Two Texans — Ted Cruz and Rick Perry — are now the preferred GOP candidates for president in the Lone Star State, according to a new poll from the University of Texas/Texas Tribune.

GOP statewide candidates uniformly hold sizeable advantages over their Democratic rivals.

Wednesday amounted to a daylong series of body blows to those who thought that authorities had things under control in the response to the diagnosis of Ebola in Dallas.

Tuesday turned into a topsy turvy day in the federal courts for the state of Texas with the voter ID law conserved for the Nov. 4 general election but a new delay placed on enforcing the new abortion law.

A federal district judge in Corpus Christi ruled against the state's voter ID law, injecting a note of drama into the run-up to the general elections.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott's $30 million campaign chest has captured a lot of attention, leading to the next question: why raise all that cash?

The keynote track at the 2014 Texas Tribune Festival featured interviews with several Texas elected officials and candidates, as well as a pair of panel discussions. Listen to audio of each session.

The major party nominees for governor — Republican Greg Abbott and Democrat Wendy Davis — hold their second and final debate tonight in Dallas. The smart money is on an encounter similar to the first one held 11 days ago in Edinburg.

The legal problems of a couple of Republican officeholders continue to garner headlines.

Most incumbents and front-runners have something in common: They're cautious in the vicinity of the public. But some of them aren't like that. In recent public appearances, Ted Cruz and Rick Perry zipped right past the usual political warning signs, while others, like Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick, took it easy.

Full video of Washington Post chief correspondent Dan Balz's 2014 Texas Tribune Festival keynote conversation with U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz hinted that he would make a decision on a run for the White House in the first half of 2015 but that his focus for the next six weeks would be on helping Republicans take back the Senate.

In the run-up to tonight's first televised debate between the two leading candidates for governor — Republican Greg Abbott and Democrat Wendy Davis — as much attention is being paid to the setting of the encounter as the substance.

State leaders seem reluctant to break out the "Mission Accomplished" banner on the border surge even though apprehensions of illegal immigrants have hit a target goal laid out in July.

It's easier to govern if you have a mandate, and you build the mandate while you're campaigning. So far, the agenda for the next set of officeholders is a little murky. The campaign for governor so far has been more about the histories and challenges in the lives of the contestants than about their differences over issues facing the state.

Greg Abbott continued on Thursday his attack against his rival in the race for governor, not going after the substance of Wendy Davis' new memoir but rather the publicity tour that has accompanied it.

Opinions differ as to whether the procedure would be allowed under an exemption for fetal abnormalities.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz will not threaten a government shutdown by seeking to attach a provision that ends the president's deportation-relief program for certain undocumented immigrants to a must-pass government funding bill, his spokeswoman said Wednesday night.