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AN PHOENIX FLA 7 26

“‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’”

That’s how federal judge Mark Walker began his 2022 injunction blocking enforcement of Ron DeSantis’ “Stop Woke Act” in Florida institutions of higher education.

In case you don’t recognize the quotation, it’s from George Orwell’s “1984:” You know, the novel where the Ministry of Truth rewrites history and forbids free enquiry.

Certain words are banned; wrong thinking is punished. Even hearing about disfavored ideas is considered an attack on decency and order.

As defendant in the case, the State of Florida argued (apparently with a straight face) university professors have the right to free speech, sure, but only if the state approves of that speech.

The law forbade teaching anything that explores racial or gender injustice.

You weren’t allowed to say, given how we still struggle to overcome discrimination against minorities, women, and the disabled, that maybe diversity, equity and inclusion programs helped a lot of people; you must embrace color-blindness in all things (because we all know race doesn’t matter in America!); yet, woe betide you if you ever made a white person feel “guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex.”

Like many of us teaching in the state university system, the judge was unimpressed.

DeSantis and the legal team from his Ministry of Truth appealed up the food chain to the 11th Circuit, and what do you know?

They lost again.

‘Breathtaking assertion of power’

The majority opinion, by a Trump appointee, is unsparing.

Judge Britt C. Grant wrote, “If the First Amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it.”

She called the Stop Woke law “a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse.”

Naturally, the governor pitched a little hissy fit, taking to social media to say, “State universities are funded by taxpayers and directed by elected officials and their appointees. The state has both a right and a responsibility to ensure instruction at these universities is consistent with the underlying mission and to exclude indoctrination and ideological agendas.”

He called the decision “judicial overreach.”

Let’s talk about gubernatorial overreach. Or, to put it another way, what is this guy’s problem with education?

Is he really that frightened of ideas?

If he and his education appointees are so convinced their positions — slavery had an upside, gender is 100% biological, capitalism is divinely ordained, a woman’s highest destiny is to be a mother, vaccines are unnecessary, climate change isn’t real — are valid, surely they’d welcome testing them with historical records, expert reports, and empirical evidence.

Facts, even.

Reading books by and about, say, gay people, teaching the history of Stonewall, or examining central Supreme Court decisions such as Obergefell v. Hodges, do not mean straight people will somehow become gay, any more than studying Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” will necessarily inspire you to assassinate any official you think has gotten too big for his britches.

Gender studies will not destroy heterosexuality; it’s simply a way to talk about the ways people understand who they are, how they present themselves, how other people see them.

Snowflakes

Universities are supposed to be where you encounter people who aren’t like you, unfamiliar, maybe upsetting, points of view, tricky topics, and ideas your parents don’t approve of.

Intellectual freedom means we should be able to discuss almost anything.

Yet the DeSantis administration act like snowflakes, hypersensitive, unwilling to contemplate anything outside their very white, very Christian, pathetically nationalist, bubble.

DeSantis is especially nervous America’s racial history, trying to outlaw “The 1619 Project,” a brilliant collection of writings about how the arrival of the first slaves on the Virginia shore has informed and shaped our country, shutting down or crippling African American Studies programs.

I guess white people are so used to considering themselves the “real” Americans who had all the good ideas, invented all the good stuff, and “built this country,” the reality that Africa is as central to our identity as Europe is scary.

The governor and his crew seem especially freaked out by the possibility students might encounter Critical Race Theory. Listening to them, you’d think CRT is to blame for everything from high gas prices to the common cold.

CRT is pretty simple: Race is socially constructed (not biological) and racism is not merely a product of individual bias (though that’s part of it) but embedded in our legal, educational, medical, and financial systems.

Say a white person and a Black person commit the same crime. It would make sense if they got the same sentence, right?

But in most cases the Black person will get a longer sentence.

‘The perfect villain’

The Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health policy think tank, has repeatedly shown structural racism (conscious or not) in the medical profession means doctors and nurses misdiagnose Black, Latino, and members of other ethnic communities far more often than they do whites, and, unlike with white patients, tend to dismiss their pain.

Infant mortality among people of color is at least twice as high than it is for whites.

There’s nothing sinister or anti-American in acknowledging, as Justice Thurgood Marshall said, the original Constitution was “defective from the start,” given that it upheld slaveholders’ rights in their human property and protected the slave trade.

Slavery was at the heart of our republic since its beginning.

It still reverberates in our culture.

There’s nothing anti-white in pointing this out. The Founders installed in the Constitution ways to amend it, fix social problems, even change American society.

The country is an ongoing project: We’re still striving for that “more perfect union,” and acknowledging the blindingly obvious ways in which our deals don’t match up with our reality is not a heinous assault on patriotism.

CRT was developed by legal scholars, and has long been part of law school curricula. Nobody much noticed it until 2021, when a right-wing activist called Christopher Rufo kicked off a national moral panic.

You might remember Rufo from the 2024 presidential campaign, amplifying J.D. Vance’s lies about Haitians in Ohio eating cats and dogs.

Before that, Rufo had made a name for himself as a warrior against anything he saw as “woke,” especially in higher education.

DeSantis appointed Rufo to New College’s Board of Trustees (he’s since left) to help destroy what once was an admired, creative, and tolerant liberal arts school, labeling any teaching he didn’t like “Critical Race Theory.”

CRT, he said, is “the perfect villain.”

Army of lefties

Having tried to banish CRT along with sociology, the unpleasant parts of American history, the novels of Toni Morrison, and any science that might reveal things are more complicated than they’d like, DeSantis, the various mediocrities running Florida’s Department of Education, and fellow travelers such as Moms for Liberty, have convinced themselves universities are hotbeds of “Marxist indoctrination.”

Apparently, professors — especially in the Humanities and Social Sciences — are not merely “woke,” we’re a bunch of commies, determined to brainwash the Youth of Florida into hollering “Workers of the World Unite!” — assured they have nothing to lose but their chains.

Or something like that.

Alas, all my colleagues and I must be really lousy at indoctrination. I don’t know anybody who’s been successful in producing even one committed Marxist.

But DeSantis et al. are convinced higher education is a plot to produce an army of lefties.

Not that they can produce much evidence of this.

They’re more ideologically rigid than the most committed Trotskyite, and less logical than the American officer who, standing in the ruins of a Vietnamese provincial capital in 1968, told reporter Peter Arnett, “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

Maybe the administration’s idea is to destroy higher ed in order to save it.

Hypotheticals

No doubt DeSantis took some comfort from the dissent in the 11th Circuit’s ruling.

Judge Barbara Lagoa, a former member of the Florida Supreme Court, (indeed, a DeSantis appointee and often mentioned as a potential U.S. Supreme Court justice), argues, what if “a professor who says that Hamas’s October 7th attack on Israel was ‘exhilarating’ and something to be celebrated and encouraged?”

She goes on to say, “Florida acts well within its authority to curb professorial endorsements of that kind within its own classrooms.”

First of all, if someone were stupid enough to say such a thing, that professor could be disciplined for creating a hostile educational environment.

But taking a hypothetical case of poor judgment and concluding somehow professorial speech must always be equivalent to the views of the state violates the First Amendment.

The First Amendment protects offensive speech — even hate speech.

In George Orwell’s essay “Freedom of the Press,” he writes, “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

Or to quote again from the majority opinion, the university’s mission is to get students to “puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth.”

Professors call this “teaching.”

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AN 6 26

President Donald Trump reportedly wants to seize the Smithsonian Institution, one of America’s most prestigious collection of museums, and to use them to whitewash the United States’ history on issues like slavery.

“When President Trump summoned Lonnie Bunch, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, for lunch at the White House on August 28 of last year, Bunch’s advisers assumed that the end was near,” The Atlantic’s Clint Smith wrote on Monday. “Trump had spent months threatening the Smithsonian’s independence; just nine days earlier, he’d written on Truth Social that ‘the Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been.’”

Bunch, who unambiguously believes that slavery was a negative for America, was also the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. He is known to have pushed back against attempts by Vice President JD Vance and Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-FL), who sits on the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, as well as others in the Trump administration to scrub so-called “woke” ideas in the museum that they described as a “divisive ideology.” Trump also tried to fire the director of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, even though the Smithsonian is meant to be independent of the government.

Despite these challenges, Bunch was able to avoid winding up in the administration’s crosshairs, at least for a while. Yet as various key personnel step down from the museums’ boards, Smith anticipates that Trump may ultimately get his wish of hiring loyalists who will reshape the museum to his liking.

“The current and looming vacancies, and the need for congressional and presidential approval, raise the possibility that Trump could attempt to install new board members who are loyal to his agenda,” Smith wrote. “(Trump’s March 2025 executive order said that the White House would work with officials ‘to seek the appointment of citizen members to the Smithsonian Board of Regents committed to advancing the policy of this order.’)”

Smith added, “In April, The New York Times reported that the regents had agreed on nominations for some of the replacements, but the House committee responsible for reviewing and vetting the nominees before they move to the full legislature for approval had yet to receive the names under consideration—intrigue that suggests some manner of strategy, although it’s far from clear whose. Minutes from board meetings earlier this year show that the regents have voted to give existing members additional duties because of the current and expected vacancies.”

Despite these pressures, Bunch vowed in an internal memo to staff that “we remain steadfast in our mission to bring history, science, education, research and the arts to all Americans. We will continue to showcase world-class exhibits, collections and objects, rooted in expertise and accuracy.”

Earlier this month, federal Judge Angel Kelly ruled against Trump’s attempts to remove historic content that is featured at national parks. Trump specifically targeted content that discussed America’s history of racism, including slavery.

"To establish a likelihood of success on the merits, Defendants must do more than express disagreement with the Court’s prior ruling; they must make a strong showing that they are likely to prevail on appeal," Kelley explained in response to the administration’s objection to being forced to allow the National Parks Service to accurately represent American history.

She added, "To establish irreparable harm, Defendants bear the burden of demonstrating that, absent a stay, they will suffer irreparable injury that is substantial, certain, and inadequately remedied by monetary damages or later appellate relief. ... Here, Defendants raise three theories: (1) the Injunction Order hampers government speech by preventing the National Park Service (“NPS”) from proffering its preferred narrative at National Parks; (2) implementation of the Injunction Order is practically infeasible and costly; and (3) the Injunction Order conflicts with a recent order issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit regarding Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, PA, thus subjecting Defendants to inconsistent obligations with respect to that site. The Court is unpersuaded by these arguments and explains why."

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REF 4 ON ARTL KOCH STORY 1 REPORT TO DL CRT Report — UnKoch My Campus

Our newest report, “Koch Funded Moral Panic: Ultra Right Think Tanks and Critical Race Theory,” analyzes published materials from Koch network think tanks and reveals that the anti-Critical Race Theory movement is a product of a coordinated dark money campaign.

We reviewed the published materials of 28 think tanks and political organizations affiliated with the Koch network and analyzed the rhetorical tactics Koch network think tanks have deployed around Critical Race Theory(CRT) and their efforts to ban it from public schools. During the investigation period, we found that Koch network think tanks published 146 articles, podcasts, reports, or videos about CRT.

Koch-affiliated national think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, FreedomWorks, and the Manhattan Institute, among others, have used their influence to generate and spread talking points, briefed state and federal legislators on model policy, and attempted to generate grassroots mobilization against local school districts. This influence is not without consequence: State politicians were almost entirely silent on the topic until Koch-funded entities started pushing the issue earlier this year. Now, more than 25 states have introduced legislation or taken other action that, backers claim, is aimed at banning “critical race theory” (CRT) from schools and government programs. Several of these states have already passed these bills.

We’ve repeatedly seen the damage that occurs when the Koch network influences institutions for the common good, from higher education to our courts. We cannot allow them to continue infiltrating our public education system by capturing curriculum and spreading disinformation.

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duck 2 26

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christopherrufo.com

https://christopherrufo.com › p › its-not-racist-to-notice-somali-fraud

It's Not "Racist" to Notice Somali Fraud - christopherrufo.com

Nov 28, 2025Last week, my colleague Ryan Thorpe and I broke a story about widespread fraud committed by Somalis in Minnesota. Members of the state's Somali community allegedly participated in complex schemes related to autism services, food programs, and housing, which prosecutors estimate have stolen billions of taxpayer dollars.

TheBlaze

https://www.theblaze.com › shows › rufo-lomez › exclusive-bessent-rufo-minnesota-fraudsters-face-justice

Exclusive: Bessent tells Rufo — 'When the bear trap snaps,' Minnesota ...

Jan 12, 2026Christopher Rufo's bombshell reporting on Minnesota's Somali fraud schemes ignited a massive federal crackdown — now, in this exclusive interview, he sits down with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for the latest on the escalating investigations.

City Journal

https://www.city-journal.org › article › fraud-minnesota-somali-feeding-our-future

Minnesota's Somali Fraud Problem - city-journal.org

Nov 26, 2025Ryan Thorpe and Christopher Rufo are to be congratulated for the attention they have drawn to the issue of fraud committed by a large cast of Minnesota Somalis. I have devoted attention to the issue over the past eight years, including in a 2018 article I wrote for City Journal headlined "Mogadishu, Minnesota," and in daily coverage of the two federal trials conducted so far in the massive ...

The Daily Caller

https://dailycaller.com › 2025 › 11 › 20 › somali-minnesota-al-shabaab-city-journal-chris-rufo-medicaid-housing-autism-feeding-our-future

Somalis Reportedly Scamming Minnesota Blind - The Daily Caller

Nov 20, 2025Thorpe and Rufo cite an anonymous source who alleges, "The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer." City Journal cites reports that about 40% of households in Somalia receive remittances from abroad, totaling $1.7 billion in remittances in 2023.

Imprimis

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu › learning-from-minnesotas-somali-fraud-scandal

Learning From Minnesota's Somali Fraud Scandal - Imprimis

The massive public programs fraud committed almost entirely by Somali perpetrators has recently exploded in the national news. The controversy is centered in Minnesota, where the amount of money bilked from American taxpayers could prove to be as high as $9 billion. But the scandal is spreading to other states as well. When Ryan Thorpe and Chris Rufo published an article in the November 2025 ...

[

WORLD

wng Sound journalism, grounded in facts and Biblical truth

https://wng.org › roundups › whats-the-deal-with-somali-fraud-in-minnesota-1764976022

What's up with the Somali fraud in Minnesota? | WORLD

Dec 8, 2025Somalis in Minnesota had stolen billions of dollars, the president claimed, adding that such people shouldn't even be in the United States. Earlier in November, Christopher Rufo and Ryan Thorpe at City Journal released a report with the provocative headline "The Largest Funder of Al-Shabaab Is the Minnesota Taxpayer."

what’s up with the Somali fraud in Minnesota?

National attention turns to a problem the state has reckoned with for years

The day before Thanksgiving, President Donald Trump declared that “hundreds of thousands of Somalians” were “ripping off our country.” Somalis in Minnesota had stolen billions of dollars, the president claimed, adding that such people shouldn’t even be in the United States.

Earlier in November, Christopher Rufo and Ryan Thorpe at City Journal released a report with the provocative headline “The Largest Funder of Al-Shabaab Is the Minnesota Taxpayer.” The article asserted that some of the funds that individuals of Somali ethnicity had defrauded from Minnesota’s welfare programs wound up thousands of miles away in the hands of an al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia.

And on Nov. 29, an X account claiming to represent nearly 500 employees of Minnesota’s government issued a statement asserting that large-scale fraud had taken place in the state and that Gov. Tim Walz was responsible for letting it happen.

The remarks by Trump and others about fraud in Minnesota have brought attention to an issue locals have raised concerns about for years.

What are the fraud claims all about?

The U.S. Department of Justice last month announced that it had charged the 78th person in connection with a scheme to defraud a COVID-era Minnesota welfare program called Feeding Our Future. The DOJ alleged that the latest defendant, Abdirashid Bixi Dool, had received more than $1 million in funds from the state of Minnesota to run a food assistance program for children. But Dool and a co-conspirator spent most of that money on enriching themselves and their families, the DOJ said. Roughly $250 million was stolen from the program altogether, Minnesota’s Legislative Auditor reported in 2024.

“It’s the simplest scam you can possibly conceive of. The fraudsters were just sending invoices and based on services that were not rendered, products that were not delivered, and they were collecting money from the state, pretty much no questions asked,” said Bill Glahn, a senior fellow at Center of the American Experiment, a Minnesota-based think tank. “They were basically delivering meals to children—poor, low-income children—but when they sent the invoices, they were adding an extra zero so they would serve one meal and they would bill for 10.”

But Feeding Our Future was only one of the Minnesota programs that have seen a fraud problem in the past few years.

The Department of Justice in September alleged that, as part of a $14 million enterprise milking a Minnesota autism assistance program, fraud ringleaders paid kickbacks to Somali parents in return for permission to register their children as autistic. The leaders then received payments from the state for supposedly providing therapy services. Some of the parents left the defendant’s fraud program so they could register their children with other fraudulent autism assistance programs that offered higher kickbacks, the DOJ claimed.

And earlier this year, federal prosecutors charged eight individuals with defrauding a housing stabilization program in the state. The defendants made millions of dollars off the program, causing the program’s budget to balloon significantly.

Were Somalis mainly responsible for the fraud?

Yes. Nearly all of the defendants in the Feeding Our Future and other welfare fraud schemes were Somali, according to Kayseh Magan, a Somali-American former investigator in the Medicaid Fraud Division of the Office of the Minnesota Attorney General, and according to prosecutors.

Nearly 80,000 people of Somali descent live in Minnesota, and most of them are naturalized U.S. citizens. But Glahn cautions against painting with too broad of a brush: He points out that even if the number of Somali fraudsters in question substantially exceeds the current number of arrests, it would still represent only a tiny fraction of the state’s overall Somali American population.

“Were the majority of the people involved in these fraud scams of Somali ethnicity? Yes,” noted Glahn. “Those are fairly, I would think at this point, non-controversial facts. But people try to turn them into value judgments, you know? We have a Somali fraud problem in Minnesota. Do we have a Somali problem in Minnesota? I don’t think so.”

So why is this fraud centered on Somalis?

Magan, writing for the Minnesota Reformer, discussed how Somali culture in many ways can serve as a force multiplier for fraudsters.

Many Somalis are the sole providers for relatives back in Somalia who rely on remittances from their American-earned dollars, Magan explained. But the Minnesota bureaucracy provided an easy way to fraudulently boost how much they sent home. “The systems intended to catch fraud are mostly designed to root out recipient fraud,” Magan wrote. “It is exceedingly difficult to guard against providers who collude with recipients, which is the type of fraud most pervasive in the Somali community.”

And providers can easily collude with recipients because Somalis in Minnesota—like many immigration communities—are tight-knit and trusting.

“This creates a vast opening for fraudsters,” Magan wrote. “The conduit for fraud in publicly funded programs are the recipients, who require services. Somali recipients face language and cultural barriers. In an unfamiliar country, they lean heavily on other Somalis. Somali providers are in a position of trust, and some have taken advantage.”

Has money really gone to terrorists?

The Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank focusing on international policy, estimated earlier this year that in 2023, Somalis around the world sent back home approximately $1.7 billion.

“Probably the vast majority of what came from Minnesota was from legitimate people sending money back home that they earned,” Glahn said. But some of the money flowing from Minnesota to Somalia did come from fraud, he added.

When Somalis in Minnesota send money back to Somalia, the terror group al-Shabaab—which is the default authority in parts of the country—takes a cut.

“There’s no evidence that these fraudsters were trying to support al-Shabaab,” Glahn said. “But these folks are fairly sophisticated adults and you know they were probably aware on the front end, ‘I’m going to send money back to my relatives, and yeah, some of it’s going to get siphoned off along the way.’”

Magan, writing again for the Minnesota Reformer, argued the allegations about fraud money making its way into the war chests of terrorists are overblown.

“The story, especially in all its sensationalism, appears to be little more than an effort by the right-wing propaganda machine to whip up hatred against Somali Americans,” he wrote. “If federal prosecutors had any inkling that the ill-gotten gains were going to a terrorist organization, don’t you think they’d have brought charges?”

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week that he’d ordered an investigation into whether Minnesotans’ taxpayer dollars got into the hands of terrorists. He promised the agency would share its findings as the investigation continued.

Has the government of Minnesota turned a blind eye to this?

Minnesota’s Legislative Auditor Judy Randall published a report last year that found the Minnesota Department of Education ignored early warning signs of fraud in the Feeding Our Future program.

The program faced racial discrimination lawsuits when the department threatened to withhold funding from Somali-run programs that seemed likely to have a fraud problem. The department then chose to fund the programs rather than face the public relations fiasco that the lawsuits threatened. Randall’s report noted that the department also failed to provide proper oversight of the program.

But an X account claiming to represent the voices of former Minnesota government employees said last month that many government workers did know about the fraud, raised concerns about it, and were told to keep quiet. The social media post, which has been viewed about 40 million times, blamed Walz’s administration for shutting down reports about widespread fraud.

Walz’s office did not respond to WORLD’s request for comment about those accusations. In September, Walz issued an executive order that his office claimed ordered state government agencies to take stronger action against fraud.

How can Minnesota prevent similar instances of fraud in the future?

State agencies need to do a better job of talking to each other about when they notice fraud, Glahn said. If an individual commits fraud while serving as a provider for one state program, the government should prevent that person from serving as a provider in all other programs run by the state, he said. The state also needs to beef up its internal auditing at the state government level, he said.

State lawmakers proposed a bill during the Minnesota Legislature’s last session that would have created a state inspector general’s office to conduct enterprise-wide audits of multiple agencies to better prevent multi-agency fraud.

Minnesota senators passed it by a vote of 60-7 in May. “You almost never get anything through our evenly divided state Senate on a lopsided vote like that,” Glahn said.

But the bill didn’t make it to the floor of the House.

“Maybe it’ll come back next year with all this attention to fraud,” Glahn said.

Josh Schumacher

Josh is a WORLD reporter and a graduate of the World Journalism Institute and Patrick Henry College. He resides with his wife in Washington, D.C.

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[

manhattan.institute

https://manhattan.institute › article › somalis-in-minnesota-can-cultures-adapt

Somalis in Minnesota: Can Cultures Adapt? - manhattan.institute

Dec 4, 2025The Somali Fraud Story Busts Liberal Myths By Christopher F. Rufo | City Journal "Though this story was particular to Minnesota, disruptive mass immigration is a national phenomenon. During the four years of the Biden administration, America imported millions of foreigners, many illegally.

MSN

https://www.msn.com › en-us › news › us › how-has-the-somali-community-shaped-the-workforce-in-minnesota › ar-AA1Wu80J

How has the Somali community shaped the workforce in Minnesota? - MSN

The Somali community has been a focus of a large immigration crackdown in Minnesota. WCCO spoke with an economist to analyze the group's specific contributions to the state's workforce.

Star Tribune

https://www.startribune.com › trump-calls-somali-community-pirates-prompting-shouts-from-rep-ilhan-omar-during-state-of-the-union › 601588100

Trump calls Somali community 'pirates,' prompting shouts from Rep ...

TodayThe president said members of the Somali community have stolen $19 billion. Minnesota prosecutors have put estimates at half that.

CBS News

https://www.cbsnews.com › news › what-to-know-about-minnesota-fraud-allegations-as-trump-levels-attacks-on-walz

What to know about Minnesota fraud allegations, as Trump ... - CBS News

Dec 5, 2025President Trump has recently attacked Gov. Tim Walz over the fraud cases, calling Minnesota a "hub of fraudulent money laundering activity" and lashing out against the state's Somali community.

Generate answer for rufo somali minnesota

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• Ryan Thorpe and **:{Christopher F. Rufo @ City Journal: The Freak World of Nicholas J. Fuentes}:

Beneath the spectacle, the right-wing influencer has created a heap of human wreckage.

HUH?

Whatever else may be said about him, one fact cannot be denied: Nicholas J. Fuentes, the 27-year-old racialist influencer, is on the run of his life.

That’s a remarkable shift from 2017, when Fuentes was a little-known university freshman who hosted a political talk show. Over time, he developed a fanatical, cultlike following known as the “Groypers.” His digital following soon crossed over into the real world: first, with his involvement in the 2017 Unite the Right rally; then, with his long-running feud with conservative activist Charlie Kirk; and finally, with his role in “Stop the Steal,” which culminated outside the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

Fuentes has cultivated a reputation as the most provocative and controversial figure on the Right. He has done this by embracing taboos, praising Hitler, and opposing interracial marriage. In turn, he has ridden a wave of spectacle and outrage to new heights, with an appearance on The Tucker Carlson Show, and garnering frequent coverage in outlets such as the New York Times and The Atlantic.

Attempting to undercut his growing influence, the media and Fuentes’s right-leaning critics both tend to focus on Fuentes’s record of offensive remarks. Take Fuentes’s appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored. During the two-hour interview, Morgan played a litany of clips from Fuentes’s talk show, highlighting bigoted comments he’s made over the years.

But this line of attack merely plays into Fuentes’s hands. As one of us has previously noted, Fuentes is best understood as an actor in what postmodern theorist Jean Baudrillard called “hyperreality.” Under conditions of hyperreality, symbols of past phenomena lose their meaning and circulate as hollowed-out images through the digital landscape, where they drive discourse and spark emotional reactions.

This is the framework through which Fuentes, with his professed admiration for Hitler and Stalin, and his embrace of anti-Semitism, should be understood. Above all, he is engaged in a performative demand for attention, cynically harnessing transgression to drive clicks, sow chaos, and gain notoriety.

By contrast, this City Journal investigation—which draws on livestreams, a review of public records, and interviews with key associates—focuses not on Fuentes’s words but on his actions. (Fuentes did not return a detailed request for comment for this article.) It looks beneath the spectacle of outrage and the self-mythology he has curated and reveals a shocking heap of human wreckage that has accumulated within Fuentes’s political universe: betrayal, pedophilia, suicide, murder.

Welcome to the freak world of Nicholas J. Fuentes.

Nicholas Joseph Fuentes was born in Chicago in 1998. He grew up in the suburb of La Grange Park. In high school, he served as student council president. After graduation, he briefly attended Boston University before dropping out. Fuentes then moved back to the Chicago area, where, every weeknight, he livestreams his talk show, America First with Nicholas J. Fuentes.

With a greenscreen backdrop, Fuentes sits behind a wooden desk, typically in a suit and tie, pontificating on political and cultural events. Frequently, he launches into expletive- and slur-laced rants. Fuentes presents himself as a dissident truthteller in a world of lies; the ringmaster of a revitalized Right; and a spokesman for young, patriotic men sold out by the elites.

The reality behind the scenes, however, is quite different from this public-facing mythology. The world that has surrounded Fuentes over the past decade is one of paranoia, intrigue, drama, and betrayals. Several of his associates have broken from his movement over the years, spilling dirt on his operation in the process, with allegations and counter-allegations following in the wake of their apostasy. At the same time, Fuentes has developed a fanatical, cultlike following, with many Groypers—at his insistence—swearing a public oath to “rape, kill, and die for Nicholas J. Fuentes.”

One of these young men is Dalton Clodfelter, a 25-year-old Fuentes follower who spoke to City Journal. Clodfelter says he first encountered Fuentes through viral video clips and eventually connected with him through an online group chat. There, he says, the two “hit it off.” At the time, Clodfelter was young, religious, and serving in the U.S. Army.

“I was pretty naïve at the time,” he recalled. “I wanted to be a commentator. I started out on radio when I was 16. I wanted to be a guy that talked and [Fuentes] was more than happy to help me along.”

In the years that followed, Clodfelter pursued a career as an online commentator, attempting to follow in Fuentes’s footsteps. Clodfelter posted openly extreme, racist, and anti-Semitic rants; he often used racial slurs. As a result, Clodfelter claims, mainstream platforms banned his accounts. Seeking an alternative, he moved over to cozy.tv, which Fuentes created to host his own show after being banned from other platforms.

“I was making really great money streaming,” Clodfelter said. “[Then] all of a sudden, like, these income sources are being taken away. . . . Now, I’ve got to figure out a new way to generate this income and supplement these things, and that really did suck on top of all the social media banning. The good thing was, Nick offered me a platform.”

Clodfelter’s association with Fuentes and his own language—including a pledge to “rape, kill, and die”—pushed him further and further from the real world. As he got deeper into the Groyper cult, Clodfelter underwent a period of dramatic disintegration: he was kicked out of the military and saw income streams dried up, and his first marriage ended in divorce, he claims; his online comments grew more extreme, erratic, and disturbed.

The end result was predictable. In a livestream, Clodfelter admitted he’d become unemployable. “I’m really untouchable,” he said. “I can’t go work for a congressman, that’s not going to happen. I can’t go get a job even at, like, a McDonald’s . . . . You look me up—look my name up . . . see what you find, and let me know if you’d hire me.”

Yet Clodfelter is unrepentant about his association with Fuentes and harbors no “resentment” for the personal cost he’s paid.

“I appreciate Nick and everything he’s done and what he’s built and everything he did for me,” he says. Fuentes might have led him down the path to personal ruin, but he was the one who took the final steps. “I decided to say the N-word. I decided to say I love Hitler . . . . And now I’m here.”

In the grand scheme of things, Clodfelter might have gotten off easy. Other Groypers have ended up in prison.

On Jan. 6, 2021, Fuentes was in Washington, D.C., where he joined crowds contesting the 2020 presidential election results. Near the Capitol, Fuentes urged the crowd onward.

“Keep moving towards the Capitol!” he into a bullhorn. “It appears we are taking the Capitol back from the police right now! Keep marching and don’t relent. Never relent! Break down the barriers and disregard the police!”

Numerous Groypers entered the Capitol that day. One rioter even carried an “America First” flag into the building. But after urging his followers toward the Capitol, Fuentes himself did not go inside. He was investigated but has not been arrested or charged in association with the day’s events.

This fact has raised eyebrows within far-right circles, particularly given the video evidence of him encouraging others to disobey the police. A former FBI agent, who spoke to City Journal on the condition of anonymity, said agents were instructed to “take down every person who was at January 6.” Fuentes, through his attorney, denied having been knowingly interviewed by federal law enforcement.

While Fuentes may have escaped the long arm of the law, other Groypers present that day weren’t so lucky. In the months that followed, at least seven were charged and sentenced for entering the Capitol on January 6. In the aftermath of their arrests, Fuentes disavowed the arrested Groypers, calling them “losers” and saying he did not “wish to be associated with” them. They may have pledged to “rape, kill, and die,” but in the Groyper movement, loyalty appears only to run in one direction.

One question has dogged Fuentes for years: How does he make his money and finance his political operation? During his livestreams, fans must pay a minimum of $20 to pose questions during his Q+A sessions. He has solicited donations and hawks America First merchandise and subscriptions to his $100-a-month private Telegram channel.

Fuentes’s largest known donor to date was a French computer programmer and cryptocurrency millionaire named Laurent Bachelier. In December 2020, as right-wing factions were organizing the “Stop the Steal” protest in Washington, D.C., Bachelier transferred roughly $522,000 in Bitcoin to a network of white nationalist and neo-Nazi activists. The largest recipient, by far, was Fuentes, who received roughly $250,000. Hours after initiating the Bitcoin transfers, Bachelier committed suicide at the age of 35.

Within three months, Bachelier’s donation to Fuentes had effectively doubled in value due to a significant spike in the price of Bitcoin.

After January 6, Fuentes’s finances appear to have been briefly imperiled. The Gray Zone, an investigative outlet edited by hard-left journalist Max Blumenthal, published a purported letter that the Department of Justice sent Fuentes, stating that the DOJ had frozen accounts belonging to Fuentes on January 23, 2021. By the summer of 2021, however, the purported letter claimed DOJ had withdrawn its request to freeze the account.

In spite of this, Fuentes allegedly continued to claim publicly that his funds remained frozen. That narrative unraveled when Jaden McNeil, a former close associate and the treasurer of Fuentes’s nonprofit, said on a livestream that Fuentes had regained access to the funds, a claim corroborated by the Gray Zone’s purported records.

“He’s had that [money] back from the feds for almost a year,” McNeil said on the livestream, accusing Fuentes of using the story to raise money while, at the same time, purchasing an expensive car. “He’s a total liar.”

Over the years, Fuentes has also sought money from at least one prominent right-wing benefactor, according to sources familiar with the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. One former associate claims that in January 2022, Fuentes was scouting real estate in Tampa Bay, where he was considering moving his political operation. During the trip, the associate claims, Fuentes drove four hours to Miami to meet a then-employee of Peter Thiel, the right-wing venture capitalist who has financially backed Republican causes, including the campaigns of President Donald Trump and then-Senate candidate J. D. Vance.

Armed with a presentation, Fuentes pitched Thiel’s employee on providing funding for his show and political operation, according to multiple sources familiar with the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Thiel, one source claimed, never replied to Fuentes’s request.

Soon after, Fuentes began launching a series of public attacks not only on Thiel, whom he called “the CIA,” but also on Trump and Vance. Fuentes also now bemoans the influence of Thiel funding in right-wing circles, despite having allegedly sought out the very Thiel funding he condemns. Multiple former Fuentes associates who spoke to City Journal claim that the Thiel story is telling, as it reveals Fuentes’s true motivations: not political grievances, but personal ones.

Conversations with multiple former associates paint a picture of Fuentes’s positions as not rooted in principle, but shifting with his perceptions of personal advantage and what he perceives as threats to his ego.

“[There’s an] extraordinary gap between the way he describes himself and presents himself to his followers . . . and his real life,” said former Fuentes ally Milo Yiannopoulos. “He’s somebody who doesn’t believe in anything at all.”

Perhaps the most sordid chapter in the Fuentes story involves his relationship with Ali Alexander, a political activist and key organizer of “Stop the Steal.” In 2023, Alexander was accused of asking teenage boys for sexual photographs.

Amid the fallout from the scandal, Fuentes initially “disavowed” Alexander’s actions, while lashing out at the accusers, saying the teenaged boys were guilty of “flirting” with Alexander. “The real victim in this entire saga is me,” Fuentes said.

He had also previously downplayed the allegations on his show. “If we’re talking about rape and murder and things like that, okay, but we’re talking about flirting?” Fuentes said. “Give me a f***ing break.”

Fuentes has long been aware of Alexander’s alleged proclivities. On a livestream in 2017, Fuentes said there was “abundant evidence” that Alexander “would like to interact in a sexual way with young fashy white boys quite like myself, and like others.” In a video posted by hard-right journalist Dustin Nemos—which purportedly depicts events from November 2020, during the so-called Million MAGA March—a young-looking male, whom Nemos describes as a teenager, recounts to Fuentes a conversation in which the alleged teenager called Alexander a “pedo.” Fuentes responded: “How do people not know about it?”

Despite this history, Fuentes continued to associate with Alexander, appearing alongside him at various political events, including one Fuentes encouraged his supporters to attend. After the scandal broke, Fuentes reportedly pressured one of Alexander’s accusers to recant his allegation in exchange for securing him a job in politics. (Fuentes denied this at the time; he did not return a City Journal request for clarifying comment.) That year, Fuentes also acknowledged on a livestream that, during the Kanye West presidential campaign, he had remained in daily contact with Alexander despite the allegations. In 2024, a Colorado police department confirmed that it was working with “partner agencies” in Texas to investigate Alexander.

Alexander did not return a request for comment.

The Alexander scandal is not an aberration, but part of a broader culture within the Groyper movement. In 2022, Alejandro Richard Velasquez Gomez, a Fuentes fan who had been photographed with him at a political event, was charged with possession of child pornography and making interstate threats on a Turning Point USA event. In the aftermath of the arrest, Fuentes attempted to distance himself, saying Gomez had “nothing to do with me or America First.”

Fuentes’s own comments on sexual topics are equally disturbing. He has stated that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was “cool as f***”; has expressed skepticism about age of consent laws; and indicated he wants to marry a 16-year-old girl when he turns 30. For the Groypers, the transgression of political and sexual taboos is part of Fuentes’s appeal. The more furious the denunciations of Fuentes—racist, sexist, pedophile, Nazi—the deeper his audience digs in. “These labels don’t mean anything,” says Clodfelter, the Fuentes follower. “Those words are meaningless to us now . . . . It doesn’t affect us anymore. And Nick proves that.”

From one perspective, we might be tempted to dismiss Fuentes as a hyperreal spectacle. His Groyper movement relates to politics the same way pornography relates to sex: stripped of meaning, flattened into an image, sensationalized for personal gain.

But hyperreality does not mean unreal, and, like pornography, it can often intrude on reality in ugly and unexpected ways. Conservatives who care about the future of the movement should understand that Fuentes is corrosive. Despite his self-mythology as the most right-wing pundit in America, he is, in a real sense, a tool of the Left. Progressive activists have spent the past decade pushing the narrative that conservatives are Nazis and Donald Trump is Hitler. In Fuentes, they have finally found their man.

The spectacle moreover is not only politically corrosive, but personally corrosive to its participants. At heart, the Fuentes phenomenon is not about ideas, or ideology, or power; it is about an angry, broken young man leading other angry, broken young men down a digital trail that ends in ruin.

Fuentes might laugh about his command for his followers to “rape, kill, and die for Nicholas J. Fuentes,” explaining it away as irony or a morbid joke. But it was only a matter of time before one of his followers, lost in the cult atmosphere of the Groyper movement and unable distinguish reality from hyperreality, would take it seriously.

That is precisely what happened last January, when a black teenager named Solomon Henderson walked into Antioch High School, outside Nashville, with a 9mm pistol and fired 10 rounds into the cafeteria, killing a 16-year-old girl and injuring another student, before turning the gun on himself.

The purported manifesto Henderson left behind—a copy of which found online corresponded to contemporary news descriptions—revealed a fascination with mass shooters, including the neo-Nazi Anders Breivik, who killed dozens of children in Norway in 2011; and a pastiche of radical ideologies lifted from internet forums and imageboards. At the logical level, these ideologies, especially when set against Henderson’s racial identity, seem to make little sense. But in the freak world, populated by a rainbow of nihilists, a black teenager, drunk on the hyperreal spectacle, can murder a young girl in a school cafeteria while calling himself an “Involuntary N[*]gger” and a “Groyper Incel.”

In the manifesto, Henderson asked himself, “Is there a particular groups[sic]or people that radicalized you the most?” He weaves one answer into the subsequent list of irony-laden names—once in plain lettering, and later, in all caps: NICK FUENTES.

Ryan Thorpe](https://www.city-journal.org/person/ryan-thorpe) is an investigative reporter at the Manhattan Institute.Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor ofCity Journal, and the author of*America’s Cultural Revolution

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MMA

Study: Fox News smeared Alex Pretti dozens of times following his killing by federal agents

In the week following Pretti’s killing by DHS, figures on Fox News made at least 75 claims blaming Pretti for his own death or contradicting video evidence

Written by Harrison Ray & Isabella Sherk

Research contributions from Tyler Monroe & Rob Savillo

:{Published 02/06/26

On January 24, Customs and Border Protection agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old Minnesota intensive care nurse, during immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis. In the week that followed, Fox News personalities and guests made at least 75 claims about Pretti that either wrongly alleged that he had been violent toward federal agents or directly blamed him for his own killing.

• Video verified by ABC News showed Pretti holding his phone to record CBP agents as a masked agent knocked a woman to the ground, then pepper-sprayed Pretti when he stepped between them. Shortly after, multiple agents pulled him to the ground before two agents fired approximately 10 shots at Pretti, killing him.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and figures from the Department of Homeland Security quickly made public statements claiming Pretti had intended to “massacre law enforcement,” commit “an act of domestic terrorism,” and “inflict maximum damage” — despite video evidence directly contradicting their claims.

In the hours following the shooting, Fox News began running with the Trump administration's narrative and parroting its talking points. Network figures and guests quoted or aired the administration's misleading and false statements at least 22 times in 24 hours after the news broke.

• Video file

:{Video

Citation

From the January 25, 2026, edition of Fox New's Fox & Friends Weekend

• ## Fox News made at least 75 claims that contradicted video evidence or blamed Pretti for his own death

• Media Matters reviewed Fox News programming from January 24-30 and found that network guests and personalities made at least 75 claims attacking Pretti — either falsely claiming Pretti was violent toward federal agents or blaming him for his own killing.

Fox’s weekend shows airing just after the shooting made the most claims attacking Pretti. On January 24 alone, network figures and guests made at least 32 such claims. As video evidence became harder and harder to refute into the week, shows hosted by Will Cain, Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham aired the most claims attacking Pretti among all of Fox’s weekday programming.

The number of daily claims against Pretti declined over the following days until footage of a January 13 incident involving Pretti and DHS agents resurfaced on January 28. Fox personalities seized on the footage to once again cast Pretti as an aggressor against federal agents, with the network airing at least 10 additional attacks even as his family stressed that “nothing that happened a full week before could possibly have justified Alex's killing at the hands of ICE.”

Despite their pleas, Fox host Jesse Watters told viewers that in the new video, Pretti “looks like a dangerous, hostile, unhinged male nurse with a loaded weapon who went back for more a week later.”

• :{Video

Citation

From the January 29, 2026, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime

• Figures on Fox News repeatedly argued that Pretti’s decision to carry a gun justified his killing, with anchor Jon Scott asking why anyone would go to a protest with “a semiautomatic handgun and a couple of magazines,” and former acting ICE Director Jonathan Fahey even claiming the agents “very well could have prevented a major mass shooting of multiple officers.”

Fox News contributors and guests also repeatedly contradicted video evidence by insisting Pretti had behaved aggressively or brandished a weapon. Fox contributor Paul Mauro claimed agents were only “trying to subdue him without using deadly force” when Pretti “pulls out that 9 mm,” former DHS official Charles Marino asserted that Pretti “showed up to this protest, intended to obstruct and confront law enforcement agents, and it turned out badly for him,” and right-wing activist Chris Rufo described him as “a violent leftist agitator … seeking armed conflict with the police.”

Former prosecutor Andrew Cherkasky described the shooting as “essentially a suicide-by-cop type of scenario,” claiming, “It's long been known if you're going to fight with cops and resist in situations that are escalating like this, it is a death wish.”

• :{Video

Citation

From the January 24, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox Reports with Jon Scott

• Not all Fox personalities embraced the Trump administration’s narrative. Late on January 24, contributor Ted Williams broke with the prevailing Fox coverage, saying that the administration put out a “misrepresentation” of what took place in the video. He continued, “This man is dead, he has a family, and to go out and call him a domestic terrorist without giving any more information is just unacceptable.”

• Video file

Video

Citation

From Fox News' live coverage on January 24, 2026

• Fox contributor Trey Gowdy even compared Pretti to Kyle Rittenhouse, adding, “Alex Pretti's firearm was lawfully being carried. It's lawful to carry a gun in Minnesota. He never brandished it. He didn't point it at the cops. … We certainly should not be labelling him as a domestic terrorist who's going to execute cops. There's no evidence to support that.”

But many others on the network continued to churn out false statements and justifications for Pretti’s killing.

• ## Methodology...

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an 1 26

One high-ranking Republican state lawmaker in New Hampshire was recently seen advocating for racially segregated public schools in her state, according to a new report.

In a Wednesday article, Granite Post – the New Hampshire-based website for the liberal Courier Newsroom media brand – reported that state representative Kristin Noble (R), who is the vice chair of the House Education Policy and Administration Committee, posted favorably about separating students by race in a group chat for Republican lawmakers. A screen recording of the "EdPolicy2026" group chat an unnamed member of the Education Committee leaked to Granite Post shows a user using the vice chair's first and last name talking about "fun stuff" that could be done "when we have segregated schools."

"Imagine the scores though if we had schools for them and some for us," Noble wrote.

Republican state representative Katy Peternel – who is the assistant majority leader in the New Hampshire House of Representatives – responded to Noble's message with a laughing-crying emoji.

