Today is
Sunday April 20, 2025
AUSTIN – The University of Texas System announced Tuesday its universities are banned from sponsoring drag shows or hosting them in their facilities, a few weeks after the Texas A&M System’s board of regents approved a similar ban.
“If the board of regents needs to take further action to make this clear, we will do so,” UT System Board of Regents Chair Kevin Eltife said in a statement on Tuesday, adding that this is a measure “to comply with all applicable federal, state and local laws and executive orders, including any restriction on the use of public funds.”
Eltife declined to say what specific laws they were seeking to comply with, but the move appears to be in response to recent executive orders issued by President Donald J. Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
In January, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to take all necessary steps to ensure funds are not used to promote gender ideology. A few days later, Abbott directed state agencies to reject efforts “to distort commonsense notions of biological sex.”
Texas A&M University System Board of Regents cited these executive orders when it passed its own drag show ban last month.
The system was sued by the Queer Empowerment Council, a student group at the College Station flagship that organizes Draggieland, an annual drag show that was slated to take place at the Rudder Theatre on March 27.
“Texas A&M can’t banish student-funded, student-organized drag performances from campus simply because they offend administrators. If drag offends you, don’t buy a ticket,” said Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a national free speech group representing the students in this case.
Judge Lee H. Rosenthal heard arguments Tuesday morning in federal court in Houston on whether to block the ban temporarily. It’s unclear when he’ll make a decision.
Texas A&M has argued in court documents that drag is not expressive speech protected under the First Amendment.
The system has also suggested it might lose funding if it disregards federal and state guidance and allows Draggieland to proceed in the campus theater. It said this fiscal year, federal appropriations made up 12% of its budget; federal contracts and grants 16%; and tuition and fees, some of which come from federally-backed student loans, 25%.
Texas A&M, which is being defended by the Texas Attorney General’s Office, also took issue with the characterization that the system has banned on-campus drag shows. It described the Rudder Theatre as a limited public forum and pointed out that students were allowed to dress in drag to protest the board’s decision on campus a few days later.
The UT System’s drag show ban comes a few days after Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare urged the board of regents to follow in A&M’s footsteps.
O’Hare, who graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a bachelor of business administration in finance in 1991, pointed out that UT-Arlington recently hosted an event that featured a drag performer. KERA reported that the event O’Hare was likely referring to was not funded by the university, but a student group. That is also the case with Draggieland at Texas A&M University in College Station.
The UT System consists of 14 institutions that educate more than 256,000 students.
The UT System Board of Regents’ next meeting is scheduled for May 7-8, but it can call a special meeting before that time.
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.
FORT WORTH – The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports the federal government has until March 18 to pay Catholic Charities Fort Worth millions in grant funds that have been withheld since January. A federal judge on March 14 ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to release $47 million that became entangled in the Trump administration’s restructuring of federal programs. The grants were allocated to pay for organizations that partner with Catholic Charities Fort Worth, such as the Texas Office for Refugees, which provides resettlement services to people fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries. Catholic Charities Fort Worth sued HHS and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy earlier this month, alleging the federal government had unlawfully frozen the funding. The pause led to thousands of refugees losing their cash payment benefits, which resulted in evictions and other hardships, the organization said, as well as the possibility of having to lay off almost almost half of its staff across Texas.
On March 10, Catholic Charities Fort Worth filed a WARN Act notice that it would lay off 169 of its approximately 400 employees in Texas effective Friday. The 1989 Worker Adjustment & Retraining Notification Act is meant to protect workers and their families by requiring employers to give 60-day notice of mass layoffs and plant closings. In a joint statement on Friday, Michael Iglio, CEO of Catholic Charities Fort Worth, and Jeff Demers, state refugee coordinator of Texas Office of Refugees, said the U.S. District Court in Washington ordered the funds to be released during a status conference on the lawsuit on Friday. “The withholding of these essential funds led to significant challenges, including widespread layoffs and the disruption of vital services for more than 100,000 across 29 partner agencies throughout Texas,” they said. “The anticipated release of these funds marks a pivotal step toward restoring and enhancing the support systems that empower individuals and families to achieve self-sufficiency and build successful lives within our communities.” HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Catholic Charities Fort Worth has administered the state’s refugee resettlement services since 2016, when Gov. Greg Abbott pulled Texas from the federal program.
