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AUSTIN – A bill filed in the Texas House co-authored by a majority of the chamber is aiming to restrict the use of bathrooms by transgender people in public spaces and may potentially go further than previous iterations of similar bills to outline restrictions and penalties.

House Bill 239 would mandate that family violence shelters, prisons and bathrooms and locker rooms of state and county buildings are segregated by state definitions of sex, and create fines for those who violate the bill’s provisions. HB 239 does allow for single-person and family restrooms, and creates exemptions for children under 10 and those who may need assistance using facilities, likey the elderly.

The bill comes as some Texas lawmakers, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, have become increasingly vocal about bathrooms being used in the state Capitol by transgender people.

HB 239 echoes 2017’s Senate Bill 6 — a focal point in the Legislature before withering support killed it in a special session — but differs from the 8-year-old counterpart on several fronts. The 2025 bill follows SB 6’s restrictions on bathrooms applying to state and county-owned facilities like the Texas Capitol, public schools or agency buildings. The bill would also extend to public universities. HB 239, however, is more detailed, crafting its own definition of biological sex, increasing proposed penalties and attempting to insulate itself from potential litigation or constitutional challenges.

HB 239’s definition of biological sex is similar to SB 6, yet goes further to clarify the state’s recognition would solely come from a person’s “original” birth certificate. The new language would ignore updated birth certificate markings for trans people who legally amended their documentation.

The bill also proposes an increased financial penalty for those who violate its provisions, with a $5,000 civil fine for the first offense, compared to a $1,500 penalty proposed by its 2017 counterpart. A second violation under HB 239 would increase the fine to $25,000.

The increased penalties were what Cathryn Oakley, senior director at the Human Rights Campaign, said stood out the most in HB 239. Oakley began working in Texas with the center in 2017 to rally against SB 6, and has been working alongside and against lawmakers since to combat anti-trans legislation. While the bill does introduce some new provisions like restricting prisons in the state from accepting trans inmates — which a Senate bill this session is also seeking to prohibit — Oakley said the ideas behind it are far from new.

“What we’re seeing is that there’s not a ton of creativity going on,” Oakley said. “These bills are introduced in other states, as well, and it’s interesting to me to see sort of where the trends are.”

HB 239 also has provisions that aim to bar state courts from certifying any writs or injunctions labeling the proposed law as unconstitutional, and that would grant sovereign immunity to the state and its employees for enforcing it. While SB 6 had a clause prohibiting lawsuits from being filed by public entities against it, it explicitly waived sovereign immunity — which makes people ineligible to sue — and did not block suits over the bill’s constitutionality.

But public sentiment over bathroom laws also differs now than they did almost eight years ago, as lawmakers and advocates nationally have gradually found footing for restrictions on a myriad of issues aimed at transgender Americans. In October, the Odessa City Council passed an ordinance limiting individuals from entering public bathrooms meant for the opposite sex, and the U.S. Congress passed a similar ban for the nation’s Capitol in November.

Rep. Valoree Swanson, R-Spring, filed HB 239 in November. It duplicates two earlier bills: one filed by another House representative in January, and another filed in the Senate. Swanson is joined by 77 co-authors on the bill, who signed on in late February when the bill was referred to committee. All are Republicans save one: Rep. Sergio Muñoz, an eight-term Democrat from Mission.

Despite the majority in the House signing on to the bill, the 77 members may not be completely indicative of its chances of success. As SB 6 went through the Senate in 2017, former House Rep. Ron Simmons, R-Carrollton, filed House Bill 2899, which failed to leave its committee despite its 79 co-authors during the regular session. Simmons later reintroduced the bill as House Bill 46 during that year’s special session, but the new version garnered only 60 authors before also failing.

While Swanson was a co-author on both HB 2899 and HB 46, Muñoz was not on either. Neither Swanson nor Muñoz could be reached for comment.

HB 239 was referred to the House Committee on State Affairs and currently is not scheduled for a hearing.

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

Over the last three years, the head of a small charter school network that serves fewer than 1,000 students has taken home up to $870,000 annually, a startling amount that appears to be the highest for any public school superintendent in the state and among the top in the nation.

Valere Public Schools Superintendent Salvador Cavazos’ compensation to run three campuses in Austin, Corpus Christi and Brownsville exceeds the less than $450,000 that New York City’s chancellor makes to run the largest school system in the country.

But Cavazos’ salary looks far more modest in publicly posted records that are supposed to provide transparency to taxpayers. That’s because Valere excludes most of his bonuses from its reports to the state and on its own website, instead only sharing his base pay of about $300,000.

