Today is
Monday July 20, 2026
TYLER — The University of Texas at Tyler received a $241,779.73 grant from the Texas Opioid Abatement Fund Council to support a rural-focused initiative for opioid use disorder. Led by Dr. Tuan Le, UT Tyler School of Medicine associate professor, the Rural Opioid Access, Delivery and Support — or ROADS — to Recovery initiative utilizes an integrated care model to help individuals with opioid use disorder.
“This grant is a vital step forward in our mission to address some of East Texas’ most pressing health needs,” said Dr. Sue Cox, School of Medicine dean. “By integrating specialized medical care with essential support services, we are not just treating a condition; we are building a sustainable system of hope and recovery for our neighbors who have been most affected by the opioid crisis.”
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Smith County reported an opioid overdose death rate of 19.7 per 100,000 in 2022, exceeding the state average of 13.6. According to emergency department data from the Texas Department of State Health Services, several East Texas counties, including Gregg, Morris, Van Zandt and Wood, exceeded the state average in overdose-related visit rates. Read the rest of this entry »
LA PRYOR (AP) – U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins watched sterile flies being released to fight the New World screwworm on Thursday and visited the Texas ranch where one of the first cases of the pest was detected. The screwworm could devastate the nation’s cattle industry.
Later, she repeated her assertion that former President Joe Biden’s administration is responsible for the parasite’s return to the U.S. six decades after it was eradicated. Democratic leaders say cuts to the nation’s agriculture agency under President Donald Trump are to blame.
Screwworms are on their way to becoming a billion-dollar international problem, but can be contained if ranchers are vigilant, watch their herds and other wildlife, and quickly treat any infestations, Rollins said. She pointed to the calf where screwworms were found six days earlier in a wound where its umbilical cord had been attached.
“He couldn’t be happier. He’s bouncing around the pasture,” Rollins said.
Screwworms are flies that lay their eggs in the wounds of warm-blooded animals and feed on living flesh rather than dead tissues. Scientists say releasing sterile flies to mate with females is the most effective way to control the population, a strategy that has worked for decades. A warming planet is complicating efforts by giving screwworms, which thrive in hot, humid weather, more places to spread.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is preparing an all-out assault on the screwworm, which had been contained in the narrow isthmus of Panama for decades.
No matter the cause, driving screwworms back south and keeping them out of the U.S. will be expensive. The USDA estimated it would spend over $1 billion on efforts to save cattle herds and other livestock.
About $750 million will go toward building and operating a plant capable of producing up to 300 million sterile flies a week. The technique has been used for decades, as female screwworms mate just once, and if they choose a sterile mate, their eggs don’t hatch, and the fly population dwindles.
The goal is to protect the U.S. cattle industry. Experts think the parasite shouldn’t cause an immediate increase in near-record-high beef prices as long as it doesn’t turn into an outbreak and large groups of cattle die. Screwworms don’t affect food safety.
The parasite has already disrupted the Mexican beef industry. The U.S. closed its southern ports to Mexican livestock last summer.
Mexico has had more than 28,000 cases of screwworms since the flies returned two years ago, mostly confined to its southern states. The Mexican government stopped the importation of almost all live animals from the U.S. after screwworms were discovered here.
The U.S. had been almost entirely rid of screwworms for 60 years, with scientists in North and Central America eventually driving it down to the containment zone in Panama. But in 2023, the flies emerged and began heading back north.
Experts say screwworms are here to stay at least for this summer. Seven cases have already been detected in Texas and New Mexico. A 12-mile (20-kilometer) quarantine zone goes up around every place a case is found.
As they work toward a solution, scientists say they aren’t sure exactly what led to screwworms leaving the area in Panama where they were boxed in.
“I don’t have the answer to that one, and I don’t know if anyone does. It doesn’t help us to speculate,” said Jonathan Cammack, a professor of livestock entomology and parasitology at Oklahoma State University.
The key now is to ramp up the sterile fly program and get international cooperation to get the pests back down to Panama, he said.
Climate change is also helping drive the spread of screwworms, said Lee Haines, an associate research professor of biological sciences at the University of Notre Dame.
“The fly is a creature of warmth as its entire life cycle, from egg to adult, can complete in as little as three weeks under tropical conditions,” Haines said.
Even Canada has temporarily stopped importing cattle, horses or other livestock from Texas. The parasites prefer humid areas where temperatures are at least 77 F (25 C), and those days are increasing further north.
As Rollins moves quickly to implement a billion-dollar response to the screwworm outbreak, she has also blamed the Biden administration, noting that it was in office as the parasite began moving north again.
She said without showing any evidence the flies were with animals that followed immigrants north as well as hitching rides with cattle and other animals being sold by Mexican cartels outside of regular markets.
“People moving north to America, bringing their livestock with them, the Mexican cartels with the illicit cattle traffic, we knew it was coming,” Rollins told the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee on Wednesday.
Nearly a dozen Democratic U.S. senators sent a letter to Rollins this week questioning whether job losses at the USDA have hurt food inspections and livestock safety programs.
Nearly 20% of the counties in the U.S. that started 2025 with at least one employee from the federal Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service ended the year with none, the letter said.
Rollins said she has moved over 100 USDA employees into the screwworm response. She said it has been one of her top priorities since Trump picked her to lead the USDA.
But Democratic U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu of California said blaming Biden is shortsighted and again shows the Trump administration creates problems through reckless spending cuts.
“The life cycle of a screwworm is about 14 to 54 days, depending on temperature and humidity. The Trump administration has been in office for over 500 days,” Lieu said earlier this week. “This is on the Trump administration. They need to own up to it, and they need to apologize.”
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Patrick Mahomes is set to be the quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs well into the next decade.
The Chiefs and the two-time MVP agreed to a restructured contract Wednesday that adds two years to his deal and pushes the total compensation past a half-billion dollars, a person familiar with the terms told The Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the Chiefs do not disclose financial terms of their contracts.
The Chiefs later posted a photo of Mahomes signing his extension on social media.
Mahomes signed a 10-year, $450 million contract in 2020 that set a benchmark not only for the quarterback position but for any football player. The latest extension ties the two-time MVP to the Chiefs through the 2033 season, when Mahomes will be 38, and it comes in at $504.75 million, with incentives and escalators that could push the value $522.25 million. Read the rest of this entry »
WASHINGTON (AP) — While millions of soccer fans cheer or groan over World Cup matches spanning North America, health officials will be on high alert for germs.
A heat wave may be the most obvious health threat. But infectious diseases can spread in a crowd, and experts are set to scrutinize wastewater, hospital visits, even social media for any signs that an outbreak might be brewing.
Measles, one of the most contagious diseases, is among the top concerns, sparking a warning this week from the Pan American Health Organization, PAHO. With a nearly six-week stretch of packed stadiums, bars and tourist sites in 16 cities, officials are on the lookout for a long list of infections, from the stomach bug norovirus to mosquito-borne dengue fever.
“This is truly a marathon,” said Palak Raval-Nelson, Philadelphia’s health commissioner.
The mass gatherings come at a tense moment for budget-strapped health agencies in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hit hard by Trump administration staffing cuts, already was grappling with a growing Ebola outbreak in central Africa and a cruise ship hantavirus outbreak. While CDC officials have advised state and local health departments behind the scenes, its expected World Cup disease surveillance dashboard still was “in final development” days before games began, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
“Our public health professionals are pretty stretched,” said global health specialist Rebecca Katz of Georgetown University, who is leading an unusual new hub to help.
At the Health Security Operations Center, a joint effort between Georgetown and MedStar Health, workers are analyzing data from around the country so they can alert health authorities, even emergency rooms, to any early signs of trouble. The center is issuing daily “situation reports” about disease trends around World Cup host cities and team base camps to several hundred local and federal public health groups, emergency management and hospital officials and others who’ve signed up.
“It’s important that we don’t become alarmist,” said MedStar emergency medicine specialist Dr. Shane Kappler. “We’re trying to be the insurance policy.”
Already more than 2,000 people in the U.S. have come down with measles this year, nearly as many as during all of last year, according to the CDC. Patients can spread measles before the rash appears and they realize they’re sick. Not too long ago, the U.S. seldom saw measles except from international travel by unvaccinated people.
Now with frequent U.S. outbreaks, “actually a lot of our international partners are worried about measles being exported to them after the games,” said Georgetown’s Katz.
Measles is spreading in Canada, too, and has exceeded 11,000 cases in Mexico, according to PAHO. It’s urging soccer fans to be sure they’re vaccinated, with a health campaign saying a single measles patient can spread the virus to up to 18 unprotected people.
Brown University’s Dr. Craig Spencer, who survived Ebola while working in the West Africa outbreak over a decade ago, said he’s repeatedly asked about the risk of Ebola during the World Cup — but “for me, Ebola is not the No. 1 or No. 2 or even No. 3 threat.”
“I am concerned about importation of measles, I am much more concerned about the importation of other infectious threats that may not seem as scary to us as Ebola,” Spencer said.
Many health experts agree that the risk of Ebola spreading in the U.S. is very low. That’s partly because of government travel screenings and restrictions on people recently in outbreak-affected areas. Moreover, Ebola spreads by contact with bodily fluids from someone showing symptoms, not through the air like measles or respiratory viruses.
“One fortunate thing about this virus is you’re most contagious when you’re really quite ill. It’s not like COVID, where you could be sitting next to someone who doesn’t even know they’re infected and perhaps contract the virus,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown’s Pandemic Center.
