01.27.2023

e-Newsletter - Week of January 27th

Howdy,

After celebrating a very merry Christmas and ringing in the New Year, I’m happy to put these boots back on the ground in D.C. and get back to working for Texans. Specifically now during National School Choice Week, I’ve been focusing on giving every child a fair chance to get a great education.

Tuesday, I introduced The Student Empowerment Act which allows all students to use 529 savings accounts to cover eligible educational expenses such as tutoring, standardized testing fees, and educational therapies for students with disabilities, among other educational expenses.

For over a decade, I’ve been the leading advocate for school choice in the Senate, and I’m proud to have authored the most far-reaching federal school choice legislation ever passed into law, which expands 529 savings accounts to cover K-12 education for every child in America.

I also introduced The Education Freedom Scholarships & Opportunity Act which would dramatically expand education freedom by creating $100 billion in federal tax credits over 10 years for contributions to nonprofit scholarship funds. If passed, it would be the most consequential federal education legislation since the GI Bill.

Our children are worth fighting for, and I’m committed to continue leading the fight for educational choice for each and every child in Texas and across the nation because a child’s opportunity to go a great school should not be limited by his or her zip code. Read the release here.

Monday, I introduced legislation to uphold the sanctity of elections in Washington, D.C. to prevent non-citizen voting – including voting by illegal aliens and embassy staff from foreign nations. Read the full release here.

Allowing non-citizens to exercise a right reserved for American citizens not only violates the constitutional principles our nation was founded upon, but also naively invites foreign meddling in our elections. Voting is a privilege and the tool by which American citizens exercise their say in who leads our country, how we spend our tax dollars, and what policies should be instituted. I am vehemently against unconstitutionally cheapening the votes of American citizens and ignoring the rule of law in this nation.

To see what I had to say about Biden’s Classified Documents click above ↑

Monday evening, I sat down to talk with Fox Business’ Dagen McDowell and Sean Duffy on the very first episode of their new show, The Bottom Line, to talk about the ongoing discovery of President Biden’s classified documents.

“It's a little bit amazing that it seems every day they find more and more and more classified documents. It makes you wonder where it's coming next. And the latest development you were just talking about that some of these documents are from his Senate tenure that I find really astonishing.”

To watch the full discussion, click above ↑

Later that same evening, I joined my friend Sean Hannity to speak to him about legislation I introduced earlier that day – The AMERICANS Act.

“I'm gonna keep fighting for every one of these soldiers, and sailors and airmen and Marines and Coast Guardsmen until justice is finally served.”

The legislation builds off of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2023, which included language from legislation I introduced last year to repeal the COVID-19 vaccine mandate in the Department of Defense and to require a report on whether DOD violated the religious freedom rights of service member’s who sought an exemption from the DOD COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The updated language in the AMERICANS Act includes measures not incorporated into the NDAA, including a requirement that the Secretary of Defense offer reinstatement and back pay to service members who were separated from service over the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate and to allow separated service members to receive an honorable discharge so they do not lose out on GI and VA benefits based on their concerns over the vaccine. Read the full release here.

Our military continues to feel the effects of the Biden administration’s reckless, misguided, and now-prohibited vaccine mandates. I’m glad that we were able to remove the COVID-19 vaccine mandate last Congress, but there is more work to do. The AMERICANS Act would correct the wrongs done to unvaccinated service members who were discharged for exercising their conscience.

To see my remarks in the Ticketmaster hearing, click above ↑

Tuesday, we discussed Ticketmaster in the Senate Judiciary Committee, during which one witness testified that Ticketmaster has ticketing contracts with the majority of NBA, NHL, and NFL arenas and stadiums.

I stand by the principles that free markets are good and monopolies are bad.

To view my conversation with Larry Kudlow about inflation, click above. ↑

“We're facing a debt crisis. The rampant inflation in this economy is caused by out of control spending.”

Wednesday, I met with cryptocurrency industry leaders from Satoshi Action Fund who were kind enough to bring by a coin.

That same day, I reintroduced the Adopting Cryptocurrency in Congress as an Exchange of Payment for Transactions Resolution, otherwise known as the ACCEPT Resolution. Read the release here.

Cryptocurrency is generating new jobs, encouraging entrepreneurs to invent new values and creating new hedges against inflation, and presenting new opportunities. It is also increasingly being used as a secure form of payment for goods and services. This is precisely why we, here at the United States Capitol, should increase accessibility and signal our support for the burgeoning cryptocurrency industry to those who visit Capitol Hill.

Later that day, I stood with my Senate colleagues to address the debt ceiling. To watch, click above. ↑

This week, I introduced legislation to prohibit the sale of American crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to any company under the control of the Chinese Communist Party, and prohibit the export of any crude oil from the SPR to China. Last year, I introduced similar legislation – the first of its kind in the House or Senate – to restrict who the President could sell America’s SPR oil to and was happy to see the new House Republican majority pass the bill earlier this year with an overwhelming bipartisan vote. Read the bill here.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve was intended to ensure that America had sufficient oil reserves in the event of an emergency. Instead, Joe Biden sold a portion of this critical national security asset to the Chinese Communist Party when the CCP was stockpiling oil for its own strategic use, and while Americans are paying higher and higher prices for fuel because of the Biden administration’s disastrous energy policies. We need to immediately act to stop this from happening in the future and unleash American energy.

Thursday, I attended a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Ukraine. ↑

“I believe the Biden administration should immediately go to the UN, invoke our snapback authority, and keep the embargo in place."

Rest assured, I will always fight for the best interests of Texas and our great nation, but this week in particular, for the shaping of the young minds that will one day lead it. God bless you all.

Keep Texas Strong,

READ: Incoming Ranking Member Cruz, Chair Cantwell Introduce Consumer Protection Bill on Recording Smart Devices

State Spotlight

Here are some of the Texans I met with this week in Washington, D.C.

Deep East Texas Council of Government

Houston Turkish American Business Delegation

And, here, you'll see my West Texas Regional Director, Bobbi Hanson, and Military Legislative Aide, Tim Dill, visited Dyess AFB in Abilene last week. ↓