KTBB News, Weather, Talk

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — A developing winter storm threatens to drop snow, sleet and freezing rain on parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas as frigid air that escaped the Arctic plunges temperatures to subfreezing levels in some of the southernmost points of the U.S.

National Weather Service meteorologists predicted wintry precipitation across the southern Plains region starting Wednesday night, with snow likely in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Farther south, snow could transition to sleet and freezing rain, which meteorologists warn could result in hazardous driving conditions.

An arctic blast descended on much of the U.S. east of the Rockies over the weekend, causing hundreds of car accidents and thousands of flight cancellations and delays. Several communities set up warming shelters this week, including one at a roller rink in Cincinnati and another in the Providence, Rhode Island, City Council chambers.

As the cold front moved south, a cold weather advisory was issued for the Gulf Coast and pushed the low temperature in El Paso, along the Texas border with Mexico, to 31 degrees (minus 0.5 Celsius). The National Weather Service predicted a wind chill factor ranging from 0 to 15 degrees (minus 18 to minus 9 Celsius) early Wednesday.

The polar vortex of ultra-cold air usually spins around the North Pole, but it sometimes ventures south into the U.S., Europe and Asia. Some experts say such cold air outbreaks are happening more frequently, paradoxically, because of a warming world.

As points north and east dug out of snow and ice Tuesday, communities in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas were preparing. In Texas, crews treated the roads in the Dallas area amid forecasts of 1 to 3 inches (about 3 to 8 centimeters) of snow on Thursday, along with sleet and rain. National Weather Service meteorologist Sam Shamburger said up to 5 inches (13 centimeters) of snow was expected farther north near the Oklahoma line.

Kevin Oden, Dallas’ director of emergency management and crisis response, said Tuesday, “Our city is in a preparedness phase.”

The storm could make roads slick Friday as 75,000 fans head to AT&T Stadium in Arlington to see Texas play Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl. Arlington spokesperson Susan Shrock said crews are ready to address any hazardous road conditions around the stadium.

“They’re going to have the salt brine, they’ll have sand and they’ll have equipment on standby,” she said.

A Tuesday night statement from AT&T Stadium and the Cotton Bowl said officials have been meeting with city and transportation officials and that “plans are in place to assure a safe environment for everyone in and around AT&T Stadium on game day.”

Parts of southeastern Georgia and northern Florida endured unusually frigid temperatures overnight into Tuesday and were under freeze warnings into Wednesday.

In northern Florida, with Valentine’s Day just a month away, the main concern for growers fearful of cold weather is the fern crop used for floral arrangements.

Major damage to citrus trees, which typically occurs when temperatures drop to 28 degrees (minus 2 degrees Celsius) or below for several hours, was less likely. Florida’s commercial citrus groves are primarily south of the central part of the peninsula.

An area stretching from the central Plains through the Ohio Valley into the mid-Atlantic region is likely to receive more snow and ice for a few days, which could cause the ground covering to melt and refreeze to form treacherous black ice on roadways, forecasters said.

Hundreds of car accidents were reported in Virginia, Indiana, Kansas and Kentucky earlier this week, and a state trooper was treated for injuries after his patrol car was hit.

Three people died in vehicle crashes in Virginia, according to state police. Other weather-related fatal accidents occurred Sunday near Charleston, West Virginia, and Monday in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Kansas, where over a foot (30 centimeters) of snow fell in places, had two deadly weekend crashes.

Nearly 100,000 customers remained without power Tuesday night in states to the east of Kansas including Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia, according to the tracking website PowerOutage.us. That was down from more than 200,000 earlier in the day.

More than 5,000 flights into or out of the U.S. were delayed Tuesday, according to tracking platform FlightAware. On Monday, more than 2,300 flights were canceled and at least 9,100 more were delayed.

Virginia’s state Capitol and General Assembly buildings will stay closed Wednesday after a weather-related power outage caused a malfunction in the water system, officials said Monday. The closure postponed lawmakers’ first working day of the legislative session. A boil-water notice that was issued for Richmond’s 200,000 residents could be lifted Wednesday, Mayor Danny Avula said.

University of Texas at Austin President Jay Hartzell said Tuesday he is leaving the UT System’s flagship school to become the next president of Southern Methodist University, marking a major change in Texas higher education leadership and leaving open a job at the center of the state’s culture wars days before the start of a new legislative session.

SMU’s Board of Trustees unanimously voted to name Hartzell as the next president of the private university in Dallas on Tuesday. In a press release, Hartzell said that this was an opportunity “I could not pass up.”

“I look forward to building upon the university’s remarkable momentum and leading SMU into its next era,” he said.

Hartzell will become president June 1. SMU’s current president, R. Gerald Turner, will transition this summer to the role of president emeritus. He has led the university for three decades.

“Dr. Hartzell is a well-respected academician and higher education leader with a strong track record of accomplishments that make him the ideal candidate to build upon the tremendous energy and momentum we are experiencing here on the Hilltop,” said David B. Miller, chair of SMU’s Board of Trustees and co-chair of the presidential search committee.

