A group of border leaders claims Washington is ignoring Texas yet again — but the issue isn’t immigration or security this time.
Demographics
Explore population trends, diversity, and data shaping Texas communities, politics, and policy.
Courting Hispanics: The Dems
The Hispanic vote in Texas is often referred to as a “sleeping giant” because of historically low turnout. If Hispanics were to show up at the ballot box in record numbers, they could easily influence elections of all kinds. In part two of his three-part series, Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports on the efforts of state Democrats to sound the alarm.
The Weekly TribCast: Episode 38
Evan returns for this week’s TribCast, in which the podcast gang takes up campaign finance, the Hispanic Republicans of Texas, Gov. Rick Perry’s taxes and the committee shakeup in the Texas Senate.
TribBlog: Juárez’s Outgoing Mayor Mulls Future
Jose Reyes Ferriz on what he’ll do next, why his successor isn’t corrupt and why the violence in his crime-ridden city will continue.
TribBlog: UH-Downtown Favors DREAM Act
Bill V. Flores, president of University of Houston-Downtown, is joining calls for the passage of the DREAM Act, which clears a path to permanent-residency status for undocumented students.
Ports of Prosperity
After a sluggish 2009, Texas’ top trade districts — Houston, Laredo and El Paso — are rebounding well from the national recession and witnessing huge increases in the value of trade passing through their ports this year.
TribBlog: Troops to Texas Aug. 1
Of the 1,200 National Guard troops deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border, Texas will see 250 — fewer than half of the 524 ordered to Arizona.
The University of Someplace Else
Fewer students from Mexico have enrolled at border schools like the University of Texas at El Paso, UT-Pan American, and Texas A&M International since 2006, while their ranks have grown at schools farther from the Rio Grande, like UT-Austin and Texas A&M. Can the drop be attributed to the drug war, or is the growing violence simply compounding the decades-old problem of border “brain drain”?
TribWeek: In Case You Missed It
Grissom’s three-part series (here, here and here) on prosperity and peril along the U.S.-Mexico border, Hu on the Division of Workers’ Compensation audit report, Stiles puts more than 3,000 personal disclosure forms filed by politicians, candidates and state officials online, M. Smith on attempts to curb the practice of barratry (better known as ambulance chasing), Ramsey interviews the chair of the Texas Libertarian Party, Hamilton on attempts to improve the success rates of community colleges, Galbraith on whether electric deregulation has helped or hurt Texans, Aguilar talks to a chronicler of the bloody narco-wars and Ramshaw on doctors who most often prescribe antipsychotic drugs to the state’s neediest patients: The best of our best from July 12 to 16, 2010.


