Last month, the bill attempting to ban taxpayer-funded lobbying appeared unlikely to make it out of the Texas House State Affairs Committee. The atmosphere has shifted in the last week, after so many people came to testify at a hearing for House Bill 749 that the meeting lasted until early the next morning. The sheer …

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated from it’s original date range of January 1, 2021-March 24, 2021 to include the entirety of Q1 views. When it comes to the money in Texas politics, these are the names that you are viewing the most so far this year. See the top five entities in each …

Our “Money Behind the Committee Chair” series spotlights the Texas lawmakers chairing prominent committees during the 87th Legislative Session, as well as the individual donors and PACs who have supported their campaigns leading up to this session. In Austin, perhaps the most important structures within the Texas Legislature are the committees that influence the fate …

In session and out, lobbying is by far the biggest source of money in Texas politics. Taxpayers foot a sizable chunk of the bill, accounting for as much as $110 million (over 16 percent of the total reported lobbying money) during the 2020 election cycle time period. Another $70,429,959 (also around 16 percent of the …

The For the People Act of 2021—known as H.R. 1 in the House and S.1 in the Senate—was introduced in the US House on January 4 as a primary concern of the Biden administration, and passed in the U.S. House on March 3rd. An almost identical bill was introduced in 2019, and passed in the …