Local leaders and rural revitalization experts say Texas’ smallest towns can survive — despite a shift to urban and suburban counties — but it will take investments.

Although Texas counties are not required to provide ambulance services, many are digging deep to pay for their own fleet or to contract out services.

LGBTQ+ advocates called the ban one of the most extreme measures enacted by a local government.

The average age of Texans last year was 37, while the Legislature’s average age was 55. Hurdles to voting and the unique challenges young candidates encounter fuel the mismatch.

Inspired by the work of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, the biennial “cumbre” helps South Texans organize for political change.

Jolt, which advocates for more Latino voting participation, says the attorney general’s probe spurred threatening comments online.

The move escalates Texas Republicans’ brewing fight with urban counties over initiatives to proactively send applications to unregistered voters.

A Texas appeals court overturned the illegal voting conviction of Crystal Mason earlier this year.

The request came from a local pastor who is part of a group that trains people to “defend their freedom and liberty.” Other faith leaders have pushed back.

In a lawsuit challenging redistricting in Galveston County, the 5th Circuit said the protections afforded to a single racial group don’t apply to multiple groups who collectively claim voting rights violations.

Black and Asian American voters collectively made up just 15% of the turnout in Texas’ 2020 and 2022 elections, according to exit polls.

After repeated attempts to convince the City Council to make zoning changes, residents asked the federal government to intervene.

Parents and medical providers of transgender adolescents sued Texas, challenging the constitutionality of a restriction on puberty blockers and hormone therapy.

A new Census Bureau report shows the Asian American population went up 5.5% in one year, outpacing overall state growth.

A local volunteer died by suicide ahead of the center’s grand opening, reminding the West Texas community why such spaces are important.

One organization helping Texans pay their electric bills said the average household was $1,400 behind.

The 5th Circuit expressed skepticism about arguments from both sides in considering whether a coalition of Black and Latino voters should be granted the same protections as a single racial group under the Voting Rights Act.

University President Walter Wendler canceled a drag performance last year, claiming such shows “denigrate and demean women.”

As Kayden Asher tumbled through several foster placements, Texas leaders intensified their efforts to regulate the lives of LGBTQ+ people.

Support once afforded LGBTQ+ foster kids has vanished and a culture of silence has blanketed the agency tasked with raising children growing up in the system.

Voting is habit-forming and high schools are critical for starting that pattern.

Los residentes presentaron más de 60 quejas en contra de Colony Ridge. No obtuvieron muchas soluciones del estado.

In the staunchly conservative Panhandle, LGBTQ+ Texans say political and legal battles overlook their humanity.

The decision means university President Walter Wendler could cancel an on-campus drag show next week. He canceled a previous show last year.

Kaufman County, east of Dallas, grew faster than any other in the country from 2022 to 2023. Harris County added the most new residents.

The South Texas Democrat said Latinos who support former President Donald Trump are voting against their self interest, but Republicans recoiled at the comparison.

During a conversation hosted in Houston by The Texas Tribune, panelists talked about the importance of building bridges among different faiths despite politics often causing divisions within institutions.

About 3.2 million Texans voted in the state’s primary election, down from 4.1 million during the 2020 presidential primary. Democratic turnout accounted for the entirety of the decline.

Texas has little to show for conservative leaders’ uproar — or previously unreported complaints about the community developer.

After a short trial, a Texas judge ruled that Barbers Hill school officials are not violating a new state law prohibiting hair discrimination.

With menu items like birria brisket ramen, the Bar-B-Que Bandidas in Lubbock are challenging the norm of Texas barbecue and a male dominated industry.

Texas police killed 141 people last year, according to a database. At least 22, including Aaliyah Anders, were Black.

Sessions at the event, held at the University of Houston-Downtown, tackled voter turnout, local governance, community news and more.

The complaint claims Bonham ISD and a city court discriminated against both Black students and disabled students by creating a hostile environment at school. The groups also filed a separate complaint against Corpus Christi ISD with the Texas Education Agency.

Georgia DeVries, an East Texas 17-year-old, shared her experience living in a car for one month last year on TikTok.

A fight over allowing transgender children to access puberty blockers and hormone therapies could hinge on justices’ interpretation of parental rights.

At a Texas Tribune event held with the LBJ School of Public Affairs’ Urban Lab, experts discussed a unified approach to working with the Texas Legislature to secure funding that would benefit employers, working parents and the broader Texas economy.

This is at least the second time Ken Paxton’s office has sought such records from an out-of-state provider since Texas banned transition-related care for kids.

Fellows play critical roles in and in support of our newsroom.

Homelessness rose last year across nearly every demographic group, but strides were made to connect people with new housing.

Diboll’s growing Hispanic population has inspired a new economy of party planners and DJs to produce quinceañeras. City leaders are taking notice.

Texas photojournalists fanned the state, capturing historic news and intimate moments.

Across the state, people are looking for ways to make Texas a better place to live as they tackle hunger, rural “brain drain,” health care obstacles and other impediments.

Our journalists brought life to the experiences of everyday Texans, held powerful institutions accountable and surfaced stories that went beyond the daily news cycles.

The card insinuates that Phelan wants to wish his constituents a happy Ramadan instead of a merry Christmas. Muslim Texans say it’s Islamophobic and some Republicans say it doesn't reflect Christian values.

According to the most recent census, Texas has fewer than 26,000 Hispanic farmers compared to 236,000 white farmers.

Texas grew by nearly half a million people in the past year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But it was South Carolina that led the nation with its rate of population growth.

Smith County’s top elected official said the downtown square’s holiday decorations policy seeks to avoid a “hodgepodge.”

An influx of highly educated people from other states helped shift the state’s economic fortune. But in many parts of Texas, residents are struggling as jobs dry up.

A Texas Tribune analysis of hate crime data found that 82% of Texas law enforcement agencies that report to the FBI tracked no hate crimes last year. However, one suburban North Texas police agency is creating a new model of collecting hate crime data.

A new Harvard University study found an increase in the number of Texas households headed by people 65 or older spending more than 30% of their income on housing. Advocates say keeping older adults housed will require substantial public investment and reforms.

As remote and hybrid working become the new normal, major Texas cities are facing a decline in office tenants. It’s too soon to tell what that means for the vitality of downtowns.

The Pew Research Center analyzed unauthorized immigrant data from 2021 finding that there’s been a significant shift in migrants’ country of origin and where they choose to live in the U.S.

According to new Texas Demographic Center figures, the Austin region continues to grow at the fastest rate, but Fort Worth was the city that attracted the most new residents between 2020 and 2023.

The Sherman school board also temporarily ended the superintendent oversight of its fine arts programs pending the results of the investigation.

After Max Hightower scored a role in the seminal American musical, administrators changed their policy on performers’ gender. After backlash, the school board directed the school to produce the original version “Oklahoma!” — not a youth version that cut Hightower’s solo.

Castro, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, has made improving discussion of Latinos and Latino issues in politics a focus of his time in office.

The Dallas-based trucking company, Stevens Transport, said they do not discriminate against women and the complaint is based on a “misunderstanding.”

Texas Supreme Court justices heard arguments Wednesday in the case of a Waco judge who refused to marry same-sex couples. It is unclear when the high court will issue a ruling.

DEI efforts have become a lightning rod for debate in American higher education. At the private Houston university, officials admit impact is hard to measure — but they also see progress from their work.

Home to the University of North Texas, organizers say Denton acts as a liberal enclave in the sprawling conservative suburbs in the Dallas-Fort Worth region.

The state has yet to return to its pre-pandemic unemployment rate of about 3.5%, even as it leads the country in new jobs created. However, state economic experts say the unemployment rate is an indicator of Texas’s rapidly growing population and labor force.

Home to more than 260,000 people, the West Texas town of Lubbock is no stranger to passing local laws by petition. In 2021, residents overwhelmingly approved a local ban on abortion.

The savvy ex-lawmaker has expanded the Texas A&M University System and mollified state leaders. Some faculty, alumni and students say that accommodation has come at a cost.

Here’s a look back at the 2023 Texas Tribune Festival through the eyes of Tribune photographers.

Senate Bill 12 would have prohibited performers from dancing suggestively or wearing certain prosthetics in front of children. Critics sued the state, saying it violated the First Amendment.

Lawyers criticize a provision they say erodes the separation of powers between Texas’ executive branch and its courts. It’s been used repeatedly this year as Texans try to block new state laws from going into effect

In an interview for The Texas Tribune Festival, the journalist urged Texans to organize in response to the state’s book bans and restrictions on public school lessons.

The report blames an “alarming rise in extremist ideology and activity” on white supremacist and anti-LGBTQ+ groups that are active or headquartered in Texas.

Texas is still the state with the highest percentage of uninsured residents, at nearly 17 percent, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau survey released Thursday.

Syphilis rates in Texas continue to climb, alarming healthcare workers who see the highest increases among pregnant people and newborns. A shortage of treatment is complicating efforts to combat it.

A report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas researchers say that economic growth, low taxes and big cities all can keep residents in their home states.

The state attorney general’s office appealed a state district court injunction that said the new prohibitions deprive trans kids of “necessary, safe, and effective medical treatment.”

The emerging technology, paid for by a grant established during the 2023 legislative session, will help emergency health care workers talk with doctors in emergency rooms to better care for critical patients.

Descendants of a prominent white family and a formerly enslaved couple are fighting over ownership — and the oil and gas royalties that would come with it — of an 147.5-acre tract that has bound and divided generations of their families.

Some queer Texans may fear disclosing their sexual orientation or gender identity to neighbors or the government. The lack of accurate numbers makes it more difficult to provide appropriate health care, especially in rural areas.

The coastal county faces a drawn-out trial over claims of intentional discrimination in its 2021 redistricting of commissioners court precincts. The only district in which Black and Latino voters could meaningfully influence elections was dismantled.

State officials backing Senate Bill 12 have said they want to protect children from seeing sexually explicit performances. But new legal challenges say the law is so broad and vague that it criminalizes constitutionally protected expression.

A new federal complaint comes as the city updates its zoning laws for the first time since the 1970s.

Senate Bill 14, which is set to take effect on Sept. 1, bans transition-related care for minors. Parents of transgender kids say it blocks their ability to support their children.

The families argue the new law, which goes into effect Sept. 1, violates their parental rights by stopping them from providing medical care for their children and discriminates against transgender teens.

Black and Latino students make up about two-thirds of Texas’ public schools. But they are vastly underrepresented at its top universities, and Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling will shake up an already complicated application process.

In the conservative High Plains city, LGBTQ leaders and activists say they feel unseen and unsupported by their elected officials.

The U.S. Supreme Court paved the way for major civil rights victories for queer Americans in the 2003 decision that decriminalized homosexuality. But progress for LGBTQ+ people has been uneven.

Texas Department of Public Safety officers were criticized for the disparate number of Latino and Black residents arrested during the first iteration of a partnership to help Austin with policing duties.

White people had been the state’s largest population group since at least 1850. Sometime in 2022, the Hispanic population surpassed them, new data shows.

Organizers across Texas are balancing a focus on security and a celebration of community after state lawmakers pushed scores of bills that threatened to upend the lives of LGBTQ+ Texans.

The high court left intact a key provision of the federal Voting Rights Act in a case many feared would go the other way. The decision’s importance in ongoing litigation over Texas’ political maps will largely be felt in what didn’t happen.

Houston has seen eviction rates soar since pandemic protections for renters lapsed. At one apartment complex, ejecting people from their homes is a ritual part of the business model.

The quiet East Texas town of Jasper came together immediately after the racist murder of James Byrd Jr. Now, Texas is leading the nation in incidents of white supremacist propaganda.

Now that Texas has a near-total ban on abortion, lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle are trying to make sure colleges are serving students who are pregnant or have children.

Their dream of passing a bill to improve access to state services for Texans who don’t speak English or Spanish was dashed. Woori Juntos activists fought until the end seeking at least a study of their ideas.

Gov. Greg Abbott over the weekend signed into law a bill prohibiting race-based hair discrimination in Texas workplaces, schools and housing policies. It goes into effect in September.

Originally pitched as an effort to restrict children from seeing certain drag shows, the House and Senate agreed on a version of the bill that could still ensnare LGBTQ performers.

Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bill on June 14, making Texas the second state in the country, after Florida, to ban DEI offices at public universities.

The bill no longer targets drag performers, but LGBTQ advocates say the legislation’s vague language could still be used to criminalize such shows.

Texas took four of the 10 top spots among the nation’s fastest-growing cities, with the Austin metro area overall seeing some of the most significant growth.

Currently, more than 80% of Texas voters can vote anywhere in their home county, a model that originated in Lubbock County. If lawmakers approve new legislation, that would change.

Attorney General Ken Paxton previously announced an investigation into “potentially illegal” activity. Parents are scrambling to find transition-related care for their kids as the Legislature appears poised to ban it altogether.

The House approved a bill Monday that would ban doctors from providing transition-related care to children. It now heads back to the Senate, which can accept the changes or ask for a committee to iron out the chambers’ differences.