Latest news with #BryanHughes
Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Texas House kills drag story time bill again
AUSTIN (KXAN) — For the second consecutive session, legislation targeting drag story time events died in the Texas House of Representatives. Senate Bill 18 missed a key deadline this week to be fully considered on the House floor, effectively ending its chances of becoming state law. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick identified the legislation as a priority this session after a similar measure died in the House in 2023. Before stalling in Texas Senate, 'homosexual conduct' bill made legislative history The bill called for stripping public funding for any library that hosted a children's reading event led by a drag performer. Supporters argued it was needed to protect kids from the confusion of seeing someone dressed in drag and concerns about them being exposed to inappropriate content. However, opponents accused lawmakers of using this to crack down further on the LGBTQ+ community and said it would do nothing to actually protect Texas children. The legislation passed the Texas Senate in February along a party line vote, and a House committee then took up the legislation in May and recommended it for consideration in the full chamber. Even though SB 18 made it onto the intent calendar Tuesday, the House took no action on it in the rush of the final few days of the session. Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, reintroduced the bill this year after the previous iteration of it met a similar fate in the lower chamber two years ago. The legislation advanced further than it did then because a House committee actually debated the bill, which never happened in 2023. KXAN reached out Thursday to Hughes' office for comment about SB 18 dying this session and asked whether he would file it again when lawmakers reconvene in 2027. This story will be updated whenever Hughes shares a response. Reporting about his previous proposal, Senate Bill 1601, was featured in a KXAN investigative project called 'OutLaw: A Half-Century Criminalizing LGBTQ+ Texans.' It looked in-depth at the historic number of bills filed in the 2023 session impacting the state's LGBTQ+ community. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Texas Lawmakers Crush Most Red Flag Firearm Regulations
(Texas Scorecard) – Lawmakers in the Texas House have approved a measure to preemptively prohibit the state from adopting most firearm-related red flag laws. Senate Bill 1362, filed by State Sen. Bryan Hughes (R–Mineola) in the Senate and carried by State Rep. Cole Hefner (R–Mount Pleasant) in the House, was finally passed in an 86-53-1 vote on Wednesday. The measure would disallow judges from issuing most extreme risk protection orders, also known as 'red flag' orders or ERPOs, which prevent an individual from owning or purchasing a firearm during legal proceedings. It would also bar local jurisdictions from accepting federal funding to implement or enforce an ERPO. An individual found to be in violation could receive a state jail felony conviction. Under the measure, the only instances in which a judge could prevent an individual from owning or purchasing a gun during legal proceedings would be in certain firearm-related cases or through existing protective orders. While Texas courts currently do not issue ERPOs, the measure is intended to prevent the practice, as an increasing number of states have begun to adopt it. According to Ballotpedia, as of May 2025, 21 states—including California, Colorado, New Mexico, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, and New York—have explicitly enacted laws authorizing courts to issue ERPOs. SB 1362 'reinforces Texas' commitment to protect the rights of law-abiding citizens, while ensuring due process for all Texans,' Hefner said Tuesday when laying out the measure on the floor. State Rep. Wes Virdell (R–Brady) shared a story about law enforcement officers in Maryland who visited 61-year-old Gary J. Willis' house in the early morning to confiscate his firearms with 'no actual evidence or due process.' The visit took a turn after Willis resisted the officers. He was shot and died from his injuries. Virdell also cited research from the RAND Corporation that summarized various studies on the effectiveness of ERPOs. Overall, the evidence showed inconclusive effectiveness. After a lengthy point of order, House Democrats proposed a slate of amendments that ultimately failed, including several by State Rep. Vikki Goodwin (D–Austin) seeking to create new exceptions and strike certain provisions. The only amendment eventually approved was one by Hefner clarifying that existing domestic violence protective orders preventing the purchase or ownership of firearms are not at risk under SB 1362. State Rep. Erin Zwiener (D–Driftwood) questioned Hefner about the necessity of passing the measure. 'So, I think as I understand it, right now, it would take a law by the State of Texas—us passing a law—for there to be extreme risk protective orders. And after this bill is passed, it would take a law from the State of Texas for us to have extreme risk protective orders,' said Zwiener. 'Well, a rational person would see it that way,' responded Hefner. 'But I do believe we've seen many cities and judges and prosecutors skirt the law, manipulate it, or work around it, come up with new things that we have to come down here and chase after them to try to rein them back in.' The measure will now be sent back to senators, who are expected to concur with the limited changes ultimately approved by representatives. Senators initially passed SB 1362 in late March. Texas Gun Rights President Chris McNutt told Texas Scorecard that lawmakers' passage of the measure was 'long overdue and will help further protect Texans from future anti-gun administrations in D.C.' He also thanked Hughes, Hefner, State Rep. Briscoe Cain (R–Deer Park), and House Speaker Dustin Burrows (R–Lubbock) for helping to push SB 1362 across the finish line.
