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HOUSTON (AP) — Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott is blaming a history of election problems in the state’s most populous county for his delay in calling for a special election to fill the seat of Democratic U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner, who died a month ago.

But Teneshia Hudspeth, the chief elections officer in Harris County where Turner’s congressional district is located, pushed back on Abbott’s criticism, saying the county is “fully prepared” to hold the election for the congressman’s replacement.

Democrats have accused Abbott of delaying the election to help Republicans maintain their razor-thin margins in the U.S. House. One candidate vying for the open seat, Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, along with Democratic U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, have threatened to sue Abbott over the delay.

Turner, a former Houston mayor, died March 5, just weeks into his first term in Congress. His district includes parts of Houston and Harris County and has nearly 800,000 residents.

Abbott has the sole authority to call for a special election. Abbott’s office had previously only said an announcement on a special election would be made at a later date.

But during an interview on Thursday with KXAN in Austin, Abbott cited elections problems in Harris County for the delay. Elections have been scrutinized for several years in Harris County — which has nearly 5 million residents, most of whom are Latino or Black. Problems have included long lines, poll worker and ballot shortages and ballots that were not counted the day of the election.

In 2023, Abbott signed a bill that removed Harris County’s elections administrator and transferred the responsibility to other local officials, including Hudspeth.

“Harris County is a repeat failure as it concerns operating elections. Had I called that very quickly, it could have led to a failure in that election, just like Harris County has failed in other elections. They need to have adequate time to operate a fair and accurate election, not a crazy election like what they’ve conducted in the past,” Abbott told KXAN.

Abbott did not give a date for the special election, saying he would be “announcing that sometime soon.”

In a statement on Friday, Hudspeth said since the state returned election administration duties to her office, “my office has successfully conducted eight elections.”

In a post on X, Menefee called Abbott’s comments “nonsense.”

“Governor, call the election. You’ve had a month. No more excuses,” Menefee said.

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Follow Juan A. Lozano on X at juanlozano70

It was just a few sentences in a meandering, hourlong presidential speech on a Friday afternoon.

Along with talk about falling egg prices and a vow to expel “corrupt forces” from the U.S. government, President Donald Trump noted that hundreds of members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had been arrested.

“You’ll be reading a lot of stories tomorrow about what we’ve done with them,” he said at the Justice Department on March 14. “These are tough people and bad people and we’re getting them out of our country.”

“You’ll be very impressed,” he added.

Trump was previewing drama to come that would involve clandestine flights to another continent, a notorious prison, innocents among criminals and a dramatic confrontation between his assertions of presidential power and a federal judge who Trump said had overreached.

The president’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to justify deporting more than 130 Venezuelan men, some of them gang members and others who claim to have been in the United States legally and were seemingly expelled because of their ordinary tattoos, played out over a frenetic 24 hours.

By the time Trump had spoken, hundreds of detained immigrants had been quietly shuttled from across the U.S. to South Texas. Planes had been chartered to take them to their ultimate destination, El Salvador, under a deal with President Nayib Bukele, who proudly calls himself “world’s coolest dictator.”

The men were herded into a maximum security mega prison in El Salvador, where officials quickly made a show of the new inmates having their heads shaved, then standing shoulder to shoulder in cells so crowded that some prisoners do not have beds.

But soon, stories began to surface that the scene was not quite as it appeared. Some of them men had long insisted they had no gang ties, and their families had produced documents showing they had no criminal records.

“I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’ve seen some pretty weird stuff,” said Texas attorney John Dutton, who represented a man who disappeared into the Salvadoran prison. “But to do this in the middle of the night, to send people to another country, and straight to a prison when they haven’t been convicted of a crime?

“It makes no sense.”
Trump fulfilled a long-standing pledge on migrants

It made sense in the White House.

Trump has been promising for years that he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act to combat illegal immigration. He repeatedly insisted, falsely, that the U.S. was facing an invasion of criminal immigrants.

Tren de Aragua became the face of that threat, and the first target of that law in decades.

Crafted during the presidency of John Adams, the law gives the president broad powers to imprison and deport noncitizens in times of war. It has been used just three times: during the War of 1812 and the two world wars.

The Trump administration had begun edging closer to calling the criminal migrant issue a war, most notably by designating eight Latin American criminal groups, including Tren de Aragua, as “foreign terrorist organizations.”

