Good morning,

Here is the Texas Minute for Friday, February 9, 2024.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Report: Texas Schools Failing to Report Educator Misconduct

• New research reveals that Texas school officials are failing to report educator misconduct as required by state law, and even some educators whose misconduct is reported are able to keep teaching. Erin Anderson has the details.
      
• Government watchdog group Citizens Defending Freedom released a comprehensive report, “Are Your Children Safe in Texas Schools?” It evaluates misconduct reporting data from the Texas Education Agency.
     
• The report reveals “inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and failures” with how school districts across the state handle allegations of teacher misconduct and how the allegations are addressed by the TEA.
       
• For example, educators found to have engaged in an “improper relationship with a student or minor” or other sexual misconduct are supposed to have their teaching certificates permanently revoked. Yet, the report finds that offenders are receiving lesser sanctions, allowing them to stay in the classroom.

Texas A&M Closing Qatar Campus

• The Board of Regents at Texas A&M voted yesterday to set in motion the closure of the university's campus in Qatar. As Syndie Henry reports, the decision follows—but did not specifically cite—a report citing serious national security issues involved with the campus.
    
• The regents' 7 to 1 vote means A&M will begin the process of closing the campus—though that is not expected to be completed until 2028.
      
• The branch came into question earlier this year when the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy produced a scathing report accusing A&M of allowing Qatar ownership of "more than 500 research projects" in "highly sensitive fields."

UT Austin Eliminates Scholarship Program for Illegal Aliens

• As the new state law banning diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in government universities goes into effect, some at the University of Texas at Austin are blaming it (or crediting, depending on your perspective) for ending a scholarship program benefiting illegal aliens. Will Biagini has the story.
       
• The program provided illegal aliens at UT with scholastic resources, including a scholarship ranging from $500 to $1,000.
      
• According to university officials, the program was eliminated because it would be in violation of Senate Bill 17, which took effect on January 1 of this year.
       
• Questions have been raised about the relationship between SB 17 and the closing of the scholarship, since the law does not apply to student-facing "programs that enhance student achievements."
       
• The measure's author, State Sen. Brandon Creighton (R-Conroe), told Texas Scorecard he's encouraged that U.T. is taking the legislation seriously.

University of Houston to Display Pro-Abortion Idol

• A statue evoking ancient occult child sacrifice is coming to Texas’ largest city. More shocking, explains Adam Cahn, is that it is scheduled to appear at the taxpayer-subsidized University of Houston.
     
• The eight-foot-tall statue, which depicts a naked woman with goat horns for hair and tentacles for arms, also has a lace collar around the neck. The figure’s features could be a reference to the pagan demon Ashteroth. According to experts, Ashteroth was the goddess of prostitution.
      
• The artists behind the monument say it was intended as a tribute to deceased pro-abortion U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. It will be on display at U of H from February 28 to October 31.

‘Drag Queen Bingo’ Targets Children in Austin

• A venue in Austin will be hosting a drag show targeting children this weekend. Drag performers who routinely publish sexually explicit material on social media are organizing the event at the Lawn, an outdoor truck park and market that caters to families and children.

Friday Reflection
No One Can Steal Your Joy

There are a lot of things that are outside of our control, ranging from the weather to the guy ahead of us on the road more concerned with his email than driving his car. I cannot control the laws passed in other states any more than how my goofy high school pal votes.

What I can always control is my own perspective and my attitude.

No one, and no situation, gets to steal your joy… unless you allow them to do so.

As C.S. Lewis wrote, joy is “neither happiness nor pleasure.” Instead, the Bible describes joy—true joy—as something that transcends time and the things of the earth. Joy comes from knowing, in the words of Horatio Spafford, “It is well with my soul.”

Most of the establishment crony media and the politicians for whom they shill exist to separate you from your joy. A person without joy is easily manipulated and controlled. This is why socialists and their communist brethren around the world denigrate the church and, ultimately, drive a wedge between people and the Eternal Joy of God.

A joyful people might be buffeted by Satan and face trials engineered by conniving men, but they won’t be talked into real or political shackles because they are told it is good for them. The joyless and the spiritually downtrodden will do so every time. “Just take care of me!” cries those who don’t know joy. “Give me something to be happy about!” they plead to any would-be master.

The measure of our joy is found where we direct the vision of our hearts and minds. This is what the Apostle James meant when he wrote, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

All things considered, we have it pretty easy as 21st Century Americans. The church is full of soft people whose greatest spiritual trials consist of a traffic jam on the way to worship.

Fuming as we do at the drivers ahead of us as we crawl along the “expressway,” it makes absolutely no sense to hear that early Christians confounded their Roman captors by singing happy songs of faith while waiting for and heading to execution.

Count it all joy, indeed. Those men and women had their eyes fixed on their perfection and completeness, not the situation imposed on them.

Times could be changing. We see it in small ways and big ways. The attitudes of culture writ large have been shifting against the Judeo-Christian ethic. People of faith are objects of ridicule, which is a prelude to worse things. How will we react? Will we allow our joy to be taken from us?

Consider the words of encouragement attributed to the early English missionary, Boniface:

Let us stand fast in what is right and prepare ourselves for trial.
Let us neither be dogs that do not bark, nor silent onlookers,
nor paid servants who run away before the wolf.
Instead, where the battle rages, let us find ourselves.
Run towards the roar of the lion!
Run towards the roar of battle!
That is where Christ's most glorious victories shall be won!

Let us, likewise, run to the roar with joy!

Quote-Unquote

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way."

– Viktor Frankl