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Thursday June 04, 2026
ARLINGTON (AP) – Just months into the pandemic, Matthew Haines, like landlords across the country, learned he was barred from evicting tenants who didn’t pay their rent under a federal eviction moratorium that lasted almost a year — costing him and his investors over $1 million.
Now, the 57-year-old Texan is hoping to get some relief.
Haines is among more than 1,500 property owners who filed a federal lawsuit arguing the moratorium enacted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention violated the Fifth Amendment by unlawfully denying them compensation. Plaintiffs range from those who lost thousands of dollars to one who lost over $14.5 million.
After initially losing in the Court of Federal Claims in 2022, the plaintiffs won on appeal and are now in settlement discussions with the Justice Department. Landlords are hoping to recoup as much as $1.5 billion — a fraction of what the industry lost.
“It’s important for us to stand up when a group like the CDC unilaterally, functionally, decides that they have a right to oversee our business,” said Haines, who owns three rental communities with 240 units in Arlington and Irving, Texas.
“What I hope that we will accomplish and, to some extent, we already have, is vindication for ourselves,” he said. “But what’s more important to me is that hopefully my investors will recover some of that money that they should have had coming in over the last six years.”
The federal eviction moratorium lasted from September 2020 through July 2021, and was among the pandemic’s most divisive policies. It ended after the Supreme Court ruled the CDC lacked authority to impose the ban without congressional authorization.
The Justice Department, responding to Associated Press questions about the landlords’ case, said it does not comment on ongoing litigation.
Moratoriums were also imposed in 43 states and scores of cities, which lasted longer than the federal ban because states and cities have broader regulatory powers than federal agencies like the CDC.
Landlords say the bans devastated their businesses. Unable to collect rent, many were forced to take on debt, lay off staff, delay repairs and, in some cases, sell their property. They say the impact lingers, with longer delays for evictions, tighter screening for riskier tenants and growing numbers of owners getting out of the rental business altogether.
Tenant advocates counter that eviction bans were a lifesaver. They credit them with keeping millions of tenants housed during the pandemic and slowing the spread of the coronavirus. They also argue landlords were already paid — in the form of tens of billions of dollars in rental assistance.
From the moment the pandemic hit, Haines said he knew he was in trouble: Many tenants lost their jobs, so he didn’t require new leases and tried to be flexible with those who couldn’t pay.
But when the moratorium took hold, it was the biggest threat he’d faced in 30 years in real estate.
“It was terrifying,” Haines said. “We knew almost immediately that we were going to a massive deficit in cash flow that we probably weren’t going to be able to cover.”
A survey by the National Rental Home Council, a trade association, published weeks after the federal moratorium ended, found that half of small landlords had tenants who missed rent and a third sold or planned to sell properties. The moratorium and backlog of eviction cases cost owners $57 billion, according to the lawsuit, with more than 10 million delinquent renters in just the ban’s first four months.
“Public health measures like this, they may be well intentioned,” said Creighton Magid, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. “But when the government imposes this type of moratorium, the financial burden should be borne by the government, not individual property owners.”
Liz Leone, who has 52 apartments in Las Vegas and is part of the lawsuit, said the moratorium almost forced her out of business. She lost over $250,000, she said, and borrowed $60,000 from the federal Small Business Administration “just to keep my nose above water.” She’s still paying it off.
“I was definitely questioning whether I would survive,” said Leone, who’s been in the business for 35 years. “You delay all the expenses you can, but we still had to pay our property taxes. We still have to pay our utilities. … So that’s what you did: I borrowed.”
Housing advocates maintain the policy kept families housed, noting a significant spike in evictions after the moratorium ended.
Eviction bans “were a powerful intervention to keep people in their homes,” said Kathryn Leifheit, assistant professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and lead author of a study published in April in the medical journal JAMA Network Open that found homelessness rose 11% in a typical state in 2022, and would have increased 20% without state eviction moratoriums.
That was the case for Dulcee Barnes. The 28-year-old and her two roommates lost their restaurant jobs in Miami during the pandemic. Two months behind on rent, they would have been evicted if not for the moratorium.
“It gave us breathing room. It took away the fear of having to possibly pack up within 24 hours and live in somebody’s car or couch surfing,” she said.
Eric Dunn, director of litigation at the National Housing Law Project, a tenants’ rights nonprofit, disputed that landlords suffered significant losses, saying they were able to collect rent and sell their properties during the moratorium.
They also benefited from $46.5 billion in federal emergency rental assistance, which the Eviction Lab at Princeton University found in April was largely targeted to areas where landlords filed the most evictions before the pandemic.
