LINDALE – The Lindale ISD community is in mourning after a Velma Penny Elementary school student died earlier this week. According to our news partner KETK, in a statement from the district, parents were informed of the student’s passing, but additional information on their death isn’t being shared to respect their family and confidentiality laws.
Lindale ISD said on Wednesday that a student at Velma Penny Elementary was transported to the hospital after they had a medical emergency at the school.
Counseling has been made available to students and staff who need support following the student’s death.
TYLER – Early Voting for the May 2 City-School Elections ends today. There are several city and school elections, including a special-called bond election for Tyler Junior College.
The cities of Tyler, Hideaway, Lindale and Winona; and the independent school districts of Lindale and Tyler District 4 are having elections. The City of Lindale is also holding a special election for a charter amendment. Continue reading Early voting ends today
EAST TEXAS — Over 60 East Texas cities are on a statewide list as the AG’s office checks compliance with rules tied to property tax increases. The investigation was launched by Attorney General Ken Paxton earlier this month, claiming that many cities are not complying with Senate Bill 1851, which requires them to complete and publicly post annual financial audits before increasing property taxes.
Due to possible violations of SB 1851, Paxton is demanding documents from over 1,000 cities across the state to ensure they are complying with audit and transparency requirements before raising taxes. The Office of the Attorney General said the review does not target cities for raising taxes, but instead aims to ensure compliance with audit and transparency requirements. Continue reading Tax audit compliance check
LUFKIN (KETK) – A Lufkin man was sentenced to 20 years in state prison on Thursday after he drove through an Angelina County home and left the homeowner dead in April 2025.
Jorge Urbina Lopez of Lufkin was arrested in April of 2025 after the Angelina County Sheriff’s Office said his Chevrolet truck left the roadway, hit a tree and smashed into a home in Moffett.
70-year-old Robert Bole was found dead inside the home after the truck drove into the home. The truck was later found under a tarp at Lopez’s home, which was just three miles away from Bole’s residence.
Lopez’s home was searched but he was only found after sheriff’s office deputies searched a second location. Lopez was found hiding under a bed and reportedly resisted arrest.
On Thursday, Lopez pleaded guilty to failure to stop and render aid in a collision causing death. The 217th Judicial District Court judge then sentenced Lopez to serve 20 years in state prison. Lopez’s 20-year sentence in state prison started on Thursday and he was given a 357-day credit for time he had already served in jail.
EAST TEXAS (KETK) — A number of cities across East Texas have been named in part of a statewide investigation regarding alleged unlawful property tax increases.
The investigation was launched by Attorney General Ken Paxton earlier this month, claiming that many cities are not complying with Senate Bill 1851, which requires them to complete and publicly post annual financial audits before increasing property taxes.
Due to possible violations of SB 1851, Paxton is demanding documents from over 1,000 cities across the state to ensure they are complying with audit and transparency requirements before raising taxes. The Office of the Attorney General clarified that the investigation of the cities is not for them raising taxes but to ensure they are following compliance with audit and transparency requirements.
East Texas cities that have been named in the investigation include:
*Alba
*Alto
*Arp
*Athens
*Atlanta
*Avinger
**Broaddus
*Brownsboro
*Bullard
*Caddo Mills
*Canton
*Carthage
*Center
*Chandler
*Clarksville
*Coffee City
*Crockett
*Daingerfield
*De Kalb
*Diboll
*Edgewood
*Elkhart
*Emory
*Frankston
*Garrison
*Gilmer
*Grapeland
*Hallsville
*Hawkins
*Henderson
*Hughes Springs
*Jacksonville
*Kilgore
*Livingston
*Lone Star
*Longview
*Lufkin
*Malakoff
*Mineola
*Mount Enterprise
*Mount Pleasant
*Mount Vernon
*Nacogdoches
*New London
*New Summerfield
*Newton
*Noonday
*Ore City
*Overton
*Palestine
*Pinehurst
**Pittsburg
*Point
*Quitman
*Rusk
*San Augustine
*Tatum
*Texarkana
*Troup
*Trinity
*Tyler
*Van
*White Oak
*Whitehouse
*Winnsboro
*Winona
*Zavalla
Paxton added, “I am demanding that cities prioritize transparency and work to minimize the tax burden of every citizen across the state,” Paxton said. “While many cities have complied with these requirements, I will continue to fight to ensure that every municipality across our state is following the law.”
