Gov. Rick Perry said Wednesday he isn’t worried that a failure to increase the nation’s borrowing authority would trigger an economic catastrophe. He also waded again into the contentious debate over states’ rights and hot-button social issues, saying he would support allowing states to determine whether abortion is illegal — or legal.

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Todd Wiseman was the senior editor for video and multimedia at The Texas Tribune, where he worked from 2010 to 2023. Todd previously worked at the Austin School of Film and Synthetic Pictures and interned...

Jay Root is an award-winning journalist who reported for the Tribune from 2011 to 2020. He covered the dramatic collapse of Gov. Rick Perry’s 2012 presidential campaign and went on to write an ebook...