Today is
Sunday July 19, 2026
A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected an effort to defend the Texas Dream Act, leaving in place a ruling that ended a longstanding state law that allowed some undocumented students to pay in-state tuition at public colleges and universities.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said advocacy groups, Austin Community College and a student could not step into the case to defend the Texas Dream Act because federal law bars states from giving undocumented students a tuition benefit based on residency unless the same benefit is available to all U.S. citizens, regardless of where they live.
The law allowed students who graduated from a Texas high school or earned an equivalent diploma in the state, lived in Texas and pledged to seek permanent residency when eligible to pay in-state tuition, even if they did not have legal immigration status.
Gov. Greg Abbott praised the 2-1 ruling on X, saying Texas and the Trump administration’s Justice Department “just secured another major victory for the rule of law.”
La Unión del Pueblo Entero and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund called the ruling a disappointment.
“Education is a human right, no matter someone’s immigration status or background,” said Tania Chavez Camacho, LUPE’s president and executive director.
Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of MALDEF, which represents Students for Affordable Tuition, said the organization would seek further review in federal court after consulting with its clients.
Saenz said the panel majority was “now complicit in one of the greatest juridical travesties in recent history,” referring to the swift end of the Texas Dream Act after Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office and the Trump administration agreed the law should be blocked.
Austin Community College said in a statement that it “remains focused on supporting all students and the community we serve” and would follow the law while continuing its mission to provide “accessible, high-quality education and opportunities for all.”
Marco Julian Gonzalez, a University of Texas at Austin business student whose fraternity and sister sorority backed the students in court, said the ruling was disheartening.
“We know who these people are and we know who they are not, and when you have politicians go on the airwaves and call our friends criminal illegal aliens we take offense and that kept us motivated to keep going,” Gonzalez said.
Judge Jerry E. Smith wrote the majority opinion for the 5th Circuit Court, joined by Judge Don Willett. Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez dissented.
Smith was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, Willett by President Donald Trump, and Ramirez by President Joe Biden.
The background
Texas was the first state to let certain undocumented students pay in-state tuition when lawmakers passed the Texas Dream Act in 2001 with little debate and broad, bipartisan support.
The law, signed by the Republican former Gov. Rick Perry, allowed certain students without legal status to qualify if they graduated from a Texas high school or earned an equivalent diploma here, lived in the state for at least three years before graduating and signed an affidavit saying they would seek permanent residency as soon as they were eligible.
Supporters said Texas benefited from students educated in its K-12 schools by making college more affordable and moving them into the workforce. But as Republican politics shifted on immigration, the law became a target.
After multiple failed efforts from state lawmakers to change the law, U.S. Justice Department lawyers sued Texas last year. Paxton’s office quickly agreed the law conflicted with federal immigration law and asked a judge to block it. U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor approved the agreement and blocked the law the same day.
Students for Affordable Tuition, La Unión del Pueblo Entero, Austin Community College and student Oscar Silva asked the court to let them defend the Texas Dream Act themselves.
Students for Affordable Tuition is a group of students who say they were harmed by the ruling. La Unión del Pueblo Entero, or LUPE, is an immigrant-rights group. They asked to intervene along with Austin Community College and Silva, a University of North Texas graduate student who qualified for in-state tuition under the Texas Dream Act.
O’Connor, a President George W. Bush appointee who sits in the Northern District of Texas’ Wichita Falls division, rejected their request, so they appealed to the 5th Circuit.
What the students and immigrant advocates say
Advocacy groups Students for Affordable Tuition and LUPE, Austin Community College and Silva argued they have the legal right to intervene. They urged the court to apply a more lenient standard for intervention instead of requiring proof that their defense of the Texas Dream Act would ultimately succeed.
Students for Affordable Tuition said the stakes are concrete for its members, who “face significant increases in their higher education costs, putting college out of reach for many of them, some of whom have already spent years in college and will not be able to complete their specific program.”
“The people of Texas are entitled to genuine litigation before a federal court invalidates their democratically enacted statute,” lawyers said in a legal brief to the 5th Circuit.
Thomas Saenz, the lead lawyer for Students for Affordable Tuition, also stressed that affected students did not get due process because of how quickly the Texas Dream Act was overturned.
It is “important to emphasize here how extraordinary that it all occurred as quickly as it did,” Saenz told the 5th Circuit during oral arguments on June 4. “The court needs to look at whether this extraordinary situation violated due process rights held by students for affordable tuition and the other students who benefited or would benefit in the future.”
The groups believed the Texas Dream Act did not conflict with federal law because eligibility was not based solely on residency. Students also had to graduate from a Texas high school or earn an equivalent diploma here, live in the state for at least three years before graduating and sign an affidavit saying they would seek permanent residency as soon as they were eligible.
What the federal government says
Justice Department lawyers sued Texas, saying the Texas Dream Act violated a 1996 federal immigration law. That federal law says states cannot give people who are not lawfully present a higher education benefit unless U.S. citizens can get the same benefit, no matter where they live.
U.S. Department of Justice attorneys arguedvthat the Texas Dream Act so clearly conflicted with federal immigration law that allowing others to intervene and defend it would be futile.
“We opposed intervention … only on the grounds that it’s legally futile because the statutes are preempted,” Andrew Marshall Bernie, an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, told the appeals court during oral arguments last month.
Responding to concerns over due process, Bernie argued courts are not constitutionally required to hear from outside groups when a state law is challenged for violating a federal statute. In the end, he said, the outside groups did get due process because their arguments have been heard by the trial court and the 5th Circuit.
Broader impact
The Texas Dream Act opened higher education to more than 57,000 students, lawyers for LUPE, ACC and Silva told the court. The end of the law could cost Texas hundreds of millions of dollars a year through reduced wages, earnings and consumer spending, lawyers for LUPE, ACC and Silva told the court. ACC said it expected lost revenue, administrative burdens and negative effects on programs and services if the ruling remains in place.
Since O’Connor blocked the Texas Dream Act last year, students and colleges across the state have faced confusion over who still qualifies for in-state tuition.
The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board told colleges to identify and reclassify students who are not lawfully present as nonresidents but did not provide clarity on how to do so. That uncertainty led at least one student with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, to be initially charged out-of-state tuition, The Texas Tribune previously reported.
Students for Affordable Tuition told the 5th Circuit that several Texas colleges had charged DACA recipients out-of-state rates, even though Texas lawyers said they should still qualify for in-state tuition.
___
This story was originally published by The Texas Tribune and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
HOUSTON (AP) — Three men inside a van who witnessed the fatal shooting of the driver by an immigration officer in Houston said the Mexican man was shot through a passenger window and that the officer was never threatened, a lawyer who has spoken with them said Friday.
The shooting Tuesday during an attempted traffic stop by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Houston has revived critical voices deriding the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and how ICE operates. Immigration arrests around the country recently surged to 10,000 over a five-day period, fueled in part by massive Congressional funding.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, has released no evidence to support the officer’s story that Lorenzo Salgado Araujo ignored their commands and rammed into an ICE vehicle with his white van, or that the officer fired in self-defense.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia has said the acting director of ICE told her officers thought someone in the van, but not Salgado Araujo, had a final order of removal but did not share a name.
The officers were not wearing body cameras and neither ICE nor DHS have released photos, videos or other evidence from the scene.
The men tell an attorney that the ICE story is untrue
Salgado Araujo was a 52-year-old homebuilder who was shot and killed as he was driving his crew to a construction site. His family said he had lived in the U.S. for more than 35 years, had no criminal record and was close to finishing the long process of obtaining legal status when he was killed.
ICE detained the other three men in the van and they all told a lawyer that no officer was in front of the van or even in danger.
“After speaking with these men, I have no doubt that what they’re saying is the truth. I know that these agents — the agency — is going to try to cover it up,” attorney Hugo Balderas-Ibarra said during a news conference.
Images of the van after the shooting appear to show no damage, he said.
ICE has not released the names of the detained men, but family members said they have been able to briefly talk with them. Salgado Araujo’s brother was among those arrested.
Garcia said at the same news conference it was unsurprising that Salgado Araujo drove off when ICE tried to stop his vehicle, given that their vehicles were unmarked and had no lights.
“What would you do if you were being followed by someone and the cars were unmarked?” Garcia said.
Salgado Araujo was at least the eighth person to die during the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement campaign. No immigration officers have been charged in the killings and video footage in several previous shootings has contradicted the accounts of federal officers.
The detained men say ICE is pressuring them to self-deport
ICE is pressuring the men to self-deport, which would make it harder for them to share their version of events with investigators or others, said Juana Degollado, who said her stepfather Daniel Tirado Pantoja is among the detained men. She said he has no legal permission to live in the U.S. but has no criminal record.
“It is extremely important that we preserve the integrity of this investigation,” Balderas-Ibarra said. “That will all be out the window if they are deported.”
DHS said allegations that the men have been pressured to leave the country are “categorically false.”
DHS said Thursday that officers investigating a tip weeks earlier saw two white vans at the address of a target. While heading to that address Tuesday, officers saw a white van and someone inside who resembled the person they were looking for, the department said in a statement.
“No one in that van had warrants or any legal problem,” Degollado told The Associated Press in a text message.
ICE refuses to release officer’s name or other information
DHS said it will not release the officer’s name because they could face threats and violence and their family could be at risk.
