
In the Energy News Beat – Conversation in Energy with Stuart Turley, speaks with Genevieve Collins, Executive Director of Americans for Prosperity in Texas, about critical topics including energy independence, education reform, and grassroots advocacy. They explore Texas’s pivotal role in driving energy solutions, the transformative potential of school choice, and the power of empowering everyday voters to influence meaningful policy change. Highlighting the connection between economic prosperity, energy security, and informed civic engagement, the discussion emphasizes actionable strategies to promote freedom, opportunity, and sustainable growth across the nation.
Thank you, Genevieve, for your time and leadership. I look forward to helping the Trump administration look at energy policies and the impact of making America Prosperous Again! It will be great to have the next round of meetings with U.S. Senators Ted Cruz and Chris Wright, Doug Bergham, and Lee Zeldin and to move forward with solutions and key influencers to help the solutions.
Follow Genevieve on her LinkedIn HERE: https://www.linkedin.com/in/genevieve-collins-mba-7b8084b/
Check out Freedom is Bigger in Texas Here: https://www.freedomisbigger.com/
Highlights of the Podcast
00:00 – Intro
01:20 – Americans for Prosperity Events
02:05 – Promises Kept
03:20 – Energy Trinity
04:07 – Texas’s Energy Dominance
06:09 – Renewed American Prosperity
06:30 – Grassroots Success in Texas
10:49 – Addressing Energy Demand
14:39 – A Rational Voice in Politics
17:32 – Gulf of America
20:32 – The Importance of Education Reform
22:36 – Texas Leads the Way
24:56 – Encouraging Responsible Voting
26:15 – How to Get Involved
27:25 – Closing Remarks
Texas is helping President Trump’s Administration with Energy on the way to America’s Return to Prosperity.
the Energy News Beat – Conversation in Energy with Stuart Turley, speaks with Genevieve Collins, Executive Director of Americans for Prosperity in Texas, about critical… pic.twitter.com/otqvHR8xlt
— STUART TURLEY – Energy Podcast Host (@STUARTTURLEY16) January 24, 2025
Stuart Turley [00:00:07] Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Energy News Beat podcast. My name’s Stu Turley President and CEO of the Sandstone Group. Today I’m recording this podcast on the 21st of January. We’ve had President Trump in office for less than a day and he has already issued out 200 executive orders and we are already feeling the world coming to our right size. And I mean, the world is about to just become normal. Today we have Genevieve Collins, and she’s the executive director down there in Texas for the Americans for Prosperity in Texas. And welcome, Genevieve. How are you today.
Genevieve Collins [00:00:50] Stu, I am so much better today being with you. And you are right. The world is full of hope, joy, and ready to get working in that.
Stuart Turley [00:00:59] Great. Now, yeah. I’ve had a couple of interviews with you and I want to give you a shout out because I had so much fun at the Americans for Prosperity, where Senator Ted Cruz had such a blast. We had our Trevino, we had David Blackman and we had Steve reach down there in Texas. And I mean, it was a blast. You put on a show.
Genevieve Collins [00:01:21] Well, thank you. It’s only because we have really smart people at this event really focusing on getting Ted Cruz the message from real people in the industry versus just the lobbyists. You know, what are the things that and Americans for Prosperity we try to do is actually help put the people that are closest to the problem, make sure the solutions are the ones that get promoted to the people, like politicians like Ted Cruz that can actually solve these problems. So, you know, I think empowering the real person’s voice and making sure they have their say is so much more important than just having a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., that says that they know what’s going on across the state of Texas, you.
Stuart Turley [00:02:03] Know.
Genevieve Collins [00:02:04] Or amazing.
Stuart Turley [00:02:05] Yes. And you know what I see yesterday when they when he he who would have ever thought that signing an executive orders and throwing the pens out like like t shirts, he almost needed a t shirt cannon to shoot his.
Genevieve Collins [00:02:21] Lawyers and.
