Good morning, 

In a rare confluence of opinions, it appears no matter how individuals answered yesterday’s One Click Survey, no one seems to have been impressed by the work ethic of Texas’ governor and legislature.

More on that at the end of today's Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Thursday, May 20, 2021
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• Yesterday morning Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law Senate Bill 8 by Bryan Hughes (R–Mineola). It will now be illegal for an individual in Texas to kill a child in the womb once the baby’s heartbeat is detected. Texas becomes the 14th state to pass such legislation. Jacob Asmussen has the details.
      
• More than 53,000 Texans’ lives were ended by abortion in 2020, according to the latest data from the state. 

• With the Texas legislative session coming to a close, the 2022 gubernatorial race is beginning to heat up. Brandon Waltens and the Texas Scorecard team will be reporting on each campaign and their major endorsements. The declared candidates include Greg Abbott, Chad Prather, and Don Huffines.
     
• For example, Julie McCarty – who founded the True Texas Project – this week has endorsed Don Huffines in his bid to be the Republican nominee. 

• Less than two weeks are left in the legislative session and Texas lawmakers just passed their first bill aimed at beginning to satisfy Republicans’ top-priority issue: election integrity. Erin Anderson reports on the progress.
      
• House Bill 574 by State Rep. Greg Bonnen (R–Friendswood) makes it a second-degree felony to “knowingly or intentionally” count invalid votes or refuse to count valid votes. These are new election fraud offenses created by the legislation.

• A controversial corporate welfare program is being criticized as having “run amok” in the Texas Senate. Jeramy Kitchen reports on efforts by crony lobbyists for unreliable energy producers to continue the corporate welfare program in Chapter 313 of the Texas Tax Code. 
     
• The program allows local school districts to offer large tax breaks for 10 years to unreliable energy and other businesses. Yet the tax breaks come at no loss to the school districts. Instead, the state supplements the lost revenue to the districts from sales taxes and other state-collected taxes. The Republican Party of Texas’ platform explicitly calls for Chapter 313 to be abolished.
      
• Continued funding for the program is being championed in the Senate by Granbury Republican Brian Birdwell. The Texas House was only able to extend Chapter 313 for two years, but Birdwell wants it to go on for at least three more years. 
     
• Not everyone is impressed.
     
• Sen. Lois Kolkhorst (R–Brenham) blasted the current state of the program: “I think that this program is run amok and it’s time to start over with an absolute clean slate.”
      
• Chapter 313 is a bad deal for Texas taxpayers. Either legislators just enjoy shoveling your money into a black hole, or they are bad at math.

• Speaking of… A proposed math curriculum for California public schools finds that a fo­cus on “get­ting the right answer” is indicative of “white supremacy.”
     

• Here’s a couple more gems the Wall Street Journal found in the proposed curriculum:“The con­cept of math­e­mat­ics be­ing purely ob­jec­tive is un­equiv­o­cally false. … Up­hold­ing the idea that there are al­ways right and wrong an­swers per­pet­u­ates ‘ob­jec­tivity.’”
      

• Because, of course, we cannot have “objectivity.” And most certainly cannot have “right” and “wrong.”

• Austin’s Democrat-run city council is already ignoring citizens following the overwhelming public rebuke of their homelessness policies earlier this month, but now they are considering turning dozens of city properties into authorized encampments for the mentally ill and criminally dangerous. Adam Cahn has the latest on the story.
      
• This week, city bureaucrats presented the council with a list of 45 potential locations to accommodate vagrants – including public recreation centers and family parks.

• Programming Note: there will be a special donors-only briefing at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, May 24. A reminder email will be sent to Texas Scorecard’s donors later in the week.

Y’All Answered

Yesterday we asked if Gov. Abbott should call the legislature back into a special session if they fail to pass the Texas GOP’s priorities. Respondents to the survey overwhelmingly (90.3%) want unfinished/unattempted priorities addressed in a special session, compared to 9.7% who don’t.

Here’s some of the feedback…

• “Telling the legislature they should have a  special session is like telling your unfaithful husband to go on an extra business trip since he wasn’t faithful on the first one.” – David Johnson
       
• “Special session, of course. It’s clear the reason our priorities did not pass was just lack of time, right? Right????” – Jim Pikl
         
• “I personally think the Texas Legislature is an embarrassment. It is incredibly frustrating to hear conservatives in other states speak so highly of Texas, and then to see the reality of our legislature’s failures at the direction of the Republicans - especially when it comes to some of the simplest priorities I can imagine.” – Kelly Stoutz
      
• “Not only should there be a special session we ought to have a special election so they can really see what we think of their efforts.” –Garry Ludwig
      

• “If the legislators cannot get their work done in the regular session, why let them waste more taxpayer money trying to get their work done.” – Lou Olson
        

• “Calling a special session to pass the rest of the GOP priorities may be one of Abbott’s last chances to redeem a little of the conservative  goodwill (votes?) he’s squandered by playing King during the pandemic.” – Mark Henley
      
• “Abbott should have called a special session at the start of Covid instead of issuing Executive Orders on masks and lock downs.” – Marti Graves
     
• “Don't count on Comrade Abbott to call a special session. He is a ‘part-time’ conservative and a ‘part-time’ legislature is advantageous for him.” – John Erwin
     
• “Why should taxpayers pay those lazy, lobby-ladened, legislators additional money if school choice isn’t important to them? Make them answer to their constituents why ‘school choice’ isn’t important when schools were closed after the ‘science and data’ showed it wasn’t necessary!” – Steve Sullivan
     
• “I firmly believe the GOP could have an 89% majority and still find a way to not get anything done and still “reach across the aisle.” – Corey Mayo
     
• “Calling a special session would only, at our expense, give them time to do more damage to Texas. What we need instead is a special election to replace most of the legislators.”– Reed Vestal
      
• “I’d say ‘yes’ - but then they shouldn’t get paid for the regular session since they didn’t do their jobs during this present session.” – Joe Zimmer

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