U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert will probably try to spin her latest embarrassing incident as a culture-war victory against the “elitist” liberals.
The framing is easy: Those snobby stiffs in Denver don’t know how to cut loose and have a good time if they can’t tolerate someone having a little fun at a live performance described as a “lusty riot” in The Denver Post. Oh, and clearly Boebert was targeted for being a Republican by patrons who complained about her behavior, right?
But the true arc running through the many Boebert scandals — whether they are performative or genuine – is her astounding sense of entitlement. The tired trope of politicians throwing their titles around to excuse bad behavior is ironically true of Boebert, who took office claiming to be an outsider who was just an everyday Coloradan trying to raise her family in God’s Country.
Boebert didn’t care if she ruined the musical “Beetlejuice” playing at the Buell Theatre for anyone else, and she certainly didn’t care if the pregnant woman sitting behind her had to breathe her second-hand smoke from a vape pen. Boebert denies that she was vaping, although she did admit to taking photos of the live performance.
The woman sitting directly behind Boebert shared her story with The Post on the condition of anonymity out of fear that there would be backlash from the congresswoman and her supporters. She provided me with the receipt for her tickets and a photo from the event that shows Boebert seated in front of her.
The woman described the evening as surreal. She didn’t even recognize Boebert as Colorado’s congresswoman who represents the Western Slope and southern Colorado.
“These people in front of us were outrageous. I’ve never seen anyone act like that before,” the woman, who lives in Denver and is in her 30s, said. It wasn’t until later during the play that someone informed her that the misbehaving theatergoer was, in fact, Boebert, a member of Congress.
The woman says Boebert took multiple long videos during the first half of the performance. When she asked Boebert to stop vaping, the congresswoman simply said “no,” the woman said. Boebert was also kissing the man she was with, and singing along loudly with her hands in the air, the woman said.
“At intermission, I asked, ‘Are there any other seats available? Can we sit somewhere else?’” the woman said. “The usher said, ‘You’re not the first complaint we had.’ ”
When the woman returned with her husband to their seats, she said Boebert called her a “sad and miserable person.”
“The guy she was with offered to buy me and my husband cocktails. I’m pregnant!” she said.
But the behavior continued, with Boebert using her phone to record several segments of the second half of the show.
The rest of the story is captured on surveillance video showing Boebert and an unidentified man getting ushered out of the Buell as the performance is going on.
Boebert’s staff issued a tongue-in-cheek statement about the ordeal: “I can confirm the stunning and salacious rumors: in her personal time, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert is indeed a supporter of the performing arts (gasp!) and, to the dismay of a select few, enthusiastically enjoyed a weekend performance of ‘Beetlejuice.’ ”
A report from the staff of Denver Arts & Venues says three people complained at intermission and included this tidbit about what Boebert said as she left the building: “stuff like ‘do you know who I am,’ ‘I am on the board’ (and) ‘I will be contacting the mayor.’ ”
Boebert is not on the board of Denver’s Center for the Performing Arts and if she were, I doubt she would support the DCPA’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. I’m more than a little skeptical that Denver’s new mayor would call in a favor for a family member acting so rudely at a play, let alone Boebert.
Boebert’s behavior is what voters would expect from a power-hungry politician, convinced that their own self-worth puts their needs and desires above others. It’s a caricature, but hardly anyone from Congress behaves that way — even though there’s ample evidence of some of vanity and conceit — because the public backlash is so great.
It’s a pattern of behavior from Boebert who doesn’t seem to think rules and laws apply to her.
Whether it’s health and safety rules in her now-closed restaurant in Rifle, refusing to show up to court dates, and other dramas unfolding with her family and friends in Garfield County, there is no question that Boebert, whose ex-husband made nearly a million dollars in two years as an oil and gas consultant before Boebert filed for divorce this year, considers herself beyond reproach.
The pattern is so familiar that perhaps the most shocking part of this story is that Boebert supports the performing arts.
As for the performance, our source tells me: “It was so wonderful. I wish I would have been able to enjoy the first half as much… ”
I want to thank Barry for introducing me to the subject of neurodivergent people / children and the mistreatment they suffer. I have been on the lookout for stories about the abuse this community suffers ever since. I had no idea of it until Barry explained it, just as fundamentalist religious leaders attack the LGBTQIA they are also targeting neurodivergent kids / people claiming they have demons in them. Damn, there is no limit to the harm these people will cause promoting the idea that their god is perfect and wouldn’t create anyone different from the accepted norms. Hugs.
A pastor in Richland is facing intense backlash for comments he made during a sermon last week at Beulah Church.
Published: Sep. 12, 2023 at 7:22 PM CDT|Updated: Sep. 12, 2023 at 7:24 PM CDT
On Wednesday, September 6, Beulah Church in Richland, Mo., held a live-streamed sermon hosted by Pastor Rick Morrow. In the sermon, Morrow made comments that caused a massive backlash in the Richland community and across the country.
In the sermon, he said, in part, “Well, either the devil has attacked [children with autism], he’s brought this infirmity upon them, he’s got them, or God doesn’t like them that much, and he made them that way…my God doesn’t make junk. Quit putting a Band-Aid on it and saying, ‘Oh, it’ll be okay. We just need to treat this or treat that.’ How about you just cast the demon out and then treat all the problems?”
The comments caused an uproar, and none more so for parents like Casey Cox and Erica Hennenberg. Their daughters, Romey and Memphis, love the tire swing outside, love arts and crafts, and are on the autism spectrum.
Morrow says while he understands the frustration, he’s upset that people didn’t understand the meaning behind the comments.
In defense of the comments, Morrow said
“By junk, I met autism, that condition, the illness or the neurodivergence,” said Morrow. “All of us have issues; all of us have problems. All of us have conditions. All of us have sicknesses and diseases and illnesses. And I just refuse to blame God for those things. ”
He had said that autism is born from demonic influence, defending the statement by saying,
“Yes, either in or around on, somehow it’s affecting,” said Morrow. “And when I say a demon, you people want to, like I said, they want to get that Hollywood description of what a demon is this nasty, so ugly and, and that’s not the case, it’s just an evil presence. It’s just the presence of evil.”
What’s more is that in addition to being a pastor, Morrow was on the board of Stoutland schools until resigning from his position amidst the backlash.
KY3 reached out to Stoutland Schools. It responded with this statement:
“The District is aware that a member of the Board of Education, in a setting and capacity outside of his board member role, made comments that have been interpreted as derogatory toward individuals with certain disabilities. One member of the Board of Education does not speak for the Board of Education as a whole, nor the District itself. The District is steadfast in its compliance with both the requirements of and the spirit of non-discrimination laws and our own Board-adopted policies regarding the same. Our school district welcomes students of all backgrounds, regardless of ability, and provides educational opportunities and services to each and everyone with commitment and care. I can confirm that the District has received a letter of resignation from the Board member, which will be presented to the board as a whole at the next meeting.”
