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AUSTIN – The Dallas Morning News reports that U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, wants to know why a Texas committee opted not to conduct in-depth investigations of pregnancy-related deaths from 2022 and 2023. Crockett and several other House Democrats wrote Thursday to Jennifer Shuford, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, requesting a briefing by Jan. 2 about the decision. Investigative news outlet ProPublica has identified several pregnant women in Texas who died after they couldn’t access timely reproductive care. Crockett accused Texas Republicans of trying to bury their stories. “We are demanding the Texas Department of State Health Services explain its reasoning behind its decision to stop reviewing maternal mortality deaths in the years following their abortion ban,” Crockett said in a news release. “The people of Texas deserve the truth.”

Texas Department of State Health Services officials did not respond Friday to an emailed request for comment. At issue is the 23-member Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee and its decision to skip over the two years in question and move on to reviewing 2024 cases in depth. That decision raised concern given the timing of the tight abortion restrictions adopted by the state. In 2021, Texas enacted a ban on abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy, followed by a near-total ban on abortion a year later. The law has an exception allowing abortions in life-threatening situations, but the scope of that exception has been the subject of continuing confusion for some medical providers. Some committee members have said the decision was not politically motivated and described it as an attempt to catch up on a backlog of data and provide more up-to-date reviews of maternal deaths.

AUSTIN (AP) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued the NCAA to block the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports, arguing that it tricks and misleads fans.

The lawsuit filed in state district court in Lubbock and announced Sunday, argues the NCAA violates the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act by promoting women’s sports that may include a transgender athlete. The law is designed to protect consumers from being misled or tricked into buying products or services that are not as advertised, the lawsuit said.

The Texas lawsuit is the latest attempt by conservative politicians to target transgender athletes and push the NCAA into banning them from competition. President-elect Donald Trump has said he wants to stop trans athletes from competing.

The lawsuit seeks an injunction to stop the NCAA from allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports in Texas, or in sports that involve Texas programs. Or it wants the court to require the NCAA to stop marketing events as “women’s” sports if transgender athletes are allowed.

In a statement, Paxton appeared to reference the recent controversy involving San Jose State women’s volleyball, where several opponents forfeited matches this season on grounds the Spartans had a transgender player.

A federal court last month refused to block the school from playing in the Mountain West Conference championship.

“When people watch a women’s volleyball game, for example, they expect to see women playing against other women, not biological males pretending to be something they are not,” Paxton said. “Radical ‘gender theory’ has no place in college sports.”

The Associated Press is withholding the player’s name because she has not publicly commented on her gender identity and through school officials has declined an interview request.

Paxton accused the NCAA of “intentionally and knowingly jeopardizing the safety and wellbeing of women” and turning women’s sports into “co-ed competitions.”

The NCAA does not track data on transgender athletes among the 544,000 currently competing on 19,000 teams at various levels across the country. NCAA President Charlie Baker testified in Congress earlier this month that he was aware of fewer than 10 active NCAA athletes who identified as transgender.

“College sports are the premier stage for women’s sports in America, and while the NCAA does not comment on pending litigation, the Association and its members will continue to promote Title IX, make unprecedented investments in women’s sports and ensure fair competition in all NCAA championships,” the NCAA said in a statement Monday.

Brooke Slusser, the San Jose State volleyball co-captain who was among the group of players who sued the Mountain West Conference over her teammate’s participation, praised the Texas lawsuit on social media.

“Hey NCAA, just in case you haven’t realized yet this fight will just keep getting harder for you until you make a change!,” Slusser posted on X.

The NCAA established a policy in 2010 that requires trans athletes who were assigned male at birth to complete at least one year of testosterone suppression therapy before being eligible to compete on a women’s team.

Trans athletes who were assigned female at birth and transitioned to male can compete on a men’s team but if they have received testosterone treatment are ineligible to compete on a women’s team.

The athletes are required to meet their chosen sport’s standard for documented testosterone levels at various points during a season.

In 2022, the NCAA revised the policy in what the organization called an attempt to be aligned with national sports governing bodies. If a governing body does not have a trans athlete policy, then it scales up to the international federation that oversees the sport. If there is no international federation policy, previously established Olympic policy criteria would be followed.

KILLEEN (AP) — A pickup truck driver fleeing police careened through the doors of a JCPenney store at a busy Texas mall, injuring five people before he was fatally shot by officers, authorities said.