The administration was telegraphing its logical next move. Immigration lawyers prepared to fight back.
Government flights signal deportations to El Salvador

The flights began arriving in the small South Texas city on March 12.

Using jets chartered by a branch of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the ICE Air flights landed in Harlingen from Dallas, Phoenix, El Paso, Texas, and Nashville, Tennessee. At least three came from Alexandria, Louisiana, a hub for that state’s network of immigration detention centers.

But it wasn’t until Saturday, March 15, that it became clear to a retired financial executive in Ohio that something unusual was happening.

Two flights, Tom Cartwright noticed, were scheduled from Harlingen to El Salvador.

Deportations are fairly rare on Saturdays, as are deportation flights from Harlingen to El Salvador, said Cartwright, a flight data analyst for the advocacy group Witness at the Border, whose social media feeds are closely watched in immigration circles.

“All that came together and said to me: There’s something weird here.”

Court documents later showed that for at least the previous week, Venezuelan men in immigration detention centers in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida and elsewhere were being moved by bus and plane toward ICE’s El Valle Detention Facility, a 40-minute drive from the Harlingen airport.
A makeup artist is caught up in the mass deportations

One of those men was a makeup artist who said he fled Venezuela last summer after his boss at a state-run news channel publicly slapped him.

In a country where political repression and open homophobia are both part of life, it’s hard to be a gay man who does not support President Nicolás Maduro.

Walking and traveling by bus and taxi through Central America and Mexico, Andry José Hernández Romero hoped to find a new life in the U.S. He used a U.S. Customs and Border Protection phone app to arrange an appointment at a U.S. border crossing in San Diego.

That’s where he was asked about his tattoos, and where his trouble started.

U.S. immigration authorities use a series of “gang identifiers” to help them spot members of Tren de Aragua. Some are obvious, such as trafficking drugs with known Tren members.

Some identifiers are more surprising: Chicago Bulls jerseys, “high-end urban street wear,” and tattoos of clocks, stars or crowns, according to government instructional material filed in court by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Tattoos were key to marking many deported men as Tren members, according to documents and lawyers.

Romero, who is in his early 20s, has a crown tattooed on each wrist. One is next to the word “Mom.” The other next to “Dad.” The crowns, according to his lawyer, also pay homage to his hometown’s Christmastime “Three Kings” festival, and to his work in beauty pageants, where crowns are common.

Romero, who insists he has no ties to Tren, was taken into ICE custody and transferred to a California detention center.

And then, around March 7, he was suddenly moved to a facility in Laredo, Texas, a three-hour bus ride from the Harlingen airport.
‘The order from the president is to deport them all’

Friday, March 14, was supposed to be quiet for Javier Maldonado.

“I had come in to work late, like 10 in the morning,” said Maldonado, a Texas immigration lawyer based in San Antonio. “I was having my coffee, and thought I was going to do admin work and catch up on emails and phone calls.”

He was wrong.

The Alien Enemies Act was hours away from being invoked, and more than a day from being announced, but word was starting to filter out from a group of Venezuelan men held at El Valle Detention Center, near Harlingen. Around 3 a.m., roughly 100 had been roused from sleep by guards and told they were being deported. Some were told they would be flown to Mexico, some to Venezuela. Many were told nothing.

Ten hours later, the men were back in their bunks. The flight had been canceled, they were told, and they would leave soon.

But a few men contacted relatives or lawyers.

Within hours, an informal legal network was frantically at work, from a lawyer in Brooklyn to a law school professor in Los Angeles to a University of Florida law student interning with an El Paso immigrant advocacy firm. All were working with Texas lawyers like Maldonado who would file petitions in federal court.

“It’s a small circle, relatively, of lawyers that do this sort of work,” he said.

Even people who cross illegally into the U.S. have rights. Some of the men the lawyers were defending have Temporary Protected Status, a legal classification that shields roughly 350,000 Venezuelans from deportation.

Communication between lawyers and detainees was often chaotic. Messages sometimes were relayed through relatives in Venezuela.

But guards, said one man, had made something clear.

“The order from the president is to deport them all.”
Trump invokes the Alien Enemies Act

Trump was aboard Air Force One that Friday when he invoked the Alien Enemies Act en route to his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

Tren de Aragua, his proclamation said, was attempting “an invasion or predatory incursion” of the United States.

Publicly, though, the administration said nothing.

Still, word was spreading about the planned flights to El Salvador. A Texas lawyer had filmed a bus leaving the El Valle facility under police escort, apparently heading to the airport.

