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LA PORTE, Texas (AP) — A massive pipeline fire sent a pillar of flame towering over some Houston suburbs on Monday as first responders evacuated a surrounding neighborhood and tried to keep more nearby homes from catching on fire.

The blaze involving a 20-inch pipeline carrying natural gas liquids must burn itself out, according to its operator, Dallas-based Energy Transfer. The company said the flow was shut off but local officials said it could take hours, if not into Tuesday, for the residual material to burn off.

Local authorities would not speculate at an afternoon news conference about what caused the fire and what role a burned car near the source of the flame may have had. Energy Transfer said in its statement that it was “aware of early reports” that a car had struck some valve equipment but did not offer more details, including the origin of those reports.

Firefighters were dispatched at 9:55 a.m. after an explosion that rattled adjacent homes and businesses in Deer Park and La Porte, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of downtown Houston, long the energy capital of the U.S. The plume of smoke could be seen from at least 10 miles away.

The only injury reported so far was to a firefighter who sustained a minor injury, officials said.

Geselle Melina Guerra said she and her boyfriend heard an explosion at around 9:30 a.m. as they were having breakfast in their mobile home. “All of a sudden we hear this loud bang and then I see something bright, like orange, coming from our back door that’s outside,” said Guerra, 25, who lives within the evacuation area.

Her boyfriend woke up his brother and they ran to their car.

“I was just freaking out, pacing around the living room, not really knowing what to do or what was happening,” Guerra said. “I thought maybe it was an airplane that had crashed down by our house.”

La Porte city spokesperson Lee Woodward told KTRK-TV that people in nearby schools were told to shelter in place as law enforcement blocked off a wide area.

Energy Transfer said in a statement that air monitoring equipment was being set up in the area.

At nearby San Jacinto College, which closed its campus after the explosion, people who gathered included Evan Wyman, who had gotten word after calling police that her dog, Baxter, and had been rescued from her home, which is in the evacuated neighborhood.

“I just know that my dog is rescued,” Wyman said.

Houston is the nation’s petrochemical heartland and is home to a cluster of refineries, plants and thousands of miles of pipelines. Explosions and fires are a familiar sight to residents in Texas’ largest city, including some that have been deadly. The blasts have raised recurring questions about the adequacy of the industry’s plans to protect the public and the impacts of environmental damage.

Video images from KTRK showed a park near the fire had been damaged and firefighters pouring water on adjacent homes. By noon, at least a couple of homes appeared to have caught fire, with smoke pouring from their roofs. There are also several businesses nearby, including a Walmart.

Sanchez said they’re used to evacuations because they live close to other plants near the highway, but he hadn’t seen an explosion before in his 10 years living there.

“We just drove as far as we could because we didn’t know what was happening,” Sanchez said from a parked car at a gas station near his college.

Officials have ordered residents in the Brookglen neighborhood area near the fire to evacuate, Woodward said in an email.

“Please avoid the area and follow law enforcement direction. Further details will be released as available,” Woodward said.

The fire burned through high voltage power lines, and the website PowerOutage.us said several thousand customers were without power in Harris County.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The former Uvalde, Texas, schools police chief made his first court appearance on Monday for his role in the heavily scrutinized law enforcement response to the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting.

Pete Arredondo, who was allegedly the incident commander, was part of the slow police response that left 19 students and two teachers dead.

Attorneys for Arredondo filed a motion to dismiss the charges, arguing that the former chief should not be held responsible for the actions he didn’t take that day. The judge did not make a ruling on the motion Monday.

A grand jury indicted Arredondo, as well as responding officer Adrian Gonzales, on multiple counts of child endangerment and abandonment earlier this year. Both have pleaded not guilty.

The indictment alleges that Arredondo did not follow his active shooter training and made critical decisions that slowed the police response while the gunman was “hunting” victims.

Arredondo has said he’s been “ scapegoated ” for his role in the law enforcement response and should not have been considered the lead commander.

Nearly 400 officers from federal, state and local agencies waited more than 70 minutes before confronting the gunman at Robb Elementary. Multiple state and federal investigations have pointed to failures in communication, leadership and training for law enforcement’s response.

A federal review from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Professional Responsibility released Thursday found similar breakdowns in communication and command among Border Patrol agents.