Stuart Turley [00:02:22] He shouldn’t and is doing all this. But you know what those are? Every one of those is promises kept as he’s doing it. And I mean, this is so cool. I would love to do because his running his campaign speeches is drill, baby, drill. And in Texas, we love that phrase. But it’s more drill baby when fiscally responsible because they’re giving their money back to their shareholders and they’re it’s going to be a lot of tough. We need help from Lee Zeldin, the head of the EPA, in order to lower regulations, we need Doug Burgum. And we need Chris. Right. Those three men run on all cylinders. President Trump will meet his commitment to cutting energy costs in half. Now, here’s a thought. What do you think? We try to get a couple meetings or podcast with you, Senator Cruz and any of those guys and let’s make something happen so that they can help get that word out there.
Genevieve Collins [00:03:21] Do we have to do that? I mean, I like to think of these three men Lee Zeldin, Doug Burgum, Chris Wray. They’re like the energy trinity, you know what I mean? And if we make sure that the energy.
Stuart Turley [00:03:33] Down.
Genevieve Collins [00:03:35] And, you know, and that they’re in front of what’s really going on, not just in Texas, but in North Dakota, in Pennsylvania and Ohio, that they’re getting in front of these the operators, the owners and the real folks that are helping drill, baby, drill, then we can unleash American energy. Right. I always like to say that when at least when as it pertains to Texas, you know, when Texas is energy dominant, America is energy abundant and our allies are energy secure.
Stuart Turley [00:04:08] Say that again. Walk time out. That is fantastic. Say that again.
Genevieve Collins [00:04:11] When Texas is energy dominant, America is energy abundant and our allies are energy secure.
Stuart Turley [00:04:20] See, this is what we’re we’re all about is because we’re back, baby. When you have President Biden sitting there going and no LNG for you, kind of like the soup Nazi on Seinfeld more than energy for you. And then you have people like Steve Reese that are now creating all the way from Texas, the Gulf, all over a one stop shop for Germany getting LNG. I mean, those kind of things.
Genevieve Collins [00:04:46] It was so shortsighted. Biden’s policy, not only did it cripple a huge sector of the energy of the energy sector, but it crippled our economy and our ability to trade and more importantly, our ability. To get our allies of Russian energy right. Cheap, clean, domestic crude smell, sweet crude oil that we’re ready to export, you know, LNG, we’re ready to export this. We’re ready to make money and make sure our allies have the proper have the proper right and are funding the agendas that as allies, we believe in not taking money or not paying for Putin’s continued wars. So it’s just crazy what the Biden administration does. But the good news is that it is finally over. And Trump executive orders, he couldn’t get them signed fast enough. And and I just I feel like there’s such a sense of hope, of joy. And more importantly, there’s a genuine sense of this renewed American prosperity and that the Internet sector is going to be a key driver for American prosperity. And after four years of Biden elation, a huge high interest rate, high grocery prices, high gas prices, people are ready for prosperity. And it’s just going to be exciting to see this Trump administration deliver.
Stuart Turley [00:06:10] Speaking of prosperity, the Americans for Prosperity is such a great organization. And when I hear what you guys have done, tell us how your last year went, because you guys have had some tremendous impact in the Texas area. But not only as Texas goes, so goes the nation. So tell us about how you did last year.
Genevieve Collins [00:06:30] Sure. So in Texas and I can speak for Texas and I can share a little bit about what we did kind of across the country since EFP is a nationwide organization. But y’all in Texas, our federal delegation, there weren’t a lot of seats to play. And so the big opportunity was looking at the Texas House of Representatives in Austin and seeing how do we change? Let me rephrase. How do we move on aligned policy for years and and put in new policy champions that believe in freedom, opportunity and prosperity. So we engaged in 26 races across the state of Texas. That’s in the both the primary and the general election. We helped win 22 of those 26 races are to know why our team knocked on over 603,000 doors across the state of Texas. In addition to making over 300,000 phone calls, we had over a million people that we talked to last year. And I think.
