Today is
Wednesday April 16, 2025
MARSHALL – A man was arrested for DWI after an injury-causing collision in Marshall on Wednesday. According to our news partner KETK, police grabbed a fleeing 22-year-old Pablo Villa after his involvement in a car accident on East End Blvd South near Highway 59. Officers charged Villa with driving while intoxicated and causing a collision with injury. After posting a bond of $12,000, he was released from the Harrison County Jail.
HARRISON COUNTY – Two people are behind bars after a search warrant was conducted in a Harrison County house on Friday as part of a drug trafficking investigation. According to our news partner KETK, the Joint Harrison County Violent Crime and Narcotics Task Force arrested 59-year-old Bobby Treece of Karnack, for the manufacture and delivery of a controlled substance. Also arrested was 37-year-old Amber Watson, from Marshall. Watson was charged with manufacture and delivery of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.
During the search, officers found more evidence, leading to a second charge of manufacture and delivery of a controlled substance. MPD said both Treece and Watson are being held in the Harrison County Jail.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he is firing members of the board of trustees for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and naming himself chairman.
He also indicated that he would be dictating programming at one of the nation’s premier cultural institutions, specifically declaring that he would end events featuring performers in drag.
Trump’s announcement Friday came as the Republican president has bulldozed his way across official Washington during the first weeks of his second term, trying to shutter federal agencies, freeze spending and ending diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across the government.
“At my direction, we are going to make the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., GREAT AGAIN. I have decided to immediately terminate multiple individuals from the Board of Trustees, including the Chairman, who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture,” Trump wrote on his social media website.
“We will soon announce a new Board, with an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!”
In a statement later on its website, the Kennedy Center said it was aware of Trump’s post. “We have received no official communications from the White House regarding changes to our board of trustees,” the statement said. “We are aware that some members of our board have received termination notices from the administration.”
The statement continued: “Per the Center’s governance established by Congress in 1958, the chair of the board of trustees is appointed by the Center’s board members. There is nothing in the Center’s statute that would prevent a new administration from replacing board members; however, this would be the first time such action has been taken with the Kennedy Center’s board.”
Drag artists accused Trump of targeting them because of who they are in a country where freedom of expression is guaranteed by the Constitution.
“This is about who gets to exist in public spaces and whose stories get to be told on America’s stage,” said Blaq Dinamyte, president of Qommittee, a national network of drag artists and allies. “Banning an entire art form is censorship, plain and simple. Americans don’t have to agree on everything, but we should be able to speak our minds and perform our art without bans, retaliation, or intimidation.”
Unlike Democratic President Joe Biden and other presidents through the decades, Trump did not attend the annual Kennedy Center Honors ceremonies during his first term.
Shortly after Trump’s post, the Kennedy Center website began experiencing technical difficulties. Visitors got a message reading “We are experiencing high traffic” and were redirected to a “waiting room” that listed how many hundreds of people were trying to access the site ahead of them.
Trump suggested in his post that he would be implementing some changes to the center’s performance schedule, noting that last year “the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth — THIS WILL STOP.”
According to its website, the center in July hosted a preshow titled “A Drag Salute to Divas” and a November “Drag Brunch.”
In his post, Trump did not clarify which board of trustee members he would terminate besides the current chairman, philanthropist David Rubenstein. The board often features political powerbrokers and major donors, and is currently made up of members from both sides of the aisle.
Rubenstein was first elected to the post in 2010 and reelected each year since that time. He was originally appointed to the Kennedy Center board by Republican President George W. Bush and subsequently reappointed by Democratic President Barack Obama and Biden.
The current board features Biden’s White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, as well as Mike Donilon, Biden’s longtime ally, and Stephanie Cutter, a former Obama adviser. The treasurer of the center’s board of trustees is television producer Shonda Rhimes, who hosted fundraisers for Biden before he abandoned his reelection bid last summer.
But the current board also features Trump allies, including Pam Bondi, his recently confirmed attorney general, and Lee Greenwood, whose song “God Bless the USA,” was the unofficial anthem of Trump’s presidential campaigns.
During his first term in 2019, Trump announced that he was tapping actor Jon Voight, a longtime supporter, to the board, along with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who is Trump’s second-term pick to be the U.S. ambassador to Israel.
LONGVIEW – The Longview Trade Days is returning to its original location at the Longview Exhibit Center this weekend after renovating the building and installing new heating and air conditioners. According to our news partner KETK, Longview Trade Days Coordinator Billy Clay said that everyone is excited to be back in their original location.
“Everyone is proud to back supporting East Texas vendors while proving locals with some much needed finds,” said Clay.
Longview Trade Days will run Saturday from from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Saturday and from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Sunday.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Friday dealt President Donald Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk their first big setback in their dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, ordering a temporary halt to plans to pull thousands of agency staffers off the job.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, also agreed to block an order that would have given the thousands of overseas USAID workers the administration wanted to place on abrupt administrative leave just 30 days to move families and households back to the U.S. on government expense.
Both moves would have exposed the U.S. workers and their spouses and children to unwarranted risk and expense, the judge said.
Nichols pointed to accounts from workers abroad that the Trump administration, in its rush to shut down the agency and its programs abroad, had cut some workers off from government emails and other communication systems they needed to reach the U.S. government in case of a health or safety emergency.
The Associated Press reported earlier that USAID contractors in the Middle East and elsewhere had found even “panic button” apps wiped off their mobile phones or disabled when the administration abruptly furloughed them.
“Administrative leave in Syria is not the same as administrative leave in Bethesda,” the judge said in his order Friday night.
In agreeing to stop the 30-day deadline given USAID staffers to return home at government expense, Nichols cited statements from agency employees who had no home to go to in the U.S. after decades abroad, who faced pulling children with special needs out of school midyear, and had other difficulties.
The judge also ordered USAID staffers already placed on leave by the Trump administration reinstated. But he declined a request from two federal employee associations to grant a temporary block on a Trump administration funding freeze that has shut down the six-decade-old agency and its work, pending more hearings on the workers’ lawsuit.
Nichols stressed in the hearing earlier Friday on the request to pause the Trump administration’s actions that his order was not a decision on the employees’ request to roll back the administration’s swiftly moving destruction of the agency.
“CLOSE IT DOWN,” Trump said on social media of USAID before the judge’s ruling.
The American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees argue that Trump lacks the authority to shut down the agency without approval from Congress. Democratic lawmakers have made the same argument.
Trump’s administration moved quickly Friday to literally erase the agency’s name. Workers on a crane scrubbed the name from the stone front of its Washington headquarters. They used duct tape to block it out on a sign and took down USAID flags. Someone placed a bouquet of flowers outside the door.
The Trump administration and Musk, who is running a budget-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, have made USAID their biggest target so far in an unprecedented challenge of the federal government and many of its programs.
Administration appointees and Musk’s teams have shut down almost all funding for the agency, stopping aid and development programs worldwide. They have placed staffers and contractors on leave and furlough and locked them out of the agency’s email and other systems. According to Democratic lawmakers, they also carted away USAID’s computer servers.
“This is a full-scale gutting of virtually all the personnel of an entire agency,” Karla Gilbride, the attorney for the employee associations, told the judge.
Justice Department attorney Brett Shumate argued that the administration has all the legal authority it needs to place agency staffers on leave. “The government does this across the board every day,” Shumate said. “That’s what’s happening here. It’s just a large number.”
Friday’s ruling is the latest setback in the courts for the Trump administration, whose policies to offer financial incentives for federal workers to resign and end birthright citizenship for anyone born in the U.S. to someone in the country illegally have been temporarily paused by judges.
Earlier Friday, a group of a half-dozen USAID officials speaking to reporters strongly disputed assertions from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the most essential life-saving programs abroad were getting waivers to continue funding. None were, the officials said.
Among the programs they said had not received waivers: $450 million in food grown by U.S. farmers sufficient to feed 36 million people, which was not being paid for or delivered; and water supplies for 1.6 million people displaced by war in Sudan’s Darfur region, which were being cut off without money for fuel to run water pumps in the desert.
The judge’s order involved the Trump administration’s decision earlier this week to pull almost all USAID workers off the job and out of the field worldwide.
Trump and congressional Republicans have spoken of moving a much-reduced number of aid and development programs under the State Department.
Within the State Department itself, employees fear substantial staff reductions following the deadline for the Trump administration’s offer of financial incentives for federal workers to resign, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. A judge temporarily blocked that offer and set a hearing Monday.
The administration earlier this week gave almost all USAID staffers posted overseas 30 days, starting Friday, to return to the U.S., with the government paying for their travel and moving costs. Diplomats at embassies asked for waivers allowing more time for some, including families forced to pull their children out of schools midyear.
In a notice posted on the USAID website late Thursday, the agency clarified that none of the overseas personnel put on leave would be forced to leave the country where they work. But it said that workers who chose to stay longer than 30 days might have to cover their own expenses unless they received a specific hardship waiver.
Rubio said Thursday during a trip to the Dominican Republic that the government would help staffers get home within 30 days “if they so desired” and would listen to those with special conditions.
He insisted the moves were the only way to get cooperation because staffers were working “to sneak through payments and push through payments despite the stop order” on foreign assistance. Agency staffers deny his claims of obstruction.
Rubio said the U.S. government will continue providing foreign aid, “but it is going to be foreign aid that makes sense and is aligned with our national interest.”
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Tyler – Tyler ISD Fine Arts is hosting the Carnegie Hall Link-Up Wednesday February 5 at 9:30 a.m in the Caldwell Arts Academy. All Tyler ISD 4th and 5th-grade students will perform with their voices and recorders from their seats. A partnership with the East Texas Symphony Orchestra (ETSO) gives nearly 4,000 students the experience to perform with the ETSO. The Tyler ISD District Honors Choir, student actors , Tyler High Drumline and Tyler ISD Recorder Choir will all be on the stage with ETSO. For more information, please contact Jennifer Hines at 903-262-1064.
