Super informative and indepth in the science of paleontology. Aron Ra knows his stuff and has the ability to instruct or impart the information in a way that is easier to understand. If you like learning about dinosaurs then you should enjoy this video. Hugs
AronRa explores the evolutionary history of sauropods, tracing their development from early archosaurs to the massive, long-necked creatures found in the fossil record. This examination focuses on anatomical transitions, such as skeletal pneumaticity, and the taxonomic debates surrounding their classification relative to theropods and other dinosaur lineages.
This is the fundamentalist Christian nationalist religious majority trying hard to find a reason that violating any religion not christianity was OK. They do not deny that the man’s religious beliefs were violated and ignored even after the courts had ruled to protect them. That shows a bias against the non-Christian religions. The SCOTUS has no qualms lying and using false misleading inform to create ruling in favor of the Christian religion and those that want to push / force it on to everyone else in the country. Hugs
For more than two decades, the Supreme Court has issued a long series of wins for plaintiffs seeking to protect their religious practices. On June 23, 2026, though, the majority delivered an uncommon defeat in this contentious area.
Landor v. Louisiana Department of Public Education and Safety, a 6-3 judgment, rejected the claim of Damon Landor, a Rastafarian whose hair was forcibly shaved in prison. Landor had worn long dreadlocks for almost 20 years as an expression of his beliefs – part of a biblical practice known as the “Nazarite vow.” Like lower court judges, the Supreme Court did not dispute that officials violated Landor’s rights. However, the high court’s majority ruled that he could not sue individual officials at the prison.
The case stands out for at least three other reasons.
First, Landor v. Louisiana underscores the complexity and far-reaching nature of religious freedom laws in the United States and the increasingly diverse faith traditions to which they apply. Christians now represent 62% of the American population, down from 78% in 2007, while 29% have no religious affiliation and 7% belong to other faith traditions.
Second, Landor’s case gained support from many groups typically at odds over how to protect religious freedoms – groups disappointed withthis week’s decision.
Finally, the case highlights the religious rights of the nearly 2 million people in U.S. prisons, jails and detention and correctional facilities – and the challenge of holding their public employees accountable when those rights are violated.
Toward the end of his sentence, Landor was transferred to a different correctional facility in the state. There – with three weeks left for Landor to serve – the warden ignored the judicial order, directing guards to shackle Landor and forcibly shave his head.
After finishing his sentence, Landor filed suit for money damages under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. The act forbids the government and its officials from imposing “substantial burden(s)” on incarcerated people’s First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. It also protects religious groups from discrimination through zoning restrictions.
Journey through the courts
In 2022, a federal trial court in Louisiana condemned Landor’s treatment but rejected his claim, concluding that money damages were not an appropriate remedy under the act.
The following year, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals “emphatically condemn(ed) the treatment that Landor endured.” However, the panel unanimously affirmed the lower court’s decision, based on its earlier ruling that plaintiffs cannot sue government officials in their individual capacities for monetary damages – only the institution.
At issue was not whether Landor’s rights had been violated but whether he could sue an individual official, namely the warden, for monetary damages. During oral arguments on Nov. 10, 2025, the Supreme Court seemed skeptical.
Legal dilemma
That skepticism was reflected in the court’s ultimate ruling. It was essentially a procedural ruling about the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act rather than a judgment on the merits of Landor’s religious freedom claim.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
The majority’s argument that Landor could not sue centered on the spending clause of the U.S. Constitution – the source of Congress’ authority to create the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. The spending clause allows the legislature to spend money to provide for the “general Welfare of the United States.” If a state or institution uses federal funds, their officials agree to certain conditions; if they violate those conditions, Congress can remove funding.
But the spending clause does not give Congress authority to hold individual employees accountable, Gorsuch argued in his 18-page opinion. Prison officials had not “voluntarily and knowingly consented to answer private suits” under the act, and so they could not be held directly liable for monetary damages. Otherwise, Congress would have “effectively unbridled police power.”
