Daily Briefing: Sunday, November 15, 2026

SpaceX caught the upper stage of its Starship rocket with the launch tower’s mechanical arms at Starbase in Cameron County on Saturday afternoon, the first time the company has recovered that part of the rocket, BBC News reported. The Ship flew for about 22 and a half hours, completed 14 orbits and deployed 26 Starlink satellites before it returned. The Super Heavy booster had aborted its own catch attempt minutes after Friday’s launch and came down in the ocean.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Friday’s four-hour nationwide ground stop came from a technical problem during an upgrade from copper wire to fiber-optic cable in the federal air traffic control system, work being done by the contractor L3Harris, BBC News reported. Duffy said the government is trying to learn whether the cause was “incompetence” by the contractor or faulty equipment, after a router began flooding other systems. The Federal Aviation Administration said flight schedules should return to normal by the end of Sunday.

The Public Utility Commission of Texas published two memos on November 12 saying commissioners voted not to put rehearing motions on Oncor’s Dinosaur to Drill Hole 765-kilovolt line “to any open meeting agenda,” Texas Scorecard reported. The roughly 390-mile line would run from near Glen Rose to near the Culberson-Reeves county line. An attorney for opponents told the outlet the approval will become final and any further challenge will have to go to court in Austin.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has rebuilt its Texas Advisory and Notification System so the public can get grid notices by text message for the first time, in English and Spanish, ERCOT announced. The notices run from a Weather Watch, issued while grid conditions are still normal, up to an Energy Emergency Alert Level 3, when controlled outages are underway.

Comptroller Don Huffines said Texas cities, counties, transit systems and special purpose districts will receive $1.4 billion in November local sales tax allocations, 14.6 percent more than a year ago, the comptroller’s office announced. Huffines urged the Legislature to use the revenue next year to cut property taxes.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear the federal government’s appeal in Mullin v. Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, limited to the first two questions in the petition, the Court’s docket shows. The case tests the presidential order suspending asylum access at the southern border, which a federal appeals court in Washington ruled against in April, PBS NewsHour reported.

Lawyers for Alberta’s government asked a judge in Edmonton on Friday to strike Onion Lake Cree Nation’s constitutional challenge to the Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act, arguing the law has had no impact on treaty rights, The Canadian Press reported. Court of King’s Bench Justice Grant Dunlop reserved his decision.

Two county teams of the Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) meet Tuesday evening at 6 PM, Caldwell County in Martindale at Chronic Chaos Cafe (event page) and Tarrant County in Fort Worth at Cousin’s BBQ (event page), according to the TNM calendar. Llano County holds a meet and greet Thursday at 6 PM at The Falls in Llano (event page) and an information table on the Llano Courthouse Square Saturday at 8 AM (event page).