Proclaiming Justice with Laurie Cardoza Moore

Laurie Cardoza Moore: I want to thank all of our PJTN watchmen who are joining us on this important call today. I want to just do a brief intro to introduce you to PJTN in the event some of you who are watching this are not familiar with our organization. Proclaiming Justice to the Nations' mission is to educate Christians about our biblical duty to stand with Israel and the Jewish people against the rise of global anti-Semitism. We accomplish that goal by producing award-winning documentary films and television programs to combat the disinformation against Israel and against our Jewish brethren that has led historically to anti-Semitism.

The way PJTN got involved in education is that one of our watchmen contacted me and said, "You'll never believe what we're teaching our kids in Williamson County schools here in Tennessee." I asked her to bring me the textbook, let me review it, and I found a quote that legitimized Palestinians blowing themselves up in a Jerusalem restaurant because they were waging a war against Israeli government policies and army actions. I asked the parent, "Can you leave the book with me? Let me scan it cover to cover." Not only did I find that anti-Semitic quote, but I found anti-American, anti-Judeo-Christian, anti-the-values that our nation was founded upon. That's how we got started.

I have been appointed by the Speaker in Tennessee, Cameron Sexton, to serve my third term on the Textbook Commission, and I also serve as the president of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations. This leads me to our conversation today and our recent involvement. PJTN was invited by members Julie Pickren and Brandon Hall, who are members of the Texas State Board of Education, to come and testify before their hearing about what I have seen over the years, not just in the state of Texas, but in states like Florida, Tennessee, Ohio, and Arizona. Because of our involvement and our experience in fighting this battle in these other states, that's how I was invited to participate in this important hearing.

On June 22nd, I traveled to Austin, Texas, to participate in the Texas State Board of Education hearing regarding the proposed Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, also called TEKS. These are the standards—social studies standards and literary works. As one of the largest textbook adoption states in America, Texas occupies a uniquely influential position in shaping educational standards and instructional materials that often impact classrooms far beyond its borders. Texas determines what many, many states will adopt with regards to standards and curriculum textbooks and instructional materials.

The purpose of my participation was to support the standards that strengthen historical accuracy, civic literacy, academic rigor, and a truthful presentation of America's heritage while expressing concerns regarding efforts by outside organizations to influence curriculum content involving Israel, Judaism, terrorism, the Middle East, and American history. What Texas purchases in curriculum, at least 25 other states across the country will adopt as well. What Texas adopts for standards, those 25 other states will also impact the standards those states will adopt as well.

Texas plays a significant role in the future of our country. Just think about this: you have Texas that has 5.5 million kids. You have 25 other states that on average would have about a million students in their classrooms. Combined, those 25 other states would equal 25 million. We include Texas, that's another 5.5 million in students across the country. That's over 30 million kids that we can impact, influence, and educate, and turn this country back. We all agree that there is a major problem in our society and our culture, and part of that problem is what we've done to our children. We've indoctrinated our children so much so that our kids will march in rallies and in parades and mobilize across the country to support Hamas.

This has to change. If we can target and focus on Texas and establishing the standards and correcting the historical inaccuracies, we can turn our country back for our children and our grandchildren. We've lost two generations. For more than two decades, PJTN has worked to expose historical revisionism, anti-Semitism, anti-Israel propaganda, and ideological activism entering classrooms through curriculum materials, teacher training programs, and educational advocacy organizations.

I urged the board then to ensure that students receive historical accuracy rather than political indoctrination and that they understand America's Judeo-Christian heritage. This is important. We must understand the contributions of the Jewish people to American history, the history of anti-Semitism in our country, what George Washington did about it, and what was his position on anti-Semitism. We must understand the Holocaust because they're trying to revise Holocaust history. We must understand the founding of the state of Israel and America's alliance with Israel. Why is this relationship between America and Israel so important? Why is it so unique? Why are Christians adopting a false narrative? It's because of the propaganda that our children have been exposed to. We're going to start with Julie Pickren to open up this conversation.

Julie Pickren: This was wild. Texas, we didn't walk into this and say, "Okay, we have a majority of votes and then we're going to win this." It was not an easy breezy walk in the park. Laurie was there. Laurie saw the opposition. She even witnessed the opposition within our board. A lot of these votes where we won, we only won these by one vote. This wasn't like a super majority of Republicans where two-thirds of the board was voting to reject CAIR's terrorist recommendations and terrorist demands. It wasn't just walk in there and vote and it's all done.

We had to fight this standard by standard, amendment by amendment. We literally went through every single grade and went through every single standard. I'm telling you, probably over 50 amendments just in elementary were proposed. This was easily 65 to 70 hours worth of work of defeating this on every single standard. Whenever one of our testifiers printed out all of CAIR's recommended amendments and all of their communications, again, CAIR is the terrorist organization, it was over 300 pages. That's a lot of amendments because each page has roughly 15 to 20 amendments on it. 300 pages. This was what I compared to literal frontline, hand-to-hand combat, defeating this wickedness that wanted to change America fundamentally.

As Laurie alluded to, our decisions do not just affect Texas. Within six months to a year, we have about 25 states that follow Texas State Board of Education decisions. These publishers write their instructional materials according to Texas standards for the nation. Within a year, whatever we adopt is affecting over half the children in America. The Texas State Board of Education is the most powerful education board in America because, as you know, the US Department of Education has never educated one child. By federal law and by Supreme Court decisions, they are not allowed to direct instructional materials in the states at a federal level.

