KTBB News, Weather, Talk

TEXAS BORDER – Texas Public Radio reports that facing worsening drought conditions and a dwindling water supply, South Texas farmers have been caught in the middle of a growing water dispute between the U.S. and Mexico. The United States denied Mexico’s request for a special delivery of Colorado River water on Thursday, citing Mexico’s ongoing failure to meet its obligations under an 80-year-old water-sharing treaty between the two countries. This marks the first time the U.S. has formally refused a non-treaty water request from Mexico, according to the Western Hemisphere Affairs division of the U.S Department of State. “Mexico’s continued shortfalls in its water deliveries under the 1944 water-sharing treaty are decimating American agriculture – particularly farmers in the Rio Grande valley,” the federal agency said via a social media post on Thursday.

The lack of water in the Rio Grande Valley has already had serious consequences for Texas agriculture, with irrigation cutbacks threatening crops, livestock and livelihoods. The region suffered an economic impact of nearly $1 billion in 2023 due to the ongoing water shortage, according to Texas A&M AgriLife. This eventually led to the 2024 closure of Texas’ last sugar mill, which operated in the RGV for more than 50 years. Under the 1944 Water Treaty, Mexico delivers the U.S. water from the Rio Grande, while the U.S. gives water to Mexico from the Colorado River. But Mexico, like Texas, is also grappling with severe drought conditions. By the end of 2024, more than half the Rio Grande and Bravo River Basin was in moderate to exceptional drought, according to data from the North American Drought Monitor (NADM). Mexican officials argue that they simply don’t have the water to spare. “There’s been less water. That’s part of the problem,” Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters on Thursday. For years now, Mexico has failed to hold up its end of the agreement. Mexico is required to deliver 1,750,000 acre-feet (AF) of water over a five-year cycle, at an average of 350,000 AF annually.

COLLEGE STATION – A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked Texas A&M University System from enforcing a ban on drag shows being held at its special event venues.

This means “Draggieland” will go on as planned on Thursday at the flagship university’s Rudder Theatre in College Station.

“Draggieland” is an annual pageant where contestants wear clothing or makeup that often, but does not always, run counter to their expected gender identity. The contestants dance and answer questions afterward about what drag and LGBTQ culture means to them. It has repeatedly sold out the 750-seat venue since it started in 2020.

In her ruling, Judge Lee H. Rosenthal said the student group that organizes “Draggieland”, the Queer Empowerment Council, was likely to succeed in showing the ban violates the First Amendment.

“Anyone who finds the performance or performers offensive has a simple remedy: don’t go,” Rosenthal wrote.

The students said while their fight isn’t over, they were overjoyed by the decision and vowed to share that joy by putting on the best show possible Thursday.

The Queer Empowerment Council, which organizes “Draggieland”, sued after the system’s board of regents passed a resolution last month banning drag performances across all 11 campuses. The council argued that the public universities are not allowed to censor student performances based on their personal dislike of its content or perceived ideology.

The regents said they were trying to comply with recent executive orders issued by President Donald J. Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott telling agencies not to promote “gender ideology” or else they could lose funding from the federal and state government. They’ve also argued drag shows mock and objectify women, which violates federal antidiscrimination law.

This follows previous drag show bans and First Amendment fights in court.

In 2023, Republican state lawmakers portrayed drag performances as inherently sexual and obscene. They passed Senate Bill 12, which prohibited performers from dancing suggestively or wearing certain prosthetics in front of children. But a court struck down the law as unconstitutional.

That same year, West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler cancelled a student drag show, similarly arguing that such performances degrade women.

The students sued, but the judge in that case has so far held that drag shows are not clearly protected under the First Amendment in part because children were expected to attend.

No children are expected to attend “Draggieland”.

Texas A&M’s resolution also spurred the University of Texas System to prohibit its 14 institutions from sponsoring or hosting drag shows.

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

AUSTIN – The impeachment of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton cost the state about $5.1 million in taxpayer funds, largely to pay for lawyers hired by House leaders to prosecute Paxton in a Senate trial that ended in his acquittal, according to a report released Friday by the State Auditor’s Office.

The total is roughly $900,000 higher than previously reported, based on records from the House’s impeachment case, which did not include a full tally of the chamber’s outside legal costs.

The House, which impeached Paxton over allegations that he accepted bribes and abused the authority of his office, accounted for nearly 87% of the state’s overall tab. Of the more than $4.4 million spent by the lower chamber, more than $4 million went to “contracted professional services,” which the auditor’s report described as “costs for attorneys, investigators, and other related costs.”

House records released in late 2023 show that invoices topped $3.5 million for the two renowned Houston attorneys who led the case against Paxton, Rusty Hardin and Dick DeGuerin.

Additionally, the auditor’s office found that the Texas Senate spent $435,000 on costs that included lawmakers’ per diem payments, travel, and producing the journal documenting the trial. The Attorney General’s Office spent an additional $230,000, while two other agencies — the Texas Legislative Reference Library and the Texas Legislative Council — combined to spend roughly $8,500.

The auditor’s report came at the request of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has spent more than a year pressuring the House to reveal its impeachment expenses. Patrick, a Republican who oversees the Senate and presided over Paxton’s trial, previously alleged that the House “spent like drunken sailors on shore leave” on the case.

Paxton’s impeachment created enormous strife between Patrick and former Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, who supported the impeachment effort. Earlier this month, the Lt. Governor wrote on social media that Phelan’s successor, Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, handed over “detailed expenditures” that Patrick then turned over to the State Auditor’s Office.

In a statement Friday, Patrick thanked Burrows for “his commitment to transparency” and slammed Phelan, saying the report showed he “frivolously wasted taxpayer funds for an ill-fated political gambit.”

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

SAN ANTONIO – The San Antonio Report says that Texas lawmakers are proposing a host of ideas to make it tougher for local governments to borrow money — the natural next step in a yearslong effort to take greater control of spending at the municipal level. If successful, bond elections like the ones San Antonio has used to finance hundreds of major projects in recent years will require two-thirds support from voters instead of a simple majority. They would also have to appear on a November ballot, instead of May, as the city has done in recent years. Gov. Greg Abbott set the wheels in motion for such changes in this year’s State of the State address, which are now laid out in House Bill 2736. Unlike some other revenue-limiting measures the state has approved in recent years, it would apply to all political subdivisions, including cities and counties of all sizes, as well as school districts.

“This is a very important taxpayer protection that ensures that a small minority of voters are not responsible for massive tax increases,” said James Quintero, policy director for the right-leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Taxpayer Protection Project, which is supporting the bill. A bond program allows a municipal government to issue debt to finance large projects, using just a portion of their property tax revenues to repay the loan over time. Often, cities are leveraging their future growth, since tax revenues rise as more people move into the community and home values increase. In a city like San Antonio, where the average resident’s income is relatively low compared to other cities, city leaders say bond programs have been a helpful tool to finance community priorities while keeping the individual tax burden relatively low. The city’s 2022 bond program, for example, is expected to finance 183 projects totaling $1.2 billion, while keeping the debt service portion of residents’ tax bills the same as they were before.

AUSTIN – Texas lawmakers agree that the answer to the state’s looming water crisis is to invest billions of dollars into fixing the problem. What they don’t agree on, at least for now, is exactly how to spend the money.

State. Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, and state Rep. Cody Harris, R-Palestine, filed bills this month that take big swings at solving the ongoing water issues plaguing Texas. They include investing billions of dollars into repairing and upgrading aging infrastructure like water pipes, as well as creating new water sources for the future.

The discussion comes at an important time — a Texas Tribune analysis found the state could face a severe water shortage by 2030 if there was a recurring, statewide record-breaking drought and if state leaders and water entities failed to use strategies that secure water supplies.

