Tag: texas

Blanco County officials not releasing records into Angela Chao’s death investigation

Blanco County authorities investigating the death of Angela Chao, the Foremost Group CEO who died last week at a private Central Texas ranch, have repeatedly declined to provide basic information or records in days since the fatal incident.

Chao, 50, is believed to have drowned Feb. 11 after her car entered a body of water on the property, a law enforcement source told the American-Statesman. An investigation by the Blanco County sheriff’s office remained ongoing Tuesday, a county spokesperson said.

The circumstances of the death are unclear. Other than a brief statement on Feb. 15 describing the incident as an “unfortunate accident,” sheriff’s office officials have declined to provide additional information, including any relevant reports requested by the Statesman under the Texas Public Information Act.

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Texas To Build Military “Base Camp” On Mexico Border To House 1,800 Soldiers

In the latest signal of his resolve to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States, Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Friday announced that the Lone Star State will build a military base along the Rio Grand at the border city of Eagle Pass. 

Spanning 80-acres, “Forward Operating Base Eagle” will house upwards of 1,800 Texas National Guard soldiers supporting Operation Lone Star, and will be expandable to house 2,300. Texas Maj. Gen. Thomas Suelzer said the camp will have 300 beds by mid-April, and will add another 300 beds every month after that. 

“Before this effort here, they had been living in conditions that were atypical for military operations,” Abbott said at a press conference in Eagle Pass. “Because of the magnitude of what we’re doing, because of the need to sustain and actually expand our efforts of what we’re doing, it’s essential that we build this base camp for the soldiers.” As it is, soldiers are housed all over the area, varyingly living in hotels, tents and even some private houses. Some bear long commutes. 

“Illegal crossings are down and, coincidentally, razor-wire barrier is up,” said Abbott. “We will continue to muster the efforts are needed to make sure that Texas does the job that the United States Congress has mandated. The United States Congress has mandated for barriers to be built on the border. Biden is not building those barriers.”

Eagle Pass has been in the national spotlight in recent months, a flashpoint in the ongoing battle between Texas and the federal government over border security, including state authority to enforce immigration laws. Earlier this year, Texas seized control of a 47-acre park in the city, a park that has been a major avenue of illegal immigration. The Texans also began barring US Border Patrol agents and watercraft from the property, which they’ve used as a staging area for processing migrants.

The new base, located about 6 miles south of the park, will include a 700-seat dining facility, workout equipment, a recreation center and laundries, vehicle maintenance bays, weapons storage rooms and a helipad. Soldiers will have individual rooms.  

In January, the US Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could proceed with removing razor wire installed by Texas at the Eagle Pass border. However, a defiant Gov. Abbott not only slammed the order and barred federal agents from accessing the razor wire, he also added even more.

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Girlfriend charged with murder of former Texas judge who died of fentanyl overdose

Authorities in Texas have arrested the 35-year-old girlfriend of a former judge for allegedly supplying him with fentanyl that led to his overdose death late last year. Kami Ludwig was taken into custody on Monday and charged with the murder of 47-year-old former Associate Tarrant County Judge William Shane Nolen.

The murder charge is the result of a novel interpretation of a new law that Gov. Greg Abbott signed in June 2023 and went into effect on Sept. 1, 2023, classifying the supplying of fentanyl that results in death as murder. The law was enacted to combat the thousands of Texans who die annually from fentanyl poisoning, but appeared to primarily target drug dealers who distribute the deadly substance.

According to a news release from the Grapevine Police Department, officers at about 4:45 a.m. on Nov. 20, 2023, responded to a call regarding a deceased male — later identified as Nolen — at a residence located in the 4100 block of Mapleridge Drive. Ludwig placed the initial 911 call and identified herself to the dispatcher as Nolen’s girlfriend.

Upon arriving at the scene, first responders said they found Nolen deceased in his bedroom “with signs consistent with an opioid overdose.” Authorities on the scene said they also recovered “several” additional pills from inside the home.

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Former Staffer Who Leaked Democrat Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s Controversial Audio Dies of a Drug Overdose

A man who was mentioned on a leaked audio clip of Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas berating him and another staffer last fall died from a drug overdose, according to a news report.

The man, 36-year-old Jerome Brooks, was insulted by the congresswoman while working as a staffer for her doomed Houston mayoral bid last November.

The audio was leaked to numerous Houston media outlets, causing a headache for the 74-year-old’s campaign.

Brooks died days after he was called a “fat a** stupid idiot” by the Texas Democrat during her 15th term in the House.

KPRC-TV reported police in Austin began an investigation into Brooks’ death last year after he was found dead in a hotel in the city just days after the audio leak was published.