The former schools police chief and Gonzalez, who was indicted on 29 similar counts of endangerment and abandonment, are the only two officers facing criminal charges. If convicted, they can serve up to two years in jail time.

DALLAS (AP) — A vehicle crossed into oncoming traffic on a Dallas interstate and collided with two other vehicles in a crash that left four people dead, police said.

The multi-vehicle accident happened about 1 p.m. Saturday on Interstate 45 in southeast Dallas, police spokesperson Michael Dennis said in a statement.

A preliminary investigation determined a vehicle was northbound on I-45 when it hit a second vehicle and then crossed the median into southbound traffic, where it struck two more vehicles.

Dennis said three people in the northbound vehicle died at the scene, and a fourth person in one of the southbound vehicles died at a hospital. Two other people were hospitalized in unknown condition, Dennis said.

The cause of the accident remains under investigation, and the names of those killed and injured weren’t immediately released.

McALLEN, Texas (AP) — For three days, the staff of an Orlando medical clinic encouraged a woman with abdominal pain who called the triage line to go to the hospital. She resisted, scared of a 2023 Florida law that required hospitals to ask whether a patient was in the U.S. with legal permission.

The clinic had worked hard to explain the limits of the law, which was part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ sweeping package of tighter immigration policies. The clinic posted signs and counseled patients: They could decline to answer the question and still receive care. Individual, identifying information wouldn’t be reported to the state.

“We tried to explain this again and again and again, but the fear was real,” Grace Medical Home CEO Stephanie Garris said, adding the woman finally did go to an emergency room for treatment.

Texas will be the next to try a similar law for hospitals enrolled in state health plans, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. It takes effect Nov. 1 — just before the end of a presidential election in which immigration is a key topic.

“Texans should not have to shoulder the burden of financially supporting medical care for illegal immigrants,” Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement announcing his mandate, which differs from Florida’s in that providers don’t have to tell patients their status won’t be shared with authorities.

Both states have high numbers of immigrants, ranging from people who are in the U.S. without legal permission to people who have pending asylum cases or are part of mixed-status families. And while the medically uninsured rate in these two states — neither of which have expanded Medicaid — are higher than the national average, research has shown immigrants tend to use less and spend less on health care.

Texas and Florida have a long history of challenging the federal government’s immigration policies by passing their own. And their Republican leaders say the hospital laws counter what they see as lax enforcement at the border by the Biden administration — though Florida’s early data is, by its own admission, limited.

Florida GOP state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, who sponsored the hospital bill, said in a written statement that the law is “the strongest, and most comprehensive state-led, anti-ILLEGAL immigration law,” but did not respond to The Associated Press’ questions about the impact of the law on the immigrant community or on hospital patients.

Luis Isea, an internal medicine doctor with patients in hospitals and clinics in central Florida, said the law “is creating that extra barrier” for patients who are already exposed to many disparities.

Immigrant advocate groups in Florida said they sent thousands of text messages and emails and held clinics to help people understand the limitations of the law — including that law enforcement agencies wouldn’t know an individual’s status because the data would be reported in aggregate.

But many outreach calls from health workers went unanswered. Some patients said they were leaving Florida, as a result of the law’s impact on getting health care and on employment; the DeSantis’ administration tied the hospital mandate to other initiatives that invalidated some driver’s licenses, criminalized transportation of migrants lacking permanent status and changed employment verification policies.

Others, advocates say, languished in pain or needed to be persuaded. Verónica Robleto, program director at the Rural Women’s Health Project in north central Florida, fielded a call before the law took effect in July 2023 from a young woman who didn’t have legal permission to be in the U.S. and was afraid she would be separated from her child if she gave birth at the hospital.

“She was very afraid (but) she did end up going after speaking with me,” Robleto said.

Whatever data Florida and Texas do collect likely will be unreliable for several reasons, researchers suggested. Health economist Paul Keckley said the report released by Florida state officials could have “incomplete or inaccurate or misleading” data.

For one, it’s self-reported. Anyone can decline to answer, an option chosen by nearly 8% of people admitted to the hospital and about 7% of people who went to the emergency room from June to December 2023, the Florida state report said. Fewer than 1% of people who went to the emergency room or were admitted to the hospital reported being in the U.S. “illegally.”

