Today is
Friday June 05, 2026
AUSTIN (KETK)– Exxon Mobil announced on Tuesday that it is seeking shareholders’ approval to make Texas its new legal home.
If approved, Exxon will join SpaceX and a number of other companies that have relocated their headquarters to Texas over the past few years. Exxon’s headquarters have been located in Texas since 1989.
Gov. Greg Abbott released a statement on Tuesday approving Exxon’s decision to move their ‘legal home’ to Texas, claiming it will help the state’s economic growth.
“Freed from the stranglehold of over-regulation, Texas is where global brand leaders thrive and jobs for hardworking Texans grow,” Abbott said. “I thank Exxon Mobil for their decision to redomicile in Texas and for their long-standing partnership with our state. With this decision, Texas will further dominate the corporate landscape and ensure our economic growth reaches new heights.”
NEW YORK (AP) — A New York federal judge on Tuesday urged over two dozen states to settle their antitrust claims against Ticketmaster and its parent company this week after the U.S. Justice Department reached a deal and dropped out of an ongoing trial.
But Dan Wall, a lawyer for Ticketmaster’s parent, Live Nation Entertainment, told Judge Arun Subramanian at a hearing in Manhattan that the chance all states would settle their claims by Friday was “about zero.”
He said he based his assessment on the nature of discussions between the ticketing and entertainment giants and the states over the past week. The states don’t all want the same kinds of relief, he said.
“There are too many parties,” Wall said. “We want to stick the landing here. Get it down. And we won’t stick the landing by Friday.”
At another point, Wall said: “There is zero chance we get this done by Friday.”
Subramanian quipped: “Not with that attitude.”
Still, the judge persuaded lawyers for both sides to negotiate in Manhattan federal court this week to see if they make progress before he decides whether to grant a mistrial request by the states and schedule a fresh start for a trial or to resume a trial next Monday that started with the presentation of evidence last week.
“Right now you should be focused on can we make a deal,” the judge told them, saying he would find them conference rooms throughout the courthouse to do their work. He even offered his robing room for office space. “I want to see if we can get a deal done here.”
Michael Rapino, president and CEO of Live Nation, attended the courthouse talks Tuesday.
On Monday, the Justice Department revealed that it had settled its antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster, describing the terms of the deal as a victory for consumers that would end an illegal monopoly over live events in the U.S.
At the trial, lawyers for the federal government and 39 states and the District of Columbia said Live Nation and Ticketmaster were squelching competition and driving up prices for fans through threats, retaliation and other tactics to “suffocate the competition” by controlling virtually every aspect of the industry, from concert promotion to ticketing. The companies insisted that artists, sports teams and venues set prices and decide how tickets are sold.
The Justice Department announcement was immediately met with strong criticism from multiple states. North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson called it “a terrible deal.”
U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat and member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, said Monday that the new deal was like previous agreements with the Justice Department that ultimately failed to curtail monopoly activity by Live Nation.
Klobuchar praised states for opposing the deal and said it was “troubling” that the deal was announced a month after the head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division was ousted.
According to a court document, Live Nation agreed to let up to 50% of all tickets sold at amphitheaters it owns, operates or controls to be sold through any ticketing marketplace.
It also said it would cap its service fees at those amphitheaters at 15% and divest ownership or control of 13 amphitheaters, including venues in Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Syracuse, New York, and Austin, Texas. It said Live Nation will create a $280 million settlement fund to settle claims or pay civil penalties to states.
None of that money will be paid out if no states settle, though. A Justice Department official said Monday that at least 10 states had agreed to join the United States in settling the case.
That leaves over two dozen states that have not agreed to the deal, lawyers for the states say.
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FILE – The Ticketmaster logo is seen along the sideline of the field before an NFL football game, Sept. 15, 2024, in Jacksonville, Fla. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack, File)
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Date Mar 3, 2026 10:35 AM
Headline Justice Department Ticketmaster Lawsuit
Source FR121174 AP
Notes FILE PHOTO
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HOUSTON (AP) — A North Texas man faced execution on Wednesday for fatally stabbing his girlfriend and her 8-year-old son nearly 13 years ago.
Cedric Ricks was sentenced to death for the May 2013 killings of 30-year-old Roxann Sanchez and her son Anthony Figueroa at their apartment in Bedford, a suburb in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Sanchez’s 12-year-old son, Marcus Figueroa, was injured during the attack.
Ricks, 51, was scheduled to receive a lethal injection after 6 p.m. CDT at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) north of Houston.
His attorneys have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay his execution, arguing that prosecutors violated Ricks’ constitutional rights by eliminating potential jurors on the basis of race. Previous appeals by Ricks that alleged ineffective counsel and called for the suppression of evidence in the case have been denied.
In a 1986 ruling known as Batson v. Kentucky, the Supreme Court determined that excluding jurors because of their race violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
“At trial, Ricks already suspected that the State had singled out minority jurors to exclude them from his jury,” Ricks’ attorneys said in their petition to the Supreme Court.
Ricks’ lawyers said that notes prosecutors kept during the jury selection process and which were not obtained until 2021 show that prosecutors singled out minority jurors.
The Texas Attorney General’s Office said court records show the prosecution’s decisions in jury selection were “race neutral” and lower courts have already concluded that prosecutors’ actions were not discriminatory.
Ricks “viciously stabbed his girlfriend Roxann and her eight-year-old son Anthony to death,” the attorney general’s office said. “The public has a strong interest in enforcement of Ricks’ sentence.”
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday denied Ricks’ request for a 90-day reprieve or to commute his death sentence.
Prosecutors said Ricks and Sanchez were arguing in their apartment when Sanchez’ two sons from a previous marriage — Anthony and Marcus Figueroa — tried to break up the fight.
Ricks grabbed a knife from the kitchen and began to stab Sanchez multiple times, according to court records.
Marcus Figueroa ran to his bedroom closet and tried to call police. After killing Anthony Figuerora, Ricks resumed stabbing Marcus Figueroa, who survived the attack by playing dead. Ricks did not injure his then 9-month-old son, Isaiah, according to court records.
Ricks fled and was later arrested in Oklahoma.
During his trial, Ricks testified that he had anger issues and had been defending himself against the two boys after they had come to their mother’s defense.
“Explaining my rage, I was upset. Things happen. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I wish I could bring them back, like, right now,” said Ricks, who also apologized for the killings.
A day before the stabbings, Ricks had appeared in court after having been charged with assaulting Sanchez during a previous incident.
If the execution is carried out, Ricks would be the second person put to death this year in Texas and the sixth person in the country. Texas has historically held more executions than any other state.
Charles “Sonny” Burton, a 75-year-old inmate in Alabama, had been scheduled to be executed on Thursday. But Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Tuesday commuted his death sentence, reducing it to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Burton had been sentenced to death for a fatal shooting during a 1991 robbery even though he didn’t pull the trigger.
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Follow Juan A. Lozano: https://x.com/juanlozano70
NACOGDOCHES, Texas (KETK)– Six people have recently been arrested in Nacogdoches County after a large number of illegal drugs were found across the county in three different cases, including methamphetamine and cocaine.
