Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times is an extraordinary opinion writer. I subscribe to the LA Times, and I always look forward to his cogent insights. In this one, he describes the tactics of rightwing lawyers, who shop for rightwing judges. When they wanted to invalidate a key plank in Obamacare, they knew exactly where to go to find a zealot to take away free preventive care from all Americans. If not reversed, this decision will cost hundreds of thousands of lives–by denying access to early screenings for cancer and other deadly diseases.
Hiltzik writes:
You might have thought that, more than a dozen years after its enactment, the Affordable Care Act was finally safe from interference by right-wing judges carrying water for religious fanatics and anti-government activists.
Unfortunately, a ruling from a one-horse federal courtroom in Texas reminds us that there’s almost an endless supply of those litigants and the judges who run with them. Less than two weeks ago, U.S. Judge Reed O’Connor invalidated an ACA provision mandating that a long list of preventive care services be provided to patients without co-pays or deductibles.
If O’Connor’s March 30 ruling stands (the government is certain to appeal), it would block no-fee preventive services such as breast- and cervical-cancer screenings for millions of women, smoking cessation programs, hepatitis tests, screening for diabetes, osteoporosis, depression, HIV and many other conditions and health risks.
A court oversteps its authority when an injunction does more than benefit the plaintiffs who have sued.
— Law professors Nicholas Bagley and Samuel Bray
The anti-HIV provision, as it happens, was the principal target of the plaintiffs in this case. Among them are Steven Hotze, a self-described Christian owner of a “wellness” center who complained that the Affordable Care Act mandate to provide anti-HIV drugs would “facilitate behaviors such as homosexual sodomy, prostitution, and intravenous drug use — all of which are contrary to Dr. Hotze’s sincere religious beliefs.”
Hotze also objects to other preventive-care mandates that require his business’ health plans to cover screening for and counseling about sexually transmitted diseases “for those engaged in non-marital sexual behavior.”
O’Connor’s ruling undermines one of the bedrock public-health features of the Affordable Care Act, its encouragement of services aimed at keeping Americans healthy by catching signs of developing medical issues before they require costly interventions.
Sadly, the ruling didn’t come as much of a surprise: Not only did O’Connor telegraph his decision during hearings on the lawsuit months ago, but he’s the same judge who in 2018 tried to throw a monkey wrench into Obamacare by declaring the entire law unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court slapped him down with a 7-2 ruling upholding the act’s constitutionality in 2021, but that didn’t seem to invest O’Connor with any measure of humility.
O’Connor’s latest ruling underscores a major problem with America’s federal judicial system. That’s the ability of hack judges in backwater courthouses to interfere with policy by issuing nationwide injunctions based on specious or at least shallow legal arguments.
In time, we will see whether the Trump Supreme Court agrees that Americans don’t need preventive health care.
The Texas Monthly asks the question: Why is Governor Greg Abbott pitching vouchers only at private Christian schools? Could it be that he knows that vouchers are a subsidy for the tuition the family is already paying? If tuition is $12,500 per child, a voucher of $8,000 is a nice chunk of change. Maybe he knows that in other states, 75-80% of vouchers are used by students already enrolled in private schools. He knows this is a reward to his evangelical base. He doesn’t give a hoot about the 5.4 students in public schools, most of whom are not white. He cares a lot about the 300,000 kids in private schools. He criticizes public schools for “indoctrinating” students. What does he think happens in religious schools? It is spelled I-N-D-O-C-T-R-I-N-A-T-I-O-N.
Who would school vouchers really benefit?
Governor Greg Abbott is helping to answer that question, not so much through his rhetoric, which is relentlessly on-message (“educational freedom,” “parental rights,” “school choice”) as through his actions. Over the last few months, the governor has been taking his case for school vouchers on the road, traveling around the state to talk up the benefits of education savings accounts, the wonky name for a program that would offer taxpayer dollars to parents who enroll their kids in private schools.
But it’s impossible not to notice that Abbott has only visited expensive private Christian institutions—all Protestant—in front of friendly audiences of parents who have opted out of public education. Of the seven schools the governor has visited on his “Parent Empowerment Tour,” not a single one has been a public school or a secular private school or a religious school affiliated with Catholicism, Islam, or Judaism. Not even a Montessori. If the goal was to reassure critics that Abbott’s embrace of vouchers wasn’t a recipe for draining the public school system while subsidizing the children of wealthy Christian conservatives in private schools of their choice, well, none of those critics were around to hear it. The governor was quite literally preaching to the choir.
