TexaS Tribune
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The Texas Supreme Court rejected Gov. Greg Abbott’s efforts to remove Houston Rep. Gene Wu from office Friday, saying that the Legislature was able to secure House Democrats’ attendance and restore a quorum last summer without involvement from the court.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock — a Republican and former Abbott aide — cited legal precedent in which the courts “have uniformly recognized that it is not their role to resolve disputes between the other two branches that those branches can resolve for themselves.”
“The courts’ institutional ‘reluctance … to involve themselves in contests of factional political power,’ a reluctance we reiterate and reinforce today, is a check on the judicial power ‘of ancient standing,’ not an optional preference we are at liberty to discard,” Blacklock wrote.
Friday’s ruling from the all-Republican Supreme Court is a setback for Abbott, who vowed to expel any members who refused to return to Texas to pass the GOP’s new congressional map. The unusual mid-decade redistricting arose under pressure from President Donald Trump, who sought to shore up the GOP’s narrow majority in the U.S. House by having Texas lawmakers draw new districts designed to give Republicans five additional seats in Texas.
More than 50 Democrats, including Wu — the House Democratic leader — left the state in August to shut down the Legislature and stall passage of the GOP’s map.
Democrats condemned the unusual mid-decade redraw as a partisan power grab that will reduce the power of Black and Hispanic voters. The Legislature adopted the map shortly after Democrats returned, and the U.S. Supreme Court approved its usage for the midterm elections, overruling a lower court’s finding that the map was racially gerrymandered.
The Texas Supreme Court on Friday left open the possibility of getting involved in any future quorum breaks, or when lawmakers purposely deny the Legislature the headcount needed to take up business.
“Whatever wrong may have been committed by the absent House members, the Texas Constitution’s internal political remedies, none of which involve the judicial branch, were sufficient to the task of restoring the House’s ability to do business,” Blacklock wrote. “Should those remedies unexpectedly prove inadequate in a future case, we might have occasion to consider whether any judicial remedy could ever be available in circumstances such as these.”
In a concurring opinion, Justice James Sullivan indicated a greater appetite for addressing future quorum breaks and potentially finding that lawmakers had vacated their offices.
“Were it to happen yet again, I believe the next set of quorumbreakers had better be ready to pay us a visit,” he wrote. “Our original jurisdiction to issue writs of quo warranto will empower us to inquire whether they’ve abandoned their legislative offices and, if we so find, to throw them out.”
Quorum breaking has a long history in Texas politics. The state’s founding fathers intentionally set the bar for quorum high, requiring two-thirds of both chambers to show up, compared to a simple majority in most states. Most recently, Democrats fled in 2003 and 2021 to delay redistricting and voting restrictions, respectively.
No Texas lawmaker has ever been removed from office solely for breaking quorum. Never in U.S. history has a governor gotten the courts to remove a member of a legislature for breaking quorum.
Wu on Friday declared victory after challenging Abbott to “come and take it” in August.
“Today, the Republican-controlled Supreme Court said: No. The Constitution does not let a governor erase voters’ choices when their choices are inconvenient to him,” Wu said in a statement. “Abbott was wrong, weak and after all his bluster he couldn’t come and take a damn thing.”
In the emergency petition he filed with the state Supreme Court in August, Abbott argued that Wu had abandoned his office by decamping to Illinois and declaring “this corrupt special session is over” — a signal that Wu and the absentee Democrats planned to stay on the lam long enough to run out the last two weeks of the overtime session, Abbott said.
“What is at stake here? Nothing less than the future of Texas,” Abbott wrote. “If a small fraction of recalcitrant lawmakers choose to run out the clock today, they can do so for any, and every, Regular or Special Session, potentially bankrupting the State in an attempt to get their way.”
In his response, Wu said he had not abandoned his office, and in fact was representing his constituents more fully by refusing to allow the House to pass legislation they opposed.
Wu “has not died and has not been expelled from the House by the constitutionally prescribed means: a 2/3 vote of the House,” his lawyers said in a response. “His presence in another state is not a voluntary resignation — as his opposition to this petition makes evident. Respondent is entitled to serve through the entire term to which he was elected.”
:{This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
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an 5 24
at Texas GOP convention, Republicans call for spiritual warfare]
(https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/28/texas-gop-convention-elections-religion-delegates-platform/)" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
SAN ANTONIO — From his booth in the exhibit hall of the Texas GOP’s 2024 convention, Steve Hotze saw an army of God assembled before him.