Hartzell has been president of UT-Austin since 2020. He previously served as dean of the McCombs School of Business and has been a UT-Austin faculty member since 2001.

It was immediately unclear who will lead UT-Austin in the interim or when the Board of Regents will name a new president. UT-Austin did not respond to requests for comment. Many faculty and administrators told The Texas Tribune that they just learned of the news Tuesday morning.

In a statement, University of Texas System Board Chair Kevin Eltife and Chancellor James Milliken congratulated Hartzell on the new appointment.

“We wish President Hartzell our very best on his new leadership role in Dallas, and we thank him for his many contributions to UT over the past 24 years,” Eltife said in a statement, adding that the Board will work closely with the flagship campus to ensure a smooth transition.

Eltife told the Tribune the board will discuss next steps at its February meeting.

Hartzell’s tenure has been marred with tense political battles on campus that pitted faculty and students against the administration. It has also been shaped by legislative efforts to implement a more conservative vision of public higher education, such as a ban on diversity, equity and inclusion offices, and attempts to end faculty tenure and limit what can be taught in college classrooms. During Hartzell’s time as president, conservative lawmakers have increasingly railed against universities that they believe have been taken over by “woke” faculty who are trying to indoctrinate students.

On Tuesday, the reaction to Hartzell’s announcement drew shock from UT-Austin faculty members.

“I think everyone is terrified of the uncertainty of doing this right now right before the legislative session,” said Karma Chavez, a Mexican American and Latino studies professor. “Everyone is on edge.”

For higher education watchers, Hartzell’s departure speaks to the difficult nature of running a public university in today’s political climate.

Michael Harris, who studies higher education leadership at SMU, said the Texas Legislature’s recent higher ed proposals likely made it difficult for Hartzell to lead UT-Austin and made him look for a job elsewhere.

“I think being president of a public university in a red state right now is one of the hardest jobs in higher education,” Harris said.

The University of Texas Board of Regents tapped Hartzell to be interim president in 2020 to replace former President Gregory Fenves, who also left the university to lead a private school — Emory University in Atlanta.

Hartzell took over at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when schools were forced to shift thousands of classes online and cancel in-person events like graduation.

Then, the murder of George Floyd in late spring of that year sparked protests in cities across the country, prompting students at universities to demand their leaders better support Black students and build more racial equity on campus.

At UT-Austin, Texas football players released a list of demands, including that the school donate to the Black Lives Matter movement, rename parts of the football stadium and stop singing the school alma mater, The Eyes of Texas, which was originally written and performed at a campus minstrel show in 1903. While students and faculty called for the song’s removal, many alumni pushed the school to keep the song, threatening to pull donations.

In July 2020, Hartzell announced that the song would remain, but also announced a list of proposals to create a more welcoming campus. He organized a committee to study the origins of the song and find new ways for the school to talk about its history.

That summer, Hartzell was named the permanent president without a national search.

Throughout his tenure, Hartzell was consumed by decisions made at the Texas Capitol surrounding higher education. In 2023, lawmakers eliminated DEI offices on campus, prompting the school to lay off dozens of employees. The university’s steps to comply with the law angered students who said the administration overinterpreted the law.

“As with all new laws, I fully expect that there will be divided opinions on our campus about both the law itself and its eventual impacts on our University,” Hartzell wrote in a letter to the campus community at the end of 2023. “But it is the law, and with compassion and respect for all of our community members, we will comply.”

Last spring, Hartzell angered students and faculty with his handling of peaceful pro-Palestinian protests after hundreds of people were arrested on campus.

Hartzell requested armed state troopers to respond, prompting some faculty to call for a vote of no confidence on Hartzell and GOP leaders to praise him.

Hartzell’s announcement comes on the heels of other notable leadership changes at the flagship. Last semester, the university’s provost, who is in charge of academics, stepped down from the administrative role. The university police chief also resigned. Last semester, the dean of the College of Liberal Arts was told she would not be allowed to pursue a second term in the job, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

Under Hartzell, UT-Austin has gotten more academically selective. Last year, the school limited automatic admission to only those Texas high school students who graduate in the top 5% of their class. All other public universities in the state automatically accept Texas high school students in the top 10% of their class.

The four-year graduation rate increased to nearly 75% last year. This fall, the university had the second-largest freshman class ever. The university has tried to increase affordable housing for students, including graduate students who often have fewer campus-run housing options. The school also raised $1 billion to support students, part of a massive $6 billion campaign.

Hartzell also oversaw the university athletic department move to the Southeastern Conference. The Texas football team is two wins away from its first national championship in 20 years.

“People ask these questions of a president, ‘How do you want to be remembered?” Hartzell said at the State of the University address last semester. “Depending how this goes, it may just be the president who hired [coach Steve Sarkisian].”

SMU, meanwhile, has had a successful football season in its own right. The Mustangs are 11-3 overall this season and are standing at number one after joining the Atlantic Coast Conference last summer.

SMU has also raised a majority of its current major gifts campaign goal of $1.5 billion ahead of schedule.

The Dallas private school, which enrolls more than 12,000 students, is in a “thriving city,” University of North Texas professor Barrett Taylor said.

