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Cases of cyclosporiasis in Michigan surpass 5,000, health officials say

Cyclospora cayetanensis is a unicellular parasite that causes an intestinal infection called cyclosporiasis. (CDC)

(NEW YORK) -- Hospitalizations in Michigan linked to an outbreak of cyclosporiasis, an intestinal illness caused by a parasite, have surpassed 100, health officials said Friday.

So far, 102 people have been hospitalized, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS). There are more than 5,000 cases in the state, an increase of nearly 700 since Thursday, officials said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration are warning consumers not to eat shredded iceberg lettuce sold at select Taco Bells in five states -- Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and West Virginia -- after the ingredient was linked to the outbreak. The CDC said that shredded iceberg lettuce sold in grocery stores or served in other restaurants is not affected.

Lettuce supplier Taylor Farms said it is voluntarily removing all iceberg lettuce sourced from central Mexico from the U.S. market.

Taylor Farms said the FDA traceback indicated a "specific farm" that accounts for "less than 1% of the U.S.'s iceberg lettuce supply" was a potential source, and they have removed all iceberg lettuce from the region indefinitely. No other Taylor Fresh Food products have been impacted and that no branded salad kits contain iceberg lettuce, Taylor Farms said.

"As a family owned and operated company, we are deeply concerned for those who became ill, their families, and the many Americans whose trust in the safety of their fresh produce has been shaken. That trust is something we've worked for decades to earn, and we are committed to doing everything in our power to restore that confidence," Taylor Farms said in a statement Friday.

Preliminary findings by Michigan health officials suggest lettuce or salad greens are the potential source of the illnesses. However, no specific type of produce, grower or supplier has been identified as the source, and federal health officials have not publicly identified a source of the outbreak.

The White House said on Thursday it is "closely monitoring" the cyclosporiasis outbreak and "has a handle on the situation."

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the White House is working with the FDA and partners at the federal, state and local levels to "increase detection methods," provide guidance and trace the outbreak.

On Tuesday, Taco Bell said it would voluntarily remove some ingredients at select restaurants as a precautionary measure.

"The health and safety of our guests is our top priority," Taco Bell Corp said in a statement to ABC News. "Public health officials have not confirmed a link to Taco Bell or any specific ingredient, supplier, restaurant or retailer. While authorities continue their broader review, Taco Bell has voluntarily and temporarily removed limited ingredients at select restaurants as a precautionary measure. We will continue to closely monitor the situation and follow the guidance of public health authorities."

Federal health officials said cases of cyclosporiasis will continue to rise in the U.S. The season is typically considered to be from May 1 to Aug. 31.

Additionally, the CDC sent out an alert to doctors around the country on Tuesday warning them of an increase in cases of cyclosporiasis.

Michigan health officials previously told ABC News the outbreak could be linked to food contamination.

Earlier this month, MDHHS sent out recommendations to restaurants and other commercial kitchens in southeast Michigan to reduce risks of exposure.

MDHHS data shows that most cases have been among adults, with 30 to 39 year olds making up the highest share.

The outbreak was first identified on June 29, when the Monroe County Health Department announced it was investigating a cluster of cases.

The parasite usually spreads through food or water contaminated with feces, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It does not typically spread person-to-person.

Foodborne outbreaks of cyclosporiasis in the past have been linked to various types of imported fresh produce, such as raspberries, basil, snow peas, mesclun lettuce and cilantro, according to the CDC.

At least 31 other states have reported cases of cyclosporiasis, according to an ABC News tally, analyzing CDC data and state health department data.

Cyclosporiasis is treated with the oral antibiotic trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP-SMX), commonly sold as Bactrim, Septra and Cotrim, and taken for 10 days, according to the CDC.

The agency says people can prevent infection by thoroughly washing produce, cutting away bruised or damaged parts of fruits and vegetables and refrigerating pre-prepared or pre-cut produce.

Additionally, the CDC recommends washing hands thoroughly with soap and water before handling or preparing raw fruits and vegetables.

ABC News' Karen Travers contributed to this report.

Hospital celebrates new births

TYLER – CHRISTUS Health Mount Pleasant celebrated the opening of its new Birthing Suite, a thoughtfully designed space created to enhance the childbirth experience for growing families across the region.

The new suite offers a welcoming, personalized and family-centered environment while maintaining the highest standards of obstetrical care.

“This new birthing suite reflects our commitment to providing exceptional patient-centered care in an environment designed to make families feel comfortable, supportive and at home,” said Nichole Quezada, labor and delivery director. “Welcoming a new child into the world is one of life’s most meaningful moments, and we are proud to offer families in our community an enhanced experience that combines compassionate care, privacy and peace of mind.” Continue reading Hospital celebrates new births

Mullin threatens to withhold aid from states that don’t comply with DHS election directives

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin speaks during a news conference in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on July 17, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

(WASHINGTON) -- Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened on Friday to strip states of federal election-related aid, and to possibly seek criminal penalties against election officials, if they don't comply with the administration's voting roll probe ahead of the midterms.

Mullin told reporters that if states want to continue to receive federal reimbursement "to run federal elections," they must now cooperate with DHS's efforts to "scrub" their voter rolls and update the security of their election systems.

"We're saying that the machines had to be secure, and that your voter registration list needs to be scrubbed," Mullin said in a news conference.

It was not immediately clear what grants or funding could be in jeopardy for non-compliant states. DHS has previously threatened to withhold Federal Emergency Management Agency counterterrorism grants unless states complied with election security mandates.

"If states want the grant funding, to recap, they must secure the election," Mullin said.

Mullin's news conference came one day after President Donald Trump's primetime speech on elections, in which he announced he was declassifying a slew of documents he claims reveal vulnerabilities in America's elections systems and foreign interference, particularly by China.

Mullin, who was sworn in as DHS secretary on March 24, claimed America's adversaries have the "key to the back" of American voting machines, alleging that bad actors could change the registration of voters -- and even manipulate votes that have already been cast.

But Mullin offered no evidence that foreign vote manipulation has occurred, nor did he elaborate on how it is possible.

Mullin also argued, as Trump did on Thursday night, that America's elections are also vulnerable because of noncitizen voters being on the voter rolls.

A DHS report released overnight alleged more than 250,000 noncitizens are on voter rolls in four states.

Mullin did not provide more information on how DHS arrived at the claim that 250,000 noncitizens are registered to vote in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada, saying only it was pulled from public voter records.

The Department of Justice attempted to compel states to turn over their voter files, and sued more than two dozen that refused to do so. But courts have thrown out those lawsuits across the board, saying the DOJ lacks a compelling reason for the data.

Mullin said it would be a "little bit tougher" to obtain data from those states.

He said DHS will continue to comb through voter rolls in search of noncitizens and others ineligible to vote, and threatened them with jail time and or financial penalties.

"We will scrub all election records, looking for illegal aliens and those who are ineligible to vote, including those that somehow voted, yet they were deceased," Mullin said.

"If you're illegal and attempted to vote, or you tried to vote illegally for someone else, we will find you, and we will charge you," Mullin continued. "Illegal voter restoration and illegal voting both carry penalties up to five years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines. We will pursue maximum pressure on this."

The secretary said election officials would be held "accountable" if they don't comply and that the penalties would be extended to them.

"If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections, and they chose not to, then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even depending on how far it goes, prison time," he said.

Mullin said DHS will look into the integrity of both early voting and post-Election Day votes during this November's midterm elections.

2017 murder suspect transferred

SMITH COUNTY – A man accused of capital murder in relation to the shooting of a Tyler man in 2017 has been transferred to the Smith County Jail. Quadaverine Allison, a Longview resident, is presently serving a 25-year prison term at the Allred Unit for aggravated robbery.

Allison and Jakysia Rodgers were indicted in April of this year for capital murder in the Tyler shooting that killed Joshua Alon McGee, 22, on August 11, 2017. According to police, a detective received fresh information that advanced the cold case and resulted in grand jury indictments.

Rodgers and Allison were both incarcerated at the time for unrelated offenses. According to jail records, Allison was transferred to the Smith County Jail on Tuesday in connection with the capital murder charge.

According to court records, Allison’s capital murder case has no scheduled hearings. Rodgers was given a 20-year prison sentence after entering a guilty plea to the lesser charge of murder in June. Prior to the capital murder indictment, he was already serving a 20-year sentence for an unrelated aggravated assault charge in 2024.

