Today is
Thursday June 04, 2026
UPDATE: KTBB talked to Joshua Gentry from the City of Lufkin, he said the repair was complete by 5:30 p.m.
LUFKIN – City crews are responding to a water leak from a broken valve on a 12-inch water line near Highway 58 and loop 287. To safely repair the leak, water service must be shut down in the affected area.
The outage will impact businesses in the area including Eye Mart, Chili’s, Cheddar’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Olive Garden. Repairs are expected to take approximately four hours. Crews will remain on-site until service is fully restored. Drivers in the area should use caution around work zones and watch for those working.
FLINT – The Faith Lutheran Church congregation gathered in Flint on Sunday to mark the very beginning of construction for their new church building. According to our news partner KETK, the congregation’s groundbreaking was held in Flint on Sunday between Wells Marble and Apache Glass off of Old Jacksonville Highway. The groundbreaking is a milestone for their church, which has been trying to grow its presence into Smith County for decades.
“It’s important because our church body, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, has been trying to establish roots in the Tyler area for 60 years now, and over the last ten years, God has blessed us to be able to do that,” Faith Lutheran Church pastor Joseph Koelpin said on Sunday.
The congregation is currently housed at their main church building on FM 346 in Tyler. Their new Flint church is expected to be completed in 2027.
TYLER — A Tyler man has recently been reindicted by the state on 10 counts of possession of child pornography, for which he was first served with in 2021. According to our news partner KETK, In a Smith County arrest affidavit from 2021, a Texas Department of Public Safety special agent developed probable cause that an IP address in Smith County possessed and distributed child pornography.
The investigation found that several electronic devices that were connected to the IP address had a peer-to-peer file sharing software. The IP address was registered to a residence where Eddie Willis lived and a search warrant was obtained from the county judge. Read the rest of this entry »
TYLER – Currently South Bois D’Arc Avenue is closed from the Tyler Public Library parking lot entrance to West Woldert Street for street improvements. The intersection of West Woldert Street and South Bois D’Arc Avenue will remain open through the end of the school day on Friday, May 22.
The intersection at South College Avenue and West Elm Street has reopened following previous improvements. The Tyler Public Library parking lot will remain accessible from the South College Avenue entrance, and full vehicle and pedestrian access has been restored to the Fair Plaza Parking Garage.
South Bonner Avenue has also reopened following its one-week closure that began May 11.
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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Sen. Bill Cassidy was decisively defeated in Saturday’s Republican primary in Louisiana, unable to convince voters that he deserved another term five years after voting to convict President Donald Trump during an impeachment trial over the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
He finished behind U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow, who capitalized on the power of Trump’s endorsement as the president continues purging his party of people he views as disloyal, and John Fleming, the state treasurer. Letlow and Fleming will compete in a runoff on June 27.
The result was the latest example of Trump’s unrivaled power over the Republican Party as he approaches the twilight of his second term with persistent inflation, sagging approval ratings and dissatisfaction over the war with Iran. Unlike some other senators who declined to run again after crossing Trump, Cassidy pushed hard for reelection and spent nearly double the combined amount of his opponents.
But none of that was enough for Cassidy to qualify for a runoff, let alone win a third term.
“Our country is not about one individual,” he told supporters after his loss. “It is about the welfare of all Americans, and it is about the Constitution.”
Letlow, on the other hand, swiftly embraced Trump’s central role when she spoke at her victory party.
“I want to say thank you to a very special man who you all know, the best president this country has ever had, President Donald Trump,” she said while flanked by her two young children.
Asked about Cassidy’s vote at the impeachment trial, Letlow called it “a sign that he had turned his back on the Louisiana voters.”
Trump cheered the victory on social media, saying “that’s what you get by voting to Impeach an innocent man.”
Trump has been purging his party
Trump unloaded on Cassidy the morning of the election, calling him “a disloyal disaster” and “a terrible guy.” Later that night, the senator made a thinly veiled reference to the attacks.
“Insults only bother me if they come from somebody of character and integrity, and I find that people of character and integrity don’t spend their time attacking people on the internet,” Cassidy said.
The Louisiana primary comes in the middle of a month of campaigns by Trump to exact retribution on politicians who have crossed him. On May 5 he helped dislodge five of seven Indiana state senators who rejected his redistricting plan.
