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AUSTIN (AP) – Conservative Texas lawmakers and power brokers in recent years have criticized university professors for being “woke” activists who indoctrinate college students with far-left teachings and ideas.

Now, as state lawmakers head back to the Capitol for the 2025 legislative session, they could limit the influence faculty have over campus culture and curriculum. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick wants lawmakers to recommend potential changes to the roles of faculty senates, which traditionally take the lead on developing curriculum — and ensuring professors have the academic freedom to teach and research their subject areas without fear of political interference.

But conservatives say university curriculum has been infused with ideologies that have helped take higher education in Texas in an overly liberal direction.

“If we’re going to refocus our universities on their mission of open inquiry and freedom of speech, we’ve got to take a look at the curriculum and who’s controlling it,” Sherry Sylvester, a fellow at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, told state senators in November.

Some Texas professors, though, fear the Republican-controlled Legislature could undermine a long-standing balance of power at universities that’s meant to protect higher education from politicization. Their concerns are that without a proper voice on campus, and a guarantee that faculty have control over their teaching and research, faculty might leave Texas or be less likely to take a job at a Texas university, research would be imperiled, and there would be no checks and balances on university leadership.

“There’s very clearly an ideological based attack against higher education and more specifically against faculty,” said Michael Harris, a professor of higher education at Southern Methodist University, a private institution in Dallas. “A place where faculty are most noticeable is a faculty senate.”

Here’s a look at faculty senates in Texas and the role they play in higher education.
What faculty senates do

Faculty senates are made up of professors from across a university. The body approves academic policies, curriculum design, faculty hiring and evaluation, and other issues that impact the academic mission. They also relay university-wide news and plans back to their colleagues.. The senates often meet monthly and invite guests from the administration to speak directly to faculty on university issues.

“They provide a critical advisory voice on so many things we do on campus,” Texas A&M University President Mark Welsh recently told reporters. “The faculty senate does work that is fundamentally important to what we do as a university.”

Faculty at many Texas universities elect a professor in their specific college to serve as a representative on the senate. Faculty will typically elect a chair or co-chairs for a one or two year term. Other faculty members can serve on specific committees that provide recommendations to leadership on specific issues, such as budget, research or facility planning.

Faculty say that it’s vital that they have a voice in the decision making processes and that university boards of regents listen to those on the ground when making decisions that impact their work.

“At a Fortune 500 company, you wouldn’t want the CEO to make every single decision,” said Harris, the SMU professor. “They don’t have time. People close to the product line or business aspect are best able to do that. The same thing is true here. You want your faculty who teach undergrads to make policy (about undergrads). They know the issues there better.”

Bill Carroll served as president of the University of Texas at Arlington’s faculty senate four years ago. He said administrators often haven’t taught in a classroom in years and rely on current faculty to share their experiences that can help shape decision-making.

“The faculty senate can provide that input and that information to administration so they can understand how the faculty are perceiving things and understand what faculty needs to do their job in an effective way,” he said.
How faculty senates fit into a university’s power structure

Public universities and university systems are overseen by boards of regents, who are appointed by the governor. Those boards hire university presidents, who serve as a CEO of the institution.

While there is nothing in state law that specifies how faculty senates should be organized or function, many universities have adopted rules based on the American Association of University Professors’ guidance that faculty have academic freedom in the classroom and in research.

They also rely on the 1966 Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities to guide how boards, presidents and faculty senates interact to operate the university. This statement was developed by national organizations that represent faculty, university presidents and governing boards. The statement spells out who should handle each sector of university operations.

“It’s not something that was just drawn up by faculty saying, ‘Here is our best practice, deal with it,’” said Joey Velasco, president of the Texas Council of Faculty Senates who also teaches at Sul Ross State University in Far West Texas. “It really was a joint effort.”

Faculty should be responsible for curriculum, methods of instruction and research, the statement reads. If the governing board or university president ultimately makes a decision that goes against the faculty’s wishes, that statement urges the board or president to communicate those reasons with the faculty.

“It’s through open dialogue and mutual respect and a shared vision that faculty, administrators and governing boards can ensure their institutions continue to thrive,” Velasco said.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has routinely criticized faculty senates

Faculty senates found themselves in Patrick’s crosshairs three years ago when he boldly declared he wanted to end tenure for new faculty hires at Texas’ public universities. It was a radical legislative priority condemned by faculty groups across the country.

At the time, Patrick was honest about his motivations: he was angry at The Faculty Council at the University of Texas at Austin. The elected group of faculty had passed a nonbinding resolution reaffirming their right to teach critical race theory in the college classroom after the state banned its teaching in K-12 schools. In the statement, faculty at UT-Austin said they will “stand firm against any and all encroachment on faculty authority including by the legislature or the Board of Regents.”

Patrick called the professors “Loony Marxists” on social media and accused them of poisoning the minds of college students with such teaching. Ending tenure would make it easier to terminate or punish faculty who were teaching these ideas.

Patrick ultimately was unable to outright ban tenure at Texas’ public universities. But Harris said it’s clear that the Faculty Council “poked the bear.”

“I do wonder, were it not for that, would it have been as much on the radar,” Harris said, though he feels like the wave of similar actions at universities in other states, such as Florida, would’ve led Texas to take similar routes.
Faculty senates can formally voice a lack of confidence in university leadership

Faculty senates largely garner the most attention outside the university when they issue a vote of no confidence in a school leader. These votes are non binding, but are meant as a way for faculty to express their discontent with the direction a president is taking the school. Sometimes, they can lead to the resignation of a university leader. Other times, they’re completely ignored.

Last year, most faculty members at West Texas A&M University in Canyon said they lost confidence in the president for a variety of issues, including his decision to cancel a student drag show on campus. Nothing happened after the vote and Walter Wendler remained president.

At Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, faculty took a vote of no confidence in the leadership of former President Scott Gordon after he accepted an $85,000 pay bump amid a COVID-19 budget shortfall. In that case, the board of regents stood behind Gordon despite the no confidence vote. Still, he stepped down six months later.

Nationally, a Chronicle of Higher Education analysis found that a president ends up leaving office within a year of a no-confidence vote about half of the time.

This spring, more than 600 faculty at UT-Austin signed a letter stating they had no confidence in President Jay Hartzell’s leadership after police arrested a swath of pro-Palestinian demonstrators protesting the war in Gaza. However, that letter came from the UT-Austin chapter of the American Association of University Professors, not the Faculty Council.
Other states have moved to limit faculty power

Across the country, other states have sought to curtail the power and freedoms of faculty. The Arizona Legislature passed a law that would reduce the power of faculty senates. The bill eliminated language in the state that says the faculty “shall participate in” or “share responsibility” for academic and personnel decisions. Instead, professors could only “consult with” university leaders on decisions. Arizona’s Democratic governor vetoed the bill.

When Florida passed a higher education bill that banned diversity, equity and inclusion programs at public institutions last year, it also included language that said public university presidents and administrators are not bound by faculty recommendations or opinions in hiring decisions.

In Texas, at a November state Senate Higher Education Subcommittee meeting, Sylvestor, with the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, suggested that the Legislature require all faculty senate votes to be public, all meetings be open to the public and live streamed, and all curriculum changes made public.

Many faculty senates at Texas universities already livestream their meetings and post agendas and minutes online. Velasco with the Texas Council for Faculty Senates said many votes are taken publicly, too. But there are instances when private voting is better, he said, such as when faculty vote whether to award tenure.

TRINITY – The Trinity County Sheriff’s Office arrested a man for sexual assault of a child and indecency with a child on Thursday. An arrest warrant said a caller told the sheriff’s office that her daughter had been sexually assaulted. The daughter, who officials said is a child under 17-years-old, was reportedly living with relatives in Walker County.

A Trinity County Sheriff’s Office investigator visited the relative’s home in Huntsville and then scheduled an interview with the child. According to the affidavit, the child told the investigator that while she was staying with family in Trinity, she woke up to find Charles Leeroy Wade, 55 in her bed. Our news partner, KETK, reports that Wade allegedly sexually assaulted her at least five times, according the arrest affidavit. The last incident was on Nov. 26 in Trinity when the girl reported that Wade had gotten into her bed and was squeezing her chest, the arrest affidavit alleged.

A warrant was then obtained for Wade’s arrest and he was taken into custody on Thursday by the Trinity County Sheriff’s Office for the charges of sexual assault of a child and indecency with a child.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Texas man who was the first rioter to go on trial for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was resentenced on Friday to nearly seven years in prison after he delivered an angry, profane rant to the judge who agreed to modestly reduce his original sentence.

Guy Reffitt benefitted from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that led to the dismissal of his conviction on an obstruction charge. His new sentence — six years and eight months — is seven months lower than his original sentence.

Reffitt repeatedly shook his head and appeared to be agitated as he listened to U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich and a prosecutor describe his role in a mob’s attack on the Capitol. He told the judge that he was “in my feelings” and upset about the “lies and the craziness” that he perceived.

“I was not there to take over no government,” Reffitt said. “I love this country.”

“No one has a problem with your feelings,” the judge said. “It’s the actions you took with your feelings.”

Reffitt stormed the Captiol with a holstered handgun on his waist. He also was carrying zip-tie handcuffs and wearing body armor and a helmet equipped with a video camera when he advanced on police officers outside the building. He retreated after an officer pepper sprayed him in the face, but he waved on other rioters who ultimately breached the building.

Prosecutors said Reffitt told fellow members of the Texas Three Percenters militia group that he planned to drag House Speaker Nancy Pelosi out of the Capitol building by her ankles, “with her head hitting every step on the way down.”

“His objective was to overtake Congress, physically and with violence,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nestler.

“In his own words,” Nestler added, “Congress was the demon and he was going to cut the head off the demon.”

Reffitt is one of several Jan. 6 defendants to be resentenced after a Supreme Court ruling in June limited the government’s use of a federal obstruction law. The high court ruled 6-3 that a charge of obstructing an official proceeding must include proof that a defendant tried to tamper with or destroy documents — a distinction that applies to few Jan. 6 criminal cases.

A jury convicted Reffitt of four other counts, including a charge that he threatened his two teenage children after returning to their in home in Wylie, Texas, after the riot. Reffitt’s son Jackson, then 19, testified that his father told him and his younger sister, then 16, that they would be traitors if they reported him to authorities and warned them that “traitors get shot.”

Reffitt’s two daughters spoke favorably of their father during his resentencing. They described him as a caring father who doesn’t pose a danger to anybody.

Prosecutors said Reffitt’s recent communications from jail indicate that he “views his imprisonment as an injustice and as part of a greater cause, and that he maintains pride in actions on January 6 and his involvement in the community of those who he believes have been wrongly prosecuted for their crimes on that day.”

More than 1,500 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related crimes. About 1,000 of them have pleaded guilty. Roughly 250 others have been convicted by a judge or jury after a trial.

CORPUS CHRISTI — Many of us know just how harmful fentanyl can be in humans, but what about animals? That’s what several researchers at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi are peeling back the layers after finding traces of the drug in bottleneck dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico, as reported by KRIS-TV.

While conducting a routine boating survey in September 2020, university researchers came across a dead dolphin, floating in the water.

They took the dolphin back to their research lab. Then about two years later, they began to use the carcass for hormone blubber analysis but came across the drug instead.

“When I started this project, we did what we call an untargeted study of the blubber, where we put it in a very fancy instrument that’s able to resolve all the compounds inside. We were looking for what we actually found,” Doctoral student Makayla Guinn, said.

Guinn and her team worked closely with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Texas Parks and Wildlife and Precision Toxicological Consultancy to begin conducting a more in-depth study. They also received support from the Frazier Family Foundation, Inc.

Guinn told KRIS 6 News reporter Alexis Scott, there were more than 3,000 different compounds inside the dolphin blubber. Within those compounds were findings of several pharmaceutical drugs, including sedatives and relaxants as well.

According to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, fentanyl is 100 times more potent than morphine.

KRIS 6 News learned, at least 89 dolphin blubber samples were analyzed within the study, including 83 collected through live dolphin biopsies and six from dead dolphins. Pharmaceuticals were found in 30 of those samples. Fentanyl was found in all six of the dead dolphins, according to the publication.

The dozens of dolphins tested were selected from Redfish Bay and the Laguna Madre in Texas and the Mississippi Sound. KRIS 6 News was told dolphins are often used to examine ecosystem health in contaminant research because their blubber can store contaminants and be sampled.

“It’s not something we were looking for, so of course we were alarmed to find something like fentanyl, especially with the fentanyl crisis happening in the world right now. These drugs and pharmaceuticals are entering our water and they have cascading effects in our marine life,” Guinn added.

Accompanying Guinn in the study was lead investigating researcher and marine biologist, Dr. Dara Orbach. The big question they haven’t been able to answer is ‘How did the fentanyl get in dolphin blubber?”.

“One possibility but not the only possibility is that drugs might becoming from our waste water,” Orbach said. “It’s likely they’re getting these pharmaceuticals in their system from eating prey. Those prey being the same fish and shrimp that we’re also eating over here, considering that the Coastal Bend is such an important fishing community, locally.”

Orbach believes this discovery could lead to more wide-ranging research to trace the source of the fentanyl and limit potential damage to the ecosystem.

“Some of these samples we looked at are more than a decade old and those animals also had pharmaceuticals. So we think this is a longstanding problem that no one’s been looking at,” Orbach said.

Both Orbach and Guinn are in the process of furthering their research. They’re hoping to bring about more awareness to the community on how important it is to preserve our wildlife.”

AUSTIN (AP) — The Republican speaker of the Texas House abandoned efforts Friday to keep his powerful post following a bruising year of criticism from the party’s hard right, driven in part by his overseeing the impeachment of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Dade Phelan said he was ending his bid to serve a third term as speaker next year after months of projecting confidence that he would continue leading the state House chamber, which passed some of the nation’s toughest restrictions over abortion and immigration.

But Paxton’s impeachment in the House over corruption accusations in 2023 angered conservatives who said the chamber went too far. President-elect Donald Trump also criticized Phelan over the impeachment.

Paxton was ultimately acquitted in the Senate.

Phelan’s campaign to hang onto the job reflected a broader power struggle within the GOP, which expanded its already commanding majorities in the Texas Legislature in November’s elections.

Paxton’s allies launched an aggressive campaign to oust Phelan during Texas’ primary elections but fell short in a runoff.

AUSTIN (AP) – As school districts struggle to control the spread of cyberbullying, sexual abuse images and online exploitation among their students, Texas lawmakers could consider banning social media from minors, among other sweeping measures, in the upcoming legislative session.

Over the last decade, Texas lawmakers have attempted to slow the spread of social media’s harmful effects by criminalizing cyberbullying and preventing online platforms from collecting data on minors, the latter of which has faced court challenges by social media companies.

While law enforcement and prosecutors have traditionally been responsible for cracking down on these online dangers, lack of resources in those agencies has meant enforcement has fallen onto educators, who already struggle to meet the demands of instruction, let alone stay knowledgeable on all the ways children use the internet.

“Almost every kid comes to school these days, regardless of background, regardless of socioeconomic status, they have some type of smartphone device in their hand. So they will have access to unfettered content most of the time, no matter what we try to do,” said Zeph Capo, president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers.

Lawmakers have suggested several initiatives next session to address the online dangers affecting Texas children, including a bill filed by Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, that would prohibit minors from creating accounts on social media sites and require age verification for new users. Other options include adding funds to internet crimes units in law enforcement agencies, banning the use of people’s likeness in artificially created sex abuse images, and making people aware of the dangers of the internet.

“Social media is the most dangerous thing our kids have legal access to in Texas,” Patterson said in a news release.

While they welcome any efforts to reduce harm to children, school officials and cybercrime investigators say more needs to be done to hold social media companies accountable for enforcement.

