James Talarico

So, I mean, if your listeners haven't heard of Tim Dunn and Ferris Wilkes, they need to.

One, because not only do they make policy increasingly for 30 million Texans, but now they're trying to go national nationally.

And a lot of their views and a lot of their politics are going to become nationalized.

So what were you trying to say?

My point was that Dun & Wilkes, and I've probably become the most outspoken critic of these guys, because I do think people need to know their names, right?

You open up your social media feed, you listen to the news, and you hear about Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick or even James Tallarico, but you don't actually hear about the two guys who run the whole thing.

But my point is that they spend so much of their energy and their money and their time trying to create wedges between people.

So let's just take schools, for instance.

The centerpiece of their agenda was this school voucher bill, which you probably heard about, which is basically taking money that would go to neighborhood public schools and sending that money to religious private schools.

Those who are around Dun & Wilkes say that their ultimate vision is to replace public schooling with religious schooling for everyone.

That's what they're trying to get to.

Yes.

Wow.

And so – but they know that Texans love their public schools, right?

Like, I mean, public education is enshrined in our state's constitution.

Friday Night Lights in a lot of these small towns, the school –

is not just an academic institution, it is the community hub that brings people together.

So if Dun & Wilkes want to get rid of public education, which I think they do, and I think the journalism bears this out,

they've got to drive a wedge between people in their public school community.

And so they deliberately fund a lot of the book stuff, a lot of the cultural stuff, the craziness at school boards.