This story was produced by Public Health Watch, a nonprofit investigative news organization based in Austin.

POINT COMFORT, Texas — For more than four decades, the Formosa Plastics plant here has been a picture of turmoil and indulgence. Situated in Calhoun County, on the Texas Gulf Coast, it has amassed a record of environmental contamination and workplace calamity that, in theory, should have subjected it to rigorous oversight and limited its ability to grow. 

Instead, Texas regulators have given the Taiwan-based company permission to expand its Point Comfort plant 10 times in the past 16 years, allowed its managers to avoid spending money on pollution controls and slashed enormous fines the company was in line to receive.

The state’s stewardship of Formosa is crucial because the company’s foundational product — a resin that underpins production of a common form of plastic — requires the use of two chemicals so hazardous that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has short-listed them for possible restrictions or bans. Highly flammable vinyl chloride is a known carcinogen that targets the liver, brain and other organs. Ethylene dichloride, or EDC — an oily, smelly liquid used to make vinyl chloride — is a probable carcinogen that can quickly evaporate into a flammable, poisonous gas. Formosa has mismanaged both from its earliest days in Point Comfort.

Public Health Watch has spent the past 10 months examining Formosa’s environmental and worker-safety records and its relationship with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, or TCEQ. The TCEQ is the lead enforcer of federal anti-pollution laws in Texas, but our investigation shows that in Formosa’s case, the agency has behaved more like a sympathetic counselor than a flinty cop. 

Among our findings:

The Point Comfort plant is among the nation’s top emitters of vinyl chloride, a carcinogen and a key ingredient in polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, a type of plastic used in pipes and other products. Most of Formosa’s emissions are allowed as part of its routine operations. But others are due to accidents, known as emissions events. While these incidents have generally declined at other large petrochemical facilities in Texas over the past two decades, they’ve increased at Formosa. About 40% of them involved vinyl chloride. 

The TCEQ has cited Formosa for 587 environmental violations since 2010, but it has fined the company for only 71 of them, resulting in about $1.4 million in penalties. That amounts to less than three hours’ worth of sales last year for Formosa Plastics Corp. USA, the parent of Formosa operations in Texas and Louisiana. Formosa resolved 18 air pollution violations not by fixing the root causes but by obtaining permit amendments that allowed it to legally release more foul air. That’s like addressing chronic speeding on a stretch of highway not with an enhanced police presence but by raising the speed limit.

After a series of chemical releases, fires, explosions and 34 worker injuries at Formosa in the 2010s, the U.S. Department of Justice found that the company’s failure to follow operating instructions had left one of its units vulnerable to fire and explosion for close to two decades. In 2013, that unit ignited, injuring 14 workers, including two who had to be airlifted out of Point Comfort. The case was settled in 2021, with Formosa agreeing to pay $2.9 million in penalties.

Worker safety remains a pressing concern at the plant. At least 122 people were hurt there between 2020 and 2025 — more than at four other large Texas chemical facilities combined, according to a Public Health Watch analysis of self-reported federal injury data. In the first 10 months of this year, the Calhoun County Emergency Communications Division received 27 medical emergency calls from Formosa, according to 911 logs. That’s more than in all of 2014, the company’s recent peak. In August, a call came in for a worker who was severely burned on both legs and had to be airlifted.

For 18 years, Formosa stored some of its hazardous waste without a permit, a major infringement of federal law. When the TCEQ discovered the infraction in 2014, it could have penalized the company for each of the 6,534 days it was out of compliance, for a maximum fine of $51 million. Instead, Formosa was penalized for each year it was out of compliance. After additional discounts, its fine was just $103,000.

“This is like a list of red flags,” said Tom Mariani, who led the Justice Department’s environmental enforcement section during the first Trump administration and the Biden administration. “If the EPA came to me and said, ‘Well, here’s what we know about Company X,’ I’d say, ‘This entity deserves our attention.’”

Formosa’s environmental and worker-safety problems extend well beyond Texas. 

In 1985, the company’s now-shuttered PVC plant in Delaware City, Delaware, was so rife with vinyl chloride leaks that the state revoked its operating permits and shut it down temporarily.  Michael Castle, Delaware’s governor at the time, warned chemical manufacturers that “if we must make a choice between the interests of industry and the well-being of our constituents, invariably we will act in the interest of the public.” 

In 2004, two years after Formosa took over a PVC plant in Illiopolis, Illinois, the facility exploded when a cloud of leaked vinyl chloride ignited, killing five workers and injuring three. Federal investigators found there had been a near-miss at the plant two months before the blast — and a similar close call a year earlier at a Formosa plant in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The Illiopolis facility never reopened.

Formosa’s biggest environmental debacle, in 2016, made headlines around the globe. Wastewater spilled from the company’s steel mill on the coast of central Vietnam, leaving behind more than 100 tons of dead fish and sickening untold numbers of people. Formosa admitted responsibility and paid the Vietnamese government $500 million, but it is still being sued by victims of the disaster, who claim they haven’t recovered physically or economically.

These highly publicized episodes didn’t slow Formosa’s momentum in Texas. 

Less than a year after the Vietnam spill, the TCEQ gave the company the go-ahead to build a third high-density polyethylene, or HDPE, unit — which makes the raw ingredients for milk jugs, trash bags and other consumer and industrial products — even though its two existing HDPE units had racked up major hazardous-waste violations and experienced two accidents that injured 19 workers. The project extended Formosa’s footprint north, into adjoining Jackson County, where it now owns 7,000 acres of undeveloped land — an expanse half the size of Manhattan.

In September 2023, shortly after TCEQ inspectors cited Formosa for its 43rd air-pollution violation that year, the agency gave the company permission to move deeper into Jackson County. The unit there will produce 1-Hexene, a flammable liquid that can irritate the eyes and respiratory tract and, in high concentrations, lead to unconsciousness or death. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who was feted by Formosa executives during a 2024 trade mission to Taiwan, praised the project and announced that it qualified for a new state tax incentive program.

Fires, explosions and toxic discharges aside, the TCEQ classifies Formosa as a “satisfactory performer.” This designation shields it from the higher penalties, extra paperwork and slower permitting that can go with an “unsatisfactory” rating.

“Formosa is not an isolated case,” said Kathryn Guerra, a former TCEQ and EPA employee who now directs the TCEQ Watchdog Campaign for the advocacy group Public Citizen. “It’s what happens when the state favors corporate profit over public health. There’s nothing a polluter can do that would make the TCEQ not give it another permit.”

Public Health Watch sent a summary of our findings and a list of detailed questions to Formosa. The company did not answer the questions but sent an email saying it “takes its environmental and workplace safety responsibilities seriously. We work closely with the appropriate regulatory agencies, comply with applicable reporting requirements, and continually pursue improvements in our operations.” 