For four decades, Hotze, an indicted election fraud conspiracy theorist, has helmed hardline anti-abortion movements and virulently homophobic campaigns against LGTBQ+ rights, comparing gay people to Nazis and helping popularize the “groomer” slur that paints them as pedophiles. Once on the fringes, Hotze said Saturday that he was pleased by the party's growing embrace of his calls for spiritual warfare with “demonic, Satanic forces” on the left.
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From left: Conservative activists Steven Hotze and Jared Woodfill enter the Senate gallery during the afternoon session of Day 1 of the Ken Paxton impeachment trial in the Texas Senate on Sept. 5, 2023. Credit: Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune
“People that aren’t in Christ have wicked, evil hearts,” he said. “We are in a battle, and you have to take a side.”
Those beliefs were common at the party’s three-day biennial convention last week, at which delegates adopted a series of new policies that would give the party unprecedented control over the electoral process and further infuse Christianity into public life.
Delegates approved rules that ban Republican candidates — as well as judges — who are censured by the party from appearing on primary ballots for two years, a move that would give a small group of Republicans the ability to block people from running for office, should it survive expected legal challenges. The party’s proposed platform also included planks that would effectively lock Democrats out of statewide office by requiring candidates to win a majority of Texas’ 254 counties, many of which are dark-red but sparsely populated, and called for laws requiring the Bible to be taught in public schools.
Those moves, delegates and leaders agreed, were necessary amid what they say is an existential fight with a host of perceived enemies, be it liberals trying to indoctrinate their children through “gender ideology” and Critical Race Theory, or globalists waging a war on Christianity through migration.
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Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick speaks during the Texas GOP Convention on Thursday, May 23, 2024 in San Antonio. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune
Those fears were stoked by elected officials in almost every speech given over the week. “They want to take God out of the country, and they want the government to be God,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Thursday morning.
“Our battle is not against flesh and blood,” Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, said Friday. “It is against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
”Look at what the Democrats have done,” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said Saturday. “If you were actively trying to destroy America, what would you do differently?”
Controlling elections
The Texas GOP’s conventions have traditionally amplified the party’s most hardline activists and views. In 2022, for instance, delegates approved a platform that included calls for a referendum on Texas secession; resistance to the “Great Reset,” a conspiracy theory that claims global elites are using environmental and social policies to enslave the world’s population; proclamations that homosexuality is an “abnormal lifestyle choice”; and a declaration that President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected.
The 2024 convention went a step further.
It was the first Texas GOP convention set against the backdrop of a civil war that was sparked by the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton and inflamed by scandals over white supremacists and antisemites working for the party’s top funders, West Texas oil billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. This year’s convention was also sparsely attended compared to past years, which some longtime party members said helped the Dunn and Wilks faction further consolidate their power and elect their candidate, Abraham George, for party chair.
“What we're seeing right now is a shift toward more populism,” said Summer Wise, a former member of the party’s executive committee who has attended most conventions since 2008, including last week’s. “And the [party’s] infrastructure, leadership, decision-making process, power and influence are being controlled by a small group of people.”
(https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/_X93OkVqWjKf0MF0YqIovXarXM4=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/37d777dfbb61f282f112bd04a575cbbc/0523%20GOP%20Convention%20EH%20TT%2055.jpg)
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, wave to attendees during the Republican Party of Texas convention in San Antonio on Thursday, May 23, 2024. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune
That shift was most evident, she said, in a series of changes to the party’s rules that further empower its leaders to punish dissent. The party approved changes that would dramatically increase the consequences of censures — which were used most recently to punish House Speaker Dade Phelan for his role in impeaching Paxton, and against U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales for voting for gun safety legislation.
Under the changes, any person who is censured by the party would be banned for two years from appearing on GOP primary ballots — including judges, who are elected in partisan races but expected to be politically neutral once on the bench. The party also voted to unilaterally close its primaries, bypassing the Legislature, in a move intended to keep Democrats from voting in Republican primaries.
“It’s pretty hypocritical,” Wise said of the changes, which legal experts and some party members expect will face legal challenges. “Republicans have always opposed activist judges, and this seems to be obligating judges to observe and prioritize party over law — which is straight-up judicial activism.”
The convention came amid a broader embrace of Christian nationalism on the right, which falsely claims that the United States’ founding was God-ordained and that its institutions and laws should reflect their conservative, Christian views. Experts have found strong correlations between Christian nationalist beliefs and opposition to migration, religious pluralism and the democratic process.
Wise said she has seen parts of the party similarly shift toward dogmatic political and religious views that have been used “to justify or rationalize corrupting the institution and stripping away its integrity, traditions, fundamental and established principles" — as if “‘God wants it, so we can rewrite the rules.’”
“Being Republican and being Christian have become the same thing,” she said. “If you're accused of being a (Republican in Name Only), you're essentially not as Christian as someone else. … God help you if you're Jewish.”
The “rabbit hole”
Bob Harvey is a proud member of the “Grumpy Old Men’s Club,” a group in Montgomery County that he said pushes back against Fox News and other outlets that he claims have been infiltrated by RINOs.
“People trust Fox News, and they need to get outside of that and find alternative news and like-minded people,” Harvey, 71, said on Friday, as he waited in a long line to meet Kyle Rittenhouse, who has ramped up his engagement in Texas politics since he was acquitted of homicide after fatally shooting two Black Lives Matter protesters.
Rather, Harvey’s group recommends places such as the Gateway Pundit, Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News or the Epoch Times, a far-right website that also had a booth at this year’s convention and is directly linked to the Falun Gong, a hardline anti-communist group.
Such outlets, Harvey said, are crucial to getting people “further down the rabbit hole,” after which they can begin to connect the dots between the deep-state that has spent years attacking former President Donald Trump, and the agenda of the left to indoctrinate kids through the Boy Scouts of America, public schools and the Democratic Party.
Harvey’s views were widely-held by his fellow delegates, many of whom were certain that broader transgender acceptance, Critical Race Theory or “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives were parts of a sinister plot to destroy the country and take over its churches.
The culprits behind the ploy differed — Democrats, socialists or “globalists,” to name a few. But their nefarious end goals loomed over the convention. Fearing a transgender takeover of the Republican Party of Texas, delegates pushed to explicitly stipulate that the party’s chair and vice chair must be “biological” men or women.
At events to recruit pastors and congregations to ramp up their political activism, elected leaders argued that churches were the only thing standing between evil and children. And the party’s proposed platform included planks that claim gender-transition care is child abuse, or urge new legislation in Texas that's "even more comprehensive" than Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits the teaching of sexual orientation or gender identity in public schools.
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Kyle Rittenhouse shakes hands with conventioneers at a meet and greet during the Texas GOP convention on Thursday in San Antonio. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune
“Our next generation is being co-opted and indoctrinated where they should have been educated,” Rep. Nate Schatzline, R-Fort Worth, said at a Friday luncheon for pastors and churches. “We are in a spiritual battle. This isn't a political one.”
For at least a half-century, conservative Christian movements have been fueled by notions of a shadowy and coordinated conspiracy to destroy America, said Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University who focuses on movements to put the Bible in public schools.
“It's like the boogeyman that won't go away, that gets summoned whenever a justification is needed for these types of agendas,” he said. “They say that somebody is threatening quintessential American freedoms, and that these threats are posed by some sort of global conspiracy — rather than just recognizing that we're a pluralistic democracy.”
In the 1950s, such claims were the driving force behind the emergence of groups such as the John Birch Society, a hardline anti-communist group whose early members included the fathers of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Trump. After decades of dwindling influence, the society has seen a revival since Trump's 2016 election. And in the exhibit hall last week, so-called Birchers passed out literature and pamphlets that detailed the New World Order's secret plans for "world domination."
Steve Oglesby, field director for the Birch Society's North Texas chapter, said interest and membership in the group has been on the rise in recent years — particularly, as COVID-19 lockdowns and international climate change initiatives have spurred right-wing fears of an international cabal working against the United States.
"COVID really helped," he said, adding that the pandemic proved the existence of a global elite that has merely shifted its tactics since the 1950s. “It’s not just communism — it’s the people pulling the strings.”
Throughout the week, prominent Republicans invoked similar claims of a coordinated conspiracy against the United States. On Friday, Patrick argued that a decadeslong decline in American religion was part of a broader, “Marxist socialist left” agenda to “create chaos,” including through migration — despite studies showing that migrants are overwhelmingly Christian. Attorney General Ken Paxton echoed those claims in his own speech minutes later, saying migration was part of a plan to "steal another election."
“The Biden Administration wants the illegals here to vote,” he said.
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Ella Maulding and Konner Earnest watch as Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick speaks during the Republican Party of Texas convention in San Antonio on Thursday, the first day of the gathering. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune
As Paxton continued, Ella Maulding and Konner Earnest held hands and nodded their approval from the convention hall’s front row. Last year, the two were spotted outside of a Tarrant County office building where Nick Fuentes, a prominent white nationalist and Adolf Hitler fan, was hosted for nearly seven hours by Jonathan Stickland, then the leader of Dunn and Wilks' most powerful political action committee. They eventually lost their jobs after The Texas Tribune reported on their ties to Fuentes or white nationalist groups.
