Category: Politics

PLANO, Texas — Talking about Jesus is pretty routine for Texans running for office. But usually not Democrats.

State Rep. James Talarico is changing the script, leaning into his background in a progressive Presbyterian seminary.

It’s a playbook that has helped propel his political career. Before he was the Democrats’ hope to flip a Republican Senate seat in Texas, the state lawmaker often invoked the Bible to justify progressive policy positions in the Texas Capitol. Past floor speeches and sermons on abortion, gender equity, and religious pluralism helped give him the online platform that launched his Senate run.

He is now making his faith a central part of his Senate campaign, telling voters “it’s time to start flipping tables” and take back faith from the religious right — a reference to the biblical story of Jesus flipping over tables in the Temple of Jerusalem to purge merchants profiting off a house of worship. Talarico boils down his core message to two commandments from the Bible: Love God and love your neighbor.

His allies say Talarico’s approach could help win over faith-based voters in the Bible Belt’s largest state. But Talarico’s past remarks regarding the Bible have infuriated some evangelical voters, and attacking Talarico’s comments is now a regular part of his Republican opponent’s stump speech.

“First of all, he said God is nonbinary. He also said, ‘I’m a Christian, but I hate Christianity.’ How many Christians do you know have said that?” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) recently told an audience of supporters in North Texas. “I’ve never met one.”

Talarico, 37, and Paxton, a 63-year-old staunch evangelical Trump ally, are engaged in a competitive general election race that could be pivotal in Democrats’ attempt to retake control of the Senate.

Texas has not elected a Democratic senator in nearly four decades, but Democrats are optimistic, given Talarico’s prodigious fundraising and novel campaign message, as well as Paxton’s past of personal and legal scandals. Public polling has had the two candidates neck and neck for weeks.

Rep. Christian Menefee (D., Texas), a Talarico supporter who grew up in Baptist and nondenominational churches, said an appeal to faith could be a key ingredient to break the Democrats’ drought. Talarico’s openness about faith could attract Christian voters who have voted Republican in the past because they never saw Democrats address their faith publicly before, Menefee said.

“When James came onto the scene, and this was before this race, when he worked in the teachings of the Bible into some of his opposition to bills while he’s at the state legislature, people immediately took notice,” Menefee said. “Anybody who thinks that it won’t play a role in this election has not spent much time in Texas.”

Brooke Kemp, a schoolteacher from Arlington, Texas, said she resonated with Talarico’s emphasis on biblical teachings of caring for others rather than some of the cultural issues that have motivated the state’s religious right.

“He has it right,” Kemp said. “I’m just practicing what Jesus told us is the tenets of my faith as a Methodist: Loving my neighbor, caring for others.”

But conservative evangelicals have expressed dismay at Talarico’s use of biblical text to justify positions they view as morally reprehensible.

Talarico has previously invoked the Annunciation, the biblical event when the archangel Gabriel told Mary that she would carry the baby Jesus, to justify abortion. Speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Talarico claimed that God asked for Mary’s consent before she became pregnant with Jesus.

He has also said during a 2021 legislative floor debate that “God is nonbinary” while opposing a bill barring trans children from participating in sports aligned with their self-identified gender. And Talarico said in 2021 that he was a Christian who hates Christianity in an expression of frustration with some elements of organized religion that peddle Christian nationalism apart from teachings of Jesus.

“It is blasphemous,” said Republican state Rep. Matt Shaheen, a deacon at the influential Prestonwood Baptist Church. Shaheen dismissed the idea that Talarico could convert evangelicals to voting Democratic as “naive,” saying “if anything, it probably frustrates evangelicals” to see their faith misrepresented.

Talarico acknowledges that his progressive positions, particularly his stance on abortion, put him at odds with many voters of faith. But he asserts those disagreements shouldn’t block Democrats from building coalitions with voters who are driven by the same Biblical tenets that drive his campaign.

“People of good faith can arrive at different moral conclusions,” Talarico said on a podcast appearance last spring. Talarico noted that even though Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV hold opposite views from him on abortion he still holds them as spiritual heroes.

He has also walked back some of his most provocative remarks, saying he regrets some of his comments that he said could be “cringy.” He told CBS News that he called God nonbinary to emphasize that God can’t be categorized in human terms and cited Galatians 3:28, which teaches that all are equal before God, regardless of nationality, gender, or class.

The divergent takes on Talarico can be explained in part by differences between the mainline Protestantism he espouses and the evangelical Christianity that makes up a plurality of Christian voters in Texas.

