Is a criminal conspiracy going on in plain sight? Major banks and investment firms are conspiring with radical environmentalists to deny lending and investments to fossil fuel companies—jeopardizing our economy, energy future, and the rule of law. A new white paper from Ambassador C. Boyden Grey for the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Life:Powered project exposes, for the...
Amid the seemingly endless debate over infrastructure proposals, Congress passed a resolution that’ll have significant negative consequences for U.S. oil and gas production. Using the Congressional Review Act (CRA), Congress reversed the Trump administration’s changes to regulations of methane—also called natural gas—from production wells and pipelines. The use of the CRA means that the Obama-era methane rule...
Violent crime is mounting in America. Many reasons—excuses, mostly—have been proffered for this: COVID-19 lockdowns, unemployment, the Defund the Police movement and its budgetary fruits, largely tolerated urban looting and rioting, police reluctance to enforce the law in high-crime areas for fear of being accused of civil rights violations, and soft-on-crime leftist prosecutors. The ramifications...
In July, the University of Houston Medical School announced a bold new program—it will open a direct primary care clinic on the campus of Memorial Herman Southwest Hospital. The new DPC facility—aimed at low-income Houston residents—is to be the first in a network of such clinics. Low-income and uninsured Texans stand to benefit from this...
Everyone knows the pandemic hit school finances hard, but districts shouldn’t make COVID-19 the scapegoat for all of their money problems. While the virus certainly has had a fundamental role in precipitating financial hardship, for many districts, much of the woe is of their own making. Up and down the Dallas-Fort Worth area, districts are...
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott just announced that he’ll convene a second special session to begin at noon on Saturday, Aug. 7. The Governor’s call includes 17 separate agenda items, but at least one high-profile item seems to be missing—a ban on local governments using tax dollars to hire lobbyists. The practice is one that’s long...
June’s jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics comfortably surpassed expectations, with non-farm payrolls increasing by 943,000, compared with an expected increase of 870,000. The unemployment rate fell from 5.9% to 5.4% with the number of unemployed falling by 782,000 to 8.7 million. The Labor Force Participation Rate increased slightly to 61.7%. Highlighted Sectors...
Adoption—it’s a tricky thing to get right. Being an adoptee myself, I speak from experience. Making sure the family and the adoptee are the right fit is everything. But we often forget the process doesn’t end there—especially for the child. Currently in the state of Texas, accessing original birth certificates, records, and contacts from the...
Backed into a corner by circumstances at the border and growing pressure from Congress, the White House on Monday renewed a public health order—Title 42—that allows the Border Patrol to turn migrants back at the border over COVID-19 concerns. That pressure from Congress came in the form of a discharge petition on a bill that...
The prognosticators were wrong again about the nation’s economy in the second quarter, and poor policies explain the disappointment. From April to June, real gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 6.5% at an annualized rate—about one-fourth slower than the 8.4% some expected. In normal times, a 6.5% growth rate would be phenomenal, but these aren’t...
When Texas public school students return to the classroom later this month, the state’s portion of their educating funding will be based on a number of factors, including whether their seat is in their seat. That’s the current model for school funding in Texas—it’s partly determined by the number of minutes that a student is...
In March, my 18-year-old brother fell and broke his nose (in my experience, that’s what little brothers do). He took himself to the emergency room, to see if it was truly broken—and to find out what he should do about it. He got his answer—and a $14,000 hospital bill. Instead of a simple X-ray, he...