Texas
SEC ready: The Texas Longhorns join new league 'obsessed' with winning from the start
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The new conference logo is on the field. The campus party over the summer was a hit. New chants of “S-E-C, S-E-C!” are perfected and a historic rival is back on the schedule.
Now it’s time for No. 4 Texas to play some ball.
The Longhorns are now officially members of the Southeastern Conference, and roll into new territory with the swagger of the new kid at school who thinks he’s got the talent to be the big man on campus from the start.
And why not?
Texas won the Big 12 last season, played in its first College Football Playoff and returns a load of talent from a 12-2 squad that finished the year ranked No. 3.
Year No. 4 under coach Steve Sarkisian has Texas not just dreaming about winning, but “obsessed” with it after last year’s near miss at playing for the national championship. It starts with an offense that could prove to be as explosive as any unit Sarkisian has had, with quarterback Quinn Ewers, a veteran offensive line and a receiving corps rebuilt with talented transfers.
“They got a taste of what it can taste like, of being a Big 12 champion, playing in a College Football Playoff, and we fell short,” Sarkisian said. “They couldn’t wait to get back to work. They couldn’t wait to get back in the weight room.
“When I took the job, I don’t know if I could have said that. It was almost like kind of prodding cattle to make sure that what they were doing day in and day out to get them to that point. Now we’ve got a team full of hungry players,” Sarkisian said.
Quarterback experience
Ewers took a big step in 2023 with 3,479 yards passing with 22 touchdowns and chose to return for his junior season rather than head for the NFL.
Sarkisian believes Ewers could prove to be one of the college game’s elite passers this season, though he has had durability issues. Ewers has missed at least two games each of the last two seasons with injuries.
Waiting behind him is Arch Manning, the former 5-star recruit who might be the most anticipated backup QB at Texas since Vince Young in 2003.
Transfer time
Texas landed a load of transfer talent, with a pair of pass catchers from Alabama in receiver Isaiah Bond and tight end Amari Niblack. Edge rusher Trey Moore (UTSA) and safety Andrew Mukuba (Clemson) were big gets as well.
Bond carries the load of the biggest expectations. Texas lost its top five receivers from 2023 and Bond led the Crimson Tide with 48 catches for 668 yards and four touchdowns. He’s the one who caught the 4th-and-31 touchdown in the final minute to beat Auburn.
Injury watch
The Longhorns are already shorthanded at running back.
Projected starter C.J. Baxter was lost for the season with a knee injury in camp. A week later, freshman Christian Clark tore an Achilles tendon in practice and will require season-ending surgery.
Next up is fast but seldom used junior Jaydon Blue, who has 80 carries for 431 yards and three touchdowns in 23 career games. Blue is a former high school sprinter who once clocked a 10.7-second 100 meters in high school.
Hill to climb
Sophomore linebacker Anthony Hill Jr. looks primed for a breakout year for a defense that lost last year’s dominant line duo of T’Vondre Sweat and Byron Murphy to the NFL. He ranked second on the team in tackles last season when he played on the edge and was turned loose to chase the ball.
Hill will move to the middle this season, which defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski called his natural position.
The schedule
Texas opens the season Aug. 31 at home against Colorado State. The next week, it’s a trip the Big House at defending national champion Michigan. The annual rivalry with Oklahoma on Oct. 12 is now an SEC game and the following weekend Texas hosts preseason No. 1 Georgia on Oct. 19. The bow on the regular season is Nov. 30 at Texas A&M, a renewal of a rivalry that dates to 1894. The Longhorns won the last meeting on a last-second field goal in 2011.
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AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/college-football and https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll
Texas
Triple-digit heat returns to North Texas before weekend storms bring relief
Dallas weather: July 8 morning forecast
High pressure starts to build back into North Texas, which lowers our rain chances and brings triple digit temperatures to parts of the region. Expect partly to mostly sunny skies today, with highs near 100.
DALLAS – A building system of high pressure is bringing triple-digit temperatures back to North Texas, though the intense heat will be short-lived before a weekend weather shift brings relief and renewed chances of rain.
Wednesday forecast
We expect partly to mostly sunny skies Wednesday, with high temperatures reaching near 100 degrees across much of the region. While hot and dry conditions will dominate, a low chance of scattered rain showers remains possible, primarily in areas east of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.
The heat is expected to solidify Thursday as the upper-level ridge settles firmly over the area. We have removed all chances of precipitation from Thursday’s forecast, locking in dry conditions and an afternoon high temperature of 100 degrees.
However, relief is on the horizon for the upcoming weekend. The high-pressure ridge will lose its grip on North Texas as it begins to shift westward toward the desert southwest.
