DALLAS — The Texas Employment Forecast released by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas indicates jobs will increase 2.1 percent in 2024, with an 80 percent confidence band of 1.9 to 2.3 percent.
This is a decrease from the previous month’s forecast of 2.5 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 contracted as 6,600 jobs were lost in October,” said Jesus Cañas, Dallas Fed senior business economist. “Losses were concentrated in the private sector services, particularly professional and business services, although some sectors expanded such as information and financial activities. Government and goods producing sectors also expanded. In the major metropolitan areas, employment grew in San Antonio, Austin and Fort Worth, while it fell in Houston and Dallas.”
Additional key takeaways from the latest Dallas Fed report:???????
The forecast suggests 288,000 jobs will be added in the state this year, and employment in December 2024 will be 14.3 million.????
Texas employment decreased by an annualized 0.6 percent month over month in October, while the September growth was revised upward to 3.7 percent.??
The unemployment rate, which takes into account changes in the total labor force along with other factors, increased in each of Texas’ major metros in October. This includes Austin–Round Rock, Brownsville–Harlingen, Dallas–Plano–Irving, El Paso, Fort Worth–Arlington, Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land, Laredo and San Antonio–New Braunfels, according to?seasonally adjusted numbers?from the Dallas Fed.???? ????
The Texas statewide unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.1 percent in October.?????
Additional information about the Texas Employment Forecast, plus seasonally adjusted and benchmarked Texas jobs data and metro unemployment rates, may be found on?DallasFed.org.????
(NEW YORK) -- President-elect Donald Trump sharply criticized the rising price of groceries throughout his campaign, even delivering an address outside his New Jersey home in August alongside a table covered with cereal boxes, coffee grounds and ketchup.
A wave of consumer discontent appears to have helped lift him back into the Oval Office, but Trump now faces the task of how to ease voters' frustration.
Food inflation soared to a peak of more than 10% in 2022, but price increases have slowed to about 2%, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows.
Still, the yearslong bout of rapid inflation has sent food prices soaring more than 25% since President Joe Biden took office.
Typically, prices do not fall across the board unless the economy slows or even tips into recession, which would reduce consumer demand but also impose economic hardship, some economists told ABC News.
Still, Trump could enact policies that may slow the rise of grocery prices, or even lower the cost of some household staples, economists added.
"Prices on different items absolutely could come down," Michael Faulkender, a professor of finance at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business, told ABC News.
In response to ABC News' request for comment, the Trump transition team said in a statement that Trump intends to fulfill the commitments he made during the campaign. But the transition team did not specifically address the issue of grocery prices.
"The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.” Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the transition team, told ABC News.
Increase oil production
On the campaign trail, Trump often responded to concern about prices with a three-word mantra: "Drill, baby, drill."
Trump, who has downplayed human-caused climate change, vowed to bolster the oil and gas industry by easing regulation and expanding output.
In theory, increased oil production could lower food prices since gas makes up a key source of costs throughout the supply chain, whether a firm is growing crops or transporting them to a seller, economists said.
"Energy is a big input cost for food," David Andolfatto, an economist at the University of Miami, told ABC News. "That should put downward pressure on food prices."
While such a move could prove beneficial, increased oil output under President Joe Biden coincided with the surge of inflation in recent years. Since oil is sold on a global market, a surge in domestic production may not lower prices for U.S. consumers as much as some may expect.
The U.S. set a record for crude oil production in 2023, averaging 12.9 million barrels per day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a federal agency.
A further uptick in oil production risks accelerating the nation's carbon emissions and worsening the impact of climate change, which would carry costs down the road, Luis Cabral, a professor of economics at New York University, told ABC News.
"We can't simply look at the benefits," Cabral said, acknowledging the potential for lower food prices. "There are also important costs in terms of emissions and climate change."
Bolster antitrust enforcement
To address high food prices, the Trump administration could crack down on market concentration, a term economists use to describe the dominance of a given industry by a handful of firms, some experts said.
They pointed to the market power of large corporations as a cause of rapid price increases, saying companies use their outsized role in the market to raise prices without fear of a competitor offering a comparable product at a more affordable price.
"Whenever there are fewer players in an industry, prices tend to be higher," Cabral said. "Supermarkets aren't an exception."
Grocery store profit margins surged in 2021 and rose even higher two years later, even after price increases had begun to cool, a Federal Trade Commission study in March showed.