Feb. 24 arrests
According to the Nacogdoches County Sheriff’s Office, two residents in the 200 block of College Street were arrested on Feb. 24 after deputies conducted a search warrant of their home and found that 53-year-old Howard Clay Cooper and 36-year-old Jessica Marie Ady were distributing large amounts of methamphetamine.
2 vehicle crash delays traffic on US Highway 69 near Love’s Lookout
During the search of the home offficlas also stated they obtained 53 grams of methamphetamine and 29 grams of crack cocaine that were found in a secret compartment. After executing the search warrant, Cooper and Ady were taken to the Nacogdoches County Jail and charged with two counts of manufacturing or delivering a controlled substance. Both their bonds were set at $200,000, and they currently remain in jail.
Feb. 20 arrests
Earlier in the month, investigators for the sheriff’s office conducted a search warrant at a home in the Kingtown community. Following the search, 52-year-old Robert Williams and 80-year-old Franklin Rickenbacker were arrested after investigators found drug paraphernalia and other items used for distributing narcotics. It was also discovered that meth was being purchased from the residence provided by both suspects.
Following the arrest, Williams and Rickenbacker were both charged with delivery of a controlled substance and they both remain in the Nacogdoches County jail.
March 5 arrests
A third drug-related arrest was made in Nacogdoches County on March 5, following a traffic stop on FM 2782. During the traffic stop, deputies noticed suspicious behavior from the driver, 47-year-old Amber Leigh Kinkaid and the passenger, 33-year-old Matthew Bradley, prompting them to contact investigators.
Once investigators arrived on the scene, Kinkaid admitted to operating the vehicle without a driver’s license and confessed to having a large amount of methamphetamine in her possession. According to officials, investigations later found 140 grams of methamphetamine in Kinkaid’s possession.
Bradley and Kinkaid were both placed under arrest and taken to the Nacogdoches County Jail, where they were charged with delivery of a controlled substance and their bonds were set at $20,000. Kinkaid was released on bond on March 6, and Williams currently remains in jail.
WASHINGTON (AP) — When COVID-19 wrought havoc on society in early 2020, today’s youngest schoolchildren were infants or yet to be born. Now in their early school years, researchers are beginning to see how the pandemic years have shaped their education, even though many had yet to set foot in a classroom when it began.
First and second graders continue to perform worse than their pre-pandemic counterparts on math and reading tests, according to a report published Tuesday by the education assessment and research group NWEA. But while math scores have inched up every year, reading scores remain stagnant, the report shows. The data suggests the slump in academic performance is not rooted only in instructional disruption. Broader societal shifts might be at play.
In the youngest students’ failure to recover, “there’s something kind of systemic here happening … within schools and outside of schools,” said Megan Kuhfeld, a researcher at NWEA. “We can’t pinpoint one specific cause.”
The pandemic’s effects on older children’s academic achievement are well-documented. COVID-19 forced kids out of classrooms and into online learning. Students lost out on face time with instructors, their mental health suffered in the isolation, and their well-being deteriorated as some families endured hardship. Some schoolchildren stopped showing up to school altogether.
The federal government gave billions of dollars to school districts to help students catch up — with mixed results. In 2024, reading scores for fourth- and eighth-graders continued a downward slide, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Math scores, however, trended upward.
Testing for younger kids is less common, so the NWEA report offers insights into the depth of the academic disruption. It’s based on assessments given to students in the 2024-25 school year.
Kindergarten scores for math and science remained roughly the same throughout the pandemic. First and second graders are trending in the same way as their older peers. Math and reading scores are still falling short of pre-pandemic levels, although math scores are slowly rising. Reading scores have remained roughly the same since the spring of 2021, when the first full school year in the pandemic was wrapping up.
It’s unclear what is depressing the scores. Kuhfeld pointed to emerging data showing that fewer parents are reading to their children, an activity that has been shown to boost literacy. A 2024 survey of parents in the United Kingdom found that less than half of children under 5 were regularly read to, a 20-point drop from a dozen years prior. Less than half of parents indicated they enjoyed reading to their kids, too.
Schools are beginning to make concessions to accommodate students with weaker literacy skills and short attention spans. Many teachers no longer assign books to their students.
In Minnetonka Public Schools outside Minneapolis, school leaders say that while reading scores dipped during the pandemic, they have since recovered. Teachers now focus more on phonics and also regularly assess students on literacy. Students who are behind receive extra help on the parts of reading where they struggle. A student who has difficulty reading aloud might be asked to read to one of their classmates, for example.
But some things are out of the district’s control. During the pandemic, Associate Superintendent Amy LaDue said, many young children were homebound. They missed out on activities like going to museums and playing with other children, which are helpful for language and literacy development. She believes that’s one factor that continues to hamper kids, especially those from low-income families.
“These kids weren’t in school when the pandemic happened, but (some) were … in early childhood and preschool,” LaDue said. “Their opportunities … to have those experiences outside of their home that build literacy skills and to apply them with peers probably were impacted because they were home.”
Along with interventions at school, a growing number of states and cities are investing in pre-kindergarten to help children with early literacy. California has introduced universal pre-kindergarten, and New York City is expanding its pre-kindergarten program to 2-year-olds, giving toddlers an early start on learning. New Mexico has made child care free for nearly all families.
RAYMONDVILLE, Texas (AP) — A family whose two teen boys are in a nationally recognized mariachi band in South Texas was reunited Monday afternoon after bipartisan criticism that the Trump administration’s campaign for mass deportation overreached by detaining the family.
Brothers Antonio Gámez-Cuéllar, 18, and Joshua, 14, were detained along with their 12-year-old brother and their parents Feb. 25. The teenage boys were prominent members of the McAllen High School Mariachi Oro band, which has visited the White House, performed at Carnegie Hall and won eight state championships.
The two younger boys and their parents were released Monday from a family detention center in Dilley, Texas, said U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat who visited them, marking his third visit to the detention center.
Antonio was released on Monday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from a detention center in Raymondville, Texas.
“They were ecstatic. They were crying. They were excited to be reunited with their son and brother, Antonio, who was being held separately in Raymondville,” Castro said at a news conference in San Antonio. “But their mom kept asking, ‘What did we do wrong? We followed all the rules. We went to court, we haven’t done anything wrong.’”
The family had been checking in regularly with immigration authorities, as instructed, when they were detained, according to a relative and a girlfriend who organized a GoFundMe account for the family.
The Department of Homeland Security said the parents, Emma Guadalupe Cuellar Lopez and Luis Antonio Gamez Martinez, were arrested by immigration authorities and “chose” to bring their three children with them. The department said they entered the U.S. illegally in 2023 near Brownsville, Texas.
Efrén C. Olivares, an attorney with the National Immigration Law Center representing the eldest son, Antonio, clarified that the family entered lawfully through the CBP One app, a legal pathway, in 2023.
Olivares said Antonio was released after attorneys filed a parole request with ICE which ICE granted, and attorneys did not need to ask for a judge’s order.
