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AUSTIN (AP) – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Monday that his office is suing the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Biden administration officials for declaring a rare lizard endangered earlier this year.

The dunes sagebrush lizard burrows in the sand dunes in the Mescalero-Monahans ecosystem 30 miles west of Odessa — the same West Texas land that supports the state’s biggest oil and gas fields.

For four decades, biologists warned federal regulators about the existential threat that oil and gas exploration and development poses for the reptile’s habitat, while industry representatives fought against the designation, saying it would scare off companies interested in drilling in the nation’s most lucrative oil and natural gas basin.

In May, federal regulators ruled that the industry’s expansion posed a grave threat to the lizard’s survival when listing it as endangered.

Now, the state’s top lawyer is suing.

“The Biden-Harris Administration’s unlawful misuse of environmental law is a backdoor attempt to undermine Texas’s oil and gas industries which help keep the lights on for America,” Paxton said. “I warned that we would sue over this illegal move, and now we will see them in court.”

Paxton’s statement said the listing of the lizard was a violation of the Endangered Species Act, adding that the Fish and Wildlife Service “failed to rely on the best scientific and commercial data” when declaring the lizard endangered and did not take into account conservation efforts already in place to protect the lizard.

The 2.5-inch-long lizard only lives in about 4% of the 86,000-square-mile Permian Basin, which spans Texas and New Mexico, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service. In Texas, the lizard has been found in Andrews, Crane, Gaines, Ward and Winkler counties.

According to a 2023 analysis by the Fish and Wildlife Service, the lizard is “functionally extinct” across 47% of its range.

The listing requires oil and gas companies to avoid operating in areas the lizard inhabits, but the Fish and Wildlife Service has yet to determine where those areas are because it is still gathering information. Oil and gas companies could incur fines up to $50,000 and prison time, depending on the violation, if they operate in those areas.

Paxton’s office said that because the Fish and Wildlife Service has not specified those areas, it has left operators and landowners uncertain about what they can do with their own land.

SAN ANTONIO – The Texas Tribune reports that Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff raised more than $1 million at a San Antonio fundraiser for Kamala Harris presidential campaign Monday night, the largest presidential fundraiser in the city’s history. San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg made the announcement at a reception hosted by Frank and Cecilia Herrera that was attended by prominent area Democrats like Henry Cisneros, a former San Antonio mayor and former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Development, State Sen. José Menéndez, and U.S. Rep. Greg Casar. Emhoff also said that voters could also make “serious changes” to the state by flipping some statehouse races and their statewide leaders.

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Death row inmates in five states are scheduled to be put to death in the span of one week, an unusually high number of executions that defies a yearslong trend of decline in both the use and support of the death penalty in the U.S.

If carried out as planned, the executions in Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas will mark the first time in more than 20 years — since July 2003 — that five were held in seven days, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which takes no position on capital punishment but has criticized the way states carry out executions.

The first execution was carried out on Friday in South Carolina, and if the other four scheduled this week proceed, the United States will have reached 1,600 executions since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, said Robin Maher, the center’s executive director.

“Two on a single day is unusual, and four on two days in the same week is also very unusual,” Maher said.

Here are some things to know about executions set this week across the country.
How did 5 executions get set for a 1-week span?

Experts say five executions being scheduled within one week is simply an anomaly that resulted from courts or elected officials in individual states setting dates around the same time after inmates exhausted their appeals.

“I’m not aware of any reason other than coincidence,” said Eric Berger, a law professor at the University of Nebraska with expertise in the death penalty and lethal injection.

Berger said some factors can result in a backlog of executions, such as a state’s inability to obtain the lethal drugs necessary to carry them out, which happened in South Carolina, or a moratorium that resulted from botched executions, like what happened in Oklahoma.
South Carolina

The first of the five executions took place on Friday when South Carolina put inmate Freddie Owens to death for the 1997 killing of a convenience store clerk during a robbery. It was South Carolina’s first execution in 13 years, an unintended delay caused by the inability of state prison officials to obtain the drugs needed for lethal injections. To carry out executions, the state switched from a three-drug method to a new protocol of using a single sedative, pentobarbital.
Alabama

Alabama on Thursday is preparing to carry out the nation’s second execution ever using nitrogen gas after becoming the first state to use the new procedure in January. Alan Miller is set to die by the process in which a mask is placed over the inmate’s head that forces the inmate to inhale pure nitrogen. Miller, who was given a reprieve in 2022 after his execution was called off when officials were unable to connect an intravenous line, was sentenced to die after being convicted of killing three men during back-to-back workplace shootings in 1999.
Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas

On Tuesday, Texas is scheduled to execute Travis Mullis, a man with a long history of mental illness who has repeatedly sought to waive his right to appeal his death sentence. Mullis was sentenced to death for killing his 3-month-old son in January 2008. Mullis’ attorneys did not plan to file any appeals to try and stay his lethal injection.

Also on Tuesday in Missouri, Marcellus Williams is set to receive a lethal injection for the 1998 stabbing death of a woman in the St. Louis suburb of University City. Williams’ attorneys argued on Monday that the state Supreme Court should halt his execution over alleged procedural errors in jury selection and the prosecution’s alleged mishandling of the murder weapon. But the state’s high court rejected those arguments, and Gov. Mike Parson denied Williams’ clemency request, paving the way for his execution to proceed.

In Oklahoma, Emmanuel Littlejohn is set to receive a lethal injection on Thursday after being sentenced to die for his role in the 1992 shooting death of a convenience store owner during a robbery. Littlejohn has admitted to his role in the robbery, but claims he did not fire the fatal shot. The state’s Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-2 last month to recommend Gov. Kevin Stitt spare Littlejohn’s life, but the governor has yet to make a clemency decision.

HOUSTON (AP) — A Texas man with a long history of mental illness who has repeatedly sought to waive his right to appeal his death sentence faced execution Tuesday evening for killing his 3-month-old son more than 16 years ago.

Travis Mullis, 38, was condemned for stomping his son Alijah to death in January 2008. His execution by lethal injection was set to take place at the state penitentiary in Huntsville.

Authorities say Mullis, then 21 and living in Brazoria County, drove to nearby Galveston with his son after fighting with his girlfriend. Mullis parked his car and sexually assaulted his son. After the infant began to cry uncontrollably, Mullis began strangling his son before taking him out of the car and stomping on his head, according to authorities.

The infant’s body was later found on the side of the road. Mullis fled Texas but was later arrested after turning himself in to police in Philadelphia.

Mullis’ execution was expected to proceed as his attorneys did not plan to file any final appeals to try and stay his lethal injection. His lawyers also did not file a clemency petition with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.

In a letter submitted to U.S. District Judge George Hanks in Houston, Mullis wrote in February that he had no desire to challenge his case any further. Mullis has previously taken responsibility for his son’s death and has said “his punishment fit the crime.”

In the letter, Mullis said, “he seeks the same finality and justice the state seeks.”

Galveston County District Attorney Jack Roady, whose office prosecuted Mullis, declined to comment ahead of Tuesday’s scheduled execution.

At Mullis’ trial, prosecutors said Mullis was a “monster” who manipulated people, was deceitful and refused the medical and psychiatric help he had been offered.

Since his conviction in 2011, Mullis has long been at odds with his various attorneys over whether to appeal his case. At times, Mullis had asked that his appeals be waived, only to later change his mind.

Shawn Nolan, one of Mullis’ attorneys, told the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals during a June 2023 hearing that state courts in Texas had erred in ruling that Mullis had been mentally competent when he had waived his right to appeal his case about a decade earlier.

Nolan told the appeals court that Mullis has been treated for “profound mental illness” since he was 3 years old, was sexually abused as a child and is “severely bipolar,” leading him to change his mind about appealing his case.

“The only hope that Mr. Mullis had of avoiding execution, of surviving was to have competent counsel to help the court in its determination of whether he was giving up his rights knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily and that did not happen,” Nolan said.

Natalie Thompson, who at the time was with the Texas Attorney General’s Office, told the appeals court that Mullis understood what he was doing and could go against his lawyers’ advice “even if he’s suffering from mental illness.”

The appeals court upheld Hank’s ruling from 2021 that found Mullis “repeatedly competently chose to waive review” of his death sentence.

The U.S. Supreme Court has prohibited the application of the death penalty for the intellectually disabled, but not for people with serious mental illness.

Mullis would be the fourth inmate put to death this year in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state, and the 15th in the U.S.

Mullis’ execution is one of five set to take place in the U.S. within a week’s time. The first took place Friday when South Carolina put inmate Freddie Owens to death. Also Tuesday, Marcellus Williams was scheduled to be executed in Missouri. On Thursday, executions are scheduled for Alan Miller in Alabama and Emmanuel Littlejohn in Oklahoma.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A federal jury in Texas on Monday rejected voter intimidation allegations against all but one of a group of former President Donald Trump supporters who surrounded a Biden-Harris campaign bus on an interstate days before the 2020 election.

Only one of the six Trump supporters who were sued in the civil trial was held responsible by the jury. A Texas man whose car brushed up against another as the caravan of vehicles dubbed the “Trump Train” raced down Interstate 35, was ordered to pay the bus driver $10,000 and another $30,000 in punitive damages.

Both sides declared victory at the end of a two-week trial in an Austin courthouse. The five Trump supporters cleared in the lawsuit — which was brought by three people aboard the campaign bus, including former Texas Democratic lawmaker Wendy Davis — described the verdict as vindicating and a relief.

“We’re just ready to feel like normal people again,” said Joeylynn Mesaros, one of the defendants, who described being harassed for participating in the ‘Trump Train.’ “It’s been a thousand something days to have our day in court.”

Attorneys for those aboard the bus said justice was served, even as they disagreed with the jury’s decision to clear five of the defendants.

“When I came to this case it was never about politics that day. I’m grateful, I’m proud of my team,” said Tim Holloway, who was behind the wheel of the campaign bus on Oct. 30, 2020.

The Biden-Harris campaign bus was traveling from San Antonio to Austin for an event when a group of cars and pickup trucks waving Trump flags boxed in the bus on the highway. Davis testified she feared for her life.

Video that Davis recorded from the bus shows one of the defendants, Eliazar Cisneros, hit a campaign volunteer’s car while the trucks occupied all lanes of traffic, forcing the bus and everyone around it to a 15 mph crawl.

It was the last day of early voting in Texas and the bus was scheduled to stop at San Marcos for an event at Texas State University. The event was canceled after Davis and others on the bus — a campaign staffer and the driver — made repeated calls to 911 asking for a police escort through San Marcos and no help arrived.

The trial centered on whether the actions of the “Trump Train” participants amounted to political intimidation.

No criminal charges were filed against the six Trump supporters.

An attorney for Cisneros, the only member of the convoy who the jury found liable, said they would appeal.

“With regard to my client, it’s not over yet,” attorney Francisco Canseco said.

Davis testified that she felt scared and anxious throughout the ordeal. “I feel like they were enjoying making us afraid,” she testified. “It’s traumatic for all of us to revisit that day.”

AUSTIN – KUT reports that the Texas Department of Transportation is looking to switch over TxTag’s toll-transaction processing and customer account services to the Harris County Toll Road Authority by the end of the year. TxDOT recommends TxTag customers update their address, vehicle information and credit card information to avoid potential problems. It also advises customers to pay off any overdue bills as soon as possible. TxDOT currently has a $185 million contract with TTEC Government Solutions to provide customer service. That deal is set to expire Nov. 14. If the transition goes forward, current TxTag customers would still be able to use their toll stickers and would not need to get an EZ TAG from the Harris County Toll Road Authority.

But drivers won’t need to use either TxTAG or HCTRA’s EZ Pass. As the CTRMA’s website explains, tolling transponders can be used from a number of different areas, including North Texas, Kansas and Florida. After the transition, customers would manage their accounts through the HCTRA website. Customers would still be able to use any of the TxTag locations in the Austin area for in-person services. Although the HCTRA would collect tolls, TxDOT would continue to be responsible for maintaining its toll roads, including SH 130, SH 45N, SH 45SE and MoPac. TxDOT said it expects the transition to occur in phases beginning at the end of this year, but it could stop the process at any point. It said it would keep customers updated.

