The Texas State Board of Education voted 9–5 Thursday to remove approximately ninety pages of climate science content from its approved 9th-grade Earth Science curriculum, replacing the affected chapters with a single declarative sentence reading “The weather has always done that, and frankly, it is doing it now.” The revised standards, which were finalized in a 14-minute working session over a tray of sheet cake, eliminate references to carbon dioxide, the industrial revolution, polar ice, and the phrase “long-term trend.”

Board chair Lurleen Hammacher-Schmidt, 58, a former regional manager for a chain of paint stores, described the change as “responsible to all students” and noted that her own grandchildren had grown up “perfectly comfortable” without knowing what a glacier was. The lone climate scientist on the working group, Dr. Renaldo Espinoza-Pratt, 47, of Texas A&M, was reached by phone at a Whataburger off Interstate 35 and asked if he wished to comment on the final language. After approximately eleven seconds of silence, Espinoza-Pratt said, “I drove eight hours for that meeting. I drove eight hours.” A board staffer, asked separately whether students would still be permitted to use the word “summer,” declined to confirm or deny, citing “an active review of seasonal terminology” and noting that the working group “wanted to be careful not to get out ahead of anything.” The revised textbooks are expected in classrooms by fall 2027, weather permitting.