Editor’s note: The Interview took place via zoom on 3/3/22. Jeff is in the Republican primary runoff and will face Flower Mound Councilman Ben Bumgarner. Jeff is running for Texas House District 63. The election is on May 24th. Check out Jeff’s website at jeffyoungerfortexas.com
Garrit: Can you talk about who you are, your background, and why you’re running?
Jeff: So, I’ve been a Republican for most of my life. In my misspent youth, I even mixed it up with Antifa a little bit here in the US and in the UK back in the 80’s. But what happened for me was, about nine years ago, I had children. I was married to a woman named Anne Georgulas–she’s a pediatrician. I have twin boys and when my sons reached the age of three, she decided that she was going to transition James into a girl–this precipitated a divorce. Since then, I’ve spent around $1.2-1.3 million trying to stop her from chemically castrating my son. In the medical records, with the pediatrician that she took my son to–this pediatricians name is Jennifer Pope (she’s a pediatrician in Flower Mound, Texas)–they said they plan to put him on puberty blockers and, maybe, cross-sex hormones as early as the age of eight. So, I’ve been struggling really hard to stop this. I’m in the liberal Dallas County courts. I have one of the most liberal judges in Dallas County, and she’s repeatedly told me that I have to accept my son for who “she” is. Think about what I just said. It makes absolutely no sense. So, it became clear to me that we needed a law to take discretion away from judges. So, I went to the Texas Legislature for the last two sessions and led the charge to create a law against sex change surgeries and chemical castration on children in the state of Texas. I was able to get that through the Senate, but Speaker Dade Phelan, Stephanie Klick (who ran the Medical Committee), and Dustin Burrows (who runs the Calendar Committee) all conspired together to prevent my bill from being heard on the House floor–despite the fact that we were polling 100% with Republicans and 60% with Democrats. This was exclusively killed by Republican leadership–not Democrats. It became very clear to me that we need a better legislature, and I had an opportunity in my district because the representative in my–District 63–was moving on to the State Senate. Because of my political activism and the fact that I intended to run for office, my liberal Dallas County judge issued a gag order on me. That was intended to prevent me from running for office–it’s totally illegal. The gag order does not prohibit me from talking about my case, but it does prohibit me from talking about political topics. It says that I can’t talk about any issue around LGBT issues. It permanently bans me for life from all social media, all radio interviews, and all podcast interviews. It prevents me from ever writing a blog post or making a podcast. It’s a completely illegal order. The Texas Constitution has greater protections for free speech than the federal constitution. In Texas, there is never a reason to do prior restraint of speech. Texas does punish harshly for illegitimate and imprudent uses of speech, but there can never be a prior restraint in this state. So, I told my judge that, and I do have contempt for her personally for issuing such an order that would violate the rights of a Texas citizen. I have contempt for the order itself and that I have no intentions of ever following that order. If she disagrees with that, then she should hold me in contempt and give me the maximum criminal sentence in the county jail. I held up a writ of habeas corpus and told her that I will go immediately to the Jail library, and I will file with the Fifth Appeals Court a writ of habeas corpus. She knows that she would lose that. So, on July 31, she took my children away from me. She said the gag order was entered in the interest of the children by the court. So, if I’m not following the court order, then I’m not acting in the interest of the children. Therefore, she’s restricting my possession to only supervised visits. The supervised visits would cost $600 per session, they would last two hours, I would not be able to change my son out of a dress, and I would have to treat him like a girl. I refuse to do that. Now the judge is saying, because I’m refusing to visit my sons, that I’ve abandoned them. They’re setting me up to remove my parental rights involuntarily. So, that’s where we are in the case, and you can see why I’m running for office. It looks like we need a law to take away discretion from crazy judges like Mary Brown in the 301st District Court.
Garrit: What does your son think of all this?
