KTBB News, Weather, Talk

AUSTIN – The Texas House approved a roughly $337 billion two-year spending plan early Friday, putting billions toward teacher pay, border security and property tax cuts, after more than 13 hours of debate that saw hundreds of amendments — from Democrats and hardline conservatives alike — meet their demise.

The House budget largely aligns with a version the Senate passed in March, though lawmakers made several changes on the floor that will have to be ironed out behind closed doors with their Senate counterparts. The biggest amendment of the day, from Rep. Mary González, D-Clint, eliminated funding for the Texas Lottery Commission and for economic development and tourism in the governor’s office, to the tune of more than $1 billion. Both remain funded in the Senate’s latest budget draft.

The House’s proposal, approved on a 118 to 26 vote, would spend around $154 billion in general revenue, Texas’ main source of taxpayer funds used to pay for core services. The bulk of general revenue spending would go toward education, with large buckets of funding also dedicated to health and human services and public safety agencies.

Both chambers’ spending plans leave about $40 billion in general revenue on the table, coming in well under the $195 billion Comptroller Glenn Hegar projected lawmakers will have at their disposal. But the Legislature cannot approach that number unless both chambers agree to bust a constitutional spending limit, a virtual nonstarter at the GOP-controlled Capitol.

Rep. Greg Bonnen, a Friendswood Republican who is the House’s lead budget writer, kicked off Thursday’s floor debate by emphasizing the budget’s spending restraint — informed by some 119 hours of public meetings and testimony before the House Appropriations Committee, which he chairs.

“I am confident that the amendments that we will consider today and the legislation that this chamber will debate in the coming weeks will produce a final budget that is fiscally conservative and represents the priorities of this state,” Bonnen said.

The dissenting votes included freshman Rep. Mike Olcott, R-Fort Worth, who said in a floor speech that he opposed the bill because it did not include enough money for property tax relief. Across the aisle, Democratic Reps. John Bryant and Gina Hinojosa voted against the bill over its funding for school vouchers, which Bryant called a ”dagger to the heart of our public school system” in a floor speech.

In all, 19 Republicans and seven Democrats opposed the budget.

House lawmakers filed close to 400 budget amendments, including proposals to zero out the Texas Lottery Commission and shift funding set for a school voucher program toward teacher pay and public schools.

More than 100 of those amendments were effectively killed en masse just before lawmakers began churning through the list, including many of the most contentious proposals. The casualties included efforts to place guardrails on school vouchers and a proposal to zero out funding for a film incentives package prioritized by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Also quashed was an amendment to pay Attorney General Ken Paxton the salary he missed out on while impeached and suspended from office.

Among the amendments that survived the purge was a proposal by Rep. Tom Oliverson, R-Cypress, to move $70 million of state Medicaid spending to Thriving Texas Families, the rebrand of the state’s Alternatives to Abortion program that funds anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers. The centers provide services like parenting classes and counseling.

The House approved Oliverson’s amendment, continuing the Legislature’s recent trend of ramping up funding for the program in the wake of the state’s near-total abortion ban. The lower chamber also approved an amendment in 2023 to reroute millions from Medicaid client services to the anti-abortion program.

Democrats, outnumbered 88 to 62 in the House, saw a number of their wish list items shot down throughout the day, and even before debate began. Those included perennial efforts to expand Medicaid and boost public school funding, including by shifting over the entire budget for school vouchers. Also killed were proposals to track the impact of tariffs and federal funding freezes imposed by the Trump administration and an effort to expand access to broadband services in rural areas.

Rep. Jessica González of Dallas notched a rare Democratic win, securing approval, 100 to 42, for an amendment directing the Department of Public Safety to conduct a study of religious leaders in Texas who have been “accused, investigated, charged or convicted of any offense involving the abuse of a child.” The House unanimously passed legislation earlier this week to bar the use of nondisclosure agreements in child sexual abuse cases.

In the end, more than 300 amendments were withdrawn or swept into Article XI, the area where measures are often sent to die if they lack enough floor support.

Another eight were voted down by a majority vote. Just 25 were approved — 18 by Republicans and seven by Democrats.