“So while it may not be as large or well known as UT-Austin, it’s in a much stronger position than most private universities are,” said Taylor, who coauthored a book in 2019 that included data showing more than three quarters of private colleges in the U.S. are financially vulnerable.

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

Justice Jimmy Blacklock, a conservative ally of Gov. Greg Abbott, has been named the new chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court. He replaces Nathan Hecht, the court’s longest serving justice, who stepped down at the end of December due to the mandatory judicial retirement age.

Abbott appointed his general counsel, James P. Sullivan, to take the seat vacated by Blacklock’s promotion.

“The Supreme Court of Texas plays a crucial role to shape the future of our great state, and Jimmy Blacklock and James Sullivan will be unwavering guardians of the Texas Constitution serving on our state’s highest judicial court,” Abbott said in a statement.

As chief justice, Blacklock will take on a larger role in the administration of the court. During his tenure, Hecht helped reform the rules of civil procedure and was a fierce advocate for legal aid and other programs to help low-income Texans access the justice system. But, as he told The Texas Tribune in December, when it comes to rulings, “the chief is just one voice of nine.”

Adding Sullivan to the court will further secure the court’s conservative stronghold. While Hecht came up in an era when state courts were less politically relevant, Blacklock and Sullivan are both young proteges of an increasingly active conservative legal movement.
Blacklock attended Yale Law School and clerked on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and after a stint in private practice, he joined the Texas Office of the Attorney General under Abbott. He helped lead Texas’ aggressive litigation strategy against the Obama administration, defending the state’s restrictive abortion and voter identification laws, gay marriage restrictions and crusade against the Affordable Care Act.

When Abbott became governor, Blacklock became his general counsel. Abbott appointed him to the bench in December 2017, when he was just 38 years old.

The Texas Supreme Court has transformed over the last few decades from a plaintiff-friendly venue dominated by Democrats to the exclusive domain of increasingly conservative Republicans. Abbott, a former justice himself, has played a huge role in this shift, appointing six of the nine current justices, including Sullivan.

Sullivan graduated from Harvard Law School and clerked for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. He spent four years as Texas assistant solicitor general during Abbott’s tenure as attorney general, and in 2018, became Abbott’s deputy general counsel. In 2021, he became the governor’s general counsel.

“As General Counsel for the Office of the Governor, James Sullivan has provided superior legal advice and rendered opinions on some of the most consequential legal issues in Texas,” Abbott said in a statement. “He has the integrity, temperament, and experience Texas needs as a Texas Supreme Court Justice.”

It’s now seen as one of the most conservative high courts in the country, issuing consequential rulings on abortion, COVID restrictions, health care for trans minors and local control in just the last few years. While Democrats have tried to pin these often unpopular rulings on the justices during election years, incumbents tend to easily win reelection in these relatively low-awareness down-ballot races.

Blacklock defeated Harris County District Judge DaSean Jones in November by more than 16 points. In a statement Monday, he thanked Hecht for his “extraordinary legacy of service.”

“The Supreme Court of Texas belongs to the People of Texas, not to the judges or the lawyers,” he said. “Our job at the Court is to apply the law fairly and impartially to every case that comes before us. My colleagues and I are committed to defending the rule of law and to preserving our Texas and United States Constitutions.”

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

Since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states like Texas to ban nearly all abortions, the number of pregnancy terminations in the United States actually increased. This paradox, which pleases abortion advocates as much as it frustrates their conservative counterparts, hinges mostly on pills.

An average of 2,800 Texans receive abortion-inducing medications through the mail each month from states that still allow abortion, according to #WeCount, a tracking project from the Society of Family Planning.

Until recently, abortion-ban states like Texas mostly gnashed their teeth and railed against their blue state counterparts for allowing this underground enterprise to flourish. But now, they’re using lawsuits and legislation to more directly attack these abortion pill providers.

In December, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a first-of-its-kind civil lawsuit against a New York doctor for allegedly prescribing abortion pills to a Texas resident, setting up a conflict between Texas’ abortion ban and New York’s shield laws. Legislators are filing bills for the upcoming session that would give the state more tools to try to root out this practice. And they do all of this knowing the incoming Trump administration has their back.

“We’re getting to the point where, if we don’t start swinging, start adopting new tools, these websites and the 20,000 abortion pills coming into the state [each year] are going to become the new status quo,” said John Seago, the president of Texas Right to Life. “I don’t judge legislators for trying something that doesn’t work. But we are demanding that they start swinging.”

In 2023, on the eve of the first anniversary of the Dobbs decision, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law a sweeping set of protections for abortion providers. The shield law meant New York wouldn’t cooperate with another state’s efforts to “prosecute, penalize, sue one of our health care providers who prescribed abortion medication,” Hochul said.

“You can continue hell-bent down your path on continuing this radical behavior,” she said, addressing anti-abortion states like Texas. “But we’ll be just as hell-bent on stopping you.”

