The Texas Legislature has prioritized getting high school dropouts the skills they need to enter the workforce.

Former state Rep. Matt Krause’s win may push the commissioners court even further away from the bipartisanship on which it once prided itself.

A mostly quiet Election Day in Texas came after a series of pitched partisan battles over how elections should be conducted.

The county decided to not have an early voting site at a Laredo university because of historic low turnout. It will have one on Election Day.

A Bexar County election worker was assaulted Thursday, officials said. In Tarrant County, officials encouraged voters to review their ballots before voting.

In a resolution signed Friday, the party blasted two Republicans who voted against the measure and accused them of undermining its electoral chances.

County Judge Tim O’Hare said he proposed the cuts to save costs. Critics accused Republican leaders of suppressing the vote of young people who back Democrats.

A Texas appeals court overturned the illegal voting conviction of Crystal Mason earlier this year.

The family of a Texas man who died after an altercation with jailers, including one who pinned his knee to the inmate’s back, has called for a federal investigation into the practices at the jail.

True Texas Project has for years worked with Attorney General Ken Paxton, Sen. Ted Cruz and other prominent Republicans.

At least 76 polling places in four counties closed after the weather left hundreds of thousands of North Texans without power.

Katy ISD’s board voted this past fall to require staff to notify parents if their child wants to use a different pronoun or identifies as a different gender.

In the state’s larger counties, voters can now elect people to the agencies that appraise property values.

A Texas appeals court recently overturned Mason’s five-year prison sentence for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election while on supervised release for federal tax evasion.

Mason gained national attention after she was convicted for voting while under supervised release for felony tax fraud. She said she didn’t know she was ineligible to vote.

Some environmental experts are skeptical that Texas can meet the new rules on particulate matter, which can cause serious respiratory problems.

A Texas woman who told various stories to explain her 6-year-old son’s absence before leaving the country has been charged with killing the child, who has been missing for a year.

Karen Wiseman previously sued former election administrator Heider Garcia and participated in a right-wing group’s search for 2020 voter fraud. She’s one of the three finalists, none of whom have experience running elections.

A San Antonio man accompanying junior roller derby teams to Fort Worth is accused of sexually assaulting a child, police and Tarrant County jail records show.

A jury found Aaron Dean guilty of manslaughter last week for the fatal shooting of Jefferson, a 28-year-old Black woman, while she was babysitting her nephew in a family home.

Under Texas law, homeowners can claim a homestead exemption only on their primary residence. The GOP Senate candidate registered to vote in Georgia last year.

Barbee, convicted in the 2005 murders of his pregnant ex-girlfriend and her child, was unable to straighten his arms, which caused the delay. Courts allowed Barbee’s execution despite concerns from his lawyer that his disability would make the process “torture.”

Texas Tribune photographers spread out all over the state to document a momentous midterm election.

In three key local elections, the Austin mayoral race will be decided in a runoff, Republican Tim O’Hare won the Tarrant County judge race and Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins won reelection.

Democrats hope population growth and Republican infighting will help them win in the state’s third-most-populous county — and finally break through in statewide races.

Nearly half of Hispanic Texans live in the state’s five largest counties, a voting bloc Democrats cannot afford to lose as they struggle to compete in the state’s vast rural areas.

Critics say state District Judge Alex Kim is sending too many children to the state’s failing youth prison system. The longtime GOP politician points to a rise in teen gang violence.

Across the country, more books have been challenged and removed as religious and conservative groups target LGBTQ and race issues.

Both Republicans have been at odds with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and neither of them are running for reelection.

Mason said she didn’t know she was ineligible to vote when she cast a provisional ballot in 2016, but she was sentenced to five years in prison. Now, the Court of Criminal Appeals says an appellate court that affirmed her conviction must look again at the evidence of Mason’s intent.

All but one of the 11 Tarrant County conservative school board candidates, who were backed this year by several high-profile donors and big-money PACs, defeated their opponents during Saturday’s local elections, according to unofficial results.

In Tarrant County, conservative PACs animated about the teaching of race and sexuality are flooding school board races with hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In some voting locations where a party’s appointed polling judge didn’t show up, election officials allowed the other party’s judge to operate both parties’ voting machines in an effort to keep the polling place running.

Voters are heading to the polls Tuesday to choose party nominees for the general election. Here’s the latest.

The redrawn state Senate District 10 splits Black and Hispanic voters in Tarrant County. A full trial on whether GOP lawmakers intentionally discriminated against voters of color is expected later this year.

A three-judge federal panel is hearing arguments in a lawsuit claiming that Texas Republicans violated the Voting Rights Act when they redrew state Senate District 10 in Tarrant County to lessen Black and Hispanic voting power.

Most local officials insist they still have testing capacity at their public testing sites, but Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said demand has outpaced supply.

Krause had been among the primary challengers to Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose legal problems have made him a target for both parties next year.

Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, said the maps were drawn “race-blind.” But Democratic Sen. Beverly Powell, whose district would be turned into a majority-Republican district, said they’re an attempt to deny voters of color their voice in elections.

Officials in some counties targeted by audits accuse Republican Texas leaders of pandering to conspiracy theorists and undermining faith in elections. They also say the secretary of state’s office hasn’t provided details on what the audits entail.

The Census Bureau is due to release new data on the changing U.S. population.

One of the last remaining Republican mayors of a big city is jumping back into the political arena after not seeking reelection.

Parker, the former chief of staff to retiring Mayor Betsy Price, declared victory in the runoff against Deborah Peoples, who recently stepped down as chair of the Tarrant County Democratic Party.

Voters in some urban, Democratic areas of Harris and Tarrant counties would see a drastic drop in polling places under the Senate version of Senate Bill 7, a Texas Tribune analysis shows.

Local elections are happening across Texas on Saturday, some of which have drawn statewide — and even national — attention. Here are the four that we are watching most closely, plus a few other contests to keep in mind.

But Tarrant County prosecutors pressed forward with charges, arguing Mason’s case came down to intent. The all-Republican court’s decision to review Mason’s case is notable. The Court of Criminal Appeals isn’t required to review non-death penalty convictions, and it rarely grants requests to do so. Mason turned to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals late last year after a state appeals court panel affirmed the trial court’s judgement. In her petition to the court, Mason’s lawyers argued the appeals court erred in upholding her conviction because the state’s illegal voting statute requires a person to know they are ineligible to vote and Mason did not.

FORT WORTH, Texas – A North Texas medical examiner’s office has brought in two refrigerated trucks to store dead bodies in response to low capacity amid a surge in coronavirus cases. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office, which has a capacity normally of 100 bodies, said each truck can store 50 bodies. Also Thursday, a South Texas county that has been hit especially hard by the pandemic announced that its county judge, the county's highest elected official, tested positive for COVID-19. The Texas Department of State Health Services said that 9,045 people with the coronavirus were hospitalized Thursday. State health officials on Thursday reported 12,211 new confirmed cases and 244 new deaths.

Tarrant County reported a pandemic high of more than 2100 new cases and nearly 800 hospitalizations Wednesday, the same day Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price tested positive for COVID-19. Price’s husband had tested positive for the virus just hours earlier. Public health officials are alarmed at the trends. On Tuesday, Vinny Taneja, the county’s public health director, issued a “public health warning” asking residents to help flatten the curve. In August, during the county’s previous peak, more than 4,000 residents tested positive per week.

Almost 7,000 COVID-19 patients were in Texas hospitals Thursday, the most in almost three months, as infections of the coronavirus that causes the disease continue statewide, nationwide and worldwide. The 6,925 hospitalizations are the most Texas has counted since Aug. 12, according to reports by the Texas Department of State Health Services. However, state figures appear to be lagging indicators of the present COVID-19 outbreak in Texas when compared with statistics compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The state coronavirus count for the pandemic that began in March was 993,841, while the Johns Hopkins count for Texas topped 1 million earlier this week. Overall, 62,525 new coronavirus infections and 698 new COVID-19 deaths have been reported in Texas in this past week alone, according to Johns Hopkins statistics.

