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ANGELINA COUNTY (KETK) — A Lufkin man was pronounced dead on Monday afternoon after his vehicle reportedly drove off U.S. Highway 59 and into the Neches River, officials said.

According to a preliminary report from the Texas Department of Public Safety, the crash occurred at around 1:43 p.m. near the Polk and Angelina County line. A 2022 Ford Bronco was traveling north on the highway before reportedly traveling off the road, down an embankment and into the Neches River.

DPS identified the driver as 71-year-old Theodore Fajen III of Lufkin, who was pronounced dead on the scene by a justice of the peace.

The investigation remains ongoing and no information is available at this time, DPS said.

HOUSTON (AP) – Camp Mystic filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization on Wednesday, nearly a year after catastrophic floods killed 25 girls and two teenage counselors at the all-girls Christian camp in Texas. In paperwork filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of Texas in Houston, the camp listed its debt as exceeding $10 million. The camp along the Guadalupe River said it had assets in the range of 100,001 to $500,000.

Families of the victims filed a lawsuit in November saying the camp operators failed to take the necessary steps to protect the girls as life-threatening floodwaters approached on July 4. Camp owner Richard Eastland also died in the flood. All told, the destructive flooding killed at least 136 people along a several-mile stretch of the river, raising questions about how things went so terribly wrong.

The bankruptcy filing comes weeks after Camp Mystic halted plans to reopen this summer in the face of outrage from victims’ families and lawmakers that the century-old camp intended to welcome girls back while lawsuits and investigations remained ongoing.

AUSTIN, Texas (KETK) — As Texas continues to attract major technology investments, state lawmakers are raising concerns about how the rapid growth of data centers could affect water supplies, particularly in rural parts of East Texas.

The Texas House Committee on Natural Resources held a hearing Tuesday to examine the industry’s water demands as state officials work on the next Texas State Water Plan ahead of the 2027 legislative session.

Much of the discussion centered on whether the state has enough information to accurately predict future water needs as more data centers move into Texas.

Temple McKinnon, director of Water Supply Planning Divisions for the Texas Water Development Board, testified that the agency surveyed industrial facilities, including 341 data centers, earlier this year to better understand water usage in 2025. However, only about 17% of facilities responded.

That response rate drew criticism from lawmakers.

McKinnon acknowledged the low participation and said the agency relies on historical data and estimates when survey responses are unavailable.

“Many facilities, there’s low response rates across the board, there can be, and when we don’t get a response, we do whatever we can to estimate around it. We might roll that over depending on past use,” McKinnon said.

Lawmakers questioned whether those estimates are sufficient given the pace at which data centers are being developed across the state.

State Rep. Trent Ashby, R-Lufkin, shifted the conversation toward East Texas, where he said some counties lack groundwater conservation districts that monitor and regulate groundwater use.

Ashby asked McKinnon whether a data center located in a county without a groundwater conservation district would face any restrictions on groundwater pumping:

“So if you’re in a county with a data center or proposed data center and there is no GCD (groundwater conservation district), there is no requirement or obstacle if you’re a data center to overcome to pump as much groundwater as you want, am I correct?” Ashby asked.

“There would be no entity in place to regulate that use, yes,” McKinnon responded.

The exchange highlighted concerns from some East Texas residents who worry that growing industrial water demands could strain local groundwater supplies in areas with limited oversight.

Ashby said he has heard from constituents concerned that future data center development could impact water availability for rural communities that depend on wells and aquifers.
Google announces $10M Texas water impact fund; makes data center water use pledges

Lawmakers emphasized that additional studies and more accurate reporting will be necessary to understand the long-term impact that data centers could have on Texas water resources and to determine whether current planning efforts adequately account for future growth.

Texans remain wary of the rapid growth of data centers, citing concerns like noise, water use, energy demand, and land impact. A UT Austin Texas Politics Project poll reflects that sentiment, showing 56% oppose local data?center construction while 29% support it. Still, lawmakers noted a competing pressure: the national?security risk of falling behind China in the race for advanced artificial intelligence.

Throughout the hearing, multiple county?level officials urged the Legislature to give local governments more authority to block or regulate data?center projects. They argued that communities should have a stronger voice in deciding whether these facilities fit their long?term development goals.

