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DALLAS – The Dallas Morning News reports that gun tracing not only is a way to help identify and capture those who purchase guns illegally, it also is used to identify and alert gun sellers. U.S. gun stores and other licensed dealers associated with a high number of crime gun traces are notified of this by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives under a special regulatory program. The “Demand Letter 2? notice is sent to dealers that had 25 or more crime guns traced to them the previous calendar year that were used in a crime within 3 years of original purchase, a concept called “time-to-crime.” Such dealers are then required to periodically supply ATF with additional information. The notice doesn’t necessarily mean the dealer did anything improper. It’s intended to add extra layers of scrutiny to licensed gun sellers that are being targeted by criminals.

Several North Texas gun stores received the notices in 2023, including large chains and independent stores, according to a batch of ATF notices released to USA Today. One such store is WEG’s Guns in Farmers Branch. A Houston man bought a .50-caliber rifle at WEG’s in 2022 with more than $8,600 in cash, court records show. Mexican authorities recovered it more than three months later in Matamoros, Mexico. The buyer pleaded guilty to a charge related to gun straw purchasing and was sentenced in September to time served in a North Texas court, court records show. WEG’s website says it’s a family-run business. Store representatives did not respond to a request for comment. Some dealers say handling a high volume of gun sales naturally leads to more traces. Indeed, national chain stores were among the dealers that received notices in 2023 of crime guns traced to them from Mexico, including at least two Bass Pro Shops stores in North Texas, according to the ATF information obtained by USA Today.

McALLEN (AP) — The phone calls at Yaqui Animal Rescue were non-stop. On the other end of the phone were requests to help with abandoned puppies or pick up stray dogs roaming the streets. The Rio Grande Valley ranch used to temporarily house and care for animals was getting hourly requests by email and social media, too.

The pleas even reached the personal Instagram account of Rebecca Chavez, Yaqui’s development director. She estimates she’s tagged daily in at least five social media posts about dogs that are dumped in the middle of nowhere.

It became too much. In early September, the rescue’s staff announced on social media that the rescue would be — for the first time in 11 years — closed for intake until further notice.

“We don’t have enough staff to take on the demand,” Chavez said. “Mentally and emotionally, it’s taking a toll on us.”

The decision was made in an effort to get a handle on the “crisis-level overcrowding” of more than 250 animals at the rescue, they wrote in the social media post.

Animal shelters across Texas are — and have been — overcrowded, say advocates, who are urging the public to help by fostering or adopting these animals.

Supreme Court to weigh a Texas death row case after halting execution
The more pressing challenge is convincing pet owners to spay and neuter their pets, animal welfare advocates said.

Chavez said that local governments could be doing more to invest in low-cost spay and neuter services, especially in places like the Valley, home to many low-income communities.

To that end, Chavez and other animal advocates across the state will take the issue to Austin when lawmakers reconvene for the next legislative session in 2025.

The Texas Humane Legislation Network, a network of leaders of animal rights groups across the state, are eyeing changes to current state regulations that would allow cities to regulate the sale of puppies and make it easier for shelters and nonprofits to access money to help cover the costs of spay and neuter services, hoping to slow the growing number of stray animals in the state.

“The No. 1 issue in Texas is clearly shelter overpopulation and, quite frankly, overpopulation of dogs throughout our state,” said Shelby Bobosky, executive director of the humane legislation network. “It doesn’t matter if you’re in an urban or rural area, it’s just happening everywhere.”

Financial assistance
When Bonnie Hill and her husband moved out of Dallas onto a Kaufman County ranch in the early 2000s, the couple was surprised to learn their new home was not completely vacated.

The previous owner had left behind a golden retriever with eight puppies that the Hills were not prepared to care for. They immediately contacted the previous owner who, conveniently, had just moved down the street.

But unable or unwilling to take on the responsibility of the dogs, the previous owner took the pups and shot them.

