Today is
Sunday April 20, 2025
SAN ANTOINIO – A federal judge in San Antonio has ruled that the state of Texas’ ID requirements for mail ballot applications are unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez on Thursday found that the provisions in the state’s 2021 voter security law SB1 discriminate against voters with disabilities.
Mail-in voters are principally people over the age of 65 and people with disabilities. Since the law was enacted, many voters reported having their ballots rejected because they didn’t provide an ID number, or the number they provided did not match the one the state had on file.
“The problem with that is that many Texans have more than one department of public safety ID number,” said Victor Genecin, an attorney with the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund. “So the first hurdle for a voter who’s applying for an absentee ballot is they may not know which number is in the election system. And even if they do know which number is in the election system and they put it in correctly, the election system may not have the number right.”
Genecin cited testimony at trial, where the Texas Secretary of State conceded that more than 650,000 registration records in their system were incorrect.
He added that expert testimony at the trial estimated that more than 2 million people were unable to vote due to the ID restrictions.
The ruling ordered the Texas secretary of state to remove the requirements from mail-in ballot applications. However, the ruling came just weeks before Texas’ municipal elections, so they will remain in effect through May 3.
Judge Rodriguez also struck down provisions of SB1 that require those who assist voters to swear an oath under penalty of perjury.
“Normally when somebody says to you, ‘would you help me?’ you either step up to help them or you don’t. But you don’t say, you know, ‘what’s wrong with you? Why do you need help?’ You just help,” Genecin said. “And so the idea that that people who are disabled must explain why they’re unable to vote without assistance is offensive in itself.”
Genecin added that part of the oath is that the assister must swear to be understanding that if the voter turns out not to be eligible for assistance, then the vote could be invalidated.
“So it puts the assister in the position of having to evaluate whether the voter is eligible for assistance, and the word ‘eligible’ is not defined anywhere in the statute,’ he said.
The state of Texas was expected to appeal.
Opponents of SB1 applauded the decision and called it a victory for voters with disabilities.
“It truly is such a victory for voting accessibility, and it affirms that our electoral system must protect and prioritize the right of every voter to be able to participate fully,” said Elsie Cooke-Holmes, International President and Board Chair of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., a co-plaintiff in the case. “It really does provide an opportunity for the 3 million plus voters with disabilities in Texas to be able to exercise their rights to vote without undue hardship. It ensures that their voices will be able to be heard, and that their votes will actually count.”
Judge Xavier Rodriguez ruled last fall that the state of Texas could no longer investigate voter assistance efforts as a criminal act. The state of Texas has appealed that ruling.
Cooke-Holmes said her organization sees momentum in the challenge to SB1.
“We know the fight is not over. We are going to continue to advocate for policies that eliminate all forms of voter suppression,” she said.
SB1, which was passed in the wake of President Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud without evidence following the 2020 election, also limited early voting hours, banned 24-hour voting, eliminated drive-thru voting centers, limited multiple drop-off locations for mail ballots, limited the distribution of mail-in ballot applications and expanded the authority of partisan poll watchers.
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.
HOUSTON (AP) — Houston police are looking for two suspects after six men were shot and wounded early Sunday at an after-hours nightclub.
Four of the wounded are in critical condition, said Assistant Chief James Skelton during a news conference. He provided no information on the conditions of the two other victims.
Dispatchers were called around 3 a.m. to the packed nightclub, which was still serving drinks after the city’s bars are supposed to be closed, Skelton said.
He said police are reviewing video and talking to witnesses, but the preliminary investigation suggests that the people involved knew each other. He described it as an “isolated attack” that illustrates the problems of after-hours clubs.
“Establishments like this, that harbor within our city, contribute to crime,” Skelton said. “So the Houston Police Department, we are targeting these locations, and we’re going to shut them down because it harbors the DWIs and the assaults, and that’s exactly what we saw here tonight.”
Officers are looking for a black car with the two suspects in it, he added.
DALLAS (AP) – History buffs dove into thousands of pages of government records released online this week, hoping for new nuggets about President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. They instead found revelations about U.S. espionage in the massive document dump that also exposed some previously redacted personal information.
The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration posted more than 63,000 pages of records on its website, following an executive order from President Donald Trump. Many of the documents had been released previously but with redactions that hid the names of CIA sources or details about its spying and covert operations in the 1960s.
Kennedy was killed on Nov. 22, 1963, during a visit to Dallas. As his motorcade finished its parade route downtown, shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald, who had positioned himself from a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor. Two days later, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer broadcast live on television.
The latest release of documents pumped new energy into conspiracy theories about the assassination. Kennedy scholars said they haven’t seen anything out of line with the conclusion that Oswald, a 24-year-old ex-Marine, was the lone gunman.
“The chase for the truth will go on forever, I suspect,” said Philip Shenon, who wrote a 2013 book about the killing of JFK.
It’s a big document dump, but it doesn’t include everything
The vast majority of the National Archives’ collection of more than 6 million related pages of records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artifacts had already been released before the archives posted about 2,200 files online this week.
Writers, historians and conspiracy promoters have spent decades pushing for the release of all the records. In the early 1990s, the federal government mandated that all assassination-related documents be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration. The collection was required to be opened by 2017, barring any exemptions designated by the president.
According to researchers and the FBI, roughly 3,700 files held by federal authorities still haven’t been released.
Trump’s order also called for declassifying the remaining federal records related to the 1968 assassinations of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Scholars describe a chaotic release
Scholars and history buffs described the latest release as rushed and expressed frustration that going through the files one by one represented a random search for unreleased information.
“We’ve all heard the reports about the lawyers staying up all night, which I believe, because there’s there’s a lot of sloppiness in this,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of “The Kennedy Half-Century.”
Scholars and history buffs grumbled that, unlike past releases, the National Archives didn’t provide an index or workable search tool. Also, the files included material generated after the 1960s, and some people listed in the records were angry to find out that sensitive information about them was revealed, including Social Security numbers.
They include Joseph diGenova, a former campaign lawyer for Trump. His personal information was on documents relating to his work for a U.S. Senate select committee that investigated abuses of power by government officials in the 1970s, including the surveillance of U.S. citizens.
He is planning to sue the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration for violating privacy laws.
“I think it’s the result of incompetent people doing the reviewing,” he said. “The people who reviewed these documents did not do their job.”
