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All Coverage

  • Michael Quinn Sullivan: The TT Interview

    By Ross Ramsey

    The bomb-throwing president of Empower Texas and Texans for Fiscal Responsibility on why Joe Straus hasn't proved himself as a conservative, why the entry of outside groups like his own into the insiders' race for speaker is proper and what he'd like to see out of a Texas House with 99 GOP members in it. Full Story 

    Michael Quinn Sullivan of Empower Texans and Texans for Fiscal Responsibility.
    Credit: Justin Dehn

  • Derision Points

    By Elise Hu

    To the list of things that Rick Perry shows contempt for — Barack Obama’s leadership abilities, excessive federal regulation, coyotes that interrupt his morning jog — add this surprising one: George W. Bush’s ideological disposition. The governor seems to go out of his way to criticize his predecessor as insufficiently conservative. Bush, for his part, makes no mention of Perry in his memoir. "There's certainly no love lost between these two men," says UT presidential scholar Bruce Buchanan. Full Story 

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    Credit: Bob Daemmerich

  • Hosed in Waco

    By Ross Ramsey

    It was a bad Election Night for residents of the largest city in McLennan County. After years of regional dominance, their congressional seat belongs to Bryan, halfway to Houston; their state senate seat is 86 miles away in Granbury; and one of their House seats has moved three counties east, to Centerville. Full Story 

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    Credit: Illustration by Bob Daemmrich/Marjorie Cotera/Todd Wiseman

  • Diaper Change

    By Emily Ramshaw

    Call it a bad case of adult diaper drama: Incontinence product vendors are facing off against the state comptroller’s office over plans to competitively bid underpads, catheters and other supplies for Texas Medicaid patients. Full Story 

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    Credit: Richard Richards

  • A Conversation With Annise Parker

    By Evan Smith

    For the 17th event in our TribLive series, I interviewed the mayor of Houston about why Bill White lost, how a state budget shortfall and ballooning federal debt impact urban areas and whether it's possible for the fourth-largest city in the United States to go green. Full Story 

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  • The Cost of Disrepair

    By Mose Buchele, KUT News

    Think repairing the state’s roads and highways is costly? Try not repairing them. That's the message from transportation advocacy groups, which say poor road conditions are costing Texas drivers $22.6 billion per year in car damage, fuel costs and traffic accidents. But as Mose Buchele of KUT News reports, before any of those problems can be addressed, we should all prepare for a bumpy ride. Full Story 

    Traffic congestion on Interstate 35 in Austin. The freeway through central Austin is among the state's most congested road segments, according to a TxDOT study.
    Credit: Illustration by Charles Stricklin/Todd Wiseman

  • Business as Unusual

    By Julián Aguilar

    “Fear is paralyzing,” says Jose Luis Mauricio, the president of LaRED, a group of Mexican professionals who have banded together and are networking in El Paso as a result of the violence that’s ravaged Ciudad Juárez. Full Story 

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    Credit: Graphic by Todd Wiseman

  • No New Textbooks?

    By Nathan Bernier, KUT News

    The State Board of Education is scheduled to vote Friday on approving the purchase of new textbooks at a cost of almost half a billion dollars. But state legislators are facing a budget gap of as much as $28 billion in the next biennium, and some observers fear that textbook spending could be on the chopping block. Nathan Bernier of KUT News reports. Full Story 

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    Credit: Ross Ramsey

  • Arlene Wohlgemuth: The TT Interview

    By Ross Ramsey

    The former budget-slashing Texas House member and current executive director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation on how she reads the mood out there, what reductions in state spending should be on the table, whether cost-shifting to local school districts is a plausible option, why lawmakers should forget about new sources of revenue, the trouble with Medicaid and what members of the Republican near-supermajority in the Legislature must do to keep the confidence of voters — and get re-elected. Full Story 

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