Almost immediately, providers in New York joined those in Massachusetts, California and other shield law states in providing abortion pills via telehealth appointments and mail-order pharmacies to patients in abortion-ban states. The health care they provided was fully legal in the state they were based in, but clearly illegal in the states their patients are based in, and they undertook this work knowing they were courting legal challenges.

If anything, it’s a surprise how long it took, said Mary Ziegler, an abortion legal historian at UC Davis School of Law.

“Everyone has been expecting this and preparing for this,” Ziegler said. “And it’s no surprise that it’s Texas that brought this first suit.”

In mid-December, Paxton filed a lawsuit in Collin County alleging Dr. Maggie Carpenter, the founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine Access, provided a Texas woman with abortion pills in violation of state law.

Carpenter’s group not only provides direct patient care but also advises other shield providers on technical and legal support. The group was co-founded by Carpenter, Dr. Linda Prine and Julie Kay, a former ACLU attorney who led the lawsuit that overturned Ireland’s abortion ban.

“This is someone who is part of a network, part of a movement,” Ziegler said. “They’re prepared for this test of the shield law.”

But Texas was prepared, too, and legal experts are not certain how exactly this will play out. Nothing in New York’s shield law prevents a Texas court from hearing a case against a New York doctor, said Paul Schiff Berman, a law professor who specializes in conflicts of state law at the George Washington University law school.

If Carpenter doesn’t show up to the hearing, Paxton’s office will likely ask the court for a default judgement. If that is granted, Paxton can ask a New York state court to enforce it, which is where the shield law may come into play.

But much of the shield law’s protections are about protecting doctors from criminal investigations and regulatory consequences, like losing their medical licenses. In a civil suit, like the one Paxton has filed, it’s much harder for one state to undermine another’s ruling, Berman said. The U.S. Constitution specifically requires that a civil judgement issued in one state, like Texas, is enforceable in all states, regardless of their other laws.

This clause applies most clearly to private lawsuits — if a court orders you to pay someone you’ve harmed to make them whole, that judgement is enforceable no matter where you live.

“You don’t want it to be that if I sue you and win in Texas, and you flee to New Mexico, that I have to sue you all over again in New Mexico, and then you flee to California and it starts again,” Berman said.

But when it’s a state, not an individual, bringing the lawsuit, the judgement may not be as easily enforced. There’s an exception for “penal judgements,” when one state is using a civil lawsuit to try to enforce their state laws.

“This is clearly not just one random person suing another random person,” Ziegler said. “New York’s best argument is that this is the state of Texas enforcing its abortion policy through a lawsuit, which is a penal judgement, and they wouldn’t have to deal with that.”

But this is a rarely litigated question the federal courts haven’t meaningfully waded into in decades. Complicating matters further is a provision in New York’s shield law that would allow Carpenter to sue Texas right back, opening the door to more questions about sovereign immunity and state-on-state litigation.

It is, put simply, “a mess,” Ziegler said.

“If New York wins, as in they don’t have to enforce the judgment, that doesn’t mean that the state 100% would know what happens with other types of defendants,” she said. “And if Texas wins, I don’t think that’s going to be the end of abortion pills, or necessarily a guarantee that Texas’s abortion rate will plummet. There are no quick fixes.”

Seago, with Texas Right to Life, agrees. He sees the Carpenter lawsuit as a “very encouraging step,” but said there’s no one legal strategy that will bring the practice of mailing abortion pills into Texas to a stop.

“There’s a long list of areas of law that have not been tested, and areas where we need to start getting precedent,” he said. “We need to start getting some specific fact patterns before judges for them to determine whether some of the laws we already have on the books apply.”

Some of these lawsuits will be brought by Paxton’s office, but Seago said he anticipates private wrongful death lawsuits, as well as lawsuits against people who “aid or abet” in illegal abortions, as prohibited by Texas’ ban on most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.

“There’s no silver bullet,” he said. “These are really difficult cases because these websites are run by individuals and others in other countries, their websites, their domains are out of our jurisdiction, the pharmacies they are using are outside of the country as well.”

Last legislative session was the quietest in decades for abortion. After successfully banning nearly all abortions, Republicans were wary about continuing to push an issue that is widely unpopular with voters.

This session, coming off a Republican rout in November, Seago is hopeful that lawmakers will feel more empowered to continue restricting abortions, and especially abortion pills.

“Texas is uniquely positioned to lead on these cutting-edge pro-life issues,” Seago said. “Some of our friends in red states are still playing defense. They’re fighting off constitutional amendments. They’re still fighting off exceptions to their laws. We’re in a solid place to start fighting back.”

Texas has no mechanism to put a constitutional amendment to increase abortion access on the ballot without the approval of lawmakers, and while Democrats have filed bills to add more exceptions to the abortion laws, they are once again expected to not get any traction.

But whether conservative efforts to further restrict abortion pills will take hold also remains to be seen. Rep. Nate Schatzline, a conservative Republican from Fort Worth, has filed House Bill 1651, which would make it a deceptive trade practice to send abortion pills through the mail without verifying that they were prescribed by an in-state doctor after an in-person exam.