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NACOGDOCHES 
— An East Texas woman was found guilty on Thursday of murdering her 19-month-old son. According to our news partner KETK, Hanna Ruth Moses was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
A release from the Nacogdoches Assistant District Attorney’s Office said the toddler, Thomas Blake Rogers, was born prematurely and was developmentally delayed. He was removed from the care of Moses in June 2021 for medical neglect and was underweight. The boy was returned to Moses in March 2022 and a few weeks later suffered a displaced femur fracture despite being unable to roll, crawl, or walk.
Thomas remained under the care of his mother, and on May 30, 2022, a 911 call was made by Moses who said her son was not breathing and attempted to do CPR for 30 minutes before making the call to 911. When first responders arrived, they found him unresponsive, wet and with his ankles “bound tightly” with a shoestring. Life-saving measures were performed on Thomas until they reached the Nacogdoches Memorial Hospital where they reportedly found bruises developing from his head to his toes on both sides of his body. He also had significant bleeding in his brain. Read the rest of this entry »
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TYLER – The Texas Agriculture Commissioner has reappointed a Tyler man to the Texas Agriculture Finance Authority (TAFA) Board on Thursday. According to our news partner KETK, Ted F. Conover will continue serving as the board’s chairman and agricultural lending representative.
Conover was the president and chief executive officer of Heritage Land Bank from 1985 to 2005 and the held the same positions at the Bank of Tyler from 2005 to 2010. Conover has served on the Greater Tyler Association of Realtors Board of Directors, the State Advisory Board for Texas Agricultural Lifetime Leadership and the Advisory Committee for the Dean of Agricultural Sciences at East Texas A&M University.
Conover received a master’s degree in general agriculture from East Texas A&M University in 1973 and graduated from the Graduate School of Banking at Southern Methodist University in 1999.
TAFA is a public authority designed to provide financial assistance to expand products, production, processing, marketing and exporting in Texas agriculture.
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ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — A passenger jet collided Wednesday with an Army helicopter while landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, prompting a large search-and-rescue operation in the nearby Potomac River.
There was no immediate word on casualties or the cause of the collision, but all takeoffs and landings from the airport near Washington were halted as helicopters from law enforcement agencies across the region flew over the scene in search of survivors. Inflatable rescue boats were launched into the Potomac River from a point near the airport along the George Washington Parkway, just north of the airport.
President Donald Trump was briefed, his press secretary said, and Vice President JD Vance encouraged followers on the social media platform X to “say a prayer for everyone involved.”
The Federal Aviation Administration said the midair crash occurred around 9 p.m. EST when a regional jet that had departed from Wichita, Kansas, collided with a military Blackhawk helicopter while on approach to an airport runway. It occurred in some of the most tightly controlled and monitored airspace in the world, just over three miles south of the White House and the Capitol.
Investigators will try to piece together the aircrafts’ final moments before their collision, including contact with air traffic controllers as well as a loss of altitude by the passenger jet.
American Airlines flight 5342 was inbound to Reagan National at an altitude of about 400 feet and a speed of about 140 miles per hour when it suffered a rapid loss of altitude over the Potomac River, according to data from its radio transponder. The Canadian-made Bombardier CRJ-701 twin-engine jet was manufactured in 2004 and can be configured to carry up to 70 passengers.
A few minutes before landing, air traffic controllers asked the arriving commercial jet if it could land on the shorter Runway 33 at Reagan National and the pilots said they were able. Controllers then cleared the plane to land on Runway 33. Flight tracking sites showed the plane adjust its approach to the new runway.
In audio from the air traffic control tower around the time of the crash, a controller is heard asking the helicopter, “PAT25 do you have the CRJ in sight,” in reference to the passenger aircraft.
“Tower did you see that?” another pilot is heard calling seconds after the apparent collision.
The tower immediately began diverting other aircraft from Reagan.
Video from an observation camera at the nearby Kennedy Center showed two sets of lights consistent with aircraft appearing to join in a fireball.
In a post on social media, American Airlines said it was aware of reports that one of its flights was involved in the incident and said it would provide more information once available.
The crash is serving as a major test for two of the Trump administration’s newest agency leaders. Pete Hegseth, sworn in days ago as defense secretary, posted on social media that his department was “actively monitoring” the situation that involved an Army helicopter. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, just sworn in earlier this week, said in a social media post that he was “at the FAA HQ and closely monitoring the situation.”
Reagan National is located along the Potomac River, just southwest of the city. It’s a popular choice because it’s much closer than the larger Dulles International Airport, which is deeper in Virginia.
Depending on the runway being used, flights into Reagan can offer passengers spectacular views of landmarks like the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the National Mall and the U.S. Capitol. It’s a postcard-worthy welcome for tourists visiting the city.
The incident recalled the crash of an Air Florida flight that plummeted into the Potomac on January 13, 1982, that killed 78 people. That crash was attributed to bad weather.
The last fatal crash involving a U.S. commercial airline occured in 2009 near Buffalo, New York. Everyone aboard the Bombardier DHC-8 propeller plane was killed, including 45 passengers, 2 pilots and 2 flight attendants. Another person on the ground also died, bringing the total death toll to 50. An investigation determined that the captain accidentally caused the plane to stall as it approached the airport in Buffalo.