Good morning, 

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Here is the Texas Minute for Thursday, March 17, 2022.

– Brandon Waltens 

University President Stands With Liberal Mob

• Two weeks after an angry “pro-trans” mob at the University of North Texas shut down a conservative campus group’s event, the university’s president is speaking out...and taking the side of the liberal mob.
   

• On March 2, the Young Conservatives of Texas at UNT hosted Jeff Younger, a Texas father who advocates for parental rights and against forcing dangerous drugs and life-altering “sex-change” surgeries onto children in the name of “gender transition.” Younger’s ex-wife got custody of their son James after Jeff refused to go along with her plans to “transition” the young boy into a girl.
   

• But when Younger arrived to speak on campus, he was greeted by a group of protestors, mostly dressed in black, who filled the classroom. They constantly shouted obscenities, heckled, screamed, and used noisemakers to try and drown him out. Protesters outside the building shouted, “F*** Jeff Younger” and “F*** Kelly”—a reference to Kelly Neidert, a graduate student at UNT who previously headed the YCT group and has been a frequent target of leftist threats and online harassment.
   

• In recent statements, UNT President Neal Smatresk has sided with the mob against YCT, saying, “If I could snap my fingers and remove [YCT], I would do it."

More Parents Finding Porn in School Libraries

• As parents across the nation speak out against racist and pornographic material in children’s schools, the fight is also occurring in communities across Texas.
   

• Jacob Asmussen shares one of the latest examples, coming out of the quaint and conservative hill country tourist town of Fredericksburg, located nearly two hours west of Austin, where parents like Tara Petsch have discovered pedophilia and explicit sexual acts and violence in books within their taxpayer-funded middle and high school libraries.
   

• “What we have found are fictional novels depicting adult and child sex, normalizing pedophilia between teachers and students, incest, rape, graphic detailed sex scenes between minors, [and] sexual harassment language between characters who are minors and adults,” Tara recently testified to the school board of the Fredericksburg Independent School District.
   

• Tara and a group of concerned parents started a website called MakeSchoolsSafeAgain.com, where they posted excerpts of explicit books found in FISD schools—including “Looking for Alaska,” which details an oral sex scene between minors, and “Fade,” which is about teachers using a date rape drug on students. Both books are available to children as young as 10 years old.
   

• Do you know what material is being made available to children in your school district?

Teachers Added to Task Force

• After getting blasted for putting just two teachers on a 28-member Teacher Vacancy Task Force, the Texas Education Agency said it is expanding the group to include an equal number of teachers and school administrators. Erin Anderson has the details. 
   

• The expansion comes just days after TEA Commissioner Mike Morath launched the task force at the direction of Gov. Greg Abbott. The group was tasked with recommending solutions to the state’s teacher shortages.
   

• Originally, Morath assigned only two teachers to the task force, along with 17 superintendents and nine human resources administrators.
   

• According to TEA, school staffing shortages caused by Texas’ population growth were amplified by COVID. Over the last two years, the state’s school systems have received an extra $18 billion in COVID relief funds they can use to help pay for more teachers and staff.
   

• The expanded task force will be organized into workgroups and is expected to meet bi-monthly over the next year to develop best practices and policy recommendations.

Fighting Big Tech

• In a new commentary, Rachel Bovard explains how a select committee on Big Tech could help us fully understand how the biggest companies in the world are reshaping our privacy, markets, discourse, politics, and mental health.

Your Federal & State Lawmakers

The districts displayed here should reflect those recently redrawn by the Legislature. Though the new lines do not take representational effect until 2023, they will appear on the 2022 ballot. Please note that your incumbent legislator and/or district numbers may have changed.