The hearing remained underway Tuesday afternoon. Committee Chairman State Rep. Cody Harris, R-Palestine, said discussions could continue into the evening as lawmakers gather information to help shape future water policy and planning efforts across Texas.

DETROIT (AP) – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is retreating from a plan to use warehouses to hold up to 10,000 people on a single site, jettisoning a key piece of former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s $38-billion plan to rapidly expand detention capacity this year.

The federal government, which was sued by Michigan and a Detroit suburb, informed a judge Monday that a warehouse purchased in Romulus will be sold. Plans also are unraveling in Social Circle, Georgia, and the El Paso suburb of Socorro, local officials said.

The three cities are among 11 where the federal government spent a combined $1.074 billion on warehouses.

The New York Times first reported last week that federal immigration officials now plan to get rid of seven of the 11 warehouses — either giving them to other federal agencies or selling them outright.

DHS didn’t confirm the reports but said in a statement that it is “moving swiftly to utilize EXISTING detention space with our state and county partners.”
Pushback to warehouse purchases was immediate

“Wildly foolhardy” is how Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former ICE official under the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations described the plans to convert the buildings into immigrant detention.

One issue was that Noem’s purchases were largely carried out of public view and angered communities that were caught by surprise. Some only learned about ICE’s ambitions after the agency bought or leased space for detainees.

After Noem was fired, her replacement, Markwayne Mullin, quickly paused the purchase of new warehouses.

Objections came from Republicans and Democrats alike

Some were opposed on moral grounds to ICE’s presence in their neighborhoods, while others questioned whether the facilities would be a drain on local resources, such as sewer and water systems.

Seven federal lawsuits were filed, and regulatory roadblocks created hassles elsewhere.

Meanwhile, questions about how much DHS paid for some warehouses triggered an internal audit. The agency shelled out double what the New Jersey warehouse was valued at in tax records and nearly five times more than the assessed value of the Social Circle warehouse.

Trickler-McNulty, the former ICE official, said ICE does have a few facilities that it owns that it inherited from its predecessor agency, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, but generally ICE has contracted out its detention needs.

“Facilities over 2,000 people just break down. It’s very hard to run a very big facility, to keep it staffed, to keep all of it moving,” she said.
Former head of plumbing business takes over for Noem

Mullin, who took over and expanded his family’s plumbing business before representing Oklahoma in the U.S House and Senate, acknowledged there had been issues at his confirmation hearing.

He noted that most municipalities don’t have the capacity in their infrastructure for waste and water.

Indeed the water issues were such a challenge that a federal lawsuit filed over the Salt Lake City warehouse, the costliest purchased at $145.4 million, said ICE officials told the mayor that they might need to truck water and sewage from the facility as an “interim solution.”

Plans begin to unravel

The New York Times story, which cited internal documents that the newspaper obtained, said the Salt Lake City warehouse is among those that federal immigration officials plans to hand off or sell. Also on the list is the Romulus warehouse, as well as one in New Jersey and two each in Georgia and Pennsylvania.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said it would have been an “abomination” if the 249,000-square-foot Romulus warehouse was transformed into immigrant detention, as was planned when it was purchased for $34.7 million,

“The ICE warehouse proposal was every bit as ill-conceived as it was cruel and unnecessary, and I am relieved that this chapter is coming to a close,” Nessel, a Democrat, said.

Social Circle, Georgia, announced last week in a statement that it has received notification from U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, a Republican, that the Department of Homeland Security is no longer pursuing an ICE detention facility there.

Meanwhile, acting ICE Director David Venturella told officials in the El Paso area during a visit there earlier this month that the agency has changed its plans for three warehouses it purchased in nearby Socorro for $122 million, said Rep. Veronica Escobar, who was present for the visit.

Escobar, a Democrat who represents El Paso, said during a news conference that ICE no longer plans to detain up to 8,500 immigrants in the facilities as originally envisioned, and instead will convert the property into an ICE campus, she said. The site will include an unspecified smaller number of detainees but also ICE offices and training space, she said.
Frustrations persist as communities seek details

However, many of the communities remained frustrated, as they struggled to get information about possible sales.

In Pennsylvania, state and local officials said Tuesday that they hadn’t received any new information from DHS about two warehouses bought earlier this year by the department. Both are being held up by the state’s denial of permits over concerns that drinking water and sewer service are inadequate to handle thousands of inhabitants.

