By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — A closely watched inflation gauge cooled last month in a sign that prices were steadily easing before most of President Donald Trump’s tariffs were implemented.

At the same time, consumers accelerated their spending, particularly on cars, likely in an effort to get ahead of the duties.

Wednesday’s report from the Commerce Department showed that consumer prices rose just 2.3% in March from a year earlier, down from 2.7% in February. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices rose 2.6% compared with a year ago, below February’s 3%. Economists track core prices because they typically provide a better read on where inflation is headed.

The slowdown in inflation could be a temporary respite until the widespread duties imposed by Trump begin to push up prices in many categories. Most economists expect inflation to start picking up in the coming months.

“Core inflation will inevitably rebound sharply in the coming months,” Harry Chambers, assistant economist at Capital Economics, said in an email. “Goods prices will rise much more strongly.”

Chambers expects core inflation will near 4% by late this year.

Wednesday’s report also showed that consumer spending increased 0.7% from February to March, a healthy gain. Much of the increase appeared to be driven by efforts to get ahead of duties, such as Trump’s 25% duty on imported cars, which took effect April 3. Spending on autos surged 8.1% in March. Still, that means auto sales are likely to fade in the coming months because those assets have already been secured.

But spending on restaurants and hotels also jumped after falling in February, a sign Americans are still willing to splurge a little on travel and dining out.

The spending increase is noteworthy because consumer confidence surveys have plunged for several months, suggesting Americans have grown increasingly worried about the economy. Yet so far, that hasn’t translated into a noticeable slowdown in spending.

Earlier Wednesday, the government reported that consumer spending slowed in the first three months of the year, compared with last year’s final quarter, as bad weather depressed shopping and Americans took a breather after healthy spending over the winter holidays.

The nation’s economy actually shrank 0.3% in the January-March quarter as imports surged as companies sought to get ahead of Trump’s tariffs.

Trump benefited in last year’s election from broad dissatisfaction among voters about the steep rise in prices that began in 2021 and that, on average, pushed prices up about 25% by the middle of last year. Grocery costs shot up nearly 30%. As a candidate, Trump said he would immediately lower prices if elected.

Yet the president has slapped 25% duties on steel and aluminum, as well as cars, and a 10% tariff on nearly all other imports. And China, the United States’ third-largest trading partner, now faces a 145% duty on its exports.

The inflation-fighters at the Federal Reserve target a 2% inflation rate and pay close attention to Wednesday’s inflation gauge, known as the personal consumption expenditures price index. The better-known consumer price index was released earlier this month and also showed a steady decline.

Inflation figures were revised higher for January and February, leaving price increases in the first quarter higher than previously estimated. The higher figures would likely leave Fed officials wary of cutting rates soon even before taking tariffs into account.

Trump has pushed the Fed to cut its key short-term interest rate because inflation has cooled. But Fed Chair Jerome Powell has underscored that the central bank is likely to remain on the sidelines as officials gauge how tariffs will impact the economy. The Fed isn’t expected to lower its rate at its policy meeting next week.

Texas Observer readers,

Three months into a second Trump administration, nearly a decade into the Trump era, more than a decade into the Greg Abbott era, and 22 harrowingly long years into the GOP’s unilateral control of Texas government, the forces of political progress in our state find themselves somewhere between stasis, retrenchment, and the abyss. 

There just isn’t much right now to prop up either cheap short-term optimism (backlash midterm) or grander narratives (demographic destiny). One may say the game has been rigged, but a critical mass of the state’s voters have simply continued to empower a party that’s been in control so long that its abandoned principles have abandoned principles, so long that charges of hypocrisy have no stable ground on which to land. 

School vouchers, the political crisis du jour as I write this (and most likely when you read it), are a “handout.” They are an “entitlement.” They are both more government bureaucracy and waste, and, if passed, will likely lead to more fraud and corruption (surely, DOGE will get right on it). But most Texas Republicans are unmoved by their own party’s erstwhile rhetoric. Politics is a game for power; they have it, and they’ll find new ways to wield it so long as they do. And logical contradictions mean little so long as you’re helping the right people (families with kids already in private schools) and hurting the right targets (unionized teachers, families who could never afford private tuition, the idea of public education as a social equalizer). 

