HPPR Government & Politics

The League of Women Voters will be hosting registration events in the Texas Panhandle Saturday reports The Amarillo Globe-News.

The events will be held at the United Supermarkets in Amarillo and Canyon, as well as the Amigos Supermarket in Amarillo, between 10 a.m. and two p.m.

Despite testimony about loved ones who have died in car crashes caused by distracted driving, a proposal to ban the use of cellphones for all Colorado drivers was rejected by the state’s Republican-led Senate committee Wednesday.

As The Denver Post reports, the measure would have prohibited the use of hand-held mobile devices for talking and texting without a hands-free device but failed in a 3-2 vote by the Senate committee.

ABC News recently profiled the Texas town of Miami, calling the small West Texas hamlet “the most pro-Trump town in America.” Miami, a ranching community of 600 near Pampa, went all in for the New York billionaire during the 2016 presidential election.

Out of 550 who voted in the town, 524 went for Trump.

The 2018 session of the Oklahoma Legislature begins in just over two weeks, and one particular bit of potential legislation is already garnering a good deal of attention, reports KFOR.

As of yet, the shutdown of the Federal Government is having a limited effect on the Texas Panhandle.

As The Houston Chronicle reports, the Texas congressional delegation was hard at work this weekend, trying to help broker a deal to end the shutdown.

The national men’s health and fashion magazine Esquire took an acerbic tone this week as it lambasted a “rising star” in the Sooner State’s Republican Party.

Ryan Dahm, a GOP State Senator from Broken Arrow, Okla., gained national notoriety this week after submitting a bill to the state Legislature that would officially designate Oklahoma’s wildlife as “the property of Almighty God.” 

The United States Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by Texas Democrats to re-examine whether congressional districts in the Lone Star State were redrawn along partisan lines.

As The Austin American-Statesman reports, the High Court said it lacked jurisdiction in the case. However, the Supreme Court is still slated to hear similar cases from Wisconsin and Maryland, and those cases may ultimately affect the way Texas (and every other state) is allowed to redraw political lines.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew White raised over $200,000 during the first three weeks of his campaign, while one of his better-known primary opponents, Lupe Valdez, took in a quarter of that over roughly the same period.

From The Texas Tribune:

For months, political prognosticators in the Lone Star State have been predicting a possible “blue wave” of successful Democratic candidates in upcoming elections.

Now, as The San Antonio Express-News reports, that same blue wave may soon result in a surge of newly elected gay officials in Texas. The ballots for 2018 contain a record number of LGBTQ candidates. In fact, the number of gay candidates on this year’s ballot is double the previous record.

Texas immigrants and their advocates said they're pleased that a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction keeping the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in place. But they said they remain focused on the push in Congress to make the program permanent.

From The Texas Tribune:

Gov. John Hickenlooper gave his final state of the state address Thursday and as The Denver Post reports, Hickenlooper spoke at length about the challenges facing rural Colorado.

Hickenlooper pointed out that rural communities face a number of issues, including teacher shortages, jobs and access to rural broadband.

U.S. Republican Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions continue to disagree about marijuana policy.

As The Denver Post reports, the two met Wednesday and Gardner said Sessions gave no indication that he would re-think his decision last week to reverse the Obama-era Cole Memorandum, which basically left states that legalized marijuana alone.

After a western Kansas lawmaker suggested black people respond to the use of marijuana differently, the Republican leader of his party condemned the remarks.

On Saturday in Garden City, Rep. Steve Alford, a Republican from Ulysses, said the drug should remain illegal because of the way he contended it affected African-Americans.

The earliest political primary in the United States is in Texas this year, and that means candidates in the Lone Star State have only a few weeks to win over the votes of their potential constituents.

An Oklahoma group is mounting a ballot effort to prevent the state’s legislature from redrawing congressional boundaries for their own benefit, a process known as gerrymandering.

Redistricting work is expected to begin after the 2020 census, but as Oklahoma Watch reports, a group called Represent Oklahoma is trying to put a stop to the effort. Represent Oklahoma has launched a website and set up a $400,000 fundraising goal, in hopes of putting a state question on this year’s state ballot.