni Mitchell lyric, but also a reference to the 2016 election — reads like the State of the Union address that the former senator and secretary of state dreamed of giving.

If you read the news, you will find few surprises here. Clinton preaches to the converted, her legion of admirers who will happily pay $30 for this book because they know precisely where she stands. Those fans will be able to meet Clinton on her extensive book tour, which, like any rock star’s, offers four levels of “experiences.” As a politician, it’s admirable that she mentions the plight of Afghan women, of women everywhere, and the perils of too much screen time for children. As a writer, it’s interminable. Clinton remains furious about Donald Trump’s hush money deal with Stormy Daniels, and that the adult-film star staying hushed possibly tipped the outcome of the 2016 election. While Clinton regrets “basket of deplorables” as “an unfortunate choice of words and bad politics,” in the years since she believes deplorable is “too kind a word for the hate and violent extremism we’ve seen from some Trump supporters.”

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'It just exploded': Springfield woman claims she never meant to spark false rumors about Haitians

The woman behind an early Facebook post spreading a harmful and baseless claim about Haitian immigrants eating local pets that helped thrust a small Ohio city into the national spotlight says she had no firsthand knowledge of any such incident and is now filled with regret and fear as a result of the ensuing fallout. “It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Erika Lee, a Springfield resident, told NBC News on Friday. Lee recently posted on Facebook about a neighbor’s cat that went missing, adding that the neighbor told Lee she thought the cat was the victim of an attack by her Haitian neighbors.

Newsguard, a media watchdog that monitors for misinformation online, found that Lee had been among the first people to publish a post to social media about the rumor, screenshots of which circulated online. The neighbor, Kimberly Newton, said she heard about the attack from a third party, NewsGuard reported. Newton told Newsguard that Lee’s Facebook post misstated her story, and that the owner of the missing cat was “an acquaintance of a friend” rather than her daughter’s friend. Newton could not be reached for comment. Lee said she had no idea the post would become part of a rumor mill that would spiral into the national consciousness. She has since deleted the Facebook post. Other posts have also contributed to the false allegations, including a photo of a man holding a dead goose that was taken in Columbus, Ohio, but was spread by some online as evidence of the claims about Springfield. Graphic video of a woman who allegedly killed and tried to eat a cat was also found not to have originated in Springfield but in Canton, Ohio, and does not have any connection to the Haitian community.

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Lead Stories

The Fed’s rate-cut dilemma: Start big or small?

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell faces a difficult decision as the central bank prepares to cut interest rates next week: Start small or begin big? The central bank is set to reduce rates for the first time since 2020 at its meeting on Sept. 17-18. Because officials have signaled greater confidence that they can make multiple rate cuts over the next several months, they are confronting questions over whether to cut by a traditional 0.25 percentage point or by a larger 0.5 point. Powell kept all his options on the table in a speech last month in Jackson Hole, Wyo., that surprised some of his colleagues with its unambiguous call to turn attention to incipient risks in the jobs market. “The direction of travel is clear, and the timing and pace of rate cuts will depend on incoming data, the evolving outlook and the balance of risks,” he said then. Officials last year raised their benchmark rate to around 5.3%, a two-decade high, and will have held it at that level for the last 14 months to combat inflation, which has declined notably.

They are nervous about keeping interest rates too high for too long amid evidence that higher borrowing costs are working as intended to slow inflation by cooling spending, investment and hiring. They don’t want to let slip through their grasp a soft landing, in which inflation falls without a serious jump in joblessness. Answers to the tactical question over how fast to go could reveal clues about the Fed’s broader strategy. The amount of cuts over the next few months “is going to be a lot more important than whether the first move is 25 or 50, which I think is a close call,” said Jon Faust, who served until earlier this year as a senior adviser to Powell. Recent economic data have been mixed. Several analysts said firmer housing costs in the consumer-price index report Wednesday weakened the case to push through a larger cut next week, sending market expectations of a smaller cut to around 85%, according to CME Group. But a separate report Thursday signaled that underlying prices in the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge were likely to have been considerably milder in August, keeping the door open for the Fed to focus on preventing labor-market softening. Meanwhile, hiring in June and July was weaker than initially reported, but payroll growth improved in August. Layoffs have been low. Claims for jobless benefits last week stood at roughly the same low level of one year ago, the Labor Department said Thursday.

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Trump rules out another debate against Harris as her campaign announces $47M haul in hours afterward

Donald Trump on Thursday ruled out another presidential debate against Kamala Harris as her campaign announced a massive fundraising haul in the hours after the two candidates met on stage. Trump, the Republican nominee, posted on Truth Social that “THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!” following Tuesday’s debate against Harris and his June debate against President Joe Biden. In rejecting another debate, the former president suggested that a “prizefighter” who loses a bout is always the one to call for a rematch. A day earlier, he had said, “I just don’t know,” to the question of whether he would meet Harris for another debate. Some Republicans, including the No. 2 GOP Senator John Thune, have urged Trump to debate against Harris again. While he could still change his mind, his announcement means that Tuesday’s meeting will likely be the only time voters will see the two debate each other before the November election. More than 67 million people watched the Trump-Harris debate.

Harris, the Democratic nominee, said during a rally in North Carolina on Thursday she believes that she and the former president “owe it to voters” to debate again. Meanwhile, her campaign revealed that it had raised $47 million from nearly 600,000 donors in the 24 hours after her Tuesday debate against Trump. “This historic, 24-hour haul reflects a strong and growing coalition of Americans united behind Vice President Harris’ candidacy that knows the stakes this November, and are doing their part to defeat Donald Trump this November,” campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said. The Tuesday debate was the first time that Trump and Harris had met, and the vice president largely controlled the tenor, goading Trump into agitated responses that contained exaggerations and mistruths. It came two months after Trump’s debate against Biden, whose unsteady performance and meandering answers led him to end his reelection bid and endorse Harris as his replacement on the ticket. Trump raised doubts earlier in the campaign as to whether he would debate Harris at all. The two eventually agreed on the Tuesday debate on ABC. Trump called Harris a “no-show” for a debate date that had been proposed earlier this month. Instead of an event with Harris, Trump ended up going on Fox News for a solo town hall with host Sean Hannity. Fox News has issued invitations to both campaigns for a debate in October.

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Houston ISD announces increased security following a 'statewide situation'

Houston ISD announced increased security in a message Thursday, following "a statewide situation involving reports of online and social media posts suggesting several Texas public schools are targets of violence." HISD said it has not confirmed any direct threats to its schools, and that its police department is working with state law enforcement agencies to investigate. "Out of an abundance of caution, we have increased on-campus patrols districtwide to further safeguard our schools. The safety and well-being of our students and staff is our top priority," HISD's statement reads on X Thursday. It added that all threats are assigned to "a criminal investigator." The district did not respond to the Chronicle's request for more information.

HISD sent a message to families Tuesday about investigating the credibility of a social media post alleging there will be a violent shooting at some campuses. The notification to parents did not say which schools received threats. It is unclear at this time if Thursday's alert is the same reason as Tuesday's alert. “We are aware of a social media post that alleges there will be (a) violent shooting on some HISD campuses,” Hamilton Middle School principal DeJonnette Childress said in a message to her school community, posted on X that day. “At this point, we do not know the origin of the post and are investigating the credibility of the threat.” Dallas ISD posted Wednesday on X it is aware of social media posts with unconfirmed threats against North Texas campuses, and that Dallas ISD police is investigating even though no threats are confirmed.

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Far-right activist Laura Loomer's access to Trump reveals a crisis in his campaign

No one can keep former President Donald Trump away from Laura Loomer. Throughout his third presidential campaign, aides and advisers have done their best to shield him from Loomer, a far-right social media influencer, and similar figures who stroke his ego and stoke his basest political instincts. They lost that battle this week, as Loomer traveled on Trump’s jet to his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday and to Sept. 11 memorial services Wednesday. Her presence at the latter infuriated some Democrats and Republicans because one of the many conspiracy theories she has promoted is the false notion that the terrorist assault on the U.S. was an “inside job.” It wasn’t.

Loomer’s return to Trump’s side is pitting key figures in his coalition against one another, testing the strength of a campaign already reeling from his subpar debate performance Tuesday and Democrats’ resurgence in the wake of their July candidate switch. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., major Trump allies in Congress who represent opposite ends of the Republican ideological spectrum, are publicly pressing him to ditch her. Loomer fired back Thursday with a string of invective about Graham. Moreover, her presence reflects Trump’s loss of faith in his campaign aides and their concomitant fear of upsetting him in a time of crisis, according to people familiar with the situation. Last month, he tapped his 2016 campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, to be an adviser to his top advisers — a move widely viewed as a rebuke of the existing leadership crew. A senior official from Trump’s 2020 campaign team said that helps explain why Loomer is no longer being kept at arm’s length.

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State Stories

Juarez shutting down shelter as migrant arrivals plummet

More than 30,000 people pursuing the American dream have taken a temporary respite in a Juarez, Mexico, gym converted to a migrant shelter in 2019. But with a noticeable decrease in asylum-seekers arriving at the border – and an urgent need to keep young people away from drugs, idleness and criminal activity – the city is planning to again repurpose the facility. “I am very enthusiastic about the rescue of Kiki Romero Gym. We are going to invest a lot of money to have basketball and boxing and return this space to the young people of Colonia Azteca,” Mayor Cruz Perez Cuellar said. The facility can accommodate up to 135 migrants in bunk beds placed over the hardwood but has been sparsely populated since June 4. That’s when a White House executive order effectively shut down asylum except through appointments at ports of entry.

The U.S. Border Patrol in July apprehended 11,615 migrants between ports of entry in the El Paso Sector. Most of them were Mexican nationals who typically are looking for temporary work in the United States, not seeking asylum. That compares to 23,478 migrant encounters in May and 30,397 in April. Perez Cuellar said DIF – the city’s child and family protection agency – is remodeling three family centers to accommodate migrant families and unaccompanied minors who might still come. A fourth facility to house women and a fifth for single males will be built in the coming months. All of that is being paid with a $10 million grant from the Mexican federal government. Plans call for the gym to close as a shelter before year’s end to make room for construction. “Obviously, all the people at Kiki Romero will be moved to the new facilities. We don’t know how many because migration trends fluctuate,” Human Rights Office Director Santiago Gonzalez Reyes said.

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Texas lands Zelus Hicks, No. 1 safety in 2026 recruiting class

Days after routing Michigan and climbing to No. 2 in the AP poll, Texas continued its run of late-summer recruiting momentum Thursday afternoon as the Longhorns landed a commitment from four-star safety Zelus Hicks, ESPN's No. 1 safety in the class of 2026. Hicks, the 6-foot-2, 190-pound defensive back from Georgia's Carrollton High School, is the No. 19 prospect in the ESPN Junior 300. He is Texas' third ESPN 300 pledge in the 2026 cycle, joining No. 2 pocket passer Dia Bell and four-star wide receiver Chris Stewart. Hicks held nearly 40 Division I offers and picked the Longhorns over Georgia, Ohio State and USC. Hicks' commitment comes as Texas holds its highest ranking in the AP poll since 2009 and arrives as the latest recruiting victory for Steve Sarkisian & Co. in recent weeks.

