click to enlarge A pack of furries attend a Minneapolis convention for people who enjoy role playing as animals. - Wikimedia Commons / dmuth
A pack of furries attend a Minneapolis convention for people who enjoy role playing as animals.
As he works overtime to sell school vouchers to Texans, Gov. Greg Abbott is ratcheting up his absurd claims about dysfunction in the state's public schools.
In his latest attempt to paint public campuses as dens of depravity, the Republican governor told a group of pastors in Austin that some schools around the state are providing litter boxes for students who identify as furries, as first reported by the Houston Chronicle.
"In some rural sections of school districts in the state of Texas, they have in their schools, what are called furries," Abbott said, according to the Chronicle. "Y'all know what this is?"
He continued: "Kids go to school dressed up as cats with litter boxes in their classrooms."
For those not in the know, members of the furry subculture adopt anthropomorphic animal identities and sometimes wear costumes to role-pay their personas.
The governor's claim appears to tap into a since-debunked 2022 panic in which right-wing politicos and media figures alleged schools nationwide were providing special treatment — including litter boxes — to students who identify as animals. For its part, Texas' Round Rock ISD was falsely accused of lowering cafeteria tables so kids could eat from pet bowls without using utensils.
Following Abbott's comments to the Austin pastors, the governor's office couldn't provide details to the Chronicle as to which schools and districts were allegedly allowing students to urinate and defecate in kitty litter.
Abbott's recycling of the furry falsehood is his latest bid to convince parents that the Texas lawmakers should pass school vouchers this legislative session.
Over recent months, the governor has zigzagged the state, issuing shrill warnings about the dangers of public schools, including claims that teachers are instructing students to hate America and that a Houston high school was forcing students to change genders.
"A child was going to [Houston's] Bellaire High School … and teachers in that school were helping a child transition [genders] against their will and even withheld information from their own parents," Abbott said last month during a Parent Empowerment Night Rally in San Antonio.
Abbott spouted his furry fable days after the Texas House Committee on Public Education heard 15 hours of testimony about a pair of school voucher bills currently under consideration in the Texas Lege.
Much of the hearing's debate centered around whether families earning more than $500,000 annually should be allowed to use the proposed program, which would use tax dollars to help subsidize Texas families' private school tuitions.
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click to enlarge Protesters take a stand against DOGE's layoffs of federal workers. - Shutterstock / Julio Javier Vargas
Protesters take a stand against DOGE's layoffs of federal workers.