ORLA — Elected officials and industry leaders warn that Texas is at the “precipice” of running out of underground space to dispose of the nearly 1 billion gallons of wastewater that oil and gas production generates every day in the Permian Basin.

The toxic wastewater, known as produced water, is usually injected underground into disposal wells. But these wells have increased underground pressure, triggering earthquakes and blowouts. Instead of underground injection, the oil industry is now seeking alternatives to treat and reuse produced water.

Industry experts made clear last week, at a legislative hearing in Austin and a conference in Midland, that a lack of disposal space could soon constrain oil production in the Permian Basin.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is developing two permitting programs for re-using treated produced water. The agency began accepting permit applications to discharge the treated wastewater into rivers in 2024 but has yet to issue any permits. The agency released a proposed rule earlier this year to allow treated produced water to be applied on land for irrigation or rangeland restoration.

In public testimony last week, Commissioner Jim Wright of the Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas, emphasized the urgency of providing alternatives to disposal wells.

“Continued delay could restrict oil and gas development across the Permian Basin,” he said during a Texas Senate hearing. “I respectfully urge TCEQ to finalize and issue workable permits as soon as possible.”

While political pressure mounts on the TCEQ to issue permits, pilot projects using treated produced water are ongoing. Researchers are still gathering data to publish more peer-reviewed papers that will inform the permitting programs. Advocates question whether regulators are jumping the gun by drafting permits as research continues on the safety of treated produced water and treatment technologies.

TCEQ declined an interview request from Inside Climate News. The agency did not respond to individual questions regarding the scientific basis of its rulemakings or when the agency anticipates issuing the first permits for produced water discharges, but it provided a statement.

“TCEQ develops permits that are unique and reflect site-specific conditions of a single entity’s proposed activities and the location of the activity,” spokesperson Victoria Cann wrote. “Permits are drafted to ensure compliance with the Texas Surface Water Quality Standards and protective of drinking water, aquatic life, and other existing uses of the receiving waterway.”

WASHINGTON, Aug 19 (Reuters) - Total U.S. debt has topped $40 trillion for the first time, the Treasury Department said on Wednesday, drawing fresh warnings that a fiscal crisis is brewing as ballooning costs for social safety-net programs and interest payments far ​outstrip revenues held back by tax cuts.

The Treasury's latest daily cash and debt balances statement showed total public debt outstanding at $40.047 trillion on Tuesday, a total that includes Treasury securities held by the public ‌of $32.266 trillion and intra-governmental debt holdings of $7.782 trillion.

The federal government's IOU has now more than doubled in less than a decade, from $19.95 trillion when President Donald Trump was sworn in for the first time in January 2017. Roughly one-third of that increase occurred during two years of frantic government borrowing to fund the COVID-19 pandemic responses undertaken by Trump and former President Joe Biden, while the fiscal policy choices of both presidents combined with long-running tax-and-spending imbalances to account for the rest.

Budget watchdog groups have been anticipating the crossing of the threshold for weeks and have issued stark ​warnings that a full-blown debt crisis could erupt unless lawmakers confront an unsustainable fiscal outlook and raise taxes, cut spending or both.

"Forty trillion dollars of debt doesn’t exist solely on the government’s ledgers; it is felt ​throughout the economy and finds its way to the pocketbooks of people one way or another," said Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

"The more ⁠we borrow, the more we exacerbate inflation, squeeze out other priorities in the budget, and leave ourselves vulnerable to emergencies at home and turmoil abroad," MacGuineas said in a statement just after the Treasury data was released.

She noted that ​the $40 trillion figure was reached less than five months after debt reached $39 trillion, and has quadrupled in less than 20 years after taking until 1981 to reach $1 trillion for the first time. "It is staggering how predictable the fiscal decline of a global ​power can become," MacGuineas added.

Global U.S. creditors may already be growing wary.

