Gender-Baiting Is Dehumanizing—And It Hurts Families Across the Political Spectrum, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Gender-Baiting Is Dehumanizing—And It Hurts Families Across the Political Spectrum

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

June 13, 2026

Elaine Godfrey’s Atlantic piece on the Paxton-Talarico Senate race is a sobering reminder that we are likely to see an ugly campaign season in Texas. Already, the attacks on James Talarico have moved beyond policy disagreement into gender-baiting, mockery, and false claims about his identity. These tactics are not only dishonest; they are dehumanizing.

Whatever one thinks of Talarico’s politics, no candidate should be reduced to insults about masculinity, gender identity, or sexuality. This kind of rhetoric does not merely target one public figure. It sends a message to every LGBTQIA perso—and to every young person who is questioning, searching, or simply different—that their dignity is conditional and that their humanity can be turned into a punchline.

That cruelty is especially painful because Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual (LGBTQIA) people are not abstractions. They are our children, siblings, cousins, parents, students, neighbors, colleagues, and friends. They live in Democratic families, Republican families, religious families, secular families, rural families, urban families, and every kind of Texas family. 

Geez, human variation does not sort itself neatly by party, denomination, ZIP code, or ideology. 

That is not “higher education gobbledygook.” It is lived reality.

So when political leaders mock gender identity or use anti-LGBTQIA insinuations to score points, they are almost certainly wounding people in their own communities—and quite possibly in their own families. 

They may imagine they are attacking an opponent, but the damage radiates outward. It reaches the child listening from the back seat, the teenager in the pew, the college student afraid to come home, the parent who loves their child but now feels politically cornered into silence.

Most positively, this moment also reminds us that LGBTQIA people have never been merely the objects of ridicule or fear. They are agents of courage, culture, family, faith, scholarship, public service, and democratic possibility. Every year on June 28, communities around the world observe International LGBT Pride Day, honoring the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City—a watershed moment that helped catalyze the modern gay liberation movement. 

Pride is not only a celebration. It is a public affirmation that people who have been shamed, criminalized, silenced, and excluded are fully human and fully worthy of dignity, safety, joy, and belonging.

Happy Pride Month, by the way!

This is why gender-baiting is so morally bankrupt. It asks us to move backward, toward shame and stigma, precisely when history calls us forward—toward recognition, repair, and love.

This is not strength. It is not faith. It is not leadership. It is the politics of humiliation.

Texas deserves better than campaigns built on ridicule. We can debate taxes, schools, health care, immigration, war, democracy, and the future of the state without stripping people of their dignity. In fact, we must. A democracy worthy of the name depends not only on votes and institutions, but on the moral discipline to recognize one another as fully human.

The truth is simple: LGBTQIA Texans belong to all of us. They are part of every community, including those that pretend otherwise. To attack them for political gain is to attack the sacred fabric of family, faith, and human dignity itself.

Reference

Stonewall riots. (2026, June 12). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots

‘We Have Not Seen Ugly Yet’

Paxton versus Talarico is already awful.  

By Elaine Godfrey | May 27, 2026

Mark Felix / Bloomberg / Getty
May 27, 2026

TWO THINGS are as certain as bluebonnets in spring now that Ken Paxton is the Republican nominee for the Senate in Texas: Democrats have a better-than-usual chance of winning statewide. And the next 23 weeks are going to be hideous.

Paxton’s big win comes days after President Trump stuck his finger into the wind, determined that the incumbent, John Cornyn, was toast, and gave the attorney general his last-minute support. Even though the nearly 28-point margin was surprising, it was probably always going to be Paxton. A runoff tends to attract the hardest of the hard-core—the kind of determined voter who is willing not only to show up to vote in March, but to show up and vote in March, sit through 12 weeks of brutal attack ads, then head back out to the polls in May. The kind of Republican who might argue, as one woman did in Dallas when I spoke with her last week, that Paxton and Trump are bringing masculinity back to the party like Bambi’s father “coming out of the forest with those huge antlers.”

Now that these dutiful Republicans have secured the animated stag of their dreams, they will turn their attention to his general-election opponent: James Talarico, the 37-year-old Democratic state lawmaker and aspiring Presbyterian minister. In some ways, the two men have become avatars for their respective parties, which will spend the next five months ruthlessly attacking each other.

Paxton, a MAGA folk hero, seems even more committed to the movement than Trump himself is. As attorney general, he filed dozens upon dozens of lawsuits against Presidents Obama and Biden, and sued to overturn the 2020 election results. Paxton and Trump happen to share a strikingly similar ethical and legal rap sheet: Both men have been indicted (Paxton’s charges involved securities fraud and were dismissed after he agreed to do community service and take an ethics class); both have been impeached (Paxton was suspended by the Texas House but later acquitted by the Senate); and both have been accused of—and deny—infidelity. (Angela Paxton is now divorcing Ken on “biblical grounds.”)

Read: Ken Paxton is actually doing this

Although Talarico doesn’t yet have Paxton’s name recognition, he does have strong youth-pastor energy and, at least for now, the moral high ground. As a faith-forward economic populist, Talarico has a core campaign message of love triumphing over hate, and little guys taking on the billionaires. Republicans know that they’ve got a tough race ahead of them, which is why they’ve already settled on a strategy: make Talarico seem like a weird dude.

Unfortunately for Democrats, Talarico has been more than a little helpful in this effort. In 2021, the state lawmaker said that “God is nonbinary,” a statement that is off-putting to some Christians, not because they believe that God is literally a man but because they can’t fathom why someone would drag God into the earthly debate over gender identity. Talarico has also said that there are six biological sexes and that he supports access to abortion, in part, because God asked for consent when he blessed Mary with the baby Jesus. As a candidate in 2022, he pledged to run a “non-meat campaign,” which was never going to play well in cattle country.

Lately, Talarico has been doing some backtracking. “I know there are two sexes, men and women. I also know there’s a very small percentage of people who have these chromosomal abnormalities, and I believe they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect,” he told CBS this week, adding that there are “some statements that I’ve made that I certainly regret.” Whenever Talarico is accused of being insufficiently pro-meat, his campaign circulates a photo of the candidate gnawing on a turkey leg at the state fair.

