Latest Texas News
Agencies
Texas General Land Office Invites Public to Unaccompanied Veteran Burial in Abilene
Agencies
Texas Transportation Commission Advances $2.14B North Houston Highway Contract
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Governor Abbott Awards $2.5M in Grants to Expand Career Pathways for Rural Texas Students
Property Taxes
Texas Senate Panel to Study Lowering Senior Homestead Tax Break Age to 55
Agencies
Texas Forensic Science Commission to Consider Firearms Licensing Rule, Investigative Report at Friday Meeting
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Texas Optometry Board to Consider Rule Changes, Review Legislative Proposals at Friday Meeting
Agencies
Attorney General Paxton Investigates Caldwell Puppy Seller Over Alleged Deceptive Health Claims
Opinion
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
OPINION: Texas Must Fight Big Pharma, Not Wage War on Pharmacies Jun 25, 2026
Transmission Lines
Patrick and Burrows Weigh In On 765kV Transmission Lines after Schwertner Calls For Denial
Texas' two top presiding officers have lined up behind a Senate committee chairman's call for state regulators to reject pending applications for the first 765-kilovolt transmission lines ever proposed in Texas, and the House will take up the issue at its own hearing in three weeks — a rapid escalation that leaves one of the largest infrastructure projects in state history facing resistance from multiple corners of the Capitol.
Profiles of Texans
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
Sen. Sarah Eckhardt Is Focused on Long-Term Solutions for Texas Infrastructure Jul 3, 2026
Katherine McLane on Building a Crisis Communications Firm from Public Service Jun 29, 2026
Featured Stories
Agencies
Two reliability metrics on the Texas grid are trending the wrong way for a second straight year. Both of them are data centers.
Under The Dome
‘It falls to Texas’: House panel told the state must police foreign money Washington won’t
Education
Texas Releases Its Long-Delayed Grade 5 and 8 Science STAAR Scores Today
Under The Dome
Grid urgency meets landowner backlash as Senate committee weighs Texas’ 765-kV plan
Energy
ERCOT tells senators Texas is bracing for 175 gigawatts — and the data centers keep coming
Flooding
Texas Hill Country Camps Say Earlier, Site-Specific Flood Warnings Helped Keep Campers Safe a Year After Deadly Deluge
Latest Policy Clips
Has Texas "hit the limits" of being a low-regulation, low-tax state?
How Texas' SAM AI tool can help small businesses
What do New World screwworms actually do?
Texas Talks Podcasts
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The Klansman Who Became America's Favorite Cherokee
Asa Earl Carter wrote George Wallace's "segregation forever" speech, then reinvented himself in Texas as "Forrest Carter," a gentle Cherokee memoirist. He died in Abilene in 1979 with the secret still mostly intact.
Read the Full Story →New World Screwworm
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Screwworm Count Holds at 42 in Texas as Active Infestations Stay Near Their Lowest of the Outbreak
Eight weeks into the first New World screwworm outbreak on U.S. soil in decades, the numbers have gone quiet. The federal count of confirmed animal cases has held at 42 since July 21, and the share still under active treatment
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Praises Reopening of Mexican Cattle Imports While Urging Aggressive Screwworm Action
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller praised a limited reopening of the U.S. border to Mexican cattle imports but said the federal response to the New World screwworm has not gone far enough.