There’s precedent for germs invading major sporting events. Canadian scientists linked a community measles outbreak to the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, and clusters of norovirus had to be contained during the Olympics this year in Milan and in 2018 in South Korea.
One way to detect signs of trouble: People with certain viral or bacterial infections shed genetic material that sophisticated testing of wastewater can spot. For example, measles can appear in wastewater days before an emergency room sees its first patients.
This week’s surveillance reports from Katz’s center note that wastewater testing recently found diarrhea-causing rotavirus, hepatitis A and norovirus in some parts of the U.S., something to watch as soccer crowds arrive.
In Dallas, officials ramped up wastewater screening including at the international airport, casting a wide net rather than looking for specific illnesses, said Dr. Phil Huang, director of Dallas County Health and Human Services.
His team also is enhancing the usual mosquito testing, checking not just for West Nile virus that regularly spreads in the U.S. but for viruses more common in other countries like dengue and chikungunya.
Public health officials have been preparing for months, said Philadelphia’s Raval-Nelson, including with mock emergency drills and communications with counterparts around the country.
“I don’t want to send a message that there’s one key thing,” she said. “We have the frameworks in place to carry out what we need to.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — Rising gas prices pushed inflation to its highest level in three years last month, a headache for the Federal Reserve and a potential political challenge for the Trump administration as midterm elections near.
Consumer prices rose 4.2% in May from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Wednesday, up from 3.8% in April and the third straight increase. On a monthly basis, prices rose 0.5% last month, after big gains of 0.6% in April and 0.9% in March.
Outside energy costs, price increases were not as dramatic, a sign that inflation hasn’t yet spread throughout the economy. Should the Iran war end and oil and gas prices decline, headline inflation could begin to cool. Gas prices have fallen this month.
One positive sign in Wednesday’s report: Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices rose at a more modest pace. On a monthly basis, they climbed just 0.2%, down from a 0.4% gain in April. Compared with a year ago, they have rise 2.9%, up from 2.8% in April.
Still, many goods and services rose in price last month: Clothing prices increased 0.3% and are 4.8% more expensive than a year ago. Airline fares, pushed higher by pricier jet fuel, jumped 2.7% just in May and are nearly 27% higher than a year ago. Electricity prices rose 0.6% in May and are up 5.9% in the past year.
Inflation had been cooling before President Donald Trump imposed sweeping tariffs in April 2025, which lifted the costs of many goods. Prices have since surged after the Iran war made oil and gas more expensive, making affordability a key political issue.
Gas prices rose in May because of Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has choked off about a fifth of the world’s oil supply. Prices at the pump rose, on average, from about $4.04 in mid-April to $4.49 in mid-May, according to the Energy Information Administration.
They have since fallen back to $4.16 on average nationwide, according to AAA, which could lead to a cooler inflation reading in June. That doesn’t mean gas prices are not on the minds of most Americans. A gallon of gas has hovered above $4 a gallon since March.
More expensive diesel fuel has lifted shipping costs, with companies like UPS and FedEx adding fuel surcharges in the past couple of months. That is likely to push up grocery prices, which jumped 0.7% in April and are 2.9% higher than a year ago.
Stubbornly high inflation has shifted the debate among Fed policymakers, who had signaled at the start of the year that they were inclined to cut their key rate twice more this year. Now, more officials are saying they expect the Fed’s next move will likely be a hike rather than a cut. When the Fed boosts its key rate, it typically over time leads to higher borrowing costs for mortgages, auto loans, and business loans.
Wall Street investors expect the Fed to raise rates in December, according to futures prices tracked by CME Fedwatch.
Despite higher inflation, the job market appears to be improving, with hiring increasing to a healthy level in May, and the economy is still growing. These positive signs suggest the Fed doesn’t need to cut rates to stimulate growth and hiring. They also signal that the Fed’s rate isn’t so high that it is weighing on the economy. Yet some officials want rates to cool growth a bit, because that can bring down inflation.
Interest rates on two-year and 10-year Treasury securities have increased since Friday’s jobs report showed hiring accelerated in May, a sign investors expect inflation may remain elevated and eventually require Fed rate hikes.
Higher inflation has put the new Fed Chair, Kevin Warsh, in a difficult spot. He advocated for rate cuts last year and was chosen by Trump to replace Jerome Powell, after Trump relentlessly criticized Powell for not reducing rates more quickly. Yet for now, Trump and White House officials are mainly arguing that interest rates don’t need to increase, rather than demanding further cuts.
Some economists still see tariffs pushing up some costs, particularly clothing, which jumped 0.6% in April and are 4.2% more expensive than a year ago. Pricier fuel may have also led to higher airline fares last month, which would lift core inflation.
WASHINGTON (AP) — After complaints about staffing cuts and long waits to get help at the Social Security Administration, its commissioner says he’s ready to make the case to Congress this week that things are getting a lot better at the embattled agency.
Frank Bisignano is expected to face pointed questions from lawmakers at a hearing on his agency’s customer service performance, its ability to pay Americans their benefits, protect their privacy, and other questions about the inner workings of the SSA.
He plans to tout shorter wait times and other customer service metrics to a House Ways and Means Committee hearing slated for Wednesday, and slam his predecessor, Martin O’Malley, for requiring appointments for field office visits, in a letter to lawmakers viewed by The Associated Press.
In the letter, Bisignano states that the SSA has cut phone wait times by 75% under his leadership, fixed frustrating website issues, and served 50% more people.
“I’ve been very clear. We will meet clients where they want to be met. You want to call us on a phone, we’ll have technology on the phone, or you can talk to somebody on the phone. You want to come to a field office, you can come with an appointment, or without,” Bisignano told The Associated Press in an interview.
Critics argue that recent gains are being achieved through temporary staffing shifts, increased reliance on online services, and workforce reductions that have created longer-term service risks, shifting bottlenecks around rather than solving staffing problems.
Bisignano dismisses the criticism. “People boo at Yankee Stadium, even when they’re winning,” he said.
Bisignano in his letter also said the Biden-era Social Security Administration, run by O’Malley, “turned people away who travelled to field offices” in a “failure to have consumer-centric service.”
O’Malley told the AP that the SSA under his tenure never turned away walk-in customers. “We encouraged appointments, but we were not turning away walk-ins.”
“He lies a lot,” O’Malley said about Bisignano. “He’s in the habit of lying.”
Bisignano took over the agency after a series of chaotic customer service changes, leadership exits, and false allegations made by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk — who ran the Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutting program — that millions of dead people were receiving benefits.
The SSA cut 7,000 workers at the start of the Trump administration. Roughly 2,000 employees were reassigned last year into direct-service positions, including staff whose jobs don’t normally involve answering calls.
The SSA’s Inspector General — its internal watchdog — has identified ongoing errors in benefit administration and claims processing. But its latest semiannual report to Congress also shows the agency has made measurable progress in improving telephone service and deploying technology to speed disability claims processing.
The union representing SSA employees and field office workers says some offices are severely understaffed. That includes Ironwood, Michigan; Decorah, Iowa; Havre, Montana; Big Spring, Texas; Sheridan, Wyoming; Glasgow, Montana; Pierre, South Dakota; Cedar City, Utah; and Cody, Wyoming, according to the American Federation of Government Employees Council 220.
But Bisignano said no field offices have been closed and noted that the agency is committed to meeting clients where they prefer.
“What I’m trying to achieve is to have a better way for the American public to interact with the Social Security Administration,” Bisignano said.
Bisignano also serves as chief executive of the IRS, in a role that was created by the Trump administration. Asked about a new tax audit immunity deal for Trump and his family that was part of the controversial settlement crafted to resolve Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, Bisignano referred The Associated Press to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s recent comments to a congressional committee, where he refused comment on ongoing litigation.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has warned more than 500 hospitals that they are failing to provide the public with basic pricing information — arguing that the lack of disclosure is keeping healthcare costs higher than they should be.
The Associated Press obtained exclusively the list of hospitals that since April have either received letters of warning or, in more severe cases, requests to submit plans to provide transparent pricing. Failing to comply with the warnings comes with penalties as high as $2 million annually for each recipient that doesn’t create a plan to post clear pricing data.
The letters are meant to fix a fundamental problem that patients, employers and insurers might not know ahead of time the cost of blood work, an imaging test or another form of treatment, and as a result pay more than they should have. The AP has posted the list of hospitals that have received letters.
A senior administration official who requested anonymity to provide the list said President Donald Trump plans to tighten enforcement of price transparency standards made possible by a 2019 executive order signed by Trump. More hospitals are likely to receive letters regarding the absence of pricing data, the official said.
The warnings are the latest example of Trump leaning into the message that his administration is fixing the problem of healthcare expenses that can drain a family budget. It’s a calculated pitch ahead of the November midterms at a time when affordability is a top concern for voters. But Trump is also vulnerable on this particular issue, as his administration allowed subsidies to lapse for people buying insurance through the 2010 Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare.
Just 29% of U.S. adults approved of Trump’s healthcare policies according to the most recent survey on the issue by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The president fared slightly worse on that issue in the December survey than on the economy, immigration or his management of the federal government.
Gary Claxton, senior vice president and the director of the program on the healthcare marketplace at KFF, said the pricing data is more useful for benefit consultants and others in the sector with access to additional information than it would be for consumers. But he said the standards in reporting pricing data can still create difficulty in making accurate comparisons about the costs and quality of the services being provided.
