Friends,
It’s been an amazing month celebrating 250 years of American independence. Just as those events are winding down, Texas continues to give us reasons to celebrate. The governor’s announcement last week about a $3.2 billion state-of-the-art shipyard coming to Texas was amplified by the release of his Keep Texas Affordable plan to address rising costs across the state. As companies like Saronic, SpaceX and others make Texas their home, the governor and state lawmakers are working together on solutions that widen the property tax base and strengthen the workforce to improve affordability for families and businesses.
TLR is doing its part to make Texas more affordable, too, as we continue to champion legal reforms to stop lawsuit abuse. Reforms like transparency measures to expose fraudulent medical billing and bans on foreign funding of lawsuits targeting Americans are key. Florida and Georgia have seen companies return billions in refunds and rate cuts to home and auto insurance customers following the passage of their recent legal reforms; the same efforts that help build the Texas Miracle we enjoy today. But we cannot rest on our success. Rather, it’s why we need to continue to build on the legal reforms that lower costs for families and ensure employers have the capital to invest in their employees and customers. This success allows businesses to expand, bringing more access to jobs and prosperity for the next generation of Texans.
My team and I have been traveling across the state, talking to business owners, community leaders, and concerned Texans who are tired of rising insurance and the growing cost of everyday goods. We look forward to sharing more of those stories with you in the coming months.
For the future of Texas,
Ryan Patrick
CEO | TLR
Last week, Governor Greg Abbott announced that Brownsville would be home to a new $3.2 billion shipyard from Saronic, an Austin-based tech startup that had been considering California for the project. Saronic is the company behind the groundbreaking naval drone rescue of two Army pilots last month near Oman. And the day before that story broke, I actually saw one of their boats on a trailer on I-10!
The shipyard project, which is expected to add 10,000 jobs over the next decade, focused on Texas for its strong industrial workforce, educational pipelines for the advanced manufacturing necessary to operate Port Alpha, and the environmental factors that allow for deep-water access to test vessels and the opportunity to expand production capabilities. Cameron County has to be one of the most dynamic locales in the country.
Of course in California, the Saronic story is being told a bit differently as state and local officials grapple with the reasons they lost the project:
“Inaction and political gridlock” in the California State Legislature …
“State leaders failed to act with the urgency this project demanded” …
“California could not provide the clear, expedited approval process needed to compete” with Texas …
Texas has long understood that being business-friendly means backing up with the policies that allow for opportunity to thrive. Because of that leadership, Texas is continuing to welcome more companies to the state. That doesn’t mean Texas is without its challenges. But the message is clear: Texas is leading the way forward. Other states are following our state’s lead by enacting policies that create jobs, allow for successful companies to expand, and foster innovation that invites new companies to form and grow.
For the past few years, Texas has benefited from extreme policies in Delaware that began driving away businesses. Renowned organizations that have historically relied on Delaware’s business courts began fleeing to Texas, Nevada, and Florida in favor of business-friendly policies. The ‘DEXIT’ movement alarmed some Delaware lawmakers, who took action to pass laws that would stop the exodus. Now, those same Delaware lawmakers are being primaried by anti-business candidates who want to see employers continue to leave the state — and take their $3 trillion in value with them.
What the politicians and chancery judges in Delaware fail to grasp is that their decisions impact jobs, families, and the businesses that have provided the state’s past success. There may be no more current obvious example of a state killing its golden goose. Companies are now leaving, taking jobs and revenue that used to support communities across their state. It’s too late for Delaware. They failed to protect their status as the default home to starting a business in America. As a result, Texas, Nevada, and Florida are now the first stops in the next American success story and the new home to legacy job creators.
Nearly everyone reading this has yet to ride in a driverless vehicle. So far, less than 2% of Americans have taken a ride in one, but the growth is extraordinary. Waymo alone provides about 500,000 paid rides per week and expects that number to be 1,000,000 by the end of this year. Texas is actually one of the few states where driverless cars are an option with the largest fleet deployed in Austin with rapid growth in Houston, Dallas and San Antonio.
So of course robotaxis are typically fair game for social media videos when they malfunction and cause traffic jams. However, despite these viral moments, the underlying data shows that these vehicles are significantly safer than human drivers. Waymo — a frequent subject of social media lambasting from Austin — recently showed its vehicles saw a 96% decrease in intersection crashes compared to human motor-vehicle operation. About 250m miles of driverless rides are already in the books. The data now is not noise, it’s real and the results point to robotaxis and other autonomous vehicles being the solution to what two doctors are calling a medical crisis.
During an interview this month, Dr. Jonathan Slotkin highlighted how these new vehicles are improving safety, yet are starting to be banned in cities around the country. No surprise that these same cities also rank high on the judicial hellholes watchlists and are target-rich environments for personal injury lawyers, whose national lobbying arm has opposed regulations for autonomous vehicles for nearly a decade. That opposition has been explicitly based on rules that would limit the number of lawsuits that could be taken to a jury instead of a judge.
In response to this opposition, many on social media have pointed out the conflict of interest from billboard lawyers who oppose safer alternatives on American roads — including trucking, which Democratic lawmakers specifically exempted from federal legislation regulating safer vehicles. Ultimately, these regulations for improved safety have failed to pass into law, leaving the door open for lawsuit abuse to continue.