The fact that the superintendent of a small district could pull in a big-time salary shocked experts and previewed larger transparency and accountability challenges that could follow as Texas moves to approve a voucher-like program that would allow the use of public funds for private schools.

Cavazos’ total pay is alarming, said Duncan Klussmann, an associate professor at the University of Houston Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies.

“I just can’t imagine that there’d be any citizen in the state of Texas that would feel like that’s OK,” Klussmann said.

Details concerning Cavazos’ compensation, and that of two other superintendents identified by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, drew a sharp rebuke from the association that advocates for charter schools across the state.

“It’s not acceptable for any public school to prioritize someone’s personal enrichment ahead of students’ best interests,” Brian Whitley, a spokesperson for the Texas Public Charter Schools Association, said in a statement. He added that any payment decisions made at the expense of students should be reversed immediately.

“The public charter school community has long embraced strong accountability and transparency. That’s what Texans deserve, both for academic outcomes and taxpayer dollars,” he said. “To that end, the full picture of superintendent compensation at all public schools should be made clearer.”

Texas lawmakers have filed legislation that would cap public school superintendents’ annual salaries, but most bills would not restrict bonuses. Those bills also don’t apply to private schools that stand to receive an influx of taxpayer dollars if lawmakers pass legislation this session approving education savings accounts, a type of voucher program. Private schools wouldn’t be subject to the same level of state oversight as public schools.

Lawmakers who advocate for vouchers won’t be able to gauge whether the investments were worthwhile if they don’t mandate that private schools follow the same financial and academic reporting requirements as public schools, said Bruce Baker, a professor at the University of Miami Department of Teaching and Learning.

Cavazos’ compensation proves that even those reporting standards are “woefully inadequate,” Baker said.

Texas school districts must post all compensation and benefits provided to their superintendent online or in public annual reports, according to rules set by the Texas Education Agency. They must also report superintendents’ salaries and any supplemental pay for extra duties to the state. But Valere excluded more than a dozen bonuses and additional payments it awarded Cavazos, some of which its board granted to him in perpetuity.

ProPublica and The Texas Tribune uncovered the total amount the district paid Cavazos by combing through federal tax records that the charter network must file annually with the Internal Revenue Service to maintain its nonprofit status. The news organizations then gathered additional details through public records requests to the district and the state.

Cavazos, who has overseen the charter district since 2014 and previously served as superintendent in two other public school systems, declined an interview and did not answer written questions for this story.

Board members provided written responses to questions through attorney Ryan Lione, who serves as outside counsel for the district. In defending Cavazos’ compensation, they likened his role to that of a corporate CEO, which they said comes with “many more day-to-day duties,” including fundraising, overseeing expansion and guiding the charter through a 2020 split from its parent organization.

“We believe that the benefits that Dr. Cavazos brings to Valere through his vast experience and knowledge justify the compensation that the Board has and continues to award him,” the Valere board’s statement read.

Board members said that they did not believe the district had run afoul of any state reporting requirements because no one from the state had told them that they had.

But Jake Kobersky, a spokesperson for the state’s education agency, said it does not monitor whether districts post their compensation information online and that it only follows up if it receives tips about violations. He declined to comment on whether the district’s omission of bonuses paid to Cavazos in its reporting to the state or on the district’s website was a violation, but after questions from the news organizations, Kobersky said the agency is now reviewing the district’s reporting to “determine what next steps, if any, are necessary.”

At least two other Texas charter school districts have also paid their superintendents hundreds of thousands of dollars on top of what they publicly reported in recent years, our analysis found.

Dallas-based Gateway Charter Academy, which serves about 600 students, paid its superintendent Robbie Moore $426,620 in 2023, nearly double his base salary of $215,100, the latest available federal tax filings show. Pay for Mollie Purcell Mozley of Faith Family Academy, another Dallas-area charter school superintendent, hit a high of $560,000 in 2021, despite a contracted salary of $306,000. She continued to receive more than $400,000 during each of the two subsequent years, according to tax filings.

The districts didn’t publicly post the additional payments on their websites, and only Faith Family Academy has reported any extra pay to the state. Moore, Mozley and Faith Family Academy did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, Gateway Charter Academy did not address questions related to the superintendent’s compensation. Without providing any details, the statement said the district has made mistakes but is implementing “corrective measures.” Since it was contacted by the newsrooms, the district has updated its website with a new document that lists an undated $75,000 bonus for Moore. The Texas Education Agency did not answer questions about either school district.

Valere, however, stands out among the charter school districts identified by the news organizations.