DHS also has not responded to requests for other information, including how long the officer has worked for ICE or whether anyone involved in the shooting is on administrative leave.
Unlike some previous deaths involving federal immigration officers, few photos or videos surrounding the shooting have emerged publicly in the days since Salgado Araujo’s death.
The League of United Latin American Citizens offered a $5,000 reward for video or other evidence, but the positions of the vehicles means surveillance cameras in the area were blocked from recording the shooting, CEO Juan Proaño said.
Local prosecutors are talking to witnesses
Local prosecutors were not invited into the investigation by federal officials but have spent the past three days in the Houston neighborhood looking for surveillance footage and talking to witnesses, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare said.
Teare said anyone with video or other information must share it with his office so the truth about the shooting can be determined.
“We will go to the ends of the earth to collect all the evidence, so that we can eventually let the public know what happened,” Teare said.
The FBI is tightly controlling the evidence in the case, but Houston Mayor John Whitmire said he wants a local independent investigation and the police chief will meet with federal investigators next week to see what can be done.
“We recognize that it is a federal police agency that was out of control Tuesday morning,” Whitmire said.
Houston police do not work with ICE and the mayor said he found out about the shooting from the media.
Salgado Araujo’s family said they found out he was dead through the ICE statement instead of directly from the agency. Garcia said officers kept his belongings and sent him to the hospital where he died without including his name.
___
Brook reported from New Orleans and Foley from Iowa City, Iowa. Associated Press reporters Valerie Gonzalez in McAllen, Texas; Rebecca Santana in Washington; and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed.
Both engines flamed out on a small business jet that crashed on a Texas highway in June, preventing the pilots from being able to reach a nearby airport, the National Transportation Safety Board said in an preliminary investigation report released Friday.
Pilots had looked for a field or other flat areas to land before the crash, but were told by air traffic controllers that there were none close by. The crash killed one person and injured six.
According to the report, the flight crew noticed an “unusual vibration” early in the flight that they had not experienced before. The plane had departed the Mexican resort city of San José del Cabo on its way to Austin, and it was determined that they could proceed to their final destination after discussing it with staff at NetJets, the company that operated the jet.
As the jet approached the U.S.-Mexico border, the flight crew received a message indicating that the right fuel system had low fuel pressure, followed by more messages, and the crew declared an emergency.
The flight crew reported a generator failure and “multiple other failures” to Houston air traffic controllers, such as “fuel level low,” and requested to divert to Laredo International Airport, according to the report. The jet was cleared but while it was on its final approach, the right engine “flamed out,” followed by the left engine moments later.
Video footage showed “two instances of fire flaring up around the airplane as it was on final approach,” the report states.
A pilot asked the Laredo air traffic control tower if there was a field to their right, and an air traffic controller replied that there was not. After the pilot again asked about open area to their right, an air traffic controller replied, “It’s just going to be the main highway, and that’s just about it.”
The flight crew “maneuvered the airplane to touch down” on the highway about 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) southeast of the airport. As the jet touched down, it “sheared off several light poles,” struck a vehicle and ended up straddling the edge of an overpass with the main cabin exit door facing up. The door was eventually opened and five people escaped.
The NTSB report also asserts that the jet’s right engine starter generator was “missing multiple screws from the outer housing.” Alan Diehl, a former NTSB investigator, said the jet’s problems likely stemmed from the missing screws and that the flight crew and air traffic controllers acted professionally with the information they had at the time.
“Sounds like the fuel lines, because of the vibration caused by the starter generator’s missing screws, initiated a whole series of cascading events that led to the emergency loss of power,” Diehl said.
Jeff Guzzetti, a former Federal Aviation Administration and NTSB investigator, said signs point to an “airworthiness issue.”
“That might tie back to maintenance procedures from when that unit was overhauled or when the fuel system and fuel sensors were tested,” Guzzetti said.
The fiery crash in Laredo near the Mexican border had sent bystanders racing from their cars to help police rescue passengers and crew from the burning aircraft. Video from the scene showed someone trying to smash the cockpit glass with a sledgehammer, while others used makeshift levers as they worked to open the plane’s door. Local officials said a firefighter entered the smoke-filled jet to extract one person still inside after the rest had escaped.
The jet “sustained substantial damage” to its fuselage, both wings, and the tail, according to the NTSB report.
Two pilots and three teenagers survived the crash and were released from the hospital, according to the Laredo Police Department. A dog on board suffered smoke inhalation but was expected to survive, Jose Baeza, an investigator with the police department, said in June.
The crash killed Joshua Baer, a leader in Texas’ technology and startup sectors.
___
This story has been updated to correct the name of the company that operated the jet. It is NetJets, not NetsJet.
GRAPEVINE, Texas (AP) — Wally Funk, an aviation pioneer who was the oldest woman to launch into space, has died. She was 87.
Funk died Wednesday at her apartment in an assisted living facility in the Dallas and Fort Worth suburb of Grapevine, Texas, Grapevine City Councilwoman Duff O’Dell said Thursday. O’Dell, who described herself as Funk’s caregiver, said she was by Funk’s side. Funk had fallen a couple of times recently and had an infection in her leg.
“It took its toll,” O’Dell said in a phone interview.
Funk was one of 13 female pilots who went through the same tests as NASA’s all-male astronaut corps in the early 1960s but never made it into space with that agency. In 2021, she got her chance aboard Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket.
At the time, the 82-year-old was the oldest person to go into space, though the record was later broken by “Star Trek” actor William Shatner and Ed Dwight, America’s first Black astronaut candidate. They were both 90.
Bezos chose Funk as an “honored guest” to ride alongside him and two others on an up-and-down hop from West Texas.
In a post on X, Blue Origin said Funk was a “pioneer in every sense of the word.”
“We were humbled to be part of her journey,” the post said.
O’Dell said Funk was the “most eternally optimistic person” she had ever met.
“She was told by many, many, many men, ‘No, you can’t do this. No you can’t do that,’ ” O’Dell said. “And she never got mad about it. She just was more determined.”
Funk was the first female inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration and the first female air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, according to a brief biography released by the City of Grapevine.
In the 1960s, she and other female pilots went through astronaut training in the Mercury 13 program, but they were not allowed to become astronauts.
“Wally Funk never stopped believing that one day she would reach space. Her passion for flight, perseverance, and love of exploration will continue to inspire generations of Americans. Godspeed, Wally,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman posted Thursday on X.
HOUSTON – A Mexican man living in the U.S. who was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent was not the person federal authorities had been targeting in a Houston operation, U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia said Thursday.
The Democratic congresswoman, whose district includes the Houston neighborhood where the shooting occurred, said acting ICE Director David Venturella told her the agency has confirmed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo “was not a target.”
Salgado Araujo was a homebuilder who had lived in the U.S. for more than 35 years, had no criminal record and was close to finishing the long process of obtaining legal status when he was killed early Tuesday morning, according to his family.
“We’ve got to do something. This is just one more death too many,” Garcia said in an interview with MS Now. “And if we’ve got to bring outside, independent folks to come in and look at it, we should do that.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return an email seeking comment late Thursday.
DHS, which oversees ICE, previously said that federal officers were conducting a targeted operation to arrest a person in the country without legal status when they attempted to stop a vehicle driven by Salgado Araujo. The agency has said Salgado Araujo rammed an ICE vehicle and that a federal officer fired a weapon in self-defense.
Asked whether ICE agents had been specifically targeting Salgado Araujo, DHS said earlier Thursday that officers had been surveilling a property where they had previously observed two white vans.
“On July 7, officers were almost at the target’s address when they observed a white van with an individual who resembled the target. Officers then initiated the vehicle stop,” the department said.
The federal agents weren’t wearing body-worn cameras, DHS said, and few photos or videos surrounding the shooting have emerged publicly in the days since the encounter, unlike other deaths involving federal immigration officers.
In a statement, DHS said the agents at the scene in Houston had not yet been issued body cameras, which it blamed on Democrats and a record government shutdown that was fueled by President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
U.S. Rep. Christian Menefee, a Democrat who also represents Houston, said if the agents didn’t have the devices, it was because Trump and Republican lawmakers did not want them to be carrying them.
“Houston is done accepting excuses from an agency that has more money than it knows what to do with and still can’t manage basic accountability,” he said in a statement.
The Harris County District Attorney’s office said it would conduct an investigation into the shooting. The office is consulting with local prosecutors in Minneapolis, where federal agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens, to learn how they have navigated investigations into federal immigration agents, spokesperson Rafael Lemaitre said.
“Although access to key evidence remains under federal control, we are pursuing investigative avenues available to us and will conduct a review of any information we collect within our reach,” Lemaitre said in an emailed statement.
Three men, including Salgado Araujo’s brother, were detained by ICE during the fatal traffic stop, according to Juan Proaño, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, who has been communicating with their families.
LULAC has yet to obtain video footage that clearly shows what happened during the moments of the shooting and has offered a reward of $5,000 for information from witnesses, Proaño told The Associated Press. The position of Salgado Araujo’s van and ICE vehicles has obstructed security camera footage LULAC has reviewed, he added.
“It’s going to make it even more difficult to find the truth in all this,” he said.
DHS said the ICE agents involved in the incident were expected to receive body-worn cameras in the next 60 days.