Still, both sides have heaps of material to work with. Which is why the next few months promise a total inundation of negative advertising online, and on the airwaves in Texas. Democrats will hammer into voters Paxton’s scandals—and the failures of Republican leadership. “Will Republicans get away with running a superficial attack campaign when Texans are really hurting?” Matt Angle, a state Democratic strategist, told me. “They’ve been in control for 30 years. If something’s broke, they broke it.” Meanwhile, Republicans are already parroting Paxton’s proposed “Tala-freako” and “Low-T Talarico” nicknames. This morning, the Trump adviser Stephen Miller wrote on X that Democrats have nominated their “first transgender senate candidate.” (Talarico is not transgender.) “We have not seen ugly yet,” Vinny Minchillo, a Texas Republican strategist, told me. They’re going to make Talarico “the woke DEI candidate of all woke DEI candidates. And pound him, pound him, pound him.”

The task ahead will be tough for Talarico, who will have to decide when to counter these attacks directly—Define thyself lest ye be defined, as the political maxim goes—and when to remain firmly astride his moral high horse. He will also have to fend off the unprecedented amounts of money that Republicans are pumping into the race in order to protect their fragile Senate majority. Already, Paxton has secured the backing of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which initially endorsed Cornyn and which, last night, dutifully scrubbed its website of all anti-Paxton press releases and ads.

Yet for Talarico, hope remains. No Texan needs reminding that inflation is high, or that the war in Iran has the whole world on edge and gas prices rising. Trump’s polling is bad, and among Texans, Talarico has higher favorability numbers than both Paxton and the president. In what might end up being a particularly good year for Democrats, victory is not only possible but achievable.

Still, if Democrats have done one thing well in Texas over the past 30 years, it’s dash hopes. The last time a Democrat came close to winning statewide in Texas was in 2018. Back then, Senator Ted Cruz beat Beto O’Rourke by roughly 215,000 votes. This time, the figure that Republicans have their eye on is 778,139, or the number of Texans who voted in the March GOP primary but who were not excited enough about either Republican candidate to vote in the runoff. A drop in turnout was expected. But a 36 percent decline “mirrors a lack of Republican enthusiasm we’ve seen in other states,” Minchillo said. For Texas Republicans, that number is “distressing.”

Last night on Truth Social, Trump congratulated Paxton and promised to hold a few rallies to help gin up some excitement. “Texas, this will be FUN!” the president teased. We’ll see.

A Wall That’s Worth Defending, by David R. Brockman, Texas Observer | March 17, 2026

I have had the good fortune of encountering the work of religious scholar and Texas Christian University professor Dr. David R. Brockman, whose Christian thought resonates deeply with my own. I grew up in the Mexican Baptist Church, where we understood faith as inseparable from justice. Ours was a social justice gospel—not because we agreed on everything, but because the church offered a space for moral reflection, honest questioning, and collective care. For many of us, it was also a refuge from the gaze, exclusion, and unsafety often experienced in predominantly white university institutions.

This is why Christian nationalism feels so profoundly alien to the Christian theology many of us inherited. Glenn Bracey and Dr. Brockman's Baker Institute colleague Michael Emerson contend that Christian nationalists are defending a “religion of whiteness” against religious and racial diversity. Alternatively, in their book on Christian nationalism, Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry argue argue that Christian nationalism is less about religion itself than about the pursuit of power. However one frames it, Christian nationalism is not about Christ or Jesus. It is hateful and hurtful, profoundly antithetical to a faith tradition rooted in love, humility, justice, and care for the vulnerable.

—Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

A Wall That’s Worth Defending

Some evangelical Christians are hammering away at the very church-state separation that allowed them, and other believers, to first flourish in America.


by David R. Brockman | Texas Observer | March 17, 2026

When our nation’s Founders took the revolutionary step of creating a republic with no state religion, they likely never envisioned how religiously diverse the nation would become. Drive around my hometown of Fort Worth, or any populous Texas city, and you’ll see Muslim mosques, Hindu and Buddhist temples, Sikh gurdwaras, and Jewish synagogues, as well as Christian churches of all sizes and varieties.

Once-predominant Christians now account for less than two-thirds of Americans, and their faith has fragmented into hundreds of denominations that differ over theology, morality, and politics. One out of 15 Americans now belongs to a religion other than Christianity. Almost a third of Americans don’t identify with any particular religion, yet belief still flourishes. Over half of Americans consider religion very important in daily life; that share struggles to reach 20 percent in other economically advanced nations.

As America grows more religiously diverse, the Founders’ decision to separate church and state looks increasingly wise. Though it’s easy to spot flaws in the Founders themselves and the Constitution they crafted (the Electoral College, for instance, or the three-fifths clause), what Thomas Jefferson called the “wall of separation” was one thing they definitely got right.

Two centuries on, it’s easy to overlook just how novel that wall was in its day. Whereas both America’s adversary (Britain) and main ally (France) in the Revolutionary War officially endorsed one religion (the Church of England and the Catholic Church, respectively), the U.S. Constitution explicitly prohibited the “establishment” of such an official religion, instead guaranteeing individuals’ right to freely practice their own beliefs. The Founders also went against the grain in prohibiting any religious tests for holding public office, a requirement both in Britain and in many of the states at the time (North Carolina and Georgia, for instance, restricted public office to Protestant Christians).

As historian Steven K. Green notes, leading clergy of the day attacked the Constitution’s “irreligious” character—particularly the fact that, unlike most public documents of the time, including the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation, it neither invokes nor mentions a deity.

Scholars and jurists have long debated how church-state separation should be interpreted and applied, but it remains a cornerstone of our democracy. And it’s one worth keeping, according to most Americans. Fifty-four percent want the federal government to enforce church-state separation; 69 percent believe the United States should never declare an official religion—and with good reason: Just imagine the mess if the government tried to foist one religious group’s beliefs on so varied a people.

Yet that’s effectively what Christian nationalists are attempting to do today. This largely white evangelical movement, which holds sway in GOP politics, especially here in Texas, seeks conservative Christian domination over law and public policy.