Landlords said rental assistance never fully compensated them for their losses, contending programs were often mired in red tape and poorly run. States were slow to spend the money, struggled to set up programs and, in the case of Arkansas and Nebraska, didn’t accept all federal funding.
Landlords also complained some tenants took advantage of the moratorium to live rent free. “They were doing things like buying cars,” Leone said. “They didn’t have to pay rent, and here I was driving a car that was 18 years old.”
Despite the moratorium ending five years ago, landlords say fallout from the policy remains. They are taking fewer risks and being more cautious about renting to tenants with checkered rental histories.
Rick Jones, vice chairman of Management Services Corporation, which owns 4,000 apartment units in Virginia and is party to the lawsuit, said that’s partly due to increasing fraud. Applicants fake employment records and payroll checks, he said, adding: “There are companies that just advertise really creating a whole new identity for you.”
“Most property owners and managers realize that it’s more important to keep that unit vacant than to put a bad resident in. That’s probably what the eviction moratorium reinforced,” said Jones, whose company lost more than $230,000 in unpaid rent during the pandemic.
“When you have somebody that’s bad and you can’t get them out, you’re helpless.”
Haines said he’s increased tenant screenings and turns away some low-income applicants he might have accepted before the pandemic. That’s partly because evicting a tenant takes months longer than before the pandemic, he said.
“It’s done more harm,” he said, to low-income people “that we might have considered leasing an apartment to that now we simply can’t take the risk.”
AMARILLO (AP) — Police are asking for the public’s help in identifying suspects in a shooting at a party in Amarillo, Texas, that killed two teenagers and wounded 10 other people.
City authorities say they are looking for two people who opened fire at an apartment complex at about 2 a.m. Saturday and are asking local residents to check their doorbell and surveillance cameras for any unusual activity around that time. Details on a motive were not released.
Surveillance video released by police shows two suspects opening fire at the outside of an apartment. Yelling and screaming follow, then more gunshots ring out.
“When I looked outside and came outside it was complete chaos,” neighbor Phillip Thrasher told KTVT-TV. “I mean there was kids running everywhere, just screaming and running. They didn’t even know where they were running to, you know. And then moms and dads showed up and came to their kids’ rescues. The ones that could, the ones that couldn’t were so upset. I mean there was nothing you could do.”
Amarillo police said two teens, ages 16 and 17, were killed and 10 others injured. The conditions of the wounded were not released.
“The investigation into this morning’s events have identified that the suspects have an affiliation with the targeted location and were known to one of the occupants at the party,” Police Chief Thomas Hover said in a statement on Saturday.
Police said the people involved had been at a party at a different location and were asked to leave, then went to the complex where the shooting occurred.
Phone messages were left Sunday for police officials and management of the apartment complex, located close to Interstate 40 about 6 miles (10 kilometers) west of downtown Amarillo.
Hover said police had increased patrol staffing after separate shootings killed six people in Amarillo on March 22.
AUSTIN (AP) – Two makers of the widely used abortion pill mifepristone asked the Supreme Court on Saturday to block an appellate court ruling that cut off mail-order access to the drug just a day earlier, in what was the biggest jolt to abortion policy in the U.S. since the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Danco Laboratories asked the high court for an emergency pause on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision, saying the appellate ruling “injects immediate confusion and upheaval into highly time-sensitive medical decisions.” GenBioPro, which makes a generic version of mifepristone, made a similar request.
The New Orleans-based appeals court’s unanimous ruling Friday marked a substantial victory for abortion opponents seeking to stem the flow of abortion pills prescribed online, which they view as subverting state bans on the procedure. It requires that mifepristone be distributed only in person and at clinics, overruling regulations set by the federal Food and Drug Administration.
“We’re now going to see, I think in a way we haven’t before, what the nation will look like when abortion bans are actually in effect,” said Mary Ziegler, an expert on abortion law and a professor at University of California at Davis School of Law.
Here’s what to know:
Impact extends beyond states with abortion bans
Frustrated with a lack of federal action against medicated abortions, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill sued the FDA last year, saying its rules allowing mifepristone to be dispensed through the mail undermined the state’s ban on abortions at all stages of pregnancy.
Friday’s ruling is in effect while the case works its way through the courts. It affects patients in all states, even those without abortion restrictions.
“This is a huge access issue for patients that haven’t got providers close by, or providers close by who are willing to prescribe,” said Josh Thorburn, owner of Eddie’s Pharmacy in Los Angeles.
