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Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas:
Ten Democratic U.S House members have demanded that Governor Greg Abbott withdraw Texas National Guard troops that he has sent to Illinois and Oregon on the orders of Donald Trump: https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/politics/2025/10/09/texas-lawmakers-oppose-guard-use-in-out-of-state-policing/86572196007/
...Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker notes that Republican Governors Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma and Phil Scott of Vermont have both also expressed opposition to the Texas deployment to other states: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5551994-pritzker-gop-troop-deployment/
...A federal appeals court has halted the deployment of Texas National Guard troops into Chicago, but has stopped short of ordering them back to Texas: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/appeals-court-rejects-trump-request-deploy-national-guard-chicago-area-2025-10-11/
The hearing over the map resulting from the Trump-ordered redistricting of Texas in El Paso ended on Friday and is now under consideration by a panel of three judges: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2025/10/10/political-or-racial-three-takeaways-from-federal-hearing-on-new-tx-congressional-map/
...The judges may be annoyed as their review of the case begins with the evasiveness of several defense witnesses: https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/new-details-emerge-in-federal-court-about-texas-secretive-redistricting-map/
A 30-year veteran professor at UT Austin writes that with conservative attacks on academic freedom lately, she barely recognizes the place: https://www.statesman.com/opinion/columns/your-voice/article/opinion-35-years-ut-austin-hardly-recognize-21089836.php
Houston friends! Join Progress Texas in The Heights on Monday October 20 for our H-Town Hits Back live podcast taping event! Tickets and sponsorship opportunities are available now: https://act.progresstexas.org/a/houston2025event
Thanks for listening! Our monthly donors form the backbone of our funding, and if you're a regular, we'd like to invite you to join the team! Find our web store and other ways to support our important work at https://progresstexas.org.
The staff, and special guest Julio Salinas, vent at the end of a long week that consisted of Texas-sized problems: from Gov. Abbott sending Texas National Guard troops to Illinois to Ken Paxton's ego, and threat as the top lawyer and candidate in 2026. Plus, what's concerning us and what's keeping us hopeful in these busy, chaotic times.
Thanks for listening! Learn more about Progress Texas at https://progresstexas.org/.
Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas:
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted a stay of execution for Robert Roberson, who would have become the first person in the US put to death in a shaken baby syndrome case: https://www.texastribune.org/2025/10/09/robert-roberson-execution-blocked-texas-court-of-criminal-appeals
...A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Texas National Guard deployment in Chicago: https://www.texastribune.org/2025/10/08/texas-national-guard-abbott-deployment-chicago/
... Governor Abbott is apparently using this deployment to fundraise for his 2026 re-election campaign: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/greg-abbott-texas-national-guard-fundraising-21090617.php
...A new poll from the University of Houston and Texas Southern University shows that Texas Democratic Senate candidates within small margin of Republicans: https://www.newsweek.com/james-talaricos-chances-against-gop-candidates-texas-senate-race-poll-10855949
...The State Republican Executive Committee will convene on Saturday as part of the Texas GOP’s push to block Republican lawmakers from the ballot: https://www.texastribune.org/2025/10/09/texas-republican-lawsuit-ken-paxton-close-primaries/
...Travis County Commissioners have approved two contracts to use voter-approved taxpayer money that will help the county create more affordable child care: https://www.kxan.com/news/local/travis-county/travis-co-commissioners-set-to-approve-millions-in-child-care-funding/
Houston friends! Join Progress Texas in The Heights on Monday October 20 for our H-Town Hits Back live podcast taping event! Tickets and sponsorship opportunities are available now: https://act.progresstexas.org/a/houston2025event
Thanks for listening! Our monthly donors form the backbone of our funding, and if you're a regular, we'd like to invite you to join the team! Find our web store and other ways to support our important work at https://progresstexas.org.
Texas Blue Action and Powered By People - already two of the Lone Star State's most prominent powerhouses in progressive voter activation and grassroots organizing - have announced a merger of Powered by People’s voter registration program with Texas Blue Action's relational organizing network. Executive Director and Progress Texas podcast regular Lana Hansen brings us the details on the formation of a truly unprecedented super-org, designed to drag Texas progressives to the polls en masse!
Learn more: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/themerger
Thanks for listening! Learn more about Progress Texas and how to support our ongoing work at https://progresstexas.org/.
Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas:
Protesters are beginning to mass in Chicago in anticipation of the arrival of National Guard troops, hundreds of whom have come to their city from Texas: https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2025/10/08/texas-national-guard-broadview-illinois
...A federal judge in Illinois will consider a restraining order against the troop deployment today: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/federal-court-weigh-trumps-deployment-national-guard-troops-126354288
...A new list of companies under the title "Governor Abbott Boycott" is circulating in response to our state's meddling in the affairs of other states: https://www.chron.com/culture/article/national-guard-deployment-boycott-21090650.php
The Texas congressional delegation remains neatly divided by party on the federal government shutdown, which now enters its second week: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2025/10/08/texas-lawmakers-dig-in-as-shutdown-rolls-into-second-week/
The author of the new Texas congressional map testified yesterday that with the 2021 map, he had been told to leave certain minority-majority districts alone - but not on the new map: https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/top-gop-mapmaker-describes-a-texas-gerrymander-ordered-up-by-washington/
...An attorney for U.S. Reps Jasmine Crockett and Al Green pressed that same mapmaker on his knowledge that he was manipulating districts full of voters of color: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2025/10/08/lawyer-for-jasmine-crockett-says-drawer-of-new-texas-district-maps-knew-they-discriminated/
Governor Greg Abbott has threatened to withhold state road maintenance money from major Texas cities if they don't remove rainbow crosswalks painted in solidarity with their LGBTQ+ citizens: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/texas/2025/10/08/abbott-orders-dallas-and-other-texas-cities-to-remove-rainbow-crosswalks-or-lose-funding/
Houston friends! Join Progress Texas in The Heights on Monday October 20 for our H-Town Hits Back live podcast taping event! Tickets and sponsorship opportunities are available now: https://act.progresstexas.org/a/houston2025event
Thanks for listening! Our monthly donors form the backbone of our funding, and if you're a regular, we'd like to invite you to join the team! Find our web store and other ways to support our important work at https://progresstexas.org.
We're joined today by Adrian Shelley and Cassidy Levin of the national watchdog group Public Citizen, who have uncovered a massive and years-long apparent pay-to-play scheme in which large-dollar donors to Governor Greg Abbott's campaign finance PAC appear to have been rewarded with very large, and in some cases, dubiously documented, state contracts - a situation that, while legal under Texas law, clearly raises considerable ethics questions.
Learn more about Public Citizen's Texas office at https://www.citizen.org/article/about-the-public-citizen-texas-office/.
Thanks for listening! Learn more about Progress Texas and how you can support our ongoing work at https://progresstexas.org/.
Attorney General Ken Paxton has issued a press release regarding a new escalation his office plans to execute against "transgenderism and Antifa", long on right-wing belligerence and short on actual facts: https://www.keranews.org/news/2025-10-07/ag-ken-paxton-announces-undercover-operations-of-leftist-terror-cells
Houston friends! Join Progress Texas in The Heights on Monday October 20 for our H-Town Hits Back live podcast taping event! Tickets and sponsorship opportunities are available now: https://act.progresstexas.org/a/houston2025event
Thanks for listening! Our monthly donors form the backbone of our funding, and if you're a regular, we'd like to invite you to join the team! Find our web store and other ways to support our important work at https://progresstexas.org.
Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas:
Around 200 National Guard troops from Texas have been deployed to Chicago over the protests of Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, ostensibly to back up ICE agents: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WRl6UUwYGI
...Trump's pretext is a countering of "rebellion against the federal government": https://www.keranews.org/texas-news/2025-10-06/texas-national-guard-trump-illinois-abbott-pritzker
Congressman Wesley Hunt has jumped into the U.S. Senate race officially, compounding an already considerable mess for the GOP: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly/2025/10/06/the-gops-texas-senate-mess-00595553
During the El Paso trial over the new Texas congressional map, State Senator Phil King yesterday suddenly remembered a conversation with Adam Kincaid about race being considered in its design: https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/in-testimony-top-texas-republican-remembers-another-conversation-with-gop-mapmaker/
Professors at Texas Tech have begun to worry that vague instructions from their MAGA leadership about what and what not to discuss in class have begun to undermine the quality of their teaching: https://www.texastribune.org/2025/10/07/texas-tech-university-system-faculty-gender-identity/
A New York-based company, employing at least two Texas GOP operatives, has been awarded a lucrative contract to oversee Texas' new private school voucher program: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/odyssey-texas-private-school-voucher-21087243.php
Houston friends! Join Progress Texas in The Heights on Monday October 20 for our H-Town Hits Back live podcast taping event! Tickets and sponsorship opportunities are available now: https://act.progresstexas.org/a/houston2025event
Thanks for listening! Our monthly donors form the backbone of our funding, and if you're a regular, we'd like to invite you to join the team! Find our web store and other ways to support our important work at https://progresstexas.org.
Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas:
Governor Greg Abbott approved a request by Donald Trump to deploy Texas National Guard troops into both Chicago and Portland, Oregon, under the pretext of protecting ICE agents from Antifa: https://youtu.be/8QFKsX1s_lM?si=Xa-pRwaY6YGgoQ0S
...A Trump-appointed federal judge has temporarily blocked that move: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5540272-donald-trump-blocked-oregon-guard/
California's Prop 50, with which that state's voters will decide whether or not to counter-gerrymander their state against Texas, has seen recent lobbying by Fort Worth State Rep. Nicole Collier in San Francisco: https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/prop-50-fundraising-21066129.php
Texas LGBTQ+ students and their families face multiple obstacles as they try to continue their social groups in spite of new state laws banning them: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/05/us/politics/texas-lgbtq-schools.html
Texas is second only to Florida in the number of books we've banned from our school libraries - here are five of the dumbest new picks: https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/dumbest-books-texas-schools-banned-last-year-40602086/
Houston friends! Join Progress Texas in The Heights on Monday October 20 for our H-Town Hits Back live podcast taping event! Tickets and sponsorship opportunities are available now: https://act.progresstexas.org/a/houston2025event
Thanks for listening! Our monthly donors form the backbone of our funding, and if you're a regular, we'd like to invite you to join the team! Find our web store and other ways to support our important work at https://progresstexas.org.
Yet another chaotic political week (should we say, typically chaotic?) ends this Friday afternoon with our regular roundtable pod. How the Democrats can have the edge with the federal shutdown, what's at stake and what to understand about the court fight over the new state congressional map, a conversation with a new key player in the RGV and more - the staff breaks down another wild week in Texas politics.
Thanks for listening! Learn more about Progress Texas and how you can help support our work at https://progresstexas.org/.
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