Sandi Villarreal

executive editor @TexasMonthly | religion. politics. wine. | past: EIC @Sojourners | hype: @WhisperPath Cellars | WSET 3 🍷

[Michael Hall @mikehalltexas]

.@Forrest4Trees spent a year reporting this story on UT-interviewing professors, students, & staff: "I was struck by the degree of fear on campus and the sense that a freewheeling intellectual culture was dead or dying." Hook 'em, Forrest @TexasMonthly https://t.co/K5DaysNtA5

[Robert Downen @RobertDownen_]

Texas Republicans used to debate. This cycle, they won't. (Gift link).
https://t.co/U6sprC9fTj

[Texas Monthly @TexasMonthly]

With early voting already underway, we're likely to close out this election cycle without a single debate between top-of-the-ticket candidates.

Why? https://t.co/ANuHJQiu4c

[Lily Kepner @lilykepner]

.@UTAustin President Jim Davis will give his state of UT address at 3 pm today.

Before then, clear your morning to read this masterful piece by @Forrest4Trees on where UT is today. ⬇️

[Sandi Villarreal @Sandi]

French’s widely condemned post of a UT football game “laid bare something that the highfalutin debates over academic freedom sometimes obscure: that UT’s diversity, Texas’s diversity, is seen by some in power not as a strength but as a terrible problem.”

https://t.co/vMs8CKGf2B

[Texas Monthly @TexasMonthly]

The University of Texas is on the verge of becoming one of the top five public universities in the country.

But will a new conservative administration and political meddling by Republican lawmakers mess up a good thing? https://t.co/9HcPjwKAYp

[Michael Hardy @mkerrhardy]

Last month Jane Coates flew to Texas from her home in Warrington, England, to demand that Collin County officials reopen the investigation into her daughter's fatal shooting. The shooter was Coates's ex-husband, who said it was an accident. https://t.co/I4d61LFAkH

[Christopher Hooks @cd_hooks]

Though it’s unpatriotic, I have to note something here about the Battle of the Alamo

[Michael Hall @mikehalltexas]

“Separation of church and state”—filthy myth used by secularists to obscure America’s true Christian heritage? Or brilliant idea conceived by the founders as a bulwark against theocracy? Where Dan Patrick leads, Donald Trump follows. @TexasMonthly https://t.co/10bQ69fh6B

[ghostly gwen howerton @kissphoria]

Fascinating tidbit in this interview with @DadePhelan: The former Republican speaker says that Texas Republicans anti-transgender ads aren't "resonating."

"What Republicans are talking about is just not what the swing voter is really interested in."

[Christopher Hooks @cd_hooks]

This is a great interview, but here’s the key part. It’s not just Cornyn—Paxton’s side has spent 15 years calling khaki Rs traitors and degenerates and that’s not easy to fix https://t.co/DGTVQVzSSb

[Texas Monthly @TexasMonthly]

The former Texas House speaker and Paxton antagonist on why he’s buying a blue wave: https://t.co/XfvjDYnLXy

[Sandi Villarreal @Sandi]

Look at this photograph ...

https://t.co/pqMpTWrLXf

[Sandi Villarreal @Sandi]

Church-state separation “is not some kind of idea that emerged from the ether in the nineteen-sixties ... This is something that was absolutely foundational to what it meant to be a Protestant in Texas.”

https://t.co/pqMpTWsjMN

[Christopher Hooks @cd_hooks]

some of the dumbest people on this website melted their brains last week https://t.co/3FyYE60fRs

[Sandi Villarreal @Sandi]

Everything is stupid. @cd_hooks investigates, finds hilarity.

https://t.co/eIGv12G9Gg

[Robert Downen @RobertDownen_]

“The separation of church and state is not in the Constitution,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick recently said as Trump nodded from behind the Resolute Desk. “From this day forward, that phrase should have no power over people of all faiths ever again.” (Gift link)
https://t.co/0n7tU29hqt

[Robert Downen @RobertDownen_]

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has for years claimed the church-state wall doesn't exist. Now, with a friendly president and U.S. Supreme Court, Patrick and his allies are working to codify their views into federal policy. (Gift link).
https://t.co/0n7tU29Pg1

[Sandi Villarreal @Sandi]

“Most consequential, the commission calls for the DOJ to issue guidance clarifying the ‘understanding of the Establishment Clause and separation of church and state.’ In other words: to make denial of the separation of church and state federal policy.”

https://t.co/pqMpTWsjMN

[Nicholas Gutteridge @NicoGutteridge]

For months, top advisers to @GregAbbott_TX and @KenPaxtonTX have coordinated a secretive government campaign against a Plano mosque.

It has amounted to a multiagency siege, orchestrated at the highest levels of Texas government, targeting a North Texas Muslim community. 1/3