The Arena

In The Arena we will discuss Texas politics, policy, and culture from a liberty perspective. Our commentary will cover local, state, and national items of interest to Texans. As it did during the 83rd Legislative Session, our commentary and analysis will draw heavily on our Liberty Principles. These are the principles we use to evaluate legislation and they are the principles that will inform our issue coverage here in The Arena. We don’t claim that these principles constitute a comprehensive definition of liberty, they are simply our areas of focus within the broad category of liberty.

We are an organization based not on party or person, but on principle. At its core, our philosophy is that liberty ought to be expanded and government ought to be contracted in size, scope, and cost. In our endeavor to promote liberty, we will be equal opportunity critics without regard for party affiliation when we see politicians encroaching on liberty. We will happily applaud when our candidates, elected officials, administrative policy makers, and institutions support liberty and we will call them out when they do not. Consistent with our earlier pledge to not get involved in elections, ...

Fraudulent callers have spoofed our phone line. If you have received a phone call in which the caller either hung up without saying anything or asked for information about your medical history and the call appeared to originate from our phone number, please disregard the call. It appears that we have been the target of phone spoofing fraud. Phone spoofing is when someone places a phone call but uses a service to make it appear on Caller ID as though the number actually originated from another number. In this case, the fraudulent caller appears to have robo-called hundreds of cell phones and put our number in the Caller ID.

To be clear, we did not place the phone calls and we do not know who placed the phone calls. This fraud is disturbing and likely illegal under the federal Truth in Caller ID Act. If you continue to receive such calls, please gather as much information as you can and pass it along to us so that we may inform the proper authorities.

The May 8 Floor Report is updated to reflect the Supplemental House Calendar for all bills scheduled for second reading. As a reminder, except for rare occasions we do not include bills on third reading in our report.

Our Floor Report for April 22 is updated to reflect the following additional bills not included in the originally published version.

SB 307 – To be considered on third reading. This was considered on Friday, April 19 in lieu of HB 362. Our analysis of HB 362 can be found on the April 19 Floor Report.

The following House Bills appeared in previous Floor Reports but were postponed until today.

HB 1902 – Originally scheduled for consideration April 9.

HB 1905 – Originally scheduled for consideration April 11.

HB 519 – Originally scheduled for consideration April 17.

Due to House passage of several highly objectionable amendments to SB 1 today we are withdrawing our support from this legislation and changing our vote recommendation to NEUTRAL. An amendment to authorize the expansion of Medicaid, as well as an amendment to keep kids in failing schools by preventing the funding for some of the options for school choice, constitute a significant blow to liberty in Texas. We cannot recommend passage of SB 1 in the House at this time. We hope to re-evaluate our recommendation again before final passage contingent on the outcome of amendments yet to be voted on. Stay tuned.

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