Daily Briefing: Wednesday, October 21, 2026

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has paused permits connected to construction or infrastructure “directly supporting data centers,” the agency’s interim executive director told Gov. Greg Abbott in a letter Monday, The Texas Tribune reported. The advocacy group Public Citizen identified more than a dozen data center plans that kept advancing through TCEQ permitting after Abbott’s September 21 directive, including at least six stormwater construction permits, the Tribune reported, citing the group’s release and a summary it published. A TCEQ spokesman said Tuesday that the agency had suspended those stormwater permits, and a notice on the agency’s stormwater permit page says applications for construction projects tied to a data center are halted until further notice.

Texas officials testified Tuesday in Houston that the state has spent more than $320 million on court-ordered improvements to its foster care system since 2019 and asked U.S. District Judge Randy Crane to release the state from federal monitoring in the 15-year-old lawsuit, The Texas Tribune reported. Of that total, $66 million went to the federal court monitors. Attorneys for about 6,800 children in long-term foster care argued the system is far from stable. The hearing is expected to last most of the week.

A plugged oil well inside a San Antonio subdivision has kept leaking methane and hydrogen sulfide even though the state has replugged it five times since it was first plugged in 2006, The Texas Tribune reported with Inside Climate News and the San Antonio Express-News. In June, contractors told the Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates oil and gas, that methane plumes were moving through the soil toward homes in the Preserve at Medina subdivision.

Hundreds of thousands of Texas homeowners who may qualify for the homestead exemption are not claiming it, policy experts and appraisal districts told The Texas Tribune. The exemption takes at least $140,000 off the value school districts tax. Appraisal districts estimated that some 113,000 Harris County homeowners and roughly 60,000 each in Travis and Bexar counties could be eligible but are not claiming it, and a Dallas nonprofit put the Dallas County figure at 57,000 households.

Total public debt outstanding stood at $40.40 trillion on October 19, according to the Treasury Department’s Debt to the Penny data. The same data show the debt first topped $40 trillion on August 18, when it stood at $40.05 trillion.

Parti Québécois (PQ) leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon is set to be sworn in Wednesday as Quebec’s 34th premier and to name his cabinet, returning the sovereigntist party to power after more than a decade, Global News reported. The PQ won 59 seats in the October 5 election, short of the 64 needed for a majority. A Léger poll for Le Journal de Montréal found that 20 percent of respondents favor the PQ holding a referendum in its first mandate, and St-Pierre Plamondon said Alberta’s vote showed “there is nothing to fear from expressing one’s views through a referendum,” Global News reported.

Crews finished a $121,300 restoration of Galveston’s Texas Heroes Monument on Tuesday, polishing and waxing its bronze plates and statues in the landmark’s first restoration since 2015, The Galveston County Daily News reported. The city council approved the project unanimously in June after a push by Councilman Alex Porretto and the Sidney Sherman Chapter No. 1 of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas.