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LONE STAR, Texas (KETK) — An investigation by the Texas Railroad Commission found that drilling fluids containing oil from a reserve pit at a Rose City Resources well site on U.S. Steel property leaked into a damaged pipe and flowed into a nearby low?lying area.

From there, the fluids migrated through underlying rock formations and ultimately entered the Ellison Creek Reservoir.

The Railroad Commission concluded that Rose City Resources is responsible for the unpermitted disposal and will be required to handle the cleanup, with the Commission providing oversight.

To date, cleanup efforts have primarily targeted the origin point and the lake’s east side, but Tuesday’s observations emphasize the need for more comprehensive action. Inspection findings indicate that areas on the western shoreline require more attention, aligning with suggestions from local officials.

The public is encouraged to report any additional affected areas to the Morris County Sheriff’s non-emergency number at 903-645-2232.

Residents who notice affected shorelines or have information about the spill are asked to contact the Morris County Sheriff’s Office at 903-645-2232.

TEXAS (KETK) — The window to apply for the Texas Education Freedom Accounts (TEFA) program has been extended to March 31, after a federal court order was issued on Tuesday ahead of the initial deadline.

Parents may submit new applications before the extended deadline and previously submitted applications may be updated.

Acting Texas Comptroller Kelly Hancock announced on Tuesday that the school choice initiative surpassed 200,000 applications, with more than 2,200 schools signed up to participate.

“Crossing the 200,000-student mark shows just how strongly Texas families are responding to the opportunity for more educational freedom,” Hancock said.

The TEFA program, established by the Texas Legislature in 2025, allows families to apply for educational funding, such as private school tuition, tutoring, and other educational services.

Applications for the 2026-2027 school year will now close on March 31 at 11:59 p.m. Families accepted into the program will have until July 15 to select a school for their children, as additional schools register on a rolling basis.

“Our team has worked to stand up a program that is transparent, accountable and focused on student success,” Hancock said. “As we head into the final hours before the deadline, I encourage any family still considering TEFA to take a few minutes to complete an application. This program gives parents more tools to support their child’s future, and we want every eligible student to have the chance to benefit.”

DALLAS (AP) – Democratic U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett on Monday confirmed that a 39-year-old man who was killed in a standoff with Dallas officers last week was a member of her security team who had been using a fraudulent identity.

Diamon Mazairre Robinson lived as “Mike King” for years, during which he operated security businesses that hired off-duty officers, Dallas police said during a Monday press conference. Robinson’s real identity was exposed after Irving police put out a bulletin for a vehicle with stolen government plates, which a Dallas officer had seen while working with Robinson on a security job six months earlier.

Robinson fled Dallas police, who attempted to pull him over on March 11, escaping a brief chase before being located once more in a hospital parking garage, officials said. After an hours-long standoff with negotiators, officers shot and killed Robinson after he stepped out of the vehicle and drew a handgun.

In a statement posted on social media, the Dallas congresswoman confirmed that Robinson had helped provide security for her for years, and said her team had followed U.S. House procedure for contracting security. She also said Robinson, acting as Mike King, had worked with multiple law enforcement agencies, including Capitol Police. A spokesperson with the Capitol Police did not respond to an immediate request for comment.

Crockett said that her team was unaware he had been acting under an alias, but that Robinson had always maintained positive community relationships and never gave anyone reason to suspect he had misconstrued his identity.

“What we’re learning about his past doesn’t fit the person we came to know as Mike King,” Crockett said. “ His death evokes a range of emotions. Our hearts grieve the loss of someone we knew and the lost good that could have come from his redemption.”

DPD Deputy Chief William Kenneth said investigators did not discover Robinson’s true identity until after Crockett’s campaign for the Democratic nomination in the U.S. Senate race had ended. Crockett, a former public defender, said in her statement that she believed in people’s capacity for redemption and second chances. She also acknowledged Robinson’s prior criminal history and said they did not believe he had been charged with any violent offenses.

Robinson had posed as a federal officer under the “Specialty Dignitary Police,” a nonexistent agency he created identification cards for, officials said. He also had two active felony theft warrants from 2017, a parole violation, two vehicles with stolen government plates and multiple stolen firearms, including the one he produced before being shot, Kenneth said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Chief Justice John Roberts warned Tuesday that personal criticism of federal judges is dangerous and “it’s got to stop,” two days after President Donald Trump called a federal judge who ruled against the administration “wacky, nasty, crooked and totally out of control.”

As he has done before, Roberts was careful not to single out Trump or anyone else, insisting that the attacks on judges are not from “just any one political perspective.”

Criticism of judicial opinions “comes with the territory” and can be healthy, Roberts said in remarks at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston.

But it’s different when the criticism moves away from legal analysis. “Personally directed hostility is dangerous and it’s got to stop,” Roberts said.

U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal, who shared the stage with the chief justice, thanked Roberts because “we always know that you have our backs and that means a great deal.”

The U.S. Marshals Service, responsible for protecting judges, reported 564 threats in the government fiscal year that ended in September, up from the year before. Roberts acknowledged the “serious threats” by noting Congress has responded by increasing funding for judges’ security.

Trump’s most recent comments about judges came Sunday in a post on his Truth Social following a ruling by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg quashing subpoenas the Justice Department had issued to the Federal Reserve.

Boasberg, Trump wrote, is “a Wacky, Nasty, Crooked, and totally Out of Control Judge” who “suffers from the highest level of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), and has been ‘after’ my people, and me, for years.”

Last year, Roberts publicly rejected Trump’s call for Boasberg’s impeachment when the judge blocked additional deportations to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

The president also has been highly critical of Roberts and the five other justices who struck down global tariffs he imposed under an emergency powers law. Trump said he was “absolutely ashamed” of the members of the court who ruled against him, questioning their patriotism and singling out two of his own appointees, Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch.

Trump’s allies and administration officials also have joined in the criticism. After U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston on Monday blocked the administration’s effort to reshape vaccines policy, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche noted that other rulings from Murphy had been upended.

“How many times can Judge Murphy get reversed in one year? The same day he is stayed for repeatedly refusing to follow the law, he issues another activist decision. We will keep appealing these lawless decisions, and we will keep winning. The question is, how much embarrassment can this Judge take?” Blanche posted on X.

AUSTIN (AP) – President Donald Trump has said he plans to endorse one of the candidates in the Republican Senate runoff in Texas, but Tuesday is the last chance for either to withdraw from the ballot and fulfill the party’s hope of avoiding more than two months of bitter and costly campaigning.

Neither incumbent Sen. John Cornyn or state Attorney General Ken Paxton have shown any signs of bowing out, instead launching new advertisements criticizing each other.

Trump told NBC News on Saturday that he thinks he’ll bestow an endorsement this week. But it’s already been two weeks since he originally promised to back a candidate “soon” and urge the one without his support to drop out of the race “for the good of the Party.”

Cornyn finished ahead of Paxton in the March 3 primary, although he didn’t secure the majority needed to avoid a runoff.

Asked about the chance of Cornyn dropping out, campaign spokesman Matt Mackowiak said “of course not” and “we’ve already started our campaign.”

An ad released Tuesday by Cornyn’s campaign highlighted allegations that Paxton had an affair and his impeachment by Texas’ Republican-controlled House. Paxton was later acquitted and denied corruption accusations. Another ad framed some of the same accusations as Paxton violating the Ten Commandments.

As to whether Paxton plans to step down, campaign spokesman Nick Maddux declined to comment. But the candidate introduced a new attack ad against Cornyn on Friday and is scheduled to speak this month at the Conservative Political Action Committee’s annual convention, hardly the signs of a candidate eyeing the exit.

The ad is a series of news clips highlighting Cornyn’s past critiques of Trump, including over the president’s false statements that the 2020 election was stolen, and frames Paxton as the MAGA-aligned candidate.

A pro-Paxton super PAC has also sought to catch Trump’s attention by airing an ad with the same messaging in the West Palm Beach, Florida, market, which includes Trump’s resort home, Mar-a-Lago.

But Cornyn, a more traditional Republican, isn’t retreating from the fight over who’s the better MAGA adherent: the first sentence on his website is “Cornyn votes with President Trump 99% of the time.”

Trump told NBC News that he likes “both candidates very much” and believes that either could beat the Democratic nominee, state Rep. James Talarico, in the general election.

While Cornyn came out slightly ahead of Paxton in the primary, the second round of voting could favor the attorney general since runoffs typically draw a more conservative, activist corner of the Republican Party.