Elected officials from across the political spectrum voiced support for the family, who are from Mexico and had sought asylum in the U.S. and were going through their immigration proceedings.
“I challenge my colleagues to work together for new enforcement policies that not only secure our border but make safer communities and that ultimately are common sense,” U.S. Rep. Monica de la Cruz, a Republican congresswoman representing McAllen, in Raymondville after Antonio’s release.
McAllen’s Republican mayor, Javier Villalobos, said he supported the family and said he continues to advocate for “responsible pathways for law abiding individuals who want to contribute to our economy, support their families, and become productive neighbors in McAllen.”
U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a New York Democrat and chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, called the family’s detention “outrageous.”
The boys’ mariachi directors visited the family held in Dilley earlier Monday. Alex Treviño, the mariachi director and Neri Fuentes, the assistant director, said the kids were concerned about losing their playing abilities.
“They were worried that their fingers weren’t going to work, because they don’t have instruments,” Treviño said.
Antonio, who had been held apart from the family due to his age, recently won the first chair for trumpet in a state competition.
“This year he’s going to be graduating from high school and going to college and joining some other groups in college. He wants to be a music educator,” Fuentes said.
Castro attributed the release of the family to an “ensemble” effort and said he continues to push for the family detention center in Dilley to be closed. He said the population at the detention facility had gone down from about 1,100 people in January to about 450 people, with about 100 of them being children.
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — State investigators began searching a secluded ranch in New Mexico on Monday where financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein once entertained guests amid allegations that the property may have been used for sexual abuse and sex trafficking of young women.
The office of state Attorney General Raúl Torrez announced that the search was being done with the cooperation of the current ranch owners.
Torrez last month reopened an investigation of the ranch. New Mexico’s initial case was closed in 2019 at the request of federal prosecutors in New York, and state prosecutors say now that “revelations outlined in the previously sealed FBI files warrant further examination.”
Epstein purchased the sprawling Zorro Ranch in Stanley, New Mexico, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of Santa Fe, in 1993 from former Democratic Gov. Bruce King and built a hilltop mansion with a private runway.
The property was sold by Epstein’s estate in 2023 — with proceeds going toward creditors — to the family of Don Huffines, a candidate in Texas for state comptroller who won the Republican primary last week.
“The New Mexico Department of Justice appreciates the cooperation of the current property owners,” the agency said in a statement. Prosecutors “will continue to keep the public appropriately informed, support the survivors, and follow the facts wherever they lead.”
Additionally, New Mexico state legislators have established a new commission to look into past activities at the ranch.
Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial in 2019 on charges that he sexually abused and trafficked dozens of underage girls.
Epstein never faced charges in New Mexico, but the state attorney general’s office in 2019 confirmed that it had interviewed possible victims who visited Epstein’s ranch.
HOUSTON (AP) – The hourslong security lines at a handful of U.S. airports this week highlight the potential problems when a government shutdown coincides with the busy spring break travel season.
Houston’s secondary airport weathered the worst problems, with lines consistently lasting over three hours for much of Sunday and Monday. Passengers also had to wait more than an hour to get through security at several other airports, including in New Orleans and Atlanta.
The surge of millions of travelers as schools take spring breaks would put pressure on even a fully staffed airport system. With the staffing problems that tend to accompany a government shutdown, some airports are are beginning to feel more pressure. Still, most airports have not experienced significantly long security lines.
The longer Transportation Security Administration officers have to work without pay during the partial shutdown, the more likely it is that some will miss work as they take on second jobs to pay for necessities like gas and child care and their other bills. Many may still be rebuilding finances after the 43-day shutdown last fall, the longest in history.
Johnny Jones, secretary-treasurer of the TSA union’s bargaining unit, said workers will miss their first full paychecks this weekend since the shutdown began Feb. 14. He said morale among the workforce “has taken a severe hit.”
“Over the last 15 months, TSA officers have went through three government shutdowns,” he told The Associated Press.
Jones, who also works as a TSA agent, said it took months for him to financially recover from the 43-day shutdown.
“I refilled my water buckets and now I’m starting to empty them again. Some people were not so fortunate to be able to refill their water buckets,” he said.
This current shutdown has only affected the Department of Homeland Security. Democrats in Congress refused to fund the department because they objected to its immigration enforcement tactics. Democratic lawmakers have said DHS won’t get funded until new restrictions are placed on federal immigration operations following the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this year.
The TSA and Homeland Security have consistently blamed Democrats for the long security lines.
“This chaos is a direct result of Democrats and their refusal to fund DHS. These political stunts force patriotic TSA officers, who protect our skies from serious threats, to work without pay,” said Lauren Bis, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, Department of Homeland Security. “These frontline heroes received only partial paychecks earlier this month and now face their first full missed paycheck, leading to financial hardship, absences, and crippling staffing shortages.”
Chris Sununu, president and CEO of the Airlines for America trade group, reiterated his plea for Congress to end the shutdown.
“More than 2.7 million people cleared through TSA yesterday, but too many had to wait in extraordinarily long—and painfully slow—lines at checkpoints,” Sununu said in a written statement Monday. “It’s unacceptable to have wait times of 2 or 3 hours. And it’s unacceptable that TSA officers will have $0 in their paychecks this week.”
But Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee rejected the notion that they were to blame for TSA officers going unpaid.
“FACTS: Democrats introduced a clean bill to fully fund TSA with no conditions. Republicans blocked it,” the Homeland Democrats group said on X. “Republicans would rather disrupt our travel than rein in ICE. It’s shameful.”
The country’s longest security lines have been reported at the William P. Hobby Airport in Houston, with wait times topping three hours. Video from New Orleans on Sunday showed the security line stretching out of the terminal and across a parking garage as the wait there peaked at 77 minutes.
The lines at both those airports had eased by Monday afternoon, but Hobby airport was still reporting a two-hour wait for security and officials were urging travelers to get to the airport at least three or four hours ahead of their flights. The wait time in New Orleans was reported at 10 minutes in the late afternoon.
But more problems could pop up if a security shift is short on screeners when it’s busy.
Neither the Houston airport authority nor TSA would answer questions Monday about why Hobby airport is so prone to long delays during the shutdown. Hobby is smaller than George Bush Intercontinental Airport, which handles roughly three-quarters of all the passengers passing through Houston. But Hobby still handled nearly 15 million passengers in 2024.
AUSTIN – Texas Governor Greg Abbott is alerting state health organizations to the possibility of Chinese espionage via medical technology. The Governor’s office on X released a letter directing state health agencies to mitigate data privacy concerns related to Chinese-sourced medical technologies.”
Abbott directed Texas state health agencies and public university systems to address potential cybersecurity risks linked to Chinese-manufactured medical devices, citing concerns that sensitive patient data could be accessed by foreign actors.Spying on Texans will not be permitted by the Chinese Communist Party.
The directive comes after warnings from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that some Chinese-made patient monitors, such as the Contec CMS8000 and Epsimed MN-120, have cybersecurity flaws that could enable unauthorized remote access and the exfiltration of protected health information.
