The article link is from Ali, thank you Ali. The court ruling was all about racism, returning the more affluent whites back to the preferential position while denying underprivileged people of color a higher education. The end result is classes of mostly or all white people going on to lead businesses or large law firms leading to political power and people of color being regulated to lower income labor servitude jobs. The 1950s all over again. It is an attempt by racists to make a white power nation continue. Hugs
The right-wing activist behind SCOTUS’ Affirmative Action decision is now attacking a venture capital fund that supports Black women-owned small businesses.
ATLANTA, GA – APRIL 07: (L-R) Tobey R. Sanders, actress Keisha Knight Pulliam, and Arian Simone attend the “Festival of Laughs” tour at Philips Arena on April 7, 2017 in Atlanta, Georgia.
On Wednesday, the nonprofit American Alliance for Equal Rights filed a lawsuit against an Atlanta-based venture capital fund that supports Black women and other minority-owned small businesses. The nonprofit was founded by none other than right-wing crusader Edward Blum, who has made it his mission to destroy affirmative action.
The lawsuit filed against the Fearless Fund alleges that the fund is “operating a racially-discriminatory program” in violation of the Civil Rights Act. The Fearless Fund was founded by three Black women — executive Ayana Parsons, actress Keshia Knight Pulliam, and entrepreneur Arian Simone.
As their website notes, less than 2.2.% of all Venture Capital funding goes towards women-founded businesses, and less than 1% of total funding goes towards businesses founded by women of color. And yet, for some reason, folks like Blum are convinced this number should be even lower.
It’s worth noting that Blum and his team are clearly riding high from Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision. In fact, they cite it at the top of their lawsuit.
Even before this lawsuit, conservatives were looking for ways to weaponize the Supreme Court’s decision in the workplace. In July, 13 Republican attorneys general wrote a letter demanding that Fortune 100 companies stop their affirmative action programs.
Amalea Smirniotopoulos, NAACP Legal Defense Fund Senior Policy Counsel, says that these Republican attorneys general are trying to make the Supreme Court’s affirmative decision about something it’s not.
“This was another attempt to chill completely lawful efforts to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion by corporations,” says Smirniotopoulos. “By really trying to stretch the meaning of the decision in the Harvard and UNC cases and frankly by also restating things that have always been true about discrimination law and employment.”
“This letter is a scare tactic,” says University of New Mexico Constitutional and Employment Law Professor Vinay Harpalani. “And unfortunately, it’s a pretty good one.”
Although the Supreme Court decision didn’t touch on hiring practices, Harpalani says that conservatives will certainly try to use it as a basis for challenging race in employment. “The law, as it is now, allows affirmative action in employment,” says Harpalani. “But if the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, I’m not at all confident that they would continue to allow it.”
The immediate threat is that companies begin to back-away from DEI programs, said Justin Hansford, Executive Director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard University.
“Some of these companies weren’t really doing that much anyway… and what they were doing was done only under pressure,” says Hansford. “This could be an excuse for some companies that already didn’t want to push the envelope on diversity to start walking things back.”
As for the lawsuit against Fearless Fund, an obvious concern is that it could scare off investors who might otherwise want to similarly invest in women of color. However, it’s still too soon to say (especially in this climate) whether the case has legs.
It’s official: PragerU will now be offered in Florida schools. Additionally, Charlie Kirk announced dozens of new high school and college field organizers are being trained for his Turning Point USA organization to spread propaganda in high schools and colleges across the country. In other words, the right is ramping up their effort to indoctrinate students while they accuse the left of “woke” indoctrination.
The candidate hires Nazi thugs. The Governor hires Nazi fascist thugs. Nazis and gang thug militia groups that try to force by violence their demand that others live as the right Nazi fascists tell them they must. So what does that mean. It means the governor and his supporters are Christian nationalist fascists. And think what that means as they work to gain control over the US government. Hugs
Senior aides to Ron DeSantis oversaw the campaign’s high-risk strategy of laundering incendiary videos produced by their staff through allied anonymous Twitter accounts, a set of internal campaign communications obtained by Semafor reveals. The videos include two that have created recurring distractions for his campaign in recent weeks: an anti-Trump video that featured a fascist symbol, and another that attacked Donald Trump for past comments supportive of LGBT rights.
