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Texas passes constitutional amendment explicitly prohibiting noncitizen voting

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Texas passes constitutional amendment explicitly prohibiting noncitizen voting

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Texans overwhelmingly approved a proposal to amend the Lone Star State constitution to stipulate that individuals who are not U.S. citizens are not permitted to vote in the state.

Unofficial results indicate that the proposition decisively passed by just under 72% of the vote.

SJR 37, which is linked to the ballot proposition, indicates that the language, “persons who are not citizens of the United States” will be added to the constitution’s list of classes of people who are not allowed to vote in Texas.

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The Texas flag flies over the circuit prior to the Sprint ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of the United States at the Circuit of the Americas on Oct. 18, 2025, in Austin, Texas. (Bryn Lennon – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images)

The state’s election code already indicates that an individual must be a U.S. citizen to be eligible to register as a voter in the state.

Federal law generally deems it unlawful for aliens to vote in elections for president, vice president, presidential elector, House, Senate, delegate from Washington, D.C., or resident commissioner.

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Voting booths are seen at Glass Elementary School’s polling station in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Nov. 8, 2022.  (MARK FELIX/AFP via Getty Images)

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“It is now in our Constitution that only US citizens can vote in Texas elections,” Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, declared in a post on X.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott poses on the field prior to the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl between the Texas Longhorns and Arizona State Sun Devils at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Jan. 1, 2025. (Todd Kirkland/Getty Images)

Abbott also weighed in on Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral contest.

“Join me for a moment of silence for NYC. Thoughts & prayers,” the governor wrote, adding the praying hands emoji in a post on X.

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Soros-backed Dem reveals he and coalition of anti-Trump AGs met ‘daily’ to strategize lawsuits

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Soros-backed Dem reveals he and coalition of anti-Trump AGs met ‘daily’ to strategize lawsuits

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A coalition of anti-Trump state attorneys general met “daily” during 2025 to brainstorm and organize ways to foil the administration, according to George Soros-backed New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, who has been an active member of the group.

In an interview with Source New Mexico published on Dec. 31, Torrez said that he and other Democratic attorneys general “were meeting on a daily basis for the first 90 or so days” of President Donald Trump’s second term. Since then, Torrez told the outlet, “We have since taken that down to every other day.”

According to Source New Mexico, the result has been that Torrez has led or signed onto 36 legal challenges against the Trump administration since January 2025. This has included a challenge to the Trump administration’s deployment of National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., as well as contesting the Department of Government Efficiency and opposition to some of the administration’s immigration actions.   

In the interview, Torrez described this opposition to Trump as an enormous undertaking and an “ever-growing resource challenge to track and monitor the pending status of all that litigation.”

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Attorney General of New Mexico Raúl Torrez speaks during a rally on January 31, 2024, in Washington, D.C.  (Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Accountable Tech)

Torrez has been New Mexico’s attorney general since 2023. He got his political start in 2016 when he successfully ran for Bernalillo County district attorney. During his 2016 campaign, he received the support of left-leaning super PAC New Mexico Safety & Justice, which was bankrolled by Soros.

According to a June 2016 expenditures and contributions report publicly available on the New Mexico Secretary of State’s website, New Mexico Safety & Justice received a $107,000 donation from Soros. The same filing shows the group spent $92,526.84 on media buys and media production costs in support of Torrez. The group also spent $9,555.00 on “In-Kind Polling to Progressive Champions NM PAC” and $1,951.40 on “polling.”

Torrez’s Republican opponent, Simon Kubiak, dropped out of the race after the contribution. According to 2016 reporting by the New Mexico Political Report, Kubiak cited Torrez’s campaign finances as the reason for his dropping out.

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The outlet reported Kubiak saying that “New Mexicans cannot afford to challenge anyone who has unlimited resources and support from a multibillionaire from another country,” in an apparent reference to Soros, who is originally from Hungary and lives in New York.

After serving two terms as Bernalillo County district attorney, Torrez was elected attorney general of New Mexico in 2022. He took office in 2023.

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George Soros, Founder and Chairman of the Open Society Foundations, arrives for a meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on April 27, 2017.  (Olivier Hoslet/AFP via Getty Images)

Torrez launched his first lawsuit against the administration one day after Trump returned to the Oval Office. On Jan. 21, Torrez joined 17 other state attorneys general and the attorney general of D.C. in challenging Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants.

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In a statement released at the time, Torrez called Trump’s order “a direct attack on the Constitution and the fundamental rights it guarantees to every child born on American soil.” The order is currently blocked while the case is ongoing.

The next month, Torrez led a lawsuit against the Trump administration over DOGE, arguing that Elon Musk and the department were unlawfully granted authority to carry out the planned budget cuts.   

