Free Republic

Border Patrol agents seized more than $1.3 million in meth and arrested three people at a checkpoint near Freer Saturday. Agents at the checkpoint were searching a Sedan during secondary inspection when they found 19 bundles of meth in the rear bumper, according to a news release. The drug load had an estimated value of $1,329,920. Agents arrested three people in the ca, who were all identified as Mexican nationals. The drug load was turned over to the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Two security experts from the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory drove to San Antonio, Texas, in March 2017 with a sensitive mission: to retrieve dangerous nuclear materials from a nonprofit research lab there. Their task, according to documents and interviews, was to ensure that the radioactive materials did not fall into the wrong hands on the way back to Idaho, where the government maintains a stockpile of nuclear explosive materials for the military and others. To ensure they got the right items, the specialists from Idaho brought radiation detectors and small samples of dangerous materials to calibrate them: specifically,...

OWENS CROSS ROADS, Ala. - An Alabama 13-year-old found dead in a wooded area last month was beheaded after she saw two men stab her grandmother to death, an investigator testified Thursday. The grisly details of Mariah Lopez’s slaying came out during the preliminary hearing of Yoni Martinez Aguilar, AL.com reported. Aguilar, 26, and Israel Gonzalez Palomino, 34, are each charged with two counts of capital murder in the deaths of Lopez and her 49-year-old grandmother and legal guardian, Oralia Mendoza. Palomino is also charged with possession of methamphetamine. Members of the middle schooler’s family wept as Investigator Stacy Rutherford...

The U.S. Army is standing up the Army Futures Command in Austin, the capital of Texas, in its first major reorganization in more than forty years, Army leaders announced on Friday. The new command will consolidate all Army efforts to prepare for war fighting, from planning to developing future combat systems. The Army had considered more than a hundred locations, but decided on Austin, Texas, since it is a growing tech hub close to top schools and affordable to live in. “The Army made the right choice. The Austin Mega Region has 6,500 high-tech companies, an innovation ecosystem with 36...

EL PASO, Texas - U.S. Border Patrol Agents in the El Paso sector arrested two MS-13 gang members this week. Early Sunday morning, Border Patrol agents working at the Texas Highway 62/180 checkpoint in between El Paso and Carlsbad began tracking a group of nine subjects attempting to walk around the checkpoint. Border Patrol agents caught up to the group after about four hours of trailing them through the desert. The people in the group admitted to entering the U.S. illegally ... one of the men in the group as 25-year-old William Amaya-Ortiz, an active member of the Mara Salvatrucha...

WASHINGTON -- Austin, Texas, will be the location for the headquarters of the new U.S. Army Futures Command, Army Secretary Mark T. Esper announced today at a Pentagon news conference. Army Undersecretary Ryan D. McCarthy then explained the details. He said the process started with 150 metropolitan areas, narrowed down to five. Besides Austin, officials considered Boston; Minneapolis-St. Paul; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; and Philadelphia

In the face of opposition from a majority of Republicans, Texas Sen. John Cornyn partnered with Democrats yesterday to confirm a judicial nominee with a checkered past. Mark Bennett was confirmed to the San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals with 27 members of the 51-member Senate Republican Caucus voting against him.Opposition to Bennett’s confirmation was led by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who grilled him for liberal positions he took while serving as Hawaii’s Attorney General. “[Bennett] was an aggressive advocate, as attorney general, for gay marriage. He was an aggressive advocate demonstrating hostility to the First Amendment and political...

A Houston woman has been sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges that she offered to sell her 2-year-old daughter for sex at a cost of $1,200. Twenty-five-year-old Sarah Marie Peters was sentenced Thursday after earlier pleading guilty to charges that include promotion of prostitution. Authorities say undercover officers in Montgomery County, north of Houston, encountered Peters online on a social media site. They say she forwarded photos of young girls and asked if there was anyone who wanted “to have fun” with her daughter. Detectives watched Peters board a bus in Houston with her...

A North Texas skydiving company is being called racist for rules posted on its website that bar anyone in the U.S. illegally from jumping out of one of the company’s planes. But the company’s owner has doubled down on its stance. Skydive Tandem Greenville, also known as Dallas Skydive Lodge, has a series of “requirements” posted on the company’s website — sort of a “know-before-you-go” set of disclaimers for tandem skydivers. They detail the maximum weight per skydiver and the company’s minimum age requirements.

Hearing with FBI agent goes off the rails after GOP congressman asks how many times he lied to his wife about cheating on her A congressional hearing devolved into chaos Thursday afternoon when Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas attacked FBI agent Peter Strzok over his extramarital affair with FBI lawyer Lisa Page. While accusing Strzok of lying under oath, Gohmert said, "I can't help but wonder when I see you looking there with a little smirk, how many times did you look so innocently into your wife's eye and lied to her about Lisa Page?" The House chamber quickly broke...

