Good morning,

When political people tell you to be "nice," what they mean is for you to silently obey the ruling elite.

Here is the Texas Minute for Friday, July 28, 2023.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

DOJ Wants Marine Barriers Removed

• The U.S. Department of Justice is asking a federal court to halt further construction of Texas’ border buoys. Emily Medeiros reports the DOJ wants a federal court to allow the United States Army Corps of Engineers to remove the barriers from the river.

     
• The floating buoy barriers were put in place this summer by the Texas Department of Public Safety on the orders of Gov. Greg Abbott to deter illegal border crossing.
      
• The federal government claims the barrier violates the Rivers and Harbors Act, and DOJ attorneys assert that the marine buoys pose an immediate threat to navigation and public safety. 
     
• The DOJ notes that because Mexico disapproves of the barriers, foreign relations between Mexico and the United States could be harmed if buoys remain in place. 
      
• Earlier this month, Abbott told President Joe Biden the barriers would not have been installed if the administration “would just enforce the immigration laws Congress already has on the books.” 

ACTIVISTS: Why Isn't Texas' Secretary of State Auditing Harris County Elections?

• A former Republican candidate is calling on Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson to take a stronger role in investigating and overseeing the scandal-plagued Harris County elections. Sydnie Henry reports Harris County has 15 percent of the state’s registered voters.
    
• Alexandra Del Moral Mealer was the 2022 Republican nominee for county judge in an election that saw widespread failures by local elections officials. Among the problems identified: voting equipment that didn’t work, ballot scanners that jammed repeatedly, and nearly two dozen polling places that ran out of ballot paper. Chain-of-custody procedures that are key to ballot security were also ignored.
      
• Mealer and others have challenged the election results in court. The challenge remains open.
      
• Although high-level state officials called for investigations into the matter, Mealer told Texas Scorecard there hasn’t been any follow-through from Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, or Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson. Nelson is an appointee of Greg Abbott.
       
• “I do not understand why the State of Texas has turned their back on Harris County,” said Mealer in a video released by Dolcefino Consulting.
       
• Secretary Nelson's office declined to give an estimated date for the release of the audit.

UT Offers ‘Woke’ Courses Pushing LGBT Agenda

• As universities across Texas are being exposed for promoting leftist ideology, the University of Texas is still advocating radical gender politics through their coursework. 
    

• The university’s Center for Women’s and Gender Studies offers a range of courses about LGBTQ lifestyles and how to advocate politically for the queer and trans agenda. 
      

• “Courses like these offer no educational value and serve only as platforms for ideologues to launch attacks at God-fearing Texans,” said Brady Gray, president of the Texas Family Project. “They drive division and seek to lead young adults further down a path of destruction.”
      

• Like the other taxpayer-subsidized universities in Texas, UT is overseen by a board of regents appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott and confirmed by the Senate.

Fort Worth ISD Parents Upset Over ‘Girls Inc.’ 

• Fort Worth parents are planning to protest a proposal that would spend thousands of school tax dollars on a left-leaning after-school program called “Girls Inc.” Valerie Muñoz has the details.

       
• Girls Inc. is a K-12 after-school program that has been the subject of controversy because of its emphasis on sexual identity politics.
      
• Girls Inc. also advocates for “abortion rights” and gender “inclusivity,” including those who identify as “undocuqueer” and “two-spirit.” FWISD could be spending $175,000 under the proposal.

REVIEW: New Documentary Tells True Story Behind ‘Sound of Freedom’

• As the movie “Sound of Freedom” continues to exceed expectations at the box office, Erin Anderson reviews the documentary “Triple Take.” It tells the true-life story behind the dramatic film exposing child sex trafficking as a multibillion-dollar global industry.

      
• Tim Ballard spent 12 years as a federal agent busting pedophiles, pornographers, and child sex traffickers before leaving his job with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2013 to start Operation Underground Railroad, a nonprofit that works with law enforcement around the world to rescue sex-trafficked children.
     

• Operation Triple Take involved simultaneous stings in three different cities that resulted in the rescue of more than 100 trafficking victims and the arrest of a dozen traffickers.

     

• While “Sound of Freedom” dramatized just one of the three busts, which took place on an island in Cartagena, the documentary reveals how closely many of that movie’s scenes and characters resemble actual events and real-life counterparts.

     
• The documentary was made in 2019 and incorporates hidden camera footage captured during the original operations. 

📺 WATCH: The Headline

• On this week's edition of The Headline with Brandon Waltens, Ron Miller explains the first lawsuit filed in Texas for medical malpractice over gender mutilation procedures.
     
• (I also drop by to chat with Brandon about the DEI ruckus at A&M, as well as the latest turn of events in the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton.)
          
• You can watch The Headline on the Apple TV or Roku apps, on an iOS or Android phone, or on the Texas Scorecard YouTube channel.

Friday Reflection:
Let's Stop Being 'Nice'

Most of us live our days striving to be nice. We think we can just be all smiles and exude love by being nice to those who do evil. It’s a niceness that doesn’t appear in scripture and provides only a self-serving sense of righteousness.

In scripture, we don’t find this modern version of “nice” that so many church leaders and secularists push Christians to embrace. We find love. We find generosity. We find kindness. We find sincerity. We find patience.

But this gooey, saccharine-sweet niceness is nowhere to be found.

On nearly every page of the Gospels, you find Jesus dining with culture’s untouchables, healing the infirm, and instructing the weak – but He isn’t “nice.” Jesus is firm, honest, truthful, patient, and – most of all – loving. He tells them the truth about their sin. He tells them to “go and sin no more.”

But with the ruling elite of the day? With the rulers who profit from self-dealing and cronyism? He calls them “serpents” and a “brood of vipers.” He says they are “whitewashed tombs.” He calls them murderers. These words weren’t directed at the occupying Romans, the atheists, or adherents to other religions; they were pointed at His fellow Jews.

Nothing about that was “nice.” It was true. It was honest. And it was a kindness to those who were being oppressed.

No doubt many wanted Jesus to just be nice. You can almost hear them demand, “More of the ‘water into wine’ and ‘free bread and fish,’ Jesus, and less of the viper-talk!”

It is no different today. I can only speak to the experience of Republicans, but those who yell the loudest for citizens to be “nice” to politicians are the ones profiting off selling out the values and principles for which the GOP reportedly stands.

We can be nice serfs, or we can be driven citizen-leaders. We can smile pleasantly as our Republic is run into ruin, or we can fight for the inheritance of self-governance meant for ourselves and our posterity.

Rather than be “nice,” let us first and always strive to be passionate citizens faithfully committed to the cause of liberty.

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