Area News

By Uriel J. García, Alex Nguyen and Apurva Mahajan, The Texas Tribune July 21, 2026 On an early April morning, two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents approached Y.R. in the parking lot of her Dallas-Fort Worth area apartment as she was about to head to her construction job. Y.R., a 37-year-old undocumented Honduran immigrant…

By Berenice Garcia, The Texas Tribune July 21, 2026 McALLEN — U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat from McAllen, is trying to protect the name of a beloved South Texas beach that was on the verge of losing its historic name earlier this month. Boca Chica Beach, which has gained national recognition as the site…

By Jared O. Bell When word came down that USAID was being dismantled in Nicaragua, I was sorting through old documents amid the chaos of the mission close-out. On the desk next to mine sat a book abandoned by a colleague: The Dictator’s Handbook, by political scientists Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith, which lays…

TEXARKANA, Texas – A Texarkana man has been sentenced to federal prison for a firearms violation in the Eastern District of Texas, announced U.S. Attorney Jay R. Combs.   Jakeem Butler, 25, pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a machinegun and was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Robert W.…

PLANO, Texas – A Saginaw man has been sentenced to over 17 years in federal prison as part of a Homeland Security Task Force investigation into a fentanyl overdose death in the Eastern District of Texas, announced U.S. Attorney Jay R. Combs.   Kevin Chase McCauley, 38, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute and possess…

By Kayla Guo, The Texas Tribune July 20, 2026 Editor’s note: This story contains explicit language. For over an hour Sunday, Democratic U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico stood on stage and fielded questions and, at times, frustration from Black Texans at a majority-Black town hall in Houston. “I’m voting for James Talarico, and I hope…

By Hien An Ngo, The Texas Tribune July 20, 2026 The race for Texas’s senate seat is shaping up to be one the most expensive competitions in the nation. Democratic nominee James Talarico is setting records, raising more at this stage of the race than any Texas general-election candidate in the past decade and posting…

By Jess Huff, The Texas Tribune July 20, 2026 TEXARKANA — On Wednesday, a conglomeration of local, state and federal leaders came together at the first State of Lithium Symposium for the region to examine the future of lithium mining in Texas. The U.S. depends primarily on foreign nations, such as China and Chile, to…

By Ayden Runnels, The Texas Tribune July 17, 2026 UVALDE — The creek behind Aracely Balderas’ home was almost always empty in the six years she’s lived in northeast Uvalde. So on Thursday morning, as she watched her home camera feed from the safety of her parents’, she couldn’t grasp how 2 feet of water…