“There’s a pretty widespread belief that prices are more divergent than they should be in a competitive market — and this is one way of trying to understand that more,” Claxton said. “It’s moving in the right direction, but that doesn’t mean it has gotten to where it needs to be.”
The American Hospital Association said in a statement that its members have long supported price transparency and the majority of hospitals are complying with the federal requirements that went into effect this year.
Still, Ashley Thompson, senior vice president for policy at the association, noted in the statement that “the current system is not working as well as it could for patients” and that hospitals would continue working with the administration to improve pricing information and transparency.
The push for price transparency could have a particular impact on Republican strongholds like Texas, Florida, Indiana, Alabama and Louisiana, which are among the states with the highest count of hospitals that have not provided adequate information on the costs of medical services.
Texas had 42 hospitals that received warnings, more than any other state. Baptist Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, among the state’s largest hospitals with 1,585 beds, received a letter, as did the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center said that after it received notice from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, it found “a minor formatting issue involving a date field” that was “quickly corrected.” The center said the government accepted the updated documentation and there “were no concerns regarding the integrity or completeness of the data.”
Missouri-based Ascension, one of the country’s largest hospital systems, had 13 hospitals in multiple states that received letters. Ascension said the warning letters identified a “minor technical error” and it’s committed to giving patients “the information they need to make informed decisions.”
The Republican state of Indiana had 34 hospitals that received letters, nearly as many as the 38 in Democratic-led California, even though California has five times more people than Indiana.
Administration officials interviewed for this article noted that Christiana Hospital in former President Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware also received a warning letter.
The letters reflect two competing philosophies between Republicans and Democrats over how to handle the ballooning expense of healthcare, which is also a growing risk for the federal government’s own balance sheet.
Biden’s team put more emphasis on record enrollment in Obamacare programs that increased the percentage of people with health insurance. Biden also signed a bill that allowed the government to begin negotiating prices for some Medicare drugs directly with pharmaceutical companies. That program, which has continued into Trump’s second administration, has helped knock down the list prices of some of Medicare’s costliest drugs.
The Trump administration, by contrast, has focused more on trying to find ways to provide details on pricing — such as promoting the TrumpRx site for prescription drugs — betting that doing so will lead to better and more efficient spending on healthcare as the data gets crunched.
Critics have said Trump’s negotiated prices on prescription drugs might not produce genuine savings for many Americans with insurance, while the administration has estimated savings in excess of $500 billion over 10 years.
With the various lists of hospital prices, the administration wants providers to make it easier to access the files and to ensure the information in them is legitimate, instead of being based on estimates or omitting numbers for key procedures.
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce has a hearing planned for Wednesday on price transparency.
“Transparency is the foundation of a healthcare system that rewards competition based on cost and quality,” Shawn Gremminger, CEO of the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions, plans to say in his prepared remarks.
MCKINNEY (AP) — A Texas teenager who fatally stabbed a 17-year-old track athlete from a rival team during a high school meet was convicted of murder and sentenced to 35 years in prison on Tuesday in a case that drew wide attention beyond the booming Dallas suburb where they were students. A jury rejected Karmelo Anthony’s claims of self-defense during a confrontation with Austin Metcalf in stadium bleachers last year. Most people who testified were students who described a heated exchange over Anthony’s refusal on a rainy spring day to leave a tent that belonged to Metcalf’s team.
Anthony, now 19, did not testify at trial and only his mother took the stand during the sentencing phase, telling jurors her son was sorry.
Notoriety about the case spread, in part, because of a flood of social media posts that amplified the killing in racial terms. Anthony is Black; Metcalf was white. Lawyers on both sides, however, told jurors that the tragedy had nothing to do with race.
Jeff Metcalf, Austin’s father, had also denounced those who sought to stoke racial divisions after his son was killed. A year later, he said again in a Collin County courtroom that it was never about race while his voice swelled with anger over the death of his son.
“You failed your parents, you failed yourself and you failed society,” said Metcalf, looking at Anthony after the teenager was sentenced.
Jurors, who deliberated for less than three hours, had the option of a lesser charge, manslaughter, but didn’t choose it.
Prosecutor Bill Wirskye had asked for a lengthy prison term.
“Mercy to the guilty,” he said, “is cruelty to the innocent.”
Earlier Tuesday, during the trial’s closing arguments, the jury heard dueling narratives from Wirskye and defense attorney Mike Howard about what happened in April 2025.
Several schools were competing when Anthony sat under the Memorial High School tent that was perched in the bleachers. Austin Metcalf and others had repeatedly told Anthony to leave, witnesses testified, leading to an escalating confrontation.
Howard told jurors that Metcalf had “no legal right to put his hands on Karmelo.”
“Texas law does not require that you wait until you get hit,” Howard said. “In that split second of chaos, you must put yourself in his shoes.”
During the nearly weeklong trial, prosecutors said that Anthony provoked Metcalf, and witnesses have testified that Anthony was the aggressor.
“This is not self-defense, folks. It’s murder plain and simple,” Wirskye said.
Anthony at one point reached inside a bag and replied: “Touch me and see what happens,” according to a police report.
Metcalf pushed Anthony, according to witnesses, who said Anthony then pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the chest.
“You don’t get to meet a shove with a stab, especially if you provoke the shove,” Wirskye said.
The teens, both from Frisco, didn’t know each other.
“He’s very sorry for what he did. Please, have mercy on my son,” Anthony’s mother, Kala Hayes, pleaded to jurors shortly after the verdict.
The trial drew lines of spectators hoping to find seats in the gallery and unfolded amid heavy security at the Collin County courthouse. As police officers watched Tuesday, dozens of people stood outside the courthouse in 90 degree Fahrenheit heat (32 degrees Celsius) to await the verdict. There were wails of grief from one woman — “This isn’t real!” — when the result became known.
Frisco is one of Texas’ fastest-growing cities and is dotted with dozens of modern school campuses and gleaming athletic facilities. The parents of Anthony and Metcalf have said they were good students who planned to go to college.
Several students testified that Metcalf, after ordering Anthony to leave his team’s tent, scoffed before Anthony reached into a bag and pulled out a knife.
One teen recalled Metcalf telling Anthony, “You don’t have anything in that backpack. It’s Frisco.”
AMARILLO (AP) – A Texas judge granted Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby a temporary injunction that clears the way for him to play this fall despite being declared ineligible by the NCAA for wagering on college sports, including bets made on his own team while he was at Indiana.
The decision sent shock waves across college sports since bans for gambling are a bedrock rule of the NCAA and many professional sports.
The NCAA said it strongly disagrees with the ruling and “is deeply concerned about the damaging, far-reaching and broadly destabilizing ramifications of this outcome — which undermines and corrupts the integrity of sports.” The NCAA said it would appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Seventh District of Texas in Amarillo.
Sorsby, whose school said he has a gambling problem that he is addressing through treatment, will miss the Red Raiders’ first two games next season under a judge-approved penalty that had been proposed by his attorneys. The NCAA, which usually handles such punishments, was not involved.
The ruling by Judge Ken Curry prevents the NCAA from being able to block the transfer QB’s eligibility for what will be his final college season with a team among the favorites to win the Big 12 Conference and return to the College Football Playoff for a second consecutive season.
Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark said the ramifications of the ruling “could have broad impacts across college athletics, creating great concern amongst our membership.” He called a meeting this week of his league’s athletic directors and executive board, and been in touch with NCAA President Charlie Baker.
Texas Tech opens the season on Sept. 5 at home against Abilene Christian. The Red Raiders then play Oregon State before their Big 12 opener at home on Sept. 18 against Houston.
“I’m very grateful for the endless support I have received throughout this entire process,” Sorsby posted on social media. “I am also grateful for the chance to rejoin my teammates. This opportunity comes with the responsibility to remain focused on my personal growth, the ability to learn from this experience, and to be able to use my situation to help others going forward.”
Curry held a two-hour hearing last week in the 99th District Court in Lubbock County, where Texas Tech is located. In his decision, he wrote that he agreed Sorsby would suffer “a probable, imminent and irreparable injury” if he cannot practice or play for the Red Raiders.
The injunction comes with conditions that Sorsby must continue counseling for his gambling and to participate in peer support through Gamblers Anonymous or a similar group. He also must continue treatment to address “the underlying anxiety that served as the primary driver of (his) gambling behavior.”
Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt said a comprehensive support structure, including clinical care, monitoring and compliance checks, will remain fully in place for Sorsby during his time at the school.
“As we have said before, we do not believe that the circumstances of Brendan’s case warranted permanent ineligibility,” Hocutt said. “As he returns to our football program, we remain committed to supporting Brendan’s recovery and ensuring his compliance with the court’s order.”
Kansas State athletic director Gene Taylor told Yahoo Sports he was disappointed by the ruling.
“It is absolutely devastating for him to be able to play when every other sport, no matter the level, deems an athlete ineligible or they are punished severely for betting on their team,” he told the outlet.
Nebraska athletic director Troy Dannen confirmed to The Associated Press that his coaches have been told to not schedule Texas Tech in any sport, as first reported by Yahoo Sports. Georgia also will not schedule Texas Tech in any sport, according to multiple media outlets.
“This may be one of those seminal moments we’ve all been waiting for,” Dannen said in a text to the AP.
NCAA attorney Taylor Askew had said during the hearing that allowing Sorsby to play another college season would provide “reputable harm” to the governing body.
