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AUSTIN (AP) – A federal appeals court has ordered the removal of a federal judge and overturned her contempt finding and fine against the state of Texas in a lawsuit over the state’s struggling foster care system.

In a ruling released late Friday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said U.S. District Judge Janis Jack’s contempt ruling and $100,000-per-day fine violates the court’s constitutional limits of power over individual states.

The appeals court also said that Jack had disrespected the state and its attorneys during the long-running case, noting that she at one point remarked, “I don’t know how the state sleeps at night with this. I really don’t.”

“The judge exhibits a sustained pattern, over the course of months and numerous hearings, of disrespect for the defendants and their counsel, but no such attitude toward the plaintiffs’ counsel,” the ruling stated.

The judge’s demeanor exhibits a “high degree of antagonism,” calling into doubt at least “the appearance of fairness” for the state, the ruling added.

An attorney for those who filed the lawsuit alleging that the state routinely fails to investigate complaints of abuse and neglect raised by children in its care said Saturday that the group will appeal the ruling.

“Frankly, this is a sad day for Texas children,” attorney Paul Yetter said in an email.

“For over a decade, Judge Jack pushed the state to fix its broken system,” Yetter said. “She deserves a medal for what she’s done.”

The case began in 2011 with a lawsuit over foster care conditions at the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, the child welfare arm of Texas Health and Human Services.

Since 2019, court-appointed monitors have released periodic reports on DFPS progress toward eliminating threats to the foster children’s safety.

A report earlier this year cited progress in staff training, but continued weaknesses in responding to investigations into abuse and neglect allegations, including those made by children.

In one case, plaintiffs say, a girl was left in the same, now-closed, residential facility for a year while 12 separate investigations piled up around allegations that she had been raped by a worker there.

Texas has about 9,000 children in permanent state custody for factors that include the loss of caregivers, abuse at home or health needs that parents alone can’t meet.

DALLAS – A Thursday drive-by shooting of a man who left the State Fair of Texas has left him injured. Dallas police said the victim and his friends got into a fight with another group of people. As they were leaving, a car drove by them, and someone in the car opened fire. One man suffered a gunshot wound to his ankle and was grazed in the head. The suspects fled the scene and remain at large. No description was released of the shooter or the car that was involved.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — One of three suspects jailed in Las Vegas following a deadly two-state shooting rampage on Thanksgiving 2020, including the killing of a man at a convenience store in southern Nevada and a shootout with authorities in northwestern Arizona, has pleaded guilty.

Christopher McDonnell, 32, entered his pleas Thursday to 23 felonies, including murder, attempted murder, murder conspiracy, weapon charges and being a felon illegally in possession of a firearm, according to Clark County District Court records.

He had been indicted on 55 counts, and his trial had been scheduled for next month. A felony charge of committing an act of terrorism was among counts dropped as part of his plea agreement.

“Christopher decided taking responsibility for his actions was in his best interest,” his attorney, Ryan Bashor, said Friday. McDonnell remains jailed without bail in Las Vegas. His plea was first reported by KLAS-TV.

McDonnell will face life in prison with a broad range of parole eligibility — a minimum of 21 years and a maximum 164 years, prosecutor Michael Schwartzer told The Associated Press, adding that he will seek a sentence “beyond (McDonnell’s) natural life term.”

Sentencing is scheduled Dec. 13. Bashor said he hopes to win a more lenient sentence.

The plea agreement does not require Christopher McDonnell to testify at a jury trial set to begin Nov. 4 for his former wife, Kayleigh Lewis, 29, and his older brother, Shawn McDonnell, Schwartzer said.

Shawn McDonnell, 34, faces 54 felony charges including committing an act of terror and could face the death penalty if convicted.

Lewis, 29, faces 53 felony charges also including an act of terror, but will not face a possible a death sentence.

Both remain jailed without bail. Their defense attorneys did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Police and prosecutors say the 11-hour rampage began Nov. 26, 2020, and included apparently random shootings that killed Kevin Mendiola Jr. at a convenience store in Henderson, near Las Vegas, and drive-by gunfire that wounded several other people.

It ended near the Colorado River town of Parker, Arizona, after a chase involving officers from the Arizona Department of Public Safety, the crash of a car with a Texas license plate and the wounding of Shawn McDonnell by troopers wielding assault-style rifles.

