Today is
Sunday July 19, 2026
WASHINGTON (AP) — Students pursuing graduate degrees in nursing, physical therapy and several other fields will be eligible to take out higher federal student loan amounts — at least for now — after a federal judge blocked part of a Trump administration rule that held them to lower limits.
The U.S. Education Department issued a revised rule on Monday designed to follow the judge’s order from last week, officials told The Associated Press. Agency officials called it a temporary change while they fight in court to keep the original rule, which defined medicine, law and other fields as “professional programs” but excluded fields such as nursing.
The department disagrees with the judge’s order but will comply, even as officials plan to prevail in the case over which degrees are defined as “professional,” Undersecretary Nicholas Kent said in a statement. “We will continue to make the case that the definition is both lawful and appropriate,” he said.
The change represents a short-term win for groups that sued to stop the rule. Eight groups challenged the department’s definition in court, representing nurse practitioners, therapists, speech language pathologists and more.
But in strictly applying the judge’s order, the department is now striking some degrees from the list of professional programs, meaning those students will face lower loan limits. Theology studies programs are among the biggest to shift from professional to non-professional degrees in the shuffle, subjecting theology students to a lower student loan limit. The master of divinity degree — a common degree for pastors and ministers — remains on the professional list, with a more generous student loan limit.
The new rule, which takes effect Wednesday, comes from a student loan overhaul passed in President Donald Trump’s tax bill last year. Programs designated as professional degrees face federal loan caps of $200,000, while other graduate programs are capped at $100,000.
Previously, graduate students had been able to take out federal loans up to the full cost of their degree. Trump officials pushed for new loan caps to rein in student debt and lower tuition prices that they said had grown out of control.
The groups that brought the lawsuit said the rule would require students to forgo their studies or take out riskier private loans. Although many graduate nursing degrees fall within the lower loan limits, some can cost more than $100,000, including in high-demand fields like nurse anesthesia.
In a notification to universities on Monday, the Education Department said it’s confident the Trump administration’s initial rule will ultimately be upheld in court. The amended rule is expected to remain in effect during the judge’s preliminary stay, but the department warned that it “may change as litigation in the case proceeds.”
The original rule included about a dozen programs that were deemed professional, which Trump officials had said was not a judgment on their importance but part of a technical definition dating to the 1960s. Along with law and medicine, that list also included theology, pharmacy, veterinary medicine, clinical psychology and more.
The temporary rule expands that list to 29 specific degree programs, including master of science in nursing, doctor of nursing practice, and doctor of nurse anesthesia practice. Others newly added to the professional list include degrees for physical therapy, athletic training, speech-language pathology, physician associates and anesthesiologist assistants.
The department’s communication listed about 25 programs that are now considered non-professional degrees. Along with theology, that list now includes applied psychology, pharmaceutical sciences and others. (The doctor of pharmacy degree remains professional.)
Last week’s court ruling blocked parts of the Education Department’s definition that were added in a federal rulemaking process. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington called it a “misguided” interpretation that strayed from a longstanding definition created by Congress.
The department’s definition laid out several criteria used to weigh if degrees count as professional programs. It said those degrees generally take six years to complete and require licenses to begin practicing, among other requirements.
It also said professional degrees cannot lead to employment that must be “be supervised by another professional” with “more education, training, and qualifications.”
A separate lawsuit filed by a coalition of Democratic-led states challenging the loan caps is still pending.
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court on Tuesday will rule on the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s order on birthright citizenship declaring that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily are not American citizens.
The decision comes on the final day of a Supreme Court term that has centered on Trump’s expansive claims of presidential power — and largely ruled in his favor.
The court on Monday handed Trump a major win by upholding his firings of independent federal agency heads at will, with the exception of Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, who will retain her job while she fights the president’s effort to fire her over allegations of mortgage fraud.
Here’s the latest:
Outside of the Americas, most countries follow the legal principle of jus sanguinis, or “right of blood,” with a child’s citizenship inherited from its parents, no matter the place of birth.
In the European Union, for example, no member states grant automatic, unconditional citizenship to children born to foreigners.
But American legal practice is descended in many ways from English common law, which had long provided for citizenship based on a child’s place of birth, the legal concept of jus soli, or “right of soil.”
The UK, though, abandoned jus soli with the British Nationality Act of 1981.
Under the new rules, people born in the UK get citizenship only if at least one parent is a British citizen or has “settled status” under the law.
The court will dive right into the remaining decisions when the justices take the bench at 10 a.m. ET.
The opinions are typically read in ascending order of seniority so that the most junior justice with an opinion goes first. Chief Justice John Roberts, who may well have the decision in the birthright citizenship case, would go last.
Other than at the Federal Reserve, with its role of setting interest rates, the court held that presidents have free rein to fire agency heads at will, despite federal laws that require a cause for such dismissals and a 91-year-old decision that had limited executive authority.
The justices allowed Fed governor Lisa Cook to stay in her job while she fights Trump’s effort to fire her over allegations of mortgage fraud, which she has denied.
With the six conservative justices in the majority, the nine-member court jettisoned its unanimous decision in Humphrey’s Executor that had limited when presidents can fire agencies’ board members — in part to try to ensure decision-making free of political influence.
“We hold that such protection from removal is contrary to the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.
In separate cases, the court will also decide:
Whether states can prohibit transgender athletes from playing on girls’ and women’s public school and college teams.
Whether to uphold a federal law more than 50 years old limiting how much political parties can spend in coordination with candidates for Congress and the president.
Oral arguments for the case lasted more than two hours in a crowded courtroom that included Trump, the first sitting president to attend arguments at the nation’s highest court, and, in seats reserved for the justices’ guests, actor Robert De Niro.
Trump heard his administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, Solicitor General D. John Sauer, face one skeptical question after another. Justices asked about the legal basis for the order and voiced more practical concerns.
“Is this happening in the delivery room?” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked, drilling down into the logistics of how the government would actually figure out who is entitled to citizenship and who is not.
Chief Justice John Roberts suggested that Sauer was relying on quirky exceptions to citizenship to make a broad argument about people who are in the country illegally. “I’m not quite sure how you can get to that big group from such tiny and sort of idiosyncratic examples,” Roberts said.
Justice Clarence Thomas sounded the most likely among the nine justices to side with Trump.
WASHINGTON (AP) — When U.S. health officials meet next month to reconsider a list of controversial peptide drugs, they will hear from a new set of voices: doctors and pharmacists with deep financial ties to the burgeoning industry of unproven chemicals.
The Food and Drug Administration on Monday released its list of participants for an upcoming meeting to reconsider the safety and effectiveness of several popular peptide injections, including some that have been praised by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Previous FDA panels on the topic have been composed of academics and researchers. The agency’s new group mainly includes health professionals who prescribe, produce or promote peptides, which have become a wellness trend among athletes, influencers and celebrities.
The two-day meeting is the latest example of how Kennedy and his deputies are trying to reshape U.S. health policy in the mold of the Make America Healthy Again movement. Some of the biggest supporters of the movement sell peptide formulas, though many pharmaceutical industry experts consider them illegal, unapproved drugs.
The substances are sold online and promoted by wellness clinics as a means to build muscle, heal injuries and look younger, though there’s little evidence behind those claims. Peptide sellers often skirt U.S. regulations by labeling their products as “for research use only,” since the FDA doesn’t regulate research chemicals.
Many of the injectable peptides sold in the U.S. are produced by compounding pharmacies, which mix custom medications that aren’t available from traditional drug manufacturers.
For several years, the FDA has warned Americans about the risks of injecting chemicals with names like BPC-157 and TB-500, which have not been extensively studied in humans. Both drugs are considered doping substances by international sports authorities. They are among seven peptides set for review in July.
Previous versions of the FDA’s panel on drug compounding — the group that will meet next month — have voted against a string of peptide ingredients brought forward by compounding pharmacies, declaring all of them too risky to be offered to patients. Those panels were mostly composed of experts from universities including Duke, Harvard and Johns Hopkins.
The FDA’s new group includes more than a half-dozen panelists who run clinics, online businesses or pharmacies specializing in peptides, which are often given alongside other unapproved therapies, including vitamin infusions.
For example, panel member Dr. Haleem Mohammed runs clinics in Florida that sell injections of peptides, vitamins, testosterone and weight loss medications. The business is part of a national chain of clinics dubbed Gameday Men’s Health. The company’s website states, “compounded medications offered through our services are not FDA-approved, and the FDA does not verify their safety.”
Another panelist, Dr. Gabriel Alizaidy, charges $500 for “peptide and hormone” consultations, including advice on “where to safely get each peptide or compound.” Alizaidy promotes BPC-157, GHK-Cu and other peptides to thousands of followers through his accounts on Instagram and TikTok.
His website contains the disclaimer that each consultation “is educational in nature and does not constitute medical care, diagnosis, or treatment.”
Another member is Bobby Harshbarger, a Tennessee state senator who has multiple connections to the industry. Harshbarger is a pharmacist at his family’s business, Premiere Pharmacy, which sells compounded medications for weight loss, longevity, pain and other conditions.
His mother, Rep. Diana Harshbarger, is also a pharmacist and a Republican member of U.S. Congress from Tennessee. Last year she sent a letter to Kennedy calling on him to relax FDA restrictions on a half-dozen peptides.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly praised Harshbarger’s support of his “Make America Great Again” agenda. Last year, the president pardoned her husband, Robert Harshbarger Jr., who pleaded guilty more than a decade ago to substituting an unapproved drug from China for one used by patients on kidney dialysis. He was stripped of his pharmacy license and sentenced to four years in prison, which he served.
