Today is
Thursday June 04, 2026
EAST TEXAS – Consumers can save money on emergency supplies while preparing for expected severe weather by shopping at local hardware stores during the 2026 emergency preparation holiday. Prepare yourself during the 2026 Emergency Preparation Supplies Sales Tax Holiday for emergencies that can cause physical damage like hurricanes, flash floods and wildfires.
You can purchase certain emergency preparation supplies tax free during the sales tax holiday. There is no limit on the number of qualifying items you can purchase, and you do not need to give an exemption certificate to claim the exemption.
This year’s holiday begins at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, April 25, and ends at midnight on Monday, April 27.
These emergency preparation supplies qualify for tax exemption if purchased for a sales price: Read the rest of this entry »
JACKSONVILLE — An infant was safely reunited with their mother after being briefly kidnapped, with law enforcement locating the toddler in a wooded area in Jacksonville. According to our news partner KETK, Jacksonville Police responded to a welfare check on Wednesday at around 1 p.m. on Myrtle Drive. A man had reportedly entered a residence and took a 1-year-old child. The man was later identified as Brian Damon Black, 42, of Jacksonville.
The initial caller was concerned that Black was seen walking into a nearby wooded area with a child. The child was located unharmed and reunited to the mother.
Black was located a short time later in a wooded area near Skyline. He was arrested following a brief pursuit.
Black was booked into the Cherokee County Jail on charges including burglary of a habitation, kidnapping and evading arrest or detention.
AUSTIN (AP) – Three congressional candidates are accused of betting on the outcome of their own elections on the prediction market Kalshi, which said Wednesday that it fined and suspended the three men from their platform for five years.
It is the latest high-profile case of alleged insider trading on prediction markets including Kalshi and Polymarket, which have brought bipartisan scrutiny from Congress and calls for stricter regulations of the websites where people can put money on just about anything.
Kalshi’s disciplinary documents named Mark Moran, who is running as an independent in Virginia’s U.S. Senate race; Ezekiel Enriquez, who ran in a Texas Republican primary for a U.S. House seat; and Matt Klein, a Democratic state senator running for a U.S. House seat in Minnesota.
Klein and Enriquez both placed bets less than $100 related to their “own candidacy,” Kalshi said. Moran said on social media that he “traded $100 on myself.”
Moran refused to reach an agreement with Kalshi and was fined the most at more than $6,200, while Klein and Enriquez did reach agreements and face penalties of over $530 and $780, respectively, the company said. All were suspended from Kalshi for five years. The agreements are with the company, and not with a government oversight or law enforcement agency.
Far from denying the allegations, Moran took to social media on Wednesday to say that he placed the bets because he wanted to draw attention to the issue.
“We live in a Country destroyed by vice, which Kalshi directly contribute to,” Moran wrote on X, saying the goal of the trade was to “highlight how this company is destroying young men.”
Klein also confirmed Kalshi’s findings in a post on social media on Wednesday. The $50 wager he placed in October was the first time he had used a predictions market, he said in a statement on X, and he was “curious about how it worked.”
“This was a mistake and I apologize,” he wrote, saying that the experience made it clear that the markets need more regulation.
Enriquez, known as Zeke, lost his House race in the beginning of March with less than two percent of the vote. Contact information for Enriquez was not immediately found to request comment.
HOUSTON (AP) — A Houston city ordinance that limited police officers’ cooperation with federal immigration agents was amended on Wednesday after Texas’ governor threatened to take away millions of dollars in public safety grants.
Houston, as well as Austin and Dallas — three of the state’s biggest cities and Democratic strongholds — are being confronted by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott with threats of losing public safety dollars over policies that dictate how law enforcement interacts with federal immigration authorities. The three cities are being threatened with the loss of about $200 million in public safety funding, including tens of millions expected to cover security at World Cup matches this summer in Dallas and Houston.
Two weeks ago, Houston City Council passed the ordinance, which eliminated a requirement that Houston police officers wait 30 minutes for agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to pick up someone with a nonjudicial administrative warrant. If ICE agents didn’t show up in time, police officers took a detained person’s information and then released them.
But Abbott warned city officials that the new ordinance and its limitation on cooperating with ICE agents violated the terms of $110 million in state grants Houston had received for police and security during the World Cup games the city is hosting in June.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had also filed a lawsuit against Mayor John Whitmire and members of the city council over the ordinance, accusing them of violating a 2017 state law that prevents cities from adopting policies that limit the enforcement of immigration laws and which also banned “sanctuary city” policies in the state. There is no strict definition for sanctuary policies or sanctuary cities, but the terms generally describe limited cooperation with ICE.
After more than two hours of discussion during its weekly meeting, Houston City Council voted 13-4 to make changes to the ordinance. Whitmire said he had consulted with Abbott’s office about making changes that would prevent Houston from losing its funding.
The amended ordinance deletes language that highlighted that administrative warrants — versus warrants signed by a judge — that ICE agents use to take individuals into custody are not enough for officers to arrest or detain an individual.
“We have no alternative for Houston to survive, prepare for (the World Cup), patrol these neighborhoods,” Whitmire said. “We’ve got to have today the restoration of the $114 million.”
Andrew Mahaleris, a spokesperson for Abbott, said the governor expects any policy Houston police adopt has to comply with the city’s certification that it will fully cooperate with the Department of Homeland Security.
“This vote is a step in the right direction after Houston leaders put public safety at risk with reckless policies that undermined law enforcement,” Mahaleris said in a statement.
Council member Abbie Kamin, one of three members who had pushed for the ordinance, voted against amending it, saying that doing so was giving in to bullying tactics from state leaders.
“If we rollover now to a bully, what will he come for next?” Kamin said.
Council members Edward Pollard and Alejandra Salinas, who also pushed for the ordinance, said they remained hopeful the changes approved Wednesday would not violate individuals’ constitutional rights and wouldn’t result in people being held on nonjudicial warrants.
Nikki Luellen, an advocate for criminal justice reform for the ACLU of Texas, called the amended ordinance “a greenlight for deeper collaboration between ICE and the Houston Police Department.”
Martha Castex-Tatum was one of several council members who had supported the ordinance but voted in favor of amending it in order to protect the city’s finances.
“For some people, this may feel like surrender. It’s not. It’s real stewardship,” Castex-Tatum said.
Dallas officials have said they are committed to ensuring public safety and would respond to Abbott’s threat by Thursday.
Austin Mayor Kirk Watson, a moderate Democrat, said the local policy complies with state law. He said Abbott’s threat to cut nearly $3 million in Austin would cut trauma aid for police officers and sexual assault victims.
“We don’t have the time and will not play into this political theater,” said Watson.
Austin officials have since indicated they could try to negotiate with Abbott.
The debate in Houston and other Texas cities comes amid the federal government’s aggressive enforcement of immigration laws. Whitmire and other local leaders in many of Texas’ left-leaning urban areas have tried to not get the federal government’s attention amid the aggressive immigration crackdown by President Donald Trump’s administration.
SMITH COUNTY — The Annual Property Tax Assessment documents have landed in the mailboxes of most East Texas property owners.
“Each year, the state reassesses property values and calculates your tax burden based on the assessment that they assign to your property,”Aden Stiles, with S.T.A.R Tax Protest Services, said. “So, every year, all property owners in Texas have the opportunity to protest this assessment to lower their tax burden and save them as much money as possible.”
Homeowners can file a protest on any property that’s taxed, which could be a vacant land you own, your home, or even a commercial warehouse.
The deadline to protest your property taxes is May 15th. You can protest on your own through the County Appraiser or hire a company.
EL PASO (AP) — The wife of a U.S. Army sergeant was being held Tuesday at an immigration detention facility in El Paso, Texas, amid signs that the Trump administration is dialing back leniency toward immigrant family members of military personnel and veterans.
Jose Serrano, an active duty soldier who served three tours in Afghanistan, said immigration agents arrested his wife April 14 as they attended an appointment with immigration services to take steps toward her permanent residency.
“A person opened the door, escorted us through the hallway, and at the end of the hallway, my wife got arrested,” Serrano said. “Arrested without any order, any warrant … They took away my wife. They don’t tell me anything.”
