Water is the new oil in Texas

AUSTIN – Inside Climate News reports that in Central Texas, a bitter fight over a $1 billion water project offers a preview of the future for much of the state as decades of rapid growth push past the local limits of its most vital natural resource. On one side: Georgetown, the fastest growing city in America for three years straight, which in 2023 signed a contract with an investor-funded enterprise to quickly begin importing vast volumes of water from the Simsboro Formation of the Carrizo Wilcox Aquifer, 80 miles to the east. On the other side: the cities atop the Simsboro that rely on its water. Bryan, College Station and the Texas A&M University System, a metro area with almost 300,000 people, have sued the developer to stop the project. A trial is set for the first week of May.

“We’re going to fight this thing until the end,” said Bobby Gutierrez, the mayor of Bryan. “It effectively drains the water source of the cities.” The pump and pipeline project to Georgetown, developed by California-based Upwell Water, is the largest of at least a half dozen similar projects recently completed, under construction or proposed to bring rural Carrizo Wilcox aquifer water into the booming urban corridor that follows Interstate 35 through Central Texas. It would eventually pump up to 89 million gallons per day, three times the usage of the city of Bryan, to Georgetown and its neighboring cities. “That basically stops all the economic development we have,” Gutierrez said. “We’re talking about our survival.” The fight over the Upwell project could well be a prelude for the broader battles to come as cities across Texas outgrow their water supplies. Lawmakers in the state Capitol are pushing to avert a broad scarcity crisis with funding to desalinate seawater, purify salty groundwater and treat oilfield wastewater to add to the supply. But all of these solutions remain years from realization. In the near term, only import projects from freshwater aquifers will continue to meet the growing water demands of thirsty Texas cities. Regulation of such projects falls to a patchwork of small, rural agencies called groundwater conservation districts, which might not be fully equipped or empowered to manage plans for competing regional water needs that can affect entire cities for generations to come.

TWU hosts public meeting for District 6 on Thursday

TYLER – TWU hosts public meeting for District 6 on ThursdayDo you have questions about your water bill? If you live in District 6, there is a place to get your answers. Tyler Water Utilitie will hold a come-and-go community meeting in District 6 at the Pollard United Methodist Church, Gym, 3030 New Copeland Rd. This event will feature information stations staffed by Department Directors and offers you a chance to speak directly with Councilmember Brad Curtis. Water Customer Service Representatives will also be available to help with individual account questions. So, if you are a district 6 customer, come to the event and speak one-on-one with experts to learn more about TWU, utility billing, and improvement projects, ask questions and provide feedback on these topics. Remember to bring a copy of your water bill for specific billing questions.

East Texas woman arrested for the murder of her daughter

East Texas woman arrested for the murder of her daughterCASS COUNTY – Our news partner, KETK, reports that a woman has been arrested by the Cass County Sheriff’s office for capitol murder after an incident left a 9-year-old dead.

At around 6:31 a.m., the Atlanta Police Department received an emergency call from a residence in Bloomburg off of FM 74, a post from the sheriff’s office said.

A neighbor made the 911 call on behalf of an injured woman identified as Jacki Kubin, who ran to the neighbor asking for help. Officials reported that the neighbor was able to give law enforcement a description of a fleeing vehicle.

When officers arrived, an Atlanta Texas Police Department officer found a female child that had suffered severe trauma. The child was transported to a nearby hospital. Continue reading East Texas woman arrested for the murder of her daughter

Dallas Fed: Texas employment expected to increase in 2025

DALLAS — The Texas Employment Forecast released by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas indicates jobs will increase 1.9 percent in 2025, with an 80 percent confidence band of 1.2 to 2.6 percent.

Texas employment grew an annualized 2.1 percent in February, while January employment was revised down to 1.7 percent growth.

The forecast is based on an average of four models that include projected national GDP, oil futures prices,?and the Texas and U.S. leading indexes.

“February job growth was broad based, led by increases in the energy, leisure and hospitality, and construction sectors,” said Jesus Cañas, Dallas Fed senior business economist. “Only employment in professional and business services dropped. Employment rose in most major metropolitan areas of the state but fell in Houston and Austin.”

Additional key takeaways from the latest Dallas Fed report:???????

The forecast suggests 276,000 jobs will be added in the state this year, and employment in December 2025 will be 14.5 million. ????

Texas employment increased by an annualized 2.1 percent month over month in February, an increase from January’s growth of 1.7 percent.??

The unemployment rate, which takes into account changes in the total labor force along with other factors, increased in Austin–Round Rock, Brownsville–Harlingen, Fort Worth–Arlington, Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land, and San Antonio–New Braunfels, according to?seasonally adjusted numbers?from the Dallas Fed.???? ????

The rate was unchanged in Dallas–Plano–Irving and El Paso.

It decreased in Laredo.

The Texas statewide unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.1 percent in February.???

Texas cities square off over aquifer pipeline plans

LEE COUNTY – In Central Texas, a bitter fight over a $1 billion water project offers a preview of the future for much of the state as decades of rapid growth pushes past the local limits of its most vital natural resource.

On one side: Georgetown, the fastest-growing city in America for three years straight, which in 2023 signed a contract with an investor-funded enterprise to quickly begin importing vast volumes of water from the Simsboro Formation of the Carrizo Wilcox Aquifer, 80 miles to the east.

On the other side: the cities atop the Simsboro that rely on its water. Bryan, College Station and the Texas A&M University System, a metro area with almost 300,000 people, have sued the developer to stop the project. A trial is set for the first week of May.

“We’re going to fight this thing until the end,” said Bobby Gutierrez, the mayor of Bryan. “It effectively drains the water source of the cities.”

The pump and pipeline project to Georgetown, developed by California-based Upwell Water, is the largest of at least a half dozen similar projects recently completed, under construction or proposed to bring rural Carrizo Wilcox aquifer water into the booming urban corridor that follows Interstate 35 through Central Texas.

