Mission: Texas

This week Mission: Texas sits down with Emily Roth, a Houston mom suing the state and Spring Branch ISD after Ten Commandments posters went up in her kindergartner’s classroom. Emily walks through her exhaustion of the school district’s grievance process, the decision to ground her lawsuit in Texas law — the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the newly passed parental rights constitutional amendment — rather than a federal establishment clause claim, and why she sees this as fundamentally a parental rights issue rather than an anti-religion one. We also talk about Microactivism, the platform she built to turn overwhelmed parents into organized, two-minutes-a-week activists.

What we cover:

• How a single email objecting to the posters escalated into three grievance hearings, a unanimous school board rejection, and ultimately a lawsuit
• Why the posters’ language (kill, adultery, manservant) raised concerns for a five-year-old learning to read, and the broader argument about age-appropriate content in classrooms
• The strategic decision to sue under TRFRA and the parental rights amendment — both championed by Republican lawmakers — rather than bring a traditional establishment clause case
• The current state of the case: a denied temporary restraining order, the state’s procedural “plea to the jurisdiction,” and Emily’s attorneys preparing a motion for summary judgment
• Why the specific Ten Commandments version posted isn’t even the Catholic version, and the pushback Emily has received from religious parents across denominations, not just secular ones
• The broader pattern connecting the posters to Texas’s social studies TEKS requiring the Ten Commandments be taught as a source of American law, alongside book bans and curriculum changes
• Microactivisms.org: Emily’s platform delivering a weekly, location-filtered two-minute civic action, plus a tool that generates official TRFRA legal notice letters — used by parents in more than 100 Texas school districts
• The parallel to Bo French and the Railroad Commission race — why conservative voters should also be wary of the precedent this sets for any future majority-religion community

Good news segment: the overwhelming, mostly positive public response to the lawsuit; Emily’s Hill Country fall break with her daughters; Kate’s trip to Notre Dame’s campus with her daughter; Alex’s raffle-won Puerto Vallarta trip narrowly dodging a hurricane, and his Election Day plans driving to Austin for GOTV work

Support the show: 

Become a member at patreon.com/missiontexaspodcast, or leave us a five-star review. God bless Texas. 🤠

Support Emily and sign up at microactivism.org

This week Mission: Texas sits down with Chanda Parbhoo, a longtime South Asian community organizer in Dallas who built SAAVETX (the state's largest South Asian voter outreach organization) from five moms into a grassroots force with nearly 600 volunteers and over half a million voter touches heading into this election. Chanda traces the decade-long effort to build civic infrastructure for a community that didn't have any, unpacks the fallout from Bo French's attacks on UT Austin students, and makes the case that South Asian Texans — roughly 2% of the electorate in a state Beto lost by 2.5 points — are an underinvested, up-for-grabs constituency that could decide close races.

What we cover:

• SAAVETX's origin story: a 2017 Facebook post asking for 200 South Asian Texans to organize that drew 6,000 signups in six weeks, built on zero funding
• The data gap SAAVETX uncovered — officials claiming only 10,000 South Asian voters existed in a community far larger than that — and building the state's first South Asian civic infrastructure from scratch
• Growth from grassroots group to C3/C4 nonprofit, a White House invitation during the 2024 gun violence initiative, and becoming the largest South Asian outreach operation in Texas
• Turnout numbers: from 20% in 2014 to 60% in 2018 to roughly 70% today — consistently two to three points above the state average
• McKinney's Islamic center city council fight and the broader pattern of "storming" local government meetings that started in Frisco
• Why South Asian voters are an effective target for the GOP's "boogeyman" strategy, and the community's historical instinct to "put your head down" rather than engage politically
• Why door-to-door outreach works best when canvassers share community identity, and the importance of leading with empathy and specific issues rather than generic appeals ("I like butter chicken" doesn't cut it)
• The diversity within "South Asian" and "AAPI" as categories, and why blanket outreach strategies fail
• Top issues for the community: public education funding, property taxes, healthcare access (22% of the community works in healthcare, 6% owns small businesses), and rising medical misinformation driving providers toward early retirement
• The Bo French controversy — his comments on UT Austin students on top of a documented history of racist statements — and Chanda's frustration that Republicans who criticized him are still planning to vote for him
• Voter suspense lists, re-registration efforts, and SAAVETX's work tracking patterns in voter roll purges
• Good news segment: being recognized unprompted at a convention by people who follow SAAVETX's work, and Kate's ACL Fest trip with her daughter, spotting Talarico merchandise throughout the crowd

Support the show: 

Become a member at patreon.com/missiontexaspodcast, or leave us a five-star review. God bless Texas. 🤠

Support SAAVETX: 

https://saavetx.org

To mark Mission: Texas's one-year anniversary, we bring back our very first guest, reelected Texas Democratic Party Chair Kendall Scudder, to check in on everything that's changed since our debut episode. Kendall reflects on a grueling year and a half in the chair, reports back on the three goals he laid out in that first conversation — message discipline, infrastructure, and statewide presence — and walks through the actual math behind flipping the Texas Senate. 

