Tag Archives: Greg Abbott

Where we are on the agenda

Posted on February 16, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Greg Abbott targets transgender college sports ban. Gov. Greg Abbott wants to ban transgender college students from competing on sports teams that align with their gender identity, adding momentum to a Republican proposal that’s condemned by LGBTQ advocates and progressive … Continue reading →

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Abbott tells state agencies and universities to hire more white people

Posted on February 9, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I mean, let’s be honest, that’s what this is about. Gov. Greg Abbott’s office is warning state agency and public university leaders this week that the use of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives — policies that support groups who have … Continue reading →

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Now we have a gambling bill filed by a Republican Senator

Posted on February 7, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Maybe this is the gambling expansion bill that those who want gambling expansion have been waiting for. Advocates for legalizing online sports betting in Texas debuted new bills Monday that take a narrower approach than they did in 2021 — … Continue reading →

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Not quite the same old gambling story

Posted on January 29, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

This Trib story about the state of gambling expansion in the Lege is not the usual formula. It has a lot of the usual elements, but for the first time there’s some hint of maybe something could happen. Maybe. Gambling … Continue reading →

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More on the PUC’s attempt to fix the grid

Posted on January 28, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

From TPR: After the last big blackout, state lawmakers passed Senate Bill 3, telling the commission to improve grid reliability. So, commissioners have been working on changing the state’s electricity market. They want to reform how energy is bought and … Continue reading →

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The next round of voter suppression bills are coming

Posted on January 27, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Brace yourselves. Texas Republicans spent most of the 2021 legislative session focusing on election security — and this year, it’s a top priority for them again. GOP leaders are discussing a range of election security measures, from higher penalties for … Continue reading →

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More on the collegiate TikTok bans

Posted on January 24, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

An interesting perspective from a professor in Texas. The bans have come in states where governors, like Texas’s Greg Abbott, have blocked TikTok from state-issued computers and phones. Employers can generally exercise control over how employees use the equipment they … Continue reading →

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PUC makes an attempt to fix the grid

Posted on January 21, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

People are skeptical. The Public Utility Commission voted Thursday to make a substantial change to the state’s electricity market in a controversial effort to get the whole system to be more reliable. The agency said it will let the Legislature … Continue reading →

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UT bans TikTok on campus WiFi

Posted on January 18, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

This feels like a bit of an overreaction to me, but we’ll see if others follow suit. The University of Texas at Austin has blocked access to the video-sharing app TikTok on its Wi-Fi and wired networks in response to … Continue reading →

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Precinct analysis: Inside and out of the city

Posted on January 17, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Most years we don’t get the data to differentiate between votes cast by residents of Houston and votes cast by Harris County non-Houston residents. There needs to be a citywide referendum of the ballot in order to get at this … Continue reading →

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Uvalde parents will take their fight to the Lege

Posted on January 17, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

They’re not going to get what they want and they know it, but they’re still going to fight. I have so much respect for them. More than seven months after a teenage gunman killed 21 people at Robb Elementary School, … Continue reading →

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Nobody knows the state of the gas supply in Texas

Posted on January 14, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

That can be a problem during freezes. You know, like the one we had over Christmas. As questions continue to swirl about widespread outages Atmos Energy customers experienced in North Texas and beyond last week, the opacity of Texas’ sprawling … Continue reading →

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Two out of three state leaders open to expanded gambling

Posted on January 13, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

As we know, two out of three ain’t bad, but it also ain’t enough. House Speaker Dade Phelan on Thursday left the door open to legalizing sports betting and casino gambling in Texas, the latest sign that opposition may be … Continue reading →

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The only pre-session gambling expansion story you need

Posted on January 3, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Just re-run a version of this for the foreseeable future. Although casino giants and sports betting groups are making a big push in Texas, the head of the state Senate said he isn’t seeing much progress on the issue going … Continue reading →

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Precinct analysis: The not-as-good statewide races

Posted on January 2, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

PREVIOUSLY Beto versus Abbott Beto versus the spread Hidalgo versus Mealer Better statewide races The difference between these statewide races and the ones we have already looked at, including the Governor’s race, is very simple: These Republican candidates did better … Continue reading →

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Precinct analysis: The better statewide races

Posted on December 30, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

PREVIOUSLY Beto versus Abbott Beto versus the spread Hidalgo versus Mealer As noted before, Greg Abbott got 490K votes in Harris County, far less than the 559K he received in 2018 running against Lupe Valdez. Of the other six races … Continue reading →

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A closer look at the maternal mortality report

Posted on December 29, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

I take no joy in predicting that the Legislature will take no action on this. Nakeenya Wilson was at a meeting of Texas’ maternal mortality review committee when she got the call: Her sister, who had recently had a baby, … Continue reading →

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Will we finally close the “dead suspect” loophole?