None of those amendments are guaranteed to stay in the final budget plan, which will be hammered out in private negotiations between a conference committee of members from the House and Senate. After that, each full chamber will have to approve the final version before it can be sent to the governor’s desk — where items can also be struck down by the veto pen.

The House budget proposal would send $75.6 billion to the Foundation School Program, the main source of state funding for Texas’ K-12 public schools.

Lawmakers, in separate legislation, want to use that bump to increase the base amount of money public schools receive for each student by $395, from $6,160 per pupil to $6,555. That amount, known as the basic allotment, has not changed since 2019.

The Senate similarly approved a spending bump for public schools, but focused its increase on targeted teacher raises based on years of experience and student performance.

Both chambers also have budgeted $1 billion for a voucher program that would let families use taxpayer dollars to pay for their children’s private schooling and other educational expenses. That funding survived multiple amendments from House Democrats aimed at redirecting it elsewhere, none of which came up for floor votes.

Unlike in previous sessions, no lawmaker filed an amendment to bar state dollars from being used on school voucher programs. Such amendments, which routinely passed the House with support from Democrats and rural Republicans, served as test votes to gauge the chamber’s support for voucher-like bills. This year, a narrow majority has signed on in support of the chamber’s school voucher bill, a milestone for the historically voucher-resistant House.

The budget would shell out another $51 billion — 15% of the state’s total two-year spending plan — to maintain and provide new property tax cuts, a proposal that some budget watchers worry is unsustainable.

Huge budget surpluses in recent years have helped pay for property tax reductions, including the $18 billion package lawmakers approved two years ago. Now, lawmakers are looking to a $24 billion surplus to help cover new cuts and maintain existing ones.

Texans pay among the highest property taxes in the country, which fund public services, especially public schools, in a state without an income tax. The Legislature has tried to tamp down on those costs in recent years by sending billions of dollars to school districts to reduce how much they collect in property taxes.

Several hardline conservative members tried unsuccessfully to amend the House budget to funnel even more money into tax cuts. Their proposals would have drawn $2 billion from a proposed dementia research institute and hundreds of millions of dollars to punish universities that offered courses or degrees in LGBTQ+ studies or diversity, equity and inclusion.

The university amendments, which sought to zero out the state’s funding to the University of Texas at Austin and Texas State University, sparked heated debate as Democrats expressed incredulity over the idea.

“If the House adopts this amendment, and it becomes law, how many fewer mechanical engineers will we have in this state as a result of UT being defunded?” Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, asked the amendment author, Rep. Andy Hopper, R-Decatur.

Hopper at first responded, “Here’s the thing — how many people are you willing to indoctrinate at our universities?” When pressed for a direct answer, Hopper said, “It’s not relevant, sir.”

Both chambers’ spending plans dedicate $6.5 billion to border security, raising total state spending on Operation Lone Star to almost $18 billion since Gov. Greg Abbott launched Texas’ border crackdown in 2021.

Most of the funding would go to the governor’s office, which would receive $2.9 billion; the Texas Military Department, which would receive $2.3 billion; and the Department of Public Safety, which would receive $1.2 billion.

Several Democrats filed amendments that sought to reroute some of the border security money for other uses, including child care, housing assistance and installing air conditioning units in state prisons. One amendment, by Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, D-Richardson, aimed to use the entire border security budget for teacher pay raises. Each amendment was withdrawn or moved to the Article XI graveyard.

The partisan rift over border security spending lit up during a sharp exchange between Rodríguez Ramos and Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington, over the Democrat’s doomed amendment to redirect $5 million in border spending toward a dashboard “tracking indicators of household economic distress,” such as eviction filings and unemployment claims.

“We could give you a trillion dollars, and you would still cry with this red meat nonsense,” Rodríguez Ramos said, after Tinderholt argued that money should not be drawn from the border budget. “Let us focus on our job, which is to save the lives and make the lives better of working Texans.”

