Good morning,

Those whose aspirations are based on rewriting history are building on a shaky foundation of lies. I end the week reflecting on the importance of honestly facing the past.

This is the Texas Minute for Friday, July 11, 2025.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Texas Lawmakers Set to Redraw Racially Gerrymandered Congressional Districts

• Putting congressional redistricting on the agenda for the upcoming special legislative session, Gov. Greg Abbott cited constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice about four racially gerrymandered districts in the state. Erin Anderson has those details.
    
• A letter sent from the DOJ Civil Rights Division to Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton urged the state to rectify the “race-based” considerations used to create the districts or face legal action. The DOJ letter described the districts as "vestiges of an unconstitutional racially based gerrymandering past."
       
• The targeted districts—three in the Houston area and one in Dallas-Fort Worth—are majority-minority “coalition districts” currently held by Democrats. A federal court ruling last year in a Galveston County redistricting case established that the Voting Rights Act does not protect districts based on “coalitions” of different minority groups.
      
• Redrawing the congressional district maps ahead of the 2026 mid-term elections could help the GOP maintain a majority in the U.S. House as Trump pushes ahead on his agenda. Such a boost would require shifting Republican voters from GOP-held areas while maintaining the party’s majority in those districts.
       
• Republicans currently hold 25 of Texas’ 38 U.S. House seats, while Democrats hold 12 seats. One traditionally Democrat seat is vacant and is targeted for redistricting.

Trump Endorses Texas Lawmakers Who Backed School Choice

• In a move telegraphed months in advance, President Donald Trump has endorsed nearly every Republican state lawmaker in Texas. As Brandon Waltens reports, lawmakers were reportedly told by Gov. Greg Abbott that Trump would have their backs come election season if they voted for the new $1 billion school choice program.
       
• The three Republicans who opposed the measure—State Sen. Robert Nichols (who is retiring), and State Reps. Dade Phelan and Gary VanDeaver—were not endorsed. (As you might expect, legislators who voted for the school choice program but aren't seeking re-election did not get an endorsement.)
        
• Trump’s political action committee, Never Surrender Inc., is sending out endorsement emails to those lawmakers who helped push the bill over the finish line.
       
• Last month, the State Republican Executive Committee passed a resolution urging Trump to withhold endorsements until after Nov. 8, 2025. The timing would allow the party to complete potential censure proceedings under Rule 44, which penalizes lawmakers for straying from the party’s legislative priorities or core principles.

Angela Paxton Announces Divorce From Ken Paxton

• Attorney General Ken Paxton and State Sen. Angela Paxton are getting divorced after nearly four decades of marriage. In a post on social media, Angela Paxton cited "biblical grounds" as the reason.
    
• "I believe marriage is a sacred covenant and I have earnestly pursued reconciliation," she wrote in that post. "But in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage." She did not specify what those "recent discoveries" were.
      
• Ken Paxton, who is opposing John Cornyn in the U.S. Senate race, said the decision follows years of public scrutiny. 
       
• "After facing the pressures of countless political attacks and public scrutiny, Angela and I have decided to start a new chapter in our lives," he wrote in his own post. "I remain committed to supporting our amazing children and grandchildren. I ask for your prayers and privacy at this time."

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo Pushes for Taxpayer-Funded International Trips

• Harris County Commissioners once again rejected a proposed overhaul to the county’s international travel policy—one closely tied to Democrat County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s recent trade mission to Paris. Joseph Trimmer has the story.

    
• This was her third attempt to get commissioners to allow county tax dollars to be used for her "trade missions" overseas. Back in May, she tried to get the county to pay $23,000 for a trip to Paris—initially trying to conceal the destination. She ended up taking the trip using political donations rather than tax dollars.

Harris County Flood Bond Reports Show Unexplained $1 Billion Discrepancy

• Harris County’s Flood Control District is facing scrutiny after a local watchdog identified a billion-dollar discrepancy in the accounting of the 2018 flood bond program. Officials have yet to explain why the money is no longer available.
    
