By VALERIE GONZALEZ, Associated Press

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (AP) — Families of students killed in the Uvalde, Texas, school massacre are among those who could testify at the trial of a police officer who was part of the hesitant law enforcement response and is charged with failing to protect children from the teenage gunman.

Opening statements were set to begin Tuesday, a day after a judge seated a jury in what is a rare case of charges being brought against an officer who is accused of not doing more to save lives. Authorities waited more than an hour to confront the shooter.

A line forms at the Nueces County Courthouse in Corpus Christi, Texas, as jury selection continues in the trial for former Uvalde school district police officer Adrian Gonzales, Monday, Jan. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Adrian Gonzales, a former Uvalde schools officer who was among the first to respond to what was one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history, has pleaded not guilty. His attorney has said the officer tried to save children that day.

Gonzales faces 29 counts of child abandonment or endangerment and could be sentenced to a maximum of two years in prison if he’s convicted.

He and former Uvalde schools police chief Pete Arredondo are the only two officers to face criminal charges over the response. Arredondo’s trial has not been scheduled.

Some families of the victims were upset that more officers were not charged given that nearly 400 federal, state and local officers converged on the school soon after the 2022 attack.

Terrified students inside the classrooms called 911 and parents outside begged for intervention by officers, some of whom could hear shots being fired while they stood in a hallway. A tactical team of officers eventually went into the classroom and killed the shooter.

The gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary.

An investigation found 77 minutes passed from the time authorities arrived until the tactical team breached the classroom and killed Salvador Ramos, who was obsessed with violence and notoriety in the months leading up to the shooting.

The trial for Gonzales was expected to last about two weeks, Judge Sid Harle said. Before seating the jury Monday, he told several hundred potential jurors that the court was not looking for those who know nothing about the shooting but wants jurors who can be impartial.

Close to 100 people were dismissed after saying they already formed opinions.

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Among the potential witnesses are FBI agents, Texas Rangers, emergency dispatchers and school employees.

At the request of Gonzales’ attorneys, the trial was moved to Corpus Christi after they argued Gonzales could not receive a fair trial in Uvalde.

The indictment accuses Gonzales of putting children in “imminent danger” of injury or death by failing to engage, distract or delay the shooter and by not following his training. The allegations also say he did not go toward the gunfire despite hearing shots and being told the shooter’s location.

State and federal reviews of the shooting cited cascading problems in law enforcement training, communication, leadership and technology, and questioned why officers waited so long.

According to the state review, Gonzales told investigators that once police realized there were students still sitting in other classrooms, he helped evacuate them.

Prosecutors likely will face a high bar to win a conviction. Juries are often reluctant to convict law enforcement officers for inaction, as seen after the Parkland, Florida, school massacre in 2018.

Sheriff’s deputy Scot Peterson was charged with failing to confront the shooter in that attack. It was the first such prosecution in the U.S. for an on-campus shooting, and Peterson was acquitted by a jury in 2023.

Associated Press writers Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas, Juan A. Lozano in Houston and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed to this report.

By SEUNG MIN KIM, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump will gather with House Republicans on Tuesday to ensure they’re aligned on their agenda at the start of a critical midterm election year that could alter the course of his final two years in office.

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GOP lawmakers are hosting a daylong policy forum at the Kennedy Center, the performing arts venue on the other side of Washington from the Capitol. Its board, which is stacked with Trump loyalists, recently voted to rename it the Trump Kennedy Center, though that move is being challenged in court.

House Republicans are convening as they launch their new year agenda, with health care issues in particular dogging the GOP heading into the midterm elections. Votes on extending expired health insurance subsidies are expected as soon as this week, and it’s unclear whether the president and the party will try to block its passage.

Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., are trying to corral Republican lawmakers when GOP leaders have a thin majority in the chamber. Meanwhile, rank-and-file lawmakers have felt increasingly emboldened enough to buck Trump and the leadership’s wishes, such as on the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

With Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resignation taking effect at midnight Tuesday, Republican leaders now have a 219-213 majority in the House.

The meeting also comes after the Trump administration’s dramatic capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, which occurred after a monthslong U.S. campaign to pressure the now-deposed leader by building up American forces in the waters off South America and bombing boats alleged to have been carrying drugs.