A recent appearance, at Brazos Christian School in Bryan, is representative. Brazos Christian is a private school serving kids from prekindergarten through high school, whose mission is “training, equipping, and educating students to impact the world for Jesus.” Tuition costs more than $12,500 a year for high-school students. Applicants for seventh through twelfth grade at Brazos Christian “must evidence a relationship with Jesus Christ” and provide a reference from a pastor to have a shot at acceptance. When Abbott showed up in early March, he spoke at a dais emblazoned with a sign reading “Parents Matter,” the kind of focus-group-tested slogan beloved by politicians and marketers. Hovering behind the governor’s head was the school’s cross-centric emblem.
Imagine your tax dollars supporting a school that will not accept your child because he or she does not have a “relationship with Jesus Christ.”
Florida legislators are about to enact a bill that criminalizes or punishes anyone who aids or hires undocumented immigrants. One of the new crimes was giving a ride to an immigrant. Church leaders loudly complained that they would not be allowed to pick up immigrants and take them to church.
A Florida House panel advanced a revised bill that no longer makes it a felony crime to knowingly transport someone without legal status within Florida.
“If it’s within the state of Florida, they are not held liable to any wrongdoing,” said Rep. Kiyan Michael, R-Jacksonville, the bill’s sponsor.
Sister Ann Kendrick, who founded the Hope CommUnity Center in Apopka that helps Central Florida’s immigrant families, was among those calling for lawmakers to reconsider the bill.
“I cart people around all the time who are undocumented,” she said. “I’ll go to jail for… helping a kid? Wow, isn’t that the American way?”
Politico reported that rightwing cultural warriors lost most school board elections, despite their big-money backers. Voters in Illinois and Wisconsin were not swayed by fear-mongering about critical race theory, LGBT issues, and other spurious claims of the extremists. These results should encourage the Democratic Party to challenge the attacks on public schools in the 2024 elections. An aggressive defense of public schools is good politics.
Amid all the attention on this month’s elections in Wisconsin and Illinois, one outcome with major implications for 2024 flew under the national radar: School board candidates who ran culture-war campaigns flamed out.
Democrats and teachers’ unions boasted candidates they backed in Midwestern suburbs trounced their opponents in the once-sleepy races. The winning record, they said, was particularly noticeable in elections where conservative candidates emphasized agendas packed with race, gender identity and parental involvement in classrooms.
While there’s no official overall tally of school board results in states that held an array of elections on April 4, two conservative national education groups did not dispute that their candidates posted a losing record. Liberals are now making the case that their winning bids for school board seats in Illinois and Wisconsin show they can beat back Republican attacks on divisive education issues.
The results could also serve as a renewed warning to Republican presidential hopefuls like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis: General election voters are less interested in crusades against critical race theory and transgender students than they are in funding schools and ensuring they are safe.
“Where culture war issues were being waged by some school board candidates, those issues fell flat with voters,” said Kim Anderson, executive director of the National Education Association labor union. “The takeaway for us is that parents and community members and voters want candidates who are focused on strengthening our public schools, not abandoning them.”
The results from the Milwaukee and Chicago areas are hardly the last word on the matter. Thousands more local school elections are set for later this year in some two dozen states. They are often low turnout, low profile, and officially nonpartisan affairs, and conservatives say they are competing aggressively.
“We lost more than we won” earlier this month, said Ryan Girdusky, founder of the conservative 1776 Project political action committee, which has ties to GOP megadonor and billionaire Richard Uihlein and endorsed an array of school board candidates this spring and during the 2022 midterms.
“But we didn’t lose everything. We didn’t get obliterated,” Girdusky told POLITICO of his group’s performance. “We still pulled our weight through, and we just have to keep on pushing forward on this.”
Labor groups and Democratic operatives are nevertheless flexing over the defeat of candidates they opposed during races that took place near Chicago, which received hundreds of thousands of dollars in support from state Democrats and the attention of Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, and in Wisconsin. Conservative board hopefuls also saw mixed results in Missouri and Oklahoma.
Democrats hope the spring school election season validates their playbook: Coordinate with local party officials, educator unions and allied community members to identify and support candidates who wield an affirming pro-public education message — and depict competitors as hard-right extremists.
Yet despite victories in one reliably blue state and one notorious battleground, liberals are still confronting Republican momentum this year that could resemble November’s stalemated midterm results for schools and keep the state of education divided along partisan lines.
