Today is
Thursday April 03, 2025
AUSTIN (ABC) – The measles outbreak in western Texas is continuing to grow with 18 cases confirmed over the last five days, bringing the total to 327 cases, according to new data published Tuesday.
Nearly all of the cases are in unvaccinated individuals or in individuals whose vaccination status is unknown, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS). At least 40 people have been hospitalized so far.
Just two cases have occurred in people fully vaccinated with the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine, according to the data.
In the Texas outbreak, children and teenagers between ages 5 and 17 make up the majority of cases at 140, followed by children ages 4 and under accounting for 105 cases, according to the data.
“Due to the highly contagious nature of this disease, additional cases are likely to occur in the outbreak area and the surrounding communities. DSHS is working with local health departments to investigate the outbreak,” the department said in a press release.
It comes as another case of measles was confirmed in New Mexico, bringing the total to 43, according to data from the state Department of Health. The majority of cases are in Lea County, which borders Gaines County — the epicenter of the outbreak in Texas.
Additionally, two cases of measles were confirmed in Erie County, Pennsylvania, on Monday. A media release from the Erie County Department of Health said the cases were linked to international travel and there is not a high risk of exposure for the general population.
Two likely measles deaths have been reported so far in the U.S. The first was an unvaccinated school-aged child in Texas, according to the DSHS. The child did not have any known underlying conditions, according to the department.
The Texas death was the first measles death recorded in the U.S. in a decade, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A possible second measles death was recorded after an unvaccinated New Mexico resident tested positive for the virus following their death. The New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH) said the official cause of death is still under investigation.
The CDC has confirmed 378 measles cases this year in at least 17 states: Alaska, California, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont and Washington. This is likely an undercount due to delays in states reporting cases to the federal health agency.
The majority of nationally confirmed cases, about 95%, are in people who are unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown, the CDC said. Of those cases, 3% are among those who received just one dose of the MMR inoculation and 2% are among those who received the required two doses, according to the CDC.
The CDC currently recommends that people receive two vaccine doses, the first at ages 12 to 15 months and the second between 4 and 6 years old. One dose is 93% effective, and two doses are 97% effective, the CDC says. Most vaccinated adults don’t need a booster.
For those living in the outbreak area, Texas health officials are recommending that parents consider an early dose of the MMR vaccine for children between 6 months and 11 months, and that adults receive a second MMR dose if they only received one in the past.
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COLLEGE STATION (AP) – A drag show scheduled for this week at Texas A&M University can go on as scheduled despite a Board of Regents ban on such performances, a federal judge ruled Monday.
The ruling from Houston-based U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal blocked a university ban on drag performances on free speech grounds.
âTo ban the performance from taking place on campus because it offends some members of the campus community is precisely what the First Amendment prohibits,â Rosenthal, who was nominated to the bench by the late President George H.W. Bush, said in her opinion.
The ruling blocks the ban while the broader legal case over it moves forward. The decision echoes others in recent years from the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to let Florida enforce a statewide ban, and district courts in a Montana, Tennessee and Texas.
Texas A&M has become a flashpoint in the most recent chapter of the legal battle.
Two years ago, the president of West Texas A&M in Canyon, said a drag show scheduled for that campus could not move ahead. In response to a legal challenge, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk said the university could block the show, finding it contained âsexualized contentâ and could be more regulated than other forms of speech.
The U.S. Supreme Court last year declined to take the case when the student group behind it appealed.
This time around, the backdrop is different. The Board of Regents passed a policy banning drag shows across the university system on Feb. 28, after tickets had already been sold to the âDraggielandâ show on the flagship campus in College Station. The show has been an annual event there since 2020.
In the first two years, the university supported it financially. But in recent years, the student group Texas A&M Queer Empowerment Council has been responsible for all the funding.
The university argued that allowing the show could jeopardize federal funding for the university in light of President Donald Trump’s executive order barring federal money to support what he calls â gender ideology.â It noted how funds were cut off from Columbia University.
