Today is
Friday June 05, 2026
GRAPEVINE, Texas (AP) — It was Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s show at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where hundreds of right-wing activists from around the country hailed him as Republicans’ clear choice for U.S. Senate.
After meeting with supporters behind closed doors, Paxton crowned the day by standing before thousands as the keynote speaker at the Ronald Reagan dinner.
Paxton thanked them for sticking by his side after he was impeached — but acquitted — for corruption charges by the Legislature four years ago.
“I want you to know, there’s only one reason I got through all that, and it’s by the grace of God,” he said Friday night as a wave of applause rolled through the hall. “He absolutely delivered me, and he used to people of Texas to deliver me.”
If Paxton is going to win the Republican nomination, it will be because of support in rooms like this one. He is in a bitter runoff with Sen. John Cornyn after neither won enough votes in the March 3 primary. Although Cornyn has raised far more money and is backed by the party establishment in Washington, Paxton’s well-honed survival skills and rock-solid foundation with the local Republican base could see him through the May 26 election.
President Donald Trump promised that he would endorse either Paxton or Cornyn weeks ago, but no announcement ever came. Paxton, however, has had no trouble proving his bona fides with the party’s right wing.
While Cornyn did not attend CPAC, which was held at a resort and convention center near Dallas, Paxton was extolled by speakers throughout the day.
“Ken Paxton is emblematic of the grassroots of the MAGA movement across the nation,” Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser who hosts the “War Room” podcast, said referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan that originated in his 2016 campaign.
Earlier Friday, CPAC senior fellow Mercedes Schlapp polled the crowd. Asking for a show of support for Paxton, there was a roar of cheers. When she asked about Cornyn, there was a light ripple of boos.
Cornyn finished first in the primary, which also featured U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt. There were briefly concerns among Paxton’s supporters that Trump would back the incumbent. That would have come as a relief to party leaders, who view Cornyn as stronger candidate against Democratic nominee James Talarico.
But Paxton appealed to Trump by embracing legislation known as the SAVE Act, which would mean new, strict proof-of-citizenship requirements for voting. The proposal is a priority for Trump, but it has stalled in the Senate because Republican leaders do not want to lift the filibuster.
Joe Ropar, a 72-year-old defense contractor who attended CPAC, said Paxton’s move was “brilliant.” Although Cornyn later said he was willing to change filibuster rules, Ropar believed Paxton had demonstrated stronger loyalty to Trump.
“Cornyn’s trying to change his stripes now,” Ropar said. “It’s too little too late.”
Paxton has another political connection with Trump: They both have portrayed themselves as the victims of political persecution. While Paxton was impeached and acquitted once, Trump went through the process twice during his first term.
James Schaare, a 61-year-old church music leader from Euless, Texas, said that perseverance shows Paxton is the right choice.
“In Paxton’s career, he’s been faithful to what he’s said he’s going to do,” he said.
Some conservative Republicans hold other grudges against Cornyn. They remember his early criticism of Trump’s proposal for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2016, his co-sponsoring of gun control legislation after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022, and his dismissive remarks about Trump’s comeback campaign in 2024.
Retired music teacher Valerie Burge, 58, said she voted for Cornyn in the primary because of his long service.
“But I’m not sure about the runoff,” she said. “It might be time for something new.”
Barbara Palmer, a 65-year-old lawyer, said Cornyn had simply been in office for too long. He has been a judge, state supreme court justice and state attorney general, and now he wants a fifth term as senator.
“It’s just time for a change,” Palmer said.
PALESTINE – The Palestine Police Department said a crash that happened on North Loop 256 on Friday has reportedly left at least one person with injuries. According to Palestine PD, the crash happened the intersection of East Palestine Avenue and North Loop 256 at around 3:25 p.m. on Friday. Drivers are asked to use caution when driving through the area as law enforcement responds to the crash.
LONGVIEW – Officials have confirmed that City of Longview employee Buddy Powell died earlier this month during a “workplace accident” when he was hit in the head with a high-pressure water hose. According to our news partner KETK, Gregg County Pct. 1 Justice of the Peace B.H Jameson said, the cause of Powell’s death was determined to be blunt force trauma after being struck by the hose. Powell was pronounced dead at a local hospital following the incident. It is unknown at this time what caused the incident and whether or not negligence was involved in Powell’s death.
