Good morning,

As a word of warning, tomorrow is April Fools' Day; watch out for the pranksters in your life.

What isn't a joke is how lackadaisical conservatives and people of faith have been in fighting for their values. I end the week reflecting on that problem.

Here is the Texas Minute for Friday, March 31, 2023.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

But First...

• You no doubt have already heard that Donald Trump was indicted yesterday by a New York grand jury in which a porn actress and a convicted felon were the star witnesses. When he secures the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, Trump should send the NY judiciary a thank-you note.

GOP Chairman: Republican-dominated House 'Adversarial' To Republican Voters

• The Texas House is "adversarial" to Republican voters, according to the chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, Matt Rinaldi. He made these comments to Chris Salcedo on a recent episode of the Salcedo Storm podcast.
      
• Comparing the two chambers of the Texas Legislature, Rinaldi said, “The House has a completely different culture, as you could see. And it’s a very adversarial relationship with the party and the grassroots. It’s like you get the sense that they don’t like their own voters.”
     
• If you don't have time to listen to the full podcast, Brandon Waltens has prepared a review of the program and Rinaldi's comments.

DEM's Senior Staff Resigns Over ‘Toxic and Unethical’ Behavior

• The senior staff for Democrat State Rep. Jolanda Jones of Houston announced their resignation over her "toxic and unethical" behavior Thursday.  Sydnie Henry has the details.
     
• Jones is a freshman in the Texas House and former contestant on the reality show Survivor. According to her staff, she “actively covered up [her] son Jio’s inappropriate relationship with one of [her] interns, who is significantly younger than him and is in a power imbalance, and [is] now using [her] position to intimidate and silence [her] own staff members.”
       
• The senior staff says Jones has also involved them in her personal life, including the coordination of her son’s father-in-law’s cancer treatment and addressing her son’s legal issues and criminal charges.
      
• Among other things, they allege she created a toxic work environment by (1) calling staff at all hours of the night on personal business, (2) disparaging staff’s family, (3) threatening to fire staff “for compliance in ethically questionable situations,” and (4) physically threatening staff members.
      
• In other words, a fairly typical work environment in a Democrat legislator's office.

Protect Texas' Electric Grid

• Bob Hall has long championed legislation to protect the grid from natural and man-made threats. Following a series of near-catastrophic problems in Texas and elsewhere, more and more lawmakers are paying attention. Darrell Frost has the story.

     
• This week, the Senate's Business and Commerce Committee held a hearing on legislation Hall (R-Edgewood) is proposing for the fifth straight session. Committee Chairman Charles Schwertner (R–Georgetown) acknowledged that “it’s getting more and more popularity and notoriety, for sure.”
     
• His proposal passed the Senate 31-0 in 2021, but it was killed in the House State Affairs Committee. This session, 25 of the Senate's 31 members are listed as either authors or co-authors of the measure.
   
• According to Hall, the legislation (SB 330) would “harden” the state’s electric grid and 16 critical infrastructure systems against a “wide range of both natural and man-made existential threats, including cyber-attacks, malware, electromagnetic pulses (EMP) and geomagnetic disturbances (GMD).” These events, Hall explains, have the potential to disrupt or shut down the entire grid, jeopardizing the lives of countless Texans.
      
• “Electricity is the second most important thing for sustaining life as we now know it and impacts almost every aspect of our modern life: healthcare, transportation, banking, sanitation, water, and food,” argues Hall.

DEMs Flee Committee To Avoid Testimony They Don't Like

• Democrats on a Texas House committee walked out of the room during a hearing this week, avoiding testimony from a "detransitioner" on the harmful effects of gender mutilation procedures on minors. Sydnie Henry has the story.

        
• At issue was legislation before the Texas House Committee on the Judiciary & Civil Jurisprudence that would extend the statute of limitations for minors who have undergone “gender transition” procedures.
        
• The measure's author, State Rep. Shelby Slawson (R-Stephenville), said minors cannot vote, drink, use tobacco, or enter contracts until they are 18, and therefore cannot consent to using these drugs and undergoing life-altering procedures. This necessitates, she believes, in them having an extended period of time as an adult to consider the actions done to them as minors.
       