The three defendants, originally from Tyler, Texas, were returned in custody to Las Vegas, where a grand jury indicted them in March 2021.

Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said at the time that the crimes amounted to “heinous and random” terrorist acts and an attempt to cause widespread fear in the public.

FORT WORTH (AP) — Attack ads on every TV break. Campaign money pouring in. And on a sunny Saturday, a crowd stretching out the door for a campaign rally at Tulip’s, a popular Fort Worth nightclub — this time for Democratic U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, a former NFL linebacker trying to unseat Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.

Texas is having one of those Octobers again.

With Democrats defending twice as many Senate seats as Republicans, Allred’s bid could be their best chance to flip a seat next month and preserve their thin Senate majority. Cruz is imploring Republican supporters to take the challenge seriously, six years after his narrow victory over Beto O’Rourke revealed fault lines for Republicans after decades of dominance in Texas.

But Allred, who would become Texas’ first Black senator, is doing things his own way. Out for more than the moral victories Texas Democrats have settled for since 1994 — the last time they won a statewide election — Allred has run to the center and away from O’Rourke’s barnstorming and break-the-rules blueprint. The different look has frustrated some Democrats, but amid signs of a competitive race with less than a month to go, Allred is sticking to the script.

“Beto didn’t win, but he was successful,” said Ryan Armstrong, 21, who was registering voters outside Tulip’s on a clipboard still adorned with a “Beto for Texas” sticker. “I have a lot of hope that (Allred) will win, but I honestly don’t know if he’s done enough.”
Abortion rights and a Cancun trip

Allred, a three-term congressman from Dallas, is by nature a far different candidate than O’Rourke, an electrifying orator who was quick to hop up on a table to fire up a crowd and road-tripped across all 254 counties. Allred describes himself as someone who “keeps a cool head” and presents himself as a bipartisan problem-solver. To win with that low-key approach, he’ll need enthusiasm generated by Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket even as he sets himself apart from her in a state former President Donald Trump is expected to win handily.

“Colin has to outperform Harris, so that’s a little more delicate for him than it was for us,” said David Wysong, a top O’Rourke adviser during his 2018 run against Cruz.

Allred boosts his moderate credentials by touting endorsements from prominent Republicans, including former U.S. Reps. Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney.

Other factors also could work in Allred’s favor. Most notably, there’s the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 to strip away constitutional protections for abortion, a ruling that paved the way for Texas to outlaw nearly all abortions. That has been a winning issue for Democrats ever since, even in red states like Kentucky and Kansas.

Allred has featured abortion rights in his campaign, highlighting the personal story of Kate Cox, a Texas woman forced to flee the state to get an abortion after doctors determined her fetus had a fatal condition for which there are no exceptions under Texas law.

He has also not let up on Cruz’s family vacation to Mexico during a deadly winter storm that crippled the state’s power grid and is likely to remind voters again when the candidates debate on Oct. 15.
Cruz goes on the offensive

Cruz, meanwhile, has transformed from selling himself as an unapologetic partisan who showed little interest in governing when he arrived in Washington to a get-things-done Republican holding the line against Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats. He remains just as combative, attacking Allred as a “radical leftist” and linking the congressman to immigration problems and transgender rights.

“Let me tell you, Chuck Schumer and the communists have set their targets on Tarrant County,” Cruz told a packed house of supporters at Outpost 36, a barbecue restaurant in the Fort Worth suburb of Keller.

“They can’t have it,” he said, prompting cheers from people waving Cruz signs that read “Keep Texas Texas.”

Tarrant County, which includes Fort Worth and the fast-growing suburbs surrounding it, is the kind of place Allred needs to win big in. Races here have been close in recent cycles, with O’Rourke topping Cruz by less than 1 percentage point in 2018 and President Joe Biden winning the county by a similar margin four years ago.

“Six years ago it was a real battle, and this year it’s a real battle,” Cruz said. “It’s not complicated. If you are a hardcore partisan Democrat, after Donald Trump there’s nobody in the country you want to beat more than me.”

And while O’Rourke’s Senate campaign in 2018 may have provided some kind of statewide roadmap for Democrats, he lost in his attempt to unseat Gov. Greg Abbott two years ago by more than 10 percentage points.
Campaign spending tops $120M in Texas

The amount of money being spent by both sides hints at the race’s national significance.

