Never underestimate the ability of the government to muck something up. That’s the subtext of a recent report from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) detailing its failures to comply with the Death in Custody Reporting Act (DCRA). For those unwilling to sift through the laundry list of excuses, the short summary is that the DOJ doesn’t know how...
Every time we open a web page, we are being monitored. Not by the people in our houses, nor by the government, nor private investigators, nor foreign agents—but by our devices themselves. That’s because data is the most valuable resource on earth—more valuable than gold, oil, or diamonds—and everything we do is data. Companies like...
A draft of the city of Austin’s 2023 legislative priorities was released last week and already many people are sounding the alarm over its anti-taxpayer bent. For instance, in the just-published document, the city suggests using its taxpayer-funded lobby muscle to oppose legislation strengthening the voter-approval tax rate, fight against proposals to enact a local...
Thirteen years in the trenches serving homeless women with children reinforced a grand life lesson for me: “treat a person as he or she is and watch them remain so. Treat a person as he or she can be and watch them become so.” In our government’s sincere attempts to help the homeless, we have...
Journalist Hector de Mauleón dropped a bombshell in his Sept. 19 column, revealing leaked diplomatic cables alleging the campaign of incoming Tamaulipas governor Américo Villarreal received funding from the Cartel del Noreste—which dominates the Nuevo Laredo crime plaza. Villarreal won the June 5 gubernatorial contest for the ruling MORENA party, taking 50.27% of the vote...
Loyal iPhone users are familiar with ever-rising standards: “bringing incredible speed to everything you do,” costing only a mere $1000, and minus the functionality of a headphone jack or charging port. And many customers do in fact find the faster speeds, higher definition cameras, and longer lasting batteries to be a good enough value add...
“One step—that’s all it would take to be in Mexico right now,” I thought as I stared through an open gate of the Arizona border wall, and seemingly into a different world. Cochise County is a stunning 6,300 square miles with 83 miles of border backed up against Mexico. The mountains are rocky and beautiful,...
Despite what seems like an unrelenting flow of disagreements on political and public policy issues, it is important we come together to solve important problems — especially when it involves the most vulnerable among the next generation. While our organizations, the Texas Public Policy Foundation and Texans Care for Children, do not always agree on every policy issue, we do...
Before the Uvalde school attacker perpetrated obvious felonies such as capital murder and aggravated assault — before he even pulled the trigger — he had already committed numerous crimes. Among them was bringing a firearm on school premises, making a menacing public display of the weapon, and trespassing on school property. Some people think there...
I just got back from another fact-finding trip to our disintegrating southern border, this time in Arizona where I was part of a group that met with scores of elected sheriffs at the Southwest Border Sheriff’s Coalition conference. What I discovered was terrifying. With Biden and Congress refusing to act to secure the border, what can be...
We all expect voters to have the final say in election questions. A solemn acceptance of the votes cast, win or lose, has been the bedrock of American politics since the inception of the nation—to ignore it would be to deny the very essence of democratic governance and embrace a type of tyranny that elevates...
Here’s the bad news: school district boundaries restrict educational opportunities for Texas’s 5.4 million students. Here’s the good news: a handful of common-sense reforms would remove key barriers for families seeking alternative education environments for their kids. That’s the main conclusion of our recent study on the Lone Star State’s student-transfer law, in which we evaluated student-transfer...