The situation in Austin suggests that a Texas icon may be shifting his focus from state to national politics. Governor Rick Perry seems increasingly unlikely to run for reelection — and increasingly interested in taking another gander at the presidency.
Harold Simmons Wins Another Favor from the Lege
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the House Homeland Security Committee chairman, predicted Monday night that the fallout from Benghazi will haunt Hillary Clinton if she runs for president.
A House-Senate showdown over water and schools pushed the Legislature beyond some of its customary deadlines Tuesday, as tempers frayed and the Senate’s new budget chief became a target of House members’ wrath.
As Congress arrives at a key moment in overhauling the nation's immigration laws, the two senators with similar roots stand at opposite ends of the debate.
More than 1,460 BSA delegates will gather Thursday at the Gaylord Texan hotel in Grapevine to vote on a resolution that would allow openly gay youth to participate in Scouting.
Groups of evangelical Christians and human rights advocates clashed Tuesday at City Hall, where a City Council subcommittee deliberated adding anti-discrimination protection for sexual orientation, gender identity and veteran status.
The federal safety agency probing the fertilizer blast in West is complaining to Congress that turf fights with other investigators could make it impossible to find out what really happened.
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday approved a broad overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws on a bipartisan vote, sending the most significant immigration policy changes in decades to the full Senate, where the debate is expected to begin next month.
On political oversight of tax-exempt groups, plenty of mischief can be made far from Washington. The latest example comes from Texas, where state lawmakers have passed the kind of campaign disclosure bill that Congressional Democrats have tried but failed to impose.
Atlanta wasn’t an isolated incident. Neither was El Paso, or Washington, DC, or Columbus. A new General Accounting Office report demonstrates that cheating by school officials on standardized tests has become commonplace despite the use of security measures the report recommends. The only solution is one that Education Secretary Arne Duncan has so far refused—removing the high stakes attached to standardized testing.
In a bipartisan vote of 13 to 5, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a broad overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws Tuesday evening, sending the legislation onto the floor, where the fight is expected to last through June.
A lesbian couple in Allen say they are targets of discrimination after a Collin County judge ruled they could no longer live together because of a morality clause in the 2011 divorce papers one of the women signed.
Texas lawmakers had a message for some of the state’s youngest students Tuesday: Stop drinking sugary drinks.
True the Vote, a Houston-based voter watchdog group that arose from a tea party organization, filed suit in federal court Tuesday against the Internal Revenue Service over the agency’s processing of its request for tax-exempt status.
Over the last seven years, more than 800 school districts in Texas have turned to an online system for help with lesson plans. The program is called CSCOPE and was developed by the state. But its lesson plans have been controversial and subject to debate in the Texas Legislature. Now those lessons are over.
The first big test of the state budget deal — a constitutional amendment meant to pave the way for addressing state water needs — was delayed into the night Monday while negotiators wrangled over details of education spending and tax relief.
Texas has the highest rate of uninsured residents in the nation – one in four Texans has no health coverage – and the rate in the Rio Grande Valley is even higher. Medicaid is closed to anyone earning more than $196 a month, leaving many working adults ineligible and without coverage.
A bill that would prohibit state officials from requiring Social Security numbers from Texans who apply for concealed-handgun licenses, as they do now, was approved by the Senate on Monday.
Gov. Rick Perry on Monday signed a bill establishing the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center at El Paso as its own independent school within the Texas Tech University System.
Democrats want to press pause on the House bipartisan immigration negotiations. After a slew of Monday meetings, the House Democratic leadership expressed private concern about language in a proposal regarding health care for undocumented immigrants.
From 2000 to 2011, the Austin metro area saw the nation’s second-fastest increase in the number of poor people living in the suburbs, according to a new book to be released Monday which describes poverty dramatically shifting from America’s inner cities to the suburbs and which calls on policymakers to rethink how they respond to poverty.
Maybe this is what the road back looks like for Democrats.
House and Senate leaders struggled Monday to protect their complicated deal on the two-year state budget. The two chambers’ budget chiefs clashed over whether a tax-relief package should rely heavily on rebates of a fee on electricity bills.
And that's exactly the path Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon, D-San Antonio, is taking as part of a grudge match with Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston. Keeping true to her word, McClendon spiked four of Huffman's bills that hit the House floor Monday — just days after using a procedural move to tank another Huffman proposal.