Although they didn’t get the blue wave they expected, Democrats narrowed the gap with Republicans in five of the most competitive and populous suburban counties in Texas. Meanwhile, Democrats won over many voters like 28-year-old Rachel Copeland, who said she voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson in 2016. Not all suburban counties became as competitive as Tarrant. “I think we need to rethink how we talk about the blue wave,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, political science professor at the University of Houston. It's going to affect some places more than others.”But after those predictions of a blue wave failed to materialize this year, Cross said, Democrats will need to temper their expectations.

Oliver said all voters were contacted and agreed to come back to the location to cast their votes for president. Going into Election Day the county, home to Houston, had easily surpassed the early voting turnout it had seen in 2016. Nearly 127,000 Harris County voters cast drive-thru ballots during the early voting period at 10 polling sites across the county, a safer option for some voters during the coronavirus pandemic. At least 9,718,648 voters cast early ballots, according to preliminary final numbers released Sunday by the Texas secretary of state. Early voting, which Gov.

Tarrant County officials are warning that coronavirus-related staffing shortages mean elections workers are unlikely to finish counting mail-in ballots on Tuesday night, potentially leaving the county’s tightest races undecided until later this week. Tarrant County, the largest Republican-controlled county in the state, is home to a number of state legislative races and at least one congressional race that are expected to be tight. While both parties and the county government say they hope winners will be declared Tuesday night, Whitley was more cautious. To ensure mail-in ballots are processed securely, two members from differing parties on Tarrant County’s ballot board review each mail-in vote. Greg Abbott on Monday took notice of the staffing concerns and called on Tarrant County Republicans to volunteer as poll watchers and poll workers.

But it’s also thanks to a surge of 1.8 million new registered voters since the 2016 election. But looking at where the new registered voters are can help us understand how the balance of voting power is subtly shifting in the state. Since 2016, they saw an increase of 630,796 registered voters, according to data collected by the Texas Secretary of State. These counties have had huge turnout and huge increases in registered voters this year, adding 533,098 new voters since 2016. They have gained 522,972 registered voters in total, and show no sign of turning blue.

Kamala Harris’ trip to Texas on Friday will include three stops across the state, including in the Rio Grande Valley, according to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign. Biden’s running mate is set to visit to Fort Worth, Houston and McAllen. Fort Worth’s Tarrant County was the state’s most populous county that Republican President Donald Trump won in 2016. Further details on her stops were not immediately available, but they are expected to mirror events she has done recently in other states to mobilize early voters. Harris’ visit is not the only notable activity by the Biden campaign this week in Texas.

FORT WORTH, Texas – A judge in Texas has tentatively set an August trial date for a white former police officer charged with murder in the shooting death of Atatiana Jefferson, a Black woman who was fatally shot through a window. Judge David Hagerman on Tuesday said the scheduling may be fluid but that the case of former Fort Worth officer Aaron Dean “needs to be tried next year,” the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported. Dean resigned after he was charged with murder in the Oct. 12, 2019, shooting death of Jefferson. Jefferson had been babysitting her 8-year-old nephew at her mother's home when a neighbor called a non-emergency police line to report that a door was ajar. At Tuesday’s pretrial proceedings, Hagerman said he would likely consider a motion to change the venue of the trial from Tarrant County, which is home to Fort Worth.

FORT WORTH A five-day evangelical convention in downtown Fort Worth brought in large crowds with very little regard to CDC health guidelines, officials said. A Tarrant County Judge is now speaking out with disappointment on both the organizers and the attendees at this years Southwest Believers Convention. However, face masks werent consistently worn by eventgoers. Saturday was the last day for the convention and since it is a religious gathering, its protected under Governor Abbotts executive orders. You can watch the full story in the video player above.

HALTOM CITY, Texas A Texas man was jailed on a capital murder charge Sunday after police say he fatally stabbed his 7-year-old brother in a suburb of Fort Worth. Officers were called to a home in Haltom City around 9:45 p.m. Saturday and found Jacob Gabriel Brito bleeding from multiple stab wounds, police said in a statement. Outside the house, officers found the the boy's 20-year-old brother, Isidro Brito Bruno, with what appeared to be a self-inflicted stab wound to his upper body, according to the statement from Police Chief Cody Phillips. Brito Bruno was being held in the Tarrant County jail Sunday morning on a $250,000 bond. Police said they are still investigating the stabbing and havent determined a motive.