Good morning,

As citizens, our first loyalty must be to each other and not the political personalities of the day. So, I conclude the week with thoughts on what it means for each of us to be journalists, sharing our honest views of public policy and political actors.

But first, here is the Texas Minute for Friday, Dec. 9, 2022.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

UPFRONT… Please join me in wishing a very happy birthday to Texas Scorecard’s managing editor, Brandon Waltens!

Texas Legislature: Not Conservative, Says New Report

• A new report from the Conservative Political Action Committee and the American Conservative Union finds that the Texas Legislature doesn’t make the list of the “top 25 most conservative legislatures” in the country.
     
• What does that mean? Texas is #26. 
   
• Legislatures beating out Texas for the top spot are: Alabama, Tennessee, Indiana, South Dakota, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Wyoming, Iowa, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Ohio, Mississippi, Kentucky, North Carolina, Georgia, North Dakota, Kansas, Utah, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Wisconsin,Montana, and Michigan.
      
• Seems like the nation is starting to notice that when it comes to conservative policymaking, Texas lawmakers are all hat, no cattle. After 20 years of the GOP controlling both chambers of the Legislature and all statewide offices, one would expect something better than a 26th place ranking…
      
• That doesn’t mean there aren’t some bright spots in the Texas Legislature. ACU says leading conservative lawmakers in Texas are State Sen. Bob Hall, State Rep. Mayes Middleton, and State Rep. Tony Tinderholt. (NOTE: Middleton will be sworn into the Texas Senate come January, and Tinderholt is running for speaker of the Texas House.)

Texas Congressional Delegation Offers Border Security Framework

• Members of the Texas GOP congressional delegation have announced a border security framework “by Texans for Texans” to address the needs of the state amid the ongoing border invasion. Sydnie Henry has the details.
      
• The delegation plan includes completing the physical border infrastructure, fixing border enforcement policies, enforcing laws within the interior, and targeting the cartel and criminal organizations flooding the U.S. with drugs.
     
• “No one understands or appreciates the widespread social and economic costs of Biden’s unprecedented open border crisis like the people of Texas,” said U.S. Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Lubbock).
      
• Only one of Texas’ 26 Republican members of Congress has not signed onto this border security framework: U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (San Antonio).

Harrison: Perpetual Emergency Orders ‘Render People Powerless’

• On Thursday, State Rep. Brian Harrison (R–Waxahachie) filed the “Liberty Protection in Emergencies Act,” which he says is designed to prevent perpetual emergency orders and return power to the people through their elected representatives in the state Legislature. Brandon Waltens has the details.
     
• Harrison’s filing of the legislation coincided with the 1,000th consecutive day of Texas being under a state of “emergency” for COVID. First declared in March 2020, Gov. Abbott has renewed his order monthly.
     
• In 2021, the Texas House and Senate both passed legislation to rein the power in… but the measure mysteriously died in conference committee without a peep.
      
• “Never ending emergency powers are antithetical to representative government and render people powerless,” said Harrison. “Having helped coordinate the federal COVID Public Health Emergency, it is past time to end all COVID-related emergency declarations.”

📺 WATCH: Discussing Emergency Orders & Pedo Cyber Bullies

• Catch the latest episode of The Headline with Brandon Waltens right now! His special guest is Chris Hopper of the Texas Family Project, talking about the cyber attack launched by pedophiles and groomers against his organization.
   
• I’ll also be joining Brandon to talk about Brian Harrison’s legislation and the security implications of TikTok on state employees’ electronic devices.
   
• You can watch The Headline on our website, YouTube channel, or Rumble page.

Republican Seeks Do-over After Harris County Botched Election

• Citing widespread irregularities in Harris County’s November election, Republican judicial candidate Erin Lunceford is challenging the outcome of her race and requesting a new election. Erin Anderson reports other candidates may follow suit.
     