FORT WORTH – The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that Hollie Plemons took her seat before a panel of lawmakers in Austin to make her conservative case against school vouchers. “This is going against everything that a Texas Republican is,” said Plemons, a mother of three and Tarrant County GOP precinct chair from Fort Worth who has been outspoken in her opposition. She was one of hundreds in a marathon hearing on March 11 to testify before the House Public Education committee as they considered House Bill 3, the House’s version of an education savings accounts program, a voucher-of-sort that supporters say would give parents more choice in their child’s education. A similar proposal passed in the Texas Senate on Feb. 5. The details are different, but both would let parents use state dollars for their child’s private or home schooled education.
The issue has historically been a tension point for Texas Republicans, facing opposition from some within the party, particularly among rural House members who have feared for their local public schools. As the legislation is debated there are also Republicans — like Plemons — whose opposition stems from what they see as a breach of traditional Republican principles opposing government subsidies and supporting small government. This is despite support for vouchers from many in the Republican Party’s upper-most ranks. “In a way, for these conservatives, vouchers are big government,” said University of Houston political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus. “Vouchers are basically setting the table for winners and losers. That’s something that many conservatives, fiscal conservatives, are adamantly against.” Plemons said she’s been attacked by Republican groups and called a Democrat, communist and Marxist for her stance. “I’m none of those, but the bill is,” she said. Dallas County GOP Chair Allen West mulled the idea of “school choice” in a recent post on the local party’s website. The former Texas GOP chair ran against Abbott for governor in 2021, challenging him from the right. “I do not think we have a very clear understanding of what ‘school choice’ means,” the post reads. “When I hear people use language such as ‘universal school choice,’ well, it sends chills down my spine because of the word ‘universal,’ which was also used to describe Obamacare as “universal healthcare.” West addresses the Senate’s proposal, saying it goes against a party platform item that calls for funding that follows a child with “no strings attached” and opposes “regulations on homeschooling or the curriculum of private or religious schools.” “Instead of issuing a voucher, why not enable Flexible Education Savings Accounts that are tax credits, not vouchers?” West said in the post.
DALLAS — The Texas Employment Forecast released by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas indicates jobs will increase 1.9 percent in 2025, with an 80 percent confidence band of 1.2 to 2.6 percent.
This is an increase from the previous month’s forecast of 1.6 percent for 2025.
The forecast is based on an average of four models that include projected national GDP, oil futures prices,?and the Texas and U.S. leading indexes. In addition, this forecast utilizes Texas employment data that have been adjusted to include anticipated downward revisions by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“January job growth was strong and broad based, led by increases in the energy and education and health sectors. Only employment in the information sector dropped,” said Jesus Cañas, Dallas Fed senior business economist. “Additionally, employment rose in all major metropolitan areas of the state, with Houston outpacing the other major metros.”
Additional key takeaways from the latest Dallas Fed report:
The forecast suggests 275,000 jobs will be added in the state this year, and employment in December 2025 will be 14.5 million.
Texas employment increased by an annualized 3.4 percent month over month in January, an increase from December’s growth of 2.9 percent.
The unemployment rate, which takes into account changes in the total labor force along with other factors, decreased in Austin–Round Rock, Brownsville–Harlingen, El Paso, Fort Worth–Arlington, Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land, Laredo and San Antonio–New Braunfels, according to?seasonally adjusted numbers?from the Dallas Fed.
The rate remained flat in Dallas–Plano–Irving for the month.
The Texas statewide unemployment rate decreased slightly to 4.1 percent in January.
AUSTIN – Lawmakers want to turn the tide on the growing number of unprepared and uncertified teachers by restricting who can lead Texas classrooms. But school leaders worry those limits will leave them with fewer options to refill their teacher ranks.
Tucked inside the Texas House’s $7.6 billion school finance package is a provision that would ban uncertified teachers from instructing core classes in public schools. House Bill 2 gives districts until fall 2026 to certify their K-5 math and reading teachers and until fall 2027 to certify teachers in other academic classes.
Texas would help uncertified teachers pay for the cost of getting credentialed. Under HB 2, those who participate in an in-school training and mentoring program would receive a one-time $10,000 payment and those who go through a traditional university or alternative certification program would get $3,000. Special education and emergent bilingual teachers would get their certification fees waived. Educator training experts say it could be the biggest financial investment Texas made in teacher preparation. Rep. Brad Buckley, the Salado Republican who authored the bill, has signaled the House Public Education Committee will vote on HB 2 on Tuesday.
District leaders, once reluctant to hire uncertified teachers, now rely on them often to respond to the state’s growing teacher shortage. And while they agree with the spirit of the legislation, some worry the bill would ask too much too soon of districts and doesn’t offer a meaningful solution to replace uncertified teachers who leave the profession.
“What’s going to happen when we’re no longer able to hire uncertified teachers? Class sizes have to go up, programs have to disappear…. We won’t have a choice,” said David Vroonland, the former superintendent of the Mesquite school district near Dallas and the Frenship school district near Lubbock. “There will be negative consequences if we don’t put in place serious recruitment efforts.”
Nowadays, superintendents often go to job fairs to recruit teachers and come out empty-handed. There are not as many Texans who want to be teachers as there used to be.
The salary in Texas is about $9,000 less than the national average, so people choose better-paying careers. Teachers say they are overworked, sometimes navigating unwieldy class sizes and using weekends to catch up on grading.
Heath Morrison started to see the pool of teacher applicants shrink years ago when he was at the helm of Montgomery ISD. Many teachers left the job during the COVID-19 pandemic, which accelerated the problem.
“This teacher shortage is getting more and more pronounced,” said Morrison, who is now the CEO of Teachers of Tomorrow, a popular alternative teacher certification program. “The reality of most school districts across the country is you’re not making a whole lot more money 10 years into your job than you were when you first entered … And so that becomes a deterrent.”
As the pool of certified teachers shrunk, districts found a stopgap solution: bringing on uncertified teachers. Uncertified teachers accounted for roughly 38% of newly hired instructors last year, with many concentrated in rural districts.
The Texas Legislature facilitated the flood of uncertified teachers. A 2015 law lets public schools get exemptions from requirements like teacher certification, school start dates and class sizes — the same exemptions allowed for open enrollment charter schools.
Usually, to teach in Texas classrooms, candidates must obtain a certification by earning a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university, completing an educator preparation program and passing teacher certification exams.
Teacher preparation experts say certifications give teachers the tools to lead a high quality classroom. To pass certification tests, teaching candidates learn how to plan for lessons and manage discipline in a classroom.
But the 2015 law allowed districts to hire uncertified teachers by presenting a so-called “district of innovation plan” to show they were struggling to meet credential requirements because of a teacher shortage. By 2018, more than 600 rural and urban districts had gotten teacher certification exemptions.
“Now, what we’ve seen is everyone can demonstrate a shortage,” said Jacob Kirksey, a researcher at Texas Tech University. “Almost every district in Texas is a district of innovation. That is what has allowed for the influx of uncertified teachers. Everybody is getting that waiver for certification requirements.”
This session, House lawmakers are steadfast on undoing the loophole they created after new research from Kirksey sounded the alarm on the impacts of unprepared teachers on student learning. Students with new uncertified teachers lost about four months of learning in reading and three months in math, his analysis found. They missed class more than students with certified teachers, a signal of disengagement.
Uncertified teachers are also less likely to stick with the job long-term, disrupting school stability.
“The state should act urgently on how to address the number of uncertified teachers in classrooms,” said Kate Greer, a policy director at Commit Partnership. The bill “rights a wrong that we’ve had in the state for a long time.”
Rep. Jeff Leach, a Plano Republican who sits on the House Public Education Committee, said his wife has worked as an uncertified art teacher at Allen ISD. She started a program to get certified this winter and had to pay $5,000 out of pocket.
That cost may be “not only a hurdle but an impediment for someone who wants to teach and is called and equipped to teach,” Leach said earlier this month during a committee hearing on HB 2.
House lawmakers are proposing to lower the financial barriers that keep Texans who want to become teachers from getting certified.
“Quality preparation takes longer, is harder and it’s more expensive. In the past, we’ve given [uncertified candidates] an opportunity just to walk into the classroom,” said Jean Streepey, the chair of the State Board for Educator Certification. “How do we help teachers at the beginning of their journey to choose something that’s longer, harder and more expensive?”
Streepey sat on the teacher vacancy task force that Gov. Greg Abbott established in 2022 to recommend fixes to retention and recruitment challenges at Texas schools. The task force’s recommendations, such as prioritizing raises and improving training, have fingerprints all over the Texas House’s school finance package.
Under HB 2, districts would see money flow in when they put uncertified teachers on the path to certification. And those financial rewards would be higher depending on the quality of the certification program.
