The Rational National points out in his normal reasonable way that holding the view that there is a difference in the worth of a Palestinian child and an Israeli child makes no sense. He also points out many incidents of Israeli soldiers killing Palestinian people, reporters, and children over the last year that received no news coverage. The video is done without sensationalism, which I appreciate. Hugs.
Breaking down the latest from the conflict, including what’s making me go crazy, a good clip from MSNBC, and where major Israeli media is correctly putting the blame.
I wanted to post an update of something I got wrong. The tatted up guy at the end of the video had a VERY different story than the one that was told to me.
Turns out he was not only at the show, he was a fan AND the guy that first got the attention of the police. He was so heated because he is part of the LGBTQ community and had been assaulted previously – so when he saw it potentially happening to a few trans women, he grabbed a cop who was stopped at a light, ran back to the theatre, and got in between the transphobe and the women. He wasn’t trying to escalate as much as he was trying to be the one to take the seemingly inevitable punch. And he left when the cops got there because he was the one who called them over in the first place.
I was told he was a bystander who just hopped in the fray, and I understand why the folks who didn’t know him thought that. In their eyes, he showed up out of nowhere and ran in – but really he was running back to protect folks from sharing the same fate he’d already experienced.
Anyway, my apologies go out to him. And know that if I ever get something wrong in a video, I am happy to correct it.
How deep are these red states willing to go in the authoritarian fascist rabbit hole? They are fast rushing into single party only allowed rule. They seem to hate democracy, free press, transparency, and government responsibility. They do not want to represent the people but to rule them. The scarcest part to me is anyone investigated can’t say anything, can not complain about constitutional violations. Yes they put it that way, they plan to violate the constitution and the target of their abuse can not even publican complain about it. You can not even get a lawyer or legal counsel if they come after you. WTF! Below is a quote from the article. Hugs
Any way you slice it, Gov Ops seems like a recipe for government overreach and abuse. If you find yourself under investigation by Gov Ops, you won’t be allowed to publicly discuss any alleged constitutional violations or misconduct by the investigators. All communications with committee personnel would be treated as “confidential.” Shockingly, you’d also be denied the right to seek legal counsel regarding your rights if Gov Ops were to search your property without a warrant, irrespective of whether it’s in a public or private space.
The euphemistically named “Gov Ops” is a civil liberties disaster waiting to happen.
Rotimi Adeoye
Republican state legislators In North Carolina are establishing a new investigative body that Democratic critics have aptly compared to a “secret police force.”
This new entity, formally known as the Joint Legislative Committee on Government Operations, or “Gov Ops” for short, will be chaired by Senate Leader Phil Berger (R) and House Speaker Tim Moore (R). It grants the state the authority to investigate various matters, including “possible instances of misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, mismanagement, waste, abuse, or illegal conduct.”
Gov Ops, a product of North Carolina’s most recent state budget, was established via a comprehensive bill passed in late September. Despite Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s refusal to sign the legislation, the Republican majority in the state legislature pushed it through just 10 days later, thanks to their veto-proof majority and the state’s laws restricting the governor’s ability to make line-item vetoes. Gov Ops is slated to take effect next week.
Any way you slice it, Gov Ops seems like a recipe for government overreach and abuse. If you find yourself under investigation by Gov Ops, you won’t be allowed to publicly discuss any alleged constitutional violations or misconduct by the investigators. All communications with committee personnel would be treated as “confidential.” Shockingly, you’d also be denied the right to seek legal counsel regarding your rights if Gov Ops were to search your property without a warrant, irrespective of whether it’s in a public or private space.
Nora Benavidez, a senior counsel with the nonprofit advocacy group Free Press, told The Daily Beast, “This is a question for the courts ultimately. But the powers granted to the Gov Ops appear to give them overreaching investigative authority, which invokes constitutionality questions.”
A critical aspect of Gov Ops development lies in the language within the statute itself. The key phrase, as highlighted by Republican state legislators, is the investigation of “possible instances of misfeasance.”
It’s unsettling that North Carolina’s Republican state legislators are poised to wield unchecked partisan authority, devoid of any form of accountability, to determine what qualifies as “possible instances of misfeasance.” This newfound investigative power threatens to have far-reaching repercussions on fundamental civil liberties, particularly those closely intertwined with the state legislature—such as voting rights and abortion.
Consider the 2020 election aftermath. Following the election’s conclusion, several North Carolina Republican lawmakers—mirroring Trump and other far-right figures nationwide—demanded access to voting machines, relying on dubious sources and unfounded claims of voter fraud.
Initially, North Carolina Republicans asserted that they would work with police to obtain warrants for such inspections. However, with the advent of Gov Ops, committee leaders could now allege “possible instances of misfeasance,” eliminating the need for a warrant and keeping the public in the dark.
With the 2024 election looming, Republicans in the state legislature will redraw voting maps after the new conservative majority on the state’s Supreme Court legalized partisan gerrymandering. (The Princeton Gerrymandering Project called North Carolina one of the most gerrymandered states in the country.)
The redistricting process in the state has been grueling; since 2011, six different versions of maps have been drawn. The process has been conducted mainly behind closed doors, and North Carolinians continue to express frustration over how they’ve been locked out of the process.
A provision of Gov Ops will likely permit lawmakers drawing the maps to bypass public records requests: “lawmakers responding to public records requests will have no obligation to share any drafts or materials that guided their redistricting decisions.”
Now, let’s look at abortion. During a legislative hearing, state Sen. Graig Meyer (D) asked lawmakers, in a hypothetical scenario, if Gov Ops could access personal health records (like ultrasounds) that are required by the state to receive abortion pills. Sen. Meyer found that Gov Ops, with its widespread ability to investigate with zero oversight, could release information like this “to the public in a hearing” if it wanted to.
Benavidez explained, “At the end of the day, Gov Ops actions and requests for information are all protected as confidential, adding a layer of opacity which means people in North Carolina will have largely no idea what the Gov Ops entity is really doing.”
The consolidation of power by Republicans in North Carolina through Gov Ops is not just a cause for concern; it is a stark warning sign. The ability of state legislators to wield unchecked authority—shielded from the scrutiny of the voters they are obliged to serve—strikes at the heart of democratic principles.
Transparency and accountability are not optional in a democracy; they are its lifeblood.
When the process of drawing voting maps becomes cloaked in secrecy, when mechanisms to hold our elected officials accountable are dismantled, we risk losing our most cherished rights to our legislators, who should be our staunchest defenders.
Government powers like Gov Ops can potentially erode the very foundations of our democracy—which can’t work if politicians refuse to work for the people and have any accountability.
The “lung float” test claims to help determine if a baby was born alive or dead, but many medical examiners say it’s too unreliable. Yet the test is still being used to bring murder charges — and get convictions.
Credit:Illustration by Chantal Jahchan for ProPublica. Source images: Getty Images; “Knight’s Forensic Pathology”; “Forensic Pathology: Principles and Practice”; “The Pathology of Homicide”
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.
Inside the medical examiner’s office, two pathologists removed a baby’s lungs from his chest, clamped them together and placed them in a container of water. Then they watched.
They were examining the suspicious death of the baby whose body was found in a Maryland home; his mother said he was stillborn.
If the lungs floated, the theory behind the test holds, the baby likely was born alive. If they sank, the baby likely was stillborn.
“A very simple premise,” the assistant medical examiner later testified.
The lungs floated — and the mother was charged with murder.
In investigations across the country, the lung float test has emerged as a barometer of sorts to help determine if a mother suffered the devastating loss of a stillbirth or if she murdered her baby who was born alive. The test has been used in at least 11 cases where women were charged criminally since 2013 and has helped put nine of them behind bars, a ProPublica review of court records and news reports found. Some of those women remain in prison. Some had their charges dropped and were released.
But the test is so deeply flawed that many medical examiners say it cannot be trusted. They put it in the same company as the discredited analysis of bite marks and bloodstain patterns, 911 calls and hair comparisons, all of which lack solid scientific foundations and have contributed to wrongful convictions.
It is pseudoscience masquerading as sound forensics, they say. Some even liken the test to witch trials, where courts decided if a woman was a witch based on whether she floated or sank.
“Basing something so enormous on a test that should not be used, that has been completely discredited, is absolutely wrong,” said Dr. Ranit Mishori, the senior medical adviser for the nonprofit Physicians for Human Rights, which has been studying the test, and a professor of family medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine. “You can send a person who is innocent to prison for many years.”
Medical examiners who rely on the lung float test typically do so in cases where someone gives birth outside of a hospital, often at home and far from the watchful eyes of medical professionals. Absent those witnesses, doubt can overshadow the insistence that the baby was stillborn.
Since the Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion, legal experts and reproductive justice advocates have voiced fears that an increased reliance on the lung float test will lead to more prosecutions in a landscape where any pregnancy that doesn’t end with a living, breathing baby can be viewed with suspicion. In several cases, the fact that a woman had considered abortion was used against her. Black, brown and poor women, research shows, already disproportionately face pregnancy-related prosecutions. Black women also are more than two times as likely to have a stillbirth as white women.
Even medical examiners who perform the test as part of an autopsy acknowledge its shortcomings. They concede that there are several ways to perform it, undermining the standardization that many forensic disciplines demand. Yet judges have allowed prosecutors to use it as evidence in court.
Basing something so enormous on a test that should not be used, that has been completely discredited, is absolutely wrong.”
—Dr. Ranit Mishori, senior medical adviser for Physicians for Human Rights
ProPublica contacted the nation’s largest medical examiners’ offices to ask if they use the lung float test and discovered a patchwork of practices. Many offices said they just don’t trust it. The County of Los Angeles Department of Medical Examiner called its results “inaccurate.” The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences in Houston said it found the test to be “very unreliable” and “not supported by empirical evidence.”
