Photo: ShutterstockAs the GOP lurches toward authoritarianism, one of its key tactics is to suppress free thinking. What better place to start that effort than in the schools (and by extension school libraries)? It’s no surprise that schools have emerged as one of the key battlegrounds in the culture war.
But what’s less noticed is that in branding itself the education party, the GOP is actually the ignorance party. Republicans’ constant attacks on bogus controversies like critical race theory are just an excuse to dumb down the school curriculum. That’s because Republicans believe that schools are where children should be taught how to become Republicans if they are taught anything at all.
Two things are happening as Republicans go after schools. One is to focus on public schools and make sure that students learn a right-wing version of history. That involves eliminating groups that the right doesn’t like, like LGBTQ people. Florida’s Don’t Say Gay bill is an obvious example of erasing the visibility of non-approved groups from schools.
Then there are the bills that protect the tender emotions of white students. These so-called “divisive concepts” laws prohibit any discussion of race in the classroom that could cause students to feel “anguish, guilt or any other form of discomfort or stress.” In short, the bills are meant to denature history so that the ongoing quest for civil rights in the U.S. effectively ends with the Civil War.
Not content to remove current events and history from schools, Republicans have gone after other subjects as well. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) called for the removal of 54 math books because he claimed that they somehow slipped critical race theory into the multiplication tables.
Absent from any of this discussion is anything about academic standards or, you know, actually making students smarter. There’s a good reason for that. What Republicans are interested in isn’t making students smarter, it’s making them more Republican. Apparently, the way to do that is to keep them as ignorant as possible.
That’s where the second part of the plan comes in. Republicans have been pushing hard for “school choice,” which would use taxpayer money to fund private schools. This effort got a big boost from–you guessed it–the Supreme Court, which ruled in its last session that two anti-LGBTQ Christian schools in Maine were entitled to receive state funding.
As those schools proved, the curricula are not designed to educate but to indoctrinate. School choice options, like religious schools and, worse still, home schools, can be as political as they want. Indeed, a leading figure on the right–Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA–has started a chain of “anti-woke” academies based on “bedrock principles” that sound a lot like Trumpism.
Kirk has the perfect credentials for the job. He never went to college.
Category: Animals / Insects / Water Life / Plants / Nature
Tucker Carlson Should Be BANNED From TV For This Stochastic Terrorism
Read More HERE: https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news…
“TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): In recent weeks, we’ve learned a lot about what is actually happening inside children’s hospitals around the country. Most people trust children’s hospitals implicitly. They just didn’t know the details but thanks to the internet we now do. It turns out some of these hospitals are performing horrifying experiments on children: elective hysterectomies on minors, physical and chemical castration, things you think would be crimes but that apparently aren’t and that are going on in children’s hospitals in the United States.”
Christian teacher wins $95,000 settlement after misgendering student for “religious” reasons
Can anyone show me where in the bible Jesus said don’t be respectful or don’t be kind to others and never use the name / pronouns they prefer. Where in the bible did their god write only use male pronouns for beings with swing penises, something I highly doubt God the father he himself has? Really the supreme being in your religion who is super magical, has a penis? If not then you are using a preferred pronoun! Did god ever write be an asshole over changing someone’s name, or did he himself command it several times? This is just hate packaged as religion to get permission from the government to be an asshole and a jerk. How much more superior that teacher must feel after treating a kid so crudely. I hope everyone learns that they do not want to ever be like her. Somehow for the good of the students we must get teachers like her out of teaching. When did the rules of a job just not apply to those who claim religion? Are we a theocracy or a democracy? Again what is the big issue religiously with calling someone by a name they prefer, we use nick names for people all the time. I think this is part of the stereotype gender role that must be enforced by the fanatically religious. Woman’s clothes, men’s clothes, woman’s job, men’s job, woman’s names, men’s names, and so on. I don’t think clothing, jobs, names and so on really need to have a gender assignment. Is Kim a male or female name? Depends where you are. What about Sandy? Hugs
Photo: ShutterstockA teacher in Kansas was awarded $95,000 Wednesday to settle a lawsuit after she misgendered a student but claimed that she should be allowed to because of her religious beliefs.