Schools with instructors who complete yearlong teacher residencies — which include classroom training and are widely seen as the gold standard for preparing teacher candidates — would receive bigger financial rewards than those with teachers who finish traditional university or alternative certification programs.
Even with the financial help, lawmakers are making a tall order. In two years, the more than 35,000 uncertified teachers in the state would have to get their credential or be replaced with new, certified teachers.
“The shortages have grown to be so great that I think none of us have a really firm handle on the measures that it’s going to take to turn things around.” said Michael Marder, the executive director of UTeach, a UT-Austin teacher preparatory program. “There is financial support in HB 2 to try to move us back towards the previous situation. However, I just don’t know whether the amounts that are laid out there are sufficient.”
Only one in five uncertified teachers from 2017 to 2020 went on to get a credential within their first three years of teaching. Texas can expect a jump in uncertified teachers going through teacher preparatory programs because of the financial resources and pressure on schools through HB 2, Marder said.
But for every teacher who does not get credentialed, school leaders will have to go out and find new teachers. And they will have to look from a smaller pool.
The restrictions on uncertified teachers “handcuffs us,”said Gilbert Trevino, the superintendent at Floydada Collegiate ISD, which sits in a rural farming town in West Texas. In recent years, recruiters with his district have gone out to job fairs and hired uncertified teachers with a college degree and field experience in the subjects they want to teach in.
Rural schools across the state have acutely experienced the challenges of the teacher shortage — and have leaned on uncertified teachers more heavily than their urban peers.
“We have to recruit locally and grow our own or hire people who have connections or roots in the community,” Trevino said. “If we hire a teacher straight out of Texas Tech University, we may have them for a year. … And then they may get on at Lubbock ISD or Plainview ISD, where there’s more of a social life.”
Floydada Collegiate ISD recruits local high school students who are working toward their associate’s degree through what is known as a Grown Your Own Teacher program. But Trevino says HB 2 does not give him the time to use this program to replace uncertified teachers. From recruitment to graduation, it takes at least three years before students can lead a classroom on their own, he said.
School leaders fear if they can’t fill all their vacancies, they’ll be pushed to increase class sizes or ask their teachers to prepare lessons for multiple subjects.
“Our smaller districts are already doing that, where teachers have multiple preps,” Trevino said. “Things are already hard on our teachers. So if you add more to their plate, how likely are they to remain in the profession or remain in this district?”
At Wylie ISD in Taylor County, it’s been difficult to find teachers to keep up with student growth. Uncertified teachers in recent years have made up a large number of teacher applicants, according to Cameron Wiley, a school board trustee.
Wiley said restrictions on uncertified teachers is a “good end goal” but would compound the district’s struggles.
“It limits the pot of people that’s already small to a smaller pot. That’s just going to make it more difficult to recruit,” Wiley said. “And if we have a hard time finding people to come in, or we’re not allowed to hire certain people to take some of that pressure off, those class sizes are just going to get bigger.”
Learning suffers when class sizes get too big because students are not able to get the attention they need.
“This bill, it’s just another obstacle that we as districts are having to maneuver around and hurl over,” Wiley said. “We’re not addressing the root cause [recruitment]. We’re just putting a Band-Aid on it right now.”
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the original article, click here.
DALLAS (AP) — President Donald Trump says files related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy will be released Tuesday without any redactions, making good on a promise he made during his campaign.
Trump told reporters Monday that his administration will be releasing 80,000 files, though it’s not clear how many of those are among the millions of pages of records that have already been made public.
“We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading,” Trump said while at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.
He also said he doesn’t believe anything will be redacted from the files. “I said, ‘Just don’t redact. You can’t redact,’” he said.
Many who have studied what’s been released so far by the government say the public shouldn’t anticipate any earth-shattering revelations from the newly released documents, but there is still intense interest in details related to the assassination and the events surrounding it.
Shortly after he was sworn into office, Trump ordered the release of the remaining classified files related to the assassination, which has spawned countless conspiracy theories.
He directed the national intelligence director and attorney general to develop a plan to release the records. The order also aimed to declassify the remaining federal records related to the 1968 assassinations of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
After signing the order, Trump handed the pen to an aide and directed that it be given to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Trump administration’s top health official. He’s the nephew of John F. Kennedy and son of Robert F. Kennedy. The younger Kennedy, whose anti-vaccine activism has alienated him from much of his family, has said he isn’t convinced that a lone gunman was solely responsible for his uncle’s the assassination.
