Ted Cruz unveiled a plan late Wednesday that calls for a "simple flat tax" of 10 percent and promises to grow the U.S. economy by nearly 14 percent a decade from now. The Republican U.S. senator from Texas rolled out the plan minutes before he took the stage at the third Republican presidential debate, where he touted his proposed flat tax as the “lowest personal rate any candidate up here has.”

Cruz excoriated moderators Wednesday night in easily his most animated moment on the debate stage since he launched his presidential campaign. Cruz criticized the moderators of CNBC’s GOP debate for not asking questions about “substantive issues people care about.” Following the debate, Jeb Bush’s campaign manager raised questions about what the U.S. senator has done for his constituents, stating “Where’s the accomplishments?” of Cruz’s three years in the Senate.

By filing a one-page form, some producers can have their oil wells reclassified as gas wells and potentially reap huge tax savings. More such requests are being granted, and the Texas budget might start feeling the pain, a trend that could renew scrutiny of Texas’ largest tax break for natural gas drilling.

Texas officials have asked an appeals court for permission to proceed with cutting payments to a therapy program for children with disabilities — the latest development in an ongoing lawsuit over the budget state lawmakers crafted this year. The Texas Health and Human Services Commission is seeking to override an order by state District Judge Tim Sulak in September that temporarily stopped health officials from implementing the cuts.

The Obama administration has warned state leaders that pushing Planned Parenthood out of the state’s Medicaid program could put Texas at odds with federal law. Federal officials alerted the state Medicaid director on Tuesday that removing Planned Parenthood from the program may violate federal law because it would limit access to healthcare for poor women from the qualified provider of their choice. On Saturday, Stuart Bowen Jr., head of the Office of Inspector General at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, told the Tribune the organization has not been terminated from that federal health care program and that it will take at least a month to determine whether it should be.

Hundreds of gas plants across the country — and as many as 180 in Texas — soon will have to alert the federal government if they discharge, produce or handle certain toxic chemicals like benzene or hydrogen sulfide. This decision was the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s response to a petition and subsequent lawsuit filed by a coalition of environmental and open government groups, including one from Texas.

After months of heated campaigning, Houston voters will have the final word next week on an embattled nondiscrimination ordinance, a big test for Texas LGBT rights activists. First passed by the Houston City Council in May 2014 after intense public debate, the ordinance, better known as HERO, makes it illegal to discriminate against someone based on 15 different “protected characteristics,” including sex, race, marital status, religion and pregnancy.

With more Republicans joining the cause — including six Texans — the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly, 313-118, on Tuesday to reauthorize the controversial Export-Import Bank of the United States.

With the Houston mayoral election fast approaching, attention is centering on which candidate will square off in an all-but-certain runoff with state Rep. Sylvester Turner. For most of the summer, the race for the top job in the nation’s fourth largest city seemed relatively static, with no dearth of candidates, cash and forums — but little drama to match. The mayoral contest, local Democratic strategist Keir Murray remarked, was "frozen in time."

Eleven years after a man's unexplained death in a Katy hospital sparked a lawsuit involving allegations of malpractice, deception and theft of a human heart, the bizarre case has made its way to the Texas Supreme Court, which will answer a simple yet macabre legal question: Does an autopsy fall under the definition of health care?

The University of Texas at Austin needs to consider race in admissions if it wants a diverse, representative student body, the school told the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday in a 70-page brief filed in advance of oral arguments in the case Fisher v. The University of Texas at Austin.

Processed meats such as bacon and hot dogs cause cancer in humans, according to the World Health Organization — but consumers shouldn't worry about it, according to Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller. After the findings were released, he said they were “another example of politicized science that is not grounded in reality."

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott warned the Dallas County sheriff on Monday that her new and softer approach to dealing with undocumented immigrants who commit crimes here “will no longer be tolerated in Texas.”  Abbott wrote a letter to Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez, a Democrat, in the wake of reports that she planned to free some of the immigrants processed through the Dallas County jail rather than hand them over to federal authorities as requested.

Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin is a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune. Planned Parenthood was a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune in 2011. A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors can be viewed here.