Conservative states are already carrying out sharp restrictions on classroom lessons, LGBTQ students, and library books. And they are beginning to refine their message to appeal to moderates.
Trump, DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and other Republican presidential hopefuls are leaning on school-based wedge issues to court primary voters in a crowded White House campaign.
Open the link. The wedge issues are working against the Republicans. Most people know and like their tearchers and their public schools.
Fabiola Santiago is my favorite Miami Herald columnist. I share her sensibility. As I read what she wrote, I say “yes” again and again. Recently she wrote about the disgraceful anti-immigrant sentiment expressed in legislation by lawmakers who came from immigrant families. Miami, she writes, was once celebrated for its ethnic mix. Now Republican legislators are obediently following the xenophobic governor, who is a Christian nationalist. Would DeSantis have let them in? Probably not.
She writes:
Immigrant-hate-stoking Florida Gov. DeSantis should be persona non grata in South Florida. But gullible voters eagerly follow charlatans.
There are plenty of reasons to whisk away the welcome mat — DeSantis has attacked practically every distinctive feature we once stood for — none more repulsive than his loathing of undocumented immigrants, encapsulated in an immigration bill making its way through the Legislature.
This is a region risen from the tears and triumphs of decades of immigration, and BD — Before DeSantis — even Republican politicians held us up as an example of the heights a diverse community can reach.
Before the abhorrent “Florida blueprint” DeSantis is peddling nationwide — autocracy, anti-gay, anti-Black and anti-women’s rights, anti-immigrant measures — we were heralded as America’s model city of the future.
Now, GOP state lawmakers stand in solidarity with inconceivable intrusion in our communities by a governor with runaway ambition. Simply put, both versions of the same proposal, House Bill 1617 and Senate Bill 1718, are a slap to the face of our immigrant families — and native-born Americans who have welcomed immigrants into their lives, whether through friendship or marriage.
Families of mixed immigration status, people who straddle two worlds, are a Florida trademark. But if bills pass both chambers, these Floridians could potentially become criminals in the eyes of the law.
If signed by the governor, the new and possibly unconstitutional law would criminalize hosting immigrants in your home and driving them to school, work or anywhere else.
Doing so would be tantamount to harboring a fugitive and abetting them. Who and how authorities get to decide who is here illegally or who isn’t is tough to tell. And neither DeSantis nor the state decides immigration matters.
The bill also mandates random raids on businesses to check employees’ immigration status, again not the purview of state government, and forces hospitals to ask patients for their immigration status.
All of these proposals, which should have been dead on arrival when filed, have passed two House and Senate committees….
“This bill will negatively impact not only tens of thousands of mixed-status families living in Florida but will also impact thousands of businesses across the state,“ former Miami congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell told me. “Immigrants have been the backbone of Florida’s economy from the agricultural sector to the hospitality industry. Will Gov. DeSantis raid every business in the state to enforce this law?”
Perhaps not the businesses of his donors, but he will target those of random Hispanics and other minority groups.
Criminalizes Floridians who shelter, support, and provide transportation to undocumented immigrants, including those who have overstayed their visa or who have lived in Florida for decades and have US born children. Makes it harder for immigrants to provide for their families. Harms businesses by authorizing FDLE to conduct random checks of businesses to ensure compliance. Prohibits public funding for community IDs and requires hospitals to inquire of Medicaid patients whether they’re lawfully allowed in the country and to collect that data.
Florida’s hospitality and tourism industry won’t find it easy to hire people to clean hotel rooms, work in kitchens, and do other low-wage jobs. Where will the agriculture industry find people to tend and harvest their crops?
Despite protests, the compliant Florida legislature seems sure to give Governor DeSantis whatever he wants.
A regular commenter, who signs as NYC Public School Parent, is sharply critical of the games charters play. She doesn’t like the way they push kids out as young as 5 or 6 for misbehaving. She doesn’t like their boasting about test scores when the schools with the highest scores are selective, either in their admissions or their attrition or both.
She writes approvingly of schools that seek out those students with the greatest needs, like the one funded by LeBron James in Akron.
Didn’t the LeBron James-funded school in Akron do just that — specifically took the most struggling students? And wasn’t it part of the public school system? THAT is what all charters should be doing.
The so called “successful” and expanding charter chains have almost universally prioritized the needs of their CEOs over the needs of the most vulnerable children. Their approach to teaching students is that they want to teach students as long as those children make the CEO and administrators look good. Period. The students who don’t make them look good are drummed out and what is most disgusting is that they demonize those students if their parents don’t quietly remove them.
