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Friday April 18, 2025
CASS COUNTY – Our news partner, KETK, reports that a woman has been arrested by the Cass County Sheriff’s office for capitol murder after an incident left a 9-year-old dead.
At around 6:31 a.m., the Atlanta Police Department received an emergency call from a residence in Bloomburg off of FM 74, a post from the sheriff’s office said.
A neighbor made the 911 call on behalf of an injured woman identified as Jacki Kubin, who ran to the neighbor asking for help. Officials reported that the neighbor was able to give law enforcement a description of a fleeing vehicle.
When officers arrived, an Atlanta Texas Police Department officer found a female child that had suffered severe trauma. The child was transported to a nearby hospital. Read the rest of this entry »
LEE COUNTY – In Central Texas, a bitter fight over a $1 billion water project offers a preview of the future for much of the state as decades of rapid growth pushes past the local limits of its most vital natural resource.
On one side: Georgetown, the fastest-growing city in America for three years straight, which in 2023 signed a contract with an investor-funded enterprise to quickly begin importing vast volumes of water from the Simsboro Formation of the Carrizo Wilcox Aquifer, 80 miles to the east.
On the other side: the cities atop the Simsboro that rely on its water. Bryan, College Station and the Texas A&M University System, a metro area with almost 300,000 people, have sued the developer to stop the project. A trial is set for the first week of May.
“We’re going to fight this thing until the end,” said Bobby Gutierrez, the mayor of Bryan. “It effectively drains the water source of the cities.”
The pump and pipeline project to Georgetown, developed by California-based Upwell Water, is the largest of at least a half dozen similar projects recently completed, under construction or proposed to bring rural Carrizo Wilcox aquifer water into the booming urban corridor that follows Interstate 35 through Central Texas.
It would eventually pump up to 89 million gallons per day, three times the usage of the city of Bryan.
“That basically stops all the economic development we have,” Gutierrez said. “We’re talking about our survival.”
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The fight over the Upwell project could well be a prelude for the broader battles to come as cities across Texas outgrow their water supplies. Lawmakers in the state Capitol are pushing to avert a broad scarcity crisis with funding to desalinate seawater, purify salty groundwater and treat oilfield wastewater to add to the supply. But all of these solutions remain years from realization. In the near term, only import projects from freshwater aquifers will continue to meet the growing water demands of thirsty Texas cities.
Regulation of such projects falls to a patchwork of small, rural agencies called groundwater conservation districts, which might not be fully equipped or empowered to manage plans for competing regional water needs that can affect entire cities for generations to come.
Texas law offers limited clarity, generally preferring a landowner’s right to pump their own groundwater over regulations on private property. Despite fierce denunciations of the Upwell project from nearby city leaders, no one has alleged that its developers have broken any laws.
“We’re following the rules. Why are we being vilified?” said David Lynch, a managing partner at Core Capital investment firm in Houston and a partner in the Upwell project. “I think they feel uncomfortable about what’s coming and their reaction is to make us go away.”
After all, he’s not the only one doing this. Five years ago, San Antonio started pumping up to 49 million gallons per day through a 140-mile pipeline from the Carrizo Wilcox Aquifer. Another pipeline was completed last year and will soon begin pumping to the city of Taylor and the new Samsung microchip manufacturing complex there. Another, scheduled for completion this year, will take water into the cities of Buda and Kyle.
After the lawsuit delayed the Upwell project’s tight timeline, Georgetown commissioned two other pipeline projects from the same aquifer.
“People are starting to pay enough for water to make these sorts of projects work,” Lynch said, driving his black Ford Super Duty Platinum truck down the dirt roads of Upwell’s 9,000-acre farm property and well field in Robertson County. “There’s no cheap water left in Texas.”
In the middle of all this is the little Brazos Valley Groundwater Conservation District, based in the small town of Hearne and also a defendant, alongside Upwell, in the lawsuit.
District manager Alan Day feels for the cities of Bryan and College Station. To an extent, he said, they are right. The more pumping from the aquifer, the sooner everyone will reach conditions of scarcity, though he doesn’t think it will happen as quickly as city leaders say.
At the same time, he said, “Bryan can’t claim the water.” Groundwater is a private property right in Texas as sacred as any other. Everyone is allowed to pump whatever their land produces.
“Water is the new oil,” said Day, a former ranch manager of 27 years. “They have a commodity that can be sold and they have every right to sell it.”
At this time, he said, he has no authority to stop landowners from pumping as long as they fulfill the requirements of the permitting process, which Upwell did. Even if he could do it, Day chuckled at the notion that state leaders would let his tiny office put the brakes on development along the I-35 corridor, home to manufacturing campuses of Tesla, Samsung and Apple, and offices of Amazon, Meta and Google, as well as one of the nation’s largest clusters of data centers and its fastest growing cities.
