Good morning, 

Yesterday’s One Click Survey might be the most one-answer-heavy I have ever seen. The vast majority of respondents, like Janice Goria, said they found it “appalling this question needs to be asked!” 

Get the results at the end of today's Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Wednesday, February 9, 2022
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Conversations Continue… Attorney General

• Texas Scorecard’s Conversations series continues with the uncut and unedited interviews conducted with statewide GOP primary candidates. Today is focused on the race for the Attorney General, featuring the front-runners: incumbent Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert.
      
• In the interviews with Brandon Waltens, Paxton and Gohmert discuss issues ranging from election integrity to executive overreach and mandates – and, of course, their electability.
      
• The other two GOP candidates, Eva Guzman and George P. Bush, declined to be interviewed.
      
• The series began this fall with the gubernatorial candidates, and has since featured interviews with the men and women seeking the commissionerships of the Agriculture and Land offices. The interviews conclude Friday with a focus on the lieutenant governor’s race.

APP: Abbott Hasn’t Signed ‘Big Family Pledge’

• With Gov. Greg Abbott refusing to act on several priority child protection laws, Texas’ new pro-family organization – the American Principles Project – continues to pressure him and top state lawmakers. Jacob Asmussen reports the governor is not signing on to a pledge to protect families and children.
      
• Yesterday, the American Principles Project released its Big Family Pledge ahead of the March 1 statewide primary election to “help voters by getting candidates on the record regarding the most important issues facing America’s families.”
       
• Three of Abbott’s Republican primary challengers—Allen West, Don Huffines, and Chad Prather—have already signed the pledge.

Cash-Race For Governor

• Amid the final, chaos-filled days of campaigning before the primary, incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott and his main Republican challengers—former State Sen. Don Huffines, former Texas GOP Chairman Allen West, and media personality Chad Prather—continue to raise and spend money in their final attempts to sway voters. Sydnie Henry reports Abbott’s war chest tops the charts, with $62.6 million cash on hand, having raised nearly $1.5 million in the first 20 days of January.
     
• Huffines, meanwhile, raised more than $1.1 million in the same timespan, bringing his total cash on hand to $2.3 million. Huffines’ expenditures show more than $2.7 million spent as he crisscrosses the state campaigning to Texans. 
      
• Over the same period, West raised $331,000 and maintains about $83,000 cash on hand after spending more than $230,000 in 20 days on the campaign trail.

Texas Health Agency Pushes Politicized Content Over Science

• On Monday, Texas Department of State Health Services posted a graphic from the Center for Disease Control’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (CDCMMWR) which proclaims that “A good mask helps you and others avoid COVID!”
     
• The “CDCMMWR” is not a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but rather a mouthpiece for the Biden Administration’s political and legislative agendas.
      
• “Why is an executive agency in a GOP state tweeting out Biden administration policy advocacy?” asked Texas GOP Chairman Matt Rinaldi on social media. “[CDC] itself admits @CDCMMWR studies are policy advocacy, not peer-reviewed science, and if CDC won’t publish if it doesn’t get the conclusion it wants. This study used garbage inputs.” 

Establishment Republican Faces Stiff Primary Opposition

• After serving just one term in the Texas House of Representatives, State Rep. Glenn Rogers (R–Mineral Wells) could find himself defeated in the upcoming Republican primary election after drawing three opponents. Brandon Waltens has the story.
     
• In his only term in the Texas House, Rogers earned a 45 on the Fiscal Responsibility Index’s 100-point rating, placing him in the bottom quarter of Texas Republicans. His score on the Young Conservatives of Texas’ legislative ratings was not much better, with the freshman lawmaker earning a score of 53.
     
• In one of his first votes after taking office, Rogers voted to allow Democrats to hold committee chairmanship positions. This vote allowed liberal Democrats to chair House committees like public education, business and industry, and transportation.
   