Anyone who doesn’t understand exactly WHO it is whose well-being is most important to charters only has to watch John Merrow’s October 2015 PBS interview with Eva Moskowitz – and the growing RED HIVES that appear on her neck which seems to be her “tell” when she feels threatened by having to defend her false narratives.
Her red hives are particularly evident when John Merrow asked her about the high rate of suspensions of Kindergarten and first graders, who are primarily African American:
“I OFTEN have parents say to me ‘my child never PUNCHED the teacher’, I say ‘well, but you weren’t there”.
That happens OFTEN, Eva Moskowitz claims in the video, referring to those youngest elementary school students. OFTEN.
Only an implicitly racist education reporter would not be extremely suspicious that there must be something very wrong with an inexperienced teacher trained in the Success Academy way if parents OFTEN are having Moskowitz telling them their 5 or 6 year olds were PUNCHING their Success Academy teachers.
And that’s how she justified high suspension rates. I would like to ask Eliza Shapiro and Elizabeth Greene whether they believe that is true, and ask them why they don’t feel that lying to demonize vulnerable children is disqualifying, but instead is something that shouldn’t be mentioned when presenting this person as a worthy source of information. Moskowitz OFTEN had to tell parents their young children PUNCHED their teacher, Eva Moskowitz says, and these reporters’ implicit racism did not even lead them to question such an absurdity that they surely would have questioned if a principal said that they OFTEN had affluent white parents of 5 year olds in her office who didn’t realize how violent their own children were.
“A disciplinary code is written to give maximum freedom…” said Eva Moskowitz, before she invoked how OFTEN 5 and 6 year old Success Academy children PUNCHED their teachers.
Complicit journalists who didn’t even question this when they heard Moskowitz invoking her violent students. Why?
Charters aren’t popping up in affluent white suburban neighborhoods because there isn’t a magic formula to turn students into scholars, there is a magic formula to cherry pick the students who perform well and dump the others but blame someone else because charters will never admit they are the ones who have failed the students they were funded to teach. Presumably the complicit journalists would not be so complicit about ignoring the red flags in the “violent children who needed to be suspended” narrative if those very young students were middle class and white.
The implicit racism that infuses every story about “high performing” charters in the NYT and Chalkbeat is that it would be impossible to cherry pick because there are simply too few academically proficient Black or Latinx students in urban areas to cherry pick. A math-challenged education reporter can see a statistic like “only 30% of Black and Latinx students in NYC are proficient on state tests” and not bother to notice that in a large city like NYC that is over 70,000 3-8 grade public school students. So they fawn over a hugely popular, lavishly funded charter with a disproportionately high rate of attrition whose 3-8 grade enrollment is a tiny percentage of 70,000, and they “inform” us in every story that to cherry pick is virtually impossible. And it simply has never been true, as anyone with a better understanding of numbers could have explained to them if they didn’t depend on press releases instead of trying to understand the evaluate the criticism themselves. It’s so much easier just to write a phrase “critics from the teachers’ union” or “critics who hate charters” disagree and then write more fawning paragraphs about the charters’ unprecedented and miraculous results.
If there wasn’t such lousy reporting that legitimized false narratives – if the reporting had been focused on why charters weren’t being held to their promise to teach the most at-risk students instead of the most motivated and academically strong students – I suspect the charter movement might become something I could support. When I found out that they were not interested in doing what they were funded to do, I was shocked. But when I found out they were LYING about what they were doing, and supporting their lie by throwing very young kids under the bus, I was disgusted.
Scott Maxwell, a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel, reports on Orwellian legislation that has been proposed by conservative elected officials. These officials don’t want professors to teach about racism. It is sure to be divisive and make someone uncomfortable. Thus they find it necessary to ban “teaching theories that suggest “systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.” This is a recent addition to the state’s higher education bill (SB 266).
This legislation is intended to shield students from unpleasant facts.
Students should not be taught about the origin of Florida’s law (recently revised) that did not allow former felons to vote, ever.
Maxwell writes:
That policy was instituted in the wake of the U.S. Civil War by Florida politicians who were, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, trying to stop the state from becoming too “n*ggerized.”
