Just Plains Silly
What to know: Plains ISD is a very small rural Texas school district with expensive tastes. Despite teaching only 414 kids in 2025-26, the district plans to build a $21 million sports complex featuring “a two story football facility with updated locker rooms, weight rooms, coaches offices and a film room that is intended for football film, but will also serve other functions.”
The TPPF take: School district debt continues to reach new heights of absurdity.
“School districts are drowning in debt and this tiny school district’s extravagant new sports complex illustrates the depth of the problem. Things are completely out of hand,” says TPPF’s James Quintero. “It’s long past time for a stricter school district debt limit that better protects Texas taxpayers.”
For more on local debt, click here.
Melting ICE
What to know: A Democratic congresswoman vows that when Democrats regain power, they will “melt ICE” and “dismantle the Department of Homeland Security.”
The TPPF take: Red states need to take action on border enforcement—before it’s too late.
“Over the past several years, we have seen what a serious approach to border security can look like,” says TPPF’s Selene Rodriguez. “Under President Donald Trump, the federal government has taken long overdue steps to restore enforcement at the border, disrupt cartel operations that extend into American communities, and reassert the basic principle that immigration law should be enforced. But the job is nowhere near finished.”
For more on border and ICE, click here.
Not a Suicide Pact
What to know: Gov. Greg Abbott is defending his call to exclude Islamic schools with ties to terror groups from the new Texas school choice program.
The TPPF take: Gov. Abbott is right; the Constitution is not a suicide pact.
“The Constitution does not require Americans to ignore legitimate national-security risks, particularly when applicants are seeking to access public dollars,” says TPPF’s Mandy Drogin. “Texans expect their government to ensure that taxpayer money does not flow to institutions connected to terrorists or hostile foreign regimes.”
For more on school choice and Islamism, click here.