SUMMARY: Rebekah Prevost of Baton Rouge was struck by lightning on July 3 while running from her vehicle to her home during a storm. The lightning hit a cedar tree near her house, traveled through the ground, up her foot, and exited her head. She sustained a broken jaw on both sides, a burn on her left hand, bruised knees, a ruptured ear membrane, a scalp injury, and burnt hair. Prevost was hospitalized for four days and is now recovering with ongoing pain and fatigue. Her recovery will take six to eight weeks, requiring rest and soft foods. A GoFundMe has been set up to assist with her medical expenses.

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SUMMARY: The Texas flood disaster death toll has risen to 118, with over 170 still missing, mostly in Kerr County, which suffered severe destruction including 36 children among the fatalities. Officials face growing scrutiny over delayed flood warnings and the lack of a flood alert system. Rescue crews continue to work tirelessly amid debris piles along the Guadalupe River. A local father with his three sons shared a harrowing survival story after quickly evacuating their flooded RV. Governor Greg Abbott ordered flags at half-staff. Recovery efforts will take months or years, with more than $3 million raised for relief. Questions remain about preparedness and response delays.

The death toll in the Texas flood disaster has climbed to 118. More than 170 people are still missing. Officials in Kerr County, which faced the worst of the destruction, said 95 people were found dead there. Including 36 children. City and county leaders say their crews have been working non-stop. Working through their off days to locate the missing.

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“Gov. Abbott orders special session on Hill Country flooding, redistricting, THC and unfinished GOP priorities” 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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Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday unveiled a jam-packed agenda for the upcoming special legislative session, calling on lawmakers to redraw Texas’ congressional maps and address several unfinished conservative priorities from earlier this year.

The governor, who controls the agenda for overtime legislative sessions, also included four items related to the deadly Hill Country floods over the July Fourth weekend, directing legislators to look at flood warning systems, emergency communications, natural disaster preparation and relief funding for impacted areas.

The flooding has killed more than 100 people, with more than 160 still missing in Kerr County alone.

Abbott’s call also includes redrawing the state’s congressional districts — following through on a demand from President Donald Trump’s advisers, who want to fortify Republicans’ slim majority in the U.S. House by carving out more GOP seats in Texas. Republicans in Texas’ congressional delegation have expressed unease about the idea, worrying it could jeopardize control of their current districts.

As expected, Abbott’s agenda for the session — scheduled to start July 21 — includes legislation to more firmly regulate THC products, such as new restrictions to keep them from children. Abbott had previously announced plans to take up the issue after he vetoed an outright THC ban that had been championed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

The ban on consumable hemp products that contain any THC easily passed the Senate, which Patrick oversees, then overcame scattered opposition in the House from a handful of Republicans who backed a proposal to more aggressively regulate the products instead. Abbott vetoed the bill last month, saying it would not have survived “valid constitutional challenges.”

A majority of Texans oppose a ban, according to a June statewide poll.

Abbott also included several high-profile and controversial conservative priorities that didn’t pass during the regular session, including proposals to ban cities and counties from hiring lobbyists to advocate for them in Austin; require people to use bathrooms that align with the sex they were assigned at birth; and crack down on the manufacturing and distribution of abortion pills.

More than 40 Republican lawmakers, including Patrick, signed onto a letter to Abbott in June asking him to include the abortion pill proposal on the special session agenda. Senate Bill 2880, considered the most wide-ranging legislation to crack down on abortion pills in the U.S., passed the Senate earlier this year but stalled in a House committee.

The so-called “bathroom bill” similarly failed to reach the House floor. An earlier bathroom measure also made it onto Abbott’s agenda for the 2017 special session, where it died under opposition from business interests.

The governor’s call to bar local governments from spending public money on lobbyists — a practice dubbed by critics as “taxpayer-funded lobbying” — has also failed to gain traction through multiple sessions, despite long-running support from conservative activists and a vocal contingent of GOP lawmakers.

Abbott is also directing lawmakers to reconsider a proposal to allow the attorney general to prosecute state election crimes. Texas’ attorney general does not have authority to independently prosecute criminal offenses unless invited to do so by a local district attorney, which the state’s highest criminal court has repeatedly upheld.

But after successfully unseating three members of the Court of Criminal Appeals in November, Attorney General Ken Paxton pushed the Legislature to carve out an exception for allegations of election fraud. The Senate passed one such proposal, but it didn’t clear the House. Abbott is asking lawmakers to reconsider the idea in the form of a constitutional amendment, which requires support from two-thirds of both chambers and voter approval in a statewide referendum.

State lawmakers meet every other year. They adjourned their 140-day regular session in early June. Special sessions can run for up to 30 days.

Since taking office in 2015, Abbott has called at least eight other overtime sessions, according to the Legislative Reference Library of Texas. He called four of them in 2023 — keeping lawmakers at the Capitol for almost the entire year — during a dispute over property tax cuts, border security measures and his push to create a private school voucher programs.

Other issues included in Abbott’s 18-item agenda are the creation of laws that would shield records accusing police officers of wrongdoing that are not substantiated; boost protections against title and deed thefts; and authorize political subdivisions to reduce fees for certain builders.

The brimming agenda lays the groundwork for the GOP-controlled Legislature to add to the variety of conservative victories recorded during the spring regular session. Already this year, Republican state lawmakers have created the school voucher program the Legislature failed to pass in 2023, mandated public schools to hang the Ten Commandments in classrooms and strictly defined man and woman in state records — a change that could have far-reaching implications for transgender Texans.

Many Republicans celebrated that Abbott was setting such an aggressive agenda. On X, Rep. Brent Money, a Greenville Republican, thanked the governor for including property tax cuts and shared a letter he and two dozen other Republican lawmakers signed this week asking for a “fundamental reset” of the property tax system.

Abbott did not spell out how far he wants lawmakers to go, calling broadly for legislation “reducing the property tax burden on Texans.” But he also included the option of “imposing spending limits on entities authorized to impose property taxes,” which includes cities, counties and school districts.

The agenda sparked immediate condemnation from some Democratic state lawmakers. Houston Rep. Gene Wu, a Houston Democrat who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, blasted Abbott for pairing flood-related items with an agenda otherwise dominated by GOP priorities.

“Governor Abbott listed flood preparedness at the top of his special session call, but then buried it under a pile of cynical, political distractions,” Wu said in a statement, calling Abbott’s agenda a “stunning betrayal.”

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/09/abbott-special-session-texas-redistricting-flooding-thc-abortion-pills/.

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 Gov. Abbott calls special session on flooding, redistricting 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

The content primarily presents Governor Greg Abbott’s legislative agenda, focusing on conservative priorities such as redistricting to favor Republicans, stricter THC regulations, bathroom bills, abortion pill restrictions, and property tax cuts. The framing is factual and balanced, providing context from multiple perspectives, including opposition from Democrats and some Republicans. The inclusion of detailed information on GOP-led initiatives and conservative legislative efforts, alongside critical reactions from Democratic lawmakers, indicates a center-right bias that leans toward conservative policy positions but remains informative and relatively neutral in tone.