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AUSTIN (AP) – Texas’ massive, multi billion-dollar mission to reinforce its border with Mexico helped Terrell County Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland hire two full-time deputies and three part-timers. It gave him the money to buy equipment and new vehicles. In the lawman’s words, it “kept us alive” as the number of illegal border crossings skyrocketed under the Biden administration to record highs.

And Cleveland, who became sheriff after 26 years as a Border Patrol agent, still has needs. He said he hopes and prays to be able to hire more deputies.

But he also has worries about the state plowing billions of more taxpayer dollars into border security as the border gets quieter and quieter — and President Donald Trump vows mass deportations of undocumented immigrants living throughout the country.

“With President Trump being in the White House, I would foresee the federal government spending more money. The state Legislature surely shouldn’t have to spend that much more money,” he said in an interview. “Why are we asking (for) that?”

Three hundred and thirty-five miles east of Terrell County, state lawmakers and leaders in Austin are asking for just that.

As the Legislature irons out the details of the state’s spending plan for the next two years, $6.5 billion for border security has sailed through both chambers with little fanfare. Meanwhile, the number of arrests along the border has dwindled to a trickle and the federal government has begun expanding its immigration enforcement apparatus to deport as many people as Trump promised on the campaign trail.

If approved, the appropriation would increase the tab for the state’s border security spending to nearly $18 billion since 2021, when Gov. Greg Abbott began the state’s own crackdown, Operation Lone Star, in response to the Biden administration’s immigration policies. That new sum would be more than five times the $3.4 billion that state lawmakers spent on border security over the 14 preceding years, when lawmakers began regularly allocating money for border operations.

“It’s hard to make the argument that the politics around immigration and the border have ever been especially preoccupied with good governance,” said Jim Henson, who directs the Texas Politics Project at UT Austin.

The project’s December poll, after the presidential election, found that 45% of Texas voters felt the state was spending too little on border security. That number increased to 63% among only Republican voters.

“If you’re trying to balance good governance and some semblance of fiscal responsibility with politics on this issue, as a Republican legislator or a Republican elected official, the politics are still weighing very heavily on that scale,” Henson said.

At various points in the last four years, Abbott has said the state must maintain its presence — and spending — along the border until it achieved “operational control” of the border.

“Texas will not stop until we gain full operational control of the border,” Abbott said in June when he welcomed troops to a new military base the state built in Eagle Pass.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said last month that the nation is close to reaching that goal.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection “literally has almost 100% operational control (of) the border which means that our country is secure and that we know who’s coming into this country,” Noem told NewsNation.

In a statement, Abbott Press Secretary Andrew Mahaleris noted that the state devoted money to border security before 2021.

“Gov. Abbott will continue working with the Legislature to determine appropriate funding levels,” Mahaleris said. “This funding is critical to ensure Texas can continue working closely with President Trump and his administration to protect our state and nation.”

State Sen. Joan Huffman, a Houston Republican who is a lead writer of the state budget, also appeared open to the idea of redirecting the money currently earmarked for border security. She said she was closely monitoring illegal crossings and the flow of drugs and weapons with the governor’s office, state leadership and state police “in order to determine the appropriate level of state support required to fully secure the border and keep Texans safe.”

In a statement to the Tribune, Huffman said Texas “is undoubtedly benefiting from the Trump Administration’s focus on reinstating security at our southern border. … It is essential that the state uses taxpayer funds prudently and in coordination with the federal government’s ongoing efforts.”

But it’s not clear how much appetite there is to make a change to the state’s recent multi-billion-dollar border commitment.

During a budget debate in the House last week, Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, D-Richardson, unsuccessfully tried to shift the border security budget to give Texas teachers a pay increase. “We could give you a trillion dollars, and you would still cry with this red meat nonsense,” Rodríguez Ramos said.