Mohammed and Alizaidy did not immediately respond to messages from The Associated Press Monday afternoon. A spokesperson for Harshbarger could not immediately provide comment when reached by phone.
The FDA has more than 30 panels of experts who advise the agency on various drugs, vaccines, food ingredients and other products.
Advisory meetings are subject to strict government transparency rules in terms of panel composition and financial disclosures. Experts who have a financial stake in a company or industry are permitted to serve on the panels, but the relationship must be disclosed and regulators are supposed to explain why the person’s expertise outweighs their potential conflict of interest.
Kennedy and his allies have been highly critical of federal expert panels, often alleging that they are riven with conflicts of interest, despite federal data showing otherwise.
Last year, Kennedy fired the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s entire 17-member vaccine panel and replaced it with a group that includes several anti-vaccine voices. A federal judge later said that action likely violated federal rules.
Kennedy told podcast host Joe Rogan earlier this year that he is “a big fan of peptides,” and described using them to recover from injuries.
Former FDA Commissioner Marty Makary — who resigned in May — was also highly critical of FDA advisory panels, complaining that they were expensive, time-consuming and subject to too many financial conflicts.
The number of such meetings plummeted during Makary’s tenure. Instead, the FDA held a number of ad hoc meetings with handpicked experts on topics favored by Kennedy, including the risks of talc powder and antidepressants.
MABANK — Mabank Fire Department Fire Chief Charlie Woodard was fatally struck by a pickup truck while directing traffic after the Mabank Rodeo on Saturday. The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) told our news partner KETK, that Woodard was stepping into the westbound lane of West Mason Street at around 10:30 p.m. while directing traffic when he was hit by a pickup truck.
Woodard was taken to a local hospital where he was later pronounced dead, according to DPS. Troopers with DPS are continuing to investigate the circumstances around the crash. Read the rest of this entry »
SMITH COUNTY — Smith County Animal Control is seeking the public’s help in identifying a person who recently abandoned multiple puppies in front of a community office near Lake Palestine. According partner to Smith County Animal Control and our new partner KETK, the individual unloaded the puppies from his truck and left them in front of their office on Saturday.
Smith County Animal Control said abandoning an animal is never the answer, it’s a crime. Anyone who recognizes the person or their truck to call animal control at (903)-266-4303.
“You can get an animal spayed or neutered for 80 bucks, so you’ve got choices way before you get to the point where you have to or you feel like you have to commit an act like that,” supervisor Colton Parsell said.
Animal advocates said ending this cycle starts with responsible pet ownership before another litter ends up without a home.
NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump on Saturday said he is nominating Lance Schroyer, a former Oklahoma state trooper, as the next director of Immigration and Customs and Enforcement.
Trump said on his Truth Social platform that his new pick for the immigration enforcement agency is a former U.S. Marine and a “PATRIOT with real operational experience.” He called Schroyer a “proven leader with DECADES of experience locking up the worst of the worst.”
Schroyer hails from the same home state as the new Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, a former congressman. Earlier this month, Mullin brought Schroyer onstage at a National Sheriffs’ Association event, calling him a “good friend of mine” and noting DHS had recently hired him.
On Saturday, Mullin quickly praised Schroyer in a statement highlighting the former trooper’s 29-year career and his work with federal and state partners on a U.S. immigration enforcement program.
“President Trump made a great pick, and I’m confident Lance’s strong leadership and firsthand experience will empower the men and women of ICE to deport criminal illegal aliens, secure the homeland, and protect the American people,” Mullin said.
If confirmed, Schroyer will lead ICE at a time when the public mood has soured on Trump’s immigration crackdown, which sent surges of federal immigration officers into American cities to round up immigrants. Those raids sent tensions soaring and prompted clashes between protesters and law enforcement, leading to the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis earlier this year.
Trump returned to the White House on a promise of mass deportations, and ICE has been a central executor of that vision. The agency is undergoing massive growth from a one-time injection of $75 billion last year, which has allowed for the hiring of 12,000 officers and increased detention capacity.
Mullin, who started in his role in March, has promised to keep his department out of the headlines and has indicated a softer tone on immigration, although he is expected to align with the president’s priorities on mass deportations.
Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former senior ICE official, said prior confirmed ICE directors have often been attorneys, though some state and local law enforcement officials have also been nominated. She said his background in Oklahoma suggests Mullin likely had influence over the pick.
“I think probably given the attention on ICE, he wants to feel like he has somebody he can trust in there,” she said in an interview.
John Torres, another senior ICE official, said Schroyer faces an uphill climb toward Senate confirmation but his experience being at the state and local level instead of the federal level might help.
“He won’t have any of that baggage, where they’re going to turn around and say, oh, well, he worked for this administration or that,” Torres said.
Schroyer’s nomination comes after former ICE director Todd Lyons resigned at the end of May. David Venturella, a former executive at a private prison operator, has been serving as the acting head of the agency. Venturella is expected to stay on as the acting director until Schroyer is Senate confirmed, according to a DHS official speaking on condition of anonymity.
ICE has not had a Senate-confirmed director since the Obama administration, a result of polarizing politics around the agency and immigration policy.
TYLER — Tyler residents got together on Saturday to march for an end to ongoing violence in the community after a local 5-year-old boy was recently shot.
“Recent acts of violence have shaken our community and left many families asking difficult questions about the future of our neighborhoods,” Smith County Justice of the Peace for Precinct 1 Derrick Choice said.
“When innocent children become victims of violence, it is a reminder that the consequences of conflict extend far beyond those directly involved. They reach into our homes, our schools, our churches, and our collective sense of security.”
Saturday’s Tyler Community Unity Day events started at the Texas African American American Museum at around 11 a.m. when residents started a peace walk to Woldert Park. Read the rest of this entry »
JACKSONVILLE — A 15-year-old Rusk ISD student-athlete drowned in Lake Jacksonville on Saturday while saving his 5-year-old cousin.
According to the Jacksonville Police Department and our news partner KETK, officers responded to the Lake Jacksonville Campgrounds at around 2:30 p.m. for a reported drowning.
Rhilynn Myers, a sophomore at Rusk High School and a Rusk Eagle football player, was identified by his grandfather Jason Myers as the 15-year-old who died at Lake Jacksonville on Saturday. Jason said his grandson was a hero who died while saving his cousin.
“Rhilynn was a defender of the bullied, the weaker kids at school and he died a hero saving his 5-year-old autistic cousin,” Jason told KETK News on Sunday. Read the rest of this entry »
UVALDE COUNTY (AP) – Gracie the Giraffe, who went missing for about two weeks in Texas after wandering off a remote private ranch, was finally found Friday — and the open range appeared to have agreed with her.
The giraffe was spotted about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) south of her enclosure during an aerial search in the Texas Hill Country, according to Real County Sheriff Nathan Johnson. He said Gracie’s owner, Vick Jones, contacted a veterinarian and began putting together a team to bring the giraffe safely back to the ranch.
“She’s in good shape,” Jones said. “She’s standing there, swishing her tail.”
Gracie, who is about 3 years old and weighs at least 1,200 pounds, was found within a half-mile of a pond and creek and had plenty of vegetation to feed on, said Jones, adding that she appeared to have been in that area for about a week.
Getting the 10-foot-tall giraffe home to the Cedar Hollow Ranch, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of San Antonio, was taking some work.
Veterinarians needed time to sedate Gracie and put a hood over her eyes, Jones said. From there, Gracie will be moved with an open-pasture trailer to a taller, enclosed trailer made for giraffes for the trip back to the ranch.
Parts of the remote area cannot be reached by car, which prompted the search by helicopter. While Real County’s 2,700 residents were urged to keep an eye out for her, Gracie was found on private property where no one lives, Jones said.
“We didn’t bother her,” Jones said of the sighting. “She’s got water. She looked in really good shape.”
The Texas Hill Country has one of the largest concentrations of exotic captive animals in the U.S.
Johnson said this week he’s had reports of missing wildebeests, water buffalo, zebras and monkeys, though never a giraffe previously.
The area has a mild climate and rugged terrain — and plenty of vegetation for Gracie to eat. In Africa, giraffes thrive best in dry and semidry savannahs and grasslands.
Jones believes that Gracie, who arrived at the ranch in May, didn’t mean to leave it. She had been wandering up to a rocky area to feed on trees growing out of the rock and had always come back to the ranch’s giraffe enclosure.
Jones said Gracie wandered into the rocky area, fed, and came down on the wrong side of the gate. At that point, he said, it was easier for her to keep walking in the same direction than to try to go back.
The area wasn’t fenced because giraffes had not been going there until Gracie did — and building a fence requires jackhammering through rock to put up the posts. But Jones said he plans to have a fence put up now, and Gracie will stay in the ranch’s giraffe enclosure until it’s ready.
Despite Gracie’s size, she wouldn’t have harmed a person who encountered her off the ranch, Jones said.
“If you move toward her, she’s taking off,” he said.
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court voted 6-3 on Thursday to allow the Trump administration to end legal protections for migrants fleeing violence and natural disaster in Haiti and Syria, exposing hundreds of thousands more people to potential deportation.
The Department of Homeland Security can now end temporary protected status, a program that protects a total of 1.3 million people from 17 countries.
The Supreme Court also voted 6-3 to clear the way for the Trump administration to potentially revive an immigration policy once used to turn back migrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. The court overturned a lower court order blocking the practice that limited the number of people who could apply for asylum each day.
Meanwhile, a liner along the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was cut with a sharp knife or razor this month, causing damage to the foam sealant installed as part of a $16 million rehabilitation project, a top official at the National Park Service said.
Heres’ the latest:
Farmers and ranchers invited to a Rose Garden dinner on Thursday were served New York strip steak joined by sides and desserts packed with seasonal ingredients.
The menu included a caprese salad with garden tomatoes, plus a side dish featuring White House-harvested peppercress. The meat was billed as a grilled prime New York strip steak. Dessert included roasted peaches and White House honey.
Dinner guests received organic garden seeds and tomato jam prepared by White House chefs.
In keeping with the theme, there was a white farm stand at the back of the garden, surrounded by baskets overflowing with carrots, cauliflower, eggplant, corn and other fruits and vegetables.
Speaking at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library on Thursday, Vice President JD Vance said the legacy of the 37th president is “enjoying a bit of a renaissance.”
“If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story, the idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy,” Vance said in a conversation promoting his new book.
He went on: “If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration.”
Vance noted his own parallels with Nixon. “Young senator, vice president, writes some bestselling books, is hated by the media,” he said. “It kind of sounds like JD Vance.”
Nixon was in his second term when he resigned over the Watergate scandal in 1974.
Speaker Mike Johnson returned from what he called a “very productive” hourslong meeting with the president in the Oval Office following a highly dysfunctional week in Congress.
“We’re on exactly the same page,” Johnson said back at the Capitol.
Trump earlier this week abruptly abandoned plans to sign the bipartisan Housing package, which had overwhelmingly passed the House and Senate but got tangled when the president insisted Congress must first pass an unrelated voting bill called the SAVE America Act. That bill has failed to draw broad support in the Senate.
A group of House GOP lawmakers joined Trump’s rally call and refused to vote on other measures, essentially shutting down business in the House.
Trump, after meeting with Johnson, told Republicans in a social media post: “no more grandstanding.”
Johnson said they had to get back to work, and he said they were transmitting the Housing bill, which starts a 10-day clock for Trump to either sign it or veto the bill.
The merchant vessel that was attacked earlier today was hit by an Iranian drone, a U.S. official told The Associated Press.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation, said that the merchant vessel Ever Lovely was attacked by a drone being flown by the Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center reported the attack earlier on Thursday but only said that the ship was struck by a “projectile off Oman near UN-approved route for Strait of Hormuz.”
The center noted that there were no causalities nor any environmental impact.
A U.S. official told The Associated Press that no frozen funds have been released to Iran and will not be done until Iran meets the requirements of Trump’s interim Iran agreement.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC’s Squawk Box this week that Treasury would oversee how unfrozen funds would be spent.
“A very large percentage of it will go to buy U.S. foodstuffs and medicines,” he said.
A U.N. maritime agency has paused the evacuation of ships through the Strait of Hormuz after the British military said a vessel was hit Thursday by a projectile off the coast of Oman.
The head of the International Maritime Organization said the plan to move stranded ships through the strait will be on hold until the agency can confirm safety guarantees for the ships on the evacuation list and in the region.
It was unclear who launched the projectile or the type of vessel that was targeted. The report of a strike came hours after Iran threatened vessels to stop using a U.N.-approved route through the strait without Tehran’s permission.
A liner along the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was cut with a sharp knife or razor this month, causing damage to the foam sealant installed as part of a $16 million rehabilitation project, a top official at the National Park Service says.
The agency reported the June 9 incident to U.S. Park Police, said Frank Lands, deputy director of operations for the park service. Lands made the statement in a court document filed late Wednesday as part of a lawsuit filed by a nonprofit organization to halt the Trump administration’s work on the project.
The police report indicates damage to the pool, “including a caulk over the foam sealant that was cut with a sharp knife or razor and destruction of delaminating surface material,? Lands said. About 70 fence post tops also were thrown into the pool, he said.
The immigration center built in the Florida swamps known as “Alligator Alcatraz” is closing after nearly a year of holding thousands of immigrant detainees, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday.
DeSantis said the center was always supposed to be temporary and now federal officials have enough ability to handle detention and deportation in more permanent facilities.
Officials announced a temporary closure of the facility earlier in June, saying hurricane season made it unsafe to keep the detainees in the Florida Everglades. All the of people kept at the isolated airstrip had been sent to other facilities.
Immigration advocates said the tents were never safe or humane to hold people. Detainees at the facility have talked about their difficulty accessing lawyers, and have described poor physical conditions, including worms in the food, toilets that don’t flush, flooding floors with fecal waste, and mosquitoes and other insects everywhere.
The top legal official at Homeland Security praised the Supreme Court’s decision on temporary protected status.
“The Court vindicates DHS yet again,” said James Percival, the department’s general counsel in a statement on X.
“The T in TPS stands for TEMPORARY, yet many of these designations became de facto amnesty. This is a win for the rule of law and common sense,” Percival said.
Markwayne Mullin says his department is reevaluating the eleven warehouses his predecessor purchased to use as immigration detention facilities.
Mullin says some just “probably won’t work” and suggested a lack of “due diligence” when it came to purchasing the warehouses. They were purchased under Mullin’s predecessor, Kristi Noem.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement received huge pushback around the country after the purchases became known.
When Mullin came into office, he paused any new purchases and federal officials have been looking at ways to offload some of them.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate passed a bipartisan housing bill on Monday that aims to reduce federal regulations and expand local control, one of the most sweeping efforts in recent decades to increase supply and bring down prices.
The bill, which passed 85-5 and now heads to the House, has been the focus of intense negotiations in recent weeks as lawmakers in both parties try to address housing costs in an election year. The final version of the legislation bans corporate investors from buying single-family homes but doesn’t include a Senate provision that would have required investors to sell newly constructed homes within seven years.
The measure was the result of years of work to “lower costs, expand housing supply, cut red tape, protect taxpayers, and help more Americans achieve the dream of homeownership,” said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott, R-S.C., who worked with Democrats to get the bill passed.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the banking panel, said it is the most significant housing bill to pass Congress since 1990, when the average home in America was sold for $150,000. Now it costs more than $500,000, she said.
The bill “acknowledges that the federal government has a role to play in lowering housing prices,” Warren told The Associated Press. “For the first time ever, private equity will be blocked from buying up single-family homes and trying to turn housing into one more Wall Street investment.”
Senate passage of the bill shapes up as a rare bipartisan legislative achievement when much of Republicans’ agenda has stalled. The House is expected to give final approval later this week and send the bill to President Donald Trump, who has signaled his support.
Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California, who helped negotiate the legislation, said it was a “huge step toward finally addressing the affordable housing and homelessness crises in this country.”
Republicans and Democrats have embraced the bill as a way to show they are addressing the nation’s affordability crisis, driven in part by rising home prices due to a shortage of affordable housing. The U.S. housing market has been in a slump dating back to 2022, when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows.
Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes have been hovering close to a 4-million annual pace going back to 2023 — well short of the 5.2-million annual pace that’s historically been the norm. Sales slowed last year to a 30-year low and have remained sluggish so far this year, declining in January and February versus a year earlier.
The Economic Report of the President in April found a shortage of 10 million homes, while a report this month from the Joint Center For Housing Studies at Harvard University found sales of existing homes were at three-decade lows and inventories were rising due to high home buying costs. “Cost burdens for both renters and owners continue to climb, while assistance remains profoundly underfunded,” the report said.
While the median U.S. monthly rent has been declining for nearly three years, it was still 17.2% higher in May than it was before the pandemic, according to data from Realtor.com.
To increase the supply of housing, the bill would streamline environmental reviews and speed up the construction process.
It would offer funding to local governments that build more housing, including Community Development Block Grant money to places exceeding the median rate of homebuilding. It would also provide new dollars for communities to turn abandoned infrastructure into housing, and offers a framework for communities that want to reform outdated zoning regulations, which often limit larger housing developments.
The legislation would allow banks to invest more in affordable housing and raise limits on the number of public housing units that can receive private financing through Section 8 funding to rehabilitate properties. And it would remove outdated requirements and expand federal financing to make manufactured homes more affordable.
“Manufactured housing produces some of the most cost-effective housing in America, but access to financing has been tightly restricted,” Warren said. “This creates the opportunity for more manufactured housing and, at the same time, creates a structure for people living in manufactured housing communities to organize and protect their investment in their homes.”
One of the sticking points between the two chambers was over a federal disaster recovery program.
An earlier Senate bill had permanently authorized block grant recovery funds, a change intended to ensure that funding requests aren’t needed after every disaster. House lawmakers opposed that provision because of concerns over how the program was run, so they agreed on a three-year authorization instead.
The final bill has received widespread support in the housing community, both from organizations representing landlords and large property owners as well as groups that advocate for tenants and low-income renters.
“There is no magic wand that will fix this crisis overnight, and no single piece of legislation is perfect,” said David Dworkin, chief executive of the National Housing Conference, the nation’s oldest housing coalition.
“Compromise demands that. But this bill is a significant down payment on a long-term effort to make housing more affordable for all Americans.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Monday ruled that a recently revamped version of a federal tool central to the Trump administration’s efforts to nationalize elections can no longer be used.
U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan sided with advocacy groups that argued the recent upgrades to the program, called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, aggregated Americans’ sensitive personal data in a way that could result in voters being wrongly purged from voter rolls.
“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan said in an order explaining the decision. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”
She said Congress had expressly prohibited the government from centralizing Americans’ personal identifying information and that the federal agencies that created the SAVE program “knew that the database violates those statutory protections.”
The decision is a major legal setback for President Donald Trump in his efforts to use federal agencies to encourage a nationwide crackdown on having noncitizens illegally on state voter rolls. The modified SAVE system, which critics had referred to as an unlawful centralized federal database of voter information, had been a key pillar of the second election executive order the Republican president signed earlier this year. The ruling leaves its future uncertain.
