Voter registration deadline nearing<\/p>\n
The deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 3 general election is Oct. 5. Early voting starts Oct. 19 and runs through Oct. 30, according to the Texas Secretary of State\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
The last day for an application to vote by mail must be received by Friday, Oct. 23.Voters can visit\u00a0votetexas.gov<\/a>\u00a0to confirm they are registered to vote, see what is on the ballot where they live, and get other election-related information. That site is maintained by the Texas Secretary of State.nMeanwhile,\u00a0The Texas Tribune<\/a>\u00a0reported that an unknown number of voter registration applications were delayed because of an error by the Texas Department of Public Safety. The agency failed to forward the applications, submitted online through its driver\u2019s license portal, to county voter registrars.<\/p>\n Texas Democrats have called on Gov. Greg Abbott to investigate the problem.<\/p>\n With the Oct. 5 deadline approaching, the delayed registrations from DPS could add to processing backlogs at affected counties. A spokesperson for the secretary of state\u2019s office said affected voters can still have their ballots counted as long as they submitted their registration before Oct. 5.<\/p>\n The DPS portal accounted for about 6 million voter registrations from 2020 to 2024. Texas has more than 18 million registered voters.<\/p>\n Judge: Texas must air-condition all prisons by end of 2029<\/p>\n A federal judge has ordered the state to air-condition its entire prison system by the end of 2029, the\u00a0Austin American-Statesman<\/a>\u00a0reported. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has estimated that could cost the state $1.5 billion.<\/p>\n Nearly two-thirds of the 143,000 prisoners now held in Texas prisons do not have air-conditioning. In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Robert Pittman said the prison agency had \u201cminimized and misled\u201d the court about the seriousness of the heat problem.<\/p>\n \u201cThe data that TDCJ does not collect also paints a picture of an agency that is not attempting to meaningfully understand or document the dangers and impacts of heat,\u201d Pitman wrote. \u00a0<\/p>\n A TDCJ spokesperson took issue with the judge\u2019s characterization.<\/p>\n \u201cTDCJ has robust heat mitigation efforts in place to protect the safety of its population and staff,\u201d Amanda\u00a0Hernandez said in an email.<\/p>\n The state will appeal the ruling.<\/p>\n Camp Mystic under criminal investigation<\/p>\n Camp Mystic, the Hill Country girls\u2019 summer camp where 28 people died in the July 2025 floods, is under criminal investigation by the Texas Rangers,\u00a0kut.org<\/a>\u00a0reported. Fourteen search warrants were executed against family and staff members who ran the camp. KUT News obtained a copy of the affidavit filed against Tweety Eastland, whose husband, Dick, was one of the 28 who died.<\/p>\n The affidavit states the Rangers have probable cause to believe the camp\u2019s leaders committed a number of criminal offenses, including manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, injury to a child, deadly conduct, and abandoning or endangering a child.<\/p>\n \u201cThese offenses were committed against child campers\u2014including both deceased victims and surviving campers of the flood event,\u201d Brant Johnston, an investigator with the Texas Rangers, wrote in the document.<\/p>\n The affidavits are intended to allow the Rangers to obtain electronic data from Tweety and other members of the Eastland family that owns the camp, as well as camp staff members. A Kerr County state district judge approved it earlier this month.<\/p>\n Camp\u00a0 Mystic\u2019s owners are being sued in civil court by more than a dozen families.<\/p>\n Land commissioner backs virtual border wall<\/p>\n Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham told the\u00a0Houston Chronicle<\/a>\u00a0that a virtual border wall makes \u201cthe most sense\u201d for much of West Texas, where plans to build a physical wall have drawn considerable opposition.<\/p>\n \u201cThe bottom line is there are places where physical barriers make sense, and there are places where they don’t. And we just want the solution that’s best for Texas,” Buckingham said in an interview with the Chronicle\u2019s editorial board.\u00a0\u201cI think especially when you\u00a0get to West Texas, a virtual wall, in my opinion, makes the most sense for most of that area.\u201d<\/p>\n The Trump administration is moving to build a border wall across the more than 13 million acres the state agency controls, most of which is in West Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott has previously questioned the logic of building a physical wall in \u201crugged, isolated areas like Big Bend.\u201d<\/p>\n Buckingham sent a cease-and-desist letter in July to U.S. Customs and Border Protection after a contractor for the agency was discovered clearing state-controlled land without permission.<\/p>\n Buckingham is running for reelection against Democrat Ben Flores, a former Bay City council member.<\/p>\n Comptroller\u2019s office fires dozens of employees<\/p>\n The Texas comptroller\u2019s office fired 41 employees recently, after agency leaders were told to submit lists of people to be terminated,\u00a0The Dallas Morning News<\/a>\u00a0reported. Comptroller Don Huffines, appointed to the post by Abbott last summer and the Republican nominee in November, campaigned on shrinking the size of the state\u2019s government.<\/p>\n In a recent interview, Huffines defended how he is doing his job since taking the helm.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re going to hear a lot about how I\u2019m changing the agency, consolidating different divisions,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m making it more efficient.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The 41 terminations make up less than 2% of the agency\u2019s nearly 3,000 full-time employees.<\/p>\n Huffines faces Democratic nominee Sarah Eckhardt, a state senator from Austin. Eckhardt was critical of the firings, saying they would have a financial impact on the state\u2019s revenue.<\/p>\n \u201cNot only does a reduction-in-force reduce the comptroller\u2019s ability to collect lawfully levied taxes, but a reduction in institutional knowledge and expertise also significantly reduces their ability to collect,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Red tide reported off the coast of Galveston<\/p>\n Biologists with the\u00a0Texas Parks and Wildlife Department<\/a>have begun receiving reports of a red tide bloom off the coast of Galveston. They are monitoring fish kills and taking water samples around Crystal Beach and southern Galveston Island.<\/p>\n \u201cWater samples indicate moderate to high concentrations of red tide cells, and beachgoers are reporting mild to severe respiratory irritation resulting from the bloom,\u201d the news release said.<\/p>\n Red tide is a naturally occurring concentration of a microscopic alga that produces a toxin. Dense concentrations are known as \u201cblooms\u201d and kill fish by paralyzing their central nervous systems. This can result in dead fish washing up on Gulf beaches.<\/p>\n Gary Borders is a veteran award-winning Texas journalist. He published a number of community newspapers in Texas during a 30-year span, including in Longview, Fort Stockton, Nacogdoches, Lufkin and Cedar Park. Email:\u00a0gborders@texaspress.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Voter registration deadline nearing The deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 3 general election is Oct.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,77396,3060,6210,58201,47379,27,1153,6357],"class_list":["post-456719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-cities-in-the-united-states","tag-driver","tag-federal-judge","tag-geography-of-texas","tag-investigator","tag-texas","tag-trump-administration","tag-u-s-customs-and-border-protection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}