However, Day said, there will come a day when that changes. The laws for his district, like all others in Texas, specify a threshold at which new rules kick in. It’s called the “desired future condition,” or DFC, a level below which the district is not willing to go. When they get there, everyone will face restrictions on pumping and the days of groundwater abundance will be over for the Simsboro portion of the aquifer. To date, no district in Texas has hit its DFC.
Day said he’s only following the rules. He’ll honor the property rights of landowners who want to pump, and when they hit the DFC, he’ll implement restrictions district-wide.
“What does that do to the growth of Bryan and College Station and Texas A&M and anyone else who is depending on Simsboro?” Day asked. “It stops it.”
This situation follows a generation of steep growth and development that state leaders have dubbed the “Texas Miracle.” The population of Williamson County, seated in Georgetown, 28 miles north of Austin, doubled in 17 years to 700,000 people while its median household income increased by more than 90%. Neighboring counties share similar stories, where sprawling subdivisions and shimmering tech campuses now cover former ranchlands.
Georgetown needs to add millions of gallons per day to its water supply within the next several years. When it signed the pipeline contract in 2023 that stipulated deliveries beginning in 2030, it was acting on a much tighter timeline than decades that are typically considered for large scale water planning.
“Based on hyper growth that we’ve seen in our water territory, we’ve seen the need for higher levels of contracted water sooner than we originally anticipated,” said city manager David Morgan.
Most of the new water will serve new residential areas, he said, and will be used primarily to irrigate lawns and other neighborhood landscaping. Williamson County is also courting a cluster of five large data centers that it expects would bring another 100,000 people to the county.
But what if Bryan, and the cities of the Brazos Valley, want data centers, too? The region is currently pursuing ambitious opportunities in semiconductors, nuclear energy, aerospace, defense and life sciences, said Susan Davenport, president of the Greater Brazos Partnership, an economic development group.
“These sectors, along with the growing workforce and families who support them, are directly dependent on access to our local water resources,” she said.
Although many major projects importing groundwater into Central Texas are just now being realized, the plans have been in the works for decades, according to Michelle Gangnes, a retired finance lawyer and co-founder of the Simsboro Aquifer Water Defense Fund.
In 1998 Gangnes moved from Austin to rural Lee County. That same year, San Antonio, 140 miles away, announced plans to import 49 million gallons per day from wells in Lee County on the site of an old Alcoa aluminum smelter. A prolonged fight ensued and the project was never realized, but many others would follow.
“That’s what started the whole gold rush on water,” Gangnes said. “It resulted in all these groundwater districts being formed, trying to resist the water rush on the Simsboro.”
The groundwater districts were formed by an act of the Texas legislature in 2001. But, when the time came to make groundwater rules, powerful interests kept them loose, according to Ken Kramer, who previously directed the Texas office of the Sierra Club for 24 years. Chief among them was T. Boone Pickens, the iconic Texas oilman who also wanted to export groundwater from his land holdings in the Panhandle.
“There was heavy lobbying by groundwater exporters to make sure that groundwater districts could not stop exports,” Kramer said. “Groundwater then became more of the target for moving water to growing areas and populations.”
Under a principle in Texas called the “right of capture,” landowners are allowed to pump from their land whatever they are able to. Changes made to the Texas Water Code in 2001 stipulated that withdrawals are allowed so long as they don’t affect other permit holders “unreasonably,” which lacks a firm legal definition. That leaves lots up to interpretation for the groundwater districts of Texas.
“They live in a difficult world where it’s unclear exactly what their power is to tell somebody no,” said Robert Mace, executive director of the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University. “If you tell somebody no you’re almost guaranteed to get sued.”
In recent years, several major pipeline projects into Central Texas came online. San Antonio eventually got its Carrizo Wilcox Aquifer water through a 6-foot-wide, 140-mile long Vista Ridge pipeline which began drawing water from Burleson County in 2020, causing levels in neighboring landowners’ wells to plummet.
The old Alcoa wells in Burleson County were also put to use. A developer called Xebec Holdings bought the 50-square-mile property in 2022 and signed deals to pipe almost 18 million gallons per day to the City of Tyler.
“There’s constantly people out there trying to lease water rights to see if they could do a project to sell water,” said Gary Westbrook, general manager of the Post Oak Savannah Groundwater Conservation District. “We’re going to have to find a way to regulate. You can’t just say no.”
