Latest Texas News
Agencies
Screwworm Response Tops the Animal Health Commission’s Aug. 25 Agenda
Agencies
ERS Board to Take Up 2027 Medicare Rates for Retired State Workers Aug. 25
Agencies
Workforce Commission to Weigh Child Care Rules That Would Narrow Access for Homeless Families
Agencies
Texas Education Board to Vote Aug. 31 on Rewritten High School Social Studies Standards
Agencies
Railroad Commission Trains Oil and Gas Inspectors in Electrical Safety to Reduce Wildfire Risk
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Railroad Commission Assesses More Than $3.1M in Penalties Against Oil and Gas Operators
Agencies
TPWD Reports Near-Record Dove Numbers as Texas Opens Statewide Season Sept. 1
Opinion
OPINION: North Texas Is Leading the Future of First Responder Safety
Aug 17, 2026
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
Education
Texas Adds State Overseer for Districts That Fall Behind on School Safety
The Texas Education Agency has adopted a rule letting the state education commissioner place an overseer inside any school district that falls behind on the state's school safety requirements.
Profiles of Texans
Rep. Mando Martinez Says Texas’ Small Airports Are Essential Infrastructure — and Disaster Insurance
Aug 21, 2026
Hoover Alexander and the Long Road to Manor Road Aug 19, 2026
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
Featured Stories
Health Care
Texas Raises the Threshold for Taking a Dead Medicaid Patient’s House, Effective Aug. 27
Agencies
Parks Commission Chairman Says He Will Oppose Ill-Advised Border Barriers, but Takes No Vote
Grid & Power
State Judges Recommend Texas Deny Two Permian Basin Power Lines, Finding Neither the Need Nor the Landowner Notice Was Proven
Interim Hearings
Texas House Panel Hears Social Media Fixes Are Not Impossible, Just Unprofitable
Education
Texas Drops the English II Exam as a Graduation Requirement, With the Last Test Set for June 2027
Health Care
Texas Moves to Let the Sickest Children Skip the Waiting List and the Nursing Home
Latest Policy Clips
What does NVIDIA's investment in Texas Tech mean for the future of higher education and technology?
How is Texas changing the way community colleges are funded?
Power demand in Texas could quadruple in the years ahead.
Texas Talks Podcasts
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The Treaty That Made Texas Mexican
With a signature at Córdoba on August 24, 1821, Spain let go of New Spain — and Texas, after three centuries as a Spanish frontier, became a province of an independent Mexico.
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Texas House Panel Hears Social Media Fixes Are Not Impossible, Just Unprofitable
The Texas House passed a social media ban for minors by 116 votes to 25 and watched it die anyway. When the House Committee on Public Health reopened the subject Aug. 20, members spent two hours pushing three witnesses on a single
Landowners Tell House State Affairs: We Got 90 Days and Five Minutes of Cross-Examination on the 765-kV Lines
In order to speed up the development of grid infrastructure, the Legislature cut the clock on transmission permits from a year to 180 days. The state's public counsel told the House Committee on State Affairs on Aug. 19 what that arithmetic leaves
Cyber Command Chief Tells Texas Lawmakers Rural Help Is ‘Pretty Close to Zero’
Texas stood up a cybersecurity agency last year and gave it responsibility for the whole state. Its chief told the House committee that created it on Aug. 19 that for most of the state's small and rural governments, he has
West Texas Is Getting $100 Billion in Data Centers and Two of the Sites Have No Air Service
A developer building three gigawatt-scale AI data centers in West Texas told state lawmakers Aug. 18 that two of the sites cannot be reached by air. "Those locations are ideal for these projects because the land is plentiful, the power
Texas’ Teacher Pension Fell Out of Actuarial Soundness After Lawmakers Raised Teacher Pay
The pension fund covering Texas public school teachers is no longer actuarially sound, and the reason is the teacher pay raise lawmakers passed last year. Brian Guthrie, testifying for the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, told the House Pensions, Investments & Financial
Grid & Power
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State Judges Recommend Texas Deny Two Permian Basin Power Lines, Finding Neither the Need Nor the Landowner Notice Was Proven
Three state administrative law judges recommended on Aug. 20 that Texas regulators refuse to let Oncor Electric Delivery Company and LCRA Transmission Services Corporation build the Bell County East-to-Big Hill 765,000-volt transmission line, and recommended the same result for the
Landowners Tell House State Affairs: We Got 90 Days and Five Minutes of Cross-Examination on the 765-kV Lines
In order to speed up the development of grid infrastructure, the Legislature cut the clock on transmission permits from a year to 180 days. The state's public counsel told the House Committee on State Affairs on Aug. 19 what that arithmetic leaves
Texas Lawmakers Move Toward Repealing a Data Center Tax Break That Grew From $5 Million to $1.3 Billion