LOUISIANA – The Grant Parish Sheriff’s Office announced that two Texas women flew cocaine and telephones into a federal prison in central Louisiana using a drone and plastic bird decoys, leading to their capture. Investigators were informed by the suspects that they were paid $40,000 to carry out the smuggling operation. The women were identified by deputies as Kassy Marie Cole, 41, of Hurst, and Melanie Jean Worthington, 38, of Joshua.
Worthington is accused of possessing marijuana and methamphetamine with the intent to distribute, as well as bringing contraband into a correctional facility.
Cole was accused of possessing synthetic marijuana and methamphetamine with the intent to distribute, as well as bringing contraband into a correctional facility. Cole had an outstanding warrant at the time of her arrest, according to authorities.
(AP) – After two legislative sessions in which Republican lawmakers hammered universities as bastions of liberal indoctrination, campuses across Texas are restricting how race and gender can be taught and requiring instructors to present controversial subjects in a “balanced” way. At the University of Houston, some deans have taken the unusual step of requiring faculty to certify they “teach, not indoctrinate.”
Tensions on campus escalated when a five-page checklist instructing professors on how to review course materials was unveiled last month during a faculty council meeting.
Some professors say the checklist, coupled with the certification effort, reinforce what they see as a false premise: that indoctrination is widespread in university classrooms. They say the efforts pressure instructors to avoid controversial topics altogether.
University officials say the certifications are not required — even though some deans described them as mandatory, with one saying punishment was an option for noncompliance — and that the checklist is a draft that is optional for faculty use.
The officials say the reviews are part of efforts to comply with Senate Bill 37, a new state law that requires boards of regents at least once every five years to review the core classes all undergraduates must take to graduate and ensure they prepare students for civic and professional life. The law does not prohibit teaching of certain topics or require instructors to submit written assurances about their teaching.
In her annual State of the University address last fall, Chancellor and University of Houston President Renu Khator opened by warning that universities face mounting attacks and declining public trust.
“The landscape of higher education is changing fast,” she said, “The attacks — justifiable or not — are constant.”
Khator pointed to a 2024 Gallup survey that found public confidence in higher education had fallen to a record low, with only 36% of Americans saying they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in colleges and universities. A July 2025 update showed trust ticking up to 42%, the only major U.S. institution to see an increase regardless of party affiliation.
The certification requirement and checklist trace back to a series of messages and internal reviews that began late last year.
Language about indoctrination appeared in Khator’s Nov. 21 message urging “faculty colleagues” to review their course titles, syllabi and content, writing that the university’s “guiding principle is to teach them, not to indoctrinate them.” She also directed department chairs and deans to help provide an objective assessment of courses and asked the Provost’s Office and the Office of General Counsel to begin reviewing the core curriculum for compliance with SB 37.
In a Jan. 27 campuswide update, Khator said the SB 37 core curriculum review had been completed and would be presented at the March 12 meeting of the board of regents.
In early February, some deans began requiring faculty to sign written statements affirming they were teaching critical thinking, not indoctrinating students.
In a Feb. 3 email, Daniel P. O’Connor, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, said he had “no evidence” any instructor was violating the university’s academic commitment but described the acknowledgement as necessary “to document that all instructors are aware” of the expectations, review their courses, and make revisions as needed.
In email replies to O’Connor, some faculty declined to sign the acknowledgment, calling the premise of widespread indoctrination a “straw man.”
Using language drafted by the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, faculty wrote that signing the acknowledgement could be construed as “some admission of guilt concerning these false accusations.”
“I have never engaged in indoctrination and … take offense, as a scholar, at such insinuations,” the emails said. “To have them paired with insinuations that I might have done otherwise … seems like it would bind me to admission of guilt for doing something that I have not done.”
The emails also asserted that administrators lack the authority to require faculty to sign the acknowledgment or punish them for refusing.
Two other UH deans — Heidi Appel of the Honors College and Yarneccia D. Dyson of the Graduate College of Social Work — also described the certification as required in emails to faculty. Both cited language stating SB 37 requires that courses “do not endorse specific policies, ideologies or legislation,” wording that appeared in earlier drafts but was removed before the law was passed. In a message to Honors College instructors, Appel wrote that full-time faculty who declined to sign the acknowledgement would be ineligible for merit salary increases, while part-time faculty — many of whom work on semester- or year-long contracts — could risk reappointment. She gave them a deadline of Feb. 9.
O’Connor, Appel and Dyson did not respond to an email containing detailed questions and a follow-up phone call.
Robert Zaretsky, who has taught at UH for 36 years and holds a joint appointment in the Honors College and the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, declined to sign.
“When I saw the word indoctrination, for me, that’s a red line,” he said. “It was as if there was a good chance that we are indoctrinating our students.”
Zaretsky said he felt able to refuse because he has tenure, but he worried the policy could pressure instructors and adjunct faculty who “have bills to pay and don’t have job security.”
Amid disagreements over the acknowledgments, instructors got their first look at the draft checklist during a Feb. 11 meeting of the faculty council’s curriculum committee. The document asks faculty to rate their courses “yes,” “partially” or “no” on whether they require students to adopt a particular political or ideological viewpoint, present multiple perspectives and avoid requiring students to express their personal beliefs or penalizing them for those beliefs.
According to faculty members present at the meeting, the agenda said nothing about the checklist, with committee members saying they were not involved in drafting it.
University officials said the checklist was written by a faculty group, but they have declined to name participants or explain how members were selected.
The confusion over the document’s origins comes as SB 37 also reshaped faculty governance at public universities. Faculty senates have traditionally operated as independent bodies elected by professors. The new law requires boards of regents to establish any faculty council or senate and allows university presidents to appoint members.
Zaretsky said he first saw the checklist when it circulated among faculty on a private email list after the meeting. He said it could complicate classroom instruction, particularly the recommendation that faculty present multiple perspectives on controversial topics.
“Our students struggle with even one article,” he said. “To have them read multiple articles … it’s going to sink the course. It’s too much ballast.”
In a March 2 letter, 174 UH professors who are members of AAUP urged the faculty council to formally vote on the checklist rather than allow it to move forward without a recorded position.
The professors argued that nothing in SB 37 prevents the faculty council from voting and warned that failing to do so would amount to “silent approval of the administration’s actions.”
“We understand the pressures you are under, and we understand how difficult this moment is. Nonetheless, we prevail on you to be courageous and accurately represent the sentiments of the faculty at this critical juncture,” the letter said.
The dispute has also prompted the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression to write to the university and argue that requiring faculty to affirm they present multiple perspectives or avoid certain viewpoints could violate First Amendment protections for academic freedom. University officials disagreed, saying the guidelines were drafted by faculty for voluntary use and that no mandatory affirmations or enforcement mechanisms exist.
Dona H. Cornell, UH’s chief legal officer, said in a letter responding to FIRE that the broader course review is intended to demonstrate the strength of the university’s academic standards.
“Our comprehensive, transparent review of all courses is intended to publicly verify what our faculty and alumni already know: that a UH education is built on the highest standards of excellence,” she wrote.
