Texas Democrat James Talarico is facing a wave of criticism after a resurfaced video showed the United States Senate candidate condemning Bible related education in public schools as propaganda and indoctrination.
The remarks quickly caught the attention of conservatives, including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.
Talarico, a Texas state representative and Christian seminarian, made the comments during a 2025 video hosted by the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
He was asked about his legislative fights with people described by the host as Christian Nationalists.
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The Democrat pointed to what he called the “most insidious” legislation he had opposed while serving in state government.
He claimed a proposed Texas curriculum would present Christian Bible stories as historical fact to children who were too young to form their own beliefs.
“It was a new state curriculum that would teach Christian Bible stories as historical fact, as the only truth to our youngest students, and I mean kindergarten, first graders,” Talarico said.
“These are kids who aren’t able to think for themselves yet. They haven’t formed their own worldviews.”
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He went further, warning that the alleged effort to “push propaganda, to push indoctrination on those youngest students is deeply immoral and should trouble all of us.”
That accusation did not sit well with Texans who viewed the curriculum as an effort to improve cultural knowledge and reading comprehension.
Cruz shared the resurfaced clip and responded with a short but unmistakably bewildered question, “Um, wut?”
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Other conservative commentators soon joined the criticism, arguing that Talarico had badly distorted what the Texas curriculum actually contained.
Mary Elizabeth Castle, director of government relations for Texas Values, called Talarico’s description misleading.
She said the Bluebonnet curriculum was an English Language Arts program adopted in 2024 to help students understand the many biblical references found throughout American history and literature.
“The references to the Bible in the Bluebonnet curriculum help students understand the thousands of everyday idioms that people use every day that have some context to Scripture,” Castle said.
In other words, recognizing biblical references is basic cultural literacy, not some sinister plot dreamed up in a church basement.
Castle also said the curriculum was supported by religious liberty attorneys and prominent officials, including Dr. Ben Carson.
She noted that its biblical material was intended to strengthen reading scores and comprehension, while a majority of Texas parents and stakeholders who testified supported its adoption.
“The majority of Texas parents and stakeholders testified in favor of the curriculum, which passed at the State Board of Education,” Castle said.
She added that several school districts have already purchased it, suggesting Talarico’s view is hardly the dominant position among Texas families.
First Liberty executive general counsel Hiram Sasser said courts have repeatedly recognized the Bible’s influence on Western culture, literature, and history.
“No education is complete without understanding the Bible and its influence, as even the ACLU recognizes,” he told Fox News Digital.
Sasser argued that Talarico had managed to position himself to the left of the ACLU, which agreed in a legal settlement that the Bible may be taught in Texas schools.
That is quite an achievement, though probably not the kind a statewide candidate should advertise in deeply religious Texas.
Tim Graham, executive editor of the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters, highlighted what he viewed as the left’s convenient double standard.
“Democrats have a funny way of defining ‘indoctrination,’” Graham said, arguing that liberal ideology is routinely presented as inclusion while biblical teaching is treated as dangerous.
Talarico’s campaign defended him as a Christian seminarian committed to the teachings of Jesus Christ and opposed to politicians using Scripture for political advantage.
The campaign also accused Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton and other politicians of attacking Talarico’s faith.
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During an appearance with podcaster Joe Rogan, Talarico explained that his concern centered on children from minority faiths or those without religious beliefs.
“As a Christian, I think my concern is for the Muslim kid and the Jewish kid, the Hindu kid, the atheist kid who’s sitting in a classroom who now has a poster on the wall forced by the government that says, you know, your religion is inferior, or you're not welcome here,” he said.
Talarico has also faced conservative criticism for supporting parents who raise children as transgender, although he has opposed gender reassignment surgeries for minors.
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His latest controversy leaves Texas voters with a clear question about whether teaching the Bible’s historical influence constitutes education or, as Talarico insists, propaganda.
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LOL, Ted Cruz knows NOTHING of the Bible. That moron would have us believe that the “Israel” created by the Rothschilds in 1948 is somehow the same “Israel” created in Jacob thousands of years ago.
