Good morning,

Ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, I asked some of the Texas Scorecard staff about their families' traditions, what they are thankful for this year, and why thankfulness is an important attitude to cultivate. You'll find those conversations below in a special edition of Real Texans.

This is the Texas Minute for Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2025.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

NOTE: The Texas Minute will return on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025.

Texas' Largest County Could Face State Oversight of Voter Rolls

• If an investigation confirms that voters are registering at post office boxes, Harris County could lose oversight of its voter roll maintenance. Erin Anderson has the details.
    
• Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson announced yesterday that she had received a complaint alleging that Harris County’s voter registrar is allowing voters to register using post office box addresses instead of physical residence addresses as required by law. She said her office will begin “an immediate investigation.”
      
• The complaint was submitted last week by State Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston), who is a former Harris County voter registrar. 
       
• Bettencourt authored legislation in 2021 that excluded commercial post office boxes as voter registration addresses and set procedures for voter registrars to confirm voters’ residences. He authored legislation in 2023 that allows the secretary of state to assume administrative oversight of Harris County’s elections or voter registration if an investigation reveals “a recurring pattern of problems.”
      
• In a letter sent to Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector and Voter Registrar Annette Ramirez earlier this week, Nelson explained that state funding for voter registration could also be withheld if the county fails to perform required duties related to confirming residential addresses.

Honduran Arrested For Smuggling 51 Illegals 

• Sydnie Henry reports that a Honduran national has been charged with smuggling illegal aliens into the country in a hidden compartment of a refrigerated tractor-trailer.
    
• Greibein Alexis Pinot-Duarte allegedly drove the tractor-trailer through the Border Patrol checkpoint near Freer late last week. After noticing what officials described as "nervous behavior," a K-9 team alerted to the presence of humans or narcotics. A search revealed 51 individuals, including two juveniles, in the cramped, hidden compartment.
      
• The man faces up to 10 years in federal prison and a fine of up to a quarter-million dollars.

UT-Austin Alumni Organization Gives ‘Distinguished Alumnus’ Award to DEI Advocate

• At last week's home football game against Arkansas, the University of Texas at Austin’s alumni organization presented a Distinguished Alumnus Award to a high-ranking administrator with an extensive history of racially inflammatory statements and support for leftwing policies. Adam Cahn has the story.
    
• The award was presented to Richard Reddick, vice provost for undergraduate education, by the Texas Exes. While formally independent of UT-Austin, the organization often works closely with university leadership.
      
• The organization approvingly noted that Reddick authored "Restorative Resistance in Higher Education: Leading in an Era of Racial Awakening and Reckoning." He also co-hosts the NPR podcast "Black Austin Matters."

East Texas Coach Accused of Sexually Assaulting a Child

• An East Texas middle school coach, Landon Christopher Odom, is accused of sexually assaulting a minor. He has been employed by Nacogdoches' Central Heights Independent School District.
       
• According to the district's superintendent, the alleged assault did not involve a CHISD student or occur on a district campus, but Odom has been placed on leave.
    
• Odom had received a certificate to teach fourth through eighth grade social studies in August of this year.

Austin ISD Votes To Close Schools Amid Budget Deficit

• In an effort to eliminate thousands of empty seats and close a large budget deficit, Addie Hovland reports that the Austin Independent School District’s Board of Trustees voted to close 11 schools starting next year.
       
• Closing the schools is estimated to open up nearly $21.5 million from the AISD budget. The closure will eliminate more than 6,000 empty seats while moving 3,700 students to surrounding schools.
       
• “For too long, the district has maintained thousands of empty seats while running massive deficits, effectively asking taxpayers to subsidize inefficiency,” said Andrew McVeigh of Texans for Fiscal Responsibility. “This plan finally begins to turn things back in a responsible direction.”

Felony Charges Dropped Against East Texas Judge Accused of Witness Tampering

• Felony charges against Rains County Justice of the Peace Robert Jenkins Franklin have been dropped after the prosecution found witnesses lacked credibility. As Travis Morgan explains, Franklin had been accused of witness tampering.
    
• The case arises from allegations that, in 2023, Franklin allegedly told a defendant, among other things, to “take that deal, boy, or dead men can’t testify.” Franklin had previously been indicted on two misdemeanor counts of official oppression and two felony counts of tampering with a witness, resulting from two separate incidents.
       
• He still faces action by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct regarding the various allegations.

REAL TEXANS

Reflection
Thankfully, They Rejected Socialism

We think we know the story of Thanksgiving: the pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, faced a harsh winter, famine, and disease, and then, only with the help of friendly natives, learned how to survive. It’s nice for bedtime stories and feel-good paintings, but it ignores the most important lessons of our early history.

The pilgrims weren’t city slickers ill-prepared for wilderness life, nor were they misguided about the challenges facing them in the New World. Sadly, the travails and trials of those pilgrims weren’t merely the result of recklessness, ignorance, or chance.

No, the problems the pilgrims faced—and overcame—were of their very own making through a well-intentioned, though misguided, governing ideology.

William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth Colony, explains what happened in his History of the Plymouth Settlement. Even before arriving in the New World, they imposed on themselves what he called "communal service," what we today would recognize as socialism.

Everything—the land, the work, the crops, everything—was held communally. Everyone was expected to work hard and receive only what they truly needed. As a result, Bradford wrote, many would simply “allege weakness and inability.”

You won’t be surprised that Bradford reported: “the young men who were most able and fit for service objected to being forced to spend their time and strength in working for other men’s wives and children, without any recompense.”

At the same time, “The strong man or the resourceful man had no more share of food, clothes, etc., than the weak man who was not able to do a quarter the other could.”

Bradford would note: “Community of property was found to breed much confusion and discontent.” No one had an incentive to work, so no one produced, and everyone was miserable.

Remember, this was a small group of people who shared common values, cared for each other, and had willingly joined philosophically to the colony’s arrangements. It’s just that socialism fails in practice whenever it is tried; sometimes it limps along, but ultimately the results are always the same.

Socialism, no matter what one calls it, always produces human misery.

After three years, the colony abandoned its “communal” life, lest they die off completely. Bradford wrote that colony leaders divided the land among the families and “allowed each man to plant corn for his own household, and to trust to themselves for that.”

As a result, Bradford added: “It made all hands very industrious, so that much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could devise, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better satisfaction.”

Private property rights and a free market carried the day. Labor was naturally divided, not politically imposed, and everyone utilized their skills to their own benefit, thereby increasing the productivity and happiness of the colony as a whole.

In the newly free society, where the local knowledge of Native Americans was combined with the techniques of Europe, the Pilgrims had a harvest bountiful beyond comparison.

The very first days of the American experience demonstrated what world history repeatedly proves: socialism fails, and fails miserably. Bounty is produced by liberty driven by self-governance, not central planning, even if it's well-intentioned.

We must remember that individual liberty is in the 21st Century, as it was in the 17th, a necessary and integral component of our general prosperity. And let us be thankful to God daily, not only for the material things we have but for the liberty of which He is the author.

Quote-Unquote

"We should rejoice, leap with joy, when socialist programs fail. Our country is in a mess because bad programs have bad effects. Why should that make us gloomy? Think how depressing it would be if socialism worked."

– H.L. Richardson

REMINDER:
The Texas Minute will return on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025.

Directory of Officials

* The new congressional boundaries will not take effect for representational purposes until January 2027.