Sen. Geraldine Thompson, an African American Democrat who founded Orlando’s Wells’Built Museum of African American History and Culture, said the goal of the legislation is to distort history so students will never learn the history of systemic racism. Nor will they learn that the University of Florida did not admit Black students for its first 100 years. Legislators want to bury those facts, as they want to bury the history of lynchings and massacres. Nor do they want students to learn about the unequal sentences imposed on Blacks and whites convicted of the same crimes.
There were examples galore. Like two 17-year-olds in Lee County who were both charged with robbing gas stations with guns. Both had precisely three prior records as juveniles. Both made off with a few hundred bucks. The Black teen got four years in prison. The White one avoided prison altogether…
Thompson actually floated a legislative proposal to more thoroughly study the discrepancies found in the Herald-Tribune’s “Bias on the Bench” series to get more complete numbers and see what, if anything, needed fixing. Her idea was rejected.
This seems to be the new Florida way for handling systemic inequality. First, you nix efforts to fix it. Then you try to ban even discussing it.
The actual language in the higher-ed censorship proposal is a hot mess, full of nebulous catch phrases and vague bans, forbidding curriculum that, for example, “teaches identity politics,” as if that’s a statutorily defined thing.
The goal seems to be to generally chill speech, so that no one’s quite clear what they’re allowed to teach…
Thompson noted that the chilling effects are already happening with Florida schools canceling classes that they fear might offend legislators.
Teaching students actual history and sharing with them concrete contemporary data isn’t unpatriotic. Trying to stop or censor that is.
The Network for Public Education sponsored a conversation among me, Daniel Santos, and Domingo Morel.
Daniel Santos is an 8th grade social studies teacher in the Houston schools and vice-president of the Houston Federation of Teachers.
Domingo Morel is author of Takeover and the nation’s leading expert on the process by which a state abrogates local control of a school district.
I am a graduate of the Houston public schools.
As background, there are two things you should know:
1. Houston is not a “failing” district. It has a B rating.
2. State law in Texas allows the state to take control of a district if only one of its schools has persistently low scores.
Students, parents, teachers, and elected officials have complained about this abrogation of democracy. Governor Abbott and State Commissioner Mike Morath ignore them.
First, DeSantis retaliated by dissolving the Reedy Creek District, a special self-governing district controlled by Disney, which supplies all services to Disney’s theme park. DeSantis created a new board called the Central Florida Oversight District Board of Supervisors to oversee the district, packed with his cronies.
But before the legislation passed, Disney quietly held public meetings and granted its district decades of future control.
Outraged, DeSantis threatened to increase hotel taxes and put tolls on the roads to Disney. He also told the State Attorney General to investigate Disney. Not a nice way to treat the state’s biggest employer.
Now he is wreaking vengeance again:
The Disney versus DeSantis fight headed into round three on Monday as Florida’s governor announced that the Florida Legislature will revoke the last-minute development agreements that undercut the authority of the governor-controlled board and unleashed a litany of retributive efforts aimed at to the powerful corporation.
“We want to make sure that that Disney lives under the same laws as everybody else,’’ said Gov. Ron DeSantis at the headquarters of the Reedy Creek Improvement District near Orlando.
DeSantis said he has authorized state agencies to increase regulatory oversight over Disney operations, such as the monorail and amusement rides. He suggested the DeSantis-controlled oversight board could use undeveloped landnot owned by Disney for other purposes.
“Maybe create a state park, maybe try to do more amusement parks,’’ he said. “Someone even said like, maybe you need another state prison. Who knows? I mean, I just think that the possibilities are endless.”
The announcement comes two days before the newly-named Central Florida Tourism Oversight District’s Board of Supervisors is scheduled to review a new proposal to strengthen its authority over planning, zoning and land development regulations for the special taxing district that operates the 39-square-mile property on which Walt Disney World exists.
DeSantis must be terrifying every big corporation in the nation. This is a guy who puts his nose into corporate governance; he is also hostile to corporations that embrace equity, diversity and inclusion programs and environmental policies.
His desire to exercise political control over private corporations will not win new friends for him except his yahoo base.
The Tennessee legislature has passed a law controlling the freedom of teachers and college professors to discuss racism. Quite literally, teachers are required to deliver content without expressing a point of view, for instance, acknowledging that slavery was wrong. The author of the bill says he is promoting freedom of expression by restricting freedom of expression.
NASHVILLE, Tenn.—
“Divisive concept” rules are a set of laws passed last year that include many concepts usually taught in courses like sociology, psychology and political sciences.
The bill passed the House of Representatives on April 13, after passing Senate on April 5.