A 53-year-old man identified as John Darrel Schultz of Kempner drove a truck and crashed into the department store in Killeen, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) north of the state capital Austin, on Saturday afternoon and continued into the building, striking people as he went, according to Sgt. Bryan Washko of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Emergency medical services transported four victims from the mall to area hospitals and another traveled to a hospital separately. They ranged in age from 6 to 75 years old and their conditions were not immediately known, he said.

The chase began around 5 p.m. on Interstate 14 in Belton, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from Killeen, after authorities received calls about an erratic driver in a black pickup, Ofelia Miramontez of the Killeen Police Department said.

Schultz then pulled off the road and drove into the parking lot of the mall.

“The suspect drove through the doors and continued to drive through the JCPenney store, striking multiple people,” Washko said. “The trooper and the Killeen police officer continued on foot after this vehicle, which was driving through the store, actively running people over. He traveled several hundred yards.”

Officers from the state public safety department, Killeen and three other law enforcement agencies “engaged in gunfire to eliminate this threat,” Washko said.

One of the officers who traded gunfire with the suspect was working as a security guard at the mall and others were off duty, he said.

Witnesses interviewed by local news outlets outside the mall said they heard multiple gunshots and saw people fleeing through the mall.

PECOS, Texas (AP) — Federal officials investigating the deadly West Texas collision between at Union Pacific train and a tractor-trailer hauling a heavy equipment said Friday they were trying to determine why the tractor-trailer was stopped on the tracks, leading to the crash that derailed the train and propelled the heavy equipment into the air.

Two employees of Omaha, Nebraska-based Union Pacific were killed in the collision Wednesday at a railway crossing in Pecos. The National Transportation Safety Board said the tractor-trailer was on the tracks for about a minute before the collision.

The train was traveling at about 68 mph (109 kph) before the crew applied emergency brakes prior to impact, the NTSB said.

The collision caused the heavy equipment to fly into a nearby building, NTSB said. The Chamber of Commerce building was damage in the collision, and a Reeves County official has said that some people in the building were injured.

The Pecos police chief has said all of the three injuries from the collision were minor.

NTSB said that a data recorder recovered from the wreckage is being transported to its lab.

Opponents of abortion are increasingly focusing on restricting access to pills, which are the most common way to end a pregnancy in the U.S.

This month, the Texas attorney general’s office filed a lawsuit against a New York doctor, saying she violated Texas law by prescribing abortion pills to a patient there via telemedicine. The suit represents the first lawsuit of its kind and could lead to a legal test for the New York law designed to protect providers there who prescribe the drugs to patients in states with abortion bans.

Anti-abortion officials are taking other steps, too, through legislation and lawsuits.

Abortion rights advocates are also concerned that President-elect Donald Trump’s administration could take action to restrict access if it chose to.
Pills are the most common means of abortion

By the time the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and opened the door for states to ban abortion, over half of all abortions were obtained using medication, usually a combination of the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol.

The drugs are different than Plan B and other emergency contraceptives that are usually taken within three days after possible conception, weeks before women know they’re pregnant. Studies have found they’re generally safe and result in completed abortions more than 97% of the time, which is less effective than procedural abortions.

By last year, nearly two-thirds of abortions were from medications, according to a tally by the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion access.

Much of the growth has been through abortion pills prescribed via telehealth and mailed to patients. A survey conducted for the Society of Family Planning found that by the first half of 2024, such prescriptions accounted for about one-tenth of abortions in the U.S.

That number has risen rapidly since 2023 when some Democratic-controlled states started adopting laws that seek to protect medical providers in their borders who prescribe abortion pills via telehealth to patients in states where abortion is banned.

“Telehealth for abortion has been a huge success,” said Ushma Upadhyay, a professor at the Center of Health and Community and the University of California San Francisco. “It has helped people in an incredible way.”
Texas is going after a New York doctor despite a law intended to protect prescribers

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton rolled out a new strategy in the fight over pills this month when he sued Dr. Maggie Carpenter, who is based in New York, alleging she prescribed and sent pills to a Texas woman.

New York is one of at least eight states with a law intended to protect medical providers who prescribe abortion pills to patients in states with bans.

If Texas prevails upon a judge to block Carpenter from prescribing in the state, it’s unclear what would happen next. New York’s shield law would bar it from being enforced in New York, said David Cohen, a professor at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law.

