Good morning, 

Here is today's Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Wednesday, February 26, 2020
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• Like many taxpayers and teachers, Republican State Sen. Paul Bettencourt of Houston is frustrated with the Texas Teacher Retirement System’s lack of transparency and accountability. But as Cary Cheshire reports, Bettencourt is pledging to do something about it.
          
• Former Speaker of the Texas House Joe Straus of San Antonio is still doling out campaign cash to promote Democrat-leaning Republicans. Brandon Waltens reports that Straus’ political action committee recently gave $10,000 to Jim Griffin, an establishment candidate running in the open-seat House District 92 primary against conservative Jeff Cason.
       
• Despite GOP majorities, Straus served as speaker of the Texas House by forming a coalition of a few moderate and liberal Republicans along with the bulk of the Democrat caucus. When faced finally with the possibility of a GOP caucus vote without his Democrat backers present, Straus retired from the speakership and the Texas House following the 2017 legislative session.
       
• Straus, his supporters, and the candidates he embraces have long opposed tax reform, pro-life initiatives, and Second Amendment rights.
      
• A Mexican national who went to prison for illegally voting in Texas elections is out on parole and awaiting deportation. Erin Anderson has the details.
         
• In a new commentary, Jim Ellis explores the role Republicans and “Independents” could play in open primaries on Super Tuesday as a means to influence the Democratic presidential nomination.

• President Trump is rightly speaking out about abuses from the administrative state and the judiciary. Whether it is the permanent bureaucracy in the alphabet soup of government agencies, or black-robed philosopher-kings sitting in our courtrooms, both are dangerous to the American system of self-governance in which the citizens are sovereign.
     
• The problem with the judiciary extends from the U.S. Supreme Court through local courts. Just recently, as Texas Scorecard has been reporting, the Tarrant County judiciary met in secret for an allegedly administrative task – specifically because the elected judges did not want to see or hear from the citizens. These were Republican judges hiding from their constituents!
     
• Judges who would hide from public accountability are a disgrace to the Texas Constitution and the people of Texas. This is a festering constitutional crisis.
     
• The judiciary views itself as supreme to the people, unanswerable to anyone but themselves. The judiciary is only to be independent of the executive and legislative branches of government, but NOT of the sovereign citizens.
     
• The “solution” being quietly shopped around Austin in advance of the state’s Republican convention and the 2021 legislative session is to further isolate the judiciary from accountability. Pushed by so-called “tort reform” advocates, they would first remove the partisan label from judicial elections... and then remove elections in favor of appointment by obscure and unaccountable committees.
      
• Texans must stand with President Trump, and against deep-state bureaucracies and unaccountable judges.

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