A Texas A&M committee ruled that the university’s decision to fire a professor after a student was removed from class for objecting to a children’s literature lesson on gender identity was unjustified.

A video recorded earlier this year by a female student showed her asking Melissa McCoul, a senior lecturer in the English department, if teaching gender ideology is legal, pointing to President Donald Trump’s executive orders aimed at removing the subject from higher education.

The internal committee ruled that the university failed to follow proper procedures and did not prove there was good cause to terminate McCoul. The committee unanimously voted this week that “the summary dismissal of Dr. McCoul was not justified.”

The university said in a statement that interim President Tommy Williams has received the committee’s nonbinding recommendation and will make a decision after reviewing it.

TEXAS LAWMAKER SLAMS TEXAS A&M AFTER STUDENT ALLEGEDLY REMOVED FROM CLASS FOR CHALLENGING TRANSGENDER LESSON

McCoul’s lawyer, Amanda Reichek, said the dispute is likely to end up in court because the university appears to want to continue fighting, and the interim president is facing similar political pressure.

“Dr. McCoul asserts that the flimsy reasons proffered by A&M for her termination are a pretext for the University’s true motivation: capitulation to Governor Abbott’s demands,” Reichek said in a statement.

Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republicans had called for her firing after watching the video.

“Fire the professor who acted contrary to Texas law,” the governor wrote on X in September.

The video led to public criticism of university president Mark Welsh, who later resigned, although he did not offer a reason and never mentioned the video in his resignation announcement.

State Rep. Brian Harrison said in a statement to Fox News Digital at the time that the “liberal president of Texas A&M must be fired and all DEI and LGBTQ indoctrination defunded.”

The opening of the video posted by Harrison on social media showed a slide titled “Gender Unicorn” that noted different gender identities and expressions. 

Students in the class told The Texas Tribune that they were discussing a book called “Jude Saves the World,” which is about a middle school student who comes out as nonbinary. Several other books included in the course also touched on LGBTQ+ issues.

After a back-and-forth dispute about the legality of teaching the lessons on gender identity, McCoul asked the student to leave the class. Harrison also posted other recordings of the student’s meeting with Welsh that showed the then-university president defending McCoul’s instruction.

TEXAS A&M REGENTS DEMAND AUDIT OF ALL COURSES AFTER TRANSGENDER LESSON CONTROVERSY

Welsh said when McCoul was fired that he learned she had continued teaching content in a children’s literature course “that did not align with any reasonable expectation of standard curriculum for the course.” He also said the course content did not match its catalog descriptions.

“If we allow different course content to be taught from what is advertised, we let our students down. When it comes to our academic offerings, we must keep our word to our students and to the state of Texas,” he said in September, noting that leaders in the College of Arts and Sciences were found to have approved plans to continue teaching course content that was not consistent with the course’s published description.

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Earlier this month, the Texas A&M Regents issued a new policy stating that no academic course “will advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity” unless approved in advance by a campus president.

Fox News Digital reached out to Texas A&M for comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

You’ll be saying “WOW.”

Famous infomercial pitchman Offer Vince Shlomi – better known as the “ShamWow guy” who advertised the super-absorbent towel on late-night TV – has filed to run for Congress in Texas as a Republican, according to state election records.

The filing, received Friday, was submitted under the name Offer Vince “ShamWow” Shlomi.

Shlomi told Fox News Digital in an interview Sunday that his decision to run for office was ultimately motivated by a desire to “destroy wokeism” and as a tribute to the late Charlie Kirk, whom he called the original “woke buster.” He added that the “political infighting in the country” eventually inspired him to seek office and “make America happy.”

WORLD SERIES CHAMPION MARK TEIXEIRA ANNOUNCES CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN IN TEXAS

The 61-year-old Israeli-American entrepreneur is aiming to unseat Congressman John Carter, R-Texas, the 84-year-old incumbent who is seeking re-election in the district. Carter’s turf includes the northern Austin suburbs, Temple and Fort Hood.

Shlomi is now one of at least five candidates aiming to compete in the primary for Texas’ 31st Congressional District – a reliably red stronghold.

TEXAS REP CHIP ROY ANNOUNCES RUN FOR STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL TO REPLACE KEN PAXTON

Shlomi, president and CEO of the TV marketing company Square One Entertainment, skyrocketed to pop-culture fame in the 2000s with his high-energy pitch videos that helped make the super-absorbent “ShamWow” towel a household name.

His rise to fame, however, was accompanied by several high-profile controversies – including allegations of harassment and physical altercations – before he eventually stepped out of the spotlight in recent years and reportedly worked to clean up his image.

