Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 41
BRENHAM, Texas (AP) — A Texas semitrailer driver rammed a stolen 18-wheeler into a public safety building where his renewal for a commercial driver's license had been rejected, killing one person and injuring 13 others, authorities said Friday. The driver — identified as Clenard Parker, 42 — was pulled out of the truck by authorities after smashing into a Texas Department of Public Safety office in the rural town of Brenham, outside of Houston, Sgt. Justin Ruiz said. Authorities say Parker was taken into custody but did not say which charges he...
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A ban on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in higher education has led to more than 100 job cuts across university campuses in Texas, a hit echoed or anticipated in numerous other states where lawmakers are rolling out similar policies during an important election year. Universities throughout Texas rushed to make changes after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the law last year. On April 2, the president of the 52,000-student University of Texas at Austin — one of the largest college campuses in the U.S. — s...
UVALDE, Texas (AP) — An investigation Uvalde city leaders ordered into the Robb Elementary School shooting that killed 19 students and two teachers defended the response by local police at a City Council meeting Thursday, prompting shouts of "cowards" from the audience and causing several family members of the victims to angrily walk out of the meeting. The report acknowledged wide failures by police during the 2022 attack and reiterated rippling missteps that the Justice Department and state lawmakers have previously laid bare. Nearly 400 l...
UVALDE, Texas (AP) — Families of the children and teachers killed in the Uvalde, Texas, school massacre are renewing demands for criminal charges after a scathing Justice Department report again laid bare numerous failures by police during one of the deadliest classroom shootings in U.S. history. "I'm very surprised that no one has ended up in prison," said Velma Lisa Duran, whose sister Irma Garcia was one of the two teachers killed in the May 24, 2022, shooting. "It's sort of a slap in the face that all we get is a review ... we deserve j...
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas man killed his parents and four others and wounded two police officers in a daylong trail of violence stretching from San Antonio to Austin, authorities said Wednesday. Shane James, 34, of San Antonio, was charged with two counts of capital murder after separate attacks in Austin and San Antonio that began Tuesday morning and ended with James crashing his car that evening during a police pursuit. James has a history of mental health problems and a prior arrest on charges of assaulting family members, authorities s...
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas state police officers separated migrant families along the border with Mexico by detaining fathers on trespassing charges and turning over mothers and children to federal officials, the state Department of Public Safety said Thursday. The separations mark a shift from previous comments by Texas state police leaders who said families should stay together and be referred to federal officers. Hearst Newspapers, which first reported the shift, said the families were separated last month in Eagle Pass, a border town of a...
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton teetered on the brink of impeachment Thursday after years of scandal, criminal charges and corruption accusations that the state's Republican majority had largely met with silence until now. In an unanimous decision, a Republican-led House investigative committee that spent months quietly looking into Paxton recommended impeaching the state's top lawyer. The House could vote on the recommendation as soon as Friday. If it impeaches Paxton, he would be forced to leave office immediately. T...
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Friday urged his supporters to protest at the state Capitol when Republicans in the House of Representatives take up historic impeachment proceedings that threaten to oust him. The House has set a Saturday vote to consider impeaching Paxton and suspending him from office over allegations of bribery, unfitness for office and abuse of public trust — just some of the accusations that have trailed him for most of his three terms. Paxton, a 60-year-old Republican, decried the impeachment pro...
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Five women who said they were denied abortions even when pregnancy endangered their lives are suing Texas over its abortion ban, the latest legal fight against state restrictions since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade. The lawsuit filed Monday in state court said the Texas law, one of the strictest in the country, is creating confusion among doctors, who are turning away some pregnant women experiencing health complications because they fear repercussions. "Nobody should have to wait until they are at d...
UVALDE, Texas (AP) — Just hours after voting started in Texas, Kimberly Rubio cast her ballot in the same Uvalde city building where she waited in May to learn that her daughter, Lexi, was one of 19 fourth-graders fatally shot at Robb Elementary School. "If our children aren't safe, neither are your jobs," Rubio said as she walked out of her polling place with an "I voted" sticker. Nearby, another woman waved a "Don't tread on me" flag. The deadliest classroom shooting in Texas history has cast a long shadow in the midterm elections, i...
UVALDE, Texas (AP) — One girl runs and hides when she sees thin people with long hair similar to the gunman who stormed into her Uvalde school and killed 21 people. One boy stopped making friends and playing with animals. A third child feels her heart race when she's reminded of the May 24 massacre that killed a close friend — once at such a dangerous pace that she had to be rushed to a hospital, where she stayed for weeks. The 11-year-old girl has been diagnosed with anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. She and her family sp...
UVALDE, Texas (AP) — Elsa Avila slid to her phone, terrified as she held the bleeding side of her abdomen and tried to stay calm for her students. In a text to her family that she meant to send to fellow Uvalde teachers, she wrote: "I'm shot." For the first time in 30 years, Avila will not be going back to school as classes resume Tuesday in the small, southwest Texas city. The start of school will look different for her, as for other survivors of the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School in which 21 people died, with an emphasis on h...
UVALDE, Texas (AP) — An attorney for Uvalde's embattled school police leader is defending the response of the Robb Elementary School massacre as the school board was set to consider firing Chief Pete Arredondo. Uvalde residents and families of the May 24 massacre packed a meeting Wednesday in which Arredondo was set to potentially become the first officer to lose his job over the hesitant response by hundreds of heavily armed law enforcement personnel. Attorney George Hyde called Arredondo a "courageous officer" who should be "celebrated for th...
