Today is
Thursday June 04, 2026
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Elon Musk is expected to take the stand in a shareholder trial on Wednesday in San Francisco, where he’s accused of making false and misleading statements that drove down Twitter’s stock price before he bought the social media platform for $44 billion in 2022.
The lawsuit was filed in October 2022 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of Twitter shareholders who sold the stock between May 13 and Oct. 4, 2022, a few weeks before Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized. It claims Musk violated federal securities laws by making false, public statements that “were carefully calculated to drive down the price of Twitter stock.”
The billionaire Tesla CEO reached a deal to buy Twitter and take it private in April 2022. On May 13, however, he declared his plan “temporarily on hold” and said he needs to pinpoint the number of spam and fake accounts on the platform. Twitter’s stock tumbled as a result. A few days later, he tweeted that the deal “cannot go forward” and claimed that almost 20% of Twitter accounts were “fake,” according to the lawsuit.
Musk’s May 13 tweet — “Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users” — was “false because the buyout was not, in fact, ‘temporarily on hold,’” the lawsuit says. That’s because Twitter did not agree to put the deal on hold, and there was nothing in the merger agreement the two parties signed that allowed Musk to put it on hold, according to the lawsuit.
In the following weeks, Musk continued to try to delay or get out of the deal, which the lawsuit claims he did in the form of false, disparaging statements about Twitter’s business that drove the San Francisco company’s stock down sharply.
In July 2022, Musk doubled down on the bots issue and said he would abandon his offer to buy Twitter after the company failed to provide enough information about the number of fake accounts. That’s even though the lawsuit notes that Musk waived due diligence for his “take it or leave it” offer to buy Twitter. That means he waived his right to look at the company’s nonpublic finances.
The stock closed at $36.81 on July 8, when Musk tweeted he was abandoning the deal over the fake accounts issue. That’s 32% below Musk’s offer price of $54.20 per share.
“To try to renegotiate the price or delay the merger, Musk made materially false and misleading statements and omissions, and engaged in a scheme to deceive the market, all in violation of the law,” the lawsuit says.
The problem of bots and fake accounts on Twitter wasn’t new. The company had paid $809.5 million in 2021 to settle claims it was overstating its growth rate and monthly user figures. Twitter also disclosed its bot estimates to the Securities and Exchange Commission for years, while also cautioning that its estimate might be too low.
Twitter sued Musk to force him to complete the deal, and Musk countersued. On Oct. 4, Musk offered to go through with his original proposal to buy Twitter for $44 billion, which Twitter accepted. The deal closed later that month. In the ensuing months, Musk slashed the company’s workforce, gutted its trust and safety team and rolled back content moderation policies. In July 2023, he renamed Twitter as X.
This isn’t the first time that Musk has been dragged into court to defend himself against allegations of duping investors with his social media posts. Three years ago, Musk spent about eight hours testifying in a San Francisco federal trial about his plans to buy Tesla — the electric automaker that he still runs as publicly traded company — for $420 per share in a proposed 2018 deal that never materialized. A nine-member jury absolved Musk of wrongdoing in that case.
HOUSTON (AP) – Republican challenger Steve Toth defeated U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw on Tuesday night, ousting the only House Republican in Texas who President Donald Trump didn’t endorse heading into the nation’s first big primary of 2026.
Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL whose independent streak sometimes clashed with fellow Republicans, spent the primary trying to fend off attacks from the party’s hard right that he was not in step with Trump’s agenda.
Toth, a state representative and member of the GOP’s hard-right caucus in the Legislature, picked up a big endorsement late in the primary from Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.
“This campaign has been a referendum on representatives who campaign one way and govern another, and the people have spoken,” Toth said in a statement after his victory.
Crenshaw, who lost his right eye when he was hit with an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan in 2012, had clashed with Cruz over the senator’s support of Trump’s unfounded claim that he won the 2020 presidential election.
Crenshaw was one of the few Texas Republican candidates for Congress in 2022 who acknowledged that President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 was legitimate, a position that occasionally found him at odds with fellow Republicans.
Crenshaw also drew the ire of conservatives when a video clip went viral of him criticizing some Republican politicians as “grifters” and “performance artists” who simply tell conservative voters what they want to hear.
The 41-year-old Crenshaw was seeking his fifth term. His 2nd Congressional District spans the suburbs north and east of Houston.
DALLAS (AP) – A rule change for primary voting in two Texas counties created mass confusion Tuesday that eventually led to a state Supreme Court ruling, threats of more legal action and the potential that an untold number of voters could find themselves disenfranchised.