The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration acknowledged large limitations in their analysis, saying it didn’t know how much of the care provided to “illegal aliens” went unpaid. It also said it was unable to link high levels of uncompensated care with the level of “illegal aliens” coming to a hospital, saying it’s “more associated with rural county status than illegal immigration percentages.”

The agency didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment and more information. Its report noted that for much of the last decade, the amount of unpaid bills and uncollected debts held by Florida hospitals has declined.

In Florida and in Texas, people who aren’t in the U.S. legally can’t enroll in Medicaid, which provides health insurance for low-income people — except in the case of a medical emergency.

Multiple factors can affect the cost of care for people who are in the U.S. without legal permission, experts said, especially the lack of preventive care. That’s especially true for people who have progressive diseases like cancer, said Dr. James W. Castillo II, the health authority for Cameron County, Texas, which has about 22% of the population uninsured compared to the state average of 16.6%.

At that point, he said, “it’s usually much harder to treat, much more expensive to treat.”

Texas community groups, policymakers and immigration attorneys are partnering with Every Texan, a nonprofit focusing on public policy and health care access, to encourage people to not answer the status question, said Lynn Cowles with Every Texan.

And in Florida, the deportation fears are subsiding but questions about the purpose of the law remain.

“How much of this is substantive policy and good policy versus how that fared, I leave that for others to speculate,” said Garris with the Orlando clinic. “But I know the practical effect of the law was egregious and demeaning to patients who are living here, working here. It’s just insulting.”

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Salomon reported from Miami, and Shastri reported from Milwaukee.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

ATLANTA (AP) — Trying to defend their narrow Senate majority with a challenging slate of contests on Republican-leaning turf, Democrats are pumping $25 million into expanded voter outreach across 10 states.

The new spending from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, first shared with The Associated Press, comes less than two months until the Nov. 5 election and as Democrats are benefiting from a fundraising surge since President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid in July and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the party standard-bearer.

“A formidable ground game makes all the difference in close races,” DSCC Chairman Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan said in a statement. “We are reaching every voter we need to win.”

The latest investment will be distributed across Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. The money will go toward efforts to defend five Democratic incumbents and open seats in Michigan, Maryland and Arizona that are currently included in Democrats’ majority, as well as efforts to unseat GOP incumbents in Florida and Texas.

Plans for the money will vary by state but will include hiring more paid field organizers and canvassers; digital organizing programs targeting specific groups of voters online; texting programs; and in-person organizing events targeting younger generations and nonwhite voters.

Democrats currently hold a 51-49 Senate advantage, a split that includes independent senators who caucus with Democrats. But of the 33 regular Senate elections this November, Democrats must defend 23 seats, counting the independents who caucus with them to make their majority. They’ve devoted few national resources to West Virginia, a Republican-leaning state where Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat-turned-independent, is retiring.

The playing field gives Democrats little margin for error. If they lose West Virginia and hold all other seats, they still would have to upset Florida Sen. Rick Scott or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz to win a majority or hope Harris wins the presidential election — an outcome that would allow her running mate, Tim Walz, to cast the tiebreaking vote for Democrats as vice president, as Harris did in a 50-50 Senate during the first two years of Biden’s administration.

The DSCC declined to disclose a state-by-state distribution of the $25 million. But it’s no secret that Democrats’ defense of the majority starts with tough reelection contests for Sens. Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Both are relatively popular, multiterm incumbents, but they’re running in states where Donald Trump, the former president and current Republican nominee, has twice won by comfortable margins. That means Tester and Brown would need a considerable number of voters to split their tickets between Trump and their Senate choice.

Senate Democrats already have financed field offices in Montana and Ohio, since those are not presidential battleground states where the Harris campaign leads Democrats’ coordinated campaign operations. And even with the money coming from national coffers, the additional on-the-ground spending will reinforce the two Democratic senators’ strategies of distancing themselves from Harris and the national party.

Five of the 10 states getting money, meanwhile, overlap with the presidential battleground map: Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Biden won all of them four years ago, while Trump won all except Nevada in 2016. Both presidential campaigns see the states as tossups this fall.

