Texas

SEC ready: The Texas Longhorns join new league 'obsessed' with winning from the start

Published

2 years ago

August 20, 2024

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.

___

AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/college-football and https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll

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Texas

Paxton hails Trump’s endorsement as ‘most powerful force in politics’ after Texas runoff win – US politics live

Published

12 hours ago

May 27, 2026

Press Room

Paxton hails Trump’s endorsement as ‘most powerful force in politics’ after Texas runoff win – US politics live

Trump endorsement ‘most powerful force in politics’, says Paxton after runoff victory

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

Texas attorney-general Ken Paxton said Donald Trump’s endorsement is “the most powerful force in politics” as he comfortably won the Republican nomination for the Senate last night.

Paxton defeated four-term senator John Cornyn in the latest contest where president Trump sought to oust an incumbent he saw as insufficiently loyal, AP reported.

Trump endorsed Paxton, calling him a “true MAGA warrior”, with Paxton’s victory in the runoff making Cornyn – who was first elected to the Senate in 2002 – the first Republican senator from Texas to lose the party’s nomination for reelection.

“When everyone in Washington told him to abandon me and abandon the people of Texas, he didn’t listen,” Paxton said. “President Trump is the leader of our party, and his endorsement is the most powerful force in politics.”

Cornyn’s loss followed primaries this month where Trump successfully backed challengers to Republican lawmakers who had displeased him in Louisiana, Kentucky and Indiana, a sign of his enduring influence among primary voters.

“After a public service career lasting more than four decades and 18 consecutive campaign wins, tonight we’ve come up short in this primary runoff,” Cornyn said shortly after the race was called. “I’ve always supported the GOP ticket. I intend to do so again this general election.”

The race had wide implications for Trump’s strength heading into November’s midterm elections, where Paxton will now face James Talarico, a Democratic pastor and state legislator whose message of peace and populism has attracted much attention. If he wins, Talarico would become the first Democrat in more than 30 years to win statewide office in Texas.

In other developments:

Christian Menefee defeated Al Green to represent Texas’s newly redrawn 18th congressional district. Green, 78, had served 11 terms as a Democrat, earning a reputation as one of Donald Trump’s top critics, when he became the first member of Congress to call for his impeachment, as early as 2017. Menefee, 38, began serving in Congress earlier this year after he won a special election. The two Democrats faced off against each other in this year’s election after Republican redistricting saw their home districts near Houston redrawn.
Two Republican-led efforts to redraw congressional maps in Alabama and South Carolina hit setbacks. In Alabama, a federal court said the proposed map could not be used because it was drawn to intentionally discriminate against Black voters. The South Carolina Senate voted against redrawing the state’s congressional map due to political and administrative reasons.
Construction is under way on the White House lawn for a UFC arena that will host a cage-match next month to mark the United States’s 250th anniversary and Trump’s 80th birthday. The mixed martial arts fight is planned for 14 June.
Trump completed his annual physical after year of public attention to health issues. Trump, the oldest inaugurated president in US history, completed a physical exam on Tuesday at Walter Reed national military medical center, amid questions around his health. “Everything checked out PERFECTLY,” the US president declared in a social media post.
The Trump administration considered asking federal workers to sign NDAs. The goal of asking federal employees to sign nondisclosure agreements is to prevent them from sharing confidential information with journalists.

Key events

Trump moves Camp David cabinet meeting to White House as Iran talks continue

Robert Tait

Donald Trump will host the 12th cabinet meeting of his second term on Wednesday as talks on ending the nearly three-month war with Iran reach a crucial stage amid conflicting signals over whether an agreement is close.

The gathering had originally been scheduled to take place in the bucolic setting of Camp David, the presidential retreat that had previously been the site of sensitive Middle East negotiations, including the historic Israeli-Egyptian peace accords.

But Trump switched it back to its more accustomed White House setting, citing adverse weather forecasts.

“Based on the possible bad weather conditions tomorrow, we will be having our Cabinet Meeting in the White House, and will be postponing the Cabinet trip to Camp David,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform. Heavy rain is expected in the area on Wednesday.

The initial decision to stage it at Camp David had raised eyebrows, given that Trump had visited the presidential retreat deep in the Maryland countryside, 62 miles north-west of Washington, much less frequently than most of his predecessors.

Veteran Texas congressman Al Green beaten in Democratic primary runoff

Uwa Ede-Osifo

Christian Menefee, a freshman Democratic US representative, beat veteran congressman Al Green on Tuesday in a fierce runoff that was the product of Republican gerrymandering.

Last year, the Republican-dominated Texas legislature unveiled a congressional map designed to flip seats in the GOP’s favor. Donald Trump had urged the state’s lawmakers to safeguard the party’s congressional majority.

Under the new map, Green, a congressional fixture for over two decades and a staunch Trump critic, saw his reliably Democratic ninth district effectively eliminated. He announced a bid for the 18th district in November.

Menefee was sworn into the seat in January, after winning a special election to replace the late US representative Sylvester Turner.