Cohen said he expects any ruling would not have a major chilling effect on other doctors who prescribe out-of-state patients. “They certainly seem undeterred by legal risk,” he said.

And, he said, like illegal drugs, they’ll continue to be available if there’s a demand for them. Cohen said Paxton “is going to plug one hole if he succeeds. There’s no way he plugs them all.”
Another lawsuit from states is trying a different way to restrict pills

Pill prescribing has already withstood one key effort to block it. The U.S. Supreme Court this year ruled that a group of anti-abortion physicians and organizations that represent them lacked the legal standing to force the undoing of federal approvals for mifepristone.

The state attorneys general from Idaho, Kansas and Missouri responded in October with a legal filing contending that they can make such an argument. Instead of focusing on the drug’s initial approval in 2000, they’re looking at later changes from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that allow its use for the first 10 weeks of pregnancy and telemedicine prescriptions.

There hasn’t yet been a ruling on their case. When there is, it will likely be appealed to a higher court.
States are also considering laws aimed at abortion pills

This year, Louisiana became the first state with a law to reclassify both mifepristone and misoprostol as “controlled dangerous substances.” The drugs are still allowed, but medical personnel have to go through extra steps to access them.

Some doctors said in a legal challenge that the change could cause delays in administering them in emergencies, such as when a woman is hemorrhaging after giving birth.

Dr. Jennifer Avengo, director of the New Orleans Health Department, said that in the first few months of enforcement, she did not hear of any cases where the drugs could not be accessed in time.

Additional states are considering ways to restrict abortion pills in their 2025 legislative sessions.

In Tennessee, a Republican state lawmaker has proposed creating a $5 million civil liability against those who deliver or help access abortion pills with the intent of helping someone end a pregnancy.

Rep. Gino Bulso said he filed the bill after learning that abortion pills were being sent to Tennessee despite state law prohibiting such actions. “I began to think about how we might be able to both provide an additional deterrent to companies violating the criminal law and provide a remedy for the family of the unborn children,” he said.

A proposal in Missouri would make it a crime to deliver mifepristone or other drugs with the intent of causing an abortion. In November, the state’s voters adopted a constitutional amendment to allow abortion until fetal viability — which is somewhere past 21 weeks into a pregnancy, though there’s no fixed timeframe.
The federal government could take steps to regulate the pills, too

Trump’s administration also could take action on the pill policy.

One approach that abortion rights advocates have warned about — and which some abortion opponents have suggested — includes enforcing an 1873 law against pills that bans mailing medications or instruments used in abortion. President Joe Biden’s administration has declined to do so.

The FDA could also change its approvals of the drugs, even without being forced to do so by a court ruling.

During his campaign, Trump flip-flopped on abortion policy and at points attempted to distance himself from abortion opponents. Since he won the election, though, he has nominated abortion opponents to administration posts.

In an interview with Time magazine published this month, he gave rambling answers to questions about pills. He said he intended to maintain access but also left the door open to changing his mind.

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Associated Press reporter Kimberlee Kruesi contributed to this article.

HOUSTON (AP) – A wave of new LNG terminals is expected to be constructed along the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast should President-elect Donald Trump carry through on his pledge to end the Biden administration’s nearly year-long pause on permitting LNG projects. Such a move would substantially increase the flows of natural gas out of the United States, providing an economic stimulus to communities like Port Arthur and Brownsville. But the rush to build comes at a time of increasing concern around the risk those terminals pose to the earth’s climate and the health of surrounding residents, as outlined in a study released by the Biden Administration this week.

Currently there are 11 LNG projects awaiting export permits from the Department of Energy, almost all of which would be built between New Orleans and Corpus Christi, in addition to a development near Brownsville that had its export permit vacated by a federal judge after it had already begun construction. Six of those projects are expected to begin construction once they receive their permits, increasing the country’s LNG exports, already the largest in the world, by more than 40%, according to analysis by research firm S&P Global. “We see overall (global) demand growing by 70% between now and 2040,” said Dan Yergin, vice chairman of S&P. “If the U.S. doesn’t export LNG, this isn’t a vacuum. It will primarily be replaced by natural gas from other countries, who will be all too happy to take their place of the U.S.” And drillers in Texas oil and gas fields are eager to gain access to natural gas markets overseas. With the ongoing oil and gas boom in West Texas, the natural gas they could sell for a pittance in Midland can be sold for a large profit in Amsterdam or Singapore.