For parents like Cox and Hennenberg who are worried about an Autism diagnosis or for people who are interested in learning more about the condition, Cox founded a non-profit called Show-Me Romey, named after her daughter Romey. They say the main focus of the group is to educate people in all areas on what autism is and where it comes from
“We can’t have autism acceptance until we have autism awareness,” said Cox. “And autism awareness is education.”
Cox and Hennenberg say people who make blanket statements about autism don’t understand the condition or the families it impacts.
Autistic children, special needs children, they are different, but they are not less,” said Hennengerg. “They are different, not less.”
Republican Senator John Kennedy spoke at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on book bans and he also read some similar passages aloud from the books “All Boys Aren’t Blue” and “Genderqueer”. Kennedy then asks Illinois Secretary Of State Alexi Giannoulias whether he thinks librarians should be the only ones who have oversight of whether kids have access to these types of books.
I thought I had posted this, but I can’t find it and I hurt so badly both emotionally and physically, I am just going to do it again. This guy is a complete scammer. His whole graft before he was hired to be a shield for DeathSantis was to hock ivermectin as a cure for covid via over the internet consultation, where he charged hundreds of dollars before giving the prescription. He was part of the “Front Line Doctors” group run by the woman that claimed that diseases were caused by demon seed, meaning demon sperm, being put in people. This guy was hired by DeathSantis to back up his anti-mask anti-vaccine screed but then DeathSantis insisted a major state run university also hire him making his yearly salary almost $600,000 a year. So it is no wonder he is willing to parrot and claim any political thing DeathSantis wants. And just to be clear, Florida had more deaths from Covid by far than states that did push masking and vaccines, but DeathSantis did not care how many people died, he wanted the state to have tourist revenue.
To be clear, this jerk is one that Tildeb used to claim that gender affirming care for youth is harmful. And others believe and follow Tildeb as if he is a sincere truth telling person. In fact, he is a lying anti-trans bigot that misinforms and spreads lies about trans people and gender affirming medical care. I have no tolerance for such people because they cause harm to both kids and adults that identify as a different gender / sex than assigned at birth. Such people deny advances in medical science and want the world to return to a past when this issue was not discussed or addressed medically. Hugs
While speaking at a Thursday news conference for Gov. Ron DeSantis in Jacksonville, Florida, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, that state’s surgeon general, advised people to steer clear of the updated booster vaccine for COVID-19. “There’s a new vaccine that’s coming around the corner, a new mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, and there’s essentially no evidence for it,” Ladapo said during the news conference, according to local news outlets.
“There’s been no clinical trial done in human beings showing that it benefits people” he said. “There’s been no clinical trial showing that it is a safe product for people — and not only that, but then there are a lot of red flags.” Ladapo warned that the updated vaccines “actually cause cardiac injury in many people.” He l urged Floridians to make their own decisions based on their particular “resonance of truth,” rather than on “very educated people telling you what you should think.”
I hope there’s an enormous class-action lawsuit against him and DeSantis sometime in the future, brought by the relatives of people who should have gotten the booster but didn’t, because this asshole said “Don’t listen to subject matter experts.”
He urged Floridians to make their own decisions based on their particular “resonance of truth,” rather than on “very educated people telling you what you should think.”
Or you could listen to the ravings of a complete lunatic liar
Advising the public to adopt harmful behaviour based on zero scientific evidence. In other words, a charlatan. Should be arrested and jailed for public endangerment.
At Tuesday’s council meeting, Prattville residents affiliated with Clean Up Alabama, which began as Clean Up Prattville, pleaded with the council that their solutions were a “common sense” approach to inappropriate materials for minors.
But the local goals are just one part of a three-prong plan that Clean Up Alabama has to push the issue across the state, according to meeting minutes included in an email to subscribers.
The minutes detailed the group’s local goals, as well as its goals with the Alabama Public Library Service, primarily to dissociate from the American Library Association. Gov. Kay Ivey has sent a letter to APLS Director Dr. Nancy Pack expressing concerns that closely follow Clean-Up Alabama’s push over LGBTQ materials in library spaces intended for minors.
But the meeting also included three state legislative goals, which go much further than simply severing any ties with the ALA or asking librarians to move books to an adult section.
Here’s what the group plans to do:
1. “Amend the Anti-Obscenity Law that exempts public libraries from criminal punishment when it comes to the distribution of material harmful to minors.”
Under Section 13A-12-200.5 of the Code of Alabama, it is a misdemeanor “for any person to knowingly or recklessly distribute to a minor, possess with intent to distribute to a minor, or offer or agree to distribute to a minor any material which is harmful to minors.” The section does not classify which level of misdemeanor that would be, but the charge would carry a fine of up to $10,000 and up to one year in county jail.
Currently, “material harmful to minors” is defined under the code to mean:
“a. The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the material, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest of minors; and
“b. Material that depicts or describes sexual conduct [this will come into play later], breast nudity or genital nudity, in a way which is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community with respect to what is suitable for minors; and
“c. A reasonable person would find that the material, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors.”
However, Section 13A-12-200.10 specifically exempts “libraries and their employees or agents” from the criminal provisions of the act.
On Aug. 16, Clean Up Alabama posted on X (formerly Twitter) that this rule could allow public libraries to give sex toys to children without criminal punishment.
“Did you know that Alabama library employees can legally display sex toys, and possibly give them to kids without prosecution?” The post says.
At this time, APR has not heard any reports of any public libraries displaying sex toys for adults or children.
2. “Possibly add the libraries onto current law passed pertaining to woke ideologies in schools; and increase from 5th grade to 12th grade like Florida was able to do”
This appears to be in reference to Alabama’s version of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which Alabama passed in the 2022 session in a bill sponsored by House Majority Leader Scott Stadthagen, R-Hartselle. The bill originally only dealt with school bathrooms, requiring students to use the bathroom that aligned with their birth sex.
In a last-minute amendment by Sen Shay Shelnutt, R-Trussville, the bill suddenly became much more, barring instructors from leading “classroom discussion or classroom instruction regarding sexual orientation or gender identity in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”
In the last session, Rep. Mack Butler, R-Gadsden, filed a bill to expand that to the eighth grade.
While Clean-Up Alabama suggests extending that to public libraries, it is not clear what that language would be and whether it would apply to the content of books or instructional programs held at the library,
3. “Considering HB401 that never made it out of committee and assure the language in it matches the harmful materials we have found in the libraries and that it includes public libraries.”
HB401 drew a lot of attention last session as it would have prohibited drag performances in public spaces where minors may be present—and some argued the language was so vague it could have applied to any transgender person in a public space.
The bill led to a massive pushback from the LGBTQ community with a march of hundreds on the state capitol.