“I was just shocked,” Hill said about finding out what had happened to the dogs. “I was, of course, hysterical.”

That was just how they handled things there, the owner had told her. There were no shelters or veterinarians, so that was their only option.

That norm was unacceptable to Hill.

She contacted the SPCA of Texas, an animal welfare agency in North Texas, with the intent to start her own shelter, but was convinced that focusing on providing low-cost spay and neuter services was more vital to their cause of minimizing the stray animal population.

The couple opened a clinic in Kaufman County in 2004 and, soon after, officials from other counties began asking for help with their own animal population. She added a transport program that would pick up animals from those areas and bring them to their clinic for surgeries.

Today, the organization — the Spay Neuter Network — has four clinics across the state along with a mobile clinic. They also mobilize five vehicles every day that travel to low-income areas as part of their transport program. The goal is to make a dent in Texas’ ballooning stray animal population.

While there is no official count of the stray animal population for Texas, an estimated 568,325 cats and dogs entered shelters in 2023, according to Best Friends Animal Society, an animal welfare nonprofit based in Utah. The group also estimates that 82,681 cats and dogs were killed in Texas that year, more than in any other state.

The Spay Neuter Network does more than 30,000 surgeries every year, according to Hill, and reported $2.8 million in service expenses for 2022.

However, the cost they charged for the surgery did not cover the cost of performing it, so organizations like the Spay Neuter Network rely on grants to make the service more accessible. Grants and contributions made up 23% of their total revenue.

Years ago, the Spay Neuter Network used to apply for money through the Animal Friendly Program, a state grant offered by the Texas Department of State Health Services that is paid for by the sale of specialty license plates. The money raised is then made available to organizations through a competitive application process.

At one point, the network received nearly $500,000 through the program, but over the years, the reimbursement process became more difficult for them. Instead of covering the $50 flat rate their clinics charged per surgery, the state wanted them to calculate the exact cost per surgery, down to how many staff members worked on it and the exact time it took to perform each one.

Vinnie Lopez, surgical technician, cleans and disinfects a puppy from an animal rescue organization in preparation to be neutered at the Spay Neuter Network clinic in Crandall. Credit: Desiree Rios for The Texas Tribune

“It was just really hard,” Hill said. “We all just said that it just doesn’t work for us. We can’t do it. There’s easier money to be found elsewhere.”

The Animal Friendly Program has awarded more than $6 million for low-cost spay and neuter services since 2002. Grants are awarded every two years and in recent years, annual total funding available has ranged from $160,000 to $200,000, according to a department spokesperson.

How much is given to each applicant is at the discretion of the department and ranges from $6,000 to $30,000 per contractor annually. If funding allows, contracts are renewed for an additional one-year term.

The health department awarded more than $165,000 in grants to 11 different organizations in Texas for 2023.

In Canton, Kathy Stonaker, an ambassador for the humane legislation network, wants more organizations to access those funds. She runs a Facebook page called Van Zandt County Pet Project that shares information about dogs needing to be adopted and encourages the public to spay and neuter their pets.

She hoped to educate nearby shelters and rescues on how to navigate the application process for the Animal Friendly program but was not able to get through it.

“It’s about the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” Stonaker said.

The process requires applicants to complete forms, questionnaires, exhibits, and provide requested information outlined by the agency. It is a process that is standard for all of the health department’s grant applications.

Stonaker argues the process is too difficult for small shelters.

“A shelter or a rescue would have to pay for the help to get this,” she said.

Ending puppy sales
The humane legislation network also wants to win back some control to local governments that was lost in 2023 through House Bill 2127, or the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act.

The law, known by its opponents as the “Death Star” bill, prevents cities and counties from passing local ordinances that go further than what’s allowed under state law. State Republican lawmakers approved the legislation after many of the state’s largest cities, often run by Democrats, approved local policies they deemed too progressive and a threat to the state’s pro-friendly business climate.

One of the less discussed provisions bars cities from adopting ordinances that would ban or restrict the retail sale of animals.