Days after a $25 billion auction of 30-year Treasury bonds went off at the highest yield since 2021, yields on so-called long bonds on Tuesday hit their highest levels in nearly two decades as investors demanded greater compensation in the face of hefty U.S. government bond issuance. On Wednesday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent took a bold step to push long bond yields back, announcing a doubling of buyback sizes for 10- to 30-year Treasuries to at least $4 billion per operation. The term premium for 10-year Treasuries — ​a measure of how much of the security's overall yield is accounted for by the perceived risk of holding them over a decade — rose this week to its highest in more than a dozen years.

Against all that, demand for U.S. ​debt by foreign investors — who hold nearly one-third of all Treasuries — has been declining over the past year, leaving more bonds to fall to more price-sensitive buyers, which can exacerbate market volatility, John Canavan, lead financial market analyst in Oxford Economics' Macroeconomic and Investor ‌Services group, wrote ⁠on Tuesday.

For more than a quarter of a century, Texas has diligently updated its state water plan every five years, a process designed to forecast water supply and demand 50 years into the future — and give communities enough warning about potential water shortages to do something about it.

That warning matters because water projects can take years — sometimes decades — to plan, finance and build.

For Corpus Christi and the rest of the Coastal Bend, it never came.

That’s because the planning process is built largely around past droughts — in fact, some regional plans still rely on the epic 1950s drought of record, the longest statewide dry spell in history. But some experts now say using historical droughts isn’t working because climate change is making droughts more frequent, longer and severe — raising doubts that yesterday’s worst-case scenario is also tomorrow’s.

That means the models that help secure money and political will for new water projects may be dramatically underestimating both future water needs and how quickly communities could face shortages.

“We need to be planning and developing infrastructure for the climate of 2050, the climate of 2100,” said Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist at Columbia University who studies drought in North America.

Nowhere were the weaknesses more evident than in Corpus Christi. A report released Wednesday by Texas 2036, a nonpartisan think tank that researches the state’s long-term infrastructure, population and economic needs, found that five state water plans adopted over 25 years sent conflicting signals about whether the Coastal Bend region, which includes Corpus Christi, could face shortages in the 2020s.

Tech companies are lining up to voice support for Gov. Greg Abbott’s audit of data centers seeking to connect to the power grid, although little is known about what the audit will entail or what it means for the data center construction boom.

Since the Aug. 3 announcement, at least 43 companies — including juggernauts like Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services — have issued public statements expressing support for Abbott’s audit, despite the governor ordering regulators to not approve any new grid connections until the audit is completed. The governor has similarly touted their endorsement of his plan.

“We share your commitment to ensuring data centers are true partners in every Texas community where we operate — protecting residential ratepayers, strengthening grid reliability and promoting responsible water stewardship,” read a letter to the governor sent Tuesday by the Data Center Coalition, a trade association representing many of the largest tech companies in the world.

Abbott directed the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s power grid, to conduct the audit, but it’s unknown how long the audit will take, how long the moratorium on grid connections will last, how many data centers will be audited and how the information gathered in the audit will be used by regulators and legislators.

Without these questions answered, it’s unclear how much of this audit will address the public’s concerns about data centers, particularly their impact on energy access, water use and the environment.

Citing polling data that shows growing discontent among rural Texans toward the buildout of data centers and competitive General Election contests for governor and U.S. Senate, Texas Politics Project Director Jim Henson said the moves by Abbott and the companies raise questions about how impactful the audit and freeze of approvals will actually be.

“It’s all very performative, it’s performative on everybody’s part,” Henson said.

Abbott’s office has largely directed questions about the audit to his public statements on the topic since Aug. 3. The PUCT and ERCOT have also remained largely silent on the matter, and the PUCT scheduled an emergency meeting for Friday morning to discuss the issue.

ERCOT did say in a Monday filing it expects the audit will last “several months” and is expected to begin shortly after Aug. 20.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is leaving her role at the end of the month to spend more time with family, President Trump said Wednesday.

She will continue to be an outside adviser, he added.

