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Police State: Texas House Passes Bill To Heavily Fine And Imprison Residents For Posting Political Memes

  • May 11, 2025
  • 2 min read

Date: May 11, 2025


Violators face a class A misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and fines up to $4,000, while critics warn it risks suppressing free speech.


Texas is quietly cracking down on free speech in a big way after the state's Congress voted to pass a bill that would fine and send residents to jail for posting certain political memes online. While the bill has yet to pass the Senate, the bill and its backers have set a precedent moving in how state lawmakers view speech and what people can say online.


The Texas House of Representatives passed House Bill 366 on April 30, 2025, criminalizing political memes without government disclaimers. The bill, authored by former House Speaker Dade Phelan and driven by concerns over AI-altered media, seeks to protect voters from manipulated political ads.


The law requires disclosure for substantially altered images, audio or video in political ads spending over $100 and applies to candidates, officeholders and committees. Violators face a class A misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and fines up to $4,000, while critics warn it risks suppressing free speech. The bill has sparked widespread backlash over free speech concerns and uncertain Senate support, reflecting a contentious shift in election ethics rules.



The bill passed with bipartisan support, with most Democrats voting in favor and roughly half of the GOP voting in favor. The bill was originally introduced by former Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan.



Tap the image to see how the state reps voted.

Gizmodo reported:


Phelan’s bill comes after he was the subject of targeted campaigns by the more conservative branches of his own party during his re-election run. The Club for Growth, a massive conservative PAC, sent out mailers with an edited picture of Phelan’s head on House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ body while hugging Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Currently, Texas has a law that prohibits using AI pictures within 30 days of an election. However, those mailers didn’t fall into that period of time.

“This is the beginning of a new era in ethics where the voters need to know what is real and what is not,” Phelan said on the House floor, per the Texas Tribune. “This AI technology gets better every single day. It gets more inexpensive every single day, and it’s going to become the norm.”“This is nothing different than what we currently do with political advertisements. You have to put ‘political ad paid for by’ when you enter this political advertising arena. And all this does is tell you to add a disclosure that you are using altered media.”

Nate Schatzline (R) called the bill as “anti-American”, saying, “To throw someone in jail is to silence political speech. This is insanity that we would propose such a harsh penalty for simply expressing our displeasure of an elected official.”

 
 
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