We also get real talk on why he ignores public polling, what a full statewide-to-county candidate slate could look like in 2028, and the massive voter protection operation the party is standing up before and after Election Day.

What we cover:

• A one-year reflection: the toll of a nonstop news cycle, the RNC in Dallas, and gratitude for his wife's patience while he ran the party
• Grading his three original 2026 goals — on-message candidates, precinct chair recruitment (1,000+ trained, aiming to outnumber Republicans), and decentralizing party offices into five regional hubs across the state
• The first full federal-and-state Democratic ballot slate since 1972, the filing-fee barrier for down-ballot recruitment, and plans to go even deeper into county races next cycle
• Giving red-district candidates free access to the voter file this cycle — an $800K budget hit — and using post-election data to decide whether to do it again
• The actual math on flipping the Texas Senate: holding Reamit's seat and flipping three more, with internal numbers showing Bob Hall down to Keenan Colbert and other close races in Bryan-College Station and Harris County
• Why Kendall refuses to trust public polling, rooted in the brutal 2010 midterm "shellacking" he lived through organizing in East Texas
• The case against writing off "unwinnable" districts — using his own 2018 Senate run and Keenan Colbert's redrawn SD2 as proof that candidates and redistricting math can shift a seat's viability
• Why Texas Democrats matter nationally regardless of outcome: forcing Republicans to spend an estimated $220 million defending Texas that they'd otherwise deploy in other Senate battlegrounds
• The party's post-election plan: the country's largest state voter protection program, five regional "boiler rooms," a 24/7 voter protection hotline (844-TX-VOTES), and bracing for Republican legal challenges and a possible special session if Democrats win
• Good news segment: Mission: Texas hitting 52 episodes and an ACL Fest trip with Kate's daughter; Alex's son's second birthday, a school-bus-themed party, and a State Fair trip to complete the family's "iconic Dallas landmarks" photo tradition with Big Tex. Kendall shares news about his relaunch of his podcast. 
• Kendall's closing marching orders: talk to the people closest to you, vote early (October 19th) to get off campaign contact lists, and become a monthly recurring donor to sustain a year-round party

Support the show: 

Become a member at patreon.com/missiontexaspodcast, or leave us a five-star review. God bless Texas. 🤠

To mark our one-year anniversary, Mission: Texas sits down with Beto O'Rourke — founder of Powered by People and the Democrat who's come closest to flipping a statewide race in a generation. 

Beto lays out exactly what has to happen between now and 2030 for Texas Democrats to hold the state Senate, the Speaker's gavel, and the governor's mansion: winning big in 2026, not waiting on national money to arrive, and doing the unglamorous relational-organizing work year-round rather than just during election season. We also go back to 2018 to compare that Trump midterm to this one, and Beto shares what he tells skeptical young voters who've concluded that voting simply doesn't work.

What we cover:

• Why Beto believes Texas can no longer wait for national Democratic donors and has to build its own infrastructure first — and why 2026 is the hinge year for everything that follows
• The full 2026 wish list: winning competitive congressional seats, flipping R+5 to R+12 state house districts, James Tallarico's Senate race, and even the governor's mansion
• How winning majorities in the state legislature by 2030 sets up Democrats for a real seat at the table during 2031 redistricting ahead of 2032
• Powered by People's relational organizing model: training volunteer deputy registrars, meeting young voters on campuses and at concerts, and staying in daily contact through early voting until a ballot is confirmed cast
• The stark turnout gap: 39% turnout among Texas 18-29 year-olds overall in 2024 versus 79% among those in Powered by People's program
• Comparing the 2018 and 2026 Trump midterms — family separation policy then, a Middle East war and $6/gallon diesel now — and what carried over from the 2018 Senate race into the current wave (12 flipped state house seats, Harris County Commissioners Court, judicial races down-ballot)
• The origin of Powered by People: the direct lesson Beto drew from asking "what could we have done differently?" after 2018
• Rio Grande Valley organizing and the cost of Democrats taking the region for granted in 2020 and 2024
• Beto's answer to young voters who've concluded the system doesn't work, and why he treats in-person organizing as "the antidote to despair"
• A one-year anniversary reflection on the podcast's own mission: meeting people where they are

