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AUSTIN (Nexstar) — A deadly attack by a gunman on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Dallas is leading to calls to tone down heated political rhetoric.
The gunman acted alone. On Thursday, officials said the investigation showed the shooter hated the U.S. government and wanted to incite terror by killing federal agents, offering the first hint of a motive in the attack.
The shooting early Wednesday targeted the ICE building, including a van in a gated entryway that held detainees. One detainee was killed, and two other were critically wounded. No ICE personnel were hurt.
Investigators say the gunman fatally shot himself.
Reactions from state leaders poured in as the investigation got underway.
Shortly after the attack, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, spoke at a news conference near the scene in Dallas. “Politically motivated violence is wrong,” Cruz told reporters.
Cruz called on politicians to stop using rhetoric directed at immigration law enforcement. “This has very real consequences. In America, we disagree. That’s fine, that’s the democratic process, but your political opponents are not Nazis,” Cruz said.
Former Dallas-area congressman Colin Allred, a Democrat who is currently who is running for U.S. Senate, emphasized the importance of denouncing violent rhetoric.
“We all have a responsibility in our personal lives to try and lower the temperature, to get us back to a more civil discourse, and to ensure that this does not become a larger pattern that we have to deal with across our state and our country,” Allred said.
The attack in Dallas happened just days after the funeral for conservative activist Charlie Kirk. In the weeks since his assassination, campuses across the country have wrestled with questions about free speech rights.
Attorney General Ken Paxton joined Stratford High School students in Houston on Wednesday to celebrate the inception of their Charlie Kirk-inspired student group.
“I’m here because I respect what you’ve done, and I want to stand with you,” Paxton said during the event at the Moran Hotel.
Paxton first got involved with the Stratford students when he responded to a post about their struggles to find faculty representation to start their “Club America” — the youth branch of Kirk’s ‘Turning Point USA.’ The post claimed a Stratford parent Facebook group reached out to the teachers who had agreed to sponsor the program due to opposition of Kirk’s views. The club’s first pair of sponsors withdrew their support.
“These are sick individuals,” Paxton posted on Sept. 19. “My office will review these messages for any violations of the law. The radical leftist culture of suppression must be totally defeated. We are not backing down, and we will not be silenced.”
Eventually, the Stratford students found a sponsor, and officially chartered their club on Monday. The Wednesday celebration took place on the two-week anniversary of Kirk’s assassination in Utah.
Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission bans THC sales for minors
Less than two weeks after Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order requiring state agencies to take steps to ban THC sales to minors, the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) created an emergency rule to ban sales to those under 21.
The rule — adopted unanimously at the TABC Commission meeting Tuesday morning — would cancel the license of a TABC licensee who “sells, offers to sell, serves, or delivers a consumable hemp product to a minor.” The regulation carves out exceptions for retailers who “reasonably” believed the customer was not a minor, and the minor lied about their age.
Capitol Context: The cannabis compound now targeted by a Texas lawmaker
In addition, TABC adopted a rule preventing sale of consumable hemp to anyone who fails to provide a “valid, unexpired proof of identification issued by a governmental agency that contains a physical description and photograph consistent with the person’s appearance and that purports to establish that the person is 21 years of age or older.”
TABC passed the rule on an emergency basis, allowing for immediate effect with enforcement starting on Oct. 1. On Friday, the State Department of Health Services said it would also be implementing an age restriction emergency rule in the coming days.
‘Change is hard’ – Texas Democrats expand offices in effort to end statewide losing streak
It has been more than 30 years since a Democrat won a statewide election in Texas. Now, the Texas Democratic Party is testing out a new strategy for the 2026 midterms: moving.
The party voted earlier this month to expand to five cities, adding offices in Amarillo, Eagle Pass, Dallas and Houston and maintaining an office in Austin, the party’s current headquarters. Party Chair Kendall Scudder said administrative duties will now be distributed between Dallas, Houston and Austin.
“We need to build a working class army in 254 counties all across this state,” Scudder said. “We don’t win elections by locking ourselves into rooms in Austin.”
“Change is hard, but I would hope that if you’re a Democratic activist around this state, you would find the consistent decades of loss a little bit harder to swallow,” Scudder said. “In order to win Texas, Democrats have to start doing things differently.”
Scudder took office as chair in April, and has since claimed a new era for Texas Democrats is on the horizon— a similar sentiment found during the 2018 midterm season, when Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke narrowly lost to Sen. Ted Cruz.
“Showing up in every corner of this state and talking to people and shaking their hands and standing for something, actually moved the needle in a big way,” Scudder said, referring to O’Rourke’s 2018 campaign. “If we do that cycle over cycle, that’s how you start to move the state permanently.”
James Dickey, who was Chairman of the Republican Party in 2018, said that next year Republicans will be the ones to see gains.
“The policies of the parties either do or do not reflect every day Texans,” Dickey said. “Republicans are absolutely standing up for every day Texans, and it’s going to be reflected in the election results next year.”
Political party organizations, like the Texas Democratic Party, help recruit and train candidates, fundraise for campaigns and run elections locally.
“The most important thing has always been that the party does what only the party can do,” Dickey said. “And to do that, of course, you have to build trust, and you have to raise funds, and you have to build willingness and interest among the populace, the voters.”
Miller calls for ‘One-two punch’ to eradicate New World screwworm
The New World screwworm (NWS) — a maggot which feeds off living flesh — is on Texas’s doorstep.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the pest was spotted by Mexican authorities in Sabinas Hidalgo in the Mexican state of Nuevo León. The city is less than a two-hour drive to Laredo, Texas.
According to the USDA, the newest screwworm outbreak in Central America in 2023, and officials started to be concerned about a potential spread as early as January. The parasite last wreaked havoc in the United States in the 1950s, costing farmers an estimated $50-$100 million per year in the American Southwest.
In June, Texas created a response team to deal with the NWS. Then, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins visited the Texas Capitol to announce a new sterile fly production facility planned to be constructed in Edinburg. The facility will breed 300 million flies a week with the intention of releasing the sterile male flies into the population. Using sterile populations for control was developed at the University of Texas in Austin by entomologists, Edward F. Knipling and Raymond C. Bushland.
The USDA and the Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC) said the sterile fly technique is the proven method to eradicate the pest from the country. But Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said his agency has created a new fly bait that, coupled with the sterile fly technique, can eradiate the pest in just 90 days. It previously took the U.S. decades to remove the pest south of the border.
The bait, called TDA Swormlure, is being tested in Panama, a hot zone for the screwworm. Miller said he had faced pushback from the USDA on deploying them in Texas.
“They are still hell-bent on a 70-year-old technology of sterile flies only. There is a fly bait that kills 90% of these flies. All I’m asking is just put out the fly bait and stop this nonsense,” Miller said.
He believes the sterile fly technique will take too long to remove the pest, which could wreak havoc on the cattle industry in Texas, harming jobs and the food supply. He claims it will take four years to build the sterile fly production facility in south Texas. There is no specific timeline of when that facility will be operational.
“We don’t have four years to wait on sterile flies to solve this problem,” Miller said.
On Friday, Miller announced that his department plans to start deploying fly traps in high-risk zones along the Texas-Mexico border and around major port regions. The strategy emphasizes early detection and quick response.
“The New World screwworm poses a serious threat to Texas livestock and rural communities,” said Commissioner Miller. “We are taking proactive steps to monitor, detect, and stop this parasite before it harms Texas agriculture. Our farmers, ranchers, and consumers depend on us being ready, and we will be.”