In April, Torrez joined 19 other attorneys general in a lawsuit challenging Trump’s executive order requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.

Then in September, Torrez filed an amicus brief in support of another lawsuit challenging the administration’s deployment of troops to D.C.

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President Donald Trump gestures while walking across the South Lawn of the White House, Sunday, Nov. 2, 2025, in Washington, after returning from a trip to Florida.  (Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo)

According to the interview, Torrez and others in the coalition began preparing for a Trump administration in “early 2024.” Since then, Torrez said, “We have kept our foot on the gas.”

At the same time, Torrez lamented that “the sad part” is that “some of these actions that were pursued by the administration through executive orders are now being built into the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill,’ so even if we win on the restoration of funding from the first fiscal year, we’ll be overtaken by federal legislation.”

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Torrez told the outlet that “none of the institutions in our government have been built to respond and react to the scale and speed of the destruction that’s being wrought by the Trump administration.”

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Fox News Digital reached out to Torrez’s office and campaign and Soros’ Open Society Foundation for comment but did not immediately receive a response. 

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Lost 18th-century Spanish mission unearthed after decades of searching offers ‘rare snapshot’

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Lost 18th-century Spanish mission unearthed after decades of searching offers ‘rare snapshot’

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Archaeologists and students recently uncovered an 18th-century Catholic mission in Texas — a discovery that clarifies a key chapter in the early history of the Lone Star State.

Excavators from Texas Tech University (TTU) unearthed remains belonging to Mission Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo (Mission Our Lady of the Holy Spirit), an abandoned settlement in Jackson County. 

With the help of students, excavators discovered proof of the missing site, which resolves “decades of searching” and “fill[s] a long-standing gap in the historical record of early Texas,” the university said in a recent release.

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Pictures show excavators and archaeologists-in-training smiling at the site, located in southeastern Texas.

Excavation leader Tamra Walter, an associate professor of archaeology at TTU, told Fox News Digital this week that her team found numerous artifacts during the dig.

Researchers and students from Texas Tech University uncovered remains of an 18th-century Spanish Catholic mission. (Tamra Walter/Texas Tech University)

“We found lead shot and sprue, sourced to the mines in Boca de Leones in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, rose head nails — indicative of this time period — [and] parts of a copper kettle, including a handle,” she noted.

Her team also found pottery, plus fired clay and daub from the mud huts of the time — as well as brass trade rings, a part of a pair of scissors and “a number of as-yet unidentified objects.”

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The mission was related to Presidio La Bahía, a Spanish fort, and Fort St. Louis, a colony established by French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle.

La Salle’s settlement, which failed, prompted Spain to reassert control over the region. The Spanish crown promptly launched expeditions, and Mission Espíritu Santo was part of Spain’s effort to “pay serious attention to Texas for the first time,” said Walter.

Artifacts recovered from the mission site include lead shot, rose head nails, pottery fragments and parts of a copper kettle. (Tamra Walter/Texas Tech University)

The religious settlement was only occupied from 1721 to 1725. The professor said that one of the main reasons for its early demise was difficulty in attracting Karankawa Native Americans to the mission.

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“They relied heavily on the labor of Native converts, and without them, they didn’t have the manpower to establish and maintain crops and livestock to keep the operation going,” she said.

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“The local environment was also challenging. It was hot, the area was full of mosquitoes and there were alligators living in the nearby creek.”

The weather combined with difficulty surviving in mud huts led the missionaries to move westward to Goliad, Texas, to set up a new site.

The discovery was made with the help of students, giving them hands-on experience with centuries-old artifacts. (Tamra Walter/Texas Tech University)

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What makes the mission’s remains so special is their rarity. Mission Espíritu Santo was “one of the earliest definitively located Spanish missions in Texas,” Walter said. 

She added that the excavation “helps to provide a rare, undisturbed snapshot of daily life on the Spanish frontier in the early 18th century.”

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“Without La Salle’s colony, this mission and presidio likely would not have existed, and the events that unfolded here helped change the course of Texas history,” she said.

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Walter added that her students were “very excited” to be part of the search for the mission.

The excavation “helps to provide a rare, undisturbed snapshot of daily life on the Spanish frontier in the early 18th century,” said the excavation leader. (Tamra Walter/Texas Tech University)

“They also had the opportunity to work with professional archaeologists from the Texas Historical Commission and even a team of researchers from New Mexico,” she added. 

“I think it is also pretty exciting for them to touch the same artifacts used by the mission occupants more than 300 years ago.”