Stadthagen has vowed to bring the bill back in the next session, and in the same conversation, praised Clean Up Prattville’s fight against LGBTQ books in the library.
Without an understanding of how that law was written, one might be confused exactly what Clean Up Alabama’s plan is to co-opt libraries into the law.
The way HB401 was written, it added drag performances into the definition of “sexual conduct,” which itself is a term included in the definition of “harmful to minors.” (Re-read that section earlier in this article to see how it plays into the code).
When Clean up Alabama says they want to ensure the language “matches the harmful materials we have found in the libraries,” it seems apparent that they mean adding LGBTQ+ content to the definition of “sexual conduct,” thereby changing the meaning of the definition of “harmful to minors” to include LGBTQ+ content.
If Clean Up Alabama were to succeed in these goals, the combination could result in librarians facing up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $10,000 just for having a book like “The Pronoun Book” on the shelf.
Under the current law, the first prong of the three-prong definition of material harmful to minors would rule out books like The Pronoun Book from ever being considered “harmful to minors,” as the word “prurient” is defined as “marked by or arousing an immoderate or unwholesome interest or desire.” But HB401 as it was written last year would break apart those three prongs; instead of requiring content to meet all three elements to qualify as “harmful to minors,” the law would only require the content to meet any one of the three prongs.
Might the plan gain support?
At least four state representatives have been supportive of Clean Up Alabama publicly in some manner: Rep. Susan Dubose, R-Hoover, has begun beating the drum for the group’s goal to keep the ALA from influencing Alabama libraries in any way. Fellow first-term state representatives Rick Rehm, R-Dothan, and Bill Lamb, R-Tuscaloosa, joined Dubose in support of the group as it listed its grievances at last month’s meeting of the APLS.
Stadthagen, as aforementioned, has given his stamp of approval to the efforts of the group.
Ernie Yarbrough, R-Trinity, worked in the last session with DJ Parten, a member of Clean Up Alabama, who wrote the failed legislation that would have allowed abortive women to be charged with homicide.
And Ivey’s letter to Pack references the Prattville books challenged by the group, although her letter shares concern about APLS policies and nothing comparable to this state legislative plan.
Finding information about homosexuality from a public library saved my life. I was eight years old and the only help a librarian gave me was to teach me how to use the main card catalog. I told her I wanted to look up dinosaurs. Librarians are so gullible when you mention dinosaurs…
This dinosaur learned (when he was going to SF State in the 60’s) that the 4th floor library men’s room was generally like a gay men’s meet and greet most evenings. But since it was in a library everyone kept it quiet.
Correct, you’d think there would be some sort of pushback from the opposition party aka the Dems on these bills coming forward. Where are they? Even AL dems are silent.
We have no clear message on this? On jailing librarians? No opposite group to the Moms for Liberty group? How about Moms for Libraries? NOTHING from our party?????
These fascists will continue to move forward when there is no opposition to their authoritarian rule.
They desperately need us to disappear. Without their power of the closet they have come to realize they don’t control the narrative any longer. I remember when I was young knowing that two men could be thrown in jail for doing stuff. (I didn’t know what stuff was, but why should a child know these things) I also knew that there was a place where some boys were sent when they couldn’t stop acting like a sissy. I knew where it was and I knew that ECT was involved. They have lost an enormous amount of power and they see their own children rejecting their hate and their religion. So they are having a temper tantrum because that’s all they know.
That’s the end result they want. But it’s a slippery slope, and on the way, they will want to jail anyone who advocates for homosexuality, which will then be interpreted as anyone who merely mentions it, and that will include any media mention of LBGTs. Eventually, they will want a complete prohibition on the certain words, such as gay, lesbian, and will prohibit anyone from stating that they are so. They want it back like the 1950s, when it was not just a taboo, but a criminal sanction.
I’ll answer it anyway: It’s a white supremacist theocratically-aligned autocracy, imposed by a small minority of citizens with power far in excess of what their numbers normally would allow in a democratic republic.
A small group of very vocal motivated fundamentalist religious right wing bigots who want desperately to return to 1950 are filing all these book challenges. Again notice the damage one of the main complainers wrote. “Damaged souls”! They don’t care about the rights of other parents, just forcing their religious moral views on everyone. These are public schools, not private Christian schools, but in Florida the fundamental religious bigots have taken over ruling as a majority when they are really a minority. Hugs.
Here are five books removed from schools and the reasons why they were taken off the shelves.
The Florida Department of Education released a list of all the books removed from school library shelves last year, and some of the titles might be surprising.
In total, Florida saw 386 book removals from 1,218 total objections last year, according to the list. Clay County had by far the most removals with 177 books removed. Martin County removed the second most books in the state with 98 books removed, followed by Manatee County in third with 25 books removed.
Books like “And Tango Makes Three,” Toni Morisson’s “The Bluest Eye,” and “Push” by Sapphire have made headlines for their removal, as parents have objected to their content for violating the Parental Rights in Education act, also known as “Don’t Say Gay,” or for containing material that is considered “sexual content” under House Bill 1069.
But also removed from school libraries, according to the list, are a book about a mammal from Asia and one of the most famous artists of all time.
Here are five books removed from schools and the reasons why they were taken off the shelves:
Ready Player One
“Ready Player One” was removed from all Clay County School District libraries, according to a spreadsheet from the district, after it was reviewed by a committee of parents, librarians and principals.
The science fiction novel by Ernest Cline, published in 2011, was removed from K-12 shelves for mentioning prostitution, drugs and using profane language, according to the request form.
The book’s film adaptation, released in 2018 and rated PG-13, was directed by Steven Spielberg and nominated for an Academy Award.
The requester, a man affiliated with “No Left Turn in Education,” wrote his reasoning for flagging the book was to “PROTECT CHILDREN!! (sic)”
The requester said the book included “victimhood=CRT,” on page 320; prostitution references; drugs and pills on page 270; and profanity, including the F-word.
Under the question for what the requester believes will be the result of a student reading the material, the man wrote “Damaged Souls.”
Christian, the Hugging Lion
Manatee County officials also removed “Christian, the Hugging Lion” by Justin Richardson, a 32-page children’s book about two men who raise a lion named Christian in a London apartment. When Christian becomes too big, the two men release the lion into the wild in Africa. When the men go to visit Christian in Africa, they find that he remembers them. The book is based on a true story.
The district cited The Parental Rights in Education Act as the reason for removing the book from district libraries. The Parental Rights in Education Act has a line prohibiting the discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in classrooms.
While the two men, John and Ace, lived together in London and raised Christian the lion, it is never explicitly said in the book whether the two men were in a relationship.
The authors of “Christian, the Hugging Lion” were also the authors of “And Tango Makes Three”, a children’s book about two male penguins raising a family. The authors are already suing Florida and a county school in federal court over restrictions on the book.
Manatee County district officials removed the book from libraries citing Florida Statute 847.012, titled “Obscenity,” and involves the sale or distribution of harmful materials to minors.
Tallahassee Classical School, a charter school in the Leon County School District, was dropped from being a Hillsdale College-affiliated campus after news of the principal’s ousting went viral.
“To set the record straight: This drama around teaching Michelangelo’s ‘David’ sculpture, one of the most important works of art in existence, has become a distraction from, and a parody of, the actual aims of classical education. Of course, Hillsdale’s K-12 art curriculum includes Michelangelo’s ‘David’ and other works of art that depict the human form,” Hillsdale stated in a press release.
Manatee County removed the book from district libraries, citing Florida Statute 1006.40(3)(d). However, section (3)(d) does not appear to exist under Florida Statute 1006.40, which is titled “Purchase of instructional materials.”
When asked for clarity and for a full copy of the objection, Manatee County did not respond in time for publication.
Will we ever grow organs?
Florida Virtual School removed a National Geographic article called “Will we ever grow organs?” from a digital anatomy and physiology course, according to a FLVS spokesperson.
The request to remove the article came from a teacher who teaches the course in a school that licenses the class from FLVS.
The teacher raised concerns about the doctor profiled in the article, Paolo Macchiarini. Macchiarini was sentenced to two years and six months in prison this past June after he was found guilty of gross assault.
While the 2012 article touts Macchiarini’s work building windpipes out of stem cells, a Swedish court said the surgeon “acted with criminal intent” by transplanting trachea into three patients, who all died when the implants failed, between 2011 and 2012.
“Out of an abundance of caution, we decided to remove the article referenced from the new version of the course,” said FLVS spokesperson Hailey Fitch.
A supreme court justice and his wife plot how to get more wealth and increase the control of the super wealthy over politicians. The justice helps push the over turning of laws limiting how much money the wealthy can use to buy / control politicians while his wife and the religious fundamentalist Christian nationalist pushing the courts to be filled with fundamentalist Christian nationalist start a new organization, a super PAC, to use the new power of the Citizens United decision pushed by her husband. Insidious. But it shows how corrupt some members of the SCOTUS are. This article is very long but informative. Joe My God has a shorter version he posted a few days ago. Hugs
Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, a trove of so-called “dark money” was about to be unleashed. Two activists prepared to seize the moment.
Leonard Leo’s role as the central figure in the conservative legal movement has long been known, culminating in his acquisition last year of what many believe to be the largest political donation in history. | POLITICO illustration/Photos by AP Photo, Getty Images
Heidi Przybyla is a Washington, D.C. journalist. You can find her on Twitter @HeidiReports.
The Supreme Court’s decision in the 2010 Citizens United case transformed the world of politics. It loosened restrictions on campaign spending and unleashed a flow of anonymous donor money to nonprofit groups run by political activists.
In the months before the ruling dropped in January of that year, a group of conservative activists came together to create just such an organization. Its mission would be to, at the time, block then-President Barack Obama’s pet initiatives.
The activists included Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo and his ideological soulmate, a hard-edged activist named Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
“Ginni really wanted to build an organization and be a movement leader,” said a person familiar with her thinking at that time. “Leonard [Leo] was going to be the conduit of that.”
She also had a rich backer: Harlan Crow, the manufacturing billionaire who had helped Thomas and her husband in many ways, from funding luxury vacations to picking up tuition payments for their great-nephew.
At the time, the Citizens United ruling was widely expected, as the court had already signaled its intentions. When it came, it upended nearly 100 years of campaign spending restrictions.
The conservative legal movement seized the moment with greater success than any other group, and the consequences have shaped American jurisprudence and politics in dramatic ways.
From those early discussions among Leo, Thomas and Crow would spring a billion-dollar force that has helped remake the judiciary and overturn longstanding legal precedents on abortion, affirmative action and many other issues. It funded legal scholars to devise theories to challenge liberal precedents, helped to elect state attorneys general willing to apply those theories and launched lavish campaigns for conservative judicial nominees who would cite those theories in their rulings from the bench.
The movement’s triumphs are now visible but its engine remains hidden: A billion-dollar network of groups, most of which are registered as tax-exempt charities or social welfare organizations. Taking advantage of gaps in disclosure laws, they shield the identities of most of their donors and some of the recipients of the funds. Among those who’ve been paid by the groups are leading thinkers and individuals with close personal ties to Leo — including a whopping $7 million to a group run by a close friend and his wife. They also include a for-profit business for which Leo himself is chairman and which received tens of millions of dollars from his nonprofit network.
Leo’s role as the central figure in this movement has long been known, culminating in his acquisition last year of what many believe to be the largest political donation in history. Few are aware of the extent to which the movement’s baby steps were taken in concert with Ginni Thomas.
Two months before the Citizens United decision, but after the justices had signaled their intentions by requesting new arguments, attorney Cleta Mitchell — later to play a role in Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 elections — filed papers for Ginni Thomas to create a nonprofit group of a type that ultimately benefited from the decision. Leo was one of two directors listed on a separate application to conduct business in the state of Virginia. Thomas was president. She signed it on New Year’s Eve of 2009, and Crow provided much of the initial cash. A key Leo aide, Sarah Field, would come aboard to help Thomas manage the group, which they called Liberty Central.
After Liberty Central went public, it provoked an outcry over a Supreme Court justice’s wife promoting causes like overturning Obamacare that were before her husband’s court. Leo and Thomas changed gears. His network reactivated a dormant group, the Judicial Education Project, which would go on to become a major supplier of amicus briefs before the nation’s highest court. She created a for-profit consulting business using a similar name — Liberty Consulting — that enabled her to perform consulting work for conservative activist groups.
The Judicial Education Project supplied some of her business: Documents indicate Leo ordered at least one recipient of his groups’ funds, Kellyanne Conway, to make payments to Ginni Thomas for unspecified work, according to a Washington Post story earlier this year.
Now, Liberty Consulting is a focus of interest from congressional committees probing the Supreme Court’s ethics disclosures. Senate Democrats have demanded that Leo and Crow provide a list of “gifts, payments, or other items of value” they’ve given Thomas and her husband.
Meanwhile, Leo’s network of nonprofits — whose annual donations have skyrocketed into the hundreds of millions of dollars — is the subject of an investigation by the Washington, D.C., attorney general, POLITICO reported last month. The probe followed a POLITICO report in March that raised questions about whether Leo’s groups were enriching him and his friends by hiring their businesses and donating to their nonprofit groups.
Together, the probes have combined to raise the question of whether Leo’s groups have taken advantage of lax disclosure laws to send additional business and funds to Ginni Thomas, among other activists. That would be legal as long as Thomas was providing services commensurate with the payments.
“The real question then is, ‘what is Ginni Thomas qualified to do, what did they pay her to do, and was it fair market value?’” said Laura Solomon, a Pennsylvania tax attorney who represents hundreds of charitable and other tax-exempt organizations and philanthropists.
