For anybody questioning what the second Donald Trump administration will seem like in apply, look no additional than the Lone Star State. Beneath Gov. Greg Abbott and Legal professional Common Ken Paxton, Texas has already perfected the artwork of utilizing all levers of presidency to drive unpopular insurance policies on its residents.
Take, for instance, imposing faith upon schoolchildren. Properly, simply theone faith. In November, the Texas State Board of Training voted to approve a brand new elementary faculty curriculum that the Texas Observer politely characterised as “Bible-infused.” How Bible-infused, precisely? When first-graders study in regards to the Liberty Bell, they’ll additionally study that “God told Moses about the laws he wanted his people to follow.” Fifth-graders finding out Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” will likely be challenged to think about “how the disciples may have felt upon hearing Jesus telling them about his betrayal and death.”
Republicans are fast to inform critics that faculties don’t must undertake the curriculum, however they get an additional $60 per pupil in the event that they do. Since Texas fails to adequately fund faculties and districts preserve having to tighten their belts by chopping workers, eliminating providers, and lowering division budgets, that $60 per pupil is desperately wanted.
A minimum of Texas hasn’t adopted the lead of Oklahoma in that state’s quest to require a Trump Bible in each classroom.
Notably, to get this variation by way of, Abbott needed to interact in some trickery. Members of the varsity board are elected, and earlier this 12 months, Aicha Davis, a Democrat who was on the board, received a Texas Home seat. Voters in her district elected one other Democrat, Tiffany Clark, to fill the seat. However relatively than seat Clark, Abbott handpicked a Republican, Leslie Recine, to fill the seat till the top of the 12 months. Recine was the deciding vote in favor of the curriculum.
Abbott has additionally tied the fortunes of Texas public faculties to the laws’s embrace of vouchers, functionally ravenous schooling funding till the state legislature agrees to enact a faculty voucher program. Requiring federal tax {dollars} to be shifted from public faculties to personal ones—particularly non secular faculties—is a key objective of Undertaking 2025, and Trump’s decide for the Division of Training, the comically-underqualified Linda McMahon, is a giant fan.
It’s not simply the Texas GOP’s method to schooling that Trump will topic the remainder of the nation to. Trump has made very clear that he plans to make use of the complete weight of the federal authorities to assault corporations he doesn’t like or he thinks are too “woke.” Anticipate Kash Patel to make use of the FBI to make good on his menace to “come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens” and Brendan Carr to make use of the FCC to assault broadcasters.
Ken Paxton has been a trailblazer in weaponizing state authorities to have interaction in these types of assaults. In 2023, he opened an investigation into Media Issues for reporting—accurately!—that adverts from main corporations had been operating alongside white nationalist and antisemitic posts since Elon Musk purchased Twitter and turned it into X. That isn’t the one time Paxton has determined to make use of his energy to do Musk’s bidding.
Final month, Paxton introduced an investigation into what he’s calling a “possible conspiracy” by corporations to boycott “certain social media platforms.” You get one guess which social media platform Paxton is anxious about. Certainly, Paxton’s inquiry is an identical to Musk’s lawsuit earlier this 12 months accusing the World Alliance for Accountable Media of violating antitrust legal guidelines by working with manufacturers who pulled their promoting from X as soon as Musk began turning it right into a Nazi bar. Musk’s lawsuit already worn out GARM, a nonprofit that didn’t have the assets to proceed to struggle X in court docket, however Paxton continues to be going after them.
Texas has additionally led the best way find progressive methods to assault reproductive well being rights, which Trump is bound to go after. Again earlier than the Supreme Court docket threw out Roe v. Wade, Texas handed SB8, which gave personal residents the precise to sue anybody who aided or abetted an abortion—and get no less than $10,000 in damages in the event that they received. This allowed the state to sidestep the truth that abortion was nonetheless authorized, because it might say that it was neither banning abortion nor taking any authorities motion to cease somebody from having one.
SB8 was the brainchild of Texas legal professional Jonathan Mitchell, a rabidly anti-choice lawyer who additionally represented Trump in his lawsuit towards Colorado after that state kicked him off the 2024 poll. Mitchell can be a key proponent of utilizing the Comstock Act to make it a criminal offense to ship abortion drugs—no matter whether or not these drugs had been destined for a state the place abortion is authorized. This might lead to a de facto abortion ban, as treatment abortions account for 63% of all abortions, and states with out bans couldn’t have drugs shipped to them legally. Mitchell has even bragged that if the Comstock Act had been used on this manner, Republicans wouldn’t even want a federal ban.
Undertaking 2025’s authors are followers of the thought, and incoming V President JD Vance loves the thought a lot that he already requested the Division of Justice to make use of the Act to crack down on the mailing of abortion drugs—manner again in January 2023.
It’s a superbly Trumpian method. It permits the administration to insist that they haven’t banned abortion whereas managing to do it anyway—precisely what Texas managed with SB8. It’s a smug, cynical method to governing, one which Texas has perfected, and Trump now has one other 4 years to hone.