Maulding has been particularly vocal about her support for Great Replacement Theory, a conspiracy theory that claims there is an intentional, often Jewish-driven, effort to replace white people through migration, LGBTQ+ acceptance or interracial marriage. Once a fringe, white nationalist worldview, experts say that Great Replacement Theory has been increasingly mainstreamed as Republican leaders, including some who spoke last week, continue to claim that migration is part of a coordinated effort to aid Democrats. The theory has also been cited by numerous mass shooters, including the gunman who murdered 22 Hispanic people at an El Paso WalMart in 2019.
Five hours after Paxton and Patrick spoke, Maulding took to social media, posting a cartoon of a rabbi with the following text: “I make porn using your children and then make money distributing it under the banner of women’s rights while flooding your nation with demented lunatics who then rape your children.”
David Barton
Kason Huddleston has spent the last few years helping elect Christians and push back against what he believes is indoctrination of children in Rowlett, near Dallas. Far too often, he said, churches and pastors have become complacent, or have been scared away from political engagement by federal rules that prohibit churches from overt political activity.
Through trainings from groups like Christians Engaged, which advocates for church political activity and had a booth at this year’s convention, he said he has been able show more local Christians that they can be “a part of the solution” to intractable societal ills such as fatherlessness, crime or teen drug use. And while he thinks that some of his peers’ existential rhetoric can be overwrought, he agreed that there is an ongoing effort to “tear down the family unit” and shroud America’s true, Christian roots.
“If you look at our government and our laws, all of it goes back to a Judeo-Christian basis,” he said. “Most people don’t know our true history because it’s slowly just been removed.”
He then asked: “Have you ever read David Barton?”
Since the late 1980s, Barton has barnstormed the state and country claiming that church-state separation is a “myth” meant to shroud America’s true founding as a Christian nation. Barton, a self-styled “amateur historian” who served as Texas GOP vice chair from 1997 to 2006, has been thoroughly debunked by an array of historians and scholars — many of them also conservative Christians.
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David Barton, left, of WallBuilders, at a Texas Eagle Forum reception at the Republican Party of Texas convention in Fort Worth on June 7, 2012. Credit: Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune
Despite that, Barton’s views have become widespread among Republicans, including Patrick, Texas Supreme Court Justice John Devine and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson. And his influence over the party was clear at last week’s convention, where his group, WallBuilders, maintained a booth and delegates frequently cited him.
This year’s platform, the votes for which are expected to be released later this week, included planks that urged lawmakers and the State Board of Education to “require instruction on the Bible, servant leadership and Christian self-governance,” and supports the use of religious chaplains in schools — which was made legal under a law passed by the state Legislature last year.
Warren Throckmorton, a former Grove City College professor and prominent conservative, Christian critic of Barton, told the Tribune that the platform emblematized Barton’s growing influence, and his movement’s conflicting calls to preserve “religious liberty” while attempting to elevate their faith over others. The platform, he noted, simultaneously demands that students’ religious rights be protected, and for schools to be forced to teach the Bible.
“What about the other students who aren’t Christians and who don't believe in the Bible?” he said. “This is not religious liberty — it’s Christian dominance.”
As Zach Maxwell watched his fellow Republicans debate and vote last week, he said he was struck by the frequency and intensity with which Christianity was invoked. Maxwell previously served as chief of staff for former Rep. Mike Lang, then the leader of the ultraconservative Texas House Freedom Caucus, and he later worked for Empower Texans, a political group that was funded primarily by Dunn and Wilks.
He eventually became disillusioned with the party’s right wing, which he said has increasingly been driven by purity tests and opposition to religious or political diversity. This year’s convention, he said, was the culmination of those trends.
“God was not only used as a tool at this convention, but if you didn’t mention God in some way, fake or genuine, I did feel it was seen as distasteful,” he said. “There is a growing group of people who want to turn this nation into a straight-up theocracy. I believe they are doing it on the backs of people who are easily manipulated.”
Nancy Leclerc poses for a photo in front of a GOP elephant statue during the Texas GOP convention in San Antonio on Thursday, May 23, 2024. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/28/texas-gop-convention-elections-religion-delegates-platf
west Texas A&M University has received a $20 million gift — the largest gift from an individual donor in the university’s history — to create a new institute to promote American values.
