Texas
Texas Supreme Court Justice John Devine narrowly survives heated primary centered on judicial ethics
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In a surprise nail-biter, Texas Supreme Court Justice John Devine narrowly survived an unexpectedly heated GOP primary challenge that centered on questions about his judicial ethics.
Devine beat Second District Court of Appeals Brian Walker by 1 percentage point of the vote.
Three Supreme Court seats are open this year, but Devine was the only justice with a primary challenger. He will now face 281st District Judge Christine Vinh Weems in a November general election that could be equally heated — Democrats in the state have targeted the high court this year, hoping that backlash to rulings on abortion, the border and LGTBQ+ issues will mobilize enough voters to unseat incumbents on the all-Republican bench. And Devine, a former anti-abortion activist who has pushed back against gay rights, is likely to be a focal point of democrats’ strategy.
Devine entered the race with a clear edge, and with the backing of powerful conservative Christian groups and voters who’ve supported him for 30 years.
He has called church-state separation a “myth,” fought to have the Ten Commandments displayed in his Harris County district courtroom in the 1990s and, as a Tea Party-backed candidate for the Supreme Court in 2012, successfully campaigned on claims that he was arrested 37 times at abortion protests in the 1980s.
After initially dismissing the seriousness of Walker’s campaign, Devine faced a bruising final stretch of the primary in which his ethics took center stage. Walker, a 46-year-old Air Force veteran and one-term appeals court judge with little statewide name recognition, spent weeks blasting Devine for skipping half of oral arguments before the court to campaign this year. And he painted Devine as an unethical jurist who had used the bench to advance his ultraconservative religious views and political ambitions at the expense of his impartiality and the public’s confidence in the judiciary.
Walker reiterated those concerns on Wednesday morning.
“I’m very encouraged by the support I received and I pray that Judge Devine sees this as a referendum,” Walker told The Texas Tribune. “I hope he presses into his job all the more and strives to do it in a way that makes most Texans proud.”
Last month, The Texas Tribune published remarks from a September speech in which Devine railed against his fellow justices, saying they were “brainwashed” and cared more about abiding by legal processes than their “fidelity to the Constitution.” In the speech, he also claimed that the state’s all-GOP Court of Criminal Appeals was controlled by “RINOs” and “trans-Republicans.”
Weeks earlier, the Tribune also reported that Devine did not recuse himself when the court ruled in 2022 on a high-profile sex abuse lawsuit against his former colleagues, Southern Baptist leader Paul Pressler and his law partner Jared Woodfill. The plaintiff in the lawsuit was a former employee of Pressler and Woodfill’s firm who alleged that he was abused while working there — and at the same time as Devine. (Woodfill, who ran for a Houston seat in the Texas House with the backing of Attorney General Ken Paxton and other Republican leaders, lost handily to incumbent Rep. Lacey Hull on Tuesday).
Walker had banked on a surge of Election Day voters, hoping they’d be disenfranchised with Devine after a late flurry of concerns about his ethics. That strategy initially seemed to pan out: As vote tallies continued to trickle in through Wednesday morning, Walker slowly chipped away at Devine’s advantage from early and mail-in voting, and won by significant margins in major counties such as Dallas and Bexar. But it wasn’t enough to overcome Devine’s massive support in Harris County — his former home turf — where his 65% vote share neutralized Walker’s 51% advantage in all other counties combined.
Walker is a seventh-generation Texan who was first elected to the district court in 2020. He is a graduate of the University of Houston Law School and Dallas Theological Seminary, and previously served as the campaign manager for his father, Scott Walker, who was elected to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 2016.
The Court of Criminal Appeals and state Supreme Court are Texas’ two highest judicial bodies, with the latter handling civil matters. No Democrats serve on either body.
Devine’s win came as the Court of Criminal Appeals faced its own upheaval on Tuesday night, the product of a yearslong effort by Paxton and his allies to remove judges who had voted that his office could not unilaterally prosecute local voting crimes. All three of the incumbent justices were soundly defeated by Paxton-backed challengers.
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Texas
North Texas middle school closes after a norovirus outbreak
A middle school in the Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD is closed Friday after an outbreak of norovirus.
According to the school district, they closed Creekview Middle School in Fort Worth on Friday to sanitize and clean the building. The district said they plan on reopening the school on Monday.
The district said children started to get sick on Tuesday with what appeared to be a stomach virus and that on Wednesday it spread to a larger group.
EMSISD said they reached out to the Tarrant County Public Health Department and that they recommended disinfecting and cleaning the school on Wednesday night and reopening the next day.
More cases continued to be reported on Thursday, so the public health department then recommended that they clean again and close the campus on Friday.
Parents were notified of the district’s decision on Thursday afternoon.
The district has not said how many students and staff were sickened in the outbreak.
Officials with Children’s Medical Center said that because norovirus is highly contagious and resistant to many common hand sanitizers, it presents a unique challenge for families.
The hospital says hand sanitizer isn’t enough and recommends thorough hand washing with soap and water. They also recommend parents keep their children home for a full 48 hours after symptoms stop to prevent further outbreaks.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there are approximately 2,500 norovirus outbreaks in the United States each year and that they are most common from November through April. For further tips on preventing the spread of norovirus, visit the CDC.
Texas
Trump heads to Texas, where 3 friends are battling it out in the Senate Republican primary
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump just can’t seem to choose among friends in the Texas Senate Republican primary.