It would eventually pump up to 89 million gallons per day, three times the usage of the city of Bryan.

“That basically stops all the economic development we have,” Gutierrez said. “We’re talking about our survival.”
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The fight over the Upwell project could well be a prelude for the broader battles to come as cities across Texas outgrow their water supplies. Lawmakers in the state Capitol are pushing to avert a broad scarcity crisis with funding to desalinate seawater, purify salty groundwater and treat oilfield wastewater to add to the supply. But all of these solutions remain years from realization. In the near term, only import projects from freshwater aquifers will continue to meet the growing water demands of thirsty Texas cities.

Regulation of such projects falls to a patchwork of small, rural agencies called groundwater conservation districts, which might not be fully equipped or empowered to manage plans for competing regional water needs that can affect entire cities for generations to come.

Texas law offers limited clarity, generally preferring a landowner’s right to pump their own groundwater over regulations on private property. Despite fierce denunciations of the Upwell project from nearby city leaders, no one has alleged that its developers have broken any laws.

“We’re following the rules. Why are we being vilified?” said David Lynch, a managing partner at Core Capital investment firm in Houston and a partner in the Upwell project. “I think they feel uncomfortable about what’s coming and their reaction is to make us go away.”

After all, he’s not the only one doing this. Five years ago, San Antonio started pumping up to 49 million gallons per day through a 140-mile pipeline from the Carrizo Wilcox Aquifer. Another pipeline was completed last year and will soon begin pumping to the city of Taylor and the new Samsung microchip manufacturing complex there. Another, scheduled for completion this year, will take water into the cities of Buda and Kyle.

After the lawsuit delayed the Upwell project’s tight timeline, Georgetown commissioned two other pipeline projects from the same aquifer.

“People are starting to pay enough for water to make these sorts of projects work,” Lynch said, driving his black Ford Super Duty Platinum truck down the dirt roads of Upwell’s 9,000-acre farm property and well field in Robertson County. “There’s no cheap water left in Texas.”

In the middle of all this is the little Brazos Valley Groundwater Conservation District, based in the small town of Hearne and also a defendant, alongside Upwell, in the lawsuit.

District manager Alan Day feels for the cities of Bryan and College Station. To an extent, he said, they are right. The more pumping from the aquifer, the sooner everyone will reach conditions of scarcity, though he doesn’t think it will happen as quickly as city leaders say.

At the same time, he said, “Bryan can’t claim the water.” Groundwater is a private property right in Texas as sacred as any other. Everyone is allowed to pump whatever their land produces.

“Water is the new oil,” said Day, a former ranch manager of 27 years. “They have a commodity that can be sold and they have every right to sell it.”

At this time, he said, he has no authority to stop landowners from pumping as long as they fulfill the requirements of the permitting process, which Upwell did. Even if he could do it, Day chuckled at the notion that state leaders would let his tiny office put the brakes on development along the I-35 corridor, home to manufacturing campuses of Tesla, Samsung and Apple, and offices of Amazon, Meta and Google, as well as one of the nation’s largest clusters of data centers and its fastest growing cities.

However, Day said, there will come a day when that changes. The laws for his district, like all others in Texas, specify a threshold at which new rules kick in. It’s called the “desired future condition,” or DFC, a level below which the district is not willing to go. When they get there, everyone will face restrictions on pumping and the days of groundwater abundance will be over for the Simsboro portion of the aquifer. To date, no district in Texas has hit its DFC.

Day said he’s only following the rules. He’ll honor the property rights of landowners who want to pump, and when they hit the DFC, he’ll implement restrictions district-wide.

“What does that do to the growth of Bryan and College Station and Texas A&M and anyone else who is depending on Simsboro?” Day asked. “It stops it.”

This situation follows a generation of steep growth and development that state leaders have dubbed the “Texas Miracle.” The population of Williamson County, seated in Georgetown, 28 miles north of Austin, doubled in 17 years to 700,000 people while its median household income increased by more than 90%. Neighboring counties share similar stories, where sprawling subdivisions and shimmering tech campuses now cover former ranchlands.

Georgetown needs to add millions of gallons per day to its water supply within the next several years. When it signed the pipeline contract in 2023 that stipulated deliveries beginning in 2030, it was acting on a much tighter timeline than decades that are typically considered for large scale water planning.

“Based on hyper growth that we’ve seen in our water territory, we’ve seen the need for higher levels of contracted water sooner than we originally anticipated,” said city manager David Morgan.

Most of the new water will serve new residential areas, he said, and will be used primarily to irrigate lawns and other neighborhood landscaping. Williamson County is also courting a cluster of five large data centers that it expects would bring another 100,000 people to the county.

But what if Bryan, and the cities of the Brazos Valley, want data centers, too? The region is currently pursuing ambitious opportunities in semiconductors, nuclear energy, aerospace, defense and life sciences, said Susan Davenport, president of the Greater Brazos Partnership, an economic development group.

“These sectors, along with the growing workforce and families who support them, are directly dependent on access to our local water resources,” she said.

Although many major projects importing groundwater into Central Texas are just now being realized, the plans have been in the works for decades, according to Michelle Gangnes, a retired finance lawyer and co-founder of the Simsboro Aquifer Water Defense Fund.

In 1998 Gangnes moved from Austin to rural Lee County. That same year, San Antonio, 140 miles away, announced plans to import 49 million gallons per day from wells in Lee County on the site of an old Alcoa aluminum smelter. A prolonged fight ensued and the project was never realized, but many others would follow.

“That’s what started the whole gold rush on water,” Gangnes said. “It resulted in all these groundwater districts being formed, trying to resist the water rush on the Simsboro.”

The groundwater districts were formed by an act of the Texas legislature in 2001. But, when the time came to make groundwater rules, powerful interests kept them loose, according to Ken Kramer, who previously directed the Texas office of the Sierra Club for 24 years. Chief among them was T. Boone Pickens, the iconic Texas oilman who also wanted to export groundwater from his land holdings in the Panhandle.