When Air Force One carrying JFK and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy touched down in Dallas, they were greeted by a clear sky and enthusiastic crowds. With a reelection campaign on the horizon the next year, they went to Texas for a political fence-mending trip.
But as the motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown, shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested 24-year-old 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.
A year after the assassination, the Warren Commission, which President Lyndon B. Johnson established to investigate, concluded that Oswald acted alone and that there was no evidence of a conspiracy. But that didn’t quell a web of alternative theories over the decades.
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 of over 5 million pages of records was required to be opened by 2017, barring any exemptions designated by the president.
Trump, who took office for his first term in 2017, had said that he would allow the release of all of the remaining records but ended up holding some back because of what he called the potential harm to national security. And while files continued to be released during President Joe Biden’s administration, some remain unseen.
Researchers have estimated that 3,000 files or so haven’t been released, either in whole or in part.
And last month, the FBI said that it had discovered about 2,400 new records related to the assassination. The agency said then that it was working to transfer the records to the National Archives to be included in the declassification process.
There are still some documents in the JFK collection that researchers don’t believe the president will be able to release. Around 500 documents, including tax returns, weren’t subject to the 2017 disclosure requirement.
Some of the documents already released have offered details on the way intelligence services operated at the time, including CIA cables and memos discussing visits by Oswald to the Soviet and Cuban embassies during a trip to Mexico City just weeks before the assassination. The former Marine had previously defected to the Soviet Union before returning home to Texas.
One CIA memo describes how Oswald phoned the Soviet embassy while in Mexico City to ask for a visa to visit the Soviet Union. He also visited the Cuban embassy, apparently interested in a travel visa that would permit him to visit Cuba and wait there for a Soviet visa. On Oct. 3, more than a month before the assassination, he drove back into the United States through a crossing point at the Texas border.
Another memo, dated the day after Kennedy’s assassination, says that according to an intercepted phone call in Mexico City, Oswald communicated with a KGB officer while at the Soviet embassy that September.
The releases have also contributed to the understanding of that time period during the Cold War, researchers said.
AUSTIN – Texas Republicans in the Senate have filed a bill that aims to make it more clear when a doctor can intervene to save a pregnant patient’s life, despite the state’s near-total abortion ban. The bill does not expand abortion access or change the exceptions, but rather aims to clarify the existing law.
Sen. Bryan Hughes, author of one of the state’s abortion bans, filed Senate Bill 31, called the “Life of the Mother Act.” The bill is one of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s priorities. A matching bill has been filed in the house by Rep. Charlie Geren, a Republican from Fort Worth.
Texas’ abortion laws have an exception to save the life of the pregnant patient. But since the laws went into effect, doctors have said the vague language and strict penalties leave them uncertain of when they are actually free to intervene. Despite lawsuits, and court rulings, and guidance from the Texas Medical Board, the confusion and fear persists for doctors and the lawyers who are advising them.
Until recently, Texas Republicans maintained that the laws are clear. Hughes wrote an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle, titled, “I wrote Texas’ abortion law. It’s plenty clear about medical emergencies.” Anti-abortion groups argue that because some abortions are being performed each month, the law is working the way it was intended.
But at least three women have died, and dozens have reported medical care delayed or denied due to their doctors’ hesitation to act. In January, Patrick said he was open to clarifying the laws “so that doctors are not in fear of being penalized if they think the life of the mother is at risk.” Hughes echoed the sentiment and agreed to carry the bill.
The bill reiterates existing law that says doctors can remove an ectopic pregnancy or the remains of a fetus after a miscarriage. It also matches the definition of medical emergency to existing state law and clarifies that a doctor or a lawyer can talk with a patient about a medically necessary abortion without it being considered “aiding and abetting.” The bill also clarifies that doctors are not required to delay, alter or withhold life-saving medical treatment to try to preserve the life of the fetus.
The bill would bring into state law previous guidance from the Texas Supreme Court, which ruled that nothing in the law required the medical emergency to be imminent or irreversible before a doctor could intervene. It also proposes continuing education requirements for lawyers and doctors, to better educate them on interpreting and applying these laws.
Texas banned nearly all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy in 2021, with a legal loophole that allowed the state to skirt the protections of Roe v. Wade. After the Supreme Court overturned that 50-year-old precedent in 2022, the state banned abortions from the moment of conception.