"Our wonderful White House Press Secretary, and one of my most trusted aides, Karoline Leavitt, will be departing her role at the end of the month so she can spend more time with her beautiful young children and family, a decision I totally understand and respect!," Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Leavitt, 28, was the youngest ever White House press secretary. She recently returned from parental leave after the birth of her second child in May.

"The truth is since returning to the White House after the birth of my daughter, I have felt in my heart that I cannot be the best mom my two young children deserve while devoting the constant time, energy, and attention required of the White House Press Secretary — and that is why I have ultimately made the bittersweet decision to depart the White House and embark on a new chapter in my life," she said on social media.

Leavitt's departure comes as the president, and his party, are struggling with voters who disapprove of his handling of the economy and high prices amid the Iran war.

In his post, Trump said Leavitt would still be an "influential voice" for the GOP.

Leavitt first started working for Trump in his first administration in 2020 and left shortly before his term ended. She later made an unsuccessful run for Congress in her home state of New Hampshire. Later, she went on to work for Trump's super PAC before working for Trump's 2024 campaign.

It's not yet clear who will replace her; several Cabinet secretaries filled in for Leavitt while she was on parental leave.

Voters in half a dozen states went to the polls Tuesday. The results highlight the ongoing conflicts within both parties ahead of the November midterms.

Democratic primaries in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Connecticut signaled what the party's base may want from new leaders: a harder line against President Trump's immigration crackdown and younger, more progressive nominees, as a 14-term congressman was swept aside by a candidate under 50.

On the Republican side, the night tested how far Trump's endorsement still carries, even with his approval at a second-term low, and the answer was mixed. His endorsements won in some states and stumbled in others.

The president sees mixed results as kingmaker

Trump-endorsed candidates in South Carolina's Senate primary and Wisconsin's gubernatorial race performed well Tuesday, highlighting that even amid his lowest approval rating in his second presidency so far, voters still have an ear for him. But Trump's pick for Minnesota's governor struggled Tuesday.

In South Carolina, the Trump-endorsed Sen. Darline Graham advanced to a special Republican primary runoff election for the U.S. Senate despite competing with several GOP heavyweights in a crowded race, according to a race call by The Associated Press.

Graham will now face Rep. Ralph Norman in the Aug. 25 special primary runoff. Norman, who also advanced Tuesday, is a member of the House Freedom Caucus and had endorsements by GOP Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Rick Scott of Florida.

Soon after she was appointed to the seat in July to complete the term of her late brother, Lindsey Graham, she announced that she was running for the full-term Senate seat on the president's encouragement. Trump held a tele-rally for her this week and said: "[She] will help us achieve our mission to make America great again,"

While no candidate was on track to win the majority needed for the Republican nomination, Graham competed in a crowded field of experienced policymakers and finished first with about a third of the vote. Two thirds of Republicans voted for Norman and Rep. Russell Fry, who were not endorsed by Trump.

In Wisconsin, a swing state, Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany, who voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election results back in January of 2021 and denied the 2020 presidential election, won his party's nomination by a landslide, in a race called by the AP Tuesday night.

Tiffany had Trump's endorsement and a united Republican backing.

Rhett Marques, an Alabama state representative endorsed by Trump, also clinched the Republican nomination for the congressional district that runs from Mobile County through the southern Black Belt to the Georgia border.

However, in Minnesota, Trump had endorsed Mike Lindell, a staunch Trump ally and the founder of MyPillow, a pillows and bedding accessories company, for the GOP gubernatorial primary, and he lost his primary to Lisa Demuth, the speaker of the Minnesota House.

Lindell had faced questions about residency requirements from the Republican Party of Minnesota and allegations that he physically abused a former girlfriend. He has denied both claims.

Demuth, 59, has presided over a state house that was almost evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats and has billed herself as the Republican with the best chance of winning in the fall.

She will face four-time Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who won the Democratic gubernatorial race Tuesday night. Klobuchar announced her decision to run for governor after Gov. Tim Walz abandoned his bid for a third term in January.

Minnesota's Republican Party has not won a governor's race in two decades.

