Katherine Haenschen Posts

The stats from Wendy's report are impressive: 85 percent of her 84,704 individual donations were under $50, as over 71,843 people supported her campaign. She has donors from all 254 counties in Texas, and in-state money makes up 70 percent of her haul. Burnt Orange Report reacts to this news...in GIF form.

The reason to sign up for health insurance is not only to stay healthy, but also to avoid financial ruin in the event that disaster strikes. Ask yourself if you can afford a $30,000 appendectomy, or a $40,000 ovarian cyst, or a $12,000 broken arm.

Texas State Senator Leticia Van de Putte received the nod from Emily's List Friday in her run for Lieutenant Governor. The women's grassroots organization brings with it money and clout for the upcoming Governor's race, one that's gaining national attention with filibuster star Wendy Davis at the top of the Democratic ticket.

Since 2012, unpaid campaign staffers for Republican Texas Representative Steve Stockman slept in a ramshackle garage. Until recently, that is, when fire marshals shut down the operation in the building which for years had been considered unsafe.

In Texas, anti-abortion "Christians" are advocating for infiltrating networks of pro-choice activists who are providing transportation and help to women impacted by HB2, Rick Perry's back-door abortion ban.

Several members of the Texas government had to sign affidavits at the polls because their names on their drivers' licenses do not match the names registered at the polls. Greg Abbott, Republican Attorney General, and State Senators Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte were just some of the many that faced that obstacle voting.

At a forum in Clear Lake, TX, all four Republican candidates for the state's Lieutenant Governor stated their support for a repeal of the 17th amendment, which allows for direct election of U.S. Senators rather than election by a state's legislature. Let that sink in: The four Republicans vying for the second most powerful position in the state don't think Texas voters should select their own U.S. Senators.

The mayor of Pasadena, Texas, has proposed replacing two of the city's eight single-member districts with two at-large districts, a move some consider an effort to decrease Hispanic voters' ability to elect candidates of their choice. Once a passable microcosm for the demographic changes in Texas, Pasadena is also now poised to become a potential test for redistricting in the post-Section 4 era.

If Texas wants to pass laws with discriminatory intent, redistricting schemes that are unconstitutional, or photo voter ID laws that will have a retrogressive effect on minority voters, John Cornyn is A-OK with that, and the senator wants to make sure you know it.

There are plenty of reasons one can list to argue why she shouldn't -- no Democrat has won since 1994, the state "isn't there yet," Abbott's got all that money, et cetera, et cetera.

But there are many compelling rational arguments in favor of why she should, and a few strong emotional arguments about why Democrats need her to get in the race, continue our party's revitalization, and move the needle.

That groan you hear emanating from downtown Austin is the collective exasperation of staffers and lawmakers who are about to be called back for a third special session this summer. The House and Senate ran out of time to finish a transportation funding plan, in part because much of the second special session was spent on a high-profile fight against anti-woman legislation designed to block access to abortion in Texas.

Monday morning, the Texas State Senate's Health and Human Services committee, chaired by Sen. Jane Nelson, began meeting in the Senate Finance room to hear testimony on SB 1, the latest and least-greatest iteration of the Republicans' back-door abortion ban in Texas. As it was in the House, the hearings inside and the protests outside are expected to be contentious.

Evidently Texas's business leaders council doesn't think women's work is worth the same as that of a man, or that women should be able to sue if they're discriminated against on the basis of sex. And not so surprisingly, Governor Perry agreed and vetoed the Lilly Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act earlier this week.

While Texas Sen. John Cornyn cosponsored Ted Cruz's amendment to defund the Affordable Care Act in the Senate, and voted thirty times to repeal the law that institutes a wide range of common sense health insurance reforms, he was writing the government in support of a grant application that would be funded by Obamacare.

Remember this when Rick Perry announces his 2016 Presidential campaign of errors — he vetoed a bill to support American workers and create American jobs that passed the Texas House and Senate with broad, bipartisan margins.

Rick "Sorry, oops" Perry has called a special session of the legislature to attempt to implement interim redistricting maps based on previous maps which were found by the courts to be intentionally discriminatory against minorities.

As the 83rd Legislative session draws to a close, Texas' elected officials are burning the midnight oil. Whether anything gets done is another story all together.

Wednesday, by a vote of 29-2, the Texas Senate passed a budget that fails to restore all of the $5.4 billion cut from public education in the 2011 session. Democratic Senators Wendy Davis and Sylvia Garcia were the lone votes against it.

Y'all, someone who puts the rights of shopping bags over the rights of human beings has a real serious problem.

Rick Perry's job-poachin' trip to California didn't sit well with the locals, especially when he tried to steal companies away from their local communities. In Oxnard, Perry met with Haas Automotive, located in Ventura County. The company is planning an expansion, and is flirting with leaving California rather than expand on land adjacent to their current headquarters.
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