Leo, Thomas, Crow and Conway did not respond to questions about their financial relationships, and whether Leo’s groups continued to ask contractors to work with Thomas.
Asked how much money overall Leo has directed to Thomas, when the payments began and if they ever stopped, a Leo spokesman responded: “No comment.”
Thomas’ representative, attorney Mark Paoletta, did not respond to questions.
In a July 25 letter to Congress, Leo’s lawyers said his advocacy work is protected under the First Amendment and that any congressional inquiry into his relationships with Supreme Court justices is “politically charged” and tantamount to harassment.
In a July interview with The Maine Wire, a conservative outlet near his home, Leo spoke about his efforts to “defend the Constitution” and why his nonprofit groups don’t reveal their donors.
“It’s not to hide in the shadows,” he said. “It’s because we want ideas judged by their own moral and intellectual force.”
Launching a Movement
Many people trace the start of the conservative legal movement to 1982, the year of the founding of the Federalist Society, which provided a forum for law students and professors with conservative ideas to incubate their theories.
But the movement that has had such a profound impact on the courts today — one that involves money and politics, more than legal theories or principles — gained steam in the wake of the Citizens United decision.
The case followed a highly unusual path — one blazed by a five-justice conservative majority who seemed determined to strike a blow against campaign finance restrictions.
Initially, the dispute centered on whether a conservative nonprofit’s unflattering documentary on former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton violated campaign finance laws. Instead of resolving the case along the lines argued by the lawyers, the justices took the unusual step of asking for re-arguments based on a sweeping question — whether they should overrule prior decisions approving laws that limited spending on political campaigns.
The re-argument took place on Sept. 9, 2009. Two months later, on Nov. 6, Mitchell filed an IRS application on behalf of Ginni Thomas to form the group that becameLiberty Central Inc. Paperwork Thomas signed on New Year’s Eve listed Leo, then the Federalist Society’s executive vice president, as one of two directors. Field, one of Leo’s right-hand people on state courts at the Federalist Society, came aboard to help Thomas in her new endeavor.
Neither Field nor Mitchell responded to requests for comment.
The application was approved seven days before Clarence Thomas joined the 5-4 majority on a decision that wouldopen the door to a new era of major spending on groups like the one his wife was forming. After putting up $500,000, the lion’s share of her nonprofit’s seed money, Crow held an event for Ginni Thomas at his palatial home in Dallas. The group later made clear its goal was disassembling President Barack Obama’s agenda, mainly the Affordable Care Act.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Ronald Reagan appointee, assumed in his majority opinion in Citizens United that donations and spending around such groups would be transparent. Justice Thomas, in his concurring opinion, argued against “forcibly disclosed donor information,” which could “pre-empt citizens’ exercise of their First Amendment rights.”
The Citizens United decision — which extended free speech rights to corporations, nonprofits and unions — effectively curbed efforts to rein in political spending, while paving the way for follow-up rulings from courts and the Federal Election Commission that would unleash additional billions of dollars in donations. Those donors would spawn a boom in tax-exempt “charitable” and “social welfare” groups as vehicles for spending on political activity.
A key part of the attraction to these groups was that they could shield the identity of donors, many of whom are reluctant to invite scrutiny of their own agendas.
Speaking out
Just five weeks after the decision, on Feb. 18, Ginni Thomas took the stage at CPAC, an annual gathering of the nation’s most prominent conservative activists. Wearing a white T-shirt emblazoned with a Liberty Central logo, Thomas introduced herself as an “ordinary citizen from Omaha, Nebraska” who felt “called to the front lines” of a battle against “arrogant elites” who “think they know how to manage our lives from cradle to grave.” She evoked the passing of “patriots,” including her 91-year-old mother and Barbara Olson, who had perished in the plane that hit the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, as her inspiration.
“When she was gone, I knew I had to work harder,” Thomas said of Olson, whose widower, Ted, had been a lawyer for Citizens United.
Thomas did not credit Crow, Leo or the Citizens United decision for her new grassroots initiative. That year, she was paid $120,500 from Liberty Central, according to tax records.
The group was destined to have only a short lifespan, thanks in part to a misstep by Thomas. In October, she left a voicemail for Anita Hill, the woman who had accused her husband of sexual harassment during his confirmation hearings in 1991. In it, Thomas demanded an apology for the 19-year-old accusations.
“I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband,” Thomas reportedly said, asking Hill to “pray about this.”
The ensuing news reports drew unwanted attention to Thomas’ new nonprofit, which by then was expressly targeting Obama and his agenda. The news led many ethics specialists to question whether it was appropriate for a Supreme Court justice’s spouse to be leading such a political effort, especially with the court preparing to consider a high-profile challenge to Obama’s health care initiative.
Incorporation records show Thomas had already pivoted to form her own for-profit consulting firm in the state of Virginia. On Nov. 16, Thomas’ “expedited service request” to incorporate her consulting business was approved. And Leo turned to another vehicle he could use to pay her with no apparent paper trail. The Judicial Education Project, a tax-exempt charity that had been founded by three of Leo’s associates in 2004 but soon became dormant, was reactivated and began receiving donations in 2010.
And far from retreating, Thomas merely moved her networking behind the scenes.
“She remained active in the [conservative legal] movement for sure,” said the person who had attended early meetings about her plans and who was granted anonymity to discuss private meetings. “People just always assumed she had to stay below the radar.”
She was a frequent attendee at major coordinating events among conservative nonprofits and was considered “a very popular activist figure,” the person said.
Thomas’ brief run as president of her own nonprofit had given her a taste of a lifelong dream. Thomas grew up tagging along with her mother, a Nebraska GOP Party activist. A 1986 Good Housekeeping article that mentioned the young Virginia Lamp said she aspired to run for Congress, but her biggest challenge was “finding a husband who’ll be supportive of a woman in public life.”
Liberty Central had been explicit about its intent to assist “citizen activists,” launching an “activism how-to website” in August and an ad campaign a month before the 2010 midterm election in which challenging Obamacare was the conservative movement’s primary objective.
Thomas continued her activism after leaving the nonprofit, with Leo helping to send money in her direction.
According to the documents obtained by the Post, Leo told Conway he wanted her to “give … another $25K” to Thomas and that the records should have “no mention of Ginni, of course.” At Leo’s behest, Conway’s polling firm billed the Leo-affiliated JEP $25,000 that day as a “Supplement for Constitution Polling and Opinion Consulting,” the documents show.
In all, Leo arranged for between $80,000 and $100,000 to go to Thomas through Conway for unspecified work in 2011 and 2012, according to the documents.
Limiting disclosures
There is no direct paper trail for JEP’s spending on Conway’s business, let alone Thomas.
