Good morning,

As we approach the 250th birthday of our republic, we must embrace anew what our Founding Fathers so clearly understood: Individual liberty and personal freedom are not means to an end; they are ends in and of themselves

This is the Texas Minute for Friday, June 19, 2026.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Talarico Welcomed Activist Group Targeting Oil and Gas

• A newly surfaced video shows Democrat U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico welcoming a climate activist organization to Texas and praising its work opposing the oil and gas industry. Brandon Waltens has the details.
     
• The tone of the January 2024 video stands in stark contrast with his campaign’s new efforts to portray him as a supporter of the state’s energy industry. In the video, Talarico thanks the radical left-wing group Third Act for coming to the Lone Star State and said he looked forward to working “alongside” the organization.
    
• Third Act has called for stopping the expansion of oil and gas infrastructure, including pipelines and liquefied natural gas terminals. The far-left extremist organization has drawn attention for staging “die-in” protests outside banks as part of campaigns targeting financing for oil and gas projects.
     
• Talarico authored European-style legislation in 2021 that would have required Texas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 90 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. He also pushed for climate indoctrination materials to be included in public schools. In 2022, Talarico announced that his campaign would adopt a vegan diet for environmental reasons.

Paxton Sues Trans Health Association

• Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, alleging that the organization is intentionally deceiving parents in the promotion of gender-mutilation procedures for children. Mary Berg reports that joining Paxton in the lawsuit are the Federal Trade Commission and the attorneys general of Alaska, Iowa, and Nebraska.
    
• The lawsuit asserts that WPATH marketed its treatment guidelines as being grounded in strong scientific backing despite no evidence supporting that claim. The entity is alleged to have failed to provide parents with information about the significant risks and lifelong side effects associated with the drugs, surgeries, and other procedures on minors.
      
• Although WPATH is structured as a nonprofit, the complaint alleges it functions as a trade organization for its members’ financial benefit.
      
• "Any group that illegally promotes irreversible, life-altering ‘transitioning’ procedures to kids as safe and necessary will face the full force of the law for harming children." – Ken Paxton

Utility Commissioners Deny Request for Hearing on Extra-High-Voltage Routes

• Landowners alleging a lack of due diligence by those pushing to build high-voltage lines across their properties were shut down by the Public Utility Commission yesterday. Robert Montoya was on hand for the meeting in which PUC commissioners denied a request from citizens for a hearing on the adequacy of routes.
    
• At issue are routes that Oncor and the Lower Colorado River Authority drew in their application for a line that spans about 199 miles. Critics have argued that the Public Utility Commission, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, and electricity delivery company Oncor transformed a regional reliability directive into a de facto statewide grid plan without an explicit vote by state lawmakers.
      
• A landowner group called Save the Lampsas, representing more than 600 property owners and community residents, argued they had identified other, less impactful, alternative routes. Commissioners said nothing presented indicated the landowners were entitled to a route adequacy hearing.
      
• Kevin Kennedy, a landowner opposing the project, decried the current system. He said he and his fellow citizens were finding that "the deck is stacked so high against them." He and others called on Gov. Abbott to intervene.
     
• All of the PUC commissioners are appointees of the governor.

Texas GOP Announces Delegate-Selected Legislative Priorities

• Signaling where grassroots activists want lawmakers to focus efforts in the next session, the Republican Party of Texas announced yesterday the eight legislative priorities chosen by delegates to last weekend’s state convention. Sydnie Henry has the story.
    
• In order, the GOP's legislative priorities going into 2027 are:

• Each of the top-line priorities has substantial subsections. For example, "Secure Texas Elections" includes language dealing with voter registration systems as well as closing the GOP primary to Democrat interference.
     
• As part of her letter announcing the priorities, the GOP's new chair, D’rinda Randall, wrote that "unity drives victory."

Conservative Conroe ISD Trustees Decline Seat on TASB Board

• Conservatives on the Conroe Independent School District’s board of trustees declined to seek a seat on the Texas Association of School Boards’ governing body, citing disagreements with the organization’s left-leaning policy positions. As Erin Anderson reports, TASB is a tax-funded association that provides a variety of services to Texas school districts—but it also promotes a legislative agenda often seen at odds with taxpayers and parents.
    
• TASB's 40 directors are school board trustees chosen to represent each of the state’s regions.
     
• Trustee Nicole May said Conroe ISD citizens elected local board members to govern the district and argued that joining the TASB board would not advance local control, accountability, or fiscal responsibility. She said trustees too often adopt TASB recommendations uncritically. "I do not believe the solution is to become more integrated into that system."
     
• Board President Misty Odenweller said that Conroe is not a member of TASB by choice, but rather because of the entity's "market dominance." She added that TASB's "policy positions, and their political leanings do not represent Conroe ISD FAMILIES."

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Friday Reflection

Freed For Freedom

It has become fashionable, in this last century, to think of our American system in utilitarian and economic terms. Our system is considered great only insofar as the stock market is thriving. While prosperity is nice, it should not be our highest moral end—either as individuals or as a republic.

When our Founding Fathers shrugged off the yoke of servitude imposed by the British crown 250 years ago, they did not see it as a means of economic prosperity. It was a moral decision, driven by the deeply philosophical and theological belief that all men are created equal and have an innate dignity as individuals before God and each other.

This is how the Apostle Paul put it in his letter to the Galatians: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

Individual liberty and personal freedom are not means to an end; they are ends in and of themselves. 

One of the greatest lies told to us, which we on the right have repeated as forcefully as those on the left, is that freedom and liberty are but tools in the process of building economic prosperity. 

The purpose of the lie has been simple. If “comfort” and “security” are the highest ends a republic can secure for its citizens, then liberty can be easily traded for servitude or control. This is why the left is so committed to creating crisis after crisis, where we give up freedom in exchange for baubles.

By turning freedom into a governing commodity, we have given the forces of tyranny a foothold not just on our shores or in our government, but—worse—in our hearts. For the sake of something “free” from government, we trade our freedom for the yoke of servitude.

It is undeniably true that where liberty and freedom have flourished, people have tended to prosper. But our individual and general prosperity, or lack thereof, must not be a condition for the allowance of liberty and freedom.

With the price of His blood, Christ set us free from the tyranny of sin. He did for us what we could not do for ourselves. It is not something we earn or deserve, but that we are given. Likewise, you do not have to earn your freedom. The generation of our Founding Fathers secured it for us with their blood. We do, though, have to keep fighting to retain it. Every day. And just as we must resist the allure of sin, so we must resist the gentle call of slavery.

It is not for prosperity that we have been set free, but rather for the sake of freedom itself.

Quote-Unquote

"All the marvelous achievements of Western civilization are fruits grown on the tree of liberty."

– Ludwig von Mises

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