Support the show: 

Become a member at patreon.com/missiontexaspodcast, or leave us a five-star review. God bless Texas. 🤠

This week Mission: Texas sits down with two leaders of Dallas County Young Democrats: Cora Black, community advocate, HR professional, and the club's first Black female president, and Tsion Amare, DCYD's current co-president, former Texas House staffer and 2024 candidate, and political affairs leader at Environmental Defense Fund. We trace DCYD's rebuild out of the pandemic, the club's early and controversial call for Biden to step aside, and what actually makes a youth political organization effective versus performative. Cora and Tsion also get candid about intra-party accountability, the RNC's recent stop in Dallas, and what it will take for Democrats to remember, as they put it, "what winning looks like."

What we cover:

• Cora and Tsion's origin stories: growing up around Dallas political fundraisers and Ron Kirk, and organizing against food insecurity as a child in Ethiopia before landing in Rep. Rafael Anchía's office and eventually EDF's political affairs team
• Rebuilding DCYD's leadership and fundraising infrastructure during COVID, and Cora becoming the club's first Black female president
• Lowering the price point for young donor engagement and trading volunteer labor (block walking) for access to traditional fundraisers
• DCYD's early, controversial 2024 vote calling on President Biden to step down — the backlash, the hate mail, and being proven right
• Why young Democrats who came of age entirely during the Trump era have a different relationship to political hope than older generations
• Critiques of Democratic messaging strategy: avoiding narrow culture-war fights, addressing "pocketbook anxieties" directly, and holding elected Democrats to the same accountability standard applied to Republicans
• The RNC's stop in Dallas, the Grindr outage jokes, the Hasan Piker Jumbotron moment, and Trump's $5,000-if-Republicans-win pledge
• The case for investing in younger, more relatable candidates — and for employers to protect paychecks for employees who run for office

Good news segment: a $250,000 fundraising haul for the Christopher Barkley Foundation featured on Good Morning Texas, Tsion's appointment to the Dallas Environmental Commission and Ethiopian New Year celebrations, Kate's family trip to El Paso, and Alex organizing a Social Security town hall with former Gov. Martin O'Malley

Support the show: 

Become a member at patreon.com/missiontexaspodcast, or leave us a five-star review. God bless Texas. 🤠

Support DCYD: 

https://dallasyoungdems.org/

This week Mission: Texas sits down with Chelsey Hockett, the Democratic nominee challenging Congressman Lance Gooden in a district that Decision Desk HQ still rates as a 12-to-14-point Republican lean — even in a good year for Democrats. Chelsey makes the case for why TX-5 isn't as out of reach as it looks: explosive population growth in Kauffman County the 2020-census maps didn't account for, a swelling Democratic primary turnout, and a data center and land-use backlash pulling in voters who've never crossed party lines before. We also get into the healthcare crises and childcare costs that pushed this Terrell-based mom of two into organizing in the first place.

What we cover:

• Chelsey's path into politics: pregnancy loss, a COVID-era insurance gap with a $100,000 hospital bill, and leaving the workforce over childcare costs before getting heavily involved with county Democratic parties
• Normalizing bringing kids to political events and organizing, and the extra scrutiny working moms face as candidates
• Lance Gooden's $750,000 in taxpayer-reimbursed travel (more than double the next-highest member of Congress) and the murky ethics investigation surrounding him
• The land-grab fight in Kauffman County: zero zoning regulation, MUD districts, four proposed data centers, and Build-to-Rent development tied to campaign donors
• The math behind "flipping rural Texas": how 2020-census-based redistricting missed explosive growth in Forney/Kauffman County, rising turnout in Palestine, Athens, and Terrell, and why Chelsey thinks the real district lean is closer to plus-10 than plus-20
• Flock camera surveillance backlash and the odd-bedfellows coalition of privacy-minded conservatives and Democrats pushing back on it
• Campaign targeting strategy using L2 modeled partisanship data instead of VAN, and the 123,000 base Democratic voters she needs to turn out
• Reflections on Cherokee family history, the Trail of Tears, and how personal history shapes her approach to organizing in rural East Texas
• Good news segment: a cinnamon-roll-crust apple pie, a quarter cow order that aged well given the beef supply headlines, Notre Dame's season opener, and Alex's new ambassador role with Volition America
• Chelsey's closing call to action: full-time, year-round organizing and treating every local election — city council, county commissioner — as a battleground worth showing up for

Support the show: 

Become a member at patreon.com/missiontexaspodcast, or leave us a five-star review. God bless Texas. 🤠

Support Chelsey: 

https://chelseyhockettforcongress.com/

This week Mission: Texas heads to West Texas for the first time, sitting down with Kyle Rable — Army Reserve civil affairs officer, PhD candidate at Texas Tech, union member, and Democratic candidate for Congress in one of the reddest districts in the country (Trump +52 in 2024). 