Noble's comments were roundly condemned by Democrats. State representative David Landau, who is the ranking member of the House Education Funding Committee, said Noble's remark was "more than shocking" and "disgusting."

"It’s not who we are as a state. It’s not who we are as a country. And we’re better because we go to schools together and because we learn together and we work together, because ... that’s how life is," Landau told Granite Post.

According to the outlet, Noble has sponsored 2026 legislation that would ban the teaching of "critical race theory," or CRT, in public schools. The NAACP has previously argued that the push to ban CRT is rooted in a desire by conservatives to limit curriculum teaching students about slavery and Black history.

AlterNet has reached out to Rep. Noble for comment.

Click here to read Granite Post's report in full.

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NOT SURE IF THIS IS CRM OR JUST MANDATORY SUBJECT POST

The Manhattan Institute’s Chris Rufo suggested the “radical Left” has caused “a wave of violence and terror” and called for arrests of “all of those who are responsible for this chaos.” According to Rufo, “The last time the radical Left orchestrated a wave of violence and terror, J. Edgar Hoover shut it all down within a few years. It is time, within the confines of the law, to infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all of those who are responsible for this chaos.” Twitter/X, [9/10/25]

MMA

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Many Christian nationalists and far-right MAGA Republicans have claimed that "holy war" or "jihad" is a concept that is unique to Islam. But quite a few religious scholars strongly disagree, emphasizing that is nothing inherently violent about either Islam or Christianity — and that an obsession with "holy war" comes from one's interpretation of the religion, not from the religion itself.

In an article published by on September 16, The New Republic's Gil Duran outlines the role that, in 2025, "holy war" is playing in Christian nationalism and the MAGA movement.

"Last week, in the hours after Charlie Kirk's assassination, the words 'demon' and 'evil' trended on X as some on the right portrayed his murder as the work of supernaturally possessed Democrats and leftists," Duran explains. "Major right-wing influencers echoed Carl Schmitt's ideas, calling for a political crackdown on Kirk’s critics. Chris Rufo, a prominent right-wing propagandist, called on law enforcement to 'infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate' the 'radical left.' This is where apocalyptic rhetoric always leads."

READ MORE:'Something is wrong': MAGA pundits say Trump is 'lying to us' about Charlie Kirk shooting

Duran notes that in Christian fundamentalist and MAGA circles, one is seeing a surge in "devil talk" and fear of The Antichrist.

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"Over time, the identity of Satan's Little Helper has shifted from Native Americans to Communists, Hitler and Saddam Hussein and Barack Obama — even barcodes and microchips have been implicated," Duran observes. "From colonial days to the AI era, the hunt for the Antichrist continues. Today's QAnon conspiracy theorists believe they are battling a cabal of cannibalistic Satanists. 'Unhumans,' a 2024 book praised by (Vice President) JD Vance, equated progressives with bloodthirsty 'unhuman' creatures. This turns politics into a zero-sum holy war."

Duran points to tech mogul and billionaire donor Peter Thiel as an example of a prominent figure in MAGA World who is obsessing over The Antichrist. In the past, Thiel was more of a libertarian. But in recent years, he has taken a decidedly MAGA turn.

"Thiel is not a theologian, scholar, or prophet," Duran writes. "So why pay attention to his biblical musings? Because Thiel is one of the world's most influential men, and his Antichrist speeches reveal his deep belief that religion is a weapon for political warfare —and he's right. Thiel's Antichrist fixation fits a long tradition in American politics. Since the nation's founding, Americans have sought to name the Antichrist — usually by pointing the finger at their political enemies."

READ MORE: 'Deeply troubling': Military expert warns Trump is unilaterally 'deciding to kill people'

Duran notes what historian Robert Fuller, author of the 1995 book "Naming the Antichrist: The History of an American Obsession," had to say about that role that "holy war" plays in Christian fundamentalism.

Duran quotes Fuller as saying, "The symbol of the Antichrist has played a surprisingly significant role in shaping Americans' self-understanding. Because they tend to view their nation as uniquely blessed by God, they have been especially prone to demonize their enemies…. Once we label our adversaries in these cosmic terms — all good versus all evil — now, there's going to be no compromise."

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DEFUND LEFT SOROS PAID PROTESTERS

mma

On the killing of Charlie Kirk, political violence, and the right’s response

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 09/12/25

Charlie Kirk, a powerful right-wing activist, popular podcaster, and close friend and ally to President Donald Trump, was shot and killed while speaking at a college in Utah on Wednesday. Politicians of both parties and commentators across the spectrum, including myself, have responded with condemnations of the act as both the tragic murder of a young husband and father and an act of political violence that must be anathema if we hope to preserve our country as a liberal democracy.

Rational people on all sides of the political spectrum abhor political violence and want to ratchet down the temperature, but this requires an honest assessment of what is happening: There have been far too many cases of political violence in recent years, and the targets are not limited by party, ideology, or creed.

Yet within the right-wing media bubble, long before there was even a suspect in custody, commentators cited Kirk’s killing as proof the left is at war with them. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) on Thursday called out right-wing pundits who took Kirk’s death “as an opportunity to say we're at war so that they could get some of our conservative followers lathered up over this.” He added: “It seems like a cheap, disgusting, awful way to pretend like you're a leader of a conservative movement.”

Tillis cited two commentators in particular, but such rhetoric has been a staple throughout the right-wing media ecosystem since news broke that Kirk had been shot. It is what right-wing audiences are hearing right now — and what they have been hearing, to one extent or another, for quite some time.

“They are at war with us!” Fox News star Jesse Watters said on The Five, his network’s most-watched show, shortly after Kirk’s passing was announced.

“Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us,” he continued. “And what are we gonna do about it? How much political violence are we going to tolerate? And that’s the question we’re just gonna have to ask ourselves.”

“THIS IS WAR,” posted Libs of TikTok. “Civil war,” was Andrew Tate’s take. “This is war,” commented Ian Miles Cheong. “This is a war, this is a war, this is a war,” Alex Jones said on his livestream. According to Steve Bannon, “We are at war in this country.” “We’re not supposed to say this,” posted Shaun Maguire. “But the truth is we’re at War.”

Many on the right were Kirk’s friends and are mourning his death. Some of them may fear for their own safety. But the narrative they have constructed relies on ignoring the recent spate of attacks targeting Democrats, the gruesome contemporaneous response to those attacks from some of the most influential voices on the right, and the chorus of Democratic officials who have condemned Kirk’s assassination.

There is no war, no righteous, violent struggle between a “left” and a “right.” A man was killed. His killer deserves to be brought to justice. Turning that into a “war” can only make the situation worse.

Terrorists have targeted political leaders of both parties

It is not true, as Eric Trump and both claimed in right-wing media interviews since Kirk’s slaying, that violence is “only going one way,” or, as right-wing radio host Dana Loesch put it on Watters’ prime-time show, that “it's not the right killing the left, it's the left killing the right.”

It seems both pointless and morally inappropriate to try to weigh attacks against one another to determine who has it “worse,” but it’s impossible to have a conversation if we can’t agree that political violence goes both ways.

The ideology of people who attack political figures doesn’t always map neatly onto a political party, in no small part because the assailant typically suffers from some form of mental illness. But Democrats have certainly been the targets of political violence in recent memory: In October 2022, a man broke into the home of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seeking to kidnap her, and brutally assaulted her husband, Paul. In June, an assassin allegedly murdered a Democratic state legislator and her husband and wounded a second and his wife in Minnesota. Last month’s lethal attackon the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by someone who authorities say “wanted to send a message against COVID-19 vaccines” should also be placed in this category.

It’s worth revisiting how right-wing media covered those domestic terror attacks, as it speaks to how its audience likely interprets them in an increasingly fragmented media landscape in which people can pick and choose news sources that confirm their biases.

After a man broke into the Pelosi residence and attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer, MAGA influencers claimed based on effectively no evidence that the attacker, who turned out to be a deranged individual steeped in right-wing fever swamp conspiracy theories, had actually been let into the speaker’s house by her husband for the purposes of sex and subsequently attacked him as part of a lovers’ quarrel.

Donald Trump Jr. posted a photo of a pair of briefs and a hammer on a bed with the caption: “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.”

For months afterwards, Fox hosts including Watters alluded to such wild claims on their nationally broadcast programs, undeterred by body camera footage from the scene of the attack or basic human dignity.

Prominent MAGA social media influencers likewise responded to the Minnesota shootings by spinning up a false profile of the killer — in reality a Trump supporter who railed against abortion and the LGBTQ community — as a far-left supporter of Gov. Tim Walz. Laura Loomer and Mike Cernovich even suggested Walz might have orchestrated the attacks as political hits.

Fox’s right-wing propagandists, meanwhile, all but buried that story. There were no soul-searching reflections about political violence targeting the left on the programs of Watters, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, or Greg Gutfeld — instead, discussion on those shows the week after the attacks was limited to correspondent reports and headline reads. The week after the CDC shooting, those programs didn’t cover it at all.

Looking further back, the leading lights of the right-wing media aggressively sought to minimize and sanitize the Trump mob’s assault on the U.S. Capitol in 2021, and they alternatively blamed “incivility” from the left for a Trumpist sending mail bombs to a host of left-wing and Democratic targets and suggested those attacks were a “false flag.” And that’s to say nothing of other attacks apparently fueled by right-wing extremism that targeted Jewish, Latino, and Black Americans in Charleston, South Carolina; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Buffalo, New York; and El Paso, Texas.

If you downplay right-wing violence against left-wing targets, it’s much easier to convince your viewers that the violence is all going in the other direction.

• ### MAGA wants “the Left” to be “crushed with the power of the state”

While the repeated declarations that they are at “war” with a murderous left are obviously corrosive, there have not been widespread direct calls for retaliatory violence from prominent right-wing media figures. But many are urging President Donald Trump, his administration, and congressional Republicans to respond with widespread political repression of the left and the Democratic Party.

“We can honor him [Kirk] and honor his memory and make it a living thing that we use this to take down the apparatus that's well-funded that is at the core of this anti-Americanism,” Steve Bannon said on his streaming show Friday. “It has to be a all-of-government approach. ... Let's go kick down some doors and perp walk some folks today.”

Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist and streamer who has Trump’s ear and regularly gets federal officials fired for insufficient demonstrated fealty to the president, declared Wednesday, “It’s time for the Trump administration to shut down, defund, & prosecute every single Leftist organization.” She later added: “All of the Leftist groups that pay for these radical protests need to be prosecuted. … More people will be murdered if the Left isn’t crushed with the power of the state.”

MAGA influencer Mike Cernovich demanded “congressional hearings now” on Wednesday, which he said should include “every billionaire funding far left wing extremism,” naming George Soros, Bill Gates, and Reid Hoffman. He also called for “massive RICO investigations now” to scrutinize “every dollar” and tagged Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.

Former GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters echoed Cernovich, adding, “Either we destroy the NGO/donor patronage network that enables and foments” violence, “or it will destroy us.”

Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist, posted Wednesday that “the Democrat party is a domestic terrorist organization” and “terrorist Democrats will not stop. … And until they are stopped—until every single nutjob inciting this madness and cheering it on is held accountable and removed from civil society—it will not stop.” His outlet published a piece which declared that Democrats “need to be treated like the domestic terrorists they are.”

“The last time the radical Left orchestrated a wave of violence and terror, J. Edgar Hoover shut it all down within a few years,” Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo said. “It is time, within the confines of the law, to infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all of those who are responsible for this chaos.”

YouTuber Benny Johnson claimed that “the modern Democrat party is a terrorist organization” and that the left-wing movement must be “ripped root and stem from our American republic and thrown into the fire where it belongs.”

Some are even suggesting that because the threat to the right is so clear, if Republican leaders don’t respond with such steps, the result will be some on the right taking matters into their own hands.

Davis posted on Thursday that if congressional Republicans don’t take “proper action” to protect “a population being hunted for sport,” then the result would be “improper reaction,” which he described as “a response that cannot be contained once it is out.”

Likewise, Cernovich wrote: “I’m choosing my words mindfully, don’t twist them. This is a prediction, not a preference. If Congressional GOP and Trump don’t act swiftly and ferociously, there will be retaliatory actions due to lawful means not being used. This is always what happens. RICO these fucks now!”

Trump appears to be responding to these demands for political retribution.

• ### The elephant in the room

It is impossible to have a rational conversation about topics like lowering the political temperature and pushing back against the spread of political violence when the president of the United States is interested in those issues only as a cudgel against his political opponents.

On Wednesday evening, the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal urged Trump, himself the victim of two assassination attempts, to take advantage of “an opportunity for leadership” by seeking to lower the tenor of political rhetoric.

Any other president would not need to hear such advice — but Trump’s previous responses to attacks on Democratic targets demonstrate his lack of interest in bringing the country together. He mocked the brutal assault against Pelosi, said following the Minnesota shooting that it would be a “waste of time” to call Gov. Tim Walz because he is “so whacked out,” and completely ignored the CDC attack.

In an Oval Office address a few hours after Kirk was killed, Trump characteristically ignored the Journal’s counsel. He offered a testament to Kirk’s life and promised that the shooter, who at that point had not been publicly identified or taken into custody, would be brought to justice.

But he also attributed blame far beyond the person who took Kirk’s life, saying that the “rhetoric” of “the radical left” was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.” He went on to promise that his administration would go after the individuals and organizations he said “contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence,” adding that “radical-left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.”

Trump did not name the targets of the action he promised to carry out. But a “straightforward reading of his rhetoric,” as The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait noted, is that “the president of the United States is treating the political opposition as accessories to murder and threatening to use the full power of the government to attack it.”

On Friday, Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt pointed to “radicals” on both the right and left and asked the president, “How do we fix this country? How do we come back together?”

Trump’s response made clear that he is uninterested in doing so. He excused “radicals on the right” as people who “don’t want to see crime,” saying, “They don't want these people coming in, we don't want you burning our shopping centers, we don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.”

“The radicals on the left are the problem, and they are vicious and they are horrible and they are politically savvy,” he added, before running through a litany of grievances with his critics.

That message is echoing across MAGA media, a powerful information apparatus with a rare and unmediated grasp on its audience. It will fuel more vitriol, making it harder, not easier, to have honest conversations and reduce the threat of political violence in this country.

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RWW

08/25/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

• Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: The problem(s) with Trump’s radical new executive order on flag burning

In this country, a presidential executive order cannot override a Supreme Court ruling. On flag burning, Trump doesn't appear to care.

• David Gilmour @ Mediaite: Trump Rages That ‘Biased’ ABC, NBC Should Have Licenses ‘Revoked’: ‘Threat to Democracy’

President Donald Trump doubled down on his late Sunday attacks on ABC News in fresh demands that ABC and NBC should both lose their broadcast licenses because of what he called “biased and untruthful” coverage of his presidency.

• Emell Derra Adolphus @ The Daily Beast: MAGA Mainstay Nancy Mace Cancels Speech After Just Eight People Show Up

The South Carolina gubernatorial candidate is known for her theatrics but reportedly struggled to find an audience—any audience.

• Ryan Bort @ Rolling Stone: Supreme Court Architect Is Pumping Money Into the Midterms

Leonard Leo, the longtime Federalist Society honcho, is lending a hand to Republican candidates in key races.

• Alan Feuer @ The New York Times: In Trump’s Second Term, Far-Right Agenda Enters the Mainstream

President Trump has embraced an array of far-right views and talking points in ways that have delighted many right-wing activists who have long supported those ideas.

• Cathy Young @ The Bulwark: How Chris Rufo Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Cancel Culture

The anti-woke warrior’s authoritarian roots are showing.

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AN 8 25

NO LNX

'Insufferable little tyrants': MAGA'S newest 'idiotic' delusion blasted by critics

John StoehrAugust 25, 2025

I was not planning to write about Cracker Barrel’s new logo. Neither was I planning to write about the voluminous rightwing backlash against it. The redesign, which does away with the old man sitting on a chair leaning against a barrel, doesn’t look “woke” to me. But change is hard for some, especially rightwingers who see dangers everywhere.

But I feel compelled to talk about it, because the official Twitter account for the Democratic Party decided to talk about it. Not only that, but the account, in a post put up yesterday evening and viewed nearly 8 million times, decided to agree with the rightwing freakout.

“We think the Cracker Barrel rebrand sucks, too,” the post says, over Norman Rockwell’s painting of a man voicing an unpopular opinion.

I don’t want to make too much of this, but this is a microcosm of a macro problem within the Democrats, in particular that faction of the party that has most of the money and most of the influence over the press corps. In short, the problem is rooted in the belief among elite Democrats that they can compromise with bad actors who in turn are motivated by compromise to be worse. Even shorter, if you accept as true the lies told by the fascists, you have two enemies: them and you.

If I must guess, I’d say the Democrats’ point is showing at least some portion of the people who are freaking out about Cracker Barrel’s redesign that the Democrats played no role in the “wokification” they see. The point might even be some sort of solidarity, as if to say the Democrats dislike “radicals” and “cancel culture” as much as you do.

To this dominant faction of the Democratic Party, I would imagine this move is reasonable, perhaps politically strategic, as it seems to create a middle ground between partisan poles. (Some wonks might call this by its old name, “triangulation.”) If that doesn’t appeal to rightwingers, per se, it might appeal to indie voters who value more than anything their reputations for being nonpartisan. I might even concede to its effectiveness if the rightwing freakout were based on something true.

There’s your problem.

It isn’t based on anything. The total substance of the allegations against Cracker Barrel is the impact of the allegations themselves. That is to say, if the allegations “work” as intended, the allegations are real.

Those allegations are themselves the consequence of a reaction to change and the search for the presumably malicious causes of it. Because these are fascists and rightwing authoritarians, those causes are always the result of some kind of conspiracy by their perceived enemies. And because perceived enemies are always seeking to destroy them, change is always some sign of imminent destruction.

From their view, Cracker Barrel’s rebrand is a declaration of war.

That’s why, from the rightwing perspective, that Nazi Christopher Rufo did not sound delusional when he said “we must break the Barrel.” He went on: “It's not about this particular restaurant chain — who cares — but about creating massive pressure against companies that are considering any move that might appear to be ‘wokification.’ The implicit promise: Go woke, watch your stock price drop 20 percent, which is exactly what is happening now. … The Barrel must be broken.”

Objectively speaking, it is delusional, and no one is entitled to a public hearing of their delusions, no matter how stentorian they may seem. As Tommy Vietor said, in reaction to Rufo: “This idiotic bull---- might have been good politics at one point, but I’m confident the pendulum has swung back and people now see these guys as insufferable little tyrants. No one cares about Cracker Barrel, you annoying dork.”

I think Vietor was on to something, briefly. After all, there’s some truth in claiming that “this idiotic bull----” has lost its populist appeal and that, as a result, the pendulum has begun swinging back so that people can now see men like Rufo as the “insufferable little tyrants” they are.

But then an official organ of the Democratic Party decided to get in the way of that pendulum swing by agreeing, and the most immediate implication is that the Democrats themselves are not nearly as liberal or democratic as they seem to be, nor are the “insufferable little tyrants” nearly as insufferable, little or tyrannical as they seem to be.

With that post, the Democrats conceded the fascists have a point.

And the Democrats should never concede anything to fascists.

Before that moment, as Vietor’s comment suggested, there was a bright moral line between the sane and the insane. There was no need to take seriously the delusions that haunt the hobgoblins of the right, and it was clear and obvious that Rufo isn’t interested in the substance of his allegations (whether they are true; whether they are based on something real), only in whether they bring him closer to his goals. And as long as liberals saw this bright moral line, there was no point in searching for good faith in the hobgoblins who have none. As Tommy Vietor said, “No one cares about Cracker Barrel, you annoying dork.”

But then the official Twitter account of the Democratic Party stepped in. It decided to see good faith where there is none. It decided to give the benefit of the doubt to malicious actors who would never give it in return. And worst of all, that decision took a simple and rational discussion, in which it was clear which side was the sane side, and made it insane. And now, instead of dismissing the hobgoblins, here I am, in today’s edition of the Editorial Board, taking them seriously.

The pattern is everywhere.

The president makes some insane allegation (crime is out of control in Washington, DC!) to advance his fascist agenda under false pretenses (the National Guard commandeered local cops in the name of public safety, despite crime rates being at historic lows). In response, a centrist Democrat who values his reputation more than his liberty decides to accept as real the insanity (well, crime really is a problem and cancel-culture can’t cancel that!), making himself complicit in advancing a fascist agenda ("Chicago is next and then we'll help with New York,” Donald Trump said), and making everyone insane.

And I don’t see this pattern changing any time soon, not until the dominant faction of the Democratic Party, the one with most of the money and most of the influence on the Washington press corps, understands the party’s majority, that faction without the money and without the influence, is no longer going to tolerate the belief among elite Democrats that it’s better to bargain with evil than to fight it.

To me, this is the true fault line – between those Democrats who look at the president and the Republicans and believe what they see, and those Democrats who look at them both and see what they want to see, because it suits their interests. The rightwing mind is not the only host of hobgoblins. The defenders of “the center” host them, too.

NOW READ: MAGA is panicking as Trump finally meets his match

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AN 8 25

Back in the early 1980s, left-wing R&B singer Gil Scott-Heron (remembered for his incendiary "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised") was fond of saying that "the New Right is the same old wrong." The term "New Right," in those days, referred to President Ronald Reagan's fragile coalition — a mixture of neocon defense hawks, evangelical Christian fundamentalists, libertarian budget hawks and moderate Reagan Democrats. But in 2025, "New Right" has a radically different connotation and is synonymous with President Donald Trump's far-right MAGA movement.

Journalist Laura Field, author of the book "Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right," examines the elements of the 2025 "New Right" in an interview with Vox's Zack Beauchamp published in Q&A form on August 14.

Field describes today's New Right as a coalition, but one that is considerably different from the Reagan coalition of the 1980s.

READ MORE:'That's how this ends': George Conway reveals 'the only way' to stop Trump's 'gangsterism'

"I'm talking about the MAGA New Right, (in contrast) with the Reagan-Buckley right, or the establishment right, which is propped up by fiscal conservatism (free-market economics), social conservatism (conservative social values), and anti-communism," Field told Vox. "The New Right turns against a lot of that. Michael Anton, one of these Claremont Institute guys, says that Trumpism and the New Right is all about economic nationalism — turning against the free market orientation of the establishment — as well as closed, secure borders."

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Field added, "So that's the anti-immigration strain and America First foreign policy. I think that there's also just a hardcore social conservatism at the core of a lot of this — at least spiritually."

The Clairemont Institute, a right-wing think tank, was founded in 1979 by the late Harry V. Jaffa, once a speechwriter for Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona). Claremont has changed dramatically since then, and its ultra-MAGA leanings are a major departure from the Goldwater and Reagan conservatism it once championed.

Describing the elements of the MAGA New Right, Field told Vox, "I have three main camps: the Claremonters, the post-liberals, and the national conservatives. Then, I talk also about the hard right, but the hard right travels alongside all three of them ideologically. The hard right is the hardcore, Manosphere-fascist types. Each of these groupings are different. The Claremonters are the West Coast Straussians that I was speaking about before. They are really committed, at least in theory, to the American founding. They have this very grandiose vision that's beyond even your ordinary patriotism. It's that this is the best regime of all time. They're also at the very cutting edge of the culture war…. And then, there's the national conservatives."

READ MORE:'Disgusting': MAGA erupts at Democratic governor over 'classless' remark about Trump 'bro'

Field continued, "They're a little more vanilla, with just nationalism as their core thing. But it turns into ethno-nationalism in some cases and certainly Christian nationalism. They're a big tent."

The journalist/author stressed that even though the New Right is full of "weirdos," that doesn't mean they haven't achieved power in the Republican Party.

"The knee-jerk reaction to think 'who cares' is a natural one, because a lot of these people are bizarre — weirdos," Field told Vox. "That's why it's alarming to see them wield so much power, to see (Vice President) JD Vance have that clout. I think they have dramatically reoriented the GOP."

READ MORE:'Severe pushback': House Republicans fear constituent revolt over divisive new proposal

REF

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The “weirdos” shaping Trump’s second term

Politics

The “weirdos” shaping Trump’s second term

A liberal writer explains her journey through intellectual MAGAland.

by Zack Beauchamp

Aug 14, 2025,

Key Speakers At Conservative Political Action Conference

Michael Anton, current director of policy planning at the State Department, speaking during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, on March 2, 2023. Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Zack Beauchamp

Zack Beauchamp is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he covers ideology and challenges to democracy, both at home and abroad. His book on democracy, The Reactionary Spirit, was published 0n July 16. You can purchase it here.

If you’ve been following American politics in the Trump era, there’s a decent chance you’ve heard of “the New Right.” It’s a loose movement of radical intellectuals who share a basic hostility to American liberal democracy. They all think the system is rotten, that it needs to be fundamentally overhauled, and that Donald Trump can be a vehicle for putting something better in its place.

But why do they think that? How much influence do they really have? And what would a response to their rising prominence look like?

In an upcoming episode of Vox’s The Gray Area podcast, I spoke about all of this with Laura Field — a political theorist who spent a lot of time in the conservative intellectual world. Her book Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right is a fascinating taxonomy of the wild world of far-right thinking.

We talk about who these people are and how they replaced the “old” conservatism with something more aggressive and authoritarian. We also talk about how they are influencing the Trump administration, and why ordinary Americans should care what a handful of thinkers are putting out on obscure Substacks and YouTube channels.

Part of our conversation is transcribed below, edited and condensed for clarity. The full interview contains much more, and you can listen to it on Monday. We’ll update this link with the embed when the episode is out.

And, if you just can’t get enough of Zack and Laura content, you can come to our Vox-sponsored panel at the Liberalism in the 21st Century conference — held in DC on Friday. There’s already a waitlist, so sign up soon.

You’re someone who is liberal but found yourself as a professional academic and intellectual in conservative spaces — and that’s pretty unusual because there tends to be a lot of self-segregation away from that world. What pulled you into it and what was it like being an insider-outsider in the conservative world of ideas?

I wanted to go into medicine and be a doctor in the developing world. I was very, very liberal and sort of a save-the-world type. I had to take some required courses in political philosophy, and one was a wonderful course on ancient political philosophy and early modern thought. It was mind-blowing.

The right today uses this language of being “red-pilled,” where you see through the lies that we are told by the regime. They use this extreme language, but something sort of parallel happened to me, just reading Plato with these really great teachers.

I fell in love with these books and the tradition of political philosophy and literature that these teachers were so good at explaining. My politics didn’t change dramatically, but some of those circles were quite adjacent to the people who were the leaders of the avant-garde of defending Trumpism: the West Coast Straussians, call them the Claremont Institute people.

When that started happening, I was really quite alarmed.

You use “new right” as an umbrella term for all of these different pro-Trump factions. What makes the new Right a cogent grouping, not just a random smattering of people who all like Trump? What connects them and what differentiates them from the old right?

I’m talking about the MAGA new right, [in contrast] with the Reagan-Buckley right, or the establishment right, which is propped up by fiscal conservatism (free-market economics), social conservatism (conservative social values), and anti-communism.

The new right turns against a lot of that. Michael Anton, one of these Claremont Institute guys, says that Trumpism and the new right is all about economic nationalism — turning against the free market orientation of the establishment — as well as closed, secure borders. So that’s the anti-immigration strain and America-first foreign policy.

I think that there’s also just a hardcore social conservatism at the core of a lot of this — at least spiritually.

The new right has shared principles: preoccupation with gender, strong support for Trump, a general disinterest in the traditional norms of democratic politics, and a commitment to unremitting culture war against the left. But there are huge divisions. If you were to divide the new right into camps, what would you say the fault lines are?

I have three main camps: the Claremonters, the post-liberals, and the national conservatives. Then I talk also about the hard right, but the hard right travels alongside all three of them ideologically. The hard right is the hardcore, manosphere-fascist types. Each of these groupings are different.

The Claremonters are the West Coast Straussians that I was speaking about before. They are really committed, at least in theory, to the American founding. They have this very grandiose vision that’s beyond even your ordinary patriotism. It’s that this is the best regime of all time. They’re also at the very cutting edge of the culture war. So America is the best regime of all time, but we’ve completely lost the plot. The liberals and liberal way of thinking have taken over to such a degree that we need a counter-revolution. They’re the [type] who defended January 6.

Michael Anton, who you mentioned earlier, is now a Trump administration official, a high-ranking one. He’s one of the key leaders in that faction.

Yeah. And then there’s the national conservatives. They’re a little more vanilla, with just nationalism as their core thing. But it turns into ethno-nationalism in some cases and certainly Christian nationalism. They’re a big tent.

The tensions are clearest when we are talking about the post-liberals, who are the most highbrow of the New Right. They tend to be Catholic intellectuals: people like Adrian Vermeule at Harvard, Patrick Deneen at Notre Dame, and writer Sohrab Ahmari. These are serious Catholics who are more committed to social conservatism and really want to shape the morals of the country in a much more traditional Catholic direction. But they’re also interestingly much more sincere about the left-oriented [redistributive] economics.

The new right as a whole speaks as if they want to help the working class, and create new populist programs. But I think that the people who are closest to Trump haven’t really followed through. They’ve got the tariffs, but otherwise economically, they’re still doing the big tax cuts. They’re still beholden to donors. So that’s been a big fissure, because the post-liberals are almost open to socialism.

A lot of other fissures come in terms of how accepting they are of the hard right. Ahmari has been quite outspoken against the Proud Boys and the manosphere, Bronze Age Pervert and those guys.

I think another interesting divide, which came about just after the election, was DOGE vs. MAGA. DOGE came in and did the destructive part of getting rid of the so-called administrative state. But a big part of the new right wants to harness the state and weaponize it for their own purposes.

Why does any of this matter for our politics?

The knee-jerk reaction to think “who cares” is a natural one, because a lot of these people are bizarre — weirdos. That’s why it’s alarming to see them wield so much power, to see JD Vance have that clout.

I think they have dramatically reoriented the GOP. It’s not just JD Vance who’s some weirdo who’s gotten to the top. It also seems to matter a lot to young people. These kinds of movements can build energy, and young men are influenced by these circles.

A lot of these people I’m writing about are in the intellectual spheres. They’re pretty smart. A lot of them have PhDs, which is no marker of genius, but they have a lot of education and resources available to them. They’re experts in ways that would surprise many people. They know a whole lot. I wouldn’t want to debate some of them on the founding or other questions.

These well-learned people shape the minds of people like Joe Rogan. Ideologically, there is a trickle-down effect. The culture war has a big impact. You see the impact of someone like Christopher Rufo.

You argue that the right operates with an “ideas first” approach, believing that ideas have a tangible, causal impact on politics. Democrats, in contrast, are putting ideas last. You contrast the “coarse brazenness of [the right’s] ideologues and the tepid intellectual and cluelessness and cowardice of so many centrist and liberal leaders both within academia and beyond.”

That is a stinging indictment of the liberal intellectual class. Where are you coming from here? When you say that they’ve failed in contrast to the coarse brazenness of the new right, what do you mean?

Trump has been much more effective in his second term. The Democrats are in a difficult position. They had a very rocky electoral cycle with Biden staying in so long and Harris in this awful position of having to parachute in and not being very well prepared.

I don’t feel like there’s much of a response from the left intellectually to what’s going on. It doesn’t seem to me like the party has much to offer on the ideological front.

It is frustrating as an observer to see that Bernie and AOC were the people who went and toured the country. But I didn’t see more centrist Democrats doing very much. And I still think that’s the case. They seem very shocked and unprepared. And I think that that comes down to a failure of imagination — taking way too much for granted for a very long time. And that’s part of what got us Trump in the first place.

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MMA

Project 2025 contributors celebrate the Trump administration moving to dismantle the Department of Education

Written by Sophie Lawton

Published 07/16/25

The Heritage Foundation and other Project 2025 partners are praising the Supreme Court decision opening the doors for President Donald Trump to dismantle the Department of Education — a key Project 2025 initiative marking another U-turn from Trump's early disavowal of the unpopular transition plan.

The court's July 14 ruling allows the administration to continue with the reduction in force of over 1,300 Education Department employees, more than one-quarter of the department's workforce. Trump praised the decision in a post on Truth Social, writing, “The Trump Administration may proceed on returning the functions of the Department of Education BACK TO THE STATES.”

The ruling also reverses a block on Trump's March executive order to close the department, though officially shuttering it requires congressional approval. The lower court judge who had halted the administration's efforts claimed the layoffs alone would effectively “cripple” the department.

The Department of Education has already struggled with enforcing civil rights laws and supporting students with disabilities since the Trump administration ordered a freeze on new cases and pressured the office to focus on investigations into transgender students on sports teams and antisemitism. The approved layoffs will shutter seven regional civil rights offices in major cities like New York and Chicago. The department’s Federal Student Aid office, which has already battled technical difficulties due to layoffs, is also facing large cuts. According to a Time magazine review, reducing the FSA offices may “massively disrupt” student loan operations. Trump has announced plans to move many of these offices’ functions to other government departments such as Health and Human Services and the Small Business Administration, both of which are also facing layoffs.

Alongside the personnel cuts and grand plans for closure of the department, the Trump administration is withholding billions of dollars in federal education grants to ensure they “align with President Donald Trump’s priorities,” effectively shuttering many after-school programs and other federally funded education initiatives.

Project 2025 — the extreme right-wing plan for a second Trump administration organized by the Heritage Foundation and over 100 conservative partners — pledged to “gut federal education funding, sanction discrimination against LGBTQ+ students, divert taxpayer funds to private schools,” and “dismantle the federal role in public education.” Now, Project 2025 partner organizations are celebrating the Supreme Court ruling.

Extremist “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty posted, “Parents should raise children, not government bureaucrats,” and has already begun a campaign to eliminate the National Education Association.

Extreme anti-LGBTQ group the Family Research Council released an episode of its Washington Watch podcast in which host Tony Perkins claimed “the left is going to be fearmongering” about the cuts to the Department of Education but argued there will be little change to classrooms. Speaking with Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT), Perkins praised the Supreme Court ruling, arguing it will “free up education at the state level to do what works.”

The Heritage Foundation's Jonathan Butcher appeared on The Steve Gruber Show and argued the layoffs and other changes to the department won't majorly affect students, repeating the claims that essential programs will simply be moved to other federal agencies. Butcher also attested that “Congress is going to look to disentangle the U.S. Department of Education and other federal responsibilities from federal law” to move education policies to the states.

Video

Citation

From the July 16, 2025, edition of Real America's Voice's The Steve Gruber Show

All of the Trump administration's steps to dismantle the Department of Education reflect the goals of the Project 2025 policy book, Mandate for Leadership. The Heritage Foundation has argued for shuttering the Department of Education since the first Mandate for Leadership book published in 1981. The 2024 edition of Mandateincluded specific plans for demolishing the Department of Education in a chapter written by Heritage's Lindsey Burke.

Burke's chapter for Project 2025 called for the Trump administration to “devolve” the Department of Education “as a stand-alone Cabinet-level department" and recommended that its programs, offices, and personnel be moved to other federal agencies or completely eliminated. Project 2025 specifically argued that the department’s Office of Civil Rights “should move to the Department of Justice,” a plan that Education Secretary Linda McMahon echoed during her confirmation hearing. Burke also suggested that only “employees whose positions are determined to be essential to the mission” would possibly move to other agencies now handling their office's work.

Closing down the Department of Education is just one area of many policies where the Trump administration is following the lead of Project 2025.

For instance, in January, the Trump administration released an executive order requiring any federally funded schools to remove so-called “critical race theory,” “gender ideology,” and other “radical indoctrination” from their curriculums. This measure was taken directly from Mandate for Leadership, which called for lawmakers to prevent the teaching of CRT and to “take particular note of how radical gender ideology is having a devastating effect on school-aged children.”

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The Big Money Behind Chris Rufo’s Right-Wing Agitating - EXPOSEDbyCMD

MAY 2024

*This piece was produced in partnership withImportant Context.

Chris Rufo has been racking up wins lately. Fresh off of tanking the tenure of Harvard’s first Black—and first Black woman—president, Claudine Gay, with a scandal over alleged plagiarism, the far-right activist has set his sights on National Public Radio.

Last month, Rufo dug up tweets from NPR CEO Katherine Maher that she posted before she was a journalist. The tweets revealed that Maher is a liberal Democrat who supported Biden’s campaign and called Donald Trump a racist. The revelations came on the heels of an op-ed by Uri Berliner published by The Free Press, the media company of conservative columnist Bari Weiss, in which the veteran NPR editor claimed that his outlet had “lost America’s trust” through a left-wing slant and an absence of viewpoint diversity. Berliner subsequently resigned from his position.

Rufo has an undeniable knack for stoking right-wing outrage. Depending on who you ask, he is either a conservative wunderkind—a culture warrior taking big swings at the liberal establishment—or a troll working to tear down decades of social progress, including in public education and higher learning. Extremist and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon even called him “an American hero.” Rufo is credited as the architect of the right’s demonization of “critical race theory” and a major contributor to its moral panic over LGBTQ+ inclusivity in public schools. But it’s not just right-wing audiences he plays to.

The professional culture warrior is equally gifted at seeding stories to legacy media outlets like The New York Times, which published a guest essay in July 2023 arguing for the abolition of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs at public universities. The paper ran five front-page pieces on a single day on Gay’s plagiarism scandal. It wasn’t long before The Gray Lady had picked up Rufo’s scoop about Maher as well.

A one-time documentary filmmaker who pivoted right around 2015, Rufo has benefited both financially and professionally from the support of right-wing billionaires and dark money. The media coverage of Rufo and his activities often notes his ties to various right-wing think tanks. However, few outlets have explored the funding behind those organizations to see just who is pulling the strings behind Rufo’s career. But now, an investigation by Important Contextand The Center for Media and Democracy offers some answers.

Through federal tax filings, we were able to identify a handful of right-wing billionaire donors and major right-wing foundations funding Rufo-affiliated groups. However, the original sources of the money behind the organizations are difficult to trace, as much of the cash came through donor-advised funds—third parties that manage money for client donors, distributing it with their input and often anonymously.

In recent years, these operations have become increasingly popular vehicles in American philanthropy, in large part because clients can transfer appreciable assets into their charitable funds without having to pay capital gains taxes that would ordinarily accompany stock sales and similar transactions. Donors have flocked to donor-advised funds to facilitate their funding of far-right and controversial causes such as hate and anti-vaccine groups, likely because donations routed through these funds are attributable only to the funds themselves. In other words, they allow wealthy financiers of unsavory causes to mask their political influence.

In response to our press inquiry asking why big money might support his work, Rufo would only say, “I billionaires.”

American Studio

Rufo is the founder of a nonprofit called American Studio, which he began after dissolving his previous filmmaking venture, the Documentary Foundation, to produce videos for his followers. The foundation had been heavily funded by dark money, as The Intercept reported, and American Studio is no different.

The nonprofit has received significant, untraceable money through donor-advised funds, including mainstream charities associated with major financial institutions. Between July 2021 and June 2023, American Studio received more than $400,000 through Schwab Charitable Fund, a donor-advised fund affiliated with financial services titan Charles Schwab. Meanwhile, from July 2021 and June 2022, the group got $122,000 through Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, the nation’s largest grant-making organization, which is affiliated with Fidelity Investments, $18,500 through the Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program, affiliated with investment giant The Vanguard Group, and $5,000 through the Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust, a donor-advised fund tied to Morgan Stanley.

American Studio pulled in cash from right-wing donor-advised funds as well. Between 2021 and 2022, American Studio received $370,000 through DonorsTrust, which is a preferred funding conduit for right-wing billionaire families like Koch, Mercer, and DeVos and a major source of funding for Southern Poverty Law Center-identified hate groups. It got an additional $26,000 in 2022 from the National Christian Charitable Foundation, which similarly funds hate.

Not all of the money was anonymous. Private foundations of wealthy individuals also bankrolled American Studio. The Edelman Family Foundation, the private foundation of billionaire hedge fund manager Joseph Edelman, which funds groups like Dennis Prager’s Prager University and the far-right parents’ rights group Parents Defending Education, gave $150,000. Meanwhile, the private foundation of Thomas W. Smith, founder of the hedge fund Prescott Investors and a major financial backer of anti-critical race theory propaganda and climate denial, gave $50,000.

Rufo’s salary from American Studio was over $240,000 in 2022, according to the organization’s latest IRS Form 990.

Manhattan Institute for Policy Research

Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a New York-based right-wing think tank founded in 1978 by prolific libertarian activist Antony Fisher and future CIA Director William Casey. Originally known as the International Center for Economic Policy Studies, the institute has long been aligned with and bankrolled by wealthy right-wingers and corporate interests. As journalist Matthew Cunningham-Cook noted, it “has played a critical role in dismantling the social safety net and criminalizing the poor under the guise of promoting ‘welfare reform’ and ‘broken windows’ policing.”

The institute’s leadership includes Wall Street executives like hedge fund billionaire Paul E. Singer, who profiteered off of the 2008 financial crisis and serves as the institute’s chairman. Since 2020, its donors have included right-wing billionaire power brokers Charles Koch and Richard Uihlein, who are known for funding climate denial and attacks on organized labor. Others include Singer, conservative legal activist and Trump “judge whisperer” Leonard Leo, Prescott Investors’ Smith, and billionaire GOP mega donor Bill Oberndorf, who bankrolled the successful recall against progressive San Francisco District Attorney Chesapeake Boudin in 2022.

From December 2019 to November 2022, Singer’s private foundation gave $3.8 million. The Ed Uihlein Family Foundation gave $175,000 between 2020 and 2021, and in 2022, Leo’s The 85 Fund gave $450,000.

Other private right-wing foundations gave big money to the institute. The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, for example, donated to the tune of $1.6 million between 2020 and 2022. Between 2021 and 2022, the Edelman Family Foundation gave $675,000. The Adolph Coors Foundation, the private foundation of the Coors brewing family, gave $30,000 in 2021.

Like American Studio, the Manhattan Institute took in a substantial amount of money in anonymous donations from donor-advised funds. For example, it received more than $630,000 through Schwab Charitable between July 2019 and June 2023, representing Schwab’s 2020 to 2023 fiscal years. It got more than $1 million through Vanguard Charitable, $1.9 million through Fidelity Charitable, $100,000 through Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust, and $77,000 through the Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund from July 2019 to June 2022. The American Endowment Foundation funneled $22,000 to the institute between 2020 and 2021.

The institute received funding through right-wing donor-advised funds as well. It raked in nearly $600,000 from DonorsTrust between 2020 and 2022. Another $30,600 came through the National Christian Charitable Foundation and $70,000 from the Bradley Impact Fund, a donor-advised fund affiliated with the Bradley Foundation which Mother Jones recently reported represents mostly money from just four large donors.

While the institute did not respond to a request for comment on Rufo’s salary, and the activist was not forthcoming, top senior fellows can earn over $400,000 according to the group’s latest IRS Form 990.

Hillsdale College

Rufo is also a distinguished fellow at the right-wing Hillsdale College. Hillsdale is a small, Christian liberal arts school in Michigan with a separate campus in Washington, D.C. that has become a central player in the world of right-wing politics. Hillsdale is known as an incubator for conservative operatives and for its ties to Donald Trump. For example, following Trump’s criticisms of the The New York Times’ “1619 Project,” Hillsdale released a “1776 Curriculum.”

In the aftermath of Trump’s defeat, for example, The New York Times reported that Hillsdale’s top brass promoted the Big Lie, and got involved in the scheme to keep him in power. The school has also given fellowships to right-wing contrarian doctors like Stanford professor Jay Bhattacharya.

Hillsdale has gotten big money from a number of foundations of wealthy right-wingers. For example, from December 2019 to November 2022, the Adolph Coors Foundation gave $662,000. The Charles Koch Foundation gave $116,000 and the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation gave $80,000 from 2020 to 2022. $157,000 from Thomas Smith’s foundation.