Since then, El Salvador native Deisy Rivera Ortega has challenged her detention in U.S. District Court and requested an order to block her deportation to Mexico — where she does not have ties and visits by active duty U.S. troops are restricted.
Attorney Matthew James Kozik said Rivera Ortega held a valid work permit and was previously granted a withholding of removal to El Salvador.
The Department of Homeland Security said in an email that Rivera Ortega entered the U.S. illegally in 2016 and that a judge issued a final order of removal in December 2019.
“Work authorization does not confer any legal status to be in the country. Rivera-Ortega remains in ICE custody pending removal,” the agency said. The agency did not address whether Rivera Ortega might be deported to Mexico.
Rivera Ortega was being held at El Paso Service Processing Center, where Serrano says he was able to visit Sunday and talk to his wife through a plastic pane.
She applied for consideration with her husband under the “parole in place” policy that previously provided a possibly expedited pathway to permanent residency for spouses of service members.
But last April, DHS eliminated a 2022 policy that considered military service of an immediate family member to be a “significant mitigating factor” in deciding whether or not to pursue immigration enforcement. The administration’s new policy states that “military service alone does not exempt aliens from the consequences of violating U.S. immigration laws.”
ANGELINA COUNTY — A Lufkin pediatrician charged in a fatal intoxication crash is being held without bond after prosecutors alleged he repeatedly violated court-ordered conditions by drinking alcohol and attempting to drive while out on bond.
Officials say Dr. George Fidone repeatedly violated bond conditions tied to a court-ordered breathalyzer, including driving after drinking April 16. Fidone was barred from consuming or possessing alcohol or nonprescribed controlled substances as a bond condition.
He was booked into the Angelina County Jail on April 18 and is currently being held without bond on charges of intoxication manslaughter and intoxication assault with a vehicle causing serious bodily injury.
In January, Fidone was involved in a deadly crash that killed an Angelina County man and critically injured his wife. A probable cause affidavit said Fidone had alcohol in his system at the time of the wreck and later tested positive for opioids and THC.
AUSTIN (THE TEXAS TRIBUNE) – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit Monday against ActBlue, a political donations platform that is primarily used by Democratic candidates.
The state court lawsuit is the latest in a string of investigations and legal actions Paxton and Congress have undertaken against the platform over the last few years. Paxton is asking a Tarrant County judge to stop the company from accepting donations via gift cards and prepaid debit cards, and fine them $10,000 per violation of the Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
Paxton claims that ActBlue allows improper donations from people outside the United States and those who have already hit the mandated donor limits. He opened an investigation into ActBlue in December 2023, and the next year, sent a letter to the Federal Elections Commission, claiming he had uncovered evidence that “bad actors can illegally interfere in American elections by disguising political donations.”
De’Andra Roberts-LaBoo, a spokesperson for ActBlue, said the company has done more than any other platform to prevent improper donations.
“If [Paxton] and his Republican allies actually cared about donor fraud, they would work to strengthen security standards across the board, including within their own operations, rather than targeting ActBlue,” she said.
Background: ActBlue is the main platform used by Democratic candidates and causes. Since its founding, more than 28 million people have donated through ActBlue, which processed $1.78 billion last year alone.
The group began facing pressure from Republican members of Congress in 2023, which Paxton followed by opening an investigation into Texas-based donations. In August 2024, Paxton claimed victory, saying ActBlue had agreed to start requiring CVV codes on credit card donations.
In April 2025, Trump ordered the Justice Department to investigate ActBlue, heightening fears among Democrats about the political targeting of the infrastructure that allows them to fundraise. Paxton also involved ActBlue in his investigation of Texas Democratic House members who left the state in the summer 2025 to protest mid-decade redistricting.
The compounding investigations have led to internal turmoil at ActBlue, The New York Times reported. Earlier this month, the newspaper reported that ActBlue lawyers raised concerns that the company’s systems were not as robust as top executives had told congressional Republicans that they were.
What Paxton is saying: Citing that recent reporting, Paxton filed his lawsuit Monday, saying that ActBlue “lied to Congress and to the American people.”
“It has blatantly ignored state law that prohibits deceptive practices, and it must pay for its illegal conduct,” Paxton said. “Fair elections are the foundation of our democracy, and I will work to ensure no illegal campaign donation flies under the radar.”
