Why are Texas, Tarrant officials sponsoring extremist group’s banquet? | Opinion
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Nearly 60 Texas and local elected officials funded a True Texas project banquet.
- Past TTP speakers warned of a “war on white America” and urged “top-down” biblical rule.
- The True Texas Project now virulently campaigns against American Muslims, “Islamization.”
Nearly 60 Texas and local elected officials, including 22 judges, helped pay for a recent banquet for a Grapevine-based patriot-movement group that promotes white Christians as superior and says conservative Christianity should be the law of the land.
Nine state and Tarrant County officials, including County Judge Tim O’Hare of Southlake, Commissioner Matt Krause of Keller and District Clerk Tom Wilder of Bedford, paid from $1,000 to $10,000 to sponsor tables at the event for the True Texas Project. The group virulently campaigns against American Muslims and Islam and has for years supported Christian rule and opposed immigration and “foreign people.”
Only two years ago, some Republican Party officials denounced the group and pulled out of a conference in Fort Worth.
Speakers that day warned of a “war on white America” and called for forced “top-down” government under biblical “natural law.”
The sponsorships of the recent event indicate how Texas and Tarrant County Republicans have changed under a new administration. Republican state attorney general candidate Mayes Middleton of Galveston was listed in the program as a $2,500 table sponsor for the banquet April 18 at the River Ranch events center in Fort Worth.
Other $2,500 sponsors included state Rep. David Cook, R-Mansfield; Rep. Mitch Little, R-Lewisville, who represents far north Fort Worth in Denton County; and elected local District Judge Andy Porter.
O’Hare, Krause and Wilder are listed as $1,000 table sponsors, along with Texas Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian, R-Center, and Texas House candidate Cheryl Bean of Fort Worth.
A much longer list of state, county and local elected officials and judges paid to have their names listed in the program.
They included U.S. Rep. Beth Van Duyne, state Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham of Travis County, state comptroller nominee Don Huffines of Highland Park and county Sheriff Bill Waybourn of Dalworthington Gardens.
That price was not given but was originally listed as $500.
The “Texas Tough 2026” event drew a crowd of what the group described as about 500 people at the River Ranch Stockyards party barn.
The True Texas Project, a former Tea Party group, is technically nonpartisan. But its members dominate the corporate Republican Party in Tarrant County.
The group endorses candidates and has added 34 chapters statewide discussing everything from violent Christian takeover to Communist China’s supposed role in solar energy. Members warn that Texas’ tiny Muslim population is behind an “Islamization” threatening Christians’ power.
Notably, the banquet did not include anyone with blatant connections to antisemitism or neo-Nazi activism, unlike the 2024 conference.
But you wonder whether someone of a different faith or even a different Christian denomination would be treated equally in those judges’ courts.
An East Texas Republican county party chairman, Hunter Bonner of Marion County, criticized Republican officials who supported the banquet.
The True Texas Project is run by “antisemites and racists,” Bonner wrote on X.com, noting not only the past choice of speakers but also pages of past social media posts bashing Latinos over immigration or blatantly antisemitic comments such as complaints about “corporations run by Jews.”
“What is worse,” Bonner wrote, “is that the people you see on this list all know this. ... You cannot call yourselves ‘Christian Conservative’ and then hold galas and anniversary parties that invite white supremacists and people who hate Jews.”
Obviously, this is no longer your father’s Republican Party.
Honest, deeply divided political convictions over U.S. support for Israel and the Iran war have given rise to old antisemitic tropes.
But Republicans have also become captivated with “Islamization.” It’s the new party buzzword in place of “reconquista” or “Don’t Say Gay.”
Locally, some of the demons may have been unleashed by the relentless bombardment of poison-pen party emails from former county Republican chairman Bo French of Westover Hills, an attendee at the 2024 conference.
French, now a runoff candidate for the Texas Railroad Commission, has described his goal bluntly as to make Tarrant County “inhospitable” to Democrats
He now says 100 million people in the U.S. should be deported, presumably counting all immigrants and their U.S.-born children.
He is running statewide. But he emboldened local Republicans.
Bonner, a former Denton County Republican, wrote in an online message: “It is beyond baffling why any Republican would choose to associate, or frankly be caught dead, hanging around this organization.
“Their own website says they believe in ‘faith and family values.’ How exactly does inviting Jew-haters and white supremacists to speak further the gospel message?
“All of this,” he wrote, “runs counter to who we are as Republicans.”
It does not win souls. Or votes.
This story was originally published April 23, 2026 at 11:02 AM.
