Latest Stories

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  Does Tuesday’s Tape Doom Dennis Bonnen as Texas House Speaker?

  October 16 at 4 a.m.

  The bomb, such as it was, has been detonated. Now comes the time to figure out the size of the fallout and, more important, its half-life. Tuesday, everyone who'd been waiting for months to hear Chekov's smartphone recording — otherwise known as Texas conservative gadfly Michael Quinn Sullivan's record of...

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  The Tape, That Tape, Is Out and It’s a Doozy for Texas Republicans

  October 15 at 11:15 a.m.

  Tuesday morning, Michael Quinn Sullivan finally released the long-awaited tape of his summer meeting with Dennis Bonnen, the speaker of the Texas House. At first listen, the recording appears to back up the basics of what Sullivan, a conservative activist and blogger, has been saying for months: In exchange for...

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  Fed Up With Legislative Moderation, Texas Anti-Abortion Activists Take to the Cities

  October 14 at 10:14 a.m.

  Like many anti-abortion activists, Mark Lee Dixon left the 2019 Texas legislative session unsatisfied. Sure, the Legislature, deep red for at least one more election, had passed the "born-alive bill," which mimics a federal law that requires doctors to care for a baby born during an attempted abortion, and another...

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  Out of Work To Do in Texas, Paxton Argues for Other State’s Abortion Restrictions

  October 8 at 4 a.m.

  The Texas Attorney General's Office made an appearance at the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans today. That's nothing new. If there's anything that Attorney General Ken Paxton likes, it's fighting the federal government, whether about the environment and Texas' ability to pollute it, people with preexisting...

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  Texas Senate Committee Holds Meeting on Gun Violence but Forgets the Guns

  September 27 at 4 a.m.

  Yesterday, a Senate special committee held its first meeting to discuss gun violence and prevention and address the eight executive orders issued by Governor Greg Abbott. Discussion centered around mental health, social media, shooters who self-radicalize online; many panel members repeated concerns about impinging on second amendment rights and due process of the law.

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  Texas GOP Circular Firing Squad Continues as Patrick, Sullivan Snipe on Twitter

  September 18 at 4 a.m.

  One could be forgiven for almost forgetting about the tape. The Cowboys are 2-0. President Donald Trump is still doing Trump things almost every day, and it's still, nearly three weeks into September, hot enough to cause hallucinations across North Texas. The tape — the maybe bombshell, maybe MacGuffin that...