Harris: Fine Gael ‘will gain seats’ amid further fragmentation of Irish politicsWinnipeg Jets (18-6, in the Central Division) vs. Dallas Stars (14-8, in the Central Division) Dallas; Sunday, 4:30 p.m. EST BOTTOM LINE: The Dallas Stars host the Winnipeg Jets after Mason Marchment scored two goals in the Stars' 5-3 win over the Colorado Avalanche. Dallas has a 14-8 record overall and a 5-2-0 record in Central Division play. The Stars have a +17 scoring differential, with 76 total goals scored and 59 conceded. Winnipeg has an 18-6 record overall and a 7-1-0 record in Central Division play. The Jets have gone 10-1-0 in games they score at least one power-play goal. Sunday's game is the second time these teams square off this season. The Jets won the last matchup 4-1. Cole Perfetti scored two goals in the victory. TOP PERFORMERS: Marchment has nine goals and 14 assists for the Stars. Roope Hintz has five goals and one assist over the last 10 games. Kyle Connor has 13 goals and 16 assists for the Jets. Mark Scheifele has scored five goals with three assists over the past 10 games. LAST 10 GAMES: Stars: 6-4-0, averaging 3.9 goals, 6.6 assists, 3.3 penalties and 8.6 penalty minutes while giving up three goals per game. Jets: 5-5-0, averaging three goals, 4.7 assists, 4.2 penalties and 11.7 penalty minutes while giving up 2.7 goals per game. INJURIES: Stars: None listed. Jets: None listed. The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar .
Panthers look to turn things around during upcoming homestandBOZEMAN — For the first time in program history, the Montana State football team finished a regular season unbeaten. The No. 2-ranked Bobcats improved to 12-0 overall (8-0 in Big Sky Conference play) with a 34-11 win over No. 9 Montana (8-4, 5-3) in the 123rd Brawl of the Wild on Saturday afternoon at Bobcat Stadium. The victory gave MSU the outright Big Sky title and most likely secured a top-two seed in the FCS playoffs. It’s the first outright conference championship for the Cats since 1984. MSU is credited with a solo Big Sky title in 2011, although it initially shared it with UM before the NCAA vacated several UM wins due to extra benefits. MSU opened Saturday's game with a 14-play, 75-yard drive that Tommy Mellott capped with a 5-yard touchdown run. The home team has now scored first in six straight Brawls, and the home team has won each of the last five Cat-Griz games by at least 19 points. After both teams traded punts, UM got to MSU’s 25-yard line on a 21-yard run from Xavier Harris. The Grizzlies settled for a 47-yard field goal after an Eli Gillman run for no gain, a false start and an incomplete pass caused by pressure from McCade O’Reilly and Rylan Ortt. On the next drive, Mellott completed a 35-yard TD pass to Rohan Jones on third and 8 to put the Cats ahead 14-3 with about 10 minutes left in the first half. MSU’s Myles Sansted put MSU up 17-3 with a 27-yard field goal at the 1-minute, 40-second mark. UM turned it over on downs with 25 seconds on the clock. MSU set up a 49-yard field goal attempt five plays later, and Sansted drilled it as time expired to give the Cats a 20-3 halftime lead. It’s the longest field goal MSU has made since a 50-yarder from Blake Glessner against William & Mary in the 2022 FCS quarterfinals. Both teams opened the second half with punts. The Griz stuffed Mellott on 4th and 1 at the 5:14 mark, but they went three and out on the next drive after Sawyer Racanelli couldn’t hold onto a 28-yard pass from Logan Fife. MSU went up by 24 points on the next drive, thanks to an 88-yard run from Adam Jones. The Missoula Sentinel grad scored on a 3-yard TD run. The Cats led 27-3 going into the fourth quarter, two seasons after they held a 41-7 lead over UM in Bozeman through three quarters. The Griz scored their only TD of the game with 11:02 left. Eli Gillman scored from 1 yard out and Fife completed a two-point pass to Racanelli after a 17-yard pass to Aaron Fontes on fourth and 8. MSU took a 34-11 lead with 4:49 left on a 2-yard TD run from Adam Jones, who finished with 197 rushing yards. The Cats out-gained the Griz 420 to 234 in total yards, including 326 to 117 on the ground.
2025 will be a year of transformation for people born under Root Number 9 (born on the 9th, 18th, or 27th of any month). Since the sum of 2025 equals 9, it is close to your personal energy. The ruling planet of Number 9, Mars, will be the dominating force that will encourage you to follow passion and courage. However, this year's energy will also be influenced by the numbers 2 and 5 associated with the Moon and Mercury, respectively. These energies will bring harmony, passion, and potential for meaningful dialogues and give you just the right portion of activity and contemplation. Also Read Numerology for 2025: Find your personal year number in 2025 Career Horoscope 2025 2025 is a good time for those born under Root Number 9 as it presents a promising year for new opportunities, growth, and a chance to start over. If you are considering changing your job or career, 2025 might be a good year. Mars energy will encourage you to look for new opportunities that you can exploit in leadership, innovation and initiative. Your natural courage will enable you to venture into areas you have not considered before, such as new industries. For others, 2025 will be a year of noticeable appreciation. Mars will power you up to perform well at your job, and you will be rewarded for your hard work. If you have had to work harder or were considering a raise, this may be the year it happens. Take care not to