SUMMARY: In northeast Houston’s Fifth Ward, a home was robbed, with the crime caught on camera. The homeowner, Jackie Griffin, reported an alarm alerting her to an intruder on February 12. The thieves entered by breaking her fence and removing her air conditioner to access the home. Griffin witnessed the man ransacking her property via video for about 10-15 minutes before he escaped with $1,300 in jewelry. Despite contacting police multiple times, she feels the investigation is stalled, as no investigator has been assigned nearly three weeks later, leaving her feeling unsafe.
A Fifth Ward burglary caught on camera has a homeowner feeling unsafe in her own home. Thieves broke through Jackie Griffin’s fence on February 12 to steal her air conditioner, and she says police are dragging their feet on the case. Joy Addison has more.
www.thecentersquare.com – By Bethany Blankley | The Center Square contributor – (The Center Square – ) 2025-05-03 14:58:00
(The Center Square) – Gov. Greg Abbott on Saturday signed Texas’ first school choice bill into law.
Abbott signed “the largest day one school choice program in the United States of America,” he said surrounded by children and state lawmakers.
“Today is the culmination of a movement that has swept across our state and across our country,” Abbott said. “A movement driven by parents … who wanted a better education option” for their children, describing examples. One was mother Hillary Hickland, “who was angry that a woke agenda was being forced on her daughter in a public school and that drove her to run for and win a seat in the Texas legislature,” he said. Abbott endorsed and campaigned for Hickland, who was in attendance at the signing.
“The movement was driven by activists and public policy advocates across the state fueled by a vision for an education system that levels the playing field for parents and expands opportunity for our great children,” Abbott continued. “A movement driven by families who shared my vision – that it is time that we put our children on a pathway to having the number one ranked education system in the United States of America knowing that school choice is part of the formula of achieving that mission.”
He also said he’s traveled across the state “talking about school choice for more than half a decade and … met with thousands of families who have longed for education freedom. These families, and thousands more, have been yearning to choose a school that best fits their child. Now they have that option.”
When Abbott ran for reelection in 2022, he “promised school choice for the families of Texas,” he said. “Today, we delivered on that promise.”
The bill creates the state’s first Education Savings Account program to provide taxpayer-funded subsidies for primarily low-income families of roughly $10,000 per student.
Both the Texas Senate and House budgets allocate $1 billion for the program to support roughly 100,000 students, prioritizing low-income and special needs students, The Center Square reported. The savings accounts can be used by parents to send their children to the school of their choice, including private schools.
For more than 20 years, Democrats and Texas House Republicans have opposed a taxpayer-funded subsidy to allow families to send their child to a private school of their choice, arguing funds would be taken away from public schools and that taxpayer money should not fund private school education.
While the Texas Senate has passed a bill creating an Education Savings Account for several legislative sessions in a row, the bill always died in the Republican-controlled House – until now.
The tide turned after Abbott campaigned for 16 House Republican candidates who challenged incumbents who opposed a bill he championed in the last legislative session. Another five Republicans who opposed the bill didn’t run for reelection last year. Abbott’s endorsed Republican challengers won their primaries and runoff elections, vowing to vote for the state’s first ESA program.
The tide also turned after the Texas House elected a new speaker, state Rep. Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, who vowed that the ESA bill would pass the House, which it did on April 17. Burrows also traveled with Abbott statewide promoting the bill, pledging multiple times on social media that it would pass, The Center Square reported.
Burrows thanked members of the Texas House for voting for the bill, saying, “they knew school choice was the moral thing to do. They knew it was the right thing to give children opportunities to go to the place that it’s in their best interest. They knew it was the principled thing to do, that competition makes all things better. That is what America was founded upon. I do believe the work is not done. We have to make sure this is not only the biggest school choice [program] in history but the best.”
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Right
This article reports on the signing of a school choice bill by Texas Governor Greg Abbott and provides context about the political dynamics surrounding the legislation. The tone and framing lean slightly toward a center-right perspective, reflecting the Republican-supportive language and pro-school choice stance. Terms like “woke agenda” and emphasis on parental empowerment and education freedom suggest a viewpoint aligned with conservative or center-right values. The article highlights Republican efforts and successes in passing the bill while presenting opposition from Democrats and some Republicans as obstacles. However, the piece primarily reports on the actions and statements of political figures and does not adopt an explicitly ideological perspective independent of those sources, maintaining a focus on factual recounting of events and political positions with mild ideological shading toward the conservative viewpoint.
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BROWNSVILLE — Texas may have a new city by the end of Saturday.
About 300 South Texas residents near Boca Chica Beach — mostly SpaceX employees — will decide whether to incorporate their neighborhood, known as Starbase, into a full-fledged city.
SpaceX is Elon Musk’s space technology company, which has the mission of colonizing Mars. The company has used the beach area since 2014.
The company has spurred development, and hopes to urbanize the area even more after Starbase is made a city. At the same time, it has enraged some neighbors who argue the company has cut public access to a popular beach and is destroying the natural ecosystem.
Voting ends today, May 3, as Texans across the state cast ballots in local elections.
The decision here at the southernmost tip of Texas has been months in the making. Given that most of the people voting on the matter of Starbase are SpaceX employees, the outcome is all but assured.
And the new city and its leaders — three people are running unopposed to form Starbase’s first board of commissioners — will be tasked with building the city from the ground up. Many first steps to establishing a city are outlined in state law. However, given Musk’s ethos, the city could try to chart a different path than a traditional municipality.
A sleepy — high turnout — election
Traffic came to a standstill along State Highway 4 outside of Brownsville on Friday morning.