Jackson’s 29-page dissent disagreed with the majority’s interpretation of the spending clause. The ruling, she contended, “jettisons ‘a long line of this Court’s precedents’” under which “Congress has been able to use its spending power to reach beyond direct recipients of federal funds.” As such, she worried that the court’s order imposed a “novel consent requirement.”
Jackson also lamented the decision’s potential consequences for inmates. Although the goal of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act was to protect prisoners’ faith practices, she worried that people “like Landor who suffer violations of their religious freedom in state prisons – no matter how blatant – will often be left remediless.”
Bigger picture
At a glance, the Landor case appears to be a procedural disagreement rather than one over religious freedom.
However, I argue Landor v. Louisiana must be viewed as a setback for religious liberty, raising a serious question about whether minority faiths have as much protection under the First Amendment as larger religions. The decision is also something of a surprise to me, because the Supreme Court has recently upheld free exercise rights in multiple high-profile cases, almost all of which involve Christianity – such as a football coach’s ability to pray on the field after public school games.
Portions of this article originally appeared in a previous article published on Nov. 6, 2025.
Wow. There is a lot of historic information in this video. The author / presenter has quick cuts to other personality characters she plays to highlight the absurdity of some positions held by the hierarchy. She delvesdeeply into the idea of what is proper femininity, who steps outside it, and who thinks they are responsible for judging or enforcing it. She delves into how many fights against change and equality are about fears by men of emasculation. The lowering of men’s status. When she elaborates on suffrage, all the fears seem to be that allowing women to vote would give women the right to be men and force men to be women. Seem familure? She goes into detail on how each repressive opressive responce to equal rights comes down to the same phrases such as save the children, save the family, or the claims that society it self will end. The clips she intersperses go by far too quickly so I had to stop the video to read them but she does describe what is on them. The begining was choppy and it took me a bit to get her style of presentation but once I did I found it very informative fillwed with facts, history, and fun to watch. Hugs
The transgender bathroom ‘debate’ isn’t new (but it is stupid). I’m looking at you TERF’s…
Looking back through history, gender politics is consistently entangled with race, class, misogyny, and disability. Minority groups existing outside the ‘norm’ are attacked as ‘radicals’ or menaces to society…
But what prevails each time we face oppression AND causes real change in our society?
In this video Dan hits back on the myth that in the bible / god will any sex outside of marriage is a sin. He shows how many different sexual acts and groupings were included as Ok for the morality of the time. I am listening to Separation of church and hate by John Fugelsang. In the book he explains that the bible is a collection of writings written for the people of that time, the culture of that time, and about the morality accepted at that time. He shares examples where different authors flat out disagree with each other, but they were separated by ceneriesin time. Dan mentions something like that here and how each author had their own view of sex and what was moral. He explains sexual agency and how in the bible for it to be considered sex a penis needed to be involved going into an orifice of some person with lesser status than the man with the active penis. I like at the end where he talks of the dangers and torments of telling developing children going through puberty that simply touching themselves is a sin, makes them an abomination to god, and will condemn them to hell. Hugs
The former transportation secretary described it as “the ugliest thing that has happened to me since my career in service began.”
Pete Buttigieg, former secretary of transportation, during the National Action Network 35th Anniversary Convention on April 10, 2026, in New York City.Adam Gray / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said his family has been targeted in a “politically motivated hoax” after someone made what police characterized as a false report to Child Protective Services alleging he committed crimes against his children.
In a Substack post Friday, Buttigieg wrote that an anonymous caller reported to CPS that his 4-year-old twins he shares with his husband, Chasten, were “at risk.”
“The caller said that he had spoken to a woman who claimed to have met me at a conference several years ago in Alabama, where she said I told her that I had committed unspeakable violent crimes, and the caller believed my children were still at risk,” Buttigieg wrote.
