Category: Featured Articles

This commentary was originally published in Townhall.

Texas Longhorns were stunned when the news broke that the University of Texas at Austin had fired as many as 60 employees connected to so-called “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” programs. A week prior to the firing, Texas Senate Education Committee Chairman Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, had alerted Texas universities that he would be calling them to the Capitol in May to provide an update on their progress in ridding Texas campuses of DEI.

With the support of Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Creighton wrote the strongest anti-DEI legislation in the nation, and his letter reminded university leaders that failure to comply with the law could ultimately affect their funding.

DEI is the acronym for “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” a deceptively named race-based ideology that divides people into two groups—oppressors, who are mostly white people, although increasingly Jews and Asians are included in the oppressor group—and victims, who are African American, Hispanic or gay. Sometimes women are included in the victim group, though rarely white women. Victims also include those who are suffering from gender dysphoria.

DEI advocates have been working for more than a decade to re-segregate university campuses in Texas and across the country so “victims” aren’t required to interact with “oppressors” in classes and activities. Many Texas universities have segregated graduations for Black students and Hispanic students. “Lavender graduations” are held for gay students.

Arguing in favor of DEI programs, a student at the University of Texas at Austin, where only 5.5 percent of students are African-American despite two decades of DEI programs, said, “I don’t feel like I go to a (predominately white institution) because I’m always around my Black friends”

Imagine if a white student boasted, “I don’t feel like I go to a racially integrated university because I only hang out with my white friends.”

There has been massive blowback on Texas campuses following the passage of Senate Bill 17. The Austin-American Statesman reported that both students and faculty are rattled, exhausted and confused. DEI has infiltrated every aspect of university life, because it seems administrators have been allowed to put forward almost anything in the name of DEI without assessing the impact on students or its relevance to the educational mission of the academic institution.

For example, in a move that harkens back to the “Whites Only” signs before the Civil Rights Act, in the name of DEI, at least one flagship university established separate study rooms in the library for only LGBTQ students. When the library was crowded, other students were required to sit on the floor—whether the separate study rooms had people in them or not.

Students at Texas A&M lamented that when the so-called “Pride Center” closed down, there would be no place for women students to get binders to smash down their breasts so they looked like men. But administrators at the University of Texas at Dallas bragged that they were able to keep their “transition closet” open to provide cross-dressing outfits and supplies for students who believe they are the other gender. The officials insist they are now using “transition” as a broader term.

When the University of Texas announced that it would change the name of the Gender and Sexuality Center to the “Women’s Community Center,” it stated its mission was to provide “a place for Longhorns of all genders to connect, find resources, and get support around experiences of intersectionality, community, and gender solidarity.”

“Longhorns of all genders?” Clearly, they just didn’t get it. Leaders of the Women’s Community Center are among those who are being let go. Other campuses have also been slow to respond.

An official at Texas A&M was caught on tape saying that DEI programs were simply being “rebranded.” At the University of Texas at Tyler, an administrator said they were getting around SB 17 by “being creative.” At Texas Tech, an administrator said DEI programs were now all operating under the Campus Access and Engagement program.

Sen. Creighton made clear in his letter to university leaders that none of this is permissible under the law.

These frantic administrators who are clinging to DEI seem unaware that the biggest indictment against it is that it doesn’t work. A British study is the latest to reveal what we have seen in Texas—DEI makes no difference in increasing the recruitment of minority and marginalized students or improving their academic outcomes or career opportunities. In Texas, shutting down racially divisive and ineffective DEI policies wasn’t a suggestion—it is Texas law that could cost them their funding.

This commentary was originally published in the Washington Times.

Gov. Ron DeSantis brags that Florida “is where woke goes to die,” but in the legislative session that just ended, Texas lawmakers passed the strongest legislation in the country to end DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and its ideological framework mandating a belief in systemic racism, non-binary genders and pronoun police, men playing women’s sports, drag shows for children and even Democrat cities defunding the police. Some of the protesters challenged the legislators fighting wokeness, insisting that “woke” is merely a left-wing term meaning “stay aware.”

But even the left-leaning AP Stylebook has been forced to accept that “woke” is conservative shorthand for every crazy idea the left is pushing.

