Today is
Wednesday June 03, 2026
ZAVALLA – An Angelina County home was left with substantial damage after a fire broke out for unknown reasons on Monday morning, officials say. According to the Huntington Volunteer Fire Department, several VFDs were dispatched to assist Zavalla VFD at a structure fire on Kitchen Cemetery Road. The majority of the fire was contained to the attic space, but the home sustained major damage.
The cause of the fire is unknown to fire officials at this time, Huntington VFD said. No injuries were reported and several valuable items were saved.
LUFKIN – A Lufkin man died Monday night from injuries sustained in wreck on U.S. 59 south, near College Drive. According to a release, 24 -year-old Jose Benitez, was traveling north in the outside lane of U.S. 59 around 5:50 p.m. Monday, approaching the intersection of College Drive when the FedEX truck he was driving struck the rear of an 18-wheeler that was slowing down due to traffic backed up at the traffic light.
Benitez swerved to the right to avoid impact, but the driver’s side of the truck struck the left back side of the tractor-trailer. Benitez was able to get out of the truck and was taken by Lufkin paramedics to a hospital, where he died around 8 p.m. from his injuries.
Lufkin Police continue to investigate the accident, and an autopsy has been ordered.
AUSTIN (THE TEXAS TRIBUNE) — After almost 20 years of bouncing from campground to campground, Orr Family Ministries finally found its home in 2022 on a 12-acre tree-filled campground located on a hill in Colorado County.
Kids played in the swimming pool, worshipped by the fire pit, and watched the sunset over the hill while learning about Bible stories.
They called it Camp Oak Haven, providing refuge for about 100 children from surrounding low-income and rural communities.
But, this summer, Camp Oak Haven won’t be reopening. Orr Family Ministries has sold the land because it could not meet sweeping regulations the state abruptly placed on the camp industry.
“We are sad. It’s terrible. We had church groups coming, and we had to give back deposits, and I don’t know where those kids will go,” said Cynthia Royal, Orr Family Ministries board president. “The dent is in these rural communities where kids or parents don’t have huge incomes to send them to a huge mega camp miles away.”
After the deadly July 4 Hill Country floods that killed 27 children and counselors at Camp Mystic, Texas lawmakers required youth camps to implement a slew of new safety requirements, including weather warning systems and having fiber optic internet, and pay thousands of dollars more in licensing fees.
While the state has pulled back on the internet requirement for now, the regulations have shaken up the industry, according to multiple camp directors. Previously licensed camps have reduced their hours of operation, so the state no longer has to license them and they can avoid paying higher licensing fees. Urban camps are scaling back activities for children due to burdensome safety plan requirements, and rural camps are closing due to uncertainty.
Families are also impacted. Many of Camp Oak Haven’s are low-income or work and need daytime care and enrichment for their children during the summer months. Some are still scrambling to find other options after camp officials announced the closure at the end of March.
The state does not track the number of camps that have closed since the new requirements went into effect. But compared to the list of active Texas camps in December, 66 camps no longer appear on the most recent roster updated Friday. It’s not clear how many of those closed because of the regulations or if they’ve scaled back operations so the state doesn’t need to license them.
There are currently 316 camps licensed by the state and the state has approved 47 applications to operate this summer, but most of the rest can still open because their licenses haven’t expired yet or their applications are pending.
“We told them this would happen, but they didn’t listen to any of us,” Royal said about camps closing. “Lawmakers threw out a blanket rule for all camps across the entire state without taking realistic things into consideration. How far away from water are you? How urban are you? How rural are you? None of that was considered.”
In April, a group of 19 camps in Texas filed a lawsuit, arguing the requirement to install fiber-optic internet does not make their properties safer, violates the state Constitution and state law regarding property rights, and could prevent them from opening.
Texas Department of State Health Services, the state’s licensing body for camps, announced this month that it reached an agreement with the 19 operators, dropping the fiber-optic internet requirement for now. Any camps that maintain at least two ways of accessing broadband internet service can be licensed this summer, as long as they meet other safety requirements.
The deal came months too late for Camp Oak Haven.
“We are praising God that the state of Texas and different legislators are waking up and realizing maybe we made a mistake and that this was too much of a blanket rule to throw on everybody because not everybody is on the same boat,” Royal said.
Even with the fiber optics settlement, high licensing fees, an inspection backlog, emergency plan rewrites, and requirements that may force structural changes at camps that are in floodplains threaten to close some youth camps, camp directors say.
When lawmakers revisit camp safety standards during next year’s legislative session, camp directors hope lawmakers will truly consider their feedback.
“It would be like them passing aviation laws without pilot input,” said Eddie Walker, the executive director of Mt. Lebanon Camp and Retreat in Cedar Hill. “Riding on the plane doesn’t qualify them to understand the intricacies of what they do, their training, and experience to fly safely.”
Losing a ‘glimpse into heaven’
Chris Stephens, minister at Ave. G Church of Christ in Temple, has been sending his youth groups along with his four daughters to Camp Oak Haven for several summers because, to him, the camp on the hill was a glimpse into heaven.
“My family didn’t take vacations. We went to camp. We viewed it as that important,” he said.
His children won’t be attending camp this summer and it’s likely the 100 or so others that used to attend won’t either because there are few camp offerings in their remote area. The lack of options affect campers from low-income families particularly harder because parents rely on camps so they can go to work.
“I got some letters from camps in Louisiana and Arkansas about summer camps, but we are a small church, and we can’t afford to send our youth that far away,” he said. “We are looking at vacation bible school, but most of them died out after COVID-19, and they only last one day which is no replacement for camps.”
The fiber optics requirement was Camp Oak Haven’s downfall. Camp Oak Haven officials reached out to multiple internet providers, and the answer was always the same: it’s too remote to even be possible to install fiber.
A preliminary study by the Christian Camps and Conference Association found that at least 173 Texas camps lack fiber access.
