As early voting begins in the Republican primary election in Texas, former President Donald Trump has issued a series of endorsements of candidates running for the Texas Legislature. In a series of posts on Truth Social on Tuesday, Trump revealed the endorsements, which included four challengers to incumbent members he called “RINOs” (Republicans in Name Only). Those candidates include: view article

Gainesville school administrators are combing through the budget to find more money for teachers after state lawmakers failed to approve the $4,000 raise earmarked for additional teacher pay in last year’s legislative session. Gainesville teachers, who start out with an annual salary of $48,000, haven’t had a raise in two years, but the district is providing teachers with instructional coaching. District officials also believe the move this year to a four-day week has helped teachers, said LaCreasha Stille, GISD assistant superintendent for human resources. view article

After being a major focal point of Texas education policy for more than a year, school choice is likely to be one among many issues motivating voters in the Republican primary election. During the 2023 legislative year, school choice, also known as vouchers or education savings accounts, drew thousands of supporters and opponents to the Capitol as lawmakers took up various iterations of the issue — none of which made it to the finish line. view article

The attorney general has tried to supplant eight Republican judges on the court after they rejected his efforts to unilaterally prosecute voter fraud. The judges are now pushing back.  The three incumbents running for their seats on Texas’ highest criminal court were not well known political figures outside of the legal community. That was until they earned the ire of Attorney General Ken Paxton in response to a 2021 opinion over a voter fraud case.  Now, the three female Republican justices on the Court of Criminal Appeals, Presiding Judge Sharon Keller, Judge Barbara Hervey and Judge Michelle Slaughter, find themselves in the position of having their conservative credentials questioned in “low-information elections” in which they’re up against Paxton’s political machine. view article

State Rep. Brian Harrison said that he will be exploring ways to end woke classes in Texas universities. Republican State Rep. Brian Harrison of Midlothian hinted that he will be exploring “legislative remedies” to end taxpayer funding of LGBTQ and woke courses at Texas universities. The announcement was made in an X post yesterday in which Harrison blasted Texas A&M University for promoting woke ideology on campus with Texas tax dollars. view article

What’s happening at the intersection of rampant illegal immigration and education in Texas? As it turns out, quite a lot. Last week, multiple incumbent members of the Texas House, who voted to strip a school choice provision from an omnibus education bill in late 2023, released political ads claiming their votes were motivated by border security convictions. Gov. Greg Abbott called one of these lawmakers, Drew Darby (R-San Angelo), a liar, and State Rep. Gary VanDeaver (R-New Boston) a fraud for “knowingly misleading his own voters to try to protect the teacher unions.” view article

In a debate this week between San Antonio Rep. Steve Allison and the Republican trying to take his place, the moderator was so eager to ask the pair about private school vouchers that she skipped the candidates’ opening remarks. The issue is defining the GOP primary between Allison, who voted against vouchers, and Marc LaHood, who says he would support spending taxpayer dollars on private education. view article

State taxpayers, through the Texas Department of Health and Human Services, paid millions in rent to a company of which Speaker of the Texas House Dade Phelan is a manager and director.  The Phelan family is in the real estate business. view article

Patrick said he believes the Texas House “needs new leadership and a fresh crop of new members.”  Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has announced his endorsement of four candidates for seats in the Texas House.   These four candidates have also been endorsed by Gov. Greg Abbott.   “I’m proud to join Governor Abbott in endorsing these fine candidates for Texas House,” said Patrick on Thursday. “I believe the Texas House needs new leadership and a fresh crop of new members. These four candidates all bring their unique talents and skills to help repair the Texas House.”  The candidates are: view article

Schwertner helped unanimously pass the Texas law to elevate the crime to a serious offense in 2015. The 21-year-old allegedly sent his ex-girlfriend texts in January threatening to release the intimate photos about six months after their break-up, according to court records obtained by Fox 7 Austin. The senior Schwertner was part of a 2015 unanimous vote in the Texas Senate to elevate the crime to a serious offense level in Senate Bill 1135, also known as the Relationship Privacy Act. view article

The two social conservatives are leading with money and endorsements in the crowded GOP primary to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess of Lewisville.  WASHINGTON — The frontrunner in the Republican primary to replace longtime Congressman Michael Burgess of Lewisville is a 29-year-old political newcomer, Brandon Gill, who helped make a name for himself in politics by marketing the election conspiracy theory documentary “2000 Mules” with his father-in-law Dinesh D’Souza.  Trailing closely behind him is John Huffman, the mayor of Southlake — a wealthy Dallas-Fort Worth suburb that drew national attention after it became ground zero in the GOP battle against diversity and inclusion policies in public schools.  The two hard-charging social conservatives are leading with money and endorsements among the pack of Republicans vying for the party’s nomination for North Texas’ Congressional District 26. view article