The meme-filled videos emerged from a Signal channel called “War Room Creative Ideas,” screenshots of which were shared with Semafor and whose authenticity was confirmed by a second source familiar with the campaign. The chat in Signal, an encrypted messaging app, offers the first clear look into the “war room” that has defined the Florida governor’s candidacy, and is presided over by his high-profile and confrontational director of rapid response, Christina Pushaw.
The creator of the Nazi clip, Nate Hochman was fired. Hochman last year appeared in a Twitter Spaces event with Nazi Nick Fuentes, during which he gushed over Fuentes.
New with @ShelbyTalcott: Inside War Room Creative Ideas, the now-dead internal DeSantis chat group where meme videos got workshopped by campaign and pitched to "anons" who could tweet them. https://t.co/mYbvgTJR9o
— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) August 1, 2023
So turns out that the DeSantis campaign dishonestly scapegoated Nate Hochman to take the blame over those viral videos and fired him over it – Despite the fact that the videos were actually approved by senior DeSantis staff. What absolute scumbags. pic.twitter.com/3HKSPh412U
Again none of what DeathSantis and the right is doing has nothing to do with protecting children from something that confuses them, sexualizes them, or makes them something they are not. This is about removing any representation from society of something Christian fundamentalist conservative dislike. This is about denying that LGBTQ+ people / kids exist. The goal is to indoctrinate kids into a 1950s social mindset in an attempt to lock them into a right wing republican way of thinking, of seeing the world. All because they can not accept nor adjust to the current society. They don’t want to allow others to live openly as who they really are with equality to themselves. They want a society where whites were automatically privileged and Christianity was forced on kids and prevalent in society. It is about forcing how they live on everyone. Republicans understand they are a minority party whose members are dwindling and dying out. Most conservatives are older white people. Instead of changing the party to appeal to more people, the party wants to force kids to be indoctrinated in to their views with no other representation. The republican leaders want to create their voters rather than appeal to those voters. Some religions are against higher education because their kids are exposed to different ways of thinking as adults than was forced on them as kids. That is why Christians had to create their own colleges and universities. Same with republicans and higher educations. Older teens would move away from restrictive conservative homes / communities to the wider more progressive view of looking at the world and they would often change their way of thinking before. Conservative religious republicans can not tolerate that and so again have to indoctrinate students at all levels. Florida is the first state that the experiment is being pushed, despite the majority of the public against it. Hugs
A quote from the article.“We are in the mind-changing business and few groups can say that,” Prager says in a promotional video for PragerU as a whole. He reiterated that sentiment this summer at a conference for the conservative group Moms for Liberty in Philadelphia, saying it is “fair” to say PragerU indoctrinates children. “It’s true we bring doctrines to children,” Prager told the group. “But what is the bad of our indoctrination?”
Critics of the material approved by Gov. Ron DeSantis say it aims to influence young minds. Its founder says that’s true.
In teaching materials from PragerU that were approved by the state of Florida, time-traveling brother and sister Leo and Layla are the main characters in animated videos that take them back into history to meet important people. In this video, they meet Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. [ Courtesy of PragerU ]
TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis repeatedly says he opposes indoctrination in schools. Yet his administration in early July approved materials from a conservative group that says it’s all about indoctrination and “changing minds.”
The Florida Department of Education determined that educational materials geared toward young children and high school studentscreated by PragerU, a nonprofit co-founded by conservative radio host Dennis Prager, was in alignment with the state’s standards on how to teach civics and government to K-12 students.
The content — some of which is narrated by conservative personalities such as Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson — features cartoons, five-minute video history lessons and story-time shows for young children and is part of a brand called PragerU Kids. And the lessons share a common message: Being pro-American means aligning oneself to mainstream conservative talking points.
