texas senate

The Texas Senate passed a resolution Tuesday afternoon calling the “crisis at the Texas-Mexico International Border an emergency.” The resolution calls on Congress to take action and supports President Donald Trump’s recent emergency declaration.

The disgraced Texas Democrat lawmaker recently convicted in a federal fraud case and sentenced to 12 years in prison filed court documents to appeal his conviction Tuesday. He wants the taxpayers to pay his legal fees.

Tomas Uresti tweeted he is “contemplating” running for the Texas State Senate seat vacated when his brother resigned following 11 felony convictions.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott called for an emergency special election to replace San Antonio Democrat State Senator Carlos Uresti, who resigned this week following 11 federal convictions for fraud and money laundering.

The Texas Senate voted to say no to boys entering the girls’ bathrooms, showers and changing rooms in schools across the state. The 21 to 10 vote came down along party lines, as expected.

The Texas Senate passed school choice legislation, Senate Bill 3, that would establish education savings accounts and tax credit scholarship programs intended to expand K-12 options for children. The bill crossed the finish line in a final vote of 18-13 on Thursday with a few notable changes.

In May of 2016, President Obama issued an edict that all school children could declare their own gender and use the restroom, locker room and shower of their choice.

The bill passed by the Texas Senate this week calls for the creation of criminal penalties for state, county, or local officials who chose to ignore federal immigration law. The bill also creates a provision whereby the official could be removed from office if they fail to enforce the law.

Texas state senators passed a bill to punish sanctuary cities, counties, and colleges, that fail to cooperate with federal immigration officials. The passage came on a straight party-line vote, 21-10.

If one Texas lawmaker has his say on police-community relationships, it could become a high school graduation requirement that ninth grade students learn how to properly interact with law enforcement.

A Democrat Texas State Senator publicly stated that the Democrat Party has taken minorities for granted. The statement was made by Texas Democratic Senator Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa Friday afternoon during a panel hosted by the Texas Tribune in this border city. In one of the questions, Tribune CEO Evan Smith brought up Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump’s effort to court African-American and Hispanic voters.

The First Amendment and religious liberty has been under assault in Texas, and the Texas Senate State Affairs Committee held a hearing and took testimony to begin to look at potential solutions to propose during the 2017 legislative session.

The Texas Senate Republican Caucus says that a study published by the New England Journal of Medicine about women’s health services in Texas is “misleading” and “excludes major facts” about services in the Lone Star state.

On Friday, Gov. Abbott announced the departure of Kyle Janek as executive commissioner of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC). Janek, a former Texas state representative and senator, was appointed to the position in 2012 by then-Governor Rick Perry.

AUSTIN, Texas — The 84th session of the Texas Legislature came to a close on Monday afternoon. Legislators spoke in the hallways about a successful session while some grassroots activists, conservatives and tea party leaders expressed wanting more.

The Texas House of Representatives voted against concurrence with changes made to the open carry bill by the Senate. The move by the House sends the bill to a conference committee between the two bodies of the Legislature to resolve their differences in the bill.

Whichever tax plan makes its way to Governor Greg Abbott’s desk, Ben Franklin would be glad to know that Texans could avoid one of his certainties by not paying higher future taxes.

A long time statutory probate judge in Harris County, Texas, is raising an issue which begs the question of where the legislature’s power over the judiciary begins and ends. It is his opinion, that Senate Bill 1876, relating to appointing attorneys, mediators, or guardians, via a rotating list, is unconstitutional as violative of the separation of powers.

The Texas Senate gave final passage to House Bill 910, the bill that would allow concealed carry license holders to openly carry a handgun. The bill was passed out of the Senate during a late night Memorial Day weekend session with a vote of 20-11. Senator Joan Huffman (R-Houston) was the lone Republican voting against the bill.

Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, has threaten an orange flood repeat at the Texas Capitol if Planned Parenthood’s cancer screening program is defunded.

The Texas Senate passed a bill on Tuesday which would protect the rights of certain religious organizations and pastors to refuse participation in marriage ceremonies which violate their sincerely-held religious beliefs. The Governor said he will sign a bill that offers such protection to pastors and ministers.

A woman allegedly claiming to be the wife of Texas State Senator Carlos Uresti (D-San Antonio) was arrested and charged with harassment. The Austin woman has been sending letters and packages to the Senator of a harassing and sexually explicit nature and failed to stop after receiving a cease and desist letter. The woman was charged with a Class B misdemeanor and could spend up to 180 days in jail and a possible fine of up to $2,000.