Board members have voted to increase Cavazos’ pay or other financial benefits in 14 of their 24 meetings since 2021.

In one instance, the board granted Cavazos a bonus of $20,000 after taxes for every month that he continued to work for the district. The increase, described as a “retention incentive,” bolstered his take-home pay by an additional $240,000 annually.

“It’s almost like they’re just convening just to keep giving away their school’s money to this individual,” said David DeMatthews, a professor at the University of Texas Department of Educational Leadership and Policy. “I don’t think teachers that work in that school would feel so great that rather than make those investments into their children, they’re making it into this gentleman’s bank account.”

Board members defended their decision to dole out repeated bonuses to Cavazos, including payments totaling roughly half a million dollars to fully reimburse a withdrawal he made from his retirement fund in 2018 for a “personal emergency.”

They declined to discuss the nature of the personal emergency but said the payments were “the right thing to do” to ensure that Cavazos could retire one day. Board members claimed that a “significant” portion of Cavazos’ compensation came from private donations but would not say how much or provide documents to support their assertion.

The board also said that it rewarded Cavazos for his work leading the district through a “difficult” 2020 separation from its former parent organization, Southwest Key Programs, the Texas-based nonprofit that provides housing for unaccompanied minors who arrive at the southern border.

The split came after The New York Times revealed that Southwest Key’s leaders, including then-CEO Juan Sanchez, had used money from the charter district and its for-profit companies to bolster their pay well beyond the $187,000 federal cap for migrant shelter grants. Sanchez, who also served on Valere’s school board at the time, received $1.5 million in 2017 as the charter struggled with debt and students contended with deteriorating buildings, the Times found. In response to the reporting, a Southwest Key spokesperson disputed that the nonprofit had unfairly taken money from the schools. Sanchez, who resigned in 2019, denied wrongdoing, saying in an interview with ProPublica and the Tribune that his salary did not come from the charter’s coffers.

State records show that the state education agency closed an investigation in 2022 into “conflict of interest, nepotism, and misuse of funds” at Valere. The agency would not provide details on what prompted the probe or share information about its findings.

To piece together Cavazos’ compensation, the newsrooms filed public records requests for payment records and meeting minutes, which the district had not posted online for years. On at least two occasions, Cavazos received payments that initially appeared to have no record of board approval.

Minutes from a January 2024 meeting showed that the board did not vote on a $73,000 payment he later received. When the newsrooms asked about the discrepancy, the board said it provided the reporters with the wrong copy of the minutes and pointed to a different version the district had later posted online that included approval of both the payment, for a life insurance plan, and a car lease.

Another bonus came after a November board meeting attended by a reporter from the news organizations who heard no discussion of the payment. Questioned about when the board approved the bonus, members said they had done so during a closed-door portion of the meeting. After the reporter pointed out that such an action was against state law, board members said they voted after ending the closed session but before allowing the public, including the reporter, back into the meeting room.

Three academics who study school performance and compensation data said they have never seen a school board fully reimburse any employee’s retirement account or approve so many hefty bonuses in such a short period.

Experts, including Klussmann, a former superintendent of a district in Spring Branch, Texas, said that the money should be put toward students’ education. The vast majority of Valere’s students qualify for free and reduced meals and more than a third are English-language learners, which education experts say are often clear indicators that students are at a learning disadvantage.

Valere’s student performance on state exams also lags behind statewide averages, data shows.

Last year, Valere teachers left at a higher rate than in most schools across the state. The turnover has been difficult for Marisol Gauna’s son, who has autism and ADHD. Gauna says he no longer has a special education teacher who works with him one on one to help overcome learning hurdles. As a result, she worries he could fail the eighth grade.

A parent of three children in the district, Gauna was flabbergasted when she learned about Cavazos’ pay from ProPublica and the Tribune. Those funds, she said, could be used to retain teachers, improve sports facilities and provide healthier cafeteria food.

“It should go to the school or even to the teachers so that way there can be good, responsible teachers that want to stay there,” Gauna said.

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

EAGLE PASS, Texas (AP) — Vice President JD Vance visited the U.S.-Mexico border on Wednesday and said that arrests for illegal crossings had fallen sharply because President Donald Trump is demanding that all of government prioritize the issue in ways his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, never did.

Vance was joined by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, as he took a helicopter tour of the area around Eagle Pass, Texas, around 150 miles southwest of San Antonio. They also visited a Border Patrol facility and sat for a roundtable with Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and national, state and local officials.