Laurie Cardoza Moore: Julie, thank you so much for sharing all of that information. I'd like for you to cover the issue of K through eight that you all were able to adopt the standards, but you're going to have to come back to do high school. I just want to mention to our audience to think about what Julie just talked about, what she just said. There's 5.5 million students in Texas and 25 other states follow Texas's lead. If we average those 25 states to a million students, that's 25 million kids plus Texas's 5.5 million. That's over 30 million children every year who are going to be educated by these new standards because Texas is the lead. We know that in Tennessee, we see it in Florida, and there are other states like Ohio that we're working in. That's why this is so important, because we can change the trajectory of this country. Half the country can be flipped if we go to these other states and get their state boards of education to adopt these civics and social studies history standards following Texas's lead. Julie, talk a little bit about the procedure because now you guys are going to have to come back in September. Tell us a little bit about what happened and why we didn't get the standards in 9th through 12th grade adopted.

Julie Pickren: Okay, our chairman broke the standards out into what we call chunks. We did kindergarten through second, then we did third through fifth, then we did junior high. We handled them in smaller chunks than just elementary, junior high, and high school. What happened by the time that we got to high school is we lost three of our Republican members on our board that were part of our voting bloc, and they went and they joined up with the five Democrats on our board. You need eight votes to win a vote. By the time we got to high school, these three Republicans joined up with these five Democrats and they started passing a lot of amendments that did align with what CAIR wanted, with what the teacher unions and the terrorist organization were demanding.

In fact, I have a crosswalk document now where there's a crosswalk between the amendments that they were proposing and passing with the CAIR demands, the terrorist organization's demands. High school was going not in the direction of what our two-thirds of Texas voters had voted for. We are a 10-5 Republican board. We are a supermajority board. When you look at our board, you can easily say that two-thirds of Texas aligns with Texas values: patriotism, pro-Israel, anti-communist, anti-terrorist. By these Republicans basically thumbing their nose at the Republican Party of Texas platform and at Republican voters and siding with the Democrats, they started passing a considerable amount of amendments to high school.

Also with high school, for us, the way we decided to institute our implementation schedule, high school will not be implemented, I believe, until the 2032-2033 school year. We do have a little bit of a buffer on deciding these standards. It wasn't as critical to pass the high school standards at our last meeting as it will be to have them completed by the end of this year because we do have a little bit of a buffer. There's a lot that we need to go back and fix in high school because, in my estimation, we passed amendments that actually could violate our own state laws. That will be in our meeting in September and we're going to have to go back and redo this.

Texas, we have been working on this on the executive branch and the legislative branch as a team for many years now. One of the great things that Texas did for the rest of the nation is, on some of these laws like anti-communism and that you must include the Bible in your instructional materials, I'm telling you, these national publishers from New York, Chicago, California, they would rather walk over broken glass than put the Bible in their instruction. We have just seen, or regarding patriotism, that we demand that you have to teach it through an American exceptionalism lens, through a patriotic lens. They just have not been complying with our state laws. As a result of that, we passed a law in Texas that Texas is now an official developer, writer, and publisher of instructional materials.

That has been incredible. I had an incredible meeting with the governor and his team about that several years ago. Governor asked about how much would this cost. I told them all in, kindergarten through 12th grade, all subjects, you're looking at about two billion dollars. They could understand the impact of that. We have now gone down this road where Texas has begun developing, writing, and publishing instructional materials. Because we do have probably the finest economy in the history of our nation as far as a state goes, Texas has paid for it. We've paid for all of it and we've made our instructional materials free to any state that wants to use them.

Any state that wants to use our Texas published materials that include the Bible, that include patriotism, that teach the horrors and the horrible effects of communism, and is more aligned with classical instruction, it's free to any state that wants to use it. I know a lot of states have sent Texas MOUs, memorandums of understanding, to start using our instructional materials. Just know that's out there. We've paid for it. Whatever state you're in, we're offering it for free.

Laurie Cardoza Moore: Okay, I want to go back to Brandon. Just so everybody knows, we're going to let both Brandon and Julie communicate and talk about this issue, and then we're going to open up the floor if anybody has any questions. Brandon, if you wouldn't mind, there was a lot of opposition not only from the CAIR side, but there were more liberal-leaning people who were concerned about the Bible being taught, that we were going to be teaching our children and favoring one religion over the other. It's favoring Christianity. When in reality, Brandon, correct me if I'm wrong, in reality, it's teaching the history, the role that both Judaism and Christianity played in history and in our founding and in Texas as well. Can you speak, Brandon, about that issue about the opposition to clarify, because I think there's some confusion and inaccurate information floating out there about what this is and what this is not?

Brandon Hall: Yeah, absolutely. I would just say the thing we get a lot is that this is a violation of the Establishment Clause or a violation of the nonexistent separation of church and state, which is not in the Constitution. As a pastor, as somebody who proselytizes for a living, this is definitely not intended to proselytize our kids. I would not want someone from a different denomination proselytizing my kids either in the schools. But this isn't anything new either. This is something that we have always had, the Bible in our schools all throughout history. Our Founders were very clear that they wanted the Bible in schools.

The Aitken Bible, which was the first printing done that was approved by the Continental Congress, was printed so that it could be put out in our schools. Then, of course, you have McGuffey Readers that have been in our classrooms all throughout our history until 1963 when it was just arbitrarily taken out. Since then, we've seen a moral decline in our classrooms. We've seen discipline issues come into our schools and all of those things. It was very arbitrary to do that. But we're doing this, first of all, for its literary value. For example, in the seventh grade, our students are going to be learning Psalm 23.