There is little precedent for a federal court overruling the scientific regulations of the FDA, and it remains to be seen how the decision could impact abortion access long-term.
Murrill, a Republican, celebrated the ruling as a “victory for life” while other anti-abortion advocates cheered the reversal of rules finalized under President Joe Biden that ended a longstanding requirement that the pills be obtained at an in-person doctor’s visit.
Representatives for the FDA and the U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Mifepristone long considered safe and effective
Mifepristone was approved in 2000 as a safe and effective way to end early pregnancies. It is typically used in combination with a second drug, misoprostol, which is not affected by the ruling but is less effective on its own.
Surveys have found that the majority of abortions in the U.S. are administered using pills and that about one in four abortions nationally are prescribed via telehealth. Providers have suggested that its availability through telehealth is a reason why the number of abortions in the U.S. has not fallen since Roe was overturned in 2022.
As a result, abortion pills and those who prescribe them out of state have become key targets of abortion opponents.
Some Democratic-led states have adopted laws that aim to protect providers who prescribe via telehealth and mail the pills to states with bans. Those so-called shield laws are being tested through civil and criminal cases in Louisiana and Texas.
One telehealth provider in a state with a shield law, Dr. Angel Foster, was working with legal experts to understand how the ruling would impact her organization, The Massachusetts Medication Abortion Project.
“We will do everything in our power to continue providing care to people in all 50 states,” she said.
Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, said providers are “in limbo” as they await further court decisions but can pivot to using just misoprostol for abortion care.
“It’s got a chilling effect on providers across the country, and it’s going to have a chilling effect on patients, who are already having a hard time navigating the law state by state, and what they can get and how they can get care,” she said.
Abortion policy could come into play in the midterms
The case could again make abortion a key issue in the midterm elections as Democrats aim to take back control of the House and Republicans fight to hold on to a narrow majority.
“This is going to be a pretty significant change in terms of how people experience abortion access, probably as significant as anything we’ve seen since Roe was overturned,” Ziegler said. “So another big question mark is going to be the extent to which voters feel that before they go to the polls.”
Recent electoral results suggest that voters seeking to maintain abortion access have the political momentum. Since Roe was overturned, abortion has been on the ballot directly in 17 states. Voters have sided with the abortion-rights side in 14 of those questions.
Abortion-rights supporter Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, said the ruling is “deeply out of step with both the public and fact-based science.”
Ziegler said the case also “sort of puts the president in the position of having to get off the sidelines on this issue in a way we haven’t seen before.”
Trump received criticism after the ruling from some anti-abortion advocates who expressed frustration that he did not take action himself to block distribution of the pill.
The FDA under Trump approved another generic version of mifepristone last year, which peeved some allies of the Republican president.
“It’s shameful that the Trump administration’s inaction has forced pro-life states to take their battle to the federal courts,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, who also applauded the appellate ruling.
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This story has been updated to correct the name of drugmaker GenBioPro and the timing of Louisiana’s lawsuit against the FDA.
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Associated Press writers Jamie Stengle in Dallas and Jeff Amy in Atlanta contributed.
NACOGDOCHES – This week, an East Texas teen was caught and arrested in Mexico on suspicion of a triple homicide that took place in in Nacogdoches on October in 2025. Jared Garcia, 18, of Nacogdoches, was detained on a murder indictment for the October 24th murder that left multiple teens dead.
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DALLAS – According to a statement issued on Friday, Dallas police detained a 25-year-old woman at Dallas Love Field after discovering three suitcases containing 75 pounds of marijuana.
An airline partner informed the police that a suitcase on a flight from Las Vegas to Love Field had split open, revealing a significant quantity of marijuana within.
According to the statement and the Dallas Morning News, when narcotics detectives arrived, they discovered two more suitcases containing marijuana in vacuum-sealed pouches. The drug weighed 75 pounds in total across the three suitcases.
The woman who owned the suitcases was identified by the police and taken into custody prior to her departure from the airport. According to the statement, the woman is accused of possessing 50 to 2,000 pounds of marijuana, which is a second-degree felony. The 25-year-old was not listed in the Dallas County jail records as of Saturday morning.
TRAVIS COUNTY (TEXAS TRIBUNE) – For the time being, a Travis County district judge has permitted the sale of naturally smokeable hemp products like rolled joints and flower buds.