The former math teacher at Fort Riley Middle School, Pamela Ricard, claimed it was a violation of her religious beliefs to use the preferred pronouns of a trans boy student and insisted on addressing him as “miss.”
She was reprimanded and suspended for three days for violating the bullying, diversity, and inclusion policies. She sued the school district.
The lawsuit alleged the Geary County School District denied Ricard’s request for a religious exemption to its policy that school staff use students’ preferred pronouns. The district also directed teachers to use a student’s legal name when communicating with parents, concealing the student’s pronoun preference, according to the suit.
“No school district should ever force teachers to willfully deceive parents or engage in any speech that violates their deeply held religious beliefs,” Tyson Langhofer, Ricard’s lawyer, told the AP.
The anti-LGBTQ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and the Kriegshauser Ney Law Group filed the case on Ricard’s behalf.
Addressing the student as “miss” was Ricard’s attempted workaround to the school’s insistence she address him by his preferred name.
According to the lawsuit, Ricard believed using “Miss (legal/enrolled last name)” respected the student while also upholding Ricard’s religious convictions, despite the fact that that was deliberately misgendering the boy and also singling him out for differing treatment from his classmates.
Ricard said she believes God assigns gender at birth, according to the lawsuit. The school’s policy requiring her to use language that doesn’t conform to a student’s biological sex “actively violates Ms. Ricard’s religious beliefs.”
The settlement came about after a federal judge ruled the lawsuit could proceed, citing its likely success based on her free exercise of religion claim. The judge also granted Ricard’s motion to halt the district’s parental communication policy. Soon after, the district school board formally revoked the guidance.
The judge also ruled, incongruously, that Picard could avoid using students’ preferred pronouns but should address them by their preferred names.
Picard retired in May. Along with the $95,000 award, she won a statement from the school district that she was in good standing without any disciplinary actions against her.
Greg Abbott’s anti-trans order has helped destroy Texas’ child abuse agency
Texas Governor Greg Abbott speaks to the media before the 2016 Republican National Committee debate. Photo: ShutterstockTexas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has helped destroy his state’s child abuse agency by forcing its workers to investigate the parents of transgender children. Its workers are now speaking out about the unethical secrecy, internal strife, and staff resignations caused by his order — and how it has interfered with the department’s ability to help victims of actual abuse.
In February, Abbott ordered the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) to investigate for child abuse any parents who allow their trans children to access gender-affirming medical care prescribed by their doctors. Abbott’s order was based on a non-binding opinion issued by the state’s Attorney General Ken Paxton earlier in the month calling gender-affirming health care a form of child abuse.
Paxton’s opinions and Abbott’s order both went against the best practices of pediatrics outlined by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and the American Psychological Association. These organizations consider gender-affirming medical care as necessary in many cases, noting it reduces mental anguish and suicide risk among trans youth.
Soon after issuing his order, several DFPS employees quit and some state attorneys refused to enforce it. The Texas Supreme Court ruled that neither Abbott nor Paxton had the authority to issue the order. Several families with trans children also filed a lawsuit against Abbott. The presiding district judge in the lawsuit issued a temporary restraining order, effectively stopping DFPS’s investigations while the court prepares to consider the order’s legality in December.
Department officials were told to hide their transphobic investigations from the public
In an August 25 amicus brief, 16 current and former DFPS workers spoke against Abbott’s order and in support of the suing parents.
The employees said that Abbott’s order represented a “radical departure” from the state’s legal definition of abuse, forcing DFPS employees to interfere with family medical decisions. In the past, DFPS workers had been taught to trust that medical professionals’ advised care — when given in good faith with fully informed consent — was in “the best interest of the child.” Not anymore.
DFPS employees were told that they had to investigate any trans-related cases, whether they thought there was reason to or not. Workers were also instructed not to comment on Abbott’s order on social media in order to appear neutral, the Texas Tribune reported.
“Everyone you need to stay off social media with any opinions,” one worker instructed employees. “We will be investigating these cases. This will get messy.”
Abbott issued his order without following the requirements for creating new departmental rules, as outlined in the state’s Administrative Procedure Act, the brief added. If allowed to go into effect, the order would “irreparably harm morale and effectiveness at DFPS, which are already in crisis,” the brief said.
Furthermore, DFPS employees were instructed “not to discuss these cases in emails, text messages, or any other form of writing that could provide a record of the investigation or ‘be pulled by media if requested,’” the brief added. This order essentially directed the DFPS to hide any paper trail of their persecution of trans-supportive families. As a result, the press, other government agencies, and even the families being investigated couldn’t examine the department’s work.
According to Randa Mulanax, an investigations supervisor who resigned over Abbott’s order, the instructions were an “unprecedented level of secrecy” that she’d never seen in her six years of working there. The instructions were particularly bizarre because department investigators regularly depend on other such documented notes to aid in their work.
The secrecy “shows consciousness of guilt by DFPS leadership that their actions are controversial, political, and based on a tenuous and novel interpretation of the law,” the brief stated.
Experienced DFPS workers quit over Abbott’s directive
In response to Abbott’s order, DFPS employee Emma Menchaca, expressed her disbelief in an email, writing, “This is Texas now? Because this is BS. Sorry not sorry. Really???”
Shaun Santiago, another DFPS employee, expressed outrage that workers would be forced to follow Abbott’s order. “We have trans workers here at DFPS, what kind of message are we sending to them?” he wrote in one email. In other emails, he said he’d resign rather than ever investigate a family over gender-affirming care, the Tribune reported.
The amicus brief also noted that nearly 2,300 DFPS employees have left the department this year alone, including ones who have departed over their disagreement with Abbott’s order. The departures have included a transgender investigator of child abuse as well as other “passionate workers who carry decades of experience and knowledge,” the Houston Chronicle noted. These resignations have made it hard for DFPS to perform its basic functions.
DFPS already had a high turnover rate with employees quitting over “safety concerns, lack of communication, low pay, problems with their bosses,” the Chronicle added. Many employees are required to oversee unhoused foster children despite having no training to do so. Others are assigned too many cases and pressured to close them before they’re properly investigated.
Shelby McCowen, a former DFPS child abuse investigator, said Abbott’s order was the “last straw” for many employees.
“There are a ton of social workers who do already identify with the LGBTQ community, me being one myself,” McCowen told the Chronicle. “It kind of feels like we’re turning on family members at this point.”
Child abuse in Texas is getting harder to investigate, thanks to Abbott
In the amicus brief, DFPS workers condemned Abbott’s order, saying, “[We] did not enter the child protection profession to remove children from loving homes with parents or guardians merely because they follow medical advice and a doctor’s care, only to place them in a foster care system that is riddled with actual abuse, sexual assault, and even sex trafficking.”
“The public statements of the Governor’s staff have made clear that the February 22 Directive was not motivated by any concern for the welfare of Texas’s vulnerable children but by the desire to create a political ‘wedge issue’ for electoral purposes,” the brief continued.
“DFPS [is] an agency that is already ‘failing children,’” the brief concluded. “[The department] cannot withstand the division, attrition, and harm to children and families wrought [by Abbott’s order].”
