DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

One year after a devastating drought, Texas agriculture watchers are wary that the positive effects of a wet spring could be zapped up with extreme heat.

The Texas Department of Agriculture’s elected leader, Sid Miller, has fought protections for trans workers.

The policy comes as LGBTQ advocates are fighting a wave of hostile legislation at the Capitol, including proposals to restrict gender-affirming care for transgender children.

The department’s helpline is less than a year old. But advocates hope state lawmakers fully fund it as farmers and ranchers continue to face hard economic times and isolation.

A new Texas Department of Agriculture report also points to other factors that are making it harder for Texans to access and afford food, including wages falling behind rising costs of living.

Securing a third term with strong support across rural Texas, the Republican pledged to expand medical use of cannabis and funding for rural health care.

The state’s agriculture commissioner oversees a vast portfolio including farming and ranching, rural health care and the scales you use at grocery store checkout.

Witnesses say Kim Olson pushed the party’s top staffer during a bus tour in 2018. Olson denies the allegation.

The incumbent avoided a runoff. State Rep. James White had tried to unseat Miller with criticisms centered on controversies under Miller’s leadership.

Miller’s top challenger is state Rep. James White, a Hillister rancher, who is running a hard-charging campaign calling out the incumbent for creating a scandal-prone culture at the commission.

Sid Miller is challenging a debt relief program that the U.S. Department of Agriculture saw as a way to correct historic discrimination. An advocate for Black Texas farmers says the challenge “pushes us back even further.”

Attorneys for Smith said he has not broken any laws. Miller, who is seeking reelection and facing a competitive primary, said Tuesday evening he's "not ready to throw [Smith] under the bus" and believes the indictment was politically motivated.

Miller is running for a third term.

When scientists destroyed the first nest of so-called murder hornets found in the U.S. recently, they discovered about 500 live specimens inside in various stages of development. The first murder hornets nest — found in a tree and destroyed in late October in Whatcom County along the Canadian border — was about the size of a basketball. It was located after state scientists trapped several hornets and attached radio trackers to some of them using dental floss. —76 queens, nearly all of them new virgin queens. Murder hornets also have been found in British Columbia, Canada.