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AUSTIN – KUT reports that the Texas Supreme Court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Travis County Republican Party alleging there were not enough Republican election workers at polling sites. The Texas Elections Code requires the county to ensure election workers at each polling location represent both major political parties – Democrat and Republican – to the best of its ability. The Travis GOP sued the Travis County Elections Division last week, naming Dyana Limon-Mercado in her role as the county clerk and election administrator. The Third Court of Appeals dismissed the lawsuit, and the Travis GOP appealed to the Texas Supreme Court.

On Monday, Texas Supreme Court Justice Jimmy Blacklock along with two other justices ruled there was not enough information to substantiate the GOP’s claims, especially just hours before Election Day. “The evidentiary record it has provided to this Court lacks the degree of clarity and specificity that would allow this Court to know with certainty what exactly has transpired and what practical effect this kind of last-minute judicial intervention would have for election day in Travis County,” the ruling states. In the meantime, the county was ordered to comply with the Election Code to the greatest extent possible. At a press conference Monday morning, Limon-Mercado said the county has assigned teams of bipartisan workers across the 176 polling sites on Election Day. “We have great teams of bipartisan election workers,” she said. “Not only at the poll sites, but here in our office, at our central count process, ensuring the integrity of our election and that all election laws are followed.”

AUSTIN – The Dallas Morning News reports that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued the U.S. Department of Justice for its plans to send election monitors on Tuesday to eight Texas counties, including Dallas, as voters are casting ballots. The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court and announced by Paxton Monday evening, alleges that the election monitors are “unlawful” since state law governs election administration and does not grant authority to federal officials to be present inside a polling place or central counting location. Paxton is asking for a temporary restraining order to block the monitors from entering polling or counting locations and a permanent injunction on federal election monitoring in Texas. The legal motion was filed in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Texas Amarillo Division, a federal trial court where a slew of conservative plaintiffs have filed lawsuits before the single sitting judge, an appointee of former President Donald Trump.

The Justice Department on Friday announced its plan to send election monitors to 86 jurisdictions across 27 states on Election Day. The department regularly visits precincts during elections to ensure compliance with federal election law, but the number of sites on the list has nearly doubled since 2020. The eight Texas counties expected to be visited by federal monitors were Atascosa, Bexar, Dallas, Frio, Harris, Hays, Palo Pinto and Waller. Texas state law lists 15 categories of people who are allowed inside polling locations, including voters and minors accompanied by voters, state and local election officials, and poll watchers who have completed state mandated training. Paxton’s lawsuit references the approved list and points out that the federal election monitors do not fit any of these criteria. A spokesperson for the Justice Department declined to comment on the lawsuit Monday evening. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting, allowed federal officials to observe polling places and sites where ballots are counted. But the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling that struck down provisions of the law made it so that the Justice Department needed a court order or cooperation from state and local officials to enter polling sites, according to reporting by The Washington Post.

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona voters are set to decide whether to let local police arrest migrants suspected of illegally entering the state from Mexico, an authority that would encroach on the federal government’s power over immigration enforcement but would not take effect immediately, if ever.

If Arizona voters approve Proposition 314, the state would become the latest to test the limits of what local authorities can do to curb illegal immigration. Within the past year, GOP lawmakers in Texas, Iowa and Oklahoma have passed immigration laws. In each case, federal courts have halted the states’ efforts to enforce them.

The only presidential battleground state that borders Mexico, Arizona is no stranger to a bitter divide on the politics of immigration. Since the early 2000s, frustration over federal enforcement of Arizona’s border with Mexico has inspired a movement to draw local police departments, which had traditionally left border duties to the federal government, into immigration enforcement.

The state Legislature approved an immigrant smuggling ban in 2005 that let then-Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio conduct immigration crackdowns, a 2007 prohibition on employers knowingly hiring people in the country illegally, and a landmark 2010 immigration law that required police, while enforcing other laws, to question the legal status of people suspected of being in the country without authorization.

Arizona voters have been asked to decide matters related to immigration before. They approved a 2004 law denying some government benefits to people in the country illegally and a 2006 law declaring English to be Arizona’s official language. They also rejected a 2008 proposal that would have made business-friendly revisions to the state law barring employers from hiring people who are in the country without authorization.

Arizona GOP lawmakers say the proposal is necessary to help secure the border, as they blame the Biden administration for an unprecedented surge of illegal immigration. Record levels of illegal crossings have plummeted in recent months, following moves by the White House to tighten asylum restrictions.

