Today is
Friday April 11, 2025
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.
Texas employment grew an annualized 2.1 percent in February, while January employment was revised down to 1.7 percent growth.
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.
“February job growth was broad based, led by increases in the energy, leisure and hospitality, and construction sectors,” said Jesus Cañas, Dallas Fed senior business economist. “Only employment in professional and business services dropped. Employment rose in most major metropolitan areas of the state but fell in Houston and Austin.”
Additional key takeaways from the latest Dallas Fed report:???????
The forecast suggests 276,000 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 2.1 percent month over month in February, an increase from January’s growth of 1.7 percent.??
The unemployment rate, which takes into account changes in the total labor force along with other factors, increased in Austin–Round Rock, Brownsville–Harlingen, Fort Worth–Arlington, Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land, and San Antonio–New Braunfels, according to?seasonally adjusted numbers?from the Dallas Fed.???? ????
The rate was unchanged in Dallas–Plano–Irving and El Paso.
It decreased in Laredo.
The Texas statewide unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.1 percent in February.???
LEE COUNTY – In Central Texas, a bitter fight over a $1 billion water project offers a preview of the future for much of the state as decades of rapid growth pushes past the local limits of its most vital natural resource.
On one side: Georgetown, the fastest-growing city in America for three years straight, which in 2023 signed a contract with an investor-funded enterprise to quickly begin importing vast volumes of water from the Simsboro Formation of the Carrizo Wilcox Aquifer, 80 miles to the east.
On the other side: the cities atop the Simsboro that rely on its water. Bryan, College Station and the Texas A&M University System, a metro area with almost 300,000 people, have sued the developer to stop the project. A trial is set for the first week of May.
“We’re going to fight this thing until the end,” said Bobby Gutierrez, the mayor of Bryan. “It effectively drains the water source of the cities.”
The pump and pipeline project to Georgetown, developed by California-based Upwell Water, is the largest of at least a half dozen similar projects recently completed, under construction or proposed to bring rural Carrizo Wilcox aquifer water into the booming urban corridor that follows Interstate 35 through Central Texas.
It would eventually pump up to 89 million gallons per day, three times the usage of the city of Bryan.
“That basically stops all the economic development we have,” Gutierrez said. “We’re talking about our survival.”
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The fight over the Upwell project could well be a prelude for the broader battles to come as cities across Texas outgrow their water supplies. Lawmakers in the state Capitol are pushing to avert a broad scarcity crisis with funding to desalinate seawater, purify salty groundwater and treat oilfield wastewater to add to the supply. But all of these solutions remain years from realization. In the near term, only import projects from freshwater aquifers will continue to meet the growing water demands of thirsty Texas cities.
Regulation of such projects falls to a patchwork of small, rural agencies called groundwater conservation districts, which might not be fully equipped or empowered to manage plans for competing regional water needs that can affect entire cities for generations to come.
Texas law offers limited clarity, generally preferring a landowner’s right to pump their own groundwater over regulations on private property. Despite fierce denunciations of the Upwell project from nearby city leaders, no one has alleged that its developers have broken any laws.
“We’re following the rules. Why are we being vilified?” said David Lynch, a managing partner at Core Capital investment firm in Houston and a partner in the Upwell project. “I think they feel uncomfortable about what’s coming and their reaction is to make us go away.”
After all, he’s not the only one doing this. Five years ago, San Antonio started pumping up to 49 million gallons per day through a 140-mile pipeline from the Carrizo Wilcox Aquifer. Another pipeline was completed last year and will soon begin pumping to the city of Taylor and the new Samsung microchip manufacturing complex there. Another, scheduled for completion this year, will take water into the cities of Buda and Kyle.
After the lawsuit delayed the Upwell project’s tight timeline, Georgetown commissioned two other pipeline projects from the same aquifer.
“People are starting to pay enough for water to make these sorts of projects work,” Lynch said, driving his black Ford Super Duty Platinum truck down the dirt roads of Upwell’s 9,000-acre farm property and well field in Robertson County. “There’s no cheap water left in Texas.”
In the middle of all this is the little Brazos Valley Groundwater Conservation District, based in the small town of Hearne and also a defendant, alongside Upwell, in the lawsuit.
District manager Alan Day feels for the cities of Bryan and College Station. To an extent, he said, they are right. The more pumping from the aquifer, the sooner everyone will reach conditions of scarcity, though he doesn’t think it will happen as quickly as city leaders say.
At the same time, he said, “Bryan can’t claim the water.” Groundwater is a private property right in Texas as sacred as any other. Everyone is allowed to pump whatever their land produces.
“Water is the new oil,” said Day, a former ranch manager of 27 years. “They have a commodity that can be sold and they have every right to sell it.”
At this time, he said, he has no authority to stop landowners from pumping as long as they fulfill the requirements of the permitting process, which Upwell did. Even if he could do it, Day chuckled at the notion that state leaders would let his tiny office put the brakes on development along the I-35 corridor, home to manufacturing campuses of Tesla, Samsung and Apple, and offices of Amazon, Meta and Google, as well as one of the nation’s largest clusters of data centers and its fastest growing cities.
However, Day said, there will come a day when that changes. The laws for his district, like all others in Texas, specify a threshold at which new rules kick in. It’s called the “desired future condition,” or DFC, a level below which the district is not willing to go. When they get there, everyone will face restrictions on pumping and the days of groundwater abundance will be over for the Simsboro portion of the aquifer. To date, no district in Texas has hit its DFC.
Day said he’s only following the rules. He’ll honor the property rights of landowners who want to pump, and when they hit the DFC, he’ll implement restrictions district-wide.
“What does that do to the growth of Bryan and College Station and Texas A&M and anyone else who is depending on Simsboro?” Day asked. “It stops it.”
This situation follows a generation of steep growth and development that state leaders have dubbed the “Texas Miracle.” The population of Williamson County, seated in Georgetown, 28 miles north of Austin, doubled in 17 years to 700,000 people while its median household income increased by more than 90%. Neighboring counties share similar stories, where sprawling subdivisions and shimmering tech campuses now cover former ranchlands.
Georgetown needs to add millions of gallons per day to its water supply within the next several years. When it signed the pipeline contract in 2023 that stipulated deliveries beginning in 2030, it was acting on a much tighter timeline than decades that are typically considered for large scale water planning.
“Based on hyper growth that we’ve seen in our water territory, we’ve seen the need for higher levels of contracted water sooner than we originally anticipated,” said city manager David Morgan.
