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AUSTIN (AP) – Gov. Greg Abbott is asking the federal government for more than $11 billion in reimbursements to Texas for the costs of border security operations and wall construction during the Biden administration.

In letters sent Thursday to U.S. House and Senate leaders, Abbott requested $11.1 billion in federal funding to reimburse the state for spending since 2021 on border wall construction and costs stemming from Operation Lone Star. The letter, also sent to Texas’ congressional delegation, largely blames former President Joe Biden’s border security policy for leaving Texas “defenseless,” forcing state officials to expend billions.

“The burden that our State has borne is a direct result of a refusal by the federal government to do its job,” Abbott said in the letter.

Since the Biden administration attempted to halt construction and spending on border wall construction, Texas has gone to great lengths to significantly increase border security. Abbott issued a disaster declaration in 2021 covering more than 50 counties near the U.S.-Mexico border, allowing the state to deploy National Guard soldiers for Operation Lone Star and increase trespassing penalties. Alongside the written request to Congress was a table breaking down how the $11 billion was spent, with $3.6 billion alone allocated to National Guard deployment, and $2.3 billion for Texas state troopers. Currently 4,200 soldiers are deployed at the border, according to the letter, and as many as 10,000 were stationed there during high points, leading to more than 50,000 criminal arrests.

The largest portion of the estimate — $4.8 billion — went to border wall construction, processing criminal trespasses and relocating migrants “out of small Texas towns.” Abbott clarified in the letter that about $3 billion went to border wall construction alone. The wall has cost the state anywhere from $17 million to $41 million to construct per mile in fragmented sections across six counties, and the letter claims more than 100 miles of the wall has been built since 2021. However, as of November 2024, only about 50 miles of border wall were confirmed to have been completed.

More than $116 million was also spent on the Eagle Forward Operating Base, the first military base at Texas’ southern border. The base, which began housing National Guard members in May, costs $14.5 million per month to operate, and officials in 2024 estimated it would save about $11.5 million per month in state lodging costs.

Abbott’s request was shortly followed by a resolution filed in the Texas House by Rep. Cole Hefner, R-Mount Pleasant, which requests that the state Legislature also demand the $11 billion from the federal government.

While the request itself is new, the use of federal funds for Texas’ border operations is not. Roughly $1 billion in federal funding already has been used to pay for Operation Lone Star through reallocations from the Coronavirus Relief Fund via the Cares Act and through a series of small transfers to the governor’s office. The request also comes after President Donald Trump spent several minutes praising Abbott during a speech on Monday, specifically referring to his border security efforts.

Calling the border the nation’s “number one” issue Monday, Trump, since taking office, has been implementing sweeping measures to halt both legal immigration and border crossings.

The U.S. Senate confirmed former Texas Congressman John Ratcliffe to serve as the next director of the CIA on Thursday.

Ratcliffe represented the 4th Congressional District from 2015 to 2020, when he was confirmed to serve as President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence. He held that position until the end of the first Trump administration. He was succeeded in Congress by Rep. Pat Fallon.

The Senate confirmed Ratcliffe’s nomination to lead the CIA on a widely bipartisan vote of 74-25. Twenty Democrats voted in favor, including Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who previously worked at the CIA. Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine also voted in favor.

Ratcliffe’s nomination was far less controversial compared to others Trump has named for his administration. In his confirmation hearing last week, he vowed to keep politics out of the agency’s work.

“It’s absolutely essential that the CIA’s director be apolitical,” Ratcliffe told the Senate Intelligence Committee during his confirmation hearing.

Ratcliffe’s confirmation was among a handful of other appointments that already had their confirmation hearings before Trump was sworn into office and faced little resistance from Democrats. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, was also swiftly confirmed to serve as Secretary of State on Monday evening.

U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn both indicated they would support Ratcliffe early on, along with all of Trump’s other nominations.

“I’ve served alongside him, seen his advocacy for our national security firsthand, and watched as he was a fierce defender of President Trump, particularly in the face of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s frivolous impeachment attempt,” Cornyn, who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote in an op-ed in The Dallas Morning News. “There is no question that he will continue to advance our state’s interests within the Trump administration.”

Still, his confirmation was not without some drama. Republicans tried to get him confirmed earlier in the week through a procedural measure that would cut down debate. But Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, objected, prolonging his confirmation process on the Senate floor.