Officials close bridge over interstate

VAN ZANDT COUNTY – Starting Friday, Van Zandt County’s County Road 4414 (Tank Farm Road) bridge over Interstate 20 is closed. The Tyler District of the Texas Department of Transportation announced the closure, citing the need for workers to examine and fix the bridge’s damage. Until further notice, the closure is in place. Traffic heading north is being diverted to the FM 16 underpass via the frontage roads. The frontage roads leading to the Oakland/Colfax overpass are being used by southbound traffic. It is advised that drivers prepare ahead of time and, if necessary, take a different route.

Andy Burnham is declared leader of UK’s Labour Party, pledges to restore hope

LONDON (AP) — Andy Burnham was officially declared leader of Britain’s governing Labour Party on Friday, promising to bring hope to the British people and purpose to the floundering government as he cleared his final hurdle to take office as prime minister next week.

The former mayor of Greater Manchester was the only contender in the center-left party’s leadership contest to replace departing Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who was forced out by a rebellion within his party. Friday’s announcement was a foregone conclusion after Burnham secured nominations from 379 of the 403 Labour lawmakers in the House of Commons.

Burnham pledged to serve “people and places who have been waiting too long for politics to let them hope again.”

“We’re going to give them hope back,” he told an audience of lawmakers, party activists and trade union leaders in his first speech as leader. “I am ready.”

“I have a plan,” he added, in a bid to reassure a party that has seen its popularity nosedive since winning a landslide election victory two years ago. He pledged to end Labour’s factional disputes, saying “we won’t beat Britain’s new right if we are consumed by infighting and pulling in different directions.”

The prime minister in waiting is about to take office

Burnham has been prime minister-in-waiting for weeks, since winning a special election for a seat in Parliament a month ago, but he has revealed little detail about his policy priorities. He will arrive in Number 10 Downing Street largely unknown to voters outside Manchester.

He sketched out some priorities in Friday’s speech, promising to deliver “hope in every heart” and “good growth in every post code,” in part by transferring power from central government in London to local leaders in cities and regions.

“We will take power back from Westminster and Whitehall and give it to the place you live,” he told the audience. “More power over life’s essentials so you can make them work better.”

Starmer announced last month that he would resign after two years in office marred by missteps and judgment errors that eroded his standing with his party and the public.

Labour regularly trails behind anti-immigration party Reform UK in opinion polls, and the governing party had catastrophic results in local elections in May, triggering pressure on Starmer to step down that he couldn’t resist.

Burnham deemed a better communicator than Starmer

Burnham brings a more relaxed style of leadership than the rather stern Starmer, and is regarded as one of the Labour Party’s best communicators. But he faces many of the same problems as his predecessor, including a sluggish economy, a cost-of-living squeeze fueled by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and overstretched public services.

And his promises of a new, less divisive politics are not too different to what Starmer pledged when he took office in 2024.

“I will work to build a new politics. The country is crying out for it,” Burnham said. “How can politicians point fingers when living standards are falling and politics as a whole isn’t working for them? It infuriates them and makes them switch off.”

He said he would have the “courage to fix the big things that politics has neglected,” such as tackling the patchy access to social care for those who need it because of age, illness or disability. It’s a pressing issue in a country with an aging population, and one that has foxed previous Labour and Conservative governments.

Burnham says he’ll reverse 40 years of bad decisions

He highlighted plans to focus on economic renewal, more public control of key sectors and creating new modern industrial jobs, arguing that Britain took “a series of wrong turns in the 1980s” when “political power was centralized and economic power privatized.”

That’s the decade when Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher oversaw policies of privatization, deindustrialization and political centralization that transformed the U.K. economy.

“Slowly, at times imperceptibly, over four decades, political and economic power drained away out of our communities in every region and nation of the U.K.,” Burnham said, calling Britain’s change of prime ministers — for the sixth time in a decade — “the most significant change moment in our politics for 40 years.”

Starmer will remain prime minister until Monday, when he formally tenders his resignation to King Charles III. The king will then ask Burnham to form a government.

Britain’s parliamentary democracy allows governing parties to change leaders, and thus prime ministers, without the need for a general election. The next national election doesn’t have to be held until 2029.

New prime ministers have come with increasing frequency in recent years. Burnham will be the U.K.’s seventh leader since 2016.

He faces strong and sometimes conflicting pressures.

Unions welcomed his focus on living standards but said the test would be whether he can deliver. Business group the Confederation of British Industry praised his emphasis on economic growth, but also aid that “the challenge is execution.”

David Rancken’s App of the Day 07/17/26 – Radiooooo!

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Crews scamble to more water rescues in Texas after days of punishing rains

UVALDE (AP) — More heavy rains in storm-weary Texas sent first responders rushing to people trapped in high waters Friday, widening the danger caused by floods that have killed at least two people and left hundreds more in need of rescue.

A relentless week of punishing downpours in Texas — dumping more than 2 feet (60 centimeters) in some areas — was expected to begin tapering off Friday. But another round of showers worsened already swollen rivers and flooded rural communities near the border with Mexico that had largely been spared major damage.

Near Ozona, a small town about 200 miles (322 kilometers) west of San Antonio, floodwaters spilled over Interstate 10. A section of a bridge also collapsed over the Nueces River in Uvalde County, where months worth of rain has fallen in a span of days.

Emergency personnel across a wide swath of southern and central Texas have rescued more than 200 people, including stranded drivers and people trapped in homes, Gov. Greg Abbott said. In the Texas Hill Country, residents were begin cleaning up after floodwaters again barrelled down the Guadalupe River and through communities still reeling from deadly floods a year ago.

“The water’s up to the top of the banks,” Sutton County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Jon Gann said. “If we get any more, we’re going to be into homes.”

The Texas Department of Transportation said high waters closed a 50-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 57 and that parts of the roadway were not expected to reopen until Monday.

In all, the downpours put roughly 6 million residents across Texas under a flood watch at various points this week.

Residents in hard-hit Uvalde return to flooded homes

In Uvalde, one of the hardest-hit cities from flooding, waters were receding and officials said a major highway, Route 90, had reopened after floodwaters had overrun the city and cut off most outside routes.

Sandra Gomez was assessing the damage at her Uvalde home on Friday after having left it before the flooding. She said about 6 inches (15 centimeters) of water got inside and left mud throughout the house, where she’s lived since last year. She said she was luckier than other people she knows whose homes were under 5 or 6 feet (1.5 to 1.8 meters) of water.

“Well, really it’s very, very emotional,” she said. “Material things I can replace. It may take a while, but I can replace those but I cannot replace my family. So, my family’s safe and that’s all that really matters.”

One person who died was driving on a flooded road and was swept away near Uvalde, authorities said.

Another victim, 65-year-old John Mark Steward of Kerrville, died after his mobile home was swept into Goat Creek on the Guadalupe River, his wife said. The river is the same one wrecked by flash floods last year when two dozen children and counselors died at Camp Mystic. Authorities on Thursday said summer campers were safe.
Nearly 1 trillion gallons of rainfall

Authorities in Crockett County evacuated more than 50 people Friday morning from apartments and an RV park in the southern part of the county seat of Ozona, using seven rescue boat teams,. They were taken to the local civic center for shelter.

He said the area received 6 inches of rain after midnight, on top of nearly 10 inches of rain before that.

“We have more and more accidents on the interstate,” he said. “We have more and more water pouring into the neighborhoods where we’ve been pulling people out of.”

The scenes were similar to recues that have played out in Texas counties this week.

Nearly 1 trillion gallons of water fell on the three hardest-hit counties over three days — Uvalde County alone got more rain in that period than California has seen over the last month, according to Ryan Maue, former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.

The Hill Country is especially prone to flash floods because the area’s signature limestone is covered by just a thin layer of soil. During heavy rains, water can quickly shoot downhill before filling the narrow river basins.

AI stocks keep falling, while oil prices keep climbing

NEW YORK (AP) — More swings for computer chip companies and other winners of the artificial-intelligence boom are yanking stock markets lower Friday. Oil prices, meanwhile, continue to climb because of the war with Iran.

The S&P 500 fell 0.7% after dropping as much as 1.4% in the morning. It’s on track for its first losing week in the last three and only its third since March, just a couple days after it climbed within 0.5% of its all-time high.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 13 points, or less than 0.1%, as of 11:30 a.m. Eastern time, after veering between an early loss of 566 points and a modest gain. The Nasdaq composite fell 1.4%.