LUBBOCK — The Texas Broadband Development Office placed a temporary hold Tuesday on all disbursements of billions of dollars in federal funds related to the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, or BEAD.

The hold comes after the office was accused of favoritism to certain companies, specifically Elon Musk’s Starlink, which led to lawmakers announcing an audit.

In an email obtained by The Texas Tribune, the state broadband office shared with subgrantees that the hold was effective as of Monday, and will be in place “until further notice.” The office did not give a reason as to why the disbursements were paused.

The office did not respond to The Tribune in time for publication.

“No further action is required from subgrantees at this time,” the office said in the email. ”The BDO will provide additional guidance and updates as they become available.”

Last week, Comptroller Don Huffines announced a comprehensive internal review of his office, which includes the broadband office.

Lawmakers began questioning the Broadband Office in June on how it doled out more than $3 billion in BEAD funding. During a Senate committee hearing, Sen. Charles Schwertner, a Republican from Georgetown, said his office heard about the concerns regarding taxpayer money, including how much money was disbursed up-front for the projects. While other providers were only expected to receive 10% of the grant money to start, with the rest dispersed on a tiered system, the rules were changed for low-Earth orbit satellite providers.

According to Bryant Clayton, the BDO’s director, the change was a directive from Gov. Greg Abbott’s office and made just days before the grant was awarded.

In response, Schwertner called for more transparency in the grant award process by the BDO.

“I have my eye on y’all regarding the way y’all are conducting your business,” Schwertner told Clayton. “I don’t care who’s messing with your business, but we, as an oversight committee, are going to oversee it regarding fairness and transparency.”

Starlink is the largest provider of residential broadband service through low-Earth orbit satellites in Texas, and has at least 12 million customers worldwide. Amazon recently began deploying satellites for its own LEO service. Both of the companies were chosen as subgrantees by the BDO.

Sen. Nathan Johnson, a Dallas Democrat running for Texas Attorney General, claimed in a campaign statement that the award process could be corruption from the federal government down.

“Without drawing conclusions for the moment, the whole process may have involved coordinated corruption among the Trump administration, the illegally empowered DOGE czar Musk, private entities (Starlink), the governor’s office and the broadband development office,” Johnson said in the statement.

Earlier this year, a 16-year-old student at a Los Angeles high school was looking forward to starting his junior year, where he planned to try out for the school’s varsity tennis team. His parents were both college psychology professors.

But in April, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested the family, who immigrated from Iran more than a decade ago, after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told immigration officers to revoke their permanent legal status. ICE separated the family, sending them to two different Texas detention centers.

For the past 123 days, the teen and his mother have lived in an immigrant detention facility in Dilley, where he and other detainees share their rooms with swarms of cockroaches, spiders and mosquitoes, he wrote in a sworn affidavit. Meanwhile, his father is at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall.

“We have been put through hell for the past four months, and our physical and mental health have deteriorated in ways that might not be reversible for years,” Maryam Tahmasebi, his mother, wrote in The Nation on Tuesday. “We are only allowed to speak with my husband for 10 minutes every two weeks, under supervision.”

The teen is one of at least 60 children who the Trump administration has held in the Dilley detention center for 100 days or more — far exceeding the 20-day limit for detaining immigrant children — according to a Texas Tribune analysis of federal government data.

On average, children in the Dilley detention center spend 25 days there — but in a six-month period ending in December, that average peaked at 47 days, according to the Tribune’s analysis.

Right after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, there were many stories about how new state abortion bans were influencing people's birth control decisions, especially by prompting people to use long-acting or permanent options.

Research shows that it wasn't just anecdotal, the trend was real — more people got intrauterine devices and implants for birth control, and procedures like vasectomies and tubal ligation spiked.

These days, though, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an OB-GYN in Indianapolis who helps lead a statewide free birth control program, says her patients aren't talking much about the abortion ban that's been in place in the state for years.

"This is just the normal status quo now," says Bernard, who was involved in a high-profile abortion case soon after Roe was overturned. "Other things that help you decide whether or not to use contraception are more top of mind."