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that the oil industry’s wastewater is becoming a bigger headache for Texas operators and regulators. Here’s what to know about where it comes from, chemicals it contains, and why it’s becoming a more pressing concern. What dangers does it pose? All this water that comes up as a byproduct of oil and gas production, referred to in the industry as “produced” water, has to go somewhere. Most of it goes back underground, injected into thousands of disposal wells that carry it into geologic formations intended to contain it. But the practice of injecting this wastewater deep underground appears to be the cause of a concerning new trend in West Texas: earthquakes that are reaching near-record intensities for the region.

Mounting pressure tied to the practice of wastewater injection also appears to be causing blowouts, which could contaminate protected groundwater aquifers. Researchers and regulators are working to understand the root causes of the problem. What’s in it? Typically, the wastewater that flows up along with oil and gas in the Permian Basin’s oil wells is very salty — as much as nine times saltier than the ocean. The briny water often contains elevated levels of the carcinogen benzene, trace amounts of oil, heavy metals, naturally occurring radioactive materials, and even critical minerals like lithium. Why is the issue so challenging? The industry must engineer a new technology capable of cleaning its super-salty wastewater in order to stop the practice of injecting it underground. The sticking point so far is the high costs associated with desalination. Meantime, oil production continues to grow in the Permian, and wastewater with it. As many as eight barrels of tainted water can come up with a single barrel of Permian crude. How much water are we talking about? A lot. The Permian is one of the most productive oil regions in the world, but it actually yields far more water than oil. That’s because the fracking process frees up vast amounts of water trapped for thousands of years alongside oil and natural gas in shale rock.

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Houston billionaire and businessman Tilman Fertitta to become the next U.S. ambassador to Italy. “Tilman is an accomplished businessman, who has founded and built one of our country’s premier entertainment and real estate companies, employing approximately 50,000 Americans,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “Tilman has a long history of giving back to the community through numerous philanthropic initiatives, which include children’s charities, law enforcement, and the medical community.” CBS on Dec. 10 first reported news of Fertitta’s possible appointment, noting the 67-year-old was expected to be Trump’s pick for the post.

Fertitta is an active member of the Houston community. He is the CEO of Landry’s, owner of the Houston Rockets, chairman of the University of Houston board of regents and executive committee member of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, among other positions and ownership stakes. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has also been a strong backer of Fertitta, appointing him to the University of Houston System Board of Regents in 2021. Fertitta has also donated millions to Texas Republicans, including to Governor Greg Abbott, as the Texas Tribune previously reported. Ambassadors are positions appointed by the president and approved by the Senate. They serve as the highest-ranking U.S. representative in the country to which they have been assigned. In November, Fertitta attended a SpaceX Starship rocket test flight in South Texas with Trump and Elon Musk. Most of Fertitta’s political donations have been to Republicans, including Trump, but he has also made donations to Democrats, according to Open Secrets. Fertitta isn’t the only person with sports ties to be nominated by Trump as an ambassador. Former Heisman Trophy winner and U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker is the nominee to be ambassador to the Bahamas.

AUSTIN – Texas Monthly reports that when Texas lawmakers return to the Capitol each January in odd-numbered years, the opening of the legislative session is generally a cross between the first day of school and a family reunion with upward of 200 relatives. Handshakes, hugs and backslaps are the first order of business. And members from both chambers often bring their spouses and children to the floor to bask in the camaraderie. The galleries are generally packed with friends and supporters who don’t have the privilege of being on the floor. But with the race for House speaker unsettled and increasingly rancorous just a few weeks before the start of the 2025 session, the atmosphere could just as easily take on the vibe of a dysfunctional family at the reading of the patriarch’s will in which members of several factions are convinced that members of the other have connived to gain a disproportionate share of the inheritance.

Instead of backslapping, there could be accusations of backstabbing. And maybe even worse. All of this is a scenario, not a prediction. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that either of the two front-running candidates — Republican state Reps. Dustin Burrows of Lubbock and David Cook of Mansfield — could cobble together a governing majority before the 89th Legislatures is gaveled to order at noon Jan. 14. It’s also possible that another House member will step in as a compromise choice and walk off with the prize. And if someone can reach the magic number of 76 votes in the 150-member House, it would not be terribly surprising if an overwhelming majority in both parties fall in line and cast their votes for the inevitable winner in the interest of decorum and putting bruised feelings in the past.