Most of the new water will serve new residential areas, he said, and will be used primarily to irrigate lawns and other neighborhood landscaping. Williamson County is also courting a cluster of five large data centers that it expects would bring another 100,000 people to the county.
But what if Bryan, and the cities of the Brazos Valley, want data centers, too? The region is currently pursuing ambitious opportunities in semiconductors, nuclear energy, aerospace, defense and life sciences, said Susan Davenport, president of the Greater Brazos Partnership, an economic development group.
“These sectors, along with the growing workforce and families who support them, are directly dependent on access to our local water resources,” she said.
Although many major projects importing groundwater into Central Texas are just now being realized, the plans have been in the works for decades, according to Michelle Gangnes, a retired finance lawyer and co-founder of the Simsboro Aquifer Water Defense Fund.
In 1998 Gangnes moved from Austin to rural Lee County. That same year, San Antonio, 140 miles away, announced plans to import 49 million gallons per day from wells in Lee County on the site of an old Alcoa aluminum smelter. A prolonged fight ensued and the project was never realized, but many others would follow.
“That’s what started the whole gold rush on water,” Gangnes said. “It resulted in all these groundwater districts being formed, trying to resist the water rush on the Simsboro.”
The groundwater districts were formed by an act of the Texas legislature in 2001. But, when the time came to make groundwater rules, powerful interests kept them loose, according to Ken Kramer, who previously directed the Texas office of the Sierra Club for 24 years. Chief among them was T. Boone Pickens, the iconic Texas oilman who also wanted to export groundwater from his land holdings in the Panhandle.
“There was heavy lobbying by groundwater exporters to make sure that groundwater districts could not stop exports,” Kramer said. “Groundwater then became more of the target for moving water to growing areas and populations.”
Under a principle in Texas called the “right of capture,” landowners are allowed to pump from their land whatever they are able to. Changes made to the Texas Water Code in 2001 stipulated that withdrawals are allowed so long as they don’t affect other permit holders “unreasonably,” which lacks a firm legal definition. That leaves lots up to interpretation for the groundwater districts of Texas.
“They live in a difficult world where it’s unclear exactly what their power is to tell somebody no,” said Robert Mace, executive director of the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University. “If you tell somebody no you’re almost guaranteed to get sued.”
In recent years, several major pipeline projects into Central Texas came online. San Antonio eventually got its Carrizo Wilcox Aquifer water through a 6-foot-wide, 140-mile long Vista Ridge pipeline which began drawing water from Burleson County in 2020, causing levels in neighboring landowners’ wells to plummet.
The old Alcoa wells in Burleson County were also put to use. A developer called Xebec Holdings bought the 50-square-mile property in 2022 and signed deals to pipe almost 18 million gallons per day to the City of Tyler.
“There’s constantly people out there trying to lease water rights to see if they could do a project to sell water,” said Gary Westbrook, general manager of the Post Oak Savannah Groundwater Conservation District. “We’re going to have to find a way to regulate. You can’t just say no.”
A Gatehouse Pipeline is currently under construction to Georgetown, with another one called Recharge in development. Morgan, the Georgetown city manager, said those two projects were identified and accelerated after the lawsuit challenged the Upwell project.
“We believe the lawsuit is going to likely delay getting that fully resolved,” he said.
Upwell Water, a San Francisco-based financing firm, announced in 2020 that it had raised $1 billion from investors “to monetize water assets.”
Upwell partnered with CoreCapital investors in Houston, which bought its 9,000-acre Robertson County farm property in 2021. Lynch, the managing partner at CoreCapital, said he expected to sit on the property for 10 years until the economics of water made it attractive to develop a major export project.
But as soon as he entered the market, he found eager buyers willing to pay well.
“We bought it and all of a sudden we had everybody calling saying we need water,” Lynch said. “Then we said, we have more demand than we can supply, let’s talk to the neighbors.”
Upwell recruited seven neighboring landowners to put company wells on their property and contribute to the export project.
These aren’t regular irrigation wells, which in this area can tap water 40 feet down. These are 1,400 feet deep, cased in 2-foot-wide steel pipe, able to produce large volumes.
“It’s a million-dollar hole,” said Mark Hoelscher, one of the neighboring landowners involved in the project, as he looked up at one of the diesel-powered well installations. “It’s big time.”
In October 2022, Upwell received permits for 16 wells to pump nearly 45 million gallons per day without any challenges in the hearing process. Four months later it received its permit to export the water out-of-district. Then in September 2023, the district issued permits for another 32 wells belonging to the seven adjoining landowners to produce an additional 45 million gallons per day.
Until that point, authorities in the Bryan-College Station metro area, some 30 miles south, apparently remained unaware of the project transpiring in Robertson County. Not until September 2024, when the district considered applications for updated permits to export the combined 89 million-gallon-per-day production of all 48 wells, did Texas A&M University enter into the proceedings, filing a request for review by the State Office of Administrative Hearings.
Texas A&M University declined to comment for this story.
“No one has questioned the fact that we own the land and we have rights to the water underneath it,” said Hoelscher, a third generation landowner in the Brazos River Valley. “The fact of the matter is the water is ours.”
One week later, A&M filed a lawsuit in state district court seeking a temporary injunction stopping the groundwater district from recognizing any of the permits associated with the Upwell project until a hearing is held.
A&M argued that the previously issued permits should be open for re-examination because some board members of the groundwater district were ineligible for service at the time the permits were originally approved.
In November, Bryan and College Station filed papers to join the lawsuit. It said their “ability to produce groundwater from their Simsboro wells and the economic vitality of the region will be adversely affected if the Contested Applications are granted.”
College Station Mayor John Nichols, a former professor of agricultural sciences at Texas A&M, said in a statement: “The transfer of groundwater from our district to users in other areas is one of the most significant issues facing the College Station/Bryan area. I’m a staunch proponent of private property rights, but we are deeply concerned about the long-term impact of excessive extraction on our community.”
He called on lawmakers to adopt statewide groundwater regulations ensuring the rights of current permit holders over new water users.
None of that, however, matters to the trial that will take place in early May. All the judge will decide is whether or not A&M and the cities have rights to challenge the previously issued permits.
In court filings, Upwell argued A&M’s petition “demands that the Court turn back time and recognize a non-existent ‘right’ to administratively contest final groundwater permits that the Brazos Valley Groundwater Conservation District properly noticed and issued to Intervenors months and years prior — all without any complaint or contest by any party, including Plaintiff.”
