Federal prosecutors in Texas connected three members of a cartel-connected human smuggling organization during a jury trial that led to a conviction this week. Prosecutors linked the suspects to large-scale smuggling of migrants, with some migrants dying during smuggling attempts. Two of the convicted members are also tied to kidnappings, hostage taking, extortion of migrants, and multiple murders -- including one where the victim was dissolved in acid and then set on fire.
Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) on Wednesday said he and his family are safe in the wake of an assassination threat from a 17-year-old. “I am grateful to the FBI and law enforcement for stopping this threat. My family and I are safe, and I remain focused on serving the people of Texas’ 3rd District,” Self…
Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) on Wednesday said he and his family are safe in the wake of an assassination threat from a 17-year-old. “I am grateful to the FBI and law enforcement for stopping this threat. My family and I are safe, and I remain focused on serving the people of Texas’ 3rd District,” Self…
Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico challenged his opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), to a debate hosted by TMZ, renewing his calls for the Republican to face him ahead of the November election. In an interview with TMZ, Talarico said Paxton has repeatedly ignored his invitations to debate him and suggested the entertainment…
Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico challenged his opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), to a debate hosted by TMZ, renewing his calls for the Republican to face him ahead of the November election. In an interview with TMZ, Talarico said Paxton has repeatedly ignored his invitations to debate him and suggested the entertainment…
A 22-year-old Texas mother accused of driving more than twice the speed limit with her two young children in the car faces manslaughter charges after a crash killed a couple who had recently graduated from college.
Aldrea Rogers, 22, was arrested and charged with two counts of manslaughter in connection with the deaths of Julian Harris and Madison Duren, Dallas County jail records reviewed by Fox News Digital show.
Rogers was allegedly driving 82 mph in a 35 mph zone when she crashed into the couple's vehicle, FOX 4 Dallas reported, citing a newly released arrest affidavit.
Their friends, Eli Barron and Emmet Overcarsh, described the couple to FOX 4 Dallas as curious, enthusiastic people who loved learning and connecting with others.
Overcarsh also expressed disbelief that Rogers, who was the same age as the victims, allegedly had her two young children in the car when the deadly crash occurred.
Friends said the deaths have been difficult to comprehend, particularly because Rogers was the same age as the victims and allegedly had her two young children in the car.
Fox News Digital has contacted the Dallas Police Department and Dallas County court officials to obtain a copy of the arrest affidavit and additional details about the crash investigation.
The main investigative unit of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been vigorously promoting on social media an effort it considers crucial in the final weeks before the midterms: pursuing alleged large-scale election fraud by noncitizens — a claim that has obsessed President Donald Trump despite a lack of evidence.
The mobilization of American voters in the midterm elections is already making an impact with fewer than two weeks to go until Election Day on November 3. Early voting, which has begun in more than 30 states, is setting records in some of them. More than 16 million voters have already cast their ballots, most of them by mail.
Charisma or cash: to win an election, candidates need at least one of those two factors. With two weeks to go until the U.S. midterm elections, Republicans are throwing everything they have into the closest states to try to climb back in polls that are unfavorable to them. They have the invaluable help of the vast sums Donald Trump raises through his Super PAC, the political action committee that pools donations coming from the ultraconservative MAGA movement.
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to lift a court order that stopped border wall construction across the Big Bend region of Texas.
A Dallas-area juvenile arrested by the FBI for planning a terrorist attack on behalf of ISIS may also have been planning to assassinate Rep. Keith Self (R-TX), the co-founder and co-chair of the Sharia-Free America Caucus, according to information reviewed by Breitbart News.
USDA says screwworm found in elk in Texas, and warns hunters and ranchers to be vigilant to help stop spread
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) said on Wednesday it had confirmed the first detection of flesh-eating parasite the New World screwworm in US wildlife in an elk in Pecos county, Texas.
The elk was located on a game ranch and was reported after being harvested by a hunter, the USDA said in a statement.
Van Zandt County, Texas, Sheriff's Deputy Adam Sherifi was killed during a shootout while assisting the Canton Police Department in serving a felony warrant Tuesday night.
Texas hasn’t gone blue in a statewide race in more than 30 years, but that streak could face a serious test this year. A new Fox News poll finds that while Texas likely voters favor Republicans retaining control of the U.S. Senate and give incumbent Republican Gov. Greg Abbott an edge in his re-election bid, the Senate race remains deadlocked.
The survey, released Wednesday, finds Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton tied at 49% each among Texas likely voters in the race to replace Sen. John Cornyn, who lost the GOP primary to President Trump-backed Paxton.
