Progress Texas Podcasts

On April 29, on a party line vote, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Louisiana v. Callais, to strip one of the most consequential protections against discrimination in our elections—Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The ruling enables years of racial inequality to come, further eroding fair representation and the equal rights of Black and brown voters in the South. To hear more about the case and h...

Monday is Star Wars Day - May the Fourth be with you! Both Communications Director Chris Mosser and Digital Associate Haley Smith are lifelong Star Wars fanatics, and are not about to allow an opportunity to talk Star Wars AND politics go by - and in fact, for those interested in both, the parallels between the galaxy far far away and the history and current political moment right here on Earth ar...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: SCOTUS Decision Overturns Decades of Voting Rights Protections Supreme Court Callais Decision Overturns Decades of Voting Rights Protections. Progress Texas: https://progresstexas.org/blog/statement-supreme-court-callais-decision-overturns-decades-voting-rights-protections  U.S. Supreme Court weakens key pillar of Voting Rights Act, openi...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: The Two “T”s impacting Texas: Talarico and Trump Talarico leads both Cornyn, Paxton in new poll of Texas’ U.S. Senate race. ⁠Texas Tribune:⁠ https://www.texastribune.org/2026/04/28/texas-us-senate-poll-talarico-cornyn-paxton-2026-midterms/ "Editing my words': Talarico's Austin pastor says Cornyn is misrepresenting his sermon....

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: As expected, Supreme Court officially greenlights Texas’ gerrymandered congressional map for midterms. ⁠Democracy Docket: ⁠ https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/as-expected-supreme-court-officially-greenlights-texas-gerrymandered-congressional-map/ Dallas could host a GOP midterm twist as Trump tries a Texas power play. ⁠Dallas Mor...

Our board has chosen to endorse Austin State Rep. Vikki Goodwin in her run for Texas Lieutenant Governor for many reasons - her years-long commitment to public education, her dedication to reproductive justice, and perhaps most importantly, her near-decade of front-seat experience with the Texas Legislature, which will be important as she takes historic steps to rehabilitate the most powerful offi...

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas: AP News: DC gala shooting suspect aired grievances against Trump in writings to family Dallas Morning News: I was at the table when chaos broke out at White House Correspondents’ Dinner Texas Tribune: Austin, Dallas revise police policy allowing more ICE cooperation after Abbott funding cut threat Texas Tribune: Texas police can arrest pe...

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...