LIVINGSTON – Our news partners at KETK report a 23-year-old was arrested on Saturday after police found more than 15 pounds of marijuana and $9,000 during a traffic stop, the Livingston Police Department said.

According to the police department, officers stopped a car travelling on Highway 59 in Livingston for a vehicle violation.

“During the traffic stop, probable cause was established to search the vehicle,” Livingston PD said.

Officers searched the vehicle and found more than 15 pounds of weed and more than $9,100, the police department said.

The police department said the driver, identified as 23-year-old Christian Ramos, of Lufkin, was taken into custody at the scene without incident.

Ramos was charged for possession of marijuana and is being held at the Polk County Jail under a $15,000 bond.

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that concerned with the possibility of problems ahead as companies ditch drivers for autonomous vehicles, Texas lawmakers are aiming at a light touch — but new requirements — for companies behind driverless cars and trucks. “The state needs to be in a position to step in and have a set of rules,” said state Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee. “But we are not fixing to slip something through here. We are going to have a methodology.” Nichols, with support from other senators, said he expects legislation in the upcoming session will require companies such as Waymo, Cruise and Aurora to inform the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles when they pull drivers from vehicles and allow the vehicles to make solo trips. The DMV would then handle permitting and registration of the vehicles and some oversight of reported problems with the systems. The new regulations, which would require approval from the legislature and Gov. Greg Abbott, would apply only to fleets of driverless cars and trucks, such as those used to ferry trailers of goods or small robotaxis carrying people.

The rules and registration would not apply to privately owned autonomous vehicles. That exclusion is important to the industry, which is nearing — albeit slowly — sales of private self-driving cars and small trucks, said Nick Steingart, director of state affairs for the Alliance of Automotive Innovation. Nichols and other lawmakers began talks over the summer with companies involved in autonomous vehicle development. The aim, he said, was to not rewrite or change trucking and paid ride rules, but integrate driverless vehicles into those rules. Federal officials, meanwhile, govern the technology and the safety requirements related to the industry. Nichols said the state must have a system that responds to issues related to the driverless vehicles and maintain that the companies are using Texas’ roads safely without stifling innovation. “The industry is already working with us, we do not want to disrupt that,” Nichols said. Texas lawmakers in 2017 approved rules for autonomous vehicles, largely to get ahead of cities in the state setting their own rules. Following the debate over ride hailing companies such as Uber and Lyft — wherein the state superseded city and county rules that attempted to regulate the companies similar to cab companies, which the companies fought — state leaders opted to get ahead with driverless cars. Rather than leave the changing technology and its regulations to cities, state lawmakers stepped in.

AUSTIN (AP) – A legal effort to block Texas from releasing school performance ratings has created a divide between district leaders who worry the scores are an inaccurate representation of their work and others who say parents need that information to make choices about their kids’ schooling.

A coalition of about 30 school districts recently sued the Texas Education Agency over the introduction of a computer system to grade the state’s standardized tests, which are used to calculate part of Texas schools’ performance rating. The year before, school districts filed a similar lawsuit arguing that the agency had raised too fast a benchmark that also goes into their score. Judges out of Travis County have sided with the school districts in both cases, ordering temporary injunctions that have kept the TEA from releasing the ratings for two consecutive school years.

The latest lawsuit has been met with wariness from some school leaders, a marked shift from when more than a 100 districts saddled up for the first suit to create a unified front against the TEA.

While the state’s hands have been tied from releasing ratings this year, some school districts in Bexar, Dallas, El Paso and Harris counties have voluntarily released their own campuses’ forecast scores. One board trustee out of Midland’s school district unsuccessfully filed a petition with the court to intervene in the lawsuit, saying time and money were wasted on standardized testing if the public could not access school performance ratings.

“If I’m going to put billboards up and I’m going to put up a fancy website promoting our academic programs or early college high school programs, I believe I owe it to that same community, those same parents, (to) put out scores,” said Xavier de la Torre, the superintendent of the Ysleta school district in El Paso.