“We are in the mind-changing business and few groups can say that,” Prager says in a promotional video for PragerU as a whole. He reiterated that sentiment this summer at a conference for the conservative group Moms for Liberty in Philadelphia, saying it is “fair” to say PragerU indoctrinates children.
“It’s true we bring doctrines to children,” Prager told the group. “But what is the bad of our indoctrination?”
The governor’s office and the Florida Department of Education declined to say how PragerU’s mission and statements align with state law and DeSantis’ vow to ensure Florida classroom instruction does not indoctrinate or persuade students to accept a specific viewpoint.
PragerU is not an accredited university, and it publicly says the group is a “force of good” against the left. It’s a nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles that produces videos that touch on a range of themes, including climate policies (specifically how “energy poverty, not climate change” is the real crisis), the flaws of Canada’s government-run health care system (and how the American privatized system is better), and broad support for law enforcement (and rejection of Black Lives Matter). In some cases, the videos tell kids that their teachers are “misinformed” or “lying.”
Some videos talk about the history of race relations and slavery. In one video, two kids travel back in time to meet Christopher Columbus, who tells them that he should not be judged for enslaving people because the practice was “no big deal” in his time. Columbus argued to the kids that he did not see a problem with it because “being taken as a slave is better than being killed.”
In another video titled “A Short History of Slavery” and narrated by Owens, she says that the first thing kids need to know is that “slavery was not invented by white people” and that it also took place in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. She also says “white people were the first to put an end to slavery” when it was abolished by Britain in 1834.
“After centuries of human slavery, white men led the world in putting an end to the abhorrent practice. That includes the 300,000 Union soldiers, overwhelmingly white, who died during the Civil War,” Owens says, while adding that “no one, regardless of skin color, stands guiltless,” noting that white slaves have also existed.
In a statement, Florida Department of Education spokesperson Cassie Palelis said the state agency “reviewed PragerU Kids and determined the material aligns to Florida’s revised civics and government standards.”
“PragerU Kids is no different than many other resources, which can be used as supplemental materials in Florida schools at district discretion,” Palelis said. She added that PragerU Kids did not submit a bid to be included in 2022-23 instructional material list, but did not answer when asked if it had submitted a bid for the 2023-24 school year.
In teaching materials from PragerU that were approved by the state of Florida, time-traveling brother and sister Leo and Layla are the main characters in animated videos that take them back into history to meet important people. In this video, they meet Thomas Jefferson. [ Courtesy of PragerU ]
Florida approves PragerU content for use in schools
That type of content can now be used in Florida classrooms at the discretion of schools. The option is becoming available as the DeSantis administration and Republican lawmakers add other right-leaning educational choices to students, including a Classic Learning Test, revised K-12 standards and an overhaul of college-level course offerings.
Adrienne McCarthy, a Kansas State University researcher who co-authored a case study on PragerU after viewing hundreds of its videos, said in an interview that the content has a “very strong agenda.”
“The videos have this very strong us-versus-them dichotomy, and it’s usually the evil, immoral leftists versus the moral Judeo-Christian right,” McCarthy said. “They are attacking culture and trying to change rhetoric.”
With colorful animation, catchy melodies and adventurous child protagonists, the content is seemingly harmless and friendly, she says. But she argued the content could potentially serve as a “gateway for right extremism.”
“If we’re teaching ideologies that overlap with far-right groups, and that becomes normalized, then it’s easier for those far-right groups to become more brave and grow,” McCarthy said.
Melissa Streit, the chief executive officer of PragerU, said in an interview that the group’s content is meant to “create an even playing field” in schools — and that the only ones accusing them of indoctrinating students with a right-wing ideology are “probably the teachers unions,” which she said don’t want to lose control of the system.
Teachers unions have criticized the organization. In a video posted on TikTok, Florida Education Association president Andrew Spar said the group has a “political agenda” as it goes over some of its content.
“We believe in teaching an honest history, a complete history. We believe in teaching the truth,” Spar says in the video. “Teachers are not pushing an agenda, they are pushing to educate children. This (PragerU) is pushing an agenda. You don’t have to take my word for it, check it out for yourselves. This is part of the agenda of Ron DeSantis.”
Streit defended the group’s content and messaging in a phone interview.
“To label PragerU as right wing, one should also label at the same time virtually 80% of what’s in American schools right now as extreme left wing,” Streit said. “The ideology that we promote is a pro-American ideology, the ideology of which America was essentially built upon that has created this nation. But we are not a political enterprise, we are a pro-American enterprise.”
Conservative activism in education
Streit said PragerU Kids was launched two years ago. Around the same time, groups like Moms for Liberty stepped into the mainstream political world, and school board meetings across the country became engulfed by partisan culture wars as parents and activists debated pandemic restrictions, race and gender issues.
“We launched because we realized that there are many parents who want their kids to learn more than what they’re learning in schools,” Streit said. “We are very, very big believers in education choice, and we believe that parents should be involved and have the right to really make sure that their kids are learning what it is that they believe that they should learn.”
In PragerU educational materials approved by the state of Florida, time-traveling brother and sister Leo and Layla are the main characters in animated videos that take them back into history to meet important people. In this video, they meet Supreme Court Justice John Marshall. [ Courtesy of PragerU ]
In Florida, the state approved the content to be used as a supplemental material in classroom instruction. It does not mean that PragerU will be writing the curriculum at a school, but that if a school approved the use of the material, a teacher could use it as an aid to teach a class.
The materials could be used starting in the upcoming school year, but some districts — including Broward, Miami-Dade, Pasco and Pinellas — say that curriculum guides remain under development and that no decisions have been made to accommodate PragerU content.
They said they have no plans to review the materials for inclusion, unless PragerU submits a bid to be considered.
Streit said the group believes in transparency and that anything that would be made available to classrooms would be made available online for parents to see.
The group’s website, prageru.com, includes links to dozens of video clips, its mission and information for those who want to learn and donate to their cause.
It also includes a list of its presenters, which include conservative activist and Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk; David Rubin, a conservative commentator and political supporter of DeSantis; and Will Witt, a longtime influencer for PragerU and the editor-in-chief of the conservative media outlet The Florida Standard, which DeSantis and his office turn to frequently to amplify their message.
The website does not include information on who is creating the content or its reference sources.
When asked for more information on the content creators, Streit said there “are a lot of people involved” with different expertise, but that the group does not intend to disclose their names or credentials on their website because “we live in a world where people attack people who they disagree with.”
How PragerU came to Florida
Streit has found supporters in Florida. She said talks of bringing PragerU Kids to Florida — the first state in the nation to approve its content — began over the summer with Education Commissioner Manny Diaz and K-12 Chancellor Paul Burns.
“The state did not approach us,” Streit said. “I would say that we got to know each other through mutual friends and we started talking about how we can be helpful. It is not that they came and applied for us to do something.”
Before the initiative was launched in Florida, Streit said she also crossed paths with Florida’s first lady, Casey DeSantis. Streit did not specify when or where, but she said that is how she learned that the DeSantis family showed PragerU videos to their young kids.
“So I imagine that if he thinks it’s good enough for his own children, why wouldn’t it be good enough for other Floridians?” Streit said.
DeSantis’ office did not respond when asked if this was true.
Times staff writer Jeffrey S. Solochek contributed to this report.
.@GovRonDeSantis repeatedly has said he opposes indoctrination in schools. His administration has approved the use of materials from @prageru, whose founder says his group is all about indoctrination and “changing minds." https://t.co/FAeQjGI5NI
The REASON you have to indoctrinate children is because if you waited till high school or college to educate persons about religion, there would almost no religious people.
Seriously, a college class explaining (for the first time) to a student that the world was created in 6 days and woman from Adam’s rib, the ark, crucifixion, etc. The teacher would struggle to be heard over the laughter.