Even if camps could find some way to install fiber, it would be very expensive. At one extreme, Camp Liberty said in court filings that it received a quote for $1 million in upfront costs plus a $3,500 monthly service fee over five years. Camp Longhorn received a quote of more than $1.2 million.
“We know other camps that were having to spend over $100,000 to get fiber optics to just stay afloat,” Royal said.
Although the current reprieve will allow camps to stay open this summer, there’s no guarantee that the state will drop the requirement next summer — and rural camps will still face the same challenge of finding someone who will install the service and paying for it.
Beyond the fiber optics requirement, the licensing fee increase for camps and burdensome safety requirements, such as creating rooftop exits on cabins not near the water, are straining the finances of these rural, mostly nonprofit organizations.
Royal said they used some of the funds from the sale of Camp Oak Haven to help other camps to cover their licensing fees or fiber-optic requirements for the summer. Others have offered to honor the price Camp Oak Haven used to charge their families to make it easier for any interested families to join.
But, there will never be another Camp Oak Haven, Stephens said.
“Those relationships made at camp won’t be present anymore. I have witnessed friendships, marriages, and people turn to the ministry because of this camp, and it’s now gone,” he said.
Urban challenge
Camps in the state’s metro areas, which serve the majority of Texas children, run during the day time hours and are also subject to the new state rules. Although lawmakers wrote the rules to better regulate overnight camps, particularly those in rural areas, the regulations don’t make sense for urban camps and the state made no exceptions, camp officials say.
Some of the requirements that are less applicable to urban camps include having rooftop access to cabins and flood emergency plans.
“One of the demands is for having exits for cabins, and one of our camps is at a Catholic girls’ school in Houston. We haven’t seen (requirements like this) in our 32 years of operation,” Mike McDonell, president of Kidventure, which operates 31 day camp locations across Houston, Dallas, and Austin. “The problem is that the state attempted to create safety rules for the situation with Camp Mystic but applied them to all camps.”
Camps located in Harris, Travis, Dallas, Bexar, and Tarrant counties make up about a third of the statewide roster and often provide summer activities for many inner-city or low-income youth at discounted rates, so their budgets are small. “For many, our camp is one of the safest places they are at all year — the same thing for our inner-city camps across the state,” said Walker, whose Cedar Hill camp is in Dallas County.
The state has previously charged day camps between $52 and $155, depending on how many campers they have, to renew their licenses annually. The state has now increased the annual renewal fee for a small day youth camp to $750 and can reach $3,500 for those with 5,000 or more campers. This hike falls particularly hard on multi-location operators. Each licensed site has to pay the fee, not just the parent organization.
“It’s a massive tax on great and safe ministries and programs, including urban-based camps,” Walker said.
Because the state has to license certain day camps if they offer activities like archery, riflery and horseback riding, some urban camps are cutting those programs so they no longer have to be licensed by the state and pay the fees, according to camp directors.
“Some camps may have reduced the number of specialized activities they offer so that they do not meet the definition of a youth camp,” said Lara Anton, a spokesperson for DSHS. “If a camp offers only one or no specialized activity, they are not qualified as a youth camp and do not need to be licensed by DSHS.”
The pain of losing one camp is felt by all in the industry, Walker said. Some of the smallest camps at risk of closing serve a particular niche – children with autism, Down syndrome, mobility issues, deaf children, cancer and diabetes.
“In a business world, a law or regulation that drives the small competitors out of business is really helpful to the big corporation,” he said. “The camp realm is different, and we all work closely together because there is no shortage of children, teens, and needs to serve in every part of the state.”
AUSTIN (THE TEXAS TRIBUNE) — Dozens of wind projects in Texas are in limbo after the U.S. Department of Defense paused issuing routine federal permits citing national security concerns, a move that experts say expands the Trump administration’s crusade against wind energy.
According to data collected by the American Clean Power Association, 54 Texas wind projects are waiting for the department to review development plans to ensure that turbines don’t interfere with military operations. It’s part of a broader nationwide logjam that has ensnared 165 onshore wind projects, a figure first reported by the Financial Times.
Federal law requires any structure 200 feet or taller — such as antennas, smokestacks or wind turbines — to be reviewed first by the Federal Aviation Administration, then the military, which must determine whether a structure may interfere with military airspace.
Federal law requires the Department of Defense to conduct those reviews within 60 days of receiving an application from the FAA. But “right now, the entire process has just ground to a halt,” said Dave Belote, a wind energy consultant who helped design the review system when it was established more than 15 years ago.
Normally, the defense department evaluates whether a turbine is within the line of sight of a radar or in a low-altitude military airspace. If so, the department and developer typically agree on mitigation options — a process that usually takes a matter of weeks.
“In the past, those have been fairly trivial — you meet the requirements and you get the permit,” said Jonathon Blackburn, an Austin-based energy consultant.
However, the department has not approved a wind project since August 2025, and in April the department canceled all pending meetings with wind developers waiting for clearance, according to the trade group.
These delays have caused disruptions to developers’ projects, hindering their ability to secure project financing, jeopardizing local permits contingent on federal approvals, and delaying construction timelines, turbine orders, and contractor scheduling.
“There’s a lot of delay coming out of the permitting process from the federal government, and delays add cost,” Blackburn said. “Maybe the federal government is not able to flat-out stop projects, but they are able to drag them out.”
In a statement, a DoD official said that the department is still actively evaluating the projects to ensure they do not impair national security or military operations, a process that requires high levels of interagency coordination.
The department’s evaluation of wind turbines “is inherently complex and time-consuming because it involves balancing two critical, and sometimes competing, interests: developing energy sources while ensuring military operations and readiness are not degraded or impaired to the extent an unacceptable risk to national security is created,” the official said.
The department didn’t respond to questions about why approval wait times have blown past federally required deadlines.
“It’s not clear why these policies are being implemented during an affordability crisis, but I think it shows the level of disdain the administration has for renewable energy in general and wind power specifically,” said University of Texas energy professor Michael Webber.
