Meet Texas’s top 10 donors of the 2018 election season. Each of these heavy hitters has given more than a million dollars to Texas candidates and PACs since August 20, 2017. And these numbers may tell only part of the story. The totals don’t include any political donations these men and women have given to …

Money drives politics, but it’s often hard to understand. With contributions to candidates and PACs in the hundreds of millions, it’s easy for political insiders to throw around big numbers to intimidate citizens. Without context, all those commas and zeros are next-to-impossible to interpret meaningfully. Most people don’t have time to dig into reports on …

Ever feel like the top politicians in Texas are the “cool kids” from your high school, all grown up, now in an even more powerful clique? Sometimes we do too. We’ve taken a look at their latest report cards — uh — make that their latest reports with the Texas Ethics Commission, and issued the …

*This article, originally published November 13, was updated on November 16, 2018, to correct a mistake about presumptive Speaker Bonnen’s expenditures.   Yesterday afternoon, State Representative Dennis Bonnen strode to a microphone in the Texas Capitol to announce, “The Speaker’s race is over.” Bonnen had collected 109 pledges of support — far more than needed — …

Democrats have their eyes on three Texas Senate seats they believe they can flip to the blue column on November 6th. If they can pull off this trifecta, it would end Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick’s Senate supermajority, and send a loud message that Texas is not as conservative as it once was. Transparency Texas has …