The clearest signal out of a nine-hour Texas House hearing on data centers Aug. 19 was not about a power line or a permit. It was about a tax break. Members of the House Committee on State Affairs indicated they
Federal Forecasters Cut Texas Power Demand Growth by More Than Half, Citing the State’s Data Center Pause
The federal government's statistical agency for energy has cut its forecast of how fast Texas electricity demand will grow next year from 14 percent to 6 percent, and it named a single cause: Gov. Greg Abbott's Aug. 3 decision to
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
Education
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Texas Adds State Overseer for Districts That Fall Behind on School Safety
The Texas Education Agency has adopted a rule letting the state education commissioner place an overseer inside any school district that falls behind on the state's school safety requirements. The rule was published in the Aug. 21 Texas Register and
Texas Drops the English II Exam as a Graduation Requirement, With the Last Test Set for June 2027
Texas high school students who graduate after Aug. 31, 2027 will no longer have to pass a state English II exam to earn a diploma, the Texas Education Agency told school administrators in a letter dated Aug. 20, ending a
Analysis: Texas Built a Better Scoreboard. The Game It Measures Has Been Slipping for 15 Years.
The 2026 A-F accountability ratings released Aug. 14 look like progress. Eighty-five percent of Texas campuses earned a C or better, up from 80 percent in 2025. Nearly a quarter of the state's 1,202 districts and 9,105 campuses improved their
Texas Education Agency Reopens Comment on Its Parental Notification Rule
Texas parents, teachers and school districts have eight more days to tell the state what they think of a rule that would require a school to call a parent within one school day when a student discloses certain things —
Texas’ Teacher Pension Fell Out of Actuarial Soundness After Lawmakers Raised Teacher Pay
The pension fund covering Texas public school teachers is no longer actuarially sound, and the reason is the teacher pay raise lawmakers passed last year. Brian Guthrie, testifying for the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, told the House Pensions, Investments & Financial
Health Care
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Texas Raises the Threshold for Taking a Dead Medicaid Patient’s House, Effective Aug. 27
Texas has rewritten the rules governing when the state bills a dead person's estate for the long-term care Medicaid paid for, and the changes take effect Aug. 27. Three dollar figures move in families' favor, and a fourth change makes
Texas Moves to Let the Sickest Children Skip the Waiting List and the Nursing Home
Texas health officials proposed a rule published Aug. 21 that would let the state's most medically fragile children get nursing care at home without first spending time in a nursing facility and without waiting their turn on a list that
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
Water
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A Data Center Company Offers to Build Childress a Temporary Water Supply as Greenbelt Lake Falls to 5 Percent Full
Greenbelt Lake, the reservoir that supplies Childress and neighboring towns in the eastern Texas Panhandle, was 5.1 percent full on Aug. 20, according to Water Data for Texas, the reservoir monitoring service run by the Texas Water Development Board, the
Corpus Christi Asks the State to Shut Off Its Environmental Water Releases Weeks After Its Reservoirs Refilled
Corpus Christi has asked state environmental regulators for emergency permission to stop sending water down the Nueces River to the bays, days after the rains that rescued its water supply also triggered the legal obligation to release it. City staff
Texas Environmental Regulators Met a 3 Percent Budget Order by Cutting Contaminated-Site Cleanup, Then Asked for the Money Back
In July, the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor and the Speaker told every state agency to build its next budget request around a 3 percent cut to general revenue. Agencies were free to ask for more — but only in the
Texas Reservoirs Are Still Three-Quarters Full, and Drought Just Spread Across Eight Percent of the State in a Week
Drought expanded across nearly eight percent of Texas in a single week, and the most severe category on the federal scale returned to the Panhandle after a five-week absence — even as the state's reservoirs, refilled by July flooding, remain
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
Property Taxes
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Two Pleas, Two Denials, and No Clearance for Austin’s Project Connect
A Travis County judge denied both pleas to the jurisdiction in the Project Connect case. A trial on the merits is postponed again -- and so is ATP's $150 million bond issue.
Texas’s Big Counties Split as Harris Weighs a Record Tax Increase and Tarrant Cuts Again
Harris County commissioners meet in special session at 9 a.m. Aug. 17 to take up proposed budgets and tax rates that one member has already called the largest increase in the county's history — four days after Tarrant County commissioners
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