The Longhorns recorded a scorching month of August in the 2025 class, landing pledges from five-star defender Jonah Williams (No. 8 in the ESPN 300), top wide receivers Jaime Ffrench (No. 17) and Kaliq Lockett (No. 23) and four-star offensive tackle Nicolai Brooks (No. 129) in the span of 24 days. Texas added another ESPN 300 prospect Saturday when four-star defensive tackle Myron Charles (No. 166) flipped his commitment from Florida State to the Longhorns. As of Thursday, Texas' 2025 class sits at No. 7 in ESPN's latest team rankings for the cycle. In Hicks, the Longhorns now have a defensive cornerstone in the 2026 class. A rangy, physical safety, he totaled 67 tackles with a pair of sacks in his sophomore season at Parkview High School in Lilburn, Georgia, last fall. Hicks transferred to Georgia high school football powerhouse Carrollton ahead of his junior season this fall, joining the program led by five-star quarterback Julian Lewis, ESPN's No. 2 overall prospect in the 2025 class. Upon his commitment, Hicks stands as Texas' second-ranked prospect in 2026. Bell, ESPN's eighth-ranked 2026 prospect and the son of former NBA shooting guard Raja Bell, committed to the Longhorns in June. Stewart, the 6-foot, 180-pound pass catcher from Pearland, Texas, is ESPN's 34th-ranked wide receiver in the cycle.

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Mark Wallace, longtime CEO at Texas Children's Hospital, announces retirement

Mark Wallace, who served as Texas Children’s Hospital’s top executive for more than three decades and helped build the system into a dominant force in pediatric care, announced his retirement Thursday. His last day is Oct. 4. Debra Feigin Sukin, who replaced Wallace as president last year while the latter remained CEO, will step into Wallace’s role. In a news release, Wallace said he had been mulling his retirement since Sukin’s appointment and was “happy with how everything has fallen into place.” “Now, as I embark on this new season — one filled with more time with my wife and my family, friends and perhaps even a few new adventures — I leave with a full heart and deep appreciation for my incredible team,” Wallace said. “I know that Texas Children’s will only get better and better in the years to come and I will always be cheering this phenomenal organization on from wherever life takes me.”

Wallace’s 35-year tenure as the hospital’s top executive has seen Texas Children’s grow from a single building in the Texas Medical Center into the largest pediatric hospital in the nation, with satellite campuses across greater Houston and in Austin. Under his leadership, Texas Children’s has been a hub for clinical milestones and has consistently been ranked among the best children’s hospitals in the country. But Wallace also has presided over periods of turmoil and uncertainty, including sudden departures of top-ranking physicians and financial challenges that led to the recent layoff of nearly 1,000 employees. Board Chair Park Shaper, however, praised Wallace’s “unparalleled vision and integrity” during his tenure. “His compassion, unwavering commitment and genuine care for our patients and staff have made this place more than a hospital, and as we bid farewell, we are grateful to know that his legacy will continue to guide our every step,” Shaper said in a news release.

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Looking for a staycation? These Houston hotels are now Michelin-honored

Ahead of the highly anticipated Michelin Guide’s Texas restaurant list dropping later this year, the French tire company announced its Michelin Keys awards recognizing top hotels across the U.S., Mexico and Canada. Hotel ZaZa’s two locations in Memorial City and Museum District, along with the Post Oak Hotel, each received one “key,” the equivalent of one of three stars Michelin doles out to restaurants. None of the 17 Texas hotels on the list received three keys. Michelin is known for sending its anonymous inspectors to produce independent reviews following a detailed set of standards. “The Michelin Guide is first and foremost not working for the industry,” said Gwendal Poullennec, Michelin Guide’s International Director, during a press conference Thursday. “It is working for the guest.”

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San Antonio leads U.S. cities in population growth, adding 22,000 residents

San Antonio’s population increased more than any other large U.S. city last year, gaining 22,000 residents even as other cities saw their populations plateau – or shrink – as families hightailed to the suburbs, according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday. Three other Texas cities – Fort Worth, New Braunfels and Atascocita – ranked among the top 10 cities nationwide with the greatest population gains from 2022 to 2023, though San Antonio netted at least 7,000 more residents than any of them. The U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey one-year estimates consists of data collected over the course of a single year in geographic areas with at least 65,000 people. The data takes into account everything from the area’s growth to its economic characteristics and housing stock.

San Antonio’s overall growth reflects a 1.5% population increase since 2022, eclipsing Houston, Dallas and Austin, which each saw their populations grow by less than 0.5% during that period. Texas State Demographer Lloyd Potter said today’s San Antonio “feels different” than the city did a decade ago. Potter said several factors have led to San Antonio’s growth, from city ladders’ work to foster economic development, to beefing up housing downtown to the growth of the University of Texas at San Antonio’s student body. As more companies set up shop within the city, San Antonio is becoming a magnet for skilled workers, he said. “??Companies are recognizing that San Antonio is a great place to come and either bring their headquarters or bring a significant portion of their business,” Potter said. “People that generally are moving here tend to be people with higher levels of educational attainment and are working in jobs that are higher-skilled, higher-paid kinds of jobs.” The proportion of San Antonio’s population over the age of 25 with at least a bachelor’s degree increased last year, going from about 29% of the city’s population in 2022 to nearly 31% in 2023.

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Family, civil rights organization demand transparency from HISD weeks after Landon Payton's death

The family of Landon Payton, the 14-year-old who died after suffering a medical emergency in the Marshall Middle School gym, is still searching for answers, a month after the teen's death. The family gathered outside HISD's administration building Thursday at the start of the board meeting with Cesar Espinosa of FIEL, an immigrant-led civil rights organization, and state Rep. Christina Morales. Espinosa, speaking for the family, said the Paytons are calling for transparency on what happened to Landon on Aug. 14. "We are here today to start asking those questions," Espinosa said. "And we are here today to demand that HISD have transparency in this investigation, in this situation. But more importantly, that they offer solutions at the end of the day, so that no family has to go through what this family has gone through."

Espinosa said they have been hearing a task force may be assembled, and Espinosa called for a member of the family to be on the task force if a group is assembled. Attorney Chris Tritico, representing the family, has said the gym's automated external defibrillator was not working at the time of the emergency. The family is waiting to see if a functioning AED could have prevented his death before potentially filing a lawsuit against the district. Morales, whose district includes Marshall, said her office still has not received answers after reaching out to HISD and the Texas Education Agency. "And to be quite frank with you, we haven't gotten any really clear answers after we sent the letter," Morales said, adding that TEA referred Morales' office to HISD for answers. The family, wearing red in honor of Payton, Morales and Espinosa locked arms as they walked to the building. After entering the board room, they remained standing. The board continued with public comment. They took turns holding Payton's photograph, until someone called for the board to say Landon's name. During public comment, Anna Luzuriaga said she was a "very bereaved citizen" with a child the same age as Payton.

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Dozens of female UNT students find ‘creeper’ photos posted to lewd website

“There is a creeper at the University of North Texas’ recreation center." The rumor started circulating last week across social media. Instagram stories and Reddit posts warned female students that they may among the dozens of unsuspecting campus gym users whose photo had been taken and plastered on a website, “Candid Girls," alongside sexually objectifying captions. The website is a forum of rudimentary design that promotes taking and posting images of women who are in public spaces and are unaware their photo is being taken. Individual posts, which are captioned with explicit buzzwords generally reserved for click-bait pornography, receive tens of thousands of clicks and comments. Comments left by users detail the sexual gratification they derived from the images.

When one UNT student, Kate S., saw the warnings of a Candid Girls user targeting the UNT Pohl Recreation Center, she began scouring the site. It didn’t take her long to find one user, whose account has now been deactivated, who boasted a hefty portfolio of “college girl” photos taken in the UNT gym. Kate, who regularly works out at the gym, found dozens of photos of herself. When she scrolled through the user's account, she found images of 57 different women, all taken in the Pohl Rec Center. “I was absolutely horrified. My heart dropped … The first thing was just like, how did I not know?” Kate, whose last name was not included in this report to maintain her privacy, told the Observer. “Every woman always knows ‘I need to pay attention to where I am at all times.’ And I thought at least at a campus gym, I thought I would be safe. But I guess that's not really the case.” The photos can no longer be viewed on the Candid Girls website because the poster deactivated the account last Friday evening, but Google searches still show a preview of the images with their explicit labels. In a statement shared with the Observer, a UNT spokesperson said the campus is “aware” of a Reddit post “??about an individual taking photos” at the campus gym.

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Tarrant again bans voter registrars from county buildings

After approving a list of early voting sites that includes eight college campuses, the Tarrant County Commissioners Court voted along party lines to rescind a court order that allowed voter registration volunteers back into county buildings. The court voted 3-1 on Sept. 4 to approve an amendment allowing volunteers to register voters in county buildings. Precinct 4 Commissioner Manny Ramirez was absent for that vote. Precinct 3 Commissioner Gary Fickes, a Republican, voted to approve the amendment alongside his Democratic colleagues Commissioners Roy Charles Brooks and Alisa Simmons. O’Hare questioned Fickes’ vote at that meeting, but the commissioner said he intended to vote yes.

Fickes also told reporters after the Sept. 4 meeting that he voted as he intended to yes and had no intention of changing it. Despite that, Fickes said Thursday that he had made a mistake and had immediately gone to ask County Administrator Chandler Merritt what he needed to do to change his vote. For the Republicans on the court, the issue was not about the county allowing volunteer deputy registrars, or VDRs, to register voters in county buildings, but rather stopping members of partisan organizations from doing so. Speaking during public comments ahead of the vote, Daniel Taylor, who is a VDR in Tarrant County, asked commissioners not to revoke the amendment. “I would still like to know from you all what harm it could possibly do for VDRs to work inside county buildings like sub-courthouses,” said Taylor, who volunteers for the Battleground Texas Engagement Fund. That group is a nonpartisan voter registration section of the nonprofit organization Battleground Texas, which expresses anti-Republican goals on its website.

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Tarrant Democrats get voting sites they had wanted all along

Three Fort Worth area Democratic candidates do not intend to sue Tarrant County after commissioners vote on Thursday to preserve early voting sites on college campuses, according to a campaign official. The candidates — Sam Eppler who’s running for Congressional District 24, Scott White who’s running for Texas House District 98 and Laura Leeman who’s running for Tarrant County commissioner — were considering legal action if county commissioners didn’t, at the least, approve putting polling places at the University of Texas at Arlington and Tarrant County College Northeast campus.

The court, during a nearly five-hour meeting that drew dozens of public comments, opted to approve the original 50 sites and add an additional location at the Vietnamese American Community Home in Dalworthington Gardens. “As far as our campaigns are concerned, this is what we had originally wanted, and I think it’s great they added an extra one location,” said Brody Mulligan, a campaign official for the three Democratic candidates. The candidates were excited by the outcome in Thursday interviews. “Amen,” said Leeman, who spoke during the meeting. “Hallelujah. Yippie Yay. Democracy won today.” The vote came after commissioners initially rejected the election department’s list of early voting polling places on a 2-2 vote Sept. 4. Precinct 4 Commissioner Manny Ramirez was absent for that vote. Ramirez on Thursday made a motion to approve the original list and additional site presented by the electron’s office. It was approved 4-1, with County Judge Tim O’Hare being the sole no vote. Mulligan believes removing sites on college campuses would have been a detriment to Democrats. Eppler, who is running against Republican U.S. Rep. Beth Van Duyne in a district that includes northeast Tarrant County, said he’s thrilled about the court’s vote. He and other Democrats cheered its bipartisan nature. “Look, I am a huge proponent of making sure that every citizen and eligible voter can vote,” Eppler said. “I don’t think we should be making it harder for people to vote. We should make it easier for citizens to vote.”