The judge decided that allowing the event does not imply that the university endorses it. By allowing it, she said, the university could comply with the “constitutional obligation to allow different messages and viewpoints, including those viewed as offensive to some, to be expressed at a university that is committed to critical thought about a wide range of conflicting and divergent viewpoints and ideologies.â
A university spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) â One stateâs effort to exempt young school-aged children from vaccines appears to have stalled as states contend with a burgeoning measles outbreak. In January, West Virginia Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey issued an executive order allowing families to apply for religious exemptions to mandated childhood vaccinations. A measure that would have enshrined that order into law sailed through the state Senate last month, but on Monday the state House of Delegates rejected a bill that would have dismantled what is broadly considered by medical experts to be among the most protective school immunization policies in the country.
West Virginia is currently one of a tiny minority of U.S. states that only exempts students from being vaccinated if doing so poses a medical problem for them.
The bill rejected Monday proposed allowing private and religious schools to decide whether or not to accept religious exemptions from students’ families, whereas the Senate version of the bill would have required the schools to accept religious exemptions. Public schools would have been required to accept the exemptions under both versions.
The state Senate also voted in favor allowing families to opt out of vaccination for philosophical reasons, a justification the House measure didnât include. West Virginia’s vaccine battle is surging to the forefront of state legislative issues as measles outbreaks in West Texas and New Mexico have surpassed a combined 350 cases, and at least two unvaccinated people have died from measles-related causes.
The West Virginia bill rejected by lawmakers Monday also would have changed the process for families seeking medical exemptions by allowing a childâs health care provider to submit testimony to a school that certain vaccines âare or may be detrimental to the childâs health or are not appropriate.â
Opposition forces surge
Those who opposed broadening West Virginia’s narrow vaccine exemptions said they were concerned about public health effects. Republican Delegate Keith Marple of Harrison County, 81, said he’s witnessed people disabled by polio and living on iron lungs.
Marple said he doesn’t want to see West Virginia children hurt and said it’s âessentialâ they continue receiving the required immunizations.
âI donât want that on my conscience,” he said, before voting no on the bill.
West Virginia does not currently have a state health officer, but the last three people to hold the position wrote a joint letter to lawmakers Friday asking them to vote ânoâ on the bill, which was rejected 56 to 42 on the House floor.
Morriseyâs communications director Alex Lanfranconi said debate had âsadly derailedâ since Morrisey put forward his proposal to provide a religious exemption to âunworkable, rigorous mandates.â
âWest Virginia remains an outlier by failing to provide these exemptions, aligning with liberal states like California and New York,â he said in a statement.
State praised for vaccine policy
A recent U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report on kindergarten vaccination exemptions cited the West Virginia as having the lowest exemption rate in the country, and the best vaccination rates for kids that age.
State law requires children to receive vaccines for chickenpox, hepatitis B, measles, meningitis, mumps, diphtheria, polio, rubella, tetanus and whooping cough before starting school. The state does not require COVID-19 vaccinations.
Last year, former governor and current U.S. Sen. Republican Jim Justice vetoed a less sweeping vaccination bill passed by the Republican supermajority Legislature that would have exempted private school and some nontraditional public school students from vaccination requirements.
At the time, Justice said he had to defer to the licensed medical professionals who âoverwhelminglyâ spoke out in opposition to the legislation.
Religious freedom
Morrisey, who previously served as West Virginiaâs attorney general, said he believes religious exemptions for vaccinations should already be permitted in West Virginia under a 2023 state law called the Equal Protection for Religion Act.
The law stipulates that the government canât âsubstantially burdenâ someoneâs constitutional right to freedom of religion unless it can prove there is a âcompelling interestâ to restrict that right.
Morrisey said that law hasnât âbeen fully and properly enforcedâ since it passed. He urged the Legislature to help him codify the religious vaccination exemptions into law.
After the bill failed Monday, Democratic Delegate Mike Pushkin called on lawmakers to reach out to Morrisey and “ask him to rescind his dangerous executive order on childhood immunizations.â
U.S. kindergarten vaccination rates dipped in 2023 and the proportion of children with exemptions rose to an all-time high, according to federal data posted in October.
SMITH COUNTY â A Smith County couple has been arrested after a 9-year-old girl accused her stepfather of sexually assaulting her, according to our news partner KETK. The Smith County Sheriffâs Office became aware of the case on March 12 after a CPS worker reported a 9-year-old girl was reportedly being touched inappropriately by her stepfather, Damian Francisco.
The incidents were reported to have occurred in the familyâs home in Tyler. The CPS worker was alerted to the case after the victim, records indicate, told teachers at her school that her stepfather had touched her inappropriately.