Senate Intelligence Chair Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, expressed frustration at the delay on the Senate floor Tuesday, asserting that Ratcliffe’s nomination should be an uncontroversial vote. Cotton noted that Ratcliffe had advanced out of the Senate Intelligence Committee on a 14-3 vote.

“Not many nominations are going to come out of committee with that kind of vote,” Cotton said. “I understand the Democrats are opposed to some of President Trump’s nominees, and I understand they want to vote no, and I respect that. But should we be denying the country a Senate-confirmed CIA director in such dangerous times for no good reason?”

The CIA director reports to the director of national intelligence, who oversees the nation’s 18 intelligence organizations. Trump picked former Democratic U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who announced she was switching parties last year, for that role. Gabbard’s selection for director of national intelligence was considerably more controversial than Ratcliffe’s due to her past comments sympathizing with Russian President Vladimir Putin and ousted Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.

Before serving in the intelligence community, Ratcliffe was an ardent Trump supporter in Congress. He defended the president through his numerous legal woes, including his first impeachment. His devotion to the president prompted concerns from Democrats, who voted against his confirmation for director of national intelligence — the first time a nominee for the role did not get any support from the opposing party.

Some of those concerns of partisanship remained this year. U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, objected to Ratcliffe’s handling of intelligence related to the death of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist killed by Saudi agents in Istanbul. Wyden said Ratcliffe acted in a way that gave the Saudi’s cover as Trump was currying favor with Saudi leadership despite being legally mandated to reveal intelligence about the incident.

“In 2020, I opposed his confirmation to be Director of National Intelligence because of his partisanship and willingness to say whatever might please Donald Trump,” Wyden said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “Unfortunately, John Ratcliffe’s actions as DNI only confirmed my concerns.”

Ratcliffe has defended his record in the role, saying it has mostly stood the test of time and that he operated with the best understanding of intel available at the time.

Ratcliffe vows to take a hawkish stance against U.S. adversaries, particularly China, including using riskier tactics and expanding the CIA’s human intelligence operations. He identified China’s technological interference, trans-national criminal organizations on the Mexican border, Russia, Iran and North Korea as the key national security threats.

“Good decisions are hostage to good information and good intelligence,” Ratcliffe said during his confirmation hearing. “The better we do at collecting human intelligence, the better decisions you all can make, the better analytic judgments analysts can make, and the fewer intelligence lapses or failures.”

“We will conduct covert action at the direction of the president, going places no one else can go, and doing things no one else can do,” he said.

He also assured senators he would reject any attempts from Trump’s political operation to interfere in the agency’s work and would never alter intel to placate the president.

Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. You can read the original article by clicking here.

WASHINGTON — Brooke Rollins, President Donald Trump’s pick for Agriculture Secretary, stood behind the president’s proposals for mass deportations and tariffs even as she acknowledged they could make life harder for farmers.

But she told senators at her nomination hearing Thursday that she will find ways to cushion the blows.

Trump believes tariffs are “a very important tool in his toolkit to continue to bring America back to the forefront of the world, and to ensure that we have a thriving economy,” Rollins said. “But just as he did and we did in the first administration, he also understands the potential devastating impact to our farmers and our ranchers. So I fully understand and we are prepared to do something similar — to ensure that we can close those holes moving forward under any sort of tariff execution.”

Trump has threatened to levy 25% tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada. Mexico is Texas’ biggest trading partner and one of the state’s biggest agricultural export markets, along with Canada.

Texas farmers bore the consequences of Trump’s tariffs against China in 2018, which were met with retaliatory tariffs by Beijing on cotton, corn and sorghum, some of Texas’ biggest exports. The Trump White House allocated aid at the time for the agriculture sector to weather some of the losses resulting from the tariffs.

Democrats on the committee noted that several farmers said during the last Trump administration that they would prefer “trade, not aid” and to open up overseas markets. Rollins said she would work with the U.S. Trade Representative and others in the administration to make sure farmers are protected amid tariffs.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, also pointed out that 40% of agriculture workers in the country are undocumented. Rollins didn’t dispute the industry’s reliance on undocumented labor but defended Trump’s plans for mass deportations.

“Listen, the president’s vision of a secure border and a mass deportation at a scale that matters is something I support,” Rollins said. “That is my commitment to help deploy President Trump’s agenda in an effective way.”

Numerous Democrats asked how farms could operate with so much of the labor force deported. Rollins repeatedly said she would work with Trump’s Department of Labor to “make sure none of these farms or dairy producers are put out of business.” She said reforming the H-2A temporary agricultural worker visa could fill the labor gap. She pointed out that Trump has been “very clear that this first round will be aimed at, as you mentioned, those who have committed crimes.”

