The notification was one of a million. 

She let it sit for a moment before grabbing the phone and bringing it to her face, expecting nothing more than a question from her co-worker or a response from the student she was helping. But the email — sent from Texas A&M’s Office of Open Records — was unusual: Under the state’s Public Information Act, she was being asked for copies of her syllabi and all emails she had sent containing the words “DEI” and “transgender.” 

The professor’s main confusion came from the requestor, however. It was a name she had never seen before. Who would be interested in what was ultimately a few benign emails? 

Her case wasn’t unique among faculty and staff. Representatives of Texas Scorecard, a right-wing website that publishes articles about state and local politics, submitted more than 100 open records requests to Texas A&M and the System from 2022-24. 

“Virtually every article they publish is not fully factual, sometimes not even close to factual,” President Mark A. Welsh III told The Battalion in a sit-down interview in November 2024. “They have never printed a retraction when we provided them the facts.” 

Scorecard’s posts, however, spread like wildfire. 

“I do find it interesting in all the articles and things over the last couple of years, I think there have been maybe four or five courses that are taught here that they’ve called out, out of 4,600,” Welsh said. “So even if you made the assumption that there was something wrong with those courses, this is clearly a very specifically targeted effort for some reason, with some long-range purpose in mind. But you’d have to ask them. I don’t know what it is.”

Originally the print and online publishing arm of Empower Texans, a now-defunct advocacy group that spent millions pushing Republican priorities in the state legislature, Scorecard spun off into an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2020 chaired by Tim Dunn, a West Texas oil billionaire — one of the largest Republican donors in the state. His son-in-law Keith Uhles works as director, and the website’s top two roles are held by Aggies: publisher and president Michael Quinn Sullivan ‘92 and Chief Executive Officer Nathan Ofe ‘09. 

Beyond online posts, podcasts and email lists, the website also hosts a directory of state politicians and ratings for each — where it derives its Scorecard branding from — created by the groups Young Conservatives of Texas and Texans For Fiscal Responsibility. The latter is a long-time affiliate of the expansive political machine Dunn funds and directs. 

The authors of Scorecard’s posts — often hardline, conservative activists — submitted 94 open records requests to A&M and 23 to the A&M System from late 2022 to 2024. These requests target records of all types, including syllabi, funding numbers, communications containing specific keywords and certain statistics, like a December 2023 request for the number of hormone replacement therapy treatments University Health Services offered.

The December request spurred a two-part Scorecard series titled “Den of Degeneracy,” written by senior Scorecard writer Robert Montoya.

Montoya emailed the Board of Regents’ official email address on Jan. 24, 2024, and, in almost 1,800 words, detailed the information he collected on on-campus gender-affirming care, Transcend and Aggie Roses, independent student organizations that champion transgender rights and feminist values, respectively. The nine-member, governor-appointed board oversees the A&M System and its 11 universities, including the College Station campus. Montoya asked 10 times whether certain details helped “secure the core educational mission of Texas A&M.” If not, he asked, “what are you going to do to return the university to its core educational mission?” 

The group’s executive assistant forwarded the inquiry to each regent’s individual email on Jan. 26, 2024. 

“When does our administration’s obsession with student sexual preferences and lifestyles finally stop?” Regent Mike Hernandez added to the email chain on Jan. 26, 2024, directly addressing Welsh. “Why is it any of their business and why do we allow the administration to continue to promote these liberal agendas that are clearly against the will of the Texas Legislature and of the vast majority of Texas taxpayers? This is the second time recently that this has come up and we were assured that this hold over [sic] nonsense from previous administrations is being eradicated.”

Hernandez then suggested having the Committee on Audit and Committee on Academic and Student Affairs, two regent-staffed groups, “make a plan to identify every misguided policy and practice like these and make sure they are eliminated ASAP.” 

This isn’t the first time Scorecard’s work has been used by regents to advocate for policy and personnel changes. Messages and emails released as part of an internal investigation into the failed hiring of Kathleen McElroy ‘81 as A&M journalism director in 2023 show regent skepticism to her appointment was directly linked to a June 15, 2023, Scorecard article about her experience with diversity initiatives. 

One regent, Sam Torn, emailed Regent Bill Mahomes the day after the article went live with a copy-pasted paragraph from the Scorecard story, saying, “This is a quote I would like explained prior to voting on [McElroy’s] tenure.” 