Texas is home to more wind turbines than any other state, and also has a number of military installations.
According to a 2019 report by the Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute, there are 17 military bases with flight facilities in the state and large expanses of airspace set aside for military operations. This includes several training routes for Air Force and Navy pilots flying out of Laughlin Air Force Base near Del Rio, the Naval Air Station in Corpus Christi, San Antonio’s Randolph Air Force Base and the Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene.
The pause is the latest move by an administration that is attempting to slow the growth of wind power across the U.S. Most of the administration’s efforts have focused on offshore projects.
Last year, the administration suspended leases for five major projects off the East Coast, citing national security concerns related to radar interference. Federal judges later ruled against the administration in all five cases, finding that the government exceeded its authority and failed to prove that the projects posed national security threats. All five projects have since resumed construction.
The Interior Department announced in March that it had reached an agreement with TotalEnergies to pay the company $1 billion to walk away from a planned offshore wind project and instead expand fossil fuel investments.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A fast-growing wildfire sparked by the fatal crash of a small medical plane outside Ruidoso, New Mexico, has triggered evacuations for a rural area north of the Capitan Mountains and closures in the Lincoln National Forest, officials said Monday.
The plane was en route from Roswell Air Center to Sierra Blanca Regional Airport when it crashed before dawn Thursday, killing the four people aboard. They were identified as pilots Keelan Clark and Ali Kawsara with the company Generation Jets and flight nurses Jamie Novick and Sarah Clark with Trans Aero MedEvac.
“Our hearts remain with the families and loved ones navigating an unimaginable loss,” Matt Goertz, vice president of Trans Aero MedEvac, said in a joint statement with Generation Jets.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the crash.
The wildfire grew rapidly over the weekend amid dry and windy conditions, nearly doubling in size between Sunday and Monday morning to more than 19 square miles (50 square kilometers). It was burning out of control in a sparsely populated area despite the efforts of more than 600 firefighters from the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and several interagency Hotshot crews.
Adam Turner, a public information officer for the fire, said steep, rugged terrain has made it impossible for crews to engage the fire directly.
“This is what firefighters call ‘mountain goat territory,’” said Turner, adding that crews were instead working to contain and steer the fire away from several evacuated cattle ranches to the northeast and the community of Arabella to the west.
A red flag warning remained in effect across southern New Mexico on Monday, with wind speeds forecast between 20-30 mph (32-50 kph).
UPDATE: KTBB talked to Joshua Gentry from the City of Lufkin, he said the repair was complete by 5:30 p.m.
LUFKIN – City crews are responding to a water leak from a broken valve on a 12-inch water line near Highway 58 and loop 287. To safely repair the leak, water service must be shut down in the affected area.
The outage will impact businesses in the area including Eye Mart, Chili’s, Cheddar’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Olive Garden. Repairs are expected to take approximately four hours. Crews will remain on-site until service is fully restored. Drivers in the area should use caution around work zones and watch for those working.
GALVESTON (AP) – Recent outbreaks of hantavirus and norovirus on cruise ships are making headlines, but they’re unlikely to dim the growing popularity of vacation cruises, according to industry representatives and travel experts.
In fact, many within the industry still expect a record number of people worldwide to take cruises this year despite three passengers aboard the MV Hondius dying from hantavirus after the ship stopped in Argentina and a recent norovirus outbreak aboard a British ship docked in Bordeaux, France.
“The cruise consumer seems to be somewhat Teflon when it comes to stories like this,” said Rob Kwortnik, an associate professor at Cornell University’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration who closely watches the cruise industry.
In mid-April, an annual forecast by the Cruise Lines International Association, an industry trade group, estimated that 38.3 million people would travel on ocean-going ships this year, 4% more from a record 37.2 million passengers last year.
Industrywide sales figures are closely held. Asked about potential impacts from what happened aboard the MV Hondius, the trade association said it doesn’t comment or speculate on bookings. Several big cruise companies didn’t respond to questions from The Associated Press about customer demand, including Royal Caribbean, Norwegian and Carnival.
Oceanwide Expeditions, the Dutch company that owns the MV Hondius, said it doesn’t foresee any changes to its operations. It has a cruise setting sail from Keflavik, Iceland, on May 29.
Veteran cruisegoers said the outbreak would not affect their plans.
“I have eight cruises booked, and I’ll absolutely be booking another,” said Jenni Fielding, who blogs and posts social media videos about cruise trips under the moniker Cruise Mummy. “Cruising is as safe as any other type of holiday, provided travelers follow sensible health advice and stay aware of official guidance.”
Scott Eddy, a hospitality influencer, is currently on a cruise and docked in Monaco. Fellow passengers have not mentioned the hantavirus outbreak, he said.
“The average traveler understands that this is an isolated health situation and not something unique to cruise travel itself,” Eddy said.
CruiseCompete.com, an online marketplace where consumers making vacation plans can compare offers from travel agents, booked 31.7% more cabins in the first half of May compared to the same period last year, CEO Bob Levinstein said.
“I can categorically say that we have not seen any drop in demand,” Levinstein said.
Levinstein said that norovirus — an extremely contagious stomach bug that thrives in crowded environments — is conflated with cruises in the minds of many Americans because the U.S. Centers for Disease Control requires ships to disclose when 3% or more passengers report symptoms.
On a ship with 5,000 passengers, an illness impacting 3% of them “goes completely unnoticed by the vast majority of vacationers, and experienced cruisers know this,” he said.
Current news cycles rarely impact passengers’ decisions to join a cruise because the trips generally are booked at least 6 months — and often as much as a year – in advance, Kwortnik said.
“People who are booking cruises tomorrow are thinking about the holidays,” he said.
During a conference call Thursday with investors, Switzerland-based cruise line Viking said demand for its river cruises softened briefly during the first three months of this year after the Iran war began but then quickly rebounded.
Viking said 92% of its 2026 cruises and 38% of its 2027 cruises were booked. The company didn’t mention hantavirus or norovirus.