The IRS requires that nonprofits must identify only their top five highest-paid contractors making more than $100,000 annually, but that leaves many contractors off the list. True North Research, an investigative watchdog group, found at least $25 million of the $240 million that JEP has spent on grants and expenses since 2010 — including salaries and contractor fees — went to people whose identities were not revealed.
“This money could have gone to anyone,” said Lisa Graves, the leader of True North Research and former deputy assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration.
In its filings for the year after Leo asked Conway to give money to Thomas, the JEP reported spending a total of $150,000 on “polling,” which could have covered the payments, but Conway’s firm, The Polling Company, was not listed on its paperwork. A spokesman for Leo said JEP used “multiple polling contractors” and that he is “unaware” of any connections between Thomas and those contractors.
In 2011, the judiciary’s policy-making body, a panel overseen by Chief Justice John Roberts, received a complaint from a sitting judge after a watchdog group revealed that Clarence Thomas hadn’t reported hundreds of thousands of dollars earned by his wife.
Clarence Thomas filed amended reports, explaining that his wife’s income was “inadvertently omitted due to a misunderstanding of the filing instructions.” No formal review was conducted, though the panel asserted there was no “willful” wrongdoing by the justice.
The filing requirements themselves were porous enough, however, that justices could effectively omit naming any of their spouse’s clients or the amount of money they were receiving. Thus, in subsequent disclosures, Clarence Thomas would go on to simply list that his wife had received money from her consulting business, without detailing how much or from whom, or whether any of the people paying her had interests before the Supreme Court.
Likewise, gaps in disclosure requirements for nonprofits were large enough that no one could keep track of who was funding Leo’s network. In some instances, the gaps were exacerbated by irregularities. In 2011, JEP reported to the IRS having received no more than $50,000 in donations, even though another Leo-aligned entity, the Wellspring Committee, reported having given JEP $136,000 that year. A spokesman said JEP took in more than expected and accounted for the surplus in a subsequent reports.
The lack of a requirement to report donors became more noteworthy as JEP’s revenue began to grow.
In 2012 — the year Leo asked Conway to direct payments to Thomas through Conway’s polling business — the formerly inactive nonprofit reported receiving $1.5 million. The next year, Thomas’ former law clerk, Carrie Severino, became one of the group’s three directors; by 2014, the nonprofit’s annual revenues were up to $9 million from nothing reported just five years previously, according to tax filings.
Severino did not respond to questions through the Judicial Crisis Network, another Leo-aligned group which she heads.
Pushing an agenda
Meanwhile, JEP was becoming a major vehicle for filing amicus briefs on behalf of the conservative legal movement seeking to influence the Supreme Court. More than just expressions of support for one side or the other, these briefs often encompassed extensive fact-finding and analysis, spanning scores of pages. The goal was to offer conservative justices arguments that they could incorporate into their opinions.
The lead attorney on the first amicus brief JEP joined was former Thomas law clerk John Eastman, who would later advise Trump on theories for overturning the 2020 election. The brief argued that Obamacare’s provision requiring minimum coverage was an “oppressive mandate” and that it was “tainted” by “abuses of the legislative process.” With the support of Roberts, the court ruled against JEP’s position. ClarenceThomas, along with the other conservative justices, joined a dissent that would have found the individual mandate unconstitutional. In later years, the mandate would be effectively ended by Congress repealing its tax penalties.
Many of the JEP’s subsequent briefs listed Severino as counsel of record.
In 2013, JEP filed a Severino-authored brief arguing in favor of striking down a Massachusetts law that made it a crime to stand within 35 feet of entrances to abortion clinics. The state claimed the law was necessary to prevent clashes between demonstrators. JEP, however, argued that abortion clinics provide “incomplete and misleading information about the abortion procedure” and that the law interfered with the rights of “sidewalk counselors.” The court unanimously struck down the law, though a five-justice majority rejected JEP’s contention that the law was aimed at curbing the rights of anti-abortion protesters.
In 2014, JEP weighed in on the landmark case of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, in which the court decided that companies can opt out of contraception coverage for employees based on the owners’ religious objections. The opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito and joined by ClarenceThomas, adopted many of the arguments JEP made in its Severino-authored brief, mainly that Obamacare’s coverage requirements burdened the Hobby Lobby owner’s right to free exercise of religion.
In 2015, JEP filed a brief in support of a petitioner challenging a University of Texas affirmative action program, which it called a “back-door” and secretive process. Clarence Thomas and Alito agreed it was “categorically unconstitutional.” The court’s majority disagreed, but later, in 2023, a more conservative court would adopt the position advocated by JEP.
Curbing oversight
Efforts to determine who was funding such advocacy, and whether they had direct interest in the cases, are complicated by gaps in disclosure rules and oversight of nonprofit groups. The rules governing such groups were designed for traditional charities such as Kiwanis Clubs or PTAs. But once activist groups started organizing under the same tax provisions, the IRS was forced to become the arbiter of what constituted politics and what did not.
Since JEP was registered as a charity, “the [IRS] limitations are very clear that you can’t do anything engaged in politics” and cannot organize a nonprofit for the benefit of any private interest or individual, said John Koskinen, a former IRS commissioner from 2013 to 2017 who reviewed the paperwork provided by POLITICO. Though such groups can engage in advocacy and limited lobbying, they are prohibited from participating in campaigns for or against political candidates.
Those who claimed the IRS wasn’t properly scrutinizing such groups quickly ran into a powerful countermovement claiming the opposite.
Mitchell, the lawyer who had helped Thomas set up her own ill-fated nonprofit, began championing a public relations offensive to combat IRS scrutiny of the same nonprofits her allies were erecting. She claimed that the tax agency, then overseen by the Obama administration, was disproportionately targeting conservative groups and called for an independent counsel.
The agency “is so corrupt and so rotten to the core that it cannot be salvaged,” Mitchell said in 2014.
A two-year investigation by the Department of Justice “found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt or other inappropriate motives” and closed with no charges. It did find “substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia” as IRS officials cut corners to deal with an explosion of Tea Party-aligned nonprofit applications similar to Thomas’ group. But it also found that some progressive groups experienced similar processing delays and extra scrutiny.
Thereafter, the division that polices such nonprofits was effectively neutered by budget cuts. Audit rates plunged as the division became overwhelmed by hundreds of new nonprofits supposedly doing charitable and educational work but actually doing mostly political work. Clawing back funding for the IRS remains a top demand of conservative lawmakers in annual congressional budget negotiations.
The timing of the campaign against the IRS was no coincidence, said Koskinen, the former IRS commissioner who was in office during that period in the Obama administration.
“It shouldn’t surprise anyone that some of the people attacking the IRS and supporting cuts to its budget after 2010 were the same people pushing the envelope of how to move ‘dark money’ around to maximize its political effect,” Koskinen said. “The fewer auditors the IRS had, the lower the odds of being caught.”