As preparations for the 2025 legislative session begin, the Texas Public Policy Foundation has announced its priorities that include ending taxpayer-funded lobbying, expanding school choice, securing the Texas-Mexico border, and several additional policy issues for the next two years.  “Texas serves as a model and a beacon for the rest of the country to maximize individual liberty, promote a vibrant and growing economy, and ensure safe and secure communities,” said TPPF CEO Greg Sindelar in the announcement.   While recent legislative sessions have made tremendous progress, vigilance remains the price of freedom. From border security to low taxes, health care to education, Texans must not rest in making our state the freest and most prosperous place on Earth. TPPF’s legislative agenda again takes an aggressive approach to improving the lives of all Texans. view article

Nearing the five-hour mark of Monday's board meeting, the Cypress-Fairbanks ISD Board of Trustees voted to affirm their existing chaplain volunteer policy, opting out of a vote on whether to adopt a policy of employing chaplains. With a conservative super-majority of 6-1, it was a surprising decision for many community members who were anticipating that the board would approve a policy employing chaplains. Some members were so concerned, some in the group Cypress Families for Public Schools organized an effort to speak out against the policy, printing out U.S. History-themed signs for parents to hold up during the meeting reading: “Don’t mess with our parental rights” and “Don’t mess with religious freedom.”  The board, which includes some new members, had only two weeks left to take a record vote on the measure before the law's March 1 deadline. Senate Bill 763 allows school districts to open a chaplain position in their schools and pay them through the safety and security allotment from the state. view article

The legislation provides no funding to combat the invasion at the southern border. Over the objection of conservative members, the United States Senate passed a $95 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Sen. John Cornyn joined most Democrats and 21 Republicans in voting to pass the package. Sen. Ted Cruz, meanwhile, voted against the measure. Cruz expressed concern that the measure included no funding for border security along the U.S. southern border, which has been a sticking point for the House. “It is important that Israel eradicates Hamas, that Taiwan remains resilient against China’s threats, and that Ukraine defeats Russia. I have consistently supported providing aid to ensure these allies are strong,” said Cruz. view article

Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, already rebuked by former President Donald Trump and no fewer than three Republican statewide elected leaders, has now been censured by his own state GOP for a “lack of fidelity to Republican principles and priorities.” The censure, handed down Saturday by a 55-4 vote of the State Republican Executive Committee (with four members abstaining), comes as the second-term speaker is facing two primary challengers for his Southeast Texas House district seat and is hoping to cobble together the majority of votes he’ll need to keep the gavel in the 150-member lower chamber when the Legislature convenes in 11 months. view article

Turn on the TV in northeast Texas, and it would be hard to guess it has become a battleground in the GOP war over school vouchers.  State Rep. Gary VanDeaver of New Boston — one of nine Republicans that Gov. Greg Abbott is trying to unseat over their opposition to vouchers — is running an ad bragging about boosting border security funding as a House budget writer. His Abbott-backed challenger, Chris Spencer, is airing a spot promising to work with former President Donald Trump to “make our Texas border secure again.” and another Abbott-endorsed challenger in the region, Joanne Shofner, is running a commercial that pitches her as a “true border hawk.”  Those ads, exclusively about the border, are underscoring a key dynamic in Texas’ extraordinary primary season: Despite all the hubbub about vouchers and Ken Paxton’s impeachment — it’s still about the border. view article

When I started working at Votebeat more than a year ago, I knew little about elections. I wasn’t eligible to vote, and for most of my adult life, the election process was confusing and intimidating. I wanted to learn as much as I could about how elections worked so I would feel empowered to one day participate myself. I wrote an essay about all of this when I started. After months of writing about election administrators’ jobs, paper ballot security and storage, how primary elections work, election funding (or lack thereof), voting machine logic and accuracy tests, and voter roll maintenance, I now feel like I know more about our elections process than most of those around me. I love it. And I’m now eligible to cast a ballot. view article

Florida long has been a pioneer in providing families with education freedom and choice. It was among the first states to enact both tax-credit scholarships and education savings accounts, and to expand those options to every K–12 student in the state. With 350,000 students participating in the state’s K–12 scholarship policies, Florida has both the most total students and most students per capita in the nation benefiting from education choice. Accordingly, Florida deservedly ranked first in the nation on The Heritage Foundation’s Education Freedom Report Card for the past two years in a row. That’s why it’s so disappointing to see the Sunshine State on the verge of taking a step backward. view article

Bryan Blaha urged Humble Independent School District trustees to sign off on a resolution to allow the district to hire chaplains to support students, a controversial option made available last year by Senate Bill 763. A chaplain himself, the 55-year-old told the board at their recent meeting that he would be quick to volunteer. He already serves as a volunteer chaplain with the Houston Police Department and is an instructor with Houston-based Crisis Chaplaincy of America. view article