U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser, whose district includes both warehouses, said he met Friday with DHS personnel, but that the agency hadn’t made a decision whether to use them as detention centers or sell them.

In Georgia, the city manager in Oakwood, said Tuesday he is talking to his state congressional delegation, trying to confirm rumors that a warehouse there will be sold. “I have not heard anything yet,” B.R. White said.
Work appears to continue on other warehouses

In Maryland, where a judge extended a stoppage on transforming a sprawling warehouse into a processing facility for immigrants, ICE is currently collecting public comments about the environmental impacts of the facility. And an announcement earlier this month disclosed more details on plans for the facility, including six secure recreation yards.

Patrick Dattilio, the founder of Hagerstown Rapid Response, which formed in opposition to housing ICE detainees in the warehouse, said there has been little communication outside of the lawsuit. But he remains committed to keeping it from opening.

“It’s a big warehouse,” Dattilio said. “It’s not meant for people.”

POLK COUNTY (KETK) — After a two week trial, a Polk County jury has found David Stimmell guilty of murder on Friday in connection to a 2024 shooting in Onalaska that left one person dead and two injured.

On Jan. 2, 2024, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office responded to a shooting in the Kickapoo Marina subdivision. Upon arrival, detectives then located and identified a dead male at the residence, identified as 50-year-old James McClanahan.

Detectives later found and identified another person injured and Stimmell, who had gunshot wounds. Polk County Sheriff’s Office detectives and Texas Rangers were able to locate several witnesses who identified many involved parties. Following an investigation, Stimmell was booked into the Polk County Jail and charged with murder, tampering with evidence and violation of protective order with a bond totaling over $1 million.

During the trial this month, evidence presented established that a confrontation at the residence had occurred, which escalated into the deadly shooting, the Polk County District Attorney’s Office said.

“Multiple witnesses testified regarding the events leading up to the shooting and the actions that occurred during the incident,” the DA’s office said. “The jury heard testimony from eyewitnesses, law enforcement officers and other expert witnesses as the State presented evidence detailing the circumstances surrounding the offense.”

On Tuesday, the DA’s office announced that Stimmell had been convicted of murder in the death of McClanahan.

“The successful prosecution of this case reflects the teamwork, dedication, and professionalism of all law enforcement involved, including the investigators, prosecutors, paralegals, and victim assistance staff who worked tirelessly to seek justice for James McClanahan and his loved ones,” Polk County Criminal District Attorney Shelly Sitton said. “The District Attorney’s office joined by the Polk County Sheriff’s Office remains committed to holding violent offenders accountable and ensuring the safety of our community.”

FORT WORTH (AP) — Eight protesters accused by the Justice Department of having ties to antifa were sentenced Tuesday to decades in federal prison over a shooting outside a Texas immigration detention center that wounded a police officer and prosecutors called an act of terrorism.

One of the defendants, a former U.S. Marine Corps reservist convicted of opening fire during the July 4 demonstration outside the Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas, was sentenced to 100 years in prison, the maximum punishment.

The lengthy sentences were condemned by family members and supporters in a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Fort Worth. Hope Song, whose son Benjamin Song received the heftiest sentence, disputed prosecutors’ claims that her son shot the officer and said he didn’t intend to hurt anyone.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, one of two judges overseeing the proceedings, said what happened wasn’t a protest but “an assault on democracy.”

“The need to deter this type of conduct is high,” O’Connor said.

The seven other protesters received prison terms ranging from 30 to 70 years.

Prosecutors said the eight are members of antifa, a decentralized anti-fascist organization and a target of the Trump administration. Antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.

President Donald Trump last fall signed an executive order designating antifa a domestic terrorist organization, even though there is no domestic equivalent to the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations.

The defendants deny any affiliation with antifa and maintain they attended the demonstration in support of detained immigrants.

Prosecutor Frank Gatto urged the judge to impose stiff penalties.

“People with that kind of extremist beliefs need extra time in prison,” Gatto said. “They believe violence is justified.”

Phillip Hayes, Song’s attorney, said outside the courthouse that he takes issue with the idea that the protesters are extremists.

“This is a bunch of kids and young adults who really have a really big heart and really wanted their voice to be heard,” Hayes said. “It was never intended that anybody get hurt. It was never intended that any shots would be fired.”

Prosecutors said in court that Song had yelled “get to the rifles” and opened fire, striking a police officer who had just pulled up to the center.