A pair of proposals — Senate Joint Resolution 66 and House Joint Resolution 7 — would allocate up to $1 billion a year to boost water projects. Their accompanying bills, House Bill 16 and Senate Bill 7, both would create new water committees to oversee the funding and promote investment into new water projects.

Gov. Greg Abbott has declared water an emergency item for this legislative session, which means the bills could be on a fast track in the Legislature.

Both proposals would funnel up to $1 billion a year to the Texas Water Fund — a special account voters approved in 2023 to help pay for water projects.

Perry’s resolution calls for 80% of the money to fund projects to create new water supplies and 20% to repair aging infrastructure. Harris’ resolution does not specify how the money would be split and would leave the structure how it is — letting the Texas Water Development Board decide how to prioritize projects.

The debate around the bills centers on whether to prioritize projects for new water sources or repairing aging water pipes that leak massive amounts of water throughout the state.

Water experts agree that projects to create new sources of water need to be funded. However, there is concern about neglecting repairs on water pipes around the state.

A Texas 2036 report estimated that the state needs nearly $154 billion by 2050 for water infrastructure, including $59 billion for water supply projects, $74 billion for leaky pipes and infrastructure maintenance, and $21 billion to fix broken wastewater systems.

Perry Fowler, executive director of the Texas Water Infrastructure Network, said the House and Senate will have to find a balance to move water legislation forward.

“I don’t think anybody takes issue with the fact that we need to invest in new water supplies,” Fowler said. “But there is a tremendous need to address aging infrastructure. We have a lot of immediate needs, like yesterday.”

Texas is looking to desalination to remove salt from seawater or brackish groundwater to create more water for drinking, irrigation and industrial uses.

Another strategy would be treating produced water, which is wastewater that comes out of the ground during oil and gas production. According to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, every barrel of oil produced also generates five barrels of wastewater.

Perry lists both options as eligible for state money in Senate Bill 7. He also acknowledged that old pipes are leaking massive amounts of water every year, calling that primarily a local issue.

“But I’m willing to leverage tax dollars, as we have in the past, and work on that at the same time,” Perry said. “But supply has to be priority one.”

Jennifer Walker, director for the Texas Coast and Water Program for National Wildlife Federation, said repairing old, leaking infrastructure should be considered a new water supply and urges lawmakers to be more liberal in that definition.

“Stopping that [water] loss and delivering more drops to customers, that is a new water supply for our communities,” she said. “We’re not delivering it to our customers otherwise, unless we address that.”

A 2022 report by Texas Living Waters Project, a coalition of environmental groups, estimated that Texas water systems lose at least 572,000 acre-feet per year, or about 51 gallons of water per home or business connection every day — enough water to meet the total annual municipal needs of Austin, El Paso, Fort Worth, Laredo and Lubbock combined.

Some of Texas’ water infrastructure is nearly as old as the state itself — the oldest pipes date back to as early as the 1890s. In 2019, Little Bill’s Plumbing in Pampa unearthed a wooden water pipe that experts believed could have been used before the city was incorporated.

Tom Gooch, vice president and a water resource planner with Freese and Nichols, said much of Texas’ water infrastructure is nearing the end of its useful life, but repairs remain largely a local responsibility — and funding is limited.

“The tradition in Texas has been that this kind of maintenance and repair tends to be a local responsibility.”

Many pipes across the state are over 100 years old, and underground pipes can be damaged when the ground around them expands and contracts during droughts and wetter weather cycles. Corrosion and leaks are hard to detect, and with thousands of miles of underground pipes, repairs are expensive and time-consuming.

Sources like the State Water Implementation Fund for Texas give local governments money to help, but there are more funding requests than the Water Development Board can fund.

Most of the experts agree that both new water supply and fixing deteriorating infrastructure is important. However, some think it would be best to keep giving the water development board discretion over how state money is spent.

Fowler, with the Texas Water Infrastructure Network, said he believes a lot of people supported the structure of the Texas Water Fund before because it was set up in a way to give flexibility to the board.

