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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A convicted murderer who was run out of several Texas cities when he was released early from prison in 1993 pleaded guilty Monday to two new murder charges in a deal that allows him to serve life in prison and avoid the death penalty, over the objections of the victims’ family members.

Raul Meza Jr., 63, served about a decade in prison for killing an 8-year-old girl in 1982 before he was released under laws at the time that gave him credit for good behavior behind bars.

He was charged in 2023 with killing 65-year-old Gloria Lofton in 2019, and 80-year-old Jesse Fraga, his roommate, in 2023. Meza pleaded guilty to capital murder in Lofton’s death and to murder in Fraga’s death. Meza will not be eligible for parole.

“Our hearts continue to break for the Lofton and Fraga families. We hope this outcome continues to help them with their healing process,” Travis County District Attorney José Garza said in a statement. “As a result of this outcome, Mr. Meza will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole and will never threaten our community again.”

But the families of Meza’s victims wanted him to go to trial and for Garza to seek the death penalty.

“A lifetime in jail will not be equal to the pain,” the families have experienced, Loftin’s daughter, Sonia Houston, said in a statement she read in court. “By accepting this plea, we are giving Raul exactly what he wants.”

Meza was first convicted in the 1982 murder of 8-year-old Kendra Page, who authorities said had been strangled and sexually assaulted. He accepted a plea agreement in which he admitted to the murder and was sentenced to 30 years in prison, but only served 11.

Meza’s early release from prison in 1993 caused an uproar throughout Texas, and he was met by protesters at nearly every turn. Picketers drove him out of six cities, sometimes with threats of violence.

“In my heart, I know that I will not willfully bring harm to anyone,” Meza said during an August 1993 news conference after he had been driven out of the communities.

Austin police said Meza called them in May 2023 and confessed to killing Fraga and implicated himself in the 2019 sexual assault and killing of Lofton.

HOUSTON (AP) — A Texas man linked to five killings and convicted of fatally stabbing twin 16-year-old girls more than three decades ago is facing execution on Tuesday evening.

Garcia White was condemned for the December 1989 killings of Annette and Bernette Edwards. The bodies of the twin girls and their mother, Bonita Edwards, were found in their Houston apartment.

White, 61, a former college football player who later worked as a fry cook, was scheduled to receive a lethal injection Tuesday evening at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. White would be the sixth inmate put to death in the U.S. in the last 11 days.

Testimony showed White went to the girls’ Houston home to smoke crack with their mother, Bonita, who also was fatally stabbed. When the girls came out of their room to see what had happened, White attacked them. Evidence showed White broke down the locked door of the girls’ bedroom. He was later tied to the deaths of a grocery store owner and another woman.

“Garcia White committed five murders in three different transactions and two of his victims were teenage girls. This is the type of case that the death penalty was intended for,” said Josh Reiss, chief of the Post-Conviction Writs Division with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office in Houston.

White’s lawyers have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop his execution after lower courts previously rejected his petitions for a stay. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Friday denied White’s request to commute his death sentence to a lesser penalty or to grant him a 30-day reprieve.

His lawyers argued that Texas’ top criminal appeals court has refused “to accept medical evidence and strong factual backing” showing White is intellectually disabled.

The Supreme Court in 2002 barred the execution of intellectually disabled people. But it has given states some discretion to decide how to determine such disabilities. Justices have wrestled with how much discretion to allow.

White’s lawyers also accused the Texas appeals court of not allowing his defense team to present evidence that could spare him a death sentence, including DNA evidence that another man also was at the crime scene and scientific evidence that would show White was “likely suffering from a cocaine induced psychotic break during his actions.”

White’s lawyers also argued he is entitled to a new review of his death sentence, alleging the Texas appeals court has created a new scheme for sentencing in capital punishment cases after a recent Supreme Court ruling in another Texas death row case.

“Mr. White’s case illustrates everything wrong with the current death penalty in Texas -– he has evidence that he is intellectually disabled which the (Texas appeals court) refuses to permit him to develop. He has significant evidence that could result in a sentence other than death at punishment but cannot present it or develop it,” White’s attorneys said in their petition to the high court.

In a filing to the Supreme Court, the Texas Attorney General’s Office said White has not presented evidence to support his claim he is intellectually disabled. The filing also said White’s claims of evidence of another person at the crime scene and that cocaine use affected his actions have previously been rejected by the courts.

“White presents no reason to delay his execution date any longer. The Edwards family — and the victims of White’s other murders … deserve justice for his decades-old crimes,” the attorney general’s office said.