In Cook County, home to Chicago, pathologists use it, but give more weight to “more reliable methods” including X-rays, microscopic examinations and autopsy findings to determine whether a birth was live or still. Others, like the Virginia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, said the test may be useful only if a baby was not born into a toilet, CPR was not performed and decomposition was not present. None of the 12 largest offices by jurisdiction expressed full-throated support for the test.
And while the national organization that represents medical examiners said that it doesn’t have an official stance on the lung float test, it said it “strongly advocates using scientifically validated and evidence-based practices in forensic pathology.” The National Association of Medical Examiners called the lung float test “a single, dated test” that has not been subjected to the organization’s rigorous evaluation process.
Dr. Gregory Davis, a forensic pathologist at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine and a consultant to the office of the medical examiner in Kentucky, called the test “an outrageous breach of science.” He said he has personally observed the lungs of stillborn babies float and those of live-born babies sink.
The fundamental problem with the test, he said, is that there are many ways that air can enter the lungs of a stillborn child.
“There’s no way,” Davis said, “you can determine live birth versus stillbirth with this test.”
Moira Akers, the Maryland woman whose baby died, didn’t intend to get pregnant. She and her husband, Ian, already had two young children and the couple worried they wouldn’t be able to handle another child.
They struggled financially — she was a stay-at-home mom and he worked only a few days a week as a first mate on a dinner cruise. Her previous pregnancies — both ending in cesarean sections — were difficult, and challenges with her youngest child demanded much of her attention.
Due to Akers’ age, 37, and weight, her pregnancy was considered high risk. The couple decided to terminate, but they didn’t tell her family, who are Catholic and who she worried may not have approved. When Akers was a little girl, her mother said, she dreamed of being a mother, and as an adult she doted on her children.
After her appointment with a gynecologist around 15 weeks into her pregnancy, court records show that Akers thought that it was too late for her to have an abortion in Maryland. She decided she would carry the baby to term without letting anyone know she was still pregnant and give it up at a firehouse.
“I wanted the baby to have a good life,” Akers later told police. “I just knew we weren’t going to be able to provide that.”
Moira AkersCredit:Courtesy of Debra Saltz
She didn’t gain much weight and she told her husband early on that the pregnancy had been terminated. She also didn’t divulge the fact that she was pregnant to other family members, who were going through their own hardships, court records and interviews show. Her sister was being treated for cancer and feared she’d never be able to have children of her own. Her brother was recovering from an accident that had left him temporarily using a wheelchair. And the family had recently buried her grandmother and aunt.
Akers declined comment through her attorney. But the description of the case is based on police and court records, including a trial transcript, as well as interviews with her family and her lawyer.
On Nov. 1, 2018, in the family’s three-bedroom duplex in suburban Baltimore, Akers had been having contractions when she felt a strong urge to use the bathroom. She delivered her son into the toilet. She said he was not breathing. She grabbed her older son’s Star Wars towel to wrap the baby in, then carried him into the bedroom to get scissors and cut the umbilical cord.
“I didn’t hear anything,” Akers later told a detective. The baby, she said, didn’t move.
She didn’t know what to do next. Akers scanned the room and spotted a large Ziploc bag meant to store her daughter’s clothes. She placed her baby in the blue bag, and she put the bag in the closet.
Akers was bleeding heavily from the delivery. Blood soaked the carpet and smeared the bathroom floor. It stained the bathtub, closet door and hallway.
Her husband came upstairs. Alarmed by all the blood, he called the paramedics. When they arrived, they asked Akers questions as she sat on the couch with her husband and two children. She denied being pregnant.
It wasn’t until later, after Akers arrived at the hospital, that she told a nurse that she had “delivered a stillborn child” at home, police records show.
The doctors, who came in next, saw a protruding umbilical cord still attached and asked if the baby was alive. Akers said she had delivered a stillborn baby and told them about the bag and the closet.
Police launched an investigation. Akers described being in denial about the pregnancy and sad about the baby’s death.
The two Maryland doctors conducted an autopsy. The baby, they wrote in their report, appeared to be “well-developed” and “well-nourished” and had been delivered after about 41-42 weeks of pregnancy. He had blue eyes and straight brown hair.
Neither the external exam of the baby nor his bloodwork nor an X-ray revealed signs of foul play. But the narrative from police described a woman who hid her pregnancy from her family and paramedics, considered an abortion and placed the baby’s body in a closet. A microscopic view of the lungs, which were soft and pink in some areas, also appeared to show that some parts had air in them and others did not.
They also had the results of the lung float test.
“A flotation test and microscopic examination of the lungs was consistent with a live birth,” the autopsy read. The baby, the medical examiners concluded, died of asphyxia and exposure from being left in the closet.
Prosecutors charged Akers with child abuse and murder.
The lung float test’s simplicity — essentially unchanged over centuries — is both a feature and a flaw.
Some medical examiners take out one lung at a time. Some cut the lungs up and test pieces, and may even go so far as to squeeze them. Others clamp them together or put the heart and lungs in a jar. Some drop in the liver as a control. Others submerge the lungs in liquid formaldehyde instead of water.
As the assistant medical examiner in Akers’ case testified, “there’s a million ways” to conduct the test.
In theory, the test is meant to determine whether air has reached the microscopic air sacs inside the lungs. If it has, the sacs open and spread out. If it hasn’t, the sacs remain collapsed.
It is not always possible to reach a definitive conclusion, but that may be preferable to [a case] that is based on a problematic test.”
—Capt. Kyle Kennedy, Oregon State Police
But the problem with using aeration as a proxy for proof of life, many medical experts argue, is that babies don’t have to take a breath for air to enter their lungs. Air can be introduced when the baby’s chest is compressed as it squeezes through the birth canal. If there is an attempt to resuscitate a stillborn baby, that pressure can inflate the lungs. And if a body has started to decompose, gases from that process can cause the lungs to float in water. Even the ordinary handling of a stillborn baby can allow air to enter the lungs.
Doctors have long struggled with the best way to determine whether a baby was born alive in unattended births. Many experts agree that it’s nearly impossible without incontrovertible evidence such as milk in the baby’s stomach or signs of the umbilical cord stump beginning to heal where it was cut.
The uncertainty can be difficult for juries to accept, especially when prosecutors present what appears to be a scientific test that proves a baby was born alive and, as a result, was murdered.
“It is not always possible to reach a definitive conclusion, but that may be preferable to one that is based on a problematic test,” said Capt. Kyle Kennedy of the Oregon State Police department, of which the Oregon State Medical Examiner is a part.
The Oregon State Medical Examiner, he said, does not use the lung float test.
The test can produce correct results, said Dr. Christopher Milroy, a forensic pathologist with the Eastern Ontario Regional Forensic Pathology Unit and a professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada. But given that it also produces inaccurate results, he said it should not be used in criminal cases.
“It’s not like some of the things we do,” he said, “where we are going, ‘Well, did they die of diabetes or did they die of something else natural?’”
Milroy has studied the test and its history and has found references to its use in the 17th century, when witch trials were still occurring. But by the late 1700s, its reliability was questioned by doctors and lawyers. More than 200 years later, in 2016, the authors of a forensic medicine textbook wrote that there were too many recorded instances of stillborn lungs floating and live-born lungs sinking for the test to be used in a criminal trial.
No agency currently tracks how often the lung float test is used in criminal cases. But the 11 cases ProPublica identified are likely an undercount because some cases weren’t covered in news reports, and plea deals and acquittals often create less of a public record.
Still, the test has been cited in medical textbooks and is often included in forensic pathology training. Its defenders say that there aren’t any better alternatives, and they may be criticized for not doing their job if they don’t use it. Some also say they don’t rely solely on the test; they acknowledge its weaknesses but say it complements other exams. In addition, some people do, in fact, kill their babies.
Prosecutors have often turned to a 2013 academic study from Germany to support admitting the lung float test as evidence. “The study proves that for contemporary medicine, the lung floating test is still a reliable indicator of a newborn’s breathing,” the authors wrote.
But some experts have questioned that study, saying its results have not been reproduced, its 98% accuracy rate is misleading and it didn’t actually answer whether a baby was born alive because the births in the study had been attended by medical professionals, so there was never any real question about what happened.
The hospital affiliated with the study’s authors declined to comment.
The dearth of research around the test raises critical questions about whether it should be allowed as evidence, said Marvin Schechter, a New York criminal defense lawyer who served on the committee that wrote a groundbreaking National Academy of Sciences report in 2009 on strengthening forensic science in the United States. Schechter said the lung float test wasn’t included because the commission reviewed only the most frequently cited forensic tests.
His concerns with the test mirror many of the ones flagged in the report. For example, he said, the lack of standardization is evident in the fact that some medical examiners squeeze the lungs as part of the test.
“What is that? Your squeeze is different than my squeeze,” he said. “That’s not science.”
Schechter called for a national conference to evaluate the test and its admissibility in court.
“If you apply the rules and regulations that follow science to the lung float test, how does it pass muster?” Schechter said. “The research doesn’t exist, and if the research doesn’t exist, then you shouldn’t be doing it.”
Every so often, after the lung float test has been used to help put a woman behind bars, the questions around it set her free.
In 2006, Bridget Lee had hid her pregnancy after having an affair. She didn’t want anyone in the small Alabama community where she played piano at her church to know.
Bridget Lee at her home in Carrollton, Alabama, in 2009Credit:Jay Reeves/AP
When she went into labor at home, she said her son was stillborn. She placed his body in a plastic container and put it in her SUV, where it sat for days.
The medical examiner used the lung float test and concluded that Lee’s son had been born alive. Lee was charged with murder, which in Alabama carried the possibility of the death penalty.
Lee’s lawyer called on Davis to review the autopsy report, which was the first time he saw the lung float test being used to support criminal charges against a mother. He concluded that the autopsy was filled with errors. It missed an infection in the umbilical cord and erroneously described decomposition as signs of injury.
