Texas Legislature
‘Heart-Wrenching, Gut-Wrenching’: How Child Therapy Providers Deal with State Budget Cuts
Redistricting Guru Michael Li on Texas’ Gerrymandered Maps
Li, who grew up in Texas, has followed Texas’ seven-year legal fight to dilute minority voting power from the beginning.
The Texas Legislature is racist. Specifically, Texas lawmakers knowingly and intentionally pass voting laws that disproportionately harm minorities. Nine federa...Read More
The Good News (and the Bad) for Beto O’Rourke in that Quinnipiac Poll
According to a poll, O’Rourke is within striking distance of Ted Cruz. But he’s got a problem: More than half of those polled don’t know who he is.
Quinnipiac University released a poll on Wednesday that provided the first quantitative pulse-reading of the Texas electorate on the U.S. Senate race between Be...Read More
Beto’s Not the Only Texas Democrat with a Big-Dollar Haul
The year’s first quarterly reports are in — and many Democratic congressional candidates are giving Republicans a run for their money.
Beto O’Rourke’s Senate bid, centered on his live-streamed barnstorming through Texas, has caught fire among Democrats around the state — and the country. ...Read More
Who is Mary Street Wilson?
Her first-place showing in the 21st Congressional District was perhaps the biggest surprise on primary night. Does she have what it takes to win the runoff?
Mary Street Wilson, a first-time candidate with little money behind her bid, said she never heard a word from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (D...Read More
Payday Lenders Are Working Hard to Keep Texas the ‘Wild West’ in Trump Era
Payday lenders in Texas have sued to block federal rules that advocates say are desperately needed to protect borrowers in a state that has failed to regulate the industry.
Texas is often called the “Wild West” of predatory lending, an anything-goes wonderland where payday and auto title loan businesses can charge low-income pe...Read More
Parsing Governor Abbott’s National Guard Charade
The deployment of troops to the Texas-Mexico border has been a made-for-TV event heavy on posturing and light on justification.
It started with a pair of helicopters taking off last Friday from an airstrip in Austin. On board was the first handful of Texas National Guard troops bound for...Read More
What’s Going on with Texas’ Maternal Mortality Rate?
The truth about women dying from pregnancy-related causes is more complicated than it seems. We help make sense of things.
When data released in 2016 indicated that the rate of Texas mothers dying of pregnancy-related causes had spiked to inexplicable heights, the issue dominated he...Read More
In Her Own Letter to Trump Officials, Texas Republican Fact-Checks Ken Paxton’s False Claims on Women’s Health
In response to an Observer story, state Representative Sarah Davis wrote a letter urging the Trump administration to deny the Texas health agency’s request to regain control over federal family planning funds.
In a letter to the Trump administration Tuesday, Republican state Representative Sarah Davis chided Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for his recent incorrect c...Read More
Who Are the People Still Marching for Trump in Texas?
At a march in Austin, an odd coalition of out-of-staters, white supremacists and the ordinary supporters who maintain his GOP approval ratings.
More than a year into Donald Trump’s scandal-plagued tenure, what sort of person would show up to march in the streets in support of the president? On a Satur...Read More