According to AdImpact, which tracks spending on advertising, the $120 million both parties are spending on the Texas U.S. Senate race is set to exceed the roughly $40 million either paid for or reserved in the Florida Senate race, another top target for Democrats. But it pales in comparison with races in Montana and Ohio, where total spending exceeds $700 million on races in which Democrats are defending seats in red-leaning states.

Part of the heavy spending in Texas is attributable to its size, with 20 separate television markets, including two of the largest and most expensive in the country in Dallas and Houston.

“I think part of it also reflects the fact that Allred has been very successful raising money, and he’s been spending quite a bit of that on TV advertising,” said Mark Jones, a Rice University political science professor. “National Democrats have not yet demonstrated the same level of enthusiasm and optimism as the Allred campaign. Part of that may be that they’re still trying to figure out the difficult calculus of combining defense, which they’re far more focused on, and offense.”
Allred: From NFL to Congress

Allred’s resume seems perfect for the Lone Star State. A star high school athlete from Dallas, he played linebacker and was captain of the football team at Baylor University in Waco. After his NFL career, he worked as a civil rights attorney.

He also has knocked off a high-profile Republican, having defeated Rep. Pete Sessions after he’d spent more than two decades in Congress in 2018. That campaign drew considerable energy from O’Rourke’s bid to unseat Cruz, who beat the former El Paso congressman by less than 3 percentage points.

Still, running a successful statewide campaign comes with a higher degree of difficulty, and Allred’s approach has left some Democrats scratching their heads. In Laredo, for example, a fast-growing county along the U.S.-Mexican border, some Democrats wonder where he’s been.

“He’s done absolutely nothing, nothing to appeal to our voters,” said Sylvia Bruni, chair of the Webb County Democratic Party. “As far as he’s concerned, apparently we’re not worth the time.”

Allred defends his strategy, saying the political landscape has shifted.

“I’m a different candidate and this is a very different year,” he said. “We have different issues that have happened since 2018.”

——

Lozano reported from Houston. Leah Askarinam of the Decision Desk contributed from Washington.

AUSTIN (AP) — A Texas man who sued his ex-wife’s friends for helping her obtain an abortion informed the court that the two sides reached a settlement, forgoing the need for a trial that would have tested his argument that their actions amounted to assisting in a wrongful death.

Attorneys for Marcus Silva and the three women he sued last year filed court papers this week stating they had reached an agreement. As of Friday, the judge hadn’t yet signed off on the settlement. Court records didn’t include its terms, but a spokesperson for the defendants said the settlement didn’t involve any financial terms.

“While we are grateful that this fraudulent case is finally over, we are angry for ourselves and others who have been terrorized for the simple act of supporting a friend who is facing abuse,” Jackie Noyola, one of the women, said in a statement. “No one should ever have to fear punishment, criminalization, or a lengthy court battle for helping someone they care about.”

Abortion rights advocates worried that the case could establish new avenues for recourse against people who help women obtain abortions and create a chilling effect in Texas and across the country.

Silva filed a petition last year to sue the friends of his ex-wife, Brittni Silva, for providing her with abortion pills. He claimed that their assistance was tantamount to aiding a murder and was seeking $1 million in damages, according to court documents.

Two of the defendants, Noyola and Amy Carpenter, countersued Silva for invasion of privacy. They dropped their counterclaims Thursday night after the settlement was reached.

“This case was about using the legal system to harass us for helping our friend, and scare others out of doing the same,” Carpenter said. “But the claims were dropped because they had nothing. We did nothing wrong, and we would do it all again.”

Brittni and Marcus Silva divorced in February 2023, a few weeks before Silva filed his lawsuit. The defendants alleged in their countersuit that Silva was a “serial emotional abuser” in pursuit of revenge and that he illegally searched Brittni’s phone without her consent.

Silva was represented by Jonathan Mitchell, a former Texas solicitor general who helped draft a strict Texas abortion law known as Senate Bill 8 before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Mitchell declined to comment Friday.

Brittni Silva took the medication in July of 2022 according to court filings. It was a few weeks after the Supreme Court allowed states to impose abortion bans. The lawsuit claimed that text messages were shared between the defendants discussing how to obtain the abortion medication.