“It’s amazing how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solving problems they insist do not exist,” James Percival, general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, said of the ruling in a social media post.
DHS referred to his post as its comment on the ruling. The Department of Justice said in an emailed statement that it would “continue to aggressively defend President Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda and DHS’s use of the SAVE system to verify citizenship.”
The executive order seeking to create a national voter list is among numerous steps Trump has taken during his second term to try to overhaul the way elections are run. He also has tried to force voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, ban mail ballots from counting if they are received after Election Day and prohibit the Postal Service from mailing ballots to people not on an approved list of voters. Most of those steps have been blocked by various courts, in part because the Constitution gives states and Congress the authority to set election rules, but provides no such power to the president.
Voting by noncitizens is already illegal and punishable as a potential felony that could lead to deportation. It also is rare, accounting for just a tiny fraction of those on state voter rolls,
The SAVE program was created under an immigration law mandating that DHS help federal, state and local agencies prevent government benefits from going to noncitizens. At least 25 states used it to check their voter rolls since April 2025, after the Trump administration significantly expanded its search abilities. Since then, at least 67 million registrations have been scanned through the program, but critics worry it could end up purging valid voters from the rolls.
Anthony Nel was one of those whose registrations were wrongly flagged. The South Africa native became a U.S. citizen more than a decade ago but had his voter registration in Denton, Texas, north of Dallas, canceled temporarily last year after Texas ran its voter file through SAVE. The check wrongly identified him as a potential noncitizen.
“I hope others can see this fight and not take their right to vote for granted,” he said in a text message.
The plaintiffs, including the League of Women Voters, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and five unnamed U.S. citizens, had alleged the revamped SAVE program violated Americans’ privacy and voting rights. The groups also alleged the Trump administration violated federal privacy laws by ignoring transparency requirements about the changes to the system.
“The agencies were scrambling to comply with an Executive Order aimed at reshaping federal elections, which directed them to create a system for mass voter verification,” the judge wrote. “So they haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable.”
Plaintiffs attorney Nikhel Sus told the court during the October hearing that naturalized citizens face a greater risk of unlawfully being purged from voter rolls.
“They are uniquely vulnerable to errors in the database,” said Sus, an attorney for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Sus said Monday he sees Sooknanan’s ruling as an “across the board victory” and noted the plaintiffs were pleased the judge’s ruling reinforced their argument that the federal government doesn’t have implied authority to freely share sensitive data across agencies.
Mark Johnson, who teaches at the University of Kansas law school and regularly pursues lawsuits over election laws, said “it couldn’t be more clear” that the SAVE program violates federal privacy laws.
He said an executive order from Trump cannot override a federal law.
“It’s an illegal idea. Plus it’s a bad idea,” he said.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, as Trump pushed false claims of widespread noncitizen voting, Republican secretaries of state began requesting improvements to the SAVE system to make it more efficient for catching noncitizens on their rolls. One limitation was that the system had been able to check just a single individual at a time.
DHS, Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency delivered on those requests in 2025, according to public announcements. They made SAVE free for election officials, allowed agencies to search voters by the thousands and began permitting queries using names, birthdays and Social Security numbers, as opposed to requiring DHS-issued identification numbers.
Several secretaries of state have said the SAVE overhaul improved its value as one of multiple tools they use to assess voter citizenship. But in her ruling, Judge Sooknanan said the plaintiffs had shown that the updated system had indeed been identifying some lawful voters as noncitizens and that states using it “are actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information.”
HOUSTON (AP) – Parents of a 2-year-old girl involved in a drowning incident on Memorial Day have sued to stop Texas Children’s Hospital from testing if she’s brain dead, testing a new strategy in Texas’ “right to life” movement aimed at giving people as much access to life-supporting services as possible.
While most fights to keep patients on life support begin after they’ve been given a brain death diagnosis, Annelise Camp’s parents are battling the hospital at an earlier stage, the testing phase.
“This is not settled science,” said state Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, who has helped drive the public’s attention to the Camps, who live in Cypress.
Brain death is defined in Texas law as the irreversible cessation of brain function. Under the law, once a patient is declared brain dead, a hospital can withdraw life-sustaining measures.
According to court documents, the Camps say Annelise shouldn’t be tested for brain death so she can have more time to recover. They also ask that she be transferred to another hospital to explore other treatment options. However, Texas Children’s has stated it wants to conduct testing to determine next steps in her medical care and that it has no imminent plans to end care for Annelise.
This case has drawn the attention of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who posted on X in support of the Camp family: “I am closely monitoring this case and will act to protect this child and honor her parents’ efforts to save her.” Influential anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life has started working with the family, too.
Given growing attention to the Camp family’s fight, bioethics and legal experts say that this could empower other families to fight brain testing, which is becoming more common. The case has already inspired at least one lawmaker to create new laws and build on Texas’ existing laws that protect the rights of patients and their families to extend life-sustaining services and access experimental treatments.
The lawsuit is the latest chapter in a yearslong fight among some right-to-life advocates to end the brain death diagnosis because they believe multiple organs have to fail to be considered a biological death.
Meanwhile, medical experts believe there needs to be a “clear line” that distinguishes life from death otherwise ICUs would lose capacity to treat patients that have a chance of recovery, said David Magnus, a Stanford University medicine and biomedical ethics professor.
It appears no courts in Texas have determined the legality of brain death tests, said Thomas Mayo, professor emeritus of law at Southern Methodist University. If the state district court rules in the family’s favor, it would not be binding in other courts, Mayo said.
However, “if Texas Right to Life is involved in any way, and the family loses, this case would likely go to appeal,” he added.
The Camp family were visiting relatives on Memorial Day, when Annelise wandered into the hotel pool without her life jacket, Johnston Camp, Annelise’s father, told FOX 26 Houston in early June. She was pulled out of the water by family members who began CPR until first responders arrived. Camp was taken to Texas Children’s west Houston location and after an hour her heartbeat returned.
“She never gave up when I asked her to do something… I’m never gonna give up on her,” Camp told the station.
Since the interview, the Camps have declined speaking to The Texas Tribune, citing a court order that prevents them from doing so, said their lawyer Heath Novosad. Texas Children’s has also declined to comment on the case.
Three days after Annelise was hospitalized, her parents filed a temporary restraining order against Texas Children’s after physicians said they had exhausted all treatment options and advised that the child get tested for brain death, according to court documents filed in late May. The documents say Annelise’s heart was beating, although she was dependent on a ventilator. The Camps have refused any brain death testing and want to transfer Annelise to another hospital to receive hyperbaric oxygen treatment or stem cell therapies.
Texas Children’s officials said in court documents they’ve contacted medical facilities to ask about accepting Annelise, but 35 of the 36 have declined and the one pending hospital said it needed her to undergo brain death testing to consider transfer.
The court granted the family’s request for a temporary injunction and the family is asking for a permanent halt to brain testing.
Hospitals usually notify family members, but are not required to get permission from them or the patient to conduct brain death testing.
Under the Uniform Determination of Death Act, if someone is determined brain dead, they are considered legally dead and hospitals have the right to discontinue organ-supporting services.
According to Texas Right to Life, which has long fought the legal recognition of brain death and its use to stop life-sustaining measures, brain death is not consistent with the Christian faith. As long as there is a heartbeat, a person is still alive. The Camp family has stated in court documents brain death testing is against their religious beliefs.
“Texans have the right to say we don’t believe in this,” said John Seago, president of Texas Right to Life, adding that his organization has worked with 106 patients to fight for life-sustaining treatment, an increase in the last three years. “A dead person has no rights, and that’s the problem with the brain death concept, in general, is it is a shortcut to deprive individuals of the right to life and other rights.”
Magnus, the Stanford professor, said that if hospitals are no longer able to diagnose someone with brain death and are forced to keep more people on life support, this could strain resources, such as ICU beds.
“Using that scarce resource for somebody who has no chance of ever making any recovery doesn’t really make a lot of sense,” he said. “When the hospital beds are full, Texas will not be a good place to get sick.”
Magnus worries that if hospitals are no longer allowed to recognize brain death diagnosis, organ procurement could decline which places the burden of organ donations on other states or else, many Texans could be at risk of dying.
“That means that if you have renal failure, you die. You have liver failure in Texas, you’ll die. When you have heart failure in Texas, you’ll die,” he said.
While some of the loudest critics of the brain death diagnosis have been among anti-abortion advocates, not all are in agreement. Texas Alliance for Life points out that the definition of death in state law is based in “sound medical science,” its executive director Amy O’Donnell said. She declined to comment specifically on Camp’s case.
In the last few decades, Texas legislators made attempts to create and fine-tune “right to life” laws that expand the rights of those who have been declared brain dead. None have addressed brain death testing, which is ripe ground for new legislation.
“We passed legislation in the state of Texas and we think people will just follow it,” Toth said.
In 2023, state lawmakers expanded the Right to Try law – originally limited to terminally ill patients – to give chronically ill patients access to investigational treatments if they had exhausted approved options. The same year, the Legislature changed the Texas Advance Directive Act, so that hospitals must give families of patients 25 days’ notice before pulling life support, increasing it from 10 days. Although, groups like Texas Right to Life believe that there should be no time limit.
This change came three years after the family of 1-year-old Tinslee Lewis challenged the advance directive act, also garnering national attention. Lewis was born with a rare heart defect that kept her on life-support in Cook Children’s Medical Center’s ICU from birth. Leveraging the law’s life-support time limit, doctors at the Fort Worth hospital wanted to take Tinslee off life support against her mother’s wishes and an appeals court ruled in the family’s favor. Lewis was discharged after two years, according to CBS.