“There was heavy lobbying by groundwater exporters to make sure that groundwater districts could not stop exports,” Kramer said. “Groundwater then became more of the target for moving water to growing areas and populations.”

Under a principle in Texas called the “right of capture,” landowners are allowed to pump from their land whatever they are able to. Changes made to the Texas Water Code in 2001 stipulated that withdrawals are allowed so long as they don’t affect other permit holders “unreasonably,” which lacks a firm legal definition. That leaves lots up to interpretation for the groundwater districts of Texas.

“They live in a difficult world where it’s unclear exactly what their power is to tell somebody no,” said Robert Mace, executive director of the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University. “If you tell somebody no you’re almost guaranteed to get sued.”

In recent years, several major pipeline projects into Central Texas came online. San Antonio eventually got its Carrizo Wilcox Aquifer water through a 6-foot-wide, 140-mile long Vista Ridge pipeline which began drawing water from Burleson County in 2020, causing levels in neighboring landowners’ wells to plummet.

The old Alcoa wells in Burleson County were also put to use. A developer called Xebec Holdings bought the 50-square-mile property in 2022 and signed deals to pipe almost 18 million gallons per day to the City of Tyler.

“There’s constantly people out there trying to lease water rights to see if they could do a project to sell water,” said Gary Westbrook, general manager of the Post Oak Savannah Groundwater Conservation District. “We’re going to have to find a way to regulate. You can’t just say no.”

A Gatehouse Pipeline is currently under construction to Georgetown, with another one called Recharge in development. Morgan, the Georgetown city manager, said those two projects were identified and accelerated after the lawsuit challenged the Upwell project.

“We believe the lawsuit is going to likely delay getting that fully resolved,” he said.

Upwell Water, a San Francisco-based financing firm, announced in 2020 that it had raised $1 billion from investors “to monetize water assets.”

Upwell partnered with CoreCapital investors in Houston, which bought its 9,000-acre Robertson County farm property in 2021. Lynch, the managing partner at CoreCapital, said he expected to sit on the property for 10 years until the economics of water made it attractive to develop a major export project.

But as soon as he entered the market, he found eager buyers willing to pay well.

“We bought it and all of a sudden we had everybody calling saying we need water,” Lynch said. “Then we said, we have more demand than we can supply, let’s talk to the neighbors.”

Upwell recruited seven neighboring landowners to put company wells on their property and contribute to the export project.

These aren’t regular irrigation wells, which in this area can tap water 40 feet down. These are 1,400 feet deep, cased in 2-foot-wide steel pipe, able to produce large volumes.

“It’s a million-dollar hole,” said Mark Hoelscher, one of the neighboring landowners involved in the project, as he looked up at one of the diesel-powered well installations. “It’s big time.”

In October 2022, Upwell received permits for 16 wells to pump nearly 45 million gallons per day without any challenges in the hearing process. Four months later it received its permit to export the water out-of-district. Then in September 2023, the district issued permits for another 32 wells belonging to the seven adjoining landowners to produce an additional 45 million gallons per day.

Until that point, authorities in the Bryan-College Station metro area, some 30 miles south, apparently remained unaware of the project transpiring in Robertson County. Not until September 2024, when the district considered applications for updated permits to export the combined 89 million-gallon-per-day production of all 48 wells, did Texas A&M University enter into the proceedings, filing a request for review by the State Office of Administrative Hearings.

Texas A&M University declined to comment for this story.

“No one has questioned the fact that we own the land and we have rights to the water underneath it,” said Hoelscher, a third generation landowner in the Brazos River Valley. “The fact of the matter is the water is ours.”

One week later, A&M filed a lawsuit in state district court seeking a temporary injunction stopping the groundwater district from recognizing any of the permits associated with the Upwell project until a hearing is held.

A&M argued that the previously issued permits should be open for re-examination because some board members of the groundwater district were ineligible for service at the time the permits were originally approved.

In November, Bryan and College Station filed papers to join the lawsuit. It said their “ability to produce groundwater from their Simsboro wells and the economic vitality of the region will be adversely affected if the Contested Applications are granted.”

College Station Mayor John Nichols, a former professor of agricultural sciences at Texas A&M, said in a statement: “The transfer of groundwater from our district to users in other areas is one of the most significant issues facing the College Station/Bryan area. I’m a staunch proponent of private property rights, but we are deeply concerned about the long-term impact of excessive extraction on our community.”

He called on lawmakers to adopt statewide groundwater regulations ensuring the rights of current permit holders over new water users.

None of that, however, matters to the trial that will take place in early May. All the judge will decide is whether or not A&M and the cities have rights to challenge the previously issued permits.

In court filings, Upwell argued A&M’s petition “demands that the Court turn back time and recognize a non-existent ‘right’ to administratively contest final groundwater permits that the Brazos Valley Groundwater Conservation District properly noticed and issued to Intervenors months and years prior — all without any complaint or contest by any party, including Plaintiff.”

If the judge denies A&M’s request, the permits will be issued and work will begin on the Upwell project pipeline.

If the judge grants A&M’s request, the permits will head into a potentially yearslong process of state administrative hearings that could threaten the viability of the project and its promised returns to investors.

Whether or not the pipeline gets built, other similar projects are likely to follow. The situation is headed in one direction: toward the DFC, the threshold at which restrictions begin.

In the Brazos Valley and surrounding districts, that threshold is a 262-foot drop in water wells from levels measured in 2000. In the 25 years since then, pumping has led the wells’ water to drop by one quarter of that allotted reduction, according to district manager Day, suggesting ample water supplies remain.

But, that remains to be seen. In total, Day said his district has issued permits for up to 291 million gallons per day of pumping from the Simsboro Formation, averaged yearly, of which 89 million gallons per day are associated with the Upwell project. However, only a fraction of that permitted volume is actually pumped.

