Texas Impact's Weekly Witness

Texas Impact's Weekly Witness

Weekly Witness is your weekly update on the mainstream faith community’s perspective on everything Texas public policy. Hosted by Texas Impact's Scott Atnip, Weekly Witness is recorded in front of a live audience in downtown Austin. We host policy experts, faith leaders, and elected officials who provide in-depth information on relevant policy issues in the state. Weekly Witness is a product of Texas Impact, Texas’ oldest and largest interfaith advocacy group. Visit texasimpact.org for more information.

Episodes

May 16, 2025 38 mins
 
The Texas Legislature is hitting key legislative deadlines with sixteen days remaining before they adjourn Sine Die. The action in the Capitol is hot on many issues important to Texans of faith, but maybe none more so than the debate over publ...
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This week, Weekly Witness highlights the voices of Texas faith leaders who spoke during the Texas Impact Leadership Council's press conference on the south steps of the Texas Capitol on May 8th as we call out religious extremism.
 
Joining us today are:
Rev. Phil Dieke, Horizon Texas United Methodist Conference, Dallas
Rev. Matt Gaventa, University Presbyterian Church, Austin
Elyse Rosenberg & Bettie Form...
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May 2, 2025 21 mins

As the Texas Legislative Session enters its final month things are hot-both in terms of public policy and feelings, and Texans of faith are working to be effective advocates through it all.

Joining us for this week’s program is the man who has seen it all in the Texas Capitol, Texas Impact’s outside legislative counsel, Beaman Floyd. He is going to give us the lay of the land and talk us through how advoca...

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April 25, 2025 20 mins
The Texas Legislature is now entering the final third when bills make it to the floor for a vote or begin to die. Last week, Bee Moorhead joined the program to talk about the House passing the Voucher bill, and it seemed like immediately after, we began to see a TON of bad bills start to move... and a few good ones. 
...
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We jumped right in this week because most of the Texas Impact staff stayed up late Wednesday night to watch SB 2, the Texas Senate's school voucher bill, be brought before the House. There were some great and no-so-great conversations between legislators about the impact of a bill that appropriates a billion dollars that could go to public schools to privately run entities, and many amendments that aimed to fix issues with the...
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Joining Weekly Witness this week is Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, Vice President of Programs & Strategy at Interfaith Alliance, a network of people of diverse faiths and beliefs from across the country working together to build a resilient democracy and fulfill America’s promise of religious freedom and civil rights for all.
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This week, we turn our eyes to DC for a fight that will impact this legislative session and sessions to come as Congress is considering hundreds of billions of dollars of cuts to Medicaid. These cuts would be devastating—not just to the Texans who rely on that coverage, but to our entire health care system.

We welcome Peter Clark, Communications Director with Texans Care for Children, to talk to us about t...

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This week we are recording from the Capitol on a day when many of Texas Impact’s priority bills are being heard or voted on. So, we sat down with a few friends and colleagues who are testifying in the Senate Committee on Business and Commerce on SB 819, a regulatory bill that is anti-energy in a time where renewables are inc...

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The Texas Impact team just worked with some incredible faith partners on the Family Matters: Faith Days at the Texas Capitol event. About 300 Texans of Faith gathered at the Texas Capitol and across the street at First United Methodist Church of Austin for three days of education, advocacy and activism.

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Y’all, it is getting wild over at the Texas Capitol, and Texans of faith are in the midst of all of it with thousands of phone calls going in every week, members of Texas Impact’s issue teams staying up until all hours of the night giving testimony, and the Texas Impact staff busting their tails working on behalf of our membership.<...

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Among the many justice issues concerning people of faith in 2025, immigration is near the top of the list across the country and across faith traditions. This week we are bringing you three guests to lay a foundation for immigration advocacy—at the federal level and in Texas. 

Fir...

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This week, we are joined by several of the speakers and participants in the Preventing Gun Violence Advocacy Day. First we talk with Jasir Rahman, a student at Rice University and Texas Youth Advocacy Coordinator with Team ENOUGH. Later in the episode we hear from Nicole Golden, Director of Texas Gun Sense, and Rev. Stephen ...

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This week we are excited to bring you content from Texas Impact’s Public School Defenders’ Lobby Day. We are joined by State Representative Gina Hinojosa, House District 49, while walking back to the Capitol after she addressed the Public School defenders to discuss voucher plans and how Texans of faith can push back against...

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This week we have an exciting episode for you as we are recording live from the Capitol office of Senator Sarah Eckhardt. Last week, the Senate passed SB 2, a school voucher bill that would give a $10,000 voucher to students to attend private schools.

What is not shocking is that the Senate passed SB...

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February 7, 2025 36 mins

This week we are going back to back with United Methodist Bishops as we welcome Bishop Ruben Saenz from the Horizon Texas Annual Conference—formerly the North, Central and Northwest Texas Conferences. 

We thought this was a timely conversation as Bishop Saenz and other United Methodist Bishops in the South Ce...

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January 31, 2025 26 mins

This week we are bringing you content from the United Women in Faith Legislative Event. This is typically Texas Impact’s biggest event of the year—and this year the UWF had record participation with 350 registrants from United Women in Faith and various other faith groups participating over the three day event with hundreds making Capitol visits to their Legislators.

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January 23, 2025 21 mins
This week, we are excited to welcome Texas Impact’s Climate Action Fellow, Rev. Dr. Becca Edwards, to talk about the President’s recent executive action, once again, removing the US from the Paris Climate Agreement.
...
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Since 1973, Texas Impact has hosted a service or celebration of public witness on the south steps of the Texas Capitol in conjunction with the opening of the Texas Legislature. This year, the Texas Legislature convened Tuesday, January 14, and so the Texas Impact crew, along with Texas faith leaders and elected representatives, gathered on the steps for a Celebration of Public Witness before the Legislature...

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January 8, 2025 32 mins

We hope you all had a meaningful and relaxing holiday season and a great start to the new year; it is about to get busy and your advocacy will be critical in the next few months. 

We know a lot of attention will be paid to what is happening in Washington with the new administration, but the Texas Legisl...

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Last week, Diana Forester and her colleague Alec Mendoza joined us to talk about health policy in Texas. It is such a big topic, and so much of it is driven by federal policy, that we are joined again this week by Diana to continue the conversation about how actions by Congress could impact health in Texas–and how you can help protect Texans' access to healthcare in the com...

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