Jeff: One of the things that happened in July that also precipitated the judge having a hearing…opposing counsel called an emergency hearing and put me on a temporary restraining order for a while. My son has to see a court appointed psychologist–her name is Susan Fletcher of Frisco. It’s not the Susan Fletcher that’s the county commissioner in Collin County. Susan Fletcher has refused to see my son as a boy. She would only see my son coming from my ex-wife’s house when James is dressed as a girl. She refused to ever see James when he was dressed as a boy coming from my home. Do you think that might indicate some kind of bias there? I got the children for the whole month of July. So, she was forced to take two appointments from James when he came from my home. He went in there and told her four times that he wants to be a boy, he wants to go to school as a boy, and that he gets embarrassed about this stuff. She never replied to him. So, he came to me and said, “I’d like to record me telling her.” I said, “Well, we’re not sneaky. Tell her that you’re going to record her and use your Apple Watch. You have a perfect right as a Texas citizen to do that.” So, he did and she immediately put my son out of the room and called CPS on me. This initiated my seventh CPS investigation, and they closed that case within 45 minutes. She then told the court that I had coerced my son to make those statements. She then conspired with opposing counsel to remove my lawyer from meetings so that my lawyers could not be present to tell what she was saying to the opposing counsel. Finally, she issued a report to the court which neglected to mention that my son asked to be a boy. When I tried to file to get her medical records on my son, she refused to give them to me–because she knew that it would show that my son asked to be a boy. I learned something new from that, which is, in Texas, parents do not have a right to their children’s medical or psychological records. The provider is allowed to assert a privilege of confidentiality against the parent. So, we need to change that. That’s another law that I intend to pursue when I get in the legislature. My son wants to be a boy, and he wants to go to school as a boy. The left wing counselors and courts are pushing my son to be a girl. I think it’s important to note that Dr. Susan Fletcher, the court appointed psychologist that’s pushing my son to be a girl and refuses to tell the court that my son told her he wants to be a boy, is an Abbott appointee.
Garrit: You touched on this issue earlier, but you have stated that you want to reform the family court system. What are some of the big issues with the family court system, and how do you plan to reform those issues?
Jeff: Alright. So, whenever there’s a divorce in family court there’s actually two cases. One case is the divorce–which deals only with property division. That is settled after the first court hearing. Then there’s something in Texas called a SAPCR. It means a “Suit Affecting the Parent-Child Relationship.” SAPCR suits are the most important lawsuits that are heard in the state of Texas. They determine the quality of life and the relationship a child will have with a parent. That’s way more important than any business dispute. In family court, there are very lengthy discovery processes and the family courts get backed up. It can take three years, I think that’s the average, to get to trial. During this time, one of the arrangements between the parents for seeing the child, it’s pretty obvious that whatever arrangements the judge puts in place a jury is likely to keep after four years. So, the judge creates a status quo by interlocutory orders. These are orders that the judge enters before a jury verdict. These interlocutory orders in family court are not appealable. Our statutes specifically deny the right of appeal on these interlocutory judgments. If I was in a business dispute, the interlocutory judgments would be appealable. If I was in a criminal court, it would be appealable. But on these super important questions about the relationship of a child to their parents, we do not have higher court oversight over Circuit Court Judges. They are abusing these, I can give you one excellent example beyond my case. So first of all, in my case, I now have supervised visitation just because I want to treat my boy like a boy, and I won’t follow an illegal gag order. I can’t appeal that. There’s another fella here in Denton County where a Republican judge gave the boyfriend of his ex wife custody of his children. That went to the Supreme Court, and it was eventually struck down, but these judges in family court abuse these interlocutory orders all the time. It’s a very big problem. There’s a second huge problem–a lot of people don’t understand the implications of this. The statutes in Texas require judges to always rule in the best interest of the child. That sounds perfectly reasonable, right? Here’s the problem. Who determines what’s in the best interest of the child? The best interest of a child is not an objective question–on some things it is. On child abuse or child neglect issues it is certainly objective. But what religion should the child be? Should the child be reared as a boy or a girl? These things are not so clear to the courts. Well, here’s what family court judges have determined. They have determined that the judge and the judge alone determines what is in the best interest of the child. A judge determines how you’re going to raise your kids. That’s how family courts work. Now, it’s illegal for family court judges to do this. The Texas Supreme Court has ruled three times on something called the Fit Parent Presumption. Fit parents are presumed to know the best interests of their children–not the courts. What happens when you have a dispute between parents over what’s in the best interests of the child? The court could probably fashion some combination of the mother and father’s ideas to come up with an equitable solution, but the court should never be able to impose on parents