CPAC Updates: Texas school board mom appears on education panel

Education, particularly school choice and cultural issues, are a hot topic in Texas. So much so that a CPAC panel on schools, called “Parents with Pitchforks, featured Olivia Barnard, a realtor elected to the Dripping Springs ISD school board in Texas. Barnard joined Ian Prior, a senior advisor at America First Legal, and Virginia’s Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears; Mercedes Schlapp hosted.

Sears, whom Schlapp called “the messenger of school choice in Virginia,” repeatedly praised the idea of school choice or education savings accounts for her state. School choice is a concept that’s been sweeping the country — especially Texas. Gov. Abbott has been championing the concept more than ever in recent weeks.

“This is a no brainer,” Sears said. “These children don’t belong to the state…I want to be able to make that choice for my children. We don’t co-parent. They belong to me.” She went on to articulate what so many conservative parents believe throughout the country.

It was refreshing to see Barnard, a school board member on the panel. She offered another similar perspective many Texas parents share and encouraged parents to look at what she called the macro and micro level of education in their home state. “As a parent, as a taxpayer….if my public school system is not meeting my needs….”that’s something that needs to get fixed.” On the micro level, Barnard encouraged parents to look at their children’s own individual classrooms to see how things are really going: Are things going smooth? Is there obvious indoctrination? Are the kids safe?

Barnard was surprisingly positive about her local public school system, something that’s encouraging to hear since often conservative parents tend to only criticize public schools.

Sears continued to encourage parents and lawmakers to consider education savings programs and other means of improving schools. “It’s not about black or white,” Sears, a black woman. said. “This is about the child.”

Towards the end of the panel, Barnard praised Texas lawmakers for how they handled critical race theory being taught in public schools, a concept that prioritizes viewing history through the lens of race.

“Some new curriculum, some history curriculum, was making its way down the pipe, and it got stopped in its tracks,” Barnard said, referring to HB 3979, a bill that describes how much Texas teachers can discuss current events. Abbott actually signed it in 2021.

This panel was chock-full of great sound bites on different education issues conservatives have been rallying around since the pandemic. From education savings accounts to gender discussions that influence school bathroom policies, Barnard, Sears, and Prior were fully dialed in on this topic and much of what they said reflected the conversations Texans are having on education too.

CPAC on the border, take one: Mostly outrage, few ideas.

The border is a complicated topic and one that affects Texas more than most states. Because of this, it’s difficult to discuss in a short time frame and frankly, the problems and solutions presented often differ from what many Texas lawmakers would suggest. CPAC’s got at least two panels scheduled on the topic of border security. Thursday’s border security panel was heavy on border outrage, but light on practical solutions.

The panel featured Tom Homan, the former Director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Mark Green, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Representative (Tennessee-7). It was moderated by Julio Rosas, senior writer for Townhall.com.

Right away, Green said border security was an issue and said “we’re going to build the wall,” although no particulars — did he mean Texas? — were mentioned. Homan, who worked briefly under Trump with some controversy, called Trump “the greatest president in my lifetime.” It’s one of a handful of mentions of Trump Thursday at CPAC.

Green vowed that a “conservative border security bill” would soon pass, but it wasn’t clear if he meant just the House, or how such a bill would pass a Democrat-held U.S. Senate. He did briefly talked about the devastating effects of fentanyl, something Texans are all too familiar with, and which Gov. Greg Abbott has repeatedly discussed.

While Homan is a known expert on border security, he is also known for regular “rants” on cable news and he did continue this reputation at CPAC, repeatedly suggesting Biden was responsible for the current state of our insecure border. “Every President I ever worked for did something to secure the border,” he said. “Joe Biden is the first president in the history of the office who unsecured the border….this administration is the most inhumane administration I’ve ever seen.”

While border security is certainly an important issue to Republicans — really it should be a bipartisan issue — this particular panel didn’t go into much detail about the particular problems at the border, nor did either men offer more solutions beyond typical talking points and outrage blaming Biden. We’ll see if the next panel Friday is a bit more specific.

Sen. Ted Cruz talks COVID

At CPAC, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz recorded a live podcast of his own “Verdict with Ted Cruz” with Ben Ferguson, his co-host, and his guest, newly-elected Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio). Cruz is known for saying some goofy things and could have talked about anything in the world, including Trump, but today, he was surprisingly relaxed, funny, and — best of all, not avidly pro-Trump.

The CPAC/podcast topic centered mostly around the news that FBI director Christopher Wray announced Tuesday that the bureau believes the COVID-19 virus “most likely” originated from a lab leak in Wuhan, China. Cruz took issue with the fact that he suggested this theory years ago and was excoriated for it.

“The breaking news now is that ... the virus likely came from a Chinese government plant,” Cruz said. “But as everyone knows for two years that was derided for two years as a conspiracy theory, tinfoil hat theory, that you were told is nutty for saying, you’d get banned for saying that. We laid out the evidence three years ago, what convinced these guys today, almost all of it we knew three years ago, but politics wouldn’t let them say it.”

Ever the lawyer, Cruz methodically went through the evidence that underscored the FBI’s recent announcement.

“Dr Fauci has done more damage than any politician in the history of our country,” he said, suggesting that in a sane country, Fauci would go to jail for misleading the public while being the medical adviser to the president.

Cruz called for hearings to determine how the story Fauci first told the Trump administration — and America — turned out to be so wrong. “This is a lawless Department of Justice. There will be accountability in the House,” Cruz said, referring to the fact that there is a Republican majority in the House.

The conversation turned to Cruz’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday, when he repeatedly grilled Merrick Garland for, as he said, “politicizing” the Department of Justice and failing to prosecute the people who protested outside the homes of sitting Supreme Court Justices.

At CPAC, Cruz simply said, “Merrick Garland is the most partisan, political Attorney General, the country has ever seen.” Cruz went on to call the people who protested in front of the Justices’ houses, “numb nuts,” who had posted their identities on social media and who were clearly, Cruz said, “not criminal masterminds.”

After discussing Vance and the problems in Palestine, Ohio with the mysterious train derailment, Ferguson closed the conversation by asking, “What does the Republican party need to do over the next two years?”

Cruz responded with one of the best lines of the day yet: “I support the strongest conservative who will win…and we need to send Joe Biden back to his beach house in Delaware.”

Cruz is known nationally for some blunders like heading to Cancun during one of Texas’s worst snow storms, and he can make some pretty odd off the cuff remarks. But at CPAC, he was (mostly) in great form: Carefree, analytical, humorous, and hardly, zealously pro-Trump. This is the Cruz Texans elected and it was refreshing to see him in this form.