Kyle Biedermann, a former Texas state representative running to unseat a fellow Republican in the March primary, blasted the House for expelling former Rep. Bryan Slaton, who had sex with a 19-year old intern after plying her with alcohol.  “Was he convicted? What was his crime? Is it a crime to have sex with a 19-year-old woman?” Biedermann said in a video captured from a Kendall County Tea Party meeting this week. “In your house, not at the Capitol.”  Slaton, a Royse City Republican who is married, was the first member of the Texas Legislature to be removed from office since 1927. His ouster came after a monthslong internal investigation by the House General Investigating Committee that stemmed from complaints from Capitol employees. Every member of the GOP-dominated House voted to remove him, including House Speaker Dade Phelan, who rarely casts votes. view article

In a statement, Biedermann said the point he was trying to make was that leaders “selectively punish impropriety.”  Kyle Biedermann, a former Texas state representative running to unseat a fellow Republican in the March primary, blasted the House for expelling former Rep. Bryan Slaton, who had sex with a 19-year old intern after plying her with alcohol.  “Was he convicted? What was his crime? Is it a crime to have sex with a 19-year-old woman?” Biedermann said in a video captured from a Kendall County Tea Party meeting this week. “In your house, not at the Capitol.”  Slaton, a Royse City Republican who is married, was the first member of the Texas Legislature to be removed from office since 1927. His ouster came after a monthslong internal investigation by the House General Investigating Committee that stemmed from complaints from Capitol employees. Every member of the GOP-dominated House voted to remove him, including House Speaker Dade Phelan, who rarely casts votes. view article

WASHINGTON — Texas Republican lawmakers in Congress, who represent a state with the most to win from a hard-nosed U.S. border package, stood firmly against a bipartisan deal that was blocked Wednesday by a 50-49 Senate vote and left on life support in a pivotal procedural decision. The Senate GOP leadership, which had championed the border deal, stepped back from pushing the $20 billion package, which makes up part of a larger $118 billion national security bill that includes aid to Israel and Ukraine, after it became clear conservative lawmakers did not think the legislation, which would revamp U.S. border and immigration policies, went far enough and that former President Donald Trump, the likely GOP nominee for president this year, was against the proposal. view article

PHOENIX (AP) — Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs has proposed requiring students to attend public school for 100 days before becoming eligible for a voucher program in a move designed to rein in the skyrocketing costs and reduce the number of participants.  The proposal is a key feature of a budget her office unveiled Friday as the state faces financial challenges. A new forecast from the Legislature’s budget analysts shows a growing deficit from from $400 million to $835 million this year, and from $450 million to $879 million next year. The state faces plummeting revenues from a massive tax cut that took full effect last year and increased expenditures from the school voucher program expansion. view article

“This is the most conflict we've seen within Texas House primaries in modern history,” Rice University professor Mark Jones told us.  Abbott failed to get his legislative priority over the finish line as a bloc of House Republicans have held steadfast in their opposition to using public funds to help some students go to private schools. Now, Abbott has turned his focus on trying to replace those Republicans through the primary and endorsing opponents who do support a school voucher program, according to a report from The Texas Tribune.  Another report from The Texas Tribune said Paxton has his own interests, seeking to enact revenge on House GOP members who voted to impeach him. This has sometimes put his efforts and Abbott’s endorsements at odds. view article

Oral arguments on Senate Bill 14 were heard in the Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday. The fate of legislation to ban child gender mutilation in Texas is in the hands of the state’s Supreme Court. Senate Bill 14 by State Sen. Donna Campbell (R–New Braunfels) protects children from being chemically castrated by puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and from receiving mutilative surgeries. After Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bill into law last year, the ACLU of Texas and five families with gender-confused children filed a lawsuit to challenge Texas’ child gender mutilation ban, arguing it would prevent “trans youth” from receiving “life-saving care.” In August, a district judge in Travis County granted a preliminary injunction, which would temporarily allow children to continue to access gender-mutilative surgeries and cross-sex hormones. That was quickly appealed by the Office of the Attorney General to the Texas Supreme Court, freezing the lower court’s injunction and allowing the law to go into effect. view article

With early voting in the March 5 Republican primary just weeks away, voters in Texas House District 5 are deciding between an established incumbent and two challengers claiming conservative grassroots support. The East Texas district covers part of Smith County and all of Camp, Rains, Titus, Upshur, and Wood counties. Incumbent State Rep. Cole Hefner of Mount Pleasant is running for a fifth term. Before joining the Legislature, Hefner served as a county commissioner in Upshur County. While Hefner maintains a relatively high conservative ranking on various scales, his standing has declined among some constituents. view article