Opponents of Proposition 314 argue it would harm Arizona’s economy and reputation, as well as lead to the racial profiling of Latinos. They cite the profiling Latinos endured when Arpaio led the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. In 2013, a federal judge ruled Latinos had been racially profiled in Arpaio’s traffic patrols that targeted immigrants, leading to a court-ordered overhaul of the agency that’s expected to cost taxpayers $314 million in legal and compliance costs by mid-summer 2025.

Kelli Hykes, who works in health policy and volunteers for Greg Whitten, the Democratic nominee in the race for Arizona’s 8th Congressional District, said she thought carefully about how to vote on the immigration measure but declined to share her choice.

“It’s so polarizing, and there are folks in my family that are going to be voting one way and I’m voting another,” Hykes said.

Proposition 314 would make it a state crime for people to illegally enter Arizona from Mexico outside official ports of entry, permitting local and state law enforcement officers to arrest them and state judges to order their deportations. Those who enforce the law would be shielded from civil lawsuits.

These provisions, however, wouldn’t be enforceable immediately. A violator couldn’t be prosecuted until a similar law in Texas or another state has been in effect for 60 consecutive days.

The Arizona GOP lawmakers who voted to put the measure on the ballot were referring to Texas Senate Bill 4. The bill, signed into law by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in December, was supposed to allow local and state law enforcement to arrest people accused of entering Texas illegally from Mexico.

A federal appeals court put it on hold in March. The following month, a panel of federal judges heard from a Texas attorney defending the law and Justice Department attorneys arguing it encroached on the federal government’s authority over enforcing immigration law. The panel has yet to release its decision.

Other provisions of Proposition 314 aren’t contingent upon similar laws outside Arizona. If voters approve the measure, it would immediately make selling fentanyl that results in a person’s death a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison, and a crime for noncitizens to submit false documentation when applying for employment or attempting to receive benefits from local, state and federal programs.

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Gabriel Sandoval is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Unable to keep up with the growing number of leaking and erupting wells in the state’s oil fields, the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry, has asked lawmakers for an additional $100 million in emergency funding — which would be equal to about 44% of the agency’s entire two-year budget.

Danny Sorrell, the agency’s executive director, sent the letter two months after the commission filed its annual budget request in August, according to the Houston Chronicle. He said the agency’s $226 million budget request did not include enough money “to protect the groundwater and the environment” from increasingly common well blowouts.

The agency follows a rating system to determine which wells it needs to plug first, according to Texas law. Priority 1 wells are leaking wells that pose environmental, safety, or economic risks. An uncontrolled flow of water occurring at a well constitutes an emergency, said R.J. DeSilva, a spokesperson for the agency. In an emergency, agency staff “respond immediately to plug it,” he said.

The agency said that it addresses actively leaking wells regardless of whether it has enough money in the designated budget for well remediation, a practice that Sorrell said has become unsustainable and caused the agency to plug fewer non-emergency wells each year.

“These high-priority wells need to be taken care of before they themselves become emergency wells,” he said.

There are approximately 140,000 so-called orphaned wells in the U.S. and more than 9,000 of them are in Texas, according to the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission. These are abandoned wells that have been inactive for at least 12 months and have no clear ownership.

When left unattended, orphaned wells are prone to blowouts that spew contaminated water onto the surrounding land. Experts said the routine industry practice of injecting fracking wastewater — called produced water — into underground rock formations, contributes to the problem.

At least eight wells have leaked and burst since last October, Sarah Stogner, an oil and gas attorney, told the Texas Tribune earlier this month. Stogner has tracked such wells for years.

In December 2023, an abandoned well that blew out in Imperial, southwest of Odessa, took more than two months to plug. That well alone cost regulators $2.5 million to cap and clean up.

In October, another well in Toyah burst and released a torrent of water that took weeks to contain. Kinder Morgan, the energy firm that assumed responsibility for the well, did not say how much it cost to seal.

The briney water is laden with chemicals it collects underground, including hydrogen sulfide, a toxic and deadly gas.

Congress approved $4.7 billion to plug orphan wells on public and private lands as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in 2021. Texas received $25 million of that money in 2022 and another $80 million in January.

The Railroad Commission used that money to plug 737 wells — 10% of the estimated orphaned wells in Texas. It also plugged 1,754 wells through an initiative funded by $63 million in state money.

The efforts have not been enough.

Sorrell’s letter to Lieutenant Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dade Phelan said that regulators need the money to staff a team of inspectors who can investigate the cause of the blowouts, which they associate with produced water injections. Sorrells said the agency’s ability “to assess, characterize and evaluate these events is limited by the currently available resources.”

Sorrells said the cost to plug wells, which includes labor and materials like cement and rigs, has increased by 36% since 2022.

