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AUSTIN (AP) — The Texas Department of Public Safety has reinstated a state trooper who was suspended after the botched law enforcement response to the shooting at a Uvalde elementary school in 2022.

In a letter sent to Texas Ranger Christopher Ryan Kindell on Aug. 2 and released by the agency on Monday, DPS Director Col. Steve McCraw removed the officer’s suspension status and restored him to his job in Uvalde County.

McCraw’s letter said the local district attorney had requested Kindell be returned to his job, and noted he had not been charged by a local grand jury that reviewed the police response.

Nineteen students and two teachers were killed in the May 24, 2022, attack on Robb Elementary School, making it one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.

Nearly 400 officers waited more than an hour before confronting the shooter in the classroom, while injured students inside texted and call 911 begging for help and parents outside pleaded for them to go in.

Kindell was initially suspended in January 2023 when McCraw’s termination letter said the ranger’s action “did not conform to department standards” and that he should have recognized it was an active shooter situation, not one involving a barricaded subject.

Scathing state and federal investigative reports on the police response have catalogued “cascading failures” in training, communication, leadership and technology problems.

Kindell was one of the few DPS officers disciplined. Later, another who was informed he would be fired decided to retire, and another officer resigned.

Only two of the responding officers from that day, both formerly with the Uvalde schools police department, face criminal charges. Former Uvalde schools police chief Pete Arredondo and officer Adrian Gonzales were indicted in June on charges of child endangerment and abandonment. Both pleaded not guilty in July.

In his reinstatement letter, McCraw wrote that Kindell was initially suspended after the agency’s internal investigation.

But now, McCraw said he had been told by Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell that a grand jury had reviewed the actions of all officers who responded to the attack, and “no action was taken on officers employed by the Texas Department of Public Safety.”

“Further, she has requested that you be reinstated to your former position,” McCraw wrote.

Mitchell did not respond to email requests for comment. It was not immediately clear if Kindell has an attorney.

Families of the victims in the south Texas town of about 15,000 people about 80 miles (130 kilometers) west of San Antonio, have long sought accountability for the slow police response that day. Some of the families have called for more officers to be charged.

Several families of Uvalde victims have filed federal and state lawsuits against law enforcement, social media and online gaming companies, and the gun manufacturer that made the rifle the gunman used.

HOUSTON (AP) — Actor Akili McDowell, who starred in the television series “David Makes Man” and had roles in “Billions” and “The Astronaut Wives Club,” has been charged with fatally shooting a man in the parking lot of a Houston apartment complex, authorities said.

McDowell, 21, was charged last week with murder in the July 20 shooting death of Cesar Peralta, 20, the Harris County sheriff’s office said. McDowell remained in jail Monday on $400,000 bond on the murder charge. The attorney listed for him in court records did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

“This is an unfortunate situation and I am in prayer for Akili and those impacted by this tragedy,” said his manager, Jonell Whitt, adding that she had no further comment.

The sheriff’s office said deputies found an unresponsive man with gunshot wounds after responding to a call about a shooting at an apartment complex on July 20. The sheriff’s office said several witnesses told deputies the man had been in a physical altercation with another man, who fled on foot after the shooting.

“David Makes Man,” which aired on Oprah Winfrey’s OWN, followed a teen named David, played by McDowell, who tried to juggle relationships between his magnet school friends and drug dealers in his impoverished South Florida neighborhood.

According to the entertainment database IMDb, McDowell appeared in some episodes of “Billions” and “The Astronaut Wives Club,” and has a role in the recently released movie “The Waterboyz.”

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports the nation’s second-largest oil company said Friday it planned to move its headquarters to Houston from San Ramon, Calif., later this year, consolidating even more big oil industry power in the nation’s energy capital. Chevron follows Exxon Mobil, the nation’s largest oil company, which last year moved its headquarters to its Houston campus from Irving. “Texas offers a business-friendly environment, a more affordable cost of living, and better proximity to key counterparts in the service sector, our industry and academia,” the company said in a statement. “We are currently in the process of evaluating which positions will relocate, and which positions will remain in San Ramon to support our California operations. We expect to complete this evaluation before the end of the year.”

Chevron’s decision follows a surge of punitive policy changes for the oil industry in California following Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2022 climate commitments that promised to quicken the state’s shift to renewable energy. At the time, Newsom said the state was in the business of “holding Big Oil accountable.” The following year, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against Chevron, four other oil and gas majors and the American Petroleum Institute alleging a years-long climate change deception campaign in the state. “We have previously stated that we believe state policy makers have pursued policies that raise costs and consumer prices, creating a hardship for all Californians, especially those who can least afford it,” the Chevron statement said. “These policies have also made California investment unappealing compared with opportunities elsewhere in the U.S. and globally.” Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates in Houston, said Chevron, which has a major refining presence in California, “continues to be at odds with the California regulators and the new state legislation that is impacting all companies operating in California. The state of Texas is much friendlier to the energy business and their moving to the state reflects that.”