Documents reviewed by The Texas Tribune show the review process has already led to revisions in at least one course in the Graduate College of Social Work.
In November, Dyson, the college’s dean, sought volunteers to review 12 spring courses and offered a stipend as compensation.
By mid-December, faculty scheduled to teach those courses were sent revised “approved” syllabi for the spring semester. The revised syllabus for one class cut several readings focused on race, gender and sexuality and removed more explicit references to those topics from the course’s objectives.
The controversy at UH is part of a broader wave of scrutiny across Texas public universities. After SB 37 took effect in September and a video of a Texas A&M professor discussing gender identity sparked backlash from leading conservatives, public university systems moved to preempt further criticism by reviewing and revising courses.
Texas State University flagged hundreds of courses for review and told faculty to use an artificial intelligence tool to revise titles, descriptions and learning outcomes in favor of more neutral language.
At Texas Tech, the chancellor created a review process requiring certain instruction on race and gender to be disclosed, and, in some cases, approved before it can be taught.
Texas A&M regents approved a policy restricting courses that address “race or gender ideology” without written approval, while University of Texas regents adopted a rule requiring campuses to ensure students can graduate without studying what they describe as “ unnecessary controversial subjects ” and to take a “broad and balanced” approach when those topics arise.
McALLEN, Texas (AP) — The detention by U.S. immigration authorities of two teen brothers who were prominent members of a nationally recognized mariachi band in South Texas has triggered bipartisan criticism that the Trump administration’s campaign for mass deportation has overreached.
Brothers Antonio Gámez-Cuéllar, 18, and Joshua, 14, were detained along with their 12-year-old brother and their parents Feb. 25, according to a relative and a girlfriend who organized a GoFundMe account for the family. The family had been checking in regularly with immigration authorities, as instructed, when they were detained, the relative and girlfriend said.
The teenaged boys were prominent members of the McAllen High School Mariachi Oro band, which has visited the White House, performed at Carnegie Hall and won eight state championships.
Antonio was released Monday afternoon. Neither he nor his attorneys commented to reporters they left a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Raymondville, Texas. The other four family members were being held at a separate detention center for families in Dilley, Texas.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
Elected officials from across the political spectrum voiced support for the family, who are from Mexico and had sought asylum in the U.S. and were going through their immigration proceedings.
“The Gamez-Cuellar family’s story breaks my heart. South Texans know better than anyone that we can secure our border and still treat people with dignity — these are not competing values,” said Rep. Monica de la Cruz, a Republican congresswoman representing McAllen.
McAllen’s Republican mayor, Javier Villalobos, said he supported the family and said he continues to advocate for “responsible pathways for law abiding individuals who want to contribute to our economy, support their families, and become productive neighbors in McAllen.”
U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat, visited the four family members at the detention center in Dilley, near San Antonio on Monday.
Castro had visited the facility before when he advocated for the release of a 5-year-old from Minnesota, Liam Conejo Ramos, and his Ecuadorian father.
U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a New York Democrat and chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, called the family’s detention “outrageous.”
“This family followed the rules, showed up to their immigration appointment in good faith, and is now being torn apart by ICE, with their 18-year-old son separated from his parents and younger brothers,” he said.
CORPUS CHRISTI (AP) — The imminent depletion of water supplies in Corpus Christi threatens to cut off the flow of jet fuel to Texas airports and other oil exports from one of the nation’s largest petroleum ports, triggering potential shockwaves through energy markets in Texas and beyond.
Without significant rainfall, Corpus Christi is headed for a “water emergency” within months and total depletion of the system next year, according to the city’s website. “The impacts are going to be felt tremendously through the state, if not internationally,” said Sean Strawbridge, former CEO of the Port of Corpus Christi Authority, the nation’s top port for crude oil exports, in a 40-minute interview Thursday. “This should be no surprise to anybody. We were talking about this over a decade ago.”
Other current and former officials, alarmed at what they call a lack of preparations, have suggested the potential for an economic crisis involving mass layoffs, disruption of fuel supplies and billions of dollars in emergency spending to avoid an evacuation of the city.
Strawbridge, who now lives in Houston, laid the blame on city leaders, citing “their lack of experience, their lack of knowledge, their lack of recognizing the risks” in a bumbling, decade-long endeavor to build a large seawater desalination plant that would veer the region off its clear course toward calamity.
“They’ve found themselves in quite a dire predicament as a result of those poor decisions,” Strawbridge said. “Time is up.”
A spokesperson for Corpus Christi Mayor Paulette Guajardo declined interview requests, citing “prior commitments,” and did not respond to follow-up questions. City manager Peter Zanoni also did not respond to questions. Instead, Corpus Christi public information manager Robert Gonzales provided an emailed statement.
“The water shortage in the Coastal Bend is the result of a historic five-year drought,” it said. “Currently, the City of Corpus Christi has $1 billion in City Council-approved and funded water projects underway to address our water needs. The City remains committed to ensuring water security for the more than 500,000 residents and our commercial and industrial customers.”
Depletion of this region’s reservoirs would lead to “controlled depression” for the local economy, “mass unemployment” and “industrial total shutdown,” according to a two-page report by Don Roach, former assistant general manager of the San Patricio Municipal Water District, which supplies many of the region’s large industrial water users.
That includes refineries operated by Flint Hills Resources, Valero and Citgo that provide jet fuel to Texas airports and meet much of the state’s daily demand for gasoline.
“This waiting disaster is under the radar for the rest of the state,” said Roach, who worked 20 years at the water district and retired in 2014. “We hear nothing from the Texas politicians about the seriousness of the situation or any state plan to mitigate it.”
He no longer had access to current water data and contracts, he stressed, but produced the report based on his own knowledge. It said the costs of trucking in emergency water “would bankrupt many local small businesses and low-income households” while state emergency managers would need billions of dollars to “build emergency temporary pipelines or subsidize desalination barge rentals to prevent a total evacuation of the city.” Strawbridge, a former director of the Port of Long Beach, said Roach’s assessment was “spot on.”
Corpus Christi faces an imminent water crisis after a decade of city government failures, according to several former officials. Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate News
“No time to panic”
Zanoni, the city manager who has overseen Corpus Christi’s descent toward water depletion since 2019 and receives a $400,000 salary, rejected notions of imminent disaster during a press conference Thursday, when Lake Corpus Christi, one of the city’s main reservoirs, dropped below 10%. The press conference took place three days after Inside Climate News asked the city for comment about the impending water crisis.
“I think we are going to get through this,” he told TV cameras as he stood before the dwindling remnants of the lake. “We have confidence in what we’re doing. This is no time to panic.”
Zanoni, who holds a master’s of public administration from Florida State University, said the city had “worked tirelessly over the past months to bring everything that we humanly and possibly could to forgo what could be this supply and demand issue.”
“Now we’re going to focus, with the city council and the region, on being prepared in case supply doesn’t meet demand,” he said.
“The best-case scenario, that assumes some level of rain, has this lake here going to about the early fall,” said Zanoni, who indicated that the summer months would give the city enough time to boot up its portfolio of new groundwater water projects.
