News from the South - Texas News Feed

Flooding in Texas leads to multiple deaths

Published

2 months ago

July 4, 2025

feeds.texastribune.org – By Uriel J. García, The Texas Tribune, and Hannah Fingerhut, Associated Press – 2025-07-04 13:29:00

By Uriel J. García, The Texas Tribune, and Hannah Fingerhut, Associated Press

July 4, 2025

“Death toll from Hill Country flash floods rises to 24 as rescue efforts continue” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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State officials said Friday night that at least 24 people have died in the catastrophic flood that swept through Kerr County early Friday morning, and 23 girls from Camp Mystic, a private Christian girls’ camp, are still unaccounted for.

In a news conference in Kerrville, Gov. Greg Abbott signed an emergency disaster declaration, which allows numerous counties affected by the floods to get the state resources needed to help with ongoing search-and-rescue efforts.

Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said one other person was found dead in nearby Kendall County but it’s unclear if that person was a flood victim.

Nim Kidd, the chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said local officials were caught off guard by the volume of rain, adding that the National Weather Service advisory issued Thursday “did not predict the amount of rain that we saw.”

Gen. Thomas Suelzer, the head of the Texas Military Department, said 237 people have been rescued and evacuated so far. Officials said they couldn’t provide the number of people who are unaccounted for, but they include the 23 girls from Camp Mystic.

In an earlier press conference Friday, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said the dead include adults and children, and some were found in cars “that were washed out upstream.” He said officials aren’t sure whether any of the bodies were children from Camp Mystic, and stressed that the campers are only considered missing at this point.

“We will do anything humanly possible to find your daughter,” Patrick said, adding that search and rescue teams are looking for survivors, along with 14 state helicopters, 12 drones and 400 to 500 people on the ground helping with the search. He added that if parents haven’t been personally contacted by the camp, they can assume their daughters have been accounted for.

As much as 10 inches of heavy rain fell in just a few hours overnight in central Kerr County, causing flash flooding of the Guadalupe River. Patrick said the river, which winds through Kerr County in Central Texas, rose 26 feet in 45 minutes during torrential rains overnight.

“It’s going to be a mass casualty event,” said Freeman Martin, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Patrick added that San Antonio and Waco also could see flash flooding in the next 24 to 48 hours.

Judge Rob Kelly, the chief elected official in Kerr County, said authorities are still working to identify those whose lives were lost.

“Most of them, we don’t know who they are,” Kelly said during a news conference. “One of them was completely naked, he didn’t have any ID on him at all. We’re trying to get the identity of these folks, but we don’t have it yet.”

Flood warning came after 1 a.m.

A flood watch issued Thursday afternoon estimated isolated amounts up to 7 inches of rising water. That shifted to a flood warning for at least 30,000 people overnight.

According to the National Weather Service website, the flash flood watch, which included Kerr County, was issued at 1:18 p.m. Thursday. Nearly 12 hours later, a “life threatening” flash flood warning was issued at 1:14 a.m., according to the website.

When asked about the suddenness of the flash flooding overnight, Kelly said “we do not have a warning system” and that “we didn’t know this flood was coming,” even as local reporters pointed to the warnings and pushed him for answers about why more precautions weren’t taken.

“Rest assured, no one knew this kind of flood was coming,” he said. “We have floods all the time. This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States.”

Abbott said the state was providing resources to Hill Country communities dealing with the flooding, including in Kerrville, Ingram and Hunt.

“I urge Texans to heed guidance from state and local officials and monitor local forecasts to avoid driving into flooded areas,” Abbott said in a statement.

The Guadalupe’s river gauge at the unincorporated community of Hunt, where the river forks, recorded a 22 foot rise in just about two hours, according to Bob Fogarty, meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Austin/San Antonio office. Fogarty said the gauge failed after recording a level of 29 and a half feet.

“We think the river’s higher than that,” Fogarty said. “The gauge is completely underwater.”

The riverfront communities include several camps, wildlife habitats and campgrounds. Texas Game Wardens, part of the state parks and wildlife agency, said on Facebook that search and rescue teams are conducting rescues throughout the region and sending more boats to help.

“This is the kind of thing that will catch you unaware,” Fogarty said. “The water’s moving so fast, you’re not going to recognize how bad it is until it’s on top of you.”

