Valley Morning Star

U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland recently announced the allocation of funding for drought mitigation projects along the Rio Grande. Few places need such projects more than the Rio Grande Valley, which already is suffering millions in agricultural losses due to the lack of rain and irrigation water.

The oil and gas industries are among the most wealthy and powerful in Texas. They own almost everything, including politicians, including our imaginations, especially RGV elected officials. Some of these officials are so dazzled by that oil and gas wealth that they are considering tax breaks for projects like the Texas LNG and the Rio Grande LNG projects proposed at the Port of Brownsville. As if any petroleum or fossil fuel project needs tax breaks. Spoiler alert: They really don’t.

HARLINGEN — A pastors’ group is standing behind a new state law and is requesting Rio Grande Valley school boards remove a list of books they describe as containing graphic sexuality from their library shelves.

Between the unseasonably warm waters already occurring in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, and the high likelihood of a La Niña developing later this year, weather scientists are predicting that the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season may be one of the busiest on record.

Since its inception in 2021, Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star (OLS) immigration enforcement program has spent $11.2 billion arresting people mostly for misdemeanors, while the prosecution rate is much higher for U.S. citizens and nationals than migrants, according to a new report from the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and ACLU Analytics.

HARLINGEN — Time management.

Funeral services for a Harlingen CISD student who drowned over the weekend will be held this week.

SAN BENITO — As they mull proposed residential and commercial development, city leaders are planning to launch a master plan aimed at guiding the city into the next decade.

Following a successful “wet dress rehearsal” of Starship-Super Heavy on Monday at Boca Chica/Starbase, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote in a social media statement that the fourth orbital flight attempt would happen soon.

HARLINGEN — Very accomplished.