Bernard says patients are questioning things like whether they would rather take a pill or have an IUD, and whether their insurance would cover both options. She also sees patients worried about finances in general and trying to avoid going to the doctor to steer clear of unexpected medical bills.

Three Houston mothers are suing to stop displaying the Ten Commandments in Texas public school classrooms, arguing that it violates the state’s religious freedom law and a voter-approved parental rights amendment.

Their lawsuit is the latest challenge to Senate Bill 10 — this time under Texas law. Other attempts to prohibit the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools under federal law — primarily the First Amendment’s guarantee of separation of church and state — have been unsuccessful so far.

The mothers’ suit, filed in Harris County, demands that the displays be taken down and that the court act before mid-August, when the school year begins.

Emily Roth, one of the plaintiffs, said in a Friday morning press release that the Ten Commandments poster purposefully ignores religious differences in the classroom and will make students feel like they do not belong.

“It teaches students, and their teachers, that exclusion is acceptable, maybe even preferred. That is not a lesson I want my children learning from the state of Texas,” she said.

The parents are suing under the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which the Legislature passed in 1999 and declares that “a government agency may not substantially burden a person’s free exercise of religion.”

They are also suing under the recently approved Texas Proposition 15 — also known as the “Parental Rights Amendment” — which ensures parents have the right “to exercise care, custody, and control of the parent’s child, including the right to make decisions concerning the child’s upbringing.”

Last year’s Senate Bill 10 requires Texas classrooms to display donated posters of the King James Version of the Ten Commandments. The posters must be visible in the classroom and cannot be smaller than 16 by 20 inches.

However, various faiths — such as Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant traditions — number and word the commandments differently, the press release noted.

Sixteen families sued 11 school districts to block the new law in July 2025. They argued that it violates the separation of church and state and pressures students to embrace religious principles and values they may not align with.

In August 2025, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery blocked the law in the targeted districts.

A 5th Circuit Court ruling this spring then permitted the enforcement of Senate Bill 10, stating that the Texas law did not violate the Constitution. The court also cleared the way for a similar law in Louisiana.

It’s not just you; the Xbox network–or parts of it, depending on when you read this–is down. After users across the globe began reporting issues with the Xbox Network, Xbox identified several issues affecting its online services today. At the time of writing, the following functions are still experiencing “major issues” on the Xbox network:

Account and profile
Store and subscriptions
Games and gaming
Apps and mobile

These problems are widespread, and include an inability to sign into network services, disconnections, and missing games from the storefront. Xbox says that the problems have been identified, and it is working on a solution, but there’s no ETA for when these fixes will be applied. “We are aware that some users are encountering errors when attempting to sign in, see your game library, or launch games,” Xbox’s official support account posted online. “Our engineers are actively working to mitigate the issue.”

Console gamers also had to contend with an outage on the PlayStation Network last week, which saw account management, gaming and social, PlayStation Video, the PlayStation Store, and PlayStation Direct go down for several hours–bad timing for anyone looking to jump into the Marvel Tokon open beta, and more fuel for the fire that PlayStation’s social media has become as users demand that Sony reverse its decision to kill discs in 2028.

Outages like these have also brought into question the decision for companies to embrace a digital-only future, as they effectively prevent users from accessing their game libraries.

The Trump administration has signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia that would allow American companies to run commercial nuclear power plants on Saudi soil.

The agreement was signed by Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Arabia's energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the Department of Energy announced on Wednesday. They also signed an accompanying agreement about safeguards. The deal must be reviewed by Congress, which has 90 days to consider it.

The cooperation agreement gives American companies priority access to the Saudi nuclear energy program, meaning they can supply nuclear reactors and fuel, according to an administration memo about the agreement seen by NPR. It's expected to last decades and be worth billions of dollars, the Energy Department said.

