In the News

WASHINGTON -- House Democrats are inching closer to impeaching President Trump after releasing a 300-page report summarizing the fact-finding investigation of the House Intelligence Committee, a move that now makes the House Judiciary Committee the central player in the debate over whether to remove the president from office.

• Judiciary panel will draft and debate articles of impeachment
• Lawmakers on both sides expected to stick to partisan lines
• Democratic leaders want to wrap up impeachment effort before the holiday break

The stakes are high in the next phase of the probe. Five Texas lawmakers are part of the 41-member House Judiciary Committee and will take part in the upcoming action.

On Thursday, November 21, Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia (D-TX) and Congressman Lance Gooden (R-TX) co-sponsored a new bill called "Managed Stablecoins Are Securities Act of 2019". While sometimes the laws and statutes from our government can require explanation, the title of this bill is pretty direct. If you were wondering when there might be regulatory clarity for crypto, at least for stablecoins, that question appears to have been answered.

Of course the bill is still in its preliminary stages, but the bill is an exclamation point of numerous public announcements over the last month with respect to stablecoins - ever since Facebook's Libra was introduced.

"Who Is It That Can Tell Me Who I Am?"

As Shakespeare's King Lear asks, stablecoins might start asking the same question, particularly after this series of public announcements.

A November 15 blog post by Libra project developers detailing testnet developments has apparently failed to impress government regulators and influential voices in the space alike. CEO of blockchain company R3, David Rutter, commented at a London conference last week that "what they did was ridiculously stupid," going on to call the announcement and approach of the project "naive." The U.S. Congress is concerned as well, with members proposing a new bi-partisan bill Thursday, which seeks to classify the asset as a managed stablecoin security.

Rep. Sylvia Garcia on the Press Pool with Julie Mason.

STANDING BEFORE A CROWD ON THE STEPS OF HOUSTON CITY HALL, U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia talked tampons.

"No one has a choice of whether or not to have a period," she said. "I'm convinced that if men menstruated, there would be a tampon machine in every bathroom everywhere. This is just another way of not dealing with what's perceived to be a woman's issue. But this is not just a woman's issue, this is about the health and wellbeing of not only the woman, but everyone around her. It's about all of us."

A pair of lawmakers on Thursday introduced legislation that would place stringent government oversight on Facebook's incoming digital currency and similar projects.

The bill from Reps. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) and Lance Gooden (R-Texas) would place the Libra digital coin squarely under the Securities and Exchange Commission's jurisdiction, a move that would subject the cryptocurrency to a set of extensive and well-established regulations.

Facebook has denied that the Libra coin is a security. But lawmakers have struggled to understand how to classify the ambitious Libra project because the U.S. government has not yet defined which federal agencies will be in charge of regulating cryptocurrencies.

A bipartisan team of senators introduced a bill Thursday that would make Facebook's cryptocurrency libra a security under the law. That classification would likely invite even greater regulation and scrutiny to the project, which Facebook has insisted is a digital payments system.

Leading up to the early 1970s, women (and some men) fought for the "radical idea" that women and men should be equal under the Constitution - "that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

Years of activism in favor of full equality culminated with the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the U.S. House of Representatives on Oct.12, 1971 and in the Senate on March 22, 1972.

I vividly remember this time because I was just starting to get involved in politics. At the time, I felt hopeful. It seemed like our country was starting to change its views about women.

Just days after Congress passed the ERA, I was in Austin when Texas became the eighth state to pass it. I thought we were on the verge of real change in America.