By MELINA WALLING and JOSHUA A. BICKEL

BEND, Texas (AP) — Across a wide swath of Texas, the inundated rivers that ravaged communities also tore through farms and ranches.

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In the town of Bend, about two hours north of Austin, Boyd Clark waded into rising waters to help one of his stranded ostrich hens. Matthew Ketterman spent several agonizing hours trapped on top of his truck amid coursing rapids after driving out to check the fences on his exotic game ranch outside Burnet, about an hour south of Bend. And the overflowing San Gabriel River knocked Christmas trees sideways and staff had to get petting zoo animals into a temporary pen at Sweet Eats Adventure Farm in Georgetown, about 65 miles east of Ketterman’s ranch.

As authorities work to understand the extent of the loss of human life—as of Friday at least 120 people were killed more than 160 missing —farmers and ranchers are working to assess damage to their properties, crops and animals. Many are facing the task of caring for livestock while salvaging what crops they can and cleaning up the wreckage.

While many farmers lean on a relentless optimism to get through the uncertainty of relying on the weather for a living, extreme weather disasters like catastrophic floods, droughts and wildfires can take a toll. The weather events also pose unique challenges to those who rely on seasonal tourist rushes or who might not have crop insurance.

It’s a double-edged sword: as some farmers turn to agritourism or niche crops to weather unpredictable markets, climate change is also intensifying many of the natural disasters that can make it more difficult for those experiments to succeed. Even the larger operations are not immune; farmers who produce all kinds of crops must plan for emergencies.

“We expect it to happen again. It’s never a question of if, but when,” said Jon Meredith, co-owner of Sweet Eats, an agritourism outfit that mainly grows Christmas trees. “And so we just continue to try to mitigate our losses and reduce our risk around events like this.”

Still surveying the damage, starting repairs

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said there has been so much rain so quickly that some farmers are seeing complete loss or severe damage to their crops and infrastructure, in several counties and beyond the banks of overflowing rivers.

Christmas trees bend toward the ground as a result of recent flooding Wednesday, July 9, 2025, at a farm in Georgetown, Texas. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

“We’ve had farm equipment washed down the river. We’ve had tractors underwater, so they’re totaled, won’t be able to use those. Irrigation equipment wadded up like a bowl of spaghetti,” Miller told The Associated Press. “We’re finding cattle dead on top of trees downriver. So it’s pretty devastating.”

Miller said there are resources available for farmers. Those include the State of Texas Agriculture Relief Fund, which helps farmers access disaster funding, the Hay and Feed Hotline, which donates animal feed and the AgriStress Helpline that provides 24/7 mental health support.

Now comes the task of cleanup: repair miles of destroyed fence line, tally lost livestock and move debris from foliage and mud to piled-up picnic tables.

After a harrowing night waiting for hours to be rescued, Ketterman, who had gotten stuck on his vehicle, felt lucky to be alive. But he and his team were also grieving the loss of a member who died in the flooding on his way to work. They lost some animals to the churning water, as well.

“We’re in the hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage, but you know, at the end of the day that’s just monetary and we’ll recover from that,” he said.

Disasters like floods can be tough for specialty farmers

Small farms that offer experiences to visitors, don’t sell to wholesalers or don’t have crop insurance are especially vulnerable, said Hannah Burrack, professor and chair of the entomology department at Michigan State University, who has worked with fruit farmers in the aftermath of floods.

Clark said ostrich growers can access some U.S. Department of Agriculture programs that cover the loss of grass that birds graze on, but otherwise there isn’t much assistance. Ostriches also get too cold in heavy rain. And it cuts down egg production; the hens almost stop laying eggs and mud and water can ruin what few they do.

“It does definitely affect our production this year and our profitability,” Clark said.

Burrack said that other crops for consumption like fruits and vegetables get submerged, they can no longer be sold. Unharvested plants in fields can build up, causing pest issues or creating an unpleasant experience for visitors. And once submerged, “long-term echoes of these short-term stressors” can make trees more vulnerable to disease.

Meredith said Sweet Eats was lucky the Christmas season is still months away; they still had a chance to put the trees back up. They would’ve had a harder time if they were still doing peach trees like they used to. “Because so much of our stuff is pick-your-own, so if we can’t be open for customers, then it magnifies the challenges that we face because of cash flow issues,” he said.

All farms need to plan for emergencies, climate change

It’s not just floods: farms across the country have taken hits due to extreme weather in recent years. Wildfires have damped farm-based businesses in California including pick-your-own apple orchards in the southern part of the state and wineries in the north. An unusually warm winter had Midwestern maple syrup producers scrambling in 2024, while pinching drought has hit pumpkins, along with many other crops, across the West.

It’s good business sense to observe how climate change might affect your operation and make adjustments accordingly, said Rob Leeds, an extension educator at Ohio State University who works with farmers, especially those interested in agritourism. He described how after watching a barrage of tornadoes and high winds in recent years, some cattle producers in Ohio have been building tougher barns that more typically would be seen in windswept areas of the West. Some fall-themed agritourism operators have started installing fans and misters, anticipating more hot days later into the fall.