Texas lawmakers attacked those crazy woke ideas starting at their power center—college campuses—by passing the strongest anti-DEI bill in the nation. Texas closed down DEI offices on every state campus, prohibited mandatory DEI training and DEI statements to be hired. They also reined in Democrat cities with the “Death Star” bill that will prohibit city leaders from overriding state law. They blocked men from playing in women’s sports on college campuses and prohibited children from being exposed to drag shows.  Children will also be protected from cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers and sex-change surgeries before they are 18.

A new Gallup poll makes it clear that the Texas anti-woke agenda is much bigger than Texas. Most Americans agree with Texans on these issues. The number of people who call themselves social conservatives has increased 8 points in just two years while the number of people who call themselves socially liberal is dropping.

To just look at one issue, support for what is called “trans rights,” which impacts those suffering from gender confusion, is falling. According to Gallup, the number of Americans who oppose transgender men playing in women’s sports has increased to almost 70%, about the same as the percentage of Texans who oppose it. Predictions by the left that “trans rights” would gradually evolve into broader acceptance, like gay rights has, seem to be off base.

The Washington Post reluctantly reports in its own poll that almost 60% of Americans “don’t believe it is even possible” to be any sex other than the sex you were born as.  Similarly, the Texas Polling Project also found that 63% of Texans believe that sex is determined by what is on your birth certificate.

Population data regarding “trans” people are suspect, but, even with all the hype, the Washington Post says only about 0.6% of the population calls themselves “trans.” If you add in those folks who believe they are somehow “non-binary” (some gender other than male or female) that number increases to 1.6%. According to the Washington Post, 2.4% of the population is gay—although the number is much higher among younger people.  As Bill Maher has hilariously pointed out, the number of young people who now say they are gay is escalating so rapidly that the entire population will be gay by 2054.

Interestingly, a Summit poll found that about 69% of Americans attribute the skyrocketing numbers of young people who suddenly believe there are the opposite sex to cultural infusion through the media as well as the influence of big medicine, which produces puberty blockers and sex transition surgical centers. Regardless of the cause, the majority of Americans support Texas legislation that restricts discussions of gender identity and adult sexuality in elementary school classrooms.

Disagreement with so-called “trans” issues isn’t the total reason for the substantial shift toward social conservativism among Americans. Progressives pushing ideas that all American and Texas history is a lie, that white supremacy is ubiquitous and racism is in America’s DNA are another chief cause. So is defunding the police, even as American cities are destroyed by crime.

Ignoring progressive charges of racism and transphobia, Texas lawmakers took on the woke insanity and they won, big time.  The took significant steps to return reason and free speech to our college campuses, protect our children and women sports and help restore safety and vitality to our cities. The numbers in the latest Gallup poll showing an increase in social conservatism makes it clear that Americans across the country would like to see more of the same in their states.

This commentary was originally published in the Washington Examiner.

One thing to be thankful for this Thanksgiving is that it took the Pilgrims only a year or so to figure out that socialism was bad, both for individuals and communities as a whole.

Four centuries ago, William Bradford, the first governor of the Plymouth Colony, stated flatly in his history of Plymouth that the Pilgrims had been wrong to think the “taking away of property and commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing, as if they were wiser than God.”

According to Bradford, not long after the Pilgrims landed in 1620, they found that the collectivity they had instituted in the colony bred “confusion and discontent and retard[ed] much employment” because men did not want to work without pay for other men’s families. And so, a little more than a year after the first Thanksgiving, they decided to divide up the land they had so that everybody had a share and could grow what they wanted. Productivity increased, and the colony began to prosper, attracting more and more immigrants and ushering in the great migration from England, which soon resulted in such prosperity that New England became a wealth center for Great Britain.

It’s too bad the failed socialist experiment at Plymouth Rock is not more prominently included in the Thanksgiving story. Perhaps it would make a difference to the 65% of Democrats who have a positive view of socialism today, including about half of millennials and Generation Zers who believe it would be preferable to our capitalist system.

As it is, most public school children do not learn about the early decision by the Pilgrims to move quickly from a socialistlike economy to an economic system that provided property rights and incentives for work and productivity. They also know little of the genius of the Mayflower Compact, which called for “just and equal laws” and set the foundation for the principles that the founders employed when they established America’s government 150 years later.

Instead, too many public schools emphasize the Native American story, which is important but so riddled with leftist ideas such as critical race theory that it doesn’t even get even the basic facts right.