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James Morris announces name of new church after Gateway scandal

The son of Gateway Church’s former senior and lead pastor, James Morris, and James’ wife, Bridgette Morris, have announced the name of the new church they’re starting following their departure from the North Texas-based megachurch. The pair coined their newly founded church, “Passage Church,” the Morrises announced in an email shared on X by Amy Smith, of the watchdog blog Watchkeep. In the statement, the couple explained how they came up with the name, saying it resembles a “journey from one place to another.” “Passage Church is on the move and filled with people pursuing God in every season,” James and Bridgette Morris wrote in the statement. “Every person’s life is filled with transitions and journeys; we will be a place that helps people no matter what stage of their journey,” the couple goes on to say.

The naming of the church comes about two months after James Morris stepped down from his position at Gateway. Although he was originally set to take over his father, Robert Morris’, former position as the lead pastor of the Southlake campus, the church elders, James Morris, and Bridgette Morris all “collectively” agreed on the couple’s resignations as pastors, church leaders confirmed in a July 25 statement. Gateway’s exodus began when Robert Morris resigned after admitting to sexually abusing a girl in the ‘80s and ‘90s, starting when she was 12 years old. Cindy Clemishire, who is now in her 50s, told Watchkeep that the abuse happened in Texas and Oklahoma and went on for four years. James and Bridgette Morris also issued a separate statement on their website announcing plans for their church. The couple said the idea started as a dream in their youth and they are taking the time to rest and pray “after this last season,” according to the website statement. The Morrises have not yet announced where the church will be located and when it is set to open, but said they will provide updates regarding when and where they will hold their first “interest” meeting.

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Texas criminal court declines to halt execution of Robert Roberson

The state’s highest criminal court on Wednesday declined to stop the execution next month of Robert Roberson, who was sentenced to death in 2003 for killing his 2-year-old daughter, but who has consistently challenged his conviction on the claim that it was based on questionable science. Without reviewing the merits of Roberson’s claims, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday dismissed both a motion to halt the execution and a new application for relief filed by his attorneys. That leaves Roberson’s execution on track for Oct. 17, unless he can win clemency from the state’s Board of Pardons and Paroles. “Robert’s fate is now at the mercy of the Governor,” Gretchen Sween, one of Roberson’s lawyers, said in a statement. “We are devastated by this staggering development but will continue to pursue any avenue to make sure that Mr. Roberson is not the first person in the U.S. executed under the discredited ‘Shaken Baby’ hypothesis.”

Roberson has maintained his innocence while being held on death row for more than 20 years. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals previously halted his execution in 2016. But in 2023, the state’s highest criminal court decided that doubt over the cause of his daughter’s death was not enough to overturn his death sentence. His new execution date, Oct. 17, was set in July. Roberson was convicted in 2002 of killing his sickly 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis. He had rushed her blue, limp body to the hospital and said that Nikki fell from the bed while they were sleeping in their home in the East Texas town of Palestine, and that he awoke to find her unresponsive. But doctors and nurses, who were unable to revive her, did not believe such a low fall could have caused the fatal injuries and suspected child abuse. At trial, doctors testified that Nikki’s death was consistent with shaken baby syndrome — in which an infant is severely injured from being shaken violently back and forth — and a jury convicted Roberson. The Court of Criminal Appeals in 2016 stopped his execution and sent the case back to the trial court after the scientific consensus around shaken baby syndrome diagnoses came into question. Many doctors believe the condition is used as an explanation for an infant’s death too often in criminal cases, without considering other possibilities and the baby’s medical history.

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Violent online threats led Dallas ISD to change high school football schedules

The online threats of violence that led to increased police presences and several arrests at Dallas-area school districts this week also prompted changes to high school athletics, officials said Thursday. Most — if not all — of the threats were proven fake or unconfirmed, according to school and police officials. But districts are taking extra precautions, especially after Kimball JV football player David Washington was shot and killed last Friday at a Love’s gas station across the street from Kincaide Stadium, where South Oak Cliff played Duncanville that night. Dallas ISD announced several changes to this week’s football schedules. Kimball’s freshman game Wednesday was moved to Midlothian, and the same day DISD had the Spruce JV play at Wilmer-Hutchins. Thursday’s Kimball vs. Midlothian varsity football game was moved from Sprague Stadium to Midlothian ISD Stadium.

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Michelin picks 4 hotels in Dallas, 2 in Fort Worth as best in United States

Michelin’s latest list of the best hotels in the United States, Mexico and Canada was announced Friday, and Texas fared quite well. Six hotels in Dallas-Fort Worth made the list, and 20 across the Lone Star State got nods from Michelin’s anonymous critics. The hotel award is called a Michelin Key. Similar to Michelin’s restaurant reviews — which will be announced in Texas for the first time in fall 2024 — Michelin-rated hotels are given a one, two or three Key rating. Michelin calls these hotels “the crème de la crème.” And we expected North Texas to be competitive, given the recent openings of several boutique properties.

“The same way the Michelin Star recognizes restaurants for outstanding cooking, the Michelin Key recognizes hotels for outstanding stays,” reads a statement from the French-based company. (We’re learning the Michelin language together, now that Texas is one of its territories.) No hotels in Texas received the coveted three-Key award. Those went to 16 hotels in the United States and include the Beverly Hills Hotel and Single Thread Inn in California, Kona Village in Hawaii, Sage Lodge in Montana and Casa Cipriani in New York. Three Texas hotels nabbed a two-Key award, described by Michelin’s anonymous critics as “an exceptional stay.” Fort Worth’s elegant Bowie House, a hotel under the Auberge Resorts Collection, was the only property in D-FW to get two-Key status. “It just might be the most stylish building in Fort Worth,” Michelin wrote, “[and] it’s surely the city’s most extraordinary luxury hotel.” Other Texas properties on the two-Key list were the Commodore Perry Estate in Austin and Hotel Emma in San Antonio. In the one-Key list, described by Michelin as “a very special stay,” Dallas and Fort Worth hotels had a significant showing.

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Trevor Reed’s dad backs Colin Allred in ad, says Ted Cruz did zero to free son from Russia

Joey Reed has endorsed U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, in his challenge to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, saying the Republican incumbent did nothing to free his son from a Russian prison. Trevor Reed, a Marine veteran and Fort Worth native, was arrested in Moscow in 2019. Russian authorities said he grabbed a police officer as they drove to the station after a night of heavy drinking, causing the squad car to swerve and endangering two officers. U.S. officials denounced the charges as bogus. Reed was facing nine years behind bars, and his loved ones were desperate for help. “We were frantic. We tried to stay focused and not just break down every day crying. The first politician that we called was Ted Cruz. They basically said, ‘We’re not going to be able to help you,’” Joey Reed says in an Allred campaign ad released Thursday. “Ted Cruz didn’t lift a finger for us when everybody else in the state did. Colin Allred was right there, working with both parties to bring our son home.”

Allred faces an uphill battle as Democrats haven’t won a statewide race in Texas in three decades. To counter the state’s Republican leanings, Allred has pitched himself as a bipartisan pragmatist and cast Cruz as more focused on furthering his own political ambitions than helping Texans. In the new ad, Joey Reed praises Allred’s ability to work with Republicans and points to a bipartisan resolution calling for his son’s return that Cruz did not co-sponsor. “Senator Cruz refused to help us when everybody else in the government was,” Joey Reed says in the ad. “Our elected officials, they’re accountable not only for their actions but for their inactions. Ted Cruz is not here for Texas. Ted Cruz is here for Ted Cruz.” It’s not the first time Joey Reed has aired complaints about Cruz. After his son was released in an April 2022 prisoner swap, he shared his frustrations in an interview with The Dallas Morning News and vowed to support whoever ran against Cruz. At the time, Cruz aides responded by saying the senator had kept a low public profile regarding Trevor Reed’s detention because he didn’t want to antagonize Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

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Sharon Grigsby: A young North Texas woman bought legal delta-8 vape oil and wound up jailed on a felony

You don’t need me to tell you our justice system is far from perfect. It too often falls short of what we expect. In Kendall Reed’s case, it didn’t come close. It didn’t even try. “Justice” — yes, I’m using the sardonic air quotes — functioned more like a mean-spirited “gotcha” game, a mindless automated trap that upended a hard-working young woman’s life and branded her a felon over an offense she had no way to know she was committing. Her crime? Buying a hemp-oil vape product to help her cope with anxiety. Arrested by a Plano police officer soon after the purchase and jailed for possession of a controlled substance, Kendall begged law enforcement and court officials to listen to her: “I bought it legally at the corner store.” The legal system repeatedly responded, “That’s your problem, not ours.”

If only someone on this miserable road — the police officer, someone in the DA’s office or a judge — had listened to Kendall from the start. These professionals should have been able to register that she was not a drug-abusing felon, but a then-21-year-old scared out of her wits and wanting above all else to do the right thing. Kendall’s ordeal has its roots in Texas’ decision in 2019 to legalize hemp-based items while keeping marijuana illegal. Hemp, like marijuana, comes from cannabis plants. What differentiates the two is the amount of psychoactive THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol. In Texas, consumable hemp products with less than 0.3% delta-9 THC are legal; concentrations above that are not. You’ve heard the ads and seen the billboards for hemp-based gummies, smokables, candies and drinks. Colorful neon storefronts in every neighborhood. Users rave that the products ease their muscle and joint pain, help them sleep and reduce depression. Produced in flavors such as glazed donut, mango sunrise and a catchy pineapple-coconut named “pina cozaza,” and branded with cartoonish characters, the items entice consumers, particularly young ones still learning to make smart decisions.

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Half of lowest-rated teachers left the district this summer

An unusually high share of teachers left Houston ISD over the summer, but new data from the district show educators who received low evaluations drove a large share of the exodus. About 83 percent of HISD teachers rated “proficient” or higher on the district’s formal evaluation tool stayed with HISD, while 51 percent of those rated “developing” or “improvement needed” left this summer, according to data shared by the district Thursday. Roughly 2,700 teachers left the district in June and July, equivalent to about a quarter of the district’s 2023-24 teaching force, district officials said. About 950 other teachers resigned during the school year. The numbers suggest the hard-charging approach of state-appointed HISD Superintendent Mike Miles, who has repeatedly told teachers they can leave the district if they don’t agree with his methods, may be playing out as he intended: Keeping top-performing instructors in classrooms while pushing out less-effective ones.

“Over time, what you’d like to see is your more effective teachers retained and your less effective teachers are the ones who leave,” Miles said Thursday during a school board meeting. “Over time, you’ll see a more and more effective teaching force in HISD.” However, the district’s largest employee union and other Miles critics argue the evaluations don’t accurately measure teacher quality. They said Miles made several changes to HISD’s rating tool — a local version of the Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System, or T-TESS — that reward formulaic teaching styles and punish teachers who use less-structured methods, such as class discussions. “I think it’s the military mindset, like everybody has to be exactly the same all the time, but that’s not how kids learn and that’s not what good teaching is,” DeBakey High School for Health Professionals physics teacher MinhDan Tran said. HISD administrators rated 60 percent of the district’s teachers “proficient,” “accomplished” or “distinguished” in 2023-24. About 18 percent received scores of “developing” or “improvement needed.” Another 22 percent were not appraised, largely because most teachers were allowed to opt out of an evaluation in Miles’ first year leading the district.