Chip stocks once again were at the center of the shakiness. They’ve been under pressure for weeks on worries that their prices shot too high and that voracious demand for computer memory and processors may be unsustainable if AI ends up producing less profit and productivity than promised.

Applied Materials sank 3.6% to trim its surge for the year so far below 108%. Micron Technology swung between a loss of 5.8% and a gain of 3.2% before adding 0.2%.

Earlier in the morning, tech sold off worldwide. Indexes tumbled 6.5% in Taipei, 4% in Tokyo and 3% in Shanghai as stocks like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. dropped 7.3%.

South Korea’s stock market was closed for a holiday, offering some respite, if only temporary. It’s been at the center of the AI swings because it’s dominated by two huge tech companies, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. This past week alone, Seoul’s Kospi stock index had one day where it surged 6.2% and two others where it sank 6.4% and 8.9%.

News of a Chinese open-sourced AI model by startup Moonshot, Kimi K3, further shook markets. Similar to when China’s DeepSeek announced its AI model in early 2025, another low-cost rival to big Western AI models like ChatGPT and OpenAI could potentially hurt demand for computer chips and other components.

European stock indexes, which have less of an emphasis on AI and tech, had milder moves.

Adding to the pressure on Wall Street Friday were drops for several stocks following their latest earnings reports. It’s a departure from much of the rest of the week, when companies like Goldman Sachs and BlackRock jumped after delivering better profits for the spring than analysts expected.

Netflix sank 7.7% after its revenue for the latest quarter fell just short of analysts’ expectations, even though its profit was bigger than expected. Its forecasts for upcoming revenue and profit in the summer also fell below expectations.

Intuitive Surgical, a maker of robotic surgical systems, dropped 12.5% despite topping expectations for the latest quarter. Analysts pointed to worries about slowing procedure growth because of the expiration of enhanced tax credits that helped lower the cost of health insurance for many Affordable Care Act enrollees.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX fell 5.1% and touched its lowest level since its stock began trading on the Nasdaq just over a month ago. The owner of the xAI business has been swept up in the swings of AI stocks, and it had to abort a test flight of its mega Starship rocket Thursday within a second or so from blasting off.

More climbs for oil prices also pressured the stock market.

The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, rose 2.5% to $86.34, up from roughly $76 a week ago.

The United States expanded its airstrike campaign against Iran early Friday by hitting more bridges and collapsing a tower at a key Iranian port. That raised further worries about whether oil tankers will be able to use the Strait of Hormuz to carry crude from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide.

High oil prices have sent Treasury yields upward in the bond market, which threaten to slow the economy and undercut prices for stocks and all kinds of other investments. Higher yields have already sent the average 30-year mortgage rate to its highest level in nearly a year.

But Treasury yields eased Friday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.53% from 4.57% late Thursday.

A report suggested sentiment among U.S. consumers is improving more than economists expected, while expectations for upcoming inflation eased. That’s important for the Federal Reserve, which is considering hikes to interest rates to keep a lid on inflation. If expectations for inflation remain anchored, it could prevent a vicious cycle where people make moves in anticipation of higher inflation, which only worsen it.

The preliminary reading from the University of Michigan’s survey for U.S. consumer sentiment hit its highest reading since February. But much of the rise was due to recent drops for prices at gasoline pumps, according to Joanne Hsu, director of the survey. If gasoline prices rise again because of crude’s recent rally, the improvement could be under pressure.

Trump says documents show voting vulnerabilities, China meddling and fraud

U.S. President Donald Trump looks on during a bilateral meeting with the Prime Minister of Iraq Ali al-Zaidi, in the Oval Office of the White House on July 14, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

(WASHINGTON) -- President Donald Trump, in a primetime address on Thursday, announced he has declassified a slew of documents he claims reveal vulnerabilities in America's elections systems, election fraud and interference in elections by China, and ordered the Department of Justice to prosecute those believed to be involved.

"America is back and doing really well, but we still have a major challenge that must be urgently addressed because no country can be great without fair and honest elections, you have to trust your country," Trump said. "Because if there can be no trust, there can be no greatness, and that's very simple: no trust, no greatness."

But throughout the more than 20-minute speech, the president did not provide specific evidence that the election outcome, or any votes, were altered in the 2020 election, despite his repeated claims that the election was "stolen" or "rigged."

Trump has long pushed debunked conspiracy theories to claim that his 2020 election loss was fraudulent.

The president's speech led to his main argument: he wants Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, his sweeping elections reform bill that Senate Majority Leader John Thune has repeatedly said does not have enough Republican votes to pass.

In his remarks, the president said that he would immediately declassify the release of "critical intelligence, revealing shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure."

According to the president, the documents focus on what he said were a number of areas of concern, including claims that China "compromised" election data during the 2020 election, and attempts to downplay the extent of China's efforts.

Trump argued that the intelligence community suppressed information about China accessing 220 million voter files and trying to turn American opinion against him in the run-up to the 2020 election.

The president also accused the "deep-state" of keeping information about election meddling from him.

Trump claimed that U.S. intelligence agencies learned that tens of millions of voters' data in 18 states had been "bought, stolen, or hacked" by China, and that the intelligence community deliberately kept this information from him while he was president.

Trump's remarks asserting that the Chinese undertook a far more ambitious role in attempting to dictate the outcome of the 2020 election goes beyond what U.S. intelligence community has previously assessed.

In March 2021, two months into the Biden administration, a declassified "Intelligence Community Assessment" (ICA) that was produced at the end of Trump's first term publicly acknowledged the belief among some intelligence officials that "China took at least some steps to undermine former President Trump's reelection chances." But the ICA said any such actions were "primarily through social media and official public statements and media," not through interference with "election processes."

Further, the ICA said that while China was "probably" trying "to gather information on U.S. voters and public opinion; political parties, candidates and their staffs; and senior government officials," the more reliable intelligence indicated that such efforts were not actually intended to undermine Trump but instead to "predict electoral outcomes and to inform its efforts to influence US policy toward China under either election outcome."

The heavily redacted documents released by the White House on Thursday do not appear to back up Trump's assertions, instead containing scattershot intelligence that descries efforts to obtain -- but not alter -- voter records and to conduct social media activity to sow social discord.

One heavily-redacted document titled "200M Voter Records Compromised. repeatedly references personally identifiable information being compromised. This information includes names, phone numbers and addresses -- which can also be found from many other sources.

In another series of near-completely redacted memos, words such as "state voter registration data" and "personal identifiable information" appear between large blocks of black redaction markings. It is impossible to surmise the meaning of these records without context, but they appear to point to some Chinese efforts to gather American voter data, much of which is publicly available.

Notably, these memos document Chinese activities ahead of both the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Trump alleged that former Justice Department officials slow-walked an investigation in Michigan that involved the submission of voter registration applications that had forged signatures and other indications of fraudulent applications. Trump called on FBI Director Kash Patel to look into whether any charges can still be brought.

Local media at the time said that a state-level investigation was halted so the FBI could continue with a related investigation. It's unclear why no federal charges were ever brought or if federal charges were warranted.

At the time, state officials said that the fact that the fraudulent applications were detected shows that the system worked.

The president also said the documents released Thursday include a Department of Homeland Security report he called "stunning," alleging approximately 278,000 non-citizens were included on voter rolls.

In the documents released by the White House, the DHS report that alleged 250,000 noncitizen voters on the rolls came from a review of "public voter files" that appear to have come from four states: California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Nevada. DHS did not provide any methodology about how it reached that number, nor does it specify what "public voter files" it reviewed.

DHS acknowledged it did not have access to those states' voter rolls, and alleges that in the 10 states that provided the federal government access to their rolls, the agency found 28,000 noncitizen voters.

Findings from the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation have found only around 100 verified instances of non-citizen voting going back two decades.

-ABC News' Lucien Bruggeman and Mike Levine contributed to this report.

DMV online system down

SMITH COUNTY — The Texas Department of Motor Vehicles online system is down statewide, so the Smith County Tax Office cannot process auto registration renewals or title work at this time, according to the county’s Facebook page.

Smith County Tax-Assessor Collector Gary Barber said the system went down Thursday afternoon and it was still down when they came to work Friday morning. He is not sure when it will be back up but we will alert the public when that happens.

The Smith County Property Tax Department is open for normal business.