Rollins, a native of Glen Rose, is one of Trump’s less controversial nominations. The Agriculture Committee, which is largely bipartisan, will vote at a future meeting on advancing her nomination to the full Senate, who will vote on her confirmation.

Rollins currently leads the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank closely linked to Trump. She previously served as CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, one the most prominent conservative think tanks in Texas. The group has had an outsized influence on the national stage with several of its alumni gaining prominence in national conservative circles. Rollins said she modeled the America First Policy Institute off of TPPF.

“At TPPF, we fundamentally redefined the mission of a think tank from just having ideas or writing about them in white papers to actually effectually changing policy for the people of our state,” Rollins said. “We engaged strongly during those 15 years with Texas rural and small town communities, giving them a voice in government that was too often denied.”

Rollins vowed to dedicate the first 100 days as secretary to pushing out disaster aid to farmers reeling from recent natural disasters, including droughts, hurricanes and heatwaves. Congress passed a disaster relief package in December that included over $3 billion expected to go to Texas’ agriculture sector. She portrayed a farming environment beleaguered by high input costs and market uncertainty.

“It will be a fast and furious effort to make sure we move that economic aid out,” Rollins said.

She also agreed with Democrats on the committee that the trend of farms being bought up by multinational corporations at the expense of smaller farms should be reversed.

“We have to find a better way, and it can’t come always through government subsidies. We’ve got to expand the market,” Rollins said.

Rollins vowed to support food assistance and nutrition programs that make up the lion’s share of federal spending on agriculture such as SNAP. She said she was “fully aware and have a heart for this work,” but added it is imperative to ensure those taxpayer dollars go to intended recipients and are spent efficiently.

Democrats and Republicans in Congress have been divided on implementing more stringent work requirements for SNAP. Food assistance programs like SNAP make up an overwhelming majority of spending under the Farm Bill, a mammoth legislative package normally passed every five years. Congress has punted for over a year on renewing the Farm Bill, with work and nutrition requirements for SNAP remaining a fissure.

Almost all SNAP participants are already required to work unless they have extraordinary circumstances such as childcare and eldercare. Rollins called work requirements “important” and said she would commit to working with Democrats to make sure they are implemented fairly.

The Agriculture Department manages a wide-reaching portfolio. In addition to the nation’s farming, the department also oversees rural development in areas including health care and housing.

Sen. Tina Smith, a Democrat from Minnesota, feared that USDA’s rural development program, a little understood branch of the agency that is involved in rural issues ranging from housing to health care, could be gutted as part of Trump’s government efficiency push. Government efficiency is a top priority of the Trump White House, with the newly minted Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk set on cutting billions of dollars in federal spending.

Rollins said she appreciated that rural development went beyond agriculture and that “revivifying, restoring and bringing back rural America” was one of the programs she was most excited about, including supporting housing and education for rural Americans.

Under her leadership, TPPF opposed biofuels, which are made from agriculture products and are a major priority for agriculture interests that crosses party lines. Asked by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the top Democrat on the Agriculture Committee, about the organization’s post opposition, Rollins acknowledged that the group has historically supported the state’s oil and gas industry, which at times competes with biofuel production. But she said she was open to supporting the biofuels industry, as is Trump.

Klobuchar asked about Rollins’ family’s financial interests in the oil and gas industry, which Rollins had to disclose as part of her nomination. Rollins insisted that “anyone that has ever worked with me will tell you, even to the detriment of organizations I have run, detriment financially to my potential family, that I have never, not ever made a decision based on financial interests, ever.”

Neither of Texas’ two senators serve on the Senate Agriculture Committee. But both Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz introduced Rollins at Thursday’s hearing, calling her a “no-brainer.” Both have known Rollins for decades going back to her time in the Texas governor’s office and leading the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

“She’s proven herself to be a leader, she’s proven herself to be an innovative policy thinker, and she’s proven herself able to bring people together to accomplish major objectives,” Cruz said.

“Everybody who knows Brooke Rollins loves Brooke Rollins, and you will, too,” said Cornyn.

During the first Trump administration, Rollins worked in the White House as director of the Domestic Policy Council and as assistant to the president for strategic initiatives. In that role, she worked with both Democrats and Republicans in Congress to pass the First Step Act, a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill that was signed into law in 2018 — an experience that she highlighted to show that she was eager to work with members of both parties at USDA.

