When the Texas Legislature convenes every two years, the state’s 150 House members and 31 Senators meet to deliberate, debate, and pass laws that will govern the lives of 30 million Texans. Covering this process is essential to transparency and accountability in government, but the ability to do so is tightly controlled. And the man holding the keys to access? Steven D. Adrian, Executive Director of the Texas House Business Office.

Adrian is the gatekeeper of ALL press access to the Texas House of Representatives. Any journalist wishing to cover legislative proceedings must apply through his office for media credentials. Each session, applicants go through an approval process dictated by House Administration Committee Rules. In theory, this process ensures that only legitimate journalists gain access. In practice, however, it has become a bureaucratic cudgel used to keep out independent and conservative journalists who aren’t part of the Austin “good ol’ boy” media club.

A Process Designed for Exclusion

On December 9, 2024, I submitted my application for media credentials to the Texas House, complete with all required documentation. After weeks of silence, I received a response on December 30—not an approval or denial, but a request for additional information.

I submitted my response on January 28, 2025—fully answering all questions. On February 19, I sent a stern letter demanding a response and the requesting the ability to pick up my credentials… as my Texas Constitutional Rights provide. Within hours, I received a letter from Adrian himself: my application was “refused by operation of House Administration Committee Rules” for failing to meet the five-day response deadline. “This action is not subject to further review,” the letter concluded. So, five days … that’s all you get to respond … five days.

A rule designed to ensure legitimacy was instead weaponized as a pretext for exclusion.

Ok, so I clearly didn’t submit my response in time … That’s on me. But that’s not the whole story. I immediately checked online to find that, indeed, they are still accepting applications … even after rejecting mine for being late. One might call this brain-dead bureaucracy.

So, I submitted a fresh application the very next day, February 20, citing the Texas House Media Credentials website, which explicitly stated that applications were still being accepted as of February 18.

Adrian’s response? Another rejection, this time citing the exact same vague inability to determine whether my publication, Texas Liberty Journal, met the eligibility criteria. Even though, they had already received my response from the first application … albeit late. It seems that it was all too ‘unclear‘ to Mr. Adrian. Despite nearly four years of continuous publishing, 116 articles, and clear adherence to the House’s requirements, Adrian’s office claimed “uncertainty” over whether my work constituted journalism.

That’s how they getcha. They don’t say no … they say they are “unclear”, then send you a notice on a Friday afternoon … at 4:00 pm. And if you don’t respond within the 5 days …. you – are – out. Hey, it’s not their fault that you didn’t follow the rules. See how this game is played?

Moving the Goalposts

The rejection letter dated February 26, 2025 that I received, was a masterpiece of bureaucratic obfuscation. The House Business Office suddenly needed to confirm:

• Whether Texas Liberty Journal was a for-profit entity supported by advertising or subscription revenue.
• Whether it was independent of lobbying or special interest groups.
• Whether I personally was involved in lobbying or paid advocacy.
  

All of these criteria had already been met and documented in my previous submissions.

Undeterred, I responded the next day, with an exhaustive rebuttal. I provided links to our publication’s website, proof of financial independence, and a clear declaration of editorial autonomy. I attached exhibits proving our operational history and revenue sources. I left nothing to chance.

Yet, as of March 12, 2025—two weeks later—I have received no response. Maybe Mr. Adrian is just too busy to respond. Maybe he was too busy cashing his $257,985 salary check.

The Bigger Picture: Who Gets In, Who Gets Shut Out

This isn’t just about one journalist or one publication. The Texas Legislature meets only once every two years for 140 days. By delaying and denying credentials, Adrian’s office effectively silences voices that might challenge establishment narratives.

Meanwhile, legacy media outlets and Austin insiders waltz through the credentialing process unimpeded. The Texas Tribune, Houston Chronicle, and Dallas Morning News have no trouble gaining access. Their reporters are not subject to nebulous “uncertainty” about their qualifications. The unspoken reality is that independent, conservative, and alternative journalists are held to a different standard—one designed to exclude.

