Texas

Vouchers have the potential to decimate public school budgets in Tyler, which, according to data from The Dallas Morning News, has one of the largest concentrations of private schools of any rural area in the state. 

The controversy revolves around three bills: One mandates the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools.

If a new Texas bill becomes law, a poster-sized display of the 10 Commandments would need to be displayed “in a conspicuous place in each classroom” of the state’s public elementary and secondary schools.

In an Aug. 28 sermon, Stedfast Baptist Church pastor Jonathan Shelley, who believes the government should execute gay people, said that women earn less than men because they are not as “good at working” and that women of a certain size are not attractive.

A Texas federal judge has preliminarily blocked enforcement of federal guidance permitting emergency room abortions in the wake of a major Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.

The Keller Independent School District (Keller ISD) in Texas has removed 41 books, including the Bible, Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” and a graphic novel adaptation of Anne Frank's “The Diary of Young Girl."

Mike Hickmon, a youth football coach in Texas, was shot and killed when coaches on opposing Little League football teams got involved in a physical altercation during a game. Hickmon's pastor, Keith Hall, says “all the air was sucked out of us” by news of Hickmon’s death.

An Aug. 14 sermon that Pastor Ed Young of Fellowship Church in Texas preached on “wokeism” has generated criticism online. In his sermon, Young offered his own definition of “wokeism,” comparing the ideology as he defines it to a cult and calling it “a seductive, satanic strategy.”