This Was In The News September 10th-

I saw a few headlines about it on Monday, and meant to post it but didn’t get it done, then Tuesday was what it was. So, it’s been a week, but here it is: there is universal childcare in New Mexico, and they are heroes for getting that done. -A

New Mexico will be the first state to make child care free

Chabeli Carrazana of The 19th. Meet Chabeli and read more of her reporting on gender, politics and policy.

In an unprecedented move, New Mexico is making child care free. 

Beginning in November, it will be the first state in the nation to provide child care to all residents regardless of income, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced this week. 

The state has been working to lower child care care costs since 2019, when it created the Early Childhood Education and Care Department and started to expand eligibility for universal child care. This latest change removes income eligibility requirements from the state’s child care assistance program altogether and waives all family copayments. 

The initiative is expected to save families $12,000 per child annually. 

“Child care is essential to family stability, workforce participation and New Mexico’s future prosperity,” Lujan Grisham said in her announcement. “By investing in universal child care, we are giving families financial relief, supporting our economy, and ensuring that every child has the opportunity to grow and thrive.”

The United States allocates some federal funding to states to lower the cost of child care for low-income kids, but eligibility for that funding is very limited and by and large, most families are paying an average of $13,000 on child care annually. It’s much higher in many states. 

In the absence of a federal universal child care system, some states have worked to build their own systems, and New Mexico has been a leader in that effort over the past several years. 

The state’s Early Childhood Education and Care Department got a budget increase of $113 million in the most recent legislative session, taking its total operating budget to nearly $1 billion. Half of that money goes specifically to child care payment support. 

The state also established a fund in 2020 with money earmarked for early childhood education. Thanks to tax collections from the oil and gas industries, the fund has grown from $320 million to $10 billion. Latinas in New Mexico led the charge in 2022 to help pass a constitutional amendment in 2022 that ensured a portion of that fund went specifically to universal child care. Funding for the new initiative will come at least in part from there, and Lujan Grisham will also be requesting an additional $120 million in state funding next year, a spokesperson for the governor said. 

The news also comes with improvements for child care facilities and, potentially, raises for their staff. As part of the rollout, the state will establish a $13 million loan fund to construct and expand facilities, launch a recruitment campaign for home-based providers and incentivize programs to pay staff a minimum of $18 an hour. 

The state hopes the initiative will lead to the creation of 55 new child care centers and 1,120 home-based child care options. 

Still, response to the initiative so far has been mixed. Republican state Rep. Rebecca Dow told the Albuquerque Journal that she believes child care vouchers should be reserved for children most at risk for child abuse and neglect. Since the state’s child care assistance program expanded eligibility over the past five years, fewer low-income families have participated in the program, the Journal reported. 

But Thora Walsh Padilla, the president of the Mescalero Apache Tribe, praised the initiative, saying during a press conference Monday that it addresses various challenges the tribe has struggled with, including raising wages for providers. There are only three child care facilities on the 463,000 acre reservation. 

“It is so timely and it answers so many needs,” she said. “A building? Oh my goodness, we’ll be one of the first to apply.”

Clay Jones, For A While-

Roughs, Volume 258 by Clay Jones

Ding-Dong! Roughs are here! Read on Substack

You’re not going to get a new cartoon from me until Sunday. Say what? I’m ahead of schedule with last night’s Charlie Kirk cartoon, dated for September 19. But you will get new content here daily.

I’m in North Bethesda, Maryland for my cartoonist association’s annual convention today, and that’s why I got ahead with work. But I’m going to post stuff about the convention while I’m there. I plan to do at least one Zoom conversation with another cartoonist while at the convention. And today, you’re getting a blog of roughs.

Speaking of the Charlie Kirk cartoon, I got a death threat today. First, it was a death wish, as in, “I hope you and your family get what Charlie Kirk got,” and then it turned into, “you’re easy to find.” I consider that a death threat. And why is he threatening my family? They’re innocent, and in fact, two of them posted on the cartoon on Facebook to tell me I’m disgusting and an asshole. Anyhoos….

DING-DONG! Roughs are here!

I drew this on August 27 and made it a real cartoon a few days later.

I liked it so much that I nearly roughed it out twice.

This was my first idea, and I roughed it out on August 28. By the way, I’m writing this on a train. Let’s blame today’s typos on that.