Two Texas Legislators have been named to GOPAC’s 2015 Class of Emerging Leaders. One state senator and one state representative. Being a freshman senator from the largest state senate district in the United States is tough work, but that is already being recognized by GOPAC, a conservative think-tank, as they named Texas State Senator Charles Perry to the 2015 Class of Emerging Leaders. State Representative Craig Goldman (R-Fort Worth) was also named to the list.

The Texas Senate moved forward this week in a bipartisan 26-5 vote to decriminalize truancy. The Failure to Attend School (FTAS) or “truancy” is currently a juvenile Class C misdemeanor that carries fines and criminal marks on a student’s record for cutting class. It may soon be a thing of the past as the Texas Senate moved forward to decriminalize it through Senate Bill 106 (SB 106).

Imagine what would happen if the power went off nationwide and did not come back for several years. Water pumps, life-saving equipment in hospitals, gasoline production, and refrigeration of our food and medicines would all stop. A widespread, extended power outage would end life as we know it.

Fireworks erupted on Wednesday in the Texas capitol building between the Lt. Governor and the House Speaker Pro Tempore over tax reform legislation. The verbal exchange between the two leaders began after State Representative Dennis Bonnen (R-Angleton), who also serves Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, unveiled his plan for a $4.7 billion tax cut.

The Texas Senate appears to be moving slowly on a pair of border security bills, one of which has already passed the House. Border security legislation was set as an “Emergency Item” by Texas Governor Greg Abbott during his State of the State Address where he laid out his legislative agenda for the 84th session of the Texas Legislature. Approximately thirty days later, the Texas House passed HB 11 relating to border security and forwarded that bill to the Senate.

The Texas Senate has passed a package of bills that include substantial reforms to the state’s franchise tax, a tax on a business’ gross margins. Conservatives are cheering the news, and turning a hopeful eye toward the House, where the fate of these reforms now rests.

AUSTIN, Texas — State Senator Dr. Charles Schwertner (R-Georgetown) sent an open letter on Tuesday to a group of business associations, challenging their opposition to SB 8, the Small Business Tax Relief Act. The bill was filed by Schwertner filed in February. The letter acknowledges the contribution that big businesses make to the Texas economy, but accuses them of neglecting the state’s small businesses in favor of protecting the interests of powerful big businesses.

AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas Senate has officially passed SB 11, the “campus carry” legislation that would expand the state’s concealed handgun license (CHL) rights to allow CHL holders to also carry their guns into certain buildings on Texas’ public colleges and universities. The bill passed its third and final reading on Thursday in the Senate, a move that was cheered by Senate Republicans, who are hopeful that their colleagues in the House will pass the bill as well.

A bill filed by Texas State Senator Joan Huffman (R-Houston) could prove to be the financial death penalty for many public sector labor unions across the state. The bill, SB 1968, was filed at the very end of the bill filing period for this Legislative Session last Friday, and would end the practice of automatic payroll deductions for labor union dues for the majority of public sector unions.

AUSTIN, Texas – The Texas Senate, along a party-line vote, gave preliminary approval to the “Campus Carry Bill” which would allow people with a concealed handgun license (CHL) to carry a concealed handgun on public campuses of colleges and universities. The bill withstood a five hour floor debate and then more than two-dozen amendments. The preliminary vote came with a 20-11 vote.

The Texas Senate passed the “open carry” bill, SB 17, on second reading Monday evening after about three and a half hours of debate. The vote was on partisan lines, with the 20 Republican Senators voting in favor of the bill, and the 11 Democrats voting against it. The bill still needs to go to third reading before it will be deemed officially passed by the Senate.

Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick opened a press conference on education by saying that nearly 150,000 students were trapped in over two hundred schools that were failing their students and parents. His remarks came at the beginning of a conference that featured members of the Senate Education Committees and other Texas State Senators with education bills.

The leader of a pro-gun control group made several statements that were easily proven to be false during her testimony before the Texas Senate State Affairs Committee last Thursday, when she joined hundreds of other members of the public who came to the Texas Capitol to share their opinions about two bills under consideration by the committee, SB 11, the “campus carry” bill, and SB 17, the “open carry” bill. As Breitbart Texas reported, both bills passed the committee and are headed to the Senate for consideration.

Texas State Senator Charles Perry (R-Lubbock) announced this week that he had filed several bills for consideration during this legislative session that were in response to feedback he had received from constituents in his district, a mostly rural area containing Lubbock and San Angelo. The new bills are the latest among the ones that Perry has filed to address specific needs of his district.