Since the passage of the law, 10 puppy stores have sprung up throughout the state, bringing the total number of stores close to 40. Animal welfare advocates believe these private puppy stores make the situation worse because the dogs sold there are brought in from other states and are not spayed or neutered.

The humane legislation network aims to require that pet stores only sell healthy animals from shelters and rescues.

A handful of cities in Texas, including Dallas and Houston, adopted similar “humane pet store” ordinances in 2022 that were grandfathered into the bill.

“We truly need a statewide law to help these communities keep the puppy mill pipeline out of Texas,” Bobosky said. “It’s just adding to the crisis.”

Heeding the call
Chavez, the Rio Grande Valley animal advocate, thinks her neighbors must believe she has magical powers for how often they call upon her to attend to abandoned or distressed animals.

Sure, she has dropped everything to drive 30 minutes to the middle of nowhere to find an injured animal. And yes, she has sheltered animals in her own garage at her own expense.

She’s not special, she said, just willing to be inconvenienced. Yet, the emotional toll is getting worse.

She got into this line of work to save animals but when the rescue can’t do that due to a lack of space or resources, the assumption that the animals will eventually die without their help begins to wear on the staff.

For their own mental health and to ease the strain on their resources, Chavez said they needed to temporarily close intakes. The move, she said, would allow them to focus on the animals they currently have in their care and try to find them permanent homes to create more space.

While the rescue does what it can to better handle the situation, Chavez wants county and city officials to invest into mobile low-cost spay and neuter clinics.

“They’re reproducing at a rate that we cannot keep up with,” Chavez said. “I don’t even want to say we’re stretched too thin, because stretching too thin means that we’re able to handle it and we’re not. We can’t do it.”

AUSTIN (AP) – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued TikTok on Thursday for sharing and selling minors’ personal information, violating a new state law that seeks to protect children who are active on social media, accusations that the company denied hours later.

The Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act prohibits social media companies from sharing or selling a minor’s personal information unless a parent or guardian approves. The law, which was passed by the Legislature last year and partially went into effect Sept. 1, also requires companies to create tools that let verified parents supervise their minor child’s account.

Paxton argues in the legal filing that TikTok, a short-form video app, has failed to comply with these requirements. Although TikTok has a “family pairing” feature that allows parents to link their account to their teen’s account and set controls, parents don’t have to verify their identity using a “commercially reasonable method,” as required by Texas law. The minor also has to consent to the pairing.

Paxton also argues that TikTok unlawfully shares and sells minors’ personal identifying information to third parties, including advertisers and search engines, and illegally displays targeted advertising to known minors.

“I will continue to hold TikTok and other Big Tech companies accountable for exploiting Texas children and failing to prioritize minors’ online safety and privacy,” Paxton said in a statement. “Texas law requires social media companies to take steps to protect kids online and requires them to provide parents with tools to do the same. TikTok and other social media companies cannot ignore their duties under Texas law.”

A TikTok spokesperson denied Paxton’s allegations, pointing to online information about how parents in certain states, including Texas, can contact TikTok to request that their teen’s account is deleted. Parents are asked to verify their identify but submitting a photograph of themselves holding their government-issued ID. According to TikTok’s privacy policies, the company does not sell personal information. And personal data is not shared “where restricted by applicable law.”

“We strongly disagree with these allegations and, in fact, we offer robust safeguards for teens and parents, including family pairing, all of which are publicly available,” TikTok spokesperson Jason Grosse wrote in a an emailed statement. “We stand by the protections we provide families.”

Paxton’s lawsuit was filed in a federal district court in Galveston. The filing comes after a federal district court judge in August temporarily blocked part of the social media law from taking effect as a legal battle over the law’s constitutionality continues to play out.

Two separate lawsuits were filed seeking to block the law. One suit was filed by tech industry groups that represent large digital companies including YouTube and Meta. A second lawsuit was filed by a free speech advocacy group.

