DEBATE

Greg Abbott has never faced a challenge quite like Gina Hinojosa. First, she's Mexican-American. Second, she's a woman. And even though he easily won against Wendy Davis, this candidate has something Davis didn't: she's puro 956. The Brownsville native and five-term state representative stopped by Caro's Restaurant in Rio Grande City on Monday to talk with local voters about her campaign. The event drew family and local Democratic officials who turned out to support her candi

The Department of Health and Human Services issued a directive in November 2025 that places Head Start programs in direct conflict with federal law. A Wisconsin program director submitted a routine funding renewal request on September 30. On November 19, she received two emails from HHS containing a six-page list of nearly 200 prohibited words and phrases. The forbidden terminology includes "disability," "women," "tribal," "accessible," "belong," "Black," "female," "minority,

Donald Trump made his choice in Texas's 34th Congressional District on December 18, and the fallout has been delicious. The former president endorsed Eric Flores, leaving his 2022 congressional candidate, Mayra Flores (who shares the surname but not the bloodline), fuming on the sidelines. Mayra Flores wasted no time posting a clarification that screamed "we are NOT related" in everything but those exact words. Eric Flores, who worked as an assistant U.S. attorney from 2021 t

Senator Mark Kelly, the combat-tested Navy captain turned Arizona senator, has launched a blistering 46-page federal lawsuit against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon, exposing what can only be described as a brazen, vindictive power grab by the Trump administration. This isn't justice—it's a political hit job, a chilling warning shot fired across the bow of any veteran or lawmaker daring to speak truth to power. In a move reeking of authoritarian overreach, Heg

ICE is here. The inevitable is happening here in Starr County and all across the Rio Grande Valley. Social media is filled with photos of people being detained. There is impotence. There is anger. There is fear. And sadness. That suffocating feeling in the air has a name: anomie. South Texas is a border region. The people who live here know immigration enforcement. But this is different. Now people are being detained at gas stations, at stores, at churches. Now filming an arr

The conversation around feminism has deteriorated into something genuinely stupid. Women bicker over dinner bills while the point sails right past them. Paying half on a date has absolutely nothing to do with equal rights. That's not activism. That's just bad math pretending to be principles. Feminism operates on a scale far beyond who picks up the tab at Olive Garden. The movement rests on one straightforward idea: women deserve the same rights as men. Not approximations. No

Greg Abbott's campaign account hit $105.7 million in January 2026. That staggering sum didn't come from bake sales or grassroots fundraising. It came from billionaires who expect results. Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass handed Abbott $6 million in December 2023, the largest single campaign donation in Texas history. Yass's net worth hovers around $29 billion, and his priority issue is school vouchers. Abbott spent 2024 using that money to unseat Republican legislators who

Senator Josh Hawley asked Dr. Nisha Verma a straightforward question during a Wednesday Senate hearing. The answer required one word. Either yes or no. Instead, he spent the next five minutes avoiding a simple yes or no. "Can men get pregnant?" he asked. Verma, an obstetrician-gynecologist and fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on January 14 during a hearing titled "Protecting Women: Exp

Vicente Ventura Aguilar spent his last documented moments doing something completely ordinary. The 44-year-old was moving to music with friends on a South Los Angeles street corner near a strip mall. Security cameras caught him at 8:40 on an October morning, laughing and dancing. Five minutes changed everything. Federal immigration agents in masks flooded the corner. They deployed some kind of spray. Multiple people got arrested. Ventura became one of them. What happened next

Across Texas—especially along the border—people continue to face intimidation and civil rights violations during encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Even U.S. citizens have been wrongfully detained or questioned. These are difficult times, but knowing how to respond safely and lawfully can protect you and others. Here's what every Texan should understand—and share—about what to do if ICE appears at your door, your workplace, or stops you on the road. 1.

Judge Baldemar Garza issued a direct response to challenger Abel Villarreal Jr.'s campaign attacks, using a social media video to defend his record and question his opponent's reliability. The 229th District Court judge framed his rebuttal around a lesson from his mother. "My mother taught me a lesson I carry every day," Garza began in a video ad. "No puedes tapar el sol con un dedo. You cannot cover the truth with a single finger." The judge addressed criticism about his war

Elizabeth Warren fumbled the easiest question in progressive politics. Asked whether she'd continue funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Massachusetts senator offered a conditional yes—funding with restrictions on behavior. A technocratic answer that misses the entire point. The correct answer was no. ICE didn't materialize from Trump's fever dreams. The agency was created in 2003 under the Homeland Security Act, signed by Republican George W. Bush but supported b

Here's what you need to know about how federal agents are trained to kill people and call it self-defense. In February 2013, the Police Executive Research Forum delivered a report to Customs and Border Protection that should have ended careers. Instead, CBP tried to bury it. The nonprofit had reviewed 67 use-of-force incidents from January 2010 through October 2012 that left 19 people dead along the southern border. What they found was a pattern so egregious it read like a tr

Minnesota is living the future that so many Americans still think could never happen here. The president of the United States has singled out one state on his social media megaphone and promised a “day of reckoning and retribution,” even as his immigration agents tear through neighborhoods with paperwork that looks like a warrant but is not. In Minneapolis, people are learning the hard way that the difference between a judge’s signature and an ICE form can be the difference b

Representative Jasmine Crockett angered people when she compared some Latino voting patterns to a "slave mentality" during a post-election interview with Vanity Fair. Her words have been resurfaced and people are obviously losing their minds. But nobody wants to talk about whether she was right about the matter. In a December 2024 Vanity Fair interview about Kamala Harris's loss, Crockett was asked about race and gender in the election. Trump pulled 46 percent of the Latino v

"We will move next week in the House Oversight Committee markup to hold former President Clinton in contempt of Congress," Rep. James Comer announced. The threat itself matters less than what came next. Bill and Hillary Clinton responded with a letter that abandons the careful distance former presidents typically maintain from congressional battles. The response extends far beyond the testimony request that prompted it. "Every person has to decide when they have seen or had e

The United States government will hand you a badge, a gun, and the authority to detain human beings after eight weeks of training. That's 336 hours. In Texas, you need 600 hours of supervised instruction before you're allowed to paint someone's fingernails. In 2025, during the Trump administration's hiring surge, ICE slashed training from six months to six weeks. Some reports put it at 47 days. Forty-seven. The number was allegedly chosen because Trump is the 47th president,

A Starr County case reached the Fourth Court of Appeals in San Antonio today, bringing a conviction for three counts of Super-Aggravated Sexual Assault of a Child under close judicial examination. Jesus Moises Lopez received three life sentences last year. His attorney, Hilda Gonzalez Garza, is now asking the appellate court to decide whether the trial court followed the law when determining Lopez’s mental competency before trial. Garza’s position rests on two issues. The fir

Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina didn't have to do much to earn President Donald Trump's endorsement. He just had to not be Henry Cuellar. That's the peculiar calculus propelling Tijerina's congressional campaign in Texas's 28th District, where Trump's backing arrived Tuesday as punishment for someone else's insufficient gratitude. The president pardoned Cuellar five weeks ago, eliminating federal bribery charges that threatened prison time. Cuellar responded by staying Democr

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stepped to the podium on September 10, 2001, and declared war. Not on a foreign enemy, but on the Pentagon itself. "The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America," he told the audience. The enemy? Pentagon bureaucracy. The evidence? $2.3 trillion in transactions the Department of Defense couldn't track. This was a financial black hole representing roughly 25% of the enti