Corpus Christi City Manager Peter Zanoni at a press conference on March 5, 2026, when Lake Corpus Christi, one of the city’s main reservoirs, dropped below 10% full.
James Dodson, a former director of Corpus Christi’s water department who retired this year as a private consultant and was involved in several of those projects, disagreed. He said residents and officials “are crazy not to be panicking.”
“It’s the very worst scenario that I’ve ever seen,” said Dodson, who oversaw a historic expansion of Corpus Christi’s water supply in the 1990s. “It’s going to be an economic disaster.”
For years, he said, the city dismissed repeated opportunities to develop groundwater import projects as it maintained a singular and fruitless focus on desalination. That includes projects that the city only recently scrambled to get started. Dodson doubted any will materialize in time.
“They’ve been kicking the can down the road for a long time and they’ve finally run out of road,” said a current regional water official who requested anonymity to preserve a working relationship with the city. “They’re looking at projects to do that they should have done five, six, seven years ago.”
The last hope to avert disaster, the official said, was a 20- to 30-inch rainfall.
“It would basically have to be a hurricane,” he said.
A spokesperson for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Andrew Mahaleris, didn’t address specific comments about an impending water catastrophe or disruption of the state economy. In an emailed statement, he said: “Corpus Christi is an important economic driver not only for Texas but also the nation. The State of Texas has made significant investments into ensuring the Corpus Christi area has the water resources it needs to serve citizens and industry alike.”
He added that the governor “will continue working with the legislature to ensure Texans have a safe, reliable water supply for the next fifty years.”
“I wouldn’t say that it’s a disaster”
Mere months remain, according to Corpus Christi’s online water dashboard, until the city enters a “Level 1 Emergency,” which begins 180 days from projected depletion of water supplies. Functional failure of the water system, or “dead pool,” will occur before total depletion.
In a level one water emergency, the city’s plans call for an immediate 25% curtailment of water consumption. But city planners are only beginning to discuss what that would even look like and still haven’t determined how they would implement it.
“We can’t close and open everyone’s valves,” said Nick Winkelmann, chief operating officer of Corpus Christi Water, in an interview at city hall last week. “One way to enact water restrictions is through pricing.”
The region’s largest industrial users, which collectively consume the majority of the region’s water, remain exempt from emergency curtailment. These multi-billion-dollar refineries, petrochemical plants and liquified natural gas facilities are built to run at a steady rate and can’t simply throttle down production in accordance with water availability. They consume large volumes of water primarily in cooling towers to prevent excessive heating and explosions.
Gulf Coast Growth Ventures, a plastics production facility operated by Exxon Mobil and Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, started operations in 2022 and is the largest water consumer in the
“It has not gone as smoothly as it should have,” said Bob Paulison, a member of the Texas Chemistry Council, director of the Coastal Bend Industries Association and architect of the desalination project. “There are a lot of reasons for why that happened.” He said he worked on desalination for 12 years, but the projects got bogged down by political fights, administrative processes, the COVID pandemic and “a tug of war which has resulted in very slow progress.”
“I wouldn’t say that it’s a disaster,” he said of the current situation, expressing faith that the city would complete new water projects before supplies run out. It was “too early” to assess when that could happen, he said.
Presented with Roach’s report, Paulison expressed a longstanding respect for the veteran water manager and said, “It looks like it’s very dire, more dire than we’ve been looking at.”
“We’re relying on the model that the city has put together,” Paulison said.
Regarding a potential shutdown of the entire refining and petrochemical complex, he said, “that could certainly shut down at some point, but we don’t see that happening in the early stages.”
Asked about plans to develop alternative jet fuel supplies for Texas airports in the case of a shutdown, Paulison said, “I’m sure that someone somewhere is working on that.”
Charles McConnell, a former assistant energy secretary with the Obama administration, wondered why concrete plans hadn’t been prepared.
“Did it take them all the way to yesterday to figure out they’re going to run out by the end of the year?” he said. “That’s pretty pathetic.” McConnell, who now teaches at the University of Houston, doubted that a shutdown of Corpus Christi’s industrial sector would have acute or long-lasting impacts beyond Texas. New producers would fill the gap, while new pipelines and supply chains would bypass the city.
“It’s a surprise to me that none of those refineries and industries down there have their own desal plants,” said McConnell, who worked 31 years for the chemical manufacturer Praxair in Houston. “They’re using municipal water, for Christ’s sake!”
An iron ore plant behind a playground at Simpson Park in Portland, near Corpus Christi, on March 4, 2026. Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate News
Rapid expansion followed the shale boom
The roots of this situation stretch back more than a decade, to the period of rapid downstream industrial expansion that followed the shale revolution in the oilfields of Texas. Strawbridge joined the Port of Corpus Christi Authority in 2015, as a surge of major industrial projects sought to build in the area. Even then, Strawbridge said, everyone knew Corpus Christi needed more water.
In January 2016, Abbott traveled to Israel, where he toured the world’s largest seawater desalination plant and met with Israeli officials to discuss desalination.
Later that year, an industry group called H2O4Texas, with sponsors including Dow, Chevron and Marathon Oil, hosted an event in Corpus Christi. “They were basically saying because of the growth in the Coastal Bend, we were gonna need desalination,” said Isabel Araiza, then a professor at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, who attended the event.
That was the first that Araiza, a Corpus Christi native with a Ph.D. from Boston University, had heard of desalination. She said she was at the meeting for a different reason, finding it strange how many business and political leaders were there.
The oil and gas industry wanted to build enormous projects in the region, processing oil and gas from Texas’ shale fields into myriad fuels, chemicals and plastics before loading them onto tankers for export.
In March 2017, then-city manager Margie Rose sent a letter to ExxonMobil, the world’s largest private oil company, that said, “because the City aggressively protects water resources for the future by implementing a matrix of supply strategies, we feel that we have sufficient water supplies to meet your needs.”
Six days later the city requested funding from the Texas Water Development Board to study feasibility and do preliminary design of a seawater desalination plant.
Around that time, Strawbridge said, “it became very clear to the port authority that there was a difference of opinions as to how much water was available and how much would be needed to continue to attract large industrial investors.”
“The city felt that it had enough water to last, based on its forecast, until 2040,” Strawbridge said. “We, the port authority, had a very different view of what that demand curve looked like.”
That’s when the port began developing plans for its own desalination plant, he said.
In 2018, a new, interim city manager, Keith Selman, promised another large volume of water to Steel Dynamics, which then built a steel mill in the area.
The emerging solution: four desalination plants
That same year, Corpus Christi created a program exempting the region’s largest industrial water users from water curtailment restrictions during drought for a fee of $0.25 per 1,000 gallons. The city said it would use the money to fund the development of a new water source. The city’s water reservoirs were two-thirds full at the time.
In 2019, the city’s staff presented the city council with a plan to build a seawater desalination facility. Exxon had taken up the city’s offer for water and planned to build a massive plastics plant called Gulf Coast Growth Ventures in partnership with Saudi Arabia’s national oil company. It would be the largest water user in the region, consuming as much as all city residents combined.