A few weeks ago, State Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, an Austin Democrat who serves on the upper chamber’s border security committee, went to Del Rio to check out the state’s military operations, the international port and Operation Lone Star staging. When she toured the Rio Grande, she said a tent set up to book people arrested under Operation Lone Star held a lone individual — a U.S. citizen from Texas accused of a crime, she said.

Eckhardt said in an interview that the $6.5 billion currently being considered might not even cover the cost of some immigration-related proposals that lawmakers are now considering. She pointed to a potential prohibition on granting bail to undocumented immigrants accused of felonies — which could increase the costs for the local government if it is not allowed by the state to release the individual.

“We are shifting the cost of Trump’s goal onto state and local taxes,” Eckhardt said.

Selene Rodriguez, a border and immigration expert for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an influential conservative think tank, said the state will always have a role to play in border security. But she would like more transparency when it comes to spending.

“I myself am a big proponent of increased public safety efforts because I believe that is one of the few legitimate roles of government,” Rodriguez said. “But if you’re going to do it, do it correctly. Line the pockets appropriately, and if you don’t need 5,000 Guardsmen at the border maybe don’t have them there.”

At least two bills this session called for auditing Operation Lone Star. Both bills, one in each chamber, were referred to committee. As of mid-April, neither had received a hearing.

___

This story was originally published by The Texas Tribune and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

AUSTIN – Federal judges have ordered immigration officials to temporarily restore the legal status of three people from India who came to Texas on student visas.

Manoj Mashatti, Chandraprakash Hinge and Akshar Patel are among more than a thousand students nationwide whose permission to be in the U.S. was revoked. International students have been discovering in recent weeks that their immigration status was marked as terminated in a database used to keep track of international students known as the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS.

Mashatti obtained an F-1 student visa to pursue a master’s degree in business analytics at the University of Texas at Dallas. He graduated in May 2024 and then applied for and received authorization to work as a full-time data engineer, according to his lawsuit. UT-Dallas informed him his status was terminated on April 2 based on a prior arrest for driving while intoxicated. He had completed probation for that charge.

Court documents provide fewer details about Hinge and Patel. Their attorney said they were both students at the University of Texas at Arlington and have graduated.

Hinge came to the U.S. in 2020 to get a graduate degree. Patel was an undergraduate student who says his immigration status was terminated from SEVIS solely because of a November 2018 arrest for reckless driving. That case was dismissed.

Both their LinkedIn profiles indicate they still live and work in North Texas, Hinge as a thermal engineer and Patel in the computer science field.

Steven Brown, the immigration attorney representing the students, filed separate lawsuits for each one against Todd M. Lyons, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in federal courts in Washington, D.C.

The judge in Hinge’s case said ICE had offered conflicting positions in both its court filings and oral arguments about what effect its actions had on Hinge’s visa. The judge wrote in his order that the student’s legal status should remain unchanged.

Brown said none of his three clients have left the country.

He added that he may be bringing more lawsuits against ICE on behalf of other international students in Texas and across the country whose legal immigration status has been revoked.

Brown said the way ICE is targeting students appears to be “arbitrary” and “capricious.” That’s also how four UT Rio Grande Valley students who have sued the Department of Homeland Security have described federal immigration officials’ actions. Those students’ attorney, Marlene Dougherty, declined to comment to The Texas Tribune on Friday.

The federal government has said it is targeting people who have committed crimes or participated in protests it views as antisemitic.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a statement to the Tribune that it regularly reviews whether visa holders are complying with requirements to remain in good standing. SEVIS terminations may occur for various reasons, the statement said, including if they stopped going to school or working. When it finds violations, the agency added, it notifies the Department of State, which may consider revoking the students’ visa after considering their criminal history and other national security concerns.

“This process is nothing new and is part of a longstanding protocol and program,” a senior DHS official said. “Individuals who remain in the U.S. without lawful immigration status may be subject to arrest and removal. If a SEVIS record is terminated or a visa revoked, the individual will be notified and typically given 10 days to depart the country voluntarily. The safest and most efficient option is self-deportation using the CBP Home app.”