Despite contrary evidence offered by mainstream historians, many leading Texas lawmakers and politicos apparently agree with Aledo-based David Barton that church-state separation is a “myth” liberals and secularists concocted to conceal the Founders’ alleged intent to create an explicitly Christian nation. The Texas GOP has pledged to work “toward dispelling” this purported myth. Both Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and state Senator Mayes Middleton, a Galveston Republican, have declared there is “no such thing” as church-state separation.

At the Capitol, Texas lawmakers have sought to weaken Jefferson’s wall, especially in public education. In 2021, they required “In God We Trust” be posted in public schools. In 2023, lawmakers authorized school districts to hire chaplains as counselors, with no prohibition on proselytizing. In 2024, the State Board of Education gave its blessing to a “Bible-infused” K-5 curriculum featuring instructional materials more appropriate for Sunday school than public schools. And last year, lawmakers mandated that all public schools display one religious tradition’s sacred text—the Ten Commandments—and provide a daily period for prayer and Scripture reading.

These measures arguably promote one religion over others, and religion over non-religion, threatening to turn students, families, and teachers who don’t subscribe to Christian-nationalist religiosity into outsiders in their own public schools and communities.

As a recent book, Randall Balmer’s America’s Best Idea: Separation of Church and State, makes clear, what the author calls our “best idea” was no deus ex machina; it emerged from a particular history and particular coalitional forces. America’s “grand experiment of constructing a government without … an established religion,” Balmer writes, grew from an alliance of “two unlikely camps,” secular rationalists and—ironically—evangelicals.

The latter group had their own history of persecution under state religion. In colonial Virginia, where the Church of England was the established religion, “a sheriff brutally horsewhipped a Baptist minister,” Balmer recounts as an example. Quaker William Penn, persecuted in Britain by the Church of England, and Baptist Roger Williams, who suffered at the hands of Puritan colonial officials, worked to free people from the yoke of official religion; they established colonies (Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, respectively) that offered religious freedom, setting a precedent for the later First Amendment.

Secular, Enlightenment-minded Founders like James Madison had their own reasons for rejecting state religion. They needed to accommodate the religious diversity already present in the new nation, where religious groups “rang[ed] from Catholics and Moravians to Jews, Quakers, and Dutch Reformed—and perhaps hundreds more.” Moreover, Madison linked religious establishment with political tyranny and violence; he wrote that “torrents of blood” had been spilled in official religion’s “vain attempt” to proscribe religious differences.

In rejecting official religion, the Founders created what Balmer calls a “free marketplace of religion”: Since no religious group holds a state-sanctioned monopoly over religious life, “religious groups … compete for adherents on an equal footing.”

Pushback to the Founders’ free-market approach, though, does have a long history. In the 19th century, for instance, the elaborately named National Association to Secure the Religious Amendment of the Constitution pushed for explicit acknowledgment of Christ’s will as the law of the land. Though this group’s efforts failed, it foreshadowed today’s Christian nationalism.

Then and now, Christian nationalists threaten a system that has actually benefited both government and religion. Though Americans haven’t always lived up to the promise of religious tolerance, we have been spared widespread sectarian bloodshed. Meanwhile, “religion has flourished in America,” Balmer writes, “precisely because the government (for the most part, at least) has stayed out of the religion business.”

Separation has perhaps benefited no group more than evangelicals themselves. They have proved far more adept than other groups at adjusting to social and technological changes (think of their adroit use of digital media or their move to megachurches featuring multisensory worship experiences). And, of course, there’s the unprecedented political power evangelicals wield, especially here in Texas.

So why the eagerness of many evangelicals to kill the golden goose of separation? Balmer blames evangelical leaders’ (and President Donald Trump’s) “rhetoric of victimization.” However, he leaves unanswered the question of why they find such rhetoric so compelling. Other scholars offer possible answers. For instance, Glenn Bracey and my Baker Institute colleague Michael Emerson contend that Christian nationalists are defending a “religion of whiteness” against religious and racial diversity. Alternatively, Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry argue that Christian nationalism is less about religion than the pursuit of power.

Like other bedrock principles of our democracy—say, the separation of powers or freedom of the press, both also under threat today—church-state separation was born of mixed motives, has not always lived up to its own promise, and remains subject to shifting interpretations. At times, it has functioned more as a hedge than an impermeable wall (as when a Cold War Congress made “In God We Trust” the national motto). Yet, it’s no myth. It has prevented any one religion from gaining a state-sanctioned monopoly in the religious marketplace, and that has served us well, fostering a pluralism that makes us stronger and freer. As Jefferson’s wall faces perhaps its most severe tests to date, it is up to all of us, religious and nonreligious alike, to speak out in its defense.


David R. Brockman, Ph.D., is an author, Christian theologian, and nonresident scholar in the Religion and Public Policy Program at Rice University’s Baker Institute. He teaches at Texas Christian University.

Summary of Key Changes in OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule: Russell Vought is going to destroy American Science

Russell Vought

Russell Vought’s hostility toward higher education research is not anti-intellectualism in the simple sense. It reflects an authoritarian theory of knowledge embedded in the governing vision he helped construct as a principal architect of Project 2025.

As Elizabeth Ginexi warns in her May 28, 2026 Substack analysis, OMB’s proposed overhaul of federal grant rules would translate that vision into a government-wide apparatus of political control "layered over every stage of the federal science lifecycle" such that senior appointees could override expert peer review. They could require grants to advance presidential priorities. They could subject research to an undefined standard of “Gold Standard Science,” as well as terminate ongoing awards without any finding of fraud or misconduct.

 
The proposal would also make federal support for conferences, scholarly memberships, journal access, publication, public communication, and international collaboration contingent upon administrative approval—giving political officials influence not only over what research is funded, but also over whether scholars can develop, test, share, and defend their findings.

Research would remain tolerable only when it serves the executive’s ideological agenda. Peer review becomes suspect because it is independent; academic freedom because it is pluralistic; and DEI, climate science, gender studies, public health, and civil-rights research because they can produce evidence that challenges hierarchy and concentrated power. 

What Vought calls “taming the bureaucracy” is therefore not merely an administrative project. It is an effort to subordinate universities, scientific inquiry, and public knowledge to presidential authority—to tame knowledge itself.