The deaths of the twin girls and their mother went unsolved for about six years until White confessed to the killings after he was arrested in connection with the July 1995 death of grocery store owner Hai Van Pham, who was fatally beaten during a robbery at his business. Police said White also confessed to fatally beating another woman, Greta Williams, in 1989.

White would be the fifth inmate put to death this year in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state, and the 19th in the U.S.

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Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Dockworkers at ports from Maine to Texas began walking picket lines early Tuesday in a strike over wages and automation that could reignite inflation and cause shortages of goods if it goes on more than a few weeks.

The contract between the ports and about 45,000 members of the International Longshoremen’s Association expired at midnight, and even though progress was reported in talks on Monday, the workers went on strike. The strike affecting 36 ports is the first by the union since 1977.

Workers began picketing at the Port of Philadelphia shortly after midnight, walking in a circle at a rail crossing outside the port and chanting “No work without a fair contract.”

The union had message boards on the side of a truck reading: “Automation Hurts Families: ILA Stands For Job Protection.”

Local ILA president Boise Butler said workers want a fair contract that doesn’t allow automation of their jobs.

Shipping companies made billions during the pandemic by charging high prices, he said. “Now we want them to pay back. They’re going to pay back,” Butler said.

He said the union will strike for as long as it needs to get a fair deal, and it has leverage over the companies.

“This is not something that you start and you stop,” he said. “We’re not weak,” he added, pointing to the union’s importance to the nation’s economy

At Port Houston, at least 50 workers started picketing around midnight local time carrying signs saying “No Work Without a Fair Contract.”

The U.S. Maritime Alliance, which represents the ports, said Monday evening that both sides had moved off of their previous wage offers. But no deal was reached.

The union’s opening offer in the talks was for a 77% pay raise over the six-year life of the contract, with President Harold Daggett saying it’s necessary to make up for inflation and years of small raises. ILA members make a base salary of about $81,000 per year, but some can pull in over $200,000 annually with large amounts of overtime.

But Monday evening, the alliance said it had increased its offer to 50% raises over six years, and it pledged to keep limits on automation in place from the old contract. The union wants a complete ban on automation. It wasn’t clear just how far apart both sides are.

“We are hopeful that this could allow us to fully resume collective bargaining around the other outstanding issues in an effort to reach an agreement,” the alliance statement said.

In a statement early Tuesday, the union said it rejected the alliance’s latest proposal because it “fell far short of what ILA rank-and-file members are demanding in wages and protections against automation.” The two sides had not held formal negotiations since June.

“We are prepared to fight as long as necessary, to stay out on strike for whatever period of time it takes, to get the wages and protections against automation our ILA members deserve,” Daggett said in the statement. “They must now meet our demands for this strike to end.”

The alliance said its offer tripled employer contributions to retirement plans and strengthened health care options.

Supply chain experts say consumers won’t see an immediate impact from the strike because most retailers stocked up on goods, moving ahead shipments of holiday gift items.

But if it goes more than a few weeks, a work stoppage would significantly snarl the nation’s supply chain, potentially leading to higher prices and delays in goods reaching households and businesses.

If drawn out, the strike will force businesses to pay shippers for delays and cause some goods to arrive late for peak holiday shopping season — potentially impacting delivery of anything from toys or artificial Christmas trees to cars, coffee and fruit.

The strike will likely have an almost immediate impact on supplies of perishable imports like bananas, for example. The ports affected by the strike handle 3.8 million metric tons of bananas each year, or 75% of the nation’s supply, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

It also could snarl exports from East Coast ports and create traffic jams at ports on the West Coast, where workers are represented by a different union. Railroads say they can ramp up to carry more freight from the West Coast, but analysts say they can’t move enough to make up for the closed Eastern ports.

“If the strikes go ahead, they will cause enormous delays across the supply chain, a ripple effect which will no doubt roll into 2025 and cause chaos across the industry,” noted Jay Dhokia, founder of supply chain management and logistics firm Pro3PL.

J.P. Morgan estimated that a strike that shuts down East and Gulf coast ports could cost the economy $3.8 billion to $4.5 billion per day, with some of that recovered over time after normal operations resume.

The strike comes just weeks before the presidential election and could become a factor if there are shortages. Retailers, auto parts suppliers and produce importers had hoped for a settlement or that President Joe Biden would intervene and end the strike using the Taft-Hartley Act, which allows him to seek an 80-day cooling off period.

But during an exchange with reporters on Sunday, Biden, who has worked to court union votes for Democrats, said “no” when asked if he planned to intervene in the potential work stoppage.

