Too damn much news out this week. Biden’s “boom” is busted, Charlie Kirk’s assassin is caught, Israel dirtnaps top Hamas kingpins in Qatar, the curse of BlueSkyism, more illegal alien perverts sexually abusing children, more of the evil George Soros funds, and California’s “Jay Leno Bill” dies in committee. Plus some Prog Rock.
The U.S. economy probably added close to a million fewer jobs in 2024 and early 2025 than previously reported, the latest sign that the labor market, until recently a bright spot in the economy, may be weaker than it initially appeared.
The revised data was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as part of a longstanding annual process known as benchmarking. But the big downward adjustment comes at an awkward moment for the agency, just weeks after President Trump fired its top official following a separate set of negative revisions last month.
The data released on Tuesday showed that employers added 911,000 fewer jobs in the 12 months through March than had been indicated in the monthly payroll figures. That implies the economy added only about 850,000 jobs during that time — half as many as previously reported.
Police have identified the suspect in Charlie Kirk’s assassination as Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old Utah man who authorities say became more political ahead of the shooting and recently expressed animosity toward Kirk.
Robinson, who is believed to have acted alone, came to the attention of the authorities after he contacted a family friend following the assassination, Utah Governor Spencer Cox revealed during a Friday morning press conference. That friend reported Robinson to the local sheriff’s office and Robinson’s father, a veteran police officer, then orchestrated his surrender to authorities at his home in Washington County, Utah.
The alleged gunman is expected to face at least three felony charges, including aggravated murder, obstruction of justice, and felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by NBC News. Cox said state law requires authorities to file the charging documents within three days.
Robinson appears to have become more political ahead of the shooting and criticized Kirk by name at a recent dinner, a family member of Robinson’s told authorities. Robinson said Kirk was “full of hate” and accused him of “promoting hate,” Cox said, though the affidavit, released later, indicates another family member may have made those remarks.
Robinson’s arrest comes after authorities had recovered a high-powered bolt action rifle they believe was used in the assassination, along with unspent rounds that were engraved with antifascist writing.
“Hey fascist, catch,” read the engraving on one round. Another round was engraved with the message “Bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao,” a reference to a song favored by resistance movements and revolutionary anti-capitalist partisans.
This is who they chose to kill: the affable man whose main act was having good-faith political debates with college students. The man who, since fatherhood, was turning more toward Christianity as both a purpose and a theme. He was a partisan to be sure, but he was nowhere near the outer limits of the American tradition, especially given his relentless fixation on Lincolnian persuasion as a stabilizing force in a slowly disintegrating polity. The ones who kept losing debates with him didn’t feel that way, of course, but they were only the instrument, not the object, of his work. The object was the millions of Americans who watched, learned, and saw who won again and again—and decided that they wished to side with the winner.
In this way, Charlie Kirk was perhaps the closest thing to Socrates in the American public square. The leftist intellectuals who sneered at him—the rube peddling his simple lines, his crass sophistry, his heartland aw-shucks certainties—would guffaw at the parallel, but it is no less true. He argued—amiably, fairly, relentlessly—until they couldn’t stand it any longer. And like Socrates, they had him killed.
Also like Socrates, his students will now do more for his cause after his martyrdom than they ever did during his life. The Socratic vindication was in his deification through literature at the pens of Plato and Xenophon. Millennia later, everyone remembers the philosopher, but vanishingly few know who ended his life.
The armies of Charlie Kirk, martyr, will be much more vast: not a handful of Athenians but millions of Americans. Their work will not be in philosophical literature but in the politics of the years to come. Whatever benefit accrues to the Republican Party is merely incidental. We are now in the realm of fundamental politics, which is concerned with the nature of the nation and the wielding of power for the common good. The generation of Americans that Charlie Kirk molded will be drawing conclusions about both from his life and his death alike.
After President Trump told Fox & Friends hosts that Charlie Kirk’s assassin is “in custody,” he went on to comment about radical leftist organizations, stating, “We are going to look into Soros. It looks like a RICO case.”
Recall that on Wednesday night, just hours after Kirk’s assassination, President Trump addressed the nation from the Oval Office, calling it a “dark moment for America.” He vowed to crack down on radical left movements across the country that have fueled chaos and even death this year.
Then on Thursday night, Texan News reporter Cameron Abrams wrote on X that Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and two dozen others in Congress called for a select committee on “the money, influence, and power behind the radical left’s assault on America and the rule of law.”
Just weeks ago, Trump stated on Truth Social that George Soros and his radical leftist son, Alex Soros, “should be charged with RICO because of their support of violent protests.”
Around that time, the “dark money” leftist NGO network operated by Arabella Advisors reportedly lost one of its top funding sources: Bill Gates.
Civil terrorism expert Jason Curtis Anderson of One City Rising states:
After the political assassination of Charlie Kirk, President Trump is interested in pursuing a RICO case against George Soros, America’s primary financier of far-left NGOs. What will likely be revealed is a complex web of dark money that observers have warned about for 20 years but never acted on.
At the center of this web are the various George Soros Open Society Foundation legal entities—four separate tax-exempt charities and one 501(c)(4) dark-money channel. Next are the Tides Foundation organizations, funded primarily by the Pritzker family, which include three separate tax-exempt charities and one 501(c)(4) dark-money channel. Following them are the Rockefeller Foundation nexus, NEO Philanthropy, the Ford Foundation, and a host of similar operations, including the Singham network. Collectively, these entities form America’s dark-money ecosystem. They fund permanent protests, bail demonstrators out of jail, finance legal efforts to sue local governments and police departments, influence immigration policy, promote drug decriminalization and criminal-justice reforms, and help elect district attorneys who decline to prosecute crime. On top of all of this, they also have entities like the Working Families Party that elect local politicians.
The money flows from donations to tax-exempt charities into non-tax-exempt 501(c)(4)s, and then trickles down to local groups. From there, funds reach the most radical organizations, which can’t even qualify for 501(c)(3) status and are instead “fiscally sponsored” by parent organizations. Because of this fiscal-sponsorship loophole, the books of these groups remain opaque. Everything from terror financing to protests-turned-riots connects in some way to these foundations.
The revolution against the West is, in effect, a network of tax-exempt charities operating as a powerful parallel government that no one ever voted for. It must be stopped before it’s too late.