Here’s another I roughed out twice. This was drawn on August 28.

I even lettered this version. It grew up to become a real cartoon.

this was drawn on August 29 and became a real cartoon. It got comments.

I roughed this out on August 29, and became a real cartoon for the FXBG Advance.

I drew this on September 1, and it became a two-panel cartoon.

I drew this on September 2, and I might like it more than the version I went with.

I was just goofing around with this on September 9. Why do I keep hearing about pickleball?

I roughed this out for the FXBG Advance on September 5. It became a real cartoon.

I liked naming some of my colleagues here, but I thought it was too many words. I roughed this up on September 9.

This was also drawn on September 9, but I went with something else.

I drew this on September 9, it became a real cartoon, and it got a lot of comments. A LOT of comments. I can’t wait for it to land on GoComics, which will be tomorrow.

I just got my idea for the FXBG Advance’s Sunday cartoon approved, but it wasn’t my first idea.

For context, we have some new public schools in this area. I got this idea and emailed it to my editor early this morning (September 11) with the subject line: “How brave are you feeling this morning?” (snip-MORE, both roughs and commentary)

“There is not peace in many of our cities because there is not freedom.” – Pres. John F. Kennedy

September 10, 1897
Nineteen unarmed striking coal miners were killed and 36 more wounded in Lattimer (near Hazleton), Pennsylvania, for refusing to disperse, by a posse organized by the Luzerne County sheriff. The strikers, most of whom were shot in the back, were originally brought in as strike-breakers, but later created their own union. 
The background and details 
September 10, 1963
Twenty black students entered public schools in Birmingham, Tuskegee and Mobile, Alabama. The Governor George C. Wallace had ordered Alabama state troopers to stop the federal court-ordered integration of Alabama’s elementary and high schools. President John Kennedy responded by calling out the Alabama National Guard to protect the students and to see the order enforced.
President Kennedy spoke that day at American University’s commencement, saying, 
“Peace need not be impractical, war not inevitable . . . There is not peace in many of our cities because there is not freedom.”
September 10, 1996
 
Sheryl Crow’s second album was banned from Wal-Mart stores because the song she co-wrote with Tad Wadhams, “Love Is A Good Thing” opens with
“Watch out sister, watch out brother,
Watch our children while they kill each other
With a gun they bought at Wal-Mart discount stores….”

Read more about this event   and an update

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september10

A Moms for Liberty Leader Claims To Be a Nurse. Is She?

Hey if these people can outright lie about the LGBTQ+ community, willing to let LGBTQ+ kids die or be pushed via violence into the closet hiding who they really were, what is faking your expertise.  I already posted about a sexologist who had no experience with trans kids testifying to red state legislatures enabling his bigotry to further the harm to trans kids by giving an excuse for theirs.   These people are on a mission that is far from pure but one driven by hate and bigotry to make all kids pretend to be straight and cis in the hope that they can force all adults to pretend to be straight and cis also.  If they can’t force the adults to pretend to be straight or cis at least they can stop the trans adults from looking like the gender they identify with in hopes of stopping those that are passing as the gender they identify as.   This they hope will mark those people in ways that make their life harder.   Again their lies are OK for them because either they think their god approves or their hate is that great so nothing but the mission matters.   Hugs


https://www.unclosetedmedia.com/p/a-moms-for-liberty-leader-claims

Uncloseted Media has obtained documents that suggest a prominent member of Moms for Liberty may be falsely presenting as a nurse.

Well, This Is A Shame, But Vote For Pedophiles, Get

a pedophile golf coach/Schools Superintendent as well as pedophile enabling officials, I guess. I hope these parents not only protect their kids, but learn from this: normalizing pedophilia, abuse, and bullying is bad. Two stories here, so the post is a bit long. The Newscow is my area’s local news site; the coverage is due to the accused being a local high school graduate. The Reflector story has more background and detail than alluded in the Newscow story, and is best read in whole, on site, for continuity. Again, normalizing pedophilia, abuse, and bullying is bad. As we here know. There is official description of what is alleged. I don’t think it’s triggering, but wanted to state that for everyone.

A Kansas student reported her coach for harassment and touching. School leaders kept it quiet.