UVALDE, Texas (AP) — One student was an avid runner, so fast she swept the races at field day. Another was learning football plays from his grandfather. One girl sensed something was wrong and wanted to skip school. On Wednesday, stories began to emerge about the lives of the 19 children — "precious individuals" according to the school district superintendent — and their two teachers who were gunned down behind a barricaded door at Robb Elementary School in the southwestern Texas town of Uvalde. Vincent Salazar said his 10-year-old daugh...
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says he will continue truck inspections that have gridlocked the U.S.-Mexico border for days. The two-term Republican governor said Wednesday he would not repeal his new policy at all bridges until there are more assurances of security. Abbott did lift inspections at one international bridge after announcing what he said was an agreement for more enhanced security with Nuevo Leon, Mexico. But the most dramatic backups of commercial trucks along Texas' 1,200-mile border have occurred at other b...
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says the state will provide migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border bus charters to Washington, D.C. The move announced Wednesday amounts to a taunt at President Joe Biden and Congress over what the Republican governor calls a failure by the federal government to stop the flow of migrants coming to the southern border. Abbott had promised "unprecedented actions" after the Biden administration announced it was winding down a public health law that has limited asylum-seekers in the name of p...
ELGIN, Texas (AP) — One person was killed and more than a dozen were injured when tornadoes tore through parts of Texas and Oklahoma, damaging a school, homes and businesses, officials said. The same storm system was poised to move into Louisiana and Mississippi on Tuesday, carrying the risk of dangerous tornadoes and powerful winds. In Texas, several tornadoes were reported Monday along the Interstate 35 corridor, particularly in the Austin suburbs of Round Rock and Elgin, and close to Dallas-Fort Worth. Two unconfirmed tornadoes caused d...
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Jose Garza ran for district attorney in Austin on promises to hold police accountable in Texas' capital city. He got off to a fast start, charging at least seven officers during his first year on the job, including one charged with murder twice. But no cases have reached deeper into the police department than the indictments Thursday of 19 officers on felony charges over tactics used during the 2020 racial injustice protests. "Nineteen is, whew, I don't know any place else that's done that," said Margaret Moore, Garza's p...
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A sweeping new Texas voting law that Republicans muscled through the Legislature last year over dramatic protests is drawing fire again, even before some of the most contentious restrictions and changes kick in ahead of the state's first-in-the nation primary. Thousands of Texans — including some U.S. citizens — have received letters saying they have been flagged as potential noncitizens who could be kicked off voting rolls. And this week, local elections officials said hundreds of mail-in ballot applications are being reje...
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Sarah Weddington, who as a young lawyer from Texas won the Roe v. Wade case at the U.S. Supreme Court, is being remembered this week as a champion of feminism whose work impacted the nation's politics as views shifted on abortion. She died Sunday at age 76. Weddington was 26 when she successfully argued the case that legalized the right to abortion throughout the United States. The Supreme Court's ruling in 1973 cemented her place in history. "I just see her role at that time as being so courageous," said Sarah Wheat, a s...
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Justice Department sued Texas on Monday over its new redistricting maps, saying the plans discriminate against minority voters, particularly Latinos, who have fueled the state's population boom. The lawsuit claims the Republican-controlled state violated part of the Voting Rights Act in drawing new district boundaries for its congressional delegation and state legislature. It's the Biden Justice Department's first legal action challenging a state's maps since states began redrawing their maps this year to account for p...
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Luz Rivas remembers seeing the word on her mother's residency card as a child: "alien." In the stark terms of the government, it signaled her mother was not yet a citizen of the U.S. But to her young daughter, the word had a more personal meaning. Even though they were going through the naturalization process, it meant the family did not belong. "I want other children of immigrants, like me, to not feel the same way I did, that my family did, when we saw the word 'alien'," said Rivas, now an assemblywoman in the C...
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday signed redrawn voting maps that pave a safer path for the GOP's slipping majority, leaving opponents hoping courts will block the newly gerrymandered districts before they can be used in the 2022 elections. Abbott signed the maps Monday, according to a spokeswoman for the governor. The governor's office did not make an announcement. Civil rights groups have already filed federal lawsuits that accuse GOP mapmakers of disenfranchising Hispanic and Black residents who are driving t...
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Big 12 Conference could see the value of its television deal cut in half once Texas and Oklahoma bolt for the Southeastern Conference, Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said Monday at a hearing of Texas lawmakers. A committee of Texas senators heard testimony from university leaders at Baylor, TCU and Texas Tech on the monetary and academic losses that conference realignment would mean for the Big 12 and its members once Texas and Oklahoma leave for the SEC in 2025. University of Texas at Austin President Jay Hartzell t...
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Democrats who hurriedly took off to Washington to block sweeping new election laws urged Congress on Tuesday to quickly pass legislation protecting voting rights, while Republican Gov. Greg Abbott threatened them with arrest the moment they return. Speaking to reporters outside the Capitol, the Democrats were realistic about the limits of their gambit, noting they can hold up the GOP-backed proposals at home for only so long and arguing that only federal legislation would prevent some of the new restrictions from b...