Psalm 23, besides just being a passage of scripture, is something that inspires us as the word of God, as Christians and Jewish people as well. Psalm 23 is the greatest poem that's ever been written and it's widely known as that. It's very commonly referenced even in popular culture, all throughout literature, and so it would just be impossible really to get a complete education without knowing Psalm 23. Then just for the proportion of its impact, this is a Judeo-Christian nation and a Judeo-Christian state. That's what our values, our culture, our way of life are based on.

That's why it's important to include that. When people say, "Oh, we should include texts from other religions," those other religious texts have had just a microscopic impact on our society compared to the Bible. That's the reason for putting it back in. I would say, again, I know you have a lot of prayer warriors and activists here on this call. I would say that the battle isn't over when it comes to getting those key passages of the Bible back into schools because, of course, we know that we're going to be sued. We know that it may make its way all the way up to the Supreme Court, probably, which I think would be a good thing. Maybe we can see that 1963 decision reversed. I think we may have the Supreme Court justices to do that. So I would say for the prayer warriors that we have on the call, continue to pray because the battle isn't over at all.

Laurie Cardoza Moore: Very good. Thank you, Brandon. Julie, would you like to comment?

Julie Pickren: Yes. Just echoing what member Hall is saying, the conversation that I had with the governor's office about Texas becoming a developer, writer, and publisher of instructional materials really came out of a great Supreme Court win that we had. I believe the case came out of Maine where the US Supreme Court ruled that public tax dollars could be used towards biblical instruction, which cleared the path for us including the Bible in our instructional materials. Our instructional materials have been out in the classroom now for a little over two years because we had pilot programs that went out first.

It's been mainstream now for two years across Texas and it has drawn zero lawsuits. Any of you that have been activists or grassroots activists or involved in this for any length of time, you know that if they are going to sue us, if a law goes into effect at midnight, the lawsuit is filed at 12:01. For the fact that we've already been in classrooms for two years and drawn zero lawsuits, that is really a great testament to Texas's due diligence on making sure that we stay within the confines of the US Constitution and federal law.

The reason why it's important for Texas that we'll take on the defense is because whenever we pass a law that could be conceived as controversial or may draw a lawsuit, we set aside about two million dollars to defend it all the way to the United States Supreme Court. That's about what it costs to take a court case to the Supreme Court for a state. Texas is willing to lead. We're saying, "Give it to us, we'll lead." We're fine with that because a lot of states, and the smaller states, in their state budgets, they don't have the resources to defend all the way to the Supreme Court that Texas has. We're willing to take that lead.

As far as including the Bible, in third grade, what's already in our instructional materials in our English classes is the ones that I told you that are free for any state to use. Whenever we teach service above self, we teach the story of Esther because I don't think there's a finer story than Esther to teach how to serve others and putting yourself behind others. Whenever we're teaching in elementary on how to write a letter, we use Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" because it provides civics education. Also Dr. King in that letter said he feels like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace, and he feels like Daniel in the lions' den in that letter when he's referencing how he's feeling sitting in that jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama.

Just for comprehension, for enrichment of knowledge, you have to teach Daniel in the lions' den and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace just so you understand how Dr. King was feeling in the letter that he was writing. The Bible is used not to proselytize, but it's used for an enrichment of knowledge because so many of our laws are based on the Bible. In Texas, like so many other Republican states, we have what's called the "Baby Moses Law." Well, how do you understand the "Baby Moses Law" if you don't know the story of Baby Moses?

Then also in our founding documents, in the Declaration of Independence, whenever we talk about unalienable rights endowed by our Creator, where does that come from? Where does the idea come from that your rights are given to you by God and not given to you by a dictator or by government? Because that is uniquely American. That is the foundation of America that is very unique to us. It is the reason why the Declaration of Independence is a precursor to the United States Constitution. That is one of the reasons why we now have the longest running constitution of any country in the history of the world. There's a reason why our US Constitution is so successful, and the main reason is because it is based on the word of God and it is based in those Judeo-Christian values.

That's what children need to understand. They need the Bible for an enrichment of knowledge because all of us on this call, we have all witnessed and we have all seen the eroding of our unalienable rights. Especially in public education, at the core of what's been happening in public education around our country is that from local elected officials all the way up to President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, we have heard them continually say that the government is who should educate your child. The government is who should make decisions for children.

That is Communism 101. When you declare that the government should be in control of a child's life and make the healthcare decisions and make the education decisions and make all the decisions for a child, you have now stepped over into communism. There are two philosophies running in public education right now throughout our country: who does the child belong to? Does the child belong to the family, to the parents, which is what the word of God says? Psalm 127 says that blessings are children from the Lord, and the Lord, the Bible, was not talking to government, the Bible was talking to parents, to families. That is where we're seeing the great divide in a lot of these decisions around the country in public education: does the child belong to the parent and the family, or does the child belong to the government? Texas, we're very clear on this issue: children belong to the families, children belong to their parents, and it's our job to support families.

Laurie Cardoza Moore: It's so good to hear all of this. I have a question for both you and Brandon about reading the Bible. You all didn't just agree to the Bible, the Christian translation. Has there been a specific translation of the Bible that's been communicated? I know also it is stated in the language that the Tanakh will be used also as a resource. Who is teaching from the Tanakh? Are there opportunities for the local religious community, rabbis in the community, to come and teach from a Jewish perspective the Bible? Julie, you want to start, and then Brandon, if you'll weigh in?

Julie Pickren: Thank you, Laurie. Actually, in our state-mandated reading list and in our standards, we do not specify which version of the Bible is taught. In our state reading list, there's not one sole version that is listed. It's multiple. One reading list may be New King James Version. One, if we are trying to emphasize the poetry of the work and really enrich the knowledge, like Pastor Brandon was saying about the 23rd Psalm, well then it's going to be King James Version because you really want that poetic type of language.