It will take a while for Texas farmers to fully recover, but some are already building back stronger. Ketterman said he thinks they’re going to put up sturdier fence posts in the coming weeks as they secure the fence line.

They’ll lean on each other, too. Many farmers described the tight-knit sense of community as they weathered the storm.

“We all started calling each other, to make sure we could get our animals out and anything else that we needed to save,” said John Meredith, owner of Sweet Eats. “Just because this is a fact of life. When you live on a river, it’s beautiful and enjoyable, but there are occasionally times where things can go south very quickly.”

Walling reported from Chicago. Amy Taxin reported from Orange County, Calif.

Follow Melina Walling on X @MelinaWalling and Bluesky @melinawalling.bsky.social. Follow Joshua A. Bickel on Instagram, Bluesky and X @joshuabickel.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org

In 2017, Cody Barbo told a room of investors that he was getting married in a month. His friend asked him this question: “Hey man, you’re getting married. Do you have a will?” Barbo froze, threw out a mild swear word and answered, “I should probably have one.”

Barbo is the CEO of Trust & Will, a San Diego company that simplifies the creation of estate planning documents by drafting documents with its lawyer-vetted software.

Eight years later, Barbo is married and his family has grown.

So has his company. Trust & Will, based in San Diego’s Bankers Hill, has helped more than 1 million families make estate plans, Barbo said in an interview from his Dallas home office.

“Normally you pay thousands of dollars up front to do this with an attorney, or hundreds to thousands of dollars for those updates, for that ongoing guidance,” he said. “This is the democratization of estate planning.”

It has raised more than $80 million from venture capital and corporate investors including Moderne Ventures, American Express, AARP and Northwestern Mutual. Last year, the company became “cash-flow positive,” startup speak for hitting profitability, and then secured a Series C round of capital this year. It employs around 110 people, up from around 80 in 2023.

And last week, it announced the launch of a new AI-powered platform called EstateOS, which Barbo says will make estate planning even easier, more efficient, more personalized and more broadly accessible. It also turns Trust & Will — one of several companies that digitally create estate plans — into what Barbo says is “the first company to launch an AI-integrated estate planning platform at scale, specifically designed for both consumers and financial professionals. While others may be experimenting with AI, EstateOS is the first comprehensive system combining Trust & Will’s proprietary estate planning software with embedded OpenAI-powered tools to streamline creation, review, and updates of estate plans.”

New tools, an AI boost

Using proprietary software and OpenAI, EstateOS delivers four features that are “intelligent upgrades of previously manual or slower processes,” Barbo said, who co-founded the company with Daniel Goldstein and Brian Lamb.

Some of the new features will appeal to U.S. consumers — only 31% of which have a will, according to a company survey of 10,000 people — and others will appeal to the company’s industry targets: financial planners, life insurance agents, nonprofits and attorneys, he added.

One feature, called PlanScore, does what its name suggests: It “scores” estate plans with a rating system that helps customers find blind spots and figure out where their estate plan needs buttressing.

Another is an AI assistant that lets users ask questions and have the answer served instantly. Instead of digging around to find out who was named as a guardian, Barbo said, you can ask who the guardian is and get reminded that it is your mother-in-law.

A third feature is document extraction, which will summarize and mine user-submitted documents for useful or actionable data and workflows. This could be especially useful for people who have drawn estate plans that are “just sitting in a box in the closet.”

The last feature streamlines communication — and client prospecting. The “Connected Networks” tool brings together parties connected to an account, including executors, beneficiaries, attorneys and financial advisers, into a shared platform. That can make deed transfers and notarized transactions run more smoothly, and also make it easier for those professionals to build their contact lists.

Down the line, Barbo said a fifth service will keep track of life’s seismic events, the kind where an estate plan update could make sense, such as marriage, divorce, a new baby, a home purchase — and alert users when they should amend something.

Pricing to create a will or trust remains the same. An individual’s will-based plan starts at $199 and a trust-based plan starts at $499. Couples are charged an extra $100, and updates cost extra. Optional memberships at different pricing tiers give access to the EstateOS and other features. Attorney support is included in some plans or can be purchased as an add-on.

The estate planning startup’s plans

For its first eight years, Trust & Will was one of several in a crowded digital legal document and estate planning marketplace, all of which turned estate planning from a costly investment to something that could be scratched off one’s to-do list with a few clicks and a spare hour. LegalZoom and Rocket Lawyer are the bigger names, but there’s also WillMaker.com and the company that would win wittiest estate planning domain name, if that were a thing — FreeWill.com.

The National Council on Aging recommends these online tools, saying “If an attorney isn’t in your budget, an online will-making service can be a good alternative.” Among the five companies it recommends, Trust & Will is crowned “most user-friendly.”