Resolved Screwworm Cases Now Outnumber Active Ones Three to One as the Texas Count Ticks to 42
A new infestation in a Sutton County goat, confirmed July 21, pushed the United States tally of New World screwworm to 42 cases — up from the 41 reported last week, when the parasite reached Starr County on the Rio
Screwworm Reaches Starr County as U.S. Case Count Climbs to 41
New World screwworm has been confirmed in Starr County for the first time, carrying the outbreak into a Rio Grande border county and pushing the U.S. case count to 41. Starr County officials confirmed the county's first case on Sunday,
New World Screwworm Cases Climb to 39 Across Texas and New Mexico as Newest Detection Hits Pecos County
Confirmed New World screwworm infestations in the United States have risen to 39, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's confirmed-detections dashboard, which the agency updates daily at 6 p.m. Eastern. As of Wednesday, July 15, all 39 cases were
Data Centers
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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
ERCOT tells senators Texas is bracing for 175 gigawatts — and the data centers keep coming
The state agencies that keep the lights on told a Senate panel Wednesday that Texas is planning for a grid nearly double the size of today’s — and that the surge is being driven by an unfamiliar customer: the data
“No tax exemption should operate on autopilot”: Senate Finance weighs $3.3 billion tax break for data centers
A sales tax break that cost Texas an estimated $14.6 million a decade ago is now on track to cost the state roughly $3.3 billion in a single two-year budget — and on Monday the Senate’s budget-writing committee spent the
Texas Senators Take Up the Grid as the State’s Data-Center Rules Remain Half-Written
The Texas Senate's Business and Commerce Committee meets Wednesday to review the state of the electric grid, and the item that will get the most attention on its agenda is the rulebook meant to keep a wave of new data
East Texas Data Center Withdraws After Falling Short of Abbott’s Standards
Governor Abbott announced that Diode withdrew a proposed Henderson County data center after it failed to meet his standards for grid, water and community protections, signaling tougher scrutiny of the industry.
Health Care
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Rep. Donna Howard Says Texas Should Fund What It Promises
When Texas overhauled how it funds community colleges in 2023, the state made a bet: pay for results — credentials earned, students transferred, workforce needs met — instead of enrollment. The colleges took the bet seriously, says Rep. Donna Howard.
OPINION: A Strong Healthcare Workforce Starts with CNAs
By Barb Clapp Across Texas, the strain on nurses, long-term care facilities and other medical facilities, and the patients who depend on them keeps growing. We celebrate our healthcare workers and recognize the tremendous impact they have on patients and
Governor Abbott Awards $5.8M to Expand Texas Emergency and Trauma Care Training
Governor Greg Abbott announced twenty-four grants totaling more than $5.8 million on July 28 to train Texas doctors and nurses in emergency and trauma care and expand the state’s healthcare workforce.
Federal Government Ends Medicare Drug-Premium Cushion, Setting Up Higher 2027 Costs for 1.7 Million Texas Seniors
The federal government said it will stop propping up Medicare prescription-drug premiums after this year, a change that could raise 2027 drug-plan costs for the more than 1.7 million Texans who buy stand-alone Part D coverage. The Centers for Medicare
Texas Physicians Urge Parents to Update Child Vaccinations Before the School Year Begins
The Texas Medical Association is urging parents to update their children's vaccinations before the school year begins, warning that U.S. measles cases in 2026 have already surpassed last year's total.
Education
View All →Governor Abbott Awards $2.5M in Grants to Expand Career Pathways for Rural Texas Students
Governor Greg Abbott awarded more than $2.5 million in Rural Pathway Excellence Partnership grants to 17 rural Texas school district partnerships to expand students' access to college and career pathways.
Texas Releases Its Long-Delayed Grade 5 and 8 Science STAAR Scores Today
The Texas Education Agency is due to release the last missing piece of this year's standardized-test results on Thursday — the grade 5 and grade 8 science scores from the spring STAAR exam — closing out a 2026 results cycle
Rep. Donna Howard Says Texas Should Fund What It Promises
When Texas overhauled how it funds community colleges in 2023, the state made a bet: pay for results — credentials earned, students transferred, workforce needs met — instead of enrollment. The colleges took the bet seriously, says Rep. Donna Howard.
Two systems, one endowment: senators examine who really benefits from the Permanent University Fund
The oldest and largest of the endowments that bankroll Texas’ public research universities was built into the state constitution to benefit two university systems — and on Wednesday the Senate Committee on Higher Education spent much of its day probing whether that
SB 37’s author, now Tech Chancellor, tells his old committee the campuses are “ahead of schedule”
The man who wrote Texas’ sweeping higher-education governance law came back to the committee that produced it Tuesday — this time as a witness, not a senator — to report that the campuses he now helps run are moving faster