James Talarico, the progressive state representative now running to become the first Democratic senator from Texas in decades, is drawing sharp criticism after old Facebook posts surfaced showing that he once assigned his sixth-grade public school students to write "Obama memoirs" celebrating Barack Obama's 2012 reelection.

The posts, from Talarico's teacher account in San Antonio, paint a picture of a classroom that functioned less like a place of learning and more like a satellite office for the Democratic Party.

The Posts

On Nov. 13, 2012, Talarico posted on Facebook:

"Today, we finished writing our Obama memoirs."

He described the assignment as one in which "students wrote a memoir of Election Night from the point of view of a member of the Obama family." He shared one student's work, which included the lines "I was crying when my father was giving his speech" and "those lovely words that came out of his mouth."

Three days later, on Nov. 16, Talarico posted again, this time sharing an image of a poster board displaying more than a dozen of the memoirs beneath a banner reading "Mr. Talarico's Wall of Fame."

"Our Wall of Fame has been updated with our awesome Obama Family Memoirs!"

These weren't optional enrichment exercises tucked into an after-school club. These were classroom assignments for sixth graders in a public school, displayed proudly on a wall of fame.

A Pattern, Not an Incident

The Obama memoirs weren't the only posts raising questions about what Talarico was doing in his classroom. Fox News reports additional posts that reveal a broader pattern:

• On Sept. 4, 2012, he encouraged his students to watch the Democratic National Convention to see Julián Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio, deliver the keynote speech.
• On Sept. 14, 2011, he posted a photo of a classroom "free thinker" display featuring figures including Barack Obama, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, Bill Gates, Frida Kahlo, Jay-Z, and J.K. Rowling.

Not included on the "free thinker" wall were any Republican or conservative leaders. Beethoven made the cut. Not a single right-of-center thinker in American public life did.

There's a word for a classroom where students are assigned to write from the perspective of a sitting president's family members, encouraged to watch one party's convention, and surrounded by a curated gallery of progressive icons presented as exemplars of independent thought. That word is not "education."

The Response

Corey DeAngelis, a school choice advocate and research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, called the revelations "disqualifying" for a Texas Senate hopeful. Conservative commentator Steve Guest slammed Talarico on X, writing sarcastically about "what Talarico was doing as an 'educator.'"

The National Republican Senatorial Committee seized on the story:

"James Talarico made his public school students write 'Obama memoirs' and encouraged them to watch the DNC. What else was he telling Texas kids in his classroom?"

It's a fair question. If these are the posts Talarico was comfortable sharing publicly, the ones he thought would play well, what did the day-to-day instruction look like?

Talarico's press secretary, JT Ennis, responded to the criticism with a statement to Fox News Digital that didn't address the substance of the posts at all:

"John Cornyn, Ken Paxton, and the billionaires who prop them up are scared of James Talarico for good reason: our campaign is building a movement poised to change the politics of this state and take power back for working people."

Notice what's missing. No defense of the assignments. No explanation for why public school students were drafted into writing fan fiction about the Obama family. No acknowledgment that a teacher using a taxpayer-funded classroom to promote one political party might be a problem. Just boilerplate about billionaires and movements.

The Bigger Problem

This is exactly the kind of story that drives parents across the country toward school choice. Not because they oppose teaching about presidents. Every student should learn about every president. But there is a canyon between teaching history and assigning eleven-year-olds to write first-person celebrations of a sitting president's reelection, then pinning them to a "Wall of Fame."

Imagine the reaction if a conservative teacher in 2017 had assigned sixth graders to write Trump family memoirs about Inauguration Day, posted them to a "Wall of Fame," and encouraged students to watch the Republican National Convention. That teacher would have been on the front page of every newspaper in America within 48 hours. School boards would have convened. Investigations would have been launched.

But when the partisan indoctrination flows in the approved direction, it gets discovered years later through old Facebook posts and met with a shrug from the candidate's team.

Talarico will face either incumbent Sen. John Cornyn or Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton this November, depending on the outcome of the Republican primary runoff this May. He aspires to represent all of Texas, a state where parents have been fighting for years to keep political activism out of their children's classrooms.

His old posts suggest he was one of the people they were fighting against.