Southwest
President Trump vows to help Texas recover from deadly flood devastation
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President Donald Trump said the devastation in Texas following deadly flash flooding is “as bad as I’ve seen” but affirmed his administration’s commitment to helping rebuild the Central Texas community Friday on “The Will Cain Show.”
“What they’ve gone through, nobody’s ever seen anything like it, frankly. When you have a wave that’s almost 40 feet high just come rushing through this, you would think it was a dam that burst,” Trump said on “The Will Cain Show.”
“It’s a tough thing that they’re going through, but it’s an amazing community,” he continued.
The president, along with first lady Melania Trump, arrived in Kerrville, Texas, Friday, following massive floods that have taken the lives of more than 120 people. They met with local officials and first responders who are navigating the aftermath of flash floods that devastated the region, after the Guadalupe River surged more than 22 feet in just a matter of hours.
TRUMP, FIRST LADY MOURN YOUNG LIVES LOST IN TEXAS FLOODS, PRAISE FIRST RESPONDERS DURING KERRVILLE ROUNDTABLE
During his visit, Trump met with the families of some of the flood victims, including those from Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp founded nearly 100 years ago for girls. Trump commended their “love for the community” and “how much they love their family” despite this “real tragedy.”
“We’re going to help this community, too. They love each other. I just left this group of people. They just love each other. They love the community, and they’re going to rebuild,” he told Fox News host Will Cain.
Among those who died in the flooding were at least 27 campers and counselors from Camp Mystic. Meanwhile, more than 160 people are missing and unaccounted for in Kerry County, Texas, following the floods, according to officials.
Trump also praised the “amazing job” of authorities and volunteers in Texas who are still facilitating search and rescue operations as well as helping rebuild from the “devastation.”
Fox News Digital’s Diana Stancy, Brie Stimson, Anders Hagstrom, Greg Norman, Landon Mion, Alex Nitzberg, Julia Bonavita, Ryan Gaydos, Daniella Genovese, Pilar Arias, Greg Wehner and Bradford Betz contributed to this report.
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Southwest
Reagan-appointed judge torches colleagues in Texas map fight, calls ruling ‘fiction,’ ‘judicial activism’
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A federal judge in Texas responded to the court’s decision to scrap the state’s redrawn map with a jaw-dropping dissent on Wednesday in which he lobbed dozens of insults at his colleague and repeatedly invoked Democratic mega-donor George Soros.
“This is the most blatant exercise of judicial activism that I have ever witnessed,” Judge Jerry Smith, a Reagan-appointee on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, wrote of the 2-1 decision to toss out the map.
In the turbulent 104-page tirade, he named the majority opinion’s author, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, hundreds of times, accusing him of “pernicious judicial misbehavior.”
The majority opinion would be a “prime candidate” for a “Nobel Prize for Fiction,” Smith said.
“The main winners from Judge Brown’s opinion are George Soros and Gavin Newsom,” Smith said. “The obvious losers are the People of Texas and the Rule of Law.”
REPUBLICANS PUSH BACK OVER ‘FALSE ACCUSATIONS OF RACISM’ IN BLOCKBUSTER REDISTRICTING FIGHT
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has turned to the Supreme Court for relief in the state’s redistricting fight. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Smith, a Yale Law School graduate, wrote that “if this were a law school exam, the opinion would deserve an ‘F.’”
Smith’s dissent came as part of a three-judge panel’s decision in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas to temporarily block the state from using its map in the 2026 midterms. The map had created five new Republican-leaning districts, which the majority said was a product of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has already turned to the Supreme Court for relief.
Just as striking as the dissent itself, which Smith conceded was “disjointed,” was that the two judges in the majority did not wait for it, issuing their decision on Tuesday and leaving Smith’s dissent to land on the docket a day later.
“Any pretense of judicial restraint, good faith, or trust by these two judges is gone,” Smith wrote. “If these judges were so sure of their result, they would not have been so unfairly eager to issue the opinion sans my dissent, or they could have waited for the dissent in order to join issue with it. What indeed are they afraid of?”
Brown was joined in the 2-1 opinion by U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama, an Obama appointee.
The U.S. and Texas flags wave outside the Texas Capitol on July 13, 2021, in Austin, Texas. (Montinique Monroe/Getty Images)
Smith’s broadside focused on Brown, saying that, “true to form,” he preferred to “live in a fantasyland” and had engaged in “judicial tinkering.”
The Supreme Court is now under pressure to act quickly on what has become a pivotal election issue that could shape the outcome of next year’s midterms. Texas requires candidates to declare their candidacy by Dec. 8.
The high court is already considering a similar Voting Rights Act case that originated in Louisiana. The justices heard oral arguments in the case last month and are expected to address the race provision of the law, which is relevant in the Texas case, on a normal timeline during this term.
Brown’s majority opinion in Texas had opened with a quote from Chief Justice John Roberts, who said in an unrelated case, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
FEDERAL JUDGES BLOCK TEXAS FROM USING REDRAWN CONGRESSIONAL MAP
Chief Justice John Roberts attends inauguration ceremonies in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla/Pool via Reuters/File Photo)
“Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map,” Brown wrote.
Brown said Department of Justice Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon’s warning to Texas this year to address four districts with non-White majorities because they were “coalition” districts was a race-based directive as evidenced by Dhillon ignoring all other Democrat-leaning districts that had White majorities. Abbott had responded to Dhillon by adding redistricting to the legislative agenda in a rush, leading to a stunning protest involving Democratic state lawmakers fleeing the state earlier this year.
“The Governor explicitly directed the Legislature to redistrict based on race,” Brown found.
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Southwest
Muslim civil rights group CAIR sues Texas over Abbott’s ‘terrorist’ designation
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A prominent Muslim advocacy organization is taking Texas to court, arguing that Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to brand it a “foreign terrorist organization” tramples both the U.S. Constitution and state law.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin chapters filed a federal lawsuit Thursday seeking to overturn Abbott’s proclamation issued earlier in the week.
“This attempt to punish the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization simply because Governor Abbott disagrees with its views is not only contrary to the United States Constitution, but finds no support in any Texas law,” the group said in its lawsuit.
Founded in 1994, CAIR operates 25 chapters nationwide, including a small Texas staff of eight employees and two contractors, according to the filing.
TEXAS GOV ABBOTT DECLARES CAIR, MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD AS TERRORIST GROUPS, PREVENTING LAND PURCHASES
The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin chapters asked a federal judge to strike down the declaration from the governor. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
“CAIR-Texas and the Texas Muslim community are standing up for our constitutional rights by directly confronting Greg Abbott’s lawless attack on our civil rights,” CAIR-Texas said in a statement. “We are not and will not be intimidated by smear campaigns launched by Israel First politicians like Mr. Abbott. Mr. Abbott is defaming us and other American Muslims because we are effective advocates for justice here and abroad. We plan to continue exercising our constitutional rights, defending civil rights, and speaking truth to power, whether in defense of free speech, religious freedom and racial equality here in Texas or in defense of human rights abroad.”
Abbott’s order extended the “terrorist” label to the Muslim Brotherhood, even though federal authorities have never classified either group that way.
The governor’s decree also bars CAIR from purchasing land in the Lone Star State under a new statute aimed at curbing purchases tied to “foreign adversaries.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s proclamation states that CAIR is blocked from purchasing land in the Lone Star State. (Antranik Tavitian/Reuters)
The group’s filing contends Abbott relied on “inflammatory statements with no basis in fact,” selectively citing remarks by affiliates to paint CAIR as sympathetic to terrorism.
“The lawsuit we have filed today is our first step towards defeating Governor Abbott again so that our nation protects free speech and due process for all Americans,” CAIR Litigation Director and General Counsel Lena Masri said in a statement. “No civil rights organizations are safe if a governor can baselessly and unilaterally declare any of them terrorist groups, ban them from buying land, and threaten them with closure. We have beaten Greg Abbott’s attacks on the First Amendment before, and God willing, we will do it again now.”