A White House official said Monday that at Biden’s direction, the administration has been in regular communication with the ILA and the alliance to keep the negotiations moving forward. The president directed Chief of Staff Jeff Zients and National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard to convene the alliance’s board members Monday afternoon and urge them to resolve the dispute fairly and quickly — in a way that accounts for the success of shipping companies in recent years and contributions of union workers.

HOUSTON – Texas Public Radio reports that Texas’ maternal mortality committee should be allowed to review abortion-related deaths and have more voices from impacted communities at the table, the group’s chair said at a Friday meeting. These comments represent the committee’s most forceful critique yet of the system by which the state reviews deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth. Dr. Carla Ortique, a Houston OB/GYN who chairs the committee, called for the reversal of recent legislative changes that redrew committee membership and began the process to remove Texas from the federal maternal mortality tracking system. She said the Legislature should consider lifting the redaction requirements that keep these deaths anonymous and allow the committee to review deaths related to abortion, which they learned in March had been excluded from their files for more than a decade.

“Each maternal death, each life that is lost, has value,” she said. “We can’t make comments about what caused an increase in maternal death in our state if we’re not really reviewing all of them.” These calls for reform come amid a recent report showing a significant spike in maternal deaths in 2020 and 2021, reversing several years of improvements. The data from this report documents the period before the state banned nearly all abortions, which is expected to increase maternal mortality. This month, ProPublica reported on two Georgia women who died after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care because of the state’s abortion restrictions. Georgia’s maternal mortality committee deemed those deaths to be preventable, public records show. Dr. Ghazaleh Moayedi, a Dallas OB-GYN, abortion provider and chair of Physicians for Reproductive Health, told The Texas Tribune she is certain there are similar stories in Texas, a state three times as large as Georgia with even stricter abortion laws. “The framing around these being the first recorded deaths is deeply painful, because I know there are people that have died right here, but their stories are never going to be told in that way,” she said.

BOSTON (AP) — Texas-based Steward Health Care CEO Ralph de la Torre filed a lawsuit Monday against a U.S. Senate committee that pursued contempt charges against him for failing to appear before the panel despite being issued a subpoena.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, named nearly all members of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, who chairs the committee which has investigated Steward’s bankruptcy.

The lawsuit claims that the lawmakers are unlawfully violating de la Torre’s constitutional rights.

It alleges that the members of the committee, by trying to compel de la Torre to answer questions about Steward’s bankruptcy, are “collectively undertaking a concerted effort to punish Dr. de la Torre for invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to ‘be compelled . . . to be a witness against himself.’”

De la Torre is asking the court to declare that all actions related to enforcement of the subpoena are invalid and unconstitutional — including the vote of the committee on Sept. 19 approving the criminal contempt resolution and its decision to present the resolution to the full Senate for a vote.

The Senate approved the resolution last week.

“No one can be compelled to testify when they exercise this right under these circumstances. Nor does the Constitution permit Congress to punish and intimidate him, or any other American, for exercising these rights,” William “Bill” Burck, a lawyer for de la Torre, said in a written statement.

The lawsuit comes a day before de la Torre is set to step down as CEO of Steward.

De la Torre has overseen Steward’s network of some 30 hospitals around the country. The Texas-based company’s troubled recent history has drawn scrutiny from elected officials in New England, where some of its hospitals are located.

A spokesperson for de la Torre said Saturday that he “has amicably separated from Steward on mutually agreeable terms” and “will continue to be a tireless advocate for the improvement of reimbursement rates for the underprivileged patient population.”

Sanders said earlier this month that Congress “will hold Dr. de la Torre accountable for his greed and for the damage he has caused to hospitals and patients throughout America.”

Steward has shut down pediatric wards in Massachusetts and Louisiana, closed neonatal units in Florida and Texas, and eliminated maternity services at a hospital in Florida.

Democratic Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts said that over the past decade, Steward, led by de la Torre, and its corporate enablers, “looted hospitals across the country for profit, and got rich through their greedy schemes.”

Alexander Merton, an attorney for de la Torre, has said the fault instead lies with “the systemic failures in Massachusetts’ health care system” and that the committee was trying to frame de la Torre as a criminal scapegoat. Merton has also said that de la Torre would agree to testify at a later date.

On Friday, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey announced her administration had formally seized a hospital through eminent domain to help keep it open and transition to a new owner. St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Boston was one of a group run by Steward. Operations will be transferred to Boston Medical Center.

Two other Steward-operated hospitals in Massachusetts were forced to close after qualified buyers could not be found during the bankruptcy process.

