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AUSTIN – Rep. Tony Tinderholt of Arlington, a leading Republican hardliner in the Texas House who once ran for speaker, announced his retirement after six terms on Monday, the last day of this year’s session.

Surrounded by lawmakers of both parties, Tinderholt said he decided to retire knowing that there was a new generation of ultraconservative lawmakers in the House who would continue the movement he has helped lead for over a decade.

“I returned to this chamber with one goal: accomplishing as much conservative policy as possible, while humbly evaluating if it was time to go home and let others continue this vital fight for the conservative movement,” he said. “We’ve accomplished a lot in six sessions, but there’s still more work to be done.”

Tinderholt, a voice of the insurgent far-right faction of the Legislature who often disagreed with his more mainstream peers, acknowledged his colleagues from across the political spectrum in a tearful speech on the floor — while encouraging his hard-right colleagues to continue the fight.

“To my Democrat colleagues, I hope you know that I’ve always tried to treat you with the respect that you deserve as members of this body who are chosen by your districts to fight for the values you hold,” he said. “To the Republican colleagues that I’ve oftentimes disagreed with, please know that my absence next session will not remove in any way the pressure to deliver real conservative results to the people of Texas. And though we’ve disagreed at times, I’ve been truly honored to serve alongside each of you.”

His departure comes after last year’s earthquake election season. Those primaries ushered in over a dozen more conservative Republicans and significantly grew the ranks of the far-right faction from last session, when Tinderholt ran for speaker on a hardline platform.

“Texas is in good hands with each of you, and it’s time for me to step aside,” he said.

Rep. Nate Schatzline, R-Fort Worth, alluded to their evolving influence in the 150-member body with a grin: “The first vote I ever took in this chamber was to vote for you to be speaker, and we were only 73 votes away. We were so close.”

Tinderholt, now 54, joined the Legislature after more than two decades serving in the military, where he earned a Bronze Star and the Combat Action Badge after taking part in counter drug missions in the Air Force and volunteering in combat zones with the Army after the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Arguably,” he said to laughs, “my 12 years here has been one of the more difficult combat zones I’ve had the pleasure of serving in.”

He attributed his decision to retire to a desire to spend more time with his family, who surrounded him after his speech.

“To my wonderful wife, Bethany, and my children, Tyler and Brenan,” he said, choking up, “I’m coming home.”

“I get to be a dad,” he said. “I don’t have to miss practices and dances. I’m going to be able to do prayer at dinner with you, instead on FaceTime.”

Colleagues in both parties who spoke after his speech emphasized his integrity, respect for his peers and the influence he developed within his caucus.

“It’s not a matter of where we are when we come, it’s a matter of whether or not we grow,” Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston and a veteran lawmaker, said. “I’ve never seen a legislator grow as much as Tony.”

Tinderholt recalled one of the earliest lessons he learned in the House, when Dutton helped him hash out the details of a technical challenge he wanted to raise to a bill the Houston Democrat supported. When he asked Dutton why he was helping him, Tinderholt recalled Dutton saying that, “we’re colleagues, and I want you to look smart when you go up there and I beat you.”

“The lesson is we are colleagues and we are family,” Tinderholt said, adding that he had tried to impress that lesson onto freshmen Republicans over each session. “We’re going to fight, and we’re going to argue, and then we’re going to go into the members’ lounge, and we’re going to make up.”

Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read originally published article, click here.

WASHINGTON D.C. – Texas would further cement its role in enforcing immigration laws under a bill the state Legislature sent to the governor Sunday that would require most sheriffs to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Gov. Greg Abbott has signaled support for such an idea, and President Donald Trump — whose administration could receive a big personnel boost for its mass deportation ambitions if Texas joins the effort — endorsed the proposed law Friday as state lawmakers worked on the latest compromise.

The version of Senate Bill 8 that lawmakers ultimately voted to send to the governor would require sheriffs who run or contract out operations of a jail to request and enter agreements with ICE under a federal law that lets ICE extend limited immigration authority to local law enforcement officers. The bill would cover approximately 234 of the state’s 254 counties, according to a bill author.

Over the weekend, SB 8 received strong condemnation from some Democrats, high praise from immigration hardliners who had pushed all legislative session for a more sweeping bill, and ultimately a final green light from the GOP-dominated Legislature: The Senate approved the bill 20-11 and the House 89-52.

“It’s not just about securing the border, it’s about public safety,” Rep. David Spiller, a Jacksboro Republican who carried the bill in the House, said Sunday after the House vote. “The focus previously before President Trump got back in office was mainly [to] secure the border. That’s being done, but we still have to deal with what’s happened over the past four years — and quite frankly the years before that — so the focus is still the same but it’s slightly directed more toward just a public safety concern.”