White House officials said a plan was in place to help those whose personal information was disclosed, including credit monitoring, until new Social Security numbers are issued. Officials are still screening the records to identify all the Social Security numbers that were released.
New details about covert CIA operations
The latest release represented a boon to mainstream historians, particularly those researching international relations, the Cold War and the activities of the CIA.
One revelation was that a key adviser warned President Kennedy after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 that the CIA had grown too powerful. The aide proposed giving the State Department control of “all clandestine activities” and breaking up the CIA.
The page of Special Assistant Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s memo outlining the proposal had not been released before. A previous release of part of his memo redacted Schlesinger’s statement that 47% of the political officers in U.S. embassies were controlled by the CIA.
Schlesinger’s plan never came to fruition.
Timothy Naftali, an adjunct professor at Columbia University who is writing a book about JFK’s presidency, said scholars likely now have more details about U.S. intelligence activities under Kennedy than under any other president.
“It’s quite remarkable to be able to walk through that secret world,” he said.
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This story has been updated to correct that the date of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination was Nov. 22, 1963, not Nov. 23.
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — The state Legislature has endorsed a bill that would raise royalty rates for new petroleum development on prime pieces of land in New Mexico, on one of the world’s most prolific oil production areas.
A 37-31 vote on Thursday sent the bill from the Statehouse to Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham for consideration.
The proposal would increase the top royalty rate for oil and gas development from 20% to 25% on New Mexico’s state trust lands with implications for the energy industry in the Permian Basin, which overlaps southeastern New Mexico and western Texas. The area accounted for 46% of U.S. oil production in 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
New Mexico deposits royalty payments from oil and gas development in a multibillion-dollar investment trust that benefits public schools, universities and hospitals.
“We have a legal duty to maximize the return on these assets,” said Democratic state Rep. Matthew McQueen of Galisteo, a co-sponsor of the bill.
Legislative approval was the culmination of a yearslong effort backed by Public Lands Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard to increase top-tier royalty rates. A year ago, Garcia Richard put a hold on lease sales indefinitely for coveted tracts while advocating for the rate increase.
Proponents say neighboring Texas already charges up to 25% on state trust land amid intense competition to drill in the Permian Basin. The royalty changes in neighboring New Mexico would not go into effect in Texas.
Opponents say the rate change threatens to penalize petroleum producers and public beneficiaries, noting that oil production is significantly taxed in other ways and hinges on volatile commodity prices.
In a news release, Garcia Richard said the goal is “to make as much money as possible for school kids and our public institutions.”
“Raising the oil and gas royalty rate on premium state lands was always the right thing to do,” she said.
Garcia Richard, a Democrat, terms out of office as land commissioner in 2026 and this week announced her candidacy for lieutenant governor.
New Mexico is the No. 2 state for oil production behind Texas.
Efforts by New Mexico to save and invest portions of a financial windfall from local oil production are paying dividends as state government income on investments is forecast to surpass personal income tax collections.
The state’s land grant permanent fund currently distributes about $1.2 billion a year to beneficiary schools, universities and hospitals as well as the state general fund.
New Mexico state government relies heavily on a financial windfall linked to oil production amid increasing concerns about the connection between climate change and natural disasters including wildfires.
A coalition of environmental groups praised the passage of bills this week that would underwrite local clean energy and environmental sustainability projects and related job training.
But Albuquerque-based attorney Gail Evans of the Center for Biological Diversity vowed to press forward with a lawsuit against the state seeking compliance with the “pollution control clause” in the New Mexico Constitution on behalf of Native Americans who live near oil wells.
“Our legislators didn’t even take the tiny step of ensuring our kids are protected from dangerous oil and gas pollution when they’re at school,” said Evans, alluding to a stalled bill to restrict oil and gas operations within a mile (1.6 kilometers) of school property.
ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — A new museum devoted to telling the stories of those who have received the nation’s highest military honor is opening this coming week in Texas.
The National Medal of Honor Museum is set to open Tuesday in Arlington, just west of Dallas. It highlights the lives and service of Medal of Honor recipients from the Civil War to the global war on terrorism. Over 3,500 people have received the Medal of Honor, which is awarded by Congress for risking one’s life in combat beyond the call of duty.
Jack Jacobs, a retired U.S. Army colonel who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Vietnam War, said he wants museum visitors to realize the recipients aren’t “spectacular supermen,” but regular people who “embody the kinds of values that are really important.”
“Really grand things, not just in combat, but in everyday life … are all accomplished by ordinary people who come to the conclusion that something has to be done and they are going to do it,” Jacobs said.
When his unit was ambushed by the Viet Cong on March 9, 1968, Jacobs took charge after his commander was seriously wounded. Despite being wounded in the head by shrapnel and bleeding heavily, Jacobs reorganized the company and repeatedly ran through enemy fire to rescue the wounded, saving the lives of a U.S. adviser and 13 soldiers.
Jacobs, now 79, said he lost a lot of friends in the battle.
“You really do wear the award for all of the people who can’t wear the award,” he said.
The museum’s focus is on telling the life stories of the recipients, said Alexandra Rhue, the museum’s senior vice president of engagement. “Here you met the people first and then you learn what they did,” Rhue said.
The recipients featured in the museum include those from various branches of the military, conflicts and geographic locations, as well as different ethnicities and races.
Chris Cassidy, the museum’s president and CEO, said he hopes the exhibits inspire visitors.
“Everybody needs courage in some form or fashion,” he said. “So that’s our aim: to inspire people through the stories of Medal of Honor actions, to bring a little courage into your own life.”
Several of the recipients, including Jacobs, appear in videos in an exhibit where their images answer visitors’ questions. There are over 60 recipients who are still living.
A celebration Saturday ahead of the opening will feature musical performances, fireworks and a drone show. The museum is nestled amongst Globe Life Field, where the Texas Rangers play, and AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys.
TEXAS (AP) – As measles cases in West Texas are still on the rise two months after the outbreak began, local public health officials say they expect the virus to keep spreading for at least several more months and that the official case number is likely an undercount.
But there’s a silver lining, officials say: More people have received a measles, mumps and rubella vaccination this year in Texas and New Mexico, which also has an outbreak, compared to last year — even if it’s not as high as they would like. And pharmacies across the U.S., especially in Texas, are seeing more demand for MMR shots.
As of Friday, the outbreak in Texas was up to 309 cases and one measles-related death, while New Mexico’s case count was up to 42 and also one measles-related death. Forty-two people have been hospitalized across the two states.