“If we’re too prescriptive, then it could potentially impact our overall spending power and what we can actually do,” Fowler said.

During a House committee meeting this week, Sarah Kirkle with the Texas Water Association testified in support of the House Joint Resolution. She said it would allow communities to meet new growth needs, upgrade existing facilities and fix broken lines. She was also in support of keeping the power to prioritize spending with the Water Development Board.

Gooch said repairing and keeping old infrastructure running is essential.

“I don’t know that you can rank it, you’ve got to do both,” Gooch said. “You’ve got to keep your system functioning well, and you’ve got to go find additional water to put into the system, to appropriately use your resources to get both those things done.”

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

AUSTIN – The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR) reports that it has issued six-month emergency closure orders effective March 19, 2025, that closes two DFW massage establishments for suspected human trafficking.

The shops, SY Foot on Belt Line road in Garland and Happy Feet Massage on Oakmont boulevard in Fort Worth, were ordered to halt operations. During two different inspections of the Garland location and one inspection of the Fort Worth location, TDLR inspectors and local Police Department officers found several indicators of possible human trafficking. These indicators included people living on the premises and items that are prohibited in a massage establishment. An online investigation also found that the locations was advertising on illicit webs sites. The Garland Police Department had received several complaints about possible human trafficking at the location.

In a House Bill passed in the 88th State Legislative Regular Session, the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation’s executive director can issue an emergency order halting the operation of any massage establishment if law enforcement or TDLR believes human trafficking is occurring at the establishment. Chiping Zhang, the owner and operator of two massage establishments, was so ordered to halt operations, and is also prohibited from operating different massage establishments at these locations for six months.

TEXAS – When it comes to gas prices, it’s that time of year. The nation’s average price of gasoline has risen for the first time in over a month, increasing 6.3 cents compared to a week ago and stands at $3.08 per gallon, according to GasBuddy® data compiled from more than 12 million individual price reports covering over 150,000 gas stations across the country. The national average is down 1.6 cents from a month ago and is 42.5 cents per gallon lower than a year ago. The national average price of diesel has decreased 0.9 cents in the last week and stands at $3.549 per gallon.

“For the first time in over a month, the national average price of gasoline has risen, driven by the final step in the transition to summer gasoline across wide portions of the country,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy. “This increase has nothing to do with politics or tariffs — which remain paused for now — but is instead the result of seasonality, and is something that happens almost every year. Concerns over refinery maintenance have been muted so far this year, largely due to broader concerns about the U.S. economy, and demand remains soft. However, for those in the Northeastern U.S. who have enjoyed relatively low gas prices compared to the national average, the final step in the transition to summer gasoline is still a few weeks away. Once it occurs, they too will likely see prices rise. For areas that have already completed the switch, ongoing economic uncertainty will likely prevent further major increases — for now.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from a Texas death row inmate whose bid for a new trial drew the support of the prosecutor’s office that originally put him on death row.

The justices left in place a Texas appeals court ruling that upheld the murder conviction and death sentence for Areli Escobar, even though Escobar’s case is similar to that of an Oklahoma man, Richard Glossip, whose murder conviction the high court recently overturned.

There was no explanation from the justices about why Escobar’s appeal met a different fate.

Unlike in Glossip’s case, Escobar is not facing imminent execution.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has twice rejected Escobar’s appeals. The first time followed a lower court decision ordering a new trial after the judge identified problems with the evidence. More recently, the appeals court again ruled against Escobar after the Supreme Court had ordered it to reconsider.

Escobar was convicted and sentenced to death in the May 2009 fatal stabbing and sexual assault of Bianca Maldonado, a 17-year-old high school student in Austin. They lived in the same apartment complex.

The focus of the prosecution case against Escobar was evidence from the Austin Police Department’s DNA lab.

But a later audit turned up problems at the lab that led Judge David Wahlberg of the Travis County District Court to conclude that Escobar’s trial was unfair.