Earlier this year, an appeals court blocked an attempt by Silva’s attorney to collect information from his ex-wife for the wrongful death lawsuit against her friends. The decision was upheld by the Texas Supreme Court, which criticized Silva in the footnotes of a concurring opinion signed by two of its conservative justices, Jimmy Blacklock and Phillip Devine.

“He has engaged in disgracefully vicious harassment and intimidation of his ex-wife,” the opinion read. “I can imagine no legitimate excuse for Marcus’s behavior as reflected in this record, many of the details of which are not fit for reproduction in a judicial opinion.”

Abortion is a key issue this campaign season and is the number one priority for women younger than 30, according to survey results from KFF.

Thirteen states ban abortions at all stages of pregnancy, including Texas, which has some of the tightest restrictions in the country. Nine states have ballot measures to protect the right to an abortion this election.

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Relatives of passengers who died in two crashes of Boeing 737 Max planes came to a federal court in Texas on Friday to listen as their lawyers asked a judge to throw out a plea agreement that the aircraft manufacturer struck with prosecutors and put the company on trial.

Their lawyers argued that Boeing’s punishment — mainly a fine amounting to about $244 million — would be too light for misleading regulators about a flight-control system that malfunctioned before the crashes. They accused Boeing and the Justice Department of airbrushing facts and ignoring that 346 people died in the crashes.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor asked a Boeing lawyer why he should accept the prepackaged plea deal and a sentence negotiated by a defendant.

The Boeing lawyer, Ben Hatch, said Boeing “is a pillar of the national economy and the national defense” and needs to know the punishment before it agrees to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud, a felony. Otherwise, he said, the company could be disbarred from federal contracting.

“All the employees of the company, the shareholders of the company and a global and national supply chain … all of those are put into doubt if the sentencing” isn’t known, possibly for months, Hatch said.

The answer stunned and angered relatives of the victims.

“Boeing is too important for the economy — they’re too big to jail. That’s what he’s saying,” Michael Stumo, whose daughter Samya died in the second crash, said after the hearing. “It allows them to kill people with no consequences because they’re too big and because their shareholders won’t like it.”

The government joined Boeing in asking the judge to accept the deal that they struck in July.

Sean Tonolli, senior deputy chief of the Justice Department’s fraud section, said the conspiracy count is the most serious crime prosecutors can bring — they can’t prove that Boeing’s deception of regulators caused the crashes. And, he said, going to trial is risky.

“We are confident in our case, but we don’t take for granted that we might not win,” he said.

The judge, who had received written arguments from all sides before the hearing in Fort Worth, asked questions but gave no indication if he is leaning one way or the other. He has expressed sympathy for the passengers’ families before, writing in a 2023 ruling about “Boeing’s egregious criminal conduct.”

“You have given me a lot to think about,” O’Connor said to all the lawyers as Friday’s hearing ended. “I’ll get a ruling out just as soon as I can.”

In July, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to a single felony count of conspiracy to commit fraud for allegedly deceiving Federal Aviation Administration regulators who were writing pilot-training requirements for the Max.

The FAA approved minimal, computer-based training for Boeing 737 pilots before they could fly the Max, the latest version of the 737. That helped Boeing by avoiding the need for training in flight simulators, which would have raised the cost for airlines to operate the Max.

Airlines began flying the Max in 2017. The first crash occurred in Indonesia in October 2018, followed in March 2019 by the second, in Ethiopia.

The plea agreement calls for Boeing to pay a fine of up to $487.2 million, but the fine would be cut in half by giving the company credit for $243.6 million it paid as part of a $2.5 billion settlement in 2021 to avoid prosecution. The Justice Department decided in May that Boeing violated terms of that settlement, leading to the new plea deal.

Boeing, which is based in Arlington, Virginia, would also invest $455 million in compliance and safety programs, and be placed on probation for three years.

The case is among a host of issues with which the manufacturer most contend.

Talks broke down this week with striking factory workers who assemble some of the company’s best-selling planes. The company withdrew its offer and S&P Global Ratings put it on its credit watch list, citing increased financial risk because of the labor unrest.

On Thursday, the company filed a complaint over what it calls unfair labor practices against the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Boeing in its complaint with the National Labor Relations Board said that the union’s public narrative is misleading and has made it difficult to reach a resolution.