Ukraine’s deep strikes mean ‘significant change’ for war, former Russian PM says

Former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov attends a march in memory of Russian opposition leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov on March 1, 2015 in Moscow, Russia. (Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images)

(LONDON) -- Once one of the most powerful men in Russia, Mikhail Kasyanov now lives in exile in Latvia, his name on a list of "extremists and terrorists" that the Kremlin alleges are trying to overthrow the state.

Kasyanov first served as Russia's finance minister before being elevated to prime minister under President Vladimir Putin from May 2000 to February 2004 -- the early years of Putin's time in office when the future strongman was embedding his control and beginning to formulate his vision of a revitalized Russia.

Putin's decades-long project culminated in the February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a gambit now in its fifth year. Kasyanov told ABC News last week that the campaign has achieved none of Putin's goals and could yet prove an existential challenge to the Kremlin regime.

In recent months, Kasyanov told ABC News on the sidelines of the Chatham House think tank conference in London, "the overall sentiment, overall attitude, to Putin started to change."

Among the factors applying more pressure to the Kremlin are expanding Ukrainian long-range drone strikes on Russia's oil production, refining and export facilities -- plus on the capital Moscow and the so-called "second capital" St. Petersburg -- apparent public concern about spreading fuel shortages, troubling macro-economic indicators and new restrictions on internet usage, Kasyanov said.

Putin, Kasyanov said, built his image around providing both stability and security. "There is nothing on this -- no stability and no security," he said, adding, "The situation now has started to change in the minds of people -- not only the ruling group, but also just the middle class, who in fact, could in any country be a driving force for any changes."

That middle class is a key constituency for the Kremlin. Concentrated in Russia's largest cities, analysts have watched keenly for any hint of dissent from this social strata.

Putin's continued refusal to order a general mobilization despite Russia's enormous battlefield losses and reported manpower strains have been interpreted by some analysts as a tacit acknowledgement that the Kremlin does not want to risk urban, middle class ire. "Putin is very much concerned about this," Kasyanov suggested.

In cities like Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, Kasyanov said, it had until recently been possible to continue as if "nothing is happening."

"But, in the spring and now, of course, Ukraine changed their attitude. They have an advantage in long-range missiles and they have an advantage in drones," Kasyanov said.

"Gradually, they moved the war from being an 'accident' somewhere, an emergency case somewhere in the corner of Russia, to Russia -- even to Moscow. And that is quite a significant change."

'He needs pressure'

Kayanov said Western powers should seek to exploit the growing pressure on Putin and force him back to the negotiating table with genuine concessions, not the same maximalist demands the Kremlin has long made of Ukraine.

"It could happen by the end of the year if consistent pressure continues," Kasyanov said. Russia's growing budget deficit -- which as of last month reached 2.5% of GDP, according to preliminary Finance Ministry data -- could prove a particular pain point, he added.

So too might international sanctions on -- and long-range Ukrainian drone attacks on -- Russia's vital oil industry, Kasyanov added. "By the end of the year, he will face a big problem," Kasyanov said of Putin.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov this week acknowledged some economic strains, telling reporters that Russia's rate of growth is currently "insufficient." But Peskov said the problems facing the country were not critical, but rather a reflection of the "rather dire state" of the global economy.

On the diplomatic front, Kasyanov said Moscow has largely failed to convert apparent diplomatic openings with Washington -- for example its success at Putin's summit with President Donald Trump in Anchorage in August 2025.

"What Putin wanted was to divide the transatlantic unity, dreaming of what they call the 'Anchorage spirit,'" Kasyanov said, referring to the U.S.-Russian understanding that Moscow said was reached at the Alaska summit, which was widely interpreted as a diplomatic coup for the Kremlin.

Broadly, Kasyanov suggested that Washington had a "wrong understanding of the whole problem." He added, "All those years, it was a useless undertaking trying to give a carrot to Putin. Because they don't understand what the Putin regime is about."

The negotiations, Kasyanov suggested, were interpreted by the Kremlin "as a demonstration of weakness." Nonetheless, both Moscow and Kyiv have acknowledged that the current conflict can only end with a diplomatic settlement.

Trump has repeatedly said he is the only Western leader capable of pressuring Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to agree a deal to end the fighting. This week, Trump told Fox News he believes that Putin is "ready to make a deal," possibly "soon."

"I tell him the same thing all the time. I don't want to go into great detail, but I say: 'Vladimir, it's time for you to stop. It's time for this war to end,'" Trump said. "It takes two to tango. But I think he's ready to make a deal," Trump added.

Earlier this month, Trump told ABC News of a potential deal, "We're getting much closer than people realize, and President Putin wants it to end."

But for all the Russian maneuvers and White House criticism directed toward Kyiv, Western funds and weapons have continued to flow into Ukrainian hands.

Last week, during a warm face-to-face meeting with Zelenskyy, Trump said Ukraine would be allowed to produce key Patriot surface-to-air system interceptors.

"That is, I think, creating a shock in Moscow," Kasyanov said of the resolute Western backing of Ukraine.

Life after Putin

Putin dismissed Kasyanov and his cabinet in early 2004, weeks before that year's presidential election. In the years that followed, Kasyanov became a prominent opposition figure, faced fraud charges -- which he denied -- and was blocked from standing as a candidate in Russia's 2008 presidential election.

After Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine In 2022, Kasyanov left Russia. He now leads the People's Freedom Party from Riga -- "temporarily," according to his business card.

Kasyanov, 68, said he has no concrete political ambitions in a post-Putin Russia. Rather, he suggested that the best case scenario would be a "long process" of political normalization and eventual democratization.

A years-long "gray period," he said, could see Putin's successors allow "imitation" or "quasi" elections and the return of a true political opposition, which Kasyanov hopes will eventually give way to a genuine vote that draws real legitimacy from the population.

"If Putin stays in power, it means there will be another period in which Russia will represent a threat and there will continue to be some kind of negotiations and preparations for some kind of revanche, as we saw in previous years," Kasyanov said.

For the time being, Kasyanov said he expects Putin to simultaneously seek to "destroy unity" within Europe and within the transatlantic system and seek negotiations.

On the domestic front, Putin will continue to keep a tight grip on the narrative, Kasyanov said, lionizing Russian achievements in the war like the retention of Crimea, further territorial gains in southern and eastern Ukraine and a supposed defeat of NATO.

In the long term, Kasyanov said he still hopes for Putin to leave the scene, one way or another. But he doubts Putin will be overthrown from the inside.

"I don't think there will be a coup, because there are no such people. All those people inside who were capable, with strength, disappeared," Kasyanov said. There are, he added, people in Russia who are "ready for changes, but they are not ready to fight, because they immediately will be in jail."

"When the situation starts to change, some of us could come back to participate in quasi-elections, which will happen not in two years after Putin, maybe in three years, maybe in four years. And at that time, real change could start," he said.

"I hope my country will be a normal European state," Kasyanov said. "We'll see."

Scoreboard roundup — 7/16/26

Not guilty plea to transporting immigrants

TYLER — Two men pleaded not guilty on Thursday after an ICE and FBI operation in June, after being accused of transporting illegal immigrants. Arturo Alcantar-Perez and Guillermo Limon-Sanchez pleaded not guilty today in federal court in Tyler to charges including conspiracy to transport illegal aliens, trafficking in false identification documents and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

According to our news partner KETK, the two men were arrested on June 2 during an FBI and ICE operation at Ximena’s Furniture Store in North Tyler.

The charges stem from an alleged conspiracy to harbor and transport undocumented immigrants that began in May 2023. Alcantar-Perez and Limon-Sanchez remain in the custody of U.S. Marshals following their court appearance.

Two women, Virginia Valdivia and Keyla Valdivia, were also charged in connection with the case, facing the same three charges as Alcantar-Perez and Limon-Sanchez. Continue reading Not guilty plea to transporting immigrants

Administrator resigns amid water issues

TRINIDAD – Trinidad City Administrator Cynthia Dosier resigned from her position on Wednesday as the city continues to deal with their ongoing water system issues. Trinidad Mayor Dennis Haws announced both Dossier’s resignation and the resignation of city employee Sandra Rojas on Wednesday. In a social media post, Haws said that he’s contacted the Texas Municipal League (TML) for advice on how to work through these resignations.

“I want to make you aware that this will undoubtedly create some issues at City Hall as we transition through this and I apologize for any inconveniences,” Haws said on Thursday. “I have contacted TML this morning to get their guidance on working through this, we will seek interim staffing through organizations they are associated with so that we can have qualified individuals that can start working through issues immediately.”