“We need these businesses to be responsible business people and throttle some of this tremendously negative content, particularly when it comes to kids,” Capo said. “But, you know, they don’t want to do anything like that.”
Schools are hunting grounds

During a Senate Committee on State Affairs hearing in October, lawmakers listened to a litany of stories about how social media has affected young people in Texas: a middle school girl who developed an eating disorder after watching a TikTok video, a middle school boy addicted to cartoon pornography after his YouTube algorithm took him to a porn site, and a woman who testified to being groomed for sex work in high school as her images were posted on social media applications.

Most of these incidents had a starting point at school where children have frequent access to technology and teachers and administrators are too busy to provide oversight. Add in the fact that they know ways to circumvent campus firewalls, students are being groomed via social media on school grounds, said Jacquelyn Alutto, president of Houston-based No Trafficking Zone, during the hearing.

“Right now, schools are a hunting ground,” she said.

The Texas Tribune requested interviews with several school districts about online dangers in schools, including the Austin, Round Rock, Katy and Eanes school districts, but they did not respond. The Plano school district declined to be interviewed.

Last year, the American Federation of Teachers and the American Psychological Association, among other national organizations, called out social media platforms for undermining classroom learning, increasing costs for school systems, and being a “root cause” of the nationwide youth mental health crisis. The admonishment came after a report detailed how school districts across the country are experiencing significant burdens as they respond to tech’s predatory and prevalent influence in the classroom.

The same year, in an attempt to hold social media companies more accountable, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law House Bill 18, known as the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act. The SCOPE Act requires covered digital service providers to provide minors with certain data protections, prevent minors from accessing harmful content, and give parents tools to manage their child’s use of the service.

It also required school districts to obtain parental consent for most software and social media applications used in the classroom and to look for alternatives to the internet for instruction.

However, many of the family-friendly websites and games that children might use for entertainment are also rife with potential sexual predators who pretend to be children.

“A little boy can be playing Robloxs in the cafeteria, and during that lunch break, a trafficker can target him, and he can be sexually groomed or exploited within a few weeks or months,” Alutto said.

And even harder to control is when students share sexual images of themselves online, a reason why some child welfare groups want social media platforms restricted or outright banned for minors.

“This has also helped human traffickers groom and recruit children,” Alutto said.
Unknown damage

Studies show 95% of youth ages 13 to 17 report using social media, with more than a third saying they use social media “almost constantly.”

Nearly 40% of children ages 8 to 12 use social media, even though most platforms require a minimum age of 13 to sign up, according to a study by the U.S. Surgeon General.

This has created a generation of chronically online children, and the medical community is still unsure of their longterm effects.

Although the SCOPE Act was passed to restrict kids from seeing harmful online content and give parents more control over what their children do online, social media companies have watered it down.

A federal district court judge earlier this year temporarily blocked part of the law that required them to filter out harmful content, saying it was unconstitutional under the First Amendment free speech right.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced in October that he was suing TikTok by allowing their algorithm to affect minors. TikTok denied the state’s allegations, pointing to online information about how parents in certain states, including Texas, can contact TikTok to request that their teen’s account be deleted.

This lawsuit, like dozens of others across the country, is playing out in court, forcing Texas lawmakers to wait and see what more they can do in the upcoming session to hold social media companies accountable.

Australia recently banned social media from children under the age of 16.

“The state needs to ensure that if technology providers want to do business, they must protect our children, stop the flow of (child sexual abuse material and child sexual assault) and report it,” Brent Dupre, director of law enforcement at the Office of the Attorney General of Texas, told The Texas Tribune.
Potential solutions?

Dupre’s department is one of three Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces in the state, and his agency alone covers 134 counties. His office receives 2,500 cyber tips per month for investigation from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an overwhelming number of cases for an agency with only 11 officers.

The problem is so persistent that Dupre said his office was conducting a live training session with law enforcement officers a few months ago on how to pose in chat rooms as a minor when the trainer noticed a real adult was already trying to solicit their fake minor for sex.

“These proactive investigations aren’t done as frequently as we like because of the sheer caseload that we got,” Dupre said, noting how they work with other law enforcement agencies who are suffering with staff shortages.