A look into Soros-funded terrorist networks is long overdue. Here’s hoping a lot of indictments, bank account freezes and billions in civil forfeiture claims are forthcoming.
Your reminder that the social justice left are horrible people:
Right on cue deranged leftists are celebrating Charlie Kirk being shot
Bluesky, the Twitter spinoff that was once billed as a kinder, gentler alternative to what is now known as X, probably isn’t on death’s door. But after a burst of growth around the election, it’s shrinking and steadily declining in influence, even as other corners of the left thrive during Trump’s second term.
Snip.
Even on a logarithmic scale — on a linear scale, the graph is boring, because everything but Twitter would pretty much just be a flat line — the gulf between X and the other platforms is clear. And since the election, Bluesky has lost ground. More precise data based on the number of unique “likers”, “posters” and “followers” at Bluesky tracks a similar curve, with an initial peak around the election and a secondary peak after Trump’s inauguration but persistent erosion since then. The number of unique posters at Bluesky peaked at just under 1.5 million on Nov. 18, 2024 but has since fallen to an average of about 660,000 on weekdays and 600,000 on weekends: in other words, a drop of more than half.
The decline in Bluesky’s number of unique daily followers is even more substantial. They topped out at 3.1 million on Nov. 18 last year, but are now just under 400,000 per day: almost a tenfold decline. So while a dedicated troupe of Bluesky regulars are still skeeting up a storm, they’re gaining less and less traction, preaching only to the converted.
Snip.
Bluesky was initially popular with Twitter refugees who disliked Musk’s takeover of the platform, some of whom proclaimed that Elon had unleashed the “gates of hell” by restoring banned accounts or predicted that the platform would implode due to a shortage of engineering talent. I suppose I have no problem with this; ironically, the first post in Silver Bulletin history is entitled “In case Twitter goes to zero”. (I wanted a hedge in case it did, although if we’re being honest, I also had one eye out the door as ABC News was beginning to dismantle FiveThirtyEight.) However, this also self-selected for a certain type of user, adherents of an attitude that I call “Blueskyism”.
Blueskyism should not be mistaken for general left-of-center political views. Google search traffic for Bluesky over the past year is highly correlated with Kamala Harris’s vote share, but has some other skews: controlling for the Harris vote, it’s (statistically) significantly higher in states with a large white population and where the percentage of people with advanced degrees is higher. Bluesky is disproportionately popular in D.C., but also in crunchy white states like Vermont and Oregon. Search traffic for Twitter/X over the same period shows the same bias toward highly educated states, but less toward Harris voters4 and actually an inverse correlation with the white population share. (X gets more search traffic in more diverse states.)
Demographics alone only go so far in explaining Blueskyism, however. It’s not a political movement so much as a tribal affiliation, a niche set of attitudes and style of discursive norms that almost seem designed in a lab to be as unappealing as possible to anyone outside the clique.
Emphasis added. Snip.
Some of the most annoying people on the platform have exited for Bluesky.
As compared to other people with a similar level of public prominence — so not heads-of-state or celebrities or NFL quarterbacks — I was a “trending topic” on Twitter as often as just about anyone for a period from roughly 2018-2021. Matt Yglesias and Maggie Haberman also come to mind as other people who share this particular “honor”, which is not a welcome one: it means you’re the main character of the day, the person that other people have decided to dogpile upon.
There’s still some of this. If you tweet about election-related stuff, there is a pervasive tendency to “shoot the messenger” from partisans when the polls aren’t going their way. But much less than there once was: no more of the dogpiles for exceptionally strange reasons that I couldn’t even explain to my IRL friends.
And that’s because this behavior — I guess you could call it harassment but I’m a big boy and I can take it — consistently came from a relatively narrow group of power users, birds of a feather who flocked together, people who could demonstrate their fidelity to the group by picking on the main character. On Bluesky, exactly the same people — and I do mean exactly — attack exactly the same perpetual enemies, but to roughly 1/60th the size of the audience.
So I feel freer using Twitter these days for jokes, memes, and tongue-in-cheek ideas that aren’t meant to be taken entirely seriously, intended to be read as though they’re written in comic sans.
Snip.
What really matters in elections is simply being popular and winning over new converts. Blueskyism, with its intolerance for dissent, is the opposite of that.
Because, yes, while this is personal for me, annoyingness matters in politics.
Snip.
The three essential characteristics of Blueskyism.
The first essential characteristic: Smalltentism
Aggressive policing of dissent, particularly of people “just outside the circle” who might have broader credibility on the center-left. Censoriousness, often taking the form of moral micropanics that designate a rotating cast of opponents as the main characters of the day. Self-reinforcing belief in the righteousness of the clique, and conflation of its values with broader public sentiment among “the base”.
A healthy political movement, you’d think, would welcome people who agree with them on 70 percent of issues, particularly if it sees Trump as an existential threat to democracy and wants a broad coalition against him. Blueskyists do literally almost the exact opposite: their biggest enemies are people on the center-left like me and Yglesias and Ezra Klein. Or center-left media institutions like the New York Times, which are often viewed as more problematic than Fox News.
This aggressive policing of boundaries might at least have been tactically smart during the miraculous Blue Period when Twitter was afflicted with Blueskyism. Yglesias, say, is followed by a lot more Democratic staffers than Ben Shapiro or some actual conservative is.
But now that Blueskyism is losing the battle of ideas, it just draws the tent narrower and ensures that it will remain obscure. There’s nothing more Blueskyist than this, literally creating a “list of shame” of Bluesky posters who remain active on Twitter.
And sometimes, Blueskyists even make violent threats toward people who disagree with them. For instance, the journalist Billy Binion says he recently “logged onto Bluesky to find thousands of people screaming at me, many of whom were telling me to kill myself” after having posted that “billionaires should exist”. There’s some of that on every social media platform, unfortunately, and I’m not going to make assertions about the relative frequency on Bluesky without taking some more comprehensive approach to the question. It certainly shouldn’t have a reputation for civil discourse, however, and this may help to explain the high rate of exits from the platform.
The second essential characteristic: Credentialism
Appeals to authority, particularly academic authority. Centering of the suitability of the speaker based on his or her credentials and/or identity characteristics (standpoint epistemology) as opposed to the strength of his or her arguments, accompanied by the implicit presumption to claim to be speaking on behalf of the entire identity group.