The House also approved a $12 billion supplemental budget early Friday, covering unexpected costs and unpaid bills from the current budget cycle. The bill, approved 122 to 22, would put $2.5 billion toward shoring up Texas’ water crisis by fixing aging infrastructure and expanding water supplies.

It would also spend $924 million to bolster the state’s wildfire and natural disaster response and $1 billion to pay down the unfunded liabilities of state employees’ pension fund. In addition, it would pump another $1.3 billion into the Texas University Fund, a multibillion-dollar endowment created by the Legislature in 2023 for “emerging” research universities around the state.

A second attempt to grant back pay to Paxton while he was suspended from office also failed after lawmakers voted to take up the supplemental budget without considering any amendments. Hopper, the Decatur Republican, had filed an amendment that would have used leftover money from the attorney general’s office budget to pay Paxton.

Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.

AUSTIN – Former U.S. Attorney and Elon Musk lawyer John Bash is the first to throw his hat in the ring to replace Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is making a bid for a U.S. Senate seat.

Bash previously worked as a federal prosecutor for the Western District of Texas until 2020, and served as a special assistant to President Donald Trump during his first term. Since resigning as a government attorney, he has taken on cases such as defending Musk against a then-college student who sued him for defamation.

Bash’s wife, Zina Bash, previously worked as Paxton’s senior counsel until 2021.

Bash describes himself on his campaign website as the “left’s worst nightmare” and pledges to “stop woke lawfare cold.” He said in a statement on social media he’s running because Texas needs “the toughest, most battle-tested attorney to lead the fight to keep our communities safe, defend our constitutional rights, and make sure Texas remains a leader in innovation and growth.’”

As a federal prosecutor, Bash led the state’s cases against the perpetrator of the 2018 Austin porch bombings, who killed two people, and the corruption case against former state Sen. Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio, who was found guilty in 2018 for his role in a Ponzi scheme.

Bash’s move comes after Paxton’s announcement earlier this week that he’ll challenge incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in next year’s midterm election. Paxton has served in the role for 10 years. He does not have to resign his seat, but can’t run for election for more than one position.

Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.

A measles outbreak in Knox County, Ohio, grew to 14 cases this week, with the state’s overall count in double digits across four counties.

The U.S. has more than double the number of measles cases it saw in all of 2024, and Texas is reporting the majority of them with 505.

Texas’ cases include two young elementary school-aged children who were not vaccinated and died from measles-related illnesses near the epicenter of the outbreak in rural West Texas, which led Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to visit the community on Sunday.

Other states with active outbreaks — defined as three or more cases — include New Mexico, Indiana, Kansas and Oklahoma. The virus has been spreading in undervaccinated communities. The third person who died was an adult in New Mexico who was not vaccinated.

The multi-state outbreak confirms health experts’ fears that the virus will take hold in other U.S. communities with low vaccination rates and that the spread could stretch on for a year. The World Health Organization has said cases in Mexico are linked to the Texas outbreak.

Measles is caused by a highly contagious virus that’s airborne and spreads easily when an infected person breathes, sneezes or coughs. It is preventable through vaccines, and has been considered eliminated from the U.S. since 2000.

Here’s what else you need to know about measles in the U.S.
How many measles cases are there in Texas and New Mexico?

Texas’ outbreak began in late January. State health officials said Tuesday there were 24 new cases of measles since Friday, bringing the total to 505 across 21 counties — most of them in West Texas. The state also logged one new hospitalization, for a total of 57 throughout the outbreak.

Sixty-five percent of Texas’ cases are in Gaines County, population 22,892, where the virus stated spreading in a close-knit, undervaccinated Mennonite community. The county now has logged 328 cases since late January — just over 1% of the county’s residents.

Thursday’s death in Texas was an 8-year-old child, according to Kennedy. Health officials in Texas said the child did not have underlying health conditions and died of “what the child’s doctor described as measles pulmonary failure.” A child died of measles in Texas in late February — Kennedy said age 6.

New Mexico announced two new cases Tuesday, bringing the state’s total to 56. State health officials say the cases are linked to Texas’ outbreak based on genetic testing. Most are in Lea County, where two people have been hospitalized, two are in Eddy County and Chaves County was new to the list Tuesday with one case.