Stuart Turley [00:07:35] That some numbers I’m sorry for interrupting, but I get excited.
Genevieve Collins [00:07:38] Now. What I’m excited about is that what we do is different. We don’t just do TV ads or radio or digital ads or mail. Right. We do the hardest thing possible, which is talking to voters at their doorstep. And I want you to just think about all of the noise that everyone in America experienced last year text messages, TV ads, billboards. We’re constantly bombarded with this noise about this candidate versus that candidate. And the fact that we spoke to a million people in their own homes, we had their own interrupted attention at their doorsteps. And we’re able to talk to people about the candidates that we believe genuinely promote freedom, opportunity and prosperity. And I know that that really tipped the scales because there’s so much there’s so much you’re.
Stuart Turley [00:08:34] Describing.
Genevieve Collins [00:08:35] A perfect tension.
Stuart Turley [00:08:36] And what you’re describing you’re describing outside thinking that got President Trump elected. Yeah. And that kind of thinking changes politics.
Genevieve Collins [00:08:46] It does. And, you know, you have to drive a narrative about candidates, about policy. And I think what people have experienced over the last four years, they didn’t want to just paint paint me a pretty picture. They haven’t lived a pretty picture in their own lives, in their own pocketbooks. So they wanted real, meaningful policy reforms. And while they may not know the ins and outs of deep policy, they know what they would prefer in normal times. And having campaigns drive that narrative while we are at people’s front doors, driving the same narrative in positive solutions about specific candidates. It’s just it’s the perfect winning combination. And we helped change the makeup of the Texas legislature that we’re going to be for school choice. They’re going to be for reducing property taxes. They’re going to be for making sure we’re not subsidizing wind and solar unnecessarily. Why are taxpayers keeping paying these subsidies when we’ve got all sorts of other, bigger, exciting forms of energy that can do more? We don’t need to be subsidizing certain industries.
Stuart Turley [00:09:56] You know, you’re the Americans for Prosperity is someone. Right now because Ercot is expected to double in the next five years. In the next five years, their energy demand is expected to double. The only way that they can do that and I went through this I just wrote a couple of articles on this. And the only way that Ercot can meet that is with natural gas power plants. And when you take a look at the Texas legislature, I backed into how much how many megawatts it would take for them to keep adding in natural gas to keep going the way it is. And it turns out they’re on track to meet what they’ve got to do. And I’m sitting there, I had I was trying to prove them wrong on a look. They’re not. Wait a minute. They’re almost on track. This is kind of cool. There are so many other states are like that.
Genevieve Collins [00:10:48] Zero.
Stuart Turley [00:10:49] Exactly. Texas is going through this with a lot of the other states, and they cannot keep up with demand. So if you are a data center, if you are a really somebody wanting to put a business in manufacturing, come to Texas because the power is there. When you’re sitting there and you look at the plans, you look at the number, you look at the number of because nuclear takes too long. We don’t have time. How do you double your grid with a nuclear reactor? You can’t.
Genevieve Collins [00:11:22] And you have a molten salt reactor in Abilene that’s going to that that got approved from the nuclear commission. So that’s at least online and hopefully that’ll produce small modular nuclear reactors. May not be in five years, but hey, if we get between 5 to 10, that’s a huge accelerant. And what it is, is that it’s in Texas that Texas gets to lead. I mean, I know for your listeners, everyone from Texas is annoying because we love Texas. But it’s that is true. We do. But if Texas can help create those new guidelines for how we’re adding natural gas to energy production and energy transmission, how we’re looking at nuclear and these new technology is doing it in an incredibly safe way, but also an incredibly optimized way of great for the rest of the country because everyone looks to Texas for energy solutions anyway. So if we can do both, walk and chew gum at the same time, heck, no one can stop us. No.