In February, the Federal Trade Commission sued to block the merger of supermarket chains Kroger and Albertsons, which would amount to the largest supermarket merger in U.S. history. The proceedings are ongoing, and will likely stretch into the Trump administration.
Some economists cast doubt over the potential benefits of antitrust, saying the recent bout of inflation coincided with an uptick in production costs during the pandemic. "It's hard to argue that it's therefore some kind of profiteering," Faulkender said.
Price-gouging ban
During the campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris proposed a federal ban on price gouging for food and groceries.
The plan could resemble price-gouging bans in place in 37 states, which prohibit a sudden spike in prices for scarce goods, the Harris campaign said. Those bans prohibit companies from exploiting a sudden imbalance between supply and demand by significantly hiking prices.
While Trump may be reluctant to adopt a policy put forward by his proponent, he could advance a price-gouging ban as a means of preventing acute price increases for specific goods.
For instance, egg prices have skyrocketed 30% over the year ending in October, U.S. Bureau of Statistics data on Wednesday showed. The spike owed primarily to an avian flu outbreak that has decimated supply. Last year, egg prices climbed more than 60% in response to a similar avian flu outbreak.
Economists who spoke to ABC News differed on the effectiveness of a potential price-gouging ban.
Some economists dismissed the policy as a flawed solution, since state-level bans usually get triggered only in the case of emergencies and, even then, often lack clarity about the type of company behavior that constitutes price-gouging.
"I don't think a federal price-gouging ban would help at all," Cabral said.
Andolfatto, of the University of Miami, said a price-gouging ban could lower food prices if it barred rapid price increases under some circumstances. However, those benefits may be outweighed by the downside, since such a ban could override the market signal delivered by prices, which help direct the distribution of goods to places where they are in short supply.
"These types of interventions have unintended consequences," Andolfatto said.
TEXARKANA — According to our news partner KETK, the Texarkana Police Department is searching for a missing 38-year-old man last seen in late October. According to a release, William Eric May was reported missing last Friday and officials are “very concerned for his safety and well-being.”
Detectives have been on the case all week and found video of him at a Arkansas-side Walmart at around 11:30 a.m. on Oct. 28. He was also spotted riding a purple bicycle in the area of Texas Boulevard and Elizabeth Street after leaving Walmart. In the videos he was seen wearing a black polo, blue jeans and tan shoes. Anyone who knows his whereabouts is asked to contact the police department at 903-798-3116 or after hours at 903-798-3876.
“Your help is vital in bringing William home safely. Thank you for your support and for sharing this post. Together, we can make a difference,” the police department said.
Update: Our news partner KETK provided this late Friday night. Misty Head, wife of singer Sundance Head, said the singer remains in good spirits and there was no internal damage. Sundance was reportedly at his ranch hunting when the incident occurred.
“He was out of the vehicle reaching in to grab his [gun], when he grabbed it the [gun] came out of its holster and hit the exterior of the Jeep just right and went off. Sundance said it happened so fast and he could see the bullet dislodging,” the post said.
HOUSTON (AP) — Efforts to free Melissa Lucio, a Texas woman whose execution was delayed in 2022 amid growing doubts she fatally beat her 2-year-old daughter, were significantly bolstered after a judge concluded that she is “actually innocent” of capital murder.
Senior State District Judge Arturo Nelson concluded that prosecutors presented false testimony, suppressed evidence and that new scientific evidence that was not available during Lucio’s 2008 trial undermines and contradicts evidence presented by the state. He recommended that Lucio’s conviction and death sentence be overturned.
“This Court finds (Lucio) has satisfied her burden and produced clear and convincing evidence that she is actually innocent of the offense of capital murder,” Nelson wrote in a 62-page ruling he signed in October but was not made public until Thursday.
Lucio has long maintained she is innocent and her daughter Mariah died of a head injury sustained in an accidental fall down a steep staircase two days before her death.
Nelson’s recommendation has been sent to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which will make the final decision in Lucio’s case. There was no timetable for a ruling by the appeals court. Lucio’s case has garnered support from celebrities like Kim Kardashian and a bipartisan group of lawmakers.
“This is the best news we could get going into the holidays,” John and Michelle Lucio, Melissa Lucio’s son and daughter-in-law, said in a statement. “We pray our mother will be home soon.”