Although Blueskyism is small, its practitioners mostly consist of people within the professional-managerial class: (over)educated blue-state liberals, perhaps people who have drawn the short straw of elite overproduction. You can see that in the demographic data, or in the attitude site management takes: the platform literally just banned people from Mississippi because of a dispute over age verification.
And Bluesky has become relatively popular among academics, which I regard as a problem on various levels. The Democratic Party has already forgotten how to talk to large groups of voters like young men, who have become considerably less likely to complete college than young women. Meanwhile, the experts have made a lot of mistakes, and sometimes the reason is because they’ve become self-serving in pursuit of social media validation or blinded by political partisanship. Increasingly often, I’ll see academics engage in incredibly sloppy argumentation and this seems to be correlated with recent exposure to Bluesky. Because Bluesky is so small, it has a highly specific signature. It’s like if you have some toxic persona on the periphery of your friend group; someone starts speaking in a particular way that you just know they recently hung out with George or Gina.
While academic credentials are one way to gain credibility under Blueskyism, they aren’t the only one. Even though the Google search data suggests that the platform is disproportionately white, an alternative is to claim to speak on behalf of a disadvantaged group. I swear to God, I’m not trying to make this about “wokeness” but there is overlap there.
Perhaps the most prominent example of Blueskyism creeping into real life is when a group of left-leaning public health professionals, who often took a bullying approach during Twitter’s Blue Period, went out of their way to rationalize mass protests after George Floyd was murdered in 2020. Personally, I think it was perfectly fine to join in on these protests; political expression is important (and these protests were usually outdoors and masked). But I also think a lot of other things, like sending your children to school or visiting your dying relatives in the hospital, would have risen to this threshold also, and this group specifically used their credentials to endorse the Floyd protests after having campaigned for those other activities to be prohibited.
Indeed, this controversy recently resurfaced on Bluesky. After Brian Schatz, the Democratic senator from Hawaii, wrote sympathetically in response to a Sean Trende tweet that recalled the hypocrisy of endorsing the protests, he and other “Dem elected/staff/consultants” were blamed on the platform for being “awash in right-wing brainrot.”
The third essential characteristic: Catastrophism
Humorless, scoldy neuroticism, often rationalized by the view that one must be on “war footing” because the world is self-evidently in crisis. Sublimation of personal anxiety as a substitute for political activism or material solutions to the crisis, with expressions of weariness and pessimism signaling virtue and/or savviness.
Although the first two characteristics already limit the appeal of Blueskyism, this makes it worse. Even people who might otherwise be sympathetic to Bluesky have noticed how impossible it is to get away with a joke on the platform, one of the things that X sometimes13 still has going for it. The Bernie-era, Chapo Trap House strain of left-wing discourse also at least had a caustic if sometimes juvenile humor streak. Blueskyism does not.
Instead, the prevailing Blueskyist attitude is often something like this — that we’re in the midst of a “late stage capitalist hellscape” and that you have to be “delusional” to have any amount of hope or optimism”.
Most people outside of Bluesky don’t think like this. Although literally almost zero Democrats are happy with the state of the country, overwhelming majorities of Americans are happy with how their personal lives are going and are able to compartmentalize politics away or recognize that other things matter in life, too.
Conclusion: “A subculture like Blueskyism that sees depression as a rational and even virtuous response is going to select for a lot of miserable people. And misery likes company. So the Blueskyists gather in a corner, exchanging tales of woe, while the rest of us slink away.”
Though there is the usual Silver hemming, hawing and sifting things into ever-finer categories (not to mention his willful denial that “wokeness” is an actual thing, despite so carefully delineating some of its most central characteristics, and his dismissal of the Twitter Files), it’s still worth reading the whole thing. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Rich Hamas honchos throught they could hang out safe in Qatar while their footsoldiers died in Gaza. Wrong.
Israel carried out a strike on senior Hamas leaders in Qatar’s capital, Doha, on Tuesday afternoon.
Qatar quickly accused Israel of “reckless” behaviour and breaking international law after the attack on a residential premises in the city.
The Israel Defense Forces claimed to have targeted those “directly responsible for the brutal October 7 massacre”.
Snip.
According to the Israeli military, it conducted a “precise strike” targeted at Hamas senior leaders in Qatar using “precise munitions”.
Israeli media says the operation involved 15 Israeli fighter jets, firing 10 munitions against a single target.
Qatar has hosted Hamas’s political bureau since 2012 and has played a key role in facilitating indirect negotiations between the group and Israel since the 7 October attacks.
Hamas said members of the group’s negotiating delegation in Doha were targeted but survived the strike. However Hamas said six others, including a Qatari security official, were killed.
According to Hamas, those killed were:
Humam Al-Hayya (Abu Yahya) – son of chief negotiator al-Hayya
Jihad Labad (Abu Bilal) – director of al-Hayya’s office
Abdullah Abdul Wahid (Abu Khalil)
Moamen Hassouna (Abu Omar)
Ahmed Al-Mamluk (Abu Malik)
Corporal Badr Saad Mohammed Al-Humaidi – Qatari internal security forces
“Trump is enjoying his highest approval rating of either term right now according to a DailyMail/J.L. Partners poll. He’s sitting at a solid 55% approval rating.”
Once again, the Supreme Court has stepped in to prevent a rogue district judge from hamstringing the executive branch in performing core executive functions under Donald Trump. And once again, the Court’s conservative majority has dispatched this order without explanation, over an angry and overwrought dissent from the Court’s liberals. This time, however, Justice Brett Kavanaugh stepped up to explain what was going on.
The Court’s order this morning in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo stayed an August 1 order by district judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong-
That name sounds like it came out of a Monty Python skit.
-of the Central District of California, a Biden appointee and former Obama Justice Department official. The order will thus have no effect unless and until the Ninth Circuit rules in the case — perhaps only a brief reprieve, given that the Ninth Circuit previously declined to stay Judge Frimpong’s initial temporary restraining order in the case.