Stuart Turley [00:12:26] In fact, I got almost teary eyed when I saw President Trump stop when he was walking in and hug Governor Abbott. Yeah, remarkable. I was like, go, Yay! You know, and we’re going to close the border. And I am so proud of Tom. And he has just immediately and he’s using Texas as a, by the way, I’m working with these guys. And then you have like the mayor in Denver saying, I’m not going to follow the law. You’re like going, Hello?
Genevieve Collins [00:12:58] Yeah. I mean, security is the number one issue, not just in Texas, but across the country. So, Governor Abbott, a tremendous amount of credit for actually sending these illegal immigrants across the country, because what I initially thought was just great political theater, you know, sending them to Kamala Harris’s vice presidential home. Right. Like. Right. And fraud and sending them to New York City and all these sanctuary cities. It’s just great political theater. But what it did was actually start sharing the burden. And it became so overwhelming for all of these other cities at every American city and state became.
Stuart Turley [00:13:41] I did see Governor Abbott outplayed me on that one from a standpoint that I did not have that on my bingo card, that, you know, we would we’d sit here next. And then when I sit back and take a look at Senator Fetterman, I don’t want to dress like him. He and I have the same haircut. But I did not have on my bingo card that he would be the most rational Democrat in Congress. I just did not have that one on there. And then I’m sitting there reading on this and I’m going, That son of a gun is probably going to become a Republican. And it wouldn’t surprise me.
Genevieve Collins [00:14:17] Well, first off, you have to know you have more hair. Everyone needs to wear hair than John Fetterman. So let’s make sure everyone knows that. Secondly, you know, the Fetterman kind of evolution has been fascinating to watch. I think that he is what we would call, you know, an old school or Blue Dog Democrat, a Southern Democrat of the year and.
Stuart Turley [00:14:40] An odd but an odd dog and a blue dog.
Genevieve Collins [00:14:44] He’s probably supportive of Israel. I think that he’s demonstrating something that both parties actually need to pay attention to is that as a senator, you represent the entire state, not just the Democrats or not. I love that there’s an. And he has taken that really to heart and demonstrated that going on Fox News media, you know, going and talking to conservatives, not just talking to liberal voters. And I think that senators and not just senators, but every politician needs to remember that their district is not just comprised of one single party. So I give him a lot of credit for critically thinking and giving, giving an example that both parties can look to for reasonability and wholeness.
Stuart Turley [00:15:31] Do you think that when President Trump annexes Greenland, that we should call that the Northern Texas and so that we can you know, as Texans, since I’m a Texas resident, that I should be able to buy my lake house up in Greenland? What do you think?
Genevieve Collins [00:15:47] I think you freeze your tail off this property up in Greenland. So, you know, you’re going to buy a glacier more than you’re going to buy a lake house. Do you know? So I just love.
Stuart Turley [00:15:59] President Trump when he was he’s sitting there and he’s trolling everybody and.
Genevieve Collins [00:16:03] You know, go fuck America. That statement, I.
Stuart Turley [00:16:07] Just bought a shirt.
Genevieve Collins [00:16:08] I to laugh out loud. You know, you don’t see Hillary Clinton just genuinely laugh. And it was just one of those moments she caught my eye and like, she just genuinely was laughing. And I just thought, you know, you guys have no idea who you’re dealing with. You guys made Donald Trump, by the way.
Stuart Turley [00:16:27] There’s a little more to the story.
Genevieve Collins [00:16:29] But it just is fabulous. You know, the goals of America. I just love everything about it.
Stuart Turley [00:16:34] Genevieve, there’s a little more to that story, and I’ve got an attorney working on this, and that is when we have our chowder head excuse me, President Biden banning the offshore willing offshore drilling, Right. Right before they leave, which is the deep state, because we know Biden can barely even understand when it’s time for a depends. I mean not it depends it’s his depends is fall and and so he doesn’t know what he’s signing. So who signed the offshore ban in our Gulf of America? So that ban says for the Gulf of Mexico.