And lest I not be completely forthcoming … this is NOT the first time. Two years ago, I went through the same process. But back then, I was just getting started, and while I still met the qualifications, I was too naive to understand that this was a sick game they were playing. So I just let it go. But now, I’m a little more wise … and a lot more pissed off.

Accountability and the Public’s Right to Know

The Texas Constitution guarantees a free press, and the public has a right to access unfiltered information about their government. When an unelected bureaucrat like Steven D. Adrian, who has been employed by the state for 32 years, controls which journalists can report from the House floor, it raises serious questions about transparency, press freedom, and political gatekeeping.

If media credentials are to serve their intended purpose—ensuring legitimate, professional coverage of the legislative process—they must be applied fairly and consistently. The House Business Office should not be a tool for suppressing dissenting voices or protecting lawmakers from scrutiny.

For now, my application remains in limbo, buried in Adrian’s bureaucratic black hole. But this fight is bigger than me. It’s about whether Texas remains a place where the press can hold government accountable—or whether access to lawmakers is reserved only for those willing to play by the establishment’s rules.

One thing is clear: if Steven D. Adrian is the gatekeeper, then someone needs to hold him accountable for who he lets in—and who he keeps out. It’s time for Steven Adrian to retire.

HOUSTON, TX — On Tuesday, March 4, 2025, the hallowed halls of Congress bore witness to a spectacle that would make the Founding Fathers recoil in disgust. Representative Al Green (D-TX), the long-serving voice of Texas’ 9th District south of Houston, turned President Donald Trump’s joint address into a personal soapbox, erupting in a tantrum that ended with his forcible removal from the chamber. Two days later, on Thursday, March 6, the House delivered a rare and deserved censure, with a 224-198 vote that saw ten Democrats break ranks to join Republicans in condemning Green’s antics. What followed was a screaming match on the House floor—a fitting capstone to the Democrats’ descent into petulant disorder.

Green’s outburst was no spontaneous act of passion. It was a calculated middle finger to decorum, tradition, and the very principles that undergird our constitutional republic. As President Trump spoke of his electoral mandate—a mandate secured by the American people in November 2024—Green leapt to his feet, brandishing his cane like a prop in some low-budget melodrama. “You have no mandate!” he bellowed, his voice cutting through the chamber as he railed against Trump’s supposed plans to “cut Medicaid.” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), a man tasked with maintaining order in an increasingly fractious body, issued stern warnings. Green ignored them. The Sergeant at Arms was summoned, and the 77-year-old congressman was escorted out to a chorus of Republican cheers—and, tellingly, Democratic silence.

This wasn’t Green’s first rodeo. The veteran lawmaker, who’s clung to his seat since 2005, has a history of grandstanding that stretches back to his early pushes to impeach Trump in 2017. A self-styled “civil rights advocate,” Green’s resume boasts arrests for protests outside embassies and a decade-long stint leading Houston’s NAACP chapter. But Tuesday’s stunt wasn’t noble dissent—it was a cheap shot at a president addressing a joint session, a moment meant to reflect the unity of our governing institutions. Instead, Green gave us a glimpse of the Democrats’ true face in 2025: unhinged, undisciplined, and utterly incapable of rising above their partisan bile.

The House’s censure vote on Thursday was a necessary rebuke, though it barely scratches the surface of what’s wrong with Green and his ilk. The resolution, spearheaded by Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA), passed with bipartisan support—a rarity in these polarized times. Two members voted “present,” one of them Green himself, who couldn’t even muster the dignity to stand by his own disruption. Speaker Johnson read the censure aloud as Green, surrounded by fellow Democrats, launched into a rendition of “We Shall Overcome”—a civil rights anthem cheapened by its use as a prop in this circus. What followed was pure chaos: a screaming match between Democrats and Republicans that turned the House floor into a scene more befitting a barroom brawl than the people’s chamber.