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Senate push to ban abortion pills in Texas was blocked in the House: A 'political decision'
A sweeping GOP-led proposal to crack down on abortion pills in Texas died without a House vote Tuesday, angering anti-abortion Republicans, relieving Democrats and potentially setting the stage for future electoral and legislative battles. Senate Bill 2880 would have allowed private citizens to sue organizations that mail drugs like mifepristone and misoprostol to patients in Texas for $100,000 or more per violation, mirroring the enforcement mechanism in a 2021 law that opponents dubbed the 'bounty hunter' ban. The measure also would have empowered the Texas attorney general to enforce the state's criminal abortion laws, including a ban originating in 1857, by suing violators on behalf of "unborn children of the residents of this state." Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, authored the bill. Both chambers held exhaustive, hours-long hearings on the legislation in April, and the bill passed the Senate on a party-line vote nearly a month ago. But after the measure advanced out of a House committee on Friday, it got stuck in administrative limbo and never reached the panel that sets floor calendars. The lower chamber's most fervently anti-abortion Republicans slammed House Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, and his leadership team for failing to advance the bill. "If we can't pass a bill to protect the most innocent Texans, then what are we here for in the Republican-led Legislature?" asked Rep. Nate Schatzline, R-Fort Worth, on Friday. Texas Right to Life director John Seago also criticized House leadership, telling the American-Statesman on Wednesday that he's "extremely disappointed" the bill didn't pass. In response, Burrows' press secretary, Kimberly Carmichael, pointed to this session's passage of a ban on taxpayer-funded abortion travel as evidence that "protecting innocent life and promoting the health of Texas families will always remain a top priority for the House." "Texas has the strongest pro-life protections in the nation, including laws that prohibit the mailing of abortion-inducing drugs into our state," Carmichael wrote in an email to the Statesman on Wednesday. "Speaker Burrows supports the state's ongoing legal efforts to hold those in violation of these provisions accountable." Anti-abortion groups hoped the measure would cut off the influx of abortion pills that persists despite the state's near-total abortion ban. Texans who terminate their own pregnancies cannot be held liable under current state law, meaning they do not face legal consequences for self-managed abortions. Democratic lawmakers, on the other hand, labeled the bill a 'bounty hunter bonanza' that challenged constitutional protections and judicial norms. The proposal would have prohibited state district judges from ruling on the law's constitutionality and allow those that did to be sued for $100,000 or more in damages. "These bills are designed to isolate women, threatening the family, friends, doctors, organizations, lawyers and judges they might turn to for help," said Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, D-Austin, during a floor debate in April. The bill's fate reflects a "political decision" on the part of House leadership, said Mark Jones, a Rice University political scientist who specializes in Texas politics. Polls show that Texans overwhelmingly oppose the state's current abortion ban, which makes no exceptions for rape, incest or fatal fetal diagnoses. At the same time, the majority of Texans do not support legalizing abortions up to 20 weeks, as was the case under Roe v. Wade, Jones added, citing a February poll from the University of Houston's Hobby School of Public Affairs. He posited that the availability of pills insulated Republicans from consequences over 2021 laws banning abortion. 'One of the reasons we didn't see as much blowback in 2022 and 2024 is because of the wide availability of medication abortion,' Jones said. 'If they cut off that route or close that pipeline, that could essentially transform abortion into a more salient political issue, which Republicans don't want.' In preventing a floor vote, University of Texas political scientist Jim Henson said, the House leadership shielded Republicans from a tough decision: either approve a bill that could hurt them in a general election or reject a proposal supported by the GOP base, which holds stronger conservative abortion views than most Texans and is active in primary contests. Burrows and other House leaders also likely prevented Democratic members from pulling out every stop to drag out debates on the bill, which could have killed other conservative priorities as the legislative clock ran out. "Burrows in particular and the House leadership have to balance dissent on the right with managing the opposition that played a big role in bringing them to power," Henson said. "They had to look at what the far-right was going to do and what the Democrats were going to do and make a judgment." Texas voters also lack appetite for the proposal's civil enforcement mechanism, according to an April poll of 1,200 registered voters from the University of Texas and the Texas Politics Project. Just 25% of survey respondents said they supported giving individuals the right to sue people who help bring abortion pills into Texas illegally, while more than 54% opposed such a measure. "Even among the most committed, strong Republicans, there's just not overwhelming enthusiasm for extending these kinds of bounty-hunter proposals that were pioneered here a few years ago," said Henson, who conducted the poll with his colleague, Joshua Blank. Henson noted that there was significantly more public enthusiasm for the concept behind Senate Bill 31, which would clarify that doctors can intervene when pregnant Texans face life-threatening conditions. The bipartisan bill comes after three women in Texas died after doctors hesitated or failed to provide abortions, as ProPublica reported. SB 31 was sent to Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday after clearing both chambers. But it wasn't a priority for anti-abortion groups like Texas Right to Life, Seago, the group's director, told the Statesman. "We made it clear to members: This is not a priority because it doesn't move us forward," Seago said. The group's only priorities were SB 2880 and SB 33, a measure to ban taxpayer funding for out-of-state abortion travel. One Republican state lawmaker suggested that passing SB 31, dubbed the "Life of the Mother Act" by Hughes, was a tradeoff in exchange for the restrictions promised by SB 2880. "The Texas House worked hand in hand in a bipartisan effort to pass the Life of the Mother Act," Rep. Mitch Little, R-Lewisville, said in a news conference Friday. "We think that that was a very noble thing to do. But there's a balance to this equation that has to be completed." The success of SB 31 and failure of SB 2880 suggests the GOP isn't as bullish on abortion rights as they used to be. Seago said members have become significantly less passionate about the issue since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 struck down the right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade. "We did see a huge drop off after 2022 in enthusiasm and passion for this issue and we've been dealing with Republican apathy ever since 2022," Seago said. "Some people think that we as a pro-life group still get a blank check. That's not the case." Austin Democratic Rep. Donna Howard, however, doesn't see Republicans as less interested in restricting abortion. "They've done what they can do," she said Howard, a leading voice on abortion rights who joined the Legislature in 2006. "They've spent a decade building this up, and now they have to kind of stretch to find additional things to do." Republicans succeeded in passing a number of other bills on "red meat" issues this session, including a requirement that the Ten Commandments be posted in every public school classroom, restrictions on school library books and property tax relief. But Seago said he believed House leadership could see a blowback in GOP primaries over the death of the abortion pill crackdown proposal. Abortion rights advocates, on the other hand, said they're focused on general elections. And while they're relieved that SB 2880 didn't make the cut, they remain wary of future efforts to crack down on the procedure. "Our numbers will keep growing while they're fighting over the next way to double down on their extreme abortion ban," said Shellie Hayes-McMahon, executive director of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes. Asked if he would refile the same bill in the next legislative session, which convenes in 2027, Hughes, who authored SB 2880, did not respond. The bill's House sponsor, Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, also did not respond to the Statesman's request for comment. This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas Legislature: House lets abortion pill crackdown proposal fizzle
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Another Attempt at Banning Abortion Pills Is Coming Out of Texas. The Reasoning Is Truly Twisted.
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. AUSTIN, Texas—In recent weeks, those inside the Texas Statehouse have heard story after story of pregnant people getting sick at home, afraid to call a doctor or go to the hospital. Of people who traveled out of state, far from home, to get an abortion, then hurried to catch a plane back without seeing the doctor again. Of women who described feeling scared and alone self-managing their abortions at home. Of women who spiked fevers doing so but hesitated to seek follow-up care. You might think that these stories would be an attempt to demonstrate the harm done by the state's notoriously strict abortion bans. Instead, they were told by anti-abortion activists, staff at pregnancy centers, and conservative legislators. They were speaking not to clarify the impacts of the bans—which have shuttered all clinics in Texas, driven people out of state for needed medical care, and stoked confusion and fear among medical providers, resulting in deadly delays in care—but to blame abortion pills themselves for the havoc women in the state have endured over the past several years. That's because, despite living under some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, thousands of Texans are still obtaining the pills via telemedicine each year. In response, Texas Republicans are now pushing a sweeping bill intended to crack down on the influx of the medication into the state. In a hearing late last month, the author in the Texas House, Republican Rep. Jeff Leach, told his colleagues that the pills 'wreak havoc on a woman's body.' Days later, Sen. Bryan Hughes, the bill's author in the upper chamber, said, 'Women are being harmed, women are being hurt by these pills,' on the Senate floor, just before a vote to pass the legislation. 'This bill protects women from abortion pills,' he said. 'The moms are victims here.' This is all happening despite medication abortion's having been approved by the Food and Drug Administration a quarter of a century ago and repeatedly proved safe and effective in more than 100 scientific studies spanning three decades. This includes when the pills were prescribed virtually. But abortions have continued in states with bans and even increased nationwide since the Dobbs decision—thanks in large part to the mailing of pills, and the protection, through shield laws, of the doctors who provide them. As a result, anti-abortion activists in Texas and across the country have increasingly tried to frame the drugs as dangerous to pregnant people, in a new effort to restrict access to the medication that is used in most abortions in the United States. Nationally, they are pushing Congress and the Trump administration to reimpose restrictions, and ultimately pull the pills from the market, according to Politico. Last week, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he was directing the FDA to review mifepristone, following claims by a right-wing group that the drug has a higher complication rate than previously thought, per a report released late last month—one that was not scientifically vetted and that medical experts and reproductive health advocates called 'junk science.' Some of the nearly two dozen women who sued the state after facing pregnancy complications and denials of care under the abortion bans in Texas testified against this and other anti-abortion legislation this session, angry that lawmakers who heard their stories are still pushing measures that would have made their situations even worse. 'Just because you don't like what the pills do doesn't mean you can use fake science to say that they're unsafe,' Kaitlyn Kash, one of the plaintiffs in the case against the state, who relied on the medication following a miscarriage of a much-wanted pregnancy, told Slate. 'If you truly cared, you would create laws and solutions that allowed women access and the ability to have honest conversations with their doctor about what they want. But you've driven this as much underground as you can.' Now, attorneys say, the legislation being pushed in Texas could limit access to abortion medication across the country and provide a road map for other conservative states to follow suit, regardless of what happens nationally. 'Texas is oftentimes a testing ground, or a way to see if certain kinds of laws get traction that are then picked up in other states,' said Kari White, a longtime reproductive health researcher in Texas and the executive and scientific director at Resound Research for Reproductive Health. After Texas passed its novel six-week abortion ban in 2021, known as Senate Bill 8, which allows private citizens to sue anyone who 'aids or abets' an abortion, states like Oklahoma and Idaho quickly followed, passing similar 'bounty hunter' laws to ban the procedure ahead of the Dobbs decision. The idea that abortion pills are unsafe 'is a narrative that is increasingly being put forth and that really is not aligned with the medical evidence around the safety of medication abortion or these medications in general when they are used in the context of other obstetrical care, like miscarriage management,' White told Slate. But if this kind of measure works in Texas, 'it very well may be that other states that are trying to curtail access to abortion might try something similar.' For supporters of the bill, this is the intent: 'Just like we did with the Texas Heartbeat Act back in 2021, Texas will be leading other red states on how we can fight this new concerning trend,' said John Seago, the president of Texas Right to Life, a statewide anti-abortion group that helped craft the legislation, at a Senate hearing this spring. Senate Bill 2880, dubbed the Women and Child Protection Act, is still awaiting passage by a House committee and by the full Texas House before the legislative session ends in early June. The bill builds off the bounty-hunter model from the state's six-week ban but includes civil penalties that are 10 times as high. It allows anyone to sue for $100,000 individuals or companies anywhere who distribute, manufacture, or provide abortion medication to a Texas resident. The bill would also empower people to file wrongful death lawsuits, following an effort by Seago's group to recruit men to file civil suits in response to their partners' abortions. And it would give new power to the Texas attorney general to enforce criminal abortion laws, by bringing civil lawsuits on behalf of 'unborn children,' as the bill puts it. This last move explicitly invokes the state's pre-Roe ban, known as the 1925 law, which attorneys say would open the door for the criminalization of pregnant people seeking abortions, even out of state, including in cases in which the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest or in which there is a fatal fetal anomaly. (None of these situations is an exception under current Texas law banning abortion.) 'Basically, the attorney general is standing in as though he were the father of the fetus,' said Elizabeth Sepper, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. 'And it does set up a posture where it's clear that the irresponsible parent, then, is the person who doesn't want to be pregnant, very early in a pregnancy.' If S.B. 2880 does pass, it's unclear how it would play out in court, given that it includes what Sepper and other attorneys say are highly unusual interstate legal questions and apparent attempts to evade judicial review. The bill subjects attorneys who might challenge it to additional fees and prevents state courts from finding it unconstitutional. The bill notes that any state judge who does can be sued for $100,000. On top of this, according to the legislation, if someone filing suit doesn't know what specific brand of pill was involved in the illegal abortion, all manufacturers of the drugs would be liable according to their percentage of the national market share—a provision that attorneys have deemed 'bananas' and 'absolutely wild' in interviews. The new legislation comes as lawmakers in Texas and elsewhere have done little in recent years to respond to reports of pregnant patients facing serious complications or dying due to denials of care under the abortion bans, as doctors—facing potential penalties of up to life in prison or contending with hospital systems that have tied their hands—hesitate to intervene during medical crises. People living in states with abortion bans are twice as likely to die in pregnancy, childbirth, or shortly after, according to a recent study, which found that in the first full year after Texas passed its six-week ban, maternal mortality in the state increased by 56 percent. Infant mortality, too, increased significantly after the state banned abortion. ProPublica found that sepsis rates for women hospitalized after miscarrying in the second trimester increased more than 50 percent after Texas banned abortion, and it identified three women in the state who died preventable deaths due to lack of timely miscarriage care. Dozens more have spoken publicly about nearly dying or being forced to flee the state for care when faced with medical emergencies and diagnoses of fatal fetal conditions. A bipartisan bill also moving through the legislature that is a limited attempt to clarify when doctors can intervene in medical crises would likely not actually prevent many of these harms, according to several attorneys focused on reproductive health law. Meanwhile, White, the Texas researcher, says that S.B. 2880 would probably cause more delays in care for miscarriages and other complications. The bill's authors did not respond to a request for comment. Multiple attorneys told Slate that the targeting of drug manufacturers could also further restrict access to the pills beyond state lines, including in cases of medical emergencies. 'It could potentially upend pretty much the entire supply chain of medication abortion, at least with respect to providing any care to Texans—and Texas is 20 percent of the reproductive population of America,' said one Texas attorney, who specializes in reproductive health care but asked not to be identified because of potential involvement in future litigation. If manufacturers, doctors, and 'helpers' fear being sued without even a requirement to prove that a specific drug was used, the attorney said, companies are 'highly likely to stop providing pills in a way that could ever reach a Texan—including, potentially, by not wanting to provide pills to out-of-state providers who are seeing Texans physically in that other state.' If S.B. 2880 had been in effect a few years ago, Kash and her family could have been criminalized for leaving the state for an abortion following a devastating fatal fetal diagnosis in late 2021. And it could have meant more barriers to care when she miscarried during a subsequent pregnancy and ended up turning to an online pharmacy after one in Austin delayed filling her prescription. For Kash, her fear and anger that legislators are now pushing bills that could further complicate medical care for people like her is exacerbated by the fact that the law would also seek to stymie lawsuits like hers from being filed in the first place, by penalizing attorneys and judges who might argue that the law is unconstitutional. Zurawski v. Texas, which Kash signed on to, was the first suit of its kind, and it brought more public attention to the harms of the abortion bans and the ways that medical exceptions weren't working in practice, in Texas and in other states. 'Now you're saying, 'Oh, well, we're going to pass another bill to continue to make it harder for women to get health care, to potentially open the door to [the] 1925 [law], to continue to make it so manufacturers are maybe afraid to put these drugs in Texas, or pharmacies are afraid to hold them, or doctors are afraid to write the script,' ' she told Slate. ' 'But we're also going to make it so that women can't come forward and do what the plaintiffs in Zurawski did.' '
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Proposal to clarify when Texas doctors can perform life-saving abortions faces critical vote
The House is slated to vote on a bill to clarify Texas' near-total abortion ban Wednesday, after it passed the Senate unanimously last month. The bill is expected to garner bipartisan support, despite some concerns from both sides of the aisle. Texas banned all abortions three years ago, with a narrow exception that allows doctors to terminate a pregnancy only to save a pregnant patient's life. Immediately, doctors and legal experts warned that this exception was too narrow and vaguely written, and the penalties too severe, to ensure that women could get life-saving care. That has proven true in many cases. Dozens of women have come forward with stories of medically necessary abortions delayed or denied, and at least three women have died as a result of these laws. Faced with these stories, Republican lawmakers have conceded that the language of the law might need some clearing up. Senate Bill 31, also called the Life of the Mother Act, does not expand the exceptions or restore abortion access. It instead aims to clarify when a doctor can terminate a pregnancy under the existing exceptions by aligning language between the state's abortion laws, codifying court rulings and requiring education for doctors and lawyers on the nuances of the law. The bill was tightly negotiated among lobbyists for doctors and hospitals, anti-abortion groups and Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Bryan Hughes of Mineola and Rep. Charlie Geren of Fort Worth, who carried the bill. 'All of these groups are going to, with one voice, tell the medical community and moms and everyone else, 'Here's the law in Texas. It's clear. Let's follow the law,'' Hughes said on the Senate floor in late April. In the Senate, Republicans threw their support behind the bill, while Democrats pushed back on its narrowness, noting that Texas law still does not allow abortions in cases of rape, incest or lethal fetal anomalies. 'The folks who are working on this fix are, from my perspective, the folks who have created the problem,' said Houston Sen. Molly Cook. 'Over the past four years, we've watched women suffer and die, and this bill is the confirmation that we all agree that something is broken in Texas.' In the House, however, the bill may face headwinds from both directions. In a committee hearing last month, some conservative Republicans raised concerns that this bill offered a loophole enabling doctors to work around the strict limits of the law. Rep. Mike Olcott, a Fort Worth Republican, asked what would prevent doctors from 'checking a box' to say a patient's life was in danger to provide 'abortion on demand,' a sentiment echoed by other conservatives on the committee. The bill's architects have been careful to say this is not a 'choice' bill, but rather a bill aimed at addressing doctors' liability and pregnant women's health needs. 'I have voted for every anti-abortion bill that's been in front of the House since I've been here for 24 years,' Geren said at the committee. 'This is not a choice bill. This is a protect-the-mothers'-life bill.' Some doctors groups, including the Texas chapter of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, have criticized the bill for not going far enough to protect doctors and the patients they treat. Others say these changes will be sufficient to free doctors to perform medically necessary abortions without fear of lengthy prison sentences and massive fines. 'At the end of the day, our hope is that political differences can be set aside, because at the heart of this is a pregnant mother whose health and safety are on the line,' Texas Hospital Association president John Hawkins said in a statement. 'Hospitals and doctors need to be able to act on the medical facts and merits in front of them, without fear of prosecution. We sincerely believe this will have an immediate and positive impact, helping us provide life-saving care to our patients.' The House will also hear Senate Bill 33 on Wednesday, which prohibits a city or county from using taxpayer dollars to pay for abortion-related expenses. The bill is aimed at Austin and San Antonio, where city officials have allocated budget dollars to support abortion funds that help pay for people to travel to abortion clinics out-of-state. Disclosure: Texas Hospital Association has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here. First round of TribFest speakers announced! Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Maureen Dowd; U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio; Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker; U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-California; and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas are taking the stage Nov. 13–15 in Austin. Get your tickets today!
