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SAN ANTONIO – The San Antonio Current reports that the San Antonio-New Braunfels area stands to lose more from the Trump administration’s trade war with Canada than any other U.S. metro, according to a new study. AD While Mexico is typically thought of as the Alamo City’s primary trading partner, 48% of the area’s exports actually cross over to Canada, an analysis by economists from Canadian Chamber of Commerce shows. Those exports constitute roughly 3.4% of the San Antonio-New Braunfels’ total gross domestic product and accounted for $6 billion in 2023. Even though the San Antonio metro is closer to Mexico, large amounts of exports from its automotive, aerospace and petroleum-refining sectors end up in Canada, Andrew DiCapua, the chamber’s principal economist told the Current.

Now, as the Canadian government retaliates against Trump’s 25% tariffs on goods from the U.S.’s northern neighbor, San Antonio businesses — from its Toyota Tundra truck plant to producers of agricultural equipment, construction gear and aircraft — will feel the pinch. “If companies aren’t selling as much, that hurts their bottom lines and contributes to job losses,” DiCapua said. “That, in turn, leads to fewer people buying things, which puts more strain on the local economy.” Further, the drop in Canadian exports will come as San Antonio’s middle-class and low-income families face higher retail prices due to the White House’s taxes on imports, ranging from food to car parts. “At the end of the day, a trade war is bad for everybody,” DiCapua said. “Tariffs are economically destructive, and a lot of economists are downwardly revising their predictions for U.S. growth right now as a result.”

HOUSTON – The New York Times reports Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic House leader, on Monday accused Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas of deliberately delaying a special election in a solidly Democratic district in Houston in order to cushion the House Republicans’ slim majority. Mr. Jeffries said in an interview that Mr. Abbott had been “feverishly working to deny representation to the people of Houston” and to help Republicans in the House pass a budget favored by President Trump that is expected to include cuts to Medicaid and other services. “House Republicans are running scared legislatively and politically, which is why Gov. Greg Abbott is slow-walking the special election to replace Sylvester Turner,” Mr. Jeffries said. “They are rigging the system.”

Republicans hold a slim 218-to-213 majority over Democrats, but two open House seats in Florida are likely to be filled by Republicans after a special election on Tuesday. Mr. Trump also pulled his nomination of Representative Elise Stefanik to the United Nations, fearing that a vacant seat in her New York district could be won by a Democrat. Two House Democrats, Representatives Sylvester Turner of Texas and Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona, died in the early months of this Congress. The Texas governor had until the end of last week to call a special election in time for the vote in Mr. Turner’s 18th Congressional District to be held on May 3, the next regularly scheduled Election Day in the state. Instead, Mr. Abbott, a Republican, did not act, and has not said when he will call the election to replace Mr. Turner, who died on March 5 after two months in office. By doing so, Mr. Abbott has helped House Republicans. Democrats in New York, with Mr. Jeffries’s encouragement, had threatened a similar gambit for Ms. Stefanik’s seat before Mr. Trump left her in it. Meanwhile, Arizona’s Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, has decided to leave a heavily Democratic House seat in Tucson, Ariz., vacant until after a special election in September.

AUSTIN – The Dallas Morning News reports that Texas House budget writers on Monday endorsed a $337.4 billion state spending plan for the next two years, sending it to the floor for a vote expected next week. Passing a balanced spending plan for the 2026-27 cycle, which starts in September, is the only task the Texas Constitution requires lawmakers to do during their regular biennial legislative session. After the House settles on its version of the new budget, leaders will negotiate with the Senate over key differences. The final budget bill will be sent to Gov. Greg Abbott for his signature, expected in June. Lawmakers are considering a separate spending bill that would earmark tax money still in state coffers to close out the current cycle. Some targets for that money include a $2.5 billion investment in water infrastructure and $394 million to the Texas A&M Forest Service Agency to increase the state’s firefighting capabilities with wildfire suppression aircraft.

