Grassroots America - We the People

The Lobbying menu lets you see who appeared before committee - whether in person or in writing - to advocate for or against a bill. So if you went to Austin, you can look for yourself at GrassrootsPriorities.com. If you click into Filter Lobbying, you will be able to search by multiple criteria. Because thousands of people and hundreds of organizations did this, you need to pre-search for the person or organization first. You do this by typing in the last name of the person or the partial name of the organization. We'll use Austin. When you click Load Matches, it will load the people and organizations that match what you entered. Then you can choose from either the Person Lobbying dropdown or the Organization Lobbying dropdown. Then click Search. When a person or a group lobbies for a bill and it passes, or they advocate against a bill and it fails, this factors into the desired outcome percentage we display. When you look at desired outcome percentages, it's probably worth looking into why the Travis County Democratic Party outperforms our Republican Party of Texas in our Republican-controlled legislature.

The Lege Donors menu shows you the top five donors for each legislator and initially shows you the donors who cumulatively gave the most. At the top of the list - by far - Texans for Lawsuit Reform, and then you can see the legislators who received money from the group. You can also sort by legislator. We hear sometimes that it would be nice to see our legislators wear sponsor patches like NASCAR drivers do. Well, here you go. And finally, you can sort by amount. It's worth noting that top contributor David Middleton II is Texas Senator Mayes Middleton and that contribution is what he gave to his own campaign. Since he can self-fund, he does, and he doesn't ask people for contributions.

From the Committees menu, you can browse and look into the activities of the House and Senate Committees. If you click into a committee, you can then see who served on the committee and what bills were considered and when. Additionally, it shows you the vote within the committee to move the bill out of committee.

The bills menu allows you to explore the story behind each of the bills filed during regular session. While you can scroll through the bills, it's better to use the Filter Bills button to narrow down what you want to see. The filter window gives you many options, and you can use multiple filters if you like. You can search for a single bill by name or bill number. Let's use Matt Schaefer's good bill, HB 20, that would have created the border protection unit. When you enter the bill name, GrassrootsPriorities.com will show you all of the bills that contain what you entered. You'll see not just HB 20, but HB 200, HB 201, and so on, because they contain HB 20 in the name of the bill. Let's search for something more complex. Let's look for any GOP priority bill coauthored by Republican Kronda Thimesch that never made it out of committee. 42 bills match that criteria. When you choose to search for someone as a coauthor, it shows you the date they became a coauthor. Notice that there are a lot of dates in May. If we click into the first bill, we see that it was filed in November. Anyone can sign onto a bill as a coauthor after January 17. Will Metcalf signed on as a coauthor on the 22nd of March. The bill was referred to committee in February and never had a public hearing - effectively killing the bill. So why is it deep into May that three people on May 6th decide to then coauthor a dead bill? And that's not the only time that happened. Almost every bill in that list shares the same story - filed early, died in committee, and then in May Thimesch and others signed on as coauthor. Let's look closer at HB 3765. Each bill page shows you what happened to the bill, the caption (or brief description) for the bill, what committees first received the bill, and its authors and coauthors, sponsors and cosponsors. If a bill's author and joint authors (together shown as authors) are all from one party, then it's declared as either a Democrat or Republican bill. If members of both parties on shown as authors, then we consider it a bipartisan bill. Then we see the bill's history. We see the House record votes and Senate votes. And finally, we see those who witness list of those who advocated for or against a bill. When viewing a bill, sometimes you will see a monetary amount attached to it. Since all of our data comes from Texas Legislature Online, the official source of record for the Texas Legislature, these figures displayed come from the fiscal notes issued by the Legislative Budget Bureau. We sum up the totals for the Five-Year Impact and display that amount for you.