High school students are a MAJOR, MAJOR target. Young Life Ministries has it down to a science. They start by recruiting the cool kids, the jocks from the football and basketball teams especially. They then use the jocks to recruit the average kids that are dying to fit in. And then they gently pressure the kids to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. Often with a version of Liar, Lunatic or Lord. ( conveniently leaving out the option of Legend). They got me and my sister. I got out. Not my sister.
Oh thank you for admitting it’s indoctrination. Makes the inevitable lawsuits easier when you come out and say you’re trying to use schools to indoctrinate kids
Yeah, this is clearly a violation of separation of church and state. Especially profiting off of taxpayers dollars. If only there was a SCOTUS that would enforce that..
Specifically, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. “Held: The Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment protect an individual engaging in a personal religious observance from government reprisal; the Constitution neither mandates nor permits the government to suppress such religious expression.”
That is to say, while a school district cannot push religion, a teacher or group of teachers or teachers and administrators can as long as they at least make it seem like they are acting under their own authority and not under government order.
Unfortunately if they have people in the right positions of political power, it doesn’t matter how few in number they are – they still can wield incredible power over the lives of others.
Yes because anything to defend white people holding black people as property and what the white people did to them. Don’t mention the bad thing, the rapes, humiliations, the being told what, when, where you were allowed to do anything including pee (sounds like how Amazon treats workers only without them being able to say no or go home) how and when they could eat, basically a white person had complete control over those black people and their bodies. Let’s obscure and fudge that anyway possible, even making up that white Irish people were also chattel slaves. That is a complete lie. But the people that wanted to push it built a whole mythology around the idea. Just like the anti-trans people have done with every mythical idea they can to try to discredit the idea of a person identifying as the gender not assigned at birth by a visual inspection of the genitals. What is it with these type people that they cannot simply accept the truth, the history, the science? Why is it so damn important for the to deny all of the science and history to protect their feelings or their views of the world? Hugs
Ron Peri, a member of the Board of Supervisors for the Reedy Creek Improvement District, listens during a monthly meeting on June 21, 2023 in Reedy Creek, Florida.
An appointee by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to an oversight board of Disney’s special tax district taught a seminar in 2021 falsely claiming “Whites were also slaves in America,” using discredited research to say there was an “Irish slave trade.”
The comments were made by Ron Peri, one of five people DeSantis appointed earlier this year to oversee the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District to replace the old board after the company spoke out against what critics dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law in Florida.
Peri, an Orlando-based pastor and CEO of a Christian ministry group called The Gathering, made the comments in an hourlong class for his group posted on YouTube about critical race theory called “Cunningly Devised Fables.”
In other comments Peri spread false claims that Irish slaves were forcibly bred with enslaved Africans. He also said a “significant” number of free Blacks in the antebellum era owned slaves, claims disputed by reputable historians who say the number was minimal. CNN archived Peri’s comments from 2021, which he deleted from YouTube following his appointment to the Disney oversight board.
The oversight board, previously called the Reedy Creek Improvement District, governed Disney’s sprawling 25,000 acre footprint around Orlando. Created in 1967, its duties include providing services like sewage, fire rescue and road maintenance and issuing debt for infrastructure projects supporting Disney’s theme park empire.
“Slavery is a moral wrong wherever it exists or existed and is one of America’s great historical wrongs,” Peri told CNN in a statement Tuesday. “Similarly, racism is likewise wrong. I countenance neither to any degree, so the criticism of the belief that thousands of people being held in slavery was significant and a terrible wrong is severely misplaced. Even one person in slavery is egregious and morally reprehensible, regardless of race.”
The DeSantis administration but did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
Peri’s 2021 comments came in the context of him pushing back on claims of “systemic racism” in the United States from past White ownership of slaves.
“Look at old newspapers, as old as you can find, and you’ll find that Whites were also slaves in America,” said Peri. “The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the new world. His proclamation of 1625, which you can go back and see, required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies.”
“By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat,” Peri added. “From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English, and another 300,000 were sold as slaves.”
“The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion,” Peri added.