“Saying the NCAA is now the first league in America that allows you, without punishment, to bet on its own contests, that’s a reputable harm to the NCAA,” Askew told the court. “This would be the first league in America that does that. … We should not say for the first time serial gambling is OK.”
Court records show that Sorsby has acknowledged making thousands of impermissible bets totaling at least $90,000 during his time at Indiana, Cincinnati and Texas Tech. That included 40 bets on Indiana while he was a freshman there in 2022, though none on any of the games he played in with the Hoosiers.
While some guidelines for penalties related to gambling have changed in recent years, NCAA rules still call for a permanent loss of eligibility for any player who wagered on his own team.
Sorsby was at Indiana for two seasons before the past two at Cincinnati.
The Texas native transferred in January to Texas Tech for a reported multimillion-dollar deal. The Red Raiders brought him in to be the starting quarterback when trying to defend their first Big 12 title and return to the CFP.
According to court filings, on March 11 the NCAA received a tip about Sorsby’s gambling activity from an online sportsbook, which had been informed by law enforcement. Texas Tech was notified April 14 that an investigation was underway by the NCAA.
Jeffrey Kessler, the attorney who negotiated the $2.8 billion House settlement against the NCAA and now represents Sorsby, told the court that the 22-year-old quarterback has a diagnosed addiction and anxiety-driven compulsion. Sorsby recently completed a monthlong stay in a residential treatment program in Arizona that he entered after the start of the NCAA’s investigation.
According to a clinician who treated Sorsby, Kessler said, not allowing the quarterback to play would hurt his mental health and hamper his recovery.
The NCAA in its statement Monday said it is “committed to supporting student-athlete mental health but must continue to aggressively defend against actions that defraud college athletics and threaten competitive integrity, such as betting on one’s own sport.”
The injunction came in Sorsby’s lawsuit filed May 18 against the NCAA seeking the restoration of his eligibility. That case was initially assigned to District Judge Phillip Hays, a Lubbock native and Texas Tech graduate who later recused himself. Curry is a retired judge from Tarrant County, nearly 300 miles away.
Since the filing of that lawsuit, the NCAA has twice denied Texas Tech’s petition to restore the quarterback’s eligibility.
When the school on May 26 revealed the first denial and its intent to appeal, university president Lawrence Schovanec wrote in a letter to the Texas Tech community that the school felt “the NCAA’s ruling should be reversed or modified.”
That comment illustrates the difficult landscape for the NCAA, which has lost multiple court cases challenging rules that were put in place by the very schools that make up its membership. Many focus on eligibility, with athletes contending they should be allowed to play and continue to earn money that was made available under the House ruling.
The NCAA is on the verge of approving a new eligibility model following meetings among stakeholders and even President Donald Trump. The NCAA continues to also seek limited antitrust protections from Congress in hopes of eliminating or at least smoothing the state-by-state rulings that have thrown the industry into chaos.
“There is no better example of why targeted intervention from Congress is necessary,” Baker said on social media after the ruling. “When you have schools and deep-pocketed supporters willing to look the other way on the glaring integrity threat of betting on your own team — and judges whose rulings effectively strip away our ability to stop them — only Congress can equip the NCAA to apply this common sense rule to everyone fairly and consistently. The Protect College Sports Act would empower the NCAA to enforce rules including the gambling restrictions — it’s needed now more than ever.”
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – ChatGPT maker OpenAI filed preliminary paperwork that would open the door to it becoming a publicly traded company, the third in a powerhouse trio of artificial intelligence companies racing to Wall Street debuts.
The San Francisco-based company said Monday it has filed confidential paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
“We expect it to leak so we’re just announcing it,” the company said in a statement. “We have not decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company. But it’s a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best.”
OpenAI’s move follows its rival Anthropic’s June 1 disclosure that it is also moving toward an initial public offering of shares. Both are now following Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX, which has started an IPO roadshow pitching itself as an AI-focused space company.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman first publicly floated the possibility of an IPO last fall, describing it as the “most likely path” for the company given its size and the need for vast amounts of capital to advance its technology.
OpenAI began in 2015 as a nonprofit dedicated to developing AI for the common good and is now a company valued at $852 billion.
The filing comes at a “precarious moment” for OpenAI as it appears to be losing ChatGPT’s strong early leads with consumers and businesses to Google and Anthropic, said Emarketer analyst Nate Elliott.
“But OpenAI doesn’t have a lot of other places to look for the enormous capital required to support its costs,” Elliott said.
Paving the way for going public was OpenAI’s decision last year to reorganize its business structure and convert itself into a public benefit corporation even as it remains technically under the control of a nonprofit.
OpenAI cleared another obstacle last month with its victory against Musk in a federal jury trial. Musk, an OpenAI co-founder and early donor, had sued the company seeking to oust Altman from its leadership and unravel its conversion to a for-profit business. A judge dismissed the case after the jury found Musk filed his lawsuit too late.
OpenAI has not yet publicly disclosed how much money it is making or when it plans to turn a profit. Much like Anthropic and SpaceX, the company has been losing more money than it makes because of the huge costs of building out the venture. OpenAI faces fierce competition from Anthropic, maker of the increasingly popular chatbot Claude, and Google’s AI assistant Gemini.
In an April interview, OpenAI’s chief financial officer Sarah Friar declined to give a timeline for a potential IPO but said the company was already “acting with the good hygiene of a public company,” such as by measuring its revenue in the way a publicly traded firm would have to report earnings to the SEC.
“I want us to be ready,” she told The Associated Press. “I think it’s good to be able to tap the public markets. They’re much bigger than the private markets.”
She said OpenAI’s current valuation would make it one of the 15 biggest companies in the S&P 500.
She also said there is a “credentializing moment of being a public company.”
“At that point, people are checking your balance sheet, the SEC is governing you and so on,” she said.
In a separate statement Monday published around the same time as the announcement of the confidential filing, Altman outlined a broad vision for OpenAI including three big goals: building an automated AI researcher, accelerating economic growth and giving “everyone on Earth a personal AGI,” which stands for artificial general intelligence or a form of AI that surpasses humans at many tasks.
Altman said OpenAI started out in AI research and moved into commercial product development but is now moving into its third phase involving a “broad distribution of power” as the economy reshapes around AI technology.
He said OpenAI is “working to ensure the gains are widely shared. Everyone should have an opportunity for a meaningful share in the prosperity AI creates.”
The remarks follow Altman’s visit last week with Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is pushing a plan for the public to take a 50% ownership stake in AI companies such as OpenAI, as well as comments from President Donald Trump embracing giving the public a stake in AI’s growth.
HOUSTON (AP) – A Texas man is accused of using a fake boarding pass to get on a United Airlines flight before he was found hiding in a restroom, forcing the plane back to the gate before it could take off at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport, court documents say.
The 25-year-old Houston man was discovered on the plane bound for Los Angeles in mid-May as it was taxiing to a runway when a passenger alerted a flight attendant, according to authorities.
He was charged last week with impairing or interrupting operation of critical infrastructure facility. A message seeking comment was left with his attorney Monday.
Surveillance cameras showed the man first having trouble with his boarding pass at a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint when he arrived at the Houston airport early on May 18, according to a criminal complaint.
He was eventually screened at the checkpoint and then tried to board a different flight to LA, but he was turned away when he tried to scan his pass, the complaint said.
About two hours later, the man went to another gate and waited until United employees who were checking boarding passes became distracted, the court document said. He then pretended to show his pass, walked by the employees and boarded the plane, the complaint said.
TSA said in a statement that the man first presented a valid boarding pass and went through standard screening and did not have any prohibited items. It referred other questions to Houston police and United Airlines. United referred all questions to law enforcement.
Once onboard the flight, the man tried to find a seat before going into a bathroom and a passenger noticed and told a flight attendant, the complaint said. He gave the flight attendant a fake name and then it was discovered he was not a passenger on the flight, the court document said.
Everyone on the flight had to get off the plane while it was checked for explosives, delaying its departure by three hours, the complaint said.
A United employee later told authorities the man had made a reservation, but it was canceled because he did not pay for it, the court document said.
He did show Houston police a confirmation number on his phone and what looked like a boarding pass, but a United employee told authorities the pass was fake and could not have been obtained without payment, the complaint said.
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) — A pilot and co-pilot from the United States have died in a fiery plane crash as they attempted an emergency landing in the Dominican Republic, authorities said.
The incident occurred Sunday near the southern coastal town of La Romana, according to a statement by the Dominican Institute of Civil Aviation, which identified the pilot and co-pilot as U.S. citizens. It wasn’t immediately known what caused the crash. No passengers were aboard.
MLB All-Star former catcher Yadier Molina said on social media that the plane was bound for Texas to pick him up, along with family and friends.
“My condolences to the pilots and their family!” he wrote. Molina and his group were headed to Puerto Rico.
Officials said the plane had departed from Puerto Rico and landed in the Dominican Republic to refuel before heading to Texas.
The pilot and co-pilot reported an emergency shortly after taking off from the Dominican Republic, authorities said.
KERVILLE (AP) — Two more cases of the New World screwworm have been confirmed in Texas, demonstrating the difficulty of stopping the spread of a pest that could potentially devastate the nation’s cattle industry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Monday.
The screwworm is actually a fly, which produces a larvae that eats live flesh instead of dead material. Females lay their eggs in open wounds of any warm-blooded animal such as cattle, but wildlife, pets and occasionally even humans can be infested.
