PEN America counted nearly 12,000 school book bans nationwide in 2025-2026, the most ever — and more than 8,100 were in Texas, driven by SB 13, the library law Abbott signed in June 2025. Some districts used AI to pick which books to pull.
▶ Video
Kevin Hern pushed hard to make sure franchise owners got special carve-outs in pandemic bailout loans.
▶ Video
Sarah Sanders' school voucher program ate up more than $309 million of taxpayer money in a single school year without improving a single public school in Arkansas.
Asked on the radio whether he'd put cameras in public school classrooms so parents could monitor teachers, Andy Biggs said 'Absolutely, I would.' Experts say classroom feeds can be hacked, and Republican Doug Ducey rejected the same idea when Kari Lake proposed it.
A ProPublica investigation found private schools routinely reject the disabled children who were used to sell vouchers in the first place. Arkansas built exactly that program in 2015, the University of Arkansas wrote in 2017 that such programs are 'often seen as' a foot in the door, and LEARNS swallowed it whole.
Demuth released her education plan on September 10. It would means-test Minnesota's universal school meals, opt the state into the $1,700 scholarship tax credit from Trump's budget bill, let districts opt out of paid family leave, and remove 'woke' standards she could not name.
Asa Hutchinson put more than $37 million into zeroing out the CES waiver waitlist in 2021. Four years into Sanders' term it is back above 2,400 people. A Little Rock lawmaker puts the cost of clearing it at $35 to $50 million; her voucher program costs more than $367 million this year.
Texas ranks 40th of 50 on the measures we track, with the second-worst food insecurity and second-worst women's health scores in the country. Greg Abbott signed the abortion ban and the school voucher law, never expanded Medicaid, and now runs on affordability after property tax levies rose to $89.4 billion and home insurance premiums rose 79%. Here is the record, and what each of the seventeen Republicans running for reelection has been busy with.
Abbott's new affordability plan promises to cut property taxes in half by zeroing out school taxes on homesteads. He has been governor since 2015, and statewide property tax levies have risen from $51.2 billion to $89.4 billion on his watch. Nearly 4 in 10 homesteads already owe no school tax, and Texas's 4.1 million renters get nothing.