Vance pointed to arrests for illegal border crossings plummeting 39% in January from a month earlier. The numbers have actually been falling sharply since well before Republican Trump took office for his second term on Jan. 20, coming down from an all-time high of 250,000 in December 2023. After that, Mexican authorities increased enforcement within their own borders and Biden introduced severe asylum restrictions early last summer.

“President Trump has empowered — and in fact demanded — that his whole government take the task of border control seriously,” Vance said.

In an effort to impose harder-line immigration policies, the Trump administration has put shackled immigrants on U.S. military planes for deportation fights and sent some to the U.S. lockup at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. It has also expanded federal agents’ arrests of people in the U.S. illegally and abandoned programs that gave some permission to stay.

The presence of Hegseth and Gabbard on the visit underscores how Trump is tasking agencies across the federal government with working to overhaul border and immigration policy, moving well beyond the Department of Homeland Security, the traditional home of most such functions.

“The border crisis has become a matter of national intelligence and it’s also become something that requires the Department of Defense to engage,” Vance said.

Gabbard blamed the Biden administration for the presence in the U.S. of people who crossed the border illegally and had possible ties to terrorists but were released into the country while they await immigration court proceedings.

“Who are they? What may they be plotting?” Gabbard asked. “This is just the beginning.”

As part of his visit, Vance went to Shelby Park, a municipal park along the Rio Grande that Abbot seized from federal authorities last year in a feud with the Biden administration, after the governor accused the Biden White House of not doing enough to curb illegal crossings.

A group of friends and neighbors gathered two blocks from the park ahead of Vance’s arrival. Dennis Charlton, a veteran and Eagle Pass resident with property along the border, wore two hats, one to commemorate his service and the other a red “Make America Great Again” cap.

He said he’s witnessed human and drug smuggling activity on his border property that scared his wife and neighbors, but said such crossings have diminished significantly of late.

“I love it,” Charlton said of the visit. “I just wish we could talk to him to thank him for everything that he and Trump have done.”

Vance came to South Texas after Trump imposed 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, saying neither country is doing enough to stem illegal immigration and address drug trafficking, especially the flow of fentanyl across the U.S. border.

Asked about Trump’s tariffs, Vance responded, “I actually think he’s doing a huge favor to the people of Mexico because, if they don’t get control of these cartels, the people of Mexico are going to wake up in a narco state, where the cartels have more power than their own government.”

When asked about the potential for the U.S. to send troops to Mexico to battle drug cartels, Vance said he was “not going to make any announcements about any invasions of Mexico here today. The president has a megaphone and he’ll of course speak to these issues as he feels necessary.”

When pressed by reporters on if an invasion was really coming, Vance was more direct: “No,” he said. “Next question.”

Vance was also asked why more large-scale operations haven’t been started to deport people who are in the U.S. illegally.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Vance said. “We have seen pretty significant increases in deportations and apprehensive and arrests,” he added. “But we have to remember, President Biden gutted the entire immigration enforcement regime of this country.”

Since Trump’s second term began, about 6,500 new active duty forces have been ordered to deploy to the southern border. Before that, there were about 2,500 troops already there, largely National Guard troops on active duty orders, along with a couple of hundred active duty aviation forces.

Troops are responsible for detection and monitoring along the border but don’t interact with migrants attempting to illegally cross. Instead, they alert border agents, who then take the migrants into custody.

Biden tasked Vice President Kamala Harris with tackling the root causes of immigration during his administration, seeking to zero in on why so many migrants, particularly from Central America, were leaving their homelands and coming to the U.S. seeking asylum or trying to make it into the county illegally.

Harris made her first visit to the border in June 2021, about 3 1/2 months deeper into Biden’s term than Vance’s trip in the opening weeks of Trump’s second term.

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Weissert reported from Washington.

A private prison company has signed an agreement to reopen an immigrant detention facility in Texas that previously held families with children for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the business said Wednesday.

Nashville-based CoreCivic announced the contract with ICE and the city of Dilley regarding the 2,400-bed South Texas Family Residential Center, located about 85 miles (135 kilometers) north of Laredo and the Mexico border.

The center was used during the administration of President Barack Obama and Donald Trump’s first presidency. But President Joe Biden phased out family detention in 2021, and CoreCivic said the facility was idled in 2024.

“We do acknowledge that we anticipate housing families” at Dilley, CoreCivic spokesman Ryan Gustin told The Associated Press.

CoreCivic said in a statement that the facility “was purpose-built for ICE in 2014 to provide an appropriate setting for a family population.” The new contract runs through at least March 2030.

ICE officials did not immediately respond to messages seeking information about who will be held at Dilley and how soon.

