DEBATE

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

"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

The Moderates Moving As GOP Allies

The news keep rolling in and everyone seems to think that America invaded Venezuela for oil. Oil. Always oil. Nothing but oil. Sure. And Putin annexed Crimea for the beaches. Venezuela sits on the largest proven oil reserves on Earth, 13% more than Saudi Arabia. But Venezuelan crude emerges thick as tar, heavy with sulfur, demanding specialized infrastructure that barely exists outside U.S. Gulf Coast refineries. Saudi petroleum flows light and sweet. The difference matters b

Starr County has spent the last decade clawing its way toward stability and growth, and that makes what is happening with State Loop 195 around Roma even more infuriating. Starr is finally seeing rising GDP, higher property values, and new public investment, while Roma is being positioned as collateral damage in someone else’s version of “progress.” Over roughly the last decade, Starr County has seen measurable economic growth, even if it still lags the state overall. County

Let's go back to November 4, 2024. Let's close our eyes and imagine... what if. Kamala Harris would have inched those 1.5 percentage points in the popular vote. Kamala Harris would gotten those 230,000 votes across three states: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. She would have flipped just 229,726 votes in the right combination across those three states, she would have won the Electoral College. What if Kamala Harris would have been our 47th President of the United State

Many Americans claim that when they see Barack Obama, they remember "a time in America where there was unity." That's adorable. It's also complete bullshit. Is Obama cute? Sure. Charming? Always. Articulate and smart? Funny and witty? You get the point. Obama is everything, but the portrait of unity he is not. The president dubbed the Deporter-in-Chief might as well be called the Divider-in-Chief too. The last time America had anything resembling presidential unity, George H.

For the first time in its 116-year history, the NAACP has denied an invitation to a sitting U.S. president. Donald Trump will not be welcome at this year’s national convention. The organization’s president, Derrick Johnson, made the decision clear and unapologetic: “Our mission is to advance civil rights, and the current president has made clear that his mission is to eliminate civil rights.” This isn’t about partisanship. The NAACP has invited presidents from both major part

Criticizing a government agency online has always carried social risks. But now, under U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), it may carry legal ones too. According to watchdog groups and federal contracting records, ICE is actively hiring private surveillance firms to monitor digital spaces for “negative sentiment” about the agency and its leadership. Posts flagged as critical may result in data collection that goes far beyond usernames and hashtags. This isn’t spec

The Republican Party has Project 2025. The Democrats, not to be outdone, came up with their own ambitious proposal—a policy buffet cooked up by consultants, warmed over by think tanks, and served cold to a nation already halfway out the door—and what is it called? Project 2029. For years, they ranted and raved about how terrifying Project 2025 was going to be—and then all of a sudden, they thought a Temu version of it would sit well with exhausted Democrats. It’s like they op

On a quiet September night in 2022, Jose Luis Martinez left Franky Flav’z in Weslaco. He was heading home. Instead, he ended up dead—his face so mangled that responding officers described the skin as “hanging to the side of his head.” He was 47. The two-vehicle crash at the 1300 block of South International Boulevard was called in at 11:26 p.m. on September 29, 2022. The man charged with causing Martinez’ death was Clayton Wayne Neuhaus, a 26-year-old from Mercedes with famil