Latest Texas News
Agencies
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Urges Food Safety Vigilance Amid Jalapeño Salmonella Outbreak
Agencies
TxDOT Awarded $755M in Federal Grants to Separate Rail Crossings Across Texas
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TEA Releases 2026 A-F Accountability Ratings, Showing Gains at High-Poverty Campuses
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Fifth Circuit Ruling Upholds Texas Mail-In Ballot ID Requirements, Paxton Says
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Texas 2036 Says 2026 School Ratings Show Continued Progress at High-Poverty Campuses
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Texas Land Office Adds Vietnam Veteran Danny Garrett to Voices of Veterans Oral History Archive
Agencies
Abbott Says Amazon, Lancium and Cipher Digital Will Meet State Data Center Standards
Opinion
OPINION: Texas Must Close the Pandora’s Box Gov. Abbott’s THC Veto Opened
Aug 12, 2026
OPINION: A Strong Healthcare Workforce Starts with CNAs Jul 30, 2026
OPINION: HB 550 Dead on Arrival: Texas’s Fight for Period Products Continues Jul 27, 2026
OPINION: The Case for Responsible Use Of License Plate Readers Jul 22, 2026
OPINION: Limiting AI Infrastructure Threatens Texans’ Access to World Class, No Cost Healthcare Advancements Jul 8, 2026
Health Care
Texas Would Redirect Unspent Medicaid Hospital Payments, and the Public Has Until Aug. 21 to Weigh In
Texas health officials have proposed letting the state take Medicaid payment room that some hospitals do not use and hand it to other hospitals in the same category, in a rule change open for public comment only until 11:59 p.m. Aug. 21.
Profiles of Texans
Jack Collier Wants Texas to Regulate His Own Industry
Aug 14, 2026
Chancellor Brandon Creighton Wants Texas Tech Designing the Menu, Not On It Aug 6, 2026
Rep. Donna Howard Says Texas Should Fund What It Promises Jul 30, 2026
Rep. Gary Gates Wants to Protect the Texas Affordability Advantage Jul 23, 2026
Kristen Doyle Wants to Take the Luck Out of Surviving Cancer Jul 16, 2026
Mark Bell Says Texas Can Meet Surging Power Demand Without Passing the Bill to Consumers Jul 10, 2026
Featured Stories
Recycling
Recycled Plastic Prices Fall Back From Spring Highs While Aluminum Cans Hold Their Value
Property Taxes
Texas Districts Send Tax-Rate Increases to November Voters as the State’s Ballot Deadline Arrives
Transmission Lines
Texas Regulators Call a Second Special Meeting on Two Permian Power Lines and Move It to a Hotel Ballroom
Education
Austin Is the Only Texas District Whose Schools Forced the State’s Hand in the New Report Cards
Under The Dome
‘A threat that’s operating in plain sight’: DPS tells senators cartel fuel trafficking may now out-earn drug smuggling
Property Taxes
Falling Home Values Are Pushing Texas’s Biggest Cities Toward Higher Tax Rates
Latest Policy Clips
How is the nurse practitioner shortage affecting healthcare in Texas?
How AI and data centers are driving the surge in Texas power demands
Has Texas "hit the limits" of being a low-regulation, low-tax state?
Texas Talks Podcasts
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The Storm That Proved the Seawall Right
Fifteen years after the deadliest disaster in U.S. history, a near-twin hurricane struck Galveston on August 17, 1915 — and this time the seawall the city built in grief saved thousands of lives.
Read the Full Story →Interim Hearings
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‘A threat that’s operating in plain sight’: DPS tells senators cartel fuel trafficking may now out-earn drug smuggling
Cartel fuel trafficking generates an estimated $12 billion to $21 billion a year — and some federal investigators now believe it has passed narcotics as the cartels' top revenue stream, the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety told
‘The question is whether Texas builds the defenses before it arrives’: Senate border committee confronts the hostile-drone threat
A drone expert opened the first hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Homeland and Border Security Wednesday with a countdown: "In security terms, today, August 12th is August 12, 2001. 30 days, our next 9/11 is coming," Michael McGee, a Ph.D.
