Area News

By Arthur Allen Aug 20, 2026 Chuck Manski, an economist at Northwestern University, at home in Chicago. After suffering severe side effects from a drug he took to treat melanoma, he studied the cancer literature and decided he could stop the treatment early. (Taylor Glascock for KFF Health News) Northwestern University economist Chuck Manski studies…

By Kelcie Moseley-Morris, Stateline August 19, 2026 A federal judge in the District of Columbia issued an order Wednesday blocking U.S. Health and Human Services from implementing sweeping changes to grants under the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program while a lawsuit proceeds, but dozens of existing grants that were canceled this summer will remain so for…

By Robbie Sequeira, Stateline August 20, 2026 New housing projects can sometimes stall out as a developer applies to city or county planning boards and goes through cycles of inspections, reviews and approvals.  Now, cities are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to address one of the most persistent sources of housing permitting delays: incomplete applications.…

By Big Bend Sentinel, The Texas Tribune August 19, 2026 The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission’s annual public hearing kicked off Wednesday with an unusually festive scene outside the agency’s Austin offices: a tailgate party where hundreds of people from around the state cooked out, shared cold drinks and talked about the reason they’d come…

By Paul Cobler, Carlos Nogueras Ramos and Emily Foxhall, The Texas Tribune August 19, 2026 Flashes of yellow were all around the Texas Capitol grounds on Wednesday as legislators gathered to consider two of the most controversial issues in Texas politics: data centers and transmission lines. The color — displayed on bandanas, pins, shirts and…

By Gabby Birenbaum, The Texas Tribune August 20, 2026 WASHINGTON — With under nine weeks to go until early voting begins in Texas’ U.S. Senate race, both Ken Paxton and James Talarico have been campaigning around the state, meeting voters everywhere from restaurants to music halls as they’ve pitched their political visions. But on television,…

By Molly Hensley-Clancy, photography by Sarah Blesener for ProPublica Co-published with The Washington Post August 20, 2026, 5:00 am The first time Ryan Richardson was suspended from coaching volleyball, in early 2024, he gathered the parents of his teenage players in the back room of his gym in the border city of Pharr, Texas. It…

By Robert C. Koehler I am in awe of the deadeye imperturbability of the armed righteous, who look upon the world’s suffering and see targets. . . .   This is a fragment of a poem (“Vigil”) I wrote 25 years ago, in response to the “vigil” some gun-rights advocates held in front of a…

Full federal registration clears commercial product for nationwide use August 19, 2026 – by Gabe Saldana A citrus greening disease treatment rooted in more than a decade of research at Texas A&M AgriLife Research has reached a milestone on the path to commercial availability; the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has granted unconditional registration to the novel therapy. The product, registered by…

Maybe we should question this AI “future” before surrendering to it. By Jim Hightower | August 19, 2026 As Big Tech, Big Finance, and Big Government collude to dig us into the unfathomable hole of artificial intelligence, an old country saying has new relevance: “If you find that you’ve dug yourself into a hole, the…