Edward Winslow, a Pilgrim leader who attended the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth, provided us with an eyewitness account of what actually happened that day.

Winslow reported that he and his fellow Pilgrims were very excited about hunting geese and ducks for the big dinner. According to Winslow, they called it “exercising their arms,” so perhaps we could have predicted that their descendants would be big supporters of gun rights. Winslow also bragged that Plymouth Bay was full of lobster, so that was likely on the menu, along with deer, which was brought by the Native Americans.

Missing from the traditional paintings of the first Thanksgiving is the fact that most of the people at the feast were Native Americans. It’s estimated there were about 90 Native Americans there that day. For comparison, 102 Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, but more than half of them died in the first winter, before the big feast.

It is no accident that our education system has distorted the Thanksgiving story and ignored both the Pilgrims’ failed socialist experiment and the importance of the Mayflower Compact. The “1619 Project ” produced by the New York Times, for example, was cynically named to challenge the dates we associate with the beginning of the American idea, including the 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence and even the 1620 landing at Plymouth Rock. The goal of the “1619 Project” is not just to downplay the significance of the American founding but also to attack and destroy American capitalism. And yet it is this capitalist system that granted the Pilgrims, and millions of Americans since, the opportunity to thrive and prosper.

History is dynamic, and there is always more to learn. But one thing is certain: The fact that the Pilgrims rejected socialism and nurtured the principles of liberty and freedom is important to who we are today — and is one more reason to be thankful this holiday season.

This commentary was originally published in the Washington Times.

CNBC used to stand for the “Consumer News and Business Channel.” but it is now part of NBC and the left-wing media.  Its job now is to demonize conservative states, especially Texas, as dismal backwaters filled with miserable, uninformed and misguided voters.

But because CNBC is still a business channel, focused on the economy, the workforce and markets, trash-talking the Lone Star State is very difficult to do.

Year after year, the data has forced CNBC to acknowledge that Texas is the best place in the country to do business—or at least one of the best—on their annual “Best States for Business” ranking.  Since they started keeping score in 2007, Texas is the only state to have ranked No. 1 four times.

It was ranked No. 2 eight times and until this year it has never been ranked lower than No. 4. In 2022, CNBC ranked Texas No. 5.  The network also decided to change the way they trumpeted its list. Instead of focusing on the business metrics—workforce, infrastructure, strength of the economy and the cost of doing business—it pumped up its previously described “quality of life” metrics to include “inclusion” and pushed out a new list of 10 states it called “the Best Places to Live” in America.

It’s not exactly clear exactly what metrics they used to determine the “Best Places to Live,” but among other things, they looked at crime rates and “inclusiveness in state laws, including protections against discrimination of all kinds, as well as voting rights.”  Adding crime rates made it impossible for California to climb above a No. 29 overall ranking, but on CNBC’s new woke “inclusiveness” scale Texas ranks No. 49—allowing CNBC to pronounce Texas as one of the worst places to live in the country.

The “best state to live in,” according to their new measure is Vermont, followed by Maine, Hawaii and North Dakota. CNBC’s “inclusiveness” list is clearly designed to give blue states a chance to dig out from the bottom. Washington and New Jersey are also in the top 10 “best states to live” list even though New Jersey, had the highest percentage of people moving out of any state in 2021 and Forbes included Washington on their list of states people are fleeing because of the high cost of living.

In Texas, we all know that when the left says “protections against discrimination of all kinds” they mean that boys are allowed to play on girls sports teams and parents have the right to experiment on their children with risky puberty blockers, hormonal therapy and even surgery. As for voting rights, CNBC apparently didn’t see the poll conducted by the Texas Association of Business before the most recent election reforms which confirmed that Texans of all races and political parties overwhelming support our election laws. Fully 95% of Texans say it’s easy to vote here.

You have to wonder how folks sitting around the conference table at CNBC deal with the fact that their own data shows that the state they have declared the worst place to live in America is where so many Americans want to live. Over a thousand people move here every day. Last year CNBC reported that Houston was number one on the list of top 10 cities people are moving too. San Antonio, Dallas and Austin were also on the list.  Texas was the only state with more than one city on the list.

Texas also just beat out two big blue nation states, New York and California, for the most Fortune 500 companies in the U.S.