New Mexico reported its first measles-related death in an adult on March 6.
How many cases are there in Kansas?

Kansas has 32 cases in eight counties in the southwest part of the state, health officials announced Wednesday. Two of the counties, Finney and Ford, are new on the list and are major population centers in that part of the state. Haskell has the most with eight cases, Stevens County has seven, Kiowa County has six, and the rest have five or fewer.

The state’s first reported case, identified in Stevens County on March 13, is linked to the Texas and New Mexico outbreaks based on genetic testing, a state health department spokesperson said. But health officials have not determined how the person was exposed.
How many cases are there in Oklahoma?

Cases in Oklahoma remained steady Tuesday: eight confirmed and two probable cases. The first two probable cases were “associated” with the West Texas and New Mexico outbreaks, the state health department said.

A state health department spokesperson said measles exposures were confirmed in Tulsa and Rogers counties, but wouldn’t say which counties had cases.
How many cases are there in Ohio?

The Ohio Department of Health confirmed 20 measles cases in the state as of Thursday: 11 in Ashtabula County near Cleveland, seven in Knox County and one each in Allen and Holmes counties.

Ohio is not including non-residents in its count, a state health department spokesperson told The Associated Press. The Knox County outbreak in east-central Ohio has infected a total 14 people, according to a news release from the county health department, but seven of them do not live in Ohio. A measles outbreak in central Ohio sickened 85 in 2022.

The outbreak in Ashtabula County started with an unvaccinated adult who had interacted with someone who had traveled internationally.
How many cases are there in Indiana?

Indiana confirmed six connected cases of measles in Allen County in the northeast part of the state — four are unvaccinated minors and two are adults whose vaccination status is unknown.

The cases have no known link to other outbreaks, the Allen County Department of Health said Wednesday. The first case was confirmed Monday.
Where else is measles showing up in the U.S.?

Measles cases also have been reported in Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, and Washington.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines an outbreak as three or more related cases. The agency counted six clusters that qualified as outbreaks in 2025 as of Friday.

In the U.S., cases and outbreaks are generally traced to someone who caught the disease abroad. It can then spread, especially in communities with low vaccination rates. In 2019, the U.S. saw 1,274 cases and almost lost its status of having eliminated measles. So far in 2025, the CDC’s count is 607.
Do you need an MMR booster?

The best way to avoid measles is to get the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The first shot is recommended for children between 12 and 15 months old and the second between 4 and 6 years old.

People at high risk for infection who got the shots many years ago may want to consider getting a booster if they live in an area with an outbreak, said Scott Weaver with the Global Virus Network, an international coalition. Those may include family members living with someone who has measles or those especially vulnerable to respiratory diseases because of underlying medical conditions.

Adults with “presumptive evidence of immunity” generally don’t need measles shots now, the CDC said. Criteria include written documentation of adequate vaccination earlier in life, lab confirmation of past infection or being born before 1957, when most people were likely to be infected naturally.

A doctor can order a lab test called an MMR titer to check your levels of measles antibodies, but health experts don’t always recommend this route and insurance coverage can vary.

Getting another MMR shot is harmless if there are concerns about waning immunity, the CDC says.

People who have documentation of receiving a live measles vaccine in the 1960s don’t need to be revaccinated, but people who were immunized before 1968 with an ineffective measles vaccine made from “killed” virus should be revaccinated with at least one dose, the agency said. That also includes people who don’t know which type they got.
What are the symptoms of measles?

Measles first infects the respiratory tract, then spreads throughout the body, causing a high fever, runny nose, cough, red, watery eyes and a rash.

The rash generally appears three to five days after the first symptoms, beginning as flat red spots on the face and then spreading downward to the neck, trunk, arms, legs and feet. When the rash appears, the fever may spike over 104 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the CDC.

Most kids will recover from measles, but infection can lead to dangerous complications such as pneumonia, blindness, brain swelling and death.
How can you treat measles?

There’s no specific treatment for measles, so doctors generally try to alleviate symptoms, prevent complications and keep patients comfortable.
Why do vaccination rates matter?

