Ep. 460 ...It Just Can't Be a Loser
Texas Impact's Weekly Witness
The Texas Impact team is on the ground and churning out great content from the United Nations climate negotiations known as COP30 Belém, Brazil. Make sure you are following along on Texas Impact’s substack and YouTube as well as through Texas Impact’s media partnerships with the Austin Chronicle, Baptist News Global, and United Methodist Insight. This week on Weekly Witness, members of that delegation–Bee Moorhead, Rev. Becca Edwards, Dylan Le and Regina Banks join the conversation with updates from COP30. This content is important to help us understand the global...
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Ep. 459 Cotton Candy for Dinner: The November Election and What's Next
Texas Impact's Weekly Witness
The election is over, and even though there weren't big statewide or federal races on the ballot, local elections and good public policy matter, and so we are excited to welcome Texas Impact’s Outside Legislative Counsel Beaman Floyd back to the program to talk about the election results and where we go from here in the legislative calendar. Now that the constitutional amendment election is in the rearview mirror, we expect at some point to begin tracking interim hearings. The candidate filing deadline for Texas races is about a month out, so primary election season will be upon us soon. As...
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Weekly Witness Ep. 459 Cotton Candy for Dinner: The November Election and What's Next
Texas Impact's Weekly Witness
The election is over, and even though there weren't big statewide or federal races on the ballot, local elections and good public policy matter, and so we are excited to welcome Texas Impact’s Outside Legislative Counsel Beaman Floyd back to the program to talk about the election results and where we go from here in the legislative calendar. Now that the constitutional amendment election is in the rearview mirror, we expect at some point to begin tracking interim hearings. The candidate filing deadline for Texas races is about a month out, so primary election season will be upon us...
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Weekly Witness Ep. 458 Spaghetti Map: Elections, Redistricting, and Closed Primaries Converge
Texas Impact's Weekly Witness
This week we are recording during early voting before election day next Tuesday, November 4, and we know that all of you are doing everything you can to make sure your friends, neighbors and communities of faith are taking this election season. For many of us, the policy implications of what's going on in the world right now are hitting close to home. The government shutdown and corresponding freeze of SNAP benefits, and so many other vital programs, is impacting our communities, and that requires our attention. There are important elections on the ballot right now. The constitutional...
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Weekly Witness Ep. 457 Science + Faith for Informed Trans Allies
Texas Impact's Weekly Witness
This week we take a break from the news of the day to talk about work important to many of us in the faith community—caring for our siblings who are being systematically marginalized by harmful public policy. Our transgender friends and neighbors have been specifically singled out for attack since at least 2017 in high profile and public ways starting most prominently in Texas when the first “bathroom bills” started coming to the forefront. For many Texans, there is a lot of ignorance on the subject, so we thought this week we would bring in an expert to talk to us about the science and...
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Ep. 457 Science + Faith for Informed Trans Allies
Texas Impact's Weekly Witness
This week we take a break from the news of the day to talk about work important to many of us in the faith community–caring for our siblings who are being systematically marginalized by harmful public policy. Our transgender friends and neighbors have been specifically singled out for attack since at least 2017 in high profile and public ways starting most prominently in Texas when the first "bathroom bills" started coming to the forefront. For many Texans, there is a lot of ignorance on the subject, so we thought this week we would bring in an expert to talk to us about the science and...
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Weekly Witness Ep. 456 There's Always a Grift
Texas Impact's Weekly Witness
This week we are excited to be joined by State Representative Mickey Dollens from Oklahoma. You might ask why Texas Impact would have an Oklahoma state representative on the program. That’s a great question—and we have an answer. We met Rep. Dollens at a recent event focused on combating Christian Nationalism sponsored by Interfaith Alliance. He shared his story of crashing a meeting with the National School Chaplain Association and how that group and similar groups are pushing a Christian Nationalist agenda in state legislatures across the country. He has been leading the fight to protect...
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Ep. 456 There's Always a Grift
Texas Impact's Weekly Witness
This week we are excited to be joined by State Representative Mickey Dollens from Oklahoma. You might ask why Texas Impact would have an Oklahoma state representative on the program. That’s a great question—and we have an answer. We met Rep. Dollens at a recent event focused on combating Christian Nationalism sponsored by Interfaith Alliance. He shared his story of crashing a meeting with the National School Chaplain Association and how that group and similar groups are pushing a Christian Nationalist agenda in state legislatures across the country. He has been leading the fight to...
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Ep. 455 Working Together to Turn the Tide
Texas Impact's Weekly Witness
This week we turn our attention from Austin to the nation’s capitol, because the center of the policy universe right now is the government shutdown. The decisions of Congress in the coming weeks will impact every one of us. Joining us for the conversation this week is friend of the program, Min. Christian Watkins, a Texas transplant currently serving as the Government Relations Advocate with NETWORK Lobby. Christian has been in the middle of these conversations, providing training for faith based advocates, and just before we recorded today, he was part of a rally that included faith...
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Ep. 454 This is a Religious Story
Texas Impact's Weekly Witness
There is a lot going on in the world from government shut downs to statements and actions that threaten democracy and try to pit Americans against each other as enemies. And, in an increasingly polarized media landscape, it is hard to know where to get good, quality information. Religious media can play an important role in this landscape. There are many great religious media outlets, and this week we are talking with Mark Wingfield, who serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global. This is his second time working as a journalist, having worked in print journalism for 21...
info_outlineThis week we are talking with friend of Texas Impact, Cyrus Reed, Legislative and Conservation Director with the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. There has been a lot of talk about flooding following the July 4 floods, but spoiler–folks were actually talking about this during the regular session, and a lot of the conversations came through the budget bills. We'll walk down memory lane, all the way back to budget night and see where legislation on water and flooding landed by the end of the last (for now) special session.
Read Cyrus' breakdown of the $338 billion budget at www.sierraclub.org/texas/blog/2025/07/whats-in-the-texas-budget