McMahon led the Small Business Administration from 2017 to 2019. She is the wife of Vince McMahon and the co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment. view article

The William B. Travis Building in downtown Austin where the Texas State Board of Education meets was raucous Monday afternoon with more than 150 people who had driven from across Texas to testify about controversial state-developed instructional materials.  While the Texas Freedom Network, a nonprofit which advocates for religious freedom and public education, held a news conference outside the building to denounce the handling and prevalence of Christian Bible stories in the state-created curriculum materials, called Bluebonnet Learning, a group of pastors who’d driven to Austin from across the state prayed and sang devotional songs in the building's front lobby to encourage the board to pass the curriculum. view article

Lawmakers in the Texas House and Senate filed more than a thousand pieces of legislation Tuesday, offering an early look at the issues they hope to prioritize when they gavel in for the 89th legislative session in January.Tuesday marked the first day lawmakers could file bills they hope to pass when the Texas Legislature reconvenes next year. Republicans control both chambers and expanded their majority in the House and Senate after flipping a handful of seats during this year’s elections. The ouster of many Republicans by challengers further to their right during this year’s primaries means that the Texas GOP’s far-right wing will have unprecedented sway over the upcoming legislative session. Few of those lawmakers filed bills on Tuesday, but it's likely they'll seek to push the Legislature's already deep-red agenda even further right once they file their own bills. view article

State Rep. Brooks Landgraf, R-Odessa, introduced a set of bills this week that would give millions of dollars to the state to seal abandoned oil wells, some of which are causing massive blowouts of toxic liquid and creating pools of wastewater. The financial boost would help clean up environmental damage caused by a century of oil and gas production that made Texas one of the world’s leading energy producers. The package needs approval from both legislative chambers, the governor and voters in fall 2025. If passed, it would reallocate the money that goes into the state’s savings account – $21 billion – to new spending. Right now, taxes gathered from oil and gas companies are divided among Texas’ savings account, schools and highways.The proposed law would pull 1% of all taxes from oil and gas production to plug the wells, and another 1% would go to bolstering emission reduction efforts.    view article

Legislation requiring school districts to obtain written consent from parents before teaching human sexuality courses in public schools has been filed.  view article

Republicans netted only two new seats in the Texas House in Tuesday's election, but of the influx of new members who either ousted incumbents in the GOP primary or won open contests means the lower chamber's center of gravity shifted more to the right. view article

​Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick publicly debunked claims that voting machines in the state are changing the selections voters make.  Republican National Committee Co-Chair Lara Trump, whose father-in-law is GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, posted on social media that Texas had looked into claims about voting machines in Tarrant County switching voters' selections and the "error has been corrected with the voting machines."    But Patrick, who is also a Republican, quickly corrected the national party leader on social media. The lieutenant governor said fewer than 10 people out of the nearly 7 million Texans who had already cast ballots across the state claimed that their selections were changed, but officials could not confirm a single instance of that happening. view article

Voters in states including Florida, Colorado and Kentucky face major decisions on their education systems on Tuesday.   view article

When a Republican is elected president, he often brings loads of Texans to Washington with him. That’s because of the state’s size, influence and political leanings. view article

Texans have faced higher home prices and rents amid the state’s economic boom — and housing experts say the state needs to build a lot more homes to rein in those costs.  The Texas Tribune this week published a pair of stories examining the state’s housing affordability crisis, the role local rules may play in exacerbating that crisis, the options that officials have to rein in soaring housing prices and the political obstacles that make it difficult to address the problem.  Here are five key points from those stories: view article

In the last presidential election cycle, four distant years ago, Texas Democrats pursued an ambitious campaign to take control of the state House. Bolstered by millions of dollars that flooded in from the national party apparatus, Dems targeted as many as 22 GOP-held seats across the Texas suburbs. The strategy was built upon Beto O’Rourke’s near-victorious U.S. Senate campaign in 2018, in which he carried a narrow majority of the state’s 154 state House districts. All they needed to do was flip nine seats that O’Rourke had carried. Democrats were so optimistic heading into Election Day 2020 that multiple state reps, having suffered in the minority for years, announced bids for the speakership in anticipation of their party taking control of the lower chamber for the first time in nearly 20 years. With the potency of the GOP’s gerrymandered maps having waned, and the next round of redistricting on the horizon, it was now or (possibly) never.   What happened instead was, of course, a failure of disastrous proportions as Democrats failed to net a single seat. Then, a few months later in the 2021 legislative session, Republicans redrew the state’s political maps to extend their single-party control of the statehouse for another decade. Their gerrymandering this time opted for maximum protection of their current majority of red seats. Without fear of electoral backlash, the GOP-controlled House and Senate has marched a long line of extreme conservative legislation into law.  view article

A new poll shows that 53 percent of Texas voters believe Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris will raise taxes.  view article

