Deep in the heart of deep-red Texas, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has spent thousands in support of Congressman Pete Sessions, a Republican who represents his wealthy and exclusive neighborhood north of downtown Dallas.

That’s his guy. And this is his turf – the 32nd District of Texas. It’s where Jones has a $28 million home and where Tuesday's midterm election has put him on the opposing side of a former NFL player backed by the NFL players union.

His name is Colin Allred, former linebacker for the Tennessee Titans. He’s the Democratic challenger and is playing for much higher stakes than the last time he faced a Jones-backed team as a player against the Cowboys in 2010.

When it comes to the Latino block of the electorate, you’ve probably heard politicians and analysts describe it this way.

“When it comes to voting, experts refer to our community as America’s ‘sleeping giant.’” “Potential Hispanic voters have a ‘sleeping giant’ in Texas.” “There has been a ‘sleeping giant’ in America that has been dormant for too long but things are about to change.”

The giant part refers to the growing number of Latinos in the U.S. The sleeping – well, that refers to how few of them vote. The term has been in use since the 90s. But the 90s were more than two decades ago. Surely things have changed since?

https://wwPotential new homeowners looking for the most bang for their buck should be sure to check out Houston's The Woodlands-Sugar Land metro area before making an offer somewhere else.

A new report from Smart Asset, a financial guidance website, ranked the Houston-Woodlands-Sugar Land metro area No. 5 in the country for affordable housing for average income earners.

The report analyzed data from 25 of the nation's largest metro areas that compared median household income, average non-mortgage debt and local median home values. Overall, the data showed that metro areas in the Midwest and South were the most affordable for median income homeowners looking to buy.w.chron.com/neighborhood/article/Affordable-metro-areas-Houston-ranking-13338931.php

There’s no other way to put it: Texas’ 23rd congressional district is huge, like, larger-than-many-states-kind-of huge. The 29-county district hugs the San Antonio suburbs. There, you’ll find all the signs of urban sprawl, shopping centers and traffic, and also a few military bases. Head west, and the scenery changes.

You’ll see pump jacks dotting the desert, and ocotillo and agave plants dot the wide, open stretches of ranch land. The district runs through and past Marfa, and stops just short of El Paso. It also includes about 800 miles of the Texas-Mexico border.

“Generally speaking, [it’s] fairly an unpopulated area,” says Texas State Demographer Lloyd Potter, who’s also a University of Texas at San Antonio professor.

AUSTIN — The rains started innocently enough — a refreshing break from a summer-long drought that had parched the landscape and sent residents of this water-loving city for relief, swimming and boating in its spectacular man-made lakes.

But what has happened is more insidious: The season has become one of the wettest autumns on record, causing five deaths in the Central Texas region and tainting an entire city’s water supply.

This city of one million people took the unprecedented step this week of asking residents to boil drinking water for three minutes to kill any bacteria, the culmination of a series of floods that have deposited large amounts of sediment from the soil, as well as oil and other pollutants into its water system, overwhelming its water-treatment plants.

Anchored by the melting pot of people in cities like Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, Houston, and San Antonio, Texas continues to gain acclaim as one of the most diverse states in the country. In fact, a new study by personal finance website WalletHub crowns the Lone Star State as the second most diverse state in the U.S., behind California.

The WalletHub study shows Texas ranks fourth for cultural diversity and sixth for religious diversity — the state’s two best showings among the study’s six buckets of diversity data. Meanwhile, Texas appeared at No. 13 for both socioeconomic diversity and economic diversity, No. 14 for household diversity, and No. 28 for political diversity.

An analysis on new census numbers by the Texas Tribune shows a Hispanic or black child in Texas is three times as likely to live in poverty as a white child. On the other hand, overall poverty in Texas continues to drop to historical lows.

Lloyd Potter is state demographer for Texas and director of the Institute for Demographic and Socioeconomic Research at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and says the drop in poverty comes from increases in median household income. But the problem is that it’s not spread equally across the state.

“There are parts of the state that are prosperous and other aprts of the state that are either not growing in terms of income or losing people to poverty,” Potter says.

Vanessa Taylor moved to San Antonio from Green Bay, Wisconsin, earlier this year seeking better opportunities for her two teenaged sons.

The family’s only source of income is a monthly disability payment of $605 that one of Taylor’s sons receives.

“It’s kind of hard,” Taylor said, noting she has to stagger necessary purchases for her sons, who are 14 and 16 years old. “It’s like one month, one child gets something — and then the next month, the other child gets something.”

