texas

She’ll mess with Texas: Nurse keeps mailing abortion pills, despite Paxton lawsuit

Abortion, abortion pills, health, Policy, telehealth, texas / Paul Patrick / January 29, 2026

Texas sues Delaware nurse practitioner shipping out hundreds of abortion pills each month.

A Texas fight with a nurse practitioner may eventually push the Supreme Court to settle an intensifying battle between states with strict abortion-ban laws and those with shield laws to protect abortion providers supporting out-of-state patients.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accused Debra Lynch, a Delaware-based nurse practitioner, of breaking Texas laws by shipping abortion pills that Lynch once estimated last January facilitated “up to 162 abortions per week” in the state.

“No one, regardless of where they live, will be freely allowed to aid in the murder of unborn children in Texas,” Paxton’s press release said.

In August, Paxton sent a cease-and-desist letter to shut down Lynch’s website, Her Safe Harbor, which she runs with her husband, Jay, a former communications director for Delaware’s health and social services department, alongside other volunteer licensed prescribers.

Fretting that Her Safe Harbor continues to advertise that Texas patients can get access to abortion pills “within days,” Paxton characterized Her Safe Harbor as an “extremist group” supposedly endangering women and unborn children in the state. To support that claim, Paxton cited two unrelated lawsuits where men allegedly ordered pills from other providers to poison pregnant partners and force miscarriages.

But Lynch told The New York Times that her lawyers advised her to ignore the demand letter, because Delaware’s shield law is one of the strongest in the country. Just before Paxton sent the letter, Delaware’s law was updated to clarify that it specifically “provides protection from civil and criminal actions that arise in another state that are based on the provision of health care services that are legal in Delaware,” the Times noted. And “even before that,” she said her lawyers “advised her that Delaware’s shield law protects her work.”

Paxton seems to expect the court will agree that shield laws cannot overrule state abortion ban laws or laws prohibiting out-of-state health practitioners from operating on Texans without a state license. His lawsuit demands a temporary and permanent injunction shutting down Her Safe Harbor, as well as the highest possible fines.

In a loss, Lynch could owe millions, as each mail order would be considered a violation of the state’s Human Life Protection Act, Paxton alleged, triggering a minimum $100,000 fine per violation. She could also face substantial jail time, the Austin American-Statesman reported, since Texas abortion “providers risk up to 99 years in prison.”

However, Lynch told the Times on Wednesday that the lawsuit will not stop her from shipping pills into Texas. She’s been anticipating this fight since at least the beginning of last year and remains committed to helping pregnant people in states with strict abortion laws get support from a qualified health provider. She fears that otherwise, they’ll feel driven to take riskier steps that could endanger their lives.

“I don’t fear Ken Paxton,” Lynch told the Statesman last January. “I don’t fear getting arrested or anything like that.”

Nurse plans to defend shield laws

This is the third lawsuit Paxton has filed against an out-of-state abortion pill provider, his press release noted. Legal experts who support abortion ban laws, as well as those supporting abortion shield laws, told the NYT they expect the Supreme Court to eventually weigh the arguments on both sides. If that happened, it could impact law enforcement in about a third of states with “near-total” abortion bans, as well as more than 20 states that enacted abortion shield laws.

To Lynch, abortion ban laws have already proven disastrous, doing more harm than good.

The Statesman cited data from the Society of Family Planning (SFP), showing that after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, medication abortion by telehealth became much more popular in the US. In 2022, this type of service accounted for approximately 1 in 25 abortions; by 2024, the numbers had shot to 1 in 5.

“Nearly half of those prescriptions went to patients in states with abortion bans or restrictions on telehealth abortion,” the Statesman reported, and SFP’s data showed that Texas residents, particularly, were turning more to telehealth. In the first half of 2024, 2,800 Texans per month received abortion medication by mail, which was “more than any other abortion-restricted state,” the data showed.

SFP also found that, overall, abortions had increased following tighter restrictions, totaling more than 1 million in 2023, which SFP noted was “the highest number in more than a decade.”

Lynch told the Statesman that abortion-ban laws “hadn’t stopped her from mailing the medications. They hadn’t stopped patients from receiving them. They just created hundreds of miles between patients and providers,” leaving women “feeling isolated and afraid to access a procedure that’s legal in half the country, and which had been legal everywhere in the US for half a century.”

“They’re truly alone,” Lynch said. “That frightens the hell out of me.”

Lynch’s case, or one of the other Texas lawsuits, could put shield laws to the test and one day clarify for all US residents if medication abortion by telehealth is legal in states with more restrictive laws.

A win could back up shield laws and block Texas from prosecuting providers like Lynch, as well as from enforcing proposed laws like Texas’ House Bill 991. If passed, that law would let Texas residents sue Internet service providers for failing to block abortion pill providers’ websites.

On the Her Safe Harbor website, Lynch and her partners say that patient safety is their priority and that they go beyond what typical providers offer to ensure that people seeking abortions are well cared for. The website details which abortion pills patients will receive (Mifepristone and Misoprostol), while, unlike other abortion providers, also sends pain and nausea medication at no cost. Both the NYT and the Statesman’s reporters confirmed that Her Safe Harbor is also available for patients to check in with any questions or concerns throughout the process.

Paxton seems fixated on Her Safe Harbor’s claims that orders can be shipped to all states, regardless of state laws, which he alleged makes women not seeking abortions vulnerable to attacks by male partners.

However, Her Safe Harbor takes steps to speak directly with patients in states with the most restrictive abortion laws. An Ars test showed that patients seeking consultations from such states are encouraged to call health care providers directly, rather than submit a form that their state could try to subpoena, a step that could prevent the kinds of attacks that Paxton fears. Of course, anyone can still choose to initiate the process using the consultation form, with Her Safe Harbor providing reassurances that the group “has never and will never disclose any private health data to any authority. We will not comply if we are ever subpoenaed.”

“This lawsuit is not about patient safety”

In email comments, Jay Lynch, who helps run Her Safe Harbor with his wife, told Ars that Paxton’s lawsuit is not trying to “protect life” but seeking to “silence medicine.”

“Every day, we provide evidence-based medical care to women who are scared, vulnerable, and often out of options,” Jay said. “We assess medical history. We evaluate risk. We follow clinical guidelines. We act to prevent complications, hospitalizations, infertility, and death. That is what medicine is supposed to do: save lives and reduce harm.”

Jay accused Paxton of “trying to expand state control across borders” and “intimidate providers everywhere.”

“This lawsuit is not about patient safety,” Jay said. “It is about who gets to decide what care is allowed: trained medical professionals—or politicians with no clinical expertise.”

To Jay, a win for Paxton would put patients in a risky place, forcing doctors and nurses to choose between “doing what is medically right, or doing what is politically ‘safe.’”

“That is a dangerous place for any healthcare system to be,” Jay said, noting that “when politicians override clinicians, patients pay the price” through delayed treatment, worsening injuries, preventable emergencies, lost fertility, or their lives.

Working with her husband and other providers, Lynch told the NYT that Her Safe Harbor is currently shipping out hundreds of packages a month. She vowed that as long as threats to abortion access continued to risk women’s lives, the shipments would never stop.

“Women are losing their lives and children are winding up orphans, and babies are being born with non-life-sustaining medical conditions” due to abortion bans and restrictive laws, Lynch told the NYT. “As long as that is happening, there’s absolutely nothing or nobody that will deter us from our mission to bring health care to women.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

She’ll mess with Texas: Nurse keeps mailing abortion pills, despite Paxton lawsuit Read More »

Texas sues biggest TV makers, alleging smart TVs spy on users without consent

Hisense, lg, Policy, samsung, smart tvs, Sony, tcl, texas / Mike M. / December 16, 2025

Automated Content Recognition brings “mass surveillance” to homes, lawsuits say.

Credit: Getty Images | Maskot

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued five large TV manufacturers yesterday, alleging that their smart TVs spy on viewers without consent. Paxton sued Samsung, the longtime TV market share leader, along with LG, Sony, Hisense, and TCL.

“These companies have been unlawfully collecting personal data through Automated Content Recognition (‘ACR’) technology,” Paxton’s office alleged in a press release that contains links to all five lawsuits. “ACR in its simplest terms is an uninvited, invisible digital invader. This software can capture screenshots of a user’s television display every 500 milliseconds, monitor viewing activity in real time, and transmit that information back to the company without the user’s knowledge or consent. The companies then sell that consumer information to target ads across platforms for a profit. This technology puts users’ privacy and sensitive information, such as passwords, bank information, and other personal information at risk.”

The lawsuits allege violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, seeking damages of up to $10,000 for each violation and up to $250,000 for each violation affecting people 65 years or older. Texas also wants restraining orders prohibiting the collection, sharing, and selling of ACR data while the lawsuits are pending.

Texas argues that providing personalized content and targeted advertising are not legitimate purposes for collecting ACR data about consumers. The companies’ “insatiable appetite for consumer data far exceeds what is reasonably necessary,” and the “invasive data harvesting is only needed to increase advertisement revenue, which does not satisfy a consumer-necessity standard,” the lawsuits say.

Paxton is far from the first person to raise privacy concerns about smart TVs. The Center for Digital Democracy advocacy group said in a report last year that in “the world of connected TV, viewer surveillance is now built directly into the television set, making manufacturers central players in data collection, monitoring, and digital marketing.” We recently published a guide on how to break free from smart TV ads and tracking.

“Companies using ACR claim that it is all opt-in data, with permission required to use it,” the Center for Digital Democracy report said. “But the ACR system is bundled into new TVs as part of the initial set-up, and its extensive role in monitoring and sharing viewer actions is not fully explained. As a consequence, most consumers would be unaware of the threats and risks involved in signing up for the service.”

“Mass surveillance system” in US living rooms

Pointing out that Hisense and TCL are based in China, Paxton’s press release said the firms’ “Chinese ties pose serious concerns about consumer data harvesting and are exacerbated by China’s National Security Law, which gives its government the capability to get its hands on US consumer data.”