Even if vouchers were to fall victim (again) to internecine GOP conflict, the general march toward privatization, toward turning public goods into auctioned goods, toward turning the machinery of state into little more than a high rollers’ pay-to-play game, is set to continue apace. 

And yet, people are funny creatures.

Look around, and you’ll always find those who stare down long, even unbeatable, odds and choose to fight anyway. Or, if not fight, at least find a way to live lives that quietly disprove the dominant political narrative about them, to “prefigure,” as the anarchists say, a society at ease with its own diversity and unsettled hierarchies. I think this emerges, in this Observer issue, as a subtle theme—through the story of a man off death row, becoming something the state claims he can never be; an uncle in Uvalde channeling irrecoverable loss into public office; Afghan refugee wrestlers succeeding in the country’s Mexican-American metropolis; and the everyday acts of small-“d” democracy at the state Capitol.

From this springtime issue, I hope you’ll come away not with erudite despair, but a grounded, tempered hope. 

Solidarity,

Note: To receive our print magazine, become a member here.

The post Editor’s Letter: Introducing Our May/June 2025 Issue appeared first on The Texas Observer.

By PRABHJOT GILL, SHEIKH SAALIQ and MUNIR AHMED, Associated Press

ATTARI, India (AP) — Pakistan said Wednesday it had “credible intelligence” that India is planning to attack it within days, as soldiers exchanged gunfire along borders and Pakistanis heeded New Delhi’s orders to leave the country following last week’s deadly attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

India’s moves to punish Pakistan after accusing it of backing the attack in Pahalgam, which Islamabad denies, have driven tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals to their highest point since 2019, when they came close to war after a suicide car bombing in Kashmir. The region is split between India and Pakistan and claimed by both in its entirety.

An Indian paramilitary soldier stands guard at a temporary checkpoint in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Wednesday, April 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin)

Calls for de-escalation

Pakistan said the intelligence shows that India plans military action against it in the next 24 to 36 hours “on the pretext of baseless and concocted allegations of involvement.”

There was no immediate comment from Indian officials. However, Indian government officials said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has “given complete operational freedom to the armed forces to decide on the mode, targets and timing of India’s response to the Pahalgam massacre.” They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations.

Last week’s attack was claimed by a previously unknown militant group calling itself the Kashmir Resistance. New Delhi describes all militancy in Indian-controlled Kashmir as Pakistan-backed terrorism. Pakistan denies this, and many Muslim Kashmiris consider the militants to be part of a homegrown freedom struggle.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in separate phone calls with India and Pakistan, stressed the need to “avoid a confrontation that could result in tragic consequences.” The U.S. State Department also called for de-escalation and said Secretary of State Marco Rubio would be speaking to the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers.

Pakistanis forced to leave

The deadline for Pakistani citizens to leave India, with exceptions for those with medical visas, passed on Sunday, but many families were still scrambling to the border crossing in Attari town in northern Punjab state.

Some arrived on their own. Others were being deported by police.

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“We have settled our families here. We request the government not to uproot our families,” said Sara Khan, a Pakistani who was ordered back without her husband, Aurangzeb Khan, who holds an Indian passport. She carried her 14-day-old child and said she had been living in Indian-controlled Kashmir since 2017.

“They (Indian authorities) told me you are illegal and you should go,” said Khan, while waiting on the Indian side of the border crossing.

Tensions between India and Pakistan have escalated after gunmen killed 26 people, most of them Indian tourists, near the resort town of Pahalgam.

The massacre set off tit-for-tat diplomatic measures that included the cancellation of visas and a recall of diplomats. New Delhi suspended a crucial water-sharing treaty with Islamabad and ordered its border shut with Pakistan. In response, Pakistan has closed its airspace to Indian airlines.

Cross-border exchanges of gunfire between soldiers have increased along the Line of Control, the de facto frontier that separates Kashmiri territory between the two rivals.

Fire along the frontier

On Wednesday, India and Pakistan accused each other of initiating the gunfire.

Pakistan’s state-run media said Indian forces violated the ceasefire agreement along the Line of Control by initiating fire with heavy weapons. According to Pakistan Television, Pakistani troops returned fire after coming under attack overnight in the Mandal sector of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

Meanwhile, the Indian army said it responded to “unprovoked” small arms fire from Pakistan in the Naushera, Sunderbani and Akhnoor sectors of Indian-controlled Kashmir.

The incidents could not be independently verified. In the past, each side has accused the other of starting border skirmishes in the Himalayan region.