We also sent summaries of our findings to the TCEQ, the EPA, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, and state and federal elected officials.

The TCEQ declined to comment. Spokespeople for the EPA and OSHA did not respond to repeated requests for comment. 

“Thank you for bringing this information to my attention,” State Sen. Lois W. Kolkhorst, a Republican whose district includes Calhoun County, said in a written statement. “I will take a closer look at these claims and consult with the TCEQ and other regulatory agencies about the sanctions or lack thereof. Safety of employees and meeting necessary and important environmental protections must be a top priority for the state.”

The Formosa Plastics plant in Point Comfort opened in 1983. (Antranik Tavitian for Public Health Watch)

State Sen. Molly Cook, an emergency room nurse and a former volunteer environmental organizer, said the findings were “hard to hear. … This is just another example of how corporate entities are allowed to run wild in Texas at the expense of everyday Texans.” Cook, a Democrat from Houston, said that in the coming legislative session, she will be “laser-focused” on making sure TCEQ permits aren’t “rubber stamps” for companies that “soil our air and soil our water.”

A spokesperson for Abbott, a Republican who lost his bid for a fourth term last week, declined to comment. “I would have to refer you to TCEQ,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. A spokesperson for the governor-elect, Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, did not respond to requests for comment. The governor appoints the three commissioners who oversee the TCEQ.

Fraught beginnings

When Formosa opened its plant on the eastern shore of Lavaca Bay in 1983, its primary product was PVC resin, a white powder that is mixed with chemicals, heated and shaped to make pipes, siding, packaging and other goods. Making the resin requires two extremely hazardous ingredients: vinyl chloride and ethylene dichloride, or EDC.

Formosa struggled to manage these chemicals from the start. 

The plant was still under construction when EDC spilled onto the soil and seeped into the groundwater. Two years after the facility opened, the Texas Attorney General’s Office sued Formosa for 65 air violations involving excessive releases of vinyl chloride. In the late 1980s, the EPA found that Formosa had been storing and treating EDC-laced hazardous waste without a permit. The EPA later fined Formosa a then-record $3.4 million.

Despite more spills and air violations, in 1989 Texas and the EPA greenlit a $1.3 billion expansion that would enlarge the plant’s domain fivefold. The project included an EDC manufacturing unit that would give the company an in-house supply of the essential chemical. 

Formosa said its investment would yield the “world’s safest and cleanest chemical complex.” News accounts told another story.

During the first year of construction, three laborers died and Formosa spilled about 500 gallons of EDC it was unloading from a barge. In 1991, a broken valve unleashed into the community a dense cloud of hydrochloric acid, which irritates the respiratory system and, in heavy concentrations, can cause a fatal buildup of fluid in the lungs. Nearby ranchers said it burned their eyes and throats and sent their cattle “bawling and running.” The following year, OSHA cited Formosa for dozens of workplace safety violations, including willfully failing to monitor for vinyl chloride when workers were being exposed above legal limits.  

Just four days after the EDC unit opened in 1993, 2,000 gallons of EDC leaked out of a faulty joint, sending a worker to intensive care.

According to a class-action lawsuit residents filed against Formosa in 1994, the plant produced noxious “vapors, fumes, dust, smoke and odors. … There are also frequent explosions, powerful rumblings and vibrations from the Formosa facility which shake the ground of Plaintiffs’ property and rattle windows of Plaintiffs’ homes.” 

Formosa ended up buying many of the homes and land at above-market prices, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said. Today, Formosa owns about a third of the residential properties in Point Comfort, and the town’s population is about a quarter of what it was when the company arrived. 

In 1997, Formosa enlarged the EDC unit and boosted its shipping rate for the chemical. A  string of tragedies followed. Just two months after regulators authorized the expansion, two workers were found dead in a tank of EDC. The following year, another EDC tank exploded, injuring 67 workers. News reports said the blast shook homes in Point Comfort, caused three schools to evacuate and sent an estimated 16,000 gallons of the chemical into the environment.

The company also fought to control releases of vinyl chloride it made and used on site. In 2009, Formosa signed a federal consent decree that included a $2.8 million fine and required it to spend an estimated $10 million to control leaks of vinyl chloride and other volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, and improve its handling of EDC- and vinyl chloride-contaminated waste at its Point Comfort and Baton Rouge plants. 

The legally binding agreement remains in effect, and the company still hasn’t gained control of the two problematic chemicals, which wind up in the air, on the ground or on workers. 

Formosa has reported 50 leaks of vinyl chloride to the U.S. Coast Guard’s National Response Center and the TCEQ since 2020. The gas escaped through misaligned or open valves, holes and cracks in piping, or broken equipment. On October 19 of this year, nearly 4,000 pounds of vinyl chloride was expelled from a ruptured pump, according to a report Formosa filed with the TCEQ. The leak lasted 17 hours. 

Since 2020, Formosa has reported more than two dozen EDC spills and air releases, and at least four workers have been injured after coming into contact with the chemical, according to OSHA records. In one of those incidents, a worker cleaning out a tank of EDC suffered burns over 30% of his body and was hospitalized with kidney failure. 

TCEQ records show the company is still cleaning up groundwater contamination caused by years of EDC and vinyl chloride spills. The agency and Formosa did not answer questions about the extent of the contamination or whether it poses a threat to the community. 

The EPA recently concluded that EDC presents an “unreasonable risk” to industrial workers because it can damage the kidneys, respiratory tract and male reproductive system, and “over a lifetime can cause cancer.” The agency said it will deal with those risks by strengthening worker protections and monitoring and possibly restricting or prohibiting the production or use of the chemical. 

Mariani, the former Justice Department lawyer, said his office handled many enforcement cases involving petrochemical companies. Those operations are extremely complex, he said, and it’s not uncommon for things to go wrong.

“OK, is anybody perfect? No. But it seems like this facility [Formosa] is pretty far away from perfect,” Mariani said. “The public record shows that the facility has had significant problems, which could well mean violation of law.”

‘Waiting for the big one’

Petrochemical plants are inherently dangerous places, where workers risk injury, illness or death every time they drive through the gates. 

But Formosa workers face a higher risk of injury than those at other large petrochemical complexes in Texas, according to a Public Health Watch analysis of self-reported federal injury data. Between 2020 and 2025, more people were injured at Formosa than at four other facilities combined – ExxonMobil in Baytown, ExxonMobil in Beaumont, LyondellBasell in Channelview and Dow Chemical in Freeport.