“Companies, especially those connected to the Chinese Communist Party, have no business illegally recording Americans’ devices inside their own homes,” Paxton said. “This conduct is invasive, deceptive, and unlawful. The fundamental right to privacy will be protected in Texas because owning a television does not mean surrendering your personal information to Big Tech or foreign adversaries.”

The Paxton lawsuits, filed in district courts in several Texas counties, are identical in many respects. The complaints allege that TVs made by the five companies “aren’t just entertainment devices—they’re a mass surveillance system sitting in millions of American living rooms. What consumers were told would enhance their viewing experience actually tracks, analyzes, and sells intimate details about everything they watch.”

Using ACR, each company “secretly monitors what consumers watch across streaming apps, cable, and even connected devices like gaming consoles or Blu-ray players,” and harvests the data to build profiles of consumer behavior and sell the data for profit, the complaints say.

We contacted the five companies sued by Texas today. Sony, LG, and Hisense responded and said they would not comment on a pending legal matter.

Difficult opt-out processes detailed

The complaints allege that the companies fail to obtain meaningful consent from users. The following excerpt is from the Samsung lawsuit but is repeated almost verbatim in the others:

Consumers never agreed to Samsung Watchware. When families buy a television, they don’t expect it to spy on them. They don’t expect their viewing habits packaged and auctioned to advertisers. Yet Samsung deceptively guides consumers to activate ACR and buries any explanation of what that means in dense legal jargon that few will read or understand. The so-called “consent” Samsung obtains is meaningless. Disclosures are hidden, vague, and misleading. The company collects far more data than necessary to make the TV work. Consumers are stripped of real choice and kept in the dark about what’s happening in their own homes on Samsung Smart TVs.

Samsung and other companies force consumers to go through multistep menus to exercise their privacy choices, Texas said. “Consumers must circumnavigate a long, non-intuitive path to exercise their right to opt-out,” the Samsung lawsuit said. This involves selecting menu choices for Settings, Additional Settings, General Privacy, Terms & Privacy, Viewing Information Services, and, finally, “Disable,” the lawsuit said. There are “additional toggles for Interest-Based Ads, Ad Personalization, and Privacy Choices,” the lawsuit said.

The “privacy choices are not meaningful because opt-out rights are scattered across four or more separate menus which requires approximately 15+ clicks,” the lawsuit continued. “To fully opt-out of ACR and related ad tracking on Samsung Smart TVs, consumers must disable at least two settings: (1) Viewing Information Services, and (2) Interest-Based Ads. Each of which appear in different parts of the setting UI. Conversely, Samsung provides consumers with a one-click enrollment option to opt-in during the initial start-up process.”

When consumers first start up a Samsung smart TV, they “must click through a multipage onboarding flow before landing on a consent screen, titled Smart Hub Terms & Conditions,” the lawsuit said. “Upon finally reaching the consent screen, consumers are presented with four notices: Terms & Conditions: Dispute Resolution Agreement, Smart Hub U.S. Policy Notice, Viewing Information Services, and Interest-Based Advertisements Service U.S. Privacy Notice, with only one button prominently displayed: I Agree to all.”

Deceptive trade practices alleged

It would be unreasonable to expect consumers to understand that Samsung TVs come equipped with surveillance capabilities, the lawsuit said. “Most consumers do not know, nor have any reason to suspect, that Samsung Smart TVs are capturing in real-time the audio and visuals displayed on the screen and using the information to profile them for advertisers,” it said.

Paxton alleges that TV companies violated the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act with misrepresentations regarding the collection of personal information and failure to disclose the use of ACR technology. The lawsuit against Hisense additionally alleges a failure to disclose that it may provide the Chinese government with consumers’ personal data.

Hisense “fails to disclose to Texas Consumers that under Chinese law, Hisense is required to transfer its collections of Texas consumers’ personal data to the People’s Republic of China when requested by the PRC,” the lawsuit said.

The TCL lawsuit doesn’t include that specific charge. But both the Hisense and TCL complaints say the Chinese Communist Party may use ACR data from the companies’ smart TVs “to influence or compromise public figures in Texas, including judges, elected officials, and law enforcement, and for corporate espionage by surveilling those employed in critical infrastructure, as part of the CCP’s long-term plan to destabilize and undermine American democracy.”

The TVs “are effectively Chinese-sponsored surveillance devices, recording the viewing habits of Texans at every turn without their knowledge or consent,” the lawsuits said.

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

Texas sues biggest TV makers, alleging smart TVs spy on users without consent Read More »

CDC data confirms US is 2 months away from losing measles elimination status

arizona, CDC, health, Infectious disease, measles, outbreak, texas, Utah, vaccination / Rejus Almole / November 18, 2025

Unsurprising

This 9171 subtype “continues, unfortunately uninterrupted, across multiple jurisdictions,” David Sugerman, who leads the CDC measles response, said on the call.

