Republican incumbents are successfully defending their seats while the party appears to be making inroads in South Texas.
Zach Despart
Zach Despart is an enterprise and investigative reporter focusing on state government. His work on a team investigating the flawed police response to the Uvalde school shooting was awarded the 2024 Collier Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting. He led the Tribune’s effort to become the first news organization to map the fragmented 50-mile Texas border wall, a project that also found the state struggled with holdout landowners along the route. After it was published, the Legislature stopped funding the wall. He previously covered Harris County for the Houston Chronicle, where he reported on corruption, elections, disaster preparedness and the region’s recovery from Hurricane Harvey. His investigation on how Texas diverted Harvey aid away from areas most at risk for storms sparked a federal investigation. An upstate New York native, he received his bachelor’s degree in political science and film from the University of Vermont.
Posted in
Texas 2022 Elections
For the first time, Texas voters send Muslims and openly gay Black men to Legislature
Voters elected Christian Manuel Hayes to House District 22 in Beaumont, Venton Jones to HD-100 in Dallas, Salman Bhojani to HD-92 in Tarrant County and Suleman Lalani to HD-76 in Fort Bend County.
Posted in
Uvalde school shooting
“I’m so scared”: 911 recordings reveal fear and urgency of those trapped in Uvalde elementary school
Audio obtained by The Texas Tribune and ProPublica shows just how long police and dispatchers likely knew that children and teachers were in danger before taking action at Robb Elementary School.
Posted in
Uvalde school shooting
Texas state trooper who responded to Uvalde shooting fired amid investigations into police response
Department of Public Safety Sgt. Juan Maldonado is the first state police officer fired in the aftermath of a botched police response to the shooting. He was the highest-ranking state trooper to initially respond to Robb Elementary School.
Posted in
Texas 2022 Elections
For Republicans, winning Hispanic voters will be a bigger fight than South Texas
Nearly half of Hispanic Texans live in the state’s five largest counties, a voting bloc Democrats cannot afford to lose as they struggle to compete in the state’s vast rural areas.
Posted in
Texas 2022 Elections
In Texas, where money has long dominated politics, Greg Abbott is in a league of his own
The two-term governor’s donors enjoy access, appointments to boards and commissions, and a chance to bend the ear of a politician who may harbor bigger ambitions.
Posted in
Operation Lone Star
As fentanyl plagues Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott directs state police to focus on cartels
Abbott directed the Department of Public Safety to boost efforts to collect intelligence on cartels and investigate gangs in Texas that support drug and human smuggling.
Posted in
Politics
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton tells court not to trust Biden in Trump records case
Several other Republican attorneys general joined Paxton in bashing the Biden administration, largely over previous policy decisions they disagreed with.
Posted in
Uvalde school shooting
DPS Director Steve McCraw tells CNN he’ll resign if troopers had “any culpability” in delayed Uvalde shooting response
The state’s top law enforcement agency has publicly criticized the actions of local police during the May shooting at Robb Elementary. But McCraw’s agency has also faced scrutiny for officers’ delay in confronting the gunman.
Posted in
Uvalde school shooting
91 Texas state troopers responded to the Uvalde massacre. Their bosses have deflected scrutiny and blame.
State troopers outnumbered local law enforcement 2-to-1 outside Robb Elementary, but the Department of Public Safety has blocked the release of records and carefully shaped the narrative to cast local authorities as incompetent.
