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A group of 46 Republican House members and nominees pledged Friday to only back a speaker next session who commits to ending the tradition of appointing Democratic committee chairs — a move that narrows the path to the gavel for House Speaker Dade Phelan, who has vowed to continue the longstanding practice. To be elected speaker, a House member must secure 76 votes, a majority of the 150-seat chamber. Democrats control 64 seats, meaning a speaker hopeful could theoretically win with full Democratic support and around a dozen of the 86 Republicans. To prevent this scenario, Phelan’s rivals have called...

Temporary Platform and Resolutions as Amended and Adopted by the 2024 State Convention of the Republican Party of Texas

Pro-Hamas protestors were at it again, this time setting fire to the Israeli embassy in Mexico City, with some reports of injuries, puzzling quite a few observers. According to the Jewish Chronicle:Rioters on Tuesday set fire to the Israeli Embassy in Mexico during a protest ostensibly against the Israeli military operation in the southern Gazan city of Rafah.Masked protesters threw stones at security forces who had created a barricade preventing access to the diplomatic mission in the Mexico City’s Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood.Around 200 people participated in the “Urgent Action for Rafah” demonstration, dozens of whom attempted to break down...

A former Trump campaign official has won a tight primary fight and will now serve as the representative of a deep-red Texas House district. Republican Katrina Pierson, who served as the spokesperson for former President Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, defeated incumbent state Rep. Justin Holland in Tuesday's primary runoff for Texas' 33rd House District, and is the presumptive winner of November's general election since no Democrat candidate is standing in the race. Pierson had the backing of Republican Texas Gov. Gregg Abott, who sought to oust incumbent Republicans opposed to some of his policy objectives. ...

A wave of Republican incumbents were swept out of the Texas House in Tuesday's primary runoffs, including a handful who opposed school vouchers last fall, handing Gov. Greg Abbott a tentative majority in the lower chamber on his signature issue. With most ballots counted across the state, six of the eight GOP House members who were forced into overtime appeared to lose their runoffs, continuing a surge of anti-establishment energy that had already led to the ouster of nine House Republicans in the March primary. The runoffs brought mixed results for Texas' hard right: the House gained a pro-voucher majority...

Phelan will be returning to the Legislature in 2025 with far fewer friends and far more emboldened enemies. Despite the cigar and bravado on display at his victory party Tuesday night, Phelan and his cohort suffered heavy losses to the rightwing. Six of the eight House incumbents mired in runoffs lost. Those losses follow the incumbent bloodbath in the March primaries, in which half a dozen Phelan allies were defeated by challengers backed by Paxton and/or Governor Greg Abbott. One of the main jobs of the speaker is to keep his members in office. The king must protect the kingmakers....

GO VOTE!

Will Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan hang onto his seat? And will Gov. Greg Abbott succeed in ousting Republicans who blocked his school choice voucher plan? Those are the big questions on the eve of Tuesday’s primary runoff elections in Texas. In order to keep his speakership, Phelan first has to win his primary runoff race in his home district Tuesday against GOP challenger David Covey. "It is a real knife fight there on the coast," said Scott Braddock, editor of quorumreport.com. Former President Trump has endorsed Covey, and Attorney General Ken Paxton blasted Phelan on social media Monday, exactly...

U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas is out to save his job Tuesday in a GOP primary runoff that has put rifts within the party on display. Gonzales, who has clashed with some of his hard-right colleagues in Washington and drawn a rebuke from the state party, is in a race against Brandon Herrera, a gun-rights YouTube creator with more than 3 million followers. Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan also faces a tough challenge that could see him ousted from his powerful seat, upending the Republican-controlled Legislature. Phelan angered conservatives for leading the 2023 impeachment of state Attorney General Ken...

If you live in Texas and haven't already voted, go vote tomorrow! Let's hope Speaker Phelan gets the boot!

The Texas Supreme Court is considering whether or not to take up the case of Caroline Antoun who is seeking personhood for her frozen embryos. The embryos are currently the property of Antoun’s ex-husband, Gaby Antoun, as the IVF contract had stated he would get custody in the event of a divorce. Antoun, however, is asking that the embryos be considered persons and placed in her custody. The former couple had welcomed twins through IVF and kept three remaining embryos frozen. Antoun said she did not fully understand the gravity of the contract she had signed regarding embryo custody and...