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National Stories

Interest payments on the national debt top $1 trillion as deficit swells

The U.S. government for the first time has spent more than $1 trillion this year on interest payments for its $35.3 trillion national debt, the Treasury Department reported Thursday. With the Federal Reserve holding benchmark rates at their highest in 23 years, the government has laid out $1.049 trillion on debt service, up 30% from the same period a year ago and part of a projected $1.158 trillion in payments for the full year. Subtracting the interest the government earns on its investments, net interest payments have totaled $843 billion, higher than any other category except Social Security and Medicare. The jump in debt service costs came as the U.S. budget deficit surged in August, edging closer to $2 trillion for the full year. With one month left in the federal government’s fiscal year, the August shortfall popped by $380 billion, a dramatic reversal from the $89 billion surplus for the same month a year prior that was due largely to accounting maneuvers involving student debt forgiveness. That took the 2024 deficit to just shy of $1.9 trillion, or a 24% increase from the same point a year ago. The Fed is widely expected to lower rates next week, but just by a quarter percentage point. However, in anticipation of additional moves in future months, Treasury yields have tumbled in recent weeks. The benchmark 10-year note last yielded about 3.7%, down more than three-quarters of a percentage point since early July.

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Trump campaigns in Western states as Harris focuses on critical Pennsylvania

Former President Donald Trump will campaign Friday in Western states as his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris keeps her focus on one of the biggest battleground prizes in the East, Pennsylvania. Trump is scheduled to hold what’s being billed as a news conference in the morning at his Los Angeles-area golf club before heading to northern California for a fundraiser, followed by a rally in Las Vegas, the largest city in swing state Nevada. Harris, meanwhile, heads to Johnstown and Wilkes-Barre on Friday as she tries to capitalize on her momentum after Tuesday night’s debate. It’s her second day of back-to-back rallies after holding two events in North Carolina, another swing state, on Thursday. While speaking in Charlotte, Harris took a victory lap for her debate performance in which she needled Trump and kept him on the defensive. Recounting one moment while campaigning in North Carolina, she mocked Trump for saying he had “concepts of a plan” for replacing the Affordable Care Act.

“Concepts. Concepts. No actual plan. Concepts,” she said as the crowd roared with laughter. Her campaign said she raised $47 million from 600,000 donors in the 24 hours after her debate with Trump. Harris said the candidates “owe it to voters to have another debate.” But Trump said he won’t agree to face off with her again. Trump’s morning event will mark the second Friday in a row that the Republican has scheduled a news conference, though at his last appearance in New York, the former president didn’t take any questions. Instead, the Republican for nearly an hour railed against women who have accused him of sexual misconduct over the years, resurrecting the allegations in the public eye days before his debate with Harris. It’s unclear whether Trump plans to speak about any subject in particular at Friday’s news conference, but his campaign has added more to his schedule since early August as he tries to contrast himself with Harris. She has not held a news conference since becoming a presidential candidate and the Democrat has only sat for one in-depth interview.

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Future of Murdoch empire comes down to a court in Nevada

Over the next few weeks, the future course of one of the most powerful media empires on the planet will depend on secret proceedings set to take place inside a domed, Beaux-Arts-style courthouse in downtown Reno, Nev. There the most powerful person in the room will be not the builder of that empire — K. Rupert Murdoch, a man who has made and broken leaders across the globe — but a mild-mannered county probate commissioner, Edmund J. Gorman Jr., who does much of his work without fanfare in his high-desert city. It was Mr. Gorman who several weeks ago agreed to hear evidence in a fight between Mr. Murdoch, 93, and three of his adult children that is not about financial benefits but about control over his media companies after he dies. His businesses include Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The Sun of London and a large collection of newspapers in Australia. And next week, barring an unexpected last-minute settlement, it is Mr. Gorman who, after five days of testimony from Mr. Murdoch and his four eldest children in his hearing room, will recommend whether Mr. Murdoch should be granted his wish: to guarantee that his elder son, Lachlan, gains full control over the media dynasty after he dies.

That can happen only if Mr. Gorman allows Mr. Murdoch to change the terms of the “irrevocable” family trust he agreed to some two decades ago. Set in stone after his divorce from his second wife, Anna Murdoch Mann, the trust gives Lachlan and his three oldest siblings equal say over the controlling shares of the family’s companies upon Mr. Murdoch’s death. The final decision in the case will have wide-ranging effects in media and politics, determining whether Fox News and the Murdochs’ other populist conservative clarions stay on their hard-right course, as Lachlan Murdoch prefers, or move toward the more centrist sensibilities of the three siblings, James, Elisabeth and Prudence, who Mr. Murdoch fears will outvote Lachlan upon his passing. The case could bring the denouement in a decades-old family drama over whom Mr. Murdoch would choose as his true successor. It has pitted sibling against sibling and finally created a lasting rift between Mr. Murdoch and his second son, James, who has emerged as an open critic of the empire’s right-wing populism and climate denialism. The saga reached its apotheosis late last year when Mr. Murdoch surprised James, Elisabeth and Prudence by secretly moving to change the trust in Nevada to favor Lachlan — drawing harsh recriminations from the disenfranchised children, who moved to challenge the proposed changes in Nevada probate court. All of that had been taking place in secret until July, when The New York Times obtained documents detailing the looming court fight.

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Haitian families in Ohio under attack as racist claims spread

The morning after former President Donald Trump repeated racist claims about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, some Haitian families are keeping their children home from school for their safety, according to an area activist. Those who allowed their children did so, but with heavy hearts. “She [my niece] was scared, but I told her to go, that God would protect,” said one Haitian resident, who asked that she not be identified publicly for fear of reprisal. “We’re all victims this morning,” said the woman, who moved to Springfield six years ago. “They’re attacking us in every way.” Aside from the anxiety caused by Tuesday night’s debate, the woman also said her cars have been vandalized twice in the middle of the night. She woke up one morning to broken windows and another to acid thrown on the vehicle. She has added cameras to her driveway and tried to report the incidents to the police to no avail. “I’m going to have to move because this area is no longer good for me,” she said. “I can’t even leave my house to go to Walmart. I’m anxious and scared.” The Haitian families’ accounts, shared with The Haitian Times under condition of confidentiality, are the latest tales of intimidation, bullying and assaults as anti-Haitian sentiment has gone viral.

Springfield police referred calls about reports of crimes targeting immigrants to spokesperson Karen Graves. She had not returned a message from The Haitian Times as of Wednesday afternoon. Meanwhile, area residents say, many Haitians are feeling more afraid as each day passes. The viral posts are being amplified across social media and by international news organizations, which spread the claims even farther. S.P., a community activist, said families have been calling her all morning saying they are scared. “People are very afraid for their lives,” S.P. said. “Many families are starting to think of leaving Springfield after last night and some kids aren’t even going to school because of fear of being attacked.” In interviews over the past week and through a Zoom call of concerned Haitians rapidly organized by Haiti’s Minister of Haitians Living Abroad on Tuesday, local Haitians continue to share instances of bullying, intimidation that the city is not addressing. “The reality is that these are people’s lives,” said J.S., an Ohio-based Haitian woman who asked that her name not be used out of fear for her safety. “I understand the focus on the political, but what’s important is the safety and security of our brethren, our people, who have left their country.” Nearly 20,000 Haitians have settled in Springfield in the past four years, according to published reports, a huge surge for a city of 58,000 as of 2020. Industries that once struggled with labor shortages have welcomed the Haitian workforce, according to published reports. However, the rapid shift has caused much strain on local agencies and facilities, including hospitals and schools. The arrival of new immigrants in Ohio has also become an election issue, often driven by false claims vilifying the newcomers. In August, a white supremacists held an anti-Haitian demonstration during a music festival. City officials then removed a white supremacist group’s leader from a meeting after he delivered “a word of warning” against allowing Haitian immigrants to settle in the community.

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33,000 Boeing union members begin strike

About 33,000 union members at Boeing have started to walk off the job on Friday after they overwhelmingly rejected a proposed four-year contract with the troubled aircraft manufacturer. The strike, the first at the company in 16 years, will virtually stop commercial airplane production at one of America’s biggest manufacturing giants and its largest exporter, dealing a potential blow to the US economy. Depending on the length of the strike, it could cause problems for nearly 10,000 Boeing (BA) suppliers, which can be found in all 50 US states. The company has a total of 150,000 US employees, and it estimates its own annual contribution to America’s economy at $79 billion, supporting 1.6 million jobs directly and indirectly.

The rejected deal, which leadership at the International Association of Machinist (IAM) union had described as the best it’s ever negotiated with Boeing, would have given raises of at least 25% over the life of the deal. It also increased job security for union members because Boeing promised to build its next commercial jet, which has yet to be announced, at a unionized plant. Without a contract including that provision, Boeing may decide to build the jet at a non-union factory. But 95% of members of the IAM union voted against the deal. In a separate vote, 96% voted to authorize a strike, easily clearing the two-thirds threshold needed to approve a walkout. The strike began at 11:59 pm PT Thursday, or 2:59 am ET Friday. “This is about fighting for our future,” Jon Holden, president of the largest IAM local at Boeing, said as he announced the vote results. “We will be back at the table whenever we can get there to drive forward on the issues our members say are important.”

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Passenger ordered to pay more than $5,000 in fuel costs after flight diverted due to bad behavior

A problematic airline passenger has been hit with an unusual form of punishment – he has to pay back the airline for the cost of fuel. According to the Australian Federal Police, a then-32-year-old man from Western Australia was disruptive on a flight headed from Perth to Sydney. As a result, the plane had to turn around and go back to Perth, which meant that the pilot was forced to dump some fuel to land. Now, the passenger has been ordered to pay $8,630 AUD ($5,806 USD) back to the airline to cover the cost of the wasted fuel. The Perth Magistrate Court also fined him $6,055, meaning that his mid-air misbehavior has a total price tag of $11,861 – likely many times higher than whatever he spent on the ticket. “This incident should serve as a warning that criminal behavior on board can come at a heavy cost to the offender,” Shona Davis, the AFP’s Acting Superintendent, said in a statement.

“It’s far simpler to obey the directions of airline staff than cause unnecessary issues, which can end up hitting you in the hip pocket.” Although the flight happened on September 25, 2023, it has taken about a year for the case against the unruly passenger to work its way through the Australian legal system. Neither the man nor the airline was publicly named, nor was it specified exactly what he did to earn such a hefty penalty. The passenger pleaded guilty to one count of disorderly behavior on an aircraft and one count of failure to comply with safety instructions. While charging a disruptive traveler for the cost of fuel is not a typical penalty, other kinds of fines are more common. In 2021, the US Federal Aviation Administration announced that they would be introducing a zero-tolerance policy for fliers behaving badly on planes. That year, passengers were issued fines for a range of incidents on planes across the United States, including one passenger who attempted to enter the plane’s cockpit and had to be restrained and another who punched a flight attendant in the face, sending them to the hospital. The most serious cases of in-flight mischief are also reported to the Department of Justice.

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MAGA civil war erupts as Laura Loomer and MTG trade blows in public

A massive rift within former President Donald Trump’s inner circle exploded into the open Wednesday night, exposing tensions running high inside MAGAworld after their candidate’s debate disaster. Two of Trump's most trusted allies went for each other in a spectacular and public spat after it emerged that far-right commentator Laura Loomer had accompanied Trump on a private plane to the debate. Axios reported on Thursday that Loomer had been “egging him on” during the flight after his other advisors urged caution and tried to convince Trump to stick to messages on key voter concerns like the economy instead of pushing old grievances and sharing easily debunked conspiracies such as Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets.

