Voters in Texas resoundingly rejected book bans last weekend. Houston’s Chron described it as a “statement election” and as a “clear protest against titles flying off school library and classroom shelves.”
The Texas Tribune explains just how big a reversal the weekend schoolboard elections were:
Conservative school board candidates across Texas suffered an array of defeats in Saturday’s local elections, marking a clear setback for the Republican-aligned movement to shape how grade school curriculums and library books confront issues of race, sex and gender.
The sweeping losses for conservative school board hopefuls also served as an early sign of potential backlash to the nascent administration of President Donald Trump, ahead of a 2026 midterm in which a number of statewide offices will be on the ballot. Midterm elections historically have spelled trouble for the incumbent president’s party in down-ballot races.
Saturday’s elections saw the defeat of numerous conservative school board trustees in the Tarrant County suburbs surrounding Fort Worth, the epicenter of the state’s recent culture war fights over how students should learn about race and gender. All seven school board candidates in contested races who were endorsed by the Tarrant County Republican Party lost their elections.
The fight dates back to 2022, when a network of conservative donors and groups led by Patriot Mobile Action — a North Texas Christian nationalist PAC funded by a cellphone company — backed a slate of 11 school board candidates around the area, 10 of whom won their elections. That included major gains on the Mansfield ISD board, where the newfound conservative majority gave itself oversight over which library books could be added to school shelves, presaging a proposal now making its way through the Legislature.
It wasn’t just in Tarrant County that the book banners lost. The “wipeout also extended to the Houston area,” the Tribune noted.
Political science professor Jon Taylor, of the University of Texas at San Antonio, said he is not convinced these results point to a big year for Democrats in 2026 given the low turnout. “That said, if I were the Republicans, I would be at least a little bit worried,” he told the Tribune.
But Texas’ conservative activist Carlos Turcios called the results “horrible news” in a Xitter post, the Tribune also reported.
It all adds up to great news for those of us who reject book banning and believe in the freedom to read.
Now we just have to hope that Texas’ already-struggling public schools survive the newly-imposed school vouchers.
