Debates over border security and immigration policy have been looming since President Joe Biden took office and implemented policies that caused a flood of migrants to show up at the Texas border. The task of securing the border and ensuring immigration laws are upheld has fallen solely on Texas lawmakers, Border Patrol, and the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Many Texas lawmakers are fed up. In a recent letter to Biden, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) suggested that the Department of Homeland Security shouldn’t receive another penny of taxpayer funding until Biden vows to institute real change.

“No appropriation should fund DHS until the necessary steps are taken to secure the border,” the letter reads. “We must use the power of the purse to force President Biden to end the carnage resulting from open borders.”

The letter concludes: “Simply put, no member of Congress should agree to fund a federal agency at war with his state and people. We have a moral obligation to protect our states, our nation, and, importantly, the migrant children getting abused from the disaster transpiring at our southern border. No border security, no funding.”

The message is clear: Do your job right, or you don’t get funding to do your job at all. If you’ve seen Roy on YouTube , you know that he only plays the game of politics one way: hardball or not at all .

In a Dallas Morning News article highlighting Roy’s letter, the author attempts to suggest Roy is a hypocrite because, while he’s called for the DHS to shape up or lose financial backing, he also decried efforts of activist groups when they called to defund the police, particularly following the death of George Floyd by local police.

The two aren’t remotely the same.

While there is likely considerable work to be done in various police departments to ensure all employees are adequately trained and mentally and emotionally healthy, local departments aren’t systemically failing at their taxpayer-funded jobs. There are people who make mistakes, yes, but defunding entire police departments to make one person’s failure right would void the work of the majority of law enforcement who are protecting citizens.

Roy’s threat to DHS was an ultimatum, calling for accountability and better policy so DHS can help the state of Texas do the job it’s supposed to be doing.

Roy clarified his stance — and the difference between the two — on The Dana Show with Dana Loesch.

“All we're trying to do is use the power of the purse which the Founders gave us, which James Madison wrote about in Federalist 58,” he said. “It was very clear that the House of Representatives, we control the purse strings. And that's how you check an out-of-control Biden administration.”

Politicians are imperfect, but labeling Roy a hypocrite without asking his office for comment — something the author did, as Roy mentioned on Loesch’s show —  is a real display of mental gymnastics. Instead of lauding Roy’s efforts to create law and order from chaos, a Dallas Morning News writer composed an entire story on a false equivalency.

No wonder Roy has become a viral voice  for Texans online; he’s combating seeds of progressive bias planted by one of his home state’s newspapers.

Nicole Russell ( @russell_nm ) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. She is a mother of four and an opinion columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in Texas.