Judd Legum of Popular Information tells the sad story of what happened to sex education in Florida. Responding to Ron DeSantis, the legislature passed a bill declaring what must be taught and what cannot be taught, in accord with the ideology of rightwing Republicans, not science. The law requires districts to have their sex Ed curriculum approved by the state. Large numbers of students are getting no sex education at all. That may be what DeSanths wants.
Legum writes:
In May 2023, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) signed Florida House Bill 1069, a law that requires sex education classes in the state to conform to right-wing ideology. Specifically, the law requires all sex education classes to teach students that sex is binary, “either male or female,” even though that is inaccurate. It also mandates that students are instructed that sex is defined exclusively by “internal and external genitalia present at birth,” and these sex roles are “binary, stable, and unchangeable.” This requirement erases the existence of trans and nonbinary people. Schools also must “teach abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage as the expected standard for all school-age students” and “the benefits of monogamous heterosexual marriage.”
To enforce these new rules and other aspects of the DeSantis administration’s political agenda, HB 1069 also requires “all materials used to teach reproductive health” to be approved in advance by the Florida Department of Education (FDE) or use textbooks pre-approved by the state. Previously, sex education curricula were approved by district school boards. Florida parents can opt-out of sex education lessons on behalf of their children.
The FDE instructed school districts to submit their materials for sex education by September 30, 2023. The school districts met the deadline, but the FDE never responded. Florida counties were placed in a no-win situation as not teaching sex education, a mandatory course, at all is a violation of state law.
Several Florida school districts — including Hillsborough, Orange and Polk Counties, three of Florida’s largest — decided not to teach sex education at all during the 2023-24 school year, the Orlando Sentinel reported. Other counties, including Broward and Seminole Counties, taught sex education classes without getting the legally required approval.
Legum reviewed a copy of the training materials for reviewers of district plans. Among other things, it requires these “experts” to watch for the following criteria:
The “experts” are directed to evaluate all materials on 11 separate criteria, some inscrutable. For example, all materials must be evaluated on the criteria of “Male and Female Reproductive Roles,” “Principles of Individual Freedom,” “Critical Race Theory,” and “Social Justice.”
Please open the link to learn more about how the Florida Department of Education trains reviewers of district plans.
The AP wrote about the annual conference of Moms for Liberty, where the guest speaker was convicted felon Donald Trump. The organization is supposed to be “non-political,” to preserve its tax-free status, but its partisan political views are undisguised. The rightwing group favors censorship, book banning, and unhinged alarmism about teachers “grooming” students to be gay or transgender.
WASHINGTON (AP) — In her welcoming remarks at Moms for Liberty’s annual gathering in the nation’s capital on Friday, the group’s co-founder, Tiffany Justice, urged members to “fight like a mother” against the Democratic presidential ticket.
Later that evening, after she had interviewed Republican nominee Donald Trump onstage, she made a point to say she was personally endorsing him for the presidency. Their talk show style chat was preceded by a “Trump, Trump, Trump” chant from the audience.
The weekend’s gathering, drawing parent activists from across the country, has showcased how Moms for Liberty has moved toward fully embracing Trump and his political messaging as November’s electiondraws nearer. The group is officially a nonpartisan nonprofit that says it’s open to anyone who wants parents to have a greater say in their children’s education, yet there was little pretense about which side of the nation’s political divide it has chosen.
A painting that was prominently displayed on an easel next to the security station attendees had to pass through before being allowed into the conference area showed Vice President Kamala Harris kneeling over a bald eagle carcass, a communist symbol on her jacket and her mouth dripping with blood. A Moms for Liberty spokeswoman said she hadn’t seen the gruesome painting and noted that the only official signage for the event included the group’s logo….
Many communities where Moms for Liberty candidates took over a majority of the school board have been frustrated by their laser-like focus on removing books, questioning lessons around race and rejecting LGBTQ+ identities. A lack of progress toward academic improvement has in turn led to a counter movement among more moderate and liberal parents and teachers unions.
