Reporting Highlights

• Statehouse Influence: Oil tycoons Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks have pushed the Texas statehouse to the far right by funding relentless primary campaigns against other Republicans.
• Christian Nationalist Beliefs: The Texas statehouse is advancing policies that threaten the separation between church and state.
• Trump Ties: Dunn is now linked to think tanks that are jockeying to influence a second Trump administration.

Last December, Sid Miller, the Texas commissioner of agriculture, posted a photo of himself brandishing a double-barrel shotgun on X and invited his followers to join him on a “RINO hunt.” Miller had taken to stumping in the March primary election against incumbents he deemed to be Republicans in Name Only. Not long after that, he received a text message from one of his targets, a state representative named Glenn Rogers. “You are a bought and paid for, pathetic narcissist,” it began. “If you had any honor, you would challenge me, or any of my Republican colleagues to a duel.”

Rogers, a […]