The ban that was granted earlier this month is still on hold as a result of Judge Daniella DeSeta Lyttle’s Friday decision. The Texas Hemp Business Council, Hemp Industry & Farmers of America, and a number of dispensaries and manufacturers in Texas were granted a temporary injunction by Lyttle against new testing regulations that establish a 0.3% total THC threshold, thereby prohibiting the sale of natural smokeable hemp products. Additionally, a 3,000% increase in hemp retailers’ licensing fees is temporarily halted by the ruling.
The ban will be temporarily suspended until the next hearing, which is currently set for July 27. However, if the state appeals the most recent decision and the court consents to hear the appeal, the suspension may end sooner. The state’s regulations will resume once the court grants the appeal, necessitating the removal of smokeable hemp from store shelves.
Attorneys representing the hemp industry contended during a three-day hearing this week that the Texas Department of State Health Services had overreached its constitutional authority by amending the statutory definitions of hemp that were created by legislators in 2019.
State attorneys contended in court that Texas law permits the health agency to enact new hemp regulations by requiring them to give Texans’ welfare top priority when making rules. The judge disagreed, claiming that the regulations were causing the industry irreversible harm.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — The next bishop for West Virginia Catholics will be an El Salvador-born advocate for immigrants who has opposed U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown policies.
Pope Leo XIV announced Friday the appointment of the Most Rev. Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, an auxiliary bishop in Washington, D.C., as the new leader of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, which comprises West Virginia, one of the nation’s least racially diverse states.
Menjivar-Ayala, 55, fled El Salvador’s civil war as a teen in the late 1980s, eventually crossing illegally into the United States in 1990, he told The Associated Press in an interview last year. But within “a couple of weeks” he gained humanitarian protection, later was granted a visa as a religious worker, and became a U.S. citizen two decades ago.
Nonetheless, he feels close to immigrants who have been caught up by raids, including last year’s federal law enforcement surge in Washington, because “that could have been me,” he said in 2025.
The Catholic Church has long advocated for humane treatment of migrants and refugees in the United States and around the world. Menjivar-Ayala and other U.S. church leaders have strongly condemned the Trump administration’s mass deportation policies while also affirming a nation’s right to control its borders and urging reconciliation.
New bishop to prioritize those on the margins
Menjivar-Ayala did not mention immigration policies nor Trump is his speech Friday, instead focusing on his desire to be accepted by West Virginians and his willingness to listen to the community. A portion of his speech was in Spanish.
“I have much to learn, but my heart is ready and wide-open,” he said. “Above all, I want to listen to the poor. Those in the margins of the church and society. To workers, to the immigrants, because as Matthew 25 says, the way we treat the least is the way we treat Jesus.”
In the Washington archdiocese, which includes the District of Columbia and parts of Maryland, more than 40% of parishioners are Latino. In West Virginia — all of which is covered by the Wheeling-Charleston diocese — only 2.4% of the population is Latino and 92.6% of its 1.77 million residents identify as white, according to the U.S. Census.
Menjivar-Ayala replaces the Most Rev. Mark Brennan, 79, who has served as West Virginia’s bishop since 2019. Brennan had taken over after a scandal over a former bishop’s sexual harassment of adults and lavish spending of church money. In a shared news conference in Wheeling on Friday, Brennan reminded West Virginians that many in America come from somewhere else.
“But he loves all the people here. He’s not going to be bishop just for one group within the diocese. He’ll be bishop for all the people. I can assure you of that.”
The new bishop, who has spent his ministerial career in the nation’s capital and surrounding communities, will work in a less Catholic and more rural region, overseeing the diocese’s 61,000 Catholics and 92 parishes throughout West Virginia.
While acknowledging the beauty of West Virginia mountains and natural resources, he said many people in one of the nation’s poorest states “continue to endure hardship, marginalization and inequality.”
Lauded for his immigration advocacy
Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington praised Menjivar-Ayala’s advocacy for migrants during his tenure in the capital, saying in a statement that “his passion for justice and sensitive care for the Hispanic and immigrant communities of our Archdiocese have planted seeds of grace that will yield a harvest here for decades to come.”
In an article he wrote last year for the Catholic Standard, the official newspaper of the Washington archdiocese, Menjivar-Ayala spoke out against the treatment of immigrants by Trump’s administration.
“Each day this situation is getting worse and more ominous,” Menjivar-Ayala wrote. “For weeks now, the federal government has pursued a ‘shock and awe’ campaign of aggressive threats and highly visible operations of questionable legality that go far beyond mere immigration ‘enforcement.’”
Menjivar-Ayala, whose appointment comes a few weeks after the pope’s disagreement with Trump over the U.S. war against Iran, will be installed as bishop at a ceremony on July 2. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Menjivar-Ayala’s appointment.