Texas’ outbreak, which has largely spread in undervaccinated Mennonite communities, could last a year based on studies of how measles previously spread in Amish communities in the U.S. Those studies showed outbreaks lasted six to seven months, said Katherine Wells, director of the public health department in Lubbock, Texas. Lubbock’s hospitals have treated most of the outbreak’s patients and the public health department is closely assisting with the response.
“It being so rural, now multistate, it’s just going to take a lot more boots on the ground, a lot more work, to get things under control,” Wells said during a media briefing this week. “It’s not an isolated population.”
The outbreak includes 14 Texas counties, two New Mexico counties and four probable cases in Oklahoma, where health officials said the first two were “associated” with the West Texas and New Mexico outbreaks.
Measles is one of the world’s most contagious diseases. Its slow way of spreading makes it especially hard to contain and outbreaks can have multiple peaks, said Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health.
Many people spread the measles virus unknowingly for days before the telltale rash appears. The virus also can hang in the air for up to two hours after a sick person has left a room.
“Within this community, it’d be perfectly reasonable to think probably another couple months before things die out,” Lessler said. “But if it gets into another community, you just potentially start that clock over again.”
If the outbreak goes on until next January, it would end the United States’ status of having eliminated measles, which is defined as 12 months without local virus transmission, said Dr. William Moss, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University and executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center.
“We’re only three months in. I think if we had a strong response where the messaging was clear that measles vaccination is the way to stop this outbreak, I would be surprised if it went for 12 months or more,” said Moss, who has worked on measles for 25 years, mostly in Africa. “But we’re not seeing that type of response, at least from the federal government.”
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. instead has sown doubt about the measles vaccine, which has been safely used for more than 60 years and is 97% effective after two doses. In an interview with Fox News last week, Kennedy said MMR shots cause “deaths every year,” although he later added that vaccinations should be encouraged.
Vaccinations are up in Texas and New Mexico
Still, there are signs the outbreak has had an effect on vaccinations, especially locally.
Between Feb. 1 and March 18 last year, New Mexico Department of Health registered 6,500 measles vaccines. During that timeframe this year, more than 11,600 measles vaccines were administered in New Mexico — about half given to adults and half to children.
Southeast New Mexico, where the outbreak is located, represents a large portion of the count, with 2,369 doses administered.
In Texas, at least 173,000 measles doses were given from Jan. 1 to March 16, compared to at least 158,000 over the same timeframe last year, according to the state health department. That includes more than 340 doses in given by public health in the West Texas outbreak area as of March 11.
Texans must opt-in to the state’s immunization registry, so most people’s vaccinations are not captured in the Texas Department of State Health Services numbers, department spokeswoman Lara Anton said.
“We don’t know if more people are opting in or if this is a true reflection of an increase in vaccinations,” Anton wrote in an email. “It may be both.”
Pharmacy chains Walgreens and CVS told The Associated Press that they’re seeing higher demand for MMR vaccines across the U.S., especially in the outbreak areas.
Texas health officials say they’d like to see more uptake in the communities at the epicenter of the outbreak, especially in Gaines County — where the childhood vaccination rate against measles is 82%. That’s far below the 95% level needed to prevent community spread, and likely lower in the small religious schools and homeschooling groups where the early cases were identified.
Prasad Ganji is a pharmacist in Seminole, the biggest town in Gaines County. He said he ordered a 10-dose box of the MMR vaccine as cases started to spread.
He can give vaccines to people older than 14. But he still has doses left.
“The uptake for vaccines been definitely been a struggle,” Wells said of Gaines County, “I want to be honest with that.”
GAINES COUNTY – The Texas parents of an unvaccinated 6-year-old girl who died from measles Feb. 26 told the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense in a video released Monday that the experience did not convince them that vaccination against measles was necessary.
“She says they would still say ‘Don’t do the shots,’” an unidentified translator for the parents said. “They think it’s not as bad as the media is making it out to be.”
The West Texas measles outbreak, the biggest in the state in 30 years, has infected more than 270 people and hospitalizing dozens of them. Public health officials have repeatedly told Texans that studies have time and time again shown that the safest and most effective way to avoid contracting the very infectious, life-threatening disease is to vaccinate with the measles-mumps-rubella shot.
The couple, members of a Mennonite community in Gaines County with traditionally low vaccination rates, spoke on camera in both English and Low German to CHD Executive Director Polly Tommey and CHD Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker.
“It was her time on Earth,” the translator said the parents told her. “They believe she’s better off where she is now.”
“We would absolutely not take the MMR,” the mother said in English, referring to the measles-mumps-rubella vaccination children typically receive before attending school. She said her stance on vaccination has not changed after her daughter’s death.
“The measles wasn’t that bad. They got over it pretty quickly,” the mother said of her other four surviving children who were treated with castor oil and inhaled steroids and recovered.
The couple told CHD that their daughter had measles for days when she became tired and the girl’s labored breathing prompted the couple to take her to Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock. There, the girl was intubated and died a few days later. The other children came down with measles after their sister died.
The parents’ interview was recorded Saturday and later posted on the website of Children’s Health Defense, an organization founded in 2007 by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now secretary for the U.S. Health and Human Services Department. Kennedy stepped down from the organization to run for president in 2023.
The deceased girl’s father insisted that measles helps build up a person’s immune system. “Also the measles are good for the body for the people,” the father said, explaining “You get an infection out.”
Infectious disease experts have urged the public to avoid attempting to achieve immunity through measles exposures. Measles carries too high of risks, including lifelong complications and death, compared to the generally mild side-effects from the vaccine.
The Mennonite community located in remote Gaines County, about 400 miles west of Dallas, has been the center of a West Texas measles outbreak. As of Tuesday, measles has spread to 279 patients in Gaines and nearby counties.
Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, which cared for the couple’s daughter, released a prepared statement on Thursday. They said the interview circulating online contains “misleading and inaccurate claims regarding care provided at Covenant Children’s” and that the hospital could not directly speak about the girl’s case because of patient confidentiality laws.
“What we can say is that our physicians and care teams follow evidence-based protocols and make clinical decisions based on a patient’s evolving condition, diagnostic findings and the best available medical knowledge,” the statement said.
Covenant Children’s reiterated that measles is a highly contagious, potentially life-threatening disease that often creates serious, well-known complications like pneumonia and encephalitis.
The hospital urged anyone with questions about measles to contact their health provider.