Another bill, HB 991, filed by Republican Rep. Steve Toth of The Woodlands, would allow lawsuits against websites that provide information about obtaining abortion pills. Elisa Wells, co-founder of Plan C, an information repository about telehealth abortion access, said they expect any challenge to their work to run afoul of free speech protections.

“Texas is a state that values free speech, but despite that, they’re taking action to try and limit free speech with respect to abortion,” she said. “It’s a bit hypocritical.”

Wells said they take seriously any legislation that might further restrict access to abortion in states like Texas. But she said even if all the domestic access routes were shut off by lawsuits and legislation, there are international providers prepared to keep providing pills to people who need them.

“It’s ironic that a lot of these legal actions and court decisions and attempts to restrict access are what is shining a spotlight on … the fact that abortion pills are available by mail,” she said. “Every time there’s a decision like that, we just see the traffic to our site just exponentially increase. These anti-choice actions are the best advertisement.”

After the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the Biden administration took steps to shore up abortion access and protect providers and patients in states where the procedure remained legal. The incoming presidential administration is expected to undo most of those protections and more vociferously go after entities that are attempting to help people skirt state abortion laws.

One open question is whether Trump will direct the Food and Drug Administration to revoke the approval of Mifepristone, a common abortion-inducing drug that conservatives tried to get moved off the market. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected those efforts, but nothing about that ruling would stop a new FDA from reviewing that approval.

Additionally, many are watching to see whether the Trump administration will issue new guidance on the Comstock Act, a 19th-century zombie law that hasn’t been enforced in decades. The Comstock Act prohibits mailing anything that could be used to facilitate an illegal abortion, which legal experts say could wreak havoc across the medical supply chain.

While trying to enforce the Comstock Act would spark significant legal challenges, it is a much more direct route to shutting down the infrastructure these shield providers have built, Ziegler said.

“This lawsuit [from Texas] isn’t likely to change much of these shield providers’ behavior, because they’ve been expecting this,” she said. “But there’s much more anxiety about the possibility of Comstock prosecutions, because those would be federal charges.”

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

WASHINGTON (AP) — More Americans say immigration should be a top focus for the U.S. government in 2025, as the country heads toward a new Republican administration in which President-elect Donald Trump has promised the mass deportations of migrants and an end to birthright citizenship.

About half of U.S. adults named immigration and border topics in an open-ended question that asked respondents to share up to five issues they want the government to work on this year, according to a December poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’s up from about one-third who mentioned the topic as a government priority in an AP-NORC poll conducted the previous year.

The issue of immigration has risen in salience across the board — among Democrats and Republicans, men and women, and adults both young and old. But Republicans, in particular, have converged around this issue in recent years. About 7 in 10 Republicans say immigration or a U.S.-Mexico border wall should be a top focus, up from 45% just two years ago.

This means that Trump will return to the White House with his base, and much of the country, interested in his signature issue. That’s a marked contrast to when he left Washington four years ago with his successor, Democrat Joe Biden, offering a more welcoming posture toward migrants.

But even with the widespread uptick in concern about immigration, that issue is still overshadowed by economic worries. About three-quarters of Americans want the government to focus on addressing broad economic concerns, similar to the past few years. There’s a range of economic issues Americans want addressed — about 3 in 10 referenced general economic issues, a similar share pointed to inflation, and roughly 1 in 10 mentioned either unemployment or taxes.

About one-third of Americans identify foreign policy as an important issue, with health care issues and politics — both identified broadly — close behind.

Republicans are especially likely to want government action on immigration

Trump won back the White House with immigration playing a key role in his campaign, often disparaging migrants to the U.S. and claiming that they commit violent crimes, though studies have shown no link between immigration and crime.

Some of his immigration reforms are likely to face legal challenges as Trump seeks to sharply limit the number of immigrants welcome in the U.S. But addressing those issues remains paramount for Americans as he prepares to take office.

About 8 in 10 Republicans want the government to prioritize economic issues, while about 7 in 10 Republicans say immigration or the border wall should be a top priority.

Most Democrats, meanwhile, are focused on the economy, but they don’t have a clear second priority. Instead, about 4 in 10 name health care and health issues, a small uptick from a year earlier. About one-third of Democrats mention political issues, the environment or climate change, or immigration.

But even Democrats are more likely to want the government to make progress on immigration than they were the year before, when only about 2 in 10 Democrats considered it something that should be a primary focus for the federal government.

That doesn’t mean, though, that they align with Trump’s hard-line approach. One Democrat said the government should focus on “border control, not mass deportation,” while another said “better pathways to citizenship” should be the goal. In their responses to the poll, Republicans tended to mention “illegal immigration” and “a stronger border” as an important focus. One Republican supported “closing the border, deporting illegal immigrants, starting with criminals first.”

The focus among Republicans on immigration and the economy dovetails with two of the biggest challenges Biden confronted during his tenure, which saw both high inflation and sharp growth in migration.

Illegal border crossings reached a record level in 2023, adding fuel to Trump’s relentless focus on border security and his promise to deport migrants en masse. The numbers fell during 2024 after Biden announced a crackdown on asylum claims, but Trump argued those moves were too little, too late.