Another Latin America-born priest was also named a U.S. bishop on Friday. The Rev. John Gomez will start his tenure in the Diocese of Laredo, Texas, on June 30. Gomez was born in Colombia, came to the United States on a student visa in 2002 and became a U.S. citizen in 2021, according to his current diocese in Tyler, Texas. In a statement, Bishop Gregory Kelly of Tyler praised his “commitment to Hispanic Ministry.”
Pope Leo’s first American bishop appointment, two weeks after his own election in May 2025, was a former refugee: Michael Pham, who was born in Vietnam and became bishop of San Diego, California.
The number of priestly ordinations in the United States has been declining for decades, making foreign-born clergy essential to many parishes nationwide.
CASS COUNTY (KETK) — An East Texas special education teacher is in custody following an anonymous tip of continuous sexual abuse of a disabled person, the Texarkana Police Department said on Friday. Pleasant Grove ISD’s Police Department reached out to the Texarkana PD after receiving an anonymous tip on Monday. Texarkana PD said evidence supported the allegation and law enforcement obtained an arrest warrant for 63-year-old Jeffrey Parker of Queen City.
Parker was identified by law enforcement as a special education teacher at Pleasant Grove ISD. He was arrested in Cass County for continuous sexual abuse of a disabled person and three counts of improper relationship between an educator and student, the police department said. The school district released a statement following the arrest, saying they are aware of the allegations connected to Parker:
” Upon receiving an anonymous report on Monday, April 27, 2026, the District began investigating and took appropriate steps to ensure the matter was promptly referred to Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, Texarkana Texas Police Department and the Texas Education Agency. The District is fully cooperating with all investigative authorities. In addition, the employee was removed from the campus and will not return to PGISD.
The safety and well-being of our students is our highest priority. We want our students, families and community to know that we take allegations of this nature with the utmost seriousness, and we will continue to support our students and families during this time.
Due to student privacy protections under federal and state law, as well as the sensitive nature of this matter, the District is limited in what it can share publicly. Additionally, under Texas law, including Texas Penal Code § 21.12(d-1), the District is prohibited from releasing the name of the accused unless and until an indictment is returned.
The District understands the serious nature of this situation and remains committed to maintaining a safe and secure environment for all students and staff.”
Pleasant Grove ISD
When asked if Parker remains an employee of the district, Pleasant Grove ISD said they could not comment at the moment. Parker is expected to be transferred to the Bi-State Jail and the case remains under investigation.
WASHINGTON (AP) — When Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin was questioned by senators during his confirmation hearing about his vision for implementing President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda, he said his goal was to keep his department off the front pages of the news.
To some degree, he has. Gone are the social media video clips of now-retired Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino clashing with protesters. Mullin’s predecessor, Kristi Noem, made her first trip as secretary to New York City to make arrests with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In contrast, Mullin went to North Carolina to review hurricane recovery efforts.
The Republican administration appears to be recalibrating its approach to a centerpiece policy that helped bring Trump back to the White House, moving in many ways away from aggressive, public-facing tactics toward a quieter approach to enforcement. Despite that shift, the administration insists it is not backing down from its lofty deportation goals.
“Clearly they’ve stepped back from the, for want of a better word, the Bovinoist tactics of before,” said Mark Krikorian, the president of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for immigration restrictions. “But it’s not clear this means they’re actually stepping back from immigration.”
The Trump administration launched a series of immigration enforcement operations last year in mostly Democratic-led cities, which drove up arrests in large-scale sweeps. The crackdown sparked clashes between protesters and enforcement officers and led to the shooting deaths in Minneapolis of two U.S. citizens.
Since then, the president’s hard-line anti-immigration agenda has lost popularity with voters and there have been no new high-profile city-based operations launched, raising questions about the administration’s strategy.
“We’re still enforcing immigration laws. We’re still deporting illegals that shouldn’t be here. We’re still going after the worst of the worst — but we’re doing it in a more quiet way,” Mullin said in an interview April 16 with CNBC.
ICE arrests have fallen in recent months, and the number of people in immigration detention has dropped from a high of roughly 72,000 in January to 58,000 this week, according to data obtained by The Associated Press.
But in a sign of its continued determination, ICE in budget documents says it plans to remove 1 million people this fiscal year and the next compared with roughly 442,000 people last year. The agency also has plenty of money to carry out its mission, with Congress granting the Department of Homeland Security more than $170 billion for Trump’s immigration agenda last year.