Formosa’s Vinyl Chloride Monomer, or VCM, unit, where it makes vinyl chloride, is especially feared and despised by workers.

“It is the oldest unit at the plant and easily the scariest,” a former employee told Public Health Watch. He requested anonymity because he still works in the petrochemical industry. “They’ve done so little maintenance over time that the drainage ditches, canals, trenches are plugged.”

He described the unit as chaotic and replete with hazards. 

“There was mud and dirt and crap that had never been cleaned up. There was hoses coiled up at the bottom of ladders where people were coming down off of towers. … There was pallets floating in or sunk in [standing water] out there for you to trip over. … It was a scene like I have never encountered in a plant in my life.”

A current worker, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, said many of the VCM unit’s pipes are corroded. “Everything is either being shut down because stuff needs to be replaced or something’s busting,” he said. “It’s drama. There’s a lot going on.”

He said that until he was interviewed by Public Health Watch, no one had told him that vinyl chloride could cause cancer. The EPA is expected to decide next year whether the chemical presents an unreasonable risk to workers or the public and should be more strictly regulated. 

About a third of Formosa’s emissions events in the past five years occurred at the VCM unit, according to TCEQ records. The unit battled a power surge, shutdowns, and bursting and leaking equipment that resulted in large releases of vinyl chloride, hydrochloric acid and EDC. 

The former worker said his concerns extend beyond the VCM unit.

“The failure to follow safety rules was pretty profound,” he said. He frequently saw people bypass OSHA-mandated procedures, including lockout-tagout. That’s a potentially life-saving rule that requires shutting down and isolating equipment prior to maintenance, so workers aren’t exposed to electricity, chemicals or maiming hazards.

This lax safety culture, he fears, could lead to something cataclysmic.

“Formosa’s safety pyramid is chock full,” he said, referring to the theory holding that weak management, unsafe behavior and frequent small incidents build toward catastrophes. “They’re waiting for the big one at the top, and they’re adding to the bottom daily. It’s only a matter of time.”

Formosa itself has acknowledged the dangers that lurk in the facility. In a worst-case accident scenario it filed with the EPA, the company estimated that a 10-minute release from the VCM unit could uncork a ground-hugging cloud of hydrochloric acid that could travel 15 miles and put more than 20,000 people at risk of injury or death. According to TCEQ records, that unit has had five accidental releases of hydrochloric acid in the past five years. 

Calhoun County’s Local Emergency Planning Committee coordinates with Formosa and other large chemical plants to prepare for accidents and natural disasters. The committee’s public information officer and the county’s emergency coordinator, Ladonna Thigpen, told Public Health Watch she was “not familiar” with Formosa’s worst-case scenario report. But she expressed confidence in the company.

“Accidents happen,” Thigpen said. “All you can do is prepare, and they do a good job at preparing and they have good teams out there.”

A different picture emerged when Public Health Watch reviewed lawsuits, 911 records and OSHA injury logs dating to 2017. We found similar workplace accidents occurring year after year.   

On three occasions, workers were severely burned after falling into holes filled with hot liquid that had been left open or improperly covered with plywood or cardboard. A worker who fell into scalding condensate in the VCM unit wrote in a Formosa incident report, “When I took my sock [off] my skin came off.”

One worker’s lawsuit said she hadn’t been provided with fall protection and had plummeted two stories from a tower. Another worker died after falling 25 feet through a hole in the floor grating of an elevated platform, according to an OSHA inspection report. 

At least 14 people were injured after coming into contact with EDC, caustic liquid, chlorine gas or other hazardous substances. 

A worker’s lawsuit filed in August said he was installing a flange when acid poured out, penetrating his protective clothing and causing severe burns. Another lawsuit alleged that when a worker went to replace a valve that was supposed to be empty, she was hit in the face with a high-pressure blast of PVC powder and liquid latex. The blast knocked off her hard hat and safety goggles, she said, and sent her stumbling backward over a pallet someone had left on the floor. 

In the past four years, OSHA has cited Formosa for nine serious violations. Seven were for endangering workers in the VCM unit by failing to follow lockout-tagout procedures and failing to inspect a vessel and piping, among other things. After negotiations with Formosa, the agency downgraded seven of the nine violations and deleted two, cutting the initial $134,400 in penalties almost in half to $71,300.

Public Health Watch asked Formosa about the recent workplace accidents, as well as conditions and safety practices in the VCM unit. The company did not answer the questions.

‘Putting out wildfires’

It’s OSHA’s job to protect people from workplace perils, but in Formosa’s case, the agency has mostly been missing in action. While OSHA has responded to injuries and worker complaints at Point Comfort, the agency’s last planned, comprehensive inspection of the facility took place a decade ago. Since then, at least 21 people have been severely injured there, agency data shows.

OSHA’s discontinuity is likely due to its traditionally sparse resources, which have become even leaner under the Trump administration. OSHA now has fewer inspectors than at any time in its 55-year history, the AFL-CIO reported this year. It would take the agency’s 70 inspectors in Texas 215 years to visit every workplace in the state.

Dean Wingo, a former OSHA area director in Fort Worth and assistant regional administrator in Dallas, led the agency’s investigation into one of Texas’s worst industrial disasters in recent decades: the 2005 explosion at BP’s Texas City refinery, which killed 15 workers and injured 180. 

“I would say Formosa, from what I’ve looked at, is going to experience a catastrophic event if they don’t correct their behavior at some point,” Wingo told Public Health Watch. “That would be my prediction.”

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board’s report on the Texas City accident pinned most of the blame on “serious deficiencies” in BP’s safety culture and the company’s failure to invest in preventive maintenance. “Warning signs of a possible disaster were present for several years, but company officials did not intervene effectively to prevent it,” the board said. BP paid a record $87 million in OSHA penalties for its role in the tragedy.

Wingo worries that Formosa could be heading down the same path, given its frequent chemical accidents, injuries and poor housekeeping practices.

“They’re not actively looking for hazards and fixing them,” he said. “They’re waiting until they become issues and then … the expression is ‘putting out wildfires.’ So, they don’t look at fire prevention; they just look at putting out the fires when they happen. Their safety program is reactive, not proactive.”

Overstretched regulators

If OSHA has done an imperfect job of protecting workers, the TCEQ has fallen short safeguarding everyone else. The agency says it prioritizes both public health and economic development. In fact, it often goes out of its way to accommodate the companies it oversees.

Formosa is a case in point.

Although the company has racked up hundreds of environmental violations in the past two decades, the resulting TCEQ fines average just $83,000 per year. For an enterprise that collected $4.4 billion in annual sales last year, that’s the equivalent of a typical American household losing $1.65 in the sofa cushions.

“When you’re talking about multibillion-dollar companies, the penalties have to be meaningful to their bottom line in order to deter them from further noncompliance,” said Guerra, of Public Citizen. “If you fine them the same amount that the CEO makes before lunchtime in a day, it’s not going to deter them.”

The Texas Legislature has increased maximum penalties for polluters twice in the past 15 years. But in 2011, the TCEQ undercut those penalty boosts: It stopped tripling or quadrupling fines for companies with especially bad records. 

The TCEQ did, however, continue another practice: offering sizable discounts to companies that settle their cases quickly or show a “good-faith effort to comply” with the rules. Formosa received such discounts on 80% of the 29 enforcement orders Public Health Watch examined, even in cases where the company had been deemed a “repeat violator,” a designation that should, in theory, have qualified it for larger penalties.

The agency does have a cudgel at its disposal: It can fine companies for each day they commit a major violation of environmental laws. But in Formosa’s case, it’s rarely used.

Nine of the company’s violations over the past two decades qualified for this designation, including one that was outstanding for more than 18 years. If Formosa had been fined by the day, it could have drawn penalties ranging from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of dollars. But the TCEQ wielded this hammer only twice during that period, both times on violations that lasted just a day or two.

Even if the TCEQ had a sudden urge to clamp down on big polluters, it would strain to make that happen. The size of the agency’s enforcement staff — 1,006 positions at last count — has remained stagnant, even as the number of permit holders has increased by about 111,000 over the past five years. Today, there is roughly one compliance employee for every 829 permittees — businesses as small as a laundromat or as large as the ExxonMobil complex in Baytown. 

In its legislative budget request for 2028 and 2029, the TCEQ asked for an extra $16.1 million for enforcement and investigations. If the request isn’t granted, Guerra said, funding for these activities won’t increase enough to keep up with the rising number of regulated companies.

The TCEQ didn’t respond when Public Health Watch asked about the growing chasm between the regulators and the regulated. But the TCEQ commissioners — the political appointees who oversee the agency — got defensive when Guerra broached the topic at their regular March meeting. 

Guerra fired off two performance metrics Public Citizen compiled using the agency’s own 2025 data: the fewest number of on-site inspections in eight years, including the COVID-19 pandemic, and a backlog of nearly 1,400 enforcement cases.

Commission Chairwoman Brooke Paup replied icily that she found Guerra’s presentation “incredibly offensive to the 3,300 TCEQ staff who work tirelessly to make sure that this environment is protected.” Another commissioner dismissed Public Citizen, which claims about 1 million members and supporters nationally, as “a group with a very small following.”

Seabirds in wetlands adjoining Lavaca Bay, in Port Lavaca, Texas. (Antranik Tavitian for Public Health Watch)

Luke Metzger, executive director of the advocacy group Environment Texas, said the TCEQ’s deferential treatment of Formosa and other polluters unmasks the state’s permissive approach to regulation. 

“The TCEQ emphasizes that it focuses on [companies] getting to compliance, that enforcement is just one tool and we should look at the results, not just how much they’re being fined,” Metzger said. “Unfortunately, we see in this case, as we see in many others, that the company is not getting to compliance. It’s clearly not working.”

Still ‘satisfactory’

Today, the footprint of Formosa’s Point Comfort plant stands at 2,500 acres, an area three times the size of New York’s Central Park. Its network of tanks, pipes, stacks, office buildings and parking lots stretches for nearly 3 miles along Farm-to-Market Road 1593.

According to data compiled by Material Research L3C, a supply-chain information service, the facility makes more chemicals used in plastics production than any other in the country. Formosa Plastics Corporation USA — primarily composed of its Texas and Louisiana facilities — had $13.1 billion in total assets at the end of last year. 

The company has spread some of its wealth throughout Calhoun County.

About 3,700 people now work at the Point Comfort site, making it an economic leviathan in a remote part of Texas. The pay is good enough to attract novices to the chemical industry, with new hires earning up to $27 an hour. To ensure a steady supply of homegrown talent, Formosa opened a training center in the old Point Comfort elementary school building, which it bought in 2014. 

The company also contributes money and sweat equity to various projects and causes, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes to qualify for tax breaks. It has donated to dozens of religious institutions, and its employees participate in blood drives and beach cleanups. It hosts an annual golf tournament that generates hundreds of thousands of dollars for the United Way. In exchange for a tax abatement, it gave $2 million for a clinic at Memorial Medical Center in Port Lavaca, a city of 11,000 across Lavaca Bay from Point Comfort. 

But its largesse has a hidden cost.

According to a study commissioned last year by the Texas Campaign for the Environment, Formosa has received $148 million in tax abatements from Calhoun County and its school district. About $39 million of that lost revenue could have been used to fund local needs like emergency services, law enforcement, roads and transportation, the study said. 

Point Comfort itself has shrunk by more than half since Formosa began work on its first units, U.S. Census Bureau estimates show. The few hundred people who still live there are likely breathing more toxic air. 

According to the state’s emissions inventory, Formosa’s releases of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, have doubled since 2010, making it the sixth-largest source in Texas. VOCs can cause cancer, central nervous system damage and chronic respiratory impairment. But the state is not regularly monitoring the impact of these emissions on local air quality; its nearest VOC monitoring station is about 80 miles away. 

Fisherwoman and environmental activist Diane Wilson has kept close watch over Formosa since the late 1980s. She was a plaintiff in a citizen lawsuit that has forced the company to pay over $94 million in penalties to date. (Antranik Tavitian for Public Health Watch)

Formosa’s only real reckoning in Texas has come not from any government agency but from a small band of locals indignant about the plant’s pernicious effects on the region’s bays and estuaries,  which sustain commercial and recreational fishing and provide habitat for a rich array of wildlife, including endangered whooping cranes and sea turtles. 

In 2017, an environmental group called the San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper and fisherwoman-turned-activist Diane Wilson brought a citizen lawsuit under the Clean Water Act. It accused Formosa of dumping vast quantities of plastic pellets and PVC powder into Lavaca Bay, Matagorda Bay and Cox Creek. After a 2019 federal bench trial, the judge labeled Formosa a “serial offender.” The company signed a consent decree committing to pay $50 million into the Matagorda Bay Mitigation Trust and to obey a “zero discharge” mandate: No plastic waste should come from the plant’s wastewater or stormwater outfalls.

Formosa hasn’t kept that promise. 

Since the lawsuit was settled, it has racked up more than 1,000 violations for spilling PVC powder primarily into Lavaca Bay and has paid an additional $44 million into the mitigation trust. The TCEQ recently closed an enforcement case involving hundreds of these releases and did not issue a penalty.

