Ross Ramsey

Politicians are always listening to voters — but the ones who actually select the state’s elected officials have a lot more clout than those who stay home. You can see it in the way lawmakers govern.

The Texas ban on abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy effectively makes abortion illegal for most pregnant people — but not for those who can afford out-of-state travel.

Like other states, Texas found out during the pandemic how critical high-speed broadband is for school, work and medicine. And the state is working to expand it — but it’s going to be at least a year before Texans start to see results.

Texas lawmakers tried to lower property tax bills during their 2019 session, and a new report says they put a dent in the problem: Taxes aren’t rising as quickly as they would have. But they didn’t solve it: Property taxes are still rising.

The good news is that no rural hospitals in Texas have closed in the last two years. The bad news? They’re still in crisis mode, and the state government is still struggling to find a remedy.

It has proven almost impossible to get meaningful property tax relief from the same state politicians who campaign on that issue.

After last winter’s near-statewide electric blackouts, Texas lawmakers went after regulators they deemed responsible but tiptoed around the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas. Now voters have a chance, if they want it, to send the state a message.

Lucky for them, Texas officials probably can’t be prosecuted for bullying under the state’s education laws. The gist of those laws, however, is crystal clear, and so is the effect of their actions and rhetoric about gender-affirming health care.

If Texas politicians seem to be tinkering at the edges of major issues like the pandemic, electric blackouts and education, an election year is the best opportunity to set them straight.

Gov. Greg Abbott’s openness to marijuana decriminalization shows that the state, while conservative, isn’t immune to larger trends.

For Texas voters, fear of an insecure border consistently overshadows other issues — electric grid failures, handgun regulation, abortion access — even when those things top the news.

As the political season starts, the contestants got an unexpected bit of good news: The state comptroller says the next Legislature will start with almost $25 billion in the state treasury. Expensive campaign promises just got a lot easier to make.

Next year’s primary elections start a year after a winter storm knocked out power across Texas — and the government response to that disaster could be on voters’ minds.

High Texas property taxes were an issue in the state’s 2018 elections, and you can see from their work on a new homestead exemption earlier this week that state lawmakers didn’t forget that lesson from voters.

Gov. Greg Abbott’s latest executive order contradicts what he’s been saying for months about mandates and the personal choices of Texans and their businesses during the pandemic.

When lawmakers find something in the law that they don’t like — or that their voters don’t like — they can always say they didn’t know what they were voting on. It happens more than you’d think.

Hegar also talked about how to keep Texas business-friendly and what another wave of COVID-19 could mean for the state budget.

After a standoff that lasted more than a month, the Texas House appears to have enough state representatives in Austin to conduct business. The divisions are deep, relationships are frayed and redistricting lies ahead.

Texas and other states are seeing an increase in COVID-19 cases, one that’s preying disproportionately on unvaccinated people.

Corporations generally stay out of legislative fights that don’t directly affect their business, but some are weighing in against proposed Republican restrictions to voting laws.