GOP lawmaker Briscoe Cain is largely known for his bomb-throwing rhetoric and inflammatory tweets. Credit: Facebook / Briscoe Cain

A far-right Texas lawmaker with a history of bomb-throwing antics has declared war on “liberal news websites,” filing two separate bills to defund long-standing news organizations such as the San Antonio Express-News.

State Rep. Briscoe Cain, a Republican who represents Houston’s eastern suburbs, on Monday filed House Bills 2600 and 2599. Individually, the proposals would bar members of the Texas Legislature from using state dollars to purchase newspaper subscriptions from outside their districts and ban state agencies from providing any financial support to news organizations.

In a Monday tweet, Cain argued the bills will stop “your taxpayer funds from supporting liberal ‘news’ websites.”

Cain’s bills come after right-wing blog the Texas Scorecard last week reported that hundreds of thousands in Texas taxpayer funds support what it called “leftwing publications.” The blog said the payments — which largely come from subscriptions paid by state lawmakers and agencies — raise questions “about journalistic integrity and government-fed propaganda.”

According to Texas Scorecard’s math, here’s how much various news organizations have received in state money since 2016:

  • Texas Tribune: $342,850
  • Quorum Report: $173,911
  • Politico: $253,050
  • Dallas Morning News: $428,096
  • Austin American-Statesman: $109,639
  • Houston Chronicle: $106,187
  • San Antonio Express-News: $71,024
  • Fort Worth Star-Telegram: $103, 234
  • Texas Monthly: $195,585

Republicans dominate the Texas Legislature and have held every statewide office since 1994, suggesting that members of Cain’s own party have written plenty of checks in an effort to, you know, stay informed as they attempt to do their jobs.

It’s also unclear how much support Cain’s bills have given his well-publicized history of grandstanding — something that recently prompted Texas Monthly to refer to him as a “boy-faced troll.”

Among other things, Cain once made national headlines for making what many interpreted as a not-so-veiled threat to shoot former El Paso Congressman Beto O’Rourke. In 2021, he left hanging some 200 people signed up to speak at a House committee hearing over which he presided by failing to set a time to return from recess — something critics blasted as an amateur-hour mistake.

Whatever the case, Cain said on social media that he “looks forward to continuing this conversation” about defunding organizations with colleagues in both chambers.

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This article appears in Feb 5-18, 2025.

Michael Karlis is a multimedia journalist at the San Antonio Current, whose coverage in print and on social media focuses on local and state politics. He is a graduate of American University in Washington,...