The budget would have $6.5 billion for property tax relief, including $3 billion reserved for the additional buying-down of school-district tax compression if that passes both chambers. It includes $700 million for business tax relief. The House committee’s budget bill does not specifically earmark funding for an increased homestead exemption that is being pushed by the Senate. Budget writers included $6.5 billion to continue Operation Lone Star, Abbott’s border security mission that has cost the state $11 billion since it was created in 2021. Most of the funding would be divided between Abbott’s office; the Texas Military Department, which oversees the Texas National Guard; and the Texas Department of Public Safety, which sends troopers to the border from other parts of the state. The funding proposal includes the creation of more than 560 new commissioned officers for DPS to help with staffing problems created in the agency by Lone Star. The plan includes $386.4 million for tech updates and additional staffers for the Medicaid offices at Texas Health and Human Services to reduce snarls and wait times on applications and eligibility determinations. An additional $100 million would be used to bolster the state’s child care scholarship program, which supporters hope will reduce its 90,000-family waitlist by about 10,000.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone, whose 1991 film “JFK” portrayed President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas as the work of a shadowy government conspiracy, is set to testify to Congress on Tuesday about thousands of newly released government documents surrounding the killing.

Scholars say the files that President Donald Trump ordered to be released showed nothing undercutting the conclusion that a lone gunman killed Kennedy. Many documents were previously released but contained newly removed redactions, including Social Security numbers, angering people whose personal information was disclosed.

The first hearing of the House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets comes five decades after the Warren Commission investigation concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old former Marine, acted alone in fatally shooting Kennedy as his motorcade finished a parade route in downtown Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, who chairs the task force, said last month that she wants to work with writers and researchers to help solve “one of the biggest cold case files in U.S. history.” Scholars and historians haven’t viewed the assassination as a cold case, viewing the evidence for Oswald as a lone gunman as strong.

Stone’s “JFK” was nominated for eight Oscars, including best picture, and won two. It grossed more than $200 million but was also dogged by questions about its factuality.

The last formal congressional investigation of Kennedy’s assassination ended in 1978, when a House committee issued a report concluding that the Soviet Union, Cuba, organized crime, the CIA and the FBI weren’t involved, but Kennedy “probably was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.” In 1976, a Senate committee said it had not uncovered enough evidence “to justify a conclusion that there was a conspiracy.”

The Warren Commission, appointed by Kennedy’s successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, concluded that Oswald fired on Kennedy’s motorcade from a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald worked. Police arrested Oswald within 90 minutes, and two days later, Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner, shot Oswald during a jail transfer broadcast on live television.

For Tuesday’s hearing, the task force also invited Jefferson Morley and James DiEugenio, who both have written books arguing for conspiracies behind the assassination. Morley is editor of the JFK Facts blog and vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a repository for files related to the assassination. He has praised Luna as being open to new information surrounding the killing.

WASHINGTON — In 2022, Abraham George was coming after John Cornyn.

Texas’ senior senator had just played a central role in passing the first gun safety bill in a generation — a move that the party’s right wing denounced as capitulating to Democrats. Members of the state party viciously booed him during their summer meeting that year. George, then leading the Collin County Republican Party in a censure motion against Cornyn, said the senator had crossed over with the Democrats too much and needed to be ousted from office.

“The censure calls for his immediate resignation, and also calls for the state party to take actions on it,” George said of Cornyn at the time, echoing a sentiment across the right wing within the party that George represented.

When George was elected to lead the state party last year on a hard-right platform, he had the support of some of the most vocal Cornyn nay-sayers in the state, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

But as chair of the Republican Party of Texas and an influential spokesperson for the ultra-conservative faction of the party loyal to Donald Trump and skeptical of any wavering, George is not joining the anti-Cornyn chorus. Quite the opposite.

“Ever since I was elected, Senator Cornyn has been an ally to the party,” George said in a statement for this story, in which he praised the senator for showing up before the State Republican Executive Committee. Cornyn “promised to support President Trump’s agenda and confirm his nominees. He has followed through on that promise. We will continue to work with all Republicans to advance a conservative agenda for our state and nation.”