HOUSTON (AP) — A Frontier Airlines flight that had been set to go from Houston to the Dallas area last week got canceled not because of weather, but because one of its pilots got arrested.

The pilot, Seymour Walker, was arrested by officers around 4 p.m. Thursday before passengers began to board the plane at Bush Intercontinental Airport, according to Houston police.

Walker was taken “into custody without incident,” Houston police said. Walker, 45, was wanted on an assault-family violence arrest warrant that had been issued by the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport Department of Public Safety.

It was not immediately known if Walker was still in custody Monday. The Dallas Fort Worth International Airport Department of Public Safety did not immediately reply to an open records request seeking comment.

Walker could not immediately be reached for comment.

In a statement, Frontier Airlines confirmed the pilot’s arrest and that it was not related to the airlines’ or the pilot’s performance of his job duties.

A replacement for the pilot was not immediately available, forcing the flight’s cancellation, Frontier Airlines said.

“Impacted customers were offered the option of a full refund, credit or re-accommodation on the next available Frontier flight, later that evening. Passengers were also provided a $100 flight voucher, and overnight hotel accommodations as needed,” the airline said.

BASTROP – KVUE reports that central Texas-based tech entrepreneur Elon Musk is opening a school in Bastrop this fall. The school is called Ad Astra, a Latin phrase that translates as “to the stars.” According to its website, the school’s mission is to “foster curiosity, creativity and critical thinking in the next generation of problem solvers and builders.” The school’s curriculum is focused on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). “Ad Astra School admits students based on merit, regardless of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school,” the school’s website reads. The website further says that the school is centered on hands-on and project-based learning, where children are encouraged to explore, experiment and discover solutions to real-world problems. It also states that it will “tailor learning experiences to each child’s unique needs, pace and interests.”

TEXAS – The Wall Street Journal reports that when illegal migration surged across the U.S.-Mexico border last fall, Phoenix’s largest migrant shelter was so busy that cots filled the cafeteria and lined the hallways. Today the shelter, housed in a converted elementary school, is empty. The U.S. has experienced a stark decline in illegal border crossings in the past six months, thanks to a newly sprung security gantlet migrants encounter traveling to the U.S. border through Mexico. On the Mexican side, security checkpoints dot highways. Mexico’s National Guard patrols the southern banks of the Rio Grande, aiming to prevent mass concentrations of migrants. Thousands of asylum seekers caught heading north have been put on buses and sent back to southern Mexico near Guatemala. Aid organizations liken the busing strategy to the board game Chutes and Ladders, as migrants are moved around the country. The policy aims to discourage them from heading north. Many decide to return to South America, migrants say.

The Americans also have a new tool. An order issued by President Biden in June disqualifies migrants from winning asylum if they enter the U.S. illegally. As a result, many more of them can be deported quickly, and far fewer have been released into the U.S. The moves mark an unprecedented level of cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico, both motivated by presidential elections this year, to bring down illegal border crossings in hopes of diverting attention away from the issue. The effort has worked beyond anything the U.S. could have predicted, at least so far. The progress gives Vice President Kamala Harris a potential counter to efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies, who are painting her as the face of failed U.S. policies on immigration. The U.S. recorded about 57,000 illegal crossings in July, according to a person familiar with unpublished government data, down from around 250,000 in December, when they reached an all-time high. That is the lowest monthly figure since 2020, when crossings were still relatively low because of the Covid-19 pandemic. “This is just what the administration wanted,” said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. “Not that Democrats are going to win on this issue, but that chaos at the border won’t be on the front pages anymore.”

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Biden administration has temporarily suspended permits for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to enter the United States and stay up to two years amid concerns about fraud by their financial sponsors, officials said Friday.

Nearly 500,000 people from the four countries arrived through June under presidential authority after applying online with financial sponsors in the United States and flying at their own expense. It is a major piece of the Democratic administration’s policies to create or expand paths for legal entry while restricting asylum for those who cross the border illegally.

The Homeland Security Department said it “temporarily paused” new authorizations while it reviews the backgrounds of financial sponsors.

The department said it has not identified any security or public safety concerns about people from the four countries who benefit, just their sponsors. Beneficiaries “are thoroughly screened and vetted prior to their arrival to the United States,” it said in statement that promised to “restart application processing as quickly as possible, with appropriate safeguards.”

