In Texas, It All Goes Back to Christian Nationalism
Brad speaks to Chris and Mendi Tackett, two Texas activists who are fighting Christian nationalism tooth and nail in their state. They explain how the school voucher scam, the abortion ban, the Ten Commandments bill, school board takeovers, and so much more all trace back to an overarching ideology - Christian nationalism.
Mendi talks about how White Christian women uphold Christian patriarchy and support the abortion ban.
Chris talks about his experience on the school board and how Texas schools are being preyed upon by Christian nationalists.
They both talk about what's changed over the last decade - and how to fight back.
Their insight is applicable all over the country, where the same playbook is being implemented.
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My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Joined today by two great folks, folks who I've had the chance to meet in person, who have just been really inspiring to me and people I'm grateful for, and that is Chris and Mindy Tackett.
So thanks y'all for joining me.
Thanks for being here.
Thank you.
We are very glad to be here.
So y'all, and many folks listening are going to know this already, but y'all are two folks living in Texas who are just constantly encouraging people to be aware of the Christian Nationalist forces in Texas, to be aware of the anti-democratic forces in the state legislature, To be wary of the ways that things are happening in schools, in areas such as reproductive rights, such as voting.
So, you're activists, you are organizers, Chris, you're a former school board member.
Tell us a little bit about your story though, the both of you, in terms of just how you came to be who you are today in terms of doing all of this work.
Yeah, well, I'll say, you know, we were just two parents with little kids and were involved in our community.
And in 2014, after I had been running the local baseball and softball association, coaching kids, decided to run for school board.
You know, it was a better chance to give more to the community and impact, again, school districts and do those things.
And while I was serving, We had a new house member get elected who told us he supported our public schools and then it came time to go to Austin and vote and he voted against public schools every single time.
So I started just trying to figure out what, why something like that would happen.
Started going to the Texas Ethics Commission and following the money and realized there was a couple of very large donors giving Basically 75% of this representative's contributions started then figuring out these people were giving to different representatives all over the state, attempting to buy elections, and made noise.
And that's kind of where it started.
And then Mindy really started digging into not just what was happening, but why.
Right.
In addition to Chris seeing this, you know, from a school board member's perspective with our then state house representative.
We were seeing just things in our community change in ways that we had never seen before.
There were these voter engagement conferences that were happening.
We had folks like Rafael Cruz coming to town.
You know, we had our state senator Giving wall builders inspired presentations at local churches.
We had the local pastor council taking out ads in our newspaper encouraging only conservative Christians to run for school board.
So there were just multiple things and layers of instances happening in our community that weren't normal.
Our community was always a conservative community, and we knew that, but we had just never seen the kind of church-state blurring of the line that we were seeing, and it just began to take over our community in total.
And so, you know, we, we started digging into, you know, these folks who were injecting a lot of money into races and why, what their motives were.
And this was going back all the way to 2014.
And we watched these things happening, you know, all the way through just here recently.
So.
And we started making noise.
I mean, that was, you know, we used whatever little platform we had and started.
Talking about what we were seeing, the articles that we were reading, the books we were reading, trying to help others see the patterns that were going on around us.
And we knew it wasn't just happening in our community.
It was happening in communities across the state of Texas, and we were lucky enough to come across experts like Andrew Seidel, and Andrew Whitehead, and Zamperi, and among others, yourself, who had written books, written articles that gave us the language to finally be able to put definition to what it was we were seeing.
That you tell is one is two parents, you know, and you are, you know, you hear you are together, you're married, you're raising a family.
You're not.
Rafael Cruz, Jr., also known as Ted, who had big ambitions from the start to like take over the world.
You're not like, hey, I want to be governor someday or.
This is a family who's thinking, are states changing?
And I think one of the things I really appreciate about your story is that it reminds people that yes, Texas has always been, or at least in recent memory, a conservative state, but it has not been the militant right wing kind of political landscape that we are seeing emerge now.
That it has not always been The home of the abortion bans and the chaplain bills and the school voucher stuff that we're seeing.
And so I think your story really reminds us that if you go back a decade, even just a decade, not two, not three, it's a different state.