The chaos had the most direct potential impact on the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. The county with the greatest number of affected voters includes Dallas and is the home base for Rep. Jasmine Crockett, an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump who was in a tight race with state lawmaker James Talarico.
Crockett told supporters Tuesday night that the race can’t be settled without the results from Dallas County.
“I can tell you, people were disenfranchised,” she said.
The unfolding chaos — first over the new voting rules, and then over the court decisions and whether late ballots would be counted — stemmed from a change by local Republicans that is unique to Texas’ primary system, but also hinted at the type of uncertainty that many have feared lies ahead for November’s midterm elections.
The problems in Texas began when voters in two counties — Dallas and Williamson, north of Austin — were turned away at polling locations and directed to different precincts after a recent change in how the primary is conducted.
In Dallas County, a judge ordered polls to remain open for two hours past the scheduled 7 p.m. closing time, citing “voter confusion so severe” that it caused the website of the county election office to crash. The judge was acting on a petition filed by the local Democratic Party in a heavily left-leaning county. Democrats in Williamson said they succeeded in getting two precincts to stay open late.
Later in the evening, the Texas Supreme Court acted on requests by the Texas attorney general’s office and stayed both decisions. Its brief orders said ballots cast by voters in both counties who were not in line by the 7 p.m. scheduled close of polls should be separated. The number of ballots affected could not immediately be determined.
Renea Hicks, a longtime Texas appellate lawyer, said the Supreme Court’s action was preliminary and does not say whether the ballots will eventually be counted. That’s something the court will have to sort out in the coming days, he said.
“That doesn’t mean ‘throw them away.’ It doesn’t meant they won’t count,” he said. “We don’t know what it means.”
In both counties, voters had been allowed to cast their ballot anywhere in their county for years. But for this primary, the local Republican parties opted against countywide voting. State law says both major parties have to agree to the countywide system for it to be in effect.
That meant that on Tuesday all voters could cast ballots only at their assigned precinct.
Both Crockett and Talarico denounced the effect of the change on voters, with Crockett saying it was an “effort to suppress the vote.” Talarico’s campaign aid it was “deeply concerned” about the reports of voters showing up at polling locations and being sent elsewhere. He told supporters later that evening, as ballots were still being tallied, that every vote must be counted.
Adding to the confusion was the fact that voting locations also might be specific to someone’s party affiliation, said Nic Solorzano, a spokesperson for the Dallas County Elections Department.
“We’re seeing a lot of people that are going to their vote centers that they usually go to … and not realizing they can’t do that anymore. They have to go to their precinct-based location,” he said.
The extensions in Dallas applied only to Democratic voting precincts. Voting also was extended for an hour in El Paso County after problems with voter check-in systems earlier in the day.
Texas was one of three states kicking off the 2026 midterm elections Tuesday, along with North Carolina and Arkansas. Voting otherwise went fairly smoothly, except for a problem with electronic poll books in one rural North Carolina county that prompted the state elections board to delay the release of statewide results by an hour.
Tomas Sanchez, a student at Dallas College, was among those who showed up at a voting location on campus to cast his ballot in Texas’ Democratic primary. But he was under a “mistaken impression” and told that he needed to vote at his assigned precinct, a location about 6 miles (about 10 kilometers) away and closer to his neighborhood.
“This is something that we were really concerned about, honestly,” Solorzano said. He added that after nearly seven years of voters being able to cast their ballots anywhere in the county, “then we kind of had to retool our entire operation to go back to precinct-based voting for Election Day.”
The county elections department has been putting up signs, running ads and sending text messages and mailers to make people aware of the change. On Election Day former poll workers were stationed outside voting locations with tablets to help people find the correct place to cast their ballot.
While Solorzano said his department was not keeping track of how many people were been turned away, local Democrats said the number was significant.
Brenda Allen, executive director of the Dallas Democratic Party, said her offices were swamped by hundreds of calls from voters of both parties trying to find their precincts. She noted that congressional districts in the county also were remapped in Texas’ mid-decade redistricting and that new precinct lines were only finalized in December, leaving little time to inform voters.
“Lots of reports of people being turned away, hundreds of people unable to vote. Both parties are affected by this,” Allen said. “It’s not great.”
In Williamson County, the local Democratic Party headquarters was slammed by calls, executive director Madison Dickinson said.
“We’re having significant problems with the precinct-level voting,” she said, adding that, like in Dallas, even Republicans were confused by the change and were calling the Democratic Party for help.