Andrew Coggins, a cruise industry analyst and professor in Pace University’s Lubin School of Business, said even if travelers set to embark on a cruise soon are unnerved by the latest news, they’re unlikely to get a refund.
“I think if there’s any impact on demand, it would be in the long term. If you’re cruising in the next few months, you’re past the point at which you can get your money back,” he said.
Coggins said he thinks the hantavirus story got a lot of attention because it reminded people of the Diamond Princess, which was quarantined off Japan for two weeks in early 2020 after the coronavirus that grew into a global pandemic was detected on board.
The COVID-19 pandemic devastated the cruise industry, shutting down many smaller operators. Cruises didn’t see an upswing in passengers again until 2022, Coggins said.
There are still fewer cruise passengers from China and Japan than there were before COVID, according to CLIA. But Coggins said demand elsewhere is booming.
“There are new ships on order out to 2037. The cruise lines are bullish. They see demand growing and they want to offer new bells and whistles, new ports, new destinations,” he said.
One reason for cruising’s growth is broad appeal across generations and income levels. In a recent U.S. survey, Bank of America found that Generation Z respondents and millennials were the most likely to say they planned to cruise over the next 12 months.
The survey also found that cruise spending rose for lower-income households even as those households spent less on airfare and lodging. Cruise lines have been wooing those passengers in recent years with shorter, more affordable itineraries.
Kwortnik said cruising also offers travelers value for their vacation dollars.
“On average, it costs more just to stay at a hotel in Miami than it does to sail on a cruise out of Miami – and the cruise includes lodging, multiple destinations, food, entertainment, and transportation all in the fare,” he said.
WASHINGTON (AP) — China has agreed to ramp up trade for U.S. agricultural products such as beef and poultry, buying at an annualized rate of $17 billion per year for 2026 and at that level for 2027 and 2028, the White House announced Sunday, two days after President Donald Trump returned from a high-stakes summit in Beijing where he sought to ease the impact on American farmers from the trade war he launched last year.
China would restore market access for U.S. beef and resume imports of poultry from U.S. states determined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to be free of the bird flu, the White House said. The deals are on top of China’s soybean purchase commitments last year.
The agreements offer some hope to American farmers harmed by the trade war as they saw a major export market for soybeans and other products dry up. Farmers also are feeling new pressure from Trump administration policies — the war that the U.S. and Israel launched against Iran has curtailed shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital trade corridor that has restricted global fertilizer supplies and sent those prices soaring.
There was no immediate confirmation of the terms from Beijing.
China’s Ministry of Commerce on Saturday said the two sides would “resolve or make substantial progress toward resolving certain non-tariff barriers and market access issues” regarding agricultural goods.
The U.S. would “actively work” to address China’s concerns regarding detention of its dairy products, seafood, the export of potted bonsai, and the recognition of Shandong province as a bird-flu-free zone, while the Chinese side will “likewise actively work” to address U.S. concerns regarding the registration of beef processing facilities and the export of poultry meat from certain states to China, a ministry spokesperson said.
The two sides also agreed to expand trade, including that of farm goods, through measures such as reciprocal tariff reductions on “a specific range of products,” though the spokesperson did not specify the products.
China, recognizing the link between food security and national security, has diversified its sources of imported soybeans, beef and other farm goods, turning increasingly to Brazil, Argentina and other countries over the U.S.
Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show China’s imports of U.S. agricultural goods peaked in 2022 with $38 billion but fell to $8 billion in 2025. These figures include nearly $18 billion in soybean purchases in 2022 and $3 billion in 2025.
It’s not immediately clear how much more China would buy from American soybean farmers, who were hit especially hard in the trade war. China, traditionally the largest foreign buyer of American soybeans, stopped purchasing them altogether last year after Trump hiked tariffs on Chinese goods.
The latest agreement builds on a trade truce Trump reached with Chinese President Xi Jinping in October in which China agreed to resume buying U.S. soybeans. The White House said then that China committed to buying 12 million metric tons in the current marketing year and 25 million metric tons for each of the next three years.
According to the White House, hundreds of U.S. beef plants, including those run by Tyson and Cargill, also will be able to export again to China, though it’s not immediately clear how much beef American businesses will be selling to China.
China let licenses for hundreds of U.S. beef plants expire last year, and the import value for 2025 fell to less than $500 million, according to USDA figures. China’s purchases of U.S. beef had peaked at $2.14 billion in 2022, the government data shows.
The U.S. export of poultry meats and products to China was $286 million in 2025, down from more than $1 billion in 2022.
During the summit last week, Trump and Xi discussed ways to enhance economic cooperation, including expanding market access for American businesses in China and increasing Chinese investment into U.S. industries, the White House had said. The two leaders agreed to set up separate boards of trade and investment — though offered few details on the proposals or how they would differ from existing trade dialogues.
The Board of Trade will allow the two governments to manage trade of “non-sensitive goods,” and the Board of Investments would provide a venue for the two sides to discuss investment-related issues, according to the White House.
China’s Ministry of Commerce said the two bodies would address respective concerns regarding trade and investment. The Board of Trade, the ministry spokesperson said, would allow the two sides to discuss issues such as tariff reductions on specific products. “In principle, the two sides agreed to reduce tariff on products of respective concern at equivalent scale,” the spokesperson said.
Xi said last week that China’s door of opportunity will open wider when he met with U.S. business leaders joining Trump on the trip. Among those who traveled to Beijing was Brian Sikes, CEO of the agricultural giant Cargill.
Soybeans, which are used for livestock feed and biofuels in China, are among the top U.S. agricultural exports. Soybean exports to China in the past had accounted for about half of U.S. exports of agricultural goods to the Asian nation.
USDA data shows the U.S. exported 10.9 million metric tons of soybeans to China as of May 7, putting China on track to fulfill its previous commitment by the end of the marketing year on Aug. 31. This is well below the 25 million to 30 million metric tons that China purchased in past years.