SHREVEPORT (AP) – Two headline-grabbing, deadly domestic violence cases, one in Louisiana and the other in Virginia targeting Black mothers, have sparked a national conversation about domestic violence prevention resources and mental health care available to Black communities.
Many advocates in the aftermath of the deadly shootings have said the tragedies pointedly highlight troubling underlying trends where Black women are more likely to experience domestic violence — and they see the killings as an opportunity to confront how disparities in access to care and resources make some women and children more vulnerable to violence in the home.
On Sunday morning, a man police identified as Shamar Elkins fatally shot seven of his children and another child in Shreveport, Louisiana. A relative has said Elkins was in the midst of separating from his wife who was wounded.
And last Thursday, police found the bodies of former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax and his estranged wife, Dr. Cerina Fairfax, in their suburban Washington, D.C., home. Justin Fairfax shot his estranged wife and then himself, and their two children in the home at the time were unhurt, police said. Like Elkins, Fairfax was in the process of separating from his wife and had faced a judge’s upcoming deadline to move from the house.
While it’s not clear what prompted the Shreveport killings or the apparent murder-suicide in Annandale, Virginia, experts say that the harrowing details of the killings echo familiar patterns that play out in homes across the country — and underscore the need for solutions that address the root causes of the disparate violence.
Sunday wasn’t the first time that Elkins’ family had suffered from gender-based gun violence: Shaneiqua Elkins and the other woman who was shot, Keosha Pugh, were sisters, and lost their mother to gun violence when they were under age 10, according to their uncle Lionel Pugh.
“It’s sad. It just breaks you down,” Pugh said.
Shreveport Councilman Grayson Boucher said at a news conference Monday that the Louisiana killings were emblematic of “a true epidemic of domestic violence” across the small southern city of roughly 180,000 people.
Those trends go well beyond Shreveport as experts have pointed out how both race and gender make Black women in particular more vulnerable to domestic violence.
More than four in 10 Black women experience physical violence from an intimate partner during their lifetimes — a much higher rate than women who are white, Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islander — according to a 2014 study by the Centers for Disease Control.
Paméla Tate is the executive director of Black Women Revolt, which runs programs to prevent abuse and offers survivors’ resources. She said a logical skepticism about police and government child services agencies based on a history of institutionalized racism makes Black women reluctant to seek help — and especially vulnerable to domestic violence.
Additionally, Black women are two times more likely to be murdered by men than their white counterparts, according to a 2025 study published by the Violence Policy Center, based on federal government data from 2023. Those men are more often than not familiar to their victims, according to the study, which found that more than nine in 10 Black female victims knew their killers, with the majority of those killings being carried out with guns.
Ultimately, Tate said, “domestic violence doesn’t see color,” and is primarily driven by the prevalent belief among men — across racial demographics — that women are subjects or property.
“Domestic violence is about exerting power over someone that you profess to love and controlling their behavior,” Tate said.
There has been intense speculation about the role that mental health crises might have played in both shootings.
A relative of Elkins’ wife told The Associated Press that Elkins had voluntarily checked into a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in January for about a week and a half for mental health help.
In Virginia, Justin Fairfax was a rising star in the Democratic Party until two women accused him of sexual assault, casting doubt on his trustworthiness as a political leader. The former lieutenant governor’s “mental and emotional health” suffered before he killed his wife and himself, according to court documents, which say he drank heavily and withdrew from his family after the allegations were made public in 2019.
Adult and child psychiatrist Christine Crawford hasn’t examined the killings in Shreveport or Annandale, but said financial troubles, marital issues and problems at work — in addition to underlying mental health vulnerabilities — can lead someone to “crack.”
“It makes some think about the amount of pain, distress and hopelessness they found themselves in at that time,” said Crawford, who practices at the Webster Clinic in Boston and is interim chief medical officer at the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
She noted many Black people find themselves priced out of programs and care for mental health for such reasons as private care costs and a lack of insurance.
That level of desperation can make some people feel “completely out of options on how to deal with the pain he was in at that moment,” Crawford said. T
Some have said that there are social dimensions to these economic trends, too.