If all permitted pumping were to suddenly come online, Day said, computer models showed they would hit the DFC in six years.

In reality it won’t happen quite that fast. The Upwell project plans to scale up its pumping gradually over years. And many farmers hold irrigation permits to pump much more water than they ever actually will, unless they also encounter the opportunity to join an export project.

When the aquifer hits the DFC, the rules say it mustn’t fall further. That means all users would face mandatory curtailment. It’s unclear how such unprecedented measures would be enforced in Texas.

For Gutierrez, the mayor of Bryan, this management method creates a contest for investors to tap the water-wealthy Simsboro Formation and sell off its bounty before time runs out.

“They want to exploit everything we have for their personal benefit,” he said. “It’s a race of who can take the most amount of water in the least amount of time to deplete a resource for their pocketbooks.”

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

Health officials say federal cuts will hurt Texas’ measles response

GAINES COUNTY – The Trump administration this week announced plans to clawback $11 billion in pandemic-era grants that could harm local Texas public health departments as they battle a historic measles outbreak.

In Lubbock, where many of the 40 Texans infected with measles have been hospitalized, grant funding affected by the announcement has paid for an epidemiologist who has directly responded to the measles outbreak in West Texas that has killed a 6-year-old girl. In Dallas, the grant funding was helping to equip a biolaboratory that will support more testing for pathogens, including measles.

“It’s kind of crazy to have this funding cut,” said Lubbock’s public health director Katherine Wells. “I don’t have a savings account in public health.”

The Trump administration confirmed Tuesday that it was going to eliminate funding that had been created to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, prioritizing instead on projects that address chronic diseases and the president’s Make America Healthy Again initiative. Much of that funding, however, has been used to pay for infrastructure to respond to infectious diseases other than COVID, including measles, local health officials have said.

The Texas Department of State Health Services notified public health departments late Tuesday of the federal government’s plans. State officials have not provided specifics on how much money is cut or how many health departments are impacted.

“DSHS was notified that the federal grant funding for Immunization/COVID, Epidemiology Laboratory Capacity (ELC/COVID), and Health Disparities/COVID, is terminated as of March 24, 2025,” according to the the notice from the agency’s associate commissioner Imelda Garcia. “The Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS or System Agency) is issuing this notice to pause all activities immediately. Please do not accrue any additional costs as of the date of this notice.”

Wells said the funding cut will impact her office’s work combating the spread of measles. Lubbock has been using three grants to help pay for extra temporary staff, a part-time nurse and a full-time epidemiologist to help with vaccinations, answering phones and working with testing of patients. Two of the city’s three grants were not set to expire until 2026.

Ten of the state’s 327 measles cases have been confirmed in Lubbock and 226 cases have been in Gaines County, about 90 minutes southwest of Lubbock.

This measles outbreak has further exposed Texas’ threadbare public health system.

The grants, she said, allowed her to hire eight people to help shoulder the workload the outbreak has brought. Since January, Lubbock hospitals have treated many of the more than 300 patients infected with measles, including a 6-year-old who died on Feb. 26.

“We’re trying to figure it out,” Wells said. But with state and federal funds cut, city and county health department that counted on those COVID-19 era grants for new programs and outreach will now have to go to local taxpayers to help shore up the abrupt shortfall.

Dallas County has already broken ground on a $52 million biolab to help combat future health threats. Their health director, Dr. Philip Huang, said the grant money Dallas County had received was going to be used to help equip that new lab.

“It was a lot of equipment,” Huang said. “These machines can help with COVID but these machines also help with our preparedness and ability to test a lot of other pathogens … including measles.”

Like Wells, he and other public health officials are now going to have to determine how to still move forward without this funding.

“The things that we’re doing and using the funds for COVID have great implications for our future preparedness for everything else so we’re not in the same situation at the start of COVID,” he said. “We had seen how little investment there had been in public health, so it’s very short sighted to say, ‘OK, well these were COVID funds it’s over.’ It’s not.”

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

3 missing US soldiers found dead in Lithuania, search continues for 4th soldier

US Army

(PABRAD?, Lithuania) -- Three of the four U.S. Army soldiers who went missing during a training mission near Pabrad?, Lithuania, last week were found dead on Monday, but the search is ongoing for the fourth soldier, the Army said.

Their identities were not released.

The M88 Hercules armored recovery vehicle the soldiers were in when they went missing was removed from a swamp early Monday morning after six days of work to retrieve it, the Army said.

The soldiers, who are all based in Fort Stewart, Georgia, went missing on Tuesday during a training exercise, the Army said.

On Wednesday, their 63-ton-vehicle was found submerged in about 15 feet of water and "clay-like mud" in a training area, the Army said.

"Most likely, the M88 drove into the swamp," and the vehicle "may have just gone diagonally to the bottom," Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovile Sakaliene told ABC News via phone last week.

The multiday search effort was complicated by the swamp's muddy conditions, officials said.

The Army said last week it brought in assets including "a large capacity slurry pump, cranes, more than 30 tons of gravel, and subject matter experts."

"The Polish Armed Forces have also volunteered a unit of military engineers, which is bringing in an additional water pump, tracked recovery vehicles, other additional equipment and supplies needed along with 150 personnel," the Army said.

On Saturday, a U.S. Navy dive team arrived at the site, joining Lithuanian divers, the Army said.

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Mortgage company Rocket buying Mr. Cooper

COPPELL (AP) -The mortgage company Rocket is buying competitor Mr. Cooper in an all-stock deal valued at $9.4 billion, just weeks after acquiring real estate listing company Redfin.

Rocket Cos. said Monday that bringing Mr. Cooper Group Inc. into the fold will create a business representing one in every six mortgages in the United States and give it almost 7 million additional clients. The deal will boost loan volumes, the company said, while lowering client acquisition costs.

