Texas could be the next state to face legal action from a pharmaceutical company that sells a drug designed to prevent pregnant women from delivering premature babies.

House Speaker Joe Straus has the votes to win reelection, according to his loyalists. But he's got a declared opponent and another in the wings, and they've got a month to work with.

State Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, and a union that represents prison employees hope to make more history in 2013, suggesting the potential closure of two privately run prison facilities in Dallas and in Mineral Wells. 

A lot of new names will go on those office signs in the Capitol, but the partisan lines didn't move much as a result of this election. And the redistricting people are good at what they do: Only 16 incumbents running for reelection lost in this year's primary and general elections. 

It’s not the most exciting election season Texas has ever seen. Most legislative races are over after the primaries and what’s left, with an exception in the Texas Senate, don’t appear to involve the balance of power in the House.

Early voting is underway as of this week. The presidential and U.S. Senate debates are over as of this week and last, respectively. All that's left is getting out the votes and then counting them. That said, here is our second-to-last Hot List of the year.

Gov. Rick Perry has compared Texas Medicaid to the Titanic, but economists and business advocates from both sides of the political aisle say Texas shouldn’t let the program sink just yet.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, fresh off a stinging loss to Ted Cruz in the race for the GOP nomination to the U.S. Senate, reshuffled the Senate committee chairs.

The Texas Weekly Hot List is back, with our best stabs at which races are closest and which ones ought to be on your watch list.

Texas, it’s official: We have the worst rate of health insurance coverage in the country. That creates a huge financial burden on the health care system and the insured. Is politics standing in the way of reform?

If a federal court decides that the state intentionally discriminated when drawing its new political maps, is it more difficult for Texas lawyers to argue against Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act? And is it fuel for the constant struggle over the leadership of the Texas House?

Texas’ controversial voter ID bill was struck down again, this time by a three-judge panel in Washington, D.C., that said the bill would disenfranchise certain segments of the voting-age population. 

Texas is to presidential politics what parents are to college students — remote players whose money is critical but whose votes don’t really matter.

The story through the primaries and runoffs? It's over for most of the races — only a few remain competitive. Turnover, as you would expect in the election after a redistricting, is high.

The high points and the low ones. Lessons learned and earlier lessons that were forgotten. Low turnout, unfortunate incumbents, successful climbers, the Hispanic Thing, the races ahead, the turnover and some things to help understand what happened on Tuesday.

In years when both parties had statewide primary runoffs, turnout in the second round of voting averaged almost half of turnout in the first round. On average, the runoff got a vote for every two in the primary. In elections with a statewide runoff, the average Republican runoff turnout was 27.3 percent of the party's average primary turnout. For Democrats, the corresponding number was 34.9 percent.

What Thursday's Supreme Court decision means for Texas, where leaders have opposed “Obamacare” despite the state's sky-high rate of uninsured residents, is complicated, both by politics and by the state's history of rejecting federal dollars. 

Debate prep is futile.

So far, 37 members of the Texas House, four members of the Texas Senate, and three members of the 32-person congressional delegation from Texas are on the list. Runoffs could add more, and so will the general election. 

The primaries left 37 runoffs — 25 on the Republican side, 12 on the Democratic side. That includes five races at the statewide level, 11 for Congress, three for the State Board of Education, one for the state Senate and 17 for the state House.

Time to reclaim your mailbox, your television, your home phone. The long-delayed Texas primary elections are finally here. 

Does the John Carona-Dan Patrick spat help either senator's hopes of becoming the next lieutenant governor?

Predicting voter turnout in November is almost riskless; if the years-long pattern holds, just under 9 million Texans will vote. As for the primaries, who knows?

Congressional and legislative primary races, ranked by competitive heat.

Rick Santorum getting out of the race for president presents two interesting problems in Texas. First, he'll be on the Republican primary ballot anyhow — it's too late to get off. Second, without a fight at the top of the ticket, turnout will probably slide.

What might have been a big turnout year has turned into a ho-hum affair, with the presidential race petering out before the Texas primary.

The top of the ballot is weird this year. The heat might be local this time.

Now that the filing deadline has passed, the congressional and legislative candidates are scouting their field. Some are shoo-ins, others have a primary crowd and a few are seeking another chance at the Lege. Here's who's who. 

After weeks with no political maps, and with an impending deadline to a week of filings, the political activity has picked up considerably.

The Texas political primaries will be on May 29 and candidates can file for those elections between now and Friday, March 9.

There is a date for primary elections, but it's uncertain. And there is one redistricting map done, with two to go. And for what it's worth, the judges seem to be in a hurry.

Start here: The judges in charge of the redistricting case in Texas haven't rejected the maps proposed by the state and agreed to by some but not all of the plaintiffs. They simply observed that no deal has been made to satisfy everyone and told everyone to keep talking and get ready for a hearing next week.

This week, the redistricting judges in Washington did the judges in San Antonio a favor, telling them the D.C. panel won't be ruling on its part of the case for a month. The Texans can start drawing maps.

Rick Perry's impulsive presidential campaign fell apart faster than a soggy taco shell. But he's not done with politics yet.

Texas politics are on hold.

The bet here is that the U.S. Supreme Court wouldn't have taken the Texas redistricting case if they thought it was a good idea to hold elections using the San Antonio court's plan. If it was, why issue a stay, set arguments, and risk delaying the primaries?