"These agreements reflect our two nations' shared commitment to strengthening U.S.-Saudi commercial relations, delivering prosperity at home and security to our allies abroad," Wright said in the announcement. "Rest assured, these agreements uphold the highest standards of nuclear safety and nonproliferation, while relying on the world's best nuclear technology and scientists, designed right here in the United States."

However, the memo seen by NPR said the agreement does not include provisions known as the "gold standard" that would prohibit the kingdom from enriching uranium and reprocessing nuclear fuel, nor does it require Saudi Arabia to adopt terms that would lead to greater oversight from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The lack of those restrictions will raise concerns over providing the kingdom a pathway to weapons development. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said that if Iran were to develop a nuclear weapon, Saudi Arabia would follow suit.

The Trump administration has signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia that would allow American companies to run commercial nuclear power plants on Saudi soil.

The agreement was signed by Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Arabia's energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the Department of Energy announced on Wednesday. They also signed an accompanying agreement about safeguards. The deal must be reviewed by Congress, which has 90 days to consider it.

The cooperation agreement gives American companies priority access to the Saudi nuclear energy program, meaning they can supply nuclear reactors and fuel, according to an administration memo about the agreement seen by NPR. It's expected to last decades and be worth billions of dollars, the Energy Department said.

"These agreements reflect our two nations' shared commitment to strengthening U.S.-Saudi commercial relations, delivering prosperity at home and security to our allies abroad," Wright said in the announcement. "Rest assured, these agreements uphold the highest standards of nuclear safety and nonproliferation, while relying on the world's best nuclear technology and scientists, designed right here in the United States."

However, the memo seen by NPR said the agreement does not include provisions known as the "gold standard" that would prohibit the kingdom from enriching uranium and reprocessing nuclear fuel, nor does it require Saudi Arabia to adopt terms that would lead to greater oversight from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The lack of those restrictions will raise concerns over providing the kingdom a pathway to weapons development. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said that if Iran were to develop a nuclear weapon, Saudi Arabia would follow suit.

Robert Howden, a senior adviser to Gov. Greg Abbott, will be Texas’ interim secretary of state, Abbott announced Friday. Howden is a longtime Texas politico who worked for GOP governors going back to Bill Clements, serving as Abbott’s legislative director since 2024.

Howden is replacing Jane Nelson, who left her post Friday as Texas’ top election official after three and a half years. Nelson’s resignation, announced in early June, set off a flurry of speculation about why she was leaving and who would replace her ahead of the contentious midterm elections in November.

Howden will need to be confirmed by the Texas Senate when the Legislature returns in January, but can serve until then without legislative approval. Nelson’s three immediate predecessors in the role resigned before the Senate got a chance to approve them.

“Robert Howden has served Texas with distinction in four Republican governors’ administrations,” Abbott said in a statement. “His experience in the legislative process and extensive public service have prepared him to protect the integrity of Texas elections and represent our state with strength on the global stage.”

Nelson has not commented on her departure, other than to say she worked hard “to ensure that voting in Texas is secure, accessible and fair.” Abbott praised her as an “extraordinary” secretary of state.

Nelson was the longest-serving Republican woman in the Texas Senate, and the first woman to lead the Senate Finance Committee. She presided over seven statewide elections and disbursed millions in grants to county election officials, according to a press release from her office.

But she clashed with GOP leadership toward the end of her tenure over closing the primaries, which would require voters to register with a specific party to vote in the primary. Last year, the Texas GOP filed a lawsuit arguing they had the legal right to close their primaries. Attorney General Ken Paxton, rather than defending Texas law, joined the party in its suit, which Nelson called “brazen and misguided.”

Nelson said in a filing that Paxton’s office gave her less than an hour’s notice about their plans, and said it was up to the Legislature, not the courts, to change the law. Abbott, who has joined the call for closing the primaries, has agreed, telling Texas Scorecard that lawmakers “can and should be more responsive to Republicans than a judge may be.”

As chief elections officer for a state whose leaders are heavily focused on election integrity and the threat of voter fraud, Howden will have more to manage than just the November elections. Nelson often found herself facing competing demands from the Trump Justice Department, state leaders, county elections officials and voting rights groups.