Comanche County school board leaders, principal strive to blunt public outrage

By:Tim Carpenter-September 2, 20252:57 pm

COLDWATER — After the father of a small-town, southwest Kansas high school junior reported his daughter was the victim of sexual harassment and unwanted touching by her golf coach, he met with the coach and principal to lay out the teenager’s concerns and disgust.

By the end of that meeting in May, the father said, the three men seemed to have an understanding that the coach violated policy — if not the law — when he made a stunning comment to the girl during golf practice: He told her to grip a club like it was a penis.

At the meeting, the coach signed a document affirming he directed lurid comments at the girl, according to a copy of the document obtained by Kansas Reflector. The student confirmed the accusations in a report with law enforcement and in an interview with Kansas Reflector.

The document said the coach on multiple occasions grabbed the student’s hips, waist and shoulders while standing behind her. She also said that he held the back of her thigh, purportedly to improve her golf posture.

Ty Theurer eventually resigned as the South Central High School golf coach, which was his part-time assignment in the Comanche County School District. He didn’t surrender a much more influential position in the district: Superintendent.

Kansas Reflector interviews with students, parents, educators and elected officials tied to Comanche County schools revealed a concerted effort by insiders to shield the district’s top administrator, despite ongoing law enforcement and Title IX investigations. People with knowledge of Theurer’s past said the golf practice incident wasn’t the only example of inappropriate behavior by the superintendent, who for years personally controlled how the district responded to alleged sexual harassment.

Kansas Reflector reporting shows the Comanche County school board president and vice president along with the high school principal collaborated to minimize disciplinary action against Theurer. It indicated the president sought to tamp down scrutiny of the superintendent as word of the student’s allegation made its way through the sparsely populated district.

In a brief interview with Kansas Reflector, Theurer declined to respond to questions about the complaint.

“I’m not going to answer any of those questions,” he said. “I am under investigation. I’m not allowed to speak about it.”

(snip)

In May, the student’s father reported the behavior to Andy Uhl, the Comanche County school board’s vice president. Uhl apparently passed the dad’s complaint up the chain of command. That resulted in the father’s meeting with Theurer and South Central High School principal Bud Valerius.

But instead of all seven members of the school board assuming a role in a personnel issue involving the person hired by the board to serve as superintendent, Valerius dealt with the student’s complaint as if it were a clash between coach and athlete, emails show. Valerius took that approach despite conflicts of interest, including his job as a direct subordinate of Theurer, his assignment as assistant golf coach and his friendship with Theurer.

School board president Kelly Herd said in an email to other board members that in her opinion, “There was nothing in the complaint that would warrant administrative leave” for superintendent Theurer. Instead, she told board members, coach Theurer had been given a “warning” to not offend again.

The school board replaced the superintendent as the district’s Title IX coordinator with oversight of sexual harassment or sex discrimination complaints because it would be improper for Theurer to investigate himself. Those duties were passed several months ago to the district’s elementary school principal, who would be expected to initiate an investigation of the superintendent.

In June, the student’s parents attended a regularly scheduled Comanche County school board meeting with the goal of sharing information about what their daughter said she endured while coached by Theurer.

Herd, the board president, called the mother before the meeting in an attempt to dissuade her from making public comments about the superintendent, the mother said.

The mother decided to go to the board meeting. She attempted to read from a written statement. Herd cut her off by adjourning the meeting. A video obtained by Kansas Reflector showed Herd and other board members walking out of the room with the mother still reading from her prepared remarks.

“How could this not be a priority? Not for my family alone, but for the school community?” the mother said in an interview. “The sudden adjournment and insistence that such an issue of import was literally worth walking out on is deeply troubling.”

She said the school board president’s attempt to bury the complaint was “completely unacceptable” and risked the health and safety of students in the district’s three schools. Failure of the school board to address the superintendent’s misconduct ran “the risk of appearing complicit in continuing toxic and dangerous situations,” the mother said.

“There is no result that can serve justice other than immediate termination,” she said.

==================================================================

Wellington grad placed on administrative leave at Comanche County School District via sexual harassment allegations

September 05, 2025  Cueball

Sumner Newscow report — A Wellington High School graduate has been placed on paid administrative leave as superintendent of the Comanche County School District.

