Arturo Alviter Balderrama lost his focus, his grade point average and eventually his freedom. But his troubles had deeper roots.
“At 13, I found myself using low-level drugs for fun,” Arturo, 17, told a legislative committee last month. “After about a year I had moved on to more serious drugs and found myself running with the wrong crowd.”
A Democratic state lawmaker arrested for drunken driving offered an emotional apology on the floor of the Texas House on Monday, drawing a standing ovation and flowers from her colleagues.
Naomi Gonzalez of El Paso crashed her BMW into another car, which then hit a bicyclist around 2 a.m. Thursday. Gonzalez, the other driver and the cyclist all went to the hospital with minor injuries. The 34-year-old was charged with driving while intoxicated.
Some Republican and Democratic legislators have joined forces on measures aimed at curtailing Gov. Rick Perry’s power, benefits and number of terms.
The Dallas Morning News reported Sunday that at least six bills, proposed constitutional amendments and budget decisions would reduce the governor’s power or perks. Although some of the efforts might not affect Perry directly, they seem to be inspired by his actions as governor.
The issue of school start dates goes beyond every kid’s desire for more summer fun; there is in fact a very real economic component to the decision. We recently looked at the implications of moving the school start date earlier in August, focusing on losses from reduced tourism.
Texas has no teams in the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1977.
When the 68-team field was announced Sunday, the Lone Star State was completely shut out. There were no Longhorns, Baylor Bears, Texas A&M Aggies, Red Raiders or Owls.
You never know what might happen when a lawmaker brings a gun to a knife fight.
But Second Amendment rights advocates are about to find out.
George Prescott Bush filed the official paperwork Tuesday to run for Texas land commissioner next year, hoping to use a little-known but powerful post to continue his family’s political dynasty in one of the country’s most-conservative states.
Texas senators started a debate Tuesday that will likely last for weeks as lawmakers try to decide how many standardized tests students must take to graduate from high school.
After the disastrous introduction of a new testing regimen last year, the Legislature is anxious to overhaul what parents, teachers, students and business leaders all consider a flawed system. Texas law currently requires some high school students to take 15 exams to graduate, though the state education commissioner has waved a requirement that exam results count toward 15 percent of the final grades in core courses.
If the day comes when you stand for the Texas National Anthem before a ballgame, you can thank several former Soviet satellite republics, your Texas twang and a bunch of good old boys (and a couple of women) who have been working to rewrite American history for 20 years.
Planned Parenthood supporters rallied on the Capitol steps Thursday in the hopes of reinstating the Medicaid Women’s Health Program.
This Medicaid program was replaced by the Texas Women’s Health Program on Jan. 1. This program cut family planning funding and led to the closure of 53 Planned Parenthood centers across the state.
About 1,000 protesters marched and rode wheelchairs to the Texas Capitol on Tuesday to demand that lawmakers fully fund Medicaid and expand it to include an additional 1.5 million poor people.
Disabled and low-income residents wearing yellow caps carried banners up Congress Avenue and chanted, “My Medicaid matters!” They were joined by their family members and dozens of groups from across the state.
A Texas Senate education panel heard details Tuesday on a proposal to prohibit organizations linked to abortion providers from teaching sex education in public schools statewide — even though critics say there are very few cases where that’s actually occurring.
The National Rifle Association is taking its relationship with racing to a new level as the title sponsor of a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race.
The deal with Texas Motor Speedway comes at a time when the NRA is involved in a renewed debate on gun violence in the wake of the December shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
Automatic government spending cuts could see military operations across Texas lose at least $1.7 billion before the end of the fiscal year, the U.S. Defense Department said late Friday.
In a letter to Gov. Rick Perry obtained by The Associated Press, the department said that no deal in Congress to stave off $85 billion in federal budget reductions means $41 billion will evaporate from the Defense Department budget by Sept. 30.
Two years after historic spending cuts to Texas classrooms, budget writers in the Senate on Thursday approved a $1.4 billion hike for public education in the first clear signal that the new Legislature may pour money back into financially ailing public schools.
How much lawmakers will ultimately spend on schools remains to be hammered out over the next few months. But education groups who rallied 2,000 supporters during a march on the Capitol last weekend greeted the spending bump by the Senate Finance Committee with optimism.
Republican state Sen. Tommy Williams, the committee chairman, called a new $40 million chunk back into a prekindergarten grant program slashed in 2011 a “down payment.”
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and his rising-political-star son, George P. Bush, urged Texas on Tuesday to dismantle the “monopoly of public education” by dramatically expanding access to charter schools, embracing online learning and overhauling how teachers are evaluated.
But neither man offered any hints about his political future.
The elder Bush, who is often mentioned as a possible contender for president in 2016, told an education forum organized by the Texas Business Leadership Council, “I urge you to be big and bold, and if people get offended, so what?”
he leader of a legislative effort to link higher education funds to graduation rates said Wednesday there seems to be some quiet resistance from major universities that have publicly endorsed the idea.