Davis’ review led to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences to examine the case, and the agency ruled that not only had the medical examiner botched the autopsy, but the baby was stillborn. Neither the medical examiner nor the prosecutors responded to requests for comment.
Lee spent nine months in jail before prosecutors dropped the charges against her.
She later told reporters that she knows it’s hard for people to understand how she could put her baby’s body in a container and leave it in her car. But, she said, the best way to describe it was like having “an out-of-body experience.”
While individual reactions are hard to comprehend, mental health specialists say the shock and pain of delivering a stillborn baby at home can be so traumatic that people may detach or disassociate from reality, said Dr. Miriam Schultz, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry who specializes in reproductive psychiatry at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health.
“Sometimes a survival instinct will kick in to try to normalize what’s an absolutely incomprehensibly shocking and devastating reality,” Schultz said. “One could imagine possibly trying to make evidence of what just happened less visible and wanting to completely compartmentalize this traumatic event that just has occurred.”
Late one April night in 2017, Latice Fisher said she felt the urge to defecate. About three hours later, she delivered her son into the toilet at her home.
The medical examiner in Fisher’s case performed the lung float test, which revealed that parts of the lungs floated and parts didn’t. He ruled that the baby was born alive and died from asphyxiation. Police also found that Fisher had searched for abortion pills on her phone.
Yveka Pierre, senior litigation counsel with the reproductive justice nonprofit If/When/How, said the people who are prosecuted for their pregnancy outcomes are typically from marginalized communities. They’re Black, like Fisher; or they’re brown, like Purvi Patel, an Indiana woman who was sent to prison for feticide after self-inducing an abortion, a charge that was later vacated; or they face financial hurdles, like Akers.
“Some losses are tragedies, depending on your identity, and some losses are crimes, depending on your identity.” Pierre said. “That is not how we say the law should work.”
Pierre, who also worked on Akers’ case, said Fisher and her husband did what prosecutors say to do by calling 911, but Fisher was still arrested. Once the medical examiner’s investigation starts, she said, the office typically works in tandem with the police.
A grand jury indicted Fisher on second-degree murder charges in January 2018. But a few months later, a local group raised money to get her released on bond. The group also contacted a national nonprofit, now known as Pregnancy Justice, which helped connect Fisher with longtime criminal defense attorney Dan Arshack. He began researching the lung float test and came to an unmistakable conclusion.
“It should be permitted to the same extent that dunking a woman in water is permitted to determine if she’s a witch,” he said in an interview.
Some losses are tragedies, depending on your identity, and some losses are crimes, depending on your identity. That is not how we say the law should work.”
—Yveka Pierre, senior litigation counsel with If/When/How
Arshack asked Davis to review the autopsy, which he found troubling. Arshack also asked Aziza Ahmed, then a professor at Northeastern University School of Law, to focus specifically on the forensics of the lung float test.
By not requiring rigorous testing or proof of its accuracy, Ahmed wrote, the “courts themselves have played a key role in sustaining the inaccurate belief” that the test could reliably determine whether a child was born alive.
Arshack wrote letters to District Attorney Scott Colom explaining Davis and Ahmed’s findings, saying there was no “reasonable legal or scientific basis” to conclude that a crime occurred. He also explained that it wasn’t “good public policy to prosecute women for bad pregnancy outcomes, especially Black women in Mississippi,” who suffer higher rates of maternal mortality and stillbirth.
In May 2019, Colom announced that he had learned of concerns surrounding the reliability of the lung float test. Once the question of whether the child was born alive was scientifically in dispute, he said, he dismissed the charges against Fisher and sent the case to another grand jury armed with the details about the test.
“When you’re talking about a murder charge for a mother,” Colom said in an interview, “I felt that was crucial information because I certainly didn’t want to be prosecuting somebody for a stillborn death that could not be her fault.”
This time, the grand jury chose not to indict Fisher.
As Akers’ case made its way through court, Davis was asked to review the autopsy. He noted that Akers had classic risk factors for stillbirth: hypertension during pregnancy, obesity, advanced maternal age and previous pregnancies. She also was past her due date and reported not feeling the baby kick in the days leading up to the birth.
Dr. Gregory Davis at University of Kentucky College of MedicineCredit:Natosha Via for ProPublica
Davis agreed with the medical examiner, Dr. Nikki Mourtzinos, and the associate pathologist who conducted parts of the autopsy, that there were infections in the pancreas, placenta — the vital organ that provides the fetus with nutrients and oxygen — and the umbilical cord, which serves as the baby’s lifeline in the womb.
But what he found “perplexing,” he wrote, is that they did “not seem to take these critical findings into account regarding such findings being associated with stillbirth.” When it was his time to take the witness stand at trial, he said the infections in the placenta, umbilical cord and membranes were “a smoking gun association” with stillbirth.
An OB-GYN also testified that he believed Akers suffered from a placental abruption — a complication where the placenta separates from the wall of the uterus — which also can lead to a stillbirth and cause heavy bleeding.
Prosecutors said the case hinged on whether the baby was born alive. Among the evidence they pointed to were the results of the lung float test, the pinkish appearance of the lungs and lack of decomposition, malformation of the baby’s head or slippage of the skin.
“These lungs floated,” the prosecutor said during closing. “They floated because this child had breathed and was alive after he was delivered at home that day.”
The prosecution homed in on the fact that Akers had wanted an abortion, which was underscored by her cellphone search history. They said she never intended to have her baby live and breathe. When she didn’t get an abortion, they said, she chose to give birth at home and kill her son. They pointed out that she hadn’t received prenatal care and that she didn’t attempt to resuscitate the baby.
Akers told police she thought it was too late.
During closing arguments, prosecutors displayed an oversized photo of the baby on the screen and repeated that Akers put his body in a bag, using the word “bag” 26 times.
In April 2022, the jury found Akers guilty of second-degree murder and first-degree child abuse.
In response to questions from ProPublica, the state’s attorney declined to comment. Mourtzinos, the assistant medical examiner who testified in Akers’ case, did not respond to requests for comment. She’s no longer with the Maryland medical examiner’s office. The agency’s interim chief medical examiner said the office is accredited by the National Association of Medical Examiners and follows the organization’s autopsy performance standards. Any and all ancillary tests, she said, “are done on a case by case basis, at the discretion of the attending medical examiner” and interpreted in the context of the entire case.
When the verdict was read, Akers collapsed in her chair, dropped her head to the table and sobbed. Her family, who was seated behind her, filled the courtroom with their own cries.
Last summer, as much of the country awaited the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which eliminated a constitutional right to abortion, the New York-based nonprofit Pregnancy Justice released a guide for medical, legal and child welfare professionals on confronting pregnancy criminalization.
The organization advised defense attorneys and medical examiners to challenge the lung float test. In many cases, the authors wrote, criminal charges are based on “the erroneous assumption that a woman engaged in acts or omissions that harmed the fetus.”
The backdrop to the lung float test is the deeper issue of criminalizing pregnancy loss. That was already on the rise before the Dobbs decision, with data from Pregnancy Justice showing that nearly 1,400 pregnant women were arrested, prosecuted or sentenced between 2006 and the 2022 Dobbs decision, more than three times the total for the previous 33 years. Many of the charges were connected to drug use while pregnant.
Society often wants to hold someone responsible, said Dana Sussman, deputy executive director of Pregnancy Justice. Mothers are usually the easiest to blame.
One of the first things Pregnancy Justice lawyers now ask in a pregnancy loss case is whether the prosecutor is attempting to use the lung float test.
“It’s almost like an intake question,” Sussman said. “We will fight every attempt that we learn of to use that test because that is a life sentence based on unreliable information and unreliable science.”
The lack of understanding, research and education around stillbirth also contributes to the urge to assign blame. Every year in the U.S., more than 20,000 pregnancies end in stillbirth, defined as the death of an expected child at 20 weeks or more. But the public is often shocked to hear that number or learn that only a fraction of stillbirths are attributed to congenital abnormalities. Some babies died just minutes before they were born and were placed in their parents’ arms while they were warm to the touch and their cheeks were still rosy.
Davis, an affable man with a snow-white beard, has started to spread the word about the lung float test. At a post-Dobbs legal seminar in Tennessee over the summer, he told a room of lawyers about the test, one that many of them had not heard of but may soon encounter.
A lawyer sitting in the back told the crowd that the lung float test seemed to have the same validity as bite mark analysis, which for decades was accepted as evidence and now is considered junk science.
“What do you do when they say this test has been accepted in the past?” she asked.
Davis pointed her to a letter where he gathered signatures from more than two dozen forensic pathologists and medical examiners from around the world who declared that the lung float test is not a scientifically reliable test or indicator of live birth and “is not generally accepted within the forensic pathology community.”
He had submitted the letter in Akers’ case.
In July of last year, three months after the Akers verdict, prosecutors asked the judge to sentence her to 40 years. They said it was the “the most heinous of crimes that can be committed” and it was carried out by a woman who hid her pregnancy and took her baby’s life in a “detached and calculated manner.”
Akers’ family came to her defense. Her husband said that in their nearly 20 years together, Akers’ “devotion to her family defies description.” One of his greatest joys in life, he said, was seeing the way their kids light up anytime she enters a room.
Her lawyer, Debra Saltz, said Akers made “lapses in judgment” by not telling anyone she was pregnant, having the baby alone and then putting his body in the closet. But, she said, “There is in this life no way anybody will get me to believe that Moira Akers killed her baby. I believe Moira, and I believe the science, that this baby was stillborn.”
Before the judge imposed his sentence, Akers addressed him.
“My children are my entire world,” she said, “and I fell in love with my son as soon as I saw him.”
The judge, who acknowledged what an “extraordinarily difficult case” it was, said the charges against Akers were “particularly egregious because they were perpetrated against an innocent, helpless, newborn child.”
He sentenced her to 30 years in prison.
