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LEWISVILLE, Texas (AP) — Deep in the heart of Texas’ sprawl, the city of Lewisville embodies the Lone Star State.

Bisected by Interstate 35 and ribboned with six- and eight-lane thoroughfares lined with chain stores, Mexican restaurants and pawn shops, Lewisville, 23 miles north of Dallas, is a prototypical slice of the nation’s second-largest state. Its typical resident is about 36 years old, the same as in Texas. Similar to statewide, 6 out of 10 of its residents are not white, and two-thirds of its voters cast ballots in the 2020 presidential election.

Next door is the city of Flower Mound, a swath of subdivisions with names such as Teal Wood Oaks and Chaucer Estates. Flower Mound looks more like the electorate that has kept Texas dominated by Republicans for decades. It’s wealthier than Lewisville, more than two-thirds of its residents are white, and 78% of them voted in 2020.

That discrepancy between the diverse, potential electorate of Lewisville and the actual, heavily white electorate of Flower Mound has been the subtext for the past two decades of American politics.

For a long time, the presumption has been that closing that gap between Lewisville and Flower Mound — getting more people to vote, and the electorate to better represent the country’s actual population — would help Democrats and hurt Republicans. That’s because a bigger electorate would mean more minorities voting, and those groups historically lean Democratic.

That presumption helped spark the Great Replacement conspiracy theory among some conservatives, imagining a plot to import immigrants to substitute for more conservative white voters. It’s been part of the fuel behind Republican-led efforts to make it tougher to vote, especially in Texas, which has some of the strictest election laws in the country.

But this presidential election has flipped the script.

Republicans have invested in reaching what they believe is a vast population of infrequent, conservative-leaning voters. Former President Donald Trump’s campaign has been counting on support from younger, Latino and African-American voters who are less likely to go to the polls.

Meanwhile, Democrat Kamala Harris is relying on Black and Latino voters, but also on increasing her support among college-educated voters, a growing group that’s both highly likely to vote and helped put Democrat Joe Biden in the White House in 2020.

The contrast is clear in the neighboring cities in north Texas. In high-propensity Flower Mound, Republicans who used to dominate the suburb fear it’s trending Democratic. Meanwhile, in more diverse Lewisville, those who rarely vote or cannot are warming to Trump.

“I think Trump would make a difference,” said Brandon Taylor, 35, who cannot vote because of criminal convictions, but is trying to persuade his girlfriend, Whitney Black, to vote for Trump. “We need that extra vote,” he told Black as the two, now homeless, sat on a bench outside Lewisville’s public library.

Meanwhile, Martha McKenzie, a retired Naval officer in Flower Mound, is a former Republican who left the party over Trump.

“I just can’t get behind a lot of the BS behind Trump,” McKenzie said.

There are, of course, plenty of Harris supporters in Lewisville and numerous Trump voters in Flower Mound. The contrast between the towns goes more to an age-old adage voiced by Sally Ortega Putney on a recent night in a Flower Mound office park.

Putney, 59, recalled spending hours outside Lewisville’s Latino markets trying, unsuccessfully, to find new voters.

“We got our hearts broken trying all sorts of different outreach. The lower class, they don’t have the time, they’re too busy trying to feed their kids,” Putney said between calls that she and two other Democratic volunteers were making to voters.

She gestured around the room: “It’s the middle class that ends up running everything, because we have the time to do it.”

For decades in Texas, that has meant Republicans run things. The party has controlled the Legislature for more than 20 years and won every statewide race since 1994. As the state has steadily grown more diverse, the GOP has taken steps to protect its power.

Texas Republicans have drawn some of the most notorious gerrymanders in the country, reshuffling the lines of state legislative and congressional districts to protect GOP politicians and push the Democratic voters who could oust them into a few oddly shaped districts. That ensures Democrats remain the minority in the Legislature.