Days before the law was scheduled to take effect, Judge Robert Pitman blocked a part of the law that would have required social media companies to filter out harmful content from a minor’s feed, such as information that features self-harm or substance abuse. But Pitman allowed other pieces of the law to take effect, such as the prohibition on selling or sharing minor’s data, as well as a new rule that social media companies let parents monitor their child’s account.

Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, rolled out new parental control features in response to Texas’ law. Now, parents who can prove their identity with a valid form of identification can set time limits on their child’s usage and update their teen’s account settings. A Meta spokesperson also said the company does not share or sell personal data.

The consumer protection division of Paxton’s office has sole authority to enforce the law. They are seeking civil penalties of $10,000 per violation, as well as attorney’s fees.

Texas is one of several states that have recently passed laws attempting to regulate how social media companies moderate their content. Those laws have also facedbacklash from the tech industry and from free speech groups.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case of a Texas man on death row who has long argued that DNA testing would help prove he didn’t kill an 85-year-old woman during a home robbery decades ago.

The order came down Friday in the case of Ruben Gutierrez, months after the justices stayed his execution 20 minutes before he was scheduled to die by lethal injection.

Gutierrez was condemned for the 1998 stabbing of Escolastica Harrison at her home in Brownsville, on the state’s southern tip.

Prosecutors said the killing of the mobile home park manager and retired teacher was part of an attempt to steal more than $600,000 she had hidden in her home because of her mistrust of banks.

Gutierrez has long asked for DNA testing on evidence like Harrison’s nail scrapings, a loose hair wrapped around one of her fingers and various blood samples from within her home.

His attorneys say there’s no physical or forensic evidence connecting him to the killing. Two others were also charged in the case.

Attorney Shawn Nolan said the high court’s action came as a relief. Agreeing to hear the case and extending the stay of execution “brings us one step closer to finally doing the DNA testing that will overturn Ruben’s wrongful conviction and death sentence,” he said.

Prosecutors said the request for DNA testing is a delay tactic and that Gutierrez’s conviction rests on other evidence, including a confession in which he admitted to planning the robbery and that he was inside her home when she was killed.

Gutierrez was convicted under Texas’ law of parties, which says a person can be held liable for the actions of others if they assist or encourage the commission of a crime. He has had several previous execution dates in recent years that have been delayed.

HOUSTON (AP) — A federal judge on Friday denied a request by a Black high school student in Texas for a court order that the student’s lawyers say would have allowed him to return to his high school without fear of having his previous punishment over his hairstyle resume.

Darryl George had sought to reenroll at his Houston-area high school in the Barbers Hill school district after leaving at the start of his senior year in August because district officials were set to continue punishing him for not cutting his hair. George had spent nearly all of his junior year serving in-school suspension over his hairstyle.

The district has argued that George’s long hair, which he wears to school in tied and twisted locs on top of his head, violates its policy because if let down, it would fall below his shirt collar, eyebrows or earlobes.

George, 19, had asked U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown in Galveston to issue a temporary restraining order that would have prevented district officials from further punishing him if he returned and while a federal lawsuit he filed proceeds.

But in a ruling issued late Friday afternoon, Brown denied George’s request, saying the student and his lawyers had waited too long to ask for the order.

George’s request had come after Brown in August dismissed most of the claims the student and his mother had filed in their federal lawsuit alleging school district officials committed racial and gender discrimination when they punished him.

The judge only let the gender discrimination claim stand.

In his ruling, Brown said he also denied George’s request for a temporary restraining order because the school district was more likely to prevail in the lawsuit’s remaining claim.

Brown’s ruling was coincidentally issued on George’s birthday. He turned 19 years old on Friday.

Allie Booker, an attorney for George, and a spokesperson for the Barbers Hill school district did not immediately return a call or email seeking comment.

George’s lawyer had said the student left Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu and transferred to another high school in a different Houston area district after suffering a nervous breakdown over the thought of facing another year of punishment.