HOUSTON, May 23 (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump raised tens of millions of dollars during a fundraising swing through Texas this week, promising he would support the oil and gas industry by backing new pipelines and restoring fracking on federal land. [cut] A Houston fundraiser on Wednesday was hosted by oil billionaires Jeff Hildebrand, founder of Hilcorp Energy, the largest closely held U.S. oil firm; George Bishop, founder of GeoSouthern Energy; Harold Hamm, founder of Continental Resources; and Kelcy Warren, head of pipeline firm Energy Transfer Partners. Trump drew standing ovations when he promised to get more natural...

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton railed against House Speaker Dade Phelan at the Texas Republican Party’s convention Thursday in San Antonio, predicting voters would oust him in Tuesday’s primary runoff election. Phelan is fighting to keep his political career alive in a contentious race against oil and gas consultant David Covey. Patrick, Paxton and Texas GOP Chair Matt Rinaldi have all been instrumental in the campaign to unseat Phelan, a five-term Republican from Beaumont, and have derided him as a fake Republican who has handed too much power to Democrats.

Two years after 19 fourth-graders and two teachers died, families and survivors also announce $2 million settlement with the city.. UVALDE, Texas— Families of children killed in the mass shooting at an elementary school here two years ago and survivors filed a lawsuit Wednesday against 91 state police officers and the local school district, calling their response the “single greatest failure of law enforcement to confront an active shooter in American history.” ... Uvalde attack and failures of responding law enforcement to stop the killing shocked the nation. A gunman killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers while nearly 400 officers...

A federal judge in Texas on Wednesday said Exxon Mobil can sue to bar a climate change proposal from an activist investor, in a case that has raised concerns about its future effect on shareholder resolutions. U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman for the Northern District of Texas ruled that Exxon’s lawsuit can proceed against Boston-based Arjuna Capital, but dismissed the oil major’s claim against a second activist shareholder, Follow This, because the firm is based in the Netherlands. Exxon sued the two investors in January after they submitted a proposal to be tabled at the May 29 annual shareholder meeting...

Elon Musk’s Tesla is continuing to lay off employees as the company has slashed an additional 600 jobs across its California facilities, affecting a wide range of positions from factory workers to engineers. CNBC reports that Tesla has been grappling with a series of challenges that have led to multiple rounds of layoffs over the past month. The latest round of layoffs, reported in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act filing obtained by CNBC, impacted a wide range of positions, from entry-level roles to directors, spanning various departments such as factory workers, software developers, and robotics engineers. This...

Last month, President Biden signed a series of executive orders undermining fossil fuels, on the grounds the “climate crisis” forced his hand. “We can’t wait any longer. We see with our own eyes. We know it in our bones. It is time to act.” Within days, most of the country was seeing “with our own eyes” and feeling “in our bones” a cold wave so severe that five million people lost electricity and, in a special irony, nearly half of the ballyhooed wind turbines in Texas, which had risen to supply 23% of her energy, were left frozen (and inoperable)....

“Texas is paying the price. I hope they learned a lesson,” Senator Schumer said. “Texas thought it could go it alone,” Senator Schumer declared on the Lower East Side. “Now Texas is paying the price. I hope they learned a lesson." But Democrats never learn their lesson. And they’re never expected to learn. In 2003, New York City’s power went out because of a mistake by an operator in Ohio as part of the second biggest blackout in history which took down the grid in eight states and in Canada. Texas’ decision to go it alone was a whole lot...

With seven people killed and close to a million losing power, the recent storms hit Texas hard. Restoring electricity may take days and may not be completed by Wednesday. The isolation of the Texas power grid has become a symbol of the state’s independent streak and resistance to federal oversight in recent years. The massive outages during Winter Storm Uri in 2021 were a wake-up call to the vulnerabilities of Texas’ system. But Texas hit the snooze button, resulting in repeated crises in Summer 2022 and Winter 2023. Now it seems Texas is sleepwalking into another avoidable crisis ... ERCOT...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has secured a temporary restraining order from a federal judge that prevents an unlawful rule promulgated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (“ATF”) from taking effect while the case is litigated. On May 1, Attorney General Paxton led a coalition suing the ATF to prevent a new regulatory restriction that unlawfully attempted to abridge Americans’ constitutional right to privately buy and sell firearms. The Final Rule was arbitrary and capricious and flagrantly violated the Second Amendment. Despite Congress having recognized the legality of private firearms sales by non-dealers, the Biden Administration issued...