A Department of State spokesperson said the agency does not comment on ongoing litigation and its actions in specific cases for privacy reasons.

The Consulate General for India could not be immediately reached for comment on Friday.

International students across the country are asking federal judges to temporarily block the government from changing their legal immigration status. In this week alone, judges in at least five states have granted their requests, according to CNN and Reuters.

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

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — The gunman who killed 23 people in a racist attack at a Texas Walmart — one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history — is expected to accept a plea deal in a state court on Monday to avoid the death penalty.

Patrick Crusius has acknowledged he targeted Hispanics on Aug. 3, 2019, when he opened fire in the store crowded with weekend shoppers from the U.S. and Mexico in the border city of El Paso.

Under the offer, Crusius would plead guilty to capital murder and receive life in prison with no possibility of parole, El Paso County District Attorney James Montoya has said.

Texas prosecutors declined to pursue the death penalty. Montoya says the decision was driven by a majority of victims’ relatives who want the case to be over.

Crusius already has been sentenced to 90 consecutive life terms at the federal level after pleading guilty to hate crimes and weapons charges.

If the plea arrangement proceeds, families will be able to give victim impact statements. Dozens of people made emotional statements during a similar hearing in federal court in 2023 that lasted three days.

Crusius, a white community-college dropout, was 21 years old when police say he drove more than 700 miles (1,100 kilometers) to El Paso from his home near Dallas.

Not long after posting a racist rant online warning of a Hispanic “invasion,” he opened fire with an AK-style rifle inside and outside the store. Police arrested Crusius shortly after.

Joe Spencer, a defense attorney in the state and federal cases, said Crusius was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder that can be marked by hallucinations, delusions and mood swings and has suffered from debilitating mental illness for most of his life.

“You are talking about an individual with a broken brain,” he said Thursday.

The people killed at Walmart ranged in age from a 15-year-old high school athlete to elderly grandparents. They included immigrants, a retired city bus driver, a teacher, tradesmen including a former iron worker and several Mexican nationals who crossed the U.S. border on routine shopping trips.

DALLAS (AP) — The long-running criminal case against a Texas gunman who killed 23 people in a racist attack targeting Hispanic shoppers at a Walmart in El Paso in 2019 is on the verge of coming to a close.

Patrick Crusius, 26, is expected to plead guilty Monday to capital murder and receive a sentence of life in prison with no possibility of parole for the massacre near the U.S.-Mexico border. El Paso County District Attorney James Montoya said last month he was offering Crusius a plea deal and that he wouldn’t face the death penalty on the state charge.

Crusius has already been sentenced to 90 consecutive life sentences in federal court after pleading guilty in 2023 to hate crime and weapons charges. Under the Biden administration, federal prosecutors also took the death penalty off the table.

Crusius is expected to serve his time in a state prison. Crusius initially was arrested by local authorities and will enter the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice if he is sentenced on the state charges, a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons said.

The attack
Crusius was 21 years old when authorities say he drove for more than 10 hours from his home in suburban Dallas to El Paso and opened fire at the Walmart, which is popular with shoppers from Mexico and the U.S.

Prosecutors have said Crusius was wearing earmuffs that muted the sound of gunfire when he began shooting people in the parking lot.

He then moved inside the store and continued firing an AK-style rifle, cornering shoppers at a bank near the entrance where nine were killed before shooting at the checkout area and people in aisles.

Exiting Walmart, he fired on a passing car, killing an elderly man and wounding his wife.

Crusius was apprehended shortly after and confessed to officers who stopped him at an intersection, according to police.

Targeting Hispanic shoppers
In a posting to an online message board just before the massacre, Crusius, a white, community-college dropout, said the shooting was “in response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.” He said Hispanics were going to take over the government and economy.

On social media, he appeared consumed by the nation’s immigration debate, tweeting #BuildtheWall and posts praising the hard-line border policies of Republican President Donald Trump, who was in his first term at the time.

After the shooting, Crusius told officers that he had targeted Mexicans.