Vanessa Potkin, director of special litigation at the Innocence Project and one of Lucio’s attorneys, said Lucio was “sent to death row for a crime that never happened.”
The Cameron County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Lucio, didn’t immediately reply to an email seeking comment.
Lucio, 56, had been set for lethal injection in April 2022 for the 2007 death of her daughter in Harlingen, a city of about 71,000 in Texas’ southern tip. But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted her lethal injection two days before her execution so Lucio’s claims that new evidence would exonerate her could be reviewed.
The appeals court had asked the trial court to review four claims made by Lucio’s lawyers: prosecutors used false testimony; previously unavailable scientific evidence would preclude her conviction; Lucio is actually innocent; and prosecutors suppressed evidence favorable to her.
In April, Nelson had approved an agreement between prosecutors and Lucio’s attorneys that found Lucio’s conviction should be overturned amid findings that evidence in her murder trial was suppressed. Prosecutors had previously maintained Mariah was the victim of abuse and noted her body was covered in bruises.
The appeals court sent the case back to Nelson in June, asking he also make recommendations in the other three claims.
Nelson found in favor of Lucio in the other three claims as well, including faulting prosecutors for presenting medical expert testimony that claimed the girl’s injuries could only have been caused by abuse and presenting “scientifically wrong testimony” from a Texas Ranger who claimed he could tell Lucio was guilty based on her demeanor and body language when interrogated.
TYLER – According to our news partner, KETK, Tyler native and former Tampa Bay Buccaneers center Randy Grimes was in his home town on Friday to speak about recovery from addiction.
“I just want to get the message out. There’s so much stigma involved with addiction, it’s such an ugly word. Nobody wants to admit it but this happens to good people,” said Grimes. “I work with judges, pastors, I work with pilots and athletes, and this happens to good people, but you’ve got to put your hands up and ask for help.”
Before the NFL, Grimes played for Baylor University in Waco and the Robert E. Lee High School football team, before they changed the name to Tyler Legacy High School.
HOUSTON (AP) — Efforts to free Melissa Lucio, a Texas woman whose execution was delayed in 2022 amid growing doubts she fatally beat her 2-year-old daughter, were significantly bolstered after a judge concluded that she is “actually innocent” of capital murder.
Senior State District Judge Arturo Nelson concluded that prosecutors presented false testimony, suppressed evidence and that new scientific evidence that was not available during Lucio’s 2008 trial undermines and contradicts evidence presented by the state. He recommended that Lucio’s conviction and death sentence be overturned.
“This Court finds (Lucio) has satisfied her burden and produced clear and convincing evidence that she is actually innocent of the offense of capital murder,” Nelson wrote in a 62-page ruling he signed in October but was not made public until Thursday.
Lucio has long maintained she is innocent and her daughter Mariah died of a head injury sustained in an accidental fall down a steep staircase two days before her death.
Nelson’s recommendation has been sent to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which will make the final decision in Lucio’s case. There was no timetable for a ruling by the appeals court. Lucio’s case has garnered support from celebrities like Kim Kardashian and a bipartisan group of lawmakers.
“This is the best news we could get going into the holidays,” John and Michelle Lucio, Melissa Lucio’s son and daughter-in-law, said in a statement. “We pray our mother will be home soon.”
Vanessa Potkin, director of special litigation at the Innocence Project and one of Lucio’s attorneys, said Lucio was “sent to death row for a crime that never happened.”
The Cameron County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Lucio, didn’t immediately reply to an email seeking comment.
Lucio, 56, had been set for lethal injection in April 2022 for the 2007 death of her daughter in Harlingen, a city of about 71,000 in Texas’ southern tip. But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted her lethal injection two days before her execution so Lucio’s claims that new evidence would exonerate her could be reviewed.
The appeals court had asked the trial court to review four claims made by Lucio’s lawyers: prosecutors used false testimony; previously unavailable scientific evidence would preclude her conviction; Lucio is actually innocent; and prosecutors suppressed evidence favorable to her.
In April, Nelson had approved an agreement between prosecutors and Lucio’s attorneys that found Lucio’s conviction should be overturned amid findings that evidence in her murder trial was suppressed. Prosecutors had previously maintained Mariah was the victim of abuse and noted her body was covered in bruises.