And that brings us to today and a lot of the transformation.
So you took us back almost 10 years.
I want to start this week.
With what happened with a high-profile abortion case in Texas.
Jay David Goodman is writing at the New York Times.
He's a Houston reporter and he says this.
"Texas doctors, women and lawyers have been asking the state for nearly two years to clarify what is and what is not allowed under strict overlapping abortion bans.
Lawmakers passed a bill this year that makes some exceptions to the bans clearer, but it wasn't enough to help doctors decide whether they could legally give a Dallas woman, Kate Cox, an abortion.
Ms.
Cox sought permission to end her pregnancy after she learned that her fetus had a fatal genetic condition.
A district court judge said she qualified for a medical exception to the bans, but the Texas Supreme Court overturned that decision This week.
Now, she did leave the state and she did eventually have the procedure done outside of Texas.
But here's a stunning statistic in the article.
Texas has publicly reported only 34 abortions so far this year, down from more than 50,000 in 2020.
It really points to the fact that these exceptions are not really exceptions because doctors are so afraid to proceed with an abortion procedure that nobody does it.
And therefore, even if abortion is not completely outlawed in Texas, it seems like it is pretty much completely outlawed in Texas in practice.
Mendi, you've been tweeting about this and speaking out about this in recent days and talking about how Part of what underpins what's happening with reproductive rights in Texas is the support and the voices of white Christian women and how they are underpinning the patriarchal dimensions of all of these issues.
Would you mind just sharing with us what you mean by that and what it looks like from your perspective?
Right, right.
Well, you know, when SB 8, which is the bill that was passed here in Texas, session before last, when that was being debated in the Texas House, I drove to Austin because it's an issue that's really important to me.
I drove to Austin and I sat in the gallery of the House chamber and I watched that debate.
And I was really struck by the fact that it wasn't a lot of men standing at the lectern making these arguments in favor of SBA and removing women's bodily autonomy and, you know, stealing health care options away from women in Texas.
It was, it was Republican women standing at the lectern making those arguments.
Now I will say, you know, Jeff Leach, who is a House member, was sitting in a chair just over to the side of that group of women.
I would say, describe it as coaching, you know, them on how to say what to say, you know, when they needed help with answers, whatever.
That was very apparent.
But You know, there's a lot of times people go to, you know, gosh, it's these men who are pushing these policies and it has nothing to do with them.
And while, yeah, there are, you know, a lot of, you know, certainly conservative, patriarchal men are helping move all of this forward.
You know, when you look at the women who have helped push these things over the line legislatively, when you look at the, you know, the woman who helped craft the language for SB8, it wasn't a man, it was a woman.
And Representative Chris Turner brought that up on the House floor, actually, and challenged Shelby Slauson with that information at the time of debate.
There are a lot of conservative Christian women that absolutely support other women being in this predicament and they're okay with it.
And I, you know, the only thing you can say is it keeps them in proximity to power.
They remain privileged and in power when the men who they support are privileged and in power.
And, you know, it...
If women in Texas, both Republican, Democratic, Independent, if women in Texas voted together to stand up for women's rights and bodily autonomy and for pregnant people in general, it wouldn't be a contest.
But we end up losing ground because there are a lot of conservative Christian nationalist women Who underpin and give full-fledged support to the men who are helping to craft and bring forth this kind of legislation.
I think it's a really good reminder that it is easy to think of all of the men who do support these things.
And undoubtedly, as you say, there are so many and there is a desire to control women's bodies, to control women's lives.
And that is, I think, pretty clear.
But you're right.
It is a mistake to overlook, to miss, to not notice all of the women and the women who are putting their bodies at the lectern saying, I support this.
Before we move on, I just want to ask, How is this a Christian nationalist issue?
I think some people would wonder, okay, so these folks don't want abortion.
You guys make Christian nationalism and everything.
You just got to twist that into everything you're talking about.
But it seems to me that in Texas, what you have is a law that reflects the I'm not y'all.
Is that how it looks to you?
Is that how it feels to you?
What am I missing?
What can you add?
