Daniel Miller opened this Late Night Coffee Talk on a quieter note than usual, then built to one of his hardest indictments of the legislative session yet. He started with a win worth honoring: State Representative Steve Toth had finally gotten a floor recognition for the late David Thomas Roberts, founder of Defiance Press, publisher of the TEXIT book, and a TNM advisory board member who died suddenly last June. The path there was ugly. Miller said Jared Patterson, who chairs the committee that handles memorial resolutions, refused to advance Roberts’s resolution out of pure political spite, the same treatment given to other proex and conservative figures, while resolutions for the politically connected sailed through. Toth got it done from the floor instead.
That fight became Miller’s frame for the whole session. He called this the most dysfunctional legislature he has seen in all his years working Austin. Lawmakers lowered property tax rates but refused to cap appraisals, which means many Texans will see their bills rise even as the mailers brag about the most conservative session ever. He ran the receipts: roughly half a billion dollars handed to Hollywood film incentives, in-state tuition for illegal aliens still on the books after Dan Patrick’s first campaign promised to end it, SB17 watered down by a Matt Shaheen amendment that would let foreign adversaries lease land for 99 years, currency and transactional gold stalled, and grid protection passed only after three or four sessions of Bob Hall pushing it. He noted more than 20 representatives voted against a bill simply affirming that communism is bad, and said leadership cut its deals with exactly those members.
His point was not despair but a gut check. The battle for Austin, he argued, is not won in Austin. It is won in your county, your church, your workplace, by turning anger into organized pressure rather than surrender. He invoked the letter he read last week and the Goliad massacre as a reminder that raising the flag of surrender does not end well. He closed by tying it to a fresh proof point: the NRSC and NRCC just filed FTC complaints over Gmail routing Republican election emails to spam, the exact censorship the TNM documented and got mocked for warning about. We told you so, he said.
Questions answered in this episode
- Will the TNM organize county days of action in Austin for the next legislative session, and how do supporters rotate in and sign up?
- What are the odds of Governor Abbott calling a special session, and what would be on the agenda given the shuffling at the top of the ticket?
- Should Daniel Miller run for Texas governor and debate Greg Abbott?
- Did the Alamo defenders really fight to the last man rather than surrender, and what does that say about compromising your principles?
- How can ordinary Texans turn frustration with the legislature into something productive instead of checking out?
- Why was a memorial resolution for Dave Roberts blocked in committee, and how did Steve Toth get him recognized from the House floor anyway?
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