The House Select Committee on Securing Texas From Hostile Foreign Organizations, chaired by State Representative Cole Hefner, has released a report of the committee’s work that makes several policy recommendations for the upcoming legislative session.
In a tweet regarding the committee’s report, Hefner said, “The interim report for the Select Committee on Securing Texas from Hostile Foreign Organizations has been released! It was a great honor to be tasked with this important work and I am deeply grateful to my fellow committee members for their thoughtful engagement and commitment to solving these issues. I am also grateful to the Texans who took time away from their busy schedules to testify before the committee and make their voices heard.
While many of the issues the committee addressed are rather complex, I believe the insightful input and information that was provided to the members allowed us to craft effective legislative recommendations that I hope to see implemented in the upcoming session.”
Hefner’s committee held two hearings earlier this year, which featured testimony from a variety of experts and industry leaders.
The committee’s report outlines twelve categories of recommendations for lawmakers to address during the upcoming legislative session. Perhaps most significant among those is the recommendation to “Protect Texas Land” by banning “hostile foreign actors” from owning land in Texas.
“Texas should act to prohibit hostile foreign actors, who intend to do us harm, from owning land in the state. This prohibition should extend to hostile foreign governments, entities controlled by hostile foreign governments, and persons living in countries with hostile foreign governments.
Care should be taken to ensure that the rights of American citizens and lawful permanent residents are not infringed upon. All efforts to protect Texas lands should be made in good faith without regard to a person’s immutable characteristics.
The legislature may consider prioritizing agricultural land, land adjacent to or within close proximity to military installations, and land adjacent to or within close proximity to critical infrastructure,” states the committee’s report.
The committee also recommended that action be taken to prevent state investment funds, including public pension funds, from making investments in “foreign adversaries.” These investment-related policy recommendations include “enact[ing] state-level legislation to prevent public funds from being allocated to Chinese or other adversarial markets,” requiring “detailed disclosures on how public investments align with national security interests and fiduciary duties,” “follow[ing] Missouri’s lead by divesting from Chinese markets and reallocating to safer investments,” and “work[ing] with financial institutions to develop emerging market funds without exposure to adversarial nations.”
The other categories of recommendations made by the committee include:
- Create a Statewide List in Statute of Designated Hostile Foreign Countries and Organizations
- Conduct a Statewide Pacific Conflict Stress Test
- Diversify Supply Chains
- Enhance Foreign Agent Registration Act and Apply to Advocacy in Texas
- Ban Sister Cities Arrangements with Cities Located in Countries on Hostile Foreign Country or Organization List
- Revoke and Prohibit Future Business Licenses and Certifications for Individuals and Entities Convicted of Intellectual Property Theft
- Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Security
- University Gifts/Grants/Research
- K-12 Curriculum and Data Protection
- Lone Star Infrastructure Protection Act (LSIPA) and Public Utility Regulatory Act (PURA)
The committee’s report also highlighted several actions Governor Greg Abbott took, including issuing three executive orders to protect Texas from the threat of hostile foreign actors.
Abbott’s executive orders involved “requiring the Texas Department of Public Safety to identify any persons engaged in harassment or coercion against Chinese dissidents and bring appropriate criminal charges, to work with local and federal law enforcement partners in assessing incidents of transnational repression by foreign adversaries within the state, and to expand avenues for the reporting of such activity,” “prohibiting certain state agencies from entering into new contracts or extending existing contracts with companies from certain hostile countries,” and “ordering the Texas Division of Emergency Management to convene, in coordination with relevant state agencies, a task force to survey state and local government vulnerabilities and to recommend policies and best practices for addressing them.”
Additionally, the committee’s report highlighted a letter Governor Abbott issued last month requiring state agencies “to divest any existing investments in China and prohibiting new investments of state funds in China.”
The committee’s report applauded Abbott’s actions and encouraged the legislature to codify his actions into statute.
“Each of these actions taken by Governor Abbott addresses threats posed by hostile foreign governments to the economy and security of our state, issues that this committee was charged with studying. Further, each order issued by the Governor, as well as his letter, aim to achieve similar objectives as recommendations provided in this report.
Governor Abbott’s directives, and the recommendations in this report, make clear that protecting Texas from hostile foreign organizations requires a whole of government response. The Legislature should consider codifying the Governor’s policies to ensure that these requirements continue. Because the Governor is limited in who he can provide direction to in these orders, the Legislature should ensure these orders are expansive so that all facets of state government are on guard against nefarious actions by hostile foreign governments.”