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Journalist’s dangerous obsession with a forgotten serial killer unraveled her reality

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Journalist’s dangerous obsession with a forgotten serial killer unraveled her reality

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Laura Greenberg was a journalist determined to understand why people kill. In her search for answers, she befriended a long-forgotten serial killer behind bars. As he described his crimes, her sense of reality began to unravel.

Greenberg’s unsettling bond with Doug Gretzler — who, along with accomplice Willie Steelman, killed 17 people, including two children — continues to haunt her decades later. Her search for understanding is the focus of Oxygen’s new true-crime documentary, “Charmed by the Devil.”

The film explores how Greenberg visited Gretzler 350 times, exchanged hundreds of letters and recorded more than 500 hours of audio in a relentless effort to, as she put it, “understand the monster.”

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Laura Greenberg’s startling bond with death row inmate Douglas “Doug” Gretzler is the subject of the new Oxygen true-crime documentary “Charmed by the Devil.” (Oxygen)

Growing up, filmmaker and Nickelodeon voice actor Ben Giroux only knew that his aunt was interviewing “a guy who killed somebody.” It wasn’t until 2020, during the pandemic, that he gained full access to Greenberg’s startling recordings.

“I went and visited Doug 350 times in prison,” Laura Greenberg is heard saying in the documentary. “We wrote hundreds of letters, and we recorded 500 plus hours of audio tapes. I wanted to understand the monster.” (Oxygen)

“She always says there are 17 bodies between them,” Giroux told Fox News Digital. “He was a monster. He was the devil. And yet she was able to look beyond that and establish a human connection. She says she wouldn’t put a label on what that connection was. I’m sure her answer changes daily on how she would define it.”

Giroux noted that the depth of that connection is what makes the story so unnerving.

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Laura Greenberg saved hundreds of hours of recordings from Doug Gretzler, including audio heard publicly for the first time in the documentary. (Oxygen)

“When you walk into her house, it’s basically a museum dedicated to this case,” he shared. “There are police reports, crime scene photos, written letters and paintings. It’s a massive trove of communication between her and Gretzler. It’s an obsession. I think they came to both rely on and become codependent on each other in that obsession.”

Gretzler and Steelman landed on death row after a three-week killing spree in Arizona and California. Steelman died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1986 — the same year that Greenberg, a scrappy reporter for City magazine in Tucson, got a tip about Gretzler that sparked her curiosity.

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Greenberg first contacted Gretzler by letter, hoping to gain his trust. At the time, he refused to discuss his crimes with anyone. Still, her words intrigued him enough to respond. What followed was an unbroken exchange of letters and recorded conversations. Soon after, she visited him in prison.

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Laura Greenberg was a Tucson-based reporter who wanted to know why people kill. (Oxygen)

“Gretzler was somebody nobody had ever heard of because the only person he was talking to was my aunt,” said Giroux.

The boundaries blurred quickly. They bonded over their shared New York City upbringings. Greenberg, who was living with a boyfriend at the time, would wait until he fell asleep, then quietly lock herself in the bathroom, draw a bath and, as she later described, listen as Gretzler spoke in detail about the murders. At one point, he professed his love for her and grew increasingly jealous after she married.

Doug Gretzler (pictured here) and Willie Steelman robbed grocery store owner Walter Parkin and killed all nine people inside Parkin’s home outside Lodi, Calif., the Los Angeles Times reported. Among the victims were a 9-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl. A loved one of the family spoke out in the documentary. (Oxygen)

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“No one knew these tapes existed until now,” executive producer Lauren Flowers told Fox News Digital.

Doug Gretzler had been on death row since Nov. 15, 1976, the Los Angeles Times reported. (Oxygen)

“I was surprised by how ordinary some of these conversations were, knowing the intention was to hear about gruesome crimes and uncover the why. Then you put on another tape and hear them talk about the weather or music, what Laura was buying at the grocery store — even realizing they once went to the same music festival and hung out at some of the same places.”

Flowers noted that the documentary raises difficult ethical questions about how close a journalist should get to a story. The unusual access Greenberg gained — and the intimacy that followed — will likely raise eyebrows among viewers, she pointed out. Giroux and Flowers said the film explores Greenberg’s pursuit as professional boundaries are tested.

Doug Gretzler (left) and Laura Greenberg (right) are originally from New York City. (Oxygen)

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Gretzler gave Greenberg detailed accounts of his life and crimes. At 22, he fled his responsibilities as a husband and father in New York and headed to Colorado, where he fueled his days with drugs and alcohol. 

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Willie Steelman (pictured here), Doug Gretzler’s accomplice, died in 1986 while incarcerated on death row. (Oxygen)

There, he met Steelman, a volatile 28-year-old who had recently been institutionalized. They formed a “pact,” with Gretzler pledging absolute loyalty to Steelman, whom he considered a brother.