Akers’ appeal, now pending, focuses on the shortcomings of the lung float test.
As she waits for a ruling, she stays connected to her family from prison. Her mom, Mary Linehan, said most of their conversations revolve around the ordinary details of her children’s lives, their first day of school and their favorite new toys.
Akers’ mom, who retired from her job as an accountant at a Catholic church and school, helps watch her grandchildren. When they ask about their mom, she said, their dad tells them that she “got blamed for something she didn’t do, and we’re fighting to get her out.”
Thanks to Ten Bears for the link. When will the US stop supporting this Apartheid nation? They clearly are not willing to give the Palestine any rights, the Palestine’s live in what is justly called an open air prison. They have no rights, they have no legal remedies but instead of being under the laws of Israel they are under military rule, their treatment is not questioned by the checks and balances of laws. But the US not only supports this corrupt government by billions of dollars, a country that has universal healthcare that the people in the US are told is too expensive for us to have. Does that make sense? This is no different from the US supporting the South African apartheid by white supremacist against black people. Just because this is religious based doesn’t make it right. We are watching the genocide of an entire group of people, and we seem to be OK with it. I AM NOT! Hugs. Scottie
Hundreds of Israeli settlers on Sunday forced their way into the flash point Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in occupied East Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish New Year, reports Anadolu Agency.
Israeli settlers observe the Rosh Hashanah (New Year) holiday from September 15 to September 17 this year. They will also mark the Sukkot holiday at the end of September and the Simhat Torah holiday on October 6.
In a statement, the Jordan-run Islamic Waqf Department said Israeli forces had emptied the Al-Aqsa complex from Palestinian worshipers before allowing settlers in.
According to the statement, Palestinians under 50 years old were prevented from entering the site.
A number of Palestinians were arrested by Israeli forces from inside the complex, local sources said.
There was no comment from the Israeli authorities on the report.
For Muslims, Al-Aqsa represents the world’s third-holiest site. Jews, for their part, call the area the Temple Mount, saying it was the site of two ancient Jewish temples.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem, where Al-Aqsa complex is located, during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. It annexed the entire city in 1980 in a move never recognized by the international community.
Please see the intro to my last three post. I am going to simply copy and paste it here as it is the same thing.
The Christian Taliban moral police strike again. When are people in the US going to get tired of the Christian nationalist trying to take over the country and force everyone to live under the doctrines of their churches. Think about it, this is not religious freedom, this is religious dictatorship. Religious freedom is everyone gets to practice and live their life according to their religion as long as it doesn’t harm others. By the Christians insisting everyone honor their idea of the holy day, they deny the religious freedom of others. What about religious sects and religions that have Saturday as the holy day? What about atheist that don’t have a holy day, and their ability to enjoy each day without the religious entanglements is also part of religious freedom. I know that some fundamental religious leaders like to claim there is no right to not be religious, but that is stupid. To be free to practice one’s personal beliefs, one must be free to have no set religious restrictions. People this is a fringe fundamentalist group of very vocal, very driven people willing to rule over every aspect of other peoples lives. They are the worst busybody nosey neighbors ever in existence. Their goal in life is to make you follow their ways, their ideas of right and wrong no matter what you believe, no matter what you think, in fact you are not important as a person for them. You need to comply so their god is happy, that is it. They don’t care if you’re happy or if things are good for you. They only care if their god is happy and they think they know the secret to making their god happy. Fight back. Hugs
The artists, many of whom were people of color and LGBTQ, left the premises to avoid violence
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Over the weekend, a retreat for Appalachian artists in Bledsoe, Kentucky had to be cut short after a conservative Christian mob invaded the rental space falsely claiming that the participants were desecrating a local chapel.
The event was run byWaymakers Collective, a non-profit group that provides grant money and learning opportunities for artists in the region. They say they’ve given away over $1 million to date and this past weekend was supposed to mark their second annual gathering.
The three-day event took place at Pine Mountain Settlement School (PMSS), an 800-acre campus with dozens of buildings. The school’s website says “We have hosted everything from church retreats to theater conferences to recording sessions.” Given that many of the Waymakers’ members had attended events there in the past and “always felt welcome, safe and had positive experiences,” it seemed like a perfect place for the occasion. The schedule included performances, meals, lectures, and free time for the artists to explore their creativity among like-minded peers.
Importantly, participants also had an option to visit the chapel on campus as a “Healing Space.” Waymakers explained it this way:
The healing space was something we instituted last year when our gathering occurred right after the flood in Eastern Kentucky and we knew many of our participants traveling from Eastern Kentucky were coming off of weeks of relief work and being impacted by the floods themselves. We chose to continue that offering this year… It was a spa-like environment to help facilitate restorativeness, rest, and reflection that we invited people to use how they wanted to: take a nap, sit in quiet meditation, or prayerful reflection within their own religious and spiritual traditions.
Organizers said the chapel was decorated with pillows, “soothing lights,” plants, and a painting that included an “Om” symbol—presumably to facilitate the meditation.
That’s what this controversy is all about.
While the “Om” wasn’t meant to be religious in nature, when some people in the community saw pictures of the painting, they flipped out over the idea that a non-Christian symbol made its way into a supposedly Christian space (even though PMSS isn’t a religious location).
Waymakers organizers said they were told they had use of the entire campus as part of their rental agreement, and the only restriction regarding the chapel involved the pews—they were told not to move them because the floors were recently resurfaced. In other words, there was no reason the painting should have been a concern for anyone.
On Saturday, however, an estimated 8-9 community members took matters into their own hands, barged into the space, and entered the chapel “to make sure the House of The Lord wasn’t being disrespected.”
Tate Napier, the mob member whose posted about the situation on Facebook, told reporter Jennifer McDaniels of the Tri-City News:
The people in the chapel said they were doing nothing wrong, and I asked if they were in there to worship Jesus, and a few started raising their voices at me, so I told them to just get their stuff – that we weren’t there to argue, and I even helped them gather their things and pack them to their cars. After that all happened, the state police and sheriff deputies showed up, and they agreed to stay out of the chapel, but then, ultimately, they decided to leave because they said they felt unsafe.
…
If they want to do that stuff, they can do it in their own homes or buildings or wherever else, but it’s not happening in Jesus’ house as long as I’m around to defend it…
Napier, aChristianwho wascharged with first-degree sexual abuseafter being caught in bed with a 15-year-old girl, had no business telling anyone to “get their stuff.” He makes it sound like he was merely escorting out people who shouldn’t have been there when, in fact, he’s the one who didn’t have access to the space. Neither did his colleagues. (Two deputies were indeed stationed outside the chapel afterwards, but unlike what his post said, they weren’t necessarily there to keep people from entering.)
One of the artists in attendance didn’t see the mob’s actions as helpful in any way. Referring to them as “yt supremacists,” Kabrea James said the invaders alleged the artists were “desecrating their space” and “demanded that we leave.” The artists left in order to avoid escalating the situation—which was understandable given that a lot of them come from marginalized communities.
Shortly after the conflict began, a PMSS staffer showed up and played mediator (which the Waymakers said they appreciated). Eventually, police were called in by both PMSS and some of the artists who felt like they were in danger. According to Waymakers, “We were also then told that the Executive Director and Board of the PMSS had ordered our group to not return to the chapel during our stay.” (How does that make any sense?!)
In a statement released by Waymakers on Monday, they expressed concern about why their safety wasn’t paramount in this situation and why their contract wasn’t honored:
What was, ultimately, at issue was the safety of our collective. We are a family-friendly community and we had parents at the event who had brought their children. PMSS is a place that has long welcomed children onto its campus, so we ask the PMSS Board and leadership: Why were children, families, and our guests put at risk in this way? Why were outside people who were not part of our gathering allowed to be present on the campus and interrupt our private, paid-for event? Why were there no safety procedures in place that the staff could follow to keep the people who rent PMSS safe?
These were some of the many reasons we made the call to end our event a day early and leave PMSS for the safety of everyone in attendance, including the staff of PMSS that we did not want to be witness to these intense interactions. To ensure the safety of all of those in attendance, we organized caravans out of the property and county so that no members left the property alone. Many of our participants are deeply traumatized by this experience, especially those of us with personal lived experiences of racial and gender-based violence. We are offering access to free therapy as part of our aftercare approach for the participants that were there.
McDaniels, the reporter, said it’s “unclear if the chapel was a part of the Waymakers Collective retreat facility lease agreement or not,” but the Waymakers certainly believed they had access to it. (Hell, their version of the story involves specific advance discussions about using the chapel.) PMSS has not yet issued any statement about the matter.
Meanwhile, Dan Mosley, the Harlan County Judge Executive, offered support for the mob shortly after the conflict occurred:
I have a lot on my mind this evening but I’m going to be brief. I’m proud of the people of Bledsoe and Big Laurel. Your perspective is my perspective, today, and in the days ahead. It’s always better to ask questions than throw stones and civil discourse is always the best pathway to resolution.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.” Matthew 5:9
“Your perspective is my perspective,” he said of the intolerant Christians who magically claimed ownership of space that wasn’t theirs.
Mosley added separately that seeing the “Om” symbol in the chapel “made me sick at my stomach”:
He basically praised the mob for taking a stand without resorting to violence, as if they deserved a reward for merely threatening the artists rather than doing something even more insane. The comments on that first post overwhelmingly agreed with that position, as did manyothers in the community. (This is apparently what they do in small towns.)
None of the groups opposing Waymakers’ use of the space has issued any official response yet. They sure as hell haven’t denounced the invaders, who simply don’t believe a chapel should be used by anyone who doesn’t share their conservative Christian faith, even if the space is no longer used as a religious site and even if the artists were contractually allowed to temporarily decorate the chapel as they saw fit.
This is nothing more than an act of white Christian supremacy that thankfully didn’t end with victims who are LGBTQ people and artists of color (including ones who are practicing Christians themselves).