• After testimony from LBGT activists against the measure, Soren Aldaco—a Texan who began transitioning as a minor and detransitioned as an adult—began her testimony. That's when the Democrats left.

         
• "[The] provider that treated me and did my double mastectomy, he came to Texas because of the laws here. He had eight malpractice suits—and don’t quote me on that [exact number]—but like an absurd amount in California. And he knew that here, he could get away with it in Texas. And he has." – Soren Aldaco

Cruz Slams Mayorkas

• During the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas called out the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, for failing to maintain control of the southwest border. Katy Marshall has the story.

       
• As the head of Homeland Security, Mayorkas is supposed to protect the country from threats, including those along the southwest border. However, when facing questions from Cruz, Mayorkas refused to say if the conditions at the border amounted to a crisis or if the situation places American lives in danger.
       
• Over the past year, the border crisis has worsened, according to data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency.
     
• “Mr. Secretary, you’ve just testified to the American people [that] you’re incompetent at your job,” said Cruz. The senator told Mayorkas that if he "had integrity," he would resign as secretary of Homeland Security.

Friday Reflection: Tolerance Became Dominance

It should be obvious now that the “gay rights” movement was never about tolerance. It was always about dominance.

Time after time, on issue after issue, by refusing to fight the secular left from the moral high ground, conservatives – and more specifically, Christians – find our culture struggling under the weight of moral degeneracy.

The left has been fighting to undermine biblical values for a long time. They have attacked the sanctity of life. They have attacked the centrality of the family. They have attacked the relevance of manhood. They have attacked the notion of womanhood.

In each case, the left’s talking points began with “tolerate this” and ended with “you have no choice but to approve and celebrate it.”

As people of faith, we must recognize our culpability. We allowed the idea of “tolerance” to be redefined into the highest of virtues, and so – not wanting to upset the civic apple cart or appear in violation of secular morals – we sat silently by. Even “conservative” pastors in “Bible-believing” denominations capitulated – at best, preaching self-help pablum so as not to offend those who hate the Gospel, and at worse, abusing scripture to justify every sin endorsed by the radical left.

When someone had the temerity to speak out, they were accused of engaging in a “culture war.”

We all should have been so engaged. There has been a war going on; one side has just simply been content to wave a white flag.

Consider the twisted knots of the modern feminist movement. It was founded on the notion that women, created in the image of God, deserved equal rights under the law. We can all wholeheartedly agree with that. Pioneers like Susan B. Anthony held that women should be treated equally, and be equally responsible, under the law. She opposed abortion on religious and practical grounds, holding that abortion was a tool of oppression.

Yet in the intervening century, feminists – led astray by the left – embraced that tool of oppression.

In an alliance with the gay rights movement of the 2020s, feminists allow womanhood to be openly mocked. In drag shows, women are reduced to objects of sexual fetish with the full approval of the feminists. A man was named USA Today’s Woman of the Year in 2022. On International Women’s Day 2023, the Biden White House presented the “Women of Courage” award to … a man.

In the 1990s, Americans were told to just “tolerate” homosexual behavior. “What happens in the privacy of someone’s bedroom …” we were told repeatedly. It was an easy, comfortable lie.

To transform American society, the left didn’t present studies; they gave us “Will & Grace” and “Modern Family.” We weren’t drowned in data points; instead, publications were flooded with cherry-picked profiles of homosexuals just wanting to be “tolerated.”

Tolerated by culture … right up until the point the left could dominate culture. Today, private businesses are forced to celebrate gay “marriage” – threatened not just with private lawsuits but with government action.

The demand to “tolerate” what two men do privately in their bedroom 25 years ago has become a demand that prepubescent children be subjected to teachers talking about their sexcapades and fetishes in the classroom.

The request for tolerance was always a precursor to dominance. And it isn’t just about the actions of abortion, gender surgeries, or homosexuality. Those are symptoms.

As we are reminded in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

The war for the culture of our republic is a war waged by the forces of evil. Unless we want to see this present darkness dominate our land, we must commit ourselves to being fully engaged in the spiritual war.