Survivors describe overnight ordeal

Erin Burgess’ home sits directly across from the river in the Bumble Bee Hills neighborhood, west of Ingram. When she woke up to thunder at 3:30 a.m. Friday morning, “it was raining pretty heavy, but no big deal,” she said.

Just 20 minutes later, Burgess said water was coming in through the walls and rushing through the front and back doors. She described an agonizing hour clinging to a tree and waiting for the water to recede enough that they were able to walk up the hill to a neighbor’s.

“My son and I floated to a tree where we hung onto it, and my boyfriend and my dog floated away. He was lost for a while, but we found them,” she said, becoming emotional.

Of her 19-year-old son, Burgess said: “Thankfully he’s over 6 feet tall. That’s the only thing that saved me, was hanging on to him.”

Dozens of people posted on Facebook asking for any information on their children, nieces and nephews attending one of the many camps in the area, or family members that went camping during the holiday weekend.

Ingram Fire Department posted a photo of a statement from Camp Mystic, saying the private Christian summer camp for girls experienced “catastrophic level floods.” Parents with a daughter not accounted for were directly contacted, the camp said.

Another camp on the river located east of Hunt, Camp Waldemar, said in an Instagram post that “we are all safe and sound.”

Disclosure: Facebook has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/04/texas-flooding-deaths/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

The post Flooding in Texas leads to multiple deaths appeared first on feeds.texastribune.org

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: Centrist

This article presents factual reporting on the tragic flooding event in Kerr County, Texas, focusing on official statements and updates from government and emergency response officials. The language is neutral and primarily descriptive, avoiding editorializing or politically charged framing. It covers responses from both state and local authorities without critique or praise, reflecting standard news coverage of a natural disaster and its consequences. The absence of ideological commentary or partisan language indicates the article is centered on informing readers rather than advancing a political viewpoint.

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News from the South - Texas News Feed

Abrego Garcia released from prison, headed to family

Published

21 hours ago

August 22, 2025

Staff Editor

www.kxan.com – Ella Lee – 2025-08-22 22:44:00

SUMMARY: Kilmar Abrego Garcia, wrongfully deported and imprisoned, has been released from a Tennessee jail and is en route to Maryland to reunite with his family, his lawyer Sean Hecker confirmed. Abrego Garcia was deported in March due to an “administrative error” and faced federal human smuggling charges related to a 2022 Tennessee traffic stop. His attorneys argue the prosecution is vindictive and selective, citing violations of his due process rights. A 2019 immigration ruling bars his return to El Salvador, and ICE is restricted from immediate custody post-release. The case continues amid concerns over potential re-deportation.

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The post Abrego Garcia released from prison, headed to family appeared first on www.kxan.com

News from the South - Texas News Feed

Texas Senate expected to take up GOP congressional map

Published

2 days ago

August 22, 2025

Staff Editor

feeds.texastribune.org – By Kayla Guo – 2025-08-22 05:00:00

By Kayla Guo, The Texas Tribune

Aug. 22, 2025

“Texas Senate expected to take up GOP congressional map, last stop before Abbott’s desk” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

The Texas Senate on Friday was expected to consider a new congressional map gerrymandered to maximize Republican representation, putting the plan on a path to the governor’s desk after weeks of intense partisan clashing.

Republican lawmakers were poised to push the map through over fierce Democratic opposition, launching a national redistricting war from Albany to Sacramento while positioning the GOP to net up to five additional seats in Texas.

The map, demanded by President Donald Trump to fortify the GOP’s U.S. House majority in next year’s midterm election, would hand up to five additional U.S. House seats to Republicans by dismantling Democratic bastions around Austin, Dallas and Houston, and by making two Democrat-held seats in South Texas redder. The new lines would also keep all 25 seats already held by Republicans safely red.

The pickups are meant to help the GOP hold onto its razor-thin congressional majority in a midterm election year that is expected to favor Democrats — potentially making the difference between a continued Republican trifecta in Washington, or a divided government with one chamber intent on investigating Trump and bottlenecking his agenda.