The pair met in Cornyn’s Capitol Hill office last September to discuss election strategy — a meeting where George lauded Cornyn for “all your efforts in what is such a pivotal election in our nation’s history.” Cornyn hosted the Republican Party’s December Christmas party, where in a stark contrast to the boos of the 2022 state party meeting, he got a standing ovation. They met again when Cornyn invited George to be his guest to President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress and discussed ways to get the federal government to reimburse Texas for its border security efforts.

That could neutralize a potential threat as Cornyn faces a challenging primary terrain. The right wing of the party has continued to blast him for his role in the gun safety bill, his doubts about Trump’s electability in last year’s elections and his support for the Ukrainian effort in its war against Russia. Paxton is openly considering a run against Cornyn, and George continues to organize and collaborate with the attorney general, including a statewide tour campaigning for state Rep. David Cook to be House speaker.

Officially, the party is staying neutral in the primary. But its leadership has previously weighed in and gone after Republicans they did not perceive as sufficiently conservative. The party censured U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales in 2022 and then-state House Speaker Dade Phelan in 2024. Gonzales was censured for his votes for the same gun safety bill that sparked the backlash against Cornyn, and Phelan was censured for the impeachment of Attorney General Paxton and the appointment of Democratic committee chairs.

Even before the censure against Phelan, the state party launched radio ads blasting him for continuing the tradition of allowing Democrats to serve as committee chairs. The move prompted criticism against then-party Chair Matt Rinaldi from other Republicans who did not think it productive to go after one of their own. Rinaldi did not seek reelection for the position during the state party convention last year.

George has also expressed a willingness to call out members of his party in the past. He said at a news conference last November that there would be a “bloody” Republican primary in 2026 if state House members continue to support Democratic committee chairs in the lower chamber.

If they support a speaker who appoints Democrats to committee chairs, “it’s time for them to go,” George said at the time. “We will definitely try our best to work with them, but we have primaries coming in a few months after this, after the session, and I can promise you, if I’m the chair, the party will be involved in those.”

Cornyn and George both declined requests for interviews. They both declined to comment when asked about how their relationship has evolved from the 2022 censure motion to now.

Rinaldi said George appeared to be taking the position he had taken as party chair — support Cornyn as part of the party’s team, even if there are some policy disagreements along the way.

“Our goal in the Republican Party of Texas is to have a team that’s striving to enact conservative policy, and Sen. Cornyn, as our senior senator right now, is a member of that team,” Rinaldi said. “We had a relationship when I was chair, and Abraham George is continuing that relationship. There will be agreements and disagreements over policy but we have an open channel of communication.”

Rinaldi didn’t say whom he would support in next year’s Senate primary, saying when he sees who will run, he will support “the most conservative candidate that I think will serve Texas and the country best.” He has cast doubt that Cornyn would win in a primary, writing on social media last November that “Cornyn needs to go.”

Cornyn leads a formidable organizing and fundraising operation that benefits Texas Republicans down ballot. During the 2020 cycle when Cornyn was at the top of the ticket, he and the Republican Party of Texas worked together to send 40 million letters, texts and other messages to voters and register almost 320,000 new Republican voters. Voter contacts that year were important for the party as it was the first election after the state removed straight-ticket voting. He also raised $3.8 million for the Republican Party of Texas that year.

“Democrats should be running scared with my friend Abraham George at the helm of the Republican Party of Texas,” Cornyn said in a statement for this story. “I’ve worked hand-in-glove with RPT every time I’ve been on the ballot, and raised money for RPT when I’m not on the ballot, to provide record-setting support for conservatives and turn out millions of Republican voters across Texas, and I’m looking forward to reprising our successful partnership this cycle.”

There is still tension with Cornyn in some corners of the state party that feel his brand of conservatism is at odds with the MAGA movement. Many Republicans in Texas can’t shake off his 2023 prediction that Trump’s “time has passed him by” and that Trump potentially would not be able to win in the 2024 general election (Cornyn later endorsed Trump after the New Hampshire primary). Kelly Perry, a member of the SREC, said Cornyn “could do better at times and that leaves many of us questioning his intent when he votes on occasion.”

