A federal judge in San Antonio is hearing a challenge to Texas' new voting law this morning, which bans public officials from encouraging people to vote by mail. Judge Xavier Rodriguez says he sees big problems with the law -- mostly that so many parts of it are vague. For one: Rodriguez raised questions about the definition of a public official. It doesn't seem entirely clear whether bans on "soliciting" vote by mail apply to deputy voter registrars, which is why one deputy voter registrar from Austin is a plaintiff in this case.

Travis County Clerk's office says that as of today, their office "has rejected about fifty percent of applications for ballot by mail that have been received for the March 1, 2022 primary election," due to changes to ID requirements made by Texas' new voting law. The new law, SB 1, requires that voters provide the same ID number -- driver's license, social, etc. -- on their VBM app that they provided on their voter registration. Many folks who registered a long time ago, don't remember what ID they used.

SOON: Gov. Greg Abbott, along with State Sen. Paul Bettencourt and State Rep. Briscoe Cain, are going to be announcing legislative efforts related to "election integrity." 1/ Abbott says voter fraud is unacceptable and is going to be a focus of his during this legislative session. Says election integrity in 2020 was "questioned in Harris County" because of mail in ballot issues. Houston, btw, is one of the most racially diverse cities in the US.

Hospitalizations in Texas due to COVID-19 are at an all time high. Soon Gov. Greg Abbott is going to update us all on what the bed capacity situation is right now. Stay tuned. 1/ Abbott says he wants to stress that Texas has enough bed capacity.

"We are in the middle of a short period of time where we all have to coexist with COVID-19," he said. 2/

Dr. John Hellerstedt - the Commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services - is briefing state lawmakers right now on the state's preparedness for the potential spread of the Coronavirus. #txlege He says DSHS is the lead agency on this right now. When asked about what has been done to prepare, Hellderstdt said they are amping up testing capabilities and opening lines of communications between agencies and other states.

At the Texas Capitol today, Texas Secretary of State David Whitley has his nominations committee hearing. He’s sure to be asked some tough questions about his office’s troubled effort to remove alleged noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls. #TXlege Whitley is talking about his voter purge effort — which he’s referring to as list maintenance. He says his office has been training local election officials since the start. However, local officials have told me they’ve felt lost on how to verify the state’s list.