Today is
Monday May 12, 2025
LONGVIEW — The Longview Police Department praised several officers and medics on Thursday for the brave actions they displayed when an officer was shot on duty. According to our news partner KETK, Officer R. Leininger received the Purple Heart award for taking a gunshot wound to the leg while trying to arrest a suspect in a vehicle burglary incident.
After Leininger was shot, Officer Kientz placed a tourniquet on his bleeding leg while Officer Jones secured the suspect. Jones noticed that Leininger needed a second tourniquet and assisted Kientz in applying the second tourniquet. Kientz and Jones’ immediate actions helped stabilize Leininger until medical assistance arrived and were awarded Lifesaving Awards. Read the rest of this entry »
LONGVIEW — Longview ISD announced on Friday that 17-year-old Longview High School student Colleen Cleaver died earlier this month. According to our news partner KETK, Cleaver was an 11th-grade student at Longview High School who died on May 3. Longview ISD is not currently sharing details out of respect for Cleaver’s family.
“We are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Colleen Cleaver, a student at Longview High School,” Longview ISD said. “On behalf of Longview ISD, I extend our heartfelt condolences to Colleen’s family, friends and the educators who supported her. During this difficult time, our thoughts are with all who knew and loved Colleen.” The district extends its deepest condolences to the family and counseling services will be available to students and staff.
WASHINGTON (AP) — White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller says President Donald Trump is looking for ways to expand its legal power to deport migrants who are in the United States illegally. To achieve that, he says the administration is “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus, the constitutional right for people to legally challenge their detention by the government.
Such a move would be aimed at migrants as part of the Republican president’s broader crackdown at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“The Constitution is clear, and that of course is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” Miller told reporters outside the White House on Friday.
“So, I would say that’s an option we’re actively looking at,” Miller said. “Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”
The Latin term means “that you have the body.” Federal courts use a writ of habeas corpus to bring a prisoner before a neutral judge to determine if imprisonment is legal.
Habeas corpus was included in the Constitution as an import from English common law. Parliament enacted the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, which was meant to ensure that the king released prisoners when the law did not justify confining them.
The Constitution’s Suspension Clause, the second clause of Section 9 of Article I, states that habeas corpus “shall not be suspended, unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.”
Yes. The United States has suspended habeas corpus under four distinct circumstances during its history. Those usually involved authorization from Congress, something that would be nearly impossible today — even at Trump’s urging — given the narrow Republican majorities in the House and Senate.
President Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus multiple times amid the Civil War, beginning in 1861 to detain suspected spies and Confederate sympathizers. He ignored a ruling from Roger Taney, who was the Supreme Court chief justice but was acting in the case as a circuit judge. Congress then authorized suspending it in 1863, which allowed Lincoln to do so again.
Congress acted similarly under President Ulysses S. Grant, suspending habeas corpus in parts of South Carolina under the Civil Rights Act of 1871. Also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, it was meant to counter violence and intimidation of groups opposing Reconstruction in the South.
Habeas corpus was suspended in two provinces of the Philippines in 1905, when it was a U.S. territory and authorities were worried about the threat of an insurrection, and in Hawaii after the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, but before it became a state in 1959.
Writing before becoming a Supreme Court justice, Amy Coney Barrett co-authored a piece stating that the Suspension Clause “does not specify which branch of government has the authority to suspend the privilege of the writ, but most agree that only Congress can do it.”
It can try. Miller suggested that the U.S. is facing “an invasion” of migrants. That term was used deliberately, though any effort to suspend habeas corpus would spark legal challenges questioning whether the country was facing an invasion, let alone presenting extraordinary threats to public safety.
Federal judges have so far been skeptical of the Trump administration’s past efforts to use extraordinary powers to make deportations easier, and that could make suspending habeas corpus even tougher.
Trump argued in March that the U.S. was facing an “invasion” of Venezuelan gang members and evoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime authority he has tried to use to speed up mass deportations.
His administration acted to swiftly deport alleged members of Tren de Aragua to a notorious prison in El Salvador, leading to a series of legal fights.
