Officials are expecting a large crowd to fill the Nueces County Courthouse, when a jury trial is set to begin for a former officer charged in the failed response to the Uvalde school shooting in 2022. Adrian Gonzalez, who was employed as a police officer with the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District when the deadly mass shooting happened May 24, 2022, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, faces 29 counts of abandoning or endangering a child, according to court documents. The case was transferred from Uvalde to Corpus Christi earlier this year. Jury selection for the trial starts Jan. 5, with about 450 potential jurors reporting to the site at 8 a.m. that day, said Nueces County Sheriff J.C. Hooper. Jury selection might take a couple of days, he said. Since finding out about two months ago that the trial would be held in Nueces County, local law enforcement have been coordinating with the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Texas Rangers and the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office to ensure safe access and security. Nueces County will provide all of the security measures during the trial, with bailiffs present in the courtroom. An additional security checkpoint area will be set up in the courthouse lobby so that people can move into the court tower more quickly, the sheriff said. “A significant, very collaborative operations plan is in place, and I’m confident that we can provide a safe and secure and orderly venue to get this trial completed,” Hooper said. “The prediction is the trial will take three weeks, but you just never know.” Members of the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office, the Uvalde County District Attorney’s Office, along with Nueces County officials and the Texas Rangers are expected to attend the trial. The trial will be open to the public and will be adjudicated by visiting judge Sid Harle, whom Gov. Greg Abbott reappointed in September as the presiding judge of the 4th Administrative Judicial Region of Texas. The 4th Administrative Judicial Region did not respond to a request for information about the case transfer to Nueces County. Both the sheriff’s office and the Nueces County judge’s office have fielded phone calls from national media sources, the sheriff said, and local, state and national media could attend the trial. County officials aren’t certain how many reporters will be there, but they will plan accordingly, he said. A designated parking area near the courthouse will be available for media to park, he said. Court TV will livestream the trial, he said, so that people who are not in the courtroom will be able to watch it. Video and audio will also be streamed to a secondary viewing area at the courthouse, he said. He said that moving the case to Nueces County increased the likelihood that a jury could be selected from a larger pool of potential jurors and also provided more spacious accommodation and viewing areas at the courthouse for the prosecution and defense teams and witnesses during the trial. “We’re just guessing it’s going to be very well attended, because we know there are family members of the victims coming from Uvalde,” he said. “There will be a prosecution team, a defense team and over 50 witnesses. “Our goal is to see that it goes off in a safe, secure, orderly environment, and I believe we are prepared to provide that,” Hooper said.

A group of federal government employees on Jan. 1 filed a class action complaint against President Donald Trump's administration over a new policy that will eliminate coverage for gender-affirming care in federal health insurance programs. The Human Rights Campaign Foundation made the complaint against the U.S. Office of Personnel Management on behalf of the federal employees as the new policy took effect with the start of the new year. OPM in an August letter stated that in 2026 “chemical and surgical modification of an individual's sex traits through medical interventions” will no longer be covered under health insurance programs for federal employees and U.S. postal workers. OPM officials could not be reached for immediate comment. The complaint argues that the policy is discriminatory on the basis of sex. It asks that the policy be rescinded and seeks payment for economic damages and other relief. If the issue is not resolved with the OPM, the foundation said that plaintiffs will pursue class claims before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and potentially pursue a class action lawsuit in federal court. A group of Democratic state attorneys general last month sued the Trump administration to block proposed rules that would cut children’s access to gender-affirming care, the latest court battle over Trump’s efforts to eliminate legal protections for transgender people. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has proposed rules that would bar hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to children from Medicaid and Medicare and prohibit the Children's Health Insurance Program from paying for it.

The U.S. Justice Department revealed it has 5.2 million pages of Epstein files left to review and needs 400 lawyers from four different department offices to help with the process through late January, according to a government document reviewed by Reuters on Dec. 30 This is likely to extend the final release of the documents to much later than expected after a December 19 deadline set by Congress, the document said. The White House and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment. The Trump administration ordered the Justice Department to release the files tied to criminal probes of Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier and convicted sex offender, who was friends with U.S. President Donald Trump in the 1990s, in compliance with a transparency law passed by Congress last month. Collectively, the Criminal Division, the National Security Division, the FBI and the US Attorney's office in Manhattan are providing 400 attorneys to review the files, the document said, a more precise, and potentially much larger, figure than previous estimates from the department. The review will occur between January 5-23, the document added. Department leaders are offering telework options and time off awards as incentives for volunteers, the document said, adding that lawyers who assist will be expected to devote three to five hours a day to review about 1,000 documents a day. The DOJ said last week it had uncovered more than a million additional documents potentially linked to Epstein. So far, the disclosures have been heavily redacted, frustrating some Republicans and doing little to quell a scandal that threatens the party ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. The law, approved by Congress with broad bipartisan support, requires all Epstein-related files to be made public, despite Trump’s months-long effort to keep them sealed. Under the statute, all documents were to be released by December 19, with redactions to protect victims. Trump knew Epstein socially in the 1990s and early 2000s. He has said their association ended in the mid-2000s and that he was never aware of the financier's sexual abuse. Epstein was convicted in Florida in 2008 of procuring a person under the age of 18 for prostitution. The Justice Department charged him with sex trafficking in 2019. Epstein was found dead in 2019 in a New York jail and his death was ruled a suicide. In a message shared on X last week, the Justice Department said, "We have lawyers working around the clock to review and make the legally required redactions to protect victims, and we will release the documents as soon as possible. Due to the mass volume of material, this process may take a few more weeks."