Peri’s claims are based on fabricated material that has circled the Internet over the last two decades and has been the subject of repeated debunkings from news organizations like the New York Times, Reuters, the Associated Press, Snopes, and frustrated historians – many of whom signed an open letter in 2016 disputing the claims.
Even the article Peri cited as evidence was updated before he used it in the seminar to note it contained a number of factual errors.
Historians who spoke to CNN said that the research Peri cited is ahistorical and based on invented research: Whites were never considered slaves in America, legally or socially; 300,000 Irish were not sent as slaves to the Americas; English King James II – who Peri cited as issuing the proclamation in 1625 – was not born until 1633 and did not take the throne until 1685. Even then, no proclamations by King James II on Irish slaves exist. The Irish did not “breed” with African slaves, as Peri claimed.
Irish immigrants in North America and the Caribbean were never considered slaves but were indentured servants, said Matthew Reilly, a professor of anthropology at City College of New York.
Indentured servitude consisted of a fixed period of time, usually five to seven years, and was not inheritable. Whereas the race-based chattel form of slavery kept enslaved people as property for life and children would inherit their mother’s status.
“The conditions may have been like that of slavery, but socio-legally, it was a very different form of unfreedom,” said Reilly.
In another comment, Peri used data attributed to the 1830 census to say the numbers showed a “significant” and “large number” of free Blacks owned slaves. However, the 1830 census data cited by scholars show that out of 2,009,043 slaves in the United States, 3,776 free Blacks owned 12,907 slaves – 0.006%.
“The justification that they have for it is they claim that systemic racism emanates from White ownership of slaves,” Peri said. “Therefore, all White wealth is based on the hard work and abuse of Black slaves and women. That’s their justification. Well, the reality is all races owned slaves.”
“A significant number of these free Blacks were the owners of slaves,” Peri added.
Historians, like esteemed Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., have noted that a large number of those Black slave owners “owned” their own family members to protect them – oftentimes by purchasing a family member. And that pointing to other races owning slaves is a way to minimize the brutal realities of slavery.
“The vast majority, the overwhelming majority – to the tune of millions of people who were brought from West and West Central Africa to the Americas – they were enslaved. Not people who were perpetrating slavery themselves,” Jenny Shaw, a professor of history at the University of Alabama, told CNN. “There’s a small number who did because they rose up in society and did what society was doing, which was enslaving people.” And that some people of African descent enslaved people because they were family members bringing them into their households with the intent of freeing them.
Peri’s appointment to the Disney oversight board followed a clash between the company and DeSantis over a state law that would restrict certain classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity. While Disney first declined to weigh in publicly on the legislative fight over what critics called the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, then CEO Bob Chapek, under immense pressure from the company’s employees, later changed directions, and shared his concerns with the legislation. Later, after it became law, the company in a statement said it would work to get it repealed.
However, Peri has also accused Disney in the past of adopting teachings of critical race theory in its company training. The comments touched on another top concern of DeSantis, who sought to ban employers from training workers about privilege and systemic racism when he signed the Stop Woke Act, parts of which were blocked by a federal judge from going into effect.
“We’re seeing companies embracing CRT,” Peri said in his Zoom. “I’m gonna just share two – Walt Disney you’re quite familiar with. You know, down here in Orlando.”
DeSantis has faced backlash in recent days over Florida’s board of education approving controversial new standards for teaching Black history in the state, which includes teaching “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” DeSantis has defended the state’s curriculum.
Peri previously faced scrutiny after CNN’s KFile uncovered that the Orlando pastor had suggested tap water turned people gay. Peri disputed that he made the remark during a May 1 Central Florida Tourism Oversight District board meeting, saying from the dais, “I never said that. I don’t believe it, certainly.”
The latest revelations about Peri’s beliefs come as DeSantis’ conflict with Disney is embroiled in dueling legal challenges. Peri is named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by Disney, which alleges that the Florida governor has punished the company for exercising its First Amendment rights while describing his hand-picked board as a pawn in his “retribution campaign” against the entertainment giant.