Genevieve Collins [00:17:11] I did know that. Yeah.
Stuart Turley [00:17:13] And so now all of a sudden, with it being renamed the Gulf of America, I think we need yeah, we can drill. So I’m sitting here thinking Gulf of America is what we need to call it, not Gulf of America. We need to be tech. We need to Texas for that part in the Gulf of America. What do you think?
Genevieve Collins [00:17:33] I am definitely for the Gulf of America. That would certainly fit the SCC, which Jeremy even pronounce an egg anyways. And I am a graduate from an SEC school, so I can say with sincerity, No, but I saw that that number is important, especially in law. If you change the name will suddenly the other name is null and void. And so it’s a very clever, you know, about face to allow for offshore drilling and and saw what he did yesterday with executive orders in Alaska as well. So it’s just like I said, I do I think that we really need to we can be excited about the policies and we should. But I think at a higher level, we also need to remember, like we are truly at the precipice of creating genuine prosperity for every American. And we can also align on the fact that opportunity and prosperity, the moments have meant for each to come to fruition. And we need to be focused on America, America being prosperous again.
Stuart Turley [00:18:38] That is so critical in the education system. And I’m hopeful that when his new person gets and and her his new nominee, yet she she knows how how takedowns happen. And I hope she can take down this husband. She knows how wrestling goes. And so I think that giving it back to the states and having state’s power gives it back to the people. And seeing Kash Patel, who is going to be reforming the FBI because the FBI was going after parents at school board meetings. We need those parents in school board meetings or we need them home schooling or we need them involved at the state level.
Genevieve Collins [00:19:23] So we’ll think about it like this. Let me go back to my previous statement about America being prosperous. Right. If if our current of the student population in America currently can’t read or do math on grade level, the future is not prosperous, period.
Stuart Turley [00:19:39] No, I went to Oklahoma State. I can barely read. So, you know, it’s just kidding. Okay. Sorry.
Genevieve Collins [00:19:45] Being able to empower parents through school choice, being able to empower parents by sending decisions back down to the states and letting the voters in those states really make the most qualified and informed decisions. For their kids is absolutely going to ensure that the future for the four American children is prosperous, that there’s not only opportunity through choice, whether that’s public school, private school, charter school, homeschool. Mike They’re learning pods. But we have to think bigger than just this protectionism, public school versus private school. This is about prosperity for the future generations, and it’s connecting parental empowerment through prayer choice. Paris freedom and student opportunity to create a prosperous future for America.
Stuart Turley [00:20:33] You know, when Jimmy Carter got rid of the or created the Department of Education, I don’t think anybody really understood how bad it would have gotten us. We’ve never been the same since.
Genevieve Collins [00:20:46] Yeah, my dad and I joke that the Department of Education is just basically a bank passed through and has unfortunately also decided to get involved in testing and curriculum. So, you know, it’s it’s just a it’s a very interesting thing. And ultimately, parents are the that are the primary educators of their children. We need to remember that as a society and we need to make sure that parents actually realize the value of their role as the primary educator of their kids. So there’s so much good stuff that’s about to happen. We in Texas, here at AP, we are in the fight for education, savings accounts, universal education, savings accounts, which is basically a form of school choice here in Texas. And I believe that we that Texas will pass school choice by May 31st of this year, which, you know. Absolutely. Absolutely. We’re going to pass school choice for the first time in the state of Texas. We have the votes in the Texas House, which is what we never had. And Ufp was a huge part of changing the makeup of the house last year to ensure that we have policy champions that believe in parents and believe that students should have the choice to go to the schools that they want or that best fit their needs. But imagine when Texas passed a school choice. It is the logjam that breaks for the rest of the nation that 5 million students in Texas will have eligibility to go to the schools of their choice. This is now because we have such scale and size now that Texas can actually help the rest of the country in transformational policy that will allow for more opportunity, more prosperity for parents and families.