Just ignore the fact that one group is called “Israelites” and the other is called “Israelis”. I’m sure there was just a name change handed down from God that we just weren’t told about. :D
Read some history of the Jewish Diaspora from 70 AD throughout history, how Jewish communities survived as the strangers and outsiders in countries around the world, and how they somehow kept their Jewish religion, language, traditions, and culture throughout. Those Jews’ descendants through the centuries are the Jews who returned to Israel in our own time. Through time they are called Israelites, Israelis, Judeans, and other names.
And it was Joshua who followed Moses in leading God’s Chosen People and the Israel of the
Twelve Tribes was created in the book of Joshua. A “book of Jacob”. doesn’t even exist. It is frightening how the demonic seed of Jew-hatred has poisoned your life and we pray that you will come to Jesus and repent.
LOL there is nothing you can say which will change the truth. The people called “jews” today weren’t called “jews” in the time of the Bible. In the OT they were called “Canaanites”. In the NT they were “Pharisees”. Even Google can’t hide the historical progression from “Pharisaism” to “Talmudic Judaism” to “Rabbinical Judaism” to plain old “Judaism”.
Jesus dealt with the jewish impostors trying to claim a false bloodline (And they answered him, ‘Abraham is our father’, and he replied to them, ‘If Abraham was your father, the works of Abraham you would do.’).
He makes this even more clear when he says to them “Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father’s name, they bear witness of Me. But you do not believe, because you are not of My sheep, as I said to you.”
YOU ARE NOT OF MY SHEEP.
He says who they really are when he says “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.”
You are of your father the devil. This is Jesus being quite literal, as in the book of Genesis, and Cain being the offspring of Satan himself.
The people called “jews” today are literally the people the Bible WARNED us about and commanded us to DESTROY “but you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the LORD your God has commanded you,”.
Even the jews themselves admit they aren’t the Hebrew Israelites of the Bible in their own works. “Strictly speaking, it is incorrect to call an ancient Israelite a Jew, or to call a contemporary Jew a Hebrew or an Israelite.” Jewish Almanac, 1980 Pg. 3.
So the Bible agrees with me, the jews themselves agree with me, but according to you I’m somehow wrong.
LOL. Not.
LOL @ cowards that can downvote but can’t show me where I’m wrong. 😂
Because I’m not.
Actually, you proved the article perfectly. You have very little understanding of the Bible and you have even less reading comprehension; obviously. Cherry picking scriptures didnt make your case at all.
Notice it didn’t disprove a single thing I said.
It didn’t argue with the nomenclature progression from “Pharisaism” to “Judaism”.
It didn’t argue with the Pharisees trying to claim Abrahamic lineage, and Jesus refuting their claims.
It didn’t argue the lineage of the Pharisees being of Cain.
It didn’t argue about jews being Canaanites.
And it didn’t argue with the jews themselves admitting who they are (or rather aren’t) in the Jewish Almanac.
It didn’t argue with a single point made. Didn’t counter with scripture, didn’t counter with genetic studies, didn’t counter with other jewish references.
Amazing how I could be so wrong but you can’t seem to be bothered to show which one of those points was incorrect. I would think it would smack of an open invitation for rebuttal, but you just…slink away from the challenge, eh?😂
In the good old days the good people of Texas would have tarred and feathered Talarico and run him out of the State.
This clown’s a train wreck.
“… Christian Bible stories as historical fact to children who were too young to form their own beliefs.”
In the meantime, the left thinks that these same kids can somehow make the decision to change their sex through mutilation (liberal surgery)!
And yes, Christianity is superior to other religions. Especially the Muslim religion of misery, darkness, brutality, oppression, backwardness, and believing it’s a dystopian paradise!
Now put the 10 commandments on the walls of every school and bring back the teaching of morality!!!
As it is said there are two things you don’t argue, politics and religion and for good reason.
Bunch of hypocrites, so it’s perfectly alright to do story time by some wannabes dressed up clowns teaching the doctrine of the anti christ and indoctrinating young minds that this is perfectly normal behaviour. However teaching a child by what is now mostly proven to be historical facts about a loving God and and a covenent made through his sacrifice and everything else positive the Bible teaches us is somehow wrong. Which by the way Jesus and John and Paul also prophesied what is good will become bad and what’s bad will become good and the persecution of the Christian faith. So here we are, at presepus of exactly what the Bible warned us about so hold on to your faith it’s going to be a bumpy ride.