TYLER – Traffic is currently stopped at the intersection of East Gentry Parkway and North Broadway Avenue after two vehicles crashed there on Friday afternoon. According to our news partner KETK, Tyler Police are directing traffic and no injuries have been reported.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Singer D4vd has been arrested on suspicion of killing a 14-year-old girl whose decomposed body was found seven months ago in his apparently abandoned Tesla, authorities said Thursday. D4vd’s lawyers declared his innocence.
Los Angeles police said in a brief statement that homicide detectives arrested the 21-year-old Houston-born alt-pop singer, whose legal name is David Burke, on suspicion of murder in the investigation of the killing of Celeste Rivas Hernandez.
Defense attorneys Blair Berk, Marilyn Bednarski and Regina Peter responded in an email: “Let us be clear — the actual evidence in this case will show that David Burke did not murder Celeste Rivas Hernandez and he was not the cause of her death.”
Police said investigators would present a case to prosecutors at the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office on Monday. The office said in its own statement that it is aware of the arrest and its Major Crimes Division will review the case to determine whether there is enough evidence to file charges.
“There has been no indictment returned by any grand jury in this case and no criminal complaint filed. David has only been detained under suspicion. We will vigorously defend David’s innocence,” the defense lawyers added.
It was their first public statement on the case. Authorities did not publicly name Burke as a suspect until his arrest. He was being held in jail without bail.
The singer had been under investigation by an LA County grand jury looking into the death of Rivas Hernandez. The probe was officially secret, but its existence — and the designation of D4vd as its target — was revealed on Feb. 25 when his mother, father and brother filed an objection in a Texas court to subpoenas demanding they testify.
The long-dead body of Rivas Hernandez was found in a Tesla towed from the Hollywood Hills on Sept. 8, a day after she would have turned 15. She was a 13-year-old seventh grader when her family reported her missing in 2024 from her hometown of Lake Elsinore, about 70 miles (112 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles. Authorities give her age as 14 when she was killed in court documents.
The 2023 Tesla Model Y was registered in the singer’s name at the Texas address of his subpoenaed family members, according to court filings from prosecutors. It had been towed from an upscale neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills where it had been sitting, seemingly abandoned.
Police investigators searching the Tesla in a tow yard found a cadaver bag “covered with insects and a strong odor of decay,” court documents said, and “detectives partially unzipped the bag and observed a decomposed head and torso.”
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Investigators from the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office removed the bag and “discovered the arms and legs had been severed from the body,” according to court documents. A second black bag was found under the first, and dismembered body parts were inside it. No cause of death has been publicly revealed.
D4vd, pronounced “David,” gained popularity among Generation Z fans for his blend of indie rock, R&B and lo-fi pop. He went viral on TikTok in 2022 with the hit “Romantic Homicide,” which peaked at No. 4 on Billboard’s Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart. He then signed with Darkroom and Interscope Records and released his debut EP “Petals to Thorns” and a follow-up, “The Lost Petals,” in 2023.
When the body was discovered, D4vd had been on tour in support of his first full-length album, “Withered.” Later, the last two North American shows, in San Francisco and Los Angeles, along with a scheduled performance at LA’s Grammy Museum, were canceled, as was the European tour that was to have begun in Norway.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The Artemis II astronauts who ignited a lunar renaissance gave high marks Thursday to their moonship, especially the heat shield, for its performance during reentry.
In their first news conference since returning to Earth, the three Americans and one Canadian said their lunar flyby puts NASA in a much better position for a moon landing by a crew in two years and an eventual moon base. They spoke from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, their home base.
Commander Reid Wiseman later told The Associated Press that he’s been so busy since getting back that he hasn’t had time to gaze up at the moon, let alone Carroll Crater, the name suggested by the crew for a bright lunar crater in honor of his late wife. They shared two daughters whose anxieties and fears over their father’s journey ended with his safe splashdown late last week.
“Being 252,000 miles away from home was the most majestic, gorgeous thing that human eyes will ever witness,” he said in an interview with the AP. But hurtling back through the atmosphere at 39 times the speed of sound, “that is scary and that is risky.” That’s why he yearned for home midway through his flight. “You just want to hold your kids and you just want them to know that you’re safe.”
Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen launched to the moon from Florida on April 1, NASA’s first lunar crew in more than a half-century and by far the most diverse.
They became the most distant travelers ever — breaking Apollo 13’s record — as they whipped around the lunar far side, illuminated enough to reveal features never viewed before by the human eye. The sight of a total lunar eclipse added to the wonderment.
