RIP Cecile

Women's rights activist and Texas native Cecile Richards dies at 67

Cecile Richards

Courtesy photo

Cecile Richards, a national leader for abortion access and women’s rights who led Planned Parenthood for 12 tumultuous years, has died. She was 67.

Richards died Monday at home in New York “surrounded by family and her ever-loyal dog, Ollie,” her family said in a statement.
“Our hearts are broken today but no words can do justice to the joy she brought to our lives,” the family said.

Richards, the daughter of the late Texas Gov. Ann Richards, was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, in 2023, five years after she left Planned Parenthood.

Though Planned Parenthood also provides birth control, cancer screenings and testing for sexually transmitted diseases at clinics nationwide, its status as the nation’s leading abortion provider has long made it a target of social conservatives. Under Richards' leadership, the organization gained in membership, donor support and political clout, and she played a prominent role in pushing back against critics.

In 2015, she spent hours answering hostile questions from Republican U.S. House members who later created an investigative panel to probe Planned Parenthood’s abortion and fetal-tissue policies. In 2021, she warned that the U.S. Supreme Court’s inaction on Texas’ restrictive abortion law could signal the end of judicial checks and balances on the issue. And after the court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, she continued to speak out.

“One day, our children and grandchildren may ask us, ‘When it was all on the line, what did you do?’” she said at the Democratic National Convention in August. “The only acceptable answer is, ‘Everything we could.’”

Born on July 15, 1957, in Waco, Texas, Richards earned a bachelor of arts degree in history from Brown University, where she unfurled a banner from a second floor window during her 1980 graduation ceremony to protest the school's investments in South Africa.

“One of the more popular buttons of the day was ‘Question Authority,’ and I feel like we did that every single day, and it absolutely set me on my path,” she said in a 2017 address to graduates. “Brown instilled in me the belief that any one of us can change the world and that, in fact, it's sort of what is expected of us.”

After college, she worked as an organizer for low-wage workers in several states before returning to Texas to help with her mother's 1990 gubernatorial campaign. In 2004, she was a founder of America Votes, and before joining Planned Parenthood, served as deputy chief of staff for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.

“It was my privilege to work directly with Cecile for many years and to I have a front-row seat to her sharp intellect, strategic thinking and relentless effectiveness," Pelosi said in a statement Monday. “As she ascended to other leadership roles, we never stopped working together to defend the rights of women and working families.”

Outgoing President Joe Biden, who awarded Richards the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November, on Monday called her a “leader of utmost character.”

“Cecile fearlessly led us forward to be the America we say we are,” he said in a statement issued about an hour before Donald Trump was sworn in as president. “Carrying her mom’s torch for justice, she championed some of our Nation’s most important civil rights causes. She fought for the dignity of workers, defended and advanced women’s reproductive rights and equality, and mobilized our fellow Americans to exercise their power to vote.”

After leaving Planned Parenthood, Richards served as co-chair of American Bridge, which supports liberal causes and conducts opposition research on Republicans. Last fall, she launched a project that used social media to emphasize personal stories about the impact of abortion bans and restrictions.

Alexis McGill Johnson, current president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, called Richards an “indomitable force.”
“As we continue to navigate uncharted territory, we will be able to meet the challenges we face in large part because of the movement Cecile built over decades,” she said. “I know, without a doubt, that Cecile would tell us the best way to honor her memory is to suit up — preferably in pink — link arms, and fight like hell for Planned Parenthood patients across the country.”
Richards is survived by her husband, two daughters, a son and one grandson.

In her Democratic convention speech, Richards described the joy of becoming a grandmother in 2023 and called Kamala Harris' presidential campaign a “celebration of women.”

“As my mother, Gov. Ann Richards, would say, ‘I hear America singing,'" she said. “When women are free to make their own decisions about their lives and to follow our dreams, we are unstoppable.”

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cattle concerns

Flesh-eating screwworm fly detected in Texas for first time since 1966

Photo courtesy of Texas A&M AgriLife

This little fly can do a lot of damage

The New World screwworm fly has reached south Texas, the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed June 3, the first time in decades that the parasite with flesh-eating larvae has threatened the nation's cattle industry and only the third time it's appeared in the U.S. in that time.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the case was in a 3-week-old calf in La Pryor, Texas, about 50 miles from the Mexico border. Texas State Veterinarian Bud Dinges said he has established a 12-mile quarantine zone, prohibiting the movement of any warm-blooded animal — including pets — outside that zone without an inspection.

Rollins said there have been no other detections of the fly in the U.S., and officials were quick to say that while the fly’s larvae are a threat to livestock production, they don’t infest food. Properly treated, even the infested calf should recover, Rollins said.

Rollins, U.S. and Texas agriculture officials, and cattle industry leaders have been sounding public alarms about the fly’s movement across Mexico for more than a year, spurred on by memories of it causing tens of millions of dollars of losses — potentially billions in today’s dollars — before its eradication in the 1970s.

It is the first case confirmed in Texas since 1966, Rollins said.

The months of effort to keep the fly out of the U.S. have included dropping millions of sterile screwworm flies in the area to mate with wild females — the same method used successfully before the fly was eradicated. Rollins said the USDA is confident enough in its preparations that it believes “there is no threat of mass infestation.”

“There is no reason to believe this incursion will result in establishment of the pest in our country," Rollins said.

The announcement of the suspected case comes only a day after Rollins had an online news conference to highlight the nearness of the threat, with cases being confirmed in Mexico as close as 25 miles from the border — and to outline the USDA's efforts to combat it.

The New World Screwworm fly is a tropical species that decades ago infested cattle in warm weather across the southern United States, but it was contained in Panama until late in 2024.

The female fly lays its eggs in open wounds or mucous membranes and they hatch into larvae that eat flesh — making them unlike most fly species — and can infest livestock, wild mammals, household pets and even humans. Infestations can lead to death if left untreated.

In August 2025, federal health officials confirmed a case in a Maryland resident who had traveled to El Salvador, but the victim recovered and officials found no transmission of the parasite. Before that, the last outbreak was in the Florida Keys in September 2016, mostly among wild deer, and it was contained early the next year without spreading further.

The female flies mate once in their monthslong lives, and if they do so with a sterile fly, their eggs would not hatch — and the population would die out over time. Past eradication efforts were so successful that the U.S. shut down facilities for breeding sterile flies, leaving only one in Panama for decades.

That is changing. The USDA dedicated $21 million to convert a fruit-fly breeding facility in southern Mexico into one for breeding screwworm flies, opened a new center for dispersing sterile flies bred elsewhere in southern Texas and has started construction on a $750 million screwworm fly factory there. The breeding facility in Mexico should be operating next month, Rollins said.

Officials also deployed 8,000 fly traps along the U.S.-Mexico border, and Rollins said the USDA has tested more than 58,000 fly samples, along with 19,000 wild animals.

Rollins also closed the U.S.-Mexico border last year to livestock imports from Mexico, a decision she defended during her news conference Tuesday. The fly also can travel with people and their pets and with wild animals, officials noted, but Rollins stressed Wednesday evening that it doesn't fly great distances on its own.

Dinges said ranchers and pet owners need to understand that it's important to respect the quarantine zone.

“Please help us prevent any further movement of this pest by staying put,” he said.

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