Posted on December 28, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

The short answer is no we won’t, but it will be worth the effort anyway. In November, state Representative Joe Moody, an El Paso Democrat who served on a committee that investigated the Uvalde killings, filed House Bill 30, a … Continue reading →

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Senate committee makes small Uvalde recommendations

Posted on December 23, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Par for the course. A special Texas Senate committee that convened in the wake of the Uvalde school shooting made a series of policy recommendations Wednesday regarding school and gun safety, mental health, social media and police training. In an … Continue reading →

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More on the post-marijuana decriminalization referendum conflict

Posted on December 23, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

The Trib takes a long look. The fight in several Texas cities to decriminalize marijuana has entered a new phase, as some city leaders have rebuffed voter-approved rules that largely end criminal enforcement against having small amounts of the substance. … Continue reading →

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Texas drops appeal of ruling that forbade banning the sale of handguns to people under 21

Posted on December 22, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Least surprising headline of the week. And month, and year, and pretty much any other arbitrary timeline you choose. Texas will no longer fight to ban 18- to 20-year-olds from carrying handguns in public. A judge ruled earlier this year … Continue reading →

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No, really, are we emotionally prepared for this freeze?

Posted on December 22, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Ready or not, here it comes. State officials warned residents Wednesday to prepare their homes and vehicles for the coming freeze while trying to reassure on-edge Texans that the electric grid will stay online. Temperatures are expected to plummet Thursday … Continue reading →

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Yep, still no voter fraud found

Posted on December 21, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

So says the official 2020 election audit. Despite challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, there was neither widespread voter fraud nor other serious issues in Texas’ 2020 elections, according to an audit of four of Texas’ largest counties released Monday … Continue reading →

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The medical response also failed at Uvalde

Posted on December 21, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

This is a very hard story to read, with graphic descriptions of injuries suffered by the shooting victims at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. Click over very carefully, but whether you read or not know that the failures at the … Continue reading →

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Are we emotionally prepared for the oncoming freeze?

Posted on December 20, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

That’s the real question at this point. ERCOT on Friday notified power generators in Texas that they need to be online and ready to provide power during an expected wave of cold air that could drop overnight temperatures into the … Continue reading →

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Precinct analysis: Beto versus the spread

Posted on December 19, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

PREVIOUSLY Beto versus Abbott So last time we saw the numbers for the 2022 Governor’s race. But what numbers need in order to be meaningful is context, and that means other numbers to compare them to. We’re going to do … Continue reading →

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Here at last is that updated report on maternal mortality

Posted on December 18, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

We’re still really bad at preventing it, especially for Black women. At least 118 women dead and nearly 200 children left without a mother. This was just a portion of the death toll from pregnancy and childbirth in Texas in … Continue reading →

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Abbott is now attacking immigration-focused non-profits

Posted on December 16, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Always be finding a new enemy, that’s the motto. Gov. Greg Abbott called Wednesday for the state to investigate whether nonprofit organizations have helped people enter the country illegally, adding another talking point to his border hawk arsenal and another … Continue reading →

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Precinct analysis: Beto versus Abbott

Posted on December 14, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

All right, I have the full landscape data for Harris County and the November 2022 election, and I’ll be doing my usual thing with it. There’s a lot of data and a lot of ways to explore it, some of … Continue reading →

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Gender affirming care is happening in Dallas

Posted on December 13, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Some good news that I had not been fully aware of. The Dallas doctor who ran the state’s most prominent medical program for transgender youth says she has seen dozens of new patients since crucial court wins this summer and … Continue reading →

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A thousand days of the COVID disaster declaration

Posted on December 11, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Happy COVID Disaster Declaration Thousand-Day Anniversary to all who celebrate. Thursday marks 1,000 days that Texans have been living under Gov. Greg Abbott’s public health disaster proclamation — an era of unprecedented gubernatorial authority for the state’s chief executive, triggered … Continue reading →

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“Heartbeat” lawsuit against doctor dismissed

Posted on December 10, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

I’d forgotten this was still a thing, it had been so long since it was filed. In the first test of the Texas law that empowers private citizens to sue for a minimum of $10,000 in damages over any illegal … Continue reading →

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So why wasn’t that report on maternal mortality released when it was supposed to be?

Posted on December 10, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

We’ll never really know, mostly because there’s no one with the power to compel an answer from those who do know that cares enough to use that power. State health officials had completed a long-awaited report on maternal deaths and … Continue reading →

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Abbott bans TikTok on state-issued devices

Posted on December 9, 2022 by Charles Kuffner

Honestly, I’m fine with this. Gov. Greg Abbott announced Wednesday a ban of the popular app TikTok from all government-issued devices. In a news release, the Republican said the Chinese government could use the app to access critical U.S. infrastructure … Continue reading →

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