The agency’s willingness to stand up to Formosa will soon be tested again, because the wastewater permit that governs its discharges into Lavaca Bay is up for renewal. The permit, notably, is missing a “zero discharge” requirement. 

Loretta Brown, who lives in Port Lavaca and runs cattle on a ranch in Calhoun County, attended a public meeting the TCEQ held about the permit last month. She wanted to know why the agency was “even considering another permit” given that Formosa has committed so many violations since the citizen suit was settled.

The TCEQ’s Michael Sunderlin, who is handling the permit renewal, replied that the agency had reviewed the company’s environmental record and rated it “satisfactory.”

“With 1,100 offenses since the last lawsuit — that comes back satisfactory?” Brown asked, incredulous. 

Nine days after that meeting, the TCEQ faced a new Formosa-induced headache. 

Just before 4 a.m. on October 28, silos of plastic pellets at the plant caught fire and detonated. Bursts of flames shot high into the sky. Homes trembled miles away. Anxious exchanges popped up in local Facebook groups. “Here we go again,” one user wrote.

Formosa assured the public there had been no injuries and told the state there had been no chemical releases significant enough to report.

After Wilson filed a complaint, the TCEQ said it would investigate.

Jason Buch and Elizabeth Douglass contributed to this story, which was produced with support from the FencelineData.org coalition.

The post ‘Satisfactory Performer’: How a Serial Polluter Keeps Thriving in Texas appeared first on The Texas Observer.

For reproductive rights advocate Amanda Zurawski, it was akin to her team winning at the Super Bowl—tenfold. When Democrats swept all statewide races on election night in an historic Texas midterm blowout, she and her family cheered wildly, ran around the living room, and shed tears of joy. The evening felt like blissful “chaos” she said. The wins aren’t just political for Zurawski, they’re deeply personal. The Austin mother nearly lost her life from sepsis in 2022 when the state’s strict abortion ban, championed by the now-vanquished Republican leadership, blocked doctors from offering her emergency care. 

She turned her trauma into activism, filing a high-profile lawsuit against the state to demand the law’s emergency exceptions be clarified, which made her into one of the leading public faces in the battle for reproductive rights, not just in Texas but nationally. When she heard the term “blue tsunami” the day after the election, the reality of the massive political shift hit her, eliciting sobs of relief. 

“It was absolutely surreal and one of the most joyous moments of my life—other than my son being born,” Zurawski told the Texas Observer a few days after the election. “I have this overwhelming sense of safety and protection now because I know the people representing me—for the first time—actually care about my health. I finally feel hope in Texas.”

State Representatives Gina Hinojosa and Donna Howard and advocates outside the House chamber don pink in support of Planned Parenthood as the Texas House debates a bill to further defund the organization in 2017. (Steven Garcia)

Texas enforces some of the most draconian abortion laws in the nation, including measures that could send doctors to prison for life and that hold no exceptions for rape, incest, or severe fetal defects. With aggressive Republican backers of those laws—Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, and Paxton—now brutally defeated in one fell swoop and a Democratic majority leading the Texas House for the first time in more than 20 years, a new era to improve abortion rights, and women’s healthcare in general, may soon emerge.

“Texans have given a clear mandate to rebuke the anti-abortion extremists and policies that have been ruling our state for so long,” Kamyon Conner, executive director of the Texas Equal Access Fund, a group that assists patients with out-of-state care, told the Observer. “The fact that it will now be difficult to pass bills that put people’s lives at risk, like we’ve seen in every recent session, is huge.”

Conner, an abortion rights advocate in Texas for 20 years, said after the initial shock of the results, “We are now sitting with an immense amount of hope. For the first time in more than a decade we have at least a fighting chance at restoring reproductive rights. That is incredible.” 

Abortion advocates in Texas say the possibilities feel “endless” for this upcoming legislative session. Lawmakers will gather on January 12 for a five-month-long session. And with an unprecedented trio of women at the helm of state government—Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, the presumptive House Speaker Senfronia Thompson, and Lieutenant Governor-elect Vikki Goodwin, all of whom share in advocating for abortion rights during their time in the House–the prospects have never been more promisingBut challenges and obstacles will still remain, the most obvious being the remaining GOP-controlled Texas Senate.

On the first day of bill filing, Austin state Representative Donna Howard—a longtime champion of reproductive rights and women’s health—offered a full repeal of the state’s abortion laws, still a seeming longshot but one that won’t be as easily dismissed under new leadership. Howard’s House Bill 126 seeks to repeal the state’s criminal abortion ban, near-total ban, pre-Roe ban, and pre-abortion sonogram law, among other provisions. “Rather than start off with something like an exceptions bill, I wanted to offer a full reset. It’s like starting from scratch,” Howard told the Observer. “It would repeal all these barriers put in place over time and restore decision making to women and their health care providers.”

While a full repeal of abortion laws is the ultimate goal for reproductive rights advocates, they’ll also be focused on pushing bills that could widen access to contraception for teenagers, allow for insurance coverage of abortion care, and stymie efforts that restrict municipal funding for logistical abortion support services. They also hope to see a reduction in funding to anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers under the Thriving Texas Families (formerly Alternatives to Abortion) Program, which sees $100 million annually, along with boosts to family planning and women’s health programs. Under Thompson, appointments of pro-abortion lawmakers to chair committees including state affairs, appropriations, and public health, could also help tip the scales. 

A major barrier amid the optimism is the sustained makeup of the rem, which, despite Goodwin’s leadership (which Republicans may disempower) remains under GOP control with a 19-12 majority. Houston state Senator Carol Alvarado told the Observer Democrats are working to build a “coalition” in the upper chamber to find common ground, and despite Republicans’ retention of the upper chamber, she is feeling “unprecedented hope and encouragement” for the session ahead. “I think the election results spoke pretty loud and clear that Republicans have overreached on so many things and abortion rights is certainly one of them,” she said. 

Representative Senfronia Thompson, now the presumptive House speaker, in Houston in 2018.
(Michael Stravato)

The senator, who chairs the Texas Senate Democratic Caucus, has filed legislation to add exceptions for sexual assault and incest to the state’s ban, a modest measure seen as unrealistic in sessions’ past that may at least have a tangible shot at moving farther this go around. 

“I wish this law didn’t exist to begin with, but giving flexibility to our most vulnerable, the victims of rape and incest, is at least a starting point,” Alvarado told the Observer. “I hope we can appeal to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, especially during testimony from survivors who have been impacted—their words may weigh on them.”