Moms for Liberty says it won’t make an official endorsement in the presidential race, but it isn’t shying away from getting involved. The group’s founders recently wrote an open letter to parents warning that Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school social studies teacher, would be “the most anti-parent, extremist government America has ever known.”
The group spent its first three years becoming synonymous with the “parents’ rights” movement in local school boards but recently has become more involved in national politics. It participated in the controversial conservative blueprint for the next Republican administration, Project 2025, as a member of its advisory board. The group also has invested more than $3 million in four crucial presidential swing states. The money has paid for advertising in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin, including messages critical of the Biden administration.
But, here’s some good news:
Around the country, some school board members backed by Moms for Liberty or who carry out the group’s agenda have been recalled in recent months by community members who say their policies have caused chaos.
In Woodland, California, north of the state capital, a school board member backed by Moms for Liberty members was recalled in March after she raised fears that children were coming out as transgender “as a result of social contagion ” during a school board meeting in 2023.
In Southern California, a trustee with the Temecula Valley Unified School District Board of Education was recalled after he and two of his colleagues voted to reject a social studies curriculum because it included a history of the gay rights movement.
And in Idaho’s heavily Republican panhandle, community members from across the political spectrum rose up to recall two right-wing members of their board last year who sought to root out critical race theory and institute a conservative agenda.
Katie Blaxberg, a Pinellas County candidate who will run against the one remaining Moms for Liberty-linked candidate for that county’s school board this fall, said the “nastiness” and “divisiveness” of the group “isn’t conducive to any sort of good wor
John Thompson, historian and teacher, writes about the controversies swirling in Oklahoma, mostly around the MAGA State Superintendent of Schools Ryan Walters, who has mandated Bible lessons in every grade, among other things.
Thompson writes:
The Oklahoma press has been reporting on a seemingly endless number of battles between traditional Republican, conservative legislators, and rightwing extremists exemplified by State Superintendent Ryan Walters and Gov. Kevin Stitt. But this week this political civil war exploded. It culminated in Walters demanding that the Republican Speaker of the House, who almost certainly plans to run for governor against Walters, start impeachment hearings against him!
As KFOR News noted, that raises the question as to why Walters would call for an impeachment hearing against himself. It then quoted the former Attorney General Mike Turpen, who has a half-century of political experience, “Ryan Walters appears to be embracing what I call victim-hood,” Turpen said. “Ryan, what you’re doing right now, saying ‘come get me,’ is political suicide.” Turpen then concluded, “I have no idea who’s advising him, but it breaks my heart for his family,” he said. “This is a Republican Party like a firing squad of circle, and they’re all aimed at one person, Ryan Walters.”
The end of a long week for Walters, which has included news about a legislative investigation into how his agency has and has not allocated appropriated funds, questions about his compliance with state transparency laws, and a new defamation lawsuit filed against him by Bixby’s superintendent (Rob Miller.)
This also was pivotal because Miller was the first superintendent to publicly call out Walters on his mismanagement of funds, even though the World spoke to “at least a dozen other superintendents [who] confirmed that Miller was accurate.” Walters then responded to Miller, a highly respected Gulf War veteran, by calling him a “clown” and a “liar,” and claiming that ‘the Department of Education was ‘dealing with all kinds of financial problems’ at Bixby schools.”
And Walters repeatedly continued to use his aggressive language, “I will not continue to stand here and listen to Speaker McCall and (Republican) Mark McBride lie about my office and lie about the work we are doing.”
On Monday, state Rep. Mark McBride sent a letter to McCall requesting a special investigation of Walters and the state Education Department. Initially, McCall told McBride “no” and said there would be no investigation until 51 Republican members of the House signed the letter.
By Thursday, however, “McBride had the support of 24 other Republican House members and the 20-member Democratic Caucus.” And as the Tulsa World reported, “McBride said he’s heard from other representatives who want to sign on or say they want Walters and the OSDE investigated but are afraid to go public.”
And, as the Oklahoman further explained, its stories this week looked “at Walters’ agency’s failure to turn over funds for life-saving asthma inhalers and why it took more than a year for “off the formula” school districts to be reimbursed for a state-mandated teacher pay raises.”
Moreover, “other lawmakers criticized Walters for his recent online name-calling about Bixby Public Schools Superintendent Rob Miller.” Vocal critics included “House Speaker Pro Tempore Kyle Hilbert (R-Bristow) [who] did not sign McBride’s letter, but on Tuesday he did call for an end to Walters’ “rhetoric toward educators.”
Even Gov. Stitt backed off from Walters’ “name-calling,” saying that, “‘hey, let’s focus on the policies.’ It’s a hateful game sometimes in politics, as people are taking shots at you.” For what It’s worth, Stitt is now calling for “discussions across party lines.”
Then, Rep. Kevin Wallace (R-Wellston), the chair of “the House Appropriations and Budget Committee became the “spearhead” of the call for the investigation of Walters and the Education Department by the Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency (LOFT). And then, McCall “softened his stance and approved an investigation by LOFT.” It “will focus on issues raised by both legislators and private citizens regarding alleged state Education Department funding disbursement issues.”
And by Friday, Senate Pro Tem Greg Treat said, “Numerous Senators and I have been raising questions about spending and money not being allocated to specific programs the legislature has authorized at the Department of Education.” The Senate’s leader further explained that he originally said, “investigations like the state Education Department/Walters investigation weren’t part of LOFT’s original mission or purpose, but he supported the review because the concerns were serious.” He now says, “the Senate will stand ready to respond to any of the (LOFT) findings.”
And that brings us back to the second series of internal conflicts between MAGA’s and “adult Republicans.” As the Oklahoma Voice had reported, months ago, Senator Treat had “warned Gov. Kevin Stitt against targeting Republican senators who are up for reelection.” Treat cited “strong rumors” that Stitt “is seeking to take out good members of the Republican caucus.” He said that Republicans had supported Stitt on school choice and outlawing abortion, but “some Republican senators have been at odds over tax cuts, gaming compacts and other issues.” Treat tactfully said, “I know he (Stitt) is fairly new to it, but all of us talk and so it is even a smaller group of people who fund these ventures.” And, “senators have heard from people who have been “hit up” by Stitt’s operation to go after some Republican senators.”
Who knows if the pushback against Walters and Stitt is a prelude to the inner conflict that the Washington Post reports is growing in the Trump campaign? It reports:
Some of the internet’s most influential far-right figures are turning against former president Donald Trump’s campaign, threatening a digital “war” against the Republican candidate’s aides and allies that could complicate the party’s calls for unity in the final weeks of the presidential race.
For instance, the rightwing extremist Nick Fuentes “said on X that Trump’s campaign was ‘blowing it’ by not positioning itself more to the right and was ‘headed for a catastrophic loss,’ in a post that by Wednesday had been viewed 2.6 million times.” And, “Candace Owens, a far-right influencer … described the conservative infighting in a podcast Tuesday as a ‘MAGA Civil War.’”
Whether we’re talking about Oklahoma’s or national MAGA-ism, they have grown, in large part, because it is easier to tear down a barn, than build one. Now, that truth may be wrecking Trumpism.
John Thompson, retired teacher and historian in Oklahoma, sees a ray of hope in the pushback against State Superintendent Ryan Walters’ efforts to impose some version of the Christian religion on the public schools.
Thompson writes:
As Oklahoma State School Superintendent Ryan Walters’s ramps up his attacks on public schools, it must be asked why is he becoming even more extremist when it seems so obvious that he’ll lose these battles? I won’t try to get into his mind, but I believe that four types of responses make it unlikely that Walters can implement his agenda. He’s losing due to resistance from educators, the courts, legislators, and the press, which is revealing his agenda in a professional manner.
