Tag Archives: Greg Abbott

The Dallas Morning News reports: Republican Gov. Greg Abbott leads Democrat Beto O’Rourke by 5 percentage points in the Texas governor’s race, according to a new poll released Wednesday. Among likely voters, Abbott edges the former El Paso congressman, 49% to 44%. Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton each holds a 5-point lead in his November …

The Texas Tribune reports: For the second time this week, the state’s power grid operator is asking Texans to turn up their thermostats to 78 degrees and to avoid using large appliances as it expects record-high demand for power amid ongoing scorching temperatures. It is asking for conservation from 2 to 9 p.m. Wednesday. If the grid’s conditions still don’t …

The Hill reports: Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke knocked Gov. Greg Abbott (R) after the state’s grid operator appealed to Texans to “voluntarily conserve electricity” during a statewide heat wave on Monday. ERCOT cited “record high electric demand” during the heat wave and low wind to power turbines as “driving the need for this important action by customers.” ERCOT urged …

The Texas Tribune reports: This fall, Texas public schools will be subjected to random inspections to detect weak access points in the wake of the Uvalde school shooting — but a state school safety leader says these reviews will not resemble potentially traumatizing intruder simulations. Texas School Safety Center plans to start randomly checking school buildings this September, its leaders …

The Texas Tribune reports: Texas is planning to add enough electric vehicle charging stations throughout the state to support 1 million electric vehicles with dozens of new stations to allow for easier long-distance travel. The plan is to have charging stations every 50 miles along most non-business interstate routes. The chargers will be high-powered at 150kW, able to bring most …

The Texas Tribune reports: A new lawsuit filed Wednesday is challenging Gov. Greg Abbott’s directive to investigate parents who provide gender-affirming care to their transgender children. The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal on behalf of three families, including the Briggle family, who have long been advocates for trans rights, including hosting Republican Attorney …

The Texas Tribune reports: Major Republican donors, including some that have contributed to Gov. Greg Abbott’s campaigns, joined other conservative Texans in signing an open letter supporting congressional action to increase gun restrictions in response to the mass shooting in Uvalde that left 19 children and two teachers dead last week. The letter, which ran as a full-page ad in …

The Texas Tribune reports: Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday instructed state school security and education officials to start conducting “in-person, unannounced, random intruder detection audits on school districts” to find weak access points and see how quickly staff can enter a school building without being stopped. Education advocates and lawmakers swiftly condemned the idea of unannounced, fake intruders. Clay Robison, …

San Antonio’s ABC News affiliate reports: “We as a state – we as a society – need to do a better job with mental health. Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge. Period. We as a government need to find a way to target that mental health challenge and do something about it.” Those are the words …

Yahoo News reports: President Joe Biden was warmly greeted when he visited Uvalde Sunday, but Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott was loudly booed as he approached the makeshift memorial at the elementary school where 19 children and two teachers were killed last week in a mass shooting. “Shame on you, Abbott!” a voice could be heard amid the boos and …

The Hill reports: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Friday said he expects new laws to be enacted in response the shooting this week that killed 21 people at an elementary school. “Do we expect any laws to come out of this devastating crime? The answer is yes. Absolutely yes,” Abbott said. When asked about calling a special session for …

Axios reports: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said at a press conference Friday that he was “misled” on the timeline of the events of the Uvalde school shooting. Driving the news: “The information that I was given turned out, in part, to be inaccurate, and I’m absolutely livid about that,” he said. The Texas governor said that he took down notes …

The Texas Tribune reports: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is backing out of a scheduled in-person appearance at the NRA’s convention in Houston on Friday and will travel to Uvalde. He will instead give prerecorded remarks to be played at the convention. Abbott’s decision comes after the massacre reignited a national debate about firearm access — and renewed criticism of Republican …

The Hill reports: Facebook is denying Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) allegation that the gunman who killed 21 people, including 19 children, at a Texas elementary school on Tuesday posted publicly about the attack on its platform. Abbott said during a press conference Wednesday that the gunman, Salvador Ramos, posted three times before the shooting at Robb Elementary School in …

Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke just crashed Gov. Greg Abbott’s press conference on the Ulvalde school massacre, where he and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was issuing the usual thoughts and prayers blather and even saying that the massacre could have been worse. Moments after O’Rourke approached the dais, multiple Abbott flacks began shouting at him, with one calling him a …

The Texas Tribune reports: After six power plants went down unexpectedly Friday — and with hot weather expected across Texas this weekend — the Electric Reliability Council of Texas on Friday evening is asking consumers to conserve electricity through Sunday. Texans are asked to set their thermostats to 78 degrees or above between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. this weekend …

CNN reports: After a pause on investigations of families seeking gender-affirming care for their transgender children, the Texas Supreme Court said the state’s child protective services investigations can continue while an appeals process plays out on the merits of the case. The opinion released Friday still restricts the state from investigating the so-called “Doe” family, which brought forward a lawsuit …

The Texas Tribune reports: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and top state lawmakers shifted around roughly $1 billion in federal coronavirus aid to help pay for their campaign to arrest migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, exposing gaps in a law meant to bolster the country’s response to the ongoing pandemic. Critics say the money would have been put to better use …

The Austin Statesman reports: Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday that Texas would consider challenging a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring states to offer free public education to all children, including those of undocumented immigrants. “Texas already long ago sued the federal government about having to incur the costs of the education program, in a case called Plyler versus Doe,” …

The New York Times reports: His efforts to tighten border security and harden Texas’ 1,254-mile frontier have helped Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, hold off challenges from his right and made the lawyerly governor into a regular on Fox News. Now Mr. Abbott is weighing whether to invoke actual war powers to seize much broader state authority on the border. …