Birds of a feather flock together. Geese do this. Starlings do this. And Democrats do this. At GrassrootsPriorities.com, we look for when birds of a feather flock together - and we also notice when they don't. Think of those you know. You are most closely aligned with those who share the principles and values as you. When someone lines up against your principles and values, you know that these fundamental disagreements are critical. If you're a Republican, someone who flies in formation with the Democrats can't represent you. They disagree with you in principles and values. It's important that we see who it is that each legislator disagrees with the most. We highlight these greatest disagreements on our website at the legislator page. Every Democrat disagrees with Republicans the most. Every single one of the sixty-four Texas House Democrats disagree the most with Republicans. You see it here in the disagreements matrix. Based on every record vote taken in the House during regular session, we know this is true. What happens when we bring a Republican leader into this comparison? It looks like this. This Republican leader was one of the House Impeachment Managers - but like every Democrat, he disagrees most with Republicans. Birds of a feather flock together. In fact, over twenty of our Republicans disagree most with Republicans and not Democrats. If you click the button to view a legislator's differences with other representatives, we show you exactly how often they disagree. And if you want to see the actual votes where they disagree, you can click Compare Votes and we show you the facts. Does your representative fly in formation with the Democrats? Find your legislator and see for yourself.

A contested, partisan vote is where at least half of one party votes way on a bill and a third of the other party votes the other way. The question is: does the legislator join their own party or do they vote with the other party? Some might call this bi-partisanship or crossing the aisle, but any time this happens with our justices on the supreme court, we all feel betrayed. Democrat policies these days seek to reduce our God-given rights and grow government into something it was never intended to be. Feeling betrayed is appropriate at the legislative level just as it is on the court. To help with this analysis, we color-coded the vote breakdown. Red for Republican and blue for Democrat. The legislator in question is highlighted in yellow to help see which party they joined. As you scroll down through the votes, you can see the legislator crossing the aisle. For the number of votes where there was this partisan divide, the more often the legislator sided with the other party, that determines the percentage. The higher the percentage, the greater the betrayal. Texas House Republicans, on average, do this 24% of the time. Democrats, on average, only do this 11% of the time.

Visit https://grassrootspriorities.com

Every time Chief Justice Roberts sides with the liberals on the supreme court and disagrees with his fellow conservatives, we know it's a bad ruling and that we've lost a bit more of our freedom. Justice Roberts is an unpredictable wild card who can deeply hurt our rights as American citizens. Likewise here in Texas, when a Republican member of the Texas legislature disagrees with Republicans more often than with socialist Democrats, that can hurt your family. At GAWTP, we've looked at every record vote of our House Republicans during this past session and discovered that too many of our Republicans disagree most often not with liberal Democrats, but with other Republicans. We've put these facts together for you at our legislative transparency website, GrassrootsPriorities.com. On the home page of the website, you'll see a graphic that shows where our weakest Republican Representatives are in the Texas House. How do we define "weakest?" Just as we all know that Chief Justice Roberts is the weakest "conservative" on the supreme court for how often he sides with the unconstitutional liberals, we know that only the weakest House Republicans side too frequently with House Democrats. Any Republican who disagrees more with other Republicans before they disagree with a Democrat - especially with Democrat policies these days - can only be the weakest of Republicans. You should know that no Democrat in the Texas House ever disagrees more with other Democrats than they do Republicans. But 24 of our Republicans disagree most with a Republican before they ever disagree with a liberal Democrat. So how did we come we come to know all of this? As the founders of our country said, "Let Facts be submitted to a candid world." They got that right. Hiding from the truth is never a good idea. Our source for all of our data is Texas Legislature Online, the official website for the Texas Legislature. We got it straight from the source to give you the facts. Whenever the House takes a floor vote, that vote is recorded and displayed in the history for a bill. If you click into the link there, it will show the actual House journal and the breakdown of the vote. We downloaded all of that data, and reassembled it to give greater context and clarity to what happened during session. We color-coded every vote by political party. We noted the times when representatives disagreed when voting. We took all of that data and put into the GP website. We didn't cherry pick votes. We used every record vote during regular session. On the website's home page you can see who disagreed with whom the most. For each representative, you will see what we call the "comparison bar," and each comparison bar is filled with blue and red lines. Each blue line represents a House Democrat representative, and each red line represents a House Republican representative. On the right side of the bar are those representatives with whom that member has the greatest disagreements. We highlighted the top 25% of their greatest disagreements, the top 15, and the top 6. Then color coded each to make it easy for you to see. For Republicans who had any other Republicans in their top 15 greatest disagreements, we loaded those into a House District map of Texas and shaded these representatives and their districts purple - from light purple for those who disagree most with one or more Republicans to dark purple for those who disagree most with ten or more Republicans. That's the map you now see. We wanted to present you, the grassroots of Texas, with inarguable data. If you believe that we're losing Texas and America, agreement with Democrats and their bad big government policies can only accelerate the decline of the great lone star state. We see it in the supreme court. We see it in Congress. If we're honest, we see it in our Texas legislature. We don't believe you, the Republicans of Texas, will allow this decline to continue, if you are given irrefutable facts. If truly your aim is to keep Texas red, then we must unite on our common-sense principles and values. Republican legislators must stop illegal entry at our border. Republican legislators must secure our elections with fully auditable results for every race and every ballot. Republican legislators must reduce the size of government. Republican legislators must protect children and families. Texas Republicans throughout the state agree with these fundamental, common-sense issues. We cannot elect Republicans who side with progressive Democrats. That's just a recipe for purple - or even blue. And no true Republican ever wants that.

