Good morning!

Here is today's Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Wednesday, June 30, 2021
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On The Border

• Gov. Greg Abbott will tour portions of the Texas-Mexico border later today. Our managing editor, Brandon Waltens, will be there providing updates on social media throughout the day.
     
• Check out Brandon’s report from Weslaco later today at TexasScorecard.com.

What A Cute Little Baby -?- You have

• Amid an escalating statewide fight over children’s biological identities, state officials are disregarding biological reality on public birth documents.
       
• Jacob Asmussen reports Gov. Abbott’s state health department has quietly revised the public “Birth Worksheet for Child’s Birth Certificate”—an informational form citizens fill out when their baby is born. The form now lists three biological sex options for the newborn child’s birth certificate: “male,” “female,” or “?”.

Dan Patrick Wants Abbott To Protect Women’s Sports …

• Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is urging Gov. Abbott to include on the agenda of the July 8 special session a prohibition on male students competing on specific female K-12 interscholastic athletic teams. This has been a priority of the lieutenant governor and was passed by the Texas Senate, but then killed in the Texas House during the regular legislative session.
      
• Grassroots activists and pro-family organizations, such as Texas Values, have also called on Abbott to include the women’s sports protections on the list.
       
• “After decades of women fighting for equity in sports, it is shameful that [legislation] was even necessary. However, by trying to force girls to compete against boys in sports, the Democrats again have shown their detachment from reality.” – Dan Patrick

… And The Freedom Caucus Has A List

• A group of conservative Republicans in the Texas House have asked Gov. Greg Abbott to add eight conservative items to legislators’ to-do list in a special session. 
     
• Included on the list submitted by the Texas House Freedom Caucus is a ban on child genital mutilation and gender hormone therapy, a ban on taxpayer-funded lobbying, improved border security, educational freedom, fair play in women’s sports, monument protection, disaster response reform, and property tax relief.
     
• Seems like we’re getting some political whiplash, given that Republican lawmakers were just a couple weeks ago crowing about this having been the ‘most conservative session ever.’

Double Big-D Bribery: Dallas Democrats

• Another participant in a scheme involving bribes to Democrats on Dallas City Council has been found guilty in federal court of buying political favors from corrupt officials. Erin Anderson has the details.

New Political Party Forms

• Houston businessman Bill King is creating a new political party in Texas called the Serve America Movement (SAM) Party. King will serve as the new party’s chairman. The Texas SAM Party is an affiliate of a national party that was formed in 2017. Additional affiliate states include Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New York.
     
• To get a flavor of the party’s ideological footing, King is the author of a book entitled “Unapologetically Moderate.” He ran unsuccessfully in 2015 and 2019 for Houston mayor.
   
• Jeramy Kitchen reports “Republican” State Rep. Lyle Larson has expressed interest in joining the new political party. Not surprisingly, Larson has consistently scored at the bottom of his own caucus on various legislative ratings on fiscal and social issues.

• “Moderate” and “centerist” are interchangeable code words best understood to mean “social liberal who wants to raise taxes more efficiently than the Democrats.”

Amarillo Spending

• Just months after voters rejected the Amarillo City Council’s ballot proposal to issue $275 million in debt for a number of downtown projects, including renovations to the Amarillo Civic Center Complex, Thomas Warren reports council members have voted to kickstart the process of considering new renovations to the facility.
   
• The renovations are projected to cost just under $500,000. This is the cost of "predevelopment services," so the council has signed up for this with the intention of further costs in the future for development.

Y’All Answered!

In yesterday’s Texas Minute, we listed 11 hot-button issues for grassroots activists that were left undone when lawmakers ended a lackluster legislative session last month. Gov. Abbott is calling legislators into a special session on July 8, though he has not yet set the agenda. So we gave readers a horrible choice: pick one issue to place on the “call” of the special session.

Our “Extra” Texas Minute (sent yesterday afternoon) provided a sampling of the hundreds of email responses I received. Here are the percentages each issue received in the One Click Survey:

• Election Integrity: 28.68%

• Property Tax Relief: 15%

• Ban Critical Race Theory: 10.24%

• Ban Gender Modification: 8.67%

• Abolish Abortion: 7.45%

• Border Security: 7.68%

• Reform ERCOT / Power Grid: 5.88%

• Other: 5%

• Ban Taxpayer-funded Lobbying: 4.54%

• Stop Executive Overreach: 3.96%

• School Choice: 1.5%

• Protect Monuments: 1.4%

Your Federal & State Lawmakers