A Gatehouse Pipeline is currently under construction to Georgetown, with another one called Recharge in development. Morgan, the Georgetown city manager, said those two projects were identified and accelerated after the lawsuit challenged the Upwell project.
“We believe the lawsuit is going to likely delay getting that fully resolved,” he said.
Upwell Water, a San Francisco-based financing firm, announced in 2020 that it had raised $1 billion from investors “to monetize water assets.”
Upwell partnered with CoreCapital investors in Houston, which bought its 9,000-acre Robertson County farm property in 2021. Lynch, the managing partner at CoreCapital, said he expected to sit on the property for 10 years until the economics of water made it attractive to develop a major export project.
But as soon as he entered the market, he found eager buyers willing to pay well.
“We bought it and all of a sudden we had everybody calling saying we need water,” Lynch said. “Then we said, we have more demand than we can supply, let’s talk to the neighbors.”
Upwell recruited seven neighboring landowners to put company wells on their property and contribute to the export project.
These aren’t regular irrigation wells, which in this area can tap water 40 feet down. These are 1,400 feet deep, cased in 2-foot-wide steel pipe, able to produce large volumes.
“It’s a million-dollar hole,” said Mark Hoelscher, one of the neighboring landowners involved in the project, as he looked up at one of the diesel-powered well installations. “It’s big time.”
In October 2022, Upwell received permits for 16 wells to pump nearly 45 million gallons per day without any challenges in the hearing process. Four months later it received its permit to export the water out-of-district. Then in September 2023, the district issued permits for another 32 wells belonging to the seven adjoining landowners to produce an additional 45 million gallons per day.
Until that point, authorities in the Bryan-College Station metro area, some 30 miles south, apparently remained unaware of the project transpiring in Robertson County. Not until September 2024, when the district considered applications for updated permits to export the combined 89 million-gallon-per-day production of all 48 wells, did Texas A&M University enter into the proceedings, filing a request for review by the State Office of Administrative Hearings.
Texas A&M University declined to comment for this story.
“No one has questioned the fact that we own the land and we have rights to the water underneath it,” said Hoelscher, a third generation landowner in the Brazos River Valley. “The fact of the matter is the water is ours.”
One week later, A&M filed a lawsuit in state district court seeking a temporary injunction stopping the groundwater district from recognizing any of the permits associated with the Upwell project until a hearing is held.
A&M argued that the previously issued permits should be open for re-examination because some board members of the groundwater district were ineligible for service at the time the permits were originally approved.
In November, Bryan and College Station filed papers to join the lawsuit. It said their “ability to produce groundwater from their Simsboro wells and the economic vitality of the region will be adversely affected if the Contested Applications are granted.”
College Station Mayor John Nichols, a former professor of agricultural sciences at Texas A&M, said in a statement: “The transfer of groundwater from our district to users in other areas is one of the most significant issues facing the College Station/Bryan area. I’m a staunch proponent of private property rights, but we are deeply concerned about the long-term impact of excessive extraction on our community.”
He called on lawmakers to adopt statewide groundwater regulations ensuring the rights of current permit holders over new water users.
None of that, however, matters to the trial that will take place in early May. All the judge will decide is whether or not A&M and the cities have rights to challenge the previously issued permits.
In court filings, Upwell argued A&M’s petition “demands that the Court turn back time and recognize a non-existent ‘right’ to administratively contest final groundwater permits that the Brazos Valley Groundwater Conservation District properly noticed and issued to Intervenors months and years prior — all without any complaint or contest by any party, including Plaintiff.”
If the judge denies A&M’s request, the permits will be issued and work will begin on the Upwell project pipeline.
If the judge grants A&M’s request, the permits will head into a potentially yearslong process of state administrative hearings that could threaten the viability of the project and its promised returns to investors.
Whether or not the pipeline gets built, other similar projects are likely to follow. The situation is headed in one direction: toward the DFC, the threshold at which restrictions begin.
In the Brazos Valley and surrounding districts, that threshold is a 262-foot drop in water wells from levels measured in 2000. In the 25 years since then, pumping has led the wells’ water to drop by one quarter of that allotted reduction, according to district manager Day, suggesting ample water supplies remain.
But, that remains to be seen. In total, Day said his district has issued permits for up to 291 million gallons per day of pumping from the Simsboro Formation, averaged yearly, of which 89 million gallons per day are associated with the Upwell project. However, only a fraction of that permitted volume is actually pumped.
If all permitted pumping were to suddenly come online, Day said, computer models showed they would hit the DFC in six years.
In reality it won’t happen quite that fast. The Upwell project plans to scale up its pumping gradually over years. And many farmers hold irrigation permits to pump much more water than they ever actually will, unless they also encounter the opportunity to join an export project.