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia’s government has given final approval for a Texas-based marine robotics company to renew the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean more than a decade ago.
Cabinet ministers agreed to terms and conditions for a “no-find, no-fee” contract with Texas-based Ocean Infinity to resume the seabed search operation at a new 15,000-square-kilometer (5,800-square-mile) site in the ocean, Transport Minister Anthony Loke said in a statement Wednesday. Ocean Infinity will be paid $70 million only if wreckage is discovered.
The Boeing 777 plane vanished from radar shortly after taking off on March 8, 2014, carrying 239 people, mostly Chinese nationals, on a flight from Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, to Beijing. Satellite data showed the plane turned from its flight path and headed south to the far-southern Indian Ocean, where it is believed to have crashed.
An expensive multinational search failed to turn up any clues to its location, although debris washed ashore on the east African coast and Indian Ocean islands. A private search in 2018 by Ocean Infinity also found nothing.
The final approval for a new search came three months after Malaysia gave the nod in principle to plans for a fresh search.
Ocean Infinity CEO Oliver Punkett earlier this year reportedly said the company had improved its technology since 2018. He has said the firm is working with many experts to analyze data and had narrowed the search area to the most likely site.
Loke said his ministry will ink a contract with Ocean Infinity soon but didn’t provide details on the terms. The firm has reportedly sent a search vessel to the site and indicated that January-April is the best period for the search.
“The government is committed to continuing the search operation and providing closure for the families of the passengers of flight MH370,” he said in a statement.
GAINES COUNTY – With its measles outbreak spreading to two additional states, Texas is on track to becoming the cause of a national epidemic if it doesn’t start vaccinating more people, according to public health experts.
Measles, a highly contagious disease that was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, has made a resurgence in West Texas communities, jumping hundreds of miles to the northern border of the Panhandle and East Texas, and invading bordering states of New Mexico and Oklahoma.
Based on the rapid spread of cases statewide — more than 200 over 50 days — public health officials predict that it could take Texas a year to contain the spread. With cases continuously rising and the rest of the country’s unvaccinated population at the outbreak’s mercy, Texas must create stricter quarantine requirements, increase the vaccine rate, and improve contact tracing to address this measles epidemic before it becomes a nationwide problem, warn infectious disease experts and officials in other states.
“This demonstrates that this (vaccine exemption) policy puts the community, the county, and surrounding states at risk because of how contagious this disease is,” said Glenn Fennelly, a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases and chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Texas Tech University. “We are running the risk of threatening global stability.”
The measles outbreak — the largest in the state in 30 years — has spread from two cases in late January to more than 270 cases and now includes 11 counties, most of them in the rural South Plains region.
So far this year, there have been more than 300 cases of measles confirmed across 15 states, as of March 13. The Texas outbreak, which makes up the bulk of those cases, is only linked to cases in New Mexico and Oklahoma, where state officials said this month that someone associated with the Texas outbreak was exposed.
Last month, Texas officials reported that an unvaccinated, otherwise healthy school-aged child died from measles, the first death from the virus in a decade.
This month, New Mexico officials said an unvaccinated adult in Lea County, about 50 miles away from the outbreak’s epicenter of Gaines County, who died had tested positive for measles. Officials are still confirming whether the cause of death was measles, according to the New Mexico Department of Health.
“This is a very multi-jurisdictional outbreak with three states involved and about seven or eight different local health departments, in addition to some areas where the state serves as the local health department. There are a lot of moving parts,” said Katherine Wells, director of public health for the City of Lubbock, during a Tuesday meeting of the Big Cities Health Coalition, a national organization for large metropolitan health departments.
Most of Texas’ measles cases are in unvaccinated school-aged children and are concentrated in the Mennonite community in Gaines County, which traditionally has low vaccination rates.
Wells said efforts to increase the vaccination rates in Gaines County, which is about 70 miles from Lubbock, and the surrounding region have been slow as trust in the government has seemingly reached an all-time low.
“We are seeing, just like the rest of Americans, this community has seen a lot of stories about vaccines causing autism, and that is leading to a lot of this vaccine hesitancy, not religion,” she said.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to the politicization of vaccines and overall weariness to health mandates like quarantines and masks. Public health officials are now battling misinformation and public resistance to measles.
Wells said because the state can’t stop people from traveling, she fully expects this outbreak to last a year, and the surrounding states and the nation should prepare themselves for a potential spread.
“Measles is going to find those pockets of unvaccinated individuals, and with the number of cases and ability for people to travel, there is that risk of it entering other unvaccinated pockets anywhere in the United States right now,” Wells said.
Vaccine hesitancy
Fennelly was living in New York in the 1990s when pamphlets started getting passed around the Hebrew community warning against the unfound dangers of the measles vaccine. Soon, the vaccine refusal rate began to climb, and an outbreak started filling hospitals with sick infants.
Now, decades later, Fennelly is watching the same series of events play out in Texas.
“This could have been predicted. There have been steady rates of increased personal belief exemptions over the last several years leading to pockets of under-vaccination across the state,” he said.
In the West Texas region, misinformation about vaccines, distrust of local public health officials, and fear of government authority overruling family autonomy have reigned supreme, creating the pockets that measles infiltrated this year.
However, this is not just a South Plains problem but a statewide issue as vaccine exemptions continue to grow.
“We have several pockets of population that have high unvaccinated groups. We sent out a letter to public and private school districts with low vaccination rates explaining the situation and asking them to update their children’s shots,” said Phil Huang, director and health authority for Dallas County Health and Human Services, during the Big Cities Health Coalition meeting.
Texas requires children and students to obtain vaccines to attend schools, child care centers, and college. However, individuals can claim they are exempt if they are in the military, have a religious or personal belief that goes against getting immunized, or if a health provider determines it is not safe to do so.
Since 2018, the number of requests to the Texas Department of State Health Services for an exemption form has doubled from 45,900 to more than 93,000 in 2024.
Data suggests that vaccine exemptions and those living in areas with higher vaccine exemption rates for measles and pertussis are at increased risk of contracting these diseases. The authors of this data collection concluded that “geographic pockets of vaccine exemptions pose a risk to the whole community.”
Fennelly said the hurdles to obtaining exemptions are easy to clear, leading to an increasing number of people refusing the vaccine.
State lawmakers this session have filed more than a dozen bills that would strengthen or expand vaccine exemptions.