“The State’s use of unreliable, false, or misleading DNA evidence to secure (Escobar’s) conviction violated fundamental concepts of justice,” Wahlberg wrote.

When the case returned to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Travis County prosecutors no longer were defending the conviction. Voters had elected a new district attorney, Jose Garza, who ran on a promise to hold police accountable in Austin, the state capital and county seat.

In Glossip’s case, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond backed the call to throw out the conviction and death sentence because the discovery of new evidence persuaded him Glossip did not have a fair trial.

The justices agreed, ruling that prosecutors’ decision to allow a key witness to give testimony they knew to be false violated Glossip’s constitutional right to a fair trial.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is halfway to the next once-a-decade census, but the Supreme Court is still dealing with lawsuits that grew out of the last one.

The justices on Monday are taking up a challenge to Louisiana’s congressional map, which was drawn so that, for the first time, two of its six districts have majority Black populations that elected Black Democrats to Congress. Black Louisianans make up about one-third of the state’s population.

Just two years ago, the court ruled 5-4 that Alabama discriminated against Black voters by adopting a congressional map with just one majority Black district, in violation of the landmark federal Voting Rights Act.

The Louisiana case features an unusual alliance of the Republican-led state government, which added a second majority Black district to essentially comply with the Alabama ruling, and civil rights groups that more often find themselves fighting the state’s redistricting plans.

A decision should come by late June.

How did we get here?

It has been a winding road. The court fight over Louisiana’s congressional districts has lasted three years. Two maps were blocked by lower courts, and the Supreme Court has intervened twice. Most recently, the court ordered the new map to be used in the 2024 election.

The state’s Republican-dominated legislature drew a new congressional map in 2022 to account for population shifts reflected in the 2020 Census. But the changes effectively maintained the status quo of five Republican-leaning majority white districts and one Democratic-leaning majority Black district.

Civil rights advocates won a lower court ruling that the districts likely discriminated against Black voters.

The Supreme Court put the ruling on hold while it took up the Alabama case. The justices allowed both states to use congressional maps in the 2022 elections even though both had been ruled likely discriminatory by federal judges.

The high court eventually affirmed the ruling from Alabama, which led to a new map and a second district that could elect a Black lawmaker. The justices returned the Louisiana case to federal court, with the expectation that new maps would be in place for the 2024 elections.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave lawmakers in Louisiana a deadline of early 2024 to draw a new map or face the possibility of a court-imposed map.

The state complied and drew a new map.

The court must decide: politics or race?

One of the questions before the court is whether race was the predominant factor driving the new map. That’s what white Louisiana voters claimed in their separate lawsuit challenging the new districts. A three-judge court agreed.

But Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, and other state officials argue that politics, not race, helped set the boundaries. The congressional map provides politically safe districts for House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, fellow Republicans.

The decision “reflects the imminent reality that Louisiana would be projected to lose one of five Republican congressional seats” when a court or the legislature adopted a second majority Black district, state Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill wrote in court papers.

Some lawmakers have also noted that the Republican lawmaker whose district was greatly altered in the new map supported a GOP opponent of Landry in the 2023 governor’s race. Former Rep. Garret Graves chose not to seek reelection under the new map.

The Supreme Court faces a lurking issue

Louisiana argues that dueling lawsuits over redistricting make it almost impossible for states to know what to do. So the state has a suggestion that, if adopted, would mark an upheaval in redistricting.

The justices could declare that racial gerrymandering cases do not belong in federal courts, Murrill wrote.

The court’s conservative majority reached that conclusion for partisan gerrymandering in 2019. Justice Clarence Thomas said the court also should no longer decide race-based redistricting cases. “Drawing political districts is a task for politicians, not federal judges,” Thomas wrote last year in an opinion no other justice joined.

But the court doesn’t have to touch that issue to resolve the Louisiana case.

A Black Democrat won the new district

The reconfigured 6th Congressional District stretches across the state, linking parts of the Shreveport, Alexandria, Lafayette and Baton Rouge areas. The percentage of Black voters in the district jumped from about 25% to 55%, based on data collected by the state.