The donation is a gift from Amarillo businessman Alex Fairly and his wife, Cheryl. Both graduated from West Texas A&M.
The new university center will be called the Hill Institute, named after the university’s second president, Joseph Hill.
“The mission of The Hill Institute is to encourage reflection upon the importance of ten West Texas, Texas, and American values and, through study and scholarship, promulgate the values among students within the diverse disciplines of the University and the extended community,” a flier for the new institute reads.
The institute’s website lists those ten values: trust; family life; hard work and persistence; regard for others; personal responsibility and free will; compatriotism and patriotism; exercise of virtue; the free and open exercise of faith; personal and civic loyalty; and rugged individualism.
“Ultimately, the goal is to have the work of scholars impact every profession and area of study represented on [West Texas A&M’s] campus through the firmly held and highly esteemed values of The Institute,” the newly created website reads. “A challenge in contemporary higher education is the retreat of disciplines into silos with little common ground from which to produce engaged citizens. The Institute will illuminate the founding values of our nation as embodied in our region as a means of cementing intellectual processes to make the world a better place to live.”
The Texas A&M Board of Regents approved the creation of the institute in February 2022 and the university had been searching for a donor to fund the center since. West Texas A&M President Walter Wendler said he worked with Fairly on crafting the institute’s mission for three years. He said he sees the university and this new institute as a “launching pad for the future of higher education.”
“Higher education is in the need to continually be reshaped, especially now with forces at work that affect every aspect of university life and the students who come here to study [and] the faculty and staff who come here to work who take care of their families,” Wendler said Wednesday during an event to announce the new center. “The enterprise of higher education is being drawn into a universalist perspective, one which says all institutions should all look the same. There are many forces at work that drive us in that direction and it's a mistake.”
Wendler, who has served as the university’s president since 2016, is known for being outspoken about his Christian beliefs, often publishing articles about his faith on his personal website and in messages to the university community.
In the spring, the university's facultyissued a vote of no confidence in Wendler's leadershipafter he canceled a student drag show on campus, which he called “derisive, divisive and demoralizing misogyny.” They accused him of abusing his role as president by running the university based on his own religious ideology and said he has exhibited a pattern of “divisive, misogynistic, homophobic and non-inclusive rhetoric that stands in stark contrast with the core values of the university.”
Wendler emerged from the controversy unscathed. He’s also received early support from a federal judge who is overseeing a lawsuit that a campus LGBTQ student group filed against Wendler in March, alleging he violated their free speech rights by banning the drag performance. Recently, the judge declined the student’s request for injunctive relief, stating that Wendler acted within his authority when he canceled the campus drag show.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who attended the event announcing the donation Wednesday, said he supported the center as a way to bring Texas “panhandle values” to the rest of the country.
“This is the America that all America used to be, it should be again,” Patrick said of the sprawling, pastoral region whose rural counties and smaller outposts have long been a Republican stronghold. “These are American values here.”
The Hill Institute will seek to embed students and faculty members “to better understand how these values impact daily life, create a better community, prepare us for engaged citizenship and shape our nation,” Wendler said. “We want the mission of the Hill Institute to have an impact far beyond our region.”
“Hill scholars” will also share their ideas and insights through regular publications and speaking engagements, according to a press release announcing the institute.
University officials said the institute will be funded through private donations, not state resources.
Alex Fairly, the donor funding the Hill Institute, told the crowd Wednesday that when Wendler approached him to serve on the committee for the university’s comprehensive fundraising campaign, the One West campaign, he was skeptical that his values aligned with those of higher education broadly.
“We wrestled with the decision to give to higher education because we were no longer sure we trusted the direction we saw higher education taking,” Fairly said. “What Texas and America need today is a leadership of intelligence and virtue. Education must take more account of permanent values.”
Fairly said he and his wife were convinced to make their donation because of Wendler, who they believe is leading higher education in the right direction, and the principles of Joseph Hill, who often spoke publicly about the values of the region.
According to the Texas Ethics Commission, Fairly has sporadically donated to local and state Republican lawmakers over the past few years. In 2022, Fairly and his entity, dealOn LLC, donated $100,000 to Attorney General Ken Paxton and $250,000 to Patrick. He has also made smaller donations to House Speaker Dade Phelan.
This year, Fairly and his wife donated $145,000 to the Defend Texas Liberty PAC, a political action committee led by former Rep. Jonathan Stickland. The PAC was a vocal supporter of Paxton after he was impeached by the Texas House this spring and throughout his impeachment trial in the Senate. In June, the PAC donated $3 million to Patrick, who presided over the trial.