The Maduro capture is reigniting the debate about Trump’s powers over Congress to authorize the campaign against Venezuela, though House Republican lawmakers have largely been supportive of the administration’s efforts there.

Among the topics likely to be discussed on Tuesday are promoting and implementing the GOP’s marquee tax-and-border legislation, as well as a broader affordability agenda and midterm politics, according to a Republican official who was involved in the planning of the meeting and insisted on anonymity to discuss it.

Republicans are also mulling a potential second tax bill that could be passed with just party line votes while confronting the possibility of a potential partial government shutdown at the end of the month.

It is unclear why House Republicans chose the Kennedy Center venue for their off-campus session. House GOP meetings are generally held in the Capitol or a nearby site off campus if they are discussing political matters. The speaker’s office did not respond to a request for further comment.

AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

By LISA MASCARO, Associated Press Congressional Correspondent

WASHINGTON (AP) — Five years ago outside the White House, the outgoing President Donald Trump told a crowd of his supporters to head to the Capitol — “and I’ll be there with you” — in protest as Congress was affirming the 2020 election victory for Democrat Joe Biden.

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A short time later, the world watched as the seat of U.S. power descended into chaos, and democracy hung in the balance.

On the fifth anniversary of Jan. 6, 2021, there is no official event to memorialize what happened that day, when the mob made its way down Pennsylvania Avenue, battled police at the Capitol barricades and stormed inside, as lawmakers fled. The political parties refuse to agree to a shared history of the events, which were broadcast around the globe. And the official plaque honoring the police who defended the Capitol has never been hung.

Instead, Trump will meet privately with House Republicans at the Kennedy Center, which the president has rebranded to carry his own name, for a policy forum. Democrats will hold a hearing with witnesses to the violence and later gather on the Capitol steps to mark the memory of what happened.

And the former leader of the militant Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, is staging a midday march retracing the rioters’ steps from the White House to the Capitol to honor Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt and others who died in the Jan. 6 siege and its aftermath.

“I ask those that are able to attend please do so,” Tarrio said on social media feed X.

Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy for having orchestrated the Jan. 6 attack, and he is among more than 1,500 defendants who saw their charges dropped when Trump issued a sweeping pardon on his return to the White House last year. “This will be a PATRIOTIC and PEACEFUL march. If you have any intention of causing trouble we ask that you stay home,” Tarrio wrote.

Echoes of 5 years ago

The Jan. 6 events, being held inside and outside, carry echoes of the split screen five years ago, as the House and the Senate gathered to affirm the election results while the Republican president’s supporters swarmed.

This milestone anniversary unfolds while attention is focused elsewhere, particularly after the U.S. military’s stunning capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and Trump’s plans to take over the country and prop up its vast oil industry, a striking new era of American expansionism.

“These people in the administration, they want to lecture the world about democracy when they’re undermining the rule of law at home, as we all will be powerfully reminded,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said on the eve of the anniversary.

Democrats revive an old committee, Republicans lead a new one

The Democratic leadership is reconvening the now defunct Jan. 6 committee to hear from police, elected officials and regular Americans about what they experienced that day.

Among those expected to testify is former Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who along with former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming were the two Republicans on the panel that investigated Trump’s efforts to overturn Biden’s win. Cheney, who lost her own reelection bid to a Trump-backed challenger, is not expected to appear.

Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, who has been tapped by House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana to lead a new committee to probe other theories about what happened on Jan. 6, rejected Tuesday’s session as a “partisan exercise” designed to hurt Trump and his allies.

Many Republicans reject the narrative that Trump sparked the Jan. 6 attack, and Johnson, before he became the House speaker, had led challenges to the 2020 election. He was among some 130 GOP lawmakers voting that day to reject the presidential results from some states.

Instead, they have instead focused on security lapses at the Capitol — from the time it took for the National Guard to arrive on the scene to the failure of the police canine units to discover the pipe bombs found that day outside Republican and Democratic party headquarters. The FBI arrested a Virginia man suspected of placing the pipe bombs, and he told investigators last month he believed someone needed to speak up for those who believed the 2020 election was stolen, authorities say.