Republicans were less vocal about the changes online, although the Dallas County Republican Party posted a link showing voters where to find their assigned polling places. The Williamson County Republican Party did not respond to a request for comment.
EAST TEXAS — In the past year, Texas’ job growth rate has outpaced the national rate, with three East Texas cities seeing significant non-farm job additions along labor force growth.
According to data from the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) and our news partner KETK, Texas added 146,300 non-farm jobs for an annual growth rate of 1%, faster than the nation as a whole by 0.4%. In East Texas, the metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) of Longview, Texarkana and Tyler saw the addition of over 3,000 non-farm jobs, supporting the growth of the labor force from November 2024 to November 2025.
The civilian labor force for Texarkana MSA and Tyler MSA had over-the-year (2024 to 2025) growth rates of 1.9% and 2.1%, respectively. While both cities saw employment rates increase, however, the over-the-year rates for unemployment also increased with Texarkana’s at 10.7% and Tyler’s at 5.5%. Read the rest of this entry »
TYLER — Brad Brookshire, the grandson of Brookshire Grocery Company founder W.T. Brookshire, is retiring as the chain’s CEO after working in his family’s business for 49 years. According to our news partner KETK, Brad Brookshire spent 20 years as the company’s chairman of the board and 10 years as CEO. Brad has also worked as a Brookshire store director, vice president, executive vice president and as president of the company.
According to a Brookshire press release, Brad Brookshire was part of the creation of the Super 1 Foods banner over 41 years ago. During his time as CEO, Brookshire Grocery Company grew from 152 stores to 222 stores.
In 2020, Brad Brookshire was named to Governor Greg Abbott’s Strike Force to Open Texas as the representative for the state’s grocery industry. That same year, he was also inducted into the Food Industry Hall of Fame. Read the rest of this entry »
SMITH COUNTY — Smith County will have 33 polling locations open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Election Day, Tuesday, March 3.
During the two weeks of early voting, there was a total of 27,964 ballots cast, consisting of 27,010 in-person and 954 mail-in ballots. That surpasses the total of 18,019 early votes in 2024; 18,688 early votes in 2022; and 19,219 early votes in 2020. Smith County has 160,066 registered voters.
Smith County residents can choose any of the 33 voting centers to cast their ballots on Election Day. There is an easy-to-use interactive map that tells you what is on your ballot and what voting location is closest to you. Find it here.
The March 3 Election Day locations include: Read the rest of this entry »
KILGORE — The Kilgore Police Chief is currently recovering from injury after he was involved in a confrontation following Tuesday’s city council meeting. According to Chief Todd Hunter, who posted about the incident on Wednesday evening, several firefighters and himself were recognized during the council meeting for their years of service to the Kilgore community. Our news partner KETK reports, Hunter said that during the meeting, a person who had been confronting officers for more than a year for his social media content was in attendance and mockingly booed Hunter as he was being recognized for his 15 years of service to the community.
After the recognition portion of the meeting was complete, Hunter went into the lobby, where he began visiting with residents and colleagues. This is where he was reportedly approached by the individual who had been heckling him during the meeting. Hunter said the individual sought him out in a room full of people and proceeded to aggressively bump the chief in the chest. Hunter quickly brought the person to the ground and placed him under arrest with the help of officers in the area.
Following the incident, Hunter said he did sustain a shoulder injury. The alleged agitator, Eric Brian Trotter, 39, of Kilgore, is facing two felony charges. Read the rest of this entry »
TYLER — A 33-year-old man was arrested Monday following a DNA swab that came back as a positive match led to the discovery that he sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl in 2020. According to our news partner KETK, Martin Roman Torres was booked into the Smith County Jail Monday for allegedly sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in June 2020, according to an arrest affidavit.
The affidavit claims the girl and her sister ran away from a group home on June 22, 2020, around 7 p.m. The girls were at the park when Torres approached them and began talking to them. He invited the girls to stay with him that night and as they were walking to his home, he wanted to stop for marijuana, the affidavit reported. Read the rest of this entry »
TYLER — An East Texas woman arrested for a December hit-and-run that killed a 19-year-old cyclist initially claimed she thought she had a tire blowout when the collision occurred. However, after driving past the scene and spotting police vehicles, she reportedly reflected, “I should have went back.”
According to our news partner KETK, footage obtained showed the truck Andrea Tanner was driving allegedly struck Lofton Williams, 19, of Argyle on Dec. 7 near the intersection of Wayside Drive and E. Fifth Street. At around 6:45 p.m., a loud crash can be heard off-screen after Tanner’s black truck was seen traveling the same lane as Williams. After hitting the cyclist, Tanner is seen on footage turning into a Brookshires less than a mile from the crime scene before exiting and driving to the Taco Bell next to it. There, video captures her going in and out of her truck several times and manipulating the grill area and the driver’s side light.