The appeals court sent the case back to Nelson in June, asking he also make recommendations in the other three claims.
Nelson found in favor of Lucio in the other three claims as well, including faulting prosecutors for presenting medical expert testimony that claimed the girl’s injuries could only have been caused by abuse and presenting “scientifically wrong testimony” from a Texas Ranger who claimed he could tell Lucio was guilty based on her demeanor and body language when interrogated.
AUSTIN (AP) —The Onion’s winning bid for Alex Jones ’ Infowars platform is under review by a federal bankruptcy judge after Jones and his lawyers complained about how an auction was conducted.
The satirical news outlet was announced as the winning bidder on Thursday in an auction that is part of Jones’ personal bankruptcy. Hours later, Infowars headquarters in Austin, Texas and its websites were shut down and Jones was broadcasting from a new studio he had set up before the bankruptcy auction. By Friday morning, Infowars and its websites were back up and running for reasons that were not entirely clear.
At a hastily called court hearing in Houston on Thursday, Judge Christopher Lopez ordered another hearing to be held next week. He wants to know what happened with the auction and how the bankruptcy trustee chose The Onion over the only other bidder — a company affiliated with a Jones product-selling website.
A court hearing is typically held after a bankruptcy auction to finalize the winning bids and sales, and to hear any objections, so the process in Jones’ case hasn’t strayed far from the usual — yet.
Here’s a look at the bankruptcy auction and what could happen next: Why was Infowars up for auction?
Jones declared personal bankruptcy in late 2022 after he was ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion to families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut who sued him for defamation for repeatedly calling the massacre a hoax aimed at increasing gun control.
Relatives of some of the 20 first graders and six educators who were killed in the 2012 shooting said Jones’ followers harassed and threatened them as a result of his lies. Jones has since acknowledged the shooting was “100% real.”
As part of the bankruptcy, Jones’ personal assets and Infowars’ parent company, the Jones-owned Free Speech Systems, were to be sold at auction, with the Sandy Hook families and Jones’ other creditors getting the proceeds. How The Onion was named the winning bidder
The bankruptcy trustee overseeing the sale chose from sealed bids. He received two.
One was from the Jones-affiliated First United American Companies, which offered $3.5 million, the trustee revealed in court Thursday. The other, from The Onion, was lower but contained an incentive by some of the Sandy Hook families to forgo a portion of the sale proceeds and give it to other Jones’ creditors, the trustee, Christopher Murray, said.
Murray said he determined The Onion’s offer, although unusual, was better overall, because it would provide more money to Jones’ creditors than the other bid. But he also said he could not yet put a dollar figure on The Onion’s bid when the families’ offer was factored in.
Judge Lopez indicated that he had expected prospective buyers would be given a chance to outbid each other after the bids were unsealed.
His 20-page order on the sale procedures in September, however, made such a bidding round optional. And it gave broad authority to Murray to conduct the sale, including the power to reject any bid, no matter how high, that was “contrary to the best interests” of Jones, his company and their creditors. Infowars reopens after shutting down
Murray had Infowars’ website and studio shut down Thursday as he began the process of securing assets, a lawyer for the trustee said in court Thursday. But on Friday, Infowars and its websites were back up and running.
On his show, Jones told listeners that Murray had told him it was wrong to shut down Infowars before the sale was finalized. Murray and his lawyer did not immediately return phone messages and emails seeking comment.
What’s next in court?
The judge said he had concerns about the auction process and transparency. Both sides are expected to present evidence at next week’s hearing.
Jones and a lawyer for First United American Companies allege Murray improperly selected The Onion’s bid and unexpectedly changed the sale process Monday after the sealed bids were submitted, by deciding not to hold a round of bidding on Wednesday. They also questioned the legality of The Onion’s bid.
Murray said denied doing anything improper and said he followed the judge’s auction rules.
Lopez would rule on whether the trustee properly ran the auction and selected The Onion as the winning bidder. If not, the possibilities include reopening the sale and holding an auction where potential buyers could outbid each other. The judge has the ultimate authority to accept or reject any sale of Infowars.
An exact date for the hearing had not yet been scheduled by Friday afternoon.
What are The Onion’s plans for Infowars?
The Onion — which carries the banner of “America’s Finest News Source” on its masthead — was founded in the 1980s and for decades has skewered politics and pop culture. It hopes to reopen the Infowars website in January as a parody of Jones and other conspiracy theorists.