In the aftermath of the fatal Minneapolis shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Democrats had refused to fund ICE and the Border Patrol without changes to those operations designed to increase accountability and transparency. Republicans in Congress eventually passed legislation funding just ICE and CBP for three years.
TYLER – State Rep. Cody Harris of Palestine shared his views Thursday on a federal lawsuit against a local groundwater conservation district that could affect the water supply for East Texans.
On Tuesday, Redtown Ranch Holding and Pine Bliss filed a federal lawsuit against the Neches and Trinity Valleys Groundwater Conservation District for their alleged ” deliberate scheme” to stop the company from drilling.
“The idea that he is having his water taken from him is just ridiculous. He’s going to get access to his water that’s underneath the land, but it’s going to be subject to whatever the new rules that the GCD’s adopt, just like everybody else in the district,” State Rep. Cody Harris of Palestine.
According to our news partner KETK, the board’s chairman, Terry Morrow, said in a statement, ” We are here to protect the groundwater we have in the district, and we will do what we can under the law to protect it,” said the board chairman of the Neches and Trinity Valleys Groundwater Conservation District. Read the rest of this entry »
AUSTIN (The Texas Tribune) – Texans lost more than $1 billion to scams involving cryptocurrency in 2025, according to the FBI, second only to California in the amount siphoned away by fraudsters.
Scams using crypto often involve fraudulent investment opportunities, but criminals are increasingly turning to the digital currency as a fast payoff that is difficult for law enforcement to track.
With cryptocurrency scams on the rise, here’s what to look for and what to do if targeted by scammers.
What are the most common cryptocurrency scams in Texas?
Scams generally fall into two categories, said Michael Levine, chief felony prosecutor for the Cyber and Financial Crimes Division of the Harris County district attorney’s office.
The most common are investment schemes where victims buy fraudulent cryptocurrencies or use crypto to invest in fake businesses.
Even legitimate-looking websites can be a front for a fraudulent operation, Levine said, which is why it’s important to vet sites by seeing if the company has been written about in reputable publications or approved by certain banks.
“The software in these things is wonderful, it looks just like an Ameritrade or E-Trade,” Levine said. “It looks just like a legitimate trading platform to the victim, and because it’s all fake, it looks like they’re making a lot of money.”
The best way to ensure your money is safely invested in cryptocurrency is to use verified, known exchanges. Be sure to do research beforehand or ask your banking institution for guidance.
Another common technique — known as romance scams or “pig butchering,” playing on the image of fattening a hog for slaughter — entices would-be victims through flattery and kindness. Once a relationship is established, the victim is directed to invest through a website or app, or directly asked for money through cryptocurrency.
Scammers are also impersonating law enforcement or state agencies, sometimes providing names of real people who work at the departments they are impersonating. Common tactics include telling victims they missed jury duty and now owe fines, or that someone falsified their signature on a legal document.
To bolster the illusion, scammers can “spoof” phone numbers, allowing them to call victims from numbers of reputable sources like a sheriff’s department or city clerk. The easiest way to determine whether you’re speaking to someone from the agency is to simply hang up and call back, or visit in person.
Texas has also seen a spike in cryptocurrency kiosk scams, ATM-like machines that convert cash to digital currency. Scammers impersonating bank employees or law enforcement direct people to pay bail money or transfer “vulnerable” account funds into these machines, which then send crypto directly to the scammer.
No bank or government agency, including a court, police department or licensing board, will ask for cryptocurrency or request payment through a crypto kiosk. If asked to do so, contact your local authorities.
How can I tell if I’m being scammed?
Whether receiving a phone call from someone claiming to be with law enforcement or a text message about a quick investment opportunity, watch out for:
• Strangers offering business opportunities over social media or text.
• Phone numbers that don’t match the official contact info of an agency or business.
• Conversations directed to a third-party app like WhatsApp or Telegram.
• Being discouraged from sharing your situation or the conversation with others, sometimes under threat of financial or legal consequences.
• Being sent official looking legal documents by text message.
• Being provided a callback number that doesn’t match the original caller’s number.
What if I’m scammed or know someone who was swindled?
After ensuring those involved in a scam are safe, immediately contact your banking institution and local law enforcement to file a police report. Be sure to keep all records, documents and messages involved in the scam.
You should also submit complaints and reports to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, also known as IC3, and the Texas attorney general’s office. IC3 gathers data and complaints to help track scammers, and the attorney general can take action against businesses that falsely advertise services.
Because cryptocurrency is able to move so quickly once deposited into a digital wallet, most law enforcement agencies have roughly 36 to 48 hours to secure stolen funds. Most victims do not recover stolen money — but officials stress that reporting the scam is still important.
Scamming victims often feel shame or guilt about being tricked — a side effect that can deter reporting and hurt victims long after the fraud. Yet being victimized by fraud is not uncommon: one in four U.S. adults have been scammed in their lifetime, according to a 2025 Gallup poll, and one in 10 report being scammed more than once.
“There’s a saying in the [scam] world that no one is unscammable, you just haven’t tried the right script yet,” Levine said. “Please don’t feel like you must be a fool if you fall for one of these scams.”
Who is most at risk for cryptocurrency scams?
Those 60 or older are the most frequently targeted for cryptocurrency scams and who lose the most money, according to FBI data, but anyone is susceptible to scams. Those over 60 lost more than $396 million in 2025 in Texas.
For those with family members who are older or less technologically savvy, it can be helpful to walk them through how to identify spam texts or calls and ask them to inform you whenever strangers ask for money.
How is Texas responding to crypto scams?
Texas has a Financial Crimes Intelligence Center based in Smith County that helps law enforcement statewide investigate financial crimes, including cryptocurrency scams. The Texas State Securities Board also investigates fraudulent cryptocurrency activity.
Before the start of the next legislative session in January, state lawmakers are holding committee hearings on a list of issues designated by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in the Senate and House Speaker Dustin Burrows. Those topics include reducing elder fraud and regulating cryptocurrency and associated technologies, including crypto kiosks.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
LUBBOCK (The Texas Tribune) – Faculty groups sued Texas Tech Chancellor Brandon Creighton and the university system’s regents Wednesday, asking a federal judge in El Paso to block classroom restrictions they say have censored professors who teach about race, gender identity and sexual orientation and intentionally discriminated against Black faculty.
The lawsuit, brought by the Texas American Association of University Professors-American Federation of Teachers and the national American Association of University Professors, challenges two memos Creighton issued after becoming chancellor last year.
The groups argue the restrictions outlined in the memos violate the First Amendment by allowing Texas Tech officials to suppress viewpoints they dislike, violate the Fourteenth Amendment by leaving professors unsure what they can teach without being disciplined and discriminate against Black faculty by singling out instruction about Black history, racial inequality and efforts to remedy it.
Creighton’s first memo, issued Dec. 1, told faculty they could face discipline if they did not comply with new limits on course content involving race, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation. It required faculty to submit course material related to those topics for regents to review and approve.
A second memo, issued April 9, went further, ordering the phase-out of academic programs centered on sexual orientation and gender identity and requiring professors in core and lower-level undergraduate courses to use alternate materials if readings, assignments or lectures included those topics.
The memo said some material could still be taught if needed for patient care, professional credentials or advanced coursework, but the lawsuit argues those exceptions were applied inconsistently.
The policies apply across the five-institution system, which includes Texas Tech University, two health sciences centers, Angelo State University and Midwestern State University.
The complaint includes new accounts of how the restrictions have been applied. It alleges a Texas Tech Health Sciences Center professor in Lubbock was told medical students could not participate in or observe care for transgender patients, even when those patients sought treatment for unrelated conditions such as hypertension, migraines or cancer. It also says a professor was told a Holocaust course would have to leave the core curriculum if it included instruction on gay and bisexual victims of the Nazis, and that regents barred professors from teaching Plato’s Republic and Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ National Book Award-winning book about racism in America.
The complaint also alleges an instructor at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center El Paso was told to not use the word “disparity” in class, affecting their ability to adequately teach students because El Paso County residents have a higher prevalence of diabetes. In addition, women along the Texas-Mexico border have a higher rate of cervical cancer mortality, children are hospitalized more for asthma in border counties, and the pregnancy-related mortality rate among Black women in Texas is 2.5 times higher than that of white women, according to the complaint.
One of the medical-training allegations underscores the lawsuit’s claim that Texas Tech’s stated exceptions were confusing and inconsistently applied. Creighton’s memos said some material could still be taught when needed for patient care or professional credentials. But the complaint says the Lubbock professor was initially required to remove material about transgender and intersex patients from a medical school course, even though the professor considered it vital to the course and necessary for medical certification exams. The professor was later told medical students could treat transgender patients during third- and fourth-year clinical rotations, according to the complaint, but only after some students’ rotations had already passed.
The groups are asking a judge to declare Creighton’s memos unconstitutional and block the system from enforcing them or any similar policy. The lawsuit, saying faculty members have already had to certify compliance for summer and fall courses, argues the restrictions will continue to harm them as well as deprive students of instruction they would otherwise receive.
A Texas Tech System spokeswoman rejected the lawsuit’s allegations.
