We Need to Talk About Citizens Defending Freedom

Princeton ISD is the latest district to fall victim to pressure from the Christian Nationalist group, following Fort Worth, Plano, & Conroe ISD.

Last November, Jennifer Eckhart, the Educational Lead of the Montgomery County branch of the far-right group known as Citizens Defending Freedom, emailed the trustees and district leaders of Conroe Independent School District, west of Houston. Her organization, she wrote, “is working across Texas to assist in the removal of sexually inappropriate books from our public schools.”

She continued: “Fort Worth ISD and Plano ISD’s [sic] have recently pulled a large selection of books at once instead of requiring citizens to use the book reconsideration process, which only allows for one book at a time.”

Eckhart, who does not pay taxes to or have children in Conroe ISD schools, asked Conroe ISD’s leaders to follow those districts’ example. And she attached a list of approximately 45 books, based on the list of books Tarrant County’s CDF sent to Fort Worth ISD, and asked for them all to be removed.

Trustee Misty Odenweller—one of three “Mama Bear” trustees who ran for the board in 2022 on a platform of “protecting childhood innocence”—responded that she had already seen to it that many of the books be removed, but she would be “looking into” the remaining books on the list.

By the board’s November meeting, all of but five of the books on Eckhart’s list had either been removed from district libraries or were listed as “pending review”. None of the books on the list were formally challenged in 2023.

In all, Conroe ISD has removed more than 130 books from its libraries since the start of the 2022-2023 school year.

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Citizens Defending Freedom & Texas School Districts: Partners?

It's a pattern across Texas: Citizens Defending Freedom, an outside activist group, is sending lists of books for mass removal to districts across the state of Texas, and those districts are complying—often through unaccountable, un-appeal-able processes.¹  

Another way of putting it is that districts are partnering with a Christian Nationalist group to restrict reading materials for students, often overriding the expertise of teachers and librarians and ignoring the input of district parents and students.

Last month, Princeton ISD removed 148 books for review after an “audit” of the district’s libraries by Citizens Defending Freedom. That audit, according to CDF-Collin County’s Educational Lead Shannon Ayres, consisted of scouring catalogues for books that matched this list of more than 400 books produced by Tyler-area Republican operative Christin Bentley, who met with the group in August of last year. Bentley’s list purports to include “sexually explicit, pervasively vulgar, and educationally unsuitable” books, but uses highly questionable interpretations of those terms. Her list includes, for example, the graphic adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary, along with classic works such as Richard Wright’s 1940 novel Native Son.

According to CDF, “PISD took immediate action to remove the identified books from circulation for review.” Ayres was invited to present her group’s findings before the board at its February meeting, where she not only praised the district for removing the books, but also attacked the American Library Association and Scholastic Book Fairs and urged the district to search its libraries for even more books to remove.

CDF has had similar success in removing books from other districts across Texas. In Fort Worth ISD, the group’s Tarrant County branch pushed for the removal of more than 100 books over the summer, staging dramatic board meeting demonstrations and sending emails to district leaders. Those district leaders obliged, shutting down libraries at the start of the school year and pulling the books CDF requested.²

In Plano ISD, as I wrote in November, a parent filed formal challenges of nearly 70 books at the end of last school year. But when many of those challenges failed, CDF raised a ruckus, and the district instituted new internal reviews overturning many of the decisions made by book review committees.

And then, in November, Conroe ISD fielded a request to review more books from Citizens Defending Freedom and promptly complied.

Though these removals are sometimes coordinated by individual board members, the recent book removals in these four districts have happened below the board level—sometimes without board members’ prior knowledge.

“Some of this is new to me, new information to me,” objected Princeton ISD trustee Carlos Cuellar after Ayres’ presentation. “And we make decisions as a board. I hope they come to the board, not through individuals.”

“There have been no decisions made that are not in line with the policies that have already been adopted by the board in the past,” responded district superintendent Donald McIntyre.

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An Extremist, Christian Nationalist Group

Citizens Defending Freedom is a Christian Nationalist group started in Florida with county-based chapters in several parts of Texas.³ The organization laments that “we are becoming a lost nation devoid of God” and argues that “we are fighting a battle of Good versus Evil, a battle for the soul of America, and a battle for the future of our children and grandchildren.”

CDF describes itself as one of the founding partners of the Remnant Alliance, whose goal is “to establish a definitive approach for pastors and churches to actively engage with culture.”

In practice, that means that CDF has organized seminars on “Biblical citizenship” and hosted meetings calling for pastors be “bold and courageous” featuring self-proclaimed “Christocrat” Rick Scarborough, who has called for "expunging every immoral book in the library" and claimed that Texas teachers are "grooming children for pedophiles."

Notably, for CDF, the “immoral” books that need expunging include texts with LGBTQ themes and characters, even when those books contain no sexual content. In addition to the list of 45 books CDF’s Montgomery County chapter sent to Conroe ISD in November, the group also sent a list of 16 books that they claimed contained “gender confusion”, including a number of children’s books. The district reviewed many of those books at CDF’s behest, though most were returned to shelves.

CDF’s “immoral” books also include a number of classic and well-regarded novels and memoirs. Princeton ISD, for example, removed several National Book Award winners and finalists for the award, while Plano ISD removed six books (Half of a Yellow Sun, The Bluest Eye, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Handmaid’s Tale, Oryx & Crake, The Kite Runner) that have appeared on the College Board’s AP Literature exam.  

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Creating Book Deserts

But the ripples of CDF’s interventions across Texas go far beyond the specific books removed or reviewed in these four districts. CDF’s performative anger and dubious legal arguments have exacerbated a climate of fear that is quickly turning certain Texas school districts into book deserts. Plano ISD has gone the entire year without purchasing any library materials; Conroe ISD has removed books with LGBTQ themes beyond CDF’s requests, including PEN America president Jennifer Boylan’s memoir She’s Not There.

Even more troubling, McKinney ISD—Plano’s neighbor—seems to have internalized CDF’s threats even though the organization has not yet directly targeted the district. In November, shortly after Plano removed books via internal review, McKinney administrators announced they were removing 73 books, as well—also via internal review, also from a list that echoed Plano, Fort Worth, and Christin Bentley’s list.

School leaders hate controversy, and district administrators often try to shield board members from making contentious decisions in public. What’s more, administrators share ideas and concerns across districts, and often make decisions based on what they see happening in their neighbors or peer districts. Citizens Defending Freedom—one of America’s most extreme Christian Nationalist organizations—has learned to exploit these tendencies in order to impose its views on Texas schools, to the detriment of Texas students.

1. For an in-depth look at two of the processes by which books are being removed from schools without formal challenges, please see this exceptionally thorough post on informal and internal reviews in Conroe ISD, by Ryan Tsamouris at We Have Quorum.

2. Defense of Democracy in Texas, and in particular Fort Worth members Sabrina Ball and Amy Custer-Ramsey, have done great work exposing Citizens Defending Freedom’s maneuvers in Fort Worth ISD. To counter the influence of outside extremist groups in the district, they have proposed policies for FWISD that would restrict public comment at board meetings for people who are not stakeholders in the district. They have also created a petition to restore access to the 118 books the district removed for review in August. They hope to present the petition at the district’s March 26 board meeting.

3. CDF currently has chapters in eight Texas counties: Collin, Denton, Harris, Montgomery, Nueces, Tarrant, Travis, and Williamson.