LONGVIEW – One person was taken to the hospital following a shooting in Longview on Friday morning. According to our news partner KETK, Longview Police Department officers responded to a call on South High Street and Marion Drive at around 12 a.m. after receiving multiple reports of a shooting. Once on the scene, officers saw several people leaving the area and found a man inside a vehicle who had been shot.
The victim was taken to a hospital for injuries that did not appear to be life-threatening, according to officials. Anyone with information regarding the incident is asked to contact the department at 903-237-199 or Gregg County Crime Stoppers at 903-236-7867
ABILENE (AP) – Microsoft is taking over a data center construction project in Texas after OpenAI declined to pursue it, in a move that will make the two companies neighbors at one of the nation’s largest complexes for running artificial intelligence.
Data center developer Crusoe said Friday it is working with Microsoft to build two new “AI factory” buildings and an on-site power plant in Abilene, Texas, right next to where Crusoe has been building an even larger computing campus for OpenAI and Oracle.
OpenAI’s existing project, the flagship of a broader initiative called Stargate, is so massive that President Donald Trump was the first to officially announce it just after his inauguration last year to signal AI investments he called a “resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential.”
Microsoft was once OpenAI’s exclusive cloud computing provider and still holds a roughly 27% stake in the ChatGPT maker, but the two companies are increasingly pursuing AI development separately, even though they are on the same tract of land.
Crusoe has already completed two buildings for OpenAI and its other cloud partner, Oracle, supplying a surge of computing power that helps build and operate technology like ChatGPT. SoftBank was also an investment partner. Crusoe is still completing six more buildings for OpenAI and Oracle due to be completed by the end of this year.
OpenAI said earlier this month that it dropped plans to expand its Abilene project even further.
“Our flagship Stargate site is one of the largest AI data center campuses in the United States,” said Sachin Katti, OpenAI’s head of compute infrastructure, in a post on X. “We considered expanding it further, but ultimately chose to put that additional capacity in other locations.”
Katti said OpenAI has more than half a dozen sites under development across the United States, including one it is building with Oracle in Wisconsin.
Microsoft’s additional two Abilene facilities announced Friday will bring the total number to 10 data center buildings, expected to supply a stunning 2.1 gigawatts of computing capacity from what was once a vast tract of mesquite shrub lands, home to coyote and roadrunners.
Originally planned as a facility to mine cryptocurrency, developers pivoted and expanded their designs after ChatGPT sparked an AI boom.
Crusoe co-founder and CEO Chase Lochmiller said in a written statement that a new power plant attached to the Microsoft project will be able to generate 900 megawatts to “continue building the industrial foundation for American AI — at a velocity the industry has never seen.”
That will be larger than the existing 350-megawatt, gas-fired power plant attached to the OpenAI and Oracle project. Oracle has previously described that on-site plant as a backup source of power, since the data centers primarily draw from the region’s electricity grid, which includes power supplied by nearby wind farms.
The AI race has been complicating tech companies’ commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, most of which come from the burning of gas, oil and coal and drive climate change. “We’re burning gas to run this data center,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said while visiting Abilene last year, adding that “in the long trajectory of Stargate” the hope is to rely on many other power sources.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The astronauts set to become the first lunar visitors in more than half a century arrived at their launch site Friday, joining the towering rocket that stands poised to blast off next week and send them around the moon.
Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman flew in with his three crewmates from Houston. It was the closest they’ve come to launching. Fuel leaks and other rocket issues caused two months of delay and double hangar-to-pad rollouts.
NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman greeted the astronauts as they emerged from their T-38 training jets at Kennedy Space Center. Besides Wiseman, the crew includes NASA’s Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen.
NASA is aiming for liftoff as soon as Wednesday. The space agency has the first six days of April to launch the Space Rocket System rocket before standing down for nearly a month.
The Orion capsule atop the rocket will carry the four on NASA’s first astronaut moonshot since Apollo 17 in 1972. The 10-day flight will end with a Pacific splashdown.
Earlier this week, Isaacman outlined a fresh plan for the moon base that NASA intends to build under the Artemis program. The upcoming moonshot will be followed in 2027 by a lunar lander demo in orbit around Earth and in 2028 by one and possibly two lunar landings by astronauts.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — New U.S. House districts in Missouri backed by President Donald Trump can be used ahead of the midterm elections, despite the potential for a voter referendum on the new map, a judge ruled Friday.
The decision by Cole County Circuit Judge Brian Stumpe marked a triumph for Republicans, who hope the districts will help them win an additional congressional seat in the November midterm elections.