offend or get into conflict with some of the staff in the office. Take your time and explain what you want to your colleagues and your superiors. Finance Horoscope 2025 2025 is likely to be a mixed year as far as financial prospects are concerned. Thus, having a good plan will be your winning ticket in terms of investment strategy in 2025. The role of emotions is going to be even bigger, and you may invest in things that you believe in or that make you feel safe for your family. Besides, the kind of investment one can look at in 2025 is the regular forms of investment and sustainable or socially responsible investments. Because of your emotional aspect, you get attached more to the investments you believe in, especially those that will positively impact the community or the environment. This could be companies in the renewable energy sector, technology solutions to the health or education sectors, or environmentally conscious businesses. Love Horoscope 2025 Root Number 9 people should expect 2025 to be one of the most emotionally charged, with opportunities for growth in love. For singles, this year opens up possibilities for new relationships. Mars will make you eager to meet people and start new relationships. In the year ahead, you may be particularly attracted to people who have goals and direction in their lives, are enthusiastic about living, and can touch your feelings. As for the new dating, 2025 may bring an interesting but definitely emotionally charged time. Mars will create an intense drive, which is great for getting things done, but Mercury will also promote honest and straightforward speech. This is the best time to show how you feel and how you are and to learn more about each other. For those in a committed relationship, 2025 will be a year where the heart and feelings can blend and make a relationship even more passionate. Mars will make you more proactive in the relationship – you’ll be more likely to plan romantic evenings, challenge yourselves, or simply express your love. One has to be careful to note when it is their partner’s turn to be cared for or when the role has switched. Health Horoscope 2025 2025 requires people with Root Number 9 to have a moderate health standard. Be careful about your body and feelings, as the energies of Mars, the Moon, and Mercury will impact different aspects of your life. As for the over-sensitive areas, one should be careful with the head, eyes, and nervous system. Mars rules over the head and the brain, so one might experience more headaches, migraines or nervous tension this year. It also lends an emotional aspect to your stomach, digestion and emotional self. The digestive system could be sensitive to stress or any form of emotional change, hence the need to take good foods and reduce stress as much as possible. Some months within the year 2025 will be a bit more sensitive as far as health is concerned. The months of March and August could be the most active or stressful.
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Mystery drone sightings continue in New Jersey and across the US. Here's what we knowAs Ukraine's allies gathered in Halifax on Friday for the International Security Forum, president Peter Van Praagh acknowledged the foreboding many felt following the election of Donald Trump. "Judging from today's reports and traditional and social media, we might be forgiven for believing that Ukraine can no longer win the war against Russian aggression," he said. "This widespread forecast is not true." "It was not true when all the experts said the same thing on February 24, 2022, the date Putin invaded, and it is not true now," he added, promising a conference that would "change this doom-and-gloom narrative." The meeting represents one of the best chances for those still committed to Ukrainian victory against Russia to try to find ways to stymie Trump's declared intention of pushing Ukraine into peace talks that almost certainly would end with the loss of a large part of its territory. Those allies face a difficult, perhaps insurmountable, task. But already, some of Trump's predictions about how the world and the war would respond to his election victory are turning out differently than he expected. President-elect Donald Trump arrives to speak at a meeting of the House GOP conference on Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in Washington. (AP/Alex Brandon) One of Trump's campaign promises was that he would end the Ukraine war before taking the oath of office. "I will get it settled before I even become president," Trump claimed with Vice President Kamala Harris. "If I win, when I'm president-elect, what I'll do is I'll speak to one, I'll speak to the other. "They respect me. They don't respect [President Joe] Biden." He in an interview on the podcast PMD: "I think the world's going to behave, and I think I will settle Russia-Ukraine while I'm president-elect." But peace has not broken out. Instead, there has been a wave of escalation. Far from quailing at the prospect of a Trump presidency, Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized the use of a new nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) called Oreshnik ('the hazel") in response to a Ukrainian missile attack on Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin makes a televised address in Moscow on November 21, 2024. (Kremlin.ru/Reuters) Putin also went on national television to tell Russians that "a regional conflict in Ukraine previously provoked by the West has acquired elements of a global character," and marked the 1000th