According to the Times, local health officials are pessimistic that they’ll be able to stamp out the virus’ spread, saying that vaccination efforts have had “limited” impact. As Ars reported previously, vaccination rates are dangerously low in two measles hotspots: northwestern Mohave County, Arizona, and the southwest health district of Utah. Vaccination rates among kindergartners in the 2024–2025 school year were 78.4 percent and 80.7 percent, respectively. That’s well below the 95 percent target needed to keep the virus from spreading onward in the communities.

In addition, public health officials in Arizona and Utah have reported barriers to responding to the outbreak. Around a quarter of cases don’t know how they were exposed, suggesting cases and exposures are being missed. In late October, health officials in Salt Lake County, Utah, said that a person likely infected with measles refused to cooperate with their investigation, leaving them unable to confirm the probable case.

David Kimberlin, who sits on a panel of experts that analyzes measles data for the United States’ elimination status review, told the Times, “It would not surprise me in the least if there’s continued spread across these next several months.”

To date, the CDC has tallied 1,723 measles cases across 42 states. Most (87 percent) of those cases were linked to outbreaks, of which there have been 45 this year. For context, there were 16 outbreaks and a total of 285 measles cases in the US last year. This year’s measles cases mark a 33-year high.

CDC data confirms US is 2 months away from losing measles elimination status Read More »

If things in America weren’t stupid enough, Texas is suing Tylenol maker

autism, health, paxton, Policy, robert f kennedy jr, texas, Trump, tylenol / Kris Guyer / October 28, 2025

While the underlying cause or causes of autism spectrum disorder remain elusive and appear likely to be a complex interplay of genetic and environmental factors, President Trump and his anti-vaccine health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—neither of whom have any scientific or medical background whatsoever—have decided to pin the blame on Tylenol, a common pain reliever and fever reducer that has no proven link to autism.

And now, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the maker of Tylenol, Kenvue and Johnson & Johnson, who previously sold Tylenol, claiming that they have been “deceptively marketing Tylenol” knowing that it “leads to a significantly increased risk of autism and other disorders.”

To back that claim, Paxton relies on the “considerable body of evidence… recently highlighted by the Trump Administration.”

Of course, there is no “considerable” evidence for this claim, only tenuous associations and conflicting studies. Trump and Kennedy’s justification for blaming Tylenol was revealed in a rambling, incoherent press conference last month, in which Trump spoke of a “rumor” about Tylenol and his “opinion” on the matter. Still, he firmly warned against its use, saying well over a dozen times: “don’t take Tylenol.”

“Don’t take Tylenol. There’s no downside. Don’t take it. You’ll be uncomfortable. It won’t be as easy maybe, but don’t take it if you’re pregnant. Don’t take Tylenol and don’t give it to the baby after the baby is born,” he said.

“Scientifically unfounded”

As Ars has reported previously, there are some studies that have found an association between use of Tylenol (aka acetaminophen or paracetamol) and a higher risk of autism. But, many of the studies finding such an association have significant flaws. Other studies have found no link. That includes a highly regarded Swedish study that compared autism risk among siblings with different acetaminophen exposures during pregnancy, but otherwise similar genetic and environmental risks. Acetaminophen didn’t make a difference, suggesting other genetic and/or environmental factors might explain any associations. Further, even if there is a real association (aka a correlation) between acetaminophen use and autism risk, that does not mean the pain reliever is the cause of autism.

If things in America weren’t stupid enough, Texas is suing Tylenol maker Read More »

Big Tech sues Texas, says age-verification law is “broad censorship regime”

1st Amendment, First Amendment, free speech, Policy, texas / Mike M. / October 17, 2025

Texas minors also challenge law

The Texas App Store Accountability Act is similar to laws enacted by Utah and Louisiana. The Texas law is scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2026, while the Utah and Louisiana laws are set to be enforced starting in May and July, respectively.

The Texas law is also being challenged in a different lawsuit filed by a student advocacy group and two Texas minors.

“The First Amendment does not permit the government to require teenagers to get their parents’ permission before accessing information, except in discrete categories like obscenity,” attorney Ambika Kumar of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP said in an announcement of the lawsuit. “The Constitution also forbids restricting adults’ access to speech in the name of protecting children. This law imposes a system of prior restraint on protected expression that is presumptively unconstitutional.”

Davis Wright Tremaine LLP said the law “extends far beyond social media to mainstream educational, news, and creative applications, including Wikipedia, search apps, and internet browsers; messaging services like WhatsApp and Slack; content libraries like Audible, Kindle, Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube; educational platforms like Coursera, Codecademy, and Duolingo; news apps from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, ESPN, and The Atlantic; and publishing tools like Substack, Medium, and CapCut.”

Both lawsuits against Texas argue that the law is preempted by the Supreme Court’s 2011 decision in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, which struck down a California law restricting the sale of violent video games to children. The Supreme Court said in Brown that a state’s power to protect children from harm “does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.”

The tech industry has sued Texas over multiple laws related to content moderation. In 2022, the Supreme Court blocked a Texas law that prohibits large social media companies from moderating posts based on a user’s viewpoint. Litigation in that case is ongoing. In a separate case decided in June 2025, the Supreme Court upheld a Texas law that requires age verification on porn sites.