Outside the Legislature, advocates point to the ways the governorship could strengthen reproductive rights. For instance, Hinojosa can make new appointments to the Texas Medical Board, which could issue clearer guidance for doctors navigating the law’s vague exceptions. Several board terms are up for appointment next year, including the president and vice president. The governor-elect will also have the opportunity to appoint the head of the Health and Human Services Commission, whose term ends February 1, 2027, a post that could call for greater regulation and transparency around Thriving Texas Families, which is currently dominated by anti-abortion entities. 

In turn, the leader of HHS could also apply pressure to the state’s Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee— tasked with analyzing maternal deaths—to review the two years of data post-Roe v. Wade that it’s thus far chosen to forgo, or at least push the committee to release reports at a quicker pace. There are signs that under new political leadership, the MMRC’s latest report –which was delayed until after the midterm election in a move criticized as “politically motivated”—could now be released earlier than the expected date of December 1.

Hinojosa, who did not make abortion rights an emphasis in her gubernatorial campaign but has said she would support ending harsh penalties for physicians under the current abortion law, also has the discretion to set legislative priorities, issue executive orders, line-item veto certain initiatives in the state budget, and—while abused by her predecessor—perhaps even issue emergency declarations that support abortion rights. 

“Theoretically, between the deaths associated with the Texas abortion law, the maternal mortality, and infant mortality crisis, Hinojosa could issue a public health disaster declaration that could attempt to suspend abortion laws,” Blake Rocap, legislative counsel with reproductive rights advocacy group Avow Texas, told the Observer. “It’s just an idea, but there are so many possibilities on the table right now.” 

One of the most meaningful victories for abortion rights in Texas is the defeat of Attorney General Ken Paxton. After years of weaponizing the office into a zealous anti-abortion legal machine, Paxton’s departure means abortion funds and supporters, soon without the specter of constant legal intimidation, can rest easier. AG-elect Nathan Johnson recently told the Texas Tribune he would deviate from Paxton’s prosecutorial crusade against out-of-state abortion providers who mail pills to Texans and would not entertain local so-called “sanctuary for the unborn” ordinances that ban abortion-related travel. 

“I do not intend to use Texas law as a tool of persecution, intimidation and harassment,” Johnson told the Houston Chronicle. “I will uphold the law. I will enforce the law. But there’s a difference between upholding and enforcing the law on the one hand, and using it to score political points by persecuting people on the other hand.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton leaves after addressing anti-abortion activists at a rally outside the Supreme Court on November 1, 2021. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Advocates hope Johnson can use the office to not only reverse course on Paxton’s many attacks but proactively support abortion rights, including exercising his investigative authority. 

“Paxton has aggressively reached beyond the scope of his office and what the Texas abortion law provides,” said Joanna Grossman, a law professor at Southern Methodist University. “He used the office to threaten and instill fear in doctors and pro-abortion groups. Johnson now has an opportunity to turn that all around, it’s really a new era.” 

It remains to be seen whether or not Johnson will drop existing Paxton anti-abortion cases like that launched against Houston-area midwife Maria Rojas (though the local district attorney can still pursue the case), or how he’ll respond to suits lodged against AG’s office under his predecessor, like the recently filed challenge on behalf of Tierra Walker, a mother who died of preeclampsia as a result of the Texas abortion ban. Grossman said Johnson may be inclined to settle that case out of court, a stark departure from Paxton’s assuredly defiant defense. “We are reviewing these actions closely, including what it means for Texans and what the law allows,” Johnson’s campaign told the Observer via email. 

Meanwhile, for the first time in years, the state’s powerful anti-abortion lobby sounded wistful—and keenly aware of their waning influence on incoming state officials. “We are very sad to see Abbott and Patrick exit, they were stalwarts for life and played a big part in leading the nation on pro-life laws,” Amy O’Donnell, executive director of Texas Alliance for Life, told the Observer. 

O’Donnell said the group will advocate against any bills that add exceptions (like Alvarado’s Senate Bill 231) to abortion law and fight to maintain funding to crisis pregnancy centers. While somewhat dispirited, she called the state Senate’s GOP majority a “bright light” for the group. “We can breathe a sigh of relief knowing the Senate will be a stopping point for any attempt to weaken Texas pro-life laws,” she said. 

Disappointed in the next attorney general’s pledge to forgo prosecuting out-of-state providers, O’Donnell said that anti-abortion advocates feel renewed motivation to use laws like House Bill 7, which empower private citizens to sue abortion providers and supporters and to expect more suits of this kind to pop up. (However, appeals to these cases will now be met with a much different court: The 15th Court of Appeals, a recently created court that reviews state-involved suits stocked with Abbott-appointed judges, saw all three of its Republicans ousted in the midterms.) 

“Anti-abortion activists may have fewer avenues at the moment to push forward their agenda but we know they are still plotting and planning,” said Conner, the reproductive rights advocate. “And they may make some last-minute moves before the power regime shifts out of their favor.”

May 2022 abortion rights protest at Texas Capitol in Austin (Gus Bova/Texas Observer)

In a pointed decision that came just days after the blue sweep, President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice stepped in to handle a five-year-old case out of Texas that seeks to bankrupt Planned Parenthood based on dubious claims of Medicaid fraud.

Zurawski strongly contemplated moving out of state after her horrific near-death experience but now she’s never been more “proud” to call Texas home. She plans to testify at the capitol next year for bills that support mothers and pregnant Texans, knowing the road ahead isn’t going to be inherently smooth. 

“With all the joy and disbelief and excitement we still need to remember to hold our elected officials accountable,” she said. “We need to celebrate this moment but also remember the work here is not done.”

The post Is This a New Dawn for Abortion Rights in Texas? appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Prior to last week’s election, it was likely the State of Texas, under Governor Greg Abbott, would continue functioning as an extension of President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation campaign—using levers throughout the state bureaucracy to help the president round up hardworking Texans, perhaps most notably through the Department of Public Safety (DPS)

Abbott has spent his nearly 12 years in office expanding his gubernatorial power through executive orders and disaster declarations, particularly during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Much of that, in the era of Operation Lone Star, was directed at enforcing so-called border security at the state level, sending millions to contractors for building walls and other pricey services in Texas’ southernmost counties. The governor entrenched immigration enforcement as a state function, through both executive action and signed legislation, even as people illegally crossed less and less into Texas from Mexico.

Texas’ role in enforcing its and the country’s immigration laws continued to grow after Trump was elected a second time in 2025. Soon after his inauguration, his administration restarted the “task force” model of what’s known as the 287(g) program, named after the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that created it. That model—discontinued under the Obama presidency amid racial profiling scandals—effectively turns local police into federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. In its new incarnation, thanks to the gusher of anti-immigrant funding unleashed by last year’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” and aided by a 2025 state law, came with new financial incentives for participation as well. 