When the aquifer hits the DFC, the rules say it mustn’t fall further. That means all users would face mandatory curtailment. It’s unclear how such unprecedented measures would be enforced in Texas.
For Gutierrez, the mayor of Bryan, this management method creates a contest for investors to tap the water-wealthy Simsboro Formation and sell off its bounty before time runs out.
“They want to exploit everything we have for their personal benefit,” he said. “It’s a race of who can take the most amount of water in the least amount of time to deplete a resource for their pocketbooks.”
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.
GAINES COUNTY – The Trump administration this week announced plans to clawback $11 billion in pandemic-era grants that could harm local Texas public health departments as they battle a historic measles outbreak.
In Lubbock, where many of the 40 Texans infected with measles have been hospitalized, grant funding affected by the announcement has paid for an epidemiologist who has directly responded to the measles outbreak in West Texas that has killed a 6-year-old girl. In Dallas, the grant funding was helping to equip a biolaboratory that will support more testing for pathogens, including measles.
“It’s kind of crazy to have this funding cut,” said Lubbock’s public health director Katherine Wells. “I don’t have a savings account in public health.”
The Trump administration confirmed Tuesday that it was going to eliminate funding that had been created to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, prioritizing instead on projects that address chronic diseases and the president’s Make America Healthy Again initiative. Much of that funding, however, has been used to pay for infrastructure to respond to infectious diseases other than COVID, including measles, local health officials have said.
The Texas Department of State Health Services notified public health departments late Tuesday of the federal government’s plans. State officials have not provided specifics on how much money is cut or how many health departments are impacted.
“DSHS was notified that the federal grant funding for Immunization/COVID, Epidemiology Laboratory Capacity (ELC/COVID), and Health Disparities/COVID, is terminated as of March 24, 2025,” according to the the notice from the agency’s associate commissioner Imelda Garcia. “The Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS or System Agency) is issuing this notice to pause all activities immediately. Please do not accrue any additional costs as of the date of this notice.”
Wells said the funding cut will impact her office’s work combating the spread of measles. Lubbock has been using three grants to help pay for extra temporary staff, a part-time nurse and a full-time epidemiologist to help with vaccinations, answering phones and working with testing of patients. Two of the city’s three grants were not set to expire until 2026.
Ten of the state’s 327 measles cases have been confirmed in Lubbock and 226 cases have been in Gaines County, about 90 minutes southwest of Lubbock.
This measles outbreak has further exposed Texas’ threadbare public health system.
The grants, she said, allowed her to hire eight people to help shoulder the workload the outbreak has brought. Since January, Lubbock hospitals have treated many of the more than 300 patients infected with measles, including a 6-year-old who died on Feb. 26.
“We’re trying to figure it out,” Wells said. But with state and federal funds cut, city and county health department that counted on those COVID-19 era grants for new programs and outreach will now have to go to local taxpayers to help shore up the abrupt shortfall.
Dallas County has already broken ground on a $52 million biolab to help combat future health threats. Their health director, Dr. Philip Huang, said the grant money Dallas County had received was going to be used to help equip that new lab.
“It was a lot of equipment,” Huang said. “These machines can help with COVID but these machines also help with our preparedness and ability to test a lot of other pathogens … including measles.”
Like Wells, he and other public health officials are now going to have to determine how to still move forward without this funding.
“The things that we’re doing and using the funds for COVID have great implications for our future preparedness for everything else so we’re not in the same situation at the start of COVID,” he said. “We had seen how little investment there had been in public health, so it’s very short sighted to say, ‘OK, well these were COVID funds it’s over.’ It’s not.”
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.
AUSTIN – The Texas Democratic Party’s governing board on Saturday elected Kendall Scudder to lead the party forward as its new chair after a devastating performance in November and years of electoral defeats.
“The challenge that we’re facing right now is terrifying for this country and for this state, and a lot of people are counting on us to come together and do the right thing and make sure that we are building a Texas Democratic Party that is worthy of the grassroots in this state,” Scudder said upon taking the gavel. “Let’s build a party that the working men and women of this state can be proud of.”
Scudder took 65 out of 121 votes, an outright majority in the seven-way race.
Scudder will take over as chair of the state party at a moment when Democrats are grasping for a way forward after blowout losses up and down the ballot last year, including President Donald Trump’s victory and a surge to the right by traditionally Democratic groups, such as Hispanic voters in South Texas.
After proclaiming Texas a competitive state where Democratic candidates had a fighting chance of winning statewide for the first time in three decades, party leaders instead watched as Trump and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz trounced their Democratic challengers by roughly 14 and 9 percentage points, respectively. Democrats also ceded ground in the state Legislature and lost nearly every contested state appellate court race, in addition to 10 judicial races in Harris County — eating away at years of Democratic dominance in Texas’ largest county.
That left many Democrats concerned that, after appearing to come within striking distance of winning statewide in 2018, the party was back at a sobering low.
Longtime Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa announced his resignation shortly after the election, acknowledging the party’s poor performance and a need for a new direction.
That push for a fresh vision defined the race for party chair. Scudder will be the incumbent come 2026, when a broader group of delegates will elect the next full-term chair at the party convention in Corpus Christi. The 121-member State Democratic Executive Committee chose Hinojosa’s successor at the Saturday meeting, its first quarterly meeting of the year, because he resigned in the middle of his four-year term.
During his campaign, Scudder, an East Texas native, emphasized the importance of listening to the “grassroots.” Even before he launched his candidacy, he had accused party leadership under Hinojosa of ignoring those voters and activists. He wants to “recalibrate” the party toward a focus on working people.
“The reality is simply that Democrats on the ground don’t have a lot of confidence in party leadership anymore,” Scudder told The Texas Tribune in an interview on Thursday.
He wants the party to pay attention to areas he says it has previously written off, like rural communities, and put a priority on Spanish-language communications.
Scudder has worked in affordable housing and real estate. He came onto the state party stage through the SDEC, although he began his political activism with the Texas Young Democrats and the Texas College Democrats.
Scudder’s leading opponents, former Harris County Democratic Party Chair Lillie Schechter and former Annie’s List Executive Director Patsy Woods Martin, had offered similar but competing visions to re-establish Democratic credibility on kitchen table issues and reconnect with voters in their communities. During the campaign, Schechter and Woods Martin emphasized their experience getting Democratic candidates elected.
The SDEC hosted a candidate forum in Austin on Friday evening before toasting Hinojosa, the outgoing chair.
There, and at the panel’s meeting on Saturday, party insiders discussed how to rebuild credibility with working class voters, engage young people, fundraise and build a party infrastructure that better facilitates elected officials’ involvement in races around the state.
“The problem is that every Democrat thinks that if they had 10 more minutes, they could explain it to you,” Scudder said on party messaging during the forum. “We’ve got to get to a point where we’re speaking to people at their gut, because people vote with their guts and not their brains.”
While most party chair contests are shaped by region and race and decided at the party’s convention during midterm election years, this race was a more insular affair whose outcome was determined by a small group of the party’s activists, many of whom are progressives dissatisfied with the party’s strategies and operations.
Although the SDEC was prepared to go multiple rounds with their ranked choice ballot, Scudder’s 65 allowed him to win in the first round. Woods Martin took 27 votes, and Schechter took 26. Denton County Democratic Party Chair Delia Parker-Mims took two votes, and Meri Gomez rounded out the count with one vote. Eight candidates appeared on the ballot, but one dropped out before the election.
As the votes were tabulated, members passed out to-go shots of blue liquor — and non-alcoholic options — in an effort to liven spirits after a difficult 2024 election and an unprecedented chair race.
The candidates were largely aligned ideologically. And they especially all agreed on the need for change in the party’s direction.
“We are at an inflection point right now,” Schechter said, “and if we don’t learn lessons from the last election, and continue doing things status quo, we’re never going to win in Texas.”
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.
GREGG COUNTY – Our news partner, KETK, reports that a county jailer was arrested on Friday after Gregg County Officials said she committed credit card abuse while on duty.
According to a statement from the sheriff’s office, officials found evidence of Shalisha Mungia committing credit card abuse. She has worked as a jailer since July 2021, and was let go following the arrest and several policy and code-of-conduct violations.
Mungia was taken to the Gregg County Jail and has since been released after posting a $1,500 bond.
TYLER – Rain, thunderstorms, and lightning are forecast throughout East Texas for most of the next few days, putting several counties on high alert for possible tornadoes.
Our news partner, KETK, has compiled a list of counties placed on tornado watches and warnings. To view the full list of counties, and the forecast for the coming days, click here.
McALLEN (AP) — Drenching rain along the Texas-Mexico border let up Friday, but rescues were still ongoing a day after severe storms trapped residents in their homes, forced drivers to abandon their vehicles on flooded roads and shut down an airport.
In Harlingen, officials said their city received more than 21 inches (53 centimeters) of rain this week, with the heaviest rainfall on Thursday causing severe flooding that had authorities rescuing more than 200 residents, with another 200 people still waiting to be rescued.