At the event Wednesday, Patrick told Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp that he would work with him to get similar institutes at all A&M campuses by the end of Sharp’s tenure.
“Start from here, make this a national policy program because we need leaders in America,” he told the crowd. “We need to turn our face back to God. Stand on that foundation.”
This isn’t the first time Patrick has supported an institute at a public university that had the financial backing of conservative donors.
In 2021, Patrick worked with private donors and university leaders at the University of Texas at Austin to create the now-called Civitas Institute. Originally called the Liberty Institute, the proposed think tank would be “dedicated to the study and teaching of individual liberty, limited government, private enterprise and free markets,” according to draft plans of the center.
Patrick later said the original concept for the center was “shot down” by UT-Austin professors because they wanted to have control of hiring. Faculty who were involved in the creation of the institute told the Tribune that university leaders diverted from the original plans after faculty pushed back against the idea.
*Disclosure: Texas A&M University, Texas A&M University System, University of Texas at Austin and West Texas A&M University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/10/04/west-texas-am-hill-institute/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
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Texas eighth graders will soon be required to learn about climate change — but not without a showdown
man and woman sitting on chairs
Erin DouglasandThe Texas TribuneAugust 30, 2023
Starting next year, Texas will require that eighth graders learn about climate change as part of a science curriculum overhaul approved two years ago.
But which textbooks they’ll use to learn about it will largely depend on the state board charged with setting curriculum standards, and questions during a Tuesday meeting to hear testimony on the proposed teaching materials showed that the 15-member body — which has taken a rightward turn since 2021 — could make its decision along partisan lines.
One Republican member of the State Board of Education asked whether students ought to learn about the benefits of burning fossil fuels. Meanwhile, Democrats advocated for texts that emphasized the scientific consensus on climate change.
Dozens of publishers submitted textbook proposals for the state’s overhaul of its science curriculums. Any resident of Texas can submit written comments on the instructional materials before Oct. 30. The board plans to adopt instructional materials in November; the new science standards and textbooks will take effect at the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year.
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Many critics say the new curriculum standards, called the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, don’t go far enough to teach kids that climate change is caused by human activities, primarily burning fossil fuels. And while the TEKS changes will require eighth graders to describe how human activities “can” influence climate, students won’t be required to learn about how “a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions” could mitigate climate change after the board previously declined to include that language.
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Publishers can choose to include information in textbooks that go beyond the state’s new minimum requirements for teaching climate change — the question is whether the board, which strengthened its Republican majority during last year’s election, will approve such textbooks.
The board’s decision could impact how science is taught in Texas classrooms for years. And while school districts aren’t required to use board-approved textbooks, many do so for the assurance that those materials meet the state’s standards.
At least one Republican board member, Will Hickman, who represents Houston, indicated that he’d advocate for instructional materials that do not include climate change solutions in science courses. He argued those solutions would be a better fit in social studies.
Hickman also asked one testifier if the textbooks should “also include the benefits we get from burning carbon,” arguing that many facets of modern society, such as air conditioning, are powered by fossil fuels. Hickman, an attorney who was elected to the board in 2021, has worked as in-house counsel forShell OilCompany since 2004.
The testifier, Susan Meredith, an Austin-based energy and education consultant who had testified that students should be presented with instructional materials that prepare them for climate change related jobs in the future, told Hickman he was conflating topics.
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“What you’re collapsing is that electricity has to come from gas and oil, and it doesn't,” Meredith said.
Another Republican SBOE member, Pat Hardy, who represents Tarrant and Parker counties and parts of Dallas County, has previously said she wants children to learn about the good fossil fuels have done for human society, such as helping the Texas economy grow. Texas is the nation’s largest oil and gas producing state.
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Texas is one of only six states that does not use the Next Generation Science Standards to guide its K-12 science curriculum. The standards — developed by states and a committee convened by the National Research Council in 2013 — emphasize that climate change is real, severe, caused by humans and can be mitigated with actions that reduce greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.
A 2020 analysis of science curriculums in all 50 states by the National Center for Science Education and the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund gave Texas an F grade for how well schools in the state taught about the scientific consensus on climate change.
Some Democrats on the board pushed back on the soft-on-fossil-fuels language proposed by their Republican colleagues.
“We absolutely should say humans do impact climate change,” said Marisa Perez-Diaz, a Democrat who represents San Antonio on the board, in an interview with The Texas Tribune. “It doesn’t have to be political — it is just fact. But I think because sometimes we get into these culture-war conversations, it blurs what should and shouldn’t go into the standards.”