While Trump’s use of the law had not yet been announced, two legal advocacy groups, the ACLU and Democracy Forward, felt they had to file preemptively.

“We couldn’t take a chance that nothing was going to happen,” said Lee Gelernt of the ACLU, the lead attorney.

They spent hours drafting a petition on behalf of five detained Venezuelans who feared being falsely labeled members of Tren and deported. They crafted legal arguments until they felt time was running out.

Finally, they filed the petition with the U.S. District Court in Washington, seeking to halt all deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.

It was 2:16 a.m. Saturday.
Prisoners moved to airport as judge issues temporary restraining order?

Later that day, after Judge James E. Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order in response to the ACLU lawsuit and scheduled a 5 p.m. hearing, things in Texas began to move faster.

Guards gathered prisoners at the El Valle detention center, ordering them onto buses for the airport at about 3:30 p.m.

The flights carried a total of 261 deportees, the White House later said, including 137 Venezuelans deported under the Alien Enemies Act, 101 under other immigration regulations, and 23 El Salvadoran members of the gang MS-13.

About 4 p.m. the White House posted Trump’s proclamation.
Trump administration ignores judges order to turn planes back

Roughly an hour later Boasberg opened his hearing over Zoom.

“First, apologies for my attire,” he began, dressed in a blue sweater. “I went away for the weekend and brought with me neither a robe nor tie nor appropriate shirt.”

Things quickly grew more serious. Boasberg asked whether the government planned to deport anyone under the new proclamation “in the next 24 or 48 hours.” The ACLU warned that deportation planes were about to take off. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign said he was unsure of the flight details.

Boasberg called a recess so Ensign could get more information. When Ensign came back empty-handed, the judge issued a new order to stop the deportations being carried out under the centuries-old law.

He noted specifically that any planes in the air needed to come back.

“This is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately,” he told Ensign.

It was about 6:45 p.m.

By then, two ICE Air planes were heading across the Gulf of Mexico and toward Central America. Neither turned around.

The airliners stopped in Honduras before making the short final flight to El Salvador.

Fear swept the plane when the doors opened and the prisoners realized where they were. Many knew the reputation of El Salvador’s prisons.

“Everyone was scared,” a Nicaraguan woman accidently put on a flight said in a legal declaration after returning to the U.S. “Some people had to forcibly be removed from the plane.”

What followed was soon set to music by the El Salvadoran government, which released videos of shackled men struggling to walk as officers forced down their heads and marched them to the immense Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT prison.

The next morning, Bukele, El Salvador’s president, tweeted a New York Post headline saying Boasberg had ordered the planes turned around.

“Oopsie … Too late,” Bukele wrote, adding a laughing/crying emoji.

The Trump administration is now urging the Supreme Court for permission to resume deportations of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act. Boasberg soon could rule on whether there are grounds to find anyone in contempt of court for defying his court order.

As for Romero, the makeup artist, he’s somewhere in CECOT.

AUSTIN (ABC) — The measles outbreak in western Texas has hit 481 cases, with 59 newly identified infections confirmed over the last three days, according to new data published Friday.

Almost all of the cases are in unvaccinated individuals or in individuals whose vaccination status is unknown, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS).

Three of the cases are among people vaccinated with one dose of the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine and seven cases are among those vaccinated with two doses.

At least 56 measles patients have been hospitalized so far, the DSHS said.

Children and teenagers between ages 5 and 17 make up the majority of cases, at 180, followed by children ages 4 and under, who account for 157 cases, according to the data.

Gaines County, which borders New Mexico, remains the epicenter of the outbreak, with 315 cases confirmed so far, DSHS data shows.

“We’re continuing to see a rise, and so it certainly does tell us that we’re not quite in a place yet where the outbreak has been contained,” Dr. Sapna Singh, chief medical officer for Texas Children’s Pediatrics in Houston, told ABC News in reference to the state data.

“What it does not tell us is how many undiagnosed cases we are potentially missing,” she continued. “I suspect that there are greater numbers of patients out there who have infections but may not be seeking out testing and or medical care for symptoms that may not require it.”

Singh said the low number of rare breakthrough cases show how effective the vaccine is, and that there are many reasons breakthrough cases might occur, including someone who has a condition that causes their immunity to wane over time.