“He is a great politician but there seems to be times where he gets lost and loses sight of who puts him in office,” Perry said. “I’d like to know that the Republicans’ best interest is his first priority. We are all very clear where we stand, it’s just we question at times where he stands. “

Perry said that SREC members gave Cornyn a standing ovation at last year’s Christmas party only because he vowed to support Trump’s nomination of Pete Hegseth to be Defense Secretary. Perry stressed she was giving her personal opinion and not speaking on behalf of the SREC or the Republican Party of Texas.

Cornyn has been heavily emphasizing his support for Trump since the election. He vowed to support all of Trump’s nominations this year. In his official campaign launch video, Cornyn leaned into his time as Republican whip, securing the votes for Trump’s legislative agenda. He supported all of Trump’s judicial and executive nominees during Trump’s first term and voted with the president over 92% of the time.

Paxton is the most vocal advocate for a primary challenge against Cornyn from the right and said an announcement on his own run could come in the next few months.

“I think it’s just time,” Paxton told Punchbowl of a Cornyn challenge. “He’s had his chance. He hasn’t performed well, and the voters know it. You can go a long time without people paying attention. And they’re paying attention now.”

Other potential candidates include U.S. Reps. Ronny Jackson, R-Amarillo, and Wesley Hunt, R-Houston, who have both made moves to increase their name-ID outside of their home districts. Neither has announced plans to run.

Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.

DALLAS – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wants to question Dallas Independent School District officials under oath as part of his investigation into the district’s policy on transgender athletes.

Paxton on Monday announced his office has filed a legal petition to do so. Earlier this year, Paxton’s office launched an investigation of the district’s “unwritten policy” that allegedly encouraged parents of transgender students to alter their child’s birth certificates in other states.

Paxton initially requested several records regarding the district’s compliance with a 2021 state law that bans transgender students from competing in sports matching their identifying gender. The request came after the district’s LGBT Youth Program Coordinator, Mahoganie Gaston, suggested in a video published by Accuracy in Media, a Washington-based nonprofit that students could play in sports matching updated birth certificates.

In a statement, Dallas ISD said it was following state law and is cooperating with Paxton’s information requests.

“We are cooperating with the Attorney General’s office to provide information that confirms Dallas ISD’s ongoing compliance with federal and state laws,” the district said. “The district is committed to continue following both the spirit and intent of the law.”

Changes to a person’s gender on birth certificates is illegal in Texas, but can still be done in other states. In the January video, Gaston suggests changing a child’s certificate in another state is a “loophole” to the Texas law. Paxton’s petition requests several Dallas ISD officials to appear for depositions, including Gaston, district superintendent Stephanie Elizalde and members of the school board.

“ISD officials who have participated in this madness will be held accountable,” Paxton said in a news release Monday. “The systematic effort by Dallas ISD officials to circumvent Texas law will be exposed and stopped.”

Dallas ISD is not the only school district affected by the undercover videos and subsequent inquiries from the attorney general. Paxton also sent a letter in February to Irving Independent School District after Accuracy in Media filmed a separate video similarly sending an undercover representative to ask about the district’s policy on student athletes.

Gov. Greg Abbott posted about the video on X, calling for Irving ISD to be investigated, and the district administrator featured in the video resigned shortly after.

Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.

TEXARKANA – According to our news partner, KETK, the Texarkana Police Department has arrested a 32-year-old man for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in connection to a Sunday night hit-and-run.

Texarkana PD said detectives used video from nearby cameras to determine that a man was walking through a church parking lot in the 300 block of W. 25th Street at around 6 p.m. on Sunday when a silver Kia left the road and accelerated before hitting him.

According to a report from the Texarkana Police Department, the man hit was found across the street from where the incident occurred, outside of Highland Park Elementary. He had severe injuries and was taken to a local ICU where he’s currently in critical condition.

A Texarkana PD detective was canvassing a neighborhood four blocks away from the crash scene when officials said they found a heavily-damaged Kia at the residence of Patrick Cridell, Jr., 32.

Texarkana PD said their investigation progressed enough to arrest Cridell for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Cridell was then booked into the Bi-State Jail.