Good morning,

With the legislative session gearing up, expect your legislators to tell you how much you don't understand. More on that in my Friday Reflection.

But first, here is the Texas Minute for January 6, 2023.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Biden To Visit Texas-Mexico Border, Push Bad Policy

• President Joe Biden is set to visit El Paso on Sunday, nearly two years after his inauguration sparked an onslaught of illegal border crossings and just days after announcing a slew of policy changes that further weaken U.S. immigration laws. Sydnie Henry has the full story.

     

• The National Border Patrol Council says Biden’s visit will change nothing on the ground. "Biden will get the usual Dog and Pony Show. Then he’ll leave and the madness will continue."

    

• Biden recently announced that the "parole" programs for Venezuelan nationals would be expanded to include Haitians, Cubans, and Nicaraguans. With these additions, up to 30,000 individuals per month from all four countries will be paroled into the U.S. for a two-year period if they meet certain criteria.

     
• "The Biden Administration has engaged in illegal expansion of categorical parole programs far beyond their intended purpose," said Chris Russo, president of Texans for Strong Borders. "It’s petty politics disguised as a humanitarian effort."

Texans Ready to End Taxpayer-funded Lobbying

• Texas taxpayers are literally forced to fund their own political opposition in the state Legislature. Each legislative session, reports Erin Anderson, local governments spend millions of tax dollars on professional lobbyists to push policies in Austin that hurt citizens. Activists want the practice brought to a halt in 2023.

     

• According to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Texas local governments spent as much as $75 million in 2021 hiring lobbyists to promote government causes.

      
• Texans for Fiscal Responsibility calls taxpayer-funded lobbying “innately corrupt and immoral” and “a major conflict of interest for taxpayers.”

MILLER: Capitalism, Education, and Texas

• In a new commentary, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller extols the benefits of school choice and competition in education.
       
• "Every other marketplace has been strengthened by competition and freedom. So will education," writes Miller. "Today’s public school system is not worthy of our kids. It’s not worthy of our ambitions. It is not worthy of Texas."

POLL: Texas Republicans Want Representation

• A new poll of Texas' Republican primary voters show they want more conservative values and stronger representation in government, and less dealmaking with Democrats. Soli Rice has the story.
     
• “Texas is a Republican state, and our voters want their lawmakers to fight for their policy priorities, not cede the narrative and fight to the radical Left,” said Jonathan Stickland, whose Defend Texas Liberty PAC commissioned the poll.

📺 Watch The Headline!

• I'm filling in for Brandon Waltens this morning on The Headline. 
     
• Attorney Tony McDonald stops in to talk about a major court victory that accomplished two things: freeing Texans to talk about the state House speakership race without fear of prosecution (yes, literally), and exposing two "Republicans" as opponents of civic engagement.
      
• We'll also talk to Drew Koch, who produced the new documentary, "It's Not Gonna Lick Itself."
     
• Catch the show on Texas Scorecard, YouTube, or Rumble.

🎧 Do You Hear The Storm?

• Catch the Salcedo Storm podcast each weekday! Texas Scorecard partners with Chris Salcedo in bringing listeners hard-hitting interviews, conversations about culture, and a lot more.

Friday Reflection: Well, They Don't Understand

Politicians are at their most condescending when informing constituents that they “just don’t understand.” The comment inevitably comes when the constituent has expressed frustration that long-promised action on publicly popular legislation has yet to materialize.

With the Texas legislative session about to begin, you can expect to hear that sentiment with frustrating regularity.

The real problem isn’t that the citizenry doesn’t understand the legislative processes, it’s that citizens have come to understand all too well the lack of results.

Whenever politicians feel a growing criticism from the public, far too many lash out in exasperation with one of several versions of that “you don’t understand” temper tantrum.  One of my least favorite is, “You didn’t attend the meetings at the Capitol where we hatched this idea, so you cannot criticize it.”

Well, definitionally, 30 million Texans were not in those meetings. That does not, however, negate anyone’s right to speak out about the results of policies under which we must all live. The arrogance of suggesting otherwise arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of the roles of citizens and elected officials.

In our republican form of government, the citizens are allowed to miss every single millisecond of government hearings and yet still reserve their sovereign rights to opine loudly and vigorously about the results.

To the politicians’ chagrin, that is the way our system was designed. Without exception, citizens are the masters in our republic; elected officials are the servants. The First Amendment was designed specifically for political speech critical of the ruling class.

The job of the citizen is to set the expectations. It is the job of the public servants to get the job done.

The details of the legislative process are interesting and sometimes informative, but in the end, those details – and even the process itself – can serve as a distraction by crony politicians more interested in serving themselves than serving the citizenry.

When the servants start making excuses or imposing demands on the people in charge, it’s time to replace the servants.

It is up to the politicians to make sure their processes produce the results Texans want. It’s the politicians who just don’t seem to want to understand a very basic truth: The citizens don’t want excuses; they expect and deserve results.