John,

A brutal session of the Texas Legislature ended this past Monday. But the campaign of cruelty we just witnessed is not entirely over.

This morning, Gov. Abbott made it clear that he intends to call lawmakers back for not one but two more special legislative sessions this year. It means that every right threatened during the past few months, and more, remains on the line.

This past session, Republican leaders spent a lot of precious time focused on appalling priorities. Instead of advancing the great state of Texas, they used their power to torment transgender kids and their families, block local efforts to help working Texans earn paid sick leave, ban abortion, censor classrooms, and attempted to make it harder for Black and Brown and disabled Texans to vote.

These bills took cruelty and recklessness to new levels even as the COVID death toll rose and Texans worked to recover from a deadly power outage that left millions of us freezing in our homes just three months ago. We are relieved to see the failure of some of these reprehensible bills to pass in the chaotic final days of the regular session, but Gov. Abbott and Lt. Gov. Patrick will spend millions of taxpayer dollars on the two special sessions to try again to pass them.

But just as Texas Freedom Network and Texas Rising Action worked to bring out massive amounts of people, even in the middle of a pandemic, to voice their opposition against anti-democratic bills, we’ll keep up the same energy going forward. Republican leaders will have to do that work under the glare of intense public attention, in Texas and across the nation. Everyone will watch as they demonstrate again just how little they value compassion, decency and democracy. And then voters next year can send a clear message at the ballot box that they have had enough.

We're ready for the coming challenges, and I hope you are too.

Thank you for everything you've done already this year to defend democracy and to ensure that Texas is a place where all of us can thrive.

In the fight,

Val Benavidez
TFN President