Federal courts around the country, including in New York, Colorado, Texas and Pennsylvania, have since blocked the administration’s uses of the Alien Enemies Act for many reasons, including amid questions about whether the country is truly facing an invasion.
Miller, who has been fiercely critical of judges ruling against the administration, advanced the argument that the judicial branch may not get to decide.
“Congress passed a body of law known as the Immigration Nationality Act which stripped Article III courts, that’s the judicial branch, of jurisdiction over immigration cases,” he said Friday.
That statute was approved by Congress in 1952 and there were important amendments in 1996 and 2005. Legal scholars note that it does contain language that could funnel certain cases to immigration courts, which are overseen by the executive branch.
Still, most appeals in those cases would largely be handled by the judicial branch, and they could run into the same issues as Trump’s attempts to use the Alien Enemies Act.
Technically not since Pearl Harbor, though habeas corpus has been at the center of some major legal challenges more recently than that.
Republican President George W. Bush did not move to suspend habeas corpus after the Sept. 11 attacks, but his administration subsequently sent detainees to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, drawing lawsuits from advocates who argued the administration was violating it and other legal constitutional protections.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that Guantanamo detainees had a constitutional right to habeas corpus, allowing them to challenge their detention before a judge. That led to some detainees being released from U.S. custody.
SAN ANTONIO (AP) – Country-music star Johnny Rodriguez, a popular Mexican-American singer best known for chart-topping hits in the 1970s, including “I Just Can’t Get Her Out of My Mind,” “Ridin’ My Thumb to Mexico” and “That’s the Way Love Goes,” has died. He was 73.
Rodriguez died Friday, according to social media statements posted by his daughter, Aubry Rodriguez. She said he died peacefully and surrounded by family.
“Dad was not only a legendary musician whose artistry touched millions around the world, but also a deeply loved husband, father, uncle, and brother whose warmth, humor, and compassion shaped the lives of all who knew him,” she wrote.
Rodriguez was named the most promising male vocalist at the 1972 Academy of Country Music Awards, and his debut album, “Introducing Johnny Rodriguez,” earned a nomination for album of the year in 1973.
Rodriguez was born in Sabinal, Texas, a small town about 60 miles west of San Antonio and about 90 miles east of the U.S.-Mexico border. He was inducted into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame in 2007.
LUFKIN — A Lufkin man has been arrested for murder after allegedly fatally shooting a man during a speeding dispute on Wednesday night, an on-view arrest complaint from the Angelina County Sheriff’s Office reveals. According to our news partner KETK, an Angelina County Sheriff’s Office deputy responded to a call from a man identified as Phillip Hunter Gersbach of Lufkin, who told dispatch that he had shot someone at around 11:15 p.m. on Wednesday. The deputy noticed an unresponsive man on the ground and performed CPR on the victim while Gersbach remained near the patrol unit.
Once the second deputy arrived, they took over chest compressions on the victim while the first deputy took the suspect into custody. The deputy put the suspect in the back seat of her patrol unit to deescalate the situation as a woman at the scene was “irate and hostile.” MS arrived on the scene and declared the man dead at 11:37 p.m. after no pulse could be found. The arrest document states that Gersbach was then read his Miranda rights and interviewed about what happened. Read the rest of this entry »
TYLER — Pope Leo XIV was celebrated today in Tyler by a local bishop who dedicated an official mass to the new pontiff. According to our news partner KETK, Tyler Bishop Greg Kelly dedicated a mass to honor the new pope, Chicago-born Robert Prevost.
“At the very heart of it is the personal encounter with Christ to come to know, love and serve him and the ongoing conversion that calls to us throughout our life,” Kelly said.
Kelly is “still learning more about the new Pope” and is “fascinated by the Pontiff’s choice to take the name Pope Leo XIV.” Bishop Kelly is also “just as surprised” that the new pope is American and is filled with anticipation to see what Pope Leo XIV will accomplish.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday said he’ll order the Trump administration to provide more information about the terms under which dozens of Venezuelan immigrants are being held at a notorious prison in El Salvador, moving a step closer to deciding whether to require the men to be returned to the United States.