Opponents of the new districts asserted they should have been automatically suspended in December when more than 300,000 petition signatures were submitted calling for a statewide referendum on the plan.
But Stumpe said opponents lacked the legal grounds to sue, had done so too soon and were asking the court to get involved in a political question best left to the executive and legislative branches. He said the new map can be suspended only if it is ultimately determined that the referendum petition meets legal muster and contains enough valid signatures.
“Without verification requirements, any group could suspend legislation merely by submitting boxes of invalid signatures, signatures of unregistered voters, forged names, or other fraudulent submissions,” Stumpe wrote. “Clearly, the framers of Missouri’s Constitution could not have intended such an easily exploited system that would allow bad-faith actors to paralyze the legislative process.”
Under state law, Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins has until Aug. 4 — the date of Missouri’s primary election — to make a final determination on the validity of the referendum petition.
Missouri is one of several states engaged in a national redistricting battle that began last summer when Trump called upon Texas Republicans to redraw House districts to try to give the GOP an advantage in this year’s midterm elections. After Texas acted, California Democrats reciprocated with their own new districts, and a tit-for-tat redistricting clash soon spread among states.
The redistricting fight, so far, has resulted in only a slight edge for Republicans as they try to hold on to their narrow House majority. But voters in Virginia are deciding in an April 21 election whether to authorize a mid-decade redistricting that could help Democrats win several additional seats.
It’s uncertain whether all the manipulation of voting district boundaries ultimately will make a difference in which party wins control of the House. The party in power typically loses seats in the midterms and Trump faces negative approval ratings in polls.
Missouri currently is represented in the U.S. House by six Republicans and two Democrats under a map passed in 2022 based on the most recent census. At the time, Republican lawmakers turned back an attempt by some in the party to push a map giving Republicans a shot at winning seven seats. They cited concerns that it could spread Republicans too thin and backfire in losses if Democrats enjoyed a favorable election year.
But Republicans set aside those concerns last year under pressure from the White House to revise the districts for partisan advantage.
A new map passed during a September special legislative session was intended to help Republicans win a Kansas City-area seat currently held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. It reassigned portions of Kansas City to two neighboring districts represented by Republicans and stretched the remainder of his 5th Congressional District eastward into Republican-heavy rural areas.
The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a legal challenge asserting that mid-decade redistricting wasn’t allowed under the state constitution. A trial court also recently rejected a legal challenge asserting that the new districts violate constitutional requirements to be compact. Plaintiffs have appealed that case to the state Supreme Court.
MARSHALL — Following a week of water outages and reduced pressure due to a major water main break, the City of Marshall is taking steps to strengthen its water infrastructure. According to our news partner KETK, at Thursday’s city council meeting, officials unanimously approved a contract with Smith Pump Company to purchase a solar pump for the raw water pump station. The $356,118 project will add a fourth pump to the system, marking the final step in restoring full pumping capacity.
The decision comes after widespread disruptions tied to a March 17 water main break that forced closures across the community. Marshall ISD canceled classes and many local businesses temporarily closed down as water pressure dropped and outages spread. Read the rest of this entry »
TYLER — A Smith County judge denied a motion to lower the bond for Dayton Morgan, who was charged with murder in connection to a fatal road rage shooting earlier this year.
According to our news partner KETK, in Friday’s hearing at the 114th District Judicial Court, a grand jury indicted thee 23-year-old Morgan, of murder for allegedly shooting a man on Feb. 13 during a Tyler road rage incident. Morgan plead not guilty to the charge, the criminal court coordinator Taylor Moss confirmed. Morgan’s bond remains at $1 million, as Smith County Judge Austin Reeve Jackson denied a motion to lower the bond to $100,000.
Morgan was arrested on Feb. 13 after 29-year-old Trevor Julian, died by gunfire in a reported road rage incident. According to an arrest affidavit, a Tesla “stopped abruptly” in front of a pickup Morgan was driving at the intersection of E. Grande Boulevard and Paluxy Drive. Julian was in the passenger seat of the Tesla, which his wife was driving. Morgan told investigators that he opened his truck door but remained seated as Julian exited the Tesla and approached the truck. The two men began yelling at each other. Read the rest of this entry »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The astronaut who prompted NASA’s first medical evacuation earlier this year said Friday that doctors still don’t know why he suddenly fell sick at the International Space Station.