“This of course has been a historic and challenging event for the city. But Harlingen is strong. We have faced adversity before and we will get through this together,” Mayor Norma Sepulveda said at a Friday afternoon news conference.
In Alamo, the police and fire department responded to more than 100 water rescues, including people stranded in their vehicles and trapped in their homes, Fire Department Chief R.C. Flores said at a news conference Friday afternoon.
Officials estimated a couple hundred homes in Alamo were flooded by the heavy rainfall.
Flores said Alamo was one of many cities in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas that were flooded and had damage from Thursday’s thunderstorms but that all were working to help their residents.
“I assure the public that we are assessing the situation on the hour, every hour. We’re constantly going out, not just in our city,” Flores said. “Just because the storm is over, it doesn’t mean that the emergencies and the disaster is over. We are going to continue to work as long as we need to.”
Weslaco Mayor Adrian Gonzalez said his city was inundated with about 14 inches (36 centimeters) of rain, prompting 30 to 40 water rescues of stranded motorists and residents trapped in their homes by rising floodwaters.
“It’s a historic rainstorm and it’s affecting all the Valley, not just Weslaco. It’s just so much water in a short period of time,” Gonzalez told reporters at a news conference.
Television news footage from flooded communities in South Texas showed multiple waterlogged cars abandoned on streets on Thursday and drivers waiting on sidewalks for the floodwaters to recede.
Between 6 inches (15 centimeters) and 12 inches (30 centimeters) of rain fell in many parts of South Texas in the past 24 hours, according to the National Weather Service.
In neighboring Cameron County, officials asked Gov. Greg Abbott to declare a disaster for the county after more than 17 inches of rain caused significant flooding.
“The rainfall amounts we received have been record-setting, and not in a good way. All county resources are being utilized right now, and we are assisting in all ways possible,” Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño Jr., the county’s top elected official, said in a Facebook post.
Valley International Airport in Harlingen was closed on Friday and all flights were canceled due to area flooding.
“We are working tirelessly to reopen and focused on ensuring safety,” airport officials said in a statement.
More than 3,400 in several counties in South Texas remained without power on Friday afternoon, according to AEP Texas.
A flood warning was still in effect for portions of South Texas, including Cameron, Hidalgo and Willacy counties, through early Friday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service.
“There’s a break from the rain this morning, which will allow flood waters to gradually recede, but we’ll still need to keep an eye on the development of isolated showers and thunderstorms once again this afternoon,” the National Weather Service said on social media. “Any additional rainfall will be quick to cause flooding issues given the heavy rainfall that has already fallen.”
One middle school in Alamo was scheduled to remain open as a shelter for residents through Friday. One shelter had been opened in Weslaco and officials in Harlingen had opened the city’s convention center as a shelter.
More than 20 South Texas school districts and college campuses canceled classes on Friday due to the severe weather and flooding.
MARSHALL – Two East Texas men have died following a Thursday morning crash in Harrison County, the Texas Department of Public Safety confirmed.
According to a preliminary investigation, the crash occurred in Harrison County at around 5:05 a.m. at the intersection of State Highway 43 and Fyffe Cutoff. The crash involved a GMC Yukon, driven by Andrew Allison, 44 of Carthage, and a Chevrolet Silverado driven by Terry Ledbetter, 69 of Marshall.
DPS Sgt. Adam Albritton said Allison was driving westbound on Fyffe Cutoff when he disregarded the stop sign and entered the intersection of State Highway 43, where Ledbetter was driving and collided with him.
According to reports from our news partner, KETK, both men were pronounced dead and no passengers were reported to be in the vehicles.
TYLER – Our news partner, KETK, reports that a Tyler man was sentenced to 17 years in prison after swerving into oncoming traffic and striking another vehicle head-on, killing the driver.
According to the arrest affidavit, on the morning of August 14, 2024, Cesar Efrain Viramontes-Cocolan of Tyler was driving a pickup truck traveling westbound on State Highway 32 near FM 2908, when he swerved into oncoming traffic, killing Maria Hernandez of Tyler.
DPS stated that an 18-wheeler followed Hernandez’s SUV; the 18-wheeler attempted to avoid crashing into other vehicles, but was unable to do so. Officials concluded that there were no “obstacles or anything that would necessitate that Viramontes veer onto the wrong side of the road.” Read the rest of this entry »
AUSTIN (AP) – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Thursday that he has launched an investigation into one of the state’s Medicaid insurance providers after allegations that the company illegally spied on Texans.
The state is investigating Superior HealthPlan, an insurance company that provides Medicaid coverage to adults, children, and coverage for the Children’s Health Insurance Program in Texas, for allegedly using private investigators to perform surveillance and gather potentially confidential information on lawmakers, journalists and other Texans.
