Good morning,

As activists begin to survey what has – and hasn’t – been accomplished this legislative session, self-serving incumbents will pretend voters’ only option is to replace bad Republicans with worse Democrats. But that isn’t the only choice. More on that below.

First, here is today's “wait, what did they do?” Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Friday, May 21, 2021
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• With just over a week left in the legislative session, the Texas House broke for an early weekend.
       
• The Texas House suddenly recessed early yesterday afternoon until Sunday at 1 p.m. As Brandon Waltens reports, their action put a nail in the coffin of the last remaining hope to ban forced gender modification on children – and killed hundreds of other measures in the legislative queue. 
     
• The action put the session’s final days into a bit of chaos; agendas had already been set for Friday and Saturday. Those bills will now be considered in addition to what was already going to be done on Sunday, rolling the calendar back against the hard deadline of midnight Tuesday. That marks the deadline for the House to consider Senate bills.
      
• More importantly, Senate legislation that had not yet been referred to House committees for work – like SB 1311, the gender modification bill – were killed because of a Saturday deadline affecting committee action on Senate-originated bills.
   
• So, why did they skip out on this work?

• The extended and unexpected long weekend for House members came after State Rep. Jeff Leach (R–Allen) joined several of his Democrat colleagues in complaining that the Senate had not moved on several criminal justice bills the House had previously sent over. 
         
• In fact, it was Leach and his partner, El Paso Democrat Joe Moody (the chamber’s Speaker pro Tem), who jointly made the motion for the House to shut down business.
     
• Mr. Leach took to Twitter: “There are either two chambers or there are no chambers. If the TX Senate wants to kill or sit on important bills sent over by the House, they can expect the same in return. Starting today. As a wise House colleague once said, ‘The Senate can respect us. Or expect us.’” (He was quoting Democrat Harold Dutton.)
      
• Interestingly, Leach has not bemoaned the death of any of the Texas GOP priorities or shuttered the process on behalf of conservative grassroots measures…
        
• Later – after seeing social media erupt in frustration – Leach tweeted that he would be “angered & saddened if SB802 and SB1311 are not calendared & reached by the deadline” – yet it was his own actions that already had effectively killed the prospects for those bills.

• Honestly, I really didn’t think the Texas House GOP Caucus under the “leadership” of Chairman Jim Murphy and Speaker Dade Phelan could be any more unproductive, petulant, or pathetic.
       
• I stand corrected.

• In this week’s edition of The Headline, Brandon Waltens will be joined by Jacob Assmusen and Jeramy Kitchen to talk about the wins and losses so far in the Texas legislative session. Join them live at 11 a.m., or catch the video archive and podcast a little later.

• Time is running out for bills aiming to ensure no Texan in long-term care facilities is banned from being with their loved ones, as happened in 2020. Robert Montoya reports their advocates are worried – and urging action.

• On Thursday, the Texas Senate approved House Bill 1925, which prevents vagrancy camping in public places across all of Texas and prohibits local officials from turning public parks into homeless campsites. Jacob Asmussen reports the measure passed in a bipartisan vote of 28-3.
   
• The proposed law was introduced after a public disaster unfolded in Austin over the past two years. In 2019, the Democrat-run Austin City Council repealed the city’s longstanding public camping rules, allowing unrestrained homeless squatting in nearly all public spaces (except city hall, notably).
   
• HB 1925 will now head back to the House for final approval before going to the governor’s desk so it can be signed into law.

• Ten Texas lawmakers will decide which reforms get included in the final version of the Legislature’s top-tier election integrity bill, in a process likely to receive limited public scrutiny. This is a top priority of both grassroots conservatives and Gov. Greg Abbott, writes Erin Anderson.
     
• Both chambers approved SB 7, but with significant differences.
   
• Hammering those out from the Senate will be Republicans Bryan Hughes (Mineola), Paul Bettencourt (Houston), Dawn Buckingham (Lakeway), and Lois Kolkhorst (Brenham). Democrat State Sen. Beverly Powell (Burleson) is their fifth conferee. The House conferees include Briscoe Cain (Deer Park), Travis Clardy (Nacogdoches) and Jacey Jetton (Sugar Land), plus Democrats Terry Canales (Edinburg) and Nicole Collier (Fort Worth).

• Legislation designed to protect businesses from frivolous COVID-related lawsuits was set to be heard in the Texas House on Friday, but their abrupt decision to start an early weekend means the legislation won’t be considered late in the day on Sunday.
   
• As Jeramy Kitchen reports, the Pandemic Liability Protection Act (Senate Bill 6) passed the Senate on April 8.

• In a new commentary, constitutional law expert Matt Rinaldi explains that SB 6 exposes Texas business owners to civil liability if they do not adhere to draconian government pandemic guidance from unelected health bureaucrats.
      
• “Businesses deserve real protection from COVID liability. If a business owner is following the law, he or she should be protected. But bills like SB 6 that give the ever-changing ‘recommendations’ and ‘guidance’ of unelected bureaucrats the force of the law should offend every Texan yearning for a return to normal.” – Matt Rinaldi

Friday Reflection:
Responding to Lackluster Effort

Many of the Republican officeholders in Texas are very upset with the grassroots. The politicians are mad that citizens aren’t being appropriately appreciative for what we are “getting” this session.

One person even suggested to me conservatives should just be “grateful for something rather than nothing.” Such defeatist notions might explain why the Texas GOP is in the place it’s in; party loyalists have enslaved themselves to the tyranny of low expectations, held captive to the politics of personality.

Rather than deliver fully and completely on their promises, too many politicians expect voters to rally around vague notions of party “unity.” I’m all for unity... around real things. The best kind of unity arises when elected officials deliver without excuse on the promises they have repeatedly made. No one has an obligation – moral or otherwise – to unify around stale table scraps.

It’s as though the Red-Elephant-Team cheerleaders have missed the non-trivial fact that the Texas GOP has commanding majorities in both chambers of the legislature and hold every statewide office. Conservatives should be getting a lot more than “something.” After two decades of control of state government, the GOP base should have everything they want.

Instead, the implication by some in the crony-wing of the Republican establishment is that voters should be grateful long-promised policies are being killed by “friendly” Republicans rather than mean Democrats.

If one lives under a medieval monarchy or dictatorial oligarchy, then perhaps gratitude for benevolent neglect from the current regime is an appropriate response for the serfs. It could, indeed, be worse for them.

Fortunately, we live in a constitutional republic in which the self-governing people are sovereign. Rather than preen about as our “leaders,” elected officials and government bureaucrats are supposed to be our servants. Supposed to be.

The obligation is for them to deliver on our expectations and their promises. It is not the citizens’ obligation to seek reasons to heap praise on politicians after they fail to perform.

Rather than pretend table scraps are a delectable meal, political activists must have high standards for – and expect real results from – our elected servants. Otherwise, we can not be surprised when our fellow Texans start looking for new servants. The wrong response would be to replace bad Republicans with worse Democrats; but that isn’t the only choice.

Consider this: 82 percent of Texans do not participate in Republican Party primaries. They have no loyalty to the “party.” So it is safe to assume they don’t care much about the “unity” of the political party, either. They are, however, very concerned with actual, practical results they can see for themselves and their families.

Our reaction to the faithlessness of politicians shouldn’t be to let our frustrations pull us deeper into the soft tyranny of the left. Instead, we should redouble our efforts to set high expectations for our public servants... and find better replacements.

The answer isn’t to replace Republicans with Democrats, but to swap out self-serving Republicans for those who will fight unceasingly for the principles on which their party has campaigned.