The USDA said the new cases were found in a calf and a dog, hundreds of miles apart in La Salle and Andrews counties. That brings the total number of confirmed cases to four. The screwworm was first discovered in a 3-week-old calf last week, and a second case was found only miles away in a young calf.
“While we address these instances that require immediate attention, and continue to sample suspected cases, we are simultaneously working to eradicate the pest entirely,” Dudley Hoskins, the USDA’s marketing and regulatory undersecretary, said in a statement.
Before it was eliminated in the U.S. in the 1960s, the fly was an annual warm-weather scourge of cattle ranchers.
The USDA and the U.S. cattle industry have been racing to prevent an infestation since the pest was detected in Mexico late in 2024 after decades of being contained at the southern end of Panama.
The government fights the fly by breeding sterile male flies, which then mate with wild females that only mate once in their monthslong life. By mating with sterile flies, the females don’t produce more flies and outbreaks can eventually be halted.
The USDA has announced plans to increase sterile fly production in plants outside the U.S. while it builds a fly factory in Texas.
USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins will be briefed on the infestation Monday afternoon at the U.S. Livestock Insects Research Laboratory in Kerville, Texas.
MCKINNEY (AP) — Prosecutors told jurors Thursday that a Texas teenager competing at a high school track meet provoked a 17-year-old athlete from a rival team before fatally stabbing him in the stadium’s bleachers as other students looked on.
An attorney for Karmelo Anthony said his client did not instigate the fight with Austin Metcalf, telling the jury at the start of a packed murder trial near Dallas that it was instead an act of self-defense.
Anthony pleaded not guilty over last year’s stabbing, which stunned an affluent suburb where the pair attended school. The death last year quickly drew wide attention, in part because of social media posts that amplified the case in racial terms. Anthony, now 19, is Black, while the Metcalf was white.
According to an arrest report, Anthony told police he was protecting himself when the two got into a confrontation during the meet in Frisco, a fast-growing city is dotted by dozens of modern-looking school campuses and gleaming athletic facilities.
But prosecutor Bill Wirskye told jurors it was a “senseless murder” and not a case of self-defense. He called it a “sneak, surprise attack” and said Anthony “knows he goaded the murder.”
“He didn’t want a fight,” Wirskye said of Metcalf.
The jury was seated this week under increased courthouse security and a Collin County judge set strict rules over the proceedings, including prohibiting attorneys from discussing the case publicly. Dozens of people lined up to get a seat in the courtroom Thursday.
The stabbing happened on a rainy morning in April 2025. Witnesses told police the confrontation began when Anthony sat under a tent belonging to Metcalf’s team, according to an arrest report. The teens went to different schools in Frisco.
When Metcalf told Anthony that he needed to move, Anthony reached inside his bag and allegedly replied: “Touch me and see what happens,” the report said.
A short time later, Metcalf allegedly grabbed Anthony, who then pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the chest, the report said.
Robert Starr, a track coach at Memorial High School, where Metcalf was a student and athlete, explained to jurors that a tent at a track competition “marks your spot” and is similar to a team bench in other sports.
“You just don’t go into someone else’s tent uninvited,” Starr testified.
In his opening remarks, defense attorney Mike Howard said it was Metcalf who made the first contact.
“In that split second, Melo has a decision to make: how and when to act,” Howard said.
“Self-defense is useless if you wait too late to defend yourself. … He reacts in a split second of fear, chaos,” Howard said.
Starr told the jury that he rushed to the tent when he saw commotion.
“I see Austin on the ground and his face is purple, and he has a big hole in his chest,” the coach said, choking up in the witness chair.
Another area track coach, Vincent Hooper, testified that he put his arm around Anthony and asked what had happened.
Anthony replied that he stabbed someone who had “put his hands on me,” Hooper recalled.
Anthony faces up to life in prison if convicted of murder.
The parents of both teens have said they were good students who planned to go to college. Metcalf’s father has condemned those who seized on the race of the teenagers after the killing.
“This was not a race thing. This is not a political thing. Please do not comment if you do not know what happened,” Jeff Metcalf said on Fox News’ “America Reports.”
“This is a human being thing,” he said. “This person made a bad choice and it affected both his family and my family forever.”
Authorities have also issued warnings about online discussions surrounding the killing. Frisco Police Chief David Shilson urged people last year to beware of posts spreading “misinformation, hate, fear, and division.”
AUSTIN (AP) – The two biggest conferences in college sports released a statement Tuesday saying they do not support the current version of a bipartisan bill designed to regulate an industry struggling for answers in a quickly changing era in which some players make millions.
The Southeastern and Big Ten conferences said the “bill leaves critical issues unresolved,” including not “meaningfully” preempting state laws with a federal one, which has long been considered a key element for a measure to get support from the NCAA and the conferences.
In an interview last week, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who drafted the bill with Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., told The Associated Press “the bill is drafted to preempt state laws that conflict with the provisions in this bill.”
The SEC-Big Ten statement came out less than 24 hours before a scheduled hearing about the bill in front of the Senate Commerce Committee. Cruz chairs the panel and Cantwell is the ranking Democrat.
The legislation has received support from the Big 12 and Atlantic Coast Conferences, but the Big Ten and SEC, as the two richest leagues that also have decision-making power over the future of the College Football Playoff, hold the biggest cards.
One of the bill’s key provisions would give conferences an option to pool their media rights — an idea the Big Ten and SEC have long claimed would not result in a financial windfall that proponents suggest. The leagues’ statement did not speak to that issue.
A spokesperson for the Commerce Committee that Cruz chairs acknowledged the Big Ten-SEC position.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is slated to appear Tuesday in the Senate to answer questions about the agency’s budget, at a time of intense scrutiny about how the Trump administration is carrying out immigration enforcement and preparing for the World Cup.
Mullin’s appearance at the appropriations subcommittee on homeland security comes as the Senate is weighing legislation that would fund immigration enforcement agencies through the end of President Donald Trump’s term in a maneuver that would bypass the need for support from Democrats, who have demanded restraints before agreeing to fund the agencies.
But, the attempt to fund those two agencies for the long term has been stalled over separate Republican opposition to a $1.776 billion settlement fund to compensate Trump allies who believe they have been politically prosecuted.
Mullin, who was tapped by Trump to lead Homeland Security after his predecessor Kristi Noem was fired, is appearing in the Senate Tuesday for the first time since his confirmation hearing in March.
The hearing also comes at a time when Mullin, who projected himself as a steadying hand at a department wracked by instability during Noem’s tenure, has set the travel industry on edge with threats to withdraw U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers from airports in so-called “sanctuary cities.”
Such a move could upend international travel at a time when millions of visitors are gearing up to come to the U.S. for the World Cup.
Mullin said during a news conference Monday that if needed, he has a plan to pull CBP officers from airports to help with security at the Delaney Hall ICE facility in Newark, New Jersey, where demonstrators have been protesting conditions inside. But he said the state is working to provide security there so it’s not needed right now.
New Jersey state police on Friday relieved federal immigration enforcement agents who had been facing off against protesters at the facility for days. The mayor of Newark Sunday also imposed a curfew around the center.
“As long as we continue to have this partnership with local and state law enforcement then there will be no need to do so,” Mullin told reporters during a news conference in Dallas Monday, in response to questions about whether he would be pulling CBP officers from airports.
Mullin can also expect to face questions over a recent announcement from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that demands that most green card seekers apply for permanent residency from their home country, changing longstanding policy that allowed them to do so from the U.S. and prompting widespread confusion among immigration lawyers and their clients.
EL PASO (AP) – An investigation by KFF Health News and The Associated Press has found that hundreds of detainees across at least 33 states allege immigration detention facilities are failing to provide adequate medical care.
Detainees allege they didn’t receive medications on time — or at all — for conditions including high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, epilepsy, Parkinson’s and HIV. Requests for help went unanswered for weeks. Blood sugars rose. Infections festered. Cancers remained untreated. Detainees collapsed and had seizures.
U.S. jails and immigration detention centers have long struggled to meet the medical needs of the people in their charge. But the system is sagging under an influx of detentions since President Donald Trump returned to office: More than 75,000 immigrants were being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as of mid-January, up from around 40,000 a year earlier.
KFF Health News and AP asked the Department of Homeland Security to respond to the findings six days before publication but it did not provide comment. DHS acting chief medical officer, Sean Conley, previously said “it is both policy and longstanding practice for aliens to receive timely and appropriate medical care from the moment they enter ICE custody” and that the department recruits healthcare professionals to maintain high standards. “This is better, more responsive healthcare than many aliens have ever received in their entire lives,” he has said.
Individual facilities and private prison companies contracting with DHS that responded to requests for comment on this story said they follow ICE standards and detainees receive adequate medical care when it is required. Some said they were unfamiliar with the allegations outlined in court documents; others blamed the detainees themselves for lapses in their medical care.
KFF Health News and AP analyzed thousands of court cases filed since Trump’s second inauguration that use a legal route known as habeas corpus to argue people are being held illegally by ICE. The records offer a rare window into how those detained say — often under penalty of perjury — ICE is handling their medical needs. Reporters also interviewed more than 50 detainees, family members and lawyers.
The investigation revealed that medical neglect is alleged across the sprawling detention system, including in offices not designed to house people, county jails and quickly staged sites with nicknames such as “Alligator Alcatraz.”
The full story can be read here. Here are the takeaways:
Previously, detainees with serious medical needs would likely have been released on humanitarian parole, in part to avoid the cost of their care, Vermont attorney Andrew Pelcher said.
