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LUFKIN, Texas (KETK) — An AI-technology company based out of Nevada entered a purchase and sale agreement with Jefferson Enterprise Energy, LLC for a 132-acre property in Lufkin, according to a filing from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The purchase of the property cost the AI-company, 1606 Corp., a total of $11,168,864, consisting of $7 million in cash that must be paid at closing on April 15. Included in the purchase are associated development rights, improvements and equipment.

A press release filed with the SEC said the property has a 50,000-square-foot warehouse, which is capable of supporting large-scale data center infrastructure.

1606 Corp. believes the purchase of the site is “attractive” for potential partnerships with data center operators looking to develop new data centers in the area.

KETK News spoke with 1606 Corp CEO Austen Lambrecht and he said the opportunity to bring a new business to the city is exciting.

“It’s exciting to bring new business to the community,” Lambrecht said.

According to Lambrecht, the company is talking with people on the ground in Lufkin to determine how they can best use the site once they gain control of the property.

“We’re talking with different people in Lufkin on what the best usage would be but we don’t have site control yet, so we haven’t gone through that yet,” Lambrecht explained.

Lambrecht said they’re waiting for final funding to come through in order to complete the transaction for the property on April 15.

HOPKINS COUNTY – A man was arrested in Hopkins County on Friday for allegedly sexually abusing a child under 14 years old, according to our news partner KETK and the Hopkins County Sheriff’s Office. The sheriff’s office said in a press release that a report of a past-occurrence of sexual assault involving a juvenile was received by deputies on Wednesday. Over the next two days, sheriff’s office investigators did interviews and gathered evidence with the help of the Northeast Texas Child Advocacy Center.

Jesus Rojas Tellez was also interview during the investigation and according to the sheriff’s office, he admitted to having inappropriate sexual contact with a minor. Tellez was then taken into custody and is currently being held in the Hopkins County Jail on a charge of continuous sexual abuse of a child under 14-years-old and is on a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement hold.

The sheriff’s office stated that they are continuing to investigate this case but that no further information will be released at this time in order to protect the victim’s privacy.

GRAPEVINE (AP) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s was the unofficial guest of honor at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where hundreds of right-wing activists from around the country hailed him as Republicans’ clear choice for U.S. Senate.

He met with supporters behind closed doors, gave the keynote address at the Ronald Reagan dinner and held court during a private reception where people lined up for handshakes and photos. Audiences cheered for Paxton and booed any mention of Sen. John Cornyn, Paxton’s opponent in the May 26 runoff.

If Paxton wins the nomination, it will be because of support from his party’s fervent grassroots base. That rock-solid foundation rescued Paxton’s political career after he was impeached — but acquitted — for corruption charges by the Texas Legislature three years ago.

“I want you to know, there’s only one reason I got through all that, and it’s by the grace of God,” he said in his Friday night speech as a wave of applause rolled through the hall. “He absolutely delivered me, and he used to people of Texas to deliver me.”

Neither Paxton nor Cornyn won enough votes in the March 3 primary to clinch the nomination outright. Although Cornyn has raised far more money and is backed by the party establishment in Washington, Paxton’s well-honed survival skills could lead him to victory.

The winner will face Democrat James Talarico, a state lawmaker, in what will be one of the most closely watched Senate races as Republicans try to retain their grip of Congress.

Cornyn did not attend CPAC, which was held at a resort and convention center near Dallas. Paxton was the overwhelming favorite in CPAC’s straw poll, beating Cornyn by more than three to one, and he won the organization’s endorsement.

‘There’s got to be a change’

President Donald Trump promised that he would endorse either Paxton or Cornyn weeks ago, but no announcement ever came. Paxton, however, has had no trouble proving his bona fides with the party’s right wing.

“The real benefit of Paxton is that he is more an ally of Trump,” said Luke Brown, a 21-year-old college student from Amarillo, Texas. “There’s got to be a change for newer conservatives.

He added that, “I have respect for Cornyn. I just think it’s time for someone more conservative.”