24 million barrels a day: Texas’ produced-water rollout advances as regulators ask lawmakers to draw the line between them
Texas oil and gas wells surface roughly 24 million barrels of salty water every day — more than a billion gallons — and the state's plan to turn that waste stream into a water supply now hinges on rules still
‘Fire almost doubles in size every 60 seconds’: Texas takes stock of its wildfire defenses
Two and a half years after a snapped utility pole ignited the largest wildfire in Texas history, the Senate Committee on Natural Resources spent more than three hours Tuesday auditing every layer of the state's wildfire defenses — and heard that the
Texas’ one-voting-period law is headed for a delay, and no one on the state’s own steering committee objects
The state panel guiding Texas' biggest election overhaul in years has voted — unanimously — to pump the brakes. Every member of the Secretary of State's steering committee for Senate Bill 2753, the 2025 law that merges early voting and Election
Grid & Power
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Texas Regulators Call a Second Special Meeting on Two Permian Power Lines and Move It to a Hotel Ballroom
The Public Utility Commission of Texas has called a special meeting for Aug. 21 devoted entirely to two of the giant power lines proposed to carry electricity out of the Permian Basin, and has moved it out of its own
Governor Abbott Announces Six More Data Center Companies Commit to Comply With State Standards
Gov. Greg Abbott announced Microsoft, Hut 8, Equinix, Galaxy, Compass Datacenters and Montera Infrastructure will comply with his data center standards protecting the grid, water and Texas ratepayers.
ERCOT Says Its Data-Center Audit Will Take Months, With 23 Projects’ 2027 Start Dates Hanging on It
ERCOT, the agency that runs the power grid for most of Texas, told state regulators Monday that the audit of every data center waiting to plug into the grid will take several months — and asked permission to miss the
24 million barrels a day: Texas’ produced-water rollout advances as regulators ask lawmakers to draw the line between them
Texas oil and gas wells surface roughly 24 million barrels of salty water every day — more than a billion gallons — and the state's plan to turn that waste stream into a water supply now hinges on rules still
Darby Asks TCEQ for Public Meeting on Beacon Data Center Air Permits in Tom Green County
State Rep. Drew Darby asked TCEQ to hold a public meeting in Tom Green County before acting on four air permits for the Beacon Data Centers campus proposed near Dove Creek.
Education
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Texas Districts Send Tax-Rate Increases to November Voters as the State’s Ballot Deadline Arrives
Texas school districts have until 5 p.m. Aug. 17 to place a tax-rate increase or a bond package on the Nov. 3 ballot, and over the past week several of the state's largest districts have done exactly that — the
Austin Is the Only Texas District Whose Schools Forced the State’s Hand in the New Report Cards
Two middle schools in Austin drew a fifth straight failing grade in the school report cards the state released Friday, and that makes Austin the only district in Texas where the education commissioner is now required by law to step
Texas Schools Get Their 2026 A-F Report Cards Friday at Noon
Texas families are days away from their first look at how every public school and district in the state performed this past year. The Texas Education Agency plans to release the 2026 A-F accountability ratings this Friday: according to the
Texas is about to rewrite community-college career curriculum
The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s Programs of Study Advisory Committee spent most of Wednesday afternoon on a question that sounds like housekeeping and is not: who gets to sit in the rooms where Texas decides what a community-college career
Analysis: The Most Important Number in Texas’ First School Choice Report Is “Fewer Than 30”
The first annual report on Texas Education Freedom Accounts is full of big numbers — 274,000 applications, 85,344 funded students, a 121,000-name waiting list the comptroller's office calls the largest in the country. But the phrase that best explains year
Health Care
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Texas Would Redirect Unspent Medicaid Hospital Payments, and the Public Has Until Aug. 21 to Weigh In
Texas health officials have proposed letting the state take Medicaid payment room that some hospitals do not use and hand it to other hospitals in the same category, in a rule change open for public comment only until 11:59 p.m.