“By combining Mr. Cooper and Rocket, we will form the strongest mortgage company in the industry, offering an end-to-end homeownership experience backed by leading technology and grounded in customer care,” Mr. Cooper Chairman and CEO Jay Bray, who will become president and CEO of Rocket Mortgage, said in a statement.

The U.S. housing market has been slumping for years with homebuyers, and sellers, buffeted by soaring mortgages rates and sky high prices that have put homes out of reach for many Americans.

Companies like Rocket, which is on an acquisition streak, are attempting to create more of a one-stop shopping experience for frazzled would-be homebuyers.

Bray will report to Rocket Cos. CEO Varun Krishna.

Mr. Cooper shareholders will receive a fixed exchange ratio of 11 Rocket shares for each share of Mr. Cooper common stock. Mr. Cooper is based in Coppell, Texas.

Rocket shareholders will own approximately 75% of the combined company, while Mr. Cooper stockholders will own about 25%. The combined company’s board will have 11 members, with nine being from Rocket and two from Mr. Cooper.

Earlier this month Rocket, based in Detroit, announced that it was buying Redfin in an all-stock deal worth $1.75 billion.

Redfin, which was founded in 2004, has more than 1 million for sale and rental listings on its online platform.

The National Association of Realtors announced this month that existing home sales rose 4.2% in February from January to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.26 million units. That was in part thanks to easing mortgage rates and more properties on the market encouraging home shoppers.

The U.S. housing sales began to slump in 2022, when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes fell last year to their lowest level in nearly 30 years.

Texas Democrats select Kendall Scudder as state party chair

AUSTIN – The Texas Democratic Party’s governing board on Saturday elected Kendall Scudder to lead the party forward as its new chair after a devastating performance in November and years of electoral defeats.

“The challenge that we’re facing right now is terrifying for this country and for this state, and a lot of people are counting on us to come together and do the right thing and make sure that we are building a Texas Democratic Party that is worthy of the grassroots in this state,” Scudder said upon taking the gavel. “Let’s build a party that the working men and women of this state can be proud of.”

Scudder took 65 out of 121 votes, an outright majority in the seven-way race.

Scudder will take over as chair of the state party at a moment when Democrats are grasping for a way forward after blowout losses up and down the ballot last year, including President Donald Trump’s victory and a surge to the right by traditionally Democratic groups, such as Hispanic voters in South Texas.

After proclaiming Texas a competitive state where Democratic candidates had a fighting chance of winning statewide for the first time in three decades, party leaders instead watched as Trump and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz trounced their Democratic challengers by roughly 14 and 9 percentage points, respectively. Democrats also ceded ground in the state Legislature and lost nearly every contested state appellate court race, in addition to 10 judicial races in Harris County — eating away at years of Democratic dominance in Texas’ largest county.

That left many Democrats concerned that, after appearing to come within striking distance of winning statewide in 2018, the party was back at a sobering low.

Longtime Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa announced his resignation shortly after the election, acknowledging the party’s poor performance and a need for a new direction.

That push for a fresh vision defined the race for party chair. Scudder will be the incumbent come 2026, when a broader group of delegates will elect the next full-term chair at the party convention in Corpus Christi. The 121-member State Democratic Executive Committee chose Hinojosa’s successor at the Saturday meeting, its first quarterly meeting of the year, because he resigned in the middle of his four-year term.

During his campaign, Scudder, an East Texas native, emphasized the importance of listening to the “grassroots.” Even before he launched his candidacy, he had accused party leadership under Hinojosa of ignoring those voters and activists. He wants to “recalibrate” the party toward a focus on working people.

“The reality is simply that Democrats on the ground don’t have a lot of confidence in party leadership anymore,” Scudder told The Texas Tribune in an interview on Thursday.

He wants the party to pay attention to areas he says it has previously written off, like rural communities, and put a priority on Spanish-language communications.

Scudder has worked in affordable housing and real estate. He came onto the state party stage through the SDEC, although he began his political activism with the Texas Young Democrats and the Texas College Democrats.

Scudder’s leading opponents, former Harris County Democratic Party Chair Lillie Schechter and former Annie’s List Executive Director Patsy Woods Martin, had offered similar but competing visions to re-establish Democratic credibility on kitchen table issues and reconnect with voters in their communities. During the campaign, Schechter and Woods Martin emphasized their experience getting Democratic candidates elected.

The SDEC hosted a candidate forum in Austin on Friday evening before toasting Hinojosa, the outgoing chair.

There, and at the panel’s meeting on Saturday, party insiders discussed how to rebuild credibility with working class voters, engage young people, fundraise and build a party infrastructure that better facilitates elected officials’ involvement in races around the state.

“The problem is that every Democrat thinks that if they had 10 more minutes, they could explain it to you,” Scudder said on party messaging during the forum. “We’ve got to get to a point where we’re speaking to people at their gut, because people vote with their guts and not their brains.”

While most party chair contests are shaped by region and race and decided at the party’s convention during midterm election years, this race was a more insular affair whose outcome was determined by a small group of the party’s activists, many of whom are progressives dissatisfied with the party’s strategies and operations.

Although the SDEC was prepared to go multiple rounds with their ranked choice ballot, Scudder’s 65 allowed him to win in the first round. Woods Martin took 27 votes, and Schechter took 26. Denton County Democratic Party Chair Delia Parker-Mims took two votes, and Meri Gomez rounded out the count with one vote. Eight candidates appeared on the ballot, but one dropped out before the election.

As the votes were tabulated, members passed out to-go shots of blue liquor — and non-alcoholic options — in an effort to liven spirits after a difficult 2024 election and an unprecedented chair race.

The candidates were largely aligned ideologically. And they especially all agreed on the need for change in the party’s direction.

“We are at an inflection point right now,” Schechter said, “and if we don’t learn lessons from the last election, and continue doing things status quo, we’re never going to win in Texas.”