“We don’t have the capacity in Texas to deal with so many sick children if this continues to spread. We are already at our limit with seasonal influenza and respiratory syncytial virus. Our doctors are at their limit,” Fennelly said.
Simbo Ige, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, had to deal with a measles outbreak in her city a year ago, with 64 individuals testing positive, 57 of whom were associated with a shelter. She said the quickest way they controlled the outbreak was quickly administering more than 30,000 doses of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine.
A Chicago Department of Health report projected a high probability of an outbreak of more than 100 cases without the city’s rapid intervention.
“It required a lot of education and messaging because people wanted the answer to why I need to get vaccinated. We started listing out the reasons — parents won’t be able to go to work, kids can’t go to school, and even worse, kids can get sick and die,” Ige said. “It’s 2025. We shouldn’t be having children dying from measles in this day and age. We have the tools. We just have to amplify the message.”
New Mexico’s public health officials started spreading awareness of vaccinations immediately after they learned Texas had its first measles case and before New Mexico got its first case.
“We started setting up clinics and getting the ball rolling,” Jimmy Masters, the southeast region director for the New Mexico Department of Health, said. “Let’s see what we can do to get people in the doors and vaccinated beforehand.”
Nearly 9,000 New Mexicans have received measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine shots between Feb. 1 and March 10. During that same time period last year, officials vaccinated 5,342 people.
Texas has held multiple vaccination clinics in the outbreak area, but according to the Texas Department of State Health Services, only 350 doses have been administered.
New Mexico has also emphasized its Vaxview website that keeps track of residents’ immunizations, allowing concerned people to check within seconds if they need a shot. Texas has a vaccine tracking program known as ImmTrac2, but it’s an opt-in program that doesn’t have most adult records. If someone doesn’t opt in by age 26, their records will not be retained.
“We told people to contact us to ensure their vaccine status is up to date,” Masters said. “If they aren’t sure, just call the health office so we can find out for them. And if they don’t have their records updated for the vaccine, then we can ask them to come in and take advantage of the clinics or come in as walk-ins.”
Because of this, most of Lea County is considered immunized, Masters said, so public health officials in New Mexico don’t view the outbreak as rapidly evolving.
Back in Texas, the opposite is playing out. Advice from public health officials is seemingly ignored, and vaccine efforts are struggling.
“We need to have a consistent message from all levels. We need to reinforce the message that vaccines are safe and vaccines are how you prevent this, and we have concerns when other messages dilute this message,” Huang said.
Texas Department of State Health Services officials are also encouraging people to vaccinate, but whether people will listen is out of the agency’s control.
“The only way to stop the virus from spreading is to get more people immunized. We are …providing education about the severe complications associated with measles infection, and directing them to locations where they can get vaccinated,” said Lara Anton, spokesperson for the state health agency.
Fennelly said the main difference between Lea County and Gaines County is the public acceptance of the vaccine and public health in general. He said if Texas wants to improve, there should be studies on why people are so hesitant to accept vaccines.
“We need to be asking why Gaines County? What are the concerns, and how do we, the health profession and public health officials, most effectively confront and allay those fears,” he said. “People shouldn’t be more afraid of the vaccine than the disease.”
A person with measles visits a friend, another visits kids at a college, and the other has friends over. Public health departments in West Texas are trying to trace the spread of measles, since other than strongly suggesting people quarantine, there’s nothing more local officials can do to prevent infected individuals from traveling.
“We shouldn’t be surprised in this kind of environment that we will have more cases,” said David Lakey, the vice chancellor for health affairs and the chief medical officer at the University of Texas System. “I think we need to work with individuals to ensure they stay home during an event like this.”
State lawmakers have stripped control from cities and counties from implementing mandates, such as closing businesses and schools. While some of these laws apply only to COVID-19, public health experts say it has created an environment where state health officials can only offer suggestions to Texans with little enforcement, allowing measles to continue to spread.
“The state of Texas is taking it seriously and trying to balance how they approach this while respecting the laws of the state and also people’s freedoms,” Lakey said. “They are doing it while also making sure that we are doing everything it can to identify people, provide vaccines, isolate individuals, and take all the other steps to address an event like this.”
With young children particularly vulnerable to the disease, Lakey said hospitals must screen people entering hospitals.
Wells said there have been a couple of women who gave birth at a Lubbock hospital who were infected with measles or were recently exposed to it, and babies six months old or younger have needed treatment with immunoglobulin because of exposure.
“That’s really why measles is so scary. It’s so communicable, and it’s so easy to enter some of the very vulnerable areas where babies don’t have those vaccinations yet,” she said. “That’s going to be day cares, schools, hospitals, pediatricians offices, and we’re seeing those cases more and more as this outbreak continues.”
This potential spread makes contact tracing necessary, but Wells said it is one of their region’s most significant challenges besides testing. While a laboratory set up in Lubbock has cut down wait times for tests results from 72 hours to one day, Wells said rural Texas doesn’t have the staff to track the travel of more than 270 people.
“This is going to be a large outbreak, and we are still on the side where we are increasing the number of cases, both because we’re still seeing spread and also because we have increased testing capacity, so more people are getting tested,” she said.
New Mexico has a lead investigator for contact tracing who interviews the patients, gathers medical records, establishes a point of contact, and organizes vaccinations for those who were potentially exposed to prevent spread.
While West Texas officials try to follow the same policies, the health care system is decentralized, meaning the contact tracing is done by the local health authority first, and then, if necessary, the state gets involved and possibly, assistance from the CDC.
Chris Van Deusen, spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services, said while the state is not necessarily struggling to contact trace, he acknowledges the extra manpower it requires.
“That also depends on the individuals talking with us and sharing that information. So that can be difficult, particularly when dealing with a more insular community. It can be difficult to make inroads, and that is why the local process is important,” Van Deusen said.
Experts say that as travel season ramps up and if Texas can’t seem to stop the spread, states nationwide should prepare themselves for what may come.
“The message to health departments is be ready, and schools need to think about this and government officials because this really does have the potential to grow beyond these three states,” Wells said.
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.
Sensitive personal information including Social Security numbers was revealed in the newly unredacted John F. Kennedy assassination documents released this week, and that is not sitting well with the people affected.
Joseph diGenova, a former campaign lawyer for President Donald Trump, was among those whose personal information was disclosed. He said he is planning to sue the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration for violating privacy laws over concerns about identity theft.
