Progress Texas Podcasts

Fresh off her recent appearance at SXSW in Austin alongside progressive legend Stacey Abrams, we're proud to have a talk with Skye Perryman: a Waco native and president and CEO of Democracy Forward, a leading legal organization based in Washington, D.C., known for wielding their expert litigation and policy advocacy to challenge executive overreach and protect democratic institutions. Skye was...

We hate to be an "I Told You So", but we did tell you and tell you AND TELL YOU that the decades-in-the-making plan to divert public school tax dollars to exclusive and frequently parochial private schools was not about "educational freedom" - it was about a rebate on the private school tuition that wealthy Texans have already chosen, and a review of the applicants in this firs...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: Data from the initial field of applicants for Texas' new private school voucher program shows that the vast majority of them are families whose kids already attend private schools: https://www.texastribune.org/2026/04/01/texas-voucher-applications-demographics/ Governor Abbott - as expected - is all in on Donald Trump's plan to un...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: Donald Trump's executive order undermining mail-in voting will face legal challenges in many states - but probably not in Texas: https://www.votebeat.org/national/2026/03/31/donald-trump-2026-midterm-election-executive-order-absentee-mail-ballots-postal-service-citizenship-list/ Governor Abbott has sent out a fundraising letter to sup...

As federal authoritarianism threatens civil rights, immigration, and economic justice, cities are stepping up to defend democracy. If democracy survives this moment, it will be because cities held the line. District 2 Austin City Councilmember Vanessa Fuentes, at-Large Philadelphia City Councilmember Kendra Brooks, and Ward 9 Minneapolis City Councilmember Jason Chavez gathered during SXSW 2026 in...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: Ken Paxton has been lobbying hard for the endorsement of Donald Trump, including trips to Mar-A-Lago to brown nose - both he and Senator John Cornyn have also been making huge media buys in Floriday in efforts to make Trump's TV: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas-take/article/ken-paxton-nudge-president-trump-endorse-2215...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: An estimated 8 million people attended No Kings events on Saturday - a solid indicator that Donald Trump and MAGA are in for a rough November: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq8wy7g1gd1o ...Things were mostly peaceful but notably, there was one arrest in Dallas resulting from a clash with Proud Boy-type counter-protestors: https://www....

The second pod presentation from last weekend's Harris County Democratic Party Convention is a live take of the panel of featured speakers, who brought incredible energy to a packed ballroom at the University of Houston: 00:55: Host and Harris County Democratic Party Convention Executive Director Jeff Hilton 03:09: Emcee and Lincoln Project Co-founder Rick Wilson 07:15: Harris County Commissioner...

The 11th Congressional District is one of those wildly gerrymandered and gigantic slices of Texas designed to amplify GOP power in rural areas while diminishing the more progressive voices in our urban areas - in this case, stretching from the Permian oil patch all the way through north Austin and Pflugerville. Just so happens, the long-time GOP nominee is August Pfluger, a lockstep Trump puppet w...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: Saturday will see over 3,000 No Kings rallies and events held across the country with a new all-time attendance record expected: https://time.com/article/2026/03/26/no-kings-protests-cities-where/ ...About San Antonio: https://www.sacurrent.com/news/san-antonio-news/next-san-antonio-no-kings-protest-scheduled-for-saturday-march-28/ ...Abo...

Lately, Jesus has taken the wheel of politics at both the state and federal level - from Pete Hegseth's pastor wishing God's lethal wrath upon James Talarico while his disciple wages holy war in Iran, to Ken Paxton and Kelly Hancock squabbling over how best to discriminate against Texas Muslims, to Dan Patrick's new Senate committee on religious freedom - formed mostly from Republicans...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: A Trump-appointed federal judge has upheld a longstanding Texas law forbidding the carrying of guns into bars, stadiums, school events and other "sensitive places", after Ken Paxton refused to defend a challenge to it: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/judge-upholds-texas-firearm-ban-for-bars-schools-stadiums Austin Congr...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: Evangelical Pastor Brooks Potteiger, a close spiritual advisor to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, agreed with a podcast host wish for Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate James Talarico, "that God kills him": https://www.sacurrent.com/news/texas-news/pete-hegseths-pastor-wants-james-talarico-to-die/ ...Talarico's calm, very Christian response w...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: That explosion at a Valero oil refinery in Port Arthur comes just as much of the world's supply has been choked off by the bumbling of Donald Trump: https://x.com/jon_rosenthaltx/status/2036266795569459210?s=46 ...Meanwhile, as natural gas shortages and price spikes are hitting Europe and Asia, West Texas oil companies are burning it...