day since Russia's full-scale invasion by signing , lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. The escalation has not surprised observers of this war, or of wars generally, said former Canadian defence official Andrew Rasoulis, now with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. "It's very predictable," he told CBC News. "As often is the case before wars come to an end and negotiations set in, the fighting sometimes can be heaviest at that point as both sides try to strengthen their positions before they actually sit down. "Everyone is now doing positional fighting to strengthen their hand at these inevitable negotiations." At the APEC and G20 summits in South America, Prime Minister Trudeau said Canada continues to see Ukrainian victory as the only acceptable outcome. "Any victory on that issue by Russia, any demonstration that if you have a bigger army that you get to redraw lines on a map, would have devastating consequences, not just for Ukraine ... but for the entire world," he said. "How many countries have a neighbour that has a historical claim over this corner across the river where their citizens used to live, or that got rejigged a hundred years ago? How many conflicts have been averted because the world has agreed that you may not like the borders where they are, but they are where they are, and they hold? "That is why it is so important that Ukraine wins this conflict, and that Russia loses." U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer brought a to South America. "We need to double down on shoring up our support for Ukraine and that's top of my agenda," he said in Rio de Janeiro. He didn't reveal that he had already given Kyiv the green light to fire British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles into Russia. In Lima for the APEC conference, Trudeau conceded that if the incoming Trump administration is determined to abandon Ukraine, Kyiv's other allies will struggle. "Let's also be very blunt — all of the allies in the world would not be able to replace a complete withdrawal from supporting Ukraine by the United States," he said. But in Rio three days later for the G20, Trudeau said Canada remains determined to try. "We're very aware of potential challenges with President Trump coming in, but we're not going to panic," he said. "We're going to continue to stay focused on getting the support to Ukraine to win this war." If money were the only issue, the remaining allies could probably find a way to outspend Russia — a country with a nominal GDP smaller than any of the G7 nations, including Canada. But dollars and euros do not easily convert into modern, sophisticated heavy weapons systems of the kind Ukraine needs to fight a military superpower such as Russia. As Canadians know well, modern military procurement is a multi-year process, which makes modern warfare something of a come-as-you-are affair. Countries burn through weapons faster than they can produce new ones. In a military handout photo, serviceman of 24th Mechanized brigade fires a 2s5 "Hyacinth-s" self-propelled howitzer towards Russian troops at a front line, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, near the town of Chasiv Yar in Donetsk region, Ukraine November 18, 2024. (Oleg Petrasiuk/Ukrainian Armed Forces/Reuters) While Canada has given generously to Ukraine, about two-thirds of its assistance has been in the form of money, loan guarantees, technical assistance, training and humanitarian aid. Two-thirds of U.S. assistance, on the other hand, has been in the form of military hardware. Europe's assistance, too, has skewed more to the financial side, but European allies have also contributed collectively even more military assistance than the U.S. Can they keep that up? Will it be enough? The U.S. defence industry is vastly larger than that of any other western country. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, is watched by Rich Hansen, the commander's representative for the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant, while signing military ordnance in Scranton, Pa., on Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (Office of the Ukrainian Presidency via AP) Money earmarked for Ukraine has flowed to arms production facilities , where it buys equipment like the , or the 155mm shells made at a plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania that Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited in September. Ukraine's other allies also make arms, but Europe has had to rely heavily on its retired and surplus stocks to arm Ukraine. Those stocks are not yet exhausted. Many European countries of stockpiled or retired armoured vehicles that could be refurbished and sent to Ukraine. On Thursday, at the Commons defence committee, Defence Minister Bill Blair announced that Canada had delivered new air defence equipment to Ukraine that it ordered in 2022, the first year of the conflict. Canada purchased the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS) from U.S. manufacturer Raytheon for about $400 million. "We have been able to deliver, at long last," he told committee members, "and I think it's going to make a difference because it will enable them to protect communities." That deal with Raytheon points to ways other countries might continue to leverage the capacity of the U.S. defence industry, even if the Trump administration itself is determined not to chip in. Blair spoke more about how the NASAMS deal came together on Friday, at the Halifax International Security Forum. "We put the money on the