Joe Spencer, one of Crusius’ attorneys, on Thursday described Crusius as “an individual with a broken brain.” Spencer said Crusius has been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, which can be marked by hallucinations, delusions and mood swings.

The victims
The people who were killed ranged in age from a 15-year-old high school athlete to grandparents. They included immigrants and Mexican nationals who had crossed the U.S. border on routine shopping trips.

They included Jordan Anchondo and Andre Anchondo, who were killed while shopping with their 2-month-old child, Paul, who survived. Authorities have said Jordan Anchondo shielded the baby from gunfire while her husband shielded them both.

Guillermo “Memo” Garcia and his wife Jessica Coca Garcia were fundraising for their daughter’s soccer team in the parking lot when they were both shot. She suffered leg wounds but recovered. He died from his injuries nearly nine months after the shooting, raising the death toll to 23.

A week after the shooting, Coca Garcia rose from her wheelchair to give a speech across the road from the county jail where Crusius was being held.

“Racism is something I always wanted to think didn’t exist,” she said. “Obviously, it does.”

A long-running court case
Montoya said he decided to offer the plea deal because a majority of victims’ relatives were eager for the case to be resolved. He acknowledged not all the families agreed.

Montoya, a Democrat, said he supports the death penalty and believes Crusius deserves it, but the case might not have gone to trial until 2028 if his office had continued seeking the death penalty.

When Montoya took office in January, he became the fourth district attorney to oversee the case in nearly six years. One of his predecessors resigned in 2022 under pressure over her handling of the case. He said the pandemic also caused delays.

Stephanie Melendez, whose father, David Johnson, died shielding his wife and granddaughter, said she initially wanted Crusius to get the death penalty but as the case dragged on she wanted it to end.

“I just wanted it to be over,” Melendez said. “I was done reliving everything. I was done going to court for hours. I was done with the briefings that happened after that would last hours and it was just the same talk over and over again. We were just ready to be done with it all because, honestly, it’s like reliving the trauma over and over again.”

DAINGERFIELD — The Texas Tribune reports that Mary Spearmon owes everything to Lake O’ the Pines. It’s where she met the love of her life. It’s where they raised their family. It’s where her husband of 57 years, Sammie Ray, died.

“My children grew up on the lake,” Spearmon said. “We spent weekends on the lake, swimming, fishing and picnicking. My husband would take me around the lake, and we would just ride and look at the beauty.”

That’s why, one evening in March, she stood with more than 100 of her fellow East Texans and demanded the regional water utility not sell one drop of the majestic lake to North Texas.

“What about our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren?” Spearmon asked. “Not only mine, but everyone’s in here. What legacy are we leaving for them?”

For most of this year, residents like Spearmon in this corner of northeast Texas have been on a singular mission to stop a potential sale of Lake O’ the Pines water to a cluster of North Texas cities. Dallas suburbs like Frisco and Forney, dominated by single-family homes, expansive shopping centers, and towering office buildings that have spread far out from the urban core, have driven much of the growth in North Texas, increasing that region’s need for more water.

Lake O’ the Pines is one of the state’s 188 reservoirs built for drinking water. The lake’s almost 18,700 acres of surface water stretch across five northeast Texas counties: Marion, Harrison, Upshur, Morris, and Camp.

Built in the 1950s, deep in the thick pine forest near the Louisiana border, the lake has provided drinking water to seven cities surrounding the lake: Avinger, Daingerfield, Hughes Springs, Jefferson, Lone Star, Ore City and Pittsburg. Over the next 70 years, Lake O’ the Pines became a defining force in the region’s economy and culture. Boats regularly dot the lake while visitors cast lines for ??bass, catfish and crappie.

Christopher Lepri, a Jefferson resident, said selling the water would result in a decline in tourism, growth and property values.

“Lake O’ the Pines is East Texas’ lifeblood, and that lifeblood should never be for sale,” Lepri said at one town hall meeting. “If Lake O’ the Pines is drained or sold, there would be a decline in tourism, growth and property values.”

