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Abbott signs Texas’ first school choice bill into law | Texas

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www.thecentersquare.com – By Bethany Blankley | The Center Square contributor – (The Center Square – ) 2025-05-03 14:58:00

(The Center Square) – Gov. Greg Abbott on Saturday signed Texas’ first school choice bill into law.

Abbott signed “the largest day one school choice program in the United States of America,” he said surrounded by children and state lawmakers.

“Today is the culmination of a movement that has swept across our state and across our country,” Abbott said. “A movement driven by parents … who wanted a better education option” for their children, describing examples. One was mother Hillary Hickland, “who was angry that a woke agenda was being forced on her daughter in a public school and that drove her to run for and win a seat in the Texas legislature,” he said. Abbott endorsed and campaigned for Hickland, who was in attendance at the signing.

“The movement was driven by activists and public policy advocates across the state fueled by a vision for an education system that levels the playing field for parents and expands opportunity for our great children,” Abbott continued. “A movement driven by families who shared my vision – that it is time that we put our children on a pathway to having the number one ranked education system in the United States of America knowing that school choice is part of the formula of achieving that mission.”

He also said he’s traveled across the state “talking about school choice for more than half a decade and … met with thousands of families who have longed for education freedom. These families, and thousands more, have been yearning to choose a school that best fits their child. Now they have that option.”

When Abbott ran for reelection in 2022, he “promised school choice for the families of Texas,” he said. “Today, we delivered on that promise.”

The bill creates the state’s first Education Savings Account program to provide taxpayer-funded subsidies for primarily low-income families of roughly $10,000 per student.

Both the Texas Senate and House budgets allocate $1 billion for the program to support roughly 100,000 students, prioritizing low-income and special needs students, The Center Square reported. The savings accounts can be used by parents to send their children to the school of their choice, including private schools.

For more than 20 years, Democrats and Texas House Republicans have opposed a taxpayer-funded subsidy to allow families to send their child to a private school of their choice, arguing funds would be taken away from public schools and that taxpayer money should not fund private school education.

While the Texas Senate has passed a bill creating an Education Savings Account for several legislative sessions in a row, the bill always died in the Republican-controlled House – until now.

The tide turned after Abbott campaigned for 16 House Republican candidates who challenged incumbents who opposed a bill he championed in the last legislative session. Another five Republicans who opposed the bill didn’t run for reelection last year. Abbott’s endorsed Republican challengers won their primaries and runoff elections, vowing to vote for the state’s first ESA program.

The tide also turned after the Texas House elected a new speaker, state Rep. Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, who vowed that the ESA bill would pass the House, which it did on April 17. Burrows also traveled with Abbott statewide promoting the bill, pledging multiple times on social media that it would pass, The Center Square reported.

Burrows thanked members of the Texas House for voting for the bill, saying, “they knew school choice was the moral thing to do. They knew it was the right thing to give children opportunities to go to the place that it’s in their best interest. They knew it was the principled thing to do, that competition makes all things better. That is what America was founded upon. I do believe the work is not done. We have to make sure this is not only the biggest school choice [program] in history but the best.”

The post Abbott signs Texas’ first school choice bill into law | Texas appeared first on www.thecentersquare.com



Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Right

This article reports on the signing of a school choice bill by Texas Governor Greg Abbott and provides context about the political dynamics surrounding the legislation. The tone and framing lean slightly toward a center-right perspective, reflecting the Republican-supportive language and pro-school choice stance. Terms like “woke agenda” and emphasis on parental empowerment and education freedom suggest a viewpoint aligned with conservative or center-right values. The article highlights Republican efforts and successes in passing the bill while presenting opposition from Democrats and some Republicans as obstacles. However, the piece primarily reports on the actions and statements of political figures and does not adopt an explicitly ideological perspective independent of those sources, maintaining a focus on factual recounting of events and political positions with mild ideological shading toward the conservative viewpoint.

News from the South - Texas News Feed

Texas redistricting: What to know about Dems’ quorum break

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feeds.texastribune.org – By María Méndez – 2025-08-04 18:35:00


Most Texas House Democrats fled the state amid a redistricting dispute, with many heading to the Chicago area for a press conference with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on August 2. Others traveled to New York to meet Gov. Kathy Hochul, who condemned Texas’ redistricting and considered retaliatory maps, while some attended a legislative summit in Boston alongside Texas Senate Democrats. State Rep. Gene Wu, House Democratic Caucus chair, stated they are handling the fight “day by day” amid financial hardships. He noted the personal sacrifices made, including being away from families and jobs for months during the long legislative session.