table and said, 'OK, we'll do this'. We went to industry, they told us to get in line and it would probably take four or even five years to deliver on those systems. "Fortunately, the United States stepped up and said, 'We have bigger buying power and perhaps a more advantageous position in the contract.' They said, 'Join us.' "And it still took two years." Blair said western leaders will have to lean on their defence industries to scale up and speed up. "All of us recognize that we need to work more closely, more effectively with industry to make sure that we can meet the moment," he said. There is also the possibility that, as the U.S. departs the scene, new players — albeit smaller ones — might step up. One example is South Korea. South Korea has been building up its defence industry for years, with the goal of becoming a world player. Its strategic decision to focus on armoured vehicles was sometimes derided as outmoded, but the rush of international orders following the Ukraine invasion has silenced the critics. Until now, South Korea has adhered to a strict policy of not supplying arms to countries involved in active conflicts, including Ukraine. South Korea's defence and foreign ministers visited their Canadian counterparts in Ottawa this month. South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol met with Trudeau in Peru last week. A South Korean K1A2 tank fires during a joint live fire exercise at a military training field in Pocheon on Thursday, March 14, 2024. South Korea views North Korea's military intervention on Russia's behalf as a clear threat to its security. (Jung Yeon-je/Associated Press) Canadian officials privy to those meetings say that North Korea's decision to send troops to fight on Russia's behalf has been received in Seoul as an almost existential threat to South Korea's own security. South Korea is it could soon be ready to supply Ukraine directly. Japan also fears the effect that exposure to modern Russian training and doctrine could have on the North Korean military, and dreads the possible quid pro quo Moscow might give Kim Jong-un in return for its intervention. Japan, like South Korea, has so far given only money and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. While these nations could never replace the U.S. as a source of weapons, they could theoretically help to mitigate the loss of American support. Finally, there's Ukraine's own defence industry, an antiquated Soviet relic that has modernized and shown a since the 2022 invasion. This week, 12 European countries joined with Ukraine in a new defence cooperation group focused on promoting that industry and linking it more closely to defence industries throughout northern Europe. Denmark this week held the first meeting of a new all-European Northern Group defence alliance that aims to arm Ukraine without US assistance. Ukraine's defence minister, Rustem Umerov, is fifth from left. (Rustem Umerov Facebook account) The includes Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Iceland, the Baltic countries, the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands and Poland. Canada is also pursuing initiatives to grow Ukraine's domestic industry, Blair said Friday. "This is a critical moment in the Ukrainian-Russian war," he said. "We have to make sure that we remain united and strong in our support of Ukraine to achieve the appropriate, right outcome for the Ukrainian people, which is victory."
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When Nathan Hecht ran for the Texas Supreme Court in 1988, no Republican had ever been elected to the state’s highest civil court. His election foreshadowed a coming transformation of the court, civil legal procedure and Texas itself. Hecht is the longest tenured Supreme Court justice in Texas history. He won six reelections and led the court as chief justice for more than a decade. He heard more than 2,700 oral arguments, authored 7,000 pages of opinions and retires now not because he’s had enough, but because state law requires him to. Late on a Friday afternoon, just two weeks before he hung up his robe, he was still in his office, his mind mired in the work that was left to be done. “This is always a really busy time for us, because the opinions are mounting up to be talked about,” he said. “It’ll be busy next week.” Hecht began as a dissenter on a divided court, his conservative positions on abortion, school finance and property rights putting him at odds with the Democratic majority and some moderate Republicans. But as Texas Republicans began dominating up and down the ballot, his minority voice became mainstream on one of the country’s most conservative high courts. In his administration of the court, Hecht has been a fierce advocate for the poor, pushing for more Legal Aid funding, bail reform and lowering the barriers to accessing the justice system. “If justice were food, too many would be starving,” Hecht told lawmakers in 2017. “If it were housing, too many would be homeless. If it were medicine, too many would be sick.” Hecht’s departure leaves a vacancy that Gov. Greg Abbott, a former justice himself, will get to fill. He may elevate a current justice or appoint someone new directly to the chief justice role. Whoever ends up in the top spot will have to run for reelection in 2026. In his typical understated manner, so at odds with the bombast of the other branches of government, Hecht told The Texas Tribune that serving on the court has been the honor of his life. “I have gotten to participate not only in a lot of decisions