Buttigieg, a prominent Democrat and potential 2028 presidential contender, likened the incident to “swatting” — when someone calls 911 to falsely report an immediate threat, often at a public figure’s home — “but with Child Protective Services instead of a SWAT team.”
As a result of the allegation, Buttigieg said a CPS worker told him he could not be around his children unsupervised for 24 hours while the allegation was investigated. He and his husband dropped the children off with their grandparents for the night, beginning what Buttigieg described as “among the darkest hours of my life.”
He said the children were also interviewed by CPS the following day.
The CPS worker assigned to the case did not find anything to substantiate the allegation, Buttigieg said, adding that he doesn’t know the identity of the person who made the accusation.
The police officer on the case “made clear that he believed this was politically motivated, and said it would not be referred to a prosecutor,” Buttigieg wrote. “Nothing in the forensic interview with the children, which was conducted by trained personnel, had led to concerns.”
In a statement provided to MS NOW on Friday afternoon, the Michigan State Police confirmed receiving an “anonymous report” in the case, adding that police and CPS workers determined it was false.
“False reports are dangerous and divert law enforcement officers and Child Protective Services workers from responding to legitimate emergencies and protecting vulnerable children and families,” the state police said.
In his Substack, Buttigieg characterized the incident as part of broader rise in political violence that leaders on both sides of the aisle face. He called it the worst thing he experienced in politics to date.
“Many times over the years, I have been denounced, yelled at, protested, threatened, and heckled,” Buttigieg wrote. “I’ve been through political attacks in office, death threats in public life, and rocket attacks in war. But this is the ugliest thing that has happened to me since my career in service began.”
“For twenty-four deeply distressing hours,” he continued, “we had no idea what I was accused of or what was about to happen. We could not understand someone abusing the system like this in order to hurt me and my family with an absurd and easily refuted allegation of a horrific crime.”
He also suggested homophobia may have motivated the incident, noting that it occurred during Pride month, which conservatives have long attacked , soon after he posted a photo of his family on Instagram to celebrate Father’s Day. Buttigieg has been subject to homophobic remarks from high-profile officials during his time in the public eye, including from former Vice President Mike Pence, who mocked his decision to take parental leave while serving as transportation secretary, and former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party, Meshawn Maddock, who called him “a weak little girl” in 2022.
As Buttigieg noted on Substack, making a false report of felony child abuse is a crime under Michigan state law, punishable by a fine of up to four years in prison or a fine of up to $2,000, or both.
Buttigieg was slated to campaign in Tucson this Sunday for JoAnna Mendoza, a Democratic candidate for the state’s 6th Congressional District, but he has canceled the trip, Tucson.com reported.
Spokespeople for the Justice Department and the local prosecutor’s office representing the county where Buttigieg lives did not immediately respond to questions from MS NOW on Friday afternoon. The Michigan Attorney General’s Office declined to comment.
A draft final report from President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission released on Friday calls for “building bridges between church and state,” a seeming reversal of a longstanding U.S. legal principle. “Americans must know their rights and stand with courage when those rights are challenged,” the commission’s report reads.
“To preserve this freedom, we must build bridges, not walls, between the City of God and the City of Man. If we do so, we will pass on a free and prosperous nation to the next generation,” it continues.
The argument is a stark reversal of the legal principle that calls for the separation of church and state. The phrase “separation of church and state” does not explicitly appear in the Constitution, but the Constitution states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Oh, unfortunately, we think about it every day.A “faith director” in every federal agency isn't a victory for religious liberty. It's an attempt to weave religion into the machinery of government. That's exactly why we have church-state separation.
Neither is Jesus.The Constitution says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. "Separation of church and state" is the shorthand for that principle, one the Supreme Court has recognized for decades.