The TEA grades every public and charter school in the state on an A-F scale. A failing grade can trigger state sanctions and it can lead the TEA to take over a district in the worst cases. Poor scores can also push families to leave the district and, since schools get money from the state based on enrollment, could lead to less funds.

Some school leaders criticized the automated computer system used to grade the statewide standardized test this year, saying a third party should have reviewed the tool before it was rolled out. They believe statewide drops in reading scores were due to errors with the system and would result in an unfair school rating.

School leaders also said they didn’t get enough notice when TEA introduced stricter expectations for how schools show they’re preparing students for life after graduation. High schools can now only get an “A” rating if 88% of their seniors enrolled in college, pursued a non-college career or entered the military, up from 60%.

Bobby Ott, the superintendent of Temple’s school district, said he never saw the changes to the career readiness benchmarks coming.

“It wasn’t even a target we could prepare for, and that was just completely uncalled for,” he said. “In no real-time situation do you measure progress improvement by doing a ‘ready, fire, aim’ approach. There’s no system built like that … There’s no chance to build to that goal.”

But critics question if back-to-back lawsuits are the best means to raise concerns about the changes. Families have now gone five years without a full picture of how their schools are doing. Texas did not release school ratings in 2020 or 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic; in 2022, Texas lawmakers ordered the state to only release A-C ratings.

Ott agreed a legal fight wasn’t the ideal way to settle disputes with the changes but he said lawmakers left districts no choice because they haven’t addressed their concerns.

The Dallas Independent School District was among the districts that joined in on the first lawsuit. A year later, it was one of the first to voluntarily release their own ratings.

“We’re all being held to that same calculation. So the fact that (the state’s rating system) is imperfect does not mean that we shouldn’t measure it at all,” said Dallas ISD Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde. “I feel like I owe it to our community, and, frankly, to the state of Texas to say, ‘here is where we are.’”

Elizalde said her district joined the first lawsuit because she wanted one more year to understand the new college and career readiness benchmarks before they went into effect. Now that that year had come and passed, Elizalde said her district needed to be transparent about its rating so her team could set performance goals — even if she does share some of the same computer scoring concerns listed in the latest lawsuit.

“If I don’t talk about where we are now, how can I explain how we’re improving?” she said.

Dallas ISD expects to get a C rating this year, a drop from the B it earned in the 2021-22 school year.

Parents lean on A-F scores to understand how their local schools are performing and, if they have the resources, they can use that information to make decisions about where to send their kids to school.

In the El Paso area, school districts in that region are open enrollment, which means families can apply to enroll their child in any school within the district regardless of where they live. The Ysleta, Socorro and El Paso school districts all released their ratings so parents could make informed decisions.

Charter schools leaders say they also benefit from having that information out in the open since many parents find them after assessing local public schools and removing their kids when they are dissatisfied.

“If parents and communities don’t understand the levels of performance of the schools in their neighborhoods … across a state standardized metric, then parents are left in the dark,” said Jeff Cottrill, the superintendent of IDEA Public Schools, Texas’ largest charter school.

The fissures forming between district leaders over the A-F accountability system come as next year’s legislative session looms near. Lawmakers are expected to propose new school voucher legislation, which would let families use taxpayer dollars to pay for their children’s private schooling. Districts are also expected to ask for a raise in the base amount of dollars they get per student after five years of no increases.

Elizalde in Dallas worries that withholding information about public schools’ performance might weaken their ask.

“We know we’re going to be asking for funding for schools. Am I really in the position to say our schools need funding, but I don’t want to tell you how we’re doing? It didn’t sit right with me.”

When asked about how he expects the lawsuit to impact superintendents’ legislative requests, Ott said he hopes the lawsuit will be a catalyst for overhauling the A-F system altogether.

Families in his district have lost trust in the standardized testing system, Ott said. Instead, they want school ratings to measure if schools are safe as well as the experience and tenure of teachers, he added.

“There should be accountability and transparency,” he said. “But they have to be good, solid systems that people can trust and have credibility. And that’s the problem right now. It’s an antiquated system.”