Blogs: March 2019

For those following the debate in the Texas House of Representatives today on HB 1, the appropriations bill, here's a searchable pdf of the pre-filed amendments, via Google Docs. If you're not a regular Google Docs user:after you follow the link, there's a download icon in the upper right that will download the pdf to your device, then you can open using whatever you're used to using.

Amidst all the unknowns about this phase of the Mueller investigation, now that the "report" has been submitted, one thing we know from University of Texas/Texas Tribune Polling: reactions will be heavily determined by partisanship. Looking back over the time series of UT/TT Polls, attitudes towards Mueller, the Russia Investigation, and even the FBI as an organization split along partisan lines a considerable time ago.

Following principle rather than politics would require crossing Texas GOP voters who are overwhelmingly and uncompromisingly supportive of the wall, comfortable with Trump’s reliance on executive power to deliver it and still intensely supportive of his presidency. [This post originally appeared in Tribtalk on March 13, 2019. When the Senate voted on March 14, Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn both voted against the resolution. Twelve Republicans joined Democrats in voting in favor of the motion, which passed 59-41.]

As the political press awaits Beto O’Rourke’s announcement that he’s ready to “push the button” on a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, we’ve gathered a set of results from the University of Texas / Texas Tribune Poll that chart his rise in his home state. All of this put him in a strong position to challenge John Cornyn in 2020, but he has apparently chosen ostensibly bigger and better things at the national level.

Lt. Governor Dan Patrick released 30 priority bills for the current legislative session Friday, conveniently mapped onto the numbering of Senate Bills 1-30. We published a similar list when Governor Abbott used the power of the governorship to shape the legislative agenda with his declaration of emergency items in February, prior to the most recent University of Texas / Texas Tribune Poll. The overlap between the Lt. Governor’s priorities and those previously announced by the governor means that several of the items below provide a useful update for that post, too.

The latest University of Texas / Texas Tribune Poll, which Ross Ramsey wrote about in a batch of stories released through the week, covered a range of subjects and issues with an emphasis on the current legislative session. As always, we’ll continue to mine the data and connect it with happenings at the legislature as the session kicks into a higher gear, but below are a first set of observations, hopefully more than hot takes but certainly less than the in-depth treatment we’ll give them in coming weeks.