Speaker Ally and Paxton Across Ring
in Battles For and Against Censorship
Capitol Inside
December 6, 2023
Texas Republicans were all over the map on the issue of censorship on Wednesday when Attorney General Ken Paxton accused the federal government of conspiring to put conservative political publications out of business in the latest in a fusillade of court fights that he's initiated with the Biden administration.
But a prominent member of Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan's team could be found on the opposite of the ring in the fight for and against censorship at the schoolhouse. GOP State Rep. Jared Patterson of Frisco issued an urgent warning on Tuesday about a move afoot to fight censorship and book banning efforts that the Republicans in Austin have supported and codified in state law in recent years.
"A new group has formed to push radically sexually explicit material on our kids while they’re in school and away from their parents," Patterson declared in a post on X. "We’ll fight them. Every step of the way."
Paxton filed a complaint against the State Department for allegedly seeking to "censor, deplatform, and demonetize" a pair of news outlets known as The Daily Wire and The Federalist through an initiative called the Global Engagement Center. The federal agency established the GEC for the purpose of countering propaganda that's designed to weaken the nation's security and stability.
The AG said in a statement that the publications in question were “branded ‘unreliable’ or ‘risky’ by the government-funded and government-promoted censorship enterprises… starving them of advertising revenue and reducing the circulation of their reporting and speech—all as a direct result of [the State Department’s] unlawful censorship scheme.”
Paxton enlisted assistance from the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which he described as co-counsel. “The federal government cannot do indirectly what the First Amendment forbids it from doing directly. The chilling censorship machinations alleged in this complaint will frighten all liberty-loving Americans to the core,” NCLA president Mark Chenoweth said of the Texas challenge.
The state is seeking "declatory and injunctive relief" in the case that's using public funds to benefit the business of the private organizations for whom the Republican attorney general is going to court to try to help.
Patterson drew his first significant assignment as a representative this year as the author of a bill that aimed to eradicate pornography in the public schools in Texas. Patterson came up with no real examples like Governor Greg Abbott envisioned when he launched an investigation in 2021 into the infestation of the public schools here with pornography on his watch as the state's top leader.
Patterson and other advocates for House Bill 900 simply expanded the definition to literature with LGBTQ references or characters that are gay or tolerant. Patterson even said he would consider banning the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove before he decided to read the classic Texas tale for the first time.
The new villain in Patterson's mind is the Texas Freedom to Read Project - a group that wants to curb censorship and to strengthen "intellectual freedom and the right to read" in the Lone Star State. The Texas Freedom to Read Project seeks to "empower, mobilize, and connect parents, students, educators and community members" for a united front against book banning here.
Texas ranks second nationally behind Florida in the number of books that have been challenged and removed from public school libraries.
Patterson was one of 60 House Republicans to vote for Paxton's impeachment during the spring. The AG was unable to sue Biden for three months while suspended until his acquittal in the Texas Senate on September 16.
more to come ...
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