Before Trump’s initial planned trip to Beijing in late March — which was postponed by the Iran war — the American Soybean Association urged him to prioritize soybeans in the trade talks with Xi.
Scott Metzger, president of the association, said Thursday the group would like to see “additional soybean purchases this marketing year, as well as continued progress toward fulfilling future purchase commitments.”
“Greater certainty and consistency in the marketplace help provide farmers with the confidence they need as they make decisions for the year ahead,” he said.
DALLAS (AP) – Days after Spirit Airlines shut down in the middle of the night, a lawyer for the defunct budget carrier stood before a bankruptcy judge and apologized to the price-conscious customers who might struggle to find affordable flights in its absence.
“We apologize most specifically for those Americans who may now be priced entirely out,” Spirit lawyer Marshall Huebner said in court, thanking all the passengers who relied on the airline during its 34-year run, many of whom, he said, “could not otherwise have afforded air travel.”
Spirit’s May 3 demise is not the only curveball confronting people planning trips a week before the summer travel season has its traditional U.S. launch on Memorial Day. Rising jet fuel costs tied to the Iran war have pushed up airfares and associated fees across the commercial aviation industry. Two of the remaining U.S. budget carriers just finalized a merger.
The uncertain outlook for economical air travel reflects how difficult it has become for low-cost, no-frills airlines to operate while squeezed by volatile fuel prices, inflation and increasingly fierce competition. While budget airlines appeal to customers motivated by fare prices alone, traditional carriers can more easily generate revenue to offset fuel costs through premium cabins, membership rewards, corporate travel programs, add-on charges and pricing algorithms.
“Dynamic pricing has taken away one of the last structural advantages that low-cost carriers had,” said Shye Gilad, a former airline captain who now teaches at Georgetown University.
For decades, low-cost carriers thrived by offering fares that traditional airlines often couldn’t match without losing money. But that edge has weakened as the “big three” — American, Delta and United — got better at tailoring prices to different travelers, and as JetBlue, Southwest and other airlines that long positioned themselves as less expensive alternatives began chasing higher-paying customers.
Today, big airlines can sell a handful of bare-bones seats at Spirit-level prices while still charging more for standard and premium tickets elsewhere on their planes. That has made it harder for budget airlines to compete solely on price.
“They can’t just be the cheapest airline anymore,” Gilad said. “They have to be the smartest low-cost airline.”
Like gasoline and diesel prices, the price of jet fuel has jumped since the Iran war put a chokehold on Middle East oil shipments 11 weeks ago. The strain prompted the Association of Value Airlines, a U.S. trade group representing Allegiant Air, Avelo Air, Frontier Airlines, Spirit Airlines and Sun Country Airlines, to ask the Trump administration in late April for $2.5 billion in temporary financial aid.
Airlines for America, the trade group for Alaska Airlines, American, Delta, JetBlue and Southwest, opposed the idea, saying that federal help would give the budget airlines an unfair advantage.
“Government intervention on behalf of those airlines would punish other airlines that have engaged in self-help in order to deal with increased costs and reward airlines who haven’t made those tough decisions,” Airliens for America said in a statement. “And, in the long-term, sustaining businesses that cannot earn their cost of capital harms competition and consumers by making it more difficult for other airlines to compete.”
Transporation Secretary Sean Duffy rejected the request the day Spirit stopped flying.
Even before the latest run-up in fuel costs, consolidation was already underway in the budget airline sector. Alaska Airlines completed its $1 billion purchase of Hawaiian Airlines in September 2024 after the two carriers agreed to maintain the level of service on key routes within Hawaii and between Hawaii and the U.S. mainland where they didn’t face much competition.
Spirit was an unsuccessful merger target of both Frontier and JetBlue as its losses mounted after the coronavirus pandemic.
Allegiant said last week it had finalized its roughly $1.5 billion acquisition of Sun Country, a deal first announced in January. The combined airline brings together passenger service with Sun Country’s cargo operations and charter business serving sports teams, casinos and the U.S. Department of Defense.
“Consolidation is a signal” of weakness in the industry, Gilad said. “If you can remove a competitor and improve your product offering, you might be able to eke out more profit.”
Other experts note the diversity within the budget airline sector, a factor that could make some carriers more resilient to spiking fuel costs and market disruptions than others.
“Budget airlines are a pretty peculiar creature,” Vikrant Vaze, an aviation systems expert at Dartmouth College’s engineering school, said, describing a category that has encompassed struggling carriers like Spirit to giants like Southwest Airlines, which grew from a low-cost pioneer into one of the largest U.S. airlines.
“Even though they can be clubbed together as budget airlines, if you want a big umbrella term, they’re very different from each other,” Vaze said. “They have very different levels of budget-ness.”
Allegiant’s focus on leisure travel centers on smaller airports with less direct competition. JetBlue, a hybrid low-cost carrier, leans more heavily on premium seating and loyalty perks than Spirit ever did.
Frontier comes closest to Spirit’s model as an ultra low-cost carrier, though analysts say it entered this period of volatility with stronger liquidity and could benefit from Spirit’s exit. It has already begun expanding in former Spirit-heavy markets that include Las Vegas, Detroit and the Florida cities of Orlando and Fort Lauderdale.
Gilad sees echoes of his own experience working as a pilot and flight-training instructor at Independence Air, a short-lived low-cost airline that previously served as a regional carrier for United and Delta. The airline, which launched in mid-2004 as fighting between U.S.-led forces and insurgents in Iraq sent fuel prices soaring, shut down during bankruptcy proceedings in January 2006.
“They burned through almost $200 million in 18 months,” Gilad said. “It was just that quick that they were gone.”
He said the same structural pressures remain in place today, but there are fewer remaining budget airlines to share them.
TECATE, Mexico (AP) — White sage burning, Norma Meza Calles gathers guests at a Mexican wellness resort into a semicircle facing Kuuchamaa Mountain and asks everyone to close their eyes and feel its presence.