The crux of the case is whether the government may stop individuals in Los Angeles on suspicion of being illegal immigrants on the basis of four factors: “(i) presence at particular locations such as bus stops, car washes, day laborer pickup sites, agricultural sites, and the like; (ii) the type of work one does; (iii) speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent; and (iv) apparent race or ethnicity.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent noted that the order attempted to enjoin Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) only from stops based solely on those four criteria, but as Kavanaugh noted, there are inherent problems in the judiciary trying to prospectively micromanage law enforcement in such fashion: “Even if the Government had a policy of making stops based on the factors prohibited by the District Court, immigration officers might not rely only on those factors if and when they stop [the lawsuit’s named] plaintiffs in the future,” and “the District Court’s injunction threatens contempt sanctions against immigration officers who make brief investigative stops later found by the court to violate the injunction. The prospect of such after-the-fact judicial second-guessing and contempt proceedings will inevitably chill lawful immigration enforcement efforts. . . . Judges are not appointed to make those policy calls.” As Kavanaugh added, particular plaintiffs do not have standing to enjoin the government in advance from stops that may or may not involve them and may or may not, depending on the circumstances, violate the Fourth Amendment.
The Department of Homeland Security launched Operation Midway Blitz on Monday to combat the influx of illegal immigration Chicago has seen under Democratic Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.
DHS said that the program was created in honor of Katie Abraham, a college student who was struck and killed by a Guatemalan national in a drunk driving hit-and-run accident in Illinois.
“DHS is launching Operation Midway Blitz in honor of Katie Abraham who was killed in Illinois by a criminal illegal alien who should have never been in our country. This operation will target the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens in Chicago,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “For years, Governor Pritzker and his fellow sanctuary politicians released Tren de Aragua gang members, rapists, kidnappers, and drug traffickers on Chicago’s streets — putting American lives at risk and making Chicago a magnet for criminals.”
During Joe Biden’s term, an estimated 233,000 unaccompanied children crossed the border and were completely lost.
The Trump admin has now found 22,638 of these children.
But many of them have suffered unbelievable horrors:
John Fabbricatore, HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement senior advisor, said to Fox News:
We found children who have been raped. We’re talking about debt bondage, where children are being made to work off debt, trafficking debt. We’re talking about children that were brought into situations and then treated like sexual slaves.
So far, 27 of the children Biden lost have been found dead, often from murder or drug overdose.
Children are in horrific environments, just environments that they should not be in, where the sponsor is a heroin dealer and that child winds up dying of a heroin overdose.
Iryna Zarutska was a 23-year-old Ukrainian who fled the war in her country for Charlotte, North Carolina.
Over the weekend, police released video of her being stabbed in the neck by a violent career criminal.
Iryna got on the train, sat down, and immediately went “condition white” (looking at her phone without paying attention to her surroundings).
Let this be a reminder that, if you’re in public, you need situational awareness at all times.
In the blink of an eye, her throat was slashed and she was bleeding out over the floor of the train.
Despite the horror of the crime, the media has remained ostensibly quiet.
The lack of any mention whatsoever of Iryna Zarutska’s murder despite her being a Ukrainian refugee reminds me of USAID’s call for media organizations to “collaborate” and “agree policies on strategic silence.” https://t.co/AkH4dxxrjtpic.twitter.com/nK6NbqvV4j
The optics are incredibly awful for the entire Democratic Party machine.
The brutal killing of Iryna Zarutska (Ukrainian refugee) on a commuter train in North Carolina highlights not only the willingness of leftist corporate media to cover up news stories that jeopardize their woke narratives but also the broader failure of so-called criminal justice reform, which appears to have shockingly backfired and become a major public safety threat. Adding to the mounting outrage, a leftist magistrate judge released the schizophrenic monster on cashless bail (before he killed Zarutska) – another failure point. And then there’s this: far-left nonprofits accelerated the push for disastrous criminal justice reforms.
It’s now widely known that Decarlos Brown Jr., 34, Zarutska’s killer, had been previously arrested 14 times in North Carolina for crimes ranging from assault to firearms possession, and whose own mother admitted he was schizophrenic and should never have been allowed back on the streets, was recently released on cashless bail (before he killed Zarutska) by a progressive magistrate judge despite a two-decade violent crime spree.
But the failures don’t stop with local leftist politicians and rogue progressive judges (or magistrate judges) who embrace woke and enabled criminal justice reform from hell. They extend much deeper – into the shadowy world of the dark-money-funded nonprofit industrial complex, which poured millions of dollars into Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, to push for “reducing the jail population.”
“Another factor in the death of Iryna Zarutska on Charlotte’s light rail–the left-wing MacArthur Foundation giving Mecklenburg county a $3.3 million grant to reduce the jail population. Specifically as part of racial equity aims,” Daily Wire’s Megan Basham wrote on X.
Basham noted, “Like Soros’ Open Society, the MacArthur Foundation incentivizes local municipalities to make residents less safe by leaving threats like Decarlos Brown on the streets.”
[Yordanis] Cobos-Martinez has a prior criminal history of:
False imprisonment in CA (unknown disposition)
Indecency with a child in Texas (dismissed)
Grand theft of vehicle in Florida (dismissed)
Carjacking & false imprisonment in CA (acquitted on carjacking, convicted of false imprisonment).
Disturbing surveillance video shows Cobos-Martinez allegedly kicking and picking up the victim’s severed head in the motel parking lot as it drips blood…
“Russian Oil Tanker in Primorsk Set on Fire by Drones & Smolensk Oil Depot Hit.” Primorsk is a good 1,000km from the Ukrainian border, up near Finland.
The Trump administration announced Wednesday that an unprecedented law enforcement operation has busted a Chinese-based fentanyl drug and money laundering conspiracy, resulting in charges against 22 Chinese nationals, four Chinese pharmaceutical companies and three U.S. citizens.
FBI Director Kash Patel described Operation Box Cutter as a “first-of-its-kind” law enforcement action targeting the threat posed to the American public by China-manufactured precursor chemicals used in the production of fentanyl.
“We’re done playing whack-a-mole,” he said during a press conference in Cincinnati, Ohio.
“We didn’t arrest a couple of people. We charged an enterprise-wide system in mainland China to include dozens of individuals and banks and companies that are responsible for making these lethal precursors and shipping them here.”
The Dayton, Ohio, grand jury five-count indictment unsealed Wednesday focuses on a Tipp City, Ohio, resident, 39-year-old Eric Michael Payne.
At this rate, with President Donald Trump being one of the most decisive presidents in history, statistics show that his endorsement could undoubtedly lead a candidate to victory.
