EL PASO, Texas — A majority of El Paso City Council members told the city attorney to continue with on-going litigation against the state of Texas over the governor’s order forbidding local face mask mandates. In a 5-3 vote on Tuesday, council members rejected a motion to drop the litigation undertaken by the city stemming
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AUSTIN, Texas — Texas’ transgender student athletes will be restricted from playing on K-12 school sports teams that align with their gender identity under a bill Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law this week. House Bill 25, authored by state Rep. Valoree Swanson, R-Spring, will require student athletes who compete in interscholastic competition to play on
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AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has signed redrawn voting maps that pave a safer path for the GOP’s slipping majority. Abbott signed the maps Monday near the end of a highly charged year in Texas over voting rights. Those maps keep most of Fort Bliss and the El Paso International Airport under the
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By Rosa Flores, CNN The 27-year-old man tried to hold it together as he walked to his cell. It was weeks since he had been arrested. Weeks with no charges and no access to an attorney, he told CNN. Worst of all, two weeks without being able to talk to anyone on the outside, especially
Continue Reading By Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter Justice Sonia Sotomayor sent a strong reminder Friday that she is not a justice looking to carve out compromises with a conservative majority. She knows she will be in dissent in cases that most capture the public’s attention for the foreseeable future. Still, she writes to illuminate
Continue Reading WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. Supreme Court is not immediately blocking the Texas law that bans most abortions, but has agreed to hear arguments in the case on Nov. 1. The court’s action on Friday leaves in place for the time being a law that clinics say has led to an 80% reduction in abortions
Continue Reading WASHINGTON (AP) — Texas is urging the Supreme Court to leave in place its law banning most abortions and telling the justices there’s no reason to rush into the case. The state filed its response Thursday to the Biden administration’s call on the high court to block the law and rule conclusively this term on
Continue Reading By Dianne Gallagher and Wesley Bruer, CNN John Scott, the newly appointed top election official in Texas, briefly represented President Donald Trump in his legal challenge of the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania. Gov. Greg Abbott announced Thursday his appointment of Scott, a Fort Worth attorney, to be the next Texas secretary of state. The
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EL PASO, Texas– Early voting for the Canutillo Independent School District’s multi-million dollar bond is underway this week. If passed, the bond will allocate $177.5 million dollars to school facilities for maintenance projects, and the new construction of campuses. The other $10 million would go to refinance older maintenance tax notes. Canutillo ISD officials said
Continue Reading By ACACIA CORONADO and PAUL J. WEBER Associated Press AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Republicans have approved redrawn U.S. House maps that favor incumbents and could decrease political representation for growing minority communities in the nation’s largest red state. The Republican-controlled Legislature approved the maps late Monday night, and they will now be sent to
Continue Reading By MARK SHERMAN Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is asking the Supreme Court to block the Texas law banning most abortions, while the fight over the measure’s constitutionality plays out in the courts. The administration has also taken the unusual step of telling the justices they could grant the Texas law full
Continue Reading AUSTIN, Texas — Legislation barring transgender children from participating in K-12 public school sports on teams that align with their gender identity passed Friday evening in the Texas Senate, despite impassioned speeches and legislative efforts by El Paso lawmakers to derail the measure. The bill passed Thursday evening in the House, and now moves back to
Continue Reading By PAUL J. WEBER Associated Press AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Biden administration says it will turn next to the U.S. Supreme Court in another attempt to halt a Texas law that has banned most abortions since September. The announcement Friday by the Justice Department comes after an appeals court again left in place the
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AUSTIN, Texas — A federal appeals court is once again allowing Texas to continue banning most abortions. The decision Thursday night keeps the law known as Senate Bill 8 in place as the Justice Department tries halting the law. The Biden administration is suing Texas over the restrictions that ban abortions once cardiac activity is
Continue Reading SOUTHLAKE, Texas — A top administrator with the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake advised teachers last week that if they have a book about the Holocaust in their classroom, they should also offer students access to a book from an “opposing” perspective, according to an audio recording obtained by NBC News. Gina Peddy, the