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

Stocks slide as Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs loom

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

(NEW YORK) -- Stocks fell on Monday ahead of the expected introduction of President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs on Wednesday, measures the president said will impact "all countries."

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ticked down 10 points, or 0.03%, while the S&P 500 declined 0.7%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq plunged 1.5%.

Tesla, the electric carmaker led by billionaire Trump-advisor Elon Musk, dropped nearly 5%.

The downturn in U.S. markets followed a wave of selloffs worldwide.

Japan's Nikkei index fell more than 4% and South Korea's KOSPI slipped 3% after opening on Monday. In Europe, the British FTSE 100 fell by 1.18%, the German DAX index fell by 1.82% and France's CAC 40 dropped by 1.76%.

Gold -- a traditional safe-haven asset -- reached a new record high of $3,128 per ounce.

Trump told reporters this weekend that his tariffs could affect "all the countries."

"The tariffs will be far more generous than those countries were to us, meaning they will be kinder than those countries were to the United States of America," he said.

"Over the decades, they ripped us off like no country has never been ripped off in history and we're going to be much nicer than they were to us, but it's substantial money for the country," Trump said.

Auto tariffs of 25% are among those expected to come into effect on April 3. The measures will apply to imported passenger vehicles, including cars, SUVs, minivans, cargo vans and light trucks, according to a White House statement released last week.

Analysts widely expect the tariffs to raise prices for foreign-made cars, since importers will likely pass along a share of the tax burden to consumers.

Cars produced in the U.S. are also expected to undergo significant price hikes since manufacturers will bear higher costs for imported parts and face an uptick in demand as buyers seek out domestic alternatives, experts have told ABC News.

Trump dismissed concerns about auto tariffs this weekend. "The automakers are going to make a lot of money," he said. "American automakers or international automakers, if you're talking about them, are going to build in the United States."

"The people that are going to make money are people that manufacture cars in the United States," he continued. "Outside of the United States, that's going to be up to them. I don't care too much about that. But you have a lot of companies coming into the country to manufacture cars."

ABC News' Hannah Demissie contributed to this report.

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Desperate search for survivors continues in Bangkok high-rise collapse from 7.7 quake

Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images

(BANGKOK) -- A desperate search for survivors continued Sunday -- from a collapsed high-rise building that was under construction in Bangkok, Thailand, to the rubble of ancient buildings in neighboring Myanmar -- as a series of powerful aftershocks from Friday's 7.7-magnitude earthquake made it precarious for rescuers digging through debris, officials said.

The death toll in the Bangkok metropolitan region rose to 18 on Sunday, according to government officials. In Myanmar, the epicenter of Friday's earthquake, at least 1,644 people were dead and another 139 were officially missing. At least 3,408 people were injured in Myanmar alone, officials said.

The number of deaths across the devastated region is expected to rise, officials said.

In the Bangkok metropolitan area, home to more than 17.4 million people, search-and-rescue workers were focused on a collapsed high-rise building in the Chatuchak district of Bangkok. At least 11 people, believed to all be construction workers, have been confirmed dead and another 78 people remain missing in the rubble of the 34-story Sky Villa condominium, according to the Bangkok Metropolitan administration.

More than 30 people were injured when floors of the building that was under construction began to pancake on top of each other around 1:30 p.m. local time on Friday, trapping construction workers in the debris and creating a large dust cloud that enveloped the area, officials said. The building collapsed about half an hour after the powerful earthquake, centered in Myanmar, struck.

Family members of the missing construction workers gathered near the collapsed building as search-and-rescue crews dug through the pile of debris by hand, racing against time in a search for survivors.

One brother and sister told ABC News their parents were among the workers who were in the building at the time of the collapse and are now among those unaccounted for.

American tourists Garret Briere and his wife told ABC News they never could have imagined that their first vacation to Thailand would end up being one of the most terrifying experiences of their lives.

The couple from Washington state was in the mall across the street from the Sky Villa construction site when the massive earthquake hit. Briere said he watched in horror as the building fell in the quake's aftermath and described panicked people running for their lives away from the structure. Briere said a huge dust cloud enveloped the area.

"We ran out of the building because it started shaking," Briere said. "I grabbed my wife’s hand and I said, 'Don’t let go.' Immediately, we were just covered in dust and debris, and we couldn’t see, and there were thousands of people just in a panic."

It took just several seconds for the entire building to be reduced to a 7-story-high pile of rubble, the couple said.

The epicenter of the earthquake was in Mandalay, Myanmar, the country's second-largest city. Bangkok is about 600 miles from the epicenter.

A series of aftershocks continued to shake the region Sunday. A 5.1 magnitude aftershock struck about 17 miles north of Mandalay on Sunday afternoon, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The USGS also recorded another strong aftershock as a 4.2 magnitude quake struck near Shwebo, which is about 68 miles northwest of Mandalay, earlier on Sunday.

Several videos emerged Sunday showing rescuers pulling survivors from the rubble in Myanmar. The Myanmar Fire Services Department released a video overnight showing rescuers pulling a woman alive from a collapsed building. People could be heard cheering in the background as the woman was taken to medics for treatment.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted Friday about the potential U.S. response to the earthquake.

"My prayers go out to the people of Burma and Thailand who are impacted by the earthquake," Rubio wrote in a social media post. "We've been in contact with these countries and, as @POTUS said, stand ready to provide assistance."

Rubio also confirmed the State Department’s teams in the affected countries were "safe and secure."

The U.S. Embassy in Myanmar has suspended nonemergency consular services for the time being. The U.S. mission to Thailand has not reported any disruption in services.

ABC News' Karson Yiu, Gamay Palacios and Preechaya Rassadanukul contributed to this report.

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Musk hands out $1M checks after efforts to block the giveaways in court are rejected

Scott Olson/Getty Images

(MADISON, WI) -- Just hours after the state Supreme Court rejected Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul's effort to block Elon Musk from handing out $1 million checks on Sunday night, the billionaire took the stage at a town hall in Green Bay and gave away two $1 million checks to attendees in his latest effort to support conservative candidate Brad Schimel.

