ETJ Win
What to know: A federal court recently granted a preliminary injunction “stop[ping] the City of Austin from regaining extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ) over a swath of land west of the city, representing a temporary win for the group of landowners who sued.” The court’s decision preserves the Texas Legislature’s intent of creating a pathway out of city control for ETJ residents.
The TPPF take: State lawmakers gave ETJ residents a way to escape. Cities cannot overturn that.
“In response to obvious frustration with the ETJ system — which permits regulation without representation — the 2023 Texas Legislature passed a state law (SB 2038) that gives affected residents a way to escape. It’s critical that policymakers and the courts not allow this pathway to be eroded or undone by opportunistic cities motivated by a need for more money or greater control,” says TPPF’s James Quintero. “While the federal court’s decision is a welcome one, this latest episode signals a need for further legislative reforms to protect ETJ residents.”
A Feature, Not a Bug
What to know: According to WNYC, “Fallout continues” from the discovery that a “software glitch” put more than 6,000 non-citizens onto the New Jersey voter rolls.
The TPPF take: New Jersey’s discovery was the predictable outgrowth of a political culture that treats elections as a mere census exercise.
“This was not a mere coding mishap,” says TPPF’s Chuck DeVore. “The right to vote is not a universal human entitlement that magically attaches to anyone present on American soil. It is a sovereign privilege of citizenship. Noncitizen voting dilutes the votes of actual Americans and erodes public confidence in elections.”
Wokeness and Money
What to know: The Texas State Board of Education will soon evaluate a new “personal finance” curriculum authored by woke interests out of California.
The TPPF take: Next Gen Personal Finance has been outed as promoting instructional materials that advance racial grievance, in addition to taking an overall shallow approach to financial literacy.
“The State Board of Education should reject materials from any organization that produces Critical Race Theory-adjacent curriculum, and instead teach students not only how to manage money but how our economic system works,” says TPPF’s Matthew McCormick. “We are seeing the consequences of economic illiteracy in cities like New York and Chicago, where voters cannot see that the cost of regulation and taxation raises the cost of living and rent-control restricts supply.”