As Ian Vallencillo, commissioner of Sweetwater, Florida, told the Washington Examiner, Trump is one of “the most popular political figures,” stating that voters “overwhelmingly support Trump’s picks.”
At this rate, with President Donald Trump being one of the most decisive presidents in history, statistics show that his endorsement could undoubtedly lead a candidate to victory.
As Ian Vallencillo, commissioner of Sweetwater, Florida, told the Washington Examiner, Trump is one of “the most popular political figures,” stating that voters “overwhelmingly support Trump’s picks.”
The commissioner is right.
Candidates endorsed by Trump have lost, but very rarely. Former Republican North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson conceded his gubernatorial election against an incumbent after receiving Trump’s approval, partly over a scandal that engulfed the news cycle days before the election.
Similarly, former presidential candidate and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) lost his reelection bid, over years of controversy, anti-Trump skepticism, and a failure to get the Republican Party in the White House in 2012.
During the 2024 federal and gubernatorial election cycles, Trump endorsed 306 candidates. Eighty-nine percent of those candidates now occupy the office they ran for. In the 2022 election cycle, Trump endorsed 195 candidates, 83% of whom were sworn in to office a few months later.
One of those key endorsements includes the key race of Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA), who unseated a longtime incumbent, former Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, by a 0.5% margin.
Similarly, in the same election cycle, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) won his Senate race against former Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who had been in office since 2007.
The year before that, after former California GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy resigned from Congress in 2023 following a motion for him to step down as speaker of the House from a Trump-endorsed representative, California Assemblyman Vince Fong was elected soon after receiving the nod from the president.
Similarly, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), who was challenged by a local Democratic advocate, won his third term soon after Trump endorsed him.
The latest scandal involves a web of shell companies, family members on mysterious payrolls, and taxpayer money that somehow found its way into campaign coffers. Multiple federal agencies are now investigating what appears to be a deliberate scheme to circumvent campaign finance laws through a maze of LLCs and nonprofits. The numbers are staggering: millions in taxpayer funds allegedly embezzled, hundreds of thousands in unreported campaign contributions, and a trail of financial breadcrumbs leading through family businesses.
The politician at the center of this storm? Democratic Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida.
Cherfilus-McCormick had won her seat after campaigning against the corruption of her predecessor, Alcee Hastings.
Today, Cherfilus-McCormick finds herself drowning in exactly the kind of investigations she once condemned. The Federal Election Commission has launched a formal probe into her campaign’s alleged violations, while the Office of Congressional Ethics has found “probable cause” that she accepted illegal campaign contributions. The schemes are breathtaking in their audacity: her husband and sister-in-law running an LLC that funneled $725,000 through a nonprofit that then paid her campaign vendors. A political consultant with direct access to these funds, making payments on her behalf while she pretended not to know.
But here’s where my blood really starts to boil. Before entering Congress, Cherfilus-McCormick was CEO of Trinity Health Care Services, a family company that received a $5 million “overpayment” from Florida’s emergency services department – supposedly due to a misplaced decimal point. Instead of immediately returning the taxpayer money, investigators allege she began moving it between family businesses, including companies where she held major stakes. The state had to sue to get its money back.
As expected. “James Talarico Launches Democrat Bid for U.S. Senate. Talarico has positioned himself as one of the more left-wing voices in the Texas Legislature.”
Remember how Adam Carolla said the Palisades fire would used as an excuse for a land grab by the Democrats running Los Angeles and California? Guess what? “Iconic Malibu restaurant is told it can’t rebuild after Palisades Fire.”
An Alpha News reporter participated in a ride-along with ICE agents during the arrest. Wilson Tindi, a Kenya native, pled guilty to sexually assaulting a sleeping woman in Minneapolis in 2014 after breaking into her home. A judge ordered Tindi to be deported, but a federal judge later overturned this ruling. ICE released him after 18 months.
After his release, Tindi became a chief audit officer at Minnesota’s education department. He was later fired after his past became known, raising questions about how he was ever hired in the first place.
Among the most high-profile and controversial legislation passed was a handful of social issue bills — in particular, one establishing civil cause of action against chemical abortion pill providers, and another separating publicly-funded private spaces by biological sex. The former came with its fair share of backdoor negotiations and amendments before it was successfully carried through both chambers, as was the case for multiple priorities of Abbott’s.
One issue which faced an untimely end in the Legislature was the attempted regulation of hemp-derived THC products. Ultimately, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, House Speaker Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock), and Abbott were unable to reach an agreement on Wednesday.
Collateral damage from the death of print magazines. “Publishers Clearing House Winners Say They Are No Longer Receiving Their Lifetime Payments.”
It seems that some leftwing Texas school nurses are practicing malicious compliance.
Texas Education Agency Updates First Aid Guidelines After Controversy Over Withheld Medical Care
The TEA updated their guidance to allow schools to provide “first aid” without parental consent.
The Texas Education Agency (TEA) has released updated guidelines for how Texas public schools should approach the implementation of Senate Bill (SB) 12, known as the “Parent Bill of Rights,” after recent reports of school nurses not providing first aid to students.
One aspect of SB 12 that caused distress and confusion among lawmakers, parents, and schools alike is the requirement for school districts to receive documentation of notice and consent from parents for their child to receive “medical, psychiatric, and psychological treatment.”
State Rep. Jeff Leach (R-Allen) posted a letter on social media he had sent to TEA Commissioner Mike Morath last week regarding “concerns with the implementation” of SB 12 after reports of how “some school districts are taking an ‘all or nothing’ approach” to the new policy requirements, which has resulted in “band-aids” and “ice packs” being withheld from children.
Following the publication of the letter, which was also signed by the bill author state Sen. Brandon Creighton (R-Conroe), reports of children not being treated for certain “general care” services began being made public.
“After a thorough review was conducted of the video recordings of the statements, it became clear to me that their actions amounted to serious professional and personal misconduct,” Texas State University President Kelly Damphousse stated late Wednesday. “Conduct that advocates for inciting violence is directly contrary to the values of Texas State University. I cannot and will not tolerate such behavior.”
“As a result, I have determined that their actions are incompatible with their responsibilities as a faculty member at Texas State University,” Damphousse continued. “Effective immediately, their employment with Texas State University has been terminated.”
Damphousse was referring to Tom Alter, who was previously an associate professor of history at Texas State.
Alter had been exposed making comments calling for the overthrow of the U.S. government.