Kyle traces his path from accidentally getting pulled into local politics over Section 8 housing without AC, to becoming the first candidate in Texas to file for ballot access by signature this cycle. We dig into what makes a "West Texas Democrat" different, the history of how the district flipped red in the first place, door-knocking strategy in a place with almost no existing Democratic infrastructure, and why he sees the fight over data centers, rural healthcare deserts, and the farm economy as the real battleground issues — not culture war fights.

What we cover:

• Kyle's winding path from Army quartermaster officer to civil affairs officer to Texas Tech PhD candidate studying psychological warfare in Vietnam
• How a Section 8 housing/AC crisis pulled him into Lubbock County Democratic Party leadership, and his decision to run for Congress after the 2024 election
• Being the first Texas candidate this cycle to file for ballot access by signature, launching on his wife's first Mother's Day
• Union roots with CWA Local 6186 (Texas State Employees Union) and why he sees labor as central to rural organizing
• What distinguishes a "West Texas Democrat" — carrying a firearm, going to church, and why that combination hasn't drawn scrutiny locally
• The history of how CD19 flipped Republican, including the story of Charlie Stenholm and redistricting that targeted him out
• Data center fallout in Taylor County/Abilene — housing costs, infrastructure strain, and Texas Tech selling its football stadium naming rights to a data center company
• Rural healthcare deserts, OB-GYN access, and the threat to rural clinics from Medicare/Medicaid cuts tied to the "Big Beautiful Bill"
• Field strategy: targeting "Triple D" primary voters, VAN scoring, and persuasion phone banking aimed at people who've stopped voting
• Why Kyle believes a Democratic win in West Texas would fundamentally reshape both parties, and what he wants to see from the 2028 presidential nominee (a real farm plan, real time spent in "flyover" country)

Good news segment: Kyle's first "Top Block" military eval, his second child due October 20th, and half-marathon training plans for Kate and Alex. 

Follow and support Kyle: 

https://www.rableforwesttexas.com/

Support the show: 

Become a member at patreon.com/missiontexaspodcast, or leave us a five-star review — it helps more than you'd think. 

God bless Texas. 🤠

This week on Mission: Texas, we're joined by Katie Serrano, DFW political correspondent for Courier Texas, a digital-first, values-driven newsroom covering progressive politics across battleground states. Katie walks us through her path from a University of Arkansas journalism program to covering the 2024 Dallas debate watch parties to breaking major accountability stories on Ken Paxton's finances. We talk about how Courier is building trust with younger, less news-engaged Texans through social-first storytelling, why education has become a defining issue heading into the midterms, and what she's seeing on the ground as Democratic candidates outwork their Republican opponents in the community.

What we cover:

• Katie's path into political journalism, from a college newspaper covering the 2014 Wendy Davis race to her master's thesis on objectivity in the Trump era
• What makes Courier's "mission and values based" model different from legacy political coverage, and how the Texas team has grown from a two-person DFW hub since launching in 2024
• Courier's social-first, presenter-led approach to reaching readers who'll never open a newspaper — and how the national Courier brand (1.1 million Instagram followers) supports state-level reporting
• Why public education, private school vouchers, the Ten Commandments classroom mandate, and Bible-as-required-reading are shaping up as top midterm issues, including the Senate District 9 special election where education drove Taylor Rehmet's flip of a red seat
• The reporting behind two of Courier's biggest recent scoops: Ken Paxton's $9 million, 15-property real estate portfolio on a $153K salary, and the New York Times investigation into his Frisco cell tower conflict of interest
• How "no-bid contract" stories connect to broader patterns of insider grifting from Paxton to Trump-era border wall contracts
• Katie's read on why Texas Democratic candidates are out-campaigning Republican incumbents in the community, and where she thinks the party still needs to grow 