Yes, all of this is pretty dire and outrageous. One thing all can do is submit a public comment. Everyone should do this. The deadline is July 13, 2026 for doing so. Ultimately, we must vote this administration out of power.

-Angela Valenzuela

Summary of Key Changes in OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule

Russell Vought is going to destroy American Science

Elizabeth Ginexi | Substack | May 28, 2026

Federal Register, May 29, 2026 | Docket OMB-2026-0034 | Comment Deadline: ~July 13, 2026

https://www.federalregister.gov/public-inspection/2026-10817/regulation-for-federal-financial-assistance

1. Political Appointees Take Control of Grant Awards (§200.205)

This is arguably the most consequential change in the rule. Senior political appointees, rather than career scientists or program officers, would now be required to conduct a “pre-issuance review” of every discretionary grant before it is awarded. These appointees are explicitly forbidden from deferring to peer reviewers or routinely ratifying their recommendations.

The criteria they must apply include blocking awards that touch on denial of “the sex binary in humans,” illegal immigration, or anything deemed to “promote anti-American values.” The rule also requires that discretionary awards must:

“...demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities.”

In practice, this gives political appointees a veto over any science that conflicts with the current administration’s ideology.

2. Peer Review Is No Longer Binding (§200.205(d))

The rule explicitly states that peer review recommendations “remain advisory and are not ministerially ratified, routinely deferred to, or otherwise treated as de facto binding.” This directly dismantles the post-WWII system used by NIH, NSF, DOE, NASA, and nearly every science agency, in which independent expert peer review was the primary measure of scientific merit. Under this rule, a political appointee can simply override the scientific community’s judgment with no finding of cause.

3. “Gold Standard Science” as an Undefined Political Test (§200.205)

The rule repeatedly invokes a concept called “Gold Standard Science,” tied to Executive Order 14303 of May 23, 2025, without defining it in any concrete or measurable way. Under the proposed requirements:

• All grants must include benchmarks for compliance with “Gold Standard Science”

• Agencies must prioritize institutions that have “demonstrated success in implementing Gold Standard Science”

• Institutional prestige and historical reputation are explicitly deprioritized in favor of compliance with this undefined standard

Because the standard is never defined, the administration retains broad, unguided discretion to favor or disfavor institutions based on their political alignment.

4. Active Grants Can Be Terminated at Any Time, for Any Reason (§200.340)

The rule codifies and expands the authority to terminate active grants mid-award simply because they are “inconsistent with program goals or agency priorities.” Agencies need only provide a brief written rationale; no finding of noncompliance or fraud is required. This retroactively threatens ongoing multi-year research that researchers and institutions have built programs around.

OMB frames this as analogous to the “termination for convenience” clause used in federal contracts, but grants are fundamentally different instruments. Researchers take on staff, make commitments to participants, and design years-long projects around the presumption that a funded grant will run its course.

5. DEI, Gender Research, and Related Topics Banned as Grant Conditions (§200.300)

All federal award funds are prohibited from being used to “fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate” any of the following:

• DEI or DEIA policies or practices

• “Gender ideology,” defined as any theory that “denies the biological reality of sex or the sex binary”

• Any assistance with gender transition for individuals under 19

These restrictions are embedded as mandatory grant conditions across all agencies and all programs. A university or research institution that conducts such research, even with entirely separate, non-federal funds, could face grant termination if the activity is found to conflict with award conditions.

6. Broad Prohibition on International Scientific Collaboration (§200.220)

A new government-wide rule prohibits the use of any federal funds, including indirect costs, for bilateral or multilateral collaboration with “covered foreign countries” or entities affiliated with them. The rule extends beyond China to all countries designated under broad sanctions lists, and covers travel, research activities, technical assistance, and indirect costs allocable to any such collaboration.

While legitimate national security concerns exist with certain foreign entities, this provision is sweeping enough to severely disrupt international partnerships that have been foundational to U.S. leadership in fields from climate science and astrophysics to genomics and epidemiology.

7. “Domestic-First” Framework for Research Awards (§200.202(e))

A new domestic-first framework requires that any international element in a federally funded R&D grant be affirmatively justified on a case-by-case basis by agency officials. Foreign entities cannot receive R&D awards at all except with written approval from a senior political appointee. International collaboration, currently standard practice across many scientific disciplines, would become presumptively disfavored.

8. Applicants Can Be Denied Based on Organizational “Affiliations” (§200.206)

The risk factors agencies may use to deny a grant application are expanded to include an applicant’s membership in or affiliation with organizations that “advocate for the overthrow of the United States Government” or “undermine public safety or national security.” Given the preamble’s expansive framing of what constitutes anti-American activity, this language could be used to disqualify researchers affiliated with civil rights, environmental, or public health advocacy organizations.

9. E-Verify Mandated for All Grant Recipients (§200.303)

All recipients and subrecipients of federal awards must enroll in and use the DHS E-Verify system for every employee and contractor working on a federal award. Any Final Nonconfirmation must be reported to the federal agency. This adds significant administrative burden to universities and research institutions and could jeopardize grants at institutions employing researchers from abroad.

10. OMB Claims Direct Binding Authority Over All Agencies

The rule restructures 2 CFR to make OMB’s guidance a directly binding regulation on all agencies, effective government-wide on a single date. This removes the previous system under which individual agencies had meaningful flexibility in adopting OMB guidance. It also eliminates the ability of individual science agencies to shield their communities from any of these changes through their own implementing rules.

Conference Attendance and Related Costs

11. Conference Attendance Now Requires Express Agency Pre-Approval (§200.432)

Under current rules, conference attendance related to the scientific work of a grant is a standard, routine allowable cost. The proposed rule eliminates that presumption entirely. The new text states:

“The costs for attending conferences are allowable only if participation in the conference is expressly approved by the Federal agency and included in the terms and conditions of the Federal award.”

This means every conference a researcher wishes to attend using grant funds must be pre-approved by the agency and written into the award at the time it is made. Conferences not anticipated when the award was issued cannot easily be added later, and the agency has full discretion to deny approval or simply decline to include any conferences in the terms at all.

