Federal Debt Doubles in a Decade to $40.2 Trillion, Auditors Find
GAO's audit of the Treasury's debt records puts the federal debt at $40.2 trillion, up 105 percent in ten years, with interest on publicly held debt near $1.1 trillion.
Where the news gets explained. Federal stories are followed all the way to Texas, and research on the Texas economy starts from the data. The legal scholarship here tests the constitutional questions a vote would raise.
Columns from Daniel Miller and other TNM leaders run under Commentary, and outside writers run under Opinion and Editorial.
GAO's audit of the Treasury's debt records puts the federal debt at $40.2 trillion, up 105 percent in ten years, with interest on publicly held debt near $1.1 trillion.
Texans backed Trump in 2024 on a promise of the largest deportation operation in history. On 60 Minutes he called his policy possibly too tough and floated a deal for long-settled immigrants.
Texas's new statewide officials took 33.7 percent of their itemized money from outside Texas, against 12.6 percent for the officials they beat, and most of the U.S. House delegation raised more than...
Ted Cruz, Jodey Arrington, Brian Babin and Roger Williams lose their committee chairs as Democrats take Congress, and James Talarico joins Cruz on the Senate seat that decides Texas's federal judges.
In 2021, Ted Cruz listed the conditions under which he would back Texas independence. The first, ending the filibuster, is now an open question, and Texas's new senator supports it.
The Legislature redrew Texas's congressional map in 2025 at President Trump's urging and left its own maps alone. The map elected 24 Republicans, not 30, and the Texas House changed hands.
President Trump is moving to nominate Texas Supreme Court Justice James Sullivan, whom voters removed from the court Tuesday, to a lifetime federal judgeship in Austin.
Texans did not vote against independence on Tuesday. The majority that buried the referendum bill is gone, and this movement is bigger than the margins that decided the election.
Texas took in $188.89 billion in fiscal 2026, up 3.2 percent, as tax collections beat the forecast by $1.6 billion. Federal money, a third of the total, is the largest uncertainty ahead.
Gov. Kevin Stitt set an April 2027 vote on whether Oklahoma should hold a convention to revise its state constitution. It is not an Article V convention of states.
The full Fifth Circuit ruled 10-7 that immigrants never lawfully admitted can be detained without bond during deportation cases, reversing three Austin rulings from Texas traffic stops.
The Fifth Circuit held that the 1958 federal ban on selling and shipping switchblades across state lines violates the Second Amendment. Texas legalized switchblades in 2013.
Border Patrol made 98,708 southwest border apprehensions in fiscal 2026, a record low, nearly half in Texas sectors. Washington's $7.5 billion repayment to Texas had not been transferred.