Americans under 30 really want the government to prioritize inflation

The youngest adults are particularly likely to want the government to work on economic issues.

Americans under 30 are significantly more likely than older adults to mention economic issues, inflation and personal financial topics as a vital focus for government in 2025. About 4 in 10 young adults name inflation, compared with roughly one-quarter of older adults. And about one-quarter of young adults say they want the government focused on housing costs, whereas only about 1 in 10 adults ages 60 or older say the same.

Trump made gains among young adults in 2024 compared with his performance four years earlier, but his youngest voters were much more motivated by the economy than by immigration, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters.

The same sentiment prevails as Trump prepares to take office. Compared with 2023, the December poll found, Americans under 30 are more likely to highlight general economic issues and immigration as things they want government to focus on — but they are much less focused on immigration than older adults. Only about one-third of adults under 30 said immigration should be a focus, compared with about 6 in 10 adults 60 or older.

Older Americans are also broadly focused on the economy, but their priorities are a little different — for instance, about 1 in 10 Americans over 60 want the government focused on Social Security in the coming year. Very few Americans under 30 mentioned Social Security as a concern.

NEW YORK (AP) —Facebook and Instagram owner Meta said Tuesday it’s scrapping its third-party fact-checking program and replacing it with a Community Notes program written by users similar to the model used by Elon Musk’s social media platform X.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — The next round of bitter cold was set to envelop the southern U.S. on Tuesday, after the first significant winter storm of the year blasted a huge swath of the country with ice, snow and wind.

The immense storm system brought disruption even to areas of the country that usually escape winter’s wrath, downing trees in some Southern states, threatening a freeze in Florida and causing people in Dallas to dig deep into their wardrobes for hats and gloves.

On Tuesday morning, the wind chill temperature was 16 (minus 9 degrees C) at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, according to the National Weather Service. A low-pressure system was expected to form as soon as Wednesday near south Texas, bringing the potential of snow to parts of the state that include Dallas, as well as to Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.

“As we go through the next few days, we’re still going to be seeing those colder-than-normal temperatures,” said Peter Mullinax, a meteorologist with the weather service in College Park, Maryland. “We’re going to see areas of snow and ice start to take shape across northern Texas, southern Oklahoma as we get into Thursday morning.”

Snow and ice are expected to make their way farther south into the lower Mississippi Valley, some of it “pretty disruptive,” he said.

Lingering snow and ice in the central Plains through the Ohio Valley into the Atlantic is likely to stick around for a few days, Mullinax said. That will create opportunities for constant re-freezing, and black ice, which may create treacherous travel conditions in some areas for the next few days.

The polar vortex that dipped south over the weekend kept much of the country east of the Rockies in its frigid grip Monday, making many roads treacherous, forcing school closures, and causing widespread power outages and flight cancellations. Some experts say such cold air outbreaks are happening more frequently, paradoxically, because of a warming world.

Ice and snow blanketed major roads in Kansas, western Nebraska and parts of Indiana, where the National Guard was activated to help stranded motorists. The weather service issued winter storm warnings for Kansas and Missouri, where blizzard conditions brought wind gusts of up to 45 mph (72 kph). The warnings extended to New Jersey into early Tuesday.

A Kentucky truck stop was jammed with big rigs forced off an icy and snow-covered Interstate 75 on Monday just outside Cincinnati. A long haul driver from Los Angeles carrying a load of rugs to Georgia, Michael Taylor said he saw numerous cars and trucks stuck in ditches and was dealing with icy windshield wipers before he pulled off the interstate.

“It was too dangerous. I didn’t want to kill myself or anyone else,” he said.

The polar vortex of ultra-cold air usually spins around the North Pole, but it sometimes plunges south into the U.S., Europe and Asia. Studies show that a fast-warming Arctic is partly to blame for the increasing frequency of the polar vortex extending its grip.

Temperatures plunge across the country

The eastern two-thirds of the U.S. dealt with bone-chilling cold and wind chills Monday, with temperatures in some areas far below normal.

A cold weather advisory will take effect early Tuesday across the Gulf Coast. In Texas’ capital of Austin and surrounding cities, wind chills could drop as low as 15 degrees (minus 9.4 C).

The Northeast was expected to get several cold days.

Transportation has been tricky

Hundreds of car accidents were reported in Virginia, Indiana, Kansas and Kentucky, where a state trooper was treated for non-life-threatening injuries after his patrol car was hit.

Virginia State Police responded to at least 430 crashes Sunday and Monday, including one that was fatal. Police said other weather-related fatal accidents occurred Sunday near Charleston, West Virginia, and Monday in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Kansas saw two deadly crashes over the weekend.

More than 2,300 flights were canceled and at least 9,100 more were delayed nationwide as of Monday night, according to tracking platform FlightAware. Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport reported that about 58% of arrivals and 70% of departures had been canceled. The airport announced early Tuesday that it had reopened all runways after closing them Monday evening so airport crews could focus on snow removal and prevent refreezing on the airfield.

