Reporting and commentary on the Legislature, campaigns, and elected officials
If Occidental Petroleum acquires CrownRock, the right-wing Midland oilman could become an even bigger power broker—in Texas and perhaps nationally.
The think tank, founded by a conservative billionaire who supports Greg Abbott, ranks Texas 39 places behind California.
Traditionally, the capitol building has housed a gigantic tree. This year's is much more meager.
This week, the women-focused dating app joined dozens of other Texas companies that say ambiguity around life-saving medical care is bad for business.
Some seem tired of working in a place where so little gets done.
Long thought of as a presidential contender, the Texas governor has endorsed the former president—and supplicated for his favor.
A suspicious man brandished a shotgun in an Austin park—then in New York. The responses of the two police departments were markedly different.
He lived out his last years in Mexico as a real estate agent, dreaming of returning home to Texas with his husband.
A 1991 mass shooting in Killeen inspired legislation that has made Texas America’s most gun-friendly state.
The Other Ones Foundation, led by Chris Baker, transformed a state-run encampment site for Austinites experiencing homelessness into a welcoming refuge.
After Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel, a crowd gathered in the Alamo City for an evangelical event that quickly turned into a call to arms.
The first stop of Ken Paxton’s revenge tour was in a North Texas House district, where his preferred candidate, Brent Money, reached a runoff.
State leaders are bullish on new atom-splitting technologies, even as those same officials hobble wind and solar projects.
Alligator snapping turtle populations in Texas were dwindling. One family of smugglers had been poaching them from the state for years.
For a long time, Texas Republican chairman Matt Rinaldi couldn’t win elections. Now he wants to decide them—by exacting revenge on opponents within his party.
After Hurricane Katrina, Darresha George moved her family to Texas. When school officials suspended her son for refusing to cut his hair, it unleashed a storm that shows no signs of easing.
The wealthy trial lawyer just helped acquit Attorney General Ken Paxton. Now he wants to fix potholes and broken water lines.
Residents of El Paso and Sunland Park, New Mexico, agree illegal immigration is a problem, but the Texas governor’s newest effort is little more than a PR stunt.
The city's University Medical Center is among the trauma centers dealing with many more migrants severely hurt in falls from the thirty-foot fence.
In the latest showdown over immigration restrictions, Texas representatives got into a heated confrontation on the floor.
Republicans need a win after a summer of infighting. But party leaders are ignoring several potential consequences in moving hastily on this issue.
The Houston exurb offers cheap land to hardworking families. But some in the GOP see the benefit in demonizing the migrants who’ve moved there.
When I wrote my YA novel, I hoped to inspire teens to figure out their beliefs around complicated political questions. But amid a wave of book bans, my book could get prohibited from school shelves.
After right-wing activist Jonathan Stickland hosted Nick Fuentes in his office, many in the GOP have attacked Stickland’s critics.
A New York financier’s scheme “rolled up” anesthesiology practices across the state, according to a complaint by the Federal Trade Commission.
Once a rising star in the Republican Party, the former congressman’s pitch as a “common-sense” Republican didn’t resonate with today’s GOP.
On Wednesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals declared the 67-year-old Native American innocent of a 1981 murder.
Ahead of a special legislative session, the governor has implied there will be political consequences for those who get in his way.
The congressman joins a handful of House Republicans who insist they’ll fund the government only when they get deep spending cuts and harsh border-control measures that have no chance of passing the Senate.
The attorney general is going on a right-wing media tour to complain—with no evidence—about a bipartisan conspiracy against him.
The attorney general’s acquittal affects an upcoming legislative session on school vouchers—and the civil war within the Texas GOP.
A defense attorney in Ken Paxton’s impeachment trial tried to twist an old conspiracy theorist line into a Texas truism. How does it hold up?
Throughout the impeachment trial of Attorney General Ken Paxton, his wife, a state senator, shared her internal struggle one Bible verse at a time.
House managers couldn’t get more than 14 votes, below the needed 21 votes to convict, on any of the sixteen impeachment counts.
After eight days of arguments and testimony, senators deliberate on whether to convict the embattled Texas attorney general.
Robert Roberson is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to examine “shaken baby syndrome” and the state of forensic science.
And on the eighth day, the defense rested.
The mistress’s testimony that wasn’t, Rusty Hardin’s snafu, a dismissed motion to drop all the charges, and more.
Shouldn’t Paxton be present for the proceedings? Best guesses on the outcome? We posed these questions and more.
Countless right wingers could do the attorney general's job more effectively, but none would so reliably serve the interests of one faction in the Texas GOP's civil war.
The young personal-injury lawyer testified about an investigation allegedly launched for the benefit of Nate Paul.
His victory in the 1994 governor’s race wasn’t the election that really transformed the state.
Rick Perry rides a gunboat. Ted Cruz goes militiaman. Ron DeSantis and George P. Bush try their best.
The attorney general’s affair finally took center stage. Plus, testimony on a meeting at Galaxy Cafe, a red car, and a Bible verse.
Delays in dispatching the alert system mean that some children fall between the cracks.
The Texas state representative and Church of Christ pastor from DeSoto is the third prominent Democrat to enter the race.
As the attorney general’s impeachment trial takes place, a shadowy group has mobilized an army of political influencers to support his acquittal. Our ethics laws aren’t keeping up.
Through anger, calm, and even some tears, former aides testified about the attorney general's alleged corruption.
Lawrence Wright’s new book, ‘Mr. Texas,’ was inspired by what he discovered about corruption, political combat, and, yes, pig hunting.
Before sunrise, journalists and eager onlookers gathered at the gates of the Capitol grounds, awaiting the start of the attorney general's historic impeachment trial.
