Good morning,

Classrooms in Louisiana will now be required to display the Ten Commandments. This morning, we'd like your thoughts on whether the same should be done in Texas.

Here is the Texas Minute for Monday, June 24, 2024.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Dan Patrick’s Sunset Commission Appointees Set to Scrutinize State Agencies

• Ahead of the 89th Legislative Session next year, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has announced his appointees to the Sunset Advisory Commission. As Sydnie Henry explains, state agencies and commissions must be reauthorized on a regular basis.
      

• In 2025, the agencies up for review include the Texas Ethics Commission, Texas Lottery Commission, Texas Real Estate Commission, Department of Information Resources, as well as the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Correctional Managed Health Care Committee, and the Board of Pardons and Paroles, among others.
       

• The Sunset Commission, comprised of both lawmakers and public members, is charged with advising legislators on each agency's continuation as well as providing recommendations for operational improvement.
         

• Patrick has appointed State Sens. Tan Parker (R-Flower Mound), Cesar Blanco (D-El Paso), Mayes Middleton (R-Galveston), and Kevin Sparks (R-Midland) to the commission, as well as Roger Elswick as a public member.
      
• House Speaker Dade Phelan previously made appointments to the commission, though two of them—Reps. Justin Holland and Travis Clardy—lost their re-election bids.

Majority of Texans Say an Electrical Grid Failure Could Come This Summer

• A new poll from the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Politics Project found that a majority of Texans believe an electrical grid failure could occur this summer. Luca Cacciatore has the details.
    
• The results come roughly three years after Winter Storm Uri rocked Texas, causing power outages across the state. During the peak of the crisis, at least 4.5 million Texans were left without electricity.
      
• Last week, Bill Peacock of the Energy Alliance attributed some of the state’s growing grid concerns to the costs of unreliable energy sources. “Since 2014, the reliability of the Texas grid has collapsed as federal, state, and local subsidies for [wind and solar] averaged $2 billion a year.”

DPS Arrests Six Illegal Aliens After High-Speed Chase in Maverick County

• An illegal alien, smuggling five others into the United States through Maverick County, led law enforcement officers on a chase through ranchland before being stopped and arrested. Debra McClure reports one of the men, Nestor Farid Garcia Morales of Mexico, had six outstanding warrants from Wisconsin.
          
• The smuggler—identified as Carlos Alberto Urbina Miralda of Mexico—reportedly rammed through six ranch fences while trying to evade state troopers.

Keller ISD Rejects Biden’s ‘Extreme’ Title IX Rewrite

• Trustees in Keller Independent School District unanimously passed a resolution rejecting the Biden administration’s recent rewrite of Title IX. As Erin Anderson reports, Title IX is the federal civil rights law originally designed to protect women from sex-based discrimination in education but has been morphed into a mandate for transsexual political theory.
     
• A federal court already struck down the 1,500-page revision, which added “gender identity” as a protected class and threatened local school districts with a loss of funding if they did not comply.
     
• Keller ISD trustees previously adopted privacy and free speech policies last June that require sex-separated bathrooms and other personal spaces, and they prevent anyone from being forced to use particular pronouns.
      
• Other school districts, including those in Tyler, Keller, and Carroll, have passed similar resolutions condemning the Title IX rewrite.

Border Patrol Reports Encounters with Illegal Aliens Dropped Last Month

• U.S. Customs and Border Protection has finally released the number of border encounters during the month of May, showing the lowest number for the month of May in the past few years. But, as Will Biagini reports, the number of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans admitted into the country via parole has risen by nearly 30,000 since April.
      
• Questions have been raised about the federal government's ability to adequately monitor the vast number of aliens being granted parole by the Biden administration.

NOTE: Sydnie Henry will be taking over the Texas Minute for the next several days while I tackle a special project.

Quote-Unquote

“Another reason we buy into Green is because we as a culture have never been fully comfortable with human industry. We’re taught that the pursuit of profit is wrong, that capitalism is wrong, and that we should feel guilty for our wealth and way of life.”

– Alex Epstein​

Today In History

On June 24, 1853, U.S. President Franklin Pierce signed the Gadsden Agreement, resulting in the purchase of 29,670 square miles of land from Mexico, constituting what is today New Mexico and southern Arizona. The purchase price was $10 million—or, approximately $408 million in 2024 dollars.

ONE CLICK SURVEY

A new law in Louisana will require public school classrooms to display the text of the Ten Commandments. A similar law was proposed in Texas last year; it passed the Senate but was killed by Speaker Dade Phelan without getting a vote in the House.

Should Texas lawmakers require all public school classrooms in the state to display a copy of the Ten Commandments?
  

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

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