Their Orion capsule, which they named Integrity, parachuted into the Pacific last Friday to close out the nearly 10-day voyage. Artemis II’s Houston homecoming the next day coincided with the 56th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 13.
Wiseman said he and Glover “maybe saw two moments of a touch of char loss” to the heat shield as Integrity plunged through the fastest, hottest part of reentry. Once aboard the recovery ship, they peered at the bottom of the capsule as best they could, leaning over to view any signs of damage. They spotted a little loss of charred material on the shoulder, where the heat shield meets the capsule.
“For four humans just looking at the heat shield, it looked wonderful to us. It looked great, and that ride in was really amazing,” Wiseman said.
He cautioned that detailed analyses still need to be conducted. “We are going to fine-tooth comb every single, not even every molecule, probably every atom on this heat shield,” he said.
The heat shield on the first Artemis test flight in 2022 — with no one aboard — came back so pockmarked and gouged that it pushed Artemis II back by months if not years. Instead of redoing it, NASA opted to change the capsule’s entry path to minimize heating. Future capsules will sport a new design.
As the parachutes released right before splashdown, Glover said he felt like he was in freefall — like diving backward off a skyscraper. “That’s what it felt like for five seconds,” he said, adding when the ride smoothed out: “It was glorious.”
Since their return, the four astronauts have endured round after round of medical testing to check their balance, vision, muscle strength and coordination, and overall health. They even put on spacewalking suits for exercises under conditions simulating the moon’s one-sixth gravity of Earth to see how much endurance and dexterity future moonwalkers might have upon lunar touchdown.
NASA already is working on Artemis III, the next step in its grand moon base-building plans. The platform from which the rocket launches headed back Thursday to Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building, where it will be prepped for next year’s Artemis launch.
Still awaiting an assigned crew, Artemis III will remain in orbit around Earth as astronauts practice docking their Orion capsule with one or two lunar landers in development by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.
Artemis IV will follow in 2028 under NASA’s latest schedule, with two astronauts landing near the moon’s south pole.
NASA is aiming for a sustainable moon presence this time around. During the Apollo moonshots, astronauts kept their visits short. Twelve astronauts explored the lunar surface, beginning with Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969 and ending with Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt in 1972.
Koch said that since returning, she and her crewmates are “feeling even more excited and just ready to take that on as an agency.”
“We made it happen,” she added.
Everyone will need to accept extra risk to achieve all this and trust that any future problems can be figured out in real time, Hansen noted. “We’re not going to be able to pound everything flat before we go. We’re going to have to trust each other,” he said.
While everything went smoothly for them, “it was also very clear to us that it can get pretty bumpy,” he said. Future crews will have to “understand it can get real bumpy real fast.”
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
President Trump and Pope Leo XIV are in a war of words over the war in Iran. It’s the most open dispute between an American president and a Roman pontiff that anyone can remember.
Without calling him by name, the pope has been sharply critical of Trump. While on a visit to Cameroon the pope spoke of a world, “ravaged by a handful of tyrants.” The statement is widely believed to be specifically referencing the president.
In a social media post, the pope said, “God does not bless any conflict.” Immediately following the beginning of hostilities on February 28, the pope said that peace comes, “…not through weapons but through dialogue.”
For his part the president has specifically named the pope in his responses. In trademark fashion, he has pushed back hard on the pontiff, saying in a Truth Social post, “Pope LEO is WEAK on crime and terrible for Foreign Policy.”
The pope’s defenders – which includes what is likely a majority of U.S. Catholic bishops – are saying that Pope Leo’s criticism of the Iran war is nothing more or less than the sum of Catholic teaching about war.
I believe that position deserves closer examination.
Such examination begins with the stipulation that a Roman pontiff is going to condemn war. That should surprise no one. But such condemnation then begs the question, “Where has Pope Leo so outspokenly condemned the known atrocities of the Iranian regime?” Oh, he frequently calls for respect for human dignity and fundamental human rights; i.e. papal boilerplate – the rhetoric of every pope.
But if Leo has as pointedly called out Iran as he has the United States and Donald Trump, I can’t find it (and neither can ChatGPT, because I asked when I could find nothing on my own).
As to the pope’s condemnation being consistent with Catholic teaching regarding war, let’s examine the writings of revered Catholic theologian and priest, St. Thomas Aquinas. In his late 13th century opus Summa Theologica, Thomas says that war is justified when it is waged by a sovereign nation in defense of a common good and when the good intended outweighs the evil of war.
With respect to the war in Iran, I’d say check, check and check.
