Last year, with the midterms fast approaching, some Texas Democrats began talking about putting together a “super ticket,” a dream team of battle-tested franchise players who could raise big money and drive turnout across strategic demographic groups.

They wanted the Avengers. They got Miracle on Ice.

But just like Team USA facing the Soviets in the 1980 Olympics, the ragtag group of scrappy underdogs the Democrats put together ended up pulling off the impossible, beating seemingly insurmountable odds to win not just one major contest, but every statewide seat.

A group of little-known state legislators and one millennial farmer unseated longtime GOP powerbrokers and their wealthy backers, reversing the state’s entire political power structure in one night.

At the top of the ticket, Austin state Rep. James Talarico managed to haul in record-setting amounts of money for the U.S. Senate race and build a national brand through his social media presence. His colleague, Austin state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, saw fundraising and attention surge in the home stretch of her challenge to Gov. Greg Abbott.

But the rest of the ticket struggled to build the branding and get the funding needed to break through in a state the size of a small country. Less than a month before the election, about half of likely voters did not know enough to have an opinion on the Democratic nominees for lieutenant governor, attorney general, comptroller and railroad commissioner, according to the Texas Politics Project.

Less than 24 hours after a historic sweep of Texas’ statewide elected offices by Democrats, the state’s attorney general-elect Nathan Johnson said Tuesday he will not continue Ken Paxton’s practice of suing doctors in other states for sending abortion medication to patients here.

It’s the first big salvo against the state’s four-year-old near abortion ban which makes the procedure virtually impossible to access in this state and is likely to be the first of many tweaks to make the ban less rigid. The attorney general’s office under Ken Paxton, who gave up the role to run for Senate, has been a powerful enforcer of the state’s abortion ban laws and a Democrat coming into that position cuts off a powerful tool for the country’s anti-abortion movement.

The first thing I do when people ask me about abortion is point out that I’m not a legislator, and I can’t change abortion law,” Johnson told The Texas Tribune. “What I can do is cease using Texas abortion laws as an instrument of persecution and intimidation, harassment and political showboating. All four of those things have happened.”

It is illegal for Texas doctors to mail abortion medication within the state and Paxton has sued doctors in other states who prescribe the medication, chilling Texans from obtaining these pills, abortion advocates say. Those lawsuits have run up against blue states’ so-called shield laws that protect physicians who send abortion medications.

Johnson said he won’t be suing those out-of-state doctors anymore. “I will not pursue the judicially absurd position that Texas law has extra territorial effect. I can honor other states’ shield laws.”

While this eliminates an obstacle to accessing abortion pills, Democrats won’t be repealing the abortion ban anytime soon.

Despite the increasing use of executive power by Gov. Greg Abbott, Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa cannot legally repeal the abortion ban with her own pen stroke. She also told Politico in September that repealing the ban would not be a priority because it would require Republicans to pass such a bill and that seems unlikely.

Instead, University of Houston political professor Brandon Rottinghaus points out she can greatly limit how the law is applied. Hinojosa has said that she would work to end penalties for doctors who perform life-saving abortions, although lawmakers provided additional protections for doctors in these situations last year.

“She can influence how portions of the law are implemented, and how certain exceptions are interpreted, and other reasonable additional restrictions that might become law eventually,” he said.

McALLEN — Dr. Ivan Melendez was among the 110,000 voters in Hidalgo County who voted for Donald Trump in 2024 in a historic swing that amounted to the first time the predominantly Hispanic county has gone for a Republican presidential nominee in more than 50 years.

In the Rio Grande Valley, Melendez serves as the county’s health authority, responsible for enacting health laws in an area with one of the highest uninsured rates in the country.

Naturally, healthcare is a top issue for the top medical official for the region. He cast that vote in large part because he viewed Trump as a major force in expediting the COVID-19 vaccine in early 2020. And after already enduring four years with Trump in the White House, Melendez thought he knew what he was getting with the tempestuous leader.

Today, he regrets that vote.

Melendez says he’s been completely disappointed by Trump because of cuts to federal programs that have gutted health departments in the Valley and made insurance coverage harder to obtain.

“It’s a simple question. When it comes to access to healthcare, am I able to do more now than I was before he became president?” Melendez said. “And the answer is no, I’m doing less.”

But earlier this month, with Election Day approaching, he had yet to decide whether his disillusionment with the Republican party would translate into support for Democrat U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico, a candidate he worried was too far-left.

