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HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports Gov. Greg Abbott is directing the Texas Division of Emergency Management to prepare for additional state emergency response resources ahead of potential impacts from tropical activity in the Gulf of Mexico. This comes as CenterPoint Energy representatives announced they were monitoring and preparing for severe weather as a way to avoid widespread power outages such as those following Hurricane Beryl this summer. According to the National Weather Service, a storm system moving through the Gulf of Mexico has a 90% chance of tropical development, with increasing likelihood of development into a tropical storm or hurricane, as written in the release. According to Houston Chronicle’s meteorologist Justin Ballard, heavy rain could be expected in the Houston area, with the potential for localized flooding.

“Texas stands ready to provide all available resources needed to support Texans as a severe storm system begins to move along the Gulf Coast that will bring potential flash flooding threats and heavy rain,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement, noting the state’s division of emergency management would be deployed Monday morning. “Texans are urged to take the necessary precautions for potential tropical weather, including remaining weather aware, monitoring road conditions and having an emergency plan to ensure safety of themselves and their loved ones.” The Texas Division of Emergency Management has issued an activation notice to the Texas Emergency Management Council agencies, increasing readiness level of the Texas State Operations Center to a 24-hour escalated response operations, a news release stated. Additional resources include search and rescue boat teams, helicopters with hoist capabilities, medical support teams, saw crews, support for agriculture and livestock needs, and teams to monitor road conditions and outages. These resources come from several agencies including the state’s department of public safety, transportation, health services; Texas National Guard, Texas A&M, Texas Parks and Wildlife, Public Utility Commission of Texas, Railroad Commission of Texas and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

HOUSTON (AP) — It’s been more than five years since a Houston couple were killed after officers burst into their home during a drug raid and opened fire, believing they were dangerous heroin dealers.

Investigators later said they only found small amounts of marijuana and cocaine in the house in Texas and accused Gerald Goines, the officer who led January 2019 drug raid, of lying about the couple to obtain a search warrant, including making up a confidential informant who had supposedly bought drugs at the home. The probe into the drug raid also brought forth allegations of systemic corruption within the police department’s narcotics unit.

Goines, 59, was later indicted on two counts of murder in connection with the couple’s death. On Monday, opening statements were set to be held in Goines’ murder trial in a Houston courtroom.

Goines has pleaded not guilty to two felony murder counts in the deaths of Dennis Tuttle, 59, and his wife Rhogena Nicholas, 58.

Both prosecutors and Goines’ lawyers declined to comment ahead of opening statements, citing a gag order in the case.

In court documents, prosecutors with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office have criticized Goines’ efforts to overturn his indictment and delay the case. In March, a judge dismissed the murder charges against Goines. Weeks later, he was reindicted.

“After more than five years of providing extensive discovery, attending numerous hearings and navigating various trial delays, the time for justice looms now,” prosecutors said in court documents.

Nicole DeBorde, one of Goines’ attorneys, has previously accused prosecutors of misconduct in the case. She had alleged that Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg has generated excess publicity in the case, preventing the ex-officer from getting a fair trial.

Prosecutors allege Goines lied to obtain a search warrant by making up a confidential informant and wrongly portraying the couple as dangerous heroin dealers. That led to a deadly encounter in which officers shot and killed Tuttle, Nicholas and their dog, they said. Five officers, including Goines, were injured in the raid.

Michael Wynne, a Houston-based criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor not connected to the case, said some of the issues prosecutors will have to contend with include overcoming the benefit of the doubt that people tend to give to police officers.

But Goines will have too many hurdles to overcome, Wynne said.

“Mr. Goines has the best counsel you could possibly get,” Wynne said. “But I think they got an uphill battle here.”

A dozen officers tied to the narcotics squad that carried out the raid, including Goines, were later indicted on various other charges following a corruption probe. A judge in June dismissed charges against some of the officers.

Since the raid, prosecutors have reviewed thousands of cases handled by the narcotics unit.

Goines is also facing federal charges in connection with the case.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has overturned at least 22 convictions linked to Goines.

One of the other cases tied to Goines that remains under scrutiny is his 2004 drug arrest in Houston of George Floyd, whose 2020 death at the hands of a Minnesota police officer sparked a nationwide reckoning on racism in policing. A Texas board in 2022 declined a request that Floyd be granted a posthumous pardon for his drug conviction stemming from his arrest by Goines.

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Follow Juan A. Lozano: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A federal trial is set to begin Monday over claims that supporters of former President Donald Trump threatened and harassed a Biden-Harris campaign bus in Texas four years ago, disrupting the campaign on the last day of early voting.