It depends on what the standard is teaching as to which version of the Bible is used. I believe we discussed four different versions of the Bible on our mandated reading list and in our social studies standards because it really correlates to what is the knowledge or what is the skill that you're trying to teach. That's where the Tanakh comes in also. What happens is once we set these standards, then these passages will actually be embedded into the instructional materials. In English class, when we are teaching letters, if you were to go right now to the Texas Education Agency website and look at the instructional materials, because they're fully transparent for everybody, you would see that the version of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and Daniel in the lions' den that's in there is what correlates directly to Dr. King's letter.

It's actually embedded. Those Bible passages are actually embedded into the instructional materials. It's not a situation where you're going to read Lamentations on our mandatory reading list for social studies and everybody's going to pull out a Bible and go to the book of Lamentations and you're going to have 20 different Bibles in the room or different versions of Bibles in the room. That is not the situation that we're creating. What will happen is Lamentations now is mandated to be used as instructional text to a specific knowledge and skill standard. Whenever that textbook is published, it will include Lamentations actually on the pages of that textbook and how it relates to that knowledge and skill.

Brandon Hall: Member Pickren covered a lot of it there. I would just say that the translations that are used were included for their literary value. As Julie mentioned, the poetic Shakespearean English of the King James is used for Psalm 23. There are a couple of Jewish English translations that are used for one of the passages out of Lamentations as an example. In some, where just the story was important, not necessarily which translation, it would be a more modern, easier to understand translation for the younger grades and things like that.

Laurie Cardoza Moore: Very good. I want to go ahead and open up for Q and A because Brandon is going to have to leave us in a couple of minutes. I want to just ask our audience if they have any questions for Julie or for Brandon. Shmuel, Dr. Katz?

Guest (Male): Thank you so much for making such a great effort to save our nation. Literally, if we don't give the people guidance, we're going to lose our youth, and when they grow up, they're going to be wild people. We see already that stuff all around the states and our need for proper education is absolutely essential. I have two parts to my question. Number one, why are we allowing subversive groups to influence the committee's work? For instance, CAIR was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, which was promoting the agenda of Hamas and of the Muslim Brotherhood, where they were believing to transform the United States into a different continent under the guidance of the radical Islamic doctrine of the Muslim Brotherhood over 100 years. These people should be excluded from any interference with the work of the committees. The second question is, if we have a lot of material which is available for free due to the generosity and the wisdom of Texas and other resources, why won't we make it available not only to the schools but also to individuals who may benefit from having the information if they don't have access to this material in their states or in their locations?

Brandon Hall: I'll start with the first part of that question, which is: why are we allowing subversive organizations to have any influence over the State Board of Education? That is something that member Pickren has been very bold about, something that I've been very outspoken about. We agree with you. We don't think that they should. For probably the last five meetings in a row, when CAIR gets up to speak, we will start issuing points of order asking why we're allowing a terrorist organization that's been designated by Governor Abbott, Governor DeSantis, and even the United Arab Emirates. Even the federal government has proven in court that they are a terrorist organization, so why are we allowing them to speak at the State Board of Education?

Some of the issue that we're running into is that there's no federal designation yet and the legal department at the SBOE feels like their hands are a little bit tied with First Amendment issues because of that. If we can get a federal designation, that's something I know Dr. Pickren has been pushing for, something that I'm pushing for, and that I hope you all will push for as well. If we can get CAIR designated on the federal level, I think that will really go a long way. In the meantime, we're still pushing really hard. We're going to have a new Attorney General next year. We have a fantastic Attorney General right now, Ken Paxton, but we also have been talking working closely with our incoming Attorney General, who already is on top of this issue and has a plan when he comes in. We're going to keep working all directions of this until they're not allowed to come in. We've even had the Democrats publicly admit that they're carrying their amendments and working directly with them, and so we've got to put a stop to that.

Julie Pickren: Yes, thank you, Dr. Katz. That's a great question. On the first part, we asked the Attorney General's office, was there anything that we could do to prevent them from testifying? Basically the answer that we received back was until they are convicted of a crime, of a felony or terrorist activity, then they still enjoy their First Amendment rights in public testimony. Member Hall and I both, I have almost two and a half million constituents in my district, and my constituents did not elect me to negotiate or bargain or listen to terrorists.

In the five meetings that they have come to testify, they're not registering as individuals. They're registering as testifying on behalf of CAIR. This is actually CAIR's leaders who are coming to testify before us. Member Hall and I, we get up and walk out. In Texas, we had a vote in March, a referendum vote in March, to ban Sharia law in Texas, and my two and a half million constituents, that ban Sharia law won by 97%. 97% of my constituents said they do not want Sharia law in Texas. I have a clear mandate from my constituents, so that's a hard no for me.

Also, as member Hall said, I have put a formal request into the White House to designate CAIR as a terrorist organization. The FBI says they're the face of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. As you said, Dr. Katz, the UAE has even declared them a terrorist organization. There's international support and international proof that they are a terrorist organization. I have actually put in that request to the White House to have them designated as a terrorist organization because there's federal statute where if they are federally declared a terrorist organization, then there is an opportunity for us to ban them from testifying to our committees and to our board. Actually, every legislative body in America would have standing to block them from testifying, which I think would be huge.