In communities with high vaccination rates — above 95% — diseases like measles have a harder time spreading through communities. This is called “herd immunity.”

But childhood vaccination rates have declined nationwide since the pandemic and more parents are claiming religious or personal conscience waivers to exempt their kids from required shots.

The U.S. saw a rise in measles cases in 2024, including an outbreak in Chicago that sickened more than 60.

___

AP Science Writer Laura Ungar contributed to this report.

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Workers have recovered thousands of gallons of crude oil from an underground pipeline spill on North Dakota farmland, the owner of the line said Thursday, but it remains unclear when oil will again start flowing to refineries.

South Bow is still investigating the cause of the spill Tuesday along the Keystone Pipeline near Fort Ransom, North Dakota, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) southwest of Fargo, the company said.

The spill released an estimated 3,500 barrels, or 147,000 gallons of oil, onto farmland. The company said 700 barrels, or 29,400 gallons, have been recovered so far. More than 200 workers are on-site as part of the cleanup and investigation.

South Bow has not set a timeline for restarting the 2,689-mile (4,327 kilometers) pipeline, which stretches from Alberta, Canada, to refineries in Illinois, Oklahoma and Texas. The company said it “will only resume service with regulator approvals.”

A map from the company shows the pipeline is shut down from Alberta, Canada, to points in Illinois and a liquid tank terminal in Oklahoma. The line is open between Oklahoma and points on Texas’ Gulf Coast, according to the map.

South Bow is working with the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the state Department of Environmental Quality.

Continuous monitoring of air quality hasn’t indicated any adverse health or public concerns, South Bow said.

The site remains busy, said Myron Hammer, a nearby landowner who farms the land affected by the spill. Workers have been bringing in mats to the field so equipment can access the site, and lots of equipment is being assembled, he said.

The area has traffic checkpoints, and workers have been hauling gravel to maintain the roads, Hammer said.

There is a cluster of homes in the area, and residents include retirees and people who work in nearby towns, he said. But the spill site is not in a heavily populated area, Hammer said.

The pipeline shutdown means that refineries that rely on crude oil will have 3% to 4% less of the total flows in a daily market of 17 million to 20 million barrels, said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, vice president for energy and innovation at the University of Houston.

“It’s hard to see how you replace that into the stockpile that goes into these refineries,” he said. “Typically you have storage of crude in storage tanks and ships and everything. That might be a few days. But when you start to lose 3%, 4% of daily demand, it’s going to have impacts.”

Gas prices in the Midwest have already seen an increase that is likely to grow, and diesel prices could be impacted significantly and quickly, he said.

Mark LaCour, editor-in-chief of the Oil and Gas Global Network, said he doesn’t think the pipeline shutdown will affect the middle of the country dramatically. But if it stays down, in two or three weeks there will be a significant price increase in the Midwest, he said.

Underground oil pipelines can be subject to a number of problems, both internal and external, said Robert Hall, a senior technical adviser with the Pipeline Safety Trust who was previously the director of the Office of Railroad, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Investigations at the National Transportation Safety Board.

Pipelines can face internal factors such as corrosion and pressure fluctuations. The latter can lead to fatigue and cracks, Hall said. External threats include corrosion, dents, gouges and construction damage, he said.

Pipelines are the safest method for transporting petroleum products, Hall said.

“Just based on the accident history, if you look at the accidents that have occurred with trains, trucks and barges, there are collisions,” he said, citing a 2013 oil train derailment in Quebec that killed 47 people.

AUSTIN (AP) — A supercharged U.S. Senate GOP primary in Texas between Sen. John Cornyn and state Attorney General Ken Paxton is kicking off with personal attacks and expectations of a high-spending race in a year when Senate Republicans will be defending key seats and targeting others in 2026.

“We’re going to end up spending hundreds of millions of dollars potentially on this race in Texas because we can’t lose the seat in Texas, and that is money that can’t be used in places like Michigan, New Hampshire and Georgia,” Cornyn told reporters Wednesday.