Trump appeared to take Loomer’s advice and turned in a fiasco of a performance marred by one rambling diatribe after another. A day later, Republican House Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene chose to jump on a three-day-old Loomer post and kick-start a civil war. Greene excoriated Loomer on X for an “extremely racist” message she posted about Vice President Kamala Harris. In the Sept. 8 tweet, which quoted a post by Harris celebrating her South Asian background, Loomer wrote that if the Vice President wins the election “the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center and the American people will only be able to convey their feedback through a customer satisfaction survey at the end of the call that nobody will understand.” Three days later, the day after the debate, Loomer—a 9/11 conspiracist—accompanied Trump to Wednesday’s solemn memorial ceremonies in New York City and Pennsylvania. Greene, who has previously used homophobic and racist slurs and claimed being called a “white supremacist” was akin to a Black person being called the n-word, decided it was finally the moment to call out discrimination.

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The Grand Canyon is experiencing one of its deadliest stretches in years

At least 16 people have died at the Grand Canyon in Arizona this year, including the recently recovered body of a 71-year-old man at the storied national park this week. The causes of death range from boating accidents to drowning after flash floods. In August alone, five canyon visitors were reported dead, including one man who attempted a risky and illegal BASE jump on the canyon’s South Rim. Two other visitors died in apparentdrownings. A fourth person was found dead after entering the park for a solo backpacking trip. A fifth body was recovered 150 feet below a canyon ridge after a multi-day search by park officials. Nearly 5 million people visit the mile-deep, yawning chasm every year to experience hiking, boating, camping and more. Of those, the 10-year average number of fatalities at the canyon is 17, according to data from the park. The most common cause of death is cardiac arrest.

Meghan Smith, the preventive search and rescue coordinator at the park, cautions that the canyon’s story shouldn’t be boiled down to all doom and gloom. She called the recent spate of deaths in August an "outlier." “We expect clusters of events any time there is monsoonal weather or any time we have extreme heat incidences. The thing that we don't expect is the cluster that you saw about a month ago where we had three back-to-back, over-the-edge falls involving our technical rescue team,” she said. A number of deaths this year have followed stretches of extreme weather. In July, for example, a 57-year-old female was found dead at the park during a punishing heat wave. Park rangers had previously posted signs warning visitors that temperatures can reach as high as 120 degrees during peak hours of the day. While climate change has been a major factor in extreme weather events around the globe — including the sort of heat waves and flash flooding that have plagued the park as much as elsewhere in the United States — Smith is wary of drawing a direct link between the string of deaths at the park and a changing environment.

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Lead Stories

At the presidential debate, fossil fuels and energy politics took center stage

A month ago, it seemed unlikely that Vice President Kamala Harris would ever reach a goal she set out to achieve as a presidential hopeful in 2019. But at 9 p.m. on Tuesday night at the National Constitutional Center in Philadelphia — five-odd years after she dropped out of her first presidential race — Harris finally faced off against Donald Trump in what will likely be the only debate between the two candidates before Election Day. Harris and Trump are diametrically opposed to each other on issues ranging from national security to the economy to foreign policy, but perhaps nowhere are the candidates more at odds than on the matter of climate change: One thinks rising temperatures pose an existential threat, the other thinks climate science is nonsense. That gulf in views was put on full display in the last minutes of the hour-and-a-half-long debate, when ABC News Live Prime host and debate co-moderator Linsey Davis asked the pair what they would do to fight climate change. Harris, who answered the question first, was quick to point out that Trump has implied on many an occasion that climate change is a hoax propagated by China. “What we know is that it is very real,” she said. “You ask anyone who is living in a state who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences who is now being denied home insurance or it’s being jacked up.” In the past couple of years, private insurance companies have begun dropping policies in fire- and -flood-prone states like California and Florida.

While Harris pointed out the existence of these worsening problems, she did not say what she plans to do about them, choosing instead to cite investments in climate change made by the current president. “I am proud that as vice president, over the last four years, we have invested $1 trillion in a clean energy economy, while we have also increased domestic gas production to historic levels.” She got that $1 trillion sum by adding up all of the administration’s major investments over the past four years, some of which are only vaguely connected to climate change. Trump didn’t answer the question at all, instead making a convoluted point about domestic vehicle manufacturing. He then falsely claimed that President Biden is getting millions of dollars from China and Ukraine. “They’re selling our country down the tubes,” he said. Trump slashed scores of environmental rules and climate regulations during his four years in office and appointed three conservative Supreme Court justices who have since made it harder for the federal government to clamp down on pollution. He also withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, a global pact to slow planetary warming, though President Biden later reentered it. Before Tuesday’s debate, it seemed likely that Harris would cite her record as district attorney for the city of San Francisco, where she formed the nation’s first environmental justice unit aimed at penalizing companies for polluting. Or her tenure as California attorney general, when she investigated oil companies and secured a multibillion-dollar joint settlement from Volkswagen over the company’s attempts to cheat smog emissions standards. But she didn’t bring those receipts to the podium.

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Texas prison inmates swelter amid persistent guard staffing shortages, critics say

The day before Patrick Womack was found face-down and unresponsive in a hot prison cell in August 2023, he asked a correctional officer to let him take a cold shower so he could cool down. The officer said no, according to court documents. The reason: There weren’t enough guards at the H.H. Coffield Unit to watch him. Attorneys for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice who are trying to dissuade a federal judge from forcing the state to cool its un-air conditioned prisons argue in an ongoing lawsuit that the state already provides incarcerated people with unlimited access to cold showers, ice water and air-conditioned respite areas. But current and former prisoners, advocates and a former guard claim the prison system isn’t following through on those promises. In hearing testimony, documents and interviews with The Texas Tribune, they say a persistent staffing shortage leaves lock-ups without enough guards needed to mitigate against the heat inside un-air conditioned prisons, which reach well over 100 degrees during the summer. The prison system’s critics say that leaves incarcerated individuals without access to respite, ice water or cool showers.

“The excuse is always we are understaffed,” one of Womack’s cellmates told investigators, according to court documents. The cellmate noted there was “nothing unusual” about prison guards denying an inmate a cold shower. “This place ain’t for humans,” the cellmate said. “Of course people are going to die.” Texas inmates and nonprofit groups are suing the state over the blistering heat inside its prisons, asking an Austin judge to declare the conditions unconstitutional and require Texas to keep temperatures under 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Complying with such a ruling — which could come at any time following a hearing last month — could cost the state more than $1 billion, officials have said. Bryan Collier, the executive director of TDCJ, admitted during a hearing last month that inmates are “not necessarily consistently” getting access to water. There are “instances probably where we don’t meet everything we are supposed to meet,” Collier said. And state officials say understaffing is not a valid excuse for failing to follow protocols meant to protect prisoners. Teams of auditors, called strike teams, visit the prisons unannounced to ensure mitigation tactics are carried out. If they aren’t, the problem is immediately rectified, TDCJ spokesperson Amanda Hernandez said in an email. Judge Robert Pitman is expected to imminently decide whether the state must embark on the costly and time intensive project of installing air conditioning in all of its prisons. Currently, 66% of Texas prison beds are not in air-conditioned areas. The lawsuit comes after the Texas House last year committed to spending $545 million to install air conditioning, only to have the proposal shot down in the more conservative Senate.

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GOP race to replace McConnell heats up

The leadership race to replace retiring Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) is heating up as Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) announced Tuesday that he will transfer $4 million to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) to overcome the Senate Democrats’ growing cash advantage. Thune’s contribution is the largest by a senator to the Senate Republican campaign arm in history, breaking the previous record of $2 million, which he himself set back in 2016. Thune made his gift from a campaign war chest of more than $18 million, and he will still have more than $14 million in his campaign account going forward. He’s made more than $9 million in direct transfers to the NRSC during his time in the Senate. Thune’s top rival, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), is making his own moves to win the support of GOP colleagues.

He says he’s on track to raise $25 million for Senate Republican candidates this cycle and circulated a letter Monday laying out his leadership vision for 2025 and beyond. Cornyn pledged to oppose efforts to scrap the Senate filibuster and to get back to the habit of passing an annual budget to set spending priorities and limits. “With the election rapidly approaching, it is only prudent to think broadly and boldly about our goals. With a Trump presidency and a Republican majority in Congress, our opportunities in Congress will only increase,” he wrote. McConnell says he will step down from leadership at the end of the year but plans to finish the rest of his current Senate term, which runs through 2026. He says he will focus on building up national defense and taking on isolationists in his own party. With McConnell stepping down, fundraising is becoming a growing concern of many GOP senators as they’re falling behind Senate Democrats in this year’s money chase. Senate Republicans say they expect to be outspent by Democrats in battleground races around the country. This makes Thune’s $4 million transfer to the party committee and Cornyn’s access to big donors in Texas major selling points in the leadership race.

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As rents across the country go up, Austin prices continue to fall

During the pandemic, Austin came to exemplify the story of housing across the country: Prices went through the roof. In 2021, the average monthly rent in the region rose 25%. Similar increases happened in cities in California and Arizona. But that narrative has flipped. As tens of thousands of new apartments have opened in Austin and the rate of people moving to the city has slowed, rent prices have been falling. For more than a year. According to new numbers from Zillow, Austin is now leading the country in declining rents. But this time few other large U.S. cities are following. The typical monthly rent in the Austin metro is down nearly 4% compared to last summer. Rents in similarly priced cities — including Dallas, Phoenix and Atlanta — are rising. The average monthly rent in Austin is now anywhere between roughly $1,500 and $1,800.

In the early years of the pandemic, demand for apartments rose. Tens of thousands of people moved to the city because they could suddenly work remotely. Meanwhile, some residents already living here decided to leave shared living situations and find apartments on their own. In response to the demand for housing, rent prices rose at an incredible pace. To builders this indicated a need and a business opportunity: more homes. “A lot of builders … they look at the demographics and they look at the job growth and they look at projections and they say, ‘You know what, this is going to be a good place for me to build,’” Kim Betancourt, vice president of multifamily research at mortgage-backer Fannie Mae, said. “This is what happened with Austin.” In 2021, local governments in the Austin area issued permits to build nearly 51,000 homes, according to census data. While not every developer that receives a permit eventually builds, this represents a rate of permitting much higher than in other cities at the time. Because construction takes several years, apartments permitted years ago are now opening. At the same time, the population surge that defined Austin in 2020 and 2021 has slowed.

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State Stories

Democratic candidates consider lawsuit over Tarrant vote sites

Three Fort Worth area Democratic candidates might pursue legal action against Tarrant County if commissioners do not place early voting locations at UT Arlington and TCC’s Northeast campus. Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare has scheduled a special meeting for Thursday to consider lists of early voting sites that include fewer college campuses than the list that failed to pass on Sept. 4. The 2-2 vote on the list of 50 proposed early voting sites was along party lines — with Commissioner Manny Ramirez not present. The court’s Democratic members contended O’Hare scheduled the meeting for Thursday knowing that they would be out of town. The Commissioners Court on Aug. 6 approved their travel to Washington for an event by Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.

At the time of the Sept. 4 vote, O’Hare said the number of polling locations was a “waste of money and manpower” and singled out the eight proposed sites for being hard for the general public to access. If, at a minimum, polling places aren’t opened at UTA and Tarrant County College’s Northeast campus for early voting, a political group and three Democratic candidates plan to request a temporary restraining order and file a motion for a temporary and permanent injunction, in hopes for a court order requiring sites to be opened, said Brody Mulligan, a campaign official for the candidates. The candidates are Sam Eppler (Congressional Disrict 24), Scott White (Texas House District 98) and Laura Leeman (County Commissioner, Precinct 3). They would be joined by the Tarrant County Young Democrats. A Tarrant County spokesperson declined to comment on the possible lawsuit. A request for comment emailed to O’Hare’s office was not immediately returned. Not having the sites would disproportionately harm Democratic candidates as well as young people and people of color, said Mulligan.