Melendez, who says he doesn’t identify with a political party, is among the state’s most politically valuable voters. He’s independent, undecided and Hispanic — which is the state’s largest ethnic bloc. Following the trends of Valley voters, Melendez had previously aligned with Democrats, but moved with conservatives in recent elections.

In 2024, exit polls showed 55% of Texas Latinos supported Trump in a massive victory for Republicans who have spent decades wooing those voters. Trump also prevailed over Kamala Harris in 14 out of 18 border counties, which is a number that doubled from the four years prior.

This midterm election, all eyes are back on the Rio Grande Valley’s voters again. Two years of higher prices from tariffs and the war in Iran, coupled with aggressive deportation tactics often targeting Texas’ border, have moved an increasing number of Latinos away from Trump. About a quarter of Hispanic voters who picked Trump say that if they had to do it over, they would not vote for him again, according to a survey by UnidosUS, a nonpartisan Latino civil rights group.

With what is expected to be Texas’ most competitive election in decades, Democrats are unlikely to succeed in their statewide bids without a major surge of Latino support.

But Melendez notes that being anti-Trump doesn’t equate to being against other Republicans running atop the ticket in Texas.

As hundreds of Valley voters were already rushing to the ballot box for early voting, reaching participation levels matching the 2024 presidential election, Melendez was still agonizing over his choice.

“I support the policies on healthcare of Talarico, but I do support some of the more fiscal issues with [Attorney General Ken] Paxton,” Melendez said of the Democratic and Republican candidates for U.S. Senate.

“My soul is torn,” he said.

It was for Dan Patrick which fucking sucks but still.

I have never seen that before in my life. Not once. I'm not entirely sure lieutenant governor candidates in Texas even campaign. Certainly I've never seen a TV commercial for them during Sunday Night Football to boot. That's got to cost a pretty penny.

Some of you might read this and not understand my point. Texas is officially a Battleground State now. That is so bizarre. This is so unusual. Like this level of ads in Texas is remarkable. In a non-presidential year too. I mean I'm seeing a whole commercial breaks with four campaign ads back to back all for the same race. This lieutenant governor spoy though, filled with bald faced lies, takes the cake. That's just so far beyond the pale of what we're used to in this state.

If this is what it's like living in a Battleground state, having to undergo this constant barrage of ads, I can finally understand why Pennsylvanians are always so pissed off.

WASHINGTON, Oct 24 (Reuters) - US President Donald Trump confirmed on Saturday he may move the White House ​press corps to a different location.

In a social media ‌post, Trump dismissed a report that he planned to remove the White House press room and restore a historic swimming pool on the site, ​saying he had never "even thought to do such a ​stupid thing."

But he said he could relocate the press ⁠corps from its current position in the White House.

"I may ​move the Fake News to a less obnoxious location," Trump said ​in the post. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Trump had urged then-press secretary Karoline Leavitt in August to move news conferences out ​of the White House's James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, although ​the idea was never implemented.

According to the report, the president told aides he ‌would ⁠rather have an indoor therapy pool that was installed at the site during Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. The Nixon administration replaced the pool with the press briefing room.

Trump has regularly accused ​US media of ​unfair reporting about ⁠his administration.

BERLIN, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Firefighters battled for hours to contain a blaze ​that engulfed the former Nazi guest house ‌known as "The Eagle's Nest" in southern Germany, while police investigated the cause after detaining a man near the ​scene, authorities said on Saturday.

Around 200 ​firefighters and emergency workers near Berchtesgaden in Bavaria were ⁠battling the flames after the building, known ​as the Kehlsteinhaus, caught fire on Friday, police ​said.

Built in 1938 as a guest house for Nazi officials and their guests, the building sits in a spectacular Alpine ​setting above Berchtesgaden. Adolf Hitler used it occasionally, earning it ​the nickname "Hitler's Tea House". It is separate from his ‌nearby ⁠summer residence, the Berghof.

Bild newspaper quoted a police spokesperson as saying the building, preserved after World War Two as a historical monument linked to the Nazi era, had ​been so ​badly damaged ⁠that it "could probably not be saved".

Oct 24 (Reuters) - Iran has ramped up efforts to target US personnel, and lethal plots by Tehran against American citizens have reached "advanced ​stages", a senior intelligence official in the Trump administration warned in a memo seen ‌by Reuters.

The alert from Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton came after Washington scaled back staffing at its mission in Saudi Arabia earlier this week in response to intensified attacks by Iran-allied Houthi forces.

