Good morning,

This is the Texas Minute for Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Texas & Florida Challenge FDA Approval of Abortion Drugs

• The attorneys general of Texas and Florida have launched a sweeping new challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval and deregulation of abortion pills, accusing federal health officials of putting politics over women’s safety and violating multiple federal laws to push chemical abortion nationwide.​ Sydnie Henry has the details.
      
• The lawsuit, filed in Texas, targets the agency’s original approval in 2000 of the abortion drug mifepristone and the later generic approvals in 2019 and 2025. It also goes after a series of major rule changes that loosened safeguards and enabled mail-order chemical abortions.​
      
• The states argue that the FDA’s actions have “placed women and girls in harm’s way” by authorizing a two-drug regimen that intentionally ends the life of an unborn child and carries serious risks to mothers. The complaint traces what it calls the political origins of mifepristone’s approval back to President Bill Clinton.
      
• If Texas and Florida succeed, access to abortion pills nationwide—including via mail-order distribution—could be dramatically curtailed or halted entirely.

Abbott: Lawmakers Must 'Move the Needle' So Taxpayers See Relief

• In an interview with Luke Macias, Gov. Greg Abbott explains that state lawmakers must pass property tax relief that Texans will see and feel. 

GOP Candidate Amy Fennell Wanted to Keep ‘Treasonous Felon’ Trump Out of White House

• Before launching her Republican primary bid for the Texas House, former Willow Park City Councilmember Amy Fennell repeatedly posted about keeping President Donald Trump out of the White House and shared favorable messages about former Vice President Kamala Harris. As Brandon Waltens reports, she is challenging incumbent State Rep. Mike Olcott of Aledo in the March primary.
      
• Fennell, of course, describes herself as a “proven conservative.” She has taken positions, though, which are causing some to question that assertion. For example, Fennell has argued in favor of taxpayer-funded lobbying and gun control measures.
      
• In a post just two months before the 2024 General Election, Fennell called Trump a "treasonous felon" after previously downplaying two assassination attempts. "Poor Trump. Everybody’s out to get him… Boohoo… Suck it up man!!"
      
• Fennell's campaign did not respond to inquiries about her posts.

REPORT: Texas Faces Higher Winter Storm Power Outage Risk Than in 2021

• Despite new state laws and spending after the 2021 winter storm, a report from the Texas Public Policy Foundation warns that the risk of winter outages is rising. Paige Feild has the story.
     
• TPPF attributes the problem to increased demand but a roughly stagnant number of dispatchable power generation sources. TPPF explains that dispatchable generation—on-demand power generation sources like natural gas, coal, and nuclear—is roughly the same as it was during 2021.
      
• The state's power grid operator says that more than 31 GW of solar and 18 GW of wind have been added to the grid in the past five years. This is not as helpful as it seems; TPPF notes that “unless the wind happens to blow at the right time, a half day or more of outages is likely.”

Texarkana Coach Accused of Soliciting Student for Sex Via Snapchat

• Erin Anderson reports that a former NFL hopeful is accused of soliciting sex from a 16-year-old female student while he was coaching at his old high school in Texarkana.
      
• Te’Vailance Ramone Lashawn Hunt has been arrested and charged with online solicitation of a minor, a third-degree felony punishable by 2 to 10 years in prison. He worked as a coach at Texas High School in the Texarkana Independent School District from August until November, when the allegations arose.
     
• The girl told authorities she received multiple Snapchat messages from Hunt between November 10 and 12 in which the coach requested nude pictures of the teen and suggested they meet at night.
      
• After playing college football for Texas Christian University and Arkansas State, he declared for the 2023 NFL Draft but was not selected. 

Property Rights Group Raises Concerns Over Federal Endangered Species Act Reform

• Addie Hovland reports that legislation amending the Endangered Species Act to incentivize wildlife conservation on private lands and provide greater encouragement to recover listed species will be considered by the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources later today.
      
• Although the legislation seeks to reduce regulatory measures on personal property by making it difficult for the federal government to impose new rules on private property owners, American Stewards of Liberty warns that the measure—as it is currently written—will sacrifice small landowners for “political expediency and false hopes of bipartisanship.”
     
• ASL has recommended seven amendments to the legislation that would reduce the burden of the ESA on small landowners. U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Houston) is the only Texan serving on the committee. His office did not respond to requests for comment.

Quote-Unquote

"My mother was born ... in 1903, the year that the Wright Brothers first flew."

– Buzz Aldrin​

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