The U.S. is preventing nuclear weapons from coming into the hands of a nation that is openly relentless in its pursuit of having them. Preventing a regime like that of Iran, with its clear and undisputed record of terrorism, mass murder and evil, is to my eye, a rather straightforward exercise in the defense of a common good.
As to peace coming via dialogue rather than weapons, the president tried that. It went nowhere. U.S./Iranian dialogue accomplished nothing other than to provide the forum for Iran to proudly and unapologetically boast of its possession of about a thousand pounds of uranium that could be enriched to weapons grade in less than two weeks.
And finally, there’s this.
Dialogue did not save the world from the evils of Adolf Hitler. That effort required weapons.
LONGVIEW – Looking to win the District 3 seat on the Longview City Council, two out of five candidates spoke on issues impacting Longview the most at a forum on Wednesday. According to our news partner KETK, District 3, which covers the south-eastern part of the city from Interstate 20 to north of U.S. Highway 80, has been under councilman Ray Wade since 2018. The seat opened up when Wade campaigned and lost the race to be a Gregg County commissioner during the March primary election.
Five candidates are vying for the seat to represent the district.
“[It’s] the oldest and most culturally enhanced part of our city,” candidate Marlena Cooper said.
Cooper, along with G. Floyd, were the two candidates present at Wednesday night’s forum, organized by the Longview Chamber of Commerce and the Longview News Journal. Continue reading District candidate forum
DALLAS COUNTY (THE TEXAS TRIBUNE) – Allen West, the Dallas County Republican Party chair, resigned Wednesday, according to Dallas County Elections Department officials.
The announcement comes after West said on March 17 he agreed to use countywide polling sites for the May 26 runoff election, a decision that drew opposition from some party members.
Dallas Republicans initially planned to hand count primary ballots before scrapping the plan due to lack of staffing. Instead, they chose to require voters to report to precincts instead of countywide vote centers for the March 3 primary, causing chaos and confusion across the county. More than 12,000 voters from both parties showed up at the wrong polling location on Election Day.
West’s resignation, however, was not tied to the Election Day confusion but followed his later decision to support a return to countywide voting for the May runoff.
West did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement, the Dallas County Elections Department said West informed county elections administrator Paul Adams of his resignation Wednesday afternoon. The department declined to comment further.
West had for months supported the use of precinct-based sites for the primary and the elimination of the countywide polling place program, which allows voters to cast ballots anywhere in the county and had been used for years. But in a March 17 statement he said that using assigned precincts again for the runoff would expose the county party to “increased risk and voter confusion.”
“To then shift for the one day runoff election to precincts would bring about large-scale disruption,” West said in that statement in March.
West expected pushback from his own party for that decision.
In a blog post on the party’s website April 6, he said that continuing to use precinct-based voting for the runoff election would expose the county party to “a most dangerous course of action.” He said the party would face a lawsuit “alleging willful and intentional voter disenfranchisement.”
“The decision that I made was one rooted in years of understanding leadership and its responsibilities, namely, protecting your Troops,“ West, a former Florida congressman and Army veteran, wrote. “If there are those who do not see this as noble and honorable, that is fine with me. I have stated my position and under my watch as Chairman of the Dallas County Republican Party will not expose this organization to potential damaging legal efforts.”
Some Republicans in Texas have for years pushed to eliminate the countywide polling place program to eliminate the use of electronic voting machines and instead hand count ballots. It’s a push that began soon after the 2020 election and the lies President Donald Trump spread about the outcome.
Republican critics of countywide voting claim it makes elections less secure because it could allow people“to double or triple vote, though there’s no evidence that countywide voting is less secure. Texas election officials use procedures to prevent double voting, including the use of technology that tracks in real time who has voted and where.
Texas election officials say the countywide voting program, which has been in use in Texas for more than 20 years, allows counties to save money by operating fewer, centralized polling locations with fewer workers and less equipment.
To read this article in its original format, go to The Texas Tribune.
If your looking for help in training your dog, then look to David Rancken’s App Of The Day. Today’s app is called Puppr. You can find Puppr in the Apple Store and Google Play below.
TYLER – Ahead of the upcoming election, East Texans in Tyler Junior College’s appraisal district are voicing their concerns over a possible rise in property taxes stemming from the college’s $167.3 million bond. The proposed $167.3 million seeks to upgrade three existing facilities — workforce and academic building, student success center and student safety and the IT center — but the number is a major concern for many East Texans.