A rocket, its massive hull perched carefully on a moving platform, inched its way to the main SpaceX facility down the road. There, hundreds of construction workers milled about the small village next to the facility, putting up fences, laying down new roads and building more tiny homes for employees.
At the end of the road is the beach, where families spent the afternoon fishing, playing with their dogs, and watching the surf. A couple from Switzerland who traveled here just to see SpaceX took selfies.
Such is life near Boca Chica Beach, a stretch of wild sand and surf sandwiched between South Padre Island and the Rio Grande. From here, Elon Musk’s SpaceX blasts rockets into space. Eventually, Starship is meant to take humans to Mars.
But with all the commotion, there is little trace that an election is happening at all. On the side of the road near the main building, just a few small red signs pointing to the voting site provided any clue. One placard, sitting amidst a construction site, was obscured by a tarpaulin.
There’s been little activity at the on-site polling place during early voting. Just 180 people have cast a ballot so far.
In most Rio Grande Valley communities, that number would signal a disappointing turnout. But here, it means 64% of the 283 registered voters cast a ballot during the early voting period that ended on Tuesday. More residents are expected to vote on Saturday.
Most of the eligible voters are employed with SpaceX or are relatives of employees. Indeed, an analysis by the Texas Newsroom found that at least two-thirds of the eligible voters either work for SpaceX or signed the petition calling for the election.
SpaceX officials estimate they own all but 10 of the properties in the area. Those who won’t work for the company were reticent to weigh in on the vote Friday. Two, reached at their homes in Boca Chica Village, declined to comment.
What comes next
Also on the ballot on Saturday are the three candidates for mayor and the two city commissioner positions. All three are running unopposed. Though the candidates have not publicly laid out a vision for the city, people associated with SpaceX have made it clear they want the community to grow to allow for more residents to move into the area. Currently, just under 500 people live in the community.
Becoming a governmental entity should provide more insight into the interests of the residents, and possibly the company, because cities are subject to the state’s transparency laws.
The commissioners will be required to hold at least one public meeting per month, and government records can be requested for public inspection, though some exceptions apply.
Incorporation could also give the community more authority over the beach. A proposed state lawseeks to give the city of Starbase the authority to close access to Boca Chica on weekdays.
The bill, Senate Bill 2188, was approved by the Senate but still needs a vote by the full House.
Denisce Palacios, a community organizer, views the incorporation of Starbase as a blatant attempt to erase the existence of Brownsville, a border community with more than 190,000 residents, and other nearby towns.
“The people who originally lived near Boca Chica were told that they needed to move because it was dangerous, only to develop and have SpaceX employees move in,” Palacios said. “The creation of a SpaceX company town gives greater power and more of a say in what the Rio Grande Valley should look like, when in reality, they’re all people from out of state who only care about their company, not our community.”
A coalition of community and environmental groups has repeatedly pushed back on SpaceX’s efforts to increase its footprint and the frequency of its rocket launches. Together, they’ve filed lawsuits attempting to stop SpaceX’s water discharges and protested bills like SB 2188.
“We see Starbase becoming a town as another move towards them escalating their dangerous SpaceX rocket activities,” said Bekah Hinojosa, co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, one of the groups that joined the lawsuits.
She worries that the city might use eminent domain to continue taking over Boca Chica Beach and that the community would completely lose access to it.
Hinojosa added that because of the candidates’ ties to SpaceX, Musk would effectively be in charge of the town, a possibility that concerns her given the work he has done for the Trump administration.
“Elon Musk has proven to be unfit to govern,” she said. “The people who are running for office for Starbase are connected to SpaceX. The real boss there would be Elon Musk.”
Anthony Soriano was born and raised in Brownsville. Standing on the beach with his dog the day before the election, he said he feels split about SpaceX’s presence here — he appreciates the jobs the company has brought to the area, but doesn’t necessarily think anything needs to change.
He said if he could cast a ballot in the election, he would vote no. But it’d be close.
“I would say, leave it as is,” he said. “But change happens and people have to be welcoming to it.”
Neither SpaceX nor the candidates running for office have returned multiple interview requests.
Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc.
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Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Left
The article presents a factual account of the election regarding the incorporation of Starbase, Texas, and does not overtly endorse a political ideology. However, the framing and inclusion of quotes from community members who express concern about SpaceX’s influence in the area, as well as the critique of Elon Musk’s leadership, suggests a subtle lean toward a more progressive stance, particularly in its focus on local residents’ rights and environmental concerns. The article highlights opposition to the corporate control of the community and presents voices critical of the project, including those worried about its environmental impact and the potential erosion of local autonomy. Despite this, it offers an in-depth look at both sides of the issue, maintaining a mostly neutral tone while implicitly sympathizing with the critics of SpaceX’s development. The focus on transparency and the community’s relationship with SpaceX adds to the more socially conscious framing, aligning with a center-left perspective that prioritizes local voices and environmental justice.
SUMMARY: In September 2023, 39-year-old Austin Conu was mysteriously stabbed to death in his northwest Harris County home. Despite 19 months passing, no arrests have been made. Conu, a devoted father of three and luxury car salesman, was killed after a suspicious man on a mountain bike forced entry into the family’s rental home. His wife and baby were present but cleared of involvement. The family longs for justice, describing Austin’s love for family and the heartbreak of his loss. They urge anyone with information to contact Crimestoppers, which offers a $5,000 reward for tips leading to an arrest.
Family members say 39-year-old Austin Kanuch was killed on September 22, 2023. To this day, no one has been arrested for the crime.