In estate planning, the use of AI is a topic of interest for attorneys, according to the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel. A free video series explores practical and ethical issues around generative AI in estate planning. “Resistance to the coming of AI is futile,” one speaker, a law professor, said last year. Lawyers, he added, “should keep abreast of the changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology. So accordingly, you have an obligation to yourself, your clients, and the profession to become acquainted with and proficient with the use of AI in your estate planning practice.”

Barbo’s 2017 pitch to investors succeeded: His company won $5,000 in seed money. Today he is eyeing the biggest prize for a startup —  to take the company public.

By MARK SHERMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — A divided federal appeals court on Friday threw out an agreement that would have allowed accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to plead guilty in a deal sparing him the risk of execution for al-Qaida’s 2001 attacks.

The decision by a panel of the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., undoes an attempt to wrap up more than two decades of military prosecution beset by legal and logistical troubles. It signals there will be no quick end to the long struggle by the U.S. military and successive administrations to bring to justice the man charged with planning one of the deadliest attacks ever on the United States.

The deal, negotiated over two years and approved by military prosecutors and the Pentagon’s senior official for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a year ago, stipulated life sentences without parole for Mohammed and two co-defendants.

Mohammed is accused of developing and directing the plot to crash hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Another of the hijacked planes flew into a field in Pennsylvania.

The men also would have been obligated to answer any lingering questions that families of the victims have about the attacks.

But then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin repudiated the deal, saying a decision on the death penalty in an attack as grave as Sept. 11 should only be made by the defense secretary.

Attorneys for the defendants had argued that the agreement was already legally in effect and that Austin, who served under President Joe Biden, acted too late to try to throw it out. A military judge at Guantanamo and a military appeals panel agreed with the defense lawyers.

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But, by a 2-1 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found Austin acted within his authority and faulted the military judge’s ruling.

The panel had previously put the agreement on hold while it considered the appeal, first filed by the Biden administration and then continued under President Donald Trump.

“Having properly assumed the convening authority, the Secretary determined that the ‘families and the American public deserve the opportunity to see military commission trials carried out.’ The Secretary acted within the bounds of his legal authority, and we decline to second-guess his judgment,” Judges Patricia Millett and Neomi Rao wrote.

Millett was an appointee of President Barack Obama while Rao was appointed by Trump.

In a dissent, Judge Robert Wilkins, an Obama appointee, wrote, “The government has not come within a country mile of proving clearly and indisputably that the Military Judge erred.”

By DAVID A. LIEB

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Eight months after voters approved it, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe signed the repeal of a law Thursday that had guaranteed paid sick leave to workers and inflationary adjustments to the minimum wage.

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The move marked a major victory for the state’s largest business group and a frustrating defeat for workers’ rights advocates, who had spent years — and millions of dollars — building support for the successful ballot measure. The repeal will take effect Aug. 28.

Kehoe, who also signed a package of tax breaks Thursday, described the paid sick leave law as an onerous mandate that imposed burdensome record-keeping.

“Today, we are protecting the people who make Missouri work — families, job creators, and small business owners — by cutting taxes, rolling back overreach, and eliminating costly mandates,” Kehoe, a Republican, said in a statement released after a private bill-signing ceremony.

The new tax law excludes capital gains from individual state income taxes, expands tax breaks for seniors and disabled residents and exempts diapers and feminine hygiene products from sales taxes.

Richard von Glahn, who sponsored the worker benefit ballot initiative, said many parents felt forced to go to work, instead of staying home to care for a sick child, in order to pay for their rent or utilities.

“The governor signing this bill is an absolute betrayal to those families, and it hurts my heart,” said von Glahn, policy director for Missouri Jobs With Justice.

About one-third of states mandate paid sick leave, but many businesses voluntarily provide it. Nationwide, 79% of private-sector employees received paid sick leave last year, though part-time workers were significantly less likely to receive the benefit than full-time employees, according to Department of Labor data.

Voters in Alaska, Missouri and Nebraska all approved paid sick leave measures last November. Only Alaska’s, which kicked in on July 1, has remained unchanged by state lawmakers.

Before Nebraska’s measure could take effect Oct. 1, Republican Gov. Jim Pillen signed a measure last month exempting businesses with 10 or fewer employees from the paid sick leave requirements. The revision also lets businesses withhold paid sick leave from seasonal agricultural workers and 14- and 15-year-olds.

Missouri’s law allowed employees to earn one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked, starting May 1. By the time it’s repealed, 17 weeks will have elapsed. That means someone working 40 hours a week could have earned 22 hours of paid sick leave.

If workers don’t use their paid sick leave before Aug. 28, there’s no legal guarantee they can do so afterward.

The Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry had made repealing the law its top legislative priority.

The “paid leave and minimum wage policies were a job killer,” chamber President and CEO Kara Corches said.

But Missouri voters could get a second chance at mandating paid sick leave.

Von Glahn has submitted a proposed ballot initiative to the secretary of state that would reinstate the repealed provisions. Because the new measure is a constitutional amendment, the Legislature would be unable to revise or repeal it without another vote of the people. Supporters haven’t decided whether to launch a petition drive to try to qualify the measure for the 2026 ballot.