• Despite Trump and Rick Perry’s Best Efforts, Another Coal Plant Eats the Dust in Texas
   
• Exxon Appears to Mislead State to Secure Tax Break

• The Soul-Crushing Emptiness of the Texas Governor’s Race
   
• Texas Governor Greg Abbott Opens His Mind to Marijuana Decriminalization… Kinda

The Lede
Ted Cruz's Fear Factory

• Fear, revanchism and chauvinistic Texas tropes: Cruz’s re-election strategy might not be pretty, but that’s not the point.
   
• While Beto O'Rourke is flying high on hope and optimism, Cruz’s natural instinct is to stoke fear and resentment — it’s the stuff his political career was forged in.
   
• Heading into the final stretch, Cruz has dialed up his extremist caricature of O’Rourke with the explicit intent of scaring the bejeezus out of old, white and conservative Texans.

• Will Sarah Davis’ Odd-Duck District Keep the Legislature’s Most Moderate Republican?
   
• After the Flood, the Political Storm in Houston?

• Hays County’s Transformation Gives Democrats Hope in Hill Country House District
   
• Strangest State: October 2018

From the archives
Texas Lawmaker on 45 Years of Sexism, Racism at the Capitol

• State Representative Senfronia Thompson is the longest-serving woman and African American in the Texas Legislature.
   
• In the midst of the #MeToo movement, the Democrat talks about her experiences with racism and sexism under the pink dome.
   
• "I tell God all the time, 'These sons of bitches make me so mad. I want to cuss ’em out, ooh Jesus.'"

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