TJC said that for the average homeowner, the cost breaks down to about $84 a year on a $252,000 home, which is less than a streaming subscription, but it’s still an increase not everyone is sold on. State Republican Executive Committeewoman Christin Bentley argues that for many families, this isn’t just spare change; it adds up. Continue reading Voters anxious over May college bond
A seagull stands on the 16th-century Rialto Bridge over the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy, Monday, April 13, 2026. (Photo by Danil Shamkin/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
(VENICE, Italy) -- One of the world's most iconic cities could be heavily impacted by climate change and sea level rise in the coming years, leading researchers to search for solutions on how to protect it.
Venice, the historic Italian city known for its canals that serve as water traffic corridors, has been said to be sinking for nearly a century. The site within the vicinity of the Venetian Lagoon has flooded increasingly over the past 150 years, according to a paper published in Scientific Reports on Thursday.
Historically, there have been 28 events in which seawater flooding impacted at least 60% of the city, according to the paper. Eighteen of those events have taken place in the last century.
Piero Lionello, a professor of atmospheric physics and oceanography at the University of Salento in Italy and native Venetian, has noticed an uptick in flooding events throughout his lifetime, he told ABC News.
"The rate has been quite impressive the last three decades," he said.
Climate experts are now calling for long-term planning to protect the city from rising sea levels over the next several centuries.
The Venetian Lagoon is a "special system" because it is so connected to the Adriatic Sea, said Lionello, the lead author of the paper.
Proposed strategies to prevent flooding as sea levels rise include movable barriers, ring dikes -- which are circular or oval-shaped embankments designed to protect localized areas from floodwaters -- or even closing the Venetian Lagoon and relocating the city, according to the paper.
Currently, the city is defended by a trio of movable barriers at the edge of the Venetian Lagoon. The MOSE project, installed in the 1990s, is a system of mobile flood barrier shields as tall as a five-story building that can be raised to separate the lagoon from the Adriatic Sea during high tides.
The system allows the waterways of Venice to function normally during high tide and has prevented flood disasters from storm surge. But it won't be sufficient in the future, Lionello said.
"The present system, it will certainly be become inadequate," he said.
The existing movable barriers may be effective against sea level rise up to 1.25 meters, or about 4.1 feet, according to the paper. But this benchmark is likely to be exceeded by the year 2300 under a low-emissions scenario due to rising global temperatures and ground subsidence -- the gradual sinking of the ground -- the researchers said.
Dikes may be necessary to protect Venice's city center from the rest of the lagoon, according to the paper. The dikes would consist of walls surrounding the city, separating it from the lagoon, Lionello said.
Construction of dikes could cost between $600 million and $5.3 billion, according to the paper.
A "super levee" that could cost more than $35 billion to construct may be needed to close the lagoon and protect the land that is already below sea level.
If sea levels rise enough, it may be necessary for the city's residents and historic landmarks to be moved inland, the researchers said. Relocating the city could be necessary beyond a 4.5-meter, or nearly 15-foot, sea level rise, which is projected to occur after 2300 under a high emissions scenario, according to the paper. Relocating the city could cost up to $118 billion, according to the researchers.
This solution is the most "provocative" and would involve moving individual buildings and monuments inland, Lionello said.
"You can preserve a building. You can have different solution to keep people living there, but it will be a completely different Venice from the Venice that we have now," Lionello said.
The system of mobile barriers has been working overtime, according to officials. The MOSE barriers were lifted from the seabed to stop water from the Adriatic Sea from entering the lagoon 31 times during a six-month period between October 2023 and April 2024.
Climate scientists have predicted a steady rise in sea levels in the Adriatic Sea -- with the lagoonal ecosystem in Venice experiencing relative sea level rise of about 2.5 millimeters per year, a 2021 study found.
Over the past 60 years, high tides in the Venetian Lagoon have become more frequent.
Between 1870 and 1949, 30 high tides exceeded 1.1 meters -- or 3.6 feet -- the level above which the MOSE barrier system is activated, according to the Venice Tide Study Center. There were 76 such high tides between 2015 and 2024 alone.
Rapid action to protect the city of Venice from climate change is “essential,” especially since the construction of large-scale interventions could take decades, the researchers said.
Robert Kennedy Jr. appears before the Senate Finance Committee at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on September 04, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) -- Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. heads to Capitol Hill Thursday after restoring staffing at the World Trade Center Health Program, a move that could ease one of the most persistent points of bipartisan criticism he has faced for months.
