This is the Texas Minute for Memorial Day, Monday, May 26, 2025.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Both Chambers Act to Abolish Texas Lottery Commission

• Last night, the Texas House joined the Senate in moving to abolish the Texas Lottery Commission and reform lottery operations, following multiple scandals that have rocked the agency. As Daniel Greer reports, oversight for the "games of Texas" would be moved to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.

    
• Yet on the floor, the House made significant technical changes to the Senate's original version. Among other things, the House changes guarantee that the contract for the state lottery remains with its current vendor, IGT, which allegedly played a critical role in the rigging of the April 2023 $95 million jackpot by an international gambling syndicate.
       
• Time is running out for the House and Senate versions to be reconciled. If they cannot reach an agreement, the lottery would be abolished or a special session could be required to save it.

Legislation Mandates Texas' Sheriffs Cooperate with ICE

• Brandon Waltens reports that the Texas House on Saturday approved a Senate measure requiring all county sheriffs operating jails to enter into formal agreements with federal immigration authorities.

    
• The Senate's version of the legislation would have required sheriffs in the state’s 43 most populous counties to enter into immigration enforcement agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The House sponsor, David Spiller (R-Jacksboro), replaced the original language entirely, broadening the mandate while narrowing its scope.
       
• Instead of applying only to counties with more than 100,000 residents, the new version requires all sheriffs who operate or contract to operate a jail in Texas to pursue a specific form of agreement with ICE known as the “warrant service model.”
       
• Under the House measure, counties that enter into agreements with ICE can receive state grants ranging from $5,000 to $40,000, depending on population size.

RELATED HOUSE NEWS

• "Religious freedom is a bedrock principle upon which America was founded, recognizing our rights come directly from God, not the government." – Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick

Lawmakers Look to Slash School Superintendents’ Severance Pay

• Erin Anderson reports that lawmakers have moved closer to cutting the size of severance payments that school districts can give superintendents without incurring a penalty, thereby saving tax dollars intended for the education of students. Such payouts have been skyrocketing in recent years, along with superintendents’ salaries, all at taxpayers’ expense—even as school districts claim to be underfunded.
      
• Even when poor performance or misconduct is alleged, superintendents receive contract buyouts and large severance payments—again, at taxpayers’ expense.
      
• Members of the Texas Senate heard testimony on a measure by State Rep. Terri Leo-Wilson (R–Galveston) that aims to limit superintendent severance payments to no more than six months’ salary and benefits under the contract. Excessive payouts would cost districts a corresponding amount from the Foundation School Program, the primary source of state funding for Texas school districts.

Harris County Commissioners Reject Paying for Judge’s Trip to France

• Harris County Commissioners have rejected Judge Lina Hidalgo’s proposal to allocate tens of thousands of dollars from her office budget for a trip to Paris, France. Joseph Trimmer has the details.
       
• Hidalgo attempted to get $23,300 approved for a June trip but withheld the destination, citing security concerns, prompting commissioners to vote against the motion. Hidalgo had requested that she and four members of her staff visit Paris as part of a delegation organized by the Greater Houston Partnership and Rice University to promote economic development.
        
• Hidalgo accused commissioners of leaking the destination of her trip to “conspiracy theorists” and argued the hefty price tag would allow staff to accompany her without using vacation time.

RELATED NEWS

• The practice of taxpayer-funded lobbying has been a contentious issue in Texas politics. According to a survey by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, 81 percent of Texans oppose taxpayer-funded lobbying. In 2023, local governments spent $98 million in tax money to lobby state government, which could have instead gone to public safety, infrastructure, or tax relief, according to TPPF.
      
• A ban on the practice has repeatedly passed out of the Senate, but has been (repeatedly) killed in the House.

Weakened Higher Education Reform Bill Passes House

• Priority legislation to reform Texas’ institutions of higher education finally cleared a key legislative hurdle in the House, but Adam Cahn reports several key provisions were jettisoned in the process. At issue has been the model of "shared governance," a system in which universities’ boards of regents share their constitutionally defined power with the faculty.
       

• Critics have argued that allowing unelected faculty to oversee the institutions has given leftists the opportunity to advance ideological agendas in the classrooms and on campus.
      

• Among other things, the House removed from the Senate's legislation a return-on-investment-based review of all degree programs as well as regent oversight on tenured faculty positions. 
      
• Both versions explicitly place final decision-making authority over degree programs and curricula in the hands of the regents and restrict the influence of faculty committees on hiring decisions.
     
• The measure, Senate Bill 37, is likely headed for a conference committee where the differing approaches between the two legislative chambers will be worked out.

Quote-Unquote

"Better to fight for something than live for nothing."

– George S. Patton

Greater Love...

by Michael Quinn Sullivan

As Jesus said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” More than a million soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines have laid down their lives for the cause of self-governance and in defense of our republic’s Constitution.

Since the late 1860s, we have set aside a day of national remembrance. Yet I fear we have actually stopped truly remembering. We have allowed Memorial Day to devolve into a long weekend of mattress sales and cookouts. 

To justify our national forgetfulness, we smugly—and, yes, correctly—assert that our rights to life, liberty, and property are endowed by God. Yet we gloss past the stark reality that securing those rights has fallen to men and women willing to battle enemy forces intent on destroying the glorious American experiment in self-governance.

We have lived in the liberty made possible by their ultimate sacrifice. We have slept easily at night under the protection of men and women who stand willing to give their lives for our liberty.

The love shown to us by those patriots has not exactly been spurned, but gets treated like a trinket without too much examination of its implications.

Our callous approach to Memorial Day is just another symptom of our national disregard for the work of self-governance in preserving liberty. Recent years have shown how easily too many of our countrymen will sacrifice their rights for the thinnest veneer of “protection.”

We don’t want to consider the 106,000 teenagers and twenty-somethings crammed into landing craft who died at Normandy, because then we would have to confront the shallowness of college campuses creating “safe spaces” that shield young adults from being philosophically challenged.

Untold thousands of Americans died in the international fight against communism, only for our schools and colleges to quietly indoctrinate children into the godless ideology that justified the murder of tens of millions of people worldwide.

It is undoubtedly easier to enjoy a beer and burger in the backyard than to reflect on the sacrifices made on our behalf—often before we were ever born—by men who would only be known as “the uncle who died in the war.”

Yet reflect, dwell, and consider we must. If we are to give up our liberties and adorn our ankles with the soft chains of tyranny, what was the point of their sacrifice? Did they die for a lost cause, or to give us the opportunity to be better, to be more?

I choose to believe our best days as a republic are ahead of us, and that our honored dead paid for that future with their lives. Let’s not squander their gift.