“Our commitment to academic integrity and the First Amendment rights of our students will not be distracted by lawsuits as we continue to deliver rigorous academic programs, relevant coursework and groundbreaking research,” spokeswoman Erin Wilson said in a statement.
Wilson also pushed back on several allegations in the complaint. Teaching about civil rights and historical events, including Nazi crimes, is permitted and instructors are not required to redact or remove works when sexual orientation or gender identity appears in adopted, industry-standard text or as an incidental reference, she said.
The board of regents also has not altered or rejected any course at Texas Tech’s health sciences centers, she said.
Creighton has previously defended the restrictions as necessary to comply with state and federal law and ensure students are provided with “degrees of value.”
In a December interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education cited in the complaint, Creighton said Texas Tech works to send a message that its “door is open to every walk of life” and said the restrictions were meant to foster “diversity of viewpoint.” Asked whether restricting teaching on gender identity, sexuality and race helped achieve that, Creighton said yes and described the guidance as a “continuum of common sense.”
Creighton, a former Republican state senator, became chancellor in November. In the Senate, he chaired the Higher Education Committee and authored Senate Bill 37, a 2025 law that gave governor-appointed regents more authority over curriculum. Creighton’s Dec. 1 memo described Texas Tech’s course review as the “first step” in implementing that law.
The lawsuit argues Creighton’s memos go beyond what lawmakers ultimately passed. An earlier version of SB 37 would have required regents to eliminate curriculum that taught “identity politics” or was based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression or privilege are inherent in the U.S. or Texas institutions. That language did not become part of the law, but the faculty groups argue Creighton later imposed those restrictions after becoming chancellor.
The complaint points to his broader record as a lawmaker to support its claim that the memos were motivated, at least in part, by racial discrimination. It says that after the George Floyd protests, Creighton opposed efforts to remove Confederate monuments and symbols, backed unsuccessful restrictions on teaching called critical race theory at public universities and colleges and authored Senate Bill 17, the state’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion offices and programs in higher education.
“Chancellor Creighton is trying to do through fiat what he couldn’t accomplish in the Texas legislature: erase the history, identities and lived experiences of LGBTQ people and people of color from the classroom,” said Nicholas Hite, senior attorney at Lambda Legal.
The faculty groups are represented by Lambda Legal, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Davis Wright Tremaine LLP.
Texas Tech is not the only Texas university system to restrict course content involving race, gender identity or sexual orientation. Texas A&M University System regents approved a similar policy in November, after a viral recording showed a student confronting a Texas A&M professor over gender identity content in a children’s literature class. That controversy led to the professor’s firing, the removal of two college leaders from their administrative roles and the resignation of the university president as well as a systemwide course audit.
The A&M policy, which was approved before Creighton’s memos, says no system academic course may advocate “race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity” unless the course and relevant materials are approved in advance by the university president. It also says faculty may not teach material inconsistent with a course’s approved syllabus.
Asked why the groups sued Texas Tech and not Texas A&M, Texas AAUP-AFT President Teresa Klein said the organizations are focused on Texas Tech for now but “will be exploring everything.”
Antonio Ingram II, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said Texas Tech represents “one of the most egregious forms of censorship we’ve seen nationwide,” pointing to restrictions on graduate student research and the closure of entire departments. A favorable ruling could affect other systems, including Texas A&M and the University of Texas System, though additional lawsuits might still be needed, he said.
The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
Disclosure: Chronicle of Higher Education, Open Campus, Texas Tech University, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and Texas Tech University System have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in The Texas Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
AUSTIN (The Texas Tribune) – State Rep. James Talarico, the Democratic U.S. Senate nominee, raised a staggering $30 million from April through June, his campaign announced Wednesday — more than triple the amount brought in by his Republican opponent, Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The haul is a record total for a U.S. Senate candidate in the second quarter of an election year, Talarico’s campaign said, noting he has now raised more than $70 million from over 1.5 million donations, including 780,000 individual contributors, since launching his bid in September.
“I’m honored to stand alongside more than 780,000 neighbors who are tired of being divided into teams — red versus blue, left versus right, rural versus urban,” Talarico, D-Austin, said in a statement. “We are uniting Texans onto one team to change this broken, corrupt political system and bring down costs for working families.”
Earlier Wednesday, Paxton’s campaign said he had raised over $9 million in the second quarter of the year — a personal best and the largest amount announced by any non-incumbent Senate GOP candidate this cycle, per his campaign. Both campaigns had yet to file their second-quarter reports, due July 15 to the Federal Election Commission, identifying their donors and how much cash they have on hand.
Talarico’s mammoth fundraising has boosted Democratic hopes that he could become the first Democrat to turn a Senate seat blue since 1988, particularly against Paxton, the Republican nominee who has historically posted relatively weak fundraising totals. Some of Talarico’s fundraising edge could be neutralized, however, by a recent Supreme Court ruling that empowers Paxton to tap into the national GOP’s deep coffers.
Recent public polling has found the race essentially tied.
Talarico’s second-quarter haul easily outpaced those of Texas’ recent Democratic Senate nominees, including the $10.4 million raised by former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke in the same period in 2018. Former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred raised $7.9 million from April through June 2024 on his way to besting O’Rourke’s then-record fundraising.
Talarico broke records in the first three months of this year, too, when he took in a whopping $27 million — more than any other federal candidate in the country over that stretch.
“Running a truly competitive campaign in a state with nearly three times the population of any other battleground state will take unprecedented resources,” Talarico campaign manager Seth Krasne said in a statement. “While the Supreme Court creates new loopholes for billionaires and special interests to prop up their puppets, we’re going to continue building a movement to take back power for working people. Because Big Money is nothing compared to People Power.”
Talarico has sworn off corporate PAC donations, and his campaign said 97% of donations to his bid were $100 or less. The most common profession among his contributors, his campaign added, was teachers.
Texas did not land on national Democrats’ initial list of top Senate targets this cycle, with Alaska, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina and Ohio seen as the party’s prime pickup opportunities. But turmoil surrounding Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee in Maine, this week has sharpened the importance of Talarico’s campaign to Democrats’ quest to retake the Senate.
Platner ended his bid Wednesday after a woman who dated him told Politico he raped her nearly five years ago and numerous Democrats called on him to drop out of the race. He has denied the allegation.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
CHEROKEE COUNTY — An 18-year-old recent New Summerfield ISD graduate has died following a Saturday crash in Cherokee County, the Texas Department of Public Safety announced. A preliminary investigation revealed that the crash occurred on July 4 at around 11 p.m. on FM 2064 near State Highway 135 involving a Jeep Grand Cherokee. DPS confirmed the identity of the driver as 18-year-old Guadalupe Moreira.
Officials believe Moreira veered off the roadway and struck a tree, causing the car to catch fire. DPS said Moreira was pronounced dead on the scene, and an investigation remains ongoing with no further information available at this time.
Following her death, a GoFundMe has been created to help her family with the expenses of her upcoming funeral.
SMITH COUNTY – A man who was arrested in 2025 was recently indicted by a grand jury after being charged with financial abuse of the elderly. According to an arrest affidavit and our news partner KETK, 36-year-old Robert Lee, who worked as a contractor, convinced a person over the age of 65 to pay $64,000 to have their roof repaired after he and his partner convinced the homeowner that their roof was in danger of collapsing. After Lee and his partner had finished their alleged roof repairs, the homeowner had a new contractor come to the home to reevaluate the roof. The contractor informed the victim that Lee had lied to her and that the roof was in no danger of collapsing, according to authorities.
A detective from the Smith County Sheriff’s Office later arrived at the victim’s house and observed that Lee and his partner’s work appeared to have been damaged and covered with roofing tiles.
East Texas breeder who sold sick, aggressive dogs pleads guilty, faces up to 20 years
The detective later went into the victim’s attic to better observe the work Lee had done to the roof and allegedly discovered only one new piece of plywood placed over the hole that Lee had created in the roof. Read the rest of this entry »
NACOGDOCHES, Texas (KETK)– Stephen F. Austin State University announced earlier this week that it has approved a plan to phase out its Early Childhood Laboratory (ECHL) over the next five years.
According to the university, under the new plan, the ECHL will no longer allow infants to enroll in the program starting at the beginning of the 2027-2028 school year. Additionally, children already enrolled in the program will be able to remain through completion.
A part of the university’s decision to phase out the ECHL, which once provided valuable learning opportunities, was due to fewer SFA students completing observations and clinical experiences there. The university said the decline was due to changes in the academic program landscape.
Financial concerns moving forward also forced the university to phase out the ECHL, after it claimed it had put $750,000 into the program over the past five years without receiving any revenue in return.
“This decision reflects the university’s responsibility to balance rising operating costs with available resources while continuing to invest in its academic mission,” the university said. “It is not a reflection of the quality of the ECHL or the dedication of its faculty and staff.”
WOOD COUNTY — A Grand Saline man was sentenced to 30 years in prison earlier this month after being found guilty on two counts of aggravated assault against a public servant. According to our news partner KETK, 20-year-old Connor Lane Scott was arrested in May 2025 after he and three other people led Wood County deputies on a high-speed chase, according to the Wood County Criminal District Attorney’s Office.
