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HOUSTON – Negotiations around a new farm bill that would increase government support for Texas farmers and ranchers are at a standstill, threatening to push back what could be a $1 trillion piece of legislation until next year, according to the Houston Chronicle. Amid a spike in the cost of agricultural supplies and equipment, farmers say they are struggling to hold on and without an immediate increase in crop support programs they will be unable to secure the loans and other financing they need to plant their crops. But Republicans and Democrats are deadlocked over spending on food stamps and other nutrition programs for low-income families, which make up the bulk of the farm bill’s cost, along with almost $20 billion in funding for climate-related conservation programs under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. With Congress in recess and November’s election less than three months away, farming lobbyists are urging members to work out a deal before year’s end.

Agriculture contributes close to $30 billion a year to the Texas economy, spanning the rice fields between Houston and San Antonio, cotton fields in the Panhandle and West Texas ranches, employing 1 in 7 Texas workers. “Congress needs to wake up and get something done,” said Laramie Adams, associate director of government affairs at the Texas Farm Bureau. “We’re expressing to everyone there’s problems in farm country right now. Input prices are extremely high, so are gasoline prices, and you have equipment that runs a million dollar plus and something breaks the parts are very expensive. But (crop) prices are way down.” Crop prices soared during the pandemic but have since dropped sharply — even as grocery prices remain high. Cotton, for instance, soared to $1.83 a pound in 2022 but now sells for less than 84 cents per pound. Likewise, corn rose to almost $350 per metric ton in 2022 before falling to close to $190 a metric ton in June. Leadership from both parties have expressed support for increasing funding to agricultural programs such as federal crop insurance, but the two sides have made little progress since House Republicans introduced their version of a farm bill in May.

HOUSTON – A South Texas coal mine and coal-fired power plant will host a new geothermal energy storage facility as part of a local electric utility’s energy transition, according to the Houston Chronicle. Sage Geosystems, a Houston-based startup founded by former executives from Shell, first announced plans to build a 3 megawatt geothermal energy storage facility, capable of providing enough electricity to power 750 Texas homes on the hottest summer days, in February. The company said Tuesday that the project would be built in Christine, about an hour south of San Antonio. Sage has leased 10 acres for the facility from San Miguel Electric Cooperative, a utility that powers up to 78,200 South Texas homes, Sage CEO Cindy Taff said. The geothermal project will be on the same site as San Miguel’s coal mine and coal-fired power plant.

The project could be the first geothermal facility in Texas and comes as the state’s grid faces twin pressures from unprecedented power demand growth and extreme weather. Grid experts say energy storage systems can help stabilize the grid by providing electricity when it’s most needed and by storing excess renewable energy for use when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. San Miguel CEO Craig Courter said the utility began to take an interest in geothermal energy, and in Sage Geosystems in particular, as it grappled with how to provide cleaner yet still affordable and reliable electricity to its customers in rural South Texas. San Miguel has faced lawsuits from local ranchers over water and soil pollution from the Christine mine. The coal-fired power plant and lignite coal mine are supposed to close in 2037. That end date could come sooner if cheap solar and wind power make it uneconomic to produce coal-fired power, or if federal regulations aiming to limit climate-warming emissions from coal-fired power plants are enacted, Courter said. “We have to be ready at any time between now and 2037 and have a game plan for how we are going to continue producing this power, and it doesn’t happen overnight,” he said.

SAN ANTONIO – Homeland Security Investigations arrested 14 people last week at an AirBnB in Texas in what the department is calling a trend, according to the San Antonio Express-News. Officials said they arrested one accused smugger and 13 migrants on August 8 at the short-term rental property in El Paso. It was the second “stash house” bust in one week,

HSI stated the AirBnB property owner contacted the department after they suspected the home was being used for trafficking while it was being rented. Officials said they believe the migrants were at the home for a day and described the group as “crammed into small quarters.” “Airbnb stash houses are a new trend. It’s become the popular alternative to motels or hotels because smugglers can book them online in their home country and check in remotely without having to meet the property owner in person,” HSI El Paso acting Special Agent in Charge Jason T. Stevens said in a news release.

AUSTIN – The Houston Chronicle reports that House lawmakers on Friday called for a legislative response after the state’s insurer of last resort voted this month to raise rates for homeowners along the Gulf Coast, signaling they may be open to broader reforms in the state’s insurance market. The Texas Windstorm and Insurance Association’s nine-member board voted for a 10% rate increase after a staff analysis found that the insurer has for years been unable to cover expected costs, which include paying claims on damage from storms such as Hurricane Beryl. Lawmakers largely agreed that TWIA’s current funding structure was unsustainable. “There’s no business that I know out there that wants to keep going if they got to pay to keep the business open,” said Rep. Richard Raymond, a Laredo Democrat.

TWIA was created decades ago to insure homeowners who couldn’t afford wind and hail coverage on the private market. It insures Texas’ 14 coastal counties and a corner of Harris County. David Durden, TWIA’s general manager, said the cost of providing wind and hail coverage along the coast has increased, largely with the rising cost of reinsurance, a form of insurance for insurance companies that distributes risk over geography and sectors. As the number of TWIA policies has spiked — 38% since 2020 — it must hold more reinsurance to cover its liability, Durden said. Roughly half of premiums go to cover TWIA’s reinsurance costs, he said, a “dramatic increase” from 2021. Reducing TWIA’s reliance on reinsurance, either by using state reserves to fund the nonprofit’s catastrophic reserve fund or otherwise propping up a state-sponsored reinsurance fund, would help lower rates. TWIA is funded through premiums paid by policyholders as well as assessments paid by private insurers operating in other parts of the state. That means that ratepayers throughout the state help subsidize TWIA. Rep. John Smithee, an Amarillo Republican, said the problems with TWIA were indicative of larger challenges in the insurance industry in Texas and that he was open to more fundamental changes to how insurance is regulated in the state.

