Last June, just before Gov. Greg Abbott appointed Donna Bahorich, R-Houston, as the new chair of the State Board of Education, outgoing chairwoman Barbara Cargill, R-The Woodlands, tried to get the SBOE more authority. Today the Texas Attorney General’s Office slapped down that power grab. Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office released a formal opinion saying […]
“Now listen, I have been a conservative my entire life. I have never met anybody, any conservative who wants to ban contraceptives.” That’s Texas Sen. Ted Cruz again, complaining about people who point out Republicans and other conservatives who want to make it harder for women to get access to birth control. But Sen. Cruz either doesn’t […]
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has insisted that the vile rhetoric of anti-abortion extremists played no role in the mass shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado. In fact, speaking at an event for his presidential campaign on Sunday in Iowa, Cruz bizarrely characterized the alleged gunman as a “transgendered leftist activist.” But it’s important to know that Cruz has closely […]
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott claims to support religious freedom, but it seems that’s the case only if religious organizations obey his political demands. If they don’t, the governor will have state officials threaten them. Politicians have been attacking the Obama administration’s efforts to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees in the United States. Those politicians say that Muslim extremists might be among the […]
Today the State Board of Education, yet again, made Texas look like an education backwater. Just two days ago the board refused to add special fact-check panels made up of university academics to the process for adopting textbooks in Texas. Today they refused to require that a majority of citizen textbook reviewers have even basic qualifications — like […]
The Texas State Board of Education, meeting in Austin today, rejected a common-sense proposal to keep errors out of public school textbooks. TFN issued the following press release: Board Votes 8-7 to Reject Establishing Scholar Panels for Reviewing Proposed Textbooks for Factual Errors Texas Freedom Network President Kathy Miller had the following statement today following […]
As lawmakers make it increasingly difficult for women to access safe, legal abortion care in the state, today researchers with the independent Texas Policy Evaluation Project (TxPEP) released information showing that at least 100,000 Texas women have attempted to self-induce an abortion. TxPEP’s study briefs are available here and here. Following is today’s press release from TxPEP: AUSTIN (November […]
We asked Tiffany Tuett, founder and director of the Institute for Diversity and Civic Life, to write a blog post about a special workshop next week in Austin about how religious leaders and activists from diverse faith communities can work together despite religious differences. *** Community leaders and activists working across religious difference want to mobilize the […]
Fresh off a vote last week in Houston to repeal a sweeping nondiscrimination ordinance, religious-righters and cynical politicians have turned their guns on a similar 13-year-old ordinance in Dallas. And once again they’ve decided that the truth won’t be an obstacle. Back in 2002, the Dallas City Council added to the City Code an ordinance barring discrimination based on, among […]
It seems that the Republican Party has become so venomously hostile toward LGBT people that the party’s presidential candidates can attend — apparently without consequence — events at which speakers insist that gay people should be put to death. Ted Cruz, a presidential candidate as well as GOP senator from Texas, attended such an event in Iowa last week along […]
