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All Coverage

  • Back on the Bus

    By Brandi Grissom

    The U.S. Border Patrol is restarting its controversial Alien Transfer and Exit Program, in which illegal border-crossers caught in Arizona are transported to Texas and deported to Mexico. Texas officials say the plan makes as little sense to them now as it did last year. Full Story 

    Border Patrol officers outside a bus in Presidio.
    Credit: Bob Daemmrich

  • The Way Forward

    By Elise Hu

    Six weeks after the drubbing their party took at the hands of voters, surviving Texas House Democrats find themselves at a crossroads — on style and substance, politics and policy. With massive budget cuts looming, will they effectively sit out the session and force Republicans in the majority to have all the blood on their hands? Will they participate just enough to soften the blow in the areas they care about the most: education and health care? Can they hold together a solid 51-vote bloc on key legislation? Where exactly should they go from here? And who will lead them? Full Story 

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    Credit: Illustration by Todd Wiseman

  • 2012: Congressman for Life?

    By Evan Smith

    In his first competitive House race analysis for 2012, Nostradamus-on-the-Potomac Charlie Cook only lists two Texas congressional seats as potentially in play. One of them is not CD-17. Full Story 

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    Credit: Morgan Smith

  • School's Out

    By Morgan Smith

    The budget shortfall — estimated to be as much as $28 billion — will require the Legislature to take a paring knife and possibly a machete to government agencies and programs. The largest single consumer of state dollars is public education, so it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which funding for teacher salaries, curricular materials and the like isn’t on the chopping block, especially if lawmakers want to make good on their promises of no new taxes. But where is that money going to come from? Full Story 

    Crowded classroom in Edgewood School District, San Antonio, TX
    Credit: Bob Daemmrich

  • Want Not, Waste Not

    By Erika Aguilar, KUT News

    A public hearing in Austin on Thursday will address a proposed rule allowing 36 states to ship their low-level radioactive waste to West Texas. As Erika Aguilar of KUT News reports, the rule has raised the eyebrows of environmentalists and the new governor of Vermont. Full Story 

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  • A "B" for Effort

    By Julie Chang

    One in 10 Asian-Americans has hepatitis B, a rate that is 20 times higher than the rest of the population — and is surely pronounced in Houston, which has the fourth-largest Asian population of any U.S. metropolitan area. But state public health officials struggle to get funding for vaccinations and outreach. Full Story 

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  • What Happened in Texas After Pearl Harbor

    By Matt Largey, KUT News

    Sixty-nine years ago, the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor compelled the U.S. to join World War II — and led to the internment of thousands of Japanese, German and Italian Americans. As Matt Largey of KUT News reports, researchers are now trying to preserve and memorialize those sites in Texas. Full Story 

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  • The Tea Pot Party?

    By Julián Aguilar

    Backers of medical marijuana laws are holding fast to hopes that the specter of an ever-encroaching government will resonate with the most energized wing of the Republican Party in the upcoming legislative session. Full Story 

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    Credit: prensa420 (Flickr)

  • TribBlog: Inflamed

    By Kate Galbraith

    The tussle between Texas and federal environmental regulators is heating up in yet another arena — natural gas drilling — after the EPA ordered a gas company to act to come to the aid of two North Texas homes with contaminated wells. Texas Railroad Commissioners fired back, calling the EPA's move "premature" and "grandstanding." Full Story 

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    Credit: Creative Commons/Daniel Foster

  • TribBlog: Inflexible

    By Kate Galbraith

    The legal wrangling between Texas and the federal government over the state's air-pollution permitting system for big industrial plants is intensifying, as Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a brief in a federal court yesterday defending the system. Full Story 

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