Judge in Texas temporarily blocks President Obama’s transgender rules

A federal judge in Texas has blocked the Obama administration's order that requires public schools to let transgender students use the bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their chosen gender identity. In a temporary injunction signed Sunday, U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor ruled that the federal education law known as Title IX "is not ambiguous" about sex being defined as "the biological and anatomical differences between male and female students as determined at their birth."

Texas Prosecuted 15 Illegal Voting Cases, None Involving Impersonation

BROWNSVILLE Until the day she was arrested, 53-year-old Vicenta Verino spent years canvassing poor, elderly and mostly Latino neighborhoods, harvesting mail-in ballots for candidates who paid her to bring in votes. Her crime: unlawful assistance of a voter, an offense that would not have been prevented by the state's voter ID law.

Analysis: That Silly Perry Vs. Cruz Idea? Don’t Be So Quick to Dismiss It

Pitting Ted Cruz and Rick Perry against each other in a political survey is just the sort of silly clickbait pollsters and headline writers love. Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-leaning firm, released a survey this week saying Cruz would lose to the former governor in a hypothetical Republican primary for re-election.

Taking on Ted

U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, is not ruling out challenging U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in 2018, but he's emphasizing that he is not focused on it for now. "Like Reagan said, never say never, but it's not something I'm spending a whole lot of time thinking about right now," McCaul told reporters Wednesday in Austin.

The Brief: A New Look at the Cost of Detaining Asylum Seekers

Protestors left their signs on the fence surrounding the South Texas Family Residential Center near Dilley, Texas on May 2, 2015. A new Washington Post report takes a close look at the $1 billion contract given to the nation's largest prison company by the federal government to build a facility in the South Texas town of Dilley to detain women and children seeking asylum.

Texas lawyer who never won a capital murder case calls it quits defending ‘the very worst’ clients

Texas lawyer Jerry Guerinot said he no longer represents people accused of capital murder after four decades of posting a perfect record. Some opponents of capital punishment label him the worst lawyer in the U.S. Guerinot shrugs off the criticism, which he says comes from taking notorious cases.

The U.S. Government Just Approved an Enormous Oil Pipeline

It took seven years of organizing to stop the Keystone XL oil pipeline from being built up-and-down the U.S. - and now a new mega-pipeline "has quietly received full regulatory permission to begin construction," reports Mother Jones. Known also as the Bakken Pipeline, the project is slated to run 1,172 miles of 30-inch diameter pipe from North Dakota's northwest Bakken region down to a market hub outside Patoka, Illinois, where it will join extant pipelines and travel onward to refineries and markets in the Gulf and on the East Coast.

Texas has a front row seat to NAFTA, one of the campaign’s most contentious policies.

Caught between the anti-globalist tirades of their presidential standard bearer and their state's close trade ties with Mexico, Texas congressional Republicans are straddling a tricky political line when it comes to talk of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Texas governor makes first public event since hospital stay

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn speaks during the ground breaking ceremony for the Harbor Bridge replacement project at the Ortiz Center in Corpus Christi, Texas, Monday, Aug. 8, 2016. The project will replace the aging hat-shaped bridge that's a signature landmark of the coastal city.

Voter ID laws in jeopardy after Texas agrees to ease its rules

In agreeing last week to relax its voter-ID requirements for the November election, Texas showed how far the legal climate has shifted with respect to the wave of state laws enacted over the last decade. The agreement came less than two weeks after a federal appeals court said Texas's ID law was racially discriminatory.

Correction: Hot Air Balloon Crash-Texas story

The U.S. Supreme Court says a Virginia school board can block a transgender male from using the boy's bathroom at his school until it decides whether to intervene in his case. A Virginia school board can block a transgender male from using the boys restroom when school starts next month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

Correction: Hot Air Balloon Crash-Texas-Pilot Timeline story

In a story Aug. 2 about a hot air balloon crash, The Associated Press reported erroneously, based on inaccurate information from the Federal Aviation Administration, that the same balloon that crashed Saturday in central Texas, killing 16, had been involved in a 2014 crash. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, the balloon that crashed in 2014 was owned by the same company and was similar in type and appearance, but was a different balloon.