What does it look like?
worldviews of other religious or non-religious people, that seems to be Christian nationalism.
I'm not in Texas.
I'm not y'all.
Is that how it looks to you?
Is that how it feels to you?
What am I missing?
What can you add?
What does it look like?
Yeah.
I think that that really is where it is, what it's centered on.
It is the imposition of one expression of faith, one way of looking at things.
And overriding all the rest of the rights.
And it is, I mean, so much of, you know, what we see in Christian nationalism is this idea of control.
And it is trying to impose fully control over the autonomy of pregnancy.
And that these things have to be carried all the way forward.
So, it is absolutely tied into the tenets of the control aspects of Christian nationalism.
Because not all faith traditions want to take away people's bodily autonomy.
You know, they don't want to get in between, you know, a pregnant person and their doctor.
But honestly, not even all Christians want that.
But there are specific, very narrow views within conservative Christianity, which is what we see coming through Christian nationalism.
And they do want those views imposed on everyone because that's what they believe.
And so I don't see how you can argue it any other way, but that it absolutely is rooted in Christian nationalism.
Well, let's talk about another aspect of that.
Want to get to school vouchers, which is something I talked about recently with Representative James Tallarico.
But before we go to vouchers, I want to talk about chaplains.
There's a bill in Texas that was passed this past summer that allows for chaplains to be school counselors.
And to me, this is another aspect of Christian nationalism.
I think it's, for me, one way to describe this as Christian privilege, because the assumption here is that if you're a chaplain, you must be a good guy, right?
You know, you can't stop a bad guy with a gun without a good guy with a gun.
Well, if you're a chaplain, you're automatically in that good guy category.
That's an assumption.
I've never lived in Texas, but I have lived In the South, I know, I don't want to offend you.
I don't know if Texas is part of the South in your mind, just so you can yell at me offline.
But, you know, I've lived in Tennessee.
I've lived in Virginia.
My mom, my mother's from West Tennessee.
My family goes back to those places.
And there is a Christian privilege in those spaces quite often, right?
You're assumed to be a Christian.
If you're a Christian, you're assumed to be a good person.
If you're an atheist or someone else, you might be suspect.
So let's just play it out.
Why is it dangerous?
To say, yeah, you know, we got this school and we got some chaplains.
They're going to come on over here, help kids, give them advice, help them figure out their future, how to navigate what's going on in these turbulent teenage years.
Can we help?
Can we use all the help we can get?
What's the problem, Chris and Mindy?
Come on.
Why do y'all, what's the big deal?
Well, I think one of the first problems is the, when we think about what a chaplain is, What they're talking about going into these schools, into public schools, is not what you would picture, right?
Someone who has gone through lots of schooling and lots of training to be ready for this.
The architect of a lot of this movement is a gentleman named Rocky Malloy.
And the national school counselors, no, Chaplains.
School Chaplains Association, right?
And there's interviews out there where he's asked, hey, what does it take to be a school chaplain?
And it's basically like, A week's worth of 40 hours of training from focus on the family associated groups.
And it is about proselytizing and bringing one, again, one version of religion into this mix.
So when the bill was passed and debated, They talked about, hey, if we're looking for parents' rights, can we say, look, if you're going to have to talk to this faith-based individual, should they have to get parents to authorize that?
And that was completely struck down.
Can we say that this chaplain can come in and not proselytize to kids?
Or if someone asked for someone of a different faith, can we get that?
And it was absolutely rejected all the way through.
And it is not to have these chaplains supplement school counselors.
It is, oh, we would rather have Chaplains instead of counselors.
And the way it's been structured, it's cheaper for school districts to do it because they're using the safety funds, trying to tie it somehow to school shootings or, you know, just mental health components there, rather than a standard salary.
So the duty sets of what they're asked to do, it's a completely different animal versus what a real professional licensed school counselor is able to do for kids.
It is such a dangerous space and the way it's been framed for a lot of folks is, oh no, they're just coming in to help.
And it's this entire erosion of a separation of church and state and the ability for every single kid to go in and be able to talk to a counselor Hi, my name is Peter, and I'm a prophet.
