Good morning,

After revelations about the leftwing advocacy at Texas' universities, some – including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick – have advocated for the abolition of tenure. Give us your thoughts in the One Click Survey.

This is the Texas Minute for Monday, July 31, 2023.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Cruz Wants Biden Impeached and Prosecuted

• U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is calling for President Joe Biden’s impeachment, prosecution, and imprisonment due to findings in recently released federal documents, which detail an alleged scandal between Biden and a Ukrainian businessman. Soli Rice has the details.
      
• A whistleblower from the Internal Revenue Service brought forward allegations that current President Joe Biden accepted a bribe from a Ukrainian businessman.
     
• “The allegations against Joe Biden are damning. If they are true, Joe Biden should be impeached, not for high crimes and misdemeanors, but for bribery. If they are true, he should be removed from office, prosecuted, and jailed for taking millions of dollars of bribes.” – Ted Cruz

Texas Lawmakers Try to Stop Biden’s Galveston Wind Farm

• Lawmakers are asking Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham to deny the Biden administration permits for burying cables in Texas-controlled waters that lead to a proposed wind farm in the Gulf of Mexico. Sydnie Henry has the story.
        
• During the regular 88th Legislative Session, State Sen. Mayes Middleton (R-Galveston) filed Senate Bill 1303, which would require an in-depth investigation into potential wind facilities and create a permitting process for such facilities. The measure was killed in the Texas House. 
         
• Middleton’s measure came about as the Biden administration was announcing plans for a 546,645 acre wind farm off the Galveston coast. The senator has said the unreliable nature of the wind farm, as well as interference with offshore shipping lanes, means the project should be abandoned.
       
• Commissioner Buckingham said the Biden project raises “serious concerns” for Texas, and that she is not a “fan.”

Houston Mayoral Candidates Violated Campaign Finance Laws

• Three Houston mayoral candidates—U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, State Sen. John Whitmire, and local attorney Lee Kaplan—are accused of illicitly accepting campaign funds during a period prohibited by city law. Micah Rice reports Houston campaign finance law dictates that after the city awards a contract, Houston political candidates may not accept donations from the awarded contractors for 30 days.
      
• Whitmire’s campaign received $21,500 from contractors, including a law firm, a consulting group, and an engineering business. 
     
• Lee took in $21,000 worth of donations during the prohibited period from contractors, including a law firm, a staffing company, and two engineering firms.
      
• Kaplan received $500 from a law firm with city contracts.
      
• Whitmire and Lee have promised to return the donations, while Kaplan said his team would review paperwork to check whether his received donations violated city ordinance.
       
• “The city of Houston hasn’t been known to take its ethics rules seriously. The council committee designated to oversee these issues hasn’t even met in a year.” – Charles Blain, president of Urban Reform

Texas Christian School Teachers Fired for Attending Drag Show

• Two Texas private school teachers recently attended a sexually explicit drag show and posted about it on social media. As Valerie Muñoz reports, the Baytown First Baptist Academy found out and terminated the teachers' employment.
       
• One of the former teachers, Kristi Maris, described her firing in a follow-up post. “Please remove yourself from my page if this offends you, if you think this is UnGodly [sic], makes me a pedaphile [sic], or causes you to feel uncomfortable.”

Professor Accuses San Antonio College of Religious Discrimination

• A federal religious discrimination complaint has been filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against a taxpayer-funded community college in San Antonio after the school allegedly fired a biology professor for teaching that sex is based on X and Y chromosomes. Emily Medeiros has the story.
     
• Dr. Johnson Varkey claims St. Philip's College discriminated against his religious and scientific beliefs. St. Philip's is part of the Alamo Colleges District in Bexar County.
      
• Varkey, who has taught biology for 19 years, had four students walk out of his lectures in 2022 after he stated that sex is based on X and Y chromosomes. During the same class, he also taught that when a sperm joins an egg, a zygote is formed, and life starts when the zygote begins to divide—not when a baby is born.
     
• A couple of months after the students walked out of his lecture, Varkey received a letter informing him that he was being terminated. The college claimed to have received reports of “religious preaching, discriminatory comments about homosexuals and transgender individuals, anti-abortion rhetoric, and misogynistic banter.”
       
• “While I never preached or proselytized in class, the accusation of religious preaching was clearly in connection with the fact that I serve as an associate pastor," explained Johnson in his filing. “The College assumed I was preaching rather than teaching due to negative, discriminatory stereotypes about Christians. This perception was inaccurate and discriminatory.”

ONE CLICK SURVEY

Like other institutions of higher education in the United States since the early 1900s, those in Texas grant "tenure" to professors – effectively shielding their employment except in the most extreme situations. Originally established to provide academic freedom in research, some claim it has become a shield for leftwing political activism. Some, like Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, have advocated ending the practice. Others, like Speaker Dade Phelan, assert providing tenure helps draw prestigious faculty to the state.

Should tenure be abolished at the taxpayer-subsidized universities and colleges in Texas?

Once you’ve clicked an answer, reply to this email with any thoughts you’d like to share!