Last month, Talarico was up by 2 points among likely voters (51%-49%). The shift to a tie reflects Paxton consolidating support among conservatives, rural voters, suburban women and voters who backed Cornyn in the primary.
Although Paxton is falling short of Trump’s 2024 margins, he has strengthened his support a tad among both men (+1) and women (+1) since September, while Talarico slightly lost support (-1 and -2, respectively).
Talarico leads by wide margins among Black voters (+65 points), urban voters (+29), those under age 30 (+28), and women with a college degree (+23). Paxton’s strongest groups include White evangelical Christians (+52), White men without a college degree (+32), rural voters (+21) and those age 65 and up (+18).
The survey finds Hispanic voters swinging back toward the Democrats. After backing former President Joe Biden by 25 points in 2020, they favored Trump by 1 point in 2024, according to the Texas Fox News Voter Analysis. This key voting bloc now favors Talarico by 30 points (64%-34%) and prefers Democratic control of the U.S. Senate by 29 points.
Overall, when it comes to Senate control, Texans choose Republicans by 4 points (51% to 47%), up from +1 point in September.
Talarico’s stronger party loyalty is another reason the race is close: 98% of Democrats support him, compared with 90% of Republicans supporting Paxton. Nearly 3 in 10 non-MAGA Republicans cross party lines to back Talarico.
Democrats also retain an enthusiasm edge: 69% are extremely interested in this year’s election, compared with 61% of Republicans. Extremely interested voters back Talarico by 7 points.
"The race is going to come down to two basic questions," says Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who helps conduct the Fox News Poll with Democrat Chris Anderson. "Do disaffected Republicans show up and, if so, do they grit their teeth and vote for a candidate who they have serious reservations about?"
Views of Talarico are net positive, albeit by just 1 point (49% favorable, 48% unfavorable), while Paxton’s ratings are underwater by 17 (41% favorable, 58% unfavorable). Among "double haters," voters who view both candidates negatively, Paxton leads by 50 points.
Voters express similar levels of concern about both candidates: 53% worry Talarico’s positions are too liberal, while 50% are concerned Paxton is too close to Trump. The intensity of these concerns is nearly identical, with 36% extremely concerned about Talarico and 37% about Paxton.
In 2024, Trump won the Lone Star State by nearly 14 points, but his job rating is currently underwater by 9 points (45% approve, 54% disapprove). Still, Paxton draws support from 13% of voters who disapprove of Trump, while 6% of Trump approvers back Talarico.
When it comes to their personal finances, more than twice as many voters say they are worse off (43%) than better off (20%) compared with two years ago; 36% say they are about the same.
Voters who are worse off back Talarico by 45 points, while those who are better off (+49) or about the same (+26) favor Paxton.
The governor’s race gives Republicans more breathing room: Abbott edges his Democratic challenger, Gina Hinojosa, by 5 points (52% to 47%), unchanged since September.
Abbott has a positive job rating (50% approve, 48% disapprove), and nearly all who approve support him in the race, as do 9% of those who disapprove.
Abbott also benefits from slightly stronger party loyalty and more ticket-splitting among Talarico supporters: 7% support Abbott, compared with 2% of Paxton supporters who back Hinojosa.
Conducted October 15-19, 2026, under the joint direction of Beacon Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R), this Fox News Poll includes interviews with a sample of 2,011 Texas registered voters randomly selected from a statewide voter file. Respondents spoke with live interviewers on landlines (205) and cellphones (1,303) or completed the survey online after receiving a text message (503). Results based on the registered voter sample have a margin of sampling error of ±2 percentage points, and for the subsample of 1,398 likely voters it is ±2.5 percentage points. Sampling error for results among subgroups is higher. In addition to sampling errors, question wording and order can influence results. Sources for developing weight targets include the most recent American Community Survey, Fox News Voter Analysis and voter file data. Weights are generally applied to age, race, education and area variables to ensure the demographics of respondents are representative of the registered voter population. Likely voters are based on a probabilistic statistical model that relies on past vote history, interest in the current election, intention to vote, age, education, race, ethnicity and marital status. Results among subgroups are only shown when the sample size is at least N=100.
People protest the plans by President Donald Trump’s administration to build a section of the border wall at the Big Bend National Park, in Study Butte, Texas, in August.
A federal judge in Texas sentenced a human trafficker from Guatemala to 30 years in prison for his role in setting up a deadly 2022 human smuggling attempt that killed 53 migrants who were stuffed in a hot trailer in South Texas. Law enforcement officials arranged his extradition to the United States so he could face the charges.
Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico blamed Republican extremism for prompting some of his past controversial remarks during a new interview, including assertions that God is "nonbinary" and that there are six biological sexes, arguing that those weren't issues he ran for office to discuss.
Talarico said that culture war issues became more prominent in the 2021 Texas state legislature and suggested Republicans were responsible for the increased attention to those topics. Talarico, in 2021, opposed a bill to ban men from women’s sports and claimed that "God is non-binary" while on the Austin, Texas, House floor.
Additionally, at a Texas House Committee on Public Education hearing in 2021, he stated, "Modern science obviously recognizes that there are many more than two biological sexes; in fact, there are six."
Talarico, who is running against Republican Ken Paxton in the state's closely watched U.S. Senate race, spoke to The New York Times' Michael Barbaro on the paper's "The Daily" podcast Tuesday. He said he felt compelled to fight what he described as Republican extremism at the time when asked about the comments.
"I was put in a position where I had to fight back against that extremism. So, you mentioned some of my comments on gender or on issues affecting trans people. It's not like I ran for the legislature to talk about these things. Again, if you go back to my first session, I wanted to talk about public education, which is why I ran in the first place," he said, pointing to other issues on which he ran.
"It's kind of ironic that they're clipping these things to make it sound like I'm the one who was talking about this when, in reality, it was the Republican extremists at the Capitol who were obsessed with talking about trans issues, obsessed with talking about people's private parts. That wasn't me. That was them that changed."
The Democratic Senate candidate said that, at the national level, the party may have gone too far. But at the state level, specifically in Texas, he believed certain bills were targeting and harming his constituents.
He pointed to Texas' abortion ban and legislation affecting the LGBTQ community.
"These bills targeting LGBTQ people have real ramifications in our state, especially when they're written to be overly broad," he said. "I'm all for if we want to figure out when it's appropriate for a trans athlete to play in a sport. That's a policy discussion that we should have and an issue we should solve.
"But the bill that they were trying to pass, the bill they ultimately did pass, was a blanket ban in all cases," he continued. "It treated tee-ball the same as varsity baseball.
"And it's because their goal was to score political points off of the backs of a very small, vulnerable group of people in our state. And, so, you know, my values haven't changed, but I was put in a position because of the rise in Republican extremism to defend my constituents."
Barbaro asked Talarico if he subscribed to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and her assertion that so-called "Woke One" was "crazy" at a personal level.
Talarico said he regretted not articulating his position in a "more straightforward way" but had no regrets about defending his constituents.
"So, there's a lot that is said and, when you pull out maybe the most inarticulate of those things to make an attack ad, you know, I certainly regret not articulating my position more clearly, in a more straightforward way to say what I actually mean. And that's going to be true, you know, probably for my entire time in public service. I'm not a perfect person. None of us are. And, so, I'm going to always keep trying to improve how I talk about things so that I'm getting my point across," he said.
"I wasn't making a large point about American politics or the Democratic Party. I'll leave those to the pundits and the commentators. All I was trying to say is that I've said things imperfectly, and I'm going to keep working on trying to communicate more clearly and effectively."
Inez Stepman, senior policy and legal analyst at Independent Women, criticized Talarico's remarks.
"The left is always pulling a bait and switch with cultural issues. They advanced policies that placed males on girls sports teams, in locker rooms, in women’s prisons, and tried to push anyone who objected to that insanity out of public life. Now, they say none of this ever existed or isn’t important. But they don’t change their policy or votes," Stepman told Fox News Digital in a statement.
"Not a single Democrat on the federal level voted for a bill to keep men out of women’s sports. If they don’t want to talk about these issues, they could easily put them behind us by ceasing their campaign, including passing laws and regulations that force us to accept men in women’s spaces. But they won’t do that. They merely want us to stop talking about the consequences of their ideas and policies on women and girls."
Talarico was recently confronted about some of his comments regarding cultural issues while participating in a "Jubilee"-style town hall, during which voters confronted him one-on-one. Talarico met with a fellow Christian from Texas who pressed him on his past statements.
"You've said some concerning things in the past kind of related to faith and social issues. Things such as God is nonbinary, questions about how many genders there really are and your justifications using the Bible for abortion," Sarah Gardner, a small business owner, said to Talarico.
"The first comment about God not being defined by gender, when I said that I was being provocative. And I want to admit that and come clean about that. But I think what I was saying is actually not controversial theologically.
"The idea that we can't define God using human categories, not only did I say that, but the late Charlie Kirk said that, the late Pope Benedict said that. And so, yes, I was doing it, maybe in an annoying way, I can admit that," he said.
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