New census numbers released today show poverty has declined slightly inside San Antonio’s city limits, but income remains stagnate.

And the share of San Antonio residents covered by health insurance has declined, according to estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau today.

Among the findings:

A newly formed state coalition says Texas has the fourth worst access to eye care in the nation and they want to do something about it.

The Texas Optometric Association (TOA) formed Focus Texas – a group of doctors, patients and citizens who are concerned about the state of eye care in Texas.

Focus Texas said Texas’ has archaic laws concerning what services eye care providers can perform.

Following 10 years of population growth driven mostly by Hispanic births, Texas stands to win big after the 2020 U.S. Census is finalized.

But if the addition of a question about U.S. citizenship to the census impacts the state’s response rates negatively, Texas could potentially lose billions of dollars of federal funding and its chances at securing the three U.S. House of Representatives seats it’s expected to gain after congressional reapportionment could be jeopardized.

Lloyd Potter, Texas’ State Demographer and director of the Texas Demographic Center, said that Texas is already a state with multiple census tracts that are among the most difficult to count in the country and the addition of the citizenship question could lead to even lower response rates.

Texas State Demographer Dr. Lloyd Potter discusses the rapidly increasing population in San Antonio, Bexar County and Texas. Then in The Conversation, local reporters Josh Baugh (San Antonio Express-News) and Greg Jefferson (San Antonio Current) discuss city-mandated paid sick leave, and how San Antonio and Austin are becoming a mega-city.

Hispanics make up the biggest racial or ethnic group in Victoria County, and that demographic trend will continue, according to newly released census estimates.

The 2017 figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show how much Victoria County’s population has evolved in the past 40 years. In 1980, non-Hispanic whites made up 62 percent of Victoria County’s population. Last year, that share shrunk to about 45 percent, according to census estimates. The non-Hispanic white population was the only major racial or ethnic group to shrink in the past seven years, according to the data.

Plans for Interstate 14 have been expanded, and the Texas Department of Transportation will have a say in how a portion of the project is executed.

Rep. Brian Babin of Beaumont, who sits on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, recently submitted a bill that would extend I-14 to Mississippi and effectively would bring two brand new interstates to West Texas.

Under the already-approved plan known as Ports to Forts, I-14’s western terminus would be at I-10 and U.S. Route 190, near Iraan. US 190 would be converted to I-14 to Brady, and the project would continue eastward.

Latinos are on pace to become the largest population group in the state of Texas in less than five years.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Lone Star State welcomed 234,000 new Hispanic residents in 2017.

That brought the Hispanic population in Texas to more than 11 million people.

Central Texas counties owe their chart-topping growth to expanding minority populations, according to new U.S. Census estimates released Thursday.

The numbers also show that the greater Austin area, in keeping with a national trend, is getting older.

Here’s what you need to know about Austin-area population shifts:

For many years, the prospect that Hispanics would become the state’s largest population group has been a question of “when” and not “if.”

With growth among the Hispanic population in Texas continuing to easily outpace growth among white Texans, it’s likely the state will reach that demographic milestone as soon as 2022. That’s according to the state demographer and new population estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Dave Harms, 71, moved with his wife last June to the Alamo Ranch area of Bexar County from Lodi, California, a town about 30 minutes south of Sacramento.

“The reason we left California is I was getting fed up with the politics ... The gun laws, the high taxes, the high cost of living — all of those combined,” the retired California Highway Patrol sergeant said.

The best kept secrets about living in San Antonio have been exposed through national reports on its new status as the fastest growing major city in America.

Army Major Jeff Shelnutt has experienced the dangers of service.

“I volunteered for this and I understand, especially since 2001, that there is real danger and there is always a possibility of something happening, but I think I look at it from the perspective that this has become a calling,” Shelnutt, 49, said.

He has risked his life in deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, endured personal hardships and advanced during his 30-year military career. Shelnutt said he’s been fortunate, but he knows other military personnel haven’t been.

(MENAFN Editorial) Valor Club development will be designed to meet the special needs of Veterans and their families SAN ANTONIO, TX - Plans for what could be the model of future communities focusing on transitioning Veterans and their families were unveiled at a meeting of the San Antonio City Council. The Valor Club which will cover over 200 acres will be built on a site just five miles southeast of downtown San Antonio.

The $225 million project will be the largest comprehensive 'one stop shopping for transitioning veteran needs ever implemented.

