Free Republic

Governor Abbott Designates Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR As Foreign Terrorist Organizations. November 18, 2025 | Austin, Texas | Press Release. Governor Greg Abbott today designated the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations. This designation authorizes heightened enforcement against both organizations and their affiliates and prohibits them from purchasing or acquiring land in Texas. “The Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR have long made their goals clear: to forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world,’" said Governor Abbott. "The actions taken by the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR to support...

A Dallas congresswoman opened her Senate campaign by telling voters that she “has gone toe to toe with Donald Trump.” Her Democratic primary opponent insisted that Americans are tired of “politics as a blood sport.” The divergent approach highlights how U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett and state Rep. James Talarico are navigating a race where Democrats hope to break a three-decade losing streak in Texas. It also reflects a broader divide within the party, with some candidates continuing to focus on Trump while others barely mention his name on the trail. Figuring out the best approach will be critical for Democrats...

Camp Mystic has announced its plan to reopen next summer with new safety measures after more than two dozen people were killed in floods at the all-girls Texas summer camp earlier this year. Twenty-seven children and camp counselors died after slow-moving thunderstorms in Kerr County caused the Guadalupe River to flood. In a message to parents issued Tuesday, the camp said it is preparing for next summer's event at their newer Cypress Lake location, which is "completely independent from the older Guadalupe River camp…” The camp said it has taken steps to enhance security at the location, including installing over...

Federal prosecutors have filed additional terrorism-related charges against six additional people in connection with the July 4 shooting outside the Prairieland immigration detention center near Alvarado, Texas, with six other defendants scheduled to enter guilty pleas. The latest indictment was issued Friday and expands on earlier charges. According to the Associated Press, the new counts relate to President Donald Trump’s declaration of Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. The violence occurred on July 4 outside the Prairieland facility, which is southwest of Dallas. Prosecutors say a group of suspects set off fireworks, vandalized vehicles and opened fire on responding officers....

In the pitch-black, storm-lashed hours before dawn on Independence Day, surging floodwaters ravaged Hunt and Kerr County in central Texas, including the summer camp filled with sleeping children. The catastrophic flooding killed 27 girls and counselors at Camp Mystic. The court filings accuse the camp of failing to move cabins out of flood-prone areas, responding poorly to the emergency, and putting profits ahead of the safety of the girls in their care.. Most of the cabins had been located in FEMA’s 100-year “Special Flood Hazard Area” up until 2013. That’s when the camp petitioned FEMA to remove most of the...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) will hold a rally in Texas on Saturday opposing the state’s redistricting efforts alongside local Democratic lawmakers, days after Golden State voters backed a measure to redraw their own congressional districts. Texas was the first of several red states that followed President Trump’s directive to change their congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterms. Though some blue states considered redrawing their maps through the legislatures, Newsom elected to have voters choose if California should proceed with his plan. “California stepped up. Now, we are taking this fight across the country — helping Democrats in other...

Leaders in the Texas House and Senate have formed a new joint committee to investigate the deadly July 4 flooding in the Hill Country, which claimed more than 130 lives and devastated communities along the Guadalupe River. The 10-member panel, made up of five Texas state representatives and five state senators, will “identify ways to strengthen the state’s preparedness and response to flooding and other natural disasters,” according to House Speaker Rep. Dustin Burrows of Lubbock. …Those measures were part of a broader flood package the Texas Legislature passed this summer that set aside nearly $300 million for flood preparedness...

Celina ISD parents packed an emergency school board meeting Thursday night after the arrest of middle school football coach and teacher Caleb Elliott, the son of longtime Celina head football coach Bill Elliott. According to a newly obtained arrest warrant, investigators say the 26-year-old recorded several boys in the locker room during school hours. The warrant states that 12 photos were recovered from Elliott's phone — all described as meeting the criteria of child pornography and showing young boys in various states of dress and undress. During the meeting, parents expressed outrage and heartbreak over the allegations

The incident happened about 1:45 a.m. on Friday, 12 September 2025, in Grand Prairie, Texas. Grand Prairie is midway between Fort Worth and Dallas, on the east side of Arlington. Police officers of the Grand Prairie Police Department went to the wrong address for a disturbance call. Officers said they knocked on the door of a Holly Hills Drive home for about five minutes.The home-renter, Thomas Simpson, a husband and father, said he did not know what was going on. He suspected criminal activity. He exited the house into the garage, then opened the garage door to investigate the situation....

