Thirteen people dead in two mass shootings. Eight immigrants killed when an SUV slams into a crowded bus stop. The likely approval of legislation that would let the Republican governor overturn elections in the most populous county, a Democratic stronghold. All in the past two weeks. These issues and the forces behind them – anger and guns, immigration turmoil, deep political divisions about what democracy means – are playing out across American life in various ways. But in Texas, with its immense size and a population that grows by more than 1,000 people a day, the stage is far bigger – and often louder. It’s enough to make even the proudest Texan wrestle with how he sees the state. “This is out of control right now,” said Jay Leeson, an illustrator and cartoonist who lives in Lubbock, a city in the Texas High Plains. He describes himself as a “conservative West Texan” whose kids “know how to handle guns, know how to ride horses, know how to do all the Texas things.” The “Texas things.” Texans have heard this all before. They’ve been hearing it for generations. That everyone is armed. That it’s a wildly conservative place full of oil…

Authorities on Monday still had not captured a gunman in Texas who killed five neighbors, and as the search dragged into a third day with false alarms and few apparent leads, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott faced backlash over drawing attention to the victims’ immigration status. An FBI agent on the scene near Houston acknowledged they have little to go on in the widening manhunt for 38-year-old Francisco Oropeza, who has been deported four times since 2009, but who neighbors say lived on their street for years prior to Friday night’s shooting. Abbott offered a $50,000 reward over the weekend for any tips that might lead to Oropeza, and while doing so, the three-term governor described on Twitter all the victims as “illegal immigrants” – a potentially false statement that his office walked back and apologized for Monday. Critics accused Abbott, who has made hardline immigration measures a signature issue in Texas, of putting politics into the shooting. KPRC in Houston reported that at least one of the victims was a permanent legal resident, despite the governor’s claim. “We’ve since learned that at least one of the victims may have been in the United States legally,” Abbott spokeswoman Renae Eze said…

An American Airlines worker died Thursday after being injured at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, according to airport officials. The worker was injured in the area where planes pull up to the terminal, an airport spokesperson said. Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services said it was called shortly after 2 p.m. Thursday and found a person dead from “traumatic injuries.” Corporal Destiny Silva with the Austin Police Department said the employee had been operating a ground service vehicle that struck a jet bridge. APD’s Vehicular Homicide Unit is investigating the crash as an accidental death, according to Corporal Silva. “I don’t have any indication that anyone is not cooperating. The main focus here is that someone unfortunately lost their lost in an unfortunate accident. We are utilizing all of our resources,” Silva said Thursday evening. American Airlines released a statement on the matter Thursday. “We are devastated by the accident involving a team member at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport,” said a spokeswoman for American Airlines. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and our local team members.” Fort Worth-based American declined to comment further. The name and sex of the worker and details about how they were injured were not immediately available. Working around…

Imagine the marketing challenge of updating a restaurant where a cult movie about a cannibalistic family was filmed. But Simon Madera and his fellow investors saw an opportunity when they bought the Grand Central Café, a Central Texas restaurant that was one of the settings for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Embracing the building’s past, they renamed the Kingsland restaurant Hooper’s, in honor of Tobe Hooper, the late Texas filmmaker who directed the horror classic. He died in 2017. “We’re absolutely, 100% leaning into it,” Mandera said. “There’s a lot of delicate pieces that we’re adding to the place to pay homage to the movie.” Madera, who was behind the Taco Flats franchise chain in the 512 area code, joined with his wife, Hobie Sasser, and Courtney and Mike Rhodes, all from Austin, in acquiring the Grand Central Café in November. At first, Madera wasn’t familiar with the century-old Victorian-era house’s cultural heritage. In the movie, a group of teenagers falls prey to a clan of cannibals, including the notorious chainsaw-wielding Leatherface. Hooper, an Austin native, filmed some of the more gruesome scenes in the house. The house originally stood near rural Round Rock. In 1998, as Round Rock was seeing development, the structure — a pattern-book…

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw is promising to help fix a major security gap in the state’s vehicle inspection program, a gap first exposed in an exclusive report from NBC 5 Investigates. Our reporting showed how some state-licensed vehicle inspection stations are taking cash in exchange for falsely passing cars — and the state’s computer system does nothing to flag the fake inspections and prevent those cars from getting real Texas license plates. Cars that were never checked, and may be unsafe on the road. A group of Travis County law enforcement investigators told NBC 5 Investigates their own analysis of state data showed as many as five million cars on Texas roads had “clean scans” — fake inspections — where someone pays a state-licensed inspector to falsely pass an emissions test and skip the safety checks on things like the brakes and tires. Making things worse, NBC 5 Investigates discovered the state inspection computer system maintained by TCEQ captures data showing many inspections are fake but does not stop those cars from falsely passing. For weeks, NBC 5 has requested interviews with the heads of two state agencies in charge of the inspection system, the Texas…

The U.S. military is investigating the death of a soldier at a Texas Army post that in recent years has struggled with homicide, suicide and sexual assault among its troops. Fort Hood officials said Wednesday that Pvt. Ana Basaldua Ruiz, a combat engineer who spent 15 months with the 1st Cavalry Division, died on Monday. Basaldua Ruiz, 20, who was from Long Beach, California, joined the Army in July 2021 and was assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division since December that year, NBC News reported. Officials at the military installation 150 miles southwest of Dallas initially did not release further information about Basaldua Ruiz or the circumstances surrounding her death. They said in a statement that her family would be provided with support and “all releasable information.” Fort Hood then shared an update Thursday, saying the Department of the Army Criminal Investigation Division confirmed that “at this point in the investigation into the death of Pvt. Ana Basaldua Ruiz no foul play is evident, and will remain under investigation.” “Army CID will continue to conduct a thorough investigation and gather all evidence and facts to ensure they discover exactly what transpired. Information related to any possible harassment will be addressed…

Texans should get ready for an abundant, flourishing wildflower season this year. According to experts at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, wildflower season in Texas will be especially lush in 2023. “I think it’s going to be an above-average spring, particularly when it comes to bluebonnets,” says Andrea DeLong-Amaya, the center’s director of horticulture. “We had good fall rain when the seedlings were just starting to come up, and that continued through the winter.” Rainfall is not the only factor that contributes to the time that the wildflower season begins. Temperatures in Texas year-round can cause the wildflowers to bloom earlier or later. “We’ve had above normal rainfall in the fall which is good because that’s when not only bluebonnets but the other wildflowers typically germinate,” Julie Marcus, senior horticulturist at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, said. “But we’ve had such warmer temperatures, seasonally warm temperatures, that have caused them to bloom a little earlier. We are a little worried now that they are going to peak earlier than normal.” Weather maps shared by David Yeomans, KXAN meteorologist, and Wildflower Center advisory council member, indicate that January and February were significantly warmer during 2023 in Texas than…