Cardoza-Moore says state education standards offer a powerful way to shape how millions of students learn about American history, Israel, antisemitism, and Judeo-Christian values
Laurie Cardoza-Moore went to a Texas education hearing prepared to talk about American history. What caught her attention instead was who else had come to testify—and what they wanted children to learn.
The question of who shapes a schoolbook had been on her mind since 2012, when, she said, a parent in Tennessee brought her a textbook. The woman’s son, an evangelical Christian who had previously been homeschooled, was in his first year of high school when he came home with a question about the Land of Israel. His mother asked him what the Bible said, but he rejected her response. “And he said, no, Mom, I know what the Bible says, but who has legitimate rights to the Land of Israel? That’s where it started.”
For Cardoza-Moore, president of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, a nonprofit Christian organization that actively campaigns against antisemitism, the exchange was a reason to look more closely at what schools were teaching. She began with textbooks. More than a decade later, her fight had reached the Texas standards that help determine the content contained in those textbooks.
She said Fox News coverage of the Tennessee dispute led parents elsewhere to bring home their children’s human geography and history books. Parents across the country then contacted her about similar material they said they found, she recalled. She described the content as anti-Israel, antisemitic, anti-American, and hostile to Judeo-Christian values, and began pressing parents, educators, and lawmakers to look more closely.
We just assumed that what was being taught to our children was the same values that we were raised with … but that’s not what we found
“We just assumed that what was being taught to our children was the same values that we were raised with, using similar textbooks with a similar history,” she said. “But that’s not what we found.”
She traces her alarm to watching the September 11 attacks. “9/11 was my wake-up call. And when I saw the second plane fly into the second tower, I knew Amalek had come to our shores.” She said her study of the Bible shaped the way she understood what she had seen. She has been called an Islamophobe and a Zionist for her stance, she said, but has continued to argue that Americans and Israelis face a shared struggle.
Israel’s battle is our battle
“Israel’s battle is our battle.” She recalled an Israeli memorial service on the anniversary of September 11 as a gesture of solidarity and said the American relationship with Israel and the Jewish community must not be lost. Evangelical Christians matter especially to her strategy. “And if we lose the evangelical Christians, who are we going to turn to, to stand with us and to stand with Israel and the Jewish people?”
That conviction brought her to a June 2026 Texas State Board of Education hearing, where she expected to speak about history, Judeo-Christian values, and Haym Salomon, a financier of the Continental Congress. Instead, she said, she found people she identified as representatives of an organization she called CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) also scheduled to testify.
“Well, unfortunately, CAIR has been operating in education in our textbooks and curriculum for decades now,” she claimed.
“I asked the State Board of Education members, what are they doing here?” she recalled. Cardoza-Moore described the organization as a Muslim Brotherhood front group and alleged it had been named an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism-fundraising case. She said its representatives objected to the way Islam and Muslims were portrayed in history books and sought different standards.
In November 2025, Texas Governor Greg Abbott designated CAIR as a “foreign terrorist organization” and transnational criminal organization” and banned it from purchasing or acquiring property in Texas.
The encounter brought into focus the question she wants Americans to ask: Who has a say in the history children learn? To illustrate her position, Cardoza-Moore argued that students hear too little about the Barbary pirates. She said lessons mention them without adequately explaining the conflict with the United States, including the capture of American merchant vessels and their crews. “That’s history that needs to be taught to our kids.” In her view, omissions of that kind leave students unable to put present-day conflicts in context. She also linked what she regards as inadequate teaching after September 11 to the phenomenon of young people marching with Hamas supporters.
In response to a question about Muslims who reject terrorism or dispute extremist readings of their faith, she pointed to Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, whom she described as a Muslim reformist. “He is trying to reform Islam and bring it into modern context.” She said she had promoted his book and interviewed him about how to reach more Muslims. She also said she understood he was running for office in Arizona.