Rep. Katrina Pierson Details 12-Part Texas Women’s Health Initiative Built on Prevention and Early Detection
State Rep. Katrina Pierson detailed a 12-part Texas Women's Health Initiative covering hormone testing coverage, menopause treatment, newborn enrollment, pharmacy standing orders and Medicaid reimbursement, framed as both a health and fiscal measure.
Texas Begins Turning Its $1.4 Billion Rural Health Award Into Contracts, With Two Deadlines in the Next Two Weeks
The largest infusion of federal health money rural Texas has ever received is moving from applications to contracts this month. Tomorrow, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission is scheduled to route the first equipment-grant contracts under its "Rural Texas
Health Insurers in All 50 States Propose a Second Straight Double-Digit Premium Jump for 2027
Health insurers selling individual coverage on the Affordable Care Act marketplace are asking for a median premium increase of 15% for 2027, according to a Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker analysis updated August 3 that now covers proposed filings from 276
“Our hands are tied.” The Texas pharmacy board adopted a consent rule its own members said the Legislature never meant to write.
Every other motion the Texas State Board of Pharmacy took up on Tuesday morning passed without a single audible objection — the jurisprudence exam rule, the disaster-closure rules, the records rule, the rule review, the officer elections. Then it reached
Water
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24 million barrels a day: Texas’ produced-water rollout advances as regulators ask lawmakers to draw the line between them
Texas oil and gas wells surface roughly 24 million barrels of salty water every day — more than a billion gallons — and the state's plan to turn that waste stream into a water supply now hinges on rules still
Analysis: The Data Center Showdown Builds—Austin Hearings Preview a 2027 Legislative Blitz
This week, the expansion of artificial intelligence data centers emerged as the single most urgent policy challenge before the Texas Legislature. What began earlier in the summer as directives from Governor Greg Abbott to state regulators culminated in an intense
Texas’s Data-Center Rules Race a Calendar as Abbott’s Ratepayer Memo Comes Due
Governor Greg Abbott's deadline for regulators to spell out how they will keep data-center costs off Texans' electric bills arrives Friday, but the state's push to rein in the industry is running into a problem it cannot regulate away: the
Batch Zero Takes Effect July 11 as Abbott’s Data-Center Ratepayer Memo Comes Due
Texas' effort to control who pays for the power that data centers demand reaches two hard markers this month. ERCOT's Batch Zero interconnection framework takes effect July 11, and Governor Greg Abbott's order to shield ordinary customers from data-center infrastructure
Vantage’s Stargate Campus in Shackelford County Nears Its First Power-On
One of the largest single data-center projects yet planned in Texas is approaching an operational milestone in a rural county west of Fort Worth. Vantage Data Centers' "Frontier" campus in Shackelford County, developed as part of the Stargate initiative led
Property Taxes
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Texas Districts Send Tax-Rate Increases to November Voters as the State’s Ballot Deadline Arrives
Texas school districts have until 5 p.m. Aug. 17 to place a tax-rate increase or a bond package on the Nov. 3 ballot, and over the past week several of the state's largest districts have done exactly that — the
Falling Home Values Are Pushing Texas’s Biggest Cities Toward Higher Tax Rates
Fort Worth wants to raise its property tax rate by 3.2 cents, and the average homeowner's city tax bill would go down $21.34. Dallas is cutting its rate for the 11th straight year, and many homeowners will pay more. Those
San Antonio’s First Tax-Rate Increase in 33 Years Goes Before the City Council Today
San Antonio City Manager Erik Walsh presents his formal 2027 budget to the City Council today, and it is expected to carry something no city budget there has carried since the early 1990s: a property-tax rate increase. The rollout of
Six Years and $1 Billion Later, an Austin Court Weighs Whether the Project Connect Tax Is Legal
A Travis County court takes up the Project Connect tax Thursday, weighing whether to rule at last on the legality of the 2020 property tax increase behind Austin's light rail — or defer again.
Texas Adopts Appraiser Rules It Didn’t Write — and Doesn’t Like
Two trustees of the Appraisal Foundation drove to Austin on Friday morning to tell the Texas Appraiser Licensing and Certification Board that the profession it regulates is running out of people. They got about ninety minutes, most of the meeting,