Big Tech sues Texas, says age-verification law is “broad censorship regime” Read More »

Apple and Google reluctantly comply with Texas age verification law

App Store, Apple, Google, Policy, texas / Paul Patrick / October 9, 2025

Apple yesterday announced a plan to comply with a Texas age verification law and warned that changes required by the law will reduce privacy for app users.

“Beginning January 1, 2026, a new state law in Texas—SB2420—introduces age assurance requirements for app marketplaces and developers,” Apple said yesterday in a post for developers. “While we share the goal of strengthening kids’ online safety, we are concerned that SB2420 impacts the privacy of users by requiring the collection of sensitive, personally identifiable information to download any app, even if a user simply wants to check the weather or sports scores.”

The Texas App Store Accountability Act requires app stores to verify users’ ages and imposes restrictions on those under 18. Apple said that developers will have “to adopt new capabilities and modify behavior within their apps to meet their obligations under the law.”

Apple’s post noted that similar laws will take effect later in 2026 in Utah and Louisiana. Google also recently announced plans for complying with the three state laws and said the new requirements reduce user privacy.

“While we have user privacy and trust concerns with these new verification laws, Google Play is designing APIs, systems, and tools to help you meet your obligations,” Google told developers in an undated post.

The Utah law is scheduled to take effect May 7, 2026, while the Louisiana law will take effect July 1, 2026. The Texas, Utah, and Louisiana “laws impose significant new requirements on many apps that may need to provide age appropriate experiences to users in these states,” Google said. “These requirements include ingesting users’ age ranges and parental approval status for significant changes from app stores and notifying app stores of significant changes.”

New features for Texas

Apple and Google both announced new features to help developers comply.

“Once this law goes into effect, users located in Texas who create a new Apple Account will be required to confirm whether they are 18 years or older,” Apple said. “All new Apple Accounts for users under the age of 18 will be required to join a Family Sharing group, and parents or guardians will need to provide consent for all App Store downloads, app purchases, and transactions using Apple’s In-App Purchase system by the minor.”

Apple and Google reluctantly comply with Texas age verification law Read More »

SpaceX has a few tricks up its sleeve for the last Starship flight of the year

Commercial space, launch, reusable rocket, Science, Space, spacex, Starbase, starship, starship flight 11, super heavy, texas / Rejus Almole / September 30, 2025

This particular booster, numbered Booster 15, launched in March and was caught by the launch tower at Starbase after returning from the edge of space. SpaceX said 24 of the 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines launching on the booster next month are “flight-proven.”

The Super Heavy booster flying next month previously launched and was recovered on Flight 8 in March. Credit: SpaceX

Similar to the last Starship flight, the Super Heavy booster will guide itself to a splashdown off the coast of South Texas instead of returning to Starbase.

“Its primary test objective will be demonstrating a unique landing burn engine configuration planned to be used on the next-generation Super Heavy,” SpaceX said.

The new booster landing sequence will initially use 13 of the rocket’s 33 engines, then downshift to five engines before running just the three center engines for the final portion of the burn. The booster previously went directly from 13 engines to three engines. Using five engines for part of the landing sequence provides “additional redundancy for spontaneous engine shutdowns,” according to SpaceX.

“The primary goal on the flight test is to measure the real-world vehicle dynamics as engines shut down while transitioning between the different phases,” SpaceX said.

Stepping stone to Version 3

After Flight 11, SpaceX will focus on the next-generation Starship design: Starship V3. This upgraded configuration will be the version that will actually fly to orbit, allowing SpaceX to begin deploying its new fleet of larger, more powerful Starlink Internet satellites.

Starship V3 will also be used to test orbital refueling, something never before attempted between two spacecraft with cryogenic propellants. Refueling in space is required to give Starship enough energy to propel itself out of Earth’s orbit to the Moon and Mars, destinations it must reach to fulfill the hopes of NASA and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

The first flight of Starship V3 is likely to occur in early 2026, using a new launch pad undergoing final outfitting and testing a short distance away from SpaceX’s original launch pad at Starbase. Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president of build and flight reliability, told a crowd at a space industry conference earlier this month that the company will likely attempt one more suborbital flight with Starship V3. If that goes well, Flight 13 could launch all the way to low-Earth orbit sometime later next year.

SpaceX has a few tricks up its sleeve for the last Starship flight of the year Read More »

Senators try to halt shuttle move, saying “little evidence” of public demand

Bring the Space Shutle Home Act, Chantilly, Committee on Appropriations, Dick Durbin, discovery, John Corbyn, letter, mark kelly, mark warner, National Air and Space Museum, One Big Beautiful Bill, Senate, senators, Smithsonian, Space, space center houston, Space exploration, space history, Space shuttle, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, ted cruz, texas, Tim Kaine, Virginia / Paul Patrick / September 29, 2025

“Houston’s disappointment in not being selected is wholly understandable,” the four senators wrote, “but removing an item from the National Collection is not a viable solution.”

In July, Cornyn and Cruz successfully added language to the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” championed by President Donald Trump, which enabled acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy to then identify Discovery for relocation. The provision also called for $85 million to be made available to transport and display the shuttle in Houston.