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Texas Cops Held a Terrified Couple at Gunpoint After Raiding the Wrong House

Tyler Harrington and his wife were asleep in their beds when four Harris County, Texas, Constable Officers burst into their home and held the terrified couple at gunpoint. While the cops eventually realized they were in the wrong house, they didn’t leave without admonishing the couple for keeping their door unlocked.

Harrington has now filed a lawsuit, arguing that the officers’ invasion of his home was an unconstitutional breach of his Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

On September 24, 2022, Officer James Lancaster responded to a call from a woman, named “Mrs. H” in the complaint, who said that she heard a knock at her back door. Lancaster spoke to Mrs. H and examined the outside of her property, finding nothing suspicious. 

Mrs. H also told Lancaster that her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend would arrive to check out the house themselves. Mrs. H then decided to “get in her car and drive around until others came home.” When Mrs. H’s daughter and her boyfriend arrived, another neighbor, named “Mr. S,” called the police to report their truck as suspicious. When talking to dispatchers, Mr. S accidentally gave the wrong address for Mrs. H’s house, reporting Harrington’s address instead.

Soon, two more officers arrived. According to the complaint, Lancaster clearly should have known that dispatch had been given the wrong address. While pointing to Mrs. H’s house, he told the other officers, “That’s the house with the person knocking on the back door, that was the house earlier….I checked the one across the street.” In reference to Harrington’s address, he said he had “never been to this house.”

But the officers decided to enter the Harrington’s home anyway, testing both the front and back doors and finding them unlocked. A fourth officer arrived, and according to the suit, Lancaster told him that they were “waiting on the owner,” despite knowing that it was a different house than the one owned by Mrs. H, where the owner had left and was to return shortly.

Around midnight, two of the officers burst into the Harrington’s home with their guns drawn, shouting “Constable’s Office, come up with your hands out!” Harrington’s wife, whose full name wasn’t identified in the suit, was woken up by the officer’s shouting. She confirmed that she lived at the house, and one of the officers, Jared Lindsay ordered her to get her ID and come to the door.

Around the same time, Lancaster entered the home with his gun drawn, shouting the Spanish phrase for “hands up,” and began searching the home. As the officers held his wife at gunpoint, Tyler Harrington woke up and walked out of the bedroom, at which point the officers began pointing their guns at him as well, shouting questions at the couple. 

Eventually, the officers realized they were at the wrong house but still led the couple back into their own home at gunpoint. After releasing the couple, Lindsay told them that “someone had reported people searching the front and back doors of this house,” adding that the caller had told them the owner was gone. 

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She Was Arrested for Her Journalism. A Federal Court Says She Can’t Sue.

A journalist asked the police a few questions and was arrested by that same agency for publishing the answers.

That this happened not in China or Russia but in the U.S. may raise some eyebrows. Yet that’s the conduct a federal court greenlit last week when it ruled that law enforcement in Laredo, Texas, did not obviously violate the Constitution when officers allegedly misled a magistrate judge and arrested Priscilla Villarreal for doing basic reporting, adding another twist to a case that in some sense asks the following: Exactly who is a journalist?

In April 2017, Villarreal reported the identity of a Border Patrol agent who killed himself by jumping off of a local overpass. A few weeks later, she published the last name of a family involved in a fatal traffic accident. She confirmed both of those identities with an officer in the Laredo Police Department (LPD). In response, that department set in motion a criminal investigation—complete with subpoenas for various people’s cellphone records—that saw Villarreal arrested months later for violating an obscure Texas law, § 39.06(c), that prohibits soliciting “nonpublic information” if done “with intent to obtain a benefit.”

The supposed benefit, the government said, was followers on her Facebook page.

Villarreal’s Facebook is indeed central to her story. She is known almost ubiquitously in Laredo, where she gained popularity by livestreaming local crime scenes and traffic accidents, infusing her videos with provocative, and often-profane, commentary. Some of that reporting has been critical of law enforcement, attracting their ire and culminating, she says, in their attempt to shut her up via the criminal justice system.

It didn’t work. But it did kick off a multiyear debate over whether or not her arrest violated the Constitution, and, if so, if those officers should be shielded by qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that prevents alleged victims of abuse from bringing civil suits against state and local government actors if the way in which those employees violated the law has not yet been spelled out precisely in a prior court ruling.

After years of a legal back-and-forth, Villarreal got her answer last week from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit: It was not clear that officers had violated the Constitution when they charged her criminally for her journalism, the majority ruled 9-7. But the decision, which was challenged forcefully by several dissenting judges, raises further questions about what qualifies as journalism and if those who adhere to a more traditional approach are entitled to a different set of rights.