“Mental health disparities in the Black community is not accidental,” said University of Michigan Social Work Professor Daphne C. Watkins. “They are the predictable result of structural racism” in schools, employment and other aspects of society.
Watkins, founder of the YBMen Project which provides young Black men with a safe place to discuss their mental health, manhood and social support, said studies show that 10% of Black adults experience moderate to severe depression, while 18% experience anxiety disorders.
But Black men tend to forego mental health treatment due to cultural expectations, in addition to costs, said Watkins. Without an outlet, stressors from family, work and relationships can pile up.
“For a long time, in the Black community, we didn’t talk about anxiety. Now, you have to talk about it hand in hand along with depression.”
Others have emphatically said that mental health is not an excuse for domestic violence.
“To say they’re mentally ill, that doesn’t cut it,” Tate said. “There are people who are depressed or people who have schizophrenia and don’t harm the their partners, much less kill them.”
Shaneiqua Elkins and Cerina Fairfax could have been struggling with mental health challenges too, Tate added, and they both “had the same access or ability to go and purchase a gun” but chose not to.
“The mental illness is not what we’re talking about here,” she said.
UPDATE — Emergency management personnel from several collaborating agencies remain on-site to address the blowout of a natural gas well in Etoile. A Houston crew has arrived at the natural gas well fire and has taken over suppressing efforts.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is continuing to monitor air quality conditions. According to our news partner KETK, Nacogdoches County officials said three residences on County Road 5061 remain evacuated while nearby residents and motorists are asked to avoid traveling in the FM 226 area.
NACOGDOCHES (AP) — An explosion at a Texas natural gas or oil well site set off a large fire that was seen for miles and led to some evacuations, but caused no injuries, authorities said Tuesday. The Nacogdoches County Sheriff’s Office received numerous calls late Monday of a loud explosion in Etoile in eastern Texas, a small, rural community about 140 miles northeast of Houston. Read the rest of this entry »
SHREVEPORT, La. (AP) — A stunned Louisiana city struggled to come to grips Monday with the massacre of eight children carried out by a father who was separating from his wife and used an assault-style weapon despite a 2019 felony firearms conviction.
The violence reverberated across Shreveport a day after the nation’s deadliest mass shooting in two years. Schools brought in counselors for the victims’ young classmates and community leaders called for a city-wide reckoning on stopping domestic violence.
“We cannot afford to wait until the next crisis,” said Caddo Parish Sheriff Henry Whitehorn. “We owe it to the eight children who were lost.”
The shooter, identified as Shamar Elkins, killed seven of his children and a nephew, police said. His wife and another woman were also shot and wounded.
Elkins had voluntarily checked into a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in January for just over a week for mental health treatment, said his brother-in-law, Troy Brown, who lived in the house with his wife, Keosha Pugh, and was at work during the attack. Elkins appeared “better when he came home,” he said.
Elkins’ wife was seeking a divorce, which was causing him stress, Brown said. But everything seemed calm in the house when Brown left for work Saturday night, with the children playing games or watching TV.
“All I know is he just snapped,” Brown told The Associated Press. “If I wouldn’t have been at work, he was going to kill everybody in the house and that includes me.”
Brown’s wife, who made a series of frantic calls for help when the shooting started, and their 12-year-old daughter escaped through the home’s roof, he said. His wife broke her pelvis after falling and has since had surgery, he said.
“She said she was running for her life,” said Lionel Pugh, an uncle of the two women shot. “The only ones he didn’t kill was the ones who got away.”
Elkins died after fleeing and a police pursuit. It was not clear whether he was killed by officers who fired or from a self-inflicted gunshot, Shreveport Police Chief Wayne Smith said.
Officials said the children who died — three boys and five girls — ranged in age from 3 to 11 years old.
Brown said his 10-year-old son, who loved to go outside and run around and play with friends, was killed.
“I’m never going to get to throw the football with him again,” he said “I’m never going to get to hear him say, ‘Dad, can I get this bag of chips?’”
Elkins and his wife, identified by family members as Shaneiqua Elkins, were separating and had been due in court Monday, said Crystal Brown, a cousin of a woman shot in the attack. She said the couple had been arguing about the separation before the shooting.
