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.
Demographics
Explore population trends, diversity, and data shaping Texas communities, politics, and policy.
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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
Analysis: Population changes the recipe for Texas’ political soup
Not every change in the state’s political maps starts with party affiliation. Geography and population are giving Republican mapmakers new headaches.
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Texas Legislature 2021
GOP bill targeting how race, slavery and history are taught in Texas schools heads to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk
Before the second special session ended, lawmakers sent the GOP-backed bill for the governor’s signature.
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Texas Legislature 2021
Analysis: The partisan debate over voting laws is a prologue to redistricting
The summer fight over voting and election law has been fierce. It may well be a prologue to a bigger battle just ahead: redrawing the state’s political maps.
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Demographics
Extended unemployment benefits for jobless Texans will end in September, state agency says
The Texas Workforce Commission announced that the U.S. Department of Labor notified the commission that the state’s unemployment rate fell below the threshold needed to continue the benefits.
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Texas Legislature 2021
“I wanted to teach differently than I had been taught”: How some Texas educators practice anti-racist teaching
Conservative lawmakers denounce critical race theory and say it facilitates racism. Some teachers say it actually informs their efforts to counter racism in the curriculum and classroom, even though they don’t teach it directly to students.
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Texas Legislature 2021
Texas House committee again passes the voting restrictions bill that instigated Democratic quorum break
Senate Bill 1 would outlaw local efforts to make it easier to vote, ratchet up vote-by-mail rules and bolster protections for partisan poll watchers. The Senate already passed the legislation, but a House panel Monday replaced that with the lower chamber’s version of the bill.
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Demographics
Texas can ban common abortion procedure in second trimester, appeals court rules
The ruling is yet another blow to reproductive rights advocates after Texas passed a law this year that goes into effect Sept. 1 banning abortions as early as six weeks. That law is also currently being challenged in court.
Posted inDemographics
Texas’ controversial new social studies law prompts McKinney school officials to cancel Youth and Government class
One of the Republican authors of the so-called critical race theory bill said the district is misinterpreting the new law’s ban on political activism. A school official called the language “vague.”