“Our goal in a couple of years is for people to think of Infowars as the funniest and dumbest website that exists,” Ben Collins, the Onion’s CEO, told The Associated Press. “It was previously the dumbest website that exists.”
LEESBURG -Our news partners at KETK report that man has been sentenced to more than 19 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to drug and firearms charges on Thursday.
Nathan Paul Hart, 36 of Leesburg, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamines and possession of a firearm for a drug trafficking crime, according to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas Damien M. Diggs.
According to Diggs, Hart was then sentenced to 170 months for the drug charge and 60 months on the firearms charge for a total of 230 months or 19.167 years. Federal court records showed that between August 2019 and August 2021, Hart was a part of a group who conspired to bring more than 1.5 kilograms of methamphetamines into East Texas. In November of 2020, Hart was stopped with another person in a car that was carrying around two kilograms of meth and a pistol. He also reportedly admitted to sending more than $22,000 to California to purchase drugs.
Hart will serve his two sentences one after the other and has also been ordered to forfeit $250,000, Diggs’ press release said. The Drug Enforcement Administration, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service – Criminal Investigations were all involved in the case
UPDATE: The Henderson County Sheriff’s Office said Mia James has been found safe.
ATHENS – Our News Partner, KETK, reports that the Henderson County Sheriff’s Office is searching for an 11-year-old girl who “is believed to have been picked up by an unknown subject.”
According to the department, Mia James, is around 5’11” tall and weighs 98 pounds. She was last seen near her home on County Road 3925 north of Athens while wearing black shorts and a teal hoodie with with the word “Venom” on it.
Anyone with information about Mia’s location is asked to call the sheriff’s office at 903-675-5128.
AUSTIN – Our news partner, KETK, reports that the Texas Supreme Court denied a petition from the Texas House of Representatives on Friday and ruled that a committee subpoena can’t block a scheduled execution like Robert Roberson’s was on Oct. 17.
The Texas House of Representatives Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence had asked the court for a writ of mandamus that would stop the Texas Department of Criminal Justice from executing East Texan Robert Roberson before he could testify in person or before the start of the 89th Texas Legislature on Jan. 14, 2025.
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JACKSONVILLE – James Warnell Phillips of Jacksonville has been sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty on Wednesday to two counts of continuous sexual abuse of a child. According to our news partner KETK and the Cherokee County District Attorney’s Office, charges against Phillips were brought after it was determined he had continuously sexually abused minors for 11 years. The case against him was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Jonathan Richey and Cherokee County District Attorney Elmer Beckworth.
LONGVIEW — Our news partner, KETK, reports that an East Texas woman has become the target of social media users who blame her for Peanut the squirrel’s death. The mother of two is now sharing her side of the story in an attempt to clear her name.
Mark Longo, the man who rescued Peanut, posted that a raid had been conducted at his home by New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, who took Peanut and Fred the raccoon. The raid was conducted after the DEC received “multiple reports from the public about the potentially unsafe housing of wildlife that could carry rabies and the illegal keeping of wildlife as pet.”
Later, the DEC and Chemung County Department of Health confirmed that Peanut and Fred had been euthanized after biting one of the investigators issuing a need to conduct a rabies test, that would later come back as negative.Longo took out his frustrations online and posted: “Well internet, you WON,” Longo posted. “You took one of the most amazing animals away from me because of your selfishness. To the group of people who called DEC, there’s a special place in hell for you.” Continue reading Longview woman accused in Peanut the Squirrel death
LONGVIEW — The Longview City Council has voted to approve an ordinance to require owners to spay and neuter stray dogs and cats. According to our news partner KETK, the step was taken by the council in order to fix their stray animal problem and prevent overcrowding. The council voted 6-1 to implement a new ordinance and enact pet and breeder permits for owners of loose dogs and cats.
“It really has the ability, like a pebble in the in the pond, to reverberate throughout East Texas,” said Kelly Heitkamp, an animal welfare attorney.
The Longview Animal Advisory committee worked for months to find a solution to overcrowding and the safety of their residents. The ordinance will require owners of stray dogs and cats to be sterilized. Sterilization requirements and the intact pet permit include exemptions such as infertility or chronic health issues, according to the city. Continue reading City of Longview approves spay and neuter ordinance
