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AUSTIN – The Austiin American-Statesman reports the Texas Democratic Party says as many as seven of 10 petition signatures submitted to the Texas secretary of state’s office by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to qualify his independent bid for president on the statewide ballot for the Nov. 5 election are invalid and should be rejected. Kennedy, the son and namesake of the late Democratic U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy of New York, was at the Texas Capitol on May 15 where he and his campaign team submitted 245,572 petition signatures to Secretary of State Jane Nelson’s office. Kennedy boasted at a rally in Austin that evening that his petition signature total was record-breaking and contained more than twice the number required under law for third-party candidates.

But Austin lawyer Chad Dunn, representing the Texas Democratic Party, said in a letter to Nelson this month that 69% of the 245,000 people who signed on Kennedy’s behalf were not eligible to do so. That means that if the percentage holds for the remaining signatures, Kennedy would fall short of the minimum needed by around 37,000, Dunn said. “Based on these public records and no other information, it is clear that Mr. Kennedy’s petition signatures are insufficient in number to meet the requirements of state law,” Dunn said in his letter. The Kennedy campaign has disputed the Democrats’ analysis and plans to hold a video news briefing Wednesday to address the matter. To qualify for a place on the 2024 Texas presidential ballot, state law requires 113,151 signatures from registered Texas voters who did not vote in either the Democratic or Republican primary in March. The secretary of state’s office declined to weigh in on Dunn’s letter or on the calculations done by the state Democratic Party, but it said it is still combing through Kennedy’s petition signatures as required by state law, and it expects to reach a decision by late August before the official state ballot is finalized. Kennedy, whose father was gunned down during his own campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968, entered the 2024 race as a challenger to President Joe Biden for the party’s nomination. His bid attracted little Democratic support, with several members of the extended Kennedy family instead endorsing the incumbent.

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that CenterPoint Energy expects to incur as much as $1.8 billion in costs from its efforts to restore power after May’s severe storms and July’s Hurricane Beryl, company executives said during a second-quarter earnings call Tuesday in which it reported a steep jump in profits over the year earlier. The company said it would seek approval from the Public Utility Commission of Texas to issue bonds to recover $1.5 billion to $1.7 billion of its storm-related costs, Chief Financial Officer Christopher Foster told investors and analysts. Foster estimated residential customers could see a 2% increase in their electricity bills for the next 15 years to pay down the debt, which carries interest. Another $100 million of investments in its transmission system, the long-distance towers and lines, would be included in CenterPoint’s next scheduled rate increase request, Foster said. CenterPoint reported income of $228 million for the quarter ended June 30, up from $118 million in the year-earlier period.

Failure to recoup the costs could shake investor confidence in the company, one analyst said. The storm-related cost estimates come as CenterPoint executives try to walk a fine line of satisfying Texas’ elected officials — who are calling for accountability from the company and even floating proposals to claw back profits — while easing investor concerns over whether the company will gain approval for past and future capital spending. CenterPoint earns a 9.4% rate of equity, essentially profit, on its capital expenditures. It has dramatically increased capital investments in recent years, boosting the investor-owned utility’s stock price. If CenterPoint were unable to recover its May and July storm-related costs, investors would lose confidence not only in CenterPoint’s current management team but also in the wisdom of investing in Texas utilities going forward, said Anthony Crowdell, an utility analyst with the investment bank Mizuho Americas. “Does the risk change with investing in a Texas utility? That’s what everyone’s trying to figure out,” Crowdell said. After Monday’s fiery first hearing of a special state Senate committee tasked with investigating utilities’ response to Beryl, senators on both sides of the aisle suggested they were opposed to CenterPoint recovering its hurricane-related costs.

GALVESTON (AP) — A lawsuit accusing the parents of a former Texas high school student of negligence for not securing weapons he allegedly used in a 2018 shooting at his campus that killed 10 people was set to go before a jury on Wednesday.

Opening statements were expected in Galveston, Texas, in the civil trial over the lawsuit filed by family members of seven of those killed and four of the 13 people wounded in the attack at Santa Fe High School in May 2018.

Dimitrios Pagourtzis was charged with capital murder for the shooting. Pagourtzis was a 17-year-old student when authorities said he killed eight students and two teachers at the school, located about 35 miles (55 kilometers) southeast of Houston.