On the campaign trail, Green sought to link Menefee with big-money politics, accusing his challenger of being aligned with “Trump crypto cronies”, Houston Public Media reported.

Green’s protests of the Trump administration have garnered national attention in recent years.

In February, he was ejected from the president’s State of the Union address after holding a sign that read “Black people aren’t apes!” It was a counter to Trump sharing a racist AI-generated video where Barack and Michelle Obama were depicted as the simians.

Trump endorsement ‘most powerful force in politics’, says Paxton after runoff victory

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

Texas attorney-general Ken Paxton said Donald Trump’s endorsement is “the most powerful force in politics” as he comfortably won the Republican nomination for the Senate last night.

Paxton defeated four-term senator John Cornyn in the latest contest where president Trump sought to oust an incumbent he saw as insufficiently loyal, AP reported.

In other developments:

Christian Menefee defeated Al Green to represent Texas’s newly redrawn 18th congressional district. Green, 78, had served 11 terms as a Democrat, earning a reputation as one of Donald Trump’s top critics, when he became the first member of Congress to call for his impeachment, as early as 2017. Menefee, 38, began serving in Congress earlier this year after he won a special election. The two Democrats faced off against each other in this year’s election after Republican redistricting saw their home districts near Houston redrawn.
Two Republican-led efforts to redraw congressional maps in Alabama and South Carolina hit setbacks. In Alabama, a federal court said the proposed map could not be used because it was drawn to intentionally discriminate against Black voters. The South Carolina Senate voted against redrawing the state’s congressional map due to political and administrative reasons.
Construction is under way on the White House lawn for a UFC arena that will host a cage-match next month to mark the United States’s 250th anniversary and Trump’s 80th birthday. The mixed martial arts fight is planned for 14 June.
Trump completed his annual physical after year of public attention to health issues. Trump, the oldest inaugurated president in US history, completed a physical exam on Tuesday at Walter Reed national military medical center, amid questions around his health. “Everything checked out PERFECTLY,” the US president declared in a social media post.
The Trump administration considered asking federal workers to sign NDAs. The goal of asking federal employees to sign nondisclosure agreements is to prevent them from sharing confidential information with journalists.

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Texas

NASA lays out its moon base plans with Texas ties to make it happen

Published

1 day ago

May 26, 2026

Press Room

NASA lays out its moon base plans with Texas ties to make it happen

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — NASA laid out its moon base plans, and the operation has Texas ties beyond the Johnson Space Center.

Only weeks have passed since NASA sent humans further in space than ever before. While the agency achieved something new, on Tuesday afternoon, NASA said it’s only the beginning.

The agency said a moon base is coming. A place where astronauts will explore, perform experiments, and provide data to get to Mars.

Although NASA has sent humans before, NASA’s moon base program manager, Carlos Garcia-Galan, said this moon base mission is different.

“Eventually, when we matched the assets, habitat modules with the logistics and all the things to move the logistics around,” Garcia-Galan explained. “Then we’ll be able to say, we’re permanently here, and we’re not giving it up.”

The plan, NASA said, is to build a moon base in three phases over 75 launches over the next six years. The first steps, officials said, will be by the end of the year when they start to send supplies to the moon, ahead of astronaut lunar missions scheduled for 2028.

Rice University physics and astronomy professor Patricia Reiff said it’s ambitious but doable. “I think this was a very sensible way to proceed,” Reiff said.

NASA isn’t doing it alone. The agency said it’s spending hundreds of millions of dollars with private companies to build the base.

On Tuesday, it announced that Firefly Aerospace, based in Austin, will deliver drones to the moon. Axiom Space, based in Houston, said it’ll work with the company selected to build the new lunar rovers.

“I think it’s fantastic news because even the ones not based in Houston will be having people here in Houston to work closely with the Johnson Space Center,” Reiff explained.

A moon base, NASA said, is ready to start just weeks after completing Artemis, not just for its own exploration, but what could one day benefit us on Earth.

“We go for the technology we will pioneer to get there,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said. “The science and all that we will learn that’ll make life better here on earth. To advance humankind on this great adventure.”

While NASA plans to send supplies to the moon starting later this year, astronauts won’t be with it. NASA said it plans to launch astronauts into space next year to test its lunar landers.

Then, in two years, it says it plans to start sending humans back to the moon.

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Texas

Texas oil companies push to fend off far-right bid for regulatory post

Published

2 days ago

May 26, 2026

Press Room

Texas oil companies push to fend off far-right bid for regulatory post

Top Texas Republicans and some of the state’s biggest oil and gas producers closed ranks in recent weeks to boost an incumbent energy regulator trying to knock off a hard-right challenger.

Jim Wright, who is seeking a second term on the Railroad Commission of Texas, won 32 percent of the vote in a five-way race in the Republican primary in March.

Bo French, who is known for social media posts disparaging immigrants and Muslims, finished with just over 31 percent.

The difference was less than 7,000 votes. The results set off alarm bells — and oil companies opened their checkbooks during the runoff campaign as politicians warned that the seat could fall into Democratic hands if French won the Republican primary.

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