The civil trial over the so-called “Trump Train” comes as Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris race into the final two months of their head-to-head fight for the White House in November.

Democrats on the bus said they feared for their lives as Trump supporters in dozens of trucks and cars nearly caused collisions, harassing their convoy for more than 90 minutes, hitting a Biden-Harris campaign staffer’s car and forcing the bus driver to repeatedly swerve for safety.

“For at least 90 minutes, defendants terrorized and menaced the driver and passengers,” the lawsuit alleges. “They played a madcap game of highway ‘chicken’ coming within three to four inches of the bus. They tried to run the bus off the road.”

The highway confrontation prompted an FBI investigation, which led then-President Trump to declare that in his opinion, “these patriots did nothing wrong.”

Among those suing is former Texas state senator and Democratic nominee for governor Wendy Davis, who was on the bus that day. Davis rose to prominence in 2013 with her 13-hour filibuster of an anti-abortion bill in the state Capitol. The other three plaintiffs are a campaign volunteer, staffer and the bus driver.

The lawsuit names six defendants, accusing them of violating the “Ku Klux Klan Act,” an 1871 federal law to stop political violence and intimidation tactics.

The same law was used in part to indict Trump on federal election interference charges over attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection. Enacted by Congress during the Reconstruction Era, the law was created to protect Black men’s right to vote by prohibiting political violence.

Videos of the confrontation on Oct. 30, 2020, that were shared on social media, including some recorded by the Trump supporters, show a group of cars and pickup trucks — many adorned with large Trump flags — riding alongside the campaign bus as it traveled from San Antonio to Austin. The Trump supporters at times boxed in the bus, slowed it down, kept it from exiting the highway and repeatedly forced the bus driver to make evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision, the lawsuit says.

On the two previous days, Biden-Harris supporters were subjected to death threats, with some Trump supporters displaying weapons, according to the lawsuit. These threats in combination with the highway confrontation led Democrats to cancel an event later in the day.

The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified monetary damages, alleges the defendants were members of local groups near San Antonio that coordinated the confrontation.

Francisco Canseco, an attorney for three of the defendants, said his clients acted lawfully and did not infringe on the free speech rights of those on the bus.

“It’s more of a constitutional issue,” Canseco said. “It’s more of who has the greater right to speak behind their candidate.”

Judge Robert Pitman, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, is set to preside over Monday’s trial. He denied the defendants’ pretrial motion for a summary judgment in their favor, ruling last month that the KKK Act prohibits the physical intimidation of people traveling to political rallies, even when racial bias isn’t a factor.

While one of the defendants, Eliazar Cisneros, argued his group had a First Amendment right to demonstrate support for their candidate, the judge wrote that “assaulting, intimidating, or imminently threatening others with force is not protected expression.”

“Just as the First Amendment does not protect a driver waving a political flag from running a red light, it does not protect Defendants from allegedly threatening Plaintiffs with reckless driving,” Pitman wrote.

A prior lawsuit filed over the “Trump Train” alleged the San Marcos Police Department violated the Ku Klux Klan Act by failing to send a police escort after multiple 911 calls were made and a bus rider said his life was threatened. It accused officers of privately laughing and joking about the emergency calls. San Marcos settled the lawsuit in 2023 for $175,000 and a requirement that law enforcement get training on responding to political violence.

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Lathan is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – The impasse between DirecTV and Disney over a new carriage agreement has become more heated as it entered its second week.

DirecTV filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission on Saturday night accusing Disney of negotiating in bad faith.

Disney channels, including ESPN and ABC-owned stations in nine markets, have been off DirecTV since the evening of Sept. 1. That meant DirecTV customers were blacked out from viewing most college football games and the final week of the U.S. Open tennis tournament, including the women’s and men’s finals.

DirecTV has 11.3 million subscribers, according to Leichtman Research Group, making it the nation’s third-largest pay TV provider.

ABC and ESPN will have the “Monday Night Football” opener between the New York Jets and San Francisco 49ers. ABC will also produce and carry a presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump on Tuesday in Philadelphia.

ABC-owned stations in Los Angeles; the San Francisco Bay Area; Fresno, California; New York; Chicago; Philadelphia; Houston; and Raleigh, North Carolina, are off DirecTV.

Besides all ESPN network channels and ABC-owned stations, Disney-branded channels Freeform, FX and National Geographic channel are dark.

DirecTV says in its 10-page complaint that Disney is violating the FCC’s good faith mandates by asking it to waive any legal claims on any anticompetitive actions, including its ongoing packaging and minimum penetration demands.

