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THE TEXAS DISPATCH

Under the Dome

Inside the Texas Legislature -- bills, votes, and committee action from the Texas House and Senate.

Latest Stories
August 12, 2026 at 4:00 pm CDT

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 being written and a jurisdictional boundary two agencies admit they cannot locate.

August 12, 2026 at 11:11 am CDT

Texas House Government Efficiency Committee to Review Cyber Command, AI Fraud Detection and Data Privacy

The Texas House Committee on Delivery of Government Efficiency will gavel in at 9 a.m. Aug. 19 to hear invited and public testimony on the rollout of three laws it shepherded through the 89th Legislature — including the one that created the Texas Cyber Command — plus interim charges on using artificial intelligence to catch fraud, the effectiveness of the state's data privacy law and oversight of three agencies under its jurisdiction.

August 12, 2026 at 8:37 am CDT

‘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 machinery lawmakers built in 2025 is largely on schedule, but that the hardest questions, from powerline liability to who approves a utility's mitigation plan, are already queued up for the next Legislature.

August 11, 2026 at 12:47 pm CDT

Texas House Broadband Subcommittee to Examine Grant Programs, Deployment Barriers and First Responder Networks

The Texas House Subcommittee on Telecommunications & Broadband will gavel in at 11 a.m. Aug. 18 to take invited and public testimony on three interim charges: monitoring the state's Broadband Development Office and its multibillion-dollar grant programs, studying pole attachment fees as a barrier to broadband deployment, and exploring public-private partnerships for wireless first responder networks.

August 11, 2026 at 12:43 pm CDT

Texas House Higher Education Committee to Examine College Affordability, Foreign Influence and Research Competitiveness

The Texas House Committee on Higher Education will gavel in at 9 a.m. Aug. 18 to take invited and public testimony on four interim charges covering college affordability, credential completion, protections against foreign adversarial influence and the ability of Texas universities to compete for federal research dollars.

August 10, 2026 at 1:51 pm CDT

Texas House Transportation Committee to Examine Commercial Driver Licenses, Seaports and TxDOT Oversight

The Texas House Committee on Transportation will gavel in at 9:30 a.m. Aug. 17 to work through one of the fullest interim agendas of the month: eight charges that range from the federal crackdown on commercial driver licenses held by foreign drivers to the economic weight of Texas seaports and broad oversight of the state's transportation agencies.