SAN ANTONIO (AP) – A federal judge ruled on Saturday that part of a Texas law that enacted new voting restrictions violated the U.S. Constitution by being too vague and restricting free speech.

The ruling, made by U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez, immediately halted the state’s ability to investigate alleged cases of vote harvesting, such as the investigation into the League of United Latin American Citizens by Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Before today’s ruling, a person who knowingly provided or offered vote harvesting services in exchange for compensation was committing a third-degree felony. This meant that organizers of voter outreach organizations and even volunteers could spend up to ten years in prison and fined up to $10,000 for giving or offering these services.

Paxton on Monday vowed to appeal the ruling.

“A ruling—weeks prior to an election— preventing my office from investigating potential election violations is deeply troubling and risks undermining public trust in our political process,” he said.

According to Republican lawmakers, the provision was put in place to prevent voter fraud and secure election integrity. However, in the ruling, the judge noted that there was widespread confusion about how to implement the canvassing restriction from local election administrators. This confusion also left voter outreach organizations uncertain about whether they could provide volunteers with food or bus fare because it could look like compensation.

Many organizations – including La Union del Pueblo Entero, LULAC, and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund – have filed lawsuits against many other provisions of the law, including voter assistance and mail-in ballot restrictions. The challenges to these provisions have not been ruled on yet. The original complaints were filed in August and September 2021.

Before the law, organizations like OCA-Greater Houston, an advocacy organization for people of Asian and Pacific Island descent, would host in-person election events and allow attendees to bring their mail-in ballots in order to receive help like language assistance.

Nina Perales, vice president of litigation at MALDEF, wrote that “Today’s ruling means that voter outreach organizers and other advocates in Texas can speak to mail ballot voters about issues on the ballot and urge voters to support improvements to their communities.”

ACLU of Texas celebrated the ruling on X saying, “This is a win for voting rights in the state, and for the organizations that help keep elections accessible.”

SAN ANTONIO – The San Antonio Express-News says Southwest Airlines sued the city and its airport director late Thursday in an effort to stop a new airline lease agreement from taking effect at San Antonio International Airport on Tuesday. The Dallas-based airline’s federal lawsuit accuses airport officials of an unfair “bait and switch” in negotiations for a 10-year lease agreement, which City Council approved earlier this month. Southwest and the San Antonio airport are fighting over the lease agreement because it would keep the airline out of the planned Terminal C, a $1.7 billion, 17-gate facility that’s slated to open in 2028. The airline instead would be the sole tenant of the cramped Terminal A.

Southwest is seeking a temporary restraining order to keep the current lease agreement in place for the time being. A hearing on the matter is set for Monday afternoon in San Antonio federal court. If a judge doesn’t grant a TRO — and if Southwest doesn’t sign the new lease — Southwest will operate at the airport on a month-to-month basis, incurring higher fees. It will also lose out on a revenue-sharing arrangement that eight other airlines, which have agreed to sign the new lease, will benefit from. In the suit, Southwest claims Airport Director Jesus Saenz verbally committed to the airline that it would get all, or most, of the 10 gates it requested in Terminal C. But in May, the airline alleges, Southwest was relegated to Terminal A, the oldest facility on the airport’s property.

AUSTIN – The Austin American-Statesman reports a Travis County state District Court judge has granted a temporary injunction to a group of more than 30 school districts — including Hays, Jarrell, Lockhart, Manor and Temple — to block the Texas Education Agency’s release of the 2023-24 A-F letter grades that rate the state’s school districts and campuses. An education agency spokesman told the American-Statesman the agency plans to appeal the recently released ruling. This is the second year in a row that a Travis County District Court has blocked the TEA’s public release of the scores it uses to assess campuses after two consecutive lawsuits brought by school districts. Judge Daniella Deseta Lyttle of the 201st District Court granted the temporary injunction Sept. 18 because lawyers representing the school districts “made a sufficient showing of a probable right to relief.”

In the initial 2023 lawsuit, about 100 school districts argued that the TEA had unfairly recalibrated the rubric for scoring and waited too long to communicate those changes, and that those adjustments would result in lower scores for many districts. In the second lawsuit Aug. 12, five districts — Pecos-Barstow-Toyah, Crandall, Forney, Fort Stockton and Kingsville — argued that the agency still hadn’t fixed those issues, such as notifying districts of changes in a timely way. The districts also took issue with the introduction in February of computer-based grading for open-ended response questions on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness. More districts have since signed on. The agency had already been blocked from releasing the 2024 scores under a temporary restraining order, which typically only last for a short time. The TEA calculates its A-F scores largely based on STAAR results as well as college and career preparedness, among other measures.