The agency — which mostly detains immigrants at privately operated detention facilities, its own processing centers and local prisons and jails — entered this year with zero facilities geared toward families, who last year accounted for about one-third of arrivals on the southern border.

The Trump administration has expanded the detention of migrants to military bases including Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba, via flights out of Army installations at El Paso, Texas, as it promises to ramp up mass deportations.

Private detention contractors with longstanding ties to ICE, including CoreCivic and GEO Group, say they offer less expensive options than the military for an array of immigrant detention services and transportation including international flights.

During Trump’s first administration, he authorized the use of military bases to detain immigrant children, including Army installations at Fort Bliss, Texas, and Goodfellow Air Force Base.

In 2014, Obama temporarily relied on military bases to detain immigrant children while ramping up privately operated family detention centers to hold many of the tens of thousands of Central American families crossing the border illegally.

ATLANTA (AP) — Powerful storms that killed three people in Mississippi and ripped roofs from buildings in a small Oklahoma town charged eastward Wednesday, spawning tornado warnings near the East Coast while heavy snow struck the Midwest and dry, windy weather fanned wildfires in Texas.

Meanwhile, forecasters warned that a Pacific storm was expected to bring widespread rain and mountain snow across California and other parts of the West through Friday. California Gov. Gavin Newsom warned on the social platform X that the storm could bring another round of debris flow in the areas left barren by recent wildfires.

Tornado warnings were issued in the Carolinas, Florida and Virginia. Officials in Union County, North Carolina, said in a social media post that the U.S. National Weather Service confirmed an EF1 tornado touched down in the Unionville area. The storm caused structural damage, and power outages after wind speeds of up to 90 mph (145 kph). No injuries were reported, according to the county.

In Texas, high winds and dry vegetation fueled wildfires in several areas of the state. One burned at least 20 homes and structures in coastal San Patricio County near Corpus Christi, County Judge David Krebs said. There were no immediate reports of injuries. The National Weather Service said critical fire weather conditions were still expected across south central Texas.

Severe weather threats persisted a day after stormy winds forced changes to Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans, which moved up and shortened its two biggest parades.

The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency blamed severe weather for three deaths. WAPT-TV reported that in Madison County one person died from a falling power line, and another was killed by a tree falling on his car. A woman in Clarke County died when a tree limb fell on her outside her home, WLBT-TV reported.

At least seven confirmed tornadoes touched down Tuesday in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, according to preliminary information from the weather service. That number could increase, with the potential for severe storms stretching from Florida to New York state, said Bill Bunting, deputy director of the agency’s Storm Prediction Center.

“These storm systems not only have a warm side with severe thunderstorms, but a cold side that can have all forms of winter weather,” Bunting said. “And looking at the forecast maps, this is not the last storm that we’ll see in March.”

Blizzard conditions hit eastern Nebraska overnight into Wednesday, bringing around 4 inches (10.2 centimeters) of snow and winds up to 65 mph (105 kph), limiting visibility and closing numerous snowy roads.

Parts of Minnesota and much of Iowa were on the waning side of a powerful winter storm. The storm brought the heaviest snow of the season to Minneapolis, where the weather service reported 7.4 inches (18.8 centimeters) at the airport. Other nearby communities reported a foot of snow or more.

“I wouldn’t want to say it’s unheard of or unusual. But it’s still pretty remarkable to see the power of nature with these storms,” National Weather Service meteorologist Jacob Beitlich said.

The slippery roads led to at least 70 crashes, the Minnesota State Patrol reported. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz authorized the National Guard to provide support and help rescue stranded drivers.

The Iowa State Patrol blamed whiteout conditions for 68 crashes, including a pileup on Interstate 35 outside Des Moines and numerous wrecks on Interstate 80.

“There’s this series of a whole bunch of small crashes, but it’s closing the interstate,” State Patrol spokesman Sgt. Alex Dinkla said. “Our officers are literally going car to car, and then cars are getting stuck on the roadway. They can’t move.”

In a South Carolina community near Myrtle Beach, where firefighters have been battling wildfires since the weekend, Horry County Fire Rescue said in a social media post that heavy winds would keep firefighters from responding to flare-ups and spot fires by air and from entering woods where damaged trees could fall.

The storms knocked out power to thousands of customers across the central and southeastern United States, including nearly 20,000 homes and businesses in Texas and about 12,000 in Tennessee, according to PowerOutage.us.

More than 900 flights scheduled to fly into or out of U.S. airports were canceled, according to FlightAware.com, which tracks cancellations and delays nationwide.

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Associated Press journalists from across the country contributed.