Dosier’s and Rojas’s resignations came after the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality recently found that Trinidad’s public water system has three alleged violations, which were only found after multiple residents submitted complaints to the state because of unclean drinking water. Continue reading Administrator resigns amid water issues

Groundwater district takes no action

ANDERSON COUNTY – The Neches and Trinity Valleys Groundwater Conservation District took no action during a public hearing today on proposed rule changes to drilling permits. The proposed changes are being considered as Dallas investor Kyle Bass is suing the District for access to drill in Anderson County.

According to our news partner KETK, the District is considering six proposed rule changes, including potential updates to water permitting, emergency planning and overall groundwater use. The hearing also provided an opportunity for District board members to hear additional public comment.

State Sen. Robert Nichols of Jacksonville attended the hearing as she looks to clarify the current permitting rules. Bass applied last year to drill 21 high-capacity wells in Anderson County. These proposed wells could potentially extract 10 billion gallons of water per year from the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer.

Upshur votes to join water district

UPSHUR COUNTY – The County Commissioners’ Court unanimously voted to join the future Northeast Texas Groundwater Conservation District on Wednesday, according to our news partner KETK. Upshur County Precinct 1 Commissioner Gene Dolle said they voted to join the planned district as part of a growing effort to conserve the area’s underground water resources.

Smith and Gregg County Commissioners have also voted to join the district recently. According to Dolle, the effort to create the district has been spearheaded in Upshur County by their recently elected County Judge L. Brandon Dodd. Dodd is working closely with State Rep. Jay Dean, a longtime champion of local water conservation.

The district will be comprised of anywhere between a dozen and 16 East Texas counties that sit over the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer and aren’t yet a part of a groundwater conservation district. It would be led by its own board and the East Texas Council of Governments, and work with state lawmakers, and individual counties to help safeguard local water resources.

Texas flash floods leave at least 2 dead in region devastated a year ago

UVALDE (AP) — Catastrophic flash floods in Texas have killed two people and forced hundreds of rescues in areas still reeling from devastating floods a year ago, Gov. Greg Abbott said Thursday.

Rescuers aboard boats and helicopters have saved more than 200 people, including stranded drivers and people trapped in homes, Abbott said.

The governor said the hardest-hit areas are expecting more rain into Friday and are not out of danger yet, with some rivers expected to reach historic levels.

After days of pounding rain, the National Weather Service said a large wave on Thursday barreled down the same river wrecked by flash floods last summer when two dozen children and counselors died at Camp Mystic.

Much like last year, the floods came in the middle of the night. But this time some residents in the Texas Hill Country said they received more warnings.

Forecasters urgently warned, “Move to higher ground now!” as rivers rose hour by hour, turning them into fast-moving seas of white water. Some spots of the Guadalupe River rose by more than 30 feet (9 meters).

The governor said more than 2,000 first responders had been deployed and some evacuations began before the worst of the flooding.

“What happened last year was a warning to people on or near rivers,” Abbott said. “No one can be complacent.”

As much as 28 inches (74 centimeters) of rain fell over the past three days in Uvalde County, which was spared from the worst flooding a year ago, the weather service said Thursday. Other areas saw roughly a foot of rain.

Victims in Texas floods were swept away

The governor said one of the victims was driving on a flooded road and was swept away near Uvalde while the other died in Kerr County.

Jennie Steward said the body of her husband, 65-year-old John Mark Steward, of Kerrville, was found Thursday.

She was visiting her parents when a neighbor called overnight, saying her husband was missing after water had risen to the door of their mobile home, which stood off the ground.

The entire home was swept off the platform and floated down Goat Creek on the Guadalupe, she said.

“It’s really hard that I wasn’t there with him,” she said. The two last spoke by phone Wednesday to celebrate their third anniversary.
Hill Country residents say they were better prepared

The unfolding crisis brought back haunting memories of last summer’s unimaginable Hill Country floods that killed more than 100 people over the July Fourth holiday.

“It’s crazy happening two times in one year,” said Josiah Rodriguez, who awoke to the sound of heavy rain around 2 a.m. Thursday in Kerrville. He navigated flooded roads to help evacuate relatives.

“Last year there was no warning of it,” he said. “It just kind of happened overnight and it took everyone by surprise. This year, a lot more alerts have gone into place, a lot more safety measures.”

Residents said they were caught off guard a year ago and didn’t receive any warning when floods overtopped the Guadalupe. Some local leaders were criticized for not acting quickly.

The storms and flooding this time threatened multiple counties close to the Mexico border and in the Hill Country near San Antonio. Roughly 6 million residents across Texas were under a flood watch this week, and many were expected to remain in effect into Friday.

Several agencies sent rescue helicopters to the flood zone, including Travis County in the state capital of Austin.

At a wild animal rescue, Katie Buck evacuated several dozen animals to higher ground in the dark Thursday as the normally dry Lazy Creek overflowed. She had to quickly grab a porcupine despite having no gloves.

She got all of the animals to safety, but flooding destroyed several enclosures at the Buck Wild Animal Rescue and Wildlife Rehab near Ingram in Kerr County.

“We were just starting to get back on our feet again,” Buck said. “To have to go through this again is just devastating.”

Residents at an RV park in Comfort moved their trailers as sirens sounded, said manager Duke Earwood.

Water rose over the hoods of vehicles parked near the river at the Comfort RV Resort. Markers showed the flooding already matched last July’s big flood.

“Too familiar for sure, and too soon,” Earwood said.
Uvalde residents isolated by floodwaters

Floodwaters also overran the city of Uvalde overnight, cutting off most outside routes. The Leona River, normally dry most of the year, filled streets with water.

“People really can’t get anywhere,” said Carmen Rodriguez, who nervously watched water engulf her neighborhood as a helicopter roared overhead. “We have a place to go, but all the streets are closed.”

Rodriguez said authorities seemed to be well prepared, ordering mandatory evacuations and notifying people directly.

Texas Game Wardens rescued close to 150 people by the afternoon, according to a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department spokesperson. Video released by the agency showed crews hoisting children from a house surrounded with water into a helicopter.

Flooding hasn’t reached last year’s deadly high
So far, the heavily swollen Guadalupe has remained below the record levels reached in 2025. Gauges showed it rose by more than 30 feet (9 meters) in some spots over just a few hours.

Close to Camp Mystic, which hasn’t reopened since last year’s tragedy, the Guadalupe near Hunt reached about 20.5 feet (6.3 meters), which is enough to cause flooding, according to U.S. Geological Survey and National Water Prediction Service data.

In Kerr County, where summer camps dot the river’s shores, the sheriff’s office said all campers were safe. Several camps said the children were staying inside, with one camp reporting normal flooding.
Towns still rebuilding are hit by new floods

While the water didn’t rise as high as a year ago in Ingram, Mayor Claud Jordan believes this round of flooding was more widespread in his city. “The rural part of Ingram, all the roads are just trashed,” he said.

“There are a bunch of businesses that haven’t reopened from last year,” Jordan said. “This doesn’t help.”

Democrats launch prebuttal to Trump’s primetime address: ‘He’s scared to death’ of the midterms

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks to members of the media outside the U.S. Capitol on June 18, 2026, in Washington, DC. Sen. Schumer blasted President Trump's new agreement with Iran, calling it an "epic failure" that keeps Americans in the dark due to a lack of transparency while leaving the U.S. in a worse strategic and security position. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

(WASHINGTON) -- Democrats on Thursday offered their prebuttal to President Donald Trump's prime time address that they expect to focus on the 2020 election.

Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, whose home state has been the target of many of the administration's election challenges, told reporters Thursday, "If the president declares Georgia's elections illegitimate, or if the president declares Georgia's sitting United States senators illegitimate, he is declaring Georgia voters illegitimate. It's Donald Trump who tried to defraud Georgia voters in that election."

Ossoff is up for re-election in November and his seat is being targeted by Republicans as a possible pickup opportunity. He predicted that Trump would use his speech to rehash challenges to the 2020 election that failed in court.

"Here's what's going to happen tonight: the world's most famous sore loser will deliver a prime-time presidential sour grapes address to pursue his six-year-old grievances about the 2020 election, while his war in the Middle East spirals out of control and the cost of living continues to rise for Americans across the country," Ossoff said.

In a White House briefing Thursday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt was tight-lipped about what the president would say besides that he will discuss "protecting the integrity of our elections."