Urging the crowd to back Schimel, Musk cast Tuesday as "a vote for which party controls the House of Representatives" and implied "the future of civilization" is at stake.

One of the recipients of a large, showy check, Nicholas Jacobs, is the chair of the Wisconsin College Republicans.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court's order came just minutes before the event was set to start.

Notably, the court also rejected a bid from Musk's lawyers to ask two justices, who had campaigned for Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford, to recuse themselves.

The ruling came after an appeals court on Saturday denied Kaul's emergency motion to stop the giveaway from taking place.

Kaul wrote in his initial filing on Friday that he was asking for emergency relief to stop Musk and America PAC "from further promoting a million-dollar giveaway to attendees of a planned event on Sunday, March 30, 2025, and prohibiting Respondents from making any payments to Wisconsin electors to vote."

However, the judge assigned to the case, the Honorable Columbia County Circuit Court Judge W. Andrew Voigt, refused to hear the lawsuit before Sunday's Green Bay rally with Musk -- prompting Kaul's emergency motion asking a Court of Appeals to take action.

After that emergency motion was rejected, Kaul appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court to step in on Sunday.

Lawyers for Elon Musk and America PAC then filed motions for the recusal of Wisconsin Supreme Court Justices Rebecca Frank Dallet and Jill J. Karofsky.

They argued that because Dallet and Karofsky campaigned for Crawford, and Crawford has been critical of Musk, "to avoid any potential perceptions of bias and manifestations of possible bias, Justices Dallet and Karofsky should decline to participate in consideration of this matter."

The lawyers also framed the planned Sunday night giveaways as "spokesperson agreements" for spokespeople for the PAC.

In the initial lawsuit, shared by Kaul's office, Kaul argued that "Musk's announcement of his intention to pay $1 million to two Wisconsin electors who attend his event on Sunday night, specifically conditioned on their having voted in the upcoming April 3, 2025, Wisconsin Supreme Court election, is a blatant attempt to violate" state law, which "forbids anyone from offering or promising to give anything of value to an elector in order to induce the elector to go to the polls, vote or refrain from voting, or vote for a particular person."

The suit asked for a restraining order "prohibiting Defendants from any further promotion of the million-dollar gifts to attendees of the planned Sunday March 30, 2025," as well as a temporary restraining order "prohibiting Defendants from making any payments to Wisconsin electors to vote," and injunctive relief to "restrain and prohibit all actions by Defendants taken in furtherance of a planned violation" of the state law.

In addition to presenting the checks on Sunday night, Musk said his PAC is launching a "Block Captain" program ahead of the election on Tuesday, where participants will make $20 for each picture they post of someone with a Schimel sign and a thumbs up outside of their home.

So far, two political groups aligned with Musk -- America PAC and Building America's Future -- have poured nearly $20 million into supporting Schimel for the open seat.

The world's richest man has used cash giveaways in the past, including a controversial $1 million sweepstakes offered to voters in swing states during last year's election cycle as part of an effort to boost President Donald Trump's chances of winning in those states.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court election, on Tuesday, has generally become the center of a political firestorm, and has become the most expensive state supreme court race in American history, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

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Trial will determine who will pay $600 million settlement in disastrous Norfolk Southern derailment

(AP) – Norfolk Southern wants two other companies to help pay for the $600 million class-action settlement it agreed to over its disastrous 2023 train derailment near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border and the toxic chemicals that were released and burned.

The railroad filed the motion that is set to go to trial starting Monday to force the railcar owner GATX and the chemical manufacturer OxyVinyls to share the cost of the settlement because Norfolk Southern believes those companies are partly responsible for what happened in East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 3, 2023.

This lawsuit won’t change anything about how much money residents will receive from the settlement or any payments the village or anyone else is set to receive because those are all established in various settlement agreements. This case will only affect which company has to write the checks to pay for the class-action settlement.

Residents are still waiting to receive most of the money from the settlement because of pending appeals, although some payments have started to go out.

An assortment of chemicals spilled and caught fire after the train derailed in East Palestine. Three days later, officials blew open five tank cars filled with vinyl chloride because they feared those cars might explode, generating a massive black plume of smoke that spread over the town and forced evacuations.

Many residents still worry today about potential health consequences from those chemicals.

The derailment was the worst rail disaster since a crude oil train devastated the small Canadian town of Lac-Megantic and killed 47 people in 2013. It prompted the U.S. to focus on rail safety and reforms, which were proposed in Congress before stalling without passing.
Norfolk Southern says companies share the responsibility

Norfolk Southern already lost a similar lawsuit last year when it tried to force GATX and OxyVinyls to help pay for the environmental cleanup after the derailment that has cost the Atlanta-based railroad more than $1 billion. It is making similar arguments again to try to get help paying for the class-action settlement.

“Norfolk Southern alone has paid the costs relating to the derailment despite ample evidence that other parties share in the responsibility. This trial is about reinforcing the role shippers and railcar owners play in transportation safety and ensuring everyone responsible pays their fair share,” the railroad said in a statement.

Norfolk Southern, like most railroads, doesn’t own most of the cars it hauls, and the railroad says everyone involved in shipping hazardous chemicals bears some responsibility for ensuring their safety under federal regulations.

Norfolk Southern argues GATX bears some responsibility for the derailment because it owned the railcar filled with plastic pellets that caused the derailment when its bearing overheated, caught fire and failed that night, sending 38 cars off the rails.

Norfolk Southern also said it believes OxyVinyls should pay because the railroad says chemical manufacturer provided inconsistent and inaccurate information about its vinyl chloride before officials decided to release and burn it.
Companies say Norfolk Southern was responsible for safety

Both GATX and OxyVinyls say it would be ridiculous to hold them responsible for the derailment when Norfolk Southern operated and inspected the train and all the cars and was responsible for delivering the cargo safely.