Hayes argued that Song’s shots were “suppressive fire” and that a ricochet bullet hit the officer after he arrived on the scene and “aggressively” pulled out his firearm. He said his client will appeal the 100-year sentence.

“Song, aside from this day, has had an impeccable life. A former Marine. A good student,” Hayes said. “He had a lot of good qualities that were just ignored. The judge went ahead and gave as much as he could.”

Other defendants and their family members pleaded for leniency in court.

Autumn Hill said the gathering “seemed more like a party to me than anything else” and that she and others who participated “didn’t expect or want any violence or destruction of property to occur.”

Amber Lowrey told the judge that her sister, Savanna Batten, is a compassionate person with dreams of opening a bakery. She said Batten’s activism started with animal rights and evolved into anti-war and human rights advocacy.

“She’s the best person I know,” Lowrey said.

Hill and Batten both received 50-year sentences.

Other defendants previously pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists rather than take their case to trial.

Critics warn the case could have wide-reaching impact on protests given that organizations operating within the U.S. are supposed to be protected by First Amendment free-speech rights.

Last week, federal prosecutors charged 15 people with impeding the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota. They claimed the demonstrators were members of antifa who conspired against the federal government to block arrests and deportations by setting up blockades around government buildings and throwing chunks of ice at federal vehicles, among other actions.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate passed a bipartisan housing bill on Monday that aims to reduce federal regulations and expand local control, one of the most sweeping efforts in recent decades to increase supply and bring down prices.

The bill, which passed 85-5 and now heads to the House, has been the focus of intense negotiations in recent weeks as lawmakers in both parties try to address housing costs in an election year. The final version of the legislation bans corporate investors from buying single-family homes but doesn’t include a Senate provision that would have required investors to sell newly constructed homes within seven years.

The measure was the result of years of work to “lower costs, expand housing supply, cut red tape, protect taxpayers, and help more Americans achieve the dream of homeownership,” said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott, R-S.C., who worked with Democrats to get the bill passed.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the banking panel, said it is the most significant housing bill to pass Congress since 1990, when the average home in America was sold for $150,000. Now it costs more than $500,000, she said.

The bill “acknowledges that the federal government has a role to play in lowering housing prices,” Warren told The Associated Press. “For the first time ever, private equity will be blocked from buying up single-family homes and trying to turn housing into one more Wall Street investment.”

Senate passage of the bill shapes up as a rare bipartisan legislative achievement when much of Republicans’ agenda has stalled. The House is expected to give final approval later this week and send the bill to President Donald Trump, who has signaled his support.

Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California, who helped negotiate the legislation, said it was a “huge step toward finally addressing the affordable housing and homelessness crises in this country.”

Housing costs are a concern for both parties

Republicans and Democrats have embraced the bill as a way to show they are addressing the nation’s affordability crisis, driven in part by rising home prices due to a shortage of affordable housing. The U.S. housing market has been in a slump dating back to 2022, when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows.

Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes have been hovering close to a 4-million annual pace going back to 2023 — well short of the 5.2-million annual pace that’s historically been the norm. Sales slowed last year to a 30-year low and have remained sluggish so far this year, declining in January and February versus a year earlier.

The Economic Report of the President in April found a shortage of 10 million homes, while a report this month from the Joint Center For Housing Studies at Harvard University found sales of existing homes were at three-decade lows and inventories were rising due to high home buying costs. “Cost burdens for both renters and owners continue to climb, while assistance remains profoundly underfunded,” the report said.

While the median U.S. monthly rent has been declining for nearly three years, it was still 17.2% higher in May than it was before the pandemic, according to data from Realtor.com.

Changes for grants, Section 8 and manufactured housing

To increase the supply of housing, the bill would streamline environmental reviews and speed up the construction process.

It would offer funding to local governments that build more housing, including Community Development Block Grant money to places exceeding the median rate of homebuilding. It would also provide new dollars for communities to turn abandoned infrastructure into housing, and offers a framework for communities that want to reform outdated zoning regulations, which often limit larger housing developments.

The legislation would allow banks to invest more in affordable housing and raise limits on the number of public housing units that can receive private financing through Section 8 funding to rehabilitate properties. And it would remove outdated requirements and expand federal financing to make manufactured homes more affordable.

