In the ongoing push to preempt progressive policies at the local level, the GOP-controlled Legislature could undo protections against predatory payday lending.
For breaking new ground in being bad at being bad, Texas Speaker of the House Dennis Bonnen has earned one half of our annual booby prize!
Beto O'Rourke, Dennis Bonnen, and the Houston Astros make our annual dishonor roll, along with assorted lesser-known idiots and evildoers.
Like so much in American conservative politics these days, everything begins and ends with Trump.
The embattled speaker of the Texas House, Dennis Bonnen, calls it quits.
Dan Patrick, John Cornyn, and Ted Cruz stood by at the president’s Thursday night rally in Dallas as he ridiculed them and claimed Hurricane Harvey made the state “a fortune.”
The secretly recorded meeting between Dennis Bonnen and Michael Quinn Sullivan shows how Texas political operators talk behind closed doors.
The growing controversy around Bonnen's quid pro quo is about much more than palace intrigue. Fundamentally, it concerns unethical, possibly criminal, behavior on the part of the speaker.
House Speaker Dennis Bonnen offers a masterclass in how to lose friends and alienate your allies in just a few easy steps.
MQS isn't the most trustworthy person in Texas politics, but Bonnen has done a poor job offering an alternative narrative about what transpired.
They called it the kumbaya session, but we still found plenty of scoundrels and statesmen.
Texas's top lawmakers managed to put together an $11.5 billion package, but they did it in a way that all but guarantees a tax hike in 2021.
The governor, lieutenant governor, and the speaker of the House announced a deal on property taxes and school finance. It sounds good, but offered awfully little in the way of specifics.
Stickland and his band of merry pranksters could have pushed the Legislature into a special session by killing a popular bill to increase mental health services for kids.
The last few days have brought tearful, angry debate over abortion, religious discrimination, and LGBTQ rights.
The Big Three are desperate to save their property tax proposal. Among the ideas to buy down property taxes is an increase in the oil and gas severance tax.
The senators who will help finalize the state budget—which affects 28 million Texans—are all white and Republican, and four of the five are from the Houston area.
In the pantheon of lawmaker-involved squabbles, what happened at the J.W. Marriott hotel in Austin on Wednesday night probably doesn’t rank higher (lower?) than the time Borris Miles whipped out a gun at a party, or the time Bob Bullock pulled a gun on
The Angleton Republican takes control of the lower chamber as the 86th Legislature convenes.
The 86th Legislature convenes at noon on Tuesday. Here's a primer on some of this year’s action.
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Speaker Joe Straus had a rocky relationship to say the least.
The Angleton Republican says he has 109 commitments when 76 are needed to elect him to the leadership post.
The Senate has already lost the fight over tax cuts.
The Texas House today is taking up its sales tax cut package, setting up a showdown with the Senate and its property tax cuts.
The House’s proposal is better than the Senate’s, for at least half a dozen reasons
The wealth the Texas House and Senate want to share is expensive but small when spread statewide.
The Joe Straus who put together these committee assignments was a different Joe Straus from the one who made the appointments in 2009. Straus 2.0 is a much more skilled politician. For those who had labeled him a RINO, he spiked that attack by appointing 27 Republican chairs to only 11