When pressed by a reporter about concerns from some Republicans that the president was litigating past elections that could turn off some swing voters, Leavitt said that Trump would focus on secure elections as key to American democracy.

"I've seen a lot of reporting and, frankly, misreporting about what the president will say. I think the American people will be relieved to hear what they are hearing from the president of the United States and his commitment to transparency and the focus on the integrity of our elections tonight," she said.

When later pressed by ABC News' Rachel Scott about the political concerns of some Republicans, Leavitt said only that people should wait until they've heard the speech.

Outgoing Republican Sens. Thom Tillis and John Cornyn and Rep. Thomas Massie said Trump looking back on the 2020 elections is not a productive message for the party as it heads into the upcoming midterm cycle.

Asked if he thought Trump focusing on the 2020 election going into the midterms was a good messages for Republicans, Tillis said, "No, not at all. Look, we can't re-prosecute that campaign. Anytime you're looking back, you're not looking ahead and I'm looking ahead to these elections, and the president should as well."

Massie said that the White House was "trying to convince the American people the problem is the elections" rather than other issues they are concerned about.

"The problem is not that we didn't win the elections. The problem is that we broke our promises when we got here ... So, it's a ruse because they're trying to convince the American people the problem is the elections. The problem is the people that they've elected."

Cornyn said that he wasn't pleased with Jay Clayton's answers on the 2020 election during his Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing to be Trump's director of national intelligence on Tuesday when he refused to answer who won.

"I thought a lot of it was pretty silly," Cornyn said of Clayton's performance. "I don't know why we're still talking about the 2020 election on either side of the aisle. We got important work to do and I think the most important is coming up here in the midterms. "In the meantime, to continue to do the people's work, and when we're talking about what happened six years ago, I don't think we're doing them any favors."

Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said Trump's speech could influence how he votes on Clayton.

"If Donald Trump does what I expect and makes outrageous claims and uses those claims as an attempt to interfere in the elections, boy oh boy, more than ever do you need somebody in that role that'll take truth to power," he said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters that Trump is "scared to death that he will lose in 2026" and is trying to change the subject.

"The bottom line is, if Trump wants to win the American people over, instead of the bulls--- that he's peddling about 2020, he ought to focus on lowering people's costs, getting rid of the chaos in administration, getting rid of the corruption," Schumer said.

ABC News' Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.

Blanche must meet with Epstein victims to earn confirmation vote, Sen. Tillis says

Sen. Thom Tillis attends the confirmation hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee for acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Capitol Hill, July 15, 2026, in Washington. Win McNamee/Getty Images

(WASHINGTON) -- A key GOP member of the Senate Judiciary Committee whose vote is needed to secure acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's confirmation as the next attorney general said Thursday that he will require Blanche to sit down with victims of deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein before he can vote for him.

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., announced the new condition during a hearing Thursday where one of the witnesses was Epstein victim Dani Bensky.

Facing a potentially rocky confirmation, Blanche made a brief attempt to meet with Epstein survivors on Capitol Hill Thursday afternoon.

He and his team arrived at a Senate Judiciary Committee office where they sat for about half an hour, but no one joined them.

"I rearranged my schedule to try to meet with them," Blanche told ABC News after leaving the office. "I've been here waiting. It didn't work out, so we're going to see if there's a way we can meet either later today or sometime soon."

"There's nothing newsworthy about this fact because the Department of Justice will always meet with victims or their representatives, and if those victims or their representatives have evidence that anybody committed a crime, whether it has to do with Jeffrey Epstein, anybody else that was associated with Jeffrey Epstein, or anybody else, we will of course move forward and investigate and prosecute," Blanche said.

Bensky testified in Thursday's hearing that Blanche has never responded to repeated attempts to reach him to sit down and recount her story.

"Blanche was willing to say that he would meet with [Epstein victims] and counsel -- I understand the restriction that counsel has to be present," Tillis said. "I expect that meeting to occur before I vote to vote out of this committee and I'm trying to get to yes. But this is a very important part of getting to yes."

"There should not be any reason why, based on what Mr. Blanche said yesterday, if he said that he would do it today, then he can certainly do it over the next two weeks," Tillis added.

Blanche told lawmakers during his confirmation hearing Wednesday that he would be happy to meet with victims but initially said he couldn't meet with them personally if they were represented by legal counsel, before correcting himself later in the hearing.

"I never said I can't meet with them. I said if they were represented, I had to meet through counsel," Blanche said. "But of course, I can meet with them. I'm the acting attorney general of the United States, so yes, I can."

Seventh DWI gets life sentence

GREGG COUNTY – A man has been sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of his seventh DWI conviction on Wednesday. According to our news partner KETK, Jeffry Scott Web was found guilty of driving while intoxicated three or more times. The jury deliberated only 45 minutes on the sentence, according to the Gregg County District Attorney’s Office.

Officials said Wednesday’s conviction stems from a report to the Longview Police Department of a drunk driver at the Majestic Inn motel. Upon arriving to the scene, responding officers spoke to a witness that claimed a man drove around the parking lot, parked and stumbled out of his vehicle into a motel room.

Motel security footage was later shown to the officers, which confirmed what the witness had said. Continue reading Seventh DWI gets life sentence

Fed probe suggests Tesla’s self-driving feature wasn’t to blame in crash that killed a grandmother

NEW YORK (AP) — Federal safety investigators looking into a runaway Tesla that killed a grandmother in her home say the driver had pressed the accelerator to full speed, suggesting the vehicle’s self-driving software was not to blame.

The driver had told police that he had the self-driving software turned on, but a report from the National Transportation Safety Board on Wednesday concluded that he had actually overridden that feature when he pushed hard on the pedal. Moments later the Tesla Model 3 raced down a residential street in Katy, Texas, at highway speeds, slammed into a brick home and killed a 76-year-old woman standing in the front room.

The crash last month drew national attention because Tesla CEO Elon Musk is seeking to reassure the public its self-driving feature is safe as he prepares to turn hundreds of thousands of Teslas already on the road into fully automatic vehicles and begin selling two-seated Cybercabs missing steering wheels and pedals.

The crash came two months after officials at a separate federal agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, announced it was elevating a 2024 investigation of the self-driving feature to new “engineering analysis” level, raising the possibility of a recall of 3.2 million Tesla vehicles.

That NHTSA probe was triggered by crashes where the self-driving feature failed to alert drivers to take control in fog and other poor visibility conditions.

The agency opened an investigation last year into 58 incidents in which Teslas reportedly violated traffic safety laws while using self-driving technology, leading to more than a dozen crashes and fires and nearly two dozen injuries.

Separate from the National Transportation Safety Board, NHTSA is also looking into the Tesla house crash in Texas, one of 46 “special crash” investigations of Tesla’s self-driving or driver-assistance technology in the past decade, according to the agency’s records. In more than a dozen of those crashes, at least one person — a driver, passenger or pedestrian — was killed.

Tesla had originally called its driver assistance software Full Self-Driving, or FSD, but auto experts and regulators complained it was misleading because drivers must always keep their eyes on the road and be ready to take over at any time.

The company has since changed the name to Full Self-Driving (Supervised).

Video of the Katy, Texas, accident shows the Tesla traveling at more than 70 mph (112.65 kilometers per hour), jumping a curb then tearing across a lawn before crushing through a brick wall of a home. A woman standing feet away, Martha Avila, was found amid piles of crumbling plaster, split beams and bits of furniture and rushed to a hospital but died.

Sales of Tesla cars still haven’t recovered fully from boycotts last year over Musk’s far-right political stands, but the stock is rising anyway as he has successfully shifted attention away from the sales figures. He says they matter less now that the company is on the cusp of major technological advances, such as turning Teslas into hands-free vehicles and having its Optimus robots take over for humans for tasks at home and work.

Tesla stock has risen 22% in the past year and is currently trading at 170 times expected annual earnings compared to 20 for the S&P 500.

For its second-quarter financial results out next week, financial analysts surveyed by FactSet expect earnings per share will barely budge — 32 cents versus 33 cents a year earlier — continuing a sixth quarter streak of flat or falling profits.

TxDox ‘Slow Down’ is on now

SMITH COUNTY – Beginning Saturday, the Smith County Sheriff’s Office will increase traffic enforcement along I-20 and Toll 49 in partnership with TxDOT for Operation Slow Down, which looks to keep roads safer. According to our news partner KETK, the sheriff’s office said increased stops will take place around portions of I-20 and Toll 49, to curb speeding, deter aggressive driving and to protect everyone on the road.