“There are also profound financial challenges associated with this transfer,” wrote Kelly. Warner, Kaine, and Durbin. “The Smithsonian estimates that transporting Discovery from Virginia to Houston could cost more than $50 million, with another $325 million needed for planning, exhibit reconstruction, and new facilities.”

“Dedicating hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to move an artifact that is already housed, displayed, and preserved in a world-class facility is both inefficient and unjustifiable,” the senators wrote.

Risks and rewards

Then there are the logistical challenges with relocating Discovery, which could result in damaging it, “permanently diminishing its historical and cultural value for future generations.”

“Moving Discovery by barge or road would be far more complex [than previous shuttle moves], exposing it to saltwater, weather, and collision risks across a journey several times longer,” the letter reads. “As a one-of-a-kind artifact that has already endured the stresses of spaceflight, Discovery is uniquely vulnerable to these hazards. The heat tiles that enabled repeated shuttle missions become more fragile with age, and they are irreplaceable.”

Kelly, who previously lived in Houston when he was part of the space program, agrees that the city is central to NASA’s human spaceflight efforts, but, along with Warner, Kaine, and Durbin, points out that displaying Discovery would come with another cost: an admission fee, limiting public access to the shuttle.

“The Smithsonian is unique among museums for providing visitors with access to a national treasure meant to inspire the American public without placing economic barriers,” wrote the senators.

Under the terms of the act, NASA has until January 4, 2027, (18 months after the bill’s enactment) to transfer Discovery to Space Center Houston. For its part, the Smithsonian says that it owns the title to Discovery and, as the institution is not part of the federal government, the orbiter is no longer the government’s to move.

Senators try to halt shuttle move, saying “little evidence” of public demand Read More »

Horrifying screwworm infection confirmed in US traveler after overseas trip

health, infection, larvae, Maryland, parasites, screw worms, texas / Paul Patrick / August 26, 2025

Flesh-eating screwworm larvae poised to invade the US have snuck into Maryland via the flesh of a person who had recently traveled to El Salvador, upping anxiety about the ghastly—and economically costly—parasite.

Reuters was first to report the case early Monday, quoting Andrew Nixon, spokesperson for the US Department of Health and Human Services, who said in an email that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had confirmed the case on August 4 in a person who had returned from a trip to El Salvador.

While other outlets have since reported that the screwworm case found in Maryland is the first human case in the US, or first travel-related case in the US, or the first case in years—none of those things are true. Screwworms are endemic in parts of South America and the Caribbean and travel-related cases have always been a threat and occasionally pop up in the US. While the CDC doesn’t keep a public tally of the cases, experts at the agency have noted several travel-related human cases in the US in recent years, including one as recent as last year.

The new case in Maryland doesn’t change anything in the US. “The risk to public health in the United States from this introduction is very low,” Nixon wrote to Reuters. But, what has changed is that the risk of an incursion at the US-Mexico border is no longer low—in fact it’s rather high currently.

Savage parasites

Screwworms were once endemic to the US before a massive eradication effort that began in the 1950s drove the population out of the US and Central America. The flies were held at bay with a biological barrier of constant releases of sterile male flies along the Darién Gap at the border of Panama and Colombia. The flies were declared eradicated from Panama in 2006. But, in 2022, the barrier was breached and the flies have worked their way back up through Central America, including El Salvador, since then. Now they are merely 370 miles or less from the Texas border, and state and federal agencies are preparing for an invasion, including with plans to build a sterile fly facility in the state.

Horrifying screwworm infection confirmed in US traveler after overseas trip Read More »

Time is running out for SpaceX to make a splash with second-gen Starship

artemis, Commercial space, elon musk, launch, NASA, Science, Space, spacex, Starbase, starship, super heavy, texas / Tim Belzer / August 25, 2025

SpaceX is gearing up for another Starship launch after three straight disappointing test flights.

SpaceX’s 10th Starship rocket awaits liftoff. Credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

STARBASE, Texas—A beehive of aerospace technicians, construction workers, and spaceflight fans descended on South Texas this weekend in advance of the next test flight of SpaceX’s gigantic Starship rocket, the largest vehicle of its kind ever built.

Towering 404 feet (123.1 meters) tall, the rocket was supposed to lift off during a one-hour launch window beginning at 6: 30 pm CDT (7: 30 pm EDT; 23: 30 UTC) Sunday. But SpaceX called off the launch attempt about an hour before liftoff to investigate a ground system issue at Starbase, located a few miles north of the US-Mexico border.

SpaceX didn’t immediately confirm when it might try again to launch Starship, but it could happen as soon as Monday evening at the same time.

It will take about 66 minutes for the rocket to travel from the launch pad in Texas to a splashdown zone in the Indian Ocean northwest of Australia. You can watch the test flight live on SpaceX’s official website. We’ve also embedded a livestream from Spaceflight Now and LabPadre below.

This will be the 10th full-scale test flight of Starship and its Super Heavy booster stage. It’s the fourth flight of an upgraded version of Starship conceived as a stepping stone to a more reliable, heavier-duty version of the rocket designed to carry up to 150 metric tons, or some 330,000 pounds, of cargo to pretty much anywhere in the inner part of our Solar System.