So when he travels to the state on Friday for his first post- State of the Union trip, where he plans to promote his energy and economic policies, Trump will have all three candidates in the competitive race join him — just days before his party casts ballots in the primary race.
Sen. John Cornyn is battling for his fifth term and is being challenged by state Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt in a primary fight that has become viciously personal. And all three men, missing the coveted endorsement from Trump, have been trying to highlight their ties to him as they ramp up their campaigning ahead of Tuesday’s vote.
For his part, Trump will be seeking to ride the message of his State of the Union address from Tuesday, where he declared a return to economic prosperity and a more secure America — two centerpiece arguments for Republicans as they campaign to keep their congressional majorities this fall.
Trump’s hesitation to endorse in the Texas Senate primary speaks to the tricky dynamics of the race.
Cornyn is unpopular with a segment of Texas’ GOP base, in part for his early dismissiveness of Trump’s 2024 comeback campaign and for his role in authoring tougher restrictions on guns after the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. But Senate GOP leadership and allied groups see Cornyn as the stronger general election candidate, in light of a series of troubles that have shadowed Paxton.
Paxton beat impeachment on fraud charges in 2023, and has faced allegations of marital infidelity by his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, right, is joined by former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, left, during a campaign stop in Austin, Texas, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. Credit: AP/Eric Gay
Senate Majority Leader John Thune and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, have urged Trump to endorse Cornyn. They and allied campaign groups argue that the seat would cost the party hundreds of millions more to defend with Paxton as the candidate.
“It is a strong possibility we cannot hold Texas if John Cornyn is not our nominee,” Scott told Fox News on Wednesday.
Hunt, a second-term Houston-area representative, was a later entry to the race, but claims a kinship with Trump, having endorsed him early in the 2024 race. Hunt campaigned regularly for Trump and earned a prime-time speaking slot at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
If no candidate reaches 50% in Tuesday’s primary, the top two finishers will advance to a May 26 runoff.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, arrive before President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in the House chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. Credit: AP/Allison Robbert
Cornyn’s campaign and a half-dozen allied groups have poured more than $63 million into the race since last fall, chiefly trying to slow Paxton but recently attacking Hunt in an effort to keep him from making it to the runoff.
Earlier this month, Trump feinted toward weighing in on the race when he said he was taking “a serious look” at endorsing in the Texas primary. He has since reaffirmed his neutrality.
Still, you wouldn’t know it from watching TV in Texas. Cornyn has been airing ads since last year touting his support for Trump’s agenda, even though his relationship with the president has been cool at times. Paxton and Hunt both have ads airing now featuring them standing with Trump.
“I like all three of them, actually. Those are the toughest races. They’ve all supported me. They’re all good. You’re supposed to pick one, so we’ll see what happens. But I support all three,” Trump said earlier this month.
The GOP battle comes as Democrats have a contested primary of their own in Texas between state Rep. James Talarico, a self-described policy wonk who regularly quotes the Bible, and progressive favorite U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett.
Trump hasn’t been shy about wading into other contested Republican primaries in the state. Parts of Corpus Christi fall within Texas’ 34th congressional district, where former Rep. Mayra Flores is fighting to reclaim her seat against the Trump-endorsed Eric Flores. (The two are not related.) The winner of the primary will face off against Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, long a target of the GOP, whose district was redrawn to make it easier for a Republican to win.
Eric Flores will be at the Trump event at the Port of Corpus Christi, which technically is located in a neighboring district.
Elsewhere in the state, the president has also endorsed Rep. Tony Gonzales, who is fighting calls from his own party to resign from Congress after reports of an alleged affair with a former staffer who later died after she set herself on fire. Gonzales is refusing to step down and has said that there will be “opportunities for all of the details and facts to come out” and that the stories about the situation do not represent “all the facts.”
Gonzales is facing a primary challenge from Brandon Herrera, a gun manufacturer and gun rights influencer who Gonzales defeated by fewer than 400 votes in their 2024 runoff. The White House did not return a request for comment on Thursday on whether Trump stands by his endorsement of Gonzales.
Texas
Man sentenced to 15 years in Texas crash that killed founding member of The Chicks
EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A man has been sentenced to 15 years in prison after admitting his reckless driving caused a head-on collision in rural West Texas that killed Laura Lynch, a founding member of the country music group now known as The Chicks, prosecutors said.
Domenick Chavez, 33, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in connection with Dec. 22, 2023, crash in Hudspeth County, according to a news release Tuesday from El Paso County District James Montoya, who also oversees nearby Hudspeth County.
The news release said Chavez was driving a truck westbound when he tried to pass four vehicles on a two-way undivided highway and collided head-on with Lynch’s eastbound truck. Lynch, 65, of Dell City, was trapped in her vehicle and died. Prosecutors said Chavez was traveling between 106 mph and 114 mph.
Prosecutors said alcohol wasn’t a factor in the crash but that Chavez was driving on a suspended license, which had been revoked due to his failure to comply with DWI-related surcharges and penalties from convictions in 2014 and 2017.
Lynch, along with Robin Lynn Macy and sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer, formed The Dixie Chicks in the late 1980s. Lynch and Macy eventually left the band and Natalie Maines joined the sisters. The trio hit commercial fame with their breakthrough album “Wide Open Spaces” in 1998 and have won 13 Grammys. In 2020, the band changed its name to The Chicks.
In a social media post after Lynch’s death, The Chicks said Lynch had “infectious energy and humor” and was “instrumental” in the band’s early success.
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