The Latest Breaking News from The Texas Tribune

Ryan Bangert, a former top official under the attorney general, said Paxton allowed a friend and political donor to hijack the state agency, diverting it from its mission to help all Texans.

Leaders in the Permian Basin have been averse to major investment projects because of the boom and bust cycle of the oil business. They hope this project helps shift that thinking.

After legislators passed laws banning diversity initiatives and targeting tenure at state universities, more than a quarter of the 1,900 Texas professors surveyed by faculty associations said they plan to look for positions out of state.

The average temperature in Texas this summer was 85.3 degrees, putting it behind only 2011 for summer misery.

Former attorney general officials testified that Ken Paxton pushed to release confidential FBI records to friend and donor Nate Paul. They also denied defense attorneys’ assertions that they staged a “mutiny.”

ERCOT has called on generators to push all available electricity to the grid as rising demand threatens to surpass the state’s power supply. If that fails, rolling blackouts are likely to begin.

Jeff Mateer testified that Paxton was so intent on helping Austin real estate investor Nate Paul that he worried the attorney general was being blackmailed.

A day after declaring emergency conditions for the first time this summer, ERCOT is asking residents to reduce how much power they use between 5 and 9 p.m. Thursday as continued high temperatures push the power grid into tight conditions.

The state has canceled all visits to Texas prison inmates until a comprehensive search of all 100 correctional facilities for contraband has been completed.

Nearly three months after Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the deployment of the 1,000-foot line of buoys and mesh in the Rio Grande, an Austin federal judge ordered the state to remove the barrier and stop building further obstructions in the river. One day later a higher court sided with Texas.

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