The short version is the company came out supporting the LGBTQ+ workers and community. The two fired workers went on the company intranet and made a point to question it and declare how they felt about the LGBTQ+ people. Lets just say they were not fans. So the company investigated and decided they would create a hostile work place. The first court agreed, but the appeals court said the employee lawsuit could go forward because the airline did not make an effort to accommodate the fired workers religious rights. So the fact that you are a Christian means you can treat LGBTQ+ co-workers like shit and disregard their very existence based on a mistaken understanding of what their god wants. Christian belief tRump’s an LGBTQ+ person’s right to exist equally with out discrimination. Hugs
An Alaska Airlines commercial airliner takes-off from Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, California, U.S., November 6, 2025. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Flight attendants fired over intranet posts
Lower court said comments were not overtly religious, and dismissed case
But there was enough to let a jury decide, appeals court panel says
June 26 (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court has revived a lawsuit claiming Alaska Airlines (ALKAIR.UL) engaged in religious discrimination by firing two flight attendants who criticized the company’s support for expanding legal protections for LGBTQ people.
A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said, opens new tab on Wednesday that there was enough proof that the airline was motivated by the workers’ Christian beliefs when it fired them to let a jury decide whether it broke the law.
The flight attendants in 2021 made separate posts on Alaska Airlines’ employee intranet critical of the company’s backing of the Equality Act, a bill in Congress to prohibit discrimination against gay and transgender people in employment, housing, public accommodations and other areas.
The posts were not overtly religious, leading a judge to dismiss the case last year. But Circuit Judge Daniel Bress, who was appointed by Republican President Donald Trump, as were the other judges on the panel, wrote for the 9th Circuit that the workers’ comments and the airline’s response to the posts were enough to show it may have been motivated by their religious beliefs.
“It did not matter whether [one of the plaintiffs] could support her post with chapter and verse from an authoritative religious text,” Bress wrote.
The plaintiffs also claim their union, the Association of Flight Attendants, discriminated against them and breached its legal duty to represent them by not fighting their termination.
The 9th Circuit on Wednesday revived those claims, and joined two other appeals courts in ruling that federal labor law does not preempt such claims against unions brought under state laws.
Alaska Airlines and the union did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.
The plaintiffs are represented by the First Liberty Institute, which says it is the largest legal organization in the country dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty. Stephanie Taub, the group’s senior counsel, said the 9th Circuit ruling reinforces legal protections from religious discrimination.
“You cannot be fired because your employer does not like your religious beliefs,” she said.
According to court filings, after Alaska Airlines posted online about its support for the Equality Act, plaintiff Lacey Smith wrote in response: “As a company, do you think it’s possible to regulate morality?”
Another flight attendant, Marli Brown, made a separate, longer post claiming the Equality Act would infringe on women’s rights, enable sexual predators, and was “endangering the Church [and] encouraging suppression of religious freedom.”
Alaska Airlines deleted the posts and issued a statement in response, saying the company supported protecting LGBTQ people against discrimination and that “we also expect our employees to live by these same values.” Smith and Brown were then fired after an investigation for violating the airline’s anti-discrimination and harassment policy, court filings showed.
The women sued in 2022, accusing Alaska Airlines and the union of discriminating against them because of their Christian beliefs.
U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein in Seattle had dismissed the case, saying the firings were not discriminatory because the flight attendants’ posts were not religious in nature. She also said the federal Railway Labor Act, which regulates the rail and airline industries, preempted the plaintiffs’ claims that the union violated Washington and Oregon law.
The 9th Circuit reversed Rothstein’s order. Brown’s post specifically mentioned “the Church,” Bress wrote for the court, and the airline investigated her and Smith together. Both women also cited their religious beliefs in the course of the airline’s investigation, he said.
Bress was joined by Circuit Judge Kenneth Lee in his opinion. Circuit Judge Morgan Christen mostly agreed, but in a partial dissent said she would not have revived Smith’s discrimination claim.
“Alaska would have had to be clairvoyant to know that Smith considered the statement she posted on the company’s internal website to be an expression of her faith,” wrote Christen.