The second part of your question is: yes, the Texas Bluebonnet instructional materials are available to anyone for free. They are published by grade with the teacher guides, with the readers, everything that is needed. The full curriculum is published on the Texas Education Agency website and anyone can download it and use it. It's only in paper form. We have all kinds of data that is showing that children who are learning exclusively on devices, that long-term cognition isn't developing. It's not there. It's why your junior high teachers are saying, "What are y'all teaching them in elementary? They don't know anything." Well, the elementary teacher probably did teach them; it's just it was delivered on through technology on a device, and so the long-term knowledge retention just isn't there. The new Texas instructional Bluebonnet materials are only available in paper form, in workbook form and paper form. What that means is anyone in the country that wants to use them, even a homeschool mom, could download them and use them and print them out.

Guest (Male): This information should be made public. I think most of the people do not know that it's available. Try and find a way how to make it public and repeat it a couple of times, like in regular advertising, because usually if you don't hear it at least 10 times, you never heard it. You have to repeat the messaging and let people know that it's available and where they can find it.

Laurie Cardoza Moore: That's wonderful, Dr. Katz. Julie, Brandon, we truly need to have resources available because I get asked all the time, "Where can I find good curriculum for my kids?" Even teachers, because there are some school districts that give teachers the flexibility to pick their own. They know what they have to teach, but they're able to pick their own curriculum to include.

Julie Pickren: Laurie, there's another great resource for everyone on the call here. We launched it from the White House a little over a year ago. We developed what's called the White House Founders Museum. If y'all have not taken a look at that, I highly invite you to go and look at it. It's called the White House Founders Museum and it has amazing founding fathers, founding mothers documents. It has videos that classrooms can use. It has lessons in there that teachers can use in the classroom for civics training. It really is exceptional. That was a collaboration among a group of us that put that together, and it is truly exceptional. I'm hoping and praying that Texas is also going to use information from the White House Founders Museum.

Laurie Cardoza Moore: Well, I know in Tennessee, I submitted a report following the hearings and my testimony before you all, and the Speaker of the House is now going to be looking at adopting the standards. He's calling for an emergency review of the civics and social studies standards in Tennessee, which aren't supposed to be reviewed for another couple of years yet, but because of what just happened in Texas, Tennessee is going to look at bringing the standards to Tennessee as well. I'll be in Ohio next week meeting with one of the members of the State Board of Education, submitting again what Texas has done and trying to get these standards adopted in the state of Ohio. And of course, we're going to continue to back Julie and Brandon in Texas, and of course, we'll be back in Florida. Anyone else? Other questions, comments?

Brandon Hall: Laurie, I'm going to have to jump off, but I just wanted to say thank you so much for having me on the call and I want to thank everybody for everything that you're doing for the cause of liberty.

Laurie Cardoza Moore: Absolutely. Thank you so much, member Hall. God bless you. Keep up the great work.

Guest (Female): First of all, I want to thank you for this webinar. It is absolutely fabulous and I want to thank everybody for all the work they are doing to get these standards in place. Looking forward, past these standards being officially in place, I kind of have three questions all together really. Number one, how will the implementation of the standards be enforced? For example, will they be officially integrated into local and state standardized tests? If so, who will be checking these tests for integrity before they are actually printed and given to the students to ensure full coverage?

Julie Pickren: Yes ma'am, that's a great question. Because as you know, we have all seen things go wrong on implementation. The best of intentions have happened on policy and then implementation happens and it doesn't fulfill what we call intent. As you know, standardized testing is mandated in every state by federal law. What happens in Texas is our standardized testing reflects our standards. That is the tool that we have to use to enforce that the local ISDs actually are teaching our Texas standards. It's the same in all of your states. That is the enforcement tool because, as you know, some of your local ISDs, the leadership, they're very woke. They believe in critical race theory or indoctrination and they would choose to teach that if they had a choice. So that's why a state standardized test is so important because it's an enforcement mechanism. In Texas, and like in other states, there is funding tied to those test scores. There's ratings tied to those test scores, and so everyone takes the standardized test very seriously. That is how implementation will happen, because the standardized test will reflect these new standards.

Miriam: This is Miriam. I have a quick question please and thank you. It's quite amazing all the hours of work that you've put into this. If I were to approach a Board of Education meeting here in North Carolina, is there anything that you've written to summarize what you're explaining here if I wanted to present this to them? Like anything written down, a few paragraphs if I sent it to them to read to explain what you're doing?

Julie Pickren: Yes ma'am. Actually, Miriam, first of all, beautiful accent. I speak with this Texas twang, and so you actually have a very beautiful accent. So yes, actually where I would point you to is this has been a long process to get to the point of adopting these standards. We had to adopt a framework to begin with, then we had to adopt themes and topics, then we had to adopt subtopics. So this has been a very long journey to get to these standards. I would advise you to go to the Texas Education Agency website because everything with the Texas State Board of Education is housed there. If you go there, or you can Google Texas State Board of Education and look up Social Studies Framework, the framework and then also our suitability rubric are there. Our suitability rubric is 100% based in federal state law, Supreme Court rulings, and what's required and what can be and what's not allowed in instructional materials and in standards. I think that suitability rubric is one of the finest documents right now in America on guiding our state boards of education on what needs to be included for a high-rigor education, but then also what needs to be kept out to keep indoctrination out of the classroom. Because like I said, over the last 10 or 15 years, we've really gone into indoctrination over education. We have to flip that if we're going to have an educated population; we have to get back to education being the main goal. That's the Texas State Board of Education Suitability Rubric, and then it's also our Social Studies Framework. If you're going to talk to your boards of education, those are the two most important documents.