a view of what is in the best interests of their children. Let me give an example for my case. The judge has told me twice that I have to accept who my son is–that’s the way she puts it. I always tell her the same thing, “I do accept who my son is. My son is a boy.” But what she means is I have to accept that my son as transgender, and he’s not. So, the judge has usurped me of my rights as a fit parent and imposed on my family and on my sons a parental relationship that is not in the best interests of my child–as I have determined. If you talk to family court judges, you will find that all of them believe they have this authority–they don’t. So, what we need to do is simply modify our statutes to make it very clear to judges that the Fit Parent Presumption always applies and that judges do not determine the best interest of the child. We need to specify in the case of conflict between the parents how the judges are to resolve that. There’s a third issue, and this is an interesting one, we don’t have any exceptions for child support in Texas. I’m never going to pay doctors to do any transgender procedures on my son. I’m not going to pay for prescription drugs, I’m not paying for any transgender counseling, and I’m not certainly not paying for a transgender surgery. In Texas, that would mean that I’m failing to pay child support. That’s a state jail felony. We need exceptions to child support on matters of conscience like this. We also have the worst child support system in the United States. If you make below $30,000 a year, and you pay child support on two children, you literally cannot afford an apartment in Dallas, Texas. Our child support system doesn’t account for the income of both parents. It doesn’t account for time spent with the child. So, if a parent has the child 40% of the time they still pay the same amount of child support as somebody who never sees the children. We have serious problems and family code needs to be reformed. It’s probably one of the most important things the legislature needs to address. I put it right up there with border and election security because nothing’s more important than our kids. They are being abused by this terrible system.
Garrit: A few months ago, I spoke with David Lowe. He talked about possibly, I believe in reference to the judge in your case, impeaching or removing the judge. Is that something that members of the Texas House have any say over?
Jeff: I’m the one who suggested to him that we should do that. This is one of the big problems that we have, generally, with the legislature. There are four checks and balances on the judiciary in the state of Texas for Circuit Court judges. One check is that they’re elected. So, they are accountable to the electorate and can be voted out of office. Another check on their power is the Judicial Conduct Commission. The Judicial Conduct Commission isn’t even funded. They don’t even have enough money to buy court transcripts. When they get an accusation that a judge has committed a felony on the bench, they can’t actually investigate it. They can’t even afford to go after the evidence; they don’t have a budget. So, they’re useless. The third way is through appellate review, but I just told you that interlocutory judgments are not appealable in Family Court. So, the only thing left is impeachment by the legislature. So, I have a slate of judges that I have already put forward with the previous three challengers to Abbott. I’m going to put them to Abbott next, and I’m going to suggest that we impeach these judges. These are judges where we can prove they acted against the interests of children. So, I’m glad David Lowe is with me on that. When I talked to him about this, he was a little bit skeptical but it is good that he has come around on that.
Garrit: You talked about earlier how Dade Phelan, Dustin Burrows, and Stephanie Klick [sabotaged] your efforts to end gender modification on children. One of your priorities is to pass Republican Party Legislative Priorities. With that in mind, Dade Phelan and Dustin Burrows won their primaries. So, they’re going to be there next time. Stephanie Klick was forced into a runoff with David Lowe. Of course, there’s a whole swath of other moderate establishment Republicans in Austin. How confident are you that we’re actually going to be able to pass Republican Legislative Priorities come this next session?
Jeff: I’m not confident at all. The central problem with the way the House functions is the way in which we select the Speaker of the House. The process for selecting the Speaker of the House is always going to produce someone who has made deals with the Democrats. Dade Phelan has spent all of last year and all of this year doing fundraisers for Democrats. Why? Because he’s going to make deals with the Democrats. He’s going to say, “you don’t want legislation on LGBT issues, you don’t want legislation on juvenile justice, and you don’t want reforms to the child support system? I’ll block all that. In return, I want you to vote for me for Speaker of the House. So, now I can go to the Republicans. I’ve got all the Democrats voting in a block to support me. If you defect and you don’t get enough votes to keep me out, I’ll make sure that you don’t get a committee assignment and that none of your bills will be passed.” That’s how it works. The Republican Party of Texas has rules that says the Speaker of the House may not caucus with Democrats. The Republican Party of Texas says that they should take secret ballots when voting for the House Speaker in the Republican caucus. So, they’re violating all of these principles that the Republican Party has laid down. That’s why we keep getting these RINO leftist Speakers of the House. Last I checked, Dade Phelan has a 100% approval rating from the Human Rights Campaign–which is the largest LGBT lobby organization in America. He has a higher rating than the best Democrats on these issues. He is fully against the Republicans social agenda and yet he continues to get elected because he caucuses with Democrats.