If the judge denies A&M’s request, the permits will be issued and work will begin on the Upwell project pipeline.
If the judge grants A&M’s request, the permits will head into a potentially yearslong process of state administrative hearings that could threaten the viability of the project and its promised returns to investors.
Whether or not the pipeline gets built, other similar projects are likely to follow. The situation is headed in one direction: toward the DFC, the threshold at which restrictions begin.
In the Brazos Valley and surrounding districts, that threshold is a 262-foot drop in water wells from levels measured in 2000. In the 25 years since then, pumping has led the wells’ water to drop by one quarter of that allotted reduction, according to district manager Day, suggesting ample water supplies remain.
But, that remains to be seen. In total, Day said his district has issued permits for up to 291 million gallons per day of pumping from the Simsboro Formation, averaged yearly, of which 89 million gallons per day are associated with the Upwell project. However, only a fraction of that permitted volume is actually pumped.
If all permitted pumping were to suddenly come online, Day said, computer models showed they would hit the DFC in six years.
In reality it won’t happen quite that fast. The Upwell project plans to scale up its pumping gradually over years. And many farmers hold irrigation permits to pump much more water than they ever actually will, unless they also encounter the opportunity to join an export project.
When the aquifer hits the DFC, the rules say it mustn’t fall further. That means all users would face mandatory curtailment. It’s unclear how such unprecedented measures would be enforced in Texas.
For Gutierrez, the mayor of Bryan, this management method creates a contest for investors to tap the water-wealthy Simsboro Formation and sell off its bounty before time runs out.
“They want to exploit everything we have for their personal benefit,” he said. “It’s a race of who can take the most amount of water in the least amount of time to deplete a resource for their pocketbooks.”
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.
GAINES COUNTY – The Trump administration this week announced plans to clawback $11 billion in pandemic-era grants that could harm local Texas public health departments as they battle a historic measles outbreak.
In Lubbock, where many of the 40 Texans infected with measles have been hospitalized, grant funding affected by the announcement has paid for an epidemiologist who has directly responded to the measles outbreak in West Texas that has killed a 6-year-old girl. In Dallas, the grant funding was helping to equip a biolaboratory that will support more testing for pathogens, including measles.
“It’s kind of crazy to have this funding cut,” said Lubbock’s public health director Katherine Wells. “I don’t have a savings account in public health.”
The Trump administration confirmed Tuesday that it was going to eliminate funding that had been created to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, prioritizing instead on projects that address chronic diseases and the president’s Make America Healthy Again initiative. Much of that funding, however, has been used to pay for infrastructure to respond to infectious diseases other than COVID, including measles, local health officials have said.
The Texas Department of State Health Services notified public health departments late Tuesday of the federal government’s plans. State officials have not provided specifics on how much money is cut or how many health departments are impacted.
“DSHS was notified that the federal grant funding for Immunization/COVID, Epidemiology Laboratory Capacity (ELC/COVID), and Health Disparities/COVID, is terminated as of March 24, 2025,” according to the the notice from the agency’s associate commissioner Imelda Garcia. “The Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS or System Agency) is issuing this notice to pause all activities immediately. Please do not accrue any additional costs as of the date of this notice.”
Wells said the funding cut will impact her office’s work combating the spread of measles. Lubbock has been using three grants to help pay for extra temporary staff, a part-time nurse and a full-time epidemiologist to help with vaccinations, answering phones and working with testing of patients. Two of the city’s three grants were not set to expire until 2026.
Ten of the state’s 327 measles cases have been confirmed in Lubbock and 226 cases have been in Gaines County, about 90 minutes southwest of Lubbock.
This measles outbreak has further exposed Texas’ threadbare public health system.
The grants, she said, allowed her to hire eight people to help shoulder the workload the outbreak has brought. Since January, Lubbock hospitals have treated many of the more than 300 patients infected with measles, including a 6-year-old who died on Feb. 26.
“We’re trying to figure it out,” Wells said. But with state and federal funds cut, city and county health department that counted on those COVID-19 era grants for new programs and outreach will now have to go to local taxpayers to help shore up the abrupt shortfall.
Dallas County has already broken ground on a $52 million biolab to help combat future health threats. Their health director, Dr. Philip Huang, said the grant money Dallas County had received was going to be used to help equip that new lab.
“It was a lot of equipment,” Huang said. “These machines can help with COVID but these machines also help with our preparedness and ability to test a lot of other pathogens … including measles.”
Like Wells, he and other public health officials are now going to have to determine how to still move forward without this funding.
“The things that we’re doing and using the funds for COVID have great implications for our future preparedness for everything else so we’re not in the same situation at the start of COVID,” he said. “We had seen how little investment there had been in public health, so it’s very short sighted to say, ‘OK, well these were COVID funds it’s over.’ It’s not.”
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.
COPPELL (AP) -The mortgage company Rocket is buying competitor Mr. Cooper in an all-stock deal valued at $9.4 billion, just weeks after acquiring real estate listing company Redfin.
AUSTIN – The Texas Democratic Party’s governing board on Saturday elected Kendall Scudder to lead the party forward as its new chair after a devastating performance in November and years of electoral defeats.
“The challenge that we’re facing right now is terrifying for this country and for this state, and a lot of people are counting on us to come together and do the right thing and make sure that we are building a Texas Democratic Party that is worthy of the grassroots in this state,” Scudder said upon taking the gavel. “Let’s build a party that the working men and women of this state can be proud of.”
Scudder took 65 out of 121 votes, an outright majority in the seven-way race.
Scudder will take over as chair of the state party at a moment when Democrats are grasping for a way forward after blowout losses up and down the ballot last year, including President Donald Trump’s victory and a surge to the right by traditionally Democratic groups, such as Hispanic voters in South Texas.
After proclaiming Texas a competitive state where Democratic candidates had a fighting chance of winning statewide for the first time in three decades, party leaders instead watched as Trump and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz trounced their Democratic challengers by roughly 14 and 9 percentage points, respectively. Democrats also ceded ground in the state Legislature and lost nearly every contested state appellate court race, in addition to 10 judicial races in Harris County — eating away at years of Democratic dominance in Texas’ largest county.
That left many Democrats concerned that, after appearing to come within striking distance of winning statewide in 2018, the party was back at a sobering low.
Longtime Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa announced his resignation shortly after the election, acknowledging the party’s poor performance and a need for a new direction.