A record 8 inches (more than 20 centimeters) of snow fell Sunday at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, leading to dozens of flight cancellations that lingered into Monday. About 4 inches (about 10 centimeters) fell Monday across the Cincinnati area, where car and truck crashes shut at least two major routes leading into downtown.

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis on Monday named Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego as the archbishop of Washington, tapping one of his most progressively like-minded allies to head the Catholic Church in the U.S. capital at the start of Donald Trump’s second administration.

At a press conference, McElroy said he prayed the incoming administration would work to make America a better place. But he also identified Trump’s threats of mass deportations of immigrants as a point of potential conflict, saying such policies were “incompatible with Catholic doctrine.”

McElroy, 70, replaces the retiring Cardinal Wilton Gregory, who steps down after having navigated the archdiocese through the fallout of the 2018 eruption of the clergy sexual abuse crisis.

The Vatican announced McElroy’s new job on Monday, the Catholic feast of the Epiphany, in a bulletin that flagged another important appointment in Francis’ reform agenda. The pope named Italian Sister Simona Brambilla the first-ever woman to head a Vatican dicastery, in this case the one responsible for religious orders.

Francis, who was elected pope on a mandate of reform, has long had his eye on McElroy, making him bishop of San Diego in 2015 and then elevating him as a cardinal in 2022.

McElroy has been one of a minority of U.S. bishops to harshly criticize the campaign to exclude Catholic politicians who support abortion rights from Communion, a campaign Francis has publicly criticized by insisting that bishops must be pastors, not politicians.

He has also questioned why the U.S. bishops’ conference, which has leaned conservative in its leadership, consistently insists on identifying abortion as its “preeminent” priority. McElroy has questioned why greater prominence is not given to issues such as racism, poverty, immigration and climate change.

He has also expressed support for LGBTQ+ youth and denounced the bullying often directed at them, further aligning himself with Francis’ priorities as pope.

“McElroy is competent, kind, empathetic, and willing to fight on the side of the vulnerable,” said Natalia Imperatori-Lee, chairperson of the religion and philosophy department at Manhattan University. She said his nomination was particularly timely given the polarization in the U.S.

“McElroy has experience leading a diocese marked by diversity and challenges, and I can’t think of a bigger challenge than to be so close to the seat of the U.S. government in 2025,” she said in an email.

McElroy, a graduate of Harvard University with a master’s in history from Stanford University, is a native of San Francisco and had ministered there until Francis moved him to San Diego.

Vincent Miller, professor of theology at the University of Dayton, pointed to McElroy’s writings on Christian nationalism and patriotism — in which he argued for a “morally sound and unitive” patriotism as opposed to an isolationist one — as particularly relevant today.

“McElroy is uniquely prepared for this moment,” Miller said in a social media post. “At a moment when constitutional democracy is in crisis in the US, on the anniversary of an insurrection that sought to undermine it, Francis has moved one of his most capable and uniquely qualified bishops into position to respond to the needs of this moment.”

McElroy’s appointment to Washington comes just a few weeks after Trump, who takes office Jan. 20, nominated Brian Burch as U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. Burch, president and co-founder of the advocacy group CatholicVote, has criticized Francis and some of his policies, including his emphasis on “synodality” or making the church a more inclusive place.

McElroy, who was a papal nominee to the Vatican’s big synod process, made clear Monday that he was fully on board with Francis’ vision of a church that doesn’t discriminate. Speaking in Spanish to address Washington’s sizeable Latino community, McElroy cited Francis’ famous line “todos, todos, todos,” to emphasize that everyone is welcome in the church, no one excluded.

He did, though, acknowledge likely points of disagreement with the incoming Trump administration. Climate change, he said, was “one of the greatest challenges” facing the world, while immigration would likely be a source of conflict if the administration fulfills its threat of mass deportations of migrants.

“The Catholic Church teaches that a country has the right to control the borders, and our nation’s desire to do that is a legitimate effort,” he said. “At the same time, we are called always to have the sense of the dignity of every human person, and thus plans which have been talked about on some level of having a wider indiscriminate, massive deportation across the country would be something that would be incompatible with Catholic doctrine.”

The Archdiocese of Washington includes the District of Columbia and the Maryland counties of Montgomery, Prince George’s, St. Mary’s, Calvert and Charles. It has a total population of 3,050,847, of whom 671,187 are Catholic.

Its outgoing archbishop, Gregory, took over in 2019 at a time of turmoil for one of the nation’s most important archdioceses. Its two previous leaders, ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and Cardinal Donald Wuerl, were caught up in a new wave of the long-running clerical sexual abuse scandal.

Wuerl stepped down after he lost the trust of his priests, and McCarrick was defrocked after a Vatican investigation found he abused adults as well as minors.

Francis not only tapped Gregory to lead but then made him a prince of the church in 2020, making him the first Black American cardinal in the process.

McElroy was indirectly tainted by the McCarrick scandal after revelations that a whistleblower had told him in 2016 that McCarrick slept with seminarians. McElroy acknowledged having received the report but said the whistleblower refused to provide him with corroborating evidence.

Bishop Joseph Strickland, an arch-conservative whom Francis ousted as bishop of Tyler, Texas last year, cited the McCarrick connection in strongly criticizing Monday’s appointment.