Four-time space flier Mike Fincke said he was eating dinner on Jan. 7 after prepping for a spacewalk the next day when it happened. He couldn’t talk and remembers no pain, but his anxious crewmates jumped into action after seeing him in distress and requested help from flight surgeons on the ground.
“It was completely out of the blue. It was just amazingly quick,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press from Houston’s Johnson Space Center.
Fincke, 59, a retired Air Force colonel, said the episode lasted roughly 20 minutes and he felt fine afterward. He said he still does. He never experienced anything like that before or since.
Doctors have ruled out a heart attack and Fincke said he wasn’t choking, but everything else is still on the table and could be related to his 549 days of weightlessness. He was 5 ½ months into his latest space station stay when the problem struck like “a very, very fast lightning bolt.”
“My crewmates definitely saw that I was in distress,” he said, with all six gathering around him. “It was all hands on deck within just a matter of seconds.”
Fincke said he can’t provide any more details about his medical episode. The space agency wants to make sure that other astronauts do not feel that their medical privacy will be compromised if something happens to them, he said.
The space station’s ultrasound machine came in handy when the event occurred, he said, and he’s gone through numerous tests since returning to Earth. NASA is poring through other astronauts’ medical records to see if any related instances that might have occurred in space, he said.
Fincke identified himself late last month as the one who was sick to end the swirling public speculation.
He still feels bad that his illness caused the spacewalk to be canceled — it would have been his 10th spacewalk but first for crewmate Zena Cardman — and resulted in an early return for her and their two other crewmates. SpaceX brought them back on Jan. 15, more than a month early, and they went straight to the hospital.
“I’ve been very lucky to be super healthy. So this was very surprising for everyone,” he said.
Fincke stopped apologizing to everybody after NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman ordered him to stop.
“This wasn’t you. This was space, right?” his colleagues assured him. “You didn’t let anybody down.”
Ever the optimist, he’s holding out hope that he can return to space one day.
AUSTIN (AP) – Less than half a percent of federal money spent on child care scholarships in Texas was considered “improper,” a new report ordered by Gov. Greg Abbott found.
Abbott’s directive followed allegations of a $110 million child care fraud scheme in Minnesota. Experts say the Minnesota allegations in December were unfounded. But they did follow years in which the state reported high rates of improper payments in its child care scholarship program, and those allegations came at a time when the state was beleaguered by fraud scandals in other programs.
Improper payments in Texas include any payment made of an incorrect amount — over or under — or they could be fraudulent.
The allegations in Minnesota caused a ripple across the country. The federal government froze funding for child care in five states, and states themselves turned inward to ensure their fraud prevention systems were up-to-date. Child care advocates worry fears of wide-spread fraud will cause regulators to tighten requirements for child care providers, which are already underfunded and struggling, making it impossible for them to operate effectively. Or worse, that regulators cut funding as a result of fears over fraudulent activity.
“While you do want to address the issue (of fraud), you also don’t want to over-correct and create issues where they currently do not exist,” said Radha Mohan, the executive director of the Early Care and Education Consortium, a national nonprofit association of child care providers.
The Texas Workforce Commission and Texas Health and Human Services Commission are two of four agencies that oversee Texas’ child care system — and were tagged with investigating payments by the governor. The report released in February by the two Texas agencies details the state’s ongoing safeguards to prevent, stop and prosecute fraud and what is being done to clamp down on it further. It also highlighted part of the last improper payment report submitted to federal regulators, that says Texas’ improper payment rate is .44% — equivalent to about $4.3 million of the more than $990 million budget.
“This report confirms that Texas maintains strong anti-fraud measures that have kept improper payments extraordinarily low compared to other states,” said Andrew Mahaleris, Abbott’s press secretary. “Governor Abbott will continue working to further enhance oversight, fraud reporting tools, and enforcement to ensure every taxpayer dollar serves its intended purpose.”
What child care looks like in Texas
The Texas child care subsidy program is notoriously overwhelmed.
More than 100,000 children were waiting for scholarships to cover the cost of preschool tuition in November of 2025. Tuition to attend preschools in Texas is, in many cases, more expensive than attending a four-year university.
The subsidy program, which spent more than $980 million in 2022, provides scholarships to families with incomes at 85% of the state’s median income and lower. It allows parents to go to work or school. The scholarships often cover only part of child care tuition.
And many communities in the state are “ child care deserts,” meaning there are few to no places actually available for kids to attend preschool.