After Cassidy’s defeat, Trump wrote on social media that “Tom Massie, a major Sleazebag, is even worse.” He encouraged voters to “get this LOSER out of politics in Tuesday’s Election.”
It’s a striking amount of intraparty turmoil as Republicans face the possibility of losing control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.
The runoff between Letlow and Fleming, a former U.S. House member and Trump administration official, will likely determine Louisiana’s next senator because of the state’s Republican leanings.
On the Democratic side, Jamie Davis advanced to a runoff, but the second spot remained too close to call between Nicholas Albares and Gary Crockett.
Election changes stir concern
Cassidy also complained that a new primary system enacted last year confused voters by requiring them to ask for a partisan ballot instead of the all-party primary previously in place. He said some called his office to say they had been unable to vote for him.
“The process that was set up was destined to be confusing,” Cassidy told reporters Friday.
Dadrius Lanus, executive director of the state Democratic Party, said his team fielded hundreds of calls from voters who said the changes undermined their ability to vote as they planned.
“A lot of the information should have gotten to voters well in advance,” Lanus said. “It’s literally been a whirlwind of confusion.”
Incumbent senator tried to hang on
Cassidy waged an aggressive campaign to convince voters he should not be counted out.
By comparison Letlow’s campaign, which launched Jan. 20, spent roughly $3.9 million, while a super PAC backing her, the Accountability Project, spent about $6 million.
Fleming’s campaign spent about $1.5 million.
Cassidy and Louisiana Freedom Fund ran ads attacking Letlow for supporting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which Trump has tried to eliminate.
Letlow, a college administrator before her election to the House, said she supported DEI while interviewing for the position of president of University of Louisiana-Monroe in 2020.
Targeted by Trump
Cassidy’s vote in favor of convicting the president after his 2021 impeachment has shadowed him since.
John Martin, a 68-year-old retired engineer in south Louisiana, said he would vote for Letlow because he was still upset by Cassidy’s decision. He waved a campaign flyer showing her standing alongside the president.
“I know a lot more about Cassidy than I do about her,” Martin said. “But if she’s endorsed by Trump, I’m going to believe that.”
Cassidy steered clear of Trump’s ire last year, supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services despite his public reservations about the nominee’s anti-vaccine views.
Trump also blamed Cassidy for the failed nomination of his second choice for surgeon general, Casey Means, who raised doubts about vaccinating newborns for hepatitis B, a practice Cassidy supports. Trump withdrew the Means nomination and criticized the senator.
Letlow waited for Trump’s backing
Letlow considered running for Senate last year but only entered the race after Trump announced his endorsement in January.
By that time Fleming, who was elected treasurer in 2023, had already jumped in and pitched himself as a Trump devotee. But Landry was looking for a better-known challenger, and he suggested Letlow to the president.
Letlow had an unconventional and tragic entry into politics.
In 2020, while she was a college administrator, her husband Luke was elected to the U.S. House but died of COVID-19 before he could be sworn in. Letlow ran for and won the seat in a March 2021 special election and was reelected in 2022 and 2024.
SAN AUGUSTINE (KETK) – The San Augustine Police Department has arrested a juvenile after a shooting happened at a Texaco convenience store on Sunday afternoon.
San Augustine PD said officers were sent out to the Texaco Convenience store on MLK Drive in San Augustine in the early afternoon on Sunday after two people reportedly pulled up to the store and started shooting at each other.
After interviewing witnesses at the scene, the officers were able to determine who the two shooters might have been. One of the suspected shooters is a juvenile and has been arrested on a warrant unrelated to Sunday’s shooting.
San Augustine PD said there’s no ongoing threat to the the public and they’re continuing to investigate what exactly led to the shooting. No injuries have been reported in connection to Sunday’s shooting.
Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call San Augustine PD at 936-275-2384.
TYLER — The Caldwell Zoo was evacuated Sunday after officials said the zoo received what appears to be a copycat bomb threat that was connected to a larger scheme nationally.
The anonymous threat said claimed that explosive devices were planted on zoo grounds. Zoo officials immediately evacuated the park out of caution. Tyler Police and Fire Department helped with a full sweep of the park.
In a statement from zoo officials, “No threats were found and the police department have given the ‘all clear.” They added, “is a shame that individuals would target an organization that does so much for the community, education and wildlife conservation.”
The zoo remained closed for the rest of of the day,
WASHINGTON (THE TEXAS TRIBUNE) – U.S. Customs and Border Protection awarded a $1.7 billion federal contract listed for border wall construction in the Big Bend region, fueling public confusion over the project after a previous assurance from a top agency official that no barriers would be built at the region’s national park.
The contract, awarded Monday, is designated “for border wall in Big Bend Texas” in its description. The $1.7 billion allocated in the contract is the single-highest amount awarded for a contract in Texas related to the border wall, according to listings on usaspending.gov, the U.S. government’s official public spending database.
A second contract for $4.5 million was awarded on Thursday for “resource monitoring support” of border wall construction in a separate area of the Big Bend region.
The new awards come a week after CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott told the Washington Examiner there would be no border wall built at Big Bend National Park because of pushback from local residents. Scott’s statements to the Examiner and a statement from CBP last week to The Texas Tribune indicated the agency would instead pave roads along the border in the national park and use digital surveillance equipment.
CBP did not respond to an immediate request for comment about the $1.7 billion award.
Opponents of wall construction in the region have seen their frustrations with the project mount as communication from the Trump administration about the project has been limited, and there have been few formal announcements about plans in the area.
“We obviously, at this point, don’t trust anything, but it’s like a roller coaster,” said Lico Miller, a business owner in Terlingua, a small, rural town a few miles west of Big Bend National Park.
An interactive “Smart Wall” map on the CBP website shows the agency planned to install roads and “virtual wall” technology that would alert Border Patrol agents when people cross the border in the “Big Bend 4” region. The $1.7 billion award is intended for a Big Bend “segment identified as BBT-4,” according to its description. CBP officials took down the Smart Wall map in late April, but later added it once more with changes in mid-May. The map currently states that no is wall planned around the national or state park despite the awarded contract.
“They have made it a mission to obfuscate and make this as confusing of a process as possible,” said Laiken Jordahl, National Public Lands Advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “From constantly changing the online smart wall map — I mean, they’ve made dozens and dozens of changes to that thing without announcing any of them — to taking it down entirely.”
Jordahl said that even paved roads along the border would likely be harmful to wildlife in the region and could make border crossings easier in areas where terrain would otherwise be difficult to traverse. He also said roads would inevitably make barrier installation easier in the future if CBP changed its mind later on.
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On Thursday, the Trump administration waived environmental protections in the Big Bend region in preparation for construction, according to a federal notice first reported by Marfa Public Radio. The notice described Border Patrol’s 517-mile Big Bend sector as “an area of high illegal entry.” The sector is the least busy of the nine sectors, with agency apprehensions in the region accounting for 1.3% of more than 237,000 across the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2025.
Residents point to the infrequency of border crossings in the area as only adding to the confusion and frustration.
“We’re 1.3% of the problem. What is this billions of dollars stuff when we are not an issue?” another Terlingua business owner Cynta de Narvaez said.
Thursday’s waivers follow similar action in February, when Trump administration officials waived over two dozen environmental laws to clear the way for a 150-mile-long border barrier through West Texas that initially included Big Bend National Park.
Advocacy groups in the region filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in mid-April arguing it had illegally waived those environmental laws and need Congress to sign off.
TYLER – U.S. Republican Congressman Nathaniel Moran stopped in Tyler on Saturday to congratulate five East Texas students who’ve been accepted into military academies across the United States.
“This is especially meaningful to me as the United States Congressman to have the opportunity to make sure that we are picking leaders of character for tomorrow, that we’re sending East Texans throughout the nation to be the leaders in the military and the nation for generations to come because I think East Texas makes the best leaders, and I think that our students need to have influence in all of these academies.” Moran said
Thanks in part to Moran’s nomination, Brooks Frans and James Thompson will join the United States Naval Academy, while Brock Sieber and Jayden Riley will serve in the United States Air Force Academy and Nora Ni will join the United States Military Academy at West Point.
