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SAN ANTONIO – The San Antonio Express-News reports The woman convicted of killing Selena Quintanilla believes she has served her time as her parole eligibility fast approaches, a relative recently told the New York Post. Yolanda Saldívar, a San Antonio native, was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years for the murder of the 23-year-old “Queen of Tejano” at a Corpus Christi hotel on March 31, 1995. Saldívar is now 64 years old. The relative, who was not named in the article, told the Post that Saldívar “feels like she’s a political prisoner at this point,” adding, “Enough is enough.” Saldívar was the president of Quintanilla’s fan club before she killed the singer after the star confronted her over embezzlement alegations, which Saldívar has denied. Quintanilla had conquered the Spanish music scene and was on the verge of an English crossover before she was shot and killed two weeks before her 24th birthday.

AUSTIN – The San Antonio Express-News says Republican state leaders pushing a private school voucher plan have emphasized it would transform the face of education in Texas. They also say its cost would be limited to $1 billion for the first year. But projections from the nonpartisan Legislative Budget Board show demand for the program providing students with taxpayer funds to subsidize homeschooling or private education options could quickly outpace that initial investment, pressuring lawmakers to pour more and more money into it, while pulling millions from public schools. According to the LBB, demand for the program is projected to grow from $1 billion worth of vouchers for its first year of operation in 2027 to $3.2 billion the following year, then $3.8 billion and $4.6 billion by 2030. In other words, the $1 billion budget line on this biennium’s state budget could grow to more than $8 billion over the two-year period up for approval by the Legislature in 2029 as more and more students seek a voucher.

State Sen. Brandon Creighton, a Conroe Republican carrying his chamber’s version of the voucher bill, Senate Bill 2, has described the fiscal note as a “fairy tale” because lawmakers would need to sign off on any future funding increases. “Senate Bill 2 is entirely subject to a future appropriations process and the Legislature making a decision to grow the population of students served,” he said during a committee hearing earlier this year. Although the program’s initial investment would be set at $1 billion under Creighton’s bill, there are other pathways to grow it, even without lawmakers’ support. Gov. Greg Abbott, the state’s biggest voucher proponent, has been able to circumvent the Legislature for funding increases in the past, namely with his ongoing border security initiative, Operation Lone Star, which began with an appropriation from the Legislature of less than $3 billion. Abbott grew the program by billions more while the Legislature was out of session by moving money amongst state agencies with the approval of a small group of lawmakers, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the House speaker. Critics warn the same thing could happen with vouchers. “What will most likely happen based on what we’ve seen in other states, to start drawing down those dollars… it’s really unlimited,” said Jaime Puente, a policy analyst with the left-leaning group Every Texan who is critical of vouchers. “It’s really an unlimited amount of funding, an unlimited amount of seats that people will be advertised to with state dollars.”

AUSTIN (AP) -After one of the worst single day sell-offs in Tesla’s history, President Donald Trump threw his support behind his advisor, billionaire Elon Musk, vowing to buy one of his cars on Tuesday.

AUSTIN (AP) – The Trump administration has unveiled an overhauled cellphone app once used to let migrants apply for asylum, turning it into a system that allows people living illegally in the U.S. to say they want to leave the country voluntarily.

The renamed app, announced Monday and now called CBP Home, is part of the administration’s campaign to encourage “self-deportations, ” touted as an easy and cost-effective way to nudge along President Donald Trump’s push to deport millions of immigrants without legal status.

“The app provides illegal aliens in the United States with a straightforward way to declare their intent to voluntarily depart, offering them the chance to leave before facing harsher consequences,” Pete Flores, the acting commissioner for U.S Customs and Border Protection, said in a statement.

Moments after Trump took office, the earlier version of the app, CBP One, stopped allowing migrants to apply for asylum, and tens of thousands of border appointments were canceled.

More than 900,000 people were allowed in the country on immigration parole under CBP One, generally for two years, starting in January 2023.

The Trump administration has repeatedly urged migrants in the country illegally to leave.

“The CBP Home app gives aliens the option to leave now and self deport, so they may still have the opportunity to return legally in the future and live the American dream,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on the social platform X. “If they don’t, we will find them, we will deport them, and they will never return.”

Experts wondered how many people without legal status would register for what has long been known as “voluntary departure,” or what the government hopes to gain from the new app.

“I’m not sure what their intentions are,” said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, associate policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute. “But they’re creating a bit of a culture of fear around immigration right now,” from highly publicized ICE arrests to sending immigrants to a detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. The new app, she said, could be part of that “targeted public relations campaign” to urge more people to leave the U.S.