“This is sacred to us like a church for you all. The mountain is our healer, our psychologist,” said Meza Calles, a Kumeyaay Nation tribal leader who explains that in its creation story a shaman transformed into the mountain. “Here is where we gather strength to live in this difficult world.”
Then she calls for a moment of reflection. But the silence is pierced by the crushing of rock. U.S. federal contractors have been blasting and bulldozing Kuuchamaa, which straddles both countries, to make way for new sections of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Indigenous leaders say that in the Trump administration’s rush to build border walls, contractors are desecrating Native American sacred places and cultural sites at an unprecedented pace, more than 170 years after the international boundary split the territories of dozens of tribes.
Barrier construction has ramped up along the 1,954-mile border even as illegal crossings have plummeted to historic lows. Much of it began this year after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security waived cultural and environmental laws.
In California, explosions on Kuuchamaa send rocks hurtling down its Mexico side.
“We feel that in our DNA,” said Emily Burgueno, a California member of the Kumeyaay Nation, adding that “body” and “land” are the same word in the Kumeyaay language. Some tribal leaders met with DHS officials to urge them to protect Kuuchamaa and are looking into legal action.
“No one ever consented or supported the use of dynamite on the mountain,” Burgueno said.
The nation consists of more than a dozen tribes in California and Mexico’s Baja California.
In Arizona, DHS contractors last month carved through a massive 1,000-year-old fish-shaped geoglyph called “Las Playas Intaglio.” The rare drawing, etched into the desert floor much like Peru’s Nazca Lines, was created on a lava field in what is now the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.
The Tohono O’odham Nation said it had pointed out the site on its ancestral land for contractors to avoid.
“This was a devastating and entirely avoidable loss,” Tohono O’odham Chairman Verlon Jose said in an April 30 statement. “There is nothing more important than our history, which is what makes us who we are as O’odham. The site was also an irreplaceable piece of the United States’ history, one none of us can ever get back.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that a contractor “inadvertently disturbed” the site west of Ajo, Arizona, on April 23, but it vowed to protect the remaining portion. CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott is talking to tribal leaders to determine next steps.
Members of the Inter-Tribal Association of Arizona, which represents 21 tribes, traveled to Washington last month to lobby against a 20-foot secondary wall being built along that section of the border, as well as a primary 30-foot bollard wall planned on Tohono O’odham tribal lands. They met with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, a Cherokee Nation member, who listened but made clear his intent is to build more border walls as fast as possible, the Tohono O’odham Nation said in a statement.
The Trump administration says the barriers are necessary to keep people and drugs from entering the U.S. illegally. It wants walls to cover at least 1,400 miles of the border.
Trump’s “ big, beautiful bill ” devoted over $46 billion to the effort.
CBP has awarded contracts or begun construction on over 600 miles of new border wall, with companion surveillance technology. A double wall is planned or under construction along another 370 miles.
In Arizona, where the Patagonia Mountains descend to the border, heavy machinery crawls along freshly graded roads to extend a double wall that could block a wildlife corridor for endangered ocelots and jaguars. Jaguars have long coexisted with the Tohono O’odham, who consider the species “spiritual guardians,” Austin Nunez, a tribal leader, said in a 2025 lawsuit that unsuccessfully challenged the DHS waivers.
In Sunland Park, on New Mexico’s border with Mexico, crews this year set off blasts on Mount Cristo Rey, a pilgrimage site topped with a limestone crucifix.
CBP is seeking to seize a strip of the mountain owned by the Roman Catholic Church for wall construction. The Diocese of Las Cruces asked a judge this month to deny the land transfer as an affront to religious liberties and the “faithful who seek to commune with God on Mount Cristo Rey.”
In western Texas, the federal government in February notified ranchers on the Rio Grande east of Big Bend National Park of its interest in their land that contains canyonland pictographs and petroglyphs, said Raymond Skiles, a retired Big Bend National Park ranger.
“There are pictographs, paintings of shaman figures and various things that we don’t know how to interpret,” said Skiles, describing the drawings on his family’s ranchlands.
After community backlash, CBP’s online planning map showed the 30-foot-wall plans were scrapped for surveillance technology, patrols and some vehicle barriers. A segment in the national park and neighboring Big Bend Ranch State Park would rely on technology alone.
CBP says it recognizes the importance of natural and cultural resources and is working to minimize the construction’s impact, including leaving drainage gates open in wildlife corridors for animal passage. Illegal border crossings have littered, polluted and trampled sensitive habitat, the agency says.
CBP also says 535 miles of remote, rugged border terrain will solely rely on detection technology.
Many tribes would prefer that to walls.
Tribes along the border “are all experiencing the same tragic desecration of our cultural and sacred sites,” said Burgueno, chair of the Kumeyaay Diegueño Land Conservancy, a nonprofit organization in California that works to protect Kumeyaay lands. “This is a great example of the federal government not following federal laws.”
Desecrating a sacred Native American site on U.S. federal or tribal land is a felony, punishable by imprisonment and fines. In 1992, the National Park Service listed Kuuchamaa Mountain, also called Tecate Peak, in the National Register of Historic Places, giving it limited protection. It noted that “discarding or disturbing the mountain’s natural state would be sacrilegious.”
Rising 3,885 feet above sea level, Kuuchamaa has also captivated non-Native people.
Sarah Livia Brightwood Szekely said her father, Edmond Szekely, felt the mountain’s healing energy when he arrived in Tecate, Mexico, as a Hungarian Jewish refugee during World War II, and started the renowned wellness resort, Rancho La Puerta, which she now runs.
“There are all of these people that have a deep relationship with the mountain,” she said.
Meza Calles leads walks at Rancho La Puerta to teach guests about Kuuchamaa.
Traditionally, young men would spend 40 days at its base in a coming-of-age ceremony before becoming warriors or shamans, she said. Today’s rituals are shorter. People suffering from a death, debt, divorce or other difficulty seek Kuuchamaa’s healing, she said.