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Houston ISD board may consider property sale, change to property sale rule

Houston ISD's state-appointed board will consider a resolution to designate business days under the Texas Public Information Act to mean days other than Saturday, Sunday, a national holiday, or a state holiday. Since it pertains to the Texas Public Information Act (TPIA), the resolution would affect the timeline for information requests. It would be in accordance with House Bill 3033, effective Sept. 1, 2023 near the beginning of last academic year, which defined business days under the TPIA. The law allows a school board to designate up to 10 days each calendar year as nonbusiness days that are not national or state holidays, where the district's administrative offices would be closed or operate with minimum staffing. This resolution follows a letter requesting an opinion from the Attorney General regarding one of the Chronicle's public information requests, where the district's public information office included Lyndon Baines Johnson Day on Aug. 27, marking his birthday, as a nonbusiness day.

"The District was closed for TPIA purposes on August 27, 2024, for Lyndon B. Johnson Day," the law firm Spalding Nichols Lamp Langlois wrote on behalf of HISD, referring to Texas law. The district was otherwise open, with school in session, that day. The district would designate its fall holiday on Oct. 4, Thanksgiving break, and winter break (Dec. 23, 27, 30 and 31) as nonbusiness days under its resolution. Confederate Heroes Day, San Jacinto Day, Texas Emancipation Day, Texas Independence Day, the Friday after Thanksgiving, and Dec. 24 and 26 are state holidays. The board will consider the sale of a property on Mesa Drive in closed session Thursday after it considers a change to its rules on the consent agenda that would allow property sales proceeds to be deposited into the district's general fund. The board would declare the property located at 0 Mesa Drive as surplus and authorize sales procedures to an adjacent property owner. The tract of land with that legal description is less than an acre, or about 36,000 square feet, between land owned by GC Community Development Corporation and Mesa Drive. The land is south of HISD Education Learning Center. HISD did not respond to the Chronicle's calls and emails requesting additional information.

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In Texas, religion and politics are intertwined. What does it mean for the upcoming election?

On a Sunday earlier this month, Pastor Robert Jeffress began his sermon at First Baptist Dallas with a sentiment that might resonate with everyone at this point in election season. "Today, we’re going to talk about politics," said Jeffress. "Yuck!" Jeffress went on to tell his congregation, which has around 16,000 members, that religion and politics are inseparable. "Government is God’s creation. Genesis Chapter 9. After the flood God gave to Noah the building block of government," said Jeffers. The connection between the two can be seen everywhere: We pledge allegiance to “one nation under God.” Most swearing-in ceremonies for public officials involve putting one’s hand on a Bible or another holy text. And a faith leader is usually invited to give an opening prayer or blessing before the Texas Legislature meets for a session. That connection goes beyond the ceremonial, with faith — most often Christianity — impacting actual policy decisions. Just this week, the Texas State Board of Education met to discuss a newly proposed elementary school reading curriculum that includes Bible stories.

A Texas law that went into effect last year now allows members of the clergy to volunteer or be hired as school counselors. Religion was also invoked by Texas’ Republican lawmakers backing a bill that banned gender-affirming care in the state. And Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick recently said he’d try, once again, to pass a bill that would require the 10 Commandments to be displayed in public schools. Those are just a few examples. Andrea Hatcher, a professor of political science at The University of the South, traces the GOP’s embrace of religion back to the 1970s. "The Christian right didn't just happen organically," said Hatcher. "It was a creation of religious elites and political elites that saw how religion could be leveraged by the Republican Party for political power to benefit them both." Hatcher said that played out in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. “When you have six Catholics on the Supreme Court and then all of a sudden they vote a particular way that happens to align with their religious views," said Hatcher. While one of those Catholics, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, voted against overturning Roe, Hatcher said the decision still leads "one to question whether that is individual religious beliefs affecting, shaping policy outcomes for a religiously pluralistic nation at large.”

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Cotton Bowl renovations move forward with another chunk of money. Here’s how much

The Dallas City Council on Wednesday approved an additional $65 million in upgrades to the Cotton Bowl in Fair Park. The latest tranche of money is part of an ongoing $140 million renovation of the historic South Dallas stadium, planned to be complete by fall 2025. Renovations on the west side of the 94-year-old stadium began in March, and the $65 million is expected to pay for improving bathrooms and concession spaces, expanding concourses, installing more elevators and escalators, and mechanical, plumbing and security improvements. Overall building upgrades include improving the venue’s entrance and seating and boosting the in-stadium Wi-Fi signal. The council approved an initial $145,000 contract with construction firms JE Dunn and H.J. Russell & Company for the stadium work in December and added $52.9 million in February.

The money is from a 2% increase in hotel occupancy taxes that Dallas voters approved in 2022. The city expects to raise $1.5 billion over 30 years. Up to $300 million is planned for the Cotton Bowl and five other Fair Park venues. The remaining $1.2 billion is set aside for a new downtown convention center. Future upgrades are planned for the east side of the Cotton Bowl, but that work isn’t scheduled to start until at least 2030. The stadium upgrades were a key part of the universities of Texas and Oklahoma agreeing to keep their annual Red River Showdown football game at the Cotton Bowl. Both schools in December announced a contract extension to keep the game in Dallas through 2036. The contract previously was set to expire after the 2025 game. According to the term sheet, the schools can terminate the deal if the city doesn’t finish the first phase of at least $140 million in stadium improvements by September 2026. The universities can also cancel the deal if the city doesn’t present “a viable construction plan and funding solution” for the second phase of Cotton Bowl improvements to the schools by September 2030, and those improvements must be complete by September 2034.

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Texas Supreme Court orders Dallas to drop charter amendment proposals from November ballot

The Texas Supreme Court ordered Dallas to drop three proposed charter amendments from the Nov. 5 election ballot because they were designed to cancel out propositions panned by council members and some top city officials. The City Council voted a little after 5:30 p.m. Wednesday to remove the proposals; officials declined to comment on the ruling. In an opinion released Wednesday, the state Supreme Court concluded the counterpropositions could mislead voters because the ballot language didn’t acknowledge that they conflicted with rival proposals backed by the nonprofit group Dallas Hero, an advocate for stronger public safety measures. “Simultaneously holding an election on contradictory propositions with which the city cannot comply is confusing, and ballot language that fails to address that contradiction or how it will be resolved does not ‘substantially submit the question ... with such definiteness and certainty that voters are not misled,’” the court opinion reads.

The opinion says ordering the city to remove Propositions K, M and N from the ballot is “the appropriate remedy” because they are the “source of the confusion.” Dallas Hero led a summer campaign to get three charter amendments on the ballot. If approved, they require a minimum of 4,000 police officers and devote excess city revenue to public safety, tie the city manager’s job status and pay bonuses to an annual community survey, and force the city to waive its governmental immunity to allow lawsuits regarding not following local and state laws. The nonprofit group has said its trio of amendments are necessary tools to improve safety and hold government officials accountable, but city leaders have said the ideas are fiscally irresponsible and detrimental to nearly all city services. Still, state law mandated the city to include them on the ballot because each petition received more than 20,000 valid voter signatures in support. After greenlighting the Dallas Hero proposals on Aug. 14, the City Council approved three charter amendments of its own to make clear that the council has the final say on how city funds are appropriated, that the council has the final say on the job status and compensation of the city manager and that nothing written in the charter is intended to waive the city’s governmental immunity from legal action.

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Irving-based auto lender Exeter deferred loans and drove up borrowing costs

Jessica Patterson tensed as she tore open the letter from Exeter Finance. “This notice is being sent to you concerning your default,” the company wrote. She didn’t need to keep reading to know she was in trouble. Become a business insider with the latest news. It was January 2018. Seven months earlier, she’d borrowed $14,786.07 to purchase a silver Kia Rio. The interest rate was sky high — 25.17% — and the $402 monthly payment was more than a quarter of her take-home pay. But she needed the car to keep her job and support her three young children. For months she had skimped on groceries, eaten at soup kitchens and even skipped Christmas gifts to pay the car loan. But most of the time it wasn’t enough, and now Exeter was threatening to seize the Kia. Panicked, she dialed the number in the letter. Can we work something out, Patterson asked. Exeter’s response came easily, she recalled. It offered to extend her loan. The company would simply move the December and January payments to the end of her five-year payment schedule, the representative told her, adding two months to the loan’s term. “It was instant relief,” Patterson said.

The extension seemed to be a courtesy from Exeter in a time of need. In fact, the company’s disclosures at the time stated “Extension fee: $0.00.” The pause in payments, however, was anything but free. What Patterson didn’t know, and what she said Exeter didn’t tell her, was that every penny of her next five payments would go to the interest that built up during the reprieve. That meant she didn’t pay down the original loan balance at all during that time. While the extension allowed her to keep her car, it added about $2,000 in new interest charges, which the lender did not clearly disclose. Patterson’s experience with Exeter was not unusual. A ProPublica investigation has found that it’s an integral part of how the company runs its business. Exeter is one of the largest auto lenders in the nation, specializing in high-interest loans to people with histories of not paying bills or defaulting on debt, a practice known as subprime lending. The company, which has more than 500,000 active loans and a partnership agreement with CarMax, the country’s largest used car retailer, casts itself as a provider of second chances. “We’re here to help,” it says on its website. In reality, Exeter’s practices often do the opposite. When the company allows a borrower to skip payments, it typically adds thousands of dollars in new interest charges to the customer’s debt. Dozens of customers told ProPublica that Exeter didn’t tell them about the added costs. When it’s time to make their final payment, many are faced with a huge bill, which they often can’t afford to pay.

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DART fails to pass 2025 budget as appointees disagree on spending

Dallas Area Rapid Transit appointees failed to pass the agency’s budget for fiscal year 2025 on Tuesday amid ongoing disagreements on how to approach spending. Committee-of-the-Whole members diverged Tuesday and during an August meeting about whether to proactively reduce its 1.6% year-over-year budget growth in light of member cities’ desire to reduce sales tax contributions to DART by a quarter. That growth includes a 5.5% increase in the operating budget. Two motions — one to pass the staff-proposed $1.8 billion budget and one to pass a budget that reduced the operating budget from 5.5% growth to 4.6% growth — failed to reach the required two-thirds vote threshold needed to pass.

The committee last month discussed capping next year’s operating budget at 3% growth over 2024 and instituting changes to the capital improvement program. Staff originally told the board that would mean eliminating underperforming routes, routes with higher passenger subsidies and popular but duplicative shuttle and GoLink services. Service and frequency improvements would have been halted and other cuts would have included department budget reductions and cuts to pension contributions. Budget and Finance Committee members in August asked staff to instead bring back a proposal capping operating growth between 4% and 4.7% without cutting service. The committee also sent the original budget to member cities for review. The 2025 staff-proposed budget includes more than $885 million in capital and non-operating costs, $725 million in operating expenses and $222 million in debt service. That amounts to $19.3 million in reductions from 2024. Staff presented multiple scenarios Tuesday to achieve growth caps — several without service cuts.