“The blatant corruption of Pope Francis and the US Cardinals is on full display with the appointment of a McCarrick clone to the same archdiocese where his evil reigned twenty years ago,” Strickland tweeted.

The Archdiocese of Washington is home to The Catholic University of America, which is run by the church and is viewed as more conservative than many other Catholic universities in the U.S. run by the Jesuits.

The dean of CUA’s school of theology and religious studies, Professor Joseph Capizzi, said he looked forward to working with McElroy.

“I hope he becomes engaged,” Capizzi said. “I hope we can influence him and he can influence us.”

ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) — About 100 migrants from various countries wandered directionless and disoriented through the streets of the troubled Pacific coast resort of Acapulco.

After walking for a couple weeks through southern Mexico with hundreds of other migrants, they accepted an offer from immigration officials to come to Acapulco with the idea they could continue their journey north toward the U.S. border. Instead, they found themselves stuck on Monday.

Two weeks ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Mexico continues dissolving attention-grabbing migrant caravans and dispersing migrants throughout the country to keep them far from the U.S. border, while simultaneously limiting how many accumulate in any one place.

The policy of “dispersion and exhaustion” has become the center of the Mexican government’s immigration policy in recent years and last year succeeded in significantly reducing the number of migrants reaching the U.S. border, said Tonatiuh Guillén, former chief of Mexico’s immigration agency.

Mexico’s current administration hopes that the lower numbers will give them some defense from Trump’s pressures, said Guillen, who left the administration of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador after Trump threatened to impose tariffs over migration during his first presidency.

Acapulco would seem to be a strange destination for migrants. Once a crown jewel of Mexico’s tourism industry, the city now suffers under the thumb of organized crime and is still struggling to climb back after taking a direct hit from devastating Hurricane Otis in 2023.

On Monday, Mexican tourists enjoyed the final hours of their holiday beach vacations while migrants slept in the street or tried to find ways to resume their journeys north.

“Immigration (officials) told us they were going to give us a permit to transit the country freely for 10, 15 days and it wasn’t like that,” said a 28-year-old Venezuelan, Ender Antonio Castañeda. “They left us dumped here without any way to get out. They won’t sell us (bus) tickets, they won’t sell us anything.”

Castañeda, like thousands of other migrants, had left the southern city of Tapachula near the Guatemalan border. More than a half dozen caravans of about 1,500 migrants each have set out from Tapachula in recent weeks, but none of them made it very far.

Authorities let them walk for days until they’re exhausted and then offer to bus them to various cities where they say their immigration status will be reviewed, which could mean any number of things.

Some have landed in Acapulco, where about a dozen sleep at a Catholic church near the immigration agency offices.

Several dozen gathered outside the offices Monday looking for information, but no one would tell them anything. Castañeda, who had just received money from his family and was desperate to leave, picked a van driver he judged to be the most trustworthy among various offering rides for up to five times the normal price for a bus ticket to Mexico City

Some migrants have discovered the permits authorities give them allow them to travel only within the state of Guerrero, where Acapulco is located. Other migrants have better luck.

On Sunday, the latest migrant caravan broke up after hundreds received free transit permits to go anywhere in Mexico for a specified number of days.

Cuban Dayani Sánchez, 33, and her husband were among them.

“We’re a little scared by the lack of safety getting on buses, that they’re going to stop us,” she said. Mexico’s drug cartels frequently target migrants for kidnapping and extortion, though many migrants say authorities extort them too.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum insists her immigration strategy has a “humanitarian” focus, and has allowed more migrants to leave southernmost Mexico. But some migration advocates note that migrants are being taken to violent areas.

It’s a concern shared by the Rev. Leopoldo Morales, the priest at the Catholic church in Acapulco near the immigration agency office.

He said that in November two or three immigration agency buses arrived with migrants, including entire families. Last weekend, two more arrived carrying all adults.

Even though Acapulco isn’t on the usual migration route and was unprepared to receive migrants, several priests have coordinated support for them with water, food and clothing. “We know they’re going through a very difficult time, with a lot of needs, they arrive without money,” Morales said.

Migrants quickly realize that finding work in Acapulco is difficult. After Otis’ destruction, the federal government sent hundreds of soldiers and National Guard troops to provide security and start reconstruction. Last year, another storm, John, brought widespread flooding.

But violence in Acapulco hasn’t relented.

Acapulco has one of Mexico’s highest rates of homicides. Cab drivers and small business owners complain – anonymously – of rising extortion. Large companies have balked at rebuilding under the current circumstances.

Honduran Jorge Neftalí Alvarenga was grateful to have escaped the Mexican state of Chiapas along the Guatemalan border, but was already disillusioned.

“To an extent they lied to us,” said Alvarenga, who thought he was going to Mexico City. “We asked for an agreement to send us to (Mexico City) for work” or other places like Monterrey, an industrial city in the north with more work opportunities.

Now he doesn’t know what to do.

___

Associated Press writer Edgar H. Clemente in Tapachula, Mexico, contributed to this report.