Energy & Environment

Reversing Trump Methane Regulations Won’t Help the Environment

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...

August 10, 2021

Public Safety

Will Defund The Police Lead To Federal And National Guard Patrols In Big Cities?

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...

August 10, 2021

Health Care

A New Prescription: Direct Primary Care in the Public Sector

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...

August 9, 2021

K-12 Education

North Texas school districts must take responsibility for their financial woes

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...

August 6, 2021

Local Government

Why Taxpayer Funded Lobbying Should be a Priority in the Second Special Session

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...

August 6, 2021

Economy

Strong Jobs Report Undermined by Inflation

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...

August 6, 2021

Family

Adoptees Want Answers—Let’s Make Those Answers Easier to Find

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...

August 5, 2021

Immigration

Biden Extends Public Health Order that can Slow Illegal Immigration

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...

August 3, 2021

Economy

Swing and a Miss: Economy Growing Much Slower than Predicted

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...

August 2, 2021

K-12 Education

Competency Based Education Emphasizes Skills, While Seat Time Focuses on Minutes

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...

July 30, 2021

Health Care

Surprise! Why We All Need Hospital Price Transparency

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...

July 29, 2021

Taxes & Spending

Reject Democrats’ Reckless Spending Proposals

President Biden and Congressional Democrats have proposed roughly $6 trillion in new spending over a decade of hard-earned taxpayer dollars. To put this into perspective, this exceeds the economic output of every country except the U.S. and China, matches the $6 trillion authorized for COVID-related items since the pandemic—with nearly $1.5 trillion unspent—and exceeds the...

July 29, 2021