Following the report, the victim was taken to the Childrenâs Advocacy Center (CAC) where a forensic interview was conducted. The affidavit stated that the victim cried for the first portion of the interview and claimed that her mother told her that it was her fault they had to do the interview. The victim said the mother threatened she and her siblings may not see her again. Read the rest of this entry »
GUN BARREL CITY â According to our news partner KETK, the Henderson County Sheriffâs Office arrested a man wanted in connection to a fatal shooting that happened near Gun Barrel City on Monday. The shooting happened near Bonita Point which is just outside of Gun Barrel City in Henderson County. Officials identified the man they were searching for as John Clague. The sheriffâs office reported that the body of Clagueâs sister was found dead on Monday.
Henderson County Sheriff Botie Hillhouse said Clague was in a travel trailer on a property in the Harbor Point subdivision. The tactical team responded to the property to try and contact Clague. He then allegedly tried to run from the trailer but was apprehended by a K9 unit. Hillhouse said that EMS was checking out Clague for injuries before he gets transported to the Henderson County Jail.
AUSTIN (ABC) — Multiple incendiary devices were found at a Tesla dealership in Austin, Texas, on Monday morning, according to the Austin Police Department.
Officers located the “suspicious devices” after responding to a Tesla dealership on U.S. Route 183 just after 8 a.m. local time and called the Austin Police Department Bomb Squad to investigate, police said in a statement.
The devices were determined to be incendiary and were “taken into police custody without incident,” officials said.
Police said it is an ongoing investigation, and had no further information to release at this time.
Recent attacks aimed at Tesla dealerships, vehicles and charging stations have been reported in Las Vegas; Seattle; Kansas City, Missouri; and Charleston, South Carolina, as well as other cities across the United States since Tesla CEO Elon Musk began his role with the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
In a public announcement Friday evening, the FBI said incidents targeting Teslas have been recorded in at least nine states since January, including arson, gunfire and graffiti.
“These criminal actions appear to have been conducted by lone offenders, and all known incidents occurred at night,” the FBI said in the public service announcement. “Individuals require little planning to use rudimentary tactics, such as improvised incendiary devices and firearms, and may perceive these attacks as victimless property crimes.”
The FBI urged the public to be vigilant and to look out for suspicious activity in areas around Tesla dealerships.
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HOUSTON (AP) â Houston police are looking for two suspects after six men were shot and wounded early Sunday at an after-hours nightclub.
Four of the wounded are in critical condition, said Assistant Chief James Skelton during a news conference. He provided no information on the conditions of the two other victims.
Dispatchers were called around 3 a.m. to the packed nightclub, which was still serving drinks after the city’s bars are supposed to be closed, Skelton said.
He said police are reviewing video and talking to witnesses, but the preliminary investigation suggests that the people involved knew each other. He described it as an âisolated attackâ that illustrates the problems of after-hours clubs.
âEstablishments like this, that harbor within our city, contribute to crime,â Skelton said. âSo the Houston Police Department, we are targeting these locations, and weâre going to shut them down because it harbors the DWIs and the assaults, and thatâs exactly what we saw here tonight.â
Officers are looking for a black car with the two suspects in it, he added.
DALLAS (AP) – History buffs dove into thousands of pages of government records released online this week, hoping for new nuggets about President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. They instead found revelations about U.S. espionage in the massive document dump that also exposed some previously redacted personal information.
The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration posted more than 63,000 pages of records on its website, following an executive order from President Donald Trump. Many of the documents had been released previously but with redactions that hid the names of CIA sources or details about its spying and covert operations in the 1960s.
Kennedy was killed on Nov. 22, 1963, during a visit to Dallas. As his motorcade finished its parade route downtown, shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald, who had positioned himself from a sniperâs perch on the sixth floor. Two days later, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer broadcast live on television.
The latest release of documents pumped new energy into conspiracy theories about the assassination. Kennedy scholars said they havenât seen anything out of line with the conclusion that Oswald, a 24-year-old ex-Marine, was the lone gunman.
âThe chase for the truth will go on forever, I suspect,” said Philip Shenon, who wrote a 2013 book about the killing of JFK.
It’s a big document dump, but it doesn’t include everything
The vast majority of the National Archivesâ collection of more than 6 million related pages of records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artifacts had already been released before the archives posted about 2,200 files online this week.