India’s cabinet committee on security, headed by Modi, met Wednesday. It was the second such meeting since the attack.

Witness accounts

At least three tourists who survived told The Associated Press that the gunmen singled out Hindu men and shot them from close range. The dead also included a Nepalese citizen and a local Muslim pony ride operator.

Aishanya Dwivedi, whose husband was killed, said a gunman approached the couple and challenged him to recite the Islamic declaration of faith. Her husband replied that he was Hindu, and the attacker shot him “point blank in the head,” she said.

“He was on my lap. I was soaked in his blood,” Dwivedi said.

Saaliq reported from New Delhi. Ahmed reported from Islamabad. Associated Press writer Rajesh Roy in New Delhi contributed to this report.

Edric Wilson spent 18 years awaiting a murder trial that would never come. From September 2006 until his release earlier this year, he split his time between the Harris County Jail and state psychiatric hospitals, with little or no hope of release. For 12 years, he was denied bail completely. Eventually, a judge set his bail at $850,000, which his family couldn’t afford. So he kept waiting. 

Texas jails around 70,000 people at any one time, and more than half are awaiting trial, per the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. A third of jail admissions nationwide are for misdemeanors, and nine out of the 10 most common charges are nonviolent, including drug offenses and failure to appear in court, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.

Texas jails are so overcrowded—partly because they’re often a county’s largest mental health facility—that some counties ship people awaiting trials to distant jails, sometimes out of state. In 2024, officials reported 135 deaths in county jails, according to the Texas Jail Project (TJP). “We’ve addressed a public health issue in the most punitive fashion possible,” said TJP cofounder Krish Gundu at a March press conference. 

Yet Governor Greg Abbott and top Republican lawmakers are pushing for bail reforms that would make it harder for people to get released from jail while they’re awaiting adjudication. Abbott declared bail reform an “emergency item” for this legislative session, saying in his February State of the State Address that judges should deny bail for people charged with violent crimes, and that undocumented immigrants arrested for a crime “should be considered a flight risk, denied bail, and turned over to ICE.” 

Since his victory in passing school choice legislation earlier in April, Abbott has turned his primary focus to his proposed bail crackdown. In his messaging, he has highlighted cases in which someone committed another crime while out on bail, including the 2022 shooting death of Harris County Deputy Constable Omar Ursin. Two men arrested in connection with Ursin’s fatal shooting were each out on bond for prior murders when he was killed. “We will put an end to easy bail policies that let dangerous criminals back on our streets,” Abbott posted to X on April 22. “It’s time to protect our communities and keep criminals behind bars.” 

Bexar County jail (Michael Barajas)

In a speech Wednesday at the Texas Border Sheriff’s Coalition conference in Austin, the governor told the gathered law enforcement officials that Texas “must fix a deadly and broken bail system.” He said the default should be that people are denied bail for violent crimes unless there is “clear and convincing evidence” that they’re not a danger. He also put the onus on judges to explain their bail decisions publicly. 

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who presides over the Texas Senate, also has promised to “play hardball” on bail reform. The upper chamber has already passed multiple priority bail bills and has threatened to essentially force a special session if the Texas House doesn’t pass the legislation by the end of the regular session. 

The Texas Code of Criminal Procedure specifies that magistrate judges should impose the least restrictive possible bail conditions. But Edric Wilson was denied bail by a judge upon his arraignment, which is allowed under Texas law under limited circumstances, including for people charged with capital crimes, multiple felonies, or people who pose a flight risk. The GOP-backed legislation under consideration would make it easier to deny bail. 

For Wilson, as the jail population fluctuated and as he got moved around, his living conditions changed. He sometimes shared tanks with 24 or even 58 other people, at times separated by bars into smaller groups. The beds were close enough together that people could reach over and touch the person in the next bunk, even through the bars. 

He’d often wake up at 2 a.m. for breakfast and would help hand out trays. He’d read his Bible, work out, and study for his commercial driver’s license exam. He printed out the handbook and passed time with a guidebook he bought. Once everyone was awake, around lunch time, he would retire to his bunk and try to avoid trouble. 

Most people spend only days in jail. “That’s what was so depressing,” he told the Texas Observer in a phone interview “You see everybody leave and come back. … The hard part is knowing everybody’s going home to their family.” 