In court documents filed this week, attorneys for the school district said George didn’t have legal standing to request the restraining order because he is no longer a student in the district.

The district has defended its dress code, which says its policies for students are meant to “teach grooming and hygiene, instill discipline, prevent disruption, avoid safety hazards and teach respect for authority.”

George’s federal lawsuit also alleged that his punishment violates the CROWN Act, a recent state law prohibiting race-based discrimination of hair. The CROWN Act, which was being discussed before the dispute over George’s hair and which took effect in September 2023, bars employers and schools from penalizing people because of hair texture or protective hairstyles including Afros, braids, locs, twists or Bantu knots.

In February, a state judge ruled in a lawsuit filed by the school district that its punishment does not violate the CROWN Act.

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GRANBURY – A group of Granbury community members, represented by Earthjustice, filed a lawsuit (case number: C2024253) in Texas State Court, Hood County, against Marathon Digital Holdings, Inc., which operates a bitcoin mine in Granbury, Texas. The lawsuit alleges that Marathon creates a private nuisance by causing and then failing to mitigate excessive noise pollution caused by their 24/7 proof-of-work cryptocurrency mining operations, resulting in sustained harm to the surrounding community. Earthjustice filed the lawsuit on behalf of Citizens Concerned About Wolf Hollow.

Proof-of-work cryptocurrency mining is an energy-intensive process involving tens of thousands of large computers running 24/7, and the constant roar of fans used to cool the machines results in excessive noise pollution. Prior to filing the lawsuit, Earthjustice identified over two dozen individuals who suffer direct health impacts due to the constant noise pollution from the cryptomining operations. Examples include permanent hearing loss, severe migraines, tinnitus and debilitating vertigo. Earthjustice is seeking a permanent injunction, demanding that the cryptomining operations either shut down or immediately implement measures to significantly reduce the harms caused by the excessive noise pollution.

“The Marathon cryptomining operations are creating significant noise pollution in Granbury, resulting in serious health and quality of life impacts to the surrounding community. Persistent exposure to this noise is detrimental for human health, animals, and the environment. Residents’ homes are no longer the refuge that they should be. Marathon must take immediate action to effectively mitigate their noise pollution or shut down operations altogether,” said Rodrigo Cantú, Senior Attorney with Earthjustice’s Gulf Regional Office.

Marathon operates its bitcoin mining facility behind-the-meter at the Wolf Hollow gas plant in Granbury. The gas plant is a 1,115 megawatt combined-cycle gas and steam turbine generation facility, with plans to bring an additional 300 megawatts of gas-fired generation online.

“The people of Granbury have been forced to endure constant and unrelenting noise from Marathon’s cryptomining operations. No corporation has the right to subject their neighbors to conditions that jeopardize their health and well-being. Marathon must reduce its noise pollution,” said Rebecca Ramirez, Associate Attorney with Earthjustice’s Gulf Regional Office.

“In such a short time, Bitcoin mining has completely altered our community, for the worse. The around-the-clock mining isn’t just driving up our electricity bills-it’s costing us our health. We feel trapped. Day and night, we are subjected to relentless noise that is physically harming us. We aren’t asking for much-just for Marathon to take responsibility and restore our peace and well-being,” said Granbury resident, Cheryl Shadden.

DALLAS – The Dallas Morning News reports that guns purchased from a single ZIP code in Grand Prairie, Texas, have been popping up in Mexico in significant numbers over the past several years. From 2015-2022, the 75051 ZIP code was the source of more confiscated guns – roughly three dozen per year – in Mexico than from any other Texas ZIP code not located on the border. Furthermore, a recent federal firearms report shows Texas is the nation’s leading supplier of illicit guns to Mexico’s drug cartels and other criminal organizations, representing 43% of the total. Those are among the revelatory findings culled from a federal gun tracing database obtained by a nonprofit organization and analyzed recently by The Dallas Morning News.