The Texas redistricting fight spurring a legislative standoff: What you need to know” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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More than 50 Texas House Democrats have fled the state to try to stop Republican state lawmakers from redrawing congressional districts maps that could help the GOP flip five Democratic seats during the 2026 midterm elections.

Republican lawmakers have said that redrawing boundaries will allow GOP candidates to pick up as many as five seats, but that it does not guarantee them wins. Democrats say the proposed reconfigurations take away power from Black and Latino voters. They also say the proposal splits up local communities, moving many voters into districts that also cover far-away regions.

Gov. Greg Abbott directed state lawmakers to redraw the districts at the urging of the Trump administration. Redrawing congressional districts in the middle of a decade is rare, but allowed. Abbott also warned Texas House Democrats that he would attempt to have them removed from office if they do not return to Austin.

A majority of the remaining members of the Republican-controlled Texas House have voted to track down and arrest their absent colleagues through civil warrants signed by House Speaker Dustin Burrows – a largely symbolic move since the warrants can only apply in Texas.

Here’s what you need to know about the redistricting fight.

Map targets Austin, Dallas, Houston and South Texas

A draft of the new map released in late July proposes to reshape a handful of districts in Texas’ major metro areas to be more favorable to Republicans, while pitting a few Democratic Congress members against each other in next year’s elections:

  • South Texas: The districts currently held by U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar of Laredo and Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen would become slightly more favorable to Republicans.
  • Dallas-Fort Worth area: U.S. Rep. Julie Johnson’s Dallas-anchored district would be overhauled to favor Republicans. U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey’s would remain solidly blue but drop all of Fort Worth — Veasey’s hometown and political base. This could set up a primary between Veasey and Johnson.
  • Austin area: A proposed GOP seat could trigger U.S. Reps. Greg Casar and Lloyd Doggett to face each other in a primary for Central Texas’ lone remaining blue district. Otherwise, one of the two would have to step aside or run an uphill race for Casar’s new district, based in San Antonio and the solidly red outlying counties east of the city, that Trump would have won by 10 points.
  • Houston area: Four Democratic districts would be altered. The biggest change would be in the 9th Congressional District, represented by Rep. Al Green, that would shift to the eastern parts of Houston and Harris County, where no current member of Congress lives. Under that proposed change, Trump would have carried the district by 15 percentage points.

Texas Republicans acknowledge plan aims to benefit GOP

Currently, Republicans hold 25 of Texas’ 38 House seats. The proposed map could help Republicans pick up five more. The plan would dismantle four congressional districts that the U.S. Department of Justice said unconstitutionally combined Black and Hispanic voters. The state has disputed that charge in an ongoing lawsuit, arguing the lines were drawn without an eye toward race.

The draft advanced by a House committee would have likely faced changes before getting final approval from both chambers of the Legislature and Gov. Greg Abbott, but Texas Republicans made their partisan intentions clear.

Setting aside the legal justification offered by the DOJ, state Rep. Todd Hunter, the Republican state lawmaker championing the redistricting legislation, said the proposed “five new districts are based on political performance”.

While the newly drafted district lines almost certainly assure Republicans at least some new seats, an analysis of the tentative redistricting plan suggests the GOP is far from guaranteed to gain all five seats.

Texas Democrats seek allies in other states

Most of the House Democrats fled to the Chicago area, where they held a press conference with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Aug. 2.

Others headed to New York for at least a day to meet with Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has condemned Texas’ mid-decade redistricting effort and entertained the idea of retaliating with new maps in her state. A third contingent of lawmakers departed for Boston to attend the National Conference of State Legislatures’ annual legislative summit, alongside some Texas Senate Democrats, according to a source familiar with the senators’ plans.

At a press conference, state Rep. Gene Wu, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, told reporters that they were taking the redistricting fight “day by day” and he wasn’t sure exactly what the caucus’ next steps would be amid financial strains.

“We’re all away from our families that we’ve already been away from for six months,” he said, referring to the 140-day legislative session that ended in early June. “We’ve been away from our jobs. We’ve not earned a lot of income this entire year. … This is not a decision that we take lightly.”

Staying away will cost Democrats financially

Before Democrats in the Texas House decamped, members of Congress were encouraging deep-pocketed donors in the party to help cover expenses, which include not only lodging and other travel costs, but also $500-a-day fines adopted by House Republicans after Democrats fled in 2021 in an unsuccessful bid to stop Republicans from passing an overhaul of the state’s election laws.

Gov. Greg Abbott said Sunday that members could face felony charges for “soliciting funds” to pay the fines, which he argued could amount to violations of the state’s bribery laws.

Republicans threaten to remove Democrats from office

Abbott threatened to initiate legal action to remove the Democrats who fled from office if they did not return to the Texas Capitol.

This could kick off a lengthy and complicated legal process that would require the Texas attorney general or a local district attorney to file a lawsuit against each state lawmaker asking a judge to remove them on the grounds that they have abandoned their office.

But the removal would not be guaranteed as legal experts say there would be no grounds for a judge to rule that participating in a quorum break warrants removal from office. After Texas House Democrats broke quorum in 2021 to block restrictive voting measures, the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court acknowledged that the Texas Constitution allows for members to deprive the state House or Senate of a quorum.

House Speaker agrees to sign warrants, but they’re mostly symbolic

After the majority of the remaining House members voted to compel the absent Democrats back, House Speaker Dustin Burrows said he would immediately sign civil warrants for each of the legislators, empowering the chamber’s sergeant-at-arms and state troopers to arrest and bring them to the Capitol.

They will not face civil or criminal charges from the arrests. The warrants apply only within state lines, making them largely symbolic as most of the legislators in question decamped to Illinois, New York and Massachusetts to forestall passage of the GOP’s proposed redraw of Texas’ congressional map.

Denying quorum is a political strategy that rarely works

History and political scientists suggest that quorum breaks are largely symbolic and have limited success blocking legislation.

While the Democrats technically can prevent the GOP’s redistricting effort by breaking quorum, it would require the entire delegation to stay out of the state until at least November, which political scientists say is unlikely given historical precedent.

Texas Democrats’ 2021 quorum break collapsed after six weeks when internal divisions fractured Democratic unity and three Houston Democrats returned citing the COVID-19 pandemic. That allowed the controversial legislation to pass.

If Texas Republicans succeed, they could trigger a redistricting arms race

Democratic leaders across the country, particularly in New York and California, have also vowed to fight back by redrawing Congressional district lines in other states. California Gov. Gavin Newsom told aides he will move forward with a plan to redraw his state’s congressional lines to install more Democrats if Texas Republicans pass their own updated map, according to a person with direct knowledge of Newsom’s thinking. The move would set up a national fight.

Disclosure: National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.


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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2025/08/04/texas-redistricting-democrats-quorum-break-what-need-know/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

The post Texas redistricting: What to know about Dems’ quorum break appeared first on feeds.texastribune.org



Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Right

This article reports on the Texas redistricting conflict with a primarily factual tone, detailing actions by both Republicans and Democrats. It highlights the Republican-led effort to redraw maps to gain seats and the Democrats’ quorum-breaking response to block the plan. While largely neutral, the article does emphasize Republican intentions to benefit their party and includes legal and political context showing complexity and contested perspectives. The presence of detailed Republican viewpoints and legal challenges, along with the framing of Democrats’ tactics as unlikely to succeed, subtly leans toward a center-right stance without overt partisanship.

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News from the South - Texas News Feed

Texas claims top spot in preseason coaches poll, season-opening opponent Ohio State at No. 2

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www.kxan.com – Billy Gates – 2025-08-04 12:24:00

SUMMARY: Texas is ranked No. 1 in the preseason USA Today/US LBM coaches poll, narrowly ahead of Ohio State at No. 2. Texas earned 28 first-place votes and 1,606 points, while Ohio State had 20 first-place votes and 1,565 points. Penn State is third, followed by Georgia and Notre Dame. Other top 10 teams include Oregon, Alabama, LSU, and Miami. Texas and Ohio State will open their seasons against each other on August 30 in Columbus, Ohio. Four SEC teams are in the top 10, with seven in the top 25, including Texas A\&M at No. 21. Oklahoma received the most votes outside the top 25.

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The post Texas claims top spot in preseason coaches poll, season-opening opponent Ohio State at No. 2 appeared first on www.kxan.com

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News from the South - Texas News Feed

Pritzker says Texas Democrats who fled state will be protected amid arrest threats

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www.kxan.com – Caroline Vakil – 2025-08-04 05:45:00

SUMMARY: Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker vowed to protect Texas Democrats who fled to Illinois to block GOP efforts to redraw Texas congressional maps. The Democrats left Texas to deny Republicans a quorum during a special session called by Gov. Greg Abbott, aimed at advancing maps favoring Republicans ahead of the 2026 midterms. The GOP-controlled legislature is expected to pass the maps despite Democrats’ actions. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton criticized the fleeing Democrats, urging their arrest. This standoff echoes 2003 tactics and highlights the intense redistricting battle, raising concerns about election fairness and drawing national attention to potential 2028 presidential hopefuls like Pritzker, Newsom, and DeSantis.

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The post Pritzker says Texas Democrats who fled state will be protected amid arrest threats appeared first on www.kxan.com

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