“It’s sad they are ruining the mountain,” she said. “We’ll see how far they go. Destiny is destiny. But the fight is not over.”
AUSTIN (AP) — Three young people were in custody following at least 10 random weekend shootings in Austin, Texas, that left four people injured, city officials said.
Driving around the city in stolen vehicles, at least two of the suspects fired at two fire stations, apartment buildings and houses during a string of robberies and shootings from Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning, Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said Sunday.
Two boys, ages 15 and 17, were apprehended after they were pulled over in a stolen car and attempted to run. A third person who had been in the car also ran and was detained Sunday night at a gas station in Manor, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) northeast of Austin. Police said the person was a juvenile, but did not provide an age or any other details.
Davis said earlier that the firearm that was used in the shootings had earlier been stolen by the 15-year old, and that the 17-year old was wanted for a separate firearm theft.
The city ordered residents of a large part of the southern area of Texas’ capital city to shelter in place Sunday while they were searching for the suspects. With two suspects in custody, the order was later lifted.
Four victims were taken to hospitals, including one with critical injuries, officials said.
The suspects stole at least four vehicles as they traveled around the city, Davis said.
“We don’t have any specific motive that has been identified. In fact, these actions appear to be random,” Mayor Kirk Watson said.
AUSTIN (AP) — Two teenagers were in custody and a potential third suspect was being sought following at least 10 random weekend shootings in Austin, Texas, that left four people injured, city officials said Sunday.
Driving around the city in stolen vehicles, the suspects fired at two fire stations, apartment buildings and houses during a string of robberies and shootings from Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning, Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said.
The two boys, ages 15 and 17, were apprehended after they were pulled over in a stolen car and attempted to run. A third person who had been in the car also ran and remained at large. Davis said it was unknown if that person was involved in the shootings.
She said the firearm that was used in the shootings had earlier been stolen by the 15-year old, and that the 17-year old was wanted for a separate firearm theft.
The city ordered residents of a large part of the southern area of Texas’ capital city to shelter in place Sunday while they were searching for the suspects. With two suspects in custody, the order was later lifted.
Four victims were taken to hospitals, including one with critical injuries, officials said.
The suspects stole at least four vehicles as they traveled around the city, Davis said.
“We don’t have any specific motive that has been identified. In fact, these actions appear to be random,” Mayor Kirk Watson said.
SAN AUGUSTINE (KETK) – The San Augustine Police Department has arrested a juvenile after a shooting happened at a Texaco convenience store on Sunday afternoon.
San Augustine PD said officers were sent out to the Texaco Convenience store on MLK Drive in San Augustine in the early afternoon on Sunday after two people reportedly pulled up to the store and started shooting at each other.
After interviewing witnesses at the scene, the officers were able to determine who the two shooters might have been. One of the suspected shooters is a juvenile and has been arrested on a warrant unrelated to Sunday’s shooting.
San Augustine PD said there’s no ongoing threat to the the public and they’re continuing to investigate what exactly led to the shooting. No injuries have been reported in connection to Sunday’s shooting.
Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call San Augustine PD at 936-275-2384.
WASHINGTON (THE TEXAS TRIBUNE) – U.S. Customs and Border Protection awarded a $1.7 billion federal contract listed for border wall construction in the Big Bend region, fueling public confusion over the project after a previous assurance from a top agency official that no barriers would be built at the region’s national park.
The contract, awarded Monday, is designated “for border wall in Big Bend Texas” in its description. The $1.7 billion allocated in the contract is the single-highest amount awarded for a contract in Texas related to the border wall, according to listings on usaspending.gov, the U.S. government’s official public spending database.
A second contract for $4.5 million was awarded on Thursday for “resource monitoring support” of border wall construction in a separate area of the Big Bend region.
The new awards come a week after CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott told the Washington Examiner there would be no border wall built at Big Bend National Park because of pushback from local residents. Scott’s statements to the Examiner and a statement from CBP last week to The Texas Tribune indicated the agency would instead pave roads along the border in the national park and use digital surveillance equipment.
CBP did not respond to an immediate request for comment about the $1.7 billion award.
Opponents of wall construction in the region have seen their frustrations with the project mount as communication from the Trump administration about the project has been limited, and there have been few formal announcements about plans in the area.
“We obviously, at this point, don’t trust anything, but it’s like a roller coaster,” said Lico Miller, a business owner in Terlingua, a small, rural town a few miles west of Big Bend National Park.
An interactive “Smart Wall” map on the CBP website shows the agency planned to install roads and “virtual wall” technology that would alert Border Patrol agents when people cross the border in the “Big Bend 4” region. The $1.7 billion award is intended for a Big Bend “segment identified as BBT-4,” according to its description. CBP officials took down the Smart Wall map in late April, but later added it once more with changes in mid-May. The map currently states that no is wall planned around the national or state park despite the awarded contract.
“They have made it a mission to obfuscate and make this as confusing of a process as possible,” said Laiken Jordahl, National Public Lands Advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “From constantly changing the online smart wall map — I mean, they’ve made dozens and dozens of changes to that thing without announcing any of them — to taking it down entirely.”
Jordahl said that even paved roads along the border would likely be harmful to wildlife in the region and could make border crossings easier in areas where terrain would otherwise be difficult to traverse. He also said roads would inevitably make barrier installation easier in the future if CBP changed its mind later on.
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On Thursday, the Trump administration waived environmental protections in the Big Bend region in preparation for construction, according to a federal notice first reported by Marfa Public Radio. The notice described Border Patrol’s 517-mile Big Bend sector as “an area of high illegal entry.” The sector is the least busy of the nine sectors, with agency apprehensions in the region accounting for 1.3% of more than 237,000 across the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2025.
Residents point to the infrequency of border crossings in the area as only adding to the confusion and frustration.
“We’re 1.3% of the problem. What is this billions of dollars stuff when we are not an issue?” another Terlingua business owner Cynta de Narvaez said.