Lawmakers in 2021 tightened election laws in response to Trump’s false fraud claims. They banned election offices from holding 24-hour voting after it became popular in a major Democratic-leaning county and prohibited anyone from sending mail ballot applications to eligible voters.

Since then Texas Republicans have continued to push back against a perceived menace of improper voters.

Attorney General Ken Paxton sued two of the state’s largest and Democratic-leaning counties to stop their voter registration drives, and his office raided the homes of leaders of Latino civil rights groups in what it said was an investigation of possible election fraud.

“There’s no question that the design of a lot of Texas’ election laws, both old and new, is rooted in the idea of demographic change and that new voters won’t support the people in power,” said Michael Li, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice.

Texas already has had recent experience with an upsurge in new voters, however, and it didn’t turn out as badly for Republicans as the party feared.

In 2018, Democrat Beto O’Rourke challenged Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. The little-known congressman became a national phenomenon for his populist message and get-out-the-vote pushes. He lost 51% to 48%.

Jim Henson, a political scientist at the University of Texas, said the new voters who turned out in 2018 were evenly split between Republicans and Democrats — only slightly more Democratic than the normally conservative-leaning Texas electorate.

“There are untapped voters for both parties,” he said.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas man whose execution was halted and then called to testify at the state Capitol did not show up Monday over growing pushback from state leaders who have blasted lawmakers’ last-ditch tactics to subpoena Robert Roberson and spare his life for now.

His absence at a highly anticipated state House committee meeting was another twist in what has become one of Texas’ most unusual and contested death row cases. A group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers have rushed to Roberson’s defense, saying outdated science led to a jury convicting him of killing his 2-year-old daughter in 2002.

After they subpoenaed Roberson last week to buy him more time, the attorney general’s office opposed efforts to bring him to the state Capitol and told the state’s highest court that doing so would present “myriad security and logistical concerns.”

The delayed execution has opened a rift in Texas between legislators and state GOP leaders, including Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who say the last-minute maneuver on Roberson’s behalf crossed a line.

“If this committee wanted to take a heavy-handed approach, there are dramatic ways that we could enforce that subpoena,” Democratic state Rep. Joe Moody said. “But we didn’t issue the subpoena to create a constitutional crisis, and we aren’t interested in creating division between branches of government.”

Roberson had been set last Thursday to become the first person in the U.S. executed over a murder conviction connected to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome. He was taken to America’s busiest death chamber and was waiting in a holding cell when the Texas Supreme Court abruptly halted plans to give him a lethal injection.

Moody, the chairman of a state House committee that led efforts to stop the execution, said discussions about having Roberson eventually testify were still ongoing.

The Texas Attorney General’s Office had told lawmakers that Roberson would only appear by videoconference, which Moody said would be “poorly suited” for Roberson because he is autistic.

“That doesn’t mean Robert won’t testify at all,” said Moody, without saying when Roberson might testify or how.

Among those testifying Monday about Roberson’s case was daytime television psychologist “Dr. Phil” McGraw and best-selling author John Grisham. The veteran talk show host McGraw threw his full support behind Roberson, stating that there was not enough evidence to convict him of a crime.

“If you execute people when you now know better, you need to abolish the death penalty. If that’s the standard by which you’re gonna execute people, you’ve got a bad system,” McGraw said.

Roberson’s claims of innocence are backed by a group of Republican and Democratic legislators who say he was convicted based on outdated science.

Roberson received the death penalty for the 2002 death of daughter Nikki Curtis in the East Texas city of Palestine. Prosecutors argued that the infant’s death was caused by serious head trauma from being violently shaken back and forth. Roberson’s attorneys say that the bruising on Curtis’ body was likely due to complications with severe pneumonia and not child abuse.

Once Roberson testifies to lawmakers, prosecutors could seek a new execution date at any time, according to Gretchen Sween, one of his attorneys.

Lawmakers had sought to have Roberson transported from death row to appear in person, raising the possibility of an extraordinary scene in the Texas Capitol. However, the state attorney general’s office told the committee he would appear virtually.