That push for a fresh vision defined the race for party chair. Scudder will be the incumbent come 2026, when a broader group of delegates will elect the next full-term chair at the party convention in Corpus Christi. The 121-member State Democratic Executive Committee chose Hinojosa’s successor at the Saturday meeting, its first quarterly meeting of the year, because he resigned in the middle of his four-year term.
During his campaign, Scudder, an East Texas native, emphasized the importance of listening to the “grassroots.” Even before he launched his candidacy, he had accused party leadership under Hinojosa of ignoring those voters and activists. He wants to “recalibrate” the party toward a focus on working people.
“The reality is simply that Democrats on the ground don’t have a lot of confidence in party leadership anymore,” Scudder told The Texas Tribune in an interview on Thursday.
He wants the party to pay attention to areas he says it has previously written off, like rural communities, and put a priority on Spanish-language communications.
Scudder has worked in affordable housing and real estate. He came onto the state party stage through the SDEC, although he began his political activism with the Texas Young Democrats and the Texas College Democrats.
Scudder’s leading opponents, former Harris County Democratic Party Chair Lillie Schechter and former Annie’s List Executive Director Patsy Woods Martin, had offered similar but competing visions to re-establish Democratic credibility on kitchen table issues and reconnect with voters in their communities. During the campaign, Schechter and Woods Martin emphasized their experience getting Democratic candidates elected.
The SDEC hosted a candidate forum in Austin on Friday evening before toasting Hinojosa, the outgoing chair.
There, and at the panel’s meeting on Saturday, party insiders discussed how to rebuild credibility with working class voters, engage young people, fundraise and build a party infrastructure that better facilitates elected officials’ involvement in races around the state.
“The problem is that every Democrat thinks that if they had 10 more minutes, they could explain it to you,” Scudder said on party messaging during the forum. “We’ve got to get to a point where we’re speaking to people at their gut, because people vote with their guts and not their brains.”
While most party chair contests are shaped by region and race and decided at the party’s convention during midterm election years, this race was a more insular affair whose outcome was determined by a small group of the party’s activists, many of whom are progressives dissatisfied with the party’s strategies and operations.
Although the SDEC was prepared to go multiple rounds with their ranked choice ballot, Scudder’s 65 allowed him to win in the first round. Woods Martin took 27 votes, and Schechter took 26. Denton County Democratic Party Chair Delia Parker-Mims took two votes, and Meri Gomez rounded out the count with one vote. Eight candidates appeared on the ballot, but one dropped out before the election.
As the votes were tabulated, members passed out to-go shots of blue liquor — and non-alcoholic options — in an effort to liven spirits after a difficult 2024 election and an unprecedented chair race.
The candidates were largely aligned ideologically. And they especially all agreed on the need for change in the party’s direction.
“We are at an inflection point right now,” Schechter said, “and if we don’t learn lessons from the last election, and continue doing things status quo, we’re never going to win in Texas.”
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.
(AP) – Norfolk Southern wants two other companies to help pay for the $600 million class-action settlement it agreed to over its disastrous 2023 train derailment near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border and the toxic chemicals that were released and burned.
The railroad filed the motion that is set to go to trial starting Monday to force the railcar owner GATX and the chemical manufacturer OxyVinyls to share the cost of the settlement because Norfolk Southern believes those companies are partly responsible for what happened in East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 3, 2023.
This lawsuit won’t change anything about how much money residents will receive from the settlement or any payments the village or anyone else is set to receive because those are all established in various settlement agreements. This case will only affect which company has to write the checks to pay for the class-action settlement.
Residents are still waiting to receive most of the money from the settlement because of pending appeals, although some payments have started to go out.
An assortment of chemicals spilled and caught fire after the train derailed in East Palestine. Three days later, officials blew open five tank cars filled with vinyl chloride because they feared those cars might explode, generating a massive black plume of smoke that spread over the town and forced evacuations.
Many residents still worry today about potential health consequences from those chemicals.
The derailment was the worst rail disaster since a crude oil train devastated the small Canadian town of Lac-Megantic and killed 47 people in 2013. It prompted the U.S. to focus on rail safety and reforms, which were proposed in Congress before stalling without passing.
Norfolk Southern says companies share the responsibility
Norfolk Southern already lost a similar lawsuit last year when it tried to force GATX and OxyVinyls to help pay for the environmental cleanup after the derailment that has cost the Atlanta-based railroad more than $1 billion. It is making similar arguments again to try to get help paying for the class-action settlement.
“Norfolk Southern alone has paid the costs relating to the derailment despite ample evidence that other parties share in the responsibility. This trial is about reinforcing the role shippers and railcar owners play in transportation safety and ensuring everyone responsible pays their fair share,” the railroad said in a statement.
Norfolk Southern, like most railroads, doesn’t own most of the cars it hauls, and the railroad says everyone involved in shipping hazardous chemicals bears some responsibility for ensuring their safety under federal regulations.
Norfolk Southern argues GATX bears some responsibility for the derailment because it owned the railcar filled with plastic pellets that caused the derailment when its bearing overheated, caught fire and failed that night, sending 38 cars off the rails.
Norfolk Southern also said it believes OxyVinyls should pay because the railroad says chemical manufacturer provided inconsistent and inaccurate information about its vinyl chloride before officials decided to release and burn it.
Companies say Norfolk Southern was responsible for safety
Both GATX and OxyVinyls say it would be ridiculous to hold them responsible for the derailment when Norfolk Southern operated and inspected the train and all the cars and was responsible for delivering the cargo safely.
“Norfolk Southern’s claims against GATX are baseless,” the railcar owner said in a statement.
GATX said it complied with all the relevant regulations for taking care of its railcars. The company said that even if the car was damaged six years earlier by standing parked in the middle of floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey, the railroad should have spotted the problem and repaired it, sending GATX the bill for the repairs.
The National Transportation Safety Board said the crash was caused by the failure of an overheating bearing on GATX’s railcar. The railroad’s sensors spotted the bearing starting to heat up in the miles before the derailment, but it didn’t reach a critical temperature and trigger an alarm until just before the derailment. That left the crew scant time to stop the train.
Norfolk Southern recommended the vent-and-burn operation to release the vinyl chloride based partly on information about the chemical that OxyVinyls had published beforehand suggesting a chemical reaction could happen and cause the tank cars to explode.
But the NTSB confirmed in its investigation that was unnecessary because the tank cars were starting to cool off and the railroad failed to listen to the advice from OxyVinyls’ experts or share their opinions with the officials who made the decision.