Continue Reading By Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton urged a powerful federal appeals court on Thursday to allow a state law that bars abortion after the detection of a fetal heartbeat to remain in effect while legal challenges play out. The new briefs are the latest salvo from Texas that
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AUSTIN, Texas — The scandal-plagued Texas Juvenile Justice Department is the target of a new federal civil rights investigation, the four U.S. Attorneys for the state announced at a news conference on Wednesday. The probe will examine whether children in Texas’ five state youth lockups are suffering from widespread sexual assault and other constitutional violations
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By Marshall Cohen and Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN A Texas florist became the 100th person to plead guilty in connection with the January 6 insurrection, a landmark moment more than nine months after the deadly attack on the US Capitol. Jenny Cudd, 37, pleaded guilty Wednesday to entering a restricted building, namely the Capitol. Cudd could
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UPDATE, Oct. 12: The Texas House unanimously approved an amendment Tuesday evening to the state’s redistricting map to include most of Fort Bliss in El Paso Rep. Art Fierro’s House District 79. The original redistricting map proposed by the Texas GOP had placed Fort Bliss in a district whose representative lives hundreds of miles away
Continue Reading By PAUL J. WEBER Associated Press AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Biden administration is again urging courts to step in and suspend a new Texas law that has banned most abortions in the state since early September. The latest request came Monday night as clinics in Oklahoma, Louisiana and other states remain busy with Texas
Continue Reading By JIM VERTUNO Associated Press AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order Monday to prohibit any entity, including private business, from enforcing a COVID-19 vaccine mandate on workers and called on state lawmakers to pass a similar ban into law. The Republican previously sought to ban state and local governments
Continue Reading SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — The final price tag for a settlement reached by New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and a former campaign spokesman is now $150,000. The latest round of payments to settle accusations of harassment are disclosed in a mandatory campaign finance report that the Democrat’s campaign filed Monday. The staffer had
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By Andy Rose and Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN Allen West, Republican candidate for governor of Texas, is being treated at Medical City Plano, he said Sunday on Twitter, a day after announcing he has pneumonia due to Covid-19. The former Florida congressman said that he and his wife Angela “underwent monoclonal antibody infusion therapy” Saturday at
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By JUAN A. LOZANO Associated Press HOUSTON (AP) — Executions in the nation’s busiest capital punishment state face delays amid legal questions over Texas’ refusal to allow spiritual advisers to touch people as they are being put to death. It’s unclear when Texas may carry out another execution after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to
Continue Reading By Tierney Sneed, CNN A federal appeals court on Friday night put a temporary hold on a judge’s order that had blocked Texas’ six-week abortion ban. The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals acted swiftly to grant Texas’ request for an administrative stay of the order, which it had filed Friday afternoon. The state’s move
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AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas Senate approved a GOP redistricting map Friday which alters El Paso’s two congressional districts. The proposed map would shift Fort Bliss and the El Paso International Airport from Congressional District 16 to the 23rd Congressional District. Both sites are currently represented by Congresswoman Veronica Escobar (D – El Paso), but
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EL PASO, Texas — The El Paso Police Department is looking to ask City Council to raise its budget by $72,000 next year to allow the department to test marijuana cases at a lab. “Marijuana and hemp are very much so identical one of the only characteristics that differs hemp from marijuana is the amount
Continue Reading By PAUL J. WEBER and JAMIE STENGLE Associated Press AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Abortions have resumed in at least six Texas clinics after a federal judge halted the most restrictive abortion law in the U.S. Amy Hagstrom Miller is the president of Whole Woman’s Health, which has four clinics in Texas. She said Thursday that
Continue Reading By Annie Grayer, Zachary Cohen, Ryan Nobles and Whitney Wild, CNN The House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol issued a new round of subpoenas on Thursday, targeting two leaders of the “Stop the Steal” group, Ali Alexander and Nathan Martin, who are also affiliated with the planning of the “Stop
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FORT BLISS, Texas — On Thursday, El Paso Congresswoman Veronica Escobar toured the Afghan refugee camp at Fort Bliss’ Doña Ana Village. Escobar, along with two other members of the Texas Congressional Delegation who were joining her, held press conference after visiting with Afghan refugees and military service members. You can watch it in the
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