As the Oklahoma Voice explained, Ryan Walters recently mandated “grade-level specific guidelines” for 5th through 12th grade classes. “They require students to analyze literary elements of biblical stories and to identify how those have impacted Western culture.” Moreover, “Every classroom must also have a physical copy of the Bible, the United States Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Ten Commandments.”
As the Oklahoman reports, eight mostly large suburban school districts say they “would not be altering their curriculum.” One district superintendent, Rick Cobb, said, “The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled this summer that selection of instructional materials is a matter of local control. … I hope that remains the law and continues to be our practice.”
I must add that these school systems’ leaders, like Cobb and Bixby’s Rob Miller, had previously been disproportionately courageous in defending their students from corporate school reform. (Miller is currently protesting the loss of teaching talent due to Walters, and how schools haven’t received their Title I allocations, which were due on July I.)
In what the Oklahoman characterized as a “veiled threat,” State Superintendent Walters doubled down on his orders, “Some Oklahoma educators have indicated they won’t follow the law and Oklahoma standards, so let me be clear: they will comply, and I will use every means to make sure of it.” And as the Frontier reports, Walters says that “teachers who don’t comply could lose their teaching licenses.”
But, Walters hasn’t been successful defending his mandates in court. As the Frontier’s Fact-Checkerreported, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond’s office has said that Walters has no legal authority to require certain content be taught by sending a memo to school districts. And KFOR reports that Drummond has already informed Walters that he can’t continue to ban legislators serving on Education Committee from his executive committee meetings.
As the Oklahoma Voice reported, the Education Department ordered the Edmond schools to remove “The Kite Runner” and “The Glass Castle” from its high school library shelves, and “threatened a potential downgrade to Edmond’s accreditation status if it didn’t comply.” However, the “Oklahoma Supreme Court unanimously agreed with Edmond Public Schools that the state Department of Education overstepped its bounds.”
And the Oklahoman reports, the “Walters-led state Board of Education created an administrative rule prohibiting school districts and local schools from ‘altering sex or gender designations in past student records’ without the board’s authorization.” They did so after Walters insisted, “We’re not going to tolerate the woke Olympics in our schools, left-wing ideologues trying to push in this radical gender theory. It is the most radical concept we’ve ever come across in K-12 education, that you can be gender fluid (or) change your gender constantly.”
During the same week the Republican Representative Mark McBride discovered discrepancies between the information he received from the State Department of Education about state funding for Walters’ and his Chief Policy Advisor Matt Langston’s political trips, and the data presented to KFOR news by the Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES). McBride “says it’s time for Attorney General Drummond’s office to step in and investigate whether OSDE violated the Open Records Act in this case.” The Lost Ogle added that one of the expenses that taxpayers paid for was Walters riding a hot air balloon; and he didn’t tip his Uber driver.
And below is Rep. Mickey Dollens‘ (D) latest critique of Walters and Stitt, listing “recent proposals introduced in the Oklahoma rooted in Christian Nationalism.”
– Bible mandate in public schools.
– Designating the Bible as the Official State Book.
– Establishing the nation’s first taxpayer-funded religious charter school.
– Displaying the Ten Commandments at the state capitol.
– Mandating the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom.
– Using Bible verses to justify spanking children with disabilities in school.
– Religious school tax credits.
– Banning the teaching of evolution in public schools.
– The governor claiming the state of Oklahoma for Christ in his inaugural speech.
Fourthly, we should take note of the number of excellent articles this piece cites. The Tulsa World’s Ginnie Graham is just one example of reporters presenting the evidence that districts are obeying the law when they reject Walters’ orders. Although the press is seriously underfunded, these local for-profit and nonprofit news organizations have done a fantastic job of documenting how Walters, and other local and national campaigns (like the Project 2025) are threatening both, public education and our other democratic institutions.
Finally, it was so exciting to be a part of the overflow crowd (not including the thousands who listened on Zoom) in Oklahoma City’s Mayflower Church when Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, spoke on Walters and the Project 2025. So I will end with her concluding words in The Hill about Walters:
The goal of all of these strategies is to assert Christian favor and privilege in America and to fight democracy’s steady march towards equality for all. It’s very much a backlash to all the progress that our society has made in recent times towards LGBTQ equality, towards women’s equality, towards racial equality and Black and brown equality.