And at the end of June, CNBC reported a better than expected jobs report that showed 372,000 workers added to payrolls nationwide.  Their news story did not point out that 82,500 of those jobs—22%—were in Texas, which created more jobs than any other state.

Woke businesses pushing boycotts against Texas haven’t convinced people that Texas isn’t a great place to live, and CNBC is not likely to be successful by stacking the deck on the “Best States to Live” list either.

In 2021, the Houston Chronicle predicted the state would lose $31 billion and 223,000 jobs if they passed proposed election reforms. The reforms passed, voter turnout broke records and the economy continues to soar.

California has banned travel for state workers and universities to Texas, and a couple of dozen other states, because of Texas laws supporting women’s sports and privacy. Since it first passed that law, the number of states on its list has almost doubled and even some major California newspapers are urging them to repeal the ban since it is obviously making no difference.

By contrast, Texas has become a mecca for business and innovation. That is no accident. The conservative policies passed by Texans over the last several decades create jobs, help business flourish and ensure that the state continues to effectively compete in the global economy. The CNBC annual rankings that consistently put Texas at the top show how well this is working for Texans and the world. CNBC should not only report that Texas is at the top, it should also report why.

This commentary was originally published in the Daily Caller.

With inflation breaking records, gas prices pushing $10 per gallon and the border exploding with hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, President Joe Biden decided to issue an executive order to “enhance protections for transgender children and take steps to ban conversion therapy as efforts continue in Texas and other states to restrict gender-affirming medical care.”

“Gender affirming medical care” is a woke term that includes chemical castration and puberty blockers, as well as hormone injections from the opposite sex. It also includes actual castration and mastectomies that are not medically necessary. These irreversible and dangerous medical actions are more accurately described as “gender destroying.” They have nothing to do with care.

There’s no way to know what the president means by “conversion therapy” in this this context, but it is clearly an effort prohibit any restrictions by states like Texas against parents who want to experiment on their own children with dangerous “gender affirming” treatments.

Meanwhile, Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently appeared on a show where men dress up as women and mimic their speech and mannerisms — “RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars.”

Despite the insulting characterization of women by drag queens, which is increasingly being compared to minstrel black face by discerning feminists, Pelosi told the men dressed up and behaving as the most degrading female stereotypes that she wanted to thank them “for the joy and beauty you bring to the world.”

She added, “Your freedom of expression of yourselves in drag is what America is all about. I say that all the time to my friends in drag.”

Texas public school librarians apparently agree with the speaker that drag queens are what America is all about, because thousands of them attended a session on drag queen story hours at their recent meeting in Fort Worth.

They must have forgotten what happened in the Houston Public Library in 2019 when one of the drag queens brought in to read stories to children turned out to be a registered sex offender.

Drag queen reading programs in public libraries and public schools are increasingly common. Advocates describe them as a fun and harmless way to introduce children to the transgender movement.

Of course, most of America is not looking for a fun way to introduce their children to the transgender movement — which brings us back to Biden’s sinking popularity.

Gloria Romero, a Democrat and former U.S. House member from California, believes wokeism is part of Biden’s problem, at least with Hispanic voters.

After Biden’s approval dropped to 24% among Hispanics and Republican Mayra Flores’s historic South Texas victory, Romero said:

“We’re [Hispanics are] looking at the economy, we’re looking at approaches to immigration. We’re looking at language, my God. Here in California, among the Latino community, we not only celebrate Mother’s Day, we celebrate two Mother’s Days and the birthing people lingo doesn’t cut it for us.”

“Birthing people” is another woke term used to push the absurd notion that both men and women can deliver babies.

Setting aside the many ethical and public policy questions raised by Biden’s transgender executive order, let’s just look at the politics.

There’s no doubt about the fact that Biden has lost support across the board in every age, race and demographic category because of his destructive economic and border policies, but his approval rating is also at 39% because of what Romero said — the country is tired of having Democrat leaders like Biden and Nancy Pelosi push destructive and fringe behavior into the narrative as if it were normal.

Dealing with those who are suffering from gender dysphoria is not a gay rights issue — which most Americans support. Instead, Americans continue to view transgender issues as a medical and mental health challenge where it appears that drug treatments are not effective and can be damaging. We are seeing more and more stories of transgender adults who regret having had surgery in childhood.

Even if Biden manages to rein in inflation, lower gas prices and address the avalanche at the border, his base, particularly in the Hispanic community, will keep slipping away if he continues to be a megaphone for woke issues like “gender affirming treatment” for gender dysphoria victims. Most people are way ahead of him on this, and they just don’t buy it.

This commentary was originally published in the Washington Examiner.

In virtually every news report of parents demanding that public school librarians do their job and remove inappropriate or pornographic materials from school libraries, the book Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe is at the top of the objectionable titles list. So many librarians and school board members are defending the book that I figured I should read it. Since the Texas Education Association just released guidelines for library acquisitions that include parental monitoring, every Texas parent should probably read it too.

Gender Queer is an autobiographical graphic novel chronicling the first 30 years of Kobabe’s life, focusing on the difficulties she faced being a girl. Being a girl is no walk in the park, but what is striking about Kobabe’s story is that she determines early on that there is no path forward for her as a female.

As she tells her story of growing up, her parents have only cameo roles and are portrayed as self-absorbed hippies. She has siblings, but there’s no close family, there’s no community, no faith or church, no mentors at school. She says she is suffering from gender dysphoria — she wants to be a boy — but at no point does she or anyone in her family mention counseling or a medical consultation.

She believes she was arbitrarily assigned her female gender at birth, and she is convinced it was a mistake. She reports that as a child, she finally found her true self by reading pornography and stories by people who were also gender dysphoric.

Adults who define themselves as something other than straight or gay represent about 1% of the population, but almost everyone Maia comes into contact with in her book defines themselves this way.

She describes herself as nonbinary for a while, but the term apparently wasn’t unique enough for her. (Some say so many teenagers are using it that it has become the new “goth.”) At age 29, Kobabe decides to call herself “gender queer,” which will probably stick, since her book with that title is now a bestseller (due to the controversy it has caused).

The book includes graphic and gross descriptions of sex and masturbation. Any reasonably competent school librarian should be able to see in an instant that it is not appropriate for a public school library. Nevertheless, it has been found in schools all over Texas. Parents in a number of Texas towns, including Prosper and Keller , have demanded that it be removed.

Last week, the National Coalition Against Censorship joined most of the state’s newspaper editorial pages in chastising Texas parents for demanding that these kinds of books be taken out of public school libraries. The NCAC alleges the parents are “censoring books and denying students the well-rounded education that is essential to preserving a healthy democracy.”

They can’t be serious. Clearly, they have not read Gender Queer. Whether the book is pornographic is up for debate, as pornography always is. But there is no censorship here. Determining what kinds of books are in public school libraries paid for by taxpaying parents is very different than saying Gender Queer shouldn’t be in any library. No one is saying that.

Parents should read this book for two reasons: first, to see what not to do when rearing adolescents. Kobabe’s story includes so many opportunities for her parents to intervene and help, but they never do. Instead, she is given carte blanche approval to pursue a quest that ultimately can lead to dangerous puberty blockers and surgery and put her at higher risk for suicide.

It is no accident that Black Lives Matter advocates getting rid of nuclear families altogether so that children will not be hindered from saying they are boys when they are girls and vice versa. These activists insist that “everyone should choose if they are a boy or a girl or both or neither.”

Parents should read the book to be aware of how their children are being indoctrinated into phony notions of gender fluidity. Ridiculous terms such as “assigned female at birth” and “nonbinary” have become normalized in our schools.

But even kindergartners understand that sex is binary — boys are boys, and girls are girls. That’s apparently why there has been such blowback in Florida over legislation to stop the teaching of homosexuality and gender identity to children aged 3 through 7.

Again, they can’t be serious.

This commentary was originally published in the Houston Chronicle.

Texans were horrified to learn of the Department of Family and Protective Services’ mishandling of allegations that children in its care were sexually exploited at a shelter intended to protect victims of sex trafficking. In the weeks since the story made it clear that DFPS has broken its promise to children to take them to a place that is safer than the place where they were in, the Texas House and Senate convened emergency hearings to get to the bottom of what happened, as did the judge overseeing the decade-old federal lawsuit against the state’s foster care system.