Writers, historians and conspiracy promoters have spent decades pushing for the release of all the records. In the early 1990s, the federal government mandated that all assassination-related documents be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration. The collection was required to be opened by 2017, barring any exemptions designated by the president.
According to researchers and the FBI, roughly 3,700 files held by federal authorities still haven’t been released.
Trump’s order also called for declassifying the remaining federal records related to the 1968 assassinations of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Scholars describe a chaotic release
Scholars and history buffs described the latest release as rushed and expressed frustration that going through the files one by one represented a random search for unreleased information.
âWeâve all heard the reports about the lawyers staying up all night, which I believe, because thereâs thereâs a lot of sloppiness in this,â said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of âThe Kennedy Half-Century.â
Scholars and history buffs grumbled that, unlike past releases, the National Archives didnât provide an index or workable search tool. Also, the files included material generated after the 1960s, and some people listed in the records were angry to find out that sensitive information about them was revealed, including Social Security numbers.
They include Joseph diGenova, a former campaign lawyer for Trump. His personal information was on documents relating to his work for a U.S. Senate select committee that investigated abuses of power by government officials in the 1970s, including the surveillance of U.S. citizens.
He is planning to sue the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration for violating privacy laws.
âI think itâs the result of incompetent people doing the reviewing,” he said. “The people who reviewed these documents did not do their job.â
White House officials said a plan was in place to help those whose personal information was disclosed, including credit monitoring, until new Social Security numbers are issued. Officials are still screening the records to identify all the Social Security numbers that were released.
New details about covert CIA operations
The latest release represented a boon to mainstream historians, particularly those researching international relations, the Cold War and the activities of the CIA.
One revelation was that a key adviser warned President Kennedy after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 that the CIA had grown too powerful. The aide proposed giving the State Department control of âall clandestine activitiesâ and breaking up the CIA.
The page of Special Assistant Arthur Schlesinger Jr.âs memo outlining the proposal had not been released before. A previous release of part of his memo redacted Schlesingerâs statement that 47% of the political officers in U.S. embassies were controlled by the CIA.
Schlesinger’s plan never came to fruition.
Timothy Naftali, an adjunct professor at Columbia University who is writing a book about JFKâs presidency, said scholars likely now have more details about U.S. intelligence activities under Kennedy than under any other president.
âItâs quite remarkable to be able to walk through that secret world,â he said.
____
This story has been updated to correct that the date of President John F. Kennedyâs assassination was Nov. 22, 1963, not Nov. 23.
SMITH COUNTY â The Smith County Sheriffâs Office has arrested a contracted medical employee working at the Smith County Jail for allegedly bringing pills to an inmate according to our news partner KETK. Jessica Riley, 41 of Tyler, was working in the jail as a medication tech when she was arrested at around 4:30 p.m. on Friday. Officials said an investigation was started after investigators were given information claiming that Riley had been illegally dispensing controlled substances to an inmate.
The sheriffâs office said that investigators were able to review video that allegedly showed Riley passing something to an inmate from her medical cart.
Officials then searched the cell of Tyirese Ladale Dews, 24 of Tyler, who was arrested for the unrelated charge of promoting prostitution on March 6. Two tablets of Seroquel were found inside the bunkbed in Dewsâ cell, according to a press release. Read the rest of this entry »
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) â The state Legislature has endorsed a bill that would raise royalty rates for new petroleum development on prime pieces of land in New Mexico, on one of the world’s most prolific oil production areas.
A 37-31 vote on Thursday sent the bill from the Statehouse to Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham for consideration.
The proposal would increase the top royalty rate for oil and gas development from 20% to 25% on New Mexico’s state trust lands with implications for the energy industry in the Permian Basin, which overlaps southeastern New Mexico and western Texas. The area accounted for 46% of U.S. oil production in 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
New Mexico deposits royalty payments from oil and gas development in a multibillion-dollar investment trust that benefits public schools, universities and hospitals.
âWe have a legal duty to maximize the return on these assets,â said Democratic state Rep. Matthew McQueen of Galisteo, a co-sponsor of the bill.
Legislative approval was the culmination of a yearslong effort backed by Public Lands Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard to increase top-tier royalty rates. A year ago, Garcia Richard put a hold on lease sales indefinitely for coveted tracts while advocating for the rate increase.