During her tenure, Texas was one of just 15 states that gave the U.S. Department of Justice access to the state’s full voter roll, including identifiable information about 18 million registered voters. The state also began using a federal database called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, last year, to verify voters’ citizenship, leading to at least two lawsuits by voting rights groups.

WASHINGTON — Sen. Mitch McConnell on Sunday revealed for the first time that a fall led to his hospitalization, breaking the silence about his condition after weeks of mounting speculation about the Kentucky Republican's health.

McConnell, 84, said in a statement that he was "briefly unconscious" around the time he was first taken to the hospital and has undergone a battery of tests to try and determine what led to his fall. He said he was also treated for mild pneumonia and has been moved to a rehabilitation facility.

"My doctors have confirmed that I didn't break any bones or suffer a concussion. I didn't have a heart attack or a stroke. I don't have any tumors or hemorrhages," McConnell said, adding that he is now "regaining my strength."

McConnell's statement came on the heels of the unexpected death of his fellow Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. McConnell said he cannot return to the Senate "quite yet."

Coupled with Graham's passing, that will temporarily whittle the GOP majority in that chamber down by two, to 51-47, as Republicans try to increase military funding, advance President Donald Trump's agenda and confirm Trump's nominees.

For at least a decade, Corpus Christi sold water to a handful of large industrial plants at a steeply discounted rate, according to documents and interviews with city officials. Residents and businesses paid more than $100 million to subsidize water for some of the world’s richest energy companies, the city’s rate models show.

Three years ago, Corpus Christi doubled the companies’ water rates in an effort to correct the imbalance. But the companies, including Valero, Citgo and LyondellBassell, protested to state regulators, sparking a legal battle that will come to a head today as a public hearing over the matter begins in front of an independent state agency in Austin.

The outcome will have major implications for Corpus Christi, which is facing an unprecedented water supply crisis, as well as the energy companies that have long dominated its economy. If the companies prevail, Corpus could be forced to refund them tens of millions of dollars even as it desperately seeks funding for new water projects and raises rates on the rest of the region’s consumers.

“I’m holding my breath,” said Sylvia Campos, a City Council member who campaigned on raising industrial water rates. “Let’s hope that we don’t have to pay them back.”

Valero, Citgo and LyondellBassell, which buy water directly from Corpus Christi’s water utility to operate oil refineries and petrochemical plants just outside city limits, commented through an industry group they have formed called Affordable Water for Corpus Christi.

“The issue before the Public Utility Commission is whether the City’s rates were developed using a fair, evidence-based and legally compliant methodology,” said Heath Armstrong, a lawyer for the group.

Campos responded: “They know very well how long they’ve gotten away with not paying their fair share.”

KERR COUNTY — Alicia Baker can’t bring herself to clean her daughter’s bedroom.

Eleven-year-old Madelyn “Emmy” Jeffrey left a pile of craft supplies on the floor in their San Antonio home before heading off to the Guadalupe River with her grandparents, where they drowned in the flood last Fourth of July.

A year later, the pile is still there.

Baker, who wears a diamond made from her daughter’s ashes, said seeing the mess allows her to pretend her daughter is away at camp or traveling.

“If all of her things are gone then I can’t rationalize that anymore,” the 43-year-old said.

When the Guadalupe River swelled into a huge, raging waterway in the early morning hours of July 4 last year, it carved a horrific path of destruction. Baker’s daughter and parents, staying at their one-bedroom vacation house by the water, died along with 116 others in Kerr County.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Tuesday decision to strike down caps on coordinated spending by political parties and candidates could boost GOP Senate nominee Ken Paxton, giving national Republicans a new tool to eat into James Talarico’s fundraising edge.

The 6-to-3 decision eliminated federal limits on how much political parties could spend on expenses like advertising in coordination with their candidates, with the high court finding that such caps violated the First Amendment.