shaping the jurisprudence of the state, but also in trying to improve the administration of the court system so that it works better and fosters public trust and confidence,” he said. “So I feel good about the past,” he said. “And I feel good about the future.” A ‘Sea Change’ Born in Clovis, New Mexico, Hecht studied philosophy at Yale before getting his law degree from Southern Methodist University. He clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and returned to Texas, where his reputation preceded him. As a young lawyer, Tom Phillips, a former chief justice and now a partner at Baker Botts, reached out to a Dallas law firm that had promised to hire him the next chance they got. “I called them a few months later and said, ‘So I assume you never got a vacancy,’” Phillips recalls. “And they said, ‘Well, we did, but we had a chance to hire Nathan Hecht, so you’ll understand why we went ahead and did that.’” Hecht was appointed to the district court in 1981 and quickly made a name for himself, pushing the court to modernize their stenography practices and taking the unusual step of writing opinions as a trial judge. He was elected to the court of appeals in 1986, and ran for Texas Supreme Court two years later. This race came at a low point for Texas’ judiciary, after a string of scandals, ethics investigations, eyebrow-raising rulings and national news coverage made several sitting Supreme Court justices household names — and not in a good way. Seeing an opportunity, Hecht challenged one of the incumbents, a Democrat who’d been called out in a damning 60 Minutes segment for friendly relationships with lawyers who both funded his campaigns and argued before the court. Hecht teamed up with Phillips and Eugene Cook, two Republicans who had recently been appointed to the court, and asked voters to “Clean the Slate in ‘88,” separating themselves from the Democrats by promising to only accept small donations. “Party politics were changing in the state at the same time, but the broader issue on our court at the time was to ensure that judges were following the law,” Hecht said. “That was a driving issue.” Since Phillips and Cook were incumbents, Hecht was the only one who had to take on a sitting Supreme Court justice. And he won. “It really was a sea change in Texas political history,” Phillips said. “He was the first person ever to do that in a down ballot race, to defeat a Democrat as a Republican.” Political Changes Republican dominance swept through the Supreme Court as swiftly as it did Texas writ large. The last Democrat would be elected to the court in 1994, just six years after the first Republican. But even among Bush-era Republicans filling the bench, Hecht’s conservatism stood out. In 2000, he wrote a dissent disagreeing with the majority ruling that allowed teens in Texas to get abortions with a judge’s approval if their parents wouldn’t consent, and a few years earlier, ruled in favor of wealthy school districts that wanted to use local taxes to supplement state funds. His pro-business bent stood out next to the court’s history of approving high dollar payouts for plaintiffs. Alex Winslow, the executive director of Texas Watch, a consumer advocacy group, told the New York Times in 2005 that Hecht was “the godfather of the conservative judicial movement in Texas.” “Extremist would be an appropriate description,” Winslow said. “He’s the philosophical leader of the right-wing fringe.” The only other justice who regularly staked out such a conservative position, according to the New York Times, was Priscilla Owen, who President George W. Bush appointed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2005. Hecht and Owen, who now goes by her maiden name, Richmond, wed in 2022. Wallace Jefferson, Hecht’s predecessor as chief justice, said Hecht’s sharp intellect and philosophical approach to the law improved the court’s opinions, even when he ultimately didn’t side with the majority. “He was a formidable adversary,” said Jefferson, now a partner at Alexander Dubose & Jefferson. “You knew that you would have to bring your best approach and analysis to overcome Nathan’s approach and analysis ... You had to come prepared and Nathan set the standard for that.” Hecht briefly became a national figure in 2005 when he helped Bush’s efforts to confirm Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court. As her longtime friend, Hecht gave more than 120 interviews to bolster Miers’ conservative credentials, jokingly calling himself the “PR office for the White House,” Texas Monthly reported at the time. This advocacy work raised ethical questions that Hecht fought for years, starting with a reprimand from the State Commission on Judicial Conduct. Hecht got that overturned. The Texas Ethics Commission then fined him $29,000 for not reporting the discount he got on the legal fees he paid challenging the reprimand. He appealed that fine and the case stretched until 2016, when he ultimately paid $1,000. Hecht has largely stayed out of the limelight in the decades since, letting his opinions speak for themselves and wading into the political fray mostly to advocate for court reforms. While Democrats have tried to pin unpopular COVID and abortion rulings on the justices in recent elections, Republicans continue to easily win these down-ballot races. Hecht is aware of the perception this one-party dominance creates, and has advocated for Texas to turn away from partisan judicial elections. In his 2023 state of the judiciary address, Hecht warned that growing political divisions were threatening