The case is Brown v. Alaska Airlines, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 24-3789.
For the plaintiffs: Stephanie Taub and others from First Liberty Institute; Andrew Gould of Holtzman Vogel Baran Torchinsky & Josefiak
For Alaska Airlines: Lauren Watts and others from Seyfarth Shaw
For the union: Benjamin Berger and others from Barnard Iglitzin & Lavitt
A federal judge said a lawsuit challenging the Department of Justice’s creation of a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund will proceed.
Judge Leonie Brinkema cited the DOJ’s refusal to confirm in writing to her that the fund is dead.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche testified to a House committee on June 2 that the fund is not going forward. DOJ lawyers have pointed to that statement in arguing to Brinkema and another federal judge that it is sufficient to dismiss suits challenging the fund.
Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks at a press conference at the Department of Justice on May 4, 2026 in Washington, DC.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images
A federal judge on Thursday said a lawsuit challenging the Department of Justice’s creation of a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund will proceed, citing the DOJ’s refusal to confirm in writing to her that the fund is dead, as the department has verbally said it is.
Brinkema said that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s refusal to rescind his May 18 memo that set up the structure of the fund, as well as his and President Donald Trump’s continued interest in compensating purported victims of DOJ overreach, “all support this conclusion” that the lawsuit is not moot.
The judge ordered the DOJ to file its answer to the lawsuit by July 17.
Blanche created the fund as part of a settlement of Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over a leak of his tax records. The fund, whose total possible disbursements would be $1.776 billion — in a nod to the year in which the Declaration of Independence was signed — was designed to provide redress to people who allegedly “suffered weaponization and lawfare.”
Critics called it a “slush fund” that would pay allies of Trump, including potentially hundreds of people convicted of crimes related to their involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Blanche testified to a House committee on June 2 that the fund is “not going forward, period,” after sharp criticism of it by Republican and Democratic lawmakers.
DOJ lawyers have pointed to that statement in arguing to Brinkema and another federal judge that it is sufficient to dismiss suits challenging the fund.
In a court filing this week, the DOJ said that written declarations that the fund is dead “are unnecessary,” and that Brinkema’s request that Blanche and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent put in writing Blanche’s promise “implicates serious separation of powers concerns.”
But Brinkema, in her order Thursday, wrote, “That the defendants have refused to accord a genuine degree of trustworthiness to their representations about the Fund not going forward is particularly concerning because of the President’s consistent support for the Fund and Acting Attorney General Blanche’s acknowledgement that the Fund remains ‘important.’ ”
“Although Acting Attorney General Blanche reiterated several times during his testimony that the Fund was not going forward, when asked whether he would ‘issue a new memo in writing rescinding that May 18 memo,’ he replied, ‘I’m not committing to putting anything in writing. And I said it over and over again,’ ” Brinkema noted.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit include Andrew Floyd, a former federal prosecutor who has said he was fired for prosecuting cases against Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol. The other plaintiffs are Jonathan Caravello, a professor at California State University Channel Islands, and the city of New Haven, Conn.
Has the state of Texas become a christian theocracy now? It seems every year they change the school curriculum to make it more white and more Christian. Itis clear that the Christian billionaire preacher who basically bought the state legislature and calls the shots has long wanted the state to be a White Christian Male paradise. These new changes basically make the state schools the same as the Jewish Orthodox schools in NY, where the students learn only the Torah but can hardly count to 20 and speak / write very little English. They are getting tax money to educate kids but they don’t. The kids graduate and can’t get jobs and are on state assistance. The new Texas standards emphasize white contributions and minimize any contributions from other races. They push religious stories over facts. This is just the forced religious indoctrination of children regardless of the religious beliefs of the parents. Notice there is no opt out on these religious texts, books, stories but parents much be told and can opt their child out of any lesson that mentions the LGBTQ+ or reading material containing information about it. If you are worried about the white washing race removing Christifying of public schools and the rewriting of history to change what really happened to make white people look better please give this article a read. below are a few quotes from the article. Hugs
The statewide reading list would require, among other literary works, that schools teach Bible material to children as young as 6 years old up to young adults preparing to receive their diplomas. That includes Christian stories about Adam and Eve, the eight Beatitudes and the Parable of the Prodigal Son.