Proponents say neighboring Texas already charges up to 25% on state trust land amid intense competition to drill in the Permian Basin. The royalty changes in neighboring New Mexico would not go into effect in Texas.
Opponents say the rate change threatens to penalize petroleum producers and public beneficiaries, noting that oil production is significantly taxed in other ways and hinges on volatile commodity prices.
In a news release, Garcia Richard said the goal is âto make as much money as possible for school kids and our public institutions.â
âRaising the oil and gas royalty rate on premium state lands was always the right thing to do,” she said.
Garcia Richard, a Democrat, terms out of office as land commissioner in 2026 and this week announced her candidacy for lieutenant governor.
New Mexico is the No. 2 state for oil production behind Texas.
Efforts by New Mexico to save and invest portions of a financial windfall from local oil production are paying dividends as state government income on investments is forecast to surpass personal income tax collections.
The stateâs land grant permanent fund currently distributes about $1.2 billion a year to beneficiary schools, universities and hospitals as well as the state general fund.
New Mexico state government relies heavily on a financial windfall linked to oil production amid increasing concerns about the connection between climate change and natural disasters including wildfires.
A coalition of environmental groups praised the passage of bills this week that would underwrite local clean energy and environmental sustainability projects and related job training.
But Albuquerque-based attorney Gail Evans of the Center for Biological Diversity vowed to press forward with a lawsuit against the state seeking compliance with the âpollution control clauseâ in the New Mexico Constitution on behalf of Native Americans who live near oil wells.
âOur legislators didnât even take the tiny step of ensuring our kids are protected from dangerous oil and gas pollution when theyâre at school,â said Evans, alluding to a stalled bill to restrict oil and gas operations within a mile (1.6 kilometers) of school property.
ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) â A new museum devoted to telling the stories of those who have received the nation’s highest military honor is opening this coming week in Texas.
The National Medal of Honor Museum is set to open Tuesday in Arlington, just west of Dallas. It highlights the lives and service of Medal of Honor recipients from the Civil War to the global war on terrorism. Over 3,500 people have received the Medal of Honor, which is awarded by Congress for risking one’s life in combat beyond the call of duty.
Jack Jacobs, a retired U.S. Army colonel who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Vietnam War, said he wants museum visitors to realize the recipients aren’t âspectacular supermen,” but regular people who âembody the kinds of values that are really important.”
âReally grand things, not just in combat, but in everyday life … are all accomplished by ordinary people who come to the conclusion that something has to be done and they are going to do it,â Jacobs said.
When his unit was ambushed by the Viet Cong on March 9, 1968, Jacobs took charge after his commander was seriously wounded. Despite being wounded in the head by shrapnel and bleeding heavily, Jacobs reorganized the company and repeatedly ran through enemy fire to rescue the wounded, saving the lives of a U.S. adviser and 13 soldiers.
Jacobs, now 79, said he lost a lot of friends in the battle.
âYou really do wear the award for all of the people who can’t wear the award,â he said.
The museum’s focus is on telling the life stories of the recipients, said Alexandra Rhue, the museum’s senior vice president of engagement. âHere you met the people first and then you learn what they did,â Rhue said.
The recipients featured in the museum include those from various branches of the military, conflicts and geographic locations, as well as different ethnicities and races.
Chris Cassidy, the museum’s president and CEO, said he hopes the exhibits inspire visitors.
âEverybody needs courage in some form or fashion,â he said. âSo that’s our aim: to inspire people through the stories of Medal of Honor actions, to bring a little courage into your own life.â
Several of the recipients, including Jacobs, appear in videos in an exhibit where their images answer visitors’ questions. There are over 60 recipients who are still living.
A celebration Saturday ahead of the opening will feature musical performances, fireworks and a drone show. The museum is nestled amongst Globe Life Field, where the Texas Rangers play, and AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys.
UPDATE: The Carthage Police Department has arrested the suspect accused of hitting a 5-year-old child with their car on Sunday. According to our news partner KETK, the suspect, Jhavorry Crayton, was found in Longview on Thursday afternoon and was arrested. Crayton was taken to the Gregg County Jail and charged with collision involving injury, evading arrest and tamper or fabricating with physical evidence.
The child injured in the crash was identified to KETK as 5-year-old Jude Brown. Jude is now out of the hospital but will need surgery. Read the rest of this entry »
Sensitive personal information including Social Security numbers was revealed in the newly unredacted John F. Kennedy assassination documents released this week, and that is not sitting well with the people affected.