“This trial is nothing more than Norfolk Southern’s continued attempt to shift the blame, attention, and financial responsibility for its train derailment, response, and vent and burn decision to anyone other than itself,” the Texas-based company said. “OxyVinyls did not cause the derailment, its tank cars did not breach, and it did not make the decision to vent and burn the VCM (vinyl chloride monomer) cars.”
The trial is expected to last two to three weeks.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The top vaccine official with the Food and Drug Administration has resigned and criticized the nation’s top health official for allowing “misinformation and lies” to guide his thinking behind the safety of vaccinations.
Dr. Peter Marks sent a letter to Acting FDA Commissioner Sara Brenner on Friday saying that he would resign and retire by April 5 as director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
In his letter, which was obtained by The Associated Press, Marks said he was “willing to work” to address the concerns expressed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about the safety of vaccinations. But he concluded that wasn’t possible.
“It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies,” he wrote.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment.
Marks was offered the choice of resigning or being fired by Kennedy, according to a former FDA official familiar with the discussions, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he didn’t have permission to discuss the matter publicly.
Kennedy has a long history of spreading anti-vaccine misinformation, although during his Senate confirmation hearings he seemed to say he would not undermine vaccines. He promised the chair of the Senate health committee that he would not change existing vaccine recommendations.
Since becoming secretary, Kennedy has vowed to scrutinize the safety of childhood vaccinations, despite decades of evidence they are safe and have saved millions of lives.
Marks oversaw the agency’s rapid review and approval of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments during the pandemic.
Marks is credited with coining the name and concept for “Operation Warp Speed,” the effort under President Donald Trump to rapidly manufacture vaccines while they were still being tested for safety and efficacy. The initiative cut years off the normal development process.
Despite the project’s success, Trump repeatedly lashed out at the FDA for not approving the first COVID shots even sooner. Trump told confidants after his 2020 loss that he would have been reelected if the vaccine had been available before Election Day.
Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, criticized what he called the “firing” of Marks.
“RFK Jr.’s firing of Peter Marks because he wouldn’t bend a knee to his misinformation campaign now allows the fox to guard the hen house,” Offit said. “It’s a sad day for America’s children.”
Former FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said the issues raised in Marks’ resignation letter “should be frightening to anyone committed to the importance of evidence to guide policies and patient decisions.”
“I hope this will intensify the communication across academia, industry and government to bolster the importance of science and evidence,” he wrote.
The resignation follows news Friday that HHS plans to lay off 10,000 workers and shut down entire agencies, including ones that oversee billions of dollars in funds for addiction services and community health centers across the country.
In a post on social media Thursday, Kennedy criticized the department he oversees as an inefficient “sprawling bureaucracy.” He also faulted the department’s 82,000 workers for a decline in Americans’ health.
The resignation is the latest blow to the beleaguered health agency, which has been rocked for weeks by layoffs, retirements and a chaotic return-to-office process that left many staffers without permanent offices, desks or other supplies. Last month, Jim Jones, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods, resigned, citing “the indiscriminate firing” of nearly 90 staffers in his division, according to a copy of his resignation letter obtained by the AP.
Marks, who could not be reached for comment, also raised concerns in his letter about “efforts currently being advanced by some on the adverse health effects of vaccination are concerning” as well as the “unprecedented assault on scientific truth that has adversely impacted public health in our nation.”
He went on to detail the historic benefits of vaccinations dating back to George Washington and pointed to the ongoing measles outbreak as proof of what can happen when doubts about science take hold.
“The ongoing multistate measles outbreak that is particularly severe in Texas reminds us of what happens when confidence in well-established science underlying public health and well-being is undermined,” he wrote.
The measles outbreak, which could go on for months, has now spread to Kansas and Ohio after sickening more than 370 in Texas and New Mexico.
If it hits other unvaccinated communities across the U.S., as may now be the case in Kansas, the outbreak could endure for a year and threaten the nation’s status as having eliminated the local spread of the vaccine-preventable disease, public health experts said.
DALLAS (AP) – A county clerk in New York refused Thursday to file a more than $100,000 judgment from Texas against a doctor accused of prescribing abortion pills to a woman near Dallas, setting up a potential challenge to laws designed to shield abortion providers who serve patients in states with abortion bans.
A Texas judge last month ordered Dr. Margaret Carpenter, who practices north of New York City, to pay the penalty for allegedly breaking that state’s law by prescribing abortion medication via telemedicine. The Texas attorney general’s office followed up last week by asking a New York court to enforce the default civil judgment, which is $113,000 with attorney and filing fees.
The acting Ulster County clerk refused.
“In accordance with the New York State Shield Law, I have refused this filing and will refuse any similar filings that may come to our office. Since this decision is likely to result in further litigation, I must refrain from discussing specific details about the situation,” Acting Clerk Taylor Bruck said in a prepared statement.
Republican Texas State Attorney General Ken Paxton said he was outraged by the refusal and signaled he would take action.
“New York is shredding the Constitution to hide lawbreakers from justice, and it must end,” Paxton said on X. “I will not stop my efforts to enforce Texas’s pro-life laws that protect our unborn children and mothers.”
New York is among eight states with telemedicine shield laws, which were considered a target for abortion opponents even before the standoff between officials New York and Texas.
Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul last month invoked her state’s shield law in rejecting Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s request to extradite Carpenter to Louisiana, where the doctor was charged with prescribing abortion pills to a pregnant minor.
Hochul on Thursday praised Bruck’s refusal and said “New York is grateful for his courage and common sense.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James also praised Bruck and said her office “will always defend New York’s medical professionals and the people they serve.”
Bruck became acting county clerk last year after a resignation and has been endorsed by county Democrats for election to the post. As county clerk, he has an administrative role in court filings.
A call seeking comment was made to Carpenter, who is the co-medical director and founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine. Carpenter did not show up for a hearing in the case in Texas.
Also in Texas, a Waller County judge issued a temporary injunction preventing a network of Houston-area clinics from reopening. The clinics were operated by a midwife accused by state authorities of performing illegal abortions. The ruling extends a temporary restraining order that shut down the clinics last week.
Maria Margarita Rojas has been charged by Paxton’s office with providing an illegal abortion and practicing medicine without a license. Two other individuals have also been charged. The charges in the case are the first time authorities in Texas have filed criminal counts under the state’s near-total abortion ban.
The attorney general’s office has filed a lawsuit that’s seeking to shut down three clinics northwest of Houston that Rojas operated and that authorities allege performed illegal abortion procedures.