“Norfolk Southern’s claims against GATX are baseless,” the railcar owner said in a statement.

GATX said it complied with all the relevant regulations for taking care of its railcars. The company said that even if the car was damaged six years earlier by standing parked in the middle of floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey, the railroad should have spotted the problem and repaired it, sending GATX the bill for the repairs.

The National Transportation Safety Board said the crash was caused by the failure of an overheating bearing on GATX’s railcar. The railroad’s sensors spotted the bearing starting to heat up in the miles before the derailment, but it didn’t reach a critical temperature and trigger an alarm until just before the derailment. That left the crew scant time to stop the train.

Norfolk Southern recommended the vent-and-burn operation to release the vinyl chloride based partly on information about the chemical that OxyVinyls had published beforehand suggesting a chemical reaction could happen and cause the tank cars to explode.

But the NTSB confirmed in its investigation that was unnecessary because the tank cars were starting to cool off and the railroad failed to listen to the advice from OxyVinyls’ experts or share their opinions with the officials who made the decision.

“This trial is nothing more than Norfolk Southern’s continued attempt to shift the blame, attention, and financial responsibility for its train derailment, response, and vent and burn decision to anyone other than itself,” the Texas-based company said. “OxyVinyls did not cause the derailment, its tank cars did not breach, and it did not make the decision to vent and burn the VCM (vinyl chloride monomer) cars.”

The trial is expected to last two to three weeks.

US immigration officials look to expand social media data collection

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — U.S. immigration officials are asking the public and federal agencies to comment on a proposal to collect social media handles from people applying for benefits such as green cards or citizenship, to comply with an executive order from President Donald Trump.

The March 5 notice raised alarms from immigration and free speech advocates because it appears to expand the government’s reach in social media surveillance to people already vetted and in the U.S. legally, such as asylum seekers, green card and citizenship applicants — and not just those applying to enter the country. That said, social media monitoring by immigration officials has been a practice for over a decade, since at least the second Obama administration and ramping up under Trump’s first term.

Below are some questions and answers on what the new proposal means and how it might expand social media surveillance.

What is the proposal?

The Department of Homeland Security issued a 60-day notice asking for public commentary on its plan to comply with Trump’s executive order titled “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats.” The plan calls for “uniform vetting standards” and screening people for grounds of inadmissibility to the U.S., as well as identify verification and “national security screening.” It seeks to collect social media handles and the names of platforms, although not passwords.

The policy seeks to require people to share their social media handles when applying for U.S. citizenship, green card, asylum and other immigration benefits. The proposal is open to feedback from the public until May 5.

What is changing?

“The basic requirements that are in place right now is that people who are applying for immigrant and non-immigrant visas have to provide their social media handles,” said Rachel Levinson-Waldman, managing director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program at New York University. “Where I could see this impacting is someone who came into the country before visa-related social media handle collection started, so they wouldn’t have provided it before and now they’re being required to. Or maybe they did before, but their social media use has changed.”

“This fairly widely expanded policy to collect them for everyone applying for any kind of immigration benefit, including people who have already been vetted quite extensively,” she added.

What this points to — along with other signals the administration is sending such as detaining people and revoking student visas for participating in campus protests that the government deems antisemitic and sympathetic to the militant Palestinian group Hamas — Levinson-Waldman added, is the increased use of social media to “make these very high-stakes determinations about people.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service said the agency seeks to “strengthen fraud detection, prevent identity theft, and support the enforcement of rigorous screening and vetting measures to the fullest extent possible.”

“These efforts ensure that those seeking immigration benefits to live and work in the United States do not threaten public safety, undermine national security, or promote harmful anti-American ideologies,” the statement continued. USCIS estimates that the proposed policy change will affect about 3.6 million people.

How are social media accounts used now?

The U.S. government began ramping up the use of social media for immigration vetting in 2014 under then-President Barack Obama, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. In late 2015, the Department of Homeland Security began both “manual and automatic screening of the social media accounts of a limited number of individuals applying to travel to the United States, through various non-public pilot programs,” the nonpartisan law and policy institute explains on its website.

In May 2017, the U.S. Department of State issued an emergency notice to increase the screening of visa applicants. Brennan, along with other civil and human rights groups, opposed the move, arguing that it is “excessively burdensome and vague, is apt to chill speech, is discriminatory against Muslims, and has no security benefit.”

Two years later, the State Department began collecting social media handles from “nearly all foreigners” applying for visas to travel to the U.S. — about 15 million people a year.

How is AI used?

Artificial intelligence tools used to comb through potentially millions of social media accounts have evolved over the past decade, although experts caution that such tools have limits and can make mistakes.

Leon Rodriguez, who served as the director of USCIS from 2014 to 2017 and now practices as an immigration attorney, said while AI could be used as a first screening tool, he doesn’t think “we’re anywhere close to where AI will be able to exercise the judgment of a trained fraud detection and national security officer” or that of someone in an intelligence agency.

“It’s also possible that I will miss stuff,” he added. “Because AI is still very much driven by specific search criteria and it’s possible that the search criteria won’t hit actionable content.”

What are the concerns?

“Social media is just a stew, so much different information — some of it is reliable, some of it isn’t. Some of it can be clearly attributed to somebody, some of it can’t. And it can be very hard to interpret,” Levinson-Waldman said. “So I think as a baseline matter, just using social media to make high-stakes decisions is quite concerning.”

Then there’s the First Amendment.

“It’s by and large established that people in the U.S. have First Amendment rights,” she said. This includes people who are not citizens. “And obviously, there are complicated ways that that plays out. There is also fairly broad authority for the government to do something like revoking somebody’s visa, if you’re not a citizen, then there’s steps that the government can take — but by and large, with very narrow exceptions, that cannot be on the grounds of speech that would be protected (by the First Amendment).”