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So if somebody at home was thinking, hey, all right, well, we got these Baptist counselors going in there, but I'm an atheist, or I'm a satanic temple person, or I'm Hindu, so I'm going to get, we're allowed to get us in there.
So what happens if I go to my local school district?
You know, Katy, Texas, in Houston, Texas, in Denton, Texas.
And I say, yeah, we're one of the few atheist or Hindu folks in town.
We'd love to have this guy over here or this gal over here be the counselor.
They went through the 40 hours of training.
They're in.
Does the school district have to honor that kind of fairness and that kind of pluralism?
Or can they just say, sorry, not you.
We'd rather take Ron over here, the Baptist minister.
In most cases, what?
Now, again, I don't know that anyone has actually brought in the chaplain yet.
So, a lot of this is the hypothetical and the things that have played through.
But this National School Chaplains Association, they are providing the chaplains for those districts who have said, yes, we want to employ them.
That group is only licensing and putting forth individuals who would fit their model, not some of those who would be from other faith traditions or no tradition that you use.
And it probably is going to, as this plays out, first of all, what we are seeing happening currently, There are some districts that are voting yes because their school boards are required to take a yes or a no vote.
They have to do that.
And there are some boards that are voting yes.
And there are some boards that have voted yes that you might Gosh, I'm surprised that they aren't voting yes, but they have been given guidance to say, well, they're just going to volunteer.
We're not necessarily going to hire them.
They're just going to volunteer.
Well, they can already volunteer under current rules.
We don't need this bill.
for a chaplain to volunteer.
They can volunteer and go through the background check just like any other volunteer that comes into a public school.
So that is just, you know, redundant policy.
And I really feel like it's probably going to depend on what kind of community you're in.
So if you are a kid or a family that happens to live in a dominant conservative Christian area, and your school board and the decision makers in that district are also made up of people who may subscribe to that ideology,
And everyone is certainly allowed their own personal, you know, beliefs and faith tradition, and we don't have any problem with that.
But chances are, no.
If you ask for someone who represents your faith tradition, You're probably not going to get that.
And there might not even be someone in the community who could fill that role, depending on where you live.
So it really is problematic and it does open up Pandora's box, really, on it is a foot in the door.
And once folks who are pushing this ideology get a foot in the door, They will continue going all the way through.
And I think there are a lot of people at the moment who are looking at it thinking, oh, well, you know, we'll compromise.
Well, you know, this is a this is a good middle of the road decision to say, well, we're going to vote yes on the chaplain bill as a school board, but we're just going to have them as volunteers.
Well, that may be what your current board is doing.
But if you have a different board, which there's all the more reason for people to run for the school board.
If they know, gosh, they're not using these chaplains the way they were intended to be used.
I'm going to run for school board and make sure they are hired and they are Presley ties.
And I think as Andrew Seidel has pointed out, and I'm sure you have done this too, over and over again, there is no satiating the people who want this kind of takeover.
We're not going to compromise to a happy medium.
They're not ever going to be satisfied with Well, we'll just do a little bit and then we'll stop and it's kind of good for everybody.
That's not going to happen.
So it is a very large mistake in our viewpoint for any school board in Texas that is voting yes to allow chaplains to be hired, which this bill does allow it.
And it's more than just people of different faith traditions.
I mean, when you listen to what, again, Rocky Molloy talks about, it is absolutely anti-LGBTQ.
So it is more than just, hey, I'm a different faith.
It's, I'm different.
And, you know, are you a boy or are you a girl?
I mean, those kinds of conversations is absolutely Going to happen.
And that is just so dangerous for a group of kids that already feels marginalized to not have someone that they can go talk to and be honest with.
Yeah, and on top of all that, it greatly diminishes the expertise and the training and the many hats that qualified, trained school counselors wear.
Those folks are doing so much more than just What is assumed, you know, with this chaplain injection.
And there is no possibility that a chaplain who's had 40 hours of computer training that Rocky Molloy's group provided could do what a trained, qualified, degreed school counselor does.
No possible way.
So there's, I feel like y'all have really helped people, I think, understand why this is so dangerous.