Conferences are where scientists present results, receive peer critique, discover new approaches, and build the collaborations that advance their fields. Giving political appointees gatekeeper authority over conference attendance is a direct tool for isolating researchers from their professional communities.

12. Professional Memberships Require Prior Approval and Must Be “Necessary” (§200.454)

The proposed rule makes three significant changes to allowable membership and subscription costs:

• Professional society memberships are only allowable if they are necessary to fulfill the award requirements and receive prior written agency approval

• Subscriptions to professional, academic, and technical journals are made categorically unallowable

• Memberships in organizations whose primary purpose is lobbying or issue advocacy are unallowable

The journal subscription ban deserves particular attention. Researchers routinely use grant funds to access the scientific literature that is foundational to their work. At institutions with constrained library budgets, this could make it genuinely difficult to conduct research.

13. Publication Costs and Open Access Fees Presumptively Unallowable (§200.461)

The rule proposes that all journal publication costs, including article processing charges, open access fees, and similar fees, are unallowable by default. Exceptions would require either a specific statutory mandate or case-by-case agency pre-approval. The proposed regulatory text reads:

“Publication costs (including page charges, article processing charges (APCs), or similar fees such as open access fees for professional journal publications and other peer-reviewed publications) are unallowable under Federal awards.”

This directly conflicts with longstanding federal open access mandates, including the 2022 OSTP memorandum requiring that federally funded research be made publicly available. Peer-reviewed publication is the mechanism by which science is validated and shared. Making it financially prohibitive for federally funded researchers to publish their findings would effectively suppress the scientific record.

14. Public Communications and Outreach Severely Restricted (§200.421)

All public relations costs are proposed as unallowable except those explicitly required by statute. This would restrict researchers from communicating findings to the public or press. Combined with the issue advocacy prohibition below, it adds another layer of control over how federally funded science reaches the public.

15. New “Issue Advocacy” Prohibition (§200.450)

Federal grant funds could not be used for:

• Any messaging that promotes or opposes a “particular social, political, or public policy position unrelated to the statutory objectives” of the award

• Voter registration activities

• Attempting to influence any state executive branch agency on matters outside the precise scope of the award

Given that the rule’s preamble characterizes climate science, public health research, and equity research as “divisive ideologies,” this prohibition could be deployed to bar researchers from speaking publicly about their own federally funded findings on politically sensitive subjects.
Notices of Funding Opportunities: New Restrictions and Controls

16. Program Goals Must “Align with Administration Policies and Priorities” (§200.202)

Every new federal grant program, including science programs, must now be designed with goals that explicitly align with administration policies and priorities. This requirement is embedded directly in the regulatory text governing program design, meaning science agencies must structure their grant solicitations around the current administration’s political agenda rather than solely around scientific need, statutory mandate, or the advice of the scientific community.

17. Agency Heads Can Exempt Grant Competitions from Public Notice (§200.204)

A new exception allows a federal agency head, or their designee, to approve an exemption from the requirement to publicly post a funding opportunity on Grants.gov when “publicly announcing an opportunity would pose a risk to national security or is in the national interest of the United States.” While narrow national security carve-outs for classified defense research are legitimate, this language is considerably broader. “National interest” is a phrase this administration has used expansively, and it could justify conducting entire grant competitions outside public view.

18. Agencies Can Restrict Eligibility to Specific Nonprofit Categories (§200.202(d))

Agencies can now explicitly restrict grant eligibility to specific IRS nonprofit categories, for example limiting eligibility to 501(c)(3) organizations while excluding 501(c)(4) organizations. This could be used to exclude advocacy-affiliated scientific organizations or civil society groups that conduct or fund research.

19. OMB Gains Direct Oversight of Which Institutions Receive Grants

A new provision allows OMB to require agencies to submit reports identifying the specific recipients of federal awards over any given period. Combined with OMB’s new authority to require political alignment in program design, this gives the White House direct oversight and leverage over which institutions receive federal research funding. That function has historically been insulated from political interference, and with good reason.

Bottom Line

Since World War II, the United States built the world’s preeminent scientific enterprise on a straightforward principle: federal dollars should fund the best science, as determined by independent experts rather than politicians. Peer review, open competition, and institutional autonomy were the pillars of that system. This proposed rule dismantles all three, simultaneously, government-wide, and binding on every federal agency by October 1, 2026.

What OMB is proposing is not a reform of grants management. It is a complete political control apparatus layered over every stage of the federal science funding lifecycle.

• Before a competition opens, every program must be designed to align with the President’s policy priorities, not scientific need, statutory mandate, or expert consensus.

• When opportunities are announced, agencies can restrict who is eligible, and the agency head can exempt solicitations from public posting under a broad national interest exception.

• When applications are reviewed, political appointees must personally evaluate every discretionary grant. Peer review is explicitly reduced to advisory status. Appointees are forbidden from deferring to scientific experts.

• When awards are made, grants can be conditioned on compliance with an undefined “Gold Standard Science” standard, and institutions can be disqualified based on their affiliations or the political character of their prior work.

• During the research itself, scientists cannot attend conferences, join professional societies, subscribe to journals, or publish in peer-reviewed journals without express agency pre-approval. Each of those approvals can simply be withheld.

• At any moment, an active grant, including a multi-year award already mid-project, can be terminated because a political appointee decides it no longer aligns with agency priorities. No finding of misconduct is required.

• When results are ready to share, publication costs are presumptively unallowable, and any public communication that could be labeled issue advocacy on a sensitive topic puts the entire award at risk.

The rule is also notable for what it cites as justification. The preamble relies heavily on Heritage Foundation reports, partisan Senate committee documents, and White House fact sheets, rather than independent scientific or administrative assessments. It characterizes decades of peer-reviewed research on climate, public health, equity, and international collaboration as “woke,” “neo-Marxist,” “anti-American,” or “divisive ideology.” It treats the scientific community’s professional infrastructure, including conferences, journals, international partnerships, and open access publishing, as wasteful overhead to be controlled or eliminated.

Congress has repeatedly appropriated funds for science agencies with the expectation that those funds would be administered through merit-based, expert-driven processes insulated from political interference. This rule attempts to override that expectation administratively, without new legislation, by repurposing OMB’s grants management authority as a vehicle for political control of science.