The administration aims to have enough space to detain roughly 100,000 people this fiscal year, which would more than double the average daily number held in ICE detention last year. The administration has already expanded its detention capacity with the purchase of 11 warehouses across the country.
“They are working really on building a juggernaut of a system,” said Doris Meissner, who headed the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, a predecessor to ICE, during President Bill Clinton’s Democratic administration and is now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said there had been no change to Trump’s strategy.
“President Trump’s highest priority has always been the deportation of illegal alien criminals who endanger American communities,” Jackson said.
ICE did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Advocates for immigrants are bracing for the Trump administration to turn its attention more intently to stripping away protections for migrants with temporary legal status to remain in the U.S. while their cases are being adjudicated.
In one example of this, the number of green cards approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services dropped by half over the course of a year under the Trump administration, according to an analysis by the Cato Institute, which supports immigration into the U.S. Humanitarian visas for refugees or people who qualified for asylum saw the biggest declines.
USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler said the drop was due to increased vetting of applicants by the administration.
The Trump administration has also pushed to strip Temporary Protected Status from hundreds of thousands of people, with a key case weighing whether it’s overstepped its power to do so being heard at the Supreme Court this week.
Advocates see it as a way to send a chilling message to immigrant communities and make more people vulnerable to deportation. It also enables the department to operate without the public spectacle of workplace raids or home arrests.
ICE has also focused over the past year on creating agreements with jurisdictions around the country that allow local and state law enforcement to carry out an expanding array of immigration enforcement tasks, ranging from checking the immigration status of people in their jails to incorporating immigration checks during routine traffic stops.
These agreements, known as 287g, have grown from 135 in 20 states before Trump took office to more than 1,400 in 41 states and territories now.
Some states, most noticeably Florida and Texas, have mandated various forms of cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE.
Meissner, from MPI, said Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, is likely to prioritize further discussions about how cities and states can cooperate with ICE.
“At the end of the day, some of this may very well succeed in increasing the numbers,” Meissner said.
Conservatives who want more deportations say the only way to truly crack down on illegal immigration is to make it so difficult for the migrants to work that they’ll leave on their own.
The Trump administration has already taken steps to make life harder for people in the country illegally including limiting who can live in public housing by immigration status, sharing Medicaid information with ICE and requiring people in the country illegally to register with the federal government.
Krikorian, of the Center for Immigration Studies, said the Social Security Administration could send out letters alerting employers when an employee’s name doesn’t match their Social Security number. Authorities could repeatedly and consistently carry out audits of I-9 forms, which companies are supposed to fill out and submit to the federal government showing that new hires are legally able to work. And they could require banks to collect citizenship information on customers.
Whatever the strategy going forward, the administration is facing heavy pressure not to back away from its goals.
“The numbers are too low,” said Mike Howell, part of the Mass Deportation Coalition, which launched a playbook for how the administration can actually get to a million deportations a year by using tactics such as worksite enforcement.
“The deportation numbers are just too low,” Howell said, “and they need to be much higher, and they can be much higher.”
HOUSTON (AP) – Profit for the two largest oil companies in the U.S. tumbled during the first quarter, a three-month period in which the price of crude and gasoline rocketed higher. It’s a setback on paper only, however, the result of financial hedges that backfired after the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran in late February.
Exxon Mobil and Chevron reported quarterly results on Friday, with adjusted profits for both companies topping Wall Street expectations. The shares of both companies, up sharply this week, ticked higher before the opening bell.
With energy prices depressed at the start of the year, Exxon Mobil and Chevron had arranged hedges to offset volatility, a standard practice in the industry.
In the aftermath of an attack by the U.S. and Israel on Iran, however, the physical delivery of oil became impossible with the Strait of Hormuz essentially closed. Exxon and Chevron cannot book gains on those hedges until the crude is physically delivered.
The near closure of the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Iran is a flashpoint in the war and the source of much of the economic pain being felt globally. About 20% of the world’s oil passes through the strait on a typical day, but the passage has been choked off since the war began in late February.
Exxon earned $4.18 billion, or $1 per share, for the period ended March 31. A year earlier it earned $7.7 billion, or $1.76 per share. The company lost almost $4 billion in the quarter on what it called “unfavorable estimated timing effects” of its hedges.
Removing such one-time impacts, Exxon earned $1.16 per share, easily topping the $1.07 per share analyst surveyed by Zacks Investment Research predicted. Exxon does not adjust its reported results based on one-time events such as asset sales.
Revenue totaled $85.14 billion, breezing past Wall Street’s expectation of $81.49 billion.
