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  • 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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  • John Nielsen-Gammon: The TT Interview

    By Kate Galbraith

    The Texas state climatologist on the reasons for rising temperatures, why international science on climate change is fundamentally sound (no matter what state officials say), what he thinks of our fight with the EPA and how long the drought in Central Texas is likely to continue. Full Story 

    John Nielsen-Gammon, Texas's state climatologist
    Credit: Illustration by Jeff Kramer/Todd Wiseman

  • Matching Medicaid

    By Emily Ramshaw, The Texas Tribune, and Phil Galewitz, Kaiser Health News

    Already facing a record budget shortfall, Texas has received more bad news: The portion of state Medicaid costs paid by the federal government is about to drop. Texas’ Federal Medical Assistance Percentage, a mathematical formula linked to a state's per-capita personal income, will fall more than 2 percentage points in late 2011, equivalent to a $1.2 billion hit. Only two states — Louisiana and North Dakota — will face a bigger percentage drop. And that’s after federal stimulus funds that have been artificially enhancing this match dry up in the spring, another blow to cash-strapped state Medicaid programs in Texas and across the nation. Full Story 

    Patients are shown checking out in 2010 at the People's Community Clinic in Austin, a safety-net clinic that serves Medicaid recipients and the underinsured.
    Credit: Callie Richmond for The Texas Tribune