The public comment period closes approximately July 13, 2026 (45 days from May 29 publication). Comments must be submitted to regulations.gov, Docket OMB-2026-0034.

Scientists, universities, scientific societies, patient advocacy organizations, state governments, and members of the public all have standing to comment. Given the scope of what is proposed, the breadth and volume of opposition in the formal record will matter both legally and politically.

Why Policy Matters: Ally Flores’ Call for Accountability to the UT System Board of Regents, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. June 9, 2026

Why Policy Matters: Ally Flores’ Call for Accountability to the UT System Board of Regents, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D., June 10, 2026

I want to elevate the powerful letter to the editor by Ally Flores published onMay 29, 2026 in The Austin Chronicle, “Demand Accountability," also published below.

A recent graduate from the University of Texas at Austin, Flores names something deeply important: policy is never neutral. The rules that govern who gets to speak, when meetings are held, how testimony is controlled, and who has the authority to eliminate departments or terminate faculty all shape the democratic life of a public university.

Ally Flores

Her letter raises serious concerns about the UT System Board of Regents’ recent actions, especially the newly introduced rule granting university presidents sweeping authority to eliminate departments and terminate faculty while removing existing appeal processes and the requirement to provide a rationale. This is not merely an administrative change. It is a governance shift with profound implications for academic freedom, shared governance, faculty rights, and the future of ethnic and gender studies at UT Austin.

Policy matters because it is the machinery through which values become institutional reality. It can protect democratic participation, transparency, and academic freedom—or it can be used to silence, consolidate, and control. Ally Flores’ letter reminds us that accountability begins with paying attention to the rules, because the rules determine what is possible.

Her voice not only deserves to be heard, but heeded—especially by those entrusted with the stewardship of our public universities.

Demand Accountability
Ally Flores, Austin Chronicle | May 29, 2026

Dear Editor,

Last week, the UT System Regents met after the academic year ended, when many students and faculty were already out of town. Between no same-day sign-ups for testimony, timed remarks limited to the “chairmen’s discretion,” requiring pre-approval of speaking topics, and a phone line for speaker registration and questions that was disconnected the day before the meeting, public input felt, at best, discouraged. More concerning, buried in the 228-page agenda was a newly introduced rule granting university presidents unchecked authority to eliminate departments and terminate faculty, removing the existing appeal process and requirement to provide a rationale for these decisions.

It is difficult to accept these changes as anything but censorship when a fully Abbott-appointed board, including a former Republican state senator and members with explicit partisan ties, reliably advance any conservative measure placed before them. With UT-Austin moving to consolidate its ethnic and gender studies departments this fall, faculty remain in limbo about its impending implementation and whether newly grouped departments will be forced to compete for already-limited resources.

However, this selective austerity seems convenient. Tech moguls Michael and Susan Dell recently crossed $1 billion in lifetime giving to the university, and as AI has become a consistent subject of praise from President Jim Davis, this year’s decision to automate the simple task of reading graduate names at commencement signals not only a disregard for the human foundations of academia but a growing institutional malleability. I implore those reading to demand accountability before a leading public university surrenders what remains of its integrity to the outside pressures it has shown no willingness to resist.

Ally Flores

The Theology of Power Behind the Anti-DEI Movement: What Katherine Stewart, Nancy MacLean, and Jane Mayer Help Us See, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

The Theology of Power Behind the Anti-DEI Movement:
What Katherine Stewart, Nancy MacLean, and Jane Mayer Help Us See          

by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

June 10, 2026

Today's anti-DEI movement does not merely invoke the language of neutrality; it weaponizes it. Its appeals to “colorblind equality,” “individual responsibility,” “viewpoint diversity,” and “freedom from coercion” provide moral cover for a coordinated effort to dismantle the institutional commitments that make multiracial and multiethnic democracy possible.

A Manhattan Institute (2023) policy brief by Christopher Rufo, Ilya Shapiro, and Matt Beienburg makes this clear. The document calls for state legislatures to abolish DEI offices, end mandatory diversity training, prohibit diversity statements, and eliminate identity-conscious policies in public universities. It even supplies model legislative language for states to adopt. In other words, it does not merely criticize DEI. It operationalizes a political project.

What would Katherine Stewart, Nancy MacLean, and Jane Mayer help us see in this document and in the broader movement from which it emerges? At the risk of oversimplifying the work of these formidable researchers and thinkers—or failing to fully acknowledge the many conceptual overlaps among them—I offer the following reading. Each illuminates a different dimension of the same political project: Stewart helps us understand the religious-nationalist drive for power; MacLean reveals the anti-democratic political economy beneath it; and Mayer follows the money and institutional networks that make such ideas actionable.

Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers and Money, Lies, and God, would
likely urge us not to mistake this for a simple “culture war.” Christian nationalism, in her analysis, is not merely about religious belief. Nor is it reducible to debates over prayer, abortion, sexuality, or school curricula. It is a political movement seeking power over the institutions of democracy. Its aim is not pluralism, but control. From this perspective, attacks on DEI, Ethnic Studies, gender studies, and public education are not side issues. They are part of a larger attempt to define whose knowledge counts, whose histories matter, and whose presence in public institutions is legitimate.

Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains, would likely locate this effort within a longer history of anti-democratic political economy. Her work shows how radical-right, neoliberal thinkers and donors have sought to constrain majority rule, weaken public institutions, privatize public goods, and insulate concentrated wealth from democratic accountability. Seen through MacLean’s lens, anti-DEI legislation is not only a cultural backlash. It is also a governance strategy. It

narrows what public universities can do, what faculty can say, what students can learn, and what communities can demand of taxpayer-supported institutions.

Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money, would likely follow the money. She would ask: Who funds the think tanks, advocacy organizations, litigation networks, media campaigns, and policy shops that produce these “model bills”? Who benefits when public institutions are weakened? Who gains when democracy is recast as “coercion,” equity as “orthodoxy,” and civil rights as “preference”? 