So not only, so let me back up, my brain's moving so fast because you really provided so much information.
I used to be, in grad school and other times, I used to be a kind of tutor for kids and some of them were online and I remember specifically a student I had in Texas, Who was South Asian, family had immigrated from India.
She was brown person, Hindu person, vegetarian person.
And I'm imagining her going to the school counselor.
And saying, hey, um, yeah, I don't, I don't really want to, I'm not here to learn about Jesus.
I just, I need help, you know, figuring out this issue or this thing that I'm trying to, you know, uh, understand.
And then I'm wondering, then I'm thinking about that person being told, as you say, um, hey, are you a boy or a girl?
What are your pronouns?
Well, guess what?
There's only two genders and God created you a certain way.
And I don't really, what's with that haircut?
I mean, that doesn't look like a girl's haircut, does it?
And these are the school counselors.
And then I'm thinking about, if you just allow me to interject one more thing here, is like, I was a 22, 23 year old guy in ministry.
And I had very little training for that.
I was part of a mega church.
I was in charge of 200 kids at this, you know, in this ministry.
And we, during my time in ministry, we had a kid in our group pass away as the result of a car accident, which was overwhelmingly painful and difficult.
And looking back on that, I was asked to do the funeral.
I was asked to be the grief counselor.
I was, and here I am, like I had graduated college like three months before.
Why do I bring that up?
I bring that up because 22-year-old me might be the school counselor that your kid is going to who's had 40 hours of training online, who, as you say, Mendy, has no degree, has not trained for years to do this, doesn't understand the nervous system or teenage psychology or the way the brain is developing or healthy ways to sort doesn't understand the nervous system or teenage psychology or the way the brain is None of that.
It's simply the 24-year-old guy up the street who thinks this is a good chance to influence to influence his community for Jesus And that's now your school counselor.
And as you say, the last thing that I want to point out that you said that's so important is there's no satiating this group.
It's always the long game.
Oh hey, the school board in that district isn't yet there?
We'll replace them.
We're good.
Give us three years.
They're not thinking about tomorrow.
They're like, give us three years.
Give us five years.
Y'all talked about a Texas nine years ago that was different?
Give us five more.
See what we can do.
That's what they're thinking.
Absolutely.
Let's stay on schools and go to school vouchers.
It's just a whole trio here of great things.
School vouchers are a big deal.
I talked to Representative Tallarico about this.
Greg Abbott called four special sessions trying to get his school voucher scheme through the legislature.
You are both parents.
You have obviously had kids who've gone through schools in Texas.
You're a former school board member, Chris.
I'll just start with a very easy question, but a very blunt question.
Why are vouchers bad for Texas?
Well, the whole focus of the vouchers It's positioned as it's to help the kids in struggling schools or communities of color that have been traditionally underperforming in their schools, in all of those types of things.
And the reality is when you look at voucher programs that have been run broadly in other states, the vast majority of those who take voucher funds are the people who are already outside the public education system.
You look at Arizona, which just went to a universal voucher system, and well over 50% of, it's actually close to 70% of those who took vouchers in that first year were all people outside the system.
So it's serving as Basically a tax break for those who are already doing in that space.
And the reality is when you look at the people who are most likely to need or think they want the voucher to be able to go to another school, if you are that underprivileged kid, socioeconomically challenged, The private school that you may want to go to is totally across town.
They don't offer transportation.
Your parents work two jobs.
They can't actually get you over there.
And those schools, in many cases, don't want some of those kids.
They want to control who's coming in.
So they are putting guidelines in place that you have to have a certain academic standard to transfer in, a behavioral history, or We'll just raise what our tuition price is just enough that no matter what value the voucher brings, you're not going to be able to come.
And then it's whether it's, it's also special needs.
It's also, I mean, you can just go down the list of all of the groups that these schools aren't really interested in, and they'll make sure that those, those kids aren't able to go.
And at the same time, you'll see Almost subprime type private schools will pop up in spaces to just take advantage of people looking for money, to take advantage of parents who just, they're looking out for their kids, right?
They're trying to do what they can, but they're being taken advantage of because we've got lawmakers and billionaires who have an agenda.
I'm thinking of the school that pops up in a neighborhood.
It's called the Oxford Academy, and it's got a shiny brochure, and you're convinced that that's the place to send your kid, because it seems fancy, and you want to do the best for your kid.
And in reality, when you get there and you spend a year in that curriculum, you realize that that school is doing its best to get as much voucher money as possible, and the goal is not educating or changing a community.
Strange chapter of my life that I won't talk about right now, but I did some work that involved working with kids in Houston ISD.
And I remember running a sports camp for some of the kids one time and asking them for their addresses.
And some of the kids had moved so often that they couldn't remember their address because they moved every month or every couple of months.
And I bring that up because I think of those kids and I think, you know what those kids need?
Not a $7,000 voucher because their parents are not going to know what to do with it or they're not going to care or they will, but they won't be able to get across town and afford it.
Everything you just said, Chris, you know what those kids need?
They need great public schools with great teachers and great counselors and people who care and whose sole motivation is education and cultivation and all those things.
And so, I can't stop thinking about that kid.
Mendy, how does it look from your view?
Well, I think we have to remember the reality, and the reality is we currently have school choice in Texas.
So this argument is being made that we have to have school choice.
Well, you can choose the school that you would like for your child to go to now.
You can choose a private school, and there are some fabulous private schools out there.
We would never say that private school is always a bad choice.
For some families, it's the perfect choice.
Um, there are charter schools, um, which present their own problematic, um, uh, or list of problematic items.
Um, but there's charter schools and there are public schools.
So right now people can, they've always, in homeschool, you can homeschool your kids if you'd like to.
So there's always been school choice in Texas.
We just don't take, public tax dollars and put those in private usually religious schools where there is zero accountability because public schools are are now and always will be have accountability standards for the tax dollars that they receive.
There is absolutely nothing in any of these bills that has made it forward saying private schools that receive voucher money will also be accountable in the same way that Public schools are.
And that's not ever going to make it in the language of any of these bills, because the people who want vouchers certainly don't want private schools to be held accountable.
And quite frankly, most private schools, they don't want The government, you know, telling them what they can or can't do.
They'd like to have the money.
A lot of them would.
But they don't want to be told that there's any accountability system for them.
They want to make the rules and have freedom to take or not take.
The analogy has been made a few times.
It is the school, private school, choosing.
It is not school choice.
So they will choose who gets in their door.
And any and every kid who walks to the front door of a public school will be given an education and given opportunity.
And that is just not, you know, how it works.
So I think we have to remember that that's a key element is that we've always had school choice in Texas.
And it's a, it's a, a massive manipulation of language and it's frankly propaganda.
To insinuate that school choice is a new concept that we don't know how.
It really feels in the way that you, well, a couple things, you know, you just highlighted the fact that, and I talked about this with Rep.
Tallarico, that public schools are democracy in practice because everyone who shows up Regardless of ability, race, religion, creed, everyone who shows up gets what?
Access to an education.
That's democracy.
And so the way you've talked about vouchers and the way you've talked about chaplains makes me think that in Texas there's a goal that says We want to give money to the schools, the private schools, that will choose which students are worth educating at our institution.
But we want to make it such that if you show up at a public school, you have no choice except for to get counseled by a chaplain.
Who is Christian and proselytizing and has a certain worldview and theology and religious belief.
So we want to give money to the schools that will choose the students and then we want to make it so you have no choice in terms of what kind of counseling you might get if you are at a public school.
There's an agenda there.
We need to sign off.
And I know we could probably talk for the next three hours about the agenda that is behind all of this.
The billionaires, the Tim Dunn's, the Ferris Wilkes, who Representative Tyler Rico is always willing to point to and call out.
The money they give to the legislature and all the Republican candidates.
The fact that there are no moderate Republicans on the ballot, as you pointed out recently, Mindy, because of that money that comes in and the way it's pushed people to the right.
We could do that for the next three hours.
Before you go, though, I want to ask, you're on the ground.
You are working really hard to fight, to organize.
What gives you hope in Texas right now as we look forward to a new year?