GALVESTON, Texas (AP) — Jurors in Texas are expected to resume deliberations Monday on whether the parents of a Texas student accused of killing 10 people in a 2018 school shooting near Houston should be held financially liable for damages.

The victims’ lawsuit seeks to hold Dimitrios Pagourtzis and his parents, Antonios Pagourtzis and Rose Marie Kosmetatos, financially liable for the shooting at Santa Fe High School on May 18, 2018. They are pursuing at least $1 million in damages.

Victims’ attorneys say the parents failed to provide necessary support for their son’s mental health and didn’t do enough to prevent him from accessing their guns.

“It was their son, under their roof, with their guns who went and committed this mass shooting,” Clint McGuire, representing some of the victims, told jurors during closing statements in the Galveston courtroom.

Authorities say Pagourtzis fatally shot eight students and two teachers. He was 17 years old at the time.

Pagourtzis, now 23, has been charged with capital murder, but the criminal case has been on hold since November 2019, when he was declared incompetent to stand trial. He is being held at a state mental health facility.

Lori Laird, an attorney for Pagourtzis’ parents, said their son’s mental break wasn’t foreseeable and that he hid his plans for the shooting from them. She also said the parents kept their firearms locked up.

“The parents didn’t pull the trigger, the parents didn’t give him a gun,” Laird said.

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. Pagourtzis’ parents are not accused of any crime.

The lawsuit was filed by relatives of seven of the people killed and four of the 13 who were wounded in the Santa Fe attack. Attorneys representing some of the survivors talked about the trauma they still endure.

SAN ANTONIO (AP) – U.S. Air Force security guards exchanged gunfire with someone who twice opened fire on an entrance to Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland early Saturday, according to a spokesperson for the base.

“It was an off-base shooting from a passing vehicle that fired shots towards the gate, prompting our security forces to respond,” base spokesperson Stefanie Antosh said in a statement. “There is no threat to the installation. We had no injuries, no fatalities.”

Antosh said the shooting was being investigated by San Antonio police, who said in a release that the first shooting occurred about 2:15 a.m.

“The security personnel stated they heard several shots fired as well as the fired rounds go past them,” Sgt. Washington Moscoso said in the release. “After this incident, the security personnel added more armed guards as a precaution.”

A vehicle later stopped near the same entrance shortly after 4:30 a.m., Moscoso said.

“For a second time, shots were fired at the Air Force security personnel, however, with the additional security personnel present, multiple Air Force personnel returned fire toward the suspect vehicle,” Moscoso said.

The vehicle then fled. No injuries were reported and the shootings remained under investigation, Moscoso said.

It was not known how many rounds were fired, how many shooters there were, or what their motive was, according to Antosh.

The entrance was closed for several hours after the shooting before reopening about 9:30 a.m., but the base was not locked down, according to Antosh.

In addition to Lackland, Joint Base San Antonio includes Randolph Air Force Base and the Army’s Fort Sam Houston and the Camp Bulllis training camp.

Lackland is home to more than 24,000 active duty members and 10,000 Department of Defense civilians, according to the base website. It includes the 37th Training Wing; 149th Fighter Wing; 59th Medical Wing; the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency; 24th Air Force Wing, 67th Network Warfare Wing; the Cryptologic Systems Group; the National Security Agency; and 70 associated units.

(ABC) – A 78-year-old man has now been charged with a murder committed over 40 years ago after genetic genealogy helped investigators identify him as a suspect.

Deck Brewer Jr., a man already imprisoned in Massachusetts, has been charged with the 1980 murder of 25-year-old Susan Leigh Wolfe, according to the Austin, Texas, Police Department. Wolfe had just enrolled as a nursing student at the University of Texas at Austin when she was kidnapped, sexually assaulted and killed on Jan. 9, 1980, according to police. Wolfe was kidnapped one block from her home while walking to a friend’s house at around 10 p.m. A witness saw a car stop before the driver exited and grabbed Wolfe in a “bear hug,” placed a coat over her head and forced her into the back of the car, police said.

Wolfe’s body was found the next morning in an alley in Austin. Her body had evidence of ligature strangulation and the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head, police said.

During an autopsy, a pathologist found evidence of a sexual assault by one of two unknown suspects seen in the car, police said.

For a year after the murder, investigators followed dozens of leads and tracked down dozens of cars that fit the witness’s description. Police said over the years they had over 40 persons of interest and conducted interviews with at least six suspects.

In April 2023, detectives submitted evidence related to Wolfe’s sexual assault to the Texas Department of Public Safety Crime Laboratory, where forensic experts evaluated it and determined it was suitable for testing, police said.

In February, Austin police received the test results — which produced a male profile for the suspect — and eliminated the six suspects who were not a genetic match with the evidence police had, police said.

Police then entered the profile into the Combined DNA Index System, known as CODIS, which operates local, state and national databases of DNA profiles from convicted offenders, unsolved crime scene evidence and missing persons, police said.

In March, Austin police received a notification for a possible match in Massachusetts, where Brewer is currently incarcerated on unrelated charges, police said.

Detectives conducted a short interview with Brewer in which he said he had been in Austin and San Antonio, Texas, around the time of the murder, police said. Brewer asked for his right to a lawyer when he was told DNA was found at the scene of a murder, police said.

After the DNA comparison was conducted, an Austin court found probable cause to charge Brewer in the murder of Wolfe, police said.