News Roundup: John Cornyn And Ted Cruz Want To Hear Both Sides In Kavanaugh Assault Allegations

Our daily look at Texas headlines.

By Becky FogelSeptember 18, 2018 2:04 pm

The Standard’s news roundup gives you a quick hit of interesting, sometimes irreverent, and breaking news stories from all over the state.

The U.S. senators from Texas will get to question Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, about sexual assault allegations he’s facing.

John Cornyn and Ted Cruz both sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Next Monday, September 24, they’ll hear from Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her at a party when they were in high school in the 1980s.

Cornyn and Cruz each released statements Monday, essentially saying both Ford and Kavanaugh deserve to address this issue. Cornyn, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, said the committee “should treat this with the seriousness it deserves, in a way that is fair to both the individual making the accusation and the judge himself.” Cruz echoed that sentiment, saying, “Professor Ford should have a full opportunity to tell her story before the Judiciary Committee, and Judge Kavanaugh should have a full opportunity to defend himself.” Kavanaugh has completely denied the allegations.




An app created by a Houston web developer is helping people in the Hurricane Florence-ravaged Carolinas. Houston Public Media’s Florian Martin reports.

When Harvey hit over a year ago, Matthew Marchetti created CrowdSource Rescue, an app that connects helpers with those in need of help. Since then, the web developer has activated it for several other disasters, including in Mexico and the Philippines.

Marchetti says it has to be adjusted according to the disaster.

“With Hurricane Florence, we knew it was going to be flooding, we knew it was going to be some water rescues as well as some large animals evacs, and we asked people, basically, like, what are your resources around that,” Marchetti says.

Marchetti says during times like this, he works 16 or 17 hours a day. At last count, he says, the app has facilitated about 17-hundred water rescues and wellness checks during Florence.




South Texas is getting a break from more than a week of heavy rains.

The region has seen multiple rounds of showers and thunderstorms over the last seven to ten days. Just this past weekend, the Coastal Bend area was hit with about 10 inches of rain.

Greg Heavener is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Corpus Christi. He says south Texas has gotten so much rain this month, the ground is saturated with water.

“Any additional rainfall that falls on top of a very, very wet saturated ground – it can’t absorb it, much like a sponge, a sponge that’s already full, so all that water basically runs off across roadways, into the rivers into the streams, causing them to rise rapidly. So it’s much a faster progression of water rising than what would normally be if the ground was say, drier,” Heavener says.

Heavener says by Thursday or Friday, the area will likely see scattered showers and thunderstorms return.