I am saddened by the passing of my friend and former colleague Garnet Coleman. A passionate advocate for the Houston community, a champion for the underserved, and above all, a great man. That is how I will remember Garnet. Please join Elisabeth and me in praying for his family, friends and loved ones, and all those whose lives he touched.   Garnet’s service in the Texas House began long before I entered the chamber, but I had the privilege of serving alongside him from my freshman year until his retirement. As a new member of the House, I looked to longtime public servants like Garnet to understand how to get things done for the people who sent us to Austin. It didn’t take long to see his compassion, courage and deep commitment to the community he served.   Throughout his decades of public service, Garnet worked to expand access to healthcare and mental health resources for Texas children and families. He was a champion of the University of Houston, helping secure important investments in its students, programs and facilities, while also working to expand economic opportunity in his community. Through it all, his work reflected a belief that government should serve everyone, especially those too often overlooked.   Garnet’s life of service and his commitment to improving the lives of others leave a lasting legacy in Houston and across Texas. I’m grateful to have known him and served alongside him, and I will always remember the example he set through his devotion to his community and the people of our state.

Andrew Wimsatt spent his life figuring out how to make things last longer. Roads, bridges, tunnels, pavement, friendships. He held three civil engineering degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, spent 18 years at TxDOT, ten of them as Fort Worth District Pavement Engineer, and in 2006 joined the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, where he eventually ran the Materials and Pavements Division and its $9 million annual research program. He worked on ground-penetrating radar, nondestructive testing, asset management. Describing the work once, he said the real challenge wasn't building new things; it was making what we already have last longer. Andrew made what we already have last longer. He was an obsessive live-music fan who would fly across the country to see a band. He loved Slowdive. In 2023 he was recommending "Souvlaki" and "everything is alive" to anyone who'd listen, singled out their cover of Syd Barrett's "Golden Hair," and admitted that when he heard them play it at FYF in 2014, he teared up. In 2016, when bad weather killed Levitation and Slowdive threw together a surprise show at the Scoot Inn, Andrew happened to be sitting at his computer and grabbed two $7.50 tickets in the roughly two minutes before it sold out. Then he recorded the entire set on his iPhone for a friend. He made music too. He'd been in bands with Karl Rehn since high school, engineered their home cassette recordings in the early 1980s, and in 1990 released "Reflections" under the name the Andrew Wimsatt Ensemble, cut at Sixth Street Studio. He and Rehn made music videos that ran for years on Austin's ACTV, and contributed to the score of a 1994 documentary about Barton Springs. Then there was the archiving, which is maybe the most Andrew thing about him. He clipped television. Constantly, expertly, for free, for people he admired. The Fifth Column crew (@wethefifth) called him "Busty Wimsatt" and, in their newsletters, "ever-alert," "indefatigable," and at least once "American hero." @MattWelch called him their most devoted cliphawker. Andrew painstakingly uploaded old episodes of "The Independents" so they wouldn't disappear. He clipped @KatTimpf's Fox appearances for her Locals community. He sent @walterkirn clips of Kirn's own jokes. "Boy did I feel special," Kirn wrote today. "Not many strangers will go out of their way to give another that kind of encouragement." He was not, for the record, employed by any of these people. He contributed old photographs to @iowahawkblog's Dave's Car ID Service. He was a fixture in Austin's science fiction community and once drove Howard Waldrop home from Worldcon. He was an executive producer of Penn Jillette and Adam Rifkin's "Director's Cut," and appears in it, briefly, as "Greeting Cop." He hosted a regular libertarian beer gathering at the Johnny Cash-themed bar Mean Eyed Cat. He was, per @JTLonsdale, one of University of Austin’s (@uaustinorg) original small donors. He bought a camouflage "No Step on Snek" hat at a Texas gun show this summer and his friends heard about it. The man lived. He lived in Cambridge Towers, a 1965 midcentury modern building near the Capitol. Punk rock, pop surrealism, midcentury furniture, a gentle Southern manner. He loved salt to a degree his friends used as a unit of measurement. He was, by every single account, one of the kindest people anyone had met. @greggutfeld: supremely gentle, willing to do just about anything for another person. @PlanetTyrus: always positive, physically slight, with a monster laugh. @NancyRomm says he once gave her the jacket off his back when she was getting hypothermic. A friend of 13 years and dozens of concerts tells me he never once heard Andrew say an unpleasant thing about anyone. Both his parents were English professors. His father, James, was a Chaucer scholar at UT Austin who died in 2023 at 96. His mother, Mary, took her doctorate at Duke, ran the Society for the Study of Southern Literature, held an endowed chair as McClintock Professor of Southern Letters at South Carolina, wrote the first full-length study of a nineteenth-century novelist almost nobody remembered, and spent five years on a public radio project designed to get ordinary people reading Faulkner and Welty. His parents spent their careers recovering things other people had stopped reading. They taught their son to make things last longer. His mother now has Alzheimer's and lives in a nursing home in Round Rock. Andrew helped care for his father at the end, and then her. His routine was to drive out, walk with her, and then take a second walk alone. He photographed what he saw on his walks. His Instagram is herons -- wading, fishing, one caught mid-wingspan over the water -- plus hawks in bare branches, a squirrel wedged in a tree hollow, a snail on a brick wall, bluebonnets, and a lot of Texas sky at the second it went orange. Two days before he died, he was at a friend's house for movie night, watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 do "The Crawling Hand." He spent his whole life trying to make things last longer, and he was good at it, and he was doing it right up to the end -- the second walk of the morning, until he sat on a park bench in the morning sun. He is survived by his siblings, Alison Ross and David Joseph Wimsatt. And by his mother, who he walked with that morning, and who does not know he isn't coming back next week.

Look forward to both @InstituteCicero & @A4PublicSafety discussing Prosecutorial Integrity on 9/30, G.O.C. hearing. @JTLonsdale @DougDeason @cvasut

@A4PublicSafety will work with @InstituteCicero on this legislation, Joe. @GovHotWheels_TX @LtGovTX @Burrows4TX @RightOnCrime

New: Three SOAH judges have recommended against administrative approval of the 765 kV power lines running from Bell County, West thru the Hill Country to Sand Lake. Ruling: interchange.puc.texas.gov/Do… The four main findings are below. #txlege

UPDATE: Baby Gabriel is here! McKenna gave birth after courageously refusing the contracting parents’ demand that she abort him because of his serious but treatable heart condition. Heartbreakingly, a temporary restraining order issued yesterday prevented McKenna from seeing or holding the baby she carried and fought to protect. But Gabriel is doing well, and because of a separate court order, he is now on the path to receiving the life-saving medical care he needs. Please pray for this precious baby boy and for McKenna.

The City of Bastrop is holding a City Council meeting hours away in Fredericksburg, making it nearly impossible for the people they represent to attend and participate. That’s especially troubling when the agenda includes major issues like the city budget, property tax rate, legislative priorities, data center policy, and Flock camera technology—topics that directly affect Bastrop residents. Public meetings should be accessible to the public. Moving them out of town undermines transparency and meaningful citizen participation. This is unacceptable. I will be filing legislation to require that city council meetings be held in the city they represent so the public has a fair opportunity to attend, speak, and hold their elected officials accountable. #txlege