AUSTIN (AP) – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Thursday that he has launched an investigation into one of the state’s Medicaid insurance providers after allegations that the company illegally spied on Texans.
The state is investigating Superior HealthPlan, an insurance company that provides Medicaid coverage to adults and children and coverage for the Children’s Health Insurance Program in Texas, for allegedly using private investigators to perform surveillance and gather potentially confidential information on lawmakers, journalists and other Texans.
“The allegations concerning Superior’s actions, such as actions that were characterized as potentially blackmailing lawmakers to secure state contracts and surveilling private citizens to avoid paying legitimate claims, are deeply troubling,” Paxton said in a statement.
Superior HealthPlan CEO Mark Sanders was questioned Wednesday by members of the Texas House Committee on the Delivery of Government Efficiency about his company’s use of private investigators. The topic surfaced as lawmakers questioned company representatives about potential fraud and waste of taxpayer funds connected to its Medicaid contracts, and Sanders told the committee members that the company used private investigators in the past, but hasn’t done so for the past few years.
On Thursday, Superior fired Sanders, the Dallas Morning News reported.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Sanders defended his company’s actions at the hearing by saying that the information gathered was nothing beyond what was publicly available.
“It was just understanding (what interests people), so we could have been knowledgeable of when we’re meeting with different individuals. That’s really it,” Sanders replied.
Lawmakers expressed concern that the actions aimed to secure leverage to help the company win future state contracts, discredit legitimate insurance claims by individuals, and track journalists reporting on allegations against Superior HealthPlan.
“I disagree. You wanted leverage, and you felt that you were going to use it. Just disgusting,” said state Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington.
State Rep. David Cook, R-Mansfield, asked Sanders that if there was no intent to gain leverage over people, why did private investigators working for Superior HealthPlan look into legislators’ divorce records?
“I don’t recall at the time,” Sanders told lawmakers.
House Bill 5061, filed by state Rep. Jeff Leach earlier this month, addresses some of the lawmaker’s concerns by prohibiting any contractor that works with the state from engaging in surveillance.
“We’re up here talking to a company who has received millions, billions of dollars in taxpayer funds through Medicaid contracts, who has used that money to hire private investigators to follow around patients and legislators that are (now) asking questions about what the heck is going on,” said state Rep. Ellen Troxclair, R-Lakeway. “It’s ridiculous.”
Tiffany Young, spokesperson for Texas Health and Human Services, referred questions on how the investigation could affect Texans’ Medicaid coverage to Paxton’s office. The attorney general’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday afternoon.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The race to fill a Texas congressional seat has candidates but no election date more than three weeks after Rep. Sylvester Turner’s death left a vacancy in a stronghold for Democrats, who are eager to cut into Republicans’ narrow U.S. House majority.
Turner, a former Houston mayor, died March 5 just weeks into his first term in Congress. Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has the sole authority to call a special election but has not said when he might do so, drawing criticism from some Democrats who have accused him of trying to help protect the GOP’s margins.
The seat is one of four vacancies in Congress, including two in Florida, where voters next week will choose successors in special elections for a pair of GOP-held districts. Republicans currently hold 218 seats, while Democrats hold 213 seats.
“An announcement on a special election will be made at a later date,” Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris said in an email, in response to whether the House majority is factoring into the governor’s decision-making.
Elections in Texas are typically held in May and November.
In 2021, Abbott called for a special election two weeks after Republican Rep. Ron Wright became the first member of Congress to die after contracting COVID-19 during the pandemic. Last year, Abbott called a special election for the vacant seat of Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee about two weeks after her death in July.
“This is very clearly playing political games. They know the U.S. majority in the House is on razor-thin margins,” said Democratic state Rep. Gene Wu of Houston, leader of the state House Democratic Caucus.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced that he was pulling Rep. Elise Stefanik’s nomination to the United Nations over concerns that it could threaten Republicans’ tight majority in the House, posting on his Truth Social platform that it was “essential that we maintain EVERY Republican Seat in Congress.”
Trump’s announcement reflects a growing concern among GOP members in the House who are fearful that their already threadbare majority will narrow and jeopardize their control of the chamber and ability to carry out Trump’s sweeping agenda.
New York Democrats had introduced legislation that would have delayed the special election and allowed Stefanik’s seat to remain open for several months but put the measure on ice after intense pushback from Republicans.
Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee and former Houston City Council Member Amanda Edwards are two of the top candidates vying for the Texas seat. Menefee quickly acquired endorsements from former Democratic Reps. Colin Allred and Beto O’Rourke. Edwards, an attorney, ran for the seat twice last year.
In Arizona, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs called for a special election days after Rep. Raul Grijalva died on March 13.
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Associated Press writer Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, New York, contributed to this report.
Lathan is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — An expanse of Gulf Coast federal waters larger than the state of Colorado was unlawfully opened up for offshore drilling leases, according to a ruling by a federal judge, who said the Department of Interior did not adequately account for the offshore drilling leases’ impacts on planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions and an endangered whale species.
The future of one of the most recent offshore drilling lease sales authorized under the Biden administration is in jeopardy after District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Amit Mehta’s finding on Thursday that the federal agency violated bedrock environmental regulations when it allowed bidding on 109,375 square miles (283,280 square kilometers) of Gulf Coast waters.
Environmental groups, the federal government and the oil and gas industry are now discussing remedies. Earth Justice Attorney George Torgun, representing the plaintiffs, said one outcome on the table is invalidating the sale of leases worth $250 million across 2,500 square miles (6,475 square kilometers) of Gulf federal waters successfully bid on by companies.
The leases in the Gulf Coast were expected to produce up to 1.1 billion barrels of oil and more than 4 trillion cubic feet (113 billion cubic meters) of natural gas over 50 years, according to a government analysis. Burning that oil would increase carbon dioxide emissions by tens of millions of tons, the analysis found.
The agency “failed to take a ‘hard look’” at the full extent of the carbon footprint of expanding drilling in the Gulf Coast, the judge wrote.
The auction was one of three offshore oil and gas lease sales mandated as part of a 2022 climate bill compromise designed to ensure support from now-retired Sen. Joe Manchin, a leading recipient of oil and gas industry donations. Another of the mandated oil and gas lease sales, in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, was overturned by a federal judge last July on similar grounds.
“If federal officials are going to continue greenlighting offshore drilling, the least they can do is fully analyze its harms,” said Hallie Templeton, legal director at Friends of the Earth, a nonprofit that is of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “We will keep fighting to put a full stop to this destructive industry, and in the meantime, we will keep a close watch on the government to ensure compliance with all applicable laws and mandates.”