Now, under “mandatory detention,” people are staying locked up with serious — and expensive — conditions.
A Romanian citizen underwent several heart surgeries, including an emergency triple bypass in April 2025, before he was arrested in July. As part of his recovery, the 52-year-old was required to take 16 daily medications. While detained by ICE in Baltimore, his court filings allege, he went two days without any medication before officials moved him to a facility in New Jersey.
The AP and KFF Health News are not naming anyone identified in court documents without their consent.
He was hospitalized three times with chest pains, in part because the detention center did not provide all his medications despite “countless requests,” medical records and court documents say. Hospital discharge papers cited by his lawyer show he received only eight of the 16 medications after his second release from the hospital.
Several weeks later in August, he had a stroke while on a video call with his daughter, according to court filings. “He was struggling to breathe, and was pointing at his chest where he was again experiencing pain, and suddenly stopped speaking.” His daughter screamed for help through the video monitor, according to his petition. “Eventually an officer came in to assist him and cut the feed.”
The man lost his ability to speak for four days, the document says. He was returned to detention, where he remained until a federal judge ordered his release in November.
Detainees receiving inadequate healthcare have little recourse. The Department of Homeland Security last year gutted the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman. In early May, they shut the office entirely arguing that Congress didn’t fund it.
Ombudsman staffers used to help facilitate medical care or investigate complaints of neglect, according to Matt Boles, an immigration attorney in Georgia. Now, he said, there’s no one to call.
Meanwhile, detainees’ families said they feel helpless, making desperate calls to facilities, the government and their legislators while watching their loved ones deteriorate.
Riya Khan saw her mother get sicker at the California City Detention Facility, which is owned by CoreCivic, a private prison company. When she visited a week after her mother arrived at the facility in the Mojave Desert, Riya said, the 64-year-old woman was shaking as she stumbled into her seat. Her breathing was labored.
Masuma Khan came to the U.S. from Bangladesh in 1997. Like 70% of those in detention, Khan has no criminal history. She was detained in October when she showed up for her regular ICE check-in.
For the month she was detained, according to her daughter, she only intermittently received her medications for conditions including high blood pressure, hypothyroidism and prediabetes.
CoreCivic treats chronic conditions in line with applicable medical standards, spokesperson Brian Todd said.
“Nothing matters more to CoreCivic than the health, safety and well-being of the people in our care,” Todd said.
Khan said she got her asthma medication for the first time two days before she was released and her eye drops for glaucoma never arrived. Staffers told Khan she needed to buy some of her medications from the commissary but it didn’t stock them, her daughter said.
Dora Schriro, who worked for ICE and now serves as a special adviser to the American Bar Association, said case law requires the government to treat people in immigration detention with the same care it affords those in traditional jails awaiting trial. But administrators are granted discretion and medical care standards vary.
Detainees are frequently moved across the country, often without warning, interrupting treatment. A woman from El Salvador said she missed a week of HIV medication when she was transferred from Colorado to a county jail in Wyoming.
A Russian man wrote that, while detained in Texas, he saw a gastroenterologist about his painful gallstones and scheduled an appointment with a surgeon. “Unfortunately, I never got to see him, due to my being moved around various detention centers.”
Advocates say that even obvious disabilities, like legal blindness, are ignored.
A detainee who lost one eye and had severe glaucoma in the other required twice-daily drops to maintain what vision remained. But, he said, some days the drops never came.
He wrote that his vision was quickly deteriorating, and he was scared he’d lose it entirely and never be able to see his infant son again.
LAKE CHEROKEE — An elderly person was found dead in Lake Cherokee on Saturday after they were reported missing. According to our news partner KETK, Elderville-Lakeport Fire Department firefighters responded to the south part of Lake Cherokee around 3:45 p.m. on Saturday to help look for a potential missing person. The Rusk County Sheriff’s Office identified Kenton Brandon as the 70-year-old man who was found.
After they arrived at the scene, they learned that an elderly person may have entered the lake. The Longview Fire Department Water Rescue Team, the Rusk County Sheriff’s Office, Texas Parks and Wildlife game wardens, the Lake Cherokee Lake Patrol and Christus EMS were then brought out to the lake to help search for this missing elderly person.
The Longview Fire Department Water Rescue Team started looking for the person underwater and a short time later, they found the missing elderly person dead in the lake. Read the rest of this entry »
TENNESSEE COLONY — The Anderson County Sheriff’s Office is investigating a fatal shooting Friday night. According to our news partner KETK, arriving deputies found Joni Williams, 54 of Tennessee Colony, dead from an apparent gunshot wound. Judge Tammy Lightfoot responded to the scene of the shooting to pronounce Williams dead and she also ordered an autopsy. Authorities are apparently attempting to contact her ex-boyfriend for questioning.
On Saturday, at around 5:45 p.m., the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office was notified that Williams’ ex-boyfriend Bruce Kenton Jeffers, 65 was arrested by an Arizona Department of Public Safety Trooper on Interstate 10 near Benson, Arizona. Read the rest of this entry »
WASHINGTON (AP) — David Johnston was a licensed attorney when he illegally entered the Capitol with a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. More than five years later, the South Carolina man is offering to help fellow “J6ers” apply for payouts from the Trump administration’s nearly $1.8 billion new fund for people claiming to be victims of a weaponized government.
He’ll do it for a 10% cut of any award, capped at $5,000 apiece.
“I think the narrative is changing” about how the history of that day is being told, Johnston said in a video he posted to social media. “I think good things are happening for us.”
Hundreds of Trump loyalists pleaded guilty to storming the Capitol, admitting under oath that they broke the law. Now pardoned by Trump, many hope to capitalize on their crimes by tapping into the $1.776 billion settlement fund designed to compensate the Republican president’s allies who believe they were politically prosecuted.
A bipartisan backlash to the fund and a legal roadblock have not dimmed the celebratory response from Jan. 6 rioters clamoring for a share of the taxpayer money. Some are staking claims even though the government has not established an application process and a judge has frozen the fund’s formation, at least temporarily.
The fund’s critics see it as another vehicle for Trump and his allies to whitewash the events of Jan. 6, retroactively justify the mob’s assault on a pillar of American democracy and reward some of Trump’s most loyal followers.
Jason Riddle, a military veteran from New Hampshire who was sentenced to 90 days behind bars after pleading guilty to riot charges, publicly rejected a pardon from Trump. Likewise, he said it would be “ridiculous” for him or any other Jan. 6 rioter to get government compensation.
“I’d love money, but I can’t accept that. That would bother me for the rest of my life,” he said. “We weren’t innocently persecuted just because of who we are or who we vote for. We were persecuted for committing criminal behavior in the Capitol of the United States.”
Plenty of other “J6ers” do not share Riddle’s reluctance.
A Florida man who posed for photos with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s podium argued on social media that he deserves to be compensated for the cost of his infamy. A rioter from New Jersey described by prosecutors as a Nazi sympathizer hailed the fund as “good news not just for J6ers but all victims of weaponization.” A Texas man who received a seven-year prison sentence for storming the Capitol with a metal tomahawk celebrated the fund as “payback” for “victims of Biden’s tyranny,” referring to Democratic President Joe Biden.
Oregon resident Pamela Hemphill, sentenced to 60 days in jail for her conviction, rejected a pardon from Trump but has drafted a written claim for compensation from the fund. Unlike scores of rioters who claim to be victims of a government weaponized by Democrats, Hemphill blames Trump for her legal troubles. Her claims letter says she is seeking $5 million in compensation.
“I wouldn’t have been through all of this if Trump hadn’t lied about the election being stolen,” she said during a telephone interview. “It’s a direct result of his lies that I was even there that day.”
It is an open question whether anyone convicted of a Capitol riot-related crime could be eligible for payments from a fund created to resolve Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has not ruled out that possibility. Blanche said there are no limits on who can apply, but he noted that the fund’s five commissioners — all yet to be named — will decide who deserves to be compensated and why, based on factors such as “what the person did, his sentence, how much time he was in jail.”
“That’s up to the commissioners,” Blanche told The Associated Press on Thursday when asked about his position on whether violent Jan. 6 defendants should be eligible for payments.
“You have to define something and then stick to it. That’s something I’ve been hesitant to try to do, because it’s very fact-intensive,” Blanche said. ”Me sitting here and talking in hypotheticals is something that I don’t think is fair to the process.”
It is unclear whether Congress would block payments to Jan. 6 defendants. Senate Republicans who are angry about the settlement have said they want to place parameters on the fund as part of a Department of Homeland Security spending bill. They abruptly left town earlier this month after a tense meeting with Blanche and will return on Monday with the situation unresolved.
A federal judge in Virginia has frozen the fund’s establishment and temporarily blocked any processing or paying of claims. The judge issued that ruling Friday in one of at least three lawsuits challenging the fund.
Brendan Ballou, a former prosecutor who tried several Jan. 6 cases before leaving the Department of Justice last year, sued on behalf of two police officers who helped defend the Capitol from the mob. Ballou views the fund’s creation as part of a broader Trump campaign to undermine democratic institutions and rewrite the history of Jan. 6.
“And if the president is successful in that effort, if he’s able to get people to either forget or condone that day, he knows that he can get people to accept any attack on democracy,” Ballou said.
Nearly 1,600 people were charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. More than 1,200 were convicted and sentenced before Trump issued mass pardons and ordered the dismissal of all pending Jan. 6 cases. Trump also freed far-right extremist group members who were imprisoned for plotting to attack the Capitol to keep Trump in office after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Biden.