District Court Judge James E. Boasberg said he needed the information to determine whether the roughly 200 men, deported in March under an 18th century wartime law, were still effectively in U.S. custody. Boasberg noted that President Donald Trump had boasted in an interview that he could get back one man wrongly imprisoned in El Salvador in a separate case by simply asking. The government’s lawyer, Abishek Kambli, said that and other public statements by administration officials about their relationship with El Salvador lacked “nuance.”
Kambli would not give Boasberg any information about the administration’s deal with El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukele, who once called himself “the world’s coolest dictator” and is holding immigrants deported from the U.S. at his country’s CECOT prison. He would not even confirm the terms of the deal, which the White House has said are a $20 million payment to El Salvador.
Boasberg wants the information to establish whether the administration has what’s called “constructive custody” of the immigrants, meaning it could return them if he ordered it. The ACLU has asked that Boasberg order the return of the men, who were accused of being members of a gang Trump claimed was invading the country. Minutes after Trump unveiled his proclamation in March, claiming wartime powers to short-circuit immigration proceedings and remove the men without court hearings, the immigrants were flown to El Salvador.
That happened despite Boasberg’s ruling that the planes needed to be turned around until he could rule on the legality of the move, and he is separately examining whether to hold the government in contempt for that action.
After the March flights, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that no one could be deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 without a chance to challenge it in court. Since then, three separate federal judges have ruled that Trump’s invocation of the act was illegal because the gang he named is not actually at war with the U.S. It’s likely that those rulings will be appealed all the way back up to the Supreme Court.
Kambli on Wednesday acknowledged that the men deported on the March flights did not get the chance to contest their designation under the Alien Enemies Act, or AEA, as the high court requires. But he argued that Boasberg cannot conclude the United States still has custody of the men. If the U.S. asks for them back, Kambli said, “El Salvador can say ‘No.'”
When it required court hearings for those targeted by the act, the high court also took much of the AEA case away from Boasberg, ruling that immigrants have to contest their removal in the places they’re being detained, not Boasberg’s Washington, D.C., courtroom. Boasberg, who’d blocked removals nationwide initially, has held onto some of the case, including the fate of the men who were first deported.
Trump and some Republican allies have called for impeaching Boasberg, who was nominated to the bench by Democratic President Barack Obama. Those calls prompted a rare statement from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who said “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”
Boasberg hinted Wednesday he may ultimately require that the deported men receive the due process the high court requires, be it by bringing them back or ordering them moved to another facility, like Guantanamo Bay, fully under U.S. control.
There was also a hint that Boasberg was aware of the way Trump and his supporters have spun the legal decisions in the case. He noted that some in the government have described the initial Supreme Court ruling as a victory in which the court upheld the legality of Trump’s proclamation.
Noting that there was an open line so the public could listen to the hearing, Boasberg read from that ruling, which states explicitly that it does not address the legality of labeling the gang a foreign invader.
“We agree,” Kambli said. “they did not handle that precise issue.”
WASHINGTON — Congressman Nathaniel Moran from East Texas introduced the No Tax on Overtime Act on Tuesday which would allow for up to 300 hours of qualified overtime compensation. According to our news partner KETK, the deduction means the first 300 hours of overtime worked is tax free within a taxable year. A press release from the Moran House website said the bill will also remove 100% of income taxes on a 50% overtime pay premium for over 90 million hourly workers. For people who work time and a half, this means the half part of that pay will be tax free.
This legislation is directed toward those who make up to $100,000 and couples who make a combined $200,00, the release said. President Trump supports the bill as a long time advocate for policy that helps working class Americans. Read the rest of this entry »
NEW YORK (AP) — Police in New York City are investigating whether the department violated policy by sharing a report with federal immigration authorities that included a record of a Palestinian woman’s sealed arrest. The report was generated by the NYPD in response to a federal request for information about Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian woman living in New Jersey. While federal authorities said they were investigating Kordia for criminal money laundering, the record is now being used as evidence in civil deportation case. The city’s police commissioner said an internal investigation into the information-sharing was underway. Kordia remains in a Texas immigration jail.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — REAL ID requirements for those flying within the United States begin Wednesday after nearly 20 years of delays.