Family members described Shaneiqua Elkins as a doting mother, who celebrated her children’s success in school.
“She raised those kids right,” Pugh said. “They were the center of her universe.”
While the shooter did not appear to have a long criminal history, court records showed Elkins was placed on probation in 2019 after pleading guilty to illegal use of weapons. In that case, Elkins fired five rounds at a vehicle and told police that someone inside it had pulled a gun on him, according to a police report.
Based on Louisiana law, a person convicted of certain violent felonies — including illegal use of weapons — are banned from having a gun for at least 10 years after completing their sentence and probation.
Authorities said Monday that how and when Elkins got the gun is being investigated.
Louisiana, a reliably red state, has expanded access to guns in recent years. For years, Democrats in Louisiana have proposed bills to tighten gun control — or at least put “red flag” measures in place. But Republicans have routinely blocked such legislation.
Investigators were not aware of other domestic violence issues involving Elkins, said police spokesperson Chris Bordelon.
Elkins had served in the Louisiana National Guard from 2013 to 2020, said guard spokesperson Lt. Col. Noel Collins. Elkins held the rank of private and had no deployments, Collins said.
Authorities said the shooting erupted before dawn at two homes.
Elkins shot a woman in a neighborhood south of downtown, and opened fire a few blocks away at the home where the children were targeted, police said.
One of the victims, 5-year-old Braylon Snow, was getting ready for preschool graduation next month, said Laurance Guidry, president and CEO of Caddo Community Action Agency, which runs the Head Start program where Braylon was a student.
“They have the cap and gowns just like you would have when you were graduating from high school,” Guidry said.
Gov. Jeff Landry said during a news conference Monday that he thought he had seen evil up close after a truck attack last year on Bourbon Street left 14 dead. “But the tragedy that unfolded this weekend seems to have eclipsed that,” he said.
Landry announced that the foundation created by the state’s first lady will pay the children’s funeral expenses.
Francine Monro Brown, a cousin of Shaneiqua Elkins, said she would often see the children playing in the yard on Sunday mornings when she drove past the house on her way to church.
“Happy children, joyful children. Shaneiqua is a great mother, She provided a great home for the kids,” Brown said as she stood near a growing memorial of stuffed teddy bears, flowers and pink and blue balloons.
Betty Pugh, another cousin of Shaneiqua Elkins, said she was always with her children. “That was the way we were taught: to love our kids, to take care of our kids. And that’s what she did,” Pugh said.
The mayor of Shreveport, a city of about 180,000 residents in northwestern Louisiana, called it one of the city’s worst days.
The shooting was the deadliest in the U.S. since January 2024, when eight people were killed in a Chicago suburb, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Oil prices slipped and shares were mostly higher Tuesday in Europe and Asia as U.S.-Iran talks aimed at ending the war remained in doubt.
The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil dipped 0.7% to $94.81. U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 0.9% to $86.63 per barrel.
The war has disrupted transport of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway that usually is fully open to international shipping, pushing oil prices sharply higher.
U.S. President Donald Trump has demanded that vessels again be allowed to transit the strait unimpeded, imposing a blockade on Iranian ports. He has said Vice President JD Vance will visit Pakistan’s capital Islamabad for talks with Iran. But after the U.S. Navy’s seizure of an Iranian-flagged cargo ship, the Iranian side has made no commitment to more negotiations.
In early European trading, Germany’s DAX rose 0.6% to 24,558.9 and the CAC 40 in Paris was little changed, at 8,333.05. Britain’s FTSE 100 edged 0.1% higher, to 10,620.92.
The futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up just over 0.1%.
In Asian share trading, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 climbed 0.9% to 59,349.17 on strong gains for tech-related companies like Tokyo Electron, which rose 3.5%. Tech and energy giant SoftBank Group Corp. gained 8.5%, part of the latest wave of gains pinned on expectations of windfalls from artificial intelligence.
South Korea’s Kospi jumped 2.7% to 6,388.47, and Taiwan’s Taiex advanced 1.8%.
The Hang Seng in Hong Kong gained 0.5% to 26,481.48 and the Shanghai Composite index added 0.1% to 4,085.08.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 declined less than 0.1% to 8,949.40.