Stuart Turley [00:22:37] If you are a parent and you’re sitting in Chicago and you realize that your kids are not going to be able to be able to read and very much like Dexter Manley, I love Dexter Manley as a person, He was funny. He was a football player at Oklahoma State University. And I was actually asked to help teach him for a class and he could not read. So the school system failed him. Now he could bench press with 500 pounds of free weight. So unless your, you know, you know, just work and all that and he was great. But, boy, unless you can do that, you’re going to need an education.
Genevieve Collins [00:23:17] Charles Hailey, same thing. He’s five time Super Bowl champion Darren Woodson. I mean, you can go through the entire NFL and find countless NFL players that this has happened to. And now these former NFL players are convinced that it is now their job to teach to make sure that kids aren’t passed into grades. And so but it happens all the time. And, you know, if you’re if you’re a parent in Chicago, not only did the teachers union shut down Chicago Public Schools, the third largest school district in the country for not one, but two years, and last year, there wasn’t a single high school, not one in the entire Chicago Public Schools school district. There was not a single high school that had a single student has high school math, No one. So we are stealing millions of kids and expecting that they can be contributors to society. You know, what are they going to be? Influencers. Get out of here. We need real jobs. You need people to be qualified to have those jobs. And we are.
Stuart Turley [00:24:28] I got a favor to ask, though, of anybody moving to Texas. Okay. Leave your voting practices behind, please. Now you’re helping people and talking to people in their homes. You’re also encouraging are getting local and helping with those kind of things that to me, when I was visiting with you last year on some of those, it’s like this is grassroots redefined in the modern age. I mean, it really is.
Genevieve Collins [00:24:57] Well, you’re still your 100% right. Thank you. What that really means is that I don’t sleep. But. But what we really are trying to do is elevate real people’s voices that grassroots matters. And it’s not that grassroots is full of a bunch of crazy people. It’s that grassroots is about making putting people that are closest to the problem, allowing their voices to be heard to solve the problem, and able to do that at scale.
Stuart Turley [00:25:25] Well, Genevieve, how do people get in touch with you?
Genevieve Collins [00:25:28] Go to our website. It’s called Freedom is bigger.com. You can sign up to become an ambassador. And what that means is that you are an evangelist of Texas. You can also go on our website freedom is becher.com and sign petitions. We have petitions that are on energy taxes, health care, school choice regulations. And you can sign petitions and we will send petition letters directly to your member of Congress or your state legislator or elected officials will get they will get petitions. And we I just want to encourage people. Your voice matters. And so find us at freedom is bigger.com. You can find me at Twitter at G, Collins T X, and I look forward to talking with you.
Stuart Turley [00:26:16] That’s so vintage. I’ll tell you what, let’s follow up and see if we can’t get Ted Cruz visiting with Chris. Right. Lee Zeldin and Doug Burgum, they’re going to be all incredibly busy. But I know that we have enough talented people that would love a few minutes to talk to them. And I know they would. Definitely those men can get the things done. And by the way, how much money did Ted Cruz’s opposition throw at that past election? That was horrible.
Genevieve Collins [00:26:48] Ted Cruz’s opposition was embarrassed. That’s all. That’s all I’m going to say about that, because I.
Stuart Turley [00:26:56] Got to I got to hand it to Senator Cruz for winning again. But I’ll tell you, that was just absolutely despicable how much money and I got and the was it coal and all red? His ads made me airsick. And I’m going to go on record. Do not ever run again in Texas, because if you lie that bad, you do not deserve a position in political office.
Genevieve Collins [00:27:19] Well said, my friend.
Stuart Turley [00:27:20] No, I tried to keep the swear words out, but thank you, Genevieve, for stopping by. I appreciate you.
Genevieve Collins [00:27:26] I so value your friendship and everything. And congratulations on your podcast. And thank you for educating people about the need of energy, not just in Texas, but across America. So love and appreciated.
Stuart Turley [00:27:39] We look forward to seeing you. Thanks.