“The Capitol Complex is no more secure today than it was on January 6,” Loudermilk said in a social media post. “My Select Subcommittee remains committed to transparency and accountability and ensuring the security failures that occurred on January 6 and the partisan investigation that followed never happens again.”

The aftermath of Jan. 6

Five people died in the Capitol siege and its aftermath, including Babbitt, who was shot and killed by police while trying to climb through the window of a door near the House chamber, and Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died later after battling the mob. Several law enforcement personnel died later, some by suicide.

The Justice Department indicted Trump on four counts in a conspiracy to defraud voters with his claims of a rigged election in the run-up to the Jan. 6 attack.

Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith told lawmakers last month that the riot at the Capitol “does not happen” without Trump. He ended up abandoning the case once Trump was reelected president, adhering to department guidelines against prosecuting a sitting president.

Trump, who never made it to the Capitol that day as he hunkered down at the White House, was impeached by the House on the sole charge of having incited the insurrection. The Senate acquitted him after top GOP senators said they believed the matter was best left to the courts.

Ahead of the 2024 election, the Supreme Court ruled ex-presidents have broad immunity from prosecution.

Much like how a sailor, lost and withering at sea, at least gets the chance to see the world, Texas’ ailing Democrats will get the chance this year to recreate some of the magic of the 2018 midterms.

You know the drill: Donald Trump’s in the second year of a presidential stint, and his megalomaniacal unsuitability for public service is catching up with him. Off-year elections in Virginia and New Jersey have given Dems new reason to believe. Congressional Republicans are heading for the exits in telling numbers, while the possibility of a weak GOP candidate in Texas for U.S. Senate looms. This go-round, there’s no real chance of the suite of downballot flips that occurred eight years ago, when that decade’s electoral maps had overripened; still, it’s time now to take out your color wheel and start studying the liminal shades of what constitutes “blue,” plus your lidar scanner (what do you mean you don’t have one?) to start distinguishing calm waters, ripples, and waves.

Paying casual attention, you might not feel Texas Democrats are fielding the A-team that this moment calls for. By this time in that long-lost cycle when Senator Ted Cruz was so nearly ousted, El Paso Congressman Beto O’Rourke had already been running without real primary competition for the better part of a year. In contrast, this year’s marquee Dem nomination process has been slow and fitful. That fact, however, belies the comparative strength of the slate that’s likely to solidify in the coming months.

At least on paper, the 2026 Democratic nominees for the top four races (senator, governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general) are almost sure to be the most formidable class in recent memory. In 2018, only two of the four already held elected office, one at the county level. From 2020 through 2024, the only top-level nominee who did so was Colin Allred in ’24, then a congressman dragging a low-energy campaign against Cruz to a 9-point defeat. In lieu of seasoned politicians, Texans during these years were invited to put their faith in: a mild-mannered accountant, a self-assessed “ass-kicking, motorcycle-riding, tattooed Democrat,” a burned-out presidential hopeful, and a mild-mannered accountant yet again, among a couple others.

State Representative James Talarico, now running for U.S. Senate, speaks at a rally in August. (AP Photo/Talia Sprague)

This November, Democrats may well put sitting legislators on the ballot in all four of the top slots. By this simple but meaningful metric, the slate should be stronger even than 2014’s relatively heralded lineup (which featured two state senators, Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte, and a guy named Sam Houston). Of course, that ’14 team ended in ashes and grief; holding elected office is no guarantee against getting walloped. But it’s encouraging to see people who’ve won something before, and have something to lose, taking the plunge.

All that praise given, the process has still left plenty to be desired. Way back in May, Allred and O’Rourke met with Congressman Joaquin Castro and state Representative James Talarico to sort out who should take on incumbent U.S. Senator John Cornyn (or one of his primary challengers—Dems are hoping for the scandal-scarred Attorney General Ken Paxton) and to possibly divide their firepower among the races. This boys’ club managed to settle on approximately nothing. Allred jumped in the Senate race first, then Talarico did too; O’Rourke stayed out altogether, as did Castro, who months later gave a head-scratching series of comments about how he would have run for AG if only the other men could have sorted themselves out.