Oil prices had climbed Monday following the latest rise of tensions between the United States and Iran, but the moves were more modest than they were earlier in the war. U.S. stocks, meanwhile, gave back a bit of their record-breaking rally.
On Monday, the S&P 500 slipped 0.2% from its all-time high and the Dow industrials edged less than 0.1% lower. The Nasdaq composite fell 0.3%.
Worries over disruptions of supplies of oil from the Persian Gulf if Iran continues to block tankers from exiting the Strait of Hormuz are clouding investor sentiment.
The next big deadline is looming on Tuesday night at 8 p.m. Eastern time, which is early Wednesday Tehran time, when a ceasefire agreement between the United States and Iran is scheduled to expire.
“The current dynamic is one of a precarious balance of truce,” Mizuho Bank said in a commentary, so “as the ceasefire draws to its 2-week deadline, the all-consuming question is whether both sides can seize on the talks to land on a US-Iran deal that ends the war.”
For now, oil prices remain well below the $119 per barrel level for Brent crude when fears were at their highest. And the S&P 500 is still above where it was before the war.
Several of the biggest U.S. banks said last week that they see the U.S. economy remaining resilient, particularly because of solid spending by U.S. consumers.
U.S. companies have been reporting big profits for the first three months of 2026, helping to support the market. Nearly nine out of 10 companies that have already reported earnings for January-March posted bigger profits than analysts had expected, according to FactSet.
If the rest of the companies in the S&P 500 match analysts’ expectations, overall earnings per share for companies in the index will end up 13% higher than a year earlier, it estimates.
Other companies scheduled to report their results this week include UnitedHealth Group on Tuesday, Tesla on Wednesday and Procter & Gamble on Friday.
In other dealings early Tuesday, the U.S. dollar rose to 159.21 Japanese yen from 158.82 yen. The euro slipped to $1.1767 from $1.1789.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Human Rights Campaign, one of the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations, is vaulting into the midterms with a $15 million investment targeting Republicans in battleground districts after a series of setbacks in recent years.
“I think that this is the election that’s going to be the sea change, not only for getting to a pro-equality majority but for changing the momentum on this fight for equality,” said Kelley Robinson, the organization’s president, in an interview with The Associated Press. “This movement is ready for its next wind, its second wind.”
Besides eight congressional districts that could help determine control of the U.S. House, the Human Rights Campaign is also supporting Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio and Texas. The money will be spent on advertising, events and canvassers.
The LGBTQ+ movement has been reckoning with a wave of defeats on the campaign trail and in the courtroom that have left Democrats struggling to regain their footing.
President Donald Trump’s Republican administration has rolled back protections for transgender people, such as banning them from serving in the military and cutting off gender-affirming care for children. The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority has upheld Republican states’ restrictions while striking down bans on “conversion therapy” practices in Democratic states.
“I believe that our movement made ourselves believe that we were closer to equality than we actually are,” Robinson said. “The last few years, we’ve been doing an incredible amount of listening, of learning, also of repositioning this work.”
After the 2024 presidential election, Democrats were divided over the role that LGBTQ+ rights played in their party’s losses. The Trump campaign ran a series of advertisements mocking Vice President Kamala Harris for supporting medical gender transitions for incarcerated people and highlighting the issue of transgender people playing on women’s sports teams.
“Kamala Harris is for they/them,” said a voice-over in one national ad. “President Trump is for you.”
Robinson argued that the ad was effective because of an implicit economic message, not for its critiques of the policy toward transgender people. But conservative activists and some moderate Democrats have argued such stances are too unpopular with swing voters.
“There’s a real disconnect between most voters and the party elite,” said Leor Sapir, a fellow with the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.
He added, “If I’m a Democrat consultant, my advice would be: Do everything in your power to keep this issue off the public agenda.”
Robinson said her organization has been soul-searching on how to best craft winning messages on LGBTQ+ rights.
“Our job is to move away from the fireballs that our opposition wants to talk about and instead find a way to get back to the things that are impacting folks every day,” she said.
In January, the Human Rights Campaign published a guide to blunting conservative attacks on LGBTQ+ issues, citing the successful campaigns of Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.
