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Matthew McConaughey surprises Houston heroes for First Responders Day

Matthew McConaughey Houston visit police fire dept mayor

The Academy Award-winning actor and Texas native visited Houston police, firefighters, and 911 dispatchers.

Photo courtesy of ABC13

In honor of National First Responders Day, Houston's finest received a surprise visit.

On Sunday, October 28, Houston police tweeted out photos of actor Matthew McConaughey bringing lunch to the officers. The Academy Award-winning actor and Texas native also spent some time with Houston firefighters and 911 dispatchers.

McConaughey said he wanted to visit his home state to honor the first responders who were on the front lines following Hurricane Harvey.

"I'm Texas born and raised, so acknowledging the hard work and dedication of first responders in Houston is meaningful to me personally," said McConaughey. "Over the past year alone with the hurricanes in Puerto Rico, the Carolinas and Florida and the fires in California, the number of heroic men and women on the front lines of natural disasters is staggering."

Thank you #WildTurkeyGivesBack and @McConaughey for bringing a turkey lunch to our officers for #FirstRespondersDay #relationalpolicing pic.twitter.com/Hzphoga4D5

— Houston Police (@houstonpolice) October 28, 2018

The event was sponsored by Wild Turkey, which is part of its annual Wild Turkey Gives Back campaign.

Wild Turkey has made a donation of $10,000 to Team Rubicon, a disaster response organization that trains and deploys military veterans and first responders to communities affected by natural disasters.

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For more on this story, including video, visit our content partner ABC13.

celebrities fundraisers

moms deserve better

New report ranks Texas as 9th worst state for working moms

Working mother, best and worst states for working moms in 2026

Photo by Filipp Romanovski on Unsplash

Texas is far from the best state for working mothers, the study determined.

A new national study comparing the best and worst states for working mothers has painted a bleak picture for Texas. The Lone Star State earned a disappointing rank as the ninth worst state for working moms in America.

WalletHub's 2026 report compared the work-life balance, childcare, and professional opportunities for working mothers across all 50 states and the District of Columbia to determine the rankings. Metrics analyzed include the quality of daycares, childcare costs, school system quality, gender pay gaps, the share of families in poverty, female unemployment rates, a parental leave policy score, the average length of a woman's work week (in hours), and much more.

The top five best states for working mothers in America are all located in the Northeast, according to the study. Connecticut claimed the top spot nationally, and Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Vermont respectfully rounded out the top five.

Texas ranked as the 43rd "best" state overall. The bottom three worst states for working moms are Louisiana (No. 51), Alabama (No. 50), and New Mexico (No. 49).

Texas' best ranking was in the national comparison of states with the best median salaries for women, adjusted for the local cost of living. The state ranked No. 22 overall, but it earned middling and poor ranks across numerous additional categories.

The average length of a woman's work week in Texas is the fifth-worst in the country, and the state's female unemployment rate is the 11th worst nationally. The ratio of female executives to male executives in Texas is also the sixth-worst in the U.S.

Here's how WalletHub ranked life as a working mom in Texas in other categories, where a No. 1 rank is considered the best and No. 25 is considered average:

No. 26 – Childcare costs (adjusted for the median women’s salary)
No. 26 – Pediatricians per capita
No. 27 – Parental leave policy score
No. 33 – Daycare quality
No. 35 – Gender pay gap (women’s earnings as a percentage of men’s)
No. 38 – Percentage of single-mother families living in poverty

Unfortunately, Texas' poor livability for working mothers may not surprise some. Earlier this year, Texas was dubbed the No. 4 worst state for women in a separate study by WalletHub. It shouldn't be a stretch to expect better for women — who make up nearly half of the workforce — yet still get paid 82 percent of what men make per hour.

"The U.S. still has a lot of work to do when it comes to improving conditions for working moms, given the wage gap and the lack of representation women have in certain leadership positions," WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo said.

He said the best states for working mothers offer equitable pay, strong career advancement, strong parental leave policies, top notch school systems, and high quality childcare and healthcare.

wallethub texas reports women's equality