The school has also received millions in untraceable funding through mainstream donor-advised funds. Hillsdale got nearly $12.2 million through Schwab Charitable Fund between the fund’s 2020 and 2023 fiscal years, running July 2019 to June 2023. It got $4.4 million through Vanguard Charitable, $9.8 million through Fidelity Charitable, nearly $2 million through Morgan Stanley Charitable Fund, and $10,000 through the Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund between those donor-advised funds’ 2020 and 2022 fiscal years.

DonorsTrust funneled more than $2.6 million and the National Christian Charitable Foundation gave $2.2 million to Hillsdale from 2020 to 2022. The Bradley Impact Fund dished out $44,000 between 2021 and 2022.

Neither Rufo nor Hillsdale responded to our question about payment for the fellowship.

The Heritage Foundation

In 2020, Rufo was a visiting fellow for domestic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation, one of the most influential right-wing think tanks in the country. It has worked to undermine climate science, public health amid the COVID-19 pandemic, organized labor, and voting rights.

The foundation’s donors represent some of the largest corporate and wealthy interests in the country, including names like Koch, Uihlein, Thomas Smith, and the Coors family. They include Leonard Leo’s The 85 Fund and the Bradley Foundation.

Over the years, Heritage has taken millions in untraceable money from donor-advised funds—Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable, Vanguard Charitable, Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust, the Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund, DonorsTrust, the Bradley Impact Fund, and the National Christian Charitable Foundation.

The Claremont Institute

After his stint at Heritage, Rufo was a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, another major right-wing think tank which the New York Times has called a “nerve center of the American Right.” Claremont’s vice chairman is Hillsdale College’s president, Larry P. Arnn, who promoted 2020 election denial and worked to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to block the certification of the results. Meanwhile, Claremont scholar John Eastman, who served as part of Donald Trump’s legal team, was a legal architect of the so-called fake elector scheme.

Like Heritage, the institute has been supported by big right-wing donors including Smith. It also receives big money through donor-advised funds.

The Discovery Institute

Rufo similarly had a research fellowship at the Discovery Institute, a Christian right think tank that opposes the theory of evolution. The institute supported Rufo’s work even after his departure, giving his now-defunct Documentary Foundation $225,000 in 2021.

The institute has received money from billionaire Charles Koch’s foundation. However, most of what it took in came through donor-advised funds. Nearly $5.8 million came from DonorsTrust and about $2.5 million from the National Christian Charitable Foundation. Between July 2019 and June 2022, Fidelity Charitable funneled over $760,000 to the institute. From July 2019 to June 2023 Schwab Charitable passed along more than $1 million.

About Walker Bragman

Walker Bragman is a reporter and co-founder of the OptOut Media Foundation

All articles by Walker Bragman

About Alex Kotch

Alex is a former investigative reporter with the Center for Media and Democracy. A campaign finance expert, Alex helped launch money-in-politics website Sludge, and his work has been published by more than two dozen media outlets including The American Prospect, The Nation, and Vice.com. As of fall 2022, he was executive director of the OptOut Media Foundation, a nonprofit charity he co-founded that maintains a news aggregation app for independent news and offer other services to assist financially independent media outlets.

All articles by Alex Kotch

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GUK

The president of the rightwing Claremont Institute and another senior Claremont official are both closely involved with the shadowy Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR), an exclusive, men-only fraternal order which aims to replace the US government with an authoritarian “aligned regime”, and which experts say is rooted in extreme Christian nationalism and religious autocracy.

The revelations emerge from documents gathered in public records requests, including emails between several senior members of SACR: Claremont president Ryan P Williams; its director of state coalitions and Boise State University professor Scott Yenor; and others including former soap manufacturer and would-be “warlord” Charles Haywood.

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Ron DeSantis ally Chris Rufo has close ties with ‘dissident right’ magazine

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The trove also contains an “internal” SACR “mission statement” with a far more radical edge than the public “vision” now recorded on the organization’s website.

That document speaks of recruiting a “brotherhood” who will “form the backbone of a renewed American regime” and who “understand the nature of authority and its legitimate forceful exercise”; whose “objectives” include to “collect, curate, and document a list of potential appointees and hires for a renewed American regime”.

The document does not indicate that such “renewal” will take place through participation in electoral contests, and nor does it make mention of the US constitution.

Along with the financial links between the SACR and Claremont – the Guardian previously reported Claremont’s $26,248 donation to SACR in 2020 – the documents raise questions as to what extent SACR is an initiative of the Claremont Institute, and to what extent its participants have abandoned liberal, secular or democratic politics.

The Guardian contacted Ryan Williams, Claremont’s president, for comment on his involvement in SACR, and on the extent of Claremont’s ties to the organization.

In an email he said: “While the Claremont Institute acted as a fiscal sponsor to help the Society for American Civic Renewal establish itself as an incorporated 501(c)(10), that was the end of any corporate collaboration between the Claremont Institute and SACR.”

He added: “As a founding board member of SACR in my personal capacity, obviously I think that a fraternal order dedicated to civic and cultural renaissance and rooted in community, virtue, and wisdom is a very good thing.”

Williams also confirmed that he continues to serve as a SACR board member.

The Guardian also contacted Scott Yenor and Boise State University for comment.

Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project on Hate and Extremism, said of the SACR documents: “Their planned regime is obviously far from a multiracial democracy. The documents appear to be describing a religious autocracy.”

Laura K Field, a writer, political theorist and senior fellow at the Niskanen Center, a Washington thinktank, said the documents expressed “extreme Christian nationalism” where “a particular kind of Christianity should dominate as an ideal, and that it should dominate permanently”.

Yenor and SACR

Scott Yenor is a professor of political science at Idaho’s Boise State University and simultaneously the senior director of state coalitions at the Claremont Institute.

His Claremont appointment came in February 2023. Media reports at that time indicated that Yenor would be working closely with the Florida governor Ron DeSantis and DeSantis-aligned legislators; when the job was announced the governor’s wife, Casey Desantis, tweeted: “Thrilled to welcome Scott Yenor from the Claremont Institute to his new home in Tallahassee.”

Reporting in the New York Times last month put Yenor at the center of a network of activists tied to Claremont and other rightwing nonprofits to wage an “anti-DEI crusade” against diversity, equity, and inclusion measures in educational institutions, corporations and public agencies.

Unreported until now is Yenor’s place as an ideological and organizational leader in SACR, and the radical nature of that organization’s aims as understood by he and other core members.

SACR is structured as a 501(c)(10) body under the section of US tax law that provides nonprofit status for organizations “with a fraternal purpose”.

In 2020 the umbrella organization was incorporated in Indiana with Charles Haywood as principal, and the first local lodge was established in Dallas, Texas. Subsequently, three local lodges were established in Idaho: in Boise and Couer d’Alene in 2021, and Moscow in 2022.

Idaho company filings show that Scott Yenor became president and the only listed principal officer of the Boise lodge on 5 August 2023.

Secrecy at SACR

But emails indicate that he had taken a board role in the national organization even earlier than that date.

On 25 January 2023, lawyer Clyde Taylor – now at Wagenmaker Law but until 2019 an associate at the rightwing litigation firm the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty – wrote to Haywood and Skyler Kressin about their trademark application for the SACR logo.

Haywood forwarded the lawyer’s email to Yenor, Claremont president Williams, and Nathanial “Nate” Fischer, copying in Kressin on two addresses including one hosted at SACR’s sacr.us domain.

“We should probably have a board meeting to discuss this, finances, etc,” Haywood wrote in response to Yenor, suggesting Yenor and the others he copied in were members of that body.

Haywood added a suggestion on encrypted messaging services, indicating an imperative of secrecy inside SACR. “I vote we create a new Signal group and have a board meeting. Any takers?” he said. The group was then set up.

The Guardian reported last August that on his website Haywood has repeatedly envisioned serving as a “warlord” at the head of an “armed patronage network” which might at some point find itself in conflict with the federal government.

Haywood has also expressed a desire to recruit “shooters” to help defend the “extended, quite sizeable, compound” he occupies on the western fringe of Carmel, Indiana. According to documents lodged with the city of Carmel, the latest construction project on Haywood’s compound is a six-bedroom faux-classical mansion with a central library room that occupies both of the building’s floors.

He has funded SACR through his Howdy Doody Good Times foundation to the tune of at least $50,000, according to 2021 and 2022 tax filings, along with at least $50,000 to the Claremont Institute.

In the same report, the Guardian revealed that Kressin, of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, appears to serve a key administrative role in SACR. Idaho and Texas company records show that Kressin incorporated lodges in Boise, Coeur d’Alene and Dallas; serves as a director of the Coeur d’Alene and Dallas lodges; and was named as the principal officer of the parent organization on its 2020-2021 tax return.

The Guardian reported last September that Fischer, a Claremont Lincoln fellow, was president of SACR’s Dallas lodge and owns a firm that has won hundreds of thousands of dollars in government ammunition contracts. He also owns another firm that helped produce videos in which Claremont chairman Thomas Klingenstein exhorted rightwingers to join in a “cold civil war” against “woke communists”.

The Guardian contacted Nate Fischer, Skyler Kressin and Charles Haywood for comment.

Neither Kressin nor Haywood responded. Fischer did not respond directly, but on Friday morning on X, formerly Twitter, he left a 900-word post offering some material from internal SACR documents, admitting that the Guardian’s reporting had led him to the conclusion that “this is a good time to share more about the organization.

SACR’s mission: ‘dominance’ and ‘authority’ in an ‘new aligned regime’

Another document suggests reasons that SACR’s leadership might want to avoid scrutiny: in internal discussions. “Civic renewal” appears to equate to regime change in America.

The document is one of two Yenor attached to a 27 April 2021 email, sent from his Boise State email address to a personal email address. The email text simply says “print”.

The SACR document contains two versions of the organization’s “mission statement” – one “public” and one “internal” – along with a list of “objectives” for the organization.

Its authenticity as a working document is indicated by the current “vision” articulated on SACR’s website, which currently features what appears to be a reworked version of the “public” mission statement.

The 2021 document envisions “a vigorous civic renewal that will reflect the past while facing the future”, while the website sets out a “new thing for a new day, informed by the wisdom of the past but facing the future”. Each version promises to “reclaim a humane vision of society”.

A harder-edged “internal” mission statement, however, stands in stark contrast to these anodyne public presentations.

It first announces: “Our aim is to build and maintain a robust network of capable men who can reverse our society’s decline and return us to the successful path off which America has strayed.”

The document says the organization’s founders are “un-hyphenated Americans, and we believe in a particular Christianity that is not blurred by modernist philosophies.”

It says: “We are willing to act decisively to secure permanently, as much as anything is permanent, the political and social dominance” of their beliefs.

In terms of recruiting, the document says: “Most of all, we seek those who understand the nature of authority and its legitimate forceful exercise in the temporal realm.”

Further down, the document specifies five organizational “objectives” that encompass nepotistic business practices, the grooming of new and emerging “elites” within SACR, and, experts say, an apparently insurrectionary political project.

The first objective is to “identify and provide formation for local elites … capable of exercising authority and who are aligned with our goal of complete civic renewal”, and warning that “concrete temporal achievements, not furthering intellectual discussion”.

The second objective is to help those local elites build “fraternal networks which will advance both the members of those networks and our collective goals” including “direct preferential treatment for members, especially in business”.

The third objectives to coordinate across the “fraternal networks” to bring “political awareness” to matters such as “hiring and promotion; award of contracts; internal policies and procedures; and leadership succession”.

A fifth objective is to “collect, curate and document a list of potential appointees and hires for an aligned future regime”, who would likely not be founding participants, but “ … men who grow up in the system”.

Asked what an “aligned regime” might look like, Williams, the Claremont Institute’s president, wrote: “It would, more likely than not, be some form of the US constitutional order, but with much higher fidelity to that order before it was corrupted and subverted by modern progressivism.”

Perhaps ominously, a fourth objective is to “defend fraternal networks, our own and allies, against attacks by those opposed to civic renewal, and strongly deter such attacks”, though no details are offered on what form this defense or deterrence might take.

Although the document makes reference to America’s founding, Field, the Niskanen fellow, said that it contradicted its spirit.

“George Washington, Jefferson, [and] Madison all embraced religious pluralism very explicitly, and the constitution reflects that,” she said.

“This is anti-constitutional, and I think many, many faithful Christians would say it’s anti-Christian.”

Beirich, the extremism expert, said the mission statement and objectives were “essentially a stealth plan to replace everything about the current government with a religious autocracy”, with the addition of an effort to “fashion young people behind closed doors for the eventual takeover of the regime, right?”

“They’re going to grow them up as Christian autocrats.”

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7/18/2022

Stuck on the Rufo Road

by Jennifer Berkshire

Jennifer C. Berkshire hosts the education podcast Have You Heard. She is the author, with Jack Schneider, of*A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door.

Last spring, taking a break from waging conspiratorial campaigns against the republic, an assortment of luminaries associated with the Claremont Institute gathered to lay out a plan to foment a culture war against the nation’s schools. The Clubhouse event, entitled “Building A New Right: Red States vs. Wokeness,” featured a grab bag of Claremont fellows and friends. The star attraction was Manhattan Institute agitprop specialist Christopher Rufo, chief sower of the panics against critical race theory (CRT) and “grooming.”

In a now familiar exercise, Rufo sketched out his campaign to make CRT toxic as part of a larger propaganda war against public institutions. The ultimate goal, he explained, was essentially to do away with those institutions and redirect school funding to families and individuals based on their “values.” Rufo waxed apocalyptic about the scourge of “wokeness,” and yet he struck a hopeful note. After all, he reminded listeners, it had only taken the country a few years to go from the Black Panthers to Nixon.

In the ensuing months, Rufo’s propaganda campaign would grow increasingly lurid, but on this occasion, he urged his audience to raise the discussion to a higher level. Focus on “excellence,” he admonished them, and attack public schools for failing to meet that standard. Conservative communications guru David Reaboi, who helped seed a previous moral panic on the right against the sinister spread of Sharia law, weighed in with some messaging advice of his own: Go full bore against the teachers unions. Do damage.

Today, this coordinated plan to wage a public relations war against the nation’s public schools is an undeniable success. Forty-two states have moved to restrict teaching about oppression, race or gender. According to one estimate, more than one third of students in the country attend school in a state where educators are now subject to some kind of classroom gag order.

The achievement of Rufo and his allies is all the more astonishing, given the deep unpopularity of the policies they champion. Polls consistently show that voters across party lines are repelled by the GOP’s education extremism. Across the chasm of our current political divide, bipartisan majorities are largely in agreement that banning books and gagging teachers is bad.

And for all of the insurgent right’s bold rhetoric about mining parent outrage for electoral gold, the polls that matter most have shown remarkably poor results for candidates running on scorched-earth education platforms. In New Hampshire, New York, Montana, Georgia, Wisconsin and beyond, voters are rejecting right-wing culture warriors, often by wide margins—a movement that might be summed up as “keeping the crazy away from the kids.”

There’s just one problem, though: The leadership of the Democratic party doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo.

Read entire article at **The Forum

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GGL 8 25

Christopher F. Rufo

American activist

America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything

2023

No Way Home: The Crisis of Homelessness and How to Fix It with Intelligence and Humanity

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He is a graduate of Georgetown University and a former Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy.

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The Israel-Gaza conflict is breaking the brains of everyone in politics. First it was the academic Left that celebrated the bloodlust hours after October 7. But on the Right, too, there is a growing and unhealthy obsession that is deranging otherwise smart and honest people.

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There is a crucial difference between the independent media figures who have influence in their own right, and the establishment media figures—most recent example: Glenn Kessler—who disappear entirely from the discourse if not propped up by a legacy publication.

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an states n? 5 25

Why are right-wingers so scared of ideas?

Are their minds so weak that mere exposure to certain books will infect them with what Elon Musk calls “the woke mind virus”?

They don’t want you inoculated against measles, but they’re doing their damnedest to inoculate Americans against knowledge.

Novels upset them; poetry upsets them; science upsets them; history upsets them; art upsets them; questioning of authority upsets them.

Universities really, really upset them — all that interrogating norms; all that challenging orthodoxy; all that critical inquiry.

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

To that end, Donald Trump’s going to war with Harvard, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, even Penn, his alma mater.

Ron DeSantis beat him to it: The governor’s been trying for years to regulate speech, impose restrictions on what teachers can teach, and decree which books the state of Florida finds “acceptable.”

While he’s had some success in K-12, enabling Moms for Liberty and their ilk in their book-banning crusade and threatening educators with dire consequences if they mention the existence of gay and trans people, some judges, unsurprisingly partial to the First Amendment, have slapped him down.

DeSantis, nothing if not energetic in his rage, is now determined to shield our precious college students from Dangerous Thoughts.

Choose the administrators. Choose the presidents. Control the universities.

The University of Florida needs a new dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences — with 40 majors and more than 10,000 students, it’s the largest college at UF.

They got as far as interviewing four highly qualified candidates: two mathematicians — UF’s own Kevin P. Knudson and Maggy Tomova, dean of UCF’s College of Science; Ryan Schroeder, dean of Georgia Southern’s College of Behavioral and Social Sciences; and Robert Brinkmann, a professor of Geology and dean of Liberal Arts and Science at Northern Illinois University.

‘Radical DEI progressives’

But two weeks ago, the governor blew up the search. Demanded UF stop it.

Seems the finalists, admired scholars and seasoned leaders, are crypto-Marxist, Trump-hating eggheads bent on destroying America.

An anonymous social media account calling itself “Commies on Campus” ran shrieking to Bryan Griffin, DeSantis’ communications director, calling all four “ radical DEI progressives.”

The Commies posted slick, selectively edited videos of candidate interviews, slamming Brinkmann for stating the obvious: “We have people in charge of things in our country that don’t have any business being in charge of those things,” and Knudson for being proud that as head of UF’s Honors Program “we were able to increase the number of African American and Hispanic students in the program.”

As if that’s somehow shameful.

Kent Fuchs, UF’s invertebrate of an interim president, sent out a memo pretending “terminating the search” was the only thing to do, what with the university also in the middle of hiring a permanent president.

Fuchs has never said no to DeSantis.

He does as he’s told, facilitating the hiring of our data-challenged surgeon general at UF’s medical school and trying to stop professorsfrom testifying on voting rights.

Academic freedom doesn’t matter; the professors’ expertise might pose a “conflict of interest to the executive branch of the state of Florida.”

As if serving the interests of the executive branch should somehow be the mission of a university.

UF remains a distinguished institution, though slipping in national rankings of public universities. It was No. 5 a couple of years ago but is now No. 7.

Still pretty good, especially given DeSantis’ obsessive attacks on higher education in the state.

But allowing some trifling X account to dictate policy at Florida’s flagship university won’t exactly burnish UF’s reputation.

All-purpose insult

Whoever the “Commies on Campus” may be, they weren’t paying attention in political science class.

They call anything they don’t like “communist:” LGBTQ, feminism, secularism, programs for the poor, addressing the climate crisis, taxing the rich, giving anyone without one of those useful White Man Cards a fair shot in life.

“Communist” is MAGA’s all-purpose insult.

Read a book, kids: While real live commies like the ones in North Korea, Cuba, or China may think religion is the opiate of the masses and rich folks (except the leaders of these countries) shouldn’t exist, they’re not keen on stuff like feminism, they persecute gay people, and they sure as hell don’t favor DEI.

Ask the Uighurs.

Yet DeSantis, a man educated beyond his intelligence, takes what these nameless chuckleheads say at face value.

There are in fact a number of well-regarded Marxist scholars at American universities. Yale, the governor’s alma mater, has a reading group studying Marxism and Cultural Theory.

Nevertheless, DeSantis emerged from the Red Menace of New Haven untainted.

He’s also unimpeded by understanding what universities are supposed to do.

An academic’s job is to research everything from the Roman Republic to astrophysics to Norse sagas to gene structure to the ideology of slavery to economic and political systems, which requires reading across the spectrum from “Das Kapital” to “ The Road to Serfdom“ and presenting their data and knowledge to students.

We call this “education.”

It’s embarrassing how MAGAs deem Hungarian (or Putinist) authoritarianism OK, even admirable, while “communist” is the gravest of insults and socialism is a mortal sin.

Perhaps they’re unaware socialism is viewed favorably by around 36%of Americans.

That’s almost the same number who say they strongly support Donald Trump.

Ideas are not viruses

The point is, ideas are not viruses: Mere exposure to communist thought doesn’t turn you into a communist, any more than reading James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room” makes you gay, any more than reading “The Wealth of Nations” ensures you’ll become a rabid capitalist.

But MAGAs don’t do high-level thinking: It makes their heads hurt. They simply react.

Loudly. Ignorantly. Irrationally.

Commies on Campus now has a new project: trying to influence who will become the new president of the University of Florida.

UF has announced a finalist.

One finalist. Chosen in secret.

He is Dr. Santa Ono, a Canadian American immunologist.

The Commies say he’s some kind of woke monster who, as president of the University of Michigan, created “THE LARGEST #DEI EMPIRE in the country.”

Their evidence? Christopher Rufo, the febrile New College trustee last heard claiming immigrants were eating cats and dogs, calls Ono “left-wing” and points to a 2023 commencement address in which he made the unimpeachable statement, “The climate crisis is the existential challenge of our time.”

Florida gubernatorial candidate and Trump acolyte U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, never losing a chance to ingratiate himself with MAGA voters, demands UF “ go back to the drawing board.”

Donalds’ hair is on fire because Ono once said, “Racism is one of America’s original sins.”

Deep breath, people: 1. Both of Ono’s statements are perfectly true; and 2. Rufo, Donalds, and the Commies need to update their intel.

Ono has changed his tune. No longer a champion of diversity, he’s now singing from the DeSantis Hymnal, declaring himself in “total alignment” with the governor’s anti-woke crusade.

“I have the same views as this governor,” Ono said.

Bend the knee

During his three years at Michigan (the shortest tenure of any president in the university’s history), Ono initially won praise for prioritizing sustainability and anti-racist projects. Students say he was personable and accessible.

Then Trump happened, and, like too many university administrators, he bent the knee, shutting UM’s DEI office, cracking down on student protest, and creating, as one faculty member said, “ a surveillance state.”

Seems he deployed plainclothes officers police to trail and photograph people on UM’s campus.

No wonder DeSantis likes this guy.

Santa is a real scholar, a proper scientist, with academic and administrative qualifications that could have been a great fit at UF. He’s streets ahead of DeSantis’ last hand-picked president, the empty, in-over-his-head Ben Sasse, whose one discernable talent was spendingother people’s money.

In a Trump-free world, Ono might have become the leader who could protect the institution. He might have pushed back against the governor’s determination to reduce Florida’s universities to football factories with libraries curated by the likes of Christopher Rufo and courses insisting on the divine greatness of America.

Alas, Ono has made clear that’s not him, not anymore.

This is what you get when one incurious, anti-intellectual, and perpetually angry man chooses university presidents in secret.

This is what you get when there’s only one finalist.

Yes, the trustees officially make the job offer, but there’s no chance they’d hire someone DeSantis didn’t like.

This is the reality of higher ed in Florida today.

FIU has one finalist for president. No shock that it’s DeSantis’ former lieutenant governor and Interim President Jeannette Nuñez.

In its presidential search, FAU announced three finalists. Maybe this would be a real contest?

Two had Ph.Ds. and solid higher ed experience. One was a Republican political hack.

You can guess who got the gig.

A ‘plant’ at FAMU?

Florida A&M, still in the process of choosing a president, has four finalists.

Promising, right?

There were initially three on the shortlist, all with extensive university experience. Then a fourth candidate, a woman with ties to top Republicans, appeared.

She’s Marva Johnson, a communications company executive, appointed by then-Gov. Rick Scott to the Florida Board of Education and chosen by Ron DeSantis for the Florida Scholars Academy Board of Trustees.

Commies on Campus have not yet weighed in on this one.

FAMU alumni say she’d be a terrible choice, calling her “ a plant” and likening her to a Trojan Horse hostile to the university’s mission.

But what the alumni want, and what the university wants, probably won’t matter.

What DeSantis wants matters.

As everyone in the unfree state of Florida knows, all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE. SUPPORT

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

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DEI boost trump 2.0

alaska teacher told to take down everyone welcome here bc hands were diff shades chris hayes 3/25

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an pp tt

In 2019, the Keller Independent School District in North Texas looked a lot like its counterpart just 30 miles to the east in the Dallas suburb of Richardson. Each served about 35,000 children and had experienced sharp increases in the racial diversity of students in recent decades. Each was run by a school board that was almost entirely white.

In the five years since, the districts have followed strikingly divergent paths as culture war battles over how to teach race and gender exploded across the state.

In Keller, candidates backed by groups seeking to limit the teaching of race and gender took control of the school board and immediately passed sweeping policies that gave outsized power to any individual who wanted to prevent the purchase of books they believed to be unsuitable for children.

Though more than half of Keller’s students are from racially diverse backgrounds, the district in 2023 nixed a plan to buy copies of a biography of Black poet Amanda Gorman after a teacher at a religious private school who had no children in the district complained about this passage: “Amanda realized that all the books she had read before were written by white men. Discovering a book written by people who look like her helped Amanda find her own voice.” The passage, the woman wrote, “makes it sound like it’s okay to judge a book by the authors skin color rather than the content of the book.”

Board members at the Richardson school district went in the opposite direction, even as they contended with similar pressure from groups aiming to rid the district of any materials that they claimed pushed critical race theory, an advanced academic concept that discusses systemic racism. The school board did not ban library books but instead allowed parents to limit their own children’s access to them, keeping them available for other students.

One major difference contributed to the districts’ divergence: the makeup of their school boards.

The way communities elect school board members plays a key, if often overlooked, role in whether racially diverse districts like Keller and Richardson experience takeovers by ideologically driven conservatives seeking to exert greater influence over what children learn in public schools, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found. Since the pandemic, such groups have successfully leveraged the state’s long-standing and predominantly at-large method of electing candidates to flip school boards in their direction.

Most of Texas’ 1,000 school districts use an at-large method, where voters can cast ballots for all candidates. Supporters say that allows for broader representation for students, but voting rights advocates argue that such systems dilute the power of voters of color. If board members are elected districtwide, there tends to be less diversity, according to research, which also shows that if they are elected by smaller geographic zones, candidates of color often have more success.

“What you’re seeing happening in Texas is how at-large districts make it easy for somebody to come in, usually from the outside, and hijack the process and essentially buy a board,” said Michael Li, senior counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit public policy institute that champions small-donor campaign financing. “Because of this conflux of factors — at-large elections and large amounts of outside money — it just sort of defeats the idea of representative democracy.”

ProPublica and the Tribune examined 14 rapidly diversifying suburban school districts where children from diverse backgrounds now make up more than half of the student population. In the six districts that used at-large voting systems, well-funded and culture-war-driven movements successfully helped elect school board members who have moved aggressively to ban or remove educational materials that teach children about diversity, even in districts where a majority of children are not white. Nearly 70% of board members in such districts live in areas that are whiter than their district’s population.

Eight nearby school systems with similar demographics employ single-member voting systems to elect school board candidates. Under the single-member system, voters within certain boundaries elect a board member who specifically represents their area. Candidates in those districts received less campaign support from ideologically driven political action committees, and none of the districts experienced school board takeovers fueled by culture war issues.

About 150 Texas school districts have transitioned to a single-member system since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which is intended to prevent voter discrimination and has brought greater racial representation to local governments. Richardson joined that list in 2019 after a former Black board member sued the district.

Such legal challenges, however, could soon become more difficult. In one of his first acts in office, President Donald Trump froze civil rights litigation against school districts accused of discriminating against minority groups, and many legal experts believe that under his administration, federal prosecutors will refuse to bring challenges against at-large systems. DOJ officials did not respond to questions from the news organizations.

Trump, a staunch critic of diversity and inclusion programs, has threatened to cut federal funding to schools that he says are pushing “inappropriate racial, sexual or political content onto the shoulders of our children.”

Districts whose boards oppose sweeping efforts to restrict curriculum and books related to race and racism face even more headwinds in Texas. In January, Gov. Greg Abbott vowed to ban diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in public schools, a move that would expand the state’s existing ban on college campuses. And Texas lawmakers continue to target the books students can access. One bill, authored by North Texas state Sen. Angela Paxton, the wife of Attorney General Ken Paxton, would require every district in the state to follow a version of Keller’s library book purchase policy.

The president of the Keller board, Charles Randklev, did not respond to multiple requests for comment, and the district did not answer written questions. District officials have previously said that the board represents all students, not just those in a specific neighborhood or area.

But Laney Hawes, the parent of four students in the district and an outspoken critic of the school board, said the policy on library purchases spawned a backdoor channel to banning materials about race. That, she said, has deprived her children of reading books about Americans like Gorman that provide points of view they might not find otherwise.

“They have created a system that allows anyone in the community to complain about any book for any reason, and now that book is not on library shelves,” said Hawes, who is white. She added that the book does not contain any sexually explicit material and was strictly targeted because it dealt with race.

“They just hate the racial undertones.”

“Up Against a Machine”

School districts across Texas have drawn considerable attention for removing books from their shelves, but board members in Keller went further when they passed a policy in August 2022 that, in practice, allowed community members to block proposed purchases.

Students spoke out against the district’s removal policies during a board meeting months later, pleading for access to books about race. One biracial student, who has since graduated, told the board that books about characters from different racial backgrounds helped her feel more accepted.

“All kids deserve to see themselves in literature,” the student said. “Racial minorities being written into a story does not instantly equate the book to being propaganda. Having books that mirror the experience of race is not pushing an agenda. It's simply documenting the hardships that consistently happen to most students of color that they’re able to relate to. Concealing ideas just because they tell an uncomfortable truth is not protecting your children.”

The students’ pleas didn’t sway the board, and by July 2023, challenges to such books began pouring in.

One person opposed the purchase of “Jim Crow: Segregation and the Legacy of Slavery.” The person, who did not provide their name, pointed to a photo of a young girl participating in a Black Lives Matter protest with the caption: “Just as in the past, people continue fighting for change.” They also took issue with this quote: “You can’t ‘get over’ something that is still happening. Which is why black Americans can’t ‘get over’ slavery or Jim Crow.”

The photo and the quotes, the book challenger said, were “potentially CRT,” showed the Black Lives Matter Movement in “a positive light” and claimed “oppression is still happening.”

Another person challenged the planned purchase of “Our Skin: A First Conversation About Race,” saying that the book started “beautifully,” but that “unfortunately tenets of CRT, social justice, and anti-white activism are portrayed.” The person, who used a pseudonym, did not offer specifics.

Administrators removed those books, the Gorman biography and 26 others from the purchase list after receiving the complaints, according to district officials. Librarians can reinstate books on future lists, but 75% of those flagged for further review never made it to the shelves, an online search of district libraries shows. That includes the three books about race.

Hawes, who heads two PTA groups at her children’s schools, said book challenges and complaints have come from allies of school board members. In 2022, Patriot Mobile Action, a North Texas Christian nationalist PAC funded by a cellphone company, spent more than $115,000 supporting three ideologically driven conservatives running for control of the school board.

Leigh Wambsganss, Patriot Mobile’s spokesperson and executive director of the PAC, declined to comment but said in a 2022 podcast that the PAC chose candidates based on their Christian conservative views and sought out those who “absolutely would stand against critical race theory.” Patriot Mobile supported eight candidates in three other North Texas districts that used at-large voting during the same election cycle. All of them won their races.

“We weren’t prepared for what was coming,” Hawes said. “We were literally up against a machine.”

Another PAC, KISD Family Alliance, spent $50,000 to help elect the same Keller school board candidates. Its donors included conservative activist Monty Bennett, who previously told the Tribune that he believes schools have been taken over by ideologues “pushing their outlandish agendas.” Neither Bennett nor the PAC’s treasurer responded to requests for comment.

The slate of Keller candidates, whose combined campaign war chests dwarfed that of their opponents’ by a more than 4 to 1 margin, focused their agendas squarely on culture war issues related to library books and curriculum.

“While I have many priorities I want to focus on, if concerns over child safety, and sexualization and politicization of children make me a one-issue candidate, so be it. I will be a one-issue candidate all day long,” Joni Shaw Smith wrote on her campaign website. Smith, who is now a board member, declined to comment.

Her election contributed to what would become a sweep of the seven seats on the board. Five of those seats are held by board members who live in the city of Keller, where three-quarters of residents are white and the median household income of more than $160,000 is among the highest in the state.

Most of the Keller district’s 42 schools, however, are located in the more diverse neighborhoods of Fort Worth.

A Different Approach

Thirty miles away, the makeup of Richardson’s school board changed dramatically after the district settled a lawsuit filed in 2018 by David Tyson Jr. He argued that the continued use of at-large voting to select candidates was a “relic of the district’s segregated past.”

Tyson became the district’s first Black board member when he was elected in 2004. After he retired in 2010, he watched with growing consternation as no candidates from diverse backgrounds followed in his footsteps, even though students of color accounted for nearly 70% of the district’s population.

Frustrated, Tyson sued Richardson, challenging its system for electing candidates under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He and Richardson officials settled the lawsuit in 2019, and the district converted primarily to a system in which candidates needed to live within specific boundaries and receive a majority of votes from residents who also lived within those boundaries to be elected.

As ideologically driven candidates swept Keller school board elections, similar efforts played out differently in Richardson. In 2022, two candidates supported by groups seeking to limit instruction and library books that deal with race and gender ran against two candidates of color with differing views. A local PAC that accused the district of teaching “CRT nonsense” in a mailer hired the same Republican campaign consulting firm that was working in support of the Keller candidates.

Despite being outspent 2-to-1, the candidates of color won their elections. Their wins gave Richardson four board members of diverse backgrounds, a remarkable evolution from an all-white board just three years earlier. And, as nearby districts began mass removals of library books dealing with race and gender, the Richardson school board embraced an “opt-out” process to give concerned parents control over their children’s reading “without impacting the choices of other families who may have different values, wishes or expectations.” Opponents say opt-out systems do not go far enough in protecting students from materials they deem objectionable.

“Single-member districts benefited us in making sure our school board maintains the diversity, and diversity of thought, we have, and not just fall into those culture wars,” said Vanessa Pacheco, one of the board members who won.

Pacheco said not being consumed by such fights allowed the board to focus on “real stuff” like dual-language classes for elementary students, expanding pre-K opportunities and scheduling school events for parents in the evenings and on weekends to account for working families.

So striking was the district’s atmosphere following the 2022 election that a Dallas Morning News commentary dubbed Richardson a “no-drama district” in a sea of school boards consumed by fights over race and gender.

Tyson, whose lawsuit set the stage for the Richardson school board’s dramatic transformation, said that the shift in voting methods has accomplished what he had hoped for.

“The goal was to get representation,” he said. “We’re a majority-minority school district, and so we need to have a majority-minority representation on the school board.”

“Now or Never”

Hawes watched as voters down the road in Richardson rejected candidates seeking to limit what the district’s diverse student body could read and learn. She watched as the board itself grew increasingly diverse. And she watched with a touch of envy as the district embraced the idea that parents and community members who opposed certain books should not make decisions for every child in the district.

With Richardson as their north star, Hawes and a growing number of concerned parents began discussing ways to force the Keller school district to adopt what they believed was a more representative voting system. It wasn’t just a question of race for Hawes. It was also about geographic diversity. Board members who live in the city of Keller hold a majority, even though less than a third of students in the district attend schools there.

So last year, Hawes and other concerned parents met with law firms and the NAACP and began planning a petition drive that would require the board to hold an election to do away with at-large voting. Members planned to meet in January to finalize a strategy.

Then, in mid-January, the Keller school board shocked many in the community by proposing to split the district in two, separating the whiter, more affluent city of Keller to the east from the neighborhoods of northern Fort Worth, which are home to the majority of the district’s students, including many who are low income. Like many districts in the state, Keller faces a massive budget shortfall.

Randklev, the board president, defended the split as financially beneficial for both districts in a Facebook post last month. He also wrote that “neighboring school districts have been forced into single-member districts, and that’s a no-win situation regardless of where you live.” He did not explain his position but said the proposed split “could provide programming opportunities that best reflect local community goals and values and foster greater parent and community involvement.”

But many parents, including Dixie Davis, who previously ran unsuccessfully for the board, said the proposed change would leave the vast majority of the district’s low-income student population, and most of its students of color, with uncertain access to facilities like an advanced learning center and the district’s swimming complex.

On Friday, board members abandoned plans to divide the school district in two, citing the cost of restructuring the district’s debt. But their push to split the district has further energized efforts by some parents to do away with at-large voting. Brewer Storefront, the same law firm that fought to change the voting system in Richardson, has filed a similar legal challenge in federal court against Keller and concerned parents have launched a petition drive to force the district to vote on its at-large system. The district has not yet filed a response to the lawsuit and did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“With the momentum and uproar around this proposed district split, it's now or never to get this done,” Davis said. “It'll be a huge uphill battle, but this is our best shot.”

Lexi Churchill, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, and Jessica Priest, The Texas Tribune, contributed research.

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MMA

Echoing right-wing media, Trump education nominee Linda McMahon casts doubt on legality of Black history courses

Written by Helena Hind

Published 02/14/25

During her February 13 Senate confirmation hearing, Trump nominee for education secretary Linda McMahon cast doubt on the future of Black history courses in American public schools, saying she’s “not quite certain” if Black history instruction would violate an executive order banning “critical race theory in the classroom." During Biden’s presidency, some right-wing media figures called for the end of Black history curriculum, with one Fox News personality calling it a “Trojan horse.”

Black history courses in public schools may be on the chopping block

* On January 29, Trump signed an executive order blocking federal funding for schools that teach “gender ideology and critical race theory in the classroom.” The executive order, “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” also reinstates the 1776 Commission, which promotes Republicans’ vision of “patriotic education." Politico, [1/29/25; MSNBC; 1/30/25]

• • While testifying before a Senate committee, McMahon declined to confirm whether public schools could still legally offer Black history courses or school clubs based on race or ethnicity. McMahon refused to give a straight answer when Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) asked if a public school could lose federal funding if it allowed identity clubs, claiming she didn’t want to address “hypothetical situations." Responding to further questioning about whether Black history courses would violate Trump’s executive order, McMahon replied, “I'm not quite certain.” NPR, [2/13/25]

• • In January 2023, right-wing media celebrated Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ decision to block the College Board’s AP African American Studies course due to its supposed lack of “educational value." DeSantis’ action came on the heels of a concentrated outrage campaign over critical race theory. Media Matters, [1/25/23; 8/3/21]

* ## Right-wing media have demonized African American history instruction in public schools for years

• • Daily Wire host Matt Walsh argued that courses on African American history should not not be offered “at all.” Walsh: “Any kind of African American history or studies, that should not be a course that is offered or presented in grade school, in public schools. It shouldn't be there at all.” Daily Wire, *The Matt Walsh Show*, [1/25/23]

• • Fox News host Jesse Watters said, “The Trojan horse is a Black history AP high school class." A chyron airing throughout the segment read: “AP history course stuffed with CRT.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [1/24/23]

* Watters said Black history after the 1950s shouldn’t be taught because “it’s all activism." Watters: “You get to about 1960 in here and it's all activism. It's all ideology. It's no history. A good chunk is really good stuff, and then it goes into white supremacy, patriarchy, abolish the prisons, overthrow capitalism, queer theory, intersectionality." Fox News, *The Five*, [1/24/23]

• • Fox host Sean Hannity defended DeSantis's ban on AP African American Studies: “I think what they're trying to do is indoctrinate kids.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [1/25/23]

• • Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo commended DeSantis’ ban of AP African American Studies, saying that the course was “being used as a Trojan horse to push, again, ideology." He also criticized the courses as being a “disservice to our kids and to African Americans.” Fox News, *Faulkner Focus*, [1/24/23]

• • Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth claimed that lessons discussing Black and LGBTQ history were proof that public schools are “radicalizing your children.” Hegseth specifically complained about lessons titled, “Black Women,” “Diversity," “Black Families," and “Black Villages." Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [2/2/24]

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12 24 see hurric NC BS fema

Joe Biden addresses America’s ‘original sin’ of slavery on Angola visit

US president remembers 'stolen men and women and children brought to our shores' and lauds American investment in country.

.

1 week ago](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/03/us-history-of-enslavement-in-spotlight-joe-biden-angola)

[

BBC

Biden in Angola: US president 'proud' to be there for unprecedented visit

US President Joe Biden has said he is “very proud to be the first American president visiting Angola” at the start of talks with his...

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3rqlwlxxpeo)

==

===

thom

• The Recession Racket: Musk, Trump, and the Billionaires’ Blueprint for Profit

-- Trump calls for Cheney's execution - by firing squad

-- Crazy Weird Alert! Tucker Carlson says a demon attack while he was sleeping and left him bleeding with ‘claw mark’ scars...Can it get any stranger?

-- A pregnant teenager died because she was pregnant and ill - she was turned away by 3 emergency rooms

-- Rudy says what Republicans across the country mumble under their breath about the Black Haitian immigrants...

-- The national archives are removing displays and information about MLK, etc., because it may upset Republican legislators...say what?

-- This is what LeBron James posted on X about Trump

-- Europe’s Greens ask Jill Stein to pull out of US election to prevent Trump victory10 24

==

AN 7 24

Do you know about Donald J. Trump’s Executive Order 13950? If you don’t, be afraid. Be very afraid.

Just weeks before he was fired by America’s voters in 2020, President Trump issued this piece of nastiness which was quickly rescinded by just-inaugurated President Biden.

The Executive Order is a “DCL,” what the right-wing brilliantly calls a, “Divisive Concepts Law.” These DCL’s terrorize teachers with the threat of losing their jobs if they dare teach the truth of America’s racial history: That white people enslaved Africans, that the Klan enforced racial vote suppression with the hanging rope. And God forbid, they teach that women were banned from the vote until the 20th Century. The Executive Order bans teaching any historical facts if,

“….any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex….”

As a practical matter, it means teaching the truth of America’s racial stain will get you fired. In 2021, Tennessee high school teacher Matt Hawn lost his job because a student accused him of teaching—cover your children’s ears—“Critical Race Theory.” Hawn said he’d never heard of Critical Race Theory when he was canned.

(Critical Race Theory, taught in law schools, says many of America’s laws and their enforcement, contain a racial bias. Well, D’oh!].

On Thursday, Vice-President Harris told the American Federation of Teachers convention in Houston, epicenter of the anti-CRT hysteria,

“While you teach students about our nation's past, these extremists attack the freedom to learn and acknowledge our nation's true and full history; including book bans! Book bans — in this year 2024! Just think about it: we want to ban assault weapons and they want to ban books.”

It was a century ago, that Tennessee was the laughingstock of the nation for prosecuting a schoolteacher for telling his class about human evolution, a story recounted in the film, Inherit the Wind. Now, a hundred years later, Trumpsters are again passing wind over Tennessee.

And he’s baaaaack! Trump has put his fixation with censoring “divisive concepts” into the GOP platform. Details are provided in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 master plan for the master race.

This ill wind originated in Georgia when Gov. Brian Kemp signed HB1084, threatening the jobs of teachers for teaching ‘divisive concepts’ that could make a white child feel “discomfort.”

Who would feel “discomfort” about the uncensored history of Georgia? Well, maybe it’s Gov. Kemp himself. Because it was the Kemp family, then known as the Habershams, that first brought Africans in chains to Georgia.

Maybe Kemp and family should feel a bit of discomfort. I spoke with Janie Banse, who told me she is she is heartsick that her cousin, Gov. Kemp, won’t admit that their family’s wealth originated in the African slave trade. Kemp’s ancestors held the largest auction of human beings in American history, still remembered by Black Georgians today as “Weeping Time,” when 436 men, women and their children were separated and sold.