This outrage is just the latest in a long line of heartbreaking, avoidable incidents that are rooted in organizational dysfunction and a toxic internal culture. Private providers, foster parents and even its own employees have described the department’s approach to internal management and external oversight as “punitive,” “crisis-driven,” fear-based, and lacking a unifying vision and clear guiding principles.

This toxicity permeates the organization, rendering it utterly incapable of protecting the children in its care. And it’s resistant to change. Efforts at reforming the department have either been ignored, delayed or poorly implemented.

The problems plaguing DFPS have been well-known for at least a decade. In 2011, Texas was sued in federal court on behalf of children in its permanent care. The lawsuit alleged that conditions in the state-run foster care system were so bad that they violated the constitutional rights of the children. In 2015, U.S. District Court Judge Janis Graham Jack ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, finding that children in the custody of the department routinely leave more damaged than when they entered. As part of her ruling, Jack required the state to comply with a series of remedial orders intended to fix the problems with the system.

Following Judge Jack’s ruling, the Texas Legislature got to work enacting reforms to give the department the tools needed to turn things around. In 2017, the Texas Senate passed Senate Bill 11, which laid out a blueprint for reform, including standards that should have prevented anything like this from ever happening. For example, the legislation sought to increase accountability for DFPS and providers on delivering optimal outcomes for children, establish a quality assurance framework, strengthen standards for child protective services investigations into allegations of abuse and neglect, and improve monitoring of DFPS contractors.

SB 11 represented a fundamental transformation of the Texas child welfare system designed to make it safer and more responsive to the unique needs of children, while increasing the role of local communities in caring for their most vulnerable.

Yet, nearly five years after the bill was signed into law, it has yet to be fully implemented.

In response to DFPS all but completely ignoring the Legislature, Sen. Lois Kolkhorst passed Senate Bill 1896 to address continuing safety problems within the foster care system and spur the full implementation of past reforms. Again, the Legislature has been ignored.

Gov. Abbott made foster care an emergency item during the 85th Legislature, including it on the call for multiple special sessions, convening workgroups and directly ordering the commissioners of both DFPS and the Health and Human Services Commission to comply with the remedial orders. Yet DFPS remains entrenched in the same cycles of failure.

More funding is routinely touted as the solution to the problems plaguing the Texas foster care system but the data show substantially increasing funding for DFPS has not been a path to positive outcomes for foster children.

The Legislature has increased the department’s budget by more than $800 million since 2015 and has authorized hundreds of millions of dollars in additional emergency appropriations during that same period. The problems have only gotten worse.

A major focus of this infusion of cash has been increasing caseworker salaries to reduce turnover and maintain manageable caseloads. In late 2016, the Legislature approved an emergency request by DFPS for $150 million to immediately raise caseworker annual salaries by $12,000 and hire an additional 829 employees. After the investment, staff turnover dramatically decreased in 2017 and caseloads began coming down. However, these gains proved short-lived. Staff turnover began increasing again in 2018 and spiked to its highest rate in a decade by 2021. While it’s likely the pandemic played some role in that spike, it doesn’t explain why in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, the percentage of staff turnover was about the same as the turnover percentage in 2019. Clearly, infusing more money into a broken system isn’t the answer.

There is one promising solution that has been recommended for years but hasn’t been attempted yet. It calls for a complete reorganization of DFPS, with a focus on transforming the agency’s management and culture. This recommendation has been repeated by numerous outside experts hired by the state to provide guidance on ending the crisis.

In 2014, for example, the Stephen Group noted that “the missing key ingredient” was a “unifying vision that clearly defines success and demonstrates how to get there.” A 2016 progress report on the implementation of the Stephen Group’s recommendations found that while some progress was being made, the department was struggling to embed changes into practice and had yet to develop a positive culture of transformation and excellence. Earlier this year, an expert panel report published in connection with the ongoing federal lawsuit stated the need for leadership to “immediately adopt and apply a set of shared values and principles” and work to rebuild relationships between the department and service providers.

The latest scandal sparked immediate action from legislative leaders. Within 24 hours of the story breaking, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick established the Senate Special Committee on Child Protective Services. The special committee is tasked with investigating the department’s continual failures and putting all options on the table to transform the agency.

That’s a good start. If it follows through with this directive, the special committee has the opportunity to bring long-overdue change to DFPS and enable Texas to once again keep its promise to the state’s most vulnerable children.