At first glance, the data might suggest Grand Prairie is a hub for international arms trafficking. Dig a little deeper, however, and a more nuanced story emerges – one that not only reveals the challenges of firearms tracing as a tool against gun traffickers, but also illuminates the ongoing national debate between gun rights groups and gun safety advocates over whether such data should be made public. Tracing can be helpful to agents, revealing patterns used by criminals and identifying possible suspects. And it can be used to alert gun sellers. But the data also can be of limited value when a gun’s serial number is filed off, when the sales paperwork is missing or when the firearms are old. Those guns from Grand Prairie are a prime example. The 275 Grand Prairie confiscated guns, it turns out, are very old. Some were bought so long ago that the North Texas gun store owners who sold them are long dead.

HOUSTON – USA Today reports the Ted Cruz curse strikes (no pun intended) again. Allegedly. The Texas senator’s attendance at sporting events across the state is famously dreaded, for reasons beyond politics. His appearance at ballparks, football fields and basketball courts has been frequently associated with various Texas teams’ ensuing losses. And the phenomenon seemingly continued this week, after Cruz was spotted at Minute Maid Park Tuesday and Wednesday for both games of the Houston Astros’ back-to-back losses, which put a quick end to the baseball team’s postseason. The “Cruz curse” was also the basis for a social media ad last month by Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, who is running to unseat Cruz this November. “Sports fans from across Texas are suffering from the same affliction,” the commercial’s narrator says, going on to blame Cruz for major losses including the University of Texas football team’s defeat in January’s Sugar Bowl and the Houston Rockets’ dashed playoff dreams back in 2018.

“Want to win? Lose Cruz,” the 30-second video concludes. The race between Allred and Cruz has intensified, as some polls heading into the fall show a near tie between the pair. No Democrat has won statewide office in the deep-red Lone Star State since 1994. Cruz has been in office since 2013. Cook Political Report Tuesday shifted their rating of the Senate race from “likely Republican” to “leans Republican,” signaling momentum for Democrats, who nationally are in a contentious battle to hold onto control of the upper chamber. Allred and Cruz are set to face off in a debate Oct. 15. Democrats that evening may hope the supposed “Cruz curse” goes beyond just sports competitions. Cruz’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the advertisement or the Astros’ loss this week.

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that Texas has surpassed 18 million registered voters for the first time as an increasingly urban and diverse population reshapes the state’s political landscape and pushes the GOP to retool its decades-old playbook to keep a grip on the state. The state’s voter registration rolls are expanding at a quicker pace than other fast-growing southern states like Florida, North Carolina and Georgia. And they’re surpassing the state’s population growth, a sign that more than just new Texans are signing up to vote. Since U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz was last on the ballot in 2018 and narrowly won reelection by just 215,000 votes, Texas has added nearly 2.6 million voters — the size of Connecticut’s entire voting rolls. The biggest growth has come in Harris County and along the I-35 corridor, areas that have trended blue in recent elections. While transplants from other states make up a good portion of that rise, voter advocacy groups say it is also a product of their work in places like Houston and San Antonio to find and register Texans who don’t typically participate in elections.

Also fueling the rise is the state’s booming youth population coming of voting age. Many high schools have programs to help sign up new voters and people can also register when getting a driver’s license. The shifting demographics are forcing both parties to lean on advanced analytics to help them identify who these new voters are, where they came from, how likely they are to vote in November and which party’s platform they gravitate more towards. While some Republicans have convinced themselves Texas will always be red, top strategists in the party warn Texas is at risk of following other Southwestern states like Arizona and Nevada, once solid Republican states that started turning blue in the last two decades and helped put Joe Biden in the White House in 2020. “We are in a competitive state and we are not going to win just sitting on our laurels,” said Dave Carney, a veteran Republican strategist who has helped Gov. Greg Abbott and former Gov. Rick Perry dominate Texas politics for the last 25 years.