DirecTV has asked Disney for the option to provide consumers with cheaper and skinnier bundles of programming, instead of bigger bundles that carry programming some viewers might not be interested in watching.

The complaint states: “Along with these anticompetitive demands, Disney has also insisted that DirecTV agree to a ‘clean slate’ provision and a covenant not to sue, both of which are intended to prevent DirecTV from taking legal action regarding Disney’s anticompetitive demands, which would include filing good faith complaints at the Commission. Not three months ago, however, the Media Bureau made clear that such a demand itself constitutes bad faith.”

DirecTV CEO Ray Carpenter said during a conference call with business and media analysts on Tuesday that they would not agree to a new carriage deal with Disney without bundling changes.

“We’re not playing a short-term game,” Carpenter said. “We need something that is going to work for the long-term sustainability of our video customers. The resolve is there.”

Disney has claimed since the blackout began that mutual release of claims is standard practice after licensing agreements are negotiated and agreed upon by the parties. It has also had one with DirecTV under its past renewals.

A Disney spokesperson said: “We continue to negotiate with DirecTV to restore access to our content as quickly as possible. We urge DirecTV to stop creating diversions and instead prioritize their customers by finalizing a deal that would allow their subscribers to watch our strong upcoming lineup of sports, news and entertainment programming, starting with the return of Monday Night Football.”

Last year, Disney and Charter Spectrum — the nation’s second-largest cable TV provider — were involved in a nearly 12-day impasse until coming to an agreement hours before the first Monday night NFL game of the season.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued two of the state’s largest counties to block efforts to register voters ahead of the November general election, drawing claims of voter suppression from state Democrats.

Paxton announced Friday a lawsuit to block Travis County, which includes the state capital of Austin, from using taxpayer money to hire a third-party vendor to identify and contact eligible but unregistered voters to try to get them registered before the Oct. 7 deadline.

That followed a lawsuit earlier in the week against Bexar County, which includes San Antonio; that county hired the same company for a similar registration effort. Paxton has also threatened legal action against Houston’s Harris County if it engages in a similar voter registration effort.

Paxton’s lawsuits are the latest round in an ongoing fight between Texas Republicans, who have long dominated state government and insist they are taking measures to bolster election integrity, and Democrats, who have strongholds in Texas’s largest urban areas and complain the GOP-led efforts amount to voter suppression, particularly of Latinos.

In the lawsuits, Paxton claimed the contracts went to a partisan vendor and argued they go beyond the local government’s legal authority. Paxton said Texas law does not explicitly allow counties to mail out unsolicited registration forms.

“The program will create confusion, potentially facilitate fraud, and undermine public trust in the election process,” Paxton said Friday.

Paxton had warned Bexar County officials he would sue if they moved forward with the project. But the county commission still voted Tuesday night to approve its nearly $400,000 contract with Civic Government Solutions, the same organization hired by Travis County. Paxton filed the lawsuit against Bexar County the next day.

Tracy Davis, vice president of marketing at Civic Government Solutions, said the organization is nonpartisan.

“Our focus is solely on identifying and assisting unregistered individuals. We do not use demographic, political, or any other criteria,” Davis said. “As someone deeply committed to civic engagement, I find it concerning that an initiative to empower Texans and strengthen democratic participation is facing such aggressive opposition.”

U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, an Austin Democrat, accused Paxton of attempting to suppress Latino votes ahead of the November general election.

“I applaud the Bexar County Commissioners for not yielding to his threats and moving forward as planned,” Doggett said. “Paxton is so fearful that more Latinos, who constitute the biggest share of Texas’s population, will vote as never before.”

Last month, the League of United Latin American Citizens, a Latino voting rights group, called for a federal investigation after its volunteers said Texas authorities raided their homes and seized phones and computers as part of an investigation by Paxton’s office into allegations of voter fraud.

No charges have been filed against those who had their homes searched this month around San Antonio. The targets of the raids, including an 87-year-old campaign volunteer, and their supporters say they did nothing wrong and called the searches an attempt to suppress Latino voters.

Paxton has said little beyond confirming that agents executed search warrants.

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A federal judge on Friday said that a powerful Mexican drug cartel leader who was arrested over the summer in the U.S. can be transferred from Texas to New York to face charges there.

The order from U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone in El Paso came after the attorneys for Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, co-founder of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, said a day earlier that they no longer opposed the transfer that had been being requested by federal prosecutors.

Zambada, 76, was arrested in July along with Joaquín Guzmán López, a son of notorious drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán,” after they landed in a private plane at an airport near El Paso. They are charged in the U.S. with various drug crimes and remain jailed.