The federal government offers three kinds of partnerships, known as 287(g) agreements, that local authorities can enter with ICE. SB 8 previously required sheriffs only to enter into agreements involving serving administrative warrants in jails. The final version allows sheriffs to request any of the three agreements, including one that lets ICE authorize local officers to question people about their immigration status while doing their daily policing in the field. The Trump administration revived that program after it fell into disuse due to allegations that it led to racial profiling.

Seventy-three law enforcement agencies in the state already have 287(g) agreements with ICE — including the state National Guard and the Texas Attorney General’s office, according to statistics published by ICE. Most of the agreements are for the two jail programs.

Before the votes in each chamber, Democrats raised concerns that SB 8 will erode immigrant communities’ trust in law enforcement, result in racial profiling by law enforcement and place a financial burden on counties that have long complained that such agreements add new responsibilities for already-strapped law enforcement agencies.

Sen. Charles Schwertner, a Georgetown Republican who co-authored the bill with Houston Republican Sen. Joan Huffman, dismissed the worries during the upper chamber’s Saturday debate, arguing in part that voters asked for it.

He also highlighted a grant program under SB 8, expanded under the final version, that would help to offset costs not covered by the federal government and said sheriffs would have discretion to select which program to participate in.

“The people of the United States and of Texas spoke very clearly last November regarding their concerns of illegal immigration and the concerns of criminal illegal aliens doing great harm to communities to Texas cities and counties,” Schwertner told his colleagues. “That’s why I filed this bill.”

Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a San Antonio Democrat who is an immigration lawyer, brought up a racial profiling documentary about Texas police pulling over and harassing Black drivers, whose belongings — like cars and jewelry — they would confiscate through forfeiture cases that became a boon for a local government, he said.

“Are you not afraid of the potentiality for racial profiling by police if they see what presumably looks like Mexican or Hispanic people in a truck, that they will not be pulled over simply because of the color of their skin?” he asked Schwertner.

“Senator, our world is not racially blind, color blind,” Schwertner responded. “There are obviously inherent biases of individuals. That said, there are ways to properly train … there is training to address the concerns of racial profiling.”

“Well, I’m glad that you agree with me that racism is still alive and well in this country,” Gutierrez said.

The Trump administration is trying to shorten training for the program, according to Schwertner’s testimony during a Senate panel hearing on the bill in March.

During debate on the House floor, some lawmakers pointed to evidence of racial profiling, most notably by the sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio, whose deputies regularly engaged in misconduct that violated the constitutional rights of Latinos stemming from the program, according to a federal probe.

“It is one of the most inhuman models,” state Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins, D-San Antonio, said.

SB 8 would become the latest move state lawmakers take to carve out the state’s lane in immigration enforcement. Other states have followed suit by passing similar laws that together could recalibrate states’ role in what was long held by courts to be the federal government’s sole responsibility.

Texas is home to about 11% of immigrants in the United States and an estimated 1.6 million undocumented persons — the second-most in the country after California.

Two years ago the Legislature approved a bill to grant Texas police the authority to arrest people suspected of being in the country illegally. During the Biden administration, the U.S. Justice Department sued Texas to stop the measure from going into effect, as did civil rights and advocacy groups.

The incoming Trump administration swiftly dropped the lawsuit, and the state has argued for the dismissal of a related legal challenge, arguing that the Department of Homeland Security and Texas law enforcement are already cooperating to enforce federal immigration laws.

Before then, the state in 2017 prohibited local government policies that prevent a peace officer from asking about a person’s immigration status, targeting municipalities that declared themselves “sanctuary cities” and directed local police not to cooperate with federal immigration officials during Trump’s first term.

“SB 8 will not make our communities safer, but it will force sheriffs to do the work of ICE in support of the federal government’s shameful mass deportation efforts,” Sarah Cruz of the ACLU of Texas said in a statement Sunday. “The legislature should not strip local communities of their ability to make decisions about what keeps them safe.”

Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read originally published article, click here.

WASHINGTON D.C. – The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to consider a lawsuit from conservative Texas activist Michael Quinn Sullivan against the Texas Ethics Commission, serving another blow to his more than decade-long challenge against the state agency that implements and enforces Texas’ campaign finance and lobbying laws.