Abbott’s office said the Texas Supreme Court should toss out the subpoena, writing that the House committee has “stepped out of line” in their first public statement on the case.

Almost 90 lawmakers across party lines, medical experts and civil rights advocates had called on Abbott to stay his execution. Abbott has not commented on Roberson’s case and the Texas parole board rejected pleas to grant clemency.

Rebuffed by the courts and Texas’ parole board in their efforts to spare Roberson’s life, legislators last Thursday subpoenaed Roberson to testify. Lawmakers on the House committee have expressed frustration with Texas’ junk science law, which they say has failed to work as intended, including in Roberson’s case.

The 2013 law allows a person convicted of a crime to seek relief if the evidence used against them is no longer credible. At the time, it was hailed by the Legislature as a uniquely future-proof solution to wrongful convictions based on faulty science. But Roberson’s supporters say his case points to faults in the judicial system where the law has been weakened by deliberate misinterpretation from the state’s highest criminal court.

In the last 10 years, 74 applications have been filed and ruled on under the junk science law. A third of applications were submitted by people facing the death penalty. All of them were unsuccessful.

Anderson County District Attorney Allyson Mitchell, whose office prosecuted Roberson, has previously told the committee that a court hearing was held in 2022 in which Roberson’s attorneys presented their new evidence to a judge, who rejected their claims.

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Lathan 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.

AUSTIN (AP) — A Texas man whose execution was halted after lawmakers ordered Robert Roberson to appear at the state Capitol did not show up as planned Monday after a dispute over transporting a person on death row for the extraordinary purpose of testifying in a public hearing.

His absence at a highly anticipated hearing at the Texas Capitol was another twist in last-ditch efforts to spare Roberson’s life over claims that outdated science and faulty evidence led to his 2003 conviction in the death of his 2-year-old daughter.

It also opened tensions between a group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers who say Roberson is innocent and state Republican leaders, including Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who say the unusual maneuver by legislators to subpoena Roberson at the last minute in an attempt to buy more time crossed a line.

Roberson had been set last Thursday to become the first person in the U.S. executed over a murder conviction connected to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome. He was taken to America’s busiest death chamber and was waiting in a holding cell when the Texas Supreme Court abruptly halted plans to give him a lethal injection.

Democratic state Rep. Joe Moody, the chairman of a state House committee that led efforts to stop the execution, said as Monday’s hearing opened that Roberson likely would not appear but that lawmakers still hoped he would do so soon.

“If this committee wanted to take a heavy-handed approach, there are dramatic ways that we could enforce that subpoena,” Moody said. “But we didn’t issue the subpoena to create a constitutional crisis, and we aren’t interested in creating division between branches of government.”

The Texas Attorney General’s Office had told lawmakers that Roberson would only appear by videoconference, which Moody said would be “poorly suited” for Roberson because he is autistic.

“That doesn’t mean Robert won’t testify at all,” said Moody, without saying when Roberson might testify or how.

Among those testifying Monday about Roberson’s case was daytime television psychologist “Dr. Phil” McGraw and best-selling author John Grisham. The veteran talk show host McGraw threw his full support behind Roberson, stating that there was not enough evidence to convict him of a crime.

“If you execute people when you now know better, you need to abolish the death penalty. If that’s the standard by which you’re gonna execute people, you’ve got a bad system,” McGraw said.

Roberson’s claims of innocence are backed by a group of Republican and Democratic legislators who say he was convicted based on outdated science.

Roberson received the death penalty for the 2002 death of daughter Nikki Curtis in the East Texas city of Palestine. Prosecutors argued that the infant’s death was caused by serious head trauma from being violently shaken back and forth. Roberson’s attorneys say that the bruising on Curtis’ body was likely due to complications with severe pneumonia and not child abuse.

Once Roberson testifies to lawmakers, prosecutors could seek a new execution date at any time, according to Gretchen Sween, one of his attorneys.