Both oil and gas industry leaders and environmental advocates in Texas applauded the commission’s request.

“We have long supported increases in funding for the Commission in this and other areas,” said Ben Sheppard, president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association. “We would support the Legislature going above and beyond the Commission’s request for plugging and remediation funding. The industry generates billions of dollars every year, and it seems appropriate that more of these dollars could be utilized for this important purpose.”

Julie Range, a policy manager for Commission Shift, an oil and gas watchdog group, commended the agency’s request.

“We hope the investigation team will prompt the Railroad Commission to scrutinize their approval process and deny more injection wells that pressurize underground aquifers and cause many of these wells to reach emergency status,” she said.

For years, a growing chorus of experts and ranchers have warned the commission about the rising threat the wells pose to the environment and the region’s vulnerable groundwater resources.

In August, researchers at Southern Methodist University found a link between the common practice of injecting wastewater from fracking underground and the blowouts occurring across the oil-rich Permian Basin — a 75,000-square-mile region straddling West Texas and New Mexico.

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This story was originally published by The Texas Tribune and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Some Republican-led states say they will block the Justice Department’s election monitors from going inside polling places on Election Day, pushing back on federal authorities’ decades-long practice of watching for violations of federal voting laws.

Officials in Florida and Texas have said they won’t allow federal election monitors into polling sites on Tuesday. And on Monday, Missouri filed a lawsuit seeking a court order to block federal officials from observing inside polling places. Texas followed with a similar lawsuit seeking to permanently bar federal monitoring of elections in the state.

The Justice Department announced last week that it’s deploying election monitors in 86 jurisdictions across 27 states on Election Day. The Justice Department declined to comment on the moves by the Republican-led states, but filed court papers urging the judge to deny Missouri’s request.

The race between Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and Republican nominee Donald Trump is a dead heat, and both sides are bracing for potential legal challenges to vote tallies. The Justice Department’s election monitoring effort, a long practice under both Democratic and Republican administrations, is meant to ensure that federal voting rights are being followed.

Here’s a look at election monitors and the states’ actions:

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Who are the election monitors?

Election monitors are lawyers who work for the Justice Department, including in the civil rights division and U.S. attorney’s offices across the country. They are not law enforcement officers or federal agents.

For decades, the Justice Department’s civil rights division has sent attorneys and staff members to monitor polling places across the country in both federal and non-federal elections. The monitors are tasked with ensuring compliance with federal voting rights laws.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division enforces a number of statutes protecting the right to vote. That includes the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits intimidation and threats against those who are casting ballots or counting votes. And it includes the Americans with Disabilities Act, which mandates that election officials ensure people with disabilities have the full and equal opportunity to vote.

“The Department of Justice has a nearly 60-year history of addressing Election Day issues to safeguard the voting rights of Black citizens and other communities of color,” said Edward Casper, acting co-chief counsel at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “While some recent efforts to interfere in this process may appear more bark than bite, they still pose a real threat to civil rights enforcement,” he said.
Where are election monitors being sent?

The 86 jurisdictions that the Justice Department will send monitors to on Tuesday include Maricopa County, Arizona and Fulton County, Georgia, which in 2020 became the center of election conspiracy theories spread by Trump and other Republicans. Another place on the list is Portage County, Ohio, where a sheriff came under fire for a social media post in which he said people with Harris yard signs should have their addresses recorded so that immigrants can be sent to live with them if the Democrat wins the presidency.

Other areas where federal monitors will be sent include Detroit; Queens, New York; Providence, Rhode Island; Jackson County, South Dakota; Salem, Massachusetts; Milwaukee; Manassas, Virginia; Cuyahoga County, Ohio; and Northwest Arctic Borough, Alaska. The Justice Department’s monitors will be in St. Louis, four jurisdictions in Florida and eight jurisdictions in Texas.
What’s happening in Missouri?

In filing the lawsuit Monday, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft said state law “clearly and specifically limits who may be in polling places.” He also accused the federal government of “attempting to illegally interfere in Missouri’s elections.”

The lawsuit states that Missouri law “permits only certain categories of persons to be present in voting locations, including voters, minor children accompanying voters, poll workers, election judges, etc.” and not federal officials.

The Justice Department also sought to monitor polling places in Missouri in 2022. The agency planned to have officials at Cole County, which includes Jefferson City, the state capital. County Clerk Steve Korsmeyer said he wouldn’t let them in if they show up.

The federal agency backed down after Ashcroft showed Justice Department officials the state law, Ashcroft said. He says the Justice Department is now “trying to go through the back door” by contacting local election officials for access.

Messages were left Monday with the St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners.