Garrit: One piece of legislation that was touted as one of the great successes of this past legislature was the Heartbeat Bill. There are some other Republicans, particularly Bryan Slaton, who want to see the total abolition of abortion. Do you agree with that or do you think the Heartbeat Bill is as good as we’re going to get on issue of abortion?
Jeff: I want the total abolition of abortion. I want to create a contiguous landmass in the US in which abortion is illegal in all cases. I’ve already spoken to members of the legislature in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. I want to change the culture of the states so that we start cooperating in this way. If we have a contiguous landmass in the United States with an abortion free zone that doesn’t allow transgender rights and the gender mutilation of children, we can start pushing back on all kinds of federal issues in ways that we can’t do right now. Right now we have individual states challenging it–we need to challenge it in block. I want this abortion free idea to expand to the border states of Texas, and I want Texas to be the leader. I’m not joking about this. No exceptions. No abortion.
Garrit: On your website, you talk about protecting the institution of family. I want to get your thoughts on the culture war, the current culture, and how we can get our culture more focused on socially conservative principles and on the foundation of family.
Jeff: First of all, we have to recognize that the conservative thinkers from the 1960’s to the early 2000’s were wrong. The fundamental unit of liberty is not the individual. Individual liberty is not conservative. The founders of this country called the notion of individual liberty licentiousness. The smallest unit of social organization, and therefore the smallest unit of liberty, is the family. The Enlightenment philosophers were all wrong about this. They write about man in a state of nature. And from this imaginary state, they construct social contract theories about why people would have a government. From that, they derived what the just powers of government ought to be. They’re all wrong because man is never in a state of nature. Men are born into small communities called families. Families are small governments, and they ought to be monarchies. All public policy should be aimed at the preservation of the liberty of the family–not the individual. The way to do that is to reestablish the family in the laws. There’s really no mention of familiar rights in our laws. Families with children should pay fewer taxes. Families with children, a lot of children, should receive tax credits to the point where, if you have five children in the state of Texas and they’re all Texas citizens, we’ll buy you a minivan to get your kids to school. We should encourage family formation like this; we should also discourage divorce. In the end, we’re going to have to confront the problems of no fault divorce. Before 1972, divorces were based on fault and would only be given on the basis of fault. There were five faults: infidelity, abuse, neglect, denial of affection, and fraud. Absent any of those, you are expected to stay and raise your kids. We’re going to have to tell people that your individual aspirations, your individual notions of liberty, and your licentious ideas about your personal actualization are just going to have to be put on the backburner until your kids are raised. The other thing is we need to reform the divorce laws to say if there are children in a marriage and there’s no fault, then whoever walks away should walk away with the clothes on their back and nothing else–no car, no house, no kids, no bank account, none of the financial assets, and no business. America’s not a slave state, so you can walk away from your marriage with kids but you may take nothing with you when you go. We first of all need to respect the family as the centerpiece that needs to be supported. All money should flow to the family; it should not flow to individuals. We also need to think about privileging families. People who have children take advantage of our public schools. It’s very expensive to privately educate. For example, I live near Founders Academy Charter School. It’s very difficult. We need to make it easier for conservative families to leave the public school system. We need to make it easier for them to homeschool. If you want to homeschool your five kids, we have to give you a massive tax credit. That means your property tax bill is not only zero, but it might be negative and we pay you. We need to start privileging families at the law because the rearing and education of children is the most important function in our society. It’s done by families; it’s not done by the government. The families right now have no place in our laws.
Garrit: So, we’ve talked a lot about social issues. Are there any issues outside of the social and cultural ones that you plan to focus on if you do get elected?