The self-described “J6 community” isn’t the only pro-Trump constituency angling for cuts of the money.
Meshawn Maddock, who was charged as being a fake elector for Trump in Michigan before a judge dismissed the case last year, said she and her husband, state Rep. Matt Maddock, “absolutely” plan on making a claim. She believes the fund’s use of taxpayer money is justified because it “paid for the prosecution and investigation of the years that I was being hunted down.”
“I want vengeance and I want retribution,” Maddock said.
Trump’s campaign to recast Jan. 6 as a peaceful protest seems to have emboldened many convicted rioters.
Johnston’s eagerness to help other Capitol rioters with claims contrasts with his remorse at sentencing in 2022. He apologized for his “terrible lapse in judgment” before a judge sentenced him to three weeks in jail and three months of home detention. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor trespassing charge.
“It was a dumb, dumb thing to do,” Johnston told the judge. “I am 100% responsible for what I did that day.”
SMITH COUNTY — Tyler Police are investigating a Friday night shooting that left a 5-year-old in critical condition. It happened around 10:45 at an apartment complex on north Grand Ave. Arriving officers found the child with an apparent gunshot wound. The child was taken to a local hospital, then flown to Dallas and is in critical condition. No other injuries were reported. Police found multiple shell casings at the location. The suspect is at large and should be considered armed and dangerous.
Anyone with information is urged to contact the Tyler Police Department at 903-531-1000 or for a cash reward of up to $1,000, tips can be submitted 100% anonymously to Tyler-Smith County Crime Stoppers by calling 903-597-CUFF (2833), through the P3 Tips app (available on Android and Apple), or online at CUFF903.org. Tips must be submitted through Tyler-Smith County Crime Stoppers to be eligible for a reward.
The FBI is offering a reward of up to $4,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of this individual. If you have any information concerning this investigation, please call the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI. You can also submit a tip at tips.fbi.gov. Tipsters may remain anonymous.
SMITH COUNTY — As Smith County election crews prepare for another election on June 13, workers are doing their best to fight fatigue, according to our news partner KETK. For the third time in less than a month, Smith County election officials are setting up polling locations.
“Actively working on the May 2 election, the May 26 election and the June 13th election all at the same time,” Smith County Elections Administrator Michelle Allcon said.
The June 13 runoff election will see Tyler residents choose their new mayor, and with early voting starting on Monday, people like Charlie Coleman are working behind the scenes. Read the rest of this entry »
SMITH COUNTY — A man who is hard of hearing narrowly escaped out of a window when his home caught on fire in the early Thursday morning. According to a county press release, the Smith County Emergency Communications Center received a 911 call just before 1:00 a.m., reporting a house fire on County Road 35, north of Tyler.
The Smith County Fire Marshal’s Office is investigating the cause of the fire, and no foul play is expected, Fire Marshal Chad Hogue said. One adult resident was inside the home and escaped out of a window with minor injuries. He was transported to a local hospital by a family member, was treated and released. Two dogs perished in the fire and the home was damaged to the point where it was considered a total loss, Hogue said.
“No functional smoke alarms were located inside the residence and could have provided advanced warning,” he said. Read the rest of this entry »
SMITH COUNTY — The Smith County Sheriff’s Office is mourning the loss of their former K9 Lobo, who died earlier this month. According to the sheriff’s office and our news partner KETK, Lobo and his handler, Deputy Constable Jose Terrazas, retired from the force earlier this year after nearly a decade of service.
During his time on the force, the sheriff’s office said Lobo was an exceptional dog and a trusted companion, a courageous protector and a devoted partner to Terrazas. He will also be remembered for faithfully serving his community with strength and commitment.
“Although Lobo’s watch has ended, his legacy and impact will forever remain in the hearts of those who knew and served beside him,” the sheriff’s office said. “His dedication to duty and love for his handler and community will never be forgotten.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — A roughly $70 billion bill to fund immigration enforcement through the remainder of President Donald Trump’s term was supposed to be an easy lift for Republicans.
But progress stalled over concerns about the inclusion of White House ballroom security funding in the package and the creation of a $1.8 billion fund to finance claims of government mistreatment. The stumble has not only delayed action on a top GOP priority but also is raising questions about other parts of the party’s legislative agenda, including whether Republicans can enact another catchall, party-line bill referred to in Washington parlance as “Reconciliation 3.0.”
Republicans have spent recent weeks laying the groundwork for such a bill, which they hope will serve as a final sales pitch to voters going into the midterms.
Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, both of Louisiana, have been meeting with committee and caucus chairs to screen for proposals that have strong buy-in from the rank and file. They are aiming to follow up on last summer’s big tax and spending cuts bill with a measure that would increase Pentagon spending by hundreds of billions of dollars and would include cuts elsewhere to help pay for it, which they are couching as tackling government waste and fraud.
It’s a high-stakes gambit in an election year. Success will reinforce the GOP’s message of being able to deliver on legislative priorities. Failure will underscore some of the Republican fractures under Trump that could leave voters seeking an alternative.
Here’s a look at the coming debate as Republicans hope to pass a bill before leaving for their August recess.
Johnson navigated the House GOP’s slim majority in passing Trump’s tax and spending cuts bill last summer. The vote was 218-214. At the time, Republicans could afford to lose three votes from within their ranks. They lost just two.
They’ll have a thin margin of error again, but Johnson said he’s even more confident of success this time around.
“It will be just as beautiful, but not as big, so it’ll have less provisions and less things to get everybody to yes on,” he said.
Rep. Jodey Arrington, chairman of the House Budget Committee, said Republicans are just as motivated as they were last year on the tax cuts bill.
“This one, I think you’ll have potentially money to support our troops in conflict,” said Arrington, of Texas. “I can’t imagine a Republican not wanting to support our troops and military community in a time of conflict.”
The Trump administration has called on Republicans to provide $350 billion to defense through a reconciliation bill.
But Rep. Brendan Boyle, the lead Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said Republicans will have a more difficult path than they did with Trump’s big tax and spending cuts bill.
“I think it will be for a couple of reasons. First is the president’s approval rating. He was at a much higher level a year ago than he is right now,” said Boyle, of Pennsylvania. “Number 2, we are much closer to the November midterm elections. So, if you’re one of a dozen or a couple dozen House Republicans who are really vulnerable in a swing district, you have to think even more carefully about voting for something that has even more health care cuts in it.”
The tax cuts bill that passed last summer reduced spending on Medicaid by more than $900 billion over a decade. It also reduced spending on nutrition assistance by about $187 billion over a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune called a third reconciliation bill to get around the filibuster a “potential option,” hardly a ringing endorsement.
“We haven’t made any commitments on that, but we’re hearing people out,” said Thune, of South Dakota.
Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said lawmakers should know what will be in the bill before the legislative process begins. That way, it’s less likely to unravel.
“If it just becomes another exercise where you’re not really sure what’s going to be the end product, then I think it’s a mistake even to pursue it,” Tillis said. “We ought to be smart about it if we do a third one, but it is kind of a moonshot.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said she worried about the strategy.
“A third reconciliation may or may not happen. I’m just being direct,” she said.
The House is expected to be in session for about 24 more days before it breaks for its August recess. That leaves little time to pass a budget blueprint in both chambers, which is the first hurdle for pursuing party-line tax and spending bills. Committees would also have to wrap up their work advancing their portions of the legislation.
Another hurdle could be Trump’s treatment of current senators whose votes he will need for any package to become law. Trump endorsed opponents of two senators who faced stiff primary challenges and eventually lost — Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and John Cornyn of Texas.
Cassidy has already shown more willingness to buck the president. Fresh off his primary loss, he voted last week to advance a bill that seeks to force Trump to withdraw from hostilities with Iran.
Lawmakers said they could tweak and resurrect some proposals that did not pass muster with the Senate parliamentarian for inclusion in last year’s reconciliation bill. For example, Republicans tried to prevent states from providing Medicaid coverage for immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.
Rep. August Pfluger of Texas, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said the bill should rest on three pillars, making the country more affordable and secure while reducing fraud.
Among the group’s recommendations is a proposal to eliminate the capital gains tax on the sale of homes to first-time homebuyers, which they say would incentivize the market, and a proposal to impose a 5% tax on funds sent by noncitizens back to their home countries.
Arrington said he would also like to tighten the rules for the earned income tax credit, a program that increases the financial reward for working but that also has a high rate of improper payments. He also called for prohibiting immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally from living in housing units financed by a housing tax credit paid to developers who construct and rehab affordable housing for renters.
“There’s a lot more work to be done to build on what we did in the first one with Medicaid and SNAP (nutrition assistance), with respect to fraud,” Arrington said.
WASHINGTON (AP)- A federal judge has declined to halt President Donald Trump’s executive order creating a federal voter list and limiting mail voting, clearing the way for potential sweeping changes in how American elections are run shortly before this year’s midterm elections.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee in Washington, late Wednesday rejected the request by Democrats and civil rights groups that had argued Trump’s order would likely be found unconstitutional because the states and Congress, not the president, have the power to set election rules. Nichols agreed with the Republican Trump administration’s contention that it was too early to block the order because it has yet to be implemented.