The initiative is focusing on decreasing the amount of speeding-related crashes and fatalities across the state. Last year, TxDOT reported that 1,247 people were killed in speed-related crashes.

“Excessive speed makes any crash more dangerous. Higher speeds mean less time to react and a much greater risk of serious injury or death. We’re asking Texans to slow down and drive with care,” TxDOT Executive Director Marc Williams said. Continue reading TxDox ‘Slow Down’ is on now

Lufkin PD is asking for your help

LUFKIN – Lufkin Police detectives are asking for the public’s assistance in solving the murder of Darrence Kindle, a case that has remained unsolved for nearly nine years, according to release from the City of Lufkin. Kindle was shot and killed during the commission of an aggravated robbery at approximately 10 p.m., November 3, 2017, at the Dollar General on Kurth Drive.

The only description detectives have at this time is that the man is approximately 6-feet 1-inches tall, African American, and he was wearing a mask from the movie Scream.The shoes the man was wearing have been identified as limited-edition Nike Zoom Kobe Venomenon 4. The shoes were identified by a forensics company in Arizona.

“We will continue to investigate this murder,” said Lt. James Cowan, LPD Criminal Investigations Division. “It has never been closed, and we remain committed to seeking justice for Kindle and his family.”

Detectives believe there are members of the public who may hold information — no matter how small it may seem — that could help solve this case. Anyone with information regarding this incident is urged to come forward.

If you have any information, please contact Lieutenant James Cowan, Criminal Investigation Division, at 936-633-0325 or email jcowan@lufkinpolice.com.

What Gerry Ford got right.

FILE – Betty Ford waves goodbye to her husband, President Gerald Ford, as he leaves their Alexandria, Va., home, Aug. 13, 1974, on his way to the White House. (AP Photo/Bob Daugherty, File)

Shortly after assuming office following the resignation of President Richard Nixon in August 1974, President Gerald Ford addressed a Joint Session of Congress. His goal was to move the country past the Watergate scandal. Contained within that speech was this passage:

Whether we like it or not, the American wage earner and the American housewife are a lot better economists than most economists care to admit. They know that a government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”

Those 50 words perfectly set up the examination of the divide between the Democratic Socialists who are quickly taking over the once semi-sane Democratic Party, and the rest of us who know better.

What we who know better understand is that freedom isn’t merely the absence of chains. It’s the ability to make choices, accept consequences, try, fail, and try again; all toward the goal of building a life through personal responsibility. I am fond of saying that personal responsibility is the ultimate expression of freedom.

That freedom so expressed is what built the most successful society in history. An appreciation of that belief, together with the resulting desire to protect those freedoms, is why conservatives (and to be fair for much of our history all but the craziest liberals) know now and knew then that grand promises of free health care, subsidized housing, free college tuition, free child care, guaranteed universal income and the rest of the socialist smorgasbord cannot withstand objective scrutiny. The reason is amazingly simple.

Nothing is free.

It’s worth looking closely at those who are on the vanguard of the Democratic Socialist movement. All of them have in common that they were either born here or have lived here long enough as to make it possible to take the abundance afforded by the American free market economy for granted. In their cossetted existences, plenty to eat, a safe place to sleep and an iPhone in the hand are just things that naturally occur. They never ask who had to put capital at risk and who had to do the work necessary to provide such things.

America has been so successful and enjoys such enormous economic wealth that minds-full-of-mush socialists look at it all and decide that there’s plenty to go around. No need for anyone to unduly exert oneself. Everyone should be free of the daily burdens of making a living so that everyone can enjoy economic freedom in its ultimate form.

What they don’t understand is that every promised benefit supplied by government must first be confiscated from the fruits of someone’s labor. The larger those promises become, the larger the confiscatory power of government must become – until one day that power becomes absolute.

When that happens, you get the blood-soaked regimes of Stalin, Mao, Castro and Maduro.

The ascendant socialists in the Democratic Party are promising what they believe will be economic freedom. If they ever succeed in gaining power, they will deliver precisely the opposite.

Money laundering scheme worth $29K discovered during Panola County traffic stop

PANOLA COUNTY (KETK) — A traffic stop in Panola County led to the discovery of a nearly $30,000 money laundering scheme on early Thursday morning.

According to the Panola County Sheriff’s Office, a deputy conducted a routine traffic stop on State Highway 315 in Long Branch at 3:15 a.m. for a traffic violation.

During the stop, the deputy observed several indicators of criminal activity including false statements from the driver. The deputy requested a K9 unit, which gave a positive alert for narcotics prompting a search of the vehicle.

Within the vehicle, a bag containing multiple bundles of money wrapped in rubber bands were found, totaling over $29,000.

The driver, Jose De Jesus Torres, Jr. of McAllen was arrested for money laundering $2,500 to $30,000, which is a state jail felony. The currency was held as it awaits a seizure hearing.

Additionally, there were two children in the vehicle who were released to Child Protective Services and later placed with other family members.

Warren Buffett explains why his kids, not the Gates Foundation, will now give away all his fortune

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Billionaire Warren Buffett said Wednesday that his decision to cut the Gates Foundation out of his charitable giving is more about believing his three kids are ready to handle giving away his entire fortune than it is about Bill Gates ‘ ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Buffett told CNBC that Gates’ association with Epstein was “distasteful,” but the 95-year-old investor suggested that Gates’ actions weren’t much different from mistakes he himself had made over the years in hiring the wrong person or in choosing friends.

“No one bats a thousand in the business of choosing people,” Buffett said on CNBC.
Buffett read up on Gates’ ties to Epstein

Buffett said he “read a great deal since Jan. 1 in terms of what happened with Bill and Epstein. And I have read his remarks to Congress given under oath, and I read the cross-examination.” He noted that Gates eventually ended his relationship with Epstein.

Buffett said Gates wasn’t surprised by the decision Buffett announced Tuesday to eventually donate all the rest of his $140 billion of Berkshire Hathaway stock to foundations associated with his family and his three children, Howard, Susie and Peter. Gates flew to Omaha a few weeks ago and spent several hours talking with Buffett. The two hadn’t spoken much since before additional details about Gates and Epstein started to come out when the federal government began releasing files from the Epstein investigation.

Gates has said that he only met with Epstein because he thought it might help him raise money for charitable causes, and he didn’t know about Epstein’s ongoing crimes.

Epstein, who was accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls, was found dead at the Manhattan federal lockup in August 2019. His death was later ruled a suicide by New York City’s medical examiner.

Gates called Buffett “one of the greatest philanthropists of all time, and a dear friend” who he hopes to spend much more time with in the future.

“His wisdom, generosity, and deep sense of purpose have defined both his life and his philanthropy. His support for the Gates Foundation, at nearly $50 billion over the past twenty years, has been unprecedented, and it has helped save millions of lives,” Gates said in a statement.

Buffett said in 2024 that he planned to cut off donations to the Gates Foundation after he died and let his three children decide how to distribute the rest of his fortune.

The Gates Foundation will still have tremendous resources: its endowment was worth nearly $90 billion at the end of last year and Gates has promised to donate nearly all his remaining fortune to the foundation.

In other news from the CNBC interview, Buffett revealed that he recently broke his leg and underwent surgery for it, but he said he is recovering well.
Drastically increasing donations to give away his fortune by 2034

Buffett said he wants his own Berkshire shares to be distributed even quicker than he has previously indicated: by the end of 2034. To do that, he will have to drastically increase the amount he donates every year, to more than $17 billion annually.

Right now he is giving roughly $6 billion to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and the foundations his children run: the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the Novo Foundation. Buffett filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday afternoon that showed he had donated a total of 12 million Class B Berkshire shares a day earlier to those foundations.

The majority of that is going to the foundation named in honor of his late wife, which may quickly become one of the world’s largest such organizations. Buffett also traditionally gives additional gifts to his family foundations around Thanksgiving each year.

He has said that after his death, a new foundation will be created to distribute the rest of his shares and that his children will have to agree unanimously on where to donate them. He wants his children to be able to make those decisions before they die or become senile, and his oldest daughter will be nearly 81 in eight years.
Buffett’s donations may affect his successor’s support

The accelerated pace of Buffett’s plan to give away his fortune over the next eight years rather than doing it over the 10 years following his death will mean that his successor at Berkshire Hathaway, Greg Abel, won’t be able to count on the support of Buffett’s family as the company’s biggest shareholder for as long as he thought. Buffett currently controls nearly 30% of the voting power with his 188,290 Class A shares.