A doctor who performs a prohibited abortion can face up to life in prison, fines of $100,000 and the loss of their medical license. Doctors report delaying care until a patient is closer to death, or pursuing procedures that are riskier medically but safer legally because they are unsure how else to proceed. Others say their hospital administrators and lawyers are restricting their ability to fully practice medicine.
The bill is unlikely to satisfy abortion advocates, who would like to see access to the procedure restored more widely, or some doctors who say the state should not be legislating the decisions they make with their patients.
But Democrats and medical organizations are getting on board, seeing SB 31 as a necessary stop-gap measure to ensure pregnant women can get the treatment they need.
“Doctors want to feel safe in providing medical care,” said Dr. Todd Ivey, a Houston OB/GYN who has been outspoken against the laws. “We want to not have to worry about the threats of criminal prosecution and civil liability, and I think this bill really goes a long way to help us with that.”
Ivey’s ideal bill would also allow abortions in cases of lethal fetal anomalies, or for pregnancies resulting from rape and incest, which are common exceptions in other states with abortion bans. But, he’s hopeful this legislation is a starting to point that will help “thaw the chilling effect” that the law has had on doctors and hospital administrators.
Rep. Ann Johnson, a Democrat from Houston, has signed on to HB 44 as a co-author. Last session, she quietly passed a bill with Hughes that created an affirmative defense for doctors who performed an abortion on an ectopic pregnancy, or after a premature membrane rupture. She was prepared to “scratch and claw” her way to more protections for doctors this session, so she’s thrilled to see the public, bipartisan support for this more wide-reaching bill.
“Let me also be clear, I am a Democrat. I am pro-choice. This is not a pro-choice bill,” she said. “This is purely a medical exception bill that deals with pregnancy complication, but it really does, in my view, address the horrific stories that we’ve been hearing from women who have a pregnancy complication and have had treatment delayed.”
Johnson said she’s had thoughtful conversations with her colleagues across the aisle on this issue and she’s hopeful the bill may move easily through the chambers.
“In a moment of just almost complete political dysfunction, this is a little ray of hope that you can have an overwhelming and bipartisan coalition of people to solve a problem that requires our immediate attention,” she said. “Let’s get this done.”
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.
UPTON COUNTY — A sinkhole around an old oil well is growing at an alarming rate on the Kelton Ranch in West Texas.
Radford Grocery #17 was originally drilled as an oil well in the 1950s and later converted to a saltwater disposal well, according to state records. The well was plugged in 1977.
The Kelton family, which owns the ranch, became alarmed recently as a sinkhole around the well rapidly grew. Water pooled in the bottom of the sinkhole. Then crude oil began migrating up from underground and formed a dark layer over the water.
By mid-March, the sinkhole was roughly 200 feet in diameter and 40 feet deep, big enough to fit a four-story building. The smell of crude permeated the air. The family has stopped using a water well they fear could be contaminated.
At some point the Radford Grocery well’s plug failed, creating a connection between the water table and the oil reservoir underground. Because the well was previously plugged and has no active operator, there’s no clear company the Keltons can turn to for help. The Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas drilling and plugging in Texas, has sent personnel to the site. But so far the Kelton family says there is no plan of action from the state agency.
“It can be fixed,” said Hawk Dunlap, a well integrity expert, as he looked over the sinkhole on Thursday. “But it’s not going to be cheap.”
The sinkhole is the latest in a string of catastrophic incidents with old oil wells in the Permian Basin of West Texas, some plugged and others not. From sinkholes to blowouts to persistent leaks, more than a century of oil drilling in the region has left a daunting array of environmental hazards. These emergencies are in addition to a long backlog of wells to plug around the state.
Acknowledging the growing challenge, the Railroad Commission requested an additional $100 million from the Legislature late last year. “The number and cost of emergency wells has significantly increased over the last five years,” RRC deputy executive director Danny Sorrells wrote to legislators, in a letter first obtained by the Houston Chronicle.
“This matter has been reported to the RRC and referred to our Site Remediation,” said agency spokesperson Bryce Dubee. “Commission staff are monitoring conditions within and around the sinkhole and considering options for addressing any concerns about groundwater quality.”
The Kelton Ranch is a few miles outside McCamey in rural Upton County. McCamey is one of countless Texas towns formed in an oil boom. Wildcatter George McCamey struck oil in 1925 and soon several companies were drilling in the area. The town, named for him, grew quickly.
The Rodman-Noel oilfield outside of McCamey, which includes the Kelton Ranch, was discovered in 1953, according to a nearby historical marker.