Jeff: Well, I think the aim of all conservative policy is really only on social issues. I mean, we have free markets precisely because they promote a conservative society. You’re producing the kind of society where families flourish. We need border security precisely to preserve our traditional way of life in Texas. We’re the only state that has its own declaration of independence. Read that Declaration of Independence from Mexico–it says “you encouraged Anglo immigrants to come to Texas, and you guaranteed us a federal government and now you’ve turned it into a military dictatorship over our families.” It specifies “over our families.” So, I don’t buy this concept of social issues being separate from another. So, border security is important because our way of life will be destroyed if we don’t do it. How do I intend to do border security? For example, I want to create a border defense unit inside the Texas military department. I would like them to be police officers with arrest powers across the state. That means we’re probably going to have to be TCLEOSE certified through the DPS. I want them trained in drone operations, long range surveillance, and interdiction. I want them to arrest illegal immigrants and charge them under state laws–not federal laws. I want us to build work prisons along the Texas border, I want to put these illegal immigrants into these work prisons, and I want them to build the wall in exchange for an early release program to their countries of origin. I also want to give them an education program on how they can go back to their countries of origin and create political insurrections to change their own governments for the better so it can be more like the American government. I want to Americanize these prisoners. Have you talked to any other candidates with a plan? I want that funded through the Texas military department, and we have a way to do it. I even have a funding vehicle for it. We give the DPS funding for long range surveillance at the border. We’re just going to turn that into a permanent arrest force. We’re going to take it from DPS and put it under the Texas military department. That’s all we’re going to do.
Garrit: Do you have anything else you’d like to say as we conclude the interview?
Jeff: I’ll just reiterate the three points I was going to make at my presentation to the Young Conservatives at UNT. The first thing is that we have to come to grips with the fact that we cannot live with the left in this country. There’s no compromise with them, we can’t allow them in our communities, and we really can’t even have mixed communities anymore. They’re just too crazy. The only way that the United States can survive, the only way that Texas can remain in the union, is if we go back to a radical Federalist conception of the United States–as the founders originally intended it to be. We have to recognize that New York is going to have a different way of life and different kinds of laws than Texas. We don’t have to be uniform. New York may allow abortion–we won’t. They may allow transgenderism–we won’t. They may allow people to cross dress, teach, and exhibit these transvestite behaviors in front of children in public–we won’t. (That’ll be public indecency here). Federalism is nothing more or less than state nationalism. It means being a Texan as much as you are an American. This country is divided, and it’s either going to become all communist or it’s going to go back and become all constitutional again. This twilight area of tyranny that we’re living in is not sustainable. So, we have to recognize that our main political goal, as conservatives, is to reestablish federalism. The second thing is that we have to recognize conservatism cannot be what it was in the past. There’s nothing in the status quo left to conserve. They’ve reached the point now where not only can unions that can never produce children can get married with full benefits but they’re cutting the genitalia off of kids. They’re sterilizing children, and they’re teaching our children that because they’re white then they’re bad people. There’s nothing left in our current society to conserve. Conservatism has to be about restoring a previous constitutional and social order. Conservatism has to move from conserving to restoring–it’s a restoration project. The third point I would make demands a different kind of politics in the Republican Party. In particular, we have to recognize that we must use the politics of power. For example, Ken Paxton is a dedicated conservative, and he has a very modest view of what his powers are as Attorney General. We have to stop thinking that way. You get your principles after you win. The American founders didn’t follow the Constitution to win the Revolutionary War. We stole all those ships that formed our Navy, and we stole them from the British and from private companies. We conducted the only successful coastal raid up the Thames of the British Navy in its entire history. We sank their entire fleet in the Thames–that was John Paul Jones–and that was done completely with stolen ships. We didn’t follow the Constitution to beat the British. We got our principles after we won by force. We have to recognize that this restoration project will require us to use all means of power–even ones that are not limited government. If we acquire power in the government, no matter what, we must use that power against the left in all cases. The second thing we have to recognize is that all instruments of power have to be used: political, economic, social, technological, informational, psychological, propaganda, and counter propaganda. All instruments of power must be brought against the left until they are subjected fully to our will and do as we say. Then we can reassess, establish a Federalist order, and live peacefully together. If we fail in this restoration project, Texas cannot remain in the union. The United States cannot remain together, and we will descend into anarchy (at first) and war later. That is the dire situation that this country and this state is in. It’s time that Republicans face this squarely and prevent it.
