Good morning,

This weekend marks the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army and the 248th anniversary of the Stars and Stripes. However, I end the week reflecting on the impact of a document signed more than 500 years earlier than either!

This is the Texas Minute for Friday, June 13, 2025.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

But Also This Weekend...

• A coordinated series of leftwing protests will be taking place tomorrow across the state and country, opposing immigration enforcement. The Texas Scorecard team will be covering those. You can track the coverage at the Texas Scorecard website or in real-time by following our social media accounts.
    
• That includes our main Texas Scorecard account on 𝕏, as well as mine (Michael Quinn Sullivan), Joseph Trimmer , Robert Montoya, and Luca Cacciatore.

New Results Reveal Students ‘Not Where They Need To Be Academically’

• Newly released results of Texas high school students’ End-of-Course assessments for 2025 show “too many students are still not where they need to be academically,” according to the state agency that oversees public education. Erin Anderson has the details.
        
• The Texas Education Agency released Spring 2025 STAAR End-of-Course assessment results this week. The test examines Algebra I, Biology, English I and II, and U.S. History. Compared to 2024 results, the percentages of students who “meet” grade level in Algebra I and Biology increased slightly, while the percentages of students meeting grade level in English and History declined.
        
• Overall performance levels remain poor. Subject mastery ranged from a high of 37 percent for U.S. History to a low of just 8 percent for English II. Asian students continued to significantly outperform white, Hispanic, and African-American students in all subjects.
        
• It is worth noting that STAAR is unpopular with parents and teachers who say it puts too much pressure on students and forces educators to spend too much time “teaching to the test.”

RELATED EDUCATION NEWS

• Williams taught junior high and high school math in Wells Independent School District at the time of the alleged incident. State records show her teaching certificate is under review by the Texas Education Agency.

Trump DOJ Official Enters Race for Texas Attorney General

• Brandon Waltens reports that a new candidate has entered the race to follow Ken Paxton as the attorney general. Aaron Reitz, a former deputy under Paxton and recent Trump administration appointee, announced his GOP campaign on Thursday.
      
• State Sen. Mayes Middleton (R-Galveston) had previously announced his bid for the nomination. Paxton is not returning as attorney general, choosing instead to challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn.
      
• Reitz made the announcement a day after resigning as assistant attorney general for legal policy under Pam Bondi in the Department of Justice. He previously served as chief of staff to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.
      
• After Reitz resigned from his federal position yesterday, he was greeted with support from those in the Trump administration, including Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.

Attorney General Sues 23andMe Over Privacy Violations

• Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that he has filed suit against 23andMe, a California-based DNA testing company, over its plan to sell customers' genetic information. Addie Hovland has the story.

      
• After filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this year, 23andMe sought to include in the sale of its holdings the genetic information, health information, and other personal information of their customers, including Texans. However, state law prohibits the sale of genetic data without the explicit consent of the individual.
      
• Paxton is arguing in the case, the first of its kind, that Texans have private property rights over their own individual genetic information.
      
• In addition to Texas, 26 other states and the District of Columbia have filed suit against the company.

Texas Republicans Face Setbacks on Broader Immigration Legislation

• Border security was one of the Republican Party of Texas’ legislative priorities this session, and lawmakers took some steps to address the issue. But, as McKael Kirwin reports, legislation ending the "magnets" failed to advance.
    
• Lawmakers did create a new Homeland Security Division within the Texas Department of Public Safety that will implement new training exercises, provide additional support to existing law enforcement, and protect important infrastructure. They also passed legislation requiring county sheriffs to enter into written agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
      
• On the other hand, a push to require E-Verify for state contractors, political subdivisions, and private employers failed to move forward. Likewise, a measure to prevent illegal aliens from enrolling in public schools unless the federal government agreed to reimburse the state for incurred expenses never left committee.

Harris County Officially Ends Failed Guaranteed Basic Income Program

• Joseph Trimmer reports that Harris County Commissioners voted yesterday to officially end the proposed guaranteed income pilot program and reallocate $14 million in unspent federal COVID-19 relief funds.
    
• The program was designed to provide $500 per month to nearly 1,900 low-income residents using cash from the federal American Rescue Plan Act.
      
• Attorney General Ken Paxton led the charge against the proposals, filing a lawsuit asserting that direct cash payments violate the Texas Constitution’s prohibition on local governments granting public funds to individuals.
       
• The Supreme Court of Texas ruled against the program, forcing the county to back down without ever distributing the cash.

This Sunday on REAL TEXANS

Matthew Marsden

Friday Reflection
A Great Charter

We don’t often think of the Magna Carta. It is, after all, an ancient legal agreement written in Latin dealing with kings and barons in a far-off land. Our founding fathers, though, thought a lot about it, using that legal framework as a justification for our own independence.

The Magna Carta was signed on June 15, 1215, marking a revolutionary shift in the relationship between those who govern and those who are governed. As a document written by flawed men, the Magna Carta was not perfect … but it represented a giant leap forward.

It was heavily inspired by the Mosaic law of the Old Testament. Notably, the government was no longer considered to be above the law. More significantly, the Magna Carta acknowledged that citizens possessed inherent rights as individuals not subject to the whims of monarchs and rulers.

When the Magna Carta was signed, it is unlikely that King John and those feudal barons imagined their 3,500 Latin words would be influencing life for eight centuries on a continent unknown to them. 

And yet, no aspect of life as we know it in these United States would exist without the Magna Carta. While subjects of the crown, Englishmen nonetheless viewed themselves as free men because of the Great Charter signed five centuries earlier in the Runnymede Meadows along the River Thames west of London. Its principles were tightly woven into the fabric of the legal and political thought that the colonists brought with them to North America.

When our Declaration of Independence cited King George’s violations of our rights, it was drawing on the details of the events surrounding the genesis of the Magna Carta. Every honest Englishman in the 18th century would have recognized the American colonists’ grievances as echoes of A.D. 1215.

Indeed, Americans’ frustrations in the 1760s and 1770s over “taxation without representation” would have resonated with those 13th-century barons, who had also been the subject of the crown’s arbitrary levies. From due process to jury trials, the Magna Carta’s limitations on royal power were transferred directly through the Declaration of Independence into our Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

What was dimly glimpsed in 1215 was more fully fleshed out in 1776. We are still doing so, by God’s grace.

The preamble of our own nation’s charter, the Constitution, has urged us to pursue a “more perfect union.” That is, one in which the government is strictly limited, the rights of citizens are respected, and the liberty given to us as the children of God is sacrosanct. 

Quote-Unquote

"To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race."

– Calvin Coolidge