Until recently, I doubt many Oklahomans believed that so many people would oppose his agenda.
A Sunday special editorial by my good friend Greg Palast for The Hartmann Report. Catch Palast this week on Thom.TV
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.
Ill wind out of Georgia
This ill wind originated in Georgia when Gov. Brian Kemp signed HB1084, threatening the jobs of teachers fot 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.
Killing Killers
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 Killersculled 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.
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.
Evicted from the Historical Society
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.
The Occupation
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
John Thompson, historian and retired teacher, brings us up to date with the latest shenanigans of Oklahoma’s State Superintendent Ryan Walters. Recently, he mandated that the Bible be taught in the state’s classrooms. Now Walters has appointed a list of rightwing luminaries to rewrite the state’s social studies curriculum. Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, Walters proves that it can.
John Thompson writes:
KOSU’s Beth Wallace reports that the Executive Review Committee assembled by Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters features prominent conservatives, including Dennis Prager of PragerU, David Barton of the Christian Nationalist organization, Wallbuilders, and the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts.” She then reminds readers that, “The Heritage Foundation is the think tank behind Project 2025, a movement that proposes to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education.”
More information was provided to NBC’s Tyler Kingkade and Marissa Parra during their interview with Walters about his plans for transforming school curriculums. They reported that “Oklahoma educators who refuse to teach students about the Bible could lose their teaching license.” Ryan Walters said that those teachers would “face the same consequences as one who refuses to teach about the Civil War. The punishment could include revocation of their teaching license.”
Moreover, Walters expressed confidence “that his order will survive legal challenges because of the Justices then-President Donald Trump appointed to the Supreme Court.” And if Trump is elected, “it will help us move the ball forward, even more so than this.”
Until recently, Dennis Prager was the best known rightwinger selected for Walters’ committee. The Hill’s Lexi Lonas explained that Prager’s so-called education group “focused on teaching conservative principles. The conservative platform has been made its way into multiple states, with videos such as ‘Was the Civil War About Slavery?’ and ‘The Inconvenient Truth About the Democratic Party.’”
National Public Radio’s Barbara Bradley Hagerty referred to another committee member, David Barton, in a very different way, as “the most important Evangelist You’ve Never Heard Of.” Hagerty explained that Barton collected 100,000 documents and, “He says they prove that the Founding Fathers were deeply religious men who built America on Christian ideas — something you never learn in school.” Barton argued that the Constitution isn’t a secular document because it “is laced with biblical quotations.”
However, NPR “looked up every citation Barton said was from the Bible, but not one of them checked out.” The Constitution had “no mention of God or religion except to prohibit a religious test for office.” Then Hagerty quoted, “John Fea, chairman of the history department at evangelical Messiah College,” who said, “Barton is peddling a distorted history that appeals to conservative believers.”
Hagerty also fact-checked Barton’s claim that President Thomas Jefferson “who owned nearly 200 slaves — was a civil rights visionary,” and he had plans that “would’ve ended slavery really early on,” and “they would have gone much more toward civil rights.” Barton said that Virginia law “prohibited Jefferson from freeing his slaves during his lifetime.” When that statement was shown to be false, Barton said that, “Jefferson could not afford to free his slaves.”
So, David Barton and Dennis Prager clearly aren’t qualified to recommend history curriculums, but the most dangerous member of the committee is Kevin Roberts, who is a driving force in the Christian Nationalist Project 2025, which is a detailed game plan for a Trump administration for dismantling the federal government’s administrative institutions. It seems obvious that his goal for the Oklahoma Executive Review Committee is to dismantle public education.
