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 companion line from Big Hill to Sand Lake.
The Texas House passed a social media ban for minors by 116 votes to 25 and watched it die anyway.
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 testing requirement that has stood since the state built its current graduation system.
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 runs years long.
In order to speed up the development of grid infrastructure, the Legislature cut the clock on transmission permits from a year to 180 days.
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 — a second chance that exists because the Texas Education Agency published the wrong web address the first time.
Texas stood up a cybersecurity agency last year and gave it responsibility for the whole state.
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.
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.
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 state agency that plans and finances water supply.