News of the Northeast Texas Municipal Water District’s potential sale kicked off months of angry meetings, online speculation, and criticism of secrecy. By March, one official had resigned, and talks of a sale had paused. However, that’s done little to assuage fears. The heated conflict and lingering tensions portend what could be Texas’ future if lawmakers do not act this spring, as they have promised, to solve the state’s water crisis.

Rapid growth like that in the sprawling Dallas suburbs, climate change and decaying water infrastructure threaten the state’s water supply. Texas does not have enough water to meet demand if the state is stricken with a historic drought, according to the Texas Water Development Board, the state agency tasked with managing Texas’ water supply.

East Texas is the most saturated part of the state, making it a natural target for thirsty regions. The idea of piping water from East Texas to fuel growth in another region touched a nerve for many residents, raising the question of whether one area should bear the cost of another’s expansion.

Lake O’ the Pines was created when the Ferrells Bridge Dam was built on Big Cypress Creek, an 86-mile-long river. Before construction, the Cypress ran freely to Caddo Lake, a 25,400-acre lake and wetland bifurcated at the Texas-Louisiana border.

After the dam went up, Caddo Lake, 30 miles west of Lake O’ the Pines, nearly disappeared.

In the early aughts, the Northeast Texas Municipal Water District, which manages Lake O’ the Pines, began voluntarily releasing water to Caddo. That decision reinforced the fact that the fate of Caddo Lake has been directly tied to Lake O’ the Pines.

So when in 2023, Laura-Ashley Overdyke, the executive director of the Caddo Lake Institute, saw Wayne Owen, the executive director of the northeast water district, speak at a conference in Denver, she paid attention.

Later that day, Overdyke heard a Dallas-area utility director tell Owen: “Wayne, I’d love to buy your water, but you’ve already sold it to North Texas.”

Overdyke was shocked. No sale had been publicly discussed.

“Was Caddo’s water going to be sold off to the highest bidder?” she recalled wondering. “Was East Texas a willing participant in her demise?”

Before moving to East Texas to help manage Lake O’ the Pines, Owen was a water planner in Tarrant County, which includes Fort Worth. He said, in an interview with The Texas Tribune, he was hired in part to help facilitate a sale of water to North Texas.

“There has been … interest from the water suppliers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to secure additional water supply,” Owen said. “And, ostensibly, water supply that is a surplus in the Cypress Basin.”

Overdyke returned to Shreveport and went to work, understanding what a potential sale would mean for Caddo. In late 2024, scientists determined Caddo Lake would be fine if water were diverted away from East Texas about 70% of the time. But any more than that and lake levels could be cut by a foot.

“For a lake that shallow, it averages about five or six feet deep, losing another foot would be devastating,” Overdyke said.

Two months later, the proposed water sale was publicly discussed at a northeast water district board meeting. The possible sale was then brought to the Jefferson City Council, which met the next day.

“The local people saw it and they started calling me,” Overdyke said. “I was terrified.”

Hundreds of East Texans took notice and went on a mission to save both Lake O’ the Pines and Caddo.

Anytime a city council or county commissioners met, they went. They drove along winding two-lane highways lined by 80-foot tall pine trees to cities like Jefferson, population 1,875, and Daingerfield, population of about 2,500.

More than 400 people attended a February town hall at the Mims Fire Station in Avinger hosted by state Rep. Jay Dean, a Longview Republican. Weeks later, more than 100 people filled the largest courtroom at the Marion County Courthouse to tell county commissioners their concerns.

Water is the new oil, Jerry Thomas, a Jefferson resident, said.

“We all grew up in East Texas and know people who sold rights to their oil and watched others get rich from it,” Thomas said.

Others wrote letters to any elected official they could think of. They submitted opinion pieces to local newspapers covering the fight, like the Marion County Herald & Jefferson Jimplecute, the Marshall News Messenger and the Longview News-Journal.