Texas continues to be a people magnet. The state dominated a list of the country’s fastest-growing large cities, released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Dallas and Fort Worth had among the largest population gains last year. On the list of 15 cities nationwide with the most population growth, Dallas' increase of 18,935 people put it at No. 3, and Fort Worth was No. 4, with an increase of 18,664. Fort Worth's growth means the city is now the country's 15th biggest, the Census says.

Frisco, for the first time in at least five years, topped the U.S. Census bureau’s list of fastest-growing big cities in the nation, adding an average of 37 new residents every day for a population jump of 8.2 percent, data released Thursday showed.

The booming Dallas suburb also landed in the ninth spot in terms of the raw number of residents it added over the year that ended in July -- an impressive feat for a city that, at 177,286 people, is still relatively small.

Houston, which seemed poised a few years ago to quickly take over Chicago’s position as the third-largest city in the United States, has hit a snag with fewer people moving here, according to newly released Census figures.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that H-Town added just over 8,000 residents for the year ending in July 2017, a sluggish pace of growth that was exceeded in raw numbers by Austin, Fort Worth, Dallas and San Antonio. The figures do not account for the impact of Hurricane Harvey, which is believed to have prompted thousands of students to leave the Houston area.

Pushing past the 1.5 million mark, San Antonio grew more than any other city in the country last year, while Houston barely experienced any growth overall.

Meanwhile, Texas suburbs once again topped the list of fastest-growing cities in the nation, according to population estimates released Thursday by the Census Bureau. With just 177,286 residents, Frisco — which ranked as the nation's fastest-growing city — easily outpaced the state's biggest city in population gain from July 2016 to July 2017.

Frisco, north of Dallas, had a net gain of 13,470 residents. Houston, which clocks out at 2.3 million residents, only grew by an estimated 8,235.

With all of the rapid growth in North Texas, it should come as no surprise — Fort Worth is now the 15th-largest city in the country.

"It's exciting," said Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price. She noted that Fort Worth is projected to be at a million people by 2025.

"That's a lot of people in a short amount of time," she said.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/fort-worth/article211740579.html#storylink=cpy

John Boekweg moved from Salt Lake City to San Antonio last fall when the accounting firm he works for expanded operations into the Alamo City. His wife and eight of his children joined him here in late December.

So far, they are thoroughly enjoying the city they now call home.

“It just seems like there’s a lot more happening here for families,” he said. “I don’t know if we’ll ever get through it all. … We’re just really impressed.”

Recently released data from the Texas Demographic Center spelled bad news for many rural areas in the state: populations there were still shrinking, or growing slowly.

Population growth in Texas remained concentrated in urban areas in 2016, according to the new numbers. That meant the fight continues for many small towns in Texas that are struggling to maintain or build their communities and economies.

In 2006 the city of Austin approved vertical mixed-use, or VMU, zoning along some of its major transit corridors to accommodate rapid growth.

The goal was density—of housing supply, transit opportunities and uses.

“Mixed-use” refers to the combination of two or more of the following uses—residential, commercial or office—in one building.

What inning are we in? By now, the commercial real estate industry has heard this question a little too often over the past couple of years, followed by something like: we’re so far into this recovery, it must be over soon!

As soon as it feels like the economy has reached its crest, we start to panic a little. Then we start questioning how much time we have left and when it will end. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

I’ve been studying the economy my entire working life, and if my tenure in economic development and data analysis has taught me anything, it’s that every economic recovery is unique. The market drivers for each expansionary period are different.

Texas continues to be America’s fastest-growing state, the U.S. government Census Bureau says.

Six of the nation’s top 10 largest-gaining counties between July 1, 2016 and July 1, 2017, were in Texas, the bureau recently said in a news release.

The fastest-growing area in the country was the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan area which includes 13 counties in Texas. It gained 146,000 residents last year.

RESTON, Va. – At lunchtime, workers from Microsoft might walk a few blocks to the fancy Morton's steakhouse, perhaps stopping in at one of the tony boutiques nearby. Corporate tech headliners like Google and Oracle have offices here, along with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Accenture. After work, young professionals pack the tables at Jackson's, a popular local restaurant.

"This is a place that has everything for you," says Joe Knapp, 47, who lives in another suburb of Washington, D.C., (Alexandria) and makes the easy commute to Reston for his video production job. From hiking trails to fine dining, Reston, he says, has enough to spare locals from dealing with the hated, heavy traffic to the District.

Laura Davis and her husband welcomed the opportunity to get back to Central Texas after living out of state for a year.

