Progress Texas Podcasts

Former Progress Texas Advocacy Manager (and forever Progress Texas family member) Reagan Stone returns for a tour of where South Texas meets West Texas, and West meets Far West. In stark contrasts, Texas’ US Congressional District 23’s sky island mountains and high desert borderlands lead to its opposite dense and urban bounds, El Paso and San Antonio, respectively. Reagan welcomes former public s...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: Hearst Newspapers is out with reporting on the PACs that spent the most on statewide and legislative races Houston Chronicle The House Majority PAC is targeting South Texas seats with $22 million in ads Texas Tribune The first school voucher applicants are being sent notifications for awards this week ⁠Texas Tribune ICE detains Texas resi...

Two stories this week that seem separate from one another are both examples of Governor Abbott's MAGA machine in Texas' slow and steady erosion of our rights under the Constitution. There's the undermining of a local ordinance in Houston designed to protect Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful detention, and then there's the greenlighting of Ten Commandments posting in Tex...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: Amendments to Houston's ICE ordinance put forth by Mayor John Whitmire were voted in yesterday by the Houston City Council - an effective caving to pressure from Governor Greg Abbott: https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/city-of-houston/2026/04/22/549776/ice-houston-police-policy-revised-city-council-whitmire-abbott/ ...Th...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: Continuing the redistricting fight started by Donald Trump in Texas and highlighted by quorum-breaking Texas State House Democrats, Virginia voters have approved a redraw of their congressional map that may yield as many as four additional blue seats in the U.S. House: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/us/elections/redistricting-gerryman...

In one of Texas' most rapidly growing and diversifying areas, Evan Hunt brings a rich background of business leadership and military leadership experience to his run against the ultra-MAGA and not-much-else Republican incumbent Keith Self. Everyday folks in northeast D/FW are sick of drama and looking for actual leadership and results - and Evan Hunt tells us how he plans to deliver. Learn mor...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: Austin-area Republican Congressman and candidate for attorney general Chip Roy has introduced McCarthy-esque new legislation that would allow political ideology and religion to be used as reasons for deportation, de-naturalization and exclusion of immigrants: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5840389-chip-roy-mamdani-act/ ...Meanwhile Ke...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: The Texas Medical Board has reprimanded the doctors involved in the deaths of Neveah Crain and Porsha Ngumezi, both of whom were denied critical care as their doctors tried to accommodate Texas' ban on abortion: https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/17/health/texas-medical-board-pregnant-women-propublica ...Meanwhile a California doctor targete...

With the primary defeat of Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw in the Houston area's 2nd Congressional District, and the ascent to the Republican nomination by the much more radically-MAGA State Rep. Steve Toth, a potential blue flip is most definitely in the offing - in a district that the Trump-ordered redistricting of Texas made just a bit less secure for the GOP. Longtime energy sector bus...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: Governor Greg Abbott has expanded his threat of public safety defunding over local police policies regarding ICE beyond Houston, to Dallas and Austin: https://www.texastribune.org/2026/04/16/texas-greg-abbott-ice-houston-dallas-austin-ice-immigration/ ...Abbott has extended his deadline to Wednesday, and Houston Mayor John Whitmire has de...

The strongarming of Houston by Governor Greg Abbott, who is threatening to withdraw $110 million in first responder funding over the city's policy limiting the Houston Police Department's interactions with ICE, is the latest example of state-level politics interfering with the right of Texas cities to run themselves as they see fit. With Abbott running the state government like a Death Sta...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: A major fight has developed between Houston Mayor John Whitmire - who wants to preserve $110 million in state funding by obey Governor Greg Abbott's orders to dump a new city ordinance limiting Houston police coordination with ICE - and members of the Houston City Council, who want Whitmire to fight back: https://www.houstonchronicle....

Progress Texas was proud to join our allies at Environment Texas recently for a terrific discussion on clean energy and its intersection with the beautiful, varied and treasured ecologies of our state at the wonderful Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in south Austin. In this second of two parts, we present a lawmaker’s perspective on the state of clean energy in Texas from Driftwood State Repre...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico unveils his plan to raise taxes on billionaires by eliminating luxury deductions and closing the "carried interest loophole": https://www.sacurrent.com/news/democratic-u-s-senate-hopeful-james-talarico-unveils-plan-to-tax-billionaires/ ...While Governor Greg Abbott is planning to force th...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: Texas Republican electeds are uniformly silent at Donald Trump's shocking self-comparison to Jesus Christ over the weekend - however, as of yesterday, the Texas Democratic Party hasn't said much either: https://www.chron.com/news/article/trump-jesus-pope-texas-22203753.php West Texas Congressman Tony Gonzales has announced he's stepping down...

Progress Texas was proud to join our allies at Environment Texas recently for a terrific discussion on clean energy and its intersection with the beautiful, varied and treasured ecologies of our state, at the wonderful Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in south Austin. In this first of two parts: a welcome statement from Andy Sansom, former Executive Director of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Depa...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: Neither of the Republicans running for their party's nomination for Texas attorney general would be better than Ken Paxton - they both, in fact, are looking to accelerate Paxton's right wing crusades: https://www.texastribune.org/2026/04/13/texas-attorney-general-gop-runoff-overturn-supreme-court-rulings-chip-roy-mayes-middleton/...

The City of Dallas is poised to step into the global spotlight, as the most-watched sporting event on the planet, the FIFA World Cup, arrives in North Texas this summer. At this critical juncture - when the international image of the United States has faced significant challenges and scrutiny due to the recent political climate - and our domestic tourism economy has suffered as a result - Dallas h...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: The victims of the Colony Ridge real estate scam have been left out of a $68 million settlement against the developer who ripped them off: https://www.texastribune.org/2026/04/09/texas-railroad-commision-bo-french-midland-republican-candidates-forum/ The Texas House Administration Committee will meet today to decide how to enforce $9,200...

The coverage by the Texas Observer, a longstanding and legendary liberal Texas media outlet - of a recent hit piece on Houston State Rep. Gene Wu by the Dallas Express, an upstart, well-funded right wing rag masquerading as a "spin-free" media entity - has us thinkin' about how difficult it has become to tell fact from fiction in the news...and that's before we even start thinkin...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: As focus on the conditions inside ICE lockups in Texas has wavered, detainees remain confined in dangerous, unsanitary and inhumane circumstances: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tW7WyzvAtg ...A celebrated doctor from Venezuela - the 2025 "Resident Of The Year" at UT Health Rio Grande Valley - is himself likely being held in si...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: Texas elected officials are calling for Donald Trump's cabinet and the Congress to remove him from office using the 25th Amendment before he starts WWIII - but in reality, that remains highly unlikely: https://www.chron.com/texas/article/texas-lawmakers-trump-iran-22194262.php ...Even Congressman Henry Cuellar is sounding sensible: ht...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: A Florida-based private school materials company has used a loophole to score funds from our new voucher scam: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/education/article/school-voucher-loophole-florida-virtual-22183576.php The Texas State Board of Education meets today in Austin to discuss a broad agenda: https://sboe.texas.gov/sta...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: A crowd of over 2,000 protestors - and speakers of a surprisingly bipartisan range - took part in a Saturday demonstration against purported plans by the Trump administration to build border walls through Big Bend National Park and other sensitive parts of the region: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/05/texas-capitol-protest-b...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: Texas oil executives, in a recent industry poll, are both bullish on recent profits and production, but also highly uncertain about future prospects due to the Trump war in Iran: https://www.wfaa.com/article/money/business/right-on-the-money/how-texas-oil-gas-executives-feel-about-war-with-iran/287-df0ccee4-9c21-4a6e-9e04-3684d348724a ......