Residents spoke at length about the impact they believed this sale would have on the local economy, ecology and culture.

The lake, as a 2020 report from Texas A&M Forest Service put it, is vital to the timber industry, the poultry industry, dairies, cow/calf operations, and for irrigation. Each year, the report said, boating and fishing — especially for trophy bass, catfish and crappie — attract a lot of visitors. These activities bring in significant income for people living on its 144-mile shoreline.

The incensed East Texans had few details on how much water would be removed or how often. In lieu of facts, many painted a picture of a pipe the size of a train car draining the lake at an impossible speed. They looked at other reservoirs used by North Texas cities and were worried.

The northeast water board — each member appointed by one of the seven cities they represented — did little to assuage those fears. They were bound by a 2023 nondisclosure agreement signed by Owen to keep details quiet. What little information was available was often released by the North Texas utility.

That self-imposed silence only made the unrest worse. The response of water board members at one city council meeting stood out to Lone Star Mayor Brianna McClain.

“We had a full house, and on the front row there were three Northeast Texas Municipal Water District members,” McClain said at the Daingerfield meeting. “One individual immediately rolled her eyes and sighed loudly.”

Sharilyn Parr, a Marion County resident, worked with many others to find and disseminate whatever information they could.

“There’s a lot of misinformation out there,” Parr told the Tribune after the Marion Commissioners Court meeting. “And water, itself, is a complicated thing.”

In Texas, surface water — water in rivers and streams, lakes and reservoirs — is owned by the state. However, the state issues water rights to agencies, like the Northeast Texas Municipal Water District, to use or sell. The northeast utility has held the permit to water in Lake O’ the Pines since 1957.

The northeast water district is permitted to use 203,800 acre-feet of water per year, according to data provided by the Caddo Lake Institute. That amount is divided into two allocations: 47,000 acre-feet per year for member cities and 156,800 acre-feet of water per year for the Northeast Texas Municipal Water District, which is sold to other East Texas cities such as Longview.

In normal weather conditions, the lake holds 241,363 acre-feet of water, according to the Texas Water Development Board. In flood conditions, which raise water levels into the flood pools, the lake can hold up to 842,100 acre-feet of water.

Jenna Covington, executive director for North Texas Municipal Water District, told the Tribune she believed the project was a “win-win” — a way to share a resource that would otherwise go untapped.

“They’ve got excess water that is valuable, and we want to properly compensate the folks in that area for the purchase of that water,” Covington said.

No dollar figure was ever disclosed.

The sale of water rights has become complicated and rare, even as demand for water increases, said Gabriel Eckstein, a professor at Texas A&M University who specializes in water law. Most of the current deals are leases, which give buyers access to water for a specific amount of time but leave the original permit holder in control.

That money could be used to upgrade the northeast region’s water infrastructure. Officials said those upgrades — projected at around $74 million — would allow the district to hold more drinking water and for longer, reduce daily operational costs and help keep current rates steady.

After the criticism arose with such ferocity, Owen, the northeast water district executive director seen by many as the mastermind of the sale, resigned in March.

Owen called his tenure in East Texas a “career milestone.” He maintained he was following orders to execute a sale.

“I was just trying to do the best job I could do,” he said in an April interview.

The Northeast Texas Municipal Water District board accepted his resignation at a meeting in Daingerfield and told attendees they were never seriously considering selling water from Lake O’ the Pines.

“If and when there is ever a proposed sale on the table that we think is worthy of consideration by the cities, we, being the district, are going to go to the cities,” said Jimmy Cox, the board’s chair. “We’ll present that sale, explain it, review the pros and cons, answer any questions they may have. And then they will make the decision.”

The more than 100 angry East Texans in attendance didn’t buy it.

That’s when Spearmon told the story of her family.

“If we sell our water to Dallas, what are we going to do? Are we going to move to Dallas to have water or purchase our water from Dallas?” Spearmon asked. “No. We don’t want to do that. No. We want our water. Please vote no.”