Let’s not mince words: Green’s behavior, and the Democrats’ tacit endorsement of it, is an affront to the Constitution itself. Article I vests Congress with the power to govern, not to grandstand. The House isn’t a stage for personal vendettas or theatrical protests—it’s a place where representatives are duty-bound to uphold order and reason, even in disagreement. Green’s refusal to heed Johnson’s calls to sit down wasn’t just a breach of decorum; it was a rejection of the very framework that keeps our republic from sliding into mob rule. And the Democrats’ response—singing hymns while the chamber dissolved into anarchy—only underscores their contempt for that framework.

The broader context makes this episode even more galling. Trump’s address came five months after a decisive electoral victory, one that handed Republicans the House, the Senate, and the popular vote—a trifecta not seen in decades. Democrats, still licking their wounds, had been urged by their leadership to show restraint during the speech. Green ignored that directive, as did others who walked out or heckled in quieter tones. Reps. Maxwell Frost (FL), Jasmine Crockett (TX), and a handful of others staged their own mini-rebellions, but Green’s was the loudest—and the most shameful. This wasn’t resistance; it was a tantrum from a party that’s lost its moorings.

Conservatives, of course, aren’t surprised. Green’s track record—impeachment crusades, cane-waving histrionics—reads like a playbook for the modern Left: when you can’t win at the ballot box, disrupt the process. But what’s truly abhorrent is how this behavior erodes the trust Americans place in their institutions. The House isn’t a sandbox for overgrown children; it’s a bulwark of liberty, a place where the people’s will is meant to be hashed out with grit and grace. Green and his Democratic cheerleaders forgot that—or, worse, they don’t care.

The censure itself is a slap on the wrist—a symbolic condemnation with no real teeth. But it’s a start. Ten Democrats crossing the aisle to support it signals that even some in their ranks are fed up with the clown show. For constitutionalists, though, the stakes are higher than party lines. We’re watching a slow-motion assault on the norms that keep our government functional. If Green’s outburst goes down as just another blip in the news cycle, we’re one step closer to a Congress where shouting matches replace debate, and the rule of law bows to the rule of the loudest.

Texas’ 9th District deserves better than Al Green. So does the nation. On March 4, he didn’t just embarrass himself—he embarrassed the republic. And on March 6, when the House rightly censured him, the Democrats’ screaming response proved they’re more interested in theater than governance. The Constitution demands more. We should, too.

For decades, the United States has cloaked itself in the sanctimonious garb of “defender of democracy,” wagging its finger at tin-pot dictators and third-world kleptocrats while its own intelligence apparatus—the CIA, NSA, and their shadowy cousins—ran roughshod over sovereign nations like a geopolitical wrecking crew. The evidence isn’t buried in conspiracy forums; it’s strewn across the historical record, plain as day. In 1953, the CIA orchestrated the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, installing the Shah to secure oil interests for Western elites. A year later, they toppled Guatemala’s Jacobo Árbenz over fears his land reforms threatened United Fruit Company’s profits—capitalism’s sacred cow. Fast forward to 2011: the NSA’s mass surveillance fingerprints were all over the Arab Spring, destabilizing regimes under the guise of “spreading freedom,” while CIA black sites waterboarded their way through the War on Terror. From Chile to Ukraine, the playbook’s the same—subvert, manipulate, install. Rinse, repeat.

This isn’t noble statecraft; it’s a global power grab dressed up as patriotism. And here’s the rub: what starts as foreign meddling doesn’t stay foreign. Power, as Lord Acton warned, corrupts—and absolute power? That’s the Deep State’s calling card. Somewhere along the line, the unelected bureaucrats in Langley and Fort Meade stopped seeing themselves as servants of the Constitution and started acting like its overlords. Elected leaders, meanwhile, caught the scent of the grift. Why settle for a congressional salary when you can funnel billions in taxpayer dollars to murky NGOs—nonprofits with no oversight, staffed by cronies, and flush with cash for “consulting” gigs? Just look at the Biden family’s Ukraine adventures or the Clintons’ foundation empire—public office became a ATM, and the PIN was plausible deniability.

