Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is pledging to pass a bill that would require public school and college classrooms to display the Ten Commandments, days after a similar Louisiana measure became law. 

In a social media post, Patrick criticized Texas state House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican, for killing a state Senate bill that would have required the display of the Ten Commandments in schools. On Thursday, he vowed to bring the measure back. 

“SB 1515 will bring back this historical tradition of recognizing America’s heritage, and remind students all across Texas of the importance of a fundamental foundation of American and Texas law: the Ten Commandments,” Patrick wrote on X. “Putting the Ten Commandments back into our schools was obviously not a priority for Dade Phelan.”

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The bill would require Texas public elementary and secondary schools to display the Ten Commandments in each classroom. No requirement is currently in place.

Fox News Digital has reached out to Phelan’s office. 

Phelan and Patrick had feuded after Patrick presided over the impeachment trial this year of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. 

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Workers remove a monument bearing the Ten Commandments outside an Ohio high school several years ago. Louisiana has become the first state to require that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom under a bill signed into law by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry. (AP Photo/Al Behrman/File)

“Texas WOULD have been and SHOULD have been the first state in the nation to put the 10 Commandments back in our schools,” Patrick wrote on X. “But, SPEAKER Dade Phelan killed the bill by letting it languish in committee for a month assuring it would never have time for a vote on the floor.” 

This week, Louisiana became the first state to require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms. The American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups said they plan to challenge the law. 

Notre Dame Law School Professor Richard W. Garnett, who is the director of the school’s Program on Church, State & Society, said it is likely several states will make efforts to mirror Louisiana. 

“It remains to be seen whether these kinds of measures are permissible,” he told Fox News Digital. “The Supreme Court’s doctrine has changed in some areas, but it hasn’t changed in all areas.”

Workers repaint a Ten Commandments billboard off of Interstate 71 on Election Day near Chenoweth, Ohio, on Nov. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster/File)

A key question for the high court will be whether a display like the Ten Commandments “has a coercive effect” on children given their age and that it’s in a classroom setting, Garnett said. 

He noted that challengers of such laws will most likely point out that the U.S. is a religiously diverse nation and that public schools are run by the government for a “pluralistic people” despite the country’s founding being inspired by some individuals’ Christian convictions. 

In a joint statement announcing their opposition to Louisiana’s law, the ACLU and civil rights groups noted that religion is a private matter.

“The First Amendment promises that we all get to decide for ourselves what religious beliefs, if any, to hold and practice, without pressure from the government,” the statement said. “Politicians have no business imposing their preferred religious doctrine on students and families in public schools.”

In early June, the Biden administration announced a more “competitive” nuclear weapons strategy, after Moscow and Beijing reportedly spurned U.S. efforts to discuss arms control. The new approach includes the possibility of increasing America’s deployment of strategic nuclear weapons. The administration’s more muscular stance may be only a small down payment on an even larger nuclear buildup foreshadowed in a recent report mandated by Congress. The public has a compelling interest in participating in this discussion now, before the bills and risks come due.

“How much is enough” regarding America’s nuclear forces is not a new question. It has been debated by political, military and scientific leaders since the first two nuclear weapons were used to end the Second World War almost 80 years ago. Today, Washington and our two most likely nuclear adversaries, Russia and China, are all examining their nuclear ledgers to account for growing tensions in great-power relations, new technologies such as artificial intelligence and cyber warfare and emerging battlefields in space.

Will the American people have a voice in this debate? Historically, there have been moments when public opinion has driven nuclear policy, and not simply through elected representatives in Congress voting on defense appropriations. Widespread concerns over radioactive fallout helped drive negotiations that banned atmospheric nuclear testing in the early 1960s. In the early 1980s, millions turned out in the United States and Europe to protest the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear weapons, which put pressure on President Reagan and the U.S.S.R.’s Mikhail Gorbachev to negotiate a ban on these systems.

Yet it has been decades since the American public has weighed in en masse on nuclear policy, leaving the discussions to a small number of government, civilian and military bureaucrats and members of Congress.

The rest of us have practical and existential reasons to get engaged. To begin, the resources required to maintain or expand our nuclear arsenal are substantial — hundreds of billions of dollars for new land-based nuclear missiles, bombers and submarines. This will come at a substantial cost to other defense capabilities and domestic priorities. Even more profoundly, a more aggressive nuclear policy and the mere existence of more weapons may increase the risk of nuclear use, which poses an existential threat to us all. As the former CIA deputy director for intelligence rightly said to then-national security advisor Henry Kissinger decades ago, “Once nuclear weapons start landing, the response is likely to be irrational.”

