> The 35th Congressional District was redrawn to give Republicans an advantage. Now the party is pouring money into the race for the open seat.
> The Public Utility Commission of Texas is asking a Travis County judge to block the release of information showing where data centers and virtual currency mines operate, saying those details could aid terrorists.
> The lawsuit filed Monday pits the state agency responsible for regulating utilities against Attorney General Ken Paxton’soffice over the scope of Texas’ public-records law and the state’s protections for critical infrastructure.
> At the center of the dispute are two seemingly basic geographic details: the county where a facility is located and the regional water planning area in which it sits.
> The last U.S. Senate race in Texas to go without a debate was in 2000. Paxton’s campaign has not responded to repeated requests for comment about whether he ever intends to debate.
> But Paxton’s in good company. Amid an unusually competitive political landscape in Texas this midterm election, almost every Republican nominee for a statewide seat appears to be dodging debate invitations from their Democratic counterparts. Notably, Gov. Greg Abbott’s campaign has not publicly agreed to debate Gina Hinojosa, despite her repeated calls for him to meet her on stage. Abbott debated his Democratic opponents in each of his three previous gubernatorial races.
> Vote for James Talarico, he has one house.
> Ken Paxton, one of the party’s top Senate candidates and a Trump loyalist, said that “everybody’s numbers dropped” after the event, according to audio obtained by The Times.
> Republicans are pouring an unprecedented sum into Texas to rescue Attorney General Ken Paxton's Senate campaign, but the flood of cash has yet to break open a race that remains deadlocked five weeks before Election Day.
> Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has backed the continued development of data centers in Texas despite growing opposition to the facilities, though he reportedly argued that safeguards are needed to protect residents’ water supplies and electricity costs.
> Monday marks seven months since the U.S.-Iran war began, which has restricted oil and gas exports from the Middle East, raising prices ahead of the Nov. 3 election.
> The 30-day disaster declaration, which can be extended indefinitely, allowed Abbott to lift some restrictions on commercial transportation, which he said will alleviate some of the elevated costs. Diesel fuel is used in farming and commercial shipping, so elevated fuel prices are passed through to consumers in the form of higher costs for goods at the grocery store.
> Republican Don Huffines and Democrat Sarah Eckhardt are among the candidates vying to become the state’s chief financial officer.
> The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts is the state’s chief financial officer. Among the office’s main responsibilities is collecting sales taxes from local government, managing hundreds of state contracts on behalf of other agencies and estimating the state’s revenue and economy, which instructs the Legislature’s budget drafting every two years.
> The office is also in charge of implementing a new $1 billion program that will offer families taxpayer-funded vouchers to send their kids to private schools and pay for educational expenses.
> Ken Paxton has the morals of a lizard, and that is probably being unkind to lizards. He has proven to be corrupt. He has lied, cheated openly on his ex-wife and stolen. He should have been removed from office when the Texas House impeached him. Instead, a purely political play with no connection to the substance of his offenses allowed his actions to go unpunished.
Poxton’s latest piece of misdirection appeared in our mailbox this weekend. It cites a July 31 article in the Texas Tribune, giving the impression that the Trib actually supports or endorses this piece of shit, when in fact, the cited article was merely reporting the contents of his own press release.