Mayer’s work helps us see that ideas rarely move on their own. They are carried, amplified, and institutionalized through networks of wealth, influence, litigation, media, and policy advocacy. In higher education, this influence can become especially consequential when donor support comes with expectations—whether explicit or implicit—that shape curricula, research priorities, faculty appointments, or public-facing programs. When private wealth gains this kind of leverage over academic life, it does more than fund ideas; it helps determine which ideas become legitimate, visible, and powerful. The result is a serious threat to academic freedom, shared governance, and the integrity of universities as public-serving institutions.

Together, these three writers help us understand that the attack on DEI is not simply about administrative offices or training sessions. It is about the future of democracy itself.

John Oliver’s recent and timely Last Week Tonight segment on New College of Florida gives us a concrete glimpse of what this project looks like when theory becomes governance. New College was not merely criticized as “woke”; it was politically captured and remade through state power. 

Board appointments, administrative upheaval, the elimination of gender studies, numerous faculty departures, escalating costs, and an aggressive campaign to rebrand the institution all became part of a larger effort to transform a distinctive honors public liberal arts college into a showcase for ideological control. Put plainly, New College was not simply reformed; it was targeted. Its transformation should be understood as an intentional and orchestrated attack—one that other states, especially those already moving in this direction, should heed as a warning.

Oliver’s satire makes the story accessible, but the implications are grave: New College reveals how appeals to freedom, neutrality, and anti-indoctrination can become instruments for narrowing intellectual life and subordinating public education to political spectacle.

Link to John Oliver's show on New College

What happened at New College of Florida should therefore be read not as an isolated Florida story, but as a warning about a broader national strategy—one that has already taken legislative form in Texas through SB 17 and related efforts to discipline public higher education.

This is especially clear in higher education. Public universities are among the few institutions where young people can still encounter histories, literatures, theories, and communities that challenge inherited hierarchies. They are places where students learn that inequality is not natural, that democracy is unfinished, and that knowledge can serve justice. This is precisely why they have become targets.

The anti-DEI movement tells us that it seeks neutrality. But there is nothing neutral or apolitical about banning the vocabulary of race, gender, sexuality, colonialism, power, privilege, or structural inequality from public life. 

There is nothing neutral or apolitical about using state power to restrict how universities support historically excluded students. There is nothing neutral about turning “colorblindness” into a weapon against the very communities whose labor, taxes, cultures, and struggles built the state.

Nor is there anything Christian, in the deepest moral sense, about denying the dignity of the vulnerable, erasing histories of suffering and resistance, or consolidating power in the hands of the already powerful. The Christianity rooted in justice that many of us recognize speaks to humility, justice, love, mercy, and care for the stranger. Christian nationalism, by contrast, cloaks hierarchy in sacred authority. It baptizes domination. It transforms—and disfigures—a faith tradition into an instrument of political control.

This is why Stewart’s analysis matters. She helps us see how religious language can be marshaled to justify anti-democratic power. This is why MacLean’s analysis matters. She helps us see how democracy is weakened not always by dramatic coups, but by slow institutional redesign. And this is why Mayer’s analysis matters. She helps us see how concentrated wealth builds the infrastructure that makes these transformations possible.

The struggle over DEI, then, is not a narrow dispute over campus bureaucracy. It is a struggle over whether public institutions will continue to serve a multiracial democracy or whether they will be remade to protect hierarchy under the banner of freedom.

For those of us in Texas, this is not abstract. Under SB 17, we have seen how anti-DEI laws chill speech, restructure universities, eliminate offices, threaten programs, and place entire fields of study under suspicion. We have seen how Mexican American Studies, African and African Diaspora Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and other knowledge traditions become vulnerable when political leaders decide that democracy itself has become too diverse, too demanding, and too honest.

The answer is not despair. It is clarity.

We should name the movement accurately. We should refuse the false innocence of its language. We should defend academic freedom, shared governance, Ethnic Studies, gender studies, civil rights, and public education as essential democratic goods. 

And we should insist that pluralism is not a threat to democracy. Pluralism is democracy.

The future being offered by Christian nationalism and its allied political networks is a narrowed one: fewer rights, fewer histories, fewer voices, fewer protections, fewer public goods. The future we must defend is broader, deeper, and more humane: a democracy capacious enough to tell the truth, educate all children, honor all communities, and build institutions worthy of the public trust.

That is the real choice before us.

Reference

Last Week Tonight. (2026, June 8). New College of Florida: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFMc07F1UUU

Manhattan Institute. (2023, January 18). New issue brief: Abolish DEI bureaucracies and restore colorblind equality in public universities [Press release]. https://manhattan.institute/article/new-issue-brief-abolish-dei-bureaucracies-and-restore-colorblind-equality-in-public-universities

MacLean, N. (2017). Democracy in chains: The deep history of the radical right’s stealth plan for America. Penguin Press.

Mayer, J. (2016). Dark money: The hidden history of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right. Anchor.

Stewart, K. (2020). The power worshippers: Inside the dangerous rise of religious nationalism. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Stewart, K. (2025). Money, lies, and God: Inside the movement to destroy American democracy. Bloomsbury Publishing.

John Oliver Takes Aim at New College of Florida

John Oliver’s segment on New College of Florida is both hilarious and devastating because it captures, with painful clarity, what happens when higher education becomes a staging ground for ideological conquest. What has unfolded there is not reform, but a political takeover that has driven away faculty, destabilized students, dismantled programs, and turned a once-distinctive public honors college into a warning for the nation. The lesson is clear for us here in Texas and beyond: when political power is used to control universities, the result is not educational improvement, but the erosion of academic freedom, institutional integrity, and student well-being.

-Angela Valenzuela

John Oliver Takes Aim at New College of Florida
“It’s not going great,” the late-night host said of the political takeover and institutional upheaval that have transformed New College’s campus since 2023.

By Kendall Southworth June 8, 2026

John Oliver turned his satirical lens on New College of Florida in a blistering 28-minute segment on Sunday, June 7. Image: Courtesy HBO

If you happened to be scrolling through channels late Sunday night, you might have stumbled across an unexpected but familiar sight: the bayfront views of the original winter home of circus magnate Charles Ringling—now known as College Hall, the academic and administrative building of New College of Florida. For the last several years, the tiny Sarasota enclave has occupied a persistent, polarizing place in headlines big and small—and on Sunday night, that long-running conflict landed onto one of television’s biggest stages.

