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[Note: Yesterday’s brief sent out our first draft of the section on “2000 Mules” but didn’t include extended remarks. The full version is included today]

Today’s Stories

GREG ABBOTT is talking out of both sides of his mouth on education. He’s hoping you don’t notice.

Yesterday, the Governor gave a speech where he claimed to support school choice. That’s all well and good.

Unfortunately, the Governor’s endorsements in Texas House races tell a different story. If Abbott supports school choice in the manner he claims, he has a strange way of showing it.

Of course, Abbott’s posturing comes after alleged remarks he made to rural Republican lawmakers became public, forcing a backtrack.

Corey A. DeAngelis @DeAngelisCorey

BREAKING: Charlie Johnson: "My phone was lighting up from rural House members ... 'take a breath, just got off the phone with [Governor Abbott], he ain't gonna push a voucher bill.'" Is this true @GregAbbott_TX?

Michael Quinn Sullivan 🇺🇸 Ultra MAGA 🇺🇸 @MQSullivan

Greg Abbott is taking this position ONLY because of the dogged national pressure of @DeAngelisCorey. Great job, Corey! https://t.co/0pqqKLD7c0

Corey A. DeAngelis @DeAngelisCorey

BREAKING: Texas Governor Greg Abbott: "Empowering parents means giving them the choice to send their children to any public school, charter school, or private school with state funding following the student." https://t.co/pUAeLrYOVh

Also, his press conference came immediately after an election where conservatives appeared insurgent at the ISD level.

Aside: Abbott’s chief political consultant tells the lobby that the campaign has 17 million voter files.

LINA HIDALGO isn’t a star, much less rising. That Politico is calling her one is laughable.

The Castro brothers could at one time legitimately be called rising stars from Texas; they were credentialed and had an established base of power. Yet, even they collapsed in a heap of mediocrity.

While Hidalgo could have been confusedly considered formidable two years ago, at this point, her ceiling is clear.

The confusion for political observers outside of Texas observing Hidalgo is that she vaguely resembles the political profile of AOC. Hidalgo's just a low-rent version.

Setting aside her skill, even if Hidalgo manages to win in November, the political environment in Texas is not hospitable for upward movement (see: Castro brothers). This is another miscalculation.

Currently, the Judge is caught up in a scandal that looks like a case where there’s smoke; there’s fire. It remains to be seen if this is the case, but regardless, her fundamentals aren’t that impressive.

2000 MULES sketches out a plausible hypothesis for how fraud might have swung the 2020 presidential election.

However, it also highlights how the Trump team’s clown show effort that year was a catastrophically missed opportunity.

D’Souza’s film isn’t the “smoking gun” its most fervent supporters claim, but it ought to be the starting point for a more thorough investigation.

TL;DR version: Thousands of so-called “mules” deposited harvested or fraudulent ballots 3 to 5 at a time at unguarded drop boxes in critical swing states. With reasonable calculations, it’s not hard to get a sufficient number of votes in the right places to flip the states in question.

Enjoyable a film as it was, it seems like too little, too late. This is unfortunate because there were plenty of opportunities to present a coherent theory of the case in real-time. Again, that Trump’s team failed to do so is a significant factor in why events unfolded in how they did.

Contrast team Trump’s approach to election irregularities with team Bush’s twenty years prior.

Whatever you want to say about Dubya’s presidency or the Bushes more generally, you can’t deny that they had an intelligible strategy (and message) during the Florida recount.

James Baker (Aside: Not a fan) got in front of the cameras every day, explained the day's developments, and tied them into a coherent whole. Unlike Baker, the Trump team sent Rudy Giuliani with his dripping hair dye to talk about servers in Germany.

Then there’s the fact that D’Souza, in his movie, kept a disciplined focus on absentee ballot fraud. That compares unfavorably with the Trump team crawling down the rabbit hole of Dominion voting machines and “foreign hacking.”

D’Souza’s claims merit a lot of further attention. It’s just a shame that the case hasn’t presented this well the first time around.

ALLEN WEST, fresh off his loss in the gubernatorial primary, is angling to be the next leader of the NRA.

Hit the Links

Austin Media List

NCAA prepares to crack down on NIL; lawyers/sports agents say ‘bring it.’

Operation Lone Star gets first to win in court.

Democrats Abort their Midterm Chances

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TUE brief 5.10.22