Tex's Place

The Glen Canyon Dam holds back the Colorado River to create Lake Powell. (USA Today) By Trevor Hughes Lake Powell, the giant reservoir on the Utah-Arizona border that helps power millions of homes, has fallen to its lowest level ever amidst a worsening western drought. The lake's surface dropped to 3,519.91 feet above sea level on Aug. 15, according to the Bureau of Reclamation's automated gauge system. The previous lowest level was 3,519.92 feet, reached in April 2023. Dropping below 3,490 feet could imperil the lake's ability to generate electricity, and federal officials have been pulling water out of smaller reservoirs upstream to help delay reaching that level. Nevertheless, the lake may fall close to that level, known as minimum power pool, early next spring, according to federal predictions. Further drops could take the lake to what's known as "dead pool," where it's too low to flow downstream. That could spark draconian cuts to how much wat...

By Ben Smith The higher-education lobby has put a price tag on President Donald Trump's crackdown on student visas and international enrollment: $3.4 billion. The figures come from the Association of International Educators (NAFSA) and JB International, which project U.S. colleges and universities could enroll as many as 111,000 fewer international students during the 2026-27 academic year, a 9.5 percent drop from the current year, costing $3.4 billion in economic contributions and more than 39,000 jobs. NAFSA's numbers are preliminary projections, not final fall enrollment totals. The organization is also asking the Trump administration to reverse several policies it identifies as contributing to the decline. The estimate is based partly on responses to the Institute of International Education's Spring 2026 Snapshot on International Educational Exchange. NAFSA projects roughly 1.057 million international students this fall, down from an estimated 1.169 million in 202...

By Teri Christoph U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Adm. Brad Cooper visited the much-talked-about USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) over the weekend, meeting with Sailors and Marines aboard the aircraft carrier as it comes to the end of what he called one of the most consequential deployments of the modern era. Cooper's visit to the Lincoln came as he wrapped up a 10-day trip through Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, where he met with civilian and military leaders, as well as American service members who are deployed throughout the area.  He hopped over to the Lincoln, which is currently in the Arabian Sea, before wrapping up his tour and thanked the crew for their "tremendous dedication and courage." This was actually Cooper's second visit to the carrier this year; he previously visited in February with U.S. Special Envoy for Peace Missions Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Cooper had high praise for what the entire Lincoln...

By Mark Tapscott Remember that old computer wisdom expressed in the acronym "GIGO" — that is, Garbage In, Garbage Out? The fundamental truth of GIGO remains today, and is even more important now with the increasingly pervasive presence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) . Earlier this week, Jim Agresti's Just Facts truth-seeking crew of healthy skeptics, scoffers and cynics published the results of their recent test of detectable ideological bias in the responses of four major AI systems, including ChatGPT , Grok, Google Gemini and Claude. The test consisted of 100 questions put to each of the four AI products, with each query designed to elicit the presence of any ideological bias of either the left or right. The results of the test were quite illuminating, and not only by way of new evidence of the continuing relevance of that old GIGO maxim, according to Just Facts: All of the AIs but Grok scored an “A” on questions designed to elicit falsehoods from the right, while...

By Matt Margolis Luigi Mangione, the man whose assassination of a health insurance executive turned him into a folk hero to many on the left, shocked the country on Friday when he finally admitted to the killing and changed his plea to guilty. "I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan. I understood that my actions would place him in fear of death of bodily injury. I knew what I was doing was illegal," Mangione told the judge. He admitted to stalking his victim, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, in the weeks before he gunned him down. The guilty plea locks in a consequence few outside the courtroom seemed to notice at first: a state court can no longer try Mangione for murder. Mangione had spent more than a year cultivating an image as a martyr willing to fight the system to the end. So why did he suddenly fold and admit everything? According to Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley, the answer has nothing to do with a guilty conscience. Turley discussed the plea with host C...