Rollins previously served as policy director to former Gov. Rick Perry, where her portfolio included agriculture policy. Several Republican governors endorsed Rollins’ nomination including Gov. Greg Abbott, in a letter earlier this month.

“Simply put, there are few better qualified than Secretary-designate Brooke Leslie Rollins to understand and engage state concerns, state priorities, and state action,” the governors wrote.

Texas is a leading agricultural state, with over 230,662 farms covering 125.5 million acres. The majority of Texas agriculture is in meat, with over half of the industry’s market value — roughly $15 billion worth — being in beef production, according to the Texas Department of Agriculture.

Rollins’ mother is state Rep. Helen Kerwin, who represents state House district 58 based in Cleburne and Rollins jokingly referred to as the “oldest freshman legislator in Texas history.” Kerwin was in the audience during Thursday’s hearing and took advantage of her trip to Washington to talk with senators about PFAS, chemicals often used in water resistant materials that have been linked to cancer.

Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.

BROWNSVILLE — It was an unusually cold Saturday morning in the Rio Grande Valley but that didn’t stop hundreds of people from forming a line that wound throughout the south side of the Brownsville Farmers Market.

Maria Ibarra and her son, Jesus, were among those waiting in line to have their measurements and blood pressure taken. They were signing up to take part in “The Challenge,” the city’s annual fitness initiative that encourages residents to eat healthier and be active.

The mother-son duo were motivated to participate for the first time this year for different health reasons. Jesus, 15, said he has struggled to maintain a healthy weight. He wants to eat healthier and be active like his mother was.

Maria, 53, had taken up walking and eating healthier options, partly out of fear of developing diabetes, a disease that disproportionately affects Black and Hispanic populations and which her mother developed.

“It could potentially become a problem in the future for me if I don’t start exercising now,” Jesus said. “I’m taking this as an opportunity to improve my health before it gets any worse.”

About 11% of adult Texans have diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association. Though the disease is partly attributable to genetics, it is largely believed to be caused by a person’s lifestyle such as diet and exercise.

Plagued by annual surveys listing the region as the “fattest” in the country, city officials in the Rio Grande Valley have adopted various fitness initiatives throughout the years. However, the needle has not moved much during that time. However, researchers are hopeful they can identify new solutions as cities continue to invest in infrastructure that enables residents to engage in physical activity.

The Challenge, launched in 2008, is held annually by UTHealth Houston School of Public Health and the city as part of the university’s efforts to address obesity and chronic illness in the community.

The university expanded the fitness challenge to the other parts of the Rio Grande Valley including Edinburg. They also collaborate with other neighboring cities to provide access to free gyms, nutritional information along with other resources through a program called “Tu Salud ¡Si Cuenta!” which translates to “Your Health Counts.”

Over the years, 15,000 people have participated who have collectively lost more than 23,000 pounds, according to Lisa Mitchell-Bennett, senior project manager at UTHealth Houston.

The program does not encourage extreme weight loss. Instead, participants are encouraged to lose about 5% of their weight over three months which can lower the risk of developing diabetes.

“It’s really kind of about well-being and energy and healthier habits,” Mitchell-Bennett said.

The average weight loss among the participants who return for the final weigh-in at the end of the three-month period is 4.8%, Mitchell-Bennett said.

But how successful the Challenge and other weight loss programs are in turning the tide on a regional level is unclear.

The university collects data from a group of more than 5,000 Hispanic residents from Cameron and Webb counties who provide personal health information for research purposes.

Mitchell-Bennet said the data collected from these residents showed the region had seen a drop in obesity and diabetes rates between 2004 and 2020, the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The obesity rate sits at 50% — down 1.5 percentage points. The rate of Type 2 diabetes is 25%, down from 30% in 2010, according to Joseph McCormick, professor of epidemiology at UTHealth Houston.

Measurements taken by the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley are higher. About 60% of the Mexican-American adult residents in the Valley are obese and 85% are classified as overweight, according to Dr. Sarah Williams-Blangero, director of the South Texas Diabetes and Obesity Institute and chief of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine’s Division of Human Genetics.

Thirty percent are diabetic and 25% are classified as prediabetic.

Despite the progress reported by UTHealth Houston, Williams-Blangero said there is still a struggle to move the needle dramatically comes down to a reality everyone knows all too well –– losing weight is hard.

Research shows that about 50% of changes in body mass index can be linked to genes as well as 50% of changes in a person’s blood-glucose levels. Those levels can determine whether a person is diabetic.