“It should not have happened,” diGenova said in a phone interview Thursday. “I think it’s the result of incompetent people doing the reviewing. I don’t believe it had anything to do with rushing the process. The people who reviewed these documents did not do their job.”
His personal information was on documents relating to his work for a U.S. Senate select committee that investigated abuses of power by government officials in the 1970s, including the surveillance of U.S. citizens.
Officials at the White House said Thursday that a plan was in place to help those whose personal information was disclosed, including credit monitoring offered by the National Archives until new Social Security numbers are issued. Officials also said they are still screening the records to identify all the Social Security numbers that were released.
“President Trump delivered on his promise of maximum transparency by fully releasing the files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “At the request of the White House, the National Archives and the Social Security Administration immediately put together an action plan to proactively help individuals whose personal information was released in the files.”
The White House press office also released a statement from the National Archives.
“In an effort to maximize transparency, these records were released without redactions and some of these records contain the personal identification information of living individuals,” the statement said. “The National Archives and Records Administration and the Social Security Administration are working closely together to protect the individuals who may be affected from their information being exploited.”
The statement also said that while the National Archives will be contacting people whose personal information was disclosed, it urged those people to contact the National Archives.
Neither the White House nor the National Archives explained the decision-making process behind the public release of the personal information.
Trump ordered the release of the remaining classified files relating to the 1963 assassination shortly after being sworn into office in January. About 2,200 files consisting of over 63,000 pages were posted on the National Archive’s website on Tuesday evening. Many of those pages revealed what had previously been redacted.
The vast majority of the National Archives’ more than 6 million pages — records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artifacts related to the assassination — had previously been released.
The National Archives posted assessments of the newly released documents on its website, but noted that there wasn’t enough time as of Wednesday to review more than a small fraction of them. The documents released this week provided more details of covert, Cold War-era U.S. operations in other nations, but they didn’t initially lend credence to conspiracy theories about who killed Kennedy.
One of the newly unredacted documents, for example, discloses the Social Security numbers of more than two dozen people seeking security clearances in the 1990s to review JFK-related documents for the Assassination Records Review Board.
Gerald Posner, author of “Case Closed,” which concludes that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman, said the documents release was rushed, echoing what other researchers believe.
“I know that people will probably shake their head if they hear that — because how could they be rushing in after 62 years?” he said Thursday. “It’s a lot of documents. It’s a lot of files. The Archives in the past has provided a sort of a search guide. So if I want to find James ‘Jesus’ Angleton, for instance, I could do a search and find all the documents he’s in and then I can see what’s different from the last release. This time they didn’t have that.”
Angleton was the CIA’s counterintelligence chief from 1954 to 1974.
The National Archives began screening the documents on Wednesday to identify all the Social Security numbers in the assassination records, the White House said.
The National Archives will share those numbers with the Social Security Administration, which will identify the people who are living and issue them new numbers, according to the White House.
Kennedy was killed on a visit to Dallas, when his motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown and shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested the 24-year-old Oswald, a former Marine who had positioned himself from a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor. Two days later, Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner, fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer that was broadcast live on television.
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Associated Press writer John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.
A key adviser warned President John F. Kennedy after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 that the agency behind it, the CIA, had grown too powerful. He proposed giving the State Department control of “all clandestine activities” and breaking up the CIA.
The page of Special Assistant Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s memo outlining the proposal was among the newly public material in documents related to Kennedy’s assassination released this week by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. So, too was Schlesinger’s statement that 47% of the political officers in U.S. embassies were controlled by the CIA.
Some readers of the previously withheld material in Schlesinger’s 15-page memo view it as evidence of both mistrust between Kennedy and the CIA and a reason the CIA at least would not make Kennedy’s security a high priority ahead of his assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. That gave fresh attention Thursday to a decades-old theory about who killed JFK — that the CIA had a hand in it.
Some Kennedy scholars, historians and writers said they haven’t yet seen anything in the 63,000 pages of material released under an order from President Donald Trump that undercuts the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old Marine and onetime defector to the Soviet Union, was a lone gunman. But they also say they understand why doubters gravitate toward the theory.
“You have this young, charismatic president with so much potential for the future, and on the other side of the scale, you have this 24-year-old waif, Oswald, and it doesn’t balance. You want to put something weightier on the Oswald side,” said Gerald Posner, whose book, “Case Closed,” details the evidence that Oswald was a lone gunman.
The first ‘big event’ in the US to spawn conspiracy theories
Critics of the Oswald-acted-alone conclusion had predicted that previously unreleased material would bolster their positions. One of them, Jefferson Morley, the editor of the JFK Facts blog, said Thursday that newly public material is important to “the JFK case.” Morley is vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a repository for files related to the assassination.
Morley said that even with the release of 63,000 pages this week, there is still more unreleased material, including 2,400 files that the FBI said it discovered after Trump issued his order in January and material held by the Kennedy family.
Kennedy was killed on a visit to Dallas, when his motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown and shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested Oswald, who had positioned himself from a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor. Two days later Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner, fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer broadcast live on television.
“It was the first big event that led to a series of events involving conspiracy theories that have left Americans believing, almost permanently, that their government lies to them so often they shouldn’t pay close attention,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of “The Kennedy Half-Century”
The Bay of Pigs fiasco prompts an aide’s memo
Morley said Schlesinger’s memo provides the “origin story” of mutual mistrust between Kennedy and the CIA.
Kennedy had inherited the Bay of Pigs plan from his predecessor, President Dwight Eisenhower, and had been in office less than three months when the operation launched in April 1961 as a covert invasion to topple Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Schlesinger’s memo was dated June 30, 1961, a little more than two months later.
Schlesinger told Kennedy that all covert operations should be cleared with the U.S. State Department instead of allowing the CIA to largely present proposed operations almost as accomplished tasks. He also said in some places, such as Austria and Chile, far more than half the embassies’ political officers were CIA-controlled.
Ronald Neumann, former US ambassador to Afghanistan, Algeria and Bahrain, said most American diplomats now are “non-CIA,” and in most places, ambassadors do not automatically defer to the CIA.
“CIA station chiefs also have an important function for ambassadors, because the station chief is usually the senior intelligence officer at a post,” Neumann said, adding that ambassadors see a CIA station chiefs as providing valuable information.
But he noted: “If you get into the areas where we were involved in covert operations in supporting wars, you’re going to have a different picture. You’re going to have a picture which will differ from a normal embassy and normal operations.”