• Rogers is being challenged by Mike Olcott, Kit Marshall, and Lucas Turner in the Republican primary, which could be made even more competitive due to redistricting.

Blocking Parents From The Libraries?

• When COVID closures prompted parents across Texas to take a closer look at what their kids read in school, many were shocked at what they found: books with sexually explicit content and images that clearly fit the definition of obscenity. Erin Anderson explores the questions raised not only by the presence of age inappropriate books, but also the process that got them there.
      
• “If you handed [these books] out to kids on the street, you’d be arrested,” according to a new documentary, “The Mind Polluters,” exposing how schools are sexualizing kids.
     

• Are parents really finding porn in schools? Granbury ISD officials think so. Responding to parents’ concerns, the district removed five sexually explicit books by Abbi Gline in January and is reviewing about 130 more. Other school districts are making similar decisions.

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Y’All Answered

The March 1, 2022, GOP primary ballot will feature a series of policy-related statements placed there by the State Republican Executive Committee. Yesterday, we asked how readers would respond on this GOP ballot statement: “Texas should ban chemical castration, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and genital mutilation surgery on all minor children for sex transition purposes.”

To that statement, 98.49 percent of Texas Minute readers said “yes” in agreement with the statement while 1.51 percent answered “no.”

Here’s a sampling of the responses:

• “We must protect our children. Children are often vulnerable & impressionable, easily influenced by peer pressure.  They should NOT be allowed to participate in this life changing mutilation until they are mature enough to comprehend the lasting effects!” – Lynn Tannehill
     
• “The obvious answer for sane people is Yes. The real question is how do you stop teachers from indoctrinating children with the harmful lies that make this behavior look normal to a child.” – Thomas Camardo
      
• “We do not need government to regulate parental choice, even when we might agree with the regulation.” – Paul Turney

      

• “At least six bills were filed in the 2021 sessions to stop this heinous practice of transgendering children. All were blocked in House committees by Stephanie Klick and/or Dustin Burrows. Gov. Abbott refused to make the issue a priority, but he did prioritize dog tethering. Dogs are now protected by law, but children are not. I hope voters think about that as they cast their primary votes.” – Fran Rhodes
    
• “It boggles my mind that we even have to have a vote about changing the sex of children. Just. Mind. Boggling.” – Karen Breazeale
      
• “Not only should child mutilation be banned, the parents should lose custody of their children.” – Gary Hunt
   
• “Children are not tinker toys!!” – Tobie Hall

      

• “Yes.  It is laughable that the left clamors about ‘follow the science’ on every topic they want Americans to conform to, except biological gender. How is any of this ‘natural’ or scientific?” – Greg Reinhart
      
• “It is sick on so many levels that THAT question even needs to be asked.” – Walter Bowen
   
• “These acts are a crime of child abuse and should be punished. The doctors, nurses, pharmacist, parents or the parent that participate in child mutation should go to prison. These children were born the gender God intended for them to be. There is a place for repairing birth defects but not to change their gender.” – Jim Hughes
   
• “These procedures are no better than abortion of a minor child.  How dare we expect that we can reject the preciousness of the person God made by ‘correcting’ a ‘mistake’?” – Arthur Potter
   
• “Think for a minute about what this poll is asking.  In Texas, in 2022 we are needing a law to keep adults from forcably attempting to change the sex of children under the age of concent.  AND we are literally needing to force Republican legislators, including the govenor of the state, to stop this from happening.  We as a state and as a nation have fallen so far.” – Jim Andrade
     
• “To say I am appalled at the fact that Texas legislators have not addressed this evil notion is an understatement. One must be of an ‘adult’ age to vote, drink alcohol, own firearms, and even be at least 16 to get a driver license in Texas, all things deemed to be inappropriate for kids. But some say it is appropriate for a young child who says he/she wants to be a dragon or a unicorn to legally be butchered, altered, and most likely adversely affected the rest of his or her life?” – Andra Haney