“Manufactured housing produces some of the most cost-effective housing in America, but access to financing has been tightly restricted,” Warren said. “This creates the opportunity for more manufactured housing and, at the same time, creates a structure for people living in manufactured housing communities to organize and protect their investment in their homes.”

Lawmakers compromised on a disaster program

One of the sticking points between the two chambers was over a federal disaster recovery program.

An earlier Senate bill had permanently authorized block grant recovery funds, a change intended to ensure that funding requests aren’t needed after every disaster. House lawmakers opposed that provision because of concerns over how the program was run, so they agreed on a three-year authorization instead.

The final bill has received widespread support in the housing community, both from organizations representing landlords and large property owners as well as groups that advocate for tenants and low-income renters.

“There is no magic wand that will fix this crisis overnight, and no single piece of legislation is perfect,” said David Dworkin, chief executive of the National Housing Conference, the nation’s oldest housing coalition.

“Compromise demands that. But this bill is a significant down payment on a long-term effort to make housing more affordable for all Americans.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Monday ruled that a recently revamped version of a federal tool central to the Trump administration’s efforts to nationalize elections can no longer be used.

U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan sided with advocacy groups that argued the recent upgrades to the program, called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, aggregated Americans’ sensitive personal data in a way that could result in voters being wrongly purged from voter rolls.

“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan said in an order explaining the decision. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

She said Congress had expressly prohibited the government from centralizing Americans’ personal identifying information and that the federal agencies that created the SAVE program “knew that the database violates those statutory protections.”

The decision is a major legal setback for President Donald Trump in his efforts to use federal agencies to encourage a nationwide crackdown on having noncitizens illegally on state voter rolls. The modified SAVE system, which critics had referred to as an unlawful centralized federal database of voter information, had been a key pillar of the second election executive order the Republican president signed earlier this year. The ruling leaves its future uncertain.

“It’s amazing how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solving problems they insist do not exist,” James Percival, general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, said of the ruling in a social media post.

DHS referred to his post as its comment on the ruling. The Department of Justice said in an emailed statement that it would “continue to aggressively defend President Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda and DHS’s use of the SAVE system to verify citizenship.”

Voting by noncitizens was already rare

The executive order seeking to create a national voter list is among numerous steps Trump has taken during his second term to try to overhaul the way elections are run. He also has tried to force voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, ban mail ballots from counting if they are received after Election Day and prohibit the Postal Service from mailing ballots to people not on an approved list of voters. Most of those steps have been blocked by various courts, in part because the Constitution gives states and Congress the authority to set election rules, but provides no such power to the president.

Voting by noncitizens is already illegal and punishable as a potential felony that could lead to deportation. It also is rare, accounting for just a tiny fraction of those on state voter rolls,

The SAVE program was created under an immigration law mandating that DHS help federal, state and local agencies prevent government benefits from going to noncitizens. At least 25 states used it to check their voter rolls since April 2025, after the Trump administration significantly expanded its search abilities. Since then, at least 67 million registrations have been scanned through the program, but critics worry it could end up purging valid voters from the rolls.

Anthony Nel was one of those whose registrations were wrongly flagged. The South Africa native became a U.S. citizen more than a decade ago but had his voter registration in Denton, Texas, north of Dallas, canceled temporarily last year after Texas ran its voter file through SAVE. The check wrongly identified him as a potential noncitizen.

“I hope others can see this fight and not take their right to vote for granted,” he said in a text message.

Right to keep Americans’ data private is at heart of the case

The plaintiffs, including the League of Women Voters, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and five unnamed U.S. citizens, had alleged the revamped SAVE program violated Americans’ privacy and voting rights. The groups also alleged the Trump administration violated federal privacy laws by ignoring transparency requirements about the changes to the system.

“The agencies were scrambling to comply with an Executive Order aimed at reshaping federal elections, which directed them to create a system for mass voter verification,” the judge wrote. “So they haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable.”

Plaintiffs attorney Nikhel Sus told the court during the October hearing that naturalized citizens face a greater risk of unlawfully being purged from voter rolls.

“They are uniquely vulnerable to errors in the database,” said Sus, an attorney for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Sus said Monday he sees Sooknanan’s ruling as an “across the board victory” and noted the plaintiffs were pleased the judge’s ruling reinforced their argument that the federal government doesn’t have implied authority to freely share sensitive data across agencies.