Those attacks on one ​front of the nearly eight-month-old regional conflict triggered by the Iran warhave coincided with a rise in ​attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

Earlier this month, sources told ⁠Reuters Iran was preparing a more forceful response if the United States resumes large-scale military attacks on ​its territory.

"Specifically, through various channels, we have received intelligence that Iran has substantially increased efforts to ​target US personnel," Clayton wrote to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a message dated October 23.

Eight years ago, at the height of the shale-oil boom, a committee of industry giants and public officials unveiled a bold plan to make Corpus Christi “drought proof.”

With this plan, a consultant explained to city officials at the time, their semi-arid stretch of coastline in South Texas could finally overcome the economic limitations of its scarce water supply.

“Industry can continue to operate,” said a slideshow the consultant, Frank Brogan, presented to Corpus Christi City Council. “Industry can justify expansion. Community can attract new industry.”

The plan seemed simple. The region’s largest water users — Texas-based titans like OxyChem, Valero and Citgo — would pay Corpus Christi to build the state’s first-ever seawater desalination plant, which would produce millions of gallons of freshwater per day at minimal cost to the public. In exchange, the companies wouldn’t face pressure to throttle back operations at their refineries and chemical plants during future dry spells.

“We don’t want to have the reputation of having a water problem,” said Brogan, a former executive at the Port of Corpus Christi, the top U.S. port for crude-oil exports, in the August 2018 presentation.

City leaders unanimously approved the plan, hailing it as a breakthrough: Giant corporations had agreed to front the money for an innovative project that other communities could only dream of affording.

But instead of securing Corpus Christi’s water future, the plan pushed Texas’ eighth-largest city to the brink of a water-supply disaster, burned through tens of millions of public dollars, and engulfed the city in political turmoil.

The city has spent at least $50 million on the promised desalination plant, but it has yet to materialize — a victim of political dysfunction, the coronavirus pandemic, rapid inflation and frequent turnover in the city’s political leadership, among other factors. And the companies that had originally agreed to pay for it now contribute only a fraction of what the plant is expected to cost. Residents would have to pay for the rest.

Meanwhile, Corpus Christi has honored the commitment it made back in 2018: It has not pressured the companies to cut back on water consumption, even when the area slipped into a punishing drought.

By this spring, the region’s main reservoirs almost dried up entirely. The industrial giants raced to drill emergency water wells, the city’s credit ratings slipped, and local business leaders raised the specter of mass layoffs if the water ran out.

In the face of an unprecedented emergency, city officials debated meager measures like closing public pools and fining residents for washing cars, rather than imposing restrictions on the chemical plants and refineries that use more water than all 500,000 residents of the seven-county Coastal Bend region combined.

For years, 7-year-old Israel Solis couldn’t communicate with the world around him. Born with autism and nonverbal, he would bite and scratch himself in frustration when someone couldn’t understand his needs. Therapy through a state-subsidized program gave him a voice: using a picture system he’s learned from his providers in Houston, he’s now able to convey his desires.

But Texas wants to eliminate the state program, which allows some families to pay nothing for services, because of state budget cuts. In its budget request to the Legislature for the 2028-2029 biennium, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) proposed eliminating funding for the Children’s Autism Program (CAP) entirely, stunning advocates, providers and parents.

“If the doors just completely close to access that at all, you just feel like it’s all caving in on you, like ‘how am I going to get some help?’” said Israel’s mother Elizabeth Solis, who has another son who obtains services through a CAP-funded program at the University of Houston-Clear Lake’s Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities; she pays nothing for their services.

CAP, which started in 2008, contracts with 16 providers across Texas to provide focused applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapy to autistic children at a reduced cost based on their families’ incomes and insurance coverage. Children are eligible for up to 720 hours of ABA therapy, which advocates consider the gold standard for autism treatment, over their lifetime.

Over the last two years, the state spent $13.7 million on the program, and this year even expanded the program, extending eligibility to those up to 21 years old and removing a cap on yearly hours. In fiscal year 2026, the state autism program funded treatment for 583 children, but contractors report there are at least 1,000 more children on waitlists statewide.

“We were really shocked to see nothing, and it’s just blank where the line item should be,” said Jacquie Benestante, executive director of the Autism Society of Texas. “We’re used to having to fight for funding, but to actually have a program just slashed and canceled is pretty shocking.”