Thursday’s waivers follow similar action in February, when Trump administration officials waived over two dozen environmental laws to clear the way for a 150-mile-long border barrier through West Texas that initially included Big Bend National Park.
Advocacy groups in the region filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in mid-April arguing it had illegally waived those environmental laws and need Congress to sign off.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Even as Democratic officials fight the effort in court, the Trump administration has run millions of voter registrations through government databases to determine their eligibility in a process that critics worry could end up purging valid voters from the rolls before the November elections.
At least 67 million registrations, primarily from Republican-controlled states, have gone through a beefed-up verification program at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and tens of thousands of those have been flagged as potential noncitizens or people who have died. Some states allow only a month for people to prove their eligibility and others suspend it immediately.
The scanning of state voter rolls at the national level is part of a broader effort by Republican President Donald Trump to federalize certain election functions and promote his messaging that elections are marred by noncitizen voting, even though instances of that are rare. Voting and civil rights advocates say the DHS system is error-prone and can mistakenly flag people who are eligible to vote.
“If a voter is wrongly removed, by the time they learn about it and correct it, they may miss their opportunity to vote in that election,” said Freda Levenson, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. The group is challenging an Ohio law requiring monthly checks with the DHS system.
Voters such as 29-year-old Anthony Nel have been caught in the middle.
The native of South Africa, who became a citizen more than a decade ago, was flagged as a potential noncitizen when Texas ran its voter file through the DHS verification system. Nel’s local election office in Denton, north of Dallas, temporarily canceled his registration last fall while he was waiting for a new passport to replace an expired one.
“I’m like, ‘You should know that I’m a citizen, that the passport exists,’” he said in an interview.
States’ entire voter rolls reviewed
Trump has been trying to overhaul U.S. elections, including calling for a federal list of verified voters, and his Department of Justice has pushed states to hand over unredacted voter information for mass checks through the DHS program known as SAVE.
The Justice Department has sued states that refuse, saying the government is trying to ensure that they are complying with federal law and have accurate voter lists. States already take a number of steps to maintain the accuracy of their voter rolls.
SAVE, short for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, was created under an immigration law mandating that DHS help federal, state and local agencies prevent government benefits from going to noncitizens. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an arm of DHS, said more than 1,300 agencies use it.
At least 25 states have used SAVE to check their voter rolls since April 2025, after the Trump administration significantly expanded its search abilities, and 60 million registrations were checked in a year’s time, according to Citizenship and Immigration Services. That figure does not include an additional 7.4 million registrations from North Carolina, where Republicans control the state election board, that were recently run through the system.
Citizenship and Immigration Services said in an emailed statement that it is “committed to helping eliminate voter fraud” to restore Americans’ trust in their elections.
“SAVE is one of the most important tools states have to verify voter information,” Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican, recently told a U.S. House committee examining how states keep voter rolls clean.
Schwab’s endorsement is notable because he once was publicly skeptical that noncitizens represented a significant voter fraud threat.
Republicans cite hits from SAVE searches
Citizenship and Immigration Services said the 60 million voter registration checks identified about 24,000 potential noncitizens. U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who runs the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said during a recent Fox News interview that those checks also identified about 350,000 people who appear to have died.
North Carolina’s State Board of Elections said its check had identified another 34,000 registered voters who are potentially deceased.
Even if all those eventually were verified as ineligible, they would represent small percentages of total registered voters. The figure for noncitizens would be about 400 for every 1 million registrations. Some 384,000 people identified as potentially deceased in about 67 million registrations is a fraction of 1%.
Some voters have been mistakenly flagged.
In Dallas, election officials recently canceled the registration of Domingo Garcia, a 68-year-old lawyer and voting rights activist, without explanation. He has been voting regularly for 50 years, most recently in the state’s March 3 primary, and suspects that officials concluded he was deceased.
“I should not have been on any lists,” he said.
False positives are popping up
Voting rights advocates have filed at least six federal lawsuits over SAVE checks, either against the Trump administration or states using the program.
Nel, a 29-year-old college administrator, is a plaintiff in one of them, filed recently in the District of Columbia against the Justice Department. It alleges an “illegal and unprecedented quest” by the administration for “millions of Americans’ confidential voter data.”
Lawyers also argue that eligible voters will be disenfranchised by hits from outdated or incomplete data.
Nel came to the United States from South Africa with his parents at age 8. His parents became citizens when he was 16, making him a citizen, as well. He said he has voted regularly since he was 18.
Yet he received a letter in October in a white envelope that looked to him like junk mail. It told him he had been identified as a potential noncitizen through a SAVE check of Texas’ 18 million voter registrations. He had 30 days to prove otherwise — a deadline he missed because of the time it took to get a new passport.
“It’s clear that this process that they’ve put into place for this doesn’t work,” he said.
Defenders say the SAVE system is a first step
Republican officials said the administration does not portray SAVE searches as foolproof. Instead, it identifies registrations that should be further investigated, they said.
In Kansas, Schwab’s office is still investigating its list of flagged registrations and has yet to disclose the number of hits of potentially ineligible voters from a SAVE check of the state’s 2 million registrations.
Once his office forwards flagged names to county officials, a state law enacted this year requires them to list the registrations as “in suspense” or “pending” until the cases are resolved. A flagged person still can vote, but the ballot is set aside for further review and might not be counted.
Texas is supposed to give people with flagged registrations 30 days to prove they are properly registered. North Carolina will require county elections boards to give people whose registrations are challenged a hearing before they can be canceled.
A new Ohio law requires local election boards to “promptly” cancel the registrations of people whom the secretary of state identifies as noncitizens during registration checks that the official is required to make at least monthly.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, said in an email that people’s voting rights are not in danger because “all they need to do to immediately restore their registration status is show proof of citizenship.”
But Levenson, the ACLU lawyer, described the approach differently.
“Shoot first and ask questions later,” she said.