Lawmakers had sought to have Roberson transported from death row to appear in person, raising the possibility of an extraordinary scene in the Texas Capitol. However, the state attorney general’s office told the committee he would appear virtually.

Abbott’s office said the Texas Supreme Court should toss out the subpoena, writing that the House committee has “stepped out of line” in their first public statement on the case.

Almost 90 lawmakers across party lines, medical experts and civil rights advocates had called on Abbott to stay his execution. Abbott has not commented on Roberson’s case and the Texas parole board rejected pleas to grant clemency.

Rebuffed by the courts and Texas’ parole board in their efforts to spare Roberson’s life, legislators last Thursday subpoenaed Roberson to testify. Lawmakers on the House committee have expressed frustration with Texas’ junk science law, which they say has failed to work as intended, including in Roberson’s case.

The 2013 law allows a person convicted of a crime to seek relief if the evidence used against them is no longer credible. At the time, it was hailed by the Legislature as a uniquely future-proof solution to wrongful convictions based on faulty science. But Roberson’s supporters say his case points to faults in the judicial system where the law has been weakened by deliberate misinterpretation from the state’s highest criminal court.

In the last 10 years, 74 applications have been filed and ruled on under the junk science law. A third of applications were submitted by people facing the death penalty. All of them were unsuccessful.

Anderson County District Attorney Allyson Mitchell, whose office prosecuted Roberson, has previously told the committee that a court hearing was held in 2022 in which Roberson’s attorneys presented their new evidence to a judge, who rejected their claims.

DALLAS – The Dallas Morning News reports that frustrated with President Joe Biden’s policies related to immigration enforcement, Gov. Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star in March 2021, deploying National Guard soldiers and state troopers to the border with Mexico. The goal was to make border crossings more difficult by installing razor wire and other physical barriers along the Rio Grande and, further inland, to arrest suspected undocumented migrants for trespassing and other state criminal charges. That first year, Abbott shifted almost $1 billion from several state agencies, including the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, to support the operation. With later allocations from the Texas Legislature, a total of $11 billion in state money has been spent on Operation Lone Star — and Abbott recently asked lawmakers for another $2.9 billion to run the program through 2027.

The money has paid for more than 100 miles of razor wire, more than 45 miles of a state-built border wall, and a 1,000-foot-long buoy barrier on the Rio Grande. The operation also has bused more than 119,400 migrants from Texas to six Democratic-run cities across the country and built a military base near Eagle Pass to house Texas National Guard soldiers. More than 522,800 migrants had been apprehended under Operation Lone Star as of Oct. 3, including 47,640 criminal arrests — 11,890 for trespassing. Abbott, a Republican who has been governor since 2015, has raised his national profile with aggressive border policies, including taking over an Eagle Pass park in January that had been a popular spot for border crossings. In February, Abbott hosted a border visit by GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, who praised the governor’s response and called him a possible running mate.

SAN ANTONIO – The San Antonio Express-News says that Texas’ labor force hit a new high in September with 15.45 million people on the job or looking for work — and the state added a record number of jobs. More than 29,000 jobs were added last month, bringing the total to 327,000 jobs added over the past 12 months. Texas has added jobs at a rate of 2.3%, outpacing national growth by 0.7 percentage points. The state’s seasonally adjusted rate of unemployment held steady at 4.1%, the Texas Workforce Commission said Friday. That matched the national rate. In the San Antonio-New Braunfels metro area, unemployment fell slightly to 3.8% from 4% in August. The region’s job count grew by 0.5% to nearly 1.2 million jobs, led by growth in the government and construction sectors.