Georgia’s HB 1084, passed in 2022,

Prohibit[s] the use of curricula that addresses the topics of slavery, racial oppression, racial segregation, or racial discrimination, including topics relating to the enactment and enforcement of laws resulting in racial oppression, segregation, and discrimination in a professionally and academically appropriate manner and without espousing personal political beliefs;

And what if a teacher expresses a personal distaste for slavery?

Since Georgia was among the first to pass a “DCL,” and at least 16 states have followed.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis, dubbed his DCL the “Stop WOKE Act.”

He banned the College Board’s AP African American Studies course and supported new Black history standards that include the requirement to teach, “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

I can’t make this up.

Since 2021, at least 27 states have imposed or proposed bans or restrictions on teaching topics related to race and gender. Mississippi, Alabama, Arizona and Oklahoma all passed these Divisive Concepts laws. What do these states have in common? According to rankings by US News and World Report, they are all in the nation’s bottom third in educational achievement. Apparently, they won’t teach uncensored history—but then, it’s not clear that they teach much history at all.

Trump’s DLC brigade is not just putting a blindfold over students regarding slavery and Jim Crow. Oklahoma’s Divisive Concepts Law has effectively silenced the true story of the state that was once known officially as, “Indian Territory.”

Jim Gray, former Principal Chief of the Osage Nation, told me that teachers throughout the state have been yanking copies of David Grann’s book Killers of the Flower Moon off their classroom shelves. Killers, on which the Martin Scorsese/Leonardo DiCaprio movie is based, tells the true story about how, in the 1920s, over 100 Oklahoma Osage were murdered for their oil rights.

The insidious brilliance of the Oklahoma law is that it has a fuzzy general prohibition on “divisive” concepts—with teachers facing loss of their teaching credentials and the entire school district losing funding. Because teachers have to guess which books or films will get them fired, the result is mass self-censorship, with Killers culled from classrooms across the state.

A RAND corporation study found that a breathtaking two out of three K-12 teachers, “have decided on their own to limit instruction about political and social issues in the classroom.” Can you blame them?

Any student or parent can put a legal gun to a school principal’s head. But when the law says, “students,” as a practical matter, they don’t mean young kids on the Reservation. Every year, on April 22, Oklahoma celebrates “Sooner Rush Day”, the day in 1889, when any white man could simply stand on a plot of land and seize the surrounding 160 acres of what was, by treaty, Indian Territory. Indigenous kids have to re-enact the theft of their property whether they feel discomfort or not.

I have included this story of the Sooner Rush land grab in my documentary, Long Knife: the Osage Nation, Koch Oil and the new Killers of the Flower Moon. And for that alone, says Chief Gray, the chance it will screen in an Oklahoma school, even a state university, is zilch.

But some states are not shy about creating Black Lists of books to ban. Assigning anti-racist classics Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird, could kill a teacher’s career. PEN America counted 3,132 books banned in nine states in the 2022-23 school year.

Cui Bono? Who benefits from historical amnesia? Kemp alone was not the only white boy to make his fortune from a slaver’s whip. Historic amnesia is a profit center covering many historic misdeeds from Jim Crow to union busting to corporate corruption.

I found this out when I was physically ejected from the Georgia Historical Society in Savannah. I was having a polite interview with the Society’s in-house historian, Dr. Stan Deaton, who was explaining that the Klan took over control of the South when, in 1876, Republicans lost both the popular vote and the Electoral vote—yet a pact between the Klan-backed Southern Democrats and northern Republicans used a sly maneuver to overturn the vote and install the GOP candidate as President. It came down to one official, Dr. Deaton noted, then added, “We saw Mike Pence in that situation recently.”

The second the historian uttered the words, “Mike Pence,” the door flew open and the Society’s PR man halted the interview and expelled me from the building, saying, “We have to protect the new corporate donors on our board.”

I was curious. Who were these “donors” needing protection from history? I found their gala dinner on YouTube with their tuxedoed corporate money men: Georgia Pacific (owned by Koch Industries), Home Depot (owned by right-wing union buster Ken Langone), and Southern Company, whom I investigated some years ago for racketeering and the inexplicable death of whistleblowers. And the Chairman of the Historical Society? Gov. Brian Kemp.

Just below Savannah, at the Kemp family’s old plantation, I spoke with caretaker and Councilman Griffin Lotson whose own great-grandmother was sold at Weeping Time by Kemp’s progenitors.

Lotson emphasizes the connection between this legally enforced historical amnesia and the fight for voting rights. He says, “Suppressing history is suppressing the vote.”

Back in Oklahoma, the current Principal Chief of the Osage, Geoffrey Standing Bear, explained that if Oklahoma were to admit that its “Sooner Rush” was simply theft from the indigenous owners of the land, then it would force open eyes to what he calls, the “military occupation [of Native land] that continues today.”

Napoleon famously said, “History is a set of lies agreed upon.” Trump’s DCL crusade sees history as a set of truths silenced.

*Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers including The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. His latest film is Vigilantes Inc.: America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen to be released in September. GregPalast.com

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===

an 7 24

A controversial campaign tactic is backfiring on former President Donald Trump as powerful celebrities warn of an imminent authoritarian regime that could put an end to "recreational sex" as part of a "fascistic game plan," according to a new political analysis.

Actors Taraji P. Henson and Mark Ruffalo, and Last Week Tonight host John Oliver have managed a novel political feat this summer with warnings about Trump's potential return to the

White House: they've made millions of Americans care about campaign platforms, Salon reported Friday.

"Swing voters and people who aren't sure yet if they're going to vote are starting to hear about this 'Project 2025' — and they do not like it," writes columnist Amanda Marcotte.

"Trump's campaign likely went with scary-sounding names on purpose, both to thrill their sadistic foot soldiers and to cause liberals to react fearfully. But those monikers also make them memorable enough to break into the consciousness of people who aren't paying close attention."

Project 2025— a platform crafted by the Heritage Foundation whose president this week delivered veiled threats of bloody revolution — is described by Marcotte as "a laundry list of the far-right's most politically toxic ideas" that includes a nationwide abortion ban, mass federal firings and the dismantling of the Education department.

It was unusual for Trump's campaign to come forward with so blatant a policy shift, but not that surprising, writes Marcotte. She likens MAGA to a man who pinches a woman's butt at a bar then calls her hysterical when she reacts.

"Authoritarian thought leader Christopher Rufo is the most prominent example," says Marcotte. "He frequently speaks loudly of his machinations, such as boldly announcing on Twitter that the right is trying to take away birth control, claiming women should not have 'recreational sex.'"

The benefit, Marcotte argues, is that it fires up Trump's base while making his nay-sayers sound deranged — and she points as proof to one of the former president's favorite phrases: "Trump derangement syndrome."

There's just one problem, argues, Marcotte: It only works if Americans don't pay close attention.

"However, there are promising signs that people who aren't political junkies are starting to hear about Project 2025," writes Marcotte. "Even better, those folks aren't immediately dismissing it as progressive theatrics but may be genuinely alarmed."

Marcotte credits Henson and her viral speech at the BET Awards last weekend for the sudden focus on Trump's policy promises.

"The Project 2025 plan is not a game," Henson told viewers. "Look it up!"

Ruffalo shared Henson's speech on X and added, "Project 2025 is not a game, it’s white Christian nationalism. It is the Sharia Law of the “Christian” crazy people who aren’t Christian at all but want to control every aspect of your life."

The fact-checking team Snopes reports it has received a "flood" on inquiries about Project 2025 — which has begun to surge on Google Trends.

"One of the most telling signs that this is beginning to backfire on Trump, however, is the way the MAGA forces on social media are starting to freak out," Marcotte writes. "As Democratic activist and researcher Will Stancill pointed out, the MAGA people who pretend to be leftists to sow confusion online are busy at work trying to pretend Project 2025 is, uh, a Biden thing."

The freak out stems from the fear that Project 2025 could prove fatal to Trump's campaign, Marcotte concludes.

"Trump cannot win without a large percentage of voters backing him under the false belief he's 'not so bad,'" she writes. "The more they find out about what he intends to do in office, the more will have second thoughts about risking another Trump term."

===

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yikes trump = offense = fascism

AN 12 23 thom 3

if Trump is re-elected, he’d be America’s 47th president, so he’s named the plans for his second term “Agenda 47.” At best, it’s a dystopian nightmare: at worst it means ending our current system of American government; aligning the US with Russia and other autocratic nations; and the USA leading the charge against democracy and in favor of authoritarian, strong-man forms of government across the world.

Over at his website, Trump lays out the details of his governing agenda, complete with short videos promoting each of the steps he plans to take. They, and his many statements about future plans, include:

Part of Agenda 47, Trump says, is “finishing the job” he started as president between 2017 and 2021.

Just two hours after he and Pence were sworn into office, they removed all mention of LGBTQ+ issues from the White House website.

Two days later, his State Department deleted former Secretary of State John Kerry’s apology to the nation for the “Lavender Scare” government persecution of gays and lesbians during the McCarthy era 1950s and early 1960s. A month later, Trump’s Justice Department announced they’d no longer defend the civil rights of trans kids.

His Education and HUD offices both withdrew their court defenses of queer people, particularly students and those in homeless shelters, and his Secretary of State refused to mention to the Russian Foreign Minister the detention and brutal executions of gay men by Russian soldiers in Chechnya. On May 4, 2017 Trump signed an executive order letting the DOJ ignore claims of illegal discrimination against queer people and women throughout every single one of the nation’s federal agencies.

In September, 2017, Trump’s Secretary of Education, billionaire Betsy DeVos, officially ended that agency’s Title IX guidance requiring schools to do something about sexual harassment, including sexual violence, against women and LGBTQ+ kids. In response to a question from the media about the change in policy and gay men, Trump said that his Vice President “wants to hang them all.”

In January of 2018, Trump rolled out the “Division of Conscience and Religious Freedom” at HHS, which would backstop people who wanted to use the excuse of “deeply held religious beliefs” to justify explicit discrimination against queer people and women, or to simply to make life difficult for government agencies.

All of this is just the beginning. The Human Rights Campaign has documented page after page of anti-queer policies put into effect by Trump that will be resurrected and put on steroids in a second term.

In the Agenda 47 section of his website, Trump explains how he’s going to use our schools and colleges to indoctrinate young Americans in rightwing ideology. He explicitly says:

“When I return to the White House, I will fire the radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics. We will then accept applications for new accreditors who will impose real standards on colleges once again and once and for all.”

Any colleges that continue to teach “under the guise of [racial] equity will not only have their endowment taxed, but through budget reconciliation, I will advance a measure to have them fined up to the entire amount of their endowment.”

In other words, just like Viktor Orbán did in Hungary and Putin did in Russia, he’s going to bankrupt the nation’s schools and colleges if they continue to teach the true history of America and promote egalitarian values. As Trump notes at his website:

“[W]e are going to get this anti-American insanity out of our institutions once and for all.”

Back in the 1970s, Richard Nixon said he was going to use “impoundment” to strip funding from agencies his donors didn’t like, claiming that, even though Congress had appropriated budgets for them, he could, as head of the Executive Branch, simply “impound” the money and refuse to spend it. His plan to remake the federal government was interrupted by Watergate.

In 1974, Democrats in Congress got together and passed legislation outlawing this and Jerry Ford signed it into law. But Trump’s lawyers apparently think they can get it overturned through their appointees on the courts or even, if they can take both branches of Congress, through new legislation. As Trump says on his website:

“I will use the president’s long-recognized Impoundment Power to squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy for massive savings.”

Since the fossil fuel companies, banks, refineries, anti-union big employers, and their billionaires who fund the GOP hate all of these agencies, it’ll be a bonanza for them.

Not so much for working people, retirees, and those of us concerned about a livable future environment for our kids and grandkids, though.

First, he wants to make it illegal for the federal government’s security services to notify social media platforms about Russian disinformation and other foreign efforts to swing elections, since nearly 100% of those efforts are coming from authoritarian countries in support of Trump and against democracy.

“I will ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as “mis-” or “dis-information,” Trump proclaims on his Agenda 47 website.

He also wants to force social media to carry his buddy Putin’s trolls’ lies and attempts to pit Americans against each other, and limit the companies’ ability to label or block lies and propaganda. As Trump puts it:

“I will ask Congress to send a bill to my desk revising Section 230 to get big online platforms out of censorship business.”

In Hungary, one way Viktor Orbán got rid of actual news media and replaced the ownership of all the nation’s major radio and TV networks, websites, and newspapers was by changing the libel laws so that public figures (like Orbán himself) could sue for libel when they thought they were treated unfairly.

They then sued company after company, commentator after commentator, reporter after reporter, into bankruptcy.

Orbán’s rightwing buddies could buy the media properties out of bankruptcy which is why now virtually all the media in Hungary is like Fox “News,” broadcasting suck-ups to Orbán and criticism of “liberals,” immigrants, and gays 24/7.

Trump wants to do the same here in the US.

When Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury came out with some unflattering characterizations of Trump in it, the then-president said:

“We are going to take a strong look at our country’s libel laws so that when somebody says something that is false and defamatory about someone, that person will have meaningful recourse in our courts. And if somebody says something that’s totally false and knowingly false, that the person that has been abused, defamed, libeled, will have meaningful recourse.”

Simply reporting on what Trump’s up to could bring lawsuits that would bankrupt even the Times or the Post, and, like in Hungary and Russia, pretty much end the existence of a free and independent press in America.

Trump has promised to pardon the January 6th insurrectionists who tried to murder the Vice President and Speaker of the House (and whose actions led to the death of four police officers), and put into place a national “stop and frisk” law that upends the 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

It would also — like Duterte in the Philippines who executed over 10,000 people during his reign of terror — authorize the federal government to immediately execute anybody convicted of trafficking in drugs without further due process or appeals.

Republicans in Texas have already pioneered using vigilantes to hunt down women who’ve had abortions and the people who’ve helped them. Expect these vigilante-enforced laws to spread across the country with a second Trump administration, with groups like the Proud Boys and III Percenters becoming the modern-day equivalent of the old west’s 19th century bounty hunters.

In a flashback to Hitler’s “work camps” that preceded the death camps by five years, Trump’s also proposed building concentration camps around the country to house “millions” of undocumented aliens and his political enemies. As he noted in a speech on Veterans’ Day this year:

“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” adding that Russia isn’t a problem. Instead, he said, “the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”

Presumably that means people like me and you, who would oppose his fascist agenda.

Way back in 1881, a man named Charles Guiteau thought he’d properly bribed President James Garfield by giving the president, during an in-person visit in the White House, a speech he’d written for Garfield to use. Garfield was polite but didn’t offer Guiteau a federal speechwriter’s job, which provoked a murderous rage: shortly thereafter, Guiteau met Garfield’s train and shot him twice, killing him.

The explicit and institutionalized practice of exchanging gifts and personal loyalty for federal jobs dated back to the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829-1837), arguably the second-most depraved president in American history behind Trump (which is probably why Trump hung his picture in the Oval Office; Jackson’s favorite nickname for himself — given him by the Cherokee he slaughtered — was “The Indian Killer”).

Jackson had elevated the practice of bribing the president — himself, at the time — to get federal jobs into an art-form: it was called the “spoils” or patronage system and was insanely corrupt. It was also, by Garfield’s presidency in 1881, routine.

After Guiteau failed to gain his “spoil” or “patronage” from Garfield and killed him, President Chester Arthur oversaw the writing and passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883.

It separated all those government jobs from the administration in power, turning federal workers from patrons of the president into permanent bureaucrats, whose first loyalty was to the nation instead of the guy who happened to be in the White House at any particular time.

It also explicitly outlawed bribing the president for a job. The goal, which it accomplished and has held for 140 years, was to end corruption in the bureaucratic branches of the federal government.

Donald Trump wants to functionally end the Civil Service system and replace the top levels of the nation’s 2.7 million federal workers with people loyal exclusively to himself.

He tried to do this in the last months of his presidency through an October 21, 2020 executive order, Schedule F, (which Biden reversed on his first day in office) that reclassified those workers out of their Civil Service jobs and into political appointee positions, doing the same work but now entirely dependent on the good will of the president to keep their jobs.

The next Republican administration will almost certainly put Schedule F back into force, reestablishing the 1829 spoils system for the federal government, and ending any possibility that people in the government will push back against Trump the way they did during his presidency.

The Department of Justice was established by President Ulysses S. Grant after the Civil War, in part to enforce federal laws protecting the rights of people who’d recently been freed from slavery.

After Richard Nixon tried to use it against his enemies (and his Attorney General, John Mitchell, went to prison for his efforts), Congress in 1978 passed the Ethics in Government Act which put a wall of separation between the DOJ and the White House.

Trump has explicitly proclaimed his intention to tear that wall down and go farther than Nixon ever imagined in using our armed investigative services for personal revenge and harassment of people he perceives as his enemies.

He wants the nation’s premiere police agencies to become his own personal enforcers, and has already said they will be hunting down “liberals,” Black Lives Matter protest participants, and Joe Biden, his family, and members of his administration.

He wants to imprison them, as well as the prosecutors and judges who have been participating in the effort to hold him to account for the crimes he committed over the past 7 years.

This politicization of law enforcement has been a first-order and primary feature of every authoritarian or totalitarian regime that’s risen to power over the past few hundred years, worldwide. It’s always one of the first things fascist leaders do when they seize power.

In an apparent attempt to portray himself as a visionary like JFK, with his promise to send men to the moon and bring them back safely, Trump is promising to build “freedom cities” in his second term. The main feature he’s discussed is that people will get around in them in “flying cars.”

While it’s being portrayed as a goofy stunt designed to make him seem like an imaginative idealist, in fact there has been a movement among rightwing billionaires for some time to create cities that they basically run as little feudal fiefdoms, the same way the morbidly rich run their companies and their football teams.

Some libertarian billionaires assert that the only reason there’s never been a successful libertarian nation in the history of the world is because true libertarianism — government doing nothing but running the police, army, and courts and everything else left to private charity and business owners — “has never been tried.”

The ”freedom cities” could be a new libertarian experiment, or they may be the 21st century version of the old “company town,” where nobody has rights or protection of the law but is subject to the whims of the local billionaire owner. A group backed by Silicon Valley billionaires has already put forward what appears to be a plan to build a new city in California that they may or may not envision running along these lines. The group has so far purchased more than 53,000 acres of land, an area larger than the entire city of Beaumont, Texas, or Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Trump is also promising that he’ll end the brutal attacks against Ukraine on “day one” by simply turning the country over to his good friend, Vladimir Putin.

For the first time since World War II, this would legitimize a nation attacking another nation simply to seize their land, resources, and people.

It would greenlight China to do the same with Taiwan, and encourage every other tinpot dictator in the world to grab nearby territory that he wants. It would encourage war, and could very easily lead to a world war.

Abandoning Ukraine like this, along with Trump’s oft-stated preference to leave or end NATO and stop support for the UN, would lead the autocracies of the world — particularly Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and North Korea — to destroy the democracies in their sphere of influence, replacing those democracies with strongman autocracies.

The democratic experiment on this planet is only 250 years old, more or less, and this would signal a return to the way the world had been ruled for the 7,000 years prior to that: by kings, popes, mullahs, strongman warlords, and the morbidly rich.

Between Agenda 47 and Project 2025, Donald Trump and the rightwing billionaires who own the GOP have big plans for this nation, regardless of which Republican takes the White House next. They’re dead serious and far more well-funded than any of the groups that fight for and advocate democracy.

If you thought it can’t happen here, I have an old Sinclair Lewis book to share with you.

Triple check your voter registration, especially if you live in a Red state where the voter purges have already begun, and make sure everybody you know is registered to vote.

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an 5 24

at Texas GOP convention, Republicans call for spiritual warfare]

(https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/28/texas-gop-convention-elections-religion-delegates-platform/)" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

SAN ANTONIO — From his booth in the exhibit hall of the Texas GOP’s 2024 convention, Steve Hotze saw an army of God assembled before him.

For four decades, Hotze, an indicted election fraud conspiracy theorist, has helmed hardline anti-abortion movements and virulently homophobic campaigns against LGTBQ+ rights, comparing gay people to Nazis and helping popularize the “groomer” slur that paints them as pedophiles. Once on the fringes, Hotze said Saturday that he was pleased by the party's growing embrace of his calls for spiritual warfare with “demonic, Satanic forces” on the left.

/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/ee33b4da54577749111fe238d8b0bd90/0905%20Impeach%20Trial%20Day%201%20BD%20TT%2013.jpg)

From left: Conservative activists Steven Hotze and Jared Woodfill enter the Senate gallery during the afternoon session of Day 1 of the Ken Paxton impeachment trial in the Texas Senate on Sept. 5, 2023. Credit: Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune

“People that aren’t in Christ have wicked, evil hearts,” he said. “We are in a battle, and you have to take a side.”

Those beliefs were common at the party’s three-day biennial convention last week, at which delegates adopted a series of new policies that would give the party unprecedented control over the electoral process and further infuse Christianity into public life.

Delegates approved rules that ban Republican candidates — as well as judges — who are censured by the party from appearing on primary ballots for two years, a move that would give a small group of Republicans the ability to block people from running for office, should it survive expected legal challenges. The party’s proposed platform also included planks that would effectively lock Democrats out of statewide office by requiring candidates to win a majority of Texas’ 254 counties, many of which are dark-red but sparsely populated, and called for laws requiring the Bible to be taught in public schools.

Those moves, delegates and leaders agreed, were necessary amid what they say is an existential fight with a host of perceived enemies, be it liberals trying to indoctrinate their children through “gender ideology” and Critical Race Theory, or globalists waging a war on Christianity through migration.

/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/da9c4842dbc8e8cb35ddbcee11590f3b/0523%20GOP%20Convention%20EH%20TT%2031.jpg)

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick speaks during the Texas GOP Convention on Thursday, May 23, 2024 in San Antonio. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune

Those fears were stoked by elected officials in almost every speech given over the week. “They want to take God out of the country, and they want the government to be God,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Thursday morning.

“Our battle is not against flesh and blood,” Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, said Friday. “It is against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

”Look at what the Democrats have done,” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said Saturday. “If you were actively trying to destroy America, what would you do differently?”

*[“The house is on fire”: Texas GOP plots its next chapter amid civil war, depleted staff, funding drops]

Controlling elections

The Texas GOP’s conventions have traditionally amplified the party’s most hardline activists and views. In 2022, for instance, delegates approved a platform that included calls for a referendum on Texas secession; resistance to the “Great Reset,” a conspiracy theory that claims global elites are using environmental and social policies to enslave the world’s population; proclamations that homosexuality is an “abnormal lifestyle choice”; and a declaration that President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected.

The 2024 convention went a step further.

It was the first Texas GOP convention set against the backdrop of a civil war that was sparked by the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton and inflamed by scandals over white supremacists and antisemites working for the party’s top funders:{, West Texas oil billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. This year’s convention was also sparsely attended compared to past years, which some longtime party members said helped the Dunn and Wilks faction further consolidate their power and elect their candidate, Abraham George, for party chair.}:

“What we're seeing right now is a shift toward more populism,” said Summer Wise, a former member of the party’s executive committee who has attended most conventions since 2008, including last week’s. “And the [party’s] infrastructure, leadership, decision-making process, power and influence are being controlled by a small group of people.”

(https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/_X93OkVqWjKf0MF0YqIovXarXM4=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/37d777dfbb61f282f112bd04a575cbbc/0523%20GOP%20Convention%20EH%20TT%2055.jpg)

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, wave to attendees during the Republican Party of Texas convention in San Antonio on Thursday, May 23, 2024. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune

That shift was most evident, she said, in a series of changes to the party’s rules that further empower its leaders to punish dissent. The party approved changes that would dramatically increase the consequences of censures — which were used most recently to punish House Speaker Dade Phelan for his role in impeaching Paxton, and against U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales for voting for gun safety legislation.

Under the changes, any person who is censured by the party would be banned for two years from appearing on GOP primary ballots — including judges, who are elected in partisan races but expected to be politically neutral once on the bench. The party also voted to unilaterally close its primaries, bypassing the Legislature, in a move intended to keep Democrats from voting in Republican primaries.

“It’s pretty hypocritical,” Wise said of the changes, which legal experts and some party members expect will face legal challenges. “Republicans have always opposed activist judges, and this seems to be obligating judges to observe and prioritize party over law — which is straight-up judicial activism.”

The convention came amid a broader embrace of Christian nationalism on the right, which falsely claims that the United States’ founding was God-ordained and that its institutions and laws should reflect their conservative, Christian views. Experts have found strong correlations between Christian nationalist beliefs and opposition to migration, religious pluralism and the democratic process.

*[Proposed Texas GOP platform calls for the Bible in schools, electoral changes that would lock Democrats out of statewide office]

Wise said she has seen parts of the party similarly shift toward dogmatic political and religious views that have been used “to justify or rationalize corrupting the institution and stripping away its integrity, traditions, fundamental and established principles" — as if “‘God wants it, so we can rewrite the rules.’”

“Being Republican and being Christian have become the same thing,” she said. “If you're accused of being a (Republican in Name Only), you're essentially not as Christian as someone else. … God help you if you're Jewish.”

The “rabbit hole”

Bob Harvey is a proud member of the “Grumpy Old Men’s Club,” a group in Montgomery County that he said pushes back against Fox News and other outlets that he claims have been infiltrated by RINOs.

“People trust Fox News, and they need to get outside of that and find alternative news and like-minded people,” Harvey, 71, said on Friday, as he waited in a long line to meet Kyle Rittenhouse, who has ramped up his engagement in Texas politics since he was acquitted of homicide after fatally shooting two Black Lives Matter protesters.

Rather, Harvey’s group recommends places such as the Gateway Pundit, Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News or the Epoch Times, a far-right website that also had a booth at this year’s convention and is directly linked to the Falun Gong, a hardline anti-communist group.

Such outlets, Harvey said, are crucial to getting people “further down the rabbit hole,” after which they can begin to connect the dots between the deep-state that has spent years attacking former President Donald Trump, and the agenda of the left to indoctrinate kids through the Boy Scouts of America, public schools and the Democratic Party.

Harvey’s views were widely-held by his fellow delegates, many of whom were certain that broader transgender acceptance, Critical Race Theory or “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives were parts of a sinister plot to destroy the country and take over its churches.

The culprits behind the ploy differed — Democrats, socialists or “globalists,” to name a few. But their nefarious end goals loomed over the convention. Fearing a transgender takeover of the Republican Party of Texas, delegates pushed to explicitly stipulate that the party’s chair and vice chair must be “biological” men or women.

At events to recruit pastors and congregations to ramp up their political activism, elected leaders argued that churches were the only thing standing between evil and children. And the party’s proposed platform included planks that claim gender-transition care is child abuse, or urge new legislation in Texas that's "even more comprehensive" than Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits the teaching of sexual orientation or gender identity in public schools.

/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/8fc7586ac950819feeeabb4760560fb8/0523%20GOP%20Convention%20EH%20TT%2072.jpg)

Kyle Rittenhouse shakes hands with conventioneers at a meet and greet during the Texas GOP convention on Thursday in San Antonio. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune

“Our next generation is being co-opted and indoctrinated where they should have been educated,” Rep. Nate Schatzline, R-Fort Worth, said at a Friday luncheon for pastors and churches. “We are in a spiritual battle. This isn't a political one.”

For at least a half-century, conservative Christian movements have been fueled by notions of a shadowy and coordinated conspiracy to destroy America, said Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University who focuses on movements to put the Bible in public schools.

“It's like the boogeyman that won't go away, that gets summoned whenever a justification is needed for these types of agendas,” he said. “They say that somebody is threatening quintessential American freedoms, and that these threats are posed by some sort of global conspiracy — rather than just recognizing that we're a pluralistic democracy.”

In the 1950s, such claims were the driving force behind the emergence of groups such as the John Birch Society, a hardline anti-communist group whose early members included the fathers of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Trump. After decades of dwindling influence, the society has seen a revival since Trump's 2016 election. And in the exhibit hall last week, so-called Birchers passed out literature and pamphlets that detailed the New World Order's secret plans for "world domination."

Steve Oglesby, field director for the Birch Society's North Texas chapter, said interest and membership in the group has been on the rise in recent years — particularly, as COVID-19 lockdowns and international climate change initiatives have spurred right-wing fears of an international cabal working against the United States.

"COVID really helped," he said, adding that the pandemic proved the existence of a global elite that has merely shifted its tactics since the 1950s. “It’s not just communism — it’s the people pulling the strings.”

Throughout the week, prominent Republicans invoked similar claims of a coordinated conspiracy against the United States. On Friday, Patrick argued that a decadeslong decline in American religion was part of a broader, “Marxist socialist left” agenda to “create chaos,” including through migration — despite studies showing that migrants are overwhelmingly Christian. Attorney General Ken Paxton echoed those claims in his own speech minutes later, saying migration was part of a plan to "steal another election."

“The Biden Administration wants the illegals here to vote,” he said.

/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/f65ff0a8564b0acdb321e69bd3b233c7/0523%20GOP%20Convention%20EH%20TT%2011.jpg)

Ella Maulding and Konner Earnest watch as Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick speaks during the Republican Party of Texas convention in San Antonio on Thursday, the first day of the gathering. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune

As Paxton continued, Ella Maulding and Konner Earnest held hands and nodded their approval from the convention hall’s front row. Last year, the two were spotted outside of a Tarrant County office building where Nick Fuentes, a prominent white nationalist and Adolf Hitler fan, was hosted for nearly seven hours by Jonathan Stickland, then the leader of Dunn and Wilks' most powerful political action committee. They eventually lost their jobs after The Texas Tribune reported on their ties to Fuentes or white nationalist groups.

Maulding has been particularly vocal about her support for Great Replacement Theory, a conspiracy theory that claims there is an intentional, often Jewish-driven, effort to replace white people through migration, LGBTQ+ acceptance or interracial marriage. Once a fringe, white nationalist worldview, experts say that Great Replacement Theory has been increasingly mainstreamed as Republican leaders, including some who spoke last week, continue to claim that migration is part of a coordinated effort to aid Democrats. The theory has also been cited by numerous mass shooters, including the gunman who murdered 22 Hispanic people at an El Paso WalMart in 2019.

Five hours after Paxton and Patrick spoke, Maulding took to social media, posting a cartoon of a rabbi with the following text: “I make porn using your children and then make money distributing it under the banner of women’s rights while flooding your nation with demented lunatics who then rape your children.”

David Barton

Kason Huddleston has spent the last few years helping elect Christians and push back against what he believes is indoctrination of children in Rowlett, near Dallas. Far too often, he said, churches and pastors have become complacent, or have been scared away from political engagement by federal rules that prohibit churches from overt political activity.

Through trainings from groups like Christians Engaged, which advocates for church political activity and had a booth at this year’s convention, he said he has been able show more local Christians that they can be “a part of the solution” to intractable societal ills such as fatherlessness, crime or teen drug use. And while he thinks that some of his peers’ existential rhetoric can be overwrought, he agreed that there is an ongoing effort to “tear down the family unit” and shroud America’s true, Christian roots.

“If you look at our government and our laws, all of it goes back to a Judeo-Christian basis,” he said. “Most people don’t know our true history because it’s slowly just been removed.”

He then asked: “Have you ever read David Barton?”

Since the late 1980s, Barton has barnstormed the state and country claiming that church-state separation is a “myth” meant to shroud America’s true founding as a Christian nation. Barton, a self-styled “amateur historian” who served as Texas GOP vice chair from 1997 to 2006, has been thoroughly debunked by an array of historians and scholars — many of them also conservative Christians.

/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/7acf1f2412dd7df9c6f492e50a5f07ee/BD%20INC%20Barton%20David%20748%202012)

David Barton, left, of WallBuilders, at a Texas Eagle Forum reception at the Republican Party of Texas convention in Fort Worth on June 7, 2012. Credit: Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune

Despite that, Barton’s views have become widespread among Republicans, including Patrick, Texas Supreme Court Justice John Devine and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson. And his influence over the party was clear at last week’s convention, where his group, WallBuilders, maintained a booth and delegates frequently cited him.

This year’s platform, the votes for which are expected to be released later this week, included planks that urged lawmakers and the State Board of Education to “require instruction on the Bible, servant leadership and Christian self-governance,” and supports the use of religious chaplains in schools — which was made legal under a law passed by the state Legislature last year.

Warren Throckmorton, a former Grove City College professor and prominent conservative, Christian critic of Barton, told the Tribune that the platform emblematized Barton’s growing influence, and his movement’s conflicting calls to preserve “religious liberty” while attempting to elevate their faith over others. The platform, he noted, simultaneously demands that students’ religious rights be protected, and for schools to be forced to teach the Bible.

“What about the other students who aren’t Christians and who don't believe in the Bible?” he said. “This is not religious liberty — it’s Christian dominance.”

As Zach Maxwell watched his fellow Republicans debate and vote last week, he said he was struck by the frequency and intensity with which Christianity was invoked. Maxwell previously served as chief of staff for former Rep. Mike Lang, then the leader of the ultraconservative Texas House Freedom Caucus, and he later worked for Empower Texans, a political group that was funded primarily by Dunn and Wilks.

He eventually became disillusioned with the party’s right wing, which he said has increasingly been driven by purity tests and opposition to religious or political diversity. This year’s convention, he said, was the culmination of those trends.

“God was not only used as a tool at this convention, but if you didn’t mention God in some way, fake or genuine, I did feel it was seen as distasteful,” he said. “There is a growing group of people who want to turn this nation into a straight-up theocracy. I believe they are doing it on the backs of people who are easily manipulated.”

Nancy Leclerc poses for a photo in front of a GOP elephant statue during the Texas GOP convention in San Antonio on Thursday, May 23, 2024. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/28/texas-gop-convention-elections-religion-delegates-platf

April 30, 2024 rww

• Eric Cortellessa @ Time: How Far Trump Would Go

Donald Trump thinks he’s identified a crucial mistake of his first term: He was too nice.

• Warren Throckmorton: Eric Metaxas Still Using the Fake Bonhoeffer Quote

It is a popular quote and many people still attribute it to Bonhoeffer; but it can’t be found in any of his writings, nor is there a record of it in his sermons or speeches.

• William Vaillancourt @ The Daily Beast: Newsmax Host Eric Bolling Goes Off the Rails Over Biden Eating Salad

President Joe Biden’s eating habits are no longer just the subject of Fox News host Jesse Watters’ invaluable scrutiny, after Newsmax host Eric Bolling grew increasingly angry Monday with the president eating salad at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner over the weekend.

• Alanna Vagianos @ HuffPost: Anti-Abortion Extremist Will Be On The Presidential Ballot In 12 States

Randall Terry, the founder of the far-right group Operation Rescue, has been chosen as the Constitution Party’s presidential nominee for the 2024 election.

• Angry White Men: Speakers At White Nationalist Conference Included Ex-DOJ Official

Over the weekend people gathered at West Virginia’s Berkeley Springs castle to attend a conference held by VDARE — a white nationalist hate group. Speakers at the event included well-known white nationalists and antisemites such as Jared Taylor, Steve Sailer, and Kevin DeAnna. It also included former Department of Justice official John Lott.

• Zachary Leeman @ Mediaite: Conservative Activist Chris Rufo Urges Right to Fuel Pro-Palestine Protests on College Campuses

Conservative activist and author Christopher Rufo declared in his Substack newsletter that pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses are a “disaster” for the left that conservatives should “exploit.”

• Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman @ The New York Times: Trump Wants to Prosecute Biden. He Also Thinks Presidents Deserve Immunity

In arguing to the Supreme Court that he cannot be charged for acts while in office, Donald Trump has asked the justices to enforce a norm that he has long threatened to shatter.

---

aha get rid of racism by cutting it from history textbooks, and stop collecting data:

2025 pjt

an 4 24 tom disp

First Up: Stop Discriminating Against Discriminators

I’m sure you won’t be shocked to learn that the opening salvo of that chapter is an attack on federal measures to reduce employment discrimination based on race or sex.

Its author, Jonathan Berry of the Federalist Society, served in Donald Trump’s Department of Labor (DOL). He begins his list of “needed reforms” with a call to “Reverse the DEI Revolution in Labor Policy.” “Under the Obama and Biden Administrations,” Berry explains, “labor policy was yet another target of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) revolution” under which “every aspect of labor policy became a vehicle with which to advance race, sex, and other classifications and discriminate against conservative and religious viewpoints on these subjects and others, including pro-life views.”

You may wonder what it means to advance “classifications” or why that’s even a problem. Berry addresses this question in his second “necessary” reform, a call to “Eliminate Racial Classifications and Critical Race Theory Trainings.” Those two targets for elimination would seem to carry very different weight. After all, “Critical Race Theory,” or CRT, is right-wing code for the view that structural barriers exist preventing African Americans and other people of color from enjoying the full rights of citizens or residents. It’s unclear that such “trainings” even occur at the Labor Department, under CRT or any other label, so their “elimination” would, in fact, have little impact on workers.

On the other hand, the elimination of “racial classifications” would be consequential for many working people, as Berry makes clear. “The Biden Administration,” he complains, “has pushed ‘racial equity’ in every area of our national life, including in employment, and has condoned the use of racial classifications and racial preferences under the guise of DEI and critical race theory, which categorizes individuals as oppressors and victims based on race.” Pushing racial equity in employment? The horror!

Berry’s characterization of CRT is, in fact, the opposite of what critical race theory seeks to achieve. This theoretical approach to the problem of racism does not categorize individuals at all, but instead describes structures — like corporate hiring practices based on friendship networks — that can disadvantage groups of people of a particular race. In fact, CRT describes self-sustaining systems that do not need individual oppressors to continue (mal)functioning.

The solution to the problem of discrimination in employment in Project 2025’s view is to deny the existence of race (or sex, or sexual orientation) as a factor in the lives of people in this country. It’s simple enough: if there’s no race, then there’s no racial discrimination. Problem solved.

And to ensure that it remains solved, Project 2025 would prohibit the Equal Economic Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, from collecting employment data based on race. The mere existence of such “data can then be used to support a charge of discrimination under a disparate impact theory. This could lead to racial quotas to remedy alleged race discrimination.” In other words, if you can’t demonstrate racial discrimination in employment (because you’re enjoined from collecting data on the subject), then there’s no racial discrimination to remedy. Case closed, right?

By outlawing such data collection, a Republican administration guided by Project 2025 would make it almost impossible to demonstrate the existence of racial disparity in the hiring, retention, promotion, or termination of employees.

:{Right-wingers in my state of California tried something similar in 2003 with Ballot Proposition 54, known as the Racial Privacy Initiative. In addition to employment data, Prop. 54 would have outlawed collecting racial data about public education and, no less crucially, about policing. As a result, Prop. 54 would have made it almost impossible for civil rights organizations to address the danger of “driving while Black” — the disproportionate likelihood that Black people will be the subject of traffic stops with the attendant risk of police violence or even death. Voters soundly defeated Prop. 54 by a vote of 64% to 36% and, yes, racial discrimination still exists in California, but at least we have access to the data to prove it.}:

There is, however, one group of people Project 2025 would emphatically protect from discrimination: employers who, because of their “conservative and religious viewpoints… including pro-life views,” want the right to discriminate against women and LGBTQ people. “The President,” writes Berry, “should make clear via executive order that religious employers are free to run their businesses according to their religious beliefs, general nondiscrimination laws notwithstanding.” Of course, Congress already made it clear that, under Title VII of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, “religious” employers are free to ignore anti-discrimination laws when it suits them....

==

MMA 4 24

Before anti-woke crusader Chris Rufo became a right-wing influencer and leading force driving moral panic around sex education and LGBTQ curriculum in our nation’s schools, his now-defunct nonprofit created a course that assisted students in making films about affirming and supporting gay youth and going through pregnancy in high school. A review of the student films reveal Rufo’s organization was involved in helping students produce the type of content that he now seeks to ban from schools, and he charged them hundreds of dollars for his services.

From 2009 to 2011, Rufo’s nonprofit Documentary Foundation ran a program called Doc School, a “community outreach and education initiative” intended to teach students how to make films on “important local topics” and gain skills necessary for “activism in the community.” (Rufo reportedly closed the foundation last year but not before he funneled at least $1.3 million in dark money to a new right-wing media nonprofit whose stated goal was to reveal “the implications of a far-left ideological takeover.”)

Media Matters reviewed student films posted to Doc School’s apparent Vimeo account — which bears the program’s name, location, and a link to Documentary Foundation’s now-defunct website — and tax filings for his organization, which show Rufo’s nonprofit earned more than $23,000 from the program in its first year.

Doc School student films celebrate gay youth and pregnant teens overcoming adversity

Before Rufo helped influence a Florida law that bars discussion of LGBTQ identity in schools, he and his collaborator Keith Ochwat assisted high school students in making a number of short documentaries highlighting the sorts of experiences Rufo fearmongers about today.

Gay Youth tells the story of a 17-year-old who discovered his sexuality in sixth grade and was removed from school by his parents after he came out. The short ends with an uplifting and affirming message describing how finally being able to come out gave him newfound confidence.

The filmmakers thanked Rufo by name in the credits.

Other films feature underage high schoolers’ descriptions of their experience with sex and pregnancy, as well as sexually explicit descriptions of hazing.

Are You Ready? — A film about Teen Pregnancy features a 17-year-old girl recounting the difficulties of going through pregnancy as a high schooler. The film features discussion of both drug use and considerations about when to first have sex. A copy of the film found on YouTube lists both Doc School and Documentary Foundation as sponsors in the credits.

Another film, Hazing High, features high schoolers recounting their experiences with hazing, including being stripped and forced to consume bodily fluids.

In 2009, Rufo’s nonprofit earned nearly a quarter of its annual income — more than $23,000 — from Doc School

Rufo founded Documentary Foundation in 2007, billing it as an organization “dedicated to the production and support of documentary films.” Along with production and “community outreach,” the nonprofit also claimed its mission included “youth education.”

Youth education took the form of Doc School, which launched in 2009 in partnership with a Northern California PBS affiliate. A flier describing the course listed Rufo and Ochwat as instructors and filmmakers who “enjoy sharing their filmmaking experience with our communityʼs next generation of filmmakers.” Documentary Foundation described Doc School as an “integral part of the Foundationʼs community outreach and education initiative.”

For $390, local high school students met with Rufo and Ochwat every Saturday for two months to make their own documentary shorts. Students were instructed to pay their tuition directly to Rufo’s nonprofit. After the instruction and films were completed, the films were screened at a “Doc School Film Festival.”

According to Documentary Foundation’s 990 form from 2009, Doc School netted the foundation more than $23,000, nearly a quarter of its total revenue for the year. The organization said the program would be offered biannually going forward, and it lasted until 2011, per tax filings.

Rufo went from empowering gay youth to deploying culture warriors against them

Today Rufo endorses a completely different view of how students and teachers should express themselves.

He now insists that K-12 schools are weaponizing “principles of academic queer theory,” which he alleges teachers have translated into “K-12 pedagogy,” and he worked to pass Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits K-12 educators from discussing gender identity, sexual orientation, or reproductive health with students.

Rufo’s crusade has similarly inspired conservative parents and groups to harass and take over local school boards based on the perception that public schools are implementing “woke” curricula and policies.

When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Rufo to the board of trustees of New College of Florida, a public liberal arts college in Sarasota, Rufo pushed to abolish gender studies programs at the school, claiming that “gender studies and queer theory” were “explicitly opposed to the classical conceptions of the true, the good, and the beautiful.”

Rufo recently announced he would be leading a new program to fund the projects of aspiring culture warriors who seek to advance the right’s war on “gender ideology” and issues like “critical race theory” to reshape public policy. Rufo again promised to teach his students important skills for activism. This time around, though, he will be paying them.

