Texas
Texas fires David Pierce after eight seasons
Following a 36-24 season that included early exits from the Big 12 Tournament and the College Station Regional, Texas Longhorns head coach David Pierce was fired on Monday morning after eight seasons and a 297-162 record on the Forty Acres.
“CDC and I met after the season and we mutually agreed that the best thing for the program was to go in a different direction. It’s been an honor and privilege to lead this program for the last eight years. It certainly is a time I will always cherish as a coach, and I am so appreciative of The University of Texas for the opportunity,” Pierce said in a statement released by the school.
“Thank you to Longhorn Nation, the fan base, our support staff, student assistants and the media who covered us so well. I especially want to thank the coaches and our former and current players who helped us win a lot of games and represented our program in a first-class manner. Thank you all for your hard work, dedication and commitment to Texas Baseball. You will forever be in my heart, and I look forward to continuing to cheer you on in baseball and beyond.”
The decision by athletics director Chris Del Conte came more than three weeks after the season ended with a loss to Louisiana, a stretch that featured notable silence from Del Conte even though Pierce had only two years left on his contract with a buyout of $1.68 million.
“After the season, Coach Pierce and I had some time to visit about the year, the future of our program, where we are, and where we’re headed,” Del Conte said. “It was a difficult decision for us both, but we have mutually agreed that we should make a change. I am so grateful for Coach Pierce and all he has poured into our baseball program for the past eight years. He is an incredible person, and I’ve truly enjoyed my time working with him. I appreciate the passion, pride and steadfast commitment he had for coaching and working with our student-athletes and am thankful for all he’s done for Texas Athletics and our entire university community as our head coach. I wish Coach Pierce and his family the best in the future.”
A Houston native who played for the Cougars after two seasons at the junior college level, Pierce entered coaching in 1989, spending the next decade coaching at Houston-area high schools before becoming an assistant at his alma mater. After serving as an assistant under legendary Rice head coach Wayne Graham, Pierce became the head coach at Sam Houston in 2012, then moved on to Tulane in 2015, where he spent two years until Texas hired him to replace Augie Garrido in 2016.
In an uninspiring coaching search led by interim athletics director Mike Perrin, Pierce was the eventual choice after numerous other coaches signed contract extensions.
Following a rebuilding season under Pierce in 2017, Texas made an unexpected run to the College World Series in 2018 behind a spectacular season from Kody Clemens before collapsing in 2019, finishing last in the Big 12 and 26-26 overall.
Pierce steadied his tenure with a strong start in the COVID-shortened 2020 season and continued that success in 2021 with a 50-17 campaign that ended with a deep run in the College World Series stymied by Mississippi State, the eventual champions.
Facing massive expectations in 2022 with a preseason No. 1 ranking, the Longhorns struggled with a difficult schedule and the loss of budding star pitcher Tanner Witt to Tommy John surgery, tying for fifth in the conference with a 14-10 record. Texas did make it to the College World Series, but lost both games, prompting Pierce to revamp his coaching staff, firing pitching coach Sean Allen and moving assistant Philip Miller into an administrative role.
Although Texas tied for first place in the Big 12, Pierce won fewer games in 2023, a season that ended in heartbreaking fashion in the Palo Alto Super Regional when right fielder Dylan Campbell lost a fly ball in the lights at Sunken Diamond.
Pierce responded by making another change on his staff, dumping pitching coach Woody Williams after one season and taking over that role himself. But when the pitching staff struggled, including Big 12 Preseason Pitcher of the Year Lebarron Johnson Jr., Texas limped to a 36-24 record, suffered embarrassing midweek losses to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and UTRGV, and then lost four of five games in the postseason, further signs of regression under Pierce, who also saw Miller depart the program during the season.
Without an assistant to scapegoat for the state of the Longhorns pitching staff, Pierce was left to take the fall himself.
According to the Houston Chronicle, an off-field altercation involving Pierce and one of his players contributed to Del Conte’s decision:
An ugly incident with one of his pitchers after Texas’ early exit from the Big 12 Tournament in Arlington led to Pierce’s visit before the school’s Human Resources department and likely sealed his fate.
The turnover on the coaching staff, Pierce’s lack of success in the NCAA transfer portal, and the looming move to the SEC, the nation’s best baseball conference, also factored into Pierce’s firing despite the three trips to the College World Series and three conference titles during his eight-year tenure at Texas.
Del Conte is expected to move quickly to hire Pierce’s replacement with the transfer portal open and the MLB Draft looming next month.
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.
Texas
Supreme Court won’t block Texas from enforcing a law requiring age verification for app downloads
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to block Texas from enforcing a state law that requires apps stores to verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent for minors seeking to download apps or make in-app purchases on mobile phones.
Justice Samuel Alito, in a pair of one-sentence orders, denied petitions by plaintiffs who claim that the Texas App Store Accountability Act violates users’ constitutional rights to free speech.
Last month, a three-judge panel from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law can take effect. The panel suspended a district court’s ruling last December that the law is unconstitutional.
The plaintiffs suing to block the law include the Computer & Communications Industry Association and Students Engaged in Advancing Texas. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is a defendant in both cases.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that the law impermissibly seeks to limit access to content protected by the First Amendment, including news and educational material.
“Equity and the public interest support relief because protecting First Amendment rights — and parents’ rights to supervise their children as they see fit, not as the government tells them they should — is always in the public interest,” wrote attorneys for Students Engaged in Advancing Texas.
Attorneys from Paxton’s office argued that the law protects children from “dangerous modern products.”
“A child with access to an app store and a mobile device (such as a tablet or smartphone) can potentially download any number of software applications, potentially agreeing to invasions of the child’s privacy and sale of the child’s data and be exposed to any conceivable content without parental consent or even parental knowledge,” they wrote.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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