Although all the textbooks that have been submitted for approval explain that climate change is happening and “can” be due to human activity, not all of them explicitly say that human activities are the primary reason or include information on how to mitigate climate change. In other words, some of the textbooks don’t say that humans will need to quickly and dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions, largely by phasing out fossil fuels, to avoid the most devastating impacts of climate change, as international climate scientists have long warned.
During the Tuesday board meeting, Perez-Diaz asked the other board members to be cautious of only supporting textbooks that meet the state’s minimum requirements and nothing more.
“When publishers take the time to include additional information past the TEKS [standards], for me, that is a text that stands out above and beyond the others,” she said.
Some educators, former teachers and education advocates are concerned that the political influence of the fossil fuel industry in Texas has prevented, and may continue to block, robust education on climate science ahead of the board’s November vote on science instructional materials.
“Climate change might be politically controversial, but the scientific consensus is clear,” said Carisa Lopez, a senior political director for Texas Freedom Network, during a Tuesday press conference. “It’s past time for the board to be clear about textbooks: that textbooks in public schools should teach the truth.”
Judy Dickey, a graduate lecturer at Texas A&M in the department of atmospheric sciences, said she thought some of the textbooks were trying to “soft-peddle” climate change by not explicitly saying humans were the cause, casting doubt on the scientific consensus or not including solutions.
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But Dickey, who reviewed the textbooks for a Texas Freedom Network analysis of the proposals, said most of them did a good job of explaining climate science, treated climate change seriously and explained how it occurs.
“To me, that is a huge step forward,” said Dickey, who was previously a science teacher in Florida. “I was pleasantly surprised. … It was nice to see that no one was trying to pretend it was volcanoes.”
One 11th-grade student who testified during the Tuesday meeting, Marygrace Beinke, said none of her teachers have ever told her that climate change is a hoax or that evolution isn’t real. She emphasized to the board that all students in Texas should be given the opportunity to learn about those topics, which she said have reinforced her faith in God.
“I’ve never felt closer to God as when I’ve been learning about how fragile, beautiful and complex our Earth is,” Beinke told the board.
Geoff Carlisle, who taught eighth-grade science at a KIPP school in Austin for a decade, said in an interview with the Tribune that like Beinke’s teachers, he taught his students about climate change, even though it was not required by the state’s standards. Carlisle incorporated information about climate science into his own lesson plans — something he said most teachers in Texas don’t likely have the time or resources to do.
He said many of his students understood that climate change was happening and that it might have something to do with burning fossil fuels, but they could not explain the greenhouse gas effect or what role burning fossil fuels had in it. He wants the state to go further and require climate science to be taught at all levels. Other states, such as New Jersey, have such standards.
“When I think about the alarming emergency that our students are going to face or are facing, it’s unethical to not be talking about this in all grade levels,” Carlisle said. “Our students deserve the right to understand what’s happening.”
Brian Lopez contributed to this story.
Disclosure: Texas Freedom Network has been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune,
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an tex trib 8 23
How the Texas AG’s office became a pipeline for conservative federal judges
María Méndezand The Texas TribuneAugust 08, 2023
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How the Texas AG’s office became a pipeline for conservative federal judges" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
The Texas attorney general’s office is often in headlines representing a conservative voice in legal fights over health care, abortion and immigration — and more recently, regarding suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton’s impeachment.
But it was once a quiet state agency that mostly collected child support and defended the state in bureaucratic lawsuits.
Over the course of more than two decades, the office has become a well-known champion of a strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution and a pipeline for conservative federal judges. Nine federal judges appointed by former President Donald Trump had worked in the Texas attorney general’s office beginning in 1999, according to a Texas Tribune review of the office’s recent history.
These judges have been key in deciding cases in favor of conservatives on a wide range of issues, including abortion, COVID-19 vaccine requirements and immigration policies, through the framework of constitutional originalism. This framework argues that judges should rely solely on the text of the nation’s founding documents, and how it was publicly understood at the time of their writing, to answer essential questions about applying the law to modern life.
Here’s a timeline of how the office transformed under the leadership of now high-profile Republicans Sen. John Cornyn, Gov. Greg Abbott and Paxton. For an in-depth history of the office, you can read the Tribune’s three-part series here.
1998: John Cornyn elected attorney general
John Cornyn became the first Republican to win an election to the Texas attorney general’s office since the Reconstruction era of the late 1800s. He left his seat on the Texas Supreme Court for the role.
He stepped into the job just as attorneys general across the country began to gain more power, working across state lines on issues like suing tobacco companies for the public health costs associated with smoking.