A measure to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas narrowly failed in the House on Tuesday, after three Republicans voted with Democrats against what would have been the first impeachment of a Cabinet member in nearly 150 years. The failed vote was a stunning rebuke of a months-long investigation into Mayorkas that legal experts and even some Republicans had raised concerns about. view article

In a video sent to voters in southeast Texas, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick blasted House Speaker Dade Phelan over the weekend on behalf of President Donald Trump. Patrick was responding to Phelan’s claims in the media that he was a supporter of Trump. Phelan made that assertion following Trump’s endorsement of David Covey, who is challenging Phelan in the GOP primary. view article

A new law requires small counties to increase early voting days and hours — with no new money from the state.   At church last month, Pam Hill’s neighbor approached her after service and asked her if she'd be opening an early voting location in their small town of Odem, just as in previous election years.  answered Hill, who has run elections in San Patricio County for more than two decades. You'll either have to wait for Election Day, or have to come to Sinton.” view article

Senators in both parties have finalized a deal on stricter border and immigration policies that is headed toward an uncertain floor vote in the coming days. The $118 billion agreement, which was released Sunday afternoon and negotiated for months, would tighten the standard for migrants to receive asylum, automatically shut down the southern border to illegal crossings if migrant encounters hit certain daily benchmarks and send billions of dollars to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan as well as the border. view article

A new law lets schools use safety funds to pay for unlicensed chaplains working in mental health roles. Supporters say it helps address student mental health while critics blast it as a Christian nationalist attempt to convert children to a specific form of faith.  It’s been more than seven months since the Texas Legislature passed a bill allowing public schools to hire school chaplains, but for the Rev. Dave Welch, his work has just begun. Dining last month at the Taste of Texas, a sprawling restaurant and museum on the outskirts of Houston with 750-pound replica cannons made to resemble those from the Battle of the Alamo bolted to its entryway, the longtime conservative Christian activist outlined his two-pronged plan for what comes next. view article

State Sen. Roland Gutierrez made the comments to a Houston audience.  While U.S. Senator Ted Cruz is expected to win re-election this fall, Texas Democrats are nevertheless holding their own primary to determine a nominee.  Democrat U.S. Rep. Colin Allred (Dallas) and State Sen. Roland Gutierrez (D-San Antonio) are the leading contenders.  While the contest had previously been expected to divide along regional lines (Dallas/North Texas vs. San Antonio/South Texas), recent comments by Gutierrez may polarize the contest along far more ominous lines.  According to a national media report, Gutierriez recently told a Houston audience “it’s going to be a Hispanic candidate, a strong Hispanic candidate” to flip the seat blue. view article

If past is prologue, Dade Phelan’s return to the Texas House would be all but guaranteed. Over five terms, he has never once drawn a reelection opponent, ascending to become the first House speaker from Beaumont, leading the lower chamber as it drifted further to the right. But a tumultuous 2023 exposed deep fissures within the Republican Party, exacerbated by the House’s impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton and refusal to pass a school voucher program favored by Gov. Greg Abbott. Now, Phelan is the No. 1 enemy of Texas’ far-right conservatives. Paxton and his ally Donald Trump want Phelan ousted. So do the state’s lieutenant governor, agriculture commissioner, the chair of the state Republican Party and its executive committee. Abbott has declined to publicly back the speaker while campaigning against incumbent House Republicans Phelan is trying to protect. view article

WASHINGTON — Texas Congressional Republicans helped move the chamber a historic step closer toward impeaching Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas for what the GOP has described as a mishandling of the southern border and a dereliction of duties amid a rise in illegal crossings. The House Homeland Security Committee voted 18-15 along party lines to impeach the secretary, citing two articles of impeachment – “breach of public trust” and “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law." Four Texas Republicans sit on the committee: former committee chair Rep. Michael McCaul, of Austin, border district Rep. Tony Gonzales of San Antonio, Rep. August Pfluger of San Angelo, and Rep. Morgan Luttrell of Willis. view article

Freshman State Rep. Frederick Frazier, a McKinney Republican, has lost another local endorsement after leaving his police job in disgrace and admitting to multiple misdemeanors committed during his 2022 primary campaign. Members of the McKinney Police Association declined to endorse Frazier for re-election to House District 61 after backing him in 2022, according to officers familiar with the vote. Frazier, a former McKinney City Councilman and Dallas police officer, is running to retain his House seat despite becoming mired in scandal. In December, Frazier retired from the Dallas Police Department with a dishonorable discharge rather than face possible termination. He was the subject of an ongoing internal investigation and had been placed on the Brady List of officers considered not credible when testifying at a trial. view article