In yet another escalation of the manufactured panic over the content of books in school libraries, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick held a news conference this week, threatening public schools with punishment if they do not remove “graphic books.” Patrick promised that schools that do not comply with the new state law, SB 13, will be subject to a grade reduction in the state’s annual school performance ratings. Schools that do not retain a certain threshold in their performance ratings then become subject to state takeover. As we saw in the state’s takeover of the Houston Independent School District in 2023, such takeovers include converting school libraries into student detention facilities.
“It’s the law, and we expect you to follow the law. So we’re coming for the books,” warned Patrick in the staged event at the Capitol that served as a plug for his latest podcast episode. He went on to make the bold and unsubstantiated claim that 80% of Texas schools are out of compliance with the law. Patrick emphasized that he wanted schools to do it on their own and “remove these books.”
During the conference, Patrick showed off several specific titles. He called the books “so filthy, so dirty, so vulgar, so pornographic” that they were prohibited in Texas prisons–a popular talking point. He also said he wouldn’t show them off further to protect the dignity of the women in the room.
Even though there is no list of books banned by the state of Texas–something for which the state currently has no mechanism, unlike its peers in Utah and South Carolina (which both face lawsuits over such lists)–Patrick claims the state has 2,200 titles on a “dirty books” list. These are deemed illegal for school libraries to have. No list was presented at the press conference, though he named several individual titles, including Boy Toy, #MurderTrending, Do Animals Fall In Love?, Let’s Talk About It, All My Age, and The Art of Drag.
Indeed, he said, schools with a single copy of one of the books on the shelf would lose a letter grade under his proposed new law.
“You’re damn right that one book is enough to get you degraded by a letter,” he said.
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Joining Patrick on stage was Texas conservative activist Bonnie Wallace. She was Patrick’s guest on his podcast, Lt. Dan, just one week earlier. This was the podcast that Patrick said he wouldn’t talk about during the presser and then, of course, spent plenty of time promoting. Wallace is well known for going across the state to ban books she deems “inappropriate.”
Wallace is the creator of the list of 2,200 books Patrick referred to as illegal for schools to have; Wallace is not an elected politician, nor is her list one that’s been reviewed or approved by the state.
The list, available here, is Wallace’s own creation, and it’s become the basis for state politicians threatening public schools, educators, and librarians. Wallace’s list is but an amalgamation of unprofessional book reviews and ratings created by partisan interest groups nationwide. None of these reviews is written by professionals with expertise and experience in literacy, children’s literature, education, or librarianship. Indeed, it includes books banned in Texas prisons as well as books that the most prolific book banner in America–Bruce Friedman in Clay County–deems inappropriate.
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In typical book banner fashion, Patrick continued his press conference by claiming that this was in no way banning books. He rehashed the popular talking point of far-right book banners that equate the ability to spend money to buy books from a store with students’ ability to access materials in their school libraries freely.
“We’re not banning books,” he said. “Taking them out of our schools is not banning books.”
Despite the emphasis from Texas politicians throughout the last legislative session that bills like SB 13 were intended to give back local control to communities when it comes to the books available in their schools, as freedom to read advocates said from the start, this is actually about the state deciding what’s appropriate for every public school student in the state.
During the podcast interview with Wallace last week, Patrick praised the efforts of those building the Rated Books website–one of the very sites being used to compile books onto Wallace’s list that Patrick claims is the state’s “dirty books” list. Rated Books is an unprofessional, volunteer-run “review” site that cherry-picks passages from books and assigns them a rating. Such a shoutout from the Texas Lieutenant Governor positively tickled the Rated Books creator, who highlights the podcast on their website, noting that Rated Books was mentioned “no less [sic] than 9 times.”
Wallace also bragged about attending 164 school board meetings across the state to spread her message that these books need to be removed from schools.
If laws like SB 13 are about local control, then why does one partisan activist brag about having been engaged in censorship attempts at 163 schools where she doesn’t have a student or pay taxes toward? Why does one partisan activist get to decide which 2,200 books are illegal in Texas?
This isn’t about local control. It’s about Republican control of anything and everything, down to local availability of books.
Wallace is also currently suing the previously mentioned Houston Independent School District, alleging her First Amendment rights were violated at a board meeting. Houston, it should be noted, is nearing the end of its state takeover, and a lawsuit like this in that district is unlikely to be coincidental.
Districts throughout Texas have used SB 13 as an opportunity for tremendous overreach in banning. They’ve utilized tools like Artificial Intelligence to determine what books rise to the state’s definition of inappropriate–never relying on the actual expertise of librarians or educators–and they’ve shut down entire school libraries to ban hundreds of books at a time. SB 13, which did not pass during its initial legislative session in 2023, had advocates behind it who have also conveniently profited from it: BookmarkED, the software created to “help” librarians navigate book bans, saw its founder speaking before the state senate in favor of further censorship.
SB 13 has also been part of why other districts in Texas have gone without buying any new books for their collections at all, either out of fear of where or how those books might be considered illegal, or because of the miles of red tape now required by the state to approve new purchases.
Bills like SB 13 and staged press conferences that threaten districts with compliance to an incredibly poorly-written, over-reaching, and vague law that’s subject to the whims and interpretation by a party that’s been active and complicit in child sexual exploitation and trafficking have real consequences. This will have a chilling effect. Not only will school administrations begin to remove books on their own, but so too will educators and librarians. It’s yet another opportunity for the right to punish public education and push for voucher programs–something that Texas passed this year, and something that Texas hopes will happen as they implement a mandatory Bible-infused reading list in those public schools.
And that’s exactly what Patrick and his ilk hope to accomplish.
Perhaps it’s of little surprise that Patrick is up for reelection this November, and his challenge, a Democrat, is eager for debate. Although his threats have real consequences–schools will begin to ban books en masse, and both librarians and educators will quietly censor materials on shelves or that they may have otherwise purchased–these threats are part of an effort to look tough. The Texas legislature doesn’t convene again until 2027, so whether or not Patrick has the legal authority to change where and how schools are evaluated remains to be seen.
But as voters have shown in other states across the country, including in this week’s Florida school board elections, book banning isn’t the winning issue that far-right politicians continue to think that it is. It’s further proof of how much time, energy, and money they’re putting into really disturbing thinking about children and sex–something those very children aren’t thinking about at all because they’re children.
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