Nevertheless, Buffett said he believes it’s clear that Abel is the right man to lead the conglomerate he built, and “that becomes more evident by the day.”

However, Buffett did note that Berkshire’s big investment in Google’s parent company, which has grown in value considerably over the past year, is one he initiated and not an investment Abel picked, though Abel did agree on it. Just last month, Berkshire agreed to invest another $10 billion in Alphabet after previously tripling its stake in the company. ___ A previous version of this story misspelled Warren Buffett’s last name in the headline.

At least 1 person has died as Texas flooding forces evacuations and rescues, governor says

UVALDE (AP) — Rescuers saved dozens of stranded drivers and people trapped in homes from catastrophic flooding in Texas while many more fled to higher ground Thursday across a region still recovering from devastating floods just a year ago.

So far, at least one person has died, said Gov. Greg Abbott, who added that it appeared that many of summer camps hit hard last year were not facing any danger. “Our number one focus is saving lives,” he said.

After days of pounding rain, the National Weather Service said a “large and deadly flood wave” was barreling down the same river wrecked by flash floods last summer when two dozen children and counselors were killed at Camp Mystic.

Forecasters urgently warned “Move to higher ground now!” as rivers rose hour by hour, turning them into fast-moving seas of white water. Several tornado warnings were also issued.

The Texas Hill Country floods over the July Fourth holiday last year killed more than 100 people.

The governor said there was “one loss of life” so far but did not specify where or when. More than 1,300 personnel were responding and have rescued well over 70 people, he said Thursday.

The unfolding crisis brought back haunting memories of last summer’s unimaginable floods for many.

“It’s crazy happening two times in one year,” said Josiah Rodriguez, who woke to the sound of heavy rain around 2 a.m. Thursday in Kerrville. He navigated flooded roads to help evacuate relatives.

Residents said they were caught off guard a year ago and didn’t receive any warning when floods overtopped the Guadalupe River. Some local leaders were criticized for not acting quickly.

The storms and flooding this time threatened multiple counties close to the border with Mexico and in the Texas Hill Country near San Antonio. City officials in Kerrville urged people to shelter at the highest levels of their homes.

Images along a creek in Kerr County showed propane tanks that had been pushed onto a bridge and a mess of tangled trees.
Uvalde residents isolated by floodwaters

Floodwaters overran the city of Uvalde overnight, cutting off outside access. The Leona River, normally dry most of the year, filled streets with water.

“People really can’t get anywhere” said Carmen Rodriguez, who was nervously watching water engulf her neighborhood Thursday morning as a helicopter roared overhead. “We have a place to go, but all the streets are closed.”

Phones buzzed with warnings throughout the night warning of flash floods in the morning. Rodriguez said it seemed that authorities were well prepared. By Wednesday, Uvalde police had ordered some mandatory evacuations, with first responders notifying people directly.

Uvalde officials sent out rescue boats and found multiple people trapped in vehicles overnight, said Juli Alvarado, a spokesperson for Uvalde police.

“There’s no way into the city at this point,” she said.

Texas Game Wardens rescued more than 40 people and evacuated about a dozen others, mostly in the Uvalde County area, according to a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department spokesperson.
Flooding could reach last year’s deadly high

The floodwaters were expected to reach a crest similar to last year’s flood, the weather service said.

Gauges in some spots along the Guadalupe River showed it rose by more than 30 feet (9 meters) in just hours overnight. One gauge outside Kerrville showed the river had risen 32 feet (9.7 meters) in four hours.

Close to Camp Mystic, which remains shut, the Guadalupe River near Hunt reached about 20.5 feet (6.3 meters), according to a U.S. Geological Survey gauge, which is just under the level expected to inundate structures and roads.

Flooding hits towns still rebuilding

Volunteer firefighters spent the night helping people evacuate their homes and answering calls about rising water in Ingram, just up river from Hunt, where summer camps dot the shores of the Guadalupe, Ingram Mayor Claud Jordan said Thursday morning.

While the water didn’t rise as high as a year ago, he believes this round of flooding was more widespread and “worse” in his city. “The rural part of Ingram, all the roads are just trashed,” he said.

“There are a bunch of businesses that haven’t reopened from last year. They’re still trying to rebuild from the July 4 floods,” Jordan said. “This doesn’t help.”
A rush to higher ground

Residents at an RV park in Comfort, Texas, near the Guadalupe River moved their trailers as local fire department sirens sounded, manager Duke Earwood said Thursday.

Water rose over the hoods of vehicles parked closest to the river.

While the water started to recede, another surge was expected, Earwood said at the Comfort RV Resort, which has about 200 residents. “People need to know to just kind of stay put for now,” he said.

Markers showed the flooding already matched the level from the big flood last July.

“Too familiar for sure, and too soon,” Earwood said.
Another test for Texas Hill Country after the Camp Mystic disaster

The Texas Hill Country is especially prone to flash floods because the area’s signature limestone is covered by just a thin layer of soil. During heavy rains, water can quickly shoot downhill before quickly filling the narrow river basins.

The weather service said 10 to 20 inches of rain (25 to 50 centimeters) had fallen in the past two days, with 8 inches (20 centimeters) in just two hours early Thursday.

The deluge dumped nearly a foot of rain in some counties and put people in multiple counties under flood watches, with some were expected to remain in effect through Friday evening.

The governor issued disaster declarations for dozens of counties. As of late Wednesday, six million residents in 57 counties were under a National Weather Service flood watch.

US designates 2 new Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The U.S. government has designated two new Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

They are the Juárez Cartel, on the border with Texas, and Los Viagras, a criminal group from the western state of Michoacán. The Federal Register, the U.S. government’s gazette, published the designation on Thursday.

They joined six other Mexican criminal organizations that the U.S. considers terrorist groups, including the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Gangs in other Latin American countries, including Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador and El Salvador, also have been designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the Trump administration.

President Donald Trump began to extend the terrorist label to Latin American cartels in February 2025 to allow U.S. authorities to take more aggressive action against them or against anyone who the U.S. sees as aiding the groups.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that both criminal groups either have committed terrorist acts or pose a serious risk of committing acts that threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.

The measure represents a further increase in pressure on Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration following the indictment of 10 current and former officials from the state of Sinaloa for alleged ties to the Sinaloa Cartel, as well as the controversies about U.S. operations in Mexico.
Higher pressure on the Texas border

Juarez Cartel is one of Mexico’s oldest drug trafficking organizations, which for decades has controlled a key crossing point in the central part of the Mexico-U.S. border: Ciudad Juárez, across from El Paso, Texas.

Both its founder, Amado Carrillo Fuentes — known as “El Señor de los Cielos” for smuggling massive drug shipments by light aircraft in the 1990s — and the brothers and sons who succeeded him, turned the trafficking of tons of drugs into a multimillion-dollar business. Despite the arrests of many of its leaders, the cartel and its allied gangs maintained control of a vast infrastructure for smuggling illegal shipments into the U.S..

According to Mexican analyst David Saucedo, the designation is key to enabling the United States to take more decisive action along the border, where two other groups both located at the eastern end of the border with Texas — the Gulf Cartel and the Northeast Cartel — were declared terrorist organizations in February 2025.

The US again targets Michoacan

Los Viagras is a local cartel in the western state of Michoacan, which is already home to two other criminal groups designated as terrorist organizations: Cárteles Unidos and La Nueva Familia Michoacana.

Los Viagras emerged following the 2013–2014 armed uprising led by farmers who succeeded in driving out many of the old cartels, only to see them replaced by new ones.

The cartel is led by Nicolás Sierra Santana, who faces a formal indictment in the District of Columbia for conspiracy to traffic drugs, filed in June 2025. The State Department is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture.

The group has shifted its loyalties and alliances to consolidate its regional control of the territory through extortion. It also produces synthetic drugs, which sells to other cartels that traffic them into the United States.

David Rancken’s App of the Day 07/16/26 – American Red Cross Blood Donor!

Giving the gift of life is as simple as rolling up your sleeve. To make it easier, find David Rancken’s App Of The Day. It’s called American Red Cross Blood Donor. You can find American Red Cross Blood Donor in the Apple Store and Google Play below.