Together, they embarked on a cross-country trip with a simple plan — to steal money and drugs. It quickly spiraled into something darker. Gretzler said flatly that it didn’t take much for him to kill.

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Laura Greenberg said she doesn’t regret their controversial relationship. (Oxygen)

While some families said the interviews helped answer lingering questions, Greenberg acknowledged that no explanation could ever justify the brutality of the murders.

Douglas E Gretzler, 22, is seen exiting a police car and is led into the police station after his arrest in downtown Sacramento.   (Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

As Greenberg gathered information, she reached out to loved ones of the victims and to Gretzler’s sister. They opened up to her for the first time.

“On the surface, it’s confusing,” Giroux said. “Wouldn’t they reject someone who became so close to a person who took so many lives and devastated so many families? But I think they’ve come to appreciate her ability to find the truth and dig for every detail. It speaks to her obsessive personality.”

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Doug Gretzler reportedly wrote letters of apology to the families of the victims. (Oxygen)

“She got everyone talking — everyone connected with her,” Giroux said. “She has a real gift for getting people to open up. She certainly did that with Gretzler, who rarely spoke to anyone else. She wanted to leave no stone unturned.”

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Douglas E. Gretzler (left), 22, and Willie L. Steelman, 28, are seen here arriving at the San Joaquin County Courts building. According to Oxygen.com, they claimed the lives of 17 people. (Getty Images)

“Does she accept that boundaries were crossed? I think so,” Giroux said. “She’s incredibly transparent and candid about it. She doesn’t shy away from discussing things that would make others flinch. She’s remarkably open about how deep that connection became.”

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Greenberg said she felt “disgusted” as Gretzler revealed the darkest details of his murders. He spoke not only about the killings, but also about a chaotic childhood, including the death of his teenage brother. She repeatedly challenged him, making it clear that no explanation could excuse the scale of his crimes.

Laura Greenberg’s nephew told Fox News Digital that she still listens to Doug Gretzler’s recordings. (Oxygen)

Greenberg pushed Gretzler as she studied how violence took root in his life and how he justified his heinous acts. For some of the victims’ families, the interviews clarified how and why the crimes unfolded, filling in gaps that police files and court records never fully answered after years of unresolved questions. It gave them a painful understanding of what happened to their loved ones during their final moments.

“I would fill up the bathtub, and I would listen to him talk to me about murder,” Laura Greenberg is heard saying in the documentary. (Oxygen)

“We wouldn’t have reached anyone without Laura,” Flowers said. “Everyone we found said, ‘Do you know Laura Greenberg? You have to talk to her.’”

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“That was especially true with Dee Gretzler, Doug Gretzler’s sister,” Flowers shared. “She was just a kid when she learned about it at school. She lives privately, and this is the first time she’s ever acknowledged that her brother was a serial killer. But she knew that if Laura participated, she could tell her story.”

“Doug and Willie were separate human beings,” retired Tucson Police Detective Weaver Barkman explained in “Charmed by the Devil.” “After they met, this symbiotic relationship formed a third personality. When you put them together, they turn into something that is extremely dangerous.” (Oxygen)

Gretzler invited Greenberg to witness his execution on June 3, 1998. She sat near his sister. In the years leading up to his death, they continued to talk about “everything in life, both profound and mundane,” said Giroux.

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Laura Greenberg is in the process of writing a book about her encounters with Doug Gretzler. (Oxygen)

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“The finality hit her hard,” Giroux admitted. “What’s so strange is how normal their interactions sounded at the end — almost casual. You’d think the execution would be the end of the story, but I think it was the beginning. Her obsession only grew after that, and her commitment to telling every detail of this story intensified after he was executed.”

What remains unchanged are the lives lost.

United Market in Victo, California, an intended robbery target of Douglas Gretzler and Willie Steelman in 1973. It was closed the night their crime spree escalated into the Parkin family murders. (Oxygen)

“I think Laura got Gretzler to accept that the responsibility was his,” Flowers said. “There are a lot of people with s—– childhoods who don’t kill 17 people — something she reminded him of repeatedly. From the start, we felt a responsibility to the victims and hoped to provide some closure to their families.”

In 1998, Doug Gretzler was executed by lethal injection. Laura Greenberg was present at the prison with his sister. (Oxygen)

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“The thing to take away from my aunt’s connection to Gretzler is the danger of obsession — and how we all need to check ourselves,” Giroux said. “You don’t want to go too far down the rabbit hole. This has consumed 40 years of her life.”

“Charmed by the Devil” is available for streaming on Peacock.



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