Tag Archives: Texas

The Texas Tribune reports: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Tuesday he will challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in next year’s midterm elections, setting up a barnburner clash of two Republican titans that is poised to reverberate across state and national politics. Appearing on Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s show, Paxton said it was “time for a change in Texas” …

NBC News reports: Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday said he had selected Nov. 4 as the date for the special election to fill the House seat that had been occupied by the late Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Texas, who died unexpectedly in March. The decision means the deep-blue, Houston-based congressional seat will be vacant for roughly eight months. House …

The Texas Tribune reports: A Travis County district court judge on Friday awarded $6.6 million to four former senior aides to Attorney General Ken Paxton who said they were improperly fired after reporting Paxton to the FBI. Judge Catherine Mauzy stated in her judgment that the plaintiffs — Blake Brickman, Mark Penley, David Maxwell and Ryan Vassar — had proven …

Courthouse News reports: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against the city of San Antonio on Friday, accusing the municipality of undermining Texas law through a fund that could help people travel out of state to get abortions. “The city of San Antonio is blatantly defying Texas law by using taxpayer dollars to fund abortion tourism,” Paxton said …

The Texas Tribune reports: Texas lawmakers could imperil the future of public transportation in two of the state’s largest urban areas, transit officials and advocates warn. Republican legislators are entertaining proposals to sap hundreds of millions of dollars from Dallas Area Rapid Transit, the state’s largest public transit system, and thwart the voter-approved expansion of public transportation in Austin known …

The New York Times reports: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, attended the funeral on Sunday of an 8-year-old girl who died of measles amid an outbreak that has burned through the region and called into question his ability to handle a public-health crisis. The child’s death, in a hospital in Lubbock, Texas, early Thursday morning, is the …

NBC News reports: Another child with measles in Texas has died, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed late Saturday night, though the exact cause of death is under investigation. This would be the second pediatric death amid a fast-growing outbreak that’s infected nearly 500 people in Texas alone since January. An adult in New Mexico is also suspected …

Austin’s NBC affiliate reports: When asked why he has not called for a special election to fill the vacant seat left by the passing of former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, Governor Greg Abbott said Harris County will need “adequate time” to conduct the election after “repeated failures” in the past. But Democratic lawmakers at the state and federal level say …

NBC News reports: Six young children at a Lubbock, Texas, day care center have tested positive for measles — a dreaded scenario with the potential to accelerate an already out-of-control outbreak that has spread to at least two other states. More than a dozen other states and Washington, D.C. are dealing with cases of measles unrelated to Texas. On Friday, …

The Hill reports: Roughly 20 states have reported measles cases, with Texas at the center of the outbreak. Texas, the hardest-hit state, is now seeing the impact of federal cuts. In Dallas County, three of the funding grants from the CDC have been impacted by a federal funding freeze. Early estimates from officials say that could be in the millions of …

The New York Times reports: Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic House leader, on Monday accused Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas of deliberately delaying a special election in a solidly Democratic district in Houston in order to cushion the House Republicans’ slim majority. Mr. Jeffries said in an interview that Mr. Abbott had been “feverishly working to deny …

El Paso Matters reports: Patrick Crusius believed he was acting at the direction of President Donald Trump when he murdered 23 people and wounded 22 others at an El Paso Walmart on Aug. 3, 2019, his defense lawyer told El Paso Matters. “He thought he had to stop the invasion because that’s what his president was telling him, which is …

From the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle: Oh, the irony. “Protect your kids from Marxist gender ideologies in public schools!” cry the voucher crusaders, eager to reroute taxpayer dollars to private schools. And yet, one of their most vocal champions, Corey DeAngelis, has a headline-worthy past: starring in gay porn. In October, on the Christian Broadcasting Network, DeAngelis admitted …

The Texas Tribune reports: The number of measles cases has risen to 400, a spike of 73 cases over the last three days, as the historical outbreak continues to rage on in West Texas, according to state officials on Friday. Of those, 41 patients have been hospitalized. State officials have been releasing updated measles numbers every Tuesday and Friday. The …

404 Media reports: A newly introduced bill in Texas would require online sellers to show a photo ID before buying a dildo. SB 3003, introduced by Senator Angela Paxton (wife of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton), would criminally charge online retailers for selling “an obscene device” without verifying the buyers’ age. Sellers would have to require customers to submit their government-issued …

The Austin Statesman reports: A state lawmaker is calling on the Legislature to “completely” defund the University of Texas if it doesn’t shutter its Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department and LGBTQ studies program, which he has decried as liberal indoctrination that taxpayers should not fund. The demand by Rep. Brian Harrison on Wednesday comes after a barrage of posts …

The Texas Tribune reports: Three weeks after U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner’s death and just over a month before the state’s next uniform election, Gov. Greg Abbott has not yet called a special election to fill the seat representing parts of Houston, a Democratic stronghold, in Congress. Turner, who previously served in the Texas House for nearly three decades before becoming …

Fox News reports: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott hit back at a Democratic lawmaker Tuesday who appeared to mock him for being in a wheelchair, saying such remarks will only leave the party “in the dust” come future elections. “It’s another day and another disaster by the Democrats. The reality is they have no vision, no policy. They have nothing to …

ProPublica reports: The findings were stark. In one investigation, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development concluded that a Texas state agency had steered $1 billion in disaster mitigation money away from Houston and nearby communities of color after Hurricane Harvey inundated the region in 2017. In another investigation, HUD found that a homeowners association outside of Dallas had …

The Dallas Morning News reports: Republicans in the Legislature filed more than 80 bills that would affect LGBTQ Texans, including many focused on public schools that would impact students, teachers and staff. Republican lawmakers filed a range of bills to ban teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity, limit the ability of teachers and students to discuss sex and gender …