Christina Green, chief advancement and external relations officer for Children’s Advocacy Centers of Texas, said her agency serves more than 60,000 child victims yearly, with a majority of these connected to online incidents that happened in school while using social media applications. She said law enforcement agencies as well as hers need more resources to protect children.

“This field is rapidly developing, and the tools needed to continue must also develop,” she said.

Echoing school officials, Dupre said social media companies should enforce more restrictions on what minors can do on their platforms. He said companies should be required to track attempts to upload child sexual abuse material and other internet harm and be held accountable for allowing sexually explicit content to stay on their websites.

Dupre suggested lawmakers require chat and social media companies use artificial intelligence to scan for child sex abuse images and child sexual assault material and block users from sending this kind of material on their platforms.

“To me, children who try to upload self-produced material should automatically have their accounts disabled,” he said. “Many technology providers scan for these photos and videos, which are then quarantined and reported, but not all providers lockout or cancel that user end-to-end encryption.”

However, the most essential place to stop cyberbullying, sexual exploitation and other internet-based crimes on minors is at home, Green said.

She suggested teaching children in schools as early as the third grade about online risks and repeating training yearly.

She also wants the same education extended to parents. “We have been talking to parents about when you drop your kid off at someone’s house, do you know if devices will be used there? It’s like asking if there is a pool in the backyard. These types of questions need to become commonplace,” Green said.

AUSTIN (AP) – Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced Wednesday that lawmakers in the state Senate would move to ban all forms of consumable tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, in Texas.

Patrick, who presides over the Senate and largely controls the flow of legislation in the chamber, said the THC ban would be designated as Senate Bill 3 — a low bill number that signals it is among his top priorities for the upcoming legislative session.

The Republican-controlled Legislature was widely expected to take aim at Texas’ booming hemp market, which has proliferated with thousands of cannabis dispensaries since lawmakers authorized the sale of consumable hemp in 2019.

That law, passed one year after hemp was legalized nationwide, was intended to boost Texas agriculture by permitting the commercialization of hemp containing trace amounts of non-intoxicating delta-9 THC. But Patrick contends the law has been abused by retailers using loopholes to market products with unsafe levels of THC, including to minors.

“Dangerously, retailers exploited the agriculture law to sell life-threatening, unregulated forms of THC to the public and made them easily accessible,” Patrick said in a statement announcing the measure late Wednesday. “Since 2023, thousands of stores selling hazardous THC products have popped up in communities across the state, and many sell products, including beverages, that have three to four times the THC content which might be found in marijuana purchased from a drug dealer. ”

Texas has not legalized marijuana in any form for broad use.

Critics of the current hemp market point to a lack of testing requirements, age restrictions, and regulation, arguing that the proliferation of products — ranging from gummies and beverages to vapes and flower buds — has posed health risks and disrupted access for medical cannabis patients. Consumable hemp products are required by law to contain no more than 0.3% THC — the intoxicating part of the cannabis plant that comes in forms known as delta-8, delta-9 and THCA — but Patrick asserts that some items sold in Texas far exceed this limit.

The Texas hemp industry, meanwhile, has argued in court that delta-8’s high is minimal, and if delta-8 and delta-9 products are banned, it would do irreparable harm to the industry and the state’s economy.

Patrick said the bill to ban THC would be carried by state Sen. Charles Perry, the Lubbock Republican who previously carried the 2019 agricultural hemp bill. Perry has expressed dismay about the exploding market for cannabis products from the many hemp dispensaries that have popped up since lawmakers authorized the sale of consumable hemp.

Consumable hemp products come in forms that include smokable vapes and flower buds, oils and creams, baked goods, drinks, gummies and candies.

They contain industrial hemp or hemp-derived cannabinoids, including the non-intoxicating cannabidiol known as CBD, and are required to stay under the 0.3% THC threshold.

The difference in the legal and illegal products lies in the plants from which they come. Hemp and marijuana plants are both cannabis plants. Marijuana plants have high THC. Hemp has low THC.

The Legislature is scheduled to reconvene Jan. 14.