“The allegations concerning Superior’s actions, such as actions that were characterized as potentially blackmailing lawmakers to secure state contracts and surveilling private citizens to avoid paying legitimate claims, are deeply troubling,” Paxton said in a statement.
Superior HealthPlan CEO Mark Sanders was questioned Wednesday by members of the Texas House Committee on the Delivery of Government Efficiency about his company’s use of private investigators. The topic surfaced as lawmakers questioned company representatives about potential fraud and waste of taxpayer funds connected to its Medicaid contracts, and Sanders told the committee members that the company used private investigators in the past, but hasn’t done so for the past few years.
On Thursday, Superior fired Sanders, the Dallas Morning News reported.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Sanders defended his company’s actions at the hearing by saying that the information gathered was nothing beyond what was publicly available.
“It was just understanding (what interests people), so we could have been knowledgeable of when we’re meeting with different individuals. That’s really it,” Sanders replied.
Lawmakers expressed concern that the actions aimed to secure leverage to help the company win future state contracts, discredit legitimate insurance claims by individuals, and track journalists reporting on allegations against Superior HealthPlan.
“I disagree. You wanted leverage, and you felt that you were going to use it. Just disgusting,” said state Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington.
State Rep. David Cook, R-Mansfield, asked Sanders that if there was no intent to gain leverage over people, why did private investigators working for Superior HealthPlan look into legislators’ divorce records?
“I don’t recall at the time,” Sanders told lawmakers.
House Bill 5061, filed by state Rep. Jeff Leach earlier this month, addresses some of the lawmaker’s concerns by prohibiting any contractor that works with the state from engaging in surveillance.
“We’re up here talking to a company who has received millions, billions of dollars in taxpayer funds through Medicaid contracts, who has used that money to hire private investigators to follow around patients and legislators that are [now] asking questions about what the heck is going on,” said state Rep. Ellen Troxclair, R-Lakeway. “It’s ridiculous.”
Tiffany Young, spokesperson for Texas Health and Human Services, referred questions on how the investigation could affect Texans’ Medicaid coverage to Paxton’s office. The attorney general’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday afternoon.
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.
KILGORE – In a historic moment, Tyler Junior College’s Sign Language and Interpretation classes give the deaf and hard of hearing community a guided tour of the iconic East Texas Oil Museum in Kilgore for the first time.
According to our news partner, KETK, TJC students set to graduate in May brought the history of the East Texas Oil Museum on Kilgore College’s campus to life, through sign language. As a part of an end-of-year project, the students gave full tours of the iconic museum, and interpreted a nearly 20-minute movie to people who are deaf and hard-of-hearing.
“Without the interpreters here, we would just look through the museum,” said Todd Lindstrom, a museum guest who’s deaf. Read the rest of this entry »
A wide-ranging crackdown on abortion pills, out-of-state travel and other ways Texans are evading the state’s near-total abortion ban drew zealous support from abortion opponents who said during a Senate committee meeting on Thursday that illegal trafficking of abortion pills harms women.
Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, authored Senate Bill 2880, which legal experts say is the most comprehensive attempt yet to stop Texans from accessing abortion pills or out-of-state abortions.
The bill would target online pill providers and tech companies that host abortion-related websites, and make it a felony, punishable by up to life in prison, to pay or reimburse the costs of an abortion, a direct hit on abortion funds, which help cover the costs of out-of-state abortions. It would also expand the ability of private citizens to bring wrongful death lawsuits against pill providers after an abortion and empower the attorney general’s office to more easily prosecute abortion offenses.
By going after the internet service providers, social media sites and search engines that power these websites, Texas could potentially undermine the entire network of pills and providers serving abortion-ban states.
“Senate Bill 2880 is a big toolbox of policies for Texas to fight back against these websites,” said John Seago, president of Texas Right to Life, during Thursday’s hearing of the Senate State Affairs Committee. “Texas will be leading other states on how we can fight this concerning trend.”
A large body of research has shown abortion drug mifepristone, first approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2000, to be safe and effective. But anti-abortion groups have been actively pushing to get the medications restricted or even moved off the market through lawsuits and legislation. Anti-abortion groups told lawmakers during the hearing that pregnant women in Texas are receiving pills such as mifepristone and misoprostol in the mail without any information about how to take them, or guidelines on follow-up care. Providers shared stories about women hemorrhaging at home or struggling to dispose of the remains of an aborted fetus.
“I see women suffering daily from the effects of incomplete chemical abortions,” said Whitney Freeman, director of medical services at Prestonwood Pregnancy Center in the Dallas area.