• Trump's foreign policy agenda appears stalled heading into November midterms

• Iran stalemate looms large

• Some world leaders push back against Trump

• US-China summit heavy on pomp, papering over differences

WASHINGTON, Sept 25 (Reuters) - From his high-profile address to the UN General Assembly to his high-stakes White House summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, US President Donald Trump this week was looking to reassert himself on the world stage.

But Trump’s diplomatic flurry has done little to dispel the view among many analysts of a president beset by problems at home and ​abroad. Those include a widening Iran war that has driven up US gasoline prices and cratered his approval ratings, while his relations with allies worsen and the AI challenge from China intensifies.

With the limits of his ‌power exposed, Trump has begun facing pushback from world leaders on issues ranging from the crisis in the Middle East to Russia's war in Ukraine, leaving the impression of a foreign policy agenda that has stalled. This comes as Trump's Republican Party faces midterm elections in November that could further constrain him politically.

Even so, Trump’s speech to the United Nations on Tuesday was a stark reminder of how, since returning to the White House last year, he has shaken up the rules-based global order that Washington helped to create from the ashes of World War Two. Standing atop the rostrum of a world body dedicated ​to peacemaking, he issued a fresh threat to “annihilate” Iran if it did not agree to a deal, defended his coercive approach to OPEC member Venezuela by asserting “to the victor belong the spoils,” and signaled he may not be done deploying ​the US military to achieve his international aims.

Despite that strident stance, Trump’s talks with Xi on Thursday put the US president up against a Chinese counterpart who appeared to be in stronger position, ⁠overseeing a surge in his country’s trade with the world while the US grapples with the economic fallout from the Iran conflict.

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A proposed desalination plant that could produce up to 100 million gallons of drinking water a day for the Coastal Bend has cleared its final permitting hurdle.

The Port of Corpus Christi announced Wednesday, Sept. 23, that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) approved its request to discharge water from the proposed Harbor Island Desalination Facility into the Gulf.

The approval completes the permitting process for the large-scale project, which would turn seawater into drinking water for industrial and municipal use.

The Port said it will now withdraw its smaller discharge permit approved in late 2022, following a commitment made by the Port Commission in May 2025.

The newer plan moves both the plant's seawater intake and discharge offshore, rather than using the nearby bay system.

Port of Corpus Christi CEO Kent Britton said the project has been in development for nearly a decade as the region continues to search for a reliable water supply amid drought conditions.

"Through that process, we have engaged with the communities we serve and have addressed reasonable concerns for our local bay system by moving the plant intake and discharge offshore," Britton said.

The proposed facility would be capable of producing up to 100 million gallons of drinking water daily, helping meet the region's long-term water needs.

Just weeks before the pivotal midterm elections, Texas election officials have discovered that an unknown number of voter registration applications have not been processed due to an error by the Texas Department of Public Safety.

DPS failed to send the applications, which were submitted by voters through its online driver’s license portal, to county voter registrars for processing, according to an email sent to county officials and provided to Votebeat. The state confirmed to Votebeat that it would begin delivering the unsent registrations to county officials overnight.

State officials said the affected transactions produced incomplete voter registration records, which prevented them from being transmitted to county registrars. Officials have not said what information was missing, what caused the records to be incomplete, how many voters were affected, or exactly when the problem began.

The DPS portal is a major voter registration channel in Texas. From 2020 through 2024, about 6 million Texans used it to register to vote, according to testimony DPS officials provided to state lawmakers in 2025. Texas has more than 18 million registered voters.

The Texas Association of County Election Officials is collecting information from its members to determine the scale of the issue. DPS officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

The problem comes less than two weeks before the Oct. 5 voter registration deadline, and the sudden arrival of older applications from DPS is likely to add to counties’ voter registration processing backlogs at one of the busiest points in the election calendar.

Voters whose registrations were affected by this issue can still have their ballots counted as long as they submitted their registration before the Oct. 5 deadline, said Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office.

“A voter who registered through DPS online services but does not appear on the rolls can cast a provisional ballot,” Pierce said in an email to Votebeat. “Election officials have an established method with DPS to check the transaction. If that voter did register, the provisional vote will be counted.”

Texas does not have online voter registration, but since September 2020, after voting rights groups sued the state and DPS, eligible Texans who renew their driver’s license and state ID or update their address online can also choose to register to vote through that same online portal.

The secretary of state’s office became aware of the problem last week, when election officials flagged that they’d noticed a surge in “older” voter registration applications coming from DPS in TEAM, the state’s voter registration system.