“I thought the purpose of us starting a journalism department was to get high-quality Aggie journalist[s] with conservative values into the market,” Regent Jay Graham wrote in a June 16, 2023 text to then-President M. Katherine Banks, Chancellor John Sharp, Regent David Baggett and another unidentified individual. “This won’t happen with someone like [McElroy] leading the department.” 

The national scandal rocked the university, ousted a president and had a million-dollar conclusion. The scandal also fueled the growth of the influential conservative alumni organization The Rudder Association, according to the organization’s president, Matt Poling ‘90.

By August 2024, a TRA-hosted leadership dinner attended by approximately 60 students — including Yell Leaders and notable student government officials — was headlined by influential conservative figures, including State Rep. Brian Harrison ‘04 (R-10); former Texas governor Rick Perry ‘72; Senate Education Committee Chair Brandon Creighton (R-4); and Brooke Rollins ‘94, whom President Donald Trump would nominate as agriculture secretary just months later. During a March meeting earlier that year, then-Commandant Patrick Michaelis and Sullivan, Scorecard’s publisher, headlined a separate meeting.

“I met former student Michael Sullvan last year, as one of our board members is a friend of his and invited him to speak at our annual meeting,” Poling said. “Super nice guy who loves A&M. Often brings to light interesting issues on our campus that we did not even know about.”

By this point, TRA was using Scorecard’s content as catalysts for its advocacy. 

As previously reported by The Battalion, an April 2024 email Poling sent to Sharp, Welsh and the regents cited Scorecard’s “Den of Degeneracy” series when listing over a dozen reasons why the university should end gender-affirming care on campus. A follow-up email from Clifford Hopewell, a TRA member and former president of the Texas Psychological Association, repeated the points and said it constituted “medical malpractice.” 

New records obtained by The Battalion show that Welsh tasked Nancy Fahrenwald, the associate vice president for University Health Services, with leading a formal response to Hopewell on May 8, 2024. 

“President may want us to refer students to the community for care,” Fahrenwald said in a text to a group chat with Matt Hoffman and Tiffany Skaggs, two top UHS administrators. “How would we do that?”

Hoffman, an assistant dean at the nursing school, said Bryan-College Station was “GREATLY lacking in local providers” — especially after he closed his private practice several years ago, where he offered similar services. 

“I hate to think of the financial burden, not to mention delay in care, that students would incur by having to go elsewhere,” Hoffman texted. “I know the both of you well enough that I feel comfortable sharing that the thought of having to send students away is heartbreaking to me.” 

Skaggs concurred. But by May 17, 2024, UHS officials were drafting the letter they used to announce the decision in July. The cut was in effect by August. 

In communications about Welsh’s permanent appointment to the presidency, Scorecard’s influence is particularly evident. A retired four-star general who served as Joint Chief of Staff over the U.S. Air Force, which at the time had 650,000 employees, he was called an “Obama appointee” and criticized by the website for his past comments supporting diversity initiatives. One former student emailed Welsh after reading a Scorecard story to say he was leading the university down a “WOKE path.” 

“You clearly don’t know me at all,” Welsh fired back in an email response. “I have no idea what ‘WOKE path’ even means and I’m certainly not leading anyone down one.”

Days before Welsh’s permanent appointment in December 2023, criticism ramped up. Regent John Bellinger emailed Regent Bob Albritton on Nov. 5, 2023, saying they “really need[ed] to vet this guy.” 

“From what I have heard along with this and other articles, I have many questions,” Bellinger wrote after an alum emailed him a Scorecard post. 

Baggett, having read a Scorecard story about Welsh’s goal of increasing the percentage of women in the military, sent the post’s link to the regents Torn, Bellinger and Brooks as well. 

The opposition wouldn’t work, however. The nine regents unanimously confirmed Welsh as the university’s 27th president on Dec. 12, 2023. However, a year later, Scorecard remains a consistent presence on campus. 

“It’s not in my decision process at all,” Welsh said. “As I said before, I do what’s best for Texas A&M. I don’t feel pressured, influenced by Texas Scorecard or anybody else who weighs in with an opinion. It’s an opinion. They rarely have all the facts.”