The longtime Rio Grande City representative, who switched parties in 2021, has played a key role in gun and immigration legislation this year.

State Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, tacks two of his stalled bills onto legislation that would create a border police unit and increase state spending in border communities.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle threw their support behind a new requirement that the unit use only commissioned peace officers for enforcement actions.

Days after another mass shooting in Texas, the measure to raise the minimum age from 18 to 21 to purchase semi-automatic rifles appears to have failed.

A bill in Texas that would raise the purchase age of AR-style rifles has abruptly advanced, two days after a mass shooting at an outdoor mall near Dallas.

The legislation would raise the minimum age for purchasing certain firearms but likely wouldn’t have been a hindrance to the Allen gunman obtaining a weapon. The bill still faces an uphill climb in the Legislature.

Almost all the preferred candidates of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dade Phelan nabbed enough votes to head into the November general election. And nearly all sitting House and Senate members seeking to return to the Texas Capitol kept their seats.

Republicans in Austin have been after local governments for years, pushing aside local laws and rules on a long list of issues where local and state powers overlap. Now they're recruiting fellow Republicans for local offices, to try to change things at the ground level.

The Rio Grande City lawmaker was the least liberal Democrat in the Texas House this year, according to a political scientist’s rankings of lawmakers.

Statewide officials are campaigning in the Democratic stronghold and GOP groups are now targeting statehouse districts.