The pursuit began after deputies arrived at Lake Holbrook recreational area after receiving reports of underage drinking, a firearm being brandished at a teenage girl, and a threat to shoot at law enforcement. Scott, along with the three others, got into an SUV and left the scene after officials arrived, prompting a chase that reached speeds of up to 112 mph. The district attorney’s office said that Scott shot at a patrol vehicle seven times during the pursuit.
The chase continued through Grand Saline, where the suspects fled from the vehicle and entered a home. Once inside the house, three suspects were taken into custody while Scott was unable to be located. Read the rest of this entry »
AUSTIN (Texas Tribune) – The Texas Stock Exchange will commence trading on Monday, kickstarting the first real test of one of the most well-funded new exchanges to launch in decades.
The Texas Stock Exchange, a Dallas-based startup, will initiate a phased rollout to take place over the course of July. On Monday, the exchange will open to TXSE members, including approved broker-dealers, banks and trading firms, to trade test stocks initially, then the symbols for thousands of stocks and other equities will come online over the course of the month, allowing the public to start trading.
By the third quarter, exchange officials hope to have Exchange-Traded Products, or ETPs, listed on the exchange and corporate listings available during the fourth quarter of this year, according to a statement from the exchange.
Both Texas state government and stock exchange officials hope the Texas Stock Exchange, or TXSE, launch will solidify Dallas’ attempt to become a national financial hub and boost the Texas economy by growing the financial services industry in the state and making money for any Texas companies and investors that are doing business through the exchange.
“With the start of full production trading, any last notions that TXSE is theoretical are instantly swept away,” a TXSE official wrote in a statement Thursday.
Monday’s start of trading is critically important to test-run and demonstrate to companies interested in listing on TXSE that it can provide a viable alternative to the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ, said Sriram Villupuram, a University of Texas at Arlington associate professor of finance.
“Basic technical things, hopefully will work well,” Villupuram said. “This is the first demonstration. It’s like a new car, a brand new company pushing out their first car. I think they’ll get through it fine, but things can go wrong. This is a high tech exchange at the end of the day.”
While most trading is now done electronically, the location of a stock exchange still matters, said Ray Perryman, president of the Waco-based economic research company The Perryman Group. Investors tend to hold stocks in and trade more on nearby companies, and Texas has both ingredients for a successful exchange — a rapidly growing pool of investors via the growth of the financial sector in the Dallas area, as well as Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the state that they can invest in, he said.
“A homegrown national exchange means more jobs, more investment, and more growth opportunities for businesses and communities across the Lone Star State,” said Gabriela von zur Muehlen, senior vice president and chief policy officer at the Texas Association of Business.
Hype around TXSE has been building since the June 2024 announcement that the exchange intended to launch with $120 million in backing from large investment firms like BlackRock and Citadel Securities. In the time since that announcement, anticipation has only grown as the exchange received federal approval and received further investments from some of the largest financial institutions in the world, now totaling $275 million.
At the same time, financial services in the Dallas area have continued to grow. JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Charles Schwab now have thousands of employees based in the region, coined “Y’all Street.”
“The center of gravity for American capitalism is now headquartered in the boom belt,” Gov. Greg Abbott said during a TXSE event in April. “The Texas Stock Exchange is the natural extension of that capitalism.”
Abbott and other state officials have cited the strength of the Texas economy, the eighth largest in the world if it were its own country, as the reason TXSE will succeed where previous exchanges have failed. The second most Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. are headquartered in Texas, leading New York and closely trailing California.
The American investment system has long been centered around the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ, both private exchanges based in New York City.
Perryman said decades of consolidation among regional exchanges have led to what is effectively a NYSE and NASDAQ duopoly for companies that wish to be publicly traded.
Since TXSE announced its intention to launch in Dallas, both the NYSE and NASDAQ have created branches of their exchanges in Texas: NYSE Texas and NASDAQ Texas. TXSE officials say those moves validate TXSE’s efforts and show Wall Street is paying attention to the upstart exchange and strength of Dallas’ growing financial sector.
Villupuram said it will take years of effort before TXSE is a true competitor to NYSE and NASDAQ because of each companies’ decades of expertise and reputation among companies that want to be publicly traded.
The creation of NYSE Texas and NASDAQ Texas, rather, are validations of Texas’ economic strength and the size of the financial sector in the Dallas area, Villupuram added.
“There is genuinely business to be made here, and part of it can also be a fear of missing out,” Villupuram said.
Over the past 20 years, New York has seen a 16% growth in investment banking jobs, compared to a 111% expansion in Texas. Across the entire financial services sector, Texas has more jobs — 939,600 — than New York or California, Perryman said.
“Texas has evolved from being primarily a back-office location into a major hub for technology, operations, wealth management, trading support, and increasingly, some front-office and investment banking functions,” Perryman said.
Regardless of the likelihood of TXSE breaking into the NYSE and NASDAQ duopoly, the competition of exchanges in Texas will create a feedback loop that leads to greater investment in Texas companies and more jobs in the financial services sector, Perryman said.
The exchange will be entirely digital but have a physical presence in Dallas, recently signing a lease at the Bank of America Tower in the Uptown neighborhood of Dallas, the Dallas Business Journal reported in May.
TXSE has announced a handful of Exchange-Traded Products, or ETPs, that will be listed on the exchange. Unlike an individual company stock, ETPs allow investors to buy into an entire market, like the S&P 500, oil or gold.
The company is yet to announce any corporate listings, although officials said those will come later this summer and into the fall as the launch of corporate listings gets closer.
Drawing those corporate listings to the exchange will be crucial to TXSE’s long-term survival, Villupuram said. Stock exchanges primarily generate revenue through listing fees collected by companies that are listed on an exchange, he added.
Both NYSE and NASDAQ have strict requirements companies must meet to be listed on the exchanges, including benchmarks for financial solvency, corporate transparency and regulatory compliance. That’s a high bar for companies to meet and achieving those requirements shows a company’s maturity, Villupuram said, but it can also effectively limit the ability of smaller companies to access investors through the NYSE and NASDAQ duopoly.
The $275 million in startup funds is a significant amount of money for a new exchange, Villupuram said, but he also noted that the technology to start and operate an exchange is incredibly expensive. Hundreds of billions of dollars flow through the NYSE and NASDAQ on any given day that markets are open.
As a comparison point, the annual salary of the New York Stock Exchange Group CEO is more than $6 million. NYSE operates as a subsidiary of Intercontinental Exchange, which pays its CEO more than $22 million annually.
“There will be several years and years of slowly growing, attracting more listings,” Villupuram said. “So compared to those big ones, it’s maybe not a lot, but from where TXSE is starting and investing, it’s significant.”
TXSE is starting slow with the goal of building toward solvency over time.
All National Market System symbols — such as TSLA for Tesla Inc. — should be available to be traded on TXSE by the end of July as they are slowly rolled out, a TXSE official said. There are more than 12,000 publicly traded stocks available to investors in the U.S., according to financial services company Motley Fool.
Although the ringing of a bell typically symbolizes the start of the trading day in a stock exchange, there will be no bell ringing on Monday in Dallas. If all things go as planned this month, exchange officials hope to have one on hand during a celebration in the near future.
Disclosure: Texas Association of Business and University of Texas – Arlington have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
Correction, July 3, 2026, 9:32 a.m. Central: A previous version of the story incorrectly stated when trading will be open to the public. The exchange will open trading initially to its members and then to the public over the course of the month of July.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
AUSTIN – (The Texas Tribune) – Last month, the leader of a small Texas state commission — tasked with aiding criminal defense for low-income Texans — received an unusual request from top officials working with the Trump administration.
The U.S. Department of Justice needed their help providing legal services to immigrant children in their deportation cases, said Scott Ehlers, the executive director of the state’s Indigent Defense Commission.
The first call to Ehlers came from high-ranking lieutenants with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Then James McHenry, the DOJ’s chief administrative hearing officer, who briefly preceded Pam Bondi as acting U.S. attorney general, reached out, Ehlers confirmed to The Texas Tribune.
The calls raised eyebrows from across the Texas agency, not just because of where they came from, but because the extraordinary request by the Trump administration was well outside of the commission’s experience and scope.
Ehlers told the officials that he did not believe that immigration defense for children was legal under his organization’s mandate, which the state Legislature created explicitly for criminal defense more than a decade ago.
A Justice Department spokesperson, who declined to be named, confirmed that officials with the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, tasked with the care of immigrant children, asked for the Texas Attorney General’s office assistance in representing immigrant children, “however, they believed they could not do so, which is why they recommended the Texas Indigent Defense Commission to take on the project.”
The DOJ, the spokesperson said, “was asked to look into the legality” of contracting with the Texas commission. Federal money would be funneled to Texas from ORR, but that agency did not respond to further questions about a proposed contract.
The request comes as the Trump administration seeks to end protections for immigrant children on multiple fronts, including threatening to terminate the existing federally-mandated contract for legal assistance to minors facing deportation. A temporary contract with the longstanding legal services provider, the Acacia Center for Justice, a national nonprofit, is set to end this month. At the same time, the government has abruptly shuttered at least 50 federal shelters detaining immigrant children across Democratic states such as New York, Illinois and Michigan even as federal contractors in Texas advertised hundreds of shelter jobs. Lawyers and advocates say that indicates that they may soon expect to receive children from elsewhere in the country as so few are currently allowed to cross the border.
They worry that the administration’s calls to Texas suggest a broader effort to transfer unaccompanied minors to the state, from where it is easier to quickly deport them.