In Texas, Cornyn created the solicitor general’s office, an elite, specialized unit of lawyers to handle state and federal appeals all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. The office drew young, smart lawyers with the promise of courtroom experience.The office also began to slowly wade into more political lawsuits over topics like abortion laws and religion in schools.
2002: Greg Abbott elected attorney general
Like Cornyn, Greg Abbott left the Texas Supreme Court and was elected attorney general. But Texas Republicans now controlled the state Legislature and every statewide office. Under Abbott, the attorney general’s office more clearly championed conservatism.
Lawyers who felt politically alignedflocked to the office, including Ted Cruz,who was hired by Abbott as solicitor general and is now one of Texas’ two U.S. senators. Under Abbott and Cruz’s leadership, the office defended conservative principles in federal cases about abortion, voting and guns — even if they did not directly involve Texas.
Read more about how the agency came to draw conservative lawyers and leaders in the first part of our series here.
2008: President Barack Obama elected
Republicans had lost the White House and Congress, but they found power in the Texas attorney general’s office. Under Abbott, Texas brought more than 30 lawsuits against the Obama administration in six years.
Texas’s federal legal fights, which often argued that Obama had overstepped the power granted to the president in the U.S. Constitution, included attempts to:
Stop the Affordable Care Act, the federal expansion of government-subsidized health care.
BlockDeferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, protections for young people who entered the country illegally with their parents.
Guard businesses against environmental regulations intended to stave off climate change. CPP?
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2014: Ken Paxton elected attorney general
Paxton, a former Republican state lawmaker, quickly pushed the office further to the right.
Paxton, who found early support among advocates of religious liberty, joined a conservative Christian legal movement against federal LGBTQ+ protections, which gained traction after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 landmark ruling establishing protections for same-sex marriage.
His office began strategically filing lawsuits in remote areas of Texas where just one judge hears most cases, ensuring any cases would be heard by a conservative judge.
Read more about how Texas took on the Obama administration in the second part of our series here.
2016: President Donald Trump elected
After Obama failed to prioritize judicial appointments, Trump entered office with more judicial vacancies than almost any president in U.S. history.
By then, Cornyn and Cruz had gained influence on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and nominated a class of young, conservative lawyers to become judges, many of whom had worked in the Texas attorney general’s office.
Nine federal judges appointed by the Trump administration from 2018-20 had previously worked in the Texas attorney general’s office under Cornyn, Abbott or Paxton.
Trump also appointed seven conservative judges to single-judge divisions in Texas, hugely expanding the number of venues where Paxton could file cases and effectively handpick the judge who would hear it. And with four former Texas attorney general employees appointed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Texas also increased its odds of getting favorable appeals rulings.
Lawyers like Jonathan Mitchell, a private lawyer and solicitor general under Abbott, have also taken advantage of the increasingly conservative roster of judges. Mitchell, for example, scored a victory with a Trump-appointed judge in a case that blocked confidential contraception access for minors in Texas.
2020: President Joe Biden elected
The Texas attorney general’s office has continued barraging the federal government with lawsuits over issues such as environmental protections and immigration policies.
The office now sees itself as at war with “the forces that want to destroy the American order, root and branch,” as Aaron Reitz, former deputy attorney general, said in November 2021. “Our soldiers are lawyers, and our weapons are lawsuits, and our tactic is lawfare. This is the project that we’re engaged in.”
Although conservative judges have not always taken up or supported the cases, the office has succeeded in delaying the rollout of federal policies amid ongoing lawsuits.
2023: Paxton impeached
In June, the Texas House of Representatives voted to impeach Paxton after he asked the Texas Legislature to fund a $3.3 million settlement in a lawsuit brought on by former employees.
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A House committee launched an investigation into the matter, resulting in 20 articles of impeachment listing a yearslong pattern of alleged misconduct. Paxton was suspended from his role and is awaiting a Senate impeachment trial scheduled to begin Sept. 5.
Paxton has faced criminal investigations, legal battles and accusations of wrongdoing for years. But he had eluded consequences and remained popular with Texas voters.
A handful of top agency employees took leaves of absence to defend Paxton. But the office has continued launching legal challenges against new federal smog regulations and protections for transgender student athletes under interim attorneys general appointed by Abbott.
And if a Republican is elected to the presidency in 2024, Texas conservatives could make further inroads in the judicial system, including in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Read more about how Trump helped cement Texas’ influence in federal courts in the third part of our series here.
Eleanor Klibanoff contributed to this story.
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