A proposal to break up the CIA that didn’t come to fruition
Schlesinger’s memo ends with a previously redacted page that spells out a proposal to give control of covert activities to the State Department and to split the CIA into two agencies reporting to separate undersecretaries of state. Morley sees it as a response to Kennedy’s anger over the Bay of Pigs and something Kennedy was seriously contemplating.
The plan never came to fruition.
Sabato said that Kennedy simply “needed the CIA” in the Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union and its allies like Cuba, and a huge reorganization would have hindered intelligence operations. He also said the president and his brother, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, wanted to oust Castro before JFK ran for reelection in 1964.
“Let’s remember that a good percentage of the covert operations were aimed at Fidel Castro in Cuba,” Sabato said.
Timothy Naftali, an adjunct professor at Columbia University who is writing a book about JFK’s presidency, discounts the idea of tensions between the president and the CIA lasting until Kennedy’s death. For one thing, he said, the president used covert operations “avidly.”
“I find that the more details we get on that period, the more it appears likely that the Kennedy brothers were in control of the intelligence community,” Naftali said. “You can see his imprint. You can see that there is a system by which he is directing the intelligence community. It’s not always direct, but he’s directing it.”
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Associated Press writer David Collins in Hartford Connecticut, contributed to this report.
SAN ANTONIO – The San Antonio Express-News reports South San Antonio Independent School District is switching to a controversial, Bible-infused curriculum next year — but not before setting up a committee to vet the learning materials for “inappropriate” content. The South San ISD board of managers unanimously approved the purchase of the state-written lessons and textbooks known collectively as Bluebonnet Learning on Monday, at the district’s second meeting since being taken over by the Texas Education Agency. South San’s new superintendent, Saul Hinojosa, recommended adopting the curriculum to address the district’s historically poor performance on standardized testing compared to the rest of the state, region and city. He said Bluebonnet Learning will help close those gaps in academic outcomes.
“I know there’s some concern as you read out there of this particular curriculum, but we are going to have some safeguards by formulating a committee that’s going to consist of teachers, parents and board members that will audit the curriculum,” he said. “If there’s anything we feel is inappropriate, we will have the ability to pull that out and change that little piece.” South San is one of the few San Antonio school systems to approve the widely debated curriculum since it was narrowly approved by eight of the 15 members of the State Board of Education in November. Harlandale ISD voted to adopt it at a December board meeting. Other local school districts, including East Central, Edgewood, Judson and Southwest ISDs, have approved portions of the curriculum. Bluebonnet Learning was created through House Bill 1605, which directed the Texas Education Agency to develop textbooks that align with state standards. The curriculum is free to access online, and school district are paid $60 per student to adopt it — $40 for using its instructional materials and $20 to cover printing the Bluebonnet textbooks.
TOMBALL – Two people have been arrested and charged with performing illegal abortions at a Houston-area health clinic, the first criminal charges brought under the state’s near-total abortion ban.
Maria Margarita Rojas, 48, a licensed midwife, and Jose Ley, 29 and her employee, were charged with the illegal performance of an abortion, as well as practicing medicine without a license. The abortion charge is a second-degree felony, which comes with up to 20 years in prison.
Rojas, who identified herself as Dr. Maria, operates a network of clinics in Waller, Cypress and Spring, where she “unlawfully employed unlicensed individuals who falsely presented themselves as licensed medical professionals,” according to a press release from Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Rojas, with Ley’s assistance, attempted an abortion on a person identified as E.G. on two separate occasions in March, according to court records. In interviews with investigators, E.G. said Rojas’ employees portrayed her as a doctor, so when Rojas told E.G. that her pregnancy was likely non-viable, she agreed to take the abortion pills Rojas offered.
The woman told investigators that she would have continued the pregnancy, but “since the gynecologist informed her of medical complications that would arise should she continue with the pregnancy, she relied on that medical advice.”
In its bail motion, the state says Rojas also performed an abortion in Harris County earlier this year. Calls to Rojas’ clinics were not immediately answered Monday.
Court records show Rojas was first arrested on March 6, charged with practicing medicine without a license and given a $10,000 bond. She was again arrested Monday morning, alongside Ley, and charged with practicing medicine without a license and performing illegal abortions. A third person, Rubildo Labanino Matos, was arrested March 8 and charged with conspiracy to practice medicine without a license, Paxton said Tuesday.
On Thursday, a Waller County judge granted a temporary injunction effectively shutting down Rojas’ clinics by prohibiting them from providing medical services. The injunction expires after 14 days, but a hearing scheduled for next week will likely extend it.
The investigation into Rojas’ practices spanned more than a month and involved more than a dozen people with the Office of the Attorney General, the arrest affidavit shows.
It started with an anonymous complaint filed to the state Health and Human Services Commission, alleging two women had received abortions at the Clinica Waller Latinoamericana in Waller. K.P., 26, had an abortion at three months pregnant in September 2023, and D.V. had an abortion at eight weeks pregnant in January, the affidavit said.
The complaint was initially filed Jan. 17, and in a follow-up email a week later, the person who sent the complaint said the facility had been performing abortions “for some side money” for some time. They said the two abortions they were aware of were not due to medical complications and suggested the patients acted irresponsibly by “not wanting to protect themselves using birth control.”
Investigators with attorney general’s office and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office began surveilling Rojas’ clinics in late January and early February. They observed a man later identified as Ley working alone in one of the clinics as people came in and out, apparently seeking medical care.
Ley is not licensed to practice medicine in Texas. He was a licensed doctor in Cuba, but came to the United States illegally in 2022 and later was paroled and received a green card, according to the affidavit. Ley later told investigators that he was connected with Rojas after training with the global health nonprofit Doctors without Borders.
Ley told investigators that he saw patients as a medical assistant and would consult via tablet with someone he believed to be Labanino Matos, before signing forms with Labanino Matos’ name.
Labanino Matos, a licensed nurse practitioner, was under an agreed order from the Texas Board of Nursing for negligent treatment of a patient at another clinic. Texas law requires nurse practitioners to have a practice agreement with a licensed physician, which the affidavit says Labanino Matos did not have in place for these clinics.
In late February, the woman identified as D.V. confirmed that she received an abortion and identified Rojas as the person who performed the procedure, per the affidavit.
On March 3, an investigator was observing one of the clinics when a car pulled up and a young couple went inside. Only Ley was at the clinic, the investigator said, but after a time, Rojas arrived as well. When the couple left, it was clear the woman had undergone some sort of medical procedure, the investigator said.