Program advocates and lawmakers said they received an email from the secretary on Wednesday approving hiring for 37 long-vacant positions. This will raise staffing from its current 83 employees to the federally authorized level of 120.
The move comes after nearly a year of bipartisan criticism that staffing shortages were slowing care for the 140,000 responders and survivors the program serves, many of whom have been diagnosed with cancer, respiratory disease and other conditions tied to exposure to toxins after the 9/11 terror attacks in New York, Shanksville, Penn., and Washington, D.C.
The World Trade Center Health Program was created as part of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act to provide long-term medical monitoring and treatment to those affected by the attacks. For more than a year, the program has operated far below capacity with about 83 staff members, following a period of upheaval that included firings, rehires and shifting leadership, even as the participant population grew by nearly 30,000 new enrollees.
Advocates say the reduced staffing has had real consequences, including slower approval of survivors into the program, delays in managing contractors, and longer wait times for care.
“This is progress,” Benjamin Chevat, executive director of Citizens for the Extension of the James Zadroga Act, told ABC News. He credited the progress to sustained pressure from lawmakers in both parties and their consistent support of the program.
Lawmakers also have welcomed the end of the hiring freeze.
Rep. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., told ABC News that the approval for the additional staff would “directly support the responders and survivors who rely on this care every day,” and that “more staff means better access to care, shorter wait times, and stronger support for those still living with the health impacts” of the attacks.
He called the move “real progress for the 9/11 community” and said it is “about making sure those who answered the call on September 11th get the care they have earned.”
Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., also welcomed the news but criticized the delays. “I am encouraged that, after repeated demands from me and from other members of Congress, Secretary Kennedy is finally increasing staffing at the World Trade Center Health Program so that our brave survivors and first responders can receive the quality health care they deserve,” Goldman told ABC News.
“The ongoing staffing shortages under this administration are unacceptable and have been undermining the program’s ability to provide timely and quality care to the enrollees," Goldman added. "I will be watching closely to ensure that new staffers are hired as quickly as possible and that our heroes receive the quality healthcare they were promised and deserve."
At a senate hearing last May, Kennedy acknowledged that "we made a couple of mistakes" in firing program staff and promised to address them.
“Under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, the World Trade Center Health Program continues to move forward and deliver for responders and survivors,” a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services told ABC News in response to a request for comment. “The approval of these positions reflects HHS’ commitment to strengthening the program. The petition reviews are proceeding through established processes, and work is actively underway to advance pending petitions. Protecting the health and well-being of those affected by 9/11 remains a top priority.”
Chevat pointed out the timing of the decision, which comes as Kennedy prepared to face lawmakers at Thursday's public hearing: “Now a year later he is finally letting the program fill the staff vacancies that the program was blocked from filling.”
In a previous statement to ABC News, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said decisions about the program, including staffing and whether to add new health conditions to be covered under the program, rest with the World Trade Center Health Program administrator, not Secretary Kennedy.
Even with the staffing issue moving toward resolution, significant concerns for the program remain, Chevat said. They include key decisions about expanding coverage for additional conditions including autoimmune, cardiac, and cognitive disorders are still pending – for years, in some cases.
Those decisions ultimately require sign-off within HHS, under Kennedy’s direction, according to Chevat. Until that happens, patients with those conditions don’t qualify for full coverage through the program.
Research funding for the program also remains stalled, according to Chevat. Its annual grant cycle, which typically distributes about $20 million for studies on 9/11-related illnesses, is still waiting for approval, despite the understanding that it would begin this past February, he said.
Additionally, communication between the program and the 9/11 community has been sparse under HHS oversight, with fewer updates and less clarity about decision-making, according to Chevat and other 9/11 survivor advocates.
Lawmakers are still likely to ask Kennedy questions about the World Trade Center Health Program during today's hearings, Chevat said. The research funding budget is also expected to come up during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing next week.
For now, however, the decision to restore program staffing removes one of the most visible and widely criticized problems, Chevat said.
LINDALE – The Lindale ISD community is in mourning after a Velma Penny Elementary school student died earlier this week. According to our news partner KETK, in a statement from the district, parents were informed of the student’s passing, but additional information on their death isn’t being shared to respect their family and confidentiality laws.
TYLER – Ahead of the upcoming election, East Texans in Tyler Junior College’s appraisal district are voicing their concerns over a possible rise in property taxes stemming from the college’s $167.3 million bond. The proposed $167.3 million seeks to upgrade three existing facilities — workforce and academic building, student success center and student safety and the IT center — but the number is a major concern for many East Texans.
