My name is Erin Davis Valdez, and I’m an education policy director at Texas Public Policy Foundation. I’m here to support HB 1605 both from the perspective of its value as good education policy and also from my perspective as a former educator and administrator.
Foreign Policy
Tackling Qatari Influence in Texas by the Horns
As an undergraduate at the University of Texas, I was tasked with investigating the funding sources of Hamas, the terrorist group that murdered 1,200 people, including 46 Americans, on Oct. 7, 2023. A truth became apparent: Qatar was not only one of Hamas’s biggest funders, having contributed billions of dollars, but also one of the largest foreign...
April 6, 2026