Mainline Protestants tend to view faith as part of a pluralistic religious and social landscape that can adapt to the needs of the people it serves. Evangelicals recognize only one form of salvation — through Jesus — and the infallibility of the literal text of the Bible.

Roughly 67% of Texas adults identify as Christian, with roughly 27% identifying as evangelical, compared to only 10% identifying as mainline Protestant, according to Pew Research Center. Catholics make up about 22% of Texas adults, making them the second largest denomination in the state.

Evangelical voters have been some of the Republican coalition’s most reliable supporters. Nearly 70% of white evangelicals nationally approve of President Donald Trump’s performance, according to Pew.

Paxton identifies as an evangelical and has invoked his faith throughout his time in office as a major motivator for his conservative beliefs.

He and his wife were longtime members of the influential Prestonwood Baptist Church, and he worked at its pregnancy and family care center, which ministers to women while discouraging them from having abortions. He has also questioned the constitutionality of separating church and state and called for encouraging public school students to pray and read the Bible in school.

“Faith is the driver of my life, and so it animates everything that I do. It animates, hopefully, how I treat people,” Paxton said. “I hope that when I’m in office, I’m thinking about what’s best for my constituents and that in the end, I’m here to represent my neighbors and do the best thing I can for my neighbors because that’s what my faith would ask me to do.”

But Paxton has also had personal scandals that are at odds with church doctrine. Those include a spate of legal controversies, including alleged corruption involving an extramarital affair that led to his impeachment by the Texas House. (He was later acquitted by the Senate.) Paxton and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, divorced in July of last year over alleged adultery.

Angela Paxton cited “biblical grounds” for the separation, writing in a social media: “I believe marriage is a sacred covenant and I have earnestly pursued reconciliation. But in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage.”

Ken Paxton no longer attends Prestonwood Baptist Church, the sprawling North Texas megachurch he and his wife attended together for years. When asked where Paxton now goes to church, his campaign said in a written response: “The Attorney General has been worshipping at churches in communities all across the state. Right now, our focus is on meeting Texans where they are and visiting churches throughout Texas as he continues to travel across the state.”

Some of Paxton’s evangelical supporters say forgiving lapses in judgment is easier than looking past fundamental disagreements on doctrine.

“I say, Here for the grace of God go I. There is nobody without a past,” said Jennie Evans, a nondenominational Christian and Paxton supporter from Dallas, reflecting the core evangelical belief that humans are all equally sinners and in need of redemption. Evans said all elected leaders have fallen short personally, but she felt Paxton’s core values still aligned with hers. Talarico’s did not, she said.

When asked about Paxton’s past conduct, Shannon Markle, another evangelical Paxton supporter from Dallas, quoted from Romans and II Corinthians and said: “No one runs for office that is a saint. No one. Every one of us is just jars of clay. Every one of us has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

But when asked about Talarico’s interpretation of the Bible, she was much less receptive.

“I think it is blasphemous. I think he is ignorant. But I do think that he will be judged,” Markle said. “We all will.”

One bill proposes increasing the number of Supreme Court justices from nine to 13. Another would cut their lifetime terms to 18 years. Others would create an enforceable ethics code and place standards on how the court rules from its relatively opaque “shadow docket.”

The latest wave of proposals to overhaul the Supreme Court have reached something of a fever pitch over the past few months, as Democrats grow increasingly frustrated with the court’s rightward turn. While the court blocked several of President Donald Trump’s key initiatives this past term, it also delivered significant conservative victories that pared back the 1965 Voting Rights Act, loosened campaign finance rules, and increased presidential power.

Democrats’ anger is fueled by a conviction that many of these rulings are more about politics than the law.

“There’s constant and building dismay about the increasingly appalling record of the court,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.), who recently introduced a term limits bill, said in an interview. “And I think the continuing interest in reform springs from continued dismay and concern about the court’s misbehavior.”

The pitches coincide with record levels of disapproval of how the Supreme Court is doing its job, as well as perceptions that the justices are ruling based on their ideology — a viewpoint largely embraced by liberals, according to a July Washington Post-Ipsos poll.

Those perceptions have only magnified as the justices have weighed in on issues that could directly affect the upcoming midterm elections. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) said Thursday that there are a “variety of different options that are on the table, and I think we can’t foreclose on any single one of them.”

Conservatives dismiss the proposals as efforts by liberals to intimidate and undermine a court that is not ruling the way they want.

“All of these ‘reforms’ are because the left doesn’t like the decisions coming out of the Court,” Mike Fragoso, a former chief counsel to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), said in an email. “The goal is to intimidate the Court into changing the course of decisions. It’s reprehensible.”