In court papers filed late Monday, the Justice Department said it has authority to conduct monitoring there under a settlement agreement with the St. Louis Board aimed at ensuring people with mobility and vision impairments can access polling places. The settlement was reached in 2021 under Trump’s Justice Department after federal officials found problems, such as ramps that were too steep and inaccessible parking, according to the court papers. The settlement, which expires next year, says the board must “cooperate fully” with Justice Department’s efforts to monitor compliance, “including but not limited to providing the United States with timely access to polling places (including on Election Day).”

The Justice Department said an attorney and investigator from its Disability Rights Section are in St. Louis to inspect for accessibility issues Tuesday. The department has carried out such inspections under the settlement agreement on “multiple occasions,” including in the April local elections, government lawyers said in court documents.
What are the other states saying?

In a letter to the Justice Department on Friday, Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson said wrote, “Texas law is clear: Justice Department monitors are not permitted inside polling places where ballots are being cast or a central counting station where ballots are being counted.”

“Texas has a robust processes and procedures in place to ensure that eligible voters may participate in a free and fair election,” Nelson wrote.

In a similar letter Friday, Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd told the Justice Department that Florida law lists who is allowed inside the state’s polling places and Justice Department officials are not included. Byrd said Florida is sending its own monitors to the four jurisdictions the Justice Department plans to send staff to and they will “ensure there is no interference with the voting process.”

__ Associated Press writer Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee contributed reporting, Salter reported from O’Fallon, Missouri.

AUSTIN (AP) — Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas faced his first election Tuesday since his indictment on bribery charges, one of three closely watched races along the U.S.-Mexico border where Republicans are trying to widen inroads in the predominately Hispanic region.

The election is another test for Democrats in a region that has historically been a stronghold and is a recurring backdrop in the national debate over immigration.

Cuellar and his wife have pleaded not guilty to charges related to the couple’s ties to the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. Republicans mounted an aggressive campaign in 2022 to oust Cuellar, one of his party’s most outspoken moderates, but lost by double digits and pulled back in the district this year despite the indictment.

The border House districts are a competitive outlier in Texas, where Republicans have full control of the Legislature and a Democrat has not occupied a statewide office for more than 30 years.
Congressman running under indictment

Cuellar is running against Republican Jay Furman, a political newcomer and Navy veteran who is the incumbent’s first challenger since being indicted on bribery charges in May.

Cuellar and his wife are accused of accepting nearly $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijan-controlled energy company and a bank in Mexico. The charges have given Furman room to make his case in the 28th Congressional District, where Cuellar first took office in 2005.

However, the seat has drawn less attention this cycle from the GOP than in 2022, when a multimillion-dollar challenge still ended in a decisive Cuellar victory.
A rematch in a new Texas district

Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz is again trying to fend off a challenge from Democrat Michelle Vallejo after winning by 8 percentage points in 2022.

De La Cruz was the first Republican to win a congressional race in South Texas. The 15th Congressional District was one of two new seats awarded to Texas following the 2020 census, driven by the state’s booming Hispanic population, and was drawn by Republican mapmakers to give them an edge.

Vallejo’s campaign has leaned into protecting Social Security and Medicare, which are popular programs among her primarily Latino and working-class base. De La Cruz has touted her support of tougher border security policies, including those backed by former President Donald Trump.
Republicans hone in on the Rio Grande Valley

Republicans are zeroing in on Democratic Rep Vicente Gonzalez in a rematch with former Rep. Mayra Flores, who Republicans see as a rising star on the southern border.

Of the three border races in Texas, Republicans have thrown most of their muster behind their campaign to unseat Gonzalez, a moderate Democrat who defeated Flores by more than 8 percentage points in 2022.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has campaigned for Flores, who was the first Mexican-born woman elected to Congress and has outraised Gonzalez in a race that is one of the GOP’s biggest targets nationally. Flores previously held the seat after winning a special election earlier in 2022, under a map that was more favorable to Republicans.
Shifts in South Texas

Counties along the Texas-Mexico border made significant swings in 2020 toward Trump. The rightward shift represents a changing political landscape along the U.S.-Mexico border where border security has become a key issue for voters. President Biden won Hidalgo County, a reliably blue district, by less than half the margin that Hillary Clinton did in 2016. In rural Zapata County, Trump flipped the county altogether after Clinton won it by 33 percentage points four years prior.

The gains have led to Republicans to invest millions of dollars into what were once considered deep blue districts.

Democrats did, however, close the gap statewide in 2020 where Trump won Texas by less than 6 percentage points. It was the closest margin of victory for a GOP presidential nominee in Texas in decades.