Toth, who carried the House version of the bill that changed the Right to Try law in 2023, said he would push to give families the right to contest the brain death test and make it difficult for hospitals to procure organs from patients declared brain dead.
Toth, who won the Republican primary for Texas’ 2nd Congressional District in Houston in the spring, ultimately wants to eliminate the brain death diagnosis on a national level.
“I think that we’ve got to be really careful at just observing the rights of parents to make this decision, this call for themselves,” said Toth.
Texas does not have legislation that provides for a reasonable accommodation of a religious objection to brain death, said Mayo.
If the brain death diagnosis was taken off the books, hospitals can still leverage the Texas Advance Directive Act which places a time limit on how long a hospital is responsible for life-supporting treatment, Magnus said, but “courts in Texas have been inconsistent about applying their own law.”
“Courts in other states have gone back and forth over whether a determination of brain death can be done at all, and whether once it’s done, the physician’s findings are determinative of further treatment or stopping treatment. I think it’s a very, very emerging question that is getting disparate treatment in various jurisdictions,” said Mayo.
In these cases, the courts will usually tell the hospital to keep the patient on life support, said Magnus. “Basically the courts don’t want to be the one that makes (the brain death) determination,” he said.
NEW YORK (AP) — The top U.S. auto regulator opened an investigation Monday after a Tesla using an automated driving feature slammed into a Texas home at high speed and killed a 76-year-old woman standing inside.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it’s opening a special investigation into the Tesla Model 3 crash on Friday near Houston, a significant probe because the car was using technology that Elon Musk considers key to the company’s future.
The Tesla CEO is rolling out robotaxis using automated software in several U.S. cities this year and plans to invite Tesla owners to put their cars into the fleet using the same system across the country.
The driver told the Harris County Sheriff’s Office that he was using the technology, according to a police report on the crash, but it’s not clear what role, if any, it played in the incident.
The police report also noted that the driver was not drunk and is cooperating. It identified the woman killed as Martha Avila.
Video obtained by KHOU-TV shows the car traveling at top speed over the front lawn of a brick home in Katy, then ramming into a front room. The next shot shows the car encased in the home amid piles of crumbling plaster, split beams and bits of furniture.
Tesla did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
The auto safety regulator, known as NHTSA, has launched several investigations into Tesla, including one late last year into 58 incidents in which Teslas reportedly violated traffic safety laws while using self-driving technology, leading to more than a dozen crashes and fires and nearly two dozen injuries.
A few months earlier, the NHTSA opened an investigation into why Tesla apparently had not been reporting crashes promptly as required.
As for special crash investigations, the NHTSA has opened 46 involving Teslas using self-driving or driver-assistance technology over the past decade, according to the agency’s records. In more than a dozen of those crashes, at least one person — a driver, passenger or pedestrian — was killed.
Tesla stock fell sharply early last year as car sales plunged amid a boycott of Musk after he waded into politics, leading President Donald Trump’s budget-cutting Department of Government Efficiency initiative and embracing European extremist candidates.
Musk has since shifted the Tesla story to one less about car sales and more about AI and robotaxis, and done so successfully. The stock is up 16% in the past year.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court sided Thursday with a Texas marijuana user who wants to legally own a gun, the latest in a line of firearm cases from a court that has expanded gun rights.
In a unanimous decision, the justices ruled in favor of Ali Danial Hemani, who argued that a law barring guns from anyone who uses drugs illegally violates the Second Amendment. Hemani wasn’t charged with any other crimes or accused of using the weapon under the influence.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the opinion, saying the ruling limits but doesn’t end the government’s power to take guns from drug users.
The decision is a loss for President Donald Trump’s Republican administration, which had defended the 1968 law despite arguing against other gun restrictions. The measure was also used in a case against Hunter Biden, who was convicted in Wilmington, Delaware, of buying a gun while addicted to cocaine in 2018. He was later pardoned by his father, then-President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
Someone addicted to a drug could still be prosecuted after Thursday’s decision, Gorsuch wrote. “We do not address efforts to ban addicts, or those presently intoxicated, from possessing a firearm,” he wrote. Prosecutors could potentially still charge a marijuana user, if they had evidence the person was dangerous.
It’s the latest in a series of firearm cases to reach the Supreme Court since a landmark ruling expanding gun rights in 2022 led to a wave of challenges around the country.
Since then, the high court has upheld a law aimed at protecting victims of domestic violence and strict regulations on ghost gun kits but has struck down a ban on bump stocks, an accessory that enables rapid fire. The justices are also considering a second firearm case this term over strict regulations on carrying guns in Hawaii.
The Texas case comes after significant shifts in the legality and use of cannabis. More than half of U.S. states have now legalized it broadly, and it’s gained widespread use for health purposes.
“Whatever one thinks of these developments, the federal government has not just tolerated them; it helped fuel them,” Gorsuch wrote. “All of which leaves it awkwardly positioned to suggest that the millions of Americans who now regularly use marijuana are categorically and unusually dangerous.”
Recreational use remains illegal on a federal level even after the Trump administration reclassified medical marijuana as a less-dangerous drug in April.
It’s rare to see standalone criminal charges filed against people accused solely of owning guns and using drugs. The charge is more often filed against people also accused of other crimes.
The case made for some unusual political alliances. The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association both supported Hemani’s case, as did cannabis legalization groups like NORML. On the other side were gun safety groups like Everytown that usually oppose the Trump administration on Second Amendment issues.
PLANO (AP) – Pizza Hut, the 68-year-old chain that has long struggled with growing competition and outdated restaurants, will be sold for $2.7 billion by parent company Yum Brands.
Yum Brands said this week that the private equity firm LongRange Capital will buy Pizza Hut, excluding the mainland China business, for about $1.5 billion.
In mainland China, Pizza Hut will be purchased by Yum China Holdings Inc. for approximately $1.2 billion, the company said. China is Pizza Hut’s second-largest market outside the U.S., accounting for 19% of sales. Yum China Holdings Inc. spun off from Yum Brands and became an independent company in 2016.
Yum Brands, which also owns KFC and Taco Bell, began to explore its options for Pizza Hut in November. Last year, Yum Brands’ global sales rose 5% but Pizza Hut’s sales fell 2%.
In February, Yum Brands announced plans to close 250 U.S. Pizza Hut locations. Pizza Hut had 19,974 restaurants worldwide at the end of last year.
“Pizza Hut has long been the weak link in Yum’s portfolio,” Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, wrote Tuesday. “Despite efforts to revitalize the brand and shut underperforming locations, it has become increasingly clear that pushing the division back into growth will require a level of investment and patience that Yum is just not prepared to commit to.”
Pizza Hut was founded in 1958 in Wichita, Kansas, by two brothers who borrowed $600 from their mother to open the store. They chose the name because their sign only had room for eight letters.
Pizza Hut’s familiar red roof debuted in 1969 and by 1971 it was the top pizza chain in the world by sales. PepsiCo acquired Pizza Hut in 1977 but spun off its restaurant division — which became Yum Brands — in 1997.
By the 1980s, Domino’s was the fastest-growing U.S. pizza company, buoyed by its promise of 30-minute delivery. As pizza carryout and delivery grew in popularity, Pizza Hut was saddled with large, dine-in restaurants. In 2020, even as pizza delivery boomed during the COVID-19 pandemic, Pizza Hut closed 300 U.S. restaurants.
The chain has been further pinched in recent years by the growth of DoorDash, Uber Eats and other restaurant delivery companies which marketed access to a slew of cuisines besides pizza.
U.S. pizza sales have slowed considerably since the pandemic, growing less than 1% in 2024 and falling less than 1% in 2025, according to Technomic, a restaurant consulting company. But Pizza Hut performed worse than average, with U.S. sales down 8.2% last year, Technomic said.
By selling Pizza Hut, Yum Brands can focus more on its brands with stronger sales, Yum CEO Chris Turner said.
“Under LongRange and Yum China, Pizza Hut will be well positioned for future growth with ownership that brings deep expertise in the restaurant industry,” Turner said in a statement.
Connecticut-based LongRange Capital was founded in 2019 by Bob Berlin, who previously engineered a turnaround at Arby’s when he led private equity investments at The Baupost Group. Berlin said Tuesday he looked forward to working with Pizza Hut’s executive team and franchisees “to drive its next phase of growth.”
“Pizza Hut is a beloved global brand with a rich heritage and a loyal customer base that few brands can match,” Berlin said in a statement.
Asked Tuesday if LongRange planned to close any Pizza Hut locations, the company said it had no comment beyond Berlin’s statement.
Yum Brands, based in Louisville, Kentucky, expects the sale in U.S. and China to close in the third quarter. The global corporate headquarters for Pizza Hut is in Plano, Texas.
RUSK COUNTY — The White Oak Community Church has created a fundraiser to help the family of Tracy Fears after he was killed in a car crash in Rusk on Saturday.
According to our news partner KETK, the Texas Department of Public Safety said the crash was caused when Tanner Templeton was driving westbound on FM 1639 and while he was approaching the intersection, he drove past a stop sign without stopping and was struck by a pickup truck traveling northbound on FM 3053.
After striking Templeton’s car, one of the trucks driven by Tracey Fears was pushed into oncoming southbound traffic and struck head-on by another truck. After being hit by the truck, Fears was pronounced dead on the scene and his two passengers were taken by helicopter to a local hospital after suffering serious injury.
Following the crash, the trooper noticed that Templeton had a strong odor of alcohol coming from his breath, along with glassy eyes and slurred speech, prompting the trooper to issue a field sobriety test. Read the rest of this entry »
SMITH COUNTY — The Smith County Sheriff’s Office is investigating two reports of dogs stolen from their homes over the weekend. According to the sheriff’s office and our news partner KETK, on Saturday, they were notified that a Blue Merle Australian Shepherd named “Pickles” was stolen from its owners’ backyard on FM 850.