“We are concerned, as are our legal service provider partners, about a potential transfer of children to Texas where there is no independent oversight of facilities and away from many of the attorneys with whom children have built trust,” said Shaina Aber, executive director of Acacia Center, which holds the overseeing federal contract for legal representation to immigrant children. “We are awaiting the government’s plan for the tens of thousands of children — including over 20,000 who are currently represented — who receive services under this contract, many of whom are outside of Texas.”
Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees ORR, said the administration continues to pursue “every available avenue” to help kids obtain legal representation for their immigration proceedings.
Agency officials did not respond to questions about whether such transfers would occur. They said, however, that many kids initially crossed the Mexico border with Texas, where there is sufficient capacity to detain the nearly 2,000 children currently in nationwide custody.
Spokespeople for Paxton and Gov. Greg Abbott did not respond to detailed questions about the involvement of the state.
Trump’s efforts to end protections for immigrant kids
Congress in 2000 passed a bipartisan bill that, among its stipulations, required the government to pay for some legal services for children who cross the border alone, based on the widely-held belief that children should not represent themselves in deportation proceedings.
The demand for funding became more urgent starting in 2012 when hundreds of thousands of immigrant children, mostly from Central America, began crossing the Texas border seeking to escape violence and poverty or reunite with their relatives in the U.S. Because of the federal laws and court settlement agreements intended to protect children, they for years have been among the hardest population to quickly deport.
Since taking office last year, Trump officials have chipped away at these protections, including making it more difficult for relatives to obtain children in custody, arresting them after welfare checks and suing to end a decades-long federal settlement agreement overseeing the rights of children in custody. Children are now staying in federal detention for months, prompting congressional scrutiny.
The administration is also litigating to end the legally mandated representation contract in federal court and have failed to pay providers while last month raiding some organization’s offices seeking evidence of financial impropriety and personal information of children. The government also is considering having military lawyers represent the government in children’s cases, Bloomberg Law reported.
Government lawyers have repeatedly argued that their legal representation is not mandated. At a hearing in April, for example, Jonathan K. Ross, a Justice Department attorney, told the court that “not only is there not a right to direct legal representation at the expense of the Government,” but pro bono lawyers could serve immigrant children at their own expense.
Lawyers for the advocates at the next hearing in the ongoing lawsuit this month plan to argue that the government is in contempt of federal court, partly because of the lack of payment. Kids In Need of Defense, a nonprofit founded by actress Angelina Jolie and the Microsoft Corporation, ended its subcontract with the Acacia Center this week as a result, saying the government owed it more than $20 million for legal services going back as far as December and has drastically reduced its staff.
“The attacks on federally funded legal service providers and the ongoing delay in payments to these organizations, as well as the unreasonable demand for sensitive data, fail to reflect the vital role attorneys play in protecting unaccompanied children and upholding the rule of law,” the organization’s president, Wendy Young, said in a statement this week. “We?are oftentimes ?these?children’s most?critical?line of defense against trafficking, exploitation, and abuse.”
The overarching temporary contract, overseen by the Acacia Center, ends on July 31. Although the administration is required to provide the organization with weeks of notice for how to transition the ongoing legal cases of children, it has not yet done so, which the groups argue is unlawful. At the same time, repatriation organizations in Central America have been told to prepare for a large number of children returned by the same day that contract ends.
In a recent letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, who oversees the child resettlement agency, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden wrote that he had received “credible information” that the administration was using an “unprecedented legal framework” to quickly deport more than 500 immigrant children in its custody.
The Oregon Democrat, a ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee overseeing the budget, said to the Tribune this week that the Texas calls further add to his alarm about the plans for immigrant kids. Wyden’s staff last week raised concerns with Texas officials about the potential contract for legal representation but did not receive a confirmation of a plan.
“A sole source contract handed out by the Texas Attorney General to handle legal representation of unaccompanied children is not legal representation at all,” Wyden told the Tribune. “It is the Trump deportation agenda being executed by a political ally paid for by taxpayer dollars.”
A Trump-aligned state
Immigration rights advocates say consolidating immigrant children in a border state aligned with the Trump administration would make it easier to deport them.
Jonathan White, a former deputy director of ORR during Trump’s first administration, said that the recent effort is a “transparent part of a larger pattern of moving all of the program’s capabilities and resources into Texas with a friendly political partnership with the governor’s office there and the proximity to the border in order to turn all of these systems into platforms for removal.”
Texas cases are argued to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that has frequently ruled in the Trump administration’s favor on cases seeking to restrict the rights of immigrants. That court, for example, agreed that the government can refuse to release most immigrants from detention. As a result, habeas petitions that argue people are wrongfully imprisoned have overwhelmed Texas federal courts and are taking months to process. Immigration judges in the state deny asylum at a higher rate than elsewhere, according to federal statistics. An average of four deportation flights leave the state daily, the most in the country, according to ICE Flight Monitor, a human rights organization that tracks it.
Texas, along with Florida, also no longer regulates childcare facilities for immigrant children, preventing the state from investigating claims of neglect and abuse as it had for decades. Abbott ended that oversight through an executive order in 2021, blaming the Biden administration for encouraging illegal immigration and conflating the issue with the ongoing longstanding state foster care crisis.
“The state of Texas is not prepared to handle this undertaking in a humane way,” said Rochelle Garza, a South Texas attorney and executive director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, a statewide nonprofit legal advocacy group.
Garza, who previously lost against Paxton as a Democrat and serves on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a bipartisan group created during the Eisenhower administration, said the administration’s outreach to Texas is “simply an attempt to undermine the federal government’s constitutional role and responsibility to execute immigration law.”
Texas Indigent Defense Commission
It remains unclear whether the Texas Indigent Defense Commission can legally take on the work representing immigrant children.
Rodney Ellis, a current Harris County commissioner, was a Houston state senator when he helped usher through a law creating the state’s legal framework for indigent defense. Ellis and two commission board members said the administration’s request for assistance on immigrant children was confounding. Helping to defend kids for civil immigration offenses is not what his bill intended, he said.
The legislation required courts to formalize procedures to provide attorneys for those who cannot afford them and set the stage for the creation of the Texas Indigent Defense Commission in 2011. Since then, the number of misdemeanor defendants without attorneys in the state have dropped by more than a half.
The organization oversees nearly three dozen state public defender offices serving more than 80 counties and operates as an entity funneling state money and highlighting best practices. Abbott’s office asked the commission to help represent the mostly misdemeanor defendants state troopers arrested during the multi-billion dollar border security program, known as Operation Lone Star, that the governor unveiled in 2021.
Despite its successes, the commission faces a significant attorney shortage and not enough resources to meet demand, making Texas the 46th in the nation when it comes to public defense funding per capita. The state only pays about 10 cents out of every dollar of criminal indigent defense costs and the commission is asking the Legislature for an increase of more than $242 million next year to meet some of the needs over the biennium.
“The state has never put any resources into us meeting our constitutional mandate that requires that people be given adequate legal representation,” Ellis said. “This suggestion to expand the mandate is ludicrous and sounds like just a way to ignore the intent of the legislation because you’re trying to thumb your nose at federal procurement rules.”
Jim Bethke, a vice chair of the commission’s board who ran and lost as a Democrat candidate for Bexar County attorney last year, said that the commission was created to improve criminal defense, not initiatives outside of that mandate.
“If the Legislature determines that the commission’s responsibilities should be expanded, it has the authority to do so,” said Bethke, whose term on the commission ends this year.
State Rep. Joe Moody, an El Paso Democrat and member of the board, said he too was concerned. Although the Legislature in 2023 expanded the commission’s mandate to help with state family protective services cases, that has never been fully funded.
“What it definitely doesn’t provide for is federal civil defense,” said Moody, adding that he does not believe the state could do so without changing the government code.
It is possible that Abbott could issue an executive order to circumvent that, although the commission’s board remained unclear on that legality.
The government has previously attempted to move immigrant children to the Texas border and quickly deport them. Last year, government contractors awakened Guatemalan children in federal shelters or foster care and with little notification to their lawyers, abruptly transferred them to shelters near the Texas border. A federal judge halted that effort as some children were on a plane in Harlingen about to fly to Guatemala. The litigation is ongoing.
A move of immigrant children to Texas would follow on that Guatemalan attempt, said Marion “Mickey” Donovan-Kaloust, director of legal services for the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a nonprofit organization in California involved in the legal case.
Late this week, her organization noticed that the policy manual on ORR’s website regarding the mandated 48-hour notices to attorneys before children are transferred suddenly went dark, saying “restricted access.” ORR did not respond to questions about that but advocates worry that is another sign that the administration intends to quietly transfer children.
“We’ve seen this pattern before,” said Donovan-Kaloust.
These suspected moves to Texas, she said, would be “the next phase of that same policy playbook.”
Disclosure: Microsoft has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Trump administration plans to open a 528-bed holding facility for migrant families and unaccompanied children next to an airport hub, positioning itself to speed up deportations.
The location in Alexandria, Louisiana, would remove logistical headaches caused by wrangling children from foster homes and shelters across the country and not having anywhere to put them during final preparations for flight. Those obstacles were apparent last year when Guatemalan children were awoken at night and given almost no time to get to Harlingen, Texas, where they waited on an airport tarmac for hours.