The Kelton family purchased the property in 1963. The Keltons remember a family tradition of walking from the ranch house to drink the well water, which was always of good quality. The family still has cattle on the ranch. They do not own the mineral rights to the oil underground, which were severed from the property rights — a common situation in the state.
Upton County is still one of the top oil-producing counties in Texas. But the area around McCamey is no longer a drilling hot spot. The Texas Legislature dubbed the town the “Wind Energy Capital of Texas” in 2001, and wind turbines dot the nearby bluffs.
Records indicate the Radford Grocery well “caved in” after it was plugged in the 1970s. The Keltons say the sinkhole has grown significantly in the past 18 months. The well casing fell deeper into the hole. They think an underground formation washed out, but they do not know why. The hole in March was notably bigger than in photos from January 2024.
“It’s suddenly much larger,” said Bill Kelton. “And it’s suddenly got oil.”
The Railroad Commission has a long-standing state program to plug orphan wells, which do not have an active operator and were not plugged by their previous owner. The agency also received significant federal funding to plug orphan wells during the Biden administration.
In addition to the Railroad Commission’s recent funding request, a Republican-backed bill in the Texas Legislature this session would set a timeline for operators to plug inactive wells.
However, wells such as the one on the Kelton Ranch pose an additional challenge. Because they were previously plugged and do not have an active operator, they are not considered orphan wells. The legal responsibility for cleanup when a plugged well fails is the subject of a lawsuit over another property 50 miles north as the crow flies.
Antina Ranch landowner Ashley Watt is suing Chevron, saying the failures contaminated her property. Her attorney, Sarah Stogner, has taken to calling these situations across the Permian Basin “zombie wells” that come back to life long after they are plugged, spewing salty water, oil or hazardous gases.
The problem is mounting month by month. The Kelton Ranch is about 40 miles from a pair of blowouts that happened in Crane County in January 2022 and December 2023. Another blowout in October 2024 alarmed the Reeves County town of Toyah. Yet another leaking orphan well was identified last month in nearby Pecos County, on land that rancher Schuyler Wight leases for cattle grazing.
The Railroad Commission has responded to several recent well emergencies. Plugging the well that caused the December 2023 blowout cost $2.5 million. The more recent blowout near Toyah was plugged by the pipeline company Kinder Morgan.
Meanwhile, earthquakes linked to wastewater injection wells continue to rock the area. The Railroad Commission has restricted deep injection to reduce seismicity in the area.
Southern Methodist University geophysicist Zhong Lu has published papers on the Permian Basin’s sinkholes, earthquakes and subsidence — the gradual sinking of the ground. His research indicates that the combination of intensive oil and gas drilling and the limestone and salt formations of the Permian Basin have made the surface unstable.
Landowners like the Keltons are seeking answers as the pockmarked surface of the Permian Basin sinks, shakes and crumbles.
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.
HOUSTON (AP) — A Texas midwife has been arrested and accused of providing illegal abortions, marking the first time authorities have filed criminal charges under the state’s near-total abortion ban, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Monday.
Maria Margarita Rojas has been charged with the illegal performance of an abortion, a second-degree felony, as well as practicing medicine without a license, which is a third-degree felony.
Paxton alleges that Rojas, 48, illegally operated at least three clinics in the Houston area where illegal abortion procedures were performed in direct violation of state law.
“In Texas, life is sacred. I will always do everything in my power to protect the unborn, defend our state’s pro-life laws, and work to ensure that unlicensed individuals endangering the lives of women by performing illegal abortions are fully prosecuted,” Paxton said in a statement. “Texas law protecting life is clear, and we will hold those who violate it accountable.”
Waller County District Attorney Sean Whittmore, whose office is located northwest of Houston, referred the case to Paxton for prosecution, according to the state Attorney General’s Office.
Waller County court records show Rojas was arrested on March 6 and she was released on bond the next day.
Court records did not list an attorney for Rojas who could speak on her behalf.
A woman reached by phone at one of Rojas’ clinics said Monday she did not know who Rojas was. Messages left at Rojas’ two other clinics were not immediately returned. On their Facebook pages, the clinics advertise various services, including physical exams, ultrasounds and vaccines.
Texas is one of 12 states currently enforcing a ban on abortion at all stages of pregnancy. Texas’ ban allows exceptions when a pregnant patient has a life-threatening condition. Opponents of the ban say it is too vague when it comes to when medically necessary exceptions are allowed. A bill has been filed in the current Texas legislative session to clarify medical exceptions allowed under the law.