the “judicial independence essential to the rule of law,” pointing to comments by both Democratic politicians and former President Donald Trump. But in an interview, Hecht stressed that most of the cases the Texas Supreme Court considers never make headlines, and are far from the politics that dominate Austin and Washington. “There’s no Republican side to an oil and gas case. There’s no Democrat side to a custody hearing,” he said. “That’s the bread and butter of what we do, and that’s not partisan.” Hecht’s Reforms Unlike its federal counterpart, the Texas Supreme Court is often a temporary port of call on a judge’s journey. Many, like Abbott, Sen. John Cornyn and U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, leave for higher office. Others, like Owen and 5th Circuit Judge Don Willett, leave for higher courts. Most, like Phillips, leave for higher pay in private practice. But Hecht stayed. “I didn’t plan it like this,” Hecht said. “I just kept getting re-elected.” Hecht had been considering retirement in 2013, when Jefferson, the chief justice who replaced Phillips, announced he would be stepping down. “He wanted me to consider being his successor,” Hecht said. “So I did, and here I am. I didn’t say, ‘Let’s spend 43 years on the bench,’ but one thing led to another.” In 2013, Hecht was sworn in as chief justice by then-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, another great dissenter whose views later became the majority. While the Texas Supreme Court’s political makeup has changed largely without Hecht’s input, the inner workings of the court have been under his purview. And that, many court watchers say, is where his greatest legacy lies. Hecht ushered in an era of modernization, both to the technology and the rules that govern justice in Texas. He led a push to simplify the appellate rules, removing many of the trapdoors and procedural quirks that led to important cases being decided on technicalities. The court scaled back how long cases could drag on by limiting discovery, including how long a deposition can go. And he ensured every case was decided before the term ended, like the U.S. Supreme Court. “I think people generally don’t understand the impact the rules can have on the equitable resolution of disputes, but they’re enormous,” Jefferson said. “Nathan recognized that at an early juncture in his career.” Hecht pushed Texas to adopt e-filing before many other states, which proved prescient when COVID hit. Hecht, who was then president of the national Conference of Chief Justices, was able to help advise other states as they took their systems online. Hecht also dedicated himself to improving poor Texan’s access to the justice system, pushing the Legislature to appropriate more funding for Legal Aid and reducing the barriers to getting meaningful legal resolutions. He helped usher through a rule change that would allow paraprofessionals to handle some legal matters like estate planning, uncontested divorces and consumer debt cases, without a lawyer’s supervision. “Some people call it the justice gap. I call it the justice chasm,” Hecht said. “Because it’s just a huge gulf between the people that need legal help and the ability to provide it.” Hecht said he’s glad this has been taken up as a bipartisan issue, and he’s hopeful that the same attention will be paid even after he leaves the court. “No judge wants to give his life’s energy to a work that mocks the justice that he’s trying to provide,” he said. “For the judiciary, this is an important issue, because when the promise of equal justice under law is denied because you’re too poor, there’s no such thing as equal justice under the law.” What Comes Next Despite the sudden departure of their longtime leader, the Texas Supreme Court will return in January to finish out its term, which ends in April. Among the typical parsing of medical malpractice provisions, oil and gas leases, divorce settlements and sovereign immunity protections, the high court has a number of more attention-grabbing cases on its docket this year. Earlier this year, the court heard oral arguments about the Department of Family and Protective Services’ oversight of immigration detention facilities, and in mid-January, they’ll consider Attorney General Ken Paxton’s efforts to subpoena Annunciation House, an El Paso nonprofit that serves migrants. They’ll also hear arguments over Southern Methodist University’s efforts to cut ties with the regional governing body of the United Methodist Church. Other cases will be added to the schedule before April. Phillips, who has argued numerous cases before the Texas Supreme Court since leaving the bench, said Hecht’s loss will be felt, but he expects the court to continue apace. “It’s not a situation like it might have been at some point in the past where if one justice left, nobody would know what to do next,” he said. “It’s an extremely qualified court.” As for Hecht, he’s tried to put off thinking too much about what comes next for him. He still has opinions to write and work to finish. He knows he wants to stay active in efforts to improve court administration nationally and in Texas, and he’s threatened his colleagues with writing a tell-all book, just to keep them on their toes. But beyond that, he’s waiting for the reality of retirement to sink in before he decides on his next steps. “We’ve got 3,200 judges in Texas, plus adjuncts and associate judges and others,” he said. “I really think it’s such a strong bench, and I am proud to have been a part of it. I look forward to helping where I can.”