Mark Johnson, who teaches at the University of Kansas law school and regularly pursues lawsuits over election laws, said “it couldn’t be more clear” that the SAVE program violates federal privacy laws.

He said an executive order from Trump cannot override a federal law.

“It’s an illegal idea. Plus it’s a bad idea,” he said.

Elon Musk’s DOGE effort was crucial for updating the SAVE system

During the 2024 presidential campaign, as Trump pushed false claims of widespread noncitizen voting, Republican secretaries of state began requesting improvements to the SAVE system to make it more efficient for catching noncitizens on their rolls. One limitation was that the system had been able to check just a single individual at a time.

DHS, Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency delivered on those requests in 2025, according to public announcements. They made SAVE free for election officials, allowed agencies to search voters by the thousands and began permitting queries using names, birthdays and Social Security numbers, as opposed to requiring DHS-issued identification numbers.

Several secretaries of state have said the SAVE overhaul improved its value as one of multiple tools they use to assess voter citizenship. But in her ruling, Judge Sooknanan said the plaintiffs had shown that the updated system had indeed been identifying some lawful voters as noncitizens and that states using it “are actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information.”

HOUSTON (AP) – Parents of a 2-year-old girl involved in a drowning incident on Memorial Day have sued to stop Texas Children’s Hospital from testing if she’s brain dead, testing a new strategy in Texas’ “right to life” movement aimed at giving people as much access to life-supporting services as possible.

While most fights to keep patients on life support begin after they’ve been given a brain death diagnosis, Annelise Camp’s parents are battling the hospital at an earlier stage, the testing phase.

“This is not settled science,” said state Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, who has helped drive the public’s attention to the Camps, who live in Cypress.

Brain death is defined in Texas law as the irreversible cessation of brain function. Under the law, once a patient is declared brain dead, a hospital can withdraw life-sustaining measures.

According to court documents, the Camps say Annelise shouldn’t be tested for brain death so she can have more time to recover. They also ask that she be transferred to another hospital to explore other treatment options. However, Texas Children’s has stated it wants to conduct testing to determine next steps in her medical care and that it has no imminent plans to end care for Annelise.

This case has drawn the attention of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who posted on X in support of the Camp family: “I am closely monitoring this case and will act to protect this child and honor her parents’ efforts to save her.” Influential anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life has started working with the family, too.

Given growing attention to the Camp family’s fight, bioethics and legal experts say that this could empower other families to fight brain testing, which is becoming more common. The case has already inspired at least one lawmaker to create new laws and build on Texas’ existing laws that protect the rights of patients and their families to extend life-sustaining services and access experimental treatments.

The lawsuit is the latest chapter in a yearslong fight among some right-to-life advocates to end the brain death diagnosis because they believe multiple organs have to fail to be considered a biological death.

Meanwhile, medical experts believe there needs to be a “clear line” that distinguishes life from death otherwise ICUs would lose capacity to treat patients that have a chance of recovery, said David Magnus, a Stanford University medicine and biomedical ethics professor.

It appears no courts in Texas have determined the legality of brain death tests, said Thomas Mayo, professor emeritus of law at Southern Methodist University. If the state district court rules in the family’s favor, it would not be binding in other courts, Mayo said.

However, “if Texas Right to Life is involved in any way, and the family loses, this case would likely go to appeal,” he added.

The brain death debate

The Camp family were visiting relatives on Memorial Day, when Annelise wandered into the hotel pool without her life jacket, Johnston Camp, Annelise’s father, told FOX 26 Houston in early June. She was pulled out of the water by family members who began CPR until first responders arrived. Camp was taken to Texas Children’s west Houston location and after an hour her heartbeat returned.

“She never gave up when I asked her to do something… I’m never gonna give up on her,” Camp told the station.

Since the interview, the Camps have declined speaking to The Texas Tribune, citing a court order that prevents them from doing so, said their lawyer Heath Novosad. Texas Children’s has also declined to comment on the case.

Three days after Annelise was hospitalized, her parents filed a temporary restraining order against Texas Children’s after physicians said they had exhausted all treatment options and advised that the child get tested for brain death, according to court documents filed in late May. The documents say Annelise’s heart was beating, although she was dependent on a ventilator. The Camps have refused any brain death testing and want to transfer Annelise to another hospital to receive hyperbaric oxygen treatment or stem cell therapies.