Liberals concede that the measures cannot succeed without Democrats solidly in control of Congress, and even then, only if the filibuster is eliminated — otherwise any proposal would require 60 votes in the Senate, which is highly unlikely.

Last month, Whitehouse and other Senate Democrats proposed a law that would limit justices’ terms to 18 years. Under that system, a president would nominate a justice every other year — a design intended to maintain a measure of ideological balance on the bench.

Some advocates say specified terms also would lower the stakes of Supreme Court confirmation battles, since they would not be for lifetime appointments. These battles in recent years have become all-out, nasty, and often personal.

“Even in a Congress like this one, where these bills have no chance of passage, it’s really important to file them and to stand by them, because they reassure people that there is in fact a mechanism by which the court could be restored to some degree of better order,” Whitehouse said.

Democrats in 2020 also offered a flurry of plans to overhaul the Supreme Court, angered that Trump was able to name three justices thanks to maneuvering by McConnell, who at that time was the Senate majority leader.

But President Joe Biden did not pursue those proposals. And the court’s solidified conservative majority has since overturned a string of precedents — including those guaranteeing the right to an abortion and upholding key parts of the Voting Rights Act — prompting fresh fury among liberals.

Congressional Democrats have introduced about a dozen proposals in recent months for revamping the court.

They call for expanding its size, requiring the justices to place certain assets into blind trusts, and creating standards for the court’s emergency docket, critically referred to as the “shadow docket.” In emergency docket cases, the justices have been criticized for ruling on consequential matters based on a limited record while offering relatively brief explanations for their decisions.

Democrats outside the Beltway are also pitching court reform. Former Vice President Kamala Harris, whom some Democrats expect to run again for president in 2028, said at a recent event at that “we need to revisit” the notion of expanding the court to 13 justices.

James Talarico, a Democrat running for U.S. Senate against Republican Ken Paxton, has called for an “overhaul” of the Supreme Court, including term limits and a binding code of conduct. In an interview with TheGrio, Talarico described the court’s recent rulings on civil rights, including a recent decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act, as a “five-alarm fire.”

“Black Texans, Black Americans, have been ringing the alarm about the Supreme Court,” Talarico said. “And I think it’s time for all of us to realize the crisis that we face on the highest court in this country.”

Tom Jipping, a senior fellow at Advancing American Freedom, an advocacy organization founded by former Vice President Mike Pence, argued that such criticisms only highlight Democrats’ fixation with results rather than the law, exposing their calls for reform as superficial.

“They never say how the Supreme Court got it wrong on the law,” Jipping said. “The only the thing they do is mention the result and tack on a few bombastic pejoratives.”

The court has regularly undergone periods of fierce scrutiny. Under Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1950s and 1960s, conservatives complained bitterly that it was making up new liberal doctrines. Most notably, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, frustrated by the justices’ rejection of many elements of the New Deal, in 1937 proposed expanding the court, leading to pushback from Republicans as well as many fellow Democrats.

Still, some academics say the current Supreme Court faces real problems unrelated to its ideological composition.

The high court has turned into a political football in which justices on both sides are expected to vote along ideological lines on the most controversial issues, said Daniel Epps, a law professor at Washington University who has advocated for efforts to “depoliticize” the court.

Gone are the days of the “swing” justices like Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Lewis F. Powell Jr., all Republican-appointed justices whose votes were less predictable when it came to hot-button issues such as affirmative action, abortion, and LGBTQ+ rights, Epps noted.

“This is the first time where you have a court where the ideology really maps onto partisan affiliation,” Epps said.

Epps and Vanderbilt Law School professor Ganesh Sitaraman argued in a 2019 paper against popular proposals such as term limits and expanding the court’s size. They say both risk further politicizing the court.

Instead, Epps and Sitaraman have suggested a “lottery” model, in which cases would be decided by panels of justices selected randomly from a pool — similar to the way federal appeals courts decide cases.

They have also recommended a “balanced bench” structure, in which the court would be composed of an equal number of justices selected by Democrats and Republicans, with an additional judge selected from a lower court to break ties.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and his colleagues have repeatedly said they issue rulings based on the law, not their political biases. But critics argue that the growing perception, among liberals at least, that the court is politically driven risks hurting its credibility in a way that could be damaging for the long term.

“The court only works as an institution if it is capable of deciding the hard cases in ways that seem credible to the country,” Epps said. “And if you have half the country that just sees the court as a partisan institution — and the court behaves in a way that seems largely consistent with that — half the country just can be like, ‘Screw these guys.’”