The Washington Post reports that Roberts recently said of Project 2025, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Roberts told the New York Times’ Lulu Garcia-Navarro that “he views Heritage’s role today as ‘institutionalizing Trumpism.’” Garcia-Navarro said that Project 2025 was:
A transition blueprint that outlines a plan to consolidate power in the executive branch, dismantle federal agencies and recruit and vet government employees to free the next Republican president from a system that Roberts views as stacked against conservative power.
Roberts has praised Hungary’s authoritarian, Christian Nationalist Viktor Orban, adding that “Modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft but the model.” He’s also said that he wants to “destroy the administrative state,” and defeat “the secret Communist movement in America.”
And since he is serving on Walters’ committee for rewriting history, it is noteworthy that Roberts said that Joe McCarthy “largely got things right.”
When asked if he believes that President Biden won the 2020 election, Roberts replied, “No.”
And that brings us to the reason why Rex Huppke writes in the Oklahoman:
Project 2025 is a governing blueprint designed by a collection of former Trump administration officials who seem to have looked at Hitler’s path to power in 1930s Germany and thought, ‘Cool!’
Huppke refers to Project 2025, as “a painstakingly detailed and hellishly authoritarian plan for a second Trump presidency.” He notes that “according to The Heritage Foundation itself,” Trump “embraced nearly two-thirds of the policy recommendations.”
I would just add that the leader of Project 2025, and his allies, clearly see Ryan Walters’ Executive Review Committee as one part of their plan.
Good news! The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled against public funding for a religious charter school. Many were watching closely to see how the court ruled. A decision that went the other way would have rebuffed the tradition of separation of church and state and erased the distinction between charters and vouchers. The fact that Oklahoma’s ultra-conservative Governor Kevin Stitt and its State Commissioner of Education Ryan Walters strongly supported the religious charter school idea makes the decision even more startling.
“Under Oklahoma law, a charter school is a public school,” wrote Justice James R. Winchester for the court. “As such, a charter school must be nonsectarian. However, St. Isidore will evangelize the Catholic faith as part of its school curriculum while sponsored by the State.”
A charter contract for St. Isidore was approved by a state board last year.
Charter schools in Oklahoma are privately owned but receive state funding under the same guidelines as government-operated public schools.
The fight over the school exposed a fault line between two of the state’s top Republican politicians. Gov. Kevin Stitt strongly advocated for the school, saying when the contract was approved that it was “a win for religious liberty and education freedom in our state.”
But the school’s charter status was strongly opposed by Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who filed the lawsuit against it and predicted the state could be forced to fund other types of religious education if St. Isidore succeeded.
“The framers of the US Constitution and those who drafted Oklahoma’s Constitution clearly understood how best to protect religious freedom: by preventing the State from sponsoring any religion at all,” Drummond said in a statement Tuesday. “Now Oklahomans can be assured that our tax dollars will not fund the teachings of Sharia Law or even Satanism.”
The school board of the Cypress-Fairbanks district (Cy-Fair) in Texas voted to delete chapters they didn’t like from textbooks in science. Science teachers in the district were taken aback.
Cy-Fair is located in the Houston suburbs and is one of the largest districts in the state.
The former science coordinator at Cypress-Fairbanks ISD was “appalled” as she watched the conservative stronghold on the school board vote to remove 13 chapters from science, health and education textbooks last month, scrapping in just minutes countless hours of work done by both state and local textbook review committees.
“Chapters are not independent entities. They’re put in an order purposefully, and they build off of prior knowledge, and they reference information in prior areas,” said Debra Hill, who has 40 years of experience in science education. “It’s like saying, ‘I’m going to take off the chapter on adding and subtracting, and we’ll just skip ahead to multiplication.’”
The material that was deleted will be covered by state tests.
One Cy Falls High School teacher, who served on the review committee for the earth systems course materials, has filed a grievance with the board that will be discussed at Thursday’s board workshop, according to information shared on social media by Trustee Julie Hinaman, the lone opposing vote on removing the chapters. Critics question whether students will get all the information the state intends — and will test for — in a last-minute effort to replace the materials.
