The Texas Sovereignty Act has been filed by Representative Cecil Bell in this 86^th Texas Legislative Session (2019).  The bill number is HB 1347.

The bill has been assigned to the State Affairs Committee in the Texas House.

I know lots of you have been eagerly waiting to take action that will help pass the Texas Sovereignty Act this session.  We now have several actions you can take to help move the legislation along.

ACTION 1:   Email (or call) your State Rep and ask them to co-author the Texas Sovereignty Act, HB 1347, authored by Rep. Cecil Bell.  If you don’t know your State Rep’s name, use this link to find out:  https://www.house.texas.gov/members/find-your-representative/ .  If you keep clicking long enough you will get to the rep’s page where you can find out their phone number.

Sadly, most pages for Reps do not have their email address on the page.  But you can likely guess it by simple using the following syntax:   [email protected] .   If that does not work, call the office number to get the right email address.  While you are on the phone, make the request verbally.

Do not assume that your rep will not take action.  My philosophy of lobbying is:  if you don’t ask, you are unlikely to get what you want.

Download  Summary of Texas Sovereignty Act – 2019 – HB 1347.  Attach this PDF to your email when making your request.  For Republicans, you may also want to attach this one pager with Texas GOP Platform planks supporting constitutional enforcement.

For your information, so you can thank them for their past support and urge them to support again, here are the State Reps who either joint authored or co-authored the Texas Sovereignty Act  last session (named HB 2338 in that 85^th session) that are still in the legislature: 

Joint Authors:  Cecil Bell (author), Dan Flynn, Rick Miller (has already joint authored again), James White, Matt Schaefer  (Note that the tradition is that the author works on who joins on as joint authors.  If you are in Rep. Cecil Bell, or Rep. Rick Miller’s district, thank them for leading on this vital issue. )

Co-Authors:  Kyle Biedermann,  Mike Lang (who is the new Freedom Caucus Chair and who has told me he will either joint or co-author), Jeff Leach (who is planning to support, as well), Will Metcalf, Jonathan Stickland, Valoree Swanson, and Bill Zedler

ACTION 2:  If you live in the following State Senators’ districts, please call them and ask them to lead on the Texas Sovereignty Act by filing the companion to HB 1347 in the senate:

SD 7 – Paul Bettencourt

SD 18 – Lois Kolkhorst

SD 30 – Pat Fallon

The syntax for deriving Texas Senate phone numbers is 512-463-01nn, where nn is the district number.  Example: Paul Bettencourt in SD 7 is 512-463-0107.

Most Republican Senators have told me that they will not lead by filing the bill.  That does not mean that they do not support the bill, but rather they are prioritizing other issues.

But we need a champion in the Senate.

I am telling Republicans this when I ask for their leadership:  There is a significant possibility that two years from now in the next Texas legislative session, we will be facing a socialist president and congress that is bent on taking everything Texans hold dear – our guns, our trucks, our airline travel, our cattle, our oil & gas industry, our wealth, and our liberty.  The Texas Sovereignty Act is a set of processes by which Texas can more rapidly respond to such a situation.  The time to build a firewall is before you are in the raging inferno.  We need action THIS SESSION.

If staffs want more information on this, have them contact Tom Glass at 832-472-4726 or via email at [email protected] .

ACTION 3:  You can help us communicate better with you on items like this if we have more information than we have on you through Facebook.  It will help to know your voting address, your email, and your phone.  Please help in that respect by going to https://www.txce.org/join and providing that information.  We have it for a lot of you, but it will not hurt to duplicate if you are not sure that we do.

ACTION 4:  Educate yourself on the arguments for and against constitutional enforcement.  Our website is a good standalone site to introduce you to the concept.  The FAQS page is especially helpful in that regard:  https://www.txce.org/faqs .