Good morning!

Bad news: Property tax hikes aren’t as “limited” as you thought… Oh, and the GOP-dominated Texas House doesn’t really want to hear from parents.

Here is the Texas Minute for Thursday, July 28, 2022.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Chinese Infiltration 🇨🇳
How The ChiComs Got In

• As part of a multi-faceted investigation into the rising influence of China in the Lone Star State, Texas Scorecard has spent months looking at how the communist regime has infiltrated our state institutions. This week, we are looking at education.
      
• To understand the breadth of the Communist Chinese government’s infiltration in Texas, Kristen Stanciu takes a deep historic dive into the way public institutions opened wide the door into the Lone Star State.
      
• With just a little cash, Texas A&M, Prairie View A&M, the University of Texas at Dallas, the University of Texas at San Antonio, and Texas State University all became willing hubs of Chinese influence… and partners with shadowy entities tied closely to China’s military and totalitarian government.
     
• Many, if not all, of the so-called Confucius Institutes appear to have been officially terminated. In some cases, though, they have been unofficially merged into other – less obvious – university programs. However, the shadow of Chinese infiltration in Texas higher education is still very present.
     
• In part three of this investigative series, launching at 12 noon, we take a closer look at the Chinese Communist Party’s infiltration into elementary, middle, and high school classrooms across Texas.

Paxton Secures Border WIN At SCOTUS

• Following a ruling by the Supreme Court last week, the Department of Homeland Security must detain illegal aliens in accordance with existing law, rather than the arbitrary “guidelines” pushed by the Biden administration.
      
• Sebastian Castro reports the ruling came thanks to a challenge made by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. 
   
• DHS must now “detain criminal illegal aliens,” Paxton explained, rather than the administration’s arbitrary guidance that detained only those deemed a threat to national security, public safety, or border security.
     

• Paxton’s office has reported that illegal immigration costs Texas taxpayers more than $850 million in 2021. Of that, $152 million went to housing, $90 million went to Medicaid, and between $579 million and $717 million went to uncompensated medical care.

Tax Dollars Defending Illegals?!

• Meanwhile, the City of Austin is planning to spend $880,000 of the taxpayers’ money helping illegal aliens thwart deportation. Katy Drollinger has the story.

Texas House: Disrepecting Parents

• Despite the hearing called to address the “meaningful role” parents have in their children’s education, the Public Education Committee of the Texas House instead prioritized speeches by lobbyists and public school bureaucrats. While the Texas House is dominated by the GOP, House Speaker Dade Phelan and the Republican caucus allow a Democrat to chair the committee.
         
• Parents and taxpayers who had driven across the state, reports Sydnie Henry, were left waiting for hours. They didn’t get their turn before the committee until after 8:30 p.m.
       

• Rhonda Jordan of Waller County called the committee hearing “a dog and pony show.” She added that “the legislators are listening to administrators of various districts around the state patting themselves on the back and saying how money can be spent. They haven’t heard a word from a parent, or any person who’s truly involved with the child’s education.” 

       

• “We are really fed up with the lawmakers,” said Mary Lowe, who travelled from the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. “For us to be here on the day of discussion around parents’ rights and education and they don’t even hear from the parents. They bring all the lobbyists.”
     

• “The committee will deliberately prolong the testimony of the invited speakers because those are people they actually want to hear from,” explained Bonnie Cudlip, who lives in Central Texas. “And they delay how much time they take with that, so that the parents and the public who come to testify, have been waiting so long that by the time it’s their turn, most of them have already left.”

A Conversation About Parents And Activism

• Join me at 12 noon today for a Conversation with Tim Lambert about parenting, activism, and the future of education.
     
• Tim heads the Texas Home School Coalition, the state’s leading voice on parental rights and engagement.
      
• Speaking of THSC, they are accepting applications for their Watchmen program at the Texas Capitol. Among other things, the role of a THSC Watchman is to track bills filed in the Texas Legislature and analyze them for content that affects Texas families and homeschoolers. Application deadline is August 14. 

Despite ‘Reforms,’ Property Tax Bills Spike

• Texas taxpayers who are counting on the highly touted property tax reforms passed in 2019 to keep their 2022 property tax bills from going through the roof may be in for a surprise. Erin Anderson has the nasty details.
      
• It’s called the “unused increment rate.”
     
• A lot was made by the politicians about 2019’s Senate Bill 2 limiting property tax increases to 3.5 percent without voter approval. Yet this “unused increment rate,” deeply embedded in SB 2, allows taxing entities to bank a three-year rolling total of “unused” tax hikes and then add those unused increments on top of the current year’s voter-approval rate, without asking voters.
         

• Local officials have accrued two years of unused increments since SB 2 took effect. That means property taxpayers could be hit with up to three years’ worth of tax hikes, with no chance to vote “no.” The size of any surprise tax spike depends on how much (or little) local officials raised taxes in 2020 and 2021.
     

• Funny how the politicians didn’t brag about THAT in their cheerleading back in 2019.
     

• Now is the time for citizens to communicate with local officials about their own priorities and spike any surprise property tax hikes.

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