Good morning,

Brandon Waltens’ weekly wrap-up show, The Headline, is getting a fresh format and a new time. Three ways to enjoy it: catching it every Friday at 5:30pm as it premieres, watching the video archive, or downloading the podcast.

Here is today's Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Friday, January 14, 2022
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#DecisionTexas: 30-Day Warning

• Today marks 30 days until early voting begins on Feb. 14 for the Republican and Democrat primaries in Texas… and 45 days until the March 1 election day.
      
• The biggest race on the ballot – and maybe the biggest race in the country – is the Republican primary for governor. Democrats have not won a statewide seat in 28 years, and that won’t happen in 2022. So the winner of the Republican gubernatorial election will be the next governor of Texas.
      
• All of our coverage for the gubernatorial race will be collected in a new section on our website, Decision Texas. That will be your best one-stop for comprehensive race coverage and reporting on the issues at play.

Go To California?

• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is thinking Californians will pay big to keep him in office, according to the invitation for a Golden State trip on January 24. As Brandon Waltens reports, the governor is asking for folks to pay $25,000 to co-chair the private Orange County event – or pay $5,000 per person.
   
• Those Californians who pay up the big bucks to co-chair will also get a signed copy of his 2016 book Broken But Unbowed (the hardcover is available for $5.47 on Amazon). The fundraiser comes as Abbott has been criticized for so-far failing to attend a single forum or debate with his opponents in the Republican primary.
   
• FWIW, Brandon Waltens and I talked about this yesterday during a quick Decision Texas chat on social media.

State Spending SOARS

• Since 2015 the size of the state budget has grown by 19 percent, according to a report from Texans for Fiscal Responsibility released Wednesday. Meanwhile, population has grown just 5.4 percent. Sydnie Henry has the details.
   
• “Most conservatives consider the size and scope of the government to be far beyond what our founders originally intended. TFR agrees that government should be so small that we can barely see it. But with a $250 billion biennial budget, we are not even close to the size of a government that fiscal conservatives would deem to be ‘limited.’ Why then would we classify a budget that allows a government to grow (even at a limited pace) conservative?” – Tim Hardin, president of Texans for Fiscal Responsibility

Plainview Citizens To Force Ballot Measure

• Since their city council is refusing to take action, citizens in Plainview are working to place a ballot initiative before voters that would ban abortions in the city limits. Mark Lee Dickson has the details.

Friday Reflection: Protecting Words

Two years before Israel became a nation in 1948, the first ancient scrolls were discovered by Bedouin shepheds in the caves of Qumran, near the Dead Sea. 

Nearly a thousand scrolls were eventually uncovered by archeologists, covering most of the Old Testament, commentaries on those texts, other religious documents, and even some information about the community that lived in Qumran before it disappeared into the sands of time.

Who these people were dwelling in the Qumran caves near the Dead Sea continues to be a topic of debate. It is believed many of the scrolls were placed in clay jars in the caves during the Great Jewish Revolt in the late 60s and early 70s A.D. They wanted these documents preserved from the ravages of war with Rome.

Two lessons spring to mind. First, the scrolls themselves provide a stunning testimony to the power of devoted transcription. These ancient copies of even more ancient texts mirror the translations we use today.

Second, the people at Qumran – the Essenes? a sect of Sadducees? – clearly wanted to preserve these writings, the fundamentals of their faith. They did so the very best way they could.

Even in an age of text messages and emojis, we can relate. Original copies of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution sit in special cases at the National Archives, set to drop safely into special chambers at a moment’s notice of a natural or manmade disaster. We do this for the same reason they did: to preserve the words that define who we are.

It’s not that thousands upon thousands of copies of the Constitution don’t exist. (I have three different copies within arms’ reach as I type this!) No, we protect those original copies because they are meaningful representations of what we believe and who we are as a self-governing people.

Before the discovery of the scrolls at Qumran, it was very fashionable to question whether the translations we read today were authentic. We preserve important literature for the same reason we are thankful the people of Qumran did. 

Words matter, and maintaining faithful translations and copies of important works remain as important today as 2000 years ago.