Texas Parks and Wildlife commissioners inundated with border wall concerns during annual meeting
By Big Bend Sentinel, The Texas Tribune August 19, 2026 The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission’s annual public hearing kicked off Wednesday with an unusually festive scene outside the agency’s Austin offices: a tailgate party where hundreds of people from around the state cooked out, shared cold drinks and talked about the reason they’d come…
Read MoreResidents and industry leaders at odds over transmission lines at legislative hearing
By Paul Cobler, Carlos Nogueras Ramos and Emily Foxhall, The Texas Tribune August 19, 2026 Flashes of yellow were all around the Texas Capitol grounds on Wednesday as legislators gathered to consider two of the most controversial issues in Texas politics: data centers and transmission lines. The color — displayed on bandanas, pins, shirts and…
Read MoreTalarico floods Texas airwaves in U.S. Senate race as Paxton, GOP stay quiet
By Gabby Birenbaum, The Texas Tribune August 20, 2026 WASHINGTON — With under nine weeks to go until early voting begins in Texas’ U.S. Senate race, both Ken Paxton and James Talarico have been campaigning around the state, meeting voters everywhere from restaurants to music halls as they’ve pitched their political visions. But on television,…
Read MoreThis Coach Is Banned From Working With Kids. Why Is He Still Coaching?
By Molly Hensley-Clancy, photography by Sarah Blesener for ProPublica Co-published with The Washington Post August 20, 2026, 5:00 am The first time Ryan Richardson was suspended from coaching volleyball, in early 2024, he gathered the parents of his teenage players in the back room of his gym in the border city of Pharr, Texas. It…
Read MoreOp-Ed: The armed righteous
By Robert C. Koehler I am in awe of the deadeye imperturbability of the armed righteous, who look upon the world’s suffering and see targets. . . . This is a fragment of a poem (“Vigil”) I wrote 25 years ago, in response to the “vigil” some gun-rights advocates held in front of a…
Read MoreSpinach peptide discovery leads to citrus greening treatment
Full federal registration clears commercial product for nationwide use August 19, 2026 – by Gabe Saldana A citrus greening disease treatment rooted in more than a decade of research at Texas A&M AgriLife Research has reached a milestone on the path to commercial availability; the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has granted unconditional registration to the novel therapy. The product, registered by…
Read MoreOp-Ed: Big Tech Is Building a New Feudalism
Maybe we should question this AI “future” before surrendering to it. By Jim Hightower | August 19, 2026 As Big Tech, Big Finance, and Big Government collude to dig us into the unfathomable hole of artificial intelligence, an old country saying has new relevance: “If you find that you’ve dug yourself into a hole, the…
Read MoreTexas Comptroller Don Huffines to Launch Performance Review of School Districts’ Spending
(AUSTIN) — Texas Comptroller Don Huffines announced today he will launch a detailed review of select school districts to ensure they are spending taxpayer funds responsibly following a formal request from Gov. Greg Abbott. The Huffines Performance Review will examine whether district spending complies with the law and reaches students, classrooms and teachers — rather…
Read MoreUT Health East Texas EMS Expands Access to Lifesaving Whole Blood in the Field
Tyler, Texas (August 19, 2026) — UT Health East Texas EMS has expanded its prehospital blood program by equipping supervisor vehicles with new blood coolers, increasing the availability of whole blood for patients experiencing life-threatening medical emergencies and traumatic injuries. The addition of the blood coolers allows specially trained EMS personnel to transport and…
Read MoreLt. Gov. Dan Patrick proposes penalties for schools that keep “vulgar” books on library shelves
By Alejandro Serrano, The Texas Tribune August 19, 2026 Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on Wednesday vowed to pass legislation punishing public schools that do not remove graphic books from their shelves by knocking them down a notch in the state’s annual school performance ratings, which the state uses to seize control of underperforming districts. Flanked…
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