This is TPR's roundup of the latest headlines and news developments. It provides a succinct and clear summary of the stories TPR is following.
Today's weather: Expect a high today of 92 and a low of 71. The heat will slowly taper off over the next several days. Highs next week will be in the high 80s.
The tropics: The National Hurricane Center continues to monitor a growing system that is moving into the Gulf of Mexico. It may be a tropical depression by this weekend. The Atlantic hurricane season ends on Nov. 30.
Election 2024: The deadline to register to vote in the November elections is Monday, Oct. 7. Voter registration forms are available at all San Antonio Public Library branches, and people can also print a form online from the Texas Secretary of State website. For more information on how to register to vote, visit VoteTexas.gov.
People who saw their homes raided over voter fraud allegation want answers
A federal judge in San Antonio ruled over the weekend that the state can no longer investigate voter assistance efforts as a criminal act. But the organizers and politicians who had their homes raided by Attorney General Ken Paxton this summer are still waiting for answers.
Cecilia Castellano is a Democrat running for the rural South Texas House District 80. Paxton's office initiated a search of her home at 6 a.m. on Aug. 20 searching for evidence of voter fraud.
Castellano told TPR's The Source she was not charged with a crime but has not received any of her belongings that were confiscated.
"My phone has not been returned," she said. "We have not heard from the Office of the Attorney General as well. We have not heard from the district attorney that initiated this search. So you know, we're just waiting patiently. I do have an attorney that is going to be making a phone call to find out when they're going to be returning our belongings."
Castellano and the leadership of the League of United Latin American Citizens have called for a federal investigation into the raids.
Report outlines multiple problems with Texas prisons that endanger the public
Multiple Texas prisons are nearly impossible to adequately staff, making the system dangerous for inmates, staff and the public. That and other critiques were levied against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice by the sunset advisory commission staff report.
The reports are used to analyze the usefulness and efficacy of departments in Texas government.
While the Sunset Commission believes the agency responsible for detaining and rehabilitating more than 100,000 people is necessary, it found numerous serious flaws with the organization in the report.
The agency that spent nearly $4 billion in 2023 has outdated technology, lax oversight of its rehabilitation programs, and a staffing crisis making the whole system dangerous for inmates and staff.
The prisons are more violent than they were a decade ago. Employees are working longer and harder and dropping more balls. The report links the "crisis level" staffing to a deadly escape in 2022.
Suicides have also more than double from what they were in Texas prisons a decade ago. At 65 deaths, it's the highest in more than two decades.
FBI data: Texas border communities have less crime than other cities
Data from the FBI shows Texas border communities continue to have lower crime rates than non-border cities
The murder and violent crime rates for every 100,000 residents along communities like Laredo and El Paso were significantly lower compared to other U.S. cities.
In Texas, Houston had the highest violent crime with around 1,100 crimes per 100,000 people. Rio Grande City and McAllen had the lowest with less than 145 violent crimes.
South Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar released the report on Tuesday using statistics from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
Mayor: San Antonio moving forward airport expansion after court ruling against Southwest
Following the rejection of a Southwest Airlines effort to block a new airline lease agreement with the City of San Antonio, Mayor Ron Nirenberg said on Tuesday that the city was prepared to move forward with its plans for airport expansion.
The airline had accused the city of pulling a bait-and-switch on it, making promises and then backing out of them.
The San Antonio Business Journal first reported Nirenberg’s comments.
He said the city offered to invest $300 million in improvements to Terminal A, where Southwest is located — a figure $100 million larger than the committee the airline chaired originally agreed to. Nirenberg said he believes Southwest’s lawsuit is driven by “anger and disappointment.”
A statement Southwest gave the Business Journal said the process to determine gate-allocation discriminated against the airline. Southwest may request a preliminary injunction hearing, continuing its fight with San Antonio.
San Antonio partnering with railroad company on quality of life, safety issues
The City of San Antonio is working on a formal partnership with Union Pacific Railroad to support the maintenance of railroad properties that are rife with illegal dumping and code enforcement issues and where trains often block roadways.
Raquel Espinoza, Union Pacific’s senior director of public relations, said the railroad understands it needs to do better for San Antonio residents and has begun working on priority crossings since learning of the policy proposal. She added that Union Pacific will also do more to advocate for funding for overpasses to prevent blocked crossings.
City staff plan to present a final agreement to the city council in early 2025.
Councilmembers Jalen McKee-Rodriguez and Marc Whyte from Districts 2 and 10 co-authored the proposal to work with Union Pacific on its right-of-way maintenance. McKee-Rodriguez said he expects that Union Pacific pay for the maintenance, even if the city lends help.
200 Texans killed by intimate partners in 2023, most of them shot
More than 200 Texans were killed by their intimate partners last year — an overwhelming majority were shot. The presence of a firearm in a domestic violence situation increases the risk of homicide by 500%.
Protective orders ban perpetrators of domestic violence from having guns. But Tabitha Harrison from the Texas Council on Family Violence said at least 20 abusers fell through the cracks last year — and that cost lives.
The Supreme Court upheld the law that bans people under protective orders from having guns in a North Texas case last year. Texas doesn't have a statewide system in place to remove those weapons once a protective order is issued.
The number of Texas women shot and killed by their intimate partners has nearly doubled since 2013.
Mariah Gardner from San Antonio said that number doesn't capture the full impact of domestic violence. Gardner's ex-husband shot her seven times and stabbed her two children with a knife. Her daughter Willow was killed — but Gardner and her older daughter lived.
KERA's Caroline Love contributed to this report.