In a blistering 28-minute segment on Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver turned his satirical lens toward the local liberal arts college that became ground zero for the conservative movement’s efforts to reshape higher education. Backed by months of research and interviews with current and former students, faculty and alumni—including the independent alumni organization Novo Collegian Alliance—the segment traced the political takeover and institutional upheaval that have transformed the campus since 2023.

For former and current New College students who have borne close witness to watching what Oliver called a “political theater” reshape where they live and learn, seeing the story broadcast to millions across platforms felt surreal.

“We’ve watched this destruction of a great educational program for the last three and a half years. Seeing it brought to national attention is both hard to see but also cathartic,” says Brian Cody, secretary of the Novo Collegian Alliance. “Seeing his face next to the null set [the college’s beloved former mascot, which Oliver described as ‘the single dorkiest thing’ he had ever heard] is just crazy.”

Oliver opened the segment by introducing viewers to the New College generations of Sarasotans have known since the ’60s: a small public honors college known for attracting unusually intellectual students, self-directed study and narrative evaluations instead of traditional grades and a reputation for attracting unusually intellectual students—or, as Oliver affectionately put it, being “a rare haven for gentle nerds.” He highlighted the school’s academic track record, including a 2018 report showing that 80 percent of graduates attended graduate school within five years and that New College ranked third nationally among public and private institutions for producing graduates who go on to earn doctoral degrees.

Oliver then revisited Gov. Ron DeSantis’ early 2023 appointment of six conservative allies to the college’s board of trustees. He described the takeover not merely as an effort to “recapture an institution,” but to “provide a model for red states to then replicate.”

That national ambition was openly shared by conservative activist Christopher Rufo, one of the newly appointed trustees. At the time of his appointment, Oliver pointed out, Rufo tweeted, “We are now over the wall and ready to transform higher education from within.” He doubled down on this language later in his foreword to Storming the Ivory Tower, a book written by New College president and former Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran. In it, Rufo praised Corcoran for implementing “the vision of Governor Ron DeSantis,” adding: “He fought the press—and won. Florida has become the blueprint for red-state governance.”

Much of the segment focused on those efforts by Corcoran. Oliver highlighted what he framed as a tension between promises of restored academic rigor and the realities of the college’s recent trajectory. He pointed to faculty departures, Corcoran’s nearly $700,000 annual salary (the highest per-student compensation of any public university president in Florida, with perks and bonuses pushing total compensation above $1 million), and the dismantling of longstanding programs and campus traditions.

He also highlighted a series of controversial hires, including vice provost David Rancourt, a former lobbyist with no prior experience in higher education. Oliver claimed that “the most noteworthy thing” Rancourt had done since his appointment was participate in a stand-up comedy night in which he described an incident from childhood in which he exposed his genitalia to a child the same age, referring to her as a “little b—-.” Ironically, Oliver also pointed to former communications director Fred Piccolo to make his point, whose tenure ended after multiple charges of indecent exposure became public.

The segment also examined one of the administration’s most frequently cited achievements: enrollment growth.

While incoming classes have increased since the takeover, Oliver argued that the gains come with important caveats. He cited reports from former admissions employees who alleged that academic standards had been lowered, and he spent several minutes on the college’s expanded recruitment of athletes, including roughly 70 baseball players the first year, when there were no athletic facilities. He also noted reporting that student-athletes have received a disproportionately large share of merit-based scholarships despite, on average, holding weaker academic credentials than other applicants.

For Cody, it was affirming to see these points surface on a national stage, but he noted there is even more to the story, saying that “they keep bringing in these big classes, but last year they only grew by 22 students compared to the year prior. They’re coming in to play sports but are leaving after a year or two. They’re wasting money recruiting people, but not keeping them.”

Oliver scrutinized the financial implications of the changes, citing a state audit that found New College’s public cost per degree had risen to nearly $500,000—far higher than other institutions in Florida’s university system. Cody added that, in the wake of a recent move by lawmakers to slash the college’s operating budget by 40 percent, the consequences of that spending trajectory may soon become more acute.

A state audit found New College’s public cost per degree had risen to nearly $500,000—far higher than other institutions in Florida’s university system.

Image: Courtesy Florida State University Efficiency Study

Throughout the piece, Oliver argued that New College had become a vehicle for political performance rather than educational reform, a view echoed by one current student who described the changes as disorienting and personal. “It feels like New College has become a political playground for what these people want the country to be,” she said. “I’m upset—this is my education.” Another student in his final year described being moved out of his campus housing by administration to make room for incoming athletes.

 “Depressingly,” said Oliver in closing, “this is the exact sort of smash-and-grab we’re seeing in so many places right now, from public health to newspapers to broadcast news. Ideologues capture something they dislike, claim they want to fix it, and then proceed to dismantle it. But seldom has that been more blatant than watching people talk about great debates and classical education, only to drive away faculty, dismiss books as trash, and assemble a veritable Avengers of D-list conservatives, celebrities, creeps and weirdos—all so they can lecture the world’s single largest baseball team.”

Corcoran didn’t reply to a request for a phone interview but released a statement to Sarasota Magazine, referencing “record enrollment growth, rising academic achievement, significant philanthropic investment, historic growth in foundation support and endowment assets, [and] the recruitment of exceptional faculty.” Despite the show’s focus on campus upheaval, Corcoran maintained that the administration’s efforts have ultimately resulted in “a strengthened campus culture rooted in intellectual freedom, civil discourse, and academic freedom.” He added that the college had repeatedly invited John Oliver to visit campus, meet with students and faculty, film on site or participate in an open conversation on its Socratic Stage, noting that the invitation “was declined” but “remains open.”

 William Rosenberg—president of the Novo Collegian Alliance—on the other hand, praised the segment, saying, “John Oliver has a rare gift for making people laugh without letting them look away.” He added that while as humorous as the segment may have been, “what is happening at New College is no laughing matter for the students, faculty and staff living through it every day.”

To watch Last Week Tonight’s segment on New College of Florida, click here.