Enter Donald J. Trump, the brash billionaire who crashed the party in 2016. To the Deep State and their political puppets, he wasn’t just an outsider—he was a five-alarm fire. Trump didn’t play by their rules. He didn’t genuflect to the intelligence community’s sacred cows or rubber-stamp the endless wars that keep the machine humming. Worse, he started asking questions—about NATO’s bloated budgets, about foreign aid slush funds, about why the U.S. was bankrolling half the planet while its own borders crumbled. For a system built on secrecy, self-enrichment, and global dominance, this was existential kryptonite.

The Deep State’s response was predictable: neutralize the threat. Politicians saw Trump as a buzzsaw to their money-laundering rackets—those sweet, untraceable streams of cash flowing through “humanitarian” NGOs and defense contracts. The intelligence brass saw him as a wrecking ball to their unaccountable fiefdoms, where they—not the President—call the shots. Exhibit A: the Russia collusion hoax. The CIA and FBI didn’t just spy on Trump’s campaign; they fabricated a narrative with forged dossiers and leaked it to a compliant press. Exhibit B: the 2020 election, where Big Tech—cozy as ever with NSA data pipelines—suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story, a move that polling later showed could’ve swung the outcome. Exhibit C: January 6, where murky federal informants and a militarized Capitol response turned a protest into a cudgel to smear Trump and his supporters as domestic terrorists.

The media, of course, is the Deep State’s megaphone. CNN, MSNBC, and the New York Times didn’t just cheerlead the takedown; they were active players, laundering lies from anonymous “senior officials” into front-page gospel. When Trump railed against “fake news,” he wasn’t wrong—he was just late to the party. The press has been in bed with spooks since Operation Mockingbird, when the CIA infiltrated newsrooms to shape narratives. Today, it’s less infiltration than symbiosis: anchors and editors know their bread’s buttered by the same hands that pull the levers in D.C.

From a constitutional conservative lens, this is a betrayal of everything America’s supposed to stand for. The Founders didn’t bleed at Valley Forge so a cabal of unelected suits could run the show. They gave us checks and balances, not shadow governments. Trump, for all his bombast, threatens to drag that original vision back into the light—less global empire, more national sovereignty; less insider grift, more accountability. That’s why the Deep State and their political lapdogs want him gone. He’s not perfect, but he’s a middle finger to a system that’s spent decades picking our pockets and subverting our will.

Texas knows this fight better than most. We’ve seen D.C.’s overreach firsthand—whether it’s federal land grabs or ATF gun grabs. The Lone Star State’s a microcosm of what’s at stake: a people who’d rather govern themselves than bow to a corrupt leviathan 1,500 miles away. Trump’s their nightmare because he’s ours—a bull in the china shop of a government that’s forgotten who it answers to. The Deep State can’t stand that. And they’ll burn it all down before they let him win again.

The rot of the Deep State doesn’t just fester in the marble corridors of Washington—it’s seeped into the red dirt of Texas, where the battle lines between constitutional liberty and centralized corruption are drawn sharper than a Bowie knife. The Lone Star State, a bastion of self-reliance and skepticism toward federal overreach, has become a proving ground for the clash between Donald Trump’s outsider insurgency and a system desperate to cling to power. Here, the stakes aren’t theoretical—they’re as real as the oil rigs dotting the Permian Basin. And the Deep State, alongside its Democratic allies in Congress, is pulling every lever to stop Trump from dismantling their racket.

Back in D.C., the CIA and NSA’s history of global manipulation—toppling Mossadegh in Iran, Árbenz in Guatemala, and greasing the skids for chaos in the Middle East—set the stage for a domestic power grab that’s now in full bloom. Power corrupts, and the federal trough has turned elected officials into pigs with snouts buried deep. Take the Biden family’s Burisma dealings or the Clinton Foundation’s pay-to-play schemes—public funds siphoned through NGOs with less oversight than a West Texas honky-tonk on a Saturday night. The Deep State, convinced it’s the real government, doesn’t just tolerate this; it thrives on it. Trump’s pledge to drain the swamp threatens not just the politicians’ slush funds but the intelligence community’s untouchable dominance. That’s why they’ve weaponized the media—from CNN’s breathless Russia hoaxes to the New York Times’ stenography for anonymous спooks—to take him down.