Plus:  Katie's two-year Courier anniversary and reporting on the Houston mom suing over the Ten Commandments law; Kate's return to Orange Theory and half-marathon training; a Secretary of State update confirming Texas will keep defending its election law in the primary lawsuit

Don't forget to sign up for Katie's free weekly education newsletter at couriertexas.com/newsletter

Support the show: 

Become a member at patreon.com/missiontexaspodcast, or leave us a five-star review. God bless Texas. 🤠

This week on Mission: Texas, we sit down with Caitlin Rourk — a mom, Army National Guard officer, business leader, and Democratic candidate for Texas's 10th Congressional District. Caitlin shares her unconventional path to service (including a medical disqualification that took her nearly a decade to overcome), her work supporting Hurricane Harvey response with the Texas Military Department, and what pushed her from the sidelines into the race for Congress. 

We dig into a new way to reach voters called deep canvassing, the youth organizing program powering her campaign, and why the data center and AI infrastructure boom has become a defining issue in her district — especially given her opponent's ties to Elon Musk's America PAC and the redistricting process itself.

Plus: back-to-school season hits Mission: Texas and Caitlin.

What we cover:

• Caitlin's winding road to military service, from a disqualifying MEPS exam to enlisting in the Texas Army National Guard at 28
• Supporting senior leadership and public affairs during Hurricane Harvey as a newly commissioned lieutenant
• The dual federal/state mission of the National Guard, and a shoutout to Friendly Forces and USERRA protections for guardsmen and reservists
• Her decision to run for Congress after going through New Politics' training program
• How Texas's new congressional maps reshaped TX-10, adding roughly 92,000 Travis County voters
• Deep canvassing strategy, a paid student canvasser program modeled on Jamie Raskin's Maryland operation, and nearly 20,000 doors knocked this summer
• The data center and AI infrastructure fight in Grimes County, Elon Musk's chip facility, and her opponent Chris Gober's ties to America PAC and to drawing the very district he's running in
• Why individual candidate trust — not party-wide messaging — is what she believes will flip red seats
• Good news segment: first days of school, Camp Mom, and a Secretary of State update on defending Texas voting law in federal court

Support and follow Caitlin: 

https://www.caitlinrourk.com/

Support the show: 

Love what we're doing? Become a member at patreon.com/missiontexaspodcast — just a few dollars a month keeps independent Texas media alive. And if you can't spare the cash, a five-star review goes just as far. God bless Texas. 🤠

Texas Lieutenant Governor nominee Vikki Goodwin returns to Mission: Texas ahead of the general election to talk about her statewide campaign against Dan Patrick. Vikki breaks down why the data center boom has become the surprise unifying issue of the cycle — driving up water and electric bills, spiking rents in cities like Abilene, and pulling even rural Republicans into the fight for regulation. She lays out her plans for childcare and early childhood education, her healthcare proposal to cover the five million uninsured Texans in the state, and why she believes the THC industry should be legalized and regulated rather than banned. Vikki also digs into the fight over religious liberty and the Ten Commandments in public schools, the power of the Lieutenant Governor's office in Texas, and the voter suppression fight unfolding in Tarrant County ahead of Election Day.

Plus: Vikki shares the joy of becoming a first-time grandmother, Kate's daughter heads into public school pre-K for the first time, and Alex gets a clean bill of health at the dermatologist.

What we cover:

• Vikki's statewide travel since winning her primary and what she's hearing from voters in every corner of Texas
• Why data centers have become the rallying issue of the election — water, electric costs, and housing prices in places like Abilene
• Dan Patrick's rural-only moratorium and why Vikki calls it political theater
• Affordability pressures on Texas families: groceries, gas, childcare, and rent
• Vikki's plan for early childhood education and childcare, including lessons from New Mexico's program
• The fight over religious liberty, the Ten Commandments in classrooms, and the ongoing voucher lawsuit
• How much real power the Lieutenant Governor holds over the Texas budget and legislative agenda
• Vikki's healthcare plan: Medicaid-Medicare reimbursement parity, a state-run insurance option, and mobile clinics
• The economic and medical case for legalizing and regulating THC in Texas
• Comparing the 2026 map to 2018, and what it will take to flip the Texas Senate
• Voter suppression concerns in Tarrant County, including the proposed closure of nearly half its polling locations
• How to get involved with Vikki's campaign and other down-ballot races through Mobilize and Texas Together

Love what we're doing? 

Become a member at patreon.com/missiontexaspodcast — just a few dollars a month keeps independent Texas media alive. And if you can't spare the cash, a five-star review goes just as far. God bless Texas. 🤠