Texas Comptroller Don Huffines announced today that the state’s record-setting education freedom program is giving Texas parents a choice to enroll their children in the school that best fits their individual educational needs. Over 85,000 students have already confirmed participation for the 2026-2027 school year in the Texas Education Freedom Account (TEFA) program according to the first-annual report to the Legislature on student participation released by Huffines.

U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) introduced the Protecting Our Kids from Harmful Research Act. This legislation prohibits the use of federal funds for research or publications that promote dangerous, life-altering, and irreversible gender transitions for minors.

For most Texans, three things reign supreme: Football, Oil & Gas, and the Rule of Law. Early last month, a Bexar County judge ruled on two of the three, ordering San Antonio's CPS Energy to pay nearly $400 million to honor natural gas contracts it agreed to during Winter Storm Uri in 2021. The message was clear: CPS Energy must pay its bills just like everyone else, but the ruling goes well beyond CPS’s unpaid invoices.

Executive Director Wei Wang welcomed RRC inspectors to the Austin headquarters for training on advanced fire prevention and electrical safety codes. To enhance inspector expertise and ensure safer field operations, the RRC has partnered with the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service to introduce a new fire-prevention training program. This initiative is designed to equip oil and gas inspectors with practical skills to identify and mitigate wildfire risks and electrical hazards.

Governor Abbott has championed the Texas Stock Exchange since its announcement. In September 2024, the Governor celebrated its creation during a press conference at the Governor’s Mansion. The Governor congratulated the exchange upon receiving SEC approval in September 2025. On July 6, 2026, as trading operations began, Governor Abbott welcomed the opening of the Texas Stock Exchange and the greater competition and opportunity it brings to American capital markets.

We've long wondered why states have been happy to disregard federal law on marijuana (we have always been in favor of legalization), but not use of other medicines and drugs. A state that insisted on asserting its sovereignty to allow people to buy and sell any medical product they wish, with informed consent, would become a mecca for innovation and freedom and better health. Montana has taken the first step in that direction.

Huffines previously served in the Texas Senate, where he built a reputation as one of the Legislature's strongest defenders of taxpayers and individual liberty. He helped pass legislation protecting the Second Amendment, strengthening border security, defending the sanctity of life, expanding free markets, increasing government transparency, and safeguarding private property rights.

The Texas General Land Office (GLO) posted Amendment 22 to the Hurricane Harvey $5.6 Billion State Action Plan for a federally required 30-day public comment period. The proposed amendment updates funding allocations and administrative language to better align available resources with current program needs, support the effective and strategic expenditure of federal disaster recovery funds, and ensure continued implementation of Hurricane Harvey recovery programs.

Governor Greg Abbott announced that 17 Rural Pathway Excellence Partnership (R-PEP) planning and expansion grants totaling $2,560,000 have been awarded to 17 rural school district partnerships. The $200,000 planning grants, administered by the Texas Education Agency, will support prospective R-PEPs in designing pathways focused on labor market alignment, operational readiness, and launch preparation. The $80,000 expansion grants will support existing R-PEPs seeking to expand by adding districts and/or pathways.

Congress must follow his lead and codify this action into law. That’s why I introduced the Initiating Biomedical Outcomes to Garner Advancements into Innovative Neuroplastogen Efficacy (IBOGAINE) Act to cement this potential breakthrough for our veterans. According to a study published by Stanford University School of Medicine in 2024, participants who received ibogaine treatment experienced reductions of 88% in PTSD symptoms, 87% in depression symptoms, and 81% in anxiety symptoms after just one month.

The Texas General Land Office (GLO) will host a homeowner outreach event on Saturday, August 8, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the St. Phillip’s Community Center in Dallas to assist residents impacted by the 2024 disasters. This event will provide information on available programs to help eligible homeowners repair, rebuild, or receive reimbursement for storm-related damage. Dallas County homeowners are encouraged to attend and learn more about eligibility for rebuilding, repair, and reimbursement assistance programs.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins was on Capitol Hill for the Republican Study Committee's (RSC) member meeting this week. Under her leadership, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has put American farmers and ranchers first by expanding markets, rooting out fraud and abuse in the SNAP program, and protecting American farmland from foreign adversary ownership.

But once again we were impressed by Pennsylvania's Democratic Senator John Fetterman, who had the backbone to say he regrets there wasn't a more bipartisan pursuit of the truth about the virus and even expressed some long overdue apologies to the small businesses that were ruined during COVID lockdowns. Not a peep from the other Democrats.

Governor Greg Abbott today attended the grand opening of Bob’s House of Hope and toured the nation’s first safe house exclusively for male survivors of human trafficking. Bob’s House of Hope provides a secure residential environment, trauma-informed care, and support services tailored to adult male survivors. The facility fills a critical gap in the national response to commercial sexual exploitation and strengthens Texas’ efforts to protect victims and hold traffickers accountable.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins today announced a new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) initiative to recruit veterans, transitioning service members, and military spouses into mission-critical careers that protect America’s food supply, strengthen rural communities, and defend the nation’s agricultural security. USDA’s 100 Hires in 100 Days initiative, a department-wide effort to accelerate the hiring of veterans, transitioning service members, and military spouses across the Department.

The 82nd Texas Legislature established the Emergency and Trauma Care Education Partnership (ETEP) program in 2011 to support partnerships between hospitals and graduate medical programs in an effort to increase the number of emergency medicine and trauma care physician residents and fellows. ETEP also supports partnerships that enhance training for registered nurses pursuing graduate degrees or certificates.

As Unleash Prosperity research has previously shown, Americans enjoy the cheapest generic drugs in the world, and our drug pricing system is much better than most nations. Drugs are the only thing in health care that always eventually get less expensive. But biotech drugs, which are complex living organisms, are different.   We have "biosimilars," which are the closest thing to generics for these drugs, but they are expensive.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health Policy, sent a bipartisan letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent outlining a strategy to counter illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing conducted by China’s distant-water fleet. The letter identifies vulnerabilities in China’s IUU fishing fleet linked to its reliance on a relatively limited number of support vessels, calls for the imposition of sanctions on such vessels, and specifically identifies 29 currently unsanctioned vessels. 

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more advanced, we must be more prepared than ever to defend our nation from cyber warfare. For years, China-backed actors have looked for any vulnerability to target our government and civilian networks and attack our critical infrastructure — including the successful data breach of four million federal government workers in 2015 and the Salt Typhoon attack in 2024. Now, advanced AI models have supercharged these threats.

Governor Greg Abbott today released the response from the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to his June 10 directive that shows they are already taking concrete steps to protect residential ratepayers from the costs of data center expansion. Governor Abbott will continue to work with the Legislature to codify these protections and ensure data centers do not come at the expense of Texas ratepayers.