A federal judge prevented their deportation, but the chaotic episode illustrated the challenges authorities face because they don’t have anywhere to put families and children near the airport. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is calling the Alexandria facility a “staging area,” not a detention center, and says people would only be there a few days at most.
However, several immigration advocates expressed concern that children could be held at the new facility for weeks or months, which happened at other federal immigration holding sites. These advocates are also concerned about oversight, and say the facility represents a departure from how the government manages those children.
“It’s an expansion of the deportation system in ways we haven’t seen before,” said Leecia Welch, chief legal counsel at the nonprofit Children’s Rights. “There’s just so much that could go wrong with this facility.”
ICE has tapped a private prison company to run the deportation facility
Unaccompanied children who are in the U.S. without parents or close relatives are not taken to facilities overseen by ICE. Instead, the law says they must be swiftly placed in the care of state-licensed shelters and foster care programs.
Those are run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Department of Health and Human Services. However, that agency isn’t involved in the Alexandria facility’s operation, according to a spokesperson at the airfield where it’s being built.
Instead, the facility would be run by a nonprofit arm of LaSalle Corrections, a private prison contractor, according to Ralph Hennessy, executive director of the England Airpark Authority. He said it could be operational as early as August.
ICE officials signed a contract late last month to build the facility at the former military base near Alexandria International Airport, roughly 175 miles (280 kilometers) northwest of New Orleans, Hennessy said.
It would operate as a 72-hour holding center for migrants awaiting deportation, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.
Compass Connections, a Texas-based nonprofit that runs shelters for unaccompanied immigrant children, had originally been tapped to help operate the facility and laid out plans during a public presentation in February.
But the company’s president, Sonya Thompson, told the AP last week that it was no longer involved. She did not elaborate.
Officials have said the facility is for ‘self-deporting’ families
In public board meetings, airpark officials said the facility is a “humanitarian effort” for families that are “self-deporting.” Immigration advocates say families and unaccompanied children sometimes make that decision under pressure or because they don’t understand their options.
“These are people that are volunteering to go back home and they’re going back home as a family unit,” Hennessy told the AP.
The facility would sit next to the nation’s largest hub for deportations. More than 4,400 immigration enforcement flights came into and out of the Alexandria International Airport in 2025, according to data from the ICE Flight Monitor, an initiative of Human Rights First. ICE planning documents say families and children at the facility “are in the legal custody of ICE and can only be released at the direction of ICE.”
The agency has instructed contractors that families at the facility cannot be referred to as prisoners, detainees or inmates, records show. The agency ordered contractors to not use bars or cages when transporting families and unaccompanied children. The facility will not be required to engage in headcounts and should allow families to “wear their own clothes,” the agency added.
The private prison company runs other ICE detention centers
Louisiana-based LaSalle Corrections runs a range of private prisons and federal immigration detention centers throughout the South, including the “Louisiana Lockup” inside the state’s maximum-security prison in Angola.
The official contractor for the new ICE holding facility will be the company’s nonprofit arm, the LaSalle Family Foundation. According to its tax records, the nonprofit provides chaplain services and educational programming in correctional facilities.
However, LaSalle Corrections itself will be involved in operating the holding facility and ensuring compliance, the company’s chief financial officer, Tim Kurpiewski, wrote in an email reviewed by the AP.
LaSalle spokesperson Scott Sutterfield declined to comment.
The deaths of two detainees have been reported since April at a LaSalle-run ICE facility in the state.
Winn Correctional Center was also found in June to have violated standards governing environmental health and safety, food service, use-of-force, medical care and other subjects, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General.
NACOGDOCHES, Texas (KETK) – A 12-year-old boy was flown to a hospital on Saturday after they were shot in Nacogdoches.
According to the Nacogdoches Police Department, the 12-year-old was in the Eastwood Terrace subdivision at around 11:38 p.m. on July 4th when they were hit by gunfire. Nacogdoches PD said the boy was flown to a hospital for treatment and he’s now in stable condition.
Detectives have been investigating the shooting since last night in order to determine if it was intentional, accidental or possibly the result of celebratory gunfire from July 4th festivities.
NACOGDOCHES, Texas (KETK) – Three people were injured on Sunday morning after two vehicles crashed on Northwest Stallings Drive in Nacogdoches.
According to the Nacogdoches Police Department, the crash happened when a vehicle turned the wrong way on to NW Stallings Drive at around 1:45 a.m. on Sunday and hit a vehicle heading the other direction. All three people involved in the crash were then taken to local hospitals for treatment.
Nacogdoches PD said the condition of the three injured in the crash is unknown to them at this time but investigators are looking into whether or not any charges for intoxicated driving will be filed in connection to this crash.
CARTHAGE – Former Panola County District Attorney Danny Buck Davidson died at 79-years-old on Sunday morning in Carthage, after serving in public office for decades. According to our new partner KETK, Davidson was born in Henderson on May 10, 1947. He attended Beckville High School and later got his bachelors of business administration degree from UT Arlington before getting his law degree from Baylor Law School in 1974.
According to his obituary, Davidson was first elected as Panola County Judge in that same year and was re-elected in 1978. Davidson then practiced private law for a number of years before he was elected as the Panola County District Attorney in 1995. He held that position for nearly 30 years until his retirement in 2024.
During his tenure as DA, Davidson served as prosecutor in the Marjorie Nugent murder case. The case was depicted in the 2011 film “Bernie”, where actor Matthew McConaughey played Davidson across from actor Jack Black, who played the film’s titular main character Bernie Tiede. Read the rest of this entry »
HENDERSON COUNTY – A Henderson County Sheriff’s Office deputy shot a man at Malakoff Cemetery on Sunday. According to our news partner KETK, a deputy responded to the Malakoff Cemetery on County Road 1400 at around 12:18 p.m. on Sunday because of a reported suicidal man. The deputy responding to the scene saw the man and he was reportedly armed with a pistol.
According to the sheriff’s office, the deputy had asked him to drop the pistol several times but the man raised the gun in the deputy’s direction, which prompted the deputy to shoot the man in the abdomen. The deputy then notified dispatchers that he had shot the man. The deputy started to tend to the man’s injuries until EMS arrived to transport him to a local hospital, where he’s currently in stable condition, according to the sheriff’s office.
The Texas Rangers and the Henderson County District Attorney’s Office have been contacted in order to investigate this shooting, which is the standard protocol for all shootings involving law enforcement officers.
SMITH COUNTY – One child is dead after they were fatally injured in an ATV crash in Smith County on Saturday. According to Smith County Emergency Services District #2, a minor was killed in an ATV crash on FM 2493 at around 10:30 p.m. on Saturday night. FM 2493 runs from Bullard through Flint and into Tyler.
Information about the crash is limited but the Texas Department of Public Safety is responsible for investigating most fatal crashes on public roads.
In 2025, the Bullard area also lost 9th grader Madison Nelson to an ATV crash.
LONGVIEW — Newly released records have provided more details about an alleged assault outside Whisky J’s in Longview last month that left a woman seriously injured. According to arrest affidavits and our news partner KETK, officers responded to the bar on the morning of June 21 after reports of an assault in the parking lot.
The victim told officers she was walking through the parking lot after leaving the bar when she was suddenly attacked by multiple people. She said she did not know the suspects or have any prior issues with anyone inside the bar. She described one attacker as a Black woman wearing an orange wig.
Investigators interviewed several witnesses, including a security guard who told officers he heard a woman say, “The next white b***h that walks out, I’m going to hit her,” before seeing a group of women assault the victim. Two other witnesses also told officers they saw multiple women attack the victim, while another said he heard someone say, “Any white girl can get it,” and “Free Karmelo” before the assault began. Read the rest of this entry »
TYLER – America’s 250th anniversary is here and East Texans across the area were out celebrating on Saturday with fireworks, hotdogs, an airshow and more. According to our news partner KETK, Tyler’s annual July 4 Festival moved into its new home at The Park of East Texas on Saturday. The free event featured food trucks, local vendors, family-friendly activities and they topped it all off with a fireworks show.
Over at the Boulders at Lake Tyler, they celebrated the holiday with a Red, White & Wings airshow where East Texans could enjoy food trucks, and watch an airshow flyover. The event also served as a fundraiser for local veterans with funds being donated to CampV.
In Kilgore, residents gathered at Kilgore City Park for their July 4th celebration, which was complete with food vendors, family fun, an inflatable obstacle course and their very own fireworks show.
CASS COUNTY, Texas (KETK) – The Linden Volunteer Fire Department responded to a fire at an oil storage tank site on Friday.
The fire was reportedly started after a bolt of lighting hit an oil storage site off of County Road 1754 when storms were moving through Cass County at around 3:04 p.m. Because the oil site was already burning, the department said they couldn’t do much until the fire burned itself out, at which time they sprayed it with foam.
Linden firefighters were assisted at the scene by Cass County Emergency Services District 2, Cass County Emergency Services District 4 and the Avinger Volunteer Fire Department.
Officials with Linden VFD said the fire was extinguished at 6:30 p.m. on Friday.
ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Egypt coach Hossam Hassan said he considered the matter resolved after he and team director Ibrahim Hassan had a physical confrontation with a police officer at the team’s hotel in Dallas.