Some people living in the U.S. illegally chose to leave even before Trump’s inauguration, though it’s unclear how many.

But earlier mass crackdowns on illegal immigration — most famously a quasi-military operation in the mid-1950s that Trump has repeatedly praised — also drove many immigrants who were in the U.S. legally to leave.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Monday urged the Trump administration to scrap plans to kill more than 450,000 invasive barred owls in West Coast forests as part of efforts to stop the birds from crowding out a smaller type of owl that’s facing potential extinction.

The 19 lawmakers — led by Republican Rep. Troy Nehls, a Texas conservative, and Democrat Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a California liberal — claimed the killings would be “grossly expensive” and cost $3,000 per bird.

They questioned if the shootings would help native populations of northern spotted owls, which have long been controversial because of logging restrictions in the birds’ forest habitat beginning in the 1990s, and the closely related California spotted owl.

Barred owls are native to eastern North America and started appearing in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s. They’ve quickly displaced many spotted owls, which are smaller birds that need larger territories to breed.

An estimated 100,000 barred owls now live within a range that contains only about 7,100 spotted owls, according to federal officials.

Under a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan approved last year, trained shooters would target barred owls over 30 years across a maximum of about 23,000 square miles (60,000 square kilometers) in California, Oregon and Washington.

The plan did not include a cost estimate. But the lawmakers said in a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum that it could top $1.3 billion based on extrapolating costs from a grant awarded to the the Hoopa Valley Native American Tribe in California to kill up to 1,500 barred owls.

“This is an inappropriate and inefficient use of U.S. taxpayer dollars,” the lawmakers wrote. “This latest plan is an example of our federal government attempting to supersede nature and control environmental outcomes at great cost.”

A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions about the cost estimate and the owl removal program. The agency’s plan called for more than 2,400 barred owls to be removed this year and for that number to ramp up to more than 15,500 birds annually beginning in 2027.

Scientists for years have been shooting barred owls on an experimental basis and officials say the results show the strategy could halt spotted owl declines. As of last year, about 4,500 barred owls were killed on the West Coast by researchers since 2009.

Killing one bird species to save others has divided wildlife advocates and is reminiscent of past government efforts to save West Coast salmon by killing sea lions and cormorants. Or when, to preserve warblers, cowbirds that lay eggs in warbler nests were killed. The barred owl removals would be among the largest such effort to date involving birds of prey, researchers and wildlife advocates said.

Barred owls arrived in the Pacific Northwest via the Great Plains, where trees planted by settlers gave them a foothold, or via Canada’s boreal forests, which have become warmer and more hospitable as the climate changes, researchers said.

Their spread has undermined decades of spotted owl restoration efforts that previously focused on protecting forests where they live. That included logging restrictions under former President Bill Clinton that ignited bitter political fights and temporarily helped slow the spotted owl’s decline.

ATLANTA (AP) — A potent storm system is expected to pour heavy rain on western states later this week before rumbling into the central United States, where it could spawn tornadoes in the South and dump heavy snow across the parts of the Great Plains and Upper Midwest, creating blizzard conditions.

The ominous forecast comes as temperatures hit record highs in parts of the central U.S. after an active few days of weather across the nation. A possible tornado touched down in central Florida on Monday morning, tearing past a local television news station as its meteorologists were live on the air. No injuries were reported.

In Texas, thunderstorms on Saturday toppled semitrailers on Interstate 35 in Texas and flipped over a recreation vehicle at the Texas Motorplex drag racing strip south of Dallas, killing a man inside the RV.
Record temperatures heat up parts of Plains and Midwest

Much of the Midwest got hit by heavy snow and blizzard conditions last week, but the region began this week with springtime temperatures. Readings reached the 60s in many parts of Minnesota on Monday and hit 76 in the western town of Granite Falls by mid-afternoon.

Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska both set records Monday with temperatures in the low 80s (20s Celsius).

Readings in the 60s and low 70s (teens to 20s Celius) were also common across South Dakota.

But dry conditions and high winds raised the wildfire risk over much of the Midwest, with red flag warnings out for most of Nebraska and South Dakota, and parts of Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota.
Southern California could get drenched

The system moving in later this week is expected to begin with an atmospheric river soaking Southern California with heavy rain on Thursday, the National Weather Service projects. Atmospheric rivers are plumes of water vapor that form over the ocean and can drop tremendous amounts of moisture over land.

