DPS investigates foggy Hwy 69 rollover near Mount Selman

DPS investigates foggy Hwy 69 rollover near Mount SelmanMOUNT SELMAN – Our KETK news partner reports that authorities responded to a two-vehicle crash on Highway 69. According to Cherokee County Sheriff Brent Dickson, deputies were on the scene responding to the crash around 8:30 a.m. “This is an ongoing investigation and no further information is available,” DPS Sgt. Chris Williamson said.

Brayden Siau, KETK morning meteorologist, said fog occurs because temperatures and dew points are very close together causing air to become saturated and condense. “We could have fog around the next few mornings as we’ll have pretty mild temperatures in the mornings,” Siau said. “But as we go into next week we should start to see some cooler air, so the fog won’t be a problem anymore.”

KETK crews on the scene saw at least two people taken by ambulance. Their conditions are unknown at this time.

Car hits middle schooler near TJC

Car hits middle schooler near TJCTYLER– Our news partner, KETK, reports that a middle school student is in the hospital after a Thursday morning pedestrian crash near Tyler Junior College, officials said. Tyler Police Department Public Information Officer Andy Erbaugh said officers responded to South Clayton Avenue and East Fifth Street in front of TJC around 7:30 a.m. for a pedestrian vs. vehicle crash.

According to Jennifer Hines, Tyler ISD director of communications, the student was trying to cross a street when they were hit by a vehicle. The child did not have major injuries but Hines said they were hospitalized and is in the company of their parent. Erbaugh said the driver cooperated and stayed at the scene.

Tyler ISD officials want drivers to always be cautious but especially during their morning and afternoon commutes and when they are in school zones and crosswalks.

Trump’s return to White House sets stage for far-reaching immigration crackdown

SAN DIEGO (AP) — “Build the Wall” was Donald Trump’s rally cry in 2016, and he acted on his promise by tapping military budgets for hundreds of miles of border wall with Mexico. “Mass Deportation” was the buzzword that energized supporters for his White House bid in 2024.

Trump’s victory sets the stage for a swift crackdown after an AP VoteCast survey showed the president-elect’s supporters were largely focused on immigration and inflation — issues the Republican has been hammering throughout his campaign.

How and when Trump’s actions on immigration will take shape is uncertain.

While Trump and his advisers have offered outlines, many questions remain about how they would deport anywhere close to the 11 million people estimated to be in the country illegally. How would immigrants be identified? Where would they be detained? What if their countries refuse to take them back? Where would Trump find money and trained officers to carry out their deportation?

Trump has said he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely used 1798 law that allows the president to deport any noncitizen from a country the U.S. is at war with. He has spoken about deploying the National Guard, which can be activated on orders from a governor. Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser, has said troops under sympathetic Republican governors would send troops to nearby states that refuse to participate.

Trump, who repeatedly referred to immigrants “poisoning the blood” of the United States, has stricken fear in immigrant communities with words alone.

Julie Moreno, a U.S. citizen who has been married for seven years to a Mexican man who is in the country illegally, is adjusting to the idea that she may have to live separately from her husband, who came to the United States in 2004. She can move to Mexico from New Jersey but it would be nearly impossible to keep running her business importing boxing gloves.

“I don’t have words yet, too many feelings,” Moreno said, her voice breaking as she spoke Wednesday of Trump’s victory. “I am very scared for my husband’s safety. … If they detain him, what is going to happen?”

Moreno’s husband, Neftali Juarez, ran a construction business and feels he has contributed to the country, paying taxes and providing employment through his company. “Unfortunately, the sentiment of the people who voted is different,” he said. “I feel horrible losing my wife.”

Some policy experts expect Trump’s first immigration moves to be at the border. He may pressure Mexico to keep blocking migrants from reaching the U.S. border as it has since December. He may lean on Mexico to reinstate a Trump-era policy that made asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court.

Andrew Arthur, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports immigration restrictions, highlighted campaign remarks by Vice President-elect JD Vance that deporting millions would be done one step at a time, not all at once.

“You’re not talking about a dragnet,” Arthur, a former immigration judge, told The Associated Press. “There’s no way you could do it. The first thing you have to do is seal the border and then you can address the interior. All of this is going to be guided by the resources you have available.”

Elena, a 46-year-old Nicaraguan who has been living in the United States illegally for 25 years, couldn’t sleep after Trump’s victory, crying about what to do if she and her husband, 50, are deported. They have two adult daughters, both U.S. citizens, who have had stomach pain and respiratory problems from anxiety about the election.

“It is so difficult for me to uproot myself from the country that I have seen as my home,” said Elena, who lives in South Florida and gave only her first name for fear of being deported. “I have made my roots here and it is difficult to have to abandon everything to start over.”

Advocates are looking at where deportation arrests might take place and are watching especially closely to see if authorities adhere to a longstanding policy of avoiding schools, hospitals, places of worship and disaster relief centers, said Heidi Altman, federal advocacy director for the National Immigration Law Center’s Immigrant Justice Fund.

“We’re taking it very seriously,” said Altman. “We all have to have our eyes wide open to the fact that this isn’t 2016. Trump and Stephen Miller learned a lot from their first administration. The courts look very different than they did four years ago.”

Trump is expected to resume other far-reaching policies from his first term and jettison key Biden moves. These include:

—Trump has harshly criticized Biden policies to create and expand legal pathways to entry, including an online app called CBP One under which nearly 1 million people have entered at land crossings with Mexico since January 2023. Another policy has allowed more than 500,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to fly into the country with financial sponsors.

— Trump slashed the number of refugees screened abroad by the United Nations and State Department for settlement in the U.S. to its lowest level since Congress established the program in 1980. Biden rebuilt it, establishing an annual cap of 125,000, up from 18,000 under Trump.

—Trump sought to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shielded people who came to the U.S. as young children from deportation. A lawsuit by Republican governors that has seemed headed for the Supreme Court challenges DACA. For now, hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients may renew their status but new applications aren’t accepted.

—Trump dramatically curtailed the use of Temporary Protected Status, created under a 1990 law to allow people already in the United States to stay if their homelands are deemed unsafe. Biden sharply expanded use of TPS, including to hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Venezuelans.

Maribel Hernandez, a Venezuelan on TPS that allows her to stay in the United States until April 2025, burst into tears as her 2-year-old son slept in a stroller outside New York’s Roosevelt Hotel as migrants discussed election fallout Wednesday.

“Imagine if they end it,” she said.

___

Salomon reported from Miami. AP reporter Cedar Attanasio contributed from New York.

Appeals court orders new trial for man on Texas’ death row over judge’s antisemitic bias

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — A Texas appeals court ordered a new trial Wednesday for a Jewish man on death row — who was part of a gang of prisoners that fatally shot a police officer in 2000 after escaping — because of antisemitic bias by the judge who presided over his case.

Lawyers for Randy Halprin have contended that former Judge Vickers Cunningham in Dallas used racial slurs and antisemitic language to refer to him and some of his co-defendants.

Halprin, 47, was among the group of inmates known as the “ Texas 7,” who escaped from a South Texas prison in December 2000 and then committed numerous robberies, including the one in which they shot 29-year-old Irving police officer Aubrey Hawkins 11 times, killing him.

By a vote of 6-3, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered that Halprin’s conviction be overturned and that he be given a new trial after concluding that Cunningham was biased against him at the time of his trial because he is Jewish.

The appeals court found evidence showed that during his life, Cunningham repeated unsupported antisemitic narratives. When Cunningham became a judge, he continued to use derogatory language about Jewish people outside the courtroom “with ‘great hatred, (and) disgust’ and increasing intensity as the years passed,” the court said.

It also said that during Halprin’s trial, Cunningham made offensive antisemitic remarks outside the courtroom about Halprin in particular and Jews in general.

“The uncontradicted evidence supports a finding that Cunningham formed an opinion about Halprin that derived from an extrajudicial factor — Cunningham’s poisonous antisemitism,” the appeals court wrote in its ruling.

The court previously halted Halprin’s execution in 2019.

“Today, the Court of Criminal Appeals took a step towards broader trust in the criminal law by throwing out a hopelessly tainted death judgment handed down by a bigoted and biased judge,” Tivon Schardl, one of Halprin’s attorneys, said in a statement. “It also reminded Texans that religious bigotry has no place in our courts.”

The order for a new trial came after state District Judge Lela Mays in Dallas said in a December 2022 ruling that Cunningham did not or could not curb the influence of his antisemitic bias in his judicial decision-making during the trial.

Mays wrote that Cunningham used racist, homophobic and antisemitic slurs to refer to Halprin and the other escaped inmates.

Cunningham stepped down from the bench in 2005 and is now an attorney in private practice in Dallas. His office said Wednesday that he would not be commenting on Halprin’s case.

Cunningham previously denied allegations of bigotry after telling the Dallas Morning News in 2018 that he has a living trust that rewards his children for marrying straight, white Christians. He had opposed interracial marriages but later told the newspaper that his views evolved.

The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office was appointed to handle legal issues related to Halprin’s allegations after the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted the case, was disqualified.

In September 2022, Tarrant County prosecutors filed court documents in which they said Halprin should get a new trial because Cunningham showed “actual bias” against him.

Of the seven inmates who escaped, one killed himself before the group was arrested. Four have been executed. Another, Patrick Murphy, awaits execution.

___

Follow Juan A. Lozano on X at https://x.com/juanlozano70.

Canadian national accused of arms smuggling in East Texas

Canadian national accused of arms smuggling in East TexasANGELINA COUNTY — A Canadian national is in custody following an Angelina County traffic stop that led deputies to believe she was “engaging in multi-national arms smuggling.” According to our news partner KETK, deputies on patrol on US 59 near the north side of Lufkin witnessed a 2024 Toyota Corolla speeding and conducted a traffic stop on Wednesday evening. Officials identified the driver as a “Lyft ride sharing driver from Houston.” When speaking to the driver, deputies allegedly smelled a strong odor of marijuana coming from the vehicle and conducted a probable cause search for contraband.

Deputies reportedly located marijuana in the car and two large bags in the trunk. The Lyft customer, later identified as Canadian national Jahtaya O’Day Jah-Kiara Hamilton of Leamington, Ontario, stated the bags belong to her.

When officers opened the bags, a large quantity of handguns with a short barrel rifle, magazines and ammunition were found. Deputies determined there were 20 semi-automatic pistols. The sheriff’s office said a number of these pistols were reported stolen out of the Houston area. Continue reading Canadian national accused of arms smuggling in East Texas

Tesla shares soar more than 14% as Trump win is seen boosting Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company

NEW YORK (AP) — Shares of Tesla soared Wednesday as investors bet that the electric vehicle maker and its CEO Elon Musk will benefit from Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

Tesla stands to make significant gains under a Trump administration with the threat of diminished subsidies for alternative energy and electric vehicles doing the most harm to smaller competitors. Trump’s plans for extensive tariffs on Chinese imports make it less likely that Chinese EVs will be sold in bulk in the U.S. anytime soon.

“Tesla has the scale and scope that is unmatched,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, in a note to investors. “This dynamic could give Musk and Tesla a clear competitive advantage in a non-EV subsidy environment, coupled by likely higher China tariffs that would continue to push away cheaper Chinese EV players.”

Tesla shares jumped 14.8% Wednesday while shares of rival electric vehicle makers tumbled. Nio, based in Shanghai, fell 5.3%. Shares of electric truck maker Rivian dropped 8.3% and Lucid Group fell 5.3%.

Tesla dominates sales of electric vehicles in the U.S, with 48.9% in market share through the middle of 2024, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Subsidies for clean energy are part of the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022. It included tax credits for manufacturing, along with tax credits for consumers of electric vehicles.

Musk was one of Trump’s biggest donors, spending at least $119 million mobilizing Trump’s supporters to back the Republican nominee. He also pledged to give away $1 million a day to voters signing a petition for his political action committee.

In some ways, it has been a rocky year for Tesla, with sales and profit declining through the first half of the year. Profit did rise 17.3% in the third quarter.

The U.S. opened an investigation into the company’s “Full Self-Driving” system after reports of crashes in low-visibility conditions, including one that killed a pedestrian. The investigation covers roughly 2.4 million Teslas from the 2016 through 2024 model years.

And investors sent company shares tumbling last month after Tesla unveiled its long-awaited robotaxi at a Hollywood studio Thursday night, seeing not much progress at Tesla on autonomous vehicles while other companies have been making notable progress.

Tesla began selling the software, which is called “Full Self-Driving,” nine years ago. But there are doubts about its reliability.

The stock is now showing a 16.1% gain for the year after rising the past two days.

Gov. Abbott in Tyler speaks about importance of school choice

Gov. Abbott in Tyler speaks about importance of school choiceTYLER – Gov. Greg Abbott was in Tyler Wednesday afternoon at Kingdom Life Academy to talk about the importance of school choice. According to our news partner KETK, Abbott was joined by school director Joel Enge in a question and answer session about Education Savings Accounts. The governor gave the floor to Enge who said he was excited about the advancement of school choice in Texas.

“As a Black founder of schools I can speak to the issue of how important school choice is for our Black and Hispanic students in our community, in the north Tyler community.” Enge said. “We desperately need school choice in order to open up opportunities that we offer.”

Marshall driver arrested after pedestrian hit-and-run

Marshall driver arrested after pedestrian hit-and-runMARSHALL – Law enforcement in Marshall have arrested a driver involved in a hit-and-run incident that has injured a pedestrian. According to our news partner KETK, Marshall Police received a call Tuesday night about an accident at the the intersection of West Burleson and North Bishop Street where a pedestrian had been hit by a vehicle.

Officers found a male victim at the location who said he had been hit by a dark-colored vehicle, whose driver fled the scene. The victim was taken to a hospital and treated for a broken leg.

Investigators identified the driver as 30-year-old Jonathan Olvera, of Marshall. Olvera was booked into the Harrison County Jail and charged with an accident involving serious bodily injury. He had an outstanding warrant from Marion County for tampering with physical evidence.

Marshall PD said “This investigation is ongoing, and no additional details are available at this time.”

Woman fends off attack with metal cup, man arrested

TATUM – Woman fends off attack with metal cup, man arrestedOur news partners at KETK report that a woman who was punched and choked attempted to free herself from her attacker, who is now behind bars, by hitting him with a metal cup, the Tatum Police Department said. According to Tatum PD, Dameion Deon Simon and an unarmend woman were traveling to a friends house when they got in a verbal argument that became physical. The police department said it is alleged that Simon punched the victim several times and choked her. “Our victim, according to a written statement, attempted to free herself from Mr. Simon (victim was pinned down in Mr. Simon’s lap) by striking him with a metal cup,” Tatum PD said. Continue reading Woman fends off attack with metal cup, man arrested

Sex offender arrested after 13-year-old found in his car

TEXARKANA – A 30-year-old registered sex offender is behind bars after evading arrest when a Texarkana mother found her teenager in his car early Monday morning, according to our news partners at KETK.

According to the Texarkana Police Department, a Texarkana mother called police when she found her 13-year-old daughter in a car parked in front of a house with Tyjae Clark, 30 of New Boston, instead of asleep in bed.

The police department said Clark kicked the girl out of the car and sped off when the mother confronted them. The mother was able to provide authorities with a car description and license plate number. Texarkana PD said the Wake Village Police Department found the car and stopped it a short time later.

It was then that Clark got out of the car and ran away from police. After a perimeter was set up in the area an officer spotted him and placed him under arrest, the police department said.

Clark was taken to the Bowie County Jail where he was originally only charged with evading detention until a search of Clark’s phone revealed several inappropriate messages between him and the girl, officials said.

According to police, the girl clearly told Clark, who has a lifetime requirement to register as a sex offender, that she was only 13-years-old.

The police department said based on the information and evidence, arrest warrants for aggravated sexual assault of a child and online solicitation of a minor were served to Clark.

Clark is being held at the Bowie County Jail on a total $410,000 bond.

Man arrested for hit and run in Marshall

MARSHALL – Man arrested for hit and run in MarshallOur news partners at KETK report that a pedestrian is injured and a driver is behind bars after a Tuesday night crash in Marshall, authorities said. According to the Marshall Police Department, officers were called around 7:50 p.m. to the intersection of West Burleson and North Bishop Street where a pedestrian had been hit by a vehicle. The department said officers found a male victim who reported that a dark-colored vehicle had hit them and then fled. Officials said the victim was taken to a local hospital to treat their broken leg. Marshall PD said an investigation identified 30-year-old Jonathan Olvera, of Marshall, as the driver. Police said Olvera cooperated with investigators and was charged with accident involving serious bodily injury. Olvera was booked into the Harrison County Jail and also has an outstanding warrant for tampering with physical evidence out of Marion County. “This investigation is ongoing, and no additional details are available at this time,” Marshall PD said.

Democrat Sylvia Garcia wins reelection to U.S. House in Texas’ 29th Congressional District

Democratic Rep. Sylvia Garcia won reelection to a U.S. House seat representing Texas on Tuesday. Garcia won her fourth term in the Houston district. One of the first two Latinas to serve in Congress from Texas, the attorney was selected as one of the House impeachment managers in the first attempt to remove Donald Trump from office. She has advocated granting citizenship to migrants who were illegally brought into the United States as children. She serves on the Financial Services Committee and is the whip for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. The Associated Press declared Garcia the winner at 11:19 p.m. EST.

Republican Monica De La Cruz wins reelection to U.S. House in Texas’ 15th Congressional District

Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz won reelection to a U.S. House seat representing Texas on Tuesday. De La Cruz, a Latina businesswoman, defended the newly drawn 15th Congressional District that stretches from San Antonio to the Rio Grande Valley. She faced a rematch this year against her 2022 opponent, Democrat Michelle Vallejo. The Associated Press declared De La Cruz the winner at 11:45 p.m. EST.