First-quarter net production was 4.6 million oil-equivalent barrels per day. That’s down from 5 million oil-equivalent barrels per day in the previous quarter.
Chevron reported a first-quarter profit of $2.21 billion, or $1.11 per share. It earned $3.5 billion, or $2 per share, a year earlier.
The company said that its quarter included a $360 million net loss related to a legal reserve and that foreign currency effects lowered earnings by $223 million.
Chevron’s adjusted profit was $1.41 per share, easily beating the 92 cents per share Wall Street was calling for. Like Exxon, Chevron does not adjust its reported results based on one-time events such as asset sales.
The company’s revenue totaled $48.61 billion, also better than expected.
Exxon and Chevron are among the big drillers reporting earnings this week. On Tuesday BP said that its first-quarter profit more than doubled.
The oil companies’ results come at a time when gasoline prices in the U.S. hit new multiyear highs, a point of increasing agitation for travelers, households and also businesses that are particularly sensitive to higher energy prices.
The average price of gasoline in the U.S. hit $4.39 on Friday, according to motor club AAA. up more than 8% this week.
Inflation in the U.S. rose sharply last month during largest monthly jump in gas prices in six decades, according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor. The surge in gas prices has squeezed the budgets of lower- and middle-income families, making it more difficult to pay for necessities.
But it’s disrupting businesses as well, particularly those sensitive to higher fuel costs. Airlines worldwide have begun canceling flights as the war in the Middle East strains jet fuel supplies and pushes up ticket prices.
WIMBERLEY (AP) — A small plane crashed in Texas, killing all five people aboard, a county official said Friday.
The crash happened Thursday night in Wimberley, a city about 40 miles southwest of Austin, Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra said in a Facebook post.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the Cessna 421C crashed around 11:25 p.m. with five people on board. It said the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash.
Becerra said preliminary information indicates the plane was traveling at a high rate of speed when it crashed. He did not release the names of the victims, pending notification of family.
He said a second aircraft traveling in the area landed safely near San Antonio.
Wimberley, with a population of about 3,000, is a popular tourist and hiking destination in the Texas Hill Country next to the Blanco River.
Wimberley Mayor Jim Chiles told The Associated Press he did not have any information about the crash.
TYLER, Texas (KETK) – AAA Texas said the statewide average gas price spiked by 25 cents since last week amid continued uncertainty over the Strait of Hormuz.
“Drivers had been seeing some minor relief at the pump, but that trend has quickly reversed as crude oil prices climb and uncertainty continues around the Strait of Hormuz,” AAA Texas spokesperson Daniel Armbruster said. “Because crude oil is the main driver of gasoline prices, continued volatility in the global oil market could keep upward pressure on pump prices in the days ahead.”
Oil prices surged above $100 this week, prompting Texas’s average regular unleaded gas price to reach $3.85 per gallon, well below the nationwide average of $4.30 per gallon.
According to AAA Texas, fuel prices haven’t been this high since 2022, as the world continues to wait and see whether the Strait of Hormuz will reopen.
HOUSTON COUNTY — A trial date has been set for an East Texas man accused of killing his ex?wife, whose disappearance from Latexo in 2000 has remained unsolved.
KETK News spoke with Dina Shoemake’s daughter, who attended Thursday’s hearing and confirmed that a pretrial date has been set for Sept. 21. She said the judge expressed confidence in the case’s progress and scheduled the trial for Jan. 19, 2027.
The date carries deep significance for the family — Jan. 19, 2000, was the last day Dina was seen— and now marks a meaningful step toward closing a long and painful chapter.
In January 2000, Dina reportedly went to the home of her ex-husband, Curtis Allen Shoemake, to visit her two children. Curtis claims that Dina then left with an unknown person in a dark green extended?cab Chevy pickup from the 1990s.
Though there were no new details in Dina’s disappearance, a Houston County grand jury indicted Curtis in 2018 on a first-degree murder charge, which read that Curtis had “intentionally or knowingly caused the death of an individual, Dina Shoemake, by an unknown manner and means.”
In 2019, an anonymous letter was sent to the sheriff’s office claiming to reveal the location of Dina’s remains, but investigators found nothing.
The case has since been delayed for eight years, leaving family members agitated with the justice system as the pretrial date has been pushed back several times.
“I’m hoping that he gets convicted of murder and finally decides to tell me where my mother’s remains are, because that’s our biggest goal: to bring her home where she belongs,” Kimberly Sanders told KETK News in 2024.
Sanders said that although investigators are still finalizing a few remaining details, the case has been continued to a Sept. 21 pretrial hearing, when both sides are expected to be fully prepared. The judge has set the trial date for Jan. 19, 2027.
