Good morning,

With House Speaker Dade Phelan hiring a taxpayer-funded lobbyist as his new chief of staff, today's One Click Survey asks what you think of schools, cities, counties, and other local governments hiring lobbyists to work against taxpayers.   

This is the Texas Minute for Monday, September 9, 2024.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Catholic Charities of Fort Worth Gets Taxpayer Funds to Enable Illegal Border-crossers

• Tarrant County GOP Chair Bo French has revealed that a Fort Worth Catholic organization has been enabling individuals who entered the country illegally. Emily Medeiros has the report.
     
• The Biden-Harris administration’s Department of Health and Human Services has given control of nearly a billion in taxpayer dollars to Catholic Charities of Fort Worth, the primary charity of the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth. The unique relationship with the Biden-Harris administration began in 2021.
     
• French accused the Biden-Harris administration of abusing the asylum process to help illegal aliens become voting citizens and using Catholic Charities of Fort Worth as a way to do it.
       
• Under the Biden-Harris administration, individuals entering the country illegally are able to receive thousands of dollars per month from taxpayer-funded sources.
       
• "We all suspected that the Biden/Harris administration was allowing this invasion on purpose. But now we know they are doing much more to enable illegals to get on the taxpayer-funded cash train. It’s beyond outrageous." – Bo French
       
• The Catholic Charities of Fort Worth has not responded to Texas Scorecard's request for comment.

RELATED NEWS

• Gov. Greg Abbott’s office estimated last month that Operation Lone Star has bused more than 119,000 individuals to Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver, and Los Angeles.
       
• Abbott has defended the busing policy, recently telling a crowd in Arizona that he was merely giving the Biden-Harris administration and other Democrats what they have given Texas.

Roy Outlines Impact of Biden-Harris Border Crisis

• U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) has compiled a summary of the ways the border crisis has harmed American cities and citizens. Titled “America Invaded,” Roy details the continuing damage the Biden-Harris border policies are having on the United States.
       
• Among other findings, Roy writes that more than 8.5 million people have illegally crossed the southern border. That is a number greater than the population of 37 states. 
     
• "We have countless examples of this crisis harming our constituents in different ways to motivate us to secure the border once and for all. Now is the time to fight. Now is the time to do what we said we were going to do in Congress: secure the border and take back our country." – U.S. Rep. Chip Roy

Texas Tech Offers ‘Diversity’ and ‘Inclusion’ Agriculture Cours

• Texas Tech’s Agricultural College is offering a course full of “Diversity” and “Inclusion” in the 2024-2025 academic year. As Robert Montoya reports, this comes despite the university's leadership declaring the institution would follow the letter and the spirit of the state law banning DEI in higher education.
        
• The state law prohibits "diversity, equity, and inclusion" offices and criteria in their hiring practices. It also bans universities from requiring employees or prospective employees to attend DEI training. It does not apply to academic instruction.
       
• One of the Texas Tech courses in question is "Belongingness and Inclusion In Agriculture Project," which helps students identify and develop goals related "to belonging, diversity, and inclusion" in the agriculture industry.

Paxton Sues Travis County for Funding Democrat Voter Registration Front Group

• Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced a lawsuit against the commissioners and voter registrar of Travis County. As Ian Camacho reports, they are being sued for hiring a partisan third-party organization to identify potentially unregistered voters without statutory authority.
       
• Paxton recently sued Bexar County after it moved forward with funding an identical program that would send unsolicited, mass voter registration mailouts to unregistered individuals.
         
• The lawsuits are seeking to prevent the counties "from giving a partisan organization thousands of taxpayer dollars to identify the names and addresses of potentially unregistered voters without statutory authority."
      
• At issue is Civic Government Solutions and its parent company, Civitech, which have been reportedly trying to do business with 40 counties across Texas. Civitech’s blog outlines its aim of "targeting" eligible but unregistered likely Democrat voters.
      
• Paxton argues that counties are not authorized to perform, or contract others to perform, the kind of work Bexar and Travis counties are trying to let CGS do. He said the programs "will create confusion, potentially facilitate fraud, and undermine public trust in the election process."

Today In History

On September 9, 1776, the United Colonies were officially named "United States of America" by the Continental Congress. 

Quote-Unquote

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."

– Rich​ard Henry Lee

ONE CLICK SURVEY

House Speaker Dade Phelan recently announced he had hired taxpayer-funded lobbyist Mike Toomey as his new chief of staff. Toomey has lobbied for Democrat-run local governments like Harris County. Republican lawmakers have tried repeatedly to ban the practice of taxing entities hiring lobbyists, but those have been blocked by the House leadership.

In 2025, should conservative lawmakers again try to ban taxpayer-funded lobbying in Texas?

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