On the contrary, Republicans eliminated a standard specifying that students should consider “the perspectives of groups whose voices are less represented in traditional historical accounts.” They added another requirement that introduces the biblical story of Moses alongside the Underground Railroad and Harriet Tubman — who was nicknamed “Moses” because, similar to the biblical prophet, she helped people escape slavery.
“Let me be very clear: Islam is not a religion,” state Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, testified before the education board Monday. “It is a totalitarian theocracy, not unlike totalitarian systems of communism, Nazism and globalism.”
Meanwhile, students, educators and progressive activists spoke out in opposition to the lack of racial, ethnic and gender inclusion in the debated books and lessons, as well as the state’s Christian focus over other religions.
The State Board of Education will hold a final vote Friday on incorporating more Christian stories into classrooms and deemphasizing race and cultural diversity in history lessons.
Certified elementary school librarian Sarah Pepin speaks at a State Board of Education meeting in Austin on June 22, 2026. Manoo Sirivelu/The Texas Tribune
Texas elementary and middle school students will likely see redesigned social studies and reading lessons that minimize racial, geographic and cultural diversity while emphasizing the Bible — but changes for high schoolers have suddenly hit a pause.
The Republican-led State Board of Education decided Thursday evening to allow final votes on a rewrite of Texas’ K-8 social studies lessons and a mandatory reading list for all public schools that includes Christian stories. Those votes are expected Friday.
However, the board delayed proposed changes to high school U.S. history, world history, geography and government.
For months, educators, Democrats and public education advocates criticized Texas’ social studies revamp as rushed. Conservative advocates and Republican board members insisted on pushing the process forward. But board chair Aaron Kinsey expressed doubts Thursday about having enough time to cut down the number of lessons packed into each course.
“This is a conundrum we’ve created of our own doing,” Democratic member Marisa B. Pérez-Díaz said. “And I’m very frustrated by it.”
Kinsey rejected an assertion from Pérez-Díaz that he rushed the process and said he was willing to continue working. But he also said board members made mistakes when they pushed through changes during late hours. For example, they eliminated a requirement that students learn about the American Revolution in high school U.S. history before reinserting it Thursday.
The elected board is on track to update what public school students must learn in reading and social studies. This week’s meetings ran as late as 2 a.m., as board members meticulously parsed through changes to lessons in each grade.
Along with Bible stories in reading, the social studies proposal features a dramatic transformation in how Texas schools have long administered lessons on history, geography, economics and government. It eliminates the current sixth-grade world cultures course, deemphasizes world history outside of European tradition and dedicates more focus to Texas and the United States.
Democrats suggested changes they hoped would make lessons more accurate and inclusive of historically underserved groups — most notably people of color — even if they ultimately did not favor the overall plan.
Republicans blamed cherry-picking over what students should learn for the delay.
“We wasted many hours late into the morning,” Republican member Brandon Hall said. “We have worn out and exhausted our staff on trifling amendments coming from people who had no intention of ever working with us or ever actually approving something they wanted to pass.”
Conservative leaders and activists champion the new lessons, which they view as “the final battle” in a push to rid Texas schools of instruction they say paints America in a negative light and trains students to hate the country.
Sociology classes, for example, currently require students to understand “the impact of race and ethnicity on society” and “analyze the varying treatment patterns of minority groups.” But that standard was eliminated in the newly proposed social studies plan.
If approved by the education board Friday, the K-8 social studies changes and the reading lists will take effect during the 2030-31 school year. The board will also decide whether to phase in the social studies changes or introduce them all at once.