He went on to call Paxton a “conman and a fraud” in remarks that set the stage for a bitter campaign in the months ahead. The feud is not new: Cornyn, who lost a bid for Senate majority leader last year, is among the few prominent Republicans who has criticized Paxton over legal troubles that once threatened the career of Texas’ top law enforcement official.

Paxton, a close ally of President Donald Trump who was first elected to the Texas statehouse in 2002, is starting his campaign by framing himself an outsider and telling voters on his website that he will take on “career politicians” in Washington. Among Paxton’s recurring criticisms of Cornyn — who has served in Congress since 2002 — was the senator’s support of a bipartisan gun control bill after the 2022 elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in which a teenage gunman killed 19 students and two teachers.

Looming over the race is if Trump will make an endorsement. Paxton said Wednesday he doesn’t expect the president to weigh in until closer to election day.

“I would certainly love to have President Trump’s endorsement. I think I would be the death knell to John Cornyn,” he said in an interview on The Mark Davis Show.

Paxton has built a loyal following within the Texas GOP’s hard right that supported him during a historic Republican-led impeachment in 2023 over accusations of corruption and bribery. Trump at the time slammed the proceedings and Paxton was later acquitted in the Texas Senate.

Statewide campaigns in Texas are already among the most expensive in the country. Last year, Republicans spent $87 million helping defend Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in his race against Democrat Colin Allred, including $75 million from a super PAC supporting Cruz, according to Federal Elections Commission filings.

Allred, who lost by more than 8 percentage points, has not ruled out another Senate run after Democrats spent more than $130 million last year trying to elect him. Among Cornyn allies, there is concern that Paxton would be vulnerable and require millions more dollars in advertising that GOP donors otherwise could apply to those other races, instead of to defend a seat in a Republican-leaning state like Texas.

Nationally, Republicans see an opportunity next year to expand their 53-47 majority in the Senate. They see pickup opportunities in three swing states where Democrats have announced retirements: New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, Michigan Sen. Gary Peters and Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith. The GOP is also optimistic about the party’s chances in Georgia, where Democrat Sen. Jon Ossoff is up for reelection.

No Democrat has yet entered the Senate race in Texas.

Paxton’s entry into the race underscores his political resiliency after being shadowed by his impeachment, an FBI corruption investigation and securities fraud charges in recent years. He reached a deal to end the securities fraud case last year and the Biden administration declined to prosecute Paxton.

During Paxton’s last campaign run for attorney general in 2022, George P. Bush, the son of former presidential candidate Jeb Bush, also drew attention to Paxton’s legal troubles. Paxton wound up defeating Bush by nearly 40 points in a runoff.

PALACIOS, Texas (AP) — While American consumers and markets wonder and worry about President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs, there’s one group cheering him as they hope he’ll prop up their sinking business: Gulf coast shrimpers.

American shrimpers have been hammered in recent years by cheap imports flooding the U.S. market and restaurants, driving down prices to the point that profits are razor thin or shrimpers are losing money and struggling to stay afloat.

Tariffs, they hope, could level the playing field and help their businesses not just survive but thrive.

“It’s been tough the last several years that we’ve tried to fight through this,” said Reed Bowers, owner of Bowers Shrimp Farm in Palacios, Texas. Tough times meant difficult choices for many. “Cutting people off, laying people off, or reduce hours or reduce wages … whatever we can do to survive.”

Since 2021, the price of imported shrimp has dropped by more than $1.5 billion, according to the Southern Shrimpers Alliance trade association, causing the U.S. shrimp industry to lose nearly 50% of its market value.

The shrimpers alliance complains that the overseas industry has benefitted from billions of dollars invested in shrimp aquaculture, cheap or even forced labor, use of antibiotics banned in the U.S., and few or no environment regulations.

More than 90% of shrimp consumed in the U.S. is imported, according to the alliance.

“I’m not a believer in free trade. I’m a believer fair trade,” Bowers said. “So if you’re gonna sell into the United States, I think it’s very important to get the same rules and regulations that I have to have as a farmer here in the United States.”