“Large increases in water demand are projected to occur in 2022,” said a presentation authored by Paulison and given to the city council by then-Assistant City Manager Mark Van Vleck. “To meet expected water demand, we need to move forward with the procurement of a seawater desalination plant now.”
The plant would produce 10 million gallons per day, cost $140 million and take two years to build, the presentation said. It needed to begin supplying water by the start of 2023. The council voted unanimously to move forward.
By 2020 the size of the proposed plant had doubled. “We were recognizing that we’re going to need more water,” said Roland Barrera, a city council member who has served since 2018. “If we want to expand our economy, then we have to recognize that’s the way to go.”
As the scale of the situation came into focus, the city proposed a second desalination plant, and the port also proposed two.
Encarnacion Serna, a retired chemical engineer, explains a diagram and calculations he made of one of the city’s desalination projects. Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate News
Sounding the alarm
That’s when Encarnacion Serna, a retired chemical plant operations manager, found out about plans for one of those plants just up the shore from his waterfront home on Corpus Christi Bay.
Serna, an engineer who had worked on reverse osmosis water systems for Valero and Occidental Chemical, reviewed the project’s application. What he saw, he said, astounded him: flimsy assumptions, unrealistic estimates and missing information.
A facility of that scale, he knew, would require railcars full of pretreatment chemicals, create a mountain of sludge waste every day and consume a tremendous amount of electricity. But he didn’t see serious plans for any of that, he said.
He dug deeper into the desalination boom and quickly saw what was going on: Politicians and businessmen had oversold their water supply, he said, and were scrambling for more as shortages approached. But none of them had any idea what they were doing, Serna remembered thinking as he reviewed the applications.
“I’ve been trying since 2020 to let them know how catastrophic this is going to be,” he said in an interview at his home. “They’ve acted with a profound ignorance.”
Serna, a father of four who worked his whole life at chemical plants in Texas, didn’t think any of the proposals would produce as much freshwater as projected, come online as quickly as expected or cost as little as any of the applications stated. These were not going to solve the crisis that officials had teed up, he believed.
In calls, emails and public comments to city and port officials, Serna raised the alarm at what he saw unfolding. He felt brushed off and soon stopped receiving responses.
Serna knew that chemical plants and refineries can’t just throttle down water consumption at will. The multi-billion-dollar facilities are meant to operate consistently at a steady state with a set inflow of water. Changing that balance raised risks of explosions. The whole region was skidding toward catastrophe, Serna thought at the time, with no realistic solution in sight.
In 2022, Gulf Coast Growth Ventures, the Exxon-Saudi partnership, began to draw water while the desalination facility meant to supply it still didn’t even exist on paper.
Strawbridge, then CEO of the Port of Corpus Christi Authority, insisted a private desalination operator should build and run a large facility that could sell its water to the city. But the city wanted to operate its own. Strawbridge considered the location of the city’s project unsuitable. Both sides said the other took steps to undermine the project.
Meanwhile, veteran local scientists rejected envrionmental studies from developers claiming the massive discharge of brine from the plants wouldn’t turn the coastal bays and estuaries into hypersaline wastelands.
“I’ve read the engineering studies,” said Paul Montagna, an endowed chair at the Harte Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi, in a 2022 interview with Inside Climate News. “And I just don’t get it.”
Environmentalists organized against the plants. Araiza, the college professor who attended the first desalination meeting, had become a leader among groups that were fighting desalination as a means to resist the onslaught of petrochemical projects in their area, which they saw as wealthy, outside interests swooping in to hijack their resources, institutions and environment.
“They really thought it was just going to be a yes,” she said from her office at Del Mar College, beneath a poster of Che Guevara. “I think we helped slow things down.”
Barrera, the city council member, started to feel uneasy as controversy and constant turnover on the council seemed to leave them unable to push the project forward.
“I’ve been accused of being a fearmonger,” he said in an interview at his office in downtown Corpus Christi. “Now everybody’s scared.”
Encarnacion Serna, at his home on Corpus Christi Bay in March, spent years trying to warn local officials that they were steering the region toward disaster. Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate News
It all falls apart
Strawbridge took an entourage of about 30 Texas lawmakers, businessmen and lobbyists to Israel in November 2022 to visit desalination facilities “to see that it is possible to solve for our water issues,” he said.
Strawbridge encouraged the lawmakers to support the port’s development of a private desalination plant, which he said was urgently needed to cover for the failures of the city. But he drew public outrage from city officials when he applied for state funding for a facility that struck them as a competitor to theirs.
Strawbridge said the trip to Israel ultimately led the Texas lawmakers to pass legislation in 2023 that created the state’s $1 billion water fund.
But the trip, not disclosed to the public at the time, ultimately ignited a scandal that led to Strawbridge’s resignation when an investigation by KRIS 6 revealed that the port, which is not a taxing entity, spent more than $200,000 taking the crew to Israel. The station described “a pattern of lavish spending” on that trip and in prior port activities.
Strawbridge earned $750,000 in the prior year and had expensed an average of $10,000 per month on food and alcohol, including parties. One day later, Strawbridge resigned, but maintained that all expenses were incurred properly through his work representing the port.
In an interview, he characterized the report and scandal as “a hit job” by political opponents and “an effort to hasten my departure from the Port.”
“They used the expenses from the Israel trip as a basis for smearing my good name, although the trip ultimately proved fortuitous for the state and its water funding,” Strawbridge said. “Ultimately an independent audit of the previous five years of my expenses found absolutely no irregularities or departures from policy. But of course that wasn’t covered by KRIS 6.”
That year, 2023, was the hottest on record in Texas. Water levels in Corpus Christi reservoirs continued to plummet as the drought intensified. Desalination had moved to the center of Corpus Christi’s public conversation. Local politicians spoke for or against it while activists flocked to city council meetings and permit hearings.
“Blessed be the environmentalists,” said Serna, the retired engineer. “But 90% of them don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”
In January 2024, Corpus Christi City Council produced a new cost estimate for its proposed desalination plant of about $550 million to produce 30 million gallons of freshwater per day.
“These numbers are ridiculously low, fraudulent and deceitful,” Serna wrote in an email to city officials.
By that time, Serna was angry. The subject line of his email read: “The Legacy of the Imbeciles.”
Where was the city even getting this cost estimate from, he asked, if it “does not have engineering and construction drawings.”
“All the city has at this time are deficits and bills incurred by lunatics in the millions of dollars already spent in the pursuit of this Scam project with nothing tangible on hand yet,” Serna wrote.
Later that year, a new cost estimate put the project at nearly $760 million. Another estimate, in July 2025, said $1.2 billion.
Two months later, Corpus Christi City Council, dominated by newly elected members and unable to stomach the cost, voted to cancel the project after a rancorous, 12-hour public meeting that broke repeatedly into yelling from the audience.
By then, the Port of Corpus Christi Authority also handed off one of its desalination projects to the nearby Nueces River Authority and mothballed another.