“The record-setting 15.4 million Texans who make up our civilian labor force are strengthening and innovating our state’s economy,” Workforce Commissioner Alberto Treviño III said in a statement. The state’s civilian labor force has added 318,500 people so far this year, including the 51,500 who joined in September. That was up from 44,800 people the month prior. Statewide, job growth was led by the professional and business services sector with its 10,500 new jobs. Private education and health services, a combined sector, added 10,400 jobs; and construction added 8,100 jobs. Construction has consistently led the state’s job growth, with a 5.1% growth rate over the year. In the San Antonio area, the construction sector — which is combined with mining and logging job categories for the report — has grown 4.2% over the past 12 months, adding 76,500 jobs. The San Antonio area wasn’t the only one to record a lower unemployment rate last month — all 25 major metro areas saw rates drop. The Midland metro had the state’s lowest unemployment rate with a rate of 2.6%, followed by the Amarillo at 3% and College Station-Bryan at 3.2%. Beaumont-Port Arthur had the highest rate on unemployment at 6%, followed by McAllen-Edinburg-Mission at 5.9% and Killeen-Temple at 4.7%. While the statewide unemployment rate is seasonally adjusted, rates for metro areas are not.

DALLAS – The Dallas Morning News reports that the Texas Supreme Court declined a request Sunday from the state attorney general to reconsider its unprecedented order staying the execution of Robert Roberson III, ensuring the man on death row will testify before a House Committee on Monday. The Thursday stay, which was issued hours after Roberson was scheduled to be executed, came after the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence issued a subpoena calling Roberson to testify about how the state’s 2013 “junk science” law allowing people to challenge convictions with new science was applied in his case. In the Sunday order, the state Supreme Court did not rule on a dispute between the attorney general’s office and lawmakers: whether Roberson will testify in person or via teleconference. Roberson’s attorneys argue that testifying virtually would “profoundly” limit the committee’s ability to assess his credibility, while the attorneys general’s office says bringing him to the Capitol in Austin presents “myriad security and logistical concerns.”

In a 24-page petition filed on behalf of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the attorney general’s office had said the House committee’s subpoena was “defective on its face” and that the state Supreme Court — which handles civil matters — lacks jurisdiction in the case. The high court’s Thursday order “flouts” the separation of powers and pushed Texas to the “brink of a constitutional crisis,” an attorney with the attorney general’s office said in the filing. State Reps. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, and Joe Moody, D-El Paso, responded Sunday night on behalf of the House of Representatives. They argued the attorney general’s office already conceded the legitimacy of the subpoena in an earlier hearing and that this case highlights the “interdependence” of the branches of government, but does not breach their separate powers. During the Travis County hearing Thursday, Assistant Attorney General Ed Marshall said the case was not a “shaken baby” case and argued the Court of Criminal Appeals had exclusive jurisdiction.

DALLAS—The Texas Employment Forecast released by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas indicates jobs will increase 2.5 percent in 2024, with an 80 percent confidence band of 2.3 to 2.7 percent.

This is an increase from the previous month’s forecast of 2.2 percent for 2024.        

The forecast is based on an average of four models that include projected national GDP, oil futures prices, and the Texas and U.S. leading indexes.

“Texas employment growth was strong again in September, adding 33,800 jobs. Employment growth has normalized to a rate more consistent with trend growth. This comes after a summer of volatile data characterized by storms that disrupted labor markets in large parts of the state,” said Jesus Cañas, Dallas Fed senior business economist. “Gains in September were led by construction, education and health services, and professional and business services. Employment fell in information, financial activities and government. Employment growth in the major metropolitan areas was led by Austin followed by Dallas and Houston.”

Additional key takeaways from the latest Dallas Fed report:       

The forecast suggests 348,900 jobs will be added in the state this year, and employment in December 2024 will be 14.4 million.    

Texas employment increased by an annualized 2.9 percent month over month in September, while the August growth was revised upward to 7.7 percent.  

The unemployment rate decreased in Dallas–Plano–Irving, Fort Worth–Arlington and San Antonio–New Braunfels, according to seasonally adjusted numbers from the Dallas Fed.    

The rate remained unchanged in Austin–Round Rock, in Brownsville–Harlingen, El Paso, and Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land.

The rate increased in Laredo.

The Texas statewide unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.1 percent in September.