Nowhere is this fight fiercer than in Texas, where the state’s 38 congressional seats make it a linchpin in the battle for the House. Top Democrats, sensing Trump’s momentum after his 2024 victory, are scrambling to erect roadblocks, and their Lone Star delegation is leading the charge. Here’s how they’re doing it:

1. Rep. Al Green’s Impeachment Gambit: On February 5, 2025, Houston’s Rep. Al Green—a Democrat with a flair for the dramatic—filed articles of impeachment against Trump over a supposed plan to “take over Gaza.” Green called it “ethnic cleansing,” a charge as wild as a Longhorn stampede, given Trump’s actual focus on domestic priorities like border security. Reported by The Guardian, this move reeks of political theater, a stunt to tie Trump up in legal knots and rally the progressive base. Green’s history of failed impeachment bids against Trump—three during his first term—shows he’s less interested in winning than in gumming up the works.
2. Rep. Lloyd Doggett’s Funding Freeze Fiasco: Austin’s Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a grizzled veteran of the House, has been pushing to freeze federal funding to Texas agencies that might align with Trump’s agenda. In late February, Doggett joined a coalition of House Democrats to block Department of Defense grants, citing Trump’s “militarization” of the border—an echo of 2019, when he and others filibustered Pentagon funds over the border wall, as noted by AP News. This isn’t about principle; it’s about starving Texas of resources to enforce immigration laws Trump champions, laws that resonate with voters from El Paso to Tyler.
3. Rep. Joaquin Castro’s Media Blitz: San Antonio’s Rep. Joaquin Castro has taken to the airwaves, partnering with MSNBC and local outlets like the San Antonio Express-News to amplify claims of Trump’s “authoritarian” bent. In a February 14, 2025, NPR report, Castro backed a new House Democratic “rapid response task force” to counter Trump’s executive orders, framing them as an assault on democracy. His real game? Keeping the narrative alive that Trump’s a threat to Texas values, even as San Antonians chafe at federal overreach on everything from gun rights to energy policy.

These Texas Democrats aren’t lone wolves—they’re pack animals, coordinating with national figures like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Schumer’s been vocal, telling The Guardian on February 9 that Democrats will “do everything in their power” to block Trump’s agenda, while Jeffries has leaned on the House’s slim GOP majority—now 217-215 after resignations—to stall Trump-backed bills. Add in lawsuits from the Democratic National Committee, filed in late February against Trump’s executive orders on election integrity (Politico), and you’ve got a full-court press to cripple his administration before it can hit stride.

For Texas, this isn’t just politics—it’s personal. The state’s economy, from oil to agriculture, thrives when Washington stays out of the way. Trump’s promise to slash regulations and secure the border aligns with that ethos, which is why he carried Texas by over 5 points in 2024. But the Deep State and its Democratic proxies see that as a threat to their globalist gravy train. They’d rather see Texas kneel than prosper—whether it’s Doggett choking off funds, Green grandstanding, or Castro playing media marionette.

The irony? Texas has seen this before. In 2021, state Democrats fled to D.C. to block a voting bill, only to watch it pass anyway (Al Jazeera). Now, their congressional kin are trying the same playbook against Trump, betting they can outlast him with procedural tricks and press conferences. But Texans don’t bend easy. From the Alamo to the present, we’ve fought bigger bullies than this—and won. Trump’s their champion because he’s ours: loud, unpolished, and unwilling to let a corrupt machine dictate terms. The Deep State can scheme all it wants, but in Texas, we still believe the people—not the spooks or the suits—call the shots.