The day ahead of the deadline, people lined up at government offices across the country to secure their compliant IDs. In Chicago, officials established a Real ID Supercenter for walk-in appointments, while officials in California and elsewhere planned to continue offering extended hours for the crush of appointments.
“I’m here today so I won’t be right on the deadline, which is tomorrow,” said Marion Henderson, who applied for her REAL ID on Tuesday in Jackson, Mississippi.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Tuesday assured people who don’t yet have a REAL ID but need to take a domestic flight Wednesday that they will be able to fly after clearing additional identity checks.
Some complained about the need to secure the ID after waiting in line for hours.
Michael Aceto waited in line at a DMV in King of Prussia, in the Philadelphia suburbs, for about two and a half hours Tuesday before getting his REAL ID.
“It’s a pain in the butt. It’s really a lot of time. Everybody’s got to take off from work to be here,” he said. “It’s a big waste of time as far as I’m concerned.”
The Transportation Security Administration warned people who don’t have identification that complies with REAL ID requirements to arrive early at the airport and be prepared for advanced screening to avoid causing delays.
The new requirements have been the subject of many Reddit threads and Facebook group discussions in recent weeks, with numerous people expressing confusion about whether they can travel without a REAL ID, sharing details about wait times and seeking advice on how to meet the requirements.
Noem told a congressional panel that 81% of travelers already have REAL IDs. She said security checkpoints will also be accepting passports and tribal identification, like they have already been doing.
Those who still lack an identification that complies with the REAL ID law “may be diverted to a different line, have an extra step,” Noem said.
“But people will be allowed to fly,” she said. “We will make sure it’s as seamless as possible.”
REAL ID is a federally compliant state-issued license or identification card that Homeland Security says is a more secure form of identification. It was a recommendation by the 9/11 Commission and signed into law in 2005. It was supposed to be rolled out in 2008 but the implementation had been repeatedly delayed.
¨The whole idea here is to better validate those individuals that were encountering a checkpoint to ensure they are who exactly they say they are,” said Thomas Carter, TSA’s Federal Security Director in New Jersey.
Carter said those without a REAL ID should give themselves extra time to clear security.
“If they do that, I do not have a belief that this will cause people to miss their flights if they take that additional time in,” he said.
Besides serving as a valid form of identification to fly domestically, people will also need a REAL ID to access certain federal buildings and facilities.
State government offices that issue driver’s licenses and state IDs have seen a significant increase in demand for REAL ID and some have extended their office hours to meet the demand. Some officials have recommended people wait for a while to get REAL ID compliant licenses and cards if they don’t have flight planned in the next few months.
“We are encouraging people who have passports or other REAL ID-compliant documents and people who don’t have travel plans in the next few months to wait until after the current rush to apply for a REAL ID,” said Erin Johnson, a spokesperson with the Minnesota Department of Public Safety.
Johnson said that the department has seen a significant increase in demand for REAL ID in recent weeks. In February, there were more than 48,000 applications for a REAL ID; that has nearly doubled to over 99,000 in April, she said.
TYLER — The North East Texas Regional Mobility Authority (NETRMA) is hosting meetings this week to discuss a proposed extension of Toll 49 out to US Route 271. According to our news partner KETK, the meetings will present members of the public with an opportunity to learn about the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process which is the next step towards extending Toll 49 to US Route 271 from State Highway 110.
The project team will be available to answer any comments or questions the public may have on potential impacts of the expansion.
The meetings will be in-person and online from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday at the Tyler Rose Garden Center at 420 Rose Park Dr. in Tyler and the Longview Exhibit Center at 1123 Jaycee Dr. in Longview.
Visit the NETRMA website here.