But that’s only part of the story, according to Williams-Blangero who added that obesity and diabetes are increasing at a rate that cannot be accounted for by genetics alone.

What likely accounts for that increase are environmental factors like diet and exposure to pollutants, which can be common in agricultural communities. A study is currently ongoing to identify those pollutants.

“It’s hard to lose weight, It’s hard to get exercise routinely integrated into your day and so it’s just a difficult problem to address,” Williams-Blangero said.

Through UTRGV’s newly launched Center for Human Genetics, Williams-Blangero said the intent is to find out what other biological factors increase the risk of disease and to assist in developing new drugs to prevent or treat diabetes.

This year is the third time that Deborah De Leon and her sister, Falisha De Leon, signed up to participate in the Challenge.

They don’t consider themselves to be physically active but, through the Challenge, are motivated to check out local gyms and be more conscious about what they eat by checking nutrition labels.

Deborah, 25, has begun cooking more for their family to try to find healthy substitutions which can be a challenge within carb-heavy Tex-Mex cuisine.

“I’m still making our authentic foods, just in healthier ways,” Deborah said.

Members of their family were diagnosed with diabetes or high blood pressure including their mother and grandfather, who lost his eyesight due to diabetes.

Seeing what their grandfather went through, both Deborah and Falisha, 30, knew something needed to change when they discovered they were pre-diabetic.

“It was very scary,” Deborah said, especially because of her young age. She made changes and both were successful in getting their blood-glucose levels to drop.

Not everyone manages to make those positive changes in time and severe consequences can follow, said Dr. Pedro Mego, an interventional cardiologist.

Mego specializes in the treatment of peripheral artery disease which develops when arteries are blocked, reducing blood flow to the legs or arms.

In some of the worst-case scenarios, the disease can lead to leg amputations. In 2023, Texas reported 5% of every 10,000 hospital discharges were for diabetes related amputations and each Valley county exceeded that rate: Hidalgo reported 6.8%, Cameron reported 7.8%, Starr reported 11.% and Willacy reported 12.9%, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Being aware of the high prevalence of amputations, Mego opened his clinic, the Mission Vascular and Vein Institute to treat patients with blocked arteries to avoid unnecessary amputations.

“The Valley has one of the highest incidence of amputations in the whole country,” Mego said, estimating about two to three amputations a week at each local hospital. “I was overwhelmed, everybody was overwhelmed.”

The constant drumbeat of headlines referring to Valley residents as obese or otherwise unhealthy motivated him to become board-certified in obesity. He launched a weight-loss program and began producing educational YouTube videos, though both were discontinued due to time constraints.

Getting an entire region to take advantage of recreational activities and change their habits is a giant endeavor, but Mego is encouraged by positive changes at the individual level.

Patients of his who were classified as obese were able to lose weight by changing their eating habits and believes that people who participate in community health challenges at least start thinking about making positive changes for their health.

“In individual cases, I feel like I have seen more but as a whole community, probably, definitely, is not at the level that we would like,” Mego said.

And while fitness challenges haven’t had a major impact on the rates of obesity and diabetes in the Valley, Williams-Blangero said they have an impact for some people. Her advice would be to implement longer-term changes like healthy cooking and adding exercise classes to their daily routine.

McAllen, the second-most populous city in the Valley behind Brownsville, has been working to implement more recreational spaces and programs for their residents over the years including expanding their 34 miles of walking trails and developing a campground that will include an archery range and a mountain biking trail. The city has also held a marathon run every winter since 2013.

“We’re extremely proud of that, knowing that people here in McAllen, people here in the Rio Grande Valley, love to exercise, love to get out, love to be active,” said Denny Meline, director of McAllen Parks and Recreation.

He pointed out that despite the negative perception when it comes to obesity, McAllen has come out on top for the last seven years in the large group category of the annual Healthier Texas Challenge, a statewide competition held annually.

Meline also highlighted the efforts of officials from neighboring cities and Hidalgo County who have launched their own fitness initiatives and are collaborating with McAllen to connect their walking trails.

“We definitely identify that there is a concern here,” Meline said regarding the unflattering labels the city has received as being the “fattest” in the nation. “Taking those initiatives and putting those out in the community is how we help try to curb that.”

Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.

The State Bar of Texas on Wednesday moved to drop its lawsuit against Attorney General Ken Paxton for his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, extending a cascade of legal and political wins for the once-embattled Republican leader.

