Texas Tidbits: Goodwin Is Up In The Polls And Trump Admonishes Abbott
Everything's closer than they want you to think, and everything's dirtier than they'll admit.
We haven’t done a Texas Tidbit episode in a while, but there’s a bunch of little things going on here and there that are worth talking about.
Vikki Goodwin Beating Dan Patrick In Latest A&M Poll
In a poll released this morning from the Texas Pulse/Texas A&M Bush School, they are not only showing Talarico up +4 points over Paxton, but also showing Goodwin up +2 points over Patrick. On top of that, this poll is also showing both the Governor’s race and the Attorney General’s race within the margin of error.
It’s worth noting that this poll uses the same methodology as the NYT/Siena poll, so this is a solid poll with real numbers.
This is also the third consecutive poll showing Talarico narrowly ahead of Paxton.
It was only last week that we were talking about how we need to see some new polling on the Lt. Governor’s race, and here it is.
There is uniform movement toward Democrats across every single statewide race, Senate, Governor, AG, Lt. Governor, and generic congressional ballot, and they are all shifting in the same direction.
Why Is Texas Giving Elon Musk So Much Money?
There’s something fishy going on with the broadband situation in Texas, and Republicans are giving handouts to billionaires (more than usual).
On July 21, Dan Patrick and Dustin Burrows issued a joint statement, publicly requesting a State Auditor performance audit of the Broadband Development Office’s grant program, citing concerns from a June 24 Senate Business and Commerce hearing.
BUT, here’s the thing. On August 1, Don Huffines was sworn in as Comptroller.
Then, on August 4, Huffines basically gutted the entire Comptroller’s office. From Huffines:
In Huffines’ announcement, he stated that the Broadband Office is “being completely restructured; new leadership will be announced at a later date.”
As for the audit?
Why did Republican leadership want an audit? Because during that June 24 hearing, Senators alleged the Broadband Development Office was tilting its grant rules toward low-earth-orbit satellite providers, with testimony indicating some of those rule changes came at the suggestion of Governor Abbott’s office.
Starlink is the only large-scale LEO (low-earth-orbit) provider in Texas right now. However, Amazon’s LEO service has also applied for grants, and SpaceX received $108.8 million in 2025 grants to serve 64,000 Texas locations.
Math time. That’s $1,700 per location.
So, here is the problem. For the exact same grants, under the exact same program, here is what other states paid Starlink per location:
Virginia: $584 per location
Minnesota: $751 per location
Why is Texas giving more than three times the money per location to Elon Musk than Virginia gave him, and more than twice the amount Minnesota gave him?
Of course, we all know how this works. Elon Musk helps Abbott hold on to power. Abbott gives a greedy trillionaire our taxpaying dollars. Abbott has done this so many times, with so many of his donors, screwing Texas taxpayers in so many ways, we should expect it from him.
Trump Tells Abbott He’s Screwing It Up
In the same poll that came out this morning, which showed Goodwin ahead of Patrick, 65% of Texas voters said they want data centers regulated. Well, Abbott has paused data centers (until after the election), and Trump is pissed about it.
Abbott announced a statewide pause on Monday, requiring state regulators to audit any proposed data center before it can connect to the grid, checking things like how much power and water the thing will use, what kind of cooling it needs, and who actually owns it.
Trump said today, “I saw Texas the other day sort of is against data centers. I think it’s a mistake.” He went on to say it “could be bigger than oil.”
Here’s the thing, though, back in November, Abbott called Texas the “epicenter of AI development” when he unveiled Google’s $40 billion data center investment in the state. Nothing changed about the water usage or the power grid between November and now. What changed is all of the public polling that’s further tilting toward Democrats. You can only imagine what the Republicans’ internal polling says.
Hinojosa called him out on it, “Abbott’s call for a ‘pause’ could be for one day, and no one buys it,” her campaign said in a statement this week. “He’s taken millions from data center CEOs while giving Texans lip service to non-existent restrictions.”
So now Abbott is stuck between the guy who runs his party and the voters who are about to decide whether he keeps his job. Watch what he does when the “audit” quietly wraps up in a month with nothing found.
Ten Commandments Are Now Just... In My Kid’s Gym
I took my middle-schooler to pick up their class schedule this week, and there it was, hanging in the gym. The Ten Commandments, King James Version, courtesy of Senate Bill 10.
Here’s how we got here. SB 10 passed the Legislature in 2025, and Abbott signed it that June, requiring every Texas public school classroom to display a donated poster of the Ten Commandments, at least 16 by 20 inches. Sixteen families across 11 school districts sued, arguing it violates the separation of church and state and pressures kids to embrace religious values they and their families may not share. A federal judge agreed and blocked it in the named districts back in August 2025.
Then, this April, the full 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that injunction in Nathan v. Alamo Heights ISD, ruling the law doesn’t violate the First Amendment. The majority leaned on the Supreme Court’s 2022 Kennedy v. Bremerton decision to argue that Stone v. Graham, the 1980 case that struck down an identical Kentucky law, doesn’t apply anymore. Six judges dissented, writing that only the Supreme Court gets to overturn its own precedent, and that the law violates “the most basic First Amendment principles.”
The ACLU said it plans to take this to the Supreme Court, and just last week, a new lawsuit landed against 11 more Texas districts, this time arguing under state law instead of the First Amendment. Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant traditions all number and word the Ten Commandments differently. SB 10 picked one version. Which means the state decided to put its own religion in the classroom, and exclude everyone else’s.
So if you’re a Texas parent, check your kid’s classroom wall.
That’s the tidbits.
Republicans in this state are losing ground in the polls, funneling your tax dollars to their donors, and putting their religion on your kid’s classroom wall, all while telling you everything is fine. It isn’t. And for the first time in a long time, the numbers say Texans are starting to notice.
Stay tuned. There’s always more.
88 days until the November election!
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Vicki Goodwin leading Dan Patrick.
Considering every Republican is breaking all the commandments this is pretty rich of them to post in the schools.