The district’s voters last year elected Cleo Fields, a Black Democrat. He returned to the House of Representatives, where he had served decades earlier.

New election dates

The state also has changed the state’s election process so that the so-called jungle primary will be replaced by partisan primary elections in the spring, followed by a November showdown between the party nominees.

The change means candidates can start gathering signatures in September to get on the primary ballot for 2026.

A Supreme Court decision invalidating the congressional map would leave little time to draw a new one before then.

SAN ANTOINIO – A federal judge in San Antonio has ruled that the state of Texas’ ID requirements for mail ballot applications are unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez on Thursday found that the provisions in the state’s 2021 voter security law SB1 discriminate against voters with disabilities.

Mail-in voters are principally people over the age of 65 and people with disabilities. Since the law was enacted, many voters reported having their ballots rejected because they didn’t provide an ID number, or the number they provided did not match the one the state had on file.

“The problem with that is that many Texans have more than one department of public safety ID number,” said Victor Genecin, an attorney with the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund. “So the first hurdle for a voter who’s applying for an absentee ballot is they may not know which number is in the election system. And even if they do know which number is in the election system and they put it in correctly, the election system may not have the number right.”

Genecin cited testimony at trial, where the Texas Secretary of State conceded that more than 650,000 registration records in their system were incorrect.

He added that expert testimony at the trial estimated that more than 2 million people were unable to vote due to the ID restrictions.

The ruling ordered the Texas secretary of state to remove the requirements from mail-in ballot applications. However, the ruling came just weeks before Texas’ municipal elections, so they will remain in effect through May 3.

Judge Rodriguez also struck down provisions of SB1 that require those who assist voters to swear an oath under penalty of perjury.

“Normally when somebody says to you, ‘would you help me?’ you either step up to help them or you don’t. But you don’t say, you know, ‘what’s wrong with you? Why do you need help?’ You just help,” Genecin said. “And so the idea that that people who are disabled must explain why they’re unable to vote without assistance is offensive in itself.”

Genecin added that part of the oath is that the assister must swear to be understanding that if the voter turns out not to be eligible for assistance, then the vote could be invalidated.

“So it puts the assister in the position of having to evaluate whether the voter is eligible for assistance, and the word ‘eligible’ is not defined anywhere in the statute,’ he said.

The state of Texas was expected to appeal.

Opponents of SB1 applauded the decision and called it a victory for voters with disabilities.

“It truly is such a victory for voting accessibility, and it affirms that our electoral system must protect and prioritize the right of every voter to be able to participate fully,” said Elsie Cooke-Holmes, International President and Board Chair of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., a co-plaintiff in the case. “It really does provide an opportunity for the 3 million plus voters with disabilities in Texas to be able to exercise their rights to vote without undue hardship. It ensures that their voices will be able to be heard, and that their votes will actually count.”

Judge Xavier Rodriguez ruled last fall that the state of Texas could no longer investigate voter assistance efforts as a criminal act. The state of Texas has appealed that ruling.

Cooke-Holmes said her organization sees momentum in the challenge to SB1.

“We know the fight is not over. We are going to continue to advocate for policies that eliminate all forms of voter suppression,” she said.

SB1, which was passed in the wake of President Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud without evidence following the 2020 election, also limited early voting hours, banned 24-hour voting, eliminated drive-thru voting centers, limited multiple drop-off locations for mail ballots, limited the distribution of mail-in ballot applications and expanded the authority of partisan poll watchers.

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

HOUSTON (AP) — Houston police are looking for two suspects after six men were shot and wounded early Sunday at an after-hours nightclub.

Four of the wounded are in critical condition, said Assistant Chief James Skelton during a news conference. He provided no information on the conditions of the two other victims.

Dispatchers were called around 3 a.m. to the packed nightclub, which was still serving drinks after the city’s bars are supposed to be closed, Skelton said.