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Glenn Hamer: Protect Texas worker benefits

(Glenn Hamer is the president and CEO of the Texas Association of Business.) This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, a landmark piece of legislation that has safeguarded American workers’ benefits and played an instrumental role in ensuring the economic stability and growth of businesses across the nation. As we commemorate this significant milestone, it is essential to recognize how ERISA has fortified Texas’ reputation as a pro-business powerhouse and why preserving this law is paramount to maintaining our competitive edge. ERISA was enacted in 1974 to address widespread concerns about the mismanagement of employee benefit plans, ensuring that pensions, 401(k)s, health insurance and other vital benefits promised to workers would be delivered as promised. Over the past five decades, ERISA has provided a consistent and reliable regulatory framework that allows businesses to plan with confidence, offering their employees the benefits they deserve while minimizing the administrative burdens associated with operating across multiple states. In the Lone Star State, the stability provided by ERISA is a cornerstone of our thriving business environment.

This uniform framework is vital for attracting and retaining top-tier talent, supporting the creation of world-class jobs that define Texas, and nurturing an environment ripe for innovation and growth. However, in recent years across the country, and even here in Texas, there have been efforts to introduce state laws that would supersede or sidestep federal ERISA regulations. These proposals risk imposing significant financial and operational burdens on employers — particularly small businesses that are already navigating a challenging economic environment. For small businesses in particular, ERISA’s protections are a lifeline, enabling them to thrive in a competitive marketplace while still offering valuable benefits to their workforce. Last year in Texas, a proposal aimed at preempting ERISA law was introduced. If enacted, this measure would have hindered Texas employers’ ability to provide affordable health care benefits to their employees, impacting their bottom line and diminishing our state’s attractiveness to businesses looking to relocate or expand. In America, health care costs are already a major concern for businesses and workers alike. The last thing we need is additional regulatory complexities that exacerbate these challenges. At the Texas Association of Business, we believe that preserving ERISA needs to be a top priority. State leaders must reaffirm their commitment to ERISA and resist the push for additional state-level regulations that could disrupt the delicate balance that has been so carefully maintained over the past 50 years. By standing with the business community and upholding the federal oversight that ERISA provides, Texas can maintain its position as a prime example of economic resilience and growth. The anticipated rise in health care costs in 2024 emphasizes the vital need to uphold the regulatory consistency provided by ERISA. Imposing additional state-level mandates would not only create a patchwork of regulations that increase compliance costs but also discourage businesses from expanding their operations in Texas — ultimately damaging our economy.

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Donna Bahorich: Defending Texas curricula that integrate cultural and biblical literacy

In the heart of Texas, an educational revolution is brewing. A pioneering approach to curriculum development promises to redefine the landscape of learning. This isn’t just another education reform; it’s a uniquely Texan solution that could set a new standard for the nation. House Bill 1605, passed last session, introduces two game-changing innovations: the Instructional Materials Review and Approval (IMRA) process and the Texas Open Education Resources (OER) initiative. These developments aren’t merely bureaucratic shuffling. They represent a fundamental shift in how we approach education in Texas. The IMRA process exemplifies the power of collaboration. By bringing together the State Board of Education with diverse stakeholders, it ensures that our educational materials are not only aligned with Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills but also reflect high-quality instructional standards and the rich diversity of our state. This thorough public review process is the cornerstone of our commitment to educational excellence.

But the true revolution lies in the Texas OER initiative. It ensures that high-quality, state-owned instructional materials are freely available to every student, either in print or digital format. A parent portal is provided for complete transparency. These aren’t one-size-fits-all materials, but resources tailored specifically to the needs of Texas students. Picture a third grader learning about the Caddo people and the Alamo while simultaneously honing critical reading and writing skills. This is the power of integrated learning that the Texas OER brings to our classrooms. Some critics argue that this approach could narrow perspectives, but they misunderstand the inherent flexibility of the OER system. Local control remains paramount, with districts retaining the autonomy to select materials that resonate with their community values. This ensures a vibrant tapestry of viewpoints across our diverse state. Others have expressed concerns about the inclusion of familiar biblical stories in language arts materials. However, these stories, such as Esther’s courage or the good Samaritan’s compassion, are presented as cultural literacy, providing context for understanding Western art and literature. The robust public review process ensures that this content remains educational rather than religious in nature. As a member of the Texas Historical Commission, I’m deeply concerned about the current imbalance in elementary education. With 75% of core instructional time focused on English and math, history and science are often shortchanged. This is particularly detrimental to the 61% of economically disadvantaged students who rely heavily on school for their learning.

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Dallas adopts plan to fix $4 billion shortfall amid fight with police, fire pension system

The Dallas City Council voted 14-1 Wednesday to invest $11.2 billion over the next three decades to fix a $4 billion shortfall in the uniformed and civilian pension funds. This comes nearly a month after the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System adopted its own plan and sued the city to determine who gets to make the final decision after a 2017 Texas Legislature measure saved the system from the brink of collapse. The two different plans are headed to the Texas Pension Review Board, marking a new chapter of animosity between the city and the pension system. Wednesday’s vote was embroiled in tension. Last week, DPFP’s lawsuit began a conversation among council members to possibly withhold supplemental checks intended to make up for the absence of cost-of-living-adjustments, at least until the lawsuit is dealt with.

COLAs can be given once a fund reaches a 70% funding level. DPFP, currently, is at less than 40%. Dallas Police Association Spokesperson Jaime Castro arrived with concerns that the city was going back on its promise to give a stipend. “I am disgusted and angry beyond belief what the city’s pension plan proposal would be,” Castro said, adding that the police association had been working with “both sides in good faith” to alleviate fears of retirees and officers. Council members, who said they were not expecting Castro’s comments, were visibly surprised because the discussion about withholding supplement checks was not set in stone. They reaffirmed the city was committed to paying the supplemental checks. Mayor Eric Johnson said the situation has multiple entities, such as the Legislature and pension system, involved in the decision-making process. “I don’t think I’m out of line to say that everybody around this horseshoe wants to do right by our retired men and women in uniform and the active ones,” he told members of the DPFP.

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Texas Republican Rep. McCaul vows to keep investigating Afghanistan withdrawal

A scathing House Republican report blames President Joe Biden’s administration for the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Rep. Michael McCaul, the Austin Republican who oversaw the report, said the messy exit emboldened U.S. enemies around the world. Democrats charged the report unfairly favored certain facts, minimized former President Donald Trump’s role and was timed to help Trump in this year’s campaign. On Capitol Hill Monday, relatives of some of the 13 U.S. service members killed in a suicide bombing during the withdrawal from Afghanistan called the deaths avoidable. They were killed at the Abbey Gate outside of the Kabul International Airport. “We have a father who is never going to know his daughter, a daughter who will never know her father, a wife who lost her husband, and a family that is never going to be allowed to grow,” Jim McCollum said. His son, Marine Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum, was among the service members killed.

They stood alongside House Republicans who released a three-year investigation that held President Joe Biden and his administration responsible for the chaotic withdrawal. After 20 years, the U.S. military left Afghanistan in August 2021. McCaul led the review as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He told Spectrum News it was “too little, too late.” “We threw our Marines in a really bad situation at the very end, under an intense threat that culminates in a suicide bomb attack killing 13 servicemen and women, 170 Afghans and 45 Americans and Afghans wounded,” McCaul said. McCaul said the Biden administration ignored warnings and did not plan for the collapse of the Afghan government, leaving Americans and Afghan allies vulnerable. “The go to zero order by [Biden] was to remove all military forces, but also air cover contractors, everything. Once that was done, the Afghan military had no chance of victory, and we saw the Taliban very rapidly taking over provincial capitals leading up to Kabul,” McCaul continued. “Look at the consequences of this. Putin invades Ukraine. Chairman Xi is threatening Taiwan, the Ayatollah is lighting up in the Middle East, all the adversaries. When you project weakness, you invite aggression,” he continued.

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Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick issues new directives to increase D.E.I. scrutiny in higher ed

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has issued a second round of directives for the Texas Senate, asking lawmakers to consider legislation that could change how the state does runoff elections, prevent protestors from wearing face masks, and further eliminate any lingering D.E.I. policies that may still exist in higher education. Since the Texas Legislature only meets biennially, there's a lot of work to be done before the start of a legislative session. In April, Patrick issued more than 50 directives, and on Tuesday he added 21 more. It includes a focused spread of items from state affairs and finance to criminal justice and education.

Of note, Patrick wants to see lawmakers "examine programs and certificates" within colleges and universities that still have Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies and "expose" them as being harmful to the state's workforce interests. "It's a signal from the lieutenant governor that he wants the Senate to look at these institutions and see if they're following through and complying with legislation that was passed in 2023." Dr. Jones said. Texas House Representative Brian Harrison says he applauds Patrick's priorities. He wants to see the legislature use taxpayer dollars wisely. "They're they are having to spend too much of their income in taxes, and the last thing we should be doing is forcing them to subsidize things that are not only against their values, but that do not help the workforce of tomorrow and do not help strengthen the economy." Rep. Harrison said. Rep. Harrison says it's a real concern that colleges and universities are skirting the law entirely, or just calling D.E.I. something else, and points to universities like Texas A&M or the University of Texas at Dallas. "They might have been a little bit too broad, and some of our higher education institutes might be exploiting that instead of educating students, using those tax dollars for liberal indoctrination, and we've got to make sure that that's not happening." Rep. Harrison said.

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Texas House District 121, 118 candidates to face off in dual debate

Candidates facing off in two of South Texas’ most anticipated Texas House races will participate in back-to-back debates moderated by the San Antonio Report. The Oct. 8 debates between Texas House District 121 candidates Marc LaHood (R) and Laurel Jordan Swift (D), and District 118 candidates incumbent Rep. John Lujan (R-San Antonio) and challenger Kristian Carranza (D), are being hosted in conjunction with the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce. The South Side’s House District 118 will be one of the most hard-fought races of the fall according to both parties’ top operatives — a rarity after redistricting has left hardly any truly competitive districts. Lujan flipped the seat for Republicans in a 2021 special election, and now must defend a district President Joe Biden carried — with a legislative record that now includes siding with Gov. Greg Abbott on a plan to create school vouchers. His opponent, progressive political organizer Kristian Carranza, has been raising the money that was sorely missing from her predecessor’s race. Northside House District 121 has made many headlines during the primary, after LaHood upset state House Rep. Steve Allison (R-Alamo Heights) — part of Abbott’s campaign to rid the party of members who oppose vouchers. Without Allison, Democrats will once again make a play for the seat, this time with political newcomer Laurel Jordan Swift. The House District 121 debate will be moderated by the San Antonio Report’s editor in chief Leigh Munsil, and the House District 118 debate will be moderated by government and politics reporter Andrea Drusch.

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Bexar County will skip appraising successfully contested valuations

Newly elected members of the Bexar Appraisal District’s board of directors secured one major change in this year’s appraisal process: giving residential property owners who’ve successfully contested their valuation a one-year reprieve from having their property reappraised. The change won’t apply to properties that made new improvements during that time, or properties that have decreased in market value since the last appraisal. “It’s a simple change, and it’s the number one complaint among the voters and the taxpayers,” said Robert Bruce, who was elected to the board in July and proposed the idea on Tuesday. “They go down [to the appraisal district], they make the same argument, they get the same reduction,” Bruce said. “All I’m saying is, ‘Hey, you did it this year. You ought to get a pass for at least one year and not have to go do a repeat performance.'”