The process to be admitted into a United States military academy often requires the applicant to get a nomination from a United States Congressman, like Moran, or a Senator, the Vice President or even the President, unless they’re applying to join the Coast Guard’s academy.
WILLS POINT – The Van Zandt County Sheriff’s Office arrested a man for aggravated assault near Wills Point on Friday after an hours-long standoff.
According to our news partner KETK and the sheriff’s office, deputies were sent out to County Road 3832,on the western edge of Wills Point, after reports of a reported verbal disturbance. When they arrived, he reportedly already left. The man was identified as 32-year-old John Cooper of Wills Point. Deputies learned that Cooper had active arrest warrants for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon.
At around 4:43 p.m. on Friday, the sheriff’s office said deputies found Cooper at a travel trailer north of Wills Point. Deputies attempted to contact Cooper for over two hours, but he wouldn’t come out. Read the rest of this entry »
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Even as Democratic officials fight the effort in court, the Trump administration has run millions of voter registrations through government databases to determine their eligibility in a process that critics worry could end up purging valid voters from the rolls before the November elections.
At least 67 million registrations, primarily from Republican-controlled states, have gone through a beefed-up verification program at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and tens of thousands of those have been flagged as potential noncitizens or people who have died. Some states allow only a month for people to prove their eligibility and others suspend it immediately.
The scanning of state voter rolls at the national level is part of a broader effort by Republican President Donald Trump to federalize certain election functions and promote his messaging that elections are marred by noncitizen voting, even though instances of that are rare. Voting and civil rights advocates say the DHS system is error-prone and can mistakenly flag people who are eligible to vote.
“If a voter is wrongly removed, by the time they learn about it and correct it, they may miss their opportunity to vote in that election,” said Freda Levenson, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. The group is challenging an Ohio law requiring monthly checks with the DHS system.
Voters such as 29-year-old Anthony Nel have been caught in the middle.
The native of South Africa, who became a citizen more than a decade ago, was flagged as a potential noncitizen when Texas ran its voter file through the DHS verification system. Nel’s local election office in Denton, north of Dallas, temporarily canceled his registration last fall while he was waiting for a new passport to replace an expired one.
“I’m like, ‘You should know that I’m a citizen, that the passport exists,’” he said in an interview.
States’ entire voter rolls reviewed
Trump has been trying to overhaul U.S. elections, including calling for a federal list of verified voters, and his Department of Justice has pushed states to hand over unredacted voter information for mass checks through the DHS program known as SAVE.
The Justice Department has sued states that refuse, saying the government is trying to ensure that they are complying with federal law and have accurate voter lists. States already take a number of steps to maintain the accuracy of their voter rolls.
SAVE, short for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, was created under an immigration law mandating that DHS help federal, state and local agencies prevent government benefits from going to noncitizens. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an arm of DHS, said more than 1,300 agencies use it.
At least 25 states have used SAVE to check their voter rolls since April 2025, after the Trump administration significantly expanded its search abilities, and 60 million registrations were checked in a year’s time, according to Citizenship and Immigration Services. That figure does not include an additional 7.4 million registrations from North Carolina, where Republicans control the state election board, that were recently run through the system.
Citizenship and Immigration Services said in an emailed statement that it is “committed to helping eliminate voter fraud” to restore Americans’ trust in their elections.
“SAVE is one of the most important tools states have to verify voter information,” Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican, recently told a U.S. House committee examining how states keep voter rolls clean.
Schwab’s endorsement is notable because he once was publicly skeptical that noncitizens represented a significant voter fraud threat.
Republicans cite hits from SAVE searches
Citizenship and Immigration Services said the 60 million voter registration checks identified about 24,000 potential noncitizens. U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who runs the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said during a recent Fox News interview that those checks also identified about 350,000 people who appear to have died.
North Carolina’s State Board of Elections said its check had identified another 34,000 registered voters who are potentially deceased.
Even if all those eventually were verified as ineligible, they would represent small percentages of total registered voters. The figure for noncitizens would be about 400 for every 1 million registrations. Some 384,000 people identified as potentially deceased in about 67 million registrations is a fraction of 1%.
Some voters have been mistakenly flagged.