Later that day, the sheriff’s office received an additional report that a 14-year-old Miniature Australian Shepherd named “Molly” had been stolen from her owner’s residence on County Road 43.
The sheriff’s office does not believe there is any connection between the two thefts at this time, as they occurred on opposite sides of Smith County. Anyone with information about the whereabouts of either of these two dogs, please call the Smith County Sheriff’s Office at (903) 566-6600.
NACOGDOCHES — A lawsuit filed in 2025 against Stephen F. Austin State University, claiming to have violated the Title IX rights of student athletes, continues to move forward in court, despite Monday’s ruling to remove five plaintiffs as individuals.
Last year, SFA decided to axe three women’s sports teams: beach volleyball, bowling and golf. According to SFA, the programs were eliminated because of budget deficits and upcoming revenue-sharing requirements.
Consequently, seven student-athletes filed a lawsuit against the institution, claiming that the university discriminated against its female student-athletes by eliminating the teams. Read the rest of this entry »
BREWSTER COUNTY (AP) – Joe Carrasco is among 400 Texas landowners in the Big Bend region facing land seizure by the Trump administration for border security infrastructure. He and others have received letters from U.S. Customs and Border Protection asking them to allow contractors onto land to survey it or risk losing it through eminent domain. Despite mixed signals about building border barriers, the government has awarded contracts and waived environmental laws to expedite the process. Carrasco and others fear losing their land and way of life in an area that sees minimal migrant traffic. Some residents are uniting to fight the government’s plans, fearing the loss of their land and heritage.
As a teenager, Joe Carrasco would help his father pick onions and cotton on the family’s 40-acre ranch on the banks of the Rio Grande. On the weekends, he would mount his horse and wade across the river into Mexico, where he would race his horse and drink beers.
Today, Carrasco is 71, retired after 26 years working in the oil fields, sitting under a carport with a Michelob Ultra beer and staring at the mountains while his cows graze on his alfalfa farm.
“I like what I see,” he said.
But he doesn’t like what he sees coming.
Carrasco is one of an estimated 400 landowners in the Big Bend region whose land has been targeted by the Trump administration. Like other property owners along the Rio Grande, Carrasco received a letter from U.S. Customs and Border Protection earlier this year asking him to let contractors on his land to survey it or risk losing it through eminent domain.
Over the past year, the Trump administration has sent mixed signals about its plans to erect border barriers in this rugged, mountainous region, saying that it prefers other infrastructure such cameras, sensors and vehicle barriers inside Big Bend National Park and the neighboring Big Bend Ranch State Park.
Even though immigration officials have claimed they’re not building a wall in the parks, the federal government has awarded billions of dollars worth of contracts to companies that have previously built border walls for work within the parks.
It has also waived environmental laws in the state and national park to speed up the process. And contractors are seeking permits to access enough water to house hundreds of workers in the area who will be tasked with building some form of border security infrastructure.
But what is clear is that the federal government has threatened to seize land along broad swaths of the Rio Grande away from the parks. And that’s causing alarm up and down the river.
“I don’t want a wall, I want to see this view,” Carrasco said, pointing at the mountains on the Mexican side of the river.
Big Bend is the largest Border Patrol sector, covering 77 Texas counties and 517 miles of the 1,954-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border.
It is also the least busy.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency recorded 3,096 migrant encounters in the sector in fiscal year 2025, or 1.3% of the 237,538 apprehensions recorded across the entire U.S.-Mexico border. That is a 74% drop compared to the two previous fiscal years.
And in the first seven months of the current fiscal year, the sector has logged 1,236 encounters, a 42.5% drop compared to the first seven months of the previous year.
Still, the Trump administration has described the region as “an area of high illegal entry where illegal aliens regularly attempt to enter the United States and smuggle illicit drugs.” On Wednesday, a U.S. House of Representatives committee killed a proposal by U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, to bar the Trump administration from erecting border barriers in Big Bend National Park.
The region is surrounded by rugged canyons and residents live mostly in isolation among desert plants and wildlife, including endangered species. Some residents can trace their family history to the founding of Redford in the 1870s. Others moved to the area more recently after experiencing its quietness and breathtaking views of the mountains. Some have started businesses catering to tourists such as renting river canoeing equipment or serving as river guides. Both old-timers and newcomers fear they would lose their way of life if the federal government seized their land for a border wall.
The threat of losing their land has galvanized some landowners, who say they’re appalled that the government would forcefully seize land in a state that prides itself on defending private property rights.
Some said that they feel powerless and lack the legal and financial resources to fight the federal government.
“I don’t want a wall, but if they’re going to build it, how am I supposed to fight it?” said Adan Madrid, 65, a descendant of one of the founding families. In March, he received a CBP letter offering $2,500 for a right of passage on his farm that sits near the riverbank, or risk losing the whole property, including his home, through eminent domain.
Other residents are trying to unite landowners to fight the Trump administration’s efforts, saying they won’t willingly give up land they’ve cultivated and handed down through generations for hundreds of years.
“It’s just something that’s been happening for generations, people coming in and trying to take land and families fighting to keep it,” said Yolanda Alvarado, 38, who also received a CBP letter seeking access to her land in nearby Pilares. “But I think this generation is more vocal and able to fight back. We have access to more resources and unlike older generations there isn’t a language barrier.”
Carrasco, who lives mostly in Odessa but frequently visits his ranch, said he signed off on allowing a surveyor on his property, hoping that he could get additional information about what the federal government wants to do on his property and whether he would be paid for it.
He said he could use the money after an oil company he worked for declared bankruptcy and he lost $260,000 of his employer-sponsored 401K.
Carrasco said he’s one of the few Trump-supporting Republicans in Presidio County, a Democratic stronghold sandwiched between Republican-leaning Jeff Davis and Brewster, the two other counties that make up the Big Bend region.
He said he agreed with Trump that the Biden administration was to blame for hundreds of thousands of immigrants crossing the Texas-Mexico border.
But he did not expect the Trump administration would target his land for border security infrastructure.
He said he’s told CBP representatives that he doesn’t want a border wall because it would ruin his farm, cut off access to an irrigation pump that pushes Rio Grande water into his alfalfa farm and ruin the big sky mountain views he’s enjoyed his entire life. He said the contractors he’s spoken to have offered scant details on what they intend to build.
“I want to come down here and die here in however many years I have left,” he said, taking a drag from his cigarette. “But now I have to deal with this.”
Carrasco’s grandfather owned the ranch and gave parcels to Carrasco’s father, who eventually divided that land among Carrasco and his brothers and sisters. After Carrasco graduated from high school, he went to work in El Paso, nearly 300 miles upriver, before getting a job in the Odessa oil fields in the 1980s.
As his brothers and sisters either passed away or moved on from the family ranch, he continued to invest in it, building a second home and remodeling the original adobe home he and his father were born in.
When he retired four years ago, he began to focus more of his time here, adding a carport for his tractor and the ATVs he bought for his grandchildren. He fixed water pipes and added additional irrigation lines. He also put in a pool with an outdoor restroom.
“I just want to protect my dad’s land,” he said.
Jesus Valenzuela, Carrasco’s neighbor, hasn’t received any communication from CBP. But he is expecting it because his mobile home is about 200 feet from the Rio Grande.
His wife, Diana Valenzuela, 74, said it stresses her out not knowing if the federal government also plans to seize their land. She said they’re too old to move and couldn’t afford to find a new home.
After meeting in Roswell, N.M., where Diana was born and her husband lived for a while, they moved to Redford 40 years ago and raised two sons and a daughter on the riverbank. They now have 12 grandchildren, seven great grandchildren and one great great grandchild who all visit during their summer break from school.
Jesus Valenzuela, a retired commercial driver, compares the border wall to the dividing line between North and South Korea, something that will separate people on both sides of the Rio Grande who have always felt like a single community.
“But it’s like they don’t care who they step on,” Diana Valenzuela said.
Mario Peña, 62, was born and raised in Redford. He grew up on his family’s farm, growing onions and cantaloupe. Like Carrasco, he left to work in the oil fields, then started his own business as an oil field contractor.
The Peñas have not received any type of communication from CPB, but their neighbors on either side have. Peña said he expects the federal government will also want a piece of his farm.
“I’m willing to die to protect my land,” Peña said, sitting in a metal chair under a carport that overlooks the lush green farm that stretches to the river.
As his children got older, he said he began to miss the 40-acre farm, which he had inherited after his father died. Shortly before the start of the COVID pandemic, Peña started to revisit the farm and laid an irrigation pipe to pump river water to the fields for alfalfa. At the height of the pandemic, Peña moved into his childhood home fulltime. His son joined him later that year.
“I always wanted to come back home,” he said. “I have to do something for my dad before I die. To get the farm all green up to the river — that’s my goal.”
His son, Joaquin Peña, was laid off from his job at an oil field service company in nearby Monahans in 2020 and joined his father in reviving the family farm. His father named him after the Mexican bandit Joaquin Murrieta, memorialized in literature and movies for revenge hunting down the Anglo settlers who lynched his brother and raped his wife during the 1849 Gold Rush in California.
The son said that he supports his father in taking any legal action necessary to protect their land. He said his father has invested too much time and money to easily give it up for political reasons they don’t agree with.
“What’s the point of putting all this money into the farm if the government is just going to take it away from us?” the younger Peña said as he drove on a utility vehicle through a muddy access road with his white Great Pyrenees dog riding next to him.
