Perhaps he was crying out for help when Rep. Jeff Leach highlighted an attack ad against him by saying he “didn’t care” and said that the very specific accusations about a bill was “trash.”
A now-deleted post from Leach highlighted a commercial very few people would have seen otherwise.
The post was in response to a commercial reposted by the indefatigable Brad Johnson of The Texan. You can click the image to watch on his X.
The commercial makes the following claim:
When you’re hurt by a semi truck driver who can’t read or speak English, juries have a right to know. That’s the law in Texas but representative Jeff Leach tried to change the law to protect truck drivers who don’t speak English. Leach wants to stop the driver’s inability to read or speak our language from automatically going to the jury.
This claim is a big yikes, because we all live in fear of the illegal alien driver, particularly if they have no insurance and especially if they are driving a semi truck.
We immediately launched an investigation into HB 4866 and found the claims to be extremely true.
The bill is written in a very legally confounding manner, linking to several other sections of Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code. This is where the lawsuit people live and get rich. It is so vague as to it’s meaning that no casual Texas politics enjoyer would ever catch it, which is why we are so thankful that Representative Leach’s conscience broke through and cried out for help.
Everything about this bill is a smoking gun that the rich lawyers who control the levers of power in Texas use issues like cheap, deregulated labor to enrich themselves and their connected corporate interests at the expense of the people of Texas and their future.
We all intuitively know this is how things are run—that politicians are bought off to do nothing about immigration—but this time we actually caught them.
We will lead with the substance of the claims and bill.
Claim:
Jeff Leach tried to change the law to protect truck drivers who don’t speak English. Leach wants to stop the driver’s inability to read or speak our language from automatically going to the jury.
We made this low-effort cartoon to illustrate what the bill means in practice, and then we will look at all the Republicans who went along with this, before finally getting into possible reasons why.
HB 4688 example scenario for dummies:
HB 4688 narrows what evidence juries can hear in truck crash lawsuits. Regulation violations (like not speaking English) would only be presented to the jury if it directly caused the crash.
Obviously the bill does more than shield companies over English rules, it may also let them get away with violating plenty of other regulations.
Here are the House members who signed onto this disastrous bill:
So what is the point of this? Why would they do this?
You will have the answer by the end.
Obviously, excessive THC use is in play, given how dumb this is.
THC theory remains unproven.
Sometimes, however, the situation is much more straightforward.
For example, an identical bill passed in the Senate was introduced by Brett Hagenbuch [R- 30/12] who himself OWNS a TRUCKING COMPANY.
Yes, a Senator who owns a trucking company authored a bill to loosen regulations on trucking companies!
Welcome to Texas politics.
Thankfully this bill never passed. But you wonder how many similar scams have slipped by?
You might have thought to yourself, “who would want to loosen regulations like this when we have all these problems with trucks drivers.”
The House Committee report shows that half the people that testified in favor of this bill are from Texans for Lawsuit Reform.
Many people are saying TLR is why conservatives in Texas can’t have nice things, and why Texas is always one of the last red states to pass any given conservative legislation.
Simply put, this was a TLR-backed bill to give one more edge to illegal aliens in Texas.
Those who benefit:
select corporations
illegal aliens
Republican politicians
Those who get screwed
Texans
We looked up each House Member’s campaign donation history to see how much they are being paid by TLR, with the working hypothesis being “they are passing bad legislation because they are paid to do it.”
For the list of authors and coauthors on the bill:
On average, TLR makes up about 36% of each candidate’s top 5 donors.
For 38 of 62 candidates (61%), TLR is their #1 donor.
Altogether, this group has received $22.65 million from TLR.
The median TLR amount received is $153,668.
The “million-dollar club” (all with TLR as their top donor):
Leach, Lopez, Button, Caroline Harris, Hull, Lujan, Meyer, Shaheen, Tepper (9 total).
Most reliant on TLR (share of top-5 donations):
Carl Tepper (94.7%)
Teresa Wilson (87.95%)
Caroline Harris (70.65%)
Richard Hayes (65.53%)
Giovanni Capriglione (62.47%)
Note: this data is from Transparency USA, and we are not responsible for anything they messed up
And just like that, it’s suddenly not so mysterious why things are the way they are in Texas. There simply is no donor giving millions of dollars to politicians demanding they lower the cost of housing by booting out millions of squatters.
In Texas, millions of votes get drowned out by millions of dollars.
It’s also likely these Reps never even read the bill before signing on, but good luck getting them to admit that.