“No, there are Muslims who agree with us, but those are the ones that are willing to speak out publicly,” she said. She contrasted them with Muslims she said remained silent and with people who, according to her account, arrived at the Texas hearing in Boy Scout uniforms to present themselves as peaceful. She questioned whether that presentation matched the positions they advocated.
Cardoza-Moore said some speakers at the Texas hearing minimized the implications of Sharia law. She contrasted their remarks with what she believes American soldiers learned while serving in Afghanistan and Iraq and urged local governments to take the issue seriously. Her concerns, she said, extend beyond Texas to Dearborn, Michigan, and New York City, though she did not give specific examples from either place.
For years, Cardoza-Moore challenged the content of textbooks and confronted publishers. Asked what the Texas hearing could change, she identified a powerful lever: “Standards.” In her view, a state’s civics, social studies, and history standards can shape what publishers produce and schools buy long after any single hearing ends.
She said her organization had been invited to participate in drafting Texas standards and submitted recommendations it had also proposed in Florida in 2023. Many were adopted in Texas, according to Cardoza-Moore, with an emphasis on the Judeo-Christian history of the United States. “We were able to get them to agree to adopt our recommendations to help reinforce and return our children back to making America great again, as Trump would say.” She said proposals from the opponents she called Islamists were not adopted, without identifying the precise provisions that passed.
She believes the reach could be far greater than one state. Cardoza-Moore estimated that Texas has 5.5 million students and predicted that more than 25 other states, representing another 25 million children, could follow its lead. “We will be able to reach over 30 million children in our country just from what Texas did.” She suggested Texas’s standards might remain in place for 13 to 15 years, “that’s a whole generation of kids through the education system.”
Why would other states follow? Cost, she said, was the answer. Adopting similar standards and buying similar curriculum could be less expensive than charting a separate course. In response to a question about the political map, she said she expected mainly Republican-leaning states to follow, though some Democratic-leaning ones might as well. Her organization is seeking to work in Georgia and to return to Tennessee, where she said it proposed similar standards a few years ago. Tennessee, she said, revisits civics and social studies standards every four years.
Her goals go beyond teaching children to be proud of America. She wants them to understand the Judeo-Christian values she believes founded the country and to reject communism and totalitarianism. “We will lose our freedoms. We will lose our liberties if we go down this path.” She alleged that communists and Islamists are working together and referred to what she described as a plan to take over the West that emerged during the Holy Land Foundation trial in 2008, which resulted in the conviction of a Texas-based Muslim charity and five of its leaders for funneling millions of dollars to Hamas. They are part of the threat as Cardoza-Moore sees it, and part of why she says the fight over standards cannot wait.
We will lose our freedoms. We will lose our liberties if we go down this path.
“Our kids and our grandkids are counting on us to do the right thing while we are able.”
When asked to look five years ahead, amid political polarization and the influence of principals, teachers, and families, Cardoza-Moore answered with a call for people to speak up. “Shame on us that we weren’t paying attention to what our children were being instructed with.” Her next thought was just as pointed: “Shame on us that we were silent when we should have been speaking up.”
Her dispute is also with people who might be expected to stand beside her. Asked about leaving a Heritage Foundation committee after a controversy involving Tucker Carlson, she sharply criticized the organization’s president, Kevin Roberts. She said he failed to reject what she considers Carlson’s antisemitism and described a meeting with other leaders, including the Family Research Council, about the “woke right” and evangelicals turning against Israel.
“I stepped down from the Heritage Foundation, because it showed me that the leadership didn’t have the guts, didn’t have the courage to say, to call antisemitism out by Tucker, and say publicly that Tucker does not represent the values of the members of Heritage, nor their supporters.” She said another apology would not persuade her to return while Roberts remained in charge. “We need to start holding our leaders accountable. That’s why I stepped down. I resigned.”
She sees the stakes in international terms, citing Christians in Nigeria seeking American help and Israel facing attacks after October 7. In her view, American leadership and support for Israel are inseparable from the principles she wants children to learn. “It is America’s war. It is our struggle as well. We cannot let Israel stand alone.”