That has put Texas lawmakers at the front lines of an issue with national stakes. Republicans earned kudos from Trump for pushing the new boundaries through the state House, while Democrats won support from national party figures, including former President Barack Obama, Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin and U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

Though congressional lines are typically redrawn once every 10 years following the decennial census, Republicans justified the aggressive and unusual move to do so in the middle of the decade by saying it was legal to craft new boundaries at any point and for purely partisan gain. They also pointed to the party’s margins of victory in 2024 and the need to counter blue-state gerrymandering to further support their push.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that states can draw electoral maps on partisan grounds. But under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the lines cannot diminish people’s voting power based on race.

Democrats argued that the new map would increase Republicans’ advantage by unconstitutionally suppressing the vote of Black and Latino Texans. They framed the push as a power grab by Trump meant to stack the deck in next year’s election.

Texas’ anticipated approval of the map has set off a tit-for-tat redistricting push in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed a map voters would have to approve that could yield five new Democratic-leaning seats, effectively offsetting GOP gains in Texas. Other blue-state governors and national Democratic leaders are backing retaliatory gerrymandering as the Trump administration also pushes GOP-controlled Florida, Indiana, Missouri and Ohio to draw more red seats.

The new Texas map cleared its biggest hurdle Wednesday when, after more than eight hours of tense debate, the state House adopted the plan along party lines.

Lacking the votes to stop the map in the GOP-dominated Texas Legislature, more than 50 House Democrats staged a two-week walkout earlier this month, grinding the lower chamber to a halt by denying the quorum needed to conduct business.

Republicans unleashed an unprecedented response to drag them back to Texas, issuing civil arrest warrants, asking a court to extradite them from Illinois, seeking to declare over a dozen Democrats’ seats vacant and clamoring for legislative punishments upon their return.

After most Democratic lawmakers returned to Austin Monday, Republican Speaker Dustin Burrows, seeking to maintain a quorum, required each of them to agree to a police escort to leave the Capitol building. Rep. Nicole Collier, D-Fort Worth, refused and was confined to the Capitol for the next 54 hours, prompting a national media frenzy.

Democrats portrayed the walkout as a victory for sparking a national movement in support of retaliatory redistricting, and as just the first part of a longer fight against the map. In the House on Wednesday, Democratic lawmakers pressed their Republican colleagues on the plan’s impact on voters of color, working to establish a record they could use in a legal challenge seeking to kill the lines before next year’s election.

“This fight is far from over,” Rep. Gene Wu of Houston, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said after the map’s passage in the lower chamber. “Our best shot is in the courts. This part of the fight is over, but it is merely the first chapter.”

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2025/08/22/texas-congressional-redistricting-map-senate-governor-desk/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

The post Texas Senate expected to take up GOP congressional map appeared first on feeds.texastribune.org

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

The article focuses on the Texas congressional redistricting map, highlighting its Republican origins and the partisan conflict it has sparked. It provides detailed coverage of Democratic opposition and criticisms, including concerns about voter suppression among minority groups, and frames Republican efforts as a “power grab” led by Trump. The inclusion of national Democratic figures’ support for opposition and the emphasis on Democratic strategies and responses suggest a slight lean toward a Center-Left perspective. However, the article maintains a measure of balance by covering Republican justifications and legal points, which keeps it from tilting strongly left or right.

News from the South - Texas News Feed

Dinosaur teeth reveal secrets to Earth's past, UT study finds

Published

2 days ago

August 22, 2025

Staff Editor

www.kxan.com – Eric Henrikson – 2025-08-22 05:00:00

SUMMARY: A University of Texas study analyzed dinosaur teeth fossils from the late Jurassic period to uncover their diets and behaviors. Paleontologist Liam Norris examined calcium isotopes in teeth from herbivores like Diplodocus, Camarasaurus, and Camptosaurus, revealing varied feeding habits such as ground-level and canopy browsing, with each species targeting different plants to coexist. Carnivores like Allosaurus mainly consumed flesh, avoiding bones, while Eutretauranosuchus likely ate fish. The research shows dinosaurs couldn’t chew but swallowed food whole, aiding new understanding of ancient ecosystems. This study enriches paleontology, offering deeper insights into dinosaur life and evolution.

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The post Dinosaur teeth reveal secrets to Earth's past, UT study finds appeared first on www.kxan.com