If county leaders and PMSS officials aren’t going to take this seriously, and the invaders face no consequences for barging, uninvited, onto private property, it’s hard to imagine anything will change.
The start of the article doesn’t mention it, but this school is in Ohio. I followed a link in the article and this school also stopped celebrating diversity day and the students protested. Seems the right is again desperately trying to push a primarily white cis straight Christian society. And while they claim that others are not civil enough, these same people use threats, violence, and they mock and insult others. Notice how the anti-diversity anti-LGBTQIA maga republicans act when others are testifying. No respect whatsoever. Fundamentalist Christian racist bigot maga are the most self entitled people ever. Hugs.
Zack Carreon
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WVXU
Parents and students attend the Forest Hills school board meeting on Sept. 20, 2023.
The debate over whether discussions about race, inclusion, and LGBTQ+ issues belong in Forest Hills Schools was reignited after Superintendent Larry Hook made the decision to paint over a student-created mural at the start of the school year.
The mural depicted the hands of people of different races signaling love and solidarity surrounded by symbols of equality and acceptance of various sexual orientations.
Advocate FHSD
/
Provided
The mural inside Nagel Middle School before it was covered and painted over.
Students at Nagel Middle School created the mural years ago, but when students returned to the building this year, some were surprised to see it covered by a banner promoting Forest Hills’s new “Culture Blueprint.” That banner was torn down. Shortly after, the mural was completely painted over, sparking outrage from some students and parents.
On the Forest Hills Schools’ website, the Culture Blueprint is described as a reminder to students to do their best and be mindful of others. But some say the superintendent’s actions send a different message.
Dozens showed up to Wednesday’s school board meeting holding signs of the mural. Parents and students spoke during public comment in opposition to the superintendent’s decision.
Forest Hills parent Jeff Nye addressed Hook directly, calling his response to the initial backlash childish.
“A 7th or 8th grade kid — 12- or 13-years-old — damaged that banner and that’s unacceptable and should be punished,” Nye said. “But before that happened, you had an opportunity to reflect and take action, value the feedback you received, to lead by example, to lead with humility, and say ‘I made a mistake, I shouldn’t have put it there,’ but you didn’t. You doubled down. You didn’t act like leader. You acted like a kid. You took your ball and you went home and I’m incredibly disappointed.”
High school student Norah Zellen also had strong words for Hook, saying that permanently covering the mural will have a more negative impact on students than district leaders thought.
“The mural exhibited a safe and inclusive learning environment, yet it was painted over. This action shows thoughtlessness, a lack of authenticity, and calls into question if the school board and superintendent want some students erased,” Zellen told Hook.
Hook was noticeably silent on the issue during the meeting. Each time the superintendent spoke about school matters, audience members held up signs of the mural.
During the meeting, board member Leslie Rasmussen called out the superintendent for his unwillingness to address the elephant in the room.
“Larry, you made a lot of wonderful comments about the awesome work our students are doing. I don’t want that to be overshadowed tonight or any time, but I want to take a moment to make sure you see all these students in the audience. They deserve acknowledgment,” Rasmussen said.
Hook responded, “I see them,” but made no further comments on the matter until questioned by reporters after the meeting.
Hook’s response
The superintendent defended the mural’s removal, saying despite the overwhelming opposition, most people in the Forest Hills community wanted to see it gone.
“I’ve talked to a lot of people who were very upset that it was there,” he said. “So, it’s kind of created this battle that shouldn’t even be in schools. We need to focus on our education. We need to focus on what’s important. That doesn’t mean we marginalize anybody.”
A small collection of adults also spoke during public comment defending Hook’s decision. One attendee, who took offense to parents and students supporting the mural, was removed by law enforcement after getting into a physical interaction with another audience member.
Read the full article. According to posts on social media today, the woman who snatched an audience member’s phone is the mother of Christianist school board member Katie Stewart, whose own children reportedly attend private Catholic school. At last night’s meeting Stewart wore a Gadsden flag t-shirt. The TikTok video below has gone viral.
At 11, hear from the woman who was attacked while filming a Forest Hills school board meeting. Parents and students were speaking out against the removal of a diversity mural. @Local12pic.twitter.com/cNKa0MrnKm
This is the mother of Katie Stewart, @FHSchools Board Member. She also laughed when a parent discussed her child’s suicide attempt and mocked students and other speakers. #classy#niceexamplehttps://t.co/HIaJa5xG1J
Students, parents and community members held a rally ahead of the Forest Hills School board meeting on Wednesday. Attendees say they’re upset about the decision by the Forest Hills School District to paint over a diversity mural. @FOX19pic.twitter.com/OH34kKGOiE
That woman’s DAUGHTER sits on the SCHOOL BOARD. Perhaps Katie STEWART should RETHINK her WARDROBE CHOICE in light of her MOM’S ANTICS. pic.twitter.com/HvYWYCabWG
She also laughed when a parent discussed her child’s suicide attempt and mocked students and other speakers
To me that’s even worse than the assault.
I wonder if it’s time to ressurect ACT UP! techniques? If this woman goes to church, perhaps go to the same church as disrupt the service: “WHAT DOES GOD THINK OF LAUGHING ABOUT SUICIDE ATTEMPTS?’
Shaming on Twitter is considered a badge of honor and they have no shame. But to so in churches or in grocery stores or at their hairdressers, that will perhaps do more?
I’m thinking of the beardy guy that is in DC and always behind (the latest) republican politician accused of wrongdoing.
Right? ACT UP wasn’t afraid to take on the churches. You do that when people are dying. We’ve already had a few killings (RIP, O’Shae Sibley). How many more will it take?
Very true. Back in the 80’s, we stormed Toronto’s St. Micheal’s Cathedral and dumped condoms on the altar because of the Church’s stance regarding their use, especially in preventing HIV/AIDS. We barricaded Conservative Pols Offices and, on more than one occasion, stood toe to toe with cops who wanted to fuck with us during marches…it didn’t end well for them. It was nothing for us to dump pink Jello by the bucket loads onto cop cars, Church steps, etc. We made a ruckus and did so until we were heard.
Long past time to teach society that lesson again. Direct Action Now.
We need to act up for sure and run for school board seats or get allies to run because imagine the lgbtq kids in that school seeing this how humiliating and hurtful. We need to stand up so they know to do the same when it’s their turn.
“Christianist school board member Katie Stewart, whose own children reportedly attend private Catholic school”
So it is none of her business what it happening at the school in question, but still finds herself in a position to dictate terms there. Just waiting for the cries of “I’m being silenced!”
Where i live its practically impossible to find the backstory on school board candidates unless you know somebody who knows somebody who knows them. School board seats are classified as non-partisan, so you cant even go by party affiliation. Their websites & mailers are useless – so generic as to convey no useful info.
Again a fundamentalist religious group think only their beliefs are correct and they need to force that belief on everyone no matter what. No matter the religion other people might have, these people feel the right to force their god on your children. Regardless of your desire to raise your child in a manner that is open and accepting of the differences in others, these people demand the right to teach your child to be a closed-minded bigot. It is scary how these people reject democracy and co-existing but instead think that religious freedom gives them the right to oppress others, require the entire PUBLIC school system be run like their church following their church doctrines. One thing in the article that makes no sense to me. A teacher said she couldn’t be a christian and use a childs prefered pronouns. Why? I read the bible, I went to church a few years. No where did god say you shall not use him instead of her, you shall not call Billy she if he asks you do, you shall not cally Sally they or them. The bible never demanded you call Sally she / her and Billy he / him. These people are creating a biblical comand, a biblical sin where none was and ifgnoring the real shalls and shall nots. Hugs
From fights over LGBT rights to prayer at school board meetings, Chino Valley public schools have become ground zero for the culture wars.
Kate Briquelet
Senior Reporter
Decca Muldowney
Reporter-Researcher
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
Outside the California State Capitol last month, a fitness trainer turned school board president fired up the crowd at a parental rights rally, telling them they were all fighters in “a spiritual battle” for their kids and must answer the call from God.
Sonja Shaw, who was elected to the Chino Valley Unified School District board of education last November with an assist from a local megachurch and its Christian nationalist pastor, didn’t equivocate in naming the enemy: state Democratic officials who are challenging her right-leaning policies—and drafting laws that hinder book bans and protect teachers from harassment.
“Today we stand here and declare in his almighty name that it’s only a matter of time before we take your seats and we be a God-fearing example to the nation, how God is using California to lead the way,” Shaw crowed, adding, “We already know who has won this battle. You will be removed in Jesus’s name! You, Satan, are losing.”
Now Shaw is in the national spotlight in wake of her Chino school board passing codes that ban pride flags in classrooms and force educators to inform parents if their children identify as transgender—the first such policy to be passed in the state.
This summer, Shaw’s school board meetings, about 35 miles east of Los Angeles, became chaotic spectacles, ones that attracted the Proud Boys and other right-wing extremists and pitted them against students and parents protesting what they’re calling anti-LGBTQ practices that endanger children. When California superintendent of schools Tony Thurmond appeared at the July meeting in opposition, Shaw unceremoniously silenced him.
Weeks after state Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a civil rights probe into Shaw’s “gender disclosure” policy, his office sued the school board. Bonta said the policy violates the California constitution and state law, and would cause LGBTQ+ students, “mental, emotional, psychological and potential physical harm,” according to a press release.
Other right-leaning school boards across the state have followed Chino Valley Unified’s lead. Shortly before filing suit against the Chino board, Bonta issued statements denouncing the Anderson Union High School District, Temecula Valley Unified and Murrieta Valley Unified school boards’ decisions to pursue “copycat” anti-trans policies.
Sonja Shaw listens to speakers in front of the state Capitol on bills related to LGBTQ school curriculum in Sacramento.
Wally Skalij/Los Angles Times
“These students are currently under threat of being outed to their parents against their will, and many fear that the District’s policy will force them to make a choice: either ‘walk back’ their constitutionally and statutorily protected rights to gender identity and gender expression, or face the risk of emotional, physical, and psychological harm,” Bonta said.
