Dallas police seek information about the September 12 Highland Hills shooting that killed Zariea Brown and wounded five.

Highland Hills residents say they've been asking for help for years. After another deadly shooting, Dallas leaders finally walked the neighborhood. Aqua RichJo/October 1, 2026 Imagine hearing gunshots outside your home so often that your response isn't shock anymore. It's getting on the floor. Now imagine being elderly and knowing that once you get down there, you might not be able to get yourself back up. That's what Highland Hills resident Anita Harris described after years

Aqua RichJo | September 29, 2026 Two Atmos Energy contract workers were hospitalized after a pipe ruptured during an air-pressure test near the Alexan Riveredge Apartments early Monday. Dallas Fire-Rescue said the incident happened shortly before 4 a.m. near the 1200 block of Turtle Creek Boulevard in Dallas’ Design District. The complex had already been evacuated earlier this month because of a separate natural-gas leak. Dallas Fire-Rescue initially described both workers’ i

Aqua RichJo| September 27, 2026 Need to visit a Dallas library, recreation center or City Hall on Monday? Change those plans. Dallas will hold its third mandatory employee furlough day on September 28, closing many public facilities as the city responds to a financial shortfall. Essential services will continue, but residents and workers will feel the disruption. City Hall, every public-library branch, recreation centers, aquatic facilities, golf courses, Fair Park and Code C

Aqua RichJo | September 26, 2026 The known backlog of delayed Texas voter-registration records has reached at least 200,000. Applications and updates submitted through the Department of Public Safety’s online driver’s license portal were not sent to counties as expected. DPS now says the problem was connected to an October 2025 software update by a third-party vendor. People using the portal had no warning that their information had stalled. Counties must now process those de

Aqua RichJo| September 25, 2026 At UT Austin, students may still be able to take classes on Black women’s history, LGBTQ literature and women’s lives. But under the university’s redesigned core curriculum, none of the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies courses submitted for review were approved to satisfy core requirements. That is a decision about what counts toward every undergraduate’s foundational education—and who gets to make that call. Reporting published September

Aqua Jones | September 25, 2026 Dallas County has received more than 68,000 voter-registration records that were delayed by a state transmission error. Collin County received about 40,000. Across seven counties that have reported figures, the known total exceeds 178,000 records—and Texas still has not said exactly what caused the failure. Let’s get the number right: 178,000 records does not necessarily mean 178,000 people lost their right to vote. The files include applicatio

Aqua Richjo | September 25, 2026 A woman called police during a domestic disturbance in April 2024. Former Lewisville officer Filemon Perez met her while responding to that call. On September 24, a Denton County jury convicted Perez of stalking her. According to KERA’s report on the trial, evidence showed Perez visited the woman’s apartment complex 83 times over roughly six months while on duty. GPS records reportedly showed that almost all of those visits had no legitimate w

Aqua RichJo| September 25, 2026 Crystal Mason cast a provisional ballot in 2016. It was never counted. The Fort Worth woman was still convicted of illegal voting, sentenced to five years in prison and left to fight the case for nearly a decade. Now her acquittal stands. On September 24, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed prosecutors’ request to review the ruling that cleared Mason. The court said it had improvidently granted review, meaning it should not have taken

Aqua RichJo | September 24, 2026 The federal government says it canceled about 315,000 Affordable Care Act Marketplace enrollments covering more than 760,000 people. Its reason: CMS says the enrollments were unauthorized. The question for patients is immediate: Is my coverage still active? CMS announced the action on September 22, but its fact sheet says the cancellations happened August 31. The agency expects to recover approximately $2.2 billion in premium subsidies tied to

Aqua RichJo | September 24, 2026 Wilber Rafael Garces Perez was shot during an ICE stop in Austin. The officer who fired had been issued a body camera but was not wearing it, according to news reports. Now Garces Perez is in ICE detention, and a member of Congress says he needs surgery to remove a bullet near his spine. A camera cannot answer every question about a shooting. Here, the footage that might show the moment an officer fired reportedly does not exist. Another offic

Texas has until December 31, 2029, to install air conditioning in every state prison under a federal court order issued this week. U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman found that extreme heat in uncooled prisons violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. He ordered prison officials to begin a plan immediately and report their progress to the court every six months.

Texas county election offices are receiving a backlog of voter registration records that the Department of Public Safety did not previously transmit from its online driver’s-license services. The discovery comes less than two weeks before October 5, the deadline to register for the November 3 election.

KERA reports at least five other in-custody deaths at the Tarrant County Jail this year and more than 80 jail deaths since Sheriff Bill Waybourn took office in 2017.