Tanner was taken into the Smith County Jail on Monday and charged with collision involving personal injury or death and is being held on a $250,000 bond. The Tyler Police Department said the case will now be forwarded to the Smith County District Attorney’s Office. Read the rest of this entry »
UPSHUR COUNTY — A woman pleaded guilty on Wednesday in a tax fraud scheme tied to her two Longview businesses, resulting in a tax loss of nearly $250,000. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of Texas and our news partner KETK, Marneitha Reese Scott, 57, of Gilmer, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to aid, assist, counsel or advise in tax fraud. Evidence showed that Scott operated two tax return preparer businesses in Longview under the name F.A.S.T. Financial Firm.
“Scott and others recruited tax preparers to work at the businesses to prepare and file income tax returns for clients,” the U.S. attorney’s office said. “With others, Scott created a scheme to defraud the United States by instructing the tax preparers to create fraudulent entries on client tax returns, including, for example, claims for business losses when the client had no business.”
The tax returns were reportedly filed by Scott or her employees working at her direction, resulting in a tax loss for tax years 2019-2022 of $243,899.
Scott could face up to five years in federal prison, a potential fine and restitution at sentencing.
TYLER — Broadway Avenue has long been known as one of the most congested roads in Tyler. Five years ago, it ranked among the 50 most congested roads in the state, according to the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). By 2023, its ranking improved significantly, dropping 40 spots to 87th place. In 2024, Broadway Avenue exited the top 100, landing in 102nd place. The following year, in 2025, it dropped another 18 spots to 120th place.
According to a City of Tyler news release, the continued drop is the result of multiple years of planning and annual traffic signal re-timing, initiated in 2019 as part of the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) Master Plan Study. This study set out a 10-year signal re-timing effort to reduce congestion and improve safety each year. Read the rest of this entry »
UPDATE: The Daingerfield Police Department has confirmed the suspect’s identity as 65-year-old John Dupriest Jr.
EAST TEXAS — The Palestine Police Department is investigating a fatal crash that left one pedestrian dead on Tuesday evening after being struck by a UPS truck. According to the department and our news partner KETK, the wreck was reported around 8 p.m. Officers and firefighters arrived at the intersection of South Loop 256 and F.M. 322 and transported the pedestrian to a local hospital. The pedestrian was pronounced dead later that evening.
Based on witness statements and evidence at the scene, authorities believe the UPS driver was traveling west on South Loop 256 when the pedestrian attempted to cross the loop traveling north near the intersection. While the pedestrian was attempting to cross, the driver had a green light and entered the intersection, striking her with the truck.
According to officials, the driver remained at the scene following the crash and cooperated with authorities throughout the incident. The department said at this time no charges are being filed.
The investigation is ongoing. The pedestrian’s identity has not been released. The department stated she is not a resident of Palestine.
WHITEHOUSE – Five polling centers all across Smith County are now set up and ready for East Texas to start early voting. Crews loaded up the truck and delivered everything from booths and tablets, to traffic cones.
The City of Whitehouse spent all day organizing and getting things ready to show off their brand-new voting facility. Maurine Smith has been an election judge in Whitehouse since 2004 and is grateful to have the new location. The new Whitehouse City Center is located on 109 East Main Street and for this early voting period its the only place to cast a vote in the city of Whitehouse.
Smith County poll locations like the Whitehouse City Center are open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the week or from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekends. Read the rest of this entry »
SMITH COUNTY — In a step towards pet care affordability, Smith County Commissioners have approved the launch of a new low-cost spay and neuter clinic in Tyler. This initiative is a collaborative effort between the Smith County Animal Shelter and the Animal Protection League (APL). According to our news partner KETK, the APL has been dedicated to serving surrounding communities for years, offering affordable spay-and-neuter services and vaccinations. With the green light from the commissioners, they will now have a central location to operate from every Tuesday.
The clinic will be conveniently set up in the parking lot behind the county shelter, making it easier for pet owners to access essential services for their furry family members. Read the rest of this entry »
VAN ZANDT COUNTY — Van Zandt County officials on Wednesday issued a 30-day burn ban, citing dangerous fire conditions. The ban prohibits any outdoor burning in the county’s unincorporated areas for 30 days beginning Wednesday, the Van Zandt County Fire Marshal said.
For more information on the ban visit the Van Zandt County website.