I think, you know, over the years that we have been trying to bring the awareness of Christian nationalism to the forefront in our community and, you know, as our platform allowed throughout the state of Texas, I think I'm consistently encouraged by the fact that when we first started talking about it,
You know, there was a lot of resistance, and it wasn't something that most people had heard of.
The term Christian nationalism, people didn't understand.
They would get very bristly.
Because they felt like, you know, you were attacking Christianity, you know, as on the whole, as a religion, which is not, you know, we won't go into all that, but that's not, they're not one in the same.
And so I'm encouraged by the fact that, number one, we have state legislators finally calling it out.
And that's taken a long time.
Again, we We struggled with the idea that, gosh, it seems like legislators are making decisions and taking votes, and they're maybe not quite understanding what's behind some of this legislation that they're debating and voting on.
Now there's a much larger awareness in Austin, you know, people are beginning to understand and talk about.
And so that's encouraging.
We hear it in the media, you know, it's called out.
So I find that to be encouraging.
So I think the sheer awareness It, on the one hand, Christian nationalism has come out of the fringes and it is now a mainstream topic in practice, which is, you know, that's certainly not encouraging.
But the encouraging part is It is not in the fringes and it is in the mainstream in discussion on what is happening to our state and why are we seeing things go off the rails and the lines of Christian, you know, church and state being so blurred.
People understand it now.
Yeah, and I think it's building on what Mindy said, is people are starting to understand the connections between the things that we've all been fighting, right?
The abortion bans, the chaplains, the book bans, I mean, all of these things.
People are starting to understand that these things are all connected to Christian nationalism at the root.
And we've come so far that people are starting to understand that.
Now, we still have lots further to go, and there are so many people that we've got to continue to engage.
We have to help them understand what the stakes are, and then we have to get them to the polls.
I mean, that is the push for 2024, 2026.
Because we know, we talked on earlier, the other side's coming.
They're playing a long game.
And so we've got to continue to work and continue to share the message.
And that's how we make a difference.
And you, I want to say this really quickly too, you know, you brought up Tim Dunn and Ferris Wiltz and the two of them being some pretty influential billionaires here that, you know, Chris highlighted their money a long time back.
And so we're so glad to see people talking about that.
But I want to make the point that if Tim Dunn and Ferris Wilkes were out of this tomorrow, there is a slew of other people who are going to carry that ideology forward.
So we can't just fixate on there's these two guys that are bad guys that have a lot of money and they're the sole cause of this in the state of Texas.
It is not just Texas, which you well know.
And even in the state of Texas, if, if they were out of the picture tomorrow, somebody else is going to continue to push the ideology and the policies forward.
And so it, it is an ongoing, uh, broad, uh, problem that we have to fix.
Absolutely.
Fantastic point.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I cut you off, Mandy.
I apologize.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
So anyway, that's it.
Well, I did.
I apologize for clipping you off there.
I was just I'm so glad you said what you said.
It was just such a wonderful point that there is no silver bullet to there is no, hey, as long as we do this, the problem will be over.
I think some people early on in the Trump years thought that, oh, if we just got rid of Trump, it'd be fine.
And I think what should be clear by now is that that's just not true.
And that everything you just said is really the way to look at it.
That awareness, voting, activism, organization, these are the things that will drive change.
Not, hey, if we can get rid of this one person, then we can all live happily ever after and it'll all be good.
All right.
Thank you so much for your time and for just giving us insight into what all this looks like from your points of view.
We've got madness happening on the other end.
Can you tell us where to find you?
Can people keep up with what you're doing?
I am always thankful to see you on social media and your interjections to these debates.
So where's the best way to find y'all if people want to connect?
Yeah, well, if you look at us, look for us on Twitter.
I'm C.J.
Tackett and... Mende Tackett.
M-E-N-D-T-A-C-K.
M-E-N-D-T-A-C-K.
website out there, seeitnameitfightit.com, where we talk about a lot of the same kind of things and try and just shine a light wherever we can.
Yeah, it's fantastic.
Well, thank you both.
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Be back next week with great content and more to say about all these debates.
