David Martin Davies

In 1964 James White opened the Broken Spoke and on most nights you can still find him there welcoming customers and introducing bands with his Broken Spoke manifesto.

The stage at the Spoke has hosted many of country music's greats and hall of fame stars. Author Donna Marie Miller has chronicled the life and times of this historic gem in "The Broken Spoke: Austin's Legendary Honky-Tonk."

Some girls in Texas, as young as 12 years old, are being forced to marry men much older than they are. And then they are living a life of servitude and exploitation. It’s sounds like a Margaret Atwood novel but it’s a reality in Texas. In Texas, 6.9 of every 1,000 teens between ages 15 and 17 married in 2014, second only to West Virginia

Senate Bill 1705, if passed into law, would make anyone getting married under the age of 18 more difficult.

Jeanne Smoot is a legislative counsel with the Tahirih Justice Center which has been at the forefront of changing the law.

Texas is one of the worst states in the nation for women to give birth. Between 2011 and 2012, 189 Texas mothers died less than a year after childbirth. And the question is why? Also – why is this statistic so much worse for African American mothers?

It’s been a topsy-turvy week for the Trump White House. The administration has been dealing with the aftermath of the firing of FBI Director James Comey. If Trump thought the dismissal of Comey would shut down investigations into his campaign’s alleged connection with Russian interference in American presidential politics, then that was a miscalculation. That firing, public humiliation of Comey and the changing story told to the public about that decision only added fuel to the fire of those looking for answers.

With about two weeks left in the legislative session, lawmakers are entering the phase when bills start to wither and die. Thursday was a critical deadline in the state house which was made all the more deadly when Tea Party-aligned lawmakers, who groused that they were being punished for petty personal politics, engaged in running out the clock maneuvers which would kill lots of bills. Meanwhile, it was the artful parliamentary maneuvers in the Texas Senate that saved a slew of bills that provide open government.