In a court filing, lawyers with the bar’s Commission for Lawyer Discipline asked the Texas Supreme Court to dismiss the suit, citing the high court’s December decision to toss a separate state bar lawsuit against Paxton’s top aide, Brent Webster, for working with Paxton to challenge the 2020 outcome in battleground states won by Democrat Joe Biden.

The state bar had sought to sanction Paxton, which could have carried a punishment ranging from a private reprimand to disbarment. Lawyers from the bar — which regulates law licenses in Texas — have argued that Paxton, in falsely claiming to have uncovered major evidence of election wrongdoing, forced the battleground states “to expend time, money, and resources to respond to the misrepresentations and false statements.”

The bar’s dismissal motion effectively ends a case that dates back to May 2022. It is Paxton’s second major legal victory within the last year: In March, prosecutors dropped long-running felony securities fraud charges against Paxton under an agreement that required the attorney general to perform 100 hours of community service and take 15 hours of legal ethics courses. Paxton also agreed to pay around $271,000 in restitution to those he was accused of defrauding more than a decade ago when he allegedly solicited investors in a McKinney technology company without disclosing that the firm was paying him to promote its stock.

Months before the securities fraud case was resolved, Paxton also survived a series of impeachment charges centered on allegations that he accepted bribes and abused the authority of his office to help a wealthy friend and campaign donor.

Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the original article, click here.

AUSTIN – The Austin American-Statesman reports that over the past two years, Texas women barred from terminating their pregnancies have shared their stories on the national state and on the campaign trail, and many of them challenged the state’s laws in high-profile court cases. Democrats and abortion advocates had hoped that the attention on Texas’ near-total ban, which bars abortions except when a pregnant person faces a “life-threatening condition,” would lead to electoral gains in the state Capitol and in D.C. But that didn’t pan out in 2024, and after Texas Republicans strengthened their supermajority in the state Legislature, and federally the GOP won the White House and both chambers of Congress, they are positioned to move the state farther right on abortion issues this session.

The Lone Star State has some of the toughest abortion restrictions in the nation, with the procedure banned unless a pregnant person faces a “life-threatening condition.” There are no exceptions for rape, incest or fatal fetal anomalies. While Texas doctors face steep criminal penalties, out-of-state physicians have mailed tens of thousands of abortion-inducing drugs into the state since the procedure was banned in 2021. A #WeCount survey from the Society for Family Planning found an estimated 12,420 abortions occurred with the use of mailed pills in Texas between June and December 2023. Bills filed ahead of the 2025 legislative session, which began Tuesday, would crack down on these transactions. House Bill 991, filed by Rep. Steve Toth, a Republican hailing from the Houston suburbs, would make it a criminal offense to possess, sell or distribute abortion-inducing drugs such as misoprostol and mifepristone, adding on to pre-existing laws that bar people from helping others illegally terminate a pregnancy in Texas. HB 1636, filed by House GOP Caucus Chair Tom Oliverson of Cypress, would further restrict access to abortion-inducing drugs by classifying them as Schedule IV controlled substances. Schedule IV classification typically applies to drugs that carry a risk of addiction or abuse, including Ambien, Valium and Xanax.

AUSTIN – KUT reports that the outlook for water in Texas is looking a bit … dry. The state will face a long-term water deficit if fails to develop new supplies and gets hit by another multi-year drought, according to a new report. The report also suggests that a prolonged, severe drought, like that of the 1950s or 2011, could cost the state’s economy hundreds of billions of dollars. Texas 2036, a non-profit, public policy organization, commissioned the report to explore the possible consequences of under-investment in the state’s water infrastructure. That potential large loss of money is because industries such as agriculture, manufacturing and energy production heavily rely upon water availability, said Jeremy Mazur, director of infrastructure and natural resources policy at Texas 2036.

“If we don’t have reliable water infrastructure, then we likely cannot have the continuation of the Texas economic miracle,” he said. “But one of the more alarming findings was that if we don’t have enough reliable water supplies and have a long, severe drought, then the reliability of our state’s electric grid could come into question.” For those reasons, Mazur said Texas 2036 has chosen water infrastructure as one its main areas of focus for this year’s legislative session. He said he plans to work with state lawmakers to help fund improvements to the state’s more than 10,000 drinking water and wastewater systems. The organization estimates $154 billion will need to be spent on the state’s water infrastructure over the next 50 years. That includes $59 billion for new water supplies, nearly $74 billion for drinking water upgrades and over $21 billion to fix wastewater systems.