Poor coordination could lead to some odd outcomes. It’s possible that three of the four top nominees will be Austin state reps, a stark homogeneity that no one would intentionally plan. It’s also possible the slots will be split equally between Austin and Dallas politicians—still odd in a sprawling state whose largest city is neither of those two. And it’s further possible that three of the four will be Anglo, in a majority-nonwhite state headed toward majority-Latino status.

Then there’s the down-to-the-wire-ness of it all. North Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, in particular, waited until the afternoon of the final possible day to officially declare for the Senate, a looming decision that sent Allred scurrying instead into a competitive U.S. House primary that very morning. A firebrand who can earn all the media she needs and stack up cash, Crockett as a candidate means a zero-sum showdown with Talarico, who’d spent months receiving a rising-star treatment and building a lead over Allred.

To this point, I’ve written this column with an assumption that primary voters will tend toward sitting elected officials in March (and May, as needed) and with some indifference to Dem primary beefing in a state where the general election belongs to Republicans until proven otherwise. But voters will indeed have to make choices at the polls before any 2026 slate actually forms, so I’ll offer at least a few notes.

Talarico is a Democrat, a politician, and a Christian. This is a normal combination, though national media has treated it as exotic. The distinction is that, as a graduate student of liberal Presbyterianism, Talarico’s breadth and consistency of religious reference is greater than usual. And his serene delivery and boyish clean-cut looks are, as the kids would perhaps still say, giving pastor.

But Talarico’s campaign refrain that it’s “time to start flipping tables” begs a question: Can you picture him actually flipping a table? With Crockett, you can—or at least the verbal equivalent. With O’Rourke, the closest thing to a success story Texas Dems have, tables were in constant physical danger as the six-foot-something El Pasoan was wont to leap atop them before addressing a crowd. Both Crockett and O’Rourke are the type of politician who can say “fuck” and make it sound right.

Talarico has developed an effective religious-political rhetorical mode, but Crockett (again like O’Rourke) can go viral by breaking out of the politician mode entirely.

Before Crockett’s entrance, Talarico was in the catbird seat. He could be the left candidate and the center candidate at will, the head and the heart of the party alike. Now, even as he responds to his competitor with grace, the high road is obstructed. The lanes of progressive vs. moderate can’t be entirely avoided, and claims about electability and divisiveness will be inflected with race and gender. 

Talarico has a large following on TikTok and Instagram; Crockett’s is larger. Talarico can raise money, and so can she. She holds a higher elected office, and she comes from a much more populous metro area. So why not her? Talarico doesn’t want to answer that, but the question isn’t going away. 

Crockett at the 2024 Democratic National Convention (Shutterstock)

A step down the ballot, five-term Austin state Representative Gina Hinojosa has nobly given up her seat to challenge the governor, who is likely untouchable but deserves a serious critic of his cronyism and creeping authoritarianism. In the absence of any serious South Texas candidate, Hinojosa will have to play the part—something she can credibly do as a Brownsville native with a last name that screams Valley to anyone who knows the region. 

Rounding out the electeds running for the next two rungs, a third Austin state House member, Vikki Goodwin, is taking a shot at the lieutenant governor, and Dallas state Senator Nathan Johnson is aiming for the AG seat vacated by Paxton.

Apart from these, there’s a competing slate of already-rans (until the former congressman from Dallas switched races, I was going to call these Allred-y-rans—alas!). This includes Andrew White, an ex-governor’s son, himself running for guv for the second time [Editor’s Note: White dropped his bid on January 5, after this story published in print]; long-ago-congressman and once-gubernatorial nominee Chris Bell also running for the executive mansion again; and ex-Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski taking a second stab at AG. (Mike Collier, the mild-mannered accountant himself, is also making his third lite guv bid—but this time as an Independent.) For these hopefuls, perhaps the umpteenth time will prove the charm, but voters are certainly under no pressure to bet on them now.

Like a sailor, lost and withering at sea, who manages to reel in a strange catch that may or may not be poisonous to eat, Texas Democrats will get the chance this year to try something new.

The post Midterm Memo: The C-Team. Maybe B-. appeared first on The Texas Observer.