Good morning!

No matter how dire the odds or thankless the task, we’re called to fight on faithfully. Two examples from history serve as bookends to this point, which you’ll find below in my end-of-week reflection.

But first, here is the Texas Minute for Friday, October 21, 2022.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Biden Asks Federal Employees to Clean up After Illegal Aliens

• As President Joe Biden’s border crisis spirals out of control, with the U.S. Border Patrol encountering more than 2.1 million illegal aliens this federal fiscal year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is asking federal employees to volunteer for clean-up duty. Sydnie Henry has the details.
       
• Earlier this week, Fox News reported on internal documents from DHS and the Pentagon requesting “every single US government department and agency [to] send volunteers on deployment to the southern border to provide support services to migrants who are detained there.”
      
• Rather than babysit illegal aliens, it would be better if the federal government bureaucracy was put to work repelling the ongoing invasion.

Texas Agency Backtracks On COVID Shot For Kids

• With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention moving to add the COVID vaccine to the recommended childhood vaccine schedule, State Rep. Brian Harrison (R-Waxahachie) raised concerns yesterday that a state agency could be requiring the same. Brandon Waltens has the story.

      
• Harrison pointed out language on the Texas Health and Human Services Commission’s website stating that “children need all CDC-recommended vaccines.” 
     
• “This language is a big problem after what #CDC just did,” Harrison posted to social media.
      
• Within hours, the THHSC removed that language from their website.
          
• Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he won’t let that happen in his state. “As long as I am Governor, in Florida there will not be a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for children in our schools.”

Democrat Says ‘Open Borders’ Is A Human Right

• As millions of illegal aliens flood across the southern border, a Democrat candidate in one of Texas’ largest counties says open borders are a “human right.” 
      
• Deborah Peoples is the Democrat candidate for Tarrant County Judge. In an audio recording from a recent fundraiser held in Austin obtained by Texas Scorecard, Peoples was asked if she believes open borders are a human right.
      

• “Yes it is, yes it is,” Peoples emphatically agreed, adding that she would be an “outspoken advocate” on the issue with the Texas Legislature.
       

• Peoples took aim at an initiative by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that allows state and local law enforcement agencies to collaborate with federal agencies to arrest criminal aliens. She falsely claimed the county doesn’t have the prison space to house them.
      

• The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office recently noted that illegal aliens made up 185 of the more than 4,300 people currently jailed in the county – with their charges including murder, sexual assault of a child, and terroristic threats.
      

• What about the human right of law-abiding citizens not to have our communities terrorized by cartels, drug smugglers, and sex traffickers? Democrats don’t care about that…

📺 The Headline: Sexualizing Kids

• Watch The Headline with Brandon Waltens right now! He is joined by Sara Gonzales of The Blaze to talk about her new initiative fighting back against drag shows that sexualize and target children. Plus, early voting begins in the long-awaited midterm elections.
     

• The Headline is available at Texas Scorecard, or you can watch it on Rumble or YouTube.

‘Americans Could Die’

• A new documentary exposes the vulnerability of the United States power grid and the seriousness of this threat to the United States security. Soli Rice reports on the conversation Chris Salcedo had with “Grid Down, Power Up” movie producer David Tice.
       
• In Tice’s movie, he exposes the vulnerability of the United States power grid and the seriousness of this threat to the United States security.
      
• “If we have an electromagnetic pulse attack, or a massive geomagnetic disturbance, it could wipe out key electronics for all our transformers and essentially knock the grid down, such that there’s no electricity in America for as long as a year, potentially a couple years. And as many as 90 percent of Americans could die,” explained Tice.
       
• Be sure to catch Chris Salcedo’s podcast every weekday on Texas Scorecard or anywhere you listen to podcasts!

Friday Reflection: Never Stop Fighting

Before my first trip to Israel, numerous friends had told me Masada would be my favorite stop – “It’s Israel’s Alamo!” they would say. It’s a beautiful place, overlooking the Dead Sea to the east. The innovative architecture made it all but impenetrable. And, yes, there are striking parallels to the Alamo. 

Masada was a remote and massive fortress built by Herod the Great, designed to sustain its occupants for a long time even in the face of an entrenched enemy. The comparison to the Alamo isn’t completely wrong. Masada saw the vastly outnumbered “good guys” hold out against superior forces. And, of course, all the good guys in both stories eventually died when the superior force made it in.

Similar, but you have to do a lot of squinting to make Masada into the Alamo. Where the Alamo came at the beginning of Texas' War of Independence, Masada was the final blow to the Jewish Great Revolt (A.D. 66-73).

The Jewish Zealots, who dreamed of political independence from the Romans, had been fighting for six years when Masada became their last stand. Built on the top of a plateau similar to an American mesa, nearly 1,000 Jews were able to hold out against 15,000 Roman forces.

Over the course of several months, the Romans built a massive siege ramp – still visible today as are the outlines of the legionaries’ camps – which they used to march up to Masada’s walls.

While the Texans at the Alamo fought the advancing Mexicans to the death, the Jewish rebels took their own lives before the Romans could enter.

The Roman historian Josephus, a former Jewish general, wrote that the zealots preferred to take their own lives rather than be paraded around as a conquered people. The Alamo defenders, you will recall, were told they would die unless they surrendered. 

There was a lot of death at Masada and the Alamo, but with big differences. One group became a footnote in the history of Roman conquest, the other inspired and mobilized a people to defeat what was the greatest military power in the hemisphere.

By choosing suicide at Masada, the Jewish rebels spared themselves the personal embarrassment of being conquered, but that did little good for their fellow countrymen left suffering under the Roman yoke. For those zealots, death was not a sacrifice made to the benefit of others, it was the prideful way out.

In choosing to fight, knowing their own death was all but inevitable, the Alamo defenders hoped to inspire their countrymen to fight a tyrannical and murderous regime. They sacrificed themselves for the cause of liberty.

The lesson I have taken from Masada and the Alamo is that my obligation isn’t to be victorious, but to be faithful. Despite the odds, despite the peril, despite the risk, we must keep fighting.

Quote-Unquote

“Never give up the fight for freedom – a fight which, though it may never end, is the most ennobling known to man.”

– Ronald Reagan​