GOP Wisconsin governor candidate donated $250K to anti-LGBTQ & anti-abortion groups
When they tell you who they are believe them the first time! We need to understand how anti-democracy these republicans are. We need to understand how badly they crave the power to rule over everyone to force their Christian doctrine on to the public at large. We must defeat them at all costs if we want to have civil rights, a secular society, and a democracy of the people for the people. Hugs
Tim Michels Photo: ScreenshotTim Michels, the Republican candidate running for Wisconsin governor, donated $250,000 in 2020 to groups opposing abortion and all forms of contraception, and to anti-LGBTQ churches. The donations, made along with Michels’s wife Barbara through their foundation, The Timothy and Barbara Michels Family Foundation, represent 15 percent of the candidate’s total donations in 2020, according to a report by The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Along with donations totaling $175,000 to radical anti-abortion organizations in Wisconsin and New York, the Michels gave $10,000 to Miami’s Christ Fellowship, whose parishioners include former Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio. Christ Fellowship’s pastor, Omar Giritli, delivered an anti-transgender sermon in May, in which he attacked Caitlyn Jenner and preached that God believes transgender people are an “abomination” and a “rebellion to their creator.” A 2015 Huffington Post report detailed the church’s consistent anti-LGBTQ message.
Spring Creek Church in Pewaukee, Wisconsin also received a $50,000 donation from the couple. The church’s pastor, Chip Bernhard, has reportedly suggested that allowing transgender children to use bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity is “awful.”
“While the media is desperate to find lines of attack, their generosity helps support causes they believe in and funds cancer research and other Christian causes,” Michels’s campaign spokesperson Anna Kelly told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Michels, meanwhile, has tried to downplay social issues on the campaign trail. “The people who feel the Democratic party has left them for social issues, you are now going to have a governor that’s going to stand up for the hard-working, tax-paying, law-abiding citizens of Wisconsin,” he said early last month after winning the Republican primary.
Michels is running to unseat incumbent Governor Tony Evers (D).
“Tim Michels will stop at nothing to push his radical agenda in order to limit the rights of LGBTQ Wisconsinites and those seeking an abortion,” Democratic Party spokesperson Hannah Menchhoff said. “If elected, Tim Michels will implement radical policies that are out of touch with the majority of Wisconsinites.”
Right-wing Troll Causes Bomb Threat at Children’s Hospital
Read more HERE: https://www.mediamatters.org/libs-tik…
“Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichik pledged to redouble her attacks on hospitals providing trans people with health care, she wrote in a rant on her Substack in which she called gender-affirming care “mutilating the body.”
Raichik’s recent efforts against Boston Children’s Hospital, Children’s National Hospital in D.C., and others have led to violent threats against health care providers and at least one request for help from law enforcement. Libs of TikTok has fallen silent on Twitter for the first time in weeks as a result of a suspension for violation of the platform’s rules against hateful conduct.
The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz reported on Sunday that Libs of Tik Tok had earned a seven-day suspension. A Twitter spokesperson confirmed the suspension in a statement to Media Matters, saying that “we took enforcement action against the account … for violating our hateful conduct policy. The account was placed in read-only mode for seven days.”
51% Of FL 10th Graders Fail English Proficiency Exam
The Florida Phoenix reports:
In Florida’s public schools, the 10th grade statewide English Language Arts assessment has been a crucial exam — kids have to pass it to get a standard high school diploma. But the 2022 spring exam results show that fewer than half of Florida’s 10th graders passed the ELA exam, troubling because students will be getting closer to entering the workforce or going to college.
Overall, 49 percent of 10th graders got a passing score of at least 3 on the spring ELA exam. In total, 202,900 10th graders took the exam, according to data from the Florida Department of Education. The school district with the lowest percent of passing ELA scores in 2022 was Jefferson County, located in North Florida, with only 15 percent of 10th graders passing the exam.
Read the full article. A score of 4 or 5 is required to show “proficiency” in reading and writing. Of note, the above-cited Jefferson County, which is majority white, is locally famous for having no traffic signals.
Good thing DeSantis is recruiting unqualified vets as teachers. That’ll fix the problem!
zhera carswell • 5 minutes ago
“You can’t read history books if you can’t read!”
Sister_Bertrille carswell • 2 hours ago
The bad teachers with no other options are staying while the good teachers are leaving.
friendlynerd carswell • 2 hours ago
They don’t want to fix the problem, having a dumb electorate helps them out.
Galvestonian carswell • 2 hours ago
Naaaaw, he’s pushing for more future Republican voters.
