Texas Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa says she'll freeze residential electricity rates within an hour of taking the oath of office — and the first thing the press did was run to a conservative think-tank operative to ask whether she's allowed.
Working families in Texas have been hammered by skyrocketing utility bills and a grid that literally froze people to death in 2021. Hinojosa's answer is direct: declare a high-cost emergency and lock down the rates. "On Day One as governor, I'll freeze residential electricity rates and make corporations finally pay their fair share," she said in an interview with a local energy data group. She told the Texas Tribune she would invoke the Texas Disaster Act to issue an emergency executive order.
Enter Nick Loris, president of C3 Solutions — described by the New York Post as "a conservative coalition for climate solutions that focuses on energy, environment and agriculture policy." Loris told Fox News Digital he expects legal challenges from energy providers almost immediately and cast doubt on whether an affordability crisis qualifies as a disaster under the Texas Disaster Act. "I think there is a high degree of skepticism, both from courts but also from state policymakers, that this warrants such a claim — and that it is such a disaster," Loris said.
Notice what's missing from that sentence: any mention of the families who can't pay their bills.
Loris praised Texas' 1999 Senate Bill 7, which deregulated the state's retail electricity market and opened it to over 100 competing retail electric providers. "It's like shopping at a grocery store for cereal for your retail electricity," he said. What he didn't mention is that this same "competitive" system produced Winter Storm Uri — when Texans either froze or got hit with bills in the thousands because the "energy-only wholesale market" lets generators spike prices during scarcity events.
The Post framed the entire story around whether Hinojosa has the legal authority to act. It never asked whether the utilities and generators who would sue to block a rate freeze bear any responsibility for the crisis they created. It never identified who funds C3 Solutions or whose interests Loris actually represents. And it buried the core reality: if electricity suppliers can't cover their costs when supply fluctuates, that's a market design failure — not a reason to keep squeezing consumers.
Loris warned that a price freeze would "leave them worse off" — meaning the providers, not the families choosing between heat and groceries. The Post let that stand without any counterweight.
Maybe Hinojosa's emergency declaration stretches the Disaster Act. Maybe the courts block her. But the real question the press won't ask: why does a system that bankrupts working families and kills people in the cold always get defended as "consumer choice" — and why do the people defending it get quoted as neutral experts?
