The Texas Dispatch - Independent Texas news and policy journalism

Texas Would Redirect Unspent Medicaid Hospital Payments, and the Public Has Until Aug. 21 to Weigh In

Texas health officials have proposed letting the state take Medicaid payment room that some hospitals do not use and hand it to other hospitals in the same category, in a rule change open for public comment only until 11:59 p.m. Aug. 21.

Jack Collier Wants Texas to Regulate His Own Industry

Recycling

Recycled Plastic Prices Fall Back From Spring Highs While Aluminum Cans Hold Their Value

The Texas Dispatch · Aug 17, 2026

Property Taxes

Texas Districts Send Tax-Rate Increases to November Voters as the State’s Ballot Deadline Arrives

The Texas Dispatch · Aug 17, 2026

Transmission Lines

Texas Regulators Call a Second Special Meeting on Two Permian Power Lines and Move It to a Hotel Ballroom

The Texas Dispatch · Aug 17, 2026

Education

Austin Is the Only Texas District Whose Schools Forced the State’s Hand in the New Report Cards

The Texas Dispatch · Aug 16, 2026

Under The Dome

‘A threat that’s operating in plain sight’: DPS tells senators cartel fuel trafficking may now out-earn drug smuggling

The Texas Dispatch · Aug 14, 2026

Property Taxes

Falling Home Values Are Pushing Texas’s Biggest Cities Toward Higher Tax Rates

The Texas Dispatch · Aug 14, 2026

Latest Policy Clips

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The Storm That Proved the Seawall Right

Fifteen years after the deadliest disaster in U.S. history, a near-twin hurricane struck Galveston on August 17, 1915 — and this time the seawall the city built in grief saved thousands of lives.

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Interim Hearings

‘A threat that’s operating in plain sight’: DPS tells senators cartel fuel trafficking may now out-earn drug smuggling

Cartel fuel trafficking generates an estimated $12 billion to $21 billion a year — and some federal investigators now believe it has passed narcotics as the cartels' top revenue stream, the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety told

Aug 14, 2026

‘The question is whether Texas builds the defenses before it arrives’: Senate border committee confronts the hostile-drone threat

A drone expert opened the first hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Homeland and Border Security Wednesday with a countdown: "In security terms, today, August 12th is August 12, 2001. 30 days, our next 9/11 is coming," Michael McGee, a Ph.D.

Aug 13, 2026

24 million barrels a day: Texas’ produced-water rollout advances as regulators ask lawmakers to draw the line between them

Texas oil and gas wells surface roughly 24 million barrels of salty water every day — more than a billion gallons — and the state's plan to turn that waste stream into a water supply now hinges on rules still

Aug 12, 2026

‘Fire almost doubles in size every 60 seconds’: Texas takes stock of its wildfire defenses

Two and a half years after a snapped utility pole ignited the largest wildfire in Texas history, the Senate Committee on Natural Resources spent more than three hours Tuesday auditing every layer of the state's wildfire defenses — and heard that the

Aug 12, 2026

Texas’ one-voting-period law is headed for a delay, and no one on the state’s own steering committee objects

The state panel guiding Texas' biggest election overhaul in years has voted — unanimously — to pump the brakes. Every member of the Secretary of State's steering committee for Senate Bill 2753, the 2025 law that merges early voting and Election

Aug 5, 2026

Grid & Power

Texas Regulators Call a Second Special Meeting on Two Permian Power Lines and Move It to a Hotel Ballroom

The Public Utility Commission of Texas has called a special meeting for Aug. 21 devoted entirely to two of the giant power lines proposed to carry electricity out of the Permian Basin, and has moved it out of its own

Aug 17, 2026

Governor Abbott Announces Six More Data Center Companies Commit to Comply With State Standards

Gov. Greg Abbott announced Microsoft, Hut 8, Equinix, Galaxy, Compass Datacenters and Montera Infrastructure will comply with his data center standards protecting the grid, water and Texas ratepayers.

Aug 14, 2026

ERCOT Says Its Data-Center Audit Will Take Months, With 23 Projects’ 2027 Start Dates Hanging on It

ERCOT, the agency that runs the power grid for most of Texas, told state regulators Monday that the audit of every data center waiting to plug into the grid will take several months — and asked permission to miss the

Aug 13, 2026

24 million barrels a day: Texas’ produced-water rollout advances as regulators ask lawmakers to draw the line between them

Texas oil and gas wells surface roughly 24 million barrels of salty water every day — more than a billion gallons — and the state's plan to turn that waste stream into a water supply now hinges on rules still

Aug 12, 2026

Darby Asks TCEQ for Public Meeting on Beacon Data Center Air Permits in Tom Green County

State Rep. Drew Darby asked TCEQ to hold a public meeting in Tom Green County before acting on four air permits for the Beacon Data Centers campus proposed near Dove Creek.

Aug 11, 2026

Education

Texas Districts Send Tax-Rate Increases to November Voters as the State’s Ballot Deadline Arrives

Texas school districts have until 5 p.m. Aug. 17 to place a tax-rate increase or a bond package on the Nov. 3 ballot, and over the past week several of the state's largest districts have done exactly that — the

Aug 17, 2026

Austin Is the Only Texas District Whose Schools Forced the State’s Hand in the New Report Cards

Two middle schools in Austin drew a fifth straight failing grade in the school report cards the state released Friday, and that makes Austin the only district in Texas where the education commissioner is now required by law to step

Aug 16, 2026

Texas Schools Get Their 2026 A-F Report Cards Friday at Noon

Texas families are days away from their first look at how every public school and district in the state performed this past year. The Texas Education Agency plans to release the 2026 A-F accountability ratings this Friday: according to the

Aug 10, 2026

Texas is about to rewrite community-college career curriculum

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s Programs of Study Advisory Committee spent most of Wednesday afternoon on a question that sounds like housekeeping and is not: who gets to sit in the rooms where Texas decides what a community-college career

Aug 6, 2026

Analysis: The Most Important Number in Texas’ First School Choice Report Is “Fewer Than 30”

The first annual report on Texas Education Freedom Accounts is full of big numbers — 274,000 applications, 85,344 funded students, a 121,000-name waiting list the comptroller's office calls the largest in the country. But the phrase that best explains year

Aug 6, 2026

Health Care

Texas Would Redirect Unspent Medicaid Hospital Payments, and the Public Has Until Aug. 21 to Weigh In

Texas health officials have proposed letting the state take Medicaid payment room that some hospitals do not use and hand it to other hospitals in the same category, in a rule change open for public comment only until 11:59 p.m.

Aug 17, 2026

Rep. Katrina Pierson Details 12-Part Texas Women’s Health Initiative Built on Prevention and Early Detection

State Rep. Katrina Pierson detailed a 12-part Texas Women's Health Initiative covering hormone testing coverage, menopause treatment, newborn enrollment, pharmacy standing orders and Medicaid reimbursement, framed as both a health and fiscal measure.

Aug 13, 2026

Texas Begins Turning Its $1.4 Billion Rural Health Award Into Contracts, With Two Deadlines in the Next Two Weeks

The largest infusion of federal health money rural Texas has ever received is moving from applications to contracts this month. Tomorrow, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission is scheduled to route the first equipment-grant contracts under its "Rural Texas

Aug 13, 2026

Health Insurers in All 50 States Propose a Second Straight Double-Digit Premium Jump for 2027

Health insurers selling individual coverage on the Affordable Care Act marketplace are asking for a median premium increase of 15% for 2027, according to a Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker analysis updated August 3 that now covers proposed filings from 276

Aug 7, 2026

“Our hands are tied.” The Texas pharmacy board adopted a consent rule its own members said the Legislature never meant to write.

Every other motion the Texas State Board of Pharmacy took up on Tuesday morning passed without a single audible objection — the jurisprudence exam rule, the disaster-closure rules, the records rule, the rule review, the officer elections. Then it reached

Aug 5, 2026

Water

24 million barrels a day: Texas’ produced-water rollout advances as regulators ask lawmakers to draw the line between them

Texas oil and gas wells surface roughly 24 million barrels of salty water every day — more than a billion gallons — and the state's plan to turn that waste stream into a water supply now hinges on rules still

Aug 12, 2026

Analysis: The Data Center Showdown Builds—Austin Hearings Preview a 2027 Legislative Blitz

This week, the expansion of artificial intelligence data centers emerged as the single most urgent policy challenge before the Texas Legislature. What began earlier in the summer as directives from Governor Greg Abbott to state regulators culminated in an intense

Jul 30, 2026

Texas’s Data-Center Rules Race a Calendar as Abbott’s Ratepayer Memo Comes Due

Governor Greg Abbott's deadline for regulators to spell out how they will keep data-center costs off Texans' electric bills arrives Friday, but the state's push to rein in the industry is running into a problem it cannot regulate away: the

Jul 17, 2026

Batch Zero Takes Effect July 11 as Abbott’s Data-Center Ratepayer Memo Comes Due

Texas' effort to control who pays for the power that data centers demand reaches two hard markers this month. ERCOT's Batch Zero interconnection framework takes effect July 11, and Governor Greg Abbott's order to shield ordinary customers from data-center infrastructure

Jul 6, 2026

Vantage’s Stargate Campus in Shackelford County Nears Its First Power-On

One of the largest single data-center projects yet planned in Texas is approaching an operational milestone in a rural county west of Fort Worth. Vantage Data Centers' "Frontier" campus in Shackelford County, developed as part of the Stargate initiative led

Jun 30, 2026

Property Taxes

Texas Districts Send Tax-Rate Increases to November Voters as the State’s Ballot Deadline Arrives

Texas school districts have until 5 p.m. Aug. 17 to place a tax-rate increase or a bond package on the Nov. 3 ballot, and over the past week several of the state's largest districts have done exactly that — the

Aug 17, 2026

Falling Home Values Are Pushing Texas’s Biggest Cities Toward Higher Tax Rates

Fort Worth wants to raise its property tax rate by 3.2 cents, and the average homeowner's city tax bill would go down $21.34. Dallas is cutting its rate for the 11th straight year, and many homeowners will pay more. Those

Aug 14, 2026

San Antonio’s First Tax-Rate Increase in 33 Years Goes Before the City Council Today

San Antonio City Manager Erik Walsh presents his formal 2027 budget to the City Council today, and it is expected to carry something no city budget there has carried since the early 1990s: a property-tax rate increase. The rollout of

Aug 13, 2026

Six Years and $1 Billion Later, an Austin Court Weighs Whether the Project Connect Tax Is Legal

A Travis County court takes up the Project Connect tax Thursday, weighing whether to rule at last on the legality of the 2020 property tax increase behind Austin's light rail — or defer again.

Aug 12, 2026

Texas Adopts Appraiser Rules It Didn’t Write — and Doesn’t Like

Two trustees of the Appraisal Foundation drove to Austin on Friday morning to tell the Texas Appraiser Licensing and Certification Board that the profession it regulates is running out of people. They got about ninety minutes, most of the meeting,

Aug 11, 2026

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