The Muslim Legal Fund of America also said it is “proud to defend the constitutional rights of CAIR-Texas and the right of all Texans to engage in free speech and uphold civil rights without facing lawless and defamatory attacks by Greg Abbott.”
“Mr. Abbott’s unconstitutional proclamation undermines the very foundational notions of due process that our system depends upon and it must not stand,” said Muslim Legal Fund of America attorney Charlie Swift. “For the sake of our nation’s basic freedoms, Greg Abbott’s latest attack on the American people must be defeated.”
ANTI-ISLAM PROTESTERS, MUSLIMS CLASH IN DEARBORN, MICHIGAN, AFTER MAN ATTEMPTS TO BURN QURAN
CAIR accused the governor of relying on “inflammatory statements that have no basis in fact.” (Ron Jenkins/Getty Images)
Earlier this year, Texas Republicans sought to stop a Muslim-centered planned community around one of the state’s largest mosques near Dallas.
Abbott and other Republican state officials opened investigations into the development linked to the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC), claiming the group is attempting to create a Muslim-exclusive community that would implement Islamic law.
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EPIC City representatives called the attacks alleging Islamic law misleading, dangerous and without basis.
The U.S. Justice Department closed a federal civil rights investigation into the planned community without bringing any charges or lawsuits.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Southwest
Two Texas men charged in plot to invade Haitian island and make women, children ‘sex slaves’: prosecutors
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Two Texas men have been charged in an alleged plot to invade a Haitian island, kill its male residents and enslave the women and children as their “sex slaves,” federal prosecutors announced Thursday.
Gavin Rivers Weisenburg, 21, of Allen, and Tanner Christopher Thomas, 20, of Argyle, were indicted on charges of conspiracy to murder, maim or kidnap in a foreign country and production of child pornography, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Texas.
“Weisenburg and Thomas intended to murder all of the men on the island so that they could then turn all of the women and children into their sex slaves,” federal prosecutors allege.
SELF-PROCLAIMED ‘APOSTLE’ WHO CLAIMS TO BE JESUS’ BEST FRIEND ARRESTED IN FORCED LABOR SCHEME
Tanner Christopher Thomas, 20, of Argyle, Texas, is pictured here. (Comal County Jail)
Between August 2024 and July 2025, Weisenburg and Thomas allegedly planned to take over Gonave Island “to carry out their rape fantasies,” court documents state.
They intended to buy a sailboat, guns and ammunition and recruit members from Washington, D.C.’s homeless community to “serve as a mercenary force as they invaded Gonave Island and staged a coup d’état,” prosecutors said.
Gavin Rivers Weisenburg, 21, of Allen, Texas. (Collin County Sheriff’s Office)
Authorities allege the pair took steps to prepare for the invasion, including learning Haitian Creole, attempting to recruit others and enrolling in schools to gain skills that would help them carry out the invasion.
Thomas even joined the U.S. Air Force to receive relevant military training, according to prosecutors.
CHRISTIAN SCHOOL TEACHER ARRESTED ON CHILD SEX CRIME CHARGES
Haitians on a boat next to the Cariesse Terminal Ferry travel to Gonave Island, located west of the coast of Port-au-Prince. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
In addition to the alleged invasion plan, both men are accused of producing child pornography.
Gonave Island, located in the Gulf of Gonave, has a population of roughly 100,000, according to La Gonave Haiti Partners.
CONVICTED ‘TEN MOST WANTED’ FUGITIVE FAKED BLOODY DEATH, RESURFACED AS STUDENT BEFORE CAPTURE: AUTHORITIES
A view of Gonave Island, which has a population of roughly 100,000. (Google Maps)
If convicted, Weisenburg and Thomas each face up to life in federal prison for the conspiracy charge. The child pornography charge carries between 15 and 30 years in federal prison.
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The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Texas did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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