Since 2014, Sullivan, who used to lead a powerful conservative advocacy group called Empower Texans, has challenged an ethics commission decision to fine him $10,000 for failing to register as a lobbyist in 2010 and 2011, repeatedly appealing his case before petitioning the nation’s highest court earlier this year to consider it. Last year, the Texas Supreme Court declined his request to overrule two state appeals’ court decisions refusing to toss out the fines.

Sullivan argued in a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court that Texas’ ethics laws violate the First Amendment rights of “ordinary citizens,” who are looking to speak to their elected representatives, with burdensome registrations and fees.

“States in some parts of the country are able to curtail the freedoms of speech, petition, and assembly by branding ordinary citizens ‘lobbyists’ and threatening them with severe financial penalties,” Sullivan’s lawyers wrote. “This Court’s review is sorely needed to clarify the circumstances under which the government may require citizens to pay a fee and obtain a license to communicate with their government representatives. Unless and until this Court does so, States can continue—as Texas has done here—to use such requirements to harass or silence those whose speech is disfavored.”

The Ethics Commission responded that Sullivan’s actions went far beyond an “average citizen who happened to visit with a lawmaker or who spent a day or two at the Texas Capitol during a legislative session.”

The Ethics Commission declined to comment.

In a statement, Sullivan’s lawyer Tony McDonald said they were grateful for those who urged the Supreme Court to take the case, including Attorney General Ken Paxton and Texas Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz.

“More and more Texans are waking up to the threat posed by the Texas Ethics Commission to the fundamental freedoms enshrined in our constitution,” McDonald said. “No Texans should ever be dragged behind closed doors to be investigated over their political speech.”

The court’s decision means the appeals court decision siding with the ethics commission stands. Sullivan will go back to a district court for a jury trial to determine how much he has to pay.

The ethics commission started investigating Sullivan after two former state lawmakers filed a complaint against him asserting that he had acted as an unregistered lobbyist. Sullivan has long contended that his activities with the now-defunct Empower Texans constituted journalism, not lobbying. But the ethics commission rejected that argument. In their 2014 ruling, they pointed to dozens of communications that he routinely sent to Republican lawmakers to discuss legislation and amendments, and encouraged them to vote in alignment with his organization’s values.

Sullivan also published a Fiscal Responsibility Index ranking lawmakers’ conservative bonafides based on their voting record each session. The commission found Sullivan used that scorecard to influence members’ votes as part of his job for Empower Texans, another example of lobbying.

In court, Sullivan repeatedly tried to argue the ethics commission didn’t have the constitutional authority to enforce the state’s ethics laws. Initially, Sullivan was able to get the case tried in a Denton County district court instead of Travis County, claiming he moved there.

A judge there ruled in Sullivan’s favor, but the ruling didn’t stick because the case got sent back to Travis County after an appeals court ruled Sullivan didn’t actually meet the residency requirements to have the case heard in Denton County from the start. The Travis County judge sided with the TEC, which Sullivan appealed and lost again. Meanwhile, Sullivan filed multiple other cases against the commission, all of which have been denied or dismissed in federal or state district court.

In recent months, Sullivan’s bid to the nation’s high court has drawn support from multiple high profile conservative officials and groups who wrote briefs in support of the activist, including the Cato Institute, the Manhattan Institute and Paxton. Cornyn and Cruz wrote a joint brief.

Paxton declined to have his office represent the ethics commission in the case, forcing the agency to hire outside counsel. Since 2014, the commission has put more than $1 million in taxpayer dollars toward outside legal help. In his brief, Paxton backed Sullivan’s argument that Texas’ lobby laws violate his first amendment rights.

“It is antithetical to the First Amendment that a private citizen working for a nonprofit organization dedicated to fiscal responsibility that does not provide gifts to lawmakers nonetheless must register with the government, make disclosures to the government, and even pay a fee to the government to simply email elected officials about matters of significant public concern,” Paxton wrote.

Cruz and Cornyn did not take a position on the fines imposed on Sullivan, but instead argued that the courts have not set a solid precedent about how courts should review lobbying statutes against free speech concerns.

“Applying the appropriate tier of scrutiny when evaluating lobbyist disclosure requirements is crucial to ensuring protected political speech is not unlawfully restricted or silenced,” they wrote.

In their response to the petition, the ethics commission said many of the authors of these friend-of-the-court briefs, including ones written by Paxton, and Cruz and Cornyn, “appear to assume, without any real analysis of the record — that Sullivan did nothing more than write a newsletter and work on a website that ‘rated’ legislators. Such characterizations belie the actual record that led to a Texas court granting summary judgements in the Commission’s favor on the merits of the claims that Sullivan violated Texas law.”

Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read originally published article, click here.