The GOP is losing its hold on suburbs of Dallas and Fort Worth as they grow more diverse. Two new districts show how far the party is reaching to entrench rural, white electoral power.
Alexa Ura
Alexa Ura reported for The Texas Tribune from 2013 to 2023. She covered the complex dynamics of race, ethnicity, wealth, poverty and power and how they are shaping the future of Texas and Texans, in the long and short term. Alexa started at the Tribune as a reporting intern before graduating from the University of Texas at Austin and joining the staff full time. Originally from Laredo on the Texas-Mexico border, she is a native Spanish speaker and is based in Austin.
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Texas Legislature 2021
Texas Senate takes another run at supposed election fraud, approving audits of 2020 results and tougher illegal voting penalties
The bills reflect GOP efforts to further tighten voting laws, and pressure from former President Donald Trump on Texas Republicans to help advance his baseless election fraud claims. They are not expected to go far in the House.
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Redistricting Texas
Texas appears to be paying a secretive Republican political operative $120,000 annually to work behind the scenes on redistricting
Adam Foltz, now on the Texas payroll, played a key role in Wisconsin’s redistricting last decade. A federal court threw out some of the maps and called the effort Foltz was involved in “an all but shameful attempt to hide the redistricting process from public scrutiny.”
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Politics
Days after disclosing election “audits” in four Texas counties, secretary of state’s office gives some details of their scope
The state agency last week announced a “full forensic audit” in Harris, Dallas, Tarrant and Collin counties. But based on details released Tuesday, it appears the scope of the effort may be more limited than what the term may suggest.
Posted in
Redistricting Texas
Texas Republicans have the redistricting tools to preserve their power. Here’s how they can do it.
Lawmakers must redraw the state’s political maps to account for a decade’s worth of growth, but the process leaves enough room for political manipulation. Here’s how it’ll work.
Posted in
Redistricting Texas
In a changing Texas, Republicans will begin redistricting with more freedom to draw their maps
Facing demographic changes that work against their political dominance, Republicans will be able to redraw politically advantageous maps — and shield themselves from the change — without federal oversight for the first time in decades.
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Texas Legislature 2021
Gov. Greg Abbott signs Texas voting bill into law, overcoming Democratic quorum breaks
SB 1 makes up Republicans’ third attempt to pass a far-reaching law that restricts how and when voters cast ballots. It takes particular aim at voting initiatives used in diverse, Democratic Harris County in the 2020 election.
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Politics
Texas must pay $6.8 million in legal fees to parties who challenged voter ID law, federal appeals court says
The case ricocheted through federal courts for nearly seven years and over several elections, with federal judges ruling that Texas lawmakers discriminated against Hispanic and Black voters when crafting one of the nation’s strictest voter ID laws.
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Politics
Before the legislation is even signed, Texas’ new voting rules are challenged in two federal lawsuits
Harris County joined a coalition of community and advocacy groups filing lawsuits over Senate Bill 1, arguing the far-reaching rewrite of Texas voting laws violates the U.S. Constitution and numerous federal laws and will suppress voters.
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Texas Legislature 2021
Texas Senate too late with hastily conjured bill allowing party officials to trigger audits of 2020 election
The bill, approved by the Senate and never considered by the House, would have allowed state and local party chairs to file requests to launch audits, but Republicans say the legislation would not have spawned a debacle akin to the controversial review underway in Arizona.