Members could take up the high school courses at its next scheduled meeting in September, or the chair could schedule a special meeting before.
Reframing history
Educators criticized how the social studies proposal prioritizes memorization over critical thinking and simplification over accuracy. Historians called attention to factual errors, saying the new standards would set children up for failure post-graduation.
One lesson, for example, had described the forced relocation and imprisonment of Japanese families during World War II as one of the “contributions” to America’s military effort. Another proposal noted that high school students should know the significance of leaders in the Civil Rights Movement, specifying Thurgood Marshall, Barbara Jordan and Hector P. Garcia — but not Martin Luther King Jr.
The standards initially approved this week reflect slightly different suggestions, instead describing Japanese incarceration as one of the “changes” during the war and adding King to the list of Civil Rights leaders.
But Democratic board members said the minor tweaks will not fix what they see as a whitewashed social studies plan and a politically influenced approval process.
A panel of nine advisers guided the social studies overhaul, almost all of whom hold no Texas K-12 classroom experience and several of whom are either conservative activists or closely affiliated with them. Educators have described it as a major reversal of previous years when teachers led the way, while Democrats have said they do not feel fairly included in decision-making.
“Our voices are being left off constantly,” Democratic board member Tiffany Clark said.
Republicans clarified that advisers only provide recommendations. Elected members maintain final say in the social studies overhaul, they noted. The GOP members argued that it is Democrats’ own responsibility to ensure they are included in the rewrite.
“I, as well as several of my colleagues, have been in direct contact with our content advisers,” Republican member Audrey Young said. “I have been communicating through my content adviser this entire time.”
But some of the appointed experts also expressed frustrations. Yolanda Chávez Leyva, a historian at the University of Texas at El Paso helping guide the board, said she “didn’t feel that every adviser’s input was treated equally.”
Kate Rogers, a social studies adviser who previously led the Alamo Trust before publicly clashing with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, said the group remained professional but its recommendations did not represent all participants.
For instance, the advisory panel proposed changing a lesson that originally called on students to “identify domestic challenges for the United States following World War I related to racial violence and intolerance, including the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and the Tulsa Race Massacre.”
They instead suggested that students learn about the Klan’s “intolerance” of Catholics, Jews and immigrants but did not specify Black Americans. They also changed the “Tulsa Race Massacre” to the “Tulsa Race Riots.” During the 1921 massacre in Oklahoma, a white mob killed Black residents, destroyed their homes and looted their businesses after a Black teenager was falsely accused of trying to assault a white girl in an elevator.
The appointed group also removed standards that defined racial segregation as “keeping people apart based on the color of their skin” and specified that Africans endured slavery in the U.S. because of their race.
“I want to make it clear to the board members that we did not discuss every item on this document,” Rogers said. “Some of the changes were not reviewed by all of the content advisers.”
Board members adopted many changes proposed by the advisory group but reinserted several others, including how Nat Turner’s Rebellion “heightened sectional tensions and deepened disagreements over slavery” and how the expansion of slavery was the central cause of the Civil War. They also clarified that the Klan sought to intimidate and “limit the rights of African Americans in Texas during Reconstruction.”
Some members initiated changes that would expose students to more positive aspects of Black history, including Republican Keven Ellis’ suggestion that schools teach about Bessie Coleman, a Texan who became the first African American and Native American woman to obtain an international pilot’s license.
On the contrary, Republicans eliminated a standard specifying that students should consider “the perspectives of groups whose voices are less represented in traditional historical accounts.” They added another requirement that introduces the biblical story of Moses alongside the Underground Railroad and Harriet Tubman — who was nicknamed “Moses” because, similar to the biblical prophet, she helped people escape slavery.
Prior to debating high school social studies, a handful of Republicans on the elected board unsuccessfully attempted to block amendments from members who did not meet an earlier deadline to submit proposed changes.
