Good morning,

In an era where victimhood has been elevated to social media sainthood, it is sometimes easier to claim a defeat than admit to a victory. As the legislative session comes to an end, I reflect on the fact that we must be willing to honestly discuss the ugly, the bad, and—yes—even the good. A relentless commitment to reality demands nothing else.

This is the Texas Minute for Friday, May 30, 2025.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

House Rejects Paxton's Call on Election Integrity Measure

• With the time remaining in the legislative session measured in hours, members of the Texas House rejected Attorney General Ken Paxton's call to concur with senators’ changes to a critical election integrity proposal. Luca Cacciatore has the details.
    
• The authority of the attorney general to unilaterally prosecute election crimes was stripped in a 2021 decision by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which found that the nearly 70-year precedent violated the state’s constitutional separation of powers.
       
• Legislation that has passed both chambers would return the attorney general’s power to prosecute crimes in certain cases unilaterally. Members of the House want the Office of the Attorney General to prosecute alleged election crimes only after a local district attorney fails to initiate criminal proceedings. Senators, however, want the OAG to have concurrent jurisdiction to prosecute the cases from the outset.
       
• Because the legislation originated in the House, it was up to state representatives to either accept the Senate's changes or request a conference committee and hammer out a compromise. Yesterday, the House opted for a conference committee, pitting the legislation against the session's countdown clock.

Connections to Conflicted Vendor Run Deep at Texas Lottery

• As lawmakers negotiate the details of eliminating the Texas Lottery Commission and transferring oversight of the games to a different agency, Daniel Greer uncovers the agency staff deeply connected to a vendor whose actions helped redefine the lottery as a money laundering operation. 
      
• While the Senate transferred oversight to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, members of the Texas House added a clause requiring that current employees get to keep their jobs and vendors hold on to contracts.
      
• Given the recent history of the commission and the cozy connections between top staff and vendors, it’s clear to many observers that TDLR will need the opportunity to clean the house and not reshuffle the deck.
       

• Following yesterday’s publication of these connections, we’ve been contacted by multiple sources with evidence of additional corruption at the lottery. If you have stories you’d like to share, we’d love to hear from you.

Harris County Bureaucrats Among America’s Highest-Paid Government Employees

• Congrats, Harris County! Your bureaucrats are among the highest-paid government employees in America! 
      
• Joseph Trimmer reports that Harris County has nine department heads earning more than the U.S. president’s $400,000 salary and 73 county employees receiving compensation that surpasses the $221,400 salary of a U.S. cabinet secretary.
         
• New payroll data obtained through a public information request for the 2024–2025 fiscal year reveals sharp pay raises across infrastructure, public health, and forensic science administrative roles. The highest-paid Harris County employee is Luis Arturo Sanchez, the chief medical examiner and executive director of the Institute of Forensic Sciences, making $536,141.
      
• Overall, Harris County now has 22,414 employees and an annual payroll of $1.47 billion.

Prosper ISD JROTC Teacher Charged With Sex Crime Against Student

• As Erin Anderson reports, an instructor for the Junior Reserve Officer Training program in Prosper Independent School District has been arrested for alleged sexual contact with a student. Michael Christopher Songy was arrested Wednesday, charged with indecent assault, and then released Thursday on a $10,000 bond.
      
• A notice sent to Rock Hill High School parents on Wednesday stated that the district “no longer employs” Songy and is fully cooperating with law enforcement in the investigation.
      
• According to court records, the assault allegedly occurred on May 14 of this year. Songy has held a Texas teaching certificate since 2015 and received an emergency permit in August to teach Junior ROTC.

MORE EDUCATION NEWS

Stockdale ISD Teacher Indicted for Student Sex Crimes, Cover-up

A now-former Stockdale Independent School District teacher has been indicted on charges related to an alleged sexual relationship with an underage student. Peter Aaron Leach, who was allowed to resign from his position, allegedly tampered with a burner cell phone in an attempt to cover up the purported crimes.

Little Elm ISD Custodian Jailed for Abusing Elementary Student

District officials said they received serious reports of “inappropriate interactions” between Eric Landaverde and three Brent Elementary students.

Houston Ends Traffic Stop Quotas in Unanimous Vote

• Michael Wilson reports that Houston has officially ended its policy requiring daily traffic stops by police officers, following a decisive move by Police Chief Noe Diaz and a unanimous city council vote.
    
• The new provision states: “No police officer shall be directed or required to have a quota on the minimum amount of traffic stops during a normal working shift.”
       
• The push to eliminate the quota system was led by Councilmembers Edward Pollard, Tarsha Jackson, and Tiffany Thomas. Mayor John Whitmire added that, despite the previous policy being on the books, it had not been enforced since his administration began.

This Sunday on REAL TEXANS

Friday Reflection
Reality Is An Acquired Taste

Most of us don’t like to acknowledge reality. It can be very inconvenient for our carefully crafted ordering of the world. 

A friend of mine likes to say that “reality is an acquired taste,” and he’s right. Yet, without a clear-eyed assessment of where we are, we’ll never successfully get where we want to go.

Usually, we paint for ourselves a soothingly false picture of the world—think about the middle-aged dad with a few extra tires around the middle who still sees himself as the high school athlete he was 30 years earlier!

Yet, in the cultural politics of the 21st century, there is a constant push to paint a dismal view that is similarly detached from reality. This is derived, in part, because we have elevated victimhood into a moral achievement. Practically, this has meant that a great many people spend time trying to position themselves as victims. I see it all the time.

It is driven by a misplaced view of success in political activism, where likes and shares have replaced human interaction. And so we find ourselves in the curious position of some grasstop leaders wanting to be seen as perpetually victimized losers.

Mass marketing doesn’t help. A “call to action” is usually most successful when there is an injustice to be righted or a foe to be vanquished. The bigger the injustice, the greater the foe, the more “urgent” the call, the greater the likelihood for participation.

Up to a point, anyway.

Consider the example of the spies who entered the Promised Land, as recounted in the Book of Numbers. God had just miraculously led the people out of captivity in Egypt. They had seen wonders beyond description. As they approached the borders of the land God was giving them, they sent in spies to reconnoiter the territory. So far, so good.

Several of them came back with exaggerated tales of impossible giants who would be impossible to overcome. They oversold their case of doom to the people. Rather than trust God and proceed to take the land, the people went wobbly and refused to move forward. As punishment for their cowardice, they wandered the desert for a generation.

History would reveal those giants weren’t quite so big, and victory was more attainable than those faithless spies reported.

The same is true today. In the rush to claim the status of a victim, there are some who prefer to rhetorically snatch defeat from the jaws of victory—all evidence to the contrary be damned.

Reality is always more nuanced than a social media post. Extreme victimhood might garner clicks and likes on X and Facebook, but it rarely builds a lasting, healthy movement.

For us politically, reality means legislators we don’t like can still pass legislation we do like. Reality means accepting that two things can be true at once: wins can be achieved, with more work still to be done. Acknowledging the one does not negate the reality of the other.

For activism to be successful, we must present arguments and provide evidence based not on emotions, but on a clear-eyed assessment of reality.

Lastly, it’s exhausting being around perpetually whining losers. At some point, people need to see that they are making a difference when they engage in civic activism.

Charting a successful path in our self-governing republic means honestly reporting to each other what has happened: the ugly, the bad, and, yes, even the good.

Quote-Unquote

"Truth carries with it confrontation. Truth demands confrontation; loving confrontation, but confrontation nevertheless."

– Francis Schaeffer