Republican Dan Branch of Dallas, chairman of the House Higher Education Committee, told a news conference that while the major university systems have endorsed the idea publicly, “they seem to be sending emissaries in to the folks on subcommittees and trying to put the brakes on things.”
“We need to identify where the tension seems to be,” Branch said.
Locations you may carry:
On the person’s own premises
Inside a person’s motor vehicle or watercraft
Any other place that is not specifically stated against in the Texas Concealed Handgun Law pamphlet.
Edilsa Lopez is 22 years old, about to graduate from college and fielding several job offers.
She credits her success to her work ethic — she has held two jobs to support herself and three siblings — and a 12-year-old Texas law that lets people like her pay a lower, resident tuition rate at public colleges and universities.
Lopez is an undocumented immigrant, a group that no longer would be eligible for resident tuition under several bills before the Texas Legislature. She sees the bills as short-sighted, saying an educated workforce is good for the state and country.
Ted Cruz glanced at his black cowboy boots, beneath a silver Texas belt buckle, waiting for the admirers to stop clapping.
His arrival had turned a drop-by at a Houston lumber yard into a virtual campaign rally. At an earlier stop near Austin —at a gun manufacturer that churns out AR-15 rifles — cheering fans crowded next to employees, and one held a sign reading “Ted Cruz rocks!”
The new troublemaker of the U.S. Senate was home again, and savoring nothing short of a victory lap.
About 2,000 teachers, students, parents and school administrators rallied at the state Capitol on Saturday, demanding that the Legislature reverse $5.4 billion in cuts to public education amid new data that Texas now spends less per-pupil than almost anywhere else in America.
Led by thunderous high school marching bands whose drumbeats echoed off surrounding buildings, protesters marched briefly through downtown Austin and then gathered for the annual demonstration organized by Save Texas Schools and other advocacy groups.
A man convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend by dousing her with gasoline and setting her on fire was executed in Texas on Thursday after the U.S. Supreme Court refused his final appeal.
Carl Blue, 48, was condemned to die for attacking Carmen Richards-Sanders at her apartment in Bryan, about 100 miles northwest of Houston, in September 1994. He also tossed gasoline on a man in the apartment, but the man survived and testified against Blue.
Blue claimed it was a prank gone wrong, but prosecutors said it was an intentional attack sparked by jealously.
State Sen. Brian Birdwell is proposing a bill to make sure college students get the most out of their education with one more test before graduation.
Birdwell filed Senate Bill 436 on Feb. 8 in the hopes of instituting a standardized test for all Texas public universities.
Birdwell released a statement about the importance of this bill to the success of Texas students and universities.
Texas lawmakers are moving forward with creating a new, unified campus for the University of Texas System in the Rio Grande valley.
Brownsville Rep. Rene Oliveira and other South Texas lawmakers laid out the legislation that would combine two campuses into a single university with a new medical school in South Texas.
House and Senate leaders on Wednesday agreed to create a special committee to investigate the University of Texas System board of regents, as a key senator filed a bill seeking to limit the power of board members.
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Joe Straus agreed to form the joint panel following an emotional speech Dewhurst gave on the Senate floor Monday defending embattled University of Texas President Bill Powers.
Amy Shireman logged into Twitter early Wednesday to join thousands of people from 60 countries watch live something she had experienced but never seen: a baby boy delivered by cesarean section, in all its graphic imagery.
The live Twitter broadcast brought to viewers by Houston’s Memorial Hermann Health System was the medical institution’s latest foray into a growing trend to gain exposure by showing the world via social media routine procedures that happen daily in operating rooms.
Police officers could be charged with a crime for enforcing new federal gun control laws in Texas under a proposal by a lawmaker who acknowledges the measure likely would end up in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Rep. Steve Toth, a newly elected Republican from The Woodlands, said his proposal would prevent officers from carrying out any future federal orders to confiscate assault rifles and ammunition magazines.
The mayors of Houston, Dallas and Austin told lawmakers on Tuesday that they support a proposed $2 billion fund to finance water projects across the state and would like to see less red tape and more conservation efforts.
Houston Mayor Annise Parker told the House Natural Resources Committee that she supports using money from the Rainy Day Fund to create a water development bank that would help local authorities build new water projects and finance conservation efforts. Houston has invested in numerous water projects and delivers 495 million gallons a day to 470,000 customers.
A Senate education panel spent hours Tuesday maligning the state’s standardized testing system, even questioning whether it’s appropriate to ask youngsters across sun-kissed South Texas math problems about the possibility of frost forming on their sidewalks.
By the end of the meeting, it seemed the exam stood only a snowball’s chance in Brownville of surviving the legislative session without a major overhaul.
An East Texas jury sentenced two women to prison Tuesday after convicting them of kidnapping a Houston boy when he was 8 months old and hiding him for eight years before he was found.
Gloria Walker was sentenced to 30 years for injury to a child and eight years for kidnapping, to be served concurrently. Her daughter, Krystle Tanner, was sentenced to eight years for kidnapping and eight years for the lesser charge of reckless injury to a child, also to be served concurrently.
