Category: Texas

15-Year-Old Smuggler Shot While Trying to Run Down Deputy in Texas

KINNEY COUNTY, Texas—A 15-year-old was shot and injured during a traffic stop after he allegedly tried to run over a sheriff’s deputy early morning on May 9, according to Brad Coe, sheriff of Kinney County, a rural border county in south Texas. The teen was smuggling five illegal aliens in his vehicle when he was…


Texas Law Regulating Social Media Platforms Back in Effect After Court Ruling

Texas can bar social media platforms from censoring users based on their political views, an appeals court ruled on May 11. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel reversed a district judge’s decision that blocked Texas from enforcing a law that bars platforms from censoring a user based on their viewpoint or location. The…


Guilty Verdict in First Illegal Alien Trespass Trial in Texas

BRACKETTVILLE, Texas—The first jury trial under Texas’s Operation Lone Star border program wrapped up in Kinney County, Texas, on May 9. The defendant, Honduran native Lester Hidalgo Aguilar, was found guilty of criminal trespass on a local ranch and sentenced to the maximum jail time of one year. The judge declined to apply an accompanying…


Goodwill Find in Texas Turns out to Be Ancient Roman Bust

SAN ANTONIO—A marble bust that a Texas woman bought for about $35 from a Goodwill store is temporarily on display at a San Antonio museum after experts determined it was a centuries-old sculpture missing from Germany since World War II. The bust, which art collector Laura Young found at Goodwill in 2018, once belonged in…


Texas Group Successfully Blocks ‘Harmful’ School Sex-Ed Program Used in 35 States

A Texas group is celebrating a win in their fight to block what they consider “harmful” sex education lessons in some Corpus Christi schools. But it’s a bittersweet victory, say parents with the Nueces County chapter of County Citizens Defending Freedom. That’s because a local nonprofit receives $412,208 annually through a two-year federal grant to persuade…


Man Gets Life in Prison for Fatally Stabbing Houston Boy

HOUSTON—A man was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday for fatally stabbing an 11-year-old Houston boy as the child walked home from school in 2016. Andre Timothy Jackson had chosen state District Judge Denise Collins to sentence him instead of the jury that had found him guilty of murder on Tuesday in the death…


Tornadoes Strike Texas, Oklahoma; More Storms in Forecast

SEMINOLE, Okla.—A storm system spawned several tornadoes that whipped through areas of Texas and Oklahoma, causing damage to a school, a marijuana farm, and other structures. There were no reports of serious injuries following the Wednesday night tornadoes, but the system caused flooding in parts of Oklahoma and Arkansas, and more stormy weather took place…


Texas Student Fatally Stabbed at School, Classmate Jailed

BELTON, Texas—An 18-year-old student has died after he was stabbed during a fight at a Texas high school and another student was taken into custody, authorities said. Jose Luis Ramirez Jr. died after he was stabbed Tuesday morning in a campus bathroom at Belton High School, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of Austin, police…


Texas Scientists Create Plastic-Eating Enzyme That Could Help Clean up Landfills

An enzyme that can chemically break down bottles and packaging that typically take centuries to degrade may be able to clean up billions of tons of plastic at landfills and other polluted sites, according to researchers at the University of Texas. Engineers and scientists at the university’s Cockrell School of Engineering and College of Natural Sciences created the…


Pro-Life Organizations Cautiously Optimistic at Prospect of Overturning Abortion Ruling

Pro-life organizations are curbing their enthusiasm at the leaked “initial draft majority opinion” reportedly written by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, which indicates the court would overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. It would put abortion laws back fully in the hands of states and give voters more local control over the issue. That…