The issue of cost and the lack of child care programs across the state prompted lawmakers to assign another $100 million to the child care subsidy program using leftover dollars from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Fund. It was an historic investment that was eaten up by rampant inflation before the end of 2025.
Federal dollars are also given to the Texas Workforce Commission, which then allocates the money to 28 local workforce development boards across the state. And they are, by no means, enough to meet the needs of families, Mohan said.
“Of the millions of children that qualify for Child Care and Development Block Grant, less than a quarter actually receive assistance through the program,” Mohan said. “The program is woefully underfunded at the federal level.”
Nobody wants to see that money be wasted on fraud, Mohan said. That’s why there was such a large reaction to allegations of fraud in Minnesota.
In December 2025, YouTuber Nick Shirley posted a video claiming child care centers run by Somalians in Minnesota had defrauded the state government of more than $110 million through this program. Shirley’s claims in Minnesota have not been verified.
In response to the video, however, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services froze access in January to the Child Care and Development Fund, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Social Services Block Grant — which can be used to subsidize child care — in five states: California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York.
Advocates have been walking a fine line since these allegations because of the heightened response by the federal government and state governments, including Texas.
“This is very delicate,” said Kim Kofron, the director of early childhood education with ChildrenatRisk, a child care advocacy and research group. “In Minnesota, there really wasn’t fraud. There were inconsistencies and errors — but that’s not fraud.”
What the report found
In response to the allegations in Minnesota, Abbott issued six directives to the state workforce and human services commissions to identify if Texas had a problem with improper payments, specifically with fraud.
He wanted the two agencies to: review current data collection efforts to make sure they’re sufficient; identify high-risk providers and bring them into compliance; ensure all providers data on children receiving scholarships is accurate; make sure the state’s oversight process is upheld uniformly across the state; improve the online fraud reporting portal; and submit fraud investigations to state or federal prosecutors if necessary.
Of the approximately 7,500 child care providers who accept child care scholarships, 125 were flagged as high risk by the state agencies during this investigation.
Other fraud prevention measures include: regular, in-person assessments of child care providers; an attendance tracking system; a hotline and online portal for allegations of fraud, and a quick response to those allegations by state boards.
Sherry Durham, the senior director of Child Care for Workforce Solutions of Deep East Texas, said the regulations Texas has in place make sense and are easy enough to maintain. The state’s safeguards could be a model for other states, she said.
“First and foremost is child safety,” Durham said. “But then, also, if there’s money coming from the federal government, you want to be good stewards of it.”
These measures, many of which have been built upon since 2011, cut improper payments from 8.28% in 2007 to less than .5% in 2022, according to the latest report, which cited the federal improper payment report submitted to the Administration for Children and Families, the largest federal human services administration, every three years.
This national average for improper payments is 3.96%.
The last report submitted by Texas was in 2022. The next report is due later this year.
What’s next
The child care fraud report detailed the next steps Texas agencies are taking to further crack down on fraud. But experts worry these measures may add unnecessary burdens on an industry that is largely made up of small businesses.
As a result of the investigation, Texas began creating a monthly report that details high-risk providers to keep an eye on. The state also created more training opportunities for local agencies investigating fraud and added to state requirements for providers tracking child attendance in child care.
Kathlyn McHenry, the director of state government relations for the Early Care and Education Consortium, worries that additional requirements will make life harder for providers with no real benefit. For example, Texas is now requiring all providers to use one child care management system in an effort to improve attendance reporting.
Before this requirement, providers could use a child care management system that worked best for them, for their families, for their structure, McHenry said. Those systems usually integrated attendance with payment programs and updates for parents.
“Mandating one specific child care management system for thousands of providers removes their ability to choose the system that works best for them and their families,” McHenry said. “And it potentially creates an unfunded mandate on providers … when there really is no indication that this will prevent any additional fraud from occurring.”
In the future, there will be enhanced data sharing between state agencies regarding programs receiving child care scholarships, the state report said. Local boards will be required to withhold funding from parents who owe the state money. There will be improvements to the state’s online fraud reporting portal and the hotlines.
The Texas Senate Health and Human Services Committee is asking for public recommendations and ideas on fraud prevention in the child care and Medicaid system. The meeting is at 9 a.m., April 8, in the Capitol Extension Office. The notice does not indicate whether online participation will be permitted.