Every time Chief Justice Roberts sides with the liberals on the supreme court and disagrees with his fellow conservatives, we know it's a bad ruling and that we've lost a bit more of our freedom. Justice Roberts is an unpredictable wild card who can deeply hurt our rights as American citizens. Likewise here in Texas, when a Republican member of the Texas legislature disagrees with Republicans more often than with socialist Democrats, that can hurt your family. At GAWTP, we've looked at every record vote of our House Republicans during this past session and discovered that too many of our Republicans disagree most often not with liberal Democrats, but with other Republicans. We've put these facts together for you at our legislative transparency website, GrassrootsPriorities.com. On the home page of the website, you'll see a graphic that shows where our weakest Republican Representatives are in the Texas House. How do we define "weakest?" Just as we all know that Chief Justice Roberts is the weakest "conservative" on the supreme court for how often he sides with the unconstitutional liberals, we know that only the weakest House Republicans side too frequently with House Democrats. Any Republican who disagrees more with other Republicans before they disagree with a Democrat - especially with Democrat policies these days - can only be the weakest of Republicans. You should know that no Democrat in the Texas House ever disagrees more with other Democrats than they do Republicans. But 24 of our Republicans disagree most with a Republican before they ever disagree with a liberal Democrat. So how did we come we come to know all of this? As the founders of our country said, "Let Facts be submitted to a candid world." They got that right. Hiding from the truth is never a good idea. Our source for all of our data is Texas Legislature Online, the official website for the Texas Legislature. We got it straight from the source to give you the facts. Whenever the House takes a floor vote, that vote is recorded and displayed in the history for a bill. If you click into the link there, it will show the actual House journal and the breakdown of the vote. We downloaded all of that data, and reassembled it to give greater context and clarity to what happened during session. We color-coded every vote by political party. We noted the times when representatives disagreed when voting. We took all of that data and put into the GP website. We didn't cherry pick votes. We used every record vote during regular session. On the website's home page you can see who disagreed with whom the most. For each representative, you will see what we call the "comparison bar," and each comparison bar is filled with blue and red lines. Each blue line represents a House Democrat representative, and each red line represents a House Republican representative. On the right side of the bar are those representatives with whom that member has the greatest disagreements. We highlighted the top 25% of their greatest disagreements, the top 15, and the top 6. Then color coded each to make it easy for you to see. For Republicans who had any other Republicans in their top 15 greatest disagreements, we loaded those into a House District map of Texas and shaded these representatives and their districts purple - from light purple for those who disagree most with one or more Republicans to dark purple for those who disagree most with ten or more Republicans. That's the map you now see. We wanted to present you, the grassroots of Texas, with inarguable data. If you believe that we're losing Texas and America, agreement with Democrats and their bad big government policies can only accelerate the decline of the great lone star state. We see it in the supreme court. We see it in Congress. If we're honest, we see it in our Texas legislature. We don't believe you, the Republicans of Texas, will allow this decline to continue, if you are given irrefutable facts. If truly your aim is to keep Texas red, then we must unite on our common-sense principles and values. Republican legislators must stop illegal entry at our border. Republican legislators must secure our elections with fully auditable results for every race and every ballot. Republican legislators must reduce the size of government. Republican legislators must protect children and families. Texas Republicans throughout the state agree with these fundamental, common-sense issues. We cannot elect Republicans who side with progressive Democrats. That's just a recipe for purple - or even blue. And no true Republican ever wants that.

Go to https://grassrootspriorities.com