The earth science textbook had three entire chapters removed, titled, “Earth Systems and Cycles,” “Mineral and Energy Resources” and “Climate and Climate Change.”
Other content removed from the textbooks included chapters on cultural diversity, vaccines, COVID-19 and climate change. Courses impacted include education, health science, biology and environmental science.
Cy-Fair ISD’s Chief Academic Officer Linda Macias assured board members when they made the vote in May that it would be possible for their curriculum staff to make these changes, even as the staff has been slashed in budget cuts for the 2024-2025 school year.
But Hill isn’t so sure it will actually be possible for Cy-Fair teachers to teach the required Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills next year, she said.
Creating a new curriculum is hard enough, and the district must also provide students with materials that pertain to every single science TEK, she said. Cy-Fair’s curriculum staff and other educators may be responsible for creating their own textbook pages to replace the ones that were deleted, a process that could take countless hours outside of instruction that could drive teachers from the profession altogether, she said.
Plus, Hill hasn’t seen any clarity on who would approve the new instructional materials. The board could theoretically reject new chapters created by the district if it included too much of the type of climate change material that the deleted textbook chapters covered, Hill worried.
“If you want to drive teachers out of education, this is what you should do to them,” she said. “I am just very afraid that students are not going to get access to accurate, TEKS-aligned content.”
Last month, the school board voted to eliminate discussions of vaccines and other topics, while cutting the budget and eliminating 600 positions.
More than a dozen chapters including content on vaccines, cultural diversity, climate change, depopulation and other topics deemed controversial by conservative Cypress-Fairbanks ISD trustees will be removed from textbooks in the state’s third largest school system for the 2024-2025 school year.
Trustees voted 6-1 late Monday to omit the material, after an hourslong discussion about a $138 million budget deficit that is forcing the district to eliminate 600 positions, including 42 curriculum coaches, dozens of librarians and 278 teaching positions.
What were the school board members thinking? Did they think if you don’t teach about climate change, it doesn’t exist?
Who will remove the chapters? Will the publisher? Will teachers cut them out of the textbooks? Will they paste the pages together?
A big thank-you to Trustee Julie Hinaman, who believes in education, not censorship or indoctrination.
Good news in New Hampshire! Federal Judge Paul Barbadoro threw out the state’s “divisive concepts” law, which banned the teaching of anything that might be “divisive.” The same kind of law has been used in other states to ban the teaching of historical facts and literature about Blacks and gays. The judge declared it was too vague to be Constitutional and created confusion about what was and was not allowed in the classroom. In an ironic twist, the law that censors teaching and curriculum is titled “The Law Against Discrimination.”
Nancy West of InDepthNH.com wrote about the decision, which certainly must have upset State Commissioner Frank Edelblut and Governor Chris Sununu, as well as the state’s busybody Moms for Liberty.
West writes:
CONCORD – A federal judge on Tuesday struck down the state’s controversial ‘divisive concepts’ law, which had its roots in an executive order by former President Trump, that limited how teachers can discuss issues such as race, sexual orientation and gender identity with students.
The law, passed in a budget rider in 2021, created a chilling atmosphere in classrooms around the state with teachers unsure of what they could discuss about those issues without fear of being suspended or even banned from teaching altogether in the state.
The four banned concepts include: That one’s age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, creed, or color is inherently superior or inferior; that an individual, by virtue of age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, creed, color…is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously; that an individual should be discriminated against because of his or her age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, creed, color; and that people of one age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, creed, color…cannot and should not attempt to treat others without regard to age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, creed, color…., according to the judge’s ruling.
In New Hampshire it’s called the Law Against Discrimination and makes it unlawful for a public employer to “teach, advocate, instruct, or train” the banned concepts to “any employee, student, service recipient, contractor, staff member, inmate, or any other individual or group.”
U.S. District Court Judge Paul Barbadoro ruled the law is unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment because it is too vague.