We had a blast in Houston over the weekend as media partners of the Harris County Democratic Party Convention! Later this week, watch for a recording of all the speeches given in the convention hall - but we start with all of the interviews with lawmakers, thought leaders, candidates and more that we gathered over the course of the day! These are presented in the order we recorded them, between 9a...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: In an escalation against Democratically-led cities, the Trump administration is deploying ICE agents into those cities' airports - supposedly to help with long security lines, but really as a means to intimidate travelers: https://viewfromthewing.com/ice-is-showing-up-at-airport-checkpoints-your-rights-are-different-than-with-tsa/ ......

All of us at Progress Texas are looking forward to seeing a bunch of great friends and making a bunch of brand new ones this weekend at the Harris and Collin County Democratic Party conventions, in Houston and McKinney respectively. These events are open and FREE with registration to the public and can be considered a terrific gateway into higher levels of involvement at this critical time - we ho...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: Energy producers around Corpus Christi already consume over half of the area's water - and as supplies dwindle, they're taking steps to greedily keep theirs flowing: https://www.texastribune.org/2026/03/20/texas-corpus-christi-water-shortage-oil-gas-refineries/ With another round of No Kings protests coming next weekend, progressi...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: Governor Greg Abbott achieves new heights of hypocrisy in his attempt to use sexual abuse revelations about Cesar Chavez to smear all progressives and unions, while continuing to turn a blind eye to Donald Trump's copious appearances in the Epstein files: https://www.texastribune.org/2026/03/18/cesar-chavez-day-texas-fallout-sexual-ab...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: Arguing in favor of the SAVE America Act as Senate debate began yesterday, Ted Cruz repeated the standard GOP lie that Democrats are systematically encouraging undocumented people to vote in the U.S. - it's simply and demonstrably false: https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/ted-cruz-democrats-want-illegal-aliens-to-cast-votes/...

All across Texas this weekend - Friday March 20 thru Sunday March 21 - county-level conventions are being held by the Texas Democratic Party. It's a terrific (and free!) way to dive into progressive politics, and an especially fun way as a bright blue wave appears to be building across the Lone Star State. Joining us to talk about their individual events and all the reasons that YOU should att...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: 5pm today is the deadline for primary runoff candidates to remove their names from the May ballot, establishing a deadline of for either John Cornyn or Ken Paxton to drop on on the orders of Donald Trump: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/trump-endorsement-texas-senate-runoff-22079256.php ...Cornyn attempted to sooth...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: The trial of nine "Antifa" defendants in a federal trial held in Fort Worth were largely found guilty of charges against them on Friday, except for a charge of attempted murder, of which only one was convicted: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/us/antifa-protesters-terrorism.html A marathon debate session is set in the U.S. Sen...

Texas is an anti-worker state, and working Texans are tired of being trampled by billionaire-bought politicians and interests. You can see it in support of a more affordable Texas: public education that sets our children up for success, quality jobs that pay a living wage, environmental protections that shield us all from pollution, and justice for our citizen and immigrant neighbors under attack....

A theme has emerged this week: as the Dallas County Democratic Party throws in the towel on a lawsuit over denied voting access on primary Election Night, judging the Republican-dominated Texas Supreme Court a hostile venue for that complaint - while our senior Senator John Cornyn reverses himself on the filibuster out of pressure from Donald Trump and Ken Paxton to pass the SAVE America Act, whic...