Tag Archives: Texas

NPR reports: Pierce Bush, the grandson of former President George H.W. Bush, says he’s running for Congress in Texas. Bush joins a crowded GOP field in Texas’ 22nd congressional district, a seat currently held by retiring Republican Rep. Pete Olson. At least 14 other Republicans are running in the GOP primary for this suburban Houston district, which will likely also …

ProPublica reports: Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez, a 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant, was seriously ill when immigration agents put him in a small South Texas holding cell with another sick boy on the afternoon of May 19. A few hours earlier, a nurse practitioner at the Border Patrol’s dangerously overcrowded processing center in McAllen had diagnosed him with the flu and measured …

San Antonio’s ABC News affiliate reports: Hours after Chick-fil-A announced it will no longer donate funds to organizations known for their anti-LGBTQ stances, Gov. Greg Abbott said he’s eating elsewhere. Abbott wrote on Twitter Monday evening that he’s “headed to Bill Miller’s tonight,” doubling down on his devotion to the San Antonio-based barbecue chain. Abbott reversed his preference to the …

Three if you count the Proud Boy who showed up late. The Advocate reports: A Straight Pride event at Dallas City Hall plaza attracted three supporters on Saturday. The march was hosted by the anti-LGBTQ group Protecting Our Next Generations (PONG). On its Facebook, the group promised the event would include discussions of abortion (“it is murder”), marriage values (“one …

Buzzfeed News reports: In yet another case of a gender reveal gone horribly wrong, an airplane crashed mid-reveal after the pilot dumped about 350 gallons of pink water out of the aircraft, which stalled and hit the ground. The pilot and a passenger were flying in the one-seat aircraft during the Sept. 7 incident in Turkey, Texas. According to a …

Roll Call reports: Navy Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson is considering a run for Congress in Texas, two sources familiar with his plans said Friday. Jackson was the chief White House physician in 2018, when President Donald Trump nominated him to be Veterans Affairs secretary. But Jackson withdrew his nomination from consideration amid allegations that he abused alcohol and mishandled prescription …

The New York Times reports: Former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas is dropping out of the presidential race, ending a campaign in which he struggled for months to recapture the energy of his insurgent 2018 Senate candidacy on a national stage full of other big personalities and liberal champions. Mr. O’Rourke made the decision to quit the race in the …

The Texas Tribune reports: First-term Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen on Tuesday announced he will not seek reelection to the lower chamber in 2020 — completing a stunning fall for the Angleton Republican who enjoyed near unanimous support in the House just months earlier. Bonnen’s political future was first called into question in late July, when hardline conservative activist Michael …

The Dallas Morning News reports: A Dallas County jury sentenced Amber Guyger to 10 years in prison after convicting her of murdering her upstairs neighbor Botham Jean in his apartment last year. Guyger, 31, had been facing between five and 99 years or life in prison. After the sentence was read out, chants of, “No justice, no peace,” broke out …

NBC News reports: Amber Guyger was found guilty of murder on Tuesday for fatally shooting her neighbor, Botham Jean, after thinking he was an intruder when she mistakenly entered his apartment. She faces a maximum of life in prison. The jury was tasked with deciding whether or not Guyger, 31, acted reasonably when she used deadly force, and if the …

Axios reports: The retirement of six House Republicans from Texas at the end of this term shows their pessimism about winning back the House majority in 2020, GOP strategists tell Axios — and foreshadows bigger Republican fears in the nation’s second most populous state. “We need a new Republican Party because the one we have is getting our asses kicked …

Just in via press release: U.S. Congressman Mac Thornberry (TX-13) released the following statement: “It has been a great honor to serve the people of the 13th District of Texas as their congressman for the last 25 years. They have given me opportunities to serve the nation in ways I could have never imagined, including as Chairman of the House …

The Texas Tribune reports: U.S. Rep. Will Hurd said Thursday he is considering a run for president in 2024. The third-term Republican congressman from Helotes is leaving the House at the end of this term, and his retirement announcement sent shockwaves throughout national politics. In an interview Thursday with The Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith, Hurd addressed a slew of …

Hemant Mehta reports at The Friendly Atheist: Nothing weird about this. Just a Christian guy who’s staking out a local park before the sun comes up in order to keep the “witches and satan worshipers” away with his Jesus prayers. I would normally just dismiss him as a kook… except that kook is Tim Kelly, a man who won a …

Politico reports: Sen. Ted Cruz is sounding the alarm on Texas. During a Christian Science Monitor breakfast on Thursday, Cruz warned that Texas will be “hotly contested” in 2020. He said that while he had confidence his colleague Republican Sen. John Cornyn and President Donald Trump would win the state, both will face a “serious race.” “I think the Texas …

The Dallas Morning News reports: Presidential hopeful Joe Biden has cemented his frontrunner status among the Democratic contenders in Texas, a delegate-rich early primary state that will see Houston play host on Thursday to the third round of the Democratic debates. A Quinnipiac University poll puts Biden at 28% among Democratic voters and independent voters who lean Democratic in Texas, …

The Texas Tribune reports: The top three contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination all lead President Trump in deep-red Texas where a Democrat has not won a statewide race in 25 years, according to a new poll. The latest Univision News survey of Texas finds Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) doing best in a hypothetical head-to-head match-up against Trump in …

The New York Times reports: David Amad, a gun rights activist and the vice president of Open Carry Texas, is not especially bothered by Walmart’s recent announcement that it is “respectfully requesting” that customers not openly carry guns into its stores. Mr. Amad said many of his group’s 38,000 members had carried their guns openly into Walmart stores since the …

The Texas Tribune reports: The Texas Democratic Party is pulling back the curtain on its 2020 strategy ahead of the Houston presidential debate, releasing a plan to flip the state that targets 2.6 million potential Democratic voters who are not registered yet and commits to deploying over 1,000 organizers by the end of the election cycle. The 10-page proposal, shared …

Newsweek reports: A report out by the San Antonio Express-News found that a gun owner in Texas had sent more than 100 pages of racist and violent letters to the Texas Attorney General’s office threatening to kill undocumented immigrants over the course of a year and a half, and that nothing was done to stop him or to communicate the …