In 2022, lawmakers passed rules that allow state leaders to withhold funding for schools that teach about social, cultural and legal issues related to race and racism. Most of those concepts focus on how the impact of racism affects people today.
The law also specified that schools can teach about ethnic groups’ histories as described in textbooks and instructional materials. Educators can also only teach about controversial aspects of history, such as racial oppression or slavery, as long those discussions are impartial.
The bill, HB 1376, was introduced by Representative John Ragan (R – Oak Ridge). He previously said that the new bill was meant to strengthen the law passed in 2022 by “promoting freedom of expression,” and keep “colleges about advancing knowledge, not about advancing political or social agendas.”
Originally, the bill required institutions to publish a syllabus for each course offered in the semester on its website, meant to assess whether a “divisive concept” may be included in the curriculum. That requirement was removed in an amendment to the bill.
The bill restricts universities from using state funds for meetings or activities of an organization that “endorses or promotes a divisive concept.” It also requires employees who support diversity initiatives to “increase intellectual diversity” and support students through mentoring, career readiness and workforce development initiatives.
Employees would be exempt from the requirement if the new duties conflict with other laws, such as Title IX officers.
It also allows students and employees who believe that the school violated last year’s law a chance to file a report with the school. The school would then need to annually report violations to the comptroller of the treasury, redacting them as needed to stay in compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
The bill would also specifically require universities to allow any guest speaker on campus regardless of “non-violent political ideology” or “non-violent political party affiliation.”
The concepts that were banned from lessons in 2022’s law are listed below.
That one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex
That a person, by virtue of their race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist or oppressive — whether consciously or subconsciously
That a person should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of their race or sex
That a person’s moral character is determined by their race or sex
That a person, by virtue of their race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex
That a person should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or another form of psychological distress because of their race or sex
That a meritocracy is inherently racist, sexist or designed by a particular race or sex to oppress members of another race or sex
That Tennessee or the U.S. is fundamentally or irredeemably racist or sexist
Promoting or advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. government
Promoting division between, or resentment of, a race, sex, religion, creed, nonviolent political affiliation, social class or class of people
Ascribing character traits, values, moral or ethical codes, privileges or beliefs to a race or sex, or to a person because of their race or sex
That the rule of law does not exist but instead is a series of power relationships and struggles among racial or other groups
That “all Americans are not created equal and are not endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”
That governments should deny to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the law
It also bans lessons that include “race or sex scapegoating” or “race or sex stereotyping,” as those terms are defined in law. In October 2022, a group of UT faculty called the law “chilling,” and questioned the law’s intent.
Rep. Justin Jones (D – Nashville) spoke about the bill when he returned to the House of Representatives after he was expelled and reinstated. He asked a series of questions, such as whether “college students are mature enough to talk about race and systemic racism, some of the concepts you want to prohibit being discussed at the college level?”
“I believe in God. All else is settled by facts and data,” Ragan said.
Jones again asked him to answer the question, but Ragan said he responded to the question.
“So, we’re playing ‘not-answer.’ Okay,” Jones said.
He also asked why the bill was introduced and said it seemed based on “white fragility and fears of the truth of history.”
“This bill was brought to me by a dean of college education, in addition to another university contributed to this bill. That was my motivation, too,” Ragan said.
He also said he did not want to name the person who brought the bill to him.
“How will we be honest about our history if you’re prohibiting any concepts about America’s racist history?” Jones said. “This sounds like fascism. This sounds like authoritarianism. This does not sound like democracy or freedom … This member has consistently invoked God to justify this unjust, immoral and extreme, racist law.”
Speaker Cameron Sexton (R – Crossville) stopped Jones from speaking. Rep. Justin Pearson (D – Memphis) also spoke after being reinstated to the House.
“This is a deeply concerning bill because it is continuing a pattern of practice that is harmful to all people,” he said. “When you try to control what a person thinks, then you are assuming the role of God rather than allowing freedom of thought.”
He said that the list of “divisive concepts” bars discussions on biases, white privilege and racism’s role in slavery.
The bill passed by a vote of 68-26 in the House.
During a meeting on March 13, Ragan said he received complaints from universities in the state about an “overemphasis” of the original law at the expense of “intellectual diversity,” which led to him proposing the new bill.
Representative Harold Love, Jr. (D – Nashville) previously asked if a conference focusing on Black history could still be held and promoted by a university should the bill pass. Ragan said it would be allowed as long as they “are not required to promote or endorse.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 