Good morning,

More than 100 million people were murdered in the name of communism, socialism, and Marxism during the last century by their own governments. As a self-governing people, we have a responsibility to remember. 

This is the Texas Minute for Friday, January 27, 2023.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Records Reveal Texans Are Desperate for Property Tax Relief

• While state lawmakers are promising to address Texas' overwhelming property taxes this year, taxpayers aren't letting up the pressure. Darrell Frost has details from records Texas Scorecard obtained from the office of Gov. Greg Abbott. 
    
• Nearly 1,000 pages of documents reveal Texans fear rising property taxes will cause them to lose their homes.
      

• Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar reported the state is projected to have a $32.7 billion budget surplus, and interest groups of all stripes are clamoring for a piece of that pie to grow government or pad their pockets.

      
• The governor has said he wants at least half of the surplus to be used for property tax relief, adding that he wants the state on a path toward eliminating school property taxes.
      
• Since the surplus is the over-collection of taxes from Texans beyond what government needed to operate, it seems like lawmakers should give back a lot more than half...

H-E-B and the University of Texas Sponsor Radical Left Group

• Known for pushing a radical agenda focused on gender confusion and the "LGBTQ" political ideology, the Human Rights Campaign's annual Texas dinner is getting big support from the Lone Star State's flagship university and beloved grocery store chain. Sydnie Henry has the story.
     
• Promising the support will be used in their ongoing leftist campaign, the Human Rights Commission lists their sponsors as H-E-B, Dell Technologies, PNC Bank, Apple, Roscoe Property Management, and the University of Texas Athletics.
      
• This far-left push by H-E-B might be surprising to some. It has only been in the last year that the grocery store, under the guidance of billionaire Charles Butt, has gone public with its promotion of a hyper-sexual drag show targeting children and underwriting the work of a group that provides "gender identity counseling" for 9-year-olds.
      

• Meanwhile, U.T. Athletics hosted its first-ever “pride night” earlier this week as part of a women's basketball game. According to the Texas Education Code, state universities are governed by a board of regents appointed by the governor and approved by the Texas Senate. All of U.T.'s trustees were appointed by Gov. Abbott.

📺 WATCH: The Headline

• In this week's edition of The Headline, Brandon Waltens chats with State Rep. Nate Schatzline, a freshman Republican from Fort Worth, about his first couple of weeks on the job. Also on the show is Sara Gonzales, talking about her work with Defend Our Kids Texas and the fourth season of EXPOSED.
   
• You can watch The Headline with Brandon Waltens on our website, Rumble, or YouTube.

Vaccine Choice Rally Draws Hundreds At Capitol

• Texans for Vaccine Choice’s fifth annual Freedom Fight – a rally to support medical liberty – drew hundreds of Texans to the state capitol. Soli Rice filed a report from the event.

     
• “This is a really simple issue. It truly is. It’s about medical freedom. It’s about personal choice. And it’s about informed consent as well,” said State Sen. Mayes Middleton (R-Wallisville).
     
• Among the speakers was United Airlines pilot Laura Cox, who founded Airline Employees 4 Health Freedom as a response to the firing and discrimination of multiple airline employees who wanted medical liberty.
      
•  "This is our fifth Freedom Fight, which is our opportunity to set the tone for this legislative session," explained Rebecca Hardy, who serves as president of TFVC. "We are here to tell those state representatives and state senators that we demand an end to the medical tyranny and the medical overreach that we have all been living through over the last three years."

City of Dallas Pushes 'Critical Race Theory'

• Following the adoption of a Racial Equity Plan, the City of Dallas is promoting critical race theory principles at its fourth annual Equity Indicators Symposium. Check out Katy Drollinger's article to sort through the mind-numbing jumble of leftist buzzwords. 
      

• Although seemingly innocuous, “equity” is commonly associated with critical race theory with activists using the term to push for equal outcomes instead of equal opportunities.
     

• This isn't the only way the City of Dallas is using taxpayer dollars to promote controversial ideologies. Last year, Dallas sponsored a left-wing activist group that was teaching “queer sex ed” to minors.
      

• Easy to waste other people's money...

Friday Reflection: Freeing Captives

I have had the opportunity over the years to meet several men who participated in the liberation of the concentration and death camps created by Germany’s National Socialist Workers’ Party. The horror of what they and their colleagues found defies words. They always mention the horrific smell of death and disease.

It was on January 27, 1945, that the most notorious of those camps – Auschwitz – was liberated in Poland.

Adolf Hitler’s personal antisemitism and racism doesn’t begin to explain the 6 million people systematically murdered by the Nazi regime.

The Holocaust was the all-too-expected result of the worldview embraced by the Nazis and socialist movements everywhere. When one abandons God and His precepts, when one looks to government as the savior, a cult of death and destruction is but a step away.

The God-rejecting systems of socialism and communism enabled the murder of more than 100 million people around the world throughout the 20th century at the hands of their own governments. 

As governing systems, socialism and communism demand – like the ancient Romans before them – that government be placed over the God of Abraham. The dignity of man collapses before the needs of the state.

Walking through the Holocaust museum in Washington, DC, or its counterpart – the Yad Vashem – in Jerusalem is an emotional experience; the sheer magnitude of the inhumanity is overwhelming.

It is overwhelming because we know all humans are capable of such atrocities, left to our devices and separated from God. Yet, thankfully, God provides us glimpses of the beauty possible when people love Him and serve His people.

Honored outside Israel’s Yad Vashem are more than 26,000 Gentiles who placed themselves in danger to rescue Jews from the clutches of the Holocaust; a tree was planted in memory of each. 

Among those honored is Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, a Baptist from Knoxville, TN. While himself a prisoner of war in the Stalag IX-A camp in Germany, Edmonds watched in early January 1945 as Nazi guards began gathering up Jewish POWs for persecution or execution. He wasn’t going to allow it. 

Edmonds stepped in front of the German officer and declared, “We’re all Jews.” He went on to inform the man that every American POW should be counted as Jews, gathered up, and executed. Of course, that would be in direct contradiction to international treaty... thus making the individual German soldier personally subject to prosecution for war crimes. The German officer holstered his weapon and walked away. Hundreds of lives were saved that day.

But hundreds out of 6 million lives extinguished? It might seem inconsequential… Except to those who were saved, and except for the example it set. 

If we are to reject socialism and tyranny, if we are to live in a self-governing political system, we must first ourselves be willing to govern ourselves. We must be like Roddie Edmonds, willing to stand up and raise our voices to defend and improve the lives of those around us. It can be risky, but we are called to be faithful. Such acts of personal courage are like the scent of a rose, reminding us just how beautiful God’s world can be.