To concerned observers in Chino, Shaw’s tack is not unlike what’s happening at school boards across the country, with brawls over curriculum, social emotional learning, and the banning of books that focus on race and LGBTQ issues. Extremist groups like Moms for Liberty have spawned a mainstream narrative that public schools are “indoctrinating” children with “woke” ideology and into believing they’re a different gender.
But in Chino Valley, the school board’s new direction appears to be spurred on by a man behind the curtain: Shaw’s megachurch pastor Jack Hibbs.
Indeed, three of the board’s five members belong to his church, Calvary Chapel Chino Hills.
At the Sacramento rally, Hibbs boasted of his congregation’s work in electing Shaw. Calling her a “true modern-day Deborah,” Hibbs said the soccer mom “heeded the call to run for the school board” and that “when churches get involved and get informed, people vote.”
God, Hibbs said, installed Shaw into her position.
“Get on your knees every night,” Shaw told the crowd. “All day I talk to him. People probably think I’m crazy, but I’m really just talking to God all day.” After reciting a Bible verse, she added, “I have looked demons straight in the eye and with God’s authority rebuked them back to hell where they belong.
“You can do that too, trust me.”
Residents have long raised alarms about the school board’s religious bent. And Pastor Hibbs and members of his megachurch congregation appear to be more involved than ever in Chino’s public schools.
Last week, in an interview with right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk, Hibbs said that he brought the policy language to the school board after Republican state Assemblyman Bill Essayli’s “parental notification” legislation died without a hearing.
“He came back thinking he was defeated,” Hibbs said. “What we did is that we read his bill and we took the verbiage from that bill and then introduced it to our unified school district school board and they voted and adopted the verbiage.
“Guess what happened?” Hibbs continued. “We found out something, Charlie, that the most powerful politics is local…”
Hibbs then turned to Bonta’s lawsuit against the board, saying, “We’re going to take that on, we’re going to make sure that this goes to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
The pastor, who hasn’t returned messages left by The Daily Beast, wasn’t shy about his fight on the school board’s behalf.
Before he signed off, Hibbs told Kirk that children are “groomed” into trans ideology in the classroom and that schools want to “castrate your children” and “mutilate them.”
Ahead of the parental notification vote in July, Hibbs also urged people to flock to the fiery board meeting. “We’re asking people to show up by the thousands,” he said in a video announcement on the church’s Facebook page. “Please make it a priority.”
A supporter of Chino Valley school board’s policy to require schools to ‘out’ students to parents if they ask to be identified by a gender not listed on their birth certificate.
David McNew/Getty Images
Meanwhile, Calvary Chapel has boasted on social media of collecting tens of thousands of ballots for state and local candidates endorsed by Hibbs. The church’s ballot collection, a practice it’s engaged in for years, is conducted with help from Hibbs’ political organization Real Impact.
A teacher in another district—who alleges she was fired for refusing to follow her school’s gender identity protocols—heeded Hibbs’ call. “I could no longer be both a Christian and a public school teacher,” she said at the board meeting. “Then I remembered what Pastor Jack Hibbs taught me, that the word of God says… that being a coward is a sin.”
Still, Shaw claims that neither she nor the school board follow Hibbs’ orders. “Absolutely not. No one has a direct line to Pastor Jack Hibbs. Pastor Jack has never said, ‘Hey, guys, I want you to bring this policy forward.’ Never ever did he do any of that,” she told The Daily Beast. She added, however, that she couldn’t speak on Hibbs’ involvement with the board of education prior to her election.
The mother of two daughters—a freshman and junior in high school—Shaw was a Bible study leader at another church before joining Hibbs’ Calvary Chapel Chino Hills about two years ago.
Last September, Shaw told the San Bernardino Sun that she wasn’t running for election on the behalf of the 10,000-member Calvary Chapel. “They keep calling me ‘the church’s choice.’ I’ve never met Pastor Jack (Hibbs). I’ve never been brought up on stage,” she said.
One month later, however, Hibbs introduced her at the pulpit, telling his Sunday service that “she’s truly going up against the machine” before leading a prayer for her victory. Shaw bowed her head as Hibbs lifted a hand in the air and declared, “She has decided, Lord, to take on the woke-ism that is attacking our children.”
“I think Chino Valley is a cautionary tale.”
Hibbs has emboldened supporters to fight progressive education bills and prop up Christian candidates. In his sermons, he has tearfully prayed on stage for Donald Trump to win the 2020 election, said COVID-19 vaccines would lead people into accepting “the mark of the beast,” and called “transgenderism” a “sexually perverted cult” and “an anti-God, anti-Christ plan of none other than Satan himself.”
On education, he’s claimed that he and his acolytes are “trying to rescue kids from a system that is sexualizing them,” that kids “come out of school questioning their gender but they don’t even know how to do simple math” and “are being raped by the public school system.”
Hibbs has also taken aim at California’s abortion protections, describing them as “Infanticidal Death Policies,” in a document circulated to his congregation in October 2022, just before Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s re-election.
“If God does not intervene in this upcoming election through His people, which has always been his MO, and, if Newsom has his way, then this will certainly be proof that judgment has begun in California if not the United States,” the document reads. It ends by encouraging followers to return their ballots to the church.
“We should be able to stand against the school board,” Hibbs said in May. “We should be able to stand against some teacher that is molesting your child—if not physically, in their minds.”
In July, Hibbs delivered a skewed history lesson claiming that some founding fathers “inherited” slaves but actually cared for them. “Before you call them rich white guys who were slave owners,” Hibbs preached, “you need to finish the sentence: They were rich white guys who were slave owners who clothed, fed, and in many cases took very good care of their slaves while at the same time juggling two worlds…”
The megachurch has also tried to meddle in Chino Valley public school classes and teachings. Calvary Chapel members once funded textbooks for an elective course in two public high schools on the Bible as history and literature and tried to alter rules for sex education curriculum.
The church also runs a Christian “Released Time” program, where public school students can duck out of class for weekly one-hour Bible lessons held in buses outfitted with tables and chairs. This program had a table at the district’s back-to-school night, and a volunteer in a Calvary Chapel Chino Hills T-shirt handed out candy and Bible coloring books.
Chino Valley Unified School District Superintendent Dr. Norm Enfield, left, and President Sonja Shaw, right, listen to a speaker during a board meeting ahead of the board’s vote to requiring schools to notify parents if their child changes their pronouns.
Will Lester/MediaNews Group/Inland Valley Daily Bulletin via Getty Images
“This is a national movement and it’s intentional,” former school board president Christina Gagnier told The Daily Beast. “I think Chino Valley is a cautionary tale.”
District parent Glory Ciccarelli condemned Hibbs’ words on slavery at the August board meeting, urging Black parents to leave his church and “wake up and realize that what our ancestors went through is slowly getting phased out of the curriculum to the point where our kids will eventually be taught that literal slaveholders were nice guys…”
Ciccarelli told The Daily Beast that her biggest issue with Chino Valley leadership is “the apathy they have for the Black kids in the district,” and that the board needs professional development training relating to race and culture and diversity in hiring.
But she believes that Hibbs’ influence over certain board members could derail any progress in the district. In addition to Shaw, two other school board members—James Na and Andrew Cruz—are also members of Calvary Chapel.
“Cruz and Na are quite literally acolytes of Jack Hibbs at this point,” Ciccarelli said. “In my opinion, everything they say and believe as it relates to the school board is basically something they have heard from him.”
Hibbs, she added, “reminds me of Jim Jones with the way he is so easily able to control so many people at the same time.”
At the July board meeting that attracted far-right extremists like the Proud Boys, some local parents pushed back against the church’s connections to the school board.
“Madam President, board, cabinet, and staff,” quipped one father of a queer child, “I didn’t know I came to church tonight. I thought it was a board meeting.”
So many citizens had signed up to speak, waiting in a line outside in 100-degree weather, that the board cut the public comment period from three minutes to one minute per person.
Lisa Greathouse, a local mom and former school board candidate, defended teachers against claims they were “indoctrinating” and “grooming” kids. “Make no mistake,” Greathouse told the auditorium, “what this board is pushing through now is just the tip of the iceberg. They are taking their cue from their megachurch…”
Outbursts from hecklers interrupted the proceeding, which had a heavy police and security presence. Speakers from out of town and from Calvary Chapel preached about God and the Devil, facing off with parents and students who warned Shaw and her board they would have blood on their hands should the “outing” policy pass.
One moment in particular was so explosive it made headlines: Shaw excoriated Tony Thurmond, California’s state superintendent of schools, who’d asked her to reconsider the policy about notifying parents if their children identified as trans. He said it might run afoul of student privacy laws and jeopardize kids who “may not be in homes where they can be safe.”
“It seriously feels like I’m in some sort of weird dystopia.”
Thurmond wasn’t finished with his remarks, but Shaw cut him off for time like she did anyone else. “Tony Thurmond,” she seethed, “I appreciate you being here, tremendously. But here’s the problem: We’re here because of people like you. You’re in Sacramento proposing things that pervert children!”
After Thurmond tried to continue, Shaw yelled into her mic that she wouldn’t let him “blackmail” or “bully” her district. Video of the scene showed Thurmond exchanging words with a group of cops before walking away.
In a statement, Thurmond told The Daily Beast that a group of concerned students contacted him about Shaw’s proposal, and he rearranged his schedule to be there. “Let’s be clear about these policies—a small group of anti-LGBTQ+ politicians like Ms. Shaw believe they have the right to dictate when and how students and their families talk about their sexual orientation or gender identity,” Thurmond said. “They are trying to turn our public school educators—who are already overworked and underpaid—into the gender police.”
“Choosing when to come out and to whom is a deeply personal decision that LGBTQ+ young people have the right to make for themselves.”