The European Commission has suffered a major defeat in court over its plans to make large tech platforms pay it to enforce the Digital Services Act.
Meta and ByteDance’s TikTok took the European Commission to court after it presented them with a “supervisory fee” equal to 0.05 per cent of their yearly global net income. The bill was to cover the EU executive’s expenses in monitoring their compliance with the Digital Services Act.
The Digital Services Act (DSA) gives the European Commission oversight of very large online platforms and search engines—ones with more than 45 million EU users a year. To fund this oversight, the Commission has said it will charge these providers an annual fee, based on their average monthly users.
The Commission adopted rules saying how it would set these fees on 2 March 2023. The next month, on 25 April, it classified Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok as very large platforms. That November, it finalised the 2023 fees for each.
In two decisions 10 September, the Court of Justice of the EU determined the Commission’s supervisory fees on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok were void for procedural grounds.
To set the 2023 fees, the Commission decided to calculate each platform’s average monthly users using a methodology based on third-party data it attached to each decision.
However, the Court ruled that this methodology for calculating fees should have been established through a delegated act–a process which involves the European Parliament and Council.
The judges said it was incorrect for the European Commission to determine the fees using implementing decisions it devised on its own authority alone.
Jay Leno’s star power wasn’t enough to persuade a California legislative committee to pass a measure to allow owners of classic cars like him to be exempted from the state’s rigorous smog-check requirements.
The Assembly Appropriations Committee on Friday blocked Bakersfield Republican Sen. Shannon Grove’s Senate Bill 712 from advancing for a full vote. Leno had testified in support of the measure in Sacramento earlier this year.
The committee’s members and its powerful Democratic chairperson, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks of Oakland, did not provide a reason for killing the bill during Friday’s hearing, which quickly and with little fanfare announced the fate of 260 other bills that had been placed on the committee’s so-called “suspense file.” Seventy other bills also were killed without explanation.
The Senate and Assembly’s appropriations committees, which both met Friday and rejected hundreds of bills, are supposed to be the gatekeepers for bills proposing to spend taxpayer money. But the committees’ suspense files are where hundreds of politically touchy bills die quietly each year with only a few insiders knowing the real reasons.
Random meme stolen from Facebook:
So I don’t think I’ll be watching all of the Joe Rogan podcasts with Carrot Top or Charlie Sheen, but I suspect I’ll be watching snippets from them, and felt I should make you aware of their existence…
For some reason, all three Top Gear/Grand Tour presents have decided they need to come out with their own gin.
Ten musical pieces you know, but not the names of. I already knew a good number, but a few were new, and a couple of others I didn’t know under their original language name.
Lots of gratifying results came out of yesterday’s primaries. Perhaps the most gratifying is that the Straus-Bonnen-Phelan Axis, which has thwarted conservative priorities for decades, finally had a stake driven through its heart.
First statewide and national office races:
President Trump crushed Nikki Haley in Texas with over 76% of the vote.
Former president Donald Trump seems poised to breeze to the Republican presidential nomination after nearly sweeping the party’s Super Tuesday contests.
By 11 p.m. ET on Tuesday, Trump had won the Republican presidential contests in at least twelve of the Super Tuesday states: Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Maine, Alabama, Massachusetts, Texas, Arkansas, Colorado, Minnesota, and delegate-rich California.
Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, meanwhile, earned her first — and likely only — win of the night in Vermont.
Results from caucuses in Alaska and Utah were still outstanding around 11:30 p.m. ET.
Ted Cruz cruised to a victory with just under 90% of the vote, and will face Democrat Collin Allred in November. Allred won a clear majority in a five-way race, with Roland Gutierrez coming in at very distant second that was more than 40 points behind.
In the Republican primary race for Texas Congressional District 23, Brandon Herrera has taken incumbent Congressman Tony Gonzales to a runoff.
According to unofficial totals, Gonzales captured 46 percent of the vote to Herrera’s 23 percent.
Leading into the election, much of the discussion centered on Gonzales’ multiple censures from Republican organizations.
The congressman had been censured by the Medina County Republican Party, which was followed by a censure from the Republican Party of Texas (RPT).
The RPT censure was only the second time in history the party had used the maneuver for a sitting politician, the first being in 2018 with then-House Speaker Joe Staus (R-San Antonio). House Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont) then became the third sitting member to be censured by the State Republican Executive Committee when they approved the official resolution in February.
Gonzales’ censure came after RPT found that he had violated the multiple tenets of the party platform with his votes in Congress.
The incumbent Gonzales had also been criticized for his stance on border security.
In December, he penned a letter to both Democratic and Republican federal leadership stating that he believes the border crisis could reach a “point of no return” if lawmakers do not act soon.
The letter came after a disagreement with Congressman Chip Roy (R-TX-21) over a border security bill Roy introduced to require the detention or expulsion of illegal immigrants, which would prohibit “all asylum” claims. Gonzales has also labeled some of his GOP colleagues “insurgents” and accused 20 Republicans of planning to push “anti-immigrant” legislation under the guise of border security policy.
The leading issue for voters statewide leading into the primary election is border security and immigration, which is represented by the vote totals in this race.
Herrera describes himself as a “Second Amendment activist, and social media personality,” known online as “The AK Guy.”
He proclaimed, “Texas is done with RINO’s,” during the night of the primary election.
But in Texas, the big news was that Dade Phalen, the latest in the Joe Straus/Dennis Bonnen cabal that has stayed in power with Democratic Party backing to thwart conservative priorities, is headed into a runoff with David Covey for Texas House District 21, with less than half a point separating the two.
The Speaker of the Texas House Dade Phelan will be heading to a runoff, after failing to receive the support of a majority of Republican voters in his district.
Phelan, who was first elected to the House in 2014 and has been speaker since 2021, will face off against former Orange County GOP chairman David Covey in a runoff election that is certain to garner attention from across the state.
Phelan had been criticized by conservatives for failing to pass conservative priorities, placing Democrats in leadership positions, and leading the charge to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton last year. Former President Donald Trump endorsed Covey, calling any Republican who backed Phelan “a fool.”
Phelan received 45.8 percent of the vote with Covey earning 45.3 percent.
Alicia Davis, a Jasper County activist, took 8.9 percent of the vote.
“The people of House District 21 have put every politician in Texas, and the nation, on notice,” said Covey. “Our elected officials are elected by the people and work for the people, and when they don’t, there will be consequences.”
“Since 1836, Texans have answered the call to defend liberty and fight for our freedoms. I have every intention of continuing that tradition,” he added.
Covey was joined by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick at his election night watch party. Patrick, who has been a vocal critic of Phelan, had not officially endorsed Covey.
But it wasn’t just Phelan! A whole bunch of the Republican state reps who backed Phelan either lost outright or are headed to runoffs:
The runoff rematch between state Rep. Glenn Rogers (R-Graford) and Mike Olcott went entirely unlike the first round two years ago, with Olcott defeating the incumbent in a landslide.
Once Palo Pinto County returns came in, it was clear which way the bout would go. Olcott won Rogers’ home county by 365 votes and cleaned up in the rest of the district.
Last go-around, Rogers nipped Olcott by a few hundred votes, thanks in large part to support from Gov. Greg Abbott. This time in the rematch, the governor switched sides after Rogers voted against his education savings account plan — opposition to which the incumbent has remained steadfast. On Monday, state Sen. Phil King (R-Weatherford) announced his support for Olcott in the race.
Rogers outlasted his previous two stiff primary challenges, the first in 2020 for the open seat against Jon Francis, the son-in-law of conservative mega-donors Farris and JoAnn Wilks. Then in 2022 Olcott challenged Rogers, the incumbent, and narrowly lost.
This time, Abbott has made multiple trips to the district, stating at one that, “There are many reasons we are here today, and one of those is that I made a mistake last time in endorsing Glenn Rogers. And I’m here to correct that mistake. I’m here to make sure everyone knows, I’m here to support Mike Olcott to be your state representative.”
Olcott swept the top-level endorsements with Abbott, Donald Trump, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).
uring the 88th Legislative session last year, Clardy was one of the House members who voted in favor of stripping education savings accounts from the November education omnibus bill.
Leading into the election a central issue was how each candidate landed on school choice, as both Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) have based their candidate endorsements on support for education freedom.
Clardy was also issued a cease and desist letter by Abbott for “representing to the public that Governor Abbott has endorsed you in your bid for re-election,” when in fact Abbott had endorsed his opponent Joanne Shofner, whom the letter called “a true conservative.” Clardy has continued to express vocal opposition to school choice: “Right now, the price to get his endorsement was I had to bend the knee and kiss the ring and say that I will vote for vouchers[.]”
Shofner, along with both Abbott and Cruz’s support, also had the endorsement of former President Donald Trump.
Conservative activist Shelley Luther has won her rematch against incumbent Republican State Rep. Reggie Smith of Van Alystne to represent House District 62 in North Texas.
House District 62 includes Grayson, Fannin, and portions of Delta and Franklin counties.
Smith, who has served in the Texas House since 2018, is part of the House leadership team, serving as chair of the House Election Committee under House Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont). As chair, Smith either slow-walked or killed several Republican priority measures addressing election security.
Smith’s record from the past year also includes voting to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton—who was later acquitted by the Senate—and voting against school choice legislation.
Luther, who made state and national headlines in 2020 when she was jailed after refusing to close her salon during the COVID-19 shutdowns, said previously she looks forward to working with the governor to pass school choice this next session.
Allison voted with Democrats to strip a school choice measure from a school spending measure.
His opposition to school choice drew the ire of Gov. Greg Abbott, who endorsed LaHood.
During Allison’s two terms, he has earned an “F” rating on the Fiscal Responsibility Index for his votes on fiscal issues. He was also one of the 60 Republican House members who voted to impeach Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Belton mom and pro-family advocate Hillary Hickland has won the Republican Primary Election for House District 55, unseating incumbent State Rep. Hugh Shine of Temple.
HD 55 encompasses part of Bell County.
School Choice has defined the HD 55 race, as Shine voted against Gov. Greg Abbott’s proposed school choice package.
Hickland meanwhile accumulated endorsements from Abbott, former President Donald Trump, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, Attorney General Ken Paxton, Texas Home School Coalition, and Young Conservatives of Texas.
Businessman Matt Morgan has defeated State Rep. Jacey Jetton of Richmond in the Republican Primary.
House District 26 includes part of Fort Bend County.
The failed impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton featured prominently in the race.
Jetton was among the Republicans who voted to impeach Paxton.
Morgan—who fell short to Jetton in a runoff in 2020—quickly earned the endorsement of Paxton. He also had the endorsement of U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls, who called Jetton a “liberal.”
During his two terms in office, Jetton earned an “F” rating on the Fiscal Responsibility Index for his votes on fiscal issues.
State Rep. Justin Holland (R-Rockwall) and challenger Katrina Pierson will duke it out for another three months after neither eclipsed 50 percent, both advancing to the runoff.
The pair were neck and neck in the Rockwall County and Collin County portions of the district.
Holland’s clash with Pierson and London was highly-anticipated. Pierson has the largest profile of any challenger in this 2024 primary, having served as a Donald Trump campaign spokeswoman in 2016. On top of that, London challenged Holland in the 2022 primary, giving him some level of ballot name ID.
Despite that Trump affiliation, Pierson was omitted from the former president’s endorsement list in Texas races.
The incumbent found himself in the political right’s crosshairs after three consequential votes: impeaching Attorney General Ken Paxton, striking down Gov. Greg Abbott’s school choice plan, and advancing through committee a proposal to raise the age of purchasing certain semi-automatic rifles to 21.
Holland far outraised and outspent his two opponents, who combined raised $337,000 to the incumbent’s $1.2 million.
He was the beneficiary of around $170,000 from Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont), $225,000 from the Charles Butt Public Education PAC, $50,000 from the casino group Texas Sands PAC, $40,000 from Texans for Lawsuit Reform, and $115,000 from the Associated Republicans of Texas.
Mitch Little, Ken Paxton’s impeachment lawyer, appears to have won Texas House District 65 over incumbent Kronda Thimesch . “Little, with Paxton’s backing, defeated State Rep. Kronda Thimesch, who had the backing of Governor Greg Abbott, by about 300 votes.” Which means a recount is likely.
In Texas House District 1, Chris Spencer forced incumbent Gary Vandeaver into a runoff, with less than 2.5% separating them.
