June 14, 2026: All Newsclips

Lead Stories

How Abbott’s advisers used agency regulating funeral homes to legally harass a Muslim community

Sarah Sanders had spent the day in her small, windowless office drafting letters to funeral directors when her boss came in with a new request. It was a late Monday afternoon in March 2025, and Scott Bingaman, the executive director of the Texas Funeral Service Commission, wanted her to put aside her other work and look into a year-old case. It concerned the East Plano Islamic Center, a mosque and Muslim community in North Texas known as EPIC. The soft-spoken 33-year-old Texas Tech University law school graduate had joined the commission, which regulates the funeral industry, only a few months earlier, after bouncing around law firms in Beaumont and briefly serving in another state agency. Most of her time in her new role in Austin had been dedicated to clearing a four-hundred-case backlog of complaints stretching back years. She figured the EPIC case would be just like the rest. Sanders opened the agency’s file. A complainant alleged that the mosque was offering Islamic funeral services without a license.

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Other staffers had left several pages of analysis, in mismatched fonts and text sizes, summarizing evidence the commission had gathered. The file had been shelved for months, sidelined by other, more pressing ones. Sanders took a few minutes to review one piece of the complainant’s evidence, a video that had appeared on EPIC’s YouTube page announcing a “one-stop shop” for funeral services. Families would call the mosque, and a funeral home it had contracted would transport the bodies to and from it for rites and burial—all for “around three thousand dollars.” As a religious institution, EPIC was allowed under state law to perform funerals without regulatory oversight as long as it didn’t charge fees. But if it had done so, it would have needed a license, and its license had lapsed more than a year earlier. To Sanders, the video—which was posted before the lapse—did not provide definitive evidence that the mosque had been charging for services improperly. But that was the point of an investigation, she thought. She prepared to issue a cease and desist order: The facility would have to halt funeral services while investigators did their work. (EPIC would later argue that any money that changed hands was a voluntary donation and that it did not profit. The commission’s lawyers would counter that the definition of compensation was broader than profits.) Sanders then turned to Bingaman’s second instruction, one that was far more unusual: Work on the case with Governor Greg Abbott’s general- counsel division, a small group of lawyers in his inner circle. Sanders wasn’t sure why Abbott’s team was so interested in a routine regulatory matter; she had never discussed one with anyone from the governor’s office. But she trusted and admired Bingaman, who had wooed her to the agency with a pitch about building something together that would outlast them both. She forwarded the file to one of the governor’s lawyers.

Gov. Greg Abbott spells out vision for fourth term at Republican state convention in Houston

Gov. Greg Abbott outlined a variety of legislative priorities during his keynote speech at the state Republican Party convention Friday afternoon in Houston, followed by the stunning appearance of an elephant that paraded around the room. Abbott, who is running for an unprecedented fourth term as governor of Texas, also stressed how he intended to help Republicans win elections, including in Harris County. Abbott had previously pledged to spend big to flip blue-leaning Harris County, but he had been largely silent on the issue since his preferred candidate for Harris County judge, Houston firefighters' union president Patrick "Marty" Lancton, failed to make the party's primary runoff. He reiterated his commitment to delegates and gave specifics while speaking on stage at the George R. Brown Convention Center.

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"My campaign will spend at least $25 million just in Harris County alone," Abbott said. "We are going block by block, door to door, and we are going to win up and down the entire ballot." Abbott also endorsed a key demand of the party, passing legislation to close the state's primary system. Currently, Texans can vote in either major party's primary. Many Republicans have expressed concerns, with little evidence, that this is encouraging crossover voting by Democrats to influence their party's choice of candidates. The Republican Party of Texas is currently suing the state, arguing that the open primary system violates Republicans' First Amendment right to freedom of association. Much of Abbott's speech revolved around listing past Republican legislative accomplishments, ranging from tightening the state's election laws out of concerns for voter fraud — the evidence for which is minimal — to banning gender reassignment surgery for children. But when Abbott began speaking about the party's efforts to cut property taxes, he focused on his proposals for the next legislative session: legislation to require two-thirds voter approval for municipalities to pass any property tax hikes, as well as legislation lowering the property tax appraisal cap from 10% to no more than 3% per year.

State Stories

Local Texas election officials await appointment of new secretary of state as midterm preparations ramp up

Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson’s unexpected departure only a few months before the November midterm election, which includes one of the most hotly contested U.S. Senate races the state has seen in years, has some local election officials and voting rights advocates worrying the transition will complicate their ability to administer a smooth election. “It’s the unknown, the uncertainty that is scary,” said Tandi Smith, the Kaufman County elections administrator. “Are we going to continue to receive guidance? Are we going to be ensured that we’ll be prepared for any coming changes? We just don’t know.” Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, is required by law to appoint a new secretary as soon as possible. His office, in an emailed statement, said the new appointee would be announced “at a later date.”

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Nelson, who has been the state’s chief election official for more than three years, last week announced that she’d be stepping down from the role effective July 17. Nelson’s departure will happen just as election officials across the state are preparing in earnest for the November general election. In the summer months, they’ll be recruiting election workers, seeking polling locations, and processing voter registration applications, among other duties. Some voting rights advocates say a new appointee may want to direct local election officials to change election procedures, which could lead to chaos and confusion for voters. Although the secretary of state’s office has no law enforcement authority and can’t change the law, it can issue election law opinions on how to implement election and voting rules. “If the new secretary of state has a laundry list of demands that election administrators can’t meet, that’s going to throw our elections into disarray,” said Emily Eby French, policy director at Common Cause Texas. French noted that there were three secretaries of state between 2017 and Nelson’s appointment in 2023, some of whom remained in the role only for about a year before resigning.

Copyright June 13, 2026, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved