The Texan Podcast - Daily Rundown - August 13, 2026

Starting point is 00:00:04 Well, howdy, folks, today is Thursday, August 13th, and you're listening to The Texans' Daily Rundown. I'm the Texan senior editor Rob Lauchess, and here is the rundown of today's news in Texas politics. First up, a new subcommittee of the Texas House of Representatives was established to study issues pertaining to women's hormonal health and medical policy related to newborns. As part of interim charges issued by House Speaker Dustin Burroughs on Wednesday, the charges, which are a blueprint for lawmakers to study before they begin drafting legislation for the session that kicks off in January, include reviewing opportunities for early detection of hormonal imbalances in women with a, quote, provision of baseline reproductive hormone testing. Burroughs announced the first list of charges in March, and lawmakers have been conducting research and holding public hearings

Starting point is 00:00:58 since then. The House Committee on Public Health, chaired by State Representative Gary Van Deaver, will have a new subcommittee on maternal health, menopause, and access to evidence-based medicine to address the full range of issues included in the supplemental list. It will be chaired by State Representative Katrina Pearson, who said in a press release on Wednesday, quote, We are setting aside the discussions on abortion, birth control, and IVF to focus on health issues that impact all women across Texas. Next, after years of legal wrangling, a federal appeals court has restored portions of a 2021 Texas election integrity law that added security measures for male ballots and restricted ballot harvesting. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals

Starting point is 00:01:46 dismissed much of the pending consolidated lawsuit filed by La Union del Pueblo Entero and other groups for a lack of standing and found that one challenge failed on the merits. In an opinion published Wednesday evening, Judge Andrew Oldham defended Texas' attempts to validate mail ballots. 2021's Senate Bill 1, authored by State Senator Brian Hughes, requires voters to provide either a driver's license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number on mail ballot applications and on the ballot carrier envelope. The identification data must match the information in the voter's registration record and any mismatches or mismatches or missing information can lead to ballot rejection. In other news, data centers have become one of the top issues in state politics this year. Texas now ranks second globally for data center development, according to real estate firm Cushman and Wakefield, with the Dallas area and West Texas attracting

Starting point is 00:02:44 the most projects. In response to the surge in development, local governments across the state are considering bans, the Texas legislature is mulling new restrictions, and statewide candidates are finding a new wedge issue. The governor's race is no exception. State Representative Gina Hinojosa, this year's Democratic nominee in the race, accused incumbent Governor Greg Abbott, her political opponent, of, quote, starting the data center madness in Texas, end quote, and challenged him to call a special session to address the issue. Abbott has now put the industry under the microscope after many years of promoting Texas' pro-business environment, calling for safeguards to protect local water supplies, limit grid strain, and steer development away from rural neighborhoods.

Starting point is 00:03:30 Visit the Texan. News for a list of the data center companies that have agreed to comply with Abbott standards, cross-referenced with the state's list of companies that benefit from a data center tax break. Last but not least, tribal communities in Texas and across the U.S. continue to grapple with crime and public safety challenges, but lawmakers are seeking to address long-standing barriers to public safety within tribal jurisdictions. Texas has three federally recognized Native American tribes. Isleta del Sur Pueblo, located in the western part of the state in El Paso, the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas, located near Eagle Pass along the Rio Grande, and the Alabama Cushada tribe of Texas, located in the eastern part of the state near Livingston. Most state and

Starting point is 00:04:18 federal law enforcement agencies are exempt from the challenges faced by tribal law enforcement and the discrepancies between operations have gained attention in recent years, including in Congress. Visit the texan. News to read reporter Hannah Brewer's breakdown of the issue. Thanks for listening. To support the Texan, please be sure to visit the texan. News to get full access to all of our articles, newsletters, and podcasts.

The Texan Podcast - Daily Rundown - August 13, 2026

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.