Craig Wallis, owner of W&W Dock & Ice, has been in the business since 1975 and noted that back then shrimpers would run their trawlers 12 months a year.

Not anymore. That’s no longer affordable as Gulf shrimpers compete with cheaper product coming in from South America, China and India.

Wallis says he’s only able to run his shrimp boats about half the year, yet “the bills keep coming every month.”

“We don’t get any subsidies here. We don’t need any help from the government. What we get for our product is what we have to make it on,” he said.

Wallis, who noted he voted for Trump, has watched the back-and-forth on tariffs in recent weeks.

“I don’t know where the tariffs are going to be settled at,” he said, “but it’s definitely going to help.”

But Trump’s tariffs will also force shrimpers to balance the higher costs of equipment, such as trawl cables, webbing, chains and shackles. Some of those items have recently been increasing in price, Wallis said.

“We got be careful that there’s a good balance,” he said.

If the American shrimping industry collapses, Wallis sees a future where foreign trawlers are operating in the Gulf of Mexico, which Trump renamed the “ Gulf of America. ”

“I’m hanging on to have something when I retire,” said Wallis, who is 72. “If it keeps going like it is, it’s taken away from my retirement that I’ve worked for all my life.”

Phan Tran’s family used to be shrimpers but quit the boats around 25 years ago to open Tran’s Family Restaurant, a place they literally built themselves.

“It was just my dad, me and one welder,” Tran said.

Tran said he doesn’t want to serve imported shrimp to his customers. He doesn’t know what shortcuts foreign shrimper firms take.

“The taste, the size, you could tell the texture of the shrimp, everything. … Domestic shrimp versus imported shrimp, you could tell the difference,” Tran said, adding he’ll be buying straight from the day’s catch at the dock, “as long as we have the restaurant business.”

Tariffs will help keep the market fair for local shrimpers, Tran said.

“We used to have a sign on our window here that says, ‘friends don’t let friends eat imported shrimp,’” Tran said. “And a few people got a little offended by it, so we had to take it off. (But) that’s a true statement that we stand by here.”

Bowers, the shrimp farm owner, hopes seafood tariffs have a positive ripple effect across the industry for American producers.

“I think the price of imported seafood is gonna come up,” he said. “And as that price comes up, it’ll make our seafood, our shrimp, more affordable for everybody else.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. House passed a bill Thursday, led by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Austin, to require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.

The bill passed 220 to 208, with all voting Republicans and four Democrats – including Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo — supporting the measure. The legislation now heads to the Senate where Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, has cosponsored the bill.

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, known as the SAVE Act, would require voters in federal elections to bring a U.S. passport, military identification card or any ID that is consistent with REAL ID requirements that indicates citizenship status to register to vote. Voters could also use a government-issued identification card along with a birth certificate, hospital record or similar form.

The Texas lawmaker argued that the SAVE Act is necessary because of the Biden administration’s immigration policies and non-citizens have been found on voter rolls.

“It’s a growing and increasing problem,” Roy told The Texas Tribune before the vote. “We just want to get in front of it now.”

Non-citizens are not legally allowed to vote in U.S. elections and there is no evidence to suggest that significant levels of non-citizens vote.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced in August that the state has removed 6,500 noncitizens from the voter rolls, including about 1,930 with a “voter history,” since September 2021. However, an investigation by The Texas Tribune and ProPublica revealed Abbott likely inflated that number and removed people who are U.S. citizens from voter rolls.

Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Houston, called Roy’s bill “basic housekeeping.”

“Election integrity is everything,” Hunt told the Tribune on Tuesday. “It’s up to us to do the best that we can to make sure that in the future, we have free and fair elections for everyone in this country.”

Democrats argue that the bill places unnecessary hurdles on voting, restricts low-income voters from participating and could cause issues for people who have changed their name — like millions of married women.

“The SAVE Act is a blatant attempt to undermine our election system, weaken American democracy and unfairly suppress millions of eligible citizens from voting,” Rep. Kevin Mullin, D-California, said on the House floor Thursday.

If the SAVE Act became law, voters would also have to present their proof of citizenship in-person when they register to vote or change their registration — such as a name change – including when registering to vote by mail.