But this iteration of Starship, known as Block 2 or Version 2, has been anything but reliable. After reeling off a series of increasingly successful flights last year with the first-generation Starship and Super Heavy booster, SpaceX has encountered repeated setbacks since debuting Starship Version 2 in January.

Now, there are just two Starship Version 2s left to fly, including the vehicle poised for launch this week. Then, SpaceX will move on to Version 3, the design intended to go all the way to low-Earth orbit, where it can be refueled for longer expeditions into deep space.

A closer look at the top of SpaceX’s Starship rocket, tail number Ship 37, showing some of the different configurations of heat shield tiles SpaceX wants to test on this flight. Credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

Starship’s promised cargo capacity is unparalleled in the history of rocketry. The privately developed rocket’s enormous size, coupled with SpaceX’s plan to make it fully reusable, could enable cargo and human missions to the Moon and Mars. SpaceX’s most conspicuous contract for Starship is with NASA, which plans to use a version of the ship as a human-rated Moon lander for the agency’s Artemis program. With this contract, Starship is central to the US government’s plans to try to beat China back to the Moon.

Closer to home, SpaceX intends to use Starship to haul massive loads of more powerful Starlink Internet satellites into low-Earth orbit. The US military is interested in using Starship for a range of national security missions, some of which could scarcely be imagined just a few years ago. SpaceX wants its factory to churn out a Starship rocket every day, approximately the same rate Boeing builds its workhorse 737 passenger jets.

Starship, of course, is immeasurably more complex than an airliner, and it sees temperature extremes, aerodynamic loads, and vibrations that would destroy a commercial airplane.

For any of this to become reality, SpaceX needs to begin ticking off a lengthy to-do list of technical milestones. The interim objectives include things like catching and reusing Starships and in-orbit ship-to-ship refueling, with a final goal of long-duration spaceflight to reach the Moon and stay there for weeks, months, or years. For a time late last year, it appeared as if SpaceX might be on track to reach at least the first two of these milestones by now.

The 404-foot-tall (123-meter) Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster stand on SpaceX’s launch pad. In the foreground, there are empty loading docks where tanker trucks deliver propellants and other gases to the launch site. Credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

Instead, SpaceX’s schedule for catching and reusing Starships, and refueling ships in orbit, has slipped well into next year. A Moon landing is probably at least several years away. And a touchdown on Mars? Maybe in the 2030s. Before Starship can sniff those milestones, engineers must get the rocket to survive from liftoff through splashdown. This would confirm that recent changes made to the ship’s heat shield work as expected.

Three test flights attempting to do just this ended prematurely in January, March, and May. These failures prevented SpaceX from gathering data on several different tile designs, including insulators made of ceramic and metallic materials, and a tile with “active cooling” to fortify the craft as it reenters the atmosphere.

The heat shield is supposed to protect the rocket’s stainless steel skin from temperatures reaching 2,600° Fahrenheit (1,430° Celsius). During last year’s test flights, it worked well enough for Starship to guide itself to an on-target controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean, halfway around the world from SpaceX’s launch site in Starbase, Texas.

But the ship lost some of its tiles during each flight last year, causing damage to the ship’s underlying structure. While this wasn’t bad enough to prevent the vehicle from reaching the ocean intact, it would cause difficulties in refurbishing the rocket for another flight. Eventually, SpaceX wants to catch Starships returning from space with giant robotic arms back at the launch pad. The vision, according to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, is to recover the ship, quickly mount it on another booster, refuel it, and launch it again.

If SpaceX can accomplish this, the ship must return from space with its heat shield in pristine condition. The evidence from last year’s test flights showed engineers had a long way to go for that to happen.

Visitors survey the landscape at Starbase, Texas, where industry and nature collide. Credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

The Starship setbacks this year have been caused by problems in the ship’s propulsion and fuel systems. Another Starship exploded on a test stand in June at SpaceX’s sprawling rocket development facility in South Texas. SpaceX engineers identified different causes for each of the failures. You can read about them in our previous story.

Apart from testing the heat shield, the goals for this week’s Starship flight include testing an engine-out capability on the Super Heavy booster. Engineers will intentionally disable one of the booster’s Raptor engines used to slow down for landing, and instead use another Raptor engine from the rocket’s middle ring. At liftoff, 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines will power the Super Heavy booster off the pad.

SpaceX won’t try to catch the booster back at the launch pad this time, as it did on three occasions late last year and earlier this year. The booster catches have been one of the bright spots for the Starship program as progress on the rocket’s upper stage floundered. SpaceX reused a previously flown Super Heavy booster for the first time on the most recent Starship launch in May.

The booster landing experiment on this week’s flight will happen a few minutes after launch over the Gulf of Mexico east of the Texas coastline. Meanwhile, six Raptor engines will fire until approximately T+plus 9 minutes to accelerate the ship, or upper stage, into space.