“Cornyn has always had a weakness with the most conservative voters in the electorate,” said Joshua Blank, director of research for the Texas Political Project at the University of Texas, Austin, which conducts statewide polls.

Still, he added, Cornyn’s primary campaign appeared to offset at least part of that disadvantage and “illustrate for the Republican primary electorate what kinds of vulnerabilities that Ken Paxton has.”

The ads, however, matter less in a runoff contest, said veteran Texas Republican strategist Dave Carney. The smaller, more concentrated electorate puts an emphasis on identifying individual voters, contacting them directly through digital advertising and texts, he said.

“Whoever has good data and knows who their supporters are and turns them out will win,” he said.

ALVARADO, Texas (AP) — A Palestinian woman who was the last person still in immigration detention after the Trump administration’s 2025 crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism on college campuses was freed Monday after a year in custody.

Leqaa Kordia, a 33-year-old from the West Bank who has lived in New Jersey since 2016, had been held in a U.S. immigration detention center in Texas since last March. Her detention was linked, in part, to her participation in a protest outside Columbia University in 2024.

“I don’t know what to say. I’m free! I’m free! Finally, after one year,” Kordia, with a beaming smile, told reporters after emerging from the detention center.

An immigration judge had ordered her released on bond three times. The government challenged the first two rulings, but Kordia was freed Monday on $100,000 bond after it did not challenge the third.

Kordia said she was looking forward to going home and hugging her mother “so hard.” But she also said she would keep fighting on behalf of people still being held at the detention center.

“There is a lot of injustice in this place,” she said. “There is a lot of people that shouldn’t be here the first place.”

Kordia was among a number of people arrested last year after the Trump administration began using its immigration enforcement powers on noncitizens who had criticized or protested Israel’s military actions in Gaza, many students and scholars at American universities.

Among them was Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student involved in campus protests. He spent three months detained in a Louisiana immigration jail before being freed. Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University student who co-authored an op-ed criticizing her university’s response to Israel and the war, was detained for six weeks.

Others did not fight to stay — one Columbia doctoral student fled the U.S. after her visa was revoked and immigration agents showed up at her university apartment.

Arrests of activists like Khalil drew condemnation from elected officials and advocates. But Kordia was not a student or part of a group that might have provided support, so her case remained largely out of the public eye while her detention carried on.

Kordia said she joined a 2024 demonstration outside Columbia University after Israel killed scores of her relatives in Gaza, where she maintains deep personal ties. She was around 100 people arrested by city police at that protest, but the charges against her were dismissed and sealed. Information about her arrest was later given to the Trump administration by the New York City Police Department, which said it was told the records were needed as part of a money laundering investigation.

Kordia was arrested during a March 13, 2025, check-in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New Jersey. She was detained immediately and flown to Prairieland Detention Center, south of Dallas.

Federal officials have accused Kordia of overstaying her visa, while scrutinizing payments she sent to relatives in the Middle East. Kordia said the money was meant to help family members suffering during the war.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, had previously criticized Kordia for what she said was “providing financial support to individuals living in nations hostile to the U.S.”

The department said in an email Monday night, “The facts of this case have not changed: Leqaa Kordia is in the country illegally after violating the terms of her visa.”

“The Trump administration is committed to restoring the rule of law and common sense to our immigration system, and will continue to fight for the arrest, detention, and removal of aliens who have no right to be in this country,” read the statement.

An immigration judge found “overwhelming evidence” that Kordia was telling the truth about the payments.

Kordia was recently hospitalized for three days following a seizure after fainting and hitting her head at the privately run detention facility.

At a hearing Friday, Kordia’s attorneys said she had a neurological condition that had worsened while in custody, putting her at an elevated risk of seizure. They reiterated that she could stay with U.S. citizen family members and did not pose a flight risk.

The immigration judge, Tara Naslow, agreed.

“I’ve heard testimony. I’ve seen thousands of pages of evidence presented by the respondent, and very little evidence presented by the government in any of this,” Naslow said.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on X that he asked for her release when he met with President Donald Trump last month

“I am grateful that Leqaa has been released this evening from ICE custody after more than a year in detention for speaking up for Palestinian rights,” Mamdani said.

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Offenhartz reported from New York.