Ty Theurer has been accused of sexually harassing a student. The story first appeared in the Kansas Reflectorin which a father of a small-town, southwest Kansas high school junior reported his daughter was the victim of sexual harassment and unwanted touching by her South Central High School golf coach.

The school district voted to place Theurer on administrative paid leave. According to the Reflector, the school board didn’t discuss publicly the reason for taking action against Theurer at this time. There was no board disclosure about who would temporarily lead the district or for how long.

The board adopted a vague motion to proceed with “next steps,” which the board president said had been discussed in an executive session. None of that information was shared with the audience, according to the Reflector report.

More than 100 residents of the rural southwest Kansas school district — including some displaying raw, intense emotion — descended on the high school Wednesday night to demand ouster or suspension of Theurer. He is accused of, while serving as golf coach, advising a female student to hold clubs like she were gripping a penis. The girl had also complained of unwanted touching by Theurer.

“How in the world did we get here?” said Zach Ellis, a county commissioner who has children in the district. “Does this board not have a responsibility to the kids of this district to do the right thing? Kids don’t feel safe in this building. You have created a hostile and toxic learning environment as well as a toxic working environment.”

School board president Kelly Herd, who became aware of the student’s harassment complaint four months ago, had resisted punishment of Theurer beyond the warning placed in his personnel file. She had told fellow board members no additional sanction was necessary in response to the allegations.

Theurer signed a summary of the student’s complaint months ago, which was viewed by the student’s parents as an admission of guilt.

Herd also sent emails to other board members saying Theurer “did not deny nor make excuses” and “has been written up.”

In front of an unusually large crowd, the seven-member board moved in and out of executive session several times before Herd sought a motion to relieve Theurer of administrative duties in the 300-student district. According to the Reflector, he wasn’t at work on Wednesday and didn’t attend the school board meeting after the Kansas Reflector article was published on Tuesday detailing allegations against the superintendent and the school board’s tepid response.

The One You Never Forget – Short Film

Dream the dream, live the life.  They will not erase us.   Hugs

Paul Robeson, Elizabeth Eckford, & More, in Peace & Justice History for 9/4

September 4, 1949
Paul Robeson, scholar, athlete, musician and leader, defying a racist and red-baiting mob, sang to 15,000 at a Labor Day gathering in Peekskill, New York.
 
Paul Robeson (at microphone) singing to the Labor Day gathering in Peekskill, New York
The story and photographs of what happened 
Film from that day narrated by Sidney Poitier 
September 4, 1954
The Peace Pledge Union (PPU) organized a demonstration against the H-Bomb in London’s Trafalgar Square.
The PPU dates back to October 1934.


Young Peace Pledge Union members today.
The PPU today
History of the Peace Pledge Union
__________________________________________________
September 4, 1957
Elizabeth Eckford and eight other young Negroes were blocked from becoming the first black student at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Elizabeth Eckford
Governor Orval Faubus had called out the National Guard to prevent the court-ordered integration of the public schools in the state’s capital.
President Dwight Eisenhower eventually sent in federal troops to guarantee the law was enforced.


Elizabeth Eckford followed and taunted by mob, 1957.Read more
 Read More
A very interesting related story: 
____________________________________________________
September 4, 1970
Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) began Operation RAW (Rapid American Withdrawal). Over the following three days more than 200 veterans, assisted by the Philadelphia Guerilla Theater, staged a march from Morristown, New Jersey, to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, reenacting the invasion of small rural hamlets along the way.





Operation Rapid American Withdrawal 1970-2005: Memories 
______________________________________________________________
September 4, 1978
Simultaneous demonstrations in Moscow’s Red Square and in front of the White House in Washington, D.C. were organized by the War Resisters League, calling for nuclear disarmament.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryseptember.htm#september4

A Resource For Life And Hope

Teaching new Americans culinary skills…and beyond by José Andrés

At Emma’s Torch, refugees get the skills to work in kitchens and make a life for themselves Read on Substack

Hello friends, today I want to tell you about a really special organization here in Washington, DC as well as in Brooklyn, New York. It’s called Emma’s Torch, a non-profit organization that provides culinary training for refugees. Kerry Brodie, the founder of Emma’s Torch, named it after the famous poem written on the Statue of Liberty (“Give me your tired, your poor…”) by Emma Lazarus. The organization runs culinary programs for small groups of students to learn kitchen skills as well as life skills—and they have a network of partners to support students and graduates find housing, seek employment, connect with local communities, and find mental health support.