Zambada, who faces charges in multiple locales, has appeared in U.S. federal court in El Paso, where he pleaded not guilty to various drug trafficking charges.

Cardone said in her order that he would complete the proceedings in New York before any further proceedings were held in Texas.

The elder Guzmán was convicted in 2019 of drug and conspiracy charges in New York and sentenced to life in prison.

In New York, Zambada is charged with running a continuing criminal enterprise, murder conspiracy, drug offenses and other crimes.

Zambada has said he ended up in the U.S. after he was kidnapped in his home country en route to what he thought was a meeting with a Mexican official.

Joaquín Guzmán López, a son of notorious drug kingpin “El Chapo,” pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and other charges Tuesday, days after an astonishing capture in the U.S.

Guzmán López has appeared in federal court in Chicago, where he has pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and other charges.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The former Uvalde, Texas, schools police chief asked a judge on Friday to throw out the criminal indictment filed against him over the slow law enforcement response to the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead.

In a motion filed in a Uvalde court, Pete Arredondo’s lawyers question whether the 10-count indictment on child endangerment and abandonment charges applies to the former chief, who has been described as the on-site “incident commander” as nearly 400 federal, state and local officers waited more than 70 minutes to confront and kill the shooter in a classroom.

Arredondo has said he should not have been considered the incident commander and has been “scapegoated” into shouldering the blame for law enforcement failures that day.

The indictment alleges Arredondo did not follow his active shooter training and made critical decisions that slowed the police response while the gunman was “hunting” victims.

But Arredondo’s attorneys argued that “imminent danger of death, bodily injury and physical and mental impairment” was not caused by him, but by the shooter.

“(The) indictment itself makes clear that when Mr. Arredondo responded as part of his official duties, an active shooter incident was already in progress,” attorney Paul Looney wrote in the motion, calling the indictment “vague, uncertain and indefinite.”

The massacre was one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. Arredondo was indicted in June.

His motion to dismiss the charges came two days after two teachers and two students were killed at a school shooting in Winder, Georgia. In that case, school security officers quickly confronted a teenager who is now charged in the killings.

Arredondo, 52, and another former Uvalde schools police officer, Adrian Gonzales, 51, are the only law enforcement officers who have been charged for the response to the Robb Elementary shooting. Gonzales faces 29 similar charges, and both have pleaded not guilty.

The charges carry up to two years in jail if convicted.

The actions and inactions by both Arredondo and Gonzales amounted to “criminal negligence,” the indictments said. Terrified students inside the classroom with the shooter called 911 as parents begged officers — some of whom could hear shots being fired while they stood in a hallway — to go in.

Dallas police officer Darron Burks, who was fatally shot in what the police chief called an execution, was remembered Saturday as a hero during a funeral service in Dallas.

“A hero who made the ultimate sacrifice … the grief is overwhelming,” said Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia during the nearly two-hour-long service that was often marked by applause for Burks’ mother, Cherie Jeffery, and laughter at memories of Burks.

“He loved me every day, he didn’t wait until my birthday” or various holidays, Jeffery said as she stood next to a portrait of Burks in his uniform, adding that her son texted her daily. “Darron loved everybody.”

Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said Burks was “tragically taken, targeted” because he was a police officer.

Burks was “a hero … with a spirit of service and selflessness,” Johnson said.

Bagpipes played and mourners streamed past his open coffin that was draped with a U.S. flag and uniformed police officers at either end until the casket was closed for the service.

Burks, 46, was sitting in his patrol car Aug. 29 when he was fatally shot by 30-year-old Corey Cobb-Bey, who spoke briefly with Burks and recorded the encounter before pulling out a handgun and shooting Burks, according to police.

“I know the word ambush has been thrown around … that’s not what happened here,” Garcia said following the shooting. “Officer Burks was executed.”

Cobb-Bey shot and wounded two other officers as they arrived, then fled the scene and was pursued by police to Lewisville, Texas, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northwest of Dallas, police said.

When Cobb-Bey’s vehicle came to a stop on Interstate 35, he exited with a shotgun in his hand and pointed it at officers. Six officers opened fire, killing Cobb-Bey who was struck multiple times, police said.

Burks joined the police force in December after graduating from the police academy. He previously spent 17 years as a high school math teacher.

Gov. Greg Abbott, at the request of Johnson, said state of Texas and United States flags could be lowered to half-staff on Saturday to honor Burks.

“The First Lady and I extend prayers of comfort for the Burks family during their time of grief, and we urge all Texans to remember and honor Officer Burks’ service as a dedicated and trusted law enforcement officer,” Abbott said in a letter to Johnson.