About
The Path That Brought Me Here
My name is Stephen Samuelson.
I joined the U.S. military at 17, beginning service in January 2001. Over the next ten years, I served with the 98th Division, the NCO Academy, and the Southwest Information Operations Command. My Military Occupational Specialty was 25B, Information Systems Operator-Analyst. I achieved the rank of Staff Sergeant, and in 2004 I deployed to the Middle East.
While overseas, I was exposed to a nerve agent. That exposure ended my career before I was ready and led to a medical retirement in November 2010.
After returning home, I earned my bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio and obtained my ministry license.
For the past ten years, I have continued to serve in a different way by speaking with trauma survivors and with military, police, EMS, and other professionals who face intense stress in their work. My role has been to listen, support, and share tools for resilience.
Later, when my wife began reporting serious issues within our local school district, including harassment, medical fraud, and retaliation, we followed every step of the grievance process exactly as the law requires. Instead of accountability, our family was met with threats and attempts to silence us. During one school board meeting, when I tried to speak about what was happening, my microphone was muted while I stood at the podium.
That moment became the turning point. I filed a writ of mandamus to defend our constitutional right to speak freely at public meetings, but it also pushed me to dig deeper into how Texas law actually works. I began reading every House and Senate bill I could find, looking for the laws that allowed this kind of misconduct to happen.
What I discovered was that many of the laws being passed, often quietly, shift oversight and power away from the public and into the hands of private entities, corporations, or appointed boards. When I started asking people if they understood what was inside these bills, most said they were too long or too complicated to read. So I decided to do it myself, to break each bill down in plain English, show what it really does, and help people see both the good and the bad in what is being signed into law.