Based on research by independent experts published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the United States today deploys more than 1,700 nuclear weapons. Roughly half of these warheads are on “day to day” alert, ready to be launched within minutes. Half of these are deployed at sea, immune from attack. Any rational nuclear adversary — say Russia or China, alone or together — must conclude that the use of even one nuclear weapon against the United States or its allies in Europe or Asia would likely trigger a massive American nuclear response that could obliterate an aggressors’ leadership, military forces and industry. And the sobering reality is that a rational U.S. president must conclude the same with respect to Russia, which deploys roughly the same number of nuclear weapons as the U.S., and China, with a much smaller but growing nuclear inventory.

Adding more nuclear weapons, missile silos, bombers or submarines to the mix in China, Russia or the U.S. — or applying new technologies, whether in speed or power — will not change the nuclear fundamentals: Use even one nuclear weapon and risk nuclear retaliation and a wider nuclear war that would destroy nations. The wise course for the U.S. is to ensure an adequate nuclear deterrent that places a premium on survivability, which means firepower and totals limited to the current arsenal, or even fewer.

Everyday Americans can and should campaign against this dangerous nuclear expansion. And beyond that, we can support what the United States has slowly been doing, reducing the risks of a nuclear use by reducing global nuclear arms through sound security policies and diplomacy.

We can also support efforts to make the stockpile we have safer. In a rare but laudable bipartisan initiative, Congress directed the Biden administration to conduct an internal review of America’s nuclear command-and-control systems, including “fail-safe” steps to strengthen safeguards against cyber warfare threats and the unauthorized, inadvertent or accidental use of a nuclear weapon. The review is due out in the fall, and it will almost certainly call for new investments to securely maintain a nuclear deterrent for as long as one is needed. That would be money well spent by Washington — and something that should be encouraged in every nuclear-armed state.

No question, the U.S. is now in an across-the-board competition with China and Russia. In Europe, it is centered on the war in Ukraine and deterring any further attacks by Russia on our NATO allies. The competition with China is much broader: There is an increasing military component in the South China sea and Taiwan, but the economic and technology race is as consequential.

“Winning” this competition will require a number of increased investments and initiatives, such as shoring up our conventional military capabilities, leading the artificial intelligence revolution, developing defenses against cyber attacks and expanding clean energy alternatives. Making expensive investments in nuclear capabilities beyond what is adequate for deterrence would mean running this race carrying a heavy sandbag on our shoulders.

When it comes to nuclear weapons, less is more.

Steve Andreasen was the National Security Council’s staff director for defense policy and arms control from 1993 to 2001. He teaches at the public affairs school of the University of Minnesota.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on Friday called for two illegal immigrants charged with killing a 12-year-old Houston girl to be sentenced to death if they are convicted for the slaying. 

Cruz also blamed President Biden’s border policies for leading to the death of Jocelyn Nungaray, who was found Monday strangled to death in a creek. 

Johan Jose Martinez Rangel, 22, and Franklin Pena, 26, both from Venezuela, are each charged with capital murder.

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“This is horrifying. If guilty, both of these men should receive the death penalty for this horrible crime,” Cruz wrote on X. “These men are illegal aliens and Jocelyn Nungaray would still be alive and with her family if not for Joe Biden’s open border policies. The Biden administration is directly responsible. My heart goes out to Jocelyn’s family.”

The pair were seen with Nungaray on Sunday night before she was killed near a bridge, police said Thursday. Investigators tracked their movements through surveillance footage. 

“In this case the defendant lured a 12-year-old under a bridge, where he and his co-defendant remained with her for over 2 hours, took her pants off, tied her up, and killed her, then threw her body into the bayou,” Harris County Assistant District Attorney Michael Abner wrote.

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Jocelyn Nungaray, 12, was found strangled to death in a Houston creek this week. (Fox Houston courtesy of the Nungaray family)

Both suspects entered the United States illegally through Texas, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said. 

“On March 14, Martinez was apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol near El Paso, Texas. That same day he was released on an order of recognizance with a notice to appear,” an ICE spokesperson said. “Pena was apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol on May 28 near El Paso. He was also released on an order of recognizance with a notice to appear the same day he was apprehended.” 

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security stated to Fox News Digital: “Our hearts go out to Jocelyn Nungaray’s family. The Department cannot publicly comment on an ongoing criminal investigations. That said, anyone who commits a horrific and senseless crime, like the one these individuals are accused of, should be prosecuted to the fullest extent under the law.”

On Friday, Cruz urged Biden to restore the Remain in Mexico policy, a Trump-era directive that required migrants applying for asylum to stay in Mexico while their cases play out in U.S. courts. 

“He must reinstate Remain in Mexico and end catch-and-release immediately, or we will lose more innocent life,” Cruz wrote. “There is no time for half measures – we need to look at what works, and do it now.”

The slaying of Nungaray came amid a week of kidnappings, murders and rapes blamed on illegal immigrants across the country. 

Fox News Digital’s Greg Norman contributed to this report.