Texas Public Radio

While Texas is responsible for educating more rural students than any other state in the country — nearly 700,000 — it’s not doing as much for those students as most other states in two key areas. That’s according to a new report from the Rural Schools and Community Trust.

Updated Nov. 7, 2019

An East Texas jury found Wells Fargo willingly infringed on mobile check deposit patents held by USAA.

A jury found unanimously in favor of the United Services Automobile Association Wednesday and ordered Wells Fargo to pay USAA $200 million.

Related | Texas Court May Decide Who Owns Mobile Check Deposit

Thousands of banks, millions of customers and billions of dollars rely on remote deposit capture (RDC) through smartphones or tablets. San Antonio-based USAA went to federal court this week against Wells Fargo over who owns mobile check depositing technology. 

Voters across Texas will vote for and against 10 state constitutional amendments on Tuesday.

Update: This story has been updated to reflect the location of the shelter. It is at a gymnasium at Alberca Chavez.

There are more than 1,500 migrants living in squalid conditions on the streets in Matamoros, Mexico. They’re forced to wait there for their day in U.S. immigration court under the Trump administration’s Remain in Mexico policy.

Now through Election Day, Tuesday Nov. 5, Texas voters have the chance to approve or deny 10 proposed amendments to the state's Constitution. 

President Trump is visiting North Texas Thursday. Before a 7 p.m. campaign rally at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, he'll start at a new Louis Vuitton facility in rural Johnson County, and then attend a fundraising lunch in Fort Worth.

The Alamo is the cradle of Texas liberty, but it’s also the site of a Catholic cemetery. The famous battleground served as a mission to area Catholics for many years before it was secularized and memorialized in Texas history.

American Indians in San Antonio used Indigenous Peoples Day to draw attention to the recent discovery of human remains on the site.

What do you want to ask the 2020 presidential candidates?

Off Script, a new NPR series about presidential hopefuls, gives voters the chance to sit down with candidates and get answers to their questions.

Emergency managers from Bexar and surrounding counties gathered Thursday for a workshop to help them prepare for natural disasters; not for floods or tornadoes or hurricanes — but for earthquakes.

Federal officials have extended the deployment of 1,000 National Guard troops Gov. Greg Abbott sent to the southern border to help with an influx of migrants.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is reaching out to clergy members who may find themselves counseling veterans in crisis or need. It now holds training sessions for religious leaders all over the country. One of the goals is to teach them to look for signs of psychological disorders and other issues among veterans in their congregations. 

Physical pain, post-traumatic stress and inconsolable crying are just some of the experiences of migrant children highlighted in a report out this month from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General. 

Last August and September, investigators visited 45 facilities funded by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, including 20 facilities in Texas. They interviewed about 100 mental health clinicians who worked with the children detained there.

Lawmakers get to redraw state and federal legislative district boundaries after every 10-year census count. A Texas redistricting committee is holding field hearings across the state ahead of 2021 mapmaking, including in San Antonio on Thursday.

More than 30,000 asylum seeking migrants have been returned to Mexico to await their day in immigration court — a process that can take months. This is part of the Trump administration’s Remain in Mexico policy. The program says vulnerable populations may be excluded from the program, but many migrants who are considered vulnerable populations, including LGBTQ asylum seekers, are still being sent back to Mexico.

A study published this week in the medical journal Radiology has found vaping — even just one time — damages blood vessel function. UT Health San Antonio pulmonologist Sandra Adams said this research, in addition to a Centers for Disease Control investigation into more than 100 cases of severe lung disease linked to vaping, back up health experts’ previous admonitions that people avoid e-cigarettes until more is known about how they impact long-term health.

Advocates for medical and recreational marijuana in Texas said the state is hypocritical for opposing reforms while profiting off the industry.

For the last two months, dozens of county and district attorneys in Texas have not prosecuted low-level marijuana crimes. That’s because they lack a reliable and affordable way to distinguish between marijuana and hemp, which was just legalized.

Archaeologists are digging through the summer heat to complete a major project at the Alamo for preservation efforts — and the occasional discovery of artifacts. 

Calls for uniting America -- and for gun reform -- echoed through the streets of El Paso Saturday. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) organized a march a week after a mass shooting rocked the heavily Latino city.

A ruling by a New Mexico judge this week may enable Texas residents to register for that state’s medical marijuana program. But critics are worried that Texans may end up breaking state and federal laws. 

It was in 2003 when Republicans took the majority of the Texas House of Representatives. The GOP had already won the Governor's seat and control of the Senate. The House was the last piece of the state government to secure the trifecta that’s been in place ever since. Controlling all three vital centers of state power makes it much easier for the dominate party to pursue its agenda and essentially operate without aggressive oversight.  This was not unlike how the Democrats ran Texas when they had a power trifecta during their era of single party rule which ended in 1994.

Texas Democrats gathered in San Antonio on Tuesday and Wednesday nights to watch fellow Texans participate in both presidential primary debates.

Native American activists from across the country came to the Rio Grande Valley on Saturday to protest the treatment of migrants at the U.S. border, including children detention and family separation.

Two Texas floodgates have collapsed in the last two years, and the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority warns four more lakes are in danger of the same fate.

San Antonio Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro introduced a bill this week to remove the words “illegal” and “alien” from the United States Immigration and Nationality Act. 

Vice President Mike Pence and Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee visited a tent-like temporary detention facility in Donna and a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Station in McAllen Friday.

The same day, groups across the country scheduled vigils to protest conditions at migrant detention facilities.

President Trump announced Thursday he would sign an executive order to obtain data about the U.S. citizenship and non-citizenship status of everyone living in the United States.

Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress will visit the Rio Grande Valley later this week.