The charge of illegal performance of an abortion carries a punishment of up to 20 years in prison while the charge of practicing medicine without a license carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.
Paxton’s office said it has filed a temporary restraining order to close Rojas’ clinics.
In the U.S., there have been few, if any, criminal charges filed alleging the operation of illegal abortion clinics since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and opened the door to state abortion bans.
A Louisiana grand jury earlier this year indicted a New York doctor on charges that she illegally prescribed abortion pills online to a Louisiana patient. Paxton has filed a civil lawsuit against the same doctor under a similar accusation.
___
Associated Press reporter Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
___
Follow Juan A. Lozano: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70
MANDAN, N.D. (AP) — Greenpeace used malicious and deceptive tactics to disrupt the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline and keep it from going forward, an attorney for the company behind the project said Monday.
But attorneys for the environmental advocacy group said during their closing arguments that Greenpeace had little involvement with the 2016-17 protests that are central to the case.
A North Dakota jury began deliberating Monday after a weekslong trial over Dallas-based Energy Transfer’s argument that Greenpeace defamed the company and disrupted the project.
What is the case about?
The energy company and its subsidiary Dakota Access accused Greenpeace International, Greenpeace USA and funding arm Greenpeace Fund Inc. of defamation, civil conspiracy, trespass, nuisance and other acts, and is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
Nine jurors and two alternates heard the case after it went to trial in late February. Their verdict will include what damages, if any, to award.
Trey Cox, an attorney for the pipeline company, highlighted damages per claim totaling nearly $350 million.
The lawsuit is linked to the protests against the oil pipeline and its controversial Missouri River crossing upstream of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation. The tribe has long opposed the pipeline as a risk to its water supply. The pipeline has been transporting oil since mid-2017.
What did the company say?
Cox said Greenpeace exploited a small, disorganized, local issue to promote its agenda, calling Greenpeace “master manipulators” and “deceptive to the core.”
Greenpeace paid professional protesters, organized or led protester trainings, shared intelligence of the pipeline route with protesters and sent lockboxes for demonstrators to attach themselves to equipment, Cox said.
Among a number of alleged defamatory statements were that the company deliberately desecrated burial grounds during construction, which Cox said was done to harm Energy Transfer’s reputation in the international investment community. The company made 140 slight adjustments to its route to avoid disturbing sacred or cultural sites, he said.
Greenpeace’s “lies impacted lenders,” Cox said. Energy Transfer suffered $96 million in lost financing and $7 million in public relations costs, he said.
The pipeline was delayed by five months, and the company lost $80 million because it couldn’t turn on the spigot on Jan. 1, 2017, when oil was to start flowing, Cox said.
He asked the jury to find the Greenpeace entities liable.
“It needs to be done for Morton County. It needs to be done for Morton County’s law enforcement and the next community where Greenpeace exploits an opportunity to push its agenda at any cost,” Cox told the jury, referring to the county where the protests were centered.
How did Greenpeace respond?
Attorneys for Greenpeace said Energy Transfer didn’t prove its case or meet its legal burden for defamation or damages, that Greenpeace employees had little or no presence or involvement in the protests, and that Greenpeace had nothing to do with the company’s delays in construction or refinancing.
A letter signed by leaders of Greenpeace International and Greenpeace USA and sent to banks involved in the project’s construction loan contained the alleged defamatory statement about desecrating burial grounds, which Cox equated to digging up dead bodies.
Greenpeace International attorney Courtney DeThomas said the other side hasn’t shown how the one act of signing a letter with 500 other organizations damaged them, and that the letter would have been sent to the banks with or without Greenpeace’s name on it. Thousands of protesters were already at Standing Rock by the time the letter was signed, she said.
Greenpeace USA attorney Everett Jack Jr. disputed the company’s claims as including costs from months before and years after the protests, with no witnesses to say that the Greenpeace entities were the cause.
Jack also said no law enforcement officers or any of Energy Transfer’s security personnel testified that Greenpeace was the cause of any violence or property destruction, or was a leader, organizer or instigator in the protests. He said law enforcement “did a phenomenal job of watching the protests.”
Greenpeace representatives have criticized the lawsuit as an example of corporations abusing the legal system to go after critics and called it a critical test of free speech and protest rights. An Energy Transfer spokesperson said the case is about Greenpeace not following the law, not free speech.