Somebody who lives in a red state. Let me just tell you what MAGA supermajorities get you. We’re 50th in education. We are 50th worst. The worst in the whole country for women to live. We’re poorer, worst health care. And if you look at the bottom ten states in the United States of America, they are all MAGA supermajorities.

These policies hurt people. They use people’s faith to lure them in and say, oh, we’re family values. But then they don’t vote to help women have children. They don’t vote for health care. They don’t vote for childcare. They demean the poor. I live in a red state where these policies, Oklahoma and these policies have horrifically impacted people in rural America that vote for this very party because they weaponized their faith and lure them in.

An article from the Texas Tribune confirms what many of us here in Texas have feared that the celebration and elevation of simple minds would create a hostile environment for people who are actually experts in their chosen fields, particularly those who work in higher education and even medicine. Now, college and university professors are saying that they want to leave their positions in Texas because of the political climate here.

And who can blame them? If they’re going to be chastised and targeted for their expertise, then they should go somewhere where they will be more appreciated. So if they leave. Good for them, but bad for Texas. And for those of you outside of Texas, it might be easy to think that Texas is creating exactly the sort of environment that the people of Texas have asked for, that the people of Texas have advocated for or have voted for.

But you would be wrong. Especially in higher education, those people aren’t MAGA. Texas has several universities that are nationally renowned, and they attract people from all over the country and the world. On that note, the Houston Medical Center is one of the best in the world. People come from all over to receive medical care here.

But when these institutions are treated as dangerous by the ruling political elite, then it creates a hostility that doesn’t exactly foster or attract any kind of competitive growth. Innovation or talent. So here’s what the Texas Tribune says. Many Texas professors are looking for jobs in different states, citing a climate of fear and anxiety on their college campuses due to increased political interference, according to a recent survey conducted by the American Association of University Professors.

The survey interviewed nearly 4000 faculty across the southern United States, including more than 100 in Texas. About a quarter of the Texas professors said they have applied for higher education jobs in other states in the last two years, and more than 25% said they soon intend to start searching for out-of-state positions.

Of those who aren’t thinking of leaving. More than one fifth said that they don’t plan to stay in higher education in the long term. If a professor or professional can’t speak truthfully about a topic that they know deeply better than most people, something that they have studied for years for fear that they that those who are politically and intellectually close minded might take offense to something that they don’t understand, then that is not a place that anyone should want to be.

Still, the Trump administration has been systematically eroding our higher minded institutions and ousting experts because while facts don’t have feelings, that’s what I keep hearing. Trump can’t handle factual evidence that contradicts his propaganda. But let’s not pretend that all of this is new. Let’s not pretend that he didn’t come out of the gate with this type of rhetoric that everything our nation is currently experiencing is not the direct and intended result of his early attempts to sow distrust within the media or within medicine,

or within any governmental agency that maybe was never perfect, but at least they were being run by experts in their fields. At least they had internal checks on their outputs to the public. At least the people in these organizations took their own work and reputation seriously. In many cases, as we’re seeing now, they took their work so seriously that they spoke out over the Trump administration’s overreaches, even though they knew that it would likely result in their removal from their positions.

There were so many red flags along the way to where we currently are, but when we pointed them out, people said that we were overreacting. A president doesn’t just change the path of a hurricane with a Sharpie, and a president’s followers don’t just accept that a Sharpie can change the actual path of a hurricane.

That doesn’t happen in a mental or ideological vacuum. Most intelligent people wouldn’t even think to redraw the path of a hurricane with a Sharpie in the first place, and most intelligent people wouldn’t look to someone who has done that and assume that he has your best interest at heart. We are here today because we have not just excused, but saluted stupidity.

For years we elected it into office twice because for some reason, Americans still think that having a beer with a president is more valuable than having a president who is competent, or at the very least, not a fascist. And let’s be real, George W Bush never wanted to have a beer with any of the people who voted for him, and Trump doesn’t want to either.

And because of all of the aforementioned and more, things are going downhill in Texas quickly, morale is down, said one Texas faculty member at a public four year university in a written response. Friends have lost contracts for no discernible reason. We live in fear of using the wrong word. We self-censor and we do not have academic freedom.

The top reason faculty cited in the survey for wanting to change jobs was the state’s broad political climate. In Texas, faculty have criticized new state laws banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs in universities, requiring university governing boards to establish policies on granting and revoking tenure, and limiting faculty’s role in crafting courses and hiring colleagues.

Other reasons include salary and academic freedom concerns, the survey found. And Texas lawmakers, specifically our governor and lieutenant governor, are very meddlesome. They overreach quite a bit in their own right into city, county and institutional inner workings, all in the name of Trump and MAGA. So between the federal government and the state, universities aren’t getting any of the kind of support that they need.

They hardly are in charge of their own operations anymore. So about 1 in 10 Texas faculty said they have had contracts cut by the Trump administration, according to the survey. Federal agencies have limited and cut funding to research at many universities, such as a policy change at the National Institutes of Health in February that threatened to cause Texas universities hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds.

A federal judge blocked the change after a coalition of states sued the NIH. Many public university systems have also disbanded their faculty senates, groups that advise leaders on curricula, hiring and other academic matters. After state lawmakers passed Senate Bill 37 earlier this year, the legislation gave more control over those decisions to Texas University System’s regents, who are appointed by Governor Greg Abbott.

And in recent years, lawmakers passed laws banning Dei initiatives in higher education, and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick spearheaded an effort two years ago to limit tenure at public universities, which opponents argued would cause a brain drain in Texas. It’s so funny how people could see something two years ago and say, this is going to be a problem in a little bit, and people are like, it’ll probably be fine.

And then whenever those problems actually do manifest, there. Like whatever. You’re overreacting anyway. So similarly, Texas has recently mandated that public schools should display the Ten Commandments in classrooms. Also, there is a die ban on public schools, something that is currently being challenged by the ACLU.

And and, you know, I’m just getting tired of pretending that everyone’s thoughts and beliefs are valuable and worthy of respect. At this point, I just don’t respect some people’s beliefs anymore because they’re hateful or they’re just dumb. I’ve never been of the mind that everyone deserves to just be heard out, and I’m tired of playing to the lowest common denominator in our society.

Now, in a democracy, that can be a problem. The lowest common denominator is, after all, common, which suggests that they are plentiful and plentiful is good when the most votes wins. But that LCD is not going to save us. I want the experts back. I want the good people back, and I want them loud and outspoken.

All right, that’s it for me. If you got anything out of this, please like this video and subscribe to the channel for more. Thanks.