Republican James White resigns from Texas House early to take leadership job at Texas Funeral Services Commission

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State Rep. James White, a conservative Republican who represented his East Texas district for 11 years, has resigned his seat within the Texas Home to take a job as government director of the Texas Funeral Companies Fee.

White, a Black Republican who first gained election to the Texas Home throughout the Tea Occasion wave of 2010 by ousting a longtime Democrat, had already determined to not search reelection to the chamber this 12 months and as a substitute opted for an unsuccessful main problem to Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller. White’s time period was set to finish in January when his successor would take workplace. However White left a number of months early when he made his resignation official on Aug. 11.

“It has been a privilege and honor to serve my fellow Texans in Tyler, Angelina, Hardin, Jasper, Newton, Polk, San Jacinto and Trinity counties for the final six periods,” he wrote in his resignation letter to Gov. Greg Abbott. “I’m happy with the work that I’ve completed for my neighborhood and for our entire state.”

White, who ceaselessly sported a bolo tie on the Home flooring, served as chair of the Corrections Committee for 2 periods and paid explicit consideration to juvenile justice points, serving to to reform a number of the state’s truancy legal guidelines, which gained him the respect of liberal teams whose politics in any other case diverged together with his. In 2021, he led the Homeland Safety and Public Security Committee, the place he helped push by way of laws that allowed any Texan to hold handguns and not using a license or coaching in the event that they in any other case have been licensed to hold a gun. The invoice had been a precedence for the proper wing of the GOP, together with White, however had been stopped by the get together’s extra average wing in previous periods.

White typically espoused a number of the most conservative views on the Home flooring on points like abortion and weapons, but additionally on different points, like his push for a invoice in 2019 that may have made it tougher to take away Accomplice monuments from public locations. (The invoice in the end failed.)

White’s departure leaves the Legislature with no Black Republicans. It additionally creates a emptiness to guide the Homeland Safety and Public Security Committee, which has been tasked with discovering legislative proposals to stop future mass shootings just like the assault on Robb Elementary in Uvalde in Might.

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