If successful, the move effectively would have stopped Democrats from proposing on-the-spot tweaks, which was notable because the rule had not been enforced when the board discussed elementary and middle school lessons.
Reading lessons with Christian stories
Some of the nearly 500 speakers at this week’s meetings exchanged heated words about Christianity’s role in the development of the country, and at least one person with a Confederate flag was deemed out of order by the board chair and escorted from the room for verbally interrupting the meeting.
The statewide reading list would require, among other literary works, that schools teach Bible material to children as young as 6 years old up to young adults preparing to receive their diplomas. That includes Christian stories about Adam and Eve, the eight Beatitudes and the Parable of the Prodigal Son.
Republican leaders across the state often depict Islam as a violent religion they view as incompatible with their conservative Christian American values. During the board’s April meetings, the board eliminated a social studies standard that would have required students to learn about Muslim contributions to algebra and astronomy.
“Let me be very clear: Islam is not a religion,” state Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, testified before the education board Monday. “It is a totalitarian theocracy, not unlike totalitarian systems of communism, Nazism and globalism.”
Asked if he had ever visited a Muslim-majority country, the senatorHall responded no.
Elizabeth Jensen, who identified herself as a Texas school board trustee but did not specify the district, told the education panel that she believes “slavery was and still is fundamental to Sharia,” referring to the set of moral codes and principles that Muslims follow. Sharia does not have a uniform meaning, as Muslims interpret and act upon it differently.
Muslims have spent months denouncing such Islamophobia at State Board of Education meetings, calling it misinformation and harmful to the hundreds of thousands of Texans who practice the faith.
Meanwhile, students, educators and progressive activists spoke out in opposition to the lack of racial, ethnic and gender inclusion in the debated books and lessons, as well as the state’s Christian focus over other religions.
“These proposed standards actually defy the Constitution and highlight only one group of Americans as the founders who built this country to the exclusion of others — both in the past and in the present,” Ruth Nasrullah, a Muslim speaker, told the board members.
English teachers stressed during the meeting that many of the books on the proposed reading list do not align with what Texas requires them to teach, despite taking up most of roughly 36 weeks of instructional time in an academic year.
Before initial approval of the reading list, the board members — led by Republican Tom Maynard — debated whether they should prohibit teachers from assigning non-state-mandated books without the educators first posting them online for parental review. However, some expressed concerns about micromanaging teachers.
They also considered whether to grant charter schools flexibility in which grades they introduce the required readings, an attempt to appease charter leaders who said they wanted to assign more rigorous books to children in lower grades. But some members said doing so might create the opposite effect, allowing lower-performing campuses to lessen rigor for students in higher grades.
Neither of those passed, but board members have another opportunity to resurface suggestions before the final vote Friday.
Jaden Edison is the public education reporter for The Texas Tribune, where he previously worked as a reporting fellow in summer 2022. Before returning to the Tribune full time, he served as the justice…
The host points out that despite the rhetoric coming from the White House and tRump there have been only 100 cases of non-citizen voting in 43 years. That is an incredibly small number. But the tRump administration wants to decide which citezens can vote and who can not. It is minority rule over the majority, it is single party rule like in dictatorships such as China. It is the end of democracy. All so tRump and republicans can stay in charge so the wealthy can raid the treasury and the entire wealth of the country leaving the people as slave labor to the upper class. Hugs
New reporting from Axios offers a window into just how far the White House is willing to go to pursue baseless claims made by President Trump for years. The group Democracy Forward obtained new records showing ICE agents went directly to local officials in Texas and North Carolina to obtain voter files. “We need to be very vigilant and we also need to be outraged,” says Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward. “It’s going to be incumbent upon every single American to make up their mind that we’re not going to have our voices silenced.”
Certified elementary school librarian Sarah Pepin speaks at a State Board of Education meeting in Austin on June 22, 2026. 
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