Soon, the DC program will be expanding to a much larger facility in Silver Spring, opening the door for even more students to be supported. My Longer Tables Fund has given a grant to Emma’s Torch to support this growth as a lead partner as they grow across the DC region, starting with the flagship Silver Spring hub in 2026…building a stronger future where more students can train for meaningful careers, more employers can connect with incredible talent, and more neighbors come together around the table. I’m excited to see the development of the new space and hopefully one day to attend a future graduation!

The Emma’s Torch culinary training program is 11 weeks total, and includes time in a classroom, in a teaching kitchen, in professional kitchens, and in a café that the organization runs. The Emma’s Torch team teaches culinary skills like knife skills, food safety, and recipe execution, as well as training outside the kitchen, like how to write a resume, how to interview, conflict resolution skills, coping methods, and language—mostly focused on culinary vocabulary and kitchen-specific language. Just imagine how important it is to be able to understand the difference between “you did cook that” and “you will cook that”…!

Emma’s Torch also has a relationship with José Andrés Group restaurants in Washington and New York—a program coordinated by our director of people, Eduardo Maia—and some of the program’s students work in our kitchens for a few days…as we say in kitchens, a “stage.” Students have worked at Zaytinya, Oyamel, Jaleo, China Chilcano, as well as minibar in DC, and Mercado Little Spain and Zaytinya in New York…and our teams have been so proud to work with them.

The organization partners with local nonprofits in DC and New York, organizations that support refugees like the International Rescue Committee, the Ethiopian Community Development Council, and other resettlement organizations…many of which have seen a decline in funding, so now more than ever, we need to be thinking about how to support people coming to our country. Today of all days, this week of all weeks, this year of all years, I think we should all be thinking about what longer tables means to us—and how the work of organizations like Emma’s Torch can make our communities, and our country, stronger.

A map on the wall of the Emma’s Torch café in DC showing all the countries that graduates have come from.

My team had the opportunity to visit the DC cafe and meet some of the team members and students from Emma’s Torch (and had an amazing lunch at the café, of course!). Here are some thoughts from Kerry Brodie, the organization’s founder, Justin Edwards, the lead culinary trainer, and two recent graduates, Clara and Mamaissata.

Kerry Brodie is the founder of Emma’s Torch. She created the organization in 2016 after seeing the challenges of the day—a growing refugee crisis and increasingly hostile attitudes to new Americans, as well as restaurants struggling to find good workers. She’d had difficulty understanding how major change could happen through public policy—so instead, she decided to take matters into her own hands, and start a program training refugees to cook and to enter the workforce. Here’s more in Kerry’s own words.

Refugee resettlement is a long process because there’s the immediate trauma that a person might be escaping, but there’s also the trauma of building something entirely new—something that you didn’t plan for, that might not be plan B for you, but plan Z. Like, this is not where you thought you would be. And so many of our students have a shared experience of coming to terms with that, processing the loss as well as seeing the future with optimism, and working to build something.

And now, that trauma is paired with the constant harassment of headlines telling you that you’re not welcome here, and that you’re a drain on society, or that you are an other.

I think the loss of agency is something that becomes a huge problem because fundamentally, many people who leave their homes as refugees are taken from place to place and no longer given choices…Like, start here, go there, do this class. Instead, we like to frame everything as terms of a choice. We have our program and we’re clear with potential students about the parameters of it: this is what might be possible for you if you want to do it, but it is your choice to show up here, it is your choice to participate. It’s also your choice to accept or not to accept a job on the other end, at one of our employment partners.

We’ve seen more and more situations where families are separated, which leads to a lot of social isolation. It means we need to help people build a whole new social network for themselves, to establish a whole new social capital structure. So of course we’re teaching culinary skills, but we’re also teaching about employment. I like the phrase “knife skills and life skills”—but it’s not just language skills and how to write a resume, but also about equity and empowerment, how to speak up for yourself, to have agency over your life, despite the huge headwinds. (snip-There Is More-Please go read it!)

Reblog Of A Reblog: Resist!

A school shooting.