• The issue came to light when Bob Rehak, who runs the watchdog site ReduceFlooding.com, compared the district's Year-End 2024 bond report with its First Quarter 2025 update. In one example, the San Jacinto River watershed’s remaining funds plunged by $143 million despite only $168,000 in new spending.
      
• The Harris County Auditor’s office refused to answer questions on the issue, demanding instead that an "open records request" be filed.
      
• This might be why the county judge is so eager to get taxpayer-funded vacations out of Harris County...

Texas Increases Artificial Intelligence Funding & Regulations

• Gov. Greg Abbott has signed into law several pieces of legislation designed to increase regulatory oversight of artificial intelligence and quantum industries in the state while also strengthening their development. Ryan Dy-Liacco profiles the laws that will soon be taking effect.

This Sunday on REAL TEXANS

Friday Reflection
Destroying History

It’s one thing to be passively ignorant of history, but something else entirely to refuse to study the past. Regardless of our political, ideological, and even theological beliefs, an honest review of history keeps us grounded in facts as we address the challenges of the day. 

Those who cannot be honest about the past are unlikely to be forthright about the present. They try to recast history as part of an agenda to seize the future. Thus, we find efforts to tear down monuments and rewrite history books.

I was reminded of this on a trip to Israel. After visiting numerous archaeological sites, I arrived in Jericho, which is considered by many to be the world’s oldest inhabited city. I know my way around Jericho, having visited the archeological mound on previous trips. I was not, however, prepared for what I saw. I was struck by how much had changed… and not for the better.

What struck me was the site’s state of disrepair. It is the archeological remains of an old city, so in one sense, “disrepair” is the order of the day. But not like this; this was the disrepair of the site as an archeological treasure. It struck a dagger through my heart and mind.

For all its storied history, dating back literally to the dawn of recorded time, most of us know of Jericho because of its prominent place in the Book of Joshua and later references in the New Testament.

But here in Palestinian-controlled Jericho—the modern city, which surrounds the archeological mound—you find… next to nothing. If you don’t know what you are looking at, you won’t know. Signposts around the mound once explained the site’s significance in layman’s archeological terms, not biblical prose. Those had all been removed.

It felt a lot like visiting the Alamo without finding a reference to the 1836 battle—or anything else, for that matter.

It is now just a high mound of exposed ancient bricks, a cistern (if you know what you’re looking at), and a few bits of walls from interior shops or dwellings. I am told new archaeological work has essentially ground to a halt.

There is a simple and sad reason why. The Palestinian Authority’s political narrative will not tolerate any more archaeological finds substantiating the words of the Holy Bible.

This is ironic, given that nearby is Qasr al-Yahud. For Christians, this site is significant as the place where Jesus is believed to have been baptized. The old Arabic name, though, attests to something far more ancient. The name translates roughly as “The Place of the Jews.” That is an illusion to the third and fourth chapters of Joshua… where the flood waters of the Jordan dried up, allowing the people of God to enter the Promised Land and begin their conquest. (It is also the general area where Elijah was taken up on a chariot of fire to heaven.)

So, there is a site named for centuries in Arabic as the place where Joshua and the people entered the land... yet no acknowledgment today that the Jews captured Jericho in one of history’s most unique battles.

Whatever one thinks of modern Israel and the geopolitical conflict between Muslims and Jews and everyone else, all of those things should be unrelated to archaeological facts.

But here’s the political problem: The Palestinians are resting their claims to the land on the belief Jews have no meaningful historic connection to it. The controlling P.A. has decided to disallow any—any—archaeological study that might suggest Jews occupied, controlled, or otherwise conquered the land even in the ancient past.

Whatever one chooses to believe about modern Israeli statehood since 1948, or the governing arrangements in the region going forward, none of us should accept the suppression of history. Those whose geopolitical aspirations are based on rewriting history are building on the shaky foundation of lies. And nothing good will result.

Modern interest groups should argue vigorously for their competing visions of the future, but we must not allow the past to be a casualty in those battles.

Quote-Unquote

"One of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous before, time and again."

– Thomas Sowell