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As voters go to the polls this March, most are confronted with a familiar name on the signs around town and a familiar face of a state representative they know through a friend from church or whose children went to school with their own. Unfortunately, far fewer know the reality about what their lawmaker did in Austin.
Heavily Republican House District 88 spans 20 counties across the rural Texas Panhandle. It voted for President Trump by over 70 points. One would think it would be represented by one of the most aggressive, America First lawmakers in Texas.
Instead, HD 88 has been represented by Ken King since 2013. In the 89th Texas Legislature, King has served as the Chairman of the Texas House Committee on State Affairs, the single most powerful committee in the Texas House. It should be an engine for conservative legislation, but truthfully, it’s a graveyard.
As committee chairman, King is tasked by the Texas House Rules to “schedule the work of the committee and determine the order in which the committee shall consider and act on bills, resolutions, and other matters referred to the committee.” In practice, his authority is even broader, unilaterally deciding what bills get hearings and votes…and which ones don’t.
King can’t control how lawmakers vote in his committee, but he can control whether they can vote or not. Even if a bill has the support of every other member, if King wants it to fail, all he has to do is never give it a vote.
And that’s just what he did with E-Verify and other key legislation to protect American workers and national sovereignty.
There wasn’t just one bill but several bills to require Texas employers to participate in the federal E-Verify system to prevent illegal aliens from obtaining employment in Texas and to protect American workers.
Originally established in 1997, E-Verify is a free, web-based system that compares information entered by an employer from an employee’s Form I-9 upon hiring to records available to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration to confirm employment eligibility. In Texas, state agencies and state contractors are already required to use E-Verify. Ten states already require E-Verify for all employers.
According to a 2017 report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, state-based E-Verify requirements reduced illegal labor by up to 80%. This makes E-Verify one of the most effective tools for internal immigration enforcement, as employment is the largest pull factor driving illegal immigration into the United States.
In the March 2024 Texas Republican Primary, 89.9% of Republican voters affirmed their support for requiring all Texas employers to participate in E-Verify. Shortly thereafter, at the 2024 Republican State Convention, delegates made universal E-Verify a Legislative Priority for the 89th Legislative Session.
Despite E-Verify’s proven track record and popularity among Panhandle voters, Chairman King held House bills concerning E-Verify (HB 1308, HB 1488, HB 3210) in committee for more than 40 days without a hearing. After a universal E-Verify bill passed by the Texas Senate in April (SB 324), King refused to hold a hearing on the measure and allowed it to die at the deadline for bills to be passed by the Texas House.
Make no mistake: this was not an isolated issue or a simple oversight.
Several other issues related to immigration enforcement and border security died without a hearing under Ken King’s leadership, including measures to end the abuse of birthright citizenship by illegal aliens (HB 4771), end all public subsidies for illegal aliens (HB 4745), and ensure that public economic incentives are used to hire American workers (HB 4935). Additionally, a bill to overhaul the state’s border mission and establish a state Border Security Unit (HB 4914) received a hearing but was left pending without a vote.
As chairman of one of the most important committees in the Texas Legislature, Ken King had multiple opportunities to advance impactful, popular, and effective policies to disincentivize illegal immigration, protect state dollars from being used to support illegal aliens, and ready our state for future border crises. Instead, he chose to let these solutions die.