“The Court recognizes that the Postal Service may ultimately issue a final rule that directly affects Plaintiffs or their members, or that the Government may develop State Citizenship Lists that omit specific individuals due to particularized flaws,” Nichols wrote. “Plaintiffs may, of course, renew their motions if and when those future actions occur. Until then, however, Plaintiffs cannot show that preliminary injunctive relief is warranted.”
The legal battle against the provision now shifts to Boston, where voting rights groups have a separate lawsuit seeking to temporarily block the executive order in federal court. The Trump administration has yet to formally issue lists of eligible voters, and those who filed the initial request for a temporary halt said they’d be back if the administration moves in that direction.
“We are ready to resume the fight if and when the administration takes those next steps,” said Juan Proaño, chief executive officer of the League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the organizations that sought the stay from Nichols.
Trump issued the order in March after a bill he supported to overhaul voting stalled in Congress. The order would have had the federal government create a list of eligible voters and then directed the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to those on the list. Election officials argued it was ripe for abuse and could cause chaos.
Since his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, Trump has groundlessly claimed mail voting is rife with fraud and has launched a federal investigation into that year’s vote, even though repeated audits and investigations, including ones run by Republicans, found it was free of widespread fraud. Trump also has said he wants to “take over” election administration in Democratic areas.
Democrats and civil rights groups argued it was urgent that Nichols issue a restraining order in the midst of primary season and with states already gearing up for the fall midterm elections.
This was Trump’s second executive order seeking to overhaul elections and voting. His initial election executive order, issued just months after he took office in his second term, has been blocked by multiplefederal judges. That order sought to require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, among other changes.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A key inflation gauge accelerated in April to the highest level in three years, squeezing Americans’ finances and creating political challenges for President Trump and congressional Republicans with midterm elections just five months away.
Inflation jumped to 3.8% in April compared with a year ago, the Commerce Department said Thursday, up from 3.5% in March and the highest since May 2023. On a monthly basis, prices rose 0.4%, down from the 0.7% jump in March but still higher than the inflation-fighters at the Federal Reserve would prefer.
Thursday’s inflation report also showed that in addition to gasoline, prices for groceries, clothing and electricity are also on the rise, indicating that inflation could persist. Inflation is also notably above the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%, which means Fed policymakers may decide to forego any cuts to their key short-term interest rate this year. Some officials have signaled that the central bank’s next move could be a hike rather than a cut.
Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core inflation rose to 3.3% in April from 3.2% the previous month. It is the highest core figure since October 2023. One positive sign in the report: Core prices rose just 0.2% in April from March, down from 0.3% the previous month.
Higher prices are also cutting into the incomes of Americans, which were unchanged in April from March. Incomes were weak in part because farm incomes fell after a large government aid package ended last month. Adjusted for inflation, personal income actually slipped 0.1% last month.
Spending rose 0.5% in April from March, though most of that reflected price increases. Adjusted for inflation, spending rose just 0.1% in April, down from 0.3% the previous month.
“Signs of stress are building inside the American household across the economy,” Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, a tax advisory firm, said. “Inflation-adjusted spending, disposable income … point to a slowing in May spending as inflation approaches a peak on the back of a historic supply shock.”
The U.S. economy grew at a modest 1.6% annual pace from January through March, according to a separate report from the Commerce Department Thursday. The country’s gross domestic product — the nation’s output of goods and services — rebounded from a lackluster 0.5% expansion the last quarter of 2025 when growth was hobbled by the 43-day federal government shutdown.
The first-quarter growth, which covered the first month of the Iran war, was a downgrade from the 2% expansion Commerce initially reported.
Gas prices averaged of about $4.50 a gallon nationwide for three weeks this month before slipping to $4.43 on Thursday, according to the AAA motor club. Gas averaged $2.98 a gallon the day before the Iran war began.
Yet the cost of many other goods and services have picked up in recent months, raising concerns among many Fed officials that inflation is being pushed higher by tariffs and other factors in addition to the war. The cost of services such as dental visits, car repairs and veterinarian visits have been rising sharply, and clothes, toys, and groceries are also seeing outsize price gains.
Rapid investment in artificial intelligence centers also appears to be driving up the cost of computer equipment and software, adding to inflationary pressures. Electricity prices have also spiked from a year ago.
TYLER — Friends and colleagues of fallen Tyler Fire Department Driver/Engineer Scott Starkey will pass through Tyler on Wednesday as part of a funeral procession in his honor.
According to our news partner KETK, Starkey died from cancer on May 16 after serving as a firefighter for the Tyler Fire Department for over 25 years. His funeral service will be held at Flint Baptist Church at around 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday and will be followed by the procession.
The procession will make its way north from Flint Baptist Church, pass through the city of Tyler on Loop 323 and end at the Bascom Cemetery. The City of Tyler said drivers could see some traffic delays as the procession passes through.
PLANO (AP) — As it turned out, it would never be enough.
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn tried for more than a year to show Donald Trump and Texas Republicans that he and the president were on the same team.
Cornyn posted a photo of himself reading Trump’s “The Art of the Deal.” He proposed legislation to rename a stretch of interstate in Trump’s honor. Perhaps most glaringly, the Senate institutionalist who long supported the filibuster reversed his position in a failed effort to advance voting restrictions that are a priority for the president.
None of it worked. On Tuesday, Cornyn became the latest in a line of Republicans who lost their primaries after falling out of favor with a president with little tolerance for dissent and a seemingly insatiable appetite for retribution. The four-term senator lost by double digits to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who Trump endorsed last week as “a true MAGA Warrior.”
Cornyn, on the other hand, “was VERY disloyal to me,” Trump wrote on social media.
Trump’s intervention in the Texas runoff came after weeks of successfully backing primary challengers in Indiana, Louisiana and Kentucky as revenge against incumbents who broke with his agenda.
Cornyn’s attempt to avoid the same fate made even some of his supporters wince.
“You look at the positions he took to please the president and the groveling and whatever,” said former Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, a Republican and Trump critic who didn’t seek reelection during the president’s first midterm in 2018. “It was rather painful to watch.”
Cornyn’s loss wasn’t for a lack of political gymnastics and astronomical campaign spending.
His campaign began running an advertisement last summer — part of an astounding nearly-$100-million air war by the senator and allied groups — with Cornyn looking into the camera and saying, “I voted with President Trump 99% of the time.”
On Cornyn’s campaign homepage, Trump and Cornyn stand side-by-side with thumbs pointed upward in an image aimed at projecting solidarity. Deeper in the website, the category titled “The Trump-Cornyn Record” notes the senator’s role securing votes for Trump’s signature 2017 tax cut bill.
Cornyn has also been championing provisions in Trump’s signature tax-and-spending legislation to finance work on the U.S.-Mexico border wall.
The senator had dismissed the project as “naive” during Trump’s 2016 campaign. But in January, he stood along a section of completed wall in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley touting the measure’s $11 billion for Texas contractors’ work at “the direction of the president of the United States, to whom I am very grateful.”
Cornyn’s praise for his party’s leader and president were not unusual, but they clash with a statement Cornyn made in May 2023, when Trump was mounting his presidential comeback campaign.
“Trump’s time has passed him by,” he told reporters. “I don’t think President Trump understands that when you run in a general election, you have to appeal to voters beyond your base.”
Trump would go on to easily win the nomination and carry every battleground state in the general election.
Cornyn would hew closely to the president for the first 16 months of his second administration, hoping at the outside chance of his endorsement or to keeping him from weighing in at all.
But Trump did not forget the past slights.
“John Cornyn is a good man, and I worked well with him, but he was not supportive of me when times were tough,” he wrote on social media while endorsing Paxton.
Cornyn has playfully worked to promote Trump fandom, last year posting a picture on social media of himself thoughtfully peering into the pages of Trump’s 1987 memoir and business advice book, “The Art of the Deal.”
In a more obvious gesture, he proposed designating a section of a U.S. highway from the Texas Gulf Coast to Montana as “Interstate 47,” to honor a 47th president with a well-documented love of naming things after himself. In a news release about the proposal, filed just over two weeks before Tuesday’s runoff, Cornyn said it would be known as the “Trump Interstate.”
The more tectonic shift occurred in March, after Trump had teased a possible endorsement of either Cornyn or Paxton in the runoff.
Paxton swiftly said he would consider dropping his candidacy if the Republican-controlled Senate lifted the filibuster and passed the SAVE America Act, a series of voting restrictions that Trump has described as an essential part of his agenda.
The following week, Cornyn wrote an op-ed in the New York Post — Trump’s favorite hometown newspaper — backing away from his previous support of the filibuster. He vowed to “support whatever changes to Senate rules that may prove necessary” to get the bill “through the Senate and on the president’s desk for his signature.”
Flake watched with unease.
“I know John and his long-held positions on the filibuster and the Senate’s institutions,” he said. “No office is worth that.”
TYLER — The East Texas Food Bank (ETFB) kicks off the free Summer Food Program for children on Tuesday, June 2, at 43 East Texas locations with a special event at the Glass Recreation Center in Tyler from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. featuring food, activities and more. The PepsiCo Foundation’s Food for Good sponsors the event.
“It’s so important to make sure children do not go hungry in the summer just because school is out,” said David Emerson, CEO of the East Texas Food Bank. “Here in East Texas, 1 in 4 children are food insecure so it’s up to our community to make sure we fill that meal gap when the school year ends and kids lose access to free and reduced-price meals they depend on.”
Food for Good is helping transform food access in rural and underserved communities by using PepsiCo’s logistical expertise to deliver nutritious meals year-round. Read the rest of this entry »