As a result, political parties can spend without limit, in direct coordination with candidates, likely opening the floodgates to even more political advertising and spending.

“This is a massive victory for the First Amendment,” Republican National Committee Chair Joe Gruters said in a statement. “The RNC has been preparing for this ruling, and we are ready to expand the ways we directly help and provide resources to Republican candidates across the country.”

The ruling could be especially meaningful in Texas’ U.S. Senate race, where Talarico has posted astronomical fundraising totals while Paxton has lagged not just his opponent, but other Republicans in key states. Talarico had $9.9 million in the bank at last count compared to Paxton’s $2.3 million, a disparity that appeared to be one of the Austin Democrat’s biggest advantages in the race.

Trey Trainor, a longtime GOP operative in Texas who previously chaired the Federal Election Commission, said the decision “would definitely make up for any of the fundraising woes that [Paxton’s] had here in Texas.”

“In other states where the Republicans are doing really well and the Democrats aren’t, the DNC will be able to come in and bridge that gap there as well,” Trainor said, noting the advantages run both ways.

While the decision does grant both parties the same coordination powers, Republicans are expected to reap more immediate benefits.

The Texas Department of Public Safety on Monday lifted a restriction on commercial drivers licenses and permits for immigrants with temporary agriculture work visas and removed the Spanish language option for CDL tests following changes in federal requirements.

In September, Texas halted commercial drivers licenses for many immigrants, including refugees, people with asylum and DACA recipients. The change on Monday will allow those with H-2A visas, designed for temporary agriculture workers, to again hold valid CDLs in Texas. Those eligible who have current CDLs may continue to use them until their expiration date, and those with expired licenses can file to renew them, according to a DPS press release.

DPS indicated the shift was made in line with a new federal guideline from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration published in mid-March, which permits H-2A workers to hold CDLs alongside H-2B and E-2 visa holders, which are temporary non-agricultural workers and treaty investors, respectively.

Under the new federal guidelines, Texas has only been approved to grant H-2A visa holders commercial drivers licenses for now, the DPS release said. Eligibility for H-2B and E-2 visa holders in Texas “will be announced at a later date,” according to the release.

The limitation to the three types of visas was implemented to prevent “dangerous foreign drivers” from being given licenses, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a February statement, claiming that bad actors had previously been abusing access to commercial drivers licenses.

The reinstatement came hours after DPS announced it would offer CDL license and permit knowledge tests only in English, removing the Spanish option previously offered, according to a DPS press release announcing the change.

In February, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit accusing Dallas officials of failing to adequately fund the city’s police department and violating a voter-approved measure requiring it to hire up to 900 new officers.

“I filed this lawsuit to ensure that the City of Dallas fully funds law enforcement, upholds public safety, and is accountable to its constituents,” Paxton said in a news release demanding that the city adhere to a 2024 change in its charter. “When voters demand more funding for law enforcement, local officials must immediately comply.”

The reason Paxton could pursue such action, the reason the Dallas city charter even requires hiring more officers, was due in large part to a man named Art Martinez de Vara. A private attorney with a law practice based in Houston and a tiny South Texas town called Von Ormy, Martinez de Vara was one of the driving forces behind the changes in the charter that opened Dallas up to such a lawsuit in the first place.

Martinez de Vara’s personal website lists him as a state historian, an anthropologist and an attorney, in that order. He’s also the mayor of Von Ormy, a community of 1,100 people. But over the past two decades, Martinez de Vara has been much more than that. He has made a name for himself in Texas conservative circles as the architect behind the formation of a handful of small towns with austere — nearly nonexistent — local governments.

His push for limited-government concepts is not out of the norm in Texas, a state that has long worn that badge with pride. But the so-called “liberty city” experiment, in which communities agree to lean governments, little to no taxation and scant regulation, never grew into a large-scale movement. So in recent years, Martinez de Vara and other limited-government advocates have taken a different tack: They’ve ramped up efforts to restrict local governments’ ability to decide how they spend their money and which policies they can adopt.

That’s what happened in Dallas.