Although the guide encourages candidates to “lead with your values” and “address concerns directly,” it also encourages them to “go big” and quickly pivot to issues like cost-of-living concerns.
“I think the number one way to shut out a voter is to try to make them believe that their fears are not real. So what we coach candidates on doing is listening,” Robinson said. “For folks who have questions about the issues, that’s OK. We’re in a moment where the stakes in front of us are too high to look away.”
HOUSTON (AP) – Environmental groups sued the Trump administration on Monday over its approval last month of oil company BP’s ultra deep-water drilling project in the Gulf of Mexico.
The groups sued on the 16th anniversary of the nation’s worst offshore oil spill 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, when BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig sent 134 million gallons (500 million liters) of crude oil spewing into the ocean, killing 11 people and causing billions of dollars in damage to wildlife and miles of coastline.
The administration approved BP’s $5 billion Kaskida project in March, the company’s first new oil field developed in the Gulf since 2010. BP said it could have capacity of 80,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
Groups Healthy Gulf, Habitat Recovery Project, Center for Biological Diversity and others requested a review of the project approval in its Monday filing against the U.S. Interior Department, Secretary Doug Burgum, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and director Matthew Giacona.
The groups say information required for the approval is missing and does not demonstrate that BP has the qualifications to conduct safe drilling that deep. They also say that Kaskida endangers Gulf residents’ health, harms ecosystems and impacts fishing and tourism industries.
“The Trump administration has teed up the entire Gulf region for a Deepwater Horizon sequel” by approving the project, said Brettny Hardy, senior attorney at Earthjustice, which is representing the plaintiffs.
Several lawmakers last year attempted to call on the administration to reject the project’s approval.
Interior spokesperson Charlotte Taylor told The Associated Press that the department does not comment on ongoing litigation. But: “America sets the global standard for energy production. We do it cleaner, safer, and more reliably than anywhere in the world.”
Taylor added the Kaskida project “represents a major step forward, unlocking more than 275 million barrels of previously unrecoverable oil in the Gulf of America. This development will drive job creation, strengthen U.S. national security, and help cut energy costs for American families.”
Increased fossil fuel production has been a priority for President Donald Trump in his second term, and the administration has proposed a number of pro-oil and gas rollbacks of regulations viewed as unfriendly to the industry as part of an “American energy dominance” agenda.
The Gulf of Mexico, which accounts for almost 15% of crude pumped annually in the U.S. and produces about 2 million barrels of oil a day, in particular has been of high importance to Trump.
The administration announced earlier this month it was combining the current Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, under the new Marine Minerals Administration to expedite permitting for offshore oil and gas drilling. The two agencies were separated in the aftermath of the 2010 oil spill.
The administration last month also exempted drilling in the Gulf from the Endangered Species Act — law that makes it illegal to harm or kill species on a protected list — on the basis of national security.
These changes have been made amid soaring energy prices and global oil shocks brought on by the U.S.-Iran war.
BP America spokesperson Paul Takahashi told The Associated Press that Deepwater Horizon forever changed the company.
He added BP believes the lawsuit is unfounded and “is fully confident in our Kaskida development plan and our ability to deliver this offshore project safely, responsibly and in compliance with U.S. regulations and industry standards.”
Just last month, a massive oil spill in the Gulf spread more than 373 miles (600 kilometers) and into seven nature reserves, contaminating at least six species and sending 800 tons of hydrocarbon-laden waste into the ocean.
Many of Trump’s moves have reversed efforts by former Democratic President Joe Biden to ban new offshore oil and gas drilling in most U.S. coastal waters.
RUSK COUNTY — A so called “swingers club” has closed its doors, but maybe not for long. LSX venue was forced to shutter last week after violating a ordinance preventing “sexually oriented businesses” from operating within a thousand feet of a residence.
According to our news partner KETK, the venue also failed to apply for needed permits. LSX offered memberships ranging from $10 to $9, 000, advertising as an “adult lifestyle venue in East Texas where like-minded adults over 21 gather to share experiences together.” Activities like cornhole and pool tables were offered, as well as hot tubs and rooms to rent.
It’s possible LSX will pivot to some other operation, with reports saying it’s already rebranded as an event center.