Good morning, 

This is the Texas Minute for Thursday, February 5, 2026.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Congressmen Call Texas ‘Ground Zero’ in Fight Against Sharia

• A congressional coalition headed by Texans is leading a campaign against Sharia in America, warning that the ideology is “one of the greatest threats facing our nation today” and calling Texas “ground zero” in the fight. Erin Anderson has the details.
      
• Republican U.S. Reps. Keith Self of McKinney and Chip Roy of Austin formed the Sharia-Free America Caucus in December. It now has 33 members of the U.S. House from 18 states, including Brandon Gill of Flower Mound and Michael Cloud of Victoria.
   
• At a press conference this week, the caucus members laid out the case against Sharia. Self said that "Sharia divides, then conquers." He cited several examples of Islamification happening in Texas’ major cities
     
• Roy, who chairs the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, said he’ll be holding a hearing next week on Sharia law and its incompatibility with the U.S. Constitution.

Paxton Sues Bexar County for Funding Defense of Illegal Aliens

• Attorney General Ken Paxton is asking a court to shut down Bexar County’s taxpayer-funded deportation-defense program for illegal aliens. As Sydnie Henry reports, Bexar County commissioners budgeted more than $566,000 for the program.
      
• The money is specifically earmarked to pay lawyers to represent illegal aliens in federal deportation proceedings—a role typically handled either by private counsel or nonprofit organizations, not county governments.
      
• Paxton framed the program as an attempt by local officials to interfere with federal immigration enforcement while using statewide taxpayers as the funding source. He called it “a flagrant violation of state law and the Texas Constitution.”
       
• Bexar County officials declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Watch List: Comptroller

Texas Appoints First Inspector General for Educator Misconduct

• Texas has its first Inspector General for Educator Misconduct, and he is laser-focused on fixing the problem. Attorney Levi Fuller was appointed to the newly created position within the Texas Education Agency on Wednesday.
      
• He will be responding to a flood of educator misconduct allegations. "I can tell you that one of the big things, and the reason why this job was created, was because of the sexual assault allegations in classrooms."
      
• Fuller, who describes himself as a "public school dad," will be building a team of 15 attorneys and legal assistants to address the incoming cases.

Applications Begin for Texas’ New $1 Billion School Choice Program

• Texas’ new $1 billion school choice program officially opened for business yesterday, marking the first opportunity for families to apply for Education Freedom Accounts under legislation enacted last year. By the end of the day, more than 34,000 applications had been submitted.
      

• Eligible students can apply to receive public funds for private school tuition, homeschooling expenses, and other approved educational services for the coming school year.
       

• The rollout comes amid heightened scrutiny of which schools and vendors may participate in the program. Last month, Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a legal opinion affirming that the comptroller’s office has the authority to exclude schools or vendors if they are tied to entities designated under Texas law as foreign terrorist organizations, transnational criminal organizations, or foreign adversaries.
      
• Applications can be submitted through March 17.

Former Professor Files Lawsuit Against Texas A&M

• A Texas A&M professor was terminated last fall after an undercover recording showed her instructing students on how to teach LGBT subjects to children as young as three. Adam Cahn updates the story.
    
• The resulting controversy ultimately led to the departure of former Texas A&M President Mark Welsh, who had defended the original course content as essential for the training of “psychiatrists” and “school superintendents.”
       
• The ex-professor, Melissa McCoul, is now suing the Texas A&M University System. She claims the institution violated her First Amendment rights.
     
• Because, as we all know, the Founding Fathers wanted to ensure that taxpayers would be required to subsidize the salaries of professors advocating that children receive LGBT indoctrination...

Quote-Unquote

"One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results."

– Milton Friedman​

SHOWS

Directories of Elected Officials

* The new congressional boundaries for representational purposes will not take effect until January 2027.