He said police are reviewing video and talking to witnesses, but the preliminary investigation suggests that the people involved knew each other. He described it as an “isolated attack” that illustrates the problems of after-hours clubs.

“Establishments like this, that harbor within our city, contribute to crime,” Skelton said. “So the Houston Police Department, we are targeting these locations, and we’re going to shut them down because it harbors the DWIs and the assaults, and that’s exactly what we saw here tonight.”

Officers are looking for a black car with the two suspects in it, he added.

DALLAS (AP) – History buffs dove into thousands of pages of government records released online this week, hoping for new nuggets about President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. They instead found revelations about U.S. espionage in the massive document dump that also exposed some previously redacted personal information.

The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration posted more than 63,000 pages of records on its website, following an executive order from President Donald Trump. Many of the documents had been released previously but with redactions that hid the names of CIA sources or details about its spying and covert operations in the 1960s.

Kennedy was killed on Nov. 22, 1963, during a visit to Dallas. As his motorcade finished its parade route downtown, shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald, who had positioned himself from a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor. Two days later, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer broadcast live on television.

The latest release of documents pumped new energy into conspiracy theories about the assassination. Kennedy scholars said they haven’t seen anything out of line with the conclusion that Oswald, a 24-year-old ex-Marine, was the lone gunman.

“The chase for the truth will go on forever, I suspect,” said Philip Shenon, who wrote a 2013 book about the killing of JFK.
It’s a big document dump, but it doesn’t include everything

The vast majority of the National Archives’ collection of more than 6 million related pages of records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artifacts had already been released before the archives posted about 2,200 files online this week.

Writers, historians and conspiracy promoters have spent decades pushing for the release of all the records. In the early 1990s, the federal government mandated that all assassination-related documents be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration. The collection was required to be opened by 2017, barring any exemptions designated by the president.

According to researchers and the FBI, roughly 3,700 files held by federal authorities still haven’t been released.

Trump’s order also called for declassifying the remaining federal records related to the 1968 assassinations of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Scholars describe a chaotic release

Scholars and history buffs described the latest release as rushed and expressed frustration that going through the files one by one represented a random search for unreleased information.

“We’ve all heard the reports about the lawyers staying up all night, which I believe, because there’s there’s a lot of sloppiness in this,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of “The Kennedy Half-Century.”

Scholars and history buffs grumbled that, unlike past releases, the National Archives didn’t provide an index or workable search tool. Also, the files included material generated after the 1960s, and some people listed in the records were angry to find out that sensitive information about them was revealed, including Social Security numbers.

They include Joseph diGenova, a former campaign lawyer for Trump. His personal information was on documents relating to his work for a U.S. Senate select committee that investigated abuses of power by government officials in the 1970s, including the surveillance of U.S. citizens.

He is planning to sue the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration for violating privacy laws.

“I think it’s the result of incompetent people doing the reviewing,” he said. “The people who reviewed these documents did not do their job.”

White House officials said a plan was in place to help those whose personal information was disclosed, including credit monitoring, until new Social Security numbers are issued. Officials are still screening the records to identify all the Social Security numbers that were released.
New details about covert CIA operations

The latest release represented a boon to mainstream historians, particularly those researching international relations, the Cold War and the activities of the CIA.

One revelation was that a key adviser warned President Kennedy after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 that the CIA had grown too powerful. The aide proposed giving the State Department control of “all clandestine activities” and breaking up the CIA.

The page of Special Assistant Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s memo outlining the proposal had not been released before. A previous release of part of his memo redacted Schlesinger’s statement that 47% of the political officers in U.S. embassies were controlled by the CIA.

Schlesinger’s plan never came to fruition.

Timothy Naftali, an adjunct professor at Columbia University who is writing a book about JFK’s presidency, said scholars likely now have more details about U.S. intelligence activities under Kennedy than under any other president.

“It’s quite remarkable to be able to walk through that secret world,” he said.

____

This story has been updated to correct that the date of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination was Nov. 22, 1963, not Nov. 23.