Freeman said sometimes women receive pills in the mail with no medical instructions, or with instructions in a foreign language such as Russian. Patients are told not to tell medical providers that they are in the process of a chemical abortion, which can then prevent them from receiving the care they need, Freeman said
SB 2880, called the Woman and Child Protection Act, would allow private citizens to sue for up to $100,000 per violation of the law. This is an escalation of the legal framework that allowed Texas to ban nearly all abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy in 2021.
Critics of the bill told lawmakers on Thursday that the legislation demonstrates government overreach and would infringe upon constitutional free speech. Austin Kaplan, an Austin attorney who sued over the 2021 law, told The Texas Tribune that it was inevitable that lawmakers would keep pushing to expand the use of this private enforcement mechanism. He said this bill, as written, would likely be challenged in court, although he noted that hasn’t stopped Texas lawmakers before.
“Looking at this, it looks just completely impossible,” he said. “But what’s the penalty for the Legislature? The legislator gets reelected. They don’t pay out of pocket for this litigation.”
The committee also signaled its support of a priority bill for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, which would prohibit cities and counties from using taxpayer dollars to pay for out-of-state abortions and travel. Senate Bill 33 targets Austin and San Antonio, which have designated $400,000 and $500,000, respectively, to assist residents with costs associated with navigating abortion bans.
“State law already prevents taxpayer funds from being used to pay for abortions, but some cities have “worked to exploit a loophole,” said bill author Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, “by using taxpayer funds to pay for travel accommodations, child care and other expenses women incur when they seek out-of-state abortions.”
“We have so many things we need to be spending our taxpayer dollars on,” said San Antonio City Council Member Marc Whyte, who testified in favor of the bill. “Not once have I heard the residents of San Antonio saying they want their tax dollars spent on sending women to other states to receive abortions.”
Under SB 33, the attorney general or any Texas resident could bring a civil legal action against cities that misuse funds by paying to facilitate abortions.
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.
NEW YORK (AP) -A county clerk in New York refused Thursday to file a more than $100,000 judgment from Texas against a doctor accused of prescribing abortion pills to a woman near Dallas, setting up a potential challenge to laws designed to shield abortion providers who serve patients in states with abortion bans.
A Texas judge last month ordered Dr. Margaret Carpenter, who practices north of New York City, to pay the penalty for allegedly breaking that state’s law by prescribing abortion medication via telemedicine. The Texas attorney general’s office followed up last week by asking a New York court to enforce the default civil judgment, which is $113,000 with attorney and filing fees.
The acting Ulster County clerk refused.
“In accordance with the New York State Shield Law, I have refused this filing and will refuse any similar filings that may come to our office. Since this decision is likely to result in further litigation, I must refrain from discussing specific details about the situation,” Acting Clerk Taylor Bruck said in a prepared statement.
New York is among eight states with telemedicine shield laws, which were considered a target for abortion opponents even before the standoff between officials New York and Texas.
Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul last month invoked her state’s shield law in rejecting Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s request to extradite Carpenter to Louisiana, where the doctor was charged with prescribing abortion pills to a pregnant minor.
Hochul on Thursday praised Bruck’s refusal and said “New York is grateful for his courage and common sense.”
An email seeking comment was sent to the office of Texas State Attorney General Ken Paxton.
A call seeking comment was made to Carpenter, who is the co-medical director and founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine. Carpenter did not show up for a hearing in the case in Texas.
TYLER – In a report from our news partner, KETK, East Texas representatives gave an update on bills filed by lawmakers for the 89th legislative session.
East Texas representatives, like State Rep. Cole Hefner (R-Mount Pleasant), who hopes to get his own bills passed. One of his top priorities is House Bill 17. This bill restricts the purchase of land in Texas from “hostile countries” such as China, Russia and North Korea.
“That bill is in the homeland security and public safety committee…in a week or two, we’re going to have a day of hearings where we hear our bills that have to do with foreign adversaries,” Hefner said.
Another big topic in the Texas House is water. Both State Rep. Hefner and State Rep. Gary VanDeaver (R-New Boston) are working to keep East Texas water in the Piney woods. Read the rest of this entry »
HALLSVILLE – Our news partner, KETK, reports that several police departments from all over East Texas had access to an abandoned school to prepare for potential threats and school shootings. Learning to work together, just like they would in real world scenarios.
“We’re finding now that if you carry a gun and badge, everybody needs this,” Longview PD alert instructor sergeant, Drew Allison said.
Mandated by the state, the training lasted 16 hours with over two days of intense instruction. The main lesson aimed to stop the threats as quickly as possible. Read the rest of this entry »