HUNTSVILLE (AP) — A North Texas man who claimed he wasn’t the shooter in a fatal robbery that killed two people nearly 18 years ago and who said prosecutors misused rap lyrics he wrote to secure his death sentence was executed Thursday evening.
James Broadnax was pronounced dead after receiving a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) north of Houston.
Earlier Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request by Broadnax’s attorneys to stop his execution.
He was condemned for the 2008 shooting deaths of two men outside a suburban Dallas music studio. Prosecutors say Broadnax and his cousin, Demarius Cummings, fatally shot and robbed Stephen Swan and Matthew Butler in the parking lot of Butler’s recording studio in Garland. Cummings was sentenced to life without parole.
Broadnax was defiant in a final statement in which he also sought forgiveness from the victims’ relatives. Seven relatives, including parents of each of the victims, were present.
“I prayed to God for your forgiveness,” he said, when asked by the warden if he had a final statement. “Despite what you think about me, I hope to God that prayer was answered. But no matter what you think about me, Texas got it wrong. I’m innocent, the facts of my case should speak for itself. Period,” he said.
The execution also was punctuated by screams of “I love you” from his wife, who also was among witnesses to the punishment. She was emotional at times during the procedure, leaning up to the death chamber window with arms spread, and had to be helped out of the prison.
As the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began, Broadnax urged his supporters to keep fighting. “Don’t give up,” he said, and was stopped in another mid-sentence by a gasp. He shook his head briefly and all movement stopped. He was pronounced dead 21 minutes later, at 6:47 p.m. CDT.
Prosecutors said Broadnax, 37, confessed to the shooting, telling reporters during jailhouse interviews that “I pulled the trigger” and that he had no remorse.
His lawyers had focused his final appeals on two issues: Cummings had recently confessed to being the shooter; and Broadnax’s constitutional rights were violated because prosecutors eliminated potential jurors during his trial on the basis of race.
“I’m really gonna tell it like it’s supposed to be told, that it was me, that I was the killer. I shot Matthew Bullard, Steve Swan,” Cummings said recently from prison in a video created as part of the efforts to stop Broadnax’s execution.
His attorneys also alleged prosecutors dismissed all seven potential Black jurors on the basis of their race, “utilizing a spreadsheet during jury selection that bolded only the names of every Black juror,” according to court documents. One Black juror was later reinstated to the jury. Broadnax was Black.
In a 1986 ruling known as Batson v. Kentucky, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that excluding jurors because of their race violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
Broadnax’s attorneys had argued in an earlier appeal that prosecutors had violated his constitutional rights by using some of the rap lyrics he wrote to portray him as a violent and dangerous person in order to secure a death sentence. A number of A-list rappers, including Travis Scott,T.I. and Killer Mike, had filed briefs at the Supreme Court in support of Broadnax’s appeal.
Theresa Butler, Matthew Butler’s mother, had asked that the execution proceed.
“This so called confession from cummings is just a stall tactic by Broadnax’s desperate defense team. Its all a lie,” Butler wrote in a post on social media.
Broadnax was the third person put to death this year in Texas and the 10th in the country. Texas has historically held more executions than any other state.
About an hour before Broadnax’s execution on Thursday, Florida put to death James Ernest Hitchcock, 70, for beating and choking his 13-year-old step-niece to death.
TEXARKANA (KETK) — The Texarkana Police Department needs the public’s help in finding a man wanted for multiple offenses related to the sexual assault of a child after he posted bond and faked his death.
According to the police, 46-year-old Gordon Lemons was arrested in July 2024 for aggravated sexual assault of a child, but was later released after posting a $150,000 bond.
Similar charges were to filed against Lemons in May 2025, but Lemons allegedly attempted to fake his own death and fled the area days beforehand. He traveled to South Texas and attempted to cross into Mexico, but was picked up by ex-girlfriend, Thesia Griffin, to help avoid law enforcement instead.
Griffin was arrested on Tuesday for hindering apprehension and booked into the Bowie County Jail for assisting Lemons, the police department said.
“We now have evidence that Lemons is hiding out in Hot Springs, Arkansas, with help from family and friends,” the police department announced on Thursday. “Lemons should be considered dangerous. Please do not attempt to approach him.”
The Texarkana Police Department urges anyone with information to call them at 903-798-3116 or submit a tip to Texarkana Area Crime Stoppers to be eligible for a cash reward at 903-793-STOP or at http://www.p3tips.com.