Weekend forecast
By late Saturday and continuing into Sunday, the atmospheric shift will establish a northerly flow aloft. This pattern change is expected to funnel a series of weather disturbances into the region, triggering a return of widespread rain and thunderstorm opportunities.
The unsettled weather pattern is forecast to linger well into next week. The persistent cloud cover and moisture associated with the continuing rain chances will successfully suppress the heat, keeping afternoon highs closer to historical norms for this time of year.
7-Day forecast
The Source: Information in this article is from the FOX 4 weather team.
Texas
US immigration officer shoots and kills man in Texas
Man, identified as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, is latest to be killed by ICE officers since President Trump took power.
Published On 8 Jul 2026
A United States immigration agent fatally shot a man in Houston, Texas, while officers were attempting to stop his vehicle, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said.
The man killed on Tuesday was identified as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, described by ICE as a Mexican national and “illegal alien” who attempted to evade arrest during a “targeted enforcement operation” by federal immigration officers.
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Ronaldo Salgado, who identified himself as Salgado Araujo’s son, told the Spanish-language television station Telemundo Houston that his father was shot while he was looking for workers to hire in the area.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, said Salgado Araujo ignored commands to stop his vehicle, saying he “rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer”.
In past shooting incidents, including the January killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, immigration officials had said that their officers were being attacked when the two were shot, claims vigorously disputed in both incidents.
Video footage captured on Tuesday by a surveillance camera from a nearby business and reviewed by the Reuters news agency showed a person lying on the ground beside a white van and surrounded by officers, in what appeared to be the aftermath of the shooting.
Salgado Araujo was targeted in an operation because he was living in the country without legal permission, according to DHS.
Democratic US Representative Sylvia Garcia called for an independent and thorough investigation of ICE’s claims about the fatal shooting.
“All available footage, communications, and other evidence should be preserved and reviewed as part of a full and impartial investigation,” Garcia posted on social media.
Juan Proano, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, echoed Garcia’s calls for a transparent investigation into ICE’s actions.
“We don’t take DHS at their word at all,” Proano told The Associated Press news agency. “There should be an independent investigation, and they should release all the videos.”
There have been at least six fatal shootings by federal immigration officers since the start of President Donald Trump’s intensified immigration enforcement crackdown.
Good, a 37-year-old US citizen, was shot in the head by a federal immigration agent during a crackdown in Minneapolis. DHS also said Good was trying to hit the agent with her vehicle, which local officials and witnesses disputed, saying she was only trying to drive away.
The backlash from Good’s killing and other similar incidents led ICE to step back from some of its more controversial operations.
However, Tuesday’s deadly confrontation in Houston came amid a recent increase in the number of ICE arrests nationwide, with immigration officers picking up about 2,000 migrants a day last week, Reuters reported.
Texas
Trump takes credit for Toyota moving some truck production from Mexico to Texas: ‘That’s what tariffs do’
Toyota is planning a $3.6 billion expansion of its Texas truck assembly plant. President Donald Trump took credit for the investment.
On Monday, the automaker announced the multibillion-dollar investment to add a second vehicle assembly line at its San Antonio manufacturing campus to support production of the Tacoma pickup. Toyota said the expansion project would shift some of the midsize truck’s production from its Mexico plants to San Antonio over roughly 4 years. Toyota will still build some Tacoma models and the Corolla in Mexico.
While Toyota did not attribute the expansion to tariffs in its announcement and the company is not fully exiting production in Mexico, Trump said the fresh investment was a sign that his tariffs were working.
“It came over the wires that Toyota is moving out of Mexico into the United States, and building one of the biggest truck and car plants ever built,” Trump said on Tuesday during a visit to Ankara, Turkey. “It’s amazing. That’s what tariffs do, properly used.”
Toyota said the investment will create 2,000 jobs and add 2.5 million square feet to the site, doubling the company’s Texas footprint by 2030.
Toyota
On Monday, Ted Ogawa, president and CEO of Toyota Motor North America, said the investment reflected the company’s “confidence in the region’s workforce, innovation, and long-term growth potential.”
The move gives Trump a high-profile example of a well-recognized company creating manufacturing jobs. His administration has argued that tariffs incentivize companies — particularly automakers — to reshore manufacturing in America and reduce reliance on foreign production.
Toyota’s announcement also comes amid major uncertainty for automakers with plants in North America. The USMCA — the trilateral free trade pact between the US, Canada, and Mexico struck during Trump’s first term — is under review after the US declined to renew the treaty in its current form on July 1. The Trump administration is reportedly pushing to change the agreement so 50% of all automotive parts and manufacturing would happen in the US.
Toyota also nodded to that trade uncertainty in its release, saying it remained committed to operations in all three countries while encouraging “a quick resolution to USMCA” to keep North America globally competitive.
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