The couple, who have a teenager in high school and another planning to attend Texas State University in the fall, recently moved from Aurora, Colorado, to Round Rock, where they had lived for about five years.

“The whole time we lived in Colorado, we wanted to move back here,” Davis said.

States are suing President Trump for adding a citizenship question to the 2020 U.S. Census. On this edition of Capital Tonight, we told you why critics say the decision will cut into Texas' representation and services.

President Trump is floating around a new idea to pay for his long-promised border wall.

Our Political Analysts joined us to discuss the possibility.

President Donald Trump won Republican-friendly Texas by nine points in 2016, securing his path to the White House and the GOP's hold over Washington. But now this ruby red state, with its mélange of arid landscapes, oversized steaks and cosmopolitan cities brimming with people from around the world, could lose representation in Congress and billions of federal dollars because of a Trump administration decision to add a question about citizenship status to the U.S. census in 2020.

The change, instated by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross Monday night, would bring back a question last seen in the 1950s. Ross claims the citizenship question will be used to increase data and prevent voter discrimination. But detractors argue the shift is intended to scare immigrants and prevent them from participating, and it's the voters in Texas, many of whom backed Trump, who could be among the hardest hit.

Once the new federal survey lands, Texas, a state that already exceeds the national average for low census response scores, could face new obstacles in accurately representing its population, a figure that determines Congressional representation and federal funding. A vocal group of bipartisan critics say that questions about citizenship would dissuade a large percentage of legal and undocumented Texas residents from answering the census, which is used to calculate the state's official population. There are nearly 5 million immigrants living in Texas, and more than half of them are undocumented or live with someone who is.

A conference room in a Houston municipal building will soon take the form of a political war room.

Maps outlining city blocks and tracts will adorn the walls. Operatives will gather to strategize on block-walking in different communities. And outreach plans will be solidified in hopes of shaking hands and meeting with as many constituents as possible.

The extensive ground game that will be formulated in that war room, and similar ones across the state, won’t be in support of any candidate or political campaign. Instead, it will be to promote the once-in-a-decade census — a crucial count of every person living in the United States.

Driving over the Belton Lake and Stillhouse Hollow dams, many folks might be tempted to think Central Texas is has drinking water aplenty.

It is a mistaken impression, according to local water experts as well as state and regional water planners. That water has been sold.

“When there is no drought and everything is going well, we don’t panic,” said Horace Grace, a water expert from Killeen. “But we need to get on top of this and get control of our water situation.”

FORT WORTH - North Texas is still booming — really booming — according to the U.S. Census Bureau's latest population estimates.

The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan area’s 146,000-resident jump in 2017 was the most of any metro area in the United States. And six of the top 10 fastest-growing counties in the United States were also in Texas, including Tarrant, Dallas, Denton and Collin.

Overall, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington ranked fourth, with 7,399,662 residents, behind only the New York, Chicago and Los Angeles metro areas and ahead of Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, which ranked fifth.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/business/growth/article206357404.html#storylink=cpy

New Census data released Thursday show six of the 10 counties with the nation's largest increases in population were located in Texas, thanks to economic growth, immigration and high fertility rates.

The six Texas counties with the biggest population increases between July 1, 2016, and July 1, 2017, are located throughout the state: Harris County had the fourth largest increase in the country; Tarrant was fifth; Bexar was seventh; Dallas was eighth; Denton was ninth; and Collin was 10th.

New numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau show Texas is still growing.

The latest report shows the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan area saw the biggest population growth over the last year – an increase of about 146,000 people.

Texas state demographer Lloyd Potter says this is a trend Texas has seen for a while, and it’s due in part to two types of migration: domestic and international.

Dallas-Fort Worth has had the largest population growth of any metro area in the country from 2016 to 2017, according to new population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Despite the local expansion, Texas State demographer Lloyd Potter says the state’s not growing everywhere, especially rural areas.

“We had about a 100 counties that lost population,” Potter said. “So there are people moving from other parts of the state to these more urbanized and suburban areas and they’re doing that because of economic opportunity.”

The Dallas-Fort Worth region, once again, added the most new residents of any metro area in the country -- roughly 400 per day, or a total of 146,238, over the year that ended in July, census data released Thursday shows.

That kept D-FW firmly in its spot as the nation’s fourth-largest metro, though the region is catching up to Chicago, whose population has been sliding as economic factors tip the scales in favor of Texas, experts say.