Video began circulating Thursday, a day before Egypt beat Australia in the round of the 32 at the World Cup, showing both men arguing with a Dallas police officer, apparently over a player preparing to take a picture with a young fan in the hotel lobby.
The officer approaches Hossam Hassan first, but his interaction with Ibrahim Hassan became a shoving match. Ibrahim Hassan appeared to be upset at the officer intervening.
Dallas police issued a statement saying officers were responding to a request from hotel security about an individual without event credentials attempting to gain access. The statement said the issue was resolved at the scene, and that police met with Egyptian representatives to address their concerns.
Hossam Hassan said through a translator the team had accepted an apology from police.
“We are really happy to be here at this tournament and we are satisfied with the security personnel that are accompanying us,” Hossam Hassan said. “I would like to point to the high-level organization we have with us and the level of security we have with us.”
Hassan is the first person to play and coach for Egypt at the World Cup. The victory over Australia came in Egypt’s debut in the knockout round of the tournament.
___
See more of AP’s World Cup coverage here
PALESTINE — Eight people were hospitalized on Wednesday morning following a single-vehicle crash involving a prison bus carrying several inmates as they headed to the Palestine Unit. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) said one of their bus was in a single-vehicle crash between Donie and Groesbeck on Highway 164, east of Highway 139. The bus was transporting 26 inmates from local jails to the Gurney Unit in Palestine for intake.
TDCJ said all inmates were accounted for, and three staff members were on the bus.
Seven inmates and a staff member were taken to a local hospital and law enforcement believes there are no life-threatening injuries.
MORRIS COUNTY, Texas (KETK) — In an effort to encourage economic growth while protecting its natural resources, the Morris County Commissioners Court has adopted a resolution to work with state legislators and agencies to support further regulation of data centers in Texas.
On June 22, commissioners signed the resolution, outlining their request to the state to require data center projects to undergo rigorous review to address their environmental impacts and to adopt standards that promote efficient use of resources.
The court said it recognizes that data centers are “essential to the future economy” but aims to ensure that economic growth is pursued responsibly, with sustainability in mind.
“Economic development and resource stewardship are not competing priorities. These two goals go hand in hand,” Morris County Judge Doug Reeder said on a social media post, where he shared the full resolution. “Morris County can continue to welcome investment while also insisting that growth be responsible, sustainable, and respectful of the people and communities who call this county home. To that end, we are asking state lawmakers to enact legislation giving local governments more control over the planning and regulating of development directly affecting our local infrastructure and resources.”
In its resolution, the court supports state requirements for the transparency and disclosure of projected electricity and water use and the anticipated impacts on county roads, infrastructure and public safety.
Additionally, the court asks legislators and related agencies to adopt standards for data centers that require them to prioritize efficient resource use, such as using water and power-efficient technology and coordinating with regional planning groups.
At the end of the resolution, the county requests state lawmakers adopt the following legislation to ensure incoming data centers use resources responsibly:
Evaluate and implement policies to improve the transparency of projected electric demand and water consumption of large-scale computing facilities
Establish reasonable requirements for infrastructure planning, resource impact review and mitigation of significant public impacts
Promote coordination among state agencies, counties, municipalities, utility providers and developers
Ensure that local governments are provided opportunities to participate in planning processes affecting local infrastructure and resources
Preserve Texas’ ability to attract technological investment while protecting taxpayers, ratepayers, landowners and natural resources
The resolution will be sent to the governor, lieutenant governor, legislators representing Morris County, the Public Utility Commission of Texas, ERCOT and other state and regional entities.
SMITH COUNTY — Records reveal new details leading up to the arrest of three Smith County women for child endangerment, after a two-month-old was placed in a medically induced coma.
According to our news partner KETK, medical staff at a local Tyler hospital alerted Child Protective Services after Sidney Whitt, 21, came in with her two-month-old, stating “she hadn’t had a wet diaper in three days and she was fatigued,” a Smith County affidavit revealed. While at the hospital, the baby reportedly began having seizures, lasting about an hour, and had visible bruises on her face, cheek and jawline. Hospital staff believed that seizures may have been caused by having been violently shaken.
The infant was then transported to a hospital in Dallas for further medical care.
In a later interview, a report revealed that Whitt had left her children locked in a bedroom when leaving to meet with Jacqulyn Morales, her roommate, and her boyfriend at a hotel where they consumed alcohol and drugs. Whitt’s and Morales’ children were left under the care of Shelby Munoz, Morales’ 18-year-old sister. Read the rest of this entry »
KILGORE – There are now 27 confirmed New World Screwworm cases in the United States, 26 of them in Texas. A ripple effect of the worm’s spread is already being felt Rusk County, where ‘That Crazy Dog Lady’ has been forced to stop intake of dogs until 20 are transported to New York, which is one of the states now restricting dogs coming from Texas.
“Our major partner is in the state of New York which has banned entry from any Texas dogs,” owner of ‘That Crazy Dog Lady’ Vanessa Cogswell said. “So, we were supposed to have 20 puppies leaving on Monday to our partner in New York, and unfortunately, they will not be able to travel.”
Her non-profit provides rescue and foster services in rural communities without animal control services. Read the rest of this entry »
DALLAS (AP) — Drop thousands of Argentina fans into Texas for the World Cup and the debate is inevitable. It’s not about who has the best team or whether Lionel Messi is the best player at the tournament. It’s about who produces the best, most succulent steaks, and how to prepare the meat.
That’s right: There’s a beef about beef between two of the top cattle-raising areas of the world, where steak is deeply ingrained in diet and culture. Texas ranks No. 1 in the United States in beef production and the U.S. is second only to Brazil globally, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Argentina ranks sixth.
It’s a high-steaks question: Who does do it best?
The case for Argentine beef
“Argentine beef is simply unbeatable. The savory texture, the style of the cut — there is no competing with it,” said Carlos Eduardo Barahona, 64, an Argentine chef who’s lived in Texas since 1998.
From the cheapest cuts to the most expensive, Argentina is tops, asserts Barahona, who has worked in restaurants across Argentina, Uruguay, and Texas.
“You can make an (Argentine) asado with the cheapest cut in our country and you will enjoy it. Here, you can use the best meat, like tenderloin, and depending on its source, it can turn out tough, inedible or tender. But our beef has a completely different flavor profile,” Barahona said.
Argentine beef cattle is mostly grass-fed on open pastures, taking longer to reach the point it is ready for market. The result is leaner meat with intense earthy flavors.
The case for Texan beef
Predominantly grain-fed beef in Texas and the U.S. will have more marbling — the streaks of intramuscular fat that act as internal baster and make the meat juicy and tender — and a sweeter flavor.
“There’s no better beef than U.S. beef, particularly Texas beef,” said Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller.
But Argentine beef is very good too, Miller said. Thanks to Texas.
Miller said his agency opened a marketing office more than a decade ago to connect Texas’ cattle raisers with ranchers in South America, notably in Argentina.
“I don’t want to disparage our friends in Argentina, but we have helped them improve,” he said.
“Their genetics were lacking. We do have them up to pretty high quality. We sold them a lot of semen, embryos, and breeding stock,” Miller added.
Miller congratulated Argentine farmers on improving the quality of their cows.
“Their herds have American genetics in them, so they should be good,” Miller said.
The verdict is in the eye of the beefholder
Argentine fan Gonzalo Herrera browsed packaged meat at a Walmart in Arlington, Texas, after watching Messi score two goals in a win over Austria. He shrugged at the whose-beef-is-better debate.
“Honestly, I don’t see a massive difference,” Herrera said as he packed four T-bone steaks into his shopping cart.
“The key is knowing exactly which cuts to buy and finding the equivalent of what we eat in Argentina,” he said, shaking his head at the $45 price.
“Prices are higher here,” Herrera said.
The beef banter just as easily boils down to recipes and preferences in style and thickness of cuts. It’s a matter of taste, quite literally, when it comes to seasoning, searing, smoking, butter, pepper, sauces and so forth.
At Corrientes 348 Argentinian Steakhouse in Dallas, steaks are prepared with just salt and mesquite charcoal, said assistant manager Emmanuel Tobon.
“There’s a big difference. Texans use a lot of pepper, they use butter, they use a little barbecue (sauce),” Tobon said. “(Argentines) like to bring all the flavor of the steak by only using salt.”
Argentina still has at least one more match to play in Dallas, on Saturday. Fans of the Albiceleste have been packing the restaurant, seeking a quick taste of home during the World Cup.
“They have been enjoying the Texas culture,” Tobon said. “(But) it has been a great pleasure to have all of them, to make them feel like home.”
Argentines are fiercely proud of their steak culture, recipes that have been passed down for generations, and the “sacred” work of the grill master at large family meals, he said.
For Fernando Garcia Morillo, an Argentine from Buenos Aires who now lives near Miami, the meat from both countries is great. But he longs for the traditions of home whenever he orders steak in the U.S.
“I order just salt, no pepper, just plain,” Morillo said. “Sometimes they use a lot of sauce.”
He dismissed any notion of a beef between the U.S and Argentina.
“Maybe there’s a rivalry as usual against Brazil, our neighbor,” he said. “I love the U.S. meat.”
___
Vertuno reported from Austin, Texas.
___
See more of AP’s World Cup coverage here