Since Trump took office, some 350 Texas law enforcement agencies have entered into task force partnerships with ICE. These are primarily at the county and municipal levels, but the list also includes the Texas Attorney General’s Office—soon to be led by Democrat Nathan Johnson—the Texas National Guard, and both the criminal investigations and highway patrol divisions of DPS, which had some 5,000 commissioned officers as of last year. (Even prior to these agreements, DPS was often acting as a force multiplier for ICE.)

Gina Hinojosa on the campaign trail in 2026 (Eden Shamy)

In the wake of last week’s election, Democrat Gina Hinojosa, a Rio Grande Valley native, is preparing to become the first Hispanic governor of Texas in its history as a U.S. state. After voters spurned ICE’s overreach, it’s likely she will shift immigration-related policy significantly, but she will face some limitations and decisions about how much of Abbott’s expansive executive approach to emulate.

The disaster declarations that underlie Operation Lone Star must be regularly renewed, so she may let them lapse. 

Beyond this, advocacy groups like La Unión del Pueblo Entero (LUPE) in the Rio Grande Valley, a place that sees ICE arresting people daily in communities across the region, are calling on the governor and the rest of the state’s newly elected Democrats to get the agency out of their communities. 

“Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa has the power to scale back Operation Lone Star. And she also has the opportunity, along with the other Democratic leadership, to end the enforcement of the 287(g) contracts,” Dani Marrero Hi, LUPE’s deputy director, told the Texas Observer in a phone call. “We already saw the mayor of Houston come out with the executive order to limit the police collaboration with ICE.” (Austin is taking similar action.)

According to the task force memorandums of agreement between ICE and DPS, the latter can terminate the partnership at any time. That authority, within DPS, lies with its director, Freeman Martin. 

While Hinojosa is expected to make numerous appointments as governor, the Public Safety Commission members—who oversee DPS and select its leadership—are all Abbott appointees with at least a year left on their terms. But that doesn’t mean that the board would necessarily defy Hinojosa, should she ask for the agreements to be terminated. 

“Once the governor says, ‘I don’t want you to do this anymore,’ I would raise my eyebrow if the DPS board said, ‘well, we don’t feel like it, we’re just going to go ahead and carry this out,’” Randy Erben, who was once Abbott’s legislative director and is currently a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told the Observer. “Agencies are not going to continue conduct that the governor, once she takes office, is unhappy with on a regular basis.”

Hinojosa’s campaign did not make the governor-elect available for an interview. DPS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

LUPE plans to meet with local and state government officials leading into the next legislative session, which starts in January. The group’s policy priorities go beyond ICE, which is only the latest symptom in years of the Rio Grande Valley’s increasing militarization, enabled and prolonged by Abbott and the Trump administration. 

Last summer, the Legislature also passed Senate Bill 8, which requires nearly all Texas sheriffs to apply for 287(g) agreements. These sheriffs do not have to apply for the task force model and may opt instead for less-aggressive partnerships that function within the county jails. The law provides some funding through a grant program.

But the turnover in state leadership could take the teeth out of SB 8 as well. The law’s enforcement mechanism is that, starting this December, “The attorney general may bring an action against a sheriff who fails to comply.” 

The Central Texas-based advocacy group Mano Amiga recently called on the Hays County sheriff, who has signed no agreement, not to do so. “Since the only 287g enforcement mechanism is the Texas attorney general: the new administration in January is not likely to take  enforcement action if the sheriff refuses to sign or delays,” the group wrote. 

Other large Texas counties that have signed no agreement include Harris, Dallas, and Travis. 

Johnson, the incoming Texas attorney general, did not respond to a request for comment. 

SB 8’s grant program is also established and administered, per the law, by the comptroller—a position set to be filled come January by Democrat Sarah Eckhardt. Eckhardt’s campaign team did not respond either to the Observer’s comment request.

Marrero Hi, the LUPE organizer, said that the Rio Grande Valley has suffered from years of being treated as a place worthy only of surveilling and patrolling: “That’s pain that an election does not fix,” she said. “But it does change the landscape and how we organize moving forward.”

The post Will Governor Hinojosa Break Up DPS and ICE? appeared first on The Texas Observer.

Over the course of 12 years at the helm of Texas state government, Greg Abbott became arguably the most powerful governor—de jure and de facto—in the history of Texas. His rule grew progressively unbalanced and unchecked by the GOP-run Legislature which increasingly followed his lead, through fear or favor, or the GOP-run judiciary, which was increasingly stocked with Abbott apparatchiks. 

Much of his power accumulated through longevity and hegemony, which also allowed for an aggressive and unprecedented use of the Texas governor’s executive powers—governing via disaster proclamations that granted him unilateral executive authority over a large swath of state policy over a long period of time. This became most pronounced during the COVID-19 pandemic and continued through his border disaster proclamations, the basis on which he built his Operation Lone Star state immigration dragnet.

In total, his actions amounted to a transformation of the historically weak Texas governorship, which through intentional constitutional design is less empowered than in many other states. Those constraints are achieved through, among other mechanisms, staggered appointment terms, an independent lieutenant governor (long considered, though the sentiment is now outmoded, the actual most powerful statewide official), and a decentralized executive branch with a number of other elected statewide positions. Abbott used a variety of methods, including his simple staying power, to break out of his constitutional cage—and his Democratic successor now inherits an office whose overreach she’s harshly criticized but whose power, to the extent it remains tappable, may be politically irresistible.

“Not only is this the most extensive [use of executive authority], it’s also the most unchecked. He’s used these powers in a very aggressive way,” Randall Erben, a governmental law professor at the University of Texas at Austin who closely follows state executive powers and who once served as Abbott’s legislative director, told me for an in-depth profile I did on Abbott’s executive power grabs in 2021. 

His powers continued to expand since that time. In seeking an unprecedented fourth term—which would have given him a tenure old enough to drive—Abbott was on the verge of attaining an even higher level of gubernatorial power. His control and micromanagement of the state agencies was total, and his willingness to preempt, circumvent, or otherwise dictate to the Texas Legislature was well established. 

That dominion, however, was rudely ripped away by the Texas electorate last Tuesday who instead gave the governorship to a liberal Austin state Representative named Gina Hinojosa, whose insurgent campaign was laser-focused on the casual corruption and political overreach of Abbott’s government. 

“The Republicans have been in too long, and they started to turn into a party of big government,” Erben told me after the election. “They were getting into your doctor’s office, getting into your house, and were telling businesses what they could and couldn’t do.”

Abbott (center) in 2021 (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Not long ago, Abbott and his advisors were trawling for generational legacy items—to put on the mantle next to private school vouchers—to tackle in his fourth term, including a harebrained scheme to abolish school property taxes. His data center pause, carried out via executive action, was meant to delay the permitting process until after the elections. Hinojosa, who campaigned on a full moratorium, could order agencies to extend the pause until the Legislature enacts permanent regulation. 

Abbott’s defeat and imminent departure will leave a gaping hole in Texas politics—but the power of his governorship will continue to be felt for years, including through his numerous board appointees whose terms will continue for years into the next administration, and his playbook of governing by executive order, a tactic which Hinojosa has signaled she may emulate. 

Hinojosa will begin the task of navigating her own realm of power as a governor who will have, in many ways, a more diminished authority. While her electoral mandate is strong and ability to wield the bully pulpit is still fresh, it’ll take years to stock her appointments throughout all the state agencies, and she’ll have to navigate tumultuous waters to get her priorities through a divided Legislature. 

With her historic victory—becoming the state’s first Hispanic governor and first woman and Democratic top executive in three decades—many observers are now wondering just what a Hinojosa administration will look like, what she can (or will) do right away and over the long term. And, importantly, will she be able to retain some of the same muscular power that Abbott built in the office, or will much of it atrophy by circumstance, reverting to the governorship’s rather weak status quo? 

With a new Democratic governor, a newly Democratic state House, and a state Senate as the only remaining bastion of GOP control, the next several months will bring about a wholesale recalibration of the balance of powers in Texas government. 

One aspect of Abbott’s swollen power cannot be immediately replicated:  longevity. His dozen-year reign maximized his appointment powers for hundreds of state boards, agencies, and universities, which are defused through staggered terms. Over time, he was responsible for almost every single agency commissioner, university regent, and all the other assorted gubernatorial appointees across state government. 

Second, he benefited from political hegemony—a GOP-run Legislature and GOP monopoly on statewide offices—that accompanied him from the outset of his tenure. Those legislators who still defied him, for instance the rural GOP state reps who blocked private school vouchers in 2023, were finally taken out to the woodshed in what turned out to be the twilight of his tenure. 

Lastly, Abbott pushed the reach of his executive authority to unprecedented levels through his aggressive use of expansive, seemingly perpetual emergency orders which, through the state’s Disaster Act, grant the governor unilateral power. 

With that came a rather brazen new brand of pay-to-play disaster politics in which vendors who won no-bid contracts under his emergency orders—during the pandemic and through Operation Lone Star—became major donors. 

Hinojosa was one of the most outspoken critics of this abuse of executive power, zeroing in specifically on what she saw as wasteful no-bid contracts to favored vendors at the Texas Education Agency—but also through Operation Lone Star.

“This is a corrupted use of the governor’s emergency powers,” Hinojosa told the Texas Observer for an investigation into Abbott’s cultivation of political contributions from major Operation Lone Star contractors. Through his perpetual disaster declarations, “Texas has become a pay-to-play [state] if you want these big government contracts because we don’t have fair bidding requirements. Now we see these political donors getting rich off taxpayer money with no accountability. Abbott acts as if he’s king, and he’s rewarding his patrons.”

As a candidate for governor, Hinojosa promised to bring in a newly transparent and accountable brand of state government leadership that would no longer rely on fiat and would not use the levers of power to award and cultivate campaign donors and political allies. 

Hinojosa will be able to swiftly appoint replacements at some agencies—such as the Texas Education Agency, where she promised to fire Commissioner Mike Morath, whose term conveniently expires in January, immediately. In other cases—such as the Public Safety Commission, which oversees the state police agency, where the earliest term expiration is in 2028; or the pardons and parole board, where only three of seven are up next year—her direct appointment influence will be relatively muted for some years. (That could change if Abbott appointees opt to resign.) These appointments also require confirmation from the state Senate, which will be in GOP hands for at least two more years, though the governor can make interim appointments that hold between sessions.

With a Governor Hinojosa, there is the possibility of some political struggles between agencies that remain controlled by Abbott appointees and the governor’s office that could play out on a number of issues. Or, there could be relative stability. 

“Agencies are not going to continue conduct that the governor, once she takes office, she is unhappy with. I just don’t buy that. You’d be causing a real crisis,” Erben said. 

On the flip-side, Hinojosa will have to be somewhat restrained:  “It’s not like you’re saying, I’m just going to fix this right now and I’m going to put all my people in charge. It doesn’t work that way. There’s going to be a lot of persuasion. And I’ve known Gina Hinojosa a long time. She’s a smart, savvy politician,” Erben added. “She’s also going to have to pick her fights.”   

As of today, there are eight active disaster proclamations issued by Abbott that grant his executive orders the power of law—one pertaining to border security (Operation Lone Star), two for floods, one for fire, one for severe storms, one for drought, one related to diesel fuel prices, and one for the Screwworm outbreak. The state has been under some sort of ongoing disaster order since at least 2020. Despite border crossings having almost entirely halted, that proclamation remains in effect and has been renewed 69 times. 

Those orders must be renewed every 30 days. Upon becoming governor, Hinojosa can either let those expire or terminate them as she sees fit. She can—and has said she will—issue her own disaster orders, a sign that she’s willing to some extent to follow Abbott’s executive playbook to enact her own agenda. 

During her campaign, Hinojosa said in a statement to the Texas Tribune that she pledged to issue a disaster proclamation related to high costs on day one of her gubernatorial administration—and to issue two executive orders: one to suspend the state’s gas and diesel fuel tax and the second to freeze electricity rates for all ratepayers.

Over the course of the past several years, some Republicans have tried meagerly to rein in the governor’s executive authority—and most specifically the governor’s disaster powers, with proposals to require legislative approval for ongoing emergencies. But they didn’t really push that hard, and they didn’t find any success. Why anger the most powerful leader of your own party, who was wielding that power to largely carry out favorable priorities? 

Chief antagonizer in the Texas House, GOP state Representative Brian Harrison, who has filed bills to limit the governor’s power in past sessions, is now leading an almost-surely doomed push to get Abbott to call a special session and get the current GOP Legislature to curb executive powers before Hinojosa takes office.

But Abbott has set a precedent—and with a divided Legislature could come an empowered new governor. 

“The precedent that’s being set is that any time in the future, when a governor believes that we have a problem and policymakers in Washington are not addressing the problem and policymakers at the local level are not, or are frustrating the governor’s preferences,” Dale Carpenter, a constitutional law professor at Southern Methodist University, told me back in 2021, “he can declare a disaster and set up a different set of policies and direct spending to accomplish those policy objectives.”

The post Gina Hinojosa Won’t Be Able to Govern like Greg Abbott. Should She Try? appeared first on The Texas Observer.