Politico: ““He has basically done the work of Stacey Abrams in Texas, if you look at this record of raising money and volunteers,” said Eliot Shapleigh, a former Texas state senator and longtime friend of O’Rourke, referring to the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate whose organizing helped elect two Democrats to the Senate in her state…

Fox 16: “Senate Bill 24, the Stand Your Ground Bill, was passed out of the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.  The bill removes the duty to retreat from Arkansas’ self-defense laws.  Proponents of the bill said prosecutors across the state already don’t take into account the duty to retreat so this bill is just putting…

Texas Observer: “Experts hired by the Texas Public Utility Commission, which oversees the state’s electric and water utilities, concluded that power-generating companies like Luminant had failed to understand the “critical failure points” that could cause equipment to stop working in cold weather. In May 2014, the PUC sought changes that would require energy companies to identify and…

WaPo: ““Just in the last day or so I’ve had several people tell me or call me or email me about how they are going to do the same thing,” said Robert F. Orr, a former North Carolina Supreme Court justice and onetime Republican gubernatorial candidate, who announced his resignation from the party last week….

HuffPo: “Cruz initially blamed his daughters, saying they asked to go away with friends since there was no power and school was out and he just “wanted to be a good dad.” Cruz claimed he planned to return home immediately after dropping them off, then admitted he had actually intended to stay through the weekend…

NY Times: “While the final tally could be much higher, Mr. Anderson was among at least 58 people who died in storm-affected areas stretching to Ohio, victims of carbon monoxide poisoning, car crashes, drownings, house fires and hypothermia….At its height, about four million Texans were without power this week as temperatures plummeted to the teens…

Star Tribune: “A Virginia man was sentenced to three years in jail for brandishing a hatchet and driving his truck toward a group of Black Lives Matter protesters, according to a news report. Emanuel “Manny” Wilder, 20, was sentenced Thursday and was also ordered to pay $1,856, the cost of his extradition from Florida, The…

Texas Observer: “Initial findings from a series city-commissioned reports released over the past year seem to only bolster complaints from former cadets like Spisak and spotlight the kind of violent, warrior-cop culture that pervades much of policing. One group of reports released last summer called APD’s paramilitary approach to training police antiquated, saying it reinforces an us-versus-them mentality toward…

The Progressive Pulse: “Trials of protesters who demonstrated in Graham last fall in support of the Black Lives Matter movement got underway on Wednesday, with the prosecutor dropping charges against two people, and the judge affirming misdemeanor charges against another individual without imposing a penalty. The Alamance County town was the scene of multiple protests…

Tennessean: “In an effort to further restrict abortion in Tennessee, two Tennessee lawmakers have introduced legislation that would allow a father to deny an abortion without the pregnant woman’s consent. SB494/HB1079, sponsored by Sen. Mark Pody, R-Lebanon and Rep. Jerry Sexton, R-Bean Station, would give a man who gets a woman pregnant the veto power to an abortion…