On March 5, the attorney general’s office secured arrest warrants and search warrants for Rojas, Labanino Matos and Ley on charges of practicing medicine without a license. The search warrants found misoprostol, a common abortion-inducing drug that can also be used for other medical purposes, as well as ultrasound machines, forceps and other medical supplies.
Ley spoke to investigators, but Rojas declined.
While those arrests were unfolding, investigators tracked down and interviewed the woman who had been at the clinic on March 3. Identified as E.G. in the records, she said she had delivered twins by cesarean section six months prior and went to the clinic on the advice of her doctor in Mexico.
She said employees referred to Rojas as a gynecologist. Rojas told E.G. she was four weeks pregnant, but there was only an 18% chance of the pregnancy being successful. Lab results showed there was only a 9% chance of a successful pregnancy, E.G. said, which Rojas told her was insufficient to continue with the pregnancy.
Rojas gave her a pill orally, and Ley administered an IV and an iron injection. The next day, when she hadn’t had the expected bleeding, she returned to the clinic and was given an additional dose of the medication orally and vaginally. She later learned the medication was misoprostol.
E.G. paid $1,320 total for the consultations. She told investigators she was “shocked” to learn Rojas was not a gynecologist.
Based on this information, the attorney general’s office charged Rojas and Ley with performing an illegal abortion.
The state recommended Rojas and Ley each be held on a million dollar bond. On Monday, a Waller County judge ordered their bonds set at $500,000 for the abortion-related charges and $200,000 for the medical license charges.
Holly Shearman, a midwife who runs Tomball Birth Center, where Rojas worked part-time providing prenatal care, said she was “shocked” by the news of her arrest. She described Rojas as a devout Catholic and skilled midwife whose clinics provided health care to a primarily Spanish-speaking, low-income community.
“I don’t believe it for one second,” she said about the allegations. “I’ve known her for eight years and I’ve never heard her talk about anything like that. I just can’t picture Maria being involved in something like this.”
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.
AUSTIN – The Austin American-Statesman reports that the person who purchased the winning ticket for the $83.5 million Lotto Texas jackpot in the Feb. 17 drawing came forward to collect her prize Tuesday but was sent away empty-handed because of the mushrooming controversy over the use of third-party vendors who broker ticket sales through smartphone apps. The person, who spoke with the American-Statesman on the condition that her name not be used because of privacy concern, said she did nothing illegal or wrong when she purchased $20 worth of tickets using a phone app she has used on and off to buy Lotto and scratch-off tickets. Still, her payment is being held up pending the outcome of an investigation by the Texas Rangers. “I’ve gone through frustration and being sad and stressed,” she said in an interview that included her lawyer, Randy Howry of Austin. “And now I’m just angry.”
Just days before the drawing that would change the winner’s life, lottery Executive Director Ryan Mindell and members of the lottery’s governing board were excoriated during a Texas Senate Finance Committee hearing because third-party operators, called courier companies, had bypassed the state’s prohibition of selling game tickets by telephone. Mindell at the time told the Senate panel that he had no authority over the companies, because they were legally making in-person purchases from licensed lottery retailers. Still, several committee members said the companies could be used by unscrupulous buyers who might be underage or otherwise ineligible to play the Texas Lottery. The members were especially upset that a courier company was used to make a bulk purchase totaling more than $25 million to buy up more than 99% of the possible number combinations to win a $95 million Lotto Texas jackpot in April 2023. Although the bulk purchase did not go through an app, Mindell was told that he should have suspected that the massive purchase of tickets could have involved a money launderer who was using the state-run lottery to legitimize profits from illicit enterprises.
MANDAN, N.D. (AP) — Environmental group Greenpeace must pay more than $660 million in damages for defamation and other claims brought by a pipeline company in connection with protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline’s construction in North Dakota, a jury found Wednesday.
Dallas-based Energy Transfer and subsidiary Dakota Access had accused Netherlands-based Greenpeace International, Greenpeace USA and funding arm Greenpeace Fund Inc. of defamation, trespass, nuisance, civil conspiracy and other acts. Greenpeace USA was found liable for all counts, while the others were found liable for some. The damages owed will be spread out in different amounts over the three entities.
Greenpeace said earlier that a large award to the pipeline company would threaten to bankrupt the organization. Following the nine-person jury’s verdict, Greenpeace’s senior legal adviser said the group’s work “is never going to stop.”
“That’s the really important message today, and we’re just walking out and we’re going to get together and figure out what our next steps are,” Deepa Padmanabha told reporters outside the courthouse.
The organization later said it plans to appeal the decision.
“The fight against Big Oil is not over today,” Greenpeace International General Counsel Kristin Casper said. “We know that the law and the truth are on our side.”
She said the group will see Energy Transfer in court in July in Amsterdam in an anti-intimidation lawsuit filed there last month.
The damages total nearly $666.9 million. The jury found Greenpeace USA must pay the bulk of the damages, nearly $404 million, while Greenpeace Fund Inc. and Greenpeace International would each pay roughly $131 million.
Energy Transfer called Wednesday’s verdict a “win” for “Americans who understand the difference between the right to free speech and breaking the law.”
“While we are pleased that Greenpeace has been held accountable for their actions against us, this win is really for the people of Mandan and throughout North Dakota who had to live through the daily harassment and disruptions caused by the protesters who were funded and trained by Greenpeace,” the company said in a statement to The Associated Press.
The company previously said the state court lawsuit was about Greenpeace not following the law, not free speech.
In a statement, Energy Transfer attorney Trey Cox said, “This verdict clearly conveys that when this right to peacefully protest is abused in a lawless and exploitative manner, such actions will be held accountable.”
The case reaches back to protests in 2016 and 2017 against the Dakota Access Pipeline and its Missouri River crossing upstream of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation. For years the tribe has opposed the line as a risk to its water supply.
The multistate pipeline transports about 5% of the United States’ daily oil production. It started transporting oil in mid-2017.
Cox had said Greenpeace carried out a scheme to stop the pipeline’s construction. During opening statements, he alleged Greenpeace paid outsiders to come into the area and protest, sent blockade supplies, organized or led protester trainings, and made untrue statements about the project to stop it.
Attorneys for the Greenpeace entities had said there was no evidence to the claims and that Greenpeace employees had little or no involvement in the protests and the organizations had nothing to do with Energy Transfer’s delays in construction or refinancing.