“Villarreal and others portray her as a martyr for the sake of journalism. That is inappropriate,” wrote Judge Edith Jones. “Mainstream, legitimate media outlets routinely withhold the identity of accident victims or those who committed suicide until public officials or family members release that information publicly.”

According to Jones and the majority, a reasonable officer could not be expected to know that it is unconstitutional to bring charges against someone for asking the government questions. That obscure Texas law, Jones said, understandably supplied law enforcement with the notion that Villarreal was indeed a criminal, despite that the statute appears to have been written to discourage corruption in government, not boilerplate journalism.

The way Villarreal communicates information, however, is anything but boilerplate. She is not employed by a publication, and her livestreams are raw and unfiltered. That general spirit is summed up well in what she named her page: Lagordiloca, or “the crazy, fat lady.”

In that vein, the 5th Circuit’s decision is dripping with contempt for Villarreal’s enterprise; Jones makes little attempt to hide it. Lagordiloca’s rough-around-the-edges, muckraker approach can certainly be jarring. But one wonders if the court would have ruled the same way if Villarreal had been employed by, say, the Laredo Morning Times, where her alleged “benefit” for seeking information would arguably be more significant: a salary. It is also unclear if the police would have had the gumption to arrest her had she fit a more conventional mold.

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Texas AG Paxton sues cities over marijuana decriminalization

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) is suing five Texas cities over their decriminalization of marijuana.

In a Wednesday press release, the office of the attorney general (OAG) said it was suing the cities for “instructing police not to enforce Texas drug laws concerning possession and distribution of marijuana.

The drug, the OAG added, is one that “psychologists have increasingly linked to psychosis and other negative consequences.”

Paxton’s suit comes amid a broader push by the conservative state government to exert authority over its left-leaning cities.

The five cities targeted in Wednesday’s suit are Austin, San Marcos, Killeen, Elgin and Denton, each of which enacted laws decriminalizing marijuana one to three years ago. Paxton did not clarify why he chose to bring the lawsuit now.

Although none of the cities has legalized the drug — which would allow it to be bought and sold openly — each has passed ordinances directing police and prosecutors to deprioritize pressing charges against people holding small amounts of cannabis.

In Austin, for example, a 2020 city council resolution directed police not to press charges against those caught with less than 4 ounces of marijuana.

In November 2022, voters in the other cities now being sued by Paxton resoundingly approved ballot measures that decriminalized up to the same limit — though these reforms have drawn resistance from local law enforcement.

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SICK: Texas Democrat Posts Tweet Seemingly Calling for Bombing American Citizens Who Support Texas Against the Biden Regime Over the Border – Conservatives Respond

A far-left Texas state legislator over the weekend posted a tweet suggesting the U.S. military would be justified in taking out Americans for daring to own guns and standing with Texas.

X user @EndWokeness posted a tweet Friday listing the ten states with the most guns per capita. He noted they are all states backing Texas in their ongoing battle with the Biden regime over the border.

Over half of the adults in these states own firearms.

After seeing this post a day later, Texas Democrat State Rep. Gene Wu suggested the proper response was for the U.S. Military to drop bombs on these Americans.

“It’s all fun and games… until someone eats a drone fired Hellfire missile.”

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War? 25 Red States Rally ‘Round Texas As Battle Brews With Biden Over Border

A coalition of red states has rallied around Texas, after Governor Greg Abbott invoked the state’s constitutional right to self-defense due to the migrant crisis, which he deemed an ‘invasion.’

As End Wokeness notes, a coalition of 25 Republican governors have signed a joint letter in support of the Texas resistance.

The support began on Wednesday, with Governor Kevin Stitt tweeting: “Oklahoma stands with Texas.”

“TX is upholding the law while Biden is flouting it,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

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Democrats Urge Joe Biden to Seize Control Over Texas National Guard Amid Border Dispute

Texas Governor Greg Abbott is steadfast in asserting the state’s right to defend its borders against invasion.

This stance has led to a growing dispute with the Biden regime and prompted some Democrats to call for Joe Biden to federalize Texas National Guard as the debate over border security intensifies.

On Wednesday, Abbott released a comprehensive declaration condemning the Biden administration for neglecting federal immigration laws and compromising the contractual agreement between the federal government and individual states.

“President Biden has instructed his agencies to ignore federal statutes that mandate the detention of illegal immigrants. The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, § 4 has triggered Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense,” said Abbott.

“For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary,” he added.

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