Although Cornyn finished first in the primary, which also included Rep. Wesley Hunt, Paxton swiftly appealed to Trump by embracing legislation known as the SAVE Act, which would mean new, strict proof-of-citizenship requirements for voting. The proposal is a priority for the president, but it has stalled in the Senate because Republican leaders do not want to lift the filibuster.

Paxton said he would consider stepping aside if the legislation passed and accused Cornyn of being a “coward.” About a week later, Cornyn reversed his position on the filibuster and wrote in an op-ed that “I support whatever changes to Senate rules that may prove necessary.”
‘Too little too late’

Paxton crowed about the shift during his reception on Saturday.

“Unfortunately, John Cornyn has never been focused on this issue until right now, when I called him out on it,” he told supporters.

Cornyn’s campaign noted that the senator is an original co-sponsor of the voting legislation.

“Ken Paxton has lied to his staff, to taxpayers, to his colleagues and to his own family, so it should be not a surprise he’s lying here too,” said Matt Mackowiak, a senior adviser to Cornyn’s campaign.

Joe Ropar, a 72-year-old defense contractor who attended CPAC, described Paxton’s maneuvering as “brilliant.”

“Cornyn’s trying to change his stripes now,” Ropar said. “It’s too little too late.”

While Cornyn did not attend CPAC, which was held at a resort and convention center near Dallas, Paxton was extolled by speakers throughout the event.

“Ken Paxton is emblematic of the grassroots of the MAGA movement across the nation,” said Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser who hosts the “War Room” podcast, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.

Earlier Friday, CPAC senior fellow Mercedes Schlapp polled the crowd. Asking for a show of support for Paxton, there was a roar of cheers. When she asked about Cornyn, there was a light ripple of boos.
‘Time for a change’

Paxton reminded conservatives here of another connection with Trump: They both have portrayed themselves as the victims of political persecution. While Paxton was impeached and acquitted once, Trump went through the process twice during his first term.

Some conservative Republicans hold other grudges against Cornyn. They remember his early criticism of Trump’s proposal for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2016, his co-sponsoring of gun control legislation after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022, and his dismissive remarks about Trump’s comeback campaign in 2024.

Retired music teacher Valerie Burge, 58, said she voted for Cornyn in the primary because of his long service.

“But I’m not sure about the runoff,” she said. “It might be time for something new.”

Barbara Palmer, a 65-year-old lawyer, said Cornyn had simply been in office for too long. He has been a judge, state supreme court justice and state attorney general, and now he wants a fifth term as senator.

“It’s just time for a change,” Palmer said.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Aviation Funding Solvency Act. The Keep America Flying Act. The Keep Air Travel Safe Act. The Aviation Funding Stability Act.

Again and again, members of Congress have dusted off the same idea: ensuring the federal employees who control air traffic and screen passengers and bags at U.S. airports get paid during government shutdowns.

Bills to make it happen keep getting introduced in one form or another, sometimes with Democrats and Republicans as co-sponsors. Yet session after session, the result has been the same — agencies receive their annual appropriations, public outrage over long security lines and flight delays fades, legislation languishes and workers have no guarantees their paychecks won’t stop coming again.

“Once the crisis is over, people assume that the good times are back,” said Eric Chaffee, a Case Western Reserve law professor whose research includes risk management in the aviation industry. “It’s easy to pass the next big bill when you’re still in the throes of the financial crisis, but once the shutdown is done, people have a relatively short memory of the problems that it created.”

Since 2019, after a partial shutdown that spanned the holiday travel season, lawmakers have drafted, revised and reintroduced multiple proposals to pay aviation workers who would have to keep reporting for duty in the event of another budget impasse.

The Aviation Funding Stability Act of 2019 — and 2021 and 2025 — and the bipartisan Aviation Funding Solvency Act introduced after a government shutdown last fall would protect the pay of air traffic controllers. The Keep Air Travel Safe Act, filed in October, extended the protection to Transportation Security Administration agents. The Keep America Flying Act, also from October, would cover both TSA personnel and certain Federal Aviation Administration employees.

Broader proposals, like the Shutdown Fairness Act introduced in January, would maintain the pay of essential federal workers across the U.S. government. Those bills have stalled as well.

“Congress cares about headlines, and as a result of that, it means they don’t always make changes that would be really beneficial,” Chaffee said.
Political gridlock

Shutdowns that disrupt air travel have continued along with the push for aviation-specific pay protections. The 35-day shutdown that arose over funding for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border during President Donald Trump’s first term resulted in delays at East Coast airports and prolonged wait times at some airports as air traffic controllers and TSA agents went unpaid.

Last fall’s 43-day shutdown broke the record for the longest funding lapse and revived concerns over the consequences of requiring air traffic controllers to work without pay. The FAA, citing risks to aviation safety, took the extraordinary step of ordering U.S. airlines to cut flights at 40 of the nation’s busiest airports as unscheduled absences deepened existing staffing shortages at air traffic control facilities.

TSA officers who worked through that shutdown also found themselves working through a short one that started on Jan. 31 and yet another when funding for only the Department of Homeland Security lapsed on Feb. 14. Thousands began missing shifts each day as the stalemate entered its second month.

Carlos Rodriguez, a TSA agent and local union leader in New York, said many workers had not recovered financially from last year’s shutdown when this one hit.

“Part of the American dream that I was sold was that working for the government was honorable and stable,” Rodriguez, a second generation Dominican American, said. “But this is not honorable or stable.”

On Friday, the 42nd day of the DHS shutdown, Trump signed an emergency order instructing Homeland Security to pay TSA agents immediately. The action came after House Republicans defeated a Senate deal that would have funded the TSA, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency but not Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol. The House later in the night passed its own bill to fund the entire Homeland Security department through May 22, but senators had already left town.

Johnny Jones, secretary-treasurer of the TSA division of the American Federation of Government Employees, said union members resent having their livelihoods used as tools and talking points in a game of political brinkmanship.

To them, the machinations of Congress feel like “let’s checkmate the queen with the TSA pawn here, and then we’ll smash them over whenever we feel like it,” Jones said. “We’re on the chess board.”
Public pressure builds

Labor unions, airline leaders and airport executives have issued open letters, taken out newspaper ads and made direct appeals to urge lawmakers to act on at least one of the existing bipartisan proposals.

“Congress has the power to end this dysfunction once and for all, and must use any legislative vehicle to accomplish this goal,” the Modern Skies Coalition said in a joint statement this week. The broad coalition of more than 60 organizations pointed to the Aviation Funding Solvency Act, Aviation Funding Stability Act and Keep America Flying Act as potential options.

The president and CEO of Airlines for America, a trade group representing major U.S. airlines, made a similar case in a Washington Times op-ed this week, writing that Congress “must get to the table immediately” and pass legislation that would prevent more scenes of frustrated passengers, overflowing airport terminals and donation drives for public servants.

“Right now, lawmakers are sitting on their hands doing nothing with three viable, bipartisan bills that could prevent this mess,” wrote Chris Sununu, a former New Hampshire governor hired to lead the trade group last year.

The American Federation of Government Employees joined more than 30 unions this week in urging Congress to pass the Shutdown Fairness Act, warning that funding lapses undermined employee morale, recruitment and retention.
Breaking the cycle

Some TSA workers have reported sleeping in their cars or thinking about selling them to make rent. Union leaders have described workers not being able to fill their refrigerators or gas tanks.

Caleb Harmon-Marshall, a former TSA officer who runs a travel newsletter called Gate Access, said the officers he’s spoken with are eager to receive all of their back pay quickly because they are struggling to pay their bills and accumulating debt. But without greater certainty, more officers may miss shifts or decide to quit, he said.

If the president’s emergency order only funds a single pay period, “that’s not enough to bring them back,” Harmon-Marshall said. “It has to be an extended pay for them to come back or want to stay there.”

Previous legislation with bipartisan backing struggled to make it across the finish line. The Aviation Funding Act of 2019 that was introduced by Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, had 13 co-sponsors, eight of them Democrats. It never made it out of committee. A House version introduced by Oregon Democrat Peter DeFazio eventually had 303 co-sponsors and cleared the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee but never received a floor vote.

The current political environment in the U.S. may consign the legislation in Congress now to the same fate, Chaffee said.

“We live in a society currently where things are very polarized,” he said. “Whether or not any of these bills get passed, it will need to have political momentum behind it, meaning it will need to be something that the public really wants to see happen.”

GRAPEVINE, Texas (AP) — It was Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s show at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where hundreds of right-wing activists from around the country hailed him as Republicans’ clear choice for U.S. Senate.

After meeting with supporters behind closed doors, Paxton crowned the day by standing before thousands as the keynote speaker at the Ronald Reagan dinner.

Paxton thanked them for sticking by his side after he was impeached — but acquitted — for corruption charges by the Legislature four years ago.

“I want you to know, there’s only one reason I got through all that, and it’s by the grace of God,” he said Friday night as a wave of applause rolled through the hall. “He absolutely delivered me, and he used to people of Texas to deliver me.”

If Paxton is going to win the Republican nomination, it will be because of support in rooms like this one. He is in a bitter runoff with Sen. John Cornyn after neither won enough votes in the March 3 primary. Although Cornyn has raised far more money and is backed by the party establishment in Washington, Paxton’s well-honed survival skills and rock-solid foundation with the local Republican base could see him through the May 26 election.

President Donald Trump promised that he would endorse either Paxton or Cornyn weeks ago, but no announcement ever came. Paxton, however, has had no trouble proving his bona fides with the party’s right wing.

While Cornyn did not attend CPAC, which was held at a resort and convention center near Dallas, Paxton was extolled by speakers throughout the day.

“Ken Paxton is emblematic of the grassroots of the MAGA movement across the nation,” Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser who hosts the “War Room” podcast, said referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan that originated in his 2016 campaign.

Earlier Friday, CPAC senior fellow Mercedes Schlapp polled the crowd. Asking for a show of support for Paxton, there was a roar of cheers. When she asked about Cornyn, there was a light ripple of boos.

Cornyn finished first in the primary, which also featured U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt. There were briefly concerns among Paxton’s supporters that Trump would back the incumbent. That would have come as a relief to party leaders, who view Cornyn as stronger candidate against Democratic nominee James Talarico.

But Paxton appealed to Trump by embracing legislation known as the SAVE Act, which would mean new, strict proof-of-citizenship requirements for voting. The proposal is a priority for Trump, but it has stalled in the Senate because Republican leaders do not want to lift the filibuster.

Joe Ropar, a 72-year-old defense contractor who attended CPAC, said Paxton’s move was “brilliant.” Although Cornyn later said he was willing to change filibuster rules, Ropar believed Paxton had demonstrated stronger loyalty to Trump.

“Cornyn’s trying to change his stripes now,” Ropar said. “It’s too little too late.”

Paxton has another political connection with Trump: They both have portrayed themselves as the victims of political persecution. While Paxton was impeached and acquitted once, Trump went through the process twice during his first term.

James Schaare, a 61-year-old church music leader from Euless, Texas, said that perseverance shows Paxton is the right choice.

“In Paxton’s career, he’s been faithful to what he’s said he’s going to do,” he said.

Some conservative Republicans hold other grudges against Cornyn. They remember his early criticism of Trump’s proposal for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2016, his co-sponsoring of gun control legislation after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022, and his dismissive remarks about Trump’s comeback campaign in 2024.

Retired music teacher Valerie Burge, 58, said she voted for Cornyn in the primary because of his long service.

“But I’m not sure about the runoff,” she said. “It might be time for something new.”

Barbara Palmer, a 65-year-old lawyer, said Cornyn had simply been in office for too long. He has been a judge, state supreme court justice and state attorney general, and now he wants a fifth term as senator.

“It’s just time for a change,” Palmer said.