The Austin Police Department (APD) continues to investigate the officer-involved shooting that occurred on Wednesday, September 10, 2025, at approximately 4:11 a.m., in the 700 block of Azie Morton Road. APD understands the importance of building trust within our community and will continue working diligently to develop a strong and trusting relationship. As per our policy, we share information about a critical incident in a timely manner. APD is working with the Office of Police Oversight (OPO) and the City of Austin to release this information today. The news release includes links to the relevant audio and video from the...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vor0BM2b_g An Austin downtown bar was hit with multiple overdoses with five hospitalized and one death reported. The local Fox station says drug dealers are moving away from fentanyl to something more potent.

When Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, dispatched his National Guard troops to Washington to support President Trump’s crackdown on crime, Democrats and other critics wondered why he didn’t keep them within state lines. Memphis, after all, has long been one of the most dangerous cities in the country, with a murder rate about twice as high as the nation’s capital, according to F.B.I. statistics. Nashville has a higher rate of violent crime than Washington as well. The same questions could be asked of other Republican governors like Greg Abbott in Texas, Mike DeWine in Ohio and Mike Kehoe in Missouri,...

“One of the biggest contributors to what we found out– and it could have been any camp, I promise you it could have been any camp– was complacency and human nature, and out of sight, out of mind,” said Republican Texas state Sen. Charles Perry, the committee’s chair. Perry said Senate Bill 1 is the framework to prevent tragedies like Camp Mystic, but the camps will need to follow the provisions in the law. “We did not send Linnie to a war zone; we sent her to camp,” said McGown, who remembered his daughter for her gentle, playful manner. “No...

Hondo and Lytle are one step closer to receiving desalinated drinking water in the future through an agreement between the Nueces River Authority and Port of Corpus Christi. On Tuesday, July 15, the port agreed to lease 31 acres on Harbor Island to the NRA to build the desalination plant. Harbor Island is northwest, across the Corpus Christi Ship Channel, from Port Aransas, and east, across Redfish Bay, from Aransas Pass. Intake and discharge pipes for the plant’s seawater will be positioned about 1.3 miles east of San Jose Island, in the deeper water of the Gulf of Mexico. This...

Representative Eric Swalwell (D-CA) said Tuesday on CNN’s “News Central” that Congress has a “responsibility” to look into whether the Trump administration’s cuts to the National Weather Service affected the amount of deviation of the deadly central Texas floods. Co-host Kate Bolduan said, “To is these deadly floods in Texas as these the search continues for the missing there are big questions being raised about the warnings that happened and the impacts also of cuts to — that the Trump administration had made to the National Weather Service.” Swalwell said, “I do think as lawmakers, we have a responsibility to...

Nearly a decade before catastrophic flash flooding in Kerr County…several local officials were hard at work convincing their peers to buy into a new early flood warning system. The once “state of the art” program installed along the Guadalupe River back in the 1980s was in desperate need of an upgrade, they argued… “I’m not trying to put a dollar on a life or a flood, but the fact of the matter is floods do happen, and we need to be prepared for them,” then-Kerr County Commissioner Bob Reeves noted during a series of public meetings that began in 2016....

Alvarado police officer shot while responding to suspicious person call near Prairieland Detention Facility The shooting of a Texas police officer near a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility and the firing of shots at federal officers over the weekend was a "planned ambush" on the building, resulting in 11 people being charged, authorities said Monday. An Alvarado, Texas, police officer was shot Friday night near the Prairieland Detention Facility, authorities said. "This was an egregious attack on federal and local law enforcement officers and it is part of an increasing trend of violence against them," said Nancy...

Death count in Independence Day flooding in central Texas has now surpassed that of Hurricane Harvey.. As the death count in the Independence Day flooding in central Texas has now surpassed that of Hurricane Harvey, with dozens of children reported dead and missing who were camping at Camp Mystic in Kerr County, Texans are asking why a warning system wasn't in place and why the camp didn’t evacuate when others did. On Wednesday and Thursday, a series of emergency weather alerts were issued by the National Weather Service and Texas Division of Emergency Management. Despite a decades-long history of flash...

The authorities confirmed that 20 girls were still missing as a result of the flooding along the Guadalupe River, but the full scope of the disaster was not clear.Frantic searches were underway for people who were missing in Central Texas after heavy rain set off deadly flooding along the Guadalupe River on Friday, authorities said. A summer camp for girls along the river in Hunt, Texas, told parents on Friday morning that not all of its campers were accounted for after “catastrophic” flooding overnight. In nearby Kerrville, some people huddled inside a church’s activity center, and others looked distraught, shivering...

On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Briefing,” host Jen Psaki stated that California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is doing “sort of the opposite” of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) in that Newsom “doesn’t want the National Guard to be intervening in these protests” and that protests in San Antonio have been peaceful. Psaki said, “This is the scene in San Antonio, Texas right now. Hundreds of people holding signs, playing music, cheering, and chanting, peacefully protesting ICE raids in their community. In response to organizers planning that San Antonio rally, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that he would deploy the...