The voter outreach spending comes alongside an ongoing $79 million advertising effort by Democrats’ Senate campaign arm and builds on staffing and infrastructure investments that the national party arm already has made.

The outlay comes after Harris, who has raised more than $500 million since taking over the Democratic presidential ticket in July, announced plans to distribute $25 million to party committees that focus on down-ballot races. Senate and House Democrats’ respective campaigns each got $10 million of that money, an acknowledgment that Democratic majorities on Capitol Hill would make a Harris presidency more successful and that Harris and down-ballot Democrats can help each other at the ballot box.

Democratic aides said the on-the-ground spending was always in the Senate committee’s plans, but Harris’ bounty certainly expands options for all party-affiliated campaign groups. Democrats believe they have a superior campaign infrastructure to Trump and the rest of the GOP in a campaign year where the White House and control of Capitol Hill could be decided by marginal turnout changes among the parties’ core supporters and a narrow band of persuadable voters.

Still, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has outraised and outspent Senate Democrats this cycle, though Democrats had more cash on hand at the end of July, the last reporting period disclosed to the Federal Election Committee.

Through July 31, the NRSC had raised $181.3 million and spent $138.5 million. Republicans reported a balance of $51 million. Democrats had raised $154 million and spent $103.3 million. They reported a balance of $59.3 million.

PITTSBURG, Kan. (AP) — A new abortion clinic has brought the debate over reproductive rights to a small college town in the southeast corner of Kansas. It’s one of the few states left in the region still allowing abortions.

A religious, Republican-leaning semi-rural location like Pittsburg, Kansas, would have been unlikely to host an abortion clinic before Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, but that is changing across the country.

The Associated Press reported on the new clinic and the town’s reactions. Here are key takeaways.

Border states are becoming abortion-access hubs
Over the past two years, Kansas is one of five states that people are most likely to travel to in order to get an abortion if their state doesn’t offer the procedure, said Caitlin Myers, an economics professor at Middlebury College who researches abortion policies.

Abortions have spiked by 152% in Kansas after Roe, according to a recent analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights.

Using Myers’ count, six of the clinics in Kansas, Illinois, New Mexico, North Carolina and Virginia that have opened or relocated post-Roe are in communities with fewer than 25,000 people. Two others are in communities of fewer than 50,000.

Kansas voters protected abortion rights
Five weeks after Roe was overturned, voters in Kansas had to decide whether to strip the right to an abortion from the state constitution, which could have led to an outright ban.

Pittsburg is in Crawford County, where 55% of voters were part of the 59% of voters statewide who killed the proposal. But the rural counties surrounding Pittsburg voted for the amendment.

Kansas’ statewide percentage is in line with an Associated Press-NORC poll from 2024 that showed 6 in 10 Americans think their state should generally allow a person to obtain a legal abortion if they don’t want to be pregnant for any reason.

Abortion in Kansas is generally legal up until the 22nd week of pregnancy.

Planned Parenthood has turned people away in Kansas
The new abortion clinic will be run by Planned Parenthood Great Plains. Its location is a few minutes’ drive from the Missouri border and is less than an hour away from Oklahoma.

All of Kansas’ other abortion clinics are in larger metro areas, where clinics have expanded hours — but appointments are still in short supply. About 60% to 65% of people who call Planned Parenthood clinics in Kansas for an abortion appointment are turned away because there isn’t enough capacity, said Emily Wales, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains.

The bulk of people looking for abortions in Kansas are from out of state — mostly Texas, which is about five hours south, Wales said. She added that some come from as far away as Louisiana and even Florida, which now prohibits the procedure after six weeks.

Small towns can be welcoming — or not
Experts said smaller-sized clinics can be less overwhelming for women who are coming from rural areas, like those surrounding Pittsburg. But, often, there is little anonymity in these places where religious and family ties often run deep.

Pittsburg is home to a state university with about 7,400 students. The town is also is increasingly religious, with twice as many white evangelical Protestants as the national average, and the area is increasingly Republican.

Pittsburg State students who The Associated Press talked to are supportive of the clinic, as are many of the Democrats in town.

But churches in Pittsburg are training people on how to protest at the abortion clinic, and Vie Medical Clinic, a crisis pregnancy center, has seen an increase in donations.