Homeland Security didn’t say when processing was suspended. But the news broke after the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that favors immigration restrictions, cited an internal Homeland Security report that raised questions about fraud.

The Associated Press did not confirm details of the internal review, which neither Homeland Security nor FAIR provided. But FAIR said the report found, among other things, that 3,218 sponsors were responsible for more than 100,000 filings and that 24 of the top 1,000 Social Security numbers used by sponsors corresponded to dead people.

Republican critics pounced. House Speaker Mike Johnson said, “This program should have never existed in the first place. It’s just another way the Biden-Harris administration has welcomed hundreds of thousands of aliens into our country unchecked.”

The policy — introduced for Venezuelans in October 2022 and for the other three nationalities in January 2023 — is aimed at countries that send large numbers of people to the United States and generally refuse to accept those who are deported. It is paired with commitments from Mexico to take back people from those countries who cross the U.S. border illegally.

Under the policy, the U.S. accepts up to 30,000 people a month from the countries for two years with eligibility for work authorization. More than 194,000 Haitians, 110,000 Venezuelans, 104,000 Cubans and 86,000 Nicaraguans benefited through June. according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Concerns about sponsors seeking a quick profit surfaced almost from the start. Facebook groups with names like “Sponsors U.S.” carried dozens of posts offering and seeking financial supporters.

Arrests for illegal crossings have plummeted among the four nationalities. Cubans were arrested 5,065 times during the first half of the year, compared with more than 42,000 arrests in November 2022 alone. Haitians were arrested 304 times during the first six months of the year, compared with a peak of nearly 18,000 in September 2021.

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Attorneys for Elon Musk and Tesla’s corporate directors are asking a Delaware judge to vacate her ruling requiring the company to rescind a massive and unprecedented pay package for Musk.

Friday’s hearing follows a January ruling in which Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick concluded that Musk engineered the landmark 2018 pay package in sham negotiations with directors who were not independent. The compensation package initially carried a potential maximum value of about $56 billion, but that sum has fluctuated over the years based on Tesla’s stock price.

Following the court ruling, Tesla shareholders met in June and ratified Musk’s 2018 pay package for a second time, again by an overwhelming margin.

Defense attorneys say the vote makes clear that Tesla shareholders, with full knowledge of the flaws in the 2018 process that McCormick pointed out in her January ruling, are adamant that Musk is entitled to the pay package.

“Honoring the shoulder vote would affirm the strength of our corporate system,” David Ross, an attorney for Musk and the other individual defendants, told McCormick. “This was stockholder democracy working.”

Ross told the judge that the defendants were not challenging the factual findings or legal conclusions in her ruling, but simply asking that she vacate her order directing Tesla to rescind the pay package.

McCormick, however, seemed skeptical of the defense arguments, peppering attorneys with questions and noting that there is no precedent in Delaware law for allowing a post-trial shareholder vote to ratify adjudicated breaches of fiduciary duty by corporate directors.

“This has never been done before,” she said.

Defense attorneys argued that, while they could find no case that is exactly comparable, Delaware law has long recognized shareholder ratification as a cure to corporate governance errors, and has long acknowledged the “sovereignty” of shareholders as the ultimate owners of a corporation.

“I candidly don’t see how Delaware law can tell the owners of the company that they’re not entitled to make the decision they made,” said Rudolf Koch, an attorney for Tesla.

Donald Verrilli, a lawyer for an induvial stockholder who owns more than 19,000 Tesla shares, suggested that it would be wrong for the lone shareholder who filed the lawsuit to thwart the will of the majority of Tesla shareholders. At the time the lawsuit was filed, the plaintiff owned just nine shares of Tesla stock.

“The voice of the majority of shareholders should matter…. This lawsuit is not representing the interest of the shareholders,” Verrilli said.

Thomas Grady, an attorney for a group of Florida objectors who own or manage almost 8 million Tesla shares with some $2 billion, argued that for McCormick to rule for the plaintiff, she has to “disenfranchise” all other Tesla shareholders.

Greg Varallo, an attorney for the plaintiff, urged McCormick not to give any credence to the June shareholder vote, saying it has no legal precedent in Delaware or anywhere else. There also is no reason for the court to reopen the trial record and admit new evidence, he said.

Under Delaware law, stockholders have no authority to overrule courts by trying to use a post-trial ratification vote as a “giant eraser,” Varallo argued.

“Ratification is not magic, and it never has been,” Varallo added. “This should end here and now.”

McCormick gave no indication on when she would rule. She also has yet to rule on a huge and unprecedented fee request by plaintiff attorneys, who contend that they are entitled to legal fees in the form of Tesla stock valued at more than $7 billion.