• According to court documents filed by Lunceford, blame for the county’s questionable election results rests squarely on “the flawed leadership of its Election Administrator, Clifford Tatum,” who Lunceford’s petition says “totally botched the security, integrity, and reliability of the purported election outcomes arising out of the November 8, 2022 General Election.”
      

• Lunceford ran for judge of the 189th state district court, located in Harris County, against Democrat Tamika Craft. Official election results show Craft won the open seat with 533,710 votes, compared to Lunceford’s 530,967 votes. That is a difference of 2,743 votes – or “0.26 percent of over a million votes cast,” as her lawyer put it.
       

• The November election was Tatum’s first in Texas, but not the first election he’s botched. Local voters in the District of Columbia, where he formerly served as head of elections, compared his mismanagement of the 2012 election to “voting in a Third World country.”
      
• What a hire… Harris County sure knows how to pick’em!

Amarillo Mayor Not Seeking Re-election

• Amarillo Mayor Ginger Nelson will not be seeking re-election, following a bruising legal defeat of her debt issuance scheme and revelations about her advocacy for gun control. Thomas Warren has the background.
      
• Nelson has served three terms as mayor, and her announcement followed months of speculation that she would not be seeking another term.

Friday Reflection: Real News For Real Texans

Most of what passes for “news” today is little more than warmed-over propaganda designed to serve the ruling elite. The foolishly described “mainstream” media (there is nothing “mainstream” about them) are shills for the far-left, while some seemingly “conservative” outlets pander to whichever moderate Republican officeholder tickles their ear.

Citizens deserve better.

Here is how I define news: the facts of the day told in their truthful context allowing citizens to make informed decisions. Every single citizen is, or can be, a journalist. Journalism is the purposeful activity of gathering relevant information and presenting it in a straightforward manner without deceit, manipulation, or unnecessary jargon.

Our Founding Fathers enshrined the God-given right of the people to speak and publish freely on political matters because they had experienced firsthand a government that did not. They understood citizens must be able to expose government malfeasance, criticize public policy, and publicly identify corruption.

This was of such preeminent importance that the adoption of the U.S. Constitution was predicated on it being enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

Yet even our Founding Fathers were not immune to using government as a means to censor and silence criticism. One of the earliest actions of Congress was the adoption of the so-called Sedition Act of 1798, at the behest of President John Adams. It allowed the government to deport, fine, or imprison anyone who published “false, scandalous, or malicious writing” – giving huge power to the executive branch.

James Madison, the author of the Constitution, joined the general public in an uproar. Virginia and Kentucky threatened to leave the union over the matter. The election of 1800 saw Adams booted from office and replaced with Thomas Jefferson, under whom the law died.

The threat we face today is less from direct government oppression, than it is corporate cronies seeking favor from government actors. We saw that in the Hunter Biden laptop scandal of 2020, where news stories were squashed by Democrat-leaning media outlets and censored on Democrat-leaning social media publishing platforms. There was no law… just-likeminded collusion.

Whether the laptop story would have swayed the election will never be known, but the fact it was effectively hidden from voters denied them the chance to decide for themselves.

Real news should be agnostic to how the “narrative” will benefit the politically powerful and connected. Stories should not be withheld because they are inconvenient to the powerbrokers. In fact, news that is inconvenient to the powerbrokers and comes to the detriment of those in public office must definitionally be told.

Analogies between business and government are overrated, and usually wrongheaded. But, with your indulgence, let me compare the citizens of the United States – and of the individual states – to corporate board trustees. The only way to be a good corporate trustee is to be fully informed and have unfettered access to the business of the business.

As citizens, our first loyalty must be to each other and not the political personalities of the day. We owe each other our honest view of public policy and political actors. 

Politicians and their sycophants want the people stuffed with a steady diet of intellectual junk food, but effective citizenship demands a steady diet of real news. 

At Texas Scorecard, our pledge is to deliver real news to real Texans. We want citizens to have the knowledge they need to effectively dominate culture and government. And, quite frankly, we don’t care how inconvenient it is to anyone.