The now 23-year-old’s criminal trial has been on hold as he’s been declared incompetent to stand trial and has remained at the North Texas State Hospital in Vernon since December 2019.

The lawsuit is seeking to hold Pagourtzis and his parents, Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Marie Kosmetatos, financially liable for the shooting. The families are pursuing at least $1 million in damages.

The lawsuit accuses Pagourtzis’ parents of knowing their son was at risk of harming himself or others. It alleges Pagourtzis had been exhibiting signs of emotional distress and violent fantasies but his parents did nothing to get him help or secure a handgun and shotgun kept at their home that he allegedly ended up using during the shooting.

“We look forward to obtaining justice for the victims of the senseless tragedy,” said Clint McGuire, an attorney representing the families of five students who were killed and two others who were injured.

Lori Laird, an attorney for Pagourtzis’ parents, did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment.

In a court filing, Roberto Torres, who is representing Pagourtzis in the lawsuit, denied the allegations against his client, saying that “due to mental impairment or illness, (Pagourtzis) did not have sufficient capacity to have a reasonable degree of rational understanding of or control over his actions.”

The trial could last up to three weeks.

Family members of those killed or wounded have welcomed the start of the civil trial as they have expressed frustration that Pagourtzis’ criminal trial has been on hold for years, preventing them from having a sense of closure.

Lucky Gunner, a Tennessee-based online retailer accused of illegally selling ammunition to Pagourtzis, had also been one of the defendants in the lawsuit. But in 2023, the families settled their case against the retailer, who had been accused of failing to verify Pagourtzis’ age when he bought more than 100 rounds of ammunition on two occasions before the shooting.

Other similar lawsuits have been filed following a mass shooting.

In 2022, a jury awarded over $200 million to the mother of one of four people killed in a shooting at a Waffle House in Nashville, Tennessee. The lawsuit had been filed against the shooter and his father, who was accused of giving back a rifle to his son before the shooting despite his son’s mental health issues.

In April, Jennifer and James Crumbley were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison by a Michigan judge after becoming the first parents convicted in a U.S. mass school shooting.

LIVINGSTON (AP) — In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, Marilyn Mayville wasn’t sure where to get help.

The 72-year-old East Texan was without power and reliable cell service. Her phone was quickly running out of power. A heat wave had settled in. A nephew in Dallas eventually reached the widow and told her about a cooling center just on the other side of Highway 59 from her apartment.

“I didn’t really know what to do, but it gets pretty warm at night,” Mayville said. “He’s in Dallas and he knows more than I do.”

On that first day after Beryl, Mayville said she was one of just five people at the cooling station. If Beryl was quick to drench Livingston, a town still recovering from a rash of floods earlier this year, news of community resources was slow to reach residents.

By the next day Mayville was joined by dozens of other Livingston residents.

At the cooling station, Mayville kept up with neighbors and her church family in those periods where cell service returned.

Communication is key for keeping residents safe during a disaster. Rural communities, especially in East Texas, start from a deficit. Much of the region lacks quality broadband and cellphone access making it difficult for residents to track developments from news organizations online.

And there is a growing distrust in institutions such as the news media and government.

It comes as no surprise to Jennifer Horney, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Delaware and former associate professor at Texas A&M, that rural residents say they feel uninformed during and after disasters.

“When official notifications come out, people either don’t trust it or they believe that their local knowledge is more accurate than a recommendation from the state or federal government,” Horney said.

Rural residents often prefer to find their information through social media, friends and neighbors, Horney said.

Most residents in Deep East Texas, which includes Polk County and Livingston, should receive alerts through the Genasys Mass Notification System operated by the Deep East Texas Council of Governments, a coalition of local governments.

“The Genasys Platform utilizes voice, text and email messages as well as geofencing to select certain areas of a city or county to be targeted for messages,” said Lonnie Hunt, the council’s director. “The Genasys Platform sends messages to landline phones, obtained through an interlocal agreement with the DETCOG Regional 9-1-1 Program, and the numbers are updated quarterly.”

It is also very common for the counties to maintain active social media accounts, even if just to share information from the National Weather Service, Texas Storm Chasers or the Texas Division of Emergency Management.

Polk County also utilizes its own text message system, AlertMePolkCounty, and County Judge Sydney Murphy keeps the messaging consistent across platforms and news releases. As the county’s chief executive and head of emergency management, she believes her job is to keep residents informed when disaster strikes – which it has multiple times this year.

Regular posts with information ranging from weather alerts to opportunities for assistance litter the emergency management Facebook page in a bid to keep residents safe, but also help them rebuild.

“I’m the one that’s sitting there, answering questions and sending out information to make sure that it is immediate,” Murphy said. “The minute we receive notice that this road is caving, or that road is closed, we immediately send out the notification so there’s no confusion about it.”

Beryl, the most recent storm to roll through East Texas, was the second natural disaster to hit the community in a matter of months and followed a stormy winter season that kept Polk County residents on alert.

But these attempts at communication can only go so far as infrastructure allows. Whether it is a news organization posting regular updates online, or a county judge making Facebook posts, someone without service won’t see it. Likewise, systems like AlertMe or Genasys can relay information quickly and effectively, but only if the person on the receiving end has actual cell service.

A lack of access to broadband has long beleaguered communities like those Murphy serves. The council conducted a broadband study in partnership with inCode Consulting, a global telecommunications consulting firm in 2019.

The study determined that broadband only effectively served 15% of what was actually needed. High speed internet was most accessible near schools and utility coops, but was limited otherwise.

Texans approved $1.5 billion in tax dollars to expand broadband access and emergency communications in 2023. The federal government allocated billions more. So more of the state should be on the path for connectivity, but developing that infrastructure will take time.

Furthermore, cellular service – which is reportedly better than broadband through the region – is still unreliable, especially in the unincorporated communities between established towns.

Murphy is actively expanding broadband across the county to provide full coverage for all her residents. Polk County parlayed a grant to multiple telecommunications providers to expand broadband to the entirety of Polk County.

“By the end of 2025, Polk County will have full fiber connectivity north to south and east to west and redundancy,” Murphy said. “No other rural community around us has that right or even or even as close to it.”

And Polk County used American Rescue Plan Act funds to construct a 440 foot communications tower that cellular providers can rent space on to provide better cell service.

Building trust is a different challenge.

There are still days when Murphy’s inboxes are filled with people complaining about how things are handled. Which she tends to ignore, unless they’re in regard to something she can actually fix. But there are also moments when residents ask a poignant question that would benefit the rest of the community to know, so Murphy does her best to answer those effectively and broadcast them.

She has found that her methods of communication have established some trust not just among her constituents, but of those in surrounding communities. After each disaster, she sees an uptick in subscriptions to the county’s text service and followers on social media.

“We have a lot of people that follow our Facebook page that are from San Jacinto County, Tyler County and Trinity County,” Murphy said. “During the pandemic and during (Hurricane) Harvey, we even had people from Harris County sending us questions.”

Polk County residents, Marissa Suski and her husband, Brian, felt lost about who to believe as Hurricane Beryl began to turn north.

The path of the hurricane had changed and was barreling directly toward them. Further exacerbating their worries, rumors of the Lake Livingston Dam failing had spread like wildfire.

“One person says one thing and you call and another person says something else,” Brian Suski said. “One person said the dam was going to fail. Another person said no, we’re just taking precautions to notify everybody. It was a lot of back and forth.”

They looked to news outlets, social media and made their own calls to government agencies but felt the answers were different from every source.

The one system they found had the most reliable information were text messages that came unbidden to their phones. The Suskis didn’t know where the texts were coming from, but they told them about boil-water notices in the past and kept them up-to-date with the flooding in April. Following Beryl, they learned quickly about the Polk County cooling stations, what help the state was sending and where to pick up MREs.

“I’m not going to lie, believe it or not, I trust those things more than what’s coming out of a human’s mouth,” Marissa said. “They’ve been pretty right on key.”

The texts were coming from Murphy.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — United States-Mexico border arrests have plummeted about 30% in July to a new low for Joe Biden’s presidency, U.S. authorities said, raising prospects that a temporary ban on asylum may be lifted soon.

The U.S. Border Patrol is expected to arrest migrants about 57,000 times during the month, down from 83,536 arrests in June, the previous low mark of Biden’s presidency, according to two U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials who spoke to The Associated Press on Wednesday on the condition of anonymity because the figures had not been released publicly. It would be the lowest monthly tally since 40,507 arrests in September 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic slowed movement across borders in many countries, including to the United States.

Even before Biden’s Democratic administration invoked powers to suspend asylum on June 5, border arrests had fallen by about half from a record-high of 250,000 in December amid increased Mexican enforcement. Since June 5, arrests have fallen by half again, helping the White House fend off attacks by former President Donald Trump and other Republicans that Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, have allowed the border to spiral out of control.

The asylum halt would end if daily arrests drop below 1,500 over a seven-day average, a scenario that Customs and Border Protection officials are preparing for with arrests now hovering 1,600 to 1,700 day. The halt would be reinstated if arrests reach a seven-day daily average of 2,500, a threshold of “emergency border circumstances” that was immediately met when the restrictions took effect in June. Immigrant advocacy groups are challenging the asylum measures in court.

Under the halt, U.S. authorities deny a chance at asylum to anyone who crosses the border illegally. Unaccompanied children are exempt, and others may seek asylum-like forms of protection that allow them to stay in the United States with a higher bar and fewer benefits, like the United Nations Convention Against Torture.

Asked to comment on July numbers, the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday referred to a statement last week that arrests had dropped 55% since asylum restrictions took effect.

San Diego was again the busiest corridor for illegal crossings in July, followed by Tucson, Arizona, an official said.

The biggest declines have been nationalities that are easiest to deport, including Mexicans, but people from other countries are also showing up less as other travel restrictions take hold, officials said. Chinese migration appears to have been slowed by Ecuador’s new visa requirements and more U.S. deportations to China.

GALVESTON (AP) — A lawsuit accusing the parents of a former Texas high school student of negligence for not securing weapons he allegedly used in a 2018 shooting at his campus that killed 10 people was set to go before a jury on Wednesday.

Opening statements were expected in Galveston, Texas, in the civil trial over the lawsuit filed by family members of seven of those killed and four of the 13 people wounded in the attack at Santa Fe High School in May 2018.

Dimitrios Pagourtzis was charged with capital murder for the shooting. Pagourtzis was a 17-year-old student when authorities said he killed eight students and two teachers at the school, located about 35 miles (55 kilometers) southeast of Houston.

The now 23-year-old’s criminal trial has been on hold as he’s been declared incompetent to stand trial and has remained at the North Texas State Hospital in Vernon since December 2019.

The lawsuit is seeking to hold Pagourtzis and his parents, Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Marie Kosmetatos, financially liable for the shooting. The families are pursuing at least $1 million in damages.

The lawsuit accuses Pagourtzis’ parents of knowing their son was at risk of harming himself or others. It alleges Pagourtzis had been exhibiting signs of emotional distress and violent fantasies but his parents did nothing to get him help or secure a handgun and shotgun kept at their home that he allegedly ended up using during the shooting.

“We look forward to obtaining justice for the victims of the senseless tragedy,” said Clint McGuire, an attorney representing the families of five students who were killed and two others who were injured.

Lori Laird, an attorney for Pagourtzis’ parents, did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment.

In a court filing, Roberto Torres, who is representing Pagourtzis in the lawsuit, denied the allegations against his client, saying that “due to mental impairment or illness, (Pagourtzis) did not have sufficient capacity to have a reasonable degree of rational understanding of or control over his actions.”

The trial could last up to three weeks.

Family members of those killed or wounded have welcomed the start of the civil trial as they have expressed frustration that Pagourtzis’ criminal trial has been on hold for years, preventing them from having a sense of closure.

Lucky Gunner, a Tennessee-based online retailer accused of illegally selling ammunition to Pagourtzis, had also been one of the defendants in the lawsuit. But in 2023, the families settled their case against the retailer, who had been accused of failing to verify Pagourtzis’ age when he bought more than 100 rounds of ammunition on two occasions before the shooting.

Other similar lawsuits have been filed following a mass shooting.

In 2022, a jury awarded over $200 million to the mother of one of four people killed in a shooting at a Waffle House in Nashville, Tennessee. The lawsuit had been filed against the shooter and his father, who was accused of giving back a rifle to his son before the shooting despite his son’s mental health issues.

In April, Jennifer and James Crumbley were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison by a Michigan judge after becoming the first parents convicted in a U.S. mass school shooting.