EXCLUSIVE: DAN CRENSHAW GOP CHALLENGER CLAIMS ‘DAYS IN CONGRESS ARE NUMBERED,’ AS RACE HEATS UP

In 2009, Shlomi was arrested in Miami Beach after an alleged violent altercation with a sex worker – an incident that became tabloid fodder after police photos of his face injuries surfaced. 

Earlier in his career, he faced legal battles tied to his 1999 underground comedy film “The Underground Comedy Movie.”

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In recent years, however, Shlomi has kept a lower profile as he shifted back into marketing and entrepreneurship.

America’s ranchers are facing their smallest cattle herd in 70 years.

Years of punishing drought, rising costs and an aging ranching workforce have thinned herds across the country. Ranchers and agricultural economists alike say rebuilding will take years and beef prices aren’t likely to ease anytime soon.

“The biggest thing has been drought,” said Eric Belasco, head of the agricultural economics department at Montana State University.

BEEF PRICES ARE CLOSE TO RECORD HIGHS — BUT AMERICANS AREN’T CUTTING BACK

He said years of dry weather have wiped out grasslands across the West and Plains, leaving ranchers without enough feed or water to sustain their herds. Many have been forced to sell cattle early, even the cows needed to produce the next generation of calves, making it hard to rebuild. 

“It’s not going to be a quick fix, you’re not going to solve it overnight,” Belasco told Fox News Digital. 

Belasco said the aftereffects of years of drought are still being felt and until ranchers can rebuild their herds, consumers will keep paying the price.

“The primary reason you see prices so high is because we haven’t seen any kind of inventory rebuilding,” he said. “Until you see that rebuild, you probably won’t see prices coming back down again.”

That slow rebuilding is a challenge for the cattle industry, according to Derrell Peel, a professor of agricultural economics at Oklahoma State University.

“The fact of the matter is there’s really nothing anybody can do to change this very quickly,” Peel said. “We’re in a tight supply situation that took several years to develop, and it’ll take several years to get out of it.”

Peel, who specializes in livestock marketing, said there’s no quick way to ease pressure on beef prices, since it takes roughly two years to bring animals to market and several years to rebuild herds.

TRUMP’S BEEF IMPORT PLAN IGNORES KEY ISSUE SQUEEZING AMERICAN CATTLE RANCHERS

Even as ranchers wait for herds to recover, parched conditions are working against them, turning pastures to dust and feed into a luxury. 

Research from the Kansas City Federal Reserve found that with each step up in drought severity, cattle-producing regions see about a 12% drop in hay production, a 5% rise in hay prices, a 1% reduction in herd size and a 4% decrease in farm income.

To cope, many ranchers are shrinking their herds. A 2022 Farm Bureau survey found that about two in three ranchers have sold animals off, leaving them with roughly one-third fewer cattle than before.

Few people see the challenges of ranching more clearly than Cole Bolton, owner of K&C Cattle Company, whose pastures stretch along the soft edge of the Texas Hill Country.

“I think it’s going to take a while to fix this crisis that we’re in with the cattle shortage. My message to consumers is simple, folks, be patient. We’ve got to build back our herds,” Bolton told Fox News Digital.

Bolton said the region, known for its red dirt and family-run ranches, has gone nearly three months without rain. While showers were finally arriving, he noted that the cattle industry has weathered one setback after another, from market turmoil to extreme conditions, over the past five years.

The growing strain highlights how persistent drought is reshaping the ranching industry and tightening the nation’s livestock supply.

That pressure is being felt not just on ranches but also at the grocery store.

According to USDA data, the average retail price of beef rose from about $8.51 a pound in August 2024 to $9.85 a pound a year later, a gain of roughly 16%. 

The “5-market steer price” represents what ranchers earn for live cattle before they’re processed into meat. The “farm-to-retail” spread reflects everything that happens after that – the costs and profits tied to slaughtering, processing, packaging, shipping and selling beef in stores.

Much of that work — and the profits it generates — are concentrated among the industry’s “big four” meatpackers: Tyson Foods, JBS, Cargill and National Beef.

Together, these data points show that while ranchers are earning slightly more for their cattle than they were a few years ago, the biggest price increases are happening well after the animals leave the pasture.

Despite the markups between the ranch and the grocery store, demand hasn’t wavered. Americans are still buying beef more than ever.

Beef remains the dominant player in the fresh-meat aisle, with $44.3 billion in sales over the past year, a 12% increase that outpaced chicken, pork and turkey, according to Beef Research, a contractor to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.

Glynn Tonsor, a professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State University, told Fox News Digital that strong consumer demand will continue to drive beef prices higher.

“There’s nothing that forces me or you or anybody else when we go into the grocery store to pay more for beef. People are choosing to,” he said. “The consumer desire for beef is strong and, regardless of the supply-side situation, that has the effect of pulling prices up.”