Joseph diGenova, a former campaign lawyer for President Donald Trump, was among those whose personal information was disclosed. He said he is planning to sue the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration for violating privacy laws over concerns about identity theft.
âIt should not have happened,â diGenova said in a phone interview Thursday. âI think it’s the result of incompetent people doing the reviewing. I don’t believe it had anything to do with rushing the process. The people who reviewed these documents did not do their job.â
His personal information was on documents relating to his work for a U.S. Senate select committee that investigated abuses of power by government officials in the 1970s, including the surveillance of U.S. citizens.
Officials at the White House said Thursday that a plan was in place to help those whose personal information was disclosed, including credit monitoring offered by the National Archives until new Social Security numbers are issued. Officials also said they are still screening the records to identify all the Social Security numbers that were released.
âPresident Trump delivered on his promise of maximum transparency by fully releasing the files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “At the request of the White House, the National Archives and the Social Security Administration immediately put together an action plan to proactively help individuals whose personal information was released in the files.â
The White House press office also released a statement from the National Archives.
âIn an effort to maximize transparency, these records were released without redactions and some of these records contain the personal identification information of living individuals,â the statement said. âThe National Archives and Records Administration and the Social Security Administration are working closely together to protect the individuals who may be affected from their information being exploited.â
The statement also said that while the National Archives will be contacting people whose personal information was disclosed, it urged those people to contact the National Archives.
Neither the White House nor the National Archives explained the decision-making process behind the public release of the personal information.
Trump ordered the release of the remaining classified files relating to the 1963 assassination shortly after being sworn into office in January. About 2,200 files consisting of over 63,000 pages were posted on the National Archive’s website on Tuesday evening. Many of those pages revealed what had previously been redacted.
The vast majority of the National Archivesâ more than 6 million pages â records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artifacts related to the assassination â had previously been released.
The National Archives posted assessments of the newly released documents on its website, but noted that there wasn’t enough time as of Wednesday to review more than a small fraction of them. The documents released this week provided more details of covert, Cold War-era U.S. operations in other nations, but they didnât initially lend credence to conspiracy theories about who killed Kennedy.
One of the newly unredacted documents, for example, discloses the Social Security numbers of more than two dozen people seeking security clearances in the 1990s to review JFK-related documents for the Assassination Records Review Board.
Gerald Posner, author of âCase Closed,â which concludes that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman, said the documents release was rushed, echoing what other researchers believe.
âI know that people will probably shake their head if they hear that â because how could they be rushing in after 62 years?â he said Thursday. âItâs a lot of documents. Itâs a lot of files. The Archives in the past has provided a sort of a search guide. So if I want to find James âJesusâ Angleton, for instance, I could do a search and find all the documents heâs in and then I can see whatâs different from the last release. This time they didnât have that.â
Angleton was the CIA’s counterintelligence chief from 1954 to 1974.
The National Archives began screening the documents on Wednesday to identify all the Social Security numbers in the assassination records, the White House said.
The National Archives will share those numbers with the Social Security Administration, which will identify the people who are living and issue them new numbers, according to the White House.
Kennedy was killed on a visit to Dallas, when his motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown and shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested the 24-year-old Oswald, a former Marine who had positioned himself from a sniperâs perch on the sixth floor. Two days later, Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner, fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer that was broadcast live on television.
___
Associated Press writer John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.
A key adviser warned President John F. Kennedy after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 that the agency behind it, the CIA, had grown too powerful. He proposed giving the State Department control of âall clandestine activitiesâ and breaking up the CIA.
The page of Special Assistant Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s memo outlining the proposal was among the newly public material in documents related to Kennedy’s assassination released this week by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. So, too was Schlesinger’s statement that 47% of the political officers in U.S. embassies were controlled by the CIA.
Some readers of the previously withheld material in Schlesinger’s 15-page memo view it as evidence of both mistrust between Kennedy and the CIA and a reason the CIA at least would not make Kennedy’s security a high priority ahead of his assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. That gave fresh attention Thursday to a decades-old theory about who killed JFK â that the CIA had a hand in it.
Some Kennedy scholars, historians and writers said they haven’t yet seen anything in the 63,000 pages of material released under an order from President Donald Trump that undercuts the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old Marine and onetime defector to the Soviet Union, was a lone gunman. But they also say they understand why doubters gravitate toward the theory.