Texas Children’s officials said in court documents they’ve contacted medical facilities to ask about accepting Annelise, but 35 of the 36 have declined and the one pending hospital said it needed her to undergo brain death testing to consider transfer.

The court granted the family’s request for a temporary injunction and the family is asking for a permanent halt to brain testing.

Hospitals usually notify family members, but are not required to get permission from them or the patient to conduct brain death testing.

Under the Uniform Determination of Death Act, if someone is determined brain dead, they are considered legally dead and hospitals have the right to discontinue organ-supporting services.

According to Texas Right to Life, which has long fought the legal recognition of brain death and its use to stop life-sustaining measures, brain death is not consistent with the Christian faith. As long as there is a heartbeat, a person is still alive. The Camp family has stated in court documents brain death testing is against their religious beliefs.

“Texans have the right to say we don’t believe in this,” said John Seago, president of Texas Right to Life, adding that his organization has worked with 106 patients to fight for life-sustaining treatment, an increase in the last three years. “A dead person has no rights, and that’s the problem with the brain death concept, in general, is it is a shortcut to deprive individuals of the right to life and other rights.”

Magnus, the Stanford professor, said that if hospitals are no longer able to diagnose someone with brain death and are forced to keep more people on life support, this could strain resources, such as ICU beds.

“Using that scarce resource for somebody who has no chance of ever making any recovery doesn’t really make a lot of sense,” he said. “When the hospital beds are full, Texas will not be a good place to get sick.”

Magnus worries that if hospitals are no longer allowed to recognize brain death diagnosis, organ procurement could decline which places the burden of organ donations on other states or else, many Texans could be at risk of dying.

“That means that if you have renal failure, you die. You have liver failure in Texas, you’ll die. When you have heart failure in Texas, you’ll die,” he said.

While some of the loudest critics of the brain death diagnosis have been among anti-abortion advocates, not all are in agreement. Texas Alliance for Life points out that the definition of death in state law is based in “sound medical science,” its executive director Amy O’Donnell said. She declined to comment specifically on Camp’s case.

Room to expand “right to life” laws?

In the last few decades, Texas legislators made attempts to create and fine-tune “right to life” laws that expand the rights of those who have been declared brain dead. None have addressed brain death testing, which is ripe ground for new legislation.

“We passed legislation in the state of Texas and we think people will just follow it,” Toth said.

In 2023, state lawmakers expanded the Right to Try law – originally limited to terminally ill patients – to give chronically ill patients access to investigational treatments if they had exhausted approved options. The same year, the Legislature changed the Texas Advance Directive Act, so that hospitals must give families of patients 25 days’ notice before pulling life support, increasing it from 10 days. Although, groups like Texas Right to Life believe that there should be no time limit.

This change came three years after the family of 1-year-old Tinslee Lewis challenged the advance directive act, also garnering national attention. Lewis was born with a rare heart defect that kept her on life-support in Cook Children’s Medical Center’s ICU from birth. Leveraging the law’s life-support time limit, doctors at the Fort Worth hospital wanted to take Tinslee off life support against her mother’s wishes and an appeals court ruled in the family’s favor. Lewis was discharged after two years, according to CBS.

Toth, who carried the House version of the bill that changed the Right to Try law in 2023, said he would push to give families the right to contest the brain death test and make it difficult for hospitals to procure organs from patients declared brain dead.

Toth, who won the Republican primary for Texas’ 2nd Congressional District in Houston in the spring, ultimately wants to eliminate the brain death diagnosis on a national level.

“I think that we’ve got to be really careful at just observing the rights of parents to make this decision, this call for themselves,” said Toth.

Texas does not have legislation that provides for a reasonable accommodation of a religious objection to brain death, said Mayo.

If the brain death diagnosis was taken off the books, hospitals can still leverage the Texas Advance Directive Act which places a time limit on how long a hospital is responsible for life-supporting treatment, Magnus said, but “courts in Texas have been inconsistent about applying their own law.”

“Courts in other states have gone back and forth over whether a determination of brain death can be done at all, and whether once it’s done, the physician’s findings are determinative of further treatment or stopping treatment. I think it’s a very, very emerging question that is getting disparate treatment in various jurisdictions,” said Mayo.

In these cases, the courts will usually tell the hospital to keep the patient on life support, said Magnus. “Basically the courts don’t want to be the one that makes (the brain death) determination,” he said.