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HENDERSON COUNTY — One man has died and another person injured in a crash early Thursday morning in Henderson County. The Texas Department of Public Safety said law enforcement was called to a single-vehicle crash on rural Henderson County at around 2:06 a.m. According to our news partner KETK, a preliminary investigation revealed that a Chevrolet pickup truck was heading west on FM 317 when the truck approached a left-hand curve at an unsafe speed, left the roadway and hit a tree. The driver, 20-year-old Daniel Rivero, of Athens, was pronounced dead at the scene, while a 19-year-old passenger was transported to a local hospital. DPS said the investigation is ongoing.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Airport security video shows another way federal agents are taking immigrants to detention centers — in some cases they’re using commercial flights, with escorts dressed like any other passenger.
Video obtained through a public records request shows the 5-year-old boy, who became a face of the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis when he was detained while wearing a bunny hat, being flown with his father to Texas on a Delta Air Lines flight, just a day after they were taken into custody.
Adrian Conejo Arias and his son Liam Conejo Ramos seemed calm in these recordings as they were being escorted through the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport by a man and two women dressed in plain clothes. Since the father and boy didn’t appear to be in custody, their trip to San Antonio likely went unnoticed by fellow passengers.
The Trump administration, like its predecessors, is mostly using ICE Air Operations charter flights as it detains hundreds of thousands of people for deportation. Human rights monitors are trying to keep track as detainees are loaded onto planes in shackles in parts of airports the public can’t easily see.
The video of Liam and his father, they say, exposes another route that’s harder for them to document, despite happening in plain view inside the same airport terminals where Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents wearing tactical, military-style gear are now being deployed to support security checkpoints.
What happened in this case?
The father, who was seeking asylum from Ecuador, and son were detained by ICE officers in Minnesota on Jan. 20 and taken to Texas. They were released on a judge’s orders and returned to Minnesota but then an immigration judge denied their asylum request. The family’s lawyer said they’re appealing.
The video that revealed their commercial airline travel was first obtained by Nick Benson, an aviation enthusiast and activist with MN 50501, a grassroots group involved in anti-ICE and No Kings protests. Benson said he’s never seen children while monitoring ICE charter flights, so he suspected ICE was flying them commercially. He identified the time and day the father and son were flown out of Minneapolis, filed a public records request for the security video — and there they were.
The Associated Press obtained the same video through a similar request to the MSP Airport Police Department. It shows Liam’s dad carrying the boy’s Spider-Man backpack as a woman shows an airline agent their boarding passes. A man and the other woman follow them onto the jetway.
Delta declined to comment on the video. But the airline said most government travel is booked through third-party agencies, with no advance notice about who is flying or why. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
What is ICE Air?
ICE Air Operations transfers and deports people mostly using flights chartered through airline broker CSI Aviation, which has subcontracted with small airlines such as GlobalX, Eastern Air Express, Bighorn Airways, Key Lime Air and Avelo Airlines.
ICE Air continues to rapidly expand both domestic transfer and deportation flights, according to Human Rights First, which documented 1,630 immigration enforcement flights in February alone — an average of 42 per day, up from 39 in January. Of that total, 183 were deportation flights and 1,170 were domestic transfer flights.
ICE also uses U.S. Coast Guard planes. Flight Monitor said it tracked hundreds of flights since June 2025 in which Coast Guard planes were used to transport immigrants domestically.
“It seems that ICE sometimes uses commercial flights to destinations where they don’t carry out kind of larger scale ICE Air deportation flights,” said Savi Arvey, director of research and analysis for refugee and immigrant rights at Human Rights First.
The monitors use flight-tracking websites to follow the charter planes, but these tools can’t track individual passengers on commercial flights, making them “less in the public eye,” Arvey said. “It adds another level of opaqueness.”
SMITH COUNTY – Impacts from the conflict with Iran are reaching East Texas farmers as the prices of fuel and fertilizer are on the rise. According to our news partner KETK, with Iran’s disruption of global shipping routes in the Strait of Hormuz, costs for key agricultural supplies, diesel fuel used to power delivery trucks, and fertilizer components are becoming hot commodities.
“Delivery is causing everything to go up because everything that comes by rail or trucking,” Smith County Farm Bureau Board Member Malcom Williams said. “Most fertilizers are a petroleum product, so you get that impact immediately.”
Petroleum is found in fuel, some fertilizer and several everyday products. A price jump in the supply chain could hurt customers.
Read the rest of this entry »