County officials discovered how long Wilson’s case had been languishing when they analyzed the jail population last year. Wilson was one of 230 people who had been in Harris County jail for more than three years without receiving a trial, according to the Houston Chronicle. The Harris County District Attorney’s office ended up dismissing Wilson’s murder charge, and he pled guilty to a separate aggravated assault charge, which had been pending for nearly two decades. 

Wilson was released to a halfway house in February. He recently started working as a peer support specialist at the Houston Recovery Center, counseling others getting out of jail, particularly those struggling with drug addiction.

He had lost contact with his family while inside. He said his kids don’t talk to him. His dad died of cancer while Wilson was in jail, and he wasn’t allowed to attend the funeral. 

There have been growing pains since his release on parole in February. He spoke to the Observer while he was taking the METRO to different tech shops in Houston looking for affordable wireless internet. Someone had gifted him a laptop, but he couldn’t afford to use it.

“The criminal justice system must find an effective way to distinguish between individuals who pose a real, immediate threat to community safety and those who do not.”

GOP state Senator Joan Huffman has deep roots in the Texas legal system. She worked as a prosecutor for Harris County and then was twice elected as a district court judge. She’s been in the Texas Senate since 2008 and has won reelection five times, most recently in November. Huffman touts herself as “tough on crime” and has campaigned as an advocate for border security.

This session, Huffman has taken the lead on bail as the author of a slate of bills—including two proposed constitutional amendments—aimed at keeping people in jail pretrial. In a statement in February, she said she was “fed up with violent, repeat offenders being released into our communities by judges that are more concerned about their own political agenda than the safety and security of law-abiding Texans.” The legislation to restrict bail access—Senate Bills 9 and 40 and Senate Joint Resolutions 1 and 5—all passed through the Senate back in February. The House companion bills were given public hearings on March 18 but are all still pending in committee. 

Senate Bill 9, which, among other things, expands the list of instances in which judges must deny bail, was flagged as a priority by Patrick. Magistrates would be prohibited from offering bail to someone who is charged with a new felony while on parole, as well as anyone charged with murder, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated assault, and aggravated sexual assault. The bill also would expand the list of charges that would require cash bail, rather than releasing people on personal bonds, which have no cost and are generally used for nonviolent or misdemeanor offenses.

SB 9 would also allow prosecutors to appeal bail decisions, which could significantly delay people getting out of jail even after bail has been set. It also limits which judges can make certain bail decisions. 

The Bail Project, a national criminal justice reform nonprofit that opposes Huffman’s bills, says SB 9 “ties judges’ hands by forcing them to jail Texans if they have been accused, but not yet convicted, of certain offenses.” Huffman argues that the bill puts more power in the hands of elected county and district judges.

Senate Bill 40 directly confronts organizations like The Bail Project which provide financial assistance to people who can’t afford to pay their own bail. In a February Senate hearing, Huffman accused The Bail Project of using public money to post bail for people in Texas, which would be banned under SB 40. That claim has been denied by the nonprofit, which says lawmakers misunderstood reports that showed bail payments being refunded to the nonprofit by public agencies. 

The first of two related constitutional amendments, Senate Joint Resolution 1, has been dubbed “Jocelyn’s Law,” after 12-year-old Houstonian Jocelyn Nungaray, who was killed in Texas by two Venezuelan-born immigrants in 2024. Alexis Nungaray, Jocelyn’s mother, has advocated for more border security after U.S. officials confirmed the accused killers entered the country illegally. 

SJR 1 would amend the Texas Constitution to deny bail for all undocumented immigrants charged with a felony. The measure passed overwhelmingly in the Texas Senate, with just two of the 11 Democratic senators voting against it. 

Madeline Bailey, advocacy manager for the Vera Institute of Justice, said the proposed resolution conflicts with the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of due process and equal protection. She said the Supreme Court’s 1987 ruling in United States v. Salerno held that pretrial detention should “never be the norm, but rather be a very carefully limited exception.”

A law making pretrial detention automatic for such a broad group of people would almost certainly be challenged in court, she said. 

Senate Joint Resolution 5, the other proposed constitutional amendment, would expand judges’ authority to deny bail for more felony charges than currently allowed by law, including violent crimes and some sex crimes. Bailey said the bill is too broad and lacks due process protections. Because there often aren’t effective ways for judges to determine whether someone poses an actual risk to public safety, she said, people who are generally harmless or falsely accused could end up sitting in jail for months or years, waiting for their case to move. 

Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare highlighted similar concerns in a letter to Huffman in February. He wrote that while he supports judges being able to deny bail for “violent offenders … in appropriate cases,” SJR 5 lacks appropriate risk assessment tools. 

“When it comes to Texas bail laws, the criminal justice system must find an effective way to distinguish between individuals who pose a real, immediate threat to community safety and those who do not,” he wrote. 

Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales, a Democrat first elected as a reformer in 2018, supported SJR 5 in a press release addressing Texas Congressman Chip Roy, who had accused the South Texas prosecutor of being too lenient on bail. Gonzales said that in his six years as DA, “Our bond recommendations on violent crimes have been consistently high.” He said he agrees, though, that the “current Texas bail bond system is in dire need of reform.” 

Some argue that Republicans have swung the pendulum too far the other way in response to advocates who have filed federal lawsuits and pushed for cash bail reform in Texas, where if you’re poor, there’s no guarantee of having a lawyer at a bail hearing while the wealthy can pay for their freedom. That means that many Texans historically have been locked away and forced to wait to get a lawyer who can argue for their release even if they face only a minor misdemeanor charge or have a solid innocence claim.

Nicole Zayas Manzano, deputy director of policy at The Bail Project, said the only thing both sides agree on is that the pretrial system needs change. “What the disagreement has been about is how best to fix it,” Manzano said.

“I kept saying, ‘I didn’t do this. I don’t have anything to do with this.”

RoShawn C. Evans, co-founder of the reform organization Pure Justice, was able to post bail in 2022, when he was arrested on a trip to Austin, where he’d gone to organize on behalf of someone who had been in jail pretrial for nine years. 

Evans was arrested for public intoxication—although he said he hadn’t had a drop to drink, and officers didn’t perform any field sobriety tests. He was also charged with resisting arrest and taken to the Travis County Jail. A magistrate judge set bail at $5,000, which his family and friends were able to post. It took Travis County prosecutors nearly three years to dismiss the case—years he would have spent in jail if his bond had been higher or his family unable to put together the funds. 

“There’s people signing plea deals every single day right now, not because they are guilty of what they are accused of, but because they want to just go home,” Evans said. “And that starts a cycle for many people … a never-ending cycle of the system. They just can’t break free because it’s so hard to manage to get off.”

Spending even a day in jail is extremely destabilizing, experts say. People can lose their jobs, custody of their children, and be evicted from homes. And the pressures of pretrial detention makes people more likely to plead guilty. It also leads to longer sentences, according to research from various sources including the Prison Policy Initiative. 

Laquita Garcia, policy coordinator with the Texas Organizing Project in San Antonio, was in jail for a year in the 1990s because she couldn’t afford bail and refused to plead guilty. 

In 1991, while at a Dallas Walmart with friends, a woman Garcia was with split away from the group, went to the baby department, and slipped a pair of baby moccasins for her daughter in her purse. Garcia was pushing the cart when they were stopped and taken to a backroom. 

Her friend explained she had taken the shoes because she couldn’t afford them—Garcia remembers the price as about $12. The police ran the women’s backgrounds. The woman who had taken the shoes was given a ticket and let go. But Garcia had a prior theft charge. She was charged with a state jail felony and given a $30,000 bond, which she couldn’t afford. 

“I kept saying, ‘I didn’t do this. I don’t have anything to do with this,’” Garcia told the Observer. “I kept thinking and saying and saying … but that didn’t matter. All they cared about is that I was pushing the cart, I had priors, and I was going to jail.”

Garcia’s teenage children were forced to live without their mother for a year, cared for by Garcia’s sister and her then-partner. Her 17-year-old daughter had to apply for food stamps. Garcia lost her job as a cashier at a gas station. 

She didn’t have a lawyer when a judge set her bail. She was eventually appointed an attorney, who told her she could get a two-year sentence if she pleaded guilty. She refused, so she waited about eight months for a court date. After a trial that lasted only 10 minutes, a judge found her not guilty, and she was released the next day.

This all happened more than 30 years ago, but nothing much has changed in Texas. “It’s exactly the same,” she said. 

The post Abbott’s Bail Agenda Could Swell Texas Jails, Test U.S. Constitution appeared first on The Texas Observer.