Decisions about funding, policies and the structure of the education system impact the day-to-day experiences and long-term outcomes for Leander ISD students and staff. As the Texas Legislature prepares to convene in 2025, the district is inviting you to play a critical role in determining the force of the future. Feedback and priorities from families, educators and local stakeholders will help inform #1LISD’s advocacy efforts during the next Texas legislative session. view article

(RNS) — ‘After more than three decades of incremental growth, the tide has turned in the battle for parental choice and education,’ said Nicole Stelle Garnett, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame. view article

BROWNSVILLE —U.S. Reps. Vicente Gonzalez and Mayra Flores are once again battling to represent a portion of South Texas and each are promising to improve the economy and curb the flow of migrants through the border — albeit with very different tactics. view article

As we near the 2024 Election Day on Nov. 5, I’d like to offer a friendly reminder that the early voting period will begin Oct. 21 and will end Nov. 1. While I always encourage folks to take advantage of the early voting period to avoid Election Day lines, what’s most important is that you plan to participate in the process by exercising your right to vote. For more information about early voting locations, what you’ll need to bring with you to the polling locations or any other questions you may have, please visit votetexas.gov.  With that, we’ll step back into our examination of House interim charges. view article

Oliverson said he will end the practice of awarding Democrats powerful committee chairmanships in the Texas House.   In an interview with the Luke Macias Show, Republican State Rep. Tom Oliverson of Cypress explained how he would use the speakership to change the structure and culture of the House.   Oliverson, who announced his candidacy for House Speaker last month, said he will “give the voters what they voted for, which is actual representation.”   He described the results of the March GOP Primary as Texans “calling for a change.”   Oliverson also explained there is a “pattern of behavior” in House leadership that he doesn’t support—namely, lording power over members, pushing them around, and telling them how they have to vote. view article

Democrats — riding a wave of enthusiasm sparked by Kamala Harris’ nomination — think they can flip just enough House seats to stop Republicans from passing school vouchers.   view article

A pro-casino PAC is contributing significantly to two of Texas’ top officials, Gov. Greg Abbott and Comptroller Glenn Hegar, ahead of the upcoming legislative session. According to new campaign finance filings, the Texas Sands PAC donated $150,000 to Abbott and $100,000 to Hegar during August and September.  The PAC also made smaller donations, giving $15,000 to Railroad Commissioner Christi Craddick and $5,000 to Democrat State Rep. Toni Rose. These contributions are part of a broader strategy as more donations are expected leading up to the legislative session in January. The recent report covers activity between July 1 and September 26. view article

Public education took center stage as three Houston lawmakers Wednesday discussed the state’s takeover of the Houston school district and the prospect of the Legislature creating subsidies for private school tuition next year. view article

Last December, Sid Miller, the Texas commissioner of agriculture, posted a photo of himself brandishing a double-barrel shotgun on X and invited his followers to join him on a “RINO hunt.” Miller had taken to stumping in the March primary election against incumbents he deemed to be Republicans in Name Only. Not long after that, he received a text message from one of his targets, a state representative named Glenn Rogers. “You are a bought and paid for, pathetic narcissist,” it began. “If you had any honor, you would challenge me, or any of my Republican colleagues to a duel.” Rogers, a 68-year-old rancher and grandfather of five, represents a rural district west of Fort Worth. He was proud to serve in a Legislature that, as he told me recently, “couldn’t be more conservative if it tried.” Since entering office in 2021, he co-authored legislation that allowed Texans to carry handguns without a permit, supported the Heartbeat Act that grants citizens the right to sue abortion providers and voted to give the police the power to arrest suspected undocumented migrants in schools and hospitals. In a statehouse packed with debate-me agitators, he was comparatively soft-spoken — a former professor of veterinary medicine with an aversion to grandstanding. He was not in the habit of firing off salvos, as he had to Miller, that ended with “Kiss My Ass!” view article

Millions of Texans would lose food subsidies and farm insurance if Congress doesn’t act before the end of the year.   view article

A Texas A&M spokesperson has confirmed that the university will deactivate 38 certificates and 14 minors, including the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies minor. view article

A Texas A&M spokesperson has confirmed that the university will deactivate 38 certificates and 14 minors, including the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies minor. view article

The state House Public Education Committee on Tuesday considered more than 30 bills aimed at making Texas public schools safer, including measures that would put more armed personnel on campuses and give districts money for sweeping security changes. The Legislature has made improving school safety a priority this session after 10 people, mostly students, were shot and killed at Santa Fe High School 10 months ago. The shooting spurred roundtable discussions and studies among policymakers, lawmakers and Gov. Greg Abbott in the immediate aftermath. “Out of that loss, we have an opportunity to devote ourselves and commit ourselves to seeing that their loss was not in vain and that future students, future teachers, future families in this state will, if at all possible, not have to experience what these individuals experienced,” said Rep. Greg Bonnen, R-Friendswood, during Tuesday’s hearing. view article

Property tax reform has been a top priority for Texas lawmakers from the start of the 86th legislative session. The early filing of identical, wide-reaching bills in the House and Senate in January—Senate Bill 2 and House Bill 2—sparked debate on the topic and earned pushback from many local entities that could be affected by the proposals. The twin bills propose to lower the cap for local entities’ annual tax revenue growth from 8 percent to 2.5 percent and to improve efficiency and transparency in the tax system. The proposals were fast-tracked for debate in both chambers after Gov. Greg Abbott declared property tax an emergency item in February, and dozens of related bills have been filed in their wake. view article

Hillary Clinton and Helen Keller are back on the lesson plan after a vote by the Texas State Board of Education. The committee voted 12-2, with one abstention, on Tuesday to continue teaching students about Clinton in high school history classes, according to State Board of Education Director Debbie Ratcliffe. The board also voted to keep Keller on the curriculum. The vote reverses a September preliminary decision to cut the women, along with 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater and several other historical figures, from the required curriculum. The board said then that the change was intended to streamline the curriculum for its 5.4 million students at the recommendation of volunteer work groups. view article

School finance was the big-ticket item this legislative session, said Emett Alvarez, Victoria Democrats Club president. "Education should be important to everyone," Alvarez said. "We are all taxpayers and are affected by it one way or the other." The Victoria County Democratic Party will host its club meeting Tuesday at VeraCruz Restaurant, 3110 N. Navarro St. Guest speakers will be Dwight Harris, former president of the Victoria chapter of the Texas American Federation of Teachers, and Ray Thomas, who is running for chief justice of the 13th Court of Appeals. view article

Will there ever come a day when our state leaders and lawmakers want to make Texas as good a place for children as it is for business? The 85th legislative session didn't seem often inclined in that direction, particularly in matters related to educating the state's schoolchildren. A massive funding failure for prekindergarten students. The state Senate's defeatist response to a solid House attempt at school finance reform. Out-of-proportion talk about vouchers for those attending private schools. But let's not overlook a couple of bright spots. Thanks to skillful work by three North Texas lawmakers, the state's youngest learners should eventually get the gift of better-prepared teachers. view article

Back in March, James Dickey, then the chairman of the Travis County Republican Party, showed up at the state Capitol to testify in support of House Bill 1911 — a proposal known as constitutional carry, or the ability to carry firearms without a license. It was a top legislative priority for the state GOP, and Dickey brought a message tailored for the Republicans on the House panel considering it: Don't forget the platform. "The plank which said we should have constitutional carry scored a 95 percent approval rate, outscoring over 80 percent of the other planks in the option," Dickey said, referring to the party platform — a 26-page document outlining the party's positions that is approved by delegates to its biennial conventions. Constitutional carry, Dickey added, "is something very clearly wanted by the most active members of the Republican Party in Texas." view article

Contention over where transgender people use the restroom has clouded much of the 2017 legislative session and has expanded to cover other issues such as property tax policy and school finance as lawmakers push to complete their work by Monday. After Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick served notice that the scaled-back version of the so-called bathroom bill recently approved by the Texas House was a non-starter in the Senate, the upper chamber in the predawn hours Wednesday made an end-run effort to save the stronger measure that fell victim to legislative deadlines. But by the time the sun rose over the Capitol, it was clear that the House would kill the measure again. view article

An effort to overhaul the state’s beleaguered school finance system has been declared dead after the Texas Senate Education Committee’s chairman said Wednesday that he would not appoint conferees to negotiate with the House. “That deal is dead,” Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, said. Taylor’s remarks come after his counterpart in the House, Dan Huberty, R-Houston, gave a passionate speech in which he said he would not accept the Senate’s changes to House Bill 21 and would seek a conference committee with the Senate. view article

The Texas House has voted to allow concealed carry permit holders to have guns in their locked cars parked outside schools. Tentative approval came late Tuesday night as an amendment to an otherwise unrelated bill on school boards. Final House approval should come Wednesday. The state Senate already approved a full, bipartisan bill seeking to do virtually the same thing. A similar, full bill had died in the House without reaching a floor vote but now lives on as an amendment. view article

A standoff between the Texas House and Senate over vouchers killed a major school finance fix Wednesday. The House tried to pump $1.6 billion dollars more into public schools. The Senate didn't want that much and countered by tacking on their own priority. The author of the House Bill 21 rejected the changes made to it in the Senate, saying they don't go far enough. Last year, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the system was barely constitutional. So the House approved pumping $1.6 billion additional dollars into it but that plan came out of the Senate reduced to $530 million. view article

Texas lawmakers have given final approval to a measure cracking down on inappropriate relationships between teachers and students. The bill requires principals and superintendents to report inappropriate teacher-student relationships or face jail time and fines up to $10,000. The teacher's family could also lose access to the teacher's pension. view article