The drilling would also threaten the Rice’s whale, a species with less than 100 individuals estimated to remain and which lives exclusively in the Gulf Coast, according to court records filed by environmental advocacy groups.
A Department of the Interior spokesperson said the agency could not comment on pending litigation.
The process did not meet the standards of the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, which requires federal agencies analyzes the environmental impacts of their actions prior to decision-making around federal lands.
While Joe Biden later sought to ban offshore drilling in his last days in office, President Donald Trump’s administration has pushed a “drill, baby, drill” agenda expanding the fossil fuel industry, withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement and rolling back environmental regulations — including for NEPA.
The American Petroleum Institute, or API, an oil and gas trade association representing more than 600 firms and a party to the Gulf Coast case, said it is evaluating its options after this week’s ruling.
API spokesperson Scott Lauermann said the case is an example of activists “weaponizing” a permitting process, “underscoring how permitting reform is essential to ensuring access to affordable, reliable energy.”
Chevron, a defendant in the lawsuit, declined to comment and referred The Associated Press to the API’s statement.
Three offshore oil and gas lease sales are scheduled over the course of the next five years.
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Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Brook on the social platform X: @jack_brook96.
McALLEN, Texas (AP) — Drenching rains along the Texas-Mexico border trapped hundreds of people in flooded homes and in cars stranded in high waters, scrambling rescue crews to calls for help that continued Friday even as the downpours let up. At least four people died, including some who drowned.
Officials warned that the devastation from the storms — which set records in parts of Texas’ low-lying Rio Grande Valley — was only starting to come into focus. In Mexico, hundreds sought temporary shelter, and videos on social media showed military personnel wading through chest-high waters.
On the U.S. side, officials said at least three people were killed in Hidalgo County, where officials said more than 21 inches (53 centimeters) of rain this week soaked the city of Harlingen. The region is rich with farmland, and Texas’ agriculture commissioner said the damage included significant losses to agriculture and livestock.
“The bed is the only thing dry right now, because the sofas are soaked. Everything is soaked,” said Jionni Ochoa, 46, from his home in Palm Valley, near Harlingen. He and his wife were still waiting to be rescued Friday as the water inside reached their knees.
He said water started coming into their house the previous night and began pouring out of the electrical sockets. They turned off the power and tried to save as much as they could.
“Things I stacked up, the rain, the water made it float, and it knocked it down. So everything got messed up, everything got ruined,” Ochoa said.
Hidalgo County officials said in a statement that they did not immediately have more information about the three deaths except that they involved law enforcement efforts. The Mexican state of Tamaulipas reported that an 83-year-old man drowned in Reynosa, which is across the border from McAllen, Texas.
Earlier Friday, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that the driver of a vehicle suspected of taking part in migrant smuggling tried crossing a flooded roadway in Hidalgo County and plunged into a canal. The agency said the body of one person who drowned was recovered and another was missing. It was not immediately known if those were among the deaths reported by county officials.
In Alamo, a small Texas border city, crews responded to more than 100 water rescues, including people stranded in vehicles and trapped in homes, Fire Department Chief R.C. Flores said. Dozens more rescues were made in nearby Weslaco, which was inundated with about 14 inches (36 centimeters) of rain, according to Mayor Adrian Gonzalez.
“It’s a historic rainstorm, and it’s affecting all the Valley, not just Weslaco,” Gonzalez said.
Thousands of power outages were reported, and more than 20 school districts and college campuses canceled classes. Valley International Airport in Harlingen was closed Friday, and all flights were canceled.
Between 7 and 12 inches of rain (20 and 31 centimeters) fell in parts of northeastern Mexico, according to Tamaulipas authorities.
Luis Gerardo González de la Fuente, state coordinator of emergencies, said the most affected city was Reynosa but conditions were also dangerous in the border cities of Rio Bravo, Miguel Aleman and part of Matamoros, south of Brownsville, Texas.
Some 640 military personnel were deployed in the area. Authorities said electricity was being restored as water levels dropped but did not clarify how many people were still without this service.
In Texas, Emma Alaniz was resigned to not being able to leave her home in a colonia, which is an unincorporated neighborhood usually located in a rural area of a county with underdeveloped infrastructure. She described her home as being on “an island.”
“For today, I won’t be able to go anywhere, because I don’t have a big vehicle,” she said. “I have a small car, and I won’t be able to take it out to the flooded street.”
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Lozano reported from Houston. Associated Press writer Alfredo Peña in Ciudad Victoria, Mexico, contributed.
McALLEN (AP) — Drenching rain along the Texas-Mexico border let up Friday, but rescues were still ongoing a day after severe storms trapped residents in their homes, forced drivers to abandon their vehicles on flooded roads and shut down an airport.
In Harlingen, officials said their city received more than 21 inches (53 centimeters) of rain this week, with the heaviest rainfall on Thursday causing severe flooding that had authorities rescuing more than 200 residents, with another 200 people still waiting to be rescued.
“This of course has been a historic and challenging event for the city. But Harlingen is strong. We have faced adversity before and we will get through this together,” Mayor Norma Sepulveda said at a Friday afternoon news conference.
In Alamo, the police and fire department responded to more than 100 water rescues, including people stranded in their vehicles and trapped in their homes, Fire Department Chief R.C. Flores said at a news conference Friday afternoon.
Officials estimated a couple hundred homes in Alamo were flooded by the heavy rainfall.
Flores said Alamo was one of many cities in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas that were flooded and had damage from Thursday’s thunderstorms but that all were working to help their residents.
“I assure the public that we are assessing the situation on the hour, every hour. We’re constantly going out, not just in our city,” Flores said. “Just because the storm is over, it doesn’t mean that the emergencies and the disaster is over. We are going to continue to work as long as we need to.”
Weslaco Mayor Adrian Gonzalez said his city was inundated with about 14 inches (36 centimeters) of rain, prompting 30 to 40 water rescues of stranded motorists and residents trapped in their homes by rising floodwaters.
“It’s a historic rainstorm and it’s affecting all the Valley, not just Weslaco. It’s just so much water in a short period of time,” Gonzalez told reporters at a news conference.
Television news footage from flooded communities in South Texas showed multiple waterlogged cars abandoned on streets on Thursday and drivers waiting on sidewalks for the floodwaters to recede.
Between 6 inches (15 centimeters) and 12 inches (30 centimeters) of rain fell in many parts of South Texas in the past 24 hours, according to the National Weather Service.