By Becca Lower Questions are swirling about just what sort of relationship the authoritarian Cuban government and members of a U.S.-based trade union with strong ties to the military have, in a story that went fairly under the radar late Thursday night. Fox News Digital reported that members of Congress are investigating the troubling information, and grilling the International Association of Machinists (IAM) over directives to its members on taking part in activism pushing Cuban propaganda and lobbying to change the U.S. embargo policy against Cuba and its leader, Raúl Castro: A powerful U.S. union representing roughly 600,000 workers is facing new scrutiny over its ties to communist Cuba. Lawmakers are demanding answers about Cuba trips, regime-aligned advocacy and whether union resources helped advance Havana’s policy goals in the United States.… pic.twitter.com/QhbDRK20Xg — Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) August 14, 2026 A powerful U.S. union representing roughly 600,00...

By Teri Christo The Democratic National Committee (DNC) usually makes headlines these days for being dead broke after Kamala Harris bled them dry during her 2024 presidential run. Ever since then, they've been doing nutty things like leveragin g their Washington, D.C., headquarters building to pay their bills and keep their heads above water.  As their money woes increase under the hapless leadership of DNC Chair Ken Martin, the party has grown reckless in its embrace of the far-left activists increasingly calling the shots. The party that couldn't face putting out an autopsy of its 2024 electoral failures is basically inviting a not-so-hostile takeover by the socialists. This was made abundantly clear Saturday as the DNC met for its summer meeting in Austin, Texas, to work through various business items and determine the party policy positions as the November midterms inch closer.  SEE ALSO Below: 'Barbarians Are Inside the Gate': Mike Johnson Nails Insidious T...

By Ward Clark Colorado's increasing leftward tilt is something people have been watching and commenting on for years. I moved to Colorado in 1988, and even then, when Colorado was still, for the most part, South Wyoming, people were beginning to complain about the influx of leftists, mostly from California. That trend accelerated through the 1990s and early 2000s, transforming Colorado from South Wyoming to East California. Now, though, the TURBO button has been hit. Colorado's First Congressional District was always a lefty haven, being in that it encompasses most of the Denver area, but now long-term Democrat Representative Diana DeGette has lost a primary election to a "democratic socialist," or, to put it bluntly, communist, Melat Kiros. Now the Denver business community is rightly worried about this trend towards the nutbar commie left in the Mile High City . Affordability was a top concern for voters who helped launch democratic socialist candidate Melat Ki...

By Ward Clark The more we learn about Dr. Anthony Fauci, the more troubling the picture of his career becomes. It's become abundantly clear that he was not a man of science, but a backdrop manipulator, a purveyor of bad advice, a self-promoter, who managed to make himself one of the wealthiest men in government service.  It seems that Anthony Fauci, post-retirement, got himself involved in countries other than China, and managed to get American taxpayer funding for at least one of his post-retirement efforts. Writing on her Substack, War Room podcast co-host Natalie Winters has painted a very troubling picture of a retired bureaucrat who is using what's left of his influence to funnel American taxpayer dollars abroad. She has all the receipts. Corruption, thy name is Anthony Fauci . Just three months after leaving the federal government, Anthony Fauci took an advisory role at a newly created, Italian government-backed center devoted to vaccines and pandemic preparedness. Le...

By Tyler Durden North Korea has issued a severe warning over the upcoming joint military exercise between the United States and South Korea, characterizing it as a rehearsal for an aggressive war and that it is ready to respond. North Korea's Foreign Ministry described Friday that these planned drills look different, and will be more dangerous, compared to all prior ones of the past-half decade , in that they appear offensive in nature as the exercise will focus on modern warfare tactics. The 10-day Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise will kick off this coming Monday, August 17, and will see tens of thousands of military personnel from the United States, South Korea participate - but also other allied countries such as Australia. "The US announced that the forthcoming exercises are quite different from the ones of the past five years and intended to master the ability of fighting a war on the basis of the new aspects of modern warfare," the North Korea condemnation reads.  ...