Corpus Christi city leaders expressed optimism over plans to quickly pipe in groundwater from the Evangeline Aquifer about 20 miles away. But when users of that water, like the small city of Sinton, requested in February 2026 that an administrative law judge review Corpus Christi’s groundwater permits, hope faded for a timely solution, other than hurricane-scale rainfall.
“Let the shit hit the fan,” said Serna. “Let dog eat dog.”
What does he think will happen to Corpus Christi? In time, he said, the refineries and chemical plants will probably build their own water projects, somehow, and possibly restart their facilities that they will have to mothball in the meantime. For residents, he said, life might be like it used to be for him, 70 years ago, as a boy in the Rio Grande Valley, when he would hang plastic jugs on mesquite branches and carry them on his shoulder to ask nearby companies for water.
“This is the legacy of the imbeciles,” he said.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas judge on Wednesday ordered Camp Mystic to preserve damaged cabins and other parts of the grounds hit by last year’s catastrophic floods that swept away and killed 25 girls and two counselors.
The order follows a lawsuit by the family of 8-year-old Cile Steward, who was swept away in the flood last Fourth of July and whose body still has not been recovered. District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble ordered Camp Mystic to halt any construction or alterations after the family argued that any changes at the camp could destroy evidence needed for their lawsuit.
Gamble ruled that Camp Mystic’s owners must not alter or demolish the cabins where campers were housed during the floods, and said they must not use the portion of the camp closest to the Guadalupe River where those cabins were located.
“What we’re trying to do is preserve the evidence that’s there so that we can understand, so that future campers will never be put in a situation like this again,” Will Steward, Cile’s father, told reporters after the hearing.
The campers and counselors were killed when the fast-rising floodwaters roared through a low-lying area of the summer camp before dawn on the Fourth of July. All told, the destructive flooding killed at least 136 people, raising questions about how things went so terribly wrong.
The camp, established in 1926, did not evacuate and was hit hard when the river rose from 14 feet (4.2 meters) to 29.5 feet (9 meters) within 60 minutes.
“The worst thing you can do is put a bunch of 8-year-olds on a bus and try to drive them out of there. They all would have drowned,” said Mikal Watts, an attorney for Camp Mystic and its family of owners.
In a packed courtroom Wednesday, family members of the deceased girls wore buttons depicting their images as lawyers for Camp Mystic displayed pictures of trees planted in their memory and architectural renderings of plans to rebuild parts of the camp outside a 1,000-year flood zone.
Attorneys for Camp Mystic have expressed sympathy for the girls’ families but maintained there was little they could have done during the catastrophic flooding that quickly overcame the camp. Pictures of the rising floodwaters were shown in court Wednesday.
“Nobody had every seen a prior flood anything like we saw in 2025,” Watts said.
More than 850 campers have already signed up to attend camp this summer, he said. The camp still needs to be approved for a license by state regulators to operate this summer.
Edward Eastland, the son of camp owner Richard Eastland, who died in the flooding, testified Wednesday that his mother, his wife and their children as well as another staff member were at a camp house when “the double doors of the house broke open” from floodwaters. They had to break out a separate window to climb out and evacuate to higher ground. All survived.
The camp had security cameras around the campus, Eastland said, but no one was watching the live feed in the middle of the night as the waters rose. When he tried to pull it up about 3 a.m., he wasn’t able to.
And when pressed about the camp’s flood plans, Eastland said he didn’t know if there was anything more detailed than a one-paragraph slide shown in the hearing. Will and Cici Steward said they don’t believe the camp has adequate safety measures in place to welcome new campers while they still search for their daughter.
“They didn’t have a plan, and they don’t have a plan moving forward,” Cici Steward said.
The camp’s decision last year to partially open and to construct a memorial on the grounds drew outrage from many of the girls’ families who are mourning their loved ones and who said they weren’t consulted on the plans.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has asked Texas regulators not to renew the license for Camp Mystic while the deaths are being investigated and cited legislative probes that are expected to begin in the spring.
Families of several of the girls who died have sued the camp’s operators, arguing that camp officials failed to take necessary steps to protect the campers as life-threatening floodwaters approached.
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This story was first published on Mar. 4, 2026. It was updated on Mar. 8, 2026 to correct that the judge‘s order focused on directing Camp Mystic to not demolish or alter areas impacted by the flood and made no explicit ruling in the order over whether the camp can remain open.
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Murphy reported from Oklahoma City.
Travelers complained of long waits Sunday — lasting hours in some cases — at security checkpoints at airports in Houston and New Orleans, which officials blamed on a government shutdown of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The estimated wait time at the standard security checkpoint at the William P. Hobby Airport in Houston early Sunday evening was at one point three hours, according to the Houston Airports website. The Hobby airport on social media Friday said it expected more travelers than normal due to spring break.
In a series of posts Sunday, the airport on X went from urging travelers to arrive early to asking them to arrive 3 to 4 hours before their flights to eventually asking them to arrive 4 to 5 hours early to allow extra time for screening, citing the partial government shutdown.
A statement from Houston Airports, which counts Hobby and George Bush Intercontinental Airport as part of its system, said the shutdown “can impact security operations day-to-day and shift-to-shift.” Wait times at checkpoints at George Bush Intercontinental Airport early Sunday evening were as brief as a few minutes.
Posts on X from Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport on Sunday said a shortage of TSA agents at the security checkpoint was leading to “longer-than-average” lines. The airport urged travelers to arrive at least three hours before their flights and said wait times could last up to two hours. It warned similar delays could continue through the coming week.
It’s not immediately clear if the delays in Houston and New Orleans were happening at other airports around the country. Sunday’s longer-than-usual wait times came on top of flight delays in recent days in places like Atlanta due to weather.
Agents with the U.S. Transportation Security Administration are expected to work without pay during the ongoing shutdown of the department, which began Feb. 14. Democratic lawmakers have said DHS won’t get funded until new restrictions are placed on federal immigration operations following the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this year.
Chris Sununu, president and CEO of Airlines for America, a trade group for U.S. airlines, in a statement urged Congress and the Trump administration to act.
“We are in spring break travel season and expecting record numbers of people to take to the skies. Airlines have done their part to prepare; now Congress and the administration must act with urgency to reach a deal that reopens DHS and ends this shutdown,” he said. “America’s transportation security workforce is too important to be used as political leverage.”
Jessica Andersen Alexie and her two children, 10 and 13, were among the travelers caught in the long lines at Hobby in Houston as they tried to return home to New Orleans. They had been in Houston for the World Baseball Classic.
Alexie said they arrived 3 hours early to find a long line and realized they would not make their flight. While in line, she checked rental cars to see if driving home might be an option but couldn’t find any available. She was able to rebook for a late-night flight and felt relieved to get through the CLEAR security line after about 3 1/2 hours.
When they finally sat down to eat, she decided to take another look at available flights, on the chance that others in line had to cancel and rearrange their plans, and found three seats on a flight that got her family home Sunday afternoon. When they landed at the New Orleans airport, the line extended out to the parking garage, she said.
“It was nuts,” she said. “It was crazy.”