Kid in viral video receives MAGA hat signed by President Trump A kid who went viral when, police say, his "Make America Great Again" hat was stolen at a local Whataburger, has received a new hat signed by President Trump.

The Senate on Wednesday took a symbolic shot at President Trump’s trade policy amid anxiety on Capitol Hill over his tariff strategy. Senators voted 88-11 to instruct lawmakers hashing out a deal on a government funding bill to include language “providing a role for Congress” on tariffs implemented for national security reasons, known as Section 232 of the trade laws. The vote is nonbinding, meaning lawmakers don’t have to add trade language into the funding bill. But the vote margin, with more senators supporting it than the amount needed to override a veto, underscores the depth of concern on Capitol...

Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) has reportedly raised more than $10.4 million over the past three months, placing him second among the top fundraisers this election season. O’Rourke, who is challenging incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), told his followers in a video posted to Twitter that his campaign raised the enormous sum with 215,714 individual contributions. The average donation was $33 over the past three months, he said. “In the last three months, all of us together, without PACs [political action committees] or corporations, or special interests, have raised more than $10.4 million,” O’Rourke said. “That comes from 215,714 individual contributors,...

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) held a joint call Tuesday to announce their efforts to comply with a June 26 federal court ruling mandating children under five years old in HHS custody be “reunited” with parents if they were separated at the border. U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, in response to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit, set a July 10 deadline to reunite the families and refused to provide additional time for the government to use DNA testing to determine if the people in question are even the 102...

•Texas claims the top spot in CNBC's 2018 America’s Top States for Business rankings. •The energy sector is helping to turbocharge the $1.6 trillion Texas economy. •Texas has added more than 350,000 jobs in the past year. •Texas is home to some of America's most important public and private companies, including giants like AT&T, ExxonMobil and Dell. Riding the rising tide of energy prices—and the job growth that goes with it—Texas claims the top spot in CNBC’s 2018 America’s Top States for Business rankings. This is familiar territory for the Lone Star State, which becomes the first four-time winner in...

WASHINGTON (AP) - New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and his security detail violated both Mexican and U.S. immigration laws by crossing the border on foot during a visit near El Paso, Texas, U.S. Customs and Border Protection alleges in a letter obtained by The Associated Press. The mayor's office flatly denied the allegation.-snip-According to the letter, a uniformed Border Patrol agent noticed a group on the Rio Grande River flood plain south of the Tornillo, Texas, Port of Entry, taking photos of the holding facility. The agent asked if anyone from Border Patrol or public affairs was there...

What's the matter with you, Variety magazine? I know you cover show business, but you're also a liberal publication so why would you want to kill the U.S. Senate campaign of Democrat Robert (Beto) O'Rourke in Texas by publishing about his treks to Hollywood to raise campaign money. Such methods of campaign financing are not exactly popular in the Lone Star State as witness what happened to another liberal Democrat, Wendy Davis, who used Hollywood cash in a failed attempt to become governor. What should have been kept under the radar to help O'Rourke was foolishly revealed by Ted Johnson of...

Senate Democratic candidates are breaking with progressives who are calling for the abolishment of ICE. The push to nix Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has gained steam among the party’s resurgent liberal base in response President Trump’s immigration policies that led to the separation of thousands of immigrant families along the U.S.-Mexico border. House candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez brought the issue into the national spotlight with her shocking defeat of Rep. Joseph Crowley (D) in last month’s New York primary. And some of the party’s 2020 presidential hopefuls, including Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) and Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), have rallied behind the...

'Why do teachers have to die protecting their students? Why can't we live protecting our students?' In the weeks and months since the school shootings in Parkland, Florida, and Santa Fe, Texas, the debate over whether teachers should be able to carry firearms in schools has received a great deal of attention. A number of states have allowed teachers to carry firearms in schools for years and provide some insight into how such programs work in practice and what motivates teachers who want to be armed. In Colorado, local school districts have the authority to but are not required to...

The Port Isabel Detention Center in Los Fresnos, Texas, is currently holding many of the parents who have been separated from their kids. But while PIDC is owned by ICE, its guards are provided by a subsidiary of Ahtna, Inc., a portfolio of businesses operated by the Ahtna, a federally recognized Alaska Native people. Ahtna, Inc. is one of a number of companies profiting off of the deportation of undocumented immigrants from the United States. Previous reporting by The Daily Beast has revealed that the federal government currently employs the services of several companies and charities bringing in millions of...