âYou have this young, charismatic president with so much potential for the future, and on the other side of the scale, you have this 24-year-old waif, Oswald, and it doesn’t balance. You want to put something weightier on the Oswald side,â said Gerald Posner, whose book, âCase Closed,â details the evidence that Oswald was a lone gunman.
The first âbig eventâ in the US to spawn conspiracy theories
Critics of the Oswald-acted-alone conclusion had predicted that previously unreleased material would bolster their positions. One of them, Jefferson Morley, the editor of the JFK Facts blog, said Thursday that newly public material is important to âthe JFK case.â Morley is vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a repository for files related to the assassination.
Morley said that even with the release of 63,000 pages this week, there is still more unreleased material, including 2,400 files that the FBI said it discovered after Trump issued his order in January and material held by the Kennedy family.
Kennedy was killed on a visit to Dallas, when his motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown and shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested Oswald, who had positioned himself from a sniperâs perch on the sixth floor. Two days later Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner, fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer broadcast live on television.
âIt was the first big event that led to a series of events involving conspiracy theories that have left Americans believing, almost permanently, that their government lies to them so often they shouldnât pay close attention,â said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of âThe Kennedy Half-Century”
The Bay of Pigs fiasco prompts an aide’s memo
Morley said Schlesinger’s memo provides the âorigin storyâ of mutual mistrust between Kennedy and the CIA.
Kennedy had inherited the Bay of Pigs plan from his predecessor, President Dwight Eisenhower, and had been in office less than three months when the operation launched in April 1961 as a covert invasion to topple Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Schlesinger’s memo was dated June 30, 1961, a little more than two months later.
Schlesinger told Kennedy that all covert operations should be cleared with the U.S. State Department instead of allowing the CIA to largely present proposed operations almost as accomplished tasks. He also said in some places, such as Austria and Chile, far more than half the embassies’ political officers were CIA-controlled.
Ronald Neumann, former US ambassador to Afghanistan, Algeria and Bahrain, said most American diplomats now are ânon-CIA,â and in most places, ambassadors do not automatically defer to the CIA.
âCIA station chiefs also have an important function for ambassadors, because the station chief is usually the senior intelligence officer at a post,” Neumann said, adding that ambassadors see a CIA station chiefs as providing valuable information.
But he noted: âIf you get into the areas where we were involved in covert operations in supporting wars, youâre going to have a different picture. Youâre going to have a picture which will differ from a normal embassy and normal operations.â
A proposal to break up the CIA that didn’t come to fruition
Schlesinger’s memo ends with a previously redacted page that spells out a proposal to give control of covert activities to the State Department and to split the CIA into two agencies reporting to separate undersecretaries of state. Morley sees it as a response to Kennedy’s anger over the Bay of Pigs and something Kennedy was seriously contemplating.
The plan never came to fruition.
Sabato said that Kennedy simply âneeded the CIAâ in the Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union and its allies like Cuba, and a huge reorganization would have hindered intelligence operations. He also said the president and his brother, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, wanted to oust Castro before JFK ran for reelection in 1964.
âLetâs remember that a good percentage of the covert operations were aimed at Fidel Castro in Cuba,â Sabato said.
Timothy Naftali, an adjunct professor at Columbia University who is writing a book about JFKâs presidency, discounts the idea of tensions between the president and the CIA lasting until Kennedy’s death. For one thing, he said, the president used covert operations âavidly.â
âI find that the more details we get on that period, the more it appears likely that the Kennedy brothers were in control of the intelligence community,â Naftali said. âYou can see his imprint. You can see that there is a system by which he is directing the intelligence community. It’s not always direct, but heâs directing it.â
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Associated Press writer David Collins in Hartford Connecticut, contributed to this report.
JACKSONVILLE â The City of Jacksonville was held a public pinning ceremony for their new police chief Steven Markasky. On Thursday, Markasky was sworn in as the 10th Jacksonville Police Chief by Mayor Tim McRae. Markasky replaced former Chief Joe Williams who was relieved of his duties in January.
Markasky is a 12-year veteran and has been the departmentâs assistant chief since April of 2024. One family friend said he was a shoe-in for the position. Markasky said he wants to continue to shape the image of the department in his time as a chief.