“Even in those cases, we know that those patients are less likely to develop severe infection, they’re less likely to have complications, and they’re also much less likely to be the spreaders of the infection, and that is very important in terms of community protection and the protection of vulnerable people in the population,” she said.

It comes as the CDC has so far confirmed 607 measles cases in at least 21 states: Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Washington.

This is likely an undercount due to delays in states reporting cases to the federal health agency.

About 12% of measles patients in the U.S. have been hospitalized, mostly among those aged 19 and under, according to CDC data.

Among the nationally confirmed cases by the CDC, about 97% are in people who are unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown, the agency said.

Of those cases, 1% are among those who received just one dose of the MMR inoculation and 2% are among those who received the required two doses, according to the CDC.

The CDC currently recommends that people receive two doses of the MMR vaccine, the first at ages 12 to 15 months and the second between 4 and 6 years old. One dose is 93% effective, and two doses are 97% effective against measles.

“This is an unfortunate part of just declining vaccine rates, not just within the country, but internationally as well,” Singh said. “Many of these other cases that you’re seeing in isolated areas, not necessarily large outbreaks, are coming from international travel. … But it is certainly of concern to see the number reach this this high,”

Last year, just 285 cases were confirmed during the entirely of 2024, according to CDC data.

Singh says having more than double the cases in just the first three months of 2025, is “of significant concern” and said it’s important to educate people on the importance of vaccination.

“Our greatest defense against the infection is vaccination” she said. “Texas Children’s pediatrics, we are really encouraging families to come in speak with their pediatricians if they think their child needs a vaccine, if they think they are due for an additional dose or are unsure about their vaccine status. Your physician, your pediatrician, is going to be the best source for you to get your concerns and questions answered.”

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

FRISCO (ABC) — A 17-year-old student charged with murder in the fatal stabbing of another student at a track meet allegedly confessed to the killing and officers say he told them he was protecting himself, according to the arrest report.

The incident occurred Wednesday morning at a Frisco Independent School District stadium during a track and field championship involving multiple schools in the district.

Austin Metcalf, 17, an 11th grader at Frisco Memorial High School, died after police said another student stabbed him during an altercation in the bleachers at the meet.

The suspect in the deadly stabbing — Karmelo Anthony, a student at Frisco Centennial High School — has been charged with first-degree murder, police said.

One officer who responded to the scene said Anthony told him unprompted, without being asked any questions about the incident, “I was protecting myself,” according to the arrest report.

When the officer advised another responding officer that he had “the alleged suspect,” Anthony reportedly responded, “I’m not alleged, I did it,” according to the arrest report.

As he was walking toward the squad car, Anthony “was emotional,” reportedly saying unprompted, “He put his hands on me, I told him not to,” according to the arrest report. Once in the back seat, he also reportedly asked if Metcalf was “going to be OK,” according to the report.

Anthony “made another spontaneous statement” and reportedly asked an officer if what happened “could be considered self-defense,” according to the arrest report. Another officer reported that the suspect was “crying hysterically” while being walked away from the stadium, the report said.

Anthony is being held in the Collin County jail on $1 million bond, court records show. When reached for comment on Friday, his attorney told ABC News he had been on the case for only a few hours and needed to catch up.

Anthony’s father told ABC News on Thursday that they do not have a statement to make at this time.

The stabbing occurred under the Memorial High School tent in the stadium bleachers at approximately 10 a.m. on Wednesday, according to the arrest report.

Responding officers say they spoke to multiple witnesses, including one who reported that the altercation began after Metcalf told Anthony to move out from under their team’s tent, according to the arrest report.

The witness reported that Anthony allegedly reached inside his bag and said, “Touch me and see what happens,” according to the arrest report.

According to a witness, Metcalf grabbed Anthony to move him, and Anthony allegedly pulled out what the witness described as a black knife and “stabbed Austin once in the chest and then ran away,” the arrest report stated.

An officer recovered a bloody knife in the bleachers, according to the report.

Metcalf was transported to an area hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 10:53 a.m. on Wednesday, according to the arrest report.

His twin brother, Hunter Metcalf, was also at the meet and spoke to officers at the scene. He said that after his brother told Anthony he had to leave the tent because he didn’t go to Memorial, the two “went back and forth and then Austin stood up and pushed the male to get him out of the tent,” according to the arrest report.

“I tried to whip around as fast as I could, but I didn’t see the stab,” Hunter Metcalf told Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA. “It was really senseless. I don’t know why a person would do that to someone, just over that little argument.”