A University of Texas study gives Texans poor marks in civic health ranked on three tiers — political involvement, volunteerism/philanthropy and neighborly engagement.

The report from UT’s flagship campus in Austin ranks Texas 47th among 50 states for voter turnout. It observes the No. 1 reason given for staying away from the polls has shifted since a baseline study in 2012.

That year, the main reasons for not voting were being too busy or a work conflict. The updated Texas Civic Health Index reports the No. 1 reason for not voting in 2016, the last major national election year, was dislike of the candidates.

If you think your car will be driving you anytime in the near future, think again.

Known as driverless or self-driving vehicles, autonomous vehicles are in the spotlight. But while the auto, tech and ride-share industries are driving the effort, the fact that automation levels vary means it will be a while before you'll pass a truly driverless vehicle on your daily commute.

In Texas, the push toward autonomous vehicles is particularly strong, accelerated by circumstances that make it among the nation's leaders as automation advances:

Written by Amanda Coers – The Brownwood Area Chamber of Commerce hosted the 2018 Economic Summit, presented by TexasBank, on Tuesday, February 20th, from 8 to 11 a.m. at the Howard Payne University Mabee Center.

Event speakers included U.S. Congressman Mike Conaway, Brownwood Municipal District Director Guy Andrews, Ann Jones with the Heartland Association of Realtors, and Texas State Demographer Dr. Lloyd Potter. Sponsors for the event included Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, Coldwell Banker – Mark Campbell and Associates, and the Brownwood Municipal Development District.

First to speak was Congressman Conaway, to give an overview of the national economy and recent activity in Washington under President Trump’s administration. Congressman Conaway is pictured at top.

Press Release – The Brownwood Area Chamber of Commerce announced this week that registration for the 2018 Economic Summit is currently underway. The event will feature Texas State Demographer Dr. Lloyd Potter as the keynote speaker. The summit will be held on Tuesday, February 20th at Howard Payne University’s Bullion Suites in the HPU Mabee Center from 8:00 AM to 11 AM.

Lloyd Potter was appointed State Demographer on June 4, 2010. He is a professor in the Department of Demography at The University of Texas at San Antonio where he also serves as the director of the Institute for Demographic and Socioeconomic Research (IDSER). He has extensive experience working as an applied demographer in several settings.

Dr. Potter will outline current demographic and population trends in the state of Texas and specifically Brown County and how they may impact the economic future.

AUSTIN, Texas - The Texas Commission on Public School Finance met for the first time Tuesday. The panel has been tasked with coming up with recommendations to overhaul what's been deemed a "broken" school finance system, and it's dredging up old feuds over how best to fund public education in Texas.

Public school advocates are pushing for more funding overall, while some lawmakers continue to question whether more money will lead to better outcomes.

"We're spending a lot of money," said state Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood. "We need to make sure that every dollar we spend gets the most bang for the buck out of it."

U-Haul named Texas the nation’s number one growth state for 2017, marking the second consecutive year the Lone Star State nabbed the top spot in the truck rental company’s annual migration trends report which analyzes domestic relocation patterns.

According to U-Haul, the number of incoming truck rentals accounted for 50.3 percent of all one-way traffic into Texas last year. The report noted that year-over-year arrivals of one-way truck rentals into the state only rose by one percent while departures climbed three percent compared to 2016’s data. U-Haul attributed some of 2017’s outbound flow to Hurricane Harvey, which pounded the Houston area and the Texas Gulf Coast. Despite these minor fluctuations, Texas remained the nation’s top net-gain state, as it also was in 2016.

Breitbart Texas reported that, in 2016, inbound U-Haul truck rentals outpaced departures 50.8 percent to 49.2 percent largely because of relocations to Austin, named the number two U.S. growth city in the 50,000-plus population category.

TEXAS (KXXV) -

The population of the state of Texas is growing faster than any other state, a state demographer said.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau report, nearly 400,000 more people became Texans in 2017. That equals out to about 1,000 people per day.

A majority of that is attributed to newborns, but the other half is people moving to the state.

SAN ANTONIO - Texas grew by more than one-thousand people per day last year, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report. The report, which looked at the population from July 1, 2016 to July 1, 2017, also said Texas saw the most numerical growth in the country, but compared to years past, it was lower.

“There still are people moving to Texas, [but] not as many as there were moving in 2015,” State Demographer Lloyd Potter said.

According to the report, 399,734 people became Texans. More than half of the new Texans were newborn babies, which Potter said was growing at a steady pace. The rest were people moving to Texas, which has actually declined.