David Keller, 55, an archaeologist who previously worked for Sul Russ University in nearby Alpine, moved to the Big Bend region 25 years ago after completing his master’s degree in Montana. He was born and raised in Lubbock, but after moving to Redford he decided he would never leave.
He bought two properties, one on the riverbank. Like other landowners, he also received a CBP letter seeking permission to access his land. But like many here, he refused to sign anything.
“We are not against border security,” he said, standing on a dirt path next to his 7-year-old Poodle mix named Sola. But he doesn’t see the use for a border wall.
“People across the river are our family and friends, there’s no animosity, we’re not afraid of them,” he said. “So to put a border wall here, it’s the most wrongheaded thing to do.”
In 2022, Keller led an archaeological project that found new artifacts from a 1918 massacre, in which Texas Rangers killed 15 Mexican-American men and boys in nearby Porvenir. The Rangers at the time said they were targeting bandits raiding people’s ranches, but families of the victims have said they were innocent and the attacks were motivated by racism toward American citizens of Mexican descent.
He said the region is filled with overlooked Mexican-American and Native American history that could be lost if construction crews begin bulldozing new roads and scraping the ground to build a wall.
In Arizona, border barrier construction crews damaged a Native American archaeological site believed to be at least 1,000 years old. In El Paso, the Trump administration has also sued the Catholic Diocese of neighboring Las Cruces, New Mexico, for 14 acres of land at the bottom of Mount Cristo Rey, where a 29-foot-tall statue of Jesus Christ draws hundreds of pilgrims each year and overlooks Ciudad Juárez, El Paso and Sunland Park, N.M.
“This could destroy the feeling of this place,” Keller said. “I’m not willing to live in a cage.”
However, he said he has come across residents who are afraid to challenge the government out of fear of retaliation, partly because of historical precedent and because many residents depend on federal government jobs. He said he’s tried to convince those families that without their voices they may lose this battle.
Concepcion “Chon” Prieto, 87, inherited his 400-acre ranch on the riverbank in Redford from his grandmother. His family has been in the area for at least five generations, he said, and have survived hard times. In 1934, a Texas Ranger fatally shot one of Prieto’s cousins while searching for bandits, according to a book written by Keller. Prieto heard the story as a child and said the experience made his family wary of people coming onto their land.
Most of his family has moved away, but he said he stays in Redford to continue watching over the family land. He said he does not want to give it up and plans to sell the land to the person who is taking care of it for him.
“I would rather give it up to someone who cares about it than the government,” he said, sitting on a recliner surrounded by mail — including letters from CBP saying that the federal government wants feedback as part of a public comment period from owners with property on the riverbank.
FORT WORTH (AP) — Soon, half of all American schoolkids will live in states that offer public money for a private education. Texas is the latest to join in, budgeting $1 billion to spend this fall on private school scholarships or homeschooling expenses. Next year, the federal government will start incentivizing private school scholarships in states that have never offered them before. In theory, these programs are supposed to give children an educational opportunity they wouldn’t otherwise have. In reality, students already in private school are most likely to benefit, an analysis by The Associated Press shows.
More families across the country are experimenting with private school as states — and soon the federal government — use taxpayer-supported scholarships to encourage them to leave public school. Soon, half of all American schoolkids will be able to apply for state money to finance a private education, and many states will offer the scholarships even to families with high incomes.
In theory, these programs are supposed to give children an educational opportunity they wouldn’t otherwise have. In reality, students already in private or home school are most likely to benefit, an analysis by The Associated Press shows.
The reasons are complicated. In some cases, public school families don’t know about these scholarship programs, known as vouchers or education savings accounts. They may lack transportation to get their kids to private school. Some worry their child won’t survive in a more strict disciplinary environment. Sometimes, as in Texas, the latest state to join the already $10.5 billion private school choice movement, the law is written to benefit families who know how to navigate complicated education systems.
Texas’ monumental program launches this fall, offering around $1 billion of public money to help families with private school or homeschooling expenses. The program funds education savings accounts — a type of scholarship that goes beyond just tuition, giving families money for everything from textbooks and music lessons to transportation and tech.
Republican-led states such as Indiana, Florida and Arizona have long offered taxpayer-funded scholarships for students attending private school or studying at home. But the movement to privatize education has surged under President Donald Trump, who has capitalized on growing skepticism of public schools.
For years, Texas had resisted launching a voucher program, as Democrats and rural Republicans blocked efforts they feared would divert money from public schools. Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, fast-tracked the creation of Texas Education Freedom Accounts last year with an assist from Trump. The president himself called GOP lawmakers to urge them to pass this part of his education agenda.
To get the votes, Texas Republicans abandoned a provision that would have awarded 80% of Freedom Accounts in the first year to students leaving public schools.
Without such a provision, evidence from other states is clear: The majority of scholarships will be used by students already in private or home schools.
In the end, the Texas legislation prioritized students from any type of school who have documented disabilities, plus their siblings. Those students, as long as their families earn less than $165,000 for a family of four, would be first in line when Texas awarded its Freedom Account scholarships this spring.
Next, the state prioritized lower-income children, whose families earn less than $66,000 for a family of four.
Today, nine states have taxpayer-funded scholarships to help students with special needs attend private school or learn at home.
But leaving the public school system is risky for many of these students, and special education advocates have long warned against it. Private schools aren’t legally required to admit students with special needs. Contreras was surprised to learn private schools also aren’t obligated to offer services to help kids with disabilities, as public schools are.
Despite decades of research on school choice, academic scholarship hasn’t kept pace with states targeting vouchers to students with disabilities. How those students are faring academically in traditional private schools is unknown.
STARBASE (AP) – SpaceX will move forward with its $60 billion acquisition of artificial intelligence startup Cursor as Elon Musk’s space exploration and AI company seeks a competitive edge against rivals Anthropic and OpenAI after its Wall Street debut last week.
SpaceX said in April that it had the rights to buy Cursor, or pay $10 billion to “work together” with the company.
In a regulatory filing Tuesday, SpaceX said that Cursor will become a wholly owned subsidiary when the deal closes in the third quarter.
Cursor, made by San Francisco startup Anysphere, is a popular AI coding assistant. What SpaceX has described as Cursor’s wide “distribution to expert software engineers” is likely part of what made it attractive to Musk’s company, giving it access to a new customer base.
When it first announced the potential acquisition, Cursor said the partnership with SpaceX subsidiary xAI would enable it to build future AI products using xAI’s massive AI data center complex Colossus, based in Memphis, Tennessee.
Cursor, which started in 2022, helped sparked a trend called “vibe coding” as AI coding assistants have become increasingly capable of doing the work of computer programming.
Cursor competes with other coding tools like Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex but also has relied heavily on partnerships with those larger AI research companies for the foundations of its technology.
It was Cursor’s Composer, combined with Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet, that a prominent AI researcher was playing with for weekend projects when he coined the phrase “vibe coding” in early 2025.
SpaceX became a public company on Friday in what is largely considered a successful debut. Shares of the company have jumped since Friday, and are up 9% before the opening bell Tuesday.
SHERMAN (AP) — Jensen Huang’s company Nvidia makes the computer chips that unleashed a revolution in artificial intelligence. Now he’s wagering that an AI buildout can revive U.S. manufacturing, pushing past limits facing science and society.
That vision might hinge on a factory groundbreaking an hour north of Dallas.
Nvidia is formally unveiling on Tuesday plans for a major upgrade to its AI infrastructure as part of its $2 billion partnership with the factory’s owner, Coherent. The factory will produce the material for a laser to transmit data among computer chips, allowing those chips to work as a single system with more power, speed and efficiency, according to executives who discussed the technology before the public announcement.
“AI factories are the infrastructure of the new industrial revolution,” Huang said in a statement.
The factory represents a fundamental test of whether, as Huang believes, AI will be a source of job creation instead of a technology that supplants workers as it becomes possible to write software, analyze a spreadsheet, run an assembly line or even drive an automobile without much human effort.
Huang has led Nvidia as it became the world’s most valuable company, worth roughly $5 trillion, to a point where it’s looking beyond chips to developing entire AI systems. The companies expected to rely on those systems to further develop AI models could soon join the elite circle of those with a valuation of more than $1 trillion. Just how that wealth spreads and the consequences of the technology have rapidly evolved into fundamental debates about how America itself is structured.
AI is powering academic breakthroughs and it creates the promise of rapid economic growth. But even if stocks are buoyed by those possibilities, there are voters who see reasons for concern over its use of electricity, the potential for job losses and the newfound national security risks.
President Donald Trump’s administration, which once saw a light regulatory touch as essential for fostering AI’s development, has recently begun to reverse course. It placed export controls on the AI company Anthropic’s latest models, leading the company on Friday to shutter all public access to those models over security concerns.
Trump, a Republican, signed an order to have new AI models voluntarily vetted by the government. He has also mused about the government owning a stake in the companies that develop AI, so that the public could benefit from the expected windfall even if that would blur the lines between the public and private sectors.
Still, Trump depends on the AI boom to fuel economic growth, drive future gains in manufacturing and construction, and push the stock market to new heights. He has insisted on Huang accompanying him on foreign trips, most recently having Air Force One pick up the leather-jacketed CEO in Alaska while en route for the state visit to China.
Trump has called Huang “smart,” a “friend” and “amazing” — and he’s publicly recounted that he once mused about breaking up Nvidia because of its dominance, only to admit that Huang was someone that he needed as an ally.
“We are proud to have you in our country,” Trump told the Taiwanese immigrant last year.
Coherent’s factory in Sherman, Texas — which includes Nvidia as a major customer — relied on bipartisan government support. The Biden administration approved $33 million in backing from the CHIPS and Science Act to help fund its buildout, while the Trump administration provided an additional $17 million grant to help ensure a key part of the AI infrastructure would be made in America.