Guest (Male): I just wanted to add, I threw a website into the chat. There was a group called the Bible Literacy Group back in 2008 that did a significant grassroots effort to basically point out that the Bible is the core of most literacy. They had many school districts sign up for it. There's a couple of white papers, if you follow the link that I put in the chat, there's a couple of significant white papers. One of them actually came out of California, of all places. I sent an email to the two guys that I knew that were working on it. I'm not even sure what the status of the project is, but the website is up and it has a lot of really good material in terms of school board-like white papers as to why this is not a radical idea. Thank you for everything you're doing and thanks for bringing this back to my radar. I haven't thought about this for a while.

Laurie Cardoza Moore: Thank you, Dennis. One of the things that concerns me, member Julie, is the issue of anti-Semitism. You and I have talked about this. We look at what's happening in our classrooms and we look at some of the curriculum, the literature that our kids are being exposed to that actually promote this. How would you say that the standards that you all are developing will help us to address this growing plague in society, especially within our K-through-12 education world?

Julie Pickren: You're right, Laurie. You're absolutely right. We are seeing a rise of anti-Semitism in our under-30 crowd in America. Again, it comes from this indoctrination versus education. We saw this in New York City. If you look at real data that we have in front of us right now, we have New York City, which was the most patriotic city 25 years ago, to now they elected a radical communist basically as their mayor. How do you go from the most patriotic city in America to now being basically electing officials who are anti-American? How that happens is through the public education system.

Even whenever we analyze the votes for what my governor has called consistently "Commie Mandami"—so if I say "Commie Mandami" it's just because I've heard Governor Abbott say it so many times—whenever you have Commie Mandami now who, when we analyzed his voting record, he was elected by the under-30 crowd. That's who showed up. When you are teaching children a Marxist education—critical race theory is based in Marxism—when you are indoctrinating children into Marxism, when a candidate like Commie Mandami stands up and starts spewing all of these communist, socialist policies, to the under-30 crowd, they're speaking the same language. It's all of us in the room and who are listening that are clutching our pearls saying, "Wait a second, this is communism, this is anti-American." That is a direct result of public education. This is why we have to take public education back, otherwise you're going to see this replicated all over our country because the younger generations have now been indoctrinated into social Marxism.

Part of this cultural Marxism is an anti-Semitic worldview. We had an economics textbook that was proposed to us a year and a half ago, and it's by a major publisher. It's in all the states; it's even in my state to a small capacity. They don't teach communism anymore; it's been relabeled to a "command economy" because communism is now a bad word. So now in your economics textbooks, it's called a command economy. I'm going to tell you, the number one economics textbook in America, this is their definition: "A command economy is the most benevolent form of economic system because it ensures that everyone has equal access to goods and services." That's how communism is being taught in our public schools, that it's the most benevolent form of economic system.

Whenever you have that being taught in your schools, it's easy to transfer over to anti-Semitism because Israel is our strongest capitalist society in the Middle East and our strongest democracy in the Middle East. Whenever you have pro-communist and anti-Judeo-Christian values, anti-virtue taught in your schools, you will create a society that is hostile to Israel. Laurie, you and I have had this conversation before. I am, in full transparency, I am very pro-Israel. I have also been an advisor to Israel and to the Israeli Knesset on education issues. In my humble worldview, there is not an America without Israel. If y'all haven't been educated on this, please do yourselves a favor and read about Haym Salomon and his contribution to George Washington and George Washington's army. America and Israel were the only two countries in the history of the world that were founded on covenant with God. We are tied together through covenant.

In all areas of Texas, we have taken a very strong pro-Israel stance. Even in Texas law, like I said, our endowment, our textbook fund, which is called the Permanent School Fund, if you are a bank or a financial institution that has adopted anti-Israel policies, you are blacklisted from participating in our municipalities and in our public funds. Texas has been very clear and very strong: we are a pro-Israel state. However, not all states have taken that position. You'll see that reflected actually in our new social studies standards. We have an entire section of TEKS that are dedicated to why Israel has the right to be its own nation, why the importance of Israel to America, Israel's contributions to America. We have a whole section of standards that are dedicated to Israel.

Laurie Cardoza Moore: Very good. Thank you so much. I want to just ask Dr. Sandra Alfonso, who is our senior academic fellow at PJTN. For those of you who are not aware, we do have a white papers and reports page. The bulk, if not all of those white papers and reports, have been written by Dr. Alfonso talking about these issues. Julie, you're absolutely right. It's one of the reasons that we see our children, K-through-12 education, marching in the streets with terrorist groups, pro-Hamas groups, is because of this very indoctrination that you've been talking about, the Red-Green Alliance. Dr. Alfonso can talk to the content, the information that she has found in all these years that she's been doing these white papers and writing these reports. The evidence is all there. Dr. Alfonso?

Dr. Sandra Alfonso: Hi, Julie. I'm glad you're here and I'm glad to see you. I would like to say something before addressing the question. Speaking about Mandami and it's cute, the "Commie Mandami," there's one thing that, yes, he's a communist, that's true. But he is an Islamist and we cannot overlook the fact that Mandami is an Islamist who is using communism in order to advance Islamism. Islamism itself is the enemy of the Jews, the Christians, and anyone outside of Islam. Always referring to Mandami as a communist, I feel, detracts from the safety that we need to bring into our cities. New York City is an Islamist city under the guise of a communist mayor who is using that communism. I think that we are whitewashing it. We are not understanding the danger of Islamism. I said a long time ago that it was a battle between globalism and Islamism going down the tracks, and at the end, Christianity is gone, Judaism is gone. That's communism. It's also socialism. But Islamism versus globalism, if Islamism succeeds in reestablishing a caliphate, that is the end of Western civilization as it's known.

