FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sept. 13, 2025
CONTACT: Nicole Hill, press@texasaft.org
Texas formalizes online hate campaigns against individual teachers
AUSTIN, Texas — In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, private citizens of all political persuasions shared their thoughts on their personal social media accounts. A number of state representatives, including state Reps. Briscoe Cain and Hillary Hickland took to Twitter to target Texas public school teachers who voiced their opinions, demanding that those teachers be fired. Not even a week prior, state Rep. Brian Harrison began a persistent, baseless online smear campaign against a Texas A&M professor for merely acknowledging LGBTQ+ people in her lesson plan.
On Friday, in the most extreme case of government officials witch-hunting those who disagreed with Kirk’s politics, Mike Morath, the Commissioner of Education for the Texas Education Agency (TEA), released a letter announcing that all Texas educators who opined on Kirk’s assassination will be investigated “to determine whether sanctionable content has occurred.”
“What started with lawmakers weaponizing their platforms against civil servants has morphed into a statewide directive to hunt down and fire educators for opinions shared on their personal social media accounts. In short order, the LibsofTikTok agenda has become the policy of the State of Texas,” said Zeph Capo, president of Texas AFT. “Here’s the thing about authoritarian regimes: They’ll take as much as the rest of us are willing to give them. It’s no surprise that, here in Texas, the purge of civil servants starts with teachers. If you value your freedom, now is the time to speak up and defend the rights of all Texans to exercise their constitutional right to have an opinion on matters of civil discourse.”
The TEA directive follows the unceremonious and politically motivated firing of two Texas professors, one of whom was similarly dismissed for comments made in his personal time and not in his professional capacity on behalf of the university.
These “investigations” into teachers exercising their First Amendment rights outside their official duties silence dissent and encourage the purging of civil servants – both key tenets of the authoritarian playbook. We urge ISDs, colleges, and public universities to review the section on crumbling independent institutions as they consider how to move forward.
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The Texas American Federation of Teachers represents 66,000 teachers, paraprofessionals, support personnel, and higher-education employees across the state. Texas AFT is affiliated with the 1.8 million-member American Federation of Teachers and the AFL-CIO.