Good morning, 

Here is today's Texas Minute.

– Brandon Waltens 

Thursday, July 30, 2020
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• Several doctors across the country—who are apparently successfully treating the Chinese coronavirus—are experiencing an Orwellian-like oppression by the media and government regulators.
   
• Matt Stringer reports that a number of doctors in Texas–including Dr. Robin Armstrong, Dr. Richard Bartlett, and Dr. Ivette Lozano–have had some success with treating patients with the virus, using hydroxychloroquine or inhaled steroids as part of their treatment plans.
   

• Efforts to suppress alternative treatments escalated even higher this week, when a video of a group of doctors from across the country holding a press conference in Washington D.C. went viral, gaining millions of views on social media platforms.
   

• Social media and tech giants reacted, with Facebook and Twitter scrubbing the videos from their platforms, saying the information was false and misleading. Twitter went so far as to temporarily ban Donald Trump Jr.’s personal Twitter account for sharing the press conference video. Even more alarmingly, Twitter deleted the post when President Donald Trump shared it on his account.
   

• As alternative coronavirus treatments continue to gain more attention across the country, it remains to be seen how long the media and tech giants will continue to attempt to suppress them—or if these treatments will ultimately be proven to work.

• Parents in the Fort Worth area are crying out against local officials after learning they are not only imposing new sweeping bans on education, but they're making the decisions in secret. Their county judge refused to make these meetings more transparent. Robert Montoya has the details. 
   

• On Monday, parents clashed with Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley, who serves as spokesman for the Tarrant County commissioners, over the county’s ban on in-person education this fall for most schools. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has since said that locally elected school boards, not local health officials, must make such decisions.
   

• What made parents even more upset was learning the ban was created at a secret, closed-door meeting of schools with local officials—and such meetings are common.
   

• “I’m very disappointed in Judge Whitley,” Sarah, one of the protesters, told Texas Scorecard. “I think there’s a lot of finger-pointing going on, and I just want answers.”

• Speaking of public education, Chris Putnam, a former Colleyville city councilman and congressional candidate, writes in a Texas Scorecard commentary that now is the time for Texas parents to take back public schools from the radical left.
   
• "I want to be absolutely clear here, because this moment is critically important to not only the future of Texas public schools but Texas itself politically, as well as our children. Fringe-left Austin lobbyists, bureaucrats, and teacher unions took the Texas public school system hostage years ago and will fight with everything they’ve got to keep control of our schools and kids—even in so-called “conservative” towns like Southlake and Colleyville."

• With the latest Texas campaign finance reports released, Tracy Marshall, the executive director of Transparency USA, highlights "Three Things You Need to Know From the Latest Texas Campaign Reports."
   
• The most shocking revelation? Twice as much money has been spent on lobbying as all the contributions to Texas candidates and PACs...combined.
   
• Transparency USA is an organization dedicated to combing through campaign financial reports and documents to bring greater transparency to politics in Texas and a growing number of other states as well. 

• Despite the economic downturn, citizens of Austin could get hit with a monstrous tax hike. Jacob Asmussen reports the Austin City Council unanimously approved a funding plan this week for their new, historically expensive, $10 billion rail and bus transit plan called Project Connect.
   
• The council wants to raise the tax rate a whopping 8.75 cents—meaning the median homeowner in Austin will pay roughly $450 more per year to the city. And that's only to fund the initial phase...

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