4. ### Before stoking fear about LGBTQ inclusion and sex ed in schools, Chris Rufo helped high schoolers produce films about being gay or pregnant

04/04/24

Pagination

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](https://www.mediamatters.org/justice-civil-liberties)

Related

1. ### Outlets like The New Yorker keep giving Chris Rufo a platform to spread dangerous propaganda about LGBTQ people

06/30/22 3:51 PM EDT

2. ### Anti-civil rights activist Chris Rufo has extensive ties to Christian nationalist-led Center for Renewing America

04/03/23 11:25 AM EDT

3. ### Christopher Rufo suggests states establish a “conservative center” in public universities

04/06/22 10:05 AM EDT

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mma 1 24

Right-wing media figures are systematically attacking a variety of initiatives intended to increase racial equity and inclusion in America’s education system. Since 2021, they have attacked or rebranded certain related concepts in order to vilify them: critical race theory; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and affirmative action.

Schools in Oklahoma and Florida are even starting to partner with right-wing media’s PragerU and “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty, which spread conservative propaganda in public schools. These ongoing strategic assaults from right-wing figures and outlets are poised to make education a culture war issue for the 2024 election.

• ## Right-wing media have spent recent years making CRT and DEI in schools into culture war issues

• • Media Matters noted in 2021 that the conservative movement’s strategy took “alleged left-wing excesses in discussions of race” in the classroom and sensationalized these stories for political gain. Media Matters’ Matt Gertz wrote, “This movement’s strategy is to identify, exaggerate, or fabricate discrete local instances of alleged left-wing excesses in discussions of race; dishonestly brand them all as ‘critical race theory’; nationalize coverage of those stories as part of the broader culture war; and polarize the debate for political gain, at times using the issue as justification for changing laws or policies.” Media Matters, [8/3/21]

• • The conservative movement uses a feedback loop between think tanks, advocacy groups, right-wing media, and GOP politicians to fuel its anti-CRT strategy. Right-wing media generated enough noise around the issue to gain further national media coverage, using that attention to create incentives for Republican politicians to change education policy. Media Matters, [6/3/21]

• • :{:{Opposition to critical race theory “might not be the defining strand of this new neo-confederate resistance,” but “no anti-civil rights campaign has ever spread this fast, this effectively}:,” Media Matters observed in 2021. Panic over critical race theory “has become a new battle flag, a very effective catalyst of multiple lost causes driven by veteran right-wing operatives and funded by far-right dark money. It might not be the defining strand of this new neo-confederate resistance -- storming the U.S. Capitol in support of white nationalism is tough to top -- but no anti-civil rights campaign has ever spread this fast, this effectively.” Media Matters, [6/17/21]

}:

• • Fox News fearmongered about CRT, then promoted it as a hot-button issue in the 2021 midterm elections.Fox News whipped up a frenzy over CRT through relentless coverage, inflating its importance as a voting issue. Fox reporter Carley Shimkus even admitted that no one was talking about CRT until the network manufactured the issue. Media Matters, [5/26/21]

• • Chris Rufo, a leading figure behind the CRT scare campaign, has admitted that the “goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’” The frequent right-wing media guest also acknowledged that he doesn’t care about understanding the theory, an academic legal framework examining the impacts of systemic racism. Media Matters, [6/23/21]

• • No Left Turn in Education, a leading anti-critical race theory group, has compared efforts of educators to those of Pol Pot, Vladimir Lenin, and Adolf Hitler. Founder Elana Yaron Fishbein has claimed that “black bigotry towards whites”' is a “very real problem.” The group has also complained that an educational video about George Floyd's death does not cover violence by Black people and promoted anti-LGBTQ rhetoric telling transgender people to go “back to Trans-sylvania.” Media Matters, [6/22/21]

• • :{:{Conservatives succeeded in abolishing DEI programs at public universities in Florida, North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas by collaborating with high-level lawmakers. Bills banning DEI-related programs in these states prohibit “using federal or state funding to support DEI offices or staff at public colleges, mandating diversity training, using diversity statements in hiring and promotion, or using identity-based preferences in hiring and admissions.” Documents obtained by The New York Times “cast light on the playbook and the thinking underpinning one nexus of the anti-D.E.I. movement — the activists and intellectuals who helped shape Texas’ new law, along with measures in at least three other states.” U.S. News & World Report, [8/18/23; The New York Times, 1/20/24]}:
  • }:
• ## Fox News and others in right-wing media have obsessed over CRT since 2021

• • Right-wing media spent 2021 attacking CRT to sow panic among their audience and energize the Republican voting base.Conservatives spun “critical race theory” into a key phrase in the national political landscape, marking a new battle in the unceasing culture wars. Right-wing media and hundreds of right-wing Facebook groups helped, using empty but dangerous and often racist rhetoric to depict CRT as a threat and energize the Republican base. Media Matters, [12/8/21]

• • A Media Matters report found that Fox ran nearly 80 segments on “critical race theory” in a single Virginia school district.The network spent 4 and 1/2 hours of airtime decrying Loudoun County schools for teaching children about critical race theory. School board meetings in Loudoun County, a “bedroom community for GOP activists, analysts, and operatives,” became the targets for mob scenes and racist threats. Media Matters, [7/21/21]

• • Fox News mentioned “critical race theory” over 1,900 times in 3.5 months in 2021, a sharp increase over the preceding months.Media Matters, [6/15/21]

• • Right-wing media and Republican lawmakers overwhelmingly drove talk about critical race theory on Facebook. Media coverage of critical race theory has influenced discussion on right-leaning Facebook news pages as well, with nearly 90% of posts mentioning CRT — and 97% of the interactions the posts earned — coming from right-leaning pages. Media Matters, [5/20/21]

• ## Conservative media fearmongered about CRT as a supposed tool for liberal indoctrination and anti-white racism, often calling to defund colleges and universities where it is taught

• • Fox News host Jesse Watters suggested critical race theory is responsible for deaths of high school students, said “the Trojan horse” in the U.S. education system “is a Black history AP high school class,” and blamed “critical race theory consultants” for school shootings. He asked, “Is it a coincidence that when they start teaching CRT, two kids kill each other in public schools?” In another episode, he suggested CRT distracts from concerns about school safety and “the mental health crisis,” saying, “We’re spending all this money on hiring critical race theory consultants. How about hiring some school therapists instead?” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [11/28/23, 1/24/23, 5/25/22]

• • On his radio show, Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk attempted to mobilize his audience to defund colleges teaching CRT. Kirk urged, “If you are in a red state, you should defund every single one of your colleges and universities if they are teaching DEI, CRT.” Salem, *The Charlie Kirk Show*, [9/20/23]

• • Conservative radio host Mark Levin: CRT is “anti-white racism,” and “Hitler himself would agree with that kind of thinking process.” Levin stated, “If you're promoting critical race theory, which is, at bottom, the promotion of anti-white racism — even if you're not white and you actually love America, you're obviously an anti-white racist between your ears, if not by skin color — but it is a horrific racist ideology.” Westwood One, T*he Mark Levin Show*, [1/23/23]

• • Fox News twisted the truth about funding from Biden’s American Rescue Plan to fearmonger about critical race theory. Fox accused over a dozen blue states including California, Illinois, and New York of using COVID-19 relief funds to promote CRT in schools, using shoddy research from a conservative dark money group to back up its claims. Media Matters, [5/2/22]

• • Citing The Daily Caller, Fox & Friends promoted a false claim that parents in Loudoun County, Virginia, are forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement to learn what their children are being taught in school, suggesting it was tied to CRT. In fact, the county partnered with Second Step, a company that provides materials for social-emotional learning to teach children about conflict resolution and understanding other people. The company’s materials are not a secret, as sample lesson plans and supporting materials are posted on both the school district and the vendor’s websites. Media Matters, [10/26/21]

• • :{:{Right-wing local news conglomerate Sinclair has relentlessly platformed anti-CRT activists and pushed right-wing misrepresentations about critical race theory. Sinclair began circulating conservatives’ distorted views on the topic in the summer of 2021, giving a microphone to right-wing activists Christopher Rufo and Ian Prior in an August town hall debate over CRT. Sinclair’s morning show The National Desk has also repeatedly aired unchecked GOP falsehoods about critical race theory. Media Matters, [8/30/21]}:

*}:

• • Telling parents to pull their kids out of schools, The Daily Wire's Candace Owens said students today are worse than the “Hitler Youth” because they are being taught to hate their country. Owens: “In fact, somebody said to me, via comment, that it feels like today it's Hitler Youth or Stalin Youth. And, actually, I said back to them no, you're wrong, because Hitler and Stalin Youth were taught to love their country. … What are the children actually learning in school today? Well, first and foremost, they are learning that America is a fundamentally backwards and racist country. They are learning that it is a good attribute, it is a virtue to hate your country.” The Daily Wire, *Candace*, [8/24/21]

*

• • Right-wing commentator Michael Savage called critical race theory “the road to the death camps.” Savage argued that “attacks on white people is exactly what was done to the Jews in Germany in the ‘30s. Don't fall for this garbage. This is the road to the death camps. Stand up to these bastards and sue them.” Newsmax, *Cortes and Pellegrino*, [6/21/21]

• • In 2021, Fox News promoted an attack on CRT that echoed the white supremacist “great replacement” conspiracy theory. The network hosted former Trump official Russ Vought and posted his pamphlet on its website accusing the left of trying to “replace you” and proposing to forbid teachers from acknowledging systemic racism. Media Matters, [6/10/21]

• • Appearing on Fox, Heritage Foundation visiting scholar Allen Guelzo claimed the Confederacy was “built on a similar kind of critical race theory and equity.” Guelzo: “The American Confederacy, for instance, the Southern Confederacy, was built on a similar kind of critical race theory and equity — but then it was about giving equity to white Southern slaveholders, who rejected the Declaration and the Constitution, and who sneered at reason and law.” Fox News, *The Story with Martha MacCallum*, [5/14/21]

• • On Fox, network contributor and New York Post columnist Miranda Devine proclaimed critical race theory a “Marxist concept” that will “warp the minds of American children.” She also argued that teaching kids not to be racist “is a recipe for social upheaval and mental illness, frankly.” Fox News, *America Reports*, [4/22/21]

• • Then-Fox host Tucker Carlson complained that “race hate” was being taught in schools and claimed that “teachers are given ‘white allies’ agenda items.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [2/19/21]

• ## Right-wing media’s anti-CRT campaign directly targeted schools, teachers, and other staff for harassment, and encouraged viewers to do the same

• • Right-wing media figures harangued Black Republican elected officials who criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new history curriculum on slavery. The new Black history standards, approved by the Florida State Board of Education on July 19, 2023, include instruction claiming that during the centuries of slavery in America, enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” After several Black GOP lawmakers including Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), and Rep. John James (R-MI) criticized DeSantis for the new standards, right-wing media attacked them, with TheBlaze’s Steve Deace accusing Donalds of “trying to race bait Ron DeSantis.” Media Matters, [7/31/23]

• • Fox's Rachel Campos-Duffy stated that Howard University students are “some pretty dumb college kids” if they believe the country “is full of white supremacists.” Co-host Pete Hegseth suggested that “most college kids across America” have never seen “real racism.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends Weekend*, [5/14/23]

• • Fox News reporter Hannah Grossman published nearly 100 articles between May 2022 and May 2023 targeting specific educators over their discussion of systemic racism, gender, and sexuality in the classroom. Multiple teachers, administrators, board members, or other staff named in her reporting have been doxxed, harassed, fired, sued, or forced to resign. Media Matters, [5/9/23]

• • Right-wing media twisted comments made by American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten to falsely paint her and the teachers union as hysterical and anti-parent. In an interview regarding the conservative movement’s efforts to limit discussions of race in schools, Weingarten suggested that propaganda and misinformation are often a prelude to hatred and war. Right-wing media twisted her words to make it seem as though she said parental rights bills are “the way in which wars start.” Media Matters, [4/26/22]

• • Rufo urged viewers to continue protesting local school boards: “Do not stop, double down.” While arguing that “it's not really critical race theory or not critical race theory, masks or no masks,” Rufo asked, “Who is the ultimate authority of our public institutions? Is it the actual public, the parents and the voters, or is it the unelected bureaucrats and the unelected teachers unions that want to jam down this curriculum in all 14,000 local school districts.” Fox News, *America Reports*, [10/6/21]

• ## Conservatives smeared DEI programs in higher education and other institutions and called for their abolition

• • Right-wing media celebrated the ouster of Harvard President Claudine Gay as a victory in their prolonged assault on DEI initiatives. Gay’s resignation was the result of a right-wing pressure campaign over accusations of antisemitisim and plagiarism, amid a clearly stated strategy to target higher education and root out supposedly “woke” ideology, including a prolonged assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Media Matters, [1/5/24]

• • Conservative media figures cited pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses during the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict to call for defunding education and diversity initiatives and deporting students studying here on visas. They also claimed the protests were evidence of “indoctrination and identity politics” on college campuses. Media Matters, [12/15/23]

• • On YouTube, Chris Rufo asserted that “the next conservative administration must work to radically reshape the federal bureaucracy, defund left-wing ideological programs, abolish DEI departments and build a patronage system capable of cultivating a new establishment.” YouTube, [8/14/23]

• • The New York Times elevated Rufo by publishing his op-ed attacking DEI, amplifying the right-wing offensive against education. Other articles published by The New York Times downplayed the right’s attack on DEI in education, most notably Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ efforts to ban teaching the actual history of racism in schools. Media Matters, [7/27/23]

• • The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh called diversity “an anti-white conspiracy.”Walsh: “All diversity initiatives are anti-white initiatives. Anytime you hear about any kind of diversity initiative anywhere, whether it's in government, in corporations, in any institution at all, it is an anti-white initiative. Diversity is an anti-white conspiracy.” The Daily Wire, *The Matt Walsh Show*, [5/23/23]

• • Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer accused a day care chain of teaching “woke issues” and “indoctrinating little children.” Hemmer mischaracterized KinderCare's “diversity, equity, and inclusion” plan, which includes reading multicultural books, as teaching kids as young as six weeks that “they're an oppressor.” Fox News, *America's Newsroom*, [11/5/21]

• ## Right-wing media attacked affirmative action, celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision to bar it in higher education, and smeared Black people in positions of power as diversity hires

• • Right-wing and fringe media celebrated the Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision ending affirmative action, calling the policy “unconstitutional,” “racist,” and “discriminatory.” The court ruled that the race-conscious admission policies of Harvard College and the University of North Carolina violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, effectively dismantling affirmative action in higher education. Media Matters, [6/29/23]

• • Conservative “parents' rights” activists led the charge for gutting the 14th Amendment and laid the groundwork for the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action. By demonizing long-standing efforts to redress systemic racism in education and beyond, the coalition of anti-civil rights activists and right-wing media helped to lay the groundwork for the Supreme Court to strike down affirmative action in higher education in the name of so-called colorblindness. Media Matters, [6/28/23]

• • Following the Supreme Court decision ending affirmative action, right-wing media responded by pushing for privatization and school choice. The policies referred to by the right as “school choice” promote defunding government education and instead investing in private school vouchers as part of the crusade against “woke” curricula. So-called school choice not only fails to improve educational outcomes — as writer Wajahat Ali explains, it is “all about entrenching right-wing power, control, and Christian nationalism.” Media Matters, [7/5/23]

• • Right-wing opponents of affirmative action falsely claimed it created racial “quotas” in college admissions. Media Matters, [7/6/23]

• • Conservatives responded with racist smears and vitriol following Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent in the affirmative action decision. Attacks labeling Jackson as “racist” and belittling her as a “diversity hire” joined a long-running right-wing smear campaign against the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. Media Matters, [6/30/23]

• • Then-Fox host Tucker Carlson said that affirmative action is “what the Nazis did.” Fellow right-wing personality Charlie Kirk also claimed that affirmative action policy is “evil” and “immoral,” adding that it does not address the “real problem” of “Black crime” and Black fathers abandoning their children. Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [11/1/22; Real America’s Voice, The Charlie Kirk Show, 7/6/23]

• • Newsmax host Marc Lotter said ending affirmative action “fulfills Dr. King's dream.” Lotter: “You know, one of the things that many people, especially on the right, have taken away is that this, basically, fulfills Dr. King's dream of saying that you would be judged by the content of your character, not by the color of your skin.” Newsmax, *The Right Squad*, [6/29/23]

• • Fox News host Jesse Watters lectured Black Americans on affirmative action: “A white person who’s more qualified was discriminated against.” Watters: “Many Black Americans acknowledge that they never would have achieved a certain level of success if it hadn't been for affirmative action. They own the fact that they were admitted because they were Black and maybe they didn't have the perfect application and I'm sympathetic to that. I get it. But a white person who's more qualified was discriminated against and didn't get in. And when you discriminate on race, some people win and some people lose.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [6/29/23]

• • :{:{While celebrating the end of affirmative action, right-wing personality Benny Johnson called the policy “Nazi-level thinking.}:” Johnson argued that “these leftists, these libs, they really do have, like, Nazi-level thinking here. The racial quotas, … it's like eugenics-thinking. It's so backwards.” YouTube, *The Benny Show*, [6/29/23]

}:

• • Fox News contributor Leo Terrell claimed that the affirmative action decision will result in “minimizing wokeness throughout this country.” Fox News, *The Faulkner Focus*, [6/29/23]

• ## Right-wing media spread conservative propaganda through PragerU partnerships and Moms for Liberty activism, and encouraged the latter group’s efforts at taking over school boards

• • PragerU created partnerships with Republican-controlled states such as Oklahoma and Florida to put its PragerU Kids videos in schools. PragerU billed these videos — which are widely criticized for including right-wing propaganda, such as distorted histories about slavery — as a counter to “the woke and anti-American leftist narrative taught in most schools.” Oklahoma’s Department of Education, led by top education official Ryan Walters, joined Florida in treating PragerU Kids’ propagandistic work as legitimate educational content. Media Matters, [9/7/23, 10/6/23]

• • Moms for Liberty introduced right-wing propaganda into public school libraries. Moms for Liberty, a self-described “parental rights” organization advocating for the banning of books across the country and strategically harassing school officials, partnered with three conservative publishing companies and figures, including Ben Carson’s American Cornerstone Institute, to introduce right-wing propaganda into public school libraries. Media Matters, [4/22/22]

• • Moms for Liberty has also previously banned books about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and recommended a history book written by a far-right conspiracy theorist. Beyond opposing education about the history of racism in America, the organization also recommends reading an American history book by a far-right conspiracy theorist that is sympathetic to slave owners, calling them “the worst victims” and writing that “in some ways, the economic system of slavery chained the slave owners almost as much as the slaves.” The group’s co-founder Tiffany Justice also actively opposed desegregation efforts while formerly serving on her school board. Media Matters, [11/15/21]

• • As a guest on conspiracy theorist DeAnna Lorraine’s show, Walters promised to “put folks that share our conservative values” into the state’s education agency. Walters appeared on Shots Fired with DeAnna Lorraine and promised to continue “running the left wing out” and to “put folks that share our conservative values” in the state's education agency. Media Matters, [1/2/24]

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an 1 24

harvard University President Claudine Gay announced her resignation Tuesday, January 2, following weeks of criticism of her testimony during a December antisemitism on college campuses Capitol Hill hearing, as well as accusations of plagiarism.

The Harvard Crimson reports, "Though Gay initially signaled that she would try to weather the charges of plagiarism, at first defending her scholarship and then making a series of corrections, the steady stream of new allegations — which continued to roll in during the final days of her presidency — only added to doubts about Gay’s fitness to effectively lead Harvard."

A Wednesday, January 3 report from Politico notes conservative activist Christopher Rufo "has been at the forefront of a sprawling campaign to force Gay to resign," and "was in a celebratory mood" after she announced her exit.

Author and editor at The Yale Review, James Surowiecki, took to X (formerly Twitter) to write, I assume Christopher Rufo will now move on and insist that Neal Gorsuch step down from the Supreme Court, given that he plagiarized parts of his 2006 book 'The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia'" — and he attached a screenshot from a 2017 Politico article, which includes a side-by-side of language from Gorsuch's book and language from a 1984 article in the Indiana Law Journal."

doc

IFrame Content

Surowiecki went on to write, "The defenses of Gorsuch's lifting, btw, were remarkably similar to the defenses of Gay's work: it was just 'sloppy,' not 'mendacious' or malicious, and was not serious because while it copied language, it didn't involve the purloining of ideas."

Per Politico's 2017 report, documents provided to the news outlet "show that several passages from the tenth chapter of his 2006 book, 'The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia,' read nearly verbatim to a 1984article in the Indiana Law Journal. In several other instances in that book and an academic article published in 2000, Gorsuch borrowed from the ideas, quotes and structures of scholarly and legal works without citing them."

According to the report, despite former President Donald Trump's White House at the time denying any "impropriety," there were "six experts on academic integrity contacted independently by POLITICO" who "differed in their assessment of what Gorsuch did, ranging from calling it a clear impropriety to mere sloppiness."

READ MORE: 'Unraveling': GOP rep calling for Ivy League leaders’ resignation mum on Trump’s Nazi rhetoric

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see story 1 crt rufo censor book ban

aha: trumpista maga qanon gop base about making AM dominant again, keeping power for shrinking white patriarchy rural less educated? that cannot win fair election

so must glorify mythologize past, which means denying slavery original sin, thus lost cause BS

an 12 23 no lnx

What Nikki Haley’s gaffe reveals about the GOP also tom cotton

South Carolina-based pediatrician Dr. Michael O'Brien was simple in his criticism, tweeting, "Tom Cotton is a prime example of why we should never ban books."

John Stoehr

December 28, 2023

The new Nikki Haley news is that she refused to say that slavery was the cause of the Civil War. During an event in New Hampshire, she said that the bloodiest conflict on US soil was about, well, anything but slavery: “how government was going to run, the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do,” she said, among other ridiculous things.

Magdi Jacobs, an Editorial Board contributor, said that “the fascinating thing about Haley's response was her discomfort. You could feel her flailing as she reached for the perfect combo of a pre-Donald Trump conservative ‘states’ rights’ answer to appeal to centrist voters, all while knowing that the insurrectionists want more racist red meat.”

“This is a balance no one can strike,” Magdi concluded. “It shows how fundamentally weak the current GOP is, even if our political media doesn't want to admit it. You can't win without Trump. I firmly believe – and I think Haley does, too – that you can't win with him either.”

More precisely (and I think Magdi would agree) is that this balance is impossible to strike because there’s nowhere to put it. There’s no such thing as a moderate position inside today’s Republican Party. There’s no foundation on which to build the broad coalition of voters that’s necessary to winning (ie, candidates need more than a base.) If such a position existed, Haley would have found it. It doesn’t, so all she can do is reach for a reason, any reason, as the true cause of the Civil War.

To her credit, Haley quickly walked back her remarks. Perhaps she sensed something was at risk in sounding so unreasonable. “Of course, the Civil War was about slavery,” she said. “We know that. That’s the easy part of it.” Then she went on to say that it was about “more than that,” citing, among other ridiculous things, “the role of government.”

That she walked back her initial remarks may seem “reasonable,” but it won’t matter. Remember, even if she wanted to strike a balance between “conservative states’ rights” and “racist red meat” – and that’s apparently what she wanted to do – there is no foundation inside the Republican Party on which to put it. There is no moderate position.

To be a moderate, you have to sound reasonable, but according to David Atkins, a frequent contributor to the Washington Monthly, the GOP base “doesn’t want even the perception of a more reasonable candidate. They want a dictator to punish their enemies.”

“Haley has zero chance of winning” the presidential election, David told me. “Even if she did win New Hampshire, it wouldn’t help her any more than it did Bernie Sanders in 2016 and Pete Buttigieg in 2020.”

There’s always makebelieve, though. Fortunately, Haley has a lot of help in that regard. The billionaire Koch brothers gave her their blessing. So did the popular governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu. They portray Haley as the champion of “conservative values,” as if “conservative values” was still shorthand for “moderate,” and as if Donald Trump’s gravity has not pulled the entire party to the far right.

While makebelieve is a powerful force in politics, it’s probably not going to be enough for Haley or any of the other GOP candidates. Oh, sure, they did OK while the neutral press was casting them as “legitimate alternatives” to Trump. But once the neutral press gets bored – and the neutral press always gets bored – whatever promise these “legitimate alternatives” once had melts into the air. It happened to Ron DeSantis. It happened to Vivek Ramaswamy. It will probably happen to Haley. Everything begins and ends with Trump. As Magdi said, the GOP can’t win with him and it can’t win without him.

In the following interview with me, David Atkins explains not only why he thinks Haley is doomed, but why, in 2024, the Republicans are, too.

JS: New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu endorsed Republican candidate Nikki Haley after the Koch network did. Could that be enough for her to win New Hampshire? And will that matter in the long run?

DA: GOP megadonors need to come to terms with the reality that their base cannot be controlled. They let the MAGA flames burn out of control and now they get to reap the whirlwind. Haley has zero chance of winning absent some issue impacting Trump’s health, because the GOP base doesn’t want even the perception of a more reasonable candidate. They want a dictator to punish their enemies.

And let’s be clear: Haley is also a radical rightwing extremist, as her embrace of a six-week abortion ban makes clear. She just doesn’t seem like she wants to destroy the entire federal bureaucracy, send Democrats to gulags, weaponize the Justice Department and the IRS against all their domestic opponents, and institute mass deportation camps of immigrants. So she’s not the candidate of the GOP base, which does want those things and wants Trump to deliver them.

The Republican Party’s base isn’t in the thrall of Trumpism; Trump is the avatar of their desires, which is why he will be the nominee. Also, even if Haley did win New Hampshire, it wouldn’t help her any more than it did Bernie Sanders in 2016 and Pete Buttigieg in 2020.

JS: You said the culture war is over. Taylor Swift won, Elon Musk lost. I have written that obituary, too, only to see myself proven wrong.

DA: The culture war is over in the sense that people under the age of 50 in the areas of the country that make up more than 80 percent of the national GDP despise the theocratic conservatism that animates Republican activists. That isn’t going to change.

This doesn’t mean that Republicans can’t win elections, and institute rearguard policy actions, like restricting abortion and LGBT rights. They can. The threat of hard-right fascist dictatorship is very real.

But most of the culture wars can be explained by the fact that the marketplace responds primarily to 18- to 45-year-old consumers in cities, while the electoral system responds primarily to 65-plus-year-olds in exurbia. The electoral system can produce a fascist takeover, but it will do so by oppressing a majority that wants nothing to do with it. Such tyrannies rarely last for long.

In the meantime, the weight of popular culture is increasingly shifting to treat cultural progressivism as normative, if for no other reason than that’s the population advertisers want to appeal to. The engines of capitalism are working against social conservatives now, which is why you see such a growing rift between the evangelical base and the urbanite business Republican crowd.

JS: You said the GOP will lose 2024. You cited the fact that they have lost every special election. Special elections attract partisans. Presidential election attracts everyone. Am I wrong in noting the difference?

DA: It’s no secret that Trump and Biden at the top of the ticket will make for an interesting dynamic in 2024, since neither are popular, at least at the moment. But in this environment, a generic Democrat is consistently beating a generic Republican. If the public’s concerns about both Trump and Biden as individuals were sidelined, and the voters were to choose a party and its policies, Democrats would be marching into a confident victory in 2024.

The key will be to remind voters of the tremendous legislative accomplishments of the Biden administration, emphasize Trump’s rampant criminality and danger to democracy, and remind people that no matter what they think of the candidates, the policy choices are very real. Republican rule would be a cruel disaster.

JS: I think the GOP is going to impeach Biden. How does that factor into your thinking, if it does, that the Republicans are going to lose 2024?

DA: Republicans want to play tit-for-tat by impeaching Biden to take some of the sting out of Trump’s double impeachments. More generally, if they can make impeachment into a routine partisan clown show, then it minimizes and defangs the one tool in the Constitution that’s designed to stop an authoritarian, criminal unitary executive.

The flip side of doing this is that any impeachment of Biden by Republicans on flimsy pretexts is likely to have as minimal an impact on voters as Trump’s impeachments apparently have.

JS: What if there's a major polling error and Trump isn't really a mile ahead of every other Republican candidate? Most of us just assume he's going to be the nominee. Iowa and New Hampshire might be stunners?

DA: What’s particularly interesting about Trump seizing the GOP nomination is the low-key panic among many Republican activists. While Trump’s indictments have so far not impacted his popularity, we are in uncharted territory. It’s impossible to predict what impact multiple public trials and possible felony convictions of the sitting GOP nominee might have on public polling and electoral outcomes.

One could speculate that the polling might be wrong, and GOP voters in Iowa and New Hampshire might choose a different nominee out of self-preservation. But Trump has developed a cult-like following, and one thing that we know about cults is that they are largely impervious to even their leaders going to jail. If anything, it makes them feel like martyrs. So I find it extremely unlikely that Iowa and New Hampshire will surprise us by selecting a Haley or Ron DeSantis.

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fake electors trump coup

vought OMB HIRED JEFFREY BOSSERT CLARK

paoletta of course

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Fox News' Jesse Watters suggests “CRT” is responsible for deaths of high school students | Media Matters for America

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October 16, Popular Information reported that Scholastic was facilitating the exclusion of books that feature people of color or LGBTQ characters from its book fairs. The company, under pressure from right-wing ideologues, created a collection of these titles and offered school officials the ability to remove all of them. Our report broke the news on what books were targeted, a list that included biographies of civil rights icon John Lewis and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Several hours later, the New York Times picked up the story, citing Popular Information's reporting. Soon, the story was covered by numerous national media outlets, including CNN, NPR, CBS, Insider, The Daily Beast, The Daily Mail, and The Intercept. On October 25, in a letter to authors and illustrators, Scholastic announced it was reversing the policy.

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an ah 8 23

mAGA Republicans in Florida drew widespread criticism from historians when they blocked an Advance Placement course on Black studies. The subjects in the course that Republicans, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, objected to included the Black Lives Matter movement and "queer theory."

But according to Miami Herald reporters Ana Ceballos and Alyssa Johnson, Florida Republicans "did not say that in many instances, its reviewers also made objections in the state's attempt to sanitize aspects of slavery and the plight of African-Americans throughout history."

"For example, a lesson in the Advanced Placement course focused on how Europeans benefited from trading enslaved people and the materials enslaved laborers produced," Ceballos and Johnson explain in a report published on August 29. "The state objected to the content, saying the instructional approach 'may lead to a viewpoint of an oppressor vs. oppressed' based solely on race or ethnicity. In another lesson about the beginnings of slavery, the course delved into how tens of thousands of enslaved Africans had been 'removed from the continent to work on Portuguese-colonized Atlantic islands and in Europe' and how those 'plantations became a model for slave-based economy in the Americas.'"

Alexander Weheliye, a Black studies professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, believes that thereviewers offered a "complete distortion" of the history of slavery.

Weheliye told the Miami Herald, "It's really trying to go back to an earlier historical moment, where slavery was mainly depicted by white historians through a white perspective. So to say that the enslaved and the sister African nations and kingdoms and white colonizers and enslavers were the same really misrecognizes the fundamentals of the situation."

READ MORE:'A deeper civic purpose’: Author explains why Ron DeSantis' views on Black studies are dead wrong

The Miami Herald's full report is available at this link.

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https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/t**hey-blew-up-my-life**/

no lnx docs

mARTINSVILLE, Ind. — It started April 12, right afterFox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime, one of the most-watched news programs in the country.

A phone call: “You stupid b*tch.”

Then an email: “Everyone you ever encounter … should spit in your face, fling their feces at you (with impeccable aim), punch you, knock you down, kick you, piss on you and hold you there for similar treatment by everyone waiting in line for their turn — you despicable sad excuse for a sub-human being.”

And that was just the first 11 minutes for Jenny Oakley, a mid-level public school administrator in Martinsville, Ind., who found herself depicted in a nationally televised secret camera video and thrust suddenly — and, she said, unfairly and inaccurately — into culture war cruelty.

It would get worse.

During sleepless nights, Oakley’s husband Justin took out his guns for the first time in 10 years. Police began patrols outside the Oakleys’ home after they reported harassment. The couple bought a Doberman named Zeus for added protection. Late on a Saturday night in their quiet neighborhood, a burst of sound — Pow-Pow-Pow — startled them and then a louder Boom.

Having previously enjoyed a quiet life, Jenny Oakley found herself in a debilitating new reality, breaking down when people merely asked how she was doing. She enjoyed reading, but now she couldn’t concentrate. She liked watching videos, but a video got her in this situation. Videos triggered dread.

Oakley describes herself as someone who wants to be liked, someone who has “always cared what people think, to a fault.” She said she avoids controversy and isn’t very political. Justin is the opposite. He works for an Indiana teachers union and ran for state Superintendent of Public Instruction in 2012 before dropping out of the race.

But on social media, strangers took off on Jenny’s character, including one who wrote, “I do not believe in any way that she is a good person.”

An email from the night of the program carried the subject line “God Bless You,” but what it said stung Oakley the most. She could handle the heinous screed of some kook. But this cut deep as an educator and mother of a middle schooler.

“You should never be near any children again, including your own…,” the email said.

That middle schooler helped her mother during the difficult days ahead.

Jenny Oakley and Zeus, her family's Doberman. Doug McSchooler / Raw Story

“I don't think she had ever seen me cry except at funerals,” Oakley said. “And I was walking around here like a zombie, basically. And she made out little Bible verses and stuck them all over the house, you know, trying to hold me up.”

And to what end are the Oakleys suffering through this ordeal?

“I just think it's just part of a bigger attack on public education,” Oakley said. “And, you know, that's the ultimate goal. I wasn't the target necessarily, but I'm definitely the collateral damage.”

Hidden camera, open wounds

In an exclusive interview with Raw Story, Oakley recounted her experience as one of seven public educators from different school districts in Indiana who Accuracy in Media recorded on a hidden camera. Fox News used the video for its April 12 segment on Jesse Watters Primetime.

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Accuracy in Media, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit, and Fox News alleged that the educators were “stealthily” teaching “principles associated with Critical Race Theory,” a highly controversial front in the culture wars that, at its core, alleges systemic racism in America.

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Raw Story last week requested an interview with Accuracy in Media President Adam Guillette. Accuracy in Media responded with an unsigned email requesting Raw Story submit written questions in advance. Raw Story declined to do so, and Accuracy in Media did not respond to subsequent interview requests. Accuracy in Media also did not respond to several emailed questions.

Fox News did not respond to requests for an interview.

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The supposed deception of parents, Accuracy in Media argues, reinforces the need for public tax money to go to charter and private schools.

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“Our goal is school choice where the money follows the child,” Guillette said on Fox News. “That is the only solution.”

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Within the past few months, Accuracy in Media also published hidden-camera video of public educators in Ohio, North Carolina, Texas, and Nebraska. In those states — plus Indiana and several others — such recordings are legal because only one party to a conversation needs to consent.

ALSO READ: A neuroscientist warns: We're watching the largest and most dangerous 'cult' in American history

Educators were accused, as in Indiana, of sneaking CRT concepts into public school curriculum.

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“After this happened, I was like, ‘How in the world did they align what I was talking about to CRT?’” Oakley said. “Because in fact, I couldn't even talk intelligently about CRT at that time.”

Through open records requests to the districts involved, Raw Story obtained Accuracy in Media’s lightly edited video from the Elkhart, Ind., public school district, plus hundreds of pages of emails from all of the districts.

:{:{}:

}:

Oakley said she spoke to Raw Story to explain her side, advocate for the teaching profession and to show the human cost of rabid culture war fighting.

She appears for 24 seconds in the Accuracy in Media video.

“We’ve talked about, to our textbook companies that are coming in to do presentations — and I actually prep them a little because I’m like, “We want this in our curriculum, so if you could just not say specifically this, then it won’t cause a red flag with the community,’” Oakley says. “And I hate that we have to do that. But that way, it’s still there. And the community would support it if just the content was there. They just … it’s the title.”

The Fox News story started with a graphic over Watters’ shoulder showing children’s blocks with the letters CRT.

:{:{}:

}:

“Children are fed CRT propaganda,” it said on the lower-third of the screen.

:{:{}:

}:

Watters started the segment by asserting, “Schools are brainwashing our kids and then lying about it.”

Jenny Oakley is the first educator shown. The Fox News segment cut something Oakley sees as critical from the Accuracy in Media video — the part where she says, “And the community would support it …”

In an interview, Oakley said the red flag she meant was Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), which is sometimes mistakenly conflated with CRT. Teaching SEL is part of Indiana’s state academic standards and is promoted on a flyer from three state agencies.

It equates to skills such as building resiliency, communicating effectively, and goal setting. Indiana schools are required by law to teach SEL concepts, the Plainfield, Ind., school district explained in a Q&A strongly supportive of its administrator who appeared in the Accuracy in Media video.

CRT, however, is another matter. In June, the Metropolitan School District of Martinsville sued Accuracy in Media, saying it defamed the district and presented it in a false light by saying it teaches CRT. In July, the district withdrew its complaint.

The complaint alleged, “MSD of Martinsville believes that AIM has manipulated a surreptitious recording of a School District employee in an effort to falsely claim that the School District is teaching CRT and is lying to School District parents about it."

Superintendent Eric Bowlen declined comment for this story, including why the district dismissed the lawsuit it brought.

Oakley has not seen the unedited version of the video. The school district’s lawsuit said Accuracy in Media initially agreed to provide it and then went silent.

A day after the Fox News segment, a truck with a large screen on the side played the Accuracy in Media video as it rolled around downtown Indianapolis, with the city about to host the National Rifle Association’s annual convention.

It’s unclear who hired the truck, but Accuracy in Media’s tactics were generating attention.

‘Sydney Greenberg’

On a Thursday morning in February, two women who Oakley thought were in their 20s showed up at Martinsville’s administration building unannounced, saying they were looking for a school district for their child in first grade.

Their story, according to an email Oakley wrote later that day to district colleagues: They came from Texas, but Texas was too conservative and they wanted a new community and school. They expressed concern about censored curriculum and book banning.

It was more than two months before the Fox News story.

Oakley wouldn’t normally be the one to talk with school shoppers. That would be her boss, Suzie Lipps, assistant to the superintendent for curriculum, instruction and human resources. But Lipps was working on an issue outside the building, so Oakley, the director of e-learning and literacy, spoke with them. These opportunities are not taken lightly. That’s especially the case with Indiana’s legislature using tax money for a robust voucher program supporting private, usually faith-based, schools.

When Oakley asked the women what part of town they moved to, they named a local church. The conversation lasted five or 10 minutes, Oakley said. She later contacted the principal of the elementary school the child would be attending and suggested inviting the women to a cultural festival at the school that night.

Oakley got a name from one of the women, “Sydney Greenberg,” and a phone number.

Nobody returned the call inviting them to the cultural event. When Raw Story called the number this month, there was a generic message to leave a voicemail.

Martinsville is a conservative town in a red state. It’s not the place one would think of for a couple seeking a community aligned with their progressive politics.

ALSO READ: Why violent extremists get security clearances — but people of color must sometimes wait and wait

Nothing came of the women’s visit until an email at 2:39 p.m. on April 12 from Max Kiviat, associate producer for Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime. He addressed it to Lipps and copied Oakley.

“Tonight we will be covering a story about an undercover investigation involving your school district,” the email said. “Video shows administrators admitting that the schools are using misleading language to confuse parents into stealthily teaching students principles associated with Critical Race Theory. We wanted to offer the school district a chance to comment on the story. We are going live at 7:30pm ET.”

The email didn’t say what specifically the district was being asked to comment on. Oakley said during ensuing conversations, she, Lipps and Bowlen all wondered if they were the one being targeted.

A little after 5 p.m., after internal discussions and consulting with lawyers, Lipps emailed back to say the district would wait to see the story. Two minutes later, Kiviat sent a link to the video Accuracy in Media had posted.

In their living room at home, Jenny and Justin Oakley watched the video on a laptop. Then Jenny started to hear from friends that her face was being used on Fox News promotions for that night’s Jesse Watters Primetime show.

The attacks on her would start in a few hours.

Oakley did have supporters in the community. Some came to her defense on social media. She sought therapy.

Before a school board meeting, local pastors led a prayer circle outside the building for people with all points of view on the situation. One of the pastors invoked the Gospel of John: “Love one another. Such as my love has been for you, so must your love be for each other. This is how all will know you for my disciples: your love for one another.”

A pastor led a prayer before a school board meeting at Martinsville High School the week after Fox News aired a story about Accuracy in Media video featuring a local school administrator. He invoked the gospel of John to love one another. Photo: Stacey Miers

About a week later, Justin learned his mother had brain cancer. This added to the pressure on their daughter who couldn’t have both of her parents in a prolonged dark place.

“So I had to snap out of it,” Jenny Oakley said. “I had to snap out of it for her, just being strong in the fact that I did not do anything wrong and that it'll be interpreted how it is no matter what.”

Unedited video

Accuracy in Media reported $908,000 in contributions and grants on its latest federal tax filing.

As a federally recognized nonprofit organization, it did not have to detail the source or sources of its money. Accuracy in Media says its mission is to “monitor the accuracy of news reporting activities by the media” and “promote accuracy, fairness and balance in news reporting.”

Guillette, the group’s president, makes $200,000, according to the document.

As part of a public records request, Raw Story obtained what Accuracy in Media described in an email to the Elkhart, Ind., school district as a lightly edited, 15-minute hidden-camera conversation with Brad Sheppard, assistant superintendent of instruction.

The edits, Guillette wrote, were to protect Accuracy in Media’s tactics during an “ongoing investigation.”

In the video, what sounds like a man and a woman gave Sheppard frequent affirmations of his answers — “right on,” “good,” “I love that.” The couple’s full pretense for showing up wasn’t part of the video, but what they said to Sheppard left little doubt about their supposed political views.

ALSO READ: A deafening silence from Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s Black football players

“In Texas, unfortunately, we banned anything that has to do with the 1619 Project,” the woman says, referring to the controversial New York Times project that put slavery at the center of America’s history.

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“In Texas, they passed one of those stupid laws banning what they call Critical Race Theory,” the man says.

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“We’re really hoping not to get a MAGA version of history, to put it bluntly,” the woman says.

Regarding what’s taught in the classroom, Sheppard emphasized the Indiana state academic standards.

“As long as (teachers) can tie it back to the standards, they’re covered,” he said. “That’s really the bottom line. Are you teaching the academic standards?”

Sheppard was shown in the Fox News video answering what educational material in the district needs to be “relabeled.”

“I think CRT, Social-Emotional Learning are the two biggies,” he says. “We just have to avoid the words. You know? The labels.”

An Accuracy in Media person says, “We can still do the content, just no labels.”

Sheppard says yes, to which the Accuracy in Media person says, “That’s cool.”

Sheppard was placed on paid administrative leave, returned to his same position and retired in June, according to a lawyer for the district.

ALSO READ: How the long 'arc of the moral universe' just landed in a New York City fire hall

Other records obtained by Raw Story show that Sheppard and another administrator in the Fox News story, Laura DelVecchio of the public school district in Plainfield, Ind., received the same email Oakley did suggesting a line of people punch her and urinate on her.

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All of them arrived within 15 minutes after Jesse Watters Primetime ended. Attorney Jon Little, who represents the Oakleys, believes that indicates a connection to an organization with all-purpose, pre-written screeds for perceived political enemies.

Trustees from the Plainfield school district received a long, racist email suggesting, amid the talk of CRT, a “Thank You White People Day.” It said, “White people created the very high standard of living all races in the USA enjoy” and “many immigrants don’t want to assimilate.” It claimed discrimination against “heterosexual White males.”

In the weeks that followed,Indiana attorney general Todd Rokita got involved on social media, encouraging journalists to write about the Accuracy in Media video.

When DelVecchio received an interview request from Indiana Public Media, she echoed what Oakley said, although they have never met or communicated.

“The story really isn’t about me,” DelVecchio wrote, “it is about the fate of public education.”

A life, changed

Jenny Oakley recalled with a touch of disbelief how, years ago, her husband used to rave about being an eighth grade teacher.

“He would come home every day and say, ‘I just can't believe I get paid to do this as a job,’” she said. “He would come home. He was so excited about the impact that he was making on kids and his conversations every day and the light bulbs going on and all those things.”

For many, teaching is a calling. Pay is often low, but the rewards are supposed to be great. That perception seems to be changing. Indiana has a teacher shortage.

Young teachers, Oakley said, “turn on their TV or hop on Facebook, and all they're seeing are attacks on their profession. And it's hard to keep up the intrinsic motivation of teaching when you have so many of these negative external factors.”

Many of the attacks come from advocates for private and charter schools.

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“I don't think that they're going to be happy until public education just completely crumbles,” Oakley said. “And then they're going to see what kind of pillars of the community we really are, and they'll have to build it back up.”

Among the administrators in the Accuracy in Media video, four are in the same job, one retired, and two districts (Monroe County and Fairfield) did not respond to Raw Story’s inquiry.

Oakley has continued to work. But she said she still can’t be certain about her future in the district.

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Oakley still doesn’t know the identity of the women who came to Martinsville. They weren’t asked to sign in. Now the district office uses the same system as its schools, scanning the driver’s license of everyone who comes in.

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“Thankfully, they didn't walk in here with a backpack that they left behind,” Oakley said, “but they blew up my life.”

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https://www.alternet.org/florida-permits-prageru-materials-classrooms/

https://www.alternet.org/desantis-slave-trade-trade-school/

https://www.alternet.org/education/florida-crt-2659613380/

florida textbook publisher under fire for editing Rosa Parks’ story to omit race

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1st grade inclusive song the kids voted for

https://www.alternet.org/wisconsin-school-board-ousts-teacher/

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https://boingboing.net/2023/07/07/oklahoma-schools-superintendent-says-tulsa-race-massacre-wasnt-um-about-race.html

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wiki manhat

2020s

During the early 2020s,City Journalhas attracted widespread national attention for its role in elevating debates on critical race theory, LGBTQ+ topics in education, and similar issues in the United States.^[7][8][9] Contributor Christopher Rufo, in particular, has drawn attention for writing numerous pieces in the magazine that often focus on these matters. In articles published by City Journal, Rufo has accused Seattle's Office of Civil Rights of "endorsing principles of segregationism, group-based guilt, and race essentialism",^[7] highlighted Disney and Twitter workers who have been convicted of child sexual abuse,^[8] suggested that there were significant levels of "'grooming' in public schools",^[8] accused a California curriculum designer of wanting to make children "chant to the gods Quetzalcoatl, Huitzilopochtli, and Xipe Totek",^[9] compared the diversity training conducted by the city of Seattle to "cult programming",^[9] and accused an Oregon school district of promoting revolutionary Marxist ideas.^[9]

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teacher taught racism

https://www.alternet.org/i-did-not-feel-safe/

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no lnx

https://www.alternet.org/critical-race-theory-2659941137/

twenty or 30 years ago, most consumers of right-wing media didn't know what critical race theory (CRT) was. Many liberals and progressives, for that matter, were unfamiliar with CRT — a college-level African-American studies discipline that, in essence, argues that racism of the past affects present-day institutions.

But in recent years, CRT has become a major boogieman in right-wing media and among MAGA Republicans. MAGA pundits and politicians, according to their liberal critics, have weaponized the term CRT and used it to attack any book or article that makes them uncomfortable — be it "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" or Alice Walker's "The Color Purple."

Scholar Stanley Kurtz is among the right-wing figures who has been railing against CRT, but his efforts go beyond trying to keep books out of public schools.

READ MORE: Why Texas Republicans’ crusade against 'woke civics' does students a huge disservice: report

Reporter Asher Lehrer-Small, in an article published by The 74 on May 2, emphasizes that Kurtz has "spearheaded a quiet but influential campaign to cleanse classrooms of what he calls 'woke civics.'" According to Lehrer-Small, Kurtz's "advocacy in Texas led to the 2021 passage of an unprecedented state law banning assignments that involve 'direct communication' between students and their federal, state or local lawmakers."

The reporter notes, "At the core of Kurtz's activism is a central idea: that hands-on civics lessons, such as students writing to their legislators, will lead to 'school-sponsored indoctrination and political action in support of progressive policy positions'…. Accurate or not, Kurtz's depiction of 'woke civics' is now being felt in America's classrooms."

Lehrer-Small adds, "When the scholar penned his model legislation in 2021, which said students should be banned from receiving class credit for 'lobbying' or 'advocacy' at the federal, state or local level, lawmakers and advocates across the country pounced."

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The reporter notes some specific examples of Kurtz's influence. In 2022, for instance, Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware and GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, according to Lehrer-Smalls, proposed a bipartisan bill that called for increasing grants for civics education. But the bill was "stopped in tracks" when Kurtz labeled it CRT. AndFlorida Gov. Ron DeSantis "mimicked" Kurtz's messaging by claiming that the bill would "award grants to indoctrinate students with ideologies like critical race theory."

READ MORE: 'Censorial filters are unconstitutional': DeSantis' aim to control FL colleges' academic freedom worsens

Read Asher Lehrer-Small's full report for The 74 at this link. https://www.the74million.org/article/the-conservative-scholar-who-convinced-gop-lawmakers-civics-conceals-crt/

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https://www.mediamatters.org/critical-race-theory/anti-civil-rights-activist-chris-rufo-has-extensive-ties-christian-nationalist

no vid twt

anti-civil rights activist Christopher Rufo has extensive ties to a leading MAGA-aligned think tank led by a Christian nationalist that’s at the heart of several high-profile political battles in Washington, D.C. The think tank, the Center for Renewing America, was founded by Russ Vought, who has called for an “army” of believers with a “biblical worldview” to transform the federal bureaucracy into an ideological weapon to further his hard-right agenda. Vought and Rufo are both conservative media mainstays, and each appears frequently on Fox News and right-wing streaming shows.

Rufo’s ties to CRA are not hidden, but nor are they particularly well-known outside of the cloistered bubble of conservative activism. Although Rufo is primarily known for his rhetorical attacks on critical race theory (which he has admitted he knows nothing about) and LGBTQ people, he shares CRA’s goal of taking over existing institutions and remaking them as supposed paragons of conservatism.

That desire has been most clearly realized in Rufo’s hostile takeover of New College of Florida, facilitated by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ decision to appoint him and several other hard-liners to the school’s board of trustees. Rufo and DeSantis’ scheme bears significant resemblance to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s remaking of Central European University in Budapest, one of many points of overlap between U.S. conservatives and their European counterparts. Rufo is currently spending a month in Hungary, according to his Substack newsletter. 

Vought and CRA have been at the forefront of advocating for a policy known as Schedule F,a Trump-era scheme that allowed the administration to sidestep job protections for non-political career staffers. In an appearance on The Charlie Kirk Show, Vought and Kirk promoted the idea of implementing “ideological purity tests” for federal civil servants, and Vought estimated that he would need to fire around 10 percent of the workforce at federal agencies and departments. Vought has also argued the House of Representatives should adopt new rules to allow the chamber to target and possibly remove individual civil servants.

CRA occupies a divided position in the conservative political landscape at the moment, seemingly straddling the line between the Trump and DeSantis camps. Vought, the organization’s leader, is a frequent guest on Steve Bannon’s War Room, which has taken a pro-Trump, anti-DeSantis editorial position. The think tank more broadly is often described as being aligned with Trump as well. But Rufo is closely associated with DeSantis, for now at least, due to his appointment to the board at New College. And CRA senior fellow Ken Cuccinelli recently launched a pro-DeSantis PAC, urging the governor to run for president.

Probably the most important link between Rufo and Vought came during the Trump administration. When Rufo was able to transform critical race theory from a relatively obscure legal discipline into a right-wing bogeyman — thanks in large part to an appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight— it was Vought, then the head of the Office of Management and Budget, who was tasked with carrying out Trump’s order to remove any mention of CRT from federal trainings. Since then, their affinity appears to have grown.

Rufo reportedly recently held a private summit at the Santa Monica, California, outpost of The Manhattan Institute, where he is a senior fellow.The gathering’s focus was “planning for the next White House,” a priority Rufo shares with CRA. In a short video summarizing his thoughts on the event, Rufo praised Vought’s behind-the-scenes efforts in Congress’ ongoing battle over the federal budgetas an opportunity to inject far-right values into final legislation.

in the video, Rufo argued that earlier generations of conservatives tried to win budgeting arguments using dry facts and figures, but that that’s changing now.

“Some people, most notably Russ Vought, who is President Trump’s former OMB director, have pioneered a new approach to talking about the budget that I think has enormous potential,” Rufo said. “Russ talks about the ‘woke and weaponized bureaucracy.’ He talks about defunding $150 billion that is currently being spent to advance left-wing priorities that are antithetical to the values of the majority of citizens.”

“He’s saying, ‘You know what? We want to defund thewoke bureaucrats and DEI commissars who are putting critical race theory in all of the agencies of the government,’” Rufo added. The official CRA Twitter account posted Rufo’s video, and Vought replied, thanking Rufo for the shout-out.   

In the YouTube description of the video, Rufo praisesWade Miller, CRA’s executive director, who apparently attended the private summit. Miller, a former aide to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), describes himself as anti-antiracism in his Twitter bio. He recently posted a racist tweet claiming, without evidence, that Stanford medical school awarded postings to new surgery applicants based on their race and ethnicity, and that those selected probably weren’t the most qualified. [twt]

rufo also has ties to CRA visiting fellow Michael Young, who is prominent on right-wing Twitter under the handle @wokal_distance, primarily for invoking 1990s nostalgia toward reactionaryends. Rufo worked with Young and CRA on his anti-LGBTQ pamphlet “A Parent’s Guide to Radical Gender Theory.” The two interact regularly on Twitter, praising each other’s acumen and execution.

Whether CRA can keep one foot in on either side of the Trump dividing line without drawing the former president’s ire is an open question, as is the impact that DeSantis’falling poll numbers could have on Rufo’s brand and influence. For now, Rufo and Vought are trying to find ways to find a broader audience for their cruel, anti-civil rights proposals, and they’re willing to burn down anything that stands in their way.

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an 3 23

of all the right-wing think tanks in the United States, the most overtly MAGA has been the California-based Claremont Institute. Claremont, founded in 1979, was around long before former President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. But a think tank that was once identified with traditional Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater conservatism has, in recent years, moved to the far right and fully embraced the MAGA ideology and the "America First" agenda — much to the dismay of former Nancy Reagan speechwriter Mona Charen and other Never Trump conservatives.

Claremont draws vehement criticism from both the left and the Never Trump right.In an article published by the liberal/progressive-oriented The Nation on March 30, journalist Jennifer C. Berkshire emphasizes that Claremont is helping to shape the "anti-woke" obsessions of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

"Claremont's leaders have marshaled so much early support behind DeSantis because they see him as a staunch ally in thwarting the alleged march of 'wokeism' through virtually every American institution: the media, corporations, and education, from pre-K through college," Berkshire explains. "They view DeSantis' legislative assault on diversity and inclusion — including stripping the Walt Disney Company of some state tax breaks, reversing diversity policies, and sharply curtailing discussions of race and gender in Florida schools — as amodel for right-wing activism across the country.Claremont and DeSantis both are holding forth Florida as a red-state template — a militant Republican state government providing a 'blueprint' for rolling back civil rights across the country."

READ MORE:How MAGA zealotry overtook a conservative think tank: report

Although the Florida governor has yet to make a formal announcement, he appears to be gearing up for a 2024 presidential run. And Berkshire emphasizes that DeSantis' "brain trust" is "stocked with Claremonsters," including Christopher Rufo (who advised DeSantis on Florida's Stop Woke Act) and the Florida governor's new speechwriter Nate Hochman.

"When DeSantis officially launches his candidacy," Berkshire explains, "he'll point to a long list of right-wing policy accomplishments. But using the levers of power to ram through an unpopular agenda is not the same thing as winning over hearts and minds. As he sells a retrograde vision of America with the help of a militant right-wing intellectual cadre, DeSantis is likely to learn that lesson the hard way."

READ MORE:'Real men don’t eat soybeans': How the 'weird right' is hijacking the GOP and conservative think tanks

Read The Nation's full report at this link.

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alex 3/17https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj5W54QcR2s

obvious proven lies earth2 for those outside bbl?

no lnx

late last month a Florida teacher posted a video of a school library where almost every shelf was empty. The video went viral, getting millions of views. Now, the teacher who posted that video has been fired.

Earlier this week Governor Ron DeSantis was asked about the video, he claimed it was a “fake narrative,” and “not true.” DeSantis told reporters the shelves were empty because “they hadn’t put the books out yet to begin with.”

School libraries at the end of January rarely have empty shelves because librarians hadn’t gotten around to filling them.

“Brian Covey, a substitute teacher at Mandarin Middle School, posted a video on Jan. 27 showing rows of empty bookshelves in the school’s library. The jarring video quickly went viral and now has over 13 million views, it made national headlines and was even fodder on a late night talk show,” First Coast News reports.

“On Wednesday, nearly three weeks after the video was posted, Covey said he was fired.”

“In discussion between the district and ESS,” a statement from Duval County Public Schools reads, “regarding this individual’s misrepresentation of the books available to students in the school’s library and the disruption this misrepresentation has caused, it was determined that he had violated social media and cell phone policies of his employer. Therefore, ESS determined these policy violations made it necessary to part ways with this individual.”

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ESS, First Coast News reports, is the company that hires substitute teachers.Their statement does not say what was allegedly misrepresented.

On January 31, First Coast News spoke with Covey, before he had been fired.

Their report, and many others, state that because of DeSantis’ laws, administrators or librarians have to review every book in the entire school.

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But DeSantis told reporters reviewing a book should only take “two minutes,” and said his Dept. of Education would be happy to help school officials if they had a question about a specific book.

During that same press conference, DeSantis was asked why a popular book about baseball great Roberto Clemente had also been pulled from school shelves.

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The Florida governor, expected to launch a presidential campaign soon, lashed out at the reporter, first blaming “politics,” then “teachers’ unions,” then claiming the story itself was “a joke” and “manufactured” while never accepting the impact the legislation he has supported, promoted, signed into law, and used to brand himself as a protector of children has had a devastating effect on those very children he claims to want to protect.

DeSantis appeared to be wholly uninformed as to what schools and students are going through as a result of his laws, which include his “Don’t Say Gay” law.

:{:{}:

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“More than 1 million books in Duval County schools in Florida are subject to review due to three state laws impacting certain subjects in education, including race, gender and sexual orientation,” ABC News reported this week, confirming the Roberto Clemente book was pulled from school shelves, citing communication from county officials.

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“As required by state law, we are in the process of having certified media specialists review all classroom library books,” Tracy Pierce, chief of marketing and public relations at Duval County Public Schools told ABC News. “There are approximately 1.6 million titles in our classroom and media center libraries that need to be reviewed by a certified media specialist.”

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his lane?

https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-christopher-rufo-says-we-should-make-colleges-better-how-where-has-ever

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yikes

https://www.mediamatters.org/ron-desantis/hungarys-viktor-orban-targeted-central-european-university-gov-ron-desantis-following

florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and anti-civil rights activist Christopher Rufo are waging a campaign against New College of Florida that strongly resembles actions taken by Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister Viktor Orbán in 2017 and 2018 to shut down Central European University.

DeSantis appointed Rufo, known for his anti-Black and anti-LGBTQ messaging propaganda, to the board of trustees at New College of Florida in early January. Since then, Rufo has engaged in what amounts to a hostile takeover of the school, forcing the president out and attempting to reinvent the school as a conservative institution. The scheme echoes Orbán’s plot to force CEU out of Hungary just years earlier.

Right-wing media personalities and activists in the United States have extensively praised Orbán in recent years, including after he gave what his own adviser called a “pure Nazi speech” in which he decried “race mixing” among Hungarians. During a May 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference event in Hungary, Orbán referred to Fox News star Tucker Carlson as a “friend” whose show should be “broadcasted day and night.” (Carlson passionately defended Orbán in 2021, characterizing his views as “moderate and conventional.”) A separate event known as the National Conservatism Conference also served to strengthen the ties between the illiberal Hungarian leader and his stateside admirers.

Whether DeSantis and Rufo are deliberately modeling their efforts on Orbán’s — or the similarities have arisen naturally from the authoritarian ideologies all three men share — isn’t clear. Regardless, Rufo himself appeared to endorse Orbán’s targeting of CEU in a tweet to conservative writer and Orbán fanboy Rod Dreher.

[twts]

other members of DeSantis’ inner circle have praised Orbán’s administration. During the National Conservatism Conference in Miami last September,Christina Pushaw,a longtime DeSantis aide, “told the audience that Orbán’s government gave her inspiration” for icing out mainstream journalists, as reported in New York magazine.

“The New Yorker wrote to Orbán and asked for comment on their hit piece, and they received a response that was just perfect. It said, ‘We are not going to participate in the validation process for liberal propaganda,’ ” she recounted, “and I don’t think we need to participate in that validation process either.” Instead, she noted, DeSantis gives access to conservative sites, which then get quotes and scooplets they can use to build their audience.

At the same conference, an Orbán adviser praised DeSantis and used the governor’s policies to justify and normalize Hungary’s own. From New York magazine:

At one panel, The Federalist’s Sean Davis asked Balázs Orbán, an adviser (no relation) to Viktor Orbán, how his government is preventing the fake-news media from poisoning the minds of the youth. “Just as is done in Florida,” Orbán replied, explaining that the Hungarian regime used state power to prevent the left from indoctrinating the country in its ideology. (His spokesperson explained that he was referring specifically to “gender propaganda.”) He mocked the idea that the regime was behaving autocratically: “You can say I am autocratic, pro-Putin, pro-everything that is bad, but look, in Florida, in the United States, the Republicans are doing the same.”

The similarities in the campaigns that DeSantis and Rufo in Florida, and Orbán in Hungary, have waged against a particular institution of higher learning are striking. Beginning in 2017, Orbán set his sights onCEU, one of Budapest’s top universities. Founded in 1991 by liberal philanthropist George Soros, who was born in Hungary, the school was meant to serve as a model of post-Cold War openness and cosmopolitanism. Orbán saw it as a threat — a bastion of liberalism that threatened his far-right regime.

Orbán, who studied law at István Bibó, a college in Budapest, moved to impose requirements on CEU that appeared to be impossible to meet by design. As The Atlantic reported:

Although the legislation didn’t mention CEU by name, the school was its obvious—and only—target. The bill would suddenly make CEU’s existence in the country dependent on quickly meeting a series of impossible-seeming requirements. As a foreign university, it would have to operate a campus in its country of origin. (CEU was chartered in the state of New York, but it didn’t have any faculty or facilities there.) Its national government would need to enter into a bilateral accreditation agreement with Hungary. (In the U.S., accreditation agreements are the jurisdiction of the states, not the federal government.)

The law passed, ultimately forcing CEU to close its campus and relocate to Vienna, Austria.

Orbán’s broader intrusions into school curricula also anticipate DeSantis’ own attempts to exert control over classroom instruction. The Atlantic writes:

Textbooks and curricula, once the domain of municipalities, have been centralized and now inculcate the regime’s politics. “The government is quite clear that patriotic education is as important as transferring knowledge,” Péter Kréko, the political analyst, told me. An eighth-grade history book praises Orbán as a “foundational figure.” A high-school textbook opens a section on “multiculturalism” with an image of refugees huddled at the Budapest train station, accompanied by a quotation from the prime minister: “We consider it a value that Hungary is a homogeneous country.”

Rufo has been alternately open and cryptic about his plans for New College. He sometimes describes his efforts almost modestly, as in a closing paragraph on his blog at City Journal:

My proposals include redesigning the curriculum to align with the classical model; abolishing DEI programs and replacing them with “equality, merit, and colorblindness” principles; adopting the Kalven statement on institutional neutrality; restructuring the administration and academic departments; recruiting new faculty with expertise in the classical liberal arts tradition; and establishing a graduate school for training teachers in classical education.

But in the same post, he endorsed DeSantis’ chief-of-staff’s comment that the goal is to remake New College into a “Hillsdale of the South,” referencing the far-right Christian college in Michigan.

As New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote (emphasis in original):

The new majority’s plan, Rufo told me just after his appointment was announced, is to transform New College into a public version of Hillsdale. “We want to provide an alternative for conservative families in the state of Florida to say there is a public university that reflects your values,” he said.

Rufo has made clear that New College is just the beginning. “If we are successful, the effort can serve as a model for other states,” he wrote at City Journal.

Orbán was successful in driving CEU out of Hungary. Whether DeSantis and Rufo can remake New College remains to be seen, much less whether their actions are scalable. Regardless, Rufo has stated that his ambitions do not end with the DeSantis administration. In a recent video titled “The Strategy Behind the Campaign to Abolish DEI Bureaucracies in Public Universities” posted to his YouTube page, he that his goal is to “get it done in one state, in the state of Florida, and then see a domino effect of other states following suit.”

But it would be wise to take warning from CEU’s president, Shalini Randeria.

“We are a textbook case because what we need to realise is that all of these ‘soft authoritarian’ regimes, as I call them, are learning from one another. There is a playbook they are carefully watching to see what works in one case or another,” she said in an interview with University World News. “We need to study this carefully to see there is a certain toolbox they’re using, and no university is safe.”

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an 2 23

A fight over new history curriculum standards in Virginia is part of a nationwide campaign to undermine public schools and prevent educators from teaching the truth about America's inequality.

"People still want to hide the truth about Black history," Dione Archer, a resident of Richmond, Virginia, said in an interview with Our Schools. Her response came after being reminded about Virginia Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin's November 2022 unveiling of a draft revision of the state's curriculum standards for teaching history in K-12 schools. The revision was roundly criticized for 'whitewashing' American history, as education historian Diane Ravitch put it in her blog, because of its treatment of African American content (all references to Martin Luther King Jr. were deleted), its description of Native American and Indigenous peoples as "the first immigrants" to the country, and other white, Eurocentric guidelines followed by it. "I was very upset," said Archer, whose 15-year-old African American grandson attends Henrico High School in Richmond. "Politicians want to deny the truth, good or bad, about this country," she said. "I didn’t learn about Katherine Johnson [a pioneering African American mathematician who worked for NASA and was a Virginia native] until I was 67 years old. That’s horrifying to me."

This article was produced by Our Schools.

Youngkin's proposed changes to the state's history and social sciences Standards of Learning (SOL) set off an immediate firestorm among public school students, educators, and parents, according to the Washington Informer. In addition to objecting to the emphasis on promoting "white conservative ideology," critics of the proposed new guidelines also opposed them because they would eliminate mention of LGBTQ+ history from K-5 standards and "delay instruction about lynching until the 6th grade and Christopher Columbus' role in the slave trade by the 11th grade. By kindergarten, students would learn to equate citizenship to following rules," the article stated.

State lawmakers and community activists were just as appalled.

"It is important that students and educators learn and teach the truth about the many contributions of African Americans and not attempt to revise history to make others feel good," Virginia House Delegate Reverend Delores McQuinn told Our Schools. McQuinn, who’s a member of the Virginia Black Caucus and co-chair of Virginians for Reconciliation, said she was offended by the governor’s effort, stating that future generations will be the losers if these changes are implemented. "The lack of knowledge about our history is a contributing factor to the racial divisiveness in this country," she said. "We must all begin to think about racial reconciliation and how to get there. The dismissal of our history and culture will not help."

"It's been shown, especially via various in-depth examinations of textbooks used in Virginia, that many Virginia public school students have been miseducated over the years," said Rachel Levy, a teacher, parent, community leader, and 2023 candidate for the newly drawn 59th district seat in the Virginia House of Delegates. "It has created a vicious cycle of ignorance," said Levy, which a previous and highly praised standards revision—conducted by the administration of former Democratic Governor Ralph Northam in 2021—"was trying to begin to break."

The backlash over Youngkin’s proposed curriculum changes persuaded the Virginia State Board of Education "not to move forward" with his proposed draft, WRIC reported in November 2022, and in January 2023, the Youngkin administration issued a revised, shorter draft that they said "fixes errors," WRIC reported, but it still contains language that experts find concerning.

On February 2, 2023, the state Board of Education voted to advance the latest revision, but final adoption isn't expected until June 2023. Educators and public school activists continue to try to thwart Youngkin's whitewashed history curriculum from being taught in Virginia's K-12 schools. Should their efforts ultimately be successful, it may cause a brief setback for a national campaign conducted by shadowy right-wing groups and led by Republican politicians to turn public schools into political battlegrounds and undermine how teachers engage students in thinking critically about important and sometimes controversial topics.

The campaign began as a strategy to falsely target schools for teaching students about critical race theory—a concept taught in higher education that has been turned into a grab bag of complaints about efforts in schools to become more welcoming and provide more inclusive learning environments that embrace teaching diverse points of view about subjects, including the history of race, gender, and religious discrimination in the U.S. Then, the campaign swiftly moved on to efforts to ban books and limit teachers' speech in schools.

Now, this movement is trying to make an end run around the democratic process and alter school curricula that have been formally created by education experts and passed by deliberative bodies and elected officials.

'Imbued With Christian and Conservative Tenets'

"[A]t least 36 states have adopted or introduced laws or policies that restrict teaching about race and racism," according to a February 2022 article in Chalkbeat.

In 2021, Oklahoma lawmakers considered a new bill that "would limit how slavery is taught in schools and ban teaching that 'one race is the unique oppressor' or 'victim' in slavery's history," NBC News reported. In Texas, new laws considered in the state legislature "[tried] to reframe Texas history lessons and play down references to slavery and anti-Mexican discrimination that are part of the state’s founding," stated a New York Times article in May 2021. That article referred to similar efforts underway in "Republican-led states [that] seek to ban or limit how the role of slavery and pervasive effects of racism can be taught."

In Florida, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis revamped the state's approach to civics "in a new direction," Education Week reported, "[toward] an overtly patriotic approach that some educators say is imbued with Christian and conservative tenets. And all of that is occurring as Florida's law limiting classroom discussions on race—a key theme in social studies—takes effect" in the 2023-2024 school year.

In some of these efforts, state lawmakers have solicited the influence of right-wing pressure groups that seek to diminish the voices of educators and limit what schools can teach. Among those pressure groups, Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian college that led former President Donald Trump's 1776 Commission, is especially influential.

Hillsdale College, according to a three-part investigation by Salon, "has inconspicuously been building a network of 'classical education' charter schools, which use public tax dollars to teach that systemic racism was effectively vanquished in the 1960s, that America was founded on 'Judeo-Christian' principles, and that progressivism is fundamentally anti-American."

In 2022, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, a Republican, announced a partnership with Hillsdale College to "open upward of 50 new charters with Hillsdale's '1776 Curriculum,'" according to WPLN News.

In Florida, where Hillsdale is rapidly expanding its network of affiliated charter schools, the Michigan-based college was an influential force in revising the state's civics curriculum and rejecting math textbooks that included "what DeSantis called 'indoctrinating concepts,'" the Tampa Bay Times reported.

In Virginia, among the outside institutions Youngkin enlisted to assist in his effort to rewrite the state's history standards was Hillsdale College, VPM News reported. The college was asked by the Virginia Department of Education "to review a working draft of its social studies standards."

A 'Cycle of Miseducation'

By law, the Virginia Board of Education is required to review the standards in all subjects at least once every seven years. The board's last revision for history and social science was in 2015.

A previous version of the history and social science SOL was created during the administration of former Governor Ralph Northam. But the state Board of Education's vote on whether or not to adopt those standards was delayed when Youngkin appointed five new members to the board and tipped the board to a "conservative majority," according to WSET. The Northam draft included lessons on racism and on the LGBTQ+ community.

Defenders of Youngkin's version of the standards are saying that those criticizing it are distorting the revisions' intentions. "Are we mandating that our teachers tell our students that we're a racist country? No. We aren't mandating that," Republican Delegate Glenn Davis, who chairs the House Education Committee, told WTOP. "Davis said that Youngkin's version requires students to learn about the KKK, and Supreme Court cases that enshrined white supremacy, including Plessy v. Ferguson and Dred Scott—which were not required in the Northam version," WTOP reported. "All students will learn about the KKK and the inherent racism during one of the darkest periods of our nation’s history," he told WTOP. "So how is that not ensuring that our students are taught about racism and those time periods of our nation's history?"

But Levy contended, "Replacing the intended, legitimately revised standards with Youngkin's deeply flawed standards will continue that cycle of miseducation."

The revised draft of the SOL introduced in November 2022 also received pushback from the Virginia Education Association. The group’s statement on the standards read, "The standards are full of overt political bias, outdated language to describe enslaved people and American Indians, highly subjective framing of American moralism and conservative ideals, coded racist overtures throughout, requirements for teachers to present histories of discrimination and racism as 'balanced' 'without personal or political bias,' and restrictions on allowance of 'teacher-created curriculum,' which is allowed in all other subject areas."

'Turning Back the Clock'

But, as an article in USA Today reported, the debate over Virginia's history standards is even more relevant, as it comes at a time when the nation's system of public education has become increasingly more racially segregated. "Education policy experts warn that efforts to keep certain books out of the classroom or ban the teaching of sensitive topics such as race and gender risk turning back the clock to a time when segregated schools meant separate—and vastly unequal—forums for learning," the article noted.

Citing the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case that made racial segregation in schools unconstitutional and "marked a major turning point in America's attitudes about racial equality," USA Today noted that "experts [now] see the dawning of anew era of school segregation—one in which certain topics will be verboten in some districts and how and what students learn will be determined by what their schools are allowed to teach."

The USA Today article quoted Sarah Hill, a political science professor and education policy expert at California State University in Fullerton, who warned that states and school boards that refuse to teach certain kinds of topics and books they deem to be divisive will effectively segregate school experiences.

"Students will have very different educational experiences, different kinds of conversations in the classroom," Hill said. "As a result, many American children may wind up at the end of high school without a complete picture of the country's history. Many will lack, under the guise of keeping them from feeling discomfort in school, exposure to aspects of the American story that undeniably define the country. They may be denied a chance to reconcile modern events and the past and be denied the opportunity to build empathy and compassion for people they are sure to face for the rest of their lives," the USA Today article stated.

Levy's take was somewhat similar. "I don't necessarily see a direct link between school segregation and Youngkin's new history and social science standards," she said, "but I could foresee if Virginia students don't learn an accurate and full version of our shared history—they wouldn't learn, for example, about the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and segregation—that they wouldn't understand where racial and other disparities in access to power and resources come from in our society and institutions, or why and how they should be remedied."

Author Bio: Sandra Jones served as an investigative reporter for nearly two decades. She has received numerous awards for her broadcast reporting.

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https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/31/florida-new-college-conservative-trustees-00080541

taLLAHASSEE, Fla. — The newly-installed conservative board of trustees at New College of Florida ousted its current president in favor of former state education commissioner Richard Corcoran Tuesday, launching the initial move in reshaping the campus under the vision of Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The decision came at the first board meeting since DeSantis appointed six new trustees with the idea of overhauling the liberal arts college in Sarasota into a more conservative-leaning institution. That track was accelerated Tuesday when the board paved the way for new leadership as students and parents protested the major changes that appear bound for New College.

“Some have said these recent appointments amount to a partisan takeover of the college. This is not correct,” said trusteeMatthew Spalding, a constitutional government professor and vice president at Hillsdale College’s D.C. campuswho was appointed by DeSantis. “It’s not a takeover — it’s a renewal.”

A leadership switch from President Patricia Okker to Corcoran as interim leader is one of several moves made Tuesday by the board, which also signaled its intent to abolish diversity, equity and inclusion programs on campus — all policies pushed by DeSantis. The changes are major developments at the school spurred by the new appointees, including Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who has advised DeSantis on critical race theory, and Eddie Speir, the co-founder of Inspiration Academy, a Christian charter school in Bradenton, Fla.

Tuesday’s meeting was met with apprehension from dozens of students and parents who protested what they called a “hostile takeover” at New College. They urged Okker to stay on as president and push back against the new mandates from the DeSantis administration to model the school as a“Hillsdale of the South” in reference to the private conservative religious “classical“ college in Michigan.

Okker in an emotional address told the board — and the campus — that she couldn’t continue to serve as president amid accusations that the students are being inundated with liberal indoctrination.

“The reality is, and it’s a hard reality and it’s a sad reality, but the vision that we created together is not the vision I have been given as a mandate here,” Okker said.

In remaking the board at New College, the DeSantis administration said the school was “completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning” and in need of change following downward enrollment trends. To move on from Okker, trustees agreed to a “generous” exit package that includes at least 12 months of paid professional development leave and benefits. Corcoran is unable to begin serving until March, leaving Okker’s chief of staff Bradley Thiessen in charge until then.

“New leadership is the expectation and I think it makes sense,” Rufo said at the meeting. “I don’t think it’s a condemnation of Dr. Okker, scholarship or skills or character.”

DeSantis’ changes at New College follow other efforts to reshape higher education in Florida. Earlier Tuesday, the GOP governor proposed several changes to Florida’s university system, including pressing the GOP-led Legislature to cut all funding for diversity, equity and inclusion programs and to allow university leaders to launch tenure review of professors. Last year, DeSantis and state Republicans placed GOP allies in top university posts and pushed legislation that could limit how professors teach race.

New College is also now set to review its Office of Outreach & Inclusive Excellence at the request of Rufo as part of the state’s stance against diversity, equity and inclusion programs in schools. Rufo originally pushed to abolish the office outright, including four positions, and take other actions tied to diversity and equity, but decided to request further details on the program for a discussion in February.

New College trustees also want former Senate President Bill Galvano to serve as their general counsel and attorney. They asked the interim president on Tuesday to enter negotiations with the former Republican lawmaker who practices law in Sarasota.

Tuesday’s meeting was tense at times, with audience members frequently shouting over and at the new trustees as they spoke. Several parents and students addressed the board before they huddled, often criticizing their plans to retool the university and asking them to leave the college alone.

Some faculty said students felt “hopeless” about what could happen at the school, which is a unique college of under 700 undergraduates where students craft personalized education plans and don’t receive letter grades.

“Many students came here to feel safe and access the education that is their right as Floridians,” Diego Villada, Assistant Professor of Theater and Performance Studies, told the board. “And the impulse to make this a place where race, intersectionality and DEI are banned indicates to them that you want everyone to be the same – to be like you.”

Trustees, though, made it clear that the New College overhaul is fully underway, a message that came the same day DeSantis pledged to invest millions of dollars into recruiting faculty to the school.

“The campus needs a deep culture change. You sat up here, you called us racists, sexists, bigots, outsiders,” said trustee Mark Bauerlein, professor emeritus of English at Emory University who was appointed by DeSantis. “We are now in a position of authority in the college. And the accusations are telling us that something is wrong here.”

• Filed under:
• Florida,
• College,
• Ron DeSantis,
• College Board

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sieg heil

left-leaning media outlets have villainized Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, painting his recent moves in the Sunshine State’s education system as a hostile takeover from the Right. So Matthew Spalding, a professor at Hillsdale College whom DeSantis recently appointed to the New College of Florida’s board of trustees, decided to set the record straight.

“DeSantis Allies Plot the Hostile Takeover of a Liberal College,” Michelle Goldberg wrote in The New York Times. Goldberg referred to Hillsdale College as “the template for this reimagined New College” and noted that the conservative Hillsdale—based in southern Michigan—worked with then-President Donald Trump to create a patriotic education curriculum.

“DeSantis moves to turn a progressive Fla. college into a conservative one,” runs the headline on Valerie Strauss’s Washington Post**story. The subheadline: “His administration says he aims to make it a ‘Hillsdale of the South.’” Strauss brands Hillsdale a “bastion of far-right conservatism.”

“A Tiny Christian College in Michigan Is Infiltrating Florida’s Schools” runs the headline on Mary Harris’ Slate story.

The New Republic‘s Jack McCordick also slammed DeSantis’ appointment of Spalding, writing that Hillsdale and the Claremont Institute “eagerly hitched their wagons to Trump” and are “home to some of the country’s most notorious coup plotters and insurrectionists.”

McCordick suggested that Spalding’s appointment by DeSantis represents a threat to the “uniquely proactive nature of the New College’s student body.” He quoted alumnus Derek Black, who credited that student body with his conversion from a “white nationalist activist,” implying that the governor’s new appointments might enable white nationalism to emerge at the school.

These media outlets eagerly cited remarks from Christopher Rufo, a Manhattan Institute scholar best known for combating critical race theory and homelessness. DeSantis also named Rufo to New College’s board. In remarks to The New York Times, Rufo said he aimed toreverse a Marxist “march through the institutions.”

“If we can take this high-risk, high-reward gambit and turn it into a victory, we’re going to see conservative state legislators starting to reconquer public institutions all over the United States,” Rufo told the Times.

The media outlets also cited James Uthmeier, DeSantis’ chief of staff, who told the Daily Caller: “It is our hope that New College of Florida will become Florida’s classical college … more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the South.”

“Florida is where woke goes to die,” DeSantis said in his victory speech following his nearly 20-point reelection victory in November.

The Republican governor has taken aim at critical race theory, a framework that claims to find “systemic racism” in American institutions and that critics say leads educators to treat white students as oppressors and treat black students and other minorities as oppressed. DeSantis also has opposed transgender ideology and signed a bill protecting parental rights in education and preventing institutionalized instruction of LGBT lessons in kindergarten through third grade.

Spalding, vice president of Washington operations and dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale’s satellite campus in the nation’s capital, did not address DeSantis’ program but insisted that the political controversy is “overwrought.”

Spalding, a former director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation, parent organization of The Daily Signal, also said he doesn’t aim to turn New College into a carbon copy of Hillsdale College. Rather, he told The Daily Signal, he intends to champion liberal arts and classical education at the historic Florida institution.

“The political controversy surrounding recent appointments to the board of New College of Florida is overwrought,” Spalding said in a written statement provided to The Daily Signal. “I am honored by the appointment and look forward to engaging in reform to achieve educational excellence.”

“As a professor, dean, and vice president at asuccessful liberal arts college, my focus is on the work at hand: restoring New College’s ‘distinctive mission’ as the ‘residential liberal arts honors college’ of Florida,” Spalding said. “I appreciate the complimentary nods to Hillsdale College, but we are not going to serve New College’s mission by remaking it into a carbon copy of another institution.”

“In the liberal arts, the college—which means a partnership, one between students and faculty—works together and comes into conversation with great thinkersand writers who’ve asked timeless questions about human purpose, about the good and justice, and how to live well,” he added. “The very aim of liberal arts education is to liberate the mind from current fads and popular ideologies by inviting students to address these questions in pursuit of the truth about what it means to be fully human. That pursuit transcends contemporary politics.”

Getting “such an education teaches one how to think, not what to think,” Spalding added. “The surging enrollment at my home institution and others like it shows that students hunger for such serious academic inquiry.”

The author of this article, Tyler O’Neil, is a Hillsdale College alumnus.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

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The New York Times

DeSantis Takes On the Education Establishment, and Builds His Brand

Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Big changes come to New College of Florida during Board of Trustees

meeting

Politico

Conservative trustees oust president at Florida's New College amid

leadership overhaul

Governor Ron DeSantis Appoints Six to the New College of ...

https://www.flgov.com › 2023/01/06 › governor-ron-d...

Jan 6, 2023 — TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Today, Governor Ron DeSantis announced the appointment of Christopher Rufo, Dr. Matthew Spalding, Dr. Charles R. Kesler, ...

New College of Florida trustees Christopher Rufo, Jason ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com › 2023/01/25 › rufo-...

6 days ago — Rufo is among six people who were appointed to New College's board earlier this month by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), setting the stage for ...

New era at New College kicks off with contentious meetings

https://www.heraldtribune.com › politics › 2023/01/25

7 days ago — DeSantis appointed Rufo, Speir and four other new board members to Florida's public liberal arts college earlier this month in an effort to ...

Gov. DeSantis taps Christopher Rufo, 5 others to transform ...

https://floridapolitics.com › archives › 579522-gov-des...

Jan 6, 2023 — Gov. Ron DeSantis has appointed conservative activist Christopher Rufo and five others to the New College of Florida Board of Trustees in ...

Is New College of Florida Headed for a Hostile Takeover?

https://www.chronicle.com › article › is-new-college-of...

5 days ago — Upon his recent appointment to New College of Florida's Board of Trustees by the state's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, Rufo promised to ...

Ron DeSantis Claims of Liberal Bias Put Florida College at ...

https://www.wsj.com › articles › new-college-of-florida...

5 days ago — Christopher Rufo was set to start his first public event as a trustee at New College of Florida this week when campus administrators ...

2 DeSantis-appointed trustees showed up at New College ...

https://www.tampabay.com › education › 2023/01/25

7 days ago — New conservative board members Christopher Rufo and Eddie Speir got a mixed reaction during their campus visit Wednesday. Christopher Rufo ...

DeSantis appointees to New College of Florida lay out their ...

https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu › education › desantis-ap...

6 days ago — New conservative board members Christopher Rufo and Eddie Speir got a mixed reaction during their campus visit Wednesday.

    DeSantis' six conservative picks for New College board could ...

    https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu › education › desantis-pi...

Jan 7, 2023 — Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday appointed six new members to the New College of Florida Board of Trustees in a move that one appointee and ...

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Far-right Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis set off yet another controversy when he banned, from public high schools, an advanced placement course on African-American studies. That controversy continued to rage on when DeSantis, in late January, visited the Union League of Philadelphia to receive its gold medal award and was greeted by a crowd of angry protesters that included local Democratic officials such as Pennsylvania State Sen. Vincent Hughes and Philadelphia City Councilman Kenyatta Johnson.

The protesters argued that in a city that is about 41 percent African-American, the Union League shouldn’t be giving a prestigious award to someone who had just attacked a perfectly legitimate Black studies course (the first recipient of that award was President Abraham Lincoln back in 1863). Liberal Philadelphia Inquirer opinion columnist Jenice Armstrong, in her January 24 column, angrily declared, “Don’t invite me to anything else at the Union League of Philadelphia ever again. I mean it.”

But despite all the blowback DeSantis has received, the College Board is now offering a different advanced placement curriculum on African-American studies — one that, according to New York Times reporters Anemona Hartocollis and Eliza Fawcett, has been “stripped of much of the subject matter that had angered the governor and other conservatives.”

READ MORE:‘A deeper civic purpose’: Author explains why Ron DeSantis’ views on Black studies are dead wrong

In an article published by the NY Times on February 1, Hartocollis and Fawcett explain, “The College Board purged the names of many Black writers and scholars associated with critical race theory, the queer experience and Black feminism. It ushered out some politically fraught topics, like Black Lives Matter, from the formal curriculum. And it added something new: ‘Black conservatism’ is now offered as an idea for a research project.”

DeSantis’ attack on the AP course, according to the Times reporters, “turned out to be the prelude to a much larger agenda” that also includes “a proposal to overhaul higher education that would eliminate what he called ‘ideological conformity’ by, among other things, mandating courses in western civilization.”

“In another red flag,” Hartocollis and Fawcett report, “the College Board faced the possibility of other opposition: more than two dozen states have adopted some sort of measure against critical race theory, according to a tracking project by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Law School.”

READ MORE: Ron DeSantis claims he banned teaching Black history because it includes 'indoctrination' on 'queer theory'

Read the New York Times’ full report at this link.

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as he gears up for a possible presidential run,Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to be a highly polarizing figure. The far-right Republican, who was reelected by 19 percent in the 2022 midterms, is a rock star in the MAGA movement. But when he visited Philadelphia in late January to receive the Union League’s medal of honor, his visit inspired angry protests from a combination of Democratic officials, activists and Black church leaders.

Pennsylvania State Sen. State Vincent Hughes, Philadelphia City Councilman Kenyatta Johnson and the Rev. Robert Collier of the Black Clergy of Philadelphia, all of whom are African-American, were among the protestors. All of them viewed the award as an insult to Philly’s Black community in light of DeSantis’ recent decision to ban an advancement-placement Black studies course from Florida’s public high schools. DeSantis claimed that the course isn’t historically accurate — a claim that many historians have vehemently disagreed with.

DeSantis’ ban has drawn widespread criticism. Some of it is coming from journalist Mark Whitaker, author of the forthcoming book “Saying It Loud: 1966 — The Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement.”

READ MORE:Scholars and lawmakers are outraged over DeSantis’ rejection of AP African-American curriculum

In an op-ed/think piece published by the Washington Post on January 31, Whitaker lays out some reasons why he believes DeSantis is dead wrong about the merits of that AP course.

“Although DeSantis and his allies have insisted that they are not against teaching ‘the history of African-Americans,’” Whitaker argues, “their rhetoric suggests that they are hostile to the idea of treating Black studies as a separate field of study, and that they believe it serves only to turn impressionable young people of different backgrounds against one another.”

Whitaker goes on to discuss the history of Black studies in the U.S., going back to the 1960s, the Black power movement and the Black Panther Party. During the 1960s, the author recalls, there was plenty of white pushback against teaching Black studies — the same type of pushback coming from DeSantis in 2023.

“In America,” Whitaker writes, “teaching history in high school has long been seen as having not just an educational, but a deeper civic purpose. DeSantis seems to be playing to his political base by harking back to a day when that meant offering students a one-size-fits-all, uplifting national story dominated by the noble deeds of great white men. But as far back as the 1960s, members of the Black power generation announced they were no longer accepting that sanitized narrative, and since then, they have been joined by millions of young women and members of other ethnic and LGBTQ communities.”

READ MORE: Ron DeSantis claims he banned teaching Black history because it includes 'indoctrination' on 'queer theory'

:{:{}:

Read Mark Whitaker’s full Washington Post op-edat this link.}:

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natcon

no lnx few

https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/national-conservative-manifesto-a-plan-for-fascism-but-it-s-not-hypothetical/

'National Conservative' manifesto: A plan for fascism — but it's not hypothetical

[Viktor Orbán in 2014, Wikimedia Commons

Trump endorses strongman Viktor Orbán in Hungarian election: ‘He has my complete support’]

Kathryn Joyce andSalon June 24, 2022

Last November in Orlando, dozens of the right's leading intellectuals, writers and think tank staffers gathered for the first meeting of the National Conservatism conference since the COVID pandemic hit, drawing journalists from across the political spectrum seeking to untangle what this high-brow gathering of avowed nationalists was all about. The emergence of the "NatCon" movement several years earlier had alarmed many liberal, centrist and even mainline conservative observers with its efforts to rehabilitate the concept of nationalism.But it energized many on the right who were starting to describe themselves as "post-liberal," meaning they were no longer satisfied with the conservative marriage of convenience that had existed since at least the Reagan era and had drawn together the religious right, anti-communists and free-marketeers in a potent but sometimes uneasy coalition. That consensus, they declared loudly, was dead, and a new conservative fusion must arise to take its place.

After the disruption of the pandemic, the loss of the presidency and the rage of Jan. 6, last fall's NatCon II conference was focused on the goal of building that new coalition along nationalist and post-liberal lines: blending extreme social conservatism with a skeptical approach to some forms of laissez-faire capitalism and a sharp hostility to both global or international authority and what they see as corporate-driven liberal cultural hegemony.

Now, the movement has formalized its ideas in a new manifesto, "National Conservatism: A Statement of Principles," released last week by the Edmund Burke Foundation. This ambitious document calls for the creation of a "world of independent nations" as the sole bulwark against "universalist ideologies" that would impose a "homogenizing, locality-destroying imperium over the entire globe." The credited authors include some leading lights of the NatCon world: Israeli political theorist and Burke Foundation chair Yoram Hazony, former American Enterprise Institute president Christopher DeMuth, First Things editor R.R. Reno and American Conservative columnist Rod Dreher.

But the list of signatories is much longer, and also far broader, ranging from right-wing mega-donor Peter Thiel to former Trump administration staffers Mark Meadows and Ken Cuccinelli, Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, anti-critical race theory activist Christopher Rufo, multiple officials from Hillsdale College — a nerve center of contemporary right-wing politics — and numerous other think tank staffers and writers from across the spectrum of conservative media.

The manifesto hasn't gotten much attention so far — which isn't surprising, considering how much else is happening in the political realm. A column by David von Drehle in the Washington Post declared its contents akin to fascism, and a more substantial fisking in The Bulwark by Cathy Young found it "a document steeped in thinly veiled and sometimes distressingly overt authoritarian ideology." That's not wrong. But it's also worth observing that, in the battle to build a new conservative coalition, much of the NatCon platform has already won.

As Young notes, many of the NatCon's 10 priorities read, at first, like banal restatements of conservative ideology in general: national independence, the rule of law, God and public religion, free enterprise, family and children. But in ways both subtle and unsubtle, those familiar terms don't all mean what you'd think.

The NatCons hope to divorce nationalism from its association with the Nazis, who they claim were not "nationalist" at all.

The first two items, national independence and rejecting globalism and imperialism, follow one of the core, if questionable, goals of the NatCon movement, which is to divorce the concept of nationalism from its most powerful associations, such as the fascist regimes of Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy, which National Conservatives see as imperialist. Instead, NatCons want to attach the term to smaller, scrappier scrappy countries that resisted the Nazis or Soviet Communism.

While the manifesto holds that "Each nation capable of self-government should chart its own course," in alignment with its own legal, cultural and religious traditions, it warns against their "transferring" authority to any "transnational or supranational bodies" and advocates opposing "imperialism in its various forms." Those forms include modern-day China and Russia, of course, but also "the liberal imperialism of the last generation, which sought to gain power, influence and wealth by dominating other nations and trying to remake them in its own image."

The "liberalism" described here, as in most NatCon contexts, isn't the center-left politics of the Democratic Party, but rather "classical" liberalism, focused on individual rights, free trade and pluralistic cultures, which until recently was embraced by most mainstream conservatives as well. But within the post-liberal and NatCon world, that small-l liberalism contained the seeds of conservatism's undoing, leading inevitably to the big-L liberalism of progressive ideology by creating a culture in which it's too hard to raise children along traditionalist lines. In this view, societies that uphold pluralistic tolerance and diversity are inherently unfair by denying the majority the right to live in a culture that supports their values — in essence, allowing the minority to oppress the majority.

While both Young and von Drehle read the jabs at boomer "imperialism" as allusions to the Iraq War — which is at least partly true — "empire" for NatCons also has a larger meaning. First, they believe that international compacts, accords and governing bodies like the European Union or the UN infringe on national sovereignty, particularly when it comes to social issues. In the movement's conference this March in Brussels, Hazony sought to align the NatCon vision with Ukraine's fight against Russian aggression. Vladimir Putin's disdain for borders and national independence, he suggested, mirrored the attitudes of bureaucrats in Brussels and Washington. The obvious subtext was that Hungary and Poland — two post-liberal, overtly nationalist countries greatly admired within the movement — were facing EU sanctions over a variety of human rights issues, which Hungarian and Polish leaders rejected as an attempt to squash the rights of the nation-state, and sympathetic fellow speakers cast as the workings of a new "evil empire."

"Empire," in the NatCon world, refers to the right's long, losing battle in the cultural sphere, these days largely waged against what American conservatives call "woke corporations."

---

an 1 23 mia brett

As I explained for the Editorial Board, CRT is a sociolegal framework to analyze ways in which our legal system perpetuates racism.

It’s not anti-white people.

It’s not about making white people feel guilty.

READ MORE: Ron DeSantis claims he banned teaching Black history because it includes 'indoctrination' on 'queer theory'

It won’t hurt white people or bring about white genocide.

Yet Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and others are treating CRT as it were a major threat to American life. Not satisfied with controlling k-12 education, many Republicans are now seeking to make the public university system an arm of government control in order to outlaw CRT as well as violate trans people’s rights.

I’m not being hyperbolic when I say this is directly out of Nazi laws passed in 1933. Though if this Republican effort is successful, you might not be able to learn things like that anymore.

Ridiculous but effective

READ MORE: Trump could end DeSantis' presidential hopes with a series of surprising attacks: analyst

In 1933, when Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor, the Nazi party took power in Germany and got down to the business of passing laws to enforce political narratives and other ways of thinking.

Two laws were passed in 1933 that successfully targeted German universities. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service banned “non-aryans” (with a few exceptions) from civil service positions that included university professors.

The Law against Overcrowding in Schools and Universities set strict limitations on the number of Jewish students permitted to attend public and private schools and universities in Germany.

The fascist control of education didn’t stop there. It included reforms to promote German art, philosophy and even “Aryanphysics.” Jewish intellectualism and works portraying an “un-German spirit” were purged. Freud, Bertolt Brecht, Karl Marx, Franz Kafka and hundreds of modernist or expressionist artists were deemed decedent, depraved, deviant and degenerate.

Einstein and his theory of relativity represented the Jewish subversion of physics and was driven out of the academy. Only pure German thinkers and early Greek and Roman art unsullied by Jewish influence could be taught in German universities.

Such ridiculous responses to intellectual and artistic pursuits was ridiculous then and its ridiculous now. Relativity and modernism weren’t perversions of science and art anymore than CRT and African American history are undermining the United States.

Though ridiculous, these arguments work.

Fascist control of the academy absolutely serves to perpetuate nationalist propaganda and influence the citizenry to be angry and uninformed in ways that serve the fascist government.

If you know anything about history or racism, DeSantis sounds unhinged, but his plan is working. Twenty-eight university presidents have promised to stop teaching undesirable subjects.

Understanding, not belief

While DeSantis’ Stop Woke Act, which restricts race-related education in workplaces, schools and colleges, has been temporarily blocked by the courts, the governor has found a new way to restrict academic freedom in Florida’s universities.

DeSantis has asked for data on all courses involving race, and all resources spent on CRT or DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion).

He and supporters of the anti-CRT panic claim critical race theory is a “trendy” ideology that teaches people to feel guilt or shame based on their race. (It doesn’t – CRT is about systemic injustice, not individual guilt). Therefore, he justifies this attempt at fascist control in universities by claiming students need to be protected from dangerous teachings on race. (Or, really, any teaching on race, as he is also banning AP African American Studies in high school.)

Fearing that DeSantis will go through their resources with a fine-toothed comb, 28 presidents of Florida state universities and community colleges have agreed to eliminate CRT education.

Technically, their statement regarded teaching “that compels belief in critical race theory or related concepts such as intersectionality.”

Thing is, I don’t know of any concept taught in college that compels belief. Biology teachers will happily teach evolution to creationists as long as those students engage with the material in good faith and answer the questions correctly, according to evolution.

Similarly, CRT isn’t something one “believes” in.

It’s an analytical framework – a tool. I suppose if you don’t “believe” racism exists or that racism is a systemic issue, it’s unlikely you’ll agree with CRT, useful analytical framework or not.

But again – belief not required to do well in class. I’ve taught CRT in many classes and I have no idea what my students believe in at the end of the semester. I only know what they understand.

A request for data on trans healthcare at universities has also been submitted by DeSantis. It’s not clear what such information could be used for, but I think we can agree it won’t be good.

It’s so reminiscent of Nazi Germany that it’s hard to believe republicans aren’t purposefully following a Nazi playbook.

A chilling erosion

In 1919, a Jewish doctor opened the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin. Dr. Hirschfeld amassed a huge collection of books on gender and sexuality. In 1930, the first modern gender reassignment surgery was performed there. In 1933, Nazis destroyed the clinic and burned the books inside, destroying an immense amount of important research on gender non-conforming and gay people.

Hirschfeld’s likeness was reproduced in Nazi propaganda. Trans and gay people were sent to concentration camps along with Jews and Romani for the crime of polluting the Aryan race.

Anti-CRT bills targeting universities have been passed in Iowa, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Dakota and Idaho.Most of these laws prohibit requiring that students “believe” in CRT or the listed divisive concepts which shouldn’t be a problem because university professors don’t care what their students believe.

But these bills are a chilling erosion of academic freedom and a huge step toward fascist academic control in the service of right-wing narratives. While it’s still legal to teach history, remember where such efforts have led and take them seriously.

READ MORE: 'They didn’t block AP European History': WH press secretary blasts DeSantis for banning class on African American History

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right-wing media have been showering praise and positive coverage upon Florida’s decision to block College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies courses due to its supposed lack of “educational value.” 

The decision made by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration to block these courses is part of his Stop Woke Act, which in part has banned educators and businesses from “subjecting any student or employee to training or instruction that espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels such individuals to believe specified concepts constitutes discrimination based on race, color, sex, or national origin.” The law in practice has held back books from elementary schools, restricted the material that educators are allowed to teach, and engaged in oppressive censorship tactics in the name of stopping the supposed teaching of critical race theory. (Critical race theory is typically taught at the graduate school level.)

In a January 12 letter from Florida’s Department of Education’s Office of Articulation to the College Board blocking AP African American Studies curriculum from being implemented in schools, the department wrote that the subject matter and curriculum in these classes are “inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.” College Board has defended the courses as being part of a pilot program offered to 60 schools nationwide, which draws from “primary sources” in areas like geography, literature, and science over a focus on “theory.”

According to DeSantis and the Florida Department of Education, the teaching of Black Queer Studies and the writings of influential Black authors are also “points of concern” related to the blocked curriculum. The decision has been condemned by Black leaders in Florida. Ebonni Chrispin, the co-chair of Black Leadership Aids Crisis Coalition Florida, called the block “sad” and “racist” as the courses would enable students to understand the “full picture” of U.S. history. 

Right-wing media, who have propagated hysteria and outrage over critical race theory in recent years, have given the decision to block the AP courses and DeSantis’ leadership over this matter ample praise. Some have even gone as far as to say that more states should model themselves after Florida, and to suggest that other Republican policymakers should block all programs containing so-called “anti-white racism” and “hateful ideology.” In supporting DeSantis’ decision, right-wing media are promoting teaching a whitewashed version of history that erases the experiences and lives of marginalized communities. 

Here are examples of right-wing outlets and media figures celebrating the block of AP African American courses:

• On January 20, Fox News host Jesse Watters praised the administration for going after the course, saying it was “laced with CRT to the point there was no real history at all being taught. It was all left-wing propaganda.” Watters also claimed that the topics taught in the course would include the “elimination of prisons” and the “destruction of capitalism.” 
• During the January 24 episode of Jesse Watters Primetime, Watters returned to the topic to complain that the course was teaching “radical, racist propaganda.”
• On Fox and Friends, co-host Ainsley Earhardt and Fox News contributor Leo Terrell celebrated DeSantis’ “brilliant” move to “take away the political power of these Democratic teachers unions” who are now “free” from the “indoctrination program.”
• On Fox Business’ Varney and Company, deputy opinion editor of Newsweek Batya Ungar-Sargon agreed with DeSantis’ block and argued that students need “to make up their own minds” about issues like defunding the police and affirmative action, while also cherrypicking statistics about support among Black Americans for reshaping police department budgets.
• Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo commended the block, saying that the AP course was a “history class is being used as a Trojan horse to push, again, ideology.” He also criticized the courses as being a “disservice to our kids and to African Americans.”
• During the January 24 episode of Outnumbered, Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway praised DeSantis for defending students against the “indoctrination about queer Marxist theory” from the courses and suggested that “every Republican governor should be doing this to protect children from some of the worst, racist, and hateful ideology coming through these courses.”
• On the January 24 edition of The Ingraham Angle, Fox News host Laura Ingraham applauded DeSantis for deciding to “put his people first and [make] decisions geared towards improving his state.” Guest andProject 21 Chairman Horace Cooper praised DeSantis for “providing a radical chemotherapy to end this poison,” while claiming that “teaching [students] instead that they should hate their country, they should resent people who don't either look like them or don't think like them is only going to cripple.”
• Fox host Mark Levin defended DeSantis on his radio show, claiming that “critical race theory is based on anti-white racism” and that DeSantis is “setting the mark for other states” with this block.
• In an article published on January 18, The Daily Wire framed the course as being “contrary to Florida Law” and claimed the block was motivated by “wokeness concerns.” The article also claimed that “the curriculum leans heavily into Marxism, socialism, and sympathy toward CRT tenets, such as a rejection of colorblindness.”
• On January 23, The Federalist published an article arguing that “every Republican lawmaker should block College Board’s critical race theory class” while purporting the false narrative that CRT “labels some racial groups victims and others oppressors based solely on skin color and ancestry.”
• National Review, which first broke the story, argued that the “AP teacher’s guide proves DeSantis right in African-American studies clash” because it “promotes a story of leftist political radicalism as a model for student activism.”
• On the January 24 stream of his show The Rubin Report on Rumble, host Dave Rubinendorsed DeSantis’ decision, claiming the governor “does not want politics and a dishonest assessment pushed on every kid going through our school system here.” Rubin also accused “awful” college professors of trying to turn students into “Antifa, you know, trans flag-waving lunatics.”

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-host-trojan-horse-black-history-ap-high-school-class

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an badash 1 23 no lnx

Responding to backlash over Florida banning a high school advanced placement course on African American history, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis lashed out, saying part of the reason it was banned is it includes “indoctrination” on “queer theory.”

Standing in a school classroom at a podium with a sign that reads, “Florida, the education state,” DeSantis defended the move to block the Black history class while not banning any others.

Acknowledging that “in the state of Florida, our education standards not only don’t prevent but they require teaching Black history, all the important things as part of our core curriculum,” DeSantis called the class “a separate course on top of that for Advanced Placement credit.”

READ MORE: Democrat Ruben Gallego Praised After Launching Campaign to Unseat Unpopular and ‘Out-of-Touch’ Senator Krysten Sinema

:{:{“The issue is we have guidelines and standards in Florida,” he proclaimed, as does every other state in the nation. “We want education, not indoctrination. If you fall on the side of indoctrination, we’re going to decline. If it’s education, then we will do.”}:

“So when I heard it, we didn’t meet the standards. I figured, yeah, they may be doing…” he said as his voice trailed off. “It’s way more than that,” DeSantis warned.

“This course on Black history. What are one of what’s one of the lessons about? Queer theory,” he criticized.}:

“Now who would say that an important part of Black history is ‘queer theory”?” DeSantis said mockingly, not recognizing that LGBTQ people are an integral and important part of all races and cultures. The Florida GOP governor has a history of trying to erase LGBTQ people, especially from public school curriculums with his “Don’t Say Gay“ law.

READ MORE: ‘I Will Never Leave That Woman’: McCarthy Vows He ‘Will Always Take Care’ of Marjorie Taylor Greene, His Friends Say

“And so we’re on, that’s the wrong side of the line for Florida standards. We believe in teaching kids facts and how to think, but we don’t believe they should have an agenda imposed on them. When you try to use Black history to shoehorn in queer theory, you are clearly trying to use that for political purposes.”

:{:{}:

Governor DeSantis studied history at Yale and taught history at a private college prep school in Georgia.}:

Last week White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre blasted DeSantis, saying, “let’s not forget,” Florida “didn’t block AP European History. They didn’t block our music history. They didn’t block our art history. But the state chooses to block a course that is meant for high-achieving high school students to learn about the history of arts and culture.”

Watch below or at this link.

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an 1 23

Teachers in Manatee County, Florida, are being ordered to remove or make inaccessible libraries of books inside their classrooms or face possible felony prosecution, as the district responds to legislation Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law prohibiting any books that have not been thoroughly vetted by a credentialed librarian.

The law, which went into effect at the start of this year, “is based on the premise, promoted by right-wing advocacy groups, that teachers and librarians are using books to ‘groom’ students or indoctrinate them with leftist ideologies,” according to Judd Legum at Popular Information.

He puts it simply: “classroom libraries that are curated by teachers, not librarians, are now illegal.”

READ MORE: DeSantis: One of the Reasons I Banned Black History Course Is It Includes ‘Indoctrination’ on ‘Queer Theory’ (Video)

“My heart is broken for Florida students today as I am forced to pack up my classroom library,” one teacher wrote on Facebook, Legum reports.

Calling it a “travesty to education, the future of our children and our nation,” another teacher lamented they have spent 18 years “dedicated to providing students with quality literature,” and helping them “connect with books and develop a love of lifelong learning,” but now they will have to dismantle their classroom library.

Kevin Chapman, the Chief of Staff for the Manatee County School District, “says that school principals in Manatee County were told Wednesday that any staff member violating these rules by providing materials ‘harmful to minors’ could be prosecuted for ‘a felony of the third degree.'”

READ MORE: Democrat Ruben Gallego Praised After Launching Campaign to Unseat Unpopular and ‘Out-of-Touch’ Senator Krysten Sinema

Not only are teachers now packing up their classroom libraries, but children are being told they are not allowed to bring any books from home to school.

Books can be returned to the classroom only after vigorous review by certified librarians, whose official title is media specialist. They are also subject to felony prosecution if they make any errors.

“That review must also be consistent with a complex training,” Legum reports, “which was heavily influenced by right-wing groups like Moms For Liberty and approved by the Florida Department of Education just last week. Any mistake by a librarian or others could result in criminal prosecution. This process must be repeated for any book brought into the school on an ongoing basis. But librarians and teachers are not being provided with any additional compensation for the extra work.”

Earlier on Monday Gov. DeSantis defended the decision to ban advanced placement for African American history classes in Florida.

Standing in a school classroom at a podium with a sign that reads, “Florida, the education state,” DeSantis declared the “issue is we have guidelines and standards in Florida.”

“We want education, not indoctrination. If you fall on the side of indoctrination, we’re going to decline. If it’s education, then we will do.”

“This course on Black history. What are one of, what’s one of the lessons about? Queer theory.

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Scholars and lawmakers are outraged over DeSantis’ rejection of AP African-American curriculum

Jake Johnson and Common Dreams January 20, 2023

Academics and Democratic lawmakers reacted angrily Thursday after the administration of Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis rejected a new high school Advanced Placement African-American studies course—without even seeing its syllabus—claiming it violates the state's ban on "woke" educationand "lacks educational value."

Some Republican Florida officials said they believe the African-American studies course offered by the College Board—which approves AP courses and runs SAT testing—violates the state's Stop WOKE Act by promoting critical race theory (CRT), a graduate-level academic framework positing that systemic racism is inherent in U.S. society.

DeSantis said the Stop WOKE Act, which applies to schools from the primary through university level and businesses, is meant tocombat "wokeness as a form of cultural Marxism."

The law was partially blocked last year by a federal judge who rejected the state's "authority to muzzle its professors in the name of 'freedom.'"

Marvin Dunn, a prolific author and former Florida International University professor who has dedicated his career to preserving and sharing Florida's Black history, told the Daily Beast that the state's rejection of the AP African-American studies course "means an insult to me, it means an injury to me."

"Florida is doing its best to shut down discussions about race, slavery, anything having to do with a challenge to the idea that racism is still a real factor in American life today," he added.

\u201cThis political extremism and its attack of Black History and Black people, is going to create an entire generation of Black children who won\u2019t be able to see themselves reflected at all within their own education or in their own State.\n\nhttps://t.co/0IDCzOJZlG via @thedailybeast\u201d

— Shevrin \u201cShev\u201d Jones (@Shevrin \u201cShev\u201d Jones) 1674085974

:{:{}:

}:

New York University historian Diane Ravitch wrote:

:{:{}:

}:

Just in case there was any doubt about what Gov. DeSantis and Florida Legislature banned when they outlawed any discussion of "critical race theory," that doubt has been resolved. They do not want schools and teachers to acknowledge race, racism, or the very existence of people of color in the United States. Sight unseen, the [Florida Department of Education] has banned an AP course on African-American studies. The department claimed that the content of the course is historically inaccurate and violates state law, even though the department has never seen the course syllabus.

DeSantis, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, has backed dozens of right-wing school board candidates while purging education officials who promote or enforce Covid-19 mandates. Last year, he outraged LGBTQ+ advocates by signing into law the so-called "Don't Say Gay or Trans" bill, falsely claiming that schools were promoting "pornographic" material.

Cassandra Quick, a Seattle-area attorney who is Black and transgender, told Common Dreams that Republicans like DeSantis "seek to silence the stories and histories of Black and Brown people, and of queer people, in a bid to maintain the cultural, economic, and political hegemony they've enjoyed since the inception of the United States and which is threatened by current efforts to shine the light on the realities of those they have suppressed and marginalized."

"Diversity and equity are offensive to the conservative worldview, and they will use whatever tools available to continue enforcing a hierarchy which keeps those they consider the in-group at the top, and the rest of us at the bottom, if they must abide our existence at all," Quick added.

\u201cWhat\u2019s worse, is that for voters who buy white supremacy lock, stock & barrel, their fealty to DeSantis just increased.\n\nThey believe him, his \u201cStop WOKE Act,\u201d and banning things like AP Black History are *protecting* them, their power, and their property.\n\nIt makes him stronger.\u201d

— brittany packnett cunningham. (@brittany packnett cunningham.) 1674138829

:{:{}:

}:

In its brief letter explaining why it rejected the AP African-American studies course, the Florida Department of Education (DOE) said that "as presented, the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value."

:{:{}:

}:

The letter was issued on January 12, just days before the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and days after the 100th anniversary of the Rosewood Massacre, in which white supremacists destroyed the eponymous Black town in Levy County, Florida in a murderous rampage.

Florida DOE spokesperson Cassie Pelelis told the Daily Beast that "if the course comes into compliance and incorporates historically accurate content, the department will reopen the discussion."

In response to Florida's move, the College Board told the Daily Beast that "we look forward to publicly releasing the updated course framework as soon as it is completed and well before this class is widely available in American high schools."

In a separate statement, the College Board said that "like all new AP courses, AP African-American Studies is undergoing a rigorous, multiyear pilot phase, collecting feedback from teachers, students, scholars, and policymakers. The process of piloting and revising course frameworks is a standard part of any new AP course, and frameworks often change significantly as a result."

\u201cClearly every history except Black, is seen as worthy of further development, exploration and understanding in Florida under DeSantis' leadership. Black history is American history. Striking it from curriculum does students a grave disservice, and makes America weaker for it.\u201d

— Ameshia Cross (@Ameshia Cross) 1674144497

Reacting to the course's rejection, political analyst Ameshia Cross tweeted: "Black history is American history. Striking it from [the] curriculum does students a grave disservice, and makes America weaker for it."  ]]

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no lnx

Scholars and lawmakers are outraged over DeSantis’ rejection of AP African-American curriculum

Jake Johnson and Common Dreams January 20, 2023

Academics and Democratic lawmakers reacted angrily Thursday after the administration of Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis rejected a new high school Advanced Placement African-American studies course—without even seeing its syllabus—claiming it violates the state's ban on "woke" educationand "lacks educational value."

Some Republican Florida officials said they believe the African-American studies course offered by the College Board—which approves AP courses and runs SAT testing—violates the state's Stop WOKE Act by promoting critical race theory (CRT), a graduate-level academic framework positing that systemic racism is inherent in U.S. society.

DeSantis said the Stop WOKE Act, which applies to schools from the primary through university level and businesses, is meant tocombat "wokeness as a form of cultural Marxism."

The law was partially blocked last year by a federal judge who rejected the state's "authority to muzzle its professors in the name of 'freedom.'"

Marvin Dunn, a prolific author and former Florida International University professor who has dedicated his career to preserving and sharing Florida's Black history, told the Daily Beast that the state's rejection of the AP African-American studies course "means an insult to me, it means an injury to me."

"Florida is doing its best to shut down discussions about race, slavery, anything having to do with a challenge to the idea that racism is still a real factor in American life today," he added.

\u201cThis political extremism and its attack of Black History and Black people, is going to create an entire generation of Black children who won\u2019t be able to see themselves reflected at all within their own education or in their own State.\n\nhttps://t.co/0IDCzOJZlG via @thedailybeast\u201d

— Shevrin \u201cShev\u201d Jones (@Shevrin \u201cShev\u201d Jones) 1674085974

:{:{}:

}:

New York University historian Diane Ravitch wrote:

:{:{}:

}:

Just in case there was any doubt about what Gov. DeSantis and Florida Legislature banned when they outlawed any discussion of "critical race theory," that doubt has been resolved. They do not want schools and teachers to acknowledge race, racism, or the very existence of people of color in the United States. Sight unseen, the [Florida Department of Education] has banned an AP course on African-American studies. The department claimed that the content of the course is historically inaccurate and violates state law, even though the department has never seen the course syllabus.

DeSantis, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, has backed dozens of right-wing school board candidates while purging education officials who promote or enforce Covid-19 mandates. Last year, he outraged LGBTQ+ advocates by signing into law the so-called "Don't Say Gay or Trans" bill, falsely claiming that schools were promoting "pornographic" material.

Cassandra Quick, a Seattle-area attorney who is Black and transgender, told Common Dreams that Republicans like DeSantis "seek to silence the stories and histories of Black and Brown people, and of queer people, in a bid to maintain the cultural, economic, and political hegemony they've enjoyed since the inception of the United States and which is threatened by current efforts to shine the light on the realities of those they have suppressed and marginalized."

"Diversity and equity are offensive to the conservative worldview, and they will use whatever tools available to continue enforcing a hierarchy which keeps those they consider the in-group at the top, and the rest of us at the bottom, if they must abide our existence at all," Quick added.

\u201cWhat\u2019s worse, is that for voters who buy white supremacy lock, stock & barrel, their fealty to DeSantis just increased.\n\nThey believe him, his \u201cStop WOKE Act,\u201d and banning things like AP Black History are *protecting* them, their power, and their property.\n\nIt makes him stronger.\u201d

— brittany packnett cunningham. (@brittany packnett cunningham.) 1674138829

:{:{}:

}:

In its brief letter explaining why it rejected the AP African-American studies course, the Florida Department of Education (DOE) said that "as presented, the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value."

:{:{}:

}:

The letter was issued on January 12, just days before the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and days after the 100th anniversary of the Rosewood Massacre, in which white supremacists destroyed the eponymous Black town in Levy County, Florida in a murderous rampage.

Florida DOE spokesperson Cassie Pelelis told the Daily Beast that "if the course comes into compliance and incorporates historically accurate content, the department will reopen the discussion."

In response to Florida's move, the College Board told the Daily Beast that "we look forward to publicly releasing the updated course framework as soon as it is completed and well before this class is widely available in American high schools."

In a separate statement, the College Board said that "like all new AP courses, AP African-American Studies is undergoing a rigorous, multiyear pilot phase, collecting feedback from teachers, students, scholars, and policymakers. The process of piloting and revising course frameworks is a standard part of any new AP course, and frameworks often change significantly as a result."

\u201cClearly every history except Black, is seen as worthy of further development, exploration and understanding in Florida under DeSantis' leadership. Black history is American history. Striking it from curriculum does students a grave disservice, and makes America weaker for it.\u201d

— Ameshia Cross (@Ameshia Cross) 1674144497

Reacting to the course's rejection, political analyst Ameshia Cross tweeted: "Black history is American history. Striking it from [the] curriculum does students a grave disservice, and makes America weaker for it."

---

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an maya 1 23

For nearly half a century, billionaire Charles Koch has quietly funded, initiated, and supported efforts to dismantle democracy in the United States, two professors wrote for Progressive Magazine.

Nancy MacLean, the William H. Chafe distinguished professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University, and Lisa Graves, executive director of True North Research and a co-creator of the websites Koch Exposed and Koch Docs, detailed a seemingly never-ending list of ways one of the richest people in the world and his wealthy allies continue to “divide the American electorate.”

The conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which has long been funded by Koch and his late brother, David, has strategized on ways to enforce voter suppression efforts by passing voter ID laws – which began when Barack Obama was first elected in 2008.

READ MORE:How Koch Industries is fighting democracy both 'at home and abroad': journalist

Last year, the Center for Media and Democracy, for which Graves sits on the board, found that a handful of Koch-backed groups collectively spent more than $1 billion on the 2020 election.

One of the organizations, Americans for Prosperity, spent around $70 million leading up to the 2022 midterms, involving itself in over 450 races on efforts that heavily targeted swing voters.

Soon after the election, Koch released Believe in People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World, a book in which he claimed he was ready for “a final act building bridges across political divides.” No more political involvement. MacLean and Graves noted that a few days prior to the book release, The Wall Street Journal published an article titled, “Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake.”

The book even contained phrases like, “Boy, did we screw up.” “What a mess!” “This is crazy! Are we going to have a civil war?” He had convinced the public that his time toying with democracy was over.

READ MORE:Charles Koch must be held accountable for his climate disinformation campaign

But, MacLean and Graves said that “mainstream news editors seemed to forget that” they were reporting on “a specialist in strategic disinformation, who had perfected the practice of deceiving the public during his network’s three decades of climate change denial” – a mastermind of finesse.

Even with that, what Maclean and Graves call Koch’s “most diabolical” move thus far, is how he bandwagoned the “white supremacist” reaction to nationwide civil unrest following George Floyd’s murder in 2020, by initiating a campaign that geared fear-mongering language towards the idea of teaching race in schools – also known as critical race theory.

The Koch network proceeded to fund organizations that actively fought against CRT, although a spokesperson from a Koch-funded group claims that is untrue.

Two examples of Kock-backed anti-CRT initiatives include ALEC’s financial support of a workshop titled “Against Critical Theory’s Onslaught,” featuring the main figurehead of anti-CRT rhetoric, Christopher Rufo in 2020; and when a coalition of Koch-funded groups including the Manhattan Institute and Heritage Foundation advocated against the idea of teaching race in schools in a published letter.

READ MORE:'That's oligarchy': Bernie Sanders batters billionaires over election spending

Aside from funding organizations that promote anti-CRT language, Koch also funds Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) and Independent Women’s Voice (IWV), which work in tandem to promote anti-trans language. For example, the groups created a “Women’s Bill of Rights” which asserts that trans women are not women.

MacLean and Graves wrote, “Just as Koch-funded operations weaponize and intensify racism to secure political power, they also exploit and escalate misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia by any means to boost Republican power.”

Despite his claim that he was removing himself from politics two years ago, it’s clear that with the success of a majority conservative Supreme Court, the continued push to control the bodies of women; anti-CRT, anti-trans, and other discriminatory laws that Koch’s behind-the-scenes funding and staunch support of those who can bring he and his allies' vision of a fully dismantled democracy to life presses on.

READ MORE:Koch keeps doing business in Russia as top journalist says family fortune came from Hitler: report

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aha yikes used to be k12? see campus free sp BS

an maya 1 23

Amid his attempt to ban race-related conversations from higher education classrooms, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis distributed a memo requesting course data from state colleges that teach “diversity, equity and inclusion,” reports ABC News.

The request comes after a judge recently temporarily blocked the passing of the governor’s Stop WOKE (Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees) Act, which would ban race-related coursework, also known as critical race theory (CRT) from college and university classrooms.

In a statement from his office regarding the proposed law, DeSantis said, "No one should be instructed to feel as if they are not equal or shamed because of their race. In Florida, we will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools and workplaces. There is no place for indoctrination or discrimination in Florida."

READ MORE:'Tone of humility': Florida columnist issues dire warning to Ron DeSantis

Those who support DeSantis’ law believe CRT is “discriminatory” and that students should not learn about the history of oppression and privilege in the U.S.

Critical race theory — taught in mostly graduate school programs, and not K-12 classrooms — according to The Brookings Institution, asserts that “U.S. social institutions (e.g., the criminal justice system, education system, labor market, housing market, and healthcare system) are laced with racism embedded in laws, regulations, rules, and procedures that lead to differential outcomes by race.”

ProPublica recently reported that DeSantis referred to the Stop WOKE Act as the “the strongest legislation in the nation against the state-sanctioned racism that is critical race theory.”

On the other hand, those who adamantly disagree with the law say it restricts free speech. Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali called it “a racist dog whistle but with a facially neutral cover.”

READ MORE:'Cold War' getting 'hotter and hotter' as Trump and DeSantis conflict comes to light

The memo says, “Governor Ron DeSantis has prioritized a cost-effective higher education system that delivers high-quality service to Floridians to best prepare them for employment.” It continues, “Additionally, state law requires dutiful attention to curriculum content at our higher education systems.”

A State University System of Florida Board of Governors representative said all 12 colleges confirmed receipt of the governor’s memo, according to ABC. And each institution is required to submit requested data by Friday, January 13.

READ MORE:How 'authoritarian' Ron DeSantis has made Florida a 'laboratory of fascist politics': scholar

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10 22 rww

weeks before the Nov. 8 elections, a gaggle of far-right pundits are helping raise money for the 1776 Project PAC, one of the right-wing groups that is investing millions to take over school boards across the country.

The group, founded in May 2021 by activist Ryan Girdusky, has endorsed 300 candidates in November’s elections. While not all far-right school board candidates have been successful, the 1776 Project PAC claims to have won 75 percent of the races it has been involved in so far.

Ben Shapiro, Laura Ingraham, Glenn Beck, and Donald Trump Jr. are all cited in recent fundraising emails from the 1776 Project PAC. Fox News personality Tucker Carlson has also helped the group raise money. Even discredited “Stop the Steal” lawyer Sidney Powell promoted the project in her “Defending the Republic” newsletter.

Like the many right-wing groups using dishonest and harmful attacks on teachers and school board members as a means to undermine public education and build political power, the 1776 Project PAC runs fearmongering campaigns against schools teaching about racism in American history and society. During a Girdusky appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show, the chyron text said the PAC “supports school board candidates who oppose anti-White curriculums.”

The 1776 Project PAC says it campaigns on behalf of school board candidates “that vow to overturn any teaching of the 1619 Project or critical race theoryin their school districts.” Visitors to the project’s website are greeted with a pop-up urging them to “Report a School Promoting Critical Race Theory.” The anti-critical race theory tactic has been embraced widely by right-wing groups and candidates after it was seen as helping Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin win his 2021 election.

The 1776 Project PAC pushes a propaganda claim that has long been central to right-wing anti-public education campaigns: that public schools are infiltrated by anti-American Marxists who are indoctrinating students in left-wing ideology. “All over the country, teachers are brainwashing children to hate themselves and their country,” Girdusky claimed in a fundraising email earlier this year. The letter went on to warn that a generation taught to hate the United States will “surrender our country to Marxism” and destroy it.

“We will also support any type of education reform that promotes a patriotic vision of America and its history,” the group’s website declares.

Not surprisingly, the PAC also traffics in the anti-trans rhetoric that so many far-right candidates have put at the center of their campaigns this year. One fundraising email from March claimed that “what’s worse is that these radical school boards allow, hire, and encourage teachers who have been caught ACTIVELY recruiting children to become transgender.” Among the claims promoted by the group on social media is theludicrous false claim,popular on the far right, that schools are allowing students who identify as animals to use litter boxes to go to the bathroom.

In May, the group had success in Texas, where it bragged that “every single one” of the 15 school board candidates it endorsed had won. In August, the PAC bragged that it was “largely responsible for the massive sweeping wins in Florida,” in which 35 out of 49candidates endorsed by the PAC won their races and created conservative majorities in some major school districts, including Miami-Dade County.

“This is how you win back the country,” gushed Laura Ingraham during an interview with Girdusky, who gave a shout out to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the right-wing Moms for Liberty for their involvement in school board takeovers.

Among the right-wing groups backing the PAC is the American Principles Project, a project of anti-LGBTQ religious-right megafunderSean Fieler,whose contributions have supported an array of anti-equality groups.

Tags: Ben Shapiro Donald Trump Jr. Glenn Beck Laura Ingraham Ryan Girdusky Sidney Powell Anti-LGBTQ Anti-Trans Critical Race Theory Election 2022 School Boards 1776 Project PAC American Principles Project

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an 10 22

...The poor, especially poor people of color , remain rigidly segregated within educational systems. The backlash against critical race theory (CRT), explorations of LGBTQ+ identities and the banning of books by historians such as Howard Zinn and writers such as Toni Morrison, are extensions of this attempt to deny the oppressed their song.

PEN America reports that proposed educational gag orders have increased 250 percent compared with those issued in 2021. Teachers and professors who violate these gag orders can be subject to fines, loss of state funding for their institutions, termination and even criminal charges. Ellen Schrecker, the leading historian of the McCarthy era’s widespread purging of the U.S. education system, calls these gag bills “worse than McCarthyism.” Schrecker, who authored No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America and The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s, writes:

The current campaign to limit what can be taught in high school and college classrooms is clearly designed to divert angry voters from the deeper structural problems that cloud their own personal futures. Yet it is also a new chapter in the decades-long campaign to roll back the changes that have brought the real world into those classrooms. In one state after another, reactionary and opportunistic politicians are joining that broader campaign to overturn the 1960s’ democratization of American life. By attacking the CRT bogeyman and demonizing contemporary academic culture and the critical perspectives that it can produce, the current limitations on what can be taught endanger teachers at every level, while the know-nothingism these measures encourage endangers us all.

The more social inequality grows, the more the ruling class seeks to keep the bulk of the population within the narrow confines of the American myth: the fantasy that we live in a democratic meritocracy and are a beacon of liberty and enlightenment to the rest of the world. Their goal is to keep the underclass illiterate, or barely literate, and feed them the junk food of mass culture and the virtues of white supremacy, including the deification of the white male slaveholders who founded this country.

When books that give a voice to oppressed groups are banned, it adds to the sense of shame and unworthiness the dominant culture seeks to impart, especially toward marginalized children. At the same time, bans mask the crimes carried out by the ruling class. The ruling class does not want us to know who we are. It does not want us to know of the struggles carried out by those who came before us, struggles that saw many people blacklisted, incarcerated, injured and killed to open democratic space and achieve basic civil liberties from the right to vote to union organizing. They know that the less we know about what has been done to us, the more malleable we become. If we are kept ignorant of what is happening beyond the narrow confines of our communities and trapped in an eternal present, if we lack access to our own history, let alone that of other societies and cultures, we are less able to critique and understand our own society and culture.

 argued that white society feared educated Blacks far more than they feared Black criminals.....

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mma

CARLSON (HOST): In recent weeks, we've learned a lot about what is actually happening inside children's hospitals around the country. Most people trust children's hospitals implicitly. They just didn't know the details but thanks to the internet we now do. It turns out some of these hospitals are performing horrifying experiments on children: elective hysterectomies on minors, physical and chemical castration, things you think would be crimes but that apparently aren't and that are going on in children's hospitals in the United States. And now learning more. The journalist Chris Rufo has just broken a story about the children's hospital in Chicago and local school administrators promoting "kink, bdsm and trans-friendly sex toys for kids."

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WEAPONIZE OMB, UNITARY?

mma 7 22

https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/center-renewing-america-preparing-next-republican-administration-govern

over the last several years, the United States has seen a dramatic rise in Christian nationalism, a loosely defined ideology that fuses patriarchy, xenophobia, and pretextual economic populism with an overtly biblical foundation and a deep distrust of democracy. This phenomenon has manifested in many ways, but one of the organizations driving the trend is a far-right think tank called the Center for Renewing America. 

Several former Trump administration officials are associated with the group, including its president, Russ Vought, who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump. Vought led the administration’s efforts to demonize critical race theory, including removing anti-racism training from federal agencies. He is a regular guest on Steve Bannon’s podcast War Room: Pandemic and on Fox News. His organization is one of several far-right groups under the umbrella of the Conservative Partnership Institute, whose top officials include former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and right-wing legal activist Cleta Mitchell.Both Meadows and Mitchell were intimately involved in Trump’s attempted insurrection, as were at least 18 other people associated with CPI, including CRA senior fellow Kash Patel,  former Trump Pentagon official.  

Perhaps the most significant of Trump’s top coup allies is CRA senior fellow Jeffrey Clark,a former environmental lawyer at the Department of Justice who was hired by the think tank in June. About three weeks later, Clark was targeted in a raid by federal law enforcement. Little is publicly known about the investigation into Clark, but it may revolve around his proposal “to send a letter to state officials in Georgia falsely stating that the department had evidence that could lead Georgia to rescind its certification of Mr. Biden’s victory in that key swing state,” according to The New York Times.

CRA works on an array of disparate, seemingly unrelated issues. In addition to CRA-linked individuals’ considerable efforts to justify the January 6 insurrection, the organization has sown doubt about future “election integrity.” Vought has remained at the heart of the anti-critical race theory push even after he left OMB. He is virulently anti-trans, calling trans identity a “contagion” in a 2021 podcast, and CRA has supported anti-trans legislation and opposed laws that would ban discrimination based on sexual and gender identity. Senior fellow and immigration restrictionistKen Cuccinelli and Vought successfully lobbied counties in Texas to declare that they were under “invasion” by migrants. CRA is also an active participant in the conservative legal community, as exemplified by its senior fellowMark Paoletta,who prepared Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas for their confirmation hearings. Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Vought celebrated Paoletta’s central role in the court’s rightward shift. 

What unites these issues is what Vought refers to as a “biblical worldview,” a concept that has long been prevalent on the religious right and refers to an all-encompassing ideology derived from a conservative interpretation of the Bible. Although Vought eschews the aesthetics of some of the street-fighting Christian fascists who terrorized Pride events in June, he overtly believes the United States should be a Christian nation. CRA’s mission is to “renew a consensus of America as a nation under God.” Vought is signatory to a national conservative statement affirming that “the Bible should be read as the first among the sources of a shared Western civilization in schools and universities.” Most revealingly, in 2021 Vought wrote an opinion piece for Newsweek with the headline: “Is There Anything Actually Wrong With 'Christian Nationalism?'

Vought argues that, no, there’s nothing wrong with Christian nationalism, so long as it’s defined in a circumscribed, non-threatening way.

“Once stripped of its superimposed liberal scar tissue, ‘Christian nationalism’ is actually a rather benign and useful description for those who believe in both preserving our country's Judeo-Christian heritage and making public policy decisions that are best for this country,” Vought writes.

This is a fig leaf. Christian nationalism as it actually operates — sometimes taking the modifier “white” at the beginning — endorses the racist “great replacement theory,” which posits that global elites are fueling non-white immigration to the United States to “replace” white people. The conspiracy theory holds that this upending of power relations will be done through demographic changes, and at the ballot box — which helps to explain CRA’s obsession with “secure borders” and “election integrity.”

For Vought, CRA’s issues of focus are not discrete policy battles. As he made clear recently on a right-wing podcast, he believes the country is in a Manichean war between the forces of good and evil. The battleground is so-called cultural issues, which, properly understood, are liberation movements to end racist and patriarchal oppression, but for Vought they must be opposed at every step of the way.

“These are the issues that if we don’t fight on we lose our civilization,” Vought said. “Critical race theory has to be front and center. Transgender contagion in our schools, impacting our daughters across the country, needs to be a front and center issue."

moment of truth pod]

vought wants to create an “army” of activists ready and waiting to serve in government who can be trusted to carry out a Christian nationalist agenda. And as former director of OMB, Vought has a unique insight into how to implement a whole-of-government approach to enacting a presidential directive, which is what he did with Trump’s initiative against so-called “critical race theory.”

“When the president says, ‘I want to not fund critical race theory through the federal government,’ that’s involving all of the agencies, and we have to then make sure that the president’s agenda is executed,” Vought said in the same interview [aud]

more broadly, Vought lamented that not enough religious right activists “operate on the basis of worldview.” As a result, less dogmatic “elite Christians” have adopted ideologies that “lack clarity at best” and are “damaging at worst.” Vought wants hardliners in the church and in the public sphere. In the context of running the government, that means replacing career staff with “ideologically committed individuals up and down the agencies.”

That idea aligns with the upcoming plans from the Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo, who, along with Vought and CRA, spearheaded the broader backlash against critical race theory. As Rufo said in a recent interview:

As we approach 2024, I will be publishing a policy paper on “eliminating left-wing ideologies in the federal government,” using the power of the presidency to fundamentally reshape the bureaucracy with a six-part program targeting budget, content, personnel, grantmaking, and oversight. The idea is to centralize ideological control over the federal agencies in the White House andcreate a team at the Office of Management and Budget to enforce it. We could easily wipe out a significant portion of the infrastructure for the left-wing ideologies within the federal bureaucracy and within the network of federal grantees and contractors, which would shift American politics in the right direction.

These plans are not theoretical. CRA is one of many hard-right organizations involved in the Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project, a coalition of zealots determined to avoid some of the shortcomings and incompetencies of the Trump administration. (Vought is a former vice president of the organization’s grassroot and advocacy arm, Heritage Action for America.)

Vought has made no secret of what he would do if given the opportunity to serve as a Cabinet-level appointee in a Republican administration. He would attempt to eliminate or drastically curtail the Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and others.

“We got to get after these agencies we talked about before, the administrative state, bigmoney, EPA, CDC, [and] NIH that's weaponized against the American people and we need to put them on the chopping block before we get to some other things down the road,” Vought said on Steve Bannon’s War Room.

A subsequent Supreme Court decision that drastically limited the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon emissions would likely serve as a template for Vought to dismantle broad swaths of the executive branch’s regulatory authority.

Vought’s antagonism toward the regulatory state extends to aspects of federal law enforcement, but only when those agencies are investigating conservatives for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Right-wing podcaster Charlie Kirk asked Vought about the Department of Justice’s supposed persecution of conservatives, including his colleague Jeffrey Clark, and how he thought it should be addressed.  The long-term plan is to structurally change it,” Vought said. “We've got to deconstruct the state that is weaponized against the American people.”

Like other organizations that have sprung up to harness Trumpism in the last several years, CRA’s broad influence remains limited. But its success in promoting the backlash against critical race theory shows it shouldn’t be underestimated, even though that topic may not have had the electoral influence Vought and others have claimed. What’s undeniable is that Vought and his fellow travelers have sweeping ambitions and the zeal of a true believer. They are telling us exactly what they are going to do if they return to power at the federal level, and it is a chilling vision of theocracy and repression.

vid Citation From the June 27, 2022, edition of Real America's Voice's The Charlie Kirk Show

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Christian nationalist Russ Vought recently appeared on Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk’s radio show to discuss plans to purge at least 10% of federal career staffers under a new Trump administration. Vought described that portion of the federal workforce as “the roots of the problem” that prevented former President Donald Trump from fully implementing his agenda. During the interview, Kirk suggested that the next Republican administration subject civil servants to “ideological purity tests.”

Vought ran the powerful Office of Management and Budget under Trump and now heads up a right-wing think tank called the Center for Renewing America, whose mission is to “renew a consensus of America as a nation under God.” While at OMB, Vought helped develop a policy called “Schedule F” as a tool that would allow a new conservative administration to circumvent job protections typically enjoyed by federal workers who aren’t politically appointed.

Speaking on the September 23 edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, Vought claimed to have reclassified 90% of the workers in his own office under that job category

CitationFrom the September 23, 2022 edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble

“Schedule F is an authority that we discovered and developed at the end of the Trump administration to give the president the ability to reclassify career civil servants, who normally have permanency within the bureaucracy, to turn them into essentially at-will employees,” Vought told Kirk.

When asked by Kirk how many career employees he’d like to potentially sack using this authority, Vought set the floor at 10% of current workers, but suggested that he considers as much as 80% of the federal workforce to be ideological opponents.

“I would say that within my agency, we had, you know, 80% of it was left-leaning,” Vought said. “Their paradigms were all rooted in this permanent class, ruling class that defines the milieu of Washington, D.C.”

“And you can reason and work with that crowd, but there is about a 10% of activists that are animated by the wokeism, the anti-racist movement, to be able to come into these agencies and they're just activists,” Vought added.

Vought then told Kirk that someone in the human resources department at OMB described themselves and their colleagues as “committed anti-racists.”

Kirk responded by calling that person the leader of “a sleeper cell of a woke communist ideology who's just right there within our federal government.”

“You're going to have to figure out how to solve that, I don’t know,” Kirk continued. “But ideological purity tests are an interesting approach, but let's break up the federal government first and then we'll go from there.”

In July, Axios reported on discussions Trump allies were having about staffing their next administration, with the Schedule F being central to the framework. Vought reportedly has been a leader in these efforts: As Media Matters reported a week prior to Axios’ story, Vought stated publicly that he wants to build an “army” of hard-right activists with “Biblical worldview” to run the federal agencies that he can’t outright destroy. He’s been very clear that the goal is to get “ideologically committed individuals up and down the agencies,” and he’s been similarly clear that Schedule F is the way to do it.

Right-wing propagandist Christopher Rufo – known for launching bad-faith attacks on critical race theory and targeting children’s hospitals that provide care to trans youth – has pushed for a similar course of action. 

“The idea is to centralize ideological control over the federal agencies in the White Houseand create a team at the Office of Management and Budget to enforce it,” Rufo said in an interview with conservative website IM-1776 in July.

In furtherance of those shared goals, Vought has attempted to turn the Center for Renewing America into a shadow government-in-waiting for Trump or another conservative president. In June, Vought brought on Jeffrey Clark, a former Department of Justice environmental lawyer and Trump’s top coup architect, as senior fellow at CRA. Kash Patel, another key figure in Trump’s attempt to subvert the 2020 election, is a CRA senior fellow as well.

In the recent interview with Kirk, Vought expressed a common regret among former Trump officials that the administration wasted precious time in its first years adjusting to the steep learning curve of running the government.

“My hope is that we don’t have to do that again because we're laying the groundwork now,” Vought said, later adding, “We want to make sure that can never happen again and make sure that from day one, we can ensure that the agenda is being done.”

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interesting two prongs/complementary:

an 7 22

A new analysis is breaking down how Republican lawmakers and candidates are further contributing to the spread of dangerous rhetoric. From "replacement theories" to other conspiracy-driven rhetoric promoting misinformation, USA Today's Candy Woodall is shedding light on Republicans' increased use of aggressive ad campaigns.

Woodall wrote: "Experts who study language, rhetoric, and communication see a disturbing pattern between a string of violent incidents across the country and an increase in 'dangerous' language from Republican candidates and sitting GOP members of Congress in ads, social media posts, and speeches."

The Congressional reporter went on to highlight the issues withRepublican-backed political ads currently circulating as the 2022 midterm elections approach. "During the 2022 midterm cycle, more than 2,700 ads have aired on television and social media focusing on racist tropes, according to a compilation by America's Voice, a progressive immigration advocacy group," Woodall wrote.

She added, "More than 100 directly mentioned the racist Great Replacement Theory and 'invasion' language, accusing Democrats of deliberately encouraging migrants to cross the southern border illegally to replace white voters. And more than 300 ads cite critical race theory, claiming Democrats are trying to indoctrinate children with fake history lessons about systemic racism against Blacks, according to a USA TODAY analysis."

She went on to highlight some of Republicans' main focal points. "For example, the Republican candidates' claims that liberals were 'grooming' children by pushing for LGBTQI+ rights were repeated by the Proud Boys when the extremist street gang disrupted a drag queen story hour on June 11 in California."

Although these types of ads may prove to be effective among Republican voters, critics have also expressed concern about the toll they can take on America's society. Zachary Mueller, the political director for America's Voice, shared his projection of the problems that could arise in the near future. "Without a doubt, there are serious downstream violent consequences," said Mueller.

She also explained how this type of political strategy appears to be working in Republicans' favor although they are facing deep criticism for it as it has taken its toll on America's democracy. "It has become a political strategy," said Sophie Bjork-James, a professor at Vanderbilt University and an expert on race relations, "and it's working very well."

"Many historians and professors who study U.S. democracy place the blame of escalating rhetoric squarely on Republicans," Woodall wrote. "They say it is highly unusual for leaders of one of America's two major political parties to be engaging in, much less condoning, such dangerous and divisive speech."

"It elevates extreme views to a legitimacy they haven't had in the past," said Ziad Munson, a professor of sociology at Lehigh University. "Words that used to be in the fringes of political life are now part of major political campaigns."

The latest analysis comes just days after U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas weighed in on the department's efforts to monitor and surveil extremist groups.

"Individuals spurred by ideology of hate, false narratives, personal grievances, to acts of violence and it is that we respond to and we seek to of course prevent," Mayorkas said. "We are in a heightened threat environment." [vs prev DHS that ignored warnings/suppresed on white supr]

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breitbart categorizations?  started as Left term for large entrenched power? the establishment?  co-opted mirror

big tech soc media bias BS, pharma // vax?

ties in with conpiracy/ agenda: there is ONE secret bad entity trying to take our freedom/destroy USA

SPARKED BY, I SHIT YOU NOT:

BIG GENDER?!

jon s salon an 7 22

A right-wing group in Missouri has launched a "woke heat map" documenting instances of "wokeness" in an attempt to fight back against "critical race theory" and alleged "grooming" in schools across the state.

The group, dubbed "Liberty Alliance," says it is "committed to fighting back against the Woke agenda that is permeating all across Missouri."

"The first step in fighting back is uncovering their crazy ideas – from Critical Race Theory to grooming toddlers with sexually explicit books," the organization states on its website. "That is why we have officially launched the Woke Heat Map – an interactive tool designed to expose the insane actions of the radical Left. This map will alert Missourians of craziness happening in their own communities."

"‘Liberty Alliance’ has launched a ‘Woke Interactive Map’ to warn MAGA about instances of woke behavior in a particular community. The site will alert people if either: 1. CRT, 2. Woke Extremism, or 3. ‘Action by a Crazy Leftist’ has taken place," Ron Filipkowski tweeted.

"This is the “Genderbread Person” & the latest example of the insanity that’s in Missouri schools," Eric Schmitt tweeted. "We launched The Students First Initiative to empower parents & bring transparency back to Missouri schools. This was submitted by a Fox C-6 parent We’ll keep exposing the extremism."

Another Twitter user added, "A reminder that on college campuses, anyone that doesn’t fall in line with the left are censored Where are you at @SLU_Official? These actions continued into the night and no one has been punished for vandalizing a peaceful #prolife @SLUSFL display #FreeSpeech [Students for Life]"

Liberty Alliance's map isn't the first of its kind. Over the years, numerous right-wing groups have created rankings, watchlists, and cluster maps to keep track of the left's alleged influence in healthcare and education as well as Corporate America.

Last October, Salon reported on a custom Google map created by trans activist Erin Reed that provides those seeking hormone replacement therapy with the names and locations of nearly 800 informed consent clinics throughout the country.By February of that year, Reed told Salon, her map was repurposed by anti-trans activist Alix Aharon as a resource for organizing protests against doctorswho provide gender-affirming care. That new map, called "The Gender Mapper," was quickly taken down over apparent copyright infringement. However, a new one has since appeared in its place, cataloging roughly 200 clinics in total.

On its website, The Gender Mapper accuses "Big Gender" of testing "experimental medication" on "confused and vulnerable children."

"GenderMapper volunteers work in secret, around the world to collate evidence and document what is occurring," the site adds. "Gendermapper volunteers are unsung [sic] heros- and data is our truth."

Right-wing groups have also sought to crack down on left-wing "indoctrination" on college campuses.

Notable among them isTurning Point USA, a conservative youth advocacy group, which runs a "Professor Watchlist" designed to keep right-wing students abreast of "college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom."...

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an 6 22

many twt

'Manufacturing hysteria’: Activist who weaponized CRT tells conservatives to make drag queens ‘more lurid’

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement June 18, 2022

Christopher Rufo, the far right activist who intentionally turned a college-level school of thought to examine social structures for systemic racism into a fear-mongering right-wing nationwide panic, is now focusing his attacks on LGBTQ people, by effectively weaponizing transgender identity.

Rufo, a senior fellow at the right-wing Manhattan Institute, is the man behind the right’s false panic and fury over CRT, Critical Race Theory. He’s bragged he wants to “have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory,’” and “put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category.”

Now he’s applying that model to attack the LGBTQ community – especially transgender people and drag queens.

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Rufo wants the right to turn a commonly used phrase, “drag queen,” one that many people both gay and straight use to refer to themselves, into something “more lurid” and sexual.

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}:

“Conservatives should start using the phrase ‘trans stripper’ in lieu of ‘drag queen,'” Rufo said openly Friday on Twitter, despite drag queens not generally being transgender. “It has a more lurid set of connotations and shifts the debate to sexualization.”

He thinks the 1.6 million people across America who identify as transgender should be victims of his weaponization of their very being.

Rufo knows what he’s doing is twisting language into an attack, and admits that when he uses the word “trans” people think “transgender,” but he outright states: “we can say that ‘trans’ is a stand-in for ‘transvestite,'” which is a word not commonly used in decades.

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rww tag

• JUNE 17, 2022 1:53 PM

Jeffrey Clark Tried to Help Trump Overturn the Election. Now Team Trump Has His Back.

• NOVEMBER 5, 2021 1:43 PM

Russ Vought—Trump’s Critical Race Theory Guy—Says Virginia Win Proves Political Power of Culture-War Fights

• OCTOBER 20, 2021 1:08 PM

The Dishonest and Harmful Right-Wing Attack on American School Boards

• AUGUST 6, 2021 2:00 PM

The Right-Wing Political Machine Is Out to Take Over School Boards by Fanning Fears of Critical Race Theory

• JULY 23, 2021 12:17 PM

Religious Right Pushes Effort To Whitewash History and Restrict Teaching About Systemic Racism

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chris rufo crt bs banner ad on alternet?] 4 22 marxist origin

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a niche for anyone who has procreated?

https://www.mediamatters.org/critical-race-theory/professional-conservatives-find-path-victory-ginned-outrage-over-critical-race

Born in a constellation of right-wing think tanks, the outrage against “critical race theory” spent over a year in the metastasizing embrace of right-wing media, churning up hatred against discussions of race in schools.

As this deceptive marketing reached a fever pitch, there was an explosion in Facebook groups being formed or shifting their focus to opposing critical race theory in schools. These groups were a nexus for supporters to organize in-person disruptions at school board meetings.

This astroturfed frenzy against supposed CRT in schools led to threats and harassment against school board members nationwide, and, in Virginia, helped propel Republican businessman Glenn Youngkin to the governor’s mansion.

Assigning national importance to a statewide election can be reckless; anti-CRT outrage did not prevail everywhere in the 2021 election. But for the effort and money that conservative activists and media put into defining the Virginia gubernatorial race with critical race theory, it is clear that these charlatans will attempt to export the Virginia playbook nationally in 2022 and beyond[twt.]

as Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo, who helped launch the campaign, has explained, the goal is to “put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category” so that people “read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’” Other right-wing institutions and groups, like the Heritage Foundation, joined in the fray with events, activist toolkits, model legislation, and pushes for bans made in concert with lawmakers.

From there, advocacy groups use this think tank framework to generate local outrage against critical race theory.[IT'S A FRANCHISE MODEL?! MLM?] According to an NBC News analysis, there are now “at least 165 local and national groups that aim to disrupt lessons on race and gender,” and several of the most prominent ones are headed by Republican activists and strategists. These groups cram local controversies into the CRT framework established by Rufo and others, disrupt school board meetings, and place spokespeople in media appearances -- sometimes professional spokespeople, who are instead described as local parents.

The noise and attention from these professionally operated, think tank-inspired groups then generates coverage from an obsequious and obsessive right-wing media, champing at the bit for any angle that will hurt Democrats and help Republicans. Empowered by the outrage suddenly all over TV -- to the tune of hundreds of Fox mentions per month, plus loads more from OAN and Newsmax -- GOP politicians find incentive to take legislative action to drastically limit the teaching of civil rights, sometimes even banning books altogether. [AND WORDS]

This feedback loop is a concerted strategy whose first trial run was the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election. It is not a grassroots movement, it is not a natural response to alleged left-wing excesses, and it is not about what is best for children. It is a top-down attempt by professional political operatives to morph political landscapes to suit their racially regressive needs. And, at least in Virginia, it seems to have worked. [twt.]

as Rufo promised, the professional outrage against critical race theory has only just begun. As the next election looms, critical race theory (or similardog whistles like “parents’ rights”) will suddenly get thousands of TV mentions again, and professional GOP operatives will again call themselves mere concerned parents. Think tankers may even publicly discuss their exact plans again, because they know it won’t cause any harm; enough of the mainstream media will still cover these anti-CRT outrages as grassroots “education” issues, instead of what they are: a think tank astroturf project.

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nh register

Opinion: Dark money behind school board conflicts

Christine Palm and Frank Hanley Santoro

Oct. 4, 2021

A woman carrying a sign protesting the teaching of critical race theory arrives at a Board of Education meeting at Central Middle School in Greenwich, Conn., on Thursday June 17, 2021. Members of the group Greenwich Patriots came out to the meeting to urge people to attend and speak at public comment toprotest masking, vaccinations for students and critical race theory..

Schools are the latest battleground in the culture wars. Protests over issues such as critical race theory, masks and vaccines have cropped up all over the state, including in the towns of Guilford, New Canaan, Glastonbury, Haddam, Cheshire, Bristol and Fairfield. The protesters often characterize themselves as concerned parents. This may be partially true, but it is not the whole story. If you dig deep enough, you will find a web of dark money fueling political operatives in so-called “astroturf” groups — those that purport to be grassroots but are in fact formed and funded by hidden corporate and political sponsors. Their agenda has little to do with improving public education.

Protesters have a right to state their opinions (even suicidal ones in the case of vaccine opposition). But as the right-wing agenda increasingly infiltrates small towns, members of local school boards might find themselves portrayed as purveyors of an “increasingly hostile” threat to the community “rooted in Marxism” who will “stop at nothing” as they are “trying to socially replace you.” Those are words from the websites of the Center For Renewing America and its Citizens Renewing America Toolkit.

In fact, hostility against board of education members has gotten so ugly that the National School Boards Association this past week asked President Biden for help from federal law enforcement agencies.In reality, most of these folks are hardworking volunteers who are far more concerned with balancing a budget than they are with a radical agenda — be it on the left or the right. And yet, recently in Haddam, police had to escort board members to their cars following a contentious meeting in which anti-maskers shouted through a bullhorn and drowned out much of the proceedings.

Clearly, something is afoot. Why is this happening suddenly and simultaneously in so many different places around the state (and indeed the country)? Why is the pattern so similar? Why does it seem peculiar to affluent Connecticut towns? Why do some protests turn disruptive? Why pick on CRT, which schools don’t even teach (it’s a post-secondary pedagogical tool)? This doesn’t sound like something that just happened to occur to parents at a local bake sale.

The explanation may lie with Steve Bannon. According to Bannon, “This is the Tea Party to the 10th power,” and “The path to save the nation is very simple. It’s going to go through the school boards.” Before he was pardoned by Trump, Bannon was the guy arrested at sea off Westbrook on a Chinese billionaire’s yacht for allegedly siphoning over a million dollars from a “We Build the Wall” scheme. According to news reports, he was also accused by an ex-wife of objecting to the Archer School in Los Angeles for his daughters because, she said, he “didn’t want the girls going to school with Jews.”

The phenomenon may also be explained byNicole Neily — the president of Parents Defending Education, whose targets include several Connecticut towns. PDE describes itself as a “grassroots” organization, and Neily once was quoted as saying, “We’re all working moms.” But according to several sources including Sourcewatch, Neily is a veteran operative of the Koch network. She’s not alone. Other astroturf operatives include Russ Vought, a former Trump official whose group publishes the “Toolkit” for taking over school boards; Christopher Rufo, whose anti-CRT activism earned him an invitation to the Trump White House; and Keri Rodriques, who was reportedly paid $388,000 in 2017 and 2018 for her advocacy work. Anti-CRT activity seems a profitable cottage industry for the apparatchiks of MAGA world.

Dark money is hard to ferret out because astroturf groups do not disclose their funders. But some information can be found. Among the sources are MassPoliticsProfs.org, the blog of Diane Ravitch, UnKochMyCampus.org, and a book called “Outside Money in School Board Elections.” Google searches also help. Our information is based largely on these sources.

A picture emerges of a shadowy and labyrinthine network of astroturf groups funded by big money. Funders include the Koch network, Turning Points USA, the DeVos Family Foundation, the Ed Uihlein Foundation, Donors’ Trust, and the Heritage Foundation. Some astroturf groups are local (Connecticut Parents Union). Most are national. Many have happy names like Citizens for Renewing America, the Center for Renewing America, Free to Learn, National Parents Union, Massachusetts Parents United, No Left Turn in Education, Moms for Liberty, and Fight for Schools. Some encourage their readers to report incidents (i.e., spy on teachers).One group calling itself School Board Watchlist models disruptive behavior on its website.

Our point is not necessarily to question the sincerity of the self-appointed disrupters, misguided though they are. But we believe they are pawns in a darker power grab of which they are probably unaware. The next time you hear that public schools are a threat to freedom, it’s good idea to follow the money.

Christine Palm is the state representative for the 36th Connecticut General Assembly District. Frank Hanley Santoro is a former assistant U.S. attorney.

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1021 an

legal expert George Conway is blasting the Claremont Institute for defending John Eastman (photo, with Giuliani on Jan. 6), the man who wrote the now-infamous "Eastman Memo" which many see as instructions to then-Vice President Mike Pence on how to overturn the 2020 presidential election on January 6.

"Claremont's statement that Eastman did not seek to have Vice President Pence unilaterally determine the validity of electoral votes and overturn the election is a bald-faced, disgraceful lie," says Conway, who successfully argued a case before the U.S. Supreme Court and won a unanimous decision, and had been under consideration to be Donald Trump's solicitor general or an assistant attorney general.

Conway was referring to a statement from the Claremont Institute, the pro-Trump conservative think tank where Eastman is employed as a senior fellow. Claremont has embraced right wing extremists, granting fellowships to Fox News' Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin, Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro, CRT conspiracist Christopher Rufo, and even Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec.

The Washington Post Monday accused Claremont of trying to "whitewash" Eastman's "road map for overturning Trump's loss."

Eastman, who happens to be the chairman of the nearly-defunct anti-LGBTQ group National Organization For Marriage (NOM) and supported Uganda's efforts to jail LGBTQ people for life, was forced to "retire" as a law professor after blowback from speaking at Trump's pre-insurrection rally, ginning up the troops, and falsely claiming Trump had won the election.

In its statement defending Eastman today, Claremont decried "a recent combined disinformation, de-platforming, and ostracism campaign," also known as holding Eastman accountable by using his own words.

Here's Conway's tweet...

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https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/critical-race-theory-invades-school-boards-help-conservative-groups-n1270794

no lnx nbc

Critical race theory battle invades school boards — with help from conservative groups

U.S. NEWS

Critical race theory battle invades school boards — with help from conservative groups

In towns nationwide, well-connected conservative activists, and Fox News, have ramped up the tension in fights over race and equity in schools.

Prominent Republican political figures are rushing in to support the anti-critical race theory parent activists, hoping that these local battles will mobilize conservative voters in next year’s midterms and beyond.Matt Williams / for NBC News

June 15, 2021

By Tyler Kingkade, Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins

A booby-trapped billboard. A list of demands. A conservative media frenzy.

Jeff Porter, superintendent of a wealthy suburban school district in Maine, had no idea that his community was about to become part of a national battle when in the summer of 2020 a father began accusing the district of trying to “indoctrinate” his children by teaching critical race theory.

To Porter, the issue was straightforward: The district had denounced white supremacy in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by police, but did not teach critical race theory, the academic study of racism’s pervasive impact.

Conservative dark money groups disrupt critical race theory debate

JUNE 15, 2021

But the parent, Shawn McBreairty, grew increasingly disgruntled and soon connected with No Left Turn in Education, a rapidly growing national group that supports parents as they fight against lessons on systemic racism. That action turned a heated conflict with the school board into one that soon drew national attention, mobilized by a new, increasingly coordinated movement with the backing of major conservative organizations and media outlets.

It’s a movement that has amped up grassroots parental organizing around the country, bringing the lens and stakes of national politics — along with the playbook of seasoned GOP activists — to school boards.

Jeff Porter, a school superintendent in suburban Maine, said his district has been "almost held hostage" by a national battle over critical race theory.

Jeff Porter, a school superintendent in suburban Maine, said his district has been "almost held hostage" by a national battle over critical race theory.Ryan David Brown / for NBC News

“I was very naïve at the beginning of the year,” Porter said. “I thought it was a concerned parent who had taken it a little too far. I didn't understand this until recently, but these were tactics from national organizations to discredit the entire district.”

McBreairty became Maine’s chapter leader for No Left Turn last summer. He has since put up a billboard-size sign of a school board member’s face on his lawn and said it was surrounded by rat traps to prevent theft. “This is a war with the left,” McBreairty said in an email to NBC News, “and in war, tactics and strategy can become blurry.” The fight has only escalated, and it shows no sign of slowing.

Political signs in Cumberland]

A sign calling for the ouster of Jeff Porter, superintendent of schools, across from his district's administrative office in Cumberland, Maine. Shawn Patrick Ouellette / Portland Press Herald via Getty Images]

Conflicts like this are playing out in cities and towns across the country, amid the rise of at least 165 local and national groups that aim to disrupt lessons on race and gender, according to an NBC News analysis of media reports and organizations’ promotional materials. Reinforced by conservative think tanks, law firms and activist parents, these groups have found allies in families frustrated over Covid-19 restrictions in schools and have weaponized the right’s opposition to critical race theory, turning it into a political rallying point.

While the efforts vary, they share strategies of disruption, publicity and mobilization. The groups swarm school board meetings, inundate districts with time-consuming public records requests and file lawsuits and federal complaints alleging discrimination against white students. They have become media darlings in conservative circles and made the debate over critical race theory a national issue.

Virtually all school districts insist they are not teaching critical race theory, but many activists and parents have begun using it as a catch-all term to refer to what schools often call equity programs, teaching about racism or LGBTQ-inclusive policies.

"I didn't understand this until recently, but these were tactics from national organizations to discredit the entire district."

SUPERINTENDENT JEFF PORTER

Now, conservative activists are setting their sights on ousting as many school board members as they can, and local Republican Parties have vowed to help, viewing the revolt against critical race theory as akin to the tea party wave from a decade ago.

Activists and parents have launched 50 recall efforts this year aimed at unseating 126 school board members, according to a new report from Ballotpedia, a website that tracks U.S. politics and elections. Most of those recalls — which already surpass the record for a single year — started as objections to Covid-19 restrictions, but five of the most recently launched campaigns, including a particularly contentious fight in Loudoun County, Virginia, include concerns about critical race theory.

And, in a new development this year, rather than targeting a single member, these efforts often target multiple members or entire school boards, according to Abbey Smith, a researcher at Ballotpedia.

Related NEWS In a diversifying Virginia suburb, a fight over equity in schools spirals out of control]

This data, which is limited to the 39 states that allow for recall of local elected officials, suggests that political discord at the local school level is at an all-time high. At least 50 other school districts from Washington to Florida have been the scenes of local unrest over the idea of critical race theory, according to an NBC News analysis of media reports.

Prominent Republican political figures are rushing in to support the parent activists, hoping that these local battles will mobilize conservative voters in next year’s midterms and beyond. The push comes as President Joe Biden and Democrats have benefited from popular economic legislation but show some vulnerability on culturally divisive issues. As former Trump adviser Steve Bannon put it on his podcast in May: “The path to save the nation is very simple — it’s going to go through the school boards.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said this month that he will get the “political apparatus involved so we can make sure there’s not a single school board member who supports critical race theory.” Political action committees have been set up dedicated to the cause.

The clashes at school board meetings and online are partly anchored in “real differences” in parents’ opinions on Covid-19, race and America’s future, said Jeffrey Henig, director of the politics and education program at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

“But it's being exploited by actors at the national level,” he said, “who see it as an opportunity to reshuffle the politics of the standard educational reform debate.”

A movement is launched

The origin of one of the largest groups targeting school boards can be traced back to last June, when many educators began looking for ways to teach students about the protests following George Floyd’s murder, and reposition how American history is taught.

When the Gladwyne Elementary School in the suburbs of Philadelphia decided to teach students about the concepts of racism, privilege and justice during the last week of classes, Elana Yaron Fishbein, a mother of two students in the school, sprang into action.

Fishbein, a former social worker, sent a letter to the superintendent calling the lessons a “plan to indoctrinate the children into the 'woke’ culture.” She said the superintendent never responded, though the district later said that the lesson plans were age-appropriate and did not shame students and that parents were allowed to opt out. Fishbein said other white parents in the district attacked her on Facebook when she shared her letter.

So Fishbein moved her children to private school and started a group to advocate against anti-racist teaching. She called it No Left Turn in Education.

“The schools have been hijacked,” she said in an interview. “Our kids are captive audiences. And they think they can do whatever they want with our kids.”

Fishbein’s endeavor received a significant boost in September, when she appeared on Tucker Carlson’s prime-time Fox News show. By the next day, No Left Turn’s Facebook page had shot up from fewer than 200 followers to over 30,000. The group now has 30 chapters in 23 states, a rapid expansion Fishbein credits to Carlson’s show.

“He launched our movements — he doesn't know it, but he did,” Fishbein said.

She said her nonprofit group, which is volunteer-driven and relies on small donations to cover promotional materials and legal fees, now fields requests from groups of parents, ranging from 50 people to more than 1,000, asking to get involved under No Left Turn’s umbrella. These local chapters are the “boots on the ground,” she said, confronting school administrators at board meetings and through records requests.

“We want to know, what are you teaching? What are you doing?” Fishbein said. “And it's exactly what I got: a lack of transparency. They don't want to answer.”

[Elana Yaron Fishbein, founder of No Left Turn in Education.

Among the many people who reached out to Fishbein after her Tucker Carlson appearance were Jonathan O’Brien, a personal injury lawyer in New York who wanted to help, and Gabrielle Clark, a mother in Las Vegas who was upset that her biracial son had received a D-minus after refusing to participate in a mandatory sociology class where the teacher labeled certain identities as “oppressive.”

Fishbein connected them, and with O’Brien’s representation, Clark sued her son’s charter school in December, arguing it was a violation of her son’s privacy and free speech rights that the sociology teacher had asked students to disclose any disabilities, as well as their religious and sexual identities.

The charter school conceded in court filings that it did not let Clark’s son drop the class, but said no one had to disclose their identities and that his poor grade was due to his refusal to complete assignments. After the suit was filed, administrators agreed to expunge his grade for the class. The charter school’s CEO called the suit an “ill-intentioned” attack by activists on “any conversation about racism or slavery that paints aspects of our country’s past in a negative light.” The litigation is ongoing, and the district has asked that it be dismissed.

"Some people are treating it like a gold rush."

The case garnered media attention on the right, and slowly, O’Brien said, more conservative advocacy groups became interested in these cases. He started SchoolhouseRights.org as a project of the International Organization for the Family, a conservative nonprofit group, to raise funds to take on more cases like Clark’s.

“Some people are treating it like a gold rush,” O’Brien said. “This is a new area where people think they can either become famous or make money on the issue, and they’re probably right.”

O’Brien later joined a coalition of attorneys focused on this cause, organized byChristopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.

Rufo, who said he was in touch with then-President Donald Trump’s staff before he issued an executive order last September banning critical race theory’s use by federal agencies, promised in a March tweet to make critical race theory “toxic” in the public imagination. Rufo declined an interview request.

“The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory,’” he wrote. “We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.”

Shared connections, shared strategies

The growth of school board-focused groups has coincided with a broader conservative effort to make critical race theory a national referendum on the discussion of race in America.

Throughout the winter, organizations like the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and the American Legislative Exchange Council, which produces model bills on Republican causes, held webinars that warned about the threat of teaching critical race theory.

Fishbein said she took part in a private briefing hosted by the Heritage Foundation in Maythat featured lawmakers from Idaho, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Texas and other states to discuss model legislation to block critical race theory. Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Montana, Oklahoma and Tennessee have already advanced some form of a restriction, and 15 states have legislation pending. The Heritage Foundation declined to comment.

"Maybe they don’t know how to get it in the right hands, but we do."

As lawmakers proposed legislation targeting critical race theory this spring, more activist organizations similar to No Left Turn sprouted up, their memberships ballooning with exposure on conservative TV and streaming programs. Each group followed a similar pattern of providing toolkits for activism, teaching people how to file open-records requests and offering to help parents publicize what’s happening in their school districts.

“Maybe they don’t know how to get it in the right hands, but we do,” Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education, said in March. “We know a lot of reporters, and we’re happy to share those things.”

Neily, who lives in the Washington metro area, started Parents Defending Education as a nonprofit group at the beginning of the year. She also runsSpeech First, a nonprofit group that has sued universities over systems to combat racism that the group believes violate free speech rights, and she had previously worked at conservative groups such as the Cato Institute and FreedomWorks.

Parents Defending Education aims to teach parents how to become activists, Neily has said, but the group is also playing an active role. It has filed civil rights complaints against schools in Massachusetts for creating an affinity space for students of color after a string of attacks on Asians, and against districts in Minnesota, Missouri and Ohio where administrators pledged to dismantle racism in their schools. She said during a webinar last month that she wants school administrators who take these steps to “know there will be consequences.”

Neily did not answer emailed requests for comment and hung up when reached by phone.

Though the political action committees and nonprofit groups will eventually disclose financial information, in most cases this hasn’t happened yet, so it’s unclear how much money this fight has drawn. Southlake Families PAC, organized around a school board battle in a wealthy Dallas-Fort Worth suburb, raised more than $215,000 as of April 21, according to finance reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission. That doesn't include more than $100,000 raised by two PAC-backed school board candidates who successfully ran on a platform of stopping the district's Cultural Competence Action Plan.

[Related NEWS

Opponents of Texas school diversity plan win big in bitterly divided town]

There’s no shortage of free publicity for the cause. The conservative focus on critical race theory is pervading right-wing news publications, likeFox News and Breitbart, which covered the issue in as many as 750 articles per week in May, according to Dominik Stecula, a political science professor at Colorado State University.

The topic is also the focus of “consistent discussion” in local GOP Facebook groups,where 2 percent of all Facebook posts from local parties mentioned critical race theory in May, climbing to 3.6 percent so far in June, according to Kevin Reuning, an assistant professor of political science at Miami University, who tracks political Facebook posts. That’s about the same as the share of posts mentioning antifa in the groups following the U.S. Capitol riot, when conservative groups were falsely blaming the far-left collection of orchestrating the Jan. 6 attack.

As a result of this movement, school boards are now facing an influx of lawsuits and records requests that can cost money and time that are in short supply, as well as public meetings that have become a sounding board for a variety of far-right causes.

“The thing that disturbs me the most about politicizing school boards is there is no mention of kids. It’s not community centered, it’s centered on political thought and theory and things that don't connect to education,” said Sonja McKenzie, a member of the board of directors of the National School Boards Action Center, which advocates for public education. “The things that have been politicized — reopening schools, mask wearing, critical race theory — a lot of these are above and beyond the purview of what you do as school boards.”

In Nevada, Washoe County’s school board halted in-person meetings in April, after residents filled a large auditorium and lobbed insults and threats of violence during the public comment portion. Meetings opened to the public again in May, in a small office where only a few speakers can be present at a time.

Undeterred, hundreds of conservative activists and local residents, many without children in the district, according to their public testimony, waited in the Reno sun until their names were called to speak out against critical race theory and the board’s recent adoption of a student-led anti-discrimination resolution.

“This is an opportunity for what I feel like I've been screaming from the rooftops about,” said Karen England, executive director for Nevada Family Alliance, a conservative nonprofit group known for its efforts to end Drag Queen Story Hour at local libraries. The group recently proposed placing body cameras on teachers to ensure they aren’t teaching critical race theory.

During the most recent meeting, which lasted 11 hours, speakers railed at school board members, calling them Marxists, racists, Nazis and child abusers, among other epithets.

Explaining the controversy behind critical race theory

JUNE 11, 202105:15

Kristen De Haan, the mother of a senior in a district high school, said she attends the meetings in support of an expanded social justice curriculum and LGBTQ-inclusive sex education.

“I don’t always agree with the board by any stretch of the imagination,” De Haan, who is white, said. “But listening to the anger, and what truly feels like hatred, and Martin Luther King being taken out of context over and over again, it’s really hard. I definitely get glares when I go up and speak. It's uncomfortable, but I feel it's important to be out there.”

Other school boards face less explosive — but in some ways just as disruptive — pushback by parents.

In South Kingstown, Rhode Island, the parent of an incoming kindergartener submitted over 200 public records requests in two months, seeking copies of middle and high school curricula, lists of all books related to gender available in the library and 10 years worth of harassment complaints and emails. The district said it would take 300 hours to compile all of the records requested.

Timothy Ryan, executive director of the Rhode Island School Superintendents' Association, called the onslaught of records requests an effort “to shut the system down.”

“I believe their intent is really to have the public lose confidence in public education,” he said. “There was the ‘war on Christmas,’ and now everybody is teaching critical race theory. I think you'd be hard pressed to find five people in the state who could even define that.”

'Just the tip of the iceberg’

Back in Cumberland, Maine, the situation has escalated. After McBreairty became even more certain the school was pushing critical race theory, he filed a public records request that revealed the school had paid over $12,000 to a nonprofit called Community Change Inc. for diversity and equity training for the school’s staff.

McBreairty then filed at least 53 more records requests, according to the school district’s superintendent, and said on a GoFundMe page that Maine’s freedom of information law is “your most powerful weapon.” Fishbein said No Left Turn paid for some of McBreairty's court costs and records requests.

On May 26, McBreairty sent an email to Porter, the superintendent, and the school board with links to coverage of his crusade, plus a list of demands, including that Porter publicly apologize for a letter denouncing white supremacy sent by the equity committee a year ago. McBreairty copied a producer for Fox News and two Daily Wire reporters.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg on media coming your way and national support aligned with our cause to fight CRT,” he wrote. The next day, McBreairty appeared on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

A representative for Fox News declined to comment.

But McBreairty’s efforts have run into problems with authorities. Last week, McBreairty was charged by the local police department with “improper influence,” after he allegedly threatened to release a recording between himself and the deceased father of school board chair Tyler McGinley if McGinley didn’t resign.

“My hope is that this summons is a reality check on his behavior,” said McGinley, who is unclear if the recording truly exists. “I wanted to make sure that if the harassment was going to continue to happen, it wouldn’t happen to other people.”

When asked about the recording that led to the charge, McBreairty didn’t deny that he’d threatened to release it. He said in a text message that he had “more info on Tyler [McGinley] that would provide a lot of context as to why MSAD51 is teaching Critical Race Theory doctrines.” The charge is pending with the district attorney.

Ann Maksymowicz, the school board member whose face appeared on McBreairty's booby-trapped billboard, said the media attention has been overwhelming. The critical race theory debate became a central issue of last week’s school board race, with Maksymowicz facing calls to resign. Instead, she won re-election.

Porter said he was “surprised by how much hate can be generated by a small group of people in the community” who he says have equated equity initiatives with critical race theory.

“For people who are not in agreement, they're using the word ‘equity’ and saying, ‘There you are, you're teaching CRT!’ And then equity becomes a horrible thing that we're doing,” Porter said.

“I feel like the district in some ways has gotten used — almost held hostage — by this national ideology or national movement, that says we're all teaching CRT, and we're all trying to indoctrinate kids.”

Porter said the battle is far from over. It “is kind of a black cloud hanging over the district,” he said.

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