James Talarico

A lot of that is kind of funded and organized through the Dun & Wilkes empire.

Of course, people should go to the school board if they have an authentic problem with the school district, which that happens a lot.

But when you actually look into where, when you follow the money about who's getting the people to show up,

Who is distributing the information?

Who is riling people up about some of this stuff and undermining trust in public education?

It's often done in Wilkes, and it isn't in pursuit of this policy goal, which is to defund and close neighborhood schools.

We've already seen schools close all over the state of Texas because they're being systematically underfunded.

So I use this as an example, not—

There are valid critiques of public schools.

Don't get me wrong.

And I've made those critiques myself.

But when you look at where the money's coming from and the fact that it is intentionally drawing a wedge or putting a wedge between people and undermining trust and education so that they can privatize it and profit off of it, I think that whole story needs to be recognized.

So people can understand how the left versus right stuff is actually not as important as the top versus bottom stuff.

That these billionaires are going to – we're not going to have public schools.

There's no way I'd be on Joe Rogan right now if I hadn't had Texas public schools because my mom didn't go to college.

The only way I got to college is because of public schools, free, high-quality public schools, period.

And I think there's a lot of people who would say the same thing.

Yes, because what they're worried about is – and I'll take the voucher fight in particular.

We almost beat this voucher bill because it was a coalition of Democrats in urban and suburban areas and then rural small-town Republicans coming together because we all benefit from public schools, right?

We set aside our party differences, even some of our ideological differences, and we said –