This is how you create republican voters
Nic Peterson Bob_Barnes • 2 hours ago
Keep them dumb, poor, pregnant and steeped in hate for anyone that doesn’t look like them.
another_steve S_E_P • 2 hours ago
DeVos was a plant of the Religious Right acting through their puppet, Trump. Her goal was to destroy the public education system in America.
Much like the goal of another Trump hack — Louis DeJoy — is (“is,” because much to America’s peril he’s still in place) to destroy the U.S. Postal Service.
Adam Schmidt • 2 hours ago • edited
There hasn’t been a Democrat as Governor of Florida in over 20 years… this is entirely on Republicans and demonstrates, as Republican leadership tends to do over and over again, that Republicans cannot lead effectively. Republican led states tend to fail in every category whether it’s education, health, employment, average pay, or any other measurement you choose.
crewman • 2 hours ago • edited
DeSantis’ America: dumb, obedient (or else!) workers, serving a ruling class. In so many ways, that’s what the Confederates fought for.
JustDucky • 2 hours ago • edited
“Half of those kids can still read? Know what’ll fix that? Uncertified cops/veterans/veteran’s spouses teaching kids!”
The whole point.
Make them uneducated as possible and they’ll be at your beck and call.
Sister_Bertrille Ninja0980 • 2 hours ago
Yes. They won’t have the reasoning skills to see through their bullshit.
Palin= electile dysfunction • 2 hours ago
But the drag queens reading to kids are the real problem.
Removing books from the libraries and barring drag queens story time do not help either.
Texas School Board Reviewing Bible
Marjorie Taylor Greene tweets image of severed hand to somehow prove Joe Biden hates women
This post shows some of the right wing talking points and then refutes them with the facts. It shows how one anti-trans activest makes stuff up that when they are checked out it shows he totally lied. But his lies are used by the right whing hate media to further the misinformation and rile up anger at the LGBTQ+. These people don’t care what they are spewing is lies and misinformation, they hate / don’t under the trans people and think anything done to stop people from transitioning is a good thing. Hugs
President Joe Biden/Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Photo: Shutterstock/ScreenshotRep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is continuing to use extreme transphobia to attack President Joe Biden, this time sharing misinformation claiming that “children’s hospitals across the country” are performing gender affirming genital surgeries on minors as well as an image of what appears to be a severed hand.
Biden tweeted over the weekend about what Democrats are going to do if they win in the midterm elections.
“We’ll codify Roe v. Wade, protecting a woman’s right to choose,” he wrote. “We’ll ban assault weapons, saving countless lives. We’ll protect voting rights.”
Biden’s invocation of women’s rights set Greene off.
“Joe says get an abortion instead of be a mother,” she responded. “Joe wants to take away guns so women can’t protect themselves.”
She included a tweet from unhinged Canadian anti-trans activist Chris Elston. Elston spent part of 2020 and 2021 putting up a billboard and wearing a sandwich sign that said “I (heart) J.K. Rowling” and harassing women who he perceived as too supportive of trans rights.
Elston’s message claimed that “children’s hospitals across the country” are performing genital surgeries on trans minors, which is not true. Gender affirming surgery is not performed on minors.
He also wrote that the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) “now recommends” genital surgeries “for 17-year-old girls.” The WPATH standards of care actually say, “Genital surgery should not be carried out until patients reach the legal age of majority to give consent for medical procedures in a given country” and suggests a 12-month waiting period.
Elston shared images of what appears to be a cadaver’s arm and claimed that they showed “tissue harvesting for construction of a phallus.” Tissue used in phalloplasty comes from the living tissue of the person who the procedure is performed on, not corpses.
“And Mr. 81M votes lies about voting rights & wants girls under 18 to be able to do this with your tax dollars,” Greene wrote, even though that is not Biden’s position on the issue. Biden has never called for the standards of care for gender affirming care to be changed and has defended gender affirming care as a decision to be made by patients, their families, and their doctors.
“Joe hates women,” she concluded.
The idea that children’s hospitals are performing gender affirming surgeries on young children has gained traction on the far-right this past month, leading to harassment and death threats against pediatricians working at children’s hospitals.