In its complaint, filed in the United States Circuit Court for the Northern District of Florida, Disney alleged DeSantis picked board members who would “censor Disney’s speech and discipline the Company” and that DeSantis’ action against the company “threatens Disney’s business operations, jeopardizes its economic future in the region, and violates its constitutional rights.”
Peri, meanwhile, voted with the rest of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District board to sue Disney in state court. In the past week, a Central Florida judge rejected Disney’s request to dismiss the state lawsuit. In the federal case, lawyers for DeSantis have asked the court to delay a trial until after the presidential election while Disney attorneys suggested a timeline that would put the case before jurors next July.
The board installed by DeSantis has said much of its power was stripped by Disney in an agreement reached before the governor’s appointees took over in February.
Since then, DeSantis and the board have focused on clawing back authority while threatening to develop the land around Disney – including by building a prison or a competing theme park next to Disney World.
Joy Alonzo, a respected opioid expert, was in a panic. The Texas A&M University professor had just returned home from giving a routine lecture on the opioid crisis at the University of Texas Medical Branch when she learned a student had accused her of disparaging Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick [photo] during the talk. In the few hours it took to drive from Galveston, the complaint had made its way to her supervisors, and Alonzo’s job was suddenly at risk.
Alonzo was right to be afraid. Not only were her supervisors involved, but so was Chancellor John Sharp, a former state comptroller who now holds the highest-ranking position in the Texas A&M University System. Less than two hours after the lecture ended, Patrick’s chief of staff had sent Sharp a link to Alonzo’s professional bio. Shortly after, Sharp sent a text directly to the lieutenant governor: “Joy Alonzo has been placed on administrative leave pending investigation re firing her. shud [sic] be finished by end of week.”
The student who made the complaint is the daughter of GOP state Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham, who was endorsed by Patrick in the last election. Earlier this year, Buckingham attended the wedding of Chancellor Sharp.
Fearing retaliation, three other students who were at the lecture won’t allow their names to be published, but say that Alonzo mentioned Patrick’s opposition to policies that would mitigate opioid-related deaths.
Per the linked report, Alonzo has brought millions in federal research dollars to the university and was last year named its researcher of the year.
Texas A&M investigated professor for criticizing Lt Gov Dan Patrick in lecture. Unsurprisingly, they couldn’t find a reason to fire her. But as is typical in these cases, the investigation is the punishment. And it’s intended to chill speech on campus. https://t.co/F2SzQqpWfo
— Nicholas A. Christakis (@NAChristakis) July 25, 2023
Texas A&M suspended professor accused of criticizing Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in lecture https://t.co/0jB2KASRXt
No… It isn’t cancelling or censorship if the GQP does it, only if one tries to balance or disagree, or, heaven forbid, hold accountable someone who agrees with their Christo-fascist worldview. Remember the Dems are the snowflakes.
Sadly, she won’t get to take the funding she’s already secured, but the major funders will follow her and the chilling effect on academic freedom will make NSF and other foundations the support university research will make it harder for all Texas programs to secure funding.
When one of our faculty members left and went to the Big Flagship University in the capitol, he was able to take much of his funding with him. Unless the rules have changed since then.
My experience is that it depends in part on whether the research is tied to the research of an individual or to a lab.
Humanities funding may trail after a researcher (e.g., funding for a project to do archival work for a book), but science funding usually doesn’t because it’s heavily dependent on a team and on infrastructure.
Either way, of course, as madknits notes, the uni gets a cut.
My experience working with academic social researchers has been that the funding stayed with the institution (which typically takes 50% of the total off the top), but it would be great if the dollars stay with the researcher – I hope that’s what happens in this case.
The student who made the complaint is the daughter of GOP state Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham, who was endorsed by Patrick in the last election. Earlier this year, Buckingham attended the wedding of Chancellor Sharp.
Losing a job for criticizing Dear Leader, or, in this case, Dear Lt Leader, is how I picture North Korea, the USSR, Saudi Arabia (at least she hasn’t been cut into pieces in an embassy), or Russia under Putin.
In most states, a lieutenant governor or vice-governor is also the president of the state senate, just like the VP and the US Senate. Usually this is effectively a ceremonial position used only to break ties, with day to day running operations in the hands of a president pro tempore and the agenda set by the majority leader, just like in the US Senate.
As I recall, the Lt. Gov of Texas actually acts as the senate president, overseeing operations and setting the agenda (which has been awkward when he is not in the senate majority party.) In effect, the Executive Branch controls half the Legislative Branch as well, making Texas one of the more fascist states in the country never mind Republican control.
A third student who also spoke on the condition of anonymity said Alonzo talked about how policies, like the state’s ban on fentanyl test strips, have a direct impact on the ability to prevent opioid overdoses and deaths. A push to legalize the test strips died earlier this year in the Patrick-led Senate despite support from top Republicans, including Abbott.
Sounds like she will be fired for making a truthful statement.
Fentanyl kills ‘those’ people so GOPers don’t really care about test strips or narcan. Sure there are a few death among the country club set but you’re always gonna catch a couple of dolphin in the tuna nets. — christian gop logic
You’re exactly right. Use fentanyl to smear Biden, but not really do anything to help, even low hanging fruit like test strips. The deaths are punishment for those people, just like women who die because they can’t get an abortion deserve it for being all slutty and female.
Fentanyl is a GQP talking point about how awful the Biden admin is. The GQP has never been about life or liberty. They’re about power and control. Without the control of the news cycles about how terrible fentanyl is they have one less talking point to take control
Abbot claims that his murder balls in the Rio Grande are also to prevent fentanyl deaths, even though the fentanyl that is smuggled across the southern border isn’t carried by migrants crossing rivers, its smuggled in through ports of entry.
Florida education officials William Allen and Frances Presley Rice, members of the group that crafted the standards, released a statement in response to the backlash. “The intent of this particular benchmark clarification is to show that some slaves developed highly specialized trades from which they benefitted. This is factual and well documented,” the pair wrote. “Any attempt to reduce slaves to just victims of oppression fails to recognize their strength, courage and resiliency during a difficult time in American history.”
The statement includes several examples of such historic figures, including blacksmiths, shoemakers, fishing and shipping industry workers, tailors, and ironically enough, teachers. But, it appears these Florida educators didn’t do their homework.
As critics were quick to note, many of the “examples” listed in the statement were never slaves, or they launched their respective professions only after gaining their freedom. The Tampa Bay Times pointed out several examples, including Booker T. Washington, listed in the statement as a teacher. “Washington was enslaved but did not gain his skills until after being freed at age 9,” the paper notes.
Right Wing Watch had written about Rice years ago when she was chairman of the National Black Republican Association, an organization that once ran radio ads and erected billboards falsely claiming that civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. “was a Republican.”
In 2008, the NBRA produced a series of radio ads declaring that “the Democratic Party is a racist party” and attacking then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama for being “an arrogant elitist who turned his back on poor blacks and his own country.”
In the wake of Obama’s election, the NBRA took it upon itself to issue a “White Guilt Emancipation Declaration” in which the organization unilaterally declared that all “white American citizens are now, henceforth and forever more free of White Guilt” because the nation had elected “a socialist who does not share the values of average Americans and will use the office of the presidency to turn America into a failed socialist nation.”
Here is Frances Rice claiming that the GOP's Southern Strategy "was designed to get the fair-minded people in the South to stop discriminating against Blacks … Those fair-minded ones who migrated to the Republican Party did so. They joined us. We did not join the racists." https://t.co/2LE1TZWaHjpic.twitter.com/K6caIWAGtz
Amateur and professional historians are shredding a list of "examples" Florida educators cited to show how some Black people benefited from skills they supposedly acquired while enslaved. https://t.co/4hsDCN79vs
Half of the examples were not slaves and others only as children. They came up with 16 examples to cover over 200 years of slavery for hundreds of thousands. — Benefited from slavery? Critics say some of the state’s examples were never even slaves. https://t.co/BTTS10toPZ
Scottie's Playtime 