In Dallas, election officials recently canceled the registration of Domingo Garcia, a 68-year-old lawyer and voting rights activist, without explanation. He has been voting regularly for 50 years, most recently in the state’s March 3 primary, and suspects that officials concluded he was deceased.
“I should not have been on any lists,” he said.
False positives are popping up
Voting rights advocates have filed at least six federal lawsuits over SAVE checks, either against the Trump administration or states using the program.
Nel, a 29-year-old college administrator, is a plaintiff in one of them, filed recently in the District of Columbia against the Justice Department. It alleges an “illegal and unprecedented quest” by the administration for “millions of Americans’ confidential voter data.”
Lawyers also argue that eligible voters will be disenfranchised by hits from outdated or incomplete data.
Nel came to the United States from South Africa with his parents at age 8. His parents became citizens when he was 16, making him a citizen, as well. He said he has voted regularly since he was 18.
Yet he received a letter in October in a white envelope that looked to him like junk mail. It told him he had been identified as a potential noncitizen through a SAVE check of Texas’ 18 million voter registrations. He had 30 days to prove otherwise — a deadline he missed because of the time it took to get a new passport.
“It’s clear that this process that they’ve put into place for this doesn’t work,” he said.
Defenders say the SAVE system is a first step
Republican officials said the administration does not portray SAVE searches as foolproof. Instead, it identifies registrations that should be further investigated, they said.
In Kansas, Schwab’s office is still investigating its list of flagged registrations and has yet to disclose the number of hits of potentially ineligible voters from a SAVE check of the state’s 2 million registrations.
Once his office forwards flagged names to county officials, a state law enacted this year requires them to list the registrations as “in suspense” or “pending” until the cases are resolved. A flagged person still can vote, but the ballot is set aside for further review and might not be counted.
Texas is supposed to give people with flagged registrations 30 days to prove they are properly registered. North Carolina will require county elections boards to give people whose registrations are challenged a hearing before they can be canceled.
A new Ohio law requires local election boards to “promptly” cancel the registrations of people whom the secretary of state identifies as noncitizens during registration checks that the official is required to make at least monthly.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, said in an email that people’s voting rights are not in danger because “all they need to do to immediately restore their registration status is show proof of citizenship.”
But Levenson, the ACLU lawyer, described the approach differently.
“Shoot first and ask questions later,” she said.
SMITH COUNTY – Early voting for the May 26 Primary Runoff Election runs Monday through Friday, May 18-22, 2026.
Statewide runoff races are on the ballot.
U.S. Senator, Attorney General, Railroad Commissioner and Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 3, Judge are on the Republican ticket. The Democratic ballot will have runoff races for U.S. Representative, District 1, Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General.
There are five early voting locations open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday. Read the rest of this entry »
FORNEY (KETK) – The Forney Police Department has confirmed that three people were injured when their plane crashed during an emergency landing on Saturday morning.
According to Forney PD, Forney police officers and Forney Fire Department firefighters responded to the area of Sage Hill Parkway and Helms Trail at just after midnight on Saturday after a single-engine aircraft crashed in a field while attempting to make an emergency landing.
Three people were on the plane and two of them had to be taken to a local hospital for treatment, while the third person was treated for their injuries at the crash scene. Forney PD said they’re working closely with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Texas Department of Public Safety to investigate the crash.
The FAA identified the crashed aircraft as a Bellanca Downer 14-19-3 single-engine plane. The Dallas Police Association Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 716 said the three passengers were all off-duty police officers traveling together in the plane while returning a personal trip.
The lodge said two of the officers received minor injuries while one officer has significant injuries that they are still being treated for.
ARP – The Arp Police Department has released body camera footage from an officer who shot a resident’s dog on Friday while he was responding to a fire. According to our news partner KETK, and Arp PD, the officer was getting off of another service call at around 7:40 p.m. on Friday when he saw black smoke rising from a property a few streets away. When he got to the scene, he saw a 20-foot tall fire emerging from behind a residence and so headed towards the fire to see if the residence was in danger.
Arp Police Chief Joe Keegan said in a statement on Saturday that the officer was walking towards the property’s fence when two dogs approached from the other side of the fence and crawled under it. The officer feared for his safety as the dogs reportedly attempted to attack him so he fired two shots from his department issued pistol, hitting one of the two dogs. Read the rest of this entry »