The claim was rated “false” by Politifact.
But Greene apparently believes that this is happening so she introduced a bill that would ban gender affirming care for minors that included a long list of surgeries, even though they are not performed on minors. Her bill would go far beyond banning surgery and would ban puberty blockers, reversible medications that give trans youth more time to figure out their identities before the permanent effects of puberty appear. Puberty blockers have been shown to significantly reduce lifelong suicide risk.
Her law would also ban certain health care plans from covering gender affirming care for adults and ban medical schools from teaching about gender affirming care for transgender people.
Right before she introduced her bill, Greene was on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show claiming that her bill would stop “horrific ‘sex change’ genital surgeries” on minors.
This is the second time this week that Greene has attacked Biden over his supposed support for gender affirming genital surgeries for minors. Yesterday, Greene claimed that Biden “supports castrating boys with so called ‘gender affirming care’ before they are even old enough to vote,” which is not true.
“Yes there is an awakening coming,” she wrote. “We will STOP your sick & perverse child abuse.”
4chan trolls target Trevor Project suicide hotline in hopes LGBTQ kids would die
That hateful woman running the Libs of TikTok, Chaya Raichik, is out to get LGBTQ+ kids killed. What is wrong with these people? What is wrong with these trolls, who are clogging up a suicide help line? What is noble or good about stopping kids from getting help not to end their lives? I think it is time that law authorities step in and do something about this stuff. But in the areas that these people do their hate work law enforcement seems more than happy with the harassment and violence against the LGBTQ+. Hugs
Photo: ShutterstockAnti-LGBTQ users on 4chan targeted the Trevor Projects suicide prevention services on Tuesday in an effort to prevent LGBTQ youth from getting help.
In a post on the notorious platform’s “Politically Incorrect” imageboard, an anonymous user posted a plan to bog down the nonprofit organization’s crisis hotline and online chats with fake requests for help. The goal was to “f**k up the queue so sodomites and f*gs commit suicide,” to “demoralize the therapists,” and “waste as much of their resources as possible.”
According to The Daily Dot, the original thread appears to have been deleted, but it’s unclear whether it was removed by 4chan or the original poster. A second thread has been archived and was still visible on the site as of Tuesday evening.
Alex Kaplan, a senior researcher at progressive media watchdog org Media Matters for America, posted screenshots of the original post and responses from trolls sharing screenshots of their chats with Trevor Project councilors.
One 4chan user posted a screenshot from the Trevor Project’s online crisis chat saying that “wait times to reach a counselor are higher than usual.”
“The act of attacking a crisis services line intended to prevent suicide among young people is egregious,” the Trevor Project said in a statement. “Our crisis counselors work around the clock to be there for LGBTQ youth who feel like they have nowhere to turn, and it’s harrowing that anybody would attempt to compromise our lifeline or encourage suicide.”
“LGBTQ youth are at significantly increased risk for suicide—not because of anything inherent about their identities, but because of the stigma, bullying, violence, and discrimination that they face,” the Trevor Project said. “The incident of users on 4chan who maliciously planned to overtake our crisis lines today is exactly the kind of mistreatment and abuse that contributes to heightened suicide risk. Alarmingly, our research has found that every 45 seconds, an LGBTQ young person attempts suicide. Every second counts when you work in suicide prevention, and we strongly condemn this intent to obstruct our lines and create even more barriers for LGBTQ people who rely on our help. We are working diligently in the face of this disruption to protect our counselors and those youth who need us.”
The Trevor Project became a target of far-right trolls earlier this year when Chaya Raichik, who runs the influential anti-LGBTQ Twitter account “Libs of TikTok,” called the non-profit “a grooming organization” in a tweet that was later deleted. Other anti-LGBTQ organizations and pundits like Moms for Liberty and Lauren Chen followed suit, equating the Trevor Project’s outreach to LGBTQ teens in crisis with giving abusers access to children.
Scottie's Playtime 