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Top Stories: School Safety Committee Wraps Up Hearings; Deadline Approaches For Family Reunification

David J. Phillip
/
AP

The top local stories this evening from KERA News:

A special Texas Senate committee looking at school safety had its last public hearing Tuesday. The Senate Select Committee on Violence in Schools and School Safety focused on “red flag” gun laws in the final hearing.

As KUT’s Claire McInerny reports, those laws would allow law enforcement or family members to ask a judge to take guns away from someone exhibiting signs they might hurt themselves, or others. Similar laws are already on the books in a few states, including Indiana, Washington, Florida and California.

Dana Hoff is a member of the gun control advocacy group Moms Demand Action of Texas. She told the panel that red flag laws are intended only for when someone is in a poor mental state.

“When a person is undergoing a crisis, a red flag law empowers law enforcement and families to act providing them with a tool they often feel they lack under the current law,” said Hoff.

Many others testified, saying red flag laws would infringe on Second Amendment rights by allowing police to confiscate guns without due process.

Other stories this evening:

  • The Trump Administration faces a Thursday deadline to reunite migrant families separated at the Southern border. The Immigration Justice Campaign says these parents will soon be transferred to other centers in Texas, where they’re expected to be joined by their children. The federal government says so far more than 1,100 migrant children have been reunited with families so far.

  • More than 40 percent of Americans have experienced online harassment. That's according to a 2017 Pew Research study. Agustin Fuentes is a professor of anthropology at Notre Dame. Today on Think, he talked with Krys Boyd about why it’s easier to be mean online.

  • The so called “cold front” that's coming will have high temperatures in Texas come down by a few degrees over the next week or so. It’ll still be hot, just not the record-breaking temps we saw in the past five days. Texas Standard's Michael Marks explains how officials decide to place a heat advisory.

  • On Tuesdays, KERA's One Crisis Away project examines life on the financial edge. As the middle class changes, sometimes even households with six figure incomes are struggling. The typical American worker puts in 47 hours a week. And nearly 5 percent work more than one job, with hours that vary depending on the needs of big corporations. Alissa Quart of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project talked with Courtney Collins on a recent episode of Think about how childcare has changed.

You can listen to North Texas stories weekdays at 8:22 a.m. and 6:20 p.m. on KERA 90.1 FM.