The idea was approved unanimously by the nine-member board, which rejected a separate proposal to require higher evidence for increasing a valuation by more than 5% in a single year. Both votes came as the board approved the county’s overall appraisal policies for the next two years — a process that in the past had been uneventful, before the Texas Legislature added new elected positions to the boards of large counties’ appraisal districts. But this year, a movement to reconsider appraisal district procedures started in Tarrant County, which approved major changes after conservatives swept the county’s appraisal board races in the spring. Tarrant County moved to every-other-year appraisals for residential properties, and will now require the appraisal district to provide additional evidence if it intends to raise a residential valuation by more than 5% in a single year. Both moves were aimed at reining in rapidly rising appraisals, but drew criticism from school districts and municipal governments affected by the changes who say it will force higher tax rates and shift a higher tax burden onto lower-income residents.

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National Stories

How colleges are changing their rules on protesting

At Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, students now must receive approval from the administration before they can protest. Rutgers students will need to acquire a permit from the school. And at Indiana University, students may no longer engage in what school leaders call “expressive activity” between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. Across the country, some universities have enacted a wave of new rules and tightened restrictions around protest and speech in an effort to avoid a repeat of the spring semester, when thousands of people were arrested at protests and encampments prompted by the Israel-Hamas war. The rules vary from campus to campus, but they generally set limits on when and where protests can occur, and clearly prohibit encampments. In many cases, universities say the policy changes are minimal or simply clarify existing rules. Some attorneys said many of the new restrictions were written to fall within acceptable limits on speech, and would not raise constitutional issues if enforced equally.

Opponents of the rules say they are designed to stifle protest. Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, a professor at the University of New Orleans, said that more detailed rules would make it easier for university administrators to say that student protesters have broken them. “To me it seems very clear that they’re setting up a case to point to where students have violated something,” she said. Many universities have adopted rules that limit protests to specific times and prohibiting them overnight. At Ohio State, all campus events must end by 10 p.m. Northwestern has prohibited protests before 3 p.m. on weekdays on a part of campus surrounded by classroom buildings. Rutgers now allows demonstrations only between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. And at Franklin & Marshall College in southeastern Pennsylvania, a new interim policy requires demonstrations, rallies and vigils to wrap up within two hours. At Indiana University, students and faculty recently held vigils with an 11 p.m. start time meant to violate the new rules. At least nine people have been referred for disciplinary proceedings for their participation, including Ben Robinson, a professor of Germanic studies who helped organize the vigil. Mr. Robinson was also among the 57 people arrested during a pro-Palestinian protest in the spring before the local prosecutor dropped charges. Editors’ Picks 7 Apple Picking Tips From the Guy Behind Apple Ratings Green Washing, Not Greenwashing: What’s the Best Way to Do Laundry? Are Special Clothes You Don’t Wear Anymore Worth Keeping? Image

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67.1 million people watched Harris and Trump, outdrawing last debate

There is a new most-watched moment of the 2024 presidential campaign. Tuesday’s televised clash between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump drew 67.1 million live viewers, according to Nielsen, outdrawing Mr. Trump’s debate in June with President Biden by 31 percent. Mass cultural events are rare in a polarized, choose-your-own-news era, but presidential debates still have pull. And the Nielsen data did not include likely millions more who followed along on social media and a variety of websites and streaming platforms. The debate, hosted by ABC News in Philadelphia, fell short of cultural touchstones like the “Seinfeld” finale in 1998 (76.3 million), but viewing habits have shifted since then. The TV audience for the Harris-Trump matchup was roughly comparable to Mr. Trump’s second debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016, and President Barack Obama’s first meeting with Mitt Romney in 2012.

Younger and early-middle-age viewers in particular helped drive up the television audience on Tuesday. Roughly 50 percent more adults between the ages of 18 and 54 watched Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump, compared with the June debate, according to Nielsen. The big ratings winner of the evening was ABC News — about 19.1 million people watched on ABC alone. The debate was simulcast on more than a dozen channels, with Fox News drawing 9.1 million viewers, the largest audience of any cable network on Tuesday. CNN, which hosted the June debate, had the lowest total viewership of the seven biggest networks, a reversal from June, when it had the highest. Executives in the television industry had expected Tuesday’s debate to bring in higher viewership than the Biden-Trump meeting in June. That debate was held far earlier in the calendar than usual, when many Americans were away on vacation. Television use is also higher in the autumn than in the summertime.

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US power use expected to reach record highs in 2024 and 2025, EIA says

U.S. power consumption is on track to rise to new records in 2024 and 2025, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its Short Term Energy Outlook (STEO) on Tuesday. With growing power demand from data centers, manufacturing and the electrification of transportation and buildings, the EIA projected power demand will rise to 4,101 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2024 and 4,185 billion kWh in 2025. That compares with 4,000 billion kWh in 2023 and a record 4,067 billion kWh in 2022. Rising instances of extreme weather, which cause homes and businesses to crank up air conditioners or increasingly-electric heating systems, are also driving up demand. EIA forecast 2024 power sales will rise to 1,503 billion kWh for residential consumers, 1,413 billion kWh for commercial customers and 1,039 billion kWh for industrial customers.

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Johnson faces GOP ire after conservative spending plan blows up

Speaker Mike Johnson and his allies agreed that embracing a hard-line spending proposal was the best of a slew of bad options to avoid an internal GOP blowup just weeks before Election Day. House Republicans just stomped on that plan. It’s become clear that the package, which would punt a government shutdown deadline into March and require proof of citizenship to register to vote, has almost no shot at even passing the House due to GOP opposition. Johnson tacitly confirmed as much when he announced that leaders would delay a scheduled Wednesday vote on the bill until next week so they could work to “build consensus.” Behind the scenes, Johnson is under fire from multiple GOP factions. Some hard-liners are accusing him of mounting a “fake” fight for which the outcome of cutting a deal with Democrats is already pre-baked. And a coalition of centrists and governing-minded pragmatists are questioning his endgame and why he would drag out the political pain for himself, and them, so close to November.

While the speaker is not at risk of being ousted immediately, the widely acknowledged eventual outcome of the spending fight — leaning on Democrats to help avoid an Oct. 1 shutdown — could easily imperil his ability to keep the gavel come January. “I feel like I am stuck in Groundhog’s Day. This is not the way we should be operating. We’ve got to clear the runway for President Trump when he gets into office,” said first-term Rep. Mark Alford (R-Mo.). Alford echoed a common GOP argument: Many Republicans don’t want to saddle a potential President Donald Trump with a funding fight as soon as he assumes office. Democrats widely agree that Congress should attempt to settle the funding fight by the end of the calendar year, though they insist the bill should be “clean” and not include the voting add-on. Republicans insist they are still trying to pass a GOP-only bill, despite the speaker yanking the scheduled floor vote Wednesday evening after it became clear the numbers weren’t shifting in his favor. Now, Johnson says they are in “family” conversation mode, trying to persuade holdouts to flip so he can at least claim some leverage in negotiations with Senate Democrats. Going ahead with Johnson’s current spending plan would risk an embarrassing defeat just before November, with little upside, since the Senate will certainly reject it regardless. But if Johnson had returned from Congress’ summer break and immediately moved to cut a deal with Democrats, he would have sparked even fiercer internal backlash that would all-but-guarantee he loses the gavel in January.

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Wall Street investors think Trump lost the debate, too

Even some of former President Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters seem worried he lost Tuesday’s debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. Shares in Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Trump’s Truth Social network, plunged more than 16% on Wednesday morning to a record low. The shares recovered a bit by mid-afternoon, but were still down more than 12%. Trump Media’s shares have been extremely volatile since their public debut in March, as their performance has turned into something of a Wall Street weathervane about the former president’s election prospects. Trump owns almost 60 percent of the company, and its other investors tend to be among his most fervent supporters.

But it’s not just Trump Media shareholders who now appear to give Harris the edge in last night’s debate. Investors broadly appear to think that the vice president improved her chances of a November victory, according to several closely-watched stock-market indicators. The prices of Bitcoin and of several cryptocurrency-related stocks, including Coinbase, also fell on Wednesday morning, before partly recovering by mid-afternoon. Trump has embraced crypto in this election cycle, and is generally seen as the more pro-crypto candidate. (Harris has also garnered some support from crypto investors, but has been less outspoken about digital currencies than Trump – who is also reportedly involved in starting a crypto business.) Meanwhile, online bettors also think the odds are now in Harris’s favor: Users of the online betting market PredictIt pushed her chances of winning to 55 percent by Wednesday afternoon, while Trump’s chances fell to 48 percent. Other betting markets were more muted, but are also putting their post-debate money on Harris: She overtook Trump across online oddsmakers on Wednesday, according to an average of betting markets by RealClearPolitics.

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Francine weakens as it moves inland after winds cause widespread blackouts

Hundreds of thousands of power outages were reported in Louisiana and Mississippi early Thursday as residents in the region braced for possible flooding as Tropical Storm Francine moved farther inland. At 4 a.m. CDT, the center of the storm was 60 miles north of New Orleans and carrying maximum sustained winds of 45 mph. Francine was moving in a northeastern path at 12 miles per hour. Heavy rains were spreading across southern Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center said. Both storm surge warnings and tropical storm warnings were in effect from Grand Isle, La., to the Mississippi-Alabama border, and for the areas surrounding lakes Maurepas and Ponchartrain, both just north of New Orleans, the NHC said. Storm surge warnings are posted if there is a danger of life-threatening rising waters that are moving inland from coastlines. Tropical storm warnings are posted in areas where tropical storm conditions are expected.

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Wall Street curbs young bankers’ hours after overwork outcry

JPMorgan, Chase and Bank of America plan to limit and more closely track young bankers’ hours following a Wall Street Journal investigation that detailed a dangerous culture of overwork on Wall Street. JPMorgan will now cap junior investment bankers’ hours at 80 a week in most cases, people familiar with the matter said. Meanwhile, Bank of America is implementing a new timekeeping tool that requires junior bankers to go into more detail about how their time is spent, other people familiar with the matter said. The changes come after the Journal investigation, based on conversations with more than three dozen current and former bankers, revealed that junior bankers at Bank of America were routinely instructed to lie about their hours to avoid exceeding hourly limits. The question of how much to work junior employees, whose entry-level salaries can reach $200,000, has divided Wall Street for decades. Each year, thousands of young people start entry-level jobs in investment banking, attracted by the industry’s reputation for turning hard workers into millionaires.

But many of them said consistent bouts of working long hours are not only mentally grueling but also hazardous to their health. The death of a 35-year-old Bank of America associate who had been working multiple 100-hour weeks prompted an outcry in the banking industry about employee protections being ignored. Leo Lukenas III had been working on a team completing a $2 billion deal. An autopsy found he died of a blood clot that formed in a coronary artery. The weekly cap on hours at JPMorgan, a first for the bank, is the same as the New York state limit for hours of medical residents. The bank plans to make exceptions in certain cases, such as a live deal. Young bankers at JPMorgan already have a protected window from 6 p.m. Friday to noon Saturday and a guarantee of one full weekend off every three months. The bank, like most of its peers, has long monitored bankers’ hours through self-reported time sheets. A sample 80-hour workweek could entail six days working from roughly 8:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., with short breaks for meals, bankers say, or 11 hours a day for seven straight days. Young bankers have been known to put in 120 hours a week or more in the thick of a time-sensitive project. JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said in May the bank was asking “what can we learn from” Lukenas’s death. Senior bankers have been communicating the new guideline to staff in recent weeks, some of the people familiar with the matter said.

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Copyright September 19, 2024, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved