Daily Dispatch 1/14/26: Tarrant Dems Strike Back Against GOP Candidate Challenges, And More

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas:

The Tarrant County Democratic Party, following Republican administrative challenges against 7 of its judicial candidates by the Tarrant GOP, has responded by challenging 43 Republican candidates: https://fortworthreport.org/2026/01/13/tarrant-democrats-seek-to-remove-all-gop-judicial-2-texas-house-candidates-from-ballot/

...All of this amounts to a "weaponizing of election integrity": https://www.lonestarleft.com/p/inside-republicans-strategy-to-weaponize

The process of approving private schools to benefit from Texas' new voucher scam has been brought to a crawl by acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock, who is apparently seeking to exclude schools with Muslim or Chinese ties: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/private-schools-voucher-program-21290944.php

An ICE assistant chief counsel based in Dallas who had been removed from duty upon the revelation that he runs a racist, Nazi-sympathizing X account, is back on duty: https://www.texasobserver.org/ice-prosecutor-racist-account-back-at-immigration-court/

Texas A&M's heavy-handed crackdown on "woke" curriculum - lately including a censoring of the works of Plato - has drawn a formal condemnation from the American Association of University Professors: https://www.kbtx.com/2026/01/13/national-education-group-condemns-texas-am-course-material-changes/

Early voting in the March primary starts in mere weeks, on February 17 - the time to research your ballot is right now: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2026/texas-march-2026-primary-ballot/?_bhlid=7d8eca3d2a16adc7c9b44185414443fa32be6d84⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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