Rep. Joseph Morelle, D-New York, said on the House floor that the SAVE Act would cause a “paperwork nightmare,” for voters and “bury voter registration under a mountain of bureaucracy and red tape.”

Roy downplayed this concern about married women who change their names before the vote on the House floor, by listing the women who worked with him on the SAVE Act, including Rep. Mary Miller, R-Illinois.

Miller said the SAVE Act has “robust protections,” for married women who change their name and called Democratic messaging on this issue “scare tactics,” during a March Committee on House Administration hearing.

A similar effort to require proof of citizenship in elections is underway in the Texas state legislature that would put voter ID requirements in place to register to vote in local, state and presidential elections.

Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.

GILLESPIE COUNTY – A year after Gillespie County Republicans hand counted thousands of primary ballots, a bill from a Republican Texas lawmaker whose district includes parts of the area could make it easier to verify the accuracy of hand-counted election results.

State Rep. Ellen Troxclair of Lakeway filed House Bill 3113, which would require counties opting for hand counts to use a ballot that is capable of being scanned and tabulated by voting machines using optical scanning technology.

By law, Gillespie County Republicans were allowed to design their own ballots, and they didn’t choose to use ballots that could be scanned. That meant their primary results could only be verified manually.

If passed, the bill would allow for a faster recount or audit of any hand-counted results. Hand counts can take days and involve hundreds of people. Studies have shown the method is time-consuming, costly and less accurate than using machines.

“It will improve accuracy so that we can have greater confidence in the outcome,” Troxclair said.

The bill does not prevent a hand count or require an audit, she said, but simply makes a faster recount of hand-counted ballots an option.

Last year, Republicans in Gillespie County, home to Fredericksburg, west of Austin, hand-counted every ballot cast in their primary. There were about 8,000 ballots, each of which contained choices for more than 30 races, including Troxclair’s. Days later, during the canvass, Votebeat reported that election officials found errors in the results of all but one of the county’s 13 precincts.

Troxclair said Votebeat’s reporting on Gillespie’s hand count helped her understand where the process “could improve to ensure accuracy,” leading her to propose legislation. The bill was discussed during a House Elections Committee hearing Wednesday and is awaiting a committee vote.

Texas requires partial recounts only for ballots that are tabulated electronically. There is no provision in state law to require a recount or audit for the results of a hand count. The Texas secretary of state’s election division does not have the authority to audit the election unless Gillespie is one of the counties the office randomly selects.

Public records showed the effort in Gillespie was costly for taxpayers. It required 350 people, who worked more than 2,300 hours on Election Day at $12 per hour, totaling more than $27,000 in wages. The amount did not include hourly wages for election clerks at each of the county’s 13 precincts on Election Day who checked in voters and performed duties other than counting.

Jim Riley, the Gillespie County elections administrator, testified in favor of the bill Wednesday.

Riley told lawmakers that there’s no way to know exactly how many errors and inaccuracies were made in the primary because the ballots could not be scanned and recounted.

“Unreadable penmanship, simple math errors, transposing numerals, all of those things made a difference in whether or not we were accurate,” Riley told lawmakers.

Those opposing the bill, including members of the Fredericksburg Tea Party who led the hand count in Gillespie, said it would create additional costs for counties who choose to hand-count because voting equipment vendors would have to be paid to program the machines to handle the ballots.

“Why should counties who choose to hand-count like us, or who are considering returning to hand count, be forced to contract with the very machine companies they’re trying to separate from?” said Jeannette Hormuth, a Fredericksburg Tea Party member who helped organize last year’s hand count.

Christina Adkins, elections division director at the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, said that under federal and state law, counties must provide at least one accessible voting machine for voters with disabilities at each polling location, whether counties hand-count or not. That means counties already are required to have the capabilities to format ballots so they can be scanned.

Riley said the bill would not create additional burdens on the county. In fact, last year, his office offered to format the primary ballots so they could be scanned. The decision was up to the county GOP.

“We said they could hand-count the complete election at their leisure after it was over, but that was turned down,” he said.

Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.