“Snow and wind will spread across the Intermountain West and Rockies Thursday into Friday before rapid development occurs over the Plains,” according to the federal Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
Tornadoes take aim at the South

As the system moves east, a regional outbreak of severe thunderstorms is expected over large parts of several southern states beginning Friday and continuing into Saturday, according to the latest forecasts from the federal Storm Prediction Center.

That means a variety of severe weather hazards, from thunderstorms to so-called supercells that can spawn destructive tornadoes.

The worst weather could strike parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee on Friday, then move into Alabama by Saturday, though it was too early to say which areas could be hardest hit.
High winds expected to increase wildfire threat

The threat of wildfires in parts of the Southwest is already high, with forecasts of critical wildfire conditions on Tuesday in the southeastern corner of Arizona and in southern New Mexico. Parts of west Texas also are at risk.

Strong winds that will likely accompany the incoming storm system are likely to add more concerns about wildfires later in the week, especially in the southern Plains, according to the National Weather Service.
Storm strikes Florida TV station

A powerful thunderstorm touched down along Interstate 4 in Seminole County north of Orlando, Florida, downing fences and blowing shingles off roofs, officials said.

The storm passed over local television station Fox 35’s studios in Lake Mary as its meteorologists were on the air.

“OK, take shelter. Everybody in the Fox 35 building, get to your safe space under your desk,” said Fox 35 meteorologist Brooks Garner. “If you’re not in a designated area, we’re catching debris right now on the roof. Debris is on the roof right now.”
Residents in Arizona, Texas clean up after earlier storms

In Texas, residents were cleaning up storm damage over the weekend.

Strong winds of up to 90 mph (145 kph) ripped the roof off a Days Inn along Interstate 45, and the high winds also damaged homes throughout Ellis County.

The 42-year-old man who died in the RV was identified as T.J. Bailey from Midlothian, Texas. His wife and two sons were inside the RV when it rolled over at the racetrack, Ellis County Justice of the Peace Chris Macon told The Dallas Morning News. Bailey’s family members were treated at a hospital for non-life-threatening injuries.

In northern Arizona, snowstorms late last week led to a more than 15-mile (24-kilometer) backup on Interstate 40, leaving some motorists stranded for hours.

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Associated Press Writer Michael Schneider in Orlando, Florida, contributed.

HOUSTON (AP) – U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner of Texas, who died this month just weeks into first term in Congress, was scheduled to lie in state at Houston City Hall on Tuesday in the first of several public events honoring the former Democratic lawmaker and mayor.

Turner, 70, died on March 5, hours after attending President Donald Trump’s address to Congress in Washington. His family said he died at his home following health complications.

The congressman served as Houston mayor for eight years before he was elected to the House in November to fill the seat held by longtime Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who died in July.

Prior to becoming mayor, Turner served as a legislator in the Texas House of Representatives for 27 years.

Turner is also scheduled to lie in state at the Texas Capitol beginning Thursday. His funeral is scheduled for Saturday in Houston.

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has not yet announced when a special election will be held for Turner’s seat.

TEXAS – The Hill reports that President Trump and Texas lawmakers are pushing to loosen the laws and liabilities governing the state’s oil and gas industry and give companies a freer hand to “drill, baby, drill,” drawing mixed reactions from the heart of oil country. On his first day back in office, the president declared a “national energy emergency.” With demand for electricity rising, the U.S. would now be able to “do whatever you have to do to get out of that problem,” he said. His administration has moved quickly to strip away a number of regulations and liabilities that impacted the oil and gas industry, lifting endangered species protections in the Permian Basin, instructing the Army Corps to fast-track pipeline construction under the Clean Water Act and laying the groundwork to overhaul a bedrock law that requires the government to consider environmental consequences before approving infrastructure projects.

Industry executives are hailing the new administration as a breath of fresh air: an end, as oil executive Kirk Edwards of Odessa-based Latigo Petroleum told The Hill shortly before Trump’s inauguration, to “these useless regulations that have been coming our way that we have to battle all the time.” Energy experts have been widely dismissive of the idea that Trump can increase drilling, however. They say that a rising global price of oil — potentially driven by more upheaval abroad — is the only likely driver of further oil-sector expansion. In regulatory terms, fossil fuel “investors have a friend in the White House,” Trey Cowan of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis told The Hill. But he added that markets, and not the White House, would determine whether there would be more drilling. And personal injury attorneys, law enforcement and worker safety advocates alike warn that if the sector does expand — particularly in tandem with continued deregulation — it would mean a lot more deaths on the nation’s roads, construction sites and well pads, where some workers already report being pushed past the limits of safety.