Ashlee Peters, the parent of a child in the district, watched the scene unfold. “As an educator and as a mom, you just sit there and go, ‘I can’t believe this is happening in my community,’” said Peters, who has been a public school teacher for 22 years.
Peters was also in line when far-right activist Bryce Henson, who also goes by Ben Richards, walked around trying to bait people into reacting on camera. “He would come up to you and be like, ‘I just want to talk to you, why can’t we just have a conversation about this?’” It was a sneak preview of the testimony to come.
Inside, people proselytized and spewed hatred, calling LGBTQ people “terrorists” and warning “demons are after our children.” Richards called transgender, Black Lives Matter and Juneteenth flags flying outside his San Diego school district a symbol of “systemic radical leftist indoctrination.” One mother ended her speech with, “As Jason Aldean would say, ‘Well, try that in a small town.’”
Chino Valley School board president Sonja Shaw told the crowd in Sacramento, “We already know who has won this battle. You will be removed in Jesus’s name! You, Satan, are losing.”
Wally Skalij/Los Angles Times
When it was her turn, Peters warned that the “outing” policy would “create a hostile environment” for LGBTQIA+ students and that the board’s “reckless pursuit of personal agendas” could bring about “expensive lawsuits.”
The atmosphere was so tense that security escorted a person out who put hands on someone else, Peters said. “It seriously feels like I’m in some sort of weird dystopia,” Peters told The Daily Beast. “I don’t know how this happened because it does not feel real.”
Peters believes that what’s unfolding in Chino Valley Unified is a wake-up call to monitor school board elections. “I just didn’t think it was going to happen in my community because I live in California,” she said. “I feel relatively safe living in a blue state—that religion wasn’t going to suddenly take over my public school system, and it has.”
Even though the involvement of Hibbs and his megachuch in local public schools has been center stage in Chino Valley this year, it’s a battle that’s been brewing for at least a decade. Back in 2014, the Freedom from Religion Foundation filed a lawsuit on behalf of parents in Chino Valley over prayers and Bible readings at school board meetings, arguing these practices “constituted an establishment of religion in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”
The prayers and Bible verses were being led by Calvary Chapel members James Na and Andrew Cruz, who were elected to the school board in 2008 and 2012 respectively.
According to the prayer lawsuit, Na once told spectators of a school board meeting that their “lives begin in the hospital and end in the church, and urged everyone who does not know Jesus Christ to go and find Him.” In 2013, Na sent out a letter to school district “family member[s]” that referred to Hibbs with an excerpt from “Pastor Jack’s Christmas story.”
“The community is going to rise and create a war chest to help you,” Hibbs told the board in 2016 in the midst of the legal battle, though a crowdfunding drive affiliated with the church apparently never delivered. A school board spokesperson previously said that funding was intended to bring the case to the Supreme Court.
“The devil always loses.”
A federal judge ultimately ruled in the parents’ favor, and the board lost its Ninth Circuit appeal, leaving the district with $282,000 in legal bills.
This apparently hasn’t stopped Cruz’s Christian commentary. In April, he went on a rant wherein he said that if he were governor, he’d mandate citizens be trained in firearms and that, “I do love one man, I really love this man, and that is Jesus Christ. It’s in my head.”
Since his election, Cruz has especially ignited parents’ ire and weathered calls to resign as a result of his offensive remarks and chemtrail conspiracy theories. In 2015, Cruz said mothers who don’t vaccinate their kids are wrongfully vilified while “illegal aliens” bring infectious disease to America. In 2018, Cruz infamously said that “it wasn’t Hitler that was bad, it was the people that follow the laws and the agenda” while discussing “parents rights.”
That year, Na and Cruz (and Hibbs) proposed that parents have the ability to opt kids out of sex-ed discussions on gender identity, sexual orientation, and discrimination—and for schools to notify parents when a transgender student uses a locker room or shower. Those measures failed.
Na is also not without controversy. Aside from his religious musings at the board, he’s also been accused of trying to recruit at least one student to Calvary Chapel.
At a June board meeting, a statement was read on behalf of Esther Kim, who was the panel’s student representative in the 2021-2022 school year. “In sophomore year, I met Mr. Na through a personal phone call where his school board role and my school were acknowledged,” Kim said. “During an unrelated conversation, he attempted to persuade me to go to his church.”
Chino Valley Unified School District President Sonja Shaw receives a high five from clerk Andrew Cruz, not pictured, as board member James Na, right, looks on during a board meeting at Don Lugo High School in Chino on Thursday night July 20, 2023.
MediaNews Group/Inland Valley Daily Bulletin via Getty Images
In November 2021, Kim mobilized classmates to oppose Cruz and Na’s attempt to ban trans students from using the bathrooms of their identified gender. Cruz additionally proposed requiring trans students to “have psychological counseling for a minimum of 6 months to ensure” they’re trans and a doctor’s letter showing the student is receiving hormonal therapy.
Kim remembers that Na had compared the fight to protect transgender people to choosing between saving a man and an “endangered species.” “The students came out feeling attacked, downcast,” Kim told The Daily Beast. “They lost hope in their school board.”
In May of last year, Kim stood up to Na’s proposed resolution against Assembly Bill 2223, which shields women who have lost or ended pregnancies from prosecution. Calvary Chapel members, including a prayer-reciting Shaw, showed up to the meeting after Hibbs encouraged “a thousand or two” people to support Na’s proposal. Na rationalized this non-education motion, telling the room that “the devil always loses” and abortion would lead to lower enrollment and thus a loss of funding. For his part, Cruz warned of a future where women are paid to have babies, who would be “ripped up” for their organs.
When it was her turn to speak, Kim said Na’s abortion proposal had no place at a school board. “My peers and I have time to time been disappointed by the actions of some of our board members to the point where we’re no longer surprised by these nonsensical resolutions,” she said. Some audience members booed, and then-president Gagnier reminded them that Kim was a student and to be “respectful.”
Na also publicly lashed out at the teen, declaring, “This is a perfect example of why you need to talk to your children. This is an appointment for us to see and hear what happens when you leave them alone with the wrong people.” He then suggested Kim was “brainwashed.”
What’s happening in Chino Valley, Kim says, is just one example of a religious “national movement that has been carefully orchestrated for a very long time.”
“We are finally seeing it surface, first in the form of attacks on marginalized communities, religion in politics, who knows what next,” Kim told The Daily Beast.
At last month’s rally at the state Capitol, Shaw shared that she grew up in a home without much parental involvement. Her mother was a heroin addict who died when she was young. Her father was from another country (Israel, she told The Daily Beast) and worked seven days a week.
Shaw was a frequent commenter at school board meetings during COVID-19 shutdowns, voicing opposition to Critical Race Theory and mask mandates via her group Parent Advocacy of Chino Valley. Sometimes she was hostile to the board, yelling and interrupting proceedings, according to footage. Calling herself “The Parent’s Voice” in campaign materials, she narrowly won election to the board by 317 votes thanks to door-knocking volunteers, Hibbs’ blessing, and a $50,000 donation from Charlie and Sherry Reynoso, who own a hardware company.
Jon Monroe, another newly-elected board member who’s voted in line with Cruz, Na, and Shaw, also received $50,000 from the couple.
In a phone call with The Daily Beast, Reynoso confirmed he is a member of Calvary Chapel but insisted he hadn’t heard about the school board race at church. Instead, he and Monroe coach high school sports together, and he thinks highly of him. “I just wanted to support them,” Reynoso said. “I just like Jon a lot. Jon is a good guy, he’s just a solid human being.”
“These actions show that we’re not worth protecting. They want us dead.”
Shaw says she decided to run for office after a local GOP operative approached her and urged someone in her parents’ group to vie for the open seat.
Her opponent was then-board president Gagnier, a technology lawyer and adjunct professor who has been featured as a legal expert on TV and in print. After Gagnier lost, she co-founded Our Schools USA with a former teacher in the district, Kristi Hirst, to combat misinformation and counter Moms for Liberty (M4L) and their ilk.
Our Schools has spent the last year spotlighting Shaw’s actions pre- and post- election, sharing footage of her yelling at Gagnier and board members; her speeches at political events as school board president; and her apparent collaborations with far-right agitators.
During an April board meeting, Shaw invited a director with Gays Against Groomers—a right-wing group aligned with M4L that calls gender-affirming care for minors “indoctrination” and “mutilation”—to lead the pledge of allegiance. She had also passed a resolution backing Assemblyman Essayli’s bill 1314, which would have required schools to tell parents if their child “is identifying at school as a gender that does not align with [their] sex on their birth certificate.”
When Essayli’s bill failed to get any traction, Shaw proposed a policy of her own. It immediately drew outrage from LGBTQ residents and allies, who said a significant percentage of trans kids feel safe at school but not at home.
Chino High School valedictorian Daniel Mora, who is gay, spoke in opposition.
“I can’t believe this is happening in my community,” said one Chino parent who has been a public school teacher for 22 years.
David McNew/Getty Images
Mora told the Daily Beast that he feels the policy “has nothing to do with parental rights” but “everything to do with outing trans kids because they don’t think people can be trans.” Mora points to the July board meeting, when Cruz called being transgender “a dismantling of our humanity” and “mental illness.” “We are saving children,” Cruz added. “Because we’re losing a lot of them. It is a death culture from the left.”
“I really don’t understand these types of policies,” Mora told us. “The majority of the people who live in Chino do not agree with this. Most people who speak at the meetings in support of these policies are outsiders. They’re outsiders invited by Sonja and the school board.” After Mora spoke at the board in June to oppose Shaw’s flag ban policy, someone yelled, “Your parents should be in jail!” in a moment captured on camera.
Max Ibarra, a transgender student who has fought the board’s anti-trans politics since 2021, told The Daily Beast that they know of several students who wanted to use new names and pronouns this year but will now stay in the closet. Ibarra says they came out last year and so the “outing” provision doesn’t apply to them.
“What they’re doing is dangerous,” Ibarra said of the board. “It’s a direct target on trans kids’ lives in the district, and they don’t care about that.” Shaw, Ibarra says, is pushing “trans panic” and “allows the members of her board to say horrible things.” Instead of stopping Cruz for publicly declaring trans was a “mental illness,” Shaw booted a student who yelled in protest at his comments, Ibarra said.
Speakers at board meetings routinely target the trans movement as an “evil ideology,” Ibarra said, making students feel unsafe. Ibarra makes sure they have a “buddy system” at meetings and someone to escort them back to their car.
Of the current board, Ibarra said, “They can say that they support every student all they want but actions speak louder than words. These actions show that we’re not worth protecting. They want us dead.”
Despite warnings about trans students’ mental health and safety, Shaw and fellow board member Monroe argue their policy ultimately protects kids by involving their parents.
Asked about arguments that some trans kids could face emotional, verbal, or physical abuse from guardians, Monroe said, “Those parents are in the minority.”
A person holds a sign in opposition to a policy that the Chino Valley school board passed in July that requires schools to notify parents if their child comes out as transgender.
David McNew/Getty Images
“The majority of the parents want what’s best for their kid,” he told The Daily Beast. “And so when you’re trying to enact policy, I’m going to go with the side that has the most benefit. That’s where I think the difference is going to be.”
Once a high school baseball coach and resource officer in the district, Monroe said that he expected pushback on the new rule. But he was surprised that local elected officials have declined the board’s invitation to talk in person—and by a flood of hate mail calling him “transphobic” and a “Nazi.”
“From the smallest local politics to the national stage, we’ve lost the ability to sit down and talk to somebody with a different ideology than our own,” Monroe added.
Recently, his secretary purchased tickets for himself and Shaw to attend a local Planned Parenthood event where Thurmond was featured as speaker. But an hour later, he says, their tickets were canceled. “I just find it very odd that I can’t go into an event of somebody that may have some different views than I do,” Monroe said.
“I don’t always think that I’m right,” he added. “As I was telling one couple, I have questions about our policy too. You can’t see the future and what happens.”
Cruz and Na didn’t return messages left by The Daily Beast
Don Bridge, elected in 2020 and the only member voting against Shaw’s handiwork, told us, “The pride flag banning and parental rights notification resolutions by our district is definitely anti-LGBTQ.”
Asked what it’s like to be the lone dissenter, Bridge said in an email: “It’s not that bad because I know I’m doing the right thing in standing up and advocating for ALL students.”
“I am worried because, as I used to teach my government students, the next election is always the most important. That occurs next year, in November 2024 when 3 seats will be up for election,” he wrote, adding that another Shaw ally could result in a “5-0 conservative board,” a future that an opposition group is working to prevent.
Andi Johnston, a school district spokesperson, said that the parental notification policy is aimed at student safety.
“The Parent Notification policy does protect transgender students by requiring staff to notify CPS/law enforcement if the student believes they are in danger or have been abused, injured, or neglected due to their parent or guardian knowing of their preferred gender identity,” Johnston added in a written statement, emphasis hers. “In these circumstances, CVUSD staff will not notify parents or guardians, but rather, wait for the appropriate agencies to complete their investigations regarding the concerns shared by the student.”
She said that while Bonta, Our Schools, and other organizations have called the policy dangerous, the district’s past and current practices “solidify staff’s priority to provide all students with a safe and positive educational experience.”
Sonja Shaw says critics have her wrong. According to her detractors, she’s a Moms for Liberty member or following their playbook, she’s affiliated with the Proud Boys and other extremists, and she’s a transphobic bigot following the agenda of Pastor Jack Hibbs.
In an interview, Shaw said she didn’t know much about M4L or the Proud Boys. “Some people have no intention other than trying to find something to make you look bad, right? That’s what I learned about the media,” she said. While she signed M4L’s candidate pledge, she says she’s not a member or otherwise involved with the group. Shaw has also claimed she didn’t know what the GOP was until she ran for office, and that her fight transcends party politics.
“If you actually look at my background, it’s not to come in and throw policies around,” Shaw told The Daily Beast. “It’s because there’s actually meaning to these things.”
Still, her targets are California Democrats and she calls Bonta, Thurmond and Newsom “a political cartel”; her policies lean decidedly Republican; and she’s a repeat guest on Fox News and the One America News Network.
A man wears an evangelical t-shirt and holds a banner in support of a policy that the Chino Valley school board is meeting to vote on which would require school staff to “out” students to their parents.
David McNew/Getty Images
After Bonta sued the district, Shaw called the legal action “another ploy to stop all the districts around California from adopting a common sense legal policy.” She told The Daily Beast, “Parents have a constitutional right in the upbringing of their children. Period. Bring it.”
Shaw is in the middle of a media tour of sorts, as she speaks at state hearings and political events. On Aug. 14, she spoke at a press conference co-organized by Freedom Angels, which is helmed by gun-toting anti-vaxxer survivalist moms. The rally targeted California bills that would limit book bans and make threatening or harassing a school employee a misdemeanor. (One intention behind the latter bill is to protect teachers from extremists.)
In mid-September, she is scheduled to speak at the Pray Vote Stand Summit in Washington, DC, organized by the Family Research Council, an evangelical nonprofit designated as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. This lineup also includes Hibbs, former president Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former vice president Mike Pence, and other boldfaced conservative names. The director of Hibbs’ Real Impact will lead a breakout session on how “individuals and churches can engage in ‘ballot harvesting.’”
Bonta and Thurmond have previously issued warning letters to the district when Na and Cruz proposed anti-trans policies. Shaw seems to welcome her place in their crosshairs.
According to Shaw, before Bonta’s office sued the district, his lawyers subpoenaed her school board emails for words like “woke,” “trans” and “hate” as part of its civil rights inquiry. “You’re making our staff spend hours looking for certain things that aren’t even there,” Shaw told us. “If you actually looked at my emails, I’m called the C-word. I’m called the B-word. My life is threatened, my kids are threatened.” She added, “and that’s ignored?”
Police recently arrested a 52-year-old Berkeley woman for allegedly threatening Shaw, who told media outlets a caller to the district warned they’d murder and “dismember” her.
Shaw routinely shares her hate mail on Instagram but insists that she’s received an outpouring of support, too, including from people in other countries.
“We have an opportunity to show the nation now because they’re all watching us,” Shaw told us. “If we can show that we can come together despite whatever people want to label us, I think just for the success of our children, that can be a really cool and beautiful thing.”
“Can you imagine what we can do together if we actually listen to each other?” she said.
Not everyone feels Shaw’s proclamations of unity are genuine. Citizens have taken to the podium to accuse Shaw of online bullying and having spies snap photos of teachers in schools.
Karen Reyes, one of Don Lugo High School’s intervention counselors, has accused Shaw of fomenting “hysteria” around a proposal to build a private office in her school’s wellness center, a place where students take mental health breaks. In public comments and on social media, Shaw has claimed this room could become a Planned Parenthood clinic. It resulted in the local chamber of commerce canceling a partnership to fundraise for the project.
Reyes told The Daily Beast that Shaw’s fear mongering led to people calling her and other counselors “pedophiles” and “groomers” and demanding they put cameras in the center. “It just feels like manufacturing crises for a larger agenda,” Reyes said.
At the board’s June meeting, another woman held up a poster printed with a photograph of a Don Lugo counselor’s office. The image was taken through a window and showed a rainbow flag and poster that read “What you say in here stays in here,” before listing exceptions such as abuse or self-harm. Someone snapped the photo for Shaw, who circulated it on Instagram. “You abused your power as a school board member to dox a district employee,” the speaker told Shaw, before claiming she was “instigating a community to attack this office and counselor on social media.”
Kelly McClister, another local mom, claimed that some parents “have been subjected to bullying and insults” by board members. She said that she filed a police report in December 2022 because Shaw posted her photo with her children to her social media account “for the purpose, I think, of calling me names.” And that Cruz, instead of responding to her emailed concerns, only replied that she was a “strange bird.”
The Daily Beast obtained a copy of a Chino Police Department report indicating McClister wanted to document the “newly elected CVUSD official” who had been “talking badly about” her on Instagram. McClister told police she worried Shaw’s adherents would appear at her home.
McClister, a lifelong Chino Valley resident, told The Daily Beast that one of the biggest reasons she moved her kids from public to private schools was Calvary Chapel’s “overreach,” especially after one of its “Released Time” volunteers approached her son outside of school.
She says she’s emailed the board over the years expressing concerns about combination classes and other issues, but Na and Cruz “have never responded.” But after Shaw took office, she emailed the board again about what she calls Shaw’s “unprofessional” social media posts with spelling and grammatical errors and shared concerns that an “under-educated” person was board president.
Shaw didn’t reply. Instead she tagged McClister in an Instagram story. “I show people when people call me names, and say bad things about me,” Shaw told us, insisting that she crossed out McClister’s name in her post.
“Because I think it’s important for people to see what we’re dealing with too,” Shaw added. “Because when you have all this hate by people who say that we’re hating, I think it’s ironic, right?”
From Shaw’s perspective, the last iteration of the board didn’t listen to parents, “exited” them from schools with vaccine and mask rules, and enabled an air of secrecy. She said that when she spoke to people on the campaign trail, secrecy was the No. 1 issue.
“You would hear over and over stories where parents would say, ‘I found out for about six months, my child was being bullied, the schools knew, there was a record, but I was never notified.’ You heard stuff about kids wanting to possibly commit suicide … and it was alarming that they found out that the school or the teacher knew and never notified them.”
The opposition from Thurmond and Bonta has only strengthened her resolve.
“We’re not going to back down. We’re not going to step down. Our board majority was voted in for a reason,” Shaw said, “and we’re going to make sure that reason is carried out.”
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