NC Policy Watch: “Patrick Woodie, president of the NC Rural Center, offered a robust endorsement of Medicaid expansion at a legislative committee meeting Tuesday, saying that more insured residents would lead to better physical health and improved community financial health. Rural North Carolinians are disproportionately uninsured compared to residents of the state’s suburban and urban…

ACLU TX: “The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Texas, and Lambda Legal [yesterday] asked a Texas state court to block the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) from investigating parents who work with medical professionals to provide their adolescent children with medically necessary gender-affirming care. The lawsuit names Texas Gov. Greg Abbott,…

NC Policy Watch: “Georgia Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is doubling down on her decision to give a speech at a far-right conference with ties to white supremacists over the weekend. In a statement released Sunday night, Greene argued that she went to talk to audience members about “America First” policies. “We’re going to…

NY Times: “A North Carolina court rejected a Republican-drawn map of the state’s 14 congressional districts on Wednesday and substituted its own version, the second time in less than two weeks that a court in the state has invalidated a Republican House map as unconstitutionally partisan. The new map, drawn by a nonpartisan panel of four redistricting…

NY Times: “In South Texas, another test is developing over the power of identity politics and whether liberals can answer the fears that conservatives are stoking about “open borders,” “critical race theory” and rising crime. In the primary campaign for Texas’ 28th district, it is Mr. Cuellar’s experience versus Ms. Cisneros’s storytelling: the powerful and…

Political Wire: ““He can’t feed his people. It’s a communist country, so he can’t feed his people, so they need more farmland.” — Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), quoted by 1819 News, explaining why he thinks Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.”

NY Times: “Representative Dan Crenshaw was tagged as a rising Republican star almost from the moment of his first victory: A conservative, Harvard-educated, ex-Navy SEAL who lost his right eye in Afghanistan, he bucked the 2018 suburban revolt against Donald J. Trump to win a House seat in the Houston suburbs. Mr. Crenshaw won again…

AR Times: “Sen. Dan Sullivan (extremist R-Jonesboro) filed legislation today to punish Arkansas PBS, which he thinks is left-wing. It’s his own hand-crafted budget bill for the education channel. The budget approved by the Joint Budget Committee, but to date falling short of the 75 votes needed for passage in the House, contains about $14.5 million in two…

Chicken Fried Politics: “Voters in Texas kick off the 2022 midterm elections with the nation’s first party primary Tuesday, featuring a pitched battle among Republicans for attorney general, the last pro-life Democratic in the U.S. House trying to hang on to his South Texas seat, and two House Republicans facing primary challenges for not being…

TX Observer: “On Friday, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick announced he would seek to abolish tenure for professors at Texas’ public universities, the latest in an ongoing GOP attack on public education.  “What we will propose to do is end tenure, all tenure for all new hires,” said Patrick, whose proposal would eliminate tenure for new…