The ship is programmed to release eight Starlink satellite simulators from its payload bay in a test of the craft’s payload deployment mechanism. That will be followed by a brief restart of one of the ship’s Raptor engines to adjust its trajectory for reentry, set to begin around 47 minutes into the mission.

If Starship makes it that far, that will be when engineers finally get a taste of the heat shield data they were hungry for at the start of the year.

This story was updated at 8: 30 pm EDT after SpaceX scrubbed Sunday’s launch attempt.

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

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Texas prepares for war as invasion of flesh-eating flies appears imminent

cattle, flesh-eating, flies, health, livestock, mexico, Science, screwworms, sterile insect technique, swormlure, texas, USDA / Tim Belzer / August 9, 2025

Past success

As the flies’ host and geographic range expand, pressure is intensifying to control the flies—something many countries have managed to do in the past.

Decades ago, screwworms were endemic throughout Central America and the southern US. However, governments across the regions used intensive, coordinated control efforts to push the flies southward. Screwworms were eliminated from the US around 1966, and were pushed downward through Mexico in the 1970s and 1980s. They were eventually declared eliminated from Panama in 2006, with the population held at bay by a biological barrier at the Darién Gap, at the border of Panama and Colombia. However, in 2022, the barrier was breached, and the flies began advancing northward, primarily through unmonitored livestock movements. The latest surveillance suggests the flies are now about 370 miles south of Texas.

The main method to wipe out screwworms is the sterile insect technique (SIT), which exploits a weakness in the fly’s life cycle since they tend to only mate once. In the 1950s, researchers at the US Department of Agriculture figured out they could use gamma radiation to sterilize male flies without affecting their ability to find mates. They then bred massive amounts of male flies, sterilized them, and carpet-bombed infested areas with aerial releases, which tanked the population.

Panama, in partnership with the US, maintained the biological barrier at the Colombian border with continual sterile-fly bombings for years. But as the flies approached this year, the USDA shifted its aerial deliveries to Mexico. In June, the USDA announced plans to set up a new sterile fly facility in Texas for aerial deliveries to northern Mexico. And last month, the USDA halted livestock trade from southern entry points.

Miller said in the announcement today that SIT is no longer enough, and Texas is taking its own steps. Those include the new bait, insecticides, and new feed for livestock and deer laced with the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin. Miller also said that the state aims to develop a vaccine for cattle that could kill larvae, but such a shot is still in development.

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Texas politicians warn Smithsonian it must not lobby to retain its space shuttle

Anti-Lobbying Act, Board of Regents, Bring the Space Shutle Home Act, Chancellor, Chantilly, congress, discovery, internal invesigation, John Corbyn, John Roberts, National Air and Space Museum, One Big Beautiful Bill, Randy Weber, representative, senator, Smithsonian, Space, space center houston, Space exploration, space history, Space shuttle, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, texas, Virginia / Kris Guyer / August 8, 2025

(Oddly, Cornyn and Weber’s letter to Roberts described the law as requiring Duffy “to transfer a space vehicle involved in the Commercial Crew Program” rather than choosing a destination NASA center related to the same, as the bill actually reads. Taken as written, if that was indeed their intent, Discovery and the other retired shuttles would be exempt, as the winged orbiters were never part of that program. A request for clarification sent to both Congress members’ offices was not immediately answered.)

two men in business suits sit front of a large model of a space shuttle — Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX, at right) sits in front of a model of Space Shuttle *Discovery* at Space Center Houston, where they want to move the real orbiter. Credit: collectSPACE.com

In the letter, Cornyn and Weber cited the Anti-Lobbying Act as restricting the use of funds provided by the federal government to “influence members of the public to pressure Congress regarding legislation or appropriations matters.”

“As the Smithsonian Institution receives annual appropriations from Congress, it is subject to the restrictions imposed by this statute,” they wrote.

The money that Congress allocates to the Smithsonian accounts for about two-thirds of the Institution’s annual budget, primarily covering federal staff salaries, collections care, facilities maintenance, and the construction and revitalization of the buildings that house the Smithsonian’s 21 museums and other centers.

Pols want Smithsonian to stay mum

As evidence of the Smithsonian’s alleged wrongdoing, Cornyn and Weber cited a July 11 article by Zach Vasile for Flying Magazine, which ran under the headline “Smithsonian Pushing Back on Plans to Relocate Space Shuttle.” Vasile quoted from a message the Institution sent to Congress saying that there was no precedent for removing an object from its collection to send it elsewhere.

The Texas officials wrote that the anti-lobbying restrictions apply to “staff time or public relations resources” and claimed that the Smithsonian’s actions did not fall under the law’s exemptions, including “public speeches, incidental expenditures for public education or communications, or activities unrelated to legislation or appropriations.”

Cornyn and Weber urged Roberts, as the head of the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, to “conduct a comprehensive internal review” as it applied to how the institution responded to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“Should the review reveal that appropriated funds were used in a manner inconsistent with the prohibitions outlined in the Anti-Lobbying Act, we respectfully request that immediate and appropriate corrective measures be implemented to ensure the Institution’s full compliance with all applicable statutory and ethical obligations,” Cornyn and Weber wrote.

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