Backing Trump
The election of Donald Trump in 2016 opened the door to countless new opportunities for the burgeoning conservative legal movement.
Leo himself had played a strong role in ensuring Trump’s election. When conservatives expressed doubts about the surprise GOP nominee, Leo helped reassure them by persuading Trump to commit to choosing Supreme Court nominees from a list that Leo himself drafted.
Then, after Trump’s victory, Leo worked hard to ensure that the president followed through.
When Conway joined the White House as an adviser to new president, with a hand in judicial nominations, Leo helped facilitate the sale of her polling firm to a Virginia company where he is now chairman.
Leo’s closeness to the White House sparked a fresh surge in donations to his network. In 2020, he announced JEP was being rebranded as the 85 Fund, and its annual fundraising skyrocketed to $65.7 million.
That year also marked the ultimate triumph of the conservative legal movement, as the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett established a 6-3 majority of justices aligned with Leo’s Federalist Society. Leo used his dark-money groups to fund campaigns urging the confirmation of those justices, including Barrett.
Then, as Trump approached a difficult re-election campaign in 2020, the 85 Fund created a subgroup, The Honest Elections Project, dedicated to amplifying claims of Democrats cheating in elections and pushing for voting restrictions.
Since Trump’s defeat, the Honest Elections Project has seized on momentum created by his unfounded claims of a stolen election to push anti-fraud measures that critics say will make voting harder for everyone.
“Tens of millions of voters harbor grave doubts about the future legitimacy of the democratic process,” the group says on its website. “They expect voting to be secure, accessible, and honest — even in a pandemic. What they got was an election marred by dysfunction, hundreds of agenda-driven progressive lawsuits that undermined voting safeguards, and a system that in many places failed to deliver prompt results. That is not how elections are supposed to work.”
A growing network
The Honest Elections Project is now just one limb of Leo’s fast-growingoperation, fortified by what is believed to be the largest political donation in history: $1.6 billion from 91-year-old manufacturing magnate Barre Seid.
But with that immense war chest has come further scrutiny of the network’s spending. In March, POLITICO reported that since Leo became chairman of the for-profit CRC Advisors in 2020, the JEP and another Leo-affiliated group has paid the firm at least $43 million. A few weeks later, a progressive watchdog group filed a complaint with the D.C. attorney general and the IRS requesting a probe into what services were provided and whether Leo was in violation of laws against using charities for personal enrichment.
The probe is ongoing, and a lawyer for the Leo-affiliated groups involved called the complaint “sloppy, deceptive and legally flawed.”
Leo did not respond previously over multiple weeks to requests for information about what services the public relations firm provided to his nonprofits.
He wasn’t alone in declining to do so.
Other Leo allies have nonprofits and have declined comment to POLITICO on what services they provided in exchange for millions of dollars, including Ronald Cass, a Boston University law school dean emeritus who runs a nonprofit registered to his home address in Virginia called The Center for the Rule of Law.
Leo was best man at Cass’ wedding and, in 2018, when Cass’ daughter was a debutante featured at one of the nation’s most exclusive galas, Leo and his wife Sally were among the attendees. Cass was also a longtime friend of Justice Antonin Scalia. In a sign of the family’s proximity to the Supreme Court, Cass was the master of ceremonies at a July 2016 dinner honoring Scalia’s memory. (Leo and Cass both sat at ClarenceThomas’ VIP table according to a seating chart.) Cass’ daughter is slated to clerk for Alito.
Cass’ group, described as an independent “center of international scholars analyzing rule of law issues,” doesn’t have much of a footprint. His wife, Susan, is the only other principal officer listed on paperwork filed in Virginia.
Between 2013 and 2021, Cass’ nonprofit took in nearly $7 million from JEP, according to tax filings. Yet POLITICO did not find a record of the annual paperwork the IRS requires of grantees detailing revenues and expenditures. Further, the group’s tax-exempt status had been auto-revoked by the IRS in 2011, the documents show.
Unless an exception is granted, the IRS requires such organizations to file the forms to keep their tax-exempt status, and all charitable grantors like JEP are required by federal and state laws to ensure grantees are using funds for charitable or educational purposes.
If Cass were running a charitable organization, as indicated on JEP’s annual filings for several years, it should have been filing the IRS forms. If not, it should have paid tax as a for-profit entity, said Koskinen.
Ronald and Susan Cass did not respond to multiple emails seeking comment about whether their organization paid tax, a record that is not subject to public disclosure.
In addition, Cass and Leo have both declined to comment on the nature of Cass’ services since POLITICO first reported in March about sizable payments received by his Center for the Rule of Law.
“Mr. Cass is a recognized expert across a wide variety of legal topics such as administrative law, antitrust, constitutional law, intellectual property, international trade and the legal process,” said the Leo spokesman. “Any organization would be fortunate to work with Mr. Cass and his wealth of knowledge.”
Pushing for answers
Philip Hackney, an expert on tax law and charities who worked in the Office of the Chief Counsel at the IRS under former Presidents George W. Bush and Obama, said he thinks the payments to Cass’ group merit further investigation.
“It’s not a small amount of money going to an organization that lost their tax-exempt status, and they started paying them after they lost their tax-exempt status,” said Hackney, who is now a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. “This is not a good look.”
Ellen Aprill, a tax law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who reviewed the same documents, called the filings “especially odd,” while cautioning further facts are needed before judging whether they are “inconsistent with the rule of law.”
Such potential IRS filing inconsistencies, JEP’s reactivation at the time when Thomas’ own nonprofit experiment fell apart and the large sums JEP has taken in and paid out make a compelling case for a closer look at how much money Thomas may have received from Leo-affiliated sources, said Eric Havian, a San Francisco attorney who has represented whistleblowers for more than 25 years and reviewed tax records at POLITICO’s request.
Whatever the state of their financial dealings, the personal and professional relationship between Thomas and Leo clearly remains strong.
Last year, Thomas came under fire over text messages revealing she pressured the Trump White House to challenge the 2020 election, a move that put renewed scrutiny on her husband, who had participated in cases related to the election. A day before the news broke, the Judicial Crisis Network, another part of Leo’s nonprofit constellation that is headed by Severino, launched a $1.5 million ad buy entitled “Misunderstood” that promoted Clarence Thomas and his judicial record.
Leo’s firm CRC Advisors has reportedly been the registered agent for several web domains related to ClarenceThomas and was responsible for promoting a PBS documentary on his life and audio and Kindle releases of his memoir.
In 2017, a conservative news site published remarks from what was supposed to be a private confab of conservative luminaries attending an awards ceremony honoring “heroes of liberty.” Ginni Thomas presented the newly created awards, including one to her one-time nonprofit business partner.
In introducing him, Thomas said Leo has “single-handedly changed the face of the judiciary,” and described him as a “disciplined strategist,” “wonderful father” and “mentor to me.”
Thomas also gave a nod to Leo’s role as a behind-the-scenes player.
“He has many hats,” she said. “That isn’t even all he does. He doesn’t really tell all that he does.”
Hypocrites. Another fundamentalist ideological right anti-LGBTQIA group caught harboring some members who engage in same-sex relationships while decrying them vehemently. Hugs
Religion News Service reports:
A former vice president of the American Family Association, a Mississippi-based conservative group that promotes “the biblical ethic of decency in American society,” has sued the religious-right group, accusing leaders of firing him after he reported alleged sexual harassment and financial irregularities.
In a complaint filed Tuesday (Sept. 5), Robert Chambers [photo], former vice president of policy and legislative affairs for AFA from 2015 to 2022, alleges that another staffer, Ron Cook, made repeated sexual advances toward him, beginning in January of 2022.
Those advances allegedly included grabbing hold of Chambers’ face and ear and making comments about masturbation, according to the complaint. “I see you’re really good with that wrist action,” the complaint alleges that Cook told Chambers. “You’d really like me to take you and get a hold of you.”
Read the full article. Chambers says that he was fired for reporting the harassment. The firing reportedly came after the daughter of AFA president Tim Wildmon allegedly told others that she’d had a dream in which Chambers kissed her infant child on the lips and that she was afraid to have her children around him.
As a reminder, the AFA is arguably the nation’s largest and most powerful anti-LGBTQ hate group with tens of millions in annual revenue. The AFA is the parent organization of One Million Moms. In the 2016 video below, the alleged victim blames criticism of anti-LGBTQ laws on Satan.
Chambers last appeared on JMG in 2021 when he joined the attack on RNC chair Ronna McDaniel for a proposed partnership with the Log Cabin Republicans.
A former VP at the AFA say another male staffer groped him and sexually harassed him. He alleges that leaders of the group, which promotes "biblical morality" looked the other way then fired him when he complainedhttps://t.co/YuIHVIZ0fS
Four hundred years ago she’d have had a successful career in the Jacobean witch trial industry pointing her fingers at innocent people and screeching “Witch!!!!”
I, for one, am shocked — SHOCKED!! — that one of the nation’s most virulently homophobic organizations is a seething HOTBED of repressed and handsy homothexuals!
So Wildmon’s daughter has a dream about this dude kissing her child and he gets fired. Meanwhile Josh Duggar was fingering his sisters over the course of multiple years and had a phone chock full of kid porn and he’s a superstar.
It’s like the Land that Time Forgot. He’s talking about Satan as a real entity, an actor in everyday affairs. This is pure creepy. No one talks like that. It’s juvenile, from the mouth of a simpleton. I have no idea what the hell this is all about, I just switched on that clip above and fell through the rift in the space -time continuum.
That was my impression, as well. They talk about satan as if it’s a thing everyone accepts as real and true, and not a figment of bronze age (or earlier), illiterate shepherds who had to have something to explain why bad things happen in the world. It’s inconceivable to them that anyone would not have the same view.
Notice this is the test backed by fundamentalist Christians, home school parents who don’t want any questions that might be based on books and ideas they don’t allow their kids to read that public schools did … until now, and it is the favorite among the hard right wing that wants to deny real history and science. It is the test of choice by home school parents, fundamentalist Christians, and ideologues who want a skewed version of history. As one board member said, the test scores have not been verified to be an accurate measure of how well-educated a student is compared to the well researched SAT and ACT. I will post some comments from Joe My God after this article. Hugs
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaks at an event in August. Photo: Megan Varner/Getty Images
Florida’s public universities will now permit the Classic Learning Test in admissions, offering a conservative-backed alternative to the SAT and ACT.
Why it matters: Florida is now the first state university system in the country to allow for the Classic Learning Test (CLT), which has gained recent popularity among the state’s Christian and charter schools.
The classical education model — not to be confused with “classics” or “classical humanities” — focuses on a return to “core values” and the “centrality of the Western tradition.”
Driving the news: The Florida state university system’s board of governors on Friday approved the test for use in undergraduate admissions.
“The system is pleased to add the CLT to reach a wider variety of students from different educational backgrounds.Not intimidated by controversy or critics, our focus is on the success of our students, and the State of Florida,” the State University System of Florida said in a statement Friday.
“Because we reject the status quo, today’s decision means we are better serving students by giving them an opportunity to showcase their academic potential and paving the path to higher education,” they added.
Of note: University of Florida professor Amanda Phalin was the only board member who opposed the approval of the Classic Learning Test during Friday’s meeting.
She said she wasn’t opposed to the use of the CLT overall but “the use of it at this time” because of a lack of empirical evidence demonstrating it is “of the same quality as the ACT and the SAT.”
Phalin clarified that her opposition did not stem from the test’s “focus,” “its content,” or “its creators.”
“I’m simply concerned because the test’s reliability and validity have not been independently demonstrated or verified,” Phalin said.
The big picture: Over 200 colleges across the U.S. accept the Classic Learning Test, which launched in 2015, according to Florida’s university system. It’s gained recent momentum in Florida charter schools and private Christian schools.
Homeschooling families and co-op groups have also used the test.
Flashback: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law in May that makes students “eligible to earn Bright Futures Scholarships with CLT scores,” per the test’s official website.
DeSantis‘ office and the Florida Department of Education did not immediately respond to Axios’ request for comment.
He’s is destroying FL universities. That must be his plan. What does he think is going to happen? Well, this might allow unqualified persons (bible thumpers) to access jobs they have no right to have. I’m thinking FL civil services being taken over. If you have not had to pleasure of working under an unqualified evangelical, let me tell you: it is soul crushing and very nearly killed me
“We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”
(Bolding is motherfucking mine.)
Even if, as PolitiFact writes, “critical thinking” here refers to a specific relabeling of “outcome-based education” (which, as they note, takes many different forms), the platform plank still glorifies “fixed beliefs” and “parental authority” above true education.
Problem is that the real working world will not settle for “Jesus did it” as an acceptable answer. Is it any wonder that current interest to attend Florida colleges have dropped 30%?
It’s been a few years decades since I took the ACT but I don’t remember any of it being woke or socialist or anti-Western or any other kind of nonsense. I’d bet the folks who approved this are heavily invested in it monetarily.
No, but you aren’t a right wing nutjob. The SAT allegedly (they never reveal how they structure the test) draws its vocabulary words from literature and current news. (So, words you would need to know to understand what you are reading.) If you stick to right wing news and avoid certain books commonly on HS and college reading lists, you are unlikely to know those words and won’t do as well on the test. That’s the bias they are worried about.
Home schooling advocates tout their higher test scores but there are two problems with that claim: 1) they often spend far more time on SAT test prep than public school students would get and 2) the students unlikely to do well on such tests just don’t take them. So the numbers are distorted. This is also true of the state mandated tests.
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Scottie's Playtime 