Helen Kerwin takes a seven point lead over incumbent DeWayne Burns into the Texas House District 58 runoff, and only missed an outright win by 1.2%. Kirwin was also endorsed by President Trump.
Challenger Keresa Richardson takes a seven point lead over incumbent Frederick Frazier into the Texas House District 61 runoff. Looks like I’ll have to wait until May to use the “Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!” joke…
Given the usual run of only one or two incumbents getting knocked off in primaries (and those usually involved in prominent scandals), having 17 reps meet that fate is a political earthquake on par with Newt Gingrich-lead Republicans capturing the House after 40 years of Democratic rule in 1994. All the outside gambling and other special interest money was on the Phelan Axis side, and they still got stomped. I credit this in large measure to Trump, Paxton, Abbott and Cruz getting involved in statehouse races.
The Phelan Axis decided that killing school choice and the Paxton impeachment were the hills they wanted to die on, and a large number of them did.
But not every rep who voted for the Paxton impeachment and/or against school choice lost or got taken to a runoff:
Keith Bell defeated Joshua Feuerstein in District 3.
Cole Hefner defeated Jeff Fletcher in District 5.
Jay Dean defeated Joe McDaniel in District 7.
Cody Harris stomped Jaye Curtis in District 8.
Trent Ashby thumped Paulette Carson.
Steve Toth defeated Skeeter Hubert in District 15.
Stan Gerdes beat Tom Glass in District 17.
Ellen Troxclair won against Kyle Biedermann in District 19.
Terry Wilson beat Elva Chapa in District 20.
Greg Bonnen destroyed Larissa Ramirez in District 24.
Gary Gates beat Dan Mathews in District 28.
Ben Bumgarner won a three-way race in District 63.
Matt Shaheen beat Wayne Richard in District 66.
Jeff Leach beat Daren Meis in District 67.
David Spiller beat Kerri Kingsbery in District 68.
Stan Lambert beat Liz Case in District 71.
Drew Darby defeated Stormy Bradley in District 72.
Dustin Burrows defeated Wade Cowan 2-1 in District 83.
Stan Kitzman defeated Tim Greeson by a similar margin in District 85.
John Smithee defeated Jamie Haynes in District 86.
Ken King walloped Karen Post in District 88.
Candy Noble edged Abraham George in District 89.
Giovanni Capriglione beat Brad Schofield in District 98.
Charlie Geren defeated Jack Reynolds in District 99.
Morgan Meyer edged Barry Wernick in District 108.
Angie Chen Button decisively Chad Carnahan in District 112.
Briscoe Cain stomped Bianca Gracia in District 128.
Mano Deayala defeated John Perez in District 133.
Lacey Hull defeated Jared Woodfill in District 138.
That’s 31 Republican reps that could theoretically reconstitute the Phelan axis, but I’m not sure they have the stomach for it.
Of those, Bell, Dean, Lambert, Darby, King and Geren were the only ones to vote both for the Paxton impeachment and against school choice. Michael Quinn Sullivan (who I’m pretty sure is ecstatic at the numbers of Phelan enablers taken down yesterday) has identified Burrows and Harris as the two most likely Phelan axis members to attempt to take the gavel next year, and Geren and Capriglione have always struck me as among the biggest supporters of the axis. But a lot of those other names strike me as “soft” axis supporters who might be persuaded to support an actual Republican for speaker, least the same fate befall them as all the other Phelan backers taken down.
All in all, it was a very, very good day for Texas conservatives.
So here is a list of every contested Republican state House race, whether the incumbent voted to kill school choice or impeach Paxton, and who their challengers are:
District 1: Gary VanDeaver:
Voted to kill school choice? Yes
Voted to impeach Paxton? Yes
Dutton is listed as the incumbent because she won the special election for the seat of the expelled and disgraced Bryan Slaton. But she wasn’t in office to vote for or against school choice or the Paxton impeachment.
As Speaker of the House, Phalen voted Present on the school choice gutting and Paxton impeachment votes, but is known to be the motivating factor behind both.
If you’ve been following the Texas legislature for any appreciable length of time, then the close of the 87th Legislative Session must have felt eerily familiar to you: A whole bunch of conservative priority bills made it to the one yard line, only to be killed by various political maneuvers and the legislative schedule.
On Sunday night, with just hours left for the Texas House to give its final approval to legislation, Democrats left the chamber and busted the quorum.
By doing so, they were able to kill multiple bills in the process, including a high-profile omnibus election integrity bill and a bail reform bill.
Both bills were deemed priorities of Gov. Greg Abbott in February.
In order for the House to conduct business, a quorum of two-thirds of the chamber’s members (100 out of 150) are required to be present.
Despite being an emergency priority item that lawmakers have been allowed to address since February 1, Senate Bill 7—election integrity legislation that has been the target of Democrats nationwide—was scheduled to finally be passed on Sunday afternoon, just hours away from the midnight deadline.
As debate began, Democrat members started to leave the chamber, taking their voting keys with them.
When a vote was taken on whether to excuse one of the members, the tally revealed that only 86 members were present in the chamber.
The House then adjourned until 10 a.m. on Monday, without objection.
Abbott quickly took to Twitter to say election integrity, as well as bail reform, would be among the items added to a special session call.
These were just many of the conservative priority bills that died in the session. Michael Quinn Sullivan provided the following scorecard via email:
Incompetence or sabotage? It seems like no matter who sits in the speaker’s chair, be it Dade Phelan, Dennis Bonnen or Joe Straus, conservative bills make it through the Senate only to die in the House at the last minute. It’s a pattern that repeats itself over and over again.
I’m not enough of an insider to tell you exact culprits behind killing conservative legislative priorities (though Speaker Phelan obviously deserves a considerable share of blame, as does Republican state representative Jeff Leach, who’s delaying tactics over a point of order helped doomed many of the above bills).
Governor Greg Abbott is threatening to veto legislative funding in retaliation for Democrats walking off the job, and threatening to hold a special session to get it done. I’m all in favor of calling a special session to pass those items, but it’s unclear whether it would be a special summer session or the already-planned redistricting session after census data is made available. It’s also unclear whether any legislator would be motivated by the threat of losing their $600 per month paycheck.
In any case, what is clear is that conservatives need a new gameplan for the next special session. If you have any ideas on what that should be (or have good candidates (besides Democrats) for who is really the power behind killing conservative bills), feel free to share them in the comments below.