This whole thing in our textbooks and about the importance of Islam and what they brought into the United States, all of that was started by Professor John Esposito at Georgetown University. He was the one that said, "No, America was not founded on the Judeo-Christian tradition. It was founded on the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition." He was the one that brought it in and we have to understand that we are looking at the conflict of the ages. It isn't just crusades, it's Holocaust, but we have gone through the Islamist, the Islamic march across civilization. Never think that the strength of Mandami is that he uses communism as a way of advancing Islamism. It's important.

The bottom line about Mandami: he has brought into New York City, with the second-largest Jewish population in the world after Israel, he has brought in Islamism. He has brought in the idea of destroying the Jewish population and that is part of Islam. The textbooks and the learning material in New York, I started a long time ago the elimination of the contributions of American Jews to American civilization. New York City has now approved the "Hidden Voices" curriculum, which rewrites the already eliminated presence of the Jews and putting it back in. We talk about Haym Salomon. It took me 10 years to put the poor man back into the textbooks because I started one day, I was reading textbooks through Curriculum Watch, and that's where my history with Texas comes in. It never ended, thank God.

I saw and I looked and I said, "Where'd Haym Salomon go?" I started one after another, and I came to the my academic advisory board and said, "Look, we have a big problem." I said, "Because if Haym Salomon is missing, we better look carefully who else is missing." Do you know who the next Jewish character, I don't mean fiction but personality important to the Jews and important to New York, do you know who disappeared next? Emma Lazarus. Emma Lazarus wrote the poem at on the Statue of Liberty welcoming in all of the immigrants, legal immigrants. They welcomed them in and she disappeared. This is something that we have to understand: that we not only have taken them out of the textbooks, we've taken them out of civilization.

Now we have a mayor who, if he is anything like the Quran and anything that happened to our people on October the 7th, that is what he has in mind to happen. You just brought in, Julie, I was watching the elections and that, you have coming into one of the school districts near Dallas, in complete hijab, a woman was elected. We are changing the face not only of America, we are changing because as America, we are changing the face of the world. What you're doing in Texas, I was so fortunate because under Curriculum Watch, I was allowed—it was an honor—to come to Texas when they were doing the state textbook adoption process. I was allowed, I was brought in, to go to the different cities and I spoke in Austin and Houston and around, looked at the textbooks, met with the people, we talked about it. Then I considered it a privilege I was allowed to start reviewing Texas textbooks and I participated in the big review. They were amazing. I fought for Texas against Pearson Education over one sentence on the Six-Day War. It took me 20 years to get Pearson to change one sentence, but we did it. We did it for Texas.

I have learned from Texas what it means to fight. The Bluebonnet curriculum is special, but in ways it has been critiqued because of the Christian nationalism. The country has to understand that the rebirth and the revitalization of Christianity is not the same thing as Christian nationalist supremacy. So when you mentioned the Bluebonnet curriculum, I was actually called by a woman in San Angelo and she said, "Sandra, would you do me a favor?" And I'm like, "Cath, I'll do anything. What do you need me to analyze?" Bluebonnet curriculum, and you have three hours to do it. So I said, "Well, we'll try." She said, "No, no, you have to promise me that you're going to tell me what's wrong with it." I said to Cath, "Based on what I found is wrong in the Texas textbooks, this curriculum has to be a doozy."

Texas has, no matter what happens, I made Aliyah in 2018 in September. In November, I got a heated phone call: "Can you come to Austin right away?" Because I got called to testify, another honor, to testify at the hearings against CAIR for one change in the TEKS. They gave me 15 minutes extra so I could finish speaking everything about CAIR, everything about this sentence in the TEKS. When it was finished, Julie, I stood there and I said, "Did I, hope I did a good job." I didn't, you know, I wanted to get rid of CAIR. I was more intense to get rid of the change that they wanted in the TEKS because it concerned the Arab-Israeli conflict and they didn't want an Arab-Israeli conflict because that meant that the Arabs did it. So it had to be the Israel-Arab conflict. That became the Israel-Palestinian conflict and we've had a hard time. But the vote, that Texas board, it was amazing just to watch them because the vote was 14 to 11. We stopped CAIR and we stopped that change on the war.

That's Texas for me. I would do anything for Texas. I got a secret message: "We need you to do something for us from the State Board." I said, "Oh, you need me to do a hit job on somebody? What do you want?" They needed someone who would read, there were on the reading list, you talked about the state reading list, and there are authors that present their books. They had one: "Can you do something?" I said, "I'll read it right away." It was anti-American, it was anti-Texas, it was anti-Semitic, it was anti-Christian. And I said she said, the woman from, and you know who was the head of the State Board then, of the board, said to me, "Look, you got 'The Bronze Bow' pulled from California because of anti-Christian anti-Semitism. Can you get this book out the same way?" I said, "I'll do my best," and they pulled it. Texas has an answer. The biggest problem Texas has is to find enough people to serve what the state is.

I'm asking you when we talk about Mandami, please, all of us, we have to remember that he is an Islamist first. Communism will be destroyed because communism right now is a method, is a means to bring in Islamism. My background with Texas, for all of you have to understand what it is to be born in Washington, D.C., and I was educated when Washington was the number two education system in the United States; number one was New York City. To go from that, to go for a PhD, my specialty, I'm a medieval French scholar. I have a PhD in medieval French and comparative linguistics and my big passion were the troubadours. From that, I went into this and I got into it only because I taught at Fordham University and I was blacklisted. My students asked me to become the advisor to the Middle Eastern Studies Club and that Professor John Entelis is a friend of Professor John Esposito at Georgetown.