In the suit filed against Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut and the Department of Education by the National Education Association of New Hampshire and the American Federation of Teachers of New Hampshire, Barbadoro sided with the teachers and granted their motion for summary judgment.
“The Amendments are viewpoint-based restrictions on speech that do not provide either fair warning to educators of what they prohibit or sufficient standards for law enforcement to prevent arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement. Thus, the Amendments violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” Barbadoro wrote…
The controversy escalated after Edelblut posted a page of the Department of Education website to file complaints against teachers for allegedly discriminating and a group called Moms for Liberty offered a $500 reward “for the person that first successfully catches a public school teacher breaking this law.”
Barbadoro wrote: “RSA § 193:40, IV provides that a “[v]iolation of this section by an educator shall be considered a violation of the educator code of conduct that justifies disciplinary sanction by the state board of education.
“An ‘educator’ is defined as ‘a professional employee of any school district whose position requires certification by the state board [of education].’ RSA § 193:40, V. Potential disciplinary sanctions include reprimand, suspension, and revocation of the educator’s certification.
“In other words, an educator who is found to have taught or advocated a banned concept may lose not only his or her job, but also the ability to teach anywhere in the state,” Barbadoro wrote…
Barbadoro was critical of Edelblut’s two op-ed pieces in the New Hampshire Union Leader.
“Despite the fact that the articles offer minimal interpretive guidance, Department of Education officials have referred educators to them as a reference point. For example, after showing two music videos to her class as part of a unit on the Harlem Renaissance, Alison O’Brien, a social studies teacher at Windham High School, was called into a meeting with her principal and informed that she was being investigated by the Department of Education in response to a parent’s complaint.
“Department of Education Investigator Richard Farrell recommended that Windham’s administrators consult Edelblut’s April 2022 opinion article to understand the context of the investigation against O’Brien, without otherwise explaining why O’Brien’s lesson warranted investigation. After witnessing her experience, O’Brien’s colleagues grew anxious about facing similar actions,” Barbadoro wrote.
What did she do wrong? She doesn’t know.
Edelblut, the state’s top education official, homeschooled his children. He was appointed by Governor Sununu. The governor likes to pretend he is a Republican moderate. Don’t be fooled.
Judge Barbadoro was appointed by President George H.W. Bush.
When PEN America released its latest national report on book banning, the state with the worst record was Florida. If you hear any bragging about test scores in Florida, think twice. Educated people typically don’t fear books; uneducated people do.
Chris Tomlinson, columnist for The Houston Chronicle, reports that book banning is getting more absurd in Texas. Why do school board members think they can censor ideas and images that are widely available on the Internet? At the same time, the state has barred public universities from administering programs that promote “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
Tomlinson writes:
The Fort Bend Independent School District superintendent would have to ban department store catalogs and National Geographic magazines if the school board goes through with its latest book ban measure.
Nationwide, PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for free expression, this week reported more than 4,000 instances of book banning during the first half of the current school year, more than in the entire previous 2022-23 school year.
Conservative book banners continue to shock and dismay with their absurdity, anti-intellectualism and renunciation of reality. Before there was online porn and young adult books about LGBTQ love, there was Sears Roebuck selling lingerie and National Geographic photographing semi-nude indigenous women.
Book bans don’t stop at nudity and sexuality; extremists are also targeting ideas they don’t like. For example, teachers may not discuss anything that might make a child uncomfortable lest they face a penalty under state law.
If my fourth grade teacher were subject to the same law, she could have lost her job for telling me enslavers brutalized the African Americans they held in bondage, contradicting my grandfather, who taught me our ancestors were “good slaveholders.”
Lately, it seems any state employee who acknowledges racism in our nation’s history or our present will lose their jobs. The University of Texas is cleaning house, firing dozens of educators dedicated to helping people from disadvantaged communities succeed in higher education.
Free speech and decades of progress toward a more honest assessment of who we are and where we come from are under attack. The wannabe oppressors are organized and winning, and yet, too many of us still don’t take the threat to our liberty seriously.
Diane Ravitch's blog 