News item #1: Whatever happens in Arizona in November, we got a preview of the difficulty Republican candidates will have in states where high-stakes ballot initiatives literally put abortion on the ballot. Shortly after Arizona’s high court ruled that the state must go back to the 1864 abortion law which forbids virtually every abortion, Kari Lake, probable GOP Senate nominee (and governor over the water) released a remarkable statement. She first denounced the 1864 law, which she said she supported as recently as last fall. She said she opposed today’s ruling. She then demanded Gov. Katie H ..read more

So says a judge. A district judge on Thursday ruled Harris County’s new guaranteed income program can proceed, denying the Texas Attorney General’s office request for a temporary injunction. The state sued Harris County earlier this month, arguing the initiative to provide financial assistance to low-income residents violated a Texas statute prohibiting gifts of public funds. Harris County Commissioners Court approved the plan last June to send $500 monthly payments to around 1,900 low-income households over the course of 18 months. The $20.5 million Uplift Harris program is funded by federa ..read more

If it weren’t for the HCAD elections on May 4, the SD15 special election would be the headliner. Molly Cook Molly Cook and state Rep. Jarvis Johnson both say they take every election seriously, and that includes their head-to-head matchup on May 4. That’s when a group of Houston-area voters will turn out for a special election to decide which Democrat completes the 2024 term of new Houston Mayor John Whitmire, whose decades-long tenure in the Texas Senate ended when he was sworn into City Hall at the start of this year. But both Cook and Johnson also have an eye on the election scheduled fo ..read more

This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think. This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth: news about the upcoming election, including what we know and don’t know; the bond package here in Dallas; lots of shenanigans and high-handedness from the Fort Worth GOP; Dallas’ former mayor on his work with No Labels; a bunch of stories about big money in local and state politics and its connection to some unsavory bigotry; hey, we had an eclipse; and a zoo baby. And more! As always when we have an election coming up, I’d like to remind you to vote. Need help? Check o ..read more

As you know, I’ve written a bunch about the HCAD Board elections, including doing interviews with four of the candidates, so that you my readers and anyone else who stumbles across this page can hopefully know a little something about who is running and what they’d do. In my recent post about the Tarrant County races, I noted that at least fifty Texas counties are having these elections in May, all for the first time ever. And that made me wonder, how much does anyone know about these elections and who is running in them? The answer is, pretty damn little. Do what I did in writing this post, w ..read more

At long, long last. Most Houston-area property owners likely are unaware that the amount of taxes they owe is decided, in part, by a group of local appraisers overseen by a little-known board of directors. But for the first time they are being asked to elect three of those board members on May 4. Texans who voted for a ballot proposition last November to lower property taxes may have noticed that, at the bottom of the measure, they also voted to add three seats to their local appraisal district’s board of directors that would be elected positions, rather than appointed. Five months later, ca ..read more

Good. Key portions of a law signed last year by Gov. Greg Abbott requiring booksellers to rate books for sexual content when selling to schools will not go into effect after the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday declined to re-consider an earlier decision. It’s a win for booksellers, especially independent ones, who sued the state last year saying the law violated the First Amendment and would devastate their businesses. Valerie Koehler, who owns Houston’s Blue Willow Bookshop, said she was happy about the ruling, but the law has already caused a chilling effect that has led to lost or ..read more

The Texas Progressive Alliance is ready for some Stormy court action as it brings you this week’s roundup. Off the Kuff has interviews with two of the candidates for the HCAD Board, Pelumi Adeleke and Austin Pooley. Neil at the Houston Democracy Project said that police union support of far-right extremists is a threat to public safety. SocraticGadfly, in an extended review of Stephen Vladeck’s book, talks about the problems with the Supreme Court’s shadow docket. ========================== And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs. Texas Highways tells the story of El Paso’s ..read more

Kathy Blueford-Daniels We come to the end of my interviews with candidates for the HCAD positions. I might have tried to broaden the field under some other circumstances, but in this case I felt it best to concentrate on the candidates who were actually worthy of consideration in this partisan (disguised, but still partisan) context. I think that part of it will be more clear in the runoffs, but one step at a time. Today’s candidate, who is vying for Position One, is the one person running who can say from experience what this job is about because she’s done it before. Kathy Blueford-Daniels ..read more

Gonna need to keep that going. Colin Allred U.S. Rep. Colin Allred raised over $9.5 million for his U.S. Senate campaign in this year’s first quarter, surpassing the campaign of his rival Sen. Ted Cruz. Notably, Allred has also raised more money than Beto O’Rourke did by this point in his own history-making run against Cruz in 2018. O’Rourke raised over $6.7 million in the first quarter of 2018 against Cruz. The El Paso Democrat’s haul that quarter was the biggest of any Democratic Senate candidate in the country. Cruz raised over $6.9 million from his official campaign this past quarter, a ..read more