Sammie Ray would have loved that she spoke up, though probably would have told her to be meaner, Spearmon said later.

Kim Hall, another resident, suggested that instead of sending North Texas water, East Texas could send folks to fix North Texas’ aging water infrastructure. Leaking pipes cause cities to lose what water they do have.

“Were it not for the public outcry, your plans may have been consummated,” said former Republican State Rep. David Simpson.

Several called for board members to resign with Owen.

As the meeting ended, the board appointed Osiris Brantley, a lifelong East Texan and the water district’s chief financial officer, as interim general manager.

It was a small win. But the fight isn’t over, East Texans said.

“This is just the beginning,” said Marion County Judge Leward LaFleur.

Last week, Dean, the state representative who hosted a town hall, posted on Facebook that the threat was over.

“WE DID IT! WE SAVED OUR LAKES!” his post said.

“The North Texas Water District Board has negotiated a deal to get water from resources closer to them,” it went on. “And they have abandoned their proposal to buy the water rights to Lake O’ the Pines!”

Hundreds of his constituents liked the post and shared it. Dozens of self-congratulating comments followed.

But any celebration appeared to be premature, as the North Texas Municipal Water District countered in its own statement Friday.

“While we’re not currently in active negotiations with the Northeast Texas Municipal Water District regarding a water purchase from Lake O’ the Pines,” it said, “we continue to believe a future agreement for the sale of water could make sense for North Texas and Northeast Texas.”

AUSTIN – The Texas Tribune reports that Andrew Hill, who studied and farmed hemp in California before it was legal in Texas, was a keynote speaker at the state’s first-ever agricultural hemp expo in Dallas in 2019. Amid considerable hype and excitement that followed the recent federal legalization of hemp, Hill tried to warn farmers that the industry wasn’t as profitable as state officials and seed vendors were pitching.

“There were guys running around telling farmers they could make $2,500 to $3,000 an acre on hemp. Being an actual farmer, not trying to sell seeds or clones, I couldn’t help but burst out laughing,” Hill said. “Everyone looked at me and asked what was so funny, and they gave me the mic and I said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll tell you right now — I haven’t seen over $1,000 an acre since 2015.’”

Still, Texas lawmakers embraced the opportunity hemp presented in 2019, legalizing hemp products of the cannabis plant with less than 0.3% of THC, the psychoactive component in marijuana. Hill’s Texas Star Hemp Farms was among those to make the investment necessary to profit from hemp, including owning almost all the means of production and sales and spending millions on seeds, licenses and facilities.

Six years after that initial rush, industrial hemp farming in Texas stands on the brink. Senate Bill 3, which would ban any consumable hemp products that contain even trace amounts of THC, could destroy what farmers like Hill have built.

“Now, considering things like hemp hearts, hemp seed oils, salad dressings, and those health products that don’t have any cannabinoids in them to get you high, [they] will still be illegal under this law,” Hill said.

Hill is one of about 450 licensed hemp producers in the Texas Industrial Hemp Program at risk of losing a chunk of their livelihoods as Texas lawmakers have prioritized banning tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC products. Farmers say there is no way they can produce hemp without traces of THC, even for non-consumable products like clothing and paper, meaning SB 3 could deliver a death blow to the industry.

The GOP-controlled Legislature authorized the sale of consumable hemp a year after it was legalized nationwide to boost Texas agriculture by allowing the commercialization of hemp containing trace amounts of non-intoxicating delta-9 THC.

What ensued was a proliferation of hemp products, such as gummies, beverages, vapes and flower buds, sold at dispensaries and convenience stores across the state. Sen. Charles Perry, a Lubbock Republican who carried the 2019 hemp legalization bill, says such uses exploit a legal loophole and put children in danger.

His SB 3 attempts to correct this by penalizing violators who knowingly possess THC products with a misdemeanor that can carry up to a year in jail and 2 to 10 years in prison for manufacturing or selling them. The measure, which was approved by the Senate, also bars marketing and sales of consumable hemp to minors and requires all legal products to be sold in tamper-evident and child-resistant packaging.