To get rid of me, they blacklisted me as an unsuitable faculty advisor because I am an extremist, because I am a Jew. Not one Jewish organization came to protect me, not even Hadassah. Who came to protect me was the Council for Academic Affairs in New York City. That is where all of this began because he said he came to Fordham and he worked with me there. He said, "Look, you'll do anything for Israel, won't you?" I said, "Don't get me in the Mossad. I don't want to be in the Mossad. What do you want me to do?" He said, "Israel wants you to find out what is causing the incitement against Israel in the universities and in K-through-12." He said, "Can you do that?" So I said, "I can do that," and I did a study on the doctoral dissertations. Julie, what I found from that were all the major universities and some of the smaller ones, the Arab money, the doctoral dissertations charting the change of how the US looked at Israel and the Arabs, etcetera. I produced a paper for the government that proved what was going on. The United States State Department refused to read it and Colette Avital in the leftist government refused to read it.

I brought some of this over to Texas and I looked, they understood. I said, "This book has to go because this author is one of the authors of a doctoral dissertation." We went and found professors who graduated. Texas listened. Many states don't listen. It's very important. That's why this, when I listen to this and why I truly love PJTN, because once you have been blacklisted at a Jesuit university and my husband was denied full professorship there because they thought with the last name Alfonso, they can't be Jewish let alone but he married a Jewish wife, so he got the other end of the anti-Semitism. But what I learned and why I love PJTN, and Dr. Katz, you know that, I love Laurie Cardoza Moore because she has made up for everything that has happened to me as a Jew and as a scholar because she lets me think, she lets me do the white papers, she lets me investigate, and she takes my work with her when she goes to testify. You're looking at, and you know this, Julie, you're looking at an organization that has potential because it believes in academic freedom and it believes in the power of the human mind. This is, it's very important and all of you should know that there isn't another anyone like Laurie Cardoza Moore. I've been in this business too long. There is not another state like Texas.

Laurie Cardoza Moore: The other Lone Star State. On that note, Sandra, thank you for your kind words and your support. We need to wrap this up. It's 5:25. I said we'd only go an hour and a half and I want to thank you all so much for joining us on this call. If you want to learn more about the work we're doing, go to pjtn.org. Julie, I hope to be bringing you to testify in Ohio next. Get your suitcase out and your travel shoes on. We've got to go back to Florida also; we've got some stuff to clean up there. I want to thank all of you who signed up to be part of this webinar today. Thank you for your questions. I hope you found this with our speakers very informative. This is a critical issue right now in our country, and without all of you, without Dr. Alfonso, without Julie and Brandon standing on the front line and fighting for this, this country would be a mess. Julie, God bless you. Keep up the great work. How can people find you, Julie? Is there an easy way for if people have questions or want to seek your advisement, how can they find you?

Julie Pickren: There is. You can go to my website. It's my name, juliepickren.com. WWW.J-U-L-I-E-P-I-C-K-R-E-N.com. juliepickren.com. I'm super transparent on social media. If you want to follow me on X, on Twitter, it's Julie the number four TX, so J-U-L-I-E-4-T-X. But thank you so much. I dropped a comment into the chat because Dr. Alfonso, you are spot on. Every Jewish organization that testified before us at the Texas State Board of Education testified in favor of what CAIR wanted and testified in favor of the demands. We did not have one Jewish organization that supported what we were doing or supported us. Thank you. Laurie, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Texas and Tennessee have a very long-standing relationship with the Tennesseans that came to Texas to establish the Republic of Texas. Thank you from the bottom of my heart and God bless each of y'all on this call.

Dr. Sandra Alfonso: And one thing, Julie: Texas is so important because it was the second home to Jewish immigration and that's been written out of the textbooks. That's been written out of the textbooks. I really want to say to you, thank you from Jerusalem where I live, and thank you from the bottom of my heart for those being giving me the possibility of defending America and Israel at the same time.

Laurie Cardoza Moore: Amen. Alright everybody, God bless you all. Thank you so much for all you're doing and stay tuned. I want to thank our PJTN watchmen for joining us today. I hope that you will share this video message with your family and friends. And those of you who are not on our mailing list, I want to invite you to go to pjtn.org, go to the website, sign up to get on our mailing list so that you can stay informed about what's going on. If you're interested in getting engaged in the standards and education and academics in your state, please contact me at Laurie@pjtn.org. That's L-A-U-R-I-E@pjtn.org.

I just want to say in conclusion, the Texas State Board of Education hearing demonstrated both the opportunities and challenges facing public education today. The standards before the board represent an important effort to strengthen civic literacy, historical understanding, and academic rigor. For that reason, I supported their adoption. At the same time, the hearing revealed increasing pressure from advocacy organizations seeking to shape curriculum content involving religion, terrorism, Israel, and world history.

These developments should serve as a wake-up call for policymakers nationwide. The students in our classrooms today will become tomorrow's teachers, journalists, legislators, pastors, military leaders, and citizens. What they learn now will shape the future of our nation. As Americans, we have a responsibility to ensure that future generations receive an education grounded in truth, historical accuracy, intellectual honesty, and respect for the principles that have made our nation exceptional. God bless you and thank you for all you do. Thank you again for joining me on this edition of Proclaiming Justice. Please share this podcast with your family and friends. For more information about how you can get involved, please visit our website at pjtn.org. As a PJTN watchman, you can help us keep up the fight to preserve our freedom for our children and their children for such a time as this.