In neighboring Cameron County, officials asked Gov. Greg Abbott to declare a disaster for the county after more than 17 inches of rain caused significant flooding.
“The rainfall amounts we received have been record-setting, and not in a good way. All county resources are being utilized right now, and we are assisting in all ways possible,” Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño Jr., the county’s top elected official, said in a Facebook post.
Valley International Airport in Harlingen was closed on Friday and all flights were canceled due to area flooding.
“We are working tirelessly to reopen and focused on ensuring safety,” airport officials said in a statement.
More than 3,400 in several counties in South Texas remained without power on Friday afternoon, according to AEP Texas.
A flood warning was still in effect for portions of South Texas, including Cameron, Hidalgo and Willacy counties, through early Friday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service.
“There’s a break from the rain this morning, which will allow flood waters to gradually recede, but we’ll still need to keep an eye on the development of isolated showers and thunderstorms once again this afternoon,” the National Weather Service said on social media. “Any additional rainfall will be quick to cause flooding issues given the heavy rainfall that has already fallen.”
One middle school in Alamo was scheduled to remain open as a shelter for residents through Friday. One shelter had been opened in Weslaco and officials in Harlingen had opened the city’s convention center as a shelter.
More than 20 South Texas school districts and college campuses canceled classes on Friday due to the severe weather and flooding.
TEXAS (AP) – At least five states have active measles outbreaks as of Friday, and Texas’ is the largest with 400 cases.
Already, the U.S. has more measles cases this year than in all of 2024, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said. Other states with outbreaks — defined as three or more cases — include New Mexico, Kansas, Ohio and Oklahoma. Since February, two unvaccinated people have died from measles-related causes.
The new outbreaks confirm health experts’ fears that the virus will take hold in other U.S. communities with low vaccination rates and that the spread could stretch on for a year. The World Health Organization said this week cases in Mexico are linked to the Texas outbreak.
Measles is caused by a highly contagious virus that’s airborne and spreads easily when an infected person breathes, sneezes or coughs. It is preventable through vaccines, and has been considered eliminated from the U.S. since 2000.
Here’s what else you need to know about measles in the U.S.
How many measles cases are there in Texas and New Mexico?
Texas’ outbreak began two months ago. State health officials said Friday there were 73 new cases of measles since Tuesday, bringing the total to 400 across 17 counties — most in West Texas. Forty-one people have been hospitalized since the outbreak began, and Andrews and Midland counties were new to the list.
New Mexico announced one new case Friday, bringing the state’s total to 44. New Mexico health officials say the cases are linked to Texas’ outbreak based on genetic testing. Most are in Lea County, where two people have been hospitalized, and two are in Eddy County.
A school-age child died of measles in Texas in late February, and New Mexico reported its first measles-related death in an adult on March 6.
How many cases are there in Kansas?
Kansas has 23 cases in six counties in the southwest part of the state. Kiowa and Stevens counties have six cases each, while Grant, Morton, Haskell and Gray counties have five or fewer.
The state’s first reported case, identified in Stevens County on March 13, is linked to the Texas and New Mexico outbreaks based on genetic testing, a state health department spokesperson said. But health officials have not determined how the person was exposed.
How many cases are there in Oklahoma?
Oklahoma stayed steady at nine cases this week — seven confirmed and two probable cases. The first two probable cases were “associated” with the West Texas and New Mexico outbreaks, the state health department said.
A state health department spokesperson said measles exposures were confirmed in Tulsa and Rogers counties, but wouldn’t say which counties had cases.
How many cases are there in Ohio?
Ohio has 10 cases of measles in Ashtabula County in the northeast corner of the state, nine of those newly reported this week. The first case was in an unvaccinated adult who had interacted with someone who had traveled internationally.
And in central Ohio, Knox County officials are tracing exposures from person who visited while contagious with measles. A measles outbreak in central Ohio sickened 85 in 2022.
Where else is measles showing up in the U.S.?
Measles cases also have been reported in Alaska, California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, and Washington.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines an outbreak as three or more related cases. The agency counted five clusters that qualified as outbreaks in 2025 as of Friday.
In the U.S., cases and outbreaks are generally traced to someone who caught the disease abroad. It can then spread, especially in communities with low vaccination rates. In 2019, the U.S. saw 1,274 cases and almost lost its status of having eliminated measles.
Do you need an MMR booster?
The best way to avoid measles is to get the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The first shot is recommended for children between 12 and 15 months old and the second between 4 and 6 years old.
People at high risk for infection who got the shots many years ago may want to consider getting a booster if they live in an area with an outbreak, said Scott Weaver with the Global Virus Network, an international coalition. Those may include family members living with someone who has measles or those especially vulnerable to respiratory diseases because of underlying medical conditions.
Adults with “presumptive evidence of immunity” generally don’t need measles shots now, the CDC said. Criteria include written documentation of adequate vaccination earlier in life, lab confirmation of past infection or being born before 1957, when most people were likely to be infected naturally.
A doctor can order a lab test called an MMR titer to check your levels of measles antibodies, but health experts don’t always recommend this route and insurance coverage can vary.
Getting another MMR shot is harmless if there are concerns about waning immunity, the CDC says.
People who have documentation of receiving a live measles vaccine in the 1960s don’t need to be revaccinated, but people who were immunized before 1968 with an ineffective measles vaccine made from “killed” virus should be revaccinated with at least one dose, the agency said. That also includes people who don’t know which type they got.
What are the symptoms of measles?
Measles first infects the respiratory tract, then spreads throughout the body, causing a high fever, runny nose, cough, red, watery eyes and a rash.
The rash generally appears three to five days after the first symptoms, beginning as flat red spots on the face and then spreading downward to the neck, trunk, arms, legs and feet. When the rash appears, the fever may spike over 104 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the CDC.
Most kids will recover from measles, but infection can lead to dangerous complications such as pneumonia, blindness, brain swelling and death.
How can you treat measles?
There’s no specific treatment for measles, so doctors generally try to alleviate symptoms, prevent complications and keep patients comfortable.
Why do vaccination rates matter?
In communities with high vaccination rates — above 95% — diseases like measles have a harder time spreading through communities. This is called “herd immunity.”
But childhood vaccination rates have declined nationwide since the pandemic and more parents are claiming religious or personal conscience waivers to exempt their kids from required shots.
The U.S. saw a rise in measles cases in 2024, including an outbreak in Chicago that sickened more than 60.