Like SB 3, House Bill 28 would ban synthetic THC and products like gummies and vapes. But the House’s proposal focuses more on tightening regulatory loopholes, allowing hemp-infused beverages and assigning the alcohol industry to regulate products, as well as limiting the consumption of such products to those 21 years or older and implementing advertising regulations.

Restart CBD displays beverages in a fridge on Thursday, May 9, 2024 in Austin. Beverages are a really interesting opportunity for this industry as they are accessible like edibles, but also allow for people to consume drinks that aren’t alcohol but still have some sort of benefit.
Beverages containing THC in an Austin store on Thursday, May 9, 2024. Credit: Maria Crane/The Texas Tribune
“This regulatory structure will also maintain the federal restriction on THC of no more than 0.3%, as well as limiting the amount a person can buy in a single day to 10 milligrams,” said state Rep. Ken King, R-Canadian, sponsor of the bill.

If the House passes its proposal, the two chambers must reconcile their differences for the legislation to become law. The House hasn’t taken up either of the hemp bills for a vote.

AUSTIN – KUT reports that Andrea Gore, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at UT Austin, knew from a young age that she wanted to be a scientist. She said she always loved watching birds and bugs. “Even as a kid, I would watch the nature programs instead of the sitcoms my friends were watching,” she said. John Wallingford was in a similar boat. The UT molecular biology chair took a life sciences class in seventh grade and knew he wanted to be a biology professor. “There’s no scientist in my family. Nobody knows where it came from,” he said. “And [I] literally never deviated.” Now though, Gore and Wallingford — who spoke on their own behalves and not on behalf of the university — are worried their students will not have the same opportunities to pursue science. Since President Trump took office, the National Institutes of Health — the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world — has significantly cut grant funding. The federal agency could also see more cuts to its overall budget, as reported by Politico.

More than 80% of NIH grants go to researchers in the U.S. — including the labs that Gore and Wallingford run at UT Austin. The cuts have prompted outcry and protests from the scientific community as well as legal challenges. Sixteen state attorneys general sued the Trump administration earlier this month for canceling NIH grants. Professors at UT Austin have not been left unscathed by the cuts. Take Jason McLellan, who did groundbreaking work to help develop a COVID-19 vaccine and is set to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. An NIH grant he had received for research on antiviral drug development was canceled on March 24. “All research and spending had to cease that day,” McLellan said in an email. “This leaves several projects stranded and jeopardizes the further development of the exciting compounds that our consortium developed.” UT Austin did not respond to a request for comment about the impact of NIH funding cuts on research at the university. The university has been tracking changes to federal funding for research, including a court ruling earlier this month that has prevented the Trump administration from lowering reimbursement rates related to NIH grants. While Gore and Wallingford have not yet lost funding, uncertainty created by changes at the NIH have permeated their labs.

DALLAS – The Dallas Morning News reports that onetime Dallas Morning News scribe Dave Levinthal, who now writes for OpenSecrets, spent some time looking into how various political action and candidate election committees have been defrauded during the last election. That would include the Tarrant County Republican Victory Fund PAC, which lost $6,980 in late November after someone swiped a mailed check and changed the recipient’s name and added a six to a $980 check before cashing it. The PAC’s treasurer told Levinthal that while the police were unable to find a suspect, the bank refunded the money because it agreed it shouldn’t have cashed it.

Levinthal says that the problem was pretty pervasive. More than a dozen elected officials and federal political committees lost up to five-figure sums from campaign accounts because of theft. Analysis of federal campaign finance records filed since the November election found the sticky fingers sometimes came in the form of the check swiping that happened in Tarrant County, but also included embezzlement, unauthorized charges, “or other shenanigans.” The Tarrant County GOP says that their accounting procedures caught the issue quickly. But Levinthal says that in many cases, political committees spin up quickly and don’t set up proper internal controls and practices, which makes them an attractive to thieves.