Including construction workers, Coherent estimates that the factory will create 1,000 jobs, with about 550 of them in advanced manufacturing, engineering and technical roles.
The factory expansion will increase production of Indium Phosphide, which is used to make a laser that has the optical intensity of the surface of the Sun. Each second, the light pulses a few hundred billion times through a fiberglass straw the width of a human hair. That allows Nvidia’s computer chips to share information and work together as one system in what Huang has dubbed “AI factories.”
Power consumption would be cut up to 50%, enabling computations to occur faster and at a drastically lower price. The prospect of reducing the cost of tokens — the industry’s term for AI usage — would make it easier for AI to expand its reach and abilities.
“This investment expands America’s capacity to manufacture critical AI-enabling technologies, creates high-value jobs, and reinforces U.S. leadership in advanced manufacturing, photonics, and innovation,” said Coherent CEO Jim Anderson in a statement.
In a paper published this month, the economists Jessica Wachter and Jonathan Wachter noted that the five largest U.S. technology firms invested $380 billion last year as part of the AI buildout and that sum could roughly double this year. Based on that investment, they estimate the possibility of rapid economic growth as AI accounts for more of U.S. gross domestic product. While AI is roughly 3% of the economy now, that figure could grow to a range of 8% to 39%.
One Nvidia executive, who insisted on speaking on background to describe its industrial strategy, stressed that the company was moving from developing computer chips to providing entire AI systems. That has meant clustering more production in the U.S. with chipmaking increasingly centered in Arizona and the assembly process increasingly located in Texas, so that there is a reliable domestic supply chain.
The executive said that Nvidia was selling brains and a nervous system to its customers, so that the intelligence generated can then be applied to their businesses in ways that create new products and identify new savings and business lines. That could allow manufacturers that depend on foreign suppliers to restore production in the U.S., taking an AI that so far has largely been accessed on laptops onto factory floors where it can, in their words, “move atoms.”
The possibility has not been lost on Trump, who sees the industry as essential to American greatness.
“It’s an amazing industry,” Trump said to reporters last week. “It’s bigger than any industry anyone’s ever seen. We are leading China by a lot. And whoever leads that is going to really lead the world to a large extent, that’s how big it is.”
TYLER — The Texas Financial Crimes Intelligence Center (FCIC), through its North Texas Field Operations Team, led a multi-agency operation that dismantled an organized criminal ring responsible for installing payment card skimmers on high-flow diesel pumps and using stolen card information to fraudulently obtain fuel from truck stops across North Texas.
In late April 2026, the FCIC received a request for assistance from the Garland Police Department in relation to multiple reports of stolen fuel and card numbers. The Texas FCIC began investigating an organized group placing skimming devices on high-flow diesel pumps throughout the North Texas region.
Authorities estimated the group stole between 1,500 and 2,500 gallons of diesel per night, five to six nights per week by pumping the fuel into hidden compartments built into the vehicles they were driving. Investigators also determined the group had placed skimming devices on fuel pumps as far away as Smith County. Read the rest of this entry »
EAST TEXAS — EAST TEXAS — East Texans will be watching closely on Saturday, June 13, as results come in for key local races across the region — in Longview’s District 3 City Council race in Gregg County, Brandon Smith defeats Marlena Cooper with 52.22% to Cooper’s 47.78% with all votes counted.
City of Tyler Mayoral Race
Tyler voters will choose a new mayor on June 13, as current Mayor Don Warren reaches the end of his third and final term. The race has drawn significant local attention, with candidates focusing heavily on infrastructure, public safety, growth management and government transparency.
Stuart Hene is leading in unofficial early and absentee voting totals with 3,876 votes cast for him so far, ahead of John Nix’s 2,931 early and absentee votes. This is with about 11 percent of the vote counted.
For the latest election results, click here.
TYLER — A robot scanning Tyler’s sidewalks to learn about their accessibility was hit by a truck during its first day on duty Thursday. The Daxbots were first deployed to help with Tyler’s Americans with Disabilities Act Self-Evaluation and Transition Plan on Wednesday. Then, less than a week into the robots’ first deployment in Tyler, one of the robots was struck by a truck at the intersection of West Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and North Palace Avenue.
According to the City of Tyler and our news partner KETK, the crash occurred at around 6:30 a.m., when the Daxbot was struck by a truck turning right on red. while the robot was being remotely directed across the street by a company operator.
“When a Daxbot needs to cross a roadway, a human operator monitors traffic and signal conditions and directs the unit to cross only when it is deemed safe to do so,” the City of Tyler explained. Read the rest of this entry »
VAN ZANDT COUNTY — The Myrtle Springs Volunteer Fire Department demolished their aging fire station building on Saturday, citing serious safety problems and a lack of funding for renovations. According to our news partner KETK, the department currently covers 3000 residents living within the 30 mile-wide Myrtle Springs area of Van Zandt County. Their fire station building has endured many problems like mold, rot, rodent infestations, unsafe structural conditions and unsafe electrical conditions.
The building is located beneath the grade of the nearby County Road 3447, meaning it also frequently flooded. It also lacked insulation which exposed their water pumps to freeze damage during the winter. Recently, the department said they had a wiring failure that almost started a catastrophic fire, which would have seriously damaged their trucks and equipment. Read the rest of this entry »
LONGVIEW — A former Longview coach was sentenced to 16 years in prison Friday after he was found guilty of sexually assaulting and grooming one of his former students. According to our news partner KETK, former owner and coach of a local gymnastics center in Longview, Matthew Orban, 52, was charged with sexual assault of a minor in 2025.
The charges came after Orban had reportedly groomed his student for several years before sexually assaulting her during a massage when she was 14 years old. Another one of Orban’s students also stated that he had groomed her and inappropriately massaged her.
During the trial, a video interview was shown of Orban admitting to a detective that he had massaged the victims after removing their shirts.
TATUM — One man has been arrested after an alleged aggravated assault happened at an apartment complex in Tatum on Saturday morning. According to the Tatum Police Department and our news partner KETK, a patrol officer and deputies from the Rusk County Sheriff’s Office responded to a reported aggravated assault at an apartment complex around 12:55 a.m. Saturday.
Brontravis Markeel Williams, 22, was booked into the Rusk County Jail on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. No one was injured during the assault.
MIDLAND (AP) – A man who opened fire in the West Texas city of Midland in an attack Friday morning that left one person dead and 10 injured had shot at a police officer just days earlier during a chase, authorities said.
The suspect, 45-year-old Victor Mata Villarreal, already was being sought by authorities when he began firing at police and bystanders in Midland on Friday before barricading himself in an abandoned veterinary clinic, where he was eventually found dead, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Police have provided limited details about how the shooting unfolded. Police arrived in the area after receiving reports of an active shooter, and Mata Villarreal started firing at officers, said Midland Police Chief Greg Snow. Several officers were pinned down behind their patrol cars and had to be rescued by an armored vehicle, Snow said, but no officers were shot.
Police then got everyone out of the area. “We moved to deny more targets for this active shooter,” Snow said.
A few hours after the shooting began, authorities used robot and drone footage from inside the building to confirm the shooter was dead, Midland Mayor Lori Blong. Police did not say how he died.
A spokesperson for the city identified a man killed in the shooting as Ed Scott, a father and husband who worked in solid waste for Midland. He also did a lot of work with local and regional softball organizations, according to the city.
Friends mourning his death described him in social media posts as a softball umpire and volleyball official who was known for his kindness and jokes.
Mata Villarreal, of nearby Odessa, was wanted for attempted capital murder of a peace officer after firing multiple times at a Midland police officer on Wednesday, the state’s public safety agency said.
The officer, who wasn’t injured, fired back after initially trying to pull over Mata Villarreal, who drove away, investigators said. His vehicle was found empty a short distance away, they said. Police have not said why the officer tried to stop Mata Villarreal.
Friday’s standoff happened about a half-mile (1 kilometer) from where the shots were fired at the police officer Wednesday.
Police have not said why Mata Villarreal began shooting on Friday or provided any details about the victims, including who they were, how they were shot or the conditions of those still hospitalized.
Midland Memorial Hospital said four people who were brought there underwent surgery and that five had been treated and released.
Calls to numbers listed for some relatives of Mata Villarreal in Texas went unanswered Friday or appeared to be lines that had been disconnected.
Mata Villarreal had several previous encounters with law enforcement, including some arrests, records show.
He was convicted on a 2009 charge of unlawfully carrying a firearm in San Angelo, according to Texas criminal history records.
He was charged in 2003 and 2004 for unlawfully carrying a weapon and unlawful possession of a prohibited weapon, but both cases appear to have been dismissed as part of a plea. He also pleaded no contest to a domestic violence charge in 2008 that was later dismissed.
As police responded to Friday’s shooting, dozens of squad cars and law enforcement vehicles descended along what’s normally a busy roadway lined with hotels and auto businesses a few miles west of Midland’s downtown.
Andrea Mendias said she heard what sounded like a small explosion at the closed veterinary clinic next to the auto body shop where she works and saw a number of heavily armed police officers rush into the parking lot. Some appeared to go inside the building.
Mendias said she earlier heard what sounded like at least 40 gunshots.
Video from Mendias showed officers pouring out of the back of an armored police vehicle and police deploying robots into the area.
The city with about 140,000 residents sits in the heart of the state’s oil and gas region and was near the site of a deadly shooting rampage in 2019.
In that shooting, a gunman who had been fired from his oil services job killed seven people and wounded two dozen others while firing at random as he drove around the Odessa and Midland areas. The two cities are more than 300 miles (482 kilometers) west of Dallas.