The track meet has been postponed to Monday and will be held at a new location, WFAA reported. Frisco ISD will share more details on updated security measures with families, according to the station.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that Meals on Wheels is bracing for the potential impacts of cuts to the agency that coordinates dispersal of federal funding to the nonprofit and similar organizations. The oldest and largest national organization that distributes meals to older adults and people with disabilities joins the growing list of programs and services affected by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency’s federal funding cuts. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced on March 27 that it would be reorganizing the Administration for Community Living, an agency that coordinates federal policy on aging and disability. About 40% of the administration’s staff received layoff notices this week. Meals on Wheels officials said the layoffs could cause disruption to the organization that serves more than 2 million people across the U.S. annually.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced in March that it would be making a “dramatic restructuring” as part of federal funding cuts of the Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE, according to a release by the department. It announced that it would be reducing staff from several agencies and consolidate the 28 divisions within the department. Meals on Wheels said that the restructuring of the Administration for Community Living would “disrupt the coordination of vital services tailored to the unique needs of older adults,” according to a release the organization issued the same day. “Our main priority is ensuring that America’s seniors continue to receive the lifesaving meals, social connection and wellness checks they rely on through Meals on Wheels. That’s why the Older Americans Act – the primary source of federal funding for community-based Meals on Wheels providers – must be safeguarded. The growing senior population and need, coupled with rising costs and funding shortfalls, have stretched local providers far beyond capacity. “As is, 1 in 3 Meals on Wheels providers already has a waitlist. Any further disruption due to the HHS restructuring could cost more taxpayer dollars in the long run.”

AUSTIN – The Houston Chronicle reports that Texas Republicans are coming to the rescue of Tesla CEO Elon Musk at a time when Democratic protesters are targeting him and his electric car company for boycotts and protests. The Texas Senate passed legislation this week that would make it a third-degree felony if protesters cause any damage to an electric vehicle charging station like those at Tesla’s dealerships.

“With the increase in the destruction and vandalism of electric charging stations throughout the nation and also in Texas, we want to make it clear that that will not be tolerated in the state of Texas,” said state Sen. Joan Huffman, a Houston Republican and the legislation’s sponsor. A third-degree felony can result in a $10,000 fine and up to 10 years in jail. Under Huffman’s measure, the penalty jumps to a first-degree felony if damage to electric charging stations is valued at over $300,000. A first-degree felony can result in up to 99 years in prison. “That’s a little scary,” state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, said of the potential penalty.

McALLEN — A South Texas county will lose some authority over the beach near the SpaceX launch site if a bill approved by the state Senate Thursday becomes law.

Instead, the authority to close access to the beach would go to the proposed city of Starbase, which its residents will vote to incorporate in May.

The bill, introduced by state Sen. Adam Hinojosa, would allow the future city of Starbase to oversee weekday closures of Boca Chica beach. Cameron County would retain authority over the beach closures on Friday afternoons and weekends.

Hinojosa said the intention is to streamline the process of closing the beach.

The bill does not increase the number of beach closures permitted. SpaceX is licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration to close the beach up to 500 hours a year for operations plus 300 hours per year to address anomalies.

The bill requires 48-hour notice to the public prior to the closure of the beach. State law already prohibits the closure of the beach on certain holidays or days before and after some holidays.

“Given the substantial economic impact of Starbase and the national security role of SpaceX, it is critical to streamline administrative processes while maintaining local oversight,” Hinojosa, a Republican from Corpus Christi, said during an earlier hearing on the bill.

A companion bill from Hinojosa also cleared the Senate on Thursday. It would require unauthorized individuals to evacuate an FAA-designated hazard area when it is closed for launches, making it a Class B misdemeanor to remain in the area. Repeat offenses would be a Class A misdemeanor.

A coalition of local nonprofit organizations have sought to push back on SpaceX’s growing presence in the area, raising concerns over environmental effects and the public’s loss of access to the beach.

In response to the bill, those groups accused lawmakers of ceding more power to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

“These public officials supposed to represent us are showing that they are bought and paid for by Elon Musk and SpaceX,” a statement from Josette Angelique Hinojosa, co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, said in part.

“Who will be the official that finally speaks up for the residents who can’t access Boca Chica Beach for swimming or fishing because of SpaceX?” she added. “We have sent letters to regulators and elected representatives, filed lawsuits, and spoken at public hearings, yet our voices go unheard.”

The Cameron County Commissioners Court also publicly opposed the bill, passing a resolution against it in late March.

County Judge Eddie Treviño said the commissioners tried to strike a balance of allowing SpaceX to be successful while also keeping in mind the impacts to the public.

“We think that having Cameron County continue to be the steward and the authority, with regard to the closures, should be continued and would be the most proper way going forward,” Treviño said at a commissioners meeting.

County Commissioner David Garza said what most upset him about the bill is that it would continue to leave it up to the county to close the beach on Friday afternoons and weekends.

“Why don’t they want to take responsibility in this law with Saturday and Sunday?” Garza said. “If you close on a Friday afternoon or a Saturday or Sunday, they want the county to get the blame for closing the beach?”

On Tuesday, Treviño reaffirmed his opposition to the bill to the Tribune and said he had met with Hinojosa, letting him know he would be opposed to the bill if it were to be filed.

Hinojosa said he hopes the bill will foster collaboration between the county and Starbase and allow the county to maintain authority over the beach when it is used most often.

SpaceX did respond to questions from the Tribune regarding the bill, though a representative of the company provided written testimony in support of the bill during last month’s committee hearing.

The only other voice of support for the bill during the hearing was a representative from KULR Technology Group, a company that in December inked a deal with SpaceX to launch a space battery into space, which was pointed out by state Sen. José Menendez during a Senate floor debate on the bill

“I’m just concerned that we’re streamlining a bill that seems to be only going to make the rules and regulations for one company and that would be SpaceX,” said Menendez, a Democrat from San Antonio.

Hinojosa, however, repeatedly sought to distinguish between SpaceX and the proposed city of Starbase which will likely be composed almost entirely of SpaceX employees.

“This is not yielding to a corporation, this is yielding to a municipality with elected officials,” Hinojosa said.

The bills must receive approval from the state House before going into effect. State Rep. Janie Lopez, a Republican from San Benito, filed a similar bill in the House that is pending at the House Committee for State Affairs.

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

AUSTIN – week after a federal judge declared hot conditions in Texas prisons unconstitutional, a legislative push to require air conditioning in every state prison has not gained significant traction.

None of the five bills lawmakers have filed to require prison cooling have been scheduled for a committee hearing yet, and the issue has hardly been mentioned during public hearings about how the state should allocate its estimated $194.6 billion two-year budget.

Officials from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which oversees the state’s 101 prison facilities, asked lawmakers for $118 million over the next biennium to install air conditioning in about 11,000 units. Even if lawmakers grant that request, millions more will be needed to get to the at least $1.1 billion the TDCJ says they would need to fully air condition their prisons.

“I don’t know how state leaders look at themselves in the mirror with this situation persisting,” said Rep. John Bryant, D-Dallas, who authored a bill that would require full prison air conditioning. “I’m hopeful this will be treated more seriously this session. It’s a moral and now a legal responsibility.”

Since a 2018 House Corrections Committee wrote in their interim report to the Legislature that TDCJ’s heat mitigation efforts were not enough to ensure the well-being of inmates and the correctional officers who work in prisons, lawmakers have tried to pass bills that would require the agency to install air conditioning. None of those bills made it to the governor’s desk.

During that time, TDCJ has also been slowly installing air conditioning. They have added 11,788 “cool beds,” and they are in the process of procuring about 12,000 more. The addition is thanks to $85.5 million state lawmakers appropriated during the last legislative session. Although not earmarked for air conditioning, an agency spokesperson said all of that money is being used to cool more prisons.

Still, about two thirds of Texas’ prison inmates reside in facilities that are not fully air conditioned in housing areas. Indoor temperatures routinely top 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and inmates report oppressive, suffocating conditions in which they douse themselves with toilet water in an attempt to cool off. Hundreds of inmates have been diagnosed with heat-related illnesses, court records state, and at least two dozen others have died from heat-related causes.

The pace at which the state is installing air conditioning is insufficient, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman wrote in a 91-page decision last week. The lack of system-wide air conditioning violates the U.S. Constitution, and the prison agency’s plan to slowly chip away at cooling its facilities — over an estimated timeline of at least 25 years — is too slow, he wrote.

Sen. Joan Huffman, a Houston Republican who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, said in an emailed statement that the supplemental appropriations bill will include the $118 million TDCJ requested to fund approximately 11,000 new air-conditioned beds. It also will include $301 million to construct additional dorms — which the prison agency requested to accommodate its growing prison population — and those new facilities will all be air-conditioned.

That may not be enough to satisfy Pitman’s ruling or some state lawmakers. Bryant said he wants to see $500 million allocated to the effort this session.

“The state must fully fund the system now, in this legislative session,” said Erica Grossman, a lawyer for the plaintiffs who sued Bryan Collier, the prison agency’s executive director.

Pitman declined to require temporary air conditioning, noting that this would only undermine the speed at which TDCJ can install permanent air conditioning. Instead, the case will likely move to a trial. The plaintiffs are expected to win and be entitled to “expeditious installation of permanent air conditioning,” Pitman wrote.

In the meantime, Grossman and the plaintiffs she is representing are urging lawmakers to allocate more funding to prison air conditioning.

In 2021, a bill that set a seven-year time limit on air conditioning installation cleared the House on a 123-18 vote. The bill died in the Senate Finance Committee, where it never received a hearing.

Two years later, lawmakers tried again to no avail.

“This comes down to political will,” said Amite Dominick, who has worked on prison air conditioning legislation for multiple sessions and founded Texas Prison Community Advocates, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “They would rather continue an image of tough-on-crime than be humane.”

This session, four prison heat-related bills filed by House members have been referred to the House Corrections Committee: House Bill 1315, House Bill 2997, House Bill 3006 and House Bill 489. None have been scheduled for a hearing.

HB 1315, by Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, and HB 489 by Rep. Jon Rosenthal, D-Houston, are identical and would require each cellblock, dormitory and common area in Texas prisons to be equipped with an air conditioning unit. Temperatures would have to be maintained between 65 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit, a rule that already applies to Texas’ county jails.

HB 3006, by Terry Canales, D-Edinburg, would require the installation of climate control in phases to be completed by the end of 2032 — if the Legislature allocates funding.

HB 2997, authored by Bryant, goes further. It also would require the installation of temperature gauges in each area of the prison. Each year, the agency would submit a report to elected state leaders about the number of incidents in which the required temperature wasn’t maintained.

“We added that so we can monitor whether or not TDCJ is complying with the requirements,” Bryant said, explaining that lawmakers previously have been given reports that offer an average of the temperatures across the entire facility, occluding the heat inside some cell blocks.

An internal investigation also found that TDCJ has falsified temperatures, and an investigator hired by the prison agency concluded that some of the agency’s temperature logs are false. Citing that report, Pitman wrote “The Court has no confidence in the data TDCJ generates and uses to implement its heat mitigation measures and record the conditions within the facilities.”

In the upper chamber, Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, along with six other Democratic state senators, filed Senate Bill 169, which would require that prison temperatures be maintained between 65 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit.

The bill has been referred to the Senate Finance Committee but has not been scheduled for a hearing. Huffman did not answer questions about whether she has plans to schedule a hearing.

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

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that the Holy Spirit had blessed St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church, businessman Clarence Kahlig declared last fall at the groundbreaking of the church’s new $24 million school in Boerne, north of San Antonio. The blessing was all the donations that had poured in from the congregation, including a plot of land and $5 million from Kahlig, a parishioner who runs a local auto sales empire. He vowed the school would pass it on, in keeping with the Catholic tradition to serve the poor by educating even those who struggle to afford its tuition bill. “If they want a Christ-centered education, we’re going to give it to them,” Kahlig said. Soon, Catholic schools around the state could receive a much larger blessing from the Legislature: a $1 billion school voucher program, possibly growing by billions more in the years to come. Of all the private schools that could soon enroll students paying tuition with taxpayer dollars, Catholic schools are among those that stand to gain the most.

The 250 some Catholic schools in Texas enroll 64,000 students — more than 20% of all private school enrollment in the state. Catholic schools typically charge less than other private, religious schools, with an average $8,000 tuition on elementary schools and $12,000 for high schools. That’s in line with the approximately $10,000 savings accounts that lawmakers are considering creating for students across the state. Under a voucher program, schools run